"It's hilarious that people still think the Democratic Party cares about winning elections. That's not its job, children. That's not why the Democratic Party exists. The Democratic Party exists to kill leftward progress in the world's most powerful nation. That's all it cares about doing."
Yet "leftists" continue to vote for Democrats. The Democratic Party needs to be completely and utterly destroyed and replaced by a party responsive to its base. No more super-delegates. No more propaganda against antiwar candidates.
In the 1854-55 Congressional elections, eight (count 'em) different political parties elected at least one House member. The GOP was the 5th largest delegation, with 13 members. Neither Democrats nor Whigs had an outright majority, so a No Nothing was elected Speaker of the House. People keep saying they want a 3rd choice, but few people ever vote for one.
I'll vote for any candidate who I feel best represents my interests. Isn't that the point? That rules out both major parties. I've voted third party for a while now, just waiting for that critical mass. Voting for a democrat or republican now would just be downright embarrassing.
I'll make an exception for an outstanding Republican, like Dr. Scott Jensen for Governor Minnesota. I also supported Tulsi Gabbard, but that was before she co-sponsored HR6666 (funding for track and trace) and endorsed "stand-off" military action. Her treatment by the Democratic establishment and their "fortifying" of the 2020 election were the final nails in the coffin they started carefully constructed by rigging the 2016 nomination against the sheepdog, and continued with all the Russiagate nonsense. Democrats are incapable of reform or even diverse opinion, so I will abstain if the Republican opponent is unworthy.
You are right that we must be persistent until a "critical mass" is reached.
You should try living up to your name. Jensen is yet one more republican lickspittle for Israel. I happen to agree with him regarding mandates, but he will turn around and support apartheid or ban me from supporting BDS. Just like the democrats, republicans appear to have no principles -- just conditions when it's convenient. Our problems are much bigger than simply opposing the democrats.
News to me. Are you saying he voted for the sanctions on BDS? Of course I would disagree with that position, which would be a violation of the 1st Amendment. The vote on that was quite a while ago. I looked for a record of it, but couldn't find a record of the vote. Even tried searching for it associated with a local Rep, generally a supporter of Israel, who made an impassioned speech against it. Do you remember when that vote took place?
I didn't mean to imply that he'd already voted to criminalize support for BDS; only that I could well see him doing so after I watched a video of him hitting all of Zionism's Greatest Hits: condemning HAMAS rockets; calling them a terrorist organization; when they launch rockets at Israel (which is ALWAYS for no reason, apparently) Israel has a -- all together now -- right to defend itself. And so on...
And I hope you caught the video of red, white & blue Trump claiming that Israel should rightfully have power over congress. A foreign country should have power over congress! Madness.
Until the republican party can really stand with the American people -- like they claim they love doing -- and not with foreign racist occupiers they remain outside my consideration to the equally noxious democrats.
I haven't seen the video of Jensen you refer to. The anti-BDS legislation was signed into law by Dayton in early March of 2017. Jensen was in the Senate at the time, but I searched the list of bills for which he was lead author or author (MN equivalent of co-sponsor) for BDS, Boycott and Israel. I found nothing with any of those words in the title. The vote was lopsided, something like 58-9 in the Senate. I agree a vote for that bill is despicable because it violates our rights, the First Amendment. I'll keep my ears open. We'll likely have 3rd party candidate on the ballot, so perhaps I'll go that route, but I weigh quite heavily that Jensen spoke out forthrightly on Covid from the beginning, which was NOT a popular position.
Trump violated my red line into evil three ways when he campaigned in 2016: 1) war is OK if you "take their oil," 2) it's OK to punish the otherwise innocent family members of a terrorist and 3) torture is OK under some circumstances, so I didn't vote for him in 2016. He consummated all three points at one point or another in his presidency, so I didn't vote for him 2020, either.
As a youth, I was fooled by "Exodus," but 1967 woke me up. I saw it as a war of Israeli aggression, and I became more and more anti-Zionist as Israeli settlements expanded and oppression of Palestinians intensified. I avoid supporting politicians who support Israel, but nominal support of Israel, even moving the embassy, does not in and of itself cross my line into evil. It's an undesirable position that must be weighed against issues that I consider more important, and currently the most important issues for me are censorship (1st Amendment) and being secure in our persons and effects (4th Amendment). It's even possible the Israelis will solve the problem themselves by killing off half their population while the vaxless Palestinians are fruitful and multiply. Karma!
Regarding Republicans in general, they're pretty bad on Israel, but exceptions are allowed, like Thomas Massie.
Did you notice Joe Biden's main communications posture upon taking the presidency? "Aw shucks" contrition. Why would a prez adopt a contrition posture at the outset? people (taking Trump's lead) call this "contrition", as "sleepy joe biden".
Joe is contrite, because he knows he ain't delivering a damn thing to his base, and he's contrite to the maga hats for "stealing their election". Heck, he even stole the DNC primary! He was running a solid 4th when Pelosi's boy Clyburne, put a stop to everything and called it for ..... sleepy joe.
Let's go Brandon! Pelosi too.
And what about our system: Trump started focussing "oppo" research on Biden WELL BEFORE DNC primaries even began, with all its' players! Trump KNEW the tag "sleepy" would apply! So rigged is the game. So rigged. Insiders (Like Trump) know even a year in advance.
Yes…. I will send an article to someone that reveals things they’d never hear on the evening news…. cognitive dissonance often freezes them from responding and delving into the implications, the layers and layers of implications. They just move on in their heads toward the safety of cognitive ease.
The times when they do react and briefly allow for the fact that things are that bad, if I sense they can handle it I’ll tell them that things are actually much much worse… but if their frame of reference for “worse” has been the election of an authoritarian buffoon then I realize I can’t force people to see clearly….
I have to remain in the state of presence so that I can continue to see clearly… and so that I can accept that greater devolution and dissolution and collapse will likely be required before greater openings for the growing consciousness can emerge…. and from this expanded consciousness, this presence, where I surrender to the movement of dissolution, I am also permitting life’s other movement to grow in me, the impulse to care and help and spread awareness.
What I tried to do with my Blue check family member was to try and point out all the things that were the same between the Biden and Trump administrations as opposed to whatever well-publicized and most superficial differences. Of course, this matters not when the main object comes down to matters of style.
"So what do we do? The only thing we can do in such a situation: work tirelessly to spread awareness. To spread awareness to other people, and to spread awareness within ourselves. To facilitate awakening, collectively and as an individual. It's the only thing that ever leads to healthy change."
I have been trying to do so, but without enough focus, without enough force. Your writing is inspiring me week after week to do better. Here's what is resulting: https://vimeo.com/mboezi/sunday-080221
Thank you sincerely, Caitlin. The Internet feels like yelling at the void sometimes, and I wanted to show you evidence of your impact.
It's kind of magical as an outsider watching democrats gain full power and seeing how they handle issues overwhelmingly popular, not only with their own base, but with independents and republicans as well. They either give them half-hearted lip service, quietly strip them away, or ignore them entirely. Then they and their media bobbleheads rewrite reality and act as if none of that just happened and chalk up their well-deserved losses to those same wildly popular policies. Rinse and repeat. It's all very remarkable watching well-behaved adult human beings act out these pantomimes and be taken seriously by millions of other adult human beings. Disgusting as well.
What to do? Thanksgiving is coming up. What better time to bring up the madness which surrounds us? And if it devolves into a romcom-worthy screaming match, at least you can hold your head high knowing that you spoiled everything for something worthwhile, and not the idiocy of the past like whether candidate A was wearing an appropriately pro-American lapel pin or the efficacy of White House blowjobs.
Besides a massive strike and ruining Thanksgiving I see no other way forward.
Yes, bring on a General Strike. That's pretty much the only thing – barring outright armed revolution – that will force the Powers to capitulate. Negotiation is clearly not working. As for Thanksgiving and other holiday events on the social calendar, that's a bit of a different proposition in scale and community connectivity. Have fun with it, though!
As we've seen over and over again, the system we have knows exactly how to deal with armed resistance. It's built for it. Those gun-toting dreamers are just that, as it's no longer muskets vs. muskets. Masses of unarmed citizens, on the other hand, including moms with strollers -- that, the state's storm troopers can't really deal with. Optics still matter.
Please start articulating a distinction between what I call sociopathic capitalism and free market economies. "Capitalism" is a Marxist moniker for a rigged and structured sociopathic free market. If not, people wind up getting mesmerized by the notions they have about socialism (which affected me for many decades, I will admit).
It turns out that the "socialism" they refer to is Scandinavian and the fact is that Scandinavian countries are NOT socialistic, They are free market economies with a moral, socialist inspired conscience.
Then we have the past year where all our wannabe socialists are dragged into the far left corner of neo Marxism, and don't even realize how out of control they have become. Nor how stupid or intellectually indolent.
So please keep raving on about the need for a morally responsible social/ economic / political system, and even a transcendental one, but please get the definitions and nomenclature right, because that's a major lapse in our cultural understanding of many of these issues
I find that so many labels have lost any usable meaning these days. Trump is either a Nazi or a populist and Biden is a Marxist. AOC is a progressive and the democrats are ultra-liberals. None of those have any real meaning as far as I'm concerned.
Regarding your economic observations, I would prefer a system where if you're smarter and more ambitious than I am, then you should be able to make more money, provided that everyone else has a decent social safety net first - decent healthcare, affordable college, livable wage. Maybe that's close to the Scandinavian model you mentioned, but it needs to fit on a bumper sticker and I don't know how to do that.
What seems to happen under our current system is the wealthy use their wealth to buy themselves governmental advantages that tilt the system in their favor. Some may argue that this isn't a feature of true capitalism, but I hear the same objections regarding defenders of true Marxism, whatever that may mean. Regardless, I'm more concerned with results and not in any system's dormitory blackboard perfection.
Remember Warren at the Primary "Debate" trying to punk Sanders in front of CNN's miraculously live, mysteriously well placed mic? Harris' BAD Biden or Tulsi's BAD Harris' (awakened by snippets of FACT?) Seemed lots LESS revalatory than DNC LLC's Super-Spreader Tuesday (murdering, lifelong, loyal Black Democrats to CRUSH M4A, GND, BLM, $15/hr, etc!)
What has struck me so is that there's basically no one on the planet that understands what they're doing, not a single person, and all the people that think they're being successful at controlling us or dominating us, they're completely and utterly clueless. Didn't get it, still don't, never will. In a sense I think the miracle is then necessarily there, beyond our own desires for control, but obviously it doesn't mean that there won't be huge amounts of suffering along the way.
"It's hilarious that people still think the Democratic Party cares about winning elections. That's not its job, children. That's not why the Democratic Party exists. The Democratic Party exists to kill leftward progress in the world's most powerful nation. That's all it cares about doing."
Yet "leftists" continue to vote for Democrats. The Democratic Party needs to be completely and utterly destroyed and replaced by a party responsive to its base. No more super-delegates. No more propaganda against antiwar candidates.
In the 1854-55 Congressional elections, eight (count 'em) different political parties elected at least one House member. The GOP was the 5th largest delegation, with 13 members. Neither Democrats nor Whigs had an outright majority, so a No Nothing was elected Speaker of the House. People keep saying they want a 3rd choice, but few people ever vote for one.
I'll vote for any candidate who I feel best represents my interests. Isn't that the point? That rules out both major parties. I've voted third party for a while now, just waiting for that critical mass. Voting for a democrat or republican now would just be downright embarrassing.
I'll make an exception for an outstanding Republican, like Dr. Scott Jensen for Governor Minnesota. I also supported Tulsi Gabbard, but that was before she co-sponsored HR6666 (funding for track and trace) and endorsed "stand-off" military action. Her treatment by the Democratic establishment and their "fortifying" of the 2020 election were the final nails in the coffin they started carefully constructed by rigging the 2016 nomination against the sheepdog, and continued with all the Russiagate nonsense. Democrats are incapable of reform or even diverse opinion, so I will abstain if the Republican opponent is unworthy.
You are right that we must be persistent until a "critical mass" is reached.
You should try living up to your name. Jensen is yet one more republican lickspittle for Israel. I happen to agree with him regarding mandates, but he will turn around and support apartheid or ban me from supporting BDS. Just like the democrats, republicans appear to have no principles -- just conditions when it's convenient. Our problems are much bigger than simply opposing the democrats.
News to me. Are you saying he voted for the sanctions on BDS? Of course I would disagree with that position, which would be a violation of the 1st Amendment. The vote on that was quite a while ago. I looked for a record of it, but couldn't find a record of the vote. Even tried searching for it associated with a local Rep, generally a supporter of Israel, who made an impassioned speech against it. Do you remember when that vote took place?
I didn't mean to imply that he'd already voted to criminalize support for BDS; only that I could well see him doing so after I watched a video of him hitting all of Zionism's Greatest Hits: condemning HAMAS rockets; calling them a terrorist organization; when they launch rockets at Israel (which is ALWAYS for no reason, apparently) Israel has a -- all together now -- right to defend itself. And so on...
And I hope you caught the video of red, white & blue Trump claiming that Israel should rightfully have power over congress. A foreign country should have power over congress! Madness.
Until the republican party can really stand with the American people -- like they claim they love doing -- and not with foreign racist occupiers they remain outside my consideration to the equally noxious democrats.
I haven't seen the video of Jensen you refer to. The anti-BDS legislation was signed into law by Dayton in early March of 2017. Jensen was in the Senate at the time, but I searched the list of bills for which he was lead author or author (MN equivalent of co-sponsor) for BDS, Boycott and Israel. I found nothing with any of those words in the title. The vote was lopsided, something like 58-9 in the Senate. I agree a vote for that bill is despicable because it violates our rights, the First Amendment. I'll keep my ears open. We'll likely have 3rd party candidate on the ballot, so perhaps I'll go that route, but I weigh quite heavily that Jensen spoke out forthrightly on Covid from the beginning, which was NOT a popular position.
Trump violated my red line into evil three ways when he campaigned in 2016: 1) war is OK if you "take their oil," 2) it's OK to punish the otherwise innocent family members of a terrorist and 3) torture is OK under some circumstances, so I didn't vote for him in 2016. He consummated all three points at one point or another in his presidency, so I didn't vote for him 2020, either.
As a youth, I was fooled by "Exodus," but 1967 woke me up. I saw it as a war of Israeli aggression, and I became more and more anti-Zionist as Israeli settlements expanded and oppression of Palestinians intensified. I avoid supporting politicians who support Israel, but nominal support of Israel, even moving the embassy, does not in and of itself cross my line into evil. It's an undesirable position that must be weighed against issues that I consider more important, and currently the most important issues for me are censorship (1st Amendment) and being secure in our persons and effects (4th Amendment). It's even possible the Israelis will solve the problem themselves by killing off half their population while the vaxless Palestinians are fruitful and multiply. Karma!
Regarding Republicans in general, they're pretty bad on Israel, but exceptions are allowed, like Thomas Massie.
To be fair, Team R does the same thing with SoCons.
Did you notice Joe Biden's main communications posture upon taking the presidency? "Aw shucks" contrition. Why would a prez adopt a contrition posture at the outset? people (taking Trump's lead) call this "contrition", as "sleepy joe biden".
Joe is contrite, because he knows he ain't delivering a damn thing to his base, and he's contrite to the maga hats for "stealing their election". Heck, he even stole the DNC primary! He was running a solid 4th when Pelosi's boy Clyburne, put a stop to everything and called it for ..... sleepy joe.
Let's go Brandon! Pelosi too.
And what about our system: Trump started focussing "oppo" research on Biden WELL BEFORE DNC primaries even began, with all its' players! Trump KNEW the tag "sleepy" would apply! So rigged is the game. So rigged. Insiders (Like Trump) know even a year in advance.
I think you're confusing contrite with senile.
Truly I think it's all an act. Very Reagan circa 1984...!
Yes: Pelosi should be met with the chant "Let's Go Nan-cy! Let's Go Nan-cy"
That is brilliant. It does fit: audience chanting F_U Nancy, covered as " let's go Nancy" I like it!
Yes…. I will send an article to someone that reveals things they’d never hear on the evening news…. cognitive dissonance often freezes them from responding and delving into the implications, the layers and layers of implications. They just move on in their heads toward the safety of cognitive ease.
The times when they do react and briefly allow for the fact that things are that bad, if I sense they can handle it I’ll tell them that things are actually much much worse… but if their frame of reference for “worse” has been the election of an authoritarian buffoon then I realize I can’t force people to see clearly….
I have to remain in the state of presence so that I can continue to see clearly… and so that I can accept that greater devolution and dissolution and collapse will likely be required before greater openings for the growing consciousness can emerge…. and from this expanded consciousness, this presence, where I surrender to the movement of dissolution, I am also permitting life’s other movement to grow in me, the impulse to care and help and spread awareness.
What I tried to do with my Blue check family member was to try and point out all the things that were the same between the Biden and Trump administrations as opposed to whatever well-publicized and most superficial differences. Of course, this matters not when the main object comes down to matters of style.
"So what do we do? The only thing we can do in such a situation: work tirelessly to spread awareness. To spread awareness to other people, and to spread awareness within ourselves. To facilitate awakening, collectively and as an individual. It's the only thing that ever leads to healthy change."
I have been trying to do so, but without enough focus, without enough force. Your writing is inspiring me week after week to do better. Here's what is resulting: https://vimeo.com/mboezi/sunday-080221
Thank you sincerely, Caitlin. The Internet feels like yelling at the void sometimes, and I wanted to show you evidence of your impact.
It's kind of magical as an outsider watching democrats gain full power and seeing how they handle issues overwhelmingly popular, not only with their own base, but with independents and republicans as well. They either give them half-hearted lip service, quietly strip them away, or ignore them entirely. Then they and their media bobbleheads rewrite reality and act as if none of that just happened and chalk up their well-deserved losses to those same wildly popular policies. Rinse and repeat. It's all very remarkable watching well-behaved adult human beings act out these pantomimes and be taken seriously by millions of other adult human beings. Disgusting as well.
What to do? Thanksgiving is coming up. What better time to bring up the madness which surrounds us? And if it devolves into a romcom-worthy screaming match, at least you can hold your head high knowing that you spoiled everything for something worthwhile, and not the idiocy of the past like whether candidate A was wearing an appropriately pro-American lapel pin or the efficacy of White House blowjobs.
Besides a massive strike and ruining Thanksgiving I see no other way forward.
Yes, bring on a General Strike. That's pretty much the only thing – barring outright armed revolution – that will force the Powers to capitulate. Negotiation is clearly not working. As for Thanksgiving and other holiday events on the social calendar, that's a bit of a different proposition in scale and community connectivity. Have fun with it, though!
As we've seen over and over again, the system we have knows exactly how to deal with armed resistance. It's built for it. Those gun-toting dreamers are just that, as it's no longer muskets vs. muskets. Masses of unarmed citizens, on the other hand, including moms with strollers -- that, the state's storm troopers can't really deal with. Optics still matter.
Please start articulating a distinction between what I call sociopathic capitalism and free market economies. "Capitalism" is a Marxist moniker for a rigged and structured sociopathic free market. If not, people wind up getting mesmerized by the notions they have about socialism (which affected me for many decades, I will admit).
It turns out that the "socialism" they refer to is Scandinavian and the fact is that Scandinavian countries are NOT socialistic, They are free market economies with a moral, socialist inspired conscience.
Then we have the past year where all our wannabe socialists are dragged into the far left corner of neo Marxism, and don't even realize how out of control they have become. Nor how stupid or intellectually indolent.
So please keep raving on about the need for a morally responsible social/ economic / political system, and even a transcendental one, but please get the definitions and nomenclature right, because that's a major lapse in our cultural understanding of many of these issues
I find that so many labels have lost any usable meaning these days. Trump is either a Nazi or a populist and Biden is a Marxist. AOC is a progressive and the democrats are ultra-liberals. None of those have any real meaning as far as I'm concerned.
Regarding your economic observations, I would prefer a system where if you're smarter and more ambitious than I am, then you should be able to make more money, provided that everyone else has a decent social safety net first - decent healthcare, affordable college, livable wage. Maybe that's close to the Scandinavian model you mentioned, but it needs to fit on a bumper sticker and I don't know how to do that.
What seems to happen under our current system is the wealthy use their wealth to buy themselves governmental advantages that tilt the system in their favor. Some may argue that this isn't a feature of true capitalism, but I hear the same objections regarding defenders of true Marxism, whatever that may mean. Regardless, I'm more concerned with results and not in any system's dormitory blackboard perfection.
Remember Warren at the Primary "Debate" trying to punk Sanders in front of CNN's miraculously live, mysteriously well placed mic? Harris' BAD Biden or Tulsi's BAD Harris' (awakened by snippets of FACT?) Seemed lots LESS revalatory than DNC LLC's Super-Spreader Tuesday (murdering, lifelong, loyal Black Democrats to CRUSH M4A, GND, BLM, $15/hr, etc!)
https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2021/11/michael-hudson-is-this-the-end-of-the-unreformable-democratic-party.html
What has struck me so is that there's basically no one on the planet that understands what they're doing, not a single person, and all the people that think they're being successful at controlling us or dominating us, they're completely and utterly clueless. Didn't get it, still don't, never will. In a sense I think the miracle is then necessarily there, beyond our own desires for control, but obviously it doesn't mean that there won't be huge amounts of suffering along the way.
You chill Caitlin, enjoy the ride.
In defense of Dr. Fauci
Listen on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/lex-fridman-podcast/id1434243584?i=1000540919852
#238 – Francis Collins: National Institutes of Health (NIH)
Lex Fridman Podcast
Vaccine is More Dangerous than COVID-19 https://www.globalresearch.ca/video-the-vaccine-is-more-dangerous-than-covid-19-dr-peter-mccullough/5759522?utm_source=pocket_mylist
Vaccine is More Dangerous than COVID-19 https://www.globalresearch.ca/video-the-vaccine-is-more-dangerous-than-covid-19-dr-peter-mccullough/5759522?utm_source=pocket_mylist