On " a few more thoughts on the left and right," in which I agree with your view entirely, and how it may relate to all our work here at c99-----

It seems to me that we, too, are ready to quibble around the edges of truth rather than uniting behind the truth that matters. We are responding to our training and our brainwashing.

I'll use my recent experience to illustrate my point in the hope that it will not anger or upset anybody.

Yesterday I wrote about the perfidious behavior of the USA towards France. My central idea is that the USA puts its own interests first second and always, at the expense of countries we pretend are our allies. The USA intervened in a contract worth 66 Billion dollars that France had with Australia. France is furious.

Moreover---France lost a contract to supply 12 diesel fueled electric submatines to Australia.

Instead, we will build nuclear subs for Australia and France was not given a heads up by USA that their rich contract had been revoked.

Here are my questions: 1) Does Australia need a nuclear necklace surrounding their continent? According to ggersh, No, there is no current threat.

In that case, 2) wouldn't the Aussies be better served by a fleet of 12 NON nuclear, less dangerous subs? common sense tells me Yes to this one.

and, 3) Does our alliance with France or any other nation matter at all to the USA? Or is pushing WAR and MILITARY Spending our only values? Betrayal and abandonment seem to be features of our foreign policies, not bugs.

The feedback about this central issued devolved into lengthy remarks about China. Which was hardly the point. China is the current designated star of War Follies and directed Fear.

Nothing requires the kind of useless buildup the USA is planning for. It feels like the WMD nonsense we used to enter Iraq. China is not a poor little country and 100 nuclear subs lurking beneath the waters will not deter a nation that can build out their own land, as well as destroy us with cyber, etc.

I’m sick of labels. Labels divide us. It’s all done on purpose, as your essay illustrates. I’m just a woman with thoughts and ideas based on personal research. Otherwise, I’m nothing ~ no label of left right up down good bad introvert extrovert ~ see what bullshit it is? People love to label. It “others people,” which is the intent.

Listening is a skill few Americans are capable of.

Enjoy your day!

For several years, I have been arguing that the same puppeteer controls both political "parties" while favoring one and disparaging the other -- and the favor shifted from Red to Blue with the Obama Administration. I agree with you on this point and I believe it is underappreciated amongst progressives, lefties and other anti-establishment voices.
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Corporate America Switched Sides in 2008
July 21, 2020
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The election of Barack Obama consummated the transition.

From the time of Nixon's Southern Strategy until the political dumpster fire of Shrub's second term, the traditional home of Big Business, the GOP, played to uneducated white people in low population states with ersatz support for the aims of the Religious Right and The Racist White. This approach dominated politics for 40 years and the Dems could only squeeze out three of ten elections by nominating Southern Governors who appeased both of those Rs.

During this era, the Republican Party resolved its own internal discord by expelling all the Eisenhower Republicans from positions of influence. That demographic of upper middle class professionals was sometimes called Country Club Republicans.

Demographics put an end to that formula for electoral dominance and the elections of 2000 and 2004 had to be stolen.

Barack Obama solved that problem and Big Business abandoned their angry white male constituency and adopted the Identity Politics agenda. Almost entirely ignored, corporate America has run the only effective political protests of the last decade, with boycotts of states that pass wingnut legislation like the Arizona bill that made it a crime for a landlord to rent an apartment to undocumented aliens.

You see it now as the mainstream media has turned on the police during the current wave of unrest.

The social class of Eisenhower Republicans, comfortable people who fancy themselves as understanding the Big Picture, but utterly incompatible with the kind of people who like Donald Trump, have become one of the two core constituencies of the Democratic Party. The other is African Americans.

Corporate logic is privatized authoritarianism. Thus this article very astutely describes how this authoritarianism is now the driving force behind Identity Politics. #Me-too was the quintessence of corporate woke-ness. It never applied to anybody but the very famous and their retinues. It offered no means of resolving conflicting claims of truth -- the arbitrary burden of persuasion was just reversed. Instead of victims having to prove their innocence, the now the accused were presumed guilty and there is no appeal for Banishment From Fame.

(It is an interesting philosophical question whether somebody like Super Chef Mario Batali got off easy or experienced a profound existential grief when he lost his gig on network television. It could be that taking fame away from the kind of whack jobs that become famous is cruel and unusual punishment. But I digress.)

So people who call themselves progressive or liberal now support telling people with the wrong ideas to shut the fuck up and backing up that order with the fear of losing one's livelihood. Yuck.

The erstwhile Tea Party and Religious Right now make up the Trump constituency, which felt abandoned by the GOP and were never all that comfortable within the corporate dominated Republicans. Corporate America of course continues to hedge its bets and keeps its gigantic hand in the GOP and the deal they offer the public by controlling both parties is the old "heads I win, tails you lose" gag.

But everybody is free to signal their own virtue and call out the evils of unwokeness.

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I have one disagreement with how you describe the little dustup of the last few days and JtC's thread about civility and discord on the topic of vaccine. I do not believe that there is ANY argument about whether the abstraction of "vaccine" represents good or evil. There is some talk on this board about specific players in the global health care advocacy dodge -- like Bill Gates. His enthusiasm for vaccines (plural) gets some heavy criticism, but I do not recall anybody on this board saying that they want smallpox to return or that we must stop the horror of tetanus shots.

The argument here IS part of the overall debate about how governments and their citizenries respond to the virus.

My stubborn point is that whenever I post something about the political decisions being made, multiple posters tell me how I don't know shit about science. Some do it politely and respectfully. Others are rude and sneering. Of course, whether nice or nasty, they are absolutely correct. I do not know shit about science. Hell, I wound up dropping out of my freshman level class called "Physics For Non Majors" rather than starting my college career with an F.

I have been a message board addict for 20 years and I do not worry about negativity and hostility. Its all just a bunch of pixels no matter how you look at it. To those with whom I disagree, I harbor no ill will or resentment. And a message board without heartfelt arguments is boring as hell.

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Finally, I just want to repeat how well written and persuasive your essay is. Thanks for posting it.

make your own decision camp.

Though I was vaccinated (and am happy I did), I understand that many have had adverse reactions and there have even been deaths (1000's in fact). Medicine, and perhaps life, is a game of weighing risks vs benefits. However, with the vaccines the risks are being hidden and ignored. Wanting transparency isn't antivax, even though many have been labeled as such for illuminating the risks associated with the various vaccines. As CB above illustrated, break through cases in the vaccinated account for many of the hospitalizations and deaths (though the CDC isn't releasing (or perhaps collecting) that data. Vaccinated people can spread this virus as effectively as people who are not, but the non vaxed are killing us? It is the false messaging which I find maddening.

My radar goes off when information is being suppressed...especially as fantastic profits are being accrued. So from my view, the MSM purposely creates vax vs antivax messaging to distract from real honest conversation that might save lives. They suppress treatments that might impact those profits, and label people antivax horse dewormer nuts even creating false stories like in the Rolling Stone ER lie.

Too bad the conversation isn't focused on the evils, yes evil, of a for profit health care system. We are too distracted with false conflicts and narratives.

My 2 cents for what it is worth, YMMV.

Thanks for the OT and conversation.

Another major shift were the neoconservatives, formerly Democrats who were dissatisfied with the pacifism that had taken hold of the 'Party of Peace' in the Vietnam era. That all switched back in the 1990's with the aggressive foreign policy of the Clinton's.

During the Bush years, it became difficult to tell the difference between the 'Peace' Party and the 'War' Party.

By the end of Obomba's two terms, the transformation was almost complete. This fundamental change became apparent while I was in DKos and argued against the Libyan and Syrian war mongering faction to no avail. I was finally given the boot when I argued against Hillary's Russigate delusions.

This transformation was set in stone when the Democrats undercut Trump's attempts to end the conflicts in Ukraine, Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria and make money not war with Russia. The only things the two parties maintained agreement on were arming Saudi Arabia, supporting Israel against Iran and blackballing/poking China. Arming SA is currently in the process of being dropped. I'm thinking they want to conserve their fire-power with the coming Pivot to War with China to preserve their world hegemony. This can only be done within the next years. 2025 will be two late - China will be much too strong (maybe it already is?).

There is no longer an anti-war party in the US. The ONLY person I can think of that has consistently pointed this out has been Tulsi Gabbard. I nominate her for President of the United States as the leader of the new Peace Party.

done. Thanks. Since it is an OT, I needn't announce digressions, but here one comes.

The White Crowns are back! Got up this morning and the platform feeder was full of them. Gonna be a lot more cheerful noise in the mornings now.

OK that said, onward. I found it entertaining that you explained and justified your reasons for getting covidvaxed, and that you have done so, for whatever reasons, before. This is an interesting new phenomena. When I was a young child, polio was running wild. I even went to school with polio survivors who were ambulatory, if only with assistance. When it became possible to get the polio vaccine everybody rushed out to get it. I recall going down to a local elementary school and standing in a huge line to get it, and looking back on the timeline, I'm pretty certain that was part of a trial. Over the years vaccines were developed for stuff and one got them if one was at all at risk. When we went to Africa, we checked with our medical provider and they called us in, pulled out a checklist and our records and began filling out this big yellow card with what we'd had, giving us additional stuff and writing it in, and offering some optional anti-malarials with explanations of the pros and cons of each. Then came the bogus autism scare and suddenly vaccinations were controversial, even after that was thoroughly debunked, and here we are today and folks feel a need or urge to justify. (Actually the great autism fraud may have started before our Africa trip, but we were adults, so "so what".)

I'm one of those who better not ever get anything worse than a cold, the likely repercussions are horrible and we had long standing plans for some spring travel. Vaccines were being given to those over 75 (I was 74), people with certain conditions but not mine, and those in certain occupations. We worked laboriously and devoted a ton of time to trying to get ours anyway, and just missed several chances, and then finally scored in early Feb, second shot in early March and hit the road asap after.

So, yesterday my wife learns that there are drive-thru flu shots at the local Kaiser for members and after reviewing our records we drove on down and got them. As we were getting them it struck me "THIS is an experimental drug" - every year's flu shot is experimental in many regards. Yet, few ever feel any need to justify getting a flu shot, especially if it is free. As with everything in life, you roll the dice, or flip a coin, and post mortems are almost always a waste of time and energy unless the decision was appallingly generic and without any specificity.

Anyway, as a public service to those who have or can readily obtain a 20 sided die (what gamers call a d20) or who have an operating system or spreadsheet which can properly interpret commands like rand -M 20 (that roll came up 9), here's the old reliable pre GWB decider, in numerical order 1 thru 20:

● It is certain.
● It is decidedly so.
● Without a doubt.
● Yes – definitely.
● You may rely on it.

● As I see it, yes.
● Most likely.
● Outlook good.
● Yes.
● Signs point to yes.

● Reply hazy, try again.
● Ask again later.
● Better not tell you now.
● Cannot predict now.
● Concentrate and ask again.

● Don't count on it.
● My reply is no.
● My sources say no.
● Outlook not so good.
● Very doubtful.

Some other fun thoughts on covid:
Yes, statistically it kills very few national or globally, but if it is your spouse, it is 50% of "you two". In any event, over the past 5 or 6 years, it is vastly more lethal than Novichok.

Earlier this year, Tesla, an "experimental car" using some new tech and some new combinations and uses of old tech sold it's millionth car worldwide. To date the US has administered about 339 million covid shots.

Have to go reload me feeders, but, there never was any right or left except on a French seating chart. In this country it is especially inapplicable we have the controller-perps and the victims, and perhaps some enablers thrown in.

be well and have a good one

Dear Signal Wave --

Your final message that we should not niggle around on minor issues on C99 is right on point!
(note my tag line!)

Your argument is also quite compelling. I am mostly a lurker on this site (but I'm not new ... no Troll I!) so I am not as tuned in to the things "everyone knows". My question about your argument is where some supporting sources are (You mentioned JtC ... not sure what that is). It is tempting to believe that there is a cabal that "decides" how things should be (e.g. decides which party should support their interests and which should be vilified), but I think it likely (w/o sources as well!) that this arises more organically than that.

Both political parties want money and therefor they naturally suck up to the 1% ... they don't need to be told. Because party leaders want to stay on the gravy train (such as it is) they quash dissent (if they can). You could imagine that the insanity of current Republicans was planned (it might be reassuring to think that), but I think they did it on their own. Trump brought out the crazies. In fact, I don't think the 1% wanted Trump ... an assumption that is pretty common around here. I don't say that C99 supports Trump, because he is an evil nut-job, but they recognize real well that the Dems were not providing any reasonable alternative in 2016 or 2020 that would actually fix real problems (as opposed to just not making them much worse!).

So ... your post makes a good story. Do you consider it just a convenient mnemonic for how we go here ... or do you think there is an any consciousness in our politicial drift?

Your stuff about the left being completely stripped of all of its thoughts on economics and class and the environment is dead on ... regardless. Isn't that perhaps a corporate media problem? Many of us on C99 are left or very left ... and we are CLEARLY wll aware that it's way more than BLM!!

All the best ... Keep on thinking great thoughts!

Thank you.

From my pov the vast majority of US politics is an obvious clown show and I have a really hard time having serious conversations with people who view it otherwise, so I'm keeping a low profile here because I don't want to offend or create more conflict. (I've never been formally diagnosed but all the self-assessment tests clock me for autism and it's true that I don't always see a communication problem soon enough.)

Personally, I've never trusted either Democrats or Republicans, always been an independent/nonpartisan, but for awhile I did buy into some lesser-evilism and tried to organize with Democrats, sort-of from the left margin. This was basically how I learned that the power distribution in the kind partisan structure they inhabit and viciously defend cannot be overcome through electoral means.

I especially loved this bit from the comment thread:

I see no option but to take linguistic territory of our own by taking control of at least some of the means of communication, or inventing new means of our own. If we have our own communicative territory, we will be able to make our own definitions and disregard theirs.

Master's tools, house, etc. Don't know how long it's been since you read Audre Lorde but she's always worth another looksee.

In any case, while you and I have had some differences of perspective on some of these issues, mostly the inside-system/outside-system stuff and things like "legitimacy", I don't think we have much/any substantive disagreement about the bigger concerns. I just wanted to pop in to say how much I appreciate your work and your voice. Please don't feel any pressure to respond!

Best wishes to all.