George W Bush is in the news again today, and once again it’s not for the only legitimate reason that he should ever be in the news, namely a war crimes tribunal. No, it’s because his voice was used in a cutesy feel-good video about unity during the Covid-19 pandemic.
“Let us remember how small our differences are in the face of this shared threat,” Bush is heard saying. “We are not partisan combatants. We are human beings, equally vulnerable and equally wonderful in the sight of God.”
And, needless to say, Democrats are all over social media orgasming in their pants about it.
“This video made me ugly cry,” tweeted actress-turned-McResistance pundit Alyssa Milano.
“A REAL president,” tweeted the other Alyssa Milano, Debra Messing.
“In a million years I never thought I’d be crying watching this, thinking how much better we’d all feel if Bush were president today,” tweeted former Democratic congresswoman Katie Hill to thunderous online applause.
The Intercept‘s Mehdi Hasan spent all day on Twitter defending his position that Dubya is superior to Trump, at one point even arguing “You can be a sane warmonger. You can be a warmonger but be an ok human being to your friends and family. You can be a warmonger and be able to handle a domestic public health crisis.”
In a million years I never thought I’d be crying watching this, thinking how much better we’d all feel if Bush were president today. Wtf. https://t.co/SSR3ieZEFP
— Katie Hill (@KatieHill4CA) May 2, 2020
For years rank-and-file Democrats have been giving the true Butcher of Baghdad a majority approval rating, running with the common narrative that while Bush perhaps made some “mistakes”, Trump is spectacularly worse. Here are five things that are highlighted by that common perspective:
1. It shows how little Democrats care about the lives of human beings overseas.
By the end of his first term Bush had launched two full-scale ground invasions, murdered a million Iraqis, destabilized an entire region in a way that would shortly give rise to ISIS, and ushered in a whole new level of unprecedented US military expansionism and imperialism. Trump has done none of these things. He has inflicted many evils upon our world and, like Obama, has continued and expanded the warmongering of his predecessors. But he has done nothing that rises to the level of depravity of Bush’s wars.
The fact that Democrats see Trump’s evils as not only equal to but far in excess of Bush’s reveals as plain as day that, for all their supposed bleeding heart liberal sensibilities, they simply do not place much value on the lives of foreigners. Sure they might enjoy a little masturbatory melodrama over kids in cages when it shows up on their doorstep, but kids getting ripped to shreds by cluster bombs and being born severely disabled from depleted uranium munitions simply does not register for them, because they don’t have to look at it.
They do not care. Rude tweets and racism are worse than institutionalized mass murder for them, because they have to look at one but not the other.
2. It shows that Trump-era Democrats are Bush-era Republicans.
The problem is that Bush and Cheney’s operatives, speechwriters, policy advisers, propagandistas and top aides are the close friends and colleagues of media liberals and DC Democrats and their beloved pundits, so they have to whitewash Bush’s evil to justify themselves: https://t.co/Z1C3CB7JQn
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) May 3, 2020
“Dems have no choice but to rehabilitate George Bush because their core narrative is the US was a fundamentally good and decent land before Trump vandalized it,” journalist Glenn Greenwald tweeted in response to Democrats’ fawning over Bush, adding, “How do you join with Bill Kristol, Nicole Wallace, Rick Wilson, David Frum and the CIA without whitewashing Bush’s crimes?”
Indeed, Bush-era neocons have been able to fully ingratiate themselves to and integrate themselves with Democrats in the age of Trump by posing as moral opposition longing for a more civilized time when presidents would politely butcher humans by the hundreds of thousands without using offensive language like “shit hole”. A gentlemanly time for gentlemanly presidents to unfold gentlemanly torture and surveillance policies all around the world without posting rude tweets about celebrities they don’t like.
Trump-era Democrats are Bush-era Republicans. That’s how far to the authoritarian right the party has moved in the last few years on important matters like foreign policy. You can see this by the shrieking, hysterical response they had to Tulsi Gabbard calling for what more or less amounted to a simple reversion back to pre-9/11 US foreign policy. It has been necessary for Democrats to gaslight themselves into this position because for three presidential campaigns in a row–Obama 2012, Clinton 2016, and now Biden 2020–they’ve had to find ways of convincing themselves that a politician who has facilitated Bush’s foreign policy agendas would make a good commander-in-chief.
3. It shows how the amnesia-inducing effects of the mass media news churn make it difficult to retain perspective.
The News Churn Memory Hole: How The MSM Lies Even When Telling The Truth
"It’s not enough to simply expose the truth. You must also fully, repeatedly and consistently expose the ones who are telling lies."https://t.co/OSW6eFQVAn
— Caitlin Johnstone (@caitoz) December 18, 2019
Mass media propagandists are able to distort perception even while telling the truth using the news churn memory hole. Even when forced to report on uncomfortable truths like not finding any weapons of mass destruction in Iraq or the fact that the occupation of Afghanistan has been justified by an entire generation of lies, the memory of that reporting can be made to fade into the background by frantically reporting on what’s happening right now without referring back to the previous revelations.
Russiagate alone did so much to distort people’s perceptions in mainstream liberal circles. Having the baseless narrative breathlessly promoted year after year after year that the Kremlin had literally seized control of the highest levels of the US government left rank-and-file Democrats who subscribed to it without any sense of scale or proportion, because they were constantly being told that the Most Important Thing Ever was about to happen. How can you hold perspective on a million dead Iraqis when you’re being told day after day, year after year in myriad ways that Russian Hitler was controlling your country but Super Mueller is going to swoop in to the rescue any minute now? It would be very difficult.
4. It shows the glaring difference between fact and narrative.
Most of the mass media reporting on Trump has been factual, it’s just had a ton of narrative spin attached to the facts. It is a fact that Trump frequently says and does dumb, obnoxious and horrible things. It is a fact that many racists think he’s the cat’s pajamas. It is a fact that there was an impeachment and a collusion investigation. But the narrative overlay that has been heaped upon those facts while they’re being reported–the urgency, the alarmism, the hyperbole–leaves viewers with the distinct impression that this US president is awful in a way that is unique and historically unprecedented, and he simply isn’t.
Trump is not worse than Bush, the mass media just yell about him a lot more. If the narratives matched the facts, mass media consumers would be aware that nothing Trump has done is as evil as Bush’s invasion of Iraq alone. In reality Trump didn’t wind up being another Hitler, he wound up being another Obama (not a compliment). And if the narrative spin matched the factual reality, people would understand that.
https://twitter.com/Chinchillazllla/status/1257020356939972612
5. It shows that this simply is not working.
Imagine you’re out in the woods with a friend you trust in the dark. You know there’s a horrible monster out there stalking you, and suddenly you hear it in the distance coming crashing towards you. It has picked up your scent and it will be upon you in moments.
You turn to run, but your friend grabs you and won’t let you move. He falls to the ground grabbing your legs screaming “No! No! We must stay here! We mustn’t move an inch!”
Who do you need to fight first? The monster? Or your “friend”?
That’s why I focus so much of my criticism on the Democratic Party instead of the Republicans. Ultimately they’re the party which could actually allow for positive changes to be made to the world, but instead they keep moving further and further into the warmongering totalitarianism they once purported to despise in George W Bush.
Relying on either head of the two-headed one-party system to make meaningful changes simply is not working, and will not ever work. No institution that would so warmly rehabilitate and welcome a bloodthirsty monster like Bush is going to help humanity one iota. In fact, its sole purpose is to do the exact opposite.
______________________________
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82 responses to “Five Things That Are Revealed By Democrats’ Rehabilitation Of Bush”
Interesting photo: wife of mass murderer embraces mass murderer.
“You can be a sane warmonger. You can be a warmonger but be an ok human being to your friends and family. You can be a warmonger and be able to handle a domestic public health crisis.”
My goodness. Anyone who could write these words, and believe them, is a sick, demented person, who has no idea about the effects of war on humanity. We see frequent manifestations of the worst behaviors caused by Trump Derangement Syndrome; this may be another one of those. Would/could this author have written these words, about anyone, in an age without Donald Trump? Just when you think that humanity, particularly in this country, has reached its lowest limit of horror, you read something like this and realize we have a long way to go before we have lost our humanity completely.
“If we do not hang together, we shall surely all hang separately.” – B. Franklin (or was it H. Clinton?)
The ugly head of the Democracy Dogma.
And pointless discussion about a lie.
When you believe in the false there is no room for the true.
Caitlin Johnstone wrote:
“George W Bush is in the news again today, and once again it’s not for the only legitimate reason that he should ever be in the news, namely a war crimes tribunal.”
.
Yes:
.
The Untold History of the United States
Chapter 10: Bush & Obama: Age of Terror
Directed by Oliver Stone
Next you’ll be telling us that Quisp and Quake were the exact same breakfast cereal, made of the exact same ingredients by the exact same manufacturer! That’s simply not true! As an entire generation of Type 2 diabetics can tell you, Quisp was shaped like saucers and Quake was shaped like the letter Q! Quake was obviously more LGBTQ-friendly, and that’s why young American progressives like me supported Quake over Quisp — to the death! Literally! They make movies about the Abraham Lincoln Brigade and the Kent State 13. When will they make a movie about the brave, principled Americans who gave life and limb — again, literally — fighting for the Quaker Oats Company? I mean, for Quake?
Good people think they can defeat evil people through their votes. The reality is that good people waste their time and energy fighting evil and trying to correct the harm evil people cause. This is because good people fight and play by the rules which these evil people applaud but do not follow themselves. Wise people don’t waste time in a rigged fight which we cannot win when evil people fight dirty and do not follow the rules. Wise people get out of the way, leave good people to waste their time and energy fighting evil people and after the battle is over and both good and evil people have finished fighting and both have lost everything they were fighting over, wise people will come out of their corners and hideouts and build a new and glorious civilization without hindrance from evil people. Read more of this here: http://www.wisdompage.com/2013%20Articles/Molyneaux%20essay.pdf
Is the handwriting already on the wall for he entire collapse of the United States economy? The banks, post offices, supermarkets, and drug stores are open. There are mom and pop delis still open; but not much else. My landlord can not take me to court if I do not pay the rent because the civil court is closed. It will not be long before ” the desperadoes ” start pulling off daring armed robberies of ever sort because the money is not flowing anymore. Yes the year 2020 may go down as the beginning of the end of these United States.
I doubt it, though the past few years may go down as the most embarrassing period in our nation’s history. First the Crooked Clintons, then the Bumbling Bushes, and now an attempted coup by the Dems to unseat a sitting president simply because, “He’s not one of us! The loutish swine wouldn’t know how to accept a cunningly proffered bribe, rig an election, frame an opponent, or even talk out of both sides of his mouth at once. Such a man has no business being anywhere near the Oval Office!”
Where’s old crooked Lyndon when we really need him?
Let us give a thought back to the significance of the recently passed anniversaries on April 30. The one I want to remember today is that April 30 was the 75th Anniversary of the day that Adolf Hitler put a bullet into his brain. Hitler was trapped in a bunker in Berlin, and the troops of the Soviet’s People’s Army were advancing through the defenses of divisions that only existed in Hitler’s fevered imagination. If Twitter had existed in 1945, I’m sure Hitler would have been sending out tweets about German superiority and how his next magical wonder weapon would result in making Germany great again.
So, let us all stop and remember that 75 years ago, give or take a couple of days, Adolf Hitler was forced to put a bullet into his brain.
Let us also reflect on the images of Hitler’s pal Mussolini hanging from the meathooks after the Italian people got hold of him and exacted retribution for what he did to Italy. https://www.gettyimages.com/photos/mussolini-hanging
“When I despair, I remember that all through history the way of truth and love have always won. There have been tyrants and murderers, and for a time, they can seem invincible, but in the end, they always fall. Think of it–always.”
― Mahatma Gandhi
Caitlin does well to expose the farce of US so-called “Democracy” but what should we be doing about this besides watching and complaining? We tried telling our friends and family that this is all political theater which entrenches them in an oppressive country but they don’t believe us even a little bit! What do you suggest we do, Caitlin?
It’s so heartbreaking seeing loved ones believe propaganda, and worse when I try and talk to them, and they get instantly emotional and treat me like I’m their enemy. Caitlin had a really interesting idea a while back, maybe you already saw it, in which she compared victims of propaganda to victims of a cult, or abusive partner. They have been conditioned to think of their abuser as their place of safety, and lash out at anyone who threatens it. If I remember right, Caitlin suggested we treat these kind of victims the same, which is to not argue with them, but let them know what you think, and let them know you will be there for them if they leave their abuser. Perhaps take opportunities to point out the holes in their logic, but not so much you push them away. I have not had any luck with this yet. I guess it’s possible I’m getting through without any signs yet. So far it feels like I just have to sit quietly and listen to them rant about how evil Trump is, and know I can’t say anything without upsetting them. I draw the line at watching TV “news” with them. I am not allowed to contradict the TV, so I just leave the room.
Consider joining Braver Angels. I have learned alot from the Thursday night on-line debates between the reds and the blues. It helps one understand why the other side thinks the way they do and how to communicate with them without getting one’s head bit off.
There is *nothing* we can do.
Clear thinking, Caitlin.. Bravo.
Bravo, Caitlin and Tim! One of your best articles to date.
It activates fond memories of your anti-McWar diatribes. Those were really something else. I’m actually a bit surprised that you survived this long.
Deciding to join Team Trump now means that Caitlin has powerful friends. She’ll be earning 7 figures on Austrailia’s own effort at foreign interference in American elections, aka Fox News, before too long.
Uh-Oh, now I’ve pissed off Google…. I had to click on many traffic lights before Google’s AI would admit that I wasn’t a robot that must be discriminated against and denied speech
When evidence does not make sense, check your assumptions.
It’s astonishing how much time people invest in politics and politicians.
Let’s say you live in a small town. You have two major stores in town. You go to one, and you are lied to, cheated on prices, treated badly, and thoroughly dissatisfied with their products. You then try the other, and at that one you are lied to, cheated on prices, treated badly, and thoroughly dissatisfied with their products.
So you might try the other store again but nothing changed there. You switch again… and again, nothing.
Every so often you see a store manager who tries to put a better face on the fiasco you are participating in and so you are temporarily pacified a bit. But that store manager never ever changes anything for the better, so it’s just an exercise in dishonest marketing.
And yet, year after year, generation after generation, you keep spending your money at these stores while living on the foolish delusion that someday – if you live long enough – you might be marginally satisfied with one of their products. But down in your soul – the part that you ignore and suppress – you know that you will never get what you really want ever at these stores from the underworld. But you keep going back for more. And so do your kids and their kids…
And when each work day is over, the two Store Managers get together for a drink and spend another evening counting the profits while laughing at their customers. And the next morning, the customers are
back waiting at their doors.
Just so we’re clear that we in the US do not live in a free and open society:
https://southfront.org/southfronts-youtube-channel-is-banned/
We are kept like pets.
Caitlin, thanks for your contributions already, we’ve peppered your writings throughout, many proved quite useful.
At every turning point of history someone rises up who can enunciate and in a sense personify the new direction of the public mind and will. America has reached such a crossroads.
Being a god on Earth is a natural human desire, and saving someone else is the closest we’ll ever come to achieving it. All Greek mythology and every major religion that followed has really been devoted to that single premise: the hero who leads the way is half god and half human, fueled as much by pity as by power.
When the Greeks created the heroic ideal, they didn’t choose a word that meant ‘Dies Trying’ or ‘Massacres Bad Guys.’ They went with ‘heros’—”protector.” Heroes aren’t perfect; with a god as one parent and a mortal as the other, they’re perpetually teetering between two destinies. What tips them toward greatness is a sidekick, a human connection who helps turn the spigot on the power of compassion. Empathy, the Greeks believed, was a source of strength, not softness; the more you recognized yourself in others and connected with their distress, the more endurance, wisdom, cunning, and determination you could tap into.
Conservatives frequently say that socialists want to have everything handed to them—that instead of complaining, they should be buckling up, showing up to work every day, and achieving something the “hard way.” This seems a bit odd, considering that, all in all, achieving a complete and revolutionary overhaul of long-standing economic and social structures against the wishes of all the world’s centers of power is probably harder than, say, becoming a reasonably successful middle manager with two cars.
Our idea of what a revolution is like, how it is carried out, and who it is carried out by has been warped by our own cultural propaganda, and by the romantic Marxist propaganda of the twentieth century. We have this idea that revolutions are led by rational-minded, tea-sipping men in three-pointed hats who discuss the rights of man while burning the candle at both ends. Or we’re warped by the Marxist ideal of revolution: a rational, inevitable historical process in which the most enlightened, most sympathetic, least overdressed human beings team up with the Historical Trend itself to effect a glorious, clean revolution. In fact, revolutions are messy, ugly, gory affairs. Nowhere in our popular notion of revolutions are such factors as stupidity, bad luck, unintended comedy, and revolting madness allowed in. Yet most of the time revolutions are ‘led,’ by people we would call nutcases and who indeed were considered nutcases during their time—and in all likelihood were nutcases. While time and distance provide a romantic view of revolutions, at the time when they actually occur, they usually seem bizarre, uncalled-for, frightening, and evil to their contemporaries, which is why they almost always seem snuffed out at their inception.
Our lives and our movements today are as shaped by the political prisoners who still sit behind concrete walls as the prisons themselves invisibly shape the landscape of the world we seek to make more just. Many have had their lives either ended by the state or have been tried, convicted, and jailed for nothing more than the crime of loving their people enough to attempt a revolution in the United States.
They remain behind walls, often isolated, and at times tortured for their political beliefs. To accept this fact is to ask what ideas can be so dangerous that those who hold it in their heads must be hidden from us? To understand that these people and their circumstance do indeed exist is a necessary first step for a country whose cloak of democracy keeps us in denial. Americans believe political prisoners are a fact in countries like China, Iran, and Cuba but live the lie of the US government’s denial of the existence of US political prisoners within its borders.
We could live in a sustainable, just, free, and peaceful world. And yet we are descending into a world of perpetual wars; slavery; ignorance; overwork side by side with unemployment; vacant homes side by side with homelessness; specialization; crass materialism; contaminated food, water, and air; destitution; despair.
Since the men in the shadows are not about to change, the only hope is their removal from power—by any means necessary. Unfortunately, given these men’s cohesiveness and organizational skills, given their power over our minds, given their ability to convince the vast majority to act against its convictions and interests, given their success in establishing cross-generational dynasties, such removal presents humanity with a herculean task.
With these words as my only weapon—though that is unlikely to keep me from being labeled a ‘terrorist’ and getting an unannounced late-night visit—I say the authority of the United States government is illegitimate and struggle by its people to overthrow the regime by whatever means seems best to them is justified.
I didn’t plan to write a book when I started on this journey. I just had an intense, personal curiosity. I wanted to understand what happened for myself. But as the years went by, the gap between what I was learning and what appeared in print and media began to weigh on me. Reluctantly, I realized I had a responsibility to share what I had found. Thank you for being brave enough to open this volume. It takes a certain amount of courage to challenge the status quo, to dare to have a thought that differs from what the media screams at you daily.
We are living through an upheaval of historic proportions. The visible evidence of collapse makes criticism redundant. What is being born before our eyes still lacks a clear shape; it could just as easily beget monsters and therefore defies any attempt to describe it. In such times, all commentary is reduced to the level of chit-chat. We can speak only from the midst of events; from the breach we can hear the cracking foundations of a global order at its end that are opening up new paths for the future.
Some will see behind this ambition either senile nostalgia or the mindless elation of youth. But let them take comfort, as much as they can: We are sure of being the most realistic by far.
A new manifesto must be written and circulated for the current age, allowing individuals to subscribe to stated goals or not. Those trying to resist the status quo are hopelessly stuck in trying to change the minds of the oppressors instead of rallying the oppressed to a new vision.
We are now faced with the fact that tomorrow is today. We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now. In this unfolding conundrum of life and history there is such a thing as being too late. Procrastination is still the thief of time. Life often leaves us standing bare, naked, and dejected with a lost opportunity. The tide in the affairs of men does not remain at flood—it ebbs. We may cry out desperately for time to pause in her passage, but time is adamant and rushes on. Over the bleached bones and jumbled residues of numerous civilizations are written the pathetic words: ‘Too late.’
This report is published with the hope that its sheer sadism and abnormal cruelty may stir thoughtful Americans to action. If this report does not do so, we fear the situation is hopeless.
What the monks said in the letters they left before burning themselves aimed only at alarming, at moving the hearts of the oppressors and at calling the attention of the world to the suffering endured then by the Vietnamese. To burn oneself by fire is to prove that what one is saying is of the utmost importance. Steeped in their Buddhist practices, the nuns and monks who burned themselves thus performed an act of construction rather than an act of destruction because to die in this way is to suffer and to die for the sake of one’s people.
It may seem crazy to risk your safety, your life, for that of a stranger, but if one firmly believes that it is the right thing to do, then it is in fact crazy to not do so. Morality and insanity, within the current frameworks of thought that govern our perception, go hand in hand; they are the catalysts for societal change. The crazy, the marginalized, the suicidal, the forgotten—the most necessary ingredients for producing foundational, revolutionary change which strikes at the core of our structures and ripples out across the globe. It is those they label as crazy who can see the only way forward. John Brown was crazy and fought for a deeply moral cause. John Brown lives on in each one of you crazy people. Jesus lives on in each one of you crazy people. We will be morally insane, the forgotten-no-more; the ground will shake and the sky will thunder, old ways ripped asunder.
Sometimes when good people caution those who protest against against our society’s many injustices, to eschew ‘violence,’ that a ‘safe’ society is better than one experiencing the turmoil of civil war, I think of the homeless people on the streets of Denver, of the Lakota babies born with fetal alcohol syndrome who will never have a chance to excel in school, of the black boys shot by police, of the girls who flee from foster care straight into the tender mercies of a pimp and forced sex, of the inmates in prisons who spend decades in a tiny windowless room, slowly losing their minds—and I think: Violence? Thousands of people are experiencing soul-numbing and body-destroying violence on a daily basis. You have made the decision that other people can suck off all the ills of our society so that you can pretend we live in a safe world. Well fuck you, I do not intend to walk away from Omelas, but instead to burn this unjust apparatus to the ground.
It does not require a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless minority keen to set brushfires in people’s minds.
Most books are dead, this one is alive. It moves, morphs, transforms, evolves. This story has many possible endings, it always has—some much darker than others. You get to help choose which, and the sum of these choices will be the page upon which the ultimate story is written. The world is provided, the shell, it is up to you all to make a home out of it.
The first thing is I think you have to frame it in the big picture. The way you get to people is to say: We’re at a turning point in history. If we don’t solve the problem of economic polarization, which is caused mainly by debt, we’re going to go into another dark age. We’re going to have neo-feudalism. We’re going to have neo-serfdom, except that you’re not going to be tied to the land like serfs were. You can live wherever you want, but wherever you are, you’re going to have to pay about 40% of your income just for housing. And you’re going to have to pay for water, and you’re going to have to pay for the other needs. This is the new kind of serfdom. You have to re-frame what the economy is about in a way that people can understand.
And you need a multi-pronged approach to fight on four or five fronts. You need academics so that nobody can say you don’t know what you’re talking about. You need an organ, a periodical; you need books; you need to make use of the Internet; you need films; and you need a political group. You need to institutionalize this idea and give it a critical mass of coherence.
When Jesus Christ prophesied about the coming of the Kingdom of Heaven, he was not talking about the magical appearance of a bunch of buildings falling out of the sky like spaceships, he was talking about an idea spreading to enough of the minds of Humankind so that Humankind itself would be transformed. The transformation would take place within the hearts and minds of Humans, and would then manifest on the Earth as a new and better form of living. This is the coming of the Kingdom of Heaven. As Jesus put it:
“The Kingdom of Heaven is like yeast that a woman took and mixed into about sixty pounds of flour until it worked all through the dough.”
The Kingdom of Heaven is an idea; like yeast spreading through dough, this idea is spreading through the minds of Humankind. When enough people become dedicated to the principles of peace and brotherly love, then the Kingdom of Heaven will come on Earth. Then justice will truly be established on Earth. This is what we are all waiting for, so this is what we must continue working for, to spread and implement these ideas.
Revolutionaries, social centers, collectives are already actively building infrastructure of resistance. This infrastructure is not just material but psychological, spiritual, theoretical, and foundational. It is a departure from party politics and in conflict with both the left and the right for complete and total freedom. Defense of oppressed people and of our political projects is paramount to liberation. We do hope you will join us in our crusade to end these unjust ideologies once and for all, we need people like you more than ever.
The Power of Narrative will be shattered, the wheel will be broken. For those that truly want this nation of hate and violence to end, self-defense, conflict resolution, and revolutionary justice are proven ways forward. It is important that the way through these tragic times not just be personal but also collective. Everything in this book is hacked, remixed, and presented from the author’s point of view. Challenge it! There is no one way forward, just powerful ideas.
All you need to do to start is to tear this text apart. Praise what you like, eviscerate what you don’t. Run it through a grinder and see what comes out. Spread it, mock it, preach it, shame it.
Most left-wing movements get into power without having properly thought out what they’ll do once in power and without a realistic understanding of the deep lack of belief in democratic norms by their right-wing opponents. Break your enemy’s power. If you’re any sort of left-winger worth your salt, you ethically do not believe in huge concentrations of power and money in the hands of a few people anyway. Act on your beliefs. And if they’ve committed a pile of crimes—and they almost always have—use those crimes against them.
Then remember the world system is set up expressly to stop what you are doing. You’re tackling the dragon, and most people who do that get eaten. We tell the stories of the dragonslayers because they are so few. So, know the odds are against you and be willing to do what is required to improve them. If you aren’t, stay home.
War is hell, which is why they need to stop waging theirs. Or we will make them stop—there is no moral uncertainty here, their actions are unjustifiable, unacceptable, unallowable. We do not do this for us, our egos, the history books, we do it for those in the here and now, those who cry out and go unheard, those who are broken and tossed away, those who are spit on and exploited, those who despair, those who needlessly struggle, those who succumb and those who are left behind. The line stops here, this is where we intend to make it end. To all would-be revolutionaries, the massive reserve army of the broken, desperate, enraged: This is what you’ve been waiting for, we’ve been watching you.
This is not the revolution of Bernie “Millionaire Socialist” Sanders. We’re not fucking around, you can’t buy us with a goddamn thing; you kill us, or we don’t stop coming. And you better hope we don’t rise from the grave—because we ain’t Jesus, we will fucking Bloodshot your ass.
We will win, that is certain. It is certain because the ideas that exist in this writer’s head do not exist solely there, nor do they exist only on these pages, or in the minds of those that have seen these pages. The ideas were not solely birthed there, just as the wheel, agriculture, religion were not solely birthed by one individual. No idea is owned, no idea is truly unique. Built on the foundations of all other thought and ideas, they are our collective wealth. We must demonize those that hoard this wealth, for they are stealing from all of us to enrich themselves.
Like dragons of lore, they will use force to keep their hoard and grow it. We must fight them. Like dragons, they will have strengths and weaknesses. We must exploit these. The system is fundamentally broken, it will never function for the enrichment of the majority. We must expose the broken system and break it further wherever we can. Whether you are simply pulling back the curtain or actively throwing wrenches into the machine, if it is done with an honest desire for justice, done as passionately as you can, then you are fighting for our cause. Do not assist your oppressors simply because you disagree with the actions taken.
The timetable is uncertain, the victory certain. This writer may be long dead, whether prematurely or naturally, but the ideas outlined will prevail, there is no other way but further backward.
The time is up. The time is now. Gather the people to do the work: the healing, transformative, deepening work of building community, solutions, understanding, skills, knowledge, and hope. You must be the one to make a change, to step out of the rutted tracks of the looming train wreck that is our culture. You must have the courage to walk into the wilderness of what you don’t know and embrace the solutions that will save our lives.
All quests and hero’s journeys begin with this: the yearning for change; the hope of saving graces; the long shot of wished-for miracles. In each of us, our willingness to make a change begins with equal measures of fear, courage, and purpose rolled into an electric jolt to the soul—a spark that launches you toward danger and potential.
Some men rise to occasions, the vast majority do not. The frail firelight that civilization casts into the darkness burns upon the sacrificial flesh of the few.
Rise from the ashes like the phoenix my brothers, be like the hydra my sisters. You are already dead, choose immortality now and live forever with us. We coursed through the veins of our ancestors and we will again through the blood of our unborn. Can you feel them brothers? Can you hear them crying out my sisters? They are your strength, they are your power, we wield the power of generations, a flame handed down through the ages, we cannot let it be extinguished, we will not let it be extinguished. Burn your enemies, the flame cannot harm you, it is the catalyst for your seeds of immortality, it will incubate your precious phoenix egg. Go forth, do what must be done.
But remember, you alone are not enough. One of our changes is that we must work together. We must reach out from our isolated lives. We must join hands with millions and take collective steps toward the future. You cannot go on a hero’s journey alone. Not this time. You must ask others—many others, millions of others—to change their lives, too.
Do not wait another minute to change your life. The time is up. The time is now.
We’ll be seeing you, we hope.
Your comment is quite moving. You speak with eloquence and conviction. And I think that what you express is in the heart of many visitors to this website. Please permit me to append an opinion thereto.
The enemy’s power must be broken, to be sure. And it will. But the manner in which it is broken is of supreme importance. If it is broken with the sword of violence the result will be similar to that of John Brown’s revolution, which led to the death of about 800,000 mostly innocent people and the foundation of the American empire. If it is broken with the sword of truth the result will be the completion of the revolution which Jesus, amazingly, foresaw and began 2000 years ago – the establishment of the kingdom of God on earth. To understand how such a thing will be possible please review the discussion of Saying 23 of the Gospel of Thomas in Chapter 3 of Part 3 of my book, “The Tomb in the Garden, the First Easter and a Gospel of Jesus.” If you e-mail me a request at andrews53@outlook.com I will attach to my reply a copy of this book in pdf format. (This book is also available as an e-book at the Amazon online bookstore. It was free last Easter but I am able to offer it free for only 5 days every 3 months. I don’t think Bezos likes to give stuff away for free. It now costs 99 cents. I should be able to offer it free again during the 5 days beginning on Independence Day, July 4, for those on a tight budget who would prefer the e-book format.)
This is beyond reason, it is about our core. This is about the earth we all spring from and will all return to. This is about being human, and though we are thinking and reasoning animals, being human is more than reason. Our truest essence is found where thought meets desire, where facts and dreams collide, where being human presses against the rest of the natural world. The choices we make at those intersections transcend our lives and reach far into the future. What seem to be small decisions and small actions actually determine our intrinsic human worth, what it means to be human, as well as the judgment we will receive from future generations.
The possibility of reaching such ideals comes rarely, and when it does, it usually comes at the dangerous crossroads of opportunity and crisis. What we decide to do at this intersection is a test of how we respond to the most distant, the powerless, and the voiceless. No one is forcing us to choose one way or the other. We don’t have to be consistent, but we have no choice but to engage. Either we act to make our ideals reality or we do nothing and attempt to un-know what we know.
As a society we’re more comfortable with custom and precedent than with facing new and unfamiliar proposals. But let us be brave. Let us cast out what we know has not only failed us but has added substantially to the heavy inventory of crimes committed against us.
If we all use the immensely powerful weapon of solidarity then the only thing left for us is to know the daily stretch of the road and to take it. Nobody can point out that stretch; that stretch in the personal road of each individual; it is what he will do every day, what he will gain from his individual experience dedicated to the people’s well-being.
But, when discussing the correctness of tactics, whether or not they should be supported, it is important to note whether we are discussing the real world or the ideal world. It is not fair to expect the oppressed, the powerless, to act as if they are in an ideal world if the powerful are not doing so.
I abhor violence. It’s often reckless, careless, excessive. It’s usually directed at the powerless. Its effects are permanent and ripple outward. Which is why the greatest purveyors of violence must be stopped once and for all
Remember, it is never the powerless, the underdog, which chooses whether violence is necessary. It is always the choice of the powerful. Always. All consequences fall upon their shoulders for they, and they alone, had the power to resolve things peacefully.
You haven’t looked at my book. Violence will not be necessary. A very special group of people will arise. I think they will become known as “the chosen.” They will be recognized by everyone everywhere as very special people. They will serve as oracles of God. Think a moment about what this implies. It implies that what Jesus calls our Spiritual Father will speak directly to humankind, particularly on the sabbath (be it Friday, Saturday or Sunday), and keep humankind aware of what their rulers and those with worldly power over them are up to, if it is something which displeases God.
You are correct, we have not, yet.
Thank you for your summary, “The Chosen” a concept we can agree with, though exactly how much “God” will have anything to do with it is something we might debate. We’re more of the Jesus-as-a-Moral-Philosopher type rather than the Magic-Son-of-God type.
We also don’t turn the other cheek. You only get one.
There will be those who, for a number of reasons, are able to hold open the door for others. And allow them, finally, to step through.
When you finish my book I don’t think you will believe in magic. But you may believe in miracles.
Love it, Jim!
Please be sure to throw a link to your book under one of our newer comments should you ever post it up on archive.org. We’ll check it out.
And might we recommend archive.org for a free hosting of your book, easy, convenient, and completely anonymous for all of us to check out.
Thank you.
Americans are very simpleminded and easily led for the most part. Also lacking in empathy for the rest of the world’s population. It’s probably inevitable that we end up with the presidents we get.
Will this catastrophe wake people up?
Not likely.
Dear Caitlin,
Thoroughly off the subject here, but have been meaning to do this for awhile: alert you and my fellow supporters to an excellent music vid about the grim realities suffered by the Palestinians in the Israeli Occupation of the West Bank by rapper JASIRI X called “Checkpoint” (please find link below, knowing I would never knowingly send anyone a virus), which has been around for several years now, still has criminally few hits, and needs to go viral.
https://youtu.be/Dq6Y6LSjulU
Best,
S.A. Hogan (horror/thriller author & humanitarian
It seems to me Caitlin that people like you have succeeded to put the wealthy “System” elites on the defensive.
They have to launch a powerful pandemic on the world to keep themselves in control and in power and to protect the “System” from crashing.
Keeping my Rosary on hand!
Ah the vagaries of our poor human consciousness. People hated Jimmy Carter apparently he wasn’t warlike enough. Bush became a wartime President and surged in popularity, murdering millions of people on a pretext based on lies, that didn’t seem to matter. Whatever evil these people do, we are all complicit. Gosh we could have had Al Gore greening up the planet and fighting air pollution. Us grasshoppers don’t choose very wisely, do we? Better hope the God so many people profess to believe in isn’t really there because if there really is a God, and a just and living God at that, we’d better look out because we’ve got some heavy shit coming!
Solid gold Caitlin! “ Indeed, Bush-era neocons have been able to fully ingratiate themselves to and integrate themselves with Democrats in the age of Trump by posing as moral opposition longing for a more civilized time when presidents would politely butcher humans by the hundreds of thousands without using offensive language like “shit hole”. A gentlemanly time for gentlemanly presidents to unfold gentlemanly torture and surveillance policies all around the world without posting rude tweets about celebrities they don’t like.” is the best thing I’ve read in a while, really made my day.
But I have one big niggle: The truth is, not only is Trump not as bad as Bush, but he’s not as bad as Saint Obama either. The fact is Obama was behind the destruction of Libya—a perfectly ok country it seems—which now enjoys open air slave markets, a failed government, and by some accounts, hundreds of thousands of Quadafi’s sub-Saharan troops summarily executed in the desert by US/Coalition ‘freedom fighters’. Then there’s Obama’s fuckery in Syria (re Syria at Night) and the Ukrainian coup. Trump has tried to extricate himself from Syria, back out of Obama’s Cold War II with Russia, and wind down other conflicts.
Correct me if I’m wrong but Obama has far more blood on his hand than The President Worse Than Hitler, Donald J. Trump. It’s a strange turn of events, yet true.
Bush could always plead the natural limitations of ignorance and stupidity, and thus get off a war crimes conviction. This cannot be said of Obama or Trump.
Thank you. Obama’s smarmy (as usual) endorsement of Joe Biden made my stomach turn. It’s Obama’s very smoothness that made him “the more effective evil” in Glen Ford’s opinion. If you don’t know Glen Ford you owe it to yourself to read the Black Agenda Report blackagendareport.com. Trump is crude, but doesn’t approach Obama as a lying sack of shit.
Let me suggest an idea that may turn the stomachs of the vast majority of people who share my political convictions, even though I am likely to their left in my vision of an just society. We who long for a better, more beautiful world and work toward it in the way we live our lives are supposed to LOVE the Trumps and Bushes of this world. Only from that existential position, a matter of the heart and the will, can we effectively oppose them without becoming somewhat like the monsters we fight.
Very good point! Of course, truly loving people may well require working for them to be deprived of political power. Trump being US President is not good for the world, but it’s also not good for Trump.
Thank you. I would go so far as to say that truly loving people, in the sense I mean it, are REQUIRED to work, each in their own way, to deprive the monsters of political power. Indeed, do not the most loving sometimes have to give their lives, literally, to that effort?
I should have picked up on your observation, Kirt, that power over others like Trump & Co. wield is not good for them, either. Perhaps the most overlooked point that Jesus repeatedly made, especially now when the prosperity gospel is growing in the both the “first” and “third” worlds, is that wealth, like power, is extremely dangerous, a spiritual snare almost impossible to escape. The reason Jesus gives reflects his accurate and practical take on human nature: that where our treasure is, there will our hearts be also.
Another great article, Caitlin, and thanks so much. In my case, it’s preaching to the choir since I never supported Clinton, Bush, Obama or Trump. What is your take on the possible candidacy of Justin Amash for the Libertarian party? He seems attractive in his opposition to US foreign policy and the surveillance state.
When people are for some reason unwilling to govern themselves, and insist someone be “in charge”, there is always a plethora of ready and willing psychopaths standing in the wings, and anyone of them will be delighted to assume that role. To expect them to behave in a sane rational humane manner is delusional. No one eager to play that role is capable of such. It’s not part of their nature. Whomever they may be, one can rest assured they have no interest whatsoever in anyone else’s welfare except as it may enhance their own. They have no problem ACTING as if they are concerned in order to insure their continued domination. But nonetheless, it is always an act.
Thank you Caitlin. Good to have some clear thinking.
Ms. Johnstone writes:
“You turn to run, but your friend grabs you and won’t let you move. He falls to the ground grabbing your legs screaming “No! No! We must stay here! We mustn’t move an inch!”
Who do you need to fight first? The monster? Or your “friend”?”
There are two very basic principles of warfare and/or politics. ( “War is just politics by other means” –von Clausewitz).
Perhaps THE most basic is “Identify the Enemy”. Another is the one that Ms. Johnstone presents here: “Fight your closest enemy first”.
I’ve never been in Australia, (I was in New Zealand for a few weeks once), so I have no idea what the Left is like there. In America, a BIG part of our total inability to mount any meaningful political resistance to rule by the Elites is that the American Left has been completely subverted into self-defeating impotence by the Elites’ powers of ‘social engineering’ through their very sophisticated use of their complete control of our nation’s Mass Media.
These social engineering powers are rooted FAR deeper than mere propaganda/disinformation. I’m not sure how well Ms. Johnstone may or may not understand how deeply rooted into the essence of people’s ‘being’, into people’s very ‘souls’, those roots of social engineering have penetrated. (She may very well understand far better than I do, I just don’t yet know).
Mass Media are comprised of far more than ‘the press’, (spewing its constant stream of disinformation/propaganda). These Elites who rule over us, (and want to rule the world), control ALL our Mass Media. They control what programs are on TV. They control what movies are made. They control what kind of music people hear. They control the plots and themes of the cartoon shows our children watch. The commercial messages that constantly bombard people are only the overt part of the Elites’ social engineering power. The inculcation of a ‘false reality’, a false concept of the very meaning of human existence, through the programming itself, supersedes even the immense but more crass persuasive power of the commercials.
The power of Mass Media goes far deeper than control of what people know, or think, or believe. Mass Media have the power to control what people WANT, to control our most basic motivations. This amounts to control of who and what people ARE.
Through this immense power, the Elites have managed to take control of the American Left, reducing it to an impotent collection of ‘marionettes’ dancing on the ends of the Elites’ own strings.
People on the Left are not in ANY way ‘immune’ to the social engineering powers of Mass Media. (I am certainly not so foolish to think I am immune). On a cognitive level, people on the Left may be more aware of various ‘facts’ than the general population, but through control of individual people’s most basic motivations, the Left has been saddled by ‘leaders’ who serve their own desires, their own ‘egos’, their own positions, far ahead of any ’cause’.
Thus has the American Marionette Left been reduced to a collection of people duped into advancing our own Enemy’s most basic philosophy/strategy of neo-Liberalism, and its ugly step child, Identity Politics. More direct to the thesis Ms. Johnstone presents here, the Marionette Left is fully supporting its own Enemy’s basic “divide and rule” political strategy by supporting not just the Scum Viper Democratic Party, but now even vomiting up nostalgia for a war criminal as execrable as Bush. (“Anyone but Bush” has now morphed into “Anyone, (even Bush), but Trump”).
The Marionette Left has failed to properly “Identify the Enemy”. Ms. Johnstone has labored mightily to make us aware of that. Trump is AN enemy. But he is not THE Enemy.
That basic failure to properly “identify the enemy” has now led the Marionette Left to be duped into supporting THE Enemy, in a stupidly misguided ‘strategy’ to defeat AN enemy.
Here, in another of her constantly brilliant essays, Ms. Johnstone is trying to make us aware that we must “fight our closest enemy first”, even when our own duped and/or misguided ‘friend’ becomes our Enemy’s closet agent.
But the ‘mistake’ I think Ms. Johnstone makes is her failure to follow her perceptive thesis all the way to where it leads us. The Democratic Party is not our “closest enemy”. The Democratic Party is being protected and supported by the subverted, and now subversive, (to the Left’s own genuine ’cause), Marionette Left. Thus this Marionette Left is a “closer enemy” than the Democratic Party.
We need to understand that this is “spiritual warfare”. When our friend’s spirit is taken over, and thus our friend gives us unwise counsel, we surely don’t want to ‘slay’ our friend to save ourselves. We rather want to ‘awaken’ our friend into awareness of the danger, to save us all.
There actually is now a major ‘schism’ taking place on the American Left. More authentic American leftists are saying “Basta!” They are rebelling against the old-line entrenched ‘leadership’ of the Marionette Left. Ms. Johnstone (and others) who are not aware of what is happening on this ‘front’, as some on the Left are trying to gather strength to “fight our closest enemy”, (the Marionette Left), might benefit from directing their attention to this most crucial ‘battle’.
Worthy commentary on an incisive post, confirming it, fleshing it out, modifying it…improving it. Thank you, Caliban, for adding your words of wisdom to those of Caitlin. Here’s an example of how blog readers can build up even the best of blogs, sharpening its edge, deepening its thrust, by contributing their own take on the truth.
Kudos, Newton & Caliban!
And Bernie, if he had been less fiercely idealistic and slightly younger, could have gotten the nod and represented that side of the D. party. He was close.
he got cheated, but he also accepted being cheated. i’ve really lost respect for him in the last stages of the campaign, he betrayed some people i feel.
Seems you have seen the Adam Curtis video “Century Of The Self” 2002.
This video is a large part of the “engineering of consent” that has been creating the reality of the west for many years.
Thanks so much for the excellent insightful comment.
If only we could become more and more aware of the struggle necessary to “see” the mess we are in.
Aldus Huxley with great prescience stated,
““By means of ever more effective methods of mind-manipulation, the democracies will change their nature; the quaint old forms— elections, parliaments, Supreme Courts and all the rest—will remain. … Democracy and freedom will be the theme of every broadcast and editorial. …
Meanwhile, the ruling oligarchy and its highly trained elite of soldiers, policemen, thought-manufacturers and mind-manipulators will quietly run the show as they see fit.”
Seems you have seen the Adam Curtis video “Century Of The Self” 2002.
This video shows us how the “engineering of consent” has been creating the reality of the west for many years.
Thanks so much for the excellent insightful comment.
If only we could become more and more aware of the struggle necessary to “see” the mess we are in.
Aldus Huxley with great prescience stated,
““By means of ever more effective methods of mind-manipulation, the democracies will change their nature; the quaint old forms— elections, parliaments, Supreme Courts and all the rest—will remain. … Democracy and freedom will be the theme of every broadcast and editorial. …
Meanwhile, the ruling oligarchy and its highly trained elite of soldiers, policemen, thought-manufacturers and mind-manipulators will quietly run the show as they see fit.”
I agree with much that you have written and am happy to read it. I would add to it by saying why, after so much has come out, so many of the people in what you call the Marionette Left prefer not to think about it and allow themselves to have their strings pulled. After 40 years of learning from some very wise men and women I have seen again and again, including in myself, that the cause is the human desire for contempt, the desire to have the pleasure of feeling superior to the world in the form of other people. We build ourselves up by lessening others. That is why they (and I) can be so cool to the death of millions of innocent people overseas and poverty of our fellow Americans,
To me what is wrong with identity politics is that it does not go far enough and take in all foreigners and all the Americans we do not want to see. You cannot kill people you see as having the same depths of feeling and thought as yourself. We do not want to see such feelings as like our own, NOR see the keenness that can be in all people, especially when they have the chance to learn, because it gets in the way of our superiority. As the greatest thinker said: Contempt must be defeated if man is to be kind.
Here’s Zizek (who, like everyone else, is right on some things, wrong on others) with some words of wisdom IMHO about this difficult, nuanced subject you raise, which we commonly called “identity politics.”
I think it’ll be nuclear war, first. Can’t fix stupidity when it stems from pride.
Cait and you are aware of the power of propaganda. Most people are not. Many people think that if they know that they are the targets of propaganda they are then immune to it. Nobody is immune to it. The best comment about the power of propaganda I’ve seen was made by a Jesuit priest who said you underestimate it at your peril. The Jesuits invented propaganda using their Society for the Propagation of the Faith, and if anyone understands it, they do. Always question your beliefs.
An analogy: Stating George W is “a good guy” because he supposedly is not as bad as Trump is like saying Stalin was “a good guy” because he supposedly was not as bad as Hitler.
When in fact, Stalin and Hitler were both evil.
And both George W. and Trump are sorry excuses for humans, and both should be in prison.
But, of course, that also applies to O’bomber, Hillary, Bill Clinton, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Kissinger. That doesn’t even include the non-US criminals like John Howard (Australia) and Tony Blair (UK) just to start the list.
not to mention lesser lights like bolton and elliot abrams. really, it would be a long list.
Maybe it’s just another bizzare twist to their sales pitch.
Like a, “You just didn’t know how good you had it,” line.
I would say, “What a bunch of monkeys,” but decent and hard working monkeys everywhere would be rightly insulted.
Maybe dragging all of them right out into the spotlight is the only way people will have no choice but to see them for what they actually are.
American Democrats are just the second head of the single-party ettin. The DNC and the GOP both need to burn in the trash barrel of history.
All of this just shows that the whole cesspool of American politics (Dem-Rep) should be dumped into the trash compactor (and then shot into space on a trajectory straight into the Sun). At this point that is about the only thing that might help. We could make an exception for the small number of actual people in both parties who are actually trying to do something positive for their country and the world. It won’t be very many.
“The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.”
The ” owners and the masters ” always want their hood ornaments ( their U.S. Presidents ) to be good actors and portray an image of the ” great human American being”. Donald Trump wears what he truly is right out in front. He is an extremely crude, selfish, egotistical, pig; without an ethical or moral bone in his body. He is the walking, talking ” Ugly American ” in stark raving technicolor. The MSM loves ” this buffoon ” of a president because he keeps their ratings sky high every single day. The owners and the masters do not like him because he shows the entire world exactly what the United States actually is; a blood-thirsty parasitic nation hellbent on bullying the entire planet to its sick fiendish will. The Evil Empire has no clothes with Donald Trump out in front revealing the true nature of the soul of the United States. Donald Trump has no charade to put up; he shows everybody exactly what he is; and he shoves it down your throat 24/7!
LBJ was a war criminal.
Trump and Bush have an important thing in common – they are both murderers and war criminals. Trump just has lower numbers than Bush so far (give him time), but a murder is a murder nonetheless. The thing that gets people angry at Trump is that he has no manners, and Bush has become likable because compared to Trump, his manners are passable – barely. Either of them would kill you in a heartbeat, and neither of them has a conscience.
I love it when they show their true colors. A protester with the “Get Back To Work You Lazy, Worthless Slaves” Movement (aka, Reopen America) displayed a sign at a protest with showed their true colors. The sign read “”Arbeit macht frei,JB.” That is the sign that was over the gate at the Auschwitz Death Camp. The JB part is a reference to the governor who is putting in place stay-at-home orders to try to minimize the massive numbers of deaths the country is suffering. The rest of the sign was in German, so there is little doubt that they know where it came from and what it means. The German translates to “Work will set you free.” It of course refers to the only freedom that fascists will ever grant anyone, that is the freedom of the grave.
This fake protest movement, with its numbers overblown by oligarch media, is the result of money from the far-right movement that stands firmly behind Trump. These are the people who want you to die for corporate profits. These are the same people trying to cover-up the Trump regime’s disastrous incompetence in handling this virus with racist taunts at China and threats of war against Iran and Venezuela.
Work will set you free.
If you believe that, then you deserve your death at their hands.
This is Trump America. Making America Great Again with Slogans from Auschwitz.
Thank you, Caitlin! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!
Politics is getting very tribal in America, like the policies matter less than the victories.
What “victories” exactly, John Knox?
I don’t know about John Knox, but their are obviously people who want to see the re-election of Donald Trump and the establishment of the Fourth Reich.
Anyone with a soul is fighting against that.
And what will be different with the administration of Joe Biden, except the rhetoric?
They are both tools of the ruling class; they are both sociopaths.
yeah this is just more 4 legs good 2 legs bad tribal nonsense. fwiw, i think biden will be replaced. clinton wants it but i don’t know if she will get it.
Electoral victories.
Rehabilitate Bush?! Tat guy was like a cackling evil carny. He had to learn how to act-like-a-Texan when he moved here, carpetbagger-muthu—-kah! What a Vogue-Yankee piece of shit!
George Bush made fun of Karla Faye Tucker to the people in the room after he hung up on her clemency request.
Mocking her with a pained expression and whiny voice, he squealed, “Please don’t kill me; please, please don’t kill me!”.
That was recounted to me here in Austin by a witness in the room that day.
http://www.johndayblog-com
i vaguely recall that, bush was a straight up psychopath. liked to blow up frogs as a kid, too. but like caitlin says, many of them are psychopaths, just smoother about it
Thank you for the on point points. Bush and even more so, glorifying him is absolutely disgusting, stomach turning.
‘ ‘ Ultimately they’re the party which could actually allow
for positive changes to be made to the world ‘ ‘
,,,,,,,,,,,,WRONG,,,,,,,,,,,,,,
Do your homework:
LBJ was the last Democrat in the WH to do anything
for the people (Voting Rights Act & Medicare)
Even though he was the pro-Viet-Nam War President,
when Eugene McCarthy challenged him for the
Democratic nomination, he resigned.
He knew thewar could not be won,
but he also knew (via JFK) that the Deep State
would not let him cut and run.
Lyndon was a murderer, not just in Vietnam, but as a general means of doing bidness.
Is there a United States President that was NOT a murderer??
No, which makes anyone who votes for them an accomplice to their crimes
If there was even one, it would be Carter. Sanders would have been a potential. But it’s important to keep in mind most of them aren’t murderers UNTIL they take the job.
Maybe Warren Harding, who ended Wilson’s terror at home and abroad, released dissenters from prison, and on whose watch not one America soldier was killed overseas. Historians generally dismiss him as “corrupt”.
his administration was, i don’t know if he was in on it or a fall guy. but he did some good, as you say.
thank you caitlin! the way the democrats cozy up to bush makes me sick. they’re all warmongers, it unites them. they liked trump escalating in syria, too.