American politics is so insular and narrow, that republicans frame democrats -- yes, democrats -- as Socialists, and nobody but actual Socialists seem to see the insanity of it.
Not to be outdone, democrats frame a careerist corporate Zionist child-sniffer as a Progressive, and the corporate media chirps merrily along.
I don't know about you, but leaving the planet is gaining a certain appeal.
The current “war against right-wing extremists" is in fact—and always has been—a war against the Left, initiated by right-wing extremist J. Edgar Hoover and his successors in the F.B.I. and the national security state against civil rights activists, anti-war protesters, unions, Occupy Wall Street, Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela, Chelsea Manning, Edward Snowden, Julian Assange, et al, characterizing them as a national security threat to the "law-abiding silent majority". This is why Noam Chomsky, Chris Hedges, Ralph Nader, Aaron Mate, Max Blumenthal, et al, are banned from the New York Times, Washington Post, and the corporate broadcast news media. The second most dangerous thing on earth to US “foreign policy” is US “domestic policy”.
The problem with this hopeless hope is its harking back to Babington Macaulay's belief in the 'natural tendency of the human intellect to truth and of the natural tendency of society to improvement'. His ideas came from what he saw as the fruit of the enlightenment (from the French Revolution to London's new sanitation and gas lit streets etc..) But this hopeful belief in a better future was dashed catastrophically in 1914 and the catastrophe continues...two world wars of unimaginable destruction, the Terror, Mao's hideous Great Leap Forward and the ensuing famine, the Holocaust, Vietnam, The Killing fields of Cambodia, constant war etc, etc. Indelible black marks on the human psyche that we seem now destined to repeat as we stumble headlong to an environmental catastrophe only possible in our time and which we have little inclination of averting. The Left...coming together and righting the world through happy thoughts and wishful thinking seems to me faintly ridiculous.
Perhaps you would like to indicate where, and with what ideas the world is to escape from the dire bloody state it is in. Otherwise you are just a slightly more articulate version of the old cartoon favourite of man with sandwich board with "We're all doomed" written on it.
I suppose mentioning that I belief in God and his Kingdom would, for many, put me in the dismiss-able idiot camp. So I avoided any temptation to express this I was just pointing out the truth. That many academics seem to fixate/hark back to a theory/ideology that has fallen flat on its face since 1914.
The continuing traumas of which I can not see us emerging from any time soon and to believe that we will somehow as a newly enlightened humankind and against all odds is to ignore the facts. Unpleasant though they are, facts are facts. We are doomed, but doomed to repeat our recent history because we are insane as Einstein defined insanity. Repeating the same things and expecting a different outcome. Like the alcoholic never admitting we are the problem and submitting to a radical change. A spiritual change, the revolution of the heart that Christ spoke of. It is not far from any of us but submitting to and acknowledging this invariably is.
Of course the Bible aphorism 'It does not belong to man to direct his step' and 'Man has dominated man to his injury' (Jer 10:23, Eccl 8:9) indicate the possibility of needing to submit to a higher power. If you do not believe this, now maybe the time to explore an alternative to the hubristic atheistic theorising that has got us to the place we are in now.
My only real issue is this piece was all over the place. Are these supposed to be real articles? Because this one started out about what the headline said it was about and then went a bunch of other places.
The legitimate rights on social media of protecting anonymity and expressing strong emotions are also some of the most effective ways to keep people from developing clarity and consensus.
Thousands are online for the specific purpose of disrupting discourse and solidarity and normalize speech which is triggering and keeps us dominated by our survival brain centers. (Thousands more do it for entertainment and expressing unconscious pain.)
(How easy it is for covert hierarchies inside us and outside in the world to maintain control: “I have a right to privacy and don’t tone police me!!“)
(The ego and its unconscious emotional pain use the same coversion and victim responses to maintain control of our sense of self.)
Given how the top of the hierarchy has stripped away most anonymity from the population it dominates and that younger generations are comfortable with having their entire lives online it would appear that visual interaction is the future which can limit disruption tactics ( growing consciousness is a combining/joining phenomenon as It comes to recognize ItSelf and gathers all its pieces together).
‘Deep fake’ personas will be seen as such through their inability to express authentic gentleness, sweetness and presence. Thus social media transparency will also boost self awareness.
I like what you write, Caitlin. A couple years ago, I thought you were too "angry." Ha! The joke was on me. But the truth is that as soon as Trump won - well, then I had my first of many panic attacks. So, I subscribe to Heather Cox Richardson (I like the context of history she adds) and Greg Olear on Substack. But I'm poor (truly, after going through an 11-year illness and then liver transplant - that's how the American medical system, even with disability, works) so there are only so many newsletters i can pay for. I'll be looking up your website. I completely agree that we need to learn how to be here now. If we don't, we are completely screwed. We have a lot at risk. I read books about Antarctica, I watched the video of that condo on the tiny island with all of Miami Beach - and still wondering why there has been no mention that the building is only 2 tiny blocks from the Atlantic Ocean, climate, nothing. Anyway, I read Thich Nhat Hanh daily and working on my Presence with myself.
Looks to me like CIA created the drug addled counter culture using messenger like Tim Leary. But do not listen to me, I only grew up in this nut house.
Caitlyn says, "I personally ignore the question altogether and just elevate people when they're saying something useful and don't elevate people when they're not." That's why I supported Trump when he said he wanted to withdraw from Syria and opposed him when he didn't follow through, and appointed John Bolton to be National Security Advisor.
"Intelligence sources tell me there's a strong probability of interference in the next election by billionaires who control all the media." Really? Who'da thunk it!
Caitlin, if you don't understand the difference between capitalism and corporatism, you need to do some reading, then take a vacation to think about it. There's a difference between the sole proprietor of a small corner store (who takes full personal responsibility for his tortes) and corporate shareholders (who risk only their initial investment) and corporate executives (who risk nothing at all).
So what stops that small corner store owner from opening another one and another one and another, and then incorporating, and then spreading even more and 4 decades later they're the Waltons and they're working with the fbi to spy on their workers who are trying to organize. Capitalism is exactly what you see. It operates exactly as you see it operating. Corporatism is just the way in which capitalists have set this system up to insulate themselves from the crimes of their companies. Shareholding is simply a way to prevent owners from liability. Maybe you should do some reading. I can suggest some.
Your comment is one huge straw man. As soon as he incorporates, he's no longer a sole proprietor taking personal responsibility for the enterprise's actions. He's now a corporate executive and shareholder and no longer takes personal responsibility for the enterprise's (now a corporation) actions. You attribute to me the exact opposite of what I argued. It's as though I said A is different from B, and you say, "But if A becomes B, then they're the same." My argument is that A should not be allowed to become B.
You have taught me nothing about joint stock corporations or the privilege of limited liability, which is at the root of our problems. Maybe you should study elementary logic and discourse.
And I'm not commenting to "teach you" anything. I'm simply correcting the record should any other dolt stumble upon this exchange and for a second want to agree with you. If you wanna know how to stop capitalism works and let go of this fantasy about "small mom and pop shops" read some fucking Marx
It's not a straw man because this is how capitalism works. What you're talking about is fantasy. My question is WHAT IS THERE TO STOP that scenario from happening? You ignored that question because it's inconvenient to your fantasy. There's nothing to stop them, because the entire point of capitalism is to acquire as much capital as possible, and true capitalists won't stop at one store they gotta monopolize the industry. They all start out small unless they're born into old money. Get a little 100k loan from the parentals who made their fortunes in some shitty way and flip it into some mega corp sucking the life blood out of every worker who works for them. All for some fucking dolt on the internet to cry "but this isn't real capitalism!" Lol
Obviously in the CURRENT SYSTEM, there's nothing to stop incorporation. My argument is that it never should have been allowed. It should be prohibited by the basic law. It's GOVERNMENT that grants corporate charters, just as the Marxist, communist government of the USSR allowed Stalin to collectivize agriculture under STATE control and kill and starve many Soviet citizens by famine and unjust violence. In your favored system, WHAT IS THERE TO STOP Stalinist atrocities? Both extremes have failed in the past and will continue to fail wherever they're allowed to gain a foothold.
Don't wrap your flawed arguments in vitriol, hate and arrogance. It's very ugly.
True, but that isn't what made him evil, that was just the excuse partisan Democrats could use to generate Trump Derangement Syndrome. What made him evil was 1) his support for torture, 2) his belief that war is OK if you "take the oil" and 3) it's OK to punish the innocent family of a terrorist. He consummated all thee of those positions, but for the Deranged to criticize him for attempting to withdraw from Syria or Afghanistan is also evil.
Indeed escape into you, but who are you ?! when you obey others, you don’t obey to oneself it’s a saying ; but we obey each day to different, and we like to call them well just a treat or addiction or I just want it or I deserve it or she/him had one and now I want too or tv comercial made me do it or ..., or ......, or ..... etc excuses when we should be true to our self cause where is no Trust there is no game to play , and it means the game is rigged ; This Game is called Life, so who better to play than you , but “ Who are you ? Who am I ? Who are those?
So Who do I want to become ?
Thank you for letting me express and as always Great Articles !
Be Here Now. Of course, it's the only place Life happens. And how we think and feel, NOW, creates our experience. Transformation is already occurring, and the controllers behind the corporations are trying to stop it.
One point of contention with Caitlin. I find capitalism is a fine system to barter or buy goods and services. You buy your shoes from the shoemaker who offers the best value and style. Once corporations infested the system, which has been ongoing for a thousand years, you get the great dysfunctionality we have today.
Globalism is about fucking stupid. Shipping crap all over the world, with a huge environmental footprint, because you can abuse workers a bit more in this country or that. Globalism didn't spring naturally from capitalism, but it arose as a preferred system of commerce by corporations. They must be banned...
You poor sad little man. It is a miracle that Cuba has survived as an independent nation, (there aren't too many of those in the Americas) it has also managed to develop, at a slower pace than would naturally occur thanks to the monster on its doorstep, but develop it has.
American politics is so insular and narrow, that republicans frame democrats -- yes, democrats -- as Socialists, and nobody but actual Socialists seem to see the insanity of it.
Not to be outdone, democrats frame a careerist corporate Zionist child-sniffer as a Progressive, and the corporate media chirps merrily along.
I don't know about you, but leaving the planet is gaining a certain appeal.
The current “war against right-wing extremists" is in fact—and always has been—a war against the Left, initiated by right-wing extremist J. Edgar Hoover and his successors in the F.B.I. and the national security state against civil rights activists, anti-war protesters, unions, Occupy Wall Street, Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela, Chelsea Manning, Edward Snowden, Julian Assange, et al, characterizing them as a national security threat to the "law-abiding silent majority". This is why Noam Chomsky, Chris Hedges, Ralph Nader, Aaron Mate, Max Blumenthal, et al, are banned from the New York Times, Washington Post, and the corporate broadcast news media. The second most dangerous thing on earth to US “foreign policy” is US “domestic policy”.
Love how you ended this one, thank you for providing some measure of hope in a very dystopian world. <3 Happy Solstice!
The problem with this hopeless hope is its harking back to Babington Macaulay's belief in the 'natural tendency of the human intellect to truth and of the natural tendency of society to improvement'. His ideas came from what he saw as the fruit of the enlightenment (from the French Revolution to London's new sanitation and gas lit streets etc..) But this hopeful belief in a better future was dashed catastrophically in 1914 and the catastrophe continues...two world wars of unimaginable destruction, the Terror, Mao's hideous Great Leap Forward and the ensuing famine, the Holocaust, Vietnam, The Killing fields of Cambodia, constant war etc, etc. Indelible black marks on the human psyche that we seem now destined to repeat as we stumble headlong to an environmental catastrophe only possible in our time and which we have little inclination of averting. The Left...coming together and righting the world through happy thoughts and wishful thinking seems to me faintly ridiculous.
Perhaps you would like to indicate where, and with what ideas the world is to escape from the dire bloody state it is in. Otherwise you are just a slightly more articulate version of the old cartoon favourite of man with sandwich board with "We're all doomed" written on it.
I suppose mentioning that I belief in God and his Kingdom would, for many, put me in the dismiss-able idiot camp. So I avoided any temptation to express this I was just pointing out the truth. That many academics seem to fixate/hark back to a theory/ideology that has fallen flat on its face since 1914.
The continuing traumas of which I can not see us emerging from any time soon and to believe that we will somehow as a newly enlightened humankind and against all odds is to ignore the facts. Unpleasant though they are, facts are facts. We are doomed, but doomed to repeat our recent history because we are insane as Einstein defined insanity. Repeating the same things and expecting a different outcome. Like the alcoholic never admitting we are the problem and submitting to a radical change. A spiritual change, the revolution of the heart that Christ spoke of. It is not far from any of us but submitting to and acknowledging this invariably is.
Of course the Bible aphorism 'It does not belong to man to direct his step' and 'Man has dominated man to his injury' (Jer 10:23, Eccl 8:9) indicate the possibility of needing to submit to a higher power. If you do not believe this, now maybe the time to explore an alternative to the hubristic atheistic theorising that has got us to the place we are in now.
My only real issue is this piece was all over the place. Are these supposed to be real articles? Because this one started out about what the headline said it was about and then went a bunch of other places.
My "Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix" pieces are all just collections of thoughts.
I liked the content and the all-over-ness of it. That's how I think. Straight-ahead narrative can be really boring!
The legitimate rights on social media of protecting anonymity and expressing strong emotions are also some of the most effective ways to keep people from developing clarity and consensus.
Thousands are online for the specific purpose of disrupting discourse and solidarity and normalize speech which is triggering and keeps us dominated by our survival brain centers. (Thousands more do it for entertainment and expressing unconscious pain.)
(How easy it is for covert hierarchies inside us and outside in the world to maintain control: “I have a right to privacy and don’t tone police me!!“)
(The ego and its unconscious emotional pain use the same coversion and victim responses to maintain control of our sense of self.)
Given how the top of the hierarchy has stripped away most anonymity from the population it dominates and that younger generations are comfortable with having their entire lives online it would appear that visual interaction is the future which can limit disruption tactics ( growing consciousness is a combining/joining phenomenon as It comes to recognize ItSelf and gathers all its pieces together).
‘Deep fake’ personas will be seen as such through their inability to express authentic gentleness, sweetness and presence. Thus social media transparency will also boost self awareness.
Transparency within and throughout.
I like what you write, Caitlin. A couple years ago, I thought you were too "angry." Ha! The joke was on me. But the truth is that as soon as Trump won - well, then I had my first of many panic attacks. So, I subscribe to Heather Cox Richardson (I like the context of history she adds) and Greg Olear on Substack. But I'm poor (truly, after going through an 11-year illness and then liver transplant - that's how the American medical system, even with disability, works) so there are only so many newsletters i can pay for. I'll be looking up your website. I completely agree that we need to learn how to be here now. If we don't, we are completely screwed. We have a lot at risk. I read books about Antarctica, I watched the video of that condo on the tiny island with all of Miami Beach - and still wondering why there has been no mention that the building is only 2 tiny blocks from the Atlantic Ocean, climate, nothing. Anyway, I read Thich Nhat Hanh daily and working on my Presence with myself.
Yep. Not a damn thin changed since J Edgar was murdering Black Panthers.... and MLK.
Really great documentary. THE CENTURY OF THE SELF. Free on youtube.
Looks to me like CIA created the drug addled counter culture using messenger like Tim Leary. But do not listen to me, I only grew up in this nut house.
I think most intelligent people know this is happening.
Caitlyn says, "I personally ignore the question altogether and just elevate people when they're saying something useful and don't elevate people when they're not." That's why I supported Trump when he said he wanted to withdraw from Syria and opposed him when he didn't follow through, and appointed John Bolton to be National Security Advisor.
"Intelligence sources tell me there's a strong probability of interference in the next election by billionaires who control all the media." Really? Who'da thunk it!
Caitlin, if you don't understand the difference between capitalism and corporatism, you need to do some reading, then take a vacation to think about it. There's a difference between the sole proprietor of a small corner store (who takes full personal responsibility for his tortes) and corporate shareholders (who risk only their initial investment) and corporate executives (who risk nothing at all).
So what stops that small corner store owner from opening another one and another one and another, and then incorporating, and then spreading even more and 4 decades later they're the Waltons and they're working with the fbi to spy on their workers who are trying to organize. Capitalism is exactly what you see. It operates exactly as you see it operating. Corporatism is just the way in which capitalists have set this system up to insulate themselves from the crimes of their companies. Shareholding is simply a way to prevent owners from liability. Maybe you should do some reading. I can suggest some.
Your comment is one huge straw man. As soon as he incorporates, he's no longer a sole proprietor taking personal responsibility for the enterprise's actions. He's now a corporate executive and shareholder and no longer takes personal responsibility for the enterprise's (now a corporation) actions. You attribute to me the exact opposite of what I argued. It's as though I said A is different from B, and you say, "But if A becomes B, then they're the same." My argument is that A should not be allowed to become B.
You have taught me nothing about joint stock corporations or the privilege of limited liability, which is at the root of our problems. Maybe you should study elementary logic and discourse.
And I'm not commenting to "teach you" anything. I'm simply correcting the record should any other dolt stumble upon this exchange and for a second want to agree with you. If you wanna know how to stop capitalism works and let go of this fantasy about "small mom and pop shops" read some fucking Marx
It's not a straw man because this is how capitalism works. What you're talking about is fantasy. My question is WHAT IS THERE TO STOP that scenario from happening? You ignored that question because it's inconvenient to your fantasy. There's nothing to stop them, because the entire point of capitalism is to acquire as much capital as possible, and true capitalists won't stop at one store they gotta monopolize the industry. They all start out small unless they're born into old money. Get a little 100k loan from the parentals who made their fortunes in some shitty way and flip it into some mega corp sucking the life blood out of every worker who works for them. All for some fucking dolt on the internet to cry "but this isn't real capitalism!" Lol
Obviously in the CURRENT SYSTEM, there's nothing to stop incorporation. My argument is that it never should have been allowed. It should be prohibited by the basic law. It's GOVERNMENT that grants corporate charters, just as the Marxist, communist government of the USSR allowed Stalin to collectivize agriculture under STATE control and kill and starve many Soviet citizens by famine and unjust violence. In your favored system, WHAT IS THERE TO STOP Stalinist atrocities? Both extremes have failed in the past and will continue to fail wherever they're allowed to gain a foothold.
Don't wrap your flawed arguments in vitriol, hate and arrogance. It's very ugly.
Sadly, Trump was always a circus barker and conman.
True, but that isn't what made him evil, that was just the excuse partisan Democrats could use to generate Trump Derangement Syndrome. What made him evil was 1) his support for torture, 2) his belief that war is OK if you "take the oil" and 3) it's OK to punish the innocent family of a terrorist. He consummated all thee of those positions, but for the Deranged to criticize him for attempting to withdraw from Syria or Afghanistan is also evil.
Indeed escape into you, but who are you ?! when you obey others, you don’t obey to oneself it’s a saying ; but we obey each day to different, and we like to call them well just a treat or addiction or I just want it or I deserve it or she/him had one and now I want too or tv comercial made me do it or ..., or ......, or ..... etc excuses when we should be true to our self cause where is no Trust there is no game to play , and it means the game is rigged ; This Game is called Life, so who better to play than you , but “ Who are you ? Who am I ? Who are those?
So Who do I want to become ?
Thank you for letting me express and as always Great Articles !
Be Here Now. Of course, it's the only place Life happens. And how we think and feel, NOW, creates our experience. Transformation is already occurring, and the controllers behind the corporations are trying to stop it.
One point of contention with Caitlin. I find capitalism is a fine system to barter or buy goods and services. You buy your shoes from the shoemaker who offers the best value and style. Once corporations infested the system, which has been ongoing for a thousand years, you get the great dysfunctionality we have today.
Globalism is about fucking stupid. Shipping crap all over the world, with a huge environmental footprint, because you can abuse workers a bit more in this country or that. Globalism didn't spring naturally from capitalism, but it arose as a preferred system of commerce by corporations. They must be banned...
You poor sad little man. It is a miracle that Cuba has survived as an independent nation, (there aren't too many of those in the Americas) it has also managed to develop, at a slower pace than would naturally occur thanks to the monster on its doorstep, but develop it has.
Like I said, you poor sad little man. Why don't you try and refute the evidence I put forward about Cuba instead of your silly attempts at a put down.
Still no proper response then, I can't say I'm surprised.
Been to Cuba, have you? How many times?