I would comment more often Caitlin however it would be the same response. How on earth do you keep organising my current thoughts and manage to write them in such an eloquent fashion?
I read everything that Caitlin writes and I often think I should comment on her articles but then again, what else can I say? Just like Kim "How on earth does Caitlin keep organizing my current thoughts and manage to write them in such an eloquent fashion?"
I only have a couple of things to add:
Thank you so much Caitlin for all you do. Please never stop, we need you, the world needs you.
I always wonder if the shitlibs child abuse is real or imagined ,,sorta like the McMartin case.. but the flip side is the conservative mindset of might makes right is abusive but now that the shitlib is a neocon light and they all join in the social construct created by the psychopaths who run the information superhighways and the Hollywood brain stem washing machine that most of these fucking people have been poisoned with from birth.
You laugh because you sucked up all the MSM koolaid you could drink and are punch drunk on it.. And being you are too far an intellectual coward to look past your brain stem washing so you cant see it.. Laugh all you want..ill have the last one...
"Find me a capitalist business plan for keeping someone free of illness." As so incisively discussed by Dr. Kheriaty in "The New Abnormal", technocratic Capitalist health care -- as distinguished from the Hippocratic variety is actually quite invested in declaring us ill unless we can prove otherwise; as illustrated of course by vaccine mandates. A genuine Hippocratic physician understands and appreciates that, in the great majority of cases, the human body is equipped by Nature with the integrated computational complexity necessary to self-sustain wellness, such that one cooperates with that potency and above all does no harm. But to the encroaching technocratic trans-humanist, the business plan is very much to assume illness and download "health", such as in the form of mRNA or other nucleic acid modules. And Capitalists like Bill Gates have shown the way to its profitability.
I am no fan of Gates but he is a capitalist (and a monopolist) but real criminals are the people in the public service, such as Fauci, that have allowed the capitalists into the public service. Capitalism has its place but it has no place inside the public service, Fauci etal. have abused the trust placed in them.
That's the problem. Capitalism is a process of digestion. It won't stay in "its place" until it is dead. Great American novelist John Steinbeck provides some color:
"And the owner men explained the workings and the thinkings of the monster that was stronger than they were. A man can hold land if he can just eat and pay taxes; he can do that.
"Yes, he can do that until his crops fail one day and he has to borrow money from the bank. But—you see, a bank or a company can’t do that, because those creatures don’t breathe air, don’t eat side-meat. They breathe profits; they eat the interest on money. If they don’t get it, they die the way you die without air, without side-meat. It is a sad thing, but it is so. It is just so."
I read that a few times to glean some meaning out of it but cant .. Humans are narcissistic piles of shit most days so my theory holds true the cancer will kill the host.. without all the jargon its just the fucking math.
Governments of the entire western allies nations are now wholly captured by the capitalist dynasty family financial mafias. No one is allowed through the loby of federal and local employee entrances of government buildings without being vetted as a full fledged hit man for the cartel..
Don't forget to sign and date your tax checks under the threats of state violence if you don't fully comply then to go wave a flag at fireworks and pretend you are free.
Republics always end like this. In the end the people revolt and start again, normally with another republic, hopefully this time it is with something like direct democracy. At least then, the corrupt representatives are done away with.
What you do about the control of the media and propaganda (by oligarchs rather than gov't), I don't know.
Thoughtful. I have not fleshed this out, so let me brainstorm. I think the solutions to most problems can be met more effectively with systems that reward activities that build community wealth, including those that broaden family wealth and also individual wealth. A commitment and enforcement process towards moral development and true meritocracy would allow quality to flourish, enabling the people who are best at things to build more. Government communitarian models like socialism tend to be just as corrupt as capitalism. I think that taking the profit motive out of essential services is a no brainer. But what you are really getting at is the need for a moral structure be built that makes it almost impossible for sociopaths to wreak havoc. The real issue with the West is that its moral development was stillborn by the development of mechanized industry. What most people on the left and right, so to speak, are clamoring for, is a moral civilization. The mechanisms envisioned are vastly different, but the core need is recognized by both, when you cancel out the sociopath factors on both sides of the equation.
Nah, this is just liberal mythology. The notion that value systems can be successfully modified by placing a whatabout across them is a debunked religious ideal. Moral perfectionists are vain control freaks better purged from societies than listened to. Robert Kaz died this year; let him and his whiny middle-class feelings rest.
I never said anything about perfctionism. Perfectionism is incredibly dangerous. I talked about a society with a moral code of civilized behavior. Just having laws is not enough.
The idea that we can "improve" others morally is called moral perfectionism. Particularly, there is a Christian version and a Liberal version. Wikipedia has articles on all three for your perusal.
No mention of improvement. Moral code as a positive system is already in use for “woke” ideology, however, it is just a costume that selfish conformists use as camouflage, and unskeptical people adhere to as a safety measure.
Puritanism is exactly what we have now and exactly what you're calling for and exactly what I'm categorically rejecting as not only a 500-year-proven failure for everyone but moral busybodies, but as an authoritarian LARP "but with typical American extravagance, they have two of them".
ETA: Ultimately, with a moral maximalist approach, you are either going to generate a better, slicker sociopath, or your society is going to devote so much time and effort to social reproduction that you'll have no time or ability for play. Rules ain't free.
Yes, this is good brainstorming. After the win of the Federalists in the Civil War and the loss by the Antifederalists, unrestrained industrialization, the rise of the monied interests (Robber Barons) took over and continued at rapid speed. I don’t believe any particular economic system is the issue here. It goes much deeper and has become systemic. We select for weakness. Weakness in our populations who then choose weak leaders.
If they get what you think they want what then? No one is an island.
Right now people could choose privacy, space and free time in the US. Financial security ... security does not exist ... and we are back to money again.
The guy cxk is your typical boot licker that wants his boots on anyone he can force benith him..proven time and time with his duplicity and disingenuous behavior patterns.
To me, CXK sounds like a veteran political operative who calculates their every word for manipulative effect. Or it's a language model trained on the exudates of DNC strategists like James Carville or Ruy Teixeira. I don't yet favor one theory over the other.
Sadly far too many easily and seemngly willngly fall for it..but propaganda has a two fold effect..fool fools and give moral and intellectual cowards all the excuses they seek.
Yeah, China should quit that. Why do countries keep accommodating US imperialism by insisting on burying US resources under their soil? Just asking for the rather unpleasant phenomenon the US refers to as "democratization".
Everything the West says about China and Russia and every other country that they have not been able to infiltrate subvert and control is the lie.,, Odd no one can notice that pattern from swollwing so much U.S. Hollywood created bovine excrement.
So now it's now the Philippines, eh? After 30 years, the US wants another base to frighten the locals, spread some venereal diseases, dish out some dollars for the easy ladies, lots of financial handouts for the politicians and make yet another S E Asian country a target for someone in the future. Quite a ways from the West Coast of the USA so the American people won't be fussed one bit about a base in the Philippines. The Philippines? Where the hell are they?
The American people are safe. Oh for another Cuban Missile Crisis just to equal it out a little. No JFK around these days though, (the CIA gangsters got rid of that decent impediment to their long range plans) so it would likely end badly in 2022 with the feeble Biden in the Neocon hotseat, with orders coming daily from Tel Aviv via Blinken, Nuland and their Washington stooges in both houses of government.
"We, the Jewish people, control America, and the Americans know it." Ariel Sharon, in October 3, 2001. Yes, that long ago but better put as far back as 1967 at the time of the Israeli attack on the USS Liberty. US sailors killed by Israelis in unmarked aircraft, all forgiven and pardoned by the Israeli-captive US President Johnson who, at the time of the cowardly attack, called back US fighter aircraft from protecting a US vessel. Old enough to remember that disgrace?
Israel has never looked back since that date.
Add the Philippines to the peaceful little Australian continent, just blessed with a B-52 Nuclear Armed bomber base in Northern Australia, approved by a new left wing government (the last chance so the people thought for giving the USA and its warmongering the cold shoulder)....but no. More of the same grovelling, bag-carrying, puppet behaviour, compliant foreign policy decisions, as we have see there since WWII.
Just another US controlled base as a target for someone in the future. Who really gives a damn in Washington as is also the case with the other 800 plus bases in strategic locations, all over the globe.
A long way from mainland America. Now that's the objective, fellow readers.
Ah but if you point out the power of the tribe to shut you up the tribe will use fakes outrage and its overwhelming power to shut you up.. You will have the scarlet letter A pinned to your lapel.. And every social media company will ban you from the public commons.
"Capitalism elevates sociopaths, because profit-seeking competition-based systems reward those who are willing to do whatever it takes to get ahead. That's why we are ruled by sociopaths, and it's why looking to "philanthropy" as a solution to our problems is a ridiculous joke."
This explains our screwed-up world in two easily understood sentences. I wish I could get more people to listen to this sentiment, but they keep making excuses that somehow the sociopaths will figure things out and help us all out...eventually. That eventuality is never coming unless we get rid of capitalism and sociopaths, folks!
One point: you say people can't imagine how far reality is from what they're propagandized to believe, BECAUSE it's so far. But it's also true that modern people's imaginative faculties have atrophied from lack of use, because they don't read or listen to oral fiction--they watch screens where the fantasies of other people are projected with full detail. This inability to imagine is a key part of our problems because people can't imagine a better future, which would have to be radically different from the present. They can imagine a dystopia, because that has been presented in so many movies. But a better, post-capitalist, cooperative, ecologically responsible, egalitarian future? Not so much.
The late Glen Ford was a committed journalist who saw the emancipation of the indentured American as the key to ending systemic racism. He reasoned that black Americans were/are the mercury in the thermometer, and the conduct of the American State beyond its borders is the tip of the spear. Racism will only be addressed when the American Empire ceases to be. This relates directly to the current topic, the mounds of propaganda imploring all to hate Putin and fear Xi.
I recently read two journalist works on China. One is reportage on China’s policies and domestic problems:
And the other is a Patrick Lawrence commentary remembering Zhou Enlai, and his 5 principles of of non-aligned statehood. It explains western propaganda without frontally addressing it:
Cait, if it were not for "capitalism", you would not have the means or the luxury of railing against on this newsletter. I presume you know this. And you vaguely refer to equality, but I presume you don't mean you would like to see all be equally destitute? I still don't see your plan for an alternative.
Here is where the capitalist that command the information highway have convinced the proletariat of the virtues of their capitalist systems when in fact it was simply the industrial revolution science and creative builders who made the way NOT capitalist. Oh yeah they may have facilitated humans ability to create but the creativity NEVER came from capitalists but they sure keep telling you numpties that how it went down....in fact predatory capitalism has stalled human progress far more than its helped. its builders artists and creatives that make human progress not a bunch of sniveling greed fuckers that get in the way.. This is the same brain washed stupid argument you get about WAR creating great strides... NO you brain dead brain stem dwellers ..it was war motivated the artist scientist and builders out of necessity...same way going to the moon does or exploring. Agriculture created art..gave humans time to develop those things..WAR gives NO one time..it just explodes precious resources into the fucking dirt and you drones keep signing and dating the tax checks of you blood sweat and tears to the CULT of death you all fucking worship.
I am happy to hear criticisms of "capitalism" but 1) let's acknowledge the massive good; 2) let's not confuse "crony capitalism" with a free market; 3) don't waste our time vaguely alluring to some other form of organizing our economy and our society, without specifics plans.
My Dear Caitlin; Find me a capitalist business plan for leaving a forest untouched. Find me a capitalist business plan for keeping someone free of illness, for ensuring that someone with nothing gets what they need, for giving resources to a struggling parent. You can't. Capitalism can't do this. These are the most important things in the world, and no possible iteration of capitalism has any solutions for any of them whatsoever, apart from "Well hopefully rich people will feel very charitable and fix those problems." And how is that solution working out? It's a joke.
yes, what you call Capitalism can do all of those things and more, much, much more (The better names for that economic system is Free Market, Free Enterprise which I shall use furthermore).
The Free Market has given all of us the entire span of prosperity we enjoy today. In thirty years the Free Market has lifted ONE BILLION humans from poverty. That window of Free Enterprise is now closing due to the increasing tide of protectionism and overregulation.
Please show me the many Socialist/Communist successes throughout history. You show me yours, I’ll show you mine.
——————————Ross Faris
Ps. I have deep admiration for the spirit of holding government (mine and yours and all through the world)which you possess your fire, fury, and great intelligence and courage.
I have to say it what "Free Market" are you living under? Are you a believer in the "Trickle Down" bullshit theory? This free market worked for .05% of the people!
In a previous thread that commenter styled Smith and Friedman as religious saints and got mad when I called Adam Smith a midwit (as every single moral philosopher who has ever lived is, by definition).
You implied that I characterized Smith and Friedman as “religious saints”. I said no such thing. They were great men, though. You however, I think, are just a bug.
I am an American. This is NOT a free Market and has not been since 1917 or even earlier (since T.R.). This is, today, a crony-capitalist, fascist leaning welfare-warfare state. But it can be a Free Market again. The 30 odd years the world had a relatively open trade going had miraculous results. 900 million humans were able to escape abject poverty during that time. I mean REAL poverty. And since you brought up “trickle down “ I expect you’re a Reagan hater? The man who, through regulation slashing, catapulted America out of the economic mess of the previous decades and into a great resurgence of American enterprise, innovation and prosperity.
Are you talking about the guy who sold the US to Corporate America? That Reagan? I loved him when I was in the Navy as when he came into office he raised my pay by 2 whole pay grades! Now I know the whole story.
I agree with all your criticisms of Empire, but I don't understand why you continually equate corruption and cronyism with capitalism. There ARE capitalist solutions (from Murray Rothbard and others) for environmental protection, public welfare, etc.
The fact is that command-and-control solutions (e.g., environmental protection, poverty reduction) have done the exact OPPOSITE of what they ostensibly intended. It is a rhetorical fallacy to say that capitalism has failed when it worked very well until it was subverted by authoritarianism.
The EPA was continually gutted by every administration directly after it came into existence. If I gave you money to buy groceries and every time you got robbed of it going to the store and then I claimed you weren't doing your job you wouldn't work either. Trump put one of the EPA's worst enemies/offenders in charge of it! Who is there now I don't know as it's a lost cause.
I get what you're saying, but even when these bureaucracies function exactly as intended, the results are horrific. They are not set up or operated for the benefit of the average citizen. They serve the same masters as every other aspect of our power structure.
If, as Caitlin clearly does, you hate what the government does in terms of security and foreign policy, why in the world would you want to give the same people control over our food, medicine, water, and every other aspect of life?
I can agree with you on this but the real purpose of the organization is to stop pollution and those who do so are governed by the rules set forth which include fines and restitution. This very function in itself would have had a good effect if it had not been highjacked. For instance near where I live is a birm built to hold toxic waste for processing. Every year when we get a sufficient amount of rain the birm overflows into the Manatee River (that's right where the Manatees come to birth their babies!) When they get fined it's 50 thousand and back to business as usual. I have many more experiences just like this so I have seen the direct effect politicians have had on the EPA.
The government is the biggest polluter, not to mention disasters like the contamination of water at Camp Lejeune, which the govt covered up and gaslit the victim's about for DECADES.
It seems to me that EPA's mandate under the neoliberal order is to value pollution and impose a price on it, not necessarily in proportion to the degradation of the ecosystem because Lolberty is sacred and so are permi$$ion $lip$.
The Biden Regime, as well as today's democrat party, is bought and paid for by the Military Industrial Complex. The MIC may not want an actual shooting war with China, but just wants to stir up enough trouble so that Taiwan, Japan, and South Korea (among others) will be forced to buy ever more of its Weapons of Mass Destruction. That's what Nancy Pelosi's Excellent Adventure to Taiwan was all about.
I would comment more often Caitlin however it would be the same response. How on earth do you keep organising my current thoughts and manage to write them in such an eloquent fashion?
I read everything that Caitlin writes and I often think I should comment on her articles but then again, what else can I say? Just like Kim "How on earth does Caitlin keep organizing my current thoughts and manage to write them in such an eloquent fashion?"
I only have a couple of things to add:
Thank you so much Caitlin for all you do. Please never stop, we need you, the world needs you.
yes!
Everything shitlibs say is externalized child abuse.
I always wonder if the shitlibs child abuse is real or imagined ,,sorta like the McMartin case.. but the flip side is the conservative mindset of might makes right is abusive but now that the shitlib is a neocon light and they all join in the social construct created by the psychopaths who run the information superhighways and the Hollywood brain stem washing machine that most of these fucking people have been poisoned with from birth.
Like you do with your tribe or gang like every other cult member.
You laugh because you sucked up all the MSM koolaid you could drink and are punch drunk on it.. And being you are too far an intellectual coward to look past your brain stem washing so you cant see it.. Laugh all you want..ill have the last one...
"Find me a capitalist business plan for keeping someone free of illness." As so incisively discussed by Dr. Kheriaty in "The New Abnormal", technocratic Capitalist health care -- as distinguished from the Hippocratic variety is actually quite invested in declaring us ill unless we can prove otherwise; as illustrated of course by vaccine mandates. A genuine Hippocratic physician understands and appreciates that, in the great majority of cases, the human body is equipped by Nature with the integrated computational complexity necessary to self-sustain wellness, such that one cooperates with that potency and above all does no harm. But to the encroaching technocratic trans-humanist, the business plan is very much to assume illness and download "health", such as in the form of mRNA or other nucleic acid modules. And Capitalists like Bill Gates have shown the way to its profitability.
I am no fan of Gates but he is a capitalist (and a monopolist) but real criminals are the people in the public service, such as Fauci, that have allowed the capitalists into the public service. Capitalism has its place but it has no place inside the public service, Fauci etal. have abused the trust placed in them.
That's the problem. Capitalism is a process of digestion. It won't stay in "its place" until it is dead. Great American novelist John Steinbeck provides some color:
"And the owner men explained the workings and the thinkings of the monster that was stronger than they were. A man can hold land if he can just eat and pay taxes; he can do that.
"Yes, he can do that until his crops fail one day and he has to borrow money from the bank. But—you see, a bank or a company can’t do that, because those creatures don’t breathe air, don’t eat side-meat. They breathe profits; they eat the interest on money. If they don’t get it, they die the way you die without air, without side-meat. It is a sad thing, but it is so. It is just so."
I read that a few times to glean some meaning out of it but cant .. Humans are narcissistic piles of shit most days so my theory holds true the cancer will kill the host.. without all the jargon its just the fucking math.
Governments of the entire western allies nations are now wholly captured by the capitalist dynasty family financial mafias. No one is allowed through the loby of federal and local employee entrances of government buildings without being vetted as a full fledged hit man for the cartel..
Don't forget to sign and date your tax checks under the threats of state violence if you don't fully comply then to go wave a flag at fireworks and pretend you are free.
Republics always end like this. In the end the people revolt and start again, normally with another republic, hopefully this time it is with something like direct democracy. At least then, the corrupt representatives are done away with.
What you do about the control of the media and propaganda (by oligarchs rather than gov't), I don't know.
Take a portion of income generated based on how well people are.
Thoughtful. I have not fleshed this out, so let me brainstorm. I think the solutions to most problems can be met more effectively with systems that reward activities that build community wealth, including those that broaden family wealth and also individual wealth. A commitment and enforcement process towards moral development and true meritocracy would allow quality to flourish, enabling the people who are best at things to build more. Government communitarian models like socialism tend to be just as corrupt as capitalism. I think that taking the profit motive out of essential services is a no brainer. But what you are really getting at is the need for a moral structure be built that makes it almost impossible for sociopaths to wreak havoc. The real issue with the West is that its moral development was stillborn by the development of mechanized industry. What most people on the left and right, so to speak, are clamoring for, is a moral civilization. The mechanisms envisioned are vastly different, but the core need is recognized by both, when you cancel out the sociopath factors on both sides of the equation.
Nah, this is just liberal mythology. The notion that value systems can be successfully modified by placing a whatabout across them is a debunked religious ideal. Moral perfectionists are vain control freaks better purged from societies than listened to. Robert Kaz died this year; let him and his whiny middle-class feelings rest.
I never said anything about perfctionism. Perfectionism is incredibly dangerous. I talked about a society with a moral code of civilized behavior. Just having laws is not enough.
The idea that we can "improve" others morally is called moral perfectionism. Particularly, there is a Christian version and a Liberal version. Wikipedia has articles on all three for your perusal.
No mention of improvement. Moral code as a positive system is already in use for “woke” ideology, however, it is just a costume that selfish conformists use as camouflage, and unskeptical people adhere to as a safety measure.
Puritanism is exactly what we have now and exactly what you're calling for and exactly what I'm categorically rejecting as not only a 500-year-proven failure for everyone but moral busybodies, but as an authoritarian LARP "but with typical American extravagance, they have two of them".
ETA: Ultimately, with a moral maximalist approach, you are either going to generate a better, slicker sociopath, or your society is going to devote so much time and effort to social reproduction that you'll have no time or ability for play. Rules ain't free.
Yes, this is good brainstorming. After the win of the Federalists in the Civil War and the loss by the Antifederalists, unrestrained industrialization, the rise of the monied interests (Robber Barons) took over and continued at rapid speed. I don’t believe any particular economic system is the issue here. It goes much deeper and has become systemic. We select for weakness. Weakness in our populations who then choose weak leaders.
So you think the people want what you want?
If they get what you think they want what then? No one is an island.
Right now people could choose privacy, space and free time in the US. Financial security ... security does not exist ... and we are back to money again.
The guy cxk is your typical boot licker that wants his boots on anyone he can force benith him..proven time and time with his duplicity and disingenuous behavior patterns.
To me, CXK sounds like a veteran political operative who calculates their every word for manipulative effect. Or it's a language model trained on the exudates of DNC strategists like James Carville or Ruy Teixeira. I don't yet favor one theory over the other.
Middle-class projection. Irrelevant social norming.
Homo suicidian has one major task to complete, based on all objective evidence: Scarf up more Gold Bars on the Global Titanic, before it's too late!
I suspect that's why I feel like a different species, and pleased to hear from others who feel the same, especially those with brighter visions.
Homo suicidian...ha I like that...sadly too true.
The best thing the U.S. government can do to help the protesters in China is to stay out of it.
The western governments are the ones behind it.
That's a near certainty
Sadly far too many easily and seemngly willngly fall for it..but propaganda has a two fold effect..fool fools and give moral and intellectual cowards all the excuses they seek.
lol Love the headline.
Yeah, China should quit that. Why do countries keep accommodating US imperialism by insisting on burying US resources under their soil? Just asking for the rather unpleasant phenomenon the US refers to as "democratization".
Everything the West says about China and Russia and every other country that they have not been able to infiltrate subvert and control is the lie.,, Odd no one can notice that pattern from swollwing so much U.S. Hollywood created bovine excrement.
So now it's now the Philippines, eh? After 30 years, the US wants another base to frighten the locals, spread some venereal diseases, dish out some dollars for the easy ladies, lots of financial handouts for the politicians and make yet another S E Asian country a target for someone in the future. Quite a ways from the West Coast of the USA so the American people won't be fussed one bit about a base in the Philippines. The Philippines? Where the hell are they?
The American people are safe. Oh for another Cuban Missile Crisis just to equal it out a little. No JFK around these days though, (the CIA gangsters got rid of that decent impediment to their long range plans) so it would likely end badly in 2022 with the feeble Biden in the Neocon hotseat, with orders coming daily from Tel Aviv via Blinken, Nuland and their Washington stooges in both houses of government.
"We, the Jewish people, control America, and the Americans know it." Ariel Sharon, in October 3, 2001. Yes, that long ago but better put as far back as 1967 at the time of the Israeli attack on the USS Liberty. US sailors killed by Israelis in unmarked aircraft, all forgiven and pardoned by the Israeli-captive US President Johnson who, at the time of the cowardly attack, called back US fighter aircraft from protecting a US vessel. Old enough to remember that disgrace?
Israel has never looked back since that date.
Add the Philippines to the peaceful little Australian continent, just blessed with a B-52 Nuclear Armed bomber base in Northern Australia, approved by a new left wing government (the last chance so the people thought for giving the USA and its warmongering the cold shoulder)....but no. More of the same grovelling, bag-carrying, puppet behaviour, compliant foreign policy decisions, as we have see there since WWII.
Just another US controlled base as a target for someone in the future. Who really gives a damn in Washington as is also the case with the other 800 plus bases in strategic locations, all over the globe.
A long way from mainland America. Now that's the objective, fellow readers.
Ah but if you point out the power of the tribe to shut you up the tribe will use fakes outrage and its overwhelming power to shut you up.. You will have the scarlet letter A pinned to your lapel.. And every social media company will ban you from the public commons.
"Capitalism elevates sociopaths, because profit-seeking competition-based systems reward those who are willing to do whatever it takes to get ahead. That's why we are ruled by sociopaths, and it's why looking to "philanthropy" as a solution to our problems is a ridiculous joke."
This explains our screwed-up world in two easily understood sentences. I wish I could get more people to listen to this sentiment, but they keep making excuses that somehow the sociopaths will figure things out and help us all out...eventually. That eventuality is never coming unless we get rid of capitalism and sociopaths, folks!
One point: you say people can't imagine how far reality is from what they're propagandized to believe, BECAUSE it's so far. But it's also true that modern people's imaginative faculties have atrophied from lack of use, because they don't read or listen to oral fiction--they watch screens where the fantasies of other people are projected with full detail. This inability to imagine is a key part of our problems because people can't imagine a better future, which would have to be radically different from the present. They can imagine a dystopia, because that has been presented in so many movies. But a better, post-capitalist, cooperative, ecologically responsible, egalitarian future? Not so much.
The late Glen Ford was a committed journalist who saw the emancipation of the indentured American as the key to ending systemic racism. He reasoned that black Americans were/are the mercury in the thermometer, and the conduct of the American State beyond its borders is the tip of the spear. Racism will only be addressed when the American Empire ceases to be. This relates directly to the current topic, the mounds of propaganda imploring all to hate Putin and fear Xi.
I recently read two journalist works on China. One is reportage on China’s policies and domestic problems:
https://www.counterpunch.org/2022/11/20/china-talks-marxism-but-still-walks-capitalism/
And the other is a Patrick Lawrence commentary remembering Zhou Enlai, and his 5 principles of of non-aligned statehood. It explains western propaganda without frontally addressing it:
https://consortiumnews.com/2022/11/28/patrick-lawrence-zhou-enlais-posthumous-triumph/?eType=EmailBlastContent&eId=d91d45f8-0d54-4fcd-af01-421f2d699e2a
Cait, if it were not for "capitalism", you would not have the means or the luxury of railing against on this newsletter. I presume you know this. And you vaguely refer to equality, but I presume you don't mean you would like to see all be equally destitute? I still don't see your plan for an alternative.
100%. Capitalism never gets credit for the wonders it’s created for humanity .
Socialism? Are these people serious?
Here is where the capitalist that command the information highway have convinced the proletariat of the virtues of their capitalist systems when in fact it was simply the industrial revolution science and creative builders who made the way NOT capitalist. Oh yeah they may have facilitated humans ability to create but the creativity NEVER came from capitalists but they sure keep telling you numpties that how it went down....in fact predatory capitalism has stalled human progress far more than its helped. its builders artists and creatives that make human progress not a bunch of sniveling greed fuckers that get in the way.. This is the same brain washed stupid argument you get about WAR creating great strides... NO you brain dead brain stem dwellers ..it was war motivated the artist scientist and builders out of necessity...same way going to the moon does or exploring. Agriculture created art..gave humans time to develop those things..WAR gives NO one time..it just explodes precious resources into the fucking dirt and you drones keep signing and dating the tax checks of you blood sweat and tears to the CULT of death you all fucking worship.
I am happy to hear criticisms of "capitalism" but 1) let's acknowledge the massive good; 2) let's not confuse "crony capitalism" with a free market; 3) don't waste our time vaguely alluring to some other form of organizing our economy and our society, without specifics plans.
Don't waste my time pretending that your property is entitled to be honored at my expense.
My Dear Caitlin; Find me a capitalist business plan for leaving a forest untouched. Find me a capitalist business plan for keeping someone free of illness, for ensuring that someone with nothing gets what they need, for giving resources to a struggling parent. You can't. Capitalism can't do this. These are the most important things in the world, and no possible iteration of capitalism has any solutions for any of them whatsoever, apart from "Well hopefully rich people will feel very charitable and fix those problems." And how is that solution working out? It's a joke.
yes, what you call Capitalism can do all of those things and more, much, much more (The better names for that economic system is Free Market, Free Enterprise which I shall use furthermore).
The Free Market has given all of us the entire span of prosperity we enjoy today. In thirty years the Free Market has lifted ONE BILLION humans from poverty. That window of Free Enterprise is now closing due to the increasing tide of protectionism and overregulation.
Please show me the many Socialist/Communist successes throughout history. You show me yours, I’ll show you mine.
——————————Ross Faris
Ps. I have deep admiration for the spirit of holding government (mine and yours and all through the world)which you possess your fire, fury, and great intelligence and courage.
I have to say it what "Free Market" are you living under? Are you a believer in the "Trickle Down" bullshit theory? This free market worked for .05% of the people!
In a previous thread that commenter styled Smith and Friedman as religious saints and got mad when I called Adam Smith a midwit (as every single moral philosopher who has ever lived is, by definition).
You implied that I characterized Smith and Friedman as “religious saints”. I said no such thing. They were great men, though. You however, I think, are just a bug.
And……if Smith and Friedman are “midwits”, then you and I, and Caitlin, are halfwits. Or even nitwits.
I am an American. This is NOT a free Market and has not been since 1917 or even earlier (since T.R.). This is, today, a crony-capitalist, fascist leaning welfare-warfare state. But it can be a Free Market again. The 30 odd years the world had a relatively open trade going had miraculous results. 900 million humans were able to escape abject poverty during that time. I mean REAL poverty. And since you brought up “trickle down “ I expect you’re a Reagan hater? The man who, through regulation slashing, catapulted America out of the economic mess of the previous decades and into a great resurgence of American enterprise, innovation and prosperity.
———————-Ross Faris
Your idpol is irrelevant. Even more irrelevant than your childish revanche myth or your LARPy idealistic bullshit.
Are you talking about the guy who sold the US to Corporate America? That Reagan? I loved him when I was in the Navy as when he came into office he raised my pay by 2 whole pay grades! Now I know the whole story.
Ross - you can always tell a real leftist because they hate America first and foremost.
They don’t want a dismantling of our supposed capitalist system they want America destroyed.
That’s why I’m a right wing populist because I love America but despise our government.
With that said as an Austrian at heart I think Friedman is overrated
I agree with all your criticisms of Empire, but I don't understand why you continually equate corruption and cronyism with capitalism. There ARE capitalist solutions (from Murray Rothbard and others) for environmental protection, public welfare, etc.
The fact is that command-and-control solutions (e.g., environmental protection, poverty reduction) have done the exact OPPOSITE of what they ostensibly intended. It is a rhetorical fallacy to say that capitalism has failed when it worked very well until it was subverted by authoritarianism.
The idea that everything is alienable will only ever lead to everything being alienated.
The EPA was continually gutted by every administration directly after it came into existence. If I gave you money to buy groceries and every time you got robbed of it going to the store and then I claimed you weren't doing your job you wouldn't work either. Trump put one of the EPA's worst enemies/offenders in charge of it! Who is there now I don't know as it's a lost cause.
I get what you're saying, but even when these bureaucracies function exactly as intended, the results are horrific. They are not set up or operated for the benefit of the average citizen. They serve the same masters as every other aspect of our power structure.
If, as Caitlin clearly does, you hate what the government does in terms of security and foreign policy, why in the world would you want to give the same people control over our food, medicine, water, and every other aspect of life?
100% Lex. I say the same to my right wing friends. The govt is evil …they tel me… except for the DOD, NASA, CIA etc.
That makes no sense.
The fun part is right wingers who so believe in vaccines… why? Because the CDC tells em.
Exactly. It's the SAME SOCIOPATHS in charge of different agencies.
I can agree with you on this but the real purpose of the organization is to stop pollution and those who do so are governed by the rules set forth which include fines and restitution. This very function in itself would have had a good effect if it had not been highjacked. For instance near where I live is a birm built to hold toxic waste for processing. Every year when we get a sufficient amount of rain the birm overflows into the Manatee River (that's right where the Manatees come to birth their babies!) When they get fined it's 50 thousand and back to business as usual. I have many more experiences just like this so I have seen the direct effect politicians have had on the EPA.
The government is the biggest polluter, not to mention disasters like the contamination of water at Camp Lejeune, which the govt covered up and gaslit the victim's about for DECADES.
It seems to me that EPA's mandate under the neoliberal order is to value pollution and impose a price on it, not necessarily in proportion to the degradation of the ecosystem because Lolberty is sacred and so are permi$$ion $lip$.
Joe and Hunter Biden have made a fortune off of China and the misery of their people. They want Americans to be as miserable as anyone on earth.
Their "anti-China" talk is just the words of controlled opposition. They are allies with China at best, and pawns at worst.
The Biden Regime, as well as today's democrat party, is bought and paid for by the Military Industrial Complex. The MIC may not want an actual shooting war with China, but just wants to stir up enough trouble so that Taiwan, Japan, and South Korea (among others) will be forced to buy ever more of its Weapons of Mass Destruction. That's what Nancy Pelosi's Excellent Adventure to Taiwan was all about.
Mike Tyson (in his prime) vs the drunken blowhard greedbag BSers. It’s not a fair fight but for their weaponry. Go Caitlin.