Excerpt: Walter and Matt discuss Joe Biden's speech, Dock Ellis's no-hitter, Roman Catholic holidays, the merits of presidential lying, the absence of Joni Mitchell, and more
That speech was a terrifying escalation of rhetoric. I've seen many comments that say "whatabout Trump, he said shit like this all the time'. The reality is that Trump targeted the leadership of the left, not citizens. Biden just verbally attacked half the country, and did it in a manor I've never witnessed in my 65 years. I'm sure his base loved it, but I can't believe he didn't lose a shit ton of independents, who now believe that not only are his policies are bad, but so are his leadership/figurehead abilities.
Agree, Trump has never attacked American people. I am not Trump’s fan and think his time has passed. But to be fair, he has never ever done it. He is smart enough and a true populist. Biden’s speech was absolutely terrifying. And the more it is being dissected by pundits, the more scared I feel. It is true that it could be a provocation. Like Walter Kirk said: “Take your civil war and shove it, this is the best time to watch TV and gain weight.”
I'm just trying to figure out who the violent ones are? The morons that took a bunch of selfies in the halls of Congress? Or the morons that lit half the cities in America on fire for "justice."
They're both morons. The actual violence, if you want to define violence as physical violence to persons and buildings was exponentially greater during the summer of 20. Both sides can point to the threat to democracy. The left will make the point that our constitution was in danger from 1/6. The Right will say that local mayors and governors suspended the rule of law and made an elective decision to allow rioters to burn down portions of their cities and do physical harm to it's citizens.
Both sides have their fanatics that make the lives of 90%+ of the citizens of this country miserable, and combined, constitute a threat to our democracy.
Point taken, but I wish I really knew who was behind the systemic destruction of our country the past 20 years.
I do believe that someone is playing us against each other.
It's hard to dispute that our last President was the only one with the yarbles to call out many of the parties that are in power in my lifetime. Thanks to Burgess for creating the term 'yarbles'.
Ever hear of a little thing called the World Economic Forum?
Disciples of that group are ascending to power all over the world, particularly the West (Truss in the UK is the latest). Their agenda is out in the open as are their ties to the UN and it's agenda for the future.
We continue to dismiss all grand conspiracy theories out of hand at our immediate and permanent peril.
Turd, nearly 95% of the protest were peaceful; how is it possible they “…lit half the cities in America on fire….” And apparently, both anarchists and white supremacists were instigating violence. The BLM may have threatened property, but the ones in the halls of Congress were threatening the Republic!
Chauvin and Floyd were affiliated not just through the arrest but were also former coworkers. I accept that he used excessive force. Was that the cause of death? I didn't perform the autopsy. I do know he had enough Fentanyl in his body to kill him, and that he was struggling to breathe before Chauvin arrived. It was a tragedy, and that was agreed by everyone. For an instant we had a chance to come together; instead, we fell apart. That was the greatest tragedy.
Jon, Trump didn’t attack white Christians, everybody else, it was open season, and half of America are not MAGA members. With all this hyperventilation about calling out people who don’t believe in representative democracy, what are we supposed to do? Pat them on the head and say now behave yourself, Johnny.
I am unhappy with many aspects of Bidens speech. But a lot of Dems are sick that Biden hadnt taken on Trumps dangerous lies (ie stolen elections) head on and more directly called out the acquiescence by the Republican Party to Trump and the MTGreens and M Gaetz’s type lunatics of the extreme right. I felt it needed to be said but I think the same message (last paragraph below) could have been delivered in way that appealed to Dems and more independents and thoughtful Republicans.
But for the record, though easily forgotten in the beginning of his address, Biden did qualify who he considered MAGA. It wasn’t half the country or all Republicans:
“Now, I want to be very clear, very clear up front. Not every Republican, not even the majority of Republicans, are MAGA Republicans. Not every Republican embraces their extreme ideology. I know, because I’ve been able to work with these mainstream Republicans.
But there’s no question that the Republican Party today is dominated, driven and intimidated by Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans. And that is a threat to this country.”
Lies and denial of an election victorty? Do you not remember the Dems pushing for "faithless electors" to deny Trump the Electoral College after the 2016 election? Four plus years of "Russiagate" nonsense, designed to wreck any chance Trump would have in office? The Silicon Valley/NYT/WaPo/CNN/MSNBC/NPR/NSA/CIA/FBI suppression of the Hunter Biden laptop story for over a year? Trump may be nothing more than a carnival barker, but the many millions of people who voted for him - and many of us who didn't - roll our eyes when we hear Biden & Co hyperventilate about "Our Democracy."
And it wasn't too many years ago that people on the liberal and left end of the spectrum were deservedly opposed to the use of electronic voting machines controlled by private companies, with no proper means of confirming an honest count. Fact of the matter is, no one can claim US elections are honest. Until we have paper ballots, hand counted in public, with a verifiable trail, our elections aren't much better than playing a video game programmed by who knows who.
We haven't even discussed Biden's discussion of violence. In 1967, Martin Luther King Jr said "the greatest purveyor of violence in the world: my own government." Absolutely just as true today, with both the Dems and Repubs equally drenched in blood.
Jim, you aren’t seriously comparing the five faithless electors who didn’t cast their ballots for Clayton and the two who didn’t cast their ballots for Trump? Or the Russians that hacked the Democratic national committee and Clinton’s presidential campaign. Additionally, they used fake accounts on American social media platforms to spread propaganda. In fact, 13 Russians were indicted; for what I call the “Big Lie”?
I'm talking about the very public campaign, by Hillary Clinton supporters, to find "faithless electors." This was a clear, totally obvious attempt to deny that Clinton had lost the election (under the admittedly bizarre US Electoral College rules.) People who mounted such a campaign have zero credibility to complain about Trump supporters four years later claiming that Biden stole the election. You are further proving my point: after all these years of Russiagate nonsense (that's the polite term for horseshit), you still think that $100,000 worth of social media ads, many of which appeared after election day, and a good part of which had nothing at all to do with the election, somehow caused Hillary Clinton to lose. Yes, 13 Russians were indicted (which brings to mind the old adage that grand juries will indict a ham sandwich.) You don't mention that one of the accused entities actually employed a law firm to demand the US prosecutors produce real evidence in a US court of law. At which point the prosecutors scurried away. Please, wake the hell up.
Jim, interesting assumption. Did all the people who complained about Trump supporters campaign for faithless electors? I think not. We’re now approaching two years with the Big Lie; the campaign to find electors for Clinton didn’t last over three months, but sure, that’s comparable!
Jim, you said: “…you still think that $100,000 worth of social media ads, many of which appeared after election day, and a good part of which had nothing at all to do with the election, somehow caused Hillary Clinton to lose.” I said nothing of the sort; I merely pointed it out!
You are going off the deep end, for me asking if the Big Lie was comparable; for length and depth, the Big Lie is more pervasive, so I recommend you wake up and smell the roses!
If you think any (non-MAGA) Republican thinks, ‘oh good, he doesn’t mean me’ you are fooling yourself. It’s scary and insane. That Buffalo Springfield song, For What it’s Worth eerily applies to every decade. ‘Battle lines being drawn. Nobody’s right, if everybody’s wrong’. ‘Mostly say hurray for our side’. We are a nation most torn apart.
As a said…I am unhappy with many aspects of the speech, one of which is how he defined who he was speaking about in various parts of his address. Many left of center folks felt threatened by Trump’s attacks on the left as well. I sadly agree with you, we are a nation torn apart.
Wait. That was knee-jerk. Sorry. I do believe not all Republicans love Trump or maybe, if they do, they still want him to step aside. Whatever, it’s everyone’s right to choose. I do believe most Democrats are now in the same cult-like place they accuse Republicans of being in. Regardless, we are all Americans aren’t we??
Lucy, here are two speeches from Pres. Biden, one, when he first became president, the other this month.
(“see each other, not as adversaries, but as neighbors, [to] stop the shouting and lower the temperature, for without unity there is no peace, only bitterness and fury.”)
“But first, we must be honest with each other and with ourselves.
Too much of what’s happening in our country today is not normal. Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans represent an extremism that threatens the very foundations of our Republic.
Now, I want to be very clear, very clear up front. Not every Republican, not even the majority of Republicans, are MAGA Republicans. Not every Republican embraces their extreme ideology. I know, because I’ve been able to work with these mainstream Republicans.”
Both speeches have conciliatory content; can you say the same about Donald Trump?
Ann22, I think Pres. Biden was trying to thread the needle, but unfortunately, when calling out a group of people who may not be logical and or rational, the task is very difficult.
I'm not sure how you separate the people who voted for the MAGA candidate from the "MAGA Republicans."
Like, I don't wear MAGA hats (I don't wear red hats at all, actually, and have shied away from wearing red in general for a while now), but I did vote for him twice (after voting for Obama twice, and Bush twice before that). I disagree with virtually every single thing Biden has done or said since taking office and cannot wait to vote him out in 2 years (and his party out in 2 months). Am I a MAGA Republican? Am I fair game for Biden's upcoming criminalization of his political enemies?
What a strange world we live in; parts of Florida are labeled extreme danger (125 degrees or higher), parts of Texas are marked danger (103 to 125 degrees), then we move on to Iowa, where it’s only extreme caution (90 to 103 degrees) how can we have so many snowflakes with this heatwave? The radical culture warriors are upset because someone pointed a finger at them; oh, woe is me; apparently, the poor souls can’t handle the heat!
Sorry but a lot of us on the left felt threatened n many ways by Trump’s rhetoric. While Right extremists ran around with confederate flags on their vehicles and F—-k Biden signs, we wouldn’t even dare stick any sort of political bumper sticker on our cars. Maybe it’s where you live, I live in a rural state. Trump made me (and many others) feel like I should apologize for having gone to university and achieved advanced degrees in science, necessary for my career. And I attended public universities and paid for it myself through work and student loans.
It's definitely where you live. I'm just outside Boston, MA. The scenario you describe is similar but reversed. There are people on the left and right that believe the other side is trying to destroy the country. Social media is amplifying what would have been a very small minority position. Most now believes they're right in the middle of a huge majority. While lots believe if you disagree with then, you're an extremist. Eventually we'll get sick of fighting and things will soften. I'm just not sure how big the fight will need to get first.
Hmmmm….I just now watched a clip from the 2020 campaign, Trump calling out democrats as trying to “replace American freedom with left wing fascism…fascists, fascists….not all of them , but some of them, and they’re getting closer and closer”. So…
I’m basing my comments on the speeches he made and comments he made that I saw and heard myself. And as for being responsible for what people do, if a President says outright that there were “good people on both sides” re Charlottesville and “proud boys stand back and stand by”, and encourages his supporters to beat up a heckler in the crowd, and uses generalizations like “they’re coming for you next”, etc. well, I think we disagree.
This is a man who goes on vacation about 4 days every week and emerges every once in a while in order to make everyone think, “What the fuck did he just say?” We all know guys this who sit at the end of the bar all night until they get up and say stuff that is incomprehensible and loud. The question is always who is putting the words on the teleprompter? Who and how many people in the White House think this sort of thing is brilliant? Perhaps the plumbing system has become self aware?
I listened to this yesterday and LOVED you and Walter. I'll be putting it on my washing-dishes playlist from now on. But I've continued to brood over a bad feeling that this speech was a set-up. Biden is being intentionally staged and lit and animated to appear Satanic. Walter is right that this is a get-out-the-vote speech ... for Republicans. It puts every Republican or individual who 'lives in MAGA country under threat where, as Walter says, anyone active in MAGA has put their lawyer on speed dial. Something very, very fishy is going on. It's not what it seems on the surface, I think.
Totally agree! As a weird person who senses patterns easily, Biden’s speech and the eerie environment felt a bit too staged for my taste. As did Pelosi ripping up Trump’s State Of The Union Speech—too staged. Also the letters given to the evil attendees at George Bush’s funeral—the letters in their programs and the cameras just happened to be on each person as they found the envelopes and read what was inside and then their reactions. That felt completely staged.
There are times—and often—I don’t get what the hell is going on. But there’s more to all of this than meets the eye for sure—I truly believe that.
GR what a great name for your 'stack and what great content! I join you as a new old lady, having reached the golden Medicare age. So far it's getting me 10% off my groceries.
I forgot about Pelosi ripping up the Trump SOTU. The Taiwan trip also feels ham-handed. Why now? What's there to gain? I think the whole country is being set up to fail ... badly. If I really put on my conspiracy theorist hat, I wonder about China. We know that Biden just gave them a big hunk of our oil reserves and that his shady dealings through Hunter were with them. They produce our voting machine software, out of Wuhan in fact. They produce our masks and PCR tests.
Putin intentionally left billions in gold in overseas banks (even moving it there) so it would give him a reason to repudiate the petrodollar when it was confiscated. Is China looking for a reason to repudiate friendly relations with the US and demand that their Treasury bills be cashed in--and for what? Something wicked this way comes, just not sure what ...
It’s hard to say what’s real. Is there a shadowy cabal behind the scenes crafting reality?
Or is Team Joe really this stupid, this cynical, this drugged into a consciousness-coma by the toxic fumes of their alleged virtue, and this willing to sabotage 200+ years of nation building and American political philosophy.
It could be either one.
If it’s a shadowy cabal, who are they? What is their goal? How do they compel obedience? What is their decision-making process? Those questions are never asked or answered, so I remain a bit skeptical. I think they really could be this stupid.
Occam's Razor, as I apply it, assumes that something is working the way it was designed to work or else it would be changed. Right now we're living through the greatest concentration of power, wealth transfer and asset grab in the history of the world (not hyperbole since there's never before been the mechanisms to globally centralize technology, money, media and governance). Does that sound like stupidity to you, for the people coming out on top?
And clearly from your second paragraph, you don't hang out with nearly as many conspiracy theorists as I do ;-) In answer, here's a post today from Robert Malone that simply puts together global news releases that speak for themselves, without editorial: https://rwmalonemd.substack.com/p/global-news-around-the-world-in-a
Yes, I've done the same. Although I still entertain the Fort Detrick theory, who sent soldiers to the War Games in Wuhan who immediately became sick, infecting hotel staff and spreading from there to the 'wet' market. Fort Detrick is near my hometown in MD and I heard this before it was labeled Chinese 'disinfo.' I haven't heard any denial of the events, however.
Even the ancient Greeks noticed the tendency for democracies to concentrate wealth and become plutocracies. These trends are not remotely new in western Civ or history. In fact, it’s “same old same old”.
There is a tendency perhaps for us Americans to look at the world and believe we’re special and everything is newly fallen snow, waiting only for our theories and interpretations. Well, yes, everything is always new — that’s what Time does. And our theories may in fact be new and correct.
I’m not averse to conspiracy theories. History shows that powerful people conspire on a routine basis. But history also shows they are often fantastically incompetent So it’s a struggle between power and ability. LOL
You're speaking my language, crazyman! My book, How to Dismantle an Empire, starts with the twin inventions of democracy and currency and shows how together they've led to where we are now. You raise an important distinction with Western Civ and history, since the latter reflects the former. Going back into anthropology like David Graeber's Debt and The Dawn of Everything shows that other ways of organizing societies have been prevalent throughout pre-history.
Powerful individuals are certainly incompetent. But the economic and governance systems that make us complicit in conquest and enslavement, and therefore not able to oppose them, have been fantastically effective--so there are always more powerful people waiting to take their places when the incompetent ones fail.
I applaud your inquisitiveness but I don’t believe it goes far enough. The conquest and enslavement that these days, seems laid solely at the door of “Western Civ” was in fact a global phenomenon almost everywhere humanity was.
We can examine non-Western history through anthropology, ethnography, mythology, comparative religion, archeology and art history. What all that shows are worldwide tendencies to empire, tribal conquest, enslavement and domination by warning tribes on their neighbors. It also shows humankind living under the thrall of mythic organizing systems that, to our “enlightened” modern standards, seem deeply psychotic — with ritual human sacrifice, torture and torment of slaves, pathological misogyny, and other wanton abuses dignified by universal necessity. Joseph Cambell’s 4-book series Masks of God was a popularized rendention on all this, but there are many other authors. To be sure, Western Civ experienced all those same realities too. In fact, if anything, a proper study of humankind and world history finds veery little difference between peoples and far more similarities. But that’s not perhaps politically correct these days, when The Big Bad Western Colonizer is the only acceptable scapegoat.
It’s, frankly, an intellectual and historical Shit Show. False, tendentious, shallow, insipid, shamefully meretricious and useful only as a tool of plunder and grift.
But I’m sure you’re smart enough and sufficiently well informed to know all.this (and I say that quiet honestly and not snarkily!). I’m serious.,
P.S. I read Graeber’s Debt, First 5000 Years. I found it to be a masterful work. But even bright capable people can see what they want to see, not what is there to be seen.
You've read Debt! You could be one of the handful of people to really get my book, since Graeber is one of the foundations of my thinking. There's an assumption you mention that I think goes to the core--if we see what we want to see, it must not be true. Yes, I would like to believe that communities are capable of self-governance and not warring with their neighbors, that women and council-led governments tend to resolve conflicts peacefully, that 'interaction spheres' can exceed Dunbar's number and still cooperate, that particularly destructive rulers pave the way for generations of peace, and that wealth accumulation and slavery are choices that were available and consciously turned against. Graeber has some very credible evidence from which he draws these inferences. I don't think inferring the worst of humanity should be taken at face value while requiring irrefutable proof that we're capable of better.
I think you'd like The Dawn of Everything that contradicts the dominant narrative that people, by their nature, "rush headlong into their chains" and tend towards empire.
You are light years behind people who have been reading, researching, looking at documents and pouring over books for a decade or more. There is ample, ample evidence there is a group of elites who wish to dramatically change the world. You don’t even have to crawl under a rock to find the information. Just read Klaus Schwab’s book, “The Great Reset” published last year. I hate to sound cheeky, but I am amused at posts like yours.
I can find information on the internet that Bigfoot is a conscious mass-energy form that lives in an as-yet umapped version of hyperspace, of which our universe is a sub-space the way a plane is a substance of Cartesian 3D space.
And you know what? I’m not a skeptic about that. I actually do believe it because that’s where the empirical evidence largely goes and perhaps the post-quantum mass-energy physics too.
But my belief demands evidence. I’m sure there are elites who “want” to dramatically change the world. I’m aware of these allegations and the personalities you mention.
But still: how do they compel obedience and agreement? Who are they? .How do they coordinate? I’m not unwilling to believe it. I have seen the shared talking points trotted out by media nationwide in montages on Youtube, the bricks that magically appeared at BLM riots, the Color Revolutions overseas. This is all strong evidence, but it also may be the group think that human society always embodies.
There are claims everywhere, but facts and least of all “proof” are very hard to come by. Let us not abandon Occam’s Razor without a little care.
I don’t claim to be an expert in crowd pyschology but it is a phenomenon that interests me, and I’ve dabbled a bit in reading — Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, French sociologist Gustav Lebon’s The Crowd, Freud’s Group Psychology and Analysis of the Ego, as well as artistic intepretations from Dostoevsky’s The Possessed to Ionescu’s Rhinoceros Also the heterodox British biologist Rupert Sheldrake has done fascinating work on how groups of animals learn.
Yes, there are profound self-organizing energies there that work without direction and much for “science’ to figure out. There is no coherent map of psyche and certainly none of group psyche.
I would think anyone who claims belief in Bigfoot could not be credibly accused of a devout belief in science. Hahahahahah. That alone cracks me up. I am very open minded actually and falsely certain of very little.
The only way the speech makes sense is if Trump is arrested soon. The reality is that at this point, they MUST arrest Trump. They have put themselves in a corner now and this is the only way they can save any face with all of this.
That assumes, though, that they want to save face. We've never had a clearer example of what's been true since at least Reagan--politicians are puppets, reading the speeches handed to them. The speechwriter, and whoever the speechwriter REALLY works for, is in charge.
Now I'm not saying that Trump has infiltrated the DNC. I'm saying that the oligarchs play both sides of the chess board. There's a cartoon of a car with two bashed ends between walls that say Dem & Rep. The wife is saying, "Should we try reverse again?"
Keeping us fighting and putting all our hopes on winning is their strategy, like funding both sides of the interminable conflicts in other countries. They just ramped that up, in case we started recognizing it was a game to keep us thinking we were players.
More likely he is charged versus arrested. The chances of an actual trial and conviction is very slim. This is, imho, more about a strategy to gradually leak 'crimes' discovered by further examination of the documents between now and the midterms, combined with an occasional House 1/6 hearing, that constitutes the DNC strategy for the midterms.
Yes, the plan is pretty obviously to indict Trump and force every Republican candidate in the country to take a stance on him this fall. The special master ruling may hinder that, though. But that was/is very obviously the plan.
Thinking ahead, the longterm plan seems to be to declare it illegal to attend Trump rallies in 2023 or 2024, assuming Trump himself is not in prison by then. Biden will issue some ruling saying that anyone attending a Trump rally is a MAGA Republican and is a clear and present danger to the country, so they should be arrested upon arrival. Or something like that.
Yes, it was a made-for-meme stage set. If that's obvious to all of us, do you think the planners didn't get that? The Powers That Be wanted a horror movie vibe. Biden supporters, if he still has any, were probably glad he didn't wet his pants or stare into space with a silly grin. He stayed in character. But this speech wasn't written to rally Dems. It was written to put about half the country under a common threat just before the midterms. Why?
As you said in your last comment, the Powers That Be Are likely playing both sides. I’m not sure to what end. So much of this charade has felt staged for many years now. The Biden speech with the evil-like stage set was purposely over the top.
It’s crossed my mind that we are watching a movie. The purpose is to force some kind of evolutionary step on the human race. Everyone is in on it, even so called “Patriots.” While we are entranced with the movie, we are missing key events, key changes taking place in our social and cultural environments. When someone actually “wins” this war and we all step out into the sunlight, we will find a world transformed.
We are trying to figure out a way to exist within the framework, which is actually hard to define these days. We have five children—all on their own and clueless, and my mother who is still living, so it’s hard to adopt an “every man for himself” plan. We have food, protection, a way to filter water and an understanding of what’s ahead and that’s about it. My feeling is that if the sh** really hits the fan, we may go down with the ship. What is there to live for if your family is not a part of your future?
I actually think it's pretty easy to see through all this.
-- Dems know they can't actually run on anything this fall (except maaaaybe abortion, but that's iffy, and even if it's successful, it'll be successful in a very limited way, because the special interest groups that care more about abortion than anything are confined to very specific geographic areas that already lean heavily blue)
-- Dems tried running against Trump last year, and failed, miserably
-- They have every intention on running against Trump again this year
-- As part of this effort, they've been meddling in Repub primaries all year to boost Trump-friendly MAGA candidates
-- They've been aware of the dispute between Trump and the national records since he left office
-- This spring, Biden upped the ante to give the DOJ/FBI authority to investigate Trump, and pushed Garland to secure an indictment against him
-- They spent all summer trying to get people worked up about the Jan 6 hearings but only managed to convince a few rich white women like Liz Cheney to care about that
The plan is pretty obviously to secure an indictment against Trump this fall and force every Republican candidate anywhere in the country to take a stance on him, thus turning off all the Liz Cheney-type women from voting Republican in the midterms. It's pretty cut-and-dried, and I would argue they're not even trying to hide it.
Thanks for sending that link to Reality Honks Back. I've subscribed to him and also read a link in the article to Mary Harrington's Welcome to Fully Automated Luxury Gnosticism. Very interesting. I still wouldn't say for sure whether Trump is a way to channel the anger of the Physicals into harmless political theater rather than taking back power. But time will tell.
Whatever else it may have been, the Independence Hall address was anything but shocking.
After the Russiagate hoax, the BLM riots, the covert license the state granted to ANTIFA to confront MAGA supporters, the election, the vindictive and opportunistic over-reaction to the Jan 6 protest no one can be truly surprised by anything other than Biden's candour.
The address was designed to intimidate and demoralise opponents and perhaps provoke the deplorables in order to justify a new wave of repression in the name of protecting "our democracy".
In the near future we can most likely expect escalating political violence and authoritarianism, leading ultimately to a low grade conflict mostly fought by propaganda, psy-ops and carefully focused police repression (supplemented by a few assassinations, beatings and plenty of abusive incarceration).
The oligarchs, the Deep State and their mass constituency of professionals and managers are prepared to rule over ruins if the alternative is compromise with the deplorables. We are seeing the next stage in the life-cycle of an emerging gangster regime that is closer to Ukrainian, Latin American or African norms than those of the American past.
A strategic move to 1) focus the midterms on Trump rather than his failed Presidency, 2) monger more fear among his base and raise a straw bogeyman to justify weaponizing the rest of the institutions for political ends, and 3) desperation as not one of the vulnerable “moderate” Dems want people to remember that they voted in lockstep with Bernie and AOC.
Those moderates were silent as Biden et al fumbled the border, mismanaged Covid, ruined our international standing, greened us into price inflation, spent us into monetary inflation and regulated us into a recession.
Please President Biden tell me what existential threat MAGA is?…required voter ID?…global warming that (1989 UN announced had to be stopped before year 2000) hasn’t submerged any islands yet?…a regulated border?…lawlessness?…etc?
No the clear and present danger is a DOJ that allows protesters to intimidate Justices and Congressmen, doesn’t comment on ongoing investigations except to release an artistically arranged collage of classified files that Trump left out on the floor of his den, and arrests old men at night using deadly force.
To me it seemed like a clear call to arms. More mind fuckery to insight division. I immediately thought ‘civil war’. Which was probably the intended effect. At first I thought DNC ……. Then later Trumps much dreaded ‘swamp’ or the good old ‘deep state’ . These are ideas that have been installed in my consciousness . Predicting a grime future seems to be a ‘thing’ these days. I can’t remember anyone ever successfully doing that. Stay calm, keep YOUR train on the tracks. Wait and see. Walk the dog, play with the kids do a good job at your job. Resist the urge to exercise your agency but know that you have it. Peace.
You are 100% right about the mind fuckery. The conflict to come will blend performative violence, public relations, weaponised infotainment, mass repression by social credit, all supplemented by a few riots on demand and a politically licensed BIPOC crime wave against whites. The intelligence community will run the war against the American people, not the military. Everyone else will watch on their TV or mobile phone.
sad to say but I see the riots you describe as having two benefits. First, they serve as a safety valve top blow off the steam from the repression that allows our social welfare state to operate. The police are the business end of that state and are required to keep the "beneficiaries" in line. This a recipe for an eventual confrontation and the blow up occurs on pretty much a cyclical basis usually in step with some other economic or political event. The second benefit is the blame for these riots is easily deflected by the masters of these urban hellscapes who use these events to solidify and amass further power. (Mayor of Minneapolis being just one of a plethora of examples.)
The riots were a complex phenomenon and IMO need to be unpacked in detail. The police were dealing with several quite distinct chronically disaffected strata: the urban underclass and the new precariat. The former are the perennial lumpenproletariat that have long been exploited by the Civil Rights leaders and the FIRE sector who need outbreaks of mass violence to create or extend the slums and No Go zones required for eventual redevelopment and gentrification. The latter is composed by the young people in insecure employment who cannot realistically expect anything approaching prosperity. The willingness of so many young urban whites to join in the violence clearly involved a lot more than college grads larping as revolutionaries.
The utility of this violence was and will be exploited by every level of the political system. The white flight now underway from Blue State metropolises is now significant enough to constitute ethnic cleansing. The oligarchs and the Deep State are reshaping the US to suit themselves. The Red States (Florida and Texas especially) are now a "Helms Deep" style redoubt for economically productive people displaced from the current Blue State zones of dysfunction. The US is splitting along classic Third World lines, with a dual economy, one advanced and capable of sustaining a viable economy, the other a much poorer one that functions as a sink of poverty and undervelopment (though with isolated enclaves of prosperity within this).
It is desperately sad. Since the Cold War the USA went through its own Yeltsin-style era of licensed plunder with the mass anaesthetic of debt-financed consumption to maintain social peace. Now the anaesthetic is wearing off....hence the impetus for fresh civil conflict and repression.
Wow! That’s some dark stuff. Karma for the Chicago school, free market rapacious rampage *we* have been on for a loooong time? You may be wrong, you may be right. We see what we look at and hear what we listen to.
Well, IMHO, it makes perfect sense. Globalisation created the perfect conditions for normalising the gangster capitalism that was sponsored by the US and other Western governments in Yeltsin's Russia. Underregulated markets, the plunder of state assets, capital flight and Sado-Malthusian social and economic policies. It was road-tested in Russia and the hollowed-out institutions of the West lacked the capacity and the will to resists any of it. What is ironic is that elements of the old KGB led by Putin are cleaning up the mess and constraining the oligarchs, while in the US the intelligence services are just interested in maintaining gangster governance.
It is role reversal on a grand scale, a geopolitical fugue state, a real-life story worthy of David Lynch. What pisses me off (amongst other things) is that Dark Brandon is piss-weak compared to Dennis Hopper. I feel cheated. If we are to get a dystopia, I want the best one possible. Call me a dreamer.
The principal political effect of IT is to refocus people's attention away from the real world towards an unreal one and to make people instinctively passive. When that has been achieved, it is easy for the powers that be to construct narratives to misdirect or control people.
What 'biden' should have said, but never could. (or would)
I don't have to tell you things are bad. Everybody knows things are bad. It's a depression. Everybody's out of work or scared of losing their job. The dollar buys a nickel's worth, banks are going bust, shopkeepers keep a gun under the counter. Punks are running wild in the street and there's nobody anywhere who seems to know what to do, and there's no end to it. We know the air is unfit to breathe and our food is unfit to eat, and we sit watching our TVs while some local newscaster tells us that today we had fifteen homicides and sixty-three violent crimes, as if that's the way it's supposed to be. We know things are bad - worse than bad. They're crazy. It's like everything everywhere is going crazy, so we don't go out anymore. We sit in the house, and slowly the world we are living in is getting smaller, and all we say is, 'Please, at least leave us alone in our living rooms. Let me have my toaster and my TV and my steel-belted radials and I won't say anything. Just leave us alone.' Well, I'm not gonna leave you alone. I want you to get mad! I don't want you to protest. I don't want you to riot - I don't want you to write to your congressman because I wouldn't know what to tell you to write. I don't know what to do about the depression and the inflation and the Russians and the crime in the street. All I know is that first you've got to get mad. You've got to say, 'I'm a HUMAN BEING, God damn it! My life has VALUE!' So I want you to get up now. I want all of you to get up out of your chairs. I want you to get up right now and go to the window. Open it, and stick your head out, and yell, 'I'M AS MAD AS HELL, AND I'M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!' I want you to get up right now, sit up, go to your windows, open them and stick your head out and yell - 'I'm as mad as hell and I'm not going to take this anymore!' Things have got to change. But first, you've gotta get mad!... You've got to say, 'I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!' Then we'll figure out what to do about the depression and the inflation and the oil crisis. But first get up out of your chairs, open the window, stick your head out, and yell, and say it: "I'M AS MAD AS HELL, AND I'M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!"
The reason he would never make that speech, is because his own policies are the reason we are in the spot we are.
Free Mooney, free money, and more free money is a big part of the inflation, and he continues to give away more with a questionably legal college loan giveaway.
Biden is for no cash bail and has no problem with Soros prosecutors turning felons free.
Biden does end rest around the Constitution, and flouts our SCOTUS rulings.
The oil crisis is the result of his policy to make every effort to end fossil fuels before the clean energy is even close to being ready to step in as a replacement at a lower cost.
If we were yelling “I’m mad as hell”, it would be Biden we would be mad at.
Everything the perma-gov cabal is doing right now is obviously geared towards provoking the violence they keep promising. It's so passive-aggressive it's a parody. But their intentions are no joke. The federal government is armed to the teeth, both law enforcement and civilian agencies, and in my view, they're spoiling for a fight. Our national slogan could be "Just give us a reason."
The evil left is being overtly provocative to try and get a reaction. What a bunch of assholes!! As usual the fascists are calling everyone else a fascist. Despicable.
Kari Lake, the Republican nominee for Governor of Arizona, has said (in an interview on One America) that she would not have certified Biden's Arizona win, had she been in office in 2020.
There are at least 100 similar "stop the steal" Republicans running for state and federal office in November.
But hey! Let's talk about the optics of Biden's speech! That's what's really important!!!
There is some serious crazy on the GOP side now. I just read an article about how Kristina Karamo, a GOP candidate in MI, threatened to kill her family if her husband divorced her. She shows the classic signs of borderline personality disorder. It seems more and more on both sides, we are given a selection of the mentally incapacitated, mentally disturbed, or just plain grifters. Do stable, serious candidates even stand a chance now?
It explains in detail how and why the 2020 election was fair. That's what the MAGA Republicans are now planning to reverse in 2024, by getting their partisans into key positions of election oversight.
It appears that the only thing that interests him are optics and theater. There is no engagement on substance. Does he think Trump won the election? Does he think it is normal for the Republicans to deny the legitimacy of the election? Does he think Trump was just having fun on Jan. 6th? Is he a MAGA fellow traveler? I am confused
optics and theatre matter in the 21st century. especially coming from the President.
it’s obvious that Matt is not a MAGA guy.
everytime the Dems go after Trump for whatever reason, it ends up backfiring, and strengthening the MAGA base. why can’t they just let Trump fail on his own ineptitude? it’s like they really want him to win. or they are addicted to losing.
I agree that another Trump presidency would be a disaster. the establishment seems dead set on getting him elected again. it’s surreal...
When optics and theater are all that you are concerned with when Republicans are denying electoral legitimacy, you are clearly adhering to a MAGA creed.
I wouldn’t worry too much about what people are spending their money on. I doubt Matt is too upset about receiving my five dollars. Oh and by the way, I am not at all directing my comments at you Hollis unless perhaps you are Matt’s stand-in. In that case - cheers for all the great reporting back in the day with Rolling Stone.
Politics is 50% optics. The art of Politics is essentially the art of avoiding violence. People often disagree. So we bargain. Rather than violence. The people that believe the POTUS election was stolen, are not going to change their mind. It's pointless to focus on it. Right now is the time to encourage compromise and forgiveness. The goal should be avoiding escalating violence.
So the federal government should just have let Trump keep those top-secret documents lying around in cardboard boxes? Is that what you (and Matt) believe?
no. if Trump broke the law, he should be held accountable. 100%.
I wasn’t really talking about that.
the documents issue seems to me another self inflicted wound Trump brought upon himself. he could have easily handed over the documents when they requested them and avoided this mess.
Yeah, but Trump did keep the classified documents. He did not give them back, despite many months of the feds saying pretty please. And his lawyers lied about how many he had.
And yet: Matt said explicitly that the search of Marlego for those classified documents should not have happened. He wrote an entire post about it. And he has not backed down from that.
So: there we are. Matt defends unlawful behavior by Trump, and condemns lawful behavior by the lawfully-empowered federal government.
We are rocketing towards tyranny in 2024, and Matt is pumping fuel into the engines.
Matt never said it shouldn’t of happened. his concern was that for the raid to be justified, it would need to be totally legitimate otherwise it could backfire and give more momentum and power to Trumps movement ala, Russiagate, the Impeachments etc.
that is the last thing we need right now...Trump running again.
I’m curious tho, U clearly dislike Matt and his writings, so why do U pay 5 bucks a month to his Substack? is it worth it just to troll the people here?
pretty sure only paid subscribers can comment, no?
The idea that life is great when you’re not looking at the truth is just ignorance, really. Your neighbors are dying. Athletes are dropping dead. Comedians, models, children, millennials...the list is overwhelming. You can pop open a beer at the end of the day, cover your eyes and sing “La, la, la” as loud as you like, but it doesn’t change the truth beyond your window.
Matt the journalist disappeared years ago. (Not entirely true: he still writes an occasional finance piece with real reporting in it, but these are getting to be ever so rare.)
Matt has discovered that feeding the trumpista trolls is FAR more lucrative (and also much easier!) than doing the sort of actual journalism on which he built his (fast eroding) reputation.
So that's what he does now. I hope his kids will be proud of him.
Matt has courage. The truth is a hard thing to find these days but one’s character is defined by the pursuit of it. Much easier for people like you to come here and disparage.
Millions of people are proud of Matt already.
Tell me, what is your worth in the world? What do you add to it?
Well among other things I've written a college-level science textbook that has been continuously in print for 16 years so far (and is still selling well).
Matt is no longer dealing in "truth", he is dealing in opinion, his main opinion being that Trump is above the law and should never be investigated for anything ever.
“ Well among other things I've written a college-level science textbook that has been continuously in print for 16 years so far (and is still selling well).”
That’s pretty much all I need to know. Your world view is being destroyed and everything you thought was true isn’t really true. So you strike out at those who are pointing it out rather than taking responsibility for your own ignorance.
That said, repeating “the election was real,” ad nauseam, doesn't illuminate much after the first couple-dozen times. I personally would rather read Taibbi’s commentary as-is than read the exact same Republicans Are Bad content that I can get from MSNBC
That story is from 2019, and was Hillary's opinion, which had NO backing from the Democrats in the Senate and House, who certified Trump's victory in January 2017. And there was no riot at the Capitol, no threats to murder the Vice President, no attempted coup.
But never fear, your boy is going to take back power in 2024, and this time, he and his mininions have figured out how to keep it permanently, Orban style.
It was far more than her opinion. The FBI and the media ran with it like it was gospel. Hundreds of millions of people around the world believed in Russiagate.
It is ludicrous and counterfactual to assert otherwise.
Obama was the first one to start the lie.
Russiagate was a deep state psyop and it was war propaganda. It worked too.
You're correct though, a pathologically narcissistic fascist freak will win if he runs. That's because "your boy(s)" have done nothing for the people of America and everything for the elites, the MIC and the deep state. And now things are so so bad that millions of people would vote for a Hitler if they thought he would try to actually help them.
In my opinion you're right that there was a much bigger talking point regarding Stop the Steal, among GOP politicians, than anything prior. I agree this sends a bad message and sets a bad precedent. I wish it to end. I think also that there would be a better chance for the GOP and/or Trump to succeed if Stop the Steal did end. I'm not a Trump supporter, but I'm someone minimally invested in GOP prospects because I don't want fossilized Dem politics. (I want there to be viable threats to Dems but wish we could coalesce around third party vehicles, especially those focused on dismantling corporate control and ending grotesquely unequal wage arrangements.)
With all that said, Biden's election was also certified. I'm not sure what Trump's attempted coup was supposed to be in actuality, since he has not been held legally liable for the Jan. 6 riots. Maybe schemes involving electors could be construed as a coup; but since Trump hasn't been convicted of anything like this, he has officially not been ruled to have carried out a coup attempt, nor has he been charged with something resembling a coup (excluding an impeachment process launched by political opponents). What evidence do you have that Trump will keep power permanently, Orban style, in 2024?
She did that in 2019. No one was paying any attention to her.
In 2016, she did not incite a mob to storm the Capitol. She did not call up the Secretary of State of Georgia in an effort to steal votes. Etc etc etc.
It's insane: they complain about political violence here in the US, while they destroy whole countries with their military violence? We're supposed to believe they're sincere?
Being a journalist nowadays seems awful....having to listen to this crap and then attempt providing rational analysis to what at base is nonsensical blather.
I have a different take. Biden’s inflammatory speech Thursday night was not directed at MAGA Republicans. No, it was aimed squarely at those DEMOCRATS who in their hearts of hearts are not on board with his destructive policies and rhetoric.
The message was clear: If, like over a million Democrats in 2021, you leave the Democrat party and register as a Republican, you are going straight to cultural hell and will deserve the systemic bullying, derision, erasure, and assault on your liberties especially reserved for MAGA Republicans. You will be subject to censorship and harassment, and perhaps be made the special target of politicized government agencies. Like the FBI. Or the IRS.
If you jump ship, you will not be spared. You will be treated as a traitor. Biden’s message to those who are on the fence is: if you are not a Democrat, you are not an American.
MAGA Republicans are accustomed to this treatment.
To wavering Democrats, Independents and everyone else: Step out of line and you're next.
I get it. It was the earthly embodiment of Dark Brandon. It it hadn’t been for the real military personnel having his back, I’d have clapped at the stagecraft. I sort of was disappointed that he didn’t have a F-15 and maybe a nuclear bomb on stage with him.
Hint. Hint. You dastardly semi-fascist American citizens that dared to vote in 2016, don’t do it this time, or substantial penalties will be applied, somewhat quoted from the movie, The Jerk.
That speech was a terrifying escalation of rhetoric. I've seen many comments that say "whatabout Trump, he said shit like this all the time'. The reality is that Trump targeted the leadership of the left, not citizens. Biden just verbally attacked half the country, and did it in a manor I've never witnessed in my 65 years. I'm sure his base loved it, but I can't believe he didn't lose a shit ton of independents, who now believe that not only are his policies are bad, but so are his leadership/figurehead abilities.
Agree, Trump has never attacked American people. I am not Trump’s fan and think his time has passed. But to be fair, he has never ever done it. He is smart enough and a true populist. Biden’s speech was absolutely terrifying. And the more it is being dissected by pundits, the more scared I feel. It is true that it could be a provocation. Like Walter Kirk said: “Take your civil war and shove it, this is the best time to watch TV and gain weight.”
I'm just trying to figure out who the violent ones are? The morons that took a bunch of selfies in the halls of Congress? Or the morons that lit half the cities in America on fire for "justice."
They're both morons. The actual violence, if you want to define violence as physical violence to persons and buildings was exponentially greater during the summer of 20. Both sides can point to the threat to democracy. The left will make the point that our constitution was in danger from 1/6. The Right will say that local mayors and governors suspended the rule of law and made an elective decision to allow rioters to burn down portions of their cities and do physical harm to it's citizens.
Both sides have their fanatics that make the lives of 90%+ of the citizens of this country miserable, and combined, constitute a threat to our democracy.
Point taken, but I wish I really knew who was behind the systemic destruction of our country the past 20 years.
I do believe that someone is playing us against each other.
It's hard to dispute that our last President was the only one with the yarbles to call out many of the parties that are in power in my lifetime. Thanks to Burgess for creating the term 'yarbles'.
Ever hear of a little thing called the World Economic Forum?
Disciples of that group are ascending to power all over the world, particularly the West (Truss in the UK is the latest). Their agenda is out in the open as are their ties to the UN and it's agenda for the future.
We continue to dismiss all grand conspiracy theories out of hand at our immediate and permanent peril.
Turd, nearly 95% of the protest were peaceful; how is it possible they “…lit half the cities in America on fire….” And apparently, both anarchists and white supremacists were instigating violence. The BLM may have threatened property, but the ones in the halls of Congress were threatening the Republic!
Really? "Mostly peaceful protests?"
I find it best to avoid feeding trolls like justme.
Bill, mostly, means, for the greater part, do you have something to show otherwise?
It is not my place to defend your assertions. If you make the assertion, it's yours to defend.
“UConn Study: At Least 96% of Black Lives Matter Protests Were Peaceful”
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/sep/05/nearly-all-black-lives-matter-protests-are-peaceful-despite-trump-narrative-report-finds
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/10/16/this-summers-black-lives-matter-protesters-were-overwhelming-peaceful-our-research-finds/
https://www.wshu.org/news/2020-10-19/uconn-study-at-least-96-of-black-lives-matter-protests-were-peaceful
Really, “half the cities in America? “
Derek Chauvin had a mostly peaceful day until he leaned on Floyd's neck for 8 minutes. Who cares about the rest?
Chauvin and Floyd were affiliated not just through the arrest but were also former coworkers. I accept that he used excessive force. Was that the cause of death? I didn't perform the autopsy. I do know he had enough Fentanyl in his body to kill him, and that he was struggling to breathe before Chauvin arrived. It was a tragedy, and that was agreed by everyone. For an instant we had a chance to come together; instead, we fell apart. That was the greatest tragedy.
Bill, the question is, why does one try to rationalize and justify what took place? And then placate, with a sermonette?
Jon, Trump didn’t attack white Christians, everybody else, it was open season, and half of America are not MAGA members. With all this hyperventilation about calling out people who don’t believe in representative democracy, what are we supposed to do? Pat them on the head and say now behave yourself, Johnny.
I am unhappy with many aspects of Bidens speech. But a lot of Dems are sick that Biden hadnt taken on Trumps dangerous lies (ie stolen elections) head on and more directly called out the acquiescence by the Republican Party to Trump and the MTGreens and M Gaetz’s type lunatics of the extreme right. I felt it needed to be said but I think the same message (last paragraph below) could have been delivered in way that appealed to Dems and more independents and thoughtful Republicans.
But for the record, though easily forgotten in the beginning of his address, Biden did qualify who he considered MAGA. It wasn’t half the country or all Republicans:
“Now, I want to be very clear, very clear up front. Not every Republican, not even the majority of Republicans, are MAGA Republicans. Not every Republican embraces their extreme ideology. I know, because I’ve been able to work with these mainstream Republicans.
But there’s no question that the Republican Party today is dominated, driven and intimidated by Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans. And that is a threat to this country.”
Lies and denial of an election victorty? Do you not remember the Dems pushing for "faithless electors" to deny Trump the Electoral College after the 2016 election? Four plus years of "Russiagate" nonsense, designed to wreck any chance Trump would have in office? The Silicon Valley/NYT/WaPo/CNN/MSNBC/NPR/NSA/CIA/FBI suppression of the Hunter Biden laptop story for over a year? Trump may be nothing more than a carnival barker, but the many millions of people who voted for him - and many of us who didn't - roll our eyes when we hear Biden & Co hyperventilate about "Our Democracy."
And it wasn't too many years ago that people on the liberal and left end of the spectrum were deservedly opposed to the use of electronic voting machines controlled by private companies, with no proper means of confirming an honest count. Fact of the matter is, no one can claim US elections are honest. Until we have paper ballots, hand counted in public, with a verifiable trail, our elections aren't much better than playing a video game programmed by who knows who.
We haven't even discussed Biden's discussion of violence. In 1967, Martin Luther King Jr said "the greatest purveyor of violence in the world: my own government." Absolutely just as true today, with both the Dems and Repubs equally drenched in blood.
Jim, you aren’t seriously comparing the five faithless electors who didn’t cast their ballots for Clayton and the two who didn’t cast their ballots for Trump? Or the Russians that hacked the Democratic national committee and Clinton’s presidential campaign. Additionally, they used fake accounts on American social media platforms to spread propaganda. In fact, 13 Russians were indicted; for what I call the “Big Lie”?
I'm talking about the very public campaign, by Hillary Clinton supporters, to find "faithless electors." This was a clear, totally obvious attempt to deny that Clinton had lost the election (under the admittedly bizarre US Electoral College rules.) People who mounted such a campaign have zero credibility to complain about Trump supporters four years later claiming that Biden stole the election. You are further proving my point: after all these years of Russiagate nonsense (that's the polite term for horseshit), you still think that $100,000 worth of social media ads, many of which appeared after election day, and a good part of which had nothing at all to do with the election, somehow caused Hillary Clinton to lose. Yes, 13 Russians were indicted (which brings to mind the old adage that grand juries will indict a ham sandwich.) You don't mention that one of the accused entities actually employed a law firm to demand the US prosecutors produce real evidence in a US court of law. At which point the prosecutors scurried away. Please, wake the hell up.
Jim, interesting assumption. Did all the people who complained about Trump supporters campaign for faithless electors? I think not. We’re now approaching two years with the Big Lie; the campaign to find electors for Clinton didn’t last over three months, but sure, that’s comparable!
Jim, you said: “…you still think that $100,000 worth of social media ads, many of which appeared after election day, and a good part of which had nothing at all to do with the election, somehow caused Hillary Clinton to lose.” I said nothing of the sort; I merely pointed it out!
You are going off the deep end, for me asking if the Big Lie was comparable; for length and depth, the Big Lie is more pervasive, so I recommend you wake up and smell the roses!
If you think any (non-MAGA) Republican thinks, ‘oh good, he doesn’t mean me’ you are fooling yourself. It’s scary and insane. That Buffalo Springfield song, For What it’s Worth eerily applies to every decade. ‘Battle lines being drawn. Nobody’s right, if everybody’s wrong’. ‘Mostly say hurray for our side’. We are a nation most torn apart.
As a said…I am unhappy with many aspects of the speech, one of which is how he defined who he was speaking about in various parts of his address. Many left of center folks felt threatened by Trump’s attacks on the left as well. I sadly agree with you, we are a nation torn apart.
Lucy, are you saying Republicans aren’t sophisticated enough to differentiate?
Wait. That was knee-jerk. Sorry. I do believe not all Republicans love Trump or maybe, if they do, they still want him to step aside. Whatever, it’s everyone’s right to choose. I do believe most Democrats are now in the same cult-like place they accuse Republicans of being in. Regardless, we are all Americans aren’t we??
Lucy, here are two speeches from Pres. Biden, one, when he first became president, the other this month.
(“see each other, not as adversaries, but as neighbors, [to] stop the shouting and lower the temperature, for without unity there is no peace, only bitterness and fury.”)
“But first, we must be honest with each other and with ourselves.
Too much of what’s happening in our country today is not normal. Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans represent an extremism that threatens the very foundations of our Republic.
Now, I want to be very clear, very clear up front. Not every Republican, not even the majority of Republicans, are MAGA Republicans. Not every Republican embraces their extreme ideology. I know, because I’ve been able to work with these mainstream Republicans.”
Both speeches have conciliatory content; can you say the same about Donald Trump?
Yes, they are.
Are Democrats??
Lucy, do you really think Democrats love Biden, as much as Republicans love Trump?
Ann22, I think Pres. Biden was trying to thread the needle, but unfortunately, when calling out a group of people who may not be logical and or rational, the task is very difficult.
I'm not sure how you separate the people who voted for the MAGA candidate from the "MAGA Republicans."
Like, I don't wear MAGA hats (I don't wear red hats at all, actually, and have shied away from wearing red in general for a while now), but I did vote for him twice (after voting for Obama twice, and Bush twice before that). I disagree with virtually every single thing Biden has done or said since taking office and cannot wait to vote him out in 2 years (and his party out in 2 months). Am I a MAGA Republican? Am I fair game for Biden's upcoming criminalization of his political enemies?
What a strange world we live in; parts of Florida are labeled extreme danger (125 degrees or higher), parts of Texas are marked danger (103 to 125 degrees), then we move on to Iowa, where it’s only extreme caution (90 to 103 degrees) how can we have so many snowflakes with this heatwave? The radical culture warriors are upset because someone pointed a finger at them; oh, woe is me; apparently, the poor souls can’t handle the heat!
And you're calling others illogical...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i-2aP5HsWl4
Sorry but a lot of us on the left felt threatened n many ways by Trump’s rhetoric. While Right extremists ran around with confederate flags on their vehicles and F—-k Biden signs, we wouldn’t even dare stick any sort of political bumper sticker on our cars. Maybe it’s where you live, I live in a rural state. Trump made me (and many others) feel like I should apologize for having gone to university and achieved advanced degrees in science, necessary for my career. And I attended public universities and paid for it myself through work and student loans.
It's definitely where you live. I'm just outside Boston, MA. The scenario you describe is similar but reversed. There are people on the left and right that believe the other side is trying to destroy the country. Social media is amplifying what would have been a very small minority position. Most now believes they're right in the middle of a huge majority. While lots believe if you disagree with then, you're an extremist. Eventually we'll get sick of fighting and things will soften. I'm just not sure how big the fight will need to get first.
Hmmmm….I just now watched a clip from the 2020 campaign, Trump calling out democrats as trying to “replace American freedom with left wing fascism…fascists, fascists….not all of them , but some of them, and they’re getting closer and closer”. So…
I’m basing my comments on the speeches he made and comments he made that I saw and heard myself. And as for being responsible for what people do, if a President says outright that there were “good people on both sides” re Charlottesville and “proud boys stand back and stand by”, and encourages his supporters to beat up a heckler in the crowd, and uses generalizations like “they’re coming for you next”, etc. well, I think we disagree.
This is a man who goes on vacation about 4 days every week and emerges every once in a while in order to make everyone think, “What the fuck did he just say?” We all know guys this who sit at the end of the bar all night until they get up and say stuff that is incomprehensible and loud. The question is always who is putting the words on the teleprompter? Who and how many people in the White House think this sort of thing is brilliant? Perhaps the plumbing system has become self aware?
I listened to this yesterday and LOVED you and Walter. I'll be putting it on my washing-dishes playlist from now on. But I've continued to brood over a bad feeling that this speech was a set-up. Biden is being intentionally staged and lit and animated to appear Satanic. Walter is right that this is a get-out-the-vote speech ... for Republicans. It puts every Republican or individual who 'lives in MAGA country under threat where, as Walter says, anyone active in MAGA has put their lawyer on speed dial. Something very, very fishy is going on. It's not what it seems on the surface, I think.
Totally agree! As a weird person who senses patterns easily, Biden’s speech and the eerie environment felt a bit too staged for my taste. As did Pelosi ripping up Trump’s State Of The Union Speech—too staged. Also the letters given to the evil attendees at George Bush’s funeral—the letters in their programs and the cameras just happened to be on each person as they found the envelopes and read what was inside and then their reactions. That felt completely staged.
There are times—and often—I don’t get what the hell is going on. But there’s more to all of this than meets the eye for sure—I truly believe that.
GR what a great name for your 'stack and what great content! I join you as a new old lady, having reached the golden Medicare age. So far it's getting me 10% off my groceries.
I forgot about Pelosi ripping up the Trump SOTU. The Taiwan trip also feels ham-handed. Why now? What's there to gain? I think the whole country is being set up to fail ... badly. If I really put on my conspiracy theorist hat, I wonder about China. We know that Biden just gave them a big hunk of our oil reserves and that his shady dealings through Hunter were with them. They produce our voting machine software, out of Wuhan in fact. They produce our masks and PCR tests.
Putin intentionally left billions in gold in overseas banks (even moving it there) so it would give him a reason to repudiate the petrodollar when it was confiscated. Is China looking for a reason to repudiate friendly relations with the US and demand that their Treasury bills be cashed in--and for what? Something wicked this way comes, just not sure what ...
It’s hard to say what’s real. Is there a shadowy cabal behind the scenes crafting reality?
Or is Team Joe really this stupid, this cynical, this drugged into a consciousness-coma by the toxic fumes of their alleged virtue, and this willing to sabotage 200+ years of nation building and American political philosophy.
It could be either one.
If it’s a shadowy cabal, who are they? What is their goal? How do they compel obedience? What is their decision-making process? Those questions are never asked or answered, so I remain a bit skeptical. I think they really could be this stupid.
Occam's Razor, as I apply it, assumes that something is working the way it was designed to work or else it would be changed. Right now we're living through the greatest concentration of power, wealth transfer and asset grab in the history of the world (not hyperbole since there's never before been the mechanisms to globally centralize technology, money, media and governance). Does that sound like stupidity to you, for the people coming out on top?
And clearly from your second paragraph, you don't hang out with nearly as many conspiracy theorists as I do ;-) In answer, here's a post today from Robert Malone that simply puts together global news releases that speak for themselves, without editorial: https://rwmalonemd.substack.com/p/global-news-around-the-world-in-a
Occam's Razor is what I invoke when people still question the Wuhan lab leak. Good use here as well.
Yes, I've done the same. Although I still entertain the Fort Detrick theory, who sent soldiers to the War Games in Wuhan who immediately became sick, infecting hotel staff and spreading from there to the 'wet' market. Fort Detrick is near my hometown in MD and I heard this before it was labeled Chinese 'disinfo.' I haven't heard any denial of the events, however.
Even the ancient Greeks noticed the tendency for democracies to concentrate wealth and become plutocracies. These trends are not remotely new in western Civ or history. In fact, it’s “same old same old”.
There is a tendency perhaps for us Americans to look at the world and believe we’re special and everything is newly fallen snow, waiting only for our theories and interpretations. Well, yes, everything is always new — that’s what Time does. And our theories may in fact be new and correct.
I’m not averse to conspiracy theories. History shows that powerful people conspire on a routine basis. But history also shows they are often fantastically incompetent So it’s a struggle between power and ability. LOL
You're speaking my language, crazyman! My book, How to Dismantle an Empire, starts with the twin inventions of democracy and currency and shows how together they've led to where we are now. You raise an important distinction with Western Civ and history, since the latter reflects the former. Going back into anthropology like David Graeber's Debt and The Dawn of Everything shows that other ways of organizing societies have been prevalent throughout pre-history.
Powerful individuals are certainly incompetent. But the economic and governance systems that make us complicit in conquest and enslavement, and therefore not able to oppose them, have been fantastically effective--so there are always more powerful people waiting to take their places when the incompetent ones fail.
I applaud your inquisitiveness but I don’t believe it goes far enough. The conquest and enslavement that these days, seems laid solely at the door of “Western Civ” was in fact a global phenomenon almost everywhere humanity was.
We can examine non-Western history through anthropology, ethnography, mythology, comparative religion, archeology and art history. What all that shows are worldwide tendencies to empire, tribal conquest, enslavement and domination by warning tribes on their neighbors. It also shows humankind living under the thrall of mythic organizing systems that, to our “enlightened” modern standards, seem deeply psychotic — with ritual human sacrifice, torture and torment of slaves, pathological misogyny, and other wanton abuses dignified by universal necessity. Joseph Cambell’s 4-book series Masks of God was a popularized rendention on all this, but there are many other authors. To be sure, Western Civ experienced all those same realities too. In fact, if anything, a proper study of humankind and world history finds veery little difference between peoples and far more similarities. But that’s not perhaps politically correct these days, when The Big Bad Western Colonizer is the only acceptable scapegoat.
It’s, frankly, an intellectual and historical Shit Show. False, tendentious, shallow, insipid, shamefully meretricious and useful only as a tool of plunder and grift.
But I’m sure you’re smart enough and sufficiently well informed to know all.this (and I say that quiet honestly and not snarkily!). I’m serious.,
P.S. I read Graeber’s Debt, First 5000 Years. I found it to be a masterful work. But even bright capable people can see what they want to see, not what is there to be seen.
You've read Debt! You could be one of the handful of people to really get my book, since Graeber is one of the foundations of my thinking. There's an assumption you mention that I think goes to the core--if we see what we want to see, it must not be true. Yes, I would like to believe that communities are capable of self-governance and not warring with their neighbors, that women and council-led governments tend to resolve conflicts peacefully, that 'interaction spheres' can exceed Dunbar's number and still cooperate, that particularly destructive rulers pave the way for generations of peace, and that wealth accumulation and slavery are choices that were available and consciously turned against. Graeber has some very credible evidence from which he draws these inferences. I don't think inferring the worst of humanity should be taken at face value while requiring irrefutable proof that we're capable of better.
I think you'd like The Dawn of Everything that contradicts the dominant narrative that people, by their nature, "rush headlong into their chains" and tend towards empire.
Thanks for the non-snarky compliment!
Totally agreed that electoral politics don't matter, Thomas. What's the solution you're suggesting?
You are light years behind people who have been reading, researching, looking at documents and pouring over books for a decade or more. There is ample, ample evidence there is a group of elites who wish to dramatically change the world. You don’t even have to crawl under a rock to find the information. Just read Klaus Schwab’s book, “The Great Reset” published last year. I hate to sound cheeky, but I am amused at posts like yours.
I can find information on the internet that Bigfoot is a conscious mass-energy form that lives in an as-yet umapped version of hyperspace, of which our universe is a sub-space the way a plane is a substance of Cartesian 3D space.
And you know what? I’m not a skeptic about that. I actually do believe it because that’s where the empirical evidence largely goes and perhaps the post-quantum mass-energy physics too.
But my belief demands evidence. I’m sure there are elites who “want” to dramatically change the world. I’m aware of these allegations and the personalities you mention.
But still: how do they compel obedience and agreement? Who are they? .How do they coordinate? I’m not unwilling to believe it. I have seen the shared talking points trotted out by media nationwide in montages on Youtube, the bricks that magically appeared at BLM riots, the Color Revolutions overseas. This is all strong evidence, but it also may be the group think that human society always embodies.
There are claims everywhere, but facts and least of all “proof” are very hard to come by. Let us not abandon Occam’s Razor without a little care.
I don’t claim to be an expert in crowd pyschology but it is a phenomenon that interests me, and I’ve dabbled a bit in reading — Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, French sociologist Gustav Lebon’s The Crowd, Freud’s Group Psychology and Analysis of the Ego, as well as artistic intepretations from Dostoevsky’s The Possessed to Ionescu’s Rhinoceros Also the heterodox British biologist Rupert Sheldrake has done fascinating work on how groups of animals learn.
Yes, there are profound self-organizing energies there that work without direction and much for “science’ to figure out. There is no coherent map of psyche and certainly none of group psyche.
I would think anyone who claims belief in Bigfoot could not be credibly accused of a devout belief in science. Hahahahahah. That alone cracks me up. I am very open minded actually and falsely certain of very little.
The only way the speech makes sense is if Trump is arrested soon. The reality is that at this point, they MUST arrest Trump. They have put themselves in a corner now and this is the only way they can save any face with all of this.
That assumes, though, that they want to save face. We've never had a clearer example of what's been true since at least Reagan--politicians are puppets, reading the speeches handed to them. The speechwriter, and whoever the speechwriter REALLY works for, is in charge.
Now I'm not saying that Trump has infiltrated the DNC. I'm saying that the oligarchs play both sides of the chess board. There's a cartoon of a car with two bashed ends between walls that say Dem & Rep. The wife is saying, "Should we try reverse again?"
Keeping us fighting and putting all our hopes on winning is their strategy, like funding both sides of the interminable conflicts in other countries. They just ramped that up, in case we started recognizing it was a game to keep us thinking we were players.
Excellent comment. I believe this to be true.
More likely he is charged versus arrested. The chances of an actual trial and conviction is very slim. This is, imho, more about a strategy to gradually leak 'crimes' discovered by further examination of the documents between now and the midterms, combined with an occasional House 1/6 hearing, that constitutes the DNC strategy for the midterms.
Yes, the plan is pretty obviously to indict Trump and force every Republican candidate in the country to take a stance on him this fall. The special master ruling may hinder that, though. But that was/is very obviously the plan.
Thinking ahead, the longterm plan seems to be to declare it illegal to attend Trump rallies in 2023 or 2024, assuming Trump himself is not in prison by then. Biden will issue some ruling saying that anyone attending a Trump rally is a MAGA Republican and is a clear and present danger to the country, so they should be arrested upon arrival. Or something like that.
I'd predict that a significant number of Conservative campaign ads in the mid terms and '24 will utilize images, or video bites from the speech.
Yes, it was a made-for-meme stage set. If that's obvious to all of us, do you think the planners didn't get that? The Powers That Be wanted a horror movie vibe. Biden supporters, if he still has any, were probably glad he didn't wet his pants or stare into space with a silly grin. He stayed in character. But this speech wasn't written to rally Dems. It was written to put about half the country under a common threat just before the midterms. Why?
As you said in your last comment, the Powers That Be Are likely playing both sides. I’m not sure to what end. So much of this charade has felt staged for many years now. The Biden speech with the evil-like stage set was purposely over the top.
It’s crossed my mind that we are watching a movie. The purpose is to force some kind of evolutionary step on the human race. Everyone is in on it, even so called “Patriots.” While we are entranced with the movie, we are missing key events, key changes taking place in our social and cultural environments. When someone actually “wins” this war and we all step out into the sunlight, we will find a world transformed.
We are trying to figure out a way to exist within the framework, which is actually hard to define these days. We have five children—all on their own and clueless, and my mother who is still living, so it’s hard to adopt an “every man for himself” plan. We have food, protection, a way to filter water and an understanding of what’s ahead and that’s about it. My feeling is that if the sh** really hits the fan, we may go down with the ship. What is there to live for if your family is not a part of your future?
I actually think it's pretty easy to see through all this.
-- Dems know they can't actually run on anything this fall (except maaaaybe abortion, but that's iffy, and even if it's successful, it'll be successful in a very limited way, because the special interest groups that care more about abortion than anything are confined to very specific geographic areas that already lean heavily blue)
-- Dems tried running against Trump last year, and failed, miserably
-- They have every intention on running against Trump again this year
-- As part of this effort, they've been meddling in Repub primaries all year to boost Trump-friendly MAGA candidates
-- They've been aware of the dispute between Trump and the national records since he left office
-- This spring, Biden upped the ante to give the DOJ/FBI authority to investigate Trump, and pushed Garland to secure an indictment against him
-- They spent all summer trying to get people worked up about the Jan 6 hearings but only managed to convince a few rich white women like Liz Cheney to care about that
The plan is pretty obviously to secure an indictment against Trump this fall and force every Republican candidate anywhere in the country to take a stance on him, thus turning off all the Liz Cheney-type women from voting Republican in the midterms. It's pretty cut-and-dried, and I would argue they're not even trying to hide it.
Agree. I have some ideas in my head, but when I try to make sense of what's swirling around in there its a jumbled mess.
Thanks for sending that link to Reality Honks Back. I've subscribed to him and also read a link in the article to Mary Harrington's Welcome to Fully Automated Luxury Gnosticism. Very interesting. I still wouldn't say for sure whether Trump is a way to channel the anger of the Physicals into harmless political theater rather than taking back power. But time will tell.
I keep hearing Marvin Gay singing “What’s going on”
Whatever else it may have been, the Independence Hall address was anything but shocking.
After the Russiagate hoax, the BLM riots, the covert license the state granted to ANTIFA to confront MAGA supporters, the election, the vindictive and opportunistic over-reaction to the Jan 6 protest no one can be truly surprised by anything other than Biden's candour.
The address was designed to intimidate and demoralise opponents and perhaps provoke the deplorables in order to justify a new wave of repression in the name of protecting "our democracy".
In the near future we can most likely expect escalating political violence and authoritarianism, leading ultimately to a low grade conflict mostly fought by propaganda, psy-ops and carefully focused police repression (supplemented by a few assassinations, beatings and plenty of abusive incarceration).
The oligarchs, the Deep State and their mass constituency of professionals and managers are prepared to rule over ruins if the alternative is compromise with the deplorables. We are seeing the next stage in the life-cycle of an emerging gangster regime that is closer to Ukrainian, Latin American or African norms than those of the American past.
A strategic move to 1) focus the midterms on Trump rather than his failed Presidency, 2) monger more fear among his base and raise a straw bogeyman to justify weaponizing the rest of the institutions for political ends, and 3) desperation as not one of the vulnerable “moderate” Dems want people to remember that they voted in lockstep with Bernie and AOC.
Those moderates were silent as Biden et al fumbled the border, mismanaged Covid, ruined our international standing, greened us into price inflation, spent us into monetary inflation and regulated us into a recession.
Please President Biden tell me what existential threat MAGA is?…required voter ID?…global warming that (1989 UN announced had to be stopped before year 2000) hasn’t submerged any islands yet?…a regulated border?…lawlessness?…etc?
No the clear and present danger is a DOJ that allows protesters to intimidate Justices and Congressmen, doesn’t comment on ongoing investigations except to release an artistically arranged collage of classified files that Trump left out on the floor of his den, and arrests old men at night using deadly force.
To me it seemed like a clear call to arms. More mind fuckery to insight division. I immediately thought ‘civil war’. Which was probably the intended effect. At first I thought DNC ……. Then later Trumps much dreaded ‘swamp’ or the good old ‘deep state’ . These are ideas that have been installed in my consciousness . Predicting a grime future seems to be a ‘thing’ these days. I can’t remember anyone ever successfully doing that. Stay calm, keep YOUR train on the tracks. Wait and see. Walk the dog, play with the kids do a good job at your job. Resist the urge to exercise your agency but know that you have it. Peace.
You are 100% right about the mind fuckery. The conflict to come will blend performative violence, public relations, weaponised infotainment, mass repression by social credit, all supplemented by a few riots on demand and a politically licensed BIPOC crime wave against whites. The intelligence community will run the war against the American people, not the military. Everyone else will watch on their TV or mobile phone.
sad to say but I see the riots you describe as having two benefits. First, they serve as a safety valve top blow off the steam from the repression that allows our social welfare state to operate. The police are the business end of that state and are required to keep the "beneficiaries" in line. This a recipe for an eventual confrontation and the blow up occurs on pretty much a cyclical basis usually in step with some other economic or political event. The second benefit is the blame for these riots is easily deflected by the masters of these urban hellscapes who use these events to solidify and amass further power. (Mayor of Minneapolis being just one of a plethora of examples.)
The riots were a complex phenomenon and IMO need to be unpacked in detail. The police were dealing with several quite distinct chronically disaffected strata: the urban underclass and the new precariat. The former are the perennial lumpenproletariat that have long been exploited by the Civil Rights leaders and the FIRE sector who need outbreaks of mass violence to create or extend the slums and No Go zones required for eventual redevelopment and gentrification. The latter is composed by the young people in insecure employment who cannot realistically expect anything approaching prosperity. The willingness of so many young urban whites to join in the violence clearly involved a lot more than college grads larping as revolutionaries.
The utility of this violence was and will be exploited by every level of the political system. The white flight now underway from Blue State metropolises is now significant enough to constitute ethnic cleansing. The oligarchs and the Deep State are reshaping the US to suit themselves. The Red States (Florida and Texas especially) are now a "Helms Deep" style redoubt for economically productive people displaced from the current Blue State zones of dysfunction. The US is splitting along classic Third World lines, with a dual economy, one advanced and capable of sustaining a viable economy, the other a much poorer one that functions as a sink of poverty and undervelopment (though with isolated enclaves of prosperity within this).
It is desperately sad. Since the Cold War the USA went through its own Yeltsin-style era of licensed plunder with the mass anaesthetic of debt-financed consumption to maintain social peace. Now the anaesthetic is wearing off....hence the impetus for fresh civil conflict and repression.
Wow! That’s some dark stuff. Karma for the Chicago school, free market rapacious rampage *we* have been on for a loooong time? You may be wrong, you may be right. We see what we look at and hear what we listen to.
Well, IMHO, it makes perfect sense. Globalisation created the perfect conditions for normalising the gangster capitalism that was sponsored by the US and other Western governments in Yeltsin's Russia. Underregulated markets, the plunder of state assets, capital flight and Sado-Malthusian social and economic policies. It was road-tested in Russia and the hollowed-out institutions of the West lacked the capacity and the will to resists any of it. What is ironic is that elements of the old KGB led by Putin are cleaning up the mess and constraining the oligarchs, while in the US the intelligence services are just interested in maintaining gangster governance.
It is role reversal on a grand scale, a geopolitical fugue state, a real-life story worthy of David Lynch. What pisses me off (amongst other things) is that Dark Brandon is piss-weak compared to Dennis Hopper. I feel cheated. If we are to get a dystopia, I want the best one possible. Call me a dreamer.
Ok. That’s a bit to unpack I will reread but like the Helms deep metaphor
The principal political effect of IT is to refocus people's attention away from the real world towards an unreal one and to make people instinctively passive. When that has been achieved, it is easy for the powers that be to construct narratives to misdirect or control people.
What 'biden' should have said, but never could. (or would)
I don't have to tell you things are bad. Everybody knows things are bad. It's a depression. Everybody's out of work or scared of losing their job. The dollar buys a nickel's worth, banks are going bust, shopkeepers keep a gun under the counter. Punks are running wild in the street and there's nobody anywhere who seems to know what to do, and there's no end to it. We know the air is unfit to breathe and our food is unfit to eat, and we sit watching our TVs while some local newscaster tells us that today we had fifteen homicides and sixty-three violent crimes, as if that's the way it's supposed to be. We know things are bad - worse than bad. They're crazy. It's like everything everywhere is going crazy, so we don't go out anymore. We sit in the house, and slowly the world we are living in is getting smaller, and all we say is, 'Please, at least leave us alone in our living rooms. Let me have my toaster and my TV and my steel-belted radials and I won't say anything. Just leave us alone.' Well, I'm not gonna leave you alone. I want you to get mad! I don't want you to protest. I don't want you to riot - I don't want you to write to your congressman because I wouldn't know what to tell you to write. I don't know what to do about the depression and the inflation and the Russians and the crime in the street. All I know is that first you've got to get mad. You've got to say, 'I'm a HUMAN BEING, God damn it! My life has VALUE!' So I want you to get up now. I want all of you to get up out of your chairs. I want you to get up right now and go to the window. Open it, and stick your head out, and yell, 'I'M AS MAD AS HELL, AND I'M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!' I want you to get up right now, sit up, go to your windows, open them and stick your head out and yell - 'I'm as mad as hell and I'm not going to take this anymore!' Things have got to change. But first, you've gotta get mad!... You've got to say, 'I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!' Then we'll figure out what to do about the depression and the inflation and the oil crisis. But first get up out of your chairs, open the window, stick your head out, and yell, and say it: "I'M AS MAD AS HELL, AND I'M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!"
-- Howard Beale
The reason he would never make that speech, is because his own policies are the reason we are in the spot we are.
Free Mooney, free money, and more free money is a big part of the inflation, and he continues to give away more with a questionably legal college loan giveaway.
Biden is for no cash bail and has no problem with Soros prosecutors turning felons free.
Biden does end rest around the Constitution, and flouts our SCOTUS rulings.
The oil crisis is the result of his policy to make every effort to end fossil fuels before the clean energy is even close to being ready to step in as a replacement at a lower cost.
If we were yelling “I’m mad as hell”, it would be Biden we would be mad at.
That is pretty darn fitting. I do wish he’d said that.
It needs to be said, but no one in power will will ever say it, or even can say it.
Everything the perma-gov cabal is doing right now is obviously geared towards provoking the violence they keep promising. It's so passive-aggressive it's a parody. But their intentions are no joke. The federal government is armed to the teeth, both law enforcement and civilian agencies, and in my view, they're spoiling for a fight. Our national slogan could be "Just give us a reason."
Lol I honestly thought something similar. Like he was goading people on to do something they could call a domestic terrorist threat.
Sometimes the most obvious answer is the correct one!
Just add an image of Dirty Harry gritting his teeth as he says it...
The evil left is being overtly provocative to try and get a reaction. What a bunch of assholes!! As usual the fascists are calling everyone else a fascist. Despicable.
Kari Lake, the Republican nominee for Governor of Arizona, has said (in an interview on One America) that she would not have certified Biden's Arizona win, had she been in office in 2020.
There are at least 100 similar "stop the steal" Republicans running for state and federal office in November.
But hey! Let's talk about the optics of Biden's speech! That's what's really important!!!
We should all stand strong against fraudulent elections. Every LEGAL vote must be counted.
There is some serious crazy on the GOP side now. I just read an article about how Kristina Karamo, a GOP candidate in MI, threatened to kill her family if her husband divorced her. She shows the classic signs of borderline personality disorder. It seems more and more on both sides, we are given a selection of the mentally incapacitated, mentally disturbed, or just plain grifters. Do stable, serious candidates even stand a chance now?
It's not crazy I'm worried about, it's the deliberate coordinated planning by Republicans to steal the 2024 election for Trump. https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/us-election-risk-index/about/
?Bloomberg? That bastion of journalistic integrity?
How about Molly Ball’s article in Time Feb 15/22 , 2021 providing an after action report on how the election was curated?
Yes, absolutely read that article: https://time.com/5936036/secret-2020-election-campaign/
It explains in detail how and why the 2020 election was fair. That's what the MAGA Republicans are now planning to reverse in 2024, by getting their partisans into key positions of election oversight.
Add this, https://www.wbay.com/2022/09/02/wisconsin-gop-candidate-calls-pitchforks-torches/….to MTGreene and others using assault weapons in their ads….and Christmas cards!
Are you unable to see two problems simultaneously? You partisanship is showing, and the $$$$ blob love it!
What happened to Matt Taibbi the journalist?
It appears that the only thing that interests him are optics and theater. There is no engagement on substance. Does he think Trump won the election? Does he think it is normal for the Republicans to deny the legitimacy of the election? Does he think Trump was just having fun on Jan. 6th? Is he a MAGA fellow traveler? I am confused
optics and theatre matter in the 21st century. especially coming from the President.
it’s obvious that Matt is not a MAGA guy.
everytime the Dems go after Trump for whatever reason, it ends up backfiring, and strengthening the MAGA base. why can’t they just let Trump fail on his own ineptitude? it’s like they really want him to win. or they are addicted to losing.
I agree that another Trump presidency would be a disaster. the establishment seems dead set on getting him elected again. it’s surreal...
When optics and theater are all that you are concerned with when Republicans are denying electoral legitimacy, you are clearly adhering to a MAGA creed.
when did I say that optics and theatre all all I’m concerned about? I said they were important, which most would agree on.
I swear, U guys pay five bucks just to come on here and completely misrepresent everything written.
don’t U have a Twitter account? save yer cash go back to Twitter with the other trolls. jeez...
I wouldn’t worry too much about what people are spending their money on. I doubt Matt is too upset about receiving my five dollars. Oh and by the way, I am not at all directing my comments at you Hollis unless perhaps you are Matt’s stand-in. In that case - cheers for all the great reporting back in the day with Rolling Stone.
Politics is 50% optics. The art of Politics is essentially the art of avoiding violence. People often disagree. So we bargain. Rather than violence. The people that believe the POTUS election was stolen, are not going to change their mind. It's pointless to focus on it. Right now is the time to encourage compromise and forgiveness. The goal should be avoiding escalating violence.
Trump’s presidency was not a disaster. Biden’s presidency is a disaster.
The fact that you are not cognizant of how America improved under Trump’s policies tells me everything I need to know.
So the federal government should just have let Trump keep those top-secret documents lying around in cardboard boxes? Is that what you (and Matt) believe?
no. if Trump broke the law, he should be held accountable. 100%.
I wasn’t really talking about that.
the documents issue seems to me another self inflicted wound Trump brought upon himself. he could have easily handed over the documents when they requested them and avoided this mess.
Yeah, but Trump did keep the classified documents. He did not give them back, despite many months of the feds saying pretty please. And his lawyers lied about how many he had.
And yet: Matt said explicitly that the search of Marlego for those classified documents should not have happened. He wrote an entire post about it. And he has not backed down from that.
So: there we are. Matt defends unlawful behavior by Trump, and condemns lawful behavior by the lawfully-empowered federal government.
We are rocketing towards tyranny in 2024, and Matt is pumping fuel into the engines.
Matt never said it shouldn’t of happened. his concern was that for the raid to be justified, it would need to be totally legitimate otherwise it could backfire and give more momentum and power to Trumps movement ala, Russiagate, the Impeachments etc.
that is the last thing we need right now...Trump running again.
I’m curious tho, U clearly dislike Matt and his writings, so why do U pay 5 bucks a month to his Substack? is it worth it just to troll the people here?
pretty sure only paid subscribers can comment, no?
I don’t get it Mark...
Not just a disaster, a culling of the world’s populace.
The idea that life is great when you’re not looking at the truth is just ignorance, really. Your neighbors are dying. Athletes are dropping dead. Comedians, models, children, millennials...the list is overwhelming. You can pop open a beer at the end of the day, cover your eyes and sing “La, la, la” as loud as you like, but it doesn’t change the truth beyond your window.
Matt the journalist disappeared years ago. (Not entirely true: he still writes an occasional finance piece with real reporting in it, but these are getting to be ever so rare.)
Matt has discovered that feeding the trumpista trolls is FAR more lucrative (and also much easier!) than doing the sort of actual journalism on which he built his (fast eroding) reputation.
So that's what he does now. I hope his kids will be proud of him.
Matt has courage. The truth is a hard thing to find these days but one’s character is defined by the pursuit of it. Much easier for people like you to come here and disparage.
Millions of people are proud of Matt already.
Tell me, what is your worth in the world? What do you add to it?
Well among other things I've written a college-level science textbook that has been continuously in print for 16 years so far (and is still selling well).
Matt is no longer dealing in "truth", he is dealing in opinion, his main opinion being that Trump is above the law and should never be investigated for anything ever.
“ Well among other things I've written a college-level science textbook that has been continuously in print for 16 years so far (and is still selling well).”
That’s pretty much all I need to know. Your world view is being destroyed and everything you thought was true isn’t really true. So you strike out at those who are pointing it out rather than taking responsibility for your own ignorance.
Wut? My "worldview is being destroyed" because I wrote a science textbook?
Well alrighty then. I'm pretty happy that I'll be taking my leave of this particular nuthouse.
Of course, you folks will be getting the last laugh when Trump steals the 2024 election. I hope you like what comes after.
>Does he think it is normal for the Republicans to deny the legitimacy of the election?
Abnormal, but not unprecedented. There was a lot of kerfuffle about 2000’s election and 2016’s, with Hillary C in particular hammering the point that Trump was illegitimately installed by Vladimir Putin: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/hillary-clinton-trump-is-an-illegitimate-president/2019/09/26/29195d5a-e099-11e9-b199-f638bf2c340f_story.html
That said, repeating “the election was real,” ad nauseam, doesn't illuminate much after the first couple-dozen times. I personally would rather read Taibbi’s commentary as-is than read the exact same Republicans Are Bad content that I can get from MSNBC
That story is from 2019, and was Hillary's opinion, which had NO backing from the Democrats in the Senate and House, who certified Trump's victory in January 2017. And there was no riot at the Capitol, no threats to murder the Vice President, no attempted coup.
But never fear, your boy is going to take back power in 2024, and this time, he and his mininions have figured out how to keep it permanently, Orban style.
You're gonna love it!!!
"Hillary's opinion"
It was far more than her opinion. The FBI and the media ran with it like it was gospel. Hundreds of millions of people around the world believed in Russiagate.
It is ludicrous and counterfactual to assert otherwise.
Obama was the first one to start the lie.
Russiagate was a deep state psyop and it was war propaganda. It worked too.
You're correct though, a pathologically narcissistic fascist freak will win if he runs. That's because "your boy(s)" have done nothing for the people of America and everything for the elites, the MIC and the deep state. And now things are so so bad that millions of people would vote for a Hitler if they thought he would try to actually help them.
In my opinion you're right that there was a much bigger talking point regarding Stop the Steal, among GOP politicians, than anything prior. I agree this sends a bad message and sets a bad precedent. I wish it to end. I think also that there would be a better chance for the GOP and/or Trump to succeed if Stop the Steal did end. I'm not a Trump supporter, but I'm someone minimally invested in GOP prospects because I don't want fossilized Dem politics. (I want there to be viable threats to Dems but wish we could coalesce around third party vehicles, especially those focused on dismantling corporate control and ending grotesquely unequal wage arrangements.)
With all that said, Biden's election was also certified. I'm not sure what Trump's attempted coup was supposed to be in actuality, since he has not been held legally liable for the Jan. 6 riots. Maybe schemes involving electors could be construed as a coup; but since Trump hasn't been convicted of anything like this, he has officially not been ruled to have carried out a coup attempt, nor has he been charged with something resembling a coup (excluding an impeachment process launched by political opponents). What evidence do you have that Trump will keep power permanently, Orban style, in 2024?
Do you think it was normal for Hillary to deny the legitimacy of the 2016 election?
She did that in 2019. No one was paying any attention to her.
In 2016, she did not incite a mob to storm the Capitol. She did not call up the Secretary of State of Georgia in an effort to steal votes. Etc etc etc.
More and more it looks like the dems will do what it takes to prevent Trump from running, and if that fails, refusing to allow him to take power.
I have always believed that even the dems and the deep state would not play dice with the American experiment; but here we are.
I'm good with watching TV and gaining weight as opposed to civil war. If they come to my house, tho. . .https://scubacat.substack.com/p/when-they-come-for-me
Beautiful 💕
Really nice!
It's insane: they complain about political violence here in the US, while they destroy whole countries with their military violence? We're supposed to believe they're sincere?
Being a journalist nowadays seems awful....having to listen to this crap and then attempt providing rational analysis to what at base is nonsensical blather.
I have a different take. Biden’s inflammatory speech Thursday night was not directed at MAGA Republicans. No, it was aimed squarely at those DEMOCRATS who in their hearts of hearts are not on board with his destructive policies and rhetoric.
The message was clear: If, like over a million Democrats in 2021, you leave the Democrat party and register as a Republican, you are going straight to cultural hell and will deserve the systemic bullying, derision, erasure, and assault on your liberties especially reserved for MAGA Republicans. You will be subject to censorship and harassment, and perhaps be made the special target of politicized government agencies. Like the FBI. Or the IRS.
If you jump ship, you will not be spared. You will be treated as a traitor. Biden’s message to those who are on the fence is: if you are not a Democrat, you are not an American.
MAGA Republicans are accustomed to this treatment.
To wavering Democrats, Independents and everyone else: Step out of line and you're next.
Consider yourselves warned.
I get it. It was the earthly embodiment of Dark Brandon. It it hadn’t been for the real military personnel having his back, I’d have clapped at the stagecraft. I sort of was disappointed that he didn’t have a F-15 and maybe a nuclear bomb on stage with him.
Hint. Hint. You dastardly semi-fascist American citizens that dared to vote in 2016, don’t do it this time, or substantial penalties will be applied, somewhat quoted from the movie, The Jerk.
Don’t forget the Red Room scene from Twin Peaks.
Which made me immediately think of the Red Wedding. 😜
"Gar...mon...BO-zi-a."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IcTRo_7q6T0&t=63s
It made me think of the speeches of chancellor Sutler in the movie V for Vendetta.
It Is Happening Again...
that was what I thought! That scene really creeped me out