This is your politics on Media Drugs (new title)

Its my opinion that national politics has become hallucinogenic. The corporate media and the political elites do not discuss reality, but rather discuss manufactured nonsense. TPTB have realized that their fake liberal shtick just isn't playing in Peoria anymore. After Obama, people are "not going to get fooled again" by the likes of Harris or Booker or Biden. So, it seems that they decided to make democracy completely irrelevant by making the national political discourse insane. Anyone discussing the crapola the media is pushing is tripping on acid.

In what sane world would Democrats have passed up two opportunities (missile strikes in Syria, coup in Venezuela) to try to impeach him for violating international law? In what sane world would the "bad trip" of Russiagate neo-McCarthyism be allowed to fester for two years? In what sane world would there be bipartisan support for obscene and ever-increasing military budgets and bipartisan support for coups? In what sane world would the Identity Politics witch hunts not be called out as divisive and discrediting to the genuine left?

However, those of us who haven't (in a similar metaphor) "drunk the koolaid" can't just walk away. We owe a duty to those people on bad trips to keep them from jumping off a tall building because they are convinced they can fly. That is, it is not safe for us to ignore the insanity being shoved at us 24/7, because there is purpose to the insanity. So, much as I'd like to go the local politics route, there is a new insanity is a danger that threatens all localities: the version of the Green New Deal (GND) being foisted on America by the corporate-media propelled AOC. This is nothing less than a false flag provocation against the environmental movement.

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I don't care about AOC. I've already written her off. But the corporate media haven't, nor have sellout dolts like my senator, Ed Markey. The corporate media have opened a new hallucination by hijacking what was a scientifically based discussion of climate change, environmental damage, and sensible infrastructure spending and replacing it with a totally politicized, over the top, poorly thought out screed mouthed by a neophyte nobody with zero environmental credentials. She has entangled environmentalism with socialism, with Identity Politics, with that rightwing bete noire "Big Government". She has muddied the waters.

The right wing loons are on this like white on rice. At ZH, there is an extensive quote from a paywalled WSJ article. Of course its over the top, its the WSJ. But, the AOC GND is red meat for even moderately conservative folks. Here's a snip of the quote:

If a bunch of GOPers plotted to forge a fake Democratic bill showing how bonkers the party is, they could not have done a better job. It is beautiful. The Republican Party has a secret weapon for 2020. It’s especially effective because it’s stealthy: The Democrats seem oblivious to its power. And the GOP needn’t lift a finger for it to work. All Republicans have to do is sit back and watch 29-year-old Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez . . . exist."
AOC, as she’s better known, today exists largely in front of the cameras. In a few months she’s gone from an unknown New York bartender to the democratic socialist darling of the left and its media hordes. Her megaphone is so loud that she rivals Speaker Nancy Pelosi as the face of the Democratic Party. Republicans don’t know whether to applaud or laugh. Most do both...

every Democrat in Washington will get to go on the record in favor of abolishing air travel, outlawing steaks, forcing all American homeowners to retrofit their houses, putting every miner, oil rigger, livestock rancher and gas-station attendant out of a job, and spending trillions and trillions more tax money. Oh, also for government-run health care, which is somehow a prerequisite for a clean economy.

It’s a GOP dream, especially because the media presented her plan with a straight face - as a legitimate proposal from a legitimate leader in the Democratic Party. Republicans are thrilled to treat it that way in the march to 2020, as their set-piece example of what Democrats would do to the economy and average Americans if given control. The Green New Deal encapsulates everything Americans fear from government, all in one bonkers resolution.

Meet Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the Republicans Secret Weapon for 2020.

Make no mistake, the environmental movement is going to take a big hit from AOC's irresponsible grandstanding. Even local organizers are going to be called on the carpet and asked to defend or reject AOC's half-baked proposals. De facto, she has already managed to split the environmental movement. Congratulations, TPTB, your new jiu jitsu strategy to provoke what little is left of the left into destroying itself is working just fine. You put the environmental movement on the defensive via one uninformed crank with a media platform.

For the right, the AOC GND is shooting fish in a barrel. Her GND proposal is stupid political posturing; and when she tries to defend it, she comes off as a confused lightweight. Here is a second article justifiably ripping the proposal to shreds by exactly the method I just mentioned: Dems are being asked to declare for/against this half-baked mess.

in what's looking like a staggeringly haphazard rollout, the controversy over the plan continued on Friday when co-sponsor Ed Markey, the Massachusetts Senator who was the plan's lead backer in the Senate, slammed Ocasio-Cortez and the plan's "fact sheet" for calling for a ban on nuclear power, which supplies roughly 50% of America's carbon-free energy.

Here's more from Bloomberg:

Giselle Barry, a spokeswoman for Senator Ed Markey, a Massachusetts Democrat who is the Green New Deal’s lead Senate backer, disowned the fact sheet and said Markey’s office wasn’t consulted before it was sent out. "We did not draft that fact sheet," she said.
"These are ideological documents - not legislative blueprints,” said Paul Bledsoe, strategic adviser at the Progressive Policy Institute. It will get even tougher “when you actually have to create legislative language.”

Considering the walk-backs and infighting that have arisen already, the unveiling of AOC's signature multi-trillion "green plan" has made the first Trump travel ban rollout almost look orderly in comparison.

Here are the most shocking proposals from Ocasio-Cortez's Green New Deal

Now, one can argue nine ways from Sunday about who is behind this particular hallucination, and that's one of the purposes of hallucinatory politics. Its an unending, distracting soap opera that lets all the business as usual continue unharmed. I waded through the sewer of ZH comments to pick out some of the soap opera theories:

1. The establishment hacks know how to deal with this situation; the only question - was it the left or the right; Im thinking it was the DNC boys; they can't have anyone upstage Pelosi.
2. I give pelosi credit - she gave AOC plenty of rope, and AOC obliged by publicly hanging herself in a media spectacle. 
3. Obviously she is getting advice and encouragement designed to implode her agenda. The best way to marginalize the girl is to have her propose an outrageous bill destroying her credibility - which she has done!
4. The GND is a god-send to the Trump2020 campaign. Already has split the Dums... the loser at the Dum Convention will sit out the Election...

Quite frankly I'm not looking to figure out who did this. I'm not buying into the inside the beltway soap opera. I'm looking for ways to shut down this insanity before it wrecks the environmental movement. As for the party formerly known as Democratic, to quote AOC, "I give zero f***s." Unfortunately, shutting it down comes right back to the title of this essay - the hallucinatory corporate media. Some germane comments:

1. why is this 29 year old getting so much attention as if her proposals have a snow ball's chance in He11 of getting passed?

2. Can somebody tell me why some freshman congresswomen in the house, is getting this much media attention?  This media in this country really is amazing, but the people are on another level.

3. The handlers always put out a useful idiot as their face. By making her proposals insane, it makes the less radical agenda seem palatable. This is how the country is being changed.

4 Silly lass out of her depth

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Here's my final statement on this debacle:

AOC did not invent the GND. She hijacked it and compromised it for her own political ends. The AOC GND is DOA. She has done the environmental movement and the left a great disservice. If someone asks me, I will denounce her version as false flag agitprop.

With that, I end my attempts to get the trippers to wake up.

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Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

@Pluto's Republic

I like your comments, which tend toward system-wide analysis, and do not eschew considerations of power. It's amazing how many analyses, especially ones coming from America, treat power like it's a secondary consideration in a world where individual moral character reigns supreme.

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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 Liberal Moonbat of some of those groups and the power they have welded.

I view them as oppressive in their attempts to control thought and punish people who think differently.

They have no respect for the Constitution or due process, and seem completely ignorant of the history of our legal system and why/how it came about. They likely have no knowledge of the Magna Carta or why it came to be.

These groups (which include men) seem to be entirely in a thrall to their emotions, and seem to be in a constant state of rage. They think wearing pussy hats and white suits to the SOTU means something.

I'm realizing there nothing that will ever satisfy the identity possessed.

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dfarrah

wendy davis's picture

amiga. but boy, howdy, has this Deal been tweaked over and over, seemingly. perhaps when parts are shouted down? 'nuclear free by 20(something) 'if possible' isn't even in there now. but the verbiage like 'citizen stakeholders', etc. is abysmal, as are the constant reminders of who it's all for: disproportionately affecting indigenous peoples, communities of color, migrant communities, ??? deindustrialized communities, depopulated rural communities, the poor, low-income workers, women, the elderly, the unhoused, people
with disabilities, and youth (referred to in this preambleas ‘‘frontline and vulnerable communities’’ . whooosh, we get it.

but so far, as with mckibben and klein, no mention of paying for it with half the military budget, and the 'electric cars' goofiness is gone, unless one can interpret this enigmatic double speak as such:

zero-emission vehicle infrastructure and manufacturing;
ii) clean, affordable, and accessible
public transit; and(iii) high-speed rail...

but a hella lot of carbon cap and trade, my, how Progressive! but every time she opens her mouth about it...it's changed.

"The short answer to 'how we will pay for' the Green New Deal is easy," Robert Hockett, a Cornell public policy and law professor and adviser to Ocasio-Cortez, wrote in a piece for Forbes last month. "We'll pay for it just as we pay for all else: Congress will authorize necessary spending, and Treasury will spend. This is how we do it -- always has been, always will be."

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socialism look really bad, just when some socialistic notions were becoming welcome.

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dfarrah

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