Caitlin Johnstone: Trump Isn’t Another Hitler. He’s Another Obama.
Towards end of Caitlin Johnstone’s epic rant...
*
Let’s be clear, too: the troops are often from some of the finest of working and middle-class families across the States, families whose strong sense of morality about right and wrong led their young sons and daughters to make the courageous decision to enter the armed forces. These young men and women were born with the most exemplary of desires. They want to make the world a better place and they are willing to make the ultimate sacrifice to do so. People love these families and they love their children.
These young people really are our best new humans. They are so committed to the highest interest that they would put aside their self-interest to do so. Do you know how rare that quality is in a human? And these young people are being taken from us young, whether that be by death or by destroying their beautiful minds as they are warped by the war machine into thinking that evil is good. Taken and used to pump up the egos of a selfish few.
In a healthy culture, the highest interest would dictate the desires of these young men and women. Unfortunately, the “highest interest” which should be assessed by the will of the people, is not being heard. It is not being enacted. The will of the people has repeatedly said that it does not want to send these young people off to kill another country’s young people to shore up the share portfolios of a few cancerous beings. The will of the people consistently saysno to that, but it has been corralled by a small group of bloodthirsty vampires, parasites who will happily lay any amount of young bodies to waste to win their tiny dick battles until they are finally satisfied with the amount of zeroes on their bank statements.
Spoiler alert: they never will be.
Americans talk about “seeing through the partisan bullshit” of US politics like it’s some kind of magical superpower, but it’s not. Both parties act in slightly different ways toward the exact same ends, working together like the jab-cross combination of a boxer to advance the same warmongering, corporatist oligarchic agendas, and there’s no reason to believe any of them about anything. America has two corporatist war parties who serve a plutocratic class of elites; one of them wears a cowboy hat, the other has pink hair. That’s it. That’s all you need to see to free yourself from the illusion.
Please stop attacking one another for the evils that have been inflicted on you by this small group of sociopaths, America. Stop buying into the two-party good cop/bad cop schtick that the elites use to turn urban Americans against rural Americans and turn your anger toward your real enemies.
https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2018/01/06/trump-isnt-another-hitler-hes-an...
Go read the whole article. She shows how this foreign intervention crap started with liars like bush**/cheney and now has come down to being policy of our current hickey on a hemorrhoid denizen in the White House.
She is ALWAYS a good, worthwhile read.
Comments
Caitlin is good
...and I thought Al did a good job in his essay the other day on the DNC warmonger platform - illustrating the fact that both parties are interested and complicit in pleasing the perpetrators of war. It is the alter of profit that is served, not the people.
Thanks for the link!
“Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”
You’re welcome.
I'm tired of this back-slapping "Isn't humanity neat?" bullshit. We're a virus with shoes, okay? That's all we are. - Bill Hicks
Politics is the entertainment branch of industry. - Frank Zappa
Correct.
I often have to fight down the feeling of being sorry for Trump supporters.
They're exactly where I was eight years ago.
This is the stage where people notice that the guy in charge isn't living up to his promises. The community splits down the middle, with half the people saying that the other half are traitors, while the "traitorous" half think their accusers are morons.
"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha
"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver
Split communities
In other words, you are ascribing a realization, deservedly made, about Republicans feeing sold out just the way the progressive Demoncrat wing of the party is now since the BS primary. Welcome to the Charade!
Back before the Ides of March decree in DK, I wrote an essay about "Don't county Bernie or Trump out". This was late in 2015 after the first few primaries. I refuse to re-enter Hades to retrieve that post, which essentially said that the Detritus of the 2016 election would leave split both Democrat and Repugnant parties. The Repugnant part of my prediction is slowly coming into realization. The Democrat schism is well-established since the pseudo-primary.
I wrote something so similar
...about the Don and Bernie Show. I was focused on the political-Outsider behaviors and the inexplicable white-hot popularity of the two candidate, which came seemingly out of nowhere. Who could miss how steamed both Party machines were about it? The rallies for both of them said it all. The situation was too transformative to ignore.
Obviously, the split in each party deepened. But the party that wins can hide the split temporarily, just as the Democrats did during the Obama years. But, if Bernie had won, the Neocon Democrats would have taken the win and sabotaged from the inside, just as the Neocon Republicans are doing now. Because the object of the game is ONLY global Empire, which is the ONLY road to wealth concentration for the plutocratic elite.
No matter how 2018 plays out — all it does is just elect more instant millionaires who get a free trip to Israel. Nothing more.
The only way out for the non-deluded working class is extreme, but it is all that we have: change needs to come from the world rejecting the US Dollar for global trade. It will bankrupt the military-extreme that is roaming the world murdering and destroying other cultures as fast as it can. Trump is speeding this up and giving the world no other choice. Thank god.
What I want to know is: Why is the Left focused on any issue other than war? I cannot understand this.
For that matter: Why is the Left focused on any issue other that human overpopulation of the planet? I cannot understand this, either.
Overpopulation is the wellsprings of human doom. It grows alongside technology, whose bounty should be used to evolve the species to a utopian furthering of our sentience. The bounty of technology has been used instead to keep too many people alive in a constant emergency of humanitarian disasters, scrabbling around in the crowded dirt for the last scraps until we all drown in our own filth on a resource-depleted planet.
All other political issues address the inevitable symptoms of a local or global overpopulation situation. Where do folks think such universal issues as racial discrimination come from? Seriously. What do they think sparks this deeply embedded reaction? Bad parenting? Eating too much sugar? Believing in the wrong god?
Unless, this is actually a Test of whether a sentient species that has gotten this far, deserves to continue on. If the species fails this Test, then they are wiped out and sentience starts all over again in a different species. As it has so many times before.
It's got to be weird to be a parent.
@Pluto's Republic
I've noticed a great deal of on-line and newspaper commentary spread around discussing a split between populations voting for either fascism or socialism as the only choices existing outside of the Corporate Parties, lumping both into 'Outsider' categories.
Even we now seem to often wind up using this category for both Bernie and Trump, whose records, policies and character traits could not be more different.
Yet what seems to me to be happening in countries around the globe is that when a socialist party runs and becomes popular, with the Corporate Parties being rejected by the public because they (in some cases, at long last) seem to have a choice of voting for their own interests and those of survival, not only is there more likely a 'leftist' propaganda storm against the socialist, but (apart from Britain and a few other places with a not-entirely-controlled media) from what I can see, the fascist party/candidate - where the Corporate Party cannot hope to be cheated in - seems typically to win, while the once-gaining socialist party/candidate does not even make it to the finals.
The billionaires and corporate self-interests can generally work smoothly with even an 'outside' fascist, sharing the same pathological worldview as they do, but with a socialist, they generally have to threaten the public with absolute horrors even beyond those previously existing (think Greece, already 'repossessed' by ruthless international banksters under a conservative government, before they got in) to get them to give another inch, rather than standing firm and fighting for better, even if strategically and carefully, due to the international and pathologically irrational powers they face.
Psychopaths don't mind and may even enjoy causing human and animal suffering, which emotionally hurts mentally normal humans; they see this essential survival characteristic of empathy as a weakness to exploit, which explains one of many reasons why this destructive brain dysfunction/identifiable character trait must be an absolute disqualification for public office or any position which can be used to abuse others.
The world is, in this sense, divided up into humans and a relatively small proportion of those lacking the human, nurturing, empathetic portion of the brain, their very ruthlessness, notable lack of any capacity for foresight beyond the achievement of their own desires, along with that lack of conscience, enabling them to trample the unwary en route to gain power over them, and con those they have successfully pathologized/brutalized into supporting them.
The psychopath cannot be reached or reasoned with on a human level and The Psychopaths/Parasites That Be have gained the capacity for global destruction via multiple disastrous means profitable for themselves on which TPTB've been mindlessly working for decades, in the delusion that they can somehow survive comfortably on their own and, in some cases, even achieve immortality, without those 'useless eaters' and the planetary life support system they rely upon to carry their parasitic and ultimately fatal weight.
And that overarching and grim reality of psychopathy within and controlling government and corporate industry is the part we've been missing in the struggle toward civilization in a sustainable society. If it is not taken into account and dealt with now, there will quite likely be no hope for life on the planet within the decade, at accelerating rates of destruction and die-off of the global life support system. Without life, hope rots with the corpses.
If we are not careful to support and vote only for non-psychopaths, we vote for our own doom.
We have no time remaining to wait for decades of '3rd'-party-building in a US system long rigged against them, which can and must take place as well, nonetheless.
No person can ever be all things to all people and the global disaster which has been created cannot be fixed with the snap of Presidential fingers, but we cannot lump Bernie in with Trump or in with The Psychopaths/Parasites That Be within either Party, the way the propaganda appears to want us to do, as their death-grip tightens daily around our minds and throats.
Bernie responds to human need, and to evidence; I cannot think of any other viable Presidential candidate currently visible who does. If Bernie-crats succeed in winning in massive, uncheatable landslides in this and the next election and Bernie does the same in this next Presidential election, the turn-around toward survival can at least begin. And I do not see any better chance for even our near-term survival.
If you can think of any, please suggest it.
But we and the planet cannot survive more evil; Mother Nature is not protesting what we're doing to throw us off for a new start, Mother Nature is being murdered by such as 'cost-cutting' and infinitely destructive corporate industrial/military poisoning, clear-cutting, mountain-top removal and other mining, radioactive waste/melt-down leaks, bomb-testing and other fall-out and DUI seeding the earth in invaded countries with perpetual death and destruction, conventional bombing, massive aircraft pollution, especially regarding entirely avoidable and often illegal, as well as immoral, military uses, and other damaging/deadly tech testing/use (such as military and corporate tests of whale/dolphin, etc.-deafening/killing radar and various nanoparticles within oceans and of electromagetics and toxic petrochemicals/metals over the world, with geoengineering also drastically reducing sunlight required for life while destroying the ozone layer and rapidly rendering that sunlight inimical to life) and it is her death throes we are feeling.
Either we do all we can to pull off and isolate the fatally parasitic predators tormenting and killing us and our Earth and work on helping her to naturally recover, or all of whatever remains of the results of billions of years of evolution miserably perishes in the very near future out of nothing more than the imposed pathological greed of ruthless mental deficients.
We must get it together by getting together to focus on getting the psychopaths out of power, everywhere we can; by their deeds and viewpoints shall we know them.
Even now we seem to be seeing what appears to potentially be early published PR 'concern' about 'witch hunts' against suspected psychopaths - that socially-engineered witch-hunt tactic being a strategy which TPTB use against those having independent information, minds, human tolerance and empathy levels, as we see in this very idea that patriotic Americans are happy with the boot-prints in their faces and that only 'Russian spies/propagandists' could possibly be concerned with such as democracy, human rights, the environment, attacks on and invasions of other people's countries to kill and dispossess citizens to steal their sovereignty, governance and resources - at American's public expense - while doing the same via corporate coups labeled as 'trade deals' in their own and allied, economically controlled countries, the murder of US citizens of Colour and others deemed vulnerable by militarized police...
They know we know, and they know they've already self-identified by their actions, attitudes and policies. And we ain't beaten yet, or they wouldn't be scared.
Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.
A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.
People around the world were voting for outsiders
...to escape the corruption. Ideology is second tier. That's my observation. In any other election, If he was a Democratic Party insider, Bernie would not have had the same traction. The fact that he was not mainstream gave him an advantage. His message was heard and it caught on. In any other year, his status would have been a disadvantage, and he would not be heard. That's why he is an "Outsider" first.
I also know what to expect because of the propaganda damage in the general population. Americans always select sociopaths, when there's a choice. They want leaders willing to kill others. They never see themselves as "others." This is what makes them feel safe in their isolation. They worship people with big money, and regard that as wisdom. Therefore, introducing decency into politics requires a certain amount of trickery and fortunate timing. I am merely analyzing the game.
Hillary was really a perfect match for the times. She wasn't an outsider, but she worked on being one. She was a born-again woman. That was her outsider card. What nobody in the Party ever got is that she was revolting to the people. Oh, they knew she was a total turn-off, but they believed that Trump would force a win for her. It was a gamble.
Overall, I agree with your evaluation. I have the same aspirations for the US. I share the vision of your outcomes. Our only difference is that I am certain we cannot get there through normal elections.
A semantic query, Pluto
First of all, I agree with your agreement to Ellen North's comment. Right on as usual.
My question is what is a normal election? Please give the most recent date this occurred.
Ha. You're right.
We embody the spirit of abnormal.
I should have just come out and said it: " We won't get there through an election process."
But then I remember that they're at least willing to put up with
Trump's shithead racism. When a person is desperate, they often stop caring what happens to others, and Trump supporters are desperate--as desperate as I am. But still.
"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha
"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver
That’s all you need to see to free yourself from the illusion.
Amen
question everything
she couldn't
be more wrong:
They are absolutely the worst of humans. They are willing agents of Thanatos, who take money to serve in outfits dedicated solely to killing people and breaking things. There is no lower form of life. A "strong sense of morality about right and wrong" that involves killing people is the morality of the gas chamber. Such is "the most exemplary of desires" only if you are Charles Manson. Such people definitely need to be made conscious, at all times, that they are not only wasting their lives, but wasting—ending—the lives of others. They are serial killers, for money, and they need to be scorned and shunned, unless and until they repent of all that they did. None of it will ever end, until individual human beings, all over the world, understand what Gurdjieff meant, when asked during WWI what the combatants would do if they became "awake": “They would throw down their guns and go home to their families.” As Tolstoy knew, "a soldier is a peasant gone bad." As Tim O'Brien confessed: "I was a coward. I went to the war."
It's funny how if someone kills somebody in a freelance manner
they are incarcerated or killed, yet if they do so at the behest of an oligarch, they are rehabilitated into "heroes". Invading armies are always evil.
"Obama promised transparency, but Assange is the one who brought it."
a hit man
doesn't get off in criminal court because somebody paid him to do it. Nor do people rush over to weep and genuflect and chant "thank you for your service."
A hit man will at least turn down a job, if he feels like it. "The troops" just go out and kill whoever they're told to.
A hit man with a penchant for sloppily gunning down a bunch of bystanders is soon out of a job. "The troops" get medals, and people fussing around them wanting to make sure they're "alright."
@dervish I tend to take more a
I tend to take more a middle road and see them as people who have the choice of living in poverty or killing people for a living. Whether they become soldiers, cops, or private security, it all comes down to the same thing in the end.
Of course, they could all work fast food. Don't get sick, though.
"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha
"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver
Thank goodness somebody said it.
Fuck the military tbh. (That's not to say we shouldn't take care of them when they come home of course.)
This shit is bananas.
Just how many of these people do you know?
A large number enlist because it's the best job they can get. I know a young man who enlisted because it was the only way top get health insurance for his wife and children. He tried for the Coast Guard, but they weren't interested in somebody with twins. The army was more accommodating.
I taught a significant number of ROTC students. Many of them would never have been in college without the stipend. They were interested in avoiding war through deterrence. If you think servicemen and women enjoy four, five or six tours away from their families in Afghanistan and Iraq you are seriously out of touch. Look at what the war is doing to them. If they were as you describe them they'd find the experience delightful.
The addition of Vietnam Vets Against the War provoked a dramatic change in the way Americans viewed antiwar protests--a lot less head bashing.
Your typical low income, poorly educated recruit has little more understanding of what he or she is getting into than you do.
somehow
that doesn't work in the criminal courts. "Your honor, my client had to start killing people and breaking things, because he couldn't otherwise find a job."
Maybe I can try that when I walk down the street and shoot the clerk in the convenience store. I mean, I don't have much money, and I could use some cigarettes.
The clerk is Syrian. How about if we transport him over there, and I put on a patch that says "I Am An Army Man," and follow? Then when I kill him, I will get a Parade. Also, health insurance!
While it's true there
is a percentage of enlistees, , that can't Wait to get their hands on an fully automatic rifle and start blasting the bad guys. But that percentage is small. Most GI Joes are just avg. joes that choose the military hoping to learn a marketable skill (besides killing people), becuz college isn't an option or interest, and the job market is bleak at best. The Military their best option. They may not be the best or brightest, but they're not the bad guys either. The Army just a place to earn a paycheck. I know a bunch of them. Not by name, but by face. I know their wives, I know their kids. Damn few are all that eager to return to the killing fields. Some are. Can't wait! But damn few. They would just as soon never return, but never is rarely an option for them.
the little things you can do are more valuable than the giant things you can't! - @thanatokephaloides. On Twitter @wink1radio. (-2.1) All about building progressive media.
they
absolutely are the bad guys. They're killing people and breaking things. For money. They don't even select their own victims. They just kill who they're told, break what they're told. It doesn't get any badder than that.
Soldiers have done that -
followed orders - since Adam and Eve, . That don't make them bad people. I served in Uncle Sam's Army during Vietnam. I was among the 50% in my training unit that went somewhere else. In my case, Germany. The other 50% went to 'nam. Luck of the draw. They told us only 10% of us would be going to 'nam. They lied. What's new? Of the 50% of us that went to 'nam... were they "bad people" compared to those of us that went elsewhere? Was I a bad people for wearing the uniform during a time of war? Four months before Basic Training I was protesting the war. Five months later I was shooting a gun for the first time, an M-16. I carried a .45 cal semi auto on my hip as part of my uniform as an M.P. (military police). Most GI Joes I've met (in the Army and out) are just like anybody else. Go home at the end of the day, hug and kiss the wife, have some dinner, play video games with the kids, call it a night. Most do not pray, "dear Lord, give me some bad guys to kill tomorrow." Not a one in my MP unit prayed for that. Your bad guy GIs are in Rambo movies, not reality.
the little things you can do are more valuable than the giant things you can't! - @thanatokephaloides. On Twitter @wink1radio. (-2.1) All about building progressive media.
that's why
it never stops: "Soldiers have done that -followed orders - since Adam and Eve." There can be no war, without warriors. Want to stop the wars? Support no troops. Only when there are no troops, will there be no wars.
So, you're anti-soldier,
regardless of circumstance. No soldiers, no war. Fine. Fine. Got it. My solution, instead, like a lot of others, is to close the bases. Closing bases automatically reduces the number of warriors. But there always will be a need for soldiers. Somebody has to stand on the wall providing defense of the home front. Since forever. Closing bases, however, reduces the Empire and reduces warriors. Maybe even the need for war.
the little things you can do are more valuable than the giant things you can't! - @thanatokephaloides. On Twitter @wink1radio. (-2.1) All about building progressive media.
Johnstone obviously used this as a literary device.
It's not like her to pander in an obvious way to her American readers, but that's what she did. There are times when I would do the same thing — crawl inside people's skin and and try to change them from the inside out.
That's what this is about:
She, I have no doubt, shares your view.
It is what it is, after all.
I agree with hecate
Good summary, hecate. I agree with Caitlyn that there is no difference between the two parties. Both are knowingly sending our troops off to kill and die for profits.
I'm seeing people saying horrible things about what Trump is doing without acknowledging that Obama did the same things. Amnesia has gripped the nation as well as hysteria.
Was Humpty Dumpty pushed?
I'm a millennial, and yet I
I'm a millennial, and yet I feel like I've lived a lifetime of bitterness, hate, and disgust at this nation and how complicit and willing its people are.
Americans are weak, cowardly, selfish, fearful, incompetent people. Americans can be easily commanded to fear 3rd-world rice farmers and so Americans cheer raping and killing them. American soldiers rape and destroy everything in their path as they did throughout Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. All in the name of profit.
The frightening thing is how committing atrocities are seen as virtuous and good. Americans merely shrugged at Abu Ghraib, didn't prosecute those for the My Lai Massacre and gang rape (sorry one soldier got house arrest for 3 years - justice served), and applaud psychopaths like Ted Cruz who want to nuke the entire Middle East.
Beneath the layers of corporate propaganda of wrapping ourselves in flags, patriotism, and exceptionalism, there is a rot. A rot that runs so deep, so wide. There is no cure for this rot. It permeates everything, going through every inch of this nation.
Americans won't stop this. They won't lift a finger to stop any of this. America is the greatest threat to the survival of the human race. Either all the nations band together to stop us or we will take down everything on this planet.
You're right about one
thing, . "Americans won't stop this." If they ain't "woke" by now I don't know that they'll ever be. Hell, most are hung up on Russia! Russia! Russia! to worry about their country being yanked from underneath them. Still I hold hope.
the little things you can do are more valuable than the giant things you can't! - @thanatokephaloides. On Twitter @wink1radio. (-2.1) All about building progressive media.