A Choice

Posted on October 7, 2023 by camelotkidd

During the Covid 19 emergency the US government enacted anti-poverty policies that were amazingly effective at reducing poverty.

“The year poverty began to end” [Nate Bear, Do Not Panic]. “From 2020 to 2021 every marker of poverty, from child poverty, to overall poverty, to food insecurity, to homelessness, plummeted in the richest countries….. In 2021, US poverty fell to a record low, as did child poverty, which was almost halved, an achievement without precedent in modern US history. These achievements equated to lifting nearly 5 million children out of poverty…. It turns out that when you give people money and food and homes, they no longer suffer from a lack of money and food and homes. It turns out that poverty in rich countries is a choice…. As this transformation was underway in 2020 and 2021, the media was flooded with articles along the lines of: will we learn the lessons from the pandemic? I think we know the answer. Who talks now about the unprecedented reduction in rich world poverty? No one. Not even the left. So predictably, all these gains have been lost…. Homelessness and poverty is capitalism’s live stream, broadcast everywhere to ensure you can never fully escape the sense of precarity about what might be.”

We also found a single payer system workable despite decades of propaganda to the contrary.

For our capitalist elite, poverty is the whole point, the engine to power the surplus value of labor. After all, we can’t let the proles get too comfortable.

And while you might imagine that such a development would open up a political opportunity you would be mistaken. It’s only by pure coincidence that your nation’s population remains in a perpetual 50–50 deadlock which prevents anyone’s votes from changing the status quo, and the status quo just happens to be perpetually frozen along lines that hugely advantage the rich and powerful.

Update: Crazy developments in the Middle East that I hope to tackle soon but for now I want to throw out an idea. The US neocons have been keen to open up another front in the new Cold War against Russia/China/Iran but what if this is the Axis of Evil playing the same game?

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An awesome power of illusion

Posted on September 29, 2023 by camelotkidd

We live in an age of lies fed to us by a political elite and corporate media that rivals Orwell’s Ministry of Truth.

Just in this century we’ve had the lies fed to us justifying the invasion of Iraq, the lies fed to us about the banks being solvent and paying back all of the bail-out billions in the aftermath of the Wall Street Crash, the lies fed to us about Russia-gate, and now the ongoing lies fed to us about the US proxy war against Russia in Ukraine.

I grew up absorbing a pack of lies about the first Cold War, where Communism was the focus of the propaganda. It was a Manichean worldview dominated by the Sacred (free-enterprise) vs the Satanic (Communism). A society, like the US, that is predisposed to see the world in Manichean terms will be extremely vulnerable to propaganda. Speaking of the Sacred and the Satanic, presently the all-American propaganda machine is tailored to a red audience and a blue one, where conservatives are utterly convinced that Biden and the Democrats are secret communists while all the little liberals believe that Trump and his MAGA supporters are Nazis even as they are fine with our real Ukrainian Nazi-proxies.

In other words the corporate media has devised a highly-profitable marketing processes that manufactures fake dissent, by appealing to Americans Manichean worldview, in order to preclude real dissent.

However, while the US corporate media possesses an awesome power of illusion, reality usually has the final say. Our country is so utterly dominant in the distribution of information and propaganda, including the electronic and social media, that we can easily persuade almost all Americans and most of the world to accept as truth our manufactured illusions.

But we cannot alter the underlying reality, perhaps leading to disastrous ultimate consequences.

Indeed, over the decades our country’s very well-oiled media-propaganda organs had proven themselves extremely skilled in flushing away memories of our past failures and defeats, but the the defeat of our Ukrainian proxy might be much more difficult to conceal.

There’s the political aspect to the present Ukraine illusions. With Biden running for re-election, the last thing he wants in the world is for him to have to declare that he was defeated in Ukraine.
So that is why they will keep funding the war in Ukraine. They’ll keep saying, you know, we stand by Ukraine, et cetera, for domestic political reasons, even though essentially, as far as I can tell, the US and NATO has lost in Ukraine, but they’ll keep up the pretense that they might yet win until after the election, which means that for the next year we are going to see the Mighty Wurlitzer turned up to 11.

And that’s why you are starting to see all of the pressure applied to US politicians who are feeling a bit of Ukraine fatigue.

And it’s not like it doesn’t work. Remember when US liberals were conditioned to hate Russia by a completely false narrative which was fed to the media by the western intelligence cartel, while the west was engaging in actions that same intelligence cartel knew would provoke a war with Russia?

These are just some examples to illustrate that the United States has the worlds best propaganda machine hands-down, with over a century of refinements and upgrades as new communication technology becomes available. The narrative managers work so hard on internet control for the same reason they’ve worked so hard on radio and television control: to control the American public. The easiest way to control people is to control how they think, and the easiest way to control how they think is to control what information they consume.

In Taking The Risk Out Of Democracy, Alex Carey postulates that: “The twentieth century has been characterized by three developments of great political importance: the growth of democracy, the growth of corporate power, and the growth of corporate propaganda as a means of protecting corporate power against democracy.

Taking Carey’s analysis further we find: capitalism requires propaganda; a corporate plutocracy like the US requires a more sophisticated propaganda to maintain the illusion of representative democracy; this sophisticated propaganda’s greatest triumph has been to convince Americans that they are free from propaganda.

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Sociopaths are people too, my friend

Posted on September 22, 2023 by camelotkidd

Mitt Romney (Mittens) is retiring after one term as a US Senator representing Utah, and the Salt Lake City Tribune was effusive in its praise so here’s an antidote to the hagiography:

The Tribune, which is Utah’s so-called liberal paper, loves them some Mittens because he was “a principled Republican opponent” of one Donald J. Trump. But anyone who know Romney’s history can tell you that he is light-years from “principled”.

Back in 2018, when Romney ran for the Senate seat vacated by Orrin Hatch, I wrote a letter to the editor of the Tribune expressing my surprise that they haven’t connected the bankruptcy of Toys ‘R’ Us with Mittens since he made his millions at Bain Capital, the private equity company at the heart of the bankruptcy story. It’s hard to believe that in a state that claims to value families and children the saga of a well known toy company that was driven into bankruptcy and who’s employees lost their pensions in the process would not be newsworthy. In other parts of the country the shocking and tragic bankruptcy has been reported on, while even Congress has gotten involved. Perhaps the fact that Toy ‘R’ Us is stiffing workers on their severance, after petitioning the bankruptcy court in September to pay executives $20 million in incentive bonuses, was too obvious a case of looting to ignore.

Indeed, USA Today featured an op-ed by Bill Pascrell, a New Jersey Congressman whose district included the company’s headquarters for 16 years: Amazon didn’t kill Toys R Us, greedy Wall Street profiteers did it.

Still, Mitten is nothing if not shameless. Back in 2018, after he won the Republican primary election, all but guaranteeing him a senate seat in red-state Utah, he lectured us on the evils of debt. “The country should live within its means.”

Ha, ha. That’s pretty rich coming from Mittens. 

Gonzo journalist, Matt Taibbi, well describes how Romney made his millions in an article that Utah journalists should be familiar with but somehow are not. “And this is where we get to the hypocrisy at the heart of Mitt Romney. Everyone knows that he is fantastically rich, having scored great success, the legend goes, as a “turnaround specialist,” a shrewd financial operator who revived moribund companies as a high-priced consultant for a storied Wall Street private equity firm. But what most voters don’t know is the way Mitt Romney actually made his fortune: by borrowing vast sums of money that other people were forced to pay back. This is the plain, stark reality that has somehow eluded America’s top political journalists for two consecutive presidential campaigns: Mitt Romney is one of the greatest and most irresponsible debt creators of all time. In the past few decades, in fact, Romney has piled more debt onto more unsuspecting companies, written more gigantic checks that other people have to cover, than perhaps all but a handful of people on planet Earth.”

Americans are unaware of Mittens backstory because the corporate media maintains a discrete silence about this dark underbelly of our “new economy”, while they heap fulsome praise on the “makers”. All the Tribune, was concerned with was what role Romney might play in regards to President Trump. Would he be, “a counterpoint or a cheerleader?” This follows a familiar pattern. For years they’ve been running a series of clueless articles wondering why Trump won the 2016 election, and why Utah’s continue to support him.

Trump won because Republicans like Mittens are presented as respected job creators and a moral counterpoints to the president, while in reality they’re both criminals who’ve looted the republic under the watchful eye of the corporate media.  Trump also won because of the behavior of the so-called opposition party. Obama ran on a platform of Hope and Change but delivered neither. Instead he bailed out the bankers who destroyed the economy, while turfing millions of Americans out of their homes.

The important takeaway is that Mittens and Obama are emblematic of the culture of elite meritocracy and class, while Trump is a crass and unsophisticated oaf and worse he is stirring up forbidden populist sentiments lying dormant in American.

The problem for, our elite, like Obama, Romney and all of the rest of them is that they have a recognizable track record of failure that includes deindustrialization and the resultant inequality, the invasion of Iraq under false pretenses, the 2008 Wall Street Crash and subsequent banker bailout, Covid 19, etc., all with a consistent and stunning lack of accountability.

Running for president in 2012, Mittens told a heckler who was complaining about the domination of the US political process by corporations–“Corporations are people too, my friend”.

But sociopaths, like Mittens and the rest of our soi-disant elite, are people too and they have more than a little in common with corporations.

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Inside the Blue Bubble

Posted on September 15, 2023 by camelotkidd

Liberals are starting to lose their shit as they contemplate the return of the Orange Menace.

“How not to have a psychic meltdown when you see new Trump-Biden poll numbers” [MSNBC]. “In The Wall Street Journal’s latest poll of the 2024 election, President Biden and former president Donald Trump are locked at 46% each. Other recent polls have shown essentially the same thing. While there will be many twists and turns before next November, at this point the race is a toss-up. If that makes you feel like your country has gone mad, you’re not alone. While political reporters obsess over the anger and resentments felt by blue-collar white men in Rust Belt diners, liberals’ emotions are seldom considered worthy of the same kind of exploration. Part of me looks at those polls and wants to respond not with calm and reason, but with a blood-curdling scream of rage. My informal canvas of liberal friends reveals that this feeling — something like incredulous despair verging on panic — is not unusual. We tamp it down and joke about it, but it never disappears. Like many on the left, I will never again be seduced by the inspiring feeling of hope and belonging we felt when Barack Obama was elected in 2008. But the emotions of 2020 were supposed to be less naïve. When Biden won, it felt like a return to sanity.”

Liberals are not “on the left” but this screed is a clear window inside the Blue Bubble.

Donald Trump’s surprise win in 2016 coupled with Hillary Clinton’s disappointing loss was a traumatic event for liberals and it has only gotten worse in the 7 years since. But the dynamics of this trauma operated at many levels. At the most superficial level was the hysterical response of Democratic Party rank-and-file women who regarded Donald Trump as the most extreme and horrifying embodiment of that boyfriend stalker or the proverbial “bad daddy.” Of course, for those of us who remember, Hillary did not simply fail to reach out to the working-class voters that the New Democrats had turned their backs on for decades, she infamously attacked them as “deplorables.” 

Unfortunately, liberals cannot allow themselves to be conscious of this. Their whole worldview–livelihoods, careers, and legacies depend on this not being true. Since Trump’s election, and like the Bourbons, they have learned nothing and forgeten nothing. Instead, as we have seen, they will double-down on the very arrogance that helped them lose the first election to Trump.

When I first read Listen Liberal by Thomas Frank, it was before Trump was elected and looking back on it I realize Frank was only scratching the surface. There are historical reasons that Americans voted for Trump that makes the liberal’s cries of victimhood ring hollow. As Frank recounts–“From the middle of the Great Depression up until 1980 the lower 90 percent of the population, a group we might like to call the American people, took home some 70 percent of the growth in the country’s income. Look at the same numbers beginning in 1997—from the beginnings of the New Economy boom to the present–and you find this same group, the American people, pocketed none of America’s income growth at all. Their share of the good times was zero. The gains they harvested after all their hard work were nil. The upper 10 percent of the population–the country’s financiers, managers, and professionals–ate the whole thing.”

The result was the massive inequality plaguing America but liberals/Democrats have shown little interest in fixing it and their inability is hardly accidental. The Democrats version of liberalism is solely related to the fortunes of the professional/managerial/class PMC’s, who make up the top 10 percent. This cohort forms a privileged class with an interest in furthering its own influence and grabbing more than its share of wealth and privilege, and in their minds it’s the best of times–gay marriage is legal, we have had a black president and woman increasingly make up the ranks of CEO’s. Unfortunately for the rest of us liberals/Democrats have morphed into a failed managerial aristocracy that can’t lead but won’t get out of the way.

I’ve come to believe that the Democratic Party’s turn away from the New Deal and pander to the professional/managerial/class PMC’s was partly due to the end of the Cold War. The Democrats could simply take working-class Americans for granted. After all, as Margaret Thatcher proclaimed–There is no Alternative.

On that note, the Democrats are still insisting that Biden is their candidate–“What’s behind the nonsensical campaign to replace Biden-Harris in 2024” [MSNBC]. “He remains broadly popular among Democratic voters, even if he clearly has work to do in order to reassure wayward party members. …”

Man! I want to know what they are smoking at MSNBC. Anyway, if this sort of behavior sounds familiar, it’s akin to the Kubler-Ross stages of grief, where Democrats are stuck at denial. It’s why Thomas Frank remains persona non grata at MSNBC or any other liberal media venue.

Put simply, Trump and his MAGA supporters are a class based rebuke to the PMC’s and their sense of superiority. This phenomenon points to the ability of the PMC and elites to rationalize that their self-interest is somehow morally virtuous and then to act in very herd like and performative ways. Liberalism needed, above all, a sense of moral superiority, to heal an imperfect world, to be ahead-of-the-curve in mankind’s implacable march of progress toward perfection, and especially to set an example for how to live for all those “deplorables” residing in “flyover America who dared vote for a caricature like Donald J. Trump.

Psychologists have found that people who perceive themselves as good are more likely to do bad things. Indeed, the affluent and financially comfortable liberals engage in almost all of the same elitism, sexism, ableism, and racism as their political opponents–as Trump. Then there was Russia-gate, the Mueller business, Impeachment No. 1, and 2 which were all efforts by liberals and the deep state to deny Trump legitimacy and effectiveness. We could go so far as to characterize all of these efforts as an “insurrection”.

But liberals refuse contemplate any of this from inside the Blue Bubble.

Update: Again, just to make clear, I’m not a Trump supporter but I am fascinated by the economic, political and social conditions that give rise to his popularity. While liberals believe all kinds of nonsense, conservatives and Republicans are even more ridiculous. They’re constantly going on about a hostile takeover of the United States by socialists and communists, as though the Democrats are anything other than the same neoliberal capitalists that Republicans are. The only thing that makes liberals more annoying is the rank hypocrisy.

Update 2: While liberal PMC Democrats inhabit the Blue Bubble here is what a working-class Democrat has to say about it. Kim McCarthy, the Democratic chair in Greene county, which includes part of eastern Dayton, Ohio, said her party struggles to shake the perception that, at a national level, it is not interested in working people. “It’s not a secret that our country is run by corporate USA Inc. I feel that limitation stops Democrats from fighting for things that would bring people over to their side, like universal healthcare,” she said. McCarthy said that remained a good part of the reason for Trump’s continuing support in her county. “The appeal of Trump ultimately is that people recognize that our federal government is failing us as a society, as a nation. I’m from Australia and I think one of the most profound things that I’ve realised over my 25-odd years of living here is that the US government doesn’t care about me and my life,” she said.

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By their words you shall know them

Posted on September 8, 2023 by camelotkidd

There are bloodthirsty monsters in the Senate. Maybe it has always been thus but since 9/11 they have sanctioned an orgy of violence–bombing, assassinations, torture, invasions and proxy wars utilizing al Qaeda and Nazi terrorists. Their latest human sacrifice involves the US proxy war against Russia in Ukraine where recent statements have dispelled any notions that Russia’s Special Military Operation was “unprovoked”. Indeed, they just can’t stop boasting about how this supposedly unprovoked war which the US is only backing out of its concern for democracy just so happens to serve US interests tremendously.

My senator, Mitt Romney (Mittens), called the US proxy war against Russia in Ukraine: “the best national defense spending I think we’ve ever done. We’re losing no lives in Ukraine, and the Ukrainians are fighting heroically against Russia,” Romney said. “We’re diminishing and devastating the Russian military for a very small amount of money … a weakened Russia is a good thing.”

Last month Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell argued that Americans should support the US government’s proxy warfare in Ukraine because “we haven’t lost a single American in this war,” adding that the spending is helping to employ Americans in the military-industrial complex. “Most of the money that we spend related to Ukraine is actually spent in the US, replenishing weapons, more modern weapons…”

Not to be outdone, in a recent article for the Connecticut Post, Senator Richard Blumenthal assured Americans that “we’re getting our money’s worth on our Ukraine investment. For less than 3 percent of our nation’s military budget, we’ve enabled Ukraine to degrade Russia’s military strength by half,” writes Blumenthal.

Look how happy they are at the results of their glorious proxy-war. I think Senator Blumenthal has a boner going, and Lindsey never met a war he couldn’t dry-hump from the safety of his closet. But Pocahontas? She looks like she has developed a secret crush on the heroic Zelensky.

Americans should be outraged at what these monsters are doing in their name. As Caitlin says: “War is the single worst thing humans do. The most insane. The most cruel. The most destructive. The most traumatic. The least sustainable. Those who knowingly choose to steer humanity into more war when it could be avoided are the worst people in the world, without exception.”

And of course the mass media is composed of the same blood-thirsty monsters. A few weeks ago the Washington Post’s David Ignatius wrote an article explaining why westerners shouldn’t “feel gloomy” about how things are going in Ukraine, writing the following about how much this war is doing to benefit US interests overseas: “Meanwhile, for the United States and its NATO allies, these 18 months of war have been a strategic windfall, at relatively low cost (other than for the Ukrainians). The West’s most reckless antagonist has been rocked. NATO has grown much stronger with the additions of Sweden and Finland. Germany has weaned itself from dependence on Russian energy and, in many ways, rediscovered its sense of values. NATO squabbles make headlines, but overall, this has been a triumphal summer for the alliance.”

While for the United States and its NATO allies, these 18 months of war have been a strategic windfall, at relatively low cost, it’s been a different story for the proxy.

A funerals of Ukrainian servicemen killed during combat with Russian troops. Military cemetery

‘Dying by the dozens every day’ – Ukraine losses climb, is posted at the BBC website. There has been a dramatic rise in Ukraine’s number of dead, according to new estimates by unnamed US officials. The reality of the scale of casualties is laid bare in Ukraine’s cemeteries. A year and a half into this war, few families here have been left untouched by grief.

No matter. For the fiends in the Senate they will wage the US proxy war against Russia to the last Ukrainian. Reportedly, the Western policy class knew Ukraine didn’t have the weapons or training necessary for success but hoped they would somehow triumph anyway. Now, with failure all but inevitable, after a year and a half of lionizing the Ukrainians, the brazen depravity of the of our Senators and their corporate media courtiers is on display for all to see: they have blamed the failure on Ukraine being too “casualty averse.” This implies, I suppose, that Ukraine should be casualty casual, and care about the lives of their troops even less than they have up to this point.

It was already well established that the Western proxy warrior class are monsters, but they have rarely exposed themselves as clearly as while talking about the young men they threw into the maw of Ukraine’s failed summer 2023 offensive.

As the Biden administration and Congress continue to pour billions of dollars into Ukraine as they pressure that unfortunate country into losing hundreds of thousands of lives in a war where the main beneficiaries are the holders of stocks and bonds in the U.S. military-industrial complex, we are also seeing disturbing news here in the Homeland.

Recent reports by the Centers for Disease Control that youth suicides and homicides for 2022 were at an all-time high. Added to more than 100,000 deaths annually from overdoses and the flood of fentanyl and crystal meth pouring across our open southern border, we are starting to look at a generation of young Americans with nothing to live for. 

What’s really tragic is that all the blood-thirsty bellicosity and constant warfare has left the US less secure, less respected and less powerful, all results that are anathema to the Straussian neo-con psychos in charge of US foreign policy who enacted their pet policies in the aftermath of 9/11 when the “gloves came off”.

The biggest loss was that of the traditional “soft power” that was always America’s greatest strength

And while Americans may not know about or understand the words that the bloodthirsty monsters in the Senate are articulating, you can bet the rest of the world does and is acting accordingly.

Update: The formation of BRICS and their recent addition of new members is a direct result of the neocon policies of world domination and endless war.

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Lies and Lying Liars

Posted on September 1, 2023 by camelotkidd

I don’t believe anything anymore. If CNN or Fox or MSNBC told me that the sun was going to rise in the East I would need to check. And US government agencies are no better. The State Department or the CIA or the FBI? Please.

The latest agency to demonstrate the full corporate takeover of our government is the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) with their admission of the safety of Ivermectin. This was prompted in part by government lawyers in a court hearing who confessed that for two years the FDA has been lying about both Ivermectin and the fact that doctors were not authorized to prescribe it in the treatment of Covid.

I know history isn’t our strong point but if you consult the wayback machine you might recall that the the FDA and every liberal outlet told Americans that Ivermectin was horse medicine. After all, the general assumption that Ivermectin is a horse dewormer didn’t come from nowhere. It was a narrative cultivated in us by the FDA and the corporate media. Here is the tweet the agency sent out exactly two years ago to persuade us that only dangerous nut-jobs (ie. Trump supporters) talk about Ivermectin:

The corporate media worked overtime to promote exactly the same messaging: that Ivermectin was only good for horses and cows. The media echoed the FDA in implying very strongly that the drug’s use in humans was not safe. There was not a late-night show host who did not mock Ivermectin as a horse drug and ridicule its supporters, even leading doctors.

As a corollary the Biden Administration and liberal corporate media proclaimed the importance of vaccines and mass vaccination, and emphasized the safety and non-transmission of the new, experimental mRNA vaccines produced under emergency authorization by Pfizer, a company for which fraud is not unknown. Before assuming office, President-elect Biden promised the electorate he would make mass vaccination against COVID-19 central to his agenda. Not only should Americans get vaccinated to safeguard their own lives, the president declared, but also as good citizens to protect each other. Those who declined vaccination were not only foolish, but selfish.

Then there was the timing of the miracle vaccine’s release. I mean knowing what we know about how Big Pharma manipulates its trials, are we really to believe that Pfizer couldn’t have manipulated its own internal timeline, such that the data to evaluate its vaccines was only available after the 2020 election? 

“Pfizer CEO: Our vaccine timing had nothing to do with politics” [CNN]. From November 9, 2020. 

Tell us another one.

Now let’s look at the politics of these vital public health decisions. Remember, the FDA’s drug division receives three-quarters of its funding from the pharmaceutical industry. This unmentioned reality should be a huge conflict of interest, but there are enormous political and economic pressures to keep Big Pharma happy. The reality is that Ivermectin and other drugs that might have been repurposed for Covid posed an enormous threat in principle to the FDA and its funders in Big Pharma–completely aside from the practical question of whether those drugs actually work against Covid.

The new, experimental mRNA vaccines could only be rushed out for use in humans on the basis of an emergency authorisation so long as no other drug could be shown to be an effective treatment for Covid.

Ivermectin has been off-patent for years. No one can make any serious money from it, and certainly not giant pharmaceuticals based in the United States. Any Chinese or Indian factory can produce the tablets for a few cents.

So in short, Big Pharma, which was poised to become fabulously enriched by its new vaccines, had every financial incentive imaginable to make sure there were no rivals in the stakes for a Covid miracle cure. The focus had to be entirely and exclusively on the vaccines.

“BioNTech, Pfizer stocks soar after COVID-19 vaccine candidate achieves ‘success’ in first analysis” [MarketWatch] and “Stock futures surge, with Dow futures up 1100 points, after Pfizer vaccine news” [MarketWatch].

Cha-ching! as the cool kids say.

The FDA, like all of the rest of US regulatory agencies has been captured by the industries they’re tasked with regulating. In this case big Pharma ownes the FDA and the doctors and scientists who work there are not stupid. They know for their careers to advance they have to make Big-Pharma happy.

The corporate media had exactly the same priorities. Why is that?

Perhaps it’s because companies like Pfizer subsidize the corporate media as heavily as they do the FDA.

We discussed this before but the pharmaceutical corporations and the corporate media are just separate wings of the same corporate empire headquartered on Wall Street. What’s good for Big Pharma is good for the military/industrial/complex is good for Big-Oil is good for corporate agriculture is good for corporate media, etc.

What is important for all of them is the maintenance of a political and economic climate that allows for corporate profiteering. What is good for one of them is good for all.

So Ivermectin had to be lied about by the lying liars.

It’s that simple.

Update: Just to make clear–I am not a Trump supporter. But I am extremely interested in the political, economic and social conditions that make Trumpism possible in the United States.

Lying about Ivermectin and demonizing those who would utilize it while screeching at the top of their lungs to “trust the science” it is not the winning issue that liberals imagine. Meanwhile, doubling down on the attacks against Trump and his supporters appears to supremely counterproductive. Of course the managers of the American empire are experts at keeping liberals generally unaware of the cruelty and tyranny of the empire overseas, with their political attention being directed toward Trump’s mugshot with the narrative that the 45th president is literally the greatest threat facing America today. The whole Russia-gate psy-op provides copious evidence of this phenomenon. Trump for liberals is like waving a red cape at a bull.

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A Natural State

Posted on August 25, 2023 by camelotkidd

With the trend of recent posts I feel it’s a propitious moment to resume our examination of power.

Capital has come to be the preeminent power in the US. And by capital I mean the corporations, banks, trusts and assorted financial entities, owned by the oligarchs, which composes American capitalism. Meanwhile, the vast majority of Americans, including members of the professional/managerial/class, make a living by selling their labor to an employer (Capital), making this the most important power relationship in their lives. However, thanks to the dedicated efforts of classical and now neoliberal economists this dynamic is considered economic instead of the most important political issue.

I’m reading a new book–Capital Control: How Economists Invented Austerity and Paved the Way to Fascism, by Clara Mattei, which details the history of austerity and demonstrates that neoliberal capitalism is just the latest itineration of liberal capitalism, as well as a successful counterattack against the New Deal, meant to reestablish capital control. In the words of the late Mark Fisher, “It is easier to imagine the end of the world that to imagine the end of capitalism.”

We think of austerity as a new set of policies but Mattei explains that austerity has been a cudgel used to discipline workers for over a century. “Economic experts, whether fascist or liberal recognized that in order to secure economic freedom–ie., the market freedom of the “virtuous” saver/entrepreneur–countries had to forgo, or at minimum marginalize, political freedoms.”

Indeed, Mattei’s examination of the conditions of capitalism in England and Italy during WWI, reveal the political nature of the “free market” and demonstrate that there’s nothing natural about it. “In sum, the war brought about an unprecedented degree of state control over labor. Insetting the price of labor, disciplining it, and controlling its supply, the Italian and British governments had exposed the profoundly political nature of the capitalist economy…The basis was set for those who were living through these changes to gain awareness of the link between economic power and political power. The full consequences were cropping up: if economic power is political, it means there is nothing natural about economic power, and the systems by which it is distributed can be changed through struggle.”

At the end of the WWI all of these contradictions brought about a crisis of capitalism. Mattei says that after the war many bureaucrats, politicians and intellectuals had been converted to belief in the benefits of nationalization and envisioned it as a long-lasting structural change. “The involvement of the state showed the irrationality of the market–that it was wasteful and anti-social.” Be that it may but the capitalists in England and Italy were the most powerful class and soon mounted a ferocious counterattack that reestablished capital control with the aid of classical economists who used austerity as their weapon of choice.

Neoliberalism advocates much more state involvement than laissez faire to nurture and protect an economic system dominated by markets but the modern state, wether liberal or fascist, has always favored the capitalist order. After all, capitalism is more than an economic arrangement. It’s system of social order.

What Mattei details is a familiar story that I have witnessed in my lifetime. American capitalists similarly mounted a successful counterattack against the US government’s uneven attempt to level the playing field between capital and labor that the New Deal represented. Moreover, the fact that capitalists have been so successful points to the power that they wield in American society. The unwelcome reality is that as a result of capitalist counterattack, the economic and financial policies since have transferred $50 trillion from labor to politically powerful capital. If this doesn’t seem possible, please read the RAND study in its entirety: Trends in Income From 1975 to 2018.

You know, it’s quite interesting because I’m old enough to remember Obama-Biden back in 2008-2012, and they were talking about that, “we as Democrats support a redistribution of wealth. And at the time, it was assumed that this redistribution of wealth would be from upper income to lower income brackets. But now it seems that the redistribution of wealth is going the other way around, taking from the poor to give to the rich.

That’s what politics is all about in America. It’s about economic power. Voting and elections are just a small part of the ongoing struggle, while unfortunately economic matters are kept far away from the electorate.

And that just how the capitalists like the American political system especially the legalized bribery campaign funding mechanism codified by Citizens United. If you look at the donor class, who are the donors? The donors are the wealthy, the beneficiaries of government policy. The brutal reality the RAND study articulates is that over the past several decades, and especially over the past ten years, since the 2008 crash, we’ve seen the US slowly transform into a financial oligarchy.

What is important for all of them is the maintenance of a political and economic climate that allows for Capital’s permanent profiteering.

Paraphrasing Kevin Spacey in–The Usual Suspects–the best trick that Capital pulled was convincing us that capitalism is the natural state of man rather than a political construct serving a narrow strata of oligarchs that can be changed.

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Most of the money

Posted on August 18, 2023 by camelotkidd

Sometimes US politicians blurt out the truth. Recently Mitch McConnell stated that: ” Most of the money that we spend related to Ukraine is actually spent in the US, replenishing weapons, more modern weapons. So it’s actually employing people here and improving our own military for what lies ahead.”

So that whole narrative about defending Ukraine from “unprovoked” Russian aggression is just a cover story to disguise the real purpose, which is feeding the military/industrial/complex. Gee, who could have known?

War really is the health of the state. Sorry. The health of the deep state. The US is an empire that wages wars to maintain control, managed by a national security class, who’s members are never on the ballot. That permanent government structure is why the large-scale movements of the empire don’t change when a president is replaced by a new president from Team Red or Team Blue. America’s official elected government may have changed, but the real government that manages the empire did not.

This is a big part of what keeps the American empire acting the same way from administration to administration. Every president is stage managed by DC swamp monsters, like Victoria Nuland, who all went to the same universities and moved through the same revolving door employment circles of government agencies and think tanks and party politics and military-industrial complex advising/lobbying and media punditry, who all understand what’s required of the US president to facilitate the perpetuation of the American empire. 

All of this was set in motion decades ago when the US established a policy of ensuring that no other rival superpowers emerge after the fall of the Soviet Union. US foreign policy in the 2000s emphasized giant overt ground invasions (Iraq, Afghanistan). In the 2010s it shifted emphasis to arming proxies (Yemen, Libya, Syria). In the 2020s it upped the ante by staging massive proxy conflicts on the borders of its top two rivals (Ukraine-Russia, Taiwan-China).

Just to give you an idea of how much mayhem we’re talking about–the United States launched at least 251 military interventions between 1991 and 2022. This is according to a report by the Congressional Research Service, a US government institution that compiles information on behalf of Congress. The Military Intervention Project added: “With the end of the Cold War era, we would expect the US to decrease its military interventions abroad, assuming lower threats and interests at stake. But these patterns reveal the opposite – the US has increased its military involvements abroad.”

And while war is the health of the deep state, for the American people it’s an ongoing disaster. For the first time under the Biden administration, food insecurity rates eclipsed 12 percent, marking a fourth consecutive month of increase. What’s more, average financial hardship and food insecurity rates this year exceed the previous three.

The temporary welfare superstructure erected for the pandemic is being dismantled with nothing to replace it, leaving tens of millions of Americans in the lurch. This wasn’t supposed to happen. Democrats and the Biden Administration led voters to believe that they wouldn’t be left high and dry — as the emergency benefits expired, they should have been replaced with permanent ones.

Meanwhile, it’s hard to look at recent footage of the devastation in Maui and then hear President Biden tell Congress that he needs another $24 billion for Ukraine. 

Update: More honesty from US officials.

Last month The Washington Post’s David Ignatius wrote an article explaining why westerners shouldn’t “feel gloomy” about how things are going in Ukraine, writing the following about how much this war is doing to benefit US interests overseas:

“Meanwhile, for the United States and its NATO allies, these 18 months of war have been a strategic windfall, at relatively low cost (other than for the Ukrainians). The West’s most reckless antagonist has been rocked. NATO has grown much stronger with the additions of Sweden and Finland. Germany has weaned itself from dependence on Russian energy and, in many ways, rediscovered its sense of values. NATO squabbles make headlines, but overall, this has been a triumphal summer for the alliance.”

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Our Democracy

Posted on August 11, 2023 by camelotkidd

I swear if I hear some liberal politician or pundit use the expression “our democracy” again I’m going to scream.

The whole idea of the US as a democracy is a joke. I don’t know exactly which cabal of Wall Street bankers, spooks and military/industrial denizens makes policy but it sure ain’t “we the people”. All of the pomp and ceremony of voting is to create the illusion that the US government is responsive to the will of the electorate. Meanwhile, we’re a plutocracy and have been for some time. Cory Doctorow says—“Our plutocratic, monopolized, unequal society is the worst of both worlds. Because companies are so big, they abuse us with impunity – and they are able to suborn the state to help them do it.”

And don’t even get me started on American foreign policy. “Our democracy”. Hah! The US maintains the largest, most powerful empire in history yet liberals use terms like “liberal democracy” and “international rules-based order” to describe this arrangement. These euphemisms might fool the American people but the rest of the world understands all to well what the score is. 

If you look solely at the raw data of the US power structure around the world (where the weapons are going, where the resources are going, where the money is and isn’t going, where the diplomats are and aren’t going, etc), you can’t tell which political party controls the White House or Congress. And Americans don’t get to vote on any of that stuff. The behavior of the American empire and the policies that maintain it are never on the ballot. 

The present embrace of Nazi’s in Ukraine and the history of US support of right-wing, business friendly governments in the Third World belies any sort of genuflection to democracy. Meanwhile, liberals are cool with all of this a long as appearances are maintained. I think that is one of the real reasons that they loath Trump, for showing the true face of American imperialism.

Ask an anti-imperialist what’s the worst thing Trump did and they’ll talk about actual US aggression in places like Yemen, Venezuela, Afghanistan, Libya and Iraq, or the embrace of jailing or assassinating critics or foreign leaders, like Julian Assange and Qasem Soleimani. Ask a Democrat what’s the worst thing Trump did and they’ll talk about pretend nonsense like Russian collusion and insurrection.

Meanwhile, the liberal guardians of “our democracy” have turned into the worst sort of authoritarians, embracing propaganda and censorship in their crusade against “disinformation”. All of the shrieking about not respecting the will of the voters and questioning the results of the 2020 election is pretty rich when they spent the entirety of the Trump presidency waging the Russia-gate coup. The hypocrisy is stunning.

It appears that “our democracy” means “their democracy”. Liberals deserve to rule the country and anything else is fascism.

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Absolution

Posted on August 6, 2023 by camelotkidd

David Brooks (of all people) has an op/ed in the Times, where he takes the professional/managerial/class (PMC) to task.

“What if We’re the Bad Guys Here?” [David Brooks, New York Times]. “We built an entire social order that sorts and excludes people on the basis of the quality that we possess most: academic achievement. Highly educated parents go to elite schools, marry each other, work at high-paying professional jobs and pour enormous resources into our children, who get into the same elite schools, marry each other and pass their exclusive class privileges down from generation to generation…. Does this mean that I think the people in my class are vicious and evil? No, most of us are earnest, kind and public spirited. But we take for granted and benefit from systems that have become oppressive. Elite institutions have become so politically progressive in part because the people in them want to feel good about themselves as they take part in systems that exclude and reject. It’s easy to understand why people in less-educated classes would conclude that they are under economic, political, cultural and moral assault — and why they’ve rallied around Trump as their best warrior against the educated class. Trump understood that it’s not the entrepreneurs who seem most threatening to workers; it’s the professional class. Trump understood that there was great demand for a leader who would stick his thumb in our eyes on a daily basis and reject the whole epistemic regime that we road in on. As the sociologist E. Digby Baltzell wrote decades ago, “”History is a graveyard of classes which have preferred caste privileges to leadership.”” That is the destiny our class is now flirting with. We can condemn the Trumpian populists all day until the cows come home, but the real question is when will we stop behaving in ways that make Trumpism inevitable.”

Ouch!

But, wait. Wasn’t Trumpism caused by racist Americans yearning to make America great again?

Or, weren’t the Russians responsible? I thought that absolving the PMC’s for their disastrous policies over the last 40 odd years was the whole point of Russia-gate?

Meanwhile, I don’t think this gambit will go over well with Brook’s fellow PMC’s. I mean, they bought into Russia-gate hook, line and sinker and are the most belligerent cold warriors now with a sizable majority of liberals preferring direct war with Russia in Ukraine. Not to mention, many of them suffered nervous breakdowns when Donald Trump won the presidency in 2016. Their reaction amounted to “he’s a Bad Person, he’s not supposed to win! Or, if he won it’s due the diabolical actions of that nefarious Putin. It couldn’t have been our actions and privileges that caused Americans to lose so much faith in the political establishment that they were willing to settle for Trump, of all people, as an alternative. 

They are not about to drop all of that and look in the mirror and blame themselves. They went to the best schools, work hard, and dammit, they deserve to rule. Furthermore, the PMC’s have evolved into a social class in which the most ironclad rule is that nobody must ever suffer the consequences of their own choices.

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