BlackRock is a global financial giant with customers in 100 countries and its tentacles in major asset classes all over the world; and it now manages the spigots to trillions of bailout dollars from the Federal Reserve.
Continue reading Meet BlackRock, the New Great Vampire SquidCategory Archives: Corporatocracy / Fascism
Reclaiming the US
At what point does a beleaguered population living near or below the poverty line rise up in protest?
Continue reading Reclaiming the USMcKinseyGate: France’s Shadow Government & the Rise of the Corporate State
In France, consultancy firms have been paid billions of euros to advise governments on policies from the coronavirus vaccine, to climate change, and vaccine roll-out, as well as digital transformation, according to a new report released by the French Senate. While the financial sums are staggering, the real scandal is the level of influence on policy that these shadowy corporate actors wield deep inside the halls of government.
Continue reading McKinseyGate: France’s Shadow Government & the Rise of the Corporate StateWhy the Freedom Convoy is Provoking Unprecedented Hysteria
The fact that it’s ordinary people behind the Freedom Convoy, rather than professional activists, has caused alarm among the ruling class.
Continue reading Why the Freedom Convoy is Provoking Unprecedented HysteriaColossal Financial Pyramid: BlackRock and The WEF “Great Reset”
A virtually unregulated investment firm today exercises more political and financial influence than the Federal Reserve and most governments on this planet.
Continue reading Colossal Financial Pyramid: BlackRock and The WEF “Great Reset”Oligarchy, the Capitalists’ Trojan Horse
As the west continues to slide inexorably towards a dystopian economic and societal abyss, its people still fail to recognise the true enemy.
Continue reading Oligarchy, the Capitalists’ Trojan HorseKlaus’ Great Narrative: Locking the Plebs Into Plato’s Cave for the 21st Century
Unfortunately for the Davos Guardians, the reality of the New Great Narrative is a world devoid of those very principles that humanity requires to survive and thrive within our creative, reasonable universe.
Continue reading Klaus’ Great Narrative: Locking the Plebs Into Plato’s Cave for the 21st Century‘Ideological Fanaticism’: The Folly of Seeing Human Systems as Hardware
The ‘meme-politics of lockdown and vaccine mandates’ may be fading, but the inflation meme and the economic aftermath meme has only just begun.
Continue reading ‘Ideological Fanaticism’: The Folly of Seeing Human Systems as HardwareUN-Backed Banker Alliance Announces “Green” Plan to Transform the Global Financial System
The most powerful private financial interests in the world, under the cover of COP26, have developed a plan to transform the global financial system by fusing with institutions like the World Bank and using them to further erode national sovereignty in the developing world.
Continue reading UN-Backed Banker Alliance Announces “Green” Plan to Transform the Global Financial SystemGlobal Economic Chaos? BlackRock and Citi Get on Board the “Climate Train”
There are some things that bring joy to my soul. My pleasures are simple ones. Peanut butter on toast (the food of gods), witnessing Macron getting a slap, and this…

The awesome thing here is that what is taking place is that our competition on bidding for coal assets has disappeared in a cloud of woke smoke.
This will quickly become geopolitical, and the question is this: can BlackRock, Citi, Prudential, HSBC, and their other woke mates decide the fate of nations?
They are already affecting the fate of nations. Witness Canada and all of Western Europe.
I found a live shot of their respective energy policies:

But will they do the same to China? Will they do the same to Russia?
The answer to that will only be fully revealed in the due course of time, but we don’t really need any crystal balls here as we just watch actions, not words.
“China put 38.4 gigawatts (GW) of new coal-fired power capacity into operation in 2020, according to new international research, more than three times the amount built elsewhere around the world and potentially undermining its short-term climate goals.”
Nearly all of the 60 new coal plants planned across Eurasia, South America and Africa — 70 gigawatts of coal power in all — are financed almost exclusively by Chinese banks”

We see all of this on the ground, and while it is taking place, formerly reputable media outlets such as the FT, Reuters, and Bloomberg tell us that: “China’s belt and road initiative creates a problem for China with respect to their climate goals.”
Really?
There is no conflict or problem. Let me explain. Here is what is transpiring. They will keep paying lip service to the woke ideology while capturing the bulk of the energy market, and by the time we all wake up, they’ll control the world’s energy and logistics chains. And once they’ve done that, they’ll be able to control the reserve currency and once they’ve done that… well, they will be the dominant power. Game over. At this rate they’ll get there in a frighteningly rapid period of time. No more than a couple of decades.

Every week I find myself saying to myself “I just can’t believe this sh**t I am reading.” It is the same old story. The West see themselves as above the East and that the West (North America and Europe) can dictate to the rest of the world what they must do.
From the BlackRock article:
“BlackRock Inc. and other major financial institutions are working on plans to accelerate the closure of coal-fired power plants in Asia in a bid to phase out the use of the worst man-made contributors to climate change.
“The world cannot possibly hit the Paris climate targets unless we accelerate the retirement and replacement of existing coal-fired electricity,” Don Kanak, chairman of Prudential’s insurance growth markets division, said in a statement. “This is especially in Asia where existing coal fleets are big and young and will otherwise operate for decades.””
So shut down coal fired power stations, and pray tell, what are you going to replace them with? How will this affect their standards of living?
Let’s put some numbers behind this to understand probabilities. China has a massive industrial sector. So massive it currently consumes 4x more primary energy than its transport sector and more primary energy than all of the US and European industrial sectors COMBINED. So, it’s big.
Will the CCP willingly negatively impact this sector whereby it threatens China’s growing lead in the global economy and, hence increasing global political influence? I’ll let you be the decider.
In contrast to the US, China uses 10x more coal than natural gas. In 2020, China built over 3x as much new coal capacity as all other countries combined, equal to one large coal plant PER WEEK. In fact, in 2020 alone China’s fleet of coal fired power plants was expanded by a net 29.8 GW.
Think that’s a lot? In 2020 they commissioned 73.5 GW of new coal plant proposals, which is over 5x that of the rest of the entire world combined.
Editor’s Note: The 2020s will likely to be an increasingly volatile decade. More governments are putting their money printing on overdrive. Negative interests are becoming the rule instead of the exception to it.
One thing is for sure, there will be a great deal of change taking place in the years ahead.
That’s precisely why legendary speculator Doug Casey and his team released an urgent new report titled Doug Casey’s Top 7 Predictions.
Copyright © Chris MacIntosh, International Man, 2021
New Movement Launched by Physicians to Fight Medical Tyranny
When Americans see the data on COVID deaths of over 600,000, who or what should they blame? The truth is this: Better than blaming the virus they should blame hospitals and the vast majority of physicians. Why?
Continue reading New Movement Launched by Physicians to Fight Medical TyrannyAmerican Medical Association Instructs Doctors to Deceive
The Winter 2021 “AMA COVID-19 Guide: Background/ Messaging on Vaccines, Vaccine Clinical Trials & Combatting Vaccine Misinformation,” issued by the American Medical Association raises serious questions about the AMA’s adherence to transparency, honesty, ethics and the moral standards to which it will hold its members.
Continue reading American Medical Association Instructs Doctors to DeceiveAustralia’s Not A Free Country: No Bill of Rights, State Surveillance and Autocracy are Rife
The Australian government has been on the receiving end of more and more criticism for its COVID response lately, not just domestically but from overseas.
Continue reading Australia’s Not A Free Country: No Bill of Rights, State Surveillance and Autocracy are RifeAstraZeneca Boss Tops CEO Pay Chart in UK – Survey
Britain’s bluechip firms last year slashed chief executive pay as the pandemic struck but the head of Covid vaccine maker AstraZeneca still pocketed a chart-topping £15.45 million, a survey showed Thursday.
Continue reading AstraZeneca Boss Tops CEO Pay Chart in UK – SurveyAmerica’s Two-Party System is Doomed… What Comes Next?
The United States is facing a historical crisis from its own internal political authority crumbling, according to American political science professor Colin Cavell. In the following interview, Cavell takes the long historical view of how the two-party system has been used traditionally as a reactionary device to conceal and shore up the oligarchic power of U.S. capitalism.
Continue reading America’s Two-Party System is Doomed… What Comes Next?Denying Reality Leads To Tyranny and Societal Failure
The common thread that connects failed societies, from Weimar Germany to the Soviet Union, is an almost pathological insistence on denying reality. Weimar Germany denied that masses of printed money would destroy civilized society. The Soviet Union insisted that Soviet Man would emerge spontaneously from the ashes of capitalist society. Weimar Germany spawned Nazi Germany.
Continue reading Denying Reality Leads To Tyranny and Societal Failure2013 Rockefeller Paper Predicted Isolation, the Death of Physical Interaction & Global Health Police
At the 2013 Global Health Summit in Beijing, China, 112 key individuals from governments, the private sector, international organizations, and other groups, met to discuss how the next 100 years of global health may look. The summit released a white paper, titled: Dreaming the Future of Health for the Next 100 Years, which was funded by the Rockefeller Foundation.
Continue reading 2013 Rockefeller Paper Predicted Isolation, the Death of Physical Interaction & Global Health Police1 Year Into ‘15 Days to Flatten the Curve’, Why Are We Still Tolerating Authoritarian Gov’t Clampdowns
In the 12 months since states first started ordering citizens to stay at home under the pretext of Covid, we’ve come a long way. Particularly in our understanding of how illiberal our politicians can be and how supine we are.
Continue reading 1 Year Into ‘15 Days to Flatten the Curve’, Why Are We Still Tolerating Authoritarian Gov’t ClampdownsThe Growing Virus of Inequality Under Covid Will Fuel Popular Rebellions Across The World
As the gap between rich and poor rapidly worsens during the pandemic, you can detect a surge in support for revolutions and remedies. But instead of truly tackling the underlying problems, governments will react with repression.
Continue reading The Growing Virus of Inequality Under Covid Will Fuel Popular Rebellions Across The WorldGovernor Andrew Cuomo Imposes Vaccination Passports in New York
Some politicians can’t stop coming up with new ways of bossing people around and preventing the return of normal life, all in the name of countering coronavirus. A prime example of such coronavirus tyrants is New York Governor Andrew Cuomo.
Continue reading Governor Andrew Cuomo Imposes Vaccination Passports in New YorkBayer’s Plan for Settling Future Roundup Cancer Claims Faces Broad Opposition
Dozens of U.S. law firms have formed a coalition to fight a new $2 billion settlement proposal by Monsanto owner Bayer AG that aims to contain the company’s ongoing liability related to claims that Roundup herbicides cause a type of cancer known as non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL).
Continue reading Bayer’s Plan for Settling Future Roundup Cancer Claims Faces Broad OppositionHome Invasions: All the Ways the Government Can Lay Siege to Your Property
“How ‘secure’ do our homes remain if police, armed with no warrant, can pound on doors at will and … forcibly enter?”— Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the lone dissenter in Kentucky v. King
Continue reading Home Invasions: All the Ways the Government Can Lay Siege to Your PropertyPrisons Prime Testing Ground for Dehumanizing Hi-Tech “Advances”
A new form of exploitation, known as “stakeholder capitalism,” is already being tested in many places around the world and prisons are among the main targets for its implementation, as they provide an ideal and literally captive market for its proof of concept.
Continue reading Prisons Prime Testing Ground for Dehumanizing Hi-Tech “Advances”Vulture Funds Plan to Use the Pandemic to Pillage the Global Economy
There’s a new app with a tagline that promises that you, too, can ‘profit like a landlord from just £1 with no effort’. Proptee, set to launch this year (subject to approval from the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority) allows anyone with, say, five grand to buy shares in a buy-to-let flat in London worth half a million.
Continue reading Vulture Funds Plan to Use the Pandemic to Pillage the Global EconomyThe Criminality of Global Capitalism
“It is time the nation woke up and realized that it’s not the armed robbers or drug dealers who cause the most economic harm, it’s the white collar criminals… who harm us the most.” (Harry Markopolos)
Continue reading The Criminality of Global CapitalismEnemies of the Deep State: The Government’s War on “Domestic Terrorism” is a Trap
“This is an issue that all Democrats, Republicans, independents, Libertarians should be extremely concerned about, especially because we don’t have to guess about where this goes or how this ends.
Continue reading Enemies of the Deep State: The Government’s War on “Domestic Terrorism” is a TrapI am an American constitutional lawyer – and I see gov’t using Covid-19 to take away our rights
Do we really think “it can’t happen here” in America? Could we quarantine the constitution? Are we doing it already? Panics from pandemics unleash unchecked governmental power.
Continue reading I am an American constitutional lawyer – and I see gov’t using Covid-19 to take away our rightsThe Sheep Syndrome
People are unhappy. Yes, but not enough to stop this tyranny! – Well, I better behave otherwise I’m going to be punished. – FEAR! – Fear leads to the sheep syndrome – that deep-deep social disease which besets us today. They keep to the narrative – MUST wear a mask – MUST keep the safe 2-meter distance – police enforced.
Continue reading The Sheep SyndromeBig Tech & the Democratic Party Are Leading America to a Fascist Future
Although there may not be tanks on the streets and a dictator inciting crowds from his bully pulpit, the end result has been pretty much the same.
Continue reading Big Tech & the Democratic Party Are Leading America to a Fascist FutureAmerica’s Richest 1% Owned 5% in 1990, Own 36% Today
According to the U.S. Federal Reserve’s table that’s headlined, “Distribution of Household Wealth in the U.S. since 1989”, the percentage of U.S. privately owned wealth which is held by the richest 1% has risen from 5% in 1990 to 36% today, more than a seven-fold increase.
Continue reading America’s Richest 1% Owned 5% in 1990, Own 36% TodayEconomist Behind 2008 Financial Crash Among Elites Warning Against $2000 Stimulus Checks
78% of Americans support the proposed $2,000 stimulus check, but that hasn’t stopped the Washington Post, New York Times, and a cadre of DC economic elites from sounding the alarm against the measure.
Continue reading Economist Behind 2008 Financial Crash Among Elites Warning Against $2000 Stimulus ChecksHow U.S. Government Paid-Off Its Super-Rich in Order to Pass Its Coronavirus-Relief Laws
On December 14th, two excellent news-reports were belatedly published about some of the massive corruption that was behind the initial U.S. federal coronavirus-relief law, the CARES Act, and about U.S. Senators of both Parties now intending to include such corruption in the next one.
Continue reading How U.S. Government Paid-Off Its Super-Rich in Order to Pass Its Coronavirus-Relief LawsAmerica’s Future is Liberal Fascism Sporting a Smiley Shirt and Armed With a Syringe
The globalists responsible for engineering a medical tyranny across much of the Western world have something valuable to teach right-wing nationalists and would-be fascists, and that is you don’t sell your damaged product out of the barrel of a machine gun, but rather dripping from the end of a syringe that promises to end all pain and misery.
Continue reading America’s Future is Liberal Fascism Sporting a Smiley Shirt and Armed With a SyringeElon Musk’s Coup Stooge Áñez Arrested Trying to Escape Bolivian Justice
On November 24th, Elon Musk’s agent and now deposed Bolivian coup leader Jeanine Áñez was caught trying to escape justice by making her way to Brazil, but was prevented from boarding a plane by a group of citizens who were able to identify her in Trinidad.
Continue reading Elon Musk’s Coup Stooge Áñez Arrested Trying to Escape Bolivian JusticeA Biden Presidency Would Be A Dream Scenario For Our Corporate Overlords
One of the biggest reasons why the elite hate Donald Trump so much is because they can’t control him. But if Joe Biden ends up in the White House, that won’t be a problem.
Continue reading A Biden Presidency Would Be A Dream Scenario For Our Corporate OverlordsThe Politics of Cultural Despair | Chris Hedges
It is despair that is killing us, eating into the social fabric, rupturing social bonds, and manifesting in self-destructive pathologies.
Continue reading The Politics of Cultural Despair | Chris HedgesIMF Seizes on Pandemic to Pave Way for Privatization in 81 Countries
76 of the 91 loans the IMF has negotiated since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic come attached with demands for deep cuts to public services and policies that benefit corporations over people.
Continue reading IMF Seizes on Pandemic to Pave Way for Privatization in 81 CountriesBezos Doubles Wealth as Amazon Essential Product Prices Rise 1000% Amid Pandemic
A report by Public Citizen found that “Amazon is engaged in price gouging on products it sells directly” through its Amazon Essentials line, with products like facemasks and corn starch seeing elevenfold increases in price.
Continue reading Bezos Doubles Wealth as Amazon Essential Product Prices Rise 1000% Amid PandemicA Silver Lining in the Rise of Neo-Fascism
The only benefit from the rise of neo-fascist leaders in heretofore democratic nations is that the various fascist, neo-Nazi, racial and religious supremacists, and far-right terrorists have reared their ugly heads to the degree where it is now easier to identify them and their circle of contacts and organizations.
Continue reading A Silver Lining in the Rise of Neo-FascismBreaking Down the Global Elite’s ‘Great Reset’ Master Plan
The World Economic Forum has defined and is leading the global stampede into “The Great Reset” that would kill Capitalism and Free Enterprise, while establishing Sustainable Development, aka Technocracy.
Continue reading Breaking Down the Global Elite’s ‘Great Reset’ Master PlanPlanetary Emergency Plan Declared | Club of Rome
Club of Rome was originally founded at a meeting in David Rockefeller’s house in Bellagio, Italy, and promoted alarmism over population growth. Its 1973 book, Limits to Growth, coincided with the creation of the Trilateral Commission, also by Rockefeller. They are still at it. This text is taken from the Club of Rome’s report, Planetary Emergency Plan: Securing a New Deal for People, Nature and Climate.
Continue reading Planetary Emergency Plan Declared | Club of RomeAmerica’s Top 12 Plutocrats Now Own $1 Trillion in Wealth
New figures from the Institute for Policy Studies show that, despite a pandemic that has stunted the economy for months, America’s billionaire class is becoming richer than ever, adding nearly $700 billion to their fortune since the nationwide lockdown in March.
Continue reading America’s Top 12 Plutocrats Now Own $1 Trillion in WealthDARPA Launches Project CHARIOT in Bid to Shield Big Tech Profits
DARPA announces a new type of cryptography to protect the Big Tech firm profits from the dawn of quantum computers and allow backdoor access into 3 trillion internet-connected devices.
Continue reading DARPA Launches Project CHARIOT in Bid to Shield Big Tech ProfitsAs Defense Bill Divides Senate, the Pentagon Shows a Crack in the Armor
The national security state is on the verge of a radical transformation. From DHS to the military, the pressure is mounting on all sides to revamp federal law enforcement hierarchies, shift information pipelines, and reimage the nature of warfare.
Continue reading As Defense Bill Divides Senate, the Pentagon Shows a Crack in the ArmorBillionaires That Donated to Gates-Buffet Giving Pledge Now Richer Than Ever – Study
As the assets of the billionaire class in the US swell to $3.5 trillion amid the pandemic, a new study of philanthropic giving reveals that many of America’s wealthiest are using charitable donations to stay rich and get richer.
Continue reading Billionaires That Donated to Gates-Buffet Giving Pledge Now Richer Than Ever – StudyScientific Study Proves America is A Dictatorship, not a Democracy
Who actually rule America today? Is America really the beacon of hope, democracy and freedom that the world came to know about? Or, is it worse than the governments it toppled in the pursuit of advancing corporate interests?
Continue reading Scientific Study Proves America is A Dictatorship, not a DemocracyThe Davos’ “Great Reset” Fraud & the Great War that We Must Fight
Like everyone, I would love to live in a pollution-free world. I would love to see human civilization strike a balance with nature and at the risk of sounding like a naïve idealist, I sincerely do believe that this is ultimately our destiny as a species.
Continue reading The Davos’ “Great Reset” Fraud & the Great War that We Must FightBehold: Gangster State Capitalism
Hanne Herland of the European Herland Report has just had her book published in which she argues that the ruling elite has resurrected feudalism by financializing the economy and offshoring middle class jobs. The title is New Left Tyranny, but it is about gangster state capitalism.
Continue reading Behold: Gangster State CapitalismUS Arrests Now Higher Than Hong Kong Protest Total Figures
While the world condemns China for its response to the Hong Kong protests, the numbers and the images make clear that the US has responded to its popular uprising with more force and less tolerance than Beijing.
Continue reading US Arrests Now Higher Than Hong Kong Protest Total Figures19 Facts About American Policing That Will Blow Your Mind
With all the protests and anger and violence across the country, a justified discussion about policing has begun on our corporate media airwaves. (I would say the discussion is overdue, but in fact, we’ve had it roughly every three years for the past 40 years.) However, despite all the coverage, a deeper debate sits ignored – A debate about why our American police system exists at all, how it works (or doesn’t), and where it came from.
Continue reading 19 Facts About American Policing That Will Blow Your MindPolice at Protests All Over the Country Caught Destroying Property
Police all over the world commonly use plants and undercover cops to undermine protests.
Continue reading Police at Protests All Over the Country Caught Destroying PropertyHow the British Empire Created and Killed George Orwell
The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), happily amplified by the Public Broadcasting System (PBS) in the United States which carries its World News, continues to pump out its regular dreck about the alleged economic chaos in Russia and the imagined miserable state of the Russian people.
Continue reading How the British Empire Created and Killed George OrwellGlobal Political Project Imposed on the Occasion of Covid-19
The inept reactions of European governments to Covid-19 were dictated by former advisers to Donald Rumsfeld and George W. Bush. Contrary to public rhetoric, they make no medical claims. Far from responding to the reality of the epidemic, they aim to transform European societies in order to integrate them into their political and financial project.
Continue reading Global Political Project Imposed on the Occasion of Covid-19America’s Fascism Problem Runs Much Deeper Than Trump
In recent years, the press reports of racist young whites attracted to far-right persuasions including flirting with fascism. But are they the cause or the consequence?
Continue reading America’s Fascism Problem Runs Much Deeper Than TrumpSheep Always Seem to Lose Their Wool
“None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.” — Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
Continue reading Sheep Always Seem to Lose Their WoolUS Election 2020: A Circus Then, a Circus Now | Chris Hedges
Here, in this reposted column from Jan. 7, 2019, are his thoughts about the then-nascent presidential election campaign.
It is January 2019. This signals the start of the 2020 election circus. Sen. Elizabeth Warren is the first big-name Democrat on stage. But we will soon be deluged with candidates, bizarre antics and endless commentary by fatuous TV and radio pundits.
The hyperventilating, the constant polling, the updates on who has the largest campaign war chest, the hypothetical matches between this hopeful and that hopeful, the mocking tweets by Donald Trump, will, as we saw in the 2016 election campaign, have as much relevance to our lives and political future as the speculation on cable sports channels about next year’s football season. This farce takes the place of genuine political life.
It costs a lot of money to mount this spectacle. Our corporate masters, like the oligarchic rulers of ancient Rome who poured money into the arena as they stripped the empire and its citizens of their assets, are happy to oblige.
The campaign sustains the fiction of a democracy and gives legitimacy to the corporate state. Maybe Hillary Clinton, who raised $1 billion in her 2016 run for president, will return for another season, although the Bill and Hillary tour is now a debacle with empty seats and slashed ticket prices.
Maybe Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders will make comebacks. And what about the new faces in the scramble for the presidency—Beto O’Rourke, former New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu, former Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick, former Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr., former Housing Secretary Julian Castro, Sens. Kirsten Gillibrand, Cory Booker and Kamala Harris, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti and the billionaires Tom Steyer and Michael Bloomberg?
It is a political version of the reality television show “Survivor.” Who will be the first knocked out? Who will make it into the semifinals and the finals? Who is the most devious and cunning? Who will come out on top?
We get to vote for the contestants that appeal to us most, or at least vote against those we hate the most. The cable news shows, in a prelude to the nonstop idiocy to come, have spent the last few days speculating about whom Mitt Romney will endorse in the 2020 race. Now there’s a burning question of national importance.
To take power in 2021 in lieu of any real policy changes, the Democratic Party is banking on the deep animus toward President Trump. It has no intention of instituting genuine populist programs, rebuilding unions, funding universal health care, providing free college tuition or curbing the criminal activities of the corporations and the big banks.
The war machine will continue to wage endless war and consume half of all discretionary spending. The vaunted new populist members of Congress will be no more than window dressing, trotted out, like Sanders, to trick voters into thinking the Democratic Party is capable of reform. Most voters, for this reason, are “voting out of loathing, against enemies and against the system in general, not really for anybody,” as journalist Matt Taibbi points out.
Working men and women especially despise the slick-talking politicians—including the Clintons and Barack Obama—and the “experts” and well-groomed pundits on their screens who sold them the con that deindustrialization, deregulation, austerity, bailing out the banks, nearly two decades of constant war, the exporting of jobs overseas, tax cuts for the rich and the impoverishment of the working class were forms of progress.
Trump hangs on to the support of white working Americans because he expresses through his adolescent insults and dynamiting of political norms the legitimate hatred they feel toward the well-heeled, college-educated ruling elites who sold them out. The Democrats, at the same time, understand that it takes someone as revolting as Trump to fire up their lethargic base, a group in which millions do not vote. They cling to a tactic of “anybody but Trump” even though it did not work in 2016.
The corporate media ignores issues and policies, since there is little genuine disagreement among the candidates, and presents the race as a beauty contest. The fundamental question the press asks is not what do the candidates stand for but whom do the voters like. As for now, Warren—the only nationally known Democrat except Julian Castro to form an exploratory committee for a presidential bid—is not winning this popularity contest.
A CNN/Des Moines Register Iowa poll—yes, polling in Iowa already has begun—puts her fourth, with only 8 percent of support among the Democrats surveyed, behind Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders and Beto O’Rourke.
Our corporate rulers do not need to denounce democracy. Democratic laws, such as who can fund campaigns, have been subverted from within, their original purposes redefined by the courts and legislative bodies to serve corporate power. This managed democracy has transformed elections from the simple, straightforward process of voting for a party platform or party positions to vast, choreographed theatrical productions.
Politicians run on “moral” issues and use public relations experts to create manufactured personalities. Trump, his image constructed by a reality television show, proved more adept than his rivals at playing this game the last time around.
Politicians must stick to the script. They have well-defined roles. They express a suffocating, reality-defying positivism about the future of America. They are steadfast in their obsequious praise of the nation’s “heroes” in the military and law enforcement. They are silent about the crimes of empire.
They ignore the plight of the poor; indeed the word “poor” is banished from their vocabulary. They pretend we do not live in a corporate oligarchy, although they acknowledge amorphous attacks on the middle class and promise to stem the assault.
They exude a cloying feel-your-pain compassion that revolves around personal stories of the hardships they overcame in their own lives to become “successes”—the most ludicrous being Trump’s claim that he turned a “very small” loan from his father into a multibillion-dollar real estate empire.
They telegraph to us that they are one of us. We can be like them. They trot out their wives, husbands and children, even when a spouse like Melania Trump looks as if she has been taken hostage, to portray themselves as family men and women.
They claim they are outsiders, ignoring their long political careers and their status as members of the wealthy ruling elite. They are no different from the array of self-help gurus who ignore systemic injustice and social decay to peddle schemes for personal success. The formula is universal. It is the triumph of artifice, what Benjamin DeMott called “junk politics.”
Those who do not play this game, like Ralph Nader, or who like Sanders play it begrudgingly—Sanders refused corporate money, has called for reforming “the bloated and wasteful $716 billion annual Pentagon budget” and addresses issues of class—are ridiculed and marginalized by a monochromatic corporate media that banishes qualification, ambiguity, nuance and genuine dialogue.
Trump’s success as a candidate came, in large part, because of the constant media attention he received. Those like Sanders who attempt to defy the rules of the game are punished. The goal is entertainment. Politicians who are good entertainers do well. The poor entertainers do badly.
The networks seek to attract viewers and increase profits, not disseminate information about political issues. Voters have little or no say in who decides to run, who gets funded, how campaigns are managed, what television ads say, which candidates get covered by the press or who gets invited to presidential debates. They are spectators, pawns used to legitimize political farce.
“At issue is more than crude bribery,” the political philosopher Sheldon Wolin writes in “Democracy Incorporated: Managed Democracy and the Spector of Inverted Totalitarianism.” “Campaign contributions are a vital tool of political management. They create a pecking order that calibrates, in strictly quantitative and objective terms, whose interests have priority.
The amount of corruption that regularly takes place before elections means that corruption is not an anomaly but an essential element in the functioning of managed democracy. The entrenched system of bribery and corruption involves no physical violence, no brown-shirted storm troopers, no coercion of the political opposition.
While the tactics are not those of the Nazis, the end result is the inverted equivalent. Opposition has not been liquidated but rendered feckless.”
This process, Wolin writes, has turned the electorate into “a hybrid creation, part cinematic and part consumer. Like a movie or TV audience, it would be credulous, nurtured on the unreality of images on the screen, the impossible feats and situations depicted, or the promise of personal transformation by a new product. In this the elites were abetted by the long-standing American tradition of dramatic evangelism and its fostering of collective fervor and popular fantasies of the miraculous.
It was no leap of faith from the camp meetings of the nineteenth century and the Billy Sundays of the twentieth century to the politically savvy televangelist of the twenty-first century.”
The corporations that own the media and the two major political parties have a vested interest in making sure there is never serious public discussion about issues ranging from our disastrous for-profit health care system and endless wars to the virtual tax boycott that large corporations have legalized. The corporate system is presented as sacrosanct and the ruling ideology of neoliberalism as natural law. The corporations are funding the show. They get what they pay for.
Sanders, it appears, will run again as a Democrat, despite the theft of the 2016 nomination by Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Party hierarchy. His next campaign, to quote Samuel Johnson, will be the triumph of hope over experience. The Democratic establishment and the media sharks will, if Sanders uses the old playbook, devour him. They have already severely diminished his stature by turning him into Clinton and Chuck Schumer’s barking seal.
The differences between the right-wing media and the liberal media are minuscule. As Taibbi writes in “Insane Clown President: Dispatches From the 2016 Circus,” they are “really just two different strategies of the same kind of nihilistic lizard-brain sensationalism.
The ideal CNN story is a baby down a well, while the ideal Fox story is probably a baby thrown down a well by a Muslim terrorist or an ACORN activist. Both companies offer the same service, it’s just that the Fox version is a little kinkier.”
“Elections are about a lot of things, but at the highest level, they’re about money,” Taibbi writes. “The people who sponsor election campaigns, who pay hundreds of millions of dollars to fund the candidates’ charter jets and TV ads and 25-piece marching banks, those people have concrete needs. They want tax breaks, federal contracts, regulatory relief, cheap financing, free security for shipping lanes, anti-trust waivers and dozens of other things.”
“They mostly don’t care about abortion or gay marriage or school vouchers or any of the social issues the rest of us spend our time arguing about. It’s about the money for them, and as far as that goes, the CEO class has had a brilliantly winning electoral strategy for a generation. They donate heavily to both parties, essentially hiring two different sets of politicians to market their needs to the population.
The Republicans give them everything that they want, while the Democrats only give them mostly everything. They get everything from the Republicans because you don’t have to make a single concession to a Republican voter. All you have to do to secure a Republican vote is show lots of pictures of gay people kissing or black kids with their pants down or Mexican babies at an emergency room.”
The Republican strategy of playing to the lowest common denominator ensured that eventually the useful idiots would take over and elect one of their own, in Donald Trump. Trump is the epitome of the human mutation produced by an illiterate, dumbed-down age of electronic images. He, like tens of millions of other Americans, believes anything he sees on television. He does not read. He is consumed by vanity and the cult of the self. He is a conspiracy theorist.
He blames America’s complex social and economic ills on scapegoats such as Mexican immigrants and Muslims, and of course the Democratic Party. The Democratic Party, in turn, blames Trump’s election on Russia and former FBI Director James Comey. It is the theater of the absurd.
The childish gibberish Trump speaks is the new language of political discourse. His taunting tweets against his enemies are countered by his enemies with taunting tweets against him. These grade-school-level insults dominate the daily news cycle. The political process, captured by commercial interests, devolved to Trump’s imbecilic level. The presidential election of 2020 has begun. The circus, with its freaks, con artists and clowns, is open for business.
Mr. Fish, also known as Dwayne Booth, is a cartoonist who primarily creates for Truthdig.com and Harpers.com. Mr. Fish’s work has also appeared nationally in The Los Angeles Times, The Village Voice, Vanity…
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