Stupid Justin Trudeau Sucks Ass On Venezuela

Liberal, Tory, Same old story!

Linda McQuaig in the Toronto Star provides the analysis:

In terms of foreign policy damage, whatever harm Justin Trudeau did by parading around India in colourful outfits is a nothing-burger compared to the severe hardship he is inflicting on Venezuela.
And yet media commentators have been full-throttle in denouncing the prime minister’s alleged wardrobe malfunction on his recent India trip while being silent – or downright supportive – of Trudeau’s decision last fall to join the Trump administration in imposing sanctions on the struggling South American nation.

Now, why would the Dream Boat do such a thing?

Anyone following the international media coverage would conclude that the Venezuelan government is terribly autocratic and that Western nations, led by the U.S., have stepped in with sanctions out of concern over human rights abuses there.
A closer look suggests a different scenario that puts Western actions in a less laudable light: Washington is waging economic war against a nation that dared to rise up and reject U.S. control over its ample oil reserves.
The Obama administration targeted individual Venezuelans with sanctions, but the Trump administration’s sanctions are much broader, taking punishing aim at the country’s entire economy.
Sadly, Trudeau is backing up the U.S. bully, apparently hoping to win a reprieve from Trump’s arbitrary trade measures – a strategy that seems unfair to Venezuela and also likely futile. 

Now here's the thing (and I challenge ANYONE from some whining right-wing Venezuelan ex-pat, to a mewling hypocritical Canadian liberal, to a fire-breathing, shit-head right-wing fuck-face to answer this) ... Venezuela has no "death squads." Colombia has death squads. Peasant leaders and trade union activists are murdered with impunity in that country. Honduras has death squads.

None of this bothers Crazy Crystia Freeland with the Fascist Family. Just the glimmerings of Venezuela's "autocratic tendencies" as it deals with violent, right-wing rebels who once staged a coup in 2002 that was thwarted by pro-Bolivarian demonstrators and [FAR MORE IMPORTANTLY] loyal members of the armed forces. Can you imagine the oligarchic sham "democracy" in the USA, or the oligarchic sham "democracy" of Canada tolerating such a movement? [Remember Dalton McGuinty "temporarily" stealing our Charter rights and freedoms?]

Such squalid behaviour is sadly par for the course in this country. And Canadians remain insufferably smug, ignorant or hypocritical.

Obviously, the big news is Trudeau and Morneau pulling $4.5 billion out of a hat to buy the Kinder-Morgan Pipeline. (Probably to bail-out the Canadian banks that had loaned money to the project.) But I started this post before that.

Why the ONDP Should Win

Kathleen Wynne isn't that bad a person I don't think. But the Ontario Liberals are corrupt. The gas plant scandal/pay for access/public-private-partnerships ... etc., etc., .  This is a party that's been in power too long. As premier, Wynne did put through some decent policies. Just like McGuinty the robot created the Green Belt. But the problem with the Ontario Liberals is the problem with liberals (often called "centrists" today) everywhere. The billionaires come first. Then the millionaires. Then it's how can they help ameliorate the worst effects of the rigged "free market" on the shmucks in such a way that it doesn't antagonize the millionaires and billionaires. Usually this involves deficit spending. And deficit spending usually means selling interest paying government bonds to rich people looking for a safe investment. "Win-win" (for them).

Ordinary people are wising up to this scam. Hence the increasing polarization of the electorate towards the left (for decent and/or intelligent people) and the right (for lazy and/or stupid and/or deplorable people).

(Part of the right-wing backlash against Wynne is no doubt motivated by sexism and homophobia. [No doubt there's some of that on the left but if it is it tends not to be stated explicitly.] Just as Hillary Clinton was rightly pilloried for being a mass-murdering war criminal and a corrupt tool of the oligarchy and unjustifiably abused for being "shrill" and a "bitch" and all sorts of other misogynist slurs.)

Here in Ontario, it first looked as if Doug Ford's surprise victory in the quickie leadership race was going to quickly propel him to majority government status. Unfortunately for Doug, he's such a loud-mouth; such a crude ignoramus; such a bully; who surrounds himself with the worst sorts of grifters and Christo-fascist closet-cases (correct me if I'm wrong, but the OPC are prepared to embrace pretty much any religion so long as it's homophobic); ... that his momentum appears to have evaporated in a fog of scandals.

But, obviously, it's not just Doug Ford. "Conservatism" embraces the stupidest 30% of any given population. How can a government of con-men and religious freaks and "free-market" fanatics be expected to provide good government? The last time these stupid clods had power under Mike Harris they displayed lethal amounts of incompetence, bigotry and corruption. It was a nightmare that those of us who lived through it will take to our graves.

I've said it before that the ONDP should win by default given how gawdawful the other two parties are. But this time it looks like disgust with the status-quo under the Ontario Liberals and the past and present extreme toxicity of the Ontario PC's, that the ONDP might win power, even majority government. Hopefully if that happens, Andrea Horwath won't pull a Bob Rae and succumb to the charms of the Glib n' Stale editorial committee. The odds are that she would though.

Sigh.

Justin Trudeau vs Free Speech Part III

People are probably going: "thwap! When are you going to mention Justin Trudeau?!? You've typed two long posts already [I & II] and you haven't mentioned him once!" To which I reply: Hold your horses! I'll get to him in my own good time. It's my blog and nobody reads it anyway. I'm talking to myself.

I was thinking the other day about how the Powers That Be like to condemn China for its Great Internet Firewall that robs its citizens of the right to access all the information super-highway's information free and uncensored. Those poor, ignorant subjects of an authoritarian/totalitarian regime! Except now we hear our deluded, or, more likely, cynical overlords saying shit like this:

“Civil wars don’t start with gunshots, they start with words. America’s war with itself has already begun. We all must act now on the social media battlefield to quell information rebellions that can quickly lead to violent confrontations and easily transform us into the Divided States of America.”He added, “Stopping the false information artillery barrage landing on social media users comes only when those outlets distributing bogus stories are silenced—silence the guns and the barrage will end.”As this “civil war” rages on, he said, “our country remains stalled in observation, halted by deliberation and with each day more divided by manipulative forces coming from afar.”

And now we have the Trudeau government spewing this sort of nonsense:

OTTAWA—Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has warned social networking giant Facebook it needs to fix its “fake news” problems or face stronger regulation from Ottawa.Trudeau told Facebook chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg in November he was concerned the company wasn’t doing enough to stop the spread of misleading information on their platform, a source with direct knowledge of the conversation told the Star.Facebook has been under intense international scrutiny for allowing so-called “fake news” — false and often outlandish information presented as legitimate journalism — to propagate on its network.Sometimes the “articles” are simply hoaxes, designed to profit from Facebook users’ clicks.But as seen during the 2016 U.S. presidential election, the tactic can also mislead or manipulate citizens to further political ends – whether by partisan actors domestically, or hostile nations internationally. Facebook has also faced criticism about a lack of transparency around who is buying ads on its platform.As Canadian political parties prepare for the 2019 federal election, the source said Trudeau suggested Ottawa could intervene if Facebook doesn’t adequately address the issues.

I mean, can you process this? That first quote is from someone named Clint Watts, a former FBI agent and a member of something called the "Alliance for Securing Democracy." These cretinous maniacs believe that the USA is a democracy when it isn't. Close, scholarly studies have shown that it is effectively an oligarchy. It is a place where the wealthy rule and the poor (by default) do not. The poor have NO SAY in the running of their country. If the poor want something that the oligarchy wants, the system will work so as to make it seem as if the people have spoken and have been listened to. Because the oligarchy likes people to believe it is a democracy. Debates over topics that have no impact on oligarchic power are allowed, as this allows people on both sides of the issue to feel a part of the political process. This is the same thing as a parent letting the children decide what game they want to play. And if the children can't decide, the parent will come down on one side or the other based on some sort of calculus having nothing to do with the democratic rights of any of the children. Just as these children should not believe they live in a democracy, neither should we.

The USA being the USA, it isn't just rich vs. poor. There are plenty of merely non-rich. These, on the whole, despise the poor and do not often make common cause with them. The non-rich are the largest demographic group (although their numbers are shrinking). The non-rich can get upset about things, including the state of the economy. For this reason there are competing political parties who offer some variants of the oligarchy's economic model for the non-rich to choose from. This too, produces the sensation of democratic choice. But in the end, both the Democrats and the Republicans serve the oligarchy.

And that is why the non-rich (sometimes referred to as "the middle class") are shrinking in numbers and more of them are becoming poor. Because the oligarchy is about enriching itself and at this stage in history, the oligarchy is so serenely self-satisfied in their control over things that they are only allowing their politicians to advocate for policies that will impoverish the majority. The Democrats believe it should be done slower and with more self-delusion about trying to help people, added with the comforting thought that they aren't as nasty as the Republicans.

The Republicans, meanwhile, are brazen in their service to the oligarchy. They are comprised of a toxic stew of the worst their society produces. Some of them are genuine racists and bigots who got into politics to subjugate Blacks, Muslims, Latinos, GLBT, etc., . Some of them are merely boot-licking toadies like Paul Ryan. Some of them are clumsy, violent militarists. Others are motivated by crazy notions that I can't be bothered to enumerate. As such, they will appeal to the bigots and homophobes and "deplorables" (occasionally even from among the poor) while they enact policies that shovel society's wealth to the super-rich in greater and greater quantities.

The Alliance for Securing Democracy also believes (or pretends to believe) that only nefarious foreigners (and small bands of treasonous "citizens") can be behind the divisions in US society. The number one source of foreign-bred divisiveness is "Black Lives Matter" apparently. Supposedly, without the cynical, dastardly Putin ordering his army of internet trolls to stir things up, Blacks in the USA would never in a million years come to think that a racist police force is abusing them and often murdering them like dogs in the street.

I guess the attitude of whites towards Blacks is similar to the attitudes of Canadian whites towards First Nations peoples. Regardless; my main point is that The Alliance for Securing Democracy is a propaganda front, a psyop. It is an anti-democratic organization dedicated to censoring any viewpoints that threaten the neo-liberal, plutocratic agenda.

Since I started this post (a long time ago) the wonderful Caitlin Johnstone as written yet another brilliant expose of the rotten system we're living under and how ALL neo-liberal parties (including that of dreamy Justin Trudeau) are becoming increasingly overt in their efforts to stifle and suppress alternatives to their own failed, destructive, reward-the-plutocrats ideology:

Internet censorship is becoming more and more brazen as our governments become increasingly concerned that we are developing the wrong kinds of political opinions. Ever since the establishment Douma and Skripal narrativesfailed to take hold effectively, we’ve been seeing more and more frantic attempts to seize control of public discourse. Two weeks after the Atlantic Council explained to usthat we need to be propagandized by our governments for our own good, Facebook finally made the marriage of Silicon Valley and the western war machine official by announcing a partnership with the Atlantic Council to ensure that we are all receiving properly authorized information.

Which brings me back to the dreamy Justin Trudeau. Here's a guy promising to bail-out an oil pipeline company with our money. Here's a guy who, after he got elected, ditched his promises about dealing with climate change and simply STOPPED TALKING to David Suzuki when the latter tried to call him on his betrayal. Here's a guy whose finance minister is a fucking air-head who inherited everything he has but who tells regular people that they just have to get used to job insecurity and shitty wages. Here's a guy who voted for stephen harper's Orwellian "Anti-Terrorism Act" (C-51), ostensibly because the Liberals were TERRIFIED of being labeled "soft on terror" by Prime Minister Pissinginthecloset. Stupidly, they said they'd amend it if they got elected. Well, they got elected. And they amended it. Now there's a parliamentary committee that will have "oversight" of CSIS activities. (Subject to "national security" limitations, which means any arbitrary, bullshit excuse Trudeau wants to insult our intelligence with.) This committee then reports to the prime minister (not Parliament) who can do whatever he wants with it.

The difference between the Liberals and the Conservatives is merely the difference between a "socially liberal" fiscal conservative and a "traditional values" fiscal conservative. Both are devoted to the rich and to extracting wealth from everyone else, but one side believes in gay rights and a woman's right to choose and the other side are homophobes (often self-hating ones), misogynists and psychopathic morons.

Them's your choices Canadians! Which one of these two sets of assholes is going to exploit you and lie to you?

Hence Justin Trudeau's vendetta against "fake news." The neo-liberals have turned Trump's weapon against him! Well, sort of. Trump's shit-head followers still believe their con-man hero and Sean Hannity and Doug Ford and etc., etc., about the liberal media. In which case, you know, they have a point. The liberal media is socially liberal and it also lies, lies, lies all the fucking time. The only problem for these poor souls is that the garbage they ingest is even more chock full of lying badness.

But no matter. It's not so much these right-wing chumps the liberals are worried about. It's us on the left as well as apolitical people who aren't completely stupid who know when they're getting screwed and are dangerously capable of recognizing the sources of their problems. Just like the liberal media elevated the idiotic "Tea Party" to major importance and either ignored or demonized the "Occupy" movement. The "fake news" on the right will be denigrated, mocked and scorned, ... but it will also be given tons and tons of free publicity. OUR analyses on the other hand will be scrubbed from the internet and (as usual) denied access to corporate media.

So, in the interests of getting alternative viewpoints across whilst simultaneously chipping away at the (inexplicable) authority of mainstream news, here's Caitlin Johnstone again:

Time and time again, we’re fed these deceitful narratives to manufacture support for the agendas of the western war machine, and when the truth begins to surface that we were lied to once again, the news churn moves on and we’re distracted with something else as the old narrative is shuffled back beyond the reach of memory. Maybe a year or two later we wonder to ourselves “I wonder what ever happened with that major news story? I should google it,” but nothing comes up and most of us shrug and move on.

Happy reading!

OH! I should add that while you're reading what Johnstone says about media coverage of Aleppo, remember that one month after their thundering about Assad-Putin's total disregard for civilian lives and other war crimes, the USA and its allies behaved with just as much callous violence clearing ISIS out of the Iraqi city of Mosul.

stephen harper Slithers Back

The Glib n' Stale endorsed enemy of Canadian democracy is back, making farting and gurgling noises about how maybe he'd like to lead Canada again. Yes, it appears that stephen harper has had enough time crying and shivering, getting  drunk and pissing himself whilst raging against his imaginary god almighty, begging for wingnut welfare and masturbating to internet porn in various offices where his paymasters have put him up, .... and he's apparently forgotten how traumatizing it was for him to be hated and criticized and defeated by the vast majority of Canadians, that he wants to be PM again.

No doubt his bullshit jobs that he's been doing since getting his fat ass kicked haven't had the prestige and the perks of the office of prime minister. Those were the days when he'd travel the world as a recognized statesman. (In his imagination anyway. He was usually the object of contempt as his petulant behaviour offended his various hosts and he usually traveled overseas in cowardly attempts to avoid scrutiny into his many scandals and brazen, stupid lies.)

Recently, from his perch at the head of some right-wing foreign affairs institute (funded by Zionist casino owners, pharmaceutical company mass-murderers, and other assorted scum) harper expressed his support for Hungarian fascism as well as Donald Trump's shit-headed exit from the Iran Treaty. And then, ... nobody condemned him! That was easy!

Of course, hardly anybody cared. He's a has-been after all. No reporters rushed up to him in a scrum. No opposition politicians interrogated him in the House of Commons, because he's not in the HoC anymore. But harper remembered that he liked pontificating about weighty topics and in the blissful quiet after his two recent brain-farts, he probably thought he'd like to be important again. Certainly Andrew Scheer hasn't been burning up the charts lately.

But Scheer is failing because "conservatism" is failing. It's a dying movement of racists and ignorant fuckwads, hypocrites, closet-cases and corporate scum-bags. harper would have been out on his ass if he hadn't stolen that majority in 2011. And by the time he finally collapsed in utter defeat in 2015 he was a drugged-up, sniveling, debased shell of a man.

No stephen. You won't be prime minister again. You're a cheat and a fraud and a failure. Don't forget that time you spent peeing your pants in a darkened broom closet. Think about that moment of disgrace and do yourself and everyone else a favour and return to the obscurity that is too good for you.

Movies About Childhood

I'm still working on the next chapter of my "Justin Trudeau vs. Free Speech" series. (The world awaits the next installment with bated breath, I know!) But today I feel like typing about three movies about childhood that really moved me.

The first film I'll talk about isn't so much about childhood as it is about single-parenting. In "The Babadook" an isolated single-mother begins to receive sinister messages from a mysterious book. The reasons why she's found herself alone with her son, and the reasons behind her son's difficult behaviour are all connected. And they combine to put this woman on-edge even before things begin to take a frightening turn.

But through it all, you can also see the scared little boy trusting earnestly in his mother's ability to protect him, even when it seems least likely.

In the end, they realize that there is just the two of them together and they both have to accept that fact. Very good acting and directing. It's a small, low-budget horror movie that produces some of the most intense feelings of dread that I can remember. (To say I'm not a fan of slasher/gore "horror" films is an understatement.)

Next up we have "Room" based on the novel of the same name by Emma Donoghue. Remember how a few years back there were two cases of Austrian girls kidnapped and forced to live in confined quarters as slaves to their psychopathic male captors. (In one of these incidents, the psychopathic abuser was the young woman's father who imprisoned her for years until she escaped.) This was followed up with those three women in Cleveland imprisoned for a decade by another scum-bag and the young woman in California kidnapped and held captive for 18 years by a deranged couple of meth-heads.

So, the novel, and the book are about what it would be like to survive such an ordeal as well as to be born and raised in such circumstances. Now, the actor playing the little boy "Jack" (Jacob Tremblay) was a natural for the part. I don't know if he'll go on to mature as an actor, but he's perfect in this role. And, for my part, though I don't really see that many films, when I was watching Brie Larson as "Ma" trying to explain to "Jack" that the world she's been describing for him for the past five years (she's tried to raise him so that he doesn't think he's a captive who can't escape) is all a lie, and her desperation in the face of "Jack's" refusal to accept this new narrative and her panic over the risks they're taking when they attempt their escape; I thought her acting was amazing. She would eventually receive an Oscar for it.

The kidnapper is given very little screen time. But his few moments are disgusting. Credits to the actor, the script and the casting director. He exhibits such clueless self-pity and entitlement.

The thing that affected me the most was the little boy's experience of a paradise lost. As he grows older he'll come to understand more and more that his early world was a nightmare place for his mother. You see, the mother tried to make their world as good a place as she could for her son. And when you're a child, the world does seem to be a better, magical place. "Room" really made me think that the innocent world of childhood can never be returned to. Because it never existed. For instance; there is no lost, glorious, perfect "Canada." This country is steeped in racism and theft. It's a story of plunder and bigotry and elitism.

I heard one review say he didn't like the last shot, but I thought it was powerful.

Finally, there is "The Florida Project":



It's also a story of the innocence of youth. Even children living in rather squalid circumstances. The cinematography is brilliant. The acting is great. It's a sad story about people forced into desperate circumstances. The mother character in this film isn't supposed to be an inspirational figure. But she's trying to provide for herself and her daughter as best she can. And she has her moments where her love for her daughter is transcendent.  Will Dafoe's character is someone else trying to do the best he can. Caring for people without letting himself care too much.

The director was trying to do a few different things at once and one of them was to recreate the spirit of the "Lil' Rascals" films. Where (basically poor, Depression-era) kids were left on their own to their own devices. The scene where the kids get into some dangerous mischief in the abandoned motel complex feels quite real. And the way the little boy stared at the TV set afterwards, with a worried, guilty look on his face, seemed very real too.

I guess I'll add another film. "Slumdog Millionaire." Because it too was about childhood to a great degree. And writing the last paragraph reminded me of that one scene where the "bad" brother is about 12 years old and he's coming to the realization that he has to kill the two adults who are harassing them or they will never be out of danger. That kid was brilliant in that scene.

Humanity is Doomed: Part LVXII

Of all the things you could be going after that degenerate Trump for, you choose to go after his "maybe avoiding nuclear war with Russia" thing.

This is why I've given up. Humanity is simply TOO FUCKING STUPID to survive.

Justin Trudeau vs Free Speech Part II

So, in Part I, I talked about the Russian-origin "fake news" that supposedly destroyed Hillary Clinton's campaign (all on its own, with no help from the fact that Clinton was a terrible, uninspiring candidate, offering traditional Democratic voters more of the same rotten status-quo; who pissed-off the progressive base of the party by stealing the nomination from Bernie Sanders and then telling them "Fuck You!" by selecting a pro-war, pro-TPP right-wing Democrat for her VP; and who arrogantly ignored vital Democratic states like Wisconsin; and whose team said out loud that they were ignoring their base and going after conservative suburbanites) .... and I showed how this Russian "fake news" from Putin's dastardly "troll army" was, when all added up together, a molehill made out to be a mountain.

But it is this molehill that we are supposed to be afraid of. Our neo-liberal authoritarian rulers believe that "democracy" in the USA (and Canada) is so fragile, the citizenry so stupid and gullible, that we need to be protected from "foreign disinformation." I'll pick-up on this notion later on.

Right now I think it needs to be said that the first time I really noticed the term "fake news" was when Donald Trump kept using it to condemn any and all negative coverage of himself and his presidential campaign. Of course the concept behind "fake news" has always been around. We called it "propaganda," or "lies" or "bullshit" or "deceit," or any number of terms. Perhaps even "fake news" once in a while. FOX News was a notorious source of false facts, sins of omission, slanted editorials and other crimes against truth. As was right-wing (there really isn't any other kind though) Talk Radio, a-la Rush Limbaugh and Mark Levin. Stephen Colbert mocked this propensity with his concept of "truthiness," to whit; If something sounded semi-plausible and (more importantly) aligned with the preconceived ideas of the right-wing universe of "The Colbert Report," then it could be spoken of as if it were true.

But, again, the real popularization of the specific term "fake news" appears to have come from Trump. And this is interesting, because Donald Trump is a shameless con-artist. He's a liar. A fraud. He's a flim-flam man. He is the epitome of the sewer of mainstream junk culture in the US of A. By that I mean that racism, sexism, greed, violence, selfishness and crudity are far more mainstream than we'd all like to pretend. This is not a specifically US-American thing either. But only the USA has the resources to make an extravagant spectacle of it. And, Trump embodies it.

The reflexive defense mechanism of a liar/con-artist is to deflect attention away from their own lies and to go on the offensive against their accusers. Now, Trump is gifted with a low cunning and (for a certain segment of the population) charisma, but it's becoming increasingly evident with each passing day, that he is a moron. It's rather terrifying when you think of it. Imagine (for instance) that you meet someone and you start to have a conversation with them about the weather, where they're from, when the subway is going to arrive, and you start to idly imagine about this person's life, background, etc., and then this person says a couple of incoherent, nonsensical things until, suddenly their face turns out to have been a rubber mask and it falls off and it turns out that this "person" is actually a robot full of thousands of tiny gears and pulleys, powered by two mice on methamphetamines, running frantically on two exercise wheels. The thing that you thought was human is actually nothing of the sort, but a crude approximation of human.

Which is not to say that Donald Trump isn't human. He's just so shallow, so stupid, so unmoored by any sort of ethics or morality, that he seems half-formed. How does someone consort with prostitutes and porn-stars, divorce his wives when they begin to age, barge-in on naked teenage girls in the dressing room of the beauty contest he runs, and then shamelessly suck-up to "Evangelical Christians" and promise them he'll attack birth control and abortion access? (How do these self-identifying "Christians" overlook their own hypocrisy in supporting him?) The same way that late-Mayor Rob Ford professed to have "zero tolerance" for drugs and gangs but still smoked crack with gangsters, refused to resign when found out and went on to endorse the racist police policy of "carding" minority youth? One has to be completely shallow, Void of introspection. Crude, stupid, lazy, narcissistic, etc., etc., ... to behave, no, TO LIVE that way.

So, Trump has to call critical coverage of his failings as "fake news" or, IOW "lies" as a means of self-defense, since he's a total fraud. To do this he resorts to the whole idea of a corrupt "liberal" media that right-wing hypocrites and morons so love to wail about.

Unfortunately for us (and fortunately for Trump) his target (the "liberal media") is an easy one. Here are some complaints we on the Left share with many Trump supporters:

1. The media lies. (see: "Iraq", "Russiagate", protest movements)

2. The media is slanted.

3. The media is elitist.

4. The media serves the powerful.

Obviously the denizens of Trumpland and "Ford Nation" and "InfoWars" and Ezra Levant's "Bigotry Cruises" have their own spin on what they consider to be lies. These are such people as to notice that a sympathetic portrait of a Black person, or a First Nations person in the news is not 100% indifferent (and therefore "neutral") and choose to rail against that. But they share with us a disdain for the media's craven worship of "free trade." (At least we used to condemn corporate free trade deals. Alas, Trump Derangement Syndrome has got many leftists defending NAFTA.)

Basically the corporate media espouses the neo-liberal corporate agenda. It's inevitable. It's what they do. It's in their DNA. The problem for them is that the corporate neo-liberal agenda has fucked so many ordinary people over that left-wing and right-wing are turning against it in its entirety. "The center cannot hold." The elites cannot paper-over the shitty outcomes enough to hide the stench. That's why Trump destroyed his Repugnican rivals. They all clung to "free trade" and he promised to bring jobs back. It's why Bernie Sanders was filling stadiums with thousands of cheering supporters and Hillary Clinton was talking to gatherings of hundreds (or merely dozens). If any of the other Repug candidates had had a lock on the nomination of their party the way that Clinton did with the DNC, they would probably have defeated Trump as well. Hillary's people helped her through corporate media debates; manipulated the primary process and corrupted the voting at the primaries, in order to steal the nomination from Sanders. The largest proportion of the blame for Trump's presidency is Hillary Clinton's sense of entitlement.

But the reality for our elites is that the majority have turned against the system. As was the case in Germany in the 1920s and 1930s, these elites believe that your average right-wing shlub can be manipulated and controlled. Germany's capitalist leadership either assisted, or at least were sympathetic to, Adolph Hitler's rousing of their country's right-wing "rabble." Making scapegoats out of the Jews and other groups was tolerable. Fighting against the left-wing was excellent. It wasn't until it was too late that they realized they could not control the monster. It will be the same this time around. Which is not to say that Trump is the new Hitler. He's not even the new Mussolini. (He's not smart enough.) But the lumpen right-wing followers are just as capable now of supporting a new Hitler and dragging us all into the abyss as they were then. They're the same people. Perhaps some members of today's elite are dimly aware of this and are therefore hoping against hope that one of their own (Hillary Clinton, Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio) can somehow squeeze out a victory.

The 100% absolute danger is the rise of the Left. Right-wingers believe that society is dominated by impoverished weak people. That's why they go after the unemployed, minorities, immigrants, non-heterosexuals, etc. They call for "law and order" which only makes it easier for the state to dominate them along with everyone else.

Left-wingers [ON THE OTHER HAND!!!] believe that society is dominated by wealthy, powerful people. We believe that we live in an oligarchy and that therefore it makes much more sense to go after the oligarchs, the plutocrats, the capitalist exploiters, the enforcers of state power, the corrupt liberal and semi-fascist politicians. We call for human equality, human freedom, social justice, environmental sanity, fact-based public policy and increased democratization. Things that are incompatible with our rulers' self-interest. And given the comparison, it is no mystery why the oligarchs fear us more than they do the right-wing chumps.

But either way, the want us both silenced. Hitlers are unreliable, untrustworthy. Inconvenient. They get ideas above their station. They'd like us all silenced. And so that's what they're going to do.

And, sadly, I think I'll end this portion of this wider presentation here. I'm busy. Hope you liked the pikatuhcherrz I stolet from the innernet.