- CoLD WaR NuT JoB…
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- Tucker Carlson Takes on DNC Chair Candidate Jehmu Greene and Humilitates Her
Tucker Carlson delved into a discussion with Jehmu Greene, frontrunner to become the next shill to head up the DNC, and got very specific when it came to the issue of drug prices and Trump’s proposal to import American made drugs from Canada, because our country is partly run by the big pharma industrial complex. The results were telling. Notice every time Jehmu blinks she is, in fact, telling a bald faced lie.
Partisan politics rules the day. What’s good for the American people, naturally, are secondary concerns to these retrograde water carriers.
Content originally generated at iBankCoin.com
- Abolish The CIA
Submitted by Michael Rozeff via The Ron Paul Institute for Peace & Prosperity,
Every American who looks at the CIA objectively or in a balanced way and judges it by any number of criteria, such as moral, legal and pragmatic, should reach the conclusion that the CIA should be abolished. JFK wanted to break it into a million pieces. Trump is right to dismiss its intelligence reports about DNC hacking. The CIA war on Trump shows us immediately that the CIA is a rogue organization within the U.S. government and a severe threat to America.
The CIA is an internal threat to the rule of law and to the government that it supposedly serves. Senator Schumer acknowledges the CIA’s unbridled power, its subversive power, its power to undermine even a president, especially one that wishes to control or alter the organization, when he says:
“Let me tell you: You take on the intelligence community, they have six ways from Sunday at getting back at you. For a practical, supposedly hard-nosed businessman, he’s being really dumb to do this.”
Schumer is saying that the CIA is so powerful that a president should not attempt to control it or else! The CIA is so powerful that elections do not matter when it comes to the CIA. The CIA stands alone. The Constitution that empowers the president as the Executive, the boss of government operations, does not matter. Basic American institutions and laws must bow before the threats that the CIA possesses. This is the assessment of a Senator beginning his 4th term and who is the highest ranking Democrat in the Senate in his post as minority leader.
The CIA is an organization that perpetually undermines traditional American values and moral values. It consistently kills innocent people. It continually causes instability and wars. It undermines other societies and our own. It interferes constantly in foreign nations, to the detriment of them and us. It is an unelected power that challenges elected officials. It favors abuses of power, including torture. Its actual value at generating usable intelligence is minimal, often wrong, often misleading, inaccurate and harmful as in the WMD that were never found in Iraq.
“The Association for Responsible Dissent estimates that by 1987, 6 million people had died as a result of CIA covert operations. Former State Department official William Blum correctly calls this an "American Holocaust."
This quote and a detailed timeline of CIA atrocities is available.
William Blum has listed CIA interventions for us.
All that needs to be done to understand the enormity of CIA crimes against humanity is to associate each of these interventions with the deaths, injuries, disruption of lives and destruction that they have caused. The most recent of these are
- Afghanistan 1980s *
- Somalia 1993
- Yugoslavia 1999-2000 *
- Ecuador 2000 *
- Afghanistan 2001 *
- Venezuela 2002 *
- Iraq 2003 *
- Haiti 2004 *
- Somalia 2007 to present
- Honduras 2009
- Libya 2011 *
- Syria 2012
- Ukraine 2014 *
The asterisks indicate a case where the CIA overthrew a government.
As long as Trump is at war with the CIA, a war that the CIA launched against him, not that this matters much because Trump has every right to change the CIA and the CIA has no right to disobey or blacken his name, he should attack the CIA much more completely and thoroughly. It deserves to be attacked. He should abolish it altogether. For a bone to those who have fears that the republic will fall without the CIA, whatever small amount of residual value that is present in its intelligence operations can easily be retained or transferred to other agencies. The latter are already in profuse abundance in Washington. The fact is, however, that the republic is more likely to fall further than it already has in the presence of the CIA than in its absence.
- 'Golfer-In-Chief' Obama Plays More Rounds Than Any President Since Eisenhower
20 years after first taking up the game of golf in 1997 – due to basketball injuries – President Obama has worked hard to get his handicap down to "an honest 13," comparable to former golfing presidents as they left office (Nixon 12, Clinton 10, JFK 14).
However, there is one thing Obama has them all beat with – during his eight years in the White House he played a total of 306 rounds of golf, more than any other president since Dwight Eisenhower.
As The Telegraph reports, Mr Obama's passion for golf contrasted with that of his predecessor, George W. Bush, who played just 24 times in office. Mr Bush gave up entirely in 2003 because he felt images of him playing seemed insensitive while US soldiers were fighting and dying in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Other golfing presidents of the modern era, including John F. Kennedy and Bill Clinton, kept their habit away from the public eye as much as possible.
Mr Obama tried to do the same but, in an era when a president's movements are constantly documented, pictures proliferated of him pacing manicured greens studying a putt at inopportune moments of national crisis.
Towards the end of his second term it offered ballast for assertions that he had "checked out".
In the annals of US presidents Mr Obama's final tally of 306 rounds is high, but he was far outstripped by two other men.
President Dwight Eisenhower played an estimated 800 rounds in office, calling golf "the best game of them all".
And President Woodrow Wilson manged to fit in over 1,000 rounds between 1913 and 1921. Despite all his efforts his wife was a better player.
Last year US president -elect Donald Trump hammered Mr Obama for "playing more golf than Tiger Woods".
Mr Trump added: "We don’t have time for this. We have to work. I love golf, I think it’s one of the greats, but I don’t have time."
But the lure of the links is strong for all presidents, including Mr Trump. Weeks after his election victory Mr Trump was in Florida, playing golf with Tiger Woods. And there were photographs.
* * *
And in case you did not believe us – here is the complete list of all 306 rounds…
- This Is What Venezuela's New, Vertical, Banknotes, Now With Added Zeros Look Like
We’ve all been eagerly waiting to see them: Venezuela’s crisp,brand new yet soon to be hyperinflated with many more zeros banknotes, and finally, after various failed attempts to deliver the new bills to Caracas (which according to Maduro were at least partially aborted due to pesky CIA meddling) they have arrived. And they are vertical.
A new bank note of 500 Bolivars held outside a bank in Caracas. Jan. 16, 2017.
A new bank note of 5,000 Bolivars outside a bank in Caracas. Jan. 16, 2017.Eager to get their hands on the new currency, AP writes that Venezuelans stood in long ATM lines Monday to take out new, larger-denominated bills “that President Nicolas Maduro hopes will help stabilize the crisis-wracked economy.” Of course, they will do no such thing as the pieces of paper in circulation have absolutely no bearing on the underlying economy, or its hyperinflation, but it will take at least several more shipments of new banknotes before the Maduro figures this out.
As a reminder, in taking a page out of the Indian demonetization playbook, Maduro last month said he was scrapping circulation of the most used bill, the 100-bolivar note, and replacing it with new bills ranging from 500 to 20,000 bolivars.
The local were appalled. Residents in Caracas expressed shock at seeing bills with so many zeros — a sign of how worthless the bolivar has become amid triple-digit inflation and a collapse in foreign exchange reserves that has led to severe food shortages.
Our advice: get used to it – the fun is only just starting. Ask Zimbabwe.
“I never thought I’d have such a big bill in my hands,” Milena Molina, a 35-year-old sales clerk, said as she inspected crisp, new 500-bolivar notes she had just withdrawn. “But with the inflation we’re suffering, the notes we had weren’t worth anything and you always had to go around with huge packages of bills.”
The Weimar Republic agrees.
Monday’s rollout of the first batch of imported notes came weeks later than the government had originally promised. Maduro last month ordered the 100-bolivar note to be withdrawn from use well before the replacement bills were ready, leading to widespread chaos as Venezuelans rushed to spend the bills before they were taken out of circulation. With cash running out, looting and protests were widespread – although they were widespread before the currency exchange too, so there wasn’t much of a difference – and Maduro had to backtrack. On Sunday, he extended for the third time, until Feb. 20, the deadline for the 100-bolivar note to remain legal tender.
While the new denominations should make cash transactions easier the relief may be short-lived: since the largest, 20,000-bolivar note is worth less than $6 on the widely used black market, Maduro already has to order a fresh batch with at least one more zero. With inflation forecast by the International Monetary Fund to hit four digits this year, few economists expect the currency to rebound any time soon.
Seeking to combat the black market, the government on Monday inaugurated four currency exchange houses near the border with Colombia where Venezuelans will be able to purchase Colombian pesos at a favorable exchange rate of 4 pesos per bolivar. The bolivar currently is worth just a quarter of that amount at exchange houses over the border in Colombia.
And while on the surface this risk-free arbitrage guaranteeing 400% returns would be a slam-dunk trade, there are two problems.
First, while Gov. Jose Vielma Mora of Tachira state said the Venezuelan central bank has at its disposal a large amount of pesos to meet what is expected to be strong demand for hard currency, purchases would be capped at between $200 and $300. A second, and bigger proble, is that it was hard to find anyone Monday who had managed to buy pesos.
Opponents of Maduro said that in trying to set an exchange rate for pesos, authorities are paving the way for corruption, saying only certain individuals and companies close to the government will be able to purchase them at the official rate. They are, of course, right.
- Merkel Says She Is Ready To "Fight A Generational Battle" With Trump To Preserve Liberal Democracy And Trade
Shortly after Germany retaliated to Trump’s overnight press attack, when German economy minister Sigmar Gabriel said on Monday morning that Germans would gladly buy US automobiles if only America could “build better cars”, and that – responding to Trump’s criticism of Germany’s “catastrophic” refugee policy – he said there “is a link between America’s flawed interventionist policy, especially the Iraq war, and the [European] refugee crisis”, Merkel fired her own shot across the bow of Trump’s proposed protectionism, when she told industry leaders late on Monday that she would remain committed to free trade, rebutting Trump’s comments about a border taxes on car imports.
Taking advantage of the anti-populist wave stirred by Trump, Merkel, speaking to the German Chamber of Commence and Industry in Cologne, urged industry leaders to remain supportive of the German government in the forthcoming Brexit negotiations between Britain and the European Union. “We can’t let anyone divide us,” she said quoted by Reuters.
As far as free trade and open markets go, Merkel told the industrialists her government was prepared to fight to preserve them.
“We’ve got to fight this battle, if for no other reason than principle,” Merkel said, referring to Germany’s commitment to the free trade, and asking German business to “join her in defending liberal democracy and trade”, saying “in every generation one has to fight for one’s ideals.”
“I’m ready for that,” Merkel added.
“I have the impression that we are once again at a crossroads,” Merkel tells a business chamber gala in Cologne, hinting at an ideological crusade to rid the world of backward-looking protectionists.
Indeed, she then said that halting protectionism is part of the struggle, and would not give up on free-trade deals with the U.S. “I have a lot of resolve, but the number of doubters is growing,” says she’s “deeply convinced” that “embracing competition rather eliminating it is best for human development and for prosperity in Germany.”
Needless to say, Merkel has never met anyone quite like Trump.
She then appealed to the audience to resist giving up those principles “too hastily for reasons of short-term gain.”
Merkel echoed words from her Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble earlier on Monday, who issued a not so thinly veiled warning to Trump over the dangers of protectionist trade policies.
“Whoever wants growth – and I trust this administration will be a growth-friendly one – must be in favor of open markets,” Schaeuble told the Wall Street Journal in an interview. “Protectionism can afford short-term advantages but is almost always damaging in the long term.”
Of course, Keynes himself said the same thing about Keynesian economics, the bedrock of all modern economic thinking, but that’s a different topic.
As for Germany and its preparedness for an “ideological” crusade against Trump and the world’s protectionists, be careful what you wish for.
- New Video Exposes Anti-Trump Groups Plotting Criminal Acts To Disrupt Inauguration
In the latest undercover video from Project Veritas, investigators uncovered a group of protesters known as the DC Anti-fascist Coalition plotting to disrupt President-Elect Donald Trump’s inauguration by deploying butyric acid (aka “stink bombs”) at the National Press Club during the Deploraball event scheduled for January 19th. In a dose of irony, the planning meeting for the attack was held at Comet Ping Pong, the DC pizza restaurant that recently gained infamy as the location of the Pizzagate controversy.
Apparently “Plan A” of the disaffected agitators was to set off “stink bombs” in the ventilation systems of the building hosting the “Deploraball.”
“I was thinking of things that ruin, that would ruin the evening, ruin their outfits or otherwise make it impossible to continue with their plans. Make sure they get nothing accomplished.”
“Yeah, if you had…a pint of butyric acid, I don’t care how big the building is, it’s closing…And this stuff is very efficient, it’s very very smelly, lasts a long time a little of it goes a long way.”
“If you get it into the HVAC system it will get into the whole building.”
Meanwhile, “Plan B” entailed an effort to simultaneously set off the sprinkler systems throughout the building which had the “added benefit” of sending party goers “outside in the freezing cold.”
“I’m trying to think through how to get all the sprinklers to go off at once. There’s usually a piece of like fusible metal or a piece of glass with liquid in it that will blow”
“And the added benefit, everybody is going to walk outside in the freezing cold.”
Because of the nature of the threats, Project Veritas notes that they notified the FBI, Secret Service and DC Metro Police of the content of this video prior to its release.
With that, here is the full video:
- Media Betrayal: Steve Harvey Given Uncle Tom Treatment After Trump Meeting, Nicole Kidman Suffers Pizza-Themed Hit Piece
Comedian Steve Harvey and actress Nicole Kidman are the latest celebrities on a growing list to come under fire for associating with President-elect Donald Trump, or making pro-Trump statements.Harvey has come under vicious attack after meeting with Mr. Trump last Friday to discuss working with incoming HUD secretary Ben Carson on inner-city housing issues. Both Harvey and Carson grew up so poor, and so black, and rose to greatness in their fields – so I think it’s safe to assume they are going to be assets to the Black community. It should also be noted that President Obama’s transition team asked Harvey to do it, which Trump’s team obviously agreed with. In response, the “tolerant left,” including fellow black comedian DL Hughley, has not been kind.
In the media’s latest attack on Harvey, sensitive Asian chef and Super Mario turtle faced author Eddie Huang penned a pithy little hit piece in the New York Times which basically called Harvey (who supported Hillary Clinton) a racist, after the comedian and TV show host made fun of a book cover that Huang had posted on instagram entitled “How to Date a White Woman – a practical guide for Asian men.” Harvey featured the image in a segment on his daytime TV show January 6th, after which he proceeded to crack jokes about how black women don’t like dating Asian men. Literally Hitler.Huang, owner of Baohaus Taiwanese restaurant in Manhattan – and author of the book turned TV show “Fresh off the Boat,” has made a fortune off the “Fresh off the boat” franchise – a term which has, for decades, been used as a derogatory slur to describe Asian immigrants who aren’t familiar with American culture. Huang’s whole shtick is the hilarious confusion between Asian and American cultural misunderstandings – so racial comedy using a provocative title.
As long as we’re talking race, are all celebrity Asian chefs this sensitive? If Dave Chappelle wanted to work with the Trump administration to help the black community in a similar capacity as Steve Harvey, do you think Korean chef David Chang would write a whiny little article about Chappelle’s stand-up to increase his visibility? I suspect not, because Chang doesn’t strike me as a sensitive, attention seeking, gold-chain wearing, Super Mario turtle faced opportunist – though I’m sure the left would find someone to write it. Granted, Huang’s opportunistic little hit-piece was related to something he posted on Instagram, however the point is that comedians make racial jokes all the time, and there was really no reason to write that article.
Nicole Kidman is yet another celebrity to come under recent fire after making pro-Trump statements to the BBC.
“[Trump’s] now elected, and we as a country need to support whoever’s the president because that’s what the country’s based on,”
Kidman, whose father died while under investigation for his suspected role in a massive pedophile ring, was featured in a recent “pizza themed” hit piece in Australia’s Woman’s Day magazine, which was parroted by the Daily Mail. Perhaps the reference to pizza, which made international news as suspected pedophile code-phrase contained within the Wikileaks dumps, was intended to punish Kidman for simply saying “let’s give Trump a chance?“
Whatever the case, this is deplorable behavior from the world’s sorest losers.
So tolerant, so liberal.
— Joss Whedon (@joss) January 13, 2017
Content originally generated at iBankCoin.com * Follow on Twitter @ZeroPointNow
- In Defense Of Populism
Submitted by Mike Krieger via Liberty Blitzkrieg blog,
DAVOS MAN: “A soulless man, technocratic, nationless and cultureless, severed from reality. The modern economics that undergirded Davos capitalism is equally soulless, a managerial capitalism that reduces economics to mathematics and separates it from human action and human creativity.”
– From the post: “For the Sake of Capitalism, Pepper Spray Davos”
One thing I’ve been very careful about not doing over the years is self-identifying under any particular political ideology. I articulated my reasoning in the post, Thank You and Welcome New Readers – A Liberty Blitzkrieg Mission Statement:
I am not a Democrat or a Republican. I do not consider myself a libertarian, progressive, socialist, anarchist, conservative, neoconservative or neoliberal. I’m just a 38 year old guy trying to figure it all out. Naturally, this doesn’t imply that there aren’t things which I hold dear. I have a strong belief system based on key principles. It’s just that I don’t think it makes sense for me to self-label and become part of a tribe. The moment you self-label, is the moment you stop thinking for yourself. It’s also the moment you stop listening. When you think you have all the answers, anyone who doesn’t think exactly as you do on all topics is either stupid or “paid opposition.” I don’t subscribe to this way of thinking.
Despite my refusal to self-identify, I am comfortable stating that I’m a firm supporter of populist movements and appreciate the instrumental role they’ve played historically in free societies. The reason I like this term is because it carries very little baggage. It doesn’t mean you adhere to a specific set of policies or solutions, but that you believe above all else that the concerns of average citizens matter and must be reflected in government policy.
Populism reaches its political potential once such concerns become so acute they translate into popular movements, which in turn influence the levers of power. Populism is not a bug, but is a key feature in any democratic society. It functions as a sort of pressure relief valve for free societies. Indeed, it allows for an adjustment and recalibration of the existing order at the exact point in the cycle when it is needed most. In our current corrupt, unethical and depraved oligarchy, populism is exactly what is needed to restore some balance to society. Irrespective of what you think of Donald Trump or Bernie Sanders, both political movements were undoubtably populist in nature. This doesn’t mean that Trump govern as populist once he is sworn into power, but there’s little doubt that the energy which propelled him to the Presidency was part of a populist wave.
Trump understands this, and despite having surrounded himself with an endless stream of slimy ex-Goldman Sachs bankers and other assorted billionaires, his campaign took the following position with regard to Davos according to Bloomberg:
Donald Trump won’t send an official representative to the annual gathering of the world’s economic elite in Davos, taking place next week in the days leading up to his inauguration, although one of the president-elect’s advisers is slated to attend.
Former Goldman Sachs President Gary Cohn, a regular attendee in the past, told the group he would skip 2017 after being named in December to head the National Economic Council, said people familiar with the conference. Other top Trump appointees will also pass up the forum.
A senior member of Trump’s transition team said the president-elect thought it would betray his populist-fueled movement to have a presence at the high-powered annual gathering in the Swiss Alps. The gathering of millionaires, billionaires, political leaders and celebrities represents the power structure that fueled the populist anger that helped Trump win the election, said the person, who asked for anonymity to discuss the matter.
While all of this sounds great, it’s not entirely true. For example:
Hedge fund manager Anthony Scaramucci is planning to travel to Davos, though. The founder of SkyBridge Capital and an early backer of Trump’s campaign, Scaramucci was named on Thursday as an assistant to the president.
Not that Scaramucci’s presence should surprise anyone, he’s the consummate banker apologist, anti-populist. Recall what he said last month:
“I think the cabal against the bankers is over.”
This guy shouldn’t be allowed within ten feet of any populist President, but Trump unfortunately seems to have a thing for ex-Goldman Sachs bankers.
While we’re on then subject, let’s discuss Davos for a moment. You know, the idyllic Swiss town where the world’s most dastardly politicians, oligarchs and their fawning media servants will gather in a technocratic orgy of panels and cocktail parties to discuss how best to manage the world’s affairs in the year ahead. Yes, that Davos.
To get a sense of the maniacal mindset of these people, I want to turn your attention to a couple of Reuters articles published earlier today. First, from Davos Elites Struggle for Answers as Trump Era Dawns:
DAVOS, Switzerland – The global economy is in better shape than it’s been in years. Stock markets are booming, oil prices are on the rise again and the risks of a rapid economic slowdown in China, a major source of concern a year ago, have eased.
First report from Davos is in. Everything’s fine.
And yet, as political leaders, CEOs and top bankers make their annual trek up the Swiss Alps to the World Economic Forum in Davos, the mood is anything but celebratory.
Last year, the consensus here was that Trump had no chance of being elected. His victory, less than half a year after Britain voted to leave the European Union, was a slap at the principles that elites in Davos have long held dear, from globalization and free trade to multilateralism.
Moises Naim of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace was even more blunt: “There is a consensus that something huge is going on, global and in many respects unprecedented. But we don’t know what the causes are, nor how to deal with it.”
Thank you for your invaluable insight, Moises.
The titles of the discussion panels at the WEF, which runs from Jan. 17-20, evoke the unsettling new landscape. Among them are “Squeezed and Angry: How to Fix the Middle Class Crisis”, “Politics of Fear or Rebellion of the Forgotten?”, “Tolerance at the Tipping Point?” and “The Post-EU Era”.
Ah, a panel on how to fix the middle class. Sounds interesting until you find out who some of the speakers are.
You really can’t make this stuff up. Now back to Reuters.
Perhaps the central question in Davos, a four-day affair of panel discussions, lunches and cocktail parties that delve into subjects as diverse as terrorism, artificial intelligence and wellness, is whether leaders can agree on the root causes of public anger and begin to articulate a response.
This has to be a joke. The public has been yelling and screaming about all sorts of issues they care about from both sides of the political spectrum for a while now. Whether people identify as on the “right” or the “left” there’s general consensus (at least in U.S. populist movements) of the following: oligarchs must be reined in, rule of law must be restored, unnecessary military adventures overseas must be stopped, and lobbyist written phony “free trade” deals must be scrapped and reversed. There’s no secret about how strongly the various domestic populist movements feel on those topics, but the Davos set likes to pretends that these issues don’t exist. They’d rather focus on Russia or identify politics, that way they can control the narrative and then propose their own anti-populist, technocratic solutions.
A WEF report on global risks released before Davos highlighted “diminishing public trust in institutions” and noted that rebuilding faith in the political process and leaders would be a “difficult task”.
It’s not difficult at all, what we need are new leaders with new ideas, but the people at Davos don’t want to admit that either. After all, these are the types who unanimously and enthusiastically supported the ultimate discredited insider for U.S. President, Hillary Clinton.
Moving along, let’s take a look at a separate Reuters article previewing Davos, starting with the title.
Did you see what they did there? The evaporating trust in globalist elites has nothing to do with “post-truth,” but as usual, the media insists on making excuses for the rich and powerful. The above title implies that elites lost the public truth as a result of a post-truth world, not because they are a bunch of disconnected, lying, corrupt thieves. Like Hillary and the Democrats, they are never to blame for anything that happens.
With that out of the way, let’s take a look at some of the text:
Trust in governments, companies and the media plunged last year as ballots from the United States to Britain to the Philippines rocked political establishments and scandals hit business.
The majority of people now believe the economic and political system is failing them, according to the annual Edelman Trust Barometer, released on Monday ahead of the Jan. 17-20 World Economic Forum (WEF).
“There’s a sense that the system is broken,” Richard Edelman, head of the communications marketing firm that commissioned the research, told Reuters.
“The most shocking statistic of this whole study is that half the people who are high-income, college-educated and well-informed also believe the system doesn’t work.”
Even wealthy, well educated people understand things aren’t working, which begs the question. Who does think the system is working? Well, the people attending Davos, of course. These are the folks who cheer on a world in which eight people own as much as the bottom 50%.
As can be seen fro the above excerpts, one thing that’s abundantly clear to almost everyone is that the system is broken. This is exactly where populism comes in to perform its crucial function. This is not an endorsement of Trump, but rather an endorsement of mass popular movements generally, and a recognition that such movements are the only way true change is ever achieved. As Frederick Douglass noted in 1857:
This struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, and it may be both moral and physical, but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress. In the light of these ideas, Negroes will be hunted at the North and held and flogged at the South so long as they submit to those devilish outrages and make no resistance, either moral or physical. Men may not get all they pay for in this world, but they must certainly pay for all they get. If we ever get free from the oppressions and wrongs heaped upon us, we must pay for their removal. We must do this by labor, by suffering, by sacrifice, and if needs be, by our lives and the lives of others.
The above is an eternal truth when it comes to human struggle. The idea that the most wealthy and powerful individuals on earth are going to get together in a Swiss chalet and figure out how to help the world’s most vulnerable and suffering is on its face preposterous. Again, this is why popular movements are so important. They represent the only method we know of that historically yields tangible results. This is also why the elitists and their media minions hate populism and demonize it every chance they get. Which is really telling, particularly when you look at the various definitions of the word. First, here’s what comes up when you type the word into Google:
Or how about the following from Merriam-Webster:
Aside from the 19th century historical reference, what’s not to like about any of the above? The mere fact that billionaire-owned media is so hostile to populism tells you everything you need to know. Behind the idea of populism is the notion of self-government, and Davos-type elitists hate this. They believe in a technocracy in which they make all the important decisions. Populism is dangerous because populism is empowering. It implies that the people ultimately have the power.
I think a useful exercise for readers during this Davos circus laden week is to note whenever the word “populism” is used within mainstream media articles. From my experience, it’s almost always portrayed in an overwhelmingly negative manner. Here’s just one example from the first of the two Reuters articles mentioned above.
The global financial crisis of 2008/9 and the migrant crisis of 2015/16 exposed the impotence of politicians, deepening public disillusion and pushing people towards populists who offered simple explanations and solutions.
The key phrase in the above is, “populists who offered simple explanations and solutions.” This betrays an incredible sense of arrogance and contempt for regular citizens. Note that it didn’t offer a critique of a specific populist leader and his or her polices, but rather presented a sweeping dismissal of all popular movements as “simplistic.” In other words, despite the fact that the people mingling at Davos are the exact same people who set the world on fire, they somehow remain the only ones capable enough to fix the world. How utterly ridiculous.
The good news is that most people now plainly see the absurdity of such a worldview, and understand that the people at Davos represent a roadblock to progress, as opposed to any sort of solution. While I don’t endorse any particular populist movement at moment, I fully recognize the need for increased populism as a facet of American political life, particularly at this moment in time.
Populism can be dangerous, and it’s certainly messy, but it’s a crucial pressure release valve for any functioning free society. If you don’t allow populist movements to do their thing in the short-term, you’ll get far worse outcomes in the long-term.
In the timeless words of JFK:
Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.
Nobody wants that.
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