The Grayzone‘s Aaron Maté has done an interview with his father titled “America in denial: Gabor Maté on the psychology of Russiagate”, and it is the single best and most insightful political video I’ve ever seen. In 27 minutes it essentially describes the fundamental problems of our times, not just with Russiagate but with world politics as a whole, from the overarching behaviors of globe-dominating forces all the way down to the ways our own inner reluctance to face reality objectively helps to prop up those forces. So it deserves its own article.

Back when I learned that Gabor was Aaron’s father my first thought was, “That makes so much sense.” Aaron had exploded onto the Russiagate debate scene seemingly out of nowhere and quickly became the most thorough and lucid voice on the subject, holding to strict principles of valuing facts and evidence over the aggressive pressure to conform from his media peers and the authoritative assertions of government agencies. Gabor I’d known of for years because of how widely respected he is in other circles I’ve moved in for his penetrating insights into the human psyche. It makes perfect sense that someone with the moral fortitude to swim against the groupthink current and speak the truth no matter what would have someone like that as part of his personal formation.

I highly recommend watching the full interview, but since I know many of my readers aren’t big on watching videos I’ll sum up what I consider the highlights here with excerpts from the Grayzone transcript, because I really do think it’s that good and that important.

The elder Maté talked about the public support for the Russiagate narrative, and the inevitable disappointment which followed after Robert Mueller failed to turn up any evidence of collusion between the Russian government and the 2016 Trump campaign, as the result of emotional investment.

“Now, disappointment means that you’re expecting something and you wanted something to happen, and it didn’t happen,” Maté said. “So that means that some people wanted Mueller to find evidence of collusion, which means that emotionally they were invested in it. It wasn’t just that they wanted to know the truth. They actually wanted the truth to look a certain way. And wherever we want the truth to look a certain way, there’s some reason that has to do with their own emotional needs and not just with the concern for reality.”

Gabor explained that the reason for this emotional investment ensued from the trauma of seeing Trump elected. They had the choice between consciously feeling through the pain and fear of that trauma and then doing some serious examinations of the factors that led to Trump’s election, or blaming the whole thing on a foreign boogeyman and avoiding that self-confrontation altogether.

“You can look at that,” Maté explained. “Or you can say there must be a devil somewhere behind all this, and that devil is a foreign power, and his name is Putin, and his country is Russia. Now you’ve got a simple explanation that doesn’t invite you or necessitate that you explore your own pain and your own fear and your own trauma.”

“So I really believe that really this Russiagate narrative was, on the part of a lot of people, a sign of genuine upset at something genuinely upsetting,” Maté continued. “But rather than dealing with the upset, it was an easier way to in a sense draw off the energy of it in to some kind of a believable and comforting narrative. It’s much more comforting to believe that some enemy is doing this to us than to look at what does it say about us as a society.”

Maté went on to discuss Trump himself as not just traumatizing, but traumatized. Someone acting out his own inner issues in the world in a deeply unconscious way:

Donald Trump is the clearest example of a traumatized politician one could ever see. He’s in denial of reality all the time. He is self aggrandizing. His fundamental self concept is that of a nobody. So he has to make himself huge and big all the time and keep proving to the world how powerful and smart, what kind of degrees he’s got and how smart he is. It’s a compensation for terrible self image. He can’t pay attention to anything, which means that his brain is too scattered because it was too painful for him to pay attention.

 

What does this all come down to? The childhood that we know that he had in the home of a dictatorial child disparaging father… who demeaned his children mercilessly. One of Trump’s brothers drank himself to death. And Trump compensates for all that by trying to make himself as big and powerful and successful as possible. And, of course, he makes up for his anger towards his mother for not protecting him by attacking women and exploiting women and boasting about it publicly. I mean, it’s a clear trauma example. I’m not saying this to invite sympathy for Trump’s politics. I’m just describing that that’s who the man is.

Maté tied his observations about the refusal of Russiagaters to confront their inner trauma and Trump’s refusal to confront his to the refusal of Americans as a whole to confront the horrors that their own country has inflicted upon the world which dwarf even the most severe things the Russian government has been accused of doing to America.

“No serious student of history can possibly deny how the United States has interfered in the internal politics of just about every nation on earth,” Maté said, adding that this interference often consists of mass murder. “For example, in Chile, there’s an elected government that America cheerfully overthrows, even boasts about it. Not to mention the current interference in Venezuela, the internal politics. Not to mention, how as you’ve pointed out, many others have pointed out, and [Time] boasts about it on its cover, about how United States helped Boris Yeltsin get elected… Even if the worst thing that’s alleged about the Russians is true, it’s not even on miniscule proportion of what America has publicly acknowledged it has done all around the world.”

Maté talked about how “it’s always easier to see ourselves as the victims than as the perpetrators,” adding that “whether it’s Great Britain, or whether it’s France with their vast colonial empires, they’re always the victims of everybody else. The United States is always the victim of everybody else. All these enemies that are threatening us. It’s the most powerful nation on earth, a nation that could single handedly destroy the earth a billion times over with the weapons that are at its disposal, and it’s always the victim.”

“So this victimhood, there is something comforting about it because, again, it allows us not to look at ourselves,” Maté said. “And I think there was this huge element of victimhood in this Russiagate process.”

Maté talked about how Mueller, despite his horrible track record of supporting the WMD lie in the lead-up to the Iraq invasion, has been made into a hero, because Hollywood has trained the public psyche to seek out “good guys” and “bad guys” in every intense situation. This is what led Putin to be depicted as an omnipotent supervillain capable of infiltrating the highest levels of the US government, and Mueller as a knight in shining armor who was going to rescue us all.

“Rather than saying, okay, there’s a big problem here. We’ve elected a highly traumatized grandiose, intellectually unstable, emotionally unstable, misogynist, self aggrandizer to power. Something in our society made that happen. And let’s look at what that was. And let’s clear up those issues if we can. And let’s look at the people on the liberal side who, instead of challenging all those issues, put all their energies into this foreign conspiracy explanation. Because to have challenged those issues would have meant looking at their own policies, which tended in the same direction.

 

“Rather than looking at how under Clinton, they’ve jailed hundreds of thousands of people who should never have been in jail. Looking at how under the Bushes and under Obama, there was this massive transfer of wealth upwards. Instead of asking why Barack Obama gets $400,000 for an hour speech to Wall Street, which means that maybe our faith in how our system operates needs to be shaken a bit so we can actually look at what’s really going on, let’s just put our attention on some foreign devil again.”

Maté talked about how Obama, despite being a warmonger like the other US presidents, represented a nice ideal in people’s minds, so the contrast between that ideal and Trump’s election made it especially traumatic. This made people unwilling to look at the actual root causes of Hillary Clinton’s loss, which taken together are far more threatening to democracy than anything Russia is accused of doing, even if those accusations are all 100 percent true.

In conclusion the younger Maté asked his father for his advice on what people can do going forward to avoid the mistakes that led to Trump’s election, and to the years of Russia hysteria that followed, or at least to deal with similar challenges in a more mature way.

“Well, first of all, I advise people to do something that I find hard to do myself, but I think it’s essential,” replied the elder Maté. “Which is that when there’s hard emotions there, just own them. Just own that you’re hurt. Own that you’re confused. Just own it. Say I’m hurt, I’m confused, I’m terrified. And rather than try and find an explanation right away, just own the feeling. And then when you’re ready, then actually ask, what happened here? What actually happened here? What are the facts? What behaviors or beliefs on my part maybe contributed to the situation? So be curious. Be really curious.”

With regard to the press, Gabor advised to be objective and skeptical of the government agencies which have so consistently deceived America into wars:

“At least be objective. Don’t be so quick to jump on board. Don’t be so quick to assume that because almost the whole media is broadcasting, trumpeting a certain line, that that line represents reality. Learn from history. Learn from this one. Learn from this Russiagate thing that they were all saying for years that this is a given fact. All of a sudden it turns out not to be a given fact. Well, next time, don’t be so quick to believe them.”

Gabor pointed out that for all people’s efforts at avoiding the internal confrontations which necessarily come along with disillusionment, it is much better to be disillusioned than illusioned.

“Would you rather believe in something that’s false, which means to have an illusion? Or would you rather be disillusioned?” Maté asked. “In other words, to see the truth. And I’m saying that we should be glad to be disillusioned. So this Russiagate and this ignoble end to the Russiagate narrative, it’s a disillusionment for a lot of people, but that’s a good thing. If they say, okay, I had this illusion, this illusion I no longer have, which means I’ve been disillusioned, now I can actually look at the truth. So it’s good to be disillusioned.”

“So this could be a positive beginning for a lot of people if they take the right attitude,” Maté concluded.

Man, I really hope so.

____________________________

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25 responses to “This Talk Between Aaron & Gabor Maté Is The Best Political Video I’ve Ever Seen”

  1. Caitlin’s article “Why The Powerful Always Paint Their Side As The Victims” is a prime case in point of victimhood on steroids. Connecting the dots with the Mates . . .
    https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2019/05/06/why-the-powerful-always-paint-their-side-as-the-victims/

  2. The essence of this interview is to debase Trump. There certainly is plenty reason to dislike Trump. But one comes away with the feeling that the purpose of the video is to say that ‘sure Hillary would have been better’ but accept the outcome. Which could have been said in three minutes.

  3. I’m sorry to hear that your experience with videos is so limited as to find such a poorly edited and recorded video would fit anywhere but at the bottom of your list. I won’t be watching any more embedded videos from you until you have completed a video production course of study so that you can understand why an experienced videographer doesn’t want to subject himself to such crap again.

  4. George Kennan was an influential US VIP for many years. He said the following only four or five short years before the end of the Soviet Union.
    ..
    “Were the Soviet Union to sink tomorrow under the waters of the ocean, the American military-industrial establishment would have to go on, substantially unchanged, until some other adversary could be invented. Anything else would be an unacceptable shock to the American economy.”
    ..
    At the time he said it, Kennan meant EXACTLY what he said, and ever since the USSR’s collapse, Kennan’s prediction has been time and time again PROVEN to be amazingly prescient. What we average people have a DUTY to fully realize and fully appreciate is that what Kennan said is EVEN MORE TRUE TODAY than it was in Kennan’s time.
    ..
    After the USSR collapsed to “The Russian Federation”, the US LITERALLY had no other choice than to CONTINUE its rampage around the world. But economic “things” started to go off the rails in 2007. Elite VIPs Paulson, Greenspan, Ben Bernanke, etc. were ABSOLUTELY CORRECT when they said that the ancient financial system (of a microscopic percentage of the population owning the vast majority of wealth and capital equipment for their own astronomical profit) would have “failed” had those VIPs not done what they did. By failure I mean that that microscopic percentage would have suffered massive losses on their investments; that many of their major banks would have gone out of business and many of the Elite would NOT have been able to remain the Elite. Most importantly of all, the US’s perpetual wars in support of USD hegemony would have had to come to a screeching halt along with its catastrophic effect on, again, the US’s war-based economy.
    ..
    So the president before Trump and the bone-ignorant US Congress Of Morons literally forced future US taxpayers to rescue the Elite; the Elite have remained the Elite; the Too Big To Fail (TBTF) banks were officially born and the US’s global war of USD hegemony has continued unabated ever since.
    ..
    It is important to fully realize and appreciate that perpetual war and FIAT, FIAT, FIAT, printed-out-of-thin-air USD (NOT gold-backed USD) go hand in hand, because domestic and foreign mercenaries paid by fiat USD now REPLACE US-citizen-draftees. Should those mercenaries “lose confidence in” USD, US citizens and their children are going to have to fight and die around the world for USD/corporate hegemony.
    ..
    Unfortunately for humanity, what those very few human beings did to rescue the Elite and the TBTF banks was even worse that the actions of Nixon ending gold-based currency and Carter’s “Carter Doctrine”. Those panicked, impulsive actions steered the traditional whatever-you-want-to-call-it system into what is now essentially a worldwide laboratory experiment, or as Lord Jacob Rothschild bluntly put it in 2016,
    ..
    “The six months under review have seen central bankers continuing what is surely the greatest experiment in monetary policy in the history of the world.”
    ..
    As incredible and ridiculous as it may sound, the model — the experiment — that the increasingly-desperate Elite are trying to foist onto the people of the world all boils down to one thing. Humanity’s ultimate purpose is to SERVE the TBTF banks (more specifically, the Elite that runs and profits from them), NOT THE OTHER WAY AROUND — THE WAY THAT THINGS USED TO BE BEFORE this ongoing experiment.
    ..
    Not so subtly, the Elite are telling us that in order for “us” to avoid yet another “financial crisis”, the Elite’s TBTF banks must FIRST have absolute control over each and every THING and each and every PERSON on planet earth and that WE are going to have to pay THEM a lot more money for their services.
    ..
    Experimental negative-interest-rate policy along with their necessary experimental abolishment of cash, are a last-ditch, now-fully-conscious effort by the inheritance/investment-owners to strip-mine some more profit from the no-inheritance owners, thus momentarily delaying the need for yet another astronomically-expensive and destructive war.
    ..
    But unfortunately, almost as if by the intentional design of an “invisible hand”, even all of these desperate, experimental measures CAN NOT and WILL NOT garner enough profit for the Elite’s centuries-long accumulation of inheritances/investments. When the panic-inducing pressure of impending loss on those investments inevitably becomes too great for the whatever-you-want-to-call-it present system to contain, the world will once again explode into full-scale, all-out war — this time, nuclear war, which will, this time around the “business cycle”, truly be “the war to end all war”. At least its end will come very fast. The mass die-off will take just a few more weeks.
    ..
    The total loss of INDIVIDUAL citizens’ privacy and liberty to an increasingly-secretive, tyrannical, intrusive, inquisitive, lawless, ruthless government/Elite are the inevitable domestic collateral damage caused by that Elite’s “foreign” policy. Foreign policy has “come home” and become domestic policy. “Threats from within” are becoming the focus of the Elite’s experimental national security state. Part of that “threat” is willing or unwitting agents of foreign powers — antiwar candidates, for example, or a presidential candidate who say “wouldn’t it be nice to get along with Russia?” to wild applause.
    ..
    The wars of USD/corporate hegemony and supporting MSM propaganda machine, as well as various Fed-funded hand-outs to keep the serfs in a semi-comatose, manageable state, are astronomically expensive, but all Jerome and Mario’s not-so-invisible hands have to do is hold down their computers’ “0” keys for longer and longer periods of time and all of the Elite’s invoices will magically get paid and their wealth infinitely increased.
    ..
    So here’s the US’s new, completely-experimental economic system in a nutshell. Jerome (etc.) holds down the “0” key for longer and longer periods of time; the TBTF banks get bailed out by taxpayers time and time again; the US national debt skyrockets and the US’s printed-out-of-thin-air-USD-funded MIC literally terrorizes the rest of the world into accepting those “dollars” as payment for their REAL goods. Any nation that does not comply with US diktat or fails to accept fiat USD as payment for its real products either has its government replaced or is reduced to stone-age chaos.
    ..
    The TBTF banks’ protective political insulation is very thick and the number of Jerome’s (etc.) fiat money is infinite, so, unfortunately, it’s beginning to look like the one and only thing that will stop the US’s new, politically-unstoppable, “whatever it takes” perpetual-war/TBTF-bank-based economic EXPERIMENT will be a nuclear strike undertaken by one or more of the ever-increasing number of nations who are being victimized by it.

    1. James Charles Avatar
      James Charles

      The ‘West’ supported the S.U.?
      “Taken together, these four volumes constitute an extraordinary commentary on a basic weakness in the Soviet system
      The Soviets are heavily dependent on Western technology and innovation not only in their civilian industries, but also in their military programs.
      An inevitable conclusion from the evidence in this book is that we have totally ignored a policy that would enable us to neutralize Soviet global ambitions while simultaneously reducing the defense budget and the tax load on American citizens.”
      “ His book tells at least part of the story of the Soviet Union’s reliance on Western technology, including the infamous Kama River truck plant, which was built by the Pullman-Swindell company of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, a subsidiary of M. W. Kellogg Co. Prof. Pipes remarks that the bulk of the Soviet merchant marine, the largest in the world, was built in foreign shipyards. He even tells the story (related in greater detail in this book) of the Bryant Chucking Grinder Company of Springfield, Vermont, which sold the Soviet Union the ball-bearing machines that alone made possible the targeting mechanism of Soviet MIRV’ed ballistic missiles. “
      http://www.crowhealingnetwork.net/pdf/Antony%20Sutton%20-%20The%20Best%20Enemy%20Money%20Can%20Buy.pdf

  5. No doubt what Maté Sr. says is all true. However, going down the armchair psychologist route is to risk overemphasizing personality traits in politics at the expense of focusing on policies. This is a trap the establishment is all too happy for us to fall into, for US politics has already become too much of a personality pageant as it is. Fortunately in this analysis, and that’s what makes it worth watching, is that Maté is smart enough not to lose sight of the connection between psychology and policy. Psychological deconstruction can be helpful, especially in the case of collective psychology, but formulating a radical change of policy should always remain the end goal.

  6. A touching interview. At the end I like how Gabor contrasted what little the Russians might have done with what the DNC did to Sanders, in terms of meddling with our precious elections.

  7. Caitlin, I’ve got mixed feelings on this one. I’ve been impressed by Aaron Mate’s straightforward reporting though occasionally feel a vague unease with him, somewhat similar to the unease I feel when watching AOC, but not quite as strong. Perhaps the eye-opening events of 2016 have made me overly suspicious of all “progressive” media spokespersons. Or maybe I need to watch the video again. But despite the interesting psychoanalysis of both the American psyche and Trump, what stood out for me were two glaring falsehoods: 1) that Trump is a misogynist, and 2) that it’s possible the DNC emails could have been taken by the Russians. Each of these false claims fits perfectly with the established Democratic propaganda line.

    Id Pol loves calling Trump a misogynist despite the fact that he has appointed a number of strong women to positions of power and influence in his administration. These include White House spokesperson Sarah Sanders, U.N. ambassadors Nikki Haley and Kelly Knight, CIA director (and ghoul) Gina Haspel, Sec. of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen, Sec. of Education Betsy DeVos, Sec. of Transportation Elaine Chao, head of small business administration Linda McMahon. And others. Plus, Trump places a very high value on the judgement and advice of his daughter Ivanka. He seems to respect and like women as equals despite the goofy locker room talk from several years ago. Yes, he uses his money to lure beautiful babes into bed and the marital chambers, but not via rape and abuse. He makes comments about the physical appearance of women he otherwise dislikes, but he does the same to men. He’s rude and crude but hardly a misogynist, so it was shocking to see Gabor make that claim.

    Bill Binney and his fellow VIPS have proven that the DNC leak had to have been an inside job. There is no reason on earth to try to pin that on “the Russians” unless you want to bolster the notion that they helped elect Donald Trump and that they are a threat to our democracy. That’s neocon.

    So when someone lards an otherwise intelligent discussion with highly partisan claims, I reach for the salt shaker.

    As forTrump’s abusive and traumatic childhood and longstanding penchant for lying, well, Hillary’s got him beat on both fronts.

    1. Joe Van Steenbergen Avatar
      Joe Van Steenbergen

      S. BLACK: Outstanding comment; I agree with everything you said. Not once in my view of Mr. Trump have I seen even a hint of misogyny on his part.. And I especially agree with your comments on the DNC leaks. Mueller deliberately ignored the opportunity to either interview Assange or Binney in an effort to conclusively determine the origin of the DNC leaks because he was not interested in finding the truth; rather, he was interested in covering for Hillary and perpetuating the establishment narrative. Thanks for sharing your thoughts.

  8. “Rice*A*Romney….that must have Zombie Treat” > a satire on actual history at FauxScienceSlayer site > written while the Bain Bandit stole the 2012 RNC nomination from Dr Ron Paul

    “A Century of US Presidents Marching to the Beat of the New World Order” by Joachim Hagopian on the CFR puppets since 1924….every POTUS except PDJT who RussiaGate has turned into due facto NWO tool

  9. I have for some time been oddly (my wife would say perversely) fascinated by articles and comments from hard-core Democratic Party loyalists at Salon.com. They are like a cult, obsessed as Rachel Maddow has been with irrational and evidence-free allegations regarding Trump and the Russians. They can’t think about anything else. And they have NOT been disheartened by the Mueller Report. They insist it proves Trump DID collude with the Russians. Anyone who disagrees with them is called a Putin-loving traitor – comrade, Boris, Ivan.. “How’s the weather in Moscow?” the ask.

    Even though Mueller punted on the issue of obstruction of justice, the true believers contend it was the worst crime in the history of humanity. At the same time they show little or no interest in Trump’s more blatant crimes against humanity, though it is apparent they support Trump’s coup attempt in Venezuela as well as his arrest of Julian Assange.

    1. It’s either hilarious or very depressing depending on your mental state at the time

      1. It’s also an interesting puzzle. In November of 2016, the principle objection to Trump, the reason why, when the results of the election came in, people were staggering down the streets of New York weeping hysterically — could not have been his policies or actions, because there hadn’t been any yet. It had to be his person, his personality, his culture. We need an explanation, but not the sort of self-serving explanations mainstream soi-disants liberals and Never-Trump conservatives have been fond of. My guess is that we need to start with class war. Yes, the Great Unwashed arose, the Id of America. Why now? What does it want? Where is it going? What will it do next?

  10. Ah ha, wise father, wise son. I’m trying to achieve the same with my son, unfortunately he is not so lucky with his dad as Aaron is.
    Just short of the 9.30 min mark Oldermann comes on. Does his family and his doctor know about this, it’s embarrassing. Followed by the lovely Rachel who we all have to be very nice to because for the rest of her life she is never going understand what happened

  11. Yes, it IS very good, but Gabor simply has the professional background and a special talent for conveying what you, Cait, and fully half of your readers, already knew.
    But I do have to give extra credit for the specific psychiatric diagnosis of The Great Orange One.

  12. Great interview. As stated the proper response to Trump’s election was to accept the hurt and to be disillusioned with the DNC/Clintonites. But Dem elites could not allow the that introspection because it would work against the goals of their wealthy donor class, which buy DNC elite. So their response was to foist a scam on the American people

  13. Donald Trump is as phony as a three dollar bill!! The United States of America is as phony as a three dollar bill!!
    It is all a grand make believe charade to hide what this country is all about!! As the Congresswoman said: ” It is all about the Benjamin’s””!! It is all about the money and nothing else matters!! No morality, no ethics, no God, no nothing; just the money and my getting my piece of it!! Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton have different genders but they are both slimy crooked criminals that our political parties put before us to choose from!!! Our government is way beyond corrupt; are population is way beyond ever waking up to any hint of reality!! That is just the way that it is here!!! The ” Trance ” is worshiped because the fog of make believe hides all of the very nasty demons!!!

  14. linda gentsch Avatar
    linda gentsch

    If people would make the effort to listen to our citizens from all sides of the political spectrum, to try and understand their fears and anger, they would realize that we are all traumatized. Just like Gabor describes Trump as being traumatized. They would also see that a large number of people on both sides have been “disillusioned” and have acknowledged such whether it is disillusioned by Trump or Obama or Clinton or Bush or others. And those that have been “disillusioned” are more sceptical, more thoughtful and as such more interested in finding solutions to our real problems and more open to working together. Less willing to succumb to the divisiveness where TPTB would like to keep us.

    1. Maybe we don’t want to find solutions to our real problems — after all, we ourselves create most of them. Tribal hooting and feces-throwing may seem to be more fun for most people than thinking.

      As for ‘skeptical’, remember the old-time mainstream liberals were supposed to be the skeptics, murmuring to one another, ‘Reality has a liberal bias.’ (Or was it the other way around?) But, wait, that’s not very skeptical after all. In any case, I guess Russiagate relieved us of the illusion of rational, skeptical liberalism.

      1. “Maybe we don’t want to find solutions to our real problems — after all, we ourselves create most of them.” — Anarcissie
        .
        Based on three decades of study and working for change, I agree with this statement. The way(s) to change things politically is in our hands, but requires thinking rationally (i.e.: setting emotions aside and confronting the reality of situation and circumstances), compromising with people of like-mind but differing political views, then deciding to act. Something I’ve (sadly) concluded will not happen without a traumatic society-wide event, and even then…
        .
        But, won’t give up trying… just consider this the ninety-ninth time I’ve picked myself up after being knocked down by the empire’s propaganda juggernaut.

        1. I am not at all sure either reasoning about humans or reasoning with them will work, because humans are too complex to analyze very thoroughly and most of them are in any case uninterested in reason, at least not until they’ve tried absolutely everything else. For the last several years, I’ve been doing prefigurative actions (Food Not Bombs, Occupy Wall Street, and so on) in the hopes that some of my propaganda targets will intuit something. I do not see the Revolution yet, but maybe it will come like a thief in the night.

  15. And here’s George Galloway at his absolute best,
    (hold onto your hats!!)

    George Galloway debates a staunch neo-liberal:

    1. Thanks, John, I enjoyed that. I would like to comment on something almost irrelevant to this subject, but something of a pet peeve of mine:
      Aaron (Somebody) mentioned two or three times “Schumpeterian creative destruction,” each time in contexts implying, as others who refer to it often do, that something must be destroyed to make room for an innovation. When you think about it, this is rather ridiculous, because what we see happening in the real world is that innovation comes first, and by making the older technology less competitive, contributes to its demise.
      In other words, creative destruction happens organically as a natural result of the development of better technologies.
      It is true that when a new technology replaces an old one there is economic displacement, and displacements invariably have both winners and losers. To say that “Creative Destruction” is a net bad thing is to risk being called a Luddite by those who comprehend it better.

    2. Interesting to watch, Definitely an example of Scott Adams one screen two movies. I’m sorry George was a bit loud for some people but the other fella must have spent his career embedded with the Teletubbies

  16. Peter Nielsen Avatar
    Peter Nielsen

    I watched the video earlier today. It should be required viewing!

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