- Paul Craig Roberts Rages "The Leftwing Has Placed Itself In The Trash Can Of History"
Authored by Paul Craig Roberts,
At a time when the Western world desperately needs alternative voices to the neoliberals, the neoconservatives, the presstitutes and the Trump de-regulationists, there are none. The Western leftwing has gone insane.
The voices being raised against Trump, who does need voices raised against him, are so hypocritical as to reflect less on Trump than on those with raised voices.
Sharon Kelly McBride, speaking for Human Rights First, sent me an email saying that Trump stands on the wrong side of “America’s ideals” by his prohibition of Muslim immigrants into the US.
My question to McBride is:
Where were you and Human Rights First when the Bush/Cheney/Obama regime was murdering, maiming, orphaning, widowing, and displacing millions of Muslims in seven countries over the course of 4 presidential terms?
Why is it OK to slaughter millions of peoples, destroy their homes and villages, wreck their cities as long as it is not Donald Trump who is doing it?
Where does Human Rights First get off. Just another fake website, or is McBride seizing the opportunity to prostitute Human Rights First in hopes of donations from the DNC, the Soros’ NGOs, the Isreal Lobby, and the ruling One Percent?
Money speaks, and alternative voices need money in order to speak.
As so many Americans are indifferent to the quality of information that they get, many alternative voices are thrown back to relying on whatever money is available. Generally, it is the money of disinformation, of information that controls the explanations in ways that favor and enhance the ruling oligarchy. Is this the position in which McBride has placed Human Rights First?
Turn now to Truthout. This website says that Trump is demonizing Muslims by denying them immigration into the US.
Where has Truthout been for the past 16 years? Did Truthout not notice that the George W. Bush regime said “We have to kill them (Muslims) over there before they (Muslims) come over here.”
Did Truthout not notice that Obama continued the policy of “killing them (Muslims) over there”?
How insane, how corrupt, does Truthout have to be to say that it is Trump who is demonizing Muslims?
Trump has not said that he wants to “kill them over there.” He has said that if the masses of peoples we have dislocated and whose families we have murdered want to come here, they might wish to exact revenge. Having made Muslims our enemies, it makes no sense to admit vast numbers of them.
According to Bush and Obama, we are supposed “to kill them over there,” not bring them “over here” where they can kill us as a payback for the murder machine we have run against them.
This is common sense. Yet, the deranged left says it is “racism.”
What happens to a country when the alternative voice is even more stupid and corrupt than the government’s voice?
- Media Turning On Itself: USAToday's Wolff Slams CNN's Stelter As "Ridiculous, Self-Righteous Figure"
Amid the ever-increasing virtue-signaling fanaticism of the mainstream media in their incessant anti-Trump (so-called 'fact-checking') propaganda, it appears the infighting has begun. As The Hill reports, USA Today and Hollywood Reporter columnist Michael Wolff slammed CNN's Brian Stelter on his media affairs program Sunday, telling the host he was becoming "quite a ridiculous figure."
With mainstream media credibility at record lows, The Hill points out that Wolff accused Stelter, in a recent Newsweek column, of delivering "a pious sermon about [Donald] Trump’s perfidiousness and nursing personal grudges."
The 31-year-old "Reliable Sources" host asked Wolff if his style or substance was wrong in attempting to "fact-check the president."
And then the fireworks began…
"I think it is, and I mean this with truly no disrespect, but I think you can border on being sort of quite a ridiculous figure. It is not a good look, to repeatedly and self-righteously defend your own self-interest. The media should not be the story every week."
"Every week in this religious sense, you make it the story," Wolff added. "We are not the story."
"Isn't there room for one hour a week on CNN for this?" Stelter asked.
"Listen, I love your show, but I wish every weekend you did not turn to the camera and lecture America about the virtues of the media and everyone trying to attack it. The media will be fine," Wolff replied.
"The media doesn't need defending?" Stelter followed.
"The media doesn't need defending by the media," Wolff responded. "The New York Times front page looks like it's 1938 in Germany every day."
"No it does not. Give me a break," retorted Stelter.
Enjoy…
- It's Time To Start Worrying About China Again
One year ago, S&P futures would tumble the second a flashing red headline noted that things involving China, the Yuan, or the PBOC were not playing out as expected. One year later, the market has forgotten it ever cared about the world’s biggest debt bubble.
However, the time may have come to once again start worrying about China.
With China coming back from its week-long holidays last Friday, a very important event took place under the radar, and was largely missed by the broader investing public masked by the relentless noise out of Washington and the January payrolls report: China has resumed tightening. For those who missed it, here is a recap of what we said first thing on Friday:
“this morning China announced an unexpected tightening of policy when it raised rates on 7, 14 and 28-day reverse repos by 10bps to 2.35%, 2.50% and 2.65% respectively. That’s the first increase in the 28-day contracts since 2015 and since 2013 for the other two tenors. Keep in mind that this is the first working day following the New Year holiday in China, so it seems to be a decent statement of intent by the PBoC.
Additionally, the SLF rate was increased to 3.1 percent from 2.75 percent. The implicit tightening sent Chinese stocks lower, with the Shanghai Composite closing down 0.6%, and accelerating the selloff in Chinese 10Y government futures.
While China’s first effective tightening in two years largely slipped between the market’s cracks, the press is starting to pay attention (“China’s central bank raised key interest rates in the money marketFriday, reinforcing a shift toward tightening monetary policy aimed atdeflating asset bubbles and reducing long-term financial risk.” MarketWatch, Feb 3; “China’s surprise increase in interest rates on medium-term loansweighed on bond prices. …Some traders were clearly rattled by China’s first-ever increase in interest rates for its medium-term lending facility (MLF) loans, which was seen as signaling that short-term funding costswill move higher eventually as authorities try to cool an explosive increase in debt.” Reuters, Jan 25).
To be sure, Friday’s explicit tightening followed several similar implicit actions by the government, which has been flashing warnings it would tighten and/or engage in deleveraging to slow down China’s stupendous ascent toward 300% debt/GDP, including a sharp slowdown in government spending which has collapsed from 20% one year ago to only 8% Y/Y at the end of 2016, the first slowdown in home price acceleration in 19 consecutive months following Beijing eagerness to pop China’s housing bubble, the recent hike in auto sales taxes from 5% to 7.5%, and so on.
China’s sudden tightening move, which according to many will end the single biggest catalyst for the global reflation/growth story of 2016, namely China’s dramatic debt-fueled growth impulse which in turn then spilled over to the rest of the world, has already been dubbed as “The Most Important Unnoticed Global Event” by the likes of Cornerstone.
* * *
And since China’s push to tighten financial is really that important, here again courtesy of Goldman, is a full recap of what happened, why it matters, and a breakdown of all the key Chinese acronyms to keep an eye on in the coming days as the PBOC is very likely to continue expanding its tightening bias into other monetary conduits.
PBOC raised interest rates on key monetary operations, further reinforcing tightening bias
On Friday, PBOC increased interest rates on OMOs (open market operations) by 10bp and on SLF (standing lending facility) by 10-35bp–shortly following the rise in interest rates on MLF (medium-term lending facility) less than two weeks ago. We believe that the PBOC will retain its tightening bias in the near term as the underlying financial-leverage and macroeconomic arguments for tightened monetary policy have largely remained.
Main points:
Daily OMOs have been a key PBOC tool to manage interbank liquidity conditions.
The central bank on Friday increased the interest rates on reverse repo OMOs (liquidity injections) of 7/14/28-day tenors by 10bp (to 2.35%/2.50%/2.65%). The last time the PBOC raised OMO rates was more than two years ago in 2014.
The PBOC also increased SLF rates on overnight/7-day/1-month tenors by 35bp/10bp/10bp (to 3.10%/3.35%/3.7%).
SLF is collateralized lending by the PBOC to financial institutions which request funding (see Appendix table for key PBOC toolkit). SLF usage has been relatively small (e.g., in January, the turnover and outstanding balance of SLF were well below RMB 100bn, while those of OMOs were about 20 times larger at roughly RMB 2tn). But given that SLF is likely tapped only when the interbank funding conditions are particularly tight, the SLF rate increase should still matter for the marginal funding cost in the system. The asymmetrically large increase in the overnight SLF rate will likely be an encouragement for financial institutions to lengthen the maturity of their interbank funding (we estimate that small commercial banks’ interbank repo borrowing has an average maturity of only about 2 days).
Media reports also suggest that the PBOC has increased SLF rates further by 100bp for those banks that fail Macro-prudential Assessment (MPA) requirements. This has not been confirmed by the PBOC, however. As background, the PBOC set up MPA at the beginning of 2016 through which the central bank may fine-tune each individual bank’s required reserve ratio (RRR) on a quarterly basis depending on its performance based on several prudential metrics (see here for further official details of MPA).
The underlying financial-leverage and macroeconomic arguments for tightened monetary policy have largely remained. We continue to expect that the PBOC’s tightening bias will remain unless either i) there is a clearer deleveraging in the interbank funding market, and/or ii) economic activity slows materially.
Appendix table: OMOs and SLF play different roles in PBOC’s policy toolkit
PBOC toolkit
- Trump To Push On With Voter Fraud Probe, Puts Mike Pence In Charge
As if trying to prove MSNBC, which last week reported that “Trump’s campaign against imaginary voter fraud quietly fades“, wrong President Trump announced during an interview with Bill O’Reilly on Sunday that he would put Vice President Mike Pence in charge of a commission to probe what he believes was voter fraud in last November’s election, and which he says helped Hillary Clinton win the popular vote.
“I’m going to set up a commission to be headed by Vice President Mike Pence and we’re going to look at it very, very carefully,” Trump told Fox News’s Bill O’Reilly.
“Many people have come out and said I’m right, you know that,” Trump said. “Look, Bill, we can be babies, but you take a look at the registration, you have illegals, you have dead people you have this, it’s really a bad situation, it’s really bad,” he said.
Previously, the Washington Post reported that Pence pledged to GOP lawmakers at the annual Republican retreat in Philadelphia that the administration would initiate a “full evaluation” of voting rolls nationwide.
Trump’s plans for a “major investigation” into what he claims were fraudulent votes by as many as 3 million to 5 million illegal immigrants may not get too far without congressional funding, which may be an issue because already Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has said he doesn’t want to spend federal funds on the investigation and leave it to state authorities. But Trump on Sunday stuck to his claim of massive voter fraud, which even Republicans on Capitol Hill have questioned while The New York Times has openly dismissed as an outright “lie.”
Of course, many of Trump’s “ludicrous” statements have been discounted in the past, only to eventually be proven right.
Trump said there is evidence of votes being attributed to dead people and of people voting in different states in the same election. He may be referring to the various Project Veritas videos which captured precisely that.
Meanwhile, McConnell and other GOP leaders agree there is voter fraud but not on the scale claimed by Trump. “There is no evidence that it occurred in such a significant number that would have changed the presidential election,” he said on CNN’s “State of the Union” Sunday morning.
That said, we eagerly look forward to the findings of the “Pence voter fraud commission.”
- Why Is The New York Times Lying About Trump?
Submitted by Scott McConnell via The Strategic Culture Foundation,
Even amidst a cacophony of nearly nonstop media fusillades against President Trump, the New York Times’ charge has stood out. After months of stories presenting Donald Trump as a sexual predator, business fraudster, puppet of Vladimir Putin, tax dodger, walking emolument disaster and whatever else it can dream up, the New York Times called Trump a liar in a prominent headline—proclaiming “Meeting with Top Lawmakers, Trump Repeats an Election Lie.”
Speaking in a closed door meeting with congressional leaders, Trump had apparently claimed that he would have won the popular vote were it not for the votes of millions of noncitizens. After escalating this bit of semi-private braggadocio into “a lie,” the Times justified itself three days later, explaining somberly that it had not made the charge lightly, but that it “ultimately chose more muscular terminology” instead of terms as “baseless” or “bogus” because, as editor Dean Baquet stated, Trump had made a similar assertion months ago in a tweet. “We should be letting people know in no uncertain terms that it’s untrue.” Times opinion columnists, who—with the notable exception of Ross Douthat—have for a year seemed to write about little else than how despicable Trump is, followed up, rolling around passionately with the L word. “Our president is a pathological liar. Say it. Write it. Never become inured to it,” wrote Charles Blow, in one instance among many.
Of course President Trump doesn’t know how many people voted illegally, but, in a country where millions of undocumented immigrants are commonly accorded driver’s licenses, access to public benefits and other accoutrements of civic normalcy, and after President Obama gave a pre-election interview to Hispanic media in which he seemed, in lawyerly fashion, to minimize the legal consequences of voting illegally, all while urging higher turnout, it’s difficult to believe the number is nugatory.
It clearly galls the new president that he lost the popular vote. So he repeats random speculations about voter fraud (though Rep. Steve King’s assessment of the extent of illegal voting strikes me as meriting serious examination) and inflates them. He does much the same thing in the even less essential question of the size of Trump’s inaugural crowd (plainly smaller than Obama’s in 2008). He does it in extolling the excellence of his very good golf courses. If one speculated about why Trump bothers, one might surmise that he thinks his supporters expect—and deserve—some pushback against a media determined, from the outset, to paint, as far as possible, his presidency as partially or wholly illegitimate.
In other words, Trump did what politicians do routinely: take more credit than they deserve, make an unsubstantiated claim, stretch the truth. Trump probably does it a little more. And New York Times editors conclude that instead of being a so-what issue, or fodder for a Saturday Night Live skit, it should be elevated into a “lie” to serve as the “not my president” talking point of the week, until it is replaced by a new one. (It was replaced by Trump’s doubling down on a previous Obama order pausing admissions of refugees from certain Muslim-majority countries, a policy that went virtually unnoticed when Obama did it in 2011.) The increasingly interlocking alliance between the establishment media and the protest left is a new phenomenon, one that hasn’t been seen in America since the radical 1960s.
When does a politician’s unsubstantiated statement merit being labeled a “lie”? The line between political misrepresentation and lying is not always a bright one. When, in 1988, Bob Dole accused George H. W. Bush of “lying about his record” (after taking a pounding from Bush’s attack ads in New Hampshire), the remark was taken as evidence of Dole’s hot temper, not Bush’s lack of veracity. When an official gives deliberately false or misleading testimony under oath before Congress, it is commonly deemed more serious, and if discovered has serious legal consequences. If the question is generally murky, one thing is clear: a casual and unsubstantiated political boast gets turned from a “so what” into a “lie” when the paper publishing it has fully internalized its role as part of the opposition.
Yet one might have thought that, given its recent history, the Times would be more careful about making such claims. Twice in recent memory, the Times has felt the need to publicly acknowledge its failings to readers about matters regarding its journalistic mission, that is, about presenting a true picture of the world. The most recent (and more benign) came five days after the election, when in a letter to subscribers, publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. and executive editor Dean Baquet, vowed to “rededicate ourselves” to honest reporting, “striving always to understand and reflect all political perspectives and life experiences in the stories we bring to you.” It was a tacit admission that the Times had failed in its horserace reporting, which up until Election Day had emphasized stories like the frazzled and unprofessional nature of the Trump effort, in contrast to the finely honed Hillary ground game and the surging anti-Trump Latino vote. On election eve, Times “data-driven” estimates had placed Hillary’s chances of victory at 84 percent, but a Times reader would have been hard put to explain how there could be any doubt about the outcome at all, so missing were respectable arguments for Trump from the paper’s pages. The final pileup came on the morning after, when the headline acknowledging Trump’s victory seemed to parody the solipsism of the paper’s editors. “Democrats, Students, and Foreign Allies Face the Reality of the Trump Presidency.” The editors could not bring themselves to acknowledge that the nation’s voters had opted for fundamental change and upended an election scenario long assumed inevitable by bicoastal elites.
In the interceding two months, some flashes of the Times’ pledges to cover the Trump phenomenon with more objectivity were apparent: one report on women who voted for Trump allowed them to speak in their own words, as did a recent story on voters who backed Trump’s immigration restrictions. But emphasis on “the lie” illustrates that in its present incarnation the Times is not going to reform itself. The paper’s reporters, editors and columnists—with a handful of exceptions—harbor a visceral hatred for Donald Trump and feel it their higher calling to act on their hate in everything they put in the paper. When it comes to Trump’s ties to Russia, the paper has acted upon the thinnest of evidence to lodge the most sweeping of claims against Trump. Is it lying, or just engaging in reckless hyperbole?
However biased the Times’ Trump coverage, the consequences were mild compared to the paper’s record in the run-up to the Iraq War. In the year prior to the invasion of Iraq, the Times published numerous front-page “scoops” based primarily on fake facts leaked to its reporters from Iraqi defectors whose goal was to spur an invasion of Iraq. Judith Miller wrote several stories promoting disinformation from the notorious fabricator Ahmed Chalabi and others in his network; so, too, did the Times give credulous play to the most alarming (and incorrect) administration interpretations of Saddam’s effort to procure aluminum tubes. As some media analysts have pointed out, numerous voices in the intelligence and nonproliferation world doubted the claims reported in the Times scoops, and tried to warn the paper. The Times customarily ignored them, or buried skeptical voices in small paragraphs deep inside the paper.
A year after the invasion, after no “weapons of mass destruction” had turned up, the Times acknowledged in an editor’s note that its coverage was “not as rigorous as it should have been.” It explained that “editors at several levels who should have been challenging reporters and pressing for more skepticism” failed to do so. In short, the Times had printed a great deal of what might fairly be called “fake news.”
Unlike many political untruths, the Times’ false Iraq coverage was enormously consequential. As perhaps the principal voice of the liberal establishment, it played a critical role in persuading the leading Democrats to go along with the hawks in the Bush administration while marginalizing those who challenged the administration’s war plans. The results are all too tragically evident. The conflagration pushed by the Times has left the Middle East in havoc fourteen years later. Millions of people have been killed or displaced, vast refugee flows that threaten to destabilize close allies have been unleashed, hundreds of thousands of American veterans have been left permanently disabled. Given that its own lack of truthful reporting had an immeasurable and tragic real-life impact on the lives of tens of millions, one might have hoped the Times would be more circumspect about how it characterized Trump’s transparent and inconsequential boasts about the size of his Inauguration Day crowd or the degree of voter fraud. And if the president’s concerns about voter fraud are indeed baseless, it would be logical for the Times to support voter-identification measures that would render them moot.
The bottom line is that if the Times is determined to create a new standard for what constitutes lying by a president, then the newspaper cannot exempt itself from that standard either. The Times, in other words, has been repeatedly lying for months about Trump and for years about other matters. Is that really a path that a paper that purports to contain “all the news fit to print” really wants to embark upon? Apparently so.
- Extreme Vetting, But Not For Banks
Authored by Matt Taibbi, originally posted at RollingStone.com,
Donald Trump, the man who positioned himself as the common man's shield against Wall Street, signed a series of orders today calling for reviews or rollbacks of financial regulations. He did so after meeting with some friendly helpers.
Here's how CNBC described the crowd of Wall Street CEOs Trump received, before he ordered a review of both the Dodd-Frank Act and the fiduciary rule requiring investment advisors to act in their clients' interests:
"Trump also will meet at the White House with leading CEOs, including JPMorgan's Jamie Dimon, Blackstone's Steve Schwarzman, and BlackRock's Larry Fink."
Leading the way for this assortment of populist heroes will be former Goldman honcho Gary Cohn, now Trump's chief economic advisor.
Dimon, Schwarzman, Fink and Cohn collectively represent a rogues' gallery of the creeps most responsible for the 2008 crash. It would be hard to put together a group of people less sympathetic to the non-wealthy.
Trump's approach to Wall Street is in sharp contrast to his tough-talking stances on terrorism. He talks a big game when slamming the door on penniless refugees, but curls up like a beach weakling around guys who have more money than he does.
The two primary disasters in American history this century (if we're not counting Trump's election) have been 9/11 and the 2008 financial crisis, which cost 8.7 million people their jobs and may have destroyed as much as 45 percent of the world's wealth.
The response to 9/11 we know: major military actions all over the world, plus a radical reshaping of our legal structure, with voters embracing warrantless surveillance, a suspension of habeas corpus, even torture.
But the crisis response? Basically, we gave trillions of dollars to bail out the very actors who caused the mess. Now, with Trump's election, we've triumphantly put those same actors back in charge of non-policing themselves.
In between, we passed a few weak-sauce rules designed to scale back some of the worst excesses. Those rules presumably will be tossed aside now.
Trump's "extreme vetting" plan for immigrants and refugees is based upon a safety argument – i.e., that the smallest chance of a disaster justifies the most extreme measures. Infamously this week, administration spokesdunce Kellyanne Conway resorted to citing a disaster that never even happened – the "Bowling Green Massacre" – as a justification for the crazy visa policy.
This makes Trump's embrace of the Mortgage Crash Dream Team as his advisory panel for how to make Wall Street run more smoothly all the more preposterous.
The crisis was caused by the financial equivalent of open borders. Virtually no one was monitoring risk levels or credit worthiness at the world's biggest companies.
The watchdogs who are supposed to be making sure the morons on Wall Street don't blow up the planet all failed: the compliance people within private companies, the so-called self-regulating organizations like the NYSE, and finally the government agencies like the OCC and the OTS.
These companies are now so enormous that they can't keep track of their own positions. Also, in sharp contrast to the propaganda about what brainy people they all are, many of them lack even the most basic understanding of the potential consequences of deals they might be making.
The leadership of AIG, for instance, basically had no clue how its derivatives portfolio worked, despite the fact that they had $79 billion worth of exposure. Similarly, then-CEO Chuck Prince of Citigroup told the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission that a $40 billion mortgage position "would not in any way have excited my attention." Both companies ended up needing massive bailouts.
Not only can they not keep track of their own books, they already blow off regulators whenever they get the chance. Take JPMorgan Chase's "London Whale" episode, in which some $6.2 billion in losses in one portfolio accumulated practically overnight. In that case, Dimon simply refused to give the federal regulators routine, required reports as to what was going on with his bank's positions, probably because he himself had no idea how big the hole was at the time.
"Mr. Dimon said it was his decision whether to send the reports to the OCC," a regulator later told the Senate.
This is the same Jamie Dimon about whom Trump said today, "There's nobody better to tell me about Dodd-Frank than Jamie Dimon, so thank you, Jamie."
The enduring lesson of the financial crisis is that in markets as complex as this one, the most extreme danger is in opacity. The big problem is that these egomaniacal Wall Street titans want markets as opaque as possible.
This is why they want to get rid of the fiduciary rule, because they don't think it's anyone's business if they choose to bet against their clients (as Cohn's Goldman famously did), or overcharge them, or otherwise screw them.
They don't want to have to submit to even the most basic capital requirements, or be classified a systemically important company, or have to keep their depository businesses separate from their gambling businesses, or have to have a plan for dissolution if they melt down, or really deal with any intrusions at all.
Trump – a man who doesn't want you to see what's going on underneath his hair, let alone in his books – naturally sympathizes with Wall Street's efforts to keep the markets opaque. The obvious conclusion is that these orders will eventually lead us back to ballooning risk, overheated markets (the NYSE is already soaring) and speculative bubbles.
If we're very lucky, it won't crash soon. But can we at least put an end to the "drain the swamp" nonsense?
- Visualizing The Shifting Income Distribution Of American Jobs
When we talk about the money that the “average” American worker makes, we are usually referencing a “median” or “mean” income statistic. While this number can be useful in many different contexts, Visual Capitalist's Jeff Desjardins notes that it can also be extremely limiting. The reality is that there’s a very wide range of incomes out there, even within a particular type of industry. Some people can barely make ends meet, and others make millions of dollars more.
To view income distribution through a wider lens, data visualization expert Nathan Yau has created an interactive chart that breaks down millions of data points into just 50 dots per industry. The dots are visualized on a scale from $0 to $200k+ and binned in $5,000 increments. Data is also adjusted for inflation.
INCOME DISTRIBUTION BY INDUSTRY IN 1960
Here’s a snapshot showing what income distribution looked like 57 years ago for a variety of broad industries:
Generally speaking, many of the ranges are on the lower side of things and tend to have data points clustered around the “middle” of each distribution.
INCOME DISTRIBUTION BY INDUSTRY IN 2014
Fast forward to 2014, and nearly every income bracket has expanded out.
In many of these professions, workers are now making more money – this is good news for the economy.
The downside? There are two problems: (1) Higher inequality, and (2) Many of the new jobs created recently are on the lower end of the income spectrum.
As you can see, top earning lawyers, engineers, or managers are able to climb up towards the tops of their brackets. A lucky few are able to make $200k+, which is far more than the vast majority of the workforce.
However, workers in other industries like food preparation or healthcare support are not so lucky. Unfortunately, in these sectors, making a middle-class income is very difficult – and many people are bringing in less than $25k per year. Yet, it is in these types of sectors that we’ve seen the majority of “new jobs” appear over recent years.
It makes it difficult for society to solve the income inequality problem when this is the case.
- America's Relief Valve – Football And Orwell's 'Two Minutes Hate'
Submitted by Eric Peters via EricPetersAutos.com,
Strong passions can erupt in unpredictable ways.
The government understands this – and desires that strong passions be diverted in a harmless – to the government – way.
Enter the cultivated, culturally and socially enforced obsession with organized, mass spectacle sports.
Fuuhhhhhtttttball especially but also the others.
These games – a new one to keep people busy almost every day, year-round – are not so much “bread and circuses,” as they are often called. They are the vivification of the fictional Two Minutes’ Hate in Orwell’s 1984. A means by which the passions – the frustrations and anger of men in particular – are diverted and dissipated.
In order that they aren’t directed at anything important.
Such as the ever-increasing control exercised over men by the state.
In red giant stage America, the average man has little meaningful control over his life. He does as he’s told – from driving the speed limit to paying “his” taxes. In the land of individuality, collectivism and conformity is the rule.
He must Submit and Obey. He must never raise his voice to question authority.
This stifling of independent action, punishment of deviation from any official orthodoxy and relentless suppression of independent judgment and self-reliance… this systematic thwarting of a normal man’s inclination to be a man. . . well, the pressure builds.
The movie, Falling Down, captured this brilliantly. Unfortunately for Michael Douglas’ character, he wasn’t interested in “the game.”
The demand that men submit and obey is also hammered into today’s boys – usually by women.
Orwell got one thing wrong. It is not Big Brother.
It is Big Sister.
Everywhere, there are short-haired, pants-suited termagants vested with power; the sort who in a better time would have been spinster librarians and generally harmless. Today they infect bureaucracies such as EPA and DOJ and many others besides.
We encounter them at the doctor’s office and DMV.
The beetle-like little men that Orwell described abound, too. But they tyranny of our times is not a masculine tyranny such as Stalin’s. Note that in the Soviet Union, people were still largely free to partake of petty vices such as booze and cigarettes. Soviet power didn’t limit the size of sodas or force people to wear seat belts. It enforced political conformity only.
Maybe that’s why fuhhhhhhttttttball was never a big deal in the Soviet Union.
America’s tyranny is the tyranny of the elementary school marm over grown up men.
These days, a man can’t even paint his own house without first begging permission from the local Gertrud Schlotz-Klink. . . and if he doesn’t cut his grass when ordered or erects a shed unapproved…
Threatening letters.
Then a lien or some other encumbrance. Eventually, the thug scrum will come. So he learns to do what he’s told.
The rage boils but silently; it must have an outlet.
Enter the game.
He is empowered! On Sunday, he can be bellow like a rutting Cape Buffalo as his team takes the field. He basks in the reflected glory of their victory. He merges with the crowd, it overtakes him. Becomes him.
He is a member of the community of men once more.
Garish flappy pennants festoon his vehicles.
This, of course, being not only allowed but encouraged by the government.
And when “we” lose the game, our cuckolded American sports worshipper is demoralized and dejected – sometimes, for days on end. He feels great disappointment.
He is angry.
But in a way utterly harmless to the government.
He seethes, he yells, he shakes his fist . . . at the enemy team on the screen.
Never at the true enemy. . . .
Axiom: The more hopeless a society is, the more under the thumb of the government-corporate nexus, the greater the adulation of professional sports teams and the deification of athletes. It is a kind of sweaty lottery – a means of dangling desperate hopes before hopeless people who might become dangerous if it ever occurred to them that there is no hope for them.
But hey – did you see that tackle?
The most loathsome dog torturing thug, outright rapists and murderers… beloved and forgiven, so long as they can run and throw or catch.
Always “the game.” Tonight’s. Yesterday’s. Tomorrow’s. An endless obsession with irrelevance.
Enstupidation accelerates.
It has been said that religion is the opiate of the masses. But religions center on values – and so, upon philosophy.
In other words, on things that matter.
The game does not matter.
All the natural, healthy emotions – including most especially anger – are adroitly redirected. Instead of being furious about constantly being required to disprove his alleged guilt, about having to submit to random, probable cause-free searches and such like by an increasingly tyrannical state, about being micromanaged and taxed and never, ever left in peace . . . the gelded, stoop-shouldered creature sitting in front of his TeeVeee is apopletic about that “bad call,” that the “we” weren’t able to convert on third and long.
He is a fan – truly, in the actual derivation of that word. A fanatic – about things properly the concern of children and the feeble minded.
Just what’s needed, from a certain point of view.
- Has Trump – Who Ran On an Anti-War Platform – Already Sold Out to the Warmongers … Or Is He Just Playing for Leverage?
Conservative Patrick Buchanan – who endorsed Trump for president – writes:
High among the reasons that many supported Trump was his understanding that George W. Bush blundered horribly in launching an unprovoked and unnecessary war on Iraq.
***
Unlike the other candidates, Trump seemed to recognize this.
Trump's anti-war, anti-interventionist statements appealed to many Americans. Indeed, quite a few Sanders supporters switched to Trump (or stayed home on election day) because of Trump's anti-war promises … and Clinton's record as a warmonger.
Buchanan expresses disappointment that Trump is already saber-rattling:
It was thought he would disengage us from these wars, not rattle a saber at an Iran that is three times the size of Iraq and has as its primary weapons supplier and partner Vladimir Putin’s Russia.
Former long-time Congressman Ron Paul notes that Trump has already engaged in bombings in Yemen:
Andrew Spannaus notes:
The early Trump administration has sent mixed signals regarding relations with Russia. Trump’s initial comments indicated that the U.S. would seek a diplomatic deal to reduce tensions around Ukraine, including by potentially recognizing the pro-Russian referendum in Crimea, in exchange for a broader deal with Russia involving cooperation against terrorism or nuclear arms reduction. However, Trump’s United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley on Thursday vowed to continue sanctions against Russia until it surrendered Crimea.
Brandon Turbeville says, "The new boss is now starting to look extremely similar to the old boss." Turbeville also points out that Trump appears to be mucking about in Syria.
And since Trump took the helm, war with China is looking increasingly likely.
So it's starting to look like – despite his promises of being an anti-war non-interventionist – Trump will be a warmonger.
I hope I'm wrong … and that Trump is just playing the unpredictable madman to gain negotiating leverage with foreign powers.
Conservative Michael Rivero – a smart guy – notes:
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