Fantasies of a Trump-led fascist coup have redounded to the benefit of many -- especially those responsible for abuses far worse than those of the current president.
This would be the ultimate way for Trump to get vengeance on the establishment - politicians, pundits, "intelligence pros", etc. - who worked to delegitimise and diminish Trump for the past many years. Unfortunately, Trump does not have the brains, the integrity, nor the courage to do this.
Trump should pardon both and a lot more people too. He should also go all out to declassify the JFK assassination info the government might have as well as everything related to Area 51. Only because it would be great to know if there are aliens and who was really behind the JFK shooting. I would even throw in all of the FBI materials related to MLK jr for good measure. Just declassify everything an let the American people finally see the truth. Trump is universally loathed now so he has nothing to lose. What really galls me though is the point Glenn is making in this story: George Bush 43 built black-site CIA prisons all over the world where thousands of people were tortured. He is a legit war criminal. And yet now the Democrats are acting like they are "centrist" by including Bush era Republicans in their big tent. At the very least Bush 43 should be handed over to the Iraqi government and imprisoned for the rest of his life for fabricating the invasion rationale.
The invasions aren't the problem, the rationalizations are. We, and most of the modern (at least western) world now invents fairy tale reasons for doing things that must be done. That's because the citizens (again, at least in the western world) are now spoiled and sheltered little children in adult bodies.
They no longer understand so long as populations increase and not enough land and resources for coming ever larger generations (thanks now -- like in the 19th century -- to overpopulated hordes of immigrants) can be confiscated just from other species, they must be taken from other people.
Because of fracking the hard "sponge" oil fields, we now have centuries of oil reserve to carry us until renewables become more viable than they are now (no they aren't enough yet, regardless of more fairy tale dreams). That's one of the reasons Trump was backing out of the Middle East, along with his policy retreating from "world policeman." Very strangely, the left's former abhorrence of our involvement everywhere has switched to wanting us involved even as the world is less contentious now.
It has been much less so over the past half century only because recent rapid technology advancement allowed much more production from the same land. More fairy tale dreamers' interference in essential (so long as we still have baby-spewing cultures) next step GMOs could put the world back into conquest mode.
I suspect the left’s reversal in international position is just more of their Orwellian “1984” policy reversals, history revisions, and redefining of words.
No, I’m not “right.” I’m an original (true) liberal, not like the progressives’ or socialists’ Orwellian “new-speak” redefining of that label so they can steal it. Apparently it looks, sounds, feels better to them than the labels actually belonging to them.
George S- please clear your rhetoric of "we now have centuries of oil reserve to carry us until renewables become more viable than they are now" and other false, leftist trash.
The United Nations itself touts the fact that the <Climate Crisis> was never an inquiry into science, but a plan to use to gain control of governments, their taxes, and use it for their own purposes.
It is right on the UN website for the United Nations Environmental Program. It was birthed by Maurice Strong, a Canadian oil millionaire with worldly intentions. The environment, and specifically carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was seen as a way to push an environmental program to control world energy supplies and gain control of funds to support 3rd world dictators.
<Renewables> can never be a complete, long term, or affordable option for mass use. Sunlight and winds are simply to low-grade a source of energy to be harvested economically on the earth's surface.
Cheers Glenn for the article- I didn't know Bush I was that bad!
Trump is hated because he didn't start new wars. It doesn't matter if your left or right as long as your willing to drop bombs. Just building up the military wasn't enough for them. The only time the left/all media praised him was the one time he did, drop a bomb.
Great article Glenn. Truth seekers, conservative or liberal, cannot swallow the lies. 🙌 Respect🙌
Brian Williams quoting Leonard Cohen at face value was one of the truly glorious moments of inadvertent cringe comedy of our time. Absolutely exquisite.
The election results really tell us that the media isn't brainwashing the public the way they want to be. I feel they are so disrespectful and arrogant all of the time, maybe the election results show I'm not the only one who feels it. Corporate media is the least trusted institution in America right now, less trusted than Congress. Says allot.
Personally, I believe that Trump is hated because he does not go out of his way to pay special respect to women. That, and his general arrogance, are two traits that leftist ideologues in the media find particularly offensive.
After the two dimensional graphing stuff, there's an erudite description of the origins of the left-right relationship in politics and it walks the history along from said origin to the present day. It's required to understand this to understand the politics of the Western world (Europe, USA, Canada, Australia, etc).
If your neighbor to the left is Marxist, and the radical right are far, far out on the right horizon, and "neo-liberals" (probably original liberals renamed by "newspeakers") are halfway to the radical right, you are not "just left of center."
This comment I'm replying to suggests you believe the left-right divide is relative while I assert that while individuals may hold differing complex ideas in mind that spread them in a continuum of left to right, there is something we can objectively call "left" and something else we can objectively call "right". Namely, and as succinctly as I can put it, what's right is in support of the ultra-rich, and what's left is what's in support of The People (everybody who isn't ultra-rich).
Formerly, we'd have called the ultra-rich the aristocracy / nobility and the church.
And, this is not Orwellian or anything of the kind, as you have repeatedly suggested.
I concur, if I understand your claim, "left" and "right" are symbolic designations when actually there is almost no pure extreme left nor pure extreme right, barring tiny groups of true radicals. Almost all left-branded "extreme right" actually are not, except in the paranoid minds of some on the "left."
When I designate "right" or "left" I am just acquiescing to the common (inaccurate) designations so people have some understanding of what I mean. Writing, "partly progressive, with some socialist, and a few communist policies," would leave them lost although that would be a much more accurate description for many "left" positions.
"Right" has no definite connection to the "ultra-rich" except, again, in the minds of some/most on the "left." Many "ultra-rich" have some left wing practices. Some of the world's richest people have devoted most of their fortunes to public service, as did Andrew Carnegie and now apparently Bill Gates and Warren Buffet.
"During the last 18 years of his life, [Carnegie] gave away $350 million "$350m in 1919 is equivalent to about $5.3 billion in 2019)[4] to charities, foundations, and universities – almost 90 percent of his fortune.[5] His 1889 article proclaiming "The Gospel of Wealth" called on the rich to use their wealth to improve society, and stimulated a wave of philanthropy" -- from Wikipedia.
Firstly, I didn't say that "all ultra-rich are right-wing", I said that POLICIES that support the ultra-rich are right-wing policies.
Secondly, the late-in-life philanthropy of a few of the ultra-rich doesn't somehow make them leftists or even decent people; their rapacious behavior throughout their lives damaged many others irreparably - mostly lives we will never know about, of course, except that we know some specifics and we know statistically there are many others.
Thirdly, you're mistaken when you claim that "right has no definite connection to the ultra-rich;" it's literally an aspect of the foundational origin of the left-right dichotomy early in the Renaissance (or "Enlightenment", which might be slightly more accurate), "the right" being the aristocracy and clergy of the day. "Left" was "the people", the not-rich. Always was, is now, and should always be seen that way.
Simply, policies that support the not-rich are properly called "left policies", and people who support them are in some way "leftists," (even if they have some right-leaning tendencies at the same time), and policies that harm the not-rich are properly called "right policies," and people who support them are in some way "rightists" (even if they have some left-leaning tendencies at the same time).
This isn't rocket science. Yes, people are complex in their views and many of us hold at least some views that fit right and left positions at the same time. But overall tendencies can be easily discerned as it's a matter of emphasis. Simply, if given a clear choice, if you'd rather support the not-rich you're left and if you'd rather support the rich, you're right.
Between his critiques of fake news, skepticism about state institutions and disinclination to take the nation to war, there's a case to be made that Trump is history's most Chomskian US president.
Again, why are you still posting the link to that garbage article? George Steffner demolished large parts of it in the comments of another GG post. You never responded to the deconstruction of the article as far as I can tell.
The "left" is corrupt, fragmented, atomized, as is the rest of the culture.
Not familiar with the deconstruction to which you refer. Perhaps you could provide some details from the comments made by Steffner? I will read the Price article again, but as a Canadian I am always somewhat thrown by a sense that Americans use the terms liberal, left, socialist differently from Europeans and even from Canadians.
Here is the full Art-vs-George rhetorical demolition derby/deconstruction:
George SteffnerNov 3
You gave me a “bio” so I’ll give you one. I’m a retired engineer with an abbreviated career in computer hardware support positions. 50 years ago, soon after I was REFRAD from the army I began examining political, religious, and economic philosophies because many people claimed they inspired wars.
I found they weren’t likely to do that, so I reversed the common belief wars were bad an unnecessary. Soon after I pretended they were good and necessary the true cause was obvious. The philosophical alignments were merely “rally flags” for gathering forces to do what most/all creatures must do as their numbers increase: capture more land and resources from other people for their future expanding generations when not enough can be confiscated just from other species.
From there I become fascinated by cultural traditions and habits that inspire alignments formed for warfare and other cooperative or adversarial activities/attitudes. To expand my studies I moved on to the general anthropological and epistemological examinations I continue today.
Redefining the Political Spectrum - R.G. Price - June 20, 2004 (abridged)
I was fascinated by the article you referenced possibly for different reasons than you were. One of the studies fascinating me initially a few decades ago is propaganda. I hope you aren’t offended by the understanding that is what you referenced, although it is a particularly superior example. It is even better than what Rachel Maddow’s had been before, so sadly, her’s recently turned into a much more trashy type.
I had intended to go through each significant section giving my opinion and correcting the relatively few erroneous definitions that helped make it propaganda (very biased information) while most of it is accurate. The best of all propaganda is all true, but with opposing views subdued or left out, loosely connected or unconnected events/attitudes stitched together (one thing Maddow does so well), and a finishing tactic of feigning fairness by opposing neutral, mild, or easily defeated opposition (something Maddow should have done but usually didn’t bother).
However, following the entire article would have made this very much longer than it is now, and unnecessarily so. Instead I will only address the erroneous stuff. You can assume I agree with his opinions, and don’t refute the remaining claims, in the vast majority of the article.
The article repetitively maligns the “right” but never criticizes the “left” at all, and even relegates what was always in the past (the original “classic”) left “liberalism” to be now “right,” and, ironically and paradoxically, equates it with neoliberalism. An even greater paradox is he uses the same, or almost the same, definition for neoconservatism he uses for neoliberalism. I suspect he does that to leave only newer, farther left progressivism and socialism, and also newer very far left Marxism, together on the left.
The following are my corrections/comments:
[“One of the major problems in American political consciousness today comes from a misrepresentation of the political spectrum. This is partly the result of a deliberate effort to put all of America's enemies (fascists and communists) into the same basket after World War II, and a deliberate effort by the American "Right” to classify everything that they oppose as “Leftist.”]
I was around, but young, when these attitudes prevailed and the “right” did not classify all opposition as “leftist.”
[After World War II the Republican Party was struggling for survival and was in the process of reinventing itself. Part of the political strategy of some Republicans was to portray the Democratic Party of Truman and Franklin D. Roosevelt as "Red," thereby associating "Liberalism" with "Socialism". It was a common tactic during the 1950s to accuse Democrats of being "Communists" or "Communist sympathizers", a tactic that worked well during the McCarthy era and has had a lasting impact on how Americans view politics.]
The anti-communist right did not refer to all Democrats as “red,” although they did call many “pink” or “com-symps.”
[By the early 20th century a new "Right-wing" criticism of liberalism began to form as well, this being fascism.]
Fascism is not “right wing” but it is relegated there, as is original liberalism, by socialists and harder left because they want to divorce it from their group. However it clearly has socialist philosophies and the only connection to the old “right” is nationalism. Many of today’s right, with international businesses, embraced “globalism,” also clearly not nationalist politics.
The infamous NSDAP (Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei) used Mussolini’s corporatist government structure to dominate all industries as all socialist practices do. His “corporatist” government policy is indicated below, but is not related to also socialist “public corporations” commonly owned as socialism defines. Private corporations are not socialist, but obviously capitalist.
Corporatism is a political ideology which advocates the organization of society by corporate groups, such as agricultural, labour, military, scientific, or guild associations on the basis of their common interests.[1][2] The term is derived from the Latin corpus, or "human body". The hypothesis that society will reach a peak of harmonious functioning when each of its divisions efficiently performs its designated function, such as a body's organs individually contributing its general health and functionality, lies at the center of corporatist theory.
Corporatization is the process of transforming state assets, government agencies, or municipal organizations into corporations.[1][2][3][4] It refers to a restructuring of government and public organizations into their administration.[2] The result of corporatization is the creation of state-owned corporations (or corporations at other government levels, such as municipally owned corporations) where the government retains a majority ownership of the corporation's stock.[1][5]
[Additionally, fascism was based on capitalist economy, unlike the feudal systems of the "old Right". This is why fascism was a "new Right" movement.]
This is a popular (among the left) but false belief. Fascism is obviously a socialist philosophy, not a capitalist one as I explained.
[This was one of the ways in which the Fascists connected with the "old Right", because the Fascists allied with the Catholic Church and re-embraced the merger of Church and State.]
Mussolini’s Fascista might have done so as necessity, just as Hitler’s NSDAP needed temporary cooperation from industrial leaders during his conquests. I’m sure Hitler would have soon nationalized industries, under typical socialist policy, if he had won the war and completed his conquests.
However, I doubt Mussolini could survive not cooperating with the Roman Church in still staunchly then Catholic Italy.
[Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a merger of State and corporate power.]
That too isn’t quite true. Fascism, by philosophy, dominates national industry and economy for the benefit of the nation as a whole, as does other socialist practices, not for any individual’s particular benefit as capitalism does. Whether or not it adheres to its socialist philosophy or is “corrupted,” as most other socialist governments were/are then and now, it is still socialist by philosophy.
He also seems to allow Fascist “corporatism/corporatization” to be confused with capitalist “corporations.” Fascism has all state and no real capitalist corporation power. A Fascist state has a dictator ruling over state control of all the society’s commercial functions, at the least.
[Fascism cannot be said to have been a truly "conservative" movement per se, but it did incorporate elements of conservatism and it did ally itself with elements of the "old Right.”]
That was only as a temporary expedient as explained.
[Additionally, fascism was based on capitalist economy, unlike the feudal systems of the "old Right". This is why fascism was a "new Right" movement.]
No. That is false. It is socialist, but its left wing cousins fraudulently call it “right” trying to remove its stink from the (left wing) home they share.
[American politics today is very much shifted to the Right economically and socially, yet American society in general is relatively liberal in the social sense.]
This might have had some credibility in 2004 (when published) but today both are profoundly shifted/shifting ever more left.
[Though we now operate under the Supply-Side model of the Reagan administration, not Keynesian economics, what Reaganomics did was to amplify the role of consumerism and do away with the elements of social responsibility found in the earlier Keynesian system. ]
Of course Reaganomics is long gone now and an even more insane half-Keynesian system, worse than the earlier half-Keynesian system, is now invoked. Huge, unprecedented borrowing and currency inflation is now still escalating although Keynes warned that not repaying and deflating after the crises, as we have never done to any real extent, would ultimately devastate the economy.
[The neo-conservative, i.e. "new Right", movement in American politics today is effectively the same as the fascist movement of Europe during the 1920s and 1930s. The neo-conservatives are embracing the use of State power to control both the economy and religion, and the use of war to expand imperial power with the intention of using the State to control and secure resources to benefit the wealthy-elite, all the while building on a middle-class appeal and creating a corporate police-state.]
All of that is completely false. The right is not doing any of that and wasn’t in 2004 either. Those are common delusions of paranoid people on the left.
[Many people have claimed that Fascism and Communism are the same or similar, or they have characterized far Right and far Left as being the same.]
That’s a classic “straw man” argument. I have never heard anyone do that. I, however, have compared Marx’s impossible dream of anarchic-communism with my impossible dream of anarchic-capitalism.
[To the Marxist Left, these things may be considered expressions of objectification and consumerism. From the standpoint of Left criticism, body piercing is an example of how capitalism causes people view themselves as objects and seek attention through individualistic expression because of their lack of a satisfying social bond with their community, which is caused by alienation and commodity fetishism.]
That’s a horrendously bigoted assumption with no solid support.
[The founding fathers of America, for an example of Liberalism, played lip service to equality, yet most owned slaves.]
Most did not own slaves. Slaves were owned by a minority. Slavery was world wide and very common in Africa then where the ones here were originally sold to traders.
Some slave holders, including Jefferson, recommended abolition as part of the new constitution changing the US from a confederacy (1783-1789) to a federation.
Summary
[The "conservative" movement in America today is greatly misguided because it aligns itself economically with the interests that contribute to the social conditions that the conservative movement opposes.]
I’m not sure about this one but if I interpret it properly it might not be very far off.
[Liberal, post-modernist, American society is not "Leftist" in the least. There is no significant Left in America at all. What is called the "Left" in America today are either Liberals or Left Fascists, those who support Leftist social regulation through cooperation with the establishment Corporate-State. These are not "Leftists”.]
I’m not sure if this had any relevance in 2004 but it certainly doesn’t now. Quite the opposite now. The society is very leftist and getting ever more so.
Yes, this is very good. My personal response to reductionist thought is almost always positive, beginning with Hume, although some of his logical conclusions don't always sit that well. This is partly because one is always left with the incredibly complex issue of identity, personal and group. Although that identity might not have a metaphysical reality, there is still the strongly sensed being with which one engages the world of experience, memory, etc.
And I agree with the notion that definitions and assigned meanings are in themselves political. As Aristotle noted, we are political animals and all our dealings with the other including family, community, society, state and the rest are founded in basic survival/reproduction and the rest. We decide how power is to be wielded, to whom each power is to be allocated, and the ways and means by which it is justified. That is politics.
This, along with vilifying efforts by the DNC, is why half the nation's voters despise(d) Trump. JRobie's comment centers on why both parties, the deep state, and the mainstream media despise(d) him.
You are missing: Trump's 4 years is objectively far better than Obama's: no new wars, peace talks in the middle east, prison reform, significantly better income growth for the working class, removal of the tax break for millionaire mansion tax deductions, more job growth for every sector, particularly minorities, the list is too long to enumerate.
Trump's 4 years is objectively not much different than his predecessors’: endless wars and occupations, lavish support for undemocratic regimes, mass incarceration, growing income insecurity for the working class, expansive tax breaks for the rich, more wealth inequality - particularly for minorities; the list is too pointless to bother.
You are missing: The U.S. military is still in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria; Trump allowed the Yemeni genocide to continue, as well as promoting Israeli imperialism; The gigantic tax scam for the rich was crumbs for a mislead 99%; Longstanding environmental and workplace reforms were ripped out under the guise of 'over regulation'; 'Prison reform' was mostly symbolic; Trump's promised 'great' healthcare package never arrived while the ACA was attacked; Climate change/global warming was ridiculed as a liberal hoax as we withdrew from weak, non-binding climate accords; The response to COVID was bungled spectacularly...the list is too long to enumerate. Nice try at the kind of revisionist history that Greenwald wrote about in this article.
Obama stopped Hillary, then Trump stopped Hillary, so I rank them as equal. At least Biden's administration will be crippled by its inability to deal with Coronavirus, which coincidentally will get more and more severe over the winter (it spreads in low humidity, which allows viruses to survive better, and low absolute humidity, which makes our immune systems more susceptible).
I believe the Biden administration will embrace the strategies you mentioned, but once hospitals become overwhelmed by exponentially increasing numbers of covid patients, Biden et al may not be able to sweep it under the rug.
The virus is airborne, and once winter hits and we are all indoors in public buildings and homes without adequate ventilation/filtration systems, numbers are likely to skyrocket. I hope I am wrong, but I fear I am not.
As long as we're testing healthy people and using bad testing, we'll never REALLY know, but we've been "waiting two weeks" for the hospitals to be overrun for 7 months now.
What sense did it EVER make to "slow the spread" into flu season? We should have taken advantage of the summertime capacity of the hospital system. Now the at-risk NEED to be at the hospital.
You can repeat that until the cows come home but the data on the ground doesn't lie. Georgia and Florida and Sweden have been open for months without the hospitals being overwhelmed. The virus has followed the same basic curve everywhere it was allowed to spread.
Obama let Hillary initiate a war in Libya. And ISIS subsequently took over Libya. Obama was also sending troops on the day he was awarded a "Nobel Peace Prize", which he acknowledged upon hearing the news.
Why blame anyone? Half the problem with us is we all want someone to blame. The C19 is a virulent strand which under even the best case will kill people. Did Trump do everything right...likely not. Will Biden, also likely not though his plan seems amazingly like Trump’s to me. Stop the blame game and listen to the CDC for advice and then FOLLOW it. Hopefully the warp speed vaccine will be efficacious and available quickly....
Why blame anyone???? Trump consistently and continually downplayed the seriousness of the pandemic and actually hosted super spreader events. He constantly ridiculed and contradicted the advice of experts in epidemiology (remember when the health authorities had to issue warnings not to ingest disinfectants after many of Trump's moronic followers actually took him at his word that ingesting disinfectants might prevent Covid19 and they did just that) and made the wearing of masks a political issue rather than a medical issue, with the result that many Americans contracted and died of Covid19. Under his lack of responsible leadership, the US, the wealthiest and most technologically advanced nation in the world gained the distinction of having the highest number of cases AND deaths. Put another way, at one point this summer the US had approximately 4% of the world's population AND 25% of the world's Covid19 cases. The figures speak for themselves. I have great respect for Glenn and have always found his commentary to be factual and balanced, but I think in this case he is being too generous to Trump, whose vitriol and pathological lying has known no bounds.
“Me thinks thou dust protest too much”... I agree that the disinfectant comment, though made in jest to a thinking man, was ill-advised when addressing a country. However, and that said, nearly the entire leadership medical community for several months initially said masks wouldn’t help. Biden called Trump xenophobic for suggesting we shut down travel from China and a variety of other missteps and miscues. Surprising? Not at all! This was a new virulent strand with which no one was familiar so again, why blame? It is also true that Joe came up with a plan in May - which very closely then resembled (and still resembles) Trump’s; less of course Joe’s national lock down thoughts. Playing Monday morning QB is fine for football not so much for important national policy on pandemics. Again why seek blame instead of spending time seeking solutions. If you think Trump politicized C19 you obviously heard none of Biden/ Harris speeches since they had little to talk about otherwise. “C’mon man”.
Well, gee. Did you expect the "aware," "fair," and "inclusive" left to actually be so? Can you say: "hypocrisy?" Do you actually expect them to have superior "moral" insight just because they claim to have it?
You say that Trump's disinfectant comment was made in jest? That is certainly what Trump claimed after the briefing but if you believed that then I have a bridge to sell you. Check out the look on Birx's face when he looked to her for affirmation of his moronic suggestion during the briefing. Trump lies so much I don't know how you can possibly believe any of the verbal diarrhea that comes out of his mouth. You have not addressed the facts of the statistics relating to Trump's disastrous response leading to the US being the leader in Covid19 cases and deaths. The health authorities have definitely adjusted their positions re the best responses to the pandemic but their position changes have been the result of updates to the scientific knowledge about the virus that was progressively gained as they researched it. You do understand the scientific method, do you? Trump does not - he said so - "I don't think scientists know, actually..." What more needs to be said about this sociopathic, narcissistic piece of human excrement who privately acknowledged the deadliness of the virus to Bob Woodward yet publicly endangered his own supporters' lives by denying it and knowingly subjected them to the virus at his super spreader rallies? A person does not have to be a Monday morning quarterback to point out the obvious failures of Trump. You yourself are playing the part of Monday morning quarterback, linebacker, defensive end, or whatever with your original comment. "Just the facts, ma'am, just the facts" - anyone can provide quotes, but it doesn't make their argument any more valid. The real fact is that the rest of the world's population, including here in Canada, has been watching this Trump circus with disbelief and horror at the utter stupidity of Trump AND his rabid, undereducated supporters.
Ah, once again, proof that instead of a dispassionate discussion of the issue/s anti- Trump, pro anything else folks just through bombs instead of ideas. No I am not at all “undereducated” neither am I blind to fact and/or to fiction. Joe’s own COS when he was VP said that had the H1N1 virus gotten as bad ( which it didn’t due to having more information than China allowed the world to have this time around) the death toll would have been staggering as Joe had no ( 0) plan. I’m tired of cranks posing as progressives. You didn’t address the politicization of the virus; Biden’s only campaign speech among the very few he actually made from somewhere other than his house. And the reason he didn’t go out publicly was his controllers fear of his catching the virus despite his “mask-wearing and social distancing.” Biden is a joke and anyone following US politics closely over these past many years knows it. Ever wonder why he was never among his party’s very senior senatorial leadership team? Because they knew he was a joke and couldn’t hold three sentences together without a club..., and how about his plagiarisms and how about during the campaign saying he was running for the senate? Oh and how about referring to “George” ( as in Bush) twice in a speech as his wife winched at his side? And how about.... stop the stone throwing and see facts as they are, not as you’d wish them to be...btw if you think Trump is an inveterate liar how about, “ if you like your plan... if you like your doctor... and save $2,500/ year?????
I think Glenn must have been referring to you when he wrote, "The age of social media has fostered a type of reductive thinking and discourse about politics and the world in which pat and trite phrases have replaced critical thought as our primary instruments for making sense of external events. One can already hear the outraged liberal response to this claim finding expression in a series of dreary, now-familiar clichés ..... the stunted, juvenile slogans that are supposed to serve as proof that America has never seen an evil quite like Trump before."
The target seems to be Trans-humans 99% Robots 1% Humans, which will safe the planet, the CDC will promote and guide investors to the super investment prospectives in Gene editing the real-life computer game.
You are right that Biden will be crippled by coronavirus... and his inability to definitively change the trajectory will weigh into the historical view of how Trump did on the pandemic.
The peace talks left out the Palestinians. Job growth for the working class, particularly minorities, was in the low wage fast food and service sector industries and companies like Uber and Lyft that have virtually no or inadequate benefits or healthcare. The steel and agriculture industries are still suffering due to Trump's trade war, with farm bankruptcies in the Midwest at their highest levels since the mid 80's. The list is too long to enumerate.
Syria/Libia = new wars Peace talks = Yemen Growth for Working Class = Crash of 08 endless quantitative easing of banks & Wall St. Taxes = Green "Stimulus" billion dollar boondoggle
You clearly are following a journalist you despise to function as a troll. Your comment is your own war with your own soul. And you clearly can't type, either.
Agree John. Benghazi, Venezuelan money laundering via US banks from drug cartels, terrorists, China’s military build up in the So China Sea to name a few- these are all under Obama/Biden.
The archeological record seems to indicate that war has been spectacularly successful most of the time*, for at least 10,000 years, probably 100000s or 1,000,000s
US Civil War: stopped slavery!
Utopian bs has a far worse track record than war. It is frequently the tool of megalomanics or other lunatics.
"The age of social media has fostered a type of reductive thinking and discourse about politics and the world in which pat and trite phrases have replaced critical thought as our primary instruments for making sense of external events."
I call it pep-squad politics, and I blame 40 years of "education reform" more than I do social media. There are people who should have developed critical thinking skills at least a decade before social media was the force it's become who are incapable of holding a discussion beyond repeating the kinds of slogans you've mentioned.
When your future, and that of your school and your teachers, is reduced to your picking the right answer from the choices provided by the company that published the standardized test that's become the sole criterion for determining what you've learned, expecting people to develop critical thinking skills is an exercise in futility.
Know who just loves education reform? The corporate media. Well, and both political parties, of course.
The revision of current history is already underway as the Democrats and the media rush to bury the fact that candidates who support the very policies they're determined to insist are losers almost universally won, while their line-toeing centrists dropped like rocks.
The Donald's biggest sin is that he's too much of a narcissist to do his damage behind closed doors in the dark. That eventually even made him too much for the oligarchs to support, so it was inevitable he'd have to go.
So, while we await the rise of President Kamala Harris in 6-8 months, and the appointment of Mayor Pete as VP, it's going to be interesting to see whether the Democrats will find a way to undermine a Populist movement that's wise to them now while maintaining their image of being the party of the rule of law.
Your 6-8 month time frame on Biden's term sounds just about right. Then we can have someone with no real governing or large enterprise leadership experience at the head of a ticket which will include someone with only failed governing experience. Voting against someone (or something) has consequences when the alternative is as pitiful as this alternative seems to be based on its history. Oh, that's right, they don't teach critical thinking in school anymore, pity. I got the popcorn....
The critical thinking concept that was recommended was always followed by how and what would be acceptable critical thought.
Read George Orwell's "1984." China is there now and we are on our way. One of the tyrannical left's "newspeak" journalists successfully switched the formerly traditional blue meant right and red meant left designation. Racism is not racism when it is "correctly" applied. Illegal immigration is "undocumented entry." Once left wing liberal philosophies are now right wing philosophies.
Historically prominent figures' philosophies and contributions are now "cancelled" because they had slaves, although so did many others world wide including black Africans with black slaves, from whom most coming here were originally purchased, so well as back freemen here having black slaves.
The delusional imaginary world already being jammed into the real one will now be rammed in with greatly increased horsepower.
But if it’s truly applied as I think it should be then the key word in that phrase is “critical” not acceptably critical. To anyone who would think rather than be led, to them let this word Be employed. And being a critical thinker doesn’t also mean be critical of any idea not your own but critical of the thought processes that have gone into the various positions espoused.
I remember Clintons talking about education reform in the 1990s, but not much seemed to change. Then there was the grotesque abomination of No Child Left Behind, the Common Core.
In higher education, "reforms" were more like diktats imposed by the Top Down Neolib Politburo that sought to destroy any remnant of academic freedom, nonconformity or dissent. After that the financialization process set in.
Clintons 1990s education reforms were linked to a Ford Foundation project to replace the public education's "liberal arts curriculum" (critical thinking) with corporate/vocation training. Glynn Custred was critical of that stuff, and he wrote a scathing article (published on the internet) about how Ford wanted universities to become "efficient", financed by corporations (selling computers and network access to students for instance) to teach relatively narrow business related topics.
Custred showed how the Ford project was tied into various neoliberal corporate criminal schemes such as the one of the junk bonds kings of that era.
I'm very late to respond because I never saw this until now.
Even when I was in school, over a century ago (it seems), It was revealed the US public education system, and much of Europe's I believe, was patterned after Bismarck's very successful one in the latter 19th century. I think his was one of the first to educate the lower classes.
However I immediately speculated Bismarck's system was structured, as obviously was ours, to also train children to follow directions and complete assignments. Just what would be wanted by the "Iron Chancellor": create an entire society of good, obedient soldiers and workers.
Yes. John Taylor Gatto discusses how Bismark's education system was the major model for the USA's public education system, and the welfare state in general. Gatto states that the Germans realized that when the inferior French (Napoleon) beat Germans militarily, a higher level of social organization (national unity, rationalization-industrialization, high social trust) was needed.
I echo much of what you have pointed out - that this "reductive thinking" came through the educational system, but not just through the public schools but also through the institutions of higher learning. The Frankfurt school post-modernist skepticism took hold and spread though our universities and has infected the culture, including the public schools. Post-modernist skepticism is saturated the absurd notion that all relationship are rooted in power struggles. This pernicious ideology orients its followers to interpret everything in terms of gaining or losing or influencing power. So power rather than truth becomes the primary matter of interest. It doesn't take much reflection to recognize what that corrosive effect that could have on character as well as critical thinking. The late Sir Roger Scruton wrote much worth reading on this matter. A number of good interviews on youtube - also with Douglas Murray.
Scruton once wrote something to this effect: You cannot use reason to convince a person to give up an idea that they did not use reason to adopt. Scruton came to believe that many leftist academics were more motivated by a desire for power and relevance rather than a desire for truth. That is why their arguments often seem more aggressive than rational.
I also think biden will be impeached and kamala will be president... i have no idea why I think this though, why do I think anyone anywhere will hold him accountable? why do you?
It won’t be a matter of any accountability, it’ll be a matter of convenience and practicality. The Dems knew that running a Sanders or even Harris ( who scored 0 in her own run for the nomination) would nit generate the turnout that old, kindly, “Uncle Joe” would but then that same voter would feel badly when for mental capacity reasons he “HAD” to be removed. So no accountability but an incumbency for Harris is 4 years. That’s my thinking but I guess we’ll see how it all goes....
You might not know so I will say it: if you have been around for 4 decades of news then you are older than the average Biden voter by far. White people are on average in their 40s or 50s whereas the demographically correct Biden voter is going to be in their 20s or 30s. By "demographically correct" I mean black and brown. So, for the most part voters today likely have no idea what even happened in the 90s in America. And they are all stoned out of their minds half the time anyway because weed is pretty much legal now.
All I which I mention by way of saying: I feel ya. Kids these days don't have a clue. They really think that up until May of this year we were all sitting around on plantations whipping slaves.
I grew up in a politically “interested” family and saw the advent of CNN- which will be the downfall of civilization in the US in my opinion. My 18 year old son asked me what it was like before cable news. I honestly can’t remember. What would be truly newsworthy today that would be important for an hour long news program each day? The advent of the 24 hour news cycle and the unlimited information from the internet hasn’t made us into a better society. What needs to happen to change that ??
My family did not have a TV until I was 8, we were overseas (USAF).
Some neighbor family in base housing had a TV in Japan, sometimes we go to watch Mothra and Godzilla movies, which were great. Or John Wayne westerns with Japanese voices. lol
The first non-military computer I can remember was a Pong arcade game in a funky Pizza shop in Santa Cruz in the mid(?) 70s.
There was no internet in the consumer sense until sometime in the early to mid 80s.
I always had access to counter culture stuff, environmental stuff, alt politics underground publications (I studied with the socialist worker party high school group while my father worked in the Pentagon, during Watergate), eastern mysticism and new age spiritual stuff, even in the suburbs.
If you watch the documentaries about Chomsky, he discusses growing up on the streets or in the counter culture bookstores in the 50s, or before.
There has always been access to non-mainstream narratives for those lucky or curious enough to find them.
My parents' home phone was bugged by the FBI because my mom was in a group of church ladies that supported the Civil Rights movement.
I disagree with your comment. Biden most likely won because suburban voters and voters over 65 shifted away from Trump--he still won the 65+ vote, but the margin this time was much smaller. My comment about the lack of paying attention over the last four decades was directed at people who were alive during that period. Criticizing the young for not paying attention to something they weren't alive for would be pretty ridiculous. As for being stoned, I get stoned pretty much every day.
I'm still mystified. I've been curious about the world, studied social science and all sorts of mainstream and counterculture narratives since the Whole Earth Catalog.
I have no more struggle now than I did 40 years ago seeing that the system is a giant clusterfvck inside a sh1tstorm, and has been since at least the Spanish-American War of 1898-99. That is when the US Constitution ceased to function as it was intended (no foreign entanglements), and the Imperial Deep State began to come into existence in the USA.
I wouldn't generalize about all "kids these days," since this is absurd. I also wouldn't generalize about age at all, since in my experience, only a small fraction of any age group read independent journalism.
Indeed! It is 12 noon, Saturday here on the East Coast, when the AP posts that Biden has won. I have no idea what is coming the next two months, but I do know that the war machine will ramp up.
Why do people - everyone - refer to Biden as the winner of the election? He was, is or will not ever be anything but a ghost rider in the game. He has NOTHING to offer now and his involvement in politics has never amounted to anything but support to already decided assaults on societies around the world. The Oligarchs runs the USA
If you see Trump as a fake President whose job is to preserve the illusion of opposing political philosophies in your parliament then you also get to see him as *already* ramping up the war machine, in preparation for the next shiny new Democrat liberator ...
I see Trump AND Biden as two wings on the same damn greedy bird. I have no illusions. I've been disgusted for far too many decades to keep falling for the same old act. I guess one would say, that I am a seasoned political watcher. I won't get fooled again. (Hopefully)
Trump has never been a politician. But Biden is. Do you have a suggestion about what "the next shiny new Democrat liberator" would do in case he happened to be the loser?
No, he is not. He does have gobs of money, and/or assests, fame. With that said, he runs in the crowd of money makers, and shakers. He may not be labeled a politican, but he certainly is not a regular working class American. I do not expect a Democrat liberator, shiny, new, or anything else. I think we have lined up at the polls, yelled at the tv, for far too many decades for anything to change. We don't hold them accountable, and they have no respect for us.
It's true that he's not a career politicians like the Biden empty suit, but whatever you think Trump may have once been, he is currently occupying the most political office in the entire world, and has done so for nearly four years. That makes him, by definition, a politician and I will not pretend otherwise.
In case who happened to be the loser? Trump? The context of that descriptor makes it clear that both Janet L McCarter and I expect the next shiny new Democrat liberator to go to war.
Whether that happens in 2021 or 2025 I'm sure it will all be done in the best possible taste.
For the first time in my life after an election, I’m afraid. I’ve felt all manner of emotions after previous elections, but I’ve never felt afraid before. I just heard the Fox News projection and I’m afraid to voice an opinion outside of my own house.
I’ve lost 4 so-called friends who instead of having a back & forth discussion on Biden vs Trump, ended up screaming & name calling. Oh, & a family member too! It’s a dangerous time in the US with communism nipping at our heels & violence in the big cities. NYC is a tinder box & has been for months. We’re the silent majority but shouldn’t be afraid to voice our opinions outside our homes. Many of us are out there. Hold tight. Learn krav maga if you can. It’ll help.
The backlash and pressure I’ve personally felt from family and friends who think I’m uninformed at best or akin to Hitler at worst by making the mistake of being honest and saying I was voting for Trump this election has been painful and openly hostile.
...In my view, first, the choices the Republicans and Democrats gave us were wholly inappropriate and the American Public is the sure loser, no mater which of the two of them might win. Either would have been / will be a disaster, just different kinds of disaster, and nobody can really say in advance which would be worse.
Secondly, given that the majority of voters are brain-washed into believing they HAD to vote either D or R, ignoring the several reasonable candidates available on most of our ballots (Green Party, The People's Party, the American Independent Party, and so forth), for those who saw that both were bad choices it became a choice of "lesser evil voting," and we should all forgive those who voted in a way we ourselves wouldn't.
Thirdly, if someone truly doesn't see how both Trump and Biden were bad choices to give us, I would urge a bit more reflection. YES, there are a lot of lies out there, but these can be sorted through. This takes a willingness to see the the lies from the side one prefers as well as from the side one opposes, a careful parsing of fact from opinion (which definitely takes more work), and a willingness to concede that maybe your first analysis or conclusion was wrong.
Good luck. ... And when Biden turns out to be awful, just as Trump was awful, try not to literally say "I told you so", but instead, perhaps yourself admit how Trump was bad and lament, "we really didn't have any good choices did we?" (ignoring, of course, your "third party options" - we're talking about "mending fences" here...)
Perhaps a little background will help....i didn’t vote for the man in 2016 and his flaws are too flagrant to miss if one isn’t blinded by rhetoric. So yes, it was certainly the lesser of two evils. Because the polling drumbeat was loud but completely wrong again and everyone believed that the House would gain, not lose and the Senate would also fall into Democrat hands. That was insupportable to me. When people tell you they want to pack the court, eliminate the electoral college and drop the voting age to 16, (just some of many checks and balances that keep us a free nation are now inconveniently in the way), you should listen. This New Democrat Party is beyond all recognition to me. I’m no longer considered pro-choice because I oppose late term abortion. I’m one of those surburban moms who taught her now grown children to love and respect all people, no matter their race or beliefs. I didn’t leave the Democrat Party. It left me.
I don't think that many Main Street democrats have yet realized that they are suddenly the party of Wall Street, corporations, big tech, the media empire, and endless wars.
The Democratic Party left The People with the election - or during the tenure - of Bill Clinton, or possibly before, but the signs were clear by that time.
As for packing the court, that's just what the Republicans did by denying Obama's pick a vote and then rushing through the new justice. Unfair by ANY (every) measure, but that's just how Republicans - the party, I mean - are. ... A larger court or smaller court is still within the bounds of the Constitution, so it's a perfectly OK thing to consider, especially when the ultra-right-wing has cheated its way into two seats.
I've never heard ANYONE talk about changing the voting age to 16.
Like you, I try to respect everyone, though when someone disrespects you, not respecting them any further is fair, I think...
And like you, I'm not a Democrat any longer. In fact, I'm now non-partisan. I'm not for ANY party; I vote for people I WANT in office and for policies I WANT to see enacted. If either of those happen to be considered from any particular party, well, fine, but that doesn't make me partisan! ...And, by the way, I get grief for this much as you have gotten grief for your choice(s) for which you made comment that prompted this dialogue.
As I said before, we should respect others choices, even if they're not - maybe especially when they're not - the choices we'd have made ourselves.
they didn't pack the court. read up on the definition of court packing (if you don't already know) and realize that while the democrats made it look ugly and undemocratic, the GOP did the right thing by filling the vacancy left by RBG. ACB is a wonderful choice, who will defend civil liberties, which is something our country desperately needs. what they did was safeguard our constitution a little while longer (while it lasts). it wasn't packing the court by any stretch of imagination, regardless of who they elected. packing the court is something FDR tried to do, and has zero to do with what happened this october.
I respect your concerns and your change of heart. But I disagree with your specific arguments.
In no way does the electoral college contribute anything to keeping us a free nation; we'd be just as free without it. It only worked as intended when George Washington was running, and it's not well-designed for protecting any of the things that people now claim it accomplishes. One person-one vote has always been a good principle.
Having an equal number of Supreme Court justices appointed by Republicans and Democrats would not in any way diminish our freedom. And clearly even if the Democrats had managed to get well over 50 senators, they wouldn't have gone beyond an equal balance of Supreme Court justices.
Although there are serious things to be worried about from the Democratic Party, I think you have been influenced by people who are exaggerating that danger. And I see that you keep saying "the Democrat Party", a term spread only by those promoting bias against Democrats. I hope you'll take a sober look that's not so influenced by the bias others are promoting, and see that there are some dangers from the Democrats but they're not as bad as what some conservative media people suggest.
Finally, although Austria (which votes at 16) is a free nation, I'm willing to listen to arguments for and against lowering the voting age. Maybe you have some insight there.
They would have packed the court. If you've been paying attention to the behavior of the senate democrats, and their treatment of political opposition, then you'll see there's nothing they wouldn't do. Or, they'd play with the idea long enough to see if they could get enough popular consensus for this uniquely awful idea, and the next regime would do it. Senate republicans are far from perfect, but i know they wouldn't pack the court, and replacing court vacancies is NOT packing the court, despite what mainstream media outlets may have told the public. They stood up against this idea publicly and vocally. The democrat party is uniquely awful in many ways.
If someone is feeling a cause for worry close to home and within her lived experience, it cannot be dismissed quite so easily. I don't even live in the US and yet feel a definite expectation to conform to the majority popular opinion about many things pertaining to the US. How to separate propaganda from facts, if there are such things left any longer. But, my question is, what you want people to call the Democratic Party if not the Democratic Party? The party formerly known as The Democratic Party?
I was inching toward the Democratic party, but its treatment of then Governor Casey of Pennsylvania at the 1992 Democratic Convention ( https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/opinions/1992/10/24/gov-casey-silenced-again/7a103651-0792-4ede-beb7-228e3e23afa5/ ) kind of slammed the door on that thought. Yes, I can understand Clinton's desire for a unified convention, but such an expedient decision (expediencey soon to be a hallmark of his presidency) over something resembling principle did it in for me. Since then I don't think things have become at all better -- for either party.
I will never be able to vote Democrat again after Nancy Pelosi ripped up Trump's SOTU address behind his back in front of the entire world. It was mortifying. I was horrified. Never again. #NewlyMintedRepublican
On the contrary, Biden has vowed to work just "as hard for those who didn't vote for him as those who did". I believe that's a true statement.
*No doubt it will be shocking for some reading this long-form journalism to realize or accept that Trump was not the worst president of all time .. . he wasn't even the worst one this century.
Good point. I don't want to be a party pooper (like Glenn, in this joyous moment.) , but the fat man is still playing putt-putt on the White House lawns as far as I can tell. .. I predict it will take an act of Congress and a posse of constables to drag his silly-ass out of there kicking and screaming.
*no, it won't take long .. . the names being floated for Biden's cabinet positions looks like a whos-who list for Obama-Bush alumni.
Did you see what happened in Victoria, Australia, with the government-run quarantine centres being the cause of the largest outbreak and death toll to date?
*I should have clarified my view of Trump's outrageous Cov response was relative to U.S. alternatives and not, necessarily, the best or worst practices of the global health community as a whole.
Of course, as a global pandemic, these various responses to the virus around the world should, and ultimately will, be compared with one another.
Outside of 'hot spots' of concern such as Australia, or examples of clear success such as New Zealand, my pick for worst offender is a tie between Trump in the U.S. and Balsonora in Brazil.
How can Glenn disagree with that point, given that no one else has had a crack at it yet? Of course it's uniquely incompetent. So far. When Biden comes in he might be better at hiding how little they're doing, and maybe do slightly better. But he's against universal health care, so deaths will be more selective.
I agree. I think to many people have become aware at how dysfunctional our government has been in the modern era. There really is truth to the idea of a Uni-Party, and legacy media as a propaganda arm of the DNC. Whether you like Trump or not, think he has been successful or not, he’s been fantastic at pulling the curtain back on the corruption and lies.
Thank you so much for writing this. Sometimes I feel like I'm living in an alternate universe. John Brennan, the man who lied to congress about hacking into their computers to spy on their investigation of bush-era torture, is now a highly paid contributing member of MSNBC. How is that not seen as absolutely insane to any reasonable person?
Sometimes it feels like I'm fucking crazy when trying to talk to people about things like this, so it's nice to know that I'm not alone.
Mr. Greenwald, I need you to hear this: This is a blazingly brilliant masterpiece you have written. My jaw dropped when I read it. It was forwarded by Mark Crispin Miller. (I've now subscribed.)
It's Beethoven.
I'm not even "on the left" but your piece makes me want to buy land on the left and build a house. SO RIGHT ON THE MONEY. I'm going to send it everywhere, post it at my site, tweet it, post it on Assbook, and send it via email to every liberal friend I lost. I am so grateful to you. You're amazing. Your readers should shower you with more praise, I feel. You deserve it.
The only thing I object to is something you couldn't possibly know unless you spent the last quarter century in the intersection between Banks BioTech WHO and Pharma, as I did: Covid-19 is a complex banking and social engineering event that has health features but. It fails not only Koch's Postulates but every other standard of contagious disease model. "Something happened," yes. "People died," yes. You probably know by now that the RT PCR test is set to cycles that Fauci himself admitted do not, repeat not, signal "infection." He called it "dead nucleotides" and nobody has asked him to explain what kind of nucleotides are anything other than dead. A virus is not a living thing. Listen to Dr. Thomas Cowan. But DON'T write about it--they will brand you a "denier" and that is not surviveable. Trump's only Covid mistake was letting Fauci and Birx into his office. If any of this interests you you can find me on Twitter and read my pinned tweet. @CeliaFarber. I knew Kary Mullis, PCR's inventor, and interviewed him many times. He cried when they pulled out PCR to con gay men into thinking they had MORE HIV in their blood, measured by PCR. It can find any molecule in anybody, and it only needs ONE molecule to blow up (multiply) and make people crazy. PCR is an overly sensitive technology not intended for use in diagnosing any viral "infection." And now it has, despite the protestations of its inventor, enslaved the world. Other than that, your article is perfection.
Medical professionals (not greedy con man ex Pharma types like Fauci) KNOW the PCR is highly manipulatable -- including the creator. 50-80% false positives. A COVID-19 antibody test is the only test that could identify if you have it (fun fact-- COVID -19 has already mutated as all corona viruses do!!) . PCR picks up any old dead or live virus-- how many depends on how they set the testing level.
I vote for president based solely on who is more likely start a war of annihilation. Having a mentally addled Prez and a totally out-of-her-league emotionally retarded coquette as VP, surrounded by never-Trump Neocons and "Left" Neolib war-mongering, all-consuming RussiaHater(tm), globalist traitors to the Republic, is a recipe for the heat-death of civilization. I completely understand the visceral distaste for Trump, but I predict a lot of those haters are going to miss Trump Chaos when it's over. Not including the millions who will just go back to sleep, of course. I voted for the Donald, but have totally surrendered to the idea that reason no longer exists and that we are doomed no matter who wins.
A case can be made* that "reason" as we know it, modern rationalism, came to a dead end and something else is evolving out of it, post-postmodern, construct aware meta-rationalism.
Glenn, thank you for keeping alive the memory of the atrocious deeds of Bush and Cheney. Singularly and as a couple, they're two of the most ruinous miscreants in all of American history.
Here's another article that would have never gotten through Betsy Reed. I'm so thankful you're free...
She really is the worst, even if Glenn makes apologies for her.
PS: Trump should pardon Julian Assange and Ed Snowden
This would be the ultimate way for Trump to get vengeance on the establishment - politicians, pundits, "intelligence pros", etc. - who worked to delegitimise and diminish Trump for the past many years. Unfortunately, Trump does not have the brains, the integrity, nor the courage to do this.
The fact that Trump chose NOT to do any of those things is good evidence that "trump" is the establishment.
I really wish he would. Wish someone would get to him and convince him to do it.
Trump should pardon both and a lot more people too. He should also go all out to declassify the JFK assassination info the government might have as well as everything related to Area 51. Only because it would be great to know if there are aliens and who was really behind the JFK shooting. I would even throw in all of the FBI materials related to MLK jr for good measure. Just declassify everything an let the American people finally see the truth. Trump is universally loathed now so he has nothing to lose. What really galls me though is the point Glenn is making in this story: George Bush 43 built black-site CIA prisons all over the world where thousands of people were tortured. He is a legit war criminal. And yet now the Democrats are acting like they are "centrist" by including Bush era Republicans in their big tent. At the very least Bush 43 should be handed over to the Iraqi government and imprisoned for the rest of his life for fabricating the invasion rationale.
The invasions aren't the problem, the rationalizations are. We, and most of the modern (at least western) world now invents fairy tale reasons for doing things that must be done. That's because the citizens (again, at least in the western world) are now spoiled and sheltered little children in adult bodies.
They no longer understand so long as populations increase and not enough land and resources for coming ever larger generations (thanks now -- like in the 19th century -- to overpopulated hordes of immigrants) can be confiscated just from other species, they must be taken from other people.
Because of fracking the hard "sponge" oil fields, we now have centuries of oil reserve to carry us until renewables become more viable than they are now (no they aren't enough yet, regardless of more fairy tale dreams). That's one of the reasons Trump was backing out of the Middle East, along with his policy retreating from "world policeman." Very strangely, the left's former abhorrence of our involvement everywhere has switched to wanting us involved even as the world is less contentious now.
It has been much less so over the past half century only because recent rapid technology advancement allowed much more production from the same land. More fairy tale dreamers' interference in essential (so long as we still have baby-spewing cultures) next step GMOs could put the world back into conquest mode.
I suspect the left’s reversal in international position is just more of their Orwellian “1984” policy reversals, history revisions, and redefining of words.
No, I’m not “right.” I’m an original (true) liberal, not like the progressives’ or socialists’ Orwellian “new-speak” redefining of that label so they can steal it. Apparently it looks, sounds, feels better to them than the labels actually belonging to them.
George S- please clear your rhetoric of "we now have centuries of oil reserve to carry us until renewables become more viable than they are now" and other false, leftist trash.
The United Nations itself touts the fact that the <Climate Crisis> was never an inquiry into science, but a plan to use to gain control of governments, their taxes, and use it for their own purposes.
It is right on the UN website for the United Nations Environmental Program. It was birthed by Maurice Strong, a Canadian oil millionaire with worldly intentions. The environment, and specifically carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was seen as a way to push an environmental program to control world energy supplies and gain control of funds to support 3rd world dictators.
<Renewables> can never be a complete, long term, or affordable option for mass use. Sunlight and winds are simply to low-grade a source of energy to be harvested economically on the earth's surface.
Cheers Glenn for the article- I didn't know Bush I was that bad!
Trump is hated because he didn't start new wars. It doesn't matter if your left or right as long as your willing to drop bombs. Just building up the military wasn't enough for them. The only time the left/all media praised him was the one time he did, drop a bomb.
Great article Glenn. Truth seekers, conservative or liberal, cannot swallow the lies. 🙌 Respect🙌
Brian Williams quoting Leonard Cohen at face value was one of the truly glorious moments of inadvertent cringe comedy of our time. Absolutely exquisite.
Actually this was a close enough race that Trump isn't much more hated than Biden.
The election results really tell us that the media isn't brainwashing the public the way they want to be. I feel they are so disrespectful and arrogant all of the time, maybe the election results show I'm not the only one who feels it. Corporate media is the least trusted institution in America right now, less trusted than Congress. Says allot.
Look at the headlines on leaving Afghanistan, hell I think impeachment started right after moving troops out of Syria.
Personally, I believe that Trump is hated because he does not go out of his way to pay special respect to women. That, and his general arrogance, are two traits that leftist ideologues in the media find particularly offensive.
What " leftist ideologues in the media"? There aren't any - not unless somehow Noam Chomsky got a gig on NPR or something while I wasn't looking.
Yall on the right don't even know what "left" even is / means.
Here's a clue for you: You're probably talking about Neo-Liberals and they are not "left".
Here, read this to gain a clue:
http://www.rationalrevolution.net/articles/redefining_the_political_spectru.htm
After the two dimensional graphing stuff, there's an erudite description of the origins of the left-right relationship in politics and it walks the history along from said origin to the present day. It's required to understand this to understand the politics of the Western world (Europe, USA, Canada, Australia, etc).
If your neighbor to the left is Marxist, and the radical right are far, far out on the right horizon, and "neo-liberals" (probably original liberals renamed by "newspeakers") are halfway to the radical right, you are not "just left of center."
This comment I'm replying to suggests you believe the left-right divide is relative while I assert that while individuals may hold differing complex ideas in mind that spread them in a continuum of left to right, there is something we can objectively call "left" and something else we can objectively call "right". Namely, and as succinctly as I can put it, what's right is in support of the ultra-rich, and what's left is what's in support of The People (everybody who isn't ultra-rich).
Formerly, we'd have called the ultra-rich the aristocracy / nobility and the church.
And, this is not Orwellian or anything of the kind, as you have repeatedly suggested.
I concur, if I understand your claim, "left" and "right" are symbolic designations when actually there is almost no pure extreme left nor pure extreme right, barring tiny groups of true radicals. Almost all left-branded "extreme right" actually are not, except in the paranoid minds of some on the "left."
When I designate "right" or "left" I am just acquiescing to the common (inaccurate) designations so people have some understanding of what I mean. Writing, "partly progressive, with some socialist, and a few communist policies," would leave them lost although that would be a much more accurate description for many "left" positions.
"Right" has no definite connection to the "ultra-rich" except, again, in the minds of some/most on the "left." Many "ultra-rich" have some left wing practices. Some of the world's richest people have devoted most of their fortunes to public service, as did Andrew Carnegie and now apparently Bill Gates and Warren Buffet.
"During the last 18 years of his life, [Carnegie] gave away $350 million "$350m in 1919 is equivalent to about $5.3 billion in 2019)[4] to charities, foundations, and universities – almost 90 percent of his fortune.[5] His 1889 article proclaiming "The Gospel of Wealth" called on the rich to use their wealth to improve society, and stimulated a wave of philanthropy" -- from Wikipedia.
Firstly, I didn't say that "all ultra-rich are right-wing", I said that POLICIES that support the ultra-rich are right-wing policies.
Secondly, the late-in-life philanthropy of a few of the ultra-rich doesn't somehow make them leftists or even decent people; their rapacious behavior throughout their lives damaged many others irreparably - mostly lives we will never know about, of course, except that we know some specifics and we know statistically there are many others.
Thirdly, you're mistaken when you claim that "right has no definite connection to the ultra-rich;" it's literally an aspect of the foundational origin of the left-right dichotomy early in the Renaissance (or "Enlightenment", which might be slightly more accurate), "the right" being the aristocracy and clergy of the day. "Left" was "the people", the not-rich. Always was, is now, and should always be seen that way.
Simply, policies that support the not-rich are properly called "left policies", and people who support them are in some way "leftists," (even if they have some right-leaning tendencies at the same time), and policies that harm the not-rich are properly called "right policies," and people who support them are in some way "rightists" (even if they have some left-leaning tendencies at the same time).
This isn't rocket science. Yes, people are complex in their views and many of us hold at least some views that fit right and left positions at the same time. But overall tendencies can be easily discerned as it's a matter of emphasis. Simply, if given a clear choice, if you'd rather support the not-rich you're left and if you'd rather support the rich, you're right.
Interesting link.
Between his critiques of fake news, skepticism about state institutions and disinclination to take the nation to war, there's a case to be made that Trump is history's most Chomskian US president.
Again, why are you still posting the link to that garbage article? George Steffner demolished large parts of it in the comments of another GG post. You never responded to the deconstruction of the article as far as I can tell.
The "left" is corrupt, fragmented, atomized, as is the rest of the culture.
Not familiar with the deconstruction to which you refer. Perhaps you could provide some details from the comments made by Steffner? I will read the Price article again, but as a Canadian I am always somewhat thrown by a sense that Americans use the terms liberal, left, socialist differently from Europeans and even from Canadians.
Here is the full Art-vs-George rhetorical demolition derby/deconstruction:
George SteffnerNov 3
You gave me a “bio” so I’ll give you one. I’m a retired engineer with an abbreviated career in computer hardware support positions. 50 years ago, soon after I was REFRAD from the army I began examining political, religious, and economic philosophies because many people claimed they inspired wars.
I found they weren’t likely to do that, so I reversed the common belief wars were bad an unnecessary. Soon after I pretended they were good and necessary the true cause was obvious. The philosophical alignments were merely “rally flags” for gathering forces to do what most/all creatures must do as their numbers increase: capture more land and resources from other people for their future expanding generations when not enough can be confiscated just from other species.
From there I become fascinated by cultural traditions and habits that inspire alignments formed for warfare and other cooperative or adversarial activities/attitudes. To expand my studies I moved on to the general anthropological and epistemological examinations I continue today.
Redefining the Political Spectrum - R.G. Price - June 20, 2004 (abridged)
I was fascinated by the article you referenced possibly for different reasons than you were. One of the studies fascinating me initially a few decades ago is propaganda. I hope you aren’t offended by the understanding that is what you referenced, although it is a particularly superior example. It is even better than what Rachel Maddow’s had been before, so sadly, her’s recently turned into a much more trashy type.
I had intended to go through each significant section giving my opinion and correcting the relatively few erroneous definitions that helped make it propaganda (very biased information) while most of it is accurate. The best of all propaganda is all true, but with opposing views subdued or left out, loosely connected or unconnected events/attitudes stitched together (one thing Maddow does so well), and a finishing tactic of feigning fairness by opposing neutral, mild, or easily defeated opposition (something Maddow should have done but usually didn’t bother).
However, following the entire article would have made this very much longer than it is now, and unnecessarily so. Instead I will only address the erroneous stuff. You can assume I agree with his opinions, and don’t refute the remaining claims, in the vast majority of the article.
The article repetitively maligns the “right” but never criticizes the “left” at all, and even relegates what was always in the past (the original “classic”) left “liberalism” to be now “right,” and, ironically and paradoxically, equates it with neoliberalism. An even greater paradox is he uses the same, or almost the same, definition for neoconservatism he uses for neoliberalism. I suspect he does that to leave only newer, farther left progressivism and socialism, and also newer very far left Marxism, together on the left.
The following are my corrections/comments:
[“One of the major problems in American political consciousness today comes from a misrepresentation of the political spectrum. This is partly the result of a deliberate effort to put all of America's enemies (fascists and communists) into the same basket after World War II, and a deliberate effort by the American "Right” to classify everything that they oppose as “Leftist.”]
I was around, but young, when these attitudes prevailed and the “right” did not classify all opposition as “leftist.”
[After World War II the Republican Party was struggling for survival and was in the process of reinventing itself. Part of the political strategy of some Republicans was to portray the Democratic Party of Truman and Franklin D. Roosevelt as "Red," thereby associating "Liberalism" with "Socialism". It was a common tactic during the 1950s to accuse Democrats of being "Communists" or "Communist sympathizers", a tactic that worked well during the McCarthy era and has had a lasting impact on how Americans view politics.]
The anti-communist right did not refer to all Democrats as “red,” although they did call many “pink” or “com-symps.”
[By the early 20th century a new "Right-wing" criticism of liberalism began to form as well, this being fascism.]
Fascism is not “right wing” but it is relegated there, as is original liberalism, by socialists and harder left because they want to divorce it from their group. However it clearly has socialist philosophies and the only connection to the old “right” is nationalism. Many of today’s right, with international businesses, embraced “globalism,” also clearly not nationalist politics.
The infamous NSDAP (Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei) used Mussolini’s corporatist government structure to dominate all industries as all socialist practices do. His “corporatist” government policy is indicated below, but is not related to also socialist “public corporations” commonly owned as socialism defines. Private corporations are not socialist, but obviously capitalist.
Corporatism is a political ideology which advocates the organization of society by corporate groups, such as agricultural, labour, military, scientific, or guild associations on the basis of their common interests.[1][2] The term is derived from the Latin corpus, or "human body". The hypothesis that society will reach a peak of harmonious functioning when each of its divisions efficiently performs its designated function, such as a body's organs individually contributing its general health and functionality, lies at the center of corporatist theory.
Corporatization is the process of transforming state assets, government agencies, or municipal organizations into corporations.[1][2][3][4] It refers to a restructuring of government and public organizations into their administration.[2] The result of corporatization is the creation of state-owned corporations (or corporations at other government levels, such as municipally owned corporations) where the government retains a majority ownership of the corporation's stock.[1][5]
[Continued]
George Steffner
Nov 3
[Continued from above]
[Additionally, fascism was based on capitalist economy, unlike the feudal systems of the "old Right". This is why fascism was a "new Right" movement.]
This is a popular (among the left) but false belief. Fascism is obviously a socialist philosophy, not a capitalist one as I explained.
[This was one of the ways in which the Fascists connected with the "old Right", because the Fascists allied with the Catholic Church and re-embraced the merger of Church and State.]
Mussolini’s Fascista might have done so as necessity, just as Hitler’s NSDAP needed temporary cooperation from industrial leaders during his conquests. I’m sure Hitler would have soon nationalized industries, under typical socialist policy, if he had won the war and completed his conquests.
However, I doubt Mussolini could survive not cooperating with the Roman Church in still staunchly then Catholic Italy.
[Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a merger of State and corporate power.]
That too isn’t quite true. Fascism, by philosophy, dominates national industry and economy for the benefit of the nation as a whole, as does other socialist practices, not for any individual’s particular benefit as capitalism does. Whether or not it adheres to its socialist philosophy or is “corrupted,” as most other socialist governments were/are then and now, it is still socialist by philosophy.
He also seems to allow Fascist “corporatism/corporatization” to be confused with capitalist “corporations.” Fascism has all state and no real capitalist corporation power. A Fascist state has a dictator ruling over state control of all the society’s commercial functions, at the least.
[Fascism cannot be said to have been a truly "conservative" movement per se, but it did incorporate elements of conservatism and it did ally itself with elements of the "old Right.”]
That was only as a temporary expedient as explained.
[Additionally, fascism was based on capitalist economy, unlike the feudal systems of the "old Right". This is why fascism was a "new Right" movement.]
No. That is false. It is socialist, but its left wing cousins fraudulently call it “right” trying to remove its stink from the (left wing) home they share.
[American politics today is very much shifted to the Right economically and socially, yet American society in general is relatively liberal in the social sense.]
This might have had some credibility in 2004 (when published) but today both are profoundly shifted/shifting ever more left.
[Though we now operate under the Supply-Side model of the Reagan administration, not Keynesian economics, what Reaganomics did was to amplify the role of consumerism and do away with the elements of social responsibility found in the earlier Keynesian system. ]
Of course Reaganomics is long gone now and an even more insane half-Keynesian system, worse than the earlier half-Keynesian system, is now invoked. Huge, unprecedented borrowing and currency inflation is now still escalating although Keynes warned that not repaying and deflating after the crises, as we have never done to any real extent, would ultimately devastate the economy.
[The neo-conservative, i.e. "new Right", movement in American politics today is effectively the same as the fascist movement of Europe during the 1920s and 1930s. The neo-conservatives are embracing the use of State power to control both the economy and religion, and the use of war to expand imperial power with the intention of using the State to control and secure resources to benefit the wealthy-elite, all the while building on a middle-class appeal and creating a corporate police-state.]
All of that is completely false. The right is not doing any of that and wasn’t in 2004 either. Those are common delusions of paranoid people on the left.
[Many people have claimed that Fascism and Communism are the same or similar, or they have characterized far Right and far Left as being the same.]
That’s a classic “straw man” argument. I have never heard anyone do that. I, however, have compared Marx’s impossible dream of anarchic-communism with my impossible dream of anarchic-capitalism.
[To the Marxist Left, these things may be considered expressions of objectification and consumerism. From the standpoint of Left criticism, body piercing is an example of how capitalism causes people view themselves as objects and seek attention through individualistic expression because of their lack of a satisfying social bond with their community, which is caused by alienation and commodity fetishism.]
That’s a horrendously bigoted assumption with no solid support.
[The founding fathers of America, for an example of Liberalism, played lip service to equality, yet most owned slaves.]
Most did not own slaves. Slaves were owned by a minority. Slavery was world wide and very common in Africa then where the ones here were originally sold to traders.
Some slave holders, including Jefferson, recommended abolition as part of the new constitution changing the US from a confederacy (1783-1789) to a federation.
Summary
[The "conservative" movement in America today is greatly misguided because it aligns itself economically with the interests that contribute to the social conditions that the conservative movement opposes.]
I’m not sure about this one but if I interpret it properly it might not be very far off.
[Liberal, post-modernist, American society is not "Leftist" in the least. There is no significant Left in America at all. What is called the "Left" in America today are either Liberals or Left Fascists, those who support Leftist social regulation through cooperation with the establishment Corporate-State. These are not "Leftists”.]
I’m not sure if this had any relevance in 2004 but it certainly doesn’t now. Quite the opposite now. The society is very leftist and getting ever more so.
Yes, this is very good. My personal response to reductionist thought is almost always positive, beginning with Hume, although some of his logical conclusions don't always sit that well. This is partly because one is always left with the incredibly complex issue of identity, personal and group. Although that identity might not have a metaphysical reality, there is still the strongly sensed being with which one engages the world of experience, memory, etc.
And I agree with the notion that definitions and assigned meanings are in themselves political. As Aristotle noted, we are political animals and all our dealings with the other including family, community, society, state and the rest are founded in basic survival/reproduction and the rest. We decide how power is to be wielded, to whom each power is to be allocated, and the ways and means by which it is justified. That is politics.
Thank you for sending this to me.
https://greenwald.substack.com/p/cnn-is-just-the-latest-news-outlet/comments#comment-689848
This, along with vilifying efforts by the DNC, is why half the nation's voters despise(d) Trump. JRobie's comment centers on why both parties, the deep state, and the mainstream media despise(d) him.
You are missing: Trump's 4 years is objectively far better than Obama's: no new wars, peace talks in the middle east, prison reform, significantly better income growth for the working class, removal of the tax break for millionaire mansion tax deductions, more job growth for every sector, particularly minorities, the list is too long to enumerate.
Trump's 4 years is objectively not much different than his predecessors’: endless wars and occupations, lavish support for undemocratic regimes, mass incarceration, growing income insecurity for the working class, expansive tax breaks for the rich, more wealth inequality - particularly for minorities; the list is too pointless to bother.
Well, you cannot wake those pretending to sleep.
You shouldn’t pretend that your dreams are reality.
Good to see you commenting here, Doc, welcome to the new neighborhood!
Thanks Art; good to see you too.
You are missing: The U.S. military is still in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria; Trump allowed the Yemeni genocide to continue, as well as promoting Israeli imperialism; The gigantic tax scam for the rich was crumbs for a mislead 99%; Longstanding environmental and workplace reforms were ripped out under the guise of 'over regulation'; 'Prison reform' was mostly symbolic; Trump's promised 'great' healthcare package never arrived while the ACA was attacked; Climate change/global warming was ridiculed as a liberal hoax as we withdrew from weak, non-binding climate accords; The response to COVID was bungled spectacularly...the list is too long to enumerate. Nice try at the kind of revisionist history that Greenwald wrote about in this article.
Obama stopped Hillary, then Trump stopped Hillary, so I rank them as equal. At least Biden's administration will be crippled by its inability to deal with Coronavirus, which coincidentally will get more and more severe over the winter (it spreads in low humidity, which allows viruses to survive better, and low absolute humidity, which makes our immune systems more susceptible).
Biden won't be crippled by corona virus.
They will stop testing healthy people.
They will dial the testing cycles back to 30.
They will start counting deaths 'of covid' not 'with covid'.
If we did that today, the crisis would be over without actually doing anything differently.
I believe the Biden administration will embrace the strategies you mentioned, but once hospitals become overwhelmed by exponentially increasing numbers of covid patients, Biden et al may not be able to sweep it under the rug.
We know that's not going to happen. We can look at Sweden and Florida. They are open and doing fine.
Without NY infecting all the at-risk at once, the hospitals were never really in trouble.
The virus is airborne, and once winter hits and we are all indoors in public buildings and homes without adequate ventilation/filtration systems, numbers are likely to skyrocket. I hope I am wrong, but I fear I am not.
As long as we're testing healthy people and using bad testing, we'll never REALLY know, but we've been "waiting two weeks" for the hospitals to be overrun for 7 months now.
What sense did it EVER make to "slow the spread" into flu season? We should have taken advantage of the summertime capacity of the hospital system. Now the at-risk NEED to be at the hospital.
Your comment and the known facts are at odds with one another.
You can repeat that until the cows come home but the data on the ground doesn't lie. Georgia and Florida and Sweden have been open for months without the hospitals being overwhelmed. The virus has followed the same basic curve everywhere it was allowed to spread.
Thanks for saying that...I tend to agree.
Obama let Hillary initiate a war in Libya. And ISIS subsequently took over Libya. Obama was also sending troops on the day he was awarded a "Nobel Peace Prize", which he acknowledged upon hearing the news.
One Libya war narrative is that Obama was creating a cover for France's special forces extraction of uranium from Niger (next to Libya)
Most of France's electricity is from nuclear (or used to be, not sure now).
USA would most likely be at war with Iran if Hilary had been elected.
Biden in the WH guarantees the USA will be in some conflict within 4 years.
Why blame anyone? Half the problem with us is we all want someone to blame. The C19 is a virulent strand which under even the best case will kill people. Did Trump do everything right...likely not. Will Biden, also likely not though his plan seems amazingly like Trump’s to me. Stop the blame game and listen to the CDC for advice and then FOLLOW it. Hopefully the warp speed vaccine will be efficacious and available quickly....
Why blame anyone???? Trump consistently and continually downplayed the seriousness of the pandemic and actually hosted super spreader events. He constantly ridiculed and contradicted the advice of experts in epidemiology (remember when the health authorities had to issue warnings not to ingest disinfectants after many of Trump's moronic followers actually took him at his word that ingesting disinfectants might prevent Covid19 and they did just that) and made the wearing of masks a political issue rather than a medical issue, with the result that many Americans contracted and died of Covid19. Under his lack of responsible leadership, the US, the wealthiest and most technologically advanced nation in the world gained the distinction of having the highest number of cases AND deaths. Put another way, at one point this summer the US had approximately 4% of the world's population AND 25% of the world's Covid19 cases. The figures speak for themselves. I have great respect for Glenn and have always found his commentary to be factual and balanced, but I think in this case he is being too generous to Trump, whose vitriol and pathological lying has known no bounds.
“Me thinks thou dust protest too much”... I agree that the disinfectant comment, though made in jest to a thinking man, was ill-advised when addressing a country. However, and that said, nearly the entire leadership medical community for several months initially said masks wouldn’t help. Biden called Trump xenophobic for suggesting we shut down travel from China and a variety of other missteps and miscues. Surprising? Not at all! This was a new virulent strand with which no one was familiar so again, why blame? It is also true that Joe came up with a plan in May - which very closely then resembled (and still resembles) Trump’s; less of course Joe’s national lock down thoughts. Playing Monday morning QB is fine for football not so much for important national policy on pandemics. Again why seek blame instead of spending time seeking solutions. If you think Trump politicized C19 you obviously heard none of Biden/ Harris speeches since they had little to talk about otherwise. “C’mon man”.
Well, gee. Did you expect the "aware," "fair," and "inclusive" left to actually be so? Can you say: "hypocrisy?" Do you actually expect them to have superior "moral" insight just because they claim to have it?
You say that Trump's disinfectant comment was made in jest? That is certainly what Trump claimed after the briefing but if you believed that then I have a bridge to sell you. Check out the look on Birx's face when he looked to her for affirmation of his moronic suggestion during the briefing. Trump lies so much I don't know how you can possibly believe any of the verbal diarrhea that comes out of his mouth. You have not addressed the facts of the statistics relating to Trump's disastrous response leading to the US being the leader in Covid19 cases and deaths. The health authorities have definitely adjusted their positions re the best responses to the pandemic but their position changes have been the result of updates to the scientific knowledge about the virus that was progressively gained as they researched it. You do understand the scientific method, do you? Trump does not - he said so - "I don't think scientists know, actually..." What more needs to be said about this sociopathic, narcissistic piece of human excrement who privately acknowledged the deadliness of the virus to Bob Woodward yet publicly endangered his own supporters' lives by denying it and knowingly subjected them to the virus at his super spreader rallies? A person does not have to be a Monday morning quarterback to point out the obvious failures of Trump. You yourself are playing the part of Monday morning quarterback, linebacker, defensive end, or whatever with your original comment. "Just the facts, ma'am, just the facts" - anyone can provide quotes, but it doesn't make their argument any more valid. The real fact is that the rest of the world's population, including here in Canada, has been watching this Trump circus with disbelief and horror at the utter stupidity of Trump AND his rabid, undereducated supporters.
Ah, once again, proof that instead of a dispassionate discussion of the issue/s anti- Trump, pro anything else folks just through bombs instead of ideas. No I am not at all “undereducated” neither am I blind to fact and/or to fiction. Joe’s own COS when he was VP said that had the H1N1 virus gotten as bad ( which it didn’t due to having more information than China allowed the world to have this time around) the death toll would have been staggering as Joe had no ( 0) plan. I’m tired of cranks posing as progressives. You didn’t address the politicization of the virus; Biden’s only campaign speech among the very few he actually made from somewhere other than his house. And the reason he didn’t go out publicly was his controllers fear of his catching the virus despite his “mask-wearing and social distancing.” Biden is a joke and anyone following US politics closely over these past many years knows it. Ever wonder why he was never among his party’s very senior senatorial leadership team? Because they knew he was a joke and couldn’t hold three sentences together without a club..., and how about his plagiarisms and how about during the campaign saying he was running for the senate? Oh and how about referring to “George” ( as in Bush) twice in a speech as his wife winched at his side? And how about.... stop the stone throwing and see facts as they are, not as you’d wish them to be...btw if you think Trump is an inveterate liar how about, “ if you like your plan... if you like your doctor... and save $2,500/ year?????
I think Glenn must have been referring to you when he wrote, "The age of social media has fostered a type of reductive thinking and discourse about politics and the world in which pat and trite phrases have replaced critical thought as our primary instruments for making sense of external events. One can already hear the outraged liberal response to this claim finding expression in a series of dreary, now-familiar clichés ..... the stunted, juvenile slogans that are supposed to serve as proof that America has never seen an evil quite like Trump before."
The target seems to be Trans-humans 99% Robots 1% Humans, which will safe the planet, the CDC will promote and guide investors to the super investment prospectives in Gene editing the real-life computer game.
https://www.bitchute.com/video/Dccv1kgGBBLl/
You are right that Biden will be crippled by coronavirus... and his inability to definitively change the trajectory will weigh into the historical view of how Trump did on the pandemic.
The peace talks left out the Palestinians. Job growth for the working class, particularly minorities, was in the low wage fast food and service sector industries and companies like Uber and Lyft that have virtually no or inadequate benefits or healthcare. The steel and agriculture industries are still suffering due to Trump's trade war, with farm bankruptcies in the Midwest at their highest levels since the mid 80's. The list is too long to enumerate.
Syria/Libia = new wars Peace talks = Yemen Growth for Working Class = Crash of 08 endless quantitative easing of banks & Wall St. Taxes = Green "Stimulus" billion dollar boondoggle
Millionaires = Income inequality: massive
You are quite the bullshit-artist John...
You clearly are a low information individual. Libya was a war of Obama's. And you clearly can't read, either.
You clearly are following a journalist you despise to function as a troll. Your comment is your own war with your own soul. And you clearly can't type, either.
Nope, only a low information individual who is blinded by his ideological fervor cannot see beyond his own echo chamber.
John, who is your favorite journalist? Or the one you consider to have the most integrity?
Holographic Future. Who is yours?
Agree John. Benghazi, Venezuelan money laundering via US banks from drug cartels, terrorists, China’s military build up in the So China Sea to name a few- these are all under Obama/Biden.
The archeological record seems to indicate that war has been spectacularly successful most of the time*, for at least 10,000 years, probably 100000s or 1,000,000s
US Civil War: stopped slavery!
Utopian bs has a far worse track record than war. It is frequently the tool of megalomanics or other lunatics.
* http://tuvalu.santafe.edu/~bowles/AltruistsAtWar.pdf
“We came, we saw, he died!” (giggle giggle giggle)-Hillary Clinton and Leslie Stahl.
This is why I follow Glenn, there are no scared cows and hes the only one I know of that slays them, right left or center....
'sacred'....
There are millions of scared cows out there, heh
Not scared of Glenn, he's vegan.
The soybeans must be scared!
"The age of social media has fostered a type of reductive thinking and discourse about politics and the world in which pat and trite phrases have replaced critical thought as our primary instruments for making sense of external events."
I call it pep-squad politics, and I blame 40 years of "education reform" more than I do social media. There are people who should have developed critical thinking skills at least a decade before social media was the force it's become who are incapable of holding a discussion beyond repeating the kinds of slogans you've mentioned.
When your future, and that of your school and your teachers, is reduced to your picking the right answer from the choices provided by the company that published the standardized test that's become the sole criterion for determining what you've learned, expecting people to develop critical thinking skills is an exercise in futility.
Know who just loves education reform? The corporate media. Well, and both political parties, of course.
The revision of current history is already underway as the Democrats and the media rush to bury the fact that candidates who support the very policies they're determined to insist are losers almost universally won, while their line-toeing centrists dropped like rocks.
The Donald's biggest sin is that he's too much of a narcissist to do his damage behind closed doors in the dark. That eventually even made him too much for the oligarchs to support, so it was inevitable he'd have to go.
So, while we await the rise of President Kamala Harris in 6-8 months, and the appointment of Mayor Pete as VP, it's going to be interesting to see whether the Democrats will find a way to undermine a Populist movement that's wise to them now while maintaining their image of being the party of the rule of law.
Who's bringing the popcorn?
Your 6-8 month time frame on Biden's term sounds just about right. Then we can have someone with no real governing or large enterprise leadership experience at the head of a ticket which will include someone with only failed governing experience. Voting against someone (or something) has consequences when the alternative is as pitiful as this alternative seems to be based on its history. Oh, that's right, they don't teach critical thinking in school anymore, pity. I got the popcorn....
The critical thinking concept that was recommended was always followed by how and what would be acceptable critical thought.
Read George Orwell's "1984." China is there now and we are on our way. One of the tyrannical left's "newspeak" journalists successfully switched the formerly traditional blue meant right and red meant left designation. Racism is not racism when it is "correctly" applied. Illegal immigration is "undocumented entry." Once left wing liberal philosophies are now right wing philosophies.
Historically prominent figures' philosophies and contributions are now "cancelled" because they had slaves, although so did many others world wide including black Africans with black slaves, from whom most coming here were originally purchased, so well as back freemen here having black slaves.
The delusional imaginary world already being jammed into the real one will now be rammed in with greatly increased horsepower.
But if it’s truly applied as I think it should be then the key word in that phrase is “critical” not acceptably critical. To anyone who would think rather than be led, to them let this word Be employed. And being a critical thinker doesn’t also mean be critical of any idea not your own but critical of the thought processes that have gone into the various positions espoused.
Of course that's the way it should be. I was referring to the way it was actually operated.
I'm into my 25th year of teaching, and I agree that much of what we're seeing today is the result of decades neoliberal education reforms.
I remember Clintons talking about education reform in the 1990s, but not much seemed to change. Then there was the grotesque abomination of No Child Left Behind, the Common Core.
In higher education, "reforms" were more like diktats imposed by the Top Down Neolib Politburo that sought to destroy any remnant of academic freedom, nonconformity or dissent. After that the financialization process set in.
correction, memory fail:
Clintons 1990s education reforms were linked to a Ford Foundation project to replace the public education's "liberal arts curriculum" (critical thinking) with corporate/vocation training. Glynn Custred was critical of that stuff, and he wrote a scathing article (published on the internet) about how Ford wanted universities to become "efficient", financed by corporations (selling computers and network access to students for instance) to teach relatively narrow business related topics.
Custred showed how the Ford project was tied into various neoliberal corporate criminal schemes such as the one of the junk bonds kings of that era.
I'm very late to respond because I never saw this until now.
Even when I was in school, over a century ago (it seems), It was revealed the US public education system, and much of Europe's I believe, was patterned after Bismarck's very successful one in the latter 19th century. I think his was one of the first to educate the lower classes.
However I immediately speculated Bismarck's system was structured, as obviously was ours, to also train children to follow directions and complete assignments. Just what would be wanted by the "Iron Chancellor": create an entire society of good, obedient soldiers and workers.
Bismark, a "conservative", invented the welfare state.
Yes. John Taylor Gatto discusses how Bismark's education system was the major model for the USA's public education system, and the welfare state in general. Gatto states that the Germans realized that when the inferior French (Napoleon) beat Germans militarily, a higher level of social organization (national unity, rationalization-industrialization, high social trust) was needed.
https://www.nationalreview.com/author/glynn-custred/
should have been:
[then] Common Core.
I echo much of what you have pointed out - that this "reductive thinking" came through the educational system, but not just through the public schools but also through the institutions of higher learning. The Frankfurt school post-modernist skepticism took hold and spread though our universities and has infected the culture, including the public schools. Post-modernist skepticism is saturated the absurd notion that all relationship are rooted in power struggles. This pernicious ideology orients its followers to interpret everything in terms of gaining or losing or influencing power. So power rather than truth becomes the primary matter of interest. It doesn't take much reflection to recognize what that corrosive effect that could have on character as well as critical thinking. The late Sir Roger Scruton wrote much worth reading on this matter. A number of good interviews on youtube - also with Douglas Murray.
Scruton once wrote something to this effect: You cannot use reason to convince a person to give up an idea that they did not use reason to adopt. Scruton came to believe that many leftist academics were more motivated by a desire for power and relevance rather than a desire for truth. That is why their arguments often seem more aggressive than rational.
The key is always education.
I also think biden will be impeached and kamala will be president... i have no idea why I think this though, why do I think anyone anywhere will hold him accountable? why do you?
He won't need to be impeached; his dementia will take him out.
I though it would be clear by now that dementia isn't a sufficient criterion for removing a president.
haha, fair point
Vegas must have odds for how long before...
He will be dead before impeached.
He will be accountable to someone; just not the voters.
It won’t be a matter of any accountability, it’ll be a matter of convenience and practicality. The Dems knew that running a Sanders or even Harris ( who scored 0 in her own run for the nomination) would nit generate the turnout that old, kindly, “Uncle Joe” would but then that same voter would feel badly when for mental capacity reasons he “HAD” to be removed. So no accountability but an incumbency for Harris is 4 years. That’s my thinking but I guess we’ll see how it all goes....
Thank you for that, Glenn. These last few years have been a real struggle for those who've actually been paying attention over the last four decades.
You might not know so I will say it: if you have been around for 4 decades of news then you are older than the average Biden voter by far. White people are on average in their 40s or 50s whereas the demographically correct Biden voter is going to be in their 20s or 30s. By "demographically correct" I mean black and brown. So, for the most part voters today likely have no idea what even happened in the 90s in America. And they are all stoned out of their minds half the time anyway because weed is pretty much legal now.
All I which I mention by way of saying: I feel ya. Kids these days don't have a clue. They really think that up until May of this year we were all sitting around on plantations whipping slaves.
I grew up in a politically “interested” family and saw the advent of CNN- which will be the downfall of civilization in the US in my opinion. My 18 year old son asked me what it was like before cable news. I honestly can’t remember. What would be truly newsworthy today that would be important for an hour long news program each day? The advent of the 24 hour news cycle and the unlimited information from the internet hasn’t made us into a better society. What needs to happen to change that ??
My family did not have a TV until I was 8, we were overseas (USAF).
Some neighbor family in base housing had a TV in Japan, sometimes we go to watch Mothra and Godzilla movies, which were great. Or John Wayne westerns with Japanese voices. lol
The first non-military computer I can remember was a Pong arcade game in a funky Pizza shop in Santa Cruz in the mid(?) 70s.
There was no internet in the consumer sense until sometime in the early to mid 80s.
I always had access to counter culture stuff, environmental stuff, alt politics underground publications (I studied with the socialist worker party high school group while my father worked in the Pentagon, during Watergate), eastern mysticism and new age spiritual stuff, even in the suburbs.
If you watch the documentaries about Chomsky, he discusses growing up on the streets or in the counter culture bookstores in the 50s, or before.
There has always been access to non-mainstream narratives for those lucky or curious enough to find them.
My parents' home phone was bugged by the FBI because my mom was in a group of church ladies that supported the Civil Rights movement.
The internet wasn't really a thing in the sense of WWW until about 1996, Windows 3 ,then windows 98 (horrible)
Ethernet still had LAN competitors till about that time.
Google didn't start until about 97-98? It took a few more years for "secure business" transactions on the WWW.
I disagree with your comment. Biden most likely won because suburban voters and voters over 65 shifted away from Trump--he still won the 65+ vote, but the margin this time was much smaller. My comment about the lack of paying attention over the last four decades was directed at people who were alive during that period. Criticizing the young for not paying attention to something they weren't alive for would be pretty ridiculous. As for being stoned, I get stoned pretty much every day.
I'm still mystified. I've been curious about the world, studied social science and all sorts of mainstream and counterculture narratives since the Whole Earth Catalog.
I have no more struggle now than I did 40 years ago seeing that the system is a giant clusterfvck inside a sh1tstorm, and has been since at least the Spanish-American War of 1898-99. That is when the US Constitution ceased to function as it was intended (no foreign entanglements), and the Imperial Deep State began to come into existence in the USA.
I wouldn't generalize about all "kids these days," since this is absurd. I also wouldn't generalize about age at all, since in my experience, only a small fraction of any age group read independent journalism.
Indeed! It is 12 noon, Saturday here on the East Coast, when the AP posts that Biden has won. I have no idea what is coming the next two months, but I do know that the war machine will ramp up.
Why do people - everyone - refer to Biden as the winner of the election? He was, is or will not ever be anything but a ghost rider in the game. He has NOTHING to offer now and his involvement in politics has never amounted to anything but support to already decided assaults on societies around the world. The Oligarchs runs the USA
If you see Trump as a fake President whose job is to preserve the illusion of opposing political philosophies in your parliament then you also get to see him as *already* ramping up the war machine, in preparation for the next shiny new Democrat liberator ...
It's a perspective I recommend.
I see Trump AND Biden as two wings on the same damn greedy bird. I have no illusions. I've been disgusted for far too many decades to keep falling for the same old act. I guess one would say, that I am a seasoned political watcher. I won't get fooled again. (Hopefully)
A wonderful word picture!
Trump has never been a politician. But Biden is. Do you have a suggestion about what "the next shiny new Democrat liberator" would do in case he happened to be the loser?
No, he is not. He does have gobs of money, and/or assests, fame. With that said, he runs in the crowd of money makers, and shakers. He may not be labeled a politican, but he certainly is not a regular working class American. I do not expect a Democrat liberator, shiny, new, or anything else. I think we have lined up at the polls, yelled at the tv, for far too many decades for anything to change. We don't hold them accountable, and they have no respect for us.
It's true that he's not a career politicians like the Biden empty suit, but whatever you think Trump may have once been, he is currently occupying the most political office in the entire world, and has done so for nearly four years. That makes him, by definition, a politician and I will not pretend otherwise.
In case who happened to be the loser? Trump? The context of that descriptor makes it clear that both Janet L McCarter and I expect the next shiny new Democrat liberator to go to war.
Whether that happens in 2021 or 2025 I'm sure it will all be done in the best possible taste.
For the first time in my life after an election, I’m afraid. I’ve felt all manner of emotions after previous elections, but I’ve never felt afraid before. I just heard the Fox News projection and I’m afraid to voice an opinion outside of my own house.
I’ve lost 4 so-called friends who instead of having a back & forth discussion on Biden vs Trump, ended up screaming & name calling. Oh, & a family member too! It’s a dangerous time in the US with communism nipping at our heels & violence in the big cities. NYC is a tinder box & has been for months. We’re the silent majority but shouldn’t be afraid to voice our opinions outside our homes. Many of us are out there. Hold tight. Learn krav maga if you can. It’ll help.
No we SHOULDN’T be. And therein lies the rub. (Your suggestion is an excellent one. Thank you).
That's a pity. ... Who do you fear and why, please?
The backlash and pressure I’ve personally felt from family and friends who think I’m uninformed at best or akin to Hitler at worst by making the mistake of being honest and saying I was voting for Trump this election has been painful and openly hostile.
Perhaps this perspective will help...
...In my view, first, the choices the Republicans and Democrats gave us were wholly inappropriate and the American Public is the sure loser, no mater which of the two of them might win. Either would have been / will be a disaster, just different kinds of disaster, and nobody can really say in advance which would be worse.
Secondly, given that the majority of voters are brain-washed into believing they HAD to vote either D or R, ignoring the several reasonable candidates available on most of our ballots (Green Party, The People's Party, the American Independent Party, and so forth), for those who saw that both were bad choices it became a choice of "lesser evil voting," and we should all forgive those who voted in a way we ourselves wouldn't.
Thirdly, if someone truly doesn't see how both Trump and Biden were bad choices to give us, I would urge a bit more reflection. YES, there are a lot of lies out there, but these can be sorted through. This takes a willingness to see the the lies from the side one prefers as well as from the side one opposes, a careful parsing of fact from opinion (which definitely takes more work), and a willingness to concede that maybe your first analysis or conclusion was wrong.
Good luck. ... And when Biden turns out to be awful, just as Trump was awful, try not to literally say "I told you so", but instead, perhaps yourself admit how Trump was bad and lament, "we really didn't have any good choices did we?" (ignoring, of course, your "third party options" - we're talking about "mending fences" here...)
Perhaps a little background will help....i didn’t vote for the man in 2016 and his flaws are too flagrant to miss if one isn’t blinded by rhetoric. So yes, it was certainly the lesser of two evils. Because the polling drumbeat was loud but completely wrong again and everyone believed that the House would gain, not lose and the Senate would also fall into Democrat hands. That was insupportable to me. When people tell you they want to pack the court, eliminate the electoral college and drop the voting age to 16, (just some of many checks and balances that keep us a free nation are now inconveniently in the way), you should listen. This New Democrat Party is beyond all recognition to me. I’m no longer considered pro-choice because I oppose late term abortion. I’m one of those surburban moms who taught her now grown children to love and respect all people, no matter their race or beliefs. I didn’t leave the Democrat Party. It left me.
I don't think that many Main Street democrats have yet realized that they are suddenly the party of Wall Street, corporations, big tech, the media empire, and endless wars.
They have an imaginary view of the inside of their echo chamber, formed by propaganda such as the West Wing TV show and similar crap.
Shhhhh...don't tell them.
The Democratic Party left The People with the election - or during the tenure - of Bill Clinton, or possibly before, but the signs were clear by that time.
As for packing the court, that's just what the Republicans did by denying Obama's pick a vote and then rushing through the new justice. Unfair by ANY (every) measure, but that's just how Republicans - the party, I mean - are. ... A larger court or smaller court is still within the bounds of the Constitution, so it's a perfectly OK thing to consider, especially when the ultra-right-wing has cheated its way into two seats.
I've never heard ANYONE talk about changing the voting age to 16.
Like you, I try to respect everyone, though when someone disrespects you, not respecting them any further is fair, I think...
And like you, I'm not a Democrat any longer. In fact, I'm now non-partisan. I'm not for ANY party; I vote for people I WANT in office and for policies I WANT to see enacted. If either of those happen to be considered from any particular party, well, fine, but that doesn't make me partisan! ...And, by the way, I get grief for this much as you have gotten grief for your choice(s) for which you made comment that prompted this dialogue.
As I said before, we should respect others choices, even if they're not - maybe especially when they're not - the choices we'd have made ourselves.
they didn't pack the court. read up on the definition of court packing (if you don't already know) and realize that while the democrats made it look ugly and undemocratic, the GOP did the right thing by filling the vacancy left by RBG. ACB is a wonderful choice, who will defend civil liberties, which is something our country desperately needs. what they did was safeguard our constitution a little while longer (while it lasts). it wasn't packing the court by any stretch of imagination, regardless of who they elected. packing the court is something FDR tried to do, and has zero to do with what happened this october.
I respect your concerns and your change of heart. But I disagree with your specific arguments.
In no way does the electoral college contribute anything to keeping us a free nation; we'd be just as free without it. It only worked as intended when George Washington was running, and it's not well-designed for protecting any of the things that people now claim it accomplishes. One person-one vote has always been a good principle.
Having an equal number of Supreme Court justices appointed by Republicans and Democrats would not in any way diminish our freedom. And clearly even if the Democrats had managed to get well over 50 senators, they wouldn't have gone beyond an equal balance of Supreme Court justices.
Although there are serious things to be worried about from the Democratic Party, I think you have been influenced by people who are exaggerating that danger. And I see that you keep saying "the Democrat Party", a term spread only by those promoting bias against Democrats. I hope you'll take a sober look that's not so influenced by the bias others are promoting, and see that there are some dangers from the Democrats but they're not as bad as what some conservative media people suggest.
Finally, although Austria (which votes at 16) is a free nation, I'm willing to listen to arguments for and against lowering the voting age. Maybe you have some insight there.
They would have packed the court. If you've been paying attention to the behavior of the senate democrats, and their treatment of political opposition, then you'll see there's nothing they wouldn't do. Or, they'd play with the idea long enough to see if they could get enough popular consensus for this uniquely awful idea, and the next regime would do it. Senate republicans are far from perfect, but i know they wouldn't pack the court, and replacing court vacancies is NOT packing the court, despite what mainstream media outlets may have told the public. They stood up against this idea publicly and vocally. The democrat party is uniquely awful in many ways.
If someone is feeling a cause for worry close to home and within her lived experience, it cannot be dismissed quite so easily. I don't even live in the US and yet feel a definite expectation to conform to the majority popular opinion about many things pertaining to the US. How to separate propaganda from facts, if there are such things left any longer. But, my question is, what you want people to call the Democratic Party if not the Democratic Party? The party formerly known as The Democratic Party?
I was inching toward the Democratic party, but its treatment of then Governor Casey of Pennsylvania at the 1992 Democratic Convention ( https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/opinions/1992/10/24/gov-casey-silenced-again/7a103651-0792-4ede-beb7-228e3e23afa5/ ) kind of slammed the door on that thought. Yes, I can understand Clinton's desire for a unified convention, but such an expedient decision (expediencey soon to be a hallmark of his presidency) over something resembling principle did it in for me. Since then I don't think things have become at all better -- for either party.
I will never be able to vote Democrat again after Nancy Pelosi ripped up Trump's SOTU address behind his back in front of the entire world. It was mortifying. I was horrified. Never again. #NewlyMintedRepublican
Yep
Here is what the Rainbow Totalitarians on the "left" really think:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4bpr-y9yo0E
This means you get it. Hopefully this is a safe forum though.
Hopefully so.
Now that Fascism has been defeated, it is important to give our leaders unlimited powers so that they can prevent Fascism from re-asserting itself.
On the contrary, Biden has vowed to work just "as hard for those who didn't vote for him as those who did". I believe that's a true statement.
*No doubt it will be shocking for some reading this long-form journalism to realize or accept that Trump was not the worst president of all time .. . he wasn't even the worst one this century.
As an astute observer once noted, sooner or later every president makes you nostalgic for his predecessor.
Assuming you do have a new President, I predict it won't take long.
>"Assuming you do have a new President ..."
Good point. I don't want to be a party pooper (like Glenn, in this joyous moment.) , but the fat man is still playing putt-putt on the White House lawns as far as I can tell. .. I predict it will take an act of Congress and a posse of constables to drag his silly-ass out of there kicking and screaming.
*no, it won't take long .. . the names being floated for Biden's cabinet positions looks like a whos-who list for Obama-Bush alumni.
I'm waiting to see him dragged out by the military and have visions of hair pulling. Just for gratuitous entertainment.
LOL!!! if you believe that I have a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you
I think you’ll find she meant he will do nothing for both classes. Don’t misunderestimate the intelligence and subtlety of the bug.
ps. unlike Glenn, I do believe Trump's handling of the Covid virus was uniquely incompetent.
By giving the power to the states he was incompetent? What else was he supposed to do.
Did you see what happened in Victoria, Australia, with the government-run quarantine centres being the cause of the largest outbreak and death toll to date?
Vaguely.
*I should have clarified my view of Trump's outrageous Cov response was relative to U.S. alternatives and not, necessarily, the best or worst practices of the global health community as a whole.
Of course, as a global pandemic, these various responses to the virus around the world should, and ultimately will, be compared with one another.
Outside of 'hot spots' of concern such as Australia, or examples of clear success such as New Zealand, my pick for worst offender is a tie between Trump in the U.S. and Balsonora in Brazil.
How can Glenn disagree with that point, given that no one else has had a crack at it yet? Of course it's uniquely incompetent. So far. When Biden comes in he might be better at hiding how little they're doing, and maybe do slightly better. But he's against universal health care, so deaths will be more selective.
I am looking forward to the next Republican presidency and watching all these people say 'it was better under Trump'.
Oh and there is no going back to the pre trump days.
I agree. I think to many people have become aware at how dysfunctional our government has been in the modern era. There really is truth to the idea of a Uni-Party, and legacy media as a propaganda arm of the DNC. Whether you like Trump or not, think he has been successful or not, he’s been fantastic at pulling the curtain back on the corruption and lies.
Thank you so much for writing this. Sometimes I feel like I'm living in an alternate universe. John Brennan, the man who lied to congress about hacking into their computers to spy on their investigation of bush-era torture, is now a highly paid contributing member of MSNBC. How is that not seen as absolutely insane to any reasonable person?
Sometimes it feels like I'm fucking crazy when trying to talk to people about things like this, so it's nice to know that I'm not alone.
Mr. Greenwald, I need you to hear this: This is a blazingly brilliant masterpiece you have written. My jaw dropped when I read it. It was forwarded by Mark Crispin Miller. (I've now subscribed.)
It's Beethoven.
I'm not even "on the left" but your piece makes me want to buy land on the left and build a house. SO RIGHT ON THE MONEY. I'm going to send it everywhere, post it at my site, tweet it, post it on Assbook, and send it via email to every liberal friend I lost. I am so grateful to you. You're amazing. Your readers should shower you with more praise, I feel. You deserve it.
The only thing I object to is something you couldn't possibly know unless you spent the last quarter century in the intersection between Banks BioTech WHO and Pharma, as I did: Covid-19 is a complex banking and social engineering event that has health features but. It fails not only Koch's Postulates but every other standard of contagious disease model. "Something happened," yes. "People died," yes. You probably know by now that the RT PCR test is set to cycles that Fauci himself admitted do not, repeat not, signal "infection." He called it "dead nucleotides" and nobody has asked him to explain what kind of nucleotides are anything other than dead. A virus is not a living thing. Listen to Dr. Thomas Cowan. But DON'T write about it--they will brand you a "denier" and that is not surviveable. Trump's only Covid mistake was letting Fauci and Birx into his office. If any of this interests you you can find me on Twitter and read my pinned tweet. @CeliaFarber. I knew Kary Mullis, PCR's inventor, and interviewed him many times. He cried when they pulled out PCR to con gay men into thinking they had MORE HIV in their blood, measured by PCR. It can find any molecule in anybody, and it only needs ONE molecule to blow up (multiply) and make people crazy. PCR is an overly sensitive technology not intended for use in diagnosing any viral "infection." And now it has, despite the protestations of its inventor, enslaved the world. Other than that, your article is perfection.
Liked - “Trump's only Covid mistake was letting Fauci and Birx into his office.” Didn’t mind Birx but Fraudci I could’ve done without.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=youtu.be&v=a_Vy6fgaBPE&t=269&app=desktop&ab_channel=VincentRacaniello
Here's the video of Fauci that she's talking about.
Medical professionals (not greedy con man ex Pharma types like Fauci) KNOW the PCR is highly manipulatable -- including the creator. 50-80% false positives. A COVID-19 antibody test is the only test that could identify if you have it (fun fact-- COVID -19 has already mutated as all corona viruses do!!) . PCR picks up any old dead or live virus-- how many depends on how they set the testing level.
The comment section is only second to Glenn's article.
I vote for president based solely on who is more likely start a war of annihilation. Having a mentally addled Prez and a totally out-of-her-league emotionally retarded coquette as VP, surrounded by never-Trump Neocons and "Left" Neolib war-mongering, all-consuming RussiaHater(tm), globalist traitors to the Republic, is a recipe for the heat-death of civilization. I completely understand the visceral distaste for Trump, but I predict a lot of those haters are going to miss Trump Chaos when it's over. Not including the millions who will just go back to sleep, of course. I voted for the Donald, but have totally surrendered to the idea that reason no longer exists and that we are doomed no matter who wins.
A case can be made* that "reason" as we know it, modern rationalism, came to a dead end and something else is evolving out of it, post-postmodern, construct aware meta-rationalism.
https://meaningness.com/metablog/stem-fluidity-bridge
I'm pretty sure they will. I wouldn't assume they won't just because they haven't.
How many millions died in the Iran-Iraq war? Why would they forget that? Why would they forget the USA military support for Saddam in that war?
Great article, really pulling back the curtain of BS, but, sadly, I see the #Resistance Crowd going back to #Brunch, like, right now.
Perfect analogy!!
Glenn, thank you for keeping alive the memory of the atrocious deeds of Bush and Cheney. Singularly and as a couple, they're two of the most ruinous miscreants in all of American history.