Ashton Kutcher, a stupid person who got famous playing the role of a stupid person, tweeted the following the other day:
“Where has the middle gone? Middle class? Politicians who don’t need to be far left or far right? Media the just tells the facts w/o spin? The middle is most! The middle can innovate. The middle can negotiate. Hardworkers with inclusive values = the middle.”
A year ago Kutcher also tweeted a photo of himself sipping from a coffee mug bearing the insignia of the lying, torturing, propagandizing, drug trafficking, coup-staging, warmongering Central Intelligence Agency, with the caption, “Just sending out a morning shout to the men and woman of the intelligence community that keep us safe and protect our country.”
Just sending out a morning shout to the men and woman of the intelligence community that keep us safe and protect our country. #gratitude #ty pic.twitter.com/Avi220aBh7
— ashton kutcher (@aplusk) July 23, 2018
If Kutcher had tweeted a “far left” or “far right” perspective, like that America should be an all-white ethnostate or that racist demonstrators should be physically assaulted in the streets, it would have made international headlines. But tweeting in favor of the CIA, who kill many orders of magnitude more people than America’s fringe white supremacist groups, went almost completely unnoticed.
This will sound normal and obvious to you. But it shouldn’t.
If people could wake up one morning and suddenly see what the ruling power establishment is doing to them every single day, there’d suddenly be vastly more outrage directed at the so-called “centrists”, and a lot less focus on politically impotent fringe organization like white nationalists and Antifa. This is not to say that all fringe ideologies are harmless, just that none of them pose anywhere near the immediate existential threat that is posed by the current order.
There’s an old joke: A duck swims past two fish and calls down, “Hey fellas! How’s the water?” The fish look at each other for a minute and then one of them asks, “What the hell is water?”
People don’t see the dangers of mainstream “centrism” for the same reason fish don’t see water. In reality, the only reason such an ideology gets labeled “centrism” at all is because it has been normalized and made mainstream by generations of plutocratic media propaganda. The ideological group which supports the status quo omnicidal, ecocidal oppression machine by giving you a choice between two warmongering oligarchic parties in fake elections that never make any difference is nowhere near a politically moderate position by any stretch of the imagination.
Where has the middle gone? Middle class? Politicians who don’t need to be far left or far right? Media the just tells the facts w/o spin? The middle is most! The middle can innovate. The middle can negotiate. Hardworkers with inclusive values = the middle.
— ashton kutcher (@aplusk) July 12, 2019
People like Ashton Kutcher imagine that the so-called “center” is called that because it sits smack dab in the middle of the ideological spectrum between communism and fascism, right in that moderate sweet spot that respects capitalism and private ownership without flying off the deep end into Nazi-like tyranny. In reality, the status quo exists entirely outside any left-right paradigm. It’s neither “left” nor “right” to give total control of the western world to an alliance of plutocrats and opaque government agencies who seek to expand their power and wealth by destroying our ecosystem, waging endless wars, and gradually shoring up more and more control of their citizenry via internet censorship, surveillance and police militarization. It’s just crazy.
I’m picking on Ashton not because he occupies some special place in all this, but because he doesn’t. He’s just an illustration of how blind people have become to the real threat that’s right in front of them, and how normalized insanity has become.
People who identify as “left” see the ruling power establishment as right-wing, people who identify as “right” see the ruling power establishment as left-wing, and people who identify as “center” see themselves as moderates whose normal, healthy way of life is under threat by the “far right” and “far left”. But really all that’s happening is a few assholes fucking over everyone else, which is no more “left” or “right” than a terrorist attack. The left versus right argument doesn’t even make sense until this far more pressing issue has been resolved. A Bernie supporter and a Trump supporter are arguing about left versus right while trapped in a room with a tiger who’s eating them both alive.
A movement towards true health will look like everyone waking up to the reality that we’re all being driven toward extinction via climate collapse or nuclear war by a ruling class who used propaganda to trick us into thinking that its suicidal trajectory was the moderate path. Obviously when we create our new model we won’t all agree with each other about the best direction to take it, but we’ve got to overhaul the old one first.
______________________________
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64 responses to “Mainstream “Centrists” Pose The Greatest Ideological Threat To Us All”
Anyone who can read tweets from the likes of Ashton Kutcher and watch The View for more than 10 seconds (and write about Meghan McCain) deserves some sort of award! Award for Strong Stomach and Stronger Mind? Award for Coming into Contact with Utter Dweebs and Not Falling Down the Rabbit Hole?
As a beneficiary of what I consider to be the “squishy middle” I for many years tried to defend centrism as a bulwark against unpleasant extremes. In a former time I likely would have identified as a Fabian.
Recently, however, it has occurred to me that my centrist position has served merely to enable the most retrograde elements to my right to install their neoliberal hegemony virtually unopposed. I have been a “useful idiot” in their program.
No more. Give me an unabashed leftism, or give me death.
A guy who hosts fund raisers for the IDF is not a centrists. He’s a shill for an ethno state that resembles in every way Nazi Germany..
‘It’s neither “left” nor “right” to give total control of the western world to an alliance of plutocrats and opaque government agencies who seek to expand their power and wealth by destroying our ecosystem, waging endless wars, and gradually shoring up more and more control of their citizenry via internet censorship, surveillance and police militarization.’
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If the left/right distinction really had no relevance for these issues, it would be rather useless indeed. However, that is not the case. Under normal understandings of left and right, both historically and conventionally, support for all of the aforementioned tendencies is clearly right-wing, and the forces that currently drive them are the forces that the left has always been fighting against.
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The left is for eliminating plutocracy as such, the right is for maintaining it and allowing it to grow even further, because the rich supposedly deserve their wealth and power. (At most, the right may be against *some* sections of the plutocratic elite because of their being culturally liberal, or cooperating with the state, or simply Jewish.)
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The left is for preserving the ecosystem, the right is for continuing and increasing its destruction, because that allows capitalist enterprises to make profit and because God has supposedly given humankind the Earth and will take care of the consequences.
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The left is against waging wars, because it wants all humans of all nations to be as brothers, the right is for wars, because it is nationalistic and dehumanises foreigners just like it dehumanises the poor.
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The left is for minimising the power of government agencies such as the CIA, the right is for maintaining that power and allowing it to grow even further, because they are supposedly patriotic forces maintaining the established order.
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The left is against censorship, surveillance and police militarisation, because it is against unaccountable power, whereas the right believes that established power is well-deserved, beneficial and patriotic (except that the hard right is sometimes against the power of the current government, because it suspects it of being too egalitarian, progressive, captured by ‘the Jews’ and suchlike).
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I get that CJ is trying to build the largest and most efficient possible cross-ideological alliance, but people just can’t work together against the status quo if they have the exact opposite values and ideas about what direction it should change in. In the real world, it’s impossible to just blow up the existing system first and to decide only afterwards what to replace it with – you always change the system step by step, and you need to know what sort of steps these are, i.e. what their direction is.
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The peace-loving, tree-hugging, anti-plutocratic Trump supporter CJ refers to and addresses is largely a myth (as opposed to uninformed one-time Trump voters and the like). The far right only has a problem with the current regime because even the current regime does too much good and not enough evil for its taste. Liking anybody who upsets the Western status quo and opposes some part of current Western foreign policy regardless of their motives makes sense for Russia Today, but not for anybody who seriously wants radical social change.
Hi Caitlin,
You’ve written about the so-called centrists at least a couple of times now.
Your instincts are correct but your analysis on the topic could go deeper.
I recently wrote a book that reframes today’s dominant left-right political model. It shows why there are no “centrists.” Instead, those who attempt to self-label with the term invariably favor the centralization of power within influential, top-down institutions. (government agencies, wall street banks, international conglomerates, etc.). Sometimes those organizations might lean left. Other times, they might lean right. But they always pursue the concentration and control of power.
You write wonderfully and with great insight, but to draw accurate distinctions between partisan positions, politics must first be analyzed as a spatial model. To do so is to fully understand the terminology it generates.
Centralisation is not an evil per se, as long as it is democratically controlled and pursues democratically determined objectives. Do you give ‘concentrated power’ to the Wall Street banks over the lives of people so that they can pursue their financial interests at the people’s expense, or do you give ‘concentrated power’ to a government agency that maintains oversight over the Wall Street banks to prevent them from that? Do you give ‘concentrated power’ to a handful of corporations to destroy the environment for the sake of their financial interests, or do you give power to a government agency that maintains oversight over these corporations to prevent them from doing that? Of course, breaking up banks and corporations might be part of the solution, but you still need central control to effect and then maintain the breakup.
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Certainly, the increasing inequality under the status quo is not only economical, but also political, so the unaccountable power of elites over populations is being increased not only in the economy, but also in political life. However, this cannot be reduced to centralisation, and supporting it is a fundamentally right-wing position.
We’re agreed that centralization is not an evil “per se.” The more pertinent question addresses balance: “When does the society reach a point of over-centralization?” (To be fair, the balance question must also be asked of centralization’s opposite: citizen-based power. Over-citizism is rarer, but still possible, and can be just as damaging as over-concentration.)
You eloquently and concisely expressed the progressive viewpoint, which took root in America in the late 1800’s as a response to the concentration of economic power in companies like Standard Oil, the railroads, the House of Morgan, and US Steel. Greater government control of such entities seemed to work pretty well through most of the twentieth century, but the constant move-and-countermove of corporate centralism vs. state centralism has ratcheted political, economic, and social power into a highly-centralized, top-down paradigm. We now face the question of “how much is too much?” Stated another way, “Are the elite minders and the minded elite conspiring together in a mutually self-serving corruption?” I think this is what Caitlin is getting at in her criticisms of the falsely-postured “centrists”.
Also …. the label “right wing” is based on connotations and conflations that are inherent within the one-dimensional left-right spatial model. When discourse is shifted to a two-dimensional construct, better distinctions can be drawn between “values” terms (like liberal and conservative) and “power” terms (like centralized and citizen-based). For example, Assange and Snowden are the most strident anti-centralist voices in western society, but they’re not vocal on values debates that can be labeled either left or right.
Re: BLAKE PAGENKOPF
I completely concur with your entire comment; especially your emphasis that:
Here in the USA the CONservatives for decades, regardless of political party affiliation or pretended identity, have tried and somewhat succeeded in concealing and covering up their behavior by simply manipulating political language through “self-labeling” themselves as “centrists”, “moderates”, and most recently “libertarians”. This convoluted rhetoric, especially when used amongst many of the self-identified “progressive” talking heads, has become so pervasive that this quest to turn the public’s opinion of itself against its own interests is actually achieving success; even as wealth disparity increases and the commonweal declines.
As Usual,
EA
Concerning my statement about changing the system step by step, I should probably add that even the most radical revolution takes place over months and years, with specific decrees replacing the old rules with new ones. It is very difficult to immediately figure out and organise all the changes at once. But even if you *could* do all the changes at once, it would still be impossible to simply eliminate an existing system and then have a period with no system at all, while you’re starting from scratch, let alone while you are making up your mind about what you’ll be doing in the first place. Change means replacing A with B, and to do that, you need to know what B is.
“Obviously when we create our new model we won’t all agree with each other about the best direction to take it, but we’ve got to overhaul the old one first.”
..
The old one (the present one) can not be “overhauled”. The new model has to be worked out in great detail and, after that gargantuan task is competed, the old model must be destroyed, probably by outright violent revolution, because the present Elite are NOT going to go gentle into that good night. They’re going to fight, tooth and nail, to keep the present arrangement EXACTLY as it is.
A quote I read somewhere recently-I probably won’t get it exactly right- goes “if you make peaceful revolution impossible you make violent revolution inevitable” it was JFK.
Guilty as charged! I have admit that just about anything that comes to my attention that reveals the corrupt, immoral, vile, and repugnant deeds of our owners, masters, and governmental swine I am apt to believe up front; without any looking into the specifics at all. Just the headline of this article had me believing it before I read a word of it:
https://www.unz.com/pgiraldi/did-pedophile-jeffrey-epstein-work-for-mossad/
Yes, I think Caitlin nailed it again. I think it might help if people could use a common definition of political words like “center”, which to most people seem to mean whatever their TV says it does at the moment. If the “middle” were halfway between the wishes of the 1% and the 99%, would that seem reasonable to ignorant celebrities?
I would love for people to think about the political spectrum in at least 2 dimensions, like the Political Compass does. It attempts to show different political positions using a common scale. Take the test yourself to see where it places you. It shows economic positions from left to right, and other positions as authoritarian to libertarian. Political discourse filtered for TV is a tiny fragment of the authoritarian right. If only the propagandized masses would adopt this version of the “middle”.
https://www.politicalcompass.org/uselection2012
Unfortunately, the political compass is a deeply flawed approach to spatial models.
…… But at least it was an honest attempt.
Caitlin gives us a view in this essay that is much closer to “truth” than most commentaries on politics. Some posters take issue with her term “climate collapse,” and I have to say I do share a bit of skepticism on that point. Maybe we should trust the “global warming” meme or maybe we should trust God, and of those two choices my reasons for preferring the latter one go on these lines:
• This last year was much colder, relatively, here in the Bay Area than any of my ten prior years here.
• The past winter saw many temperature readings below minus 50° F all over my home state ND.
• The largest glacier in the Northern Hemisphere, Jakobshavn, which previously one of the fastest shrinking on Earth, has been growing again since 2014 according to a recent study.
• NASA has confirmed that the minimal solar irradiance (as per the normal 11-year sunspot cycle) arrived in 2018 instead of the expected 2020.
Of course, temporary coolings would present in a general climate trend of warming, but CO2 emissions won’t overcome (in macro warming/cooling terms) continued solar irradiance at the level of 2018.
It doesn’t matter what you call it – the results will be the same. Renaming it to something more benign sounding is a trick of the government that stopped working a long time ago.
“global”. there is no prediction that global warming will be uniform over the entire globe. science isn’t a meme, and god doesn’t exist glaciers overall are shrinking, and the arctic ice is melting.
Mate when you bring up the imaginary sky fairy and say we should trust it I just do an eye roll and move on.
You need to understand the concept of the polar vortex. It is supposed to be a circular phenomenon, spinning counterclockwise, but with the warming of the Arctic, it is now unstable and no longer circular; this past winter its edges were drooping all over the North American continent. I don’t have much good to say about PBS but they had a very good explanation by a climate scientist about the polar vortex and its behavior during the winter of 2018-19.
As the Democratic candidates for President of these United States nit pick at each other and make more and more illogical statements and stupid promises; President Donald Trump has his victory already in hand by demonizing every fringe element that the Democrats have. Here is an example:
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/51914.htm
I think Kutcher is just kind of dumb. The answer to ‘What happened to the Middle’ is that various problems were perceived by large numbers of people which the Middle couldn’t handle, either by solving them or making them go away. People then began thinking and saying something should be done about them. These people — activists, you might say — come in various ideological colors, and seldom agree with one another. They also have different interests. Hence, conflict on the part of activists with each other and with the ‘center’ — the conservatives, many of whom are dumb, like Kutcher. The smarter conservatives may have better answers, but Kutcher is not among them. Kutcher does not seem to believe in engaging his brain, which makes him pretty uninteresting.
The Bernie fan and the Trump fan are at least trying to deal with the tiger. Beat the tiger over the head with a 2×4 or give it a can of cat food? As for the tiger, William Blake wrote, ‘The tygers of wrath are wiser than the horses of instruction’, certainly a questionable provocation given some of the tigers of wrath that are around, but maybe one more productive than pious adherence to one ideological line or another.
How about a guide book on how to destroy your country:
https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2019/07/14/an-idiots-guide-to-destroying-your-country-in-six-easy-steps/
If only it were that easy.
You are right Ms Caitlin,
You see that “centrist middle class” speech everywhere in the Western world and those people are really the ones helping the elites to maintain the statu quo.
They vote in great number for the political parties of the establishment.
Here in Quebec, souverainists are almost extinguished and the people identified themselves more and more considering their social status (the social status “middle class” being the one that is the best to be in), much more than their national identity (French Canadian or Québécois if you prefer) to the point that they are abandoning their language and their culture (In the province of Quebec, you see more and more young French Canadians switching from french to english in a 5 minutes conversation, especially young “middle class and centrist” French Canadians).
Those young middle class pro statu quo French Canadians are more and more snobbing French Canadian culture (which they identify more and more with economically poor people) and embrace especially (and it is very telling) american culture.
But there was a clear sign from Heaven last night as thousands of young people in Quebec City were forced to flee a show given by the american pop band “Imagine Dragons” after only two songs because of a hard-hitting thunderstorm.
We are in the return of the days of Noah. Jesus in coming soon. Keeping my Rosary close.
You are way worse than the bible thumpers and god botherers. Take your religious fever somewhere else.
Sorry, but I prefer to be on the side of a Woman so powerful to make the sun dance in the sky in Fatima, Portugal in 1917.
Such a Woman surely can do something for our world.
Religious faith requires a leap away from reality and represents the main obstacle to folks waking up to the reality described in this article. Most, maybe even Caitlin are fearful of addressing this obstacle to rational thinking.
Religous faith requires a leap away from reality and represents the main obstacle to folks waking up to the reality described in this article. Most, maybe even Caitlin are fearful of addressing this obstacle to rational thinking.
Mr Herbert,
I think miss Caitlin is probably aware that what we are facing is as much a spiritual battle than a battle at a worldly level.
We have to do things, to take a stand, but we also have to pray.
I always think of Father Daniel Berrigan who was a man of action but also a man of faith.
We have to pray, especially the Holy Rosary, because the Second Coming of Jesus is near according to many prophecies.
The bulk of humanity has never been motivated by anything resembling “rational thinking”
No, for most people across most civilizations and since the earliest tribalism the single most reliable motivator of groups of human beings has been religions
So a little respect for the religious impulse, please. Some variant of it is almost certain to prove necessary to change current human behaviours in order to save our civilization, or to pick up the pieces should it collapse.
Caitlin, please learn about Professor Valentine Zharkova and the evidence for a new Grand Solar Minimum. I am your patron because I believe you are fair. However, I believe you are in tow to (and possibly a mite enthralled with) the global warming meme. As I read it, solid evidence is mounting that this earth may well chill rapidly over the next couple decades. Your voice is heard, and being a part of the herd that follows you, I ask that you refresh your knowledge base on this.
hahahaha…sure hope I live to see the big chill…please check the data on species extinction that results from what is obviously happening as we discuss.
Well, Caitlin, you certainly have a bit of a fringe audience as well as the rest of us..
it’s not a meme, it’s supported by every major science organization. i believe them over your interpretation of what you choose to read.
Professor Zharkova’s model is solar centric, and so overlaps earth centric interactions. Her model suggests a protracted period of few sunspots and consequently lower earth temperatures. Regarding earth-centric climatology, I am in no position to argue with Pretzelattack’s comment regarding support for global warming. 10 years ago or more I found myself somewhat outraged that, from my perspective, the political right refused to acknowledge the obvious growing evidence of global warming. And today, global warming is taken as conventional wisdom (a lovely oxymoron, that). Bucking the prevailing wind of this political and scientific persuasion isn’t my cup of tea, but earth climate changes on a much longer time frame dwarf the recent temperature changes. Do we really understand even the earth centric interactions? Do we even have the facts straight? A source on one podcast stated there has been no change in sea levels. Is that true? Does that contradict a source of evidence of global warming? Yeah, as mentioned, earlier I was pissed that the right wasn’t listening. Just speaking about myself though, I have found that when merit worthy conjecture is winded by moral outrage, then I am flying on bias. Getting back to earth centric changes, yeah, global warming seems to be the overwhelming consensus. But as to sun centric effects on death’s climate, the possible solar minimum may be a really big deal, and as far as I can tell, very few are aware of this. And if Professor Zharkova is correct, boy will that change over the next couple years.
Dave Collin (professor of Chemistry at Cornell) on podcast Quoth the Raven says he’s 50 hours in to a 1000 hour study of global warming, but has serious questions about its credibility. He says scientists of the highest credentials are calling it “hooey”.
Dave Collum not Dave Collin, stupid autocorrect
Was really enjoying and agreeing with this article until the final Paragraph.
“….everyone waking up to the reality that we’re all being driven toward extinction via climate collapse or nuclear war…”
Mmmmm Extinction Rebellion’s a huge hoax as is Climate Change (aka Global Warming; term no longer used as Data/Evidence said NO) already proven to be funded by the Cabal. I didn’t realise you were a supporter of Extinction Rebellion & the Climate Change Hoax. It’s disappointing to know that you are. As for nuclear war; the only time nukes will be unleashed will be against a nation that rises up against the Cabal. I don’t mean Russia (part of the Cabal since 1917) or Iran/Syria, obviously in cahoots with the war games being played out presently to feed the Industrial War Complex and scare people. Russia and Israel have the ME carved up nicely, thanks very much.
lol the term global warming was coined by a political consultant, not scientists to hide the truth. you don’t know the first thing about it if you don’t know that.
“A Bernie supporter and a Trump supporter are arguing about left versus right while trapped in a room with a tiger who’s eating them both alive.”
Which is no different to a Corbyn or May supporter. Lefties are going to be hugely disappointed after Corbyn’s gone. The hang-over will be worse than the one left by Tony Blair – when they realise they’ve been used AGAIN. The game with Corbyn and Bernie is that neither will ever be allowed to win an election. There’ll be no fundamental changes even if they are *allowed* to win; just lots of horse-trading and compromises. Business as usual.
The “mainstream” is dangerous, doubly so with economics. It’s economics that is used to have us accept people sleeping rough in the wealthiest countries the world has ever seen. It’s not remotely necessary as there is plenty of wealth to go around, Except we see excuses by our politicians that they cannot afford more welfare or free education or single payer healthcare, but they can afford to cut taxes for the 1%
It’s all a sick joke.
The US and most western nations are monetary sovereign. They can spend whatever they like to pay for stuff They can’t go broke [it’s like Monopoly money] they don’t save or borrow their own currency.Federal taxes do not provide revenue for a the Federal government. Cutting taxes make no difference to the ability to spend. Spending creates the currency. etc.
Economics is not sexy, not easy to follow so gets a blank look from most people. Yet economics is the powerhouse that guides the planets economies and we are willingly bamboozled by it.
The CIA, the Deep State, etc have got nothing on the damage economics can do!!!
Right on, Caitlin! It’s We the 99% versus the oligarchy 1%. The name for transcending right wing, left wing, center misnomers is TRANSPARTISAN.
I’m a transpartisan constantly asking what do We 99% all have in common against the hegemons?
what the apologists like Kutcher refer to as the middle or the center or the moderate is the amoral or immoral, self-serving, conscience-less parasites who think they have made it to the exclusive club of the “chosen 1%”.
they have no moral compass, no faith in anything, no ideological commitment. they go to the church of $$$$$.
and yes, they are the cancer of humanity. the struggle is between this cancer and humanity.
In the third chapter of The Abolition of Man, CS Lewis predicted this very thing—an elite generation that would arise to control the present with propaganda, the past by dismissing it as irrelevant, and the future through eugenics and conditioning. It just arrived sooner than he projected, and so here we are. I suppose the best we can do is remain human (responsible moral beings, in Lewis’s terms) in the face of it all.
BDS the evil. that’s the only way to defeat it.
I think C.S. Lewis was actually talking about his present but didn’t know it There was an dominating, exploitive elite in his day, too.
Democracy doesn’t work to produce the greatest good for the greatest number of people. It works to produce the greatest good for the richest, most influential people. That’s why the most influential people allow it, and praise it, and think anyone who wants some other way of doing things is bad, or a terrorist or worse.
The MSM, including in Australia the ABC and SBS and News Corp, constantly impress on us how the goal is Economic Growth, more stuff to buy, more of everything, more more more. And the only way to do it is to do what the Government is already doing it or the marginally different Opposition. Of course you can protest, but you MUST do it peacefully. You MUST NOT be so angry and violent that the protest actually changes anything. You have NO RIGHT to bring down the government, because you can always vote them out and put the other lot in.
That is the trap, and there is no way out of it.
One alternative to the Democracy we have now would be Democracy where you vote every month instead of every three or four years. It could easily be done on-line. If people got fed up with voting every month, then things couldn’t be all that bad. If a party couldn’t hold the confidence of people for more than a month at a time, then the system would be broken, but a new party would soon emerge that only did what everybody wanted.
Another alternative Democracy would be one where everybody voted on every piece of legislation, and could introduce their own legislation.
But as it is, the system is frozen in place and can’t be changed without violent protest. So don’t trust anyone who tells you you shouldn’t go to violent protests – they don’t have any means to cause the change we need, and they know it.
Sooner or later, it will turn into a violent revolution, and then there will be hell to pay. I predict that when the Silicon Valley Billionaires finally find a way to defeat natural death, and of course horde it to themselves, that is when it will happen. They are not smart or practical enough to realize that their own greed will be their undoing.
I’m not sure what you expect from the likes of Ashton Kutcher, who has shit for brains, and in the US at least owes his fame solely to a few year of marriage to Demi Moore, who also has shit for brains.
This shit American culture is neither left nor right – it’s simply horrible. The status quo is killing us. The “average American” is totally insane. Wanting things to continue going as they are is sick and deluded. What does “normal ” mean in in a culture as bizarre as ours?
Re: Caitlin
Why are you equating middle-class (U.S.) American citizens with the population’s centrist political ideology? While the two words/terms – middle & centrist -, sans class and ideological usage, have very similar definitions and usages, there is no such synonymous similarity when one conflates the (U.S.) American middle-class constituency with the population’s political/ideological centrists. and then chooses to brand the entire construct as “posing the greatest ideological threat to us all”. Poets often add clarity to difficult subjects, but they can also employ their license to add to the confusion.
As Usual,
EA
The middle class are among the most dangerous and deluded group in our American society. Period.
I have no idea why you think I’m doing that.
Fuck EA, he’s probably a frustrated Libertarian. I got your point and it was one of your best spiels. Fuck libertarian purist’s they are why the libertarian party will always FAIL. If you doubt my premise just look what Amash did to the Republican grassroots supporters in his district.
Miss Caitlin,
You are very very pertinent in this article.
I see it in Quebec all the time. The self-proclaim middle class are those who get the mainstream political parties elected all the time.
They do not care about who they are anymore; they care only about money and their social status. So they endorse the ruling elites agenda all the way.
The truth is that they are decadent. Western civilization is at the present time decadent.
I have to admit there was a time when there were great statesmen in the West. But it was before the decadence. No more Pierre Trudeau, no more tall and impressive president as General Charles de Gaulle.
It is like the decadence of Rome. No noble sentiments. Sadly the middle class has joined the elites in that behavior.
No doubt we are in the return of the days of Noah just before the return of Jesus. I pray the Rosary it will be soon because I do have seen enough.
Upon re-reading your post, and considering your reply to my comment, it became obvious that I misconstrued your intended meaning. Thanks for calling attention to my misunderstanding.
As Usual,
EA
“A Bernie supporter and a Trump supporter are arguing about left versus right while trapped in a room with a tiger who is eating them both alive.” Ms Johnstone I have to admit that that line is a real beauty. I am sure a lot of people are going to use it and insert something in front of the word tiger; like IRS tiger, or something. Although you are absolutely correct that ” people need to wake up ” the ” coma ” that the masters and owners have put the general public in has them asleep and enjoying it. Some kind of ” really bad nightmare ” is the only thing that is going to ever jar them awake!
let’s encourage Trump to bring that nightmare into reality sooner than later!
Well meaning “thoughtful” people have indeed become unwitting supporters of the “Power Elite”, to use Chris Hedges’ term. When I ask people, ” So you are believing and taking the side of the CIA?”, I get blank stares.
worse yet, they start talking about “our intelligence community”, and defending it like blind fans of a sports team.
I really like, “A Bernie supporter and a Trump supporter are arguing about left versus right while trapped in a room with a tiger who’s eating them both alive.”….
That is just brilliant….funny how Bernie and Trump are not in the room, isn’t it?
Thank you!
A good point you added to what is indeed a very stong allegorical punchline
All these labels have been distorted and misused to the point of uselessness. For now, only two policy positions count – pro- or anti-war and pro- or -anti-fossil fuels. And if we don’t sort it very soon, it will be too late for us all.
My thoughts exactly. Of course, today’s centrists aren’t the same as yesterday’s centrist’s, and I shudder to think of what tomorrow’s centrists might be like. When the Center supports nuclear war and the 1% owning and controlling everything, its hard to see how it can get much worse. But history of the last 50 years says that it can get worse. The once great Bogey Man on the right, the original Cold Warrior, ally of Joe McCarthy, thundering in the Senate about commies who infiltrate and control America through the traitors, who kept political slush funds and used them to spy and pull dirty tricks on his opponents, the man who was evil incarnate to the Left of that day, the man named Richard Nixon, and today he’d be considered a flaming liberal, albeit of the Cold Warrior variety, from California who supported crazy notions like Clean Water and Clean Air Acts and government imposed price controls to combat inflation. The center is self-defined and has moved so far to the right that Nixon could run against Hillary from her left.