If all your rabbit holing through information about conspiracies and establishment power leads you to believe that the world is being secretly rescued by the president of the United States, you made a wrong turn at Albuquerque.

~

Really sucks how the US intelligence cartel is going to claim a rival nation interfered in the election no matter who wins in order to advance pre-planned geostrategic agendas and everyone’s just going to accept it on faith because they learned nothing these last four years.

Not looking forward to Trump supporters unquestioningly swallowing the narrative that China interfered for Biden and then spending years screaming about the need for more cold war aggressions against Beijing while Biden does exactly that and they still claim he’s not doing enough.

~

The fact that politicians who not only supported the Iraq invasion but actively facilitated it are still becoming US presidential nominees proves the entire American political system is corrupt beyond the possibility of redemption.

~

Saying anything about Trump or Biden always gets Americans to reflexively assume that I’m pushing for one or the other to win, but for the record I have no more preference for the outcome of this fake oligarchic election than I have for the winner of the next Wrestlemania.

~

Part of the problem is that Hollywood has conditioned people to think that where there are bad guys, there must be a good guy around to oppose him. So they look for one and find Trump or Biden. But there are no good guys in a system that’s rigged to only let in corrupt assholes.

~

If you don’t talk about Trump in a way that draws angry responses from both Democrats and Republicans, you’re doing it wrong.

~

When both mainstream parties exist to deceive you, it’s impossible to inform yourself using mainstream partisan narratives without being deceived. They’re both worldviews that are deliberately designed to distort your perception.

~

The mass media don’t use the word “moderate” accurately, whether they’re talking about moderate rebels in Syria or moderates who stand between two warmongering oligarchic parties. This is because the mass media are there to promote an empire whose ideology is violent extremism.

Things will remain fucked as long as “moderate” means standing between one warmongering political party that lets rich people screw you and another warmongering political party that lets rich people screw you.

~

The only real consequences of Russiagate have been manufacturing consent for a new Cold War and neutering any potential leftward movement in the United States, both of which were pre-existing agendas of the same intelligence agencies that started Russiagate.

~

Supporting the Vietnam war was dumb. Supporting the Iraq invasion after being lied to about Vietnam was an order of magnitude dumber. Supporting any US war agendas after being lied to about Iraq is an order of magnitude even dumber than that.

~

Monopolistic social media giants collaborate with US government foreign policy objectives to ensure their monopoly is allowed to continue and then ban accounts for posting ill will toward US government leadership, but China and North Korea are bad because they have government censorship.

~

Calls for civility and politeness are always anti-populist in nature and always arise from the fear of the ruling class that the commoners can wake up at any moment to their strength of numbers and overthrow them.

~

Everyone carries trauma and delusion. Irresponsible people focus on conquest and achievement, thereby spreading their trauma and delusion around, and they’re praised for it. Responsible people prioritize inner work, healing their trauma and delusion, and they’re called losers.

~

Our species is never going to compete its way out of the existential threats it competed its way into. We will move out of the capitalist model of competition and into a collaborative relationship with each other and with our ecosystem, or we will go extinct. It is that simple.

___________________________

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68 responses to “A Wrong Turn At Albuquerque: Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix”

  1. Just give up? Don’t you know that you are going to die regardless? Does that mean just give up? Of course not, but you deal with that reality in the manner that works for you. I am saying face reality, the extremely high probability of mass extinction sometime during the next 100 years or less, in an intelligent and caring manner. Accept what you can not change and focus on changing yourself to being the person you want to be.

  2. Absolutely brilliant! As always!

  3. NEW VACCINATION DATA:
    “Just coincidentally, the authors of the paper reside at Yale and Stanford, institutions that have received substantial funding from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation for vaccine development.”
    Medical Journal Calls for Mandatory COVID Vaccine: ‘Noncompliance Should Incur a Penalty’
    Suggests that “employment suspension or stay-at-home orders” should be used to force people to get a jab
    https://www.globalresearch.ca/medical-journal-calls-mandatory-covid-vaccine-noncompliance-incur-penalty/5725752

    Give our government the MIDDLE-FINGER!

  4. This article is about the United Kingdom. Older people within these United States will soon be ” thrown overboard ” by the owners and the masters to save resources. That is the way that they do things. Pity is not on their agenda.
    ~
    This article can be read here:
    Take Pity on Britain Because It Is Approaching Catastrophe by Brian Cloughley!
    https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2020/10/06/take-pity-on-britain-because-it-is-approaching-catastrophe/

  5. I support any system that allows me to continue with my life unchanged while everyone else makes great sacrifices for our survival. – John Q Citizen

  6. Roundball Shaman Avatar
    Roundball Shaman

    “If all your rabbit holing through information about conspiracies and establishment power leads you to believe that the world is being secretly rescued by the president of the United States, you made a wrong turn at Albuquerque.”
    .
    Or a very wrong turn way back in Dallas, 1963.
    .
    “The fact that politicians who not only supported the Iraq invasion but actively facilitated it are still becoming US presidential nominees proves the entire American political system is corrupt beyond the possibility of redemption.”
    .
    The USA loves oil. Lots of it. Big pickup trucks that burn lots of oil products. SUVs that guzzle oil like parched plants suck up water. Next year, even bigger pickup trucks and SUVs. Build more roads. Build more subdivisions. Need more big trucks and bigger SUVs. More television ads featuring cool dudes with beards fawning over the latest Massive Pickup Truck, and soccer moms piling the little ones into the school-bus-sized SUV that needs lots and lots of oil. Barrels and barrels of it. Slippery, gooey, smelly, sweet crude. Pipelines brimming with glee. Empty tanks begging to become drunk with petro.
    .
    “Everyone carries trauma and delusion. Irresponsible people focus on conquest and achievement, thereby spreading their trauma and delusion around, and they’re praised for it. Responsible people prioritize inner work, healing their trauma and delusion, and they’re called losers.”
    .
    “Losing” with class is far better than “winning” by cheating or abusing others to achieve “victory”.
    Looking at things this way, the World needs more Losers.

  7. “move out of the capitalist model and into a collaborative relationship, or we will go extinct.” More to the point: Move into a collaborative relationship with each other and with our ecosystem and thus precipitate the collapse of the evil empire based on capitalism and violence.

  8. All fascist and totalitarian movements paper over their squalid belief systems with the veneer of morality.
    The Christian Right is content to have the focus on Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett revolve around her opposition to abortion and membership in People of Praise, a far-right Catholic cult that practices “speaking in tongues.” What it does not want examined is her abject subservience to corporate power, her hostility to workers, civil liberties, unions and environmental regulations. And since the Democratic Party is beholden to the same donor class as the Republican Party, and since the media long ago substituted the culture wars for politics, the most ominous threat Barrett’s appointment to the court represents is going unmentioned.
    ~
    This revealing article can be read here:
    Trump’s Barrett Nomination Another Step Toward Christian Fascism By Chris Hedges!
    http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/55685.htm

  9. Put your money on mass extinction, nothing will come of this election, nothing will change and what is bad will only get much worse. We have fallen off the cliff and it is a long ways down but that is the only direction possible now.

    1. Hug your loved ones as much as possible because every day now is ” overtime “! The Golden Golem of Greatness, a.k.a. President Donald Trump has returned to his White House where, with the nuclear launch codes, he intends to do battle against the entire world.

    2. If it’s already all over and we’re helplessly falling down off a cliff, then why are you here posting about it? Are you trying to get people to get right with God or make their peace with some other ultimate reality? Are you trying to spread your feelings of utter futility and despair? Are you claiming your place in line to smugly tell us “I told you so” when we all, including you, drop dead like flies? I’m seriously interested in understanding your motivation in making a post like this if, as you claim to believe, we’re inevitably plummeting down, beyond any hope or possibility of rescue, toward the rocks that will pulverize us into pieces of lifeless tissue. Why talk about it the way you do, instead of, for example, reaching out to hold hands with others in the brief moments you are certain are all we have left?

      1. Feel free to hold hands with any you please. My posting is saying deal with this in the manner that works best for you but unless you can offer concrete solutions then recognize it most likely hopeless. We are destroying our environment and with that ourselves.

      2. Mr. O, then just give up. It’s okay, many people have given up.
        `
        You act like you don’t care, but you seem to be advocating that everyone should give up with you. Why? If you don’t care, I wonder why you would waste your time on this? Hmmm . . ..
        `
        Concrete solutions: Practice positive human traits and values. Love, peace, forgiveness, compassion, humility, generosity, patience, persistence . . ..
        `
        In lieu of those, I’ll settle for boycotting Amazon.

    3. Hopelessness. That’s exactly what they want. They (the global robber baron crime syndicate for lack of a better description) want all of us, who want a better, peaceful, humane, viable planet, to feel hopeless and powerless. They probably pay people to spread hopelessness on blogs. Don’t give in to it.
      `
      There’s work to do. Fight hatred with love, fight greed with generosity, fight hopelessness with positive solutions . . ..

      1. Now that’s the spirit we need to summon, Shocker, as difficult as it is to do in these dystopian days. Defeatists, whatever their motivation, provide as much support to neoliberal ecocide and oppression as do the most greedy and violent plutocratic bastards. Perhaps more support, because the defeatists are supposedly speaking from the left.

        1. I agree, Newton.
          `
          “If you can’t fly, run; if you can’t run, walk; if you can’t walk, crawl; but by all means keep moving.”
          MLK

            1. Should have said, peace to you, Active.

          1. I’m suppose the freedom marchers asked the same question. I imagine his intention was that people should do whatever they can manage in their daily lives, however small, to improve the lives of African Americans, to improve our planet.
            `
            I always think of Buckminster Fuller’s trim tab effect. Peace to you, Tired.

  10. I think that the proposition that human imagination is one of the most, if not the most, powerful forces on planet earth can be proven by very easy arguments. I’m typing on one right now and you are able to read what I’ve typed through/on another. So let’s employ what may very well be the most powerful force on the planet for a very few minutes right now.
     
    Imagine first that every human being outside of US borders suddenly ceases to exist and that the “nation” called the USA expands to encompass the entire surface of planet earth.
     
    Imagine that the present whatever-you-want-to-call-it system in the US in which the vast majority of wealth and LARGE-SCALE capital equipment is owned by a microscopic percentage of human beings for their own astronomical profit REMAINS THE SAME.
     
    Imagine that both “labor” (the working class) and “management” (the ruling class, or Elite) can “organize”, as they supposedly can in our present “democracy”. But now, because nobody is alive outside of the former US borders, the owners of large-scale capital equipment no longer have the option to move their capital equipment to other former nations on the planet where there used to be desperately poor people who were “willing” to work for food, water and a place to sleep on the factory floor.
     
    Imagine that US environmental, labor, etc. regulations apply, now, everywhere on planet earth (again, because the US is the only nation on planet earth).
     
    Just exactly HOW are the roughly 334 million “Americans” (now AKA earthlings) going to “go it alone” when America’s presently-designed economy needs a great number of “immigrants” (of a certain “economic type”) each and every year from now to eternity?
     
    Just exactly WHO is going to buy all of the “excess” natural resources, oil, farm products, manufactured goods, etc. that a small percentage of working Americans can very efficiently produce, but can no longer “export”? NOBODY.
     
    To have available the relatively small amount of warm-weather items that America now imports, Americans will venture forth to those places, AS AMERICANS, and produce and send those products “back home”. Naturally, those American workers working on other parts of the globe outside of FORMER US borders will be paid a wage that also applies to the rest of the American “labor market” and, again, the American regulatory framework will also apply to those workers and facilities and places of production, as well as those workers being able enjoy America’s social benefits.
     
    ALL of the work that is presently being done in America by “temporary foreign workers” and other temporary workers who harvest crops, put roofs on houses, cook food in restaurants, take care of the elderly in nursing homes, etc. will have to be done by Americans who will be paid by other Americans.
     
    Automobiles, trucks, TVs, toilet tissue, etc. will now have to be produced by Americans, for Americans. In other words, absolutely any thing and any service that Americans need/desire will have to be produced by Americans and, again, Americans will have to pay these other Americans to do that — enough payment so that these hard-working Americans will make enough “profit” to “save” enough money to be able to “retire” when they inevitably become physically decrepit.
     
    Here’s the most important question of all. WHO is going to play the role of “enemy” that is necessary to maintain the need, the justification, for the present economically-necessary military industrial complex? Answer: NOBODY. How are the tens of millions of people either directly or indirectly employed in that MIC and all of the government “security apparatus” going to be “employed” after the disappearance of those “threats to national security”? (How are they going to behave, what are they going to do, in order to literally survive, especially those living in the large cities?)
     
    How much is the above arrangement (again, an arrangement in which only Americans inhabit the planet, and in which the vast majority of wealth and large-scale capital equipment is owned by a truly microscopic percentage of the population of America for their own astronomical profit) going to “cost” average Americans? Will/would average Americans be able to “afford” that system, that arrangement (the one we live in now)?
     
    NO, they would not!
     
    When I recently asked my brother in law why the American government finds it necessary to import vehicles, TVs, etc. from other countries, his reply was that “if they were produced by Americans in America, they would be too expensive”. (This coming from a man who hired a temporary foreign worker to give additional care to his elderly mother who was ALREADY living in a nursing home).
     
    So now to my point. Just as it is for the vast majority Americans now living in our present multi-national globalized world, Americans living in an America-only world could NOT “afford” what they need and what they want under the present economic arrangement in which the vast majority of wealth and large-scale capital equipment is owned/controlled by a microscopic percentage (and getting smaller by the day) of the population for their own astronomical profit.
     
    THIS is why under the present economic system desperate slave labor is needed to provide what Americans need.
     
    THIS is why when the US Elite “conquers” other nations’ military forces, it does not make those “nations” new States of the USA; and instead installs in those places puppet governments made up of, essentially, US State Department employees who bleed their citizenry and their land-mass dry of anything valuable, to be used by the US Elite as a means of obtaining ever more “profit”.
     
    THIS is why Americans can not afford to have enough children to maintain the present population and, therefore, immigrants of a certain economic status have to be imported from other nations (usually the ones being bled dry by US corporations) into America each and every year from now to eternity.
     
    THIS is why “trade agreements” such as NAFTA between international corporations are needed to exploit the most desperate people on the planet for the greater benefit of a much smaller percentage of the population.
     
    Again, what Americans desperately need TODAY is an economic system in which ALL Americans, not just a microscopic percentage, own/control LARGE-SCALE capital equipment COLLECTIVELY, and collectively provide the LABOR (by “divvying up” the necessary labor among ALL citizens) to operate that large-scale capital equipment.
     
    By providing THEIR labor to run THEIR capital equipment, farm THEIR land, take care of THEIR sick and elderly, etc., ALL Americans will have EARNED the right to consume all of the goods and services produced by THIER large-scale capital equipment and THEIR labor. In other words, ALL Americans will get to “profit” from THEIR large-scale capital equipment and THEIR labor, not just a microscopic (and getting smaller by the day) percentage of the American population for their own astronomical profit.

    1. Ishkabibble,

      A commitment to socialist ideas can do the same thing and that does not need a long and complicated thought experiment. But thank you for it.

      Consider the inspiration for a socialist ideal.

      “Do to others as you would have them do to you.”

      And that translates to a minimum wage and health care.

  11. It is possible to prefer Trump to Biden without being a Trump supporter or a QAnon dupe. It seems obvious to me Trump is likely to do less damage to the US and the world than Biden & Co. That is a good enough reason for me to hope he wins. That does not mean I support all he does or does not do. We do not get to choose what we want in US elections. We only ever get to choose the lesser evil.

    1. True, we choose the lesser evil, however with strategic voting, ie, voting for a third party, enough votes could put a third party in the debate which would show the bankruptcy of the Jack Ass Party and the Elephant Party and we might achieve some sort of reasonable change without a revolution. History rhymes to itself, and I imagine the era of the American Aristocracy will go the route of the French aristocracy of two hundred odd years ago.

  12. The wrestling thing is funny because Trump is a wrestler.
    https://youtu.be/y0WI-Lv_U4A

  13. There is a vast difference between free enterprise and the competition that results, and the outright thievery that is absolved by the label “capitalism”. All economies are capitalist, from tribal barter to the current corporate oligarchy. The difference being who controls the capital. In a free market, selfishness is countered by the need to provide a service people need or want in order to make any gains. Delayed gratification is rewarded by increase in wealth at a later date. None of this is true of current economies, which are founded on fiat currency and debt. Saving is punished by inflation, while debt is rewarded by paying it down with inflated currency that’s worth less than what was borrowed. To put it plainly, we do not have an economy. We have a means of extracting wealth, by force if necessary. Outright thievery by whatever party by means of hiding the truth from the victims.

    1. Tribal barter cannot become capitalist because tribal barter does not store expended labor or theoretical wealth (gold, paper money or credit notes) nor provide loans. However, Tribal barter can exploit laborers who have nothing to offer and agree to work for food and accommodation which is of less value than people who already have enough accommodation and more than enough food, materials, tools with which to barter.

  14. Long before Julian Assange, Edward Snowden and Chelsea Manning were being castigated for blowing the whistle on the United States governments war crimes and the National Security Agencys abuse of its surveillance powers, it was Mr. Lennon who was being singled out for daring to speak truth to power about the governments warmongering, his phone calls monitored and data files illegally collected on his activities and associations.
    For a while, at least, John Lennon became enemy number one in the eyes of the United States government.
    ~
    This great article can be read here:
    John Lennon at 80: One Man Against the Deep State “Monster” By John W. Whitehead!
    https://www.rutherford.org/publications_resources/john_whiteheads_commentary/john_lennon_at_80_one_man_against_the_deep_state_monster

    1. I was just getting ready to post link to that article before I saw your comment. It is a great article. I particularly liked the John Lennon quote at the end:
      `
      “Produce your own dream…. It’s quite possible to do anything, but not to put it on the leaders…. You have to do it yourself. That’s what the great masters and mistresses have been saying ever since time began. They can point the way, leave signposts and little instructions in various books that are now called holy and worshipped for the cover of the book and not for what it says, but the instructions are all there for all to see, have always been and always will be. There’s nothing new under the sun. All the roads lead to Rome. And people cannot provide it for you. I can’t wake you up. You can wake you up. I can’t cure you. You can cure you.”
      `
      “Peace is not something you wish for; It’s something you make, Something you do, Something you are, And something you give away.”
      `
      “If you want peace, you won’t get it with violence.”

      1. The Buddha Ms Caitlin Johnstone is tirelessly rising onto the radar of the Evil Empire Monster. They will likely send an agent or two or three or maybe more to try to solicit comments here that promote violence and or revolution. Then our crazy government will have an excuse to bar her great website from being viewed by anyone within these United States. Unfortunately the Internet is the only widespread place dissent is publicly allowed nowadays.

        1. “They will likely send an agent or two or three or maybe more to try to solicit comments here that promote violence and or revolution.”
          `
          Good chance we’ve already seen that.
          `
          In any case, thanks for posting that link. Seems like we don’t see enough of that.

  15. “Part of the problem is that Hollywood has conditioned people to think that where there are bad guys, there must be a good guy around to oppose him.”

    —-This is far too categorical. From 1941 through 1959 Hollywood so reliably turned out films built around characters and universes that were thoroughly gray, if not darker and bleaker, that they became an entire genre unto themselves—called film noir—better known now and more often watched than the Westerns or science fiction or romantic comedies or dramas of the period.

    Film noir was succeeded by neo-noir, which also featured a universe of grays and blacks, where the best human beings were nonetheless morally compromised.

    It’s always worth looking deeply into Hollywood’s reputation towards contrasting that reputation with the reality of film in the United States. For example Hollywood always, always featured intelligent professional women in much higher percentages than existed in general U.S. society. It was never common to feature women as deservedly subservient, or less bright or alert or accomplished.

    It routinely showed women in a positive light, and typically as better, smarter, and wittier than men. It so regularly cranked out films either starring women, or starring them coequally with men, that you can go to any year since 1930 and find a high percentage of such films.

    Try it. If you’re not a film aficionado, Wikipedia lists Hollywood films by year, and alphabetically within each year. Pick a year and go through the plot summaries, casts, and starring roles. It’s nothing like we’re commonly told. Various political movements write histories of film for their own purposes—that doesn’t make those histories true.

  16. We will move out of the capitalist model of competition and into a collaborative relationship with each other and with our ecosystem, or we will go extinct. It is that simple.
    ~
    Ah, the Buddha Ms Caitlin speaks the plain simple truth! Humanity can keep on going the way that it is going and destroy this entire planet; or humanity can wake up before it is too late!

    1. Thank you, Ron, for at least suggesting that we still have a shot–however long, however remote–to turn things around and begin to rescue people and planet. Without believing in that almost impossible possibility, why would we even be here listening to Caitlin and each other?

      1. People shoveling against the tide seem to never believe in giving up; I guess that is a part of us the owners and the masters just do not understand. Yes, we get crushed; but we do not give up.

  17. I agree with very much of what you write, but I think I’ve figured out why I disagree so much with your ‘solutions’.

    The answer is found in your very last paragraph:

    “Our species is never going to compete its way out of the existential threats it competed its way into. We will move out of the capitalist model of competition and into a collaborative relationship with each other and with our ecosystem, or we will go extinct. It is that simple.”

    This is where you go wrong. You assume that capitalism is simply competition, but it is more than competition. It is also cooperation, much more so than many think. Competition is built into the very fabric of our being and the nature of our world. Scarcity is the overarching reality, and men have developed mechanisms for dealing with the inevitable squabbles over the scarce resources of our world. This is the cooperation part. Advanced societies have learned to adapt to this scarcity with rules that govern who gets to use what and who gets to consume what.

    Far from being this evil system you imagine, capitalism and, more generally, cooperation and competition, ensures that scarce resources will tend to go toward the most needed projects and purposes.

    The State interferes with this orderly process, and ends up picking winners and losers based on the ability of some to game the system. This is the fault of Statism, not capitalism.

    In your utopian world, where everybody magically cooperates with everybody, you still need some way to sort out access and ownership to scarce resources and sort out competing claims to the same property or resource. There are only two ways to do this: markets and competition, or an overwhelming State, which is what you prefer. You may not think this is in your system, but it is there, implicitly. If you don’t allow people to peaceably sort out competing claims, using their own institutions, you are only left with some ‘authority’, a State, to do it.

    There is no other way.

    You create a false dichotomy when you try to distinguish capitalism from cooperation. Capitalism involves cooperation, if the State doesn’t interfere and screw things up. This is what you constantly fail to grasp, and this is why you will always gravitate to systems that, ultimately, involve some overarching authority, the very thing you claim to despise.

    Ironic, isn’t it?

    1. Being lied about does not make something ironic.

      1. Who’s being lied about, and who’s lying?

          1. You seem pretty certain of that verdict.

            I couldn’t just be sadly mistaken? I am a liar?

            What, pray tell, did I lie about?

            I think you’re really stretching, man. You probably use the term ‘liar’ as much as a lot of people these days use the term ‘racist’.

            Have a nice day.

            1. People who make mistakes make them in different directions. Everything in your post says the author is guilty of magical thinking. It isn’t true, she is well known for pointing out the magical thinking in the speeches of conservative politicians. That a conservative would call that magical thinking and then suggest confusion is mendacious.

              1. I think you’re reading way too much into my comments and into my thought processes.

                Clearly, though, I think CJ is a Utopian dreamer, much as most of the progressive left is. I think she is sincere, and well-meaning. But, she criticizes a caricature of capitalism (or free market cooperation and competition). I don’t know that there ever was, or ever could be, a capitalism without the State. I know that none has existed so far, at least not for very long. My ideal is capitalism, or free enterprise and competition, free from State interference, which always causes conflict where none should exist and always perverts incentives and politicizes private decision making.

                I am simply saying that, to my ears, she simply is advocating a different kind of State, whereas I reject any kind of State.

                Can we start there for a more fruitful discussion? Do I misread her? Does she favor a State, or not? What’s your understanding of her ideal political system?

                1. Now you play the victim, it’s still bull. You came here to put words into her mouth. You want to spread BS. It’s not confusing to us why you are here.

    2. Funny how we always see that same excuse for capitalism—but never the acknowledgment that inherent in capitalism is its devolution into a system where the state you decry is owned effectively outright by a few thousand capitalists.

      When you become intellectually curious I encourage you to figure out why states become what they inevitably become. Best of luck.

      1. States are what they become, they don’t become what they are because some ‘capitalists’ learn how to game the system.

        States are corrupt from the get-go; they only become more so as people with too much money on their hands bend the State to their will. States are instruments of plunder already. That’s why they are evil.

        I think you should take your own advice and figure out why States are corrupt from the beginning. That has nothing to do with people buying and selling to each other.

        1. So we are to revert to the rule of the strongest, most vicious, most calculating warlord in the neighborhood? Seems like that’s what it took us thousands of years to evolve out of, and what some now want insanely to devolve back into. Or am I reading you wrong and you just think we should rely on everybody being nice to each other in a government-free paradise of universal empathy and compassion?

          1. “So we are to revert to the rule of the strongest, most vicious, most calculating warlord in the neighborhood? Seems like that’s what it took us thousands of years to evolve out of, and what some now want insanely to devolve back into.”

            What the hell do you think we have now?

            Have you never heard of collective security apart from a State?

            I think everybody being nice to each other is what Caitlin is espousing. Either that, or a different kind of State, one that works.

            Well, guess what? None of them work.

            The problem is the State, not what system people choose to use to trade with each other.

            I can’t tell you how many Leftists I have conversed with over the years. We agree on who the bad guys are a lot more often that we disagree. But we always part ways when they claim that the government needs to protect us from those other bad guys. That’s like putting the proverbial fox in charge of the hen house.

            My whole point is that the State, a monopoly of the initiation of force, is the source of all our problems. Trading our current State for another one that ‘works’ is just brain-dead. We need to rid ourselves of the idea of any kind of a ruling class. We can rule ourselves, without any kind of State, just fine. They only screw things up.

            1. You’re not here to stop the state, you’re here to stop the left. Just admit it.

              1. I’ll admit that I am here to stop both, because I think that the left is also in favor of a State, just one they control.

                I reject, categorically, any kind of State, whether left or right. I’ll admit to being very conservative in my outlook and world view, but that doesn’t men I support a conservative State.

                I don’t think I can have a rational discussion with you because you assume too much about me and my motives. I am more than willing to explore our basic premises because it seems we are arguing past each other, but you don’t seem to be willing. You just want to psycho-analyze me and impugn my motives.

                I’ll try with somebody else.

                1. I’m not just assuming, I’m noticing that you act exactly like every other right wing troll who shows up here- Get agressive then play the victim. There is nothing about you that deserves respect or civility.

                  1. With all due respect, sir, you have no friggin’ idea what you’re talking about. You couldn’t be more wrong about me. Something I said obviously triggered your irrational responses to my initial post, and the follow-ups, but that’s your problem, not mine.

                    I’ve never trolled anybody about anything but, as you wish. Stop replying to my comments if you don’t like what I say. It’s that easy.

                    I think, for the record, that you are extremely intellectually dishonest. If all of the progressives and lefties are like you, I know I want no part of whatever you want.

                    1. I’m not wrong, you’re a dreary ordinary right wing troll.

                    2. Yes, sir, you are wrong. You’re as rigid in your opinions as you accuse me of being. You have no sense of self awareness and your own limitations.

                      I think you’re the troll. Typical tactic of the left to accuse your opponents of doing and being what you are doing and being.

                      I think I’ll just un-follow this thread and this author. I can get the same analysis without the progressive nonsense many other places.

                      Bye.

                    3. Dont let the door hitcha on the way out, troll.

  18. “Supporting the Vietnam war was dumb. Supporting the Iraq invasion after being lied to about Vietnam was an order of magnitude dumber. Supporting any US war agendas after being lied to about Iraq is an order of magnitude even dumber than that.”

    Supporting any war is dumb! But if people can’t get the bigger picture I guess starting with specific examples is a beginning. A journey begins with the first step.

    1. @K-DOG Unfortunately an insurmountable part of the problem is, using your and CJ’s shorthand, that the general population is in fact “dumb.”
      .

      CJ doesn’t appear to grasp this. Or would prefer not to. Understandable, but blinding.
      .

      By IQ, half the Earth’s population is 100 or less. (If that’s offensive, by all means substitute your yardstick of choice.) They simply lack the equipment to get past propaganda. They lack the reasoning skills to see through it. If the major media outlets are telling them “corporate capitalism is good” and “war is necessary,” then overwhelmingly that’s what they’ll believe.
      .

      Even people significantly smarter than that will find it very difficult to get past the problem of media lying to them, where the lies are asserted unequivocally and told in unison.
      .

      That leaves only a small minority both capable of seeing through the msm’s narratives and willing to do so. The very bright people I know could probably do it if they applied themselves, but it’s too painful for them—there’s too much succor in believing the narrative, that we’re the good guys, admittedly flawed, but still fundamentally good, and in any case China and Russia and North Korea and Venezuela and Iran and Syria and… etc are somehow worse.
      .

      People in general aren’t particularly evil, but they certainly aren’t particularly bright, and if the world goes up in flames it will likely be due to the inability of the average person to see through the sociopathy of the feverish accumulators.

      1. I like your response Blair. You made a point that is a bit contrary without being offensive. You certainly are not dumb.

        Only a small minority is ever on a leading edge of change and all others follow. Without a narrative to lead them the majority is lost. As things are now, what leads people is a poisonous narrative. If a humane narrative replaces the poison, then let them be dumb.

        And let a minority be vigilant to ensure the narrative remains humane.

        Electronic devices have not selected for wisdom but rather they select for the sensual, the outrageous, and the lowest common denominator. Yet a basic decency still remains between people.

        While what you write may have much merit it is not the final answer. Improvement is possible.. Absolute perfection is certainly not but if an improved narrative makes the world only incrementally better it is worth doing.

        And no offense to you who by simply answering my comment shows you to be otherwise, the idea that the crowd can’t change is a convenient ticket to apathy and wrong. Consider current events. I would not begin to claim that American mass media has discovered virtue but the outrageousness and emptiness of Trump is now becoming common knowledge.

        Compare the common perception of the man to what it was a year ago. There has been an obvious improvement and that shows change is possible.

      2. I detect a higher than average IQ at work with Blair’s comment. It was very refreshing, thank you.

  19. As amoral oligarch Elon Musk put it, in a candid Twitter moment: “We will coup whoever we want. Deal with it.”

    The politicians are just the “tweedledee” vs “tweedledum” mask worn by oligarchy – as in “Vote for tweedledee!” “No, vote for tweedledum!” “No, vote for tweedledee!” – repeat ad nauseam every four years.

  20. The Trumpster was never taken out of action by the virus that has been ravaging Big-Mac consumers his age all year.
    Uh, how come?
    ​ ​Update (1515ET): Dr. Conley has confirmed that although President Trump isn’t out of the woods yet, he has recovered enough to warrant his safe return back to the West Wing, as the president announced via tweet roughly 30 minutes ago.
    ​ ​Doctors said that Trump has maintained a full work schedule at Walter Reed. He will receive his fourth dose of remdesivir Monday evening, before taking the fifth and final dose on Tu​e​sday.
    ​ ​When pressed by a reporter about the safety risks to the Secret Service agents during Trump’s ride outside Walter Reed Sunday evening, Dr. Conley said that the agents wore PPE, as they have in recent days, and that the trip took place over a “very short period of time”.
    ​ ​Circling back to Trump’s mental acuity, reporters asked whether there had been any fogginess as a result of the medication, or the virus, Dr. Conley assured reporters that “he’s back” and that Trump has been a “great” patient.
    ​ ​Looking ahead, Dr. Conley said advanced diagnostic techniques will be used to detect when the last traces of ‘live’ virus have left the president. Dr. Conley said that people are most at risk of shedding the live virus during the first 5 days of infection, but usually by ten days the last traces have left.
    https://www.zerohedge.com/political/trump-tweets-he-leaving-walter-reed-hospital-monday-evening

    ​Trump got treated with antiviral medicines shortly after he was diagnosed with SARS-CoV-2, based upon a screening test.
    (A super-spreader cluster was identified at the White House, with 29 people now positive, from that event. The unmasking in the Rose Garden for Amy Coney Barrett’s nomination is blamed, but the people who got sick were all inside without masks for the reception afterward. I think that’s where the viral cloud got ’em.)​
    We have all been told that the only advantage to early and frequent testing is early isolation to reduce spread. All the drugs the Chinese used, and the rest of the world uses, have not been shown to save lives in America, where nobody is allowed to have them until they are almost dying.
    These antiviral drugs only worked in cell cultures, China which is to blame, and fakes results, and poor countries like India.
    Just stay at home until you need a ventilator. Do NOT use drugs from India and Bangladesh! Are you CRAZY?!

    Trump announced in May that he was taking hydroxychloroquine/zinc prophylaxis, but no mention is made of it now. None.
    Was it stopped sometime in the summer? Anyway, nobody says he was taking it last week and he’s not taking it now.
    Hydroxychloroquine/Zn does seem to work as prophylaxis in studies.

    There is a progression in the attack of SARS-CoV-2 upon the human body. It’s moderately well understood now, but understandings are broadly misrepresented to the public by the national medical bureaucracy. Many treating physicians have been mocked and belittled in the press for saying that there are treatments to reduce morbidity and mortality from COVID.
    Rheumatic fever, from untreated Strep Throat used to be a major cause of death and morbidity in the US. That stopped when strep throat started to be treated promptly with penicillin. Now it’s unheard of.

    In HIV, we discovered that all the “AIDS-defining-illnesses” like pneumocystis pneumonia, and Kaposis’s Sarcoma would just never happen if viral infection was detected early and antivirals were started before the virus had caused widespread injury. Even Tony Fauci knows that.

    Now, with the way Donald Trump is being treated, with antivirals reserved for the hopelessly ill, and getting a rapid recovery from early symptoms, when we know he’s exactly the target this virus likes to find, maybe we can get a national reprieve and Make-America-Average-Intelligent-Again.

    What if everybody took a little saliva test everyMonday and Thursday? What if people at higher risk or even higher anxiety level, got treated as soon as the test was confirmed, like President Trump did, and some of the other party-goers probably are?
    Hey, what if all the people who tested positive before elective surgery got treated that way for starters?
    I bet we could set up a study proposal to do that in about 3 months, and have it reviewed for possible approval by next spring!
    To have convincing scientific evidence you have to go through the process. It takes a lot of time. Just treating people, like in the old days, can’t give you convincing evidence that it is better to take ordinary drugs for a life threatening infection, before your life is already threatened.
    Some people might want to do that if they test positive, of course, but it’s not to be condoned, is it?

    What if it was somebody in your family? You know how stressful that can be, right? What if great-aunt, or grandma isolated at home and took some safe, purportedly antiviral combination like ivermectin, zinc and doxycycline, or hydroxychloroquine and zinc if her EKG was ok?
    Would you go for that?
    Would it seem ok to you? If auntie-grandma just got a positive screening test after 3 visits to the ER , and couldn’t get the surgery she needed, would you think she should take some treatment, even before she got sick with fever, diarrhea, hurting all over, and gasping for air?
    How would you know the medicine really worked if she never got sick enough to be sure? Can’t have that, can you?

    Our family is treating Auntie-Grandma.
    Judge us if you must, but we are weak and subject to temptation. We fear the guilt which would come from inaction if she did get badly sick and suffered, and maybe died. She has started ivermectin, doxycycline, and will get the zinc in a couple of hours when the family-courier gets it to her.
    We’ll letcha know how it works out. Maybe she can get her surgery without too long of a wait.
    https://www.johndayblog.com/2020/10/covid-gets-demoted.html

  21. William T Conklin Avatar
    William T Conklin

    This is an immense amount of truth in a small space. Human beings were hunter gathers for over 200,000 years. About 10,000 years ago we invented agriculture. Then the psychopaths who were not tolerated in hunter-gather society, stole the land and enslaved the population to work the fields. They invented slavery, later on the invented Feudalism and later still, they invented Capitalism which is just Industrial feudalism. Marx came along and figured out the scam. Then the Russians and the Chinese invented State Capitalism in which the bureaucrats instead of the aristocrats run the show. that upset the aristocrats so they had a big cold war. Now we have overpopulated the earth, we have eaten the fish, we have dumped poison on the insects and cut down the forests. The psychopaths’ are fighting with each other for what is left and we are in the way. The past 10,000 years of copulation has produced plenty of psychopaths’. We are just extra bio-mass to them. The future won’t be pretty. The Nation that can build 800 military bases has vomited up a Narcicistic Apex Predator and a Neo-Liberal Retard to run their horror show. Now it is time for the next act.

    1. Very well said Sir. I feel exactly the same way.

      1. It is nice to meet a kindred spirit Avatar
        It is nice to meet a kindred spirit

        It is nice to meet a kindred spirit

        1. It is depressing to meet a kindred spirit. I was just hoping I was insane.

          1. It is nice to meet a kindred spirit Avatar
            It is nice to meet a kindred spirit

            Chuckle

    2. @William T Conklin

      A question, friend. You wrote:

      ” Now we have overpopulated the earth, we have eaten the fish, we have dumped poison on the insects and cut down the forests. The psychopaths’ are fighting with each other for what is left and we are in the way.”

      —-I suspect we’d agree that the psychopaths and sociopaths who control our politics and media and thus overwhelmingly the disposition of our resources and capital aren’t troubled in the least by scarcity. Scarcity is our problem—not theirs.

      Nor is there any meaningful upper bound on their wealth thanks to the current population. None of them are sacrificing their New York penthouses, their estates in Costa Rica or the Bahamas, or their vacation homes on Martha’s Vineyard because there are 7.6 billion people currently inhabiting the Earth as opposed to, say, 3 billion, or 1 billion.

      In any case, fwiw, political economist Mark Blyth avers that a mere 10% of the global work force could easily produce a megasurplus of everything all 7.6 billion of us could possibly need. Even back of the napkin calculations strongly support Blyth’s contention.

      In sum, all scarcity with the exceptions of the aftermaths of disaster or extreme geographical distance is contrived. The rich aren’t battling anyone for resources (that’s part of their sales pitch for wars), but it’s rather the case that contriving shortages keeps everyone else at each others throats, and keeps everyone else less able to recognize that the oligarchy is the problem.

    3. Joe Van Steenbergen Avatar
      Joe Van Steenbergen

      Concur; nicely put.

  22. the US has not beat a natnoion with no air force in my lifetime. and that goes back to WWII.
    see the nazis had a state of th art AF. and we whipped their cherry butts.
    then came N. Korea–theN is for no money. after we bombed every rice paddy and school yrd they had we tied. Then came vietnam. loss. Serbia, loss. Iraq, loss. Afghanistan, tie. Except for 911. so loss.
    Libya, idunno. are we there still? loss. Years of war and nothign to show for it.
    Stupid. but support o ur troops-yeah bring ’em home and give ’em a decent job.
    WE cudda had free edu. and free med. not done and probably never will be.
    C’mon! big boss man in da sky gimme one more senator. and we lose again via Pence.
    so we got to win this election big time and appoint 10 new supremes to make it 19.
    Then we outlaw religion. how about that one?

  23. 1984 is like a bible for the oppressed. It also seems to be an oppressors’ manual.

    One thing of note: the idealism and good faith of the oppressed are used against them. Smith was captured through the use of Goldsmith’s revolutionary document. It was used like a bit of cheese to bring the mouse out of the hole.

    That is the same kind of dynamic employed by the government/media conglomerate when hooking citizens into believing they are on the side of right when opposing whoever they are told to oppose.

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