“More than 700 esteemed economists, including more than a half dozen Nobel Prize winners, have signed an open letter urging voters to reject Donald Trump at the ballot box in this election. ‘In just one term in office, Donald Trump has rendered the United States unrecognizable, and has faced no consequences for doing so,’ the letter reads. ‘He has carried out a sustained assault on democratic institutions, put his family members in charge of critical government functions during a pandemic, called for his political opponents to be thrown in prison, normalized corruption, and weakened the economic recovery with selfish and reckless behavior. For these reasons, we strongly recommend that the electorate do what no one else can: reclaim your democracy by voting to remove Donald Trump from office.”
The Republicans are the radical Neoliberals who have made money the god of this nation and by extension of the planet. The Corporate Democrats are only a lesser evil and might, by great effort, be steered back toward the Imbedded Liberalism of The New Deal. Trumpism is the Dunning-Kruger version of Neoliberalism and a clear and present danger to our species. It is fairly simple to discern who is crossing the line into fascism by statements such as “America is not a democracy, it is a Republic”, and terminology like “the radical liberal mob.”
If hope becomes something you express through illusion then it’s not hope, it’s fantasy: The cult of the self is in biblical terms a form of idolatry.
Exactly how much of the profits made are you entitled to as a worker? The Neoliberal answer is zero. You get what the owner in an ownership society decides to pay you and if you don’t like it you are free to seek other employment. No entitlements. The Neoliberal believes this is all you get and it is absolutely fair because you are not a slave and have the freedom to leave just as they have the freedom to pay you whatever they want to. Neoliberals see this as the only exception, the only necessary restraint, on their absolute greed- that if they are not paying their workers enough then they will not have enough workers and will have to pay more. Any taxes are theft and an infringement of their freedom. When all the land and water become the property of the few this quickly becomes a bizarre game and exposes the hypocrisy and true thieves. In theological terms this is called Latifundalization.
In laymen terms it is the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.
The golden rule for Neoliberals: those with the gold make the rules.
It seems there is a personality type the fascists seek to radicalize because they are fairly sure to succeed. Trump, perhaps because he is somewhere on the sociopath scale, knows how to manipulate this percentage of the population who are vulnerable. With about 30 percent said to be supporting Trumpism, Plato’s assertion that democracy cannot work may have some validity. Disenfranchising one out of three voters because they are gullible and cannot think critically does not seem very Democratic.
However…just as Imbedded Liberalism has elements of two adversarial systems- socialism and capitalism- it may be that only qualifying the non-psychopathological part of the population to vote is the best solution. We weaponized IQ tests for war…why not optimize personality evaluations for voting?
We have challenges ahead of us…and Trump is not going to succeed in meeting them.
Trumpism is a lesson to the human race, not just America. It may be our last chance to change course away from the looming disaster Neoliberalism is steering us toward. Those of us who have some ability to think critically have witnessed the Trump cult firsthand and now see clearly the sickness that caused so much destruction in the last century. Not that we fully understand it, but identifying the enemy is the first step.
George Santayana’s most famous quote is so often misquoted by conservatives it is important to revisit in this context:
“Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. When change is absolute there remains no being to improve and no direction is set for possible improvement: and when experience is not retained, as among savages, infancy is perpetual. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.“
Often the last sentence is used alone to justify burning a system to the ground and starting from nothing. Inferring that we must remember how bad this or that was and destroy it. In fact the meaning of the whole quote is exactly the opposite. The New Deal, Keynesian Imbedded Liberalism, from approximately 1930 to 1980, was the system of mixing capitalism and socialism that made America great. The history has been largely rewritten or taken off the library shelf regarding how The New Deal lifted the United States up and then how the “monied interests” finally brought it crashing down so they could once again attempt to install an autocratic oligarchy. Trumpism is the natural progression of Neoliberalism- as the originators of the ideology clearly leaned in the direction of fascism and promoted it in South America.
Herd Immunity will be the American Holocaust with 6 million dead
The numbers are fairly clear on letting the virus “wash over” the United States- around 6 million will die. Those who believe vaccines are “around the corner” and the pandemic is over are in for a big surprise.
Trumpism is sociopathy applied to politics- and nobody will ever forget what it has now done to the United States. The profound and unrealized damage will linger for decades.
Neoliberalism lost credibility and then it became necessary to end the fourth estate
Algorithms were used to steer the citizenry away from the truth, from the content that exposed and criticized the corporate oligarchy and inverted totalitarianism.
Liberal meant a free market until recently
The Neoliberal fantasy is slavery- then your workers cannot cost you anything but the bare minimum you have to expend on food and shelter. When something generates a profit it no longer costs you anything and becomes “free.” So…everything must generate revenue and profit or it is useless. The extreme expression of this ideology is branding people as “useless eaters” and then exterminating them as in Nazi Germany. It is no coincidence.
Not-for-profit is the key term. Non-profits are the nightmare of the rich since it is the opposite of their ideology. Everything MUST generate a profit or be eliminated from the economic “gene pool.” It is actually their religion, the fundamental feature best summarized as social Darwinism: only the rich matter. Non-profit to Neoliberalism is as Satanism to Christianity. And the whole point of socialism is to do what is best for the public without regard for individual profit. Again, what is best for Neoliberals is what is best (profit) for the individual without regard to the public. See how that works?
That is the invisible war being fought and the Neoliberal frame this in terms of collectivism (as satanic socialism) vs individualism (the sacred free market). The Neoliberals consider the word freedom to be interchangeable with the word greed- they want no taxes, no regulation, and none from the lower classes able to sue them. In reality a mixed system like The New Deal is the only system that works without falling apart. The guillotine and totalitarianism and chaos is the inevitable consequence of the rich getting richer and poor getting poorer. Neoliberalism is an “inverted totalitarianism” that seeks wage slavery as the status quo. It is not working. Pray for The Green New Deal.
My YouTube comment on the Salon article: “He is a Narcissist/Sociopath draft dodging tax dodging 6 time bankrupt 3 time married failed rich boy reality tv insulter who calls vets and Killed In Action suckers and losers, Christians are fools and schmucks, calls the news fake and the enemy of the people while he lies endlessly. All of this is true and yet he has a cult, and I know some of them, that will vote for him even though his incompetence has caused the deaths of, by most estimates, over a hundred thousand Americans. The last 4 years have disturbed and depressed me about the future of America and this creature, who is blatantly trying to steal reelection, has damaged the nation for decades to come.”
And after reading the Salon article I asked myself, “Is it really possible the forever trumpers have some kind of psychiatric disorder? All those millions of people?
And then I remembered a picture I came across not long ago of Evita’s funeral.
And now we see the violence beginning:
DENVER, COLORADO – OCTOBER 10: A man turns after fatally shooting another man during dueling protests in Denver, Colorado, on October 10, 2020. The man on the left side of the photo was supporting the right-wing “Patriot Rally” and sprayed mace at the man on the right side of the image. The man at right, then shot and killed the protester at left. Denver Channel 9News has confirmed that the man who did the shooting was a private security guard contracted by them and is in custody after the shooting. It has been confirmed the guard was contracted through Pinkerton and that it has been the practice of 9NEWS for a number of months to hire private security to accompany staff at protests. (Photo by Helen H. Richardson/The Denver Post)
I was talking with a coworker last night, one of those people I would never think of as a rabid forever trumper, and he made references to the only two people he can stand to listen to on TV as being Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity. This, despite his seeming to be fairly moderate in his views. He derided AOC about causing Amazon to abandon their project in New York and I then expressed my view- that it was a headquarters for executives that would do nothing for AOC’s constituents except cost them money due to gentrification. He seemed to take it well. Then he talked about “the riots” and I expressed my view that they were not really riots. He argued they were and I stated a riot generally involves hundreds or even several thousand people and watching the videos it is obvious this is only a few lawbreakers using the protests as cover. And he seemed to take that well also. Interestingly, another coworker, overhearing our conversation, refused to take any directions from me later in the evening. Since we usually work well together this was telling.
We have millions of people that have been conned, and once they are hooked, having invested, or “bought in”, they are extremely unwilling to cut their losses. This is because it is not money they have invested, but emotions and their own self-perception as being smart enough to know what is right and wrong. Part of the game is this loyalty to the cult figure fueled by a persons own self-image and self-esteem. Whatever terminology is used it is essentially about not being humiliated. Many forever trumpers, having expressed their views to the people around them for the last couple years, are afraid they will be seen for the rest of their lives as fools for promoting Trumpism.
DENVER, COLORADO – OCTOBER 10: A group of people listen to rally organizer John Tiegen, not pictured, as he addresses them in what was billed as a Patriot Rally in the amphitheater in Civic Center Park on October 10, 2020 in Denver, Colorado. Two rallies, one right-wing and one left-wing, took place at the same time in Civic Center Park. One person has died and another man, who Denver Channel 9News confirmed was a private security guard contracted by them, is in custody after a shooting during dueling protests Saturday in downtown Denver. The rallies at Civic Center on Saturday came less than a month before a presidential election and amidst a global pandemic that has the nation on edge. Until the shooting, the protests mostly consisted of each group chanting and yelling at one another from across the amphitheater, which separated the two groups. (Photo by Helen H. Richardson/The Denver Post)
Neoliberals have spent hundreds of millions in propaganda and far more in political funding over the last half a century to demonize “socialism.” The left, because of communist regimes being painted as the inevitable end result of socialism, have never been able to effectively reply and the extreme right triumphed in this winning of hearts and minds. The story is not being accurately related to the American people that The New Deal, from the 1930’s all the way up to the early 1980’s, used Imbedded Liberalism as the operating principle, and this system was essentially socialist. Liberalism, the old term for capitalism, was placed inside, or imbedded, in a socialist political system.
The history is fairly clear on this to anyone who takes some hours to read up on it. From the 1870’s all the way up to the crash of 29, the super-rich consistently worked to take over America and make it an Oligarchy (like Russia is right now). The United States reorganized after the civil war toward industry and expansion all the way west. Within a few years the new mega-industries of railroads, fossil fuels, steel, and factory mass production made certain people super-rich. These individuals were immediately identified as a serious threat to the democratic system and the corruption their obscene wealth generated was fought against all through the half a century leading up to the stock market crash. Politicians who were not bought and unions were the main stumbling blocks to those seeking absolute power. Eventually, as it always does, this predatory rule by greed fell apart and The New Deal came into effect.
The Neoliberal movement worked against The New Deal from the start. The failure of soviet communism enabled the demonization of socialism by rebranding it as communism by way of ceaseless propaganda. The left could thus mount no effective defense of The New Deal- which mixed together capitalism and socialism to form the most functional system the world had ever seen. The Reagan Revolution of the 1980’s saw the end of Keynesian Imbedded Liberalism, that is, the end of the New Deal, and wages immediately flattened and have never come back for the middle class. The result has been a slow redistribution of wealth upward to the present situation of astronomical wealth inequality. It is ironic that the Americans in the picture flying their “Socialism Sucks” banner are actually promoting a system that is impoverishing them and is working toward taking away everything “socialist” policies have given them.
Trumpism is a reality TV show featuring no social security, no government medical assistance, and the privatization for profit of all federal safety net programs. The propaganda endlessly promoting Neoliberalism has been the same for the half a century since it began to change America: wealth trickles down, the private sector can do it better, and anything free is satanic communism. Everyone has to pay and pay. And it is of course all a lie. The rich do not pay. They are paid by our labor and we are now exploited by super-corporations as wage slaves. The right is fundamentally pushing one basic theme- the rich not paying taxes or paying a fair wage or pollution being regulated. To them this unrestrained greed is called “freedom.”
In conclusion, U.S. history can be divided into four approximately half century long eras after the initial quarter century of revolution and post-revolution formation up to the war of 1812: in the early 1800’s the industrial revolution kicked in and westward expansion began the first era. This culminated in the end of slavery with the Civil War. The second era was the “gilded age” as never-before-seen-in-history wealth was concentrated in a few individuals and American Democracy fought for existence against a creeping Oligarchy. The third era began when “the free market” collapsed, as they always do, and The New Deal made America great. The fourth era began in 1980 with the Reagan Revolution and we are now experiencing the end of that…or the end of Democracy. It could go either way. Truth.
6:13 “The Jewish question.” The real fascists are not on Trumps side- they see Trump as a Jewish tool.
“It is sad that veterans are used as props by this president.”
Sadder still that many veterans support him. 15:15 “-why is there still such strong support for the president inside the military, inside law enforcement-” ?
Actually, the perceived support for Trump is propaganda. Joe Biden has a plurality (officers and enlisted) of support in the active duty military.
The Great Danger is lone wolf fanatics like Timothy McVeigh.
“Of course, this all could have been done sooner, before Q factions aligned with militia groups and anti-vaxxers, to curtail the spread of medical misinformation and the mobilization of vigilante groups,-”
Keynesian Imbedded Liberalism; this political-economic system was the single most important factor in making America great. The two other factors most important were separation of church and state and unions. I would guess if nine out of ten citizens were asked if they know what Imbedded Liberalism and Neoliberalism are they would either not know or give some kind of free-market-propaganda-nonsense reply.
In this post I will attempt to explain why so many people refuse to accept either ideology for what each actually is, and why explaining what they are so the average citizen understands is so important. Let us begin by stating, yes, it is about “us.” Not “individual freedom” or any of the other popular code words that actually mean unrestrained greed. We all sacrifice for a collective so individuals survive.
Those who have gained so much power or serve those with obscene wealth are playing a historically recent game and threaten the survival of the human race. They have preached their religion of rapacious acquisition of money to the point where a majority of the population is brainwashed into believing in their cult. “They” have managed to gain control of most of the civilized world. “They” as in that 1 percent who own most of what can be owned on this planet.
It must be made clear to as many as can understand that competition must be embedded in cooperation or it is predation. The best and brightest are elevated not so they can live as demi-gods reigning far above the squalid masses, but so they can raise all others up with them. For this they are given fame and fortune and everything that goes with it, but not semi-divine status relegating the rest of us to the category of subhuman.
Neoliberalism is essentially a religion that does award semi-divine status and relegates all but the very few to being not fellow human beings but commodities. We are in fact social animals and live in a society and both words come from the same root word as socialism. It is undeniable that Neoliberalism has accomplished the goal of demonizing the word socialism for a specific purpose. Embedded liberalism is understood as a capitalist (the old meaning of “liberal”) economic system that exists within, and is regulated by, a socialist political system. Regulation is anathema to Neoliberalism and socialism is thus a blasphemy.
It is fundamental that the individual cannot survive without the collective anymore than there can be a collective without individuals. This is the great sin, the primal illusion of pride and optimism bias: that each is his own master and only purpose. We are all slaves and masters to each other at the same time and our purpose is to insure the best for each other as this automatically becomes the best for each of us. Like the arrow of time, it does not work in the opposite direction.
When we take more than we are given we betray the trust we are gifted with by our fellow human beings and if others combine in this treachery at some point there is war. It never fails to amaze me when I see the reaction of those I enlighten with the fact that the only reason they own anything is because the rest of us let them have it. The strongest, cruelest, most violent person is nothing compared to a mob and will quickly be ripped limb from limb. Truth.
We gladly give treasure to the leader who accomplishes complex projects with their organizational genius, the scientist who provides the technological miracles that make life so easy compared to our stone age beginnings, and the doctor who cures disease and saves lives. But when ownership of almost everything is by a few, obscene wealth and corruption becomes all powerful, fantastic fortunes acquired and hoarded while almost everyone else labors in wage slavery and gains almost nothing in comparison- the guillotine is the inevitable consequence.
At some point in our history the medium of exchange called money evolved into a supernatural element. Where only food and shelter and safety had mattered before the magical power of money became a reality and gained ascendance over the necessities of life. It has always been an illusion of course. Something we all must agree to honor and give allegiance to. A piece of paper or rare metal that we cannot eat, will not protect us from the elements, that will not keep us from harm.
And so, the modern human being labors long hours on goods that devour far more time and resources than they provide in the way of what nourishes and protects and promotes health. All those hours they could spend with their community, all the nutritious food and clean spacious climate controlled housing and quality health care is denied them so that a tiny minority can have absolutely anything they desire.
The reason this is so is not some natural law of social and economic Darwinism. Nothing validates the low quality of life of humans who are “unsuccessful” while lavishly providing a thousand times more for a few definitely not a thousand times more intelligent or capable. The reason this is so is simply because we foolishly believe our fellow humans are doing what is right for all of us. But they are not.
Our hunter gatherer instincts drive the majority of us to sacrifice and obey the leaders who we presume want our group to survive. But that small percentage who, simply because of natural variation, are wired for the opposite set of goals, have taken over the world. They do not compete within a cooperative society for the good of all; they are predators and parasites sucking the life out of a mass of individuals who they have conditioned with propaganda and psychological marketing tricks to be their prey. They worship a predator god that has indeed taken over our world.
We must take it back. Want to know how we got here?
40:07 Explains original Neo-liberalism but this early article was superseded by the idea that competition would solve all problems and keep the system functioning perfectly.
Ironic that the title of the book that more than any other successfully promoted Neoliberalism, was titled, “The Road to Serfdom.” It did more to impress several billion people into the 21st century version of serfdom called wage slavery.
Milton Friedman published “Capitalism and Freedom” in 1962 and in the above video at 43:46 the essential points of Neoliberalism that informed the Reagan Revolution are detailed.
Just as money for climate change denial came from the Koch brothers, the seed funding for the Neoliberal movement was the Volker fund, which was started as a socialist charity by a philanthropist and then converted by the relative who took it over as an anti-new-deal organization.
A group of hungry apes is venturing into new territory and they confront a smaller group of apes, perhaps of a different species, perhaps not. In either case the smaller group stands their ground and marks their territory with some kind of visible and/or audible display. The leadership of the hungry apes, considering the fewer numbers of the other group and their own hungry baby apes, have a choice to make. A simple binary yes or no decision. Fight or flight. Are they so hungry and exhausted they will lose a battle even with this smaller group? If they lose they will be in a far worse position being even more exhausted and possibly with injuries and/or fewer numbers.
The leader of the smaller group trying to hold this territory is relying on his group to defend their ground for several reasons. First, the individuals collectively follow the leader because they instinctively believe it will lead to their collective and individual survival. There is some risk if they follow the leader into battle but if they do not there is the risk they will end up as hungry exhausted refugees like the group they are confronting. Second, if they fight well it will raise their status in their group. And third, if they run away they will certainly be punished by their own group later, unless their own group is defeated in which case by running they will have avoided death or life threatening injuries.
All of these survival scenarios are evaluated from either an individual or collective standpoint. The salient feature of social being is the inability to survive individually. This is why it is stated, “The Collective and their Individuals”, rather than the opposite order. Without a collective identity they will not be able to protect each other, successfully reproduce, or enjoy any of the many advantages the group confers and as a species they will cease to exist. For apes in the wild it is a simple matter of being eaten by predators if they are caught outside the collective which will fight to protect the individual. If resources are plentiful groups will multiply and if they become scarce due to a changing environment then separate groups will inevitably go to war.
In the modern world human beings are manipulated psychologically by those who take advantage of instincts going back millions of years. It is faux drama reenacting the eternal struggle for resources and territory, status and reproduction in the group. Changing environmental conditions and competition with other species all drive behaviors in human beings to this day and we are unconsciously influenced by these built-in instincts and behaviors. We are driven, even though as modern human beings starvation, heat and cold, and predators, are no longer life and death evolutionary issues. The lesser problem is both individually and collectively we are largely either unaware or refuse to acknowledge this heritage that drives us to act or not act in certain ways. The greater critical problem is the very tiny percentage of people and entities that are aware and use group and individual psychology to the detriment of the vast majority in pursuit of gross advantage for the few. Due to climate change this is actually a threat to the survival of our species.
The individual or collective view is key in manipulating both individuals and collectives because of an inverse relationship. To influence the collective it is the individual that must be affected (by manipulating their instincts and behaviors). To influence the individual lost in the crowd it is the collective that must be affected (by reaching large numbers in the shortest time with mass media and marketing-so all are exposed to a herd or mob mindset). If the individual logically understands both the smaller and bigger picture of their own world and a larger world including others they are extremely difficult to manipulate and take advantage of. If the individual is limited to only a very narrowly defined scenario where everything is about the individual and a programmed trigger of some kind is programmed in to activate a collective response, it is much easier to control individuals as a group.
Concerning the small group of “rich” apes and the larger group of “poor apes” who are competing for territory, or “wealth”, it may not be a clear binary fight or flight scenario. If some of the poor apes have any affiliation with the rich apes they may defect and turn against their own poor group in the hope of being accepted, even if only as new, low-ranking members, into the rich group. After the prehistoric era, as populations grew, human societies would often use this tactic of “divide and conquer.” In the 21st century, the dominant neoliberal ideology presently employed to transfer vast and almost inconceivable wealth to a tiny fraction of the population is the ultimate refinement of divide and conquer. The majority of human beings in developed countries have been indoctrinated with a set of false ideas they will fight to the death to defend. It is almost impossible to deprogram these beliefs once they are instilled in individuals, no matter what evidence or logical argument is presented to them. In the year 2020 we have the “forever trumper” phenomenon that baffles and terrifies the majority of citizens in America. As of this writing the several hundred year old system of democracy in the United States is in danger of falling apart.
Neoliberalism is the fundamental cause of this possible dissolution yet among another group, the “never trumper”, this fact is denied or ignored. Even among the third group, the “corporate democrats”, the over half a century of free market economic propaganda has had the effect of programming many to recoil in fear and alarm from any ideas promoting a “collectivist” view of society. The fourth faction, the “progressive democrats” are the minority who alone seem to have any idea of the true nature of the problem. Hungry apes.
Actually, this is what they have promoted- to let everyone get it so we end up with herd immunity. They are unashamedly willing to have an American Holocaust with 6 million dead. Since most of those dying will be elderly minorities with pre-existing conditions it is a win-win for the Neoliberals since those victims are “negative revenue” anyway. People just don’t get it: Neoliberalism makes money the god of this world. If you are not rich you are just a commodity and if you happen to be a worthless commodity you can, and should, die in the gutter. That is their religion and they believe it even if they have to deny it to the unwashed masses. And they have no problem at all lying and deceiving the general population as this is an accepted and admirable practice of their faith.
I ate M&Ms and Snickers last night and now I cannot go to sleep again. I googled caffeine in chocolate and….yup. I had no idea (well, I knew it had some but now I know it is enough to keep me from sleeping). Now I know why I could not go to sleep this morning, and I am in for a miserable night tonight. I am getting ready to turn the light off and lay down and try and get 3 or 4 hours of sleep. At least I got in 10 short rounds on the punching bag this morning. I wonder how Trump is doing.
Ice on the Moon 