Jesse nails it:
A credibility trap is when the regulatory, political and informational functions of a society have been compromised by corruption and fraud, so that the leadership cannot effectively reform or even honestly address the situation without impairing and implicating, at least incidentally, a broad swath of the power structure, including themselves.
The status quo tolerates the corruption and the fraud because they have profited at least indirectly from it, and would like to continue to do so. Even relatively honest reformers within the power structure are susceptible to various forms of soft blackmail and coercion.
And so a failed policy and its support system are almost self-sustaining, long after it is seen by the people to have failed. In its failure it becomes counterproductive, and an impediment to recovery in the real economy. Admitting failure is not an option for those who receive their power from that system.
The continuity of the structural hierarchy must therefore be maintained at all costs, even to the point of becoming a painfully obvious hypocrisy.
The Banks must be restrained, and the financial system reformed, with balance restored to the economy, before there can be any sustainable recovery.
I could not put it better myself. This further explains the move by our governing elite to constrain free speech. A tendency recognized by denizens of the opposite ends of the political spectrum, such as Goebbels and Hayek :
“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.”
Joseph Goebbels
“Everything which might cause doubt about the wisdom of the government or create discontent will be kept from the people. The basis of unfavorable comparisons with elsewhere, the knowledge of possible alternatives to the course actually taken, information which might suggest failure on the part of the government to live up to its promises or to take advantage of opportunities to improve conditions–all will be suppressed. There is consequently no field where the systematic control of information will not be practiced and uniformity of views not enforced.”
Friedrich A. von Hayek, The Road to Serfdom
It’s little wonder the governing class across the English speaking world are so determined to remove not just the right, but the expectation of free speech. If they get their way, we know where we will end up:
“When any government, or any church for that matter, undertakes to say to its subjects, ‘This you may not read, this you must not see, this you are forbidden to know,’ the end result is tyranny and oppression, no matter how holy the motives. Mighty little force is needed to control a man whose mind has been hoodwinked; contrariwise, no amount of force can control a free man, a man whose mind is free. No, not the rack, not fission bombs, not anything—you can’t conquer a free man; the most you can do is kill him.”
Robert A. Heinlein, If This Goes On, 1940
George Orwell wrote 1984 as a warning, not a how to manual. Something we need to recognize if we are to resist big brother and the thought police’s propaganda.
It’s the kids I feel sorriest for. Governments will lose the ability to maintain their big lie. Much of the governing class will try to resort to tyranny to maintain their relatively privileged position. This process and the overthrow of the big lie will tear core societal assumptions and structures asunder. It’ll be as traumatic for us as was the ending Communism and the defeat of Nazis for Nazis and communists. Most have no idea what they will lose:
“It is worthy of remark that a belief constantly inculcated during the early years of life, whilst the brain is impressible, appears to acquire almost the nature of an instinct; and the very essence of an instinct is that it is followed independently of reason.” Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man, 1871
Reality always wins.
