Everything you know is wrong

Talking with DBB reveals very clearly a new direction in my thinking: Everything the bourgeoisie and their government tells us is wrong — on the rare occasions they're right, they're right only by accident and they'll soon correct that. Everything I thought I knew has changed, been turned upside down by this new paradigm.

There are no abstract standards of justice: there are only competing interests. And everything the bourgeoisie says and does, especially when they're talking about justice and rights, is said and done to further the interests of the bourgeoisie as a class. Everything. Without exception.

(Which is why, fundamentally, communism is about securing and promoting the interests of the proletariat, not implementing some abstract, metaphysical notion of "justice".)

The most important, fundamental strategy in sales is ABC: Always Be Closing. Always be manipulating the customer into making decisions that moves the sale closer to completion. The technique most often used to close is to frame the decision between alternatives either both beneficial to sale or where one alternative is clearly not a viable choice ("Would you like to talk now, or would you like to make an appointment to talk later?" or, "Would you like the undercoating, or do you want the bottom to fall out of your car?") Sometimes both techniques can be combined: Obama or McCain?

This framing issue dominates bourgeois politics: Invade Iraq or continue sanctions? Go to war with Hamas or continue the siege? Islamofascism or good ol' American values? Welfare or jobs? Democrat or Republican? Bailout or chaos and looting in the streets?

The fundamental psychological and social issue, then, is breaking out of bourgeois framing of the social and political issues of the day. It's important to get out of the frame of which faction of the bourgeoisie to support, and start framing the issue as: Whose interests are being furthered and secured? Your own, or the interests of the rich?

It's especially difficult for people in the labor aristocracy to break out of bourgeois framing, because we're being bought off with the labor and wealth of the truly oppressed people of the world. It's perhaps a little easier for me: I have no college degree, and I've always been an atheist and iconoclast. I'm not really "one of us"; even in a temporary contraction I'm the first to be pushed down into the proletariat or the unemployed. I know first hand the fragility and unreliability of blood money. But 90% of the present labor aristocracy are destined for the bottom; only those who can flatter and charm the obscenely wealthy will survive the coming economic cataclysm with their middle-class positions secure.

Everything you know is wrong. Everything you've been told is a lie.