Charles Hugh Smith rocks it once again

Charles Hugh Smith has published another on-the-money essay. I'm quite certain most everyone here at c99p will appreciate what he has to say. The title pretty well explains where he's going to go:

Dear Self-Proclaimed "Progressives": as Apologists for the Neocon-Neoliberal Empire, You Are as Evil as the Empire You've Enabled

A sample:

Dear Self-Proclaimed "Progressive": I love you, man, but it has become necessary to intervene in your self-destruction. Your ideological blinders and apologies for the Establishment's Neocon-Neoliberal Empire are not just destroying your credibility, they're destroying the nation and everywhere the Empire intervenes.

While you squandered your political capital defending zero-cost causes like "safe spaces on college campuses," the Empire was busy killing, maiming and making refugees of women and children in Syria. President Obama and his Neocon crew (former Secretary Hillary Clinton included) aren't fools; they rely on drones and proxy armies to do their dirty work.

The dirty little secret of Neoliberalism is that the markets it creates are rigged in favor of Elitist cronies. If you can set aside your "progressive" blinders for a moment (Bill and Barack could do no wrong for 16 long years of neoliberal exploitation), you might learn that the Presidents and party you supported ushered in the era of neoliberal pillage as public-private partnerships, Philanthro-Capitalism, and rigged markets that enriched the elitist Establishment you defend at the expense of the bottom 95% non-elites.

The entire article is hard-hitting, pulling no punches, and backed with Smith's usual graphics and charts.

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love to forward that to but I've already ranted on my own, no need to bombard or completely alienate. Yet. You're right, very hard hitting and very true.

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

Big Al's picture

etc. It's like when you break it you own it. In this case, you support it, you own the actions. Support Clinton and the democratic party, and you support war, imperialism and all the killing that comes with it.
A lot of hypocrites out there, Meryl Streep and Bob DeNiro being two of them.

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Every now and again the truth leaks from pie hole.

Ours is a self-loathing party, refusing to treat this asshole like the idiotic right-wing hack that he is.

since forever I might add nothing has changed loser
http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2017/1/9/1618602/-What-the-f-is-Ron-Fournier-doing-moderating-a-DNC-chair-debate
this instead of a thousand words
Kos Remedy
shove it
wish he'd go away from California myself, he typifies all that's gone wrong
just another idiot seeking political power to avoid the existential nihilism
kos and bbb from coast to coast
piss ants and ass hats galore

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sojourns's picture

other than bemoan Drumpf. Is that the tool they are going to use to sustain them for 4 years? That's barely a coping method much less doing anything to improve their party. Social Justice Warriors Deflate!

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"I can't understand why people are frightened of new ideas. I'm frightened of the old ones."
John Cage

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Alligator Ed's picture

Remember, misery loves company and those folks* are pretty miserable.

*"folks" used with permission of B.H. Obama (miserable in his own way).

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OzoneTom's picture

Rather than give them a page-view, when I want a pick-up I just check the stats here:
http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/dailykos.com

When I do go there out of curiosity about how sad the vote and comment counts are I never click on anything and bounce away after checking the front-page names and titles. I wouldn't want to improve their engagement figures either. And these have all been worsening steadily as well.

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Site also registers as having a below-average percentage of female visitors and above-average percentage of male - so much for us unwittingly gender-swapped Bernie-Bros, lol. Did that 5 million Correct the Record spent go mostly to male trolls, or were they simply better paid, I wonder? Same with '...Four billion dollars per year is spent by the Pentagon on propaganda aimed at the American public...' ( https://www.occupycorporatism.com/how-the-ndaa-allows-us-gov-to-use-prop... )

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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

Your ideological blinders and apologies for the Establishment's Neocon-Neoliberal Empire are not just destroying your credibility, they're destroying the nation and everywhere the Empire intervenes.

And discovered how "viral" the essay became in just a few hours …and all the interesting places it was reprinted. Especially notable were investor blogs.

After several pages, Google results listed other websites that matched various words in the sentence, themselves… aka the like-minded. So many unique places I've never heard of before.

(For people with too much time on their hands, today Wink

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____________________

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

I first became aware of Charles Hugh Smith just before the start of the Great Recession. I was searching to find whether anyone beside myself was seeing the signs of impending disaster. Mr. Smith saw it coming and was able to describe why it was happening, what was coming, and what would and would not work to fix it. There were others I found at about the same time for the same reasons. Oddly enough (or not) one of those sites is listed to the left - Naked Capitalism. This is also when I discovered Washington's Blog and even the Karl Denninger's (the Father of the Tea Party) site.

There were not many that called the shots correctly on the Great Recession, but Charles Hugh Smith was one of them and is still one of the best. His insight on things political, financial, medical, and sustainable is far superior to most mainstream news sources.

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Pluto's Republic's picture

He's been linked to before on c99.

So that's what happened to Karl Denninger? He was something of an economic demagogue back then. It makes sense.

Charles Hugh Smith is smart, interesting guy. The essay you cite hits hard.

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____________________

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

Seems Karl is still his old self. I checked in to see what what's shakin' there and he didn't disappoint. He was busy attacking Trump for his appointment of Rep. Tom Price (R-Ga.) to lead the Department of Health and Human Services. A snippet from the essay:

... Trump's nomination of Price for HHS is proof that he has zero intention of fixing anything related to the health care mess and in fact will enable the medical industry to screw you longer and harder, giving that screwing the force of law for Seniors through what is known as "Balance Billing" -- a practice Price has not only endorsed he previously tried to get it passed into law for Medicare recipients. ...

I have to admit that I've always admired the guy. Particularly in financial matters, he's not a bad voice to listen to. If nothing else, he is damn entertaining and has no problem whatsoever standing up against dragons or various bad guys. Though many cite him as a father of the Tea Party (I happen to agree), he has dissed them and dissed them hard in the past. When he sees something he thinks is wrong, evil, stupid, or corrupt, he will open his mouth. I like that.

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Mark from Queens's picture

Great piece, thanks for turning us onto him. Like Washington's Blog too. Can't find the article now now but WB did a good one on the phony, ginned-up by the RW press and the fascists inside the department insurrection by the NYPD goons who turned their backs on DeBlasio at a cop's funeral.

The mask of Liberalism has finally fallen off with the election of the most intensely disliked, incompetent, inarticulate and unfit crony capitalist bigot ever seen. Neoliberalism is the lie that Democrats are any different in terms of economic policy than the Republicans, and this year people understood that and were so desperate and disgusted they voted for a disgusting loser instead. Politics were so detested, in the form of the arrogant, hubristic and entitled insider Hillary Clinton, that we now have this ugly scene on our hands.

The smug and soft people who make up the political apparatus of DC and the media pundits who prop them up unquestioningly are to blame for running this scam for decades. They've abandoned the middle and working class for big paydays by keeping the status quo for the 1% bankers and oligarchs for whom they are elected by their campaign donations merely to run interference for their grotesque and harmful exploits. The lip service and empty platitudes have done nothing to abate the merciless grinder of unbridled capitalism and an ever-inhumane justice system and monopoly ownership of all of our resources.

There is a huge movement of the 99% waiting to be galvanized, if people can accept that they've been duped and want to regain a dissident spirit missing in the citizenry.

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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