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ericfruits · 7 years ago

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How Putin meddles in Western democracies

IN THE late 1980s, as Mikhail Gorbachev launched perestroika, Russia made peace with the West. It was possible to believe that each would give up trying to subvert the other with lies and cold-war conspiracy theories. With the indictment of 13 Russians on February 16th by the American special counsel, Robert Mueller, it is clear just how fragile that belief was.

Mr Mueller alleges that in 2014 Russia launched a conspiracy against America’s democracy, and he believes he has the evidence to withstand Russian denials and a court’s scrutiny. Perhaps because Vladimir Putin, Russia’s president, thought the CIA was fomenting an uprising in Ukraine, the Internet Research Agency, backed by an oligarch with links to the Kremlin, set up a trolling team, payments systems and false identities. Its aim was to widen divisions in America and, latterly, to tilt the vote in 2016 from Hillary Clinton to Donald Trump.

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Europe has been targeted, too. Although the details are sketchier, and this is not the focus of the Mueller probe, Russia is thought to have financed extremist politicians, hacked computer systems, organised marches and spread lies (see Briefing). Again, its aim seems to have been to deepen divides.

It is futile to speculate how much Russia’s efforts succeeded in altering the outcomes of votes and poisoning politics. The answer is unknowable. But the conspiracies are wrong in themselves and their extent raises worries about the vulnerabilities of Western democracies. If the West is going to protect itself against Russia and other attackers, it needs to treat Mr Mueller’s indictments as a rallying cry.

Trolleology

They hold three uncomfortable lessons. One is that social media are a more potent tool than the 1960s techniques of planting stories and bribing journalists. It does not cost much to use Facebook to spot sympathisers, ferret out potential converts and perfect the catchiest taglines (see article). With ingenuity, you can fool the system into favouring your tweets and posts. If you hack the computers of Democratic bigwigs, as the Russians did, you have a network of bots ready to dish the dirt.

With a modest budget, of a little over $1m a month, and working mostly from the safety of St Petersburg, the Russians managed botnets and false profiles, earning millions of retweets and likes. Other, better-funded, groups exploit similar techniques. Nobody yet knows how the outrage they generate changes politics, but it is a fair guess that it deepens partisanship and limits the scope for compromise.

Hence the second lesson, that the Russia campaign did not create divisions in America so much as hold up a warped mirror to them. It played up race, urging black voters to see Mrs Clinton as an enemy and stay at home on polling day. It sought to inflame white resentment, even as it called on progressives to vote for Jill Stein, of the Green Party. After Mr Trump’s victory, which it had worked to bring about, it organised an anti-Trump rally in Manhattan. Right after the Parkland school shooting, Russian bots began to pile into the debate about gun control (see article). Europeans are to a lesser degree divided, too, especially in Brexit Britain. The divisions that run so deep within Western democracies leave them open to intruders.

The most important lesson is that the Western response has been woefully weak. In the cold war, America fought Russian misinformation with diplomats and spies. By contrast, Mr Mueller acted because two presidents fell short. Barack Obama agonised over evidence of Russian interference but held back before eventually imposing sanctions, perhaps because he assumed Mr Trump would lose and that for him to speak out would only feed suspicions that, as a Democrat, he was manipulating the contest. That was a grave misjudgment.

Mr Trump’s failing is of a different order. Despite having access to intelligence from the day he was elected, he has treated the Russian scandal purely in terms of his own legitimacy. He should have spoken out against Mr Putin and protected America against Russian hostility. Instead, abetted by a number of congressional Republicans, he has devoted himself to discrediting the agencies investigating the conspiracy and hinted at firing Mr Mueller or his minders in the Justice Department, just as he fired James Comey as head of the FBI. Mr Mueller is not done. Among other things, he still has to say whether the conspiracy extended to the Trump campaign. Were Mr Trump to sack him now, it would amount to a confession.

How to win the woke citizens vote

For democracy to thrive, Western leaders need to find a way to regain the confidence of voters. This starts with transparency. Europe needs more formal investigations with the authority of Mr Mueller’s. Although they risk revealing intelligence sources and methods and may even please Russia—because proof of its success sows mistrust—they also lay the ground for action. Party-funding laws need to identify who has given money to whom. And social media should be open to scrutiny, so that anyone can identify who is paying for ads and so that researchers can more easily root out subterfuge.

Then comes resilience, which starts at the top. Angela Merkel successfully warned Mr Putin that there would be consequences if he interfered in German elections. In France Emmanuel Macron frustrated Russian hackers by planting fake e-mails among real ones, which discredited later leaks when they were shown to contain false information. Finland teaches media literacy and the national press works together to purge fake news and correct misinformation.

Resilience comes more easily to Germany, France and Finland, where trust is higher than in America. That is why retaliation and deterrence also matter—not, as in the cold war, through dirty tricks, but by linking American co-operation over, say, diplomatic missions, to Russia’s conduct and, if need be, by sanctions. Republican leaders in Congress are failing their country: at the least they should hold emergency hearings to protect America from subversion in the mid-term elections. Just now, with Mr Trump obsessively blaming the FBI and Democrats, it looks as if America does not believe democracy is worth fighting for.

This article appeared in the Leaders section of the print edition under the headline "The meddler"

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marymosley · 5 years ago

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Clinton Fuels New ‘Red Scare’ With Political Attacks Against Gabbard

Below is my column the Hill newspaper on the recent accusation of Hillary Clinton that presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard is a “Russian asset.” What is most astonishing is the silence of virtually all of the other presidential candidates. Only Yang and Williamson came out quickly to support Gabbard. For presidential candidates denouncing Donald Trump for his personal attacks and reckless hyperbole, it is the height of hypocrisy to remain silent unless they believe that Gabbard is indeed a Russian asset. If so, they should have the courage to say so, particularly front runner Joe Biden and Elizabeth Warren.

Here is the column:

“We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty.” Journalist Edward Murrow said those words 65 years ago, responding to Republican Senator Joseph McCarthy and his accusations of Americans being “Russian stooges” and “fellow travelers.” Murrow declared that, despite the best efforts of political opportunists, “We will not walk in fear, one of another.”

Those words came to mind after former Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton accused current Democratic presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard of being a “Russian asset” in the 2020 election. It seems there is a communist stooge behind every poll, as people like Clinton make support for the establishment a loyalty test.

Long ago, I wrote about how the Russia investigation was spurring a new type of “red scare” as critics denounced Donald Trump, Republican members of Congress, and commentators as Russian apologists or Kremlin assets. It was not enough that most of us agreed that Russian intervention in the 2016 election was worthy of investigation. It did not matter that special counsel Robert Mueller determined that no one in the Trump campaign knowingly worked with Russian agents.

It does not matter that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Democratic leaders reportedly have said they do not want to impeach Trump on Russian conspiracy claims, a curious thing, given their years of claiming clear proof of such crimes. It also does not matter that the United States has a long history of intervening in foreign elections, or that we have regularly hacked the emails of foreign foes as well as close allies like German Chancellor Angela Merkel. To even utter such facts is to find oneself on the feared “fellow travelers” list.

Clinton made her accusation on the “Campaign HQ” podcast, telling host and former Obama aide David Plouffe that the Russians “got their eye on somebody who is currently in the Democratic primary and are grooming her to be the third party candidate.” That someone appeared to be Gabbard, who she claimed, is “the favorite of the Russians. They have a bunch of sites and bots and other ways of supporting her so far.” She warned that Gabbard might run as a third party candidate at the behest of the Russians, continuing, “That is assuming Jill Stein will give it up, which she might not because she is also a Russian asset.”

These comments by Clinton seem right out of the infamous Republican National Convention speech by McCarthy in 1952, in which he painted a widening group of Americans as Russian assets. He declared, “Our job as Americans and as Republicans is to dislodge the traitors from every place where they have been sent to do their traitorous work.” It is an irresistible temptation to portray opponents as Russian cutouts or conspirators, so perhaps it was only a matter of time before accusations of Russian conspiracy moved from Republican to Democratic rivals.

Clinton may hate Gabbard even more than she hates Trump, for the contrast Gabbard creates with figures like Clinton. Gabbard is a former Army National Guard major who served in Iraq and has long opposed our foreign wars and interventions. Clinton supported wars in Iraq, Libya, and Afghanistan before trying to distance herself from those conflicts that cost thousands of American lives and trillions of dollars.

Gabbard responded to Clinton, calling her “the queen of warmongers, embodiment of corruption, and personification of the rot that has sickened the Democratic Party.” Rather than step back, the Clinton camp has continued to mock Gabbard as a tool of foreign interests for her efforts against wars. In true McCarthy fashion, Clinton spokesman Nick Merrill taunted, “Assad day for your candidacy,” a reference to the meeting between Gabbard and Syrian dictator Bashar Assad in 2017.

The Clinton aversion to Russia appears to be an acquired distaste. Her campaign spent a massive amount of money seeking dirt on Trump from foreign sources, including Russian intelligence assets, in 2016. The Clinton campaign denied any involvement in the creation of the Christopher Steele dossier that the Obama administration used to secure a secret surveillance warrant against Trump associates. The campaign hid its payments to the opposition research firm Fusion GPS as “legal fees” among the millions of dollars paid to its law firm.

Clinton lawyer Marc Elias vigorously denied to the New York Times that the campaign funded the dossier. Reporters proved that was false, with journalist Maggie Haberman noting, “Folks involved in funding this lied about it, and with sanctimony, for a year.” Even when Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta was questioned by Congress, he denied any contractual agreement with Fusion GPS, as Elias sat beside him.

It is notable that the Democratic cry of “Russian stooges” involves fear of a third party challenge. The establishment has pushed Joe Biden as the presumptive nominee, just as it pushed Clinton in 2016. Biden, however, has become embroiled in his signature gaffs and the questionable business dealings of his son. This week, a respected diplomat testified that he raised concerns about Hunter Biden and his deals to the staff of the former vice president but was shut down in those efforts.

For those of us who have long opposed the hold of the two major parties over our government, the Clinton attack is right on schedule. Every election, the establishment tells voters they have no alternative but to choose the lesser of two evils offered by this duopoly. A vote for a third party candidate is portrayed as supporting the other party.

Now, however, red baiting may be needed to maintain control. The argument for the lesser of evils did not work for Democrats in 2016. Despite polls showing a strong sentiment against the establishment, the party rigged its primaries in favor of Clinton, the ultimate establishment figure. That election became a contest between the two least popular candidates to run for president. Many voters saw Trump not as an ideal choice but as a way to defy the establishments of both parties.

Voters are even more unhappy today with the choice between Trump and his current challengers on the left. For some of us, the choice seems between an environmental apocalypse offered by Trump and an economic meltdown offered by Democrats. That could play into the hands of a strong third party candidate, which is why it is necessary for the establishment to portray such a vote as a Russian conspiracy.

The question is whether voters again will be duped, not by the Russians, but by our own American politicians here at home. Much has changed since 1954, when attorney Joseph Welch exposed McCarthy with his famous inquiry, “Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?” One thing is abundantly clear in government today. There is no room for decency in our duopoly of power.

Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University. You can follow him on Twitter @JonathanTurley.

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galigio · 7 years ago

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Green Party's Jill Stein denies any ties to Russian election interference probe - News965 (blog) News965 (blog) Green Party's Jill Stein denies any ties to Russian election interference probe News965 (blog) Rejecting assertions that she was a tool of the Kremlin, Green Party leader Jill Stein told supporters Wednesday night that her independent political cause is being targeted as part of the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 elections ...

May 03, 2018 at 06:29PM & selected by Galigio

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josidel · 7 years ago

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Russian-bought ads on YouTube, Gmail and other platforms

Google for the first time has uncovered evidence that Russian operatives exploited the company’s platforms in an attempt to interfere in the 2016 election, according to people familiar with the company's investigation.

The Silicon Valley giant has found that tens of thousands of dollars were spent on ads by Russian agents who aimed to spread disinformation across Google’s many products, which include YouTube, as well as advertising associated with Google search, Gmail, and the company’s DoubleClick ad network, the people said, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss matters that have not been made public. Google runs the world’s largest online advertising business, and YouTube is the world’s largest online video site.

The discovery by Google is also significant because the ads do not appear to be from the same Kremlin-affiliated troll farm that bought ads on Facebook -- a sign that the Russian effort to spread disinformation online may be a much broader problem than Silicon Valley companies have unearthed so far.

Google previously downplayed the problem of Russian meddling on its platforms. Last month, Google spokeswoman Andrea Faville told The Washington Post that the company is "always monitoring for abuse or violations of our policies and we've seen no evidence this type of ad campaign was run on our platforms."

Nevertheless, Google launched an investigation into the matter, as Congress pressed technology companies to determine how Russian operatives used social media, online advertising, and other digital tools to influence the 2016 presidential contest and foment discord in U.S. society.

On Monday, the company issued a statement saying, "We have a set of strict ads policies including limits on political ad targeting and prohibitions on targeting based on race and religion. We are taking a deeper look to investigate attempts to abuse our systems, working with researchers and other companies, and will provide assistance to ongoing inquiries."

The people familiar with Google's investigation said that the company is looking at a set of ads that cost less than $100,000 and that it is still sorting out whether all of the ads came from trolls or whether some originated from legitimate Russian accounts.

To date, Google has mostly avoided the scrutiny that has fallen on its rival Facebook. The social network recently shared about 3,000 Russian-bought ads with Congressional investigators that were purchased by operatives associated with the Internet Research Agency, a Russian-government affiliated troll farm, the company has said.

Some of the Facebook ads, which cost a total of about $100,000, touted Donald Trump, Bernie Sanders and the Green party candidate Jill Stein during the campaign, people familiar with those ads said. Other ads appear to have been aimed at fostering division in United States by promoting anti-immigrant sentiment and racial animosity. Facebook has said those ads reached just 10 million of the 210 million U.S. users that log onto the service each month.

At least one outside researcher has said that the influence of Russian disinformation on Facebook is much greater than the company has so far acknowledged and encompasses paid ads as well as posts published on Facebook pages controlled by Russian agents. The posts were shared hundreds of millions of times, said Jonathan Albright, research director of the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia University.

On Monday he said the revelations about Google suggest the Russian online influence campaign likely used many of the American technology industry’s most prominent online platforms and services.

“It’s a system,” Albright said. “It’s not necessarily magic. It’s social media marketing at an expert level… This is very well executed.”

Oxford University researchers, meanwhile, reported Monday that Twitter and Facebook accounts linked to Russians targeted online content at U.S. military veterans and active-duty personnel, mixing disinformation alongside other content already being read and shared widely among these communities.

In a blog post, Facebook wrote it is also looking at an additional 2,200 ads that may have not come from the Internet Research Agency.

"We also looked for ads that might have originated in Russia — even those with very weak signals of a connection and not associated with any known organized effort," the company wrote last month. "This was a broad search, including, for instance, ads bought from accounts with US IP addresses but with the language set to Russian — even though they didn’t necessarily violate any policy or law. In this part of our review, we found approximately $50,000 in potentially politically related ad spending on roughly 2,200 ads."

Meanwhile, Twitter said that it shut down 201 accounts associated with the Internet Research Agency. It also disclosed that the account for the news site RT, which the company linked to the Kremlin, spent $274,100 on its platform in 2016. Twitter has not said how many times the Russian disinformation was shared. The company is investigating that matter and trying to map the relationship between Russian accounts and well-known media personalities as well as influencers associated with the campaigns of Donald Trump and other candidates, said a person familiar with Twitter's internal investigation. RT also has a sizeable presence on YouTube.

Twitter declined to comment for this story.

Executives for Facebook and Twitter will testify before Congressional investigators on Nov. 1. Google has not said whether it will accept a similar invitation to do so.

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The Switch

Google uncovers Russian-bought ads on YouTube, Gmail and other platforms

By Elizabeth Dwoskin, Adam Entous and Craig Timberg October 9

Play Video 1:31

Google uncovers Russian-bought ads

Google found tens of thousands of dollars were spent on ads by Russian agents who aimed to spread disinformation across Google's platforms. (Elyse Samuels/The Washington Post)

SAN FRANCISCO — Google for the first time has uncovered evidence that Russian operatives exploited the company’s platforms in an attempt to interfere in the 2016 election, according to people familiar with the company's investigation.

[Facebook to turn over thousands of Russian ads to Congress, reversing decision]

AFP/Getty Images/Leon Neal and Loic Venance

[Twitter finds hundreds of accounts tied to Russian operatives]

On Monday he said the revelations about Google suggest the Russian online influence campaign likely used many of the American technology industry’s most prominent online platforms and services.

“It’s a system,” Albright said. “It’s not necessarily magic. It’s social media marketing at an expert level… This is very well executed.”

In a blog post, Facebook wrote it is also looking at an additional 2,200 ads that may have not come from the Internet Research Agency.

Play Video 3:08

How Russian operatives used Facebook and Twitter during the 2016 election

Facebook, Twitter reveal Russian meddling during 2016 election (The Washington Post)

Twitter declined to comment for this story.

Executives for Facebook and Twitter will testify before Congressional investigators on Nov. 1. Google has not said whether it will accept a similar invitation to do so.

The Switch newsletter

The day's top stories on the world of tech.

U.S. intelligence agencies concluded in January that Russian president Vladmir Putin intervened in the U.S. election to help Donald Trump win. But Silicon Valley companies have received little assistance from the intelligence community, people familiar with the companies' probes said.

Google discovered the Russian presence on its platforms by siphoning data from another technology company, Twitter, the people familiar with Google's investigation said. Twitter offers outsiders the ability to access a small amount of historical tweets for free, and charges developers for access to the entire Twitter firehose of data stemming back to 2006.

Google downloaded the data from Twitter and was able to link Russian Twitter accounts to other accounts that had used Google’s services to buy ads, the people said. This was done without the explicit cooperation of Twitter, the people said.

Google's probe is still in its early stages, the people said. The number of ads posted and the number of times those ads were clicked on could not be learned. Google is continuing to examine its own records and is also sharing data with Facebook. Twitter and Google have not cooperated with one another in their investigations.

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nowagepress · 8 years ago

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Now Age Minute – Burn Down the Mission

In a rash effort to rescue his signature policy success, President Obama did something he did his best to avoid during his presidency: visit congress. According to a story from the Washington Post,

Congressional Republicans on Wednesday launched their long-promised effort to dismantle the Affordable Care Act, even as they acknowledged that they may need several months to develop a replacement along conservative lines.

Signifying how enormous a priority the issue is for the incoming administration, Vice President-elect Mike Pence met privately to discuss it with House and Senate Republicans. He offered no details afterward about what a new health-care law might look like but vowed to unwind the existing one through a mixture of executive actions and legislation.

Meanwhile, President Obama made a rare Capitol Hill appearance, meeting behind closed doors with Democrats from both chambers. He urged members of his party not to help the GOP devise a new health-care law.

Trust, abated When I began using this medium to share my thoughts nearly twenty years ago, my interest was to shine a light on the perverse in American culture and society. As a perennial outsider, I developed keen observational skills, which helped me to see what power brokers of all sorts preferred to hide in the shadows. In particular, my curiosity was piqued by how Americans were so propagandized by food processors and marketers to convince a wide swath of the population to eat non-foods, get sick, then pop pharmaceuticals to stave off death, never once to think that their own choices contributed to their suffering. Once the Supreme Court ordered a halt to the 2000 presidential vote recount in Florida, however, the pathway to the perverse shifted to politics.

Ironically, perhaps, I find myself coming to the end of the political road over a recount issue. This time it’s the infamous Jill Stein-branded recount effort in three states that went for Trump, and tossing the Clintons into the electoral incinerator once and for all.

For the past year and a half, at the beginning of this inhumanely long election cycle, I put my voice, for what it’s worth, whole hog behind Ms. Stein’s Green Party presidential bid. Many entries in this space, and nearly every interview conducted turned back to promoting Stein as the only choice. In that effort, I aligned with new friends, and alienated old ones.

On the issues, for the most part, I have no regrets voting Green and supporting Stein, even in a swing state. In the election aftermath, however, my trust in her has abated. And the reluctance for the Green Party to distance the party (at the time of this writing) from her ongoing efforts, in particular the two million dollar refund awarded to her campaign for over payment of recount services. Will that money be refunded to donors? Will it be donated to the Green Party? Again, as of this writing, all that’s clear is Stein’s assertion to use the cash to fund a voter integrity project, Count My Vote.

So while I have no regrets in my vote, I’ve learned a large lesson about putting my trust in personalities or parties. Hence, I’ll be changing my voter registration to “unaffiliated,” and refrain from top-down politics as a reasonable vehicle for social change for anyone other than the oligarchy behind the curtain. I’ll use this entry, however, for a parting shot at the crime syndicates posing as our trusted Democratic and Republican parties, and the direction I’d like to take this column in going forward.

The losers It’s not that Jill Stein’s recount argument carried no worth or value; it did… for Democrats. Forgetting about the ridiculous “Russian hack” part of the complaint, there have been real shenanigans going on for several election cycles regarding purging of black citizens from state voter rolls, as exposed by investigative reporter Greg Palast, warranting an actual investigation. Liberal talk radio show host Thom Hartmann echoes the perverse dynamic when he writes,

Speaking in front of the Senate Armed Services Committee yesterday, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said he was highly confident that Russia had interfered in the presidential election.

With testimony like that from the country’s highest ranking intelligence officer, and a declassified report on alleged Russian interference expected out next week, Democrats now have plenty of new fodder for their endless quest to delegitimize Donald Trump by tying him to Russia.

Which is too bad, because it means they’re going to continue to ignore the real scandal of the 2016 presidential election: Interstate Crosscheck, a program started by Trump advisor Kris Kobach, a fellow you may remember from the “your papers please” “walking while brown” law in Arizona, or the Muslim registry that he designed for George W. Bush in the hysteria right after 9/11.

And he’s also the Secretary of State for Kansas, the epicenter of the Koch network.

According to investigative reporter Greg Palast, Crosscheck is a glorified national voter purge disguised as a tool to prevent people from double voting. Crosscheck kicked millions of people – overwhelmingly people of color, according to Palast – off the voting rolls before election day.

I wonder why Putin-frenetic Democrats aren’t pointing their frustration and outrage towards Crosscheck? Maybe because they don’t know? What they do know, however, is that their trusted news media is hammering home the official Obama administration (and notables in congress) story about Putin and the Russians, which in the end, is nothing more than the usual spy vs spy game played for decades. All anyone curious about facts over fake news could simply read the intelligence report, or a particularly useful news analysis by NY Times national security reporter, Scott Shane, where he writes,

What is missing from the public report is what many Americans most eagerly anticipated: hard evidence to back up the agencies’ claims that the Russian government engineered the election attack. That is a significant omission: Mr. Trump has been expressing skepticism for months that Russia was to blame, variously wondering whether it might have been China, or a 400-pound guy, or a guy from New Jersey…

…Instead, the message from the agencies essentially amounts to “trust us.” There is no discussion of the forensics used to recognize the handiwork of known hacking groups, no mention of intercepted communications between the Kremlin and the hackers, no hint of spies reporting from inside Moscow’s propaganda machinery.

When it comes to interfering in foreign elections, let’s not lose sight of our own sordid history. And let’s not lose sight of how we’ve been employing the U.S. Armed Forces, under the guise of spreading “freedom and democracy,” have done much more than manipulate elections. We don’t like the leader, and want the resources, we (or we arm our surrogates to) blow the damned country to bits. No one as been more two-faced than Barack Obama about this. Still, Democrats let him off the hook. He has such a nice family, after all.

Turns out self-professed liberal intellectuals are no less susceptible to propaganda than their “deplorable” countrymates. All said, there’s enough deplorable to go around.

The loser here is the Democratic establishment, from Obama to Clinton, and on down to the newly elected congressional leadership. It seems these baby boomer maniacs never surrender to their own failures. And the party faithful, primarily entitled baby boomer types that mirror the deplorable defects of their leaders. In particular, however, Barack Obama bares primary responsibility for Democrat’s devastating defeat (not only the presidency). Case in point, the lead quoted article highlighting the critical failure in his refusal to engage with congress to advance policy, or to build a bench of fresh, young leaders. Rather, he proved himself to be a wretched neoliberal, in the mold of the Cinton that proceeded him, and the one he pinned hopes upon to shepherd his legacy. Sadly, he took the rest of us down with him, save the ultra wealthy he aligns with. Don’t cry for him, though, his future is gilded. It’s the rest of us he screwed. If you think I’m being harsh, have a read of the post-mortem penned by Huffington Post Senior Political Economy Reporter, Zach Carter, where he writes,

Obama didn’t invent economic inequality. The gap between the rich and the rest of us has been widening since the 1970s ? and if Piketty is to be believed, it may be an intractable element of capitalism itself. But when presented with the opportunity to do something about it, Obama never really tried.

In the end, “too cool” Obama was too cool to govern, which resulted in the strongman, proto-fascist about to replace him.

The winners While it’s easy, and on the face of it correct, to declare Republicans supreme victors in the 2016 American electoral extravaganza. In actuality, the winners are the oligarchs, the faceless (and some faced!) power brokers who win no matter which party is in power. Winners, too, are yuppie liberals, who, while decrying the president-elect’s stated conservative policies, will do just fine, thank you very much, with Trump’s proposed tax cuts for the wealthy. For the rest of us, and that includes the working-class who put their faith in The Donald’s campaign promises, we’ll be reminded to show gratitude for crumbs dribbling from the tables of the wealthy.

Burn down the mission Take a detour with me now, and walk into any bookstore in America where you’re likely to be greeted (right up front!) by the “personal growth” table, a segment of the publishing world that’s evolved from books on motivation and personal excellence, to titles about happiness, and its spawn, mindfulness. There’s nothing more perverse in my mind that in the “land of the free, and the home of the brave” there’s a big happiness hole, assuming the gods of the publishing marketplace are correct. Last spring I spoke to an author of a happiness book, whose take offered more appeal to my perversely curious mind (see conversation here). “The Anxiety of Happiness,” by journalist Ruth Whippman looks at America’s obsession with being more happy, written through the wonderfully cynical eyes of a Britisher come to the States. What drew me to speak with Whippman was a piece she wrote on happiness, where she states,

Positive psychology’s insistence that our circumstances matter little to our happiness, and relentless focus on individual effort has an ideological flavor – a kind of neoliberalism of the emotions.

That’s a notion that’s been banging around my head for several years, considering the volume emitting from the positive psychology cult, driven by the usual maniacs, shaking down the anxious with the notion that their happiness, or lack of it, is a product of one’s personal mindset, beliefs, and so forth. We’re implored to walk on hot coals, to be warriors, to find that flame of fighter inside us to transcend our misery. Missing from the conversation, though, is the inquiry about social and community support. In fact, it’s anathema to a system that benefits from transferring the care for one’s state of being from the community to the individual; from the business to the worker. Perhaps, as Whippman eludes, the dearth of happiness is a byproduct of neoliberal economic policies that have created a Mad Max dystopia for American workers (and not just American workers, it must be noted!). Still, most people I encounter are ignorant to the term neoliberalism, even though its ideology has governed American policy since the industrial deregulation policies of President Jimmy Carter. Better to keep the little people divided over political parties and social issues than allow them to see the actual goal of the oligarchical elites: take everything.

That in mind, I recently found myself hypnotized by vacuous gazes of mannequins in storefront windows. Faces that were speaking to me. No, they were beckoning me. I ran home for my camera and returned to the mall to capture their message. Often, I could barely see their faces through the reflection in the window. When I looked at the images in Photoshop, however, their message was clear: we’re a reflection of you. The mannequins were reflecting the hollowness of our modern lives, where all personal value has been subjugated to the whims of the marketplace. The mannequins I captured (see “I Am Mannequin“) reflect the state of modern life; empty and trapped behind an invisible barrier separating us from our humanity. This, in my view, applies to those working multiple minimum wage jobs per day as well as those graced with wealth. There’s a point when the luxury car trick stops working. The is the curse of consumerism. Either there’s not enough, or never enough. My mannequins demonstrate the effects of neoliberalism far better than any essay or discussion I’ve presented.

I detour to this discussion about happiness, or lack of it, and mannequins to underscore my assertion that hierarchical politics are the problem, and henceforth, cannot be part of any solution. Thanks to our consumable entertainment culture, politics is now the providence of personalities over policies. In order to transcend the living hell imposed upon people and the planet by the neoliberal nightmare animating both major parties, we must reject a culture of personal power, and embrace a sustainable collective. Our task is not to nurture the warrior within, but to ignite the divine within. It is time we reject the myth of materialism, to reject the ethos of ego, and relearn the hymn of humanity. It’s time to shatter the neoliberal glass that divides us. It’s time to burn down the Mission.

Now everybody bring your family down to the riverside Look to the east to see where the fat stock hide Behind four walls of stone the rich man sleeps It’s time we put the flame torch to their keep –Bernie Taupin, Elton John

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