Renaissance, Resistance & Revolution

In terms of social movements, the Left is dead, for the time being, at least in the formerly industrialized, formerly “leading”, “developed”, First World nations of the (North-) West. The reason it is dead, is because it has been seduced into supporting authoritarianism, and has thereby been co-opted by the fascist corporate oligarchy, ruled by the Western business and political elite. (See my essay, When Liberals & The Left Lose Their Minds.)

What’s left, then? The major centres of resistance to the global corporate-fascist coup, are now in the Global South, the Majority World, where 80% of the world’s people live.

Meanwhile, the North-West corner of the world, that is, North America, Britain and Europe, is rapidly becoming a collapsing Third World, communist-fascist police state, and a deeply Orwellian corporatist technocracy – one gulag under Davos.

Awakening and resistance are growing globally, however, and with exponential speed – including in the North-West region of the world. But it is now the fact that the global awakening and resistance are strongest in Latin America and the Global South.

That being said, I think the strongest and grestest hopes for real, positive social change, are now coming from a loose coalition or constellation of forces, above all, from Indigenous movements, the global peasants movement, and a myriad of generally complimentary and synergistic popular social movements: including the ecovillage movement, the voluntary simplicity, nomad, permaculture, organic and homesteading movements, the anti-authoritarian right, which not only exists, of course, despite the messaging of the technocratic faux-left propaganda blitz, but is growing fast – and the anti-authoritarian left, which still exists and is also rapidly growing; along with the anti-authoritarian and decentralist currents within the environmental movement, which 40 years ago were predominant, but which are still alive now, and are resurging fast; and along with the natural health movement, and the many threads of the global freedom movement.

All of this should be seen as signs of hope. Moreover, it should be viewed within the wider context, which includes the major tectonic historical changes which are now underway: including a global paradigm shift, the emergence and rebirth of a multipolar world, and the decline and fall of the corporate-state oligarchy and empire of the North-West, formerly and foolishly referred to as “Western civilization”, “the Western world”, or “the West”.

As the global tectonic shift accelerates, in all of these ways, the rebirth of the world will begin to emerge, and become more and more visible, and in time, undeniable.

In historical terms, the world is changing and shifting now in extremely rapid ways. Some trends are ominous in the extreme. Others are deeply hopeful, liberatory and enlightening. In the short term, which side predominates in our personal lives, depends largely on how we choose to live, and even more so, on where we place ourselves, with some regions becoming increasingly dystopian, while other places experience freedom, a renaissance, and a rebirth.

In the longer view, however, we can say with certainty that no empire lasts forever. All empires fall. And the Western corporate oligarchy, which has now mutated into the new billionaire-ruled communist-fascist empire, is collapsing now, slowly, but with accelerating speed. In its death throes, it is a wounded, montrous predatory beast, extremely dangerous. But it is dying, nonetheless. And the plutocrats know it. That’s why the billionaires are resorting to the desperate measures of fascist totalitarianism, while building bunkers as fast as they can.

(See my essays and books: The Failure Of Propaganda, Sinking All Ships, Importing From China, The Worst Of Both Worlds, The Global Tectonic Shift, The Collapse Of The West, Slavery Or Rebirth, Enlightened Democracy, and The People vs The Elite.)

A new day is dawning for humanity. A new world is indeed being born. But like all births, there is pain. Keep a long term perspective – and never surrender. There is, as Thoreau said, more day yet to dawn.

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The hope doesn’t come from corporate-communist China, by the way, as many people on the Left naively have come to believe. That is simply another example of large currents of the Left temporarily losing their minds – in the same way that much of the Left supported the Soviet Union, from 1917 into the 1950s, until the New Left of the 1960s reverted to the Left’s original heritage and roots, which are fiercely libertarian; and in the same way the neo-Maoist “Left” now, today, unwittingly supports the totalitarian corporate-fascist coup, that is presently underway. Idiocy by any other name would smell as foul – and still does.

China is a totalitarian police state. End of story. It may help defeat and dethrone the globally dominant, but rapidly collapsing Western technocracy, or corporate-fascist empire, but it is certainly not the hope for the world.

Supporting China is no different from supporting the neo-Maoist wokesters – or supporting Stalin. Totalitarianism is demonic egomania, and tyranny, utterly unacceptable and intolerable under any circumstances – just as the new corporate-fascism of the Western oligarchy is utterly intolerable.

Hope lies, as always, with the grassroots, with the people. It is we who will save and liberate ourselves, together – and no one else.

The world is changing. And it is the people who have the greater power, as always – and it is leadership from below, from millions of points of light, which is where our true hope lies: now, more than ever before.

JTR,
January 17, 2024,
Villa Samadhi,
Uruguay

The Global Fascist Coup: Time To Face Reality

We need to stop making the irrational and unfounded, anti-empirical assumption that the corporate and financial elite are stupid – they are demonstrably sociopathic, but they are not stupid, as a class – and it would be stupid of them to not cooperate and coordinate, orchestrate, plan and carry out broad agendas based on their shared, common class interests, despite the obvious fact that they do compete with each other, as well. Of course they have broadly shared class interests, and of course it woulf be stupid of them to refuse to cooperate and coordinate broad agendas based on those shared interests. Therefore it is stupid of us to assume they do not act, in powerful ways, with coordinated, planned agendas, now globally, to further their shared interests. How is this not patently obvious and a matter of simple common sense?

There are only a few hundred power elites dominating most of the world, directing the biggest 1,000 corporations, the IMF, World Bank, WEF, WHO, G7, BIS, ECB, Fed, Big Ag, Big Tech, Big Pharma, Big Oil, the military-industrial-surveillance complex, the NGO-industrial complex, the major media, Blackrock and the big banks, and all major systems and institutions globally, as Peter Phillips showed in his recent book, Giants: The Global Power Elite. A terror and phobia of conducting such sociological, classed-based, systems or institutional analysis, is what has blinded the mainstream, academia, and particularly the left, for a long time now. Enough of that. Yes, the plutocrats have a plan, and no, it is not good for the people and the Earth. In fact, it is genocidal, ecocidal, war-mongering, imperialist, neo-colonialist, and fascist. To avoid all discussion or even thought of that obvious and by now undeniable fact, is simply foolish, and a matter either of a confirmed Stockholm syndrome, or sheer denial. It’s not merely an elephant in the middle of the room, which the public, the academics and above all the left refuse to acknowledge. It’s a mutated giant vampire squid in the middle of the room, so to speak, staring us in the face, though always camoflauged – and it is feeding off humanity and the Earth, and devouring both, along with our freedom, our human rights, our democracy, our future, our world, and with transhumanism, our very humanity itself. It’s time to deal with reality. Stop skirting the central issue of our time. A corporate-fascist coup is underway, and if we don’t admit it, then defeat it, our future will be dystopian and bleak, neo-feudal and horrific, followed by civilizational collapse, and quite possibly, the slow, agonizing death of the human species.

Time to face reality, head on. We can defeat this latest of empires, but only if we choose to deal with reality, by looking it straight in the face.

– J. Todd Ring,
Author of Enlightened Democracy, The People vs The Elite, The Collapse of the West, and Slavery Or Rebirth

Villa Samadhi,

Uruguay,

December 24, 2023

(Btw, Christmases will be merrier when we rip the vampire squid off our face.)

Greenwash, Lithium & Eco-Fascism

Proved:

Greenwash Is Ecoterrorism, Eco-Fascism, and High-Tech, Neo-Feudal, “Green” Imperialism.

Indigenous cultures in the “lithium triangle” of Chile, Argentina and Bolivia are being robbed, subjugated, poisoned and plundered, to make Teslas and cell phones. Corporate-state violence is the continuing norm, in response. Welcome to “Green” Imperialism. This is the primary camouflage, among various other psyops and modes of propaganda and psychological warfare, of the Davos/WEF corporate-state empire’s, Great Reset and Green New Deal. It is eco-fascism – and it is as ecodical, as it is genocidal, imperialist, techno-feudal and fascistic.

Cell phones, tablets, laptops and electric cars are all based in unsustainable, ecodical, extractive, environmental imperialism. No more greenwash.

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Note that I have personally been deeply involved in the environmental movement for four decades, having fund raised and canvassed for Greenpeace and the Western Canada Wilderness Committee, helping to build the Green Party of Canada when it was new to the country, and having written the draft constitution for the Green Party of Peterborough, when it was just being born, in my university town.

My roots are deeply libertarian left, and solidly, deeply green, as well as anti-war, anti-racist, pro-diversity and equality, anti-colonialist and anti-imperialist. I am no right-winger on a rant of corporatist-globalist neoliberal apologetics, that is certain, and undeniably clear.

Nor am I naive, nor inclined to throw the baby out with the bathwater, and smugly and foolishly pronounce all environmentalists as eco-fascists – which is a dangerous and flatly untrue obfuscation, confusion, illusion, and lie, which is being paraded commonly as informed opinion. It is not. It is idiocy and ignorance on the part of many; and sheer propaganda and lies on the part of the globalist corporate-state power elite, and their willing tools and intellectual prostitutes – which includes all of the corporate/state media, the presstitutes, virtually the entire political class of the Global North, and much of the Global South, most of academia, and a great number of “scientists”, “thought leaders”, religious leaders, and pop culture celebrity gurus.

Beware the herd instinct. Question everything – especially authority, your own club, clique, sect, tribe, clan or social circle, and everything you thought you knew for certain.

Question everything. Think for yourself.

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The great majority of Earth’s people now reject fascism, communism and dictatorship, authoritarianism and totalitarianism, imperialism, racism and colonialism, and they lean strongly towards a left libertarian nexus of values, including freedom, decentralization, diversity, equality, ecology and peace. These are also the values and sympathies of the global green movement, at the grassroots. The fact that the big NGOs have now been co-opted and corrupted by their ties with the corporate elite, does not change that fact.

Question everything. The Green Left is back. And it is decidedly libertarian, and on the side of freedom, indigenous peoples, and the people of the world, everywhere.

But having said that, what we need most, is not a renewed, anti-authoritarian Green Left – but a uniting of the people. If you believe that freedom is fundamental, that peace is vital, that fascism, communism, technocracy, neofeudalism, colonialism, imperialism, or any form of tyranny over human beings and life on Earth is an intolerable abomination, and that the Earth we live on and share must be protected and cared for, and not merely plundered, pillaged, poisoned and destroyed, then we are allies – whether you are on the political left or right, rich or poor, urban or rural, or where you come from, or how you look.

Stand now. And unite the people.

It’s time to heal the people and the Earth.

Let the Renaissance be born.

JTR,
November 6, 2023

https://www.globalresearch.ca/ravages-lithium-extraction-chile/5718609

Populism, Elitism & Propaganda: The Continuing Failure of Liberals, Progressives & the Left

Thomas Frank gives a good definition of populism in the US tradition: populism is a working class movement that seeks to reform capitalism. It is not anarchist or socialist, but simply seeks a greater fulfilment of the democratic dream, and a greater empowerment of the working class, or the 99% who are not among the ruling elite.

Not only is populism not to be equated with racism, xenophobia, demagoguery and authoritarianism, movements which often falsely present themselves as being populist to win public support; but in fact, populism gave birth to the labour movement, or at least tripled its ranks in the 1930s, resulting in the critical mass needed for FDRs New Deal, which ended the Great Depression and reformed Wall Street, and gave rise to what is today referred to in the US and its nearest vassal states as progressivism.

Did that come across clearly? It needs to. Populism gave birth to what is now called progressive politics. Let that sink in.

Populism therefore, far from being the great evil of the world, along with FDR, the New Deal and the broader labour movement, created the middle class. It forced a more just compromise between the ruling business elite and the other 99%. It also gave renewed life to democracy and countered the rising power of elites. For all these reasons, the elite have despised populism, for the same reason that they despise nationalism and they despise democracy: because it limits their oligarchic power. And yet, air head liberals, progressives and intellectuals on the left have been duped into using the term populist as a synonym for the dangerous violent mob – precisely the Orwellian propaganda misusage of the term invented by the same rabidly anti-democratic elite. Dumb move!

As I have been saying: accepting the elitist derogatory and vilifying use of the term populism as a synonym for all that is evil in the world is playing into the hands of the plutocrats. Yet, leading figures, groups and media sources among progressives, liberals and the left fell for the psyops bait en mass. Not surprising, given their mass failures on other major subjects, such as Obamamania, Russiagate, the Ukraine coup, Syria and the OPCW, the War On Terror, covid-1984, which is the new pretext for the continuing class war and the war on democracy…and on and on.

We need to do better. The people and the planet are being devoured by the global corporate fascist empire, and the propaganda must be seen through, not aided and abetted.

Got it, #CCPA? #theLeap, #TYT, #DemocracyNow….#IdleNoMore, #CounterPunch, #CanadianDimension, #CouncilofCanadians, #BlueDot……?

What’s wrong with the left? It’s the faux left, is the problem, more often than not. It is liberal centrist and pseudo-democratic elitist. And remember, the political spectrum has been driven far to one extreme over the past 50 years of the slow motion corporate coup. What is called the centre is now the far right: cosmopolitan, yes, but authoritarian, and fascist.

The true left seeks to empower the 99%. The faux left presents that facade, but like the faux populists on the right, offers simply a different flavour of elite rule. Wall Street Democrats, and the Liberal party of Canada since 1979, represent a smiley faced, deeply Orwellian, globalist neoliberal corporate fascism. Make no mistake. The Republicans and Conservatives are even further to the extreme right.

But even where and when the left is not faux left, the failure is in a lack of critical thinking. Even the better thinkers, activists, journalists, media sites and groups on the left, tend too often to be uncritical of elite-driven propaganda narratives. This must change, or we are dead in the water.

To clarify further, and distill it down as concisely and clearly as possible, we can say this. Populism is any popular movement which genuinely seeks to empower the great majority, or the 99%, who are not among the ruling elite, and which seeks a more participatory and robust form of democracy, as opposed to elite rule, authoritarianism or oligarchy.

If you are opposed to participatory democracy, then you are opposed to populism, and you are an elitist, if not an authoritarian – which is usually the case with elitists, almost by definition.

Again, the important point is what this Orwellian doublespeak, propaganda and confusion of terms reveals. It reveals: a) a long-standing and highly conscious class war waged by the elite against the 99% (see Noam Chomsky, Necessary Illusions, and Naomi Klein, The Shock Doctrine); and more disturbingly, b) it reveals a shocking lack of critical thought among liberals, progressives and the left. We are far too credulous. But oh, are we so very self-righteous in our foolish and dim-witted credulity.

Again, this must change, or we are doomed.

Think for yourself. Question everything.

JTR,

September 22, 2020

By the way, I am not on the right, nor a Trump supporter, as trolls and fools might accuse or assume. I am democratic libertarian socialist, or libertarian progressive, if that is more understandable. (And no, none of those terms are in conflict, as people with some understanding of history, political philosophy, or political economy, understand very well.)

From Good Reads:

The People, No – by Thomas Frank

“Rarely does a work of history contain startling implications for the present, but in The People, No Thomas Frank pulls off that explosive effect by showing us that everything we think we know about populism is wrong. Today “populism” is seen as a frightening thing, a term pundits use to describe the racist philosophy of Donald Trump and European extremists. But this is a mistake. 

The real story of populism is an account of enlightenment and liberation; it is the story of American democracy itself, of its ever-widening promise of a decent life for all. Taking us from the tumultuous 1890s, when the radical left-wing Populist Party—the biggest mass movement in American history—fought Gilded Age plutocrats to the reformers’ great triumphs under Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman, Frank reminds us how much we owe to the populist ethos. Frank also shows that elitist groups have reliably detested populism, lashing out at working-class concerns. The anti-populist vituperations by the Washington centrists of today are only the latest expression.

Frank pummels the elites, revisits the movement’s provocative politics, and declares true populism to be the language of promise and optimism. The People, No is a ringing affirmation of a movement that, Frank shows us, is not the problem of our times, but the solution for what ails us.”

Covid & the Left: An open letter

It matters not what group it was this letter was addressed to. What matters is the content. Please read:

(Note that WordPress randomly gets buggy on me and will not let me make paragraph spacing properly: hence the strange use of stars. * And WordPress strangely made my signature invisible as well. Sorry I am all thumbs with tech or I would fix it, somehow.)

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With much respect, and solidarity, I urge you to check your facts.

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You wrote, “On Friday, May 1, an ongoing General Strike campaign begins. This campaign could become the most powerful movement in the United States and reset the national agenda. It comes when the failures of the US political system have been magnified by the COVID-19 pandemic, which triggered an economic collapse in a presidential election year.”

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This is the beginning of a bold plan, which could be transformative – yet it is also based in delusion, due to lack of fact checking, and the succumbing to an elite-crafted propaganda narrative.

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I am not going to argue my case again here. I have argued it many times already. Please see the articles on my blog: J. Todd Ring on WordPress. If that is not sufficient, please check the facts at Trends Journal.

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If you base a major strategy, a key strategy, on a radically misinformed view, you will likely be discredited later for being revealed to have been terribly and dangerously  naive.

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Worse yet, by supporting the standard narrative that covid-19 CAUSED an economic collapse and an  authoritarian lockdown, which is an obviously irrational and foolish view, since a virus cannot quarantine anyone, much less entire nations, then you are lending support to what is in truth a simple fascist power grab, a fascist coup, by a bipartisan neoliberal and neoconservative global power elite.

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How this is not clear to the left is almost inconceivable to me. You need to rethink and do some basic fact-checking, immediately.

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Under 200,000 people have died from covid-19, versus 300,000 to 700,000 ANNUAL deaths from the common flu. How is it that these numbers justify extreme authoritarian measures? Can you not see the obvious big lie in this? The covid-19 virus is not even an epidemic if the annual flu is not considered an epidemic with 2-3 times higher yearly death toll. Are these things not obvious?

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Read my blog, see Trends Journal, and please, think again.

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YOU ARE PLAYING INTO THE HANDS OF  FASCIST OLIGARCHS, BY UNQUESTIONINGLY ACCEPTING AND SUPPORTING THEIR NARRATIVE!

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Peace,

J. Todd Ring

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See:

The Herd Mentality – Trends Journal

Piers Robinson

GreenMedInfo

My essays, including: Any Enemy Will Do

Crisis Point: Leadership Needed From…Anywhere, Now

 

Imagine if real leadership from the grassroots comes now from the moderate, democratic/republican right, and not the centre or the left. Considering that the centre and left, almost without exception, have their heads up their asses, this mortifying development is entirely possible.

Let us hope that basic sanity, in terms of resisting authoritarianism, comes from a broad-spectrum coalition, however; because that is what we will need to defeat the oligarchs in their current bipartisan neoliberal/neoconservative joint effort at a slow motion fascist coup. 

For the record, I supported Ron Paul in 2008 & 2012, because he was the only anti-authoritarian (and anti-imperialist) in those corporate coronations erroneously called elections. I supported Sanders in 2016 and 2020 because he was the only conceivably winnable candidate who is a genuine constitutional (small d and r) democrat or republican, and was not on the oligarch’s payroll or lackey squad. Left and right mean nothing if we do not have basic rights and freedoms. That is something the high-handed and supremely pretentious, blinkered centre and left need to figure out, and now.

The people had better wake up fast. The global showdown between democracy and oligarchy has now reached endgame.

The Brave New World is here. But the vast majority are asleep; and worse, they are sleep-walking while cheering on their slavers, and begging for their shackles and chains.

Ron Paul, Bernie Sanders, the grassroots right or left – it doesn’t matter now: we need leadership to resist corporate fascism, and it matters not where it comes from.

Unite the people. Wake the people. Defend democracy and freedom, before we lose them. And we are losing them now.

JTR,

April 25, 2020

The Failure of the “Left” – Continued

 

In addition to the giant blunders that I’ve already written about, and the clear absence of leadership on the left, there is the even more glaring indictment, which is this:

The US Democratic party, including all major self-proclaimed “progressives”, just voted unanimously, along with the Republicans, to give a $4.2 trillion bailout to the Wall Street corporate elite (after they crashed theeconomy by invoking the lockdown which caused the economic meltdown).

But, the fake left got the people a one-time $1,200 check per person – which won’t do anything – for which they are praising themselves like they are true messiahs.

That was, as it has been said, the cheese that baited the trap. But when the mousetrap snaps shut, as Jimmy Dore said, millions of heads will be crushed.

Millions of families are going to lose their homes – even more than the 5.1 million families who lost their homes in the last crash, in 2007-2009, when the faux left under Obama chose to bail out Wall Street instead of the 99% – which the faux left has just now done again.

Will someone please explain to the left, as well as the centre and right, that trickle-down economics don’t work? If you give billions or trillions to the business elite, it just makes the richest 0.1% richer – it doesn’t help the poor or the middle class, and it doesn’t stimulate the economy.

$20 trillion was transfered from Mainstreet to Wall Street between 2008 and 2010. It made the billionaires and the corporate giants even more astronomically wealthy and powerful. It caused stocks and assets to become super-inflated in an even bigger bubble (through stock buy-backs, which in an earlier era would have been called fraud). It post-poned the structurally inevitable major market correction, aka, crash. But it failed to revive the economy, which has remained in global recession since 2007. The richest got richer, while the 99% continued to be devoured.

Giving $20 trillion in debt relief to the poor, the middle class, and to small and medium business, instead of the Wall Street elite, would both help the people greatly, and also massively stimulate the economy – because they will spend the money, as they have to, to survive; whereas the elite just line their pockets further if you give it to them.

A Green New Deal to build renewable energy and transportation infrastructure would do the same – help the 99% greatly while powerfully boosting the economy – while creating millions of jobs.

For the $4.2 trillion that was just handed to Wall Street, both a job-creating, true economic stimulus of a Green New Deal, as well as debt relief for the struggling majority, could have neen done. Instead, the people have been looted, lied to, and swindled again.

Repeating the same failed multi-trillion dollar wealth transfer from the 99% to the ruling 1% in 2020 is not going to help the people or the economy this time, any more than it did the last time. In factm it is a giant swindle. It is economic warfare: class war. And “the left” legitimized it, and helped make it happen.

Disgraceful.

In the biggest single transfer of wealth from the 99.9% to the top 0.01% in history, “the left” was unanimously on board, just like the centre and the right. Clearly “the left” is, at present, devoid of leadership. Clearly, in fact, it is the faux left. There is no courage, vision, or leadership there.

Is the left leadership corrupt, cowardly, or simply deer caught in the headlights, momentarily shellshocked into a stupor of paralysis and brain fog? I don’t believe it is the first, in general. Let’s hope it is the last explanation, not the second. That would be the most promising.

Whatever the causes of the pervasive failure of the left, we need to correct it, and soon. Things are clearly in dire straights. Moreover, the people need to question everything, and everyone – including their “leaders”.

JTR,

April 9, 2020

Post-Script:

Immediately after writing this short essay, I see the announcement: Fed To Approve Another $2 Trillion In Stimulus. The business elite are tripping over themselves to give themselves ever greater wealth transfers from the people. They jusy can’t plunder the people fast enough, it seems.

Revolution is brewing, mark my words.

Why The Left Is Once Again Wrong

 

Also happening now, and further showing the continued failure of the left: the left is shouting in defence of payroll taxes – which kill jobs, as they are a tax on hiring and employment, as well as a regressive tax that hurts small and medium business the hardest.

The smart policy would be for the left to say to Trump, yes, we agree payroll taxes should be cut, and in fact eliminated – but we need to make any tax cuts revenue neutral at least, so as to not increase the deficit and debt without good reason.

(Sometimes that is ok, to run or to increase a running deficit, even wise, temporarily, as the Keynsian New Deal showed; but you don’t want to further run up deficits and debt if you can easily avoid it. The central point is, there are two sides to a budget, not one: revenue (taxes) and spending. You must naturally address both, or you are quite clearly, simply insane: either delusional, that is, or else deceitful.)

That means, cutting payroll taxes must be linked with a carbon pollution tax – with temporary transitional excemptions for small and medium business, and poor and middle class households, but serious pollution taxes for the big corporations and the rich.

And of course, if you are going to cut taxes again – this time, sensibly, for a change – you must reflect on whether forty years of neoliberal and neoconservative tax cuts for big business and the rich have helped the economy, and the people broadly, or not. Clearly they have harmed both.

What the left needs to say, therefore, is, Look, we know that more than four decades of neoliberal and neoconservative policies, including massive tax cuts, bailouts and subsidies for big corporations and the richest 1%, have balooned the debt load, and gutted the economy as well as the middle class.

We will give you your payroll tax cut, because that helps small and medium enterprises and will create jobs. But we demand an end to the feeding trough of multi-trillion dollar give-aways to big business, in the form of bailouts, subsidies and tax breaks.

Again, we are aiming for a balanced budget here, remember, as well as job creation.

Imagine the right being accused of budgetary indescretions, which of course they are notorious for, with corporate tax cuts and subsidies and military/police state spending far outweighing any savings from slashing much-needed programs that help and protect the environment, the poor and the middle class.

Imagine the left being the ones fighting for budgetary sensibility, and showing the right to have been full of deceit on that count for decades.

Now that would be an intelligent policy for the left. But that’s not what we see. We see unthinking knee-jerk reactions, and a patchwork of ideas with no systematic or even truly strategic approach. This must change, and now.

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In addition to the giant blunders that I’ve already written about, and the clear absence of leadership on the left, there is the even more glaring indictment, which is this: the Democratic party, including all major self-proclaimed “progressives”, just voted unanimously, along with the Republicans, to give a $4.2 trillion bailout to the Wall Street corporate elite (after they crashed theeconomy by invoking the lockdown which caused the economic meltdown).

But, the fake left got the people a one-time $1,200 check per person – which won’t do anything – for which they are praising themselves like they are true messiahs.

That was, as it has been said, the cheese that baited the trap. But when the mousetrap snaps shut, as Jimmy Dore said, millions of heads will be crushed.

Millions of families are going to lose their homes – even more than the 5.1 million families who lost their homes in the last crash, in 2007-2009, when the faux left under Obama chose to bail out Wall Street instead of the 99% – which the faux left has just now done again.

In the biggest single transfer of wealth from the 99.9% to the top 0.01% in history, “the left” was unanimously on board, just like the centre and the right. Clearly “the left” is, at present, devoid of leadership. Clearly, in fact, it is the faux left. There is no courage, vision, or leadership there.

Is the left leadership corrupt, cowardly, or simply deer caught in the headlights, momentarily shellshocked into a stupor of paralysis and brain fog? I don’t believe it is the first, in general. Let’s hope it is the last explanation, not the second. That would be most promising.

Whatever the causes of the pervasive failure of the left, we need to correct it, and soon. Things are clearly in dire straights. Moreover, the people need to question everything, and everyone – including their “leaders”.

JTR,
April 5, 2020

Hurray For the Daft! (That’s Us)

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(My apologies for the strange formatting again – WordPress gets glitchy on me and refuses paragraph spacing, forcing me to use awkward-looking stars. Bear with me.)

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The left is loudly proclaiming, amidst the coronavirus (largely manufactured disaster capitalism) disaster: bail-outs for the people not the corporate elite, health care for all – and a green new deal!

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Yes, that is entirely sensible. But what about civil liberties for all, basic constitutional law, and functioning democracy, all of which requires a functioning resistance to the clear and present, unfolding imposition of neoliberal fascism, as a solution for a vastly exaggerated health crisis – fascist measures which are not likely to be reversed after the crisis has passed.

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Without those three things – civil liberties for all, basic constitutional law, and functioning democracy – all your wishes and demands – for universal health care, aid to the people and not just big business and the rich, and a green energy infrastructure and jobs program – are just pipe dreams.

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With real democracy these things and more are all possible. Without standing up for these three essentials, they are nothing but that – pipe dreams.

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But to ask the left (or “progressives”) for presence of mind is something that is too much to ask, it seems. They can quote Marx, but they really need to be quoting Huxley, Orwell, or Thomas Jefferson right now – and they seem to realize it not, but are oblivious.

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It is well-documented that US and other Western elites have armed, trained, funded, used, and colluded with Islamic terrorists for murderous geopolitical and imperial objectives for decades. There is no question that Western elites have for decades, and repeatedly, lied to the people, falsified evidence, colluded with terrorists, and engaged in mass murder for oil and other resources, while imposing a kind of global economic apartheid and predatory economic imperialism upon the world, resulting, among other things, in the on-going deaths of 20,000 children per day due to hunger, in a world that produces enough food for all. Yet the people broadly, and the left in particular, are quite cheerfully willing to believe that the same Western elite are telling the truth now, while they use the present coronavirus crisis to usher in literally fascist measures, and to believe that they have only a deep and abiding concern for human health as their motivation. Clearly the people, including the left, have lost all capacity for rational thought, and have temporarily lost their minds.

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We need a little more Sun Tzu, and a little less Homer Simpson here, people. Think! Wake up! Question!

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If this doesn’t soon change, we are doomed to slavery under a corporate-run, technocratic, neo-feudal Orwellian order which I and others have warned about for decades – and it will not be pretty, I assure you, but will make COVID-19(84) look like a child’s picnic.

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Unless, of course, this is just the warm-up, the prelude to the final putsch: in which case, the people are being conditioned to accept “emergency” fascist measures, so that whenever the elite feel the need, they can flick the switch again – and this time, people disappear for good, and en mass (think Jakarta, or labour camps) – dissidents, activists, anybody who gets in the way or opposes the elite’s rule in any way. And nobody questions enough to stop it, until it is too late. If that is what we are experiencing, it is perhaps even more dangerous.

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In any event, complacently and meekly, slavishly, obediently, foolishly allowing our civil liberties to be stripped away, while sweeping, literally fascist powers are granted to, or usurped by, elites both West and East, is terrifyingly dangerous in the extreme.

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We should not be so foolish as to be complacent about this. How much can that be emphasized? Not possibly enough.

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JTR,

April 3, 2020

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Post-Script:

Naomi Klein wrote the book that best describes what we have been experiencing since 9/11, with the “war on terror”, the “regime change” wars that resulted, and the war on democracy which it represented, and the rise of disaster capitalism – The Shock Doctrine: the book that still, to my mind, best describes what is happening right now. We need to make sense of this, in the most obvious sort of way. How is this not obvious that it is another power grab? A real event, hyped to the maximum degree possible, is being exploited by power hungry elites in the West, as in the East. This is not complicated to understand.

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PSII: Karl Marx, as well as being brilliant (as a sociologist, though a daft philosopher and a terrible political theorist), was fiery as well. He managed to piss off virtually the entire left of Europe. But a fiery spirit goes with the left, generally speaking. Look at Tommy Douglas, or Martin Luther King Jr. These guys were not pussy cats. Fiery is what we need. So, sorry if I ruffle feathers at times. It is not my intention, but it is sometimes unavoidable. Truth comes first. Always.

Trump Says Up, You Say Down: Psyops 101

The deep state steers Trump. Smart move would be to nudge him to dismiss the coronavirus as over-hyped. Then the lemmings will trip over themselves to avoid guilt by association. But even idiots can be right sometimes, remember. Even a broken watch tells the right time twice a day. But the centre and left reacted like Pavlov’s dogs. Now they are loathe to admit they made a mistake, so they refuse to look at facts, and dig in. The majority are easily manipulated by elites playing power games…. It’s terrifying how easily the majority can be manipulated. That is the real danger.

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Trump is a tool of the Deep State. He thinks he’s a brave rebel, at war with the Deep State. Or so he thought until the generals schooled him. Now he obeys orders.

Trump may be unpredictable and a loose cannon, but by and large, the Deep State has him firmly under control. They steer him, letting him believe he has far more power and autonomy than has actually has. He is another pawn – a pawn they wish to remove from the board, but a pawn so long as he is in play, nonetheless.

That considered, and that summary of Trump and the Deep State is pretty much unquestionable, it is interesting to note how an intelligent psyops campaign might be played out, if the ruling neoliberal elite wanted to:

a) get rid of Trump; and more importantly,

b) distract the people from the major crises –  the economy, poverty, inequality, injustice, climate change, pipeline protests, an explosion of protests world-wide, simultaneous with growing oligarchic and fascist powers, class warfare, imperial wars abroad, and the rapidly growing crisis of legitimacy of the ruling elite and the entire global corporate oligarchy – distract the people by a greatly exaggerated public health crisis (see my earlier articles, especially, Coronavirus: Facts & Fallout); and

c) use the public health crisis as a way to further intensify class warfare, crash the economy for this purpose, and loot the people further, in the process hopefully removing Trump in the 2020 election, and bring about police state measures in response to the largely manufactured crisis.

Nudging Trump to initially dismiss the virus as greatly overblown – which it is (see WSJ article, re-posted on my blog, written by Standford University professors, saying exactly this); and now to signal he wants an end to “social distancing” soon; would have the predictable response from the centre and left: they would, and did, trip over themselves stampeding to avoid any association with Trump.

Trumps says Up, so we say Down. Trump says black, so we say white. Trump is crazy, scary, stupid, and bad (all true) so we must disagree with everything he says (a foolish and childish reaction).

Everyone in the centre and on the left wants to avoid guilt by association with Trump. It is an unconscious but powerful reaction. Trump says X; Trump must be wrong, always; so we say Y.

But remember, even idiots are right sometimes. And even a broken clock tells the right time twice a day.

Look at the evidence. Avoid knee-jerk reactions. We are being manipulated, and played.

Investigate. And think for yourself.

The centre and left are acting like Pavolv’s dogs. They are cheerleading for a narrative that is demonstrably false, proven false by the facts; and worse, they are cheerleading for the removal of our rights and freedoms, and the imposition of a police state.

“The men the American people admire most extravagantly are the most daring liars; the men they detest most violently are those who try to tell them the truth.” – H. L. Mencken

“We Americans are the ultimate innocents. We are forever desperate to believe that this time the government is telling us the truth.” – Sydney Schanberg

“If you think any American official is going to tell you the truth, then you’re stupid.” – Arthur Sylvester, assistant secretary of defense for public affairs, to American journalists, 1965

“This is a business-run huckster society, whose cardinal virtue is deceit.” – Noam Chomsky

“During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act.” – George Orwell

Can you spell, (self-) L-O-B-O-T-O-M-Y?

At present, to repeat, the centre and left are being misled and manipulated, en mass, into:

a) accepting a narrative which is patently false (remember Saddam’s WMDs?), and does not fit the facts (see the Italian government’s study on the true death toll from the coronavirus, and the WSJ article by two Stanford professors);

and, more terrifyingly, into:

b) screaming loudly in defense of a normalization of the very authoritarian measures they should be fighting against.

Now that is a psyops/propaganda/social engineering coup.

Let us pray it is short-lived, and the people recover their senses, and their sanity, and soon.

JTR,
March 27, 2020