Could you elaborate, please? She blames capitalism and pigeonholes conservative/right as knuckle-dragging greed monkeys who recently startled awake and reflexively urge to oppress minorities, blind and deaf to all basic human needs and suffering.
This is well-intentioned but illiberal ranting. But for someone well-known who calls attention to an information matrix enslaving us all in propaganda, this is ridiculous. It reads like one side of the coin blaming the other.
That's precisely what has paralyzed us and made us vulnerable to mass influence of corporate, media, and political control. The cretins who do this don't see left or right in their own ranks, because it's one of their ways of controlling us, like antagonisms in race and gender. We're manipulated to fight each other through diabolical social and political engineering of information.
People surely have concrete differences in ideology, but independent minds always listen, identify differences, and can peacefully co-exist. What Caitlin pontificates breeds intolerance for hundreds of millions of people, and effectively declares them dead to the human struggle.
Left vs. Right nonsense is defunct in any serious, intelligent discussion. I come from the right and it's always hard to watch people breathe into each other's mouths. To see both left and right camps surge in 2025, leading people away from truly independent, and mired in jaded, confused, tribal camps, is deeply disappointing.
I hope Caitlin and others can zoom out and do more work on deprogramming themselves. I'm far from healed, but good grief.
“I have found little that is "good" about human beings on the whole. In my experience most of them are trash, no matter whether they publicly subscribe to this or that ethical doctrine or to none at all. That is something that you cannot say aloud, or perhaps even think.” - Sigmund Freud
Events of recent years have made it clear to me that each side tends to see some problems clearly that the other side misses. The worst thing about political polarization is that it gets in the way of respectful inter-tribal communication, which would help all of us see the big picture more clearly.
I heard Dennis Kucinich sum up the problem very succinctly: "partisanship does violence to cognition". Sadly, for all Catlin's brilliance, she periodically exemplifies this problem.
As long as people believe that money and technology will bring them more happiness than a bright smile, a kind word, a hearty laugh, a helping hand, a warm hug, the love of a good woman and a good man, they will continue to lead empty, lonely, depressing, disconnected and meaningless lives. And I mean not only the smiles, words, laughs, hugs and love that you receive, but moreso the ones you give.
So incredibly spot on! I always knew something was wrong, particularly in corporate America, but I thought it was a personal problem that I didn't have an obsession with "getting ahead," hustle culture, getting rich, etc. The past 5 years (especially this last one, watching a livestreamed genocide), showed me that there was nothing wrong with me and everything wrong with our capitalist society. Now I am both more miserable in knowing what this empire continually unleashes on the world and happier than ever in my new pursuits of community building and mutual aid. It has been so freeing to let go of all the aspirations I've been told I should have, but it's also extra hard to pretend to care to get the paycheck with every passing day.
I never bought into the myth. Working within that system was pretty damn unpleasant but I did it, saving my money so I could get out. It took twenty years but I did it. Once I had what I needed I left the United States immediately. That was twenty-two years ago.
I'm a subsistence farmer-builder-inventor, by choice on the "U.S." territory. I worked the building trades for decades before fully realizing what I was doing and left the human farm. No taxes, "drivers license" insurances or dependence on agribusiness, allopathy or "law" to take care of and mine.
Huh! I live the spring and fall in Tokyo and the rest of the year in Bali. It is a very little-known fact that Tokyo is a bargain. It might have the best arts in the world -- dance, music, and painting -- and it costs nothing compared with New York City or Paris. Doesn't have much nature though so I live on the outskirts and take the train.
In Bali I live on the outskirts of Ubud. I do lots of walking in the ricefields. A very friendly and pretty place. Lots of ducks laying eggs near where I live. Bali is close to the equator but has a nice climate, not too hot and it never gets cold. It's very popular with tourists. I moved here twenty years ago.
I have friends who are farmers/survivalists/Buddhists/conspiracy buffs. They've lived in Fiji and Kauai but now have returned to Texas and gone Christian(!). Life has some surprises, yes?
Life has SOME surprises? Mine is rife with surprises. Too many. Here's a surprise I just ran into. I'm in the position to move to the tropics from the rustbelt. Being a subsistence farmer this would ease my workload immensely. I find I would miss winter too much! No sitting by the woodstove (burning the six cords I cut each year) during a storm with a stew simmering and me with a bowl of my own kief. No shoveling snow at 4:30 A.M. to clear paths for the truck and animals then sitting with a hot drink and that bowl again! Entire days spent relaxing or preparing for spring.
I was thinking of buying a farm down south for winter but splitting myself into two is not healthy for me. Being a farmer my home-farm is an extension of my body-mind and heart. There is a saying in Maine I now find is true. "If you can't take our winters you don't deserve our summers". I find winter makes summer much more appreciated. As the dog days makes winter somewhat appreciated.
I was a programmer in Silicon Valley and Oregon for twenty years. One day I couldn't do it any more. I decided to leave before they found out. I couldn't afford to retire in the USA so I had to try overseas. I sold my pickup truck and other such things and flew to Bali. That worked out great. I speak Indonesian, which is the easiest language in the world to learn.
After about a dozen years I'd seen everything in Bali and was bored. By accident I wound up in Tokyo and found out what a bargain it was. So now I spend half of the year on the outskirts of Tokyo. There's always something to see in Tokyo. The music, painting, and dance are terrific. Not much in the way of nature in Tokyo but enough there on the edge of town.
Sadly, the plutocrats have such total control over political/civic decision-makers, news-manufacturers/avoiders/twisters and propagandists, that the majority are being kept generally ignorant and desperately busy in making just to keep their heads above water. The super-duper-rich call the shots and keep the factory-fodder in its place. The moral-free zone that encompasses the politico-corporate slice of the society will be obliged to apply ever greater strictures upon the populace, especially when, and if, it becomes a little restive. I see more Luigi Mangiones popping up, somehow.
Thirty years ago I used to visit the beach on an island. There were no houses or businesses. You could see the water for as far as you could see as long as you looked over the sand. You could smell everything and breathe the air. I went there before the pandemic flood and now you couldn't see the beach past high rise condos, strip malls and ugly chain hotels. Certain roads to the beach were blocked off when before there were no signs that said don't enter. Before the beach was free for everyone, now you had to pay hundreds of dollars just to look at the beach. Now the old beach is a memory to me that I cherish because I will never be able to stand there at that specific spot and just stare into the water, wondering.
Money is their vehicle. If we want to make them impotent, then we must start using an alternative to their system. We can definitely do this and without much bother. We need to get started, there are many possibilities for us today with our digital technology that can empower us.
Money is their medium. Having studied the theory of money, I can see how they have incited greed. Think about this - they make money scarce (by issuing only a fraction of what needs to be paid. Interest is never an amount included in the issuance of money so there is always a huge shortfall) So when something is scarce, say water, wheat or anything that people need, what do we do? We hoard and become grasping (greedy). We're very different in scarcity than we are in abundance. And that's what they've done to us with this money system, they have inculcated greed into our everyday lives by making money scarce.
Just to clarify, if money were not issued like it currently is, if it were issued in a different way, under a different system, it wouldn't incite greed. There is a tendency to think all money systems produce greed but that is not so at all.
Please explain your meaning in stating "There is a tendency to think all money systems produce greed but that is not so at all."
Please explain exactly the monetary system, the method of creating, monitoring, distributing and enforcing compliance you're claiming will not incite what all currencies do and must?
You don't understand money mechanics. For instance all currencies even digital ones must have a controller, an issuer, a banker and a set of laws requiring certain ways of accessing, using and monitoring.
No re-presentation of a thing (money being the representation of our time, effort and products created) can be used without crime, without stealing, without exactly what we suffer now channeling our interactions through a medium.
Commerce itself must be abandoned but that brings forth a fear only children suffer. That of feeling being on ones own with no security blanket, no parens patriae. We're all on different steps on the staircase of comprehending reality. This because "the jew" has successfully completed their goal of "making the people believe the fantasy created by "the jew" to be reality". Remember William Casey? Are you SURE you're not one who believes in what is not real? Like currencies are inert and concentrations of power are not ALWAYS corrupt?
Are these just absurd claims OR THE CLAIMS OF ONE WHO KNEW FAR MORE OF OUR REALITY THAN YOU DO AT THIS POINT IN YOUR JOURNEY? “Money is the universal, self-constituted value of all things. Hence it has robbed the whole world... of its proper value. Money is the alienated essence of man's labour and life, and this alien essence dominates him as he worships
it.”―Karl Marx, On the Jewish Question
"What is the worldly religion of the Jew? Huckstering. What is his worldly God? Money.…. Money is the jealous god of Israel, in face of which no other god may exist. Money degrades all the gods of man – and turns them into commodities…. The bill of exchange is the real god of the Jew. His god is only an illusory bill of exchange…. The chimerical nationality of the Jew is the nationality of the merchant, of the man of money in general." Karl Marx
"Capitalist production, therefore, develops technology, and the combining together of various processes into a social whole, only by sapping the original sources of wealth, the soil and the laborer." Karl Marx
If you comprehend those you must see what currencies are and why we have to live another path. What that path is I will not mention now. You have to come to grips with what citizenship is and what the use of currencies makes the user before you're ready to deal with the Adulthood humanity has yet to attain in large numbers.
I remember Montauk NY being as you describe. I spent 2 weeks there when I was 9, no TV, radio, or anything. I was miserable. As I grew older and life beat at me to succumb, I thought of Montauk as my great escape... Someday I'd run away and live on the empty beach. Like you, I was horrified that all the pristine land is crammed with crap and people. We still have our memories and can stroll those beaches as they were forever. Keep the faith and the memories 🤗
So it seems like Caitlin is exerting her supremacy. I hear and see this a lot but didn't expect it from her. So though she writes heartfeltly, she doesn't "get it", she doesn't get that censorship is the tool of the psychopaths. It always takes us out of peer-to-peer frequency and puts one into a superior position, one of power. I am sure Caitlin if you read this, you don't like being censored, right? So why are you doing it? Are you too chicken to take on the criticism? You could always ignore it, that's a choice. But you don't allow commenters to say what they wish. I'm truly stunned that you're censoring. I consider it an enemy action.
If only you could realize the gravity of what you do. If only you could realize that a world of free speech is the only way we can survive against, you know, the psychopaths. By censoring you push your view onto others by disallowing them to read another person's opinion. And why can't you handle an opinion that differs? Who decides what is rudeness? So you mandate politeness, is that how you think? I find this a sort of cultish action these days, everyone ready to block someone because they don't live up to their standards. It's much the same as facebook and the other tyrants, deciding what is the standard. Censorship needs to meet some criteria. If you censor others, that means you agree with censorship. All speech must be free if we are to be free. By withholding someone from speaking, you actually threaten my future and everybody else's. Free speech is THAT crucial.
Freedom of speech is one of our constitutional rights, and it applies very specifically to the public realm. You have the right to say what you like in public (with the usual limits on yelling "Fire!" in a crowded room). But you don't have the right to say whatever you like in my house, or on my property. In that case, I have the right to send you off.
And that's how it is here. This newsletter is Caitlin's private space, and when I speak here I speak as a guest. If I speak badly, Caitlin may ask me to leave and she has the right to send me off.
It's really that simple. And it has nothing at all to do with censorship.
Now, that's how you see it but that is not the right way. This is a public forum. All of the internet needs to be based on free speech. It is very different than speaking in someone's house. Some people also think that bullying can be done online, but it really can't, because it's only text. In physical proximity, that's a different thing, yes, then bullying does matter. The idea of ownership too, (like "it's her page" or "it's my page") is another bamboozle that comes from the ego, the me/me mentality. And that is a mentality that cannot succeed as it will kill us, especially now, as we're on the cusp. We need to learn some new skills now that we are in the digital age because it changes everything. Same with cell phones, some kind of etiquette should be talked about as it's bloody annoying talking to people who keep looking at their phones. But I digress.
The “constitution” doesn’t give anyone “rights”. It restricts the government from taking away a persons natural rights such as free speech. Otherwise … ok.
Sir, she created snd owns her Substack , and is within her owner rights and responsibilities to restrict racist, bigoted, and venal postings from her Substack
I agree with you to a point, because letting you speak does nothing but make people realize how pea brained you are. Eventually, the shit you repeat over and over, gets old. You can’t add anything new to your understanding of life, so you repeat the same hate filled rhetoric over and over. If you’ve heard it once, you’ve heard it a thousand times. You act like people don’t know what mentally handicapped, racists think. You didn’t invent the wheel, dipshit.
Don’t worry, I wasn’t saying anything about East Asians. Married to a Chinese twenty odd years. Read between the lines. I’m German if that helps point in the right direction.
He's saying Jews are satanic and he wants me to say that also. I'm banning him. These Nazi types never come right out and say what they mean; they're cowards.
Please stop this banning ridiculousness Caitlin. I thought you were above that. You do know that the Nazi's favored censorship? What is the matter with you? Is your constitution not strong enough to either ignore what you don't like or respond to it? Give him a public schlapping, you've got the skill. Why inflict censorship? You are lowering yourself. Please reconsider. Censorship must be condemned outright. Whoever does it.
Caitlin has EVERY RIGHT to ban whomsoever she pleases.
Aren't you a proponent of FREEDOM? Doesn't Caitlin have the freedom to manage/monitor her substack according to her rules?
(1) Are you trying to take freedom away from Caitlin?
(2) Are you trying to infringe on Caitlin's rights and agency to manage her platform/account/substack her way as she sees fit?
(3) Are you restricting (and in so doing) censoring Caitlin YOURSELF by telling Caitlin what she can and can't do ON HER OWN Substack?
(4) Shouldn't the OWNER of the substack be able to make decisions on the "rules of moderation" and what SHOULD (or SHOULD NOT) be allowed? And if not then who should?
There is NO SUCH THING as "absolute FREE SPEECH". It is a made up concept. It DOES NOT EXIST in the real world. Free Speech absolutionists use the MANTRA of free speech as an excuse to GET THEIR WAY. When such people used the "free speech" excuse, they often mean "Free speech for me but not for thee" (that's how it works for people like Elon Musk and those in power).
"Free Speech" is an ILLUSION - it always has been. Instead, please study POWER dynamics. That explains a lot more about what is free and for whom.
Oh, I assumed 'race' meant blacks and others, not the special ones!
No, Martin, you need to be more specific and realize that the Genociding Zionist Supremacists in israel and controlling our Gov and throughout West and even Middle eastern country leaders, .. they are not all Jews.
Think of them as the Elite Class of Jews that will kill other Jews as easy as they will us, as the elite Class that drove Germany into Nazism and War, escaping and leaving the regular Jews to suffer and die for their Satanic Evil.
We have an Orthodox Hasidim Jewish community here in Burlington Vermont and as a young man with a friend converting into their Jewish Sect, I was welcome to join and learn. Very decent time - I darn near converted myself.
Sure, they Are not Christians and generally cannot be expected to be the same as .. as .. our fathers and grandfathers - and our society used to be - but now is not - so sad.
Well, after my daughter was tortured to death unborn before I knew of her, and my farm and son taken from me in Divorce-Rape, and a dream job turned into a hell at a University because 'professional' 3rd Wave Feminists Affirmative Action meritless man-hating co-workers targeted me with that slimy cnt Witch-whisper-web with lies and viciousness - and even though 3 separate women - 2 that worked there - warned me that man-hating psycho women were thick there, and I said I worked with a lot of women and men before - why would I have trouble now? "Because you are a white men." and not understanding that evil festers in such horrors, supported by women that attack their victims and call them Sick ..
You bring back my daughter from a horrible death, and my son when he was young, and that dream job with co-workers not domically-possessed and perhaps I will not sometimes think that WW3 and most of you and me dead - especially the Sick women that are immune from baby-murdering, false-rape and other hate filled vomit, so the few remaining peoples can start over , and hang in public the Witches as soon as they Show.
Steve I hear your pain and anger but I just want to point out that those women are really patriarchal, they are doing the patriarchal thing. Practically all women do now. Femininity is almost lost, we don't even know how to breastfeed without going to lessons! And even then! Men do most of the rapes by far and the killings so just notice that. We all have been usurped and shaken to hate one another. The reason you lost your children is because we live in a patriarchy - a totally man-designed system that caters only to psychopathic men. Everyone else is just earth fodder to them. We are responsible because we give them power, we give them our power and leave nothing for ourselves. We must NEVER give away our power. But we have to learn how to do this as it's never been done in our lifetimes. It's called freedom.
What you call patriarchy is what I call industrial capitalism. And it is equally destructive to men and women. It has nothing to do with patriarchy. But because most of us are blind to the source of our problem (which surrounds us like the air we breathe), we blame each other instead.
Once a man refers to women as cunts, why would you bother to engage? This guy is a total whack job.
From his feed:
The schools need a major overhaul.
First remove most of the women for most fields but especially in education, shoot for 10% or less, especially for the younger ages where the children are helpless to the Witches' commie feminist delusional psychotic pedo-sexual-mutilating mind-raping practices that have damage too many, and they long ago drove men away, the vicious lying man-hating psycho women that know men will protect the children from their victim-isolating mental-torturing, those fatherless Witch raised university-Sickened women, as teachers and administers should not be trusted with children.
.. Not since they became insane baby-murdering vicious lying horrors, and those healthier teachers that are not, they will lie and cover for those Witches, Womanhood has too many virtueless vomit filled horrors, that if they were men, we would likely throw them off a building.
School ends at 8th grade, and the men teachers would focus on the basic skills, critical thinking, how to research and learn on their own self direction and motivation. Some, most excellent (top 10%) go to University, men teachers, and the rest would go to trade-skills school, or apprenticeship with father's employment, or other business willing to train then while they work….
I guess he doesn't count who does the most raping of women and children and who does the bombing and murdering. Things are cuckoo now because women and men have to live in a construct that was only designed by greedy, controlling and psychopathic men. Women had nothing to do with putting this stupid and dangerous culture together. Now of course, after women were trained to succeed in a man's world, women act like men, do the things men do, but can't do the things women do, like breastfeed and know how to handle a man. The feminine has always been defined by men, but it's up to women to define things their own way, however they are not doing it!
“God bless you”? Fuck whatever god you worship. It seems to make you a miserable, uneducated, POS. Most born again Christians are just that. People like you are easy to brainwash and indoctrinate, since you lack the ability to think critically. You’re the problem in the country and the world. Hopefully people like you eventually die off. I’ll be cheering for it, and assisting in any legal way I can. 😉
So Fatherless mother-twisted Satanic Peanut Gallery member,
What was 'racists' in what I wrote? Exactly .. or did you react like a spastic slimy cnt when you saw some women signal to mob a man like vicious lying rabid-dogs, and kick testicles, and your Vagina-Worshipping reflex kicked-in, and now you will belly crawl to her while praising her godesness, and licking her Fem-Nazi boots, asking her to stand on your privates because you are not worthy?
When you employ such nasty, slimy vernacular , you dis the entire female gender . You resentment and anger may arise from your personal experience(s) with some difficult situations, but you can’t throw “all “women” under the bus . Thus feels like guilt by association
He’s mad because he’s still a virgin, and doesn’t understand why no woman would want to be around him. He’s not the sharpest pencil in the box. Oh yeah, I forgot I did his circumcision! I know the other reason he’s so angry.
You’re saying you’re a good 🐑. Being a brainwashed zombie is nothing to be proud of. You’re dumb enough to wear it as a badge of honor though. It’s people like you that have ruined the country, but you’re so fucking stupid, you don’t understand how!
Recently discovered your writing and am now a loyal fan! So glad you are on the scene and obviously fearless as well as brilliant! I regularly re-post you! I'd be interested in learning your thoughts on how we get out of this mess; I can't see any solution other than taking to the streets with pots and wooden spoons - en mass! Repeatedly. Endlessly. What say you?
Yep, the benign-sounding “Status quo voting” or “lesserevilism” is directly responsible for this increasing trend of exploitation, capitalist extraction of resources, and the upward shift of wealth - produced as surplus by the working class - largely to the top 0.1 of a percentage point, but also the top 10 percent which encompasses the ruling class in order that they do their job and legislate for yet more protection, the militarisation of police, more prisons run for more profits, and the subjugation and colonisation and extermination of the people “in the way” whom are resisting this hegemony backed with extreme violence which is only available to state actors.
The liberal ‘PMC’ voters naively think they are helping ‘incrementalism’ improve people’s lives and helping ‘save the planet’, but actively block or ignore any attempts to open their eyes and minds to the carnage they are actively enabling by voting “lesserevilism” - which must be the most egregiously misnamed political ideology since “National Socialism”.
Excellent discussion but I would highly recommend avoiding the use of the term "conservative" in such a broad sense. After all, this battle with conservatives is precisely what the power players want to trap us in. Moreover much of the so called conservative agenda is not conservative at all but rather revolutionary. True conservatives exist out there and you will find you have a lot in common with them. Those hyped up free market China threat anti immigrant conservatives are not conservative but rather caught in the net
Since my youth many words have mutated in meaning. Back then a liberal was anti-war, pro-free speech, pro-working man. Nowadays a "liberal" is anything the DNC wants it to be. Not long ago a bedrock conservative goal was a balanced budget. Now "conservatives" advocate a multi-trillion dollar deficit. In short, these words are so debased as to have become meaningless.
Arguing about the meaning of these deliberately confused words is a fruitless waste of time. I recommend avoiding the quicksand of such propagandized labels and instead sticking with individual issues.
Thanks. I tend to cringe when people, even people I like and respect, speak about "liberals". What they mean by the word isn't what I mean by it. So I just don't use the word.
And I am 100% with you that wise people don't use labels, but just stick to the issues.
I observe that the primary political/cognitive rift is one between those who valorize and support Capitalism and those who wish for its overthrow and replacement by some form of Socialism.
What's your problem dude? Don't have any logic or rational arguments? Are ad hominem attacks all you have? Please don't make yourself look worse than you already have.
Who deleted the comment? The author or Caitlin? If it was Caitlin then that makes a lot of her writing moot but I'm not saying it was however I hope it wasn't as that will mean she's a censor and thus does not understand that free speech is all we have to get through this nightmare. I sincerely hope it wasn't you that deleted the comment, Caitlin. The age we are upon now is the age of reason. Free speech is more important than oxygen. And if one doesn't understand that, then woe.
It was IceBox (the author of the comment) who deleted it (FYI).
>>"Free speech is more important than oxygen. "
NO, it's not. Have you lived ANYWHERE else in the world other than in the US (or the West)? Try living without Oxygen and let me know how it turns out...
Well it's going to be the same soon. They're not going to let you have oxygen. You totally missed the point - you're too fixated on minutia and missed the whole point. I still stand by it, but what it is meant to convey is that we can only get through this nightmare on the shirtails of free speech. I'm telling ya, you won't have oxygen if we don't, and if we do have free speech, we'll be free! No kidding. Psychopaths cannot live in the light and they always favor censorship. Thanks for letting me know that the author deleted the comment. however Caitlin threatened further down to suspend one of the commenters. I find that extremely infantile. It really changes the face of Caitlin. Anyone who is "awake" must surely by now understand that free speech is our ticket out of this asylum? Seems nobody wants out of it, just repeats the same memes. So we keep repeating the same nightmare. Let's try something different?
>>"Moreover much of the so called conservative agenda is not conservative at all but rather revolutionary."
Huh? Project 2025 is revolutionary? What have you been smoking? Now don't say the Trump administration is not "true conservatives" in order to weezle your way out. That would be an excuse.
Please tell me, WHAT is good about "conservative thinking" - because I haven't been able to come up with a single thing good about "conservative principles"? (Maybe I need to be educated on some of those things - here's your chance).
It is revolutionary in that it intends to destroy existing institutions and replace them with a privatized global system to support banks and billionaires. This is a revolutionary act, not a conservative one. The confusion emerges from the use of the terms "conservative," "progressive," and "revolutionary." We use the terms "conservative" for what is in fact "reactionary" and "progressive" for what should be "egalitarian". It is no contradiction to be reactionary and revolutionary. For that matter, many of the well meaning progressives are conservative in posture in that they wish to preserve existing systems (like constitutional balances) not create new systems. I could go on, but thank you for the question.
"destroy existing institutions and replace them with a privatized global system to support banks and billionaires."
You mean destroy the institutions of Russia and China? The DNC is 100% on board with this. Though I would agree that the DNC is deeply conservative, using these Orwellized words confuses discourse to such an extent that I recommend simply not using them. Stick with specific issues, as you did here. I never would have understood what you meant without this clarification.
>>"It is revolutionary in that it intends to destroy existing institutions and replace them with a privatized global system to support banks and billionaires."
What is revolutionary about it? What is new about it? The neoliberal project (which is what you describe) has been going full-swing since the 1970s. Are you just waking up now?
We use the terms "conservative" for what is in fact "reactionary" and "progressive" for what should be "egalitarian".
I've never heard such bullshit. And why are you redefining terms to suit your contrived justifications? Maybe look up the common known and understood meanings of "conservative, reactionary, progressive, egalitarian, etc." instead of creating your own definitions and meanings for them.
>>"For that matter, many of the well meaning progressives are conservative in posture in that they wish to preserve existing systems"
Nope - you are COMPLETELY WRONG on that. First, I suggest understanding what "progressive" means. You're trying really hard to gaslight aren't you?
Wow. Not much to say in response to this sort of attack. If others are interested in the issues, not personal attacks, please see green-liberty.org/ctp
If you think "my comment" was an attack, then obviously you lack sufficient reasoning and logical abilities (and argumentation skills). How is it that when people don't have an adequate defense to back up their statements that they "play the victim"?
Shame on you. I thought you were better than this.
In fact your comment did come across as a personal attack. You need to think about your choice of words, arguing the issues, not degrading the other person's intelligence or education or intention.
You wrote: "I've never heard such bullshit. " And instead of owning your insulting words, you blame the person you attacked. I expect you will now attack me for pointing out the obvious.
The Maga agenda is not conservative (ie with goal of preserving most cherished traditions and institutions) but reactionary radical in the attempt to tear them down. There are some, such as the Electoral College or Citizens United that should be torn down but to tear down institutions in order not to transform society but to immobilize society for control is even revanchist. I suggest that these terms thrown around, such as conservative and liberal, have lost all meaning. INstead be specific in terms of policies and laws: when Sanders proposes a bill to halt military aid to Israel, it is neither liberal nor conservative but a moral mandate. When AOC calls out Israel for genocide, at the price of being attacked and censored, it is not liberal; it is simply telling the truth, and the truth has no party. So let's stop using meaningless words which have so many meanings they have none. Let's talk about real issues, real polcieis, real proposals and not label them as a cheap way to shout boo or hooray!
Bernie Sanders' proposal to halt military aid to Israel is Conservative, because we aren't supposed to waste weapons. Around the time of the Founding, wars had to be paid for with real money.
If money was real now, we'd each be paying back $100,000 dollars to the Treasury Bond holders. Taken right out of our paychecks.
Sorry, it's far more. Each taxpayers share is now 280k, plus the debt of what ever state and city you live in. We have never been here before with the dollar being used as a weapon. I have a Treasury account, and now don't use it.
Not one person who calls himself a conservative in Congress agrees with Sanders. And the issue is not about "wasting" weapons but the policy that prohibits delivering them if it is likely they will be used in violation of international law. The American Revolution was not funded with "real money" but with loans: "For the first two years of the war, the colonists received secretive private and public loans from the French, who held a lingering resentment for the British after the Seven Years' War.[9] After the British defeat at Saratoga, however, foreign support for the Continental Army increased, and in 1778 the colonies signed a treaty with France, officially bringing them into the war with Great Britain.[10] By the end of the war, the colonies had received loans from several different European nations, including a significant contribution from France, Spain and the Netherlands."
>>"The Maga agenda is not conservative (ie with goal of preserving most cherished traditions and institutions) but reactionary radical in the attempt to tear them down."
Dale Ruff, I think you may have misunderstood. The MAGA agenda IS "preserving most cherished traditions and institutions" - and those are NEOLIBERAL ones (that are so cherished by MAGA and capitalists alike). What it's tearing down are regulatory mechanisms, curbs to capitalism, oversight, public protections, etc.
So NO - MAGA is not reactionary - it is just ANOTHER LEVEL (and an extreme one at that) in continuing "neoliberal capitalism" down its current path and eventual objectives.
Also, I wonder if you will EVER get over your "pandering" of virtue signallers like "AOC" and to a certain extent Sanders. I have a bit of respect for Sanders (for all the good that he has done over his long career), but AOC is a faker (and she has conned and fooled many - just like Clinton and Obama).
Maga means make America great again, which means not change but stopping change and returning to a previous (mythical) era of greatness, thru steps like repealing the ACA, repealing Roe vs Wade, and reigniting racism. "Reactionary is a term for a person or ideology that opposes social, political, and economic change and seeks to restore a previous condition of affairs. " This is the proclaimed goal of the MAGA movement, and I add it is destructive because it is based not on new programs but breaking down those that exist, repealing birthright citizenship, repealing reproductive rights, repealing Social security and handing it over to Wall St for profit, etc etc. So reactionary is always destructive, for its goal is to break things, to "destroy the administrative state." It is also revanchist because the underlying appeal of Trump to his base is to restore their sense of lost status and even territory (Panama, Greenland, Canada): Revanchist is an adjective or noun that describes a policy or a person who seeks to recover lost territory or status. "
And restoring neoliberalism is not revolutionary but reactionary, for it means cutting down progressive programs and laws and restoring the campaign to replace government functions (education, prisons, etc) with private corporations, something the Nazis did in the 1930's (tho the mythi is they took over corporations, but the fact is while everyone else in Euroope and the US was was doing the opposite, Nazi Germany had a huge privatization program: 'n the mid‐1930s, the Nazi regime transferred public ownership to the private sector. In doing so, they went against the mainstream trends in western capitalistic countries, none of which systematically reprivatized firms during the 1930s." This is a basic fascist move: reactionary in restoring superannuated programs and law, by tearing down existing programs and law, and revanchist in restoring "lost status" of the white working class and "real Americans" and returning to neoliberal privatization. This is not revolutionary but anti-revolutioinary, as all fascist regimes proclaim communism (revolution) as the enemy to be destroyed: Here is Trump saying just that to his base: "Former President Donald Trump frequently derides Vice President Kamala Harris as "Comrade Kamala." He says she must be stopped to prevent the United States from turning communist or Marxist.
"She is a communist, I guess," Trump said in an Aug. 26 podcast " This is how HItler created a mass movement unified by hatred of the Bolsheviks, or "far left radicals," as Trump also called the Democrats, a party clinging except for its progressive faction, to the center.
Mathew Wills put it this way: "The immediate post-war reading of fascism was of an “ideology of nihilistic irrationalism, a movement fueled by pathological barbarism.” Marxists on the other hand viewed fascism from the 1930s on as an end-stage of capitalism, a corporate-state reaction. More recent liberal academic theories of fascism have defined it as: authoritarian nationalism; reactionary mass movement; revolutionary ultra-nationalism; synthesis of right-wing and left-wing characteristics; mobilizing myth of national rebirth." From the left a false populism arises and from the right, a movement to restore the greatness of the past after having been "stabbed in the back" by the liberals or far left radicals, or as in the case of hapless Harris, communists.
>>"And restoring neoliberalism is not revolutionary but reactionary"
I disagree! restoring is closely related to preserving. Isn't that what you said yourself in one of your comments above about "conservatives preserving things"?
>>"Maga means make America great again"
NO! MAGA is an "ACRONYM" for "Make America Great Again" (which itself is a vague statement). When was America great? And for whom? And in what circumstances? And for which races/cultures? And in what context?
(1) Was America great when it Genocided the native population of the Americas?
(2) Was America great when it profited off slavery?
(3) Was/Is America great because of racism?
(4) Was/Is America great because of Imperialism, Colonialism, War, destruction, exploitation, etc........?
(5) Was America great for exploiting migrant labor? Indentured servitude? Promoting and spreading neoliberal Capitalism?
(6) Was America great for destroying so many countries, regime change operations, debt diplomacy,....
(7) Was/Is America great because of its prison system and rates of incarceration?
(8) Was/Is America great because of inequality? (and MAGA agendas will only make this worse)
(9) Was/Is America great because of its "Health Care System"?
(10) Was/Is America great because of its "fake democracy"?
.....
I'll have to stop here (since this could be a never-ending list)
I will add this, though (in the spirit of objectivity). America HAS made many positive contributions to the world too (lest we lose sight of this).
MAGA means some VERY DIFFERENT things from what the acronym stands for.
Damn, could not have said it better myself ha. Thank you for that. My brother was a maga supporter, and after the Mush, Vivek hate on working people, he now agrees with me on our previous discussions ha. Thank you Mush and Vivek, doing the work : )
The leadng intellectual of the Maga agenda is Steven Bannon and his mission, as he has announced, is to tear down the administrative state: that is hardly preservation but rather destruction. BTW, virtue signaling is an evolutionary feature of people seeking mates or, in today's, world, jobs. Using it as a slur is a cheap shot, which is a way of signaling your virtue in a negative way. AOC is out in public calling out genocide while you attack her. HOw pathetic. She is working to build a majority to outlaw shipment of arms to Israel, while you are taking cheap shots. Sad.
>>"...tear down the administrative state: that is hardly preservation but rather destruction."
Wow - you like twisting things so they work in your favor, don't you?
Ok, here's another way to look at it ->
(1) PRESERVATION of neoliberal policies
(2) PRESERVATION of capitalism
(3) PRESERVATION of "white supremacy/dominance" (Make America Great Again - make america white again?)
(4) PRESERVATION of "male dominance and patriarchy" (that's what they really mean by "family values")
(5) PRESERVATION of "social norms that discriminate against immmigrants, minorities, at-risk marginal communities"
(6) PRESERVATION of "the ability to continue exploiting the ENVIRONMENT" in the pursuit of profits
(7) PRESERVATION of "laws (and legal loopholes) that concentrate wealth to the top 1% and exploit others"
(8) PRESERVATION of "structural and systemic RACISM, bigotry, etc."
(9) PRESERVATION of "systems and organizations that continue to financially exploit the majority" (such as the banking system, Wall Street, etc.)
..... I could go on for quite a while.
To summarize, what CONSERVATIVES would like to do is to "PRESERVE THE STATUS QUO" (those policies that benefit THEM) and DESTROY any opposition to "CHALLENGES TO THE STATUS QUO" (which is what progressives are trying to do).
Hope you understand the difference between WHAT conservatives are PRESERVING and WHAT they are DESTROYING.
Restoring policies by deregulating and getting rid of the rules is not preservation but restoration......I am have no interest in further discussion with you. There are no conservatives in the Trump regime...there are reactionaires, revanchist, and restorative I do not see repealing the current rules (environment, car safety, etc) and restoring the unregulated capitalism that people like Bannon want to bring back: Make America great again is not about preserving but restoring. You are free to disagree..I no longer care. Please spare me.
To tear down means to preserve? When Bannon says tear down the administrative state, he uses the term "deconstruct the administrative state," which he explains means to undo, to repeal, the "liberal" policies and deregulate, thus nothing is preserved but neoliberal policies (privatization and deregulation) are restored.
>>"AOC is out in public calling out genocide while you attack her."
Wow - you are either "intellectually challenged", employed in some capacity by AOC, lack adequate critical thinking skills, or are unable to see through the propaganda, false narratives, and virtue signaling (or a combination of the above).
I believe you have been CONNED, gaslighted, bamboozled, hoodwinked, been misled, and duped about YOUR "AOC narratives". If you can't figure out how, then I suggest you spend some time (with an open, questioning, and objective mind) with Caitlin's past articles (going back years).
Don't worry, MANY people (including me at one point in time) have been fooled by AOC, Clinton, Obama and such purveyors of "hopium". You are NOT ALONE!
Your accusations are both false and absurd: AOC is one of the few calling out genocide and for halting shipment of arms to Israel. At 83, totally independent, and with a world class education, I reject your insults and forgive you.
Actually all talk about politics is showing that one is still in the kindergarten of thought. Question yourselves, why do you obey something psychopaths write into the thing they call "law"? Why do you feel compelled to obey it? Why do you give it your energy, your attention, you money, your life? Why? Is it due to cowardice because you're afraid of their thugs? Or that they could ruin you? It's all based on blackmail isn't it? You're giving energy to blackmail when you talk about politics. All parties, all policies, all hairstyles.
Whether YOU are interested in politics or not, POLITICS is interested in YOU. Everything is politics. There is NOT AN AREA of human society/culture/economics/civilization that is NOT touched by politics.
Maybe make an effort to understand what politics is, the history of politics (in various forms) throughout human history, etc.
Before "Economics" was called economics, it was called "the political economy".
well we could live with no politics and no laws...if we were hunter-gatherer bands. It simply isn't realistic in modern mass society. There must be organization, and a huge culture like ours requires a lot of centralization. Which pretty much inevitably leads to corruption; I think it could be designed to block that path, but I don't know if it ever has been.
Even in hunter-gatherer bands there were laws (unwritten, non-codified socially/culturally agreed upon ways of behaving, etc.). And there is always politics (though of different kinds in smaller groups).
I'm not sure why you think hunter-gatherer societies had no laws or politics - since anthropology studies refute that claim.
I will admit that I WANT to believe that hunter-gatherer bands were/are egalitarian and mostly nonviolent. Because it suggests that this is a POSSIBLE mode for humanity; we aren't constructed, hardwired, to hierarchy, domination and violence. But there may be those who want to grind the ax on the other side. Who want to believe that only law and rulers keep us in line--or that we are fucked-up POS who need God/Jesus/Allah to redeem our worthless selves. Researchers with advanced degrees may well be affected by either of these biases too. I looked at the link you posted and note that it goes between talking about what ancient societies were like, to talking about what the researchers here actually studied--ONE group of tribes in northern Chile, in the driest desert in the world (the extreme environment could be a factor although I note that the famously peaceable and egalitarian Pygmies/Bantu live in the Kalahari.)
So maybe the point is that SOME small bands have been egalitarian and peaceable but not all. And I'm a proponent of the Parable of the Tribes, which says that when a group turns to agriculture, division of labor and hierarchy, it's set up for expansion, warfare and domination. Likely this domination always includes domination of women by men and domination of other creatures by humans--it's part of the same mindset. But the key thing is--once this gets going, the tribe is going to need more land and they will be well set up to take it from their neighbors. Who will almost never succeed in defending their tenancy--the aggressive tribe has more young men, they practice war, they work on weapons development, and their culture justifies it. So the peaceable tribe is either vanquished, the survivors absorbed into the aggressive one, or they flee. One of those aggressive tribes has evolved into today's world order.
From I can tell, hunter-gatherers are the only groups that are really egalitarian. And radical egalitarian behavior seems to be an essential part of what keeps them together.
I mean right as in conservatives predict policies will end badly, and they do. From education, to crime, to marriage, etc... It always plays out the same. Conservatives raise an alarm about, let's say, divorce rates exploding in the 70's and the social ills that will happen. The leftist media dismisses and ridicules their concerns. Then exactly what the conservatives say will happen...happens. There is never any accountability for those who were wrong.
That is why I have urged governments to title legislations with the names of those who created each Act: Minister/Departmental Head/project officer. The cascading effects on society would be immediate change in culture.
You give the example of "raising alarm rates over divorce" as being proof of "conservatives being right". There are so many things wrong with this that I don't know where to begin...
(1) What are the statistics of divorce rates in "conservative, liberal or neither" groups?
(2) What's your target focus group? Conservatives ONLY in the US or conservatives throughout the world? (in the context of divorce rates)
(3) Have you bothered to examine/analyze/understand WHY divorce rates are going up? Maybe it has to do with financial issues arising in families because of Capitalism and neoliberalism? Maybe it has to do with a "patriarchal system"? Maybe it has to do with "women not taking shit from men as they used to? Many more reasons.
There are too many errors in your critical thinking here, so I won't proceed further on the fallacies in your argument.
Sorry, but there's no coherent logic in your comment. BOTH conservatives AND liberals can be NEOLIBERALS (it's not either/or). Being a neoliberal is independent of the conservative/liberal classification.
>>"There are many “conservatives” who have take a strong stand against the colonial-settler Zionist state of apartheid Izrahell"
So? What does that prove? There are leftists against Zionism, there are rightists against Zionism, there are people who are neither right or left that are against Zionism, there are conservatives and liberals and neither of the two that are against Zionism.
Yeah, they construct false matrixes and superimpose them on top of terms like “liberal” and “conservative”. The terms are so twisted they’re hardly cohesive concepts of political science, much reflectively of our body politic and society as a whole.
I was brought up in Scotland. I never bothered with politics. I think I heard and somehow some was in there. I was never good at reading all the shenanigans in newspapers either. I think that helped keep me from some of what Caitlin is talking about now. I always had my own way of not bothering about some things. Eg. I laughed at swine flu. What was that. Never had a flu jab. Only since being in Australia many years later and intuitively going against things like covid, the vax etc have I taken an interest in politics and only because I felt I had to. Had to for the next generation, children, freedom etc. I do not like what I see and I see too well what Caitlin is talking about and have done for a while. Trying to extricate yourself from that empty feeling of having no joy in life over what you see as a complete mess all over the world is not easy. I try now to look within for that feeling of contentment and to not allow the pressures of this dystopia Caitlin talks about, to destroy me mentally. To enjoy family and those few you still think are genuine. To continue reading about the horrors our govts are trying to descend on us but to stay above it. I remember in Scotland when you were either conservative or labour Labour being supposedly for the worker and progression and against exploitation. Conservative as the more family, less confrontational element. Quick explanation as I’m sure it meant a lot more. However, today I think they are all one and the same and all on the same path of destruction.
Let’s hope that with knowledge and truth we can avoid the wanted outcome.
I have no idea what that emoji is supposed to mean, but it looks suspiciously like something that Australians who are pissed off with national politic, are likely to draw on their ballot paper come election time.
Sorry, Caitlin, but I have huge issues with your statements about antidepressants, which quite literally have saved my life. I suffer from CLINICAL DEPRESSION, which means my brain is unable to transmit serotonin to the appropriate cells. The correct antidepressants can correct this. If not for them, I would have taken my own life many years ago.
I have been taking them for forty years.
What you are describing is situational depression, that is, depression due to outside circumstances. Antidepressants will NOT CORRECT THIS, and I resent your implication that they are being “handed out like candy”. A psychiatrist knows the difference.
A mild anti-anxiety agent such as Buspar can help.
Am I depressed over the state of the world? Of COURSE I am. Only a psychopath wouldn’t be. And this is in spite of being on the maximum dose of sertraline.
If you’ve never taken antidepressants, Ms. Caitlin, don’t speak about what you don’t know. And don’t disparage those of us who actually require them in order to live as normal a life as possible.
Gypsy, I think you may have misunderstood the context in which Caitlin talks about "anti-depressants". She is focusing/emphasizing the "push towards anti-depressants" by BIG PHARMA (including on kids being over-prescribed stuff like Prozac, etc.) to increase profits (and not serious clinical cases and diagnoses or genetic/hereditary conditions that people may have).
That’s not how I read it, Chang. She places this in the context of people seeking happiness.
Caitlin clearly is unaware of the fact that antidepressants are NOT a “feel-good” pill. They are a corrective medication. People with clinical depression taking them is exactly the same as a diabetic taking insulin.
When Caitlin states, "If they put microchips in our brains which allowed them to fully control our minds, they’d have us moving around in more or less the same way we’ve been moving for generations" I automatically thought of Sheldon S. Wolin's 'DEMOCRACY INC. Managed Democracy and The Specter of Inverted Totalitarianism' a book ever American should read as it's a great study in Caitlin piece.
Yes, there is a false world created by our conditioning, education, loneliness and self-hate that's being used to the advantage of big pharma, junk food, gambling, drinking, smoking and endless products. However, Caitlin, remember the environmental dystopia that greeted Neo when he was jacked out of it? It's not all tweeting birds and cream teas.
When we wake up we see that we have fucked over every member of every species, including our pets, some of whom we have bred so that they can hardly breath. We see the tiny pockets of jungle trapping the last members of millions of species. 'Co-existence'?: what a joke.
We see that we are in the calm before the storm of mass migration of humans, as many countries become too hot for either arable or the farming of other animals for food.
Waking up is not for the faint hearted. Many may prefer to stay asleep.
Wonderful writing.
Thanks.
Could you elaborate, please? She blames capitalism and pigeonholes conservative/right as knuckle-dragging greed monkeys who recently startled awake and reflexively urge to oppress minorities, blind and deaf to all basic human needs and suffering.
This is well-intentioned but illiberal ranting. But for someone well-known who calls attention to an information matrix enslaving us all in propaganda, this is ridiculous. It reads like one side of the coin blaming the other.
That's precisely what has paralyzed us and made us vulnerable to mass influence of corporate, media, and political control. The cretins who do this don't see left or right in their own ranks, because it's one of their ways of controlling us, like antagonisms in race and gender. We're manipulated to fight each other through diabolical social and political engineering of information.
People surely have concrete differences in ideology, but independent minds always listen, identify differences, and can peacefully co-exist. What Caitlin pontificates breeds intolerance for hundreds of millions of people, and effectively declares them dead to the human struggle.
Left vs. Right nonsense is defunct in any serious, intelligent discussion. I come from the right and it's always hard to watch people breathe into each other's mouths. To see both left and right camps surge in 2025, leading people away from truly independent, and mired in jaded, confused, tribal camps, is deeply disappointing.
I hope Caitlin and others can zoom out and do more work on deprogramming themselves. I'm far from healed, but good grief.
“I have found little that is "good" about human beings on the whole. In my experience most of them are trash, no matter whether they publicly subscribe to this or that ethical doctrine or to none at all. That is something that you cannot say aloud, or perhaps even think.” - Sigmund Freud
I agree, though I come from the left.
Events of recent years have made it clear to me that each side tends to see some problems clearly that the other side misses. The worst thing about political polarization is that it gets in the way of respectful inter-tribal communication, which would help all of us see the big picture more clearly.
I heard Dennis Kucinich sum up the problem very succinctly: "partisanship does violence to cognition". Sadly, for all Catlin's brilliance, she periodically exemplifies this problem.
Who did you vote for?
Meant for George Kim: cognitive dissonance
Listen to the words of The The "Cognitive Dissident"
As always, Caitlin, you make such common sense to this disaffected, dissident community. Truth to power: go for it!
As long as people believe that money and technology will bring them more happiness than a bright smile, a kind word, a hearty laugh, a helping hand, a warm hug, the love of a good woman and a good man, they will continue to lead empty, lonely, depressing, disconnected and meaningless lives. And I mean not only the smiles, words, laughs, hugs and love that you receive, but moreso the ones you give.
Diane!🕊️Yes…
So incredibly spot on! I always knew something was wrong, particularly in corporate America, but I thought it was a personal problem that I didn't have an obsession with "getting ahead," hustle culture, getting rich, etc. The past 5 years (especially this last one, watching a livestreamed genocide), showed me that there was nothing wrong with me and everything wrong with our capitalist society. Now I am both more miserable in knowing what this empire continually unleashes on the world and happier than ever in my new pursuits of community building and mutual aid. It has been so freeing to let go of all the aspirations I've been told I should have, but it's also extra hard to pretend to care to get the paycheck with every passing day.
I never bought into the myth. Working within that system was pretty damn unpleasant but I did it, saving my money so I could get out. It took twenty years but I did it. Once I had what I needed I left the United States immediately. That was twenty-two years ago.
I'm a subsistence farmer-builder-inventor, by choice on the "U.S." territory. I worked the building trades for decades before fully realizing what I was doing and left the human farm. No taxes, "drivers license" insurances or dependence on agribusiness, allopathy or "law" to take care of and mine.
Care to post a bit of your created situation?
Huh! I live the spring and fall in Tokyo and the rest of the year in Bali. It is a very little-known fact that Tokyo is a bargain. It might have the best arts in the world -- dance, music, and painting -- and it costs nothing compared with New York City or Paris. Doesn't have much nature though so I live on the outskirts and take the train.
In Bali I live on the outskirts of Ubud. I do lots of walking in the ricefields. A very friendly and pretty place. Lots of ducks laying eggs near where I live. Bali is close to the equator but has a nice climate, not too hot and it never gets cold. It's very popular with tourists. I moved here twenty years ago.
I have friends who are farmers/survivalists/Buddhists/conspiracy buffs. They've lived in Fiji and Kauai but now have returned to Texas and gone Christian(!). Life has some surprises, yes?
Life has SOME surprises? Mine is rife with surprises. Too many. Here's a surprise I just ran into. I'm in the position to move to the tropics from the rustbelt. Being a subsistence farmer this would ease my workload immensely. I find I would miss winter too much! No sitting by the woodstove (burning the six cords I cut each year) during a storm with a stew simmering and me with a bowl of my own kief. No shoveling snow at 4:30 A.M. to clear paths for the truck and animals then sitting with a hot drink and that bowl again! Entire days spent relaxing or preparing for spring.
I was thinking of buying a farm down south for winter but splitting myself into two is not healthy for me. Being a farmer my home-farm is an extension of my body-mind and heart. There is a saying in Maine I now find is true. "If you can't take our winters you don't deserve our summers". I find winter makes summer much more appreciated. As the dog days makes winter somewhat appreciated.
I would love to read the story of Patrick.
I was a programmer in Silicon Valley and Oregon for twenty years. One day I couldn't do it any more. I decided to leave before they found out. I couldn't afford to retire in the USA so I had to try overseas. I sold my pickup truck and other such things and flew to Bali. That worked out great. I speak Indonesian, which is the easiest language in the world to learn.
After about a dozen years I'd seen everything in Bali and was bored. By accident I wound up in Tokyo and found out what a bargain it was. So now I spend half of the year on the outskirts of Tokyo. There's always something to see in Tokyo. The music, painting, and dance are terrific. Not much in the way of nature in Tokyo but enough there on the edge of town.
What country did you move to? It's a worldwide mess - not just U.S.
Sadly, the plutocrats have such total control over political/civic decision-makers, news-manufacturers/avoiders/twisters and propagandists, that the majority are being kept generally ignorant and desperately busy in making just to keep their heads above water. The super-duper-rich call the shots and keep the factory-fodder in its place. The moral-free zone that encompasses the politico-corporate slice of the society will be obliged to apply ever greater strictures upon the populace, especially when, and if, it becomes a little restive. I see more Luigi Mangiones popping up, somehow.
Oppression will continue to increase.
Thirty years ago I used to visit the beach on an island. There were no houses or businesses. You could see the water for as far as you could see as long as you looked over the sand. You could smell everything and breathe the air. I went there before the pandemic flood and now you couldn't see the beach past high rise condos, strip malls and ugly chain hotels. Certain roads to the beach were blocked off when before there were no signs that said don't enter. Before the beach was free for everyone, now you had to pay hundreds of dollars just to look at the beach. Now the old beach is a memory to me that I cherish because I will never be able to stand there at that specific spot and just stare into the water, wondering.
Money is destroying our culture and our life support system.
It’s not money Denise, it’s GREED.
You get the drift though. I could also say it's not the greed. It's all of it, ignorance, money, politics, greed, etc. Many would include religion.
Money is their vehicle. If we want to make them impotent, then we must start using an alternative to their system. We can definitely do this and without much bother. We need to get started, there are many possibilities for us today with our digital technology that can empower us.
Money is their medium. Having studied the theory of money, I can see how they have incited greed. Think about this - they make money scarce (by issuing only a fraction of what needs to be paid. Interest is never an amount included in the issuance of money so there is always a huge shortfall) So when something is scarce, say water, wheat or anything that people need, what do we do? We hoard and become grasping (greedy). We're very different in scarcity than we are in abundance. And that's what they've done to us with this money system, they have inculcated greed into our everyday lives by making money scarce.
She's correct. The existence of currencies breeds greed. you simple cannot have one without the other.
Just to clarify, if money were not issued like it currently is, if it were issued in a different way, under a different system, it wouldn't incite greed. There is a tendency to think all money systems produce greed but that is not so at all.
Please explain your meaning in stating "There is a tendency to think all money systems produce greed but that is not so at all."
Please explain exactly the monetary system, the method of creating, monitoring, distributing and enforcing compliance you're claiming will not incite what all currencies do and must?
You don't understand money mechanics. For instance all currencies even digital ones must have a controller, an issuer, a banker and a set of laws requiring certain ways of accessing, using and monitoring.
No re-presentation of a thing (money being the representation of our time, effort and products created) can be used without crime, without stealing, without exactly what we suffer now channeling our interactions through a medium.
Commerce itself must be abandoned but that brings forth a fear only children suffer. That of feeling being on ones own with no security blanket, no parens patriae. We're all on different steps on the staircase of comprehending reality. This because "the jew" has successfully completed their goal of "making the people believe the fantasy created by "the jew" to be reality". Remember William Casey? Are you SURE you're not one who believes in what is not real? Like currencies are inert and concentrations of power are not ALWAYS corrupt?
Are these just absurd claims OR THE CLAIMS OF ONE WHO KNEW FAR MORE OF OUR REALITY THAN YOU DO AT THIS POINT IN YOUR JOURNEY? “Money is the universal, self-constituted value of all things. Hence it has robbed the whole world... of its proper value. Money is the alienated essence of man's labour and life, and this alien essence dominates him as he worships
it.”―Karl Marx, On the Jewish Question
"What is the worldly religion of the Jew? Huckstering. What is his worldly God? Money.…. Money is the jealous god of Israel, in face of which no other god may exist. Money degrades all the gods of man – and turns them into commodities…. The bill of exchange is the real god of the Jew. His god is only an illusory bill of exchange…. The chimerical nationality of the Jew is the nationality of the merchant, of the man of money in general." Karl Marx
"Capitalist production, therefore, develops technology, and the combining together of various processes into a social whole, only by sapping the original sources of wealth, the soil and the laborer." Karl Marx
If you comprehend those you must see what currencies are and why we have to live another path. What that path is I will not mention now. You have to come to grips with what citizenship is and what the use of currencies makes the user before you're ready to deal with the Adulthood humanity has yet to attain in large numbers.
I think it’s the money.
Aside from that Mrs. Lincoln, how did you enjoy the play?
The world's a stage.
I remember Montauk NY being as you describe. I spent 2 weeks there when I was 9, no TV, radio, or anything. I was miserable. As I grew older and life beat at me to succumb, I thought of Montauk as my great escape... Someday I'd run away and live on the empty beach. Like you, I was horrified that all the pristine land is crammed with crap and people. We still have our memories and can stroll those beaches as they were forever. Keep the faith and the memories 🤗
The same is happening in Chicago : (
So it seems like Caitlin is exerting her supremacy. I hear and see this a lot but didn't expect it from her. So though she writes heartfeltly, she doesn't "get it", she doesn't get that censorship is the tool of the psychopaths. It always takes us out of peer-to-peer frequency and puts one into a superior position, one of power. I am sure Caitlin if you read this, you don't like being censored, right? So why are you doing it? Are you too chicken to take on the criticism? You could always ignore it, that's a choice. But you don't allow commenters to say what they wish. I'm truly stunned that you're censoring. I consider it an enemy action.
I have a substack too. There, I don't tolerate rudeness. There are plenty of other places they can act that way. Get off of my lawn.
If only you could realize the gravity of what you do. If only you could realize that a world of free speech is the only way we can survive against, you know, the psychopaths. By censoring you push your view onto others by disallowing them to read another person's opinion. And why can't you handle an opinion that differs? Who decides what is rudeness? So you mandate politeness, is that how you think? I find this a sort of cultish action these days, everyone ready to block someone because they don't live up to their standards. It's much the same as facebook and the other tyrants, deciding what is the standard. Censorship needs to meet some criteria. If you censor others, that means you agree with censorship. All speech must be free if we are to be free. By withholding someone from speaking, you actually threaten my future and everybody else's. Free speech is THAT crucial.
Freedom of speech is one of our constitutional rights, and it applies very specifically to the public realm. You have the right to say what you like in public (with the usual limits on yelling "Fire!" in a crowded room). But you don't have the right to say whatever you like in my house, or on my property. In that case, I have the right to send you off.
And that's how it is here. This newsletter is Caitlin's private space, and when I speak here I speak as a guest. If I speak badly, Caitlin may ask me to leave and she has the right to send me off.
It's really that simple. And it has nothing at all to do with censorship.
Now, that's how you see it but that is not the right way. This is a public forum. All of the internet needs to be based on free speech. It is very different than speaking in someone's house. Some people also think that bullying can be done online, but it really can't, because it's only text. In physical proximity, that's a different thing, yes, then bullying does matter. The idea of ownership too, (like "it's her page" or "it's my page") is another bamboozle that comes from the ego, the me/me mentality. And that is a mentality that cannot succeed as it will kill us, especially now, as we're on the cusp. We need to learn some new skills now that we are in the digital age because it changes everything. Same with cell phones, some kind of etiquette should be talked about as it's bloody annoying talking to people who keep looking at their phones. But I digress.
The “constitution” doesn’t give anyone “rights”. It restricts the government from taking away a persons natural rights such as free speech. Otherwise … ok.
Sir, she created snd owns her Substack , and is within her owner rights and responsibilities to restrict racist, bigoted, and venal postings from her Substack
I agree with you to a point, because letting you speak does nothing but make people realize how pea brained you are. Eventually, the shit you repeat over and over, gets old. You can’t add anything new to your understanding of life, so you repeat the same hate filled rhetoric over and over. If you’ve heard it once, you’ve heard it a thousand times. You act like people don’t know what mentally handicapped, racists think. You didn’t invent the wheel, dipshit.
>>"Yet you, among others keep race out of the equation."
Your comment didn't really make much sense to be. What are you really trying to say or imply? Maybe try a more direct and less obtuse approach?
Don’t worry, I wasn’t saying anything about East Asians. Married to a Chinese twenty odd years. Read between the lines. I’m German if that helps point in the right direction.
Why do you think I asked you to clarify? Because reading between the lines (of your comment) doesn't make much sense.
And what does "you being married to a Chinese" (or anyone else) have anything to do with this discussion?
He's saying Jews are satanic and he wants me to say that also. I'm banning him. These Nazi types never come right out and say what they mean; they're cowards.
Please stop this banning ridiculousness Caitlin. I thought you were above that. You do know that the Nazi's favored censorship? What is the matter with you? Is your constitution not strong enough to either ignore what you don't like or respond to it? Give him a public schlapping, you've got the skill. Why inflict censorship? You are lowering yourself. Please reconsider. Censorship must be condemned outright. Whoever does it.
Caitlin has EVERY RIGHT to ban whomsoever she pleases.
Aren't you a proponent of FREEDOM? Doesn't Caitlin have the freedom to manage/monitor her substack according to her rules?
(1) Are you trying to take freedom away from Caitlin?
(2) Are you trying to infringe on Caitlin's rights and agency to manage her platform/account/substack her way as she sees fit?
(3) Are you restricting (and in so doing) censoring Caitlin YOURSELF by telling Caitlin what she can and can't do ON HER OWN Substack?
(4) Shouldn't the OWNER of the substack be able to make decisions on the "rules of moderation" and what SHOULD (or SHOULD NOT) be allowed? And if not then who should?
There is NO SUCH THING as "absolute FREE SPEECH". It is a made up concept. It DOES NOT EXIST in the real world. Free Speech absolutionists use the MANTRA of free speech as an excuse to GET THEIR WAY. When such people used the "free speech" excuse, they often mean "Free speech for me but not for thee" (that's how it works for people like Elon Musk and those in power).
"Free Speech" is an ILLUSION - it always has been. Instead, please study POWER dynamics. That explains a lot more about what is free and for whom.
It was written, it doesn't need to be history on Caitlin's writing. He would never get a chance to say that to me twice. Thank you Caitlin.
Oh, I assumed 'race' meant blacks and others, not the special ones!
No, Martin, you need to be more specific and realize that the Genociding Zionist Supremacists in israel and controlling our Gov and throughout West and even Middle eastern country leaders, .. they are not all Jews.
Think of them as the Elite Class of Jews that will kill other Jews as easy as they will us, as the elite Class that drove Germany into Nazism and War, escaping and leaving the regular Jews to suffer and die for their Satanic Evil.
We have an Orthodox Hasidim Jewish community here in Burlington Vermont and as a young man with a friend converting into their Jewish Sect, I was welcome to join and learn. Very decent time - I darn near converted myself.
Sure, they Are not Christians and generally cannot be expected to be the same as .. as .. our fathers and grandfathers - and our society used to be - but now is not - so sad.
God Bless., Steve
Have a nice day.
Steven Work, based on your comment above -> you need PROFESSIONAL PSYCHOTHERAPY and help! You are ONE SICK individual (and should be banned)!
(and NO - your virtually signaling "God Bless., Steve" doesn't work)
Well, after my daughter was tortured to death unborn before I knew of her, and my farm and son taken from me in Divorce-Rape, and a dream job turned into a hell at a University because 'professional' 3rd Wave Feminists Affirmative Action meritless man-hating co-workers targeted me with that slimy cnt Witch-whisper-web with lies and viciousness - and even though 3 separate women - 2 that worked there - warned me that man-hating psycho women were thick there, and I said I worked with a lot of women and men before - why would I have trouble now? "Because you are a white men." and not understanding that evil festers in such horrors, supported by women that attack their victims and call them Sick ..
You bring back my daughter from a horrible death, and my son when he was young, and that dream job with co-workers not domically-possessed and perhaps I will not sometimes think that WW3 and most of you and me dead - especially the Sick women that are immune from baby-murdering, false-rape and other hate filled vomit, so the few remaining peoples can start over , and hang in public the Witches as soon as they Show.
God Bless., Steve
Steve I hear your pain and anger but I just want to point out that those women are really patriarchal, they are doing the patriarchal thing. Practically all women do now. Femininity is almost lost, we don't even know how to breastfeed without going to lessons! And even then! Men do most of the rapes by far and the killings so just notice that. We all have been usurped and shaken to hate one another. The reason you lost your children is because we live in a patriarchy - a totally man-designed system that caters only to psychopathic men. Everyone else is just earth fodder to them. We are responsible because we give them power, we give them our power and leave nothing for ourselves. We must NEVER give away our power. But we have to learn how to do this as it's never been done in our lifetimes. It's called freedom.
What you call patriarchy is what I call industrial capitalism. And it is equally destructive to men and women. It has nothing to do with patriarchy. But because most of us are blind to the source of our problem (which surrounds us like the air we breathe), we blame each other instead.
Once a man refers to women as cunts, why would you bother to engage? This guy is a total whack job.
From his feed:
The schools need a major overhaul.
First remove most of the women for most fields but especially in education, shoot for 10% or less, especially for the younger ages where the children are helpless to the Witches' commie feminist delusional psychotic pedo-sexual-mutilating mind-raping practices that have damage too many, and they long ago drove men away, the vicious lying man-hating psycho women that know men will protect the children from their victim-isolating mental-torturing, those fatherless Witch raised university-Sickened women, as teachers and administers should not be trusted with children.
.. Not since they became insane baby-murdering vicious lying horrors, and those healthier teachers that are not, they will lie and cover for those Witches, Womanhood has too many virtueless vomit filled horrors, that if they were men, we would likely throw them off a building.
School ends at 8th grade, and the men teachers would focus on the basic skills, critical thinking, how to research and learn on their own self direction and motivation. Some, most excellent (top 10%) go to University, men teachers, and the rest would go to trade-skills school, or apprenticeship with father's employment, or other business willing to train then while they work….
God Bless., Steve
Whew, get some help Steve…you’re upsetting me!!
I guess he doesn't count who does the most raping of women and children and who does the bombing and murdering. Things are cuckoo now because women and men have to live in a construct that was only designed by greedy, controlling and psychopathic men. Women had nothing to do with putting this stupid and dangerous culture together. Now of course, after women were trained to succeed in a man's world, women act like men, do the things men do, but can't do the things women do, like breastfeed and know how to handle a man. The feminine has always been defined by men, but it's up to women to define things their own way, however they are not doing it!
Caitlin, if you let this comment stand, I hate to think what Martin Beckmann must have said.
“God bless you”? Fuck whatever god you worship. It seems to make you a miserable, uneducated, POS. Most born again Christians are just that. People like you are easy to brainwash and indoctrinate, since you lack the ability to think critically. You’re the problem in the country and the world. Hopefully people like you eventually die off. I’ll be cheering for it, and assisting in any legal way I can. 😉
Pretty sure they indefinitely suspended the wrong guy; it was supposed to be your racist ass.
So Fatherless mother-twisted Satanic Peanut Gallery member,
What was 'racists' in what I wrote? Exactly .. or did you react like a spastic slimy cnt when you saw some women signal to mob a man like vicious lying rabid-dogs, and kick testicles, and your Vagina-Worshipping reflex kicked-in, and now you will belly crawl to her while praising her godesness, and licking her Fem-Nazi boots, asking her to stand on your privates because you are not worthy?
What fun., Steve
We need to read this, your words are what's wrong. Thank you for sharing.
When you employ such nasty, slimy vernacular , you dis the entire female gender . You resentment and anger may arise from your personal experience(s) with some difficult situations, but you can’t throw “all “women” under the bus . Thus feels like guilt by association
He’s mad because he’s still a virgin, and doesn’t understand why no woman would want to be around him. He’s not the sharpest pencil in the box. Oh yeah, I forgot I did his circumcision! I know the other reason he’s so angry.
Go back to the Dark Ages from where you came because you clearly have no clue how humanity works.
You’re saying you’re a good 🐑. Being a brainwashed zombie is nothing to be proud of. You’re dumb enough to wear it as a badge of honor though. It’s people like you that have ruined the country, but you’re so fucking stupid, you don’t understand how!
Recently discovered your writing and am now a loyal fan! So glad you are on the scene and obviously fearless as well as brilliant! I regularly re-post you! I'd be interested in learning your thoughts on how we get out of this mess; I can't see any solution other than taking to the streets with pots and wooden spoons - en mass! Repeatedly. Endlessly. What say you?
Be at peace within yourself. That’s all I have. It’s easier said than done, but it works. The energy and vibration goes UP when we do this.
Truth.
Yep, the benign-sounding “Status quo voting” or “lesserevilism” is directly responsible for this increasing trend of exploitation, capitalist extraction of resources, and the upward shift of wealth - produced as surplus by the working class - largely to the top 0.1 of a percentage point, but also the top 10 percent which encompasses the ruling class in order that they do their job and legislate for yet more protection, the militarisation of police, more prisons run for more profits, and the subjugation and colonisation and extermination of the people “in the way” whom are resisting this hegemony backed with extreme violence which is only available to state actors.
The liberal ‘PMC’ voters naively think they are helping ‘incrementalism’ improve people’s lives and helping ‘save the planet’, but actively block or ignore any attempts to open their eyes and minds to the carnage they are actively enabling by voting “lesserevilism” - which must be the most egregiously misnamed political ideology since “National Socialism”.
Excellent discussion but I would highly recommend avoiding the use of the term "conservative" in such a broad sense. After all, this battle with conservatives is precisely what the power players want to trap us in. Moreover much of the so called conservative agenda is not conservative at all but rather revolutionary. True conservatives exist out there and you will find you have a lot in common with them. Those hyped up free market China threat anti immigrant conservatives are not conservative but rather caught in the net
Never seen you complain when I bash liberals.
Since my youth many words have mutated in meaning. Back then a liberal was anti-war, pro-free speech, pro-working man. Nowadays a "liberal" is anything the DNC wants it to be. Not long ago a bedrock conservative goal was a balanced budget. Now "conservatives" advocate a multi-trillion dollar deficit. In short, these words are so debased as to have become meaningless.
Here's an article about this Orwellization of words. https://science1arts2and3politics.substack.com/p/the-orwellization-of-words
Arguing about the meaning of these deliberately confused words is a fruitless waste of time. I recommend avoiding the quicksand of such propagandized labels and instead sticking with individual issues.
Thanks. I tend to cringe when people, even people I like and respect, speak about "liberals". What they mean by the word isn't what I mean by it. So I just don't use the word.
And I am 100% with you that wise people don't use labels, but just stick to the issues.
I observe that the primary political/cognitive rift is one between those who valorize and support Capitalism and those who wish for its overthrow and replacement by some form of Socialism.
Nope - BOTH liberals AND conservatives support Capitalism.
Yup. 🤓
Fine with me!!
lol, you'd make a good clown. Maybe just stop using those words to attack people. Duh. All this time I thought you had a brain.
What's your problem dude? Don't have any logic or rational arguments? Are ad hominem attacks all you have? Please don't make yourself look worse than you already have.
I second that!
I guess you haven't understood ANY of CJ's articles (if that was your takeaway).
PS: Here is the deleted comment by IceBox: "All you do is complain".
Who deleted the comment? The author or Caitlin? If it was Caitlin then that makes a lot of her writing moot but I'm not saying it was however I hope it wasn't as that will mean she's a censor and thus does not understand that free speech is all we have to get through this nightmare. I sincerely hope it wasn't you that deleted the comment, Caitlin. The age we are upon now is the age of reason. Free speech is more important than oxygen. And if one doesn't understand that, then woe.
It was IceBox (the author of the comment) who deleted it (FYI).
>>"Free speech is more important than oxygen. "
NO, it's not. Have you lived ANYWHERE else in the world other than in the US (or the West)? Try living without Oxygen and let me know how it turns out...
Well it's going to be the same soon. They're not going to let you have oxygen. You totally missed the point - you're too fixated on minutia and missed the whole point. I still stand by it, but what it is meant to convey is that we can only get through this nightmare on the shirtails of free speech. I'm telling ya, you won't have oxygen if we don't, and if we do have free speech, we'll be free! No kidding. Psychopaths cannot live in the light and they always favor censorship. Thanks for letting me know that the author deleted the comment. however Caitlin threatened further down to suspend one of the commenters. I find that extremely infantile. It really changes the face of Caitlin. Anyone who is "awake" must surely by now understand that free speech is our ticket out of this asylum? Seems nobody wants out of it, just repeats the same memes. So we keep repeating the same nightmare. Let's try something different?
Sure, I live in Indonesia. The government is much less powerful. The press much more free than in the West.
My responses were all deleted
I never deleted anything.
Nope - none of your responses were deleted. Nice try - they're all still here. You can always try again. And please stop LYING!
>>"Moreover much of the so called conservative agenda is not conservative at all but rather revolutionary."
Huh? Project 2025 is revolutionary? What have you been smoking? Now don't say the Trump administration is not "true conservatives" in order to weezle your way out. That would be an excuse.
Please tell me, WHAT is good about "conservative thinking" - because I haven't been able to come up with a single thing good about "conservative principles"? (Maybe I need to be educated on some of those things - here's your chance).
It is revolutionary in that it intends to destroy existing institutions and replace them with a privatized global system to support banks and billionaires. This is a revolutionary act, not a conservative one. The confusion emerges from the use of the terms "conservative," "progressive," and "revolutionary." We use the terms "conservative" for what is in fact "reactionary" and "progressive" for what should be "egalitarian". It is no contradiction to be reactionary and revolutionary. For that matter, many of the well meaning progressives are conservative in posture in that they wish to preserve existing systems (like constitutional balances) not create new systems. I could go on, but thank you for the question.
"destroy existing institutions and replace them with a privatized global system to support banks and billionaires."
You mean destroy the institutions of Russia and China? The DNC is 100% on board with this. Though I would agree that the DNC is deeply conservative, using these Orwellized words confuses discourse to such an extent that I recommend simply not using them. Stick with specific issues, as you did here. I never would have understood what you meant without this clarification.
I agree. I was not the one who was tossing around the term *conservative* here. I have written at length about this problematic.
>>"It is revolutionary in that it intends to destroy existing institutions and replace them with a privatized global system to support banks and billionaires."
What is revolutionary about it? What is new about it? The neoliberal project (which is what you describe) has been going full-swing since the 1970s. Are you just waking up now?
We use the terms "conservative" for what is in fact "reactionary" and "progressive" for what should be "egalitarian".
I've never heard such bullshit. And why are you redefining terms to suit your contrived justifications? Maybe look up the common known and understood meanings of "conservative, reactionary, progressive, egalitarian, etc." instead of creating your own definitions and meanings for them.
>>"For that matter, many of the well meaning progressives are conservative in posture in that they wish to preserve existing systems"
Nope - you are COMPLETELY WRONG on that. First, I suggest understanding what "progressive" means. You're trying really hard to gaslight aren't you?
Wow. Not much to say in response to this sort of attack. If others are interested in the issues, not personal attacks, please see green-liberty.org/ctp
If you think "my comment" was an attack, then obviously you lack sufficient reasoning and logical abilities (and argumentation skills). How is it that when people don't have an adequate defense to back up their statements that they "play the victim"?
Shame on you. I thought you were better than this.
In fact your comment did come across as a personal attack. You need to think about your choice of words, arguing the issues, not degrading the other person's intelligence or education or intention.
You wrote: "I've never heard such bullshit. " And instead of owning your insulting words, you blame the person you attacked. I expect you will now attack me for pointing out the obvious.
Green Liberty actually looks pretty good, minus the Covid Project reference.
Who is "we"? I'm a conservative. Pat Buchanan is a good example of what I call a conservative.
The Maga agenda is not conservative (ie with goal of preserving most cherished traditions and institutions) but reactionary radical in the attempt to tear them down. There are some, such as the Electoral College or Citizens United that should be torn down but to tear down institutions in order not to transform society but to immobilize society for control is even revanchist. I suggest that these terms thrown around, such as conservative and liberal, have lost all meaning. INstead be specific in terms of policies and laws: when Sanders proposes a bill to halt military aid to Israel, it is neither liberal nor conservative but a moral mandate. When AOC calls out Israel for genocide, at the price of being attacked and censored, it is not liberal; it is simply telling the truth, and the truth has no party. So let's stop using meaningless words which have so many meanings they have none. Let's talk about real issues, real polcieis, real proposals and not label them as a cheap way to shout boo or hooray!
Bernie Sanders' proposal to halt military aid to Israel is Conservative, because we aren't supposed to waste weapons. Around the time of the Founding, wars had to be paid for with real money.
If money was real now, we'd each be paying back $100,000 dollars to the Treasury Bond holders. Taken right out of our paychecks.
Sorry, it's far more. Each taxpayers share is now 280k, plus the debt of what ever state and city you live in. We have never been here before with the dollar being used as a weapon. I have a Treasury account, and now don't use it.
Not one person who calls himself a conservative in Congress agrees with Sanders. And the issue is not about "wasting" weapons but the policy that prohibits delivering them if it is likely they will be used in violation of international law. The American Revolution was not funded with "real money" but with loans: "For the first two years of the war, the colonists received secretive private and public loans from the French, who held a lingering resentment for the British after the Seven Years' War.[9] After the British defeat at Saratoga, however, foreign support for the Continental Army increased, and in 1778 the colonies signed a treaty with France, officially bringing them into the war with Great Britain.[10] By the end of the war, the colonies had received loans from several different European nations, including a significant contribution from France, Spain and the Netherlands."
>>"The Maga agenda is not conservative (ie with goal of preserving most cherished traditions and institutions) but reactionary radical in the attempt to tear them down."
Dale Ruff, I think you may have misunderstood. The MAGA agenda IS "preserving most cherished traditions and institutions" - and those are NEOLIBERAL ones (that are so cherished by MAGA and capitalists alike). What it's tearing down are regulatory mechanisms, curbs to capitalism, oversight, public protections, etc.
So NO - MAGA is not reactionary - it is just ANOTHER LEVEL (and an extreme one at that) in continuing "neoliberal capitalism" down its current path and eventual objectives.
Also, I wonder if you will EVER get over your "pandering" of virtue signallers like "AOC" and to a certain extent Sanders. I have a bit of respect for Sanders (for all the good that he has done over his long career), but AOC is a faker (and she has conned and fooled many - just like Clinton and Obama).
Maga means make America great again, which means not change but stopping change and returning to a previous (mythical) era of greatness, thru steps like repealing the ACA, repealing Roe vs Wade, and reigniting racism. "Reactionary is a term for a person or ideology that opposes social, political, and economic change and seeks to restore a previous condition of affairs. " This is the proclaimed goal of the MAGA movement, and I add it is destructive because it is based not on new programs but breaking down those that exist, repealing birthright citizenship, repealing reproductive rights, repealing Social security and handing it over to Wall St for profit, etc etc. So reactionary is always destructive, for its goal is to break things, to "destroy the administrative state." It is also revanchist because the underlying appeal of Trump to his base is to restore their sense of lost status and even territory (Panama, Greenland, Canada): Revanchist is an adjective or noun that describes a policy or a person who seeks to recover lost territory or status. "
And restoring neoliberalism is not revolutionary but reactionary, for it means cutting down progressive programs and laws and restoring the campaign to replace government functions (education, prisons, etc) with private corporations, something the Nazis did in the 1930's (tho the mythi is they took over corporations, but the fact is while everyone else in Euroope and the US was was doing the opposite, Nazi Germany had a huge privatization program: 'n the mid‐1930s, the Nazi regime transferred public ownership to the private sector. In doing so, they went against the mainstream trends in western capitalistic countries, none of which systematically reprivatized firms during the 1930s." This is a basic fascist move: reactionary in restoring superannuated programs and law, by tearing down existing programs and law, and revanchist in restoring "lost status" of the white working class and "real Americans" and returning to neoliberal privatization. This is not revolutionary but anti-revolutioinary, as all fascist regimes proclaim communism (revolution) as the enemy to be destroyed: Here is Trump saying just that to his base: "Former President Donald Trump frequently derides Vice President Kamala Harris as "Comrade Kamala." He says she must be stopped to prevent the United States from turning communist or Marxist.
"She is a communist, I guess," Trump said in an Aug. 26 podcast " This is how HItler created a mass movement unified by hatred of the Bolsheviks, or "far left radicals," as Trump also called the Democrats, a party clinging except for its progressive faction, to the center.
Mathew Wills put it this way: "The immediate post-war reading of fascism was of an “ideology of nihilistic irrationalism, a movement fueled by pathological barbarism.” Marxists on the other hand viewed fascism from the 1930s on as an end-stage of capitalism, a corporate-state reaction. More recent liberal academic theories of fascism have defined it as: authoritarian nationalism; reactionary mass movement; revolutionary ultra-nationalism; synthesis of right-wing and left-wing characteristics; mobilizing myth of national rebirth." From the left a false populism arises and from the right, a movement to restore the greatness of the past after having been "stabbed in the back" by the liberals or far left radicals, or as in the case of hapless Harris, communists.
>>"And restoring neoliberalism is not revolutionary but reactionary"
I disagree! restoring is closely related to preserving. Isn't that what you said yourself in one of your comments above about "conservatives preserving things"?
>>"Maga means make America great again"
NO! MAGA is an "ACRONYM" for "Make America Great Again" (which itself is a vague statement). When was America great? And for whom? And in what circumstances? And for which races/cultures? And in what context?
(1) Was America great when it Genocided the native population of the Americas?
(2) Was America great when it profited off slavery?
(3) Was/Is America great because of racism?
(4) Was/Is America great because of Imperialism, Colonialism, War, destruction, exploitation, etc........?
(5) Was America great for exploiting migrant labor? Indentured servitude? Promoting and spreading neoliberal Capitalism?
(6) Was America great for destroying so many countries, regime change operations, debt diplomacy,....
(7) Was/Is America great because of its prison system and rates of incarceration?
(8) Was/Is America great because of inequality? (and MAGA agendas will only make this worse)
(9) Was/Is America great because of its "Health Care System"?
(10) Was/Is America great because of its "fake democracy"?
.....
I'll have to stop here (since this could be a never-ending list)
I will add this, though (in the spirit of objectivity). America HAS made many positive contributions to the world too (lest we lose sight of this).
MAGA means some VERY DIFFERENT things from what the acronym stands for.
Damn, could not have said it better myself ha. Thank you for that. My brother was a maga supporter, and after the Mush, Vivek hate on working people, he now agrees with me on our previous discussions ha. Thank you Mush and Vivek, doing the work : )
To preserve is to keep what exists.
To restore is to dismantle what exists and to put in place that which once existed.
The leadng intellectual of the Maga agenda is Steven Bannon and his mission, as he has announced, is to tear down the administrative state: that is hardly preservation but rather destruction. BTW, virtue signaling is an evolutionary feature of people seeking mates or, in today's, world, jobs. Using it as a slur is a cheap shot, which is a way of signaling your virtue in a negative way. AOC is out in public calling out genocide while you attack her. HOw pathetic. She is working to build a majority to outlaw shipment of arms to Israel, while you are taking cheap shots. Sad.
>>"...tear down the administrative state: that is hardly preservation but rather destruction."
Wow - you like twisting things so they work in your favor, don't you?
Ok, here's another way to look at it ->
(1) PRESERVATION of neoliberal policies
(2) PRESERVATION of capitalism
(3) PRESERVATION of "white supremacy/dominance" (Make America Great Again - make america white again?)
(4) PRESERVATION of "male dominance and patriarchy" (that's what they really mean by "family values")
(5) PRESERVATION of "social norms that discriminate against immmigrants, minorities, at-risk marginal communities"
(6) PRESERVATION of "the ability to continue exploiting the ENVIRONMENT" in the pursuit of profits
(7) PRESERVATION of "laws (and legal loopholes) that concentrate wealth to the top 1% and exploit others"
(8) PRESERVATION of "structural and systemic RACISM, bigotry, etc."
(9) PRESERVATION of "systems and organizations that continue to financially exploit the majority" (such as the banking system, Wall Street, etc.)
..... I could go on for quite a while.
To summarize, what CONSERVATIVES would like to do is to "PRESERVE THE STATUS QUO" (those policies that benefit THEM) and DESTROY any opposition to "CHALLENGES TO THE STATUS QUO" (which is what progressives are trying to do).
Hope you understand the difference between WHAT conservatives are PRESERVING and WHAT they are DESTROYING.
Restoring policies by deregulating and getting rid of the rules is not preservation but restoration......I am have no interest in further discussion with you. There are no conservatives in the Trump regime...there are reactionaires, revanchist, and restorative I do not see repealing the current rules (environment, car safety, etc) and restoring the unregulated capitalism that people like Bannon want to bring back: Make America great again is not about preserving but restoring. You are free to disagree..I no longer care. Please spare me.
To tear down means to preserve? When Bannon says tear down the administrative state, he uses the term "deconstruct the administrative state," which he explains means to undo, to repeal, the "liberal" policies and deregulate, thus nothing is preserved but neoliberal policies (privatization and deregulation) are restored.
>>"AOC is out in public calling out genocide while you attack her."
Wow - you are either "intellectually challenged", employed in some capacity by AOC, lack adequate critical thinking skills, or are unable to see through the propaganda, false narratives, and virtue signaling (or a combination of the above).
I believe you have been CONNED, gaslighted, bamboozled, hoodwinked, been misled, and duped about YOUR "AOC narratives". If you can't figure out how, then I suggest you spend some time (with an open, questioning, and objective mind) with Caitlin's past articles (going back years).
Don't worry, MANY people (including me at one point in time) have been fooled by AOC, Clinton, Obama and such purveyors of "hopium". You are NOT ALONE!
Your accusations are both false and absurd: AOC is one of the few calling out genocide and for halting shipment of arms to Israel. At 83, totally independent, and with a world class education, I reject your insults and forgive you.
https://www.workersstrikeback.org/
Actually all talk about politics is showing that one is still in the kindergarten of thought. Question yourselves, why do you obey something psychopaths write into the thing they call "law"? Why do you feel compelled to obey it? Why do you give it your energy, your attention, you money, your life? Why? Is it due to cowardice because you're afraid of their thugs? Or that they could ruin you? It's all based on blackmail isn't it? You're giving energy to blackmail when you talk about politics. All parties, all policies, all hairstyles.
Whether YOU are interested in politics or not, POLITICS is interested in YOU. Everything is politics. There is NOT AN AREA of human society/culture/economics/civilization that is NOT touched by politics.
Maybe make an effort to understand what politics is, the history of politics (in various forms) throughout human history, etc.
Before "Economics" was called economics, it was called "the political economy".
well we could live with no politics and no laws...if we were hunter-gatherer bands. It simply isn't realistic in modern mass society. There must be organization, and a huge culture like ours requires a lot of centralization. Which pretty much inevitably leads to corruption; I think it could be designed to block that path, but I don't know if it ever has been.
Even in hunter-gatherer bands there were laws (unwritten, non-codified socially/culturally agreed upon ways of behaving, etc.). And there is always politics (though of different kinds in smaller groups).
I'm not sure why you think hunter-gatherer societies had no laws or politics - since anthropology studies refute that claim.
Also, have you looked at the crime and violence in hunter-gatherer societies? Here's one link -> https://news.tulane.edu/pr/new-study-reveals-long-history-violence-ancient-hunter-gatherer-societies
I will admit that I WANT to believe that hunter-gatherer bands were/are egalitarian and mostly nonviolent. Because it suggests that this is a POSSIBLE mode for humanity; we aren't constructed, hardwired, to hierarchy, domination and violence. But there may be those who want to grind the ax on the other side. Who want to believe that only law and rulers keep us in line--or that we are fucked-up POS who need God/Jesus/Allah to redeem our worthless selves. Researchers with advanced degrees may well be affected by either of these biases too. I looked at the link you posted and note that it goes between talking about what ancient societies were like, to talking about what the researchers here actually studied--ONE group of tribes in northern Chile, in the driest desert in the world (the extreme environment could be a factor although I note that the famously peaceable and egalitarian Pygmies/Bantu live in the Kalahari.)
So maybe the point is that SOME small bands have been egalitarian and peaceable but not all. And I'm a proponent of the Parable of the Tribes, which says that when a group turns to agriculture, division of labor and hierarchy, it's set up for expansion, warfare and domination. Likely this domination always includes domination of women by men and domination of other creatures by humans--it's part of the same mindset. But the key thing is--once this gets going, the tribe is going to need more land and they will be well set up to take it from their neighbors. Who will almost never succeed in defending their tenancy--the aggressive tribe has more young men, they practice war, they work on weapons development, and their culture justifies it. So the peaceable tribe is either vanquished, the survivors absorbed into the aggressive one, or they flee. One of those aggressive tribes has evolved into today's world order.
From I can tell, hunter-gatherers are the only groups that are really egalitarian. And radical egalitarian behavior seems to be an essential part of what keeps them together.
https://www.workersstrikeback.org/
Conservatives have been right across the board, from what I can see.
I'm not sure what you see. Firstly, what is "right across the board"? Who's right? Yours? Your values? Conservative values?
Your "right across the board" may very well be "wrong across the board".
What does YOUR "right across the board" entail?
I mean right as in conservatives predict policies will end badly, and they do. From education, to crime, to marriage, etc... It always plays out the same. Conservatives raise an alarm about, let's say, divorce rates exploding in the 70's and the social ills that will happen. The leftist media dismisses and ridicules their concerns. Then exactly what the conservatives say will happen...happens. There is never any accountability for those who were wrong.
That is why I have urged governments to title legislations with the names of those who created each Act: Minister/Departmental Head/project officer. The cascading effects on society would be immediate change in culture.
I seem to have issues with your logic.
You give the example of "raising alarm rates over divorce" as being proof of "conservatives being right". There are so many things wrong with this that I don't know where to begin...
(1) What are the statistics of divorce rates in "conservative, liberal or neither" groups?
(2) What's your target focus group? Conservatives ONLY in the US or conservatives throughout the world? (in the context of divorce rates)
(3) Have you bothered to examine/analyze/understand WHY divorce rates are going up? Maybe it has to do with financial issues arising in families because of Capitalism and neoliberalism? Maybe it has to do with a "patriarchal system"? Maybe it has to do with "women not taking shit from men as they used to? Many more reasons.
There are too many errors in your critical thinking here, so I won't proceed further on the fallacies in your argument.
Sorry, but there's no coherent logic in your comment. BOTH conservatives AND liberals can be NEOLIBERALS (it's not either/or). Being a neoliberal is independent of the conservative/liberal classification.
>>"There are many “conservatives” who have take a strong stand against the colonial-settler Zionist state of apartheid Izrahell"
So? What does that prove? There are leftists against Zionism, there are rightists against Zionism, there are people who are neither right or left that are against Zionism, there are conservatives and liberals and neither of the two that are against Zionism.
And your point was?
Yeah, they construct false matrixes and superimpose them on top of terms like “liberal” and “conservative”. The terms are so twisted they’re hardly cohesive concepts of political science, much reflectively of our body politic and society as a whole.
Oh that term made me giggle, "political "science""?
Don’t encourage her! She will grow up eventually!
I say the GOP agenda is superficial revolutionary posing to garner votes. Nothing will fundamentally change.
https://science1arts2and3politics.substack.com/p/usa-politics-new-years-predictions
Seeing China as a threat is conservative cannon.
Seeing Israel as an ally...is not. Almost always an indication of a neocon, which was never conservativism.
Just IMO.
I was brought up in Scotland. I never bothered with politics. I think I heard and somehow some was in there. I was never good at reading all the shenanigans in newspapers either. I think that helped keep me from some of what Caitlin is talking about now. I always had my own way of not bothering about some things. Eg. I laughed at swine flu. What was that. Never had a flu jab. Only since being in Australia many years later and intuitively going against things like covid, the vax etc have I taken an interest in politics and only because I felt I had to. Had to for the next generation, children, freedom etc. I do not like what I see and I see too well what Caitlin is talking about and have done for a while. Trying to extricate yourself from that empty feeling of having no joy in life over what you see as a complete mess all over the world is not easy. I try now to look within for that feeling of contentment and to not allow the pressures of this dystopia Caitlin talks about, to destroy me mentally. To enjoy family and those few you still think are genuine. To continue reading about the horrors our govts are trying to descend on us but to stay above it. I remember in Scotland when you were either conservative or labour Labour being supposedly for the worker and progression and against exploitation. Conservative as the more family, less confrontational element. Quick explanation as I’m sure it meant a lot more. However, today I think they are all one and the same and all on the same path of destruction.
Let’s hope that with knowledge and truth we can avoid the wanted outcome.
"We come to nirvana by way of samsara"
🙏Thank you Caitlin.
I have no idea what that emoji is supposed to mean, but it looks suspiciously like something that Australians who are pissed off with national politic, are likely to draw on their ballot paper come election time.
Hah! That's a good one.
They're supposed to be praying hands.
Thanks. I'm not sure if I'm relieved or disappointed.
Sorry, Caitlin, but I have huge issues with your statements about antidepressants, which quite literally have saved my life. I suffer from CLINICAL DEPRESSION, which means my brain is unable to transmit serotonin to the appropriate cells. The correct antidepressants can correct this. If not for them, I would have taken my own life many years ago.
I have been taking them for forty years.
What you are describing is situational depression, that is, depression due to outside circumstances. Antidepressants will NOT CORRECT THIS, and I resent your implication that they are being “handed out like candy”. A psychiatrist knows the difference.
A mild anti-anxiety agent such as Buspar can help.
Am I depressed over the state of the world? Of COURSE I am. Only a psychopath wouldn’t be. And this is in spite of being on the maximum dose of sertraline.
If you’ve never taken antidepressants, Ms. Caitlin, don’t speak about what you don’t know. And don’t disparage those of us who actually require them in order to live as normal a life as possible.
Gypsy, I think you may have misunderstood the context in which Caitlin talks about "anti-depressants". She is focusing/emphasizing the "push towards anti-depressants" by BIG PHARMA (including on kids being over-prescribed stuff like Prozac, etc.) to increase profits (and not serious clinical cases and diagnoses or genetic/hereditary conditions that people may have).
That’s not how I read it, Chang. She places this in the context of people seeking happiness.
Caitlin clearly is unaware of the fact that antidepressants are NOT a “feel-good” pill. They are a corrective medication. People with clinical depression taking them is exactly the same as a diabetic taking insulin.
When Caitlin states, "If they put microchips in our brains which allowed them to fully control our minds, they’d have us moving around in more or less the same way we’ve been moving for generations" I automatically thought of Sheldon S. Wolin's 'DEMOCRACY INC. Managed Democracy and The Specter of Inverted Totalitarianism' a book ever American should read as it's a great study in Caitlin piece.
Yes, there is a false world created by our conditioning, education, loneliness and self-hate that's being used to the advantage of big pharma, junk food, gambling, drinking, smoking and endless products. However, Caitlin, remember the environmental dystopia that greeted Neo when he was jacked out of it? It's not all tweeting birds and cream teas.
When we wake up we see that we have fucked over every member of every species, including our pets, some of whom we have bred so that they can hardly breath. We see the tiny pockets of jungle trapping the last members of millions of species. 'Co-existence'?: what a joke.
We see that we are in the calm before the storm of mass migration of humans, as many countries become too hot for either arable or the farming of other animals for food.
Waking up is not for the faint hearted. Many may prefer to stay asleep.
Such beautiful writing. The good thing Is how the awareness of living in a dystopic society, makes us more authentic and genuine