The Magic Socialist
CJ Hopkins
So here it is, the announcement we’ve been waiting for … all aboard for another cruise on the new and improved U.S.S. Magic Socialist with your captain Bernie Sanders at the helm! If you’re not familiar with this extraordinary vessel, it’s like the luxury liner in The Magic Christian, except catering to credulous American socialists instead of the British filthy rich. Tickets start at just $27 dollars … so hurry, because they’re going fast!
That’s right, folks, Bernie is back, and this time it’s not just a sadistic prank where he gets you all fired up about his fake “revolution” for fifteen months, gets cheated out of the nomination, then backs whichever corporate-bought candidate the Democratic Party orders you to vote for.
No, this time the Bernster really means it! This time, when the DNC rigs the primaries to hand the nomination to Harris, or Biden, or some billionaire android like Michael Bloomberg, Bernie is not going to break your heart by refusing to run as an independent candidate, unbeholden to the corporations and oligarchs that own both political parties, or otherwise make you feel like a sucker for buying his “revolution” schtick. He’s not going to fold like a fifty dollar suit and start parroting whatever propaganda the corporate media will be prodigiously spewing to convince you the Russians and Nazis are coming unless you vote for the empire’s pre-anointed puppet!
Bernie would never dream of doing that … or at least he’d never dream of doing that twice.
There are limits, after all, to people’s gullibility. It’s not like you can just run the same con, with the same fake message and the same fake messiah, over and over, and expect folks to fall for it. If you could, well, that would be extremely depressing. That would mean you could get folks to believe almost anything, or that we were stuck in some eternally recurring multi-dimensional reality loop. The next year and a half in American politics would play out like one of those Groundhog Day knock offs meets The Magic Christian meets The Usual Suspects, directed by David Lynch, on acid. We’d be barraged by recycled Feel-the-Bern memes. Hacky sack shares would go through the roof. That creepy little bird would come fluttering back, land on Bernie’s podium again, and chirp out “L’Internationale.” People would start booking Tim Robbins for interviews. Ben & Jerry’s would roll out another revolutionary flavor of Bernie ice cream … and in the end it would all amount to nothing.
But that’s not going to happen this time. No, this time, the U.S.S. Magic Socialist is setting sail straight for Socialismland! This time, it’s really the Revolution! The end of global capitalism! And the best part of the whole deal is, you don’t even have to take up arms, stage a series of wildcat strikes, blockade major highways, occupy airports, or otherwise cripple the U.S. economy … all you have to do is vote for Bernie!
See, that’s the magic of electoral politics! The global capitalist ruling establishment, despite the fact that they own the banks and the corporations that own the government that owns the military and intelligence services, and despite the fact that they own the media, and all essential industries, and channels of trade, and are relentlessly restructuring the entire planet (which they rule with almost total impunity) to conform to their soulless neoliberal ideology, and are more than happy to unleash their militarized goons on anyone who gets in their way … despite all that, if we elect Bernie president, they will have no choice but to peacefully surrender, and transform America into a socialist wonderland!
Sure, they won’t be happy about it, but they will have no choice but to go along with whatever Bernie and his followers want, because that’s how American democracy works! We’ve seen it in action these last two years, since Donald Trump got elected president. The establishment wasn’t too thrilled about that, but they had to put aside their own selfish interests and respect the will of the American people … because imagine what might have happened if they hadn’t!
For example, they might have concocted a story about Trump being a Russian intelligence asset who was personally conspiring with Vladimir Putin to destroy the fabric of Western democracy so that Russia could take over the entire planet. They could have had respected newspapers like The New York Times and The Washington Post and television networks like CNN and MSNBC disseminate this story, and subtly reinforce it in endless variations, on a daily basis for over two years. They could have appointed a special prosecutor to investigate the facts of their made-up story, and indict a bunch of unextraditable Russians and a handful of inveterate D.C. slimebags to make the whole thing look legitimate. At the same time, they could have had the media warn everybody, over and over, that Trump, in addition to being a traitor, was also the second coming of Hitler, and was on the verge of torching the Capitol, declaring himself Führer, and rounding up the Jews. They could have generated so much mass hysteria and Putin-Nazi paranoia that liberals would literally be seeing Russians and Nazis coming out of the woodwork!
Fortunately, the global capitalist establishment, out of respect for democracy and the American people, decided not to go that route. If Americans chose to elect a jabbering imbecile president, that was their right, and far be it from the empire to interfere. Tempting as it must have been to use all their power to demonize Trump in order to teach the world what happens when you get elected president without their permission, they restrained themselves … and thank God for that! I don’t even want to contemplate the extent of the rage and cynicism they would have fomented among the public by doing those things I just outlined above. That might have left people with the false impression that their votes mean absolutely nothing, and that the entire American electoral system is just a simulation of democracy, and in reality they are living in a neo-feudalist, de facto global capitalist empire administrated by omnicidal money-worshipping human parasites that won’t be satisfied until they’ve remade the whole of creation in their nihilistic image.
Thankfully, the ruling classes spared us all that, so now we can hop aboard the Magic Socialist and take another cruise with Cap’n Bernie! Considering how magnanimous they’ve been with Trump, once Bernie wins the election fair and square, the empire clearly won’t have any problems with him nationalizing the American healthcare system, tripling taxes on the super-rich, subsidizing university education, and all that other cool socialism stuff (i.e., the stuff we mostly still have here in Europe, along with some semblance of cultural solidarity, although the global capitalists are working to fix that).
Oh, yeah, and in case you’re worried about Bernie backing the empire’s ongoing regime change op in Venezuela, don’t be. He’s just playing 4D chess, like Obama did throughout his presidency, by pretending to do the empire’s bidding while he actually went about the business of resurrecting hope and eradicating racism. Bernie’s just being sly like that! It might seem like he’s aligning himself with mass murdering thugs like Elliot Abrams and sadistic ass freaks like Marco Rubio, but he isn’t. Not really. It’s just an act. I mean, he has to get elected, doesn’t he?
How else are we going to get to Socialismland?
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Now, now, CJ, cannot have this sort of uppity independent thinking, even coming out of Berlin. You know the Poles are the Yanks’ best friends now and all that stationing of US war infrastructure could just as easily target Berlin as Moscow. There is a final solution for garrulous old critiques of the Thousand Year Riches underway, you know.
After all, ol Bernie fancies piloting a bunker buster Top Gun airplane, not some clunkin’ ol’ clipper.
He fancies bombin the frig out of ever weapons factory in both the Confederacy n the other place. Much better bombin yourselves outta warmongering, rather than expectin ol Vladi to be generous in his choice of targets.
Once he’s bombed em all, the insurance payout can build factories for peace time instead, usin 300bn a year saved from those skanky genocidal MIC killers who prey on the hill (they would pray there too, but Bernie has enforced ‘Thou Shalt Not Kill’ as criterion one for being allowed to be Christian n all).
He’s been thinkin about nanothermite to flatten WTC again, but reckons the insurers would not pay out if he did. But it would put Larry Silverstein outta business, which is good for votes in NYC….and he would do it on a Sunday, so no lives would be lost…in fact he would evacuate Downtown hours before pressin the trigger.
Ya see, the great thing about being President aged 79-83 is that you’ll be gone soon, so being radical is the name of the game.
Ol Bernie fancies a Maglev from Dulles to TWH n The Hill: demonstrates to world leaders he has them onside n all. Course, the only stop for everyone else would be downtown but hey: most folks in their right mind keep well away from the Hill. And as the Chinese have tested the technology already, no Republicans can say it is unsafe. Getting home quick from work at the weekends is a votewinner in Congress, doncha know….
The real challenge for Bernie being from NE WASP country n all, is how to balance the ticket without pissing off his 29 yr old enforcer from NYC. Woman: check; Ethnic minority: check; from the western or Southern three quarters of the country: FAIL. So could he sign up young Tulsi or is she too midstream to associate with the Wacky Race that Bernie will run?
Cannot see Michelle, Barry’s Belle, being the Veep with Bernie.
But stranger things have happened….
Socialism ,bolshevism ,communism,fascism ,capitalism.
Enough of the isms,
Its plain and simple the social contract has been broken.
The commons.You know the concept of common man . Simple things like education,housing,employment,healthcare,common spaces the public (il pluribus unum).
Society and life are not commodities,hence the largest wealth gap exceeding the Gilded age.
Fascism or whatever one calls it in the modern vernacular is besides the point.
Sociologically speaking we have come to another crossroad in humanity.There fore the Bernies or the OAC’s the CFRs the Chattam houses are known and verifiable realities.The very notion of the sovereignty of nations being used to destroy ancient principles of humanity are all calling signs that there plan is total spectrum dominance.
Let us the free citizens of humanity take back what is rightly are’s (il pluribus unum)
Society with out humans and social intercourse the quint-essentials of being human.Embrace the future with pure dynamism such as feel ,touch ,smell,hear and see.
Political purism only works when a majority of voters share your particular purism. “My way or the highway” is not a winning strategy, although it may get you into Heaven.
Greetings, Dimly. It is fascinating how people who do not have the integrity to stick to their convictions like to call those who do “purists”. We got a lot of that when we were exposing the high crimes of the Uterus of Wall Street you were trying to shove down our throats too. Don’t forget to remind us, in the most condescending tone, that we just don’t understand how the sausage is made while the working class gets served up yet another turd on thier plate.
If I may add, auntiebuna: It could be argued that “political purism”—i.e., the dominant ideology/hegemony/hierarchy of power of late-capitalist imperial oligarchy—is exactly what leftists aim to release folks from.
Democrats (including lapdog social democrats), as much as Republicans, are hell bent on keeping the status quo pure. Long put to pasture is the notion that US voters, as well as the over half of eligible voters who opt out (ain’t just because they’re lazy either), are represented by most if not all politicians.
What little remains of the American left—which has been systematically and repeatedly declawed, neutered, backstabbed, and winnowed since at least the 1930s, by Democrats and Republicans—has really no alternative but to stand as a countervailing force, no matter how small, against the political purism that’s dominated the US for nearly a century. And that can’t be done merely by taking part in an electoral charade every two and four years—certainly not by following leftish sheepdogs and pied pipers loyal to a socio-econo-political machine designed to eat everyone and everything it encounters.
Leftists have to be hold outs—speaking up and reaching out—until the time, which may be at the last minute, when people have had enough and are ready to be their own masters.
Brother George. I couldn’t agree with you more but you did miss my entire point.
I took your point to be this: the old “political/ideological purism” canard is trotted out by fair-weather progressives or sophistical leftists as if they’re in possession of some sage insight about political compromise or reasonableness, which they then use to justify acquiescing to, thereby promoting, a system and entities diametrically opposed to what they (those genteel leftists) say they hold dear. Case in point: supporting and even attempting to bully others into supporting DNC/Clinton, Inc. back in 2016.
That’s a point I most certainly agree with. I apologize if I got it wrong.
I merely wanted to add—sort of panning the camera out a bit—to suggest to folks like Dimly that they’re actually missing the forest for the trees, that they take the current socio-econo-political framework to be some kind natural, preordained order which everyone must accept and work within. Such an assumption, and actions (or inactions) based on that assumption condemn most folks to misery and everyone to extinction sooner rather than later. In view of that, and dovetailing with what I took to be your point, there are some on what’s left of the left who refuse to abide by that assumption and what it promises.
Yo George. Yeah, what you said. I thought you were accusing me of being for the cluster f*ck that is the status quo and could not imagine how you got that out of what I said. It’s all good, my brother.
My bad. I wouldn’t dare suggest you contributed to that mess. Solidarity.
George, just wondering if you are the guy who wrote that article in Counterpunch recently.
I wrote a couple-three for them back in 2017. I’m flattered you remember. Solidarity.
Greetings Auntie,
No offense intended. I merely wished to emphasize that politics is a social activity which requires consensus-building. An unwillingness to compromise with other groups makes it difficult to win their support.
In the most recent U.S. presidential election, Jill Stein of the Green Party, who was the most principled progressive candidate and has always remained true to her beliefs, received 1% of the vote. Many Democrats hate Stein, just as they hated Ralph Nader. Many Democrats even hate Bernie, whom mainstream Democratic voters view as a “purist” spoiler who is splitting the party and get Trump re-elected.
It seems clear to me that ideological purism and successful campaigns are usually mutually exclusive. I’d love to be convinced otherwise. What political strategy do you suggest as an alternative? I’m all ears.
No suggestions for you because I no longer believe voting or getting worked up over fake elections is going to change a thing. Didn’t you notice how much of a joke voting machines are (for example) and the long lines of honest people standing for HOURS in the sun (Arizona) to vote for Bernie and they fucking RAN OUT OF BALLOTS while the Uterus of Wall Street declared her “win” with hundreds still waiting in line. How about the rooms full of paper ballots that were never counted? Nope. Voting in the USA was clearly exposed in 2016 for the dog and pony show that it probably always has been.
At some point boycotting elections may make sense (e.g. see Jimmy Dore’s recent interview with Tim Canova), but I’m not ready to give up quite yet, since no better alternatives present themselves. To quote Burke, or whomever, the only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good people to do nothing.
<a href=" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B6A452H6wA4" Why Did Bernie Abandon Tim Canova & Election Integrity
Dimly, first I want to thank you for including the link with Tim Canova on the Jimmy Dore Show. That was generous of you and I didn’t expect it. Please, if you want to be active in the electoral circus, you probably should do it. I never have told anyone not to vote. My own views about voting used to be pretty similar to yours and even from over here in the Netherlands, I made sure my voter registration was up to date and had not missed an election in all the years I lived here. After I voted for Bernie in the absentee ballot Primary (ballots counted in Germany so Bernie won 78% of the expat vote). Suddenly the state of North Carolina “lost” my name and I was unregistered for the first time in the 24 years I had been living over here. Took me four written requests and almost as many months to get an absentee ballot for the General. My vote for Jill Stein went directly into the shredder. No doubt in my mind. Dimly, you and I are not adversaries. I respect you, especially since you demonstrated integrity by providing the Tim Canova link. I hope you don’t think that the many millions of us who no longer believe that our vote counts are “doing nothing”. We just don’t want to bandy it about on social media.
Too true, but unfortunately with voting, at least in USAmerica, they’ve removed all the green scenery and replaced it with false front facades. The voting is all fake. I’ve researched,written (at opednews, under my name) and been many times on WGDR.org in Vermont about this. The host of the radio program, Jim Hogue, was the first person to push through legislation (in VT) to ban touch screens there.
Last time I talked to him, by phone, we commiserated on how voting has become absolutely unverifiable in the country, and ALL the voting integrity groups are overrun and ransacked with Intel infiltrators, all bent on subverting the electoral process in the U.S.
This has been going on forever, but the voting process, for hundreds of reasons and techniques I won’t go into here, has been so occulted and obscured at every step, by design, and replaced with fake wannabe process, that it is quite impossible to say for certain whether any votes are counted, or they just make them up.
I still do it (vote) but the whole event is cold comfort.
We need parallel elections, per Lynn Landes valiant efforts, AND above all, parallel Intelligence analysis.
The latter would have to be done in such a way as to resist infiltration and hijacking, and it’s unclear if that’s still possible, but we can try.
It is why, in conclusion, I’ve been saying for at least ten years, that “the only secure repository of true and reliable intelligence is the domain of God the Father.”
And that’s very scriptural, for thousands of years, since Jesus told his disciples, when asked by them, that even the Son does not know the day or the hour, only the Father knows.
And, as in the case of the Genesis account of Babel, the reasons for that are quite clear, in the Age of Babel 2.1.
We are finding out every day that knowledge is the currency of the day and the future, and the quality of information will be hijacked by various mobs.
However, as I also like to formulate it, God has, and always has had, the means to communicate with his children along channels that are infinitely discreet.
We are entering an age where, whatever way you parse that, we are starting to verify it as a truth that is “too true.”
Just sayin’
In 1999, soon after he became prime minister, Putin enlisted Abramovich and Leviev to create the Federation of Russian Jewish Communities. Its purpose was to undermine the existing umbrella for Russia’s Jewish civil society, the Russian Jewish Congress, led by oligarch Vladimir Gusinsky, a potential threat to Putin and President Boris Yeltsin. A year later, Gusinsky was arrested by Putin’s government and forced into exile.
At the time, Russia already had a chief rabbi as recognized by the Russian Jewish Congress, Adolf Shayevich. But Abramovich and Leviev installed Chabad rabbi Lazar at the head of their rival organization. The Kremlin removed Shayevich from its religious affairs council, and ever since it has instead recognized Lazar as Russia’s chief rabbi, leaving the country with two rival claimants to the title.
The Putin-Chabad alliance has reaped benefits for both sides. Under Putin, anti-Semitism has been officially discouraged, a break from centuries of discrimination and pogroms, and the government has come to embrace a state-sanctioned version of Jewish identity as a welcome part of the nation.
As Putin has consolidated his control of Russia, Lazar has come to be known derisively as “Putin’s rabbi.” He has escorted the Russian leader to Jerusalem’s Western Wall and attended the opening ceremony of the Sochi Olympics, Putin’s pet project, on the Jewish Sabbath. Putin returned that favor by arranging for Lazar to enter the stadium without submitting to security checks that would have broken the rules for observing Shabbat.
In 2013, a $50 million Jewish Museum and Tolerance Center opened in Moscow under the auspices of Chabad and with funding from Abramovich. Putin donated a month of his salary to the project, while the Federal Security Service, the successor to the KGB, pitched in by offering relevant documents from its archives.
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/04/the-happy-go-lucky-jewish-group-that-connects-trump-and-putin-215007
As it becomes clear that Bernie and AOC are completely fake, as it becomes clear that Corbyn’s Labour are a machine for destroying socialists whilst enacting the orders of zio-fascists, as the world seems to hover on the brink of cross continental war, might we consider the other dichotomy that we are presented with : that Putin’s Russia is some kind of bulwark against the Anglo-zionist empire ?
Despite the ridiculous charade of Russiagate, might it be that there really are connections between Moscow and Washington that we all should know about? Connections that run through Jerusalem ? Jared Kushner is heavily involved in the Chabad movement and is generally recognised as a (or ‘the’) power in the White House.
Is there more to geopolitics than superpowers’ pursuit of resources and territory?
If so, then we are all being played on a global level?
This is in the realm of the far flung, and the presentation is classic ‘conspiracy porn’ style, but hasn’t Adam Green collected a lot of confirming evidence ? Chabad are plugged into the very heart of the key power centres of the world and they have some very crazy convictions about a second temple :
Thesis, antithesis, synthesis. Control both sides = NWO.
Just make sure there are plenty of circuses (elections; false flags, strawmen, etc.) and lots of cake – sex for everyone, everywhere with anyone/thing; smart phones, etc).
If anyone claims to be a socialist and supports sanders or corbyn then know this fact: you aren’t a socialist just like the two Trotskyists. All trots are champagne socialists and have never supported actually existing socialism. Look at peter Hitchens and his brother. One went full neocon (typical Trotskyist) and thevother went from so called Bolshevik atheist to ardent Christian Thatcherite who now hates Maggie and who has whined and bleated about the EU and the need to leave and when they said here’s a vote in a referendum peter did the trot and split and refused to take part and mocked those that did. All trots no matter how well meaning they are are fraudsters
“All trots are champagne socialists and have never supported actually existing socialism. … All trots no matter how well meaning they are are fraudsters”
Blair Peach?
Cut’n’Paste from Saker Vineyard on Russian economy:
Dalmer on February 26, 2019 · at 7:08 pm EST/EDT
What the poor usually forget is that they can eat the rich.
As far as I am concerned, the US middle class does not deserve any socialistic benefits until they renounce all the US illegal wars of aggression, demand an end to them, a closure of foreign bases, and a big cut in military spending. Sanders isn’t going to do that, so there is no money for universal healthcare, free college and all the other goodies the “progressives” want.
All the funding for socialistic programs is being spent to bomb foreign countries, kill million of people, and turn millions of more people into widows, orphans, and refugees. Guns and butter don’t mix. Besides it is morally repugnant to demand government freebees while destroying the live of others.
There is no such thing as a lesser evil, so I cannot support anybody who is not antiwar. The 2016 choice between Hillary and Trump should have settled that question. There were other choices such as Dr. Jill Stein.
America’s self proclaimed role of world’s policeman which led it into world domination also made the economy reliant on war and weapons production, especially hi-tech weapons. I believe Russia’s S-400 system is the first one to displace American dominance and they don’t like it. However, they will spend their way back to dominance. There is no going back, it’s all or nothing and who happens to be president doesn’t matter. No one will dominate America militarily, we’ve got to wait till they implode economically…..and that will take the west with them.
“No one will dominate America militarily”.
I’m sure eqivalent statements were uttered with regard to previous invincible empires of their day (the Romans, Ottomans, Mongols, British,etc…) but they all collapsed.
The Stone Age did not end because the world ran out of stones.
Hmmm, Yes, “world’s policeman” is right. So was the self-same agenda of Hitler’s Gestapo.
Perhaps this is why Harry Truman called the CIA “The American Gestapo”.
He should know, Reinhard Gehlen, Hitler’s top spy (who by the way did not inform Adolf of the upcoming July 20 plot by The White Rose to bomb his bunker, even though RG clearly knew about it, throughout its incubation; can you say “mercenary”?) and Otto von Bolschwing, and, indeed, Josef Mengele all came to Langley HQ in 1947.
Otto von Bolschwing was the architect of The Final Solution blueprint to liquidate Jews worldwide, and Eichmann answered to him, as his immediate chief-in-war-crimes. Allen Dulles and Co. brought them over and told the American (and world) public that they had been “de-Nazified”.
Fascinated by NASA and the space program from the 2nd grade and on, I asked my mother in some alarm how the Nazi designer of Hitler’s dread V-! and V-2 that rained down on London, could possibly be the same person, as the spelling of his name would suggest, who was now head of the American NASA? She told me he’d been de-Nazified. I said something like, “Serious.” I wouldn’t leave the question alone, back in the late 1950s, but always got the same vague answer.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Paperclip
Now here’s an astounding bit of editing: the Paperclip link above, last time I perused it a couple years ago, had, after all the scientists listed by specialty, such as “physics” (nuclear bombs) and rocketry (W. von Braun) and such, a special section at the bottom of the Nazi brain trust imports to America, with two names, in blue for links: (General) Reinhard Gehlen and Otto von Bolschwing.
Those names are now totally ABSENT. Expunged. Despite the fact that the huge listenership of Coast to Coast AM, with its nightly national audience of millions, heard last year from Fred Burks of http://www.wanttoknow.info that Mengele was on hand, physically, training agents at Langley, CIA, back in the 1950s.
Yes. I had begun to suspect that some years ago, in my various encounters with that dread death camp name, Uncle Joe to the kids he gave a lollilop then trotted to their deaths in ovens.
But now, on NATIONAL A.M. RADIO, we have heard that he was actually “consulting” and training at Langley. I had thought Gehlen could have done it with this handy device known as a landline telephone, but I am not in the least surprised at the sangfroid of RG to bring in Mengele for a “hands on” seminar or two.
This of course is what developed directly into the hideous hydra-headed psyop (domestic war) of MKULTRA and all its derivatives (Artichoke, Bluebird, Monarch et al.), and with them, the assassinations of the 60s.
There is a link to Intelligence, but its paths are very muddied and obscured, at the Paperclip article, link above, but you’ll see how hard it is to find, if you wish to study it.
So there has been some clear and ongoing and deep stated burial of the Nazi links to CIA, however much that cat is out of the bag.
But these are some of the Volk who enabled our Intel community, who in turn enabled Uncle S(c)am to become
THE WORLD’S POLICEMAN.
Some police force.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Hemisphere_Institute_for_Security_Cooperation
OTTO VON BOLSCHWING:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otto_von_Bolschwing
Lived a life of luxury in Sacramento, CA., the state capitol, east a few hours drive from San Francisco. From the late ’40s to the 1980s !
It’ll make your hair stand on end, CIA’s assessment that his “Nazi past is relatively inconsequential…”
Adolf Eichmann’s superior, but his Nazi derring-do is “relatively inconsequential”? Per: Langley.
And thus, protected as the VP of a computer leasing company in Northern California, forty years after he had designed, as chief architect mind you, the Final Solution. Sounds like more of Allen Dulles “de-nazification” and sanitization of war criminals.
Another “Nazi aristocrat”.
To brother David William Pear: wonderful to see you commenting over here. I’m over here under the name of auntiebuna when I used to think we had a right to privacy. You know me as Brenda Schouten-Beckett.
Always a joy to get your take on any subject!
Sounds right. And “left” as its current default mode here.
If anyone believes, or ever has believed, or ever will believed that Bernster Sanders ever has had a chance to be President of this regrettable “Republic”, I have a Bridge in Brooklyn I’d like to unload on them, at a discount.
I got a really great deal on it from a guy named Trump.
Serious! You believe Sanders, but you DON’T believe ME?
Actually a little bird told me, an even creepier bird. MOCKINGBIRD.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mockingbird
Sorry, “alleged” bird. “Attempted” bird.
I sympathise with what you are saying but he appears to be far far the lesser of evils.
And just raising the issues he does is a necessary first step in getting a real political dialogue going in the USA.
I’m sitting on the fence for this one.
Neither lesser, nor greater, nor anything else in any way substantive.
Just another “optical illusion” of the 4th Reich, for our soporific delectation. Zzzzzzzz.
By leaning to the right, Sen. Sanders did increase his popularity among Democrats and middle class liberals. In the US, post- (Bill) Clinton liberals have stood “in solidarity” to protect the advantages of the middle class within our capitalist state, and have been untroubled by the consequences (our poverty crisis). That’s just the way things are. Political campaigns are about selling the paying customers whatever they want to buy.There is no longer anything loftier about American politics — no values, no ideals.
Thanks for this superb article. Most of the comments were pretty insightful too. I don’t know how Tulsi Gabbard fits in here, but if my suspicions are correct ( she being the ONLY one talking about wars of regime change) then Bernie’s decision to run is calculated to split what remains of a “left” in the Evil Empire. Since he announced, some of us old tattered lefties have been suspicious of his motives. I still want my money back from 2016, Bernie.
P.S. The little bird on his podium WAS cool as fuck and I fell for it…back then.
Just google Dave Emory at spitfirelist.org and “Who is Tulsi Gabbard” and you shall see what a wolf in ewe’s clothing she is. From her curious father to her curiouser ISKON spouse, to her connections to right wing Modi in India, heir to the RSS that assassinated MK Gandhi, that girl is up to her eyeballs in bizarre fascist encounters of bad odour.
Gee, what a surprise.
The only problem with that site is it’s pro Hillary and has trump derangement syndrome but some (not all) of the details in it were quite useful on tulsi the fraud
I’ve met Dave Emory, recently, and talked a little about some of this with him. He is not pro-Hillary, he’s anti-Trump, though I did see his tepid support of her in lieu of any other Trump alternative in 2016. Granted, not really a choice, but others did the same, rather than split the Left vote with Sanders. Heck, almost all of Black America voted for her, as a Trump antidote. Stalin teamed with FDR? A marriage de convenance? That’s just basic to such epic confrontations.
Emory is one of the few long-standing scholars who are still doing stellar work on exposing what he calls “The Underground Reich” and in fact has been using that term for over 30 years at KPFK in L.A. I believe he coined it, 30 years before the recently departed Jim Marrs wrote “Rise of the 4th Reich.”
He’s practically a university one-stop-shop degree on getting the word out on how CIA morphed into the American Gestapo, and started doing it long, long, long before anyone else did, except Mae Brussel, from whom he took the torch when she died in her 60s. (Black Op?) He deserves a lot of kudos just for all that, but his broadcasts at For The Record, now in quadruple digits, such as his 25-part just concluding interviews with James DiEugenio and his landmark work on JFK, “Destiny Betrayed” are still and always an ongoing veritable fountain of information that few sources have. It was on his show, 32 years ago, one late night, that I heard him report that Manley Palmer Hall, my attorney father’s client, had known and seen Sirhan at Hall’s PRS Reading Library in Hollywood, in 1967, months before the assassination of RFK.
He gets an awesome lot of props for all those chops, in my book.
In light of such a contribution, I tend to await further explanation, patiently, on tangential pecadilloes.
He’s been one of the few I’ve found, yet, in the US, who is all over Tulsi and exposing the glaring contradicitons on her resume. Like having a lot of past association, through a spouse, etc., with Prabhupada and his stridently fascist and racist comments in a number of letters on file, so unsettling in a “guru”.
Tulsi has voted for everybwar she could vote on and is a member of the council on foreign relations. She’s another fraud and total fakes like jimmy dore and secular talks Kyle Kulinski and Gordon dimmack all push her and Bernie and corbyn etc. They’re all controlled opposition
Brother John, many of your comments here resonate with me and I thank you for steering me in the direction of inevitable disillusion with Tulsi. I had not yet done my due diligence about her but I am ALL THROUGH with Bernie. I stopped trusting Kyle a while back but have really liked Jimmy Dore. Recently, however, he’s jumped on the Bernie bandwagon which is a huge disappointment. It’s getting harder and harder to find news sources. Well, we still have Off Guardian, Tele Sur and RT…for a while…
I think that Sanders is able to change half of the USA. He is likely to do something about inequality, unemployment, health care, but he will not touch the MIC.
The US is a rich country, and if the US wants stay rich it has to do something about this third world-isation of the USA that is in play since the 1990s (outsourcing of jobs, leaving the home population with less and less means to buy stuff US corporations produce abroad). This is where Sanders will come to help: he will help US citizens, by helping corporations to be able to sell their stuff to US citizens. Sanders calls that socialism, but it is, as Chomsky explained, new dealism. Socialism would be if Sanders promoted that workers would take over the corporations, or would allow to re-open factories, warehouses, and farmland where the workers were in control, not the bosses. Sanders is not promoting any of that. Sanders may be a Roosevelt, but he is not an Upton Sinclair (who nearly became governer of California in the 1930s by running a truly socialist platform). And, as said, he will certainly not touch the MIC.
Here is Michael Parenti on Bernie Sanders
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=OLNQEHbusSA
The juvenile, sarcastic tone of this article reminds one of why Lenin characterized ultra leftism as an “infantile” development, radical in words but objectively reactionary in effect. Is the best Marxist response to the first American Presidential candidate in 70 years (who has gotten millions of votes) who describes himself as Socialist–is the best response to this epochal political development to withdraw from political action?
Everyone on the US Left understands that Sanders is no Leninist. But simply having a pro labor organizing Administration would be a tremendous difference from past Presidents, Democrat or Republican, and a tremendous opportunity for organizing the working class. Real Revolutionaries support reforms if not reformers. Bedides helping the workers, reforms permit the workers to build their own, future base.
As a model for radicals in their attitude toward the Sanders movement, contemporary Leftists should look to how the powerful Communist Party USA of the 1930s and 1940s dealt with President Roosevelt. They gave him “critical support,” entering into alliances with left Democrats for needed reforms most effectively, without losing their independent, working class identity. If a Marxist Leninist, revolutionary Communist Party could work with FDR’s New Deal, can radicals of today not work with the Sanders movement?
‘can radicals of today not work with the Sanders movement ? ‘ …. The Bern saw nothing wrong in taking $240 million from small donation supporters in 2016 and then shitting on them from a great height. And this week on CNN Town Hall he blamed the Russians entirely for fixing the result of the election.
Fool me once shame on you … fool me twice shame on me etc. etc.
It would be helpful to have an understanding of the history of the US working class before 2016.
The US has no class, working or otherwise.
I admire CJ’s writing and thoughts, but this particular piece does seem ‘ultra-left’ in our U.S. context. I am definitely not going to forgo the Bernie campaign for 2020, given the options and the opportunity for political discussion of our current political stances and trends. Yes, he is being cagey about foreign relations, but is not in any way condoning military adventures. As to the MIC, he has often stated that reduction of related spending by the feds is part of the means to support his socialistic (yes, New Deal) programs.
Don’t know about the Communist Party, but do know about Upton Sinclair, who ran for California governer in 1934 by promising to End Poverty In California (EPIC) by means of, amongst others, ‘production for use by the unemployed’. He received a promise of support by FDR (FDR would support Sinclairs plan on a radio show), a promise FDR did not keep, which was an important reason why Sinclair lost that election to a pro business/ wall street republican.
Sinclair concluded that it didn’t matter. He felt that socialism had to come to the US, ‘because there is no other way to save our nation from bankruptcy […] The purpose for which I entered the campaign was to open people’s mind for that reality’
IMO, we are there again. It doesn’t matter for the US if Trump, Sanders or someone else gets elected, if they want to prevent the country from going bankrupt they have to introduce socialist ideas like welfare for all, more control by the workers, higher wages for the workers, less inequality.
I guess that voters know this, and I also guess that the media knows that voters know this. So if the people who run the show don’t want a revolt, they will allow Sanders a stage and possibly even the presidency. In that way Sanders can be used as the Messiah, similar as to how FDR was used as the Messiah in the 1930s. Thereby they will prevent the truly socialist concept that it is the people who govern, not politicians, like Trump or Sanders and the puppeteers behind the curtain.
Juvenile? The writer strikes the precise right notes and chords, eloquent in a way of satire that Will Rivers Pitt often is, only even more so. Go live in Europe for a few years. Make “Le Grand Tour”. You’ll see.
What do you think of Lenin’s ideas which he expressed in that pamphlet?
You’re just the kind of sheep to vote for blanders and then wonder why nothing changed. And ultra leftists are the ones pushing him and aren’t in the least bit bothered about bombing the rest of the planets continents. Someone in this very comment section has a bridge to sell you
For a few minutes back in 2015-16, I was grateful to Sanders for putting “socialism” in a relatively healthy way back into US political discourse. Now, every time he or Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez or one of these “‘democratic socialism’ isn’t THAT kind of socialism” progressives speaks or scribbles, I shudder. (As if they even know what democratic socialism is.) Their responses (or lack thereof) to what the US government and Latin American right have been/are doing to Venezuela are merely the latest—and telling—indicators of how spineless, opportunistic, and pro-imperial they are (à la the SPD’s Eduard Bernstein, for example). As self-appointed ambassadors for socialism (whether Marxist, libertarian-socialist, Debs-style American socialist, or any other variant), they do more harm than good. I’m suspecting that very well may be the point.
All the more visible Left here are part of a process of offering us 31 flavors so they can identify the supporters for later toe-tagging.
Sorry to be a buzzkill, but this is all scripted and contained, pending our coming reabsorption into their shtick. Works every time. Here at least. It is psychodrama for show, not any tangible results. This Age’s equivalent of ancient Rome’s bread and circus.
Good luck with that change thing.
“You can not solve a problem of consciousness on the same level it originated.”
-CG Jung, as heard quoted by Echkhart Tolle
And so goes American political consciousness, for real.
Nota Bene:
A long-time Company watcher, sez:
“The CIA doesn’t care what you do as long as it’s something they want you to do.”
I memorized that some time ago, by heart, and can remember it verbatim, so telling, but can’t yet source it.
In any case, everything I look at in this country, and really much of the world, I look at through that lens, as a caveat for pondering people like Bernie, or Tulsi, or any number of other simulacra of pined-for reality.
Phew CJ, you gave me a scare early there.
The problem with the US socialists is that they never understood how socialist they really always were. They believe they never had a new-deal or an old-deal. They chose the myth of the American Dream over the reality of a nation of slaves.
Great advice. As soon as they extend the NYC subway to Florence, I’ll take the working man’s Express . . . .
I wish Bernie would fuck the fuck off.
Re stupid ass freaks. That photo of Gadaffi ( https://medium.com/@caityjohnstone/psychopathic-us-senator-openly-calls-for-maduro-to-suffer-gaddafis-fate-43b618eaaf0e), before and after his sodomisation is, for me, the defining image of the decade. Up there with the naked Vietnamese child burnt with napalm. It needs to be viewed in tandem with Hilary Clinton in her “pantsuit” speaking “We came, we saw, he died” through her teeth and around her laughter. I also link William Hague to the image, with his droning fake statesman hipocrisy, he, Cameron, Obama, Clinton and a sodomised Gaddafi are the visual description of global, no holds barred, managed democracy.
I vote for the Hillary laugh. Laughs say so much more. After all she started her political career by working for Goldwater who at the time was advocating nuking the peasants of Viet Nam. Lots to admire there. And epitomizing American foreign policy. But the heart-rending sound bites of the harridan Albright , comfy with the deaths of a million Iraqis, and declaring how women not voting for Hillary should be in hell, are certainly “in the conversation”.
Scandalously side-splitting gallows humour, a la Stephen King and “Misery” etc.
“Nice.”
It really can’t be repeated enough. That’s what regime change is, that’s what neocons and neolibs like. That’s their happy place. They are so far outside of the range of ordinary sentiments of kindness, fairness, or horror that they really have no place in the scale of “right” vs. “left” as it is conventionally understood.
You forgot the Abu Ghraib pictures of “humans rights” supported by the hegemon in Iraq which I think are emblematic for USA policy at home and abroad and I am surprised nobody mention these pictures every day as they should…Peace.
One poor devil was stripped naked in a freezing cell and chained to the wall in a standing position until someone noticed 17 days later that he was dead.
Aren’t we lucky to have the Exceptional And Indispensable People around to climb up on their high horse and give us lofty sermons and pious lectures about our human rights failings?
A couple of more ‘wars’ and the need for a ‘strong man’ in charge will sink the Bernie ship, Trump might go the whole hog and invade Iran and Russia simultaneously.