This is one of the major divides in modern world: Some people think the People should really run their own governments. Then there is an elite handful of people who believe that because they are so super-smart, the public-facing government should be a facade for unwashed masses, a Potemkin village, and the self-appointed rich fucks should call all the shots.
Who are the powerful shy people who tell so many politicians what to do and say? What am I talking about? Dozens of members of Congress (I'm focusing on the political Left these days) walk in lockstep. For example:
Modern Democrats apparently have conjured up a political purity test that they require of each other.
In his American Dream bit, George Carlin spoke of "The Big Club" and you and I are not in "The Big Club."
They spend billions of dollars every year lobbying, lobbying, to get what they want. Well, we know what they want. They want more for themselves and less for everybody else, but I’ll tell you what they don’t want: They don’t want a population of citizens capable of critical thinking. They don’t want well informed, well educated people capable of critical thinking. They’re not interested in that. That doesn’t help them. Thats against their interests. Thats right. They don’t want people who are smart enough to sit around a kitchen table and think about how badly they’re getting fucked by a system that threw them overboard 30 fucking years ago. They don’t want that!You know what they want? They want obedient workers. Obedient workers, people who are just smart enough to run the machines and do the paperwork. And just dumb enough to passively accept all these increasingly shitty jobs with the lower pay, the longer hours, the reduced benefits, the end of overtime and vanishing pension that disappears the minute you go to collect it, and now they’re coming for your Social Security money. They want your retirement money. They want it back so they can give it to their criminal friends on Wall Street, and you know something? They’ll get it. They’ll get it all from you sooner or later cause they own this fucking place! It’s a big club, and you ain’t in it! You, and I, are not in the big club.
The amazing Data Republican has dug into the politicians who are all mouthing the same words in unison, abdicating their duties to think for themselves in congress. What has she found? Lots of financial ties binding these politicians to their "Big Club." For instance,
Carlin thought that there was no need for formal meetings to coordinate the activity of "The Big Club."
Thanks to DataRepublican, we are now learning, however, that sophisticated logistics and money-flow coordinate the activities of The Big Club.
Legacy media fails in SOOO many ways these days. They refuse to offer links to primary sources relating to their stories, for instance. Matt Taibbi explains that this is not an accident. They also refuse to give historical context for the "stories" they report. So often, we only hear of the crisis de jour. That's how it is with the Ukraine War. RFK, Jr. did offer this short history of the American Military Industrial Complex. It's real and it is responsible for much of the worldwide dysfunction we read about, including the War in Ukraine. Kennedy:
“We are the military-industrial complex.”
“Washington ... is like a Kabuki theatre of democracy.”
It’s about ending the trauma that the US military-industrial complex has put the world through since 1963.
RFK Jr: JFK’s 1,000 days in office were a “constant fistfight with the military-industrial complex to keep the country out of war.”
“Three days before [JFK] took office, President Eisenhower gave what I think we should today regard as the most important speech in American history.”
“He warned Americans against the domination of this emerging military-industrial complex that would turn us into an imperium abroad and a security state at home.”
“[JFK] takes office three days later.”
“They tried to get him to go into Laos, he refused.”
“They tried to get him to go into Cuba in ‘61 and again in ‘62 during the missile crisis, and he wouldn’t.”
“They tried to get him to go into Berlin in ‘62, and he wouldn’t.”
“They tried to get him to go into Vietnam … and he said it can’t be our fight.”
“In October 1963 … [JFK] signed National Security Order 263 ordering all military personnel out of Vietnam.”
“Thirty days after he signed that order, he was murdered. And a week after that, President Johnson remanded the order and then sent 250,000 troops in.” “My father ran against the war in ‘68. He wins the California primary, meaning he’s on his way to the White House, and he’s shot that night.”
Jeffrey Sachs has calmly delivered short presentations that give context to the the Ukraine War that you will never hear on Corporate media. For most self-declared Democrats I know, the history of the Ukraine War started in 2022. They are off by a few decades, as Sachs Discusses (I created this transcript based on the following video:
Yesterday was the most important day for peace in maybe decades. Actually, this war in Ukraine resulted from a very bad idea of the United States taken in 1994 it's a project. The project was a project to expand NATO forever, anywhere. Just keep moving east. Keep moving, not only to the first wave, which was the Prime Minister's country, Hungary, Czech Republic and Slovakia, but then move eastward, closer to the former Soviet Union, into the former Soviet Union, surround Russia in the Black Sea region, go all the way to little country in the south caucuses, Georgia. It was mind boggling. Clinton signed onto that in 1994 it became what we call the deep state project, meaning it didn't really matter who the President was. Each president would come and basically would be informed NATO is moving eastward, you're part of that process.
So Clinton started it in 1994 and as Prime Minister Orban said, he mentioned briefly in 1990 on February 9, 1990 in unequivocal, clear as can be terms the United States, and said to President Michel Gorbachev NATO, will not move one inch eastward. And if you have any doubt about it, all the documents are now online available. You can scrutinize everything. Hans Dietrich Genscher, the US, the German foreign minister said the same thing same day. He's on tape actually explaining, no, no, I don't just mean within eastern Germany. I mean anywhere to the east. Clinton, being Clinton and the US Deep State, being the US Deep State, started this project in 1994 they already had the idea, by the way, in 1991 92 as soon as the Soviet Union ended, aha. Now we move now we move eastward. Now we control everything. Now we are the sole superpower.
So this has gone on for 30 years, and each president got into it. Under George Bush Junior, seven more countries were added, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Bulgaria and Romania. Nine, in 2004 then in 2007 President Putin said at the summit that's taking place right now, the Munich Security Summit said, Stop! You told us no expansion, not an eastward expansion, even an inch, you said. You've now done 10 countries. Stop! Perfectly reasonable. Stop.
I don't think our president, Donald Trump, would much like to see China and Russia building their military bases up from Central America. You know, this was how the Russians saw this. Why are you coming to our border when you told us you weren't going to move? And there was one other thing that was very important in this which is probably the most decisive thing and almost not even recognized in 2002 the US did something really, really, really destabilizing, and that is it unilaterally left the anti ballistic missile treaty that was a core strategy to stop a nuclear war between the two super powers. Because . . . [More . . . ]
For years it has been increasingly difficult for me to have a give-and-take conversation with a Democrat. I've voted almost entirely with the Democrats all my life, and I remain committed to what were, more or less, the Democratic values that were known and accepted by the far majority of Democrats 10 to 15 years ago: anti-war, anti-censorship, don't judge people by irrelevant characteristics like the way they look, deference to the family re how to raise children, etc.
Now it is almost impossible to talk. My guiding assumption is that almost all people think and act rationally based upon what they know and believe. We live in two primary informational ecosystems, however, and the one embraced by most self-proclaimed modern day Democrats has ever-fewer connection points with those who are not in that tribe. It is for that reason that I have, indeed, been posting X links to my FB page, to the the dismay of what turns out to be a smallish group of very loud people who respond almost entirely with ad hominem attacks. I also receive many private messages thanking me for sharing these posts, many of these also adding that they can't "like" or res-hare my links because of social and economic repercussions. Such a sad state of affairs. BTW, Elon Musk has encouraged the sharing of X posts to those who are still trapped in the Matrix:
