Politics of Hate

Warning: This will be a rant.

Everyday here in America shows another round of insanity that seems utterly improbable to occur. And yet it does.

Everyday the corruption becomes more entrenched, the populace more tortuously obedient and ignorant, and the world slowly dying.

Everyday creates a new bud of hatred for the system and a new blooming of resignation to the system.

While this list is not all encompassing, it is a start. If something is missed, it isn't due to importance but rather a fevered state.

*I hate how both parties view themselves as the "good guys" as they commit atrocities around the world.
*I hate how the Democrats view themselves as these enlightened, marvelous people when in reality they are manipulable, bloodthirsty individuals.
*I hate how Republicans view themselves as God's chosen when they are also manipulable, bloodthirsty individuals.
*I hate how Christians don't somehow explode in the contradiction of accepting Capitalism as their orthodox.
*I hate how Clinton supporters somehow in this deluded fantasy see Clinton having the election rigged against her by the Russians and Sanders having the advantage.
*I hate how Democrats view themselves as pragmatic and somehow "wanting the same things" as 'progressives' when in reality they are nauseatingly greedy and selfish people living in their 5-1% lifestyle not giving a single fuck about the lives of poor people.
*I hate how often more so with Democrats than Republicans can simultaneously be for and against the very same thing merely depending on partisan approach (being against the Iraq War to some extent but then also simultaneously talking about the virtue of destroying Libya and Syria).
*I hate how Democrats try to sell themselves as the party of women and POC when those same Democrats voted to rape, torture, kill, or ruin the lives of those very same people across the world multiple times (Vietnam, Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, Libya, and on and on).
*I hate how Sanders who talked about the virtues of 3rd parties and the problems of the duopoly is nothing more than a company party man for the Democrats, even though he now has the most power he has ever had in his elected history. If there was any singular individual in the last century who even had a chance of breaking the duopoly and allowing 3rd parties to grow, it would have been him. But instead he shows his obsequiousness to power.
*I hate how the general population just plods along, barely able to lift their obese frames as they consume and consume everything in their path from food to utterly meaningless trinkets and baubles in our excessive consumerist society.
*I hate how the general population talks about wanting a 3rd party yet will never vote for the damn 3rd parties on the ballot. I mean, Libertarians were in all the state ballots while Green was in roughly 48 I believe. This in itself could generate an essay but I'll leave that for later.
*I hate how we are mindlessly careening off the cliff here with regards to climate change, with the general populace just strolling along. In the end the rich will win while the general population dies off without even a single whimper.
*I hate how easy it is to manipulate the American public, ramping up another Cold War with Russia so easily. My God, it's like the MIC just has a game-show spin wheel and whatever the arrow lands on will be the next enemy. In 30 years we will probably worry about Islamic terrorists again. Or maybe we will have moved back to Communists, or maybe the Chinese. Who knows. The public just easily accepts the lies of Rachel Maddow or Hannity or whatever nonsense gets pushed at the other networks.

I know there is more, but I could go on for quite some digital pages here. In the end I see no reason for hope. My generation of millennials are barely scraping by while Boomers won't give up a single ounce of power until it is pried from their cold, dead hands. And by then it probably will be too late.

Again this is a rant so I don't have an eloquent and elegant ending. It seems that we are resigned to just watch the world burn around us.

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The Aspie Corner's picture

I know there is more, but I could go on for quite some digital pages here. In the end I see no reason for hope. My generation of millennials are barely scraping by while Boomers won't give up a single ounce of power until it is pried from their cold, dead hands. And by then it probably will be too late.

They refuse to concede anything even when enough people demand it. They just want to die with as many toys as they can get before their destructive policies kill the world for good. They are literally eating their young alive as younger folks continue to work several jobs at once because greedy employers refuse to pay proper wages or institute proper 40-hour work weeks to get around paying benefits because they'll go "bankrupt" (code for shareholders losing money).

They and their Habsburgian/Randian/Rothbardian offspring want all the perks of society but they don't want to pay a single red cent because society doesn't exist to them. Only money.

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Modern education is little more than toeing the line for the capitalist pigs.

Guerrilla Liberalism won't liberate the US or the world from the iron fist of capital.

Pricknick's picture

@ @The Aspie Corner
Generational blame.

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Regardless of the path in life I chose, I realize it's always forward, never straight.

The Aspie Corner's picture

@Pricknick And here we are facing the consequences of their bullshit with no recourse. No alternative. And you wanna whine about generational blame? All right, the boomers weren't the only generation of sociopaths. Not all boomers behave this way. I get it. But those assholes who do are the ones with the loudest megaphone.

The Silents had quite a few of their own and like their boomer offspring, they'll still hold power even after they're dead. And some millennials and post-millennials would rather bitch about how everything is being 'ruined' by 'feminists' and 'sjws' while the rest are too busy worrying where the next gig is going to come from to give a shit what they think.

I myself gave up on the gig economy because there's nothing out there if you don't have a drivers' license, a car and so-called good credit on top of having disabilities that make physical labor too difficult for any piece of shit manager to tolerate.

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Modern education is little more than toeing the line for the capitalist pigs.

Guerrilla Liberalism won't liberate the US or the world from the iron fist of capital.

Steven D's picture

@The Aspie Corner @The Aspie Corner have all the money. Many Boomers are struggling and will struggle even more as they age, particularly the later Boomers (of which I am one).

I know a lot of Boomers my age who lost everything in their fifties - job, house, pension, etc. Many went into debt to help put our kids through school only to find that college no longer provides passage to a middle class lifestyle.

That said, I know older Boomers, the ones who made their money during the 80's or got lucky who fit the profile you describe, but it's not a large percentage.

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"You can't just leave those who created the problem in charge of the solution."---Tyree Scott

Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

@Pricknick Here's the thing. In my experience, Gen X was the first to be targeted for blame by Boomers and Silents who didn't want to face up to the awful crash and burn of their dreams when those dreams came into high-velocity contact with the brick wall that was the earlier rendition of the American police state. Rather than admitting to themselves that they had been defeated by a truly horrendous power structure, many of them buried themselves in Reaganism and consumerism, while projecting the qualities of apathy and materialistic selfishness onto my generation. This was a veritable media project that began when I was an adolescent and most of my generation were still kids. And it was pushed in the media. That's how we became known as Gen X. The media branded us as that. The idea was that we had no real beliefs or unifying concern, so we were a mystery. At the same time, they pushed the idea that we were selfish, uncaring, materialistic little bastards. While, in many cases, our Boomer and Silent Gen parents voted for Reagan.

I've been living with this all my life. That's why I'm surprised when I come on a Gen-Xer who does that same thing to the millenials. That happens about half the time. The other half of the time, the Gen-Xer in question remembers what happened to us and feels solidarity with the millenials who are getting the same shit--just with a slightly different twist--from the media.

What it comes down to is that somebody needs to be blamed because the large left-wing movements and the joyous creative expression of the 60s and early 70s died and left us with--mostly--a pile of junk. And we can't blame the people who are actually responsible, because they have power. We need sin eaters. My generation has filled that role since I was twelve.

To the millenials, all I can say is, welcome aboard the shit train.

To the Boomers and Silents of good conscience I say, please recognize what's going on and withdraw your support for these memes.

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"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

@The Aspie Corner
You might as well be blaming our troubles on immigrants or blacks as blaming a generation, that's just what the power wants. This generational warfare serves only the interests of power.

I'm a boomer. We inherited the Cold War, DDT, fossil fuel, imperialism, and nuclear nightmares. Every single day we expected to die in a nuclear holocaust; we practiced for it in school. I practiced hiding behind the washing machine in the basement. We turned out in the MILLIONS to fight against war, defend the environment, oppose capitalism, fight for civil rights… the list goes on. Look up Mayday, Amchitka, Kent State. We were positioned by timing and circumstances to rise up: we had the numbers, there was liberation in the air, a lot of factors combined synergistically. There was nothing special about us, we just happened to be there. Power learned a LOT in those times about how to manipulate, control and co-opt, and eventually power won. We suffer today from those lessons that power learned. And one of the biggest lessons that power learned was divide and conquer.

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The Aspie Corner's picture

@pindar's revenge And you're right that they've got the divide and conquer strategy down pat. It worked quite well in 2016 and it's only gotten worse since. We have no way of pushing back against this kind of crap because those who plug it have more money and resouces than we ever will.

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Modern education is little more than toeing the line for the capitalist pigs.

Guerrilla Liberalism won't liberate the US or the world from the iron fist of capital.

@The Aspie Corner
for the last 50 years. We were beaten, busted and shot, but the most successful strategy was turning us against each other. Let's not perpetuate that.

Here's a little tidbit that didn't make it into the history books: in the 70's, record companies were undecided whether to promote reggae, danceable but with themes of liberation, or disco, danceable but with themes of "Gucci, Pucci, Fiorucci". Guess which won?

We need more oral history to counterweight the bullshit that simplifies and distorts the past. I've been to demonstrations and saw the tv coverage, and couldn't believe they were describing the same event. Example: an anti-nuke demo with 100k+ marching. TV showed one counter-demonstrator with a sign saying "A Little Nukie Never Hurt Anyone".

Blaming the older generation AKA Establishment was de rigeur in my youth. A popular protest button read "Don't Trust Anyone Over 30".
I scratched out the zero.

At a demo, I saw a group of oldsters who were definitely of the "Establishment" generation. They carried a banner which said "Abraham Lincoln Brigade".
These guys were volunteers who fought the Fascists in Spain.
Live and learn.

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@pindar's revenge

Cheers loudly - solidarity wins!

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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.

Pricknick's picture

*I hate those who blame any generation for the issues all generations face.

My generation of millennials are barely scraping by while Boomers won't give up a single ounce of power until it is pried from their cold, dead hands.

I've seen an uncomfortable rise here and on other sites (maybe it's just me) of generational disgust.
As a boomer, I've spent my life helping others including millennials such as yourself. I quit blaming my elders when I realized that I had to take responsibility for myself first. Sure it sucks. I'm scraping. But I'll never blame your or any generation for where I am.

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Regardless of the path in life I chose, I realize it's always forward, never straight.

Strife Delivery's picture

@Pricknick

I quit blaming my elders when I realized that I had to take responsibility for myself first.

A nice statement to deflect from the sheer destruction that the Boomer generation inflicted upon the planet. Blaming your elders? For what? Boomers had things granted to them on a giant silver platter. More of a meaningless pull-yourself-up-by-the-bootstraps garbage that Boomers like to believe they had to do but in reality never had to do.

Might as well tell the children in Iraq who had their houses bombed that they need to take responsibility for themselves and not blame older generations.

Boomers will never take responsibility for the death and destruction they rained down upon the future generations. Opportunities, wages, costs of living across the board, environmental stability, and on and on were literally handed to the Boomers. And what did Boomers do for the future generations? Gutted everything and hoarded. Now, the planet is very close to an utter environmental meltdown across the board from decades upon decades of destruction, but somehow we should absolve the previous generations of what they did? The thing is, from just normal lifespans, the Boomers won't be around to truly see the damage they have inflicted on the planet. And it will be far too late. Millennials and Gen Z will face the full brunt of that.

Take responsibility? Scientists are already worrying that it is too late to stop the changes. We needed to do these things decades ago, before guess what, Millennials were even born. So tell me: How were Millennials and Gen Z supposed to take responsibility and fix these problems that not only took decades to create but also already are too late to fix?

Boomers have been dictating our government policy for decades. Even 2016, Trump and Clinton were overwhelmingly favored by Boomers. Millennials showed their preference, upon which I have disagreements with the man, but their preference was Sanders. But instead of Boomers listening about the roar from the Millennials, they scoffed and told them "No".

What you do individually is you. But in history we look at the average of a society, or in particular, a generation spanning a certain period of time.

Were there people in the 1870's who viewed AA's as actual human beings? Yeah, but the average in society didn't really follow that belief. So we don't mention every instance of every outlier of every individual.

In the end, there is a reason that Boomers are called the "Me Generation". Everything they did was for them and it didn't matter if it damned future generations so long as it benefited them. Through all their party-hard, me-me-me philosophy, only now is the damage taking effect and will only truly come to fruition when the Boomers are gone.

Millennials like myself are expected to have shortened lifespans because of the damage inflicted by previous generations. But I guess I need to take responsibility for that, right?

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Daenerys's picture

@Strife Delivery about being born on third base and think they hit a home run? Yup.

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This shit is bananas.

Pricknick's picture

@Strife Delivery

But I guess I need to take responsibility for that, right?

But to generalize a situation that is also performed by all is wrong.
I dislike Zuckerberg for the way he manipulates all generations for personal gain. Yet I don't blame millennials of which he belongs to.
All I was trying to say is that you can paint a broad stroke in blaming others when only a fine line actually is true.

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Regardless of the path in life I chose, I realize it's always forward, never straight.

Centaurea's picture

@Strife Delivery

Blaming your [the Boomers'] elders? For what?

Well, let's see ...

The rise to global power of the petrochemical industry.

Environmentally detrimental practices by pretty much every industry, which were engaged in with no thought of potential consequences down the line. Toxic waste dumps, fracking (it's been around a long time), improper disposal of nuclear waste, etc. etc.

Development of the "consumer society", embracing and normalizing the use of manipulative psy-ops in consumer advertising (a la Edward Bernays), planned obsolescence in the design and production of consumer goods.

Invention and growth of the mass electronic media (first motion pictures and radio, then TV) without considering how to manage it to avoid potential downsides.

The development of governmental intelligence agencies as instruments of the military-industrial complex. Beginnings of the "Deep State".

The deliberate destabilization of the Middle East, beginning with Iran in the 1950s at the behest of the oil industry.

US imperialism, interventionalism, and "regime change". Korea. Vietnam. Iran-Contra. Henry Kissinger.

PNAC. The Powell Memo. The oligarchical movement that had been operating in the background since FDR's time, plotting and planning.

I could go on, but you see how this works?

You seem to have all of your anger focused on one particular segment of society. All of this white hot rage at how life is, at the mess the human race is in at the moment, projected onto one group of people, whom you refer to as "Boomers"; although I'm not sure that you clearly understand to whom that term applies.

There are pieces of truth in what you've posted about this (in this essay as well as comments elsewhere at c99). But they're floating in a sea of historical inaccuracies and clichés. Your view of the events of 20th century America -- who did what, and when, and how the generations fit together and interacted -- is faulty and distorted. Similarly, your understanding of the life experiences of the Boomer generation is faulty.

As a Boomer, I am well aware of my generation's shortcomings. I would be happy to have a good faith discussion about this, but I'm not sure that's what you're looking for.

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"Don't go back to sleep ... Don't go back to sleep ... Don't go back to sleep."
~Rumi

"If you want revolution, be it."
~Caitlin Johnstone

Strife Delivery's picture

@Centaurea

You seem to have all of your anger focused on one particular segment of society. All of this white hot rage at how life is, at the mess the human race is in at the moment, projected onto one group of people, whom you refer to as "Boomers"; although I'm not sure that you clearly understand to whom that term applies.

There are pieces of truth in what you've posted about this (in this essay as well as comments elsewhere at c99). But they're floating in a sea of historical inaccuracies and clichés. Your view of the events of 20th century America -- who did what, and when, and how the generations fit together and interacted -- is faulty and distorted. Similarly, your understanding of the life experiences of the Boomer generation is faulty.

As a Boomer, I am well aware of my generation's shortcomings. I would be happy to have a good faith discussion about this, but I'm not sure that's what you're looking for.

What stemmed from one sentence in this essay has then spawned all future comments to revolve around that sentence, which wasn't the point of the essay at all. The essay itself actually had nothing to do with Boomers; it was a throw-in sentence at the end of a rant. That throw-in sentence was regarding current power dynamics. The essay itself was structured around specified terms: "Democrats", "Republicans", "Christians and Capitalists", "American public", etc. But I never threw in Boomers into the list. My comment on Boomers had nothing to relate to back to the initial essay; it was just in relation to a response from Pricknick.

And already the dripping arrogance and condescension on my ability to understand terms, such as the basic terminology of Baby Boomers which are simply folks born from the mid 40's to early 60's. Not that hard, but it seems that older generations always seem to have a nauseating condescension towards younger generations. It's like Clinton for 2016 - constantly shouting down millennials for not understanding how the "real world" worked.

But they're floating in a sea of historical inaccuracies and clichés. Your view of the events of 20th century America -- who did what, and when, and how the generations fit together and interacted -- is faulty and distorted. Similarly, your understanding of the life experiences of the Boomer generation is faulty.

I'm not going to go and unpack through this. Also another nauseating concept that older generations seem to cling to is this belief that younger generations cannot simply grab a handy-dandy history book and learn about the time period to cut through the haze you are trying to puff upward. I guess it's easier to just say how X,Y, and Z are wrong without going through the leg work of showing how, but that's expecting too much. It isn't difficult to look at economic data and historical trends, as well as the accumulation of wealth and power.

I would be happy to have a good faith discussion about this, but I'm not sure that's what you're looking for.

Going through and reading your comment, I doubt it.

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@Strife Delivery back like all the way to WWI if we're really honest about it? And really, our very Constitution was set up to protect not a generation or the entire country but a particular CLASS of people. It is the RICH who have kept their power and co-opted so many Americans into being the greedy shits they currently are. And by blaming ONE entire generation you're only playing by our owners' rules. I have more than enough anger at my Greatest Gen parents for how they voted and what they were taught to believe in, but even I have had to revise much of my blame - they were as propagandized as we are today. Who to blame for that? The rich of course. Should my parents have known better? Damn right they should, in my mind. But I voted Dem all those years thinking these greedy bastards were "liberal" and "fair," who's the dupe now?

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Only a fool lets someone else tell him who his enemy is. Assata Shakur

@Strife Delivery
immediately followed the boomers. It was a symptom of the reaction against the social involvement of the boomers. One of Power's triumphs.

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Strife Delivery's picture

@pindar's revenge

Actually, the me generation
immediately followed the boomers. It was a symptom of the reaction against the social involvement of the boomers. One of Power's triumphs.

I'm going to have to push back on this one. The Me Generation refers to Boomers. Considering that the term got coined in the mid-70's, and you have the span of Boomers being born from mid 40's to early 60's, the Gen X's at the time at their oldest would have been 14/15 by the end of the 70's. The topics of self-help, hedonism, consumerism and more applied to the generation that had the means of pursuing those ideals. Those would be the Boomers, not the children, pre-teens, or barely teenagers of Gen X.

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@Strife Delivery
I've always seen boomer defined as being born WWII into the 50's. I'd never heard Me Generation applied that way, and I was there. There's a reason why professors reject research from wikipedia. The peak of self-indulgence was in the Reagan era, dwarfing the 70's.
The mid-70's were a sharp dividing line. Consumerism was just returning in vogue, along with disco and nose drugs. A lot of the self-indulgence was a reaction to despair and disillusion. And there seems to be a misconception that everyone was rich or well-off. There was less concentration of wealth at the top, but few were wealthy. "Means of pursuing"? I'd really like to know where that came from. Not everyone was a record company executive or "jet-setter", as we called the bouzhies. I'm wondering what sort of disinformation and stereotype is being promulgated, and where. Remember, the winners write the history. And the corporations won. Much of what I read about the era seems to have been written about an alternate universe.

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Strife Delivery's picture

@pindar's revenge

I'm going by experience, not wikipedia
I've always seen boomer defined as being born WWII into the 50's. I'd never heard Me Generation applied that way, and I was there. There's a reason why professors reject research from wikipedia. The peak of self-indulgence was in the Reagan era, dwarfing the 70's.
The mid-70's were a sharp dividing line. Consumerism was just returning in vogue, along with disco and nose drugs. A lot of the self-indulgence was a reaction to despair and disillusion. And there seems to be a misconception that everyone was rich or well-off. There was less concentration of wealth at the top, but few were wealthy. "Means of pursuing"? I'd really like to know where that came from. Not everyone was a record company executive or "jet-setter", as we called the bouzhies. I'm wondering what sort of disinformation and stereotype is being promulgated, and where. Remember, the winners write the history. And the corporations won. Much of what I read about the era seems to have been written about an alternate universe.

So because it didn't fit your anecdote of experience, it means that not only is it wrong but that I must have gone right from wikipedia right? It can't at all be looking through history or reading articles/journals from the time period right? There's also a reason why professors reject anecdotal experience in place of research as well.

The Boomers are divided into two chunks: the one you described and then the other half, the Trailing-Edge Boomers or a bunch of other names that go from the 50's to early 60's. Considering again that Gen X are born from 1965 to the early 80's, that has to mean that Boomers go from the mid 40's up to 1964. You have demographers and researchers such as Gallup and Pew Research which uses up to the mid 60's to define Boomers. I'll stick with general trends in society and defined terminology vs. individual, anecdotal experience.

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@Strife Delivery
was added later; originally it was considered to end around 55. I guess they had to tack on the next ten years to fit a definition of "generation".

I mentioned wikipedia because your description fit a quick scan of their article. I should not have implied that that was the extent of your source.

Much sociology is based on anecdotal evidence, otherwise called oral history. It's very important to challenge the abbreviations and biases of the dominant class.

But this fine slicing and dicing -- is it productive? I see huge slabs of population get stuck with glib descriptions that reduce the true complexity to sound bites.

Let us agree to disagree, and focus on what's more important.

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Strife Delivery's picture

@pindar's revenge Fair enough.

To be frank (and I have a friend with that middle name), personally for demographic purposes Boomers should have ended right at the cusp of the 60's. But now we like placing generations every 20 years which is a hair too long.

Those born in the early 80's vs. the late 90's/right at 2000 face vast differences in their life experiences, but we call them millennials.

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@Strife Delivery
This labeling of generations (boom [from postwar baby boom]), etc. is misleading. The baby boom had one sharp edge: the end of WWII and soldiers returning. There's no real reason for sharp categories; there are trends and transitions. I tend to think more in decades, and I'm flexible there too. For instance, I consider the 70's to have started in 72, thereabouts. It's convenient to label and categorize, but for substantive discussion it may be more productive to think in terms of historical events like Vietnam, Earth Day, or nine eleven.

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@Strife Delivery
I'm a boomer. I went into education. I never expected to get rich, but I thought I'd have security in my old age. Now they're trying to mess with my pension and health insurance benefits. Two good friends of mine and a close friend of my mother's son were laid off in their mid-fifties. So was my spouse. Two of them will get reduced pensions. The others take any temporary job they can get. Take a look at all the boomers behind the counters at McDonald's.

I imagine you and I regularly vote for the same candidates. At least I had the privilege of casting one vote for the New Deal. And I've protested war, racism, and environmental degradation just like many here in all cohorts. I didn't eat CA grapes for years.

Tell me about all this power I have. Tell me where they hid my money. I'm starting to need it. (Maybe the 1% is holding it in a blind trust.) I'll accept responsibility for my own actions, but not for Jamie Dimon's.

You attempt to create one more division for no good reason. We're on the same side.

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Strife Delivery's picture

@FuturePassed

I'm a boomer. At least I had the privilege of casting one vote for the New Deal.

A vote for the New Deal?

How old are you? I ask because if you're voting for the New Deal you wouldn't be a Baby Boomer.

Regardless, it seems that I'm going to have to construct another essay to get my point across.

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@Strife Delivery
was the last president elected by the New Deal coalition. Admittedly, he weakened it and set the stage for what was to follow. But Carter was genuinely trying to help the working people of the country, misguided though he often was.

Nixon's Southern Strategy was having an ongoing effect too.

But I was voting before any national Democrat dared to claim the New Deal is dead.

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Strife Delivery's picture

@FuturePassed Oh the COALITION, OK, gotcha.

I mean, I thought you were talking about the New Deal back when FDR ran on it back in the 30's. That would make you a bit long in the tooth there.

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@Strife Delivery
Fixed that for you.

'... Boomers corporate self-interests have been dictating our government policy for decades. ...'

And I'll stop there, lol.

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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.

@Strife Delivery

Once again, this will undoubtedly end up on a dead thread, lol. Oh, well...

This following illustrates what was and is running American policy, not the citizens the government was to be of, by and for, or the ideal of democracy with equal rights, treatment and opportunity for all, or any care for the public good. The psychopathic US industrialists who funded and supported Hitler as a proxy for their previous attempt at a corporate/military global take-over.

When psychopaths arrive in an essentially lawless or isolated area, as within a new frontier, their very ruthlessness often enables them to take over from the beginning and to pathologize that society by imposing their inhuman world-view.

Where psychopathy is not yet understood and restrained from taking power over others on order to predate upon them, this will happen. Due to the brain deficiency of the born psychopath, they regard other life as alien-to-them machinery either useful or disposable and humans as weak tools to manipulate or do with as they will; basic human survival capacities such as ethics and empathy are past their comprehension and perceived by them as weaknesses to be manipulated and used against humans and are presented as such by them in 'social engineering', and so they shape, as far as they can, any society over which they gain control into a destructive and ultimately unsustainable personal resource enacting their wills.

This, following, is a demonstration of what happened where psychopaths ruthlessly gaining great wealth, typically at the too-often extreme expense of others, translated into political power in one country, supported psychopaths within another country, in order to use these and the people and resources of that country for their own purposes, (possibly in the end figuring out that the fascists they'd fostered in order to control the world on their behalf would be no longer controllable by them in any end stage,) providing not only funding, etc., but their manipulative skills in the form of propaganda which also worked upon another population, with a great number of these simply in denial, as 'this can't happen within our democracy, therefore it must not be happening', exactly as occurs within America, with a nurtured collection of psychopaths in now-obvious control and the gloves coming off to show the hand of the monster beneath.

We need to understand what we're dealing with in order to do so, while withstanding their manipulations; clever psychopaths have fooled experts, at least over the short-term, and can coldly manipulate even these, without them realizing until, perhaps, much later. Lying doesn't bother them, you see, and they can do so easily, even passing lie detector tests without a falter or a sign - without conscience. And they'd much rather that we blame their other victims...

http://www.publicbooks.org/what-the-nazis-learned-from-america/

What the Nazis Learned from America
7.6.2017

... Many observers have condemned the term “alt-right” as obfuscation—an attempt by standard-issue right-wing hate groups to rebrand themselves as something respectable-sounding. For example, in a New York Times opinion piece published shortly after the election, historian Kelly J. Baker correctly pointed out that the alt-right is an extension of earlier white-supremacist movements and shares much with the scientific racists and white-supremacist propagandists of the early 20th century—people like the millionaire philanthropist and eugenics advocate Madison Grant, whose books Hitler admired. For Baker, Grant and others also prefigure the alt-right’s attempts to dress up or hide white-supremacist ideas in terms that might gain broader acceptance in respectable circles. The KKK, but in suits. ...

...In his new book, Hitler’s American Model: The United States and the Making of Nazi Race Law, legal scholar James Q. Whitman shows that America’s regime of legal discrimination drew the admiration of the most notorious “race realists” of the 20th century, the Nazi regime. The mutual regard of Nazi and US eugenicists is well known to historians of scientific racism. (Edwin Black’s 2003 War Against the Weak brings together many threads of this story.) We know, for instance, that Hitler wrote a fan letter to Grant, and that his writings and speeches exhibited an approving awareness of US compulsory sterilization laws, racial restrictions on immigration, and—especially—exterminatory policies toward Native Americans.

... On the US side, the eugenicist Harry Laughlin published a translation of the 1933 German Law for the Prevention of Defective Progeny in his Eugenical News. He noted proudly that the Nazi law, like several similar American state laws, was patterned on a model that he drafted. As late as 1940, the American writer Lothrop Stoddard published a book subtitled “A Sympathetic Report from Hitler’s Wartime Reich.” By then, admiration for Germany was unfashionable, but for most of his career Stoddard had been a respected expert on international relations whose work, alongside Grant’s, brought the idea of “race suicide” into the scientific mainstream.

Whitman brings legal theory into this story, showing that the jurists charged with working out the early phases of the Nazi legal regime showed intense interest in American racial jurisprudence. Nazi thinkers examined legal practices in other settler colonial states as well (and while Whitman only mentions it in passing, German scientists and administrators had already used German-controlled South West Africa—now Namibia—as a laboratory and testing ground for techniques of racial degradation and extermination). Nonetheless, the Nazi lawyers Whitman discusses saw the United States as “the leading racist jurisdiction”—the prototype of a legal regime addressing how a Nordic Volk could deal with foreign races living in their midst. As a result, they went on study trips to the US; published articles, books, and bureaucratic reports on American legal practices; and met with American legal experts.

Drawing on meeting transcripts, memos, and published work, Whitman argues that US models inspired the lawyers working to craft the Nuremburg laws that stripped Jews of citizenship, barred mixed marriages, and prohibited what the Americans called “miscegenation.” Dismayingly, the US example appealed primarily to the most extreme Nazi thinkers. ...

...For the (ultimately triumphant) extremists, on the other hand, this incoherence was the American legal regime’s greatest virtue. “Technical doctrinal concerns” such as precise definitions and consistent application did not bog down the Americans. The (particularly murderous) Nazi judge Roland Freisler approvingly observed that American law exhibited a “primitive,” “political” spirit. Another proponent of radical measures, Hans Kier, wrote in 1934 that “the variegated abundance of statutory racial regulation in the States of the Union demonstrates that the elemental force of the necessity of segregating humans according to their racial descent makes itself felt even when a political ideology”—egalitarianism, enshrined in the 14th Amendment—“stands in the way.” US jurisprudence, that is, exhibited a bracing “realism”: when legal doctrine met racial “reality,” the former gave way. ...

... It is not surprising, then, that Nazi thinkers found in the American example a rationale for casting off any constraints that German legal tradition might have placed on their persecution of the Jews. Still, this is a disturbing story, and one that casts a harsh light on conventional accounts of American history. Such accounts look back at interwar America and see a flawed but fundamentally liberal society. Nazis looked at early 20th-century America and saw themselves. ...

Psychopaths in their little nest-eggs all agree... and they will unite, as they did, to 'justify' and promote as 'scientific' or 'acceptable' psychopathic viewpoints and actions as a 'norm' to be imposed... fascism enacts psychopathic thinking, this, not surprisingly, making it popular with with psychopaths and the most heavily pathologized.

And a number of these Nazi's were, as has long been known, rescued from justice following WW2 and brought to America (and elsewhere) by powerful US industrial psychopaths, including, of course, the Bush line, to work within industry and politics, polluting the culture further, in order to help work toward a more carefully planned 2nd attempt at a fascist global take-over, using American resources and (where achievable, via regime change, assassination, military coups, invasion, electoral 'help', propaganda, Astroturf protest/revolution, threats, bribery, enforced famine and deprivation of medical aid to civilian populations, and the like,) 'adjusting' the political structures of other people's countries around the world to suit themselves in working toward this aim. They've seemingly never missed a trick, a war-crime or any other crime.

I suspect that they felt that their own country, where they already held, and now hold even greater, control, is a better place from which to maintain that control on a global basis, than a foreign one which had already been proven by the Russians to be insufficient to take on the world. (That, I expect, being, at least in part, why Russia forms such an apparently attractive scapegoat and target for The Powers That Be, having beaten their proxies the last time, if at great cost, and being ready to defend themselves again against attack.) In this last stage, as we see, everything goes into the US military/Intelligence for their long-planned Final Solution military/corporate global domination, spying on all people all of the time in all countries, setting up strategic staging areas in other people's countries all over the world so as to be able to attack every country from anywhere, right under everyone's noses and on the excuse of 'fighting terrorists' which we continually discover to have been created/trained/armed/funded/shifted around by themselves or their partners in other governments, further growing that already insanely bloated US military scattered strategically all over the world in readiness - why, if not to be certain that it can invade/destroy every country on earth at once, if required for conquest?

And what will doubtless work out to multiple trillions of America's public money for even more nukes with which to threaten/destroy countries/global life when they've already enough to destroy life on the planet however many times over, this to be drained out of the already-drained American public and the remaining shreds of any social programs. But, logically, the greater the population die-off at home and abroad, the fewer they'd have to fight, exterminate or exert micro-managed control over later.

I really can't see any other way, in view of their documented history, demonstrated tendencies and ongoing actions, to interpret all this.

Meanwhile, much of the rest of the world (finally realizing, I'd like to believe, the nature and extent of the peril,) begins to draw back from/mass against them.

In the meantime, those making a killing off the killing industriously drain, pollute and maim the world they'll evidently destroy in the taking, one way or another. This is still the looting phase, even if the loot of the most vulnerable is running dry at this point, soon forcing a turn on each other in order to continue accumulating soon-to-be-useless wealth.

And this needs to be read at full at source, but there's a few indications below of some bits of various important points covered. This makes it evident that nothing involves the planning, consent or fault of the propagandized, drained and used American citizens of any generation or at any stage, any more that was the informed consent of the previous propagandized, drained and used German citizens required when members of this conspiracy sponsored Hitler and the Nazis. Propaganda's used because it works upon those carefully kept ignorant, disinformed and unaware of what they're dealing with.

http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=14307

US: Lockheed Stock and Two Smoking Barrels

by Richard Cummings, Playboy.com
January 16th, 2007

In November of 2002, Stephen J. Hadley, deputy national security advisor, asked Bruce Jackson to meet with him in the White House. They met in Hadley's office on the ground floor of the West Wing, not far from the offices of Vice President Dick Cheney and then-National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice. Hadley had an exterior office with windows, an overt indicator of his importance within the West Wing hierarchy.

This was months before Secretary of State Colin Powell would go to the United Nations to make the administration's case for the invasion of Iraq, touting the subsequently discredited evidence of weapons of mass destruction. But according to Jackson, Hadley told him that "they were going to war and were struggling with a rationale" to justify it. Jackson, recalling the meeting, reports that Hadley said they were "still working out" a cause, too, but asked that he, Jackson, "set up something like the Committee on NATO" to come up with a rationale.

Jackson had launched the U.S. Committee on NATO, a nongovernmental pressure group, in 1996 with Hadley on board. The objective of the committee, originally called the U.S. Committee to Expand NATO, was to push for membership in the NATO military alliance for former Soviet bloc countries including Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic.

What Bruce Jackson came up with for Hadley this time, in 2002, was the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq. The mission statement of the committee says it was "formed to promote regional peace, political freedom and international security by replacing the Saddam Hussein regime with a democratic government that respects the rights of the Iraqi people and ceases to threaten the community of nations." The pressure group began pushing for regime change -- that is, military action to remove Hussein -- in the usual Washington ways, lobbying members of congress, working the media and throwing money around. The committee's pitch, or rationale as Hadley would call it, was that Saddam was a monster -- routinely violating human rights -- and a general menace in the Middle East. ...

... As The New York Times put it in a 1997 article, "at night Bruce Jackson is president of the U.S. Committee to Expand NATO, giving intimate dinners for senators and foreign officials. By day, he is director of strategic planning for Lockheed Martin Corporation, the world's biggest weapons maker."

That's how D.C. works. Many of the people making decisions have been in and out of the same set of revolving doors connecting government, conservative think tanks, lobbying firms, law firms and the defense industry. So strong is the bond between lobbyists, defense contractors and the Pentagon that it is known in Washington as "the iron triangle." And this triangle inevitably gets what it wants. Why? Because in the revolving door system, a defense contractor executive can surface as an official in the Department of Defense, from which position he can give lucrative contracts to his former employer, and his prospects for an even better paying job in the private sector brighten. Former aides to members of congress become handsomely paid lobbyists for the companies they were able to help in their position on Capitol Hill. Such lobbyists can spread their corporate-funded largesse to the friendliest members and their aides on the Hill. And so on.

These "blow-dried Republican lobbyists," as one Washington district court judge calls them, wield far more power than most of the elected officials in town. Forget dime-a-dozen congressmen. ...

... Bruce Jackson is a perfect example of this. While vice president for strategy and planning for Lockheed from 1999 to 2002, Jackson, by his own account, was also "responsible for the foreign policy platform at the 2000 Republican National Convention," to which he was a delegate. (The platform involved a dramatic increase in defense spending.) His title at the convention was chair of the platform subcommittee on foreign policy. He also served as co-chairman of the finance commission of Bob Dole's 1996 campaign. Prior to joining Lockheed, Jackson had served as executive director of the Project for the New American Century (PNAC), the think tank whose principles included Dick Cheney. PNAC served as the Bush administration's blueprint for preemptive war and authored a 1998 open letter to President Bill Clinton calling for military force to oust Saddam Hussein.

But forget Jackson. In 2002, he was on the outside. Stephen Hadley, looking out of the windows from his West Wing office, was on the inside. Sure, Hadley had the requisite government experience for a deputy national security advisor. He had been an assistant secretary of defense under Bush's dad. But he had been through the revolving door, too: Stephen Hadley, the point man for justifying the invasion of Iraq, had also lawyered at Shea & Gardner, whose clients included Lockheed. ...

... It's actually much more sinister than that, allowing the interests of America to be subverted by the interests of corporate America. As you'll see here, your elected officials did not deliberate on how best to protect their constituents, decide bombing Iraq was the best way and then order some provisions and weapons. On the contrary, this is the story of how Lockheed's interests, as opposed to those of the American citizenry, set the course of U.S. policy after 9/11. ...

Profiting by the growth of the military toward the War On The World to enforce the 2nd attempt at Total Dominance global fascist hegemony not of 'the US' but of the psychopaths who've stolen control over governance from the American people to whom it belongs.

How much 'destabilizing' terrorism and war has not been due to TPTB setting up for this? Virtually everything seems to trace back to them, one way or another... no wonder censorship and McCarthyism are being so frantically imposed.

But now it seems evident (to me, at any rate) that all this ever-more-obvious corruption and warmongering appears to be actually just a continuation of the progress of those US industrialist's initially Nazi-attempted global agenda, becoming more contemptuously blatant as they near their goal - and things once again begin to go sour for them at the last moment. In the meantime, there are floods of pumped-out and increasingly desperate propaganda produced by experts, growing more and more insane, with the apparent objective of having Americans believing nothing that is true, only what they are told by The Right People.

We must not fall prey to the disinformation, the seemingly endless and increasing variety offered vulnerable victims among ourselves offered as misleading objects of arrack precisely to forestall our solidarity forming and our identification and removal of the relative few with stolen control over the warped system of government and all mechanisms of checks and balances. They still fear The People united, they fear the Progs, they still fear Bernie, even now - and what they fear gives us hope.

Their end game involves game over for planetary life, whether the Psychopaths That Be, incapable of seeing beyond their own desires, realize it or not. Will we end in the futile squabbles and victim-blaming they lead us into, or will we, at the least, go down swinging in the right direction in the effort to bring democracy to America, as promised by her most enlightened Founders and enshrined in the Bill of Rights they fought so hard to have included?

Since this was written for Bush and a favourite of mine which is appropriately playing right now:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cgEBojCBOd0&list=RDcgEBojCBOd0#t=56

Beth Hart:-'Sick'

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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.

Pluto's Republic's picture

@Pricknick

Not by a long shot.

The story of this time is that calcified brains have destroyed the economic futures of the current new generation. But those enfeebled brains are just about dead, so it's not their problem. Bwa-hahaha! They got theirs. "Enjoy your lifetime enslavement to debt, suckers. I had to walk 20 miles to school in the snow, both ways!"

People over 55 really should abstain from voting. Voting age should begin at 14.

Age matters.

Did you know that making the age for gun possession 29 years old will drop the gun death rate by 75 percent in an armed society?

On the whole, age matters a lot.

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____________________

The political system is what it is because the People are who they are. — Plato

@Pluto's Republic that's harsh, no pass. See what that grows into your future.

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Pluto's Republic's picture

@QMS

Voters with brains that are physically unable to anticipate upcoming change in a changing world and run the scenario, and then adapt to that outcome? Voters who prefer denial to cogitation?

When it comes to voter's and candidate's brains — I am clinical.

For the purpose of survival.

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____________________

The political system is what it is because the People are who they are. — Plato

@Pluto's Republic the harshness is the implication that older brains do not have the flexibility to anticipate consequences of present decisions. The fissures that deepen as the brain ages contain experiences made in the more distant past more accessible than present stimuli. This revolving game of life is the same as it ever was. Experience teaches that. Adaptability is not the same as newness.

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@Pluto's Republic
for calling me witless. Yeah, sure, disenfranchise me. And while you're at it, disenfranchise all the undereducated and poor. Oh, and the mentally ill. And everyone under 95 IQ. And everyone who watches tv. Maybe we should revisit eugenics. I'm sure we can find plenty of deserving categories for the dust bin. Divide and conquer!
I guess all the 20ish trumpsters around me don't count.
At least I don't calcify my brain with tv, twitter, zuckbook and iphones. How's that for generalizing?
Reductio ad absurdum.
Heh, see my comment about "don't trust anyone over 30".

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Pluto's Republic's picture

@pindar's revenge

Plato already covered it 2500 years ago. "The city is what it is because the people are who they are."

I believe in the human right to self determination, and this is what American self-determination looks like after 200 years of voting. They keep voting so this works for them. No point in messing with a system they identify with.

The solution for me is to enjoy the show.

In the distance.

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____________________

The political system is what it is because the People are who they are. — Plato

@Pluto's Republic
for many decades. Very limited success (grin).
I think we can walk and chew gum at the same time; while we're working on ourselves, we must address the suffering around us, IMHO.

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Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

@Pluto's Republic We keep having this fight with each other.

I like to apply some historical specificity to my general truths.

I didn't blame individual working-class Russians for the wrongs inflicted by the Soviet Empire, and I don't blame individual working-class Americans for the wrongs inflicted by the American Empire.

With great power comes great responsibility. With almost no power, comes very little responsibility, because one has very little agency.

We have experienced a historical trajectory that has eaten this republic from the inside out, leaving a shell going through the motions of populist power. This trajectory was well-established by 1988, when I first went to the polls to vote. By 1994, voting had become a pointless exercise, though I didn't realize that till almost twenty years later. What happened in the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections should have clued me in. I just couldn't stop believing we could get it back. It took Obama to show me that we couldn't.

This is the only legitimate foundation for generational blame. Quite frankly, nobody outside the 1% who's under 40 bears blame for our current conditions. And those of us between 40 and, say, one's early fifties, bear some blame, but not much, since the avenues by which ordinary people could influence policy were already shutting down by the time we reached our majority.

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"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

Pluto's Republic's picture

...and big data that reveals deep universal tendencies and behavior.

@Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal

I didn't blame individual working-class Russians for the wrongs inflicted by the Soviet Empire

Were they a voting democracy at the time? If not, I wouldn't blame them either. Only democracies truly deserve what they get.

Generally, I use a broader brush regarding voters, one that seems pretty accurate, regardless of the vagaries of history:

People under 50 vote their dreams;
People over 50 vote their fears.

The Boomers were a huge population — a demographic goat swallowed by a boa constrictor. They've taken decades to digest and they dominated the trends at ever age as they traveled through the snake. The bad news is that they only began to reach Social Security age in 2011. We can look forward to 15 to 20 years of their fearful voting bloc to endure, and their mountain of ED drugs to pay for.

When you live in an aging population, as we do, we going to get a larger majority of votes that lead to selfish, befuddled, frightened, and angry policies year after year, especially with cuts to immigration. The only way to manage this huge injustice and burden on younger generations is to put upper limits on the voting age. Now would be a good time to do that.

A better bet for those looking for a progressive future and a happy society is to emigrate.

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____________________

The political system is what it is because the People are who they are. — Plato

@Pluto's Republic

ROFLMAO True, to a point; I'll vote only Green or social democrats (if/when they really are) because predatory capitalism scares (and sickens) me - but that's also my (and my roommate's and others) over-50 dream. YMMV.

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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.

Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

@Pluto's Republic What I'm saying is that we began the process of not being a voting democracy somewhere between 1968 and 1978; that by 1988 the process was well underway; that by 1994 the process was essentially finished and what voters were participating in was a well-controlled fraud posing as a populist process.

The 21st century has been one long proof of the fact that we don't live in a voting democracy anymore, and haven't for some time.

I blame (most of) the Boomers (and Silents and Greatests) for voting Reagan in 1980 and 1984. And I blame those people, Boomers and Silents and Greatests, who voted for Tricky Dick twice.

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"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

@Pluto's Republic

Does this brain change rendering one incapable of voting set off on the 55th B-Day precisely? Just curious, lol.

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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.

lotlizard's picture

@Ellen North

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Pluto's Republic's picture

@lotlizard

There's a lack of understanding around here about exceptions and rules. But it doesn't have to be addressed today. I'd rather see the humor flowing.

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____________________

The political system is what it is because the People are who they are. — Plato
Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

@Pricknick I appreciate that, given my analysis above.

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"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

snoopydawg's picture

They still believe that we are the good guys by going around the world creating freedom and democracy, while they stay blind to the horrors our military commits.

Good rant.

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Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.

Daenerys's picture

I hate how they keep saying "Vote the bastards out!!" every time something terrible happens, but the same fuckers somehow keep getting re-elected time and time again. *rage*

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This shit is bananas.

snoopydawg's picture

@Daenerys

We saw how horriblycorrupt it was during the last election. From just kicking people off the voting rolls, changing their party affiliations, exit polls not lining up with the actual vote tallies to gerrymandering. The best way of dealing with the exit polls not matching the votes? Get rid of them.

Hell if this country really wanted to make voting more fair and secure, we'd go back to paper ballots, not use the machines that can be hacked.

Good to see you again, Danni

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Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.

Wink's picture

Boomers to cede power. It's up to Millenials to take it. After all, nobody ceded anything to us, it had to be won. If not for the Bubba win in '92 we Boomers likely wouldn't have seen the WH until 2000 or 2004. Everybody running in '92 and '96 were over 70 or pushing 70, the WWII generation. Bubba ran a great campaign in '92, and it wasn't a given that George 41 wanted another four years, kept looking at his watch during the debates, as though he was missing Jeopardy. So the unexpected happened and Boomers finally won the power they'd been seeking since the '60s. And then blew every opportunity to bring back the '60s, Bubba possibly getting a little pep talk from Deep State telling him who Really was the Leader of the Free World. Each generation has to take power from the generation ahead of them, it won't be given.

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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.

The Aspie Corner's picture

@Wink And we've been punched the fuck down every single time. We will be again if any other movements that challenge end-stage capitalism arise again that isn't Libert-Aryan in nature.

COINTELPRO and other attacks against anything even remotely left-wing never ended.

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Modern education is little more than toeing the line for the capitalist pigs.

Guerrilla Liberalism won't liberate the US or the world from the iron fist of capital.

Centaurea's picture

@The Aspie Corner

Who do you believe is doing the punching?

Do you believe that the Boomers haven't similarly been punched down?

Hint No. 1: the assassinations of JFK, Malcolm X, Dr. King, and RFK; the use of brutal force against anti-war protestors at the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago; the killing by police of student protestors at Jackson State and Kent State.

Hint No. 2: The general destabilization of the lives of American citizens, beginning in the 1980s and intensifying in the '90s. Constant corporate mergers, companies folding, layoffs, pension plans being gutted, wages stagnating while cost of living soared, basic employee benefits disappearing, stock markets crashing, NAFTA, gaslighting by politicians, etc.

Who do you believe did the "punching down" then?

How do you believe the Boomers should have responded to being punched down?

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"Don't go back to sleep ... Don't go back to sleep ... Don't go back to sleep."
~Rumi

"If you want revolution, be it."
~Caitlin Johnstone

Pluto's Republic's picture

@Centaurea

It's a systemic corruption of the soul that continues a problem that could easily be regulated to the betterment of civilization. No punching required.

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____________________

The political system is what it is because the People are who they are. — Plato
Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

@The Aspie Corner Millenials take power my ass. Most Gen-Xers haven't been able to take power. The few that have look like Paul Ryan.

But for the most part, the politicians who are serving as the go-betweens for the people who really have power are all Boomers and Silents. And it looks to me like there are a lot of Boomers and Silents still running major corporations and banks.

That, however, is not the main problem. The main problem is that no one with a different view of the world, no one who opposes the status quo, can take power, under any circumstances.

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"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

Here's one of my generation's anthems from 1970, when I was a young pup:

That song used to fire me up, it still does. They knew, we knew.

Here's the author of that song from 1959:

Mose knew in '59, I knew, I'm sure you know too. We too blamed the older generation.

My generation tried to make change, gave it a good go, back in the 60s and early 70s. Then we got jackbooted in Chicago, Kent State, Jackson State, etc. People were cut down, shot dead. The PTB learned their lesson well from the Vietnam War, how the war was depicted in the media, about allowing protests and the draft, and they made adjustments. Many, too many, sold out, the movement petered out.

Then in the subsequent decades a coup slowly took hold. A MIC/corporate/bankers coup that culminated in the 2000s. I wouldn't call it a bloodless coup because many people around the world died because of it. And here we are today, they don't even try to hide it anymore. They own everything.

My point is, many of us tried. Some of us are still trying.

What I hate is the greed, that is the root. IMHO anyway.

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travelerxxx's picture

@JtC

Thanks, JtC. You nailed it 100%. The issue is not someone's age. That's an issue that's meant to divide and it does it well.

Greed is the problem. Pure, unadulterated, white-hot, straight-from-hell greed.

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LeChienHarry's picture

@JtC in hand.

I'm a boomer, and those from my part of the west coast in my generation are often the "sandwich" generation as well. Not very many of us had or have it easy and in older age suffer from lack of health care, transportation, education of children and grandchildren; watching the environment go steadily to hell. At least we can see what has been lost.

Fought hard in the 60s, 70s, 80s and until Obama, thought there was a chance to turn things around. Didn't get the global reach and control of the various moneyed and powerful people and organizations.

I was always an optimist (my psychology tests said I had a "Pollyannish" view of life.) Well twenty years on, and I have been disabused of that bright-eyed view. I am pissed off, and have suffered abuse from those we hold most responsible for our care and advice. I believe it's a form of PTSD.

I don't like this generational blame thing at all. We are all in it, and many of us in all generations have tried to understand the millieu we live in and to rectify things we understand to be going wrong.

The scope of the willingness to prevent us from making meaningful changes has been beyond our comprehension until fairly recently. Our puny efforts against a global machine were coldly stopped any way it could be done.

We are trying every day to take on our own health care, garden for our own food, and make our home a place to age and die in.

We do try to educate our family and friends, but end up without many at all who will give our thoughts a go inspite of well written information about people like William Donovan, William Stephenson and the Dulles Brothers. That history alone, should give people pause. And yes I looked up their connections (Google) and found how much they played together at our peril.

A lest we think they are always on the same page, reading their histories has showed me that even when it gets down to just a few, they will fight each other for dominance, power and control.

I will not /end rant, because I know too much from reading here and following to good research and books by people who somehow managed to get published.

But for this comment, the end is that there isn't a single segment of our society and culture which hasn't been co-opted.

I go outside and walk with my dogs; fix my house; listen to music; do what I can locally to make a difference. It's the best I can do with my remaining energy and days.

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You may choose to look the other way, but you can never say again you did not know. ~ William Wiberforce

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gulfgal98's picture

@JtC Generational blaming is exactly what the powers that be want us to do. They want us to deflect the blame upon others for their greed.

Many of the original founders here were from the Boomer generation,myself included. It really hurts my heart to read how much animosity there is on this very site that is being directed toward me and those of my generation.

Blanket stereotyping and or blame of any group is counter productive. Try this. Substitute the word Black for Boomer or White for Boomer and see if that is acceptable. I expect most people would find those substitutions offensive.

What I am trying to point out is that blanket stereotyping does absolutely nothing to further the battle we ALL are facing together against the very powerful forces that are the real villains. We cannot allow them to continue to divide us.

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Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?

“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy

@JtC
were those you cited? Because I run NoScript, I don't see anything but a black rectangle. I picture "Crown Of Creation" (and the cover art) from those days...
Incidentally, John Wyndham gave Jefferson Airplane permission to use lines from "The Chrysalids" for that song. Wyndham wrote about genetic engineering, sea level rise from melting ice caps, nuclear war, fundamentalism -- in the 50's.

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@pindar's revenge
Both Mose Allison's original and the Who's red hot angry version.

Young Man Blues--Mose Allison

Oh well a young man
Ain't nothin' in the world these days
I said a young man
Ain't nothin' in the world these days

In the old days
When a young man was a strong man
All the people'd step back
When a young man walked by

But nowadays
The old man got all the money
And a young man
Ain't nothin' in the world these days

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@JtC
Very good choices.

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Mark from Queens's picture

@JtC
is the reason I wanted to play in a band. I was a massive Who fan as a kid, though I was discovering them years after the prime, just a bit before Moon died.

The electricity, ferocity and dynamics jumping off that record from start to finish blew my young mind. I could not believe it was the sound of three guys playing drums, bass and guitar, with a singer. I had formed my first band at 14, and that excitement was always in my head whenever I was sitting behind my drums looking over at the guys setting up their amps and getting sounds.

Personally, I envy the Boomer generation (whatever that really means), as one who is technically on the cusp of it. The spirit of the 60's (and 70's) lives deep inside of me, and informs all my worldviews.

And I can say this: among almost all my musician friends, the overwhelming majority view the 60's so reverentially for not only the explosion of incomparable rock music, but maybe more importantly, the challenge to preconceptions, societal mores and the status quo. That stuff still reverberates today. No doubt it was the coolest time: so hopeful, so colorful, so vibrant, so liberating. And let me add, the middle of my teens coincide with the reactionary Conservative/Christian Right/Gordon Gekko-dominated 80's. There is no question in my mind it was the worst cultural, musical, political and entertainment decade by far (although these last two may be in the running).

"...the Young Man, he ain't nothin' in the world these days, I said. They ain't got nothin'. They ain't got sweeeeeet, fuck all!", as Daltrey screamed at the end.

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"If I should ever die, God forbid, let this be my epitaph:

THE ONLY PROOF HE NEEDED
FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD
WAS MUSIC"

- Kurt Vonnegut

Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

@JtC Thank you, JtC. You are one of those Boomers who is willing to make an honest assessment of the history we've shared.

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"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

Both party establishments serve the purpose of keeping the people divided, to prevent public unity against their shared multinational corporate agenda.
The public division/hate is by design. It's been that way forever. It's establishment Kabuki. Both party establishments will tacitly agree on stuff that makes the rich richer (deregulated trade policy, deregulated immigration policy, 'defense' policy etc.), while championing social policy designed by each Kabuki partner to keep the public helplessly divided, to prevent any chance of public unity against the stuff they agree on (which ALWAYS helps the super-rich and hurts everyone else).
I actually think they have 'bipartisan' think tanks to come up with the most divisive social issues, as a way of protecting themselves (and their rich sponsors) from any threat of a unified public against them.

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Mike Taylor

@Mike Taylor @Mike Taylor Blaming the Boomers is perfect for that. Why should Millienials, et al, pay into a system for a bunch of greedy fucking geezers, lets just end that altogether, nothing but a Ponzi scheme, nothing but a bunch of lazy takers who "had it all" and kept it all, why they're fucking you, why should YOU pay for their elder care? Fuck them, all their fault, end SS and Medicare now!

See how that works for them?

Edit to add: And when this happens, how are the people who voted their own shit away going to feel when Grandma is living on the street? She may be a Boomer after all, so maybe that's OK. She was a greedy bitch so fuck her.

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Only a fool lets someone else tell him who his enemy is. Assata Shakur

The Aspie Corner's picture

@lizzyh7

Blaming the Boomers is perfect for that. Why should Millienials, et al, pay into a system for a bunch of greedy fucking geezers, lets just end that altogether, nothing but a Ponzi scheme, nothing but a bunch of lazy takers who "had it all" and kept it all, why they're fucking you, why should YOU pay for their elder care? Fuck them, all their fault, end SS and Medicare now!

See how that works for them?

Edit to add: And when this happens, how are the people who voted their own shit away going to feel when Grandma is living on the street? She may be a Boomer after all, so maybe that's OK. She was a greedy bitch so fuck her.

Hell, one Libert-Aryan/AnCap/Original Intent dipshit actually said that seniors are the richest demographic and even presented fudged stats that wouldn't survive even a layperson's level of scrutiny.

Libert-Aryans already have, and have always had, the capitalist controlled gubmint they want. They're just pissing and moaning because they aren't in control of it.

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Modern education is little more than toeing the line for the capitalist pigs.

Guerrilla Liberalism won't liberate the US or the world from the iron fist of capital.

@The Aspie Corner
Love it. Stolen!

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@lizzyh7 the govt. raided the SS trust to pay for their glory wars. Wouldn't surprise me if there is no there there.

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Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

@lizzyh7 That will never work. They've been trying that one since the early 90s.

What they don't get is that young people have mothers and fathers and grandmothers and grandfathers. For both selfish and altruistic reasons, they don't want their relatives screwed.

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"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

Centaurea's picture

It may feel good to express our hatred and rage. (Yes, I do know how it feels. There is plenty I'm angry about.)

But if that's where we leave it, raging and hating, it does us no good. It does not get us what we want. It blocks self-awareness, it disempowers us, and it keeps us separated from each other.

Revolutions may be motivated by anger (among other emotions), but they are accomplished through action.

Without awareness, empowerment (and that's an inside job), cooperation and a sense of solidarity, we cannot act effectively.

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"Don't go back to sleep ... Don't go back to sleep ... Don't go back to sleep."
~Rumi

"If you want revolution, be it."
~Caitlin Johnstone

The oligarchy has the power. They are boomer, GenX, male, female, white, black, brown - well you get the drift. So why pick boomers out of that group to blame when you could pick any of the other demographics applicable to the oligarchy?

I have three grandsons in their early 20s. I understand the dread and anger you feel because I feel it too on their behalf. In their youth, the boomers paid their dues to themselves and the country at Kent State and the Chicago convention. Where were the succeeding generations to pick up the torch? My hope is that the generation of kids coming out to protest guns will all register to vote and burn the whole fucking thing down. I hope they don't despair and quit, or win this battle and walk away. Inevitably they will get older, life will change, and they too will become old and yesterday.

What we need is an unwavering and unending force for tomorrow. Our children, their children, and their children's children are our future.

Good rant. Life truly does suck for your generation. Lots of us boomers are on your side.

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"Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich."--Napoleon

The Aspie Corner's picture

@dkmich for ever shittier wages and no benefits or retirement. And before that, many were acting as cannon fodder for the capitalist machine in Iraq and Afghanistan while Shrub, Cheney and their defense contractor buddies were making out like bandits.

Many millennials did try activism during Occupy only to be punched the fuck down by the entire capitalist apparatus for doing so. If there hasn't been anyone to pick up the torch, it's because the torch is either snuffed out or co-opted by the Repigs AND Porky Dems before any fire can be lit.

Flawer'Duh is a literal no-man's-land for young people because the state is entirely ruled by old rich retirees who just don't give a fuck about anything or anyone as long as they have theirs. And thanks to that blatant apathy, services and infrastructure in the state have withered away to nothing. Thank you very much Grover Norquist.

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Modern education is little more than toeing the line for the capitalist pigs.

Guerrilla Liberalism won't liberate the US or the world from the iron fist of capital.

Centaurea's picture

@dkmich

The oligarchy has the power. They are boomer, GenX, male, female, white, black, brown 

Need to add the Silent generation to that list. Pelosi, Feinstein, Biden, the Koch brothers, George Soros, among others ... Silents.

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"Don't go back to sleep ... Don't go back to sleep ... Don't go back to sleep."
~Rumi

"If you want revolution, be it."
~Caitlin Johnstone

The Aspie Corner's picture

@Centaurea And all because he adopted a few pro-worker policies to stave off the possiblity of a revolt by labor.

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Modern education is little more than toeing the line for the capitalist pigs.

Guerrilla Liberalism won't liberate the US or the world from the iron fist of capital.

The ones you could off prob. don't have any influence or power,(or you couldn't get within a thousand feet of them) but hey every sin deserves punishment. Like the Armenians or Jews, the Boomers are just so powerful, they need to be destroyed. In 75 years they ruined America, all by themselves. Everyone knew it then,too. Those fucking hippies ruined everything. Should have been shot then and there. They did a couple of things, rivers don't catch fire any more, with less smog sunsets are less spectacular. We helped stop a 10 yr. war, and came of age just when the bill for all those bombs came due, with nothing to show for it. Then we scrambled for jobs that went offshore. We were stupid, too. We voted for politicians that promised to fix things, right wrongs, and when they lied to us we thought "next time". Next time it was just more lies. We worried about our kids, and had no advice for them, because we didn't understand the world we were living in anymore, either. Each election more lies told , each betrayal, a cut. One of a thousand cuts that brought us here, together. We don't have any money, the government won't let us retire, we're just clogging up the system, and life bears no resemblance to what our hopes envisioned. So go to it, there will never be a better time.

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@Snode we have been fighting 'the man' for over 50 years, now the kids are going after us for not growing a progressive spine? WTF, over. Yeah, maybe the fight is bigger than us. Sure as hell ain't our fault. We'll be dying while we are still trying to make this a better world to live in.

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The Aspie Corner's picture

@Snode And some of those gray hairs just sat there and pointed fingers at us while the world burned. So what are we supposed to do?

We can't protest because the capitalists have co-option, appropriation, astro-turfing, incarceration, denigration via media outlets and assassination down pat. Social media is worthless because it's little more than trolls and genuinely stupid people who just don't give a shit. Town halls are nothing more than reactionary bullshit the politicians use to shit on their own constituents as they scream at each other. Voting and campaigning in capitalist-controlled elections is purely an empty gesture because they're already decided before a single ballot is even cast. Boycott is virtually impossible because you're buying from them even when you aren't.

So how are we supposed to respond? There is literally no recourse. Prove me wrong.

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Modern education is little more than toeing the line for the capitalist pigs.

Guerrilla Liberalism won't liberate the US or the world from the iron fist of capital.

@The Aspie Corner all the way thru. Surely understand the frustration. A difference 'tween then and now is the access to information by degrees. We didn't know where or how our rebellion affected outcomes, so we kept on pushing till getting locked up. But we knew why.

Now, instant messaging polls trending in 'real' time give the feedback that 'this' is working or 'that' isn't because of XYZ. Does that take the wind out of your sails? Maybe the why is now exploited by the info managers. Hard to articulate, but we must keep fighting. That much I know.

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@The Aspie Corner write off an entire generation of people? How do you think a 60 year old who's been laid off from his job and has NO prospects for another one would feel when you tell him to check his Boomer privilege, think that would go over so well? Think that gets him on our side of the fence? Think that wakes him up to see what an asshole dupe he too has been? As Snode said above, blame away then, but you'll never hurt our owners by doing that, they laugh all the way to the bank watching that shit as they have for generations.

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Only a fool lets someone else tell him who his enemy is. Assata Shakur

The Aspie Corner's picture

@lizzyh7 In fact, I'm just as sick of this generational warfare shit as you are. Gods know us younger folks have had enough of being called lazy and stupid in spite of the overwhelming evidence to the opposite.

The problem is here in 'Murica any talk about class struggle is a mortal sin. Hell, Socialist and Communist parties were illegal for quite some time. We can't say anything about that without being called [insert identity here]ist, being called losers, envious of our 'betters' and so on.

And I personally am sick and tired of having to live in a blatantly ableist economic structure. Yet, I can do absolutely nothing for reasons I have stated countless times.

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Modern education is little more than toeing the line for the capitalist pigs.

Guerrilla Liberalism won't liberate the US or the world from the iron fist of capital.

gulfgal98's picture

@The Aspie Corner to comments posted on this site that called young people lazy and stupid.

I know you are pissed about your personal circumstances, but I am getting tired of the name calling and negativity expressed toward people like me who happened to be born during the baby boom. I did not choose the time of my birth just like I did not choose to be female.

What I did choose was to try in my own small way to make things better for all of us. I protested during the Viet Nam war and lost friends during it. I participated in Occupy Tallahassee because I believe in stewardship for the generations that follow. I spent over four years every Saturday afternoon with a local Peace vigil until we were forced to disband because my fellow participants were all in their 80's and were no longer physically able to do it. I tried to recruit people, but most folks did not want to give up their Saturdays.

I am nearly 71 years old and am apparently considered a burden on the system. So what am I supposed to do now? DIE? I am not quite ready to do that and think I still have something to offer.

This issue has come up on numerous occasions and many of us have tried to politely explain who the real villains are. Yes, I am very empathetic about your plight, but you are attacking the wrong people here. It is very sad to see this site devolve into this type of ageism.

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Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?

“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy

The Aspie Corner's picture

@gulfgal98 I know who, and what, the real villains are. We simply aren't allowed to discuss them without attaching bullshit terms like 'Deep State', 'The Jews', etc. to it because for some reason we refuse to let go of the pro-capitalist narrative. But hey, who cares what I think, right?

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Modern education is little more than toeing the line for the capitalist pigs.

Guerrilla Liberalism won't liberate the US or the world from the iron fist of capital.

@The Aspie Corner Many here do. Helping to expose the oppression we all feel is important work. Keep it up!

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Pluto's Republic's picture

@gulfgal98

You're nothing like them. You would never fit in. So why try to identify as one?

We don't have any Boomers at c99. Not a single one. You can find plenty of them in DC.

Boomer is not an age. It's the distillation of an attitude of a culture that develops when people are raised together and experience the same events, and even intermarry, while their brains are still forming. They end up with a recognizable consensus of reinforced attitudes, forged by the times they live through.

There are always misfits in each generation. We have a lot of those here.

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____________________

The political system is what it is because the People are who they are. — Plato
gulfgal98's picture

@Pluto's Republic being a boomer is an age group, one I happen to be a part of. Like everyone else here, I cannot control how others in my own age group think. Even if you or someone else sees me as some sort of "exception," my real issue is the stereotyping of people by physical characteristics, including age, over which we have no control.

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Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?

“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy

@Pluto's Republic

Just to mention:

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/baby%20boom

Definition of baby boom
: a marked rise in birthrate (as in the U.S. immediately following the end of World War II)
— baby boomer noun

I'm afraid that this term covers everyone born within a certain (and apparently now expanded) time period - most of us now being powerless Poors/relative Poors, with only a tiny fraction of that group being extractive and hyper-wealthy/powerful psychopaths messing with politics/policy/the rest of the world.

And there are rather a number of us on the site - who do know you well enough to realize that there was an obvious misunderstanding and no intention of lumping us in The Psychopaths That Be.

*hugs*

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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.

Daenerys's picture

@gulfgal98 when almost all of our jobs require us to work weekends anymore too. Another reason why I'll probably never get another conventional job again. And people still act like most jobs are still Monday-Friday 9-5s.

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This shit is bananas.

gulfgal98's picture

@Daenerys even those in my own age group, was interested. I can understand how people simply do not want to commit the time necessary. I was the youngest in the group by at least ten years when I joined them. I was just pointing out that even though many of us are older, we still have positive things to offer society as a whole.

Honestly, I never did expect young people or working people to participate in things like the Peace vigil. It is too easy for the PTB to label them negatively which can affect their future employment.

And yes, I am very aware of the issues of finding good employment. While I do not have children of my own, I have ten nieces and nephews, eight of whom are old enough to be in the job market. Finding living wage jobs is nearly impossible in the gig economy. Middle class jobs began disappearing with NAFTA and continue to disappear with the privatization of the public sector which is the last significant area of living wage jobs.

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Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?

“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy

@The Aspie Corner I can't prove you wrong. What you say is true. Everything that happened we saw happen right before our eyes. I have a son, who went to college in a STEM field, we both went into debt to make this happen. I told him to work hard, this was worth it. It wasn't. Unless he wants to spend more time and money to get a Doctorate and a slim chance at a job as a glorified lab rat. He didn't even have any wild times. 70% of his class was mainland Chinese that didn't mix with other students. Now he works construction, no insurance, no benefits or workman's comp. I told him that he needed to vote, but why, there's nothing in it for him, neither r or d have anything for him. And all the advice I gave him was wrong. I hate I had nothing of value to guide him. We saw the internet go from a clear open stream to a capitalist open sewer. There's no living time, just one manufactured crisis after another to keep us off balance, take away another part of our lives, diminish us. How we got here is by thousands and thousands of small cuts, tiny cuts, by our leaders over decades. that betrayed us, bled us. Made possible by liars,traitors, hucksters and gullible fools like me. For all our counter culture swagger, in the end we pretty much did what we were told. You and my son know that doesn't work, and you're smarter for it. I don't believe this millennial slacker snowflake crap. I think, hope, you, this generation will find a way.

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The Aspie Corner's picture

@Snode

I have a son, who went to college in a STEM field, we both went into debt to make this happen. I told him to work hard, this was worth it. It wasn't. Unless he wants to spend more time and money to get a Doctorate and a slim chance at a job as a glorified lab rat. He didn't even have any wild times. 70% of his class was mainland Chinese that didn't mix with other students. Now he works construction, no insurance, no benefits or workman's comp.

I was lucky that my two Associate's Degrees were paid for by grants. I think the most laughable part was that near the end of my tenure at the community college, there were recruiters for McDonalds of all places. You read that correctly. McDonalds. And the incompetants at job placement were telling me I needed to be more open minded. Assholes.

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Modern education is little more than toeing the line for the capitalist pigs.

Guerrilla Liberalism won't liberate the US or the world from the iron fist of capital.

Daenerys's picture

@Snode Is that even legal?? I mean I wouldn't be surprised if it is these days...

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This shit is bananas.

@Daenerys the loopholes the assholes have passed give workers few rights and fewer protections. The problem I have in hiring help is the state has made it financially unfeasible for small businesses to hire and train without grants. Those grants have their own maze of traps. I can't justify charging my clients for the requirements of the state just because there is no safety net. It doubles my cost and I lose money by helping out the kids. It's a tough situation.

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