I have the feeling this is going to be one of those days. Not quite 0700 where I live and I am not optimistic about today…and tonight.
It is very likely that some of these people are going to die because they sat there for hours for their cult leader. If Biden shuts down the economy again it will save thousands of lives- Trump is lying saying more will die because of it.
Of course he is lying, that is what he does.
China wants Biden to win because Trump is unpredictable while Russia, who is not a big trading partner, wants Trump because he is so damaging to America. Obvious.
200,000 dead weeks ago but the official toll will pass that in a couple weeks- and nothing is going to change that. How many dead when a vaccine is being deployed and this nightmare begins to end? A quarter million will have died and most of them because of Trumps inaction.
I knew I should have moved to Portland years ago. I wish I was there tonight.
Most recent YouTube comment: “48 police killed by felons is a fatality rate of about 1 in 17,000 per year. They are far behind the top ten most dangerous professions which are Loggers, Fishermen, Aircrew, Roofers, Sanitation, Steelworkers, Commercial drivers, Farmers/Ranchers, Construction site supervisors, and Groundskeepers. https://www.themarlincompany.com/blog-articles/dangerous-jobs-2019/ Though I don’t have a number, I read somewhere it is actually more dangerous being a convenience store clerk than a police officer. Definitely not what the public has been conditioned to believe by the media and entertainment industry. They can stand a little defunding- and with so many billionaires like Bezos- the richest man in the history of the human race- we actually can afford M4A, a living wage, and school loan forgiveness and free college, and a Green New Deal. Truth.”
Really good read by Joy- so true. Thanks so much.
If “everybody is going to get it” then a couple million people are going to die. Really. They don’t need to die. It is all about money and the Trump cult. The 1 percent in their mansions are not the ones that are going to have their lives cut short- millions of others would be the ones who die.
If anybody is burning the flag it is the ones carrying the stars and bars and that thing with a blue line. Tight as a duck’s ass, protest this in your ass.
A video posted to Twitter by a Washington Examiner reporter shows former Amazon warehouse worker Christian Smalls, an outspoken Amazon critic, calling on the company to raise its minimum wage from $15 per hour to $30 per hour in light of Bezos’ surging wealth. The protest was led by the Congress of Essential Workers, a group founded by Smalls.
“Give a good reason why we don’t deserve a $30 minimum wage when this man makes $4,000 a second,” Smalls said.”
He is not even aware of what he is doing- attempting to hide his racism behind moral judgement on a certain “type” of citizen. And that is what is scary. He is advocating a societal change completely beyond his job. He is using his position in an absolutely unethical way.
So…what scares me is my coworkers. Why? Because this policeman is the kind of person they believe is “one of them.” And…this guy is classic Nazi. He is very good at tiptoeing around the fact his references to “garbage people” that should not be allowed to reproduce are about blacks…but it is so transparent.
My coworkers do not have much education and they are proud of not being brainwashed by liberal college professors. They do not know much history because they spend their leisure time watching sports and reality tv shows. They will never actually try and think about the ideologies in play right now because it is just too complex and takes away from their smart phone time. They rely on 30 second Trump commercials or the Tucker Carlson white power hour to inform their worldview.
Kenosha did not “burn” (some cars in lots were burned, a few buildings, not the city) and the police did not “stand by” Tucker. Liar. The police did nothing to stop the “militia”, including a 17 year old with an AR-15. The police thanked them and gave them water. See how that works?
No cure, disastrously failed testing system, largest and deadliest coronavirus epidemic in the world, Biden does not support abortion -at birth, NYPD has not endorsed Trump, only 3 miles of wall have been built, it was- Obama that signed the veterans choice act, more troops overseas now than when he took office, Biden has not promised to abolish energy production in the U.S. and will not bulldoze the suburbs, Trump is actually fighting to abolish protections for pre-existing conditions, gas is cheap because nobody is driving as much.
They are saying Trump is, absolutely, without any doubt, a habitual liar. That he not only lies but has largely destroyed the concept of truth in the U.S. The damage is inestimable.
Racism (by way of “white grievance”) is at the core of the Republican project- says one of the most successful conservative political operatives of his generation.
Right wing influencers urging others to take matters into their own hands. That is obviously generating a ROI now.
BLM and ANTIFA “sprang into action” conspiring with democratic mayors. Riiiiight.
This is not the America of 4 years ago. We are in trouble.
4:28 “I literally breathe, it’s a big technique and it will happen in the moment and I will just stop and then just take deep breaths and I will have a little something I say like breathe in power, breathe out anger-”
I breathed in power and breathed out a spontaneous “do something.” Maybe I will start my own conspiracy theory cult. I will call it the cult of…let me think about it tomorrow. It won’t be QNAnon though.
“Lenders add value by way of interest and Merchants by resale but neither are producing. The Employer buys the time/labor and the raw materials/tools and takes the added value from what is produced. While Lenders and Merchants only use money or finished goods already produced, the Employer OWNS the means of production. That is capital. It seems there are these three categories- Lenders, Merchants, and Employers- and they deal with money, products, raw materials/tools etc. but the Employee is in a separate category as all three use them; typically the Lenders not so many, the Merchants more, and the Employers who OWN the means of production the most. Still slightly confusing as the “Employers” should more accurately be called “Capitalists” and all three employers of the Employee. I am interested in ways to explain this that others can more easily understand.”
This is not going well. The media seems in my perception to not be jumping on it- I would guess because they know how serious this is. I am scared about how this could develop. The video of police thanking the militia and handing out water to them is damning in the extreme.
It occurs to me we might need a fourth branch of government after the Trump fiasco is over; a “Fourth Power” – from Wiki: “The equivalent term “fourth power” is somewhat uncommon in English, but it is used in many European languages, including German (Vierte Gewalt), Spanish (Cuarto poder), and French (Quatrième pouvoir), to refer to a government’s separation of powers into legislative, executive, and judicial branches.”
The media says Trump has promoted and allowed the destruction of the truth. Many many people do not trust or believe anything anymore and this is incredibly destructive and has done inestimable damage. We probably need to elect people to a new branch who are not political, religious, or biased toward anything but presenting facts accurately to the public. Because the media is presently for-profit and mostly owned by corporations means there is likely not enough public trust to keep the “conspiracy virus” from running out of control at this point.
Neal is inept…for most politicians there are so many layers of confusing babble protecting them they are immune to being exposed like this. And they look at Neal and wait to see if he gets away with it and then they can be less cautious or if he gets dethroned- then they will tighten up a little in response. The only way for Americans to fix this is likely mass demonstrations. Chris Hedges says it is too late to use the system to fix the system- it is so corrupt only massive non-violent protest in the streets will terrify those in power enough to cause change. I have to go with that.
I believe it was last year I had a conversation with a coworker about the political landscape and he questioned my “patriotism”, asking me if I “believe in America.” I told him that people “believe” in different stories that explain reality and he snickered at that as if I was talking nonsense. I then asked him if he had ever lived in California to which he said no. I then asked him if he had seen movies featuring famous cities like LA and San Francisco with scenes where it was raining. He said yes. I asked him if there was lightning and thunder in those scenes. He thought about it a second and said yes. I explained to him that he took it for granted there was lightning and thunder there and that is actually a “story” as there is almost never lightning and thunder on the west coast- they put that in movies for dramatic effect. And now Northern California is burning up because of lightning strikes.
The single most manipulative and dramatic feature of the conservative story is the “welfare queen” getting something for nothing and dragging the rest of us down- by making us pay entitlements to the undeserving. Even the very few of my coworkers who are not confirmed righties have that button and it is easy to push. We hate to see others get for free what we have to work for. If they only knew what the rich get for free. Another coworker is a gun nut and any discussion of him giving up his AR-15 results in red-faced anger even though he is on the left on most issues. His guns symbolize power and freedom he really does not have. My coworkers buy motorcycles they cannot afford with no mufflers because in their story they see themselves as born to be wild. Or the muscle cars and trucks they floor from light to light every day with hundreds of horsepower they, and the planet, don’t need.
I try to explain to them the numbers concerning wealth inequality and how bizarrely rich the 1 percent are now- and how that is still not enough to satisfy their insane greed. But my coworkers seem to think that goes against their welfare queen myth and cannot be true- so there is little reaction from them. The single most manipulative and dramatic feature of the progressive story was sociopathic capitalists possessed by greed making wage slavery of the 99% their universal goal. This worked throughout the 1800’s during the industrial revolution but not anymore. What I call obscene wealth is even worse than it was then but very few are marching in the streets about it. And this leads me to believe, in all honesty, we are a stupid species and will probably go extinct. Biology may not be a process capable of generating beings smart enough to survive any geologic time scales. The gullibility of QAnon followers seem to confirm this. And today the President tweeted the deep state (or whoever?) is working against deploying a vaccine for the virus. Crazy.
The Nazi regime manipulated the masses with the familiar formula but instead of the poor “stealing” entitlements, it was inferior races and congenital defectives as “useless eaters.” The Communists were, on the other hand, a cult that promised utopia by ending all private property, which was characterized as a kind of original sin, as the root of all evil. In the 21st century the Neoliberal Oligarchy is now mostly in control of planet Earth. There are only a few problems they have to deal with, the big one being us- the unwashed masses they use as domestic animals, as their beasts of burden. They are, if you dig into their collective subconscious, terrified of us because of a simple device called the Guillotine and what it was used for at the end of the 18th century. In the early 20th century, because of the Russian revolution, this fear was far more clear and present. Now that the Russian Oligarchs are in control it has become a much less dreaded possibility- like a meteor hitting the Earth. A meteor killed off most of the last dominant species, the dinosaur. And by coincidence a very small harmless meteor will be in the neighborhood on election day with certain clickbait articles making this sound serious. The election is what is serious.
The second problem faced by Neoliberals is they are constantly at war with each other and simply will not combine in any way to share ultimate power. It is not in their nature to share anything and thus we have thousands of years of wars in which those who did attain or were born into local god-like power tried to “steal” the power of neighboring semi-divine rulers. Empires did rise when noble families intermarried and efforts were made to keep the peace. But that led to the third problem. For large organizations like empires to function there has to be upward mobility available to the most driven, intelligent, and ruthless members. If they cannot get more power and/or wealth they start “stealing” or destroying the organization itself so they can pick up the pieces and make it benefit them. This is the cycle of empire where greed and corruption lead to inevitable self-destruction. My fellow Americans don’t seem to get any of this. Not only do they have so little knowledge of history they can’t understand, they do not want to waste any of their precious smart phone time on it. Since I am no rocket scientist myself, of average intelligence, and just happened to grow up in an environment that steered me toward reading instead of sports and history instead of consumerism, I am not hopeful.
At the beginning of the 20th century the Sherman Anti-trust Act began to break-up corporate monopolies and this was continued under several administrations. It did not keep individuals from manipulating the markets and in 1929 it all came crashing down. FDR gave us the New Deal and thirty years later Kennedy gave us the New Frontier and immediately after his assassination Johnson pushed the Great Society. When the 21st century arrived the Reagan Revolution had wiped out most of the gains made by past progressive policies and then came the crash of 2008. Corporations as lawful psychopathic entities were now driving the decisions and were bailed out. Because Americans were not thrown into the street with no jobs or food as they were in 1929, no mass outrage and danger of revolution was detectable- and Neoliberalism triumphed. The “ownership society” is a story that converts stealing the ground we walk on into the ground they own. Neoliberalism makes money the god of this world where all things are owned by those who can pay.
Over a decade after 2008 and Trumpism is the response- the populist ideology that a very small minority of the population with any knowledge of history and instruction in critical thinking now realize is a danger not just to America, but to our species as a whole. That climate change was largely dismissed, by way of paid propaganda from the Koch brothers, as an unimportant issue in the U.S. is…so dangerous it is hard to put into words. But if a high school dropout like me can understand it, then I believe the rest of the population can. The secret is comprehending the the vast size of the human race and our fragile ability to feed it. Raising the temperature of the planet has the makings of a catastrophe that will kill a large percentage of humankind, billions, and send us back into another dark age. The salient feature of Trumpism is lying. Truth is…inconvenient.
Imbedded Liberalism, where a classical liberal free-market economy is strictly regulated and laid on top of a base of social safety net programs managed by big government and supported by progressive taxation of the rich- is what made America great after the great depression. It is an ideal hybrid of capitalism and socialism that depends on educated citizens to keep it functioning properly- and is the most successful socio-economic system in history. It has been associated with the term “the end of history” as there is no other form of government in sight that works as well. Nothing else has ever allowed the individual and the collective to coexist efficiently. We had it, or at least a prototype of it, and we lost it. We have to get it back. A Green New Deal is the best path, the only path. We are not voting for Bernie and AOC but we at least have the option of pushing Biden and Harris into progressive policies- where no such possibility exists with the present administration.
5:20 “People who refuse to tow the line, a line of fiction- a set of statements which were clearly false- that you don’t follow the line- and then get purged- that’s what happens in authoritarian systems, or rather, in totalitarian systems.”
7:28 “-this is a direct attack on the rule of law- the law comes before the individual person and the more power you have the more you have to respect that principle. -without the rule of law nothing else is possible, including freedom.”
10:00 “-I am on the side of facts because facts give us a chance to have deliberative democracy, give us a chance to have law, give us a chance to have decency and for that matter prosperity- ultimately not just democracy but functioning markets depend on factuality-”
12:50 “-making our institutions a joke is exactly what helps authoritarians like Mr. Putin survive; if there is no example of things going better it makes their life much much easier. A big sad thing which is happening is that there is no longer an American example – dissidents – could point to, thanks to Mr. Trump.
14:10 “What Russia does is not particular to Russia- (it) is how an oligarchy with a good understanding of the media stays in power- you figure out what people want to hear- but (also) by way of technical tools (like facebook and google)- and then you target your messages to them. And you don’t care that your messages are lies, in fact, it is better if your messages are lies; you want people to think that there’s not really any truth and to just accept the story that sounds better.”
15:15 “The fundamental question is can you win a campaign on the basis of proposing policy based on facts against someone whose basic idea is to just stir the pot with the most advanced technical tools possible (like facebook) and to rile people up. -That’s everywhere.”
16:42 “What facebook does is it amplifies the authoritarian habit of looking for the emotion of fear. That’s what it does. That’s its design model. It looks for what makes you anxious and fearful and tribal and childish. -It has an inbuilt authoritarian bent. – it has to pull away – and make some changes that support factuality.”
18:26 “-I am for freedom of speech for humans but not for digital beings who don’t have souls.”
He goes on to infer he is for economic inequality and I believe that is the right-leaning view that the extreme opposite of “inequality” is communism and the abolition of private property. I personally believe this view is abused by conservatives to promote predatory economic policies but that is my own opinion. I differ with people who lean to the right but still appreciate their correct views (in my judgement) concerning other matters. And this of course is a big problem in itself: how can you agree with a few or many things a person says but then also disagree with a many or few things and still support their credibility?
Someone I differ with not at all is Chris Hedges. A fellow Presbyterian.
“Salacious tawdry court gossip that now has taken the place of news.” Sad but so true.
Paraphrasing Chris, who is “talking about something that only religious people can grasp in a way” A culture we have created that orchestrates alienation, loneliness, unhappiness, a sense of inadequacy, and promises us that if we invest in that culture, both financially and personally, we can find that happiness they have destroyed.- In biblical terms it is a culture of idolatry. In the end- like Moloch- you are sacrificed on this altar. -That cult of the self has created tremendous depression and unhappiness. What is- any social media platform- many forms of the self-presentation that obsesses a figure like Trump. We all have our own version of it. It is certainly not friendship. -We have created powerful mechanisms to prey upon and exacerbate that sickness.
“The white working class- believe the myth and with the understanding they have been had, I think express a very frightening violent rage which manifests itself in mass shootings and hate groups and figures like Trump.”
“My heart is with the 60 or 70 percent of Americans who are being pushed towards a modern form of serfdom in the oligarchic system. If we don’t rebuild those social bonds we are finished.”
One of the best pieces I have seen in years. Thank you Wade Davis and Amanpour&Co.
My comment on YouTube: “We have discovered we live in kind of a failed state with a dysfunctional government.” It is called Neoliberalism- Hayek and the Chicago school worked for decades to undermine Embedded Liberalism and it went downhill fast with the Reagan Revolution. Corporate think tanks have been brainwashing Americans to think the safety nets and high tax rate on the top earners is wrong when a half century ago we all took it for granted (except for a much smaller percentage of rabid conservatives) that the New Deal made America great.”
9:30 What Chris saying is true. But because he rightfully lays the blame on Corporatism, it will not be admitted or generally accepted by media or allowed to be widely disseminated.
13:50 The Clinton campaign pushed Trump because they thought he would be easy to defeat.
14:44 The most ominous danger indeed. “Bill Clinton does that make that argument anymore” (NAFTA will create jobs). But was it a lie? Not at the time, but this is very different than directly disseminating lies as truth. “There job is to make sure that people speak about a verifiable reality- those institutions have become corrupted, weakened, destroyed…or been replaced-.”
The only way to battle the Christian right- giving them the kind of jobs, the unionized jobs, that were once available, where you had job security, job safety, a pension plan, medical benefits, and a salary that could sustain a family. That’s all gone.”
“Unless there is sustained mass civil disobedience to put pressure on- two political parties and a system that is completely captured by corporate power, then what is coming will not- be good.”
Hayek’s Neoliberalism, Ayn Rand’s Objectivism, Plutocrats corrupting the political process; and what this toxic cocktail will result in is obvious:
Anything new deal left and anti-corporate has been “canceled”, including Noam Chomsky, Ralph Nader, and Chris Hedges. But change is coming. Change or guillotines.
11:00 “-it’s intentional, this feigning of outrage- you have millions of people- who have a reason to risk their lives to change the system, while you pretend like you are- equally injured- so they are trying to co-op that narrative- when- they are the oppressors.”
Thank you Ben Dixon.
The people who are losing their status are fighting back and this is how. It is like the crisis actors in conspiracy theories, except, these oppressors using conspiracy theories as a tool are also the crisis actors.
The secret to all this is the super-rich avoiding taxes. Everything revolves around this. The culture wars are being used as a distraction. Embedded liberalism and the 91 percent tax rate on the top earners from The New Deal era is what the Neoliberals are absolutely terrified of.
My latest YouTube comment: “The right wing really believe that telling the best lie is a good business practice and this by itself has the effect of corroding all structures in a society and eventually bringing it crashing down. Neoliberalism has been going on since the first city state rose and fell. It is why Socrates was given the option of suicide or exile for “corrupting the youth” (telling the truth). He threw the B.S. flag on them and killed himself to show the world what was happening. It is the cycle of empire where greed and corruption eventually bring all great states to ruin. We no longer have the option of playing this game and should not have to. But the predators keep trying to kill everyone except their valet parking team.”
Steve Bannon was indicted for his wall scam and Trump of course denied knowing him very well and that project was “for government and not private.” Complete lies that nobody except a true believer believes. God please let this end.
I did not get to swim this morning- the pool was full of soldiers doing drownproofing. Oh well. I will try and get some laps in tomorrow morning.
My second comment on the same YouTube video: “Actually, what I call “obscene wealth” is a danger to civilization and the only solution to that destroyer is “redistribution of wealth.” The wealthy have paid billions over the last half a century to think tanks and P.R. organizations to propagandize the idea that redistribution (a.k.a. as taxes) are theft and satan come to Earth. And the dummed-down masses mostly believe it. That another human being can have billions of dollars in their bank account and want us to believe they deserve that unbelievable power- even though they are in fact just another one of us. People who speak truth to power and plainly state there should be no billionaires are shouted down as “communists” and the amazing rage against them speaking the truth is…again…unbelievable.”
And a third comment: “2:21 “#1 on that list is when people deny the obvious.” “They must have gotten there out of merit-” So…whenever the majority report bashes Jordan Peterson I post video lectures from him where he states truths just like you do Cenk. He is not perfect but many of his views are actually to the left. One of those videos discusses IQ and another discusses the big five personality traits. IQ was weaponized by the U.S. Army at the turn of the last century and has been constantly improved for going on a full century. The Big Five is the result of a long series of personality tests going back almost as far and is extremely good at predicting outcomes. After IQ and the Big Five is Academia. If Academia worked the way it is supposed to the most driven intelligent people would receive credentials that would ideally enable public service. AOC is a perfect example. What we have with C student Bush and Trump is the opposite of course.”
If you look at the YouTube comments they are an endless string of Trump. I smell Russian computers at work. They are doing it again. What is crazy is the incessant chant that there was no Russian interference and that was a “witch hunt” has most people thinking it is true. Tell a lie enough times and it becomes the truth.
A grave counter-intelligence threat brought to you by the Trump organization. What is happening right now: Our adversaries are boosting Trump and denigrating Biden.
Not much else to say.
That is Trumps Supreme Court Justice, one very important one among hundreds of conservative appointees that are presiding over courts now. That is how much trouble we are in.
And here we are- that history not many people know about it. The poor south used to be democratic because the left was on their side. Then after the civil rights movement the right went racist and turned poor whites from the lefties that were on their side to the party of the rich that was never and will never be. Crazy.
This is probably the best single video explaining the present situation. 5:20 seems to point to Hayek as being Satan come to Earth. If anyone deserves the title Antichrist it is Hayek.
The thin blue line flag flying in company with the confederate battle flag means it probably will not be around much longer. I have no problem with that but I could never say that around my coworkers. No way. To me…it does not even represent Law Enforcement- it brings to mind a thin blue line of New Deal Democrats who are the only hope for this country. Bernie and AOC are our candidates and we are only going to vote for Biden because we have to. Dear God everyone has to.
At least Biden gets a few points with the gun nuts. I made my own Joe Biden shotgun.
I had a blog post describing this weapon with it’s side-mounted dot sight and received so much hate mail I had to remove it. Gun nuts are a touchy bunch.
Ice on the Moon 