There is strong evidence that some of the fake campaign news originated from Russia. It isn't as if there wasn't an interest for it, as it would be Putin's payback for the U.S State Dept. operations in Ukraine and the constant expansion of NATO right up to the Russian borders in what has been essentially a new cold war. They know full well how to manipulate authoritarian followers minds, which are very different than much of the population. Authoritarian followers do not operate by reason, but by emotional drives, so arguing factually with them is pointless. They could be present and watching as something that doesn't agree with their prejudices happens in front of them and they would still come to the conclusion that fits their preset assumptions about the world. Don't bother reasoning with or getting angry with his and their traditional followers. They are not factually based. Tradition and security override all reason subconsciously. That is why outsiders sit dumbfounded thinking " Don't they see it?" He (Trump) understands this fully, and that is why he made the statement " I could shoot somebody and not lose voters." Trump, frankly, is modeling his candidacy and governing style after Putin, as he is and has always been a kleptocrat with an admiration for authoritarian rulers. He used the oldest authoritarian tricks there are, fear, fear of outside groups and the anger that comes from it and old archetypal symbols and language . It is all sitting right in front of us, as obvious as it can be. Considering his history, and the history of the Republicans glad to serve with him and join his power, we should be ready for the grandest thievery we have ever seen. Their entire goal will be to extract as much as they can from the public and now they have no limitations other than organized resistance outside of the traditional channels. They will not shrink or limit government, but activate it in the direction they desire, most of it targeted at extracting wealth in some form or another. Our military-industrial complex, already the world's largest, will continue to expand and drain the resources of the country more than it already has. The reason the establishment figures within the National Security State came out so strong for Clinton is she operated within and understood the monstrous, society draining apparatus that it is. Their problem is they understood fully the implications of the monster they had, and they had used the very same methods to create and support it within the population. From Reagan's evil empire and welfare queens, Bush's Willie Horton and Saddam Hussein, we how have terrorists as blowback created by our operations within the Mideast and Mexican's as economic refugees from NAFTA. They created this and have tried to manage it, and now this usurper, using the same methods they have used, not only likely accepted their enemy's aid, but modeled himself after him. They built the many headed monster, and now this ignorant, puppet lunatic was going to be in charge along with a gaggle of crazies who'd all sat on the outskirts. Despite the inherent evil of the empire, and the size of it's internal institutions, they ( Whether Clintonites or people within the security apparatus in general) are at least rationally based. They know global warming is real, and that the models for sustaining current populations at these levels of resource use doom future humans. Trump and his crazies are not rational and do not understand this, as they are nothing but self-interested thieves who cannot assimilate factual information. As Chalmers Johnson and other writers have stated for ages, you cannot be a republic and an empire, and we have been an empire since the revolutionary war, and especially since World War II. FDR might have been our Augustus, but we now have our Caligula, and he was likely helped along with help from Alaric I. Our problem is the empire is much bigger and so are the problems. This is not the sack of Rome, but the fall of American society by internal means, and perhaps risks human civilization.
Saturday, November 26, 2016
Saturday, November 12, 2016
There was no victory, and there isn't a mandate.
There was no victory, and there isn't a mandate.
As we stand today, Hilary Clinton now has a large lead in the popular vote. For the fourth time in our history, the majority of U.S. Citizens will now be forced to legally endure policies they did not vote for. The last time was the year 2000, and considering the results of the two Bush II administrations, we should pray it ends better.
In all likelihood it will be worse, considering the candidate now given power.
The electoral college, designed to buffer smaller states and/or allow intervention in case of a lunatic being elected, is an artifact now cursing the majority of Americans. And in many ways it did as it was designed to do, to give enhanced power of a minority of states, and minorities within those states, to decide what is good for the rest of us.
While some claim this is somehow the voice of “forgotten Americans”, those doing should be reminded of some obvious facts. The majority of American's did not vote for the policies. There are still more Democratic voters than Republican voters, and surveys consistently show strong majority support for progressive policies and not those of the Republicans or the right wing.
Additionally, other salient points deserve mention. The unprecedented amount of money spent to support Republican candidates. The voter suppression methods enacted after the Supreme Court's ruling on the Voting Rights Act in various states. The more subtle methods of voter suppression, such as limiting poll places and machines in Democratic areas. The voter roll purge fraud using the Interstate Crosscheck system. The gerrymandering of districts by Republicans in states after the 2010 elections, which will likely be affecting voting until 2030. All of these affect vote totals that in reality, despite the efforts, still could not produce a majority for the Republican candidate.
It must also be remembered that there was a deliberate strategy to create mass frustration by not allowing any progressive initiative forward. They have held the house since 2010, and have not let any possible useful legislation forward.. For example, both the 2009 stimulus and the Affordable Care Act were resisted fanatically and limited by right wing political attacks. Finally, the last two times the Republicans have ruled, they have robbed the country blind leaving the two Democratic administrations to clean up the fiscal mess and limiting possible progressive program responses to people's difficulties. Both ended in massive fraud and recession. Corporate media, of course, casually forgets this fact, as if history ended a week ago.
Friday, November 11, 2016
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold: W.B. Yeats
While
the internal debate about the campaign and Hilary as a flawed candidate
(which she was) and the DNC machinations is important, there are other factors to analyze and remember.
1: Ignoring the white working class. Thomas Frank, Christopher Hedges and Michael Moore have written extensively about this.
2: It should still be remembered that any attempt forward in the first two years of the Obama administration was met with absolute resistance. For example, the stimulus bill (ARRA) was limited purely by politics, and not by the claimed fiscal concerns of Republicans who spent freely beforehand. What would the recovery have looked like if the stimulus had been 500 billion more of infrastructure modernization and repair with a buy only American products policy? What if there had been a student loan forgiveness package as advocated by more than one economist? What would millions of people having hundreds of dollars more spendable cash per month done for the last five years? Obamacare itself was a war fought with every means necessary including a massive propaganda campaign by the right against it. There was a strategic reason for how the republicans were acting and we see it now. It was to raise anger.
This is a recent historical pattern. Both the Reagan-Bush and Bush II administrations were fiscally insane, ended in massive fraud, economic recession and limited the following Democratic administration's ability to move forward. At the same time, republican's refused to govern, instead acting as an insurgency funded by the crazed elite of the corporate right wing. Some have suggested this has been deliberate strategy. It likely is. It is easier to rob the place blind during a crisis and they have done that both times.
This is a lesson going all the way back to the first Clinton Administration, when Bill Clinton came in wanting to do a large social-economic package. When his advisors walked in, they told him (paraphrasing).." we can't...we have all the deficit obligations left over from Reagan and Bush." Obama was limited both by fiscal necessity from the insane Bush years and and an opponent not interested in governing, but in regaining power no matter the consequence. See Norm Ornstein.
We forget that since 2010, the House has been republican and essentially nothing has been done nor have the democrats had the power.
3: Voter Suppression: Since the Voting Rights act ruling by the Supreme Court, many republican controlled states have engaged in voter roll hi jinks to limit democratic voters. North Carolina is but one example. There are other well documented ways of limiting voting, from voter id laws, difficult methods of registration and simply limiting voting facilities in certain areas. Ohio is a perfect example of the latter.
4: This is not to excuse the Centrist democrats including Clinton who helped march through deregulation. The trade agreements are best described as investor rights agreements for multi-nationals. Many of the Mexican illegals are derived from the former corn farmers of Mexico who under Nafta were subject to the United States subsidized agribusiness and are now simply economic refugees.
5: Technology is reducing the needed workforce. The fact is we just need less people to operate larger plants or operations. So, places that once had sawmills employing hundreds or mines employing thousands just don't exist. That sort of manufacturing will not happen again. The problem is there has been no direct response to this that meets people's needs. There are now millions of people who are no longer in their former workforce simply because of technology, but our system does not provide them with an income regardless of their situation. There is no guaranteed minimum income. In rural areas, the smaller former regional agricultural centers are really hurt by the shrunken farm labor force and families, but there is no magic bullet to replace the former service industries in these towns. The Iron Range is a perfect example. In 1979 there were about 14,500 steelworkers there. Now there are less then 4000. All of this is from technology and forced market competition and not regulation. Any newer proposed operations use less manpower. I have two friends who drive production trucks and I repeatedly warn them they will likely be replaced by remote technology with one person watching several trucks guided by robot algorithms within ten years.What will they do?
6: There was still enormous money spent by the right on their favored candidates. The fact is someone like Russ Feingold had to compete against millions of Dark money dollars.
7: Gerrymandering, especially after the 2010 state elections.
8: Citizen's United
9: The economic and social conditions fueling this have been there for decades. Noam Chomsky warned a decade ago the only thing missing was what people perceived as an honest demagogue, and that is the role Trump played to perfection..the anti-hero demagogue. The propaganda system which kept the real concerns and experiences of ordinary people at bay added to this, as well as the deliberate actions by the republicans to not let anything be done for working people.
10: Liberal elites refusal to acknowledge or deal with the majority of people's life experiences. Rather than any sort of income and jobs program, we got income qualified school lunches, the Violence Against Women Act and affordable housing programs that did not take into account anything outside of income as a possible cause. We got Beyonce' dancing in support, but nothing that dealt with the rural drug problem. Thus working people watched as assistance based programs were fed into dysfunctional areas without dealing with addiction or behavior. When someone is working two jobs, cannot afford health care and then they watch as their dysfunctional neighbor receives all sorts of assistance, the resentment builds, real or not. There are entire regions that now look like industrial brownfields with closed buildings.
11: I am not as magnanimous to some of my fellow white working people as some commenters are. If I spent my time fact checking every coffee conversation for the utterly deluded, uninformed and racist beliefs espoused, I would end up working all day with a white board and power points. None of it would serve any purpose as most people's beliefs are fixed and they react only emotionally. The level of discerning literacy has dropped proportional to the amount of television watched. This is especially true with white's over 50 and ask any retail or public service person about dealing with an older baby boomer and their expectations. There are also still enough well off white people detached from any of these problems and simply support putting the boots to the lower classes necks to keep their economic status.
12: Nothing is still being done structurally. We still have a military and intelligence budget eating over half our resources, over 800 foreign military installations and troops in over 100 countries. We are still making enemies by our actions in other places and the blowback is the Muslim mass shootings and the crazed fear mongering of the right. That was Hilary's worst trait in my mind..the continued militarism. The empire is hollow and without pulling those resources back, this will all continue. You cannot be an empire and a democracy. See Chalmers Johnson.
1: Ignoring the white working class. Thomas Frank, Christopher Hedges and Michael Moore have written extensively about this.
2: It should still be remembered that any attempt forward in the first two years of the Obama administration was met with absolute resistance. For example, the stimulus bill (ARRA) was limited purely by politics, and not by the claimed fiscal concerns of Republicans who spent freely beforehand. What would the recovery have looked like if the stimulus had been 500 billion more of infrastructure modernization and repair with a buy only American products policy? What if there had been a student loan forgiveness package as advocated by more than one economist? What would millions of people having hundreds of dollars more spendable cash per month done for the last five years? Obamacare itself was a war fought with every means necessary including a massive propaganda campaign by the right against it. There was a strategic reason for how the republicans were acting and we see it now. It was to raise anger.
This is a recent historical pattern. Both the Reagan-Bush and Bush II administrations were fiscally insane, ended in massive fraud, economic recession and limited the following Democratic administration's ability to move forward. At the same time, republican's refused to govern, instead acting as an insurgency funded by the crazed elite of the corporate right wing. Some have suggested this has been deliberate strategy. It likely is. It is easier to rob the place blind during a crisis and they have done that both times.
This is a lesson going all the way back to the first Clinton Administration, when Bill Clinton came in wanting to do a large social-economic package. When his advisors walked in, they told him (paraphrasing).." we can't...we have all the deficit obligations left over from Reagan and Bush." Obama was limited both by fiscal necessity from the insane Bush years and and an opponent not interested in governing, but in regaining power no matter the consequence. See Norm Ornstein.
We forget that since 2010, the House has been republican and essentially nothing has been done nor have the democrats had the power.
3: Voter Suppression: Since the Voting Rights act ruling by the Supreme Court, many republican controlled states have engaged in voter roll hi jinks to limit democratic voters. North Carolina is but one example. There are other well documented ways of limiting voting, from voter id laws, difficult methods of registration and simply limiting voting facilities in certain areas. Ohio is a perfect example of the latter.
4: This is not to excuse the Centrist democrats including Clinton who helped march through deregulation. The trade agreements are best described as investor rights agreements for multi-nationals. Many of the Mexican illegals are derived from the former corn farmers of Mexico who under Nafta were subject to the United States subsidized agribusiness and are now simply economic refugees.
5: Technology is reducing the needed workforce. The fact is we just need less people to operate larger plants or operations. So, places that once had sawmills employing hundreds or mines employing thousands just don't exist. That sort of manufacturing will not happen again. The problem is there has been no direct response to this that meets people's needs. There are now millions of people who are no longer in their former workforce simply because of technology, but our system does not provide them with an income regardless of their situation. There is no guaranteed minimum income. In rural areas, the smaller former regional agricultural centers are really hurt by the shrunken farm labor force and families, but there is no magic bullet to replace the former service industries in these towns. The Iron Range is a perfect example. In 1979 there were about 14,500 steelworkers there. Now there are less then 4000. All of this is from technology and forced market competition and not regulation. Any newer proposed operations use less manpower. I have two friends who drive production trucks and I repeatedly warn them they will likely be replaced by remote technology with one person watching several trucks guided by robot algorithms within ten years.What will they do?
6: There was still enormous money spent by the right on their favored candidates. The fact is someone like Russ Feingold had to compete against millions of Dark money dollars.
7: Gerrymandering, especially after the 2010 state elections.
8: Citizen's United
9: The economic and social conditions fueling this have been there for decades. Noam Chomsky warned a decade ago the only thing missing was what people perceived as an honest demagogue, and that is the role Trump played to perfection..the anti-hero demagogue. The propaganda system which kept the real concerns and experiences of ordinary people at bay added to this, as well as the deliberate actions by the republicans to not let anything be done for working people.
10: Liberal elites refusal to acknowledge or deal with the majority of people's life experiences. Rather than any sort of income and jobs program, we got income qualified school lunches, the Violence Against Women Act and affordable housing programs that did not take into account anything outside of income as a possible cause. We got Beyonce' dancing in support, but nothing that dealt with the rural drug problem. Thus working people watched as assistance based programs were fed into dysfunctional areas without dealing with addiction or behavior. When someone is working two jobs, cannot afford health care and then they watch as their dysfunctional neighbor receives all sorts of assistance, the resentment builds, real or not. There are entire regions that now look like industrial brownfields with closed buildings.
11: I am not as magnanimous to some of my fellow white working people as some commenters are. If I spent my time fact checking every coffee conversation for the utterly deluded, uninformed and racist beliefs espoused, I would end up working all day with a white board and power points. None of it would serve any purpose as most people's beliefs are fixed and they react only emotionally. The level of discerning literacy has dropped proportional to the amount of television watched. This is especially true with white's over 50 and ask any retail or public service person about dealing with an older baby boomer and their expectations. There are also still enough well off white people detached from any of these problems and simply support putting the boots to the lower classes necks to keep their economic status.
12: Nothing is still being done structurally. We still have a military and intelligence budget eating over half our resources, over 800 foreign military installations and troops in over 100 countries. We are still making enemies by our actions in other places and the blowback is the Muslim mass shootings and the crazed fear mongering of the right. That was Hilary's worst trait in my mind..the continued militarism. The empire is hollow and without pulling those resources back, this will all continue. You cannot be an empire and a democracy. See Chalmers Johnson.
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