@lizzyh7

The old distinctions between left and right wing are obsolete. Both sides now support more war profits, more corporate giveaways, less action on climate change, and fewer programs that benefit the 99%.

#3.4.3 What I meant by right wing I should have clarified better - while our Dems and too many of us think in terms of right wing being merely Republican I no longer see it that way. They are both "right wing" for want of a better label (and I do understand the whole fallacy of labels but we work with what we have I guess) is that they BOTH want lower taxes for themselves and their wealthy friends, both want endless wars with corresponding austerity at home, both are hellbent on retaining the narrative of a democratic and benevolent USA while all evidence shows that for the lie it is, and neither one of them give any real shits about this country at all. All of them, regardless of their label, are fine with what Trump is doing, some just don't like the way he's doing it.

Trump has indeed ripped the mask of what both "sides" in this country truly represent, that is the one positive I see out of his election. But sadly, the team warfare is already degrading the truth people have known for decades about our government and too many just want to go back to red vs blue, right vs left, regardless that those terms really have no meaning at all anymore. If they ever did have any real meaning at all. Perhaps I need to dispense with right wing altogether and just start calling them the fascists that they really are.

@ovals49

It's indeed true that left has shifted rightward. But Yovanovich, Vindman, et. al. are clearly more left than right. I judge people by how virulently pro-Russiagate they are. Maddowites (true believers of Rachel Maddow) espouse Russia hacked the election memes. Hannityites (fellow travelers of Sean Hannity) pooh-pooh the entire Russia collusion meme.

Many of the witnesses at the impeachment hearings were Maddowites.

#3.4.3

Most of the parade of deep state witnesses are pretty clearly left wing.

Relative to Trump, perhaps.

I always thought that the left pointed in the direction of socialists and communists. Has the Overton Window shifted so far to the right that what used to be left no longer exists within our political window frame?

@ovals49

...to the Deep State, which is largely tethered to the State Department. Domestic politics is irrelevant, as well, unless something came up domestically, that might eat into their war money. But they turned that faucet off long ago. The people were no longer benefitting from most of the tax money they pay in to the government every year; half of the revenues are drained off and lavished on the War Complex and their think tank cronies. The money instantly disappears into a top secret lockbox and the people have nothing to show for their labor and sacrifice but an audit that says $21 trillion is still unaccounted for. The people don't even ask for anything anymore. If someone does ask for something on the People's behalf, like Bernie Sanders, someone will ask in a defeated voice, "Who's going to pay for it?" The people are now reduced to mewling for health care for all Americans, a human right that the rest of the world has long enjoyed.

The Deep State may be associated with one Party on another for a time, but that is mostly due to money and convenience. Not ideology. The Party ideologies are used way down at the Kabuki Level, where the democracy circus revels in its never-ending fund raising and constant campaigning.

Remember when Trump was campaigning and blowing through his competition in the Republican Party? He was drawing large crowds to his rallies. I was reporting on the text of his speeches for a news org, so I read most of them. Trump was campaigning to the Left of Hillary. That's really how he won. He would sound anti-war at times. He was against paying for Israel's shit-stirring in the Middle East. He was against the US military fighting Israel's wars for them. He said the US promised to defend Israel, and he would keep that promise — but he would demand that Israel pay their share to use of the US military. And he wanted the money up front. He said the same about using the US Navy to guard shipping lanes in the waters of other nations. "It's time for these nations to start paying their fair share of the US Navy's costs," he would say. "Why should American tax payers pick up the bill?" Trump wanted to stop the hostilities between the US and its enemies. It was a waste of money and time when we could be making lucrative deals and everyone could be doing a whole lot better. Trump said that trading deals like the TPP and the TTIP were designed to harm other nations and cause wars (referring to China and Russia). And those trade agreements would also hurt American workers, who would see more of their jobs disappear. Trump was going to turn that whole thing around, and make better deals.

It was not the sort of speech you would ever hear from the Democrats, or the Republicans. If the US had a Left Wing and that Left Wing had a political party, you might hear such a speech from them. But there is no organized Left in America and the Democratic Party will never belong to them. I remember noticing that the media was not reporting of the content of Trump's speeches; they reported on racism pretty exclusively. The Democratic amateurs at Daily Kos were too shocked and outraged to hear much of anything besides these so-called progressive communities had completely transformed into the Anti-Trump Party and they were running on pure identity politics and fund-raising.

Perhaps parts of Trump's speeches would only really register with people they were designed to communicate with. The words had been conjured and arranged by Cambridge Analytica, a tech firm that was developing an advanced artificial intelligence. The scientists at Cambridge Analytica had data-mined a staggering amount of private and personal information from files of Facebook's enormous membership. This and other raw data would be memorized and processed by the AI, and it would begin to learn about the political thoughts and feelings of the American public as a whole and individually. It would discover people's beliefs and behaviors and fears. It would learn where they lived, what they shopped for, how much money they had, the condition of their health, their credit-worthiness, and who they knew. All of this might be cross-tabbed with the pressing issues and concerns of their community and state, the news sources they read and watched, and the topics, celebrities, and politicians they followed. In time, the AI would be able to predict the reactions that various real-world groups or demographics might have to specific ideas or information. It might even predict just the right worlds to use or avoid.

Cambridge Analytica gave the words and narratives to Donald Trump and suggested when and where to deliver them in his speeches. They told him who to admire and who or what to deplore.

Of course, most of it was lies. By 2016, all of them were lying through their teeth. It was a political season like no other. At the time, I had noticed only two groups who really seemed to 'hear' Trump's Left Wing messages: One was the completely disenfranchised blue and white collar Democrats, who had cursed the party for betraying them. They rather liked Trump's rebellious-sounding words. The other group that immediately picked up on Trump's words, despite the fact they were not mentioned in the news, was the Deep-State Neocons. They were threatened by Trump's buried peacenik message, which set them off into a major public panic. A number of them promptly endorsed Hillary Clinton and joined the Democratic Party to lend their evil influence to what the future might bring. They all made pilgrimages to the Sunday talk shows.

It was a perfect fit.

I figure that's when they hatched the plan to out Donald Trump as a traitor.

#3.4.3

Most of the parade of deep state witnesses are pretty clearly left wing.

Relative to Trump, perhaps.

I always thought that the left pointed in the direction of socialists and communists. Has the Overton Window shifted so far to the right that what used to be left no longer exists within our political window frame?