Bernie Ends In Extreme Failure

When Bernie endorsed Biden

It came once he dropped out of the race, despite Biden’s near-half century of high crimes, racism, and betrayal of the public trust.

- There is nothing in it against corporate coup d’etat trade deals. Nothing about reigning in Wall Street or war-profiteering. Nothing about universal healthcare.

-Nothing about ending endless wars of aggression. Nothing about rescinding police state repression.

- Nothing about holding killer cops accountable or putting people above privilege and profits.

This well-rehearsed, pre-scripted theater, masquerading as political debate like all others in the US, featured bombast, misinformation, and disinformation over substance, mostly by Biden — slogans and one-liners over solutions, and promises made to be broken if elected.

Government-provided healthcare shouldn’t just be for the elderly or cover one illness that affects a small fraction of the population.

It should be for everyone at all times, covering all medical, dental, prescription drugs, and related healthcare expenses.

Americans indeed face crisis conditions. Ongoing for decades, it’s at a fever pitch today because of COVID-19 fear-mongering.

It features a lack of confidence because government serves privileged interests at the expense of most others.

Biden represents a near-half century of dirty business as usual. The same goes for Sanders for around 30 years in Congress.

He pretends otherwise. Check his voting record, most often along party lines, supporting dirty business as usual while pretending otherwise.

Instead of going all-out for universal healthcare, he settled for Obamacare.

It made the US sickness industry more dysfunctional by rationing healthcare to enrich insurers, drug companies, and large hospital chains at the expense of Medicare for all, including prescription drugs and dental coverage.

Neither Sanders or Biden addressed the money-controlled US political system under one-party with two right wings.

Names and faces in high office change. The dirty system remains in place — unaltered except at times tinkered around the edges too inadequately to matter.

Popular revolution is the only solution, voting a waste of time when results turn out the same way every time.

Only the illusion of change happens when elections are held, never the real thing from inception to today.

Once again billions are being spent on another election horse race where people with money make sure that they get their sycophants elected so that they can make rules that will help those with money while screwing those who have none and are left to fend on their own. Or die.


“In a fully developed bureaucracy there is nobody left with whom one can argue, to whom one can present grievances, on whom the pressures of power can be exerted. Bureaucracy is the form of government in which everybody is deprived of political freedom, of the power to act; for the rule by Nobody is not no-rule, and where all are equally powerless, we have a tyranny without a tyrant.”

- Hannah Arendt

I picked a few things from this article to make a point about what we have been witnessing since before 9/11, but then seeing it on steroids afterwards. And just like after the global economic crisis of 2007 the rich have gotten bailed out while close to 30-40 million of us are going to be kicked out of our homes and apartments because both parties are beholden to big business and are not going to give We the People our bailout to keep the USA from imploding. The power elite do not care how many of us are evicted from our homes during a global pandemic. Or how many of us become food challenged because we can't afford to buy food and we are still seeing millions of pounds of food thrown away because of the broken food supply chain that was first seen 3 months ago and Trump said that he was going to fix by getting the national guard involved. What we are witnessing from our government are crimes against humanity. When religious organizations are allowed to receive tax funded bailouts even though the don't pay taxes you know that the game is rigged against us.

For one brief moment in the wake of George Floyd’s death, it seemed as if finally “we the people” might put aside our differences long enough to stand united in outrage over the government’s brutality.

That sliver of unity didn’t last.

Suddenly, no one seems to be talking about any of the egregious governmental abuses that are still wreaking havoc on our freedoms: police shootings of unarmed individuals, invasive surveillance, roadside blood draws, roadside strip searches, SWAT team raids gone awry, the military industrial complex’s costly wars, pork barrel spending, pre-crime laws, civil asset forfeiture, fusion centers, militarization, armed drones, smart policing carried out by AI robots, courts that march in lockstep with the police state, schools that function as indoctrination centers, bureaucrats that keep the Deep State in power.

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

How do you persuade a populace to embrace totalitarianism, that goose-stepping form of tyranny in which the government has all of the power and “we the people” have none?

You persuade the people that the menace they face (imaginary or not) is so sinister, so overwhelming, so fearsome that the only way to surmount the danger is by empowering the government to take all necessary steps to quash it, even if that means allowing government jackboots to trample all over the Constitution.

This is how you use the politics of fear to persuade a freedom-endowed people to shackle themselves to a dictatorship.

The government’s overblown, extended wars on terrorism, drugs, violence, illegal immigration, and so-called domestic extremism have been convenient ruses used to terrorize the populace into relinquishing more of their freedoms in exchange for elusive promises of security.

Strangely enough, in the face of outright corruption and incompetency on the part of our elected officials, Americans in general remain relatively gullible, eager to be persuaded that the government can solve the problems that plague us, whether it be terrorism, an economic depression, an environmental disaster, or a global pandemic.

The lesson is this: once a free people allows the government inroads into their freedoms or uses those same freedoms as bargaining chips for security, it quickly becomes a slippery slope to outright tyranny.

Nor does it seem to matter whether it's a Democrat or a Republican at the helm anymore. Indeed, the bureaucratic mindset on both sides of the aisle now seems to embody the same philosophy of authoritarian government, whose priorities are to milk “we the people” of our hard-earned money (by way of taxes, fines and fees) and remain in control and in power.

Modern government in general—ranging from the militarized police in SWAT team gear crashing through our doors to the rash of innocent citizens being gunned down by police to the invasive spying on everything we do—is acting illogically, even psychopathically. (The characteristics of a psychopath include a “lack of remorse and empathy, a sense of grandiosity, superficial charm, conning and manipulative behavior, and refusal to take responsibility for one's actions, among others.”)

When our own government no longer sees us as human beings with dignity and worth but as things to be manipulated, maneuvered, mined for data, manhandled by police, conned into believing it has our best interests at heart, mistreated, and then jails us if we dare step out of line, punishes us unjustly without remorse, and refuses to own up to its failings, we are no longer operating under a constitutional republic. Instead, what we are experiencing is a pathocracy: tyranny at the hands of a psychopathic government, which “operates against the interests of its own people except for favoring certain groups.

So where does that leave us?

Having allowed the government to expand and exceed our reach, we find ourselves on the losing end of a tug-of-war over control of our country and our lives. And for as long as we let them, government officials will continue to trample on our rights, always justifying their actions as being for the good of the people.

Yet the government can only go as far as “we the people” allow. Therein lies the problem.

The pickle we find ourselves in speaks volumes about the nature of the government beast we have been saddled with and how it views the rights and sovereignty of “we the people.”

Now you don’t hear a lot about sovereignty anymore. Sovereignty is a dusty, antiquated term that harkens back to an age when kings and emperors ruled with absolute power over a populace that had no rights. Americans turned the idea of sovereignty on its head when they declared their independence from Great Britain and rejected the absolute authority of King George III. In doing so, Americans claimed for themselves the right to self-government and established themselves as the ultimate authority and power.

In other words, in America, “we the people”— sovereign citizens—call the shots.

So when the government acts, it is supposed to do so at our bidding and on our behalf, because we are the rulers.

That’s not exactly how it turned out, though, is it?

In the 200-plus years since we boldly embarked on this experiment in self-government, we have been steadily losing ground to the government’s brazen power grabs, foisted upon us in the so-called name of national security.

The government has knocked us off our rightful throne. It has usurped our rightful authority. It has staged the ultimate coup. Its agents no longer even pretend that they answer to “we the people.” Worst of all, “we the people” have become desensitized to this constant undermining of our freedoms.

We are fast approaching a moment of reckoning where we will be forced to choose between the vision of what America was intended to be (a model for self-governance where power is vested in the people) and the reality of what it has become (a police state where power is vested in the government).

This slide into totalitarianism—helped along by overcriminalization, government surveillance, militarized police, neighbors turning in neighbors, privatized prisons, and forced labor camps, to name just a few similarities—is tracking very closely with what happened in Germany in the years leading up to Hitler’s rise to power.

We are walking a dangerous path right now.

No matter who wins the presidential election come November, it’s a sure bet that the losers will be the American people.

Despite what is taught in school and the propaganda that is peddled by the media, the 2020 presidential election is not a populist election for a representative. Rather, it’s a gathering of shareholders to select the next CEO, a fact reinforced by the nation’s archaic electoral college system.

Anyone who believes that this election will bring about any real change in how the American government does business is either incredibly naïve, woefully out-of-touch, or oblivious to the fact that as an in-depth Princeton University study shows, we now live in an oligarchy that is “of the rich, by the rich and for the rich.”

When a country spends close to $10 billion on elections to select what is, for all intents and purposes, a glorified homecoming king or queen to occupy the White House and fill other government seats, while more than 40 million of its people live in poverty, more than 40 million Americans are on unemployment, more than 500,000 Americans are homeless, and analysts forecast it will take a decade to work our way out of the current COVID-induced recession, that’s a country whose priorities are out of step with the needs of its people.

Be warned, however: the Establishment—the Deep State and its corporate partners that really run the show, pull the strings and dictate the policies, no matter who occupies the Oval Office—is not going to allow anyone to take office who will unravel their power structures. Those who have attempted to do so in the past have been effectively put out of commission.

Voting sustains the illusion that we have a democratic republic, but it is merely a dictatorship in disguise, or what political scientists Martin Gilens and Benjamin Page more accurately refer to as an “economic élite domination.”

We have been saddled with a two-party system and fooled into believing that there’s a difference between the Republicans and Democrats, when in fact, the two parties are exactly the same. As one commentator noted, both parties support endless war, engage in out-of-control spending, ignore the citizenry’s basic rights, have no respect for the rule of law, are bought and paid for by Big Business, care most about their own power, and have a long record of expanding government and shrinking liberty

We’re drowning under the weight of too much debt, too many wars, too much power in the hands of a centralized government run by a corporate elite, too many militarized police, too many laws, too many lobbyists, and generally too much bad news.

I still do not understand how any conviction from the Mueller investigation can still stand after it was found out that the FBI lied to the FISA court to start investigating people in Trump's campaign. Anything found out from wiretaps that led to investigation should be on the fruit of the poisonous tree. The lie was that Carter Page was working with people in Russia to get help with the election when in fact Page was not working with anyone in Russia, but instead had been working with the CIA in numerous cases against people in Russia.

And this is a big fat lie. Wikileaks had already told the world that they would be releasing their information on the DNC, Hillary and Podesta's emails a month before Stone opened his mouth. Every aspect of Russia Gate has been debunked and by Mueller and CrowdStrike themselves and yet with help from people like Rachel Moscow the lie continues to this day. Look at any article on Stone's commutation and you will see them full of lies.

2nd tweet:

The country is in an uproar over Trump commuting Roger Stone's sentence. I don't remember any uproar when Obama said that We would be looking forward on the crimes against the Bush/Cheney administration that include the biggest one according to the Nuremberg trials which was invading a country that hadn't threatened another and on false pretenses. Or for torture which is another crime against humanity. Nor when Bill Clinton wasn't prosecuted for perjury. Nor when Brennan and Clapper and numerous other powerful people lied to congress. When Eric Holder wasn't charged for contempt of congress. Nor when Obama said that the banks were to big to jail for deliberately crashing the global economy. Nor when countless other powerful people were found guilty and got off with a slap on the rich.

John Edwards told us that there are two justice systems in America. Of course we already knew that. When cops get off murdering us in cold blood while a guy that has too much marijuana is sentenced to decades in prison. Or one of the worst examples of the powerful getting off scoot free which was when Jeffrey Epstein was not charged with statutory rape and sex trafficking, but instead a charge of prosecution and only served 13 months in a minimum security prison and was allowed to leave for up to 12 hours a day to go to work. Or wherever the hell he wanted to. I think that denying millions health care is a crime against humanity. Same with evicting millions during an epidemic. Or watching millions and especially kids starve while fat cats get fatter. I am sure you can add to the list of Too.... to charge and jail examples.

Was Obama a despot for protecting Bush/Cheney? Was Bush for protecting Clinton? Was Clinton for protecting Reagan? Was Ford for pardoning Nixon? Was every president that followed the one before them who committed war crimes a despot? I am not going to get upset that Stone doesn't when worse people have gotten away with murder and so much more. This march into fascism didn't start with Trump.

People say that Obama's presidency was scandal free:

Ecp6j8fWkAAD03H.jpg

Phewy!

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As Progressives we are looking for some sign of life, not much, just some sign, any sign. Bernie picked up his political philosophy in NYC in the 1960s, very early. It's Socialism Light, with some twists. His political strategy was to run as an independent, but always as acceptable to the Democrat Party, not a simple trick. His speeches and phrasing are always the same across time. Ever wonder about that? He was the master at parroting socialist ideas, but never offending the Democrat Party. How did he pull this off?
We were shocked that he got so far in 2016 and now. The truth is that the Democrat Party would close ranks to never let him win, and on top of that he was really incapable of creating the political strategy and tactics required for a win, either at the party or national level. However, what he did show us is that the American people will entertain a Socialist message, if it's phased in a way that speaks to their grievances against political/corporate America. The bad news is that he was doomed to failure, but not because of the message, but because of the messenger. He could, in fact, never succeed. Even if he could enumerate a dynamic strategy and message, his dependency on the Party would sink him. In the end he tripped himself up and showed his true colors as a total sycophant. He was utterly screwed by Obama and then said: Sir may I have some more. Obama: Yes, you have to elevate the useless, corrupt, brain addled Biden to hero status. Him: Yes sir, right away, no problem. Really, would you want this person sitting in the White House negotiating with corporations and world leaders?

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Capitalism has always been the rule of the people by the oligarchs. You only have two choices, eliminate them or restrict their power.

Shahryar's picture

Seriously. 500 years ago people were executed in England (for example) and their heads were placed on pikes to be displayed on well traveled thoroughfares. We can only imagine what their wars were like.

So I'm figuring 500 years from now we'll have moved on a bit. Can't say how much better it'll be, maybe not much at all. So let me change that to "things will be better in 10,000 years".

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Pricknick's picture

@Shahryar
humans will be a forgotten blip in history.

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

@Pricknick

at one point the entire global human population was down to about a thousand reproductive adults, possibly fewer than 100 (this around 70,000 BC) - and we did succeed in coming back from that.

Our prospects for surviving success - OTOH - look problematic...

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@Shahryar

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lotlizard's picture

@Shahryar  
http://longnow.org/clock/

There is a Clock ringing deep inside a mountain. It is a huge Clock, hundreds of feet tall, designed to tick for 10,000 years. Every once in a while the bells of this buried Clock play a melody. Each time the chimes ring, it’s a melody the Clock has never played before. The Clock’s chimes have been programmed to not repeat themselves for 10,000 years. …

The Clock is real. It is now being built inside a mountain in western Texas. This Clock is the first of many millennial Clocks the designers hope will be built around the world and throughout time. There is a second site for another Clock already purchased at the top of a mountain in eastern Nevada, a site surrounded by a very large grove of 5,000-year-old bristlecone pines. Appropriately, bristlecone pines are among the longest-lived organisms on the planet. The designers of the Clock in Texas expect its chimes will keep ringing twice as long as the oldest 5 millennia-old bristlecone pine. Ten thousand years is about the age of civilization, so a 10K-year Clock would measure out a future of civilization equal to its past. That assumes we are in the middle of whatever journey we are on – an implicit statement of optimism.

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- Lily Tomlin

One small thread of hope I have rests in the ideas that intentionally, or not, were spread across the Country. Bells have rang in stadiums and giant rallies in Cities across the entire Country for ideas like M4A,free college and trade schools, student loan forgiveness, the Green New Deal, making the cops accountable, and every other thing that brought tens of thousands to their feet cheering...those bells can't be unrung.

Bernie may ,in effect, be gone but not those fires he started, you hear them at every protest, and those voices will continue to get louder as tens of millions of more people join the ranks as they are evicted, unemployment payments end, as they see they have no option but to fight.
Bernie is unimportant now, and whether or not his campaign slogan was the result of a focus group test,'Not Me, But Us', that slogan will continue to outlive his campaign.

Definitely not 'him' anymore, but certainly a matter of 'Us' working together, and that's the only way any real change for the better for people of this Country ever could happen anyway, it never comes from 'the top', every Civil Right we praise came from civil disobedience, like striking, marching,boycotting and taking the licks that come with it, but not stopping.

Of course the bigger the movement becomes the bigger, and more open the opposition will become, from the various police forces, the courts and lawmakers, but this time the numbers of the dispossessed will be people of all walks of life and the mask of Democracy will have to be dropped, gloves snapped on in public, in order to try to stop the movement.
It can't stop tho until there is real change,and along the way crumbs will thrown to pacify the people, but they've waited too long, been used and abused for far too long and the hunger is just too big for crumbs. It will not be pretty, never has, never will.

Final note, I think in Countries around the world people will cheer and support a movement 'of by and for the people' in the US. Maybe most won't cheer them in public but how many other Countries in the world would give a big sigh of relief if this Country collapsed ?
Trade with whatever Country you choose, don't worry about sanctions and/or invasions. A habitable planet may become possible for all, a lot of possibilities without the boot of the US on everyone else's neck.

“The greatest purveyor of violence in the world : My own Government, I can not be Silent.”
Martin Luther King Jr.

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@aliasalias This generation is getting wacked big time. If leadership for a new party or movement doesn't come because of it, this country is over.

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mimi's picture

@aliasalias

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snoopydawg's picture

@aliasalias

and I have read it more than once to capture what you say here. Yes I do think when the poo hits the fan blades and this country collapses from congress' abdication of duty or dereliction of it we are going to see mass uprising, general strikes and boycotts. Maybe starting with teachers who refuse to open up the schools in the middle of a pandemic. Seriously how insane is that? Kids in the lower grades are not going to keep their masks on and they will then infect their parents who just returned to work and as it spreads companies on the edge will need to close down again sending the business world into a spiral. Lines for food banks are getting longer and still tons of food is just thrown away because there still is no way to get it to the production or processing facilities. It took months into this epidemic for this administration to even acknowledge there was a problem and then said they would get it worked out. They haven't. But does this all fall on Trump? What are the governors of those states doing to alleviate this problem? Does anyone think that there isn't a plan in place just for this scenario? Is this another dereliction of duty done purposely to sew discontent and whatever word fits here? Strife? (speaking of strife has anyone seen Strife Delivery lately? You are missed.)

It can't stop tho until there is real change,and along the way crumbs will thrown to pacify the people, but they've waited too long, been used and abused for far too long and the hunger is just too big for crumbs. It will not be pretty, never has, never will.

This could have been avoided if congress had put our needs before bailing out their donors. We could be opening up like other countries because our numbers would still be going down instead of up like they are. Lots of the people at the open up rallies did so because they wanted/needed to work. There are huge numbers of people still struggling through our aged unemployment systems because they can't handle the number of people needing it. 50 million people have lost their jobs. The rule was that we'd open up again after the numbers had gone lower for 2 weeks. Many states did not and now they are at the front line of the rising numbers. In 2 more weeks we are either going to catastrophic numbers of infections and deaths or not.

Trump's election numbers are not looking good right now, but he can turn this around if he decided that we the people will get some financial support. He has already said that the government will pick up the tab for COVID treatments. Would his donors allow him to do that? Pelosi's sure don't seem to want that to happen. Just a thought.

Well said, aliasalias!

Side note. Sorry about the grammar errors and sentence structure errors in this essay. Maybe it was TL;dr for most and you didn't catch them. I did this morning and well...oh well my bad. AMs that's all I can say. Smile

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

@snoopydawg

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snoopydawg's picture

I don’t know what else you’re waiting for.

Now get out there and vote for ByeDone! STAT.

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

snoopydawg's picture

And why not? Everything else about this election has been rigged so let’s just coronate ByeDone and be done with this crap.

This is one way democrats can keep Bernie supporters from doing what they did last time when they knew they had screwed us over.

I’m having trouble seeing posted tweets so sorry if they are dupes.

Does anyone know what this is about?

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

gulfgal98's picture

Bernie chose his position in the Senate (seniority and committees) over doing the right thing. In the long run, it is a very sad thing becaue Bernie chose to sully his legacy in exchange for a small amount of power in the Senate.

The Mafia would be envious at how the Democratic party operates.

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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

snoopydawg's picture

.

Worthless bag of bones!

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

Shahryar's picture

@snoopydawg
There's nothing wrong with aging. Wearing something like that only draws attention to how she pretends to be something she isn't.

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@Shahryar

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I've seen lots of changes. What doesn't change is people. Same old hairless apes.

snoopydawg's picture

Here’s a few snippets.

There is a connection between the Democrats three-plus years spent pushing the un / disproven Russiagate story and Joe Biden’s miraculous ascent as the establishment candidate in 2020. The Russiagate allegations shifted attention away from rejection of the Democrat’s political program in 2016 so that they could run the same program again in 2020. Amongst the political variables open for ‘discussion,’ the choice of candidate is all there is. The political program is determined at the intersection of campaign contributions, the needs and desires of capital, and the ids of oligarchs freed from public accountability. Democracy has nothing to do with it.

The ‘left’ argument for electing Joe Biden is as a placeholder, without precisely explaining how placeholding has supported the upward redistribution of political and economic power for four decades running. Donald Trump made himself known— seemingly to his political detriment, while five decades in public life left Joe Biden a political unknown who oversaw the writing of the 1994 Crime Bill and the Patriot Act, supported the misguided U.S. war against Iraq, and acted as collection agent for the credit card company MBNA. That both men represent the interests of capital and disjoint constituencies within the neoliberal order again suggests political guidance from outside of electoral politics.

This description is difficult for Democrats because they never took account of their loss in 2016. The stories they told themselves of foreign intrigue and racial backlash weren’t, and still aren’t, supported by the data. The Russiagate pillars have fallen one by one until nothing is left but tribal shorthand for aesthetic aversion to ‘Trump!’ Otherwise, the SPLC (Southern Poverty Law Center) has been the gold standard of ‘ascendance of hate’ reporting since the 2000s. Outside of its made-for-the-establishment-press headlines, the number of racist and neo-Nazi hate groups is falling.

Furthermore, a social democratic alternative was offered by the left through the candidacy of Bernie Sanders. At the behest of capital, establishment Democrats sabotaged the Democratic primaries, thereby assuring that conditions conducive to the rise of an angry and determined political right would emerge from the next capitalist crisis—like the one that is now upon us. In this regard, dedicated austerian Joe Biden, who spent five decades making the ‘hard’ decisions to punish and demoralize vulnerable people, is exactly what global capital and the rich are hoping for. (Evidence: he is the establishment candidate.)

Why this is more than everyday hypocrisy in the service of power makes the Democrats the more skilled demagogues. Through state-corporate bureaucrats, much of what Republicans say they will do in plain language is achieved in a more politically palatable manner by Democrats behind closed doors. Noam Chomsky has made the point that Donald Trump is an environmental terrorist. No one paying attention would disagree with this point. What Mr. Chomsky doesn’t say— and appears not to be aware of, is that environmental terrorism was moved off of the political books by Democrats through ISDS (Investor-State Dispute Settlement) clauses in U.S. trade deals.

Donald Trump set aside the TPP (Trans-Pacific Partnership) trade deal shortly after entering office, earning the ire of the neoliberal left, the free-trade left and the market fundamentalist left, for daring to reconsider capitalist trade relations. In fact, the ISDS clauses in it and NAFTA, provided corporations with the ability to sue nations to be compensated for profits lost due to environmental regulations. Should this be less than evident, this is an extortion scheme designed to inflict economic penalties on states for passing environmental legislation. Had the TPP been ratified with the ISDS clause included, it would have been virtually impossible to reverse.

Lots more of good stuff in it. Will Biden bring back the TPP? Obama wanted it bad enough that he worked on it his entire tenure. This was probably the biggest sellout of his presidency. He basically tried to end our sovereignty and right for states to set their own environmental policies. But now they are fighting Trump’s fancy with deregulation.

It ends with this.

There is plenty fraught about the political and economic present. Only a fool would dismiss the risk of an ugly political reaction to widespread and persistent economic stress. Given that capitalist crises are increasing in scale and scope, the solution is to temper this economic frailty through the downward redistribution of political and economic power. However, Democrats just pulled out all the stops to prevent just such a social democratic political program from being realized. This is the political backdrop that makes Joe Biden anything but a temporary solution to aggregating crises. He, and the Democrats, are one-half of the problem with electoral politics.

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

The lesson is this: once a free people allows the government inroads into their freedoms or uses those same freedoms as bargaining chips for security, it quickly becomes a slippery slope to outright tyranny.

Indeed.

We are...living in a free society without the faith that built that society -- and without the conviction and dedication needed to sustain it.

Thomas Sowell (2006) full article

and are now seeing the results

Excellent LtU+E (Life, the Universe and Everything) reality check, Snoop.

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@Blue Republic

He has always been and remains a Christian thug and a conservative with a very skewed take on history.This opinion piece on the Greece case over sectarian prayers in government meetings made me want to throw up.

https://www.daily-journal.com/opinion/columnists/national/thomas-sowell-...

In short, you won't find me looking to your links to anything that man has written as a valid source of erudite opinion.

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"Without the right to offend, freedom of speech does not exist." Taslima Nasrin

Lookout's picture

...is plain to see. Both parties are tools of the oligarchy.

Two things that may bring societal change IMO, climate chaos (environmental collapse) and the loss of the US dollar as the international standard of exchange. They may occur simultaneously. The other possibility is WWIII with China and/or possibly Russia (which I sure hope we can avoid).

Economic collapse is my preferred outcome though it won't be pretty.

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“Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”

I honestly feel that I am a well informed voter, but suffer now from the thought that I too was taken in by dishonesty on his part. I saw this interview with him and keep thinking, "why are his eyes so wide and popped out? Is he ill, or is this what happens when he bold faced lies to the American people?"

What I now loathe him for most of all was his treatment of the younger generation.... those kids who earnestly got in their cars and traveled all over the country to canvass for him in the purity of their belief that he was genuine. He ended up betraying them in order to keep his cozy but psycho relationship with the Democratic Party. He spoiled a whole generation who he made feel that change was possible. I can never forgive him for this.

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"Without the right to offend, freedom of speech does not exist." Taslima Nasrin

snoopydawg's picture

@Fishtroller 02

What I now loathe him for most of all was his treatment of the younger generation.... those kids who earnestly got in their cars and traveled all over the country to canvass for him in the purity of their belief that he was genuine. He ended up betraying them in order to keep his cozy but psycho relationship with the Democratic Party. He spoiled a whole generation who he made feel that change was possible. I can never forgive him for this.

Many people gave Bernie a pass for rolling over for Hillary and the DNC after they screwed him in the primary because "he had to play nice so that he could run again in 2020." Okay I could see that happening. But then he once again not only has rolled over after blatant rigging from this git go, but what is inexcusable is that he did not speak out in outrage when the Iowa f'ck up happened. And then when it kept happening in state after state and still he stayed silent. Seeing the number of polling places in Wisconsin going from over ... a lot.. I have forgotten the numbers, but then down to just 50 is outrageous. Then again in one of the other states where it was down to one polling place for well over 600,000 voters. And in of course a minority and poorer neighborhood. He should have right then said that this was unacceptable but .... silence.

Did he say anything after it came out that Obama said that he would interfere with the primary if it looked like Bernie was winning? Not to my knowledge. Just like last time. And then to see how Obama got Pete and Amy to drop out to clear the field for Biden while Pete was beating him at the time and what did Bernie say about that obvious foul play? NADA.

Just like Obama betrayed his millions of supporters that criss crossed the country for him people then stayed home. Boy didn't that work out well for the dems? "We really want to give you nice things, but the GOP won't let us." BULL!!

Will those young voters even vote again or will they work on getting a new party to replace the traitorous dems? Hopefully the later. But with this much money in politics will they get anywhere? People are saying we must vote for Biden cuz Trump is bad. Yes he is. But so are dems. In the article you don't care for it talks about the ecocide Trump is doing. But it also states that the dems would have been even worse to us if Her had one because of the ISDS that was included in the TPP.

It is outrageous how he was treated by the media asses who he is now going on their show like they never said anything. But for him to say that IF Biden enacts the things they got included in his platform he'd be the second coming of FDR is a betrayal on every level. Read the article When Bernie endorsed Biden. I changed the name to make it present tense. Bernie said the same thing about Hillary. She who said, Universal health care will never ever happen." So damn progressive huh?

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8 users have voted.

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

RantingRooster's picture

fight or die.

We must stop "believing" in the possibility "the people" will rise up and some how effect real change. Ain't, gonna, happen.

The most productive resource on this planet, is people. The most powerful motivator is the threat of loss. When everything needed for human survival has been commoditize, that threat of loss, is even more powerful. Losing one's job, means losing healthcare, food and any semblance of "security" (to live without fear), and ultimately, losing one's life.

How does one convince 320 million people, they are living a lie, when their livelihood depends on "believing the lie"? How do you convince the Google engineers that the algorithms they create and skew the information retrieved for their advertisers, is actually bad for humanity, when they are making more money than they've ever made in their life, and if they stop, they will go broke?

What "alternative" can we offer? Who is going to give up (lose) their livelihood of 180K a year for growing their own food, composting their own trash, and basically becoming a simple farmer? How do you "sell that idea"?

People don't seem to realize, you can make all the demands you want, but until the 1% feels the heat of poverty or death, things will not only not change, but as we are experiencing in real time, they are getting much, much worse, and if the "science" is true, human extinction is a very real possibility, much, much sooner than anyone realizes. (Yeah, I'm Danny downer...)

I hate the term "the 99%" (no offense JtC), because, it's the top 49% that support the top 1%. (I'm sure that will ruffle some feather's but, I said it and I'm sticking with it.) Think about the people that are so rich, they don't even make the Forbes list of billionaires. They have people that want to be like them, working for them so they can taste that "privileged" life, to be treated like royalty by politicians and their puppets.

They have no compunction what so ever to "change the system". That system is what gives them "privilege" over "others". Their fucking laundry bill is more than most American's make in a year. Their fucking wardrobe is worth more than most Americans homes.

How do you convince someone who will spend $2,000 on a pair of shoes, their life style is killing the survivability of the human race?

Who is going to give up riding in a limo everyday, to riding a bicycle? How are they going to go to their unless meeting in another country, if they are now riding a bicycle? Nothing beats first class right? I used to LOVE being an Admiral's Club member, if for no other reason I could get a jack and coke, and sit and smoke cigarettes in comfort, till my next flight or my taxi arrived.

There is no "secret cabal", they operate in the open, ie the World Economic Forum, is just one such venue where they express their ideas and intent in public. The linguistics they use is quite simple to diagram their true intent. Terms like access, affordable, work force, consumers, trade, allocation of resources. We never hear the term citizens.

We are human capital to be allocated for their "projects" of enrichment, power and population control. And when I say population control, I'm not talking about wholesale death, that's is already happening, I'm talking about literal population "control". What you can do, say and think.

This pandemic should have been a huge fucking wake up call to the unwashed masses, taxes do not fund government spending. But "the left", left the building after FDR saved Capitalism. The rich, and I'm talking the ones that don't make the Forbes list, know very well, FEAR (of loss) is the most powerful motivator in this universe today.

There need not been any "truth" to their messaging, ie Russia meddled in our "exceptional nation's elections". 15 guys armed with box cutters, effectively shut down our country, if you believe the "big lie".

Think for a moment, if we are such an exceptional nation, why did we make such ineffective voting system that could be "rigged by those pesky Russians"? We put men on the moon with less computing power than today's cell phone, but can't keep the evil Russians from rigging our elections? I wouldn't call that exceptional, except to say, that it is exceptionally fucking STUPID, that we can't build secure voting systems! (psst, they don't want secure voting.)

quote-people-governments-and-economies-of-all-nations-must-serve-the-needs-of-multinational-zbigniew-brzezinski-91-50-45_0.jpg

The one thing Zbigniew didn't realize, is that the multiple climate tipping points we are rapidly approaching will produce an out of control "systems state", which are going to make multinational corporations and central banks mute. And a lot sooner than most realize. Again, assuming the "climate science" is true.

Oh and by the way, FUCK Bernie Sanders! He is a TRAITOR to the cause of the people, and should be viewed and treated as such, with polemic ire and disdain. If not tar and feathers. I'ld rather piss on his leg than shake his hand.

Bernie's call to cut the military by 10% is a fucking bad joke, when 188 democrats voted to give Trump 120 billion more than Obama's last military budget, which is still more than Bernie wants to cut. 10% is roughly 75 billion? Here let my poke you in the eye with this stick. Doink!

There is no vanguard to "lead" the Revolution. People like Chris Hedges, Dr. Cornel West, are not going to lead, they are only educators. They are "comfortable", and not facing immediate death or poverty as we are.

America, in a sense, is like Hydra. You kill one snake, and two more rise in it's place.

Crazy

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9 users have voted.

C99, my refuge from an insane world. #ForceTheVote

lotlizard's picture

@RantingRooster  
https://www.unz.com/lromanoff/a-few-historical-frauds/

Now, even if one rejects the above article and/or website out of hand: nevertheless, seeing how ridiculously easy it is for the mainstream media to get a majority of the American people to believe lies — Russiagate 1.0 and 2.0 “Bounty Edition” being merely the latest examples — no doubt “the truth of history” as told in America isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.

The whole fabric of consensus reality is falling apart in real time before our very eyes…

Granted, after one passes a certain age, one ceases to be surprised if things one thought one knew yesterday turn out to be — like food that’s been kept in the fridge too long — “off” today…
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=everything+you+know+is+wrong

Return to the spiritual wellsprings deep inside and find what all the false hearsay could never corrupt, your real essence and true self, known by direct experience from the earliest age you can remember, when all was new and unexplored and full of wonder…

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2 users have voted.