@Phoebe Loosinhouse

I've never dreamed about a website and would probably ascribe it to "an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of underdone potato."

Or, more likely, a mushroom or three of un-authorized taxonomy.....

#1
Periods of withdrawal are restorative. I didn't post or comment for about a month recently, although not due to any issues with this site; it was the holidays, I had a lot of stuff going on, I was interested in doing some things I had neglected IRL, etc.

But, when I did feel the need to discuss current events again, I came back here to my own internet "safe space", where at the minimum, I think I'll find some decent conversation, insights and information that doesn't have to pass through a sieve of political correctness or run by a gauntlet of Party protectionists.

I've never dreamed about a website and would probably ascribe it to "an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of underdone potato."

@CB

When political debate no longer speaks to us, people become responsive instead to slogans, symbols and sensation. To the admirers of Trump and Hillary, for example, facts and arguments appear irrelevant.

#1
Trump did not come from nowhere. Just like a fungus, the ground has to have the right conditions. It takes a long time for the mycelium to grow and spread, hidden and unnoticed in the dark, absorbing nutrients, until the fruiting body suddenly sprouts from the ground, fully formed as if from nowhere.

Trump is the fruiting body of a fungus called neoliberalism. This fungus, first known as the Washington Consensus, was deliberately and forcefully injected into foreign nations all around the globe in order to pillage their resources, both labor and material - many times under force of arms. The disease eventually returned to its source and infected its mother country. America, the land of rotting, unfettered capitalism was well prepared for the fungus to thrive.

In the Chris Hedges article you posted, there is a link to

Neoliberalism – the ideology at the root of all our problems
...
Perhaps the most dangerous impact of neoliberalism is not the economic crises it has caused, but the political crisis. As the domain of the state is reduced, our ability to change the course of our lives through voting also contracts. Instead, neoliberal theory asserts, people can exercise choice through spending. But some have more to spend than others: in the great consumer or shareholder democracy, votes are not equally distributed. The result is a disempowerment of the poor and middle. As parties of the right and former left adopt similar neoliberal policies, disempowerment turns to disenfranchisement. Large numbers of people have been shed from politics.

Chris Hedges remarks that “fascist movements build their base not from the politically active but the politically inactive, the ‘losers’ who feel, often correctly, they have no voice or role to play in the political establishment”. When political debate no longer speaks to us, people become responsive instead to slogans, symbols and sensation. To the admirers of Trump, for example, facts and arguments appear irrelevant.
...