Traditional

Posted on July 28, 2023 by camelotkidd

In an article last month, Matt Taibbi, asked “where are the rest of the “card-carrying” liberals from the seventies, eighties, and nineties — people like me, who always reflexively opposed restrictions on speech?”

The short answer is, of course, Donald Trump.

But the longer answer is that they’ve been trending that way for a while. The term liberal original meant a capitalist whose sole concern was the treatment of property. Ultimately, the Industrial Revolution created a new power center apart from monarchy, and this new movement required an intellectual edifice, provided by Smith and Ricardo, hence liberalism, whose property trumped hereditary monarchy.

The modern version/definition of liberalism came about in the 1960’s and described baby-boomers who opposed the Vietnam War, supported Civil Rights, opposed censorship and propaganda, and were generally on the left. They were hippies.

But then the hippies became yuppies during Ronnie Raygun’s administration and it’s been downhill ever since. But Donald Trump really broke their brains. Liberals went into a sort of fugue state where hatred of the Orange Menace became their overriding concern. The national security state made good use of this hatred, utilizing the Russia-gate psy-op to transform liberals into the pro-censorship cold warriors, flying the Ukrainian flag that you see now. My working theory is that once the draft ended liberals could embrace war and empire since they and their children would not being coming back in body-bags. Only the dreaded MAGA infantry were now on the firing line thanks to an economic draft.

I realized that the transformation of modern day liberals into their long lost heirs is complete after watching the House hearing in which Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. was testifying. What was bizarre was the Democratic representatives reaction throughout. They tried to shut down RFK. They moved to go to executive session so that the public could not hear the proceedings. The effort failed. Then they shouted over his words when they were questioning him. They wildly smeared him and defamed him. They even began with an attempt to block him from speaking at all, and 8 Democrats voted to support that. 

This was a hearing on censorship and they were trying to censor him. It could have been part of a modern version of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, if Lewis Carroll were alive to write it today. 

While it’s important to despise liberal political and media institutions and the capitalist, imperialist, authoritarian ideology they promote, conservatives as represented by the Republican Party are no better, just the other side of the coin. 

That’s my senator–Mittens–being Mittens.

During a Senate hearing Wednesday, Mitt Romney argued against an amendment proposed by Rand Paul to make it illegal for government to use social media and big tech companies to censor the views of Americans.

In theory both mainstream political parties compete to make your life better than the other does so you’ll vote for them; in practice both parties openly oppress and impoverish you while focusing on murdering foreigners, and compete for your vote based on your feelings about artificial wedge issues. They’ve rigged the political currency they’d normally use to obtain votes in a way that guarantees the continuation of the status quo in every meaningful way, so the gears of the empire keep turning uninterrupted while the riff-raff argue about volatile cultural issues which don’t affect power, like “wokeness” and prayer in schools.

Not only are liberals, represented by the Democratic Party, turning into authoritarians but their whole “woke” agenda seems to really be alienating average Americans. The party has long since turned its back on its old blue-collar constituency, engaging instead with an urban ‘creative class’ in an exalted, world-shaping ‘social engineering’ project of moral redress. Indeed, the Democratic wokish ideology of historical redress is separating the U.S. into two nations living in one land. Divided not so much by ‘Red or Blue’, or class, but defined by irreconcilable ways of being and ways of living

The old categories: Left, Right, Democrat or GOP are being dissolved by a Cultural War that respects no categories, crossing the boundaries of class and party affiliation. Conservatives serve capital openly while liberals, who have reverted to the traditional definition of liberalism, engage in identity politics and “woke” ideology because it doesn’t threaten the sanctity of capital which is the only true value their main constituents–Wall Street–cares about.

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Cheap

Posted on July 21, 2023 by camelotkidd

We are going to have to learn to care for one another again. Neoliberalism has turned us into selfish assholes. We have followed Thatcher’s maxim that there is no society only individuals, and in the process have lost our humanity.

Becoming cheap assholes is the other trick neoliberalism has played on us. We’re encouraged to seek out the lowest price even if it means outsourcing our jobs and transforming once American vibrant cities and towns into wastelands. Even as it means increasingly shoddy made products that fill our landfills to overflowing. Even if it means relying on child-labor in Third-World hellholes to supply us with the latest fashions that we casually toss away. Even if it means putting once vibrant small stores out of business so we can seek out the lowest, lowest price at Walmart.

Of course we aren’t all encouraged to be cheap. The marketing wizards invented a new product niche aimed at the professional/managerial/class (PMC’s). In a bit of evil-genius marketing they turned consumer ecological responsibility into this trendy elite thing priced way out of range for normal people. For example there’s the whole eco chic thing and Whole Foods and Tesla and the rest of this whole new luxury market designed to let rich people feel good about themselves while the world burns and create the narrative that buying stuff will fix our problems.

And if all of this sounds suspiciously like class-warfare designed to turn Americans against one another give yourself a cookie.

Like I repeat endlessly–evil is easy.

But, wouldn’t we hear or read about all of this on the news? The corporate media likes to portray themselves as an alert watchdog but the media is owned by billionaires, and serves as little more than the public relations arm of concentrated wealth and as cheerleader for a neoliberalism that normalizes the criminal profiteering of the monopolistic corporations that control America. The billionaire-owned media corporations are embedded in the same model of corporate profit as these corporations. Indeed, the media’s own corporate profits depend on the advertising and sponsorship of the same corporations they are supposedly holding accountable. It’s no wonder trust in the corporate media is at an all time low.

Going further, because I always do, we live in a world not, as we are told, of democratic accountability and transparency. Beyond formal, surface appearances, our system of political, economic and social control is designed to be unaccountable. We live in a world of illusion, of elites that look out for their own, that develop ever more sophisticated technological tools to manipulate and deceive us, and that have progressively rigged the system to accrue to themselves ever more wealth and power. They manufacture consent for our rugged-individualism and throwaway culture the same way they manufacture consent for endless warfare and empire.

I’m convinced that this is a huge factor in the mental health crises our society is experiencing today. We’re trapped in this system where we’re constantly being psychologically bombarded with an endless barrage of messaging trying to make us think and feel and desire and loathe specific things for no other reason than because it’s profitable.

Ultimately, being cheap has political ramifications. Neoliberalism encourages competition and an obsessive focus on maximizing “human capital”, while promoting frugality with care and concern for one another, in the process destroying any idea of republican self-government.

That’s why creating community is a revolutionary act.

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Fight for your right to loot

Posted on July 14, 2023 by camelotkidd

I welcome the collapse of the US empire due to the sociopathy of our feral elite.

The coming collapse could be brought about by the US and NATO’s defeat in their proxy war in Ukraine, hence all of the hysterical propaganda depicting the glorious success of their endeavor. The prevailing theory is that a Ukrainian proxy defeat would be the end of America’s world dominance militarily, and effectively the end of NATO, but also the end financially for the US, as the non-West abandons the dollar. In that scenario, the BRICs dump their trillions in US bond holdings, sending all that putative “money” back to America, stoking a king-hell inflation, effectively bankrupting us.

About the proxy war thing–it’s obvious that the Ukrainian military could only operate with US military intelligence, weapons and training. That’s why so much of our media is dedicated to normalizing the idea that Russia invaded Ukraine because Putin is uniquely evil and why they spend so much time manufacturing consent for the American empire. Despite Russia’s overwhelming upper hand in Ukraine, Western officials and media continue to flout reality and weave stories of Russian collapse. To truly understand the proxy war it’s key to realize the larger geostrategic goal. Ukraine was supposed to be a launching pad for spreading US military bases across Central Asia and (eventually) encircling, isolating and containing China. See Halford MacKinder’s The Geographical Pivot of History, for the long version.

Anyway, at this point the level of disinformation in the media is so far beyond the pale it is impossible for a normal person to wrap their head around it.

Just like the average American cannot wrap his or her head around the fact that the US empire does not work for them but only for our feral elite. Going further, the empire, in its current form is already bankrupting us. Just look around. Since 2009 US corporations have spent more than $7 trillion on stock buybacks which is an activity that boosts payouts to rich shareholders but fails to produce anything of material value. Had that capital been invested in critical infrastructure, every city in America would be linked to a gigantic network of high-speed rail, with parks, bike and pedestrian trails, etc. But that hasn’t happened, because the western model incentivizes the extraction of capital for personal enrichment rather than the development of projects that serve the common good.

Meanwhile, it’s just taken as a given that it’s fine for US oligarchs and empire managers to run our country. US policies are all set by the bankers and oligarchs who control the politicians, the media, and the sprawling deep state. Then there’s the brazen psy-ops and mass media propaganda, even as more and more internet censorship gets put in place. 

But, but, how will we go forward without our glorious American empire?

We can learn from the sanctions these very same elites have inflicted on the rest of the world that refuses their commands. Countries like Cuba or Venezuela or Iran or Russia or Syria or, you get the picture. All of these countries have had to create a domestic economy free from western banking interests. The US basically makes other countries an offer they can’t refuse. Not to bomb other countries, not to overthrow their governments, not to have a color revolution. They’ll say what we can offer: your life. We’ll agree not to kill you, not to overthrow you, not to bomb you, not to do to you what we did recently to Afghanistan, to Libya, to Iraq, to Syria.

Alongside the military there’s the financial warfare, where the US has perfected the art financial conquest. To conquer a country financially, you conquer a country by getting it to submit to austerity programs by the International Monetary Fund, again, to impose austerity, to keep its local wages down. So you use finance as a means of imposing post-industrialization and depression, in order to prevent democracy from developing. Finance is just the gentle hand of neocolonialism.

So any country that is seeking to promote a democracy by public spending on basic infrastructure, or banking, like China is doing, is called an autocracy, while all of the right-wing juntas that have imposed a client oligarchy, to fight against labor, and to prevent these policies that would help enrich and industrialize the economy, are called democracies.

And that brings us too the crux of our problem. We are controlled by these same banking interests, who have been looting our country for decades. They ran out of foreigners to pilfer and have brought to the racket to a state and city near you. Heterodox economist Michael Hudson is very clear on this point. “So the problem is that both US political parties are committed to de-industrialization for the reasons that the head of the Federal reserve has explained over the last few months: if you have more industrialization, you’ll have more employment, and if you have more employment, you’ll raise wages. And our philosophy, Democrats and Republicans alike, is to keep wages down so that corporate profits can be higher. And it’s worth it to the employing class, it’s worth it to the corporate monopolies to impose a depression on the United States, as long as that will reduce wages and strengthen the power of the 1% over the 99%. So the 1% is willing to lose sales, to lose profits, as the economy falls into what they call a recession, as long as their power over the 99% increases…America cannot re-industrialize without reversing this whole philosophy of post-industrial society as a class war against labor.”

I written about it before but at this point it’s obvious that voting is a waste of time. Both political parties, the Republicans and the Democrats are controlled by the financial industry, which makes up the bulk of the 1%. To extend this dynamic back to the US empire, it exists to further the interests of Wall Street and the elites that make up the commanding height of corporate America.

They are getting desperate.  If the objective was to weaken Russia, it didn’t work out. Rather, it exposed the USA as a “reckless global psychopath bent on wrecking every country it pretends to help — including the major countries in NATO.” Unfortunately, the American empire won’t go quietly in the night. Our feral elite will not forgo their last looting opportunity without a fight. Despite military and economic losses suffered by Ukraine and its Western backers, US elites want to double down rather than negotiate a possible peace settlement. They simply cannot entertain the possibility of a Russian victory.

Apologies to the Beastie Boys.

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To Eleven

Posted on July 7, 2023 by camelotkidd

Seeing the polling results last week showing a majority of Americans support pouring more dollars down the Ukrainian rathole was depressing but not surprising. The US has a world-class propaganda system and the managers of empire have been bludgeoning the American mass mind relentlessly.

Since the start of the US proxy war against Russia in Ukraine the propaganda dial has been turned up to eleven. Bringing back serial murderers like Elliot Abrams is a sure sign of desperation for our feral elite, who are freaking-the-fuck-out about their loss of credibility as the American empire circles the drain.

As Caitlin Johnstone observes–“One of the weirdest things to happen last year was the entire western political/media class deciding to start pretending Ukrainian Nazis aren’t Nazis based on literally nothing whatsoever, just because it’s convenient, and a substantial portion of the population playing along.”

All of this is part and parcel of the larger propaganda assault against Russia. Washington had decided to continue on its goal of world hegemony and had prepared public opinion to believe that Putin was a dictator and that Russia was simultaneously a gas station in the wilderness and a diabolical enemy. The role of the neo-Nazis in Ukraine and the attacks and relentless shelling of Russian separatists in the Donbass by Ukrainian forces had been deleted from Western news.

Logic is not a strong point in Washington, or among the American populace.

The 4th of July is a great time to witness the patriotic propaganda, where we’re encouraged to honor our armed forces as defenders of the nation when for decades the US military has been engaged in endless expeditionary actions to serve the oligarchic owners of the American empire. They con us into one war after another. They don’t even have to be innovative. The rhetoric is lifted from the old playbook. We naively swallow the bait and embrace the flag — this time blue and yellow — to become unwitting agents in our own immiseration.

And now our feral elite seem hell bent on wars against both Russia and China. For example, the prestigious Foreign Affairs, mouthpiece of the American political establishment, carried a major article discussing the looming possibility of a simultaneous war against both Russia and China and how we could successfully triumph in such a difficult conflict. Since the first Cold War, no American president has seriously contemplated a war with either Russia or China, but our current national leadership seems quite eager to embroil us in a global war with both of them at the same time.

With the propaganda apparatus available I’m sure that the American people could be whipped into a war fever to support such madness. But I do wonder if there will come a point where the propaganda enters a phase of diminishing returns? As time goes by and more and more Americans notice that they are poorer and more indebted than they have ever been before, the effectiveness of such propaganda campaigns will eventually lose effectiveness, much as did the similar propaganda organs of the decaying Soviet Union.

The increased propaganda and censorship going on right now is a reflection of the loss of credibility, trust and the mandate of our feral elite, who are flailing about madly to ward off the inevitable. There is little doubt in my mind that the main motivation is to control Americans now groaning under the strain of neoliberal misrule. If the world didn’t hang in the balance it would be dark comedy.

Update: In a rare bit of good news, on Tuesday, the Fourth of July, a federal judge in Louisiana, struck a blow against the “Censorship Industrial Complex”, ruling that federal officials (with limited exception) can no longer communicate or collude with big tech companies to censor “protected speech.” This is a huge win for free speech – and comes on the heels of Twitter Files revelations of government influence and control over various hot button narratives. Meanwhile, journalists Matt Taibbi, Jacob Seigel and Michael Shellenberger deserve a well deserved victory lap.

Federal Judge Terry Doughty cited “substantial evidence” of a far-reaching censorship campaign. He wrote that the “evidence produced thus far depicts an almost dystopian scenario. Here’s how he described the digital censorship controversy at which pundits a half-year now have repeatedly rolled eyes, dismissed, and mocked as a nothingburger:  “If the allegations made by Plaintiffs are true, the present case arguably involves the most massive attack against free speech in United States’ history.”

The censorship efforts of the government are, unfortunately, not new.  However, what is new is the support of the media and the Democratic Party in such censorship. That was on display on various channels after the recent opinion finding that the Biden Administration had violated the First Amendment in “the most massive attack against free speech in United States history.” However, the New York Times immediately warned that the outbreak of free speech could “curtail efforts to combat disinformation.”

Yet, no one expressed more simply and chillingly than CNN Chief White House Correspondent Phil Mattingly who stated that it “makes sense” for tech companies to go along with government censorship demands.

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Empire Incorporated

Posted on June 30, 2023 by camelotkidd

It’s hard to run an empire with neoliberalism as your operating system.

Neoliberalism favors a sort of short-termism, where the next quarter is the only thing that matters. It’s a race to the bottom, a real looters ball. Unfortunately, over the last two decades, the national security focused neoconservatives have largely joined forces with the economically-focused neoliberals, forming a unified ideological block that represents the political worldview of the elites running both American parties.

We saw a pure distillation of these ideologies in Iraq, when after invading the country, the Bremer regime disbanded the Iraqi Army and privatized their economy, in effect turning it over to American corporations and oil majors. As Naomi Klein writes in the Shock Doctrine–“Immediately following September 11, the Bush Administration quietly out-sources the running of the “War on Terror” to Halliburton and Blackwater…At the most chaotic juncture in Iraq’s civil war, a new law is unveiled that would allow Shell and BP to claim the country’s vast oil reserves… “

I can’t believe those Iraqi’s weren’t more grateful.

Of course there will be hiccups on the way to this neoliberal/neoconservative nirvana.

Raytheon Chief Executive Greg Hayes admitted last week that Beijing effectively has the US military’s supply chain by the balls thanks to its reliance on rare earths and other materials which come from, or are processed in, China.

According to Hayes, Raytheon has “several thousand suppliers in China,” because of which “decoupling … is impossible.”

“We can de-risk but not decouple,” he told the Financial Times, adding that he thinks this is the case “for everybody.”

So maybe we won’t have a war with China?

Then there’s “cost plus” the practice where weapons companies mark up basic items they sell to the US government, with the result being a $50,000 trashcan and a $49,000 radio filter.

Consolidation of the defense industry is one factor feeding the price-gouging. In the 1990s, there were more than 50 Department of Defense contractors capable of competing for major contracts. Now, there are only five. 

Per the latest iteration of the National Defense Authorization Act, the federal government will spend over $850 billion on “defense” in the 2023 fiscal year, roughly half of which will be devoured by contractors. 

Nice work if you can get it.

Congress is “investigating” the allegations of widespread price gouging by contractors but the members of congress receive millions of campaign donations from the very same contractors so don’t hold your breath. These reports of overcharging come as weapons manufacturers report record earnings, allowing them to give shareholders nearly $20 billion last year through stock buybacks and dividends, so there’s that.

The latest antics of our privatized empire involve the US’s behavior in the proxy war against Russia in Ukraine. Having organized a coup in Ukraine in 2014, the US sent its proxy army to attack Russian speaking separatists in the Donbass and to seize the Russian naval base in Crimea. After 8 years of provocations a new military attack was thwarted by Russia’s own Social Military Operation. The US and NATO immediately seized Russia’s foreign-exchange reserves and demanded that the rest of the world impose sanctions against Russia, hoping that this would reduce the ruble to “rubble”. All of this was expected to cause Russian oligarchs and average Russian to revolt and overthrow the hated Putin government enabling US maneuvering to install a client oligarchy like the one it had established in the 1990’s under President Yeltsin.

Fortunately for Russia, they still have patriots who won’t sell their grandmother for next quarters bonus like Wall Street speculators. “It’s only business”, they’d exclaim as granny was carted off to the boneyard.

Our Ukraine adventure is emblematic of the problems of a corporate empire. Just like Afghanistan and Iraq, if it all goes south, the various parts of the military/industrial/complex will walk away having profited immensely while suffering zero consequences for their failure. In their eyes it wasn’t a failure but a resounding success–just ask their shareholders if you have any doubts.

This is the end stages of the US empire, brought down by the hubris and greed of its leadership class who gutted the country for profit. Charles Ferguson well described the pattern in his 2012 book Predator Nation. “Over the last 30 years the United States has been taken over by a amoral financial oligarchy, and the American dream of opportunity, education, and upward mobility is now confined to the the top few percents of the population…If allowed to continue, this process will turn the US into a declining, unfair society with an impoverished, angry, uneducated population under the control of a small, ultra-wealthy elite. Such a society would be not only immoral but also eventually unstable, dangerously ripe for religious and political extremism.”

Sound familiar?

Empire incorporated is a corporate/state merger that exists to send state resources abroad for the benefit of shareholders at home. An alternative name for capitalist imperialism is fascism. The political-theoretical difference between state-capitalism and fascism lies in who controls the state. That would be Wall Street. Maybe we should name it “financial fascism”?

What’s so sad is that the US was divinely positioned after WWII to do the all-American empire, only in a manner that complemented the sentiment from a Third-World that truly believed the jeremiads about freedom, peace and democracy and wanted to emulate a United States that had long since abandoned the ideals of our founders.

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No Bananas

Posted on June 22, 2023 by camelotkidd

It’s clear that we live in a banana republic where the former president is facing a 37 count indictment and 400 years in prison while the current president is under investigation for a massive bribery scandal.

While the US doesn’t grow bananas the corruption is similar to the aforementioned example. And this brings us to the heart of the matter. With two crooks as our choices at what point do we abandon the whole electoral charade?

15 Questions That Are More Useful Than “What Presidential Candidate Should Americans Vote For?”

1. Why does nothing change no matter who we vote for?

2. Why does US foreign policy always continue along the same trajectory regardless of the president’s party or platform?

3. What keeps our voting population split right down the middle into two political factions of equal size, with neither side ever gaining enough of a majority to democratically change society in any meaningful way?

4. Why does the stalemate described in #3 always seem to benefit the rich, the powerful, and the war-horny?

5. Why is it that the most consequential US government policies like plutocratic influence, privatization, globalization, ecocidal capitalism and nuclear brinkmanship are never on the ballot? Why do these things keep happening, against our interests, without our ever voting for them or electing anyone who campaigned on the pledge to enact them?

6. If our federal government’s behavior never changes no matter who we elect, could it be that there are other bodies involved in government policy-setting whom we did not elect, and who remain in positions of influence regardless of the comings and goings of our official elected government?

7. If the above is the case, then who is it? Who’s really calling the shots in this country?

8. Could it be that everything we’ve been told about our country, our government, our political processes and our world is untrue?


9. If so, what are the implications of the fact that our schools and our media have been feeding us lies since we were small?

10. What forces would be responsible for keeping all these lies flowing throughout our society? What might keep an ostensibly free press spinning more or less the same lies throughout the western world day after day, year after year, generation after generation?

11. Is it possible that our entire electoral system is a sham designed to give the public the illusion of control so that they’ll let oligarchs and empire managers run the country undisturbed?

12. If the electoral system is a sham, then how do we enact the changes we so desperately need?

13. Is it possible that there are other ways to effect change in the United States which don’t involve casting a pretend vote in a fake election?

14. Could it be that those other means of forcing change are precisely what the charade of casting pretend votes in fake elections is meant to divert us from?

15. Should we perhaps spend less energy bickering about who should get sworn into the White House a year and a half from now, and more energy examining other possible avenues toward advancing meaningful change?

Just asking.

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Mendacity

Posted on June 16, 2023 by camelotkidd

I swear to God that if I hear one more lie I’m going to scream.

We live in nation of lies. They lied about the “weapons of mass destruction” that led to the invasion of Iraq. They lied about the “banksters” paying back all of the bailout money we showered on them. They lied about Hope and Change. That was a good one. They lied about Covid and about the vaccines. They lied about Russia-gate, and are still lying about the US/NATO proxy war against Russia in Ukraine. They lied and are still lying about about the Nord Stream pipeline bombings and the destruction of the Kakhovka dam.

And, I’m just scratching the surface.

There’s a broad-based assumption across the land, derived from novels, television and the movies, that Americans can’t handle the truth. But, that’s bullshit. I’ve come to believe that our nation is desperately searching for anyone in the government, corporate media or business to lay a little truth on them.

That’s why Robert F. Kennedy’s campaign has been such a breath of fresh air. And what is so striking in Mr. Kennedy’s performance so far is an absence of fakery. It’s more than refreshing, it’s shocking. Makes you go what the fuck? Makes you remember what it’s like to not be lied-to incessantly. Makes you want to see more of it. A lot more. In fact, Kennedy’s campaign hold promise of forcing some of the many festering issues into the light. Similarly, America’s polarization and deepening political divide aren’t caused by the Russians but from its unresolved contradictions and endless lies. For instance, America’s own structural contradictions of a hyper-financialized economy, sucking the substance from its real-economy host. A society living in trembling fear of a hospital bill. Of despairing to put their children through college with its exorbitant fees and a debt burden that can’t be discharged during bankruptcy. And a political system in near constant paralysis, a zero-sum confrontation except when it comes to war or bailouts for banks and mega-corporations.

All of this, but especially the endless lies have left Americans bitter that the system so obviously doesn’t act in their interest, nor does it even really pretend to anymore.

Maybe the biggest lie, repeated endlessly, is that Americans abhor socialism, even the warmed-over New Deal kind proposed by Bernie Sanders in 2016 and 2020. We’re lectured endlessly that any sort of socialism is simply the Soviet Union with its grey bureaucracy and gulags, and besides there is no alternative to “free market” neoliberal capitalism. There’s a good reason for this. Since the late 1970s, a form of predatory capitalism or what can be called neoliberalism  has waged war on the welfare state, public goods and the social contract.  Neoliberalism insists that the market should govern not just the economy but all aspects of society. As a result it has concentrated wealth in the hands of a financial elite and elevating unchecked self-interest, self-help, deregulation, and privatization as the governing principles of society, all while insisting loudly that this system will benefit everyone. 

And now, having precluded socialism or any sort of left-wing response, the evolving anti-establishment protests or revolts are labeled right-wing extremism.

I guess we’re all “right-wing extremists” now.

There does appear to be convergence of thought about the sheer mendacity of ruling elite.

Tucker Carlson–who good little liberals love to hate–is doing a podcast on Twitter that’s drawing millions of Americans desperate for any semblance of the truth. The key passage in a recent episode: [Tucker] “We can point to the precise moment that permanent Washington decided to send Donald Trump to prison. Here it is from the Republican debate in Greenville South Carolina, in 2016.

[Trump] “We should have never been in Iraq; we have destabilized the Middle East. They lied, ok. They said there were weapons of mass destruction there were none and they knew there were none, there were no weapons of mass destruction.” [Tucker] “Now by the time Trump said that a lot of Republican primary voters were starting to reach the same conclusion; how could they not. But it was the next line that doomed Trump to today’s arrest. “They lied” he said, “there were no weapons of mass destruction” and they knew there were none.”‘

[Tucker] “Now when he said that a few in the crowd booed, most just sat there in stunned silence. Can he say that? Well he said that anyway and by saying it sealed his fate. That was the one thing you were not allowed to say because it implicated too many people on both sides, which on this topic is really just one side.”

Whatever you think of Carlson and Trump, they aren’t lying.

Neither is Robert F. Kennedy. He put it so simply in April when he announced a run to preside over the stupendous mess that is our government. He said his mission is an experiment to see what happens when you tell Americans the truth.

Update: “The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out for himself, without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. Almost inevitably he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane and intolerable.”

– H.L. Mencken

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Power

Posted on June 9, 2023 by camelotkidd

Occasionally I’m going to feature an examination of power in the US.

I’m not talking about the legislative, executive and judiciary as enumerated in the Constitution, but the real power that exists behind these documents. A starting point is Federalist Papers author John Jay, who stated that “the people who own the country ought to govern it.”

And so they have.

Since I’ve been hitting the propaganda beat pretty hard lately I thought the corporate media was a good place to begin.

The media, or 4th estate, as the founders envisioned it, was to provide a check on power yet it’s morphed into a a key node in the unofficial power center some call the deep state. The uncomfortable reality is the reason that the corporate media doesn’t touch any of this with a ten foot pole, and why there was such hostility at Trump’s ramblings about the existence of a deep state.

At this point the American people have come to the realization that the image that mainstream journalists have of themselves as “a crusading profession” who are “adversarial” and “stand up against power,” is a lot of nonsense, and it’s almost impossible for a good journalist to do so in any meaningful way in the mass media in America. “It happens because of groupthink. It happens because top editors and producers know — without being told — which issues and sources are off limits. No orders need be given, for example, for rank-and-file journalists to understand that the business of the corporate boss or top advertisers is off-limits, short of criminal indictments.

Or as Matt Taibbi says–“Reporters watch as good investigative journalism about serious structural problems dies on the vine, while mountains of column space are devoted to trivialities like Trump tweets and/or simplistic partisan storylines. Nobody needs to pressure anyone. We all know what takes will and will not earn attaboys in newsrooms.”

Just because a lot of the mass media’s propagandistic behavior can be explained without secret conspiracies doesn’t mean secret conspiracies aren’t happening. In 1977 Carl Bernstein published an article titled “The CIA and the Media” reporting that the CIA had covertly infiltrated America’s most influential news outlets and had over 400 reporters who it considered assets in a program known as Operation Mockingbird. We are told that this sort of covert infiltration doesn’t happen anymore today, but that’s absurd. Of course it does. People believe the CIA no longer engages in nefarious behavior because they find it comfortable to believe that, not because there is any evidentiary basis for that belief.

There were no conditions which gave rise to Operation Mockingbird in the 1970s which aren’t also with us today. Cold war? As I’ve written about incessantly, the corporate media were instrumental, in league with the alphabet intelligence agencies, in fanning the flames of Russia-gate, all to ensure that Trump could not improve US/Russian relations. Hot war? The same corporate media has been cheerleading each and every escalation in the US/NATO proxy war against Russia in Ukraine. A mad scramble to secure US domination and capital on the world stage as part of the American empire? Happening today. The CIA wasn’t dismantled and nobody went to prison. All that’s changed is that instead of hiding in the shadows the intelligence operatives are proudly presented as analysts on the TV shows and newspaper op/eds.

I know for anyone who has read Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky’s, Manufacturing Consent, where the authors detail a propaganda model of the mass media, all of this is old hat. We understand that the filters in place ensure that the corporate media represents and glorifies the plutocratic class that’s come to dominate all aspects of American policy.

I talked about it in a previous post but the way in which the corporate media treats unconventional presidential candidates offers a glimpse inside the desires of the plutocratic power centers in the US. It was obvious how horrified they were at the possibility of a Sanders presidency, but Trump’s election has really sent them over the edge. As a result, the corporate media has shaped a political sphere that is increasingly schizophrenic. A dizzying political realignment has fucked-up all of the traditional categories and left in its wake just two sides: not left and right, but establishment and anti-establishment. And no matter the substance of one’s beliefs, to the media, anti-establishment means “right-wing conspiracy theorist.”

On yesterday’s Twitter spaces conversation, the shift was lost on nobody, including Robert F. Kennedy. “The Democrats slowly became pro-corporate, pro-war, and pro-censorship,” said Kennedy, and “Republicans became anti-censorship, pro-civil liberties, and anti-war. There’s been this tremendous realignment.”

I don’t think I would go that far as there are still plenty of pro-war, pro-censorship Republicans, but Kennedy has a point.

Indeed, Kennedy’s rising profile ignited a media backlash yesterday that felt almost orchestrated. None put it as plainly as The Washington Post. “Robert F. Kennedy Jr. tests the conspiratorial appetite of Democrats,” wrote the Post’s Michael Scherer. Kennedy, Scherer alleged, “campaigns on the idea that powerful people have been working in secret to deceive you.”

Powerful people working in secret to deceive you? I’m aghast that anyone would suggest such a thing.

The Washington Post may believe that the public’s distrust of the elite is nothing more than a conspiracy theory. But if the last few years have taught us anything, it’s that powerful people have, indeed, been working in secret to deceive us. And the corporate media has been there with them every step of the way. In fact, their treatment of Kennedy, and his campaign for president is a constant reminder of the hidden power structure in America. It’s more than ironic that the corporate media is labeling Kennedy “conspiracy theorist” when the term was invented by the CIA to ridicule anyone who doubted the Warren Commission’s report on the examination of the assassination of John F. Kennedy, his uncle.

As you can see, the corporate media, because of its ongoing propaganda program, constitutes a very powerful barrier to any political change.

The good new is that trust in the corporate media is at an all time low.

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The Antidote

Posted on June 2, 2023 by camelotkidd

NakedCapitalism.com is the antidote to all of the shit that flows into your conscious through the corporate media. It’s not just the Big Lie that we need to guard against. It’s the cumulative effect of little lies, evasions, distortions and misdirections.

And propaganda. Americans are marinated in propaganda from the day they’re born to the day they die. And most are completely oblivious to it. Or they believe that it’s only something that’s done by foreign nations who have governments that are so totalitarian they won’t even let people know what’s true or think for themselves. We are trained to believe we are free while behaving exactly how our feral elite want us to behave. Meanwhile, we look down on other nations and lament how unfree their people are.

Others Americans understand that propaganda is something that happens here too, but think it only happens to other people in different political parties. I’m sure you know exactly who they are. If they think of themselves as liberal they see those to their right as propagandized by right wing media. But as we’ve witnessed with Russia-gate, liberals are just as susceptible to propaganda as that uncle who watches Fox News 24/7. Meanwhile, conservatives believe that CNN stands for Communist News Network.

It’s like shooting fish in a barrel at this point for the psychological warriors who comprise the propaganda leviathan. Remember kids–the our corporate media are propagandists first and news reporters second. And the Internet, for all its promise, has become dominated by powerful corporate media entities who want to sell you a bunch of crap, including the so-called news you consume.

What makes our dilemma so historically unique is that we live under an empire which makes extensive use of the science of mass-scale psychological manipulation that began with the Creel Commission during WWI and has only become exponentially more sophisticated since.

Maybe the most consequential of all the mundane, routine ways we are propagandized is the way the corporate media manufacture the illusion of normality so that we go about our lives without seeing the dystopia around us. The way American cities are full of homeless people and it’s just treated as a normal and acceptable thing to simply let them stay homeless and push them out of wherever they try to be. The way pundits, politicians and reporters will talk about the Biden administration cranking up a new Cold War with Russia and China without also talking about how truly crazy it is that we’re looking at rapidly escalating brinkmanship between nuclear-armed countries. The way nothing ever changes no matter who we vote for but we’re still herded into the voting booths and told to vote better.

I’ve talked about this many times before but one of the most effective ways our feral elite maintain control is through tribal conflict with liberals herded into the Democratic Party while conservatives are kept pulling the lever for Republicans. Those few politically engaged people who can’t be herded toward any of these groups are so small in number that they can simply be marginalized and denied any sizeable platform from which to spread their ideas.

So that’s what we’re up against. There’s a failure to appreciate just how pervasive and powerful the empire’s propaganda machine is, even among those who are very critical of empire, because propaganda in our society is like water for fish — we’re swimming in it constantly, so we don’t see it. You have to step way, way back and begin examining our situation from its most basic foundations to get any perspective on how all-encompassing it really is.

George Orwell was correct when he stated: “In a time of deceit telling the truth is a revolutionary act.”

That’s where Naked Capitalism comes in. Yves, Lambert and the other fearless writers provide high-quality information and opinions together with relentless accountability of the people and institutions in power. In the process, they have created a community of apostates, who draw strength from like minded folks. One of the coolest things about NC is the commentariat, a disparate group of doctors, professionals and intellectuals, who interact with Yves Smith and her strict rules of honesty and courtesy, to prove that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts.

Naked Capitalism should be your first read in the morning.

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Confirmation

Posted on May 26, 2023 by camelotkidd

Six years and millions of dollars later, the “Durham report” released on May 15th confirmed once again what I’ve been saying all along–that Russia-gate was a massive fraud perpetrated on the U.S. public. What the report alluded to and what is important to remind the public of, is that the “investigation” by the FBI of the Trump campaign constituted a full-blown counterintelligence campaign. Dubbed “Crossfire Hurricane,” the investigation of a presidential contender–Trump–was initiated by the Clinton campaign. That’s right. The FBI Russia-gate probe was not only baseless, but they investigated Trump despite warnings that the conspiracy theory they were pursuing was generated by his Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton.

Going further, the political and cultural phenomenon known as “Russia-gate” could be legitimately characterized as a state-sponsored domestic psy-op. However, the report also made clear that no one in the FBI or CIA , or even in the Clinton campaign, will be held accountable for efforts made to influence the outcome of the 2016 election and to denigrate Trump personally using what they knew to be lies. This should hardly be a surprise to anyone with a passing familiarity with US history. The FBI are political police. Their mission is to protect the capitalist state and status quo.

The Durham Report is also confirmation of the brutal effectiveness of the propaganda apparatus that’s been constructed over the last hundred years. Both Edward Bernays and Joseph Goebbles would have understood intuitively the power of the Russia-gate “big lie” that was repeated endlessly until believed by a sizable portion of the population. In the process, not only did corporate media elite suffer zero consequences, but the ones who pushed it the hardest were rewarded and went on to bigger and better things, while those brave journalists who got the story right were punished.

I think there’s a lesson here.

However, his behavior is hardly a surprise. The corporate media is designed to advance the interests of the powerful, not to report the news, and to separate Americans into two tribal enclosures designed to make you to hate the opposing team. The print and TV media, which serve as propagandists for the ruling military/security complex and Wall Street elites, make certain that Americans have nothing but bogus orchestrated information. Every household and person who turns on TV or reads a newspaper is programed to live in a false orchestrated reality that serves the tiny few who comprise the ruling Establishment or deep state.

Ultimately, Russia-gate stemmed from the fact that Trump challenged this deep state without realizing that it is more powerful than a mere President of the United States. Trump was always in over his head and payed a huge price. He had no experience in government and no bench of qualified foreign policy administrators so he was easy meat.

Going further, Russia-gate was the result of the deep state, military/industrial/complex (MIC), national security state, etc. wanting war with Russia while Trump proposed peace. Trump calls Russia-gate a “hoax” but it is in fact much worse. Ultimately Russia-gate was used to make the case for the proxy war in Ukraine. The MIC initiated the 2014 coup in Ukraine with the plan that they could seize Crimea and the Russian naval base at Sevestapol. This was the opening gambit in a regime-change operations, Color Revolution that would overthrow Putin and reestablish a comprador regime like they had under Yeltsin. All was scheduled to proceed under the expected Clinton Administration.

The brutal reality that Russia-gate illustrates is that there is nothing the political establishment will not do, and no lie they will not tell, to hold on to their prestige and power. The fact that Durham brought no charges against the principle actors tells you all you need to know–they won and the false narrative Russia-gate promoted has become accepted wisdom. For example, in a brazen bit of projection Hillary Clinton is still whining about losing the 2016 election and still blaming the Russians. She further stated that if Trump were to prevail in 2024–“it would be the end of democracy in the United States, it would be the end of Ukraine. It would become a –you know, he will pull us out of NATO if he wins again. And just like he pulled us out of the Iran deal, he pulled us out of the Paris Accords. He will pull us out of NATO.”

As you can see, Russia-gate will not die as long as it is a useful tool for intimidating the public. Overall, Russia-gate is part and parcel of the corrupt merger of state and corporate power that is threatening now to impose a new kind of corporate feudalism in our country. It has been especially useful in goading liberals into full on bellicosity by linking Trump and Russia. During the first Cold War it was conservatives who wanted to drop “the big one” on Russia, now it’s liberals.

Pretty fucking impressive propaganda, if I do say so.

The only problem is that the proxy war against Russia in Ukraine that was initiated largely through the Russia-gate psy-op is going badly. No matter. The neocon lunatics steering the Biden Administration are doubling down, with the latest move to send F-16 fighters to Ukraine.

Remember kids, there is no alternative to neoliberalism and war.

Unfortunately, this brings us to the final confirmation–the main lesson of the recent Durham Report is that nothing will be done to address the lawlessness of our feral elite.

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