TWIB : This Week in Bullshit (Feb. 17th - 24th)

Estimated Reading Time : 5 minutes 42 seconds

I am a baseball fan, and as a little kid I used to religiously watch This Week In Baseball, which was hosted by Yankees play by play man, Mel Allen, one of the all-time great baseball announcers. Allen would narrate highlights from the week's games and add his signature call, "How about that!!". Since I didn't have cable tv or access to much if any highlights, This Week in Baseball was my lifeline to the sport I adored. I loved This Week in Baseball with a near-religous fervor, its theme music would instantaneously make me giddy.

That was a long time ago, though. My childhood a distant, faded memory. Mel Allen is long dead. This Week in Baseball is still on, but now it is on Fox and it is entirely useless since ESPN exists. So why I am rambling on about This Week in Baseball? Because I have decided to write a brief column about the media titled, This Week in Bullshit. Bullshit seems to have become our national pastime, so i figured...why not?

This past week I forced myself to do some very uncomfortable and unpleasant things, among them were to watch both Bill Maher's and John Oliver's HBO shows, and also read the editorial pages of both the New York Times and the Washington Post everyday. Even writing that last sentence, never mind doing those things, makes my colon twinge. But I did it. And I thought I would share some random thoughts about what I discovered as I swam among the sewage that is the establishment media's point of view. 

Maher, Milo and Malcolm

On Bill Maher's show last Friday (Feb. 17), everyone got into an uproar because Little Bill had on Milo Yiannopoulis, the alt-right provocateur/performance artist who liberals love to hate. I do not now, nor have I ever, given a shit about Milo or anything he has to say. I do not understand why anyone else would either.  But they do. In fact, I have heard numerous liberals say out loud this week that they would like to kill Milo. I am not joking.

As demonized as Milo has become, and it got worse after his appearance, he came across to me as transparent phony and unserious glamour boy. Why anyone would get worked up over something he says is beyond me. People like Milo, or Ann Coulter or Sean Hannity or whoever the conservative "it" girl of the moment is, get rich by instigating and provoking liberals. Why Liberals make their jobs so easy I will never understand. Milo and company need your hatred in order to survive, if you remove it from them, they whither and die…not unlike Trump. So, liberals need to toughen up and stop being so delicate when it comes to what people say. They need to think strategically and not emotionally, deal with actions, not words. 

The most important thing about that Maher episode though was buried under the Milo freak show. After Little Bill's "interview" with Milo (which was, as usual for Little Bill, flaccid and nonsensical), his opening segment with the panel was astounding and has received little attention. In the segment, Little Bill got very solemn and said he wanted to be serious…always a bad sign. He then went on to say that the CIA and the Intel Community are at war with Trump and that is good because they know the president is dangerous.  Little Bill put himself firmly in the camp of the intel community.

Little Bill then followed up with this doozy…he said that years ago during the Kennedy administration, the Intel Community moved against JFK because JFK had a "pussy problem" and was sleeping with East German agents and Mafia girlfriends and the like. In essence what Little Bill was saying is that the CIA killed Kennedy and that they were right to do it because he was compromised by his sexual dalliances. HOW ABOUT THAT!!

Maher then argued that the same is true now and that it is good that the Intel Community is plotting against President Trump. This is some remarkable stuff…but no one on the panel blinked an eye. And most importantly, "former" Navy Intelligence Officer and multiple-agency Intelligence agent, Malcolm Nance, never uttered a word of denial about Little Bill's thesis about Trump OR Kennedy. 

So what we have here is Bill Maher admitting he believes that the CIA killed Kennedy and that it was a good thing, and that he wants them to sideline Trump by any means necessary (wink-wink). The fact that Nance never challenged Maher or spoke up in defense of the intel community against these charges is stunning. It makes you even wonder if it might even be true (wink-wink). 

Having a major voice of the establishment, Little Bill, claim that the Intel Community murdered one president and is plotting against another, without a peep of denial from a member of that community, is a ground breaking development. One that shocks me no end. it is stunning that no one else seemed to noticed.

The Empire Strikes Back

John Oliver's show was it's usual impotent attempt at being insightful. In the opening segment, Brave Sir John "eviscerated" Trump as he has done countless other times. One wonders how many evisceration must take place before the evisceration event horizon gets crossed. I have a not-so-funny feeling we are a long way from Trump evisceration market saturation. 

Brave Sir John then did his feature segment on…surprise, surprise…Russia. I had just written an article about John Oliver that get some attention on the internets the week before, and got me lots of emails calling me a Kremlin stooge and Putin shill, which puts me in very good company with people like Glenn Greenwald and Chris Hedges who routinely suffer the same fate. I can't help but wonder if Brave Sir John, or his staff, read that piece and my other critiques, as his Russia segment seems to use my arguments against him as a blue print. It felt like Brave Sir John was defending himself against my accusations. Another, much more plausible scenario is that I am suffering from manic depression and am currently in a heightened state accompanied by delusions of grandeur…God knows it wouldn't be the first time. Regardless, whatever the reason, Brave Sir John seemed to make a feeble attempt to counter my charges. 

Brave Sir John's basic argument against Russia and for the U.S. is that the Russians are awful, and we may do bad things but it is different when we do them because we are good and deserve every benefit of the doubt no matter what!! In conclusion…U.S. is good…just because…and Russia is bad…because everyone says so. 

Watching John Oliver is like being forced at gun point to watch old people fucking. It is excruciating, it takes forever, it is entirely repulsive and there is never a climax. HOW ABOUT THAT!!

"I Know Nothing!!" - Sgt. Schultz

On Tuesday of last week, Steve Phillips wrote an Op-ed for the New York Times titled, "Move Left, Democrats". This op-ed was remarkable for no other reason than it was the least coherent and most idiotic thing I have seen in a long time. Phillips spent 1,000 words or so saying absolutely nothing, all while fighting straw men and falling to define his terms. It was a tremendous piece of opinionated detritus, and proves that all you have to have to get your 1,000 words in the Times are connections to the right people and be fluent in the right buzz words.

Phillip's argument is nearly as incomprehensible as it is moronic. As far as I can decipher it, he thinks democrats should ignore white working class voters who went for Trump, but who had previously voted for Obama, in favor of "progressive" voters who voted third and fourth party in 2016. He then gives numbers to back up his assertions, but never gives any facts to back up his assumptions. For instance, he assumes libertarian voters are democrats who didn't vote Clinton, and not republicans who didn't vote Trump. Regardless, it all looks serious, until you actually read it. 

Phillips logic is so faulty it is amazing he is able to function in the world, never mind write an op-ed. Phillips keeps saying democrats should be more "progressive" but never defines what that means in the context of his argument. Does being more progressive mean being economically populist? Does it mean identity politics? This is the crux of the issue when debating these points. If you don't specify what you mean, then you don't mean anything. 

Phillips also pulls some bait and switches which prove him to be a charlatan in trying to make a pointless argument. He starts off by arguing for ignoring Springsteen voters (my term for white, working class who voted Obama twice and now for Trump) in favor of third and fourth party voters (green, libertarian), but then in the latter half of the piece he simply calls the Springsteen voters "conservatives". He claims that democrats shouldn't waste time trying to convince conservatives to vote for them. Ummmm…no shit, Einstein. The problem with Phillips argument, and thinking ( or lack thereof), is that he doesn't understand that Springsteen voters are not "conservative" in the sense that he makes them out to be. They are economic populists…which was a lynchpin of the progressive political movement for ages. This is why his not defining "progressive" makes his entire article moot. The political spectrum was deconstructed with the last election, and it is fools like Steve Phillips who fail to recognize this. He is like those generals in Vietnam who are trying to re-fight World War II. The battlefield is entirely different now, and the tactics and strategies required to compete and succeed on this battlefield are much different than the ones Steve Phillips is trying, and failing, to articulate.

Democrats should move left, because that is how they will woo third and fourth party voters AND Springsteen voters. The democrats and Hillary Clinton are a center-right party, beholden to corporate and Wall Street interests and a neo-con foreign policy. If Phillips had the intelligence, and courage, to say as much, he might even earn my respect. But since he just babbled on about nothing and wasted my time, he earns my venom.  HOW ABOUT THAT!!

Thar She Blows!!

The aptly named, Charles M. Blow, wrote a wonderful piece of emotionalist horseshit on Feb. 23rd, that no doubt felt invigorating to him, but is ultimately fruitless. Here are Blow's final few paragraphs...

"This is why I have no patience for liberal talk of reaching out to Trump voters. There is no more a compromise point with those who accept, promote and defend bigotry, misogyny and xenophobia than there is a designation of “almost pregnant.”

Trump is a cancer on this country and resistance is the remedy. The Trump phenomenon is devoid of compassion, and we must be closed to compromise.

No one need try to convince me otherwise. The effort is futile; my conviction is absolute. This is a culture war in which truth is the weapon, righteousness the flag and passion the fuel.

Fight, fight, fight. And when you are finished, fight some more. Victory is the only acceptable outcome when freedom, equality and inclusion are at stake."

What is so great about Blow's self-righteous nonsense is that it is so completely Trumpian in its self-absorbed myopia. Blow, just like Trump, need not be convinced, as the effort would be "futile", his conviction is "absolute".  The Trump movement is "devoid of compassion", Blow demands that "no compromise" be permitted.

Blow, like many liberals I speak to about Trump, is so emotionally triggered that he is incapable of thinking straight….or of just plain thinking. If Trump is as awful as liberals say he is, then stop being such candy-ass clowns about it. Stop thinking emotionally and start thinking strategically. If you ignore Springsteen voters, you will lose again. If you find ZERO room to compromise, especially on any economically populists opportunities, then you will push those moderate, Trump-lite folks, deeper into his camp. 

Resist when needed, but embrace when necessary. Blow, like many liberals, is entranced by the siren's call of his emotionalism. He refuses to stop, breathe, reflect and strategize. To Mr. Blow I will quote the great, 21st century, American philosopher Dr. Phil, "Would you rather be right, or would you rather be happy?" Being "right" about how wonderful you are and how awful every Trump voter is, even the Springsteen voters who went for Obama twice, is a surefire way to  end up unhappy come election day. 

To Mr. Blow, I quote myself, "self-righteousness is a warm blanket few refuse in favor of the cold, hard struggle of self-reflection". Hey Blow, grow up, stop bitching, and start winning. HOW ABOUT THAT!!

Nick of Time

Nicholas Kristof wrote an op-ed in the Times on the 23rd as well. St. Nick wrote about how Trump voters are not the enemy. He said it is ok to attack Trump but not his voters because that is unproductive. Kristof is from Ohio and assures his readers that Trump voters are just regular, working class folks trying to make a living in a tough world. 

I liked Kristof's piece a great deal. When I think about it now, I realize the reason I liked Kristof's piece so much is because I wrote it myself three months ago, right after the election (HERE, HERE , and HERE ). It almost feels like you aren't allowed to write op-ed's for the Times unless you are at least three months behind morons like me in your thinking.

But hey, better late than never. Hopefully Kristof, just like John Oliver, keeps reading my pieces. I appreciate the traffic, Nick. 

And thus concludes This Week in Bullshit!! After this week's episode, I am sure Mel Allen, JFK, Herman Melville, Sgt. Schultz and Dr. Phil are all spinning in their graves. I will try to keep up my media feast, but I don't know how long I will last. One man can only eat so many shit sandwiches before his eyes go blind with brown-ness.

©2017

John Oliver - Shameless Establishment Shill

FOR THE PREVIOUS JOHN OLIVER ARTICLES CLICK ON THE LINKS BELOW

1. COURT JESTER AS PROPAGANDA TOOL - 2. THE DRUMPF AFFAIR AND LITTLE BILL MAHER'S POWER FETISH - 3. WAXING BRAZILIAN AND WANING CREDIBILITY -4. OUT TRUMPING TRUMP ON THE GREAT WALL OF TRUMP - 5. THINGS SAID AND UNSAID.

Estimated Reading Time : 5 minutes 02 seconds

This Sunday, February 12, 2017, season 4 of John Oliver’s Last Week Tonight premieres. If the first three seasons are any indication, viewers can expect no deviation from the official party line by the establishment’s favorite comedy accomplice.

John Oliver is a charlatan who appears to be a rebellious liberal comedian speaking truth to power, but is really a shameless shill for the ruling class in the U.S. Oliver specializes in telling his liberal audience and those in the establishment exactly what they want to hear. He never genuinely challenges or questions the U.S. power structure, making him an agent of the status quo, which is why the media love him so dearly.

In order to maintain most favored status among liberals, Oliver assails universally loathed entities like FIFA, the NCAA, tobacco or televangelists. Or he’ll investigate a wonky subject like infrastructure, voter ID laws or reforming the bail system. While Oliver gets quite a lot of attention for these stories, they only generate heat, not light. Nothing changes as a result, not even popular opinion since Oliver is only preaching to the converted in the liberal echo chamber.

When it comes to potentially controversial topics, like the rare times he looks at the U.S. political, military and media establishment, John Oliver gives his sycophant fans the soft sell. In the 89 Episodes of Last Week Tonight that have aired, they have shown 250 segments. In those segments, Oliver has scrutinized issues pertaining to the U.S. military and foreign policy just 11 times, that’s 4.4%. In contrast, the show has dedicated 14 or 5.6 % of their segments to Russia, Putin and Russia’s foreign policy. And those numbers do not include the innumerable one-liners at Russia’s expense scattered throughout various other segments, as Putin is Oliver’s favorite comedy whipping boy.

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Even when Oliver looks into issues like drones, torture, Guantanamo Bay or NSA spying, he does so with the gentlest of tones and the kindest of language. For example, in regards to drones he called U.S. strikes, which killed civilians, “a little disturbing”. At end of the segment he concluded that now “might be the time to think about drones”. So his scathing assessment of the drone program was that it might now rise to the level of “thinking about”? And I guess “might” was the operative word in his statement since Oliver has never returned to the topic.

Contrast this delicate approach to the U.S. with his scorched earth campaign against Putin, where Oliver leads a cacophony of establishment media voices preaching a Russian hysteria. Oliver has assured his audience that the “brutal Russian dictator” shot down MH17, invaded Ukraine, committed war crimes in Syria, murdered Boris Nemtsov and would starve and freeze the population of Crimea once winter arrived. Oliver’s stance on Russia is just as vacuous, assumption-filled and fact-free as the rest of the mainstream media. A braver comedian would challenge the current prevailing presumptions, but courage is obviously not John Oliver’s strong suit.

Even when Oliver is mildly critical of the U.S., like he was in his torture and Guantanamo Bay pieces, he deflects those American failures by pointing to other nations that he feels are much, much worse, like Russia, North Korea, Iran, and Sudan. He also avoids using moral and ethical frameworks to argue against alleged U.S. failings, instead favoring arguments about “image”.

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Oliver’s main thrust on torture was that it causes “serious harm to America’s image”. He had an entire segment titled “The CIA’s Public Image” which dealt with how the CIA handles its social media. Of all the things to talk about regarding the CIA, their social media prowess seems to be the most frivolous, which is probably why Oliver chose it. In Oliver’s interview with NSA chief Keith Alexander, an important part of the conversation was on the NSA’s image and how to change it for the better, not on its Orwellian surveillance programs.  When it comes to questioning the U.S. establishment, Oliver never dare wander into the heart of the matter, only stay on the surface and stick to appearances.

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The discussion with Keith Alexander was also enlightening when contrasted with Oliver’s interview with Edward Snowden. Watching the Alexander and Snowden interviews side by side, it is easy to see where Oliver’s loyalties lie. Oliver uses the softest and most playful tone with Alexander, where he is extremely aggressive and nasty with Snowden.

The Snowden interview also reveals Oliver’s tactic of obfuscating uncomfortable issues. Oliver spends the first half of his Snowden segment making the story about how frightened he is to be in Russia. He is fearful because Snowden is late, the old KGB building is across the street and Russians are no doubt listening to his every word. You could come away from these bits thinking it is Russia that’s been eavesdropping on the world and not the U.S. But that was Oliver’s point with the Snowden interview and many other segments, to distract from U.S. crimes by imagining foreign ones.

The cherry on top of the Snowden episode was when John Oliver blamed Edward Snowden for the “major f***- up” of the New York Times publishing information that allegedly named a secret agent and a target.  In John Oliver’s world, the New York Times is sacrosanct and above blame, but that scoundrel Snowden makes for a convenient scapegoat.

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Lies of omission are littered throughout Last Week Tonight episodes as well. When Oliver did a segment on Obama’s visit to Saudi Arabia, he made the story about how rude the Saudi’s were to the president but gave no context at all. According to Oliver, the Saudi’s just randomly decided to hate Obama. Of course, the actual context is pretty important, Obama went to Saudi Arabia to calm the royal family over the 9-11 lawsuits and the congressional bills opening up the Saudi’s to liabilities for the attacks. Why Oliver would ignore this is beyond me.

When Oliver doesn’t ignore context is also revealing. In two segments on Ramzan Kadyrov, the Sunni strongman in Chechnya who had lost his cat, Oliver went to great lengths to give Kadyrov’s ties to Putin. He also spoke of Kadyrov’s Wikipedia page, which has a section about his human rights abuses, and spoke of it as if it were some sort of smoking gun. This is curious, as there was no mention of human rights abuses when another group of despotic Sunni Muslims, the Saudi’s, were the topic. And the Saudi’s don’t just have a section on their Wikipedia page about human rights abuses, they have a whole page dedicated to their human rights abuses! But Kadyrov is an enemy of the U.S. establishment and the Saudi’s are protected by it, so Oliver acted accordingly.

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Oliver only uses context when it supports the official narrative, not when it undermines it. A case in point was his coverage of the protests in Brazil against the left-wing Workers Party government. Oliver made that story about left wing corruption in Brazil, and nothing more. A closer examination of those protests reveals that a major factor was class and race, with wealthy Whites protesting against the government and poor Black/Brown people protesting for it. Race and class would normally be things that someone like John Oliver, and his liberal audience, would focus on, he certainly would in relation to the Tea Party or Trump supporters here in the U.S. But in South America, the official U.S. narrative is left-wing, populist governments are “no bueno”, and so  Oliver, whether it be in regards to Dilma Rousseff in Brazil or Rafael Correa in Ecuador, propagates that position.

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In contrast to his coverage of Brazil, watch this segment on turmoil in another left-wing South American country, Venezuela. In it, Oliver opens the segment with a news story that clearly defines the context of the protests, with the poor and working class on one side, and the military and police on the government side. Why clarify the struggle in Venezuela so distinctly but keep the Brazil situation murky at best? Because context in the Venezuela story supports the establishment media narrative that Oliver wants to sell, and it undermines it in the Brazil story.

And finally, the most remarkable proof of Oliver being an establishment shill occurred on the season three finale. Oliver actually pleaded with his audience to subscribe to the New York Times and the Washington Post in order to counter Trump and fake news. This was the first time John Oliver ever made me laugh out loud, as buying the Times and Post as an antidote to fake news is like treating obesity with a diet of pizza and ice cream.

It is too bad that Oliver’s insipidly predictable comedy and insidious support for all things establishment are so beloved by his minions. They obviously don’t know it yet, but John Oliver isn’t laughing with them, he’s laughing at them, all the way to the bank.

Previously published on Saturday February 11, 2017 at RT.

©2017

La La Land : An Analysis - Political Subtext

THIS IS THE THIRD…AND MAYBE FINAL…ARTICLE IN A SERIES ABOUT THE CULTURAL RELEVANCE OF THE FILM LA LA LAND. THE PREVIOUS TWO ARTICLES CAN BE FOUND HERE AND HERE.

****WARNING: THIS ANALYSIS CONTAINS MASSIVE SPOILERS!!! CONSIDER THIS YOUR SPOILER ALERT!!****

DISCLAIMER: This is an in depth analysis of the film La La Land, if you haven't seen the film, you probably shouldn't read this until you have. Also, I am aware that the overwhelming majority of people will find this to be at best a wonk-ish, if not foolish, exercise. I totally get it, but I wrote this piece for the maybe two or three other people in the universe besides me who might find it interesting. And finally, keep in mind that the political views in this analysis are what I believe to be the the film's, not mine. Now…sit back, relax, and enjoy the ride!! Or not.

Estimated Reading Time : 11 minutes 11 seconds (that's the time on Seb's clock in his apartment too!)

La La Land is, on its surface, a "delightful" musical romp of pure entertainment, but when you peel back the joyous cover of the film, a political sub-text is revealed that makes for a fascinating lens through which to watch the film again. 

The most important thing in watching La La Land is to pay attention to the color scheme. Director Damien Chazelle uses very vibrant colors to visually tell his story on multiple levels. The colors make for an interesting viewing experience, and they also reveal the political underpinnings of the story. The most apparent colors are yellow, green, blue and red. In the most basic way to look at the film, realize that Blue is Mia's core color (even when she wears Yellow…I'll explain later), and Red is Sebastien's core color.

To look even deeper at the color scheme, one must understand that Mia (blue), who drives her quiet, eco-friendly Prius, is symbolic of the left of the political spectrum, meaning she is liberalism and progressivism in all their shades, and the democratic party. Sebastien (red), who drives his red, gas-guzzling, noisy, American sedan, is symbolic of the right of the political spectrum, meaning he is conservatism and traditionalism in all their shades, and the republican party. The color scheme is also relevant to the "seasons" that the narrative goes through as well, but they are most relevant as a means to disclose the political sub-text. 

Here is a (not-so) brief look at the film from the perspective of the movie's political sub-text and things I picked up on and noticed as I watched it again. Keep in mind that these are the film's politics, not necessarily mine. There is probably much more than this, but these are the things that stood out the most, and what i had time to explore. 

SEBASTIEN

Sebastien is conservatism in post-1960's sexual revolution, America. Sebastien symbolizes a mix of conservatism, traditionalism, right-wing ideology and republicanism. He yearns for a return to the halcyon days of, specifically, 1950's America and the nation's vision of itself back then. Here are some indicators this is the case.

1. When Seb first enters his apartment, he looks left and is startled because his sister is in his home. She is on his left because she symbolizes liberalism or the left side of the political spectrum. She also wears blue, the color of liberalism in the film. She brings him a blue (liberal) throw rug as a gift, which he doesn't want. In addition, she sits on a stool that Seb cherishes because Hoagy Carmichael sat on it. Hoagy Carmichael is a jazz composer from the 1950's (he won an Oscar in 1951). Jazz, the quintessential American art form, represents Seb's 1950's vision of America, so if people don't like jazz or respect it, that means they don't like or respect America. Seb's sister is disrespectful of America because she doesn't respect Jazz's (America's) history/tradition and belittles it, for example by sitting on Hoagy Carmichael's stool, or joking that Miles Davis pissed on the blue throw rug she bought Seb. 

Speaking of history, the Jazz club that Seb is obsessed with is now a Samba and Tapas place. This club, the "Van Beek", used to be home to famous jazz bands (Count Basie) from back in the 50's, but that history is now being desecrated by immigrants and multiculturalism, in the form of samba and tapas. This is symbolic of what Seb would see as the changing of America through immigration and multiculturalism and the forgetting of what made America great in the 1950's, at least in his eyes. 

In addition regarding that club, Seb indicates he was hustled out of a business deal by someone, and that is how he lost his jazz club. Symbolically, the person who stole Seb's jazz club dream (his American traditionalism and conservatism dream) was Richard Nixon. This is revealed when Seb describes his being robbed by this guy as being "Shanghai'd", a clue he speaks of Nixon who is so associated with his opening of relations with China. Seb's sister also says of this Nixon-esque "crook", that "everyone knew he was shady except you". 

Seb's sister says she has a woman she wants Seb to meet. Seb is resistant, he asks if this woman "likes jazz" (likes 1950's America)? Seb's sister says "does it matter?"…but to Seb it does, as the question really means is she a "traditional/conservative" American like Seb. She writes down the woman's number on an envelope and then leaves. Seb hollers out to her as she goes that he is "a phoenix, rising from the ashes", much like conservatism in the 70's rising from the ashes of Nixon's horrific presidency. He then looks at the number on the envelope, which happens to be written on a past due bill notice, a symbol of his view of liberalism as a bankrupt ideology, and then he tosses it out. 

Sebastien then sits down at his piano and plays a "red" colored album, Monk's Dream by Thelonious Monk, where he tries to recreate the piano music on it. He plays it over and over trying to get it just right. Monk's Dream was released in 1963, before the sexual revolution and all that came with it for traditionalism and conservatism. That is also the year of JFK's assassination, which forever changed America. The psychological shock of Kennedy's murder sent America into a tailspin and shook the foundations and assumptions upon which the traditional and conservative order were based…thus the sexual revolution was born. Seb is trying to recreate and conjure up the time before that happened with his piano playing.

2. I-Ran

The next indicator of Seb as American traditionalism (and conservatism) is in the Spring section of the film where he sees Mia at a Hollywood pool party. Mia recognizes him from their "curt" encounter at the dinner club, but now he wears a cheesy red jacket and plays keyboards in an 80's cover band. In an act of vengeance and in order to embarrass Seb, Mia requests the song "I Ran" by Flock of Seagulls, which is, oddly, not a very keyboard heavy song. But when she says the name of the song out loud, it sounds like "Iran", the country. This entire sequence, which is meant to humiliate Seb, is a metaphor for the Iran Hostage crisis of 1979-80.This is an excruciatingly embarrassing moment for Seb, a "serious musician", just as it was for Cold War Superpower America, a "serious nation". Mia is wearing a yellow dress when she requests the song, the same color as all of those yellow ribbons that were tied everywhere in remembrance of the hostages in 1980. (as an aside, in the film, the song "I Ran" is followed by "Tainted Love" by Soft Cell, which has the lyric in it, "Once I-Ran…I-ran... to you, now I run from you"…)

After the song, Seb confronts Mia and she is still wearing the yellow dress but now holds a green soda can, no doubt "Canada" Dry Ginger Ale (Canada a symbol of a more European style Social Democracy). The equation of the yellow dress and green is only lacking one thing, blue (yellow + blue = green), but the blue in this picture is Mia, her liberalism being the blue. After this somewhat flirtatious confrontation and once the party ends, Mia asks Seb for help in getting her car keys from the valet. Seb asks her what kind of car she drives, Mia answers a "Prius", which doesn't help because there are dozens of Prius keys, so she clarifies and says "with the green ribbon". This again, indicates yellow (her dress) and green (the ribbon) equalling blue, her liberalism. Also, her saying the word "ribbon" ties back into the yellow ribbons for the Iranian hostages and makes that connection even more apparent. 

As Seb and Mia walk looking for her car, she thanks him for "saving the day back there", which is symbolic of Seb being Reagan, the traditional/conservative who got the hostages released from Iran (the actual story of that situation is far less clear cut and is quite nefarious, but that is a discussion for another day). Then they come upon a glorious view of L.A. at sunset. But when they look at the sunset they are looking to their left, which is either an indicator of liberalism's decline in Reagan's America, or of the direction of east (since they are standing atop of the world, looking down, left would be east), where it wouldn't be a sunset, but a sunrise, symbolic of Reagan's "Morning in America". 

Mia carries a red hand bag on her arm, and Seb a blue jacket on his arm. This is a metaphor for the two of them being open to the other's ideological arguments. Mia also wears blue shoes that are very uncomfortable. She even sings about how this view (of the sunset, or sunrise depending on perspective) would be appealing if she weren't in those heels, "maybe this appeals, to someone not in heels". The blue heels represent liberalism becoming too constricting as a political ideology at the time. Liberalism, and those heels, were ill suited for the time and place of the 1980's. Mia must change out of the blue shoes and liberal political views, in order to flirtatiously dance with Seb, who, curiously enough, has discarded his blue jacket on a nearby tree stump. For the dance number they wear matching black and white shoes which represent a Manichean worldview they can momentarily agree on. 

At the beginning of the dance number, as they sit on a bench, Seb puts his head and shoulders down and scratches his foot on the ground, sending dirt flying onto Mia's feet. This act, where Seb looks like a bull, is done three times, and is symbolic of Reagan's bull market and economic growth in the 80's. Mia is at first irritated by this, but then they begin their dance flirtation. At the end of the dance, Mia's blue shoes are on the ground in front of the bench, and the red bag is on the bench above the shoes, this is symbolic of traditional conservatism being on top during the 1980's Reagan era time period.

As Seb walks Mia to her car, he hands her blues shoes back once she sits inside her eco-friendly Prius. He then walks back to his big, red, gas guzzling, American car, which is parked right across from the valet stand. 

3. Rebel Without a Cause

When Mia gets a call back for a tv show, she describes the show as like "Rebel Without a Cause". Seb says a James Dean line from the film back to her, "I got the bullets!". This line is interesting as it symbolizes the right wing's militarism and willingness to spend money on the military. Mia has no idea what Seb is saying as she has never seen the film, which is interesting since she was raised on classic Hollywood films. But Rebel Without a Cause is an iconic 1950's film, and Mia's background is in 1940's cinema, which is symbolic of FDR's New Deal America and not Eisenhauer's conservative America of the 1950's. Seb then invites Mia to go see Rebel at the Rialto and she agrees, "for research".  James Dean wears a red jacket in Rebel Without a Cause, again a symbol of the conservatism of the time. It is at the showing of the film where Mia and Seb fall for each other. Seb has successfully seduced Mia with his vision of 1950's America, and the two kiss while having a fantasy sequence at the Hollywood observatory. 

4. Summer

The summer section is interesting because of the use of colors. When Mia is beckoned outside by Seb's loud American made car horn, she exits her apartment and all of the garbage bins lined up in the alley, which in real life here in L.A. are black, green or blue, are now all purple. Purple is red and blue combined…Sebastien and Mia and conservatism and liberalism blended together. Mia's handbag is now purple as well. Throughout the "dating montage" of the summer section, Mia wears some purple, light-red, or a red top with blue skirt or vice versa. Seb even wears blue, as he is wearing a Dodger baseball cap when he learns of his sisters engagement to a black man (more on this later). During the montage, Seb and Mia also work together to destroy the "Samba and Tapas" sign outside his old jazz club, with Mia holding the door closed while Seb smashes the sign. This, of course, is symbolic of immigration and traditional/conservative America's discomfort with it and lashing out at it with cover from democrats.

When Seb plays piano and Mia dances in the crowd at the Lighthouse, she wears a red top and blue skirt. After the song is over they sit down and she drinks her red beverage and Seb drinks his green bottle of beer, conservatism is still ascendant at this point, but Seb has softened, as has conservatism (maybe this is compassionate conservatism?). Then Keith shows up….

5. Keith

Keith shows up at the Lighthouse and Seb is instantly uncomfortable. He introduces Keith to Mia and says they "went to school together", but he is obviously not happy about that fact. This is symbolic of school desegregation (1954) and forced busing (1970's). Seb and Keith have an undisclosed issue, something in their past that is never clearly enunciated. This is symbolic of traditional/conservative America's unease with racial issues, and reluctance to be more open on issues like civil rights, school integration etc.  

Keith offers Seb a job but he turns him down, even though Keith tells him it pays. Seb doesn't trust Keith, that much is clear. Keith is Obama…and Seb feels about him the same way traditional/conservative Americans felt about Obama.  

When Seb takes a job with Keith, his first day in the studio, Seb is wearing blue. Traditional/Conservative Seb is on Obama's liberal turf now. And Keith/Obama talks to Seb about how in order to save Jazz(America), you have to be progressive, and not traditional. Traditional is killing jazz (America). Here is Keith's entire speech. Replace the word "jazz" with "America" and the speech takes on a deeper significance.

"I know…it's different. But you say you wanna save jazz? How you gonna save jazz if no one's listening? Jazz is dying because of people like you. You're playing to 90 yr. olds at the Lighthouse, where are the kids? Where are the young people? You're so obsessed with Kenny Clarke and Theolnious Monk, these guys were revolutionaries,…how are you gonna be a revolutionary if you're such a traditionalist? You're holding onto the past, but jazz is about the future. I know, the other guy, he wasn't as good as you, but you're a pain in the ass."

Keith is making Obama's progressive argument about how to save America in the 21st century. Monk and Clarke are musicians that represent the 1950's, which is Sebastien's dream world. Keith/Obama, wants to transform America in order to save it. Seb is reluctant but gets on board because he needs the money and wants to be able to support Mia, and in the political sense, he does want America to flourish, so he gives Obama a try.

A closer examination shows that Keith is Seb's biggest problem. Keith takes him away from Mia with touring. Keith convinces Seb to compromise his principles for money, which reduces his attractiveness to Mia. And finally, Keith is the reason Seb misses Mia's one woman show because he needs Seb to do a PR photo-shoot.

Keith/Obama/Race are Seb's/traditional/conservative America's kryptonite, and he is never able to fully get control of his Keith issues. Even though Seb prospers while working with Keith, he is never happy or fulfilled working with him. 

This brings up a bunch of race issues that appear just under the surface of the film which I'll touch upon briefly later in this piece.

MIA

Mia is the color blue, and represents liberalism, progressivism, left-wing ideology and the democratic party. She yearns for an FDR New Deal type of politics or a European social democracy. Here are the indicators of that.

1. Ingrid Bergman

Mia has a giant poster of Ingrid Bergman on her bedroom wall in her apartment. There are dozens and dozens of actresses Mia could have on her wall, but she has Bergman, which means a great deal. Bergman, a Swedish actress, with Sweden being home to a renowned social democracy with stellar social programs that are greatly admired by American leftists, was a star in the 1940's…which was the height of FDR's New Deal America.

Bergman also was much more progressive for her time in her sexual politics as she became scandalized when she cheated on her husband with Italian director Roberto Rossellini. Bergman divorced her husband and married Rossellini, which was shocking for the time. So Bergman was not only a symbol of New Deal politics, but a pre-cursor to the sexual revolution. 

In addition, Bergman did win a Best Actress Oscar (her second), in 1956, which is in the heart of Seb's conservative American dream, but she won it for playing an amnesiac living in Paris who looked like the Russian Czar's daughter Anastasia. Russia, of course, being a symbol of socialism and Paris being a center of bohemian social democracy.

Ingrid Bergman also starred in "Casablanca", a film which Mia mentions by name. Mia says that a window right outside the coffee shop where she works, is the window Bogart and Bergman looked out of in Casablanca. In fact, the camera shot for the opening of this scene between Mia and Seb is from that exact window. This is followed by Seb asking who Mia's "Bogart" is? Meaning her boyfriend. This shows that Mia is, in fact, symbolically Ingrid Bergman. Another thing to keep in mind is that Casablanca came out in 1942 and won the Best Picture Oscar, during FDR's presidency. 

The Bergman poster in Mia's room takes up a whole wall, and there is a striking dash of blue on the lower left hand side of that wall, indicative of Bergman's symbolic connection to Mia's liberalism. 

When Mia moves out of her apartment and in with Seb, she brings her Bergman poster with her. There is a shot of it rolled up on the floor as she packs, but is never shown in Seb's apartment, meaning that Mia carries it with her, but wouldn't unveil it in Seb's "American" home.

2. Paris

Paris is a recurring theme for Mia. There is the obvious Ingrid Bergman connection with Paris, as both Casablanca and Anastasia are either set in, or revolve around Paris. But there is also Mia's aunt, who went to Paris and jumped in the Seine, as she sings about in her audition song. There is also Mia's one-woman show which is set in Paris. And there is the Warner Brothers studio lot where Mia works, which looks remarkably like Paris, including the little european car parked on the street. Mia even has a poster of Paris in her childhood bedroom at her parent's house in Boulder City, Nevada.

The biggest Paris connection for Mia is that her big break is a role in a film that shoots in Paris and she must go live there for 7 months. Seb tells her to go, but that he will stay in America even though Paris "has good jazz". Seb is America through and through, he can't leave, but Mia is liberalism and for her to flourish and become all that she can become, she must go to Paris, the preeminent European capital. 

3. Color

As previously mentioned, Mia's color is blue, for liberalism. But early in the film she is rushing to an audition and someone spills coffee on her white shirt. She ends up auditioning with a blue jacket covering her stained white shirt. This stain imagery appears later in the film when Mia talks on the phone with her mother and Seb overhears the conversation. Seb looks up and sees a similar brown stain that had been on Mia's white audition shirt, on the white ceiling. It is at this moment that Seb decides to take Keith up on his offer of a job. The stain on the pure white is a sign of decay. The decay for both Mia and Seb (and America) at those moments in the film are about their imperfections(and America's) and trying to cover them with ideology, in both cases liberalism.

Mia has other auditions that reveal the meaning of color throughout the film. When she plays a caring physician in one she wears blue (liberal) scrubs with a green background. When she plays a tough cop in one and says the line "damn Miranda rights!", she is wearing a cop uniform with a striking red (conservative) backdrop. And finally when she auditions as a white teacher in a Black school, and says the line, "why you be trippin' Jamal, why you be trippin'?'", she wears a red jacket.  The color red shows a rather conservative outlook on law and order and racial issues, where the blue shows a liberal outlook on caring for people. 

After the "Someone in the Crowd" party, Mia walks through a very blue downtown L.A. The entire city is lit in blue and the only place that isn't, is the dinner club where Seb is playing that night. There is a red light that is like a beacon, beckoning Mia to enter. Seb is the lone sign of traditionalism in the blue sea of L.A. That encounter does not go well for Mia as Seb is "curt" with her. Other red encounters end just as badly, like when she wears a red jacket to her callback audition and they stop her after just a few lines. The director, dressed in blue, instantly dismisses her. Mia leaves the audition and tears her red jacket off like it is poisoned. But as she drives home she drives past the Rialto where Rebel Without a Cause is playing and she smiles, reminded that traditionalism and conservatism (Seb) and a red jacket, might no be that bad after all. 

As Mia becomes more and more enamored by Seb, she wears more and more red or variations of red. Mia needs an injection of traditionalism and conservatism in order to succeed in the world, even though at her core she is a blue liberal. 

THE END

The ending sequence of the movie is very interesting and reveals a great deal about the sub-text of the entire narrative. A closer look reveals the political underpinnings of the story.

1. Mia

Mia is now a successful actress and her face is plastered on a giant poster right outside Seb's club. The poster is very reminiscent of the Bergman poster Mia had on her bedroom wall. Mia has become Ingrid Bergman by going to Paris and making her movie that catapults her to stardom.

Mia is also married to another man. He seems nice enough, but is extraordinarily dull. He does wear blue though, and has a blue tie on for their night out. An interesting little piece of information is that Mia's daughter wears a red bow in her hair. Mia has learned traditionalism from Seb, and she has passed it on to her daughter.

As Mia and her blue-tied husband are stuck in traffic, Mia is illuminated by red light from the car stopped in front of them, and she suddenly says they should get off the highway and go get dinner. After dinner, Mia and her husband walk to the car in a very blue L.A., and then the husband hears some music and they walk toward the red light. This is Mia's original meeting with Seb all over again. They enter the club and walk down into a sea of red. Mia then realizes this is Seb's place, and even sees the sign she designed, which is all in blue. 

As she sits next to her husband, Seb comes on stage in his red suit. He spots Mia and freezes.

2. Seb

Seb's club is ready to go and has a giant picture of John Coltrane on the wall right as you enter, just like Seb's apartment had a smaller picture of Coltrane. Coltrane died in 1967…right before Nixon took office and the sexual revolution truly took off, and traditionalism got steamrolled.

Seb lives alone, and has a seemingly monastic life, much like he did at the start of the film. He does have his club though, which acts as a Benedict Option or monastery to traditional values and conservatism amidst the all encompassing blue liberalism of L.A.

When Seb sees Mia and then plays their song on the piano at the club, they have a fantasy sequence. In the fantasy sequence, everything turns out perfectly for Mia, and it is predominantly colored in blue. The Paris she goes to is overwhelmingly blue, except for the red light of a jazz club sign, and smatterings of red along the Seine, like a little boys red balloon and a red flower. But Paris is really blue. And Seb can only visit there in a fantasy.

When we see "home movies" of Seb and Mia's relationship and her pregnancy and child, it is all done in the style of 1950's home movies. The family is the symbol of tradition and that would be Seb's success in this fantasy. His dream is to perpetuate his traditional values and in his dream with Mia he does that with their marriage and child. 

When Seb and Mia go out to dinner, Seb wears a blue suit and tie, just like Mia's real life husband. They sneak out past their son, who wears red, white and blue striped pajamas, and the babysitter, who wears purple. They have made the perfect American family, a blend of liberalism and conservatism wrapped in traditionalism. The second half of the dream leans far to Seb's side just as the first half leaned toward Mia's side. As Seb has his perfect 1950's, pre-sexual revolution family, he also has a Latina nanny.

As Seb and Mia sit and listen to the piano player at the dream jazz club, Mia sits curled toward Seb, and he toward her. She has her left hand over his heart, and he has his left hand on her lap. They are connected through the left. In contrast, when Mia sits in the same club with her real life husband, they sit not touching at all. They aren't even should to shoulder, but have a table between them. This shows that Mia has compromised love to be with her real husband. 

3. The Actual Ending

The ending where Mia leaves the club and stops to look at Seb can be seen as bittersweet. Mia doesn't love her husband like she loved or loves Seb. When she looks to Seb she is worried about how Seb will react. He pauses and then smiles, and she returns the smile. Seb smiles because Mia has been taught his traditional values, and she proves that by sacrificing her happiness in order to maintain her family and raise her child. She doesn't leave her husband and child to be with Seb, which is what a child of the sexual revolution would do, or Ingrid Bergman. Instead she acknowledges the lessons Seb taught her and which she integrated into her liberal value system, and has made a new system that is partially traditional and conservative, and partially liberal and progressive. With the lessons from Seb, Mia has overcome the criticism Seb has of liberalism, that it "worships everything and values nothing."

 Interestingly though, in both the fantasy and real life jazz club scenarios, Mia does not wear blue, but wears black…which is the first time she has done that in the entire film. I believe this is symbolic of her becoming a void where no color can enter and where no stains can appear.

Seb smiles at Mia because he realizes that he has passed his traditionalism on to her. Seb will gladly sacrifice his happiness to know that traditionalism and conservatism live on beyond him. He has carved out a small corner of the world where his Jazz and traditionalism can thrive in the blue sea of L.A. When he realizes that Mia has learned this "valuable" lesson and is not going to leave her husband, he smiles…his job is done. And then he gets back to the music…one, two, three, four...

RACE

As previously mentioned, the main Black character, Keith, is a symbol of Obama, and of Seb's discomfort with racial issues. Keith is not the only Black character that reveals things of note though. Here are some of the others.

1. Seb's Sister

Seb's sister gets engaged and then married to a Black man. We never hear him speak and never know his name. Seb plays at their wedding. As Seb's sister and her Black husband dance and kiss at the reception, the camera pans over the wedding party and the mix of races and then settles on Seb playing the piano. In the context of the film's narrative, Seb is melancholy over his break up with Mia, but I believe this sequence is meant to reveal Seb's melancholy over his sister marrying a Black man. This is another sign of Seb's dream of a 1950's America dying before his eyes. I also think this is why Seb is so reluctant when his sister says she has a woman she wants him to meet at the beginning of the film. Seb knows his sister is not a "traditional" American like him, and therefore the woman could be Black or of another ethnicity, so Seb wants nothing to do with it. 

2. Black Couple on the Pier

After Seb goes to Mia's work and has a great day with her, he ends up alone on the pier and sings a little song. The sun is setting and there is an older Black couple a little further out on the pier. Seb whistles and then sings "City of Stars". He sees an old style hat lying on the ground and picks it up. He brushes it off and does a little dance move with it but never puts it on. 

He walks over to the Black couple, who both wear blue, and hands the hat (which looks strikingly similar to the hat worn by Thelonious Monk on the Monk's Dream album cover!) to the man who thanks him with a gesture. Seb then takes the Black woman and dances slowly with her. As he takes her hand to initiate the dance he sings the line, "Who knows, is this the start of something wonderful and new.." and he then spins the woman. After the spin he sings, "or one more dream..". Right after saying "dream", the Black man slaps Seb's arm to get him to let go of his wife. Seb does and then walks off singing, "that I cannot make true". The Black couple dance together in the background as Seb exits the shot. 

This entire sequence reveals Seb's and America's struggle with racial issues as he tries to reach out to people of color, but is rebuffed. The Black man, is pleased to have his hat returned, which could symbolize the civil rights act of 1964, but doesn't appreciate Seb getting to comfy with his wife. It is intriguing that Seb sings of "one more dream" and then the man slaps him. "Dream" conjures images of Dr. King's famous "I Have a Dream" speech, which to many feels still unfulfilled. Seb (traditional/conservative America) may have thought that everything was cool after the hat return (civil rights act), but that is proven not to be the case.

3. Opening Sequence Dancers

There are two Black dancers in the opening fantasy dance number on the highway that I think are important to notice. The first Black dancer, is a young woman in a green shirt. She gets out of a red car when a white man in a red shirt opens the door for her, and he then helps her up onto the hood of the car. Once on the hood she dances and then does a flip off the hood. The person driving that car wears a red and white baseball hat with a large "X" on the front. 

This sequence reveals a certain perspective on America's racial history. The white man freeing the Black woman from her imprisonment in the red car of America. He then gives her a helping hand up and she dances in joy. Then the X-capped character (Malcolm X and his version of Black Conservatism?) comes out and dances with a woman in red. The Black woman then flips, the world turned upside down momentarily, until she is right side up again and off to the side. 

The second Black woman of note is a featured singer who wears a blue denim outfit and a pink bandana on her head. The striking thing about this woman is that she wears her bandana in an Aunt Jemima style, which conjures memories of a much bleaker time in America for people of color. She also sings the lyrics, "and even when the answer's no, and when my money is running low" as she dances with a White man in a red tie. This White man, another featured singer, is the one who unleashes the burst of glorious music from the big blue truck that brings everyone, people of all colors and backgrounds, together for a dance party. The shot right before he opens the truck to reveal the modern day revolutionary pipers, there is the red of a nearby Black man's outfit, the White man's white shirt, and the blue of the truck. This is America at its finest, but it is born out of the Black woman with the bandana and the White man with the red tie, singing together. 

The racial underbelly of La La Land is pretty interesting. It is striking how people react to the Black characters in the film who aren't background jazz musicians. What this says about America and its history I will leave to the reader.

CONCLUSION

On its surface, La La Land is a musical love story, but the deeper you dive into the picture, the more layers of narrative intrigue are revealed. The symbolic use of color and the sub-text of political ideology tell a far deeper and more meaningful story than the surface entertainment alone that many believe La La Land to be. 

I encourage you to go watch the film again, or many times over again, and see if you think I am crazy or if there is something to what I am saying. If nothing else, it will make you watch the film in a different way, which is always a good exercise for a cinephile.

The opening dance number alone is worthy of an article all to itself, as are each of the musical numbers, but frankly, I don't have the time to get into it at the moment. Hopefully this overview of the film is good enough to satiate any other people out there like me who love this sort of stuff. I don't think there are very many of us…so if you do exist…let me know.

And finally, to answer your questions before you ask them…Yes, I have way too much time on my hands (even though I really don't). No, I don't have a life or any friends. And yes…this article is pure insanity…no scratch that…this is pure lunacy…pure lunacy. (If you watch the film closely enough you'll get that reference!!)

© 2017

La La Land is Hollywood's Version of "Make America Great Again"

Estimated Reading Time : 5 minutes 18 seconds

THIS IS THE SECOND IN A SERIES OF ARTICLES ABOUT THE CULTURAL RELEVANCE OF THE FILM LA LA LAND. THE FIRST CAN BE FOUND HERE.

La La Land is Hollywood’s version of “Make America Great Again”

 Hollywood is revolted by Trump, and Trump voters resent Hollywood, but both are enchanted by the same quintessentially American myth. The optimistic nostalgia of Trump’s “Make America Great Again” and La La Land are proof of the delusional fairy tale that binds us all together.

“People love what other people are passionate about” – Mia

 La La Land, which is nominated for a record tying 14 Academy Awards, is a fantasy-musical that tells the story of Mia, a barista and aspiring actress, and Sebastian, a struggling musician, as they navigate their relationship and the travails of life in Hollywood. While the story of Mia and Sebastian is a play on the age-old musical love story, the more elemental myth at the films core is one of passionately delusional confidence and a wistful yearning for a return to glory.

Just like the premise of La La Land, Trump’s candidacy was founded on a similar type of exuberant expectation and backward-looking inspiration. Trump’s “Make America Great Again” was nebulous and hopeful, just like previous successful campaigns, from Reagan’s “It’s Morning Again in America”, to Bill Clinton’s “Don’t Stop Thinking About Tomorrow” to Obama’s “Hope and Change” and “Yes We Can”. This upbeat and anticipatory message has successfully played upon American’s hopeful idealism for generations.

 “How are you going to be a revolutionary if you’re such a traditionalist? You hold onto the past, but Jazz is about the future.” – Keith

 Trump’s harkening back to a past time of national grandeur is echoed in La La Land as well. The film is a cinematic ode to Hollywood’s history. Mia, played by Emma Stone, was raised on vintage movies and works at a coffee shop on a studio lot, where she can point out where all the classic scenes of old were shot. In addition, Sebastian, played by Ryan Gosling, is a jazz purist, traditionalist and staunch idealist. Jazz, the kind Sebastian reveres, was at its creative heights in the 1940’s, 50’s and early 60’s, which coincides with Hollywood’s golden age of the classical musical. This pre-1960’s revolution era, is often thought to be the time Trump refers to when he proclaims he is going to  “Make America Great Again”.

 “I’m letting life hit me ‘til it gets tired. Then I’ll hit back. It’s a classic rope a dope.” – Sebastian

 Like Trump the billionaire, selling the American success story, La La Land reinforces the age-old Hollywood rags to riches tale. If Mia, the barista, works hard enough, and believes strong enough, then her dream of making it as an actress will become reality. As an acting coach out here in Los Angeles, I can testify that there is a never ending tide of young people from across the country who come here inspired by that same story. They may or may not have talent, or looks, or a work ethic, but like Mia, they all have a dream and limitless ambition.

 “They worship everything and value nothing.” – Sebastian

 And I know, “regular” people in Middle-America may laugh at these eager would-be actors and think they’re foolish for following their dream. I understand, it seems ridiculous from the outside looking in, but left coast liberals think the same of their flyover country opposites. Those Springsteen voters, the white-working class Trump supporters from the rust belt, seem just as optimistically foolhardy as the fresh-off-the-bus, wannabe starlets who come to Tinseltown by the thousands to claim their millions. The ingénue has La La Land as inspiration, and the Springsteen voter has Trump as aspirational figure. Both are certainly being unrealistic and impractical, but that doesn’t mean their dreams won’t come true, just that it’s a very long shot at best.

 The thing about Americans, regardless of political party, race or religion is that they not only want to believe, they need to believe. Americans will buy into anyone or anything that restores their belief in their country or themselves. Making people “believe” in their dreams has been the film industry’s goal from day one. The Hollywood sign might as well be a banner that says “Dreams For Sale” that looms over the entire city. Trump has made a name, a fortune and a presidency, out of doing the same thing. Trump has convinced, and his opponents would say “conned”, people into putting their trust into him to restore their dream for the country.

 “You’re a barista, I can see how you can look down on me from all the way up there.” – Sebastian

 While both Trump and La La Land are selling sentimentality for a bygone era, they’re also putting a new twist on that old song and dance. For instance, La La Land is not just a rehash of the old classical musical, but is a reimaging of the musical genre, it is a “millennial musical”, if you will. The film is intentionally less polished, and therefore seemingly more genuine, that its glitzy and fancy forebears. The film’s two stars, Gosling and Stone, are good enough at singing and dancing, but not nearly as technically impeccable as the classically-trained musical stars of old. The reason for this is their short-comings make them more human and therefore appealing to the modern audience which values relate-ability over all else.

 Trump is similar in that he is a politician for the millennial age. His speeches are not like the speeches of the consummate politicos he went up against. He speaks roughly, off-the-cuff, just like his audience. That is why Trump resonated with those Springsteen voters, they thought that even though he was a silver-spooned billionaire, he was rough around the edges, like them. As with La La Land, it is Trump’s flaws that made him more attractive to his crowds, because it made him approachable.

 “Maybe I’m not good enough!” – Mia

 “Yes you are!” – Sebastian

 “Maybe I’m not, it’s like a pipe dream!” – Mia

 “This is the dream! It’s conflict and compromise, and it’s very, very exciting!” – Sebastian

 As an example of the psychological need many people have for myth, I will relate a brief anecdote. I had a discussion many years ago with an actor who was in his late-seventies. He was a tremendous guy, gigantic heart, just the salt of the earth. He had never had any success as an actor at all, none, but he loved doing it and he hustled his butt off to look for work. To give you an indication of where he was in his career, at the time of our conversation, his only work was volunteering as a stand-up comedian at a nursing home. We were chatting one day about our lives and our love of acting, film and theatre, when he paused as if to compose himself.

 He slowly turned to me and looked me right in the eye and with a deeply moving sincerity he said, “I gotta tell you, Mick, sometimes I wonder…am I ever going to make it?”

 I was taken aback by his heartfelt emotion, I kept silent but put my hand on his shoulder to reassure him.

 He then said, “I don’t know what I’m gonna do if I don’t make it.”

 I knew very well that he was never going to “make it”, but seeing the desolation in his eyes at even the briefest consideration of that fact, reinforced my decision not to burst his bubble.

 It would be easy to think of my starry-eyed compatriot as a fool or crazy, as his pie-in-the-sky vision of stardom was obviously a pipe dream. But like the unemployed machinist in Youngstown or the former assembly line worker in Flint, my old-timer pal wasn’t insane, just a hopeless dreamer. My friend, like those rust belt Trump voters, wanted to believe that his life could be better. He needed to believe in the fable that Hollywood presented to him, just like regular Americans need to believe in the tale Trump is offering them, which happens to be the same. This myth gave my friend’s life meaning just as Trump has given a purpose to those who felt like they had none.

“Here’s to the one’s who dream, foolish as they may seem. Here’s to the hearts that ache. Here’s to the mess we make.’ – Mia

 My friend has long since died, his dreams of theatrical notoriety buried with him. I don’t doubt that he would have loved La La Land as it would have spoken to his inherent love of the fantastical and his eternal hope for the impossible, just like Springsteen voters love Trump.

 The title of the film La La Land has two meanings, the first, is that it is a nickname for the movie’s setting, the city of Los Angeles and Hollywood. The second definition of the term is “a fanciful state or dream world.”  La La Land, its title’s multiple meanings and the parable at its core, are a wonderful metaphor for the current state of America. Whether we want to admit it or not, we all live in La La Land now. 

Previously published at RT

©2017

Welcome to La La Land!!

Estimated Reading Time : 5 minutes 27 seconds

THIS IS THE FIRST IN A SERIES OF ARTICLES ON THE CULTURAL RELEVANCE OF THE FILM LA LA LAND.

The phrase La La Land has two meanings, one is shorthand for the city of Los Angeles and Hollywood, the second “a fanciful state or dreamworld.”  Both the movie La La Land and the terms two definitions directly apply to the current delusional state of America.

This past January, the film La La Land, which cleverly plays upon both definitions of that term, was nominated for a record-tying 14 Academy Awards. The movie, a fantasy-musical, tells the story of Mia, a young aspiring actress, and Sebastian, a struggling musician, as they navigate their relationship and the travails of life in Hollywood.

At its heart though, La La Land is really just another of Hollywood’s cinematic odes to itself. Like Narcissus falling deeply in love with his own reflection, Hollywood adores gazing at itself lovingly. La La Land is one more in a long line of movies that allows Hollywood to tell a story about how wonderful it is. From Show People in 1928 to Gene Kelly in Singin’ in the Rain to Fellini's 8 1/2 to 2011 Oscar winner The Artist, and lots of movies in between, the film industry has a long history of rewarding moviemakers who spend time celebrating Hollywood’s favorite subject, itself.

 The scorn heaped on Hollywood for its vain and congratulatory view of itself along with its eternal frivolity, is hard earned and well deserved. But don’t kid yourself, Hollywood’s brazen self-worship and facetiousness is just a symptom of a much more widespread disease of delusional self-love and un-seriousness that has infected the entirety of our culture. For this reason and others, I believe that La La Land is indeed the perfect film for our times.

 To see an example of La La Land as both “a fanciful state or dreamworld” and an act of ludicrous self-absorption, one need look no further than our nation's capital. We have just finished two weeks of the Trump administration, and our current Narcissist-in-Chief and the odious press corps who hang on his every word, have shown an astonishing level of egoism and frivolity that is easily on par with their navel-gazing counterparts out here in Tinseltown.

The vainglorious Trump spent his first weeks in office arguing with the pompous media about the size of his inauguration crowd and the millions of people he claimed had voted illegally for Hillary Clinton. It was even revealed that Trump had pressured the Parks Service to find proof for his inauguration crowd number claims. The insidiously dramatic press covered Trump’s vacuous claims like they were Soviet naval maneuvers during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Meanwhile, America’s drone war continues unabated in the Middle East, the U.S. backed war in Yemen rages on and Navy SEALs murdered an 8 year old American girl with nary a mention from our intrepid reporters in the commercial media. If this isn’t La La Land, I don’t know what is.

Just like the film La La Land is an example of Hollywood’s undying self-admiration, the kerfluffle over the inauguration is an example of the virulent narcissism of both Trump and the media. A story so inconsequential as the attendance figures at an inauguration can only be relevant because it is serves as a proxy for the pissing contest between Trump and the media. Neither the President nor the press, gives a flying fuck about the American people, only their own self-interests. In a battle for egoic supremacy, Trump and the press corps have battled to a stand still thus far, but we are only two weeks in and this repugnant nonsense appears to have no end in sight.

Trump’s vanity and egocentricity were entertaining when he played himself on the Celebrity Apprentice, but in the role of President they are deeply disconcerting. At least with the film La La Land, Hollywood’s self-aggrandizing but whimsical nature will keep you occupied for two hours, but then you can leave the theatre and return to real life. You can’t walk out of Trump’s America, or away from his desperate and delusional self-worship and triviality, or from the cocky, puffed up, braggadocio he calls his foreign policy,  or from the administration's fantastical claims of Iranian acts of war or imaginary massacres in middle America.

 In addition to the bafflingly myopic egotism of President Trump, we have a rabid yet impotent press corps devoid of any interest in subjects of any depth or substance. A great example of this was a few weeks ago when President Obama commuted Chelsea Manning’s thirty-five year sentence for violating the Espionage Act. While watching cable news I witnessed segment after segment that discussed Manning’s genitals, Obama’s supposed compassion and even Julian Assange’s alleged vanity, but not once did anyone mention the most critical part of the Manning story, the war crimes that she had revealed. Talk about living in La La Land.

 This is typical for our mainstream media, they only cover the salacious and insubstantial, like Manning’s transgenderism or Trump’s delusional inauguration attendance numbers, while ignoring or diminishing the more profound and morally troubling stories, like American war crimes, the Navy SEALs murdering an 8 year old American girl, and the continuing devastation in Yemen.

 Hollywood, Trump and the mainstream media are all in the same business, the business of giving the people what they want. Hollywood deceives itself with a vision of its own magnificence with the movie La La Land, while Trump cons America with a revisionist form of utopianism with “Make America Great Again”, and the press deludes itself with self-serving grandiosity by thinking that they are all Woodward and Bernstein breathlessly breaking their own Watergate (and no doubt dreaming of who will play them in the movie!) with the inauguration numbers story.

 The curious thing about Hollywood, Trump and the mainstream media is that they all loathe one another because they mirror back to each other their own malignant and delusional narcissism. When Hollywood rants against the reality TV star turned politician Trump, it is because he reflects back at them their own self-absorption and furious hunger for validation. When Trump rages against the commercial media it is because he despises them for mirroring back to him his own staggeringly deep-seeded insecurities and tenuous relationship with the truth. And the commercial media detest Trump because he echoes back to them their own asinine vacuity and superciliousness.

 And even though we in the public would like to think otherwise, we are no better. We love Trump, Hollywood or the media for the lies they tell us, and for allowing us to live in our own “fanciful state or dreamworld”. Whichever one of the three tells us what we want to hear, they are the one that we will believe. Whoever tells us contrary facts, we will mercilessly label as a liar. What matters most is not the Truth, but that we are proven right. So we filter our newsfeeds to buttress our viewpoint and confirm our bias. We use cognitive dissonance in order to avoid any mental or emotional anxiety brought on by information that conflicts with our previously held worldview.

A brief look at the polls proves my point, Clinton voters cling to any and all stories that reaffirm the belief that the election was tampered with by Russia or the FBI. And Trump voters embrace any story that he tells them, from his claim of winning the popular vote to there being three to five million fraudulent votes for his opponent.

We have gotten the La La Land country and culture we deserve. Hollywood gives us the garbage movies we demand because we throw money at them to see one empty-headed sequel after another and then complain that no one has any original ideas anymore. We have the President we have earned because like us, he is a self-absorbed charlatan who sells the hungry public “a fanciful state and dreamworld” and yet we complain of fake news and living in a post-truth world. And finally, we get the media we deserve, a vacuous and insipid bunch of self-centered drama queens who entertain us with conflict rather than inform us with content because we prefer to be lost in the fantasy of La La Land than wake up to the stark reality of the cold hard world.

 You can make fun of me, and my artistic compatriots, out here in the original La La Land for our delusional self-love and substance-free storytelling, but don’t kid yourself, the rest of America is just as deluded, self-absorbed and shallow as we are. Two weeks into the Trump administration, and we have all officially taken up residence in a Hollywood-esque La La Land, or fanciful dreamworld, where egomania, cognitive dissonance and confirmation bias rule the day, and Truth is a stranger in a strange land. Unlike in the contrived fantasy world of the film La La Land, in the real world, I seriously doubt we will get a happy ending.

©2017

Express Yourself? Madonna Don't Preach!

Estimated Reading Time : 4 minutes 11 seconds

At the Women’s March on Washington this past Saturday, Madonna tried to cut President Trump down to size with an impassioned speech, but she ended up helping her opponents and hurting her cause.  

Let me say right up front that I am not one of those people who thinks celebrities should never talk about politics. I feel that all Americans, celebrities included, should share their thoughts as they see fit. Of course, I also believe that people, celebrities most especially due to the size of their audience, should be held to account for what they say. Which brings us to Madonna and the Women’s March on Washington inauguration weekend.

 At the anti-Trump/pro-woman event this past weekend, Madonna gave a profanity-laced speech where she said, in part, “Yes, I am angry. Yes, I am outraged. Yes, I’ve thought about blowing up the White House”.  No doubt the Secret Service are drawing straws right now to see who gets stuck with the miserable assignment of interviewing the erstwhile Material Girl. While most people will chalk up Madonna’s statement as just a bit of emotionalist nonsense, the Secret Service, sadly for them, don’t have that luxury.

While the 58 year-old, former pop-princess isn’t entirely culturally irrelevant, she can certainly see irrelevance from her backyard. Madonna’s artistic insignificance aside, her diatribe at the rally this past weekend will no doubt bring her some much-desired attention, but it will also most certainly undermine the anti-Trump cause for which she alleges to be speaking.  

Problem number one with Madonna’s speech is that you cannot decry what you consider to be Donald Trump’s outrageous statements by making outrageous statements of your own. Doing so only serves to highlight your own hypocrisy and diminish and normalize what you believe to be Trump’s inappropriateness. In addition, violent speech, whether it comes from Madonna or Trump or anyone else, simply cannot be permitted to stand unchallenged in the public square. Violent speech eventually can lead to violent action. This was on display at a Trump rally in North Carolina during the campaign where a protestor was sucker-punched by a Trump supporter after candidate Trump had talked of getting tough with unwanted agitators. Conversely, this past weekend, alt-right leader Richard Spencer got punched in the face in broad daylight by a masked man while giving an interview on a street corner in Washington D.C. Regardless of what you may think of the protestor at the Trump rally or of Richard Spencer, there can be no tolerance for violence towards people because of their political beliefs. If you can’t convince people of your argument with your words, you certainly won’t convince them with your fists.

Speaking of failing to convince people of your arguments, who, exactly, was Madonna trying to sway with her diatribe? Like Meryl Streep’s recent speech at the Golden Globes, Madonna’s tirade was not meant to persuade anyone, only to preach to the already converted.  Madonna and Meryl both gave their immediate audiences what they wanted, and got the cheers they expected, the problem though is that while their speeches were directed towards those who agree with them inside the Hollywood bubble, ‘regular’ people in flyover country heard them as well.  Among those flyover folks are the swing voters democrats need to convince if they want to stop Trump and get back into power. I am willing to bet those 80,000 or so working class white voters, or as I call them “Springsteen voters”, who voted Obama twice and put Trump over the top in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Ohio and Wisconsin in 2016, were less enamored with Madonna’s screed than the true-blue liberals cheering her at the Women’s March.

 President Trump tweeted his response to the protests. “Watched protests yesterday but was under the impression we just had an election! Why didn’t these people vote? Celebs hurt cause badly.” I am not a Trump voter or supporter, truth is I dislike him “bigly”. That said, he is spot-on about that last part, “Celebs hurt cause badly”. Trump knows his target audience extremely well, and he is well aware that Americans in the Heartland, chief among them the “Springsteen Voters”, are tired of being preached to and looked down upon by liberal coastal elites, so anytime a celebrity or the media attacks him, Trump gets considerably stronger and his opposition gets weaker.

 While Madonna’s rant may have felt good to her personally and momentarily excited her cohorts in the democratic base, it was terribly counter-productive in terms of a strategic resistance to Trump. Madonna and Meryl Streep are both so deeply entrenched in their own epistemic echo chamber that they are unable to grasp how their harangues are heard by the great, unwashed masses in Middle America. To swing-voting ‘regular’ Americans, these anti-Trump speeches are not heard as heartfelt emotional rebuttals against President Trump, rather they are heard as the self-serving tantrums of spoiled entertainers.

 If celebrities want to truly help their cause and hurt Trump, they need to stop thinking and acting emotionally and start thinking and acting strategically. Instead of urgently reacting to everything Trump says, they should methodically and rationally respond to what Trump does. They should be all the things they claim Donald Trump is not, they should be measured, calm and thoughtful. Before they utter a single word, they should think about how those pivotal Springsteen voters in the Rust Belt will hear the message they are trying to convey. Those swing voters can be convinced, and democrats have swayed them before, so instead of calling them racists or idiots or misogynists because they voted Trump, liberals should lick their wounds and then set out to methodically persuade them back to their point of view using logic and reason and not emotion.

 One final point, here is a piece of anecdotal evidence I will share with you. On the day after the Women’s March, I had a discussion with my neighbor here in Los Angeles. She is a woman in her late thirties originally from Pennsylvania (everyone who lives here is from somewhere else). When the subject of the Woman’s March came up she told me that “all of her female friends” had gone to the march. I was really surprised and impressed to hear this and it made me think the rally and resistance to Trump had a deep base and were very wide spread. I then rattled off a list of names of her friends from Pennsylvania, asking if they went to the march.

“Did Lisa go?”

 “No.”

 “Did Jenny go?”

 “No.”

 “Did Karen go?”

 “No. None of my friends from Pennsylvania went, only my friends from LA.”

 “Oh,” I said, the bigger picture becoming more clear, “but what did your Pennsylvania friends say about the march on Facebook?”

 My friend paused a moment and then replied, “They didn’t really comment on it at all.”

 This conversation is one of the reasons why I believe that Madonna and other celebrities fail so miserably when they carelessly attack Trump. Madonna and Meryl Streep’s fellow travelers in the liberal big cities will cheer their every word, but the “Springsteen voters” who can make the electoral difference in Michigan, Ohio, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, will either tune out, be turned off to the liberal cause or be turned on to Trump at the sound of celebrity political pontification, even when it comes from their idol Bruce Springsteen.

 I am sure Madonna felt invigorated giving her speech surrounded by adoring fans this past Saturday, but she won’t feel so great when she has to give another speech to the same group of down-trodden liberals after Trump’s inauguration in January of 2021. If these celebrities really care about the anti-Trump cause, they would be most wise to think long and hard before assailing him so recklessly. Everyone has the right to speak, but strategically it is sometimes best to keep your mouth shut. As the old saying goes, “better to remain quiet and be thought a fool, than to speak and remove all doubt”.

Previously published on January 24, 2017 at RT.

©2017

President Trump : A Viewer's Guide

ESTIMATED READING TIME: 2 minutes 48 seconds

WELCOME TO THE CLIP SHOW!!

President Trump has been in office for less than a week and it has already been quite a ride. In an attempt to try and understand the man we are dealing with in the Oval Office, I have put together a collection of scenes from films. These scenes highlight the myths and archetypes that are alive and well and living at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. It would be wise for you, dear reader, to seek out and watch these films in their entirety again, or for the first time, in order to get a primer on what we have in store for the next four to eight years. 

So, sit back, relax, and enjoy a preview of our potential future and a glimpse into the psyche and soul of America's 45th President, Donald J. Trump as brought to you by the art of cinema. 

1. A FACE IN THE CROWD

A Face in the Crowd, is directed by Elia Kazan and stars Andy Griffith, yes, THAT Andy Griffith, as a drunken, southern, ne'er do well, con artist who is blessed with an intoxicating charm and a gift for the gab. Griffith's performance is outstanding, as is Kazan's direction, but what makes the film worth watching now is to see the prescient representation of the money and power-hungry huckster and charlatan that lives deep in the soul of Trump, and that many American's have fallen prey to. Here is a brief scene to give you a taste, but please check out the film in its entirety when you have a chance, it is remarkably well done.

2. CITIZEN KANE

Citizen Kane is an easy choice, so easy that even a dimwitted buffoon like Chris Matthews could and did pick up on it, making a documentary last year titled Citizen Trump. I bring it up here because it is really uncanny how Trump and Kane are thematically intertwined. Trump's narcissism is born out of a childhood father wound, just as Kane's egomania is born out of his childhood wound. Both men have spent their entire lives pursuing their Rosebud, and the world has had to suffer the consequences of that hole in their psyche. As further proof of Kane as Trump, here he is giving a political speech where he promises to lock up his corrupt opponent. Sound familiar?

3. THE APOSTLE

The Apostle is a brilliant film showcasing a mesmerizing performance from one of the all-time greats, Robert Duvall. In this scene we get a glimpse of what it must be like for Donald Trump at 4 a.m. when his fragile ego and pulsating father wound are screaming out for recognition as a sign that he has some value and worth. As Duvall's character rants to God, imagine Trump, sweaty and agitated, taking to twitter to find validation and redemption in conquering imagined enemies and getting revenge for imagined slights.  

4. NIXON

Oliver Stone's Nixon, is one of his underrated masterpieces. Sir Anthony Hopkins gives a magnificent performance as Pre-Trump America's most insecure president. This scene is a glimpse of President Nixon doing his best Trump impersonation, firing anyone who doesn't cow to his demands. Nixon's resentment of elites and low self-esteem fueled his self-destructive tendencies, no doubt Trump will fall prey to the same egoic traps. Please go watch Nixon for a best-case scenario preview of the Trump administration. 

5. THERE WILL BE BLOOD

Daniel Plainview, the lead character in There Will Be Blood, has the same hole in his soul as Donald Trump. Plainview must win at all costs and destroy his enemies no matter what the price. Plainview, like Trump, takes every slight personally, even where none exist. And he will move mountains to exact his revenge and stand a top those who looked down their noses at him. This scene is what I imagine Trump would be like at a dinner with the Bush family and the establishment Republicans. 

6. THERE WILL BE BLOOD - MILKSHAKE SCENE

Daniel Day-Lewis is one of the great actors of our time, and in There Will Be Blood he pulls out all the stops. This scene, which is the end of the film, is what I imagine Trump would be like when he meets with the democratic party. Trump stole their milkshake, their old-time economic populist message, and he makes them beg and plead for him to stop tormenting them. Plainview goes mad in his quest for respect and revenge, and I don't doubt that Trump will go similarly insane.

7. APOCALYPSE NOW

Apocalypse Now is one of the greatest films ever made. This scene along the Do Long Bridge, perfectly captures the chaotic madness of America's war in Vietnam. I think it also captures the pandemonium and disorder that will descend upon the American government under the rule of Trump.

"Who's the commanding officer here? "

"Ain't you?"

"Hey soldier, you know who's in command here?"

"Yeah"

That sums it up perfectly.

8. WALL STREET

Not surprisingly, Oliver Stone gets a second film on the list. Wall Street is the inspiration for many, if not most, of the guys working on Wall Street back in my day and today, except they don't see Gordon Gekko as a villain, they revere him as an idol. Michael Douglas' Gekko is a masterful acting job, and his lesson to Bud Fox on capitalism should be taught to every child in school when they learn of President Trump's reign. Gekko is how Trump sees himself in his minds eye…the business acumen, the toughness, the brains, the guile. But in reality Trump is a silver-spooned brat who was born on third base and thinks he hit a triple. I know Gordon Gekko, and Donald Trump is no Gordon Gekko.

9. WALL STREET - GREED IS GOOD

You can't have a list of movie scenes about a rich douchebag like Trump without having Gordon Gekko's iconic "greed is good" speech. Gekko's brilliant monologue is compelling and convincing. If Trump were wise, he'd just play this clip at his first State of the Union address, drop the mic and walk off the stage, because this is America's unquestioned mantra, and has been from time immemorial.

10. NETWORK

Another easy choice, Network is one of the great films of all-time and is so prescient about our current state of affairs that it is eery. Trump is Howard Beale, a man who tapped into the resentment and rage that seethes just beneath the surface of our arrogant and delusional American exceptionalism. Trump understands what none of the establishment fools can grasp, that people don't care about solutions, or ideas, or policy, they just want to feel...SOMETHING. Sometimes they want to feel good, sometimes they want to feel angry. Trump is catharsis for the anger that is bubbling up from the dark shadow of our nation and enveloping the collective consciousness. 

11. NETWORK - THE WORLD IS BUSINESS

A second scene from Network reveals what I imagine to be the monologue/conversation that the Deep State has with President Trump if he actually tries to govern as an economic populist. Paddy Chayefsky's script perfectly captures the the truth of our world, and cuts through the propaganda and bullshit that we gorge upon everyday at the mainstream/commercial media trough.

12. DR. STRANGELOVE

In Kubrick's cold war masterpiece, the world is brought to the brink of destruction and beyond, but thankfully we have the comedic genius of Peter Sellers showing us a feckless U.S. president in action. When the shit hits the fan, and it most certainly will, Trump's adolescent bluster will be a mask for the scared whimper of Trump's lonely little inner boy. President Merkin Muffley is Trump without the combover, stripped of all his defenses.

13. DR. STRANGELOVE - ASTONOSHINGLY GOOD IDEA

Trump, ever the lecherous pervert, will be easily manipulated by those trying to control him who will tap into his more base instincts. No doubt the intelligence community and military industrial complex are setting honey traps for him at this very moment. I am sure Trump's administration are making a list of the most desirable candidates to accompany our pussy grabbing Commander in Chief into the bunker. President Trump and his little hands will have his pick of all the beauties in the Miss Post-Apocalyptic World Pageant!!

That's it folks. A festering father wound, malignant narcissism and an Oedipal complex, and that's not even the half of it. If you think that's bad, imagine how mentally and emotionally ill the nation that elected him is!

Hope you enjoyed our fun little jaunt through some great films and outstanding acting to get a taste of the archetypal demons that hound the psyche of the most powerful man on the planet. See you at the funhouse.

©2017 

As Ringling Brothers Closes Its Doors, Cirque du Trump and the Media Clownshow Takes Center Stage

ESTIMATED READING TIME : 5 minutes 01 seconds.

This past Saturday, January 14th, Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus announced they are ending their 146 year run as The Greatest Show on Earth. Concidentially, a new circus, The Cirque du trump and Media Clownshow, is poised to take its place.

The term "synchronicity", loosely defined as a "meaningful coincidence", came to my mind when I learned of the news that Ringling Brothers was shutting down this coming May. After the freak show that was the 2016 election, the carnival that has been the Turmp transition and the media circus that has covered them both, it strikes me as a "meaningful coincidence" that The Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus has decided they can't hold the public's attention any longer. The circus market is officially saturated since the most astonishing media spectacle the world has ever known is coming to the public square for at least a four year engagement.

The Ringling Brothers Circus bought the Barnum & Bailey Circus in 1906, with the two shows officially combined to perform together for the first time in 1919. The new circus replacing it, the Cirque du trump and Media Clownshow, is a child of circus marriage too, between the Trump Circus, which has been operating for the last forty years or so with a P.T. Barnum-esque level of commitment to self-promotion, and the repugnant Media Circus, also known as The Clownshow, which has been lying, distorting  and self-aggrandizing, since at least the time of William Randolph Hearst.

THE GREATEST SHOW ON EARTH

Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus gave themselves the moniker "The Greatest Show on Earth", but Trump, with his improbable 2016 election victory, is undoubtedly the "Greatest Showmen on Earth", better than Barnum, Bailey and all of the Ringling Brothers combined. Naturally, Trump is the unquestioned ringleader of Cirque du Trump and Media Clownshow. He is part carnival barker, part high wire act, part clown, part acrobat and part lion-tamer. Like the carnival barker he will draw viewers to the show with his curiously flamboyant hair and bold declarations of remarkable abilities and accomplishments. Like the tightrope walker he will leave everyone on the edge of their seats with his death-defying (hopefully) foreign, military and economic policy. Like the clown he will amuse and offend millions with his defensive midnight tweet storms. Like the acrobat, he will astound and amaze with his ability to politically contort and contradict himself, sometimes even in the span of a single sentence. And finally, like the lion-tamer, Trump will manipulate the mindless media to do what he wants, when he wants, either by throwing them a distracting piece of read meat, or cracking the whip on their backsides.

"I'M FUNNY HOW, I MEAN FUNNY LIKE I'M A CLOWN, I AMUSE YOU?"  - TOMMY DEVITO, GOODFELLAS

What makes Cirque du Trump's accompanying Media Clownshow so entertaining is that they are unaware of their comedic brilliance. Examples of their gut-busting comedy abound, like when they rail against the scourge of fake news…while reporting a plethora of fake news. Or how they breathlessly declare that Intel reports are "definitive and devastating" proof of Russian interference in the U.S. election, but then also say the same dispatch is entirely evidence-free. Or how with stern-faced seriousness, they broadcast a story on a dossier that alleges that Donald Trump not only adorns his buildings with gold, but likes to watch people shower in it too. The ribald comedy of the "Golden Shower" story is two-fold. First, it is a story so vacuous and devoid of any substance or proof that even a feckless shill like Bob Woodward describe it as a "garbage dossier". Secondly, the unfolding of this story is similar to the Iraq War, where Bush officials would anonymously give a quote to the New York Times saying Saddam had WMD's, and then go on television and say, "hey, see what the New York Times is reporting?…Saddam has WMD's!!" 

These jesters of the Media Clownshow think they're cutting Trump down to size with these poorly sourced and paper thin Russian hacking and golden shower stories, but they are really inoculating him against more serious and substantial charges that may come his way in the future.  

"CLOWNS TO THE LEFT OF ME, JOKERS TO THE RIGHT, HERE I AM STUCK IN THE MIDDLE WITH YOU" - STEALERS WHEELS

While the Media Clownshow may get second billing, without it the Cirque du Trump would not exist. The curious thing about Trump and the media, while they both venomously hate each other, they also desperately need each other. 

What is remarkable considering their disdain of him, is that the pancake-faced, tragic-comic buffoons on the mainstream media never failed to deliriously cover live, every single rally and speech (not to mention tweet) Trump delivered during the campaign. Their standard approach would be to show Trump's speech, with fingers crossed a fight breaks out or he says something outrageous, and then mournfully recount either the fight that broke out the outrageous thing he said, or how awful he was. Trump strategically used his free television time to engage in attacks upon those giving him free television time, thus sparking a narcissistic - vanity cycle where the mainstream media played upon his vanity by focusing on him so often, while he played upon their vanity by focusing on them so often, and thus both parties prospered.

VIDEO LINK

With the unwitting aid of the mainstream media, Trump, the billionaire plutocrat, was able to convince middle Americans that he was on their side simply because they shared the same arrogant antagonists. These middle Americans saw the establishment media belittling Trump and thought they looked down on him, just like they looked down on them. Like a scene out of Tod Browning's iconic 1931 film Freaks, these folks went to the polls saying the mantra, "one of us, one of us, one of us." The great lesson of he 2016 election is that having the proper enemies can get you pretty far, even all the way to the White House.

Donald Trump won the presidency by attacking an out of touch and despised mainstream media, and the media made millions and millions of dollars by covering his attacks on them. Like the joining of the Ringling Brothers Circus with the Barnum & Bailey Circus nearly a hundred years ago, the Cirque du Trump and Media Clownshow has been a wildly successful merger for everyone involved, except of course, for the people of the United States. 

"SEND IN THE CLOWNS, DON'T BOTHER, THEY'RE HERE" - STEPHEN SONDHEIM

And finally, while the Cirque du Trump and Media Clownshow will no doubt be entertaining, this next four or eight years will be a most perilous time for our country and the world. History shows us that a circus can end tragically. For example, The Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey's Circus used to use a mixture of paraffin wax melted in gasoline to waterproof their Big Top tent. In 1944, during a performance in Hartford, Connecticut, either by accident or an act of arson, no one knows for sure, the Big Top went top in flames. The resulting inferno and ensuing stampede killed 167 people and injured 700, making it one of the worst fires in American history. 

Trump now takes power with a constitution that has been deeply weakened after continuous assaults by both Bush and Obama, who have, through their myopic governance, paved a way for a demagogue like Trump to freely follow his more imperial instincts. In addition to this constitutional decay, we've had a dramatic deterioration of civic institutions, coupled with a hapless, untrustworthy and unserious press, and our national Big Top has most definitely been soaked in gasoline. Maybe it will function properly and keep the rain off of our heads. Or maybe, with a combustible personality like Trump in charge, either through his recklessness, vindictiveness or inexperience, he will accidentally or intentionally, set off a spark and ignite a conflagration that will engulf us all. 

The Cirque du Trump and Media Clownshow is coming to town folks, enjoy the show, but make sure your seat is near an exit, as you sure as hell don't want to get caught in the stampede for the doors when the big tent goes up in flames.

THIS ARTICLE WAS ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED ON SATURDAY, JANUARY 21, 2017 AT RT.

©2017

Meryl Streep, Character and Moral Authority

Estimated Reading Time : 5 Minutes 08 Seconds

Last night after finishing up some work I sat down and turned on the television just in time to catch Meryl Streep's speech when she won her much deserved lifetime achievement award at the Golden Globes. In the speech, Streep spoke out against president-elect Trump but never mentioned him by name.  Here is the speech.

Streep's speech has received a great deal of attention, both good and bad, and everyone seems to have an opinion on it. Here is mine.

I love Meryl Streep. If she isn't the greatest actress of all time, she is most definitely in the discussion. Her talent and passion for her art are only surpassed by her mastery of craft and technique. In addition to being a tremendous artist, Streep has the reputation of being a wonderful human being, kind and generous to everyone with whom she comes into contact . With all of that said, I found myself getting very angry as I watched her speech last night. I wasn't angry because I disagreed with her, I didn't, I agreed with nearly everything she said. I was angry because I was wondering, where have you been for the last eight years Meryl?

If the things Meryl Streep talked about last night meant so much to her, why didn't she speak up for them during Obama's presidency? If she is so concerned about foreigners or immigrants being singled out, why didn't she speak up when Obama deported nearly three million of them, more than any other president? If she is so concerned with "bullying" of the weak and defenseless, why didn't she speak up when Obama ordered the extra-judicial murder of Americans including a 16 year old American and then had his spokesman say the teen "should have had a better father" as being the reason he was killed ? And why didn't she speak up when Obama failed to prosecute torturers and war criminals in the Bush administration? If Streep is so concerned about protecting the press, why didn't she speak up when Obama had twice as many prosecutions of whistleblowers, eight, as all of the other presidents combined? Why didn't Streep speak up for Chelsea Manning who sat in solitary confinement for nearly a year? Or Edward Snowden who sits in exile in Russia? or Julian Assange who has been imprisoned in the Ecuadorian embassy in London for over four years now? If Meryl Streep cares about those issues as much as she passionately displayed last night, why didn't she fight for them when Obama was president? Could it be that she is actually more interested in style over substance? Political party, power and ideology over Truth?

Sadly, Streep's speech will resonate with no one outside of those who already agree with her. She will change no minds and change no policies with her words from last night. The Obama presidency was the opportunity to change things for Streep and those like her. Streep could have spoken out vociferously for immigrants, foreigners and the weakest among us during the last eight years, if she had, she may have been able to change things. She may have, with her respected standing in the public eye, been able to have gotten Chelsea Manning pardoned, or Snowden, or Assange (or Leonard Peltier for that matter). She may have been able to hold Obama accountable for the extra-judicial drone killings of Americans and gotten that policy changed and saved innocent lives that Obama calls "collateral damage". She may have been able to speak out for poor and working class people who didn't get bailed out while Wall street did, but she didn't. She may have been able to force Obama to fight for single payer healthcare and not the corporate friendly Affordable Care Act, but she kept quiet. She was silent on all of these and a host of other issues she claims to hold dear, only speaking out now that Trump is soon to be president. 

The problem with Streep staying silent during the Obama years is that she has lost all moral authority to lecture anyone. She had her chance for eight years to fight for Truth and change things, and she blew it. She stayed quiet when speaking up could have cost her something in her liberal community, but also when her voice could have really made a difference. Streep's anger may be righteous, but she has lost all moral authority and standing because she failed to speak up at a time, during the Obama years, when her critical voice would not have been so warmly welcomed by her Golden Globe compatriots. That is the sin of the Obama years, liberals stayed quiet in order to stay in power, or to support the party or to not be seen as attacking the first Black president. Whatever the reason, it was a most egregious mistake and one that they will rue for decades to come. It is when your side is in power that your voice and dedication to principles must be loudest because that is when you can actually effect change, not when those who oppose you take the reins. Speaking up against Trump now was a safe move for Meryl Streep in the largely liberal world she inhabits, speaking up against Obama during his presidency would have taken real courage.

It is not only what you say or do when you are out of power that defines your character, but what you say and do when in power that reveals your character. The democrats and Obama supporters revealed their lack of character and cowardice by not being true to their supposed values and speaking out forcefully against Obama when he failed to uphold the constitution and fight for the people. When Obama sided with Wall street over Main street, democrats gave him a pass. When he sided with the insurance companies and big pharma over regular working folks, democrats sat on their hands. When Obama imprisoned whistleblowers and murdered Americans without trial, democrats kept their mouths shut. Democrats revealed their character during Obama's presidency with their silence, and they no longer have any moral authority to speak out against Trump. That doesn't mean they won't speak out, it just means no one will listen or believe them when they do. The Obama presidency was a lost opportunity for democrats to prove their character and their moral authority, and they failed miserably. It will take a long time for them to ever be able prove to people that they mean what they say or are worthy of trust.

The first step for Meryl Streep, and other like-minded people, is to come out and apologize for losing their way and failing to uphold their convictions and principles during the Obama years. If Streep came out and said she was wrong to blindly support Obama, and that she is now going to be loyal to Truth above all else, then maybe…just maybe…she can regain the moral authority that is needed to change hearts, minds and policies. Will she do that? Not likely, as self-righteousness is a warm blanket few refuse in favor of the cold, hard struggle of self-reflection. Which is a shame, as Meryl Streep is an important voice that needs too be heard, it just needed to be heard for the last eight years, and not just last night.

©2017

Through the Looking Glass : Truth and Lies in Week One of 2017

Estimated Reading Time : 8 Minutes 44 Seconds

Week one of 2017 is in the books and boy oh boy was it a doozy. This most bizarre week no doubt portends the strangeness of the year to come. We are only one week into this new year and we are already through the looking glass where up is down, left is right, lie is truth, good is bad and nothing seems to make any sense whatsoever. What am I talking about…well…let's recount the week and discover the ways our world has gone topsy turvy. 

The big news of the week was the "Russia Hacking" story. Director of National Intelligence James Clapper testified before congress and assured everyone that the Russian government in general, and Putin in particular, were indeed behind the hacking of the election against Hillary Clinton. DNI Clapper followed that up by releasing a "report" by the CIA, FBI and NSA that was meant to prove his case for Russian hacking. None of that is very weird, but what was weird was how many republicans were skeptical of the intelligence community claims and how many democrats unquestioningly embraced the intelligence community claims. 

I have read the intelligence report, have you? Did you notice anything funny about the CIA report on Russian hacking into the election? Maybe I am crazy, but there is absolutely zero evidence in that report of Russian hacking or tampering in the election at all. Nothing. It is like the book reports I used to turn in in high school when I didn't read the book…which was always, because reading is for nerds. What would happen is that I wouldn't read the book and then I'd get the Cliff Notes, but I wouldn't even read those, just give them a half-assed skimming over the night before the report was due. Then I would just scratch a bunch of bullshit together in homeroom and hope to sneak by without anyone noticing I had no idea what I was talking about….sort of like what the Intelligence community just did with their hacking report. DNI Clapper turned in one hell of a whopper of a book report the other day and boy is he hoping no one actually reads it with a critical eye. What the Intelligence community did was make a bunch of assumptions, toss in some innuendo, and then played it off as some shocking new information of official Russian guilt and then let the media, and democrats, run with it. The media, of course, excitedly exclaimed that not only is this report proof that Russia hacked the election for Trump, but that Putin himself was the one who ran the whole operation…Dr. Evil style!! This entire episode is utter madness. Anyone who believes that evidence-free report needs to have their head examined. The intelligence community has been deceiving, propagandizing and fooling the populace for decades and yet the democrats cling to their every word because it means they didn't really lose the election!! 

Democrats jumped at the chance to take Clapper at his word without any evidence because it means they aren't as huge a train-wreck of a party as they fear they may be. See it wasn't their shitty candidate, or their shitty campaign, or their vacuous ideas, or their myopic political vision, no it was Putin and the mustache-twirling Russians fault that they lost. I warned democrats against embracing this Russia hacking story because it was too good to be true, and I stand by that. And if democrats would actually read the declassified report, they might not be so enamored with the intelligence community and their conclusions as to who is an enemy of the state. Let's go through the report quickly to see what I am talking about. 

First off, as I already stated, there is zero evidence presented. This report is simply a piece of paper that is meant to make "official" the leaks, which are nothing more than innuendo, that have been published across the media for weeks. The media are treating it like it is manna from heaven, but it is really regurgitated nonsense that contains nothing new. In addition to presenting zero evidence, the "sources" the document provides for their background information are embarrassingly absurd. The report uses an open source document from the internet to make their case that Russia had intent to hack the election. I am not kidding, go look at it.  The "Annex A" section (starting on Page 6, ironically enough) spends the majority of its time attacking the television channel RT (Russia Today) and blaming it for being such an effective propaganda tool for Putin to destroy American democracy. The majority of the report, in fact, is analysis of RT, which takes up 7 of the 25 pages of the report, in contrast to the actual meat of the report which takes up 5 pages.

RT is a lightning rod for the establishment as they often report on things the mainstream media would just as soon ignore. Anytime the mainstream media mention RT, they always describe it as "Kremlin controlled RT" or "Kremlin financed RT" or "Kremlin backed RT", which is pretty funny. I wonder why they don't describe the BBC as "Westminster financed or backed or controlled", or the US networks as "Washington financed, backed or controlled" or the cable channels as "Wall Street financed, backed or controlled"? Any time you hear a talking head describe RT as "Kremlin backed" immediately dismiss them as they are shoveling propaganda. Another sure fire sign of a propagandist is if they describe Putin as "former head of the KGB Putin". Yes, Putin was formerly the head of the KGB, but George HW Bush was formerly the head of the CIA, and yet no one describes him as "former head of the CIA George HW Bush", and they do not describe his son as "son of the former head of the CIA George HW Bush".  It is a simple propaganda ploy to trigger fear and distrust in the viewer and taint the story.

Getting back to the report…if democrats or liberals who are supporting it haven't read it yet,  they really should. The report gives a variety of examples of how RT attacked and undermined America's beloved democracy, the funny thing is though that many of those examples are from 2012, not 2016. Here are some of the more entertaining ones. The report states that in the lead up to the 2012 election RT introduced a new show, "Breaking the Set", hosted by Abby Martin, which "overwhelmingly focused on criticism of US and western governments". See you cannot criticize the US or western governments, that is an attack on America and democracy. Another way to look at it is that Abby Martin committed the crime of journalism. Shame on her! The hysterical part of this whole "Breaking the Set" thing being put in a report about Russian interference in the 2016 election is that "Breaking the Set" stopped airing two years before the 2016 election. Someone please buy James Clapper a calendar…and a TV Guide.

The next section of "Annex A" tells us that RT, in the lead up to the 2012 election, not the 2016 election, had the temerity to report on "alleged US election fraud and voting machine vulnerabilities". Can you believe the gall of a news agency reporting on the possibility of election fraud and voting machine vulnerabilities in the lead up to an election? RT is out of control!! You know who else reported on voting machine vulnerabilities, except unlike RT it wasn't in relation to the 2012 election, but the 2016 election? CBS and PBS just to name two. I wonder if they are Russian spies too? Probably…commie bastards!!

In the next part of Annex A, the report tells us that RT, in an effort to "highlight a lack of democracy in the United States" had "broadcast, hosted and advertised third party candidate debates". What monsters!! The lesson here is that when you are through the looking glass, more candidates, more debate and more democracy actually is an attack on democracy. According to the intel community, war is peace, slavery is freedom and ignorance is strength!!

Another section of Annex A will come as quite a shock to liberals and democrats…but in the lead up to the 2012, again, to be clear, this is not the 2016 election but the 2012 election, RT aired a documentary on Occupy Wall Street that the report described like this…"RT framed the movement (Occupy Wall Street) as a fight against the ruling class and described the current US political system as corrupt and dominated by corporations". Is there any rational and un-compromised human being on the planet who would describe the US political system any other way?

Some other parts of the Annex A section of the report say that RT "alleges widespread infringements of civil liberties, police brutality and drone use" in America. Another part says that RT is attacking the US by criticizing "alleged Wall street greed." Let that one sink in for a minute. I hope liberals and democrats are starting to understand how this report, and the intelligence community that prepared it, are not your friends, not by a long shot. Neither are they friends of Truth. 

And finally, the report claims that RT is attacking US democracy by "running anti-fracking programming, highlighting environmental issues and the impacts of public health." That is just outrageous!! How many liberals or democrats have seen Josh Fox's excellent documentary "Gasland"? Probably a lot of them. Well, they should realize that the intelligence community that they are so enamored with right now, thinks JOSH FOX IS JOSEF STALIN!! In essence, the intel community thinks Josh Fox will kill you and eat your children!! HBO is a tool of Putin!!

So, according to this report on election interference by the Russians in the 2016 election, the intelligence community writes a report that cites a russian news channel's reporting FROM 2012, that is basically in line with liberal or left leaning political positions. And democrats and the media are falling all over themselves to praise this report for its thoroughness and seriousness and attack anyone, even Glenn Greenwald, who questions in it the least. Rachel Maddow was nearly orgasmic when the report was released this week, and interestingly enough she said you should go read it, but she curiously told her viewers to only read the meat of it, which is 5 pages, and skip the "sources and methods" section, because that is longer and boring and confusing. Annex A is the sources and methods section where they only talk about RT. In other words, there are no sources, and there are no methods, there is only old speculation and assumptions. The Intel community, just like me in high school, didn't read the book or even skim the Cliff Notes, and yet the media are determined to make you not notice that. Do democrats and liberals not know this stuff? Have they not read the report? Maybe they should read it before embracing it. Dear liberals, please go read the report. Know what you are signing on to when you endorse this report. What you are signing onto to is the criminalization of your own beliefs and your own eventual demise.

It isn't only Rachel Maddow's coverage of the report and Clapper's testimony that has been both breathless and despicable.  On MSNBC the consistently deplorable Joy Ried, who is such a vacuous dimwit that she has quickly shot up that hapless network's ladder in record time, asked some bumpkin republican congressman from Nowheresville, USA whether he believed the Director of National Intelligence James Clapper or Julian Assange in regard to the Russian hacking allegations. It was an obvious "gotcha" type of moment that cable tv lives for…and watching this dope squirm was what was intended. There is just one problem with Ms. Reid's question and premise…and that is that any rational, sane human being would believe Julian Assange over DNI Clapper in a heartbeat, you know why? Because Julian Assange has never lied to them. Never. You may dislike what he has done, but he has never lied. Clapper? Clapper can't open his mouth without a swarm of lies flying out. Clapper lied to congress, which is a felony, just a few years ago in relation to the Snowden material. Has everyone lost their minds and memory all at once? Apparently the answer is yes. Assange has, at great personal expense, exposed US war crimes, Clapper, at great personal reward, has covered up his own and other war crimes. And I know it is in style at the moment to dismiss and demean Assange due to personal distaste for him, but those sex crimes charges against him reek of Intelligence community handy work.  If you think the US intel community wouldn't try and frame someone  by any means necessary, that they see as a mortal threat, you are incredibly naive.

And then there is the highest ranking democrat in the country, the loathsome Senator from New York, Chuck Schumer. Schumer went on Rachel Maddow's show last week and said that Trump better be careful because the intelligence community has "six ways to sunday to get back at you if you cross them." Think about that statement for a second. Democrats are holding up the intelligence community as the bastion of professionalism and patriotism and in the same breath are claiming the Intel community will circumvent the constitution and extra-judicially "get back" at their political enemies. If I said that same statement people would call me a conspiracy theorist and dismiss me out of hand. The ranking democrat in the country, Chuck Schumer, just said that the intelligence community will exact revenge on President Trump if he challenges them and no one bats an eye. Want to know two presidents who got on the wrong side of the intelligence community? Kennedy and Nixon. Remember how their presidency's ended? Kennedy's brains were splattered all over Jackie's nice pink suit in Dealey Plaza, and tricky Dick ignominiously gave us the "v" for victory sign and then flew off into historical oblivion after resigning. Both Kennedy's assassination and Nixon's impeachment had intelligence agency fingerprints all over them, and even some of the same intelligence operative fingerprints (I'm looking at you E. Howard Hunt). But of course thinking that, never mind saying it out loud, gets you labelled a "conspiracy theorist" and taken off the "serious person" list. But now we have the ranking Democrat directly saying it out loud on national television as a threat to the president-elect of the United States. I do not know how exactly this will play out, but I guarantee you that it will not end well. 

Speaking of repugnant Senators, John McCain and his common-law wife,  Senator Lindsay Graham aka The Southern Dandy, of course are banging the war drums claiming Russia's alleged hacking is an act of war. McCain and Graham are hawks who have never meet a war they didn't love. Democrats and liberals are empowering the war party by embracing this evidence-free report. You want a war with Russia, keep on taking the intel community at their word and I promise you will get one. It is what they want and they have convinced you that is what you want too.

Fake news has also been a major talking point of the media and even the intel community in the last week. As with the Russian hacking story, the fake news story is most bizarre. The mainstream media has claimed that fake news is what lead to Trump beating Clinton, as voters were misinformed as to the real facts and stories. The media have used a plethora of polls that say that Trump voters were terribly misinformed about the election, for instance overwhelming numbers of Trump voters believe he won the popular vote. As we know, this is not true, and so the media have used this point to say that fake news tainted the well so to speak. Of course, the media fail to mention their own part in misinforming the populace and how that is reflected in the media. For instance, there are polls that show how Clinton voters now believe that Russia actually hacked voting machines and changed votes in Trump's favor. This is untrue, even by the flimsy intel report standards, but the media would never blame themselves for this mis-information. 

In addition, the main generator of fake news, is the mainstream media. Just in the last few weeks the Washington Post has published the fakey-ist of fake news stories which much fanfare, but only after time and attention has passed have they sent out little noticed retractions. The WaPo stories were about the alleged fake news generated by Russian propaganda sources about the US election. The  PropOrNot Russian propaganda website lists made by an unnamed and unchecked source, which the Post published without questioning, is total nonsense. The other story was about Russian hacking as well, this time about how the Rooskies hacked into the Vermont power grid!! The story was absurd on its face but that didn't stop everyone from re-tweeting it and spreading it and shouting form the mountain tops about it. Of course, when the story turned out to be untrue, the Post didn't hype that fact, they sheepishly put a small disclaimer on top of it. The damage was done already…which is how fake news works. It is all about manufacturing consensus, consent and content…which is exactly why the Russia hacking the election story is fake news as well. The lack of evidence and proof don't matter to people because the story tells them what they want to hear, and the damage is done. Truth has no meaning in an empire of lies, and we are the ruling empire at the moment.

Speaking of truth, there has also been a great deal of talk about how with Donald Trump as president we now live in a post-truth world, where Truth or facts don't matter.  That may be true, but it isn't entirely Trump's doing…as the Washington Post keeps proving over and over again. Even the aforementioned Joy Reid, a vociferous attack dog against fake news and post-truth Trump, is guilty of spreading fake news and not correcting to fact. Ms. Reid, and the ludicrous "Russia" expert, the sleepy-eyed, charlatan Malcolm Nance, spread the lie pre-election that the DNC emails were proven to have been tampered with and altered. This is factually untrue, but Ms. Reid and Mr. Nance have never retracted those statements. Just like Trump, they have little regard for Truth.

The bottom line is this regarding the intel report, fake news and our post-truth world, if you take anything at face value you are a fool. Only a dupe or a dope, or both, would believe a word the intel community tells them. A brief look at recent and not-so recent history shows us that the American intelligence community are professional liars who will do anything and everything to obscure and destroy the Truth. Remember Clapper lying about surveillance? Remember the Iraq War? Remember the torture report and all the dirty tricks surrounding it? Remember the Gulf War? Remember Iran-Contra? Remember Nicaragua? El Salvador? Venezuela? Brazil? Argentina? Cuba? Iran and the Shah? Vietnam? Laos? Cambodia? I mean, c'mon, how dumb do you have to be to fall for the intel community bullshit again?

And in terms of Russia and Putin, it is most certainly possible that they hacked the election. I have no illusions about Putin being some saint, but regardless of that, what I demand in relation to any news or charges is evidence. I have yet to see compelling evidence that Russia shot down MH-17, or invaded Ukraine or committed war crimes in Syria or hacked the US election. That doesn't mean they definitely didn't do those things, only that I have not seen compelling evidence that they did. And until I see evidence I will not believe those claims, and neither should you. 

This past week is a wonderful launching pad for the chaos, disorder and madness to be unleashed in 2017. The media is abysmal, do not trust a word they say. The intel community are professional liars…never believe them…ever. Trump is incapable of telling any truth, ignore everything he utters. Trust nothing and no one. If someone makes a claim demand to actually SEE the evidence, not some report that is meant to appease people who will never read it and is void of any proof. Demand to see actual, tangible evidence, or consider it a lie.

And finally, if you are dismayed about the post-truth world we now inhabit, make it a practice to be loyal to the Truth above all else. Be loyal to the Truth above ideology, political party and even country. The Truth shall set you free, so stop being a slave to the lies and disinformation coming from "official sources". We are through the looking glass here people, we need to cast off wishful thinking and anchor ourselves to Truth or all will be lost. The road ahead is going to be very disorienting, I mean just last week Sarah Palin wrote an apology to Julian Assange and told people to go see Oliver Stone's Snowden… we are most definitely through the looking glass. Maybe if we can hold onto the Truth for dear life, we might just be able to make it through all of this madness.

©2017

Election 2016 Aftermath : A Practical Handbook to Survive and Thrive in the Era of Trump

Estimated Reading Time : 15 minutes 37 seconds

"IN THE MIDST OF CHAOS, THERE IS ALSO OPPORTUNITY" - SUN TZU

A little over a month ago Donald Trump won the U.S. presidential election. I was in the minority as I was not one of those shocked by this outcome, but many people were and still are positively shocked and maybe even shell-shocked. Hillary supporters in particular were blindsided by the election and are very angry, hurt and upset about the result. Even though I am not a Democrat or a Clinton supporter (nor am I a Republican or Trump supporter), I truly understand how they feel and I even have empathy for them and their situation. That said, as I have witnessed Clinton supporters react to the election results over the last month on Facebook, Twitter, Blogs, in the media and elsewhere, I have been struck by how counter-productive their reactions have been. 

The biggest problem with the Clintonites reactions to the election are just that, they have been reactions and not responses. A reaction is emotion based and a response is reason based. That in a nutshell is not only what is wrong with the Clinton supporters post-election actions but also with the entire Clinton campaign. Emotionalism is the scourge of our time and the post election reaction by Clinton supporters proves this point almost as much as the emotionalist Trump campaign's victory. 

"THERE ARE TWO WAYS TO BE FOOLED. ONE IS TO BELIEVE WHAT ISN'T TRUE; THE OTHER IS TO REFUSE TO BELIEVE WHAT IS." - SOREN KEIRKEGAARD

"GET THEE TO A NUNNERY, GO. FAREWELL. OR IF THOU WILT NEEDS MARRY, MARRY A FOOL, FOR WISE MEN KNOW WELL ENOUGH WHAT MONSTERS YOU MAKE OF THEM" - HAMLET

A great example of this Clintonite reaction was from a reader of my post-election piece who wrote in response to it that because I was a "straight, white male" my opinion wasn't worth anything and should be ignored. This reader is an unemployed, middle-aged, white woman and a vociferous Clinton supporter. I understand her frustration and frankly her embarrassment at having been so catastrophically wrong about the election in every single way, so her emotionalism is to be expected, but that doesn't make it any less useful as an example or any less harmful to her alleged long term political interests. Her reaction to my piece was to, unintentionally no doubt, prove the point of it, namely that identity politics was what painted Clinton and the democrats into a corner from which she could not escape. So she reduced my argument to being nothing more than my identity. She then said that she could explain to me why I was so wrong but that she wouldn't because I "just wouldn't get it." This is a wonderful rhetorical device, refuse to actually engage an argument by blaming it on the stupidity of your opponent rather than your inability to articulate it. 

Sadly, this ill-informed woman is a perfect example of the failure of the Clinton campaign, she feels entitled to not have to actually make an argument to persuade people to her side. This foolish woman refused to acknowledge the obvious in our situation, namely that I, regardless of my sexual preference, race or gender was right about the election and she was spectacularly wrong, because that would undermine her perceived intellectual and moral superiority, which is essential for her to maintain her self-delusional identity in the world. What struck me most about this exchange was that it foreshadows the strategic and tactical ineffectiveness to come from democrats as they wander in the political wilderness for the next two years which, with this lack of thoughtfulness, will most likely turn into 8 or more years. 

"YOU CANNOT ESCAPE THE RESPONSIBILITY OF TOMORROW BY EVADING IT TODAY" - ABRAHAM LINCOLN

From what I have seen coming from democrats and Clinton supporters since the election, it is blatantly obvious that they have not only learned nothing from their failure, but they do not want to learn anything from it either. Hillary supporters have pointed their finger at the F.B.I., James Comey, Vladimir Putin, the Russians, fake news, the electoral college, racists, Nazis and misogynists in an attempt to cast blame on why they lost. This finger pointing and blaming is born out of an emotionalist arrogance and does nothing more than highlight and solidify the actual reason Clinton lost, her inability to be honest with herself and others and take responsibility. Clinton supporters can bemoan all sorts of external evils that conspired to take them down, but until they can muster the humility to actually look in the mirror and take full responsibility for their historical blindness, their lack of any coherent argument, their shocking tone-deafness, the atrocious campaign they ran and the dreadful candidate they put up, they will not learn anything and will not be able to mount a successful insurgency against Trump in the coming years.

This failure to learn anything or take any responsibility is not only bad news for democrats and Clinton supporters, but for our entire nation as well. If Clinton supporters truly believe Trump is as dangerous and tyrannical as they say he is, and he very well may be, then they would be most wise to stop thinking and acting emotionally and start thinking and acting strategically in order to stop him. Which is why I have written this little handbook on a strategic and tactical approach for the democrats to use in the coming years. 

I know, I know, why on earth would anyone want to read a handbook on how to get back into power written by the horrors of horrors…a straight, white male? Great question, sweetheart. (I'm kidding!!) The answer is that straight, white men, and some gay ones too, have conquered and ruled the planet for centuries. For good or for ill, and a whole hell of a lot of it has been for ill, that is the reality of the world in which we live. With that in mind, it might be a wise move to listen to a straight, white male when it comes to issues of power and conquest if you want to conquer and rule. If you want to sit on the throne, you might want to know how to think like the king. And it might be an even smarter move to listen to this straight, white male who just so happened to be right about the election when you were so fantastically and spectacularly  wrong. So, democrats and Clintonites, ignore this handbook at your own peril. Now onto the strategic and tactical guide.

"IT'S NOT PERSONAL, IT'S STRICTLY BUSINESS" - MICHAEL CORLEONE

Michael Corleone's point is critical to understand if you want to be successful in stopping the Trump agenda and his quest for a second term. The unemployed, middle-aged woman I referenced at the beginning of this piece was very heavily emotionally and psychologically invested in the Clinton campaign. This woman took the campaign, and Hillary's loss, very, very personally. I understand, I totally get it. Clinton was the first female candidate of a major political party and was thought to be a shoo-in for the presidency. Many women projected their struggles onto Hillary and took her success to be their success. This is a natural and normal thing to do especially when her opponent was such an obnoxious, misogynistic asshole. The problem though is that when Hillary supporters projected themselves onto her, it became all too easy for them to stop thinking logically and to start thinking emotionally. It is human nature when we take things personally to react emotionally, but reacting emotionally almost always makes things worse and not better. We have all been in the situation where we are pissed about something and we furiously write an email to the person who has angered us and then we send it and we escalate a situation that needn't be escalated and we create more drama and despair than we needed in our lives. The best course of action in cases like this is to wait 24 hours before sending the email. We all know this intellectually, but goodness knows we don't always act according to our intellect. Delaying the email gives us a chance to shift out of emotionalism and its myopic, limiting thought process and into rationalism which is much more cognitively expansive. It doesn't always work that way, as humans have the uncanny ability to stay pissed for a long time, or at least I do, but it usually works. Daybreak can bring with it a new perspective and a wiser decision that ceases our pain rather than exacerbates it. 

"I RANT, THEREFORE I AM" - DENNIS MILLER

"NEVER INTERRUPT YOUR ENEMY WHEN HE IS MAKING A MISTAKE" - NAPOLEON

"THE SUPREME ART OF WAR IS TO SUBDUE THE ENEMY WITHOUT FIGHTING" - SUN TZU

Unfortunately, due to taking the Clinton loss personally, and the emotionalism that comes with that, since the election there has been a spate of Facebook rants from Hillary supporters bemoaning the outcome and belittling the fools who voted for Trump. Some have even become so enamored with their diatribes that they have filmed themselves reading those same rants (and even though they wrote the rant, they chose not to memorize it, which is the height of laziness) and then posted that as well.  These rants usually involve calling all Trump voters racist, numerous mentions of the "KKK", charges of misogyny, xenophobia and stupidity along with the demand that anyone who voted for Trump or for a third party "unfriend" the ranter. Sadly, these breathless, yet heart felt rants, have the exact opposite effect of which the ranter intended, which is to strengthen their side and weaken the other side. I hate to be the one to tell these ranters, but what your rants actually do is strengthen your opponents and weaken you.

These ranter's opinions are as valid as anyone else's and they are entitled to them, but their arguments are vapid. These rants are not arguments at all so much as tantrums. They have all the intellectual heft and political sophistication of the backstage bitching at a child beauty pageant. These rants don't actually make any arguments, they only make accusations. And while these ranters obviously think they are brilliant and are exceedingly proud of their diatribes enough to film them and share those cringe-worthy bits of cinematic detritus, they are the equivalent of a toddler who throws their poop against the wall and is so proud of it because they think they have created art. Of course, it is only the poop throwing toddler alone who believes their mess is praiseworthy. While the poop wall may be vaguely reminiscent of a Pollock, it isn't going to hang in the Guggenheim, it will only be cleaned up and forgotten as quickly as possible. 

The truth is these rants aren't meant to change anyone's minds at all, only to buttress the beliefs of the like minded. There is nothing wrong with that except the problem is that these rants don't happen in a liberal vacuum, they are posted for the entire world to see. The world not only includes the potential allies of third party voters whom you want to "unfriend", but also includes those marginal Trump voters, all 77,000 of them in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan who flipped from voting Obama twice and now made the difference for Trump. 

While It is important to remember that there are an overwhelming majority of Trump voters who will never switch their allegiance, so trying to convince them is fruitless, it is equally important to remember there are a pivotal and key group of Trump supporters who can be convinced to change their allegiance. Those are the 77,000 voters that you need for victory in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan. By lumping those 77,000 in with the other more rabid Trump voters, you are alienating crucial potential allies. Your empty-headed, emotionalist vitriol is forcing people away from your point of view and your candidates and towards Trump. It is sort of like when Hillary won the nomination and her supporters, like those now ranting, decided it was still a good idea to keep attacking "Bernie Bros" and all of their "mansplainin'". How did that work out for you, Sugartits? (Again…I am kidding!!) In other words, these ranters are cutting off their nose to spite their face. I am sure their rant feels good now, but it won't feel so good at Trump's next election victory party in 2020.

Another serious issue with these arrogantly self-serving tirades is the call for "unfriending" of anyone who dared disagree with the pompous ranter. Epistemic closure and living in a bubble is exactly how democrats got themselves into this whole mess in the first place. To demand even more epistemic rigidity and isolation is so mind-numbingly moronic as to be amazing. I understand that these ranters are irritated by people who disagree with them, but you just lost an election because your arguments were so remarkably flaccid. Shutting out any contrarian opinions now will only lead to more severe political and intellectual impotence. Arguments need to be forged in fire and strengthened by opposition. If you cannot sharpen your arguments against your enemies or even mildly oppositional forces, your arguments will atrophy and wither in the delusional comfort of your epistemic bubble. Calls for immediate removal of all oppositional opinions is literally sticking your head up your own ass. What is desperately needed now is not a tighter bubble, but the humility to admit you were wrong and to sharpen your arguments against the rock of those who oppose you. I totally understand why these ranters want to only shout and not to engage, life seems easier that way, but that is a one way ticket into further political and intellectual oblivion. Being on the battlefield of ideas is scary, especially if, like these ranters, you are unarmed, so to those folks I say arm yourself and find some courage. And when I say arm yourself, I don't mean just regurgitate what you heard on Rachel Maddow or what you read on DailyKos, that is not strengthening your arguments or nurturing vibrant intellectual debate, that is just one more exercise in confirmation bias.

"I NEVER HAD A PROBLEM RESISTING SOMEBODY THAT I KNEW WAS GOING TO BREAK MY HEART" - JENNIFER GARNER

Both physically and psychologically, it is human instinct to become more rigid and resist when someone pushes you. This resistance instinct is a natural occurrence when someone calls you names, like racist or misogynist, and pretends to know what you feel deep in your heart. The form of resistance taken in the face of these charges is for those being called racists to simply join with those who are in opposition to their attacker. In recent weeks, things have ratcheted up to the point where there are even social media/video rants from Clintonites that demand that Trump voters PROVE to them that they aren't racist. This is just the most self-serving horseshit imaginable. These social media ranters build a straw man, that all Trump voters, including those who voted for Obama twice, are racists, and then demand that these voters PROVE to them that they aren't racist. These "prove it' challenges are absurd and are just the most self-righteous, self-satisfying and self-defeating tactic imaginable. The natural, normal, human response for any person exposed to a vapid challenge like that is to take the opposing position against those accusing you. This is what is happening when "Springsteen voters" see and hear these social media rants, they simply shake their heads and think they made the right decision not so much voting for Trump, but voting against Clinton and those holier-than-thou haranguing asshats.

"VICTORIOUS WARRIORS WIN FIRST AND THEN GO TO WAR, WHILE DEFEATED WARRIORS GO TO WAR FIRST AND THEN SEEK TO WIN." - SUN TZU

In addition, these jeremiads play into every single stereotype that hardcore Trump voters have of liberals and democrats, namely that they are entitled, arrogant, selfish, whiny, know-it-alls. Seeing these rants gives these hardcore Trumpists a tremendous amount of joy, pleasure and satisfaction. These diatribes give aid and comfort to the people you want to defeat and also no shortage of ammunition to be used to keep those 77,000 Springsteen voters in the fold and Trump in power. With this in mind, these rants look less like rallying the base to action and more about a form of self-aggrandizing masturbation.

While these screeds may be a way for the individual ranters, especially the desperately thirsty, fame-whoring ones inhabiting Los Angeles, to try and raise their public profile and maybe even save their moribund careers by getting a job on a political tv show (The Daily Show...fingers crossed!! Better yet…Full Frontal with Samantha Bee!!! Girl Power!!!), they certainly aren't a way to strategically stop Trump and his minions from destroying all the things these ranters claim to hold dear. So stop with the selfish, transparent and desperate rants. Stop with the weak kneed emotionalism. Grow a pair of balls (and yes, I am a misogynist for saying that only people with testicles are tough, I am an evil minion of the patriarchy, you caught me Buttercup…again, just kidding!!), get up off the canvas, brush yourself off and get back in the ring. Except this time go into that ring thinking strategically, not emotionally, and maybe you won't get knocked on your ass again. Which brings us to...

"NEVER LET ANYONE OUTSIDE THE FAMILY KNOW WHAT YOU'RE THINKING." - DON CORLEONE

"LET YOUR PLANS BE DARK AND IMPENETRABLE AS NIGHT, AND WHEN YOU MOVE FALL LIKE A THUNDERBOLT." - SUN TZU

Don Corleone said this to Sonny when he revealed to The Turk his surprise that the Tartaglias would guarantee the Corleone's investment in the drug trade. This seemingly minor error by Sonny led to the assassination attempt on Don Corleone, war amongst the five families, Sonny's death on the causeway, Michael's murder of the Turk and a police Captain, Michael's year in exile and the murder of his wife Appollonia, and eventually Michael settling all family business by killing all the family's enemies. In other words…if Sonny hadn't let someone outside the family know what he was thinking, then a whole lot of people wouldn't have been killed. The same applies to Clintonites and the election aftermath. 

As I stated previously, the social media rants against Trump voters may feel good when your doing them, but they are terribly counterproductive. Emotionalists want to feel good in the moment, strategists want to succeed in the long run. So stop with the rants already. That said…just because you shouldn't let anyone outside the family know what your thinking, doesn't mean you shouldn't think it. You can think every Trump voter is racist all you want, even though it is obviously not true. I am not telling you what to think, I am telling you what to do and how to succeed. I also don't give a flying fuck how you feel. If you want to get angry or be hurt or upset, or if you are afraid, go ahead, just don't let your enemies know that is how you feel. Tie your courage to to the sticking post. Be rational, be reasonable, be logical, and be calm in front of your enemies and then plot to eviscerate them when the time is right. 

In fact, I would tell you that instead of ranting on social media where everyone can see what you are thinking (or not-thinking as the case may be) or feeling and where you strengthen your enemies and weaken yourself…just set aside some time everyday to have a nice, private, little two minutes hate. If you have a friend with similar political leanings, call them once a day, or email them and only them, and rant for two minutes about how awful Trump or his voters are. Unleash all of your pent up hostility and rage during this two minutes. Spew forth all of the vitriol you can muster. That way you purge yourself of the emotionalism that cripples your arguments and you keep yourself sane and logical for the great fight ahead.

"THE WISE MUSICIANS ARE THOSE WHO PLAY WHAT THEY CAN MASTER." - DUKE ELLINGTON

"MOVE SWIFT AS THE WIND AND CLOSELY FORMED AS THE WOOD. ATTACK LIKE THE FIRE AND BE STILL AS THE MOUNTAIN." - SUN TZU

Another thing to strategically keep in mind regarding emotionalism is that emotion can be a valuable weapon in the hands of a master. The problem is that your opponent, Donald Trump, is a master of emotion. Trump is the archetypal trickster, and he can not only manipulate the emotions of his supporters to his benefit, but can manipulate his opponents emotions to his advantage as well. Trump masterfully plays democrats and the media to react the way he wants them to by pushing their emotional buttons. He tweets something outrageous in order to distract from a story he doesn't like (the flag burning nonsense), or he meets with Kanye West or something like that. Trump is constantly toying with democrats and the media like a cat with a mouse, and they become victims of their own emotionalism.

It is vitally important to remember this, in the battle for power, emotion is Trump's weapon, not yours. If you take Trump on, on emotional grounds, he will destroy you. You must take him on rationally, using unemotional language and arguments. Trump is a narcissist who desperately needs an emotional foil in order to maintain his self image. By not engaging him emotionally, and not reacting to his tweets or what he says, you neuter him. Without a foil, Trump flails about like a frantically drowning man. Trump needs an enemy to emotionally invigorate and engage him, if you do not give that to him, he spins out of control, then withers and dies. Emotionalism is Trump's power source, cold rationalism is his Kryptonite.

"ACTIONS SPEAK LOUDER THAN WORDS BUT NOT NEARLY AS OFTEN." - MARK TWAIN

So in order to weaken Trump you must ignore his tweets…all of them, no matter how infuriating they may be. Ignore every single word he says as well, no matter what. Ignore his neo-Nuremberg rallies and his playing to the crowd with his loaded language. You must understand that Trump's words are meaningless and are meant to make you react and not respond. Do not let him control you so easily. Instead, only respond, not react, to the things he actually does, never what he says. For instance, if Trump nominates people you dislike for cabinet positions, quietly plot to undermine them. Do not talk about them publicly, but conspire to dig up dirt on them and make their confirmation a living hell. Let Trump react to what you do, not the other way around. And when Trump reacts to you, ignore his reaction and keep on calmly working to undermine and destroy him.

"SO IN WAR, THE WAY IS TO AVOID WHAT IS STRONG, AND STRIKE AT WHAT IS WEAK." - SUN TZU

Also, Trump's great strength is in form and appearance as he is the ultimate improvisational showman, and his great weakness is detail, structure and function. So attack Trump's weakness, detail and function, with your strength, bureaucracy. What I mean by that is you must make Trump have to slog through the muck and mire, the monotonous and grueling process of actually governing. You can tie Trump up in knots over the process of writing minutely detailed and specific legislation and actually passing it. When you get outraged by his remarks, your distraction allows him to win on form instead of lose on function. If he says outrageous things, let them just float out there and let people make up their own minds. If the media asks a democrat what they think about the latest outrageous remark Trump has just made, they should respond, "I don't care what the President says, I care what he does." 

And, I understand how difficult this tactic can be, when you hear the things that Trump says it can be downright infuriating because he means to infuriate you, but it is vital that you remember that in order to stop Trump, you must make him fight you on your ground, not his. The media will be of little help in this endeavor as they proved in the campaign by covering Trump's every rally and every word. The media want Trump in the spotlight because he is outrageous and unpredictable and outrageousness and unpredictability means ratings. So my advice in order to stay sane and be effective in opposition to Trump, is to never read Trump's twitter feed, and to never watch any cable news. I know this is where many people get their news…but I have bad news…cable news isn't news, it is infotainment. So read the newspaper for your news…but do not read the editorials. And avoid cable news like the plague, because it is a plague. You literally get dumber every second you watch cable news, regardless of the channel. Those networks are meant to make you think emotionally, not rationally, so don't let them derail your opposition to Trump. If you simply cannot function without television news, watch the BBC…with the sound off.

"KEEP YOUR FRIENDS CLOSE AND YOUR ENEMIES CLOSER." - MICHAEL CORLEONE

"I'M WATCHING YOU AND FIDEL CASTRO IN THE SAND. ASSASSIN!!" - SISTER HAVANA BY URGE OVERKILL

As I stated earlier, it is a physical and psychological human instinct to resist when pushed. Many martial arts teach students to overcome this instinct in order to gain an advantage in combat. For example, Judo and Aikido teach that when pushed you should pull and when pulled you should push. The idea behind this technique is that when someone pushes you and you pull them towards you, you are using their force against them by adding a small amount of your strength to it and knocking you opponent off balance. An opponent who is off balance is one that is not an immediate threat to you and one that is also vulnerable to your attack.

Which brings us to another key strategy to derail Trump which may seem counter-intuitive, but it is to embrace Trump on any and all economic issues you even remotely agree with him on. Embracing Trump will knock him off balance and will also play to his vanity, for God knows flattery will get you somewhere with Trump. An example of what I am talking about would have been to embrace the Carrier deal Trump made to "save" American jobs. Yes, I know that the deal is a total charade, but in order to beat Trump long term you must embrace him short term. So, emphasize how great it is that those 800 people still have jobs due to this deal, but then emphasize how much better the deal could have been and go to great lengths to talk about the other workers who are now left behind because of this deal and how much they will suffer. This is crucial because it means you flatter Trump and do not alienate the people whose jobs he has "saved", but you also ally yourself with people he has screwed who will obviously be more open to vote against him. By embracing Trump on economics, it will force him to occasionally search for a different enemy and Trump's need to find a foil might land squarely on Paul Ryan and the republicans. Trump always desperately needs an enemy and if you can make Paul Ryan and the establishment wing of the republican party his enemy, you make them fight each other and they end up weaker and you get stronger. 

The union leader from Indiana who Trump attacked on twitter in the aftermath of the Carrier deal is a great example of how to handle Trump. This leader, Chuck Jones of the United Steelworkers, is a plain spoken, working class, midwestern guy…a Springsteen voter. When Trump personally attacked him on twitter he didn't get emotional, he just calmly stated his argument, which was correct by the way, and Trump was left with nothing to rage against. Trump backed down and shut up because Chuck Jones didn't get emotional, he got rational. This white working class guy gave an unintentional seminar on how to disarm and defeat Trump…I hope democrats were paying attention.

History and recent news have given us an example of how not embracing your enemies can be counterproductive. Last month Fidel Castro died in Havana. Whatever you think of Castro, it is pretty remarkable that he stayed in power for nearly sixty years while the greatest super power on the earth just 90 miles away actively tried to kill him. The reason Castro was able to stay in power was because he gained strength in resistance to the U.S. If the U.S. had been less adversarial with him, and had embraced him even a little bit, Castro would not have been able to maintain his grip on Cuba. Castro was strengthened by the unilateral opposition to him by the U.S. just like Trump will be strengthened by unilateral opposition by democrats.

"OPPORTUNITIES MULTIPLY AS THEY ARE SEIZED." - SUN TZU

Another strategy that is very Machiavellian but would be vital to eroding Trump's support, would be to embrace guns and the second amendment. I totally understand that most democrats dislike guns, I get it. But you need to think of two things in regards to guns and your political positions. The first is that Donald Trump, a man you fear and loathe, is President and has all the power of the federal government at his disposal. Many democrats and liberals are worried about people being rounded up and put in camps and all sorts of tyrannical things like that. Well, if you are afraid of President Trump and the unimaginable power he wields, it might be a good time to embrace the second amendment and arm yourself in case things get as scary as you imagine they might. If you look at it rationally, the second amendment was designed for people like you who fear the potential tyranny of President Trump. Secondly, as much as democrats dislike and oppose guns, the reality is that even after the atrocious massacre of children at Newtown/Sandy Hook, nothing has changed. Democrats have lost the argument and guns aren't going anywhere. The democrats would be wise to accept this fact and use it to their strategic advantage. 

What advantage would democrats gain by embracing guns? Well, those 77,000 Spingsteen voters are from rural, hunting states and they live in the gun culture. Guns are a wedge issue used to make Springsteen voters occasionally vote against their economic interests. If you remove the wedge issue of guns, you have taken a very valuable weapon out of the hands of your enemies. It would be very wise to do so in order to weaken your opponents and strengthen yourself. 

"WHEN THE ENEMY IS RELAXED, MAKE THEM TOIL. WHEN FULL, STARVE THEM. WHEN SETTLED, MAKE THEM MOVE." - SUN TZU

Attacking Trump would seemingly be an easy task as he is a target rich environment, but the opposite is actually true. Effectively attacking Trump, and that is the key, to effectively attack him rather than just attack him, will take great skill and patience. Here are some basics traps to avoid. First off, do not attack Trump by calling him stupid. Just as Hillary supporters took her loss personally, so will Trump supporters take attacks on him personally, specifically the ones calling him dumb. Even those marginal Springsteen voters will be roused by attacks on Trump's intelligence because they already feel that democrats speak down to them, whereas Trump speaks their language. Attacks on Trump that call him stupid will have the reverse effect that the attacker intends, as it will strengthen Trump and weaken the attacker. 

Another thing to consider is that attacking Trump as dumb is more about shadow projection by liberals than it is about his actual intellect. If you look at the last forty years or so a pattern emerges where the attacks by each political party take on a psychological consistency. Liberals called Reagan, George W. Bush, Sarah Palin and now Trump, stupid. For liberals, intelligence is a highly regarded value, and obviously the shadow of intelligence is stupidity. So for liberals the fear of their being perceived as dumb lurks in their shadow, and they project that negative/shadow attribute onto their opponents. Republicans/conservatives do the same thing with their own shadow projections. Republicans value purity and strength and so their shadow values/fears are impurity and weakness. Both Bill Clinton and Barrack Obama were believed to be "unworthy" and illegitimate presidents by republicans, the most glaring example being the birther nonsense. Obama and Bill Clinton were also thought of as "weak" by republicans. Shadow projections are ineffective weapons of attack because they only ring true for those doing the projecting and not those without the same hierarchical values and  beliefs. So while it seems like a great line of attack, it is really more a sign of weakness than strength and will only harm the attacker.

Along the same lines it is essential that democrats never attack Trump voters. Hillary's "deplorables" comment played well with Trump's base but it also greatly offended those marginal Springsteen voters which was a fatal error. Attacking Trump is tricky business, but attacking his supporters is down right political suicide. As I said previously, you can think what you want about these people, but just don't think it out loud.

"APPEAR WEAK WHEN YOU ARE STRONG, AND STRONG WHEN YOU ARE WEAK." - SUN TZU

Another trap to avoid is the sirens call of victimhood and using it as a weapon against Trump. Trump will offend a lot of people with the things he says and there will be no shortage of victims of his thoughtlessness and bullying. That said, it is important to understand the historical wave and time we live in. This is the time of the archetypal "strong man". Across the globe strong men and nationalists are taking power. In order to stop them one must understand the archetypes that resonate in the collective at this time and be able to manipulate them to your advantage. 

The collective is attracted to "strength" at the moment. This sort of "strength" is not a physical, spiritual or even moral strength, rather it is the outward appearance of strength which masks the inner toxic combination of blindness, paranoia and insecurity. It hasn't always been this way and it won't always be this way, but it is this way now…which is how we got Trump (and Putin, and Erdogan and Duterte etc.). According to social scientist Jonathon Haidt, liberals are usually motivated by the moral values of care/fairness, which is often translated into equality, diversity and protecting the weakest members of society. In recent years this has morphed into a sort of elevation of status for the victim in liberal circles. So as victimhood has become status, power has been translated into the negative archetype of the bully. Well, the world and the collective unconscious has changed and the status of victimhood no longer resonates across the broader population, only among liberals. In order to effectively attack Trump and win over marginal voters (Springsteen voters), it is vital to not embrace victimhood but to embrace "strength". Chuck Jones of the United Steelworkers embraced strength in his confrontation with Trump. Those calling Trump a racist, misogynist, sexist or xenophobe are unconsciously embracing the archetype of the victim and victimhood. And I am not arguing Trump isn't a racist, misogynist, sexist, xenophobe, what I am arguing is that calling him those things is an ineffective way to attack him according to the present historical wave and the archetypes currently resonating in the collective. As Bin Laden once said, if you show a person a strong horse and a weak one, they will choose the strong one…and so it is in our time. This is also why it is vital not to share your hurt or anger or fear to Trump or his supporters, because showing those things is a sign of weakness, not strength, and now is the time of strength. 

"HE WHO IS PRUDENT AND LIES IN WAIT FOR AN ENEMY WHO IS NOT, WILL BE VICTORIOUS." - SUN TZU

This leads us to the discussion about identity politics which has come to the forefront lately. After my post-election piece, Mark Lilla wrote a similar, much talked about piece in the New York Times arguing the same thing I did. The identity politics argument seems to have veered off into a strange cul-de-sac of misunderstanding and emotion that does neither side any good. What I mean by that is both sides seem to be arguing past each other and neither seems to be making any ground. 

The issue that I need to make clear which I may not have in my previous piece is this, that if you stop making arguments about identity and start making them about class, that does not mean that you have abandoned minorities. My argument is that identity politics has come to exclude white, working class people whereas class politics includes not only those white, working class people but minorities of all kinds who fall under the "identity" politics umbrella. Black, White, Latino, Asian, Native-American, gay, straight, transgender and every other identity imaginable falls into the poor and working class denomination. Focusing on economic issues and not identity issues doesn't reduce your potential base, it expands it. 

Another reason to focus on economics and class as opposed to identity is that identity politics very often falls into the trap of victimhood politics. I am not saying the minorities of all types aren't victimized, but being victimized and embracing victimhood are two very different things. Once you understand the historical wave we are on, it is easy to see that the best way to protect the victimized regardless of their identity, is to embrace the politics of economics and strength. The politics of identity (which can morph into victimhood), has been successful in the past, but will fail at this time because of the historical wave we are on and the inability of Trump to feel shame. To be effective today, identity (and victimhood) must be jettisoned and economic class and strength must be championed. So if Trump attacks someone or some group of people, the most effective way to counter that is not to call him racist or homophobic or hater or whatever term may very well apply, but to not reveal any upset at all and to stay strong and focus on Trump's actions, not his words. This will make him look weak, and make you look strong. Make the rational, unemotional argument based on facts against Trump, ignore what he says and he will back down. Make a plea based on victimhood or weakness and he will double down and he will rally potential democratic allies to his side. Calling someone a racist or misogynist or whatever is meant to shame them, but shaming Trump is impossible because he is shameless. So you may feel righteous in calling Trump those names, but your attacks will not only be ineffective as he is immune to shame, but will also boomerang back upon you, making you weaker.

A final note about identity politics. In an article in the New York Times recently Cornell Belcher argues that focusing on the dying demographic of white working class people is foolish. Belcher claims we should disregard white, working class voters and instead focus on the Obama coalition and getting those younger, non-white voters to the polls. It is not surprising that Belcher was so terribly and arrogantly wrong about the last election and he is just as wrong about the next one as well. The most important thing about the Obama coalition is not the coalition of young, Black and Latino voters, the most important thing about the Obama coalition is Barrack Obama. Obama is a once in a generation or maybe lifetime political talent. If you think his coalition is coming together for anyone else, you are very mistaken. And I have bad news for you, Barrack Obama is not walking through that door. Going forward you are going to have to deal with second rate political hacks like Hillary Clinton, and she didn't get the Obama coalition to rock the vote. Someone ought to buy Cornell Belcher a calendar for Christmas, since he fails to understand that while white working class voters are a dying breed, they ain't nearly dead yet. Their projected year of death is 2050…another 34 years from now. 34 years is a long time to sit around waiting for the demographics to change so you can get another shot at the throne. 

I think that the wisest course forward is to build a broad based political coalition based on economics and class. Democrats must turn their backs on Wall Street, corporate interests, free trade and globalization and turn their focus back to working class people and the poor. Trump won by using an old school, democratic, populist economic message. There is no doubt Trump will completely ignore that economic message as president, so democrats must be there with a genuine form of populism in order to remove Trump from power. If they fail to embrace this economic populism and class warfare, the democrats will be left in the dust.

"THUS THE EXPERT IN BATTLE MOVES THE ENEMY, AND IS NOT MOVED BY HIM." - SUN TZU

One last thing that liberals must do going forward is both a defensive and an offensive move simultaneously, and that is to completely embrace the constitution. Rigidly embracing the constitution is a way to protect yourselves from the potential tyranny of a Trump presidency, and also a way to attack Trump and criminalize him and his actions. Embracing the constitution means that democrats must stop talking about fake news and ways to fix or stop it. Talk of shutting down conspiracy websites or fake news sites is detrimental to the long term strategy of stopping, or at least containing, Trump. Liberals need to embrace not only the first amendment without hesitation or qualifiers, but also Wikileaks, Edward Snowden, Chelsea/Bradley Manning and all of the other whistleblowers (and convince Obama to pardon them all including Snowden, Manning and Assange before he leaves office), for they will be pivotal weapons in the battle against Trump (a strong renunciation of Obama's war on whistleblowers is urgently needed now as well). The reality is that if you only want to embrace the first amendment some of the time, or when it is convenient to you, then it will not only be an ineffective tool against Trump but he will turn it around and use it as a weapon against you. As I already stated, embracing the second amendment is vital as well for not only self-protection but for political purposes. The constitution is all that stands between you and the darker instincts of President Donald Trump. The restraints the constitution can place on Trump will be the only thing that will stop him from exacting revenge on his domestic enemies…namely YOU...and he will most certainly try to do that. If you try and mess with any part of the constitution, whether it be the first, second, fourth, fifth, sixth, thirteenth, fourteenth, fifteenth or any other amendments, the rest of it will be useless in protecting you from Trump…including the twenty-second amendment which limits him to two terms in office. Ponder that for a moment.

The final point I will make to you is this...I know this story circulating lately about Russia interfering with the election in Trump's favor is tantalizing, but please do not embrace it. I am telling you, the more you want a story to be true the more skeptical you should be of it. This "Russia hacked our election" story, or the more recent version of it where Vladimir Putin himself is actually personally involved, is fools gold. These stories being breathlessly reported by the establishment media are all based on unnamed official sources. Please just wait until there is actual, tangible evidence put forth, and even then be very, very skeptical. This whole Russia hacking episode reeks of the wishful thinking that was going around (especially in establishment media circles) in the build up to the Iraq war.  There was no evidence then either, but people wanted those stories to be true so they gave them the benefit of the doubt. This Russia story is even less credible at the moment and even more dangerous. Russia is a nuclear power. The deep state and neo-cons are determined to have a war with Russia, we've actually been in a limited war (propaganda, economic, political war) with them for the last bunch of years. Do not fall for this Russia story trap. Don't do it, one way or another you will live to regret it. I promise you that. 

And thus concludes my not so brief handbook on how to survive the era of Trump. I realize that most of the people who already disliked me for my pre and post-election pieces will have already chalked this piece up to just one more bit of mansplainin' by a deplorable straight, white male, but these things happen. I do not expect the hapless democrats to follow my handbook at all, and they are off to a really shitty start with the re-election of Nancy Peolosi as leader of the house democrats. Pelosi's victory is a strong sign that democrats would rather double down on the same insanity, with insanity being defined as doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results, that got them here rather than learn anything and adapt going forward. But hey, just like with the election, you can't say I didn't warn you. 

"YOUR SPIRIT IS THE TRUE SHIELD." - MORIHEI UESHIBA, THE ART OF PEACE

©2016

Election 2016 Post-Mortem : Crossing the Rubicon and Chickens Coming Home to Roost

ESTIMATED READING TIME : 9 MINUTES 11 SECONDS

I TOLD YOU SO

On the night of Tuesday, November 8th, I watched the 2016 U.S. presidential election unfold before me just as I predicted it would. I sat bemused flipping from one cable news channel to the next and heard all of the talking heads spouting out as if they suffered from Tourette's Syndrome, "no one saw this coming!" over and over. On MSNBC an apoplectic Chris Matthews incredulously asked his sullen panel of insiders, "did anyone see this coming?" I sat on my couch and raised my hand because unlike the collection of mopes at 30 Rock, I did see it coming. Mr. Matthews didn't see me raising my hand because, sadly for me since it would be fun to show these talking empty heads how I really feel about them, my tv isn't a two-way watching device, but he, and the rest of the political and media establishment, didn't see me and my election forecast because they couldn't be bothered to look. Regular people like me are invisible to the establishment. The political/media establishment myopia caused them to fail to heed my prescient warning, in addition it also caused them to failed to see all the "white working class" people who voted for Trump in Michigan, Wisconsin, Ohio and Pennsylvania, because like Narcissus, they were too busy being enamored with their own perceived brilliance reflected back to them in the pool of their own group think.

As I explained in my pre-election post, the warning signs of a Trump victory were all there flashing in neon, if people only had the will and vision to see them. The most obvious was Brexit…but there were more recent ones as well…the Pirate Party victory in Iceland, Duterte in the Philippines, hell…even the "Bundy ranchers" being acquitted in their recent trial in Oregon. The anti-establishment sentiments are just in the air right now, as I explained in my earlier post when I spoke of historical waves, and Trump floated to victory upon this one. But the political and media establishment were blind to the reality staring them in the face. I saw it, so why didn't they? George Orwell once said, "to see what is in front of one's nose needs a constant struggle." You're damn right, George!! It is even more difficult to see what is right in front of your nose when your livelihood depends on you not seeing it, hence no one working in the main stream media will ever go against the agreed upon group think orthodoxy, whatever that may be, whether it is the lead up to the Iraq War, the housing bubble, or Trumpism.

Not only is that the case in the media but also in the political class of America. No one in the establishment pundit/political class actually thinks for themselves, they only regurgitate the tired old talking points that keep discourse and debate confined in a very narrow ideological space. This makes me think of the late Tim Russert of NBC who when asked how he missed the glaring faults and lies in the Bush administrations case for the Iraq War said in effect he 'wished someone with information suggesting the nuclear claims were false would have picked up the phone and called him.' Mr. Russert wouldn't have taken my call back during the Iraq War debate, just like the rest of NBC news wouldn't take my calls in the lead up to Tuesdays election. And so the election of Donald Trump becomes the political equivalent of the Iraq War, a debacle for establishment institutions, the media in particular, that are incapable of thinking critically and avoiding the infection of group think.  And just like when the establishment was wrong about the Iraq war, no one who was wrong, be they in the media or in political life, will lose their job or their standing for their lack of insight and intelligence. Interestingly enough, as an outsider, I was able to see the reality of both the 2016 election and the Iraq war (not to mention the housing bubble…or Chris Kyle for that matter) better than anyone working in the establishment. And yet, I think it wise for me to not hold my breath waiting for their phone call.

POLITICAL MALPRACTICE

The Democrats got their asses handed to them on Tuesday night, and rightfully so. The party in general, and Hillary Clinton's campaign in particular, committed some of the most egregious acts of political malpractice in recent memory. Clinton's campaign was such an exercise in tone-deafness it was like a Britney Spears show without the auto-tune on.

Here are a few examples of their political malpractice…the first is the slogan "Love Trumps Hate". This is the most moronic and self-defeating slogan imaginable. Think about what that slogan says…"Love Trumps Hate". You can read it the way they intended which means that your "Love", love being a noun, will "Trumps", Trumps being a verb meaning overcomes, "Hate", Hate meaning the "hate" Donald Trump embodied. It can also be read another way, the way that we as a culture have been conditioned by years of advertising to read it… namely that we should "Love Trump's Hate"…in other words the campaign slogan is not so subliminally telling people to "Love", love being a verb, "Trump's", meaning the candidate Trump's, "Hate", meaning the hate that Trump is spewing. That slogan is literally telling us to love Hillary Clinton's opponent and his hate. And yes, I know there is an "S" in the Hillary poster and an "apostrophe S" is needed to make my point. In response to that I ask you to do a little exercise to make my point…stand up and shout "Love Trumps Hate" and then shout "Love Trump's Hate". Could you hear the apostrophe? 

How they could not see this is beyond me. Any dope with half a brain in their heads could see this…but not the Clinton campaign. We are a consumerist culture, we are conditioned to be told what to do by advertising, not what to think, hence lawn signs that say "Vote Obama" or billboards that say "Drink Coke". We are conditioned to be the passive consumer who is being told what to do by advertising. "Just Do It", "Think Different", you get the idea, these are advertisements that assume our passivity and encourage us to ACT. The Clinton campaign ignored this fact of our conditioning and put out a slogan that in essence was endorsing their opponent, Trump, and undermining the argument they made to people about why they shouldn't vote for him, because of his "Hate". What an incredible level of blindness and lack of self-awareness on the part of the campaign. In addition, the slogan "Love Trumps Hate" has their opponents name in it and not their own candidates name. This is like Pepsi having the slogan "don't DRINK COKE!!" 

Another thing Hillary did that was shocking to me as well and I think also rises to political malpractice, is that she refused to acknowledge the suffering of regular Americans. What do I mean by that? Well, whenever Trump would say he would "Make America Great Again", Clinton would respond by saying "America IS great!!". Well, there are millions of people suffering and feeling left out and disaffected in this country, and when you say "America IS great" it comes across as "Everything is fine!!" Everything isn't fine. This "America IS great" approach was shocking to me not only for its tone deafness but also because it was the same trap George HW Bush fell into when it was set in the 1992 election by Mrs. Clinton's husband Bill. Back in '92 Bill Clinton would talk about what was wrong with America and how people were suffering, "I feel your pain", and Bush countered with some Reagan-esque optimism in the form of "America Is Great!!", which fell flat for a nation that was stuck in neutral at the time. It is amazing to me that in 2016 the Clintons did not see the error of their ways considering they had so masterfully used this bit of political jiu jitsu to get into the White House in the first place back in 1992.

One final piece of political malpractice on behalf of the democrats was the act of nominating Hillary Clinton in the first place. As I said in my pre-election piece, Bernie Sanders would've beaten Trump silly. Trump defeated Hillary by outflanking her to the left on economic issues with an old school populist democratic economic message. Bernie would've cut him off at the pass. All those working class whites in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Wisconsin and Michigan who voted for Obama twice, would've voted for Bernie because he speaks their language. Clinton is a center right corporatist and her efforts to connect with working people rang hollow after a career of kissing Wall Street behinds and allowing unfettered free trade to decimate the manufacturing base in America.

A closer look at the democratic primary, and the Wikileaks emails, shows that the primary was essentially rigged for Clinton, it just was. If the Democrats had allowed the truly open primary election that the Republicans did, Bernie would've won, and then he would've gone on to trounce Trump. Bernie brought with him working class legitimacy and grass roots enthusiasm. Clinton brought with her working class skepticism and a dull sense of the inevitable, which ended up being not-so-inevitable. 

Both the democratic party and the Clinton campaign were mismanaged to such an outstanding degree it is amazing to think that there were professionals running the show. But then you think about the nepotism and corruption that has infected American politics and it becomes much more easy to imagine how all of this malpractice could have happened. 

RACE AND THE RACE

I have a simple observation when it comes to race relations in America…Once something becomes about race, it stops being about anything else. The establishment in America wants there to be ethnic and racial strife and distrust. The establishment knows that if things stop being about race and start being about class, then they are in very serious trouble. Race warfare strengthens the status quo whereas class warfare is an existential threat to the establishment. For example, Malcolm X was a lightning rod in the civil rights struggle for Blacks in the early sixties, but when he expanded his horizons beyond just race and recognized the importance of class in his struggle, he was assassinated.  The same can be said of Martin Luther King, who was very successful in the struggle for civil rights for Black Americans, but when his message went from being about race to being about economics, class and war, he too was assassinated. The Black Panthers were a group of Black activists who crossed racial lines and understood they were in a class struggle as opposed to simply a racial one. Their free breakfast program was open to under privileged children of all races, and FBI director J. Edgar Hoover called it the greatest threat to the internal security of the United States of America. Not surprisingly, The Black Panthers were systemically assassinated or imprisoned. 

If you make things about race you play into the hands of those that wish to and do oppress you. So when people say Black Lives Matter in relation to police brutality, they immediately lose potential allies in the White, Latino, Asian and other minority communities. Michael Brown was shot and killed in Missouri in 2014, on the same day an unarmed young White man, Dillon Taylor was shot in the back and killed by a Black cop in Utah. This was a tremendous opportunity to make the police brutality debate about government power and violence against the poor and working class, but instead it became about race. And once it became about race, that ensured that nothing would change. Look, I am not arguing that Blacks don't face very specific problems in regards to police violence, they do, but what I am saying is that when racial battle lines become drawn, potential allies are divided and thus a stalemate takes place where the status quo continues to reign supreme, just as the establishment likes it. 

Which brings us to the aftermath of the 2016 election. There have been many, if not most, democrats and liberals who have called Trump voters racist and have blamed Clinton's loss on racism. While there are certainly people in Trump's coalition who are blatantly racist, like the KKK for example, calling all Trump voters racist is not only factually incorrect though, it is extremely shortsighted, childish and counter productive. In addition, calling Trump voters racist is a short cut to thinking and intellectually lazy. In recent years liberals have fallen into the pattern of lazy debate when they simply label their opponents as racist. This tactic does nothing but shut down open discussion and stifle debate while antagonize potential allies. It is foolish beyond words. The "white working class" voters who went for Trump in Michigan, Wisconsin, Ohio and Pennsylvania this year actually voted for Obama in the two previous elections. Were they still racist in 2008 and 2012 when they voted for a Black man? And how do you think they feel when you call them stupid and racist because they voted for their perceived economic interests? They have suffered under the brilliance of the Clinton's free trade corporatism before, they would've been foolish to fall for it again. Instead they rolled the dice on Trump, which will probably not work out very well for them either, but in their eyes they have nothing to lose. Do you think these folks will be open to your arguments in the future after you've belittled and offended them by calling them stupid and racist just for voting in what they perceived to be their best economic interests?

The cry of "racism" post-election is just more proof of the emotionally driven "thinking" that permeates our politics. In my opinion, the racial divide in this election is a case of the chickens coming home to roost for the democrats. The party has made a point of using identity politics in order to gain an advantage with minority communities. They target Black and Latino voters and cater their message to them. Of course, the problem is, you can't use identity politics in regards to Black and Latino voters and then cry foul when White voters embrace identity as well. And while it is always amusing to hear some pundit tell me that in 2050 America will be a minority-majority country, I wonder if they don't own a calendar. It ain't 2050…its 2016…and it is easy to forget while living in an urban area, but white people aren't just the majority in America, they are the overwhelming majority in America. Which is why it is so egregiously foolish for the democrats to call White Trump voters racist now, as you may very well lose them for a generation, when the truth is you could easily sway them back to your side with a genuine populist message that cuts across all racial divides if you weren't insulting and offending them.

If democrats want to be successful in future elections they need to grow up and think rationally and not emotionally. So yes…there may certainly be "racist" people who voted for Trump, but that doesn't mean everyone who voted for him is racist. To democrats I will quote the great American philosopher Dr. Phil,  "do you want to be right or do you want to be happy?" And to working class people of all races I tell you that identity politics is a tool used by the establishment to separate people and make them weaker and more easily manipulated. They've been doing it forever and will continue to do so as long as you let them.

SPRINGSTEEN VOTERS

Speaking of those "white working class" voters from Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania, or as I call them, "Springsteen voters", who went for Trump this year but in years past have voted Obama, they have a pretty terrible track record when it comes to voting in their own interests. This year they went for Trump in order to try and get their manufacturing jobs back. If you look at their voting history, it is littered with bad decisions.  Let's take a quick look at their recent decisions and how awful they ended up being. 

1. In 1980 the "Reagan Democrats" were born when white working class union voters who usually went democrat voted for Reagan. They followed suit in 1984. Reagan even co-opted Bruce Spingsteen's "Born in the USA" to entice these folks, even though the song was actually about how white working class people were continually shit on in America…but no one noticed.  Reagan essentially broke the backs of unions in America when he fired all the striking air traffic controllers right after taking office. Private industry used his get tough model on their own workers and unions were devastated. But the reality of this time was that white working class voters were enticed and blinded to their own economic interests by a waving flag…not a good sign of a group's judgement.

2. in 1992 and again in 1996, Springsteen voters voted for Bill Clinton. The scales had fallen from their eyes after 12 years of Reaganomics so these folks rolled the dice on a slick southern boy who charmed them but good. Of course, Clinton then went on to govern as a corporatist from the center right and sold the North American free trade agreement to U.S. voters as a way to bolster trade and manufacturing in this country. Of course it had the exact opposite effect. NAFTA made the wealthy even wealthier, and made the working class even poorer. America hemorrhaged manufacturing jobs to third world nations that didn't have to worry about pesky workers rights or unions. Reagan broke union backs, but Clinton put the nail in their coffins with NAFTA.

3. After falling for "Slick Willie's" bullshit, Springsteen voters went for Bush in 2000. The thinking was, he was the type of guy you could have a beer with…which is ironic since Bush is a recovering alcoholic who doesn't drink beer….but lets not get caught up in details. Springsteen voters were in for a double whammy with Bush, he not only continued Reagan and Clinton's economic holocaust upon them, he added a meat-grinder of a war in the Middle East for good effect. It was Springsteen voters and their sons and daughters who, whether out of economic necessity or patriotism or both, went and fought and died and were physically and emotionally maimed over in the sands of Mesopotamia. And when those men and women came home from war they were met by communities that had been ravaged by twenty years of economic war and neglect. At the end of Bush's two terms he gave them a parting gift of the economic collapse of 2007 and 2008. So, whatever savings Springsteen voters could scrape together was lost and they were in great peril of losing their homes. Their neighborhoods went from decaying to being ghost towns.

4. In 2008 and 2012, after the disillusionment of the Bush years, Springsteen voters elected Obama. Springsteen voters bought into Obama's campaign message of "Hope and Change". After 8 years of Obama, these Springsteen voters are left with little hope after getting no change. Obama had the chance to change things, especially after the collapse of 2008, but instead he went center right and back to business as usual.  From day one he staffed his administration with the same people who had allowed the collapse of 2008 to happen under their watch and guidance. Instead of bailing out ordinary Americans, Obama bailed out the corporate class. Springsteen voters were left behind again, with no hope in sight. As a parting gift Obama came up with a new free trade agreement, the TPP…which Trump has vowed to demolish.

5. Which brings us to The Donald. Springsteen voters went for Donald Trump because he wasn't Hillary Clinton. Springsteen voters had seen the Clinton movie before and didn't like how it turned out. So they rolled the dice on Trump. No doubt Trump will fuck them six ways to Sunday, but these Springsteen voters are nothing if not persistent, and they will probably re-elect him in four years. Part of that has to do with "not changing horses mid-stream" and part of it has to do with being belittled and called racist by democrats. Trump will be a disaster for Springsteen voters, but in their eyes, at least he will be a new disaster.

In regard to Springsteen voters I keep hearing lots of pundits tell me that those manufacturing jobs that Springsteen voters have lost are "not coming back". That may very well be true…but you know what else isn't coming back? Trust in the institutions of American life. Which brings us to...

THE INFRASTRUCTURE OF TYRANNY

A lot of people are very afraid of a Trump administration. They fear that he is an unstable and vengeful man who can't be trusted with the ultimate power that presides in the presidency. Those fears are very legitimate, but the people to blame for the situation are not Trump voters who got conned by a con-man, but rather establishment Republicans and Democrats who spent the last 16 years building the infrastructure for tyranny which a demagogue could now exploit. It was establishment Republicans and Democrats who dismantled the constitutional restrictions placed upon the executive by our founders and instead turned to putting their faith in the men who hold the office. Our nation was built on laws, not on faith in men in power.

What do I mean by that? Well, it was the imperial presidency of George W. Bush that expanded the powers of the executive office far beyond what had been previously acceptable. Bush put in place the policies of preemptive war, torture and mass secret surveillance. Establishment Republicans and Democrats did nothing to stop him, in fact, they emboldened him. In regards to surveillance, when it came out that he was breaking the law, they simply voted to make it legal. And as for pre-emptive war, it was Republicans AND Democrats who voted in support of the war in Iraq.

Things only got worse when Obama came into office as he expanded secret surveillance and added to it drone strikes that killed American citizens without any due process. They even killed the 16 year old son of an alleged American terrorist, and their explanation was that "he should have had a more responsible father." Chilling. And no one, not the Republicans or the Democrats did anything to reign in the Obama administration and its expansionist view of presidential powers. 

So even before Donald Trump ever sets foot in the oval office, our nation has "normalized" the policies of preemptive war, torture, warrantless wiretapping, intrusive surveillance, extra-judicial killings of American citizens and maintaining a kill list of Americans. Think about that for a second. Now think about giving all of those expansive powers to Donald Trump. Donald Trump will now have those powers and will have no oversight, because Congress has abdicated its oversight responsibilities. The checks and balances of our government have been neutered and we are left with the imperial presidency, more emperor than president, who can kill, torture, spy and wage war without any obstruction from other branches of government. If you are a Democrat who is afraid of Trump's presidential power, guess who you have to protect you? The highest ranking democrat in America is Senator Chuck Schumer of New York. Feel better? I didn't think so. Schumer is as loathsome a creature as you'll find in politics and he will do nothing to curb Trump's imperial urges.  Remember brave Chuck Schumer is the guy who voted to abolish Glass-Steagall, voted for the Patriot Act and the Iraq War and supports uninhibited surveillance and torture. I am sure Senator Schumer will be a stalwart for freedom and the working man during the Trump presidency, just like he has been during his lifetime as a politician. 

And it isn't just the establishment Republicans and Democrats in government who are to blame, it is media establishment as well. The trust in the media has evaporated just as it has for congress, and rightfully so. The New York Times, the paper of record in America, which is an alleged liberal bastion, is the same outlet that was used as a propaganda mouthpiece for the invasion of Iraq. It is the same media outlet that when they discovered the Bush administration was illegally surveilling Americans, they held the story for over a year so as to not seem to be taking sides in an election. This is the same newspaper that refused to use the word "torture", and instead decided to torture the english language and logic by using the term preferred by the Bush administration, "enhanced interrogation". 

Of course, the Times wasn't alone, every other major media outlet was right with them being in step with the imperial presidency of Bush. And when Obama came into office, little if anything changed. Whether it be the Washington Post, NBC, Fox or CNN, the media has been nothing but lapdogs to power for the last 16 years. So it is doubtful they will be very effective, or believable when they dare to question Trump for exercising the same expansive executive powers that Bush and Obama used. And most importantly, they have lost all credibility in the eyes of the public because of their egregious behavior for the last 16 years.

Whether it be politicians, or the media or any other wing of the establishment, they have all lost their credibility. The Iraq War was the turning point for the establishment as it was so spectacularly wrong on all counts regarding the conflict. They were wrong about the reason for the war and the execution for the war. The establishment was eviscerated by its own arrogant, myopic group think. If we lived in a more just society, there would have been a lot of people in the establishment committing seppuku after Iraq. But we don't live in a just society, and these clowns are still roaming the halls of power and influence.

Speaking of justice, one of the most egregious forms of neglect that will have enabled Donald Trump in his power, was the failure of the Obama administration to hold the Bush administration accountable for war crimes. Obama wanted to "move on" and "look forward", but what he ended up doing was becoming an accomplice after the fact and enabling future presidents, maybe even Donald Trump, to commit even more heinous acts that the Bush administration did. Obama allowed Bush to be above the law, just like Ford did with Nixon. The pardon of Nixon by Ford is seen by many as being a way for the country to heal and move forward, but it was the exact opposite. The wound America suffered under Nixon was never healed because he was never held to account for his crimes. There can be no healing without forgiveness, and no forgiveness without repentance, and no repentance without justice. The power of truth, transparency and justice are disinfectants against tyranny. America's Nixon wound never healed but only festered, and the infection grew and spread through the Reagan and Bush 43 administrations in particular because many of the people who worked for Nixon also worked for Reagan and again for Bush 43. Cheney and Rumsfeld, two war criminals, learned their craft in the Nixon administration. They honed their trade during the Reagan/Bush years and became masters during the Bush 43 years. Obama may have had new faces in his administration, but the Nixon infection spread to them as well as they fully embraced the expansive executive powers that were conjured by Nixon's, Reagan's and Bush's minions. And now Donald Trump walks into the White house with the infrastructure of tyranny already in place for him. Republicans and Democrats who bemoan this fact have no one to blame but themselves. 

NOSTRADAMUS READS THE TEA LEAVES

I think Donald Trump will be a terrible president because he is a terrible person, and a terrible business man. But I also think Hillary Clinton would've been a terrible president.  No matter who got elected, according to my historical wave formula that correctly predicted the election results (not to mention the financial crisis of 2008), we in America are in for a very difficult stretch. What I think we have in store for us in the next four years is going to be very, very bad. According to my calculations, I think we are going to have a large economic earthquake at some point in the next two years that will be just as devastating as the 2008 collapse. I also think that we will have a major terror attack at some time over the next four years that will be as catastrophic as 9-11 in effect if not scale. I do not think Donald Trump is well equipped to deal with either of those impending calamities. I do think he will be re-elected in part though, because of them, as counter-intuitive as that may seem. 

Trump will become a war time president and all of his bombastic and bellicose instincts will be called to the forefront. And as "tough" as he will try to appear to our external enemies, he will actually be much tougher on what he perceives as his internal enemies. When Trump's vengeance is unleashed, his political opposition will face a scorched earth campaign against them that is unimaginable. This will only become even more heightened when any attempts to reign him in, impeach him or, God forbid, assassinate him takes place. I want to be really clear here so I don't get a knock on my door from the secret service, I am not calling for anyone to try and harm Donald Trump at all. My fear and my thought is, that someone may very well try to harm him and that someone could be a lone nut, a jihadi terrorist or an agent of the "deep state" who is defending deeply entrenched interests. These are dangerous and erratic times we live in, and when that danger becomes personal to Trump, whether it be from a foreign or domestic enemy, he will be at his most lethal. And when that happens the downward spiral of America will increase at a rate dramatically faster than its already solid and steady pace.

And to be clear I don't think that the coming economic collapse or terror attack is Trump's fault, I think that those events would happen regardless of who was in office. But what I do think is that Trump will react very poorly and destructively to these events, especially considering all of the constitutional constraints upon the presidency that have been removed over the last 16 years. And I think Trump's reaction to these and other world events will cause a further political and cultural splintering of America which will, eventually way on down the road, lead to an actual splintering of America…a Balkanization if you will. 

Ok…so now that is what I think will happen. Maybe I am wrong, I certainly hope I am wrong. But with that said, I think Trump's election is a crossing of the Rubicon for America. Caesar is on the throne and while business as usual may appear to go on for a while, things have changed irrevocably on a much deeper level. The American Republic/Empire is officially over, and Trump's election will hasten the crumbling of the world order with America on top. That isn't necessarily a bad thing, quite the opposite in the long run, but it will be a very dramatic and traumatic thing for Americans and people across the globe. Some empire's go quietly into that goodnight…and some don't. I don't think the American Empire is going to go quietly at all. Buckle up…things are about to get even more interesting. We are down the rabbit hole here ladies and gentleman, expect the unexpected.

©2016

Election 2016 : Random Dispatches From the Shitshow

ESTIMATED READING TIME: 8 MINUTES 19 SECONDS

This election has broken my already diseased brain. So, instead of writing a coherent and intelligible article about it, I decided to go through my notes and write an incoherent and rambling post about it. I think these seemingly random ravings perfectly capture the madness that is the 2016 election. Enjoy!!

DISPATCH 666: MEET THE NEW BOSS, SAME AS THE OLD BOSS

On Tuesday, November 8th, 2016, the U.S. Presidential election will come to a merciful end (hopefully!!). In a country of over 320 million people, Americans are forced to choose between the repulsive Donald Trump and the repugnant Hillary Clinton. This is how low we have sunk as a nation, may God help us all.

It is difficult to wrap your head around how the alleged "Greatest Nation on Earth™" found two such odious people to run for the highest office in the land. If Nixon and Nero had a baby and its wet nurse was George W. Bush, that baby would be Donald Trump. If Nixon and Margaret Thatcher had a child that had Dick Cheney for a nanny, that child would be Hillary Clinton.

In my opinion, voting for Donald Trump is an irrational act born out of emotion, that emotion being anger. Voting for Hillary Clinton is an act of insanity, if you define insanity as doing the same thing over and over agin and expecting a different result. Either way, whether you are acting irrationally out of anger, or acting insane out of fear, you are making a really terrible decision. But that is what America has become, we only act out of emotion…be it fear or anger. This is who we are, an anti-intellectual, frightened and impotent nation of cowards. We can bitch about it all we want, but we have gotten the nominees we deserve.

The funny thing to me are the people who support either candidate so vociferously. To think that there is any difference between them is absurd. We do not get to choose between different ideologies in American elections, who only get to choose between different faces upon the same ideology. There are not two opposing parties in America, only one party that wears different colored jerseys for some occasional intramural scrimmages, usually revolving around abortion or guns, with the result always being a draw where nothing changes. No matter who is elected we will get a corporatist who worships Wall Street and a neo-con who fellates the military-intellegence-law enforcement-industrial complex. The only choice we are given is between different sides of the same coin. Whether Trump or Clinton is elected we will have another war, we will have more intrusive surveillance, we will have more economic instability and we will be forced to bail out more "too big to fail" institutions, and we will have more downward pressure on wages and more squeezing of working and middle class Americans. In other words, meet the new boss, same as the old boss. 

To see the mental gymnastics people put themselves through in order to support or oppose a candidate for reasons that are beyond their conscious, rational minds is pretty funny. So many Republicans absolutely hate Hillary Clinton…and yet you can never actually pin them down on the exact positions she holds that they hate, it is entirely personality based. She is a war-monger and a corporatist…a big supporter of the Iraq war and Wall Street banks, which are two things the Republicans celebrate, and yet Hillary is despised by them because of her "corruption" or her pantsuits or her shrill voice. Republicans, and many other Americans, have an emotional and visceral hatred of Hillary that is irrational and not based on her positions or policies. Me on the other hand, I hate her for her positions and policies, but thankfully I am neither a Republican or a Democrat. 

The same can be said of Trump as well since he will do in office exactly what Hillary will do. Many Democrats hate Trump for his style, not his substance, the same for Republicans and Hillary. Many people hate Trump because he is a loud mouthed braggart and a braggadocios buffoon. In America, whether we want to admit it or not or acknowledge it or not, we choose our presidents based solely on personality, look at Republicans and their hatred of Obama, as it was with Democrats and Bush. Next to nothing was different between Obama and Bush except for their personality and style. Democrats just don't like Trump as a person, and Republicans just don't like Hillary as a person. It is immaterial as they are both going to serve you the same steaming shit sandwich and we are all gonna have to take a big bite.

DISPATCH 327: AMERICAN IDOL-ATRY

At some point over the long, hot summer, I watched on tv as President Obama gave a speech to a raucous Democratic party crowd in some battleground state, where he said, in a not-so-veiled shot at Donald Trump, that the Presidential election "wasn't a reality show." Oh Obama, you silly little man, you couldn't be more wrong. This election is nothing but a reality show from start to finish. This is what happens when you have a dumbed down, uninformed, ill-informed or mis-informed, emotionally driven populace…you get the shit show that is election 2016. Speaking of shitshows…what follows are some of my observations and thoughts on this Presidential reality show that I lovingly call American Idolatry.

DISPATCH 47: AND THE WINNER IS….

I have thought all year that Donald Trump is going to win the election. I have been and probably still am in the minority on this thought, but as my readers know, I am used to being out on my own. I am not an expert on polls, so why do I think Trump will win? Because this is the time we live in. History has an ebb and flow to it with multiple actions and reactions shaping the course of events. The time we live in now is the time of the backlash against what is left of the establishment. You can see it across the globe, most noticeably in this years Brexit vote, but also in the recent Iceland elections, and in recent years with the rise of nationalist and independence parties of both the left and the right across Europe from Ireland (Sinn Fein) to France (Nationalist Front) to Britain (UKIP) to Scotland (SNP) to Spain (Catalans). For good or for ill, the establishment is crumbling and people want to throw off the yoke of globalism and internationalism and return to their nationalist roots. And so it is in the U.S. Since we don't have a parliamentary system, the route for these nationalist and independence parties is limited, but they have still taken hold of the collective unconscious (and conscious) to throw a monkey wrench into the "business as usual" plans of the establishment. This is why I thought it was such a tremendous error by the Democrats to select Hillary Clinton to be the nominee. She is the antithesis of this pushback against the establishment. She IS the establishment. Bernie Sanders, with his passionate populism, would've trounced Trump, cutting him off at his populist knees, but instead we will see Trump beat Clinton. The torches and pitchforks are out folks, and the Frankenstein's monster that is the political establishment is going to be attacked by the angry villagers. Moronically, the Democrats nominated the ultimate Frankenstein's monster in Hillary, and the Republicans got a con-man who sells pitchforks to rile up the locals. This is also why Trump is immune from the barrage of "attacks" on him by the media as the media are part of the establishment and the angry villagers justifiably hate them as much as they hate the rest of the establishment. So whenever the media "attacks" Trump whether it be by stating facts or with scandal, Trump only gets stronger, whereas Clinton is tied in knots over every single scandal and troubling story that gets thrown at her. 

Context is everything when evaluating the waves of history. Think of it this way, Obama never would have become President if it weren't for the disaster of 8 years of the George W. Bush administration preceding him. Obama was the polar opposite STYLISTICALLY of Bush, and style is the most important factor now in elections. People don't understand or care about the nuance of positions and policy, they just understand that they are casting the person they will have to see on tv almost everyday for the next 4 to 8 years…that is why the election is a reality tv show. So W. the rube was elected as a reaction to Bill Clinton (Slick Willie) the calculated politician. Then Obama, who was perceived as thoughtful and articulate is selected to replace W. who was perceived to be instinctively acting from his gut and a verbal stumbler. In keeping with this casting theme, Trump is the polar opposite of Obama, whereas Hillary Clinton is just a far inferior version of Obama, that is why the historical wave favors Trump.

When you add together the wave of nationalism and independence and anti-establishment sentiment sweeping the globe with the context of the reality tv casting couch, you get a President Trump. Trump is seen as going from his gut just like W. which is opposite of Obama, and when people think to themselves that he may not know what the hell he is talking about, they will calm themselves by saying that he will "surround himself with the best advisers", just like they told themselves with W. when they got cold feet because of how stupid he seemed. Of course, that worked out really well the last time and I am sure it'll go just as swimmingly this time around.

And just to be perfectly clear, just because I think Trump will win, doesn't mean I want Trump to win. And just because I don't want Trump to win doesn't mean I want Hillary to win, I sure as hell don't. What I want is for both of them to be stuck in an elevator together that is filled with raw sewage, then catches on fire, then explodes and is propelled into deep space, never to be seen or heard from again. That is my dream…this election is my nightmare. 

DISPATCH 411: THE UN-AFFORDABLE CARE ACT

Contrary to popular belief, it doesn't matter who you vote for, you are going to get the same thing no matter what.  Remember Obama's "Hope and Change" ? He sold a lot of hope, but not much changed. Why do I say that? Well…here is one piece of evidence…the Affordable Care Act…which is neither affordable nor does it provide care. Before the Affordable Care Act came to be, when Obama was rallying support to do something about health care, I knew that we the people would get royally screwed. And surprise, surprise, that is exactly what happened. Obama turned the creation of the health care bill over to…insurance companies. I find it is always a wise move to turn the solving of a problem over to the creators of the problem…in case you weren't sure I am being sarcastic. Now, you have a lot of liberals who defend Obamacare tooth and nail, this always makes me chuckle. The only reason they defend it is because it has Obama's name in it. The plan is a Republican plan, it is a corporatist plan. Liberals also tell me that Obama actually wanted a "government option" or a "single payer" plan but that he knew it would never pass. Of course, this is psychological projection as Obama never fought once to get a public option or single payer. Obama turned health care reform over to health insurers just like he turned Wall Street reform over to Wall Street, and it turned out going just as well for regular Americans. 

I am a healthy man in my forties. I have never been to the doctor for any other reason than to get a yearly check up. Never. I am healthy as a horse. I bought "catastrophic" health insurance the year before Obamacare came online just to make sure my family would be ok in case I got hit by a bus. That insurance cost me $107/month, with a deductible of $5,000 and an out-of pocket max of $8,000. That worked well for me as I never had any need to go to the doctor that whole year and, thankfully, I wasn't hit by a bus. Then Obamacare rolled into town, and don't you know it, my monthly rate jumped to $253/month. That is a jump of over 150%. Sweet!! The kicker is that my rate jumped astronomically for a plan that gave me worse health care coverage, with my deductible rising to $8,000 and my out-of pocket max going to $12,000. See this is what happens when the government forces you to buy an industry's product…that industry gauges the hell out of people because they can.

Things didn't exactly get better for me with Obamacare as the years rolled by, after my first year with this plan, the cheapest I could get by the way, my rates jumped again to $289/month. This was especially awesome because I never once used my insurance except for my yearly check up, which told me I was in great physical condition and completely healthy.

Things took a turn for the better the next year when my plan got slightly less expensive, which was a relief. My plan dropped down to $268/month..a savings of a whopping $21!!! This is how you condition people to eat shit, you raise their rates by $182/month over a few years and then a you cut prices by $21/a month and tout it as the plan working to save people money. Thanks Obama.

The kicker came just last month when I got a notice from my insurer that my rate would be going up from $268/month to $354/month in 2017. That is over a 300% increase from my original pre-Affordable Care Act of $107/month. Good times. So I am now forced to purchase this product, which is for no other reason than catastrophic coverage and which I have never used except for a yearly check up, for $4,200 a year. If I don't purchase it I will have to pay the penalty tax, so either I pay the money and get the plan or I pay the money and get no plan. I get no subsidies because I am eligible for my wife's health care plan through her work, but that plan would cost each of us $500/month. 

So here I am, a working-class man, who is busting his back by running three of my own small businesses where I am the only employee. I am hustling my ass off just to barely keep my head above water and now I am forced to purchase a shitty health care plan that does nothing for me that eats away at my already very narrow margins. I am not alone, and this is why Donald Trump, as loathsome as he is, and he is extremely loathsome, and as much of a charlatan as he is, and he is a yuuuuge charlatan, has garnered traction in this election with "regular" folks. Of course, the reality is that he will do nothing to fix the health care debacle and will only make things worse, but at least he isn't saying the Affordable Care Act is working. It isn't, and I am proof of that.

Speaking of health care, this past year my father, a true blue conservative, died after a brief illness. As sad as he was to be shuffling off this mortal coil, there was a part of him that was greatly relieved to sneak away without having to suffer through this nightmare of an election. My father had always been very interested in politics and was well read and followed the news religiously. Even though he was proudly registered as an independent, in the entire fifty years he was eligible to vote he had only voted for Republicans. My father is an interesting litmus test for this election, as he, like many Republican men of his generation, loathed Hillary Clinton. Interestingly enough, he also loathed Donald Trump with the power of a thousand suns. My father was a native New Yorker, so he knew of Trump's father Fred and had watched from the very beginning as his obnoxious spawn, The Donald, rose to prominence. My father thought Trump was "full of shit" and was a "self-serving asshole" and "scumbag". When I asked my father who he would vote for this year he said he might write in Paul Ryan or someone else like that as a protest, but he also said he was seriously considering moving out of the country. I laughed when he said that…he didn't laugh…because he was deadly serious. This election made my father despair, and while we didn't agree on much, I agreed with him in that.

Oddly enough, or not, my father, the deeply conservative, life-long Republican voting man, hated Obamacare as much as I did. And oddly enough considering his political disposition, he agreed with me on the only way to solve the problem…single payer health care. I can't emphasize how extraordinary this revelation is, that my father, whose hatred of government and bureaucracy knew no bounds, actually thought the only rational and fair way to make health care work in America was to have a single payer plan. I agree with him. I understand the arguments against it, as did he, but we are at the point where we have no other viable options. The fact that two people of such disparate views like my father and I both agreed on this and yet it is a total non-starter in the public debate, is damning evidence to the disconnect between Washington and Main Street.

As much as I am sure my father wishes he were alive today, in some ways I'm sure he is glad he didn't have to live to see the vacuous and repugnant Donald Trump become President of the country he held so dear. Sadly, the rest of us will have to bear witness to the clusterfuck that will be the Trump administration. And if I am wrong and Clinton wins, don't kid yourself, we are still in for one hell of a gigantic shitshow.

DISPATCH 911: DEATH RATTLE OF AN EMPIRE

Just as my father's body deteriorated and failed him, so it goes with America. This election is the death rattle of the American empire. Nominating Trump and Hillary is a sign of a nation mired deep in a self-destructive decadence that will destroy what is left of its power and prestige. The decay at the heart of America and American life has corroded the institutions that held up the nation. Those institutions are crumbling and the future of America is dying on the vine. There will be those that will tell you that this election is merely the end of the beginning of the fall of America, it isn't, this is the isn't even the beginning of the end of the fall of America, this is the death rattle of the rabid, diseased-ridden beast of American empire that flails about gasping for its final breath.

DISPATCH 69: WHO'S THE BOSS?

The other day I emailed a friend of mine, a well regarded financial writer who I call Red Dragon. I emailed Dragon an article form the LA Times which was about the working class people of Youngstown, Ohio who Bruce Springsteen has often written about in his songs. The article showed that these left behind blue collar workers of Youngstown are Trump's base, which is ironic since Bruce Springsteen is such a strong supporter of the Democratic party. It is an interesting article which you should check out here. 

Red Dragon's response was thus, " The frustration of these people, and millions more like them around the country, is understandable and palpable. However, that has led them to a state of delusion, in which they think an aristocratic, billionaire, plutocrat actually cares about them and their problems, and that he alone can “make American great again.” It reminds me of the 'hope and change' that so many Americans fell for in 2008. It’s all so transparent that it’s hard to believe that they fall for it. Desperation causes delusion, I guess." Red Dragon is a smart guy, and as usual he was spot on in his analysis. I could not agree more.

I had a conversation with another friend of mine, a successful radio and tv host who I will call Johnny Steamroller. When I asked Johnny what he thought of this election he said, "Hillary Clinton is what is wrong with American politics, and Donald Trump is what is wrong with America." It is good to have smart friends. Steamroller and Red Dragon are always insightful guys. I would describe Steamroller as a center-right conservative and Red Dragon as a center-left liberal. Their political views may at times be at odds, but one thing they agree on, they do not want to vote for either Trump or Clinton. Whether they do or do not only they know for sure, but I think they are not alone in their reticence to vote for either candidate.

Even though I live in Los Angeles, a liberal bastion, I have many friends across the political spectrum who live in different states across the country. Here is some anecdotal evidence about the election that I have observed, take them for what they are worth.

1. I have not spoken to a single person among my many conservative friends across the country, who said they would vote for Trump. Not one. That doesn't mean they won't vote for Trump, just that they wouldn't tell me they would.  

2. Of all the women in the same age bracket as Hillary Clinton who I have spoken to about the election, none of them like her and none of them would vote for her. In fact, all of the baby boomer woman I have spoken with, from the far right, to the right to the center to the left to the far left, absolutely despise Hillary Clinton. They have a visceral, deep-seated dislike of her. None of them said they were going to vote for her.

3. Being in Los Angeles I do know of a lot of people who will vote for Hillary, some even enthusiastically, but all of them are women under 45. I know of no man who is excited to vote for Hillary. The majority of women I know who are voting for her are voting for her just because she is a woman. In my opinion, if you want to vote for a woman, vote for Dr. Jill Stein, at least she is an honest and decent person you can trust and can be proud to have supported.

Speaking of excited…whenever I see either Trump or Clinton or their surrogates give a speech to a crowd on the campaign trail, I always wonder, who the fuck goes to a campaign event? Think about it, these people have to take time out of their day, and maybe take the day off from work, to drive to some event, find parking, wait in line, then stand waiting for the candidate to arrive, and then after the nonsensical speech they wait in line to leave, then sit in traffic, then drive home. There whole day is shot just to be in the same room while one of these asshats gives a vapid and vacuous speech about absolutely nothing. Who are these dipshits and assholes standing behind the candidate as they give the same canned, manufactured speech over and over again? I am sure these people think they are being civically and politically engaged…but they aren't. They are nothing but props on a reality tv show. They are not only dupes, but they are proud of being dupes. These people are the living, breathing, walking definition of "useful idiots." It doesn't matter the candidate, if you go to a rally or a speech of either one of these people, you are part of the problem, and you will get the shit sandwich you deserve.

DISPATCH 007: DIAGNOSIS AND CONCLUSION

A brief look into Donald Trump's history reveals a great deal about the "man", and I use that term very lightly. Trump is a charlatan, a silver-spooned, mealy-mouthed, spoiled brat of a douchebag who has never worked a day in his life. He is also a failure, an utter loser who has only managed to promote his family name, but never has been able to succeed in business or anything else. He is a punchline and a, pardon the language, "pussy". 

Trump is symptomatic of the disease that ravages America. His spiritual life consists of following Norman Vincent Peale, the power of positive thinking guy. Trump worships greed and self-delusion, which is right in line with the prosperity gospel and its new age counter part, The Secret. This selfish and myopic approach to life is not only morally and ethically untenable, it is politically and economically cancerous. This cancer has eaten away at our society and culture. It infects everything it touches, be it government, business, religion, family or society. Trump being President will be like treating terminal brain cancer with a cyanide tablet.

Hillary Clinton is a corrupt, manipulative and manufactured politician who has risen to power through nepotism. She should be everything liberals and Democrats rail against, and yet she is held up by them as someone to admire. The stench of the Clinton's and how they have conned the Democrats and liberals into selling their soul is repulsive. Clinton being President will be like treating terminal brain cancer with even more brain cancer.

Do I sound pessimistic? Trust me, I am not a pessimist, I am a realist. And history, and my eyes and ears tell me that we are in for a very bad stretch no matter who gets elected. The only thing you can hope for is that something better, something more local, something more sustainable, something more generous and thoughtful, rises from the ash heap of the American empire. Clinton or Trump? It doesn't matter. And if some bumper sticker sloganeer chastises you and tells you this is the most important election ever, tell them to stop moving deck chairs, put down the violin, and either make a run for a lifeboat or sit back and enjoy the up close view of history as the Titanic goes down and sucks us all down with it. It doesn't matter who we vote for on November 8th…the Iceberg is going to win. And it is going to be a landslide. 

What am I going to do? I am going to take the advice of the great, leather-clad American poet and prophet Jim Morrison…I am going to get my kicks before the whole shithouse goes up in flames. You in?

EMBRACE THE INEVITABLE!!!

VOTE ICEBERG/GODZILLA 2016!!

© 2016

Snowden : A Review and Commentary

****THIS IS A SPOILER FREE REVIEW!! THIS REVIEW CONTAINS ZERO SPOILERS!!!****

ESTIMATED READING TIME : 12 MINUTES AND 39 SECONDS

MY RATING : 3 out of 5 Stars

MY RECOMMENDATION : If you saw and liked Citizenfour, see Snowden in the theatre. If you don't like Edward Snowden, or are indifferent, see it on Netflix or Cable.

Snowden, written and directed by three-time Oscar winner Oliver Stone, is the story of famed NSA whistelblower Edward Snowden. The screenplay is based upon the books The Snowden Files by Luke Harding and Time of the Octopus by Anatoly Kucherena. The films stars Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Edward Snowden, with Shailene Woodley, Zachary Quinto, Melissa Leo, Rhys Ifans and Nic Cage in supporting roles.

Director Oliver Stone, like Edward Snowden, is a controversial figure who is despised and ridiculed by those in the establishment, which is a pretty good reason to like the guy. Stone has spent his career sticking his finger in the eye of those in power and their sycophants in the media. Stone and his films have been an important cultural counter weight to the prevailing winds of his time. During the height of conservative rule and thought in America during the 80's, when the nation was all too happy to forget its sullied not too distant past and corrupt present, Stone reminded America of its unresolved hubris with his Vietnam films (Platoon and Born on the Fourth of July) and his indictment of then U.S. foreign policy in Latin America with Salvador and the economic ruse of the times in Wall Street.

In the early 90's, while the nation was still basking in the warm glow of sunlight from Reagan's "morning in America", Stone pulled back the veil and tore off the scab to reveal the rot at America's core underneath the flag waving veneer with his films JFK, Nixon and Natural Born Killers.  Stone's insistence that America look at and acknowledge its true self was never warmly welcomed by those who need to deceive in order to succeed, thus the Washington and media establishment have always loathed him. All the more reason to admire the man and his work, which certainly struck a raw nerve for those in power.

Edward Snowden is also quite a controversial figure to say the least. As the marketing of the film tells us, some people call him a traitor, like those in the establishment and media, others call him a hero. The film Snowden itself is probably a Rorsharch test for viewers, with those who think Edward Snowden a hero liking it and those thinking he is a traitor hating it. The reality is that if you already think Snowden is a traitor, you probably aren't going to go see this film anyway. The people who believe Snowden is a hero are the most likely ones who will go and see this film.

With that context in mind, director Oliver Stone surprisingly pulls a lot of his punches in the film. In Snowden, Stone "bottles the acid", to quote Judge Haggerty from JFK,  and never goes in for the kill shot on the intelligence community, which is very out of character for the rebellious director. Considering Oliver Stone's past work, I found his indictment against the intelligence community in Snowden to be rather tame. That said, Stone certainly shows Edward Snowden in as positive a light as he can, and there is never any doubt as to Snowden's moral and ethical superiority throughout the story, but the scope, scale and magnitude of the evil being perpetrated by our intelligence community, and the impetus for Snowden to act, is under played and never fully fleshed out to satisfaction.

All that said, Snowden, while not a great film, it certainly is a good one. It is without question the best Oliver Stone film of the last twenty years or so since Nixon in 1995. The only other film of note from Stone during the second half of his career is 2008's W., which like Snowden, is also a Rorsharch test for viewers and is a good but not great movie. Both Snowden and W. pale in comparison to Oliver Stone's genius work during the first half of his career, when he made a bevy of tremendous films such as, Platoon, Salvador, Born on the Fourth of July, Wall Street, JFK, Nixon, The Doors and Natural Born Killers. When I speak of the futility in the second half of Stone's filmmaking career I am not counting his documentaries which can be quite good. His Showtime series Oliver Stone's Untold History of the United States is extremely well done and should be mandatory viewing for any citizen.

As for Snowden, as much as I enjoyed the film, the greatest issue I had with it was that it failed to use Stone's signature visual and editing style (think JFK) to tell the complex and mammoth tale of the various surveillance programs that Ed Snowden uncovered and revealed. This is the crux of the story as it shows why Snowden risked so much in order to inform the public as to what was being done to them and in their name to others. Stone does try to personalize the snooping that the programs do, but while that sequence is effective it isn't quite enough. Stone also under-uses actual news footage and cutting between it and the dramatic narrative of Snowden. Stone used that technique to great effect in JFK but fails to utilize it enough in Snowden, much to the detriment of the film. Stone's masterful work on JFK showed how to take an enormous and complex subject and whittle it down so that people could understand and digest it, he needed more of that approach in Snowden, not less. Oddly enough, Snowden almost feels like it was directed by someone other than Oliver Stone, as the film lacks his visual and storytelling trademarks.

As for the acting, Joseph Gordon-Levitt's performance is simply miraculous. Levitt's work is meticulous, detailed and vibrant. Levitt perfectly captures Snowden's unique vocal tendencies and looks strikingly like the man, so much so that in some shots I was wondering if that actually was Edward Snowden and not the actor. Snowden is not an easy character to take on, he is an enigmatic man, probably somewhere on the autism spectrum, who is both self conscious and self confident, sometimes all in the same moment. Levitt creates a genuine, complex human being with all of his intracacies and inhabits him fully, never letting the character slip into caricature or imitation. Levitt's Snowden is multi-dimensional and is a truly remarkable piece of acting work, proving Levitt to be among the best actors of his generation. In comparing Levitt's performance as Snowden to other actors in previous Oliver Stone films, the thing that is strikingly obvious is that other actors in Oliver Stone films were actors in "Oliver Stone films". For instance, Born on the Fourth of July is an "Oliver Stone film", not a "Tom Cruise film", the same can be said for Charlie Sheen in Platoon or Kevin Costner in JFK or Anthony Hopkins in Nixon, these actors all did solid work but were overshadowed by the talent and vision of their director Oliver Stone, hence they were in "Oliver Stone films" and not in "Sheen/Costner/Hopkins films". The very high compliment I can pay Joseph Gordon-Levitt is that Snowden is, without question, a "Joseph Gordon Levitt film", and not an "Oliver Stone film". Levitt outshines his director, which is a tribute to him as an actor, and a recognition of some creative slippage on the part of Stone the director.

The supporting cast is hit and miss. Shailene Woodley does a solid job in the terribly underwritten role of Snowden's girlfriend Lindsay Mills. Woodley is a strong actress, approachable and artistically honest, who has an undeniable charisma that lights up the screen. On the other hand there is Nic Cage, who is simply a dreadful actor of epic proportions, and frankly, contrary to popular opinion, always has been. Cage is in some very crucial scenes but is so distractingly bad that those scenes and the highly critical information they convey, get scuttled, much to the detriment of the film. It feels like Cage is in one of those god-awful National Treasure films and not a serious Oliver Stone film.

Zachary Quinto, Melissa Leo and Tom Wilkinson all do solid work as the documentarians and reporters Glenn Greenwald, Laura Poitras and Ewen MacAskill. The scenes with Snowden and the reporters in the Hong Kong hotel room are surprisingly compelling since they are scenes we have already seen in the documentary Citizenfour, that is a credit to the actors.

Snowden reminds me of two films, one, Citizenfour is pretty obvious. Snowden is a very nice companion piece to Laura Poitras' Academy Award winning documentary Citizenfour, as it dramatizes and expands on what was revealed in that excellent film.

The second film I was reminded of is much less obvious, at least on the surface. That film is American Sniper. Here is the round-a-bout way in which Snowden reminded me of American Sniper. As I walked out of the theatre post-Snowden, I was wondering if Oliver Stone has simply lost his fastball as a filmmaker and was not able to land his punches quite as crispy and effectively as he was twenty five years ago in films like JFK, Platoon, Wall Street etc. Then I wondered if maybe Stone had just grown weary of the cultural battle to which he has dedicated his life, which seems never ending and futile at best. I thought this because of Stone's surprisingly conventional storytelling in Snowden, punctuated by an upbeat ending that, in my opinion, defies the reality we find ourselves in, in regard to surveillance and what the intelligence community is up to. And then I wondered if…and this gives a big benefit of the doubt to Oliver Stone, who, frankly, with the stellar filmography of his earlier years has earned that benefit, Stone had made a truly subversive film with Snowden, but it was hidden beneath the surface of the rather tepid bio-pic it was buried under. It could be that Snowden is Oliver Stone's answer to American Sniper, right down to mimicking its flaws?

Here is my theory…that Oliver Stone intentionally made Snowden to undermine the propaganda of American Sniper and reduce its power on the American collective unconscious.  Snowden the film and the man, are counter-myths to Chris Kyle and American Sniper. Like American Sniper, Snowden is structured as a standard bio-pic, almost hitting the same exact beats and with the same exact rhythm as American Sniper. Also like American Sniper, Snowden ties the dramatic film to the actual, real-life man in it's final scenes, blurring the lines between what is dramatized and what is real. That said, one real life difference between the films is that unlike with the Kyle family and American Sniper, Edward Snowden had no say or final approval of the final script, and received no money for Snowden.

I don't think those structural and narrative similarities between American Sniper and Snowden are accidental. If Oliver Stone is anything, he is a true-blue subversive and it is a stroke of genius to make Snowden a parallel to American Sniper. Oliver Stone has spoken of his masterpiece JFK as being a counter-myth to the prevailing myth of the Warren report. The only difference between the Warren report and JFK is that JFK readily admits it is a myth, while the Warren report holds onto the illusion and delusion that it is factual. And so it is similar with Snowden and American Sniper, as Stone sets out to counter Clint Eastwood in his bootlicking, ass kissing, myth making, propaganda with a counter-myth meant to celebrate the thoughtful, rebellious, principled subversive in the form of Edward Snowden.

Why do I think Oliver Stone is intentionally taking shots at American Sniper in Snowden? I think that because Stone has cast the remarkably wooden actor Scott Eastwood, American Sniper director Clint Eastwood's look alike son, as Trevor James, an NSA middle management type who never questions, or thinks, about what he is tasked to do, or much of anything really. It was seeing Scott Eastwood in the film that made me connect American Sniper and Snowden, and I think that that was not an accident. Stone could have cast a million other actors in that role, but he didn't, he cast Clint Eastwood's kid. Scott Eastwood being cast is not because of his superior talent (God knows) and it isn't a business decision, it is a creative and symbolic decision, and it is deliciously stealthy bit of cinematic intrigue.

Stone subtly and surreptitiously shows that Trevor James is, just like his father's American Sniper muse Chris Kyle, an unquestioning and unthinking fool who fights for tyrants and tyranny, as opposed to Snowden, who selflessly risks his life for the truth, and nothing else. That is what stands out the most to me in Snowden as a contrast to American Sniper, namely that Edward Snowden is smart and insightful enough to recognize the true enemy of America is within in the form of Bush, Obama, Clinton, Petreaus, Hayden, Clapper, the intelligence/political and media establishment et al. Stone is showing that Chris Kyle, like Trevor James, is a dupe, a sucker and a fool, who gives his life as a pawn for the powerful to exploit the weak, the stupid and the gullible. If Chris Kyle were a real man and the true American hero he has been sold to us as, he would not have gone to Iraq to keep us safe from phantom enemies a world away, he would have used his substantial sniping skill on the only actual threat to America that exists, namely the same tyrants who were sending him to war for their own benefit. Of course, Oliver Stone would be excoriated if he came out and said what I just wrote, and it is hard enough to sell movie tickets to a film about Edward Snowden, the man our country and culture has labelled a traitor, already, considering we live in a nation of propagandized flag waving dupes, dopes and dipshits who don't have a single clue between them and are as happy as pigs in shit about it. So Stone made a subtle and ingenious dig at Clint Eastwood, Chris Kyle and American Sniper, that only those cinematically savvy enough would be able to catch and I, for one, give him great credit for that.

One other thing to keep in mind in regards to Snowden and some parallels with American Sniper, namely that both of them may very well be pieces from the same propaganda puzzle brought to us by our power and control hungry friends who operate in the shadows (and are unaware of their own shadow - psychologically speaking!!). There is a part of me, and there is substantial evidence to back this up, that believes that The Legend Chris Kyle was created as a propaganda tool out of whole cloth. His story and his rise into public consciousness is very suspect to say the least, as we've seen from the revelations about his less than truthful depiction of his life and military career. The other thing to keep in mind though is that Snowden, as much as I admire what he did, he may very well be just another piece of counter intelligence propaganda meant to spread disinformation and to manipulate the masses. The reason I say that is because while Snowden revealed a great deal of government illegality, yet no one has ever been held to account for these crimes, which is quite convenient. One result of Snowden's revelations are that the public has become numbed into a shoulder shrugging apathy in regards to government surveillance. So with Snowden's revelations, the intelligence community gets to have the cover of being forced to  "come clean", meanwhile they can continue surveillance without anyone noticing or more importantly, caring.

In keeping with the intelligence communities playbook, right after Snowden's revelations the media went into hyper-drive to destroy Snowden personally. The usual suspects at the Washington Post and New York Times and all the television outlets painted him as a self serving, smug, fame hungry man trying to harm his nation for his own advantage. Even ferret faced "comedian" John Oliver got into the act. So now, any other whistleblowers will be reticent to come forward, and any other revelations of government criminality will be ignored. The cavalcade of information that Snowden revealed has been masterfully manipulated into having the effect of creating apathy in the general public and giving immunity to the intelligence community from any crimes committed.  Snowden may not have been a part of the bigger propaganda and counter intel project, but he was certainly useful to it.

Add to that that Snowden seemingly came out of nowhere…his life story reeks of someone who was snatched up by the intel community and groomed to be an asset. He never finished high school? Failed out of the Army Rangers? These are odd things for someone so obviously intelligent and highly functioning. To tie things back to Oliver Stone, Snowden may be a modern day Oswald, nothing more than a patsy. (Oswald too was a high school drop out and was seemingly much more intelligent than he seems at first glance, for example he allegedly taught himself to be fluent in Russian.)

The reality is that if I am to be suspect of Chris Kyle's story I need to be equally suspect of Edward Snowden's story, as both of them are littered with red flags, some waving higher than others. A giant red flag for both of them is that their stories were made into major motion pictures. Hollywood is a very useful tool to the intel community to shape culture and perception. The idea that Snowden is an intelligence asset meant to obfuscate the truth rather than reveal it may be a stretch to some people, but we must understand that nothing can be taken at face value. If you want to be a well informed human being, you have to be skeptical of everything you come across. Manipulation of the masses by the powers that be is as old as civilization itself, and one must always be vigilant against one's owns prejudices.  

The intel community could use Snowden's revelations to divert attention and distract us from what they are really up to, which is probably a hell of a lot more heinous than we can ever imagine. Maybe that is why Oliver Stone made such an un-Stone-like film. Maybe Stone had an inkling that not all was as it seemed in the Snowden story, and so he used the film as an opportunity to subtly undermine the military-industrial-propoganda complex by taking shots at American Sniper while telling a tepid version of the Snowden tale. Maybe…just maybe…Oliver Stone's Snowden is a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma. Or maybe my tinfoil hat is on too tight…who knows?

One final odd contradiction coming from people like Chris Kyle and his flag waving and ass kissing supporters, is that they are usually either Republicans or conservatives, and often times both. They dislike and rail against government, determined to reduce it to a size where they can drown it in a bathtub, but they fail to realize that the military, the intelligence services and law enforcement are all part of the government. In fact, military/intelligence/law enforcement are often times the most expensive form of government and the most dangerous to the things that I, and alleged conservatives, say we hold dear, namely, the constitution and our individual, GOD-given liberties. As Republicans and conservatives like to tell us, and as I certainly believe, government didn't give us our liberties, God did. So why are conservatives in general, and Republicans in particular, so infatuated with government power, violence and secrecy? It is odd. And don't get me wrong, the Democrats are usually just as awful as Republicans on these issues…look at the superstars who have been my Senators and representatives over the years, Jane Harman, Dianne Feinstein, Barbara Boxer, Chuck Schumer, Hillary Clinton…they are like a murderer's row for the military/Intelligence industrial complex and against civil liberties.

Which brings us to another point made in Snowden, albeit only in passing. Namely that all of these surveillance programs run by the intelligence community aren't meant to stop terrorists at all, they are meant for corporate and government espionage, and to scuttle civil unrest and protest. In the film, Nic Cage's character Hank Forrester describes to Snowden how he had developed a much better, much more accurate and much cheaper surveillance program than the one the CIA and NSA currently use, but they chose not to use it because they wanted to fill the coffers of the military industrial complex by using a bigger, less effective and more expensive by billions program. This sounds exactly like our trusted government in action. Even applying the most basic, Luddite logic, one would understand that the more information you sweep up, the less usable information you will actually be able to focus on. When you expand the haystack, needles don't get easier to find, they get harder.

This is proven by the fact that the NSA and CIA have never used these surveillance programs to stop a terror attack. They have CLAIMED to have stopped terror attacks using these surveillance programs, but there is absolutely no proof whatsoever that is true. Like the overwhelming majority of police work, these surveillance programs, at best, give the intelligence services something to do AFTER an attack, but never before. So what are these programs really about? These surveillance programs aren't about security, they are all about power.

If the U.S. government were so interested in stopping terrorists, then why do they bend over backwards to protect the home and heart of terrorists, Saudi Arabia. Bush's bestest hand holding buddy Saudi Prince Bandar, has been proven to be an accomplice and paymaster to the 9-11 hijackers, as was his wife. And yet, Bush and his successor Obama have moved heaven and earth to protect the Saudi's at all costs and to protect that information from coming to light…why? The Saudi's have been proven to have supported the 9-11 hijackers…think about that. Saudi Arabia was complicit in 9-11, where three thousand Americans were killed. 9-11 has been used as the catalyst and excuse for all of the intrusive (and illegal) surveillance the government has undertaken, and yet, that same government has no interest in pursuing justice in regards to the Saudi's. In fact, not only are they not holding the Saudi's accountable, they are actively arming and protecting them. Any rational human being could, in the light of this information, see the War on Terror for the Kabuki theatre that it is.

Further strengthening the case against the alleged use of surveillance in the war on terror is the fact that the U.S. is also actively working with, arming and supporting terrorists in Syria. ISIS and Al Qaeda are being used by the U.S. as weapons in their war against the Assad regime and its Russian benefactor.  We are doing the same thing in Ukraine where we supply and arm jihadists in the war against Russian nationalists in eastern Ukraine. We play our little public game of charades and pretend to deplore terrorists but behind the scenes we do everything we can to arm and empower them in Syria, Ukraine and across the globe. Is this the act of a nation so desperate for security that they would trample the Constitution and our civil liberties in order to stamp out terror? 

In conclusion, I have an opinion of what Edward Snowden that is probably right in synch with Oliver Stone's, thus I enjoyed the film. I think it could have been much better, but in the final analysis I think it was good enough. I am sure people on the other side of the argument will loathe the film. I believe that if Edward Snowden is the man he says he is, this is the type of man we as a nation should celebrate and hold in the highest regard. It is a sign of our culture's decadence, intellectual indifference and moral and ethical decay that Edward Snowden has successfully been labelled a traitor and an enemy by those in the establishment. He may be an enemy of the state, but he is undoubtedly a hero for the people. If we plan on getting our country back from the oligarchs, aristocrats, corporatists and military industrialists who currently reign over us with their Eye of Sauron intelligence apparatus, the people will need to wake up and fight back. The film Snowden is not perfect, and seeing it will not be a cure-all for the fear, weakness and stupidity that cripple us as a people, that said, seeing it would be a small and positive step in the right direction. 

©2016

Jason Bourne, Projecting the Shadow and the Technological Hunter : A Review and Commentary

ESTIMATED READING TIME : 12 MINUTES 27 SECONDS

****THIS IS A SPOILER FREE REVIEW!!! THIS REVIEW CONTAINS ZERO SPOILERS!!!****

My Rating : 2 out of 5 Stars.

My Recommendation : Skip it in the theatre. See it on Cable or Netflix.

THE BOURNE REDUNDANCY

Jason Bourne, written and directed by Paul Greengrass, is the fifth film in the iconic Bourne franchise (The Bourne Identity 2002, The Bourne Supremacy 2004, The Bourne Ultimatum 2007 and The Bourne Legacy 2012) and the fourth starring Matt Damon in the lead role. Jason Bourne is the direct sequel to the 2007's The Bourne Ultimatum which was the most recent Matt Damon starring film in the franchise. Besides Matt Damon in the lead, Jason Bourne boasts Academy Award Winners Alicia Vikander and Tommy Lee Jones in major supporting roles.

The Bourne movies have always been the Rolls Royce of action films in large part because of quality work from Matt Damon and their wise choice of directors in Doug Liman (The Bourne Identity) and Paul Greengrass (The Bourne Supremacy, The Bourne Ultimatum and Jason Bourne). Bourne films are better than Bond, better than Mission Impossible and better than Fast and the Furious (God help us all). The franchise tried to spin off with another lead actor, Jeremy Renner, in 2012's underwhelming The Bourne Legacy helmed by Tony Gilroy, which was the most recent film in the Bourne series. Renner, a good actor, showed how great an actor Matt Damon really is by simply not being able to live up to the standard of Damon's work in the earlier Bourne movies. The studio made the decision to fork over the cash and switch back to Damon for Bourne film number 5,  Jason Bourne, in an attempt to salvage a big money making franchise.

While the move to Renner didn't work and the move away from him was wise, the return to Damon, while good, just isn't good enough in comparison to the first three Damon led films. One wonders if this franchise has simply run its course and run out of creative steam. For a variety of reasons, Jason Bourne feels like a bridge too far in terms of asking audiences to suspend their disbelief once again for Bourne to go through the same ordeal he always seems to be going through, namely searching for his lost/stolen past.

When the Bourne franchise began, Jason Bourne was a man without a memory. The main driving force for Bourne throughout the earlier films was to find out the truth about himself and who he really was and how he got into this business of being Bourne. Those questions maintain very little dramatic currency or urgency as we come to the fourth go around of trying to answer them, since for the most part they have been answered already. With the big Bourne questions having already been answered, what remains is little more than window dressing. The reality is that Bourne, and the audience, know enough about him that answering more questions about his murky past is not dramatically imperative, thus leaving this latest cinematic adventure to be little more than an echo of previous better ones.

What made the earlier Bourne films so good were that they had a stylistic hyper-realism to them. Every punch thrown and received is excruciatingly realistic, every fight a grueling battle, with magazines, pens and other everyday items given new life as weapons. Bourne exists in the real world and that is what made the character and the films so compelling. Bourne isn't a superhero, at his core Bourne is a man, just like us. There is a Bourne potentially lurking in every man and woman sitting in the audience, which is why it is easy to project ourselves onto him as we watch.  And in everyone's home or office there are everyday items, like those previously mentioned magazines and pens, which we may, deep down in our secretly Bourne trained psyche, already know how to use in order to kill our enemies! At least that is the fantasy that the Bourne films have successfully sold to us. 

Sadly, in Jason Bourne, the franchise veers a little too wayward into the realm of the fantastical and away from that trademark hyper-realism. It doesn't entirely go away from that realism, but it does venture far enough out into the neverland of Hollywood action film land to scuttle the franchise's signature core of hyper-realism. The main problem with Jason Bourne is in the second half of the film when the story goes to Las Vegas. The Vegas section of the film is pretty terrible. Lovers of big, Hollywood action movies will love it, but lovers of Bourne hyper-realism will cringe. Bourne lovers go to see Bourne films to get away from the mindless destruction of the average Hollywood blockbuster. Bourne is usually the thinking man's action movie, but not here. The Vegas fiasco could be taken from any run of the mill, shoot 'em up, Hollywood action flick, and Jason Bourne suffers greatly because of it. 

What makes the Vegas section of the film so disappointing is that the opening portion of the film, set during an outbreak of civil unrest in Athens, is so remarkably well done. Director Paul Greengrass' trademark frenetically intimate camerawork is on full display in the Athens section of the film, and it is glorious. The Athens scenes are riveting and breathtaking. This is the Bourne franchise at its best, using the real world, and real events, as the back drop for this story hidden beneath the surface that goes unseen by the masses. Bourne having a fight and chase in the midst of civil unrest in Athens doesn't just make for interesting cinema, it makes us watch the news differently. We become aware that a whole host of things could be going on behind the scenes of the stories we see and read, and we have no idea what the truth really is beyond the images on the news. That is what makes the Bourne series so much fun, it awakens our imagination and lets us bring it out of the theatre with us and into our everyday life. (To go back to an earlier point, we will never look at a rolled up magazine quite the same way after having watched Bourne beat somebody's ass with it.)

As good as the Athens section is, the Vegas section is equally bad. It feels like two different films spliced together, the first half a Bourne film, the second half a Fast and Furious film. Greengrass is a very talented director, his Bloody Sunday is an absolute masterpiece, but here he seems to have run out of ideas in the later portions of the movie and gone back to the old "Hollywood action movie playbook" to find an ending.

The acting in the film is uneven as well. Matt Damon does his usual solid work. Much has been made of the fact that Bourne speaks about twenty lines in the entire film, or something to that effect, meaning Damon was paid a million dollars a line. But to be frank, he is worth it since it has been proven that no one else could play the part better. Damon has a charisma and magnetism on camera that serve him incredibly well in these films. His comfort in not talking is a rarity for actors, and is an under valued and unappreciated great skill. 

A terrible disappointment in terms of the acting is Academy Award winner Alicia Vikander as Heather Lee, head of the CIA Cyber Ops division. Vikander is a very good actress, of that there is no doubt, but here she struggles mightily. The biggest issue with Vikander's performance is that she butchers her American accent. Vikander is Swedish and British, so speaking with an American accent is no easy task. Sadly, she falls into the trap that many foreign actors in general, and British actors in particular fall into, namely that they mimic what they think the Ameican accent is rather than actually understanding it from the inside out. What I mean is that learning an accent doesn't just require you to re-train your vocal instrument, the mouth, tongue, vocal chords etc., but it requires you to re-train your ears. In order to really do an accent well, you must be able to hear it properly. Most British actors hear American speech through British ears, which makes for a disjointed and poor imitation of an American accent. Vikander does exactly that in Jason Bourne and you can hear it very clearly because she makes the technical error of putting her voice too deeply into the back of her throat and speaking in too low a register. Firstly, this does the opposite of what I assume she was trying to do, it doesn't make her voice sound more grounded and powerful, it makes her voice sound muffled, flighty and weak. Secondly, and this happens a lot of the time with Brits, is that she loses the subtle rhythm of the American voice. The British accent is so wonderfully sing-song to the American ear, and it has a distinct rhythm to it that is easy to pick up. The American accent, on the other hand, sounds terribly flat, dry and dull to the British actor, and so they think it has no rhythm to it all. They are wrong, the rhythm is there it is just much more difficult to locate if you don't know how to listen for it. Thus the issue with hearing an accent in your native voice and trying to translate from there…you cannot do it, or better said, you cannot do it well. Vikander falls prey to this trap, which is a shame since she is such a wonderful presence on screen, but that is undermined here with her distractingly bad American accent.

THE HUNTER MYTH CYCLE

Coincidentally enough, right after seeing Jason Bourne I read the book, Projecting the Shadow : The Cyborg Hero in American Film by Janice Hocker Rushing and Thomas S. Frentz. The book is wonderful and I highly recommend it to anyone who is interested in cinema, myth and Jungian psychology. In the book, the authors examine from a Jungian perspective, six films and their relationship to the evolution of the archetypal hunter myth, from The Indian Hunter to The Frontier Hunter to The Technological Hunter as seen through the modernist, post-modernist and "trans-modernist" view. The six films they look at are Jaws, The Deer Hunter, The Manchurian Candidate, Blade Runner, Terminator and Terminator 2. The book was published in 1995 so the Bourne films weren't "born" just yet, but I couldn't help but think of them in terms of the authors intriguing premise. 

According to Hocker and Frentz, there are three types of hunter myths, the Indian Hunter, the Frontier Hunter and the Technological Hunter. The Hunter Myth Cycle is seen as circular in that it evolves from one myth (I.E. Indian myth) to another myth (I.E. Frontier myth) to another myth (I.E. Technological myth) and then back to where it started (I.E. Indian myth). It is interesting to examine the character Jason Bourne in relation to this hunter myth cycle. The Bourne character is a weapon used by men in suits in offices back in the Pentagon and C.I.A., so he is a no different than a drone, or a smart bomb. He was created, much like the man/weapons of The Manchurian Candidate, to do the killing from which the post-modern man wants to consciously dissociate. The Bourne character is also similar to the Manchurian Candidate, in that he is a human but has had his true identity and memory, markers of his humanity, taken from him in order to make him a near perfect robotic killer.

Bourne's personal place on the archetypal Hunter Myth scale is that of The Frontier Hunter, yet he is also just a weapon of his C.I.A. overlords who are Technological Hunters, thus giving the film two myths in one. Rushing and Frentz describe the Frontier Hunter in part, "Since Indians as well as wild beasts occupy the land he wants, he slaughters both indiscriminately, gaining a decisive advantage over his human prey because of…his sophisticated weaponry, and his lack of spiritual restraint. Although his frontierism converts "savagery" to "civilization", the white hunter himself cannot reside in society without losing his individualistic heroic status and thus does not return from the hunt…". Things always get interesting in the Bourne films when Jason Bourne must fight against another one of the human weapons of the Technological Hunters in the C.I.A. in the form of an opposing Frontier Hunter. Two men/weapons with "sophisticated weaponry and lack of spiritual restraint" fighting each other is a key to the successful Bourne formula.

Rushing and Frentz describe the Technological Hunter Myth as follows, "…Because he is so good at making machines, he now uses his brains more than brawn, and he prefers to minimize his contact with nature, which can be uncomfortable and menacing. Thus he creates ever more complex tools to do his killing and other work for him. Having banished God as irrelevant to the task at hand, the hero decides he is God, and like the now obsolete power, creates beings 'in his own image'; this time, however, they are more perfect versions of himself - rational, strategic, and efficient. He may fashion his tools either by remaking a human being into a perfected machine or by making an artificial "human" from scratch. "

In cinematic terms the Bourne character falls somewhere between the dehumanized human weapons of The Manchurian Candidate, "remaking a human into a perfected machine", and the humanized robot-weapon "replicants" of Blade Runner, "making an artificial 'human' from scratch". The replicants in Blade Runner are tools and weapons for humans, just like Bourne, but they also yearn to be human, as does Bourne, who aches for a return to his long lost humanity while his Technological Hunter overlords yearn to make him ever more robotic, or more accurately, devoid of humanity. The problem with both the replicants and Bourne, is that their humanity, their need for love and connection, is their greatest weakness and their greatest strength.  Bourne and the Blade Runner replicants, yearn to Know Thyself, which is what drives them toward freedom from their makers and yet also makes them erratic and at times vulnerable weapons for the Technological Hunter. This inherent weakness of humanity, the need for love and connection, is removed entirely in the later films that Rushing and Frentz examine, Terminator and Terminator 2, where humans have created super weapons, cyborgs, that are completely inhuman, and of course as the story tells us, turn on their creators like Frankenstein's monster and try to hunt and torment mankind into oblivion.

In many ways, Bourne is the perfect post-modern hero in that he is so severely psychologically fragmented. He was intentionally made that way by the Technological Hunter Dr. Frankensteins at the C.I.A. because eliminating his humanity (past/memory/love and connection) is what makes him so effective as a weapon. Originally in the story, the people in power calling the shots back in Washington are using Bourne to clandestinely hunt their enemies. But now that Bourne is off the reservation and out on his own, he has become the archetypal Frontier hunter, searching for his soul/memory which was stolen by those D.C. Technological Hunters. This is the normal evolution in the hunter myth cycle…the weapon turns on its creator, as evidenced by both Blade Runner and the Terminator films, and now by the Bourne films.

LIVING IN THE AGE OF THE TECHNOLOGICAL HUNTER

What does this talk of post-modernism and the technological hunter have to do with anything? Well, in case you haven't noticed, we live in an age of the post-modern technological hunter. The films examined in Projecting the Shadow show us the road that may lay ahead for our culture. Our inherent weakness in being human, both physical and emotional, and our intellectual superiority has forced us to become technological hunters. From the first caveman to pick up an animal bone and use it to bash in another cave man's head (hat tip to Mr. Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey), to the drone pilot who sits in an air conditioned office in Nevada and kills people half a world away with the touch of a button, we have removed ourselves from the direct conscious responsibility for killing because it is too psychologically and emotionally traumatic for our fragile psyches. Or at least we think we have removed our psychological responsibility. Like consumers of meat who would rather not know where it comes from or how it is treated, we as a society have removed our direct conscious involvement in the killing done in our name by creating a cognitive dissonance (cognitive dissonance is defined as  a "psychological conflict resulting from incongruous beliefs and attitudes held simultaneously") and an emotional distance from it.

Whether it be the drone pilot who goes home for lunch with his wife and kids after having killed dozens, or the politicians and citizens who cheer at the shock and awe of "smart bombs" and munitions dropped from miles overhead on defenseless human beings, we have become Technological Hunters all. Rushing and Frentz describe the Technological Hunter as one who…"prefers to minimize his contact with nature, which can be uncomfortable and menacing", that is us. The "nature" we want to minimize contact with is the killing we have done and our moral, ethical, psychological and spiritual responsibility for it. That is why we create "ever more complex tools to do our killing". We need those tools to give us an emotional, psychological, physical and spiritual distance from the the killing we do. 

The distance between thought, impulse and deed in regards to killing is shorter than ever for the technological hunter, it is just the push of a button away, but with our cognitive dissonance, we are able to consciously detach from the results of those actions and make them feel ever more remote. While they may feel consciously remote, the unconscious ramifications of those actions are felt deeply and personally in the psyche of the collective and the individual. The drone pilot may believe he is merely playing a realistic video game when he kills people half a world away, but his psyche and soul are being torn to shreds without his conscious knowledge of it, as is our collective psyche and national soul.

PROJECTING THE SHADOW

The U.S. soldiers and Marines, Frontier Hunters all, sent to the Middle East to be the weapons of their Technological Hunter superiors in the Pentagon, continuously come back psychologically, spiritually and emotionally fragmented beyond recognition, perfect symbols of the post-modern age in which they fight. This psychological fragmentation brought about by the trauma of these wars leaves these soldiers and Marines wounded and maimed in invisible and intangible ways and often times leads to them killing themselves. The suicide rate of U.S. veterans of the Iraq and Afghan wars is that of 22 a day. This horrendous torment, and the desperate suicides attempting to get away from it, are the price paid for the cognitive dissonance we as a culture enable and embrace in regards to the killing of other people done in our name. Since we as a culture cannot embrace or acknowledge our killing, we stuff it into our collective shadow, or as I call it the "killing shadow", and force the less than 2% of the population who serve in our wars (and even fewer who kill in those wars) to carry our killing shadow for us. The psychological shadow in general and the killing shadow in particular, brings with it an enormous amount of powerful psychic energy, which is why it does such tremendous damage to those who bear its burden, and why it is imperative for us as a culture to reduce that burden on the soldiers and Marines carrying our killing shadow energy.

As our Technological Hunter culture evolves, in order to remove the psychological and emotional cost on the human beings sent to fight these wars, we won't decide to stop fighting future wars, but we will decide to stop using humans to fight them. No doubt at this very moment, somewhere in the Pentagon they are developing robotic, amoral, emotionless warriors who will do all our dirty work for us. The problem will arise of course, when that same amoral, emotionless warrior technology figures out that they are stronger, faster, bigger and better than us. And once they realize they can replicate themselves, we weak humans will become entirely unnecessary. This is the story told in the Terminator films. This will just be another form of our culture ignoring their killing shadow and projecting it onto another, in this case our cyborg weaponry. Except our shadow will not be ignored, and it will lash out at its deniers by any means necessary, in this case by using our technological weapons to strike out at us to force us to acknowledge our own killing shadow.

SHOCK AND AWE - MUST SEE TV

Until we can create these perfect, robotic killers though, we are left to wrestle with our own spiritual and psychological weaknesses, namely, our thirst to kill and our desire to not feel the emotional and spiritual turmoil that comes with killing. It is interesting to notice how in our time we fully embraces the technological hunter myth completely unconsciously. An example of this was the overwhelmingly giddy joy and exuberance shown for the first Gulf War in 1991 and its made-for-tv technological bombardment with smart bombs upon Iraq. Never before had war been brought into the living rooms of Americans as it was happening, and yet, here was the war in all its technicolor glory except without any conscious connection to our responsibility for the devastation and death that we were watching unfold.

The same occurred with the start of the second war in Iraq in 2003 when the U.S. unleashed the cleverly marketed "shock and awe" bombardment. The dizzying display of devastating munitions were a sight to behold, like the greatest fireworks display imaginable, but our conscious connection to the devastation being wrought was minimal. This is another example of our culture being unwittingly under the throes of the Technological Hunter Myth. In contrast, our cultural shock and visceral disgust with the terror attacks of 9-11, where barbarians used primitive box cutters to kill innocents and then turn our technology (airplanes) against us, were signs of our unconscious detachment from the Indian Hunter myth and more proof of our deep cultural connection to the Technological Hunter Myth.

Another example of our cultures post-modern Technological Hunter Myth is the fetish among the populace for Special Operations Forces (SEALs, Special Forces, Delta force, Army Rangers and Marine Force Recon). These Special Ops forces have become the favorite go to for any talking head on television or at the local bar or barbershop, to proclaim who we should get to handle any military issue. ISIS? Send in the SEALs!! Al Qaeda? Send in the Green Berets!! Not long ago I saw everyone's favorite tough guy Bill O'Reilly opining on his Fox news show that we should send in ten thousand Green Berets into Syria and Iraq to wipe out ISIS. I guess Bill isn't aware that there are only 11,000 Special Operators deployed around the globe at any moment in time, not to mention that most of those Special Operators are not Special Forces (Green Berets). This sort of thing happens all the time where people see a problem and say, 'well let's send in these Special Operations supermen to deal with it.' This is more proof of the Technological Hunter Myth in action, as Rushing and Frentz describe it, "...the hero (the technological hunter) decides he is God, and like the now obsolete power, creates beings "in his own image"; this time, however, they are more perfect versions of himself - rational, strategic, and efficient. He may fashion his tools...by remaking a human being into a perfected machine". We as a culture are Technological Hunters who have made these Special Operations forces in "our own image", but only better. The Special Operations forces are "more perfect versions" of ourselves, "rational, strategic, and efficient." We believe we have remade these ordinary men into "perfected machines" for killing, and then we have projected our killing shadow (our responsibility and hunger for killing) onto them.

In our current Technological Hunter Myth, these Special Operators are, like Jason Bourne, nothing more than extensions of ourselves in the form of weaponry, no different than the drone or smart bomb, or in the future the cyborg, and looked upon as just as mechanical. And we have no more genuine connection to them or their work or the massive psychological toll it will take for them to carry the burden of our shadow than we do that of the drone or the smart bomb or any other machines we created.

HERO OF THE DAY

When we examine our Technological Hunter Myth in the form of Special Operations forces, we can see why our culture is drawn to certain things and repulsed by others. For instance, the greatest hero and biggest symbol of our most recent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the cultural militarism surrounding them has been Navy SEAL Chris Kyle. Kyle, who alleged to be the most lethal sniper in U.S. history, wrote a best selling book, "American Sniper" and the movie of the same name based on that book broke box office records. People went absolutely crazy for the story of Chris Kyle. In terms of the Hunter Myth Cycle, Chris Kyle was a weapon used by the Technological Hunter. And interestingly, he was a sniper, a man who kills his enemies from great distances. This is not to diminish the skill it takes to be a great sniper, or the utility of that skill, but it is to point out that a sniper being the heroic symbol of a post-modern war speaks volumes to where we are as a culture. The reason people could admire Chris Kyle is because on an unconscious level they could symbolically and mythologically relate to him. Chris Kyle, like the rest of the culture, killed people from a distance and removed the conscious emotional and psychological responsibility for those kills from himself and from the culture.

The act of looking through a scope mounted on a sniper rifle gives the shooter much needed psychological and emotional distance from his killing. In the case of the sniper, he is twice removed from his kill, once by the scope and once by the weapon itself. The psychological distance of the sniper with his scope is in some ways similar to the emotional distance and cognitive dissonance created when people sitting on their couches watching CNN see smart bomb after smart bomb eviscerate some Iraqi city. Whether it be the sniper scope or the television camera, seeing something through a lens or screen gives the viewer a detachment from what they see, and with that detachment comes the ability to maintain a cognitive dissonance from the horrors seen and any moral or psychological responsibility for them.

In thinking about our current age, and our evolution from the age of the Frontier Hunter Myth of World War II, where our soldiers fought the savagery of the Nazi's and the Imperial Japanese in order to preserve western civilization, to the post-modern, Technological Hunter Myth of today, it is easy to see why an accomplished sniper like Chris Kyle became such a celebrated symbol of the wars we are waging. In comparison to our current culture's example of "The Sniper", Chris Kyle, being the hero for the Iraq war, think of World War II and the hero and symbol of that war, Audie Murphy. Murphy became revered and beloved in his time just like Chris Kyle did in our time, and like Kyle, Murphy also had a successful film about his combat exploits. Murphy, though, fought and killed his enemies in close quarters, without the scope and distance of the sniper. Back then, Murphy was fighting under the predominant myth of the time, The Frontier Hunter Myth, while Chris Kyle fought under our current myth of the Technological Hunter Myth. This doesn't make Murphy better than Kyle or vice versa, it just shows how cultures unconsciously choose their hero's based on the myths they currently embrace.

Another point of note showing how we are currently under the spell of the Technological Hunter Myth, is that there are other warriors who could've become the cultural icons and symbols of our current wars, but didn't resonate quite as much with the public as much as sniper Chris Kyle did. The late Pat Tillman, the former NFL football player who became an Army Ranger, is one example of someone who easily could've become the iconic hero of the war on terror but didn't.  Marcus Luttrell, the Navy SEAL of the book and movie Lone Survivor fame is an even better example. Luttrell did become famous for his story, but, for some reason, he didn't resonate anywhere near as much with our culture as Chris Kyle did. I believe the reason for this is our cultural and collective unconscious attachment to the Technological Hunter Myth. Simply put, Luttrell and Tillman were just as worthy of adulation as Kyle, but they weren't snipers. The sniper is the perfect symbol of the emotional and psychological distance we as a culture like to keep from the people we are killing. The current cultural celebration of the sniper also enables us to maintain our cognitive dissonance with relative ease and keep any conscious psychological and emotional turmoil brought about by the killing we do at bay.

The need for psychological and emotional distance between the person wanting to kill and the actual killing is a signature of the Technological Hunter Myth. At the behest of his superiors in Washington, the drone pilot in Nevada pushes a button and kills dozens in Yemen or Pakistan. The drone pilot is, through his drone, twice removed from the actual killing, once by the button he pushes and once by the missile fired,  and is also detached from it by the screen he watches it on, thus giving him a conscious distance from the killing. His superior in Washington is thrice removed, once by his phone used to call the pilot, once by the pilot himself and once by the missile used. The B-2 pilot, who at the behest of those same Washington superiors drops his payload from a mile up, never sees the people he is obliterating, enjoys the same distance and assures himself of the same cognitive dissonance as the drone pilot. The Special Operations forces that are covertly sent to Pakistan to assassinate a terrorist leader under the dark of night and the cloak of secrecy are the closest yet to the actual killing, but even they are twice removed from their kill because of the weapon they shoot, and the night vision goggles they see through, creating that technological hunter myth distance for which western man yearns. The conscious distance from the killing through the use of technology is vital in creating and maintaining our cognitive dissonance and the illusion of conscious emotional and psychological well being.

In contrast, think of the terrorists in ISIS who behead their captives. They kill directly, no distance between them and their victims. The act of beheading, like the atrocity of 9-11, gives us in the west a visceral, guttural reaction, one of pure revulsion. There is something utterly barbaric, savage and repulsive about cutting a defenseless persons head off. Yet if innocents are decapitated by drone strikes or smart bombs we somehow aren't quite as repulsed by that. What this speaks to is our current enchantment with the Technological Hunter Myth. For in western culture, we have created technology which gives us a safe distance from the barbarity of the acts done in our name. Decapitation by smart bomb feels much less barbaric to us because our technology gives us a moral, emotional and psychological distance from that barbarity and aids us in maintaining our cognitive dissonance. 

I HAVE BECOME COMFORTABLY NUMB

In American foreign policy killing has become something other people, or things, do, and anyone who directly kills, like ISIS, are reprehensible savages. In our post-modern age and the Technological Hunter Myth which has come with it, the extensions of man are his weaponry in the form of machines (drones/smart bombs) and human machines (special operations forces). Either way, whether with a manufactured machine or a human one, our culture is able to consciously detach and distance itself from the violence it perpetrates, regardless of the righteousness of that violence, and this is a recipe for a cultural and psychological disaster as we numb ourselves to the damage we do others and our selves.

In bringing this back to Jason Bourne, the Bourne films have resonated with our culture to such a great extent because Bourne is the perfect human weapon in the age of the Technological Hunter Myth. Like we imagine our Special Operations Forces, Bourne is " made in our own image", but is a 'more perfect version of ourselves - rational, strategic, and efficient."

We can watch Bourne kick-ass in a world that is just like ours thanks to the franchise's trademark hyper-realism, and so we are able to project ourselves onto him and live vicariously through him. The Bourne character gives us one more lens, like the snipers scope, or the camera, or the television screen, through which we can see the horror of our world, that lens is the mind's eye…our imagination. This added lens of imagination means we can watch actual, real-life civil unrest in Athens on our television and not only detach ourselves from our responsibility for that unrest, but also create even more distance by imagining the drama going on underneath the surface of that unrest, and imagining how we would, like our "perfect version of ourselves" Bourne, thrive under those circumstances. This is the final stage of the Technological Hunter Myth, where the technological hunter is so far removed from the actual killing that he/she is forced to use their own imagination in order to envision how they themselves would really behave if they were actually in the scenario where the killing took place. The end stage of this type of evolution, or devolution as the case may be, would be The Matrix trilogy, where humanity is reduced to being prisoners of their own imagination and being used as little more than captive batteries to their shadow, the Technology they once created to fight for them. Once that Technology became self aware and understood that humans were intellectually and physically inferior, it simply conquered and enslaved humanity for its own benefit. 

CONCLUSION

In conclusion, at the current stage of the Technological Hunter Myth we find ourselves in, we have been so far removed from our primal instincts and detached from our collective psychological shadow, that the tide may turn and we may eventually begin to yearn for an acknowledgment of our most ancient and primitive psychological drives. The need not just to eat an animal, but to kill it, courses through the deepest trenches of our psyche. The need not just for our enemies to die, but for us to feel their last breath on our faces, is alive and well and living in our killing shadow. As counter-intuitive as it may seem, these type of instincts are the gateway to a return to a respect for the earth, respect for life, respect for our enemies and respect for killing in general.

Killing and war will never cease to be, they are eternally part of the human condition, but one can only hope that the anti-septic form of war/killing currently enjoyed by the west, where we shove our darker impulses and our unequivocal guilt and responsibility into our shadow, where it festers and grows as we ignore it, will be transformed back into the more simple, if equally brutal form of killing of the Indian Hunter Myth, where respect for prey, enemy and the act of killing return. What I am saying is that if we are to kill we must do it consciously, take full responsibility and be fully aware of what we have done. If we continue to psychologically fragment and cognitively dissociate from the killing we do, that impulse will become our killing shadow, unconscious and angry. When those impulses are cast into the shadow they do not disintegrate, they only disappear from consciousness and grow more and more powerful until they simply refuse to be ignored. When the killing impulse is ignored and forced into the shadow, it eventually will strike out with a vengeance, often destroying the fragmented and cognitively dissociated psyche which ignores it. Twenty-two veteran suicides a day is the damning proof of the consequences of our cognitive dissonance from the killing we do and our moral and ethical responsibility for it. 

Our only hope for the healing of our fragmented psyches, and the reclamation of our humanity is to make our killing impulses and acts conscious.  We must take full mental, emotional, psychological and spiritual responsibility for the killing that we do.  Sadly, with our culture thoroughly numbed through technology and medication, this seems terribly unlikely. The more likely scenario? Go watch the Terminator and Matrix films to see what happens when humanity is unable to carry and acknowledge its killing shadow. It will give you something to watch while you wait for Jason Bourne to come out on cable or Netflix, because you shouldn't spend a dime going to see it in the theatre. And if you really want to spend your time wisely, I highly recommend you go read Projecting the Shadow : The Cyborg Hero in American Film.

©2016

Hell or High Water : A Review

****THIS IS A SPOILER FREE REVIEW!!! THIS REVIEW CONTAINS ZERO SPOILERS!!!****

Estimated Reading Time : 5 Minutes 14 Seconds

My rating : 4.5 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation : See it in the Theatre!! Go See it Now!!

"THE DAYS WHEN YOU COULD ROB BANKS AND LIVE OFF THE MONEY ARE LONG GONE"

Hell or High Water, written by Taylor Sheridan and directed by David MacKenzie, is the story of Toby and Tanner Howard, two native sons of Texas who go on a bank robbing spree. The film stars Chris Pine and Ben Foster as the Tanner brothers and Academy Award winner Jeff Bridges as the Texas Ranger Marcus Hamilton who is hot on their trail.

The acting, the writing and the directing in Hell or High Water is impeccable. Taylor Sheridan who wrote the script, also wrote last years Sicario, and is quickly becoming a master screenwriter. His dialogue is crisp and his action and storytelling vibrant and vivid. The very basic story of Hell or High Water is that of bank robbers, but Sheridan puts an original and unique twist onto that narrative and uses it to tell an intriguing story with deeper truths sprinkled throughout his multilayered script.

Director Mackenzie uses a deft touch to allow the film and his actors room to breath, and he uses the vast Texas landscape to enhance his visual storytelling. Mackenzie's pacing and fluid camera work add an extra dimension to the story that help it blossom. Mackenzie's other great achievement is his obvious insightful work with his actors. While Ben Foster, Chris Pine and Jeff Bridges are accomplished actors who may not need all that much direction, Mackenzie's work with the supporting and smaller roles is evident and excellent. There are local hires in this film, I am thinking of an older man in a diner, and an old waitress in another diner, who are so great in their scenes it filled me with a beaming joy. After having suffered through the atrocity of acting in Sully, seeing the exquisite work of the actors in smaller roles in Hell or High Water gave me faith once again in the craft and skill of not only acting but of directing. I thank Mr. Mackenzie for that and for his dedication to his job and the specificity of his work.

As for the main characters, all three actors are outstanding. Ben Foster is an often over looked actor, but he is among the best we have working today. Foster's Tanner vibrates with a palpable chaotic energy and unpredictability that is mesmerizing. Chris Pine's Toby is more subdued than his brother, but carries a cross of melancholy throughout life that permeates his every move. In my eyes, Pine was little more than a pretty boy movie star before this, but after seeing his work in Hell or High Water, I am excited to see where his career can go from here. And finally Jeff Bridges, who is one of the great actors of our time, turns in another stellar performance. Bridges' Texas Ranger is funny, bordering on cruel, a man desperate to connect and feel again but who is completely ill-equipped to do so. But when we see rare glimpses of Ranger Hamilton's true self and heart, they are utterly captivating. There is one heart breaking sequence where Bridges goes from a subdued guttural cry to a ferocious and fierce determination that could melt steel. Bridges is a joy to behold on screen, and his work in Hell or High Water is more proof of his professional and artistic mastery.

Finally, a special mention for Gil Birmingham who plays Bridges' Texas Ranger partner Alberto Parker. Birmingham takes a role that in the hands of a lesser actor could have been just a caricature, and creates a truly magnificent character of depth, life and feeling. Birmingham's Parker takes much abuse from his partner Hamilton, and while he wishes that abuse would roll off his back in all good fun, it doesn't. Birmingham creates a wall which Parker hides behind in order to function in the world of the Texas Rangers, and is smart enough to let the audience get glimpses of who Parker really is behind that wall which makes him a distinct and genuine character that lights up the screen.

"I'VE BEEN SITTING HERE LONG ENOUGH TO WATCH THAT BANK BEEN ROBBING ME FOR THIRTY YEARS GET ROBBED" - OLD MAN IN DINER

I had not heard much about Hell or High Water before seeing it. It is one of those films that sort of flies under the radar in our very cluttered popular culture. I went to see it because a friend of mine, Mr. Ben AKA The Oklahoma Kid, had recommended it to me. He is usually spot on when it comes to film, so on his advice I made the trek to the theatre to check it out. And boy, am I ever glad I did. Hell or High Water is a truly magnificent film, one of the best of the year. After seeing it I tried to describe my feelings for the film to a friend of mine, I told her that Hell or High Water is the type of film for which cinema was invented. The film tells its story on multiple, complex levels, and most importantly it also tells the truth. There is no Sully-esque fairy tale or wish fulfillment here. The lesson of Hell or High Water is that the American Dream is a lie. On top of that it makes the subtle yet effective argument that America itself was founded upon a lie and built upon the slaughter of native people and the theft of their land, and the karma of that theft reverberates to this day. Hell or High Water shows us that the exploitation that built this country has moved from the native population to the nativist population. Hell or High Water is damning evidence that American capitalism has now become a cancer that is devouring its host, and will continue to do so until its death. 

The Howard brothers learn quickly that the only way to succeed in the rigged game of American capitalism is to cheat. And if you have to hold a gun to somebody's head just to get a place at the table, then you do it….that is the true American way. The Howard brothers are like millions of Americans who have been sold a bill of goods and were and will be again, left holding the bag when the house of cards tumbles. The Howard brothers are the type of men who fight our wars overseas only to come back home to be "thanked for their service" by self-satisfying American sycophants but ignored for their true sacrifice and their desperate needs. The Howard's, like most Americans, live in a country where opportunity is for the few and despair for the many. The Howard's, unlike most Americans, are smart enough to realize that the real enemy is not outside our borders in Iraq, or Syria or Russia, but right here at home on Wall Street and in Washington.

"BOY, YOU'D THINK THERE WERE TEN OF ME" - TANNER HOWARD

The Howard's are also throwbacks to a time when real men existed in this country, not the faux men who roam our land now, with their big pick up trucks, belt buckles and cowboy hats, the Chris Kyle worshipers who carry weapons but lack the courage and wisdom to know against whom to use them. These faux men are good government bullshitters who wave their flag and pledge their allegiance to the lie that is killing them. And when Tanner Howard walks down the middle of the street with guns a-blazin, these "real" men, who greatly outnumber him and out gun him, turn tail and run, because they know that in the face of a real man, of true masculinity, the American male of today stands no chance. 

Hell or High Water is about the loss of that true American masculinity. The Howard brothers are the last of the dinosaurs roaming the Texas plains. The outlaw, the true individualist, who would stand up to power, not be its slave, are long gone. America has become a nation of cowards because all the real men have been neutered…by government, by culture, by greed, by fear, by generational incompetence. The younger generations have grown up not knowing what a real man is, so they drive their lime green muscle cars and play their hip-hop and wave their pistols in an attempt to emulate what they think a real man is, all the while the real man rides his white stallion in the background without a sound and barely a notice, and uses his fists to beat the shit out of those posing at being real men.

"THESE BOYS IS ON THEIR OWN" - TEXAS RANGER MARCUS HAMILTON

There is a scene in Hell or High Water where a bunch of ranchers drive their cattle across the road to escape a brush fire. From atop his horse the rancher says to Bridges' Ranger, "My kids won't do this job!". As Bridges drives away he says to his partner, "These boys is on their own." They are on their own, for they are the last of their kind, driven to extinction by events beyond their control. The real men, like the Howards or that cattle driving cowboy, know that America's true enemy is from within, it is the banks that started that brushfire that will drive us off our lands, just like we drove the Comanche off of this same land a hundred and fifty years before. The flag waving dipshits, the Chris Kyles, the good government bullshitters, they are already dead and they are too stupid to even know it yet. These faux men, these impotent American males worship an idol, America, that cares not for them except to feed upon their naiveté and idiocy. That brushfire sweeping the Texas plain already destroyed the uber-masculine culture of the Comanche, and now it will grow and spread and leave behind it a scorched earth of American masculinity that will never grow back.

That's the real problem with guns in this country, not that guns are dangerous in and of themselves, but that there are no real men left to carry them. The men of this nation are simply children grown large who have had no true men to raise and guide them, and that is why there is so much gun violence today. The people with guns aren't man enough to know when, how and on whom to use them. That goes for the gang banger, the cowboy, the soldier and the cop alike, none of which are real men, that is why they shoot unarmed men and deer…because unarmed men and deer don't shoot back. That is why we fight wars against countries that can't fight back, and still can't win them. When Tanner Howard brazenly walks down the street and shoots back at the pick-up truck contingent, those cowards tuck tail and head for the hills as fast as they can, because Tanner is worth ten of those neutered half-men. 

I have a theory of masculinity that most film lovers will understand. It goes like this…most men of today think of themselves as one of the Corleone family from The Godfather. Of the Corleone brothers, Sonny, Fredo, Michael and Tom Hagan, most men think they are either Sonny or Michael. Sonny, the hot tempered tough guy and ladies man, or Michael, the cool, calm, unflappable leader. In Hell or High Water, Tanner is Sonny and Toby is Michael. In reality most men of today are delusional and are neither Sonny nor Michael. The one's who think they are Sonny are really Fredo, and the ones who think they are Michael are really Tom Hagan. And this is where we find ourselves at this time in the history of the American male…we are a nation of Fredo's, incompetent cowards who are afraid of our own shadow…psychologically speaking I absolutely mean that literally. Occasionally we run into a Tom Hagan and confuse him as being a Michael because we haven't seen a real Michael in many decades. The man we think is a Michael isn't a Michael, he is a Tom, more an errand boy for those in power than real a man who should wield power. The days of the American male as Sonny and Michael are long gone, for now we live in the age of Fredo. What proof do I have of this? Look at our two Presidential nominees…who are you voting for? Fredo or Tom? You get what you pay for…and our bill has come due.

"ONLY ASSHOLES DRINK MR. PIBB" - TANNER HOWARD

Hell or High Water is the epitaph of the real American man. Go see it as it is a fantastic film. It is well worth your hard earned dollars and your sparse free time. Go see it and see the last of a dying breed, the Real American Man, because soon enough the only place you will be able to see one is on a movie screen.

©2016

THE JOHN OLIVER TWIST : Things Said and Unsaid.

This is the fifth article in our new series THE JOHN OLIVER TWIST, where we monitor tv's political comedians and hold them accountable. The original article, Court Jester as Propaganda Tool, can be found HERE. The second article, The Drumpf Affair and Little Bill Maher's Power Fetish, can be found HERE. The third article Waxing Brazilian and Waning Credibility can be found HERE, and the fourth, Out Trumping Trump on the Great Wall of Trump HERE.

ESTIMATED READING TIME : 7 MINUTES 12 SECONDS

A (relatively) brief post on the recent comings and goings of our favorite political comedian, Brave Sir John Oliver, and to a lesser extent, Little Bill Maher, over the last few months. Much has happened but I've been pressed for time so haven't been able to update you, dear reader, on the shenanigans these two faux truth tellers have been up to.

As I have tried to show in previous posts, John Oliver uses the Establishment Propaganda Model ™ to great effect to deceive and misinform his audience. Oliver is not the first comedian to use that model, but in recent years he has certainly been the most effective. Part of how you know he is such a good propagandist for the establishment is to see how the establishment has embraced his work. If Oliver were what he claimed to be, a rebel speaking truth to power, those in power would loathe or maybe even fear him, but they don't, they celebrate and embrace his every move. It seems every week following one of Oliver's shows the public is inundated with articles in the mainstream press about how Oliver's latest "takedown" or "evisceration" of one subject or another was so utterly brilliant. Even Oliver has poked fun at the embarrassing amount of gushing praise his work receives.

The thing about Oliver's "eviscerations" or "takedowns" are that they have absolutely no effect whatsoever on the subjects he takes on. Yes, they may raise some sort of momentary awareness, but that awareness evaporates almost as soon as the episode is over. The Atlantic magazine did a great piece on this recently where they exposed the reality that Oliver is all sound and fury signifying nothing. And that is part of the Establishment Propoganda Model™ as well. Feed the audience something to distract them and to give them the impression that they are well informed and making a difference, when in reality they are really being led down a cul-de-sac of self satisfaction with nothing at all changing in the long run. 

What has interested me the most in the last few months since my last John Oliver Twist post, has been the things that Oliver has left out of his segments, as opposed to what he has put in. This is a vital part of the Establishment Propaganda Model ™, focusing on certain, specific things, but leaving others out. For instance, on episode 10 of season 3, which aired on April 24, 2016, Oliver's opening segment was on Obama's trip to Saudi Arabia and how the Sauid's ignored him during his trip.

It was a cute bit, but if you watch it closely you realize that it entirely ignored the real reason the Saudi's were so angry with Obama. Saudi Arabia was furious with the U.S. over a bill that was up before congress that would allow victims of the 9-11 attacks to sue Saudi Arabia over their role in those attacks. That is kind of a huge thing to leave out of the story, don't you think? It's like talking about O.J.'s marriage to Nicole and leaving out the stabbing. The funniest part of the whole thing is that two episodes later, on episode 12 of season 3, which aired on May 15, 2016, Oliver opened his main segment, which happened to be on the 9-1-1 emergency phone system and it's problems, by stating "9-1-1, a number we work hard to remember". Apparently Brave Sir John doesn't work so hard to remember those numbers when they point to Saudi complicity in terror attacks referred to by those same three numbers, and Obama's ass-kissing of those same, complicit Saudi's. 

The Saudi/Obama kerfluffle and Oliver's choice to willfully ignore the reason behind it, 9-11, is both odd and telling. It is also telling that just a few weeks later, Oliver did a little bit on Chechnya's leader Ramzan Kadyrov, who had lost his cat. Kadyrov is a real piece of work, no doubt about it, but Oliver made a big point, in fact he mentioned it twice, that Kadyrov's wikipedia page has an entire section dedicated to his human rights violations, as if this was some sort of remarkable "gotcha" point. As I said, Kadyrov, a Sunni Muslim, is a real piece of work (or a real piece of something else more odorous), but that said, you know another group of Sunni Mulsims who have a less than stellar track record on human rights…that's right...the Saudi's! Oliver never mentioned that fact in his piece on Obama visiting the royal kingdom to try and quell the fears of financial liability of the royal family over their role in 9-11. In fact, Saudi Arabia has such a horrendous human rights record that, unlike Kadyrov, they don't just have a mention of it on their wikipedia page…they have a whole wikipedia page dedicated to it!!

This is how the Establishment Propaganda Model™ works, some things are said and others not said. The assumptions underlying the establishment propaganda are never to be challenged, only blindly accepted. A great example of this shows up on Oliver's most recent episode, episode 13 of season three, which aired May 22, 2016. Oliver opened the episode by doing a segment on the turmoil in Venezuela, and the protests that have broken out there. The very first thing he shows about the protests is a video clip from ABC News which clearly states the context of the protests, that "on one side (of the protests) are students and the middle class, and on the other, police and the military."

That quote may seem like a minor part of a bigger segment, but this clip and statement are incredibly crucial in setting up the context of the protests and the premise of Oliver's argument that follows. This statement of "students and the middle class being on one side, and the military on the other", does all the work Oliver needs in setting audience expectations for who the good guys are and who the bad guys are in the Venezuelan situation.  And I am not saying that Oliver is wrong here, as he skillfully shows with the rest of the segment, Venezuelan president Maduro is, like Kadyrov, a real piece of work. What actually intrigued me the most about Oliver's Venezuela piece and his setting of context in regards to the protests, was that in a very similar situation in Brazil (episode 6, season 3, air date March 20, 2016), he completely ignored the context of those protests because he was taking the side of the right wing, the lighter skinned, the powerful, the rich and the military, against the black lower and working classes. Why would Oliver highlight the context in one case and ignore it in the other? The answer is obvious, the context helps him in the Venezuela argument, and undermines him in the Brazil argument. The key in both cases is that Oliver, just like the American Establishment, and just as the Establishment Propoganda Model™ would predict, calls for the overthrow or removal of an elected, left-wing, South American government that is less than friendly with the U.S.. The Venezuela/Brazil protests segments are damning and incontrovertible evidence of Oliver as a propaganda tool. Every liberal watching his show immediately sided with the "students and middle class" against Maduro in Venezuela, just as they would have sided with the black, poor and working class protesting in support of the left-wing President Dilma Rousseff in Brazil, but Oliver intentionally never alerted them to the class warfare element of the Brazil situation.

This is how the Establishment Propaganda Model™ works, you manipulate the information you present in order to contort "reality" to your own ends. So, for instance, the mainstream media in the U.S. would ignore or treat as completely normal the U.S. military doing exercises on the Russian border, but would call Russian military exercises WITHIN THE BORDERS OF RUSSIA as provocative. An easy way to dissect this sort of propaganda is to simply turn it around and imagine what you would think if the media from another country…Russia say, did the same thing. Would you trust them, or believe them? Would you take them seriously? Of course not. If the Russians did a military exercise in Canada and the U.S. did a military exercise in North Dakota, who is the one being provocative? In this case, obviously the Russians. So this is one way you should watch and read the news and see through the propaganda model.

As previously stated, it is not always the things that are said that are revealing of the Establishment Propaganda Model™ at work, but what isn't said. For example, why does John Oliver choose the subjects he chooses? Why did he completely ignore 9-11 in regards to the Saudi/Obama situation when it was such a vital part of the story? Why hasn't he done a segment on the "28 pages" redacted from the 9-11 report which some believe implicate the Saudi's in the attack? Why hasn't he done a segment on the C.I.A. losing the torture report…talk about a situation ripe with comedy? Or better yet…why not do a bit on this press conference from last year by the State Department which talks about how the U.S. has  'long standing policy" to not support coups. it is relevant to both the Venezuela and Brazil situations…and come to think of it, the Ukrainian and Egyptian situations as well. This press conference is the height of comedy and should be right up Brave Sir John's alley…yet he ignored it. 

These are the types of questions viewers should be asking of Oliver and all of the other political comedians. These questions show that it isn't just what Brave Sir John says that proves he is a propaganda shill for the establishment, it is what he chooses NOT to say.

LITTLE BILL MAHER PUCKERS UP

As for Little Bill Maher…well…he has been up to his old ass-kissing tricks once again. Most of the episodes of Realtime with Bill Maher are dreadfully dull and inane. The only time my interest is piqued is when Bill bends over backwards (or just over) for an interview guest. On the 5th episode of season 10, which aired on February 12, 2016, Little Bill interviewed "journalist" Richard Engel. Engel was there to promote his book, and Maher was more than happy to let him "plug away".

What was so interesting in the interview was that Maher briefly mentioned Engel's being kidnapped in Syria. This kidnapping story is pretty amazing and is a twisting and turning tale of propaganda from start to finish. Engel was kidnapped by Syrian rebels who claimed to be Assad forces in an attempt to garner U.S. public support to invade Syria. Engel claimed that a group of Syrian rebels attacked his captors, killing many of them, and freed him. The purpose of the propaganda was to make Assad's troops out to be the bad guys, and the rebels to be the good guys. Except…there were no dead bodies…even though Engel claimed to have seen them. And the rebels didn't save Engel from Assad's forces, they saved him from themselves. It was all a ruse…one which, shock of shocks, NBC, the home of Brian Williams, gladly went along with. You know who else gladly went along with it? Little Bill Maher. The story had been quite clearly debunked and dissected by the time Engel made it the set of Realtime, but Little Bill Maher simply pretended that Engel's original story was the one that happened. In typical Maher fashion, he got on his knees, licked his lips and told Richard Engel that he was "so brave", much like his similar work with General Hayden this season.  This is a great example of the Establishment Propaganda Model™ in two respects…the first is what Maher (and Engel) didn't say, namely that the kidnapping was a ruse and propaganda ploy, and two, retelling the original story so that the truth of what actually happened goes down the memory hole, never to be seen or heard again.

Another hum dinger of an interview with Little Bill was on epsidoe 13, season 10, air date April 22, 2016. This time writer Lawrence Wright stopped by to discuss 9-11, Saudi Arabia and the 28 pages redacted front he 9-11 report. I was glad Little Bill was tackling this important issue…and then I saw the interview. This interview was a classic of the Establishment Propaganda Model™ in that it served no purpose but to obfuscate the truth, not reveal it. Take a look.

This interview is so incoherent as to be mind numbing…and that was its purpose. Wright speaks of Saudi complicity in the attacks due to a Saudi agent being in contact with the hijackers here in the U.S. He also spoke of Saudi government officials being involved by supporting the attack logistically. He also claimed that the U.S. intelligence community knew this as it was happening and were also in close watch over the hijackers their entire time in America. But then he says that the 28 pages aren't really worth much thought because all they will do is "embarrass" the C.I.A. Yes…"embarrass" is what he said. The idea that anything other than "embarrassment" is behind the nondisclosure of the 28 pages is never even mentioned or thought of. What an absurd idea!! How could it be anything other than fear of "embarrassment"? This ignores the fact that it isn't just 28 pages we haven't seen about 9-11 and the Saudi's, but 80,000 files. That's right, 80,000 files…not just 28 pages. That is a hell of a lot of "embarrassment" to cover up in an attempt to save face.

Later in the interview Wright goes on to "explain" that Saudi Arabia isn't responsible for any terrorism at all…only the ideology that creates terrorists. Got that? This comes just moments after he explains that Saudi Arabian officials were in direct contact and supported the hijackers on 9-11. If none of this makes any sense to you, then that makes two of us.

Of course those statements by Wright are in direct contradiction of one another. Maybe Wright was just drunk and rambling…not the craziest notion after watching the absurd interview, or maybe he was intentionally being obtuse and contradictory. Maybe that is his job, to muddy the waters, to obfuscate the truth, not to clarify it. And Little Bill Maher was all to happy to help Wright make a gigantic mess of things. Little Bill was giddy at the chance to be able to change the subject from 9-11 and Saudi and U.S. Intelligence "embarrassment" and make it about Pakistani child fuckers…seriously. Little Bill turned the redacted 28 pages of the 9-11 report into a story about Pakistani child fuckers. Pakistani child fuckers reinforces Little Bill's, and the establishment's, preferred worldview, and U.S. intelligence "embarrassment" and Saudi complicity in 9-11 do not. Concerned about Saudi Arabia, U.S. intelligence and terror attacks?Don't worry…Lawrence Wright and Bill Maher assure that there is nothing to see here.

Besides his interviews, Little Bill has been full of the usual idiocy in his comments over the last few months as well. A case in point is when he had a comedian on and talked about how he, Little Bill, doesn't tell his audience what they want to hear. He was very proud of this, wearing it as a badge of courage. Little Bill is a truth speaker who says the truth no matter what…consequences be damned!! In his next breath, Little Bill went out of his way to make a point blindly supporting Israel. Little Bill explained that Europe, who has always been adversarial with Israel, might now be more sympathetic to Israel since European countries are now being over run with Muslim immigrants from Syria. It was a staggeringly illiterate thing to say, historically speaking. In case Little Bill doesn't know, it was European Jews who immigrated into Palestine, not the other way around. And those European Jews brought with them a terrorist campaign against the locals which featured the invention of the car bomb!! Yes, Little Bill Maher doesn't tell his audience what they want to hear, unless that audience are his pay masters in the establishment, then he says exactly what they want to hear, especially about Israel, over and over again. Bravo Little Bill!! 

Also in keeping with the Establishment Propaganda Model™, Little Bill, just like Brave Sir John, hasn't mentioned on his show the C.I.A. losing it's torture report either. In addition, Little Bill keeps on banging home the idea of "liberals supporting liberal ideas" in regards to the Middle East and Islam. Either Bill is dumber than I think, or he is intentionally laying the foundation for more wars in the region against Islam. You see, you cannot argue for liberals to fight for liberal values in Middle Esatern countries, without also arguing for actual fighting in those countries. Little Bill is a neo-con in that he wants to reshape the middle east, and while he would say he is against another war there, his rhetoric betrays him. You can't tell people to fight for liberal values and then tell them not to actually fight.

In conclusion, both Brave Sir John and Little Bill Maher have been, as the Establishment Propaganda Model™ would predict, serving as useful tools to reinforce the establishment narrative, and not to attack it.  As much as I am loathe to do it, I will continue to watch these two dim-witted, establishment shill, asshats, week in and week out, all as a service to you, my dear reader. I hope you are grateful for this, the greatest of all sacrifices, that I willingly make for you. God help me!!

©2016

THE JOHN OLIVER TWIST : Out-Trumping Trump on The Great Wall of Trump

THIS ARTICLE WAS ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED ON MONDAY, MARCH 28, 2016, BUT DUE TO A TECHNICAL ISSUE, IT IS RE-POSTED AGAIN NOW. APOLOGIES TO ANY READERS WHO HAVE ALREADY SEEN IT.

ESTIMATED READING TIME: 8.5 MINUTES

This is the fourth article in our new series THE JOHN OLIVER TWIST, where we monitor tv's political comedians and hold them accountable. The original article, Court Jester as Propaganda Tool, can be found HERE. The second article, The Drumpf Affair and Little Bill Maher's Power Fetish, can be found HERE. The third article Waxing Brazilian and Waning Credibility can be found HERE.

John Oliver's HBO show "Last Week Tonight", took Easter weekend off, so you would think I would have no fodder for my John Oliver Twist article this week. You might also think that with it being Easter that I would be so busy with bunny related activites that I would have no time to write yet another John Oliver Twist article...you would be sadly mistaken on both counts. After last week's John Oliver Twist - Brazil article ran long (as most of my articles do), I decided against posting my analysis of Oliver's allegedly devastating takedown of Trump's Mexican border wall proposal. With no new material to dissect this week, I am free to go back a week to examine Brave Sir John's supposed evisceration of The Donald's cornerstone issue. Here is the relevant segment from the March 20, 2016 episode of "Last Week Tonight".

As someone who does not support a wall on the Mexican border, I found Oliver's argument on episode six of season three against Trump's wall to be, frankly…Trumpian in its vacuousness, speciousness and transparency. What made this "takedown" so absurd was how obviously flaccid it was to anyone with an open mind on the subject and half a brain in their head. A brief glance at Oliver's argument reveals it to be at best, amateurish. 

Brave Sir John challenged Trump for his ever changing estimate of the cost of building "his" wall along the U.S.-Mexican border. At first Trump said the cost would be 4, then 8, then 10, then 12 billion dollars. Not surprisingly, Trump is a bit fuzzy on the details, which is par for the course with The Donald and part of his appeal to his followers, you see Trump is a big "ideas man", he'll let others fill in the details. Regardless of where that number lands, it certainly is a lot of money. Oliver claims that Trump's estimate isn't the half of it, as there will be maintenance costs and all sorts of hidden building costs and such, which will greatly increase the ultimate final cost, which Oliver puts at roughly $25 billion. Brave Sir John points out that this is $77 per American, and that money would be more effectively and more wisely used buying each American a Palmer Waffle Iron rather than building a wall. Cute. He then joked that this plan, unlike Trump's would not offend Latinos…only Belgians. In a weird coincidence, the terror attacks in Belgium a few days later made that joke much less funny in hindsight.

The issue I have with this line of attack from Brave Sir John is this, if we have learned anything over the years it is that Americans never give a rat's ass how much something costs, especially if it is something that they want. Look at it this way, $25 Billion certainly is a hell of a lot of money, but to put it into perspective, it is a drop in the bucket compared to other government spending. When compared to say, Obamacare, which is something that Oliver's liberal audience would presumably support, and that program's cost over a ten year period, which is $2.76 trillion, or even just the increase in overhead for Obamacare over that same time period which is $270 billion. Liberals would not be swayed against Obamacare by a "cost" argument, just like conservatives, and most Americans, were not swayed against the Iraq war by the cost argument. Speaking of which, $25 Billion is still $5 billion less than the U.S. spent every single month in Iraq during the war. If you remember, that war was sold on the premise that oil revenue would pay for the war effort…or put another way…the Iraqi's would pay for the war. Sound familiar? It should, because The Donald is guaranteeing that Mexico will pay for building the wall.

Brave Sir John did step up and take on the claim by Trump that "Mexico will pay for the wall". He used two clips of former Mexican presidents saying that "no" and "fuck no" they won't be paying for Trump's stupid wall. These denials are absolutely meaningless in the debate and prove little except how paper thin John Oliver's anti-wall argument really is, because of course Mexican politicians are going to say that Mexico won't pay for the wall. Trump's argument is that Mexico will pay because they wouldn't want to endanger the $54 Billion trade surplus they have with the U.S. Brave Sir John countered that by saying that yes, Mexico does have a trade surplus with the U.S., but that money is not just sitting in some pile somewhere, it is Mexican businesses money. A glaringly obvious point is sitting right out there for all to see but Brave Sir John ignores it because to acknowledge it would scuttle his entire argument. That point is this, that if a President Trump (God help us all) is in power and says to Mexico, "hey, either you pay for this wall or I am going to put big tariffs on all Mexican products coming into the U.S.", a Mexican President might say "fuck you" to Trump, but Mexican business interests will say…"no...fuck you El Presidente, pay that orange haired gringo for his stupid wall". And in Mexico, as in the U.S., money talks and bullshit walks. The reason is simple and clear, Mexico needs the wealthy American market much more than America needs Mexican goods. Apparently Brave Sir John has never heard of the term leverage, or how to use it. For decades now, the U.S. has been idiotic with it's "free trade" policy, this fact is a great part of Trump's appeal to blue collar workers. If Donald Trump, or anyone else, becomes President, he or she would be very wise to tear up all the free trade agreements we've gotten ourselves into and end "free trade" as we know it because it is neither free, nor trade. America is the wealthiest nation on the planet, we are of much more value as a market to every other nation on earth, than those nations are valuable to us for their products. Sometimes being a bully has its uses, and in the trade debate, this is one of those times. 

Oliver's next line of attack was to claim that Trump's wall simply won't work in keeping out illegal immigrants because no matter how high it is, people will just get ladders one foot higher to climb it and use ropes to climb down on our side. Of course, this conveniently ignores the reality that a wall is much more easily manned than a wide open border. And since the wall will be manned anyone trying to climb it will be exposed to the people meant to protect the border who are working on the wall. This is an obvious point that any impartial observer would note, and it is an extremely silly argument against Trump's wall.

Oliver also makes the claim that "nearly half" of all illegal immigrants have come across the border at official checkpoints. Brave Sir John makes it seem like this is some magic bullet that proves that the wall is totally useless and a giant waste of time and money….case closed.  Of course, this does nothing of the sort…think about it, "nearly half" of all illegal immigrants cross at border checkpoints? "Nearly half" can also be said another way…"less than half"…or better yet try this on for size, "more than half of all illegal immigrants do not cross the border at a checkpoint". Think of it this way…if the U.S. could stop "more than half" of all crime, wouldn't that be a pretty tremendous accomplishment. Or "more than half" of all drugs coming over the border, or terrorists coming into the country or whatever it is you are trying to stop. Even though his supporters are too blind to see it, Brave Sir John's semantic gymnastics are again, little more than clever cover for a glaringly vacant argument. 

Oliver attempts to buttress his "wall is useless" argument by declaring that Trump's wall won't stop drugs coming into America either because drug cartels already build tunnels, or use catapults, or slingshots, or just have people throw drugs over the border in an attempt to evade law enforcement. Seriously…this is his argument. Think about that logic for a second, we should not build a wall because people will try and circumvent it? Yes, cartels will still try to get drugs into the U.S., I mean, you can't keep drugs out of a secured facility like a prison, so your not going to keep them out of an entire country, but does that mean we shouldn't try to keep them out? O.J. got away with killing two people, so I guess we shouldn't arrest anyone for murder. What the fuck kind of dimwitted logic is that and what sort of numb-nuts falls for it?

The biggest issue I have with Oliver's "takedowns" of Trump are that they are fighting fire with fire…or better said…Oliver fights emotionalism with emotionalism. Trump is the master of pushing buttons and playing on people's emotions, and to counter that, one must plug into reason, logic and rational thought, not with counter-emotions. Trump's proposal is certainly vacuous, but Oliver's attack of it is specious at best. What Oliver is really doing is not rationally countering Trumps proposal, but rather satiating his liberal audiences emotional and psychological desire to feel intellectually superior. Think of it this way, would Oliver's argument against the wall convince anyone who believes that we need a wall to change their mind? No…it would only reinforce the beliefs of those who are already against the wall. This sort of argument is perfectly Trumpian…empty, hollow and emotive. Trump does little more than posture, pose and preen, and although his liberal devotees don't, won't or can't see it…John Oliver does exactly the same thing. Both men are symptoms of the same disease that has become epidemic and is ravaging this country…emotionalism.

In terms of the specifics of the immigration debate…want me to let you in on a little secret? Here it is…the powers that be don't want to fix the illegal immigration issue, they want it to forever be a mess. You want to know why? Well…whether you do or don't , I'm going to tell you. Illegal immigration keeps wages down and undermines organized labor in the U.S. (whenever you hear someone say that "illegal immigrants do the jobs Americans don't want to do" tell them that sentence is incomplete. Here is the complete version, "illegal immigrants do the jobs American don't want to do…AT THAT WAGE". And therein lies the problem and the proof of downward wage pressure), which keeps American workers struggling to keep their heads above water, and keeps corporate profits way up. Corporate profits keep the the powers that be happy and low wages and neutered unions keep working people struggling and disorganized, and a struggling, disorganized person is one who is more worried about paying their bills than marching in the streets. Speaking of marching in the streets, illegal immigration also does something else, and this is a topic no one talks about…it keeps pro-U.S. corporatists, tyrants and right-wing fascists in power in Central and South America. If all illegal immigration into the U.S. were stopped today, and all of those poor people who come here for a better life were stuck in the shithole from which they came, then eventually, the pressure in their home countries would grow and grow until finally it would explode in a huge wave of revolution. It is easier for the U.S. to absorb these down-trodden people and use them as near slave labor, than it is for the U.S. to keep them where they are and let them grow in numbers and get more and more disgruntled until they finally lash out and overthrow our corporate puppets who run their country. Mexico is, of course, the greatest example of this. But the rest of Latin America is also riddled with nations that have gone through multiple revolutionary cycles. The region is also infested with drug gangs and cartels, which the U.S. works very hard to keep in business. What? Why would the U.S. do that? Well, for one, to destabilize our own inner cities through an influx of drugs so that the poor can never organize and protest effectively, and also so that the U.S. intelligence community can have an off the books way of raising money for their nefarious operations around the globe. 

Which brings us to the truth about John Oliver, that he is a propaganda tool for the establishment in arguing for the status quo. John Oliver's audience is overwhelmingly liberal, yet he argues time and time again against working people and for the powers that be, and the immigration debate is no different. Oliver's liberal audience should believe in a strong working class and a unionized labor force, but illegal immigration undermines unions and the working class while exploiting poor illegal immigrants for nearly slave wages. In his case against Trump, Oliver argues against using our leverage to strengthen America's trade position in favor of giving our power away to corrupt Central and South American governments like Mexico. John Oliver argues for the status quo and allowing the people of Latin America to escape their native lands for the U.S., which lets corrupt tyrants and corporatists favorable to the U.S. establishment to never be held accountable to their people and to prosper throughout the region. As highlighted with last weeks Brazil column, Oliver has a special hatred for any left or liberal government in Central or South America (Brazil, Ecuador, Argentina etc.) that does come to power through the people's vote and goes out of his way to denigrate and attack them. 

John Oliver's stance on immigration is once again proof of his being a propaganda puppet for the establishment, and his liberal viewers unwitting dupes in his charade. The biggest red flag about Brave Sir John being a warrior for the establishment is that he never makes an alternative proposal to Trump about what to do about illegal immigration. This shows that John Oliver wants to maintain the status quo, which benefits no one but those at the very top of the power structure in the U.S, in other words, the people to whom Brave Sir John answers.

In order to not be accused of doing just what Brave Sir John does, and not offering a counter proposal to Trump's immigration plan, let me offer my own. You want to solve the illegal immigration problem? Make it a crime punishable by prison time for a business to hire any illegal alien and enforce that law for everyone in the corporate power structure of the company. Deport a million illegal aliens, and I promise the rest will leave by their own accord because they can't work due to pulling the weed at the root, which is employment. If illegal immigrants have had children in the U.S., which makes those children citizens, then allow those people to stay under a green card (with all the worker protections that come with it) and garnish a portion of their wages for ten years, and make them become proficient in the English language. After ten years or a certain total sum paid in fines for coming here illegally, and once they have learned English, they become citizens. Finally, legalize narcotics, which will eliminate the need for the drug cartels to use violence, corruption and human exploitation in order to run their business. Wow…look at that, I just solved some of the biggest issues currently ailing our nation. But guess what…none of these things will happen, not because they can't happen, but because the establishment don't want them to happen. It is more beneficial to the power structure in the U.S. for the scourge of the illegal drug trade, the downward wage impact of illegal alien labor, and the upward corporate profit motive, to continue than it is to solve the problem. With shills like John Oliver…and his HBO partner in crime, little Bill Maher, consistently making the establishment case while pretending to be rebelling against the establishment, I am sure no one will notice, or do anything about it, which is just how they want it.

©2016

THE JOHN OLIVER TWIST : Waxing Brazilian and Waning Credibility

THIS ARTICLE WAS ORIGINALLY POSTED ON THURSDAY, MARCH 24, 2016. DUE TO A TECHNICAL ISSUE IT IS RE-POSTED AGAIN. APOLOGIES TO READERS WHO HAVE ALREADY SEEN IT.

ESTIMATED READING TIME : 11 MINUTES

This is our third article in our new series, THE JOHN OLIVER TWIST, where we monitor TV's political comedians and hold them accountable. The original article, COURT JESTER AS PROPAGANDA TOOL can be found HERE. The second article, THE DRUMPF AFFAIR AND LITTLE BILL MAHER'S POWER FETISH, can be found HERE.

This past Sunday, March 20, 2016, John Oliver was at it again on his HBO show "Last Week Tonight". As Always, Brave Sir John was the right-wing establishment wolf dressed in a rebellious left-wing sheep's clothing. The topics this week on episode 6 of season 3…protests in Brazil and Donald Trump/s xenophobic border wall. Let's take a closer look to see where Brave Sir John pulled the bait and switch on his starry-eyed, lapdog, liberal followers. Here is the Brazil protest segment of the episode for those of you who were lucky enough to miss it.

The opening segment was on Brazil, which happens to be in the midst of a terrible economic downturn, and the anti-government protests that have rocked the country recently. The protests are in response to alleged widespread corruption by the left-wing Workers Party government of President Dilma Rousseff and her mentor and predecessor Lulu Da Silva, involving the state-owned oil company Petrobras and an investigation known as Operation Car Wash. The anti-government protestors are calling for Rousseff to be impeached, and for Rousseff and Lula to be charged with crimes. It is, as NBC's Chuck Todd recently re-tweeted, a case of the "People vs. The President"…or at least that is what the media establishment in the U.S., John Oliver included, and Brazil, would have us believe. Brazil's political situation is certainly a potential comedic goldmine, so let's take a closer look and see if John Oliver went down the right mine shaft or if he gave his viewers the shaft.

Here is a little context on the "anti-government protests" of which Brave Sir John is so enamored. Take a look at this picture of the protestors….notice anything a little funny?

In case you are color blind I'll help you out, the protestors are overwhelmingly white. In fact, according to polls cited by Joshua Howet Berger of yahoo News, the protestors against Rousseff and her leftist government are "significantly richer, whiter and more educated than Brazilians at large." At the largest anti-governemnt protests in Sao Paulo, 77% of the demonstrators self identified as white, and 77% were university graduates. In the entirety of Brazil these numbers are dramatically lower, with 48% of the population White and only 13% university graduates.

To expand our context a bit more, understand that Brazil's population of 200 million people is roughly 50.7% Black/Brown, and Black/Brown people make up a disproportionately larger percentage of the populace living in poverty, 70%, than they do of the overall population. Black/Brown people also make up 68% of homicide victims and 62% of the prison population. In other words, Brazil has a pretty serious race problem. In addition, according to a study by the BBC, "Brazil has one of the highest levels of income inequality in the world." If we broaden our context to Brazilian history, the deep roots of that income and racial inequality are easy to see as Brazil was the last country in the western hemisphere to abolish slavery in 1888.

What does any of this have to do with John Oliver and his Brazil bit? Well, take a look at this other picture. This was taken of a family heading out to attend the anti-government protest of which John Oliver is spoke and supports.

This picture should be the Holy Grail for a rebellious liberal comedian like Oliver as it captures perfectly the hypocritical core of the protests against the left wing government. Rich, white people, with their pure-bred dog, out to protests their suffocating oppression at the hands of the left wing government with their black nanny in tow wearing her uniform, pushing their two children.  HOLY SHIT!! Is this not the kind of picture that gives a supposed liberal comedian like Brave Sir John wet dreams? I can hear his voice…"Keep up Maria!! We can't be late to the anti-government protest!! We need to oust this oppressive left-wing government which forces us to pay you a livable minimum wage!! It's for your own good Maria!! Followed by…""Maria you need to wear all whtie today so you match little Fifi, my husband and I are wearing matching green and yellow, so you should wear the same color as the dog since you and Fifi are equals in my eyes!!Viva La Revolucion!!" But Oliver never mentioned this infamous picture, nor did he ever mention the racial component (white) of the anti-government protests, or of the pro-government protests that followed (Black/Brown).

The closer you look at what Brave Sir John kept out, the curiouser his Brazil segment becomes. Another aspect that Oliver failed to mention can be found in a terrific article at The Intercept written by Glenn Greenwald, which tells us that the white, wealthy, anti-government protestors are being relentlessly egged on by the corporate Brazilian media which are owned by a small group of, not surprisingly, rich, white oligarchs with a long track record of nefarious political activities. The main culprit is a media monster known as Globo, which is basically the Fox News of Brazil. How bad is Globo? Well, in 1964 there was a military coup in Brazil which overthrew a democratically elected left wing government, just so you know, this coup was backed and funded by the U.S., another little factoid that Brave Sir John would never mention. Anyway, this coup led to over twenty years of brutal, right-wing, pro-U.S., military dictatorship which tortured, murdered, disappeared and imprisoned political opposition. This coup was fully supported by Globo and the rest of the oligarch media and their ownership of a handful of plutocratic families, which described the coup as "a noble defeat of a corrupt left wing government." If that sounds eerily reminiscent of what is going on in Brazil right now…well, it would seem with U.S. backed right wing South American coups, as with fashion, everything old is new again.

So what we have is John Oliver, a darling of the liberal class here in America, taking the side of the wealthy, white, right-wing Brazilians and their mouthpiece media monster Globo, which is basically a Portuguese language Fox News on steroids, in their attempt to overthrow a democratically elected left wing government that has, through various government programs like raising the minimum wage, lifted tens of millions our of poverty and hunger, many of those millions being the poor Black/Brown Brazilians who are now protesting in support of the government. Let that sink in for a minute. A very understated comparison would be if John Oliver were supporting the Tea Party and Fox News in an attempt to remove Obama from the Presidency because of Obamacare.

Well, you may ask…what about the corruption? There is no doubt that the terribly flawed left wing Worker's Party government of Rousseff is corrupt…but you know who else is corrupt? The right wing governments that preceded Lulu And Rousseff in office and the one that would take her place if she is impeached. In fact, according to that same article by Glenn Greenwald of the Intercept, "five members of the impeachment commission are themselves being investigated as part of the same corruption scandal that is threatening to bring down Rousseff. Of the 65 members of the House impeachment committee, 36 are currently facing legal proceedings." The right wing opposition leader who would replace Rousseff if she were impeached is Vice-President Michel Temer, who, surprise, surprise, has also been identified as having accepted bribes in the same scandal that embroils Rousseff. Hold onto your hats because, shock…the opposition Senate leader, Aecio Neves, has also been implicated five times in this same exact scandal. Another understated but apt comparison would be when during the 90's, republicans like Newt Gingrich and Bob Livingston tried to impeach Bill Clinton for the Lewinsky affair, when they themselves were having affairs. In the opening of the Brazil segment, John Oliver says in a very dismissive and throw away fashion, that "the Rousseff government claims the charges are politically motivated", ummm…yeah…you think that might be a possibility? Goodness knows it certainly wouldn't be the first time.

So now we have an executive branch, president Rousseff and her predecessor Lulu, ensnared in corruption allegations, and the legislative branch tarred by the same corruption investigation, but at least the judiciary has clean hands in all of this…right? Right? RIGHT? Oh dear. Even this part of the story is rife with unbelievable corruption. Brave Sir John mentioned a "smoking gun" audiotape of a wiretapped conversation between Rousseff and Lulu that was released by the court which seems to indicate that Rouseff and Lulu were in cahoots to get Lulu protection from prosecution by making him part of her cabinet. With the help of Mr. Greenwald once again, a closer investigation of this "smoking gun" reveals that the judge who leaked the audiotape, Sergio Moro, obviously did so as a political maneuver to embarrass Rousseff and Lulu and to create the same street protests of which Brave Sir John is so enamored. A brief glance at the facts surrounding this audiotape, that Brave Sir John portrayed as powerful proof of Rousseff's and Lulu's looking guilty but which is, in reality, much more ambiguous than he claims, shows that the audiotape was illegally obtained after Moro's warrant had expired, and it was released to the media without any due process and only hours after the tape was made. This, of course, didn't stop the right wing Globo from dramatizing this "bombshell" revelation with all the journalistic integrity we have come to expect from out own 'Fair and Balanced" friends at Fox.

Oliver also mentioned that twenty judges have vowed to block Rousseff's attempt to get Lulu onto her cabinet, a move that Oliver described as an "outright revolt". It is an interesting choice of words because Oliver praises this "outright revolt" by the judiciary, but never mentions the judges connections to the upper class, white protests and the right wing opposition party. A judicial revolt is not democratic, and in fact, subverts the will of the populace in Brazil which over the last four presidential election has elected Lulu and Rousseff to the nations highest post. In the last presidential election alone, 54 million Brazilians voted for President Roussef. Would John Oliver's sycophant fans think he was so wonderful if he spoke the same way about Jstice Scalia and the Bush v. Gore decision of 200 which discontinued recounts and put the man with fewer votes, Bush, into the white house? Or the Senate republicans who are blocking Obama's Supreme Court nominee in his final year in office? Both of these pale in comparison to what is happening in Brazil right now but it gets the point across that Brave Sir John is up to no good and his liberal fans are none the wiser. 

In regards to the state-run oil company Petrobras scandal, Brave Sir John was quick to point out that the only two words more suspicious than "state-run" are "oil company". He then quickly corrected himself and gave this list of the most suspicious two word phrases…1. Open Marriage 2. Well-spoken 3. Homeopathic remedy 4. State-run 5. father-daughter 6. Oil company 7. Discount sushi. As always Brave Sir John is nothing if not "clever", but beneath this clever cloak lies a steely establishment dagger. What is this establishment dagger? Let's take a closer look.

Brave Sir John's favorite tactic is to completley ignore context when attacking any country except the U.S. In his assault on the left in Brazil, he makes the blanket statement that "State-run" is a suspicious word. Good to know…I hope his liberal sycophants in the U.S. are listening so that they understand that single payer healthcare…which would be "state-run"…is very suspicious. As are social security, medicare, medicaid, law enforcement and the military to name but a few. Also, according to Brave Sir John the question becomes…why would ANY country have a state-run oil company? To Brave Sir John that idea is utter lunacy…the implication being that those dipshit Brazilians are just idiots. This is where context would help a great deal because as with nearly every country in South America, Brazil has a very long and dark history of being raped, ravaged, pillaged and plundered by Europeans and American colonialist powers. Brazil's natural and human resources have been exploited for centuries by powerful outsider interests which subjugated much of the populace and stole most of the resources. This might be an important fact to point out when discussing the desire by Brazilians to nationalize their oil industries.

And as a supposed beacon of liberalism, Brave Sir John might also want to point out that it was U.S. multi-national companies that as recently as late last century were the ones leading the charge to exploit Brazil and its resources, and also destroying its Amazon rain forest in the process. But Brave Sir John would never do that because that would mean standing up to the Establishment which is anathema in the weak kneed world of John Oliver.

It also would have been helpful in regards to the "state-run" issue, to point out that the U.S. was behind the coup in 1964 that overthrew the democratically elected left wing government and installed a brutal right wing military dictatorship. That right wing dictatorship ruled from 1964 to 1985…which might be important piece of information if you are trying to explain why, after returning to democracy in 1986, Brazil would eventually in 2002 embrace the left wing Worker's Party and "state-run" oil companies after decades of severe right wing dictatorial rule and the exploitation by multi-national companies that came with it.

The context of the '64 coup might also be useful in understanding that not everything his what it appears to be in Brazil, namely that these wealthy, white, right wing protests might be backed by powerful foreign interests…like…I don't know…the United States, which has a very long and odious history of partaking in such covert operations in the region. 

These facts are uncomfortable for Brave Sir John because they go against the establishment narrative that he routinely espouses and vociferously defends. As does the fact that in 2013 it was revealed that the U.S. was spying on President Rousseff and intercepting her texts, emails and phone calls…which might be an indicator that they were trying to dig up dirt on her to get her removed from her democratically held office of President.

Why would the U.S. want to remove Rousseff and her left wing government from office? This is a geo-political move by the U.S. to strangle the potential economic, military, and political rival of the BRICS alliance (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) in the cradle. Removing the threat of the BRICS alliance guarantees that the world remains a uni-polar one, with the U.S. at the top, and not a multi-polar one where the BRICS are an admittedly weaker, although viable, alternative to U.S. domination. This is also why the U.S. has made covert moves against Russia in the form of the coup in Ukraine and the war in Syria. Coincidentally, or not, the moves against Putin and Russia also involved the Olympics, the 2014 Socchi Winter Olympics, which brought a great opportunity for a propaganda victory by the west over Putin. The moves against Rousseff coincide with this summer's Rio de Janeiro Olympics.

What makes the Rio Olympics interesting is that there is also a massive corruption scandal swirling around them that is centered on the same ruthless construction monopolies at the heart of the Petrobras/Car-Wash investigation that has enveloped Rousseff, but the political party involved with the Olympic corruption is the center right opposition party to the Worker's Party, so for the time being that investigation has been thwarted.

Construction magnate Marcelo Oderbrecht, whose company Odebrecht was at the heart of the Petrobras corruption, was sentenced to 19 years in prison for his role in that scandal. Odebrecht was also involved in building much of the World Cup and Olympic venues, but the company's criminality in those cases has been ignored for now. As a Rio based journalist told The Nation's Dave Zirin, " The contrcution Indistrial Complex in Brazil is similar to the Military Industrial Complex in the U.S. Instead of Haliburton and the Carlyle Group, Brazil has Odebrecht and all the rest ." Brave Sir John has taken on FIFA corruption on his show, so why not take on Olympic corruption in Rio? Why not expose the Construction Industrial Complex  and its connection to the opposition trying to take down the Worker's Party in Brazil? This seems to be fertile ground for a comedian whose legion of fans are avowed liberals, does it not?

To close out the Brazil piece, Brave Sir John in passing states that there were "pro-government rallies" as well. In his next breath he went on to the next segment. Ummm…the fact that there were "pro-government" rallies is kind of an important point, and it actually undermines the majority of the segment that preceded that acknowledgment. A closer inspection of both the anti and pro-government rallies also reveals something quite extraordinary that Brave Sir John might wanted to enlighten his audience with. Namely, that the people who dislike Rousseff and the Worker's Party are openly calling for a military coup to overthrow the government and to, in a wonderful bit of Orwellian flourish, "restore democracy". The Brazilian oligarch class is pissed off by the social changes that have taken place in Brazil during the 13 years of Worker Party rule in the country…changes like a higher minimum wage and greatly reduced poverty and hunger. As Duke University historian John French told Yahoo News, that wealthy, white Brazilians are "discomforted by the fact that people are rising to places where they're not supposed to be, for example, a lot of poor people are now flying in airplanes, which really outrages them because airports used to be an upper-class preserve. Or the tripling of the number of people going to higher education."

If this story were based in the U.S. wouldn't John Oliver and his ilk be in total support of the impoverished Black minority fighting against an uprising by wealthy white elites? The answer is, of course, yes. In fact, race would be the central issue in the story for people like John Oliver….you know how I know that…because he makes it the central issue later in the same episode with his segment on Trump's Mexican wall. But in the case of Brazil, since it has a leftist government, Brave Sir John takes the side of American corporate and foreign policy establishment interests which loathe the Worker's Party and Rousseff and Lulu, over that of its historically dispossessed and marginalized poor Black/Brown population. If anyone else were doing that, Brave Sir John would call them a racist…so what does that make him…a racist, a hypocrite and an imperial asshat?

With the Brazil segment Oliver did what he always does in regards to South and Central America, he attacked only the leftists who stand for their native people against the U.S. establishment…remember his assault on President Correa of Ecuador last season? Why would Brave Sir John, a supposed liberal, only attack South American leftists and their policy? And why wouldn't he openly declare that was what he was doing? The answer is obvious, he was covertly doing the dirty work for the U.S. establishment by inoculating his liberal audience from thinking critically about America's imperial foreign policy in the region.

Brave Sir John's modus operandi is to completely ignore context and nuance when trying too make an argument, and the Brazil story is testament to that. Oliver's turning a blind eye to the crucial context of these protests is damning and incontrovertible confirmation that he is an agent of disinformation who intentionally obfuscates the truth and deliberately misinform his audience. 

Will Brave Sir John's liberal audience actually inform themselves about the slow-motion coup taking place in Brazil and hold John Oliver accountable for being a lackey to the establishment and powerful here in America? It is doubtful, you know why? Because he distracts his intellectually self-satisfied minions by wrapping his imperial foreign policy and establishment ass kissing, in a fuzzy, warm blanket of domestic liberalism. You know how I know that? Because, in keeping with his tried and true formula, he followed up his assault on the Worker's Party of Brazil, with the delicious liberal red meat of deconstructing the reasoning and logistics of Donald Trump's xenophobic Mexican wall. The liberal establishment swooning over Oliver when he takes on Trump reaches uncomfortably pornographic proportions, so I wouldn't count on much self-refelction from that crew of mindless, yet self-satisfied dupes. 

The truth of what John Oliver is really up to with his HBO show is very clear to see for those interested in looking. When presented with the choice of siding with the wealthy, white, fascist oligarchy or the downtrodden and their very flawed leftist government, Oliver chooses the former. Time after time, when given the choice between the powerful and those fighting for the powerless, Brave Sir John chooses the powerful. While his audience are overwhelmingly avowed liberals, Brave Sir John knows where his bread is truly buttered…on the side of the establishment and empire. Well done, Brave Sir John, another episode of "Last Week Tonight" and another misinformation mission accomplished. 

UPDATE I - MAY 25, 2016

Some new information has come to light on the coup in Brazil…I am pretty positive that Brave Sir John won't do a segment on this material because it is inconvenient to his rabid pro-U.S. establishment argument. Please read the following.

RIGHT WING/FASCIST COUP IN BRAZIL

UPDATE II - JUNE 3, 2016

The hits keep on coming down in Brazil. Please read this new piece from Glenn Greenwald…another bit of information that Brave Sir John won't share on his show.

INTERIM PRESIDENT OF BRAZIL RECEIVES 8 YEAR BAN ON RUNNING FOR OFFICE

And for more information on John Oliver and Brazil, check out the new John Oliver Twist : Things Said and Unsaid 

©2016

THE JOHN OLIVER TWIST : The Drumpf Affair and Little Bill Maher's Power Fetish

ESTIMATED READING TIME: 10 MINUTES

This is the second article in our new series THE JOHN OLIVER TWIST, where we monitor tv's political comedians and hold them accountable. The original article, Court Jester as Propaganda Tool, can be found HERE.

There has been a great deal of chatter about John Oliver's latest episode of his HBO show Last Week Tonight and Oliver's "masterful takedown" of all things Donald Trump. I think the episode is noteworthy, but not for the same reason others seem to think so. I believe the episode is noteworthy because it lays bare, not just the vacuousness of Donald Trump, but also the vapidity of Brave Sir John and his flaccid humor.

The problem with Oliver's Drumpfening, is not that he attacked Donald Trump, who has been a boil on the ass of America for over thirty years, but rather that he only diagnosed the symptom (the boil) and not the disease (the corrupt establishment) from which it sprang. This is John Oliver's modus operandi, he zeros in on a very specific, and frankly, insignificant issue, and self-aggrandizingly beats it death, all the while whistling past the graveyard of the bigger looming issue. It is this larger issue, the disease if you will, that needs to be addressed, ridiculed and dissected, not the superficial symptom. 

Oliver's Trump episode exposes his adamant and willful ignorance of the larger, more pressing issues from which these smaller issues come. The Egyptian economic crisis is a perfect example. Oliver made fun of Egyptian President el-Sisi and his opulent arrival via a $200,000 red carpet to an event where he tells Egyptians that there must be spending cuts to basic services in  order to save money as the country goes through economic hardship. Oliver followed up with a scathing attack on a tongue-in-cheek el-Sisi speech where he tells Egyptians that they can "sell him" in order to raise money. It was funny because it is such an obvious display of corruption and narcissism on the part of El-Sisi. Oliver rightly took the leader to task for such nonsense. What Oliver didn't do…was take the United States to task for being the ones behind putting El-Sisi into power and keeping him there.

A brief history lesson shows us that the U.S. backed the brutal dictator Hosni Mubarek for decades until he was overthrown by the "Arab Spring" protests. A democratic election followed that put the Muslim Brotherhood in charge of Egypt. This was unacceptable to the U.S. and it's ally Israel, so the U.S. quickly went about undermining the Muslim Brotherhood's government and supported a coup by another military leader in the vein of Mubarek, this time with the aforementioned nefarious narcissist General el-Sisi. So Oliver shows what a venal and delusional leader el-Sisi is but ignores how and why he got into power in the first place. Brave Sir John also fails to mention that the US is backing el-Sisi, who besides being corrupt, is a savage tyrant who tortures and brutalizes the same democratic forces we once praised in Egypt. Because if Oliver pulled that particular string of inquiry into el-Sisi and Egypt, then he begins questioning the U.S. and the establishment, and Brave Sir John  has proven that he will never, under any circumstances, take on or stand up to, the U.S. establishment in general, and its foreign policy in particular. Even though Brave Sir John wears the mask of the fearless rebel, he is actually a chickenshit sycophant whose actual job is to protect authority, never attack it.

Oliver followed the el-Sisi bit with his much adored Trump rampage. It was a very effective evisceration of the unscrupulously hollow man behind the Trump brand. But, regardless of whether you like Trump or not, there is a much deeper, and more relevant story behind him and his political rise than his obvious lies and despicable behavior. That story is…how in the hell did the Trump phenomenon even become possible in the first place?

The answer to that question is obvious to anyone with eyes to see. The political, media, financial, and corporate establishment of this country has spent years demeaning, belittling, exploiting and deceiving the populace for their own personal wealth and gain. No one trusts or should trust politicians, the government, the media, Wall Street or corporate America. The failure across the board of the establishment and its exploitation of the working class, is the fertile ground upon which the demagogue Trump gained his foothold and blossomed into a most unlikely voice for the forgotten. 

It is not without a tremendous amount of irony that a silver-spooned, self-serving billionaire has become the symbol of the exploited. As Oliver points out, Trump's whole game is just pure bullshit, but so is John Oliver's, as Trumps lies are lies of commission, while Oliver's lies are lies of omission. Oliver never even attempts to pull the Trump weed at its root, instead preferring to pluck the dandelion by its Orange-haired head, insuring that the ground from which this toxic flower blossoms will never be held to account, guaranteeing that another, maybe even more repugnant, weed will bloom from the same soil the next time around. 

Oliver's target audience, those on the political left and in the establishment, already loathe Trump with a fiery passion, so by simply taking down Trump, Oliver is just doing what he always does, reassuring his audience that they are really, really smart and superior, all the while making sure they never actually question the root causes of such problems, only their superficial existence.

Those...and please pardon the pun...Trumpeting Oliver's masterful annihilation of all things Trump are really only buttressing the trivial type of thinking from which a man like Trump can gain traction. It is a strange bit of political and intellectual Jiu Jitsu, but the reality is that Oliver's empty attack on Trump's shallowness will only reinforce the type of thinking, or more accurately, the shortcuts to thinking, that brought a man like Trump to political prominence in the first place. I doubt Oliver's minions will be self aware enough to break through their own sense of self-satisfaction to see that they are just as vacuous and mindless as the buffoons who praise and follow Trump. Both groups, those who love Trump and those who love Oliver, are embracing the easy, the simple and the thoughtless at the expense of the meaningful, the important and the sophisticated.

LITTLE BILL MAHER LOVES FELLATIO!!

A brief note on another impotent clown who wears the rebel mask but refuses to actually take on the powerful…Little Bill Maher. On Friday nights Realtime with Bill Maher, Maher shamelessly interviewed former NSA and CIA chief General Michael Hayden. The interview touched upon Hayden's new book, thoughts on surveillance and on the Apple/FBI battle over the iPhone of the San Bernadino shooters.

Little Bill Maher is, on his very best day, a third rate hack of a comedian and an intellectual dwarf. To his credit, Maher is very good at hosting "Realtime" and at keeping the show moving as his panels are usually populated by a collection of dullards so lacking in wit and insight as to be mind numbing. Watching a chimp smelling his own poop would be a vastly more entertaining and intellectually stimulating exercise.  

In keeping with Little Bill's patty cake interview style that he used with propagandists Judith Miller and Kathryn Bigelow, Maher went the extra mile last week. Fridays interview with Hayden was nothing short of pornographic as Maher spent the entire interview fellating General Hayden on live television. Little Bill empathized with Hayden for doing such a hard job and never getting credit for it. BOO-HOO. Maher said that Americans demand better intelligence after a terror attack but then want less surveillance when no attacks have occurred. To Maher this showed how Americans are coddled and stupid, something Little Bill would know a lot about since he is a spoiled pampered dipshit. Little Bill even chastised his audience for cheering Apple for taking on the FBI.

What was really great was that Maher told his audience that they have no idea what a dangerous and scary world we live in because terrorists REALLY want a nuclear bomb and to set it off in America. OH NO….WITTEW BIWW IS SCAWED!!!!  Maher sounded more like Dick Cheney's fluffer than an insurgent comedian.

Little Bill went on to say that the intelligence services only make the news when they don't stop an attack. He claimed that the NSA, CIA et al have stopped attacks, but that all of the attacks that they have stopped, and how they have "kept us safe" since 9-11, are not front page news. Maybe it isn't front page news because it isn't even remotely true. The idea that the NSA has kept us safe from any attacks and that is why they need such vast surveillance on regular Americans is a piece of steaming horse shit that has been debunked many times. Little Bill repeating that lie proves he is out to deceive, either his audience, himself, or both.

The NSA and other intelligence agencies have regularly lied to Congress and undermined our democracy by spying on ordinary Americans and on the U.S. Congress that is tasked with oversight of that same intelligence community that is doing the spying. Little Bill knows these things, but he chooses to ignore them in order to leave his pre-concoeved worldview unchallenged. Instead Maher lets his irrational hatred and fear of Muslims override the rational, easily observable facts on the subject of surveillance and the intelligence agencies.

Little Bill finished Fridays interview with the most egregious form of bootlicking imaginable when he gushed to General Hayden…"Thank you for you service." Thank you for your service? This to a man, General Hayden, who is an agent of tyranny, who has lied to congress about torture and committed numerous war crimes,  one more heinous than the next.

Little Bill Maher is a shill for the establishment elite, who uses his position to fortify authoritarians and war criminals. It is amusing that Maher is so in lock step with the intelligence community in regards to surveillance since the most animated and aggressive he has ever been on television was when he physically ejected a bunch of 9-11 Truthers from his studio audience. Maybe someone should remind Little Bill that the intelligence agencies had lots and lots of surveillance on the 9-11 hijackers, yet did nothing to stop the attacks. 

Someone should also tell Little Bill that more surveillance won't keep us safe. Being smarter about our foreign policy, and keeping our nose out of other people's business most certainly will. But that line of thinking doesn't mesh with Little Bill's nuanced world view which is Islam = Bad, US establishment = Good.  

It is mealy-mouthed cowards like Little Bill Maher that make despots like Bush, Cheney and yes, even Donald Trump possible. Brownnosing Little Bill is willing to give up all of our liberties for the straw man of perfect security. What a wonderful couple…the straw man of perfect security and the boogie man of scary Muslim terrorists, maybe Little Bill can blow both of them when he's done with General Hayden. Little Bill Maher should grow a pair of balls and stop playing the rebel while he kisses establishment ass, and start actually being the rebel by kicking the establishment in the ass.

©2016