Trump, Parasite and the 2020 Election

Estimated Reading Time: 5 minutes 57 seconds

This is an extended version of an article that was originally published on Friday, February 21, 2020, at RT.

TRUMP HATES PARASITE BECAUSE IT PREDICTS HIS ELECTION DEFEAT

Movies are a bellwether of public sentiment, and last year’s crop of class-conscious nominees, such as Best Picture winner Parasite, spell doom for Trump’s re-election.

Last night (Thursday February 20th) President Trump told a raucous rally crowd that he was not a fan of Parasite winning Best Picture at this year’s Oscars.

I think Trump despises Parasite, the South Korean film about class divisions and class struggle, because he unconsciously understands that it is a foreboding omen that foretells his electoral defeat come November.

As longtime readers know, I have developed a theory, named the Isaiah/McCaffrey Wave Theory, that is meant to track trends in the collective unconscious through various data points. These data points are then turned into waves - such as historical waves, empire waves, generational waves, time waves, and culture/art waves.

The theory is rather complex and is simply too long and complicated to coherently boil down in a blog post. So for this article I have simply focused the lens of the theory down to the culture/art waves as a way to measure unconscious trends before, or as, they turn into public sentiment.

In terms of the McCaffrey Wave Theory’s (MWT) viability, it did accurately predict the last presidential election - the first in which it was used…which most prognosticators, political scientists and other theories did not. In fact, the MWT thought that Trump’s victory was glaringly obvious…which is why I was so puzzled when everyone else was so shocked by the result.

In regards to the culture/art wave of the MWT, the primary (and most easily digestible) data points are the top ten box office films and Oscar nominated films for the year previous and the year of a presidential election. There are other secondary data points as well, but box office/Oscars are the one that we will use in this article because those films are the ones that most resonated with the general public. (And it should also be noted, film is not always the primary art/culture data point, that changes through history as different art/culture forms take precedence over others.)

Artists…even those that work in corporate Hollywood, are like antennas attuned to the collective unconscious, and their art is the act of taking the unconscious and making it conscious. In other words, artists take dreams and put them into reality. These artists are not consciously predicting the future, they are just acting on whatever resonates with their own subconscious when they are choosing what stories to tell and how to tell them.

Due to the nature of the film business, it takes years for their work to come to fruition…which is why cinema can be a leading indicator of what comes next in public sentiment as the lag time between concept and fruition gives time for those sentiments to come closer to the surface of the collective consciousness.

According to the McCaffrey Wave Theory, the titles, narratives, themes, color palettes and archetypes present in the most popular (box office/awards) movies hold clues as to what lies ahead in terms of public political preference.

The basic premise regarding these pieces of information, is to consider them like a dream and interpret them through a Jungian perspective. Dreams come from the unconscious, and movies/art are collective dreams born of the collective unconscious. Jungian dream interpretation is used because it is the best way to try and decipher the language of symbols with which the unconscious (collective or personal) communicates.

With this in mind it is also worth remembering that Oscar nominated and Box Office winning films aren’t just about the movies, but the marketing around those movies. The messages of these movies are not confined to the two hour viewing experience or to just those who see the film, because marketing will put incessant advertisements, tv and radio commercials, magazine and newspaper coverage, and billboards and posters in front of the entire populace. This will have the effect of not only being a leading indicator of public sentiment by expressing the symbols of the collective unconscious, but, as Freud’s nephew Edward Bernays teaches us, also being somewhat of a driver of that sentiment.

With all of this background in mind…let’s take a look at recent electoral history using the MWT before we dive in what lay ahead for 2020.

2016 ELECTION

The box office and Oscars accurately foreshadowed Trump’s 2016 win as in 2015 both Spotlight and The Big Short, two stories about outsiders taking on a corrupt establishment – The Catholic Church and Wall Street respectively, won Oscars, with Spotlight winning Best Picture.

Three other nominees, The Revenant, The Martian and Mad Max: Fury Road, were about men overcoming long odds and surviving in the starkest of situations. These films also had very distinct color palettes, with Mad Max and The Martian having red as their primary color, and The Revenant having blue as its primary color. These films also had similar visual schemes as they frequently used wide panoramic shots of bleak and desolate landscapes.

Even the title, Mad Max: Fury Road, was a sign of what lay ahead, Mad, Max, Fury…these words are obviously pointing to a jolting amount of anger coming to a boil in the collective unconscious. In terms of Trump, he was Mad to the Max, and his road to the White House was paved with Fury -and in the wake of his election, Democrats were the ones at Maximum Mad and filled with Fury.

Symbolically, these films tapped into the archetype of the outsider taking on the corrupt establishment (Spotlight, The Big Short), and the individual man overcoming staggering odds to survive in the bleakest of environments. Trump followed suit as he ran as an outsider taking on Washington and survived bleak odds and the grueling gauntlet of a decidedly adversarial establishment media to win.

The 2015 box office also presaged Trump’s election, as the box office champ, The Force Awakens, could’ve been titled “The Populist Force Awakens”, as it foreshadowed a forceful awakening of something. That something was the populism that propelled Trump to the Republican nomination and elevated Bernie Sanders to be a threat in the Democratic primary.

Like The Revenant, The Martian and Fury Road, The Force Awakens also used similar wide shots of bleak environments as the previously mentioned Oscar nominees, and also had a clashing red and blue color scheme…most notably in its movie poster…where red (the color of Republicans) is superior to blue (the color of Democrats). (See visual aids below)

Another top ten box office film in 2015 was Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 2. The title “Hunger Games” is all about warfare and a lack of resources…people being hungry and there being winners and losers. This is the same theme that Trump ran so successfully on in both the party and general elections. In addition Trump’s favorite political tactic, “mocking”, is also prominently highlighted by the title.

Two other 2015 top ten box office winners signaling Trump’s victory were Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation and Minions. Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation could be the title of Trump’s entire campaign and presidency…as his winning was deemed “impossible”, and the nation needed to go “rogue” to elect this “rogue” candidate. “Minions” is also an apt description of Trump’s devoutly loyal followers.

The word “rogue”, defined as “a dishonest or unprincipled man”, made a very large appearance in the 2016 box office as well when Rogue One was a big box office winner. This meant that the “rogue” was not only a symbol the collective unconscious was desperate to make conscious, but also one that was advertised and marketed to the American public from the Summer of 2015 through to the end of 2016.

The top ten of 2016’s box office was chock full of primal words that indicated a less civilized, animalistic, predatory nature…such as Zootopia (a utopia of madness), Jungle Book (a handbook for life in a jungle), and Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (a road map to the beast).

2016 also brought us the very clear signs of the hellaciously contentious energy in both the party primaries and in the general election. The most glaring examples were Captain America: Civil War and Batman v Superman which both told stories of internecine warfare with blue (Captain America) versus red (the billionaire Iron Man) as the opposing colors. (See visual aids below)

Another comic book movie, Suicide Squad was a top ten box office earner and it astutely summed up the feelings of the anti-Trump establishment Republicans and the Democrats after Trump’s victory.

But the biggest box office clue to Trump’s impending victory was the astounding success of Deadpool, the red clad, wise-ass outsider superhero, who premiered on the big screen in February of 2016. Is there any more Trumpish a superhero than the irreverent, anti-establishment Deadpool?

Hell or High Water, a 2016 Oscar nominee about two brothers who rob the corrupt banks in Texas that robbed their family, was another movie with wide shots of bleak environments (with a bleak reddish color palette), that thematically was right in Trump’s wheelhouse.

2012 ELECTION

Looking at other elections through the MWT is enlightening as well.

In 2012 Argo, Zero Dark Thirty and Lincoln, films about government accomplishing great things, were nominated and monopolized attention throughout the year leading to Obama’s re-election. These films told the narrative of government as effective and good…and obviously reflected a satisfaction with the status quo…which would mean an incumbent’s re-election.

Silver Linings Playbook was another Oscar nominee that year and its title is one of optimism (silver lining) and planning (a playbook)…which sums up Obama’s re-election message.

2012 also saw Django Unchained get Oscar nominations and do very well at the box office. The film is about a black man, Django - played by Jamie Foxx, getting revenge upon racist Southerners and slave owners. Of course, this archetype of the empowered black man in a racist America, was attached to Obama during his presidency.

2011’s Oscar nominees had two films that pointed towards Obama’s impending victory, the first was The Descendants, a movie set in Hawaii, the state of Obama’s birth, and The Help, a film about working class black women dealing with racism in the Deep South.

2008 ELECTION

Obama’s election in 2008 is also apparent when seen through the MWT perspective.

In 2007, No Country for Old Men won Best Picture and could have been a bumper sticker for Obama’s campaign against his older opponents Democrat Hillary Clinton and Republican John McCain.

Other nominees from that year were Michael Clayton, a story about a lone man taking on a corrupt corporate establishment, and Atonement. Obama ran as the archetypal fighter against corporate malfeasance…and his election would symbolize, among many voters, an atonement for the sin of slavery and Jim Crow.

2007’s box office also gave indication of a major shift occurring in the collective. Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End and Harry Potter: Order of the Phoenix were the top two movies that year. At World’s End symbolizes the ending of something, and the title Order of the Phoenix is a cry to rise like a Phoenix from the ashes (of the Bush administration, Wall Street collapse etc.) and restore “order”…which was the narrative and archetype Obama embraced.

Another top ten box office film was Legend, which starred Will Smith and told the story of a black man surviving a pandemic and working to find a cure. Once again, the archetype of the black savior is perfectly embodied by Obama.

In 2008, the box office was dominated by Hancock, a story of a black superhero, and The Dark Knight, both metaphors for Obama (a black man as a white knight, hence the dark knight) as the man to save America from the disastrous chaos of the Bush reign.

Other 2008 box office winners signaled pro-Obama sentiment as well, with Madagascar: Escape to Africa 2 and Narnia: Prince Caspian landing in the top ten for the year. Escape to Africa has the word “Africa” in the title, which is significant in an election where there is an African-American candidate…and “Prince Caspian” once again indicates preference for the younger - “prince”.

Although these film’s were not released until right after the election, both 2008 Oscar winner Slumdog Millionaire and nominee Milk, pointed to Obama winning. Slumdog Millionaire is the story of a poor Indian boy (who is brown skinned and born into poverty), overcoming great odds and making it big, while Milk is about a first…the first openly gay politician elected to public office. Obama, of course, would become the first black man elected to be president.

2004 ELECTION

Bush’s re-election in 2004 is also found in the MWT data.

In 2003, The Return of the King, a title that is an incumbent’s wet dream, won both the box office and Best Picture Oscar. Another Oscar nominee was Master and Commander: Far Side of the World, which is a powerful title in an election involving a “commander” in chief waging two wars on the “far side of the world”.

A plethora of sequels in the top ten box office of both 2003 and 2004, such as Matrix Reloaded, X2, Bad Boys 2, Spider Man 2, Shrek 2, Meet the Parents 2 and Ocean’s 12, all foresaw Bush’s reelection as he was going for a sequel in the form of a second term.

2004’s Oscar winner, Million Dollar Baby, could have been a moniker hung on Bush, as he was labeled by his critics as an entitled, petulant, silver spooned child born into enormous wealth, power and privilege. Another nominee, Sideways, indicated not a moving forward but rather a perpendicular movement…thus re-election.

2020 ELECTION

Which finally brings us to 2020.

Purely as a political observer I have long felt Trump was going to win re-election in 2020, and 2/3rds of the American public feel the same way. The MWT has also pointed, ever so slightly, in that same direction…until very recently. It was on Oscar night, when Parasite, the ultimate outsider (a foreign film with subtitles), beat out 1917, the status quo nominee, that I noticed a pronounced shift in the waves.

Parasite’s Best Picture win is a very clear signal that the economic populism of 2020 is an even more vibrant energy in the collective unconscious than it was in 2016.

Further proof of this is that in 2019, of the nine films nominated for Best Picture, a staggering six of them deal specifically with issues of class. Parasite, Joker, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, Ford v Ferrari, The Irishman and Little Women all tell varying tales of class warfare and struggle. This is as strong an indicator of a single sentiment as we have ever seen in the art/culture wave of the MWT in recent memory.

The box office indicates a dramatic change coming as well, with Endgame (the highest grossing film of all-time) - which signifies a definitive ending, and Rise of Skywalker - indicating something rising, dominating, as did the overtly revolutionary populist Joker.

It is also noteworthy that both Endgame and Rise of Skywalker are the end of the respective story arcs of two record-breaking, blockbuster franchises. This Star Wars narrative arc is a cultural cornerstone and is over forty years old, and Marvel’s narrative arc has monopolized the culture for well over a decade. Both of these iconic stories ending in the same year is an extraordinarily compelling piece of evidence that the end of an era is upon us.

Rise of Skywalker is not only significant for these reasons, but also because of its color scheme. In the movie’s poster, the dominant color is now blue, whereas in 2016’s The Force Awakens, red dominating blue was the color scheme.

Endgame too has a color scheme of a purple-ish blue completely dominating red in its posters which is fascinating. The off-blue-ish color is striking because it is so unusual…and portends that not only is red waning but that it is not business as usual on the blue side of the divide.

These symbols in the art/cutlure wave could not be more clearly telling us that the thing ending is Trump’s presidency, and the thing rising is Bernie Sander’s class-fueled populist revolution.

Here are some more pieces of evidence to back up that assertion. Aladdin, the tale of a blue (Democrat) genie who grants wishes, was a top ten big box office winner last year. The symbolism is obvious as, fair or not, Bernie Sanders is being labeled as someone “giving away free stuff” by his critics in the establishment.

Another sign is much more esoteric, and that is the film Jumanji:The Next Level. The film was in the top ten of the box office last year and on its surface seems quite benign, but when you dig into it, things become pretty fascinating. Let me preface this by saying once again that this is Jungian dream interpretation, and you may find this interpretation to be a bridge too far. But here it is…

When you break the word Jumanji down into what it sounds like….it becomes “jew” + “manji”. Of course, the word “Jew” in the consciousness is striking in a year with the potentially the first Jewish presidential candidate.

The other part of this equation is even more subtle, but potentially much more powerful. The word “manji” is a Japanese word for a symbol…the symbol being the left facing swastika - as opposed to the right facing swastika used by the Nazis. To interpret this data from a Jungian perspective, that would mean that “Jew” + “manji” could be interpreted as a Jew who reverses the swastika/Nazism. I am not calling Trump a Nazi, but there is a strong sentiment in the culture that does attach him to the Nazi archetype. The conclusion to draw from this is that Jumanji symbolically means the current right (Republican) facing swastika will be reversed into a left (Democratic) facing manji. It might also signify Bernie Sanders, potentially the first Jewish candidate for President, will reverse the gains of the archetypal “Nazi”, Trump. (Again…I am not calling Trump a Nazi, only that he has been branded with the Nazi/“not-see” archetype in the public consciousness)

Another vital point is that like Trump in 2016, Sanders is running as the archetypal outsider. For instance, the media keep saying that Bernie is a joke and he can’t win the nomination or the general election, but remember, the media once said the same thing about Trump, and treated him with the same contempt.

Sanders is running against the establishment of both Washington AND the Democratic party. Also like Trump, he is despised by the mainstream media, who, like establishment politicians, belittle, dismiss and denigrate him every chance they get.

On a purely political and psychological level, it is obvious that the public viscerally loathes Washington and the media more than anything, which means that just like Trump in 2016, Sanders has the right enemies…and this will be a key to his success.

In conclusion, there is certainly a chance that the data that makes up the History, Empire, Generation, Time and Art/Culture waves, will shift in the crucial coming months, and the waves will obviously reflect, and I will report, that shift. But with that said, as currently configured, the Isaiah McCaffrey Wave Theory, most notably but not exclusively the art/culture wave, clearly indicates that Bernie Sanders is going to be the next President of the United States.

©2020

VISUAL AIDS

The blue-ish purple of 2019 Endgame surrounding red.

2019’s Rise of Skywalker has blue dominated red…in contrast to the color scheme of 2016’s The Force Awakens.

Blue once again taking up a larger percentage of the frame than red in 2019’s Rise of Skywalker.

2016 - The Force Awakens has red front and center over blue.

2016 The Force Awakens with its protagonist having the appearance of holding red…the color which dominates the frame over blue.

Red v Blue in 2016’s Civil War.

Red v Blue in Batman v Superman…notice that red wins.

Deadpool…the Trumpiest of superheroes…being snakry and wearing red in 2016.

Kamala and Krusty the Clown

Estimated Reading Time: 5 minutes 49 seconds

On Tuesday December 3, 2019, California Senator Kamala Harris ended her bid for the Democratic nomination in the 2020 presidential election. My reaction to this news was inspired by The Simpsons episode "The Last Temptaion of Krust”, where Krusty the Clown calls a press conference to announce his retirement from show business. After Krusty’s attempt at a profound retirement statement is scuttled by an intrusive press corp, he is barraged by a series of questions, one of which is “Krusty…why now? Why not twenty years ago?” My question for Kamala Harris and her supporters would be, “Why now? Why not ten months ago?”

I wonder if like Krusty, Kamala has simply faked her own demise and will resurface, sans clown makeup, under the name of Rory B. Bellows. Could Rory B. Bellows make an appearance at the Democratic convention? Could Rory B. Bellows be a VP candidate? Who knows…who cares?

Let’s be very clear about something…Kamala Harris was a dreadful candidate from day one who was solely motivated by her personal ambition and not any guiding political principle. A shamelessly shallow, woke posing, neo-liberal dedicated to maintaining the status quo, Harris attracted vociferous support from the media and middle-aged bourgeois white women. In a brazen display of identity politics at its worst, a certain faction of woke posing bougie white women loved Harris for the sole reason that she is black and a woman and gave them a chance to clearly signal their virtue. It seems obvious that these Harris supporters are as devoid of any guiding principles, core political beliefs, morals and ethics as their black lady savior.

Harris’s army of woke bourgeois white women routinely use terms like “racist”, “misogynist”, or my favorite, the painfully pretentious “misogynoir” (hatred of black women), as a defense mechanism against any and all questions about Harris’s worth as a candidate. In the wake of Harris’s demise they are now furiously hurling those same invectives around like syphilitic monkeys throwing poop in a frenzy at the zoo. Thankfully for them they are so full of shit that they will never run out of ammunition. What is so revealing about these tactics from pro-Harris white women is that they are routinely employed against “people of color”, like Andrew Yang and Tulsi Gabbard…apparently when you are a bougie white woman Harris supporter, racism and misogyny are things of which only other people are guilty.

It should come as no surprise that these empty-headed Harris supporters who are now so triggered by her failure, are the same collection of mindlessly rabid Hillary hypocrites from 2016 who consistently alienated anyone and everyone with their entitled, self-serving bitching. Just like when they blamed Hillary Clinton’s 2016 defeat on Bernie Bros and Russia, these Harris supporting woke bougie shrews will now blame everyone and everything else for their idols humiliating and catastrophic failure. Old dogs never seem to learn new tricks…like how to actually think…or take responsibility…or how not to get emotionally attached to a political candidate.

Speaking of not thinking…the New York Times published two op-eds in Thursday’s paper on the topic of Kamala Harris dropping out. One was from the reliably inane and emotionalist Charles Blow, whose column is once again a case study in buffoonery. The piece, titled “What Kamala Harris’s Campaign Teaches Us” is a masturbatorial exercise in delusional racism porn.

Blow opens the piece by describing how last January, Kamala Harris came into the presidential race with a bang and a resoundingly warm welcome. Blow recounts how Harris raised a substantial sum of money, sold a great deal of merchandise and had 20,000 people at her Oakland announcement. He then describes how polling guru Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight published a piece just after her announcement that touted her as the front runner. Silver also proclaimed he was “skeptical” of “Biden, Sanders and Klobucher” but “more bullish about Kamala Harris, Beto O’Rourke and Corey Booker”.

Of course, these Nate Silver quotes are pretty hysterical in hindsight as Kamala and Beto are out of the race and Booker might as well be, and Biden and Bernie are among the top three candidates. Silver has once again revealed himself to be a charlatan when it comes to political prophecy but this hasn’t stopped him from becoming the establishment’s favorite numbers nerd, and this partially accounts for why woke bourgeois white women swarmed to Harris…she had gotten the stamp of approval from Silver and the rest of the mainstream media.

Blow then papers over the problems with Harris as a candidate and her campaign, and boils down her failure with this wonderfully obtuse paragraph.

“It is fair to ask what role racism and sexism played in her campaign’s demise. These are two “isms” that are permanent, obvious and unavoidable in American society.”

Blow is a high priest of the Church of Identity Politics and a guru in the Cult of Victimhood, so his racism addled brain believes everything is because of racism. Proof of this is on display in his article when Blow goes through all the of the structural racism Harris failed to overcome in her bid for the nomination…from debate rules about funding to a primary schedule that opens with two “white” states Iowa and New Hampshire. See, according to Blow it wasn’t Kamala Harris’s fault that she failed, it was the racism and misogyny of white Democrats.

Of course, Blow’s thesis is obliterated by reality, as in the last three presidential elections, Democrats have nominated a black man (Obama) twice and a white woman (Hillary) once, with Obama getting the momentum to his first nomination in 2008 when those rascally racist white Iowans came out en masse for him, but Charles Blow never let’s facts get in the way of his idiocy.

Another piece of information that destroys Blow’s thesis is that Beto O’Rourke, a white man who also got Nate Silver’s stamp of approval and who also hit the ground running with a well received campaign, went out of the race with merely a whimper even before Kamala Harris after voters got to know him and realized that toothless dog won’t hunt.

My favorite part of Blow’s article is when he finally acknowledges the black elephant in the room that stomps his thesis into the dust when he mentions that it wasn’t just white voters who rejected Harris…it was black voters. Blow has a theory about black voter’s reticence with Harris too. He writes,

“But there is something else that we learn — or relearn — from Harris’s run: the enduring practicality of black voters. They, in general, reward familiarity, fealty and feasibility.”

According to Charles Blow, when black voters reject Kamala Harris it is because they are practical and pragmatic, whereas when white voters reject her it is because of racism and misogyny. Charles Blow is a social justice hammer who thinks the whole world looks like a rusty racist nail.

The second Times piece, “Why There Won’t Be A Black Woman Running for President” is from Melanye Price, a professor of political science at Prairie View A&M. Prof. Price makes similar arguments in her piece as Charles Blow. What is striking about Prof. Price’s op-ed is that , similar to Blow’s column, its internal logic is entirely at odds with itself. For instance, Price states,

“Any time a black politician has to demonstrate her blackness or prove her connections to the black community, she is already in serious trouble. But why were blacks so suspicious? None of it seemed to be enough — not her decision to attend a historically black college, join a black sorority, not even her black father. This I still don’t understand.”

What is so odd about that statement by Price is that literally in the next paragraph she answer’s her own questions. “Why were blacks so suspicious?”…as Price tells us,

“In black circles, the “she’s a cop” refrain was heard most often. Her role as California’s attorney general — its “top cop” — was a major source of criticism during her presidential run. Police officers of any gender or race are wildly unpopular among blacks.”

If Price wanted to understand black voter’s recalcitrance regarding Harris’s candidacy maybe she should have read her own article.

It is important to note that Harris’s history as a “cop” not only turned off black voters but poor ones as well, because in poor communities, regardless of race, the police are a malignant entity that menaces the population and is a major threat to their freedom and well-being, whereas for woke bougie white women, like Harris’s supporters, the police are a benevolent force who protect them from the dangerous world outside their privileged enclaves.

Earlier in her piece, Prof. Price writes incoherently about her thoughts on the word “electability” in relation to race and gender.

“Thrown about as an identity-neutral term, there is no doubt that, in 2019, electability means white male centrist. In the shadow of America’s first black president, it seems that only white men who take positions that are more conservative than the party’s base can overcome the misogyny and racism of the current president, not women or racial minorities and certainly not a black woman.

It is doubtful whether or not having the support of the African-American community would overcome this. Currently, Pete Buttigieg has tiny black support and he is still seen as a viable candidate. This is the challenge going forward for flawed candidates like Ms. Harris or for that perfect black female candidate people seek — convincing the media and the electorate to reject the tendency to revert to traditional understandings of who can be president. If flawed white male candidates are still “highly electable,” then where is the space for flawed black, white, Latina, Asian or Native ones?”

What Prof. Price is arguing in these two paragraphs is difficult to discern. I am certainly not as bright as a professor from Prairie View A&M, so it could be that Prof. Price is talking over my head…or it could be she has no idea what she what she is talking about or what she wants to say.

The sentence, “In the shadow of the first black president, it seems that only white men who take positions that are more conservative that the party’s base can overcome the misogyny and racism of the current president, not women, or racial minorities and certainly not black woman”, is so garbled and jumbled as to be near gibberish. My best attempt to decode this statement is that she is saying that ‘after Obama, Democratic voters believe that only center right candidates can defeat Trump’. If she believes that it would have been nice if she actually wrote that more concisely and clearly.

It only gets worse in the second paragraph as the claims in one sentence that she doubts that African-American support would overcome this bias (towards white, male centrists), but then points out that “Pete Buttigieg has tiny black support but is still seen as a viable candidate.“ This is such an odd argument. Pete Buttigieg IS a white, male centrist, so in keeping with Prof. Price’s thesis Democrats…including black ones who shunned Harris, would support him due to his “electibility”.

Price then claims in her next statement that the challenge going forward is for flawed minority candidates to convince the media and electorate to “reject the tendency to revert to traditional understandings of who can be president”. By using Pete Buttigieg as her nefariously centrist, white male example, Prof. Price scuttles her entire flaccid thesis, as Mayor Pete is NOT someone who would be categorized under “traditional” in terms of being president due to his youth, inexperience and most notably his being gay. If Mayor Pete became president he would be the very first openly gay person to do so…that hardly seems traditional.

In the last sentence of the paragraph in question, Price moves the goalposts considerably when she says flawed white male candidates are considered “highly electable”, when in the preceding sentences she used the lower bar of the term “viable” to describe Buttigieg. This is not a difference without a distinction, as being a “viable” candidate and being a “highly electable” candidate are very different things. “Viable” and “electable” mean the same thing, but “viable” and “highly electable” are miles apart.

Prof. Price and Charles Blow obviously both believe that Kamala Harris’s campaign was destroyed because of racism and misogyny. They can’t prove it, and that is very clear from reading their articles, but they just KNOW it must be the truth. They know that even though Harris was a dead eyed, impotent candidate, the reason she failed is because of some deep seated bias in Democratic voters. Harris’s woke bougie white women supporters fervently agree with this critique and are all too happy to shout it from the mountaintops because it proves the most important thing to them, that they aren’t racist, but everyone else is…including apparently, black voters, who en masse rejected Harris.

The bottom line regarding Kamala Harris is this…and Prof. Price, Charles Blow and the Harris fan club will never be able to see or admit this…but Kamala Harris has risen in her political career from local, state and now federal government, and all the way up to being a “viable” candidate for president when she first got into the race, not despite her gender and skin color, but because of it. Obama didn’t become president despite his blackness, but because of it. Liberal white guilt is a real thing and a potent political force in the hands of a skilled politician. To be clear, Barrack Obama was an awful president, just look at his selling out of working people with his handling of Wall St. and Obamacare…and his disgusting chicanery in Flint, but he was a miraculously gifted, once in a lifetime political talent. Obama’s talent was enhanced by his “compelling narrative”, which like “electable” is a code word, but for “race/gender/sexual orientation differences”. Americans were attracted to Obama’s “compelling narrative” and elected him twice to the highest office in the land, just like Californians were entranced with Kamala Harris’s “compelling narrative” and voted her into state office and then a senate seat. Regardless of white liberals infatuation to Harris’s “compelling narrative”, she ain’t no Obama, and never will be, and thus white liberal guilt was not enough for her to overcome the fact that she alienated black voters. Harris is a third rate political hack whose only skills are shamelessness and woke pandering…and, white liberal guilt or no, that does not play quite so well on the national big stage as it does in California.

Prof. Price finishes her piece by writing,

“But there is vetting a candidate using reasonable metrics and there is scrutiny that some reserve for certain categories of candidates. We should consider whether some of Ms. Harris’s detractors fell in the latter category.”

The word “consider” is doing a lot of work there. Prof. Price and Charles Blow don’t so much as “consider” Democratic racism and misogyny in Harris’s fall, but insinuate and assume it. This is an important lesson for anyone who is a liberal or progressive, know that no matter a candidates qualifications, talents or skills, if they are black, a woman or both, if you don’t mindlessly support them you are infected with the disease of racism and misogyny. This does nothing but alienate potential allies, and reduce the much needed critical thinking function from political debate and decision making…which is not a positive development.

One thing about Harris’s failed campaign that neither Price nor Blow “consider” is that her inability to generate support is not a function of racism and misogyny but rather of voter maturity. Could it be that after at least thirty years of progressive voters being conned by neo-liberal bullshitters like Bill Clinton and Barrack Obama who, like Kamala Harris, had no core political belief beyond gargantuan personal ambition, they have finally woken up to the scam, and Kamala Harris is just a casualty of that awakening? Maybe, just maybe, Kamala Harris’s dismal showing in the presidential campaign is a sign that the scales have fallen from liberal eyes and they now possess the ability to discern who actually cares about and will fight for working people and the poor and not simply be a corporate shill in progressive sheep’s clothing. I certainly hope the scales have fallen from liberal eyes and they can now see the light through the deceptive haze…but Joe Biden’s and Pete Buttigieg’s continued popularity does not leave me optimistic.

Prof. Price writes in her final paragraph a sentence that is just remarkable for its obviousness. She writes,

“I am still trying to make sense of her (Harris’s) candidacy and its larger implications.”

Great. How about this Prof. Price, how about you and Charles Blow go “consider” Kamala Harris’s candidacy and its larger implications, and THEN write an op-ed about it, instead of vomiting upon New York Times readers this vacuous and vapid word salad totally devoid of any insight or meaning?

Much like Kamala Harris’s campaign, both Prof. Price and Charles Blow’s op-eds are self-serving embarrassments that should be ignored and forgotten as soon as possible. Good riddance to bad rubbish.

©2019

The Tragedy of Charlottesville and the Age of Identity

Estimated Reading Time : 8 minutes 13 seconds

I attempted to write about the whole Charlottesville situation last week but found I just didn't have the heart to do it. As I am sure it does for others, the entire episode depresses me no end. My depression does not come from the knowledge that there are neo-Nazi's and racists in America, I've known that for a long time. What has depressed me so much was that I was forewarning about this exact type of conflagration for some time and no one heeded my alarm and now a young woman, Heather Heyer, is dead. 

My depression has only gotten worse since the murder Saturday, August 12, because of the strategically inept, emotionally driven, intellectually vacuous and politically self-defeating response to it by those on the left and in the media. 

Even though I know it is a fruitless endeavor, I will once again throw out some thoughts I hope people will consider if they really, truly want to succeed in overcoming the darker aspects of American politics and culture. Do I expect anyone to listen to me or heed my warnings? Of course not, but goodness knows that has never stopped me before. 

PUNCHING NAZIS AND PANDORA'S BOX

Let's start at the beginning, I have written more articles than I care to remember about the subject of violent political language leading to political violence . I have written ad nauseam about how when you give yourself the right to punch Nazi's because they are terrible people, you open a Pandora's Box of violence and self-aggrandizing righteousness that can never be shut and will ultimately be used against you. 

For one example, at the end of May I wrote a piece titled, Greg Gianforte, Punching Nazi's and the Absence of Moral Authority where I lay out the case that giving yourself permission to punch bad guys only gives the bad guys permission to punch you back, or to preemptively punch you first. Punching Nazi's may feel like a fun thing to do, but the problem with punching Nazi's is that they will definitely punch back, and last Saturday they punched back with a Dodge Charger killing Heather Heyer and wounding dozens. It is easy for liberals to scream about there being "no moral equivalency" between the Nazi's and Antifa, but that doesn't mean that Antifa, liberals and the left don't bear some responsibility for the conditions which led to Ms. Heyer's death. Here are some other examples of where I made the same argument and warned against violent language leading to violence. Link, Link, Link, Link.

THERAPEUTIC VS. STRATEGIC

This past week the New York Times ran an interesting piece by Moises Velasquez-Manoff about how to counter Nazi protestors and, not the least bit surprising to me since I've been saying this all along, the best way to do so is to not confront them physically. Confrontation is oxygen to neo-Nazi's, when you attack them you are giving teeth to their tiger. This quote from the Times piece echoes what I have been saying non-stop on the subject.  

“I would want to punch a Nazi in the nose, too,” Maria Stephan, a program director at the United States Institute of Peace, told me. “But there’s a difference between a therapeutic and strategic response.” The problem, she said, is that violence is simply bad strategy."

As everyone's favorite Nazi, Hans Landa, would say…"That's a BINGO!!"

"Violence is bad strategy". I have said that over and over and over again but to no avail. And still in the wake of Charlottesville, the left is doubling down on this strategy and holding up Antifa as a noble resistance movement. It isn't, it is a collection of the self-indulgent having tantrums for personal reasons wrapped in the political.

More from the Times...

"Violence directed at white nationalists only fuels their narrative of victimhood — of a hounded, soon-to-be-minority who can’t exercise their rights to free speech without getting pummeled. It also probably helps them recruit. And more broadly, if violence against minorities is what you find repugnant in neo-Nazi rhetoric, then “you are using the very force you’re trying to overcome,” Michael Nagler, the founder of the Peace and Conflict Studies program at the University of California, Berkeley, told me."

Another BINGO!! Mr. Nagler is correct, but the majority of the left and the media are in a bizarre emotionalist hysteria at the moment where reason and self-reflection are anathema. If those resisting Trump and the neo-Nazi's truly want to succeed in their endeavor, they would step back from their emotionalism and embrace a calm, cool and calculating strategic approach to do so.

More from the Times...

"Most important perhaps, violence is just not as effective as nonviolence. In their 2011 book, “Why Civil Resistance Works,” Dr. Stephan and Erica Chenoweth examined how struggles are won. They found that in over 320 conflicts between 1900 and 2006, nonviolent resistance was more than twice as effective as violent resistance in achieving change. And nonviolent struggles were resolved much sooner than violent ones.

The main reason, Dr. Stephan explained to me, was that nonviolent struggles attracted more allies more quickly. Violent struggles, on the other hand, often repelled people and dragged on for years.

The broader issue, in her view, is this: Why do oppressive regimes and movements invest so much in fomenting violence? (Think of our president and his talent for dividing the country and generating chaos.) Because violence and discord help their cause. So why would you, she asks, “do what the oppressor wants you to do?”

A triple BINGO!! What frustrates me no end is that people on the left are so hysterical that they never answer the most important question of all…why are you acting emotionally and violently (including language) when that is exactly what your oppressor (Trump et al) wants you to do? The left may be too lost in their echo chamber to realize this, but Trump won Charlottesville and the aftermath. Polling from NPR/PBS clearly shows this. And Pelosi and the democrats overreach regarding the taking down of confederate statues is unpopular with a majority of Americans and Black Americans (44% -40% think confederate statues should remain), and will only empower Trump and weaken them further. And the greater problem of liberal overreach is that there has already been vandalism of and calls for removal of statues that aren't confederate, with examples being Joan of Arc, St. Junipero Serra and Christopher Columbus. As a friend of mine, an independent voter in a blue state, said to me the other day, "I hate to say it because he is such a disgusting person, but Trump is right about the statues." "Regular" people can be repulsed by neo-Nazi's and still not want statues to be removed, this nuance is lost on democrats and it is a trap they should avoid.

Regardless of statues, the larger problem is that we live in a culture, and the politics of both the left and right are reflective of this, that demands instant self-gratification. As the Times piece points out, and as I have been saying for ages, punching Nazi's may be therapeutically useful in the moment, but ultimately it is strategically asinine and self-defeating. Many on the left do not care about the long term political effects of this self-sabotaging strategy, only that it assuages their personal psychological discomfort in the moment. 

IS THERE ANY POINT TO PROTESTING?

The New Yorker ran a piece by Nathan Heller on August 21, 2017 titled "Is There Any Point To Protesting?"  that discussed the efficacy of protests. The piece pointed out that most protests simply don't work. For instance in the lead up to the Iraq war millions of Americans, myself included, marched and protested against the war, but the war happened anyway. The piece points out that the effective protests are the ones born of a strong leadership structure and precise strategic and tactical goals and objectives. The civil rights protests led by Martin Luther King, Jr. being the prime examples. 

Besides the strategic, tactical and moral genius of King, the civil rights movement also displayed what the Times piece, and I, advocate, non-violence. Civil rights protestors maintained their dignity and their righteousness by exposing the moral and ethical deviancy of their opponents. What shocked America, and white America in particular, into siding with the civil rights protestors was that the chaos, anger and violence were only emanating from those fighting for discrimination and segregation. The moral strength of the civil rights activists was what deeply moved white Americans, who chose King's spiritual strength against the physical strength wrapped in moral weakness of the segregationists.

TARGETING THE ACLU AND THE FIRST AMENDMENT

The current strategic idiocy of the left is not confined to just the failure to embrace non-violence. In the wake of Charlottesville, liberals have decided to attack the ACLU. The ACLU is a crucial bulwark for the left in the battle against Trump, but liberals want to hold them accountable for daring to fight for the 1st amendment right of Nazi's to rally and march. This is the most self-defeating approach imaginable for the liberals. If liberals want to succeed, they better start understanding that the constitution is the only way they will be able to defeat Trump and Trumpism. This is something I wrote about immediately after Trump's election in my strategic guide to defeating him, but I was ignored then too. I promise you that the left will come to rue the day they failed to embrace the first amendment unabashedly because their enemies will use that as a weapon against them. 

Speaking of which, I saw the founder of Black Lives Matter, Patrisse Cullors, on television last week and she was saying that "hate speech is not protected by the first amendment." You know who would really be shocked to hear that? The founding fathers who wrote the constitution. Of course hate speech is protected by the first amendment, and Ms. Cullors should be very happy about that. Yes, it allows Nazi's to march, but is also allows Black Lives Matter to march. What Ms. Cullors and many on the left fail to understand is that if you water down the 1st amendment, or any other constitutional rights, those weakened rights will be used as a weapon to destroy you. Lots of people out there think what Black Lives Matter advocates is hate speech, which means Black Lives Matter needs the first amendment and the ACLU in order to exist, they would be wise to act accordingly. I seriously doubt they will. 

HATING HATE AND THE HATERS WHO HATE

Which brings us to the word "hate". I've heard the word hate a lot these last few weeks, and I have to say that "hate" is a losing battle for liberals as well. Any protest that wants to be successful need not only be non-violent, it desperately needs to have a very clear objective. The civil rights protests of the 50's and 60's had an overarching objective of civil rights for Black Americans, and specific objectives to each locality, for instance the ending of segregation on buses in Montgomery etc.  The current protests have no clear cut objective. What they say they are against is "hate". They want to stamp out "hate", and carry signs saying "No hate!!". Well, the bad news is that hate is an entirely natural human condition. It has been around ever since we've had sentient beings on this planet, and it will be around when the last man breathes his final breath. You cannot stamp out hate anymore than you can stamp out love, and trying to do so is a fools errand of Quixotic proportions.  

Targeting hate sounds like something a 1st grader would wish for, right after Legos and action figures. Hate is a state of mind that you cannot police because people will just bury it in their psychological closet when in mixed company. In that psychological closet, hate doesn't diminish, it grows in strength and power so that when it does rear its head it will have grown into a very potent force indeed. On the other hand, if people are "allowed to hate" in thought, but not allowed to discriminate in action, then you are on the path to find that delicate balance where disparate people can live side by side without killing each other in a democracy. So being specifically against "discrimination" or "segregation" or whatever specific goal you choose, as opposed to against an amorphous "hate", is the way to go if you want to politically succeed in the long run. 

And just like fighting against the first amendment, fighting against "hate" will easily be used as a weapon against those trying to stamp it out. For instance, people on the left "hate" Nazi's, or "hate" Trump, so they themselves "hate" and feel comfortable doing so. You see, decrying hate is a loser's game because everyone hates something. Just because you think you hate the right things doesn't mean your hate is righteous, only that you're a hypocrite for pointing out other people's hate and being blind to your own.  

NOT-SEEING THE NEO-NOT-SEES

My friend, the inimitable Jungian Falconer, often talks to me about the psychology of Nazi's and the Nazi impulse within us all, but he makes the point that "Nazi" is really "Not-See", meaning the Nazi/Not-See does NOT SEE the humanity of the other. Obviously white supremacists and neo-Nazis and the like do not see the humanity of those different from them, but maybe not so obviously, those on the left are also guilty of this same bit of Not See-ism. These Not-Sees are not interested in searching for Truth, only in confirmation bias and the warm embrace of the echo chamber.  They adamantly avoid the hard work of  exploring and discovering anything new about the world or themselves, they just want to FEEL good and self-righteous right now.

Not See-ism is ascendant in the world right now. This is just a fact of where we are on the historical cycle/wave. To stop it we don't need marches or "pussy-hats" or righteous indignation, what we need is self-reflection, introspection and the hard work of making ourselves conscious of the demons that dwell and work inside of us all. 

THE RELIGION OF SELF AND THE CHURCH OF IDENTITY POLITICS

On the subject of historical waves, there is one large issue that most seem to be unaware of that plays a vital role in the current clash between Not-See Left and Neanderthal Right, that issue is religion. In the long arc of history, the religions of the world that have held cultural sway for the last two thousand years are in decline and collapse in the west. Just because religion is in decline does not mean that people no longer have a religious impulse. Studies show that humans are hard wired for religion, so what happens when the old religions die? New religions get born. The new religion of our time is The Religion of Self, and one of its most powerful denominations is the Church of Identity Politics. This new Religion of Self and its Church of Identity was born after the Century of the Self where advertising and public relations primed humans to respond to their personal unconscious wants and desires before contemplating community or anyone or anything else.

Identity Politics, of both the left and the right, is personal and psychological and fills an unconscious need for the faithful and feeds the narcissism of our time. On the left the identity politics movement fulfills people's need to feel of worth by valuing them based upon their individual identifying markers…race, sexual orientation, gender etc. On the right the same principle is in practice, with white power and white supremacy being the most malignant forms of right wing identity politics. What both the left and right versions of the Religion of Self and the Church of Identity Politics share is that they are both ruled by the quest for sanctity in the form of Victimhood. Victimhood is held up as the highest marker of value and worth and achievement.

The religious impulse of the current Identity era is similar to the religious impulse of the Christian era in that it gives its adherents a sense of purpose and meaning. In addition, its doctrine and dogma is based on faith and feelings, not logic and reason, and it is also infused with a heavy dose of intoxicating self-righteousness and the prestige of exclusivity, which gives the faithful a psychological release of powerful psychic and emotional energy through the use of scapegoating, shaming and exiling of those who do not conform to the dogma being preached. This is true of disciples of the Religion of Self and the Church of Identity Politics on both the left and the right.

On the right, the impulse is to brand heretics with everything from RINO, Republicans in Name Only, to Cuckservative, the clever and effective meme that at once eviscerates and emasculates any political opponents who don't adhere to the proper dogma. Shouting "Cuckservative" is to the right as crying "racists/misogynist" is to the left. Two sides of the same coin in the collection plate at the Church of Identity Politics. 

With the democrats, you see a similar thing when the members of the Clinton Cult attack, shame and exile non-compliant leftists by calling them racists and misogynists for daring to disagree with the Identity Dogma which demands people be judged by their race, gender, sexual orientation and position on the victimhood scale and not by the content of their character or their ability. 

Right before the horrors of Charlottesville there was a great example of this dogmatic impulse when centrist democrats wailed about racism from "Bernie Bros" who don't support California Senator Kamala Harris, a Black woman, for president in 2020. The centrist attack was transparently ridiculous, but it was undertaken with all of the fervor of the Inquisition. The blindness revealed by the Clinton Cult regarding Harris and her opponents alleged "racism" is staggering. Calling Bernie Sanders supporters and those who dare to question Kamala Harris "racists and misogynists", means that the multitude of people of color and women who support Bernie Sanders and question Harris are treated as if they are invisible by the centrist democrats, which is exactly what the Clinton Cult claim Sanders supporters do to women and minorities. Add to that the fact that some of the most effective spokespeople for the progressive ideology that fuels the leftist movement (and Bernie Sanders) today are Tulsi Gabbard and Nina Turner, two powerful women of color, and you can see how Clintonistas have earned the moniker of Hillary Hypocrites.

PRAY FOR YOUR ENEMIES

Speaking of church, the civil rights movement which was so very successful at protest, was grounded in Christianity, which gave it a built in moral authority and common ground with even its most ardent adversaries. As previously stated, the time of Christianity in the west has passed, but none of the new religions, The Religion of Self and the Church of Identity Politics most especially, have been able to fill that moral void or accentuate community through common experience.

I read an interview last week with the Eagles of Death Metal lead singer Jesse Hughes. To refresh your memory, Hughes and his bandmates survived the horrific Bataclan terrorist attack in Paris back in November of 2015 where 90 people were slaughtered in a concert hall. In the interview, Hughes spoke of how he reached out to Ariana Grande, the young signer whose concert in Manchester, England was targeted by Islamic terrorists in May of this year. Hughes recounted how he has tried to handle the psychological and emotional tumult brought on by his brush with death two years earlier. Hughes advice to Grande was "you've always got to pray for your enemies". I truly believe that and try to practice it, and that means praying not only for Heather Heyer, but for James Fields, the neo-Nazi who killed her, who is desperately in need of solace from  the torment in his lost soul regardless of the heinous atrocity he committed. But I am aware that to advocate for prayer now, in the wake of Charlottesville and in the Identity Age, I would only, at best, be laughed at and ridiculed. And I understand that is because calling for prayer in this day and age is in itself seen to be a divisive act in this time when the Religion of Self reigns supreme.

The reality is that this is the post-Christian western world we live in. The philosophical and psychological container of the old religions cannot hold the New Man, and the old religions have earned the public's disillusionment with corruption and hypocrisy on an epic scale. The collective is currently disoriented because they no longer have a foundational orientation to the old religions, and are struggling to re-orient to a new religion that can adequately contain the New Man in all of his complexity. 

What we need at this time are new versions of Martin Luther King, Thomas Merton, Dorothy Day, Thich Naht Hanh, Gandhi and Anthony DeMello, but with no viable new religion with which to re-orient ourselves, civilization is left with underserving religions, like the Religion of Self and the Church of Identity Politics and its sacred Victimhood, which are unable to contain the New Man in his entirety and therefore not fertile ground from which any new great men and women can grow and flourish. Instead, from our disorientation from the old religion and failure of the new religion, we flail about and embrace the false prophets and idols on the left like Black Lives Matter, The Clinton Cult and their emotive neo-liberal cohorts in the media, and on the right like Fox News, the Confederacy, Chris Kyle and Donald J. Trump. 

THE ROUGH BEAST IN WINTER

I wrote last June that a beast was awakened and slouching towards Bethelehem. I wrote last month that winter isn't coming, winter is here. Both of these things have been proved by the events of the last year and last month to be entirely true. There is no way to stop the historical wave we are on that is, like a tsunami, gaining strength and power every moment of the day. Delusional liberals believe removing Trump will stop it. It won't. Fighting against "hate" won't help. Protesting won't help. The dye is cast, the conclusion inevitable. Our only wise course of action now is to accept the inevitable, embrace our disorientation, and prepare for impact and the aftermath of the crash. 

This is the world we have built, these are the politics we deserve. If we cannot pray at all, never mind pray for our enemy, we are no better than our enemy, and we will be engulfed by the same flames that devour him. Our blindness is no excuse, our ignorance is no excuse, our arrogance is no excuse. We deserve Trump, for he is a mirror reflection of us and our narcissism, intellectual vacuity, self-defeating strategies and crumbling empire. The darkness is upon us, all of us, and until we realize that, we are doomed to remain without light. Know this, things are going to get much, much worse, before they get any better.

©2017

Dunkirk : Random Thoughts

****THIS ARTICLE CONTAINS SOME MINOR SPOILERS****

Estimated Reading Time : 6 minutes 39 seconds

After seeing Dunkirk I exited the theatre and sat in the lobby at an isolated table next to a big window that gave me a nice view of most of Los Angeles. I sat there and jotted down my thoughts on the film and once that was done, I kept on jotting. In a near stream of consciousness, I scribbled down everything that came flooding into my mind. These thoughts may be completely incoherent, totally random and not make a lick of sense, but if you think that means I'm not going to share them with you then you don't know me very well. So sit back, relax and enjoy unfettered access to the dark corners of my post-Dunkirk mind.

BREXIT STAGE LEFT

Director Christopher Nolan's politics are always difficult to read, but it strikes me that his newest tour-de-force, Dunkirk, is an unabashed metaphor for modern-day Britain escaping the EU before that whole enterprise goes under.

One supporting clue to that thesis is that the first civilian small boat that crosses the channel and lands on France's shore to save and extract British soldiers from Europe is named "New Britannia". Add to that the films overall underlying premise that Brits are palpably and desperately yearning for "home", and Kenneth Branagh's Henry V-esque role/performance, and it seems pretty clear.

This is obviously an interesting time for Dunkirk to be hitting the theaters. In Britain, the tumultuous uncertainty of the impending Brexit (along with the fact that Theresa May's government is teetering) hovers over the nation like a dense fog. To many this is a catastrophe on par with the British armies defeat at Dunkirk. At this darkest hour comes Dunkirk, a film, and a story, that highlights the very best of Britishness, their resilience, resourcefulness and stiff-upper lip and all that. That Britishness was on full display in 1940 at Dunkirk when the Brits had their back against the wall and all, including the war and the world, seemed lost, but they rose to the occasion back then for their finest hour. 

Love it or loathe it, the British will now have to withdraw back to the their island fortress and work together in order to survive the coming inevitable post-Brexit winter. I happen to think that Brexit will be revealed to be a prescient decision by the Brits once the financial troubles and civilizational clashes in the EU boil over and chaos ensues. The UK will then have a head start in localization and in rebuilding their nation, traditional national identity and economy well before the other EU nations are forced to do the same by economic and political forces well beyond their control or knowledge. The movie Dunkirk also gives some not so subtle signs as to what it believes will happen to the French (and the rest of Europe) in the coming years, as there is one major French character in the film and he ends up at the bottom of the channel, unable to escape the rising tide that is destined to engulf the EU.

The film Dunkirk can be a roadmap for the British to follow in their flight from Europe and return to "home". They must change course by jettisoning the historic shackles of their own imperialism and colonialism and prioritizing their own national interests and the interests of their native and traditional peoples. Many folks will get hurt, some will be left behind and some will die. But it all MUST happen if Britain, the nation and culture, is to live to see another day. Similar to how after the actual evacuation of Dunkirk the Brits, my Scottish grandmother and her children among them, had to suffer through the blitz by seeking refuge in tube stations as the German bombardment raged overhead, so it will be with post-Brexit Britain. As the world order tumbles, and the EU crumbles, Britain will have to hunker down in order to avoid and survive the external onslaught.  

THE OLD ORDER IS DEAD

The U.S. global empire is over. Neo-liberalism is dead. China and Russia are potentially ascendant because they will be able to withstand hardships and instability much better than their counter-parts in the west due to their more recent experience with calamity and their less diverse make-up. Having a more homogeneous population will make for less ethnic competition and confrontation as resources dwindle and power consolidates especially in cultures that are not born of a melting pot. Also to the Sino-Russian advantage, is that they are beginning to work much more closely together in regards to their economies, resources and militaries in order to ascend to power and eclipse the fading star that is U.S. global hegemony. 

From the rubble of neo-liberalism and the old world order, post-Brexit Britain will have a chance to rise from the ashes and will benefit from having a head start on most of the rest of the Europe. "Dunkirk" will be the first step in Britain's grand Brexit maneuver. First comes consolidation (Dunkirk), then comes resilience and localization (the Blitz), then comes intelligent re-ordering of priorities and the world order.

In world war two, Britain allied with the hated Soviets in order to defeat Nazism. And regardless of what you've been taught in school, it was the Soviets who defeated Hitler, not the British and Americans. And so it will be in post-Brexit and "Blitz" Britain, where the Brits will realize that the U.S. has become a global albatross around their necks, and that Russia and China and others are the most rational choice for allies and very limited partnerships, regardless of their obvious flaws.

THE WINTER OF OUR DISCONTENT

Look, I understand that these thoughts will be unpopular and deemed unpleasant at best. I am not endorsing this inevitable trajectory, only acknowledging it. The writing is on the wall and to ignore it would not only be the height of folly but perilous. Understanding where the collective unconscious is leading humanity is vital in order to prepare for and respond to the black swan events that sneak up on us but are all too obvious in hindsight. My Isaiah Wave Theory®© shows that film, in conjunction with other social/economic/historical/political trends, can be a very critical element in getting a glimpse into the collective unconscious to see what lies ahead for us. Just like 2016 when the story lines, color schemes and visuals of Captain America: Civil War, Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice, X-Men: Apocalypse, Rogue One and even La La Land  were telling us of the disastrous clash awaiting us later in the year (2015 films The Revenant, The Martian, The Hateful Eight, Avengers : Age of Ultron and Star Wars : A Force Awakens portended the same exact thing), so it is with Dunkirk, War for the Planet of the Apes, Logan and Wonder Woman this year. As the Game of Thrones has been telling us over the last few years, "Winter is Coming"…well...I have bad news for you, "Winter is Here". Or more accurately, "The Long, Cold Winter of our Discontent has just Begun".

THE CENTER CANNOT HOLD

There has been a lot of talk about how the Brexit vote and Trump's victory in America are actually outliers, and that the right-wing or the alt-right trends are receding worldwide. People often point to Geert Wilders defeat in the Netherlands and Marine Le Pen's loss to Macron in France's last election as proof of this fact. There are many things wrong about not only that interpretation of those election results but the premise of an alt-right ascendancy or decline.

Let's start with the former. What is really happening now with Trump and Brexit as examples, is not an alt-right/right wing rise, but rather the collapse of the center and the establishment. Yeats, as a million writers (myself included) remind us ad nauseum, tells us that "the center cannot hold", and that is where we are now. This is why it is so vital for the democrats to jettison the centrist, neo-liberal, "Clinton-way" and embrace a far left economic ideology. Many democrats keep telling me that to defeat Trump they must position themselves as the centrist and "rational" party. I understand the sentiment as Trump seems so outrageous that by going to the center democrats believe they will flourish. This could not be further from the truth. A leftist, not liberal, but leftist, economic agenda is the only thing that will defeat Trumpism. More of the same Wall Street corporate ass kissing will be punished by voters because the establishment, media included, is in a credibility death spiral. Trump won by out flanking democrats to their left economically, democrats simply must go further out on the flank to defeat him and the republicans next time. And it is important to note that what is vital is a leftist economic message, not a culturally liberal message. A culturally liberal agenda with its accompanying substance-free identity politics will be doomed to fail and will scuttle the entire progressive ship right along with it. 

Jeremy Corbyn's powerful rise in the last British snap election, despite constant attacks on him by the media and the Blairites in his own party, is proof of the current vitality of this old school leftist ideology. Labour's showing in that election was stunning, but not for those who can properly read the tea leaves. I saw it coming just as I saw Trump's victory coming, and could not understand how others didn't see it coming. 

There are democrats who have poo-pooed Corbyn and Labour's stunning election showing by saying, "they didn't actually win". This is myopic analysis at best. Corbyn is actually better positioned now because he didn't win and become Prime Minister. He can sit back and prepare for his ascent to 10 Downing Street while Theresa May is on the hook for all of the failures of her makeshift coalition government. Corbyn is a shadow Prime Minister, which means power with no responsibility…in other words, the catbird seat. And of those establishmentarians diminishing Corbyn's election results, imagine if the entire mainstream media and a good number of his own party hadn't attacked him relentlessly and mercilessly at every turn…he and Labour might actually have won outright.

As for the election in the Netherlands and Geet Wilders, people terribly misread that result in regard to a wider trend. Wilders is a one man gang and it was impossible for him to actually ascend to power. What he was able to do though is push the center right party out towards him at the far right, as they fully embraced his stances on immigration, for example, and won the election. This was an electoral loss for Wilders, but a resounding ideological victory. 

APRES MACRON - LE DELUGE

As for France, democrats and the establishment media in America have been touting Macron as the second coming who will save centrism and neo-liberalism from the populist hordes. Guess again. This is just another mis-reading of the trend. All of the mainstream, traditional parties in France were decimated and didn't even make it to the final round of the presidential election. Macron ran and won as an outsider (even though he is a consummate insider). His victory over Le Pen  and the more baser instincts of the populace, will only be temporary as he is not only terribly ill-equipped to deal with the existential threats to France, he is completely blind to them. He, like Trump, is wrapping the same old turd in a different type of bread, but it will still taste like a shit sandwich once everyone has to take a bite of it. 

Macron will fail in France because the ground he stands on is quicksand. There will be more terror attacks which will stoke the fires of ethnic nationalism even further. At some point, probably after a particularly nasty attack and/or an economic earthquake, people will say enough, and it won't matter what your passport says, the French will brutally evict or restrict anyone who doesn't look "traditionally French". Many think this is an impossibility and tell me so. This makes me laugh as France and a whole bunch of other European countries have, in living memory, been ruthlessly efficient in removing a population they deem troublesome. If you don't think it can happen again, you are fooling yourself.

ONCE MORE UPON THE BREACH, DEAR FRIENDS, ONCE MORE; OR CLOSE THE WALL UP WITH OUR ENGLISH DEAD!

The same will happen in Britain. Citizenship will not matter as much as tribalism once the heat of civilizational clash and economic instability rises to an unbearable level. Just this year England has suffered through multiple terror attacks that are like logs on a camels back. At some point, the camels back will shatter and the Islamists will get the blowback they want, but it won't go quite as well as they expect. In a clash of civilizations, always bet on the home team…in the middle east bet the Islamists, in Europe/UK bet the natives. Britain will probably recede back into England, with Northern Ireland, Scotland and maybe even Wales being jettisoned to independence in order for the English to survive the coming storm. 

Unlike America, all of these European countries are not built upon a culture of immigration. The English, French and German cultures (not nations) are thousands of years old. Those countries were built upon their cultures, and are now trying to transform into multi-cultural utopias that at their core they simply are not. These countries immigration issues stem from the evils of colonialism, and are in many ways are due punishment for those sins. But that doesn't mean the native culture will embrace change so easily or willingly. That is what is bubbling up from the collective unconscious in Europe and America right now, resistance to the other and a yearning for the tribally traditional and familiar.

THE #WOKE ARE #SOUNDASLEEP

The coming "winter" will bring with it a desolation that can be transformative, but only by those insightful enough to recognize it as an opportunity and not a catastrophe. This is why I find it so frustrating watching the democrats try and "resist" Trump with their nonsensical #staywoke idiocy and "A Better Deal" bullshit. The democrats I know are so desperate to hold onto the ideological corpse of neo-liberalism and American capitalism that their politics resembles little more than a stale Weekend at Bernie's sequel. These allegedly liberal democrats have fully embraced our nefarious intelligence community, neo-conservatives and their foreign policy, and unabashed corporatism while they cry racism, misogyny and xenophobia to anyone who points out their political hypocrisy and intellectual vacuity and vapidity. These dupes and dopes have absolutely no clue for what they fighting. Are they even aware that by protesting FOR Obamacare they are protesting for a right-wing, republican health care plan that is a corporate handout and are insuring that universal coverage/single-payer will never happen? And are these same fools even remotely aware that they are substantially diminishing the impact of the once devastating words racist, misogynist and xenophobe every single time they utter them. They use those words like Americans use antibiotics, as a first option, too frequently and when it is entirely unnecessary and inappropriate, and just like with antibiotics, overuse of those words greatly diminishes their potency.

You cannot "resist" Trump and Trumpism with Hillary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer. If you do you will fail. You cannot have the neo-liberal, corporate, holy trinity of Wall Street whores, Hillary, Nancy and Chuck roll out the "Better Deal" and have anyone take them seriously. The longer they are the face of the democratic party, the deeper the hole of credibility gets…so deep it might just be a grave. But try telling that to members of the Clinton cult and watch them shriek and scream with emotionalist abandon. This sorry group of people are so ill-prepared to do battle and succeed they should have "Born to Lose" tattooed across their chests.

OUR LAST, BEST HOPE

In contrast, Sanders and Corbyn are certainly not perfect, but they are exactly the way to counter the decomposing old order, even though they themselves are as old as dirt. Just like the billionaire plutocrat Trump was able to win as a populist, so can these two old timers win as a new wave of populist. Austerity has failed, not just in America but across the globe. "American capitalism" has failed. Imperialism has failed. You cannot try and prop them back up or re-inflate the bubble just one more time. An alternative solution must be presented, and when it is, if it is genuine, people will embrace it. Sanders and Corbyn are some of the alternate solutions, and they can fill the vacuum left by the collapsing center. But know this, if leftists do not fill that leadership void created in the wake of the disintegrating center, than a far right demagogue will. Trump did it this time but he is an ineffective fool. But next time, what if we get a ruthlessly effective and disciplined right wing demagogue…which in the post-Trump era is a very distinct and frightening possibility. This is why democrats and the Clinton cult better really "get woke", forget the luxury of culturally liberal politics and get on the economically progressive agenda or they will find themselves exiled to the wilderness at best, or blindfolded  and against the wall at worst . 

The cycle of history we are on is a perilous one, and it is fraught with many many dangers. The world will look considerably different in ten years than it does now, and it won't be because of technology, but rather ideology and economic seismology. The neo-liberal ideology is proven fraudulent and the coming economic/political seismological event that buries it forever will re-shape the world in ways which we can either shape to our benefit, or to our destruction. The first step is, with clear eyes and full heart, seeing and understanding what is happening and what is coming, and then strategically and tactically preparing for it so that what comes next is much better than what is left behind.

Ladies and gentlemen…thank you for enduring my post-Dunkirk rant. Maybe I was just shell-shocked by the film or maybe I am just a full-time maniac, or maybe, just maybe, I am on to something. Who knows? If I am wrong, it sure wouldn't be the first time…and if I am right, it wouldn't be the first time either. Only time will tell...don't forget to place your bets…and please tip the doorman on your way into the bunker.

©2017