#this is a story about gullibility but not about fascism

[askshivanulegacy]

These comments are a really weird take, and the video is less than fantastic. And also the comments are a complete tangent from anything the video actually says; i.e., the video does not support them.

I dislike Thomas Kinkade, but not because the art is "bad." It's not bad art. You don't make millions on art people think is bad, bottom line. His art is beautiful, and none of OP's negative comments about it apply. As the video itself points out, there's nothing wrong with creating art in the niche you enjoy. That is, in fact, the entire point of creating art. You don't HAVE to throw angst and drama into art to "say something." Art can just be beautiful and compelling, and speculative merely because it's beautiful and compelling.

The video compared Kinkade to Norman Rockwell, and ofc both the styles and subject matter are leagues apart - because the artists had different influences and wanted to pursue different subjects. This is normal. They don't even look similar. I'm not sure why you would bother comparing them in the first place, unless you are simply misinformed.

If you want to compare Kinkade, as beautiful artwork without a political message (which is a large majority of art), then he falls exactly among the ranks of:

Lisa Frank:

Christian Riese Lassen:

Bob Ross:

James Gurney (who worked with Kinkade, actually):

And all such artwork, like the painting of any sunset, landscape, or sailing ship ever. Most photography is in this category too.

Are Frank's, Lassen's, Ross's, and Gurney's artwork devoid of creativity, meaning, soul, and wit?

No. Neither is Kinkade's. Or maybe Bob Ross is a fascist too for the crime of (checks notes) creating beautiful and uplifting art.

You don't have to like the subject matter, but then you wouldn't like the above artists either.

I take exception to Kinkade too, but more because the cost of his prints are inflated beyond all reason. As an artist, if you make prints, the prints must be at a reachable price for the average person. That is the point of a print. Kinkade's prints are all at scalper prices which don't reflect their worth. Of course, this ties in to the "scam" he was running ... but honestly, if stupid people are willing to pay $200-$6000 for a print with a hand-painted rock in the corner because they think it's going to be worth more someday, then that's a personal problem. Buying a physical object as your investment mechanism is a risk, as is all investment. That's your problem and your own fault. Kinkade is detestable, not because of the art which is perfectly good, but because he found a way to exploit stupid people at scalper prices (also for his personality I guess, but that's not relevant to most people). But if you're convinced it's worth paying $6000 for a print with a tiny fragment of hand-painted something on it, that's not really exploitation if you knew about it, is it?

This is really more commentary on the idiocy of the average American person than on Kinkade himself. I object to his methods on a philosophical level because art prints should be accessible. I don't object to the art itself, or care that stupid people paid those prices.

Also, that video is extremely sub-par. Sure, they walk through Kinkade's life story, which is interesting, but they make fun of his personal appearance, which is extremely unprofessional and irrelevant. And this, despite the fact that the people producing the vid look worse than Kinkade does. The guest speaker artist adds zero value to the video. He also doesn't know who James Gurney is, which is ... embarrassing to say the least. I'm not sure why he's on the show because he's just not useful. Both men consistently speak over the lady on the show, and the number of words she says can be counted on one hand. Either she simply has nothing to add, or the two men are chronically obsessed with pointless quips to the extent that they never leave room for her to contribute. In essence, the main narrator simply reads from a script he's presumably written, and derails himself with bad taste jokes every two minutes, which the guest artist contributes to, and which the lady looks either unimpressed or disgusted by. The story they tell could have been interesting in terms of Kinkade's business practices and how he made his millions, had they actually dived very deep into it, but they didn't. It was a supremely superficial coverage that obsessed more over personality flaws extremely common to many famous people. That Kinkade also had these flaws is not remotely interesting.

Also the video says nothing about fascists, so defaulting to that opinion just because you hate everything conservative is weird and also a bad faith take. I don't care that many people dislike Kinkade and his work (I would never buy Kinkade, but more out of principle and because my tastes have evolved since then), but I do care when people take their own opinion as gospel regarding what is and isn't good art. Quite obviously, there's nothing factual about an opinion, and opinions about art are meaningless because they're about personal preference and nothing else of relevance.

Kinkade's art is good. It's real art. You don't have to like it. The people who paid more than $20 for a print of it are stupid.

You also can't psychoanalyze a fascist by their art preference or even make sweeping statements about the type of art they like. And even if that's what you wanted to do, one bad video about one artist isn't how you do it.

If you want a really good basic-level exploration about why fascists have no fucking taste and can't make good art, the Behind the Bastards episodes about Thomas Kinkade are fantastic.

Basically, the fascist view of art is that art should always be beautiful and uplifting, with an incredibly narrow definition of what beautiful and uplifting means. It's fundamentally anti-creativity and its art is removed of all meaning, soul and wit.

[read-marx-and-lenin]

Can you explain why 1984 is fundamentally reactionary? I remember seeing a journalistic article talking about the same thing but sadly it was paywalled

The whole premise of the book is "if we let the government do too much stuff, eventually the government will get so big it will do Everything and nobody will be able to stop it, it will grow so big it will be a self-perpetuating tyranny."

It's your typical liberal cautionary tale against "authoritarianism", conflating fascism and communism while understanding neither. Orwell had never been to the Soviet Union, and instead drew heavily from his own experience working for the British Ministry of Information. Later in his life, he would even compile a list of suspected Communists to hand over to British intelligence agents, some on the list included solely because they were gay or Jewish.

Animal Farm is another example of his reactionary sentiment, in which the peasants and workers of the Soviet Union are depicted as gullible and weak-minded animals jerked around at every turn by the pigs, a stand-in for Marxists in general and Bolsheviks specifically. Incidentally, Orwell during his time at the Ministry of Information had become acquainted with one Gertrude Elias, who shared with him her own idea for a cartoon film depicting the Nazis as tyrannical pigs ruling over the other animals in a farm. Orwell had told her the idea wasn't any good, before going on to write Animal Farm, replacing the fascists in the story with communists.

Here's a good read about Animal Farm by the way, which I feel shows very clearly the kind of reactionary Orwell was:

Compare Orwell's depiction of the mindless masses in Animal Farm to the "proles" in 1984. 1984 hardly mentions them except to say that they all live in squalor and have no agency worth considering, which allows them to live free of surveillance and control, since the State doesn't see any purpose in expending the resources to surveil them. They're all dumb, mindless addicts and gamblers whose only purpose is to provide menial labor. Meanwhile, the protagonist of the book, who is cunning and able to question the whole situation, is a middle-class white collar propagandist, just like Orwell was during his time at the Ministry of Information. Orwell clearly viewed himself as superior to the mindless masses, and he was a racist to boot, just look at what he wrote about the Burmese or the Irish. The Russian masses as depicted in Animal Farm needed little more than to be ordered around and they were willing to follow whoever was giving the orders. The English masses as depicted in 1984 needed a bureaucratic mountain of sophisticated social engineering dedicated entirely to manipulating every last minutia of information in society in order to be subject to the same level of control.

[qqueenofhades]

One of my more "radical" leftist friends admitted after the 2016 election that they voted for Jill Stein. I asked them why and they said, and I quote, "I don't really know."

Anyway, thank you for the thoughtful post about polling. I'm still terrified of another Biden-Trump match up, but I suspect you are right that many of these online leftists yelling about sending a message to "genocide Joe" were not likely voters to begin with.

Well I mean, in Online Leftist world, voting is an essentially meaningless act anyway, so if they do bother to do it, why not make some sort of "protest" against the Corrupt System, even though (as I said) Jill Stein is literally a Manchurian candidate sponsored and funded by Russia precisely in order to dupe gullible leftists who want to Send a Message to the Democrats. She has no platform and no policies. She just exists to hurt Democrats and she is another part of the reason HRC lost in 2016, but hey. That sure showed us, or something.

And the thing is, while I'm not discounting that there could be some slippage of the youth vote, it would be much more effective as a threat (much as I would still deeply disagree with it, since the stakes are far too high with Trumpian fascism to fuck around with this bullshit) if we had literally any shred of evidence that they were planning to vote at all, that they were planning to vote for Biden and this is somehow the one thing that made them decide otherwise, or that their arguments were at all widespread beyond their tiny hermetic internet echo chamber. As I have said, I have not thus far seen compelling evidence that any of this is true, and believe me, I am ALSO keeping a close eye on things because this year will probably kill me before it's over. But when the Online Leftists have already spent three years lying about and trashing everything Biden has actually done, it is difficult to believe that they were in fact intending to vote for him, that they should be priced into any election analysis, or that they are as impactful as they think.

I suspect they're mostly being used to try to convince other people (who may or may not have planned to vote) that it is morally reprehensible to vote for Biden solely because of Gaza, no matter how illogical that is and how many orders of magnitude worse Trump would be on literally everything. And while I'm not denying that they may well peel off a few of the wishy-washy leaners and that's why their rhetoric is dangerous, I deeply doubt that they themselves were ever any kind of electoral or voting participant at all, because they keep telling us loudly that they're not. The media is running hard with this angle because they desperately want more Biden in Trouble stories, but actual election results keep proving them wrong, over and over. For all our sakes, let's hope very much this trend continues.

[dwestfieldblog]

LUNATICS RUN THE ASYLUM

(I began this in late October before the election and don’t want to edit, just to insert what a great victory for Putin in the USA eh? The End starts here. Wilhelm Reich was right. Ever read The Psychology of Fascism? Do.)

See Trump ‘dancing’ on stage for thirty minutes like a tacky cruise ship comedian, hear him say the January 6th 2021 riots were ‘a day of beauty and love’? A deranged liar, a racist, sexual scumbag, mocker of afflictions, disparager of captured soldiers, fondler of his daughter, friend of Epstein…a deeply corrupted, petulantconvicted criminal who should be in prison, or at very least a mental hospital having straitjacketed remedial English lessons. Never let a man with a small dick (or one testicle) be the Fuhrer. And he wants Robert F Kennedy, a loony who was against covid vaccines etc, to be in charge of the Centre for Disease Control and Prevention etc. Selling bleach cures?

Doubling down on all his pet eating nonsense and boasting of using ‘the weave’ when he delivers speeches and interviews…rather than the insane ramblings of a bigoted idiot. The ‘weave’? As if he is a master story teller with arcs and plot lines only he can perceive with random surrealist chaos. His weave is a tangled web of malignant and despicable lies. … The orange Don praised Hitler’s generals for their loyalty and ranting about ‘enemies within’ needing to have the army turned on them. General Mark Milley said; ‘(Trump) is the most dangerous person to this country…a fascist to the core’. And sofa humping Vance the Vice called him the ‘candidate of peace’. Christ on a trampoline.

So, a fascist German teams up with a South African racist, what could go wrong? The world’s richest man with the cheapest soul, AKA ‘Free speech’ (unless you disagree with him) Misinformation Musk jumping up and down on stage beside him, crying that if Trump loses, it ‘will be the last election’. As if Kamala is going to go all totalitarian in the USA. Perhaps ‘Dark Maga’ has his eye on a future presidency…his appalling interview with (yes, that’s right, Tucker Carlson the Putin fellating lapdog) was almost all inverse to actual facts and wilfully blind to what DT has actually said and done…and the evil direction to which he moves. So much for ketamine Elon. Trump is the ‘antichrist’.

Musk (who has top secret security clearance in the US) has been in regular contact with Putin since 2022. Baldie recently asked Musk not to deploy the Starlink internet system for Taiwan as a favour to his mate President Xi. Lovely people. Meanwhile Elon started to bribe folk one by one in the swing state Pennsylvania with one-million-dollar lottery gifts. That’s how desperate he is/was for the toupéed man baby to win. At the same time hoping the US will default on its deficit in January because he (and Trump) can make a mint with gold and crypto and become de facto Masters of North America. ‘Normal’ people losing their jobs and savings are irrelevant to these filth-pig ass clowns, yet these are the ones who are the most gullible to Donalds tangled weave and will vote for their own redundancy. Like turkeys voting for Christmas.

The whole crap sack of main Trump fans are deranged. Musk, Vance, Majorie Taylor Greene (she of the ‘Jewish space lasers’ idea) the evil ugly bitch ‘proud Islamophobe’ Laura (‘If Kamala wins, the White House will smell like curry’) Loomer, the grifters and utter cowards of the Republican party, Mike Johnson, Fox News, the corrupted judges, nutjobs R F Kennedy and Alex Jones, Steve Bannon, the Proud Boys aka the KKK, the foul coven of unholy money worshipping evangelicals, those in the UK who support him…Russell Brand, Lawrence Fox, Nigel Farage, Tommy Robinson, Piers Morgan, Boris, and around the world, Orban the toad in Hungary, Netanyahu the corrupt, Kim Wrong ‘Un and of course Putin, who needs his fat Caligula gimp back in power.

By his sycophants and masters, shall thee know him.

One of Putin’s billionaire shoeshine boys, Bidzina Ivanishvili of the Georgian Dream party has promised a ‘Nuremberg trial’ of the opposition parties if he wins. (The recent election seems doubtful but it is always the way that the older and the rural will vote more than the younger. He wants to turn the country into another Belorussia…Many old fools miss Stalin; the good old days of show trials, neighbours denouncing each other…dragged screaming into the past.

China and India continue to buy Russian oil and gas and thus support the orc invasion, London is still laundering oligarch money, Iran sent attack drones and ballistic missiles to Russia…who then complain about the West sending munitions. Both sides fighting a proxy war, seems safer that way for the rest of us than going nuclear. So far. Putin has sent the first of a possible ten thousand north Korean troops to be cannon fodder in Ukraine as well as early release for Russian prisoners of all ages if they fight. And as for the Middle East…. Arg.

Arg. Perhaps it is because this year I finally realised how old I am/appear to be, and all which that entails…and am projecting my sense of dread into apocalyptic visions of total dystopia. BUT. It really does seem as if the dark forces are coalescing and metastasizing all over the world.  The Bastards will never earn respect through fear but will be increasingly paranoid power mad energy vampires seeking complete control. Full spectrum dominance indeed. And all the Ego Immortals will live forever on a Musk space station, uploaded as cyber souls in a virtual paradise with E Lon as The Creator. What is left of humanity will be enslaved (to an even greater degree than before), working to extract the very last goodness from the planet to build the machines…rhodium in its high-speed state and white powder gold and etc. Arg.

All those who fell for the con trick of ‘it’s us against the Illuminati/New World Order and the corrupt old system’, who voted against their democracies and for the axe, will be confused to find themselves in a corrupt system of a real New World Order where their lives have blatantly zero value other than as slaves. A planet run by types such as Putin, Xi, Trump and Musk. The twisted, evil and insane men will spin this globe into a nightmare holocaust of oblivion. So, congratulations suckers. Here is your world, now eat your own excrement.

‘Better the pride that resides in a citizen of the world, than the pride that divides when a cloth or rag is unfurled’.  Neil Peart. Damn right. And no religions too.

Seems likely that my future postings will stick to writing about everything other than politics, religion and totalitarianism. Perhaps a goulash of multicoloured collage stuff from here on out. Diaries, musings, ‘poetry’, memories and recommendations… staying weird but without all the endless ranting. Might be healthier for us perhaps.

Right now (October 31st) I feel the world as we knew it in terms of basic Western democracy is very close to being destroyed by the machinations of the East, but mostly thanks to the greedy scum over here aided by the badly educated drones who yearn at heart for the forced order of tyranny. As long as they feel a ‘purpose’ to their lives. Which will be to serve those who declare themselves their betters, with the liar’s promise of a better life in return for complete acquiescence, obeisance and obedience. Or else.

Nothing seems to have changed much in human evolution, it is the same do-do, just more fake alpha males like scared children seeking total control for their own security.  Bastards leading idiots, revolutions turning…into the system.  Primate survival updated with weapons of mass destruction and harnessing viruses. Enough money BUYS ‘justice’, rich criminals are never punished, con merchant priests still fool their flocks with utter bullshit to get their cash and bathe in hero worship.

The best minds are ridiculed, mistrusted, absorbed and diluted by the mainstream or worse by the dumbest neophobes. Art, theatre, writing, science, collectively the humanities, regarded with suspicion, too gay, too intellectual, progress is the Devil. Only soundbite Tik Tok bread and circuses reality tv gameshow soap operas are acceptable. Short attention spans are encouraged, so as to blind-side the public to the perpetual ‘find the lady’ con trick perpetuated by the State.

Humans are easy to rile up and manipulate when they are desperate, so to the ruling classes (and those who would be so) it is always worth keeping their citizens and voters on a knife edge of stress via finance, health and existential threats. Those who think Trump will root out the ‘deep state’ blah blah and take power from the rich are going to have a rude awakening from the American Dream, as he will just keep the money where it always stays. With the plutocracy. The billionaire tax dodgers who demand you pay them to exist.

The East has taken its revenge and infiltrated the West to the extent that its own people are turning against themselves in the name of patriotism and ‘God’. Their puppets are numbered heavily among the leaders on the Right and the rising populists…traitors who are selling out their countries for power, status and wealth. The mass who supports them are usually the mentally vulnerable, those who have been encouraged to be scared and angry among the elderly, the young and the working classes, and the middle class who feel their comfortable lifestyle is in danger.

All are being manipulated by actual, genuine enemies to divide and conquer for them. Break up Europe, the United Nations, NATO, Britain and North America…Trigger events to cause a steady flow of endless refugees so all member states are deeply freaked by foreigners. ‘There are no natives anywhere in the world – everyone is from somewhere else – all people are refugees, immigrants or aliens.’ George Carlin

‘Think for yourself, question ‘reality’, question ‘authority’ Practice good mental operational security…critical thinking. Ignoring actual global warming as we bury deeper into virtual reality and tik tok dumbing down with absolute denial, Sidestep the madness, close down and go within. Remain in this world to work but with as much amused detachment as you can manage. The scared children have voted for what they believe will bring security. Not much of that when daddy is crazy. Poison is often part of the cure but Trump is just corrosion. So, over the Rubicon we go. ‘Russia can do whatever the hell it wants’. They will. Their carefully placed and financed useful idiots/ poleznye idiot in high places in the West will take the gold and betray..

So, no more politics from here on out. Enough already. The present is tense, so love, laugh, learn and live, Reconnect. Love again…and remember…

‘Magnetic and gravitational fluctuations appear to cause the majority of occult phenomena and alter brain wave patterns…psychic windows, hallucinations external and mental.’  Stay fine😊

[ms-boogie-man]

No… wrong

However, George Clooney is a CIA operative … true story. His aunt Rosemary also worked for in a government agency… that is how he got in and how he got his career. Clooney is a shill for commies, and I am not even finished researching this smug, arrogant, moron lib-turd.

Speaking of the CIA and the like, did you know that all these government 'alphabet' agencies are Democrat spawned and part of a fascist bureaucracy that was not approved by We the People? Did you know that these agencies are designed to never be abolished, and that positions within those agencies are intended and designed to never be removed? Did you know that Democrats went behind closed doors in DC to pass this garbage, and have bribed, coerced and blackmailed any non-complicit Dems, as well as Republicans? Are people like Ghislaine Maxwell and her lapdog, Jeffrey Epstein, beginning to make more sense now? Did you know that Ghislaine's father, Robert Maxwell, directed designing of the framework for the internet as we know it today? This was done for surveillance purposes. Using a private browser does not hide you on the net, neither does a VPN, anymore. Still like the Dems? Yes? Well, here is some more yo…

Do you think Democrats are telling you the truth and support you when they claim to support your sexuality community?? Your so-called marginalization? How much division would you like with that 'marginalization-burger'??!! How fucking gullible are you — How fucking dumb are you — *those questions are rhetorical… not actually asking *I felt the need to mention that as you believe Democrats

How divided do you want to be from your neighbors? I am a 19-century old daughter of Rome. I am of the House of the Julii Before Rome's legions ever donned a helmet, ever picked up a broad sword, ever formed a column… they went amongst those they wished to conquer and worked to divide them. Pick up an apple, squeeze it. You cannot shmoosh it, no matter how hard you try. Now remove the dagger from the scabbard on your hip, where it should always be, and cut the apple into at least 6 pieces. Now you are ready to do some shmooshing yo… no problem.

But keep listening to divisive Democrats. They were and still are slave owners, and will tell you whatever you want to hear that you will support them. And when they are finished with you, they will chuck you down the ni**er hole just like the story from Django Unchained… just like Josef Stalin did to his people, just Mao Zedong did to his people. And Che Guevara … you should hear what that left-wing monster did to gay men during his reign of terror in Cuba. Fuck him too

"But Angie, the Democrats are not left-wing or far left"

Yes, they most certainly are yo. Ever notice how many hits they keep making on our Constitution? They hate our Constitution. Our Constitution, when adhered to, makes us all equal. Period dot, the end Dems have spent the last 150 years, since signing the Act of 1871… behind closed doors in DC I might add … infringing free speech, gun rights, and the right to peace, freedom and the American way Bring up mass shootings, I have many answers for that Bring up hate speech, I have many, many answers for that Try and debate me on anythingy the Democrats ever do, and I will have a reasonable, logical and common sense answer for you

I am finished here… for now You want to put out garbage on the internet, I will speak my mind in response to it… and do not dare try to cancel or censor me in anyway, or you will have proven my point about the fascism and tyranny of the left. 1st Amendment; freedom of speech, remember —

Angie/Maddie🦇❥✝︎🇺🇸

#george clooney is caca #fauci is caca #Joe Biden always was a knuckle-dragging thug bully #start thinking for yourself

[tessatechaitea]

Justice Society of America #9 (1993)

I bet Guy Gardner makes a "Wood is your biggest weakness!" joke.

Back in the late 80s/early 90s, there were two stories that every single DC comic book had to tell: the protagonist battles and defeats Lobo and the protagonist puts Guy Gardner in his place. The first one proved that the protagonist could beat the toughest bastich in the DC Universe. The second was just satisfying to a lot of customers. I hated every single one of these stories. Except maybe the Hitman story where they defeat Lobo by taking pictures of Bueno Excellente ass-fucking the unconscious Lobo. I don't think that's using rape in an offensive way because Lobo was a murderous, genocidal psychopath and Bueno Excellente loved to fuck things in the ass. I suppose my love of Lobo and Guy Gardner in my teens and twenties says something unpleasant about me. But you can't deny that Lobo was the character every DC fan most wanted to fuck. And I mean every DC fan. I still find it weird that somebody could create a character that was both super sexy and also looked like a clown. And I just felt sympathy for Guy Gardner. These were the days before you had to account for mental illness and traumatic brain injury when assessing somebody's personality and attitude. But I was there for you, Guy! I knew what you'd been through and how unfairly everybody treated you! If only Harley Quinn could have been around to tell everybody to stop being so hard on Guy because he was suffering from severe brain trauma and couldn't help flying into rages on a near constant basis. Instead we just had Batman to lay Guy out in one punch and "fix" his personality until he was hit on the head again like some amnesiac Fred Flintstone. When we last left the Justice Society of America, the people of Earth were being driven toward hatred due to the unearthing of Kulak by Hawkman and Hawkwoman. It reminds me of something that happened in 2016 but I just can't quite put my finger on it.

I suppose if comic book artists can't help making corpses sexy, I shouldn't be surprised that they're making me think about fucking a seventy year old.

I know Joan Garrick is just a fictional drawing but at least I'm honest about when fictional drawings of old people and corpses give me a boner.

"One cop's nightmare." Yeesh. I'm afraid to ask how this movie ends.

Doctor Mid-Nite relaxes at home listening to the radio while coming up with old man takes to impress his young assistant.

Just wait until he gets a load of Twitter and Internet memes!

Thunderbolt and his dull friend work out that some kind of sorcery is affecting the Justice Society members, causing everybody to despise them. But it doesn't seem super important so Johnny Thunder decides to leave it for morning. I can't blame him for not knowing the whole world can burn down in that time; he isn't outside the story like I am so he can't perceive the whole of it all. Normally I would blame him and call him an idiot but I'm feeling charitable tonight. Thunderbolt does rush off to investigate because he senses something familiar. So at least the Hex Bolt is being cautious instead of lazy. And maybe Johnny isn't being lazy but have you seen the way he's drawn? It's not like he's in a hurry for anything except maybe a nap. Meanwhile, a new program has popped up: Current Affairs Spotlight. It's basically the Kulak version of Fox News, reporting questions that they don't really want to answer but by simply asking them causes their audience to distrust the subject of the questions. On a related note, Sean Hannity is a huge piece of shit.

I mean, they do have "society" in their name. They were just asking for the socialist accusation.

Alan Scott smashes the television and flies off in a rage. I guess I know who else was watching that program and believed every bit of it because his traumatic brain injury causes problems with his ability to assess the validity of facts over propaganda! It seems like I know a lot of people like that these days. I forgot Alan Scott runs a television station until he starts complaining about the propaganda airing on his station. He says, "I don't think that Molly should be censoring programming, but the station should have some standards. And she knows that report is sensational nonsense." Welcome to modern media, Alan! It's no longer up to the standards of the station to decide what bullshit should be shoveled onto the viewing public! Now it's just about how much money can be made on advertising while espousing some kind of freedom of speech fair exchange of ideas nonsense! It's exactly the problem that has been exploited by people who actually want less free speech. You muddy and obfuscate the truth by putting out whatever outlandish bullshit you can come up with and then if a station refuses to air it, you claim they're biased toward the side of the political spectrum you're trying to fuck over with your bullshit. I mean, that's Fox News. The other stations are the ones that have been cowed by Fox News into being horrible both sides news vehicles. Guy Gardner attacks Alan on the way to the television station because Guy was watching the show, of course. Remember, random television news broadcasts was once how super heroes got all of their breaking news alerts! How could they fight crime otherwise?!

A man with a traumatic brain injury has the same general understanding of fascism and political theory as the average Fox News viewer.

Guy Gardner doesn't make a wood weakness joke because he doesn't know about Alan Scott. Len's idea for this battle was probably, "Guy can only beat Green Lanterns because he's cheating using that yellow ring! But now let's see him fight a fair fight against a Green Lantern!" Which is exactly what happens! Alan Scott gives Guy a lesson on how to be a Green Lantern. I'm sure later, when Guy isn't being manipulated by Kulak, he'll process the information and accept it as wise words and valued experience from an old timer. Or he'll just vent and fume and look for an occasion to get even with him. After defeating Guy, all of the normal people on the street begin attacking the Justice Society and calling them fascists and commies. I'll accept their gullibility because it was caused by sorcery. Otherwise I'd be rolling my eyes at, once again, every regular citizen of the DC Universe being bamboozled by some demagogue. Hawkman drives up to save the day but instead just drives everybody right into Kulak's clutches.

I am surprised that Thunderbolt being driven on a stake through his asshole made it into a Comics Code Authority book.

Justice Society of America #9 Rating: B+. Sure Guy Gardner got his ass kicked like usual but at least Guy Gardner was in the comic book! That totally made it worth it to me! Except for how he was portrayed and the lines they gave him and the assumption that everybody thinks he's stupid and the idea that his only redeeming quality is being tough. But he looked like Guy and they called him Guy and he made some yellow rockets with his ring! So cool!

[gary232]

Media Controls, No Media Diversification, Controlling Institutions, Repeating History 1919-45, Religious and Nationalistic Fascisms, UN Cohesion, Worldwide Free Flow of Information and Freedom to Express Free Thought, Oligarchical Controls in Today’s World

Don't take this to heart. The establishment, churches, big corporations, institutions, and traditionalists are afraid to move forward and to stay in their comfort zones, afraid of change. Thinking on your own through reason, and logic, thinking outside the box, not being programmed, not being gullible or desperate, being control freaks, religious fanatics, and the government telling you it is fake news is the way to go, break free from those tactics and be your own independent thinker. Freethought, free spirit, free markets, and free internet content expressed by individuals is what the establishment or traditionalists do not want you to have to control you. When religion mixes with the government to set the agenda and become more powerful than the government, you get a repeat of the history of the Dark Ages, Islamic doctrine in the form of the Iranian governments in the most extreme, nationalism (Naziism), etc. Globalism comes in many forms, communism, Nazism, Islamic fundamentalism, etc to program and keep you dumb to the facts, denying access to information and free thought to keep you as you are and not to change. If you go back into the Bible, there was a sense to keep you from the tree of knowledge, such as the story of the Tower of Babel, that you would become a God or your own God, but in since, it was to keep you dumb, not letting you to develop and keep you in a programmed state. The Tree of Knowledge today is the free Internet, free social networks, and the diversification of many choices so you can become an independent thinking and analytical entity developed in your own journey in life and not a mass-programmed and manipulated population of old and ancient ways. Eat the apple, enjoy the tree of knowledge, and you can have both. Becoming free is being able to develop and think on your own and not be programmed to fill a con, control most freaks, programmed, religious agenda. For there are 5000+ religions and disciplines in the world, ever decentralizing the world and that is true globalization. And that is what the religious fanatics, con artists, oligarchs, central governments, and nationalists are worried about. That you might become this diversified portfolio of thought, debatable logical, and reasonable individuals that will form friction from their path of programming you. You are free to think, say, share, introduce ideas, express yourself and debate any subject without the fear of persecution. In most cases, the suppressing elements will use religion, monopolized governments, military conflicts, proxy wars, and police state tactics if they feel they are losing grip. Extreme religion brought us the Dark Ages in Europe during the crusades and the Islamic crusade, in which both clashed, but after many deaths over two religions to be based on love, but only based on hate for one another and many died and were forced to believe in something without free will to do so. Prohibition, brought us income inequality, Al Capone and the mobs, the Great Depression, Hitler, Imperial Japan, Communism, and World War 2. Dispelling the idea of the League of Nations which Woodrow Wilson wanted, but did not happen at the Treaty of Versailles, which would have prevented WW2, the threat to worldwide democracy, which is true globalization is being threatened again. There are many in the world that do not like a world body of collectivism and the coming together of all nations to solve problems in the world. That comes together in a diversified mode from many cultures to solve world problems that prevented World War 3 and have given the prosperity that the world enjoys today. Do we wish to repeat history with nuclear war, where no one wins? The aftermath of it would be worldwide anarchy. Think well today what is happening today with Fascism, European Nationalism, nationalism within itself religious prohibitionist fanaticism, and Islamic extremism, for we are following this path today familiar in the world after World War 1 and post World War 2, 1919-45. 

[mullercells]

Look, the single animating principle of everything Ryan did and proposed was to comfort the comfortable while afflicting the afflicted. Can anyone name a single instance in which his supposed concern about the deficit made him willing to impose any burden on the wealthy, in which his supposed compassion made him willing to improve the lives of the poor? Remember, he voted against the Simpson-Bowles debt commission proposal not because of its real flaws, but because it would raise taxes and fail to repeal Obamacare.

And his “deficit reduction” proposals were always frauds. The revenue loss from tax cuts always exceeded any explicit spending cuts, so the pretense of fiscal responsibility came entirely from “magic asterisks”: extra revenue from closing unspecified loopholes, reduced spending from cutting unspecified programs. I called him a flimflam man back in 2010, and nothing he has done since has called that judgment into question.

So how did such an obvious con artist get a reputation for seriousness and fiscal probity? Basically, he was the beneficiary of ideological affirmative action.

Even now, in this age of Trump, there are a substantial number of opinion leaders — especially, but not only, in the news media — whose careers, whose professional brands, rest on the notion that they stand above the political fray. For such people, asserting that both sides have a point, that there are serious, honest people on both left and right, practically defines their identity.

Yet the reality of 21st-century U.S. politics is one of asymmetric polarization in many dimensions. One of these dimensions is intellectual: While there are some serious, honest conservative thinkers, they have no influence on the modern Republican Party. What’s a centrist to do?

The answer, all too often, has involved what we might call motivated gullibility. Centrists who couldn’t find real examples of serious, honest conservatives lavished praise on politicians who played that role on TV. Paul Ryan wasn’t actually very good at faking it; true fiscal experts ridiculed his “mystery meat” budgets. But never mind: The narrative required that the character Ryan played exist, so everyone pretended that he was the genuine article.

And let me say that the same bothsidesism that turned Ryan into a fiscal hero played a crucial role in the election of Donald Trump. How did the most corrupt presidential candidate in American history eke out an Electoral College victory? There were many factors, any one of which could have turned the tide in a close election. But it wouldn’t have been close if much of the news media hadn’t engaged in an orgy of false equivalence.

[thefingerfuckingfemalefury]

This story is about a right wing politician  disguising his blatant fascism with  a “Law and order” platform deliberately working to manipulate the news media while personally funding, creating and inciting criminal and terrorist groups, all with the goal of creating an environment of perpetual anxiety and terror  to scare gullible morons into voting for him

Thank god in real life the Republican party could never possibly be involved in things like that >.>

At the time I was reading this, I was like "Gosh... there are so many spider-based villains..." hah... sweet summer child...

[past---caring]

Helen Keller:The Revolutionary and Social Activist

As a disabled person I dream of embodying the same passion for achieving social justice that Helen Keller had.Keller is a very misunderstood disabled historical figure  who has not gotten full recognition for their life’s work.

She was born in 1880 in the state of Alabama and her loss of sight and hearing occurred when she was eighteen months old ; likely due to a condition like meningitis. Helen’s family struggled to communicate with her fully until they heard of the ‘Perkins Institute for the blind’. It is through this institute that Anna Sullivan ,who was also blind, was chosen as Keller’s instructor and teacher. Their relationship began in 1887 with Sullivan attempting to reach Helen through spelling on her hand. As shown in ‘ the miracle worker’ and Keller’s memoir  understanding was reached through Sullivan pouring water from a pump over Keller’s hand until she connected that the word being spelt into her palm was the sensation and object she felt pouring on her hand. Anne’s teaching allowed Helen to attend Perkins. In the 1890s she moved with Anne to  New York  to attend schools such as the Wright-Humason school for the deaf. Her mastery of Braille and more enabled her to florish. In 1900 she was  admitted to Radcliffe college and by the age of twenty four she graduated as the first deaf and blind person to achieve a bachelor degree in art. This point in Helen’s life is pretty much the end of what most people know about her. A supposedly feral disabled girl breaks free from the isolation of her condition thanks to a patient teacher ,but the problem with this picture is that it strips Keller of her incredible achievements and life instead infantilising her even beyond childhood.  

Helen Keller’s role as a writer was central to her identity from a young age and was the career she had listed in documentation. Her first work at the age of eleven called ‘The Frost King’ was suspected of possible plagiarism, but might have been due to forgetting the story ‘The Frost Fairies’ being read to her. Her memoir called ‘The Story of My Life’ was released in 1903 and opened up about her early life and relationship with Anne. It would go on to inspire the 1962 film “The Miracle Worker”. The book was a best-seller, is an enduring classic of American Literature and is now available in fifty languages. Keller wrote fourteen more books and hundreds of speeches which were on topics as diverse as faith, the experience of blindness, socialism/communism, birth control, the rise of fascism, nuclear weapons and feminism. Her autobiography appealed to the public then and now for its focus on her disability and overcoming of the aforesaid condition. The text is apolitical and was thus easier for the public to enjoy and admire. Books to follow would fail on this front. ‘The World I Live In’(1908) challenged the ableism of those who believed she was still essentially ignorant of life. ‘Out of the dark’(1913) consisted of essays focused on social issues such as feminism and socialism. As others have stated the success of her childhood memoirs over her works regarding politics and more show how Helen Keller was expected to fit a sanitised and one dimensional inspiring mould for the public  and when it became clear she was multifaceted, complicated and opinionated she suffered. Reading these works even now is an incredible experience as Keller explores what it means to be a disabled women insightfully while also discussing her leftist politics, feminism, pacifism and more at a time when this was extremely brave for anyone never mind a disabled woman. Using her braille and regular typewriters Keller didn’t find just a way to communicate with the world ,but engage, probe and explore its depth in an incredibly beautiful ,vital and intellectual way. Literature surely was her utopia.

Keller’s activism and political/social beliefs were tied to and equally important as her writing. Helen should be remember for these as much as her personal story. Helen became a socialist after reading texts such as Well’s ‘New World For Old’ and taking part in a study on the causes of blindness in which she discovered class played a huge part. She wrote about her journey to socialism in ‘How I became a socialist’ and in ‘why I became a IWW’. The public and press saw her politics as repugnant and a warping of the safe disabled heroine that had existed before. One paper editor said that mistakes sprung “out of the manifest limitation of her development.” Keller in ‘How I became a socialist’ replied to these comments saying that the paper was controlled by industrial tyranny which clouded its senses. She also asked for it to fight fairly and use arguments against her own instead of simply reminding people that she can’t see or hear. Keller had to deal with it being claimed she was gullible and so ignorant that her companions the Macy’s had brainwashed her into believing in such politics. She was no longer a role model, but someone with difficult views. Alongside being a socialist(then communist) Keller did much more activism. She supported the newly formed NAACP in 1916 by donating a substantial amount to their cause despite this being criticized by her family and friends. She also helped create the ACLU in 1920 which fought for civil liberities. Her pacifism was tied to her politics and led to her opposing WW1 severely. She was also a feminist who supported birth control and was against capital punishment. In a piece for the Manchester Advertiser in 1911  she said that instead giving women the vote first  the system needed to be changed. In Britain for instance 10/11 of land belonged to 200,000 people while the other 40 million only had 1/11.She also stated how unimportant males having the vote was in  a system  so corrupt and unrepresentative. In her 1916 speech called ‘Strike Against War’ Keller begins by stating she is not being controlled by anyone, doesn’t want their pity and knows what she speaks of. With passion she shows this is true. She discusses how the American government at the time were more interested in imperial capitalist concerns in places like Hawaii than their security. She says that the workers are controlled and made to fight in a terrible cycle. Lastly she implores that the working class “be not dumb obedient slaves in an army of destruction”. Keller advocated for female contraception and birth controlling with the belief it would enfranchise women in their lives, help them plan their family and help end suffering caused by poverty. After the deployment of nuclear weapons in WW2 Keller visited Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1948 to speak out against nuclear weapons. Throughout her life Keller also fought for disabled rights and support. She helped in 1946 to form a special service for the blind and deaf, worked for forty years for AFB ,helped create rehabilitation centres/studies into blindness and more. She helped aid blind soldiers after WW1 through the permanent blind war relief fund and til the end of her life travelled the world as a representative for disabled peoples. She never forgot that her own success was due to her class privilege and used her position to help millions without this benefit.

Keller spoke out about how she was treated for some of her beliefs in a 1924 letter. As long as she stuck to activities associated with the disabled etc she was viewed saintly, a ‘wonder woman’ and a ‘modern miracle’. However when she stood up against poverty, sexism,  racism and more things were different. Giving pennies to the disabled was laudable and good for many ,but to state the world should be better was a naïve dream only the deaf and blind like her could believe. The incredible array of causes Keller stood up for somewhat ahead of her time should be something we all know about her. These beliefs led to her being watched by the FBI most of her life and experiencing times when she was shunned severely ,but Keller lived her life campaigning for these things till her last day.Keller like many woman historical figures has been sanitized and erased. A disabled women who is so multifaceted is a peculiar thing even now in media. Her entire life work matters as much as her overcoming of the difficulties caused by her condition. This is one of the many reasons Keller matters so much and why you should admire her even now.

References:

Her extensive works such as The Story of My Life (1902), Optimism: An Essay (1903),Our Duties to the Blind (1904), The World I Live In (1908), Out of the Dark: Essays, Letters, and Addresses on Physical and Social Vision (1913).

Selection of her many quotes: https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Helen_Keller

Strike Against War By Helen Keller, Speech at Carnegie Hall, New York City, January 5, 1916, under the auspices of the Women’s Peace Party and the Labour Forum:http://gos.sbc.edu/k/keller.html

The Radical Lives of Helen Keller by Kim E. Nielsen:https://www.amazon.co.uk/Radical-Lives-Keller-History-Disability/dp/0814758142

Article on her radicalism: http://www.yesmagazine.org/people-power/the-radical-dissent-of-helen-keller

A Disabled Feminist’s opinion of her: http://disabledfeminists.com/2010/01/14/feminist-icons/#fn-2553-6

Bios on her: http://www.nndb.com/people/074/000046933/ ; http://www.afb.org/info/about-us/helen-keller/biography-and-chronology/biography/1235

[libertariantaoist]

The liberal elites, who bear significant responsibility for the death of our democracy, now hold themselves up as the saviors of the republic. They have embarked, despite their own corruption and their complicity in neoliberalism and the crimes of empire, on a self-righteous moral crusade to topple Donald Trump. It is quite a show. They attack Trump’s “lies,” denounce executive orders such as his travel ban as un-American and blame Trump’s election on Russia or FBI Director James Comey rather than the failed neoliberal policies they themselves advanced.

Where was this moral outrage when our privacy was taken from us by the security and surveillance state, the criminals on Wall Street were bailed out, we were stripped of our civil liberties and 2.3 million men and women were packed into our prisons, most of them poor people of color? Why did they not thunder with indignation as money replaced the vote and elected officials and corporate lobbyists instituted our system of legalized bribery? Where were the impassioned critiques of the absurd idea of allowing a nation to be governed by the dictates of corporations, banks and hedge fund managers? Why did they cater to the foibles and utterings of fellow elites, all the while blacklisting critics of the corporate state and ignoring the misery of the poor and the working class? Where was their moral righteousness when the United States committed war crimes in the Middle East and our militarized police carried out murderous rampages? What the liberal elites do now is not moral. It is self-exaltation disguised as piety. It is part of the carnival act.    

The liberal class, ranging from Hollywood and the Democratic leadership to The New York Times and CNN, refuses to acknowledge that it sold the Democratic Party to corporate bidders; collaborated in the evisceration of our civil liberties; helped destroy programs such as welfare, orchestrate the job-killing North American Free Trade Agreement and Trans-Pacific Partnership deal, wage endless war, debase our public institutions including the press and build the world’s largest prison system.

“The truth is hard to find. The truth is hard to know. The truth is more important than ever,” reads a television ad for The New York Times. What the paper fails to add is that the hardest place to find the truth about the forces affecting the life of the average American and the truth about empire is in The New York Times itself. News organizations, from the Times to the tawdry forms of entertainment masquerading as news on television, have rendered most people and their concerns invisible. Liberal institutions, especially the press, function, as the journalist and author Matt Taibbi says, as “the guardians” of the neoliberal and imperial orthodoxy.

It is the job of the guardians of orthodoxy to plaster over the brutal reality and cruelty of neoliberalism and empire with a patina of civility or entertainment. They pay homage to a nonexistent democracy and nonexistent American virtues. The elites, who live in enclaves of privilege in cities such as New York, Washington and San Francisco, scold an enraged population. They tell those they dismiss as inferiors to calm down, be reasonable and patient and trust in the goodness of the old ruling class and the American system. African-Americans have heard this kind of cant preached by the white ruling class for a couple of centuries.

Because the system works for the elites, and because the elites interact only with other elites, they are mystified about the revolt rising up from the decayed cities they fly over in the middle of the country. They think they can stuff this inexplicable rage back in the box. They continue to offer up absurd solutions to deindustrialization and despair, such as Thomas Friedman’s endorsement of “a culture of entrepreneurship” and “an ethic of pluralism.” These kinds of bromides are advertising jingles. They bear no more connection to reality than Trump promising to make America great again.

I walked into the Harvard Club in New York City after midnight on election night. The well-heeled New York elites stood, their mouths agape, looking up at the television screens in the oak-paneled bar while wearing their Clinton campaign straw hats. They could not speak. They were in shock. The system they funded to prevent anyone from outside their circle, Republican or Democrat, from achieving the presidency had inexplicably collapsed.  

Taibbi, when I interviewed him in New York, said political power in our corporate state is controlled by “a tripartite system.” “You have to have the assent of the press, the donor class, and one of the two [major] political parties to get in,” said Taibbi, author of “Insane Clown President: Dispatches From the 2016 Circus.” “It’s an exclusive club. It’s like a membership system. They all have to agree and confer their blessing on the candidate. Trump somehow managed to get past all three of those obstacles. And he did it essentially by putting all of them on trial. He put the press on trial and villainized them with the public. I think it was a brilliant masterstroke that nobody saw coming. But it wouldn’t have been possible if their unpopularity hadn’t been building for years and years and years.”

“It’s a kind of Stockholm syndrome,” he said of the press. “The reporters, candidates, and candidates’ aides are all thrown together. They’re stuck in the same environment with each other day after day, month after month. After a while, they start to unconsciously adopt each other’s values. Then they start to live in the same neighborhoods. They go to the same parties. Then it becomes a year-after-year kind of thing. Then after that, they’re the same people. It’s a total perversion of what’s supposed to happen. We’re [the press] supposed to be on the outside, not identifying with these people. But now, it’s a club. Journalists enjoy the experience of being close to power.”

At first the press, especially the television press, could not get enough of Trump. He received 23 times the coverage of Sen. Bernie Sanders, who spoke about things that do not make for great television—inequality and corporate corruption. Trump brought in the advertising dollars. 2016 was CNN’s most profitable year. Then, alarmed at Trump’s ascendancy, the press set out to destroy him. The press applied its Darth Vader Force choke. It did not work. They tried it again and again. The Force had deserted them.  

“When a candidate makes a mistake and steps in it—[2004 presidential hopeful] Howard Dean is the classic example, the scream—then they [TV news shows] replay it every hour, 100 times a day,” Taibbi said. “The critical part is that Dean was already in violation leading up to that moment. He was not the right person because he was anti-war. He got his donations from the wrong people. He makes the mistake. The press pig-piles on the person just instinctively. All this negative attention. The candidate freaks out and apologizes. He disappears for a while. He tries to soldier on. The next thing you know, there’s a Page 16 story: Candidate exits the race. It’s a script. But it didn’t work with Trump.”

The press, like the Democratic Party, is an appendage of the consumer society. These institutions are not about politics or news. They are about imparting an experience. They create political personalities, marketed as celebrities, to make us feel good about candidates. These manufactured emotions, the product of the dark arts of the public relations industry, determine how we vote. Issues and policies are irrelevant. It is marketing and entertainment. Trump is a skillful marketer of his fictitious self.

“When you work in that environment long enough you unconsciously become an agent for whatever that commercial strategy is,” Taibbi said of the press in our corporate-run political theater.

“What we call right-wing and liberal media in this country are really just two different strategies of the same kind of nihilistic lizard-brain sensationalism,” Taibbi wrote in “Insane Clown President.” “The ideal CNN story is a baby down a well, while the ideal Fox story is probably a baby thrown down a well by a Muslim terrorist or an ACORN activist. Both companies offer the same service, it’s just that the Fox version is a little kinkier.”

The pseudo-events on television displace reality. This is how a reality star becomes president. Sixty million people think Trump’s manufactured persona—the predominate tycoon—on “The Apprentice” is real. Our perception of the truth is determined by what appears on the screen. If an event is never broadcast, it somehow never happened. The electronic image is the word of God. The corporate state controls most of what is seen and heard on television, what ideas and events can be discussed in the mainstream media and what orthodoxies, including neoliberalism and the war industry, must never be questioned. We suffer an intellectual tyranny as pervasive as that imposed by fascism and communism. Trump, who is as gullible as the most habitual television viewer, exemplifies our cultural and political death. He is no more “authentic” than Hillary Clinton. But he appears on our screens as more authentic because he is more deeply embedded in the medium that controls our thoughts. He is what is vomited up from the perverted zeitgeist of a nation entranced and dominated by electronic hallucinations.

“People have this idea that Trump has no connection with the ‘common man,’ but he does,” Taibbi said. “He has exactly the same media habits that ordinary people have. He believes the stuff that he reads on the internet and watches on television implicitly and unquestioningly. That is what gives him that connection with people. He thinks like they do. He has the same habits they have. A classic example is the thing with the so-called 3 million illegal … voters. He reads that, probably in an Infowars story, it’s policy like two minutes later. He doesn’t go through the process of asking himself if it’s untrue. He’s a perfect consumer in that respect. That’s what makes him so dangerous.”

“[George W.] Bush was child’s play compared to what we’re dealing with now,” Taibbi said. “Bush was a puppet. He was a vehicle for a very familiar form of right-wing capitalist politics. This Trump thing is totally different. Trump really is the actual engine behind this phenomenon during the entire campaign. There were no people behind the man, I don’t think. The presidential campaign has no relation to the issue of whether or not you can govern effectively. The campaign is a television show. The values that decide whether a person becomes a candidate or can’t become a candidate are more or less arbitrary. It has a lot to do with the commercial value of the candidate. You can’t have an unentertaining candidate because the press needs to make money. They will unconsciously gravitate towards someone who does what Trump does, which is get [website] hits and eyeballs and ratings.”

Trump’s popularity increased the more the establishment condemned him. This would have sent a profound and disturbing message to anyone not as clueless as our liberal elites. They did not get it. They thought they could trot out Bill Clinton, Barack Obama and Hollywood celebrities and get the rubes to fall for their routine one more time. They thought the country would again obey.

The liberal class, by embracing neoliberalism and refusing to challenge the imperial wars, empowered the economic and political structures that destroyed our democracy and gave rise to Trump. Multiculturalism, when it means, to use the words of Cornel West, nothing more than having a president who is a “black mascot for Wall Street,” betrays the disenfranchised and endows the ruling elites with a false progressivism, a false humanism and a false inclusiveness.

Hillary and Bill Clinton, Joe Biden and the current Democratic Party leadership designed and built the massive system of imprisonment, essentially ended welfare, expanded our wars and pushed through NAFTA. They destroyed the lives of hundreds of thousands of poor and working-class families and are responsible for the mounds of corpses in the Middle East. Yet these liberal elites speak as if they are champions of racial and economic justice. They appear in choreographed pseudo-events to demonstrate a faux compassion. Now they have been exposed as fakes.

A genuine populism, one defined and often articulated by Bernie Sanders, could sweep the Democratic Party back into power. Regulating Wall Street, publicly financing campaigns, forgiving student debt, demanding universal health care, bailing out homeowners victimized by the banks, ending the wars in the Middle East, instituting a jobs program to repair our decaying infrastructure, dismantling the prison system, restoring the rule of law on the streets of our cities, making college education free and protecting programs such as Social Security would see election victory after election victory.  

But this will never happen within the Democratic Party. It refuses to prohibit corporate money. The party elites know that if corporate money disappears, so do they. The party’s hierarchy, pressured by Obama and the Clintons, elevated Tom Perez over Keith Ellison—whom a major donor to the party, Haim Saban, condemns as an “anti-Semite” because of Ellison’s criticism of the Israeli government—to head the Democratic National Committee. They will press forward repeating the same silly slogans and trying to use the now ineffective Force choke on their political enemies. They may have lost control of the Congress and the White House and hold only 16 governorships and majorities in only 31 of the states’ 99 legislative chambers, but they are incapable of offering any meaningful alternative to neoliberalism and empire. They are devoid of a vision. They can only moralize. They will continue to atrophy and enable the consolidation of an American fascism.

Fyodor Dostoevsky excoriated Russia’s bankrupt liberal class at the end of the 19th century. Russian liberals mouthed values they did not defend. Their stated ideals bore no relationship to their actions. They were filled with a suffocating narcissism.

In “Notes From Underground,” Dostoevsky lampooned the defeated dreamers of the liberal class, those who preached goodness but lived in moral squalor. These defeated dreamers denounced the social and cultural depravity they had largely created. They had an open disdain for the uneducated, the poor, the working class, the lesser breeds beneath them. And in the end they ushered in a moral nihilism to empower a dangerous class of demagogues, killers and fools.  

“I never even managed to become anything: neither wicked nor good, neither a scoundrel nor an honest man, neither a hero nor an insect,” the Underground Man wrote. “And now I am living out my life in my corner, taunting myself with the spiteful and utterly futile consolation that it is even impossible for an intelligent man seriously to become anything, and only fools become something. Yes, sir, an intelligent man of the nineteenth century must be and is morally obliged to be primarily a characterless being; and a man of character, an active figure—primarily a limited being.”

[ripplestitchskein]

How in the ever living fuck would it make sense for news organizations to NOT cover sensational, viewer gaining terrorist attacks that would garner ratings and additional advertising revenue? Their entire business model is predicated on the fact that big stories sell and terrorist attacks are BIG STORIES. The same news organizations that report if a brown man stands near a suspicious package, and milks one line statements for HOURS wouldn't cover a radical extremist harming American citizens? And where are the victims of these attacks? The families? Wouldn't they mention something? Surely it's on record with a law enforcement office somewhere who contained the situation. No social media posts? No one tweeted or took a video? I know if Kanye West took a shit but a terrorist attack didn't make my timeline? Or are these attacks ones that occurred in other countries, to other non-white people that ARE covered by the press just maybe not on Fox? Or maybe people should use their fucking brains and realize that they are being manipulated and lied to DAILY. There has been a blatant falsehood spewed out by the administration that can be easily fact checked and verified every single day so far. It's scary, it's ridiculous, and it's basically Fascism 101. They know people are gullible fucks who can't work their Google machines and rely on memes to get their daily doses of bullshit. To stand in front of military personnel and lie to them about terrorist attacks that didn't happen to undermine news organizations that aren't selling your narrative, men and women who have to face ACTUAL terrorists is disgusting.

[idlnmclean]

There’s an indignation here. A suggestion that perhaps she ought to be grateful to all these people who have fought to create and maintain her bubbles of comfort.

To me though any more, I read things like this and I don’t begin to know how to concisely and clearly state what is wrong with these views. I struggle with communicating something that I’ve known since I was beaten by my father when I was 6 years old. I know it viscerally. My father would never have laid hands on me and would never have had opportunity if it were not for a bunch of well meaning people that enabled and empowered him.

I remember the contemptuous stories he told me and my siblings growing up. How stupid and gullible and usable and abusable these people were that gave him all these things like the benefit of the doubt or custody of the children.

I watched him as an adult walk into a court room several times and lie to courts and play his “awshucks, I’m just a simple country bumpkin” bit that he plays to take advantage of people naive or ignorant enough to not know that he was raised in Cherry Hill, NJ and lived much of his life wandering from one big city to another. I watched the courts reduce his child support payments on the 75K$+ that he owes from evading collection for decades and most of my life; they bought hook-line-and-sinker his “I’m just a poor man” stories and cut his payments in half without ever hearing from the children that know about his bug out properties and house and his cars and big rigs.

It makes me think about how the Panama Papers revealed that the people of bad faith took all the allowances afforded to them and pipelined it into offshore tax havens and shady fucking banks. The infrastructure they use was built by liberals and democrats and moderates trying to change things from the inside, and all they accomplished was paving the way for genocide and rising fascism.

[oscopelabs]

'All the King’s Men’: Your Guide and Non-Guide to the Post-Election United States by Steven Goldman

It’s shocking to realize we don’t have a good collection of cinematic equivalents to help us navigate the difficult post-election interregnum of 2016-2017. We have celebrations of democracy by the dozen and more dystopias than you can count, most of them science-fiction films more interested in dealing with the action possibilities created by political failure than with politics and governance. We also lack films that, depending on your political orientation, sincerely celebrate an ascendant American right wing or picture the United States on the edge of dystopia as a result of that same ascendency. Nor, for that matter, do we have too many films exploring either outcome as the result of a triumphal liberalism. 

At the risk of employing an overbroad shorthand, whether embracing a point of view for or against their subjects, such films would be exploring the potential for an American fascism, which from certain perspectives is indistinguishable from the triumph of an American democracy. The word “triumph” is used pointedly, for this is one subtle but important message of Leni Riefenstahl’s 1935 Nazi propaganda masterpiece The Triumph of the Will. The overarching theme is of the deification of Adolf Hitler and a display of power and unity meant to restore Germany’s reputation after the supine years that followed the Great War, but the images themselves contain a warning: There are 700,000 people at this rally. This is a mass movement, and what is democracy but a mass movement? Democracy, freedom of thought and choice, the lasting gift of the Enlightenment, contains the seeds of its own destruction.

Thus did Benjamin Franklin say, on the eve of the adoption of the United States Constitution in 1787, “This is likely to be well administered for a course of years, and can only end in despotism, as other forms have done before it, when the people shall become so corrupted as to need despotic government, being incapable of any other.” He could foresee the way the downfall of democracy would work.

Only one major American film attempts to grapple with Franklin’s prophecy in anything like a realistic fashion and, despite winning an Academy Award for Best Picture, it makes a total hash of it. Put aside such flawed films as 1933’s Gabriel Over the White House, an outright plea for fascism in which the president is transformed by an accident into a galvanic one-man government, and Frank Capra’s 1941 classic/mess (a film can be both) Meet John Doe, which tries to have it both ways by simultaneously celebrating the goodness and gullibility of the people—only Robert Rossen’s All the King’s Men, a 1949 adaptation of Robert Penn Warren’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, takes place within a recognizable American political system utilizing characters drawn from the real world of the 1930s in its depiction of the attenuated rise of Governor Willie Stark. Modeled after Louisiana governor (later Senator) Huey Pierce Long, Stark in his cinematic form is meant to provide an object lesson in the corrupting nature of power. Consideration of both Stark and Long may help us better recognize where we are and where we may be going. If not for an assassin’s bullet, it might have been someplace we’d already visited. 

Long (1893-1935) was the closest thing the United States has had to a dictator, and although his power was circumscribed by the borders of Louisiana, at the time of his death he was actively interfering in the politics of adjoining states and building a national organization that likely would have seen him try to challenge incumbent president Franklin Delano Roosevelt and split the Democratic vote in the 1936 election. The resultant repeal of Roosevelt’s Depression-fighting New Deal programs might have created enough political dysfunction that Long would have been elected by acclamation in 1940, possibly on a third-party ticket. He would have been beholden to no one in the existing power structure and imbued with dictatorial possibilities. 

We’ll never know, but this was Roosevelt’s belief about Long’s maneuvers around him. What is certain is that Long’s national organization, the Share Our Wealth Society, claimed over seven million members at its peak and had been delegated to Gerald L.K. Smith, an avowed fascist and anti-Semite who was simultaneously seeking to affiliate with Hitler fan William Dudley Pelley’s Silver Shirts movement (as Benito Mussolini had Blackshirts and Hitler had Brownshirts, American fascism would be styled in argent tops) and would subsequently found the isolationist America First party to “preserve America as a Christian nation” against “highly organized” Jewish subversion. (At that moment, Jews were being highly organized into ghettos and gas chambers, but that was merely a pesky detail.) Such alliances, if Long was aware of them, would have been purely incidental to him. As he said, “I haven’t any program or any philosophy. I just take things as they come.” For Long, the means justified the end—securing and maintaining power for himself.

To understand All the King’s Men, it’s relevance to today, and where it let down as a guide to the issues it explored, even in its own time (which was contemporaneous with the rise of the House Un-American Activities Committee as a disruptive force in Hollywood and elsewhere, Richard Nixon, and Joseph McCarthy), we have to also understand Huey Long and where he and Willie Stark part ways. The Louisiana into which Long was born had long been neglected by its political establishment. In the post-Civil War world, the Republican party didn’t exist in the South. It has more life in California today than it had in the former Confederate states then. The lack of competition meant that the politicians in power didn’t really have to do anything. Sure, there were different factions within the southern Democratic Party that vied for power, but in the end, whoever won would end up cutting deals with the defeated segments to maintain the status quo. In that sense, each election was really a referendum on the distribution of graft.

The state suffered as a result. It is no insult to say it was a backwards place. As Robert J. Gordon wrote in his recent book, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, “Except in the rural South, daily life for every American changed beyond recognition between 1870 and 1940.” That is to say electrified houses? The rural South didn’t get that. Indoor plumbing? Nope. Cars instead of horses? No again, and as Warren points out more than once in the novel, most of those “horses” were actually mules. The illiteracy rate exceeded 20 percent among whites and therefore must have been appallingly high among African Americans. A state that was a patchwork of bayou and whose major city is wedged between the foot of the almost-inland sea that is Lake Pontchartrain and the Mississippi River had few bridges and almost no paved roads. New Orleans, the seat of the political old guard more so than the state capital of Baton Rouge, may have been a modern city—to a point; collusion between the government and the power utility limited even its development—but the countryside existed in a near state of nature. 

No one in power cared so long as they got paid. This is the Louisiana Randy Newman sang about in the 1974 song which became an anthem in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in 2005. All of the above—Louisiana before Huey Long, the great Mississippi flood of 1927 (which is the subject of Newman’s song), and the aftermath of Katrina—are stories of the ordinary citizen being caught between hostile nature and an indifferent ruling class:

President Coolidge came down in a railroad train With a little fat man with a notepad in his hand. President say, “Little fat man, isn't it a shame What the river has done to this poor cracker’s land?”

Note that in the song President Coolidge only marvels at the destruction of the “poor cracker’s”—that is, the peasant farmer’s—land; he doesn’t offer any help. The real Coolidge didn’t even go to Louisiana when the Mississippi flooded in 1927, killing 500, displacing 700,000, and doing a billion dollars’ worth of damage. He did something worse: He sent Herbert Hoover. And Hoover, who didn’t believe government should do anything for anybody, called the Red Cross. For Louisiana, it was just more of the same, a continuation of the past and a preview of their “Heckuva job, Brownie” future. Huey Long claimed to be an alternative to all of that neglect. The problem was that no one knew if he was sincere or not.

Long expressed a lifelong interest in the poor and middle class, but also a lifelong ambition for political power. The maldistribution of wealth was his constant theme, first expressed publicly when he was still in his 20s. He would say that if one percent of the people consumed 99 percent of the resources, then 99 percent of the people had to survive on one percent of the resources. He had countless variations on this theme:

God invited us all to come and eat and drink all we wanted.  He smiled on our land we grew crops of plenty to eat and wear… [But then] Rockefeller, Morgan, and their crowd stepped up and took enough for 120 million people and left only enough for 5 million for all the other 125 million to eat. And so many millions must go hungry and without those good things God gave us unless we call on them to put some of it back.

Long would eventually have a program to redistribute wealth in this country, a bold stance even in the Great Depression—anything that sounded like socialism or communism was feared and distrusted by the mainstream. Nevertheless, he insisted, “None shall be too big, none shall be too poor. None shall work too much, none shall be idle.” He framed this as a question of class struggle, right from the very beginning. “With wealth concentrating, classes become defined,” he wrote when he was 24. “There is not the opportunity for Christian uplift and education and cannot be until there is more economic reform.” As one of his slogans, borrowed from William Jennings Bryan, put it, “Every man a king, but no one wears a crown.”

This was a fresh idea in national politics, but was as much a vehicle for Long’s own rise in the world as a sincere desire to better the lives of the non-wealthy classes. Long liked to say he was born in a log cabin, but it was kind of a nice, built-out log cabin, more or a log house, really, and if his family was far from rich, it was still comfortably situated relative to its community. Still, Long lacked the money to stick in college, and after some short stints at other institutions and a spell as a traveling salesman, he convinced Tulane to let him sit for the bar exam despite having put in only a year of study. He passed easily. From the moment he passed the bar, he said, he was running for office. In his mind, he had already been running. His siblings noted he had almost no appetite for doing physical work around the family farm and devoted more energy to nurturing his feeling that, as one remembered, “He was a man of destiny who was put here for a purpose.” He was still a teenager when he met his future wife, Rose McConnell. Soon after, she noticed he had an odd habit. As she later related to Long’s primary biographer:

He would write frequent letters on any pretext to United States senators.  Naturally intrigued, she asked him why he did it. “I want to let them know I’m here,” he explained. “I’m going to be there myself someday.” …A little later he listed for her the offices he intended to occupy in progression—first, he would win a secondary state office; next, he would be elected governor; third he would go to the Senate; and finally and inevitably, he would become President. “It almost gave you the cold chills to hear him tell about it,” said Mrs. Long, shivering slightly… “He was measuring it all.”

Except for the last step, prevented by Long’s murder, this was pretty much what happened. At 24, Long was too young to run for most Louisiana offices, but he noticed that the state Railroad Commission didn’t have an age barrier. He won election to that body, which supervised utilities as well as railroads and immediately became a force in state politics, fighting Standard Oil, the real power in the state, calling the company an octopus and its executives, “the nation’s most notorious and leading criminals.” 

From there, it was a short hop to the governor’s mansion in 1928. Long ran on a platform of changing the state tax code to make corporations carry more of the load and other reform-minded ideas. Once elected, he wasn’t like the previous political hacks who ran on reform platforms and then temporized once in office. Long actually did things. He provided textbooks to every school in the state, public and private; opened night schools to educate adults who might never have been to school; and pushed Louisiana State University into becoming a high-quality institution. He built free hospitals to give an impoverished populace a public health infrastructure. In a state that no one had bothered to pave, he created miles of roads and several dozen bridges. And, perhaps not least, he abolished the poll tax so as to extend the franchise to poor whites. (African Americans, alas, were still disenfranchised by other means.) Various other public works projects, such as a huge new statehouse, didn’t have much of a long-term point, but they were, on a small scale, what a state in a depression should be doing to stimulate employment. 

Long paid for these programs via the traditional route of bond issues and the non-traditional one of shifting, or attempting to shift, ever more of the burden onto Standard Oil and other companies extracting resources from the state. The response of the state’s old guard was to impeach him. Long beat back the challenge by bribing 15 state senators to abort the process. That was fair, in a sense; various other senators had been bribed to support impeachment. Louisiana was the eBay of corruption.  

Once Long was safe, he took control of the state in a way that ensured he would never be challenged again. “I used to try to get things done by saying ‘please.’ That didn’t work and now I’m a dynamiter. I dynamite ‘em out of my path.” He began calling himself the Kingfish, after a character on the wildly popular radio show Amos ‘n’ Andy, and acted the part. His method of dynamiting can be boiled down to:

Patronage. He controlled every job in the state down to the school janitors. If he couldn’t cow a legislator, he could threaten the job of his sister, a teacher, and so on. This also allowed positive inducements. He could see to it that the sister was hired in the first place, or place the legislator himself on some state board that provided a second salary.

Graft. Long had 10 percent of the salaries of every state worker skimmed and placed in what was called the “Deduct Box.” This paid for Long’s national political activities and propaganda.

Flat-out kidnapping. At one point, an opponent was going to speak publicly against Long and also identify his mistress (of whom there were several). Long had him taken to a remote location for a while. When he returned, he was somehow a Long supporter. During the impeachment, he was accused of plotting the murder of an opponent as well. 

The centralization of power. Long had the legislature pass laws that allowed the state to replace local governments that refused to go along with his plans. The state’s version of checks and balances had become so dysfunctional that the legislature was passing bills without even knowing what was in them. In one session, the legislature passed 44 bills in just over two hours. “The end justifies the means,” Long said. “I would do it some other way if there was time or if it wasn’t necessary to do it this way.” When a legislator put a copy of the state constitution in his hands, Long said, “I’m the constitution around here now.”

Extensive use of propaganda. Long was one of the first American politicians to grasp the possibilities of mass media. He made frequent use of the radio, originated the use of sound trucks at his rallies so he could reach more listeners, and had his own pet newspaper, which was paid for by proceeds from the Deduct Box.

Brazen “I dare you to call me on this” acts. For example, when Long wanted to replace the governor’s mansion and the legislature was slow to cooperate, he grabbed a bunch of convicts from the state penitentiary, handed them sledgehammers, and told them to demolish the place. 

Unable to succeed himself as governor, he had himself elected to the U.S. Senate in 1930 but kept both jobs until he could engineer the election of a pliable successor who would allow him to continue running the state. Then he went to Washington and positioned himself to challenge Roosevelt. FDR tried to win him over, but in the end, he told an advisor that Long was one of the two most dangerous men in America, the other being Army Chief of Staff Douglas MacArthur. The general represented the possibility of a right-wing coup, Long the left. 

“Let no one tell you that it is difficult to redistribute the wealth of this land,” Long said. “It is simple.” Hodding Carter, a Louisiana journalist and editor who was a dedicated anti-Long man to the extent he once took up arms against him, summed up the Share Our Wealth program this way: “A limitation of fortunes to $5,000,000; an annual income minimum of $2,000 to $2,500 and a maximum of $1,800,000; a homestead grant of $6,000 for every family; free education from kindergarten through college; bonuses for veterans; old-age pensions, radios, automobiles, an abundance of cheap food through governmental purchase and storage of surpluses.”

The math changed whenever Long spoke but never made any sense in any version; you couldn’t wring enough cash out of the rich to raise up the poor to that extent. The details, of course, would have been beside the point. “They think I’m so smart,” Long once said privately. “Maybe I’m not. Maybe it’s that there are a lot of dumb people in the world.” He was in basic sympathy with the Hitler-Goebbels idea of the Big Lie: Tell the people something they want to hear, the more incredible the better. They won’t check you. 

FDR agreed. “Long plans to be a candidate of the Hitler type,” he said privately. He thought Long would fracture the New Deal coalition, ensuring a Republican winning the White House in 1940. Due to their laissez-faire philosophy, the Republicans would be unable to ameliorate the effects of the Depression. “That,” Roosevelt concluded, “would bring the country to such a state by 1940 that Long thinks he would be made dictator.” At about that time, Long was over at the Capitol, jokingly telling his colleagues, “Men, it will not be long until there will be a mob assembling here to hang Senators from the rafters of the Senate. I have to determine whether I will stay and be hung with you or go out and lead the mob.” No one laughed.

Watching all of this was Robert Penn Warren, a poet, novelist, and playwright then teaching at Tulane. The book that resulted won the Pulitzer Prize and is routinely listed among the best American novels in history. Goodreads has it ranked #58. David Handlin of The American Scholar listed it among the 100 best American novels published between 1770 and 1985. Time placed it among the 100 best English-language novels published since 1923. Book Riot placed it in the top 100 published from 1893-1993. The Guardian thinks it one of the 100-best novels written in English.  The Modern Library list has it at No. 36, wedged between William Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying and Thornton Wilder’s The Bridge of San Luis Ray. 

Briefly, the novel is the story of Jack Burden, an ex-reporter who is working for Willie Stark, the governor of an unnamed Southern state (pretty clearly Louisiana) as a right-hand man and fixer. Self-educated and slovenly but mentally sophisticated, Stark’s motto is “My study is the heart of the people,” but his real study is how to maintain his hold on power. When the elderly former state attorney general Judge Irwin comes out against the governor, Stark sends Burden to delve into Irwin’s background for some useful piece of blackmail. Irwin was something of a foster father to Burden, and he protests that the judge is clean. Stark disagrees: “Man is conceived in sin and born in corruption and he passeth from the stink of the didie to the stench of the shroud. There is always something.” Stark’s insistence causes Burden to immerse himself in his own past as well as the judge’s, and the more he discovers about both, the more collateral damage he and other characters suffer and the more he is forced to reevaluate his own beliefs. 

Many summaries of the book refer to Stark as the main character, but in fact it is Burden, the first-person narrator. Stark is a catalytic that acts to change Burden, but undergoes no evolution himself and his perspective is never directly experienced. In short, as a novel All the King’s Men is Citizen Kane if the reporter was investigating the meaning of his own “Rosebud” instead of Charles Foster Kane’s. Demagogic politics and the Huey Long story are the environment in which Burden’s story takes place and motivates his self-searching, but are not in and of itself the point. To drive this home, the novel comes to a dead stop in the middle so that Burden can flash back to writing his graduate thesis, the story of a distant relative prior to and during the Civil War, whose experiences are an exact allegory for what Burden is going through.

The Civil War interlude is actually the best-written and most compelling part of the book, but since it’s so far off the trunk of the main plot, naturally screenwriter-director Robert Rossen lifted it right out when it came time to make the film for Columbia Pictures. This was probably inevitable regardless of which director, writer, or studio had gotten hold of the property—the Civil War interlude was a problem for the book’s original editors, the novel’s first British edition left it out altogether, and staged adaptations have done without it as well—but Rossen never found anything to replace it as the center of Burden’s story. The result is that the film of All the King’s Men doesn’t belong to any character at all. There wasn’t enough Stark material in the novel to make him the focus, Rossen didn’t invent any either, and despite receiving a Best Actor award for his portrayal, Broderick Crawford couldn’t find any depth in an underwritten character whose despotism is more alluded-to than dramatized. Burden (John Ireland) is still present as voice-over narrator, and though some viewers have been willing to see his ethics evolve over the course of the film, the arc of his character is barely sketched in. 

This presents a huge problem for a film that is supposedly depicting the way an unprincipled leader might corrupt our politics and receive his comeuppance. The film does little to engage directly with Crawford’s political process except to indicate that he’s a slob in his comportment (he drinks and takes food off of other people’s plates) and that he’s willing to use Burden for what today we would call “oppo research.” The viewer is given silent montages of him haranguing voters and legislators (in 1949 this would have been a clear allusion to Hitler) with the same footage reused more than once. Instead, in both book and film the observer is supposed to understand his corruption through the way the better people, the snobs of the patrician old guard, react to him. They are shocked and appalled that there might be corruption going on in Louisiana, a very convenient case of amnesia given that this same political class had been running the state for their own benefit for years. 

In the novel, the realization that it’s not just Stark but everyone who came before him who is corrupt sends half the characters into irreversible tailspins of disillusionment and triggers the book’s denouement. This requires spectacular naiveté on the part of the characters that is not believable. In the film, these developments are simply unmotivated.   

It’s tempting to assign the film’s shortcomings to its production company. King’s Men arguably never should have been at Columbia at all. Into the 1940s, there was an informal bifurcation of Hollywood studios into a “Big Five” that included MGM, Paramount, Twenty Century-Fox, RKO, and Warner Bros., and a “Little Three,” containing Universal, United Artists, and Columbia. For Universal and Columbia, part of being relegated to the minor leagues was their lack of vertical integration: They owned few or no theaters. This helped protect them from the upheaval of 1948, when the United States Supreme Court forced the studios to divest of their theatre chains. Columbia had nothing and therefore lost nothing. More importantly, under production director Harry Cohn, Columbia kept things cheap and put out a more inconsistent product than the Big Five. 

One thing Columbia largely didn’t do is bid on big properties. Going back to 1920, 13 of the 25 Pulitzer Prize fiction winners had been filmed more or less contemporaneously, some multiple times. MGM had five (most famously Gone With the Wind via David O. Selznick). Even RKO, always just hanging in there, had two. Columbia had none. The closest they came was adapting two Pulitzer Prize winners for drama, Craig’s Wife (1936) and You Can’t Take It With You (1938). Here too they trailed the major studios, with MGM making six such adaptations, Warner Brothers five, and Paramount four. What Columbia did was series: It had the Three Stooges (190 shorts), Blondie (28 films), Boston Blackie (14 films), The Whistler (eight films), Crime Doctor (10 films), and The Lone Wolf (19 films). Rita Hayworth musicals didn’t have a continuing character, but they constitute a series of a kind. Cohn liked dependable properties, not risky prestige vehicles. The studio didn’t even make a Technicolor film until 1943, and that was a safe Randolph Scott western.

Hollywood noticed. There were 21 years of Academy Awards prior to 1949. Columbia had 10 Best Picture nominations in that time, and two wins: It Happened One Night, 1934, and You Can’t Take It With You. MGM had had 38 Best Picture nominations, Warner Brothers 26, Paramount and RKO 19 each, and so on. 

Both of Columbia’s winning films were directed by Frank Capra. He personally was responsible for six of the 10 nominations, George Stevens for another two (The Talk of the Town, 1942, and The More the Merrier, 1943). Capra’s creative well began to dry (the unsolvable puzzle of ending Meet John Doe seems in retrospect a sign), and he left to make propaganda films for the war effort, as did Stevens. After the war ended, the two teamed up with fellow director William Wyler to form their own production company. 

Without Capra and Stevens, the studio spent a few years trying to find itself. Rossen was one of the new faces given a shot at putting Columbia back on a firm creative footing. He had written some notable films for Warner Bros, including The Roaring Twenties (Raoul Walsh, 1939) and A Walk in the Sun (Lewis Milestone, 1945) and was now trying to establish himself as a director.  He had two pictures under his belt, 1947’s crime story Johnny O’Clock, with Dick Powell, and the boxing film Body and Soul with John Garfield, when the rights to King’s Men became available. Depending on the source, Rossen either bought the rights himself and then made a deal with Cohn or begged Cohn to buy them and let him write, direct, and produce. Cohn, who liked Rossen, acceded, but neither had the background to make much more than a B picture. 

Writing King’s Men, Rossen encountered a political riptide of criticism from voices on both the right and left, and one suspects the book was only available to Columbia because its subject matter was too controversial for the conservative likes of L.B. Mayer or Jack Warner. A member of the Communist Party, Rossen envisioned John Wayne as Stark and sent him the script. Wayne’s far-right political sympathies were well known; that Rossen could conceive of him as a left-wing demagogue shows he recognized that the goals of left- and right-wing movements may differ but the optics can be painfully similar. Unfortunately, the Duke wasn’t buying. In fact, he was disgusted. In a 1971 Playboy interview he remembered, “Every character who had any responsibility at all was guilty of some offense against society. To make Huey Long a wonderful, rough pirate was great, but according to this picture, everybody was shit except for this weakling intern doctor who was trying to find a place in the world,” and through his agent told Rossen to shove the script up his ass. 

At roughly the same time, the Hollywood 10, already blacklisted but still exercising ideological pull, met with Rossen to criticize the script’s lack of proletarian rigor. They subjected him to an inquisition which only concluded when he abruptly walked out, telling them to, “Stick the whole Party up your ass.” Between Wayne and Rossen, this was clearly a film that invited severe rectal trauma. 

Deprived of Wayne, Rossen went with Broderick Crawford, a jowly, heavy-set middle-aged film veteran who had first gained fame as the original Lennie in the Broadway production of Of Mice and Men. Since then, he’d spent most of his career in supporting roles in gangster and western films with titles like Trail of the Vigilantes and Black Angel. One wonders what Orson Welles, who was around Columbia at this time making The Lady from Shanghai might have done with the part, but with Crawford in the lead, a strictly B cast fell into place around him: Ireland, best known today for one of the most notorious scenes of coded homosexual flirting in a studio-era film for the scene in Red River in which he and Montgomery Clift admire each other’s guns, as Burden; Joanne Dru, also from Red River, and far from the best part of it, as Anne Stanton, Burden’s childhood sweetheart; Shepperd Strudwick as her brother Adam, a noted doctor; and Raymond Greenleaf in the pivotal role of the judge. Only with Mercedes McCambridge as Sadie Burke, who—the film does a poor job of explicating this—is in the impossible position of serving simultaneously as a key political advisor and disrespected mistress, did Rossen hit a home run; McCambridge plays in a different league than the rest of the film’s performers. She won a deserved Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress.  

Crawford’s Oscar for Best Actor, won over such worthies as Kirk Douglas, Gregory Peck, and, yes, John Wayne (for Sands of Iwo Jima), is harder to figure. It’s impossible to overemphasize how miscast he is. In reviewing the film, Bosley Crowther of the New York Times wrote, “Mr. Crawford concentrates tremendous energy into every delineation he plays.” That is to say he’s loud. Crawford was 48 years old the year King’s was made. The period of Long’s life roughly corresponding to Stark’s journey in the film took him from when he was 24 to his death at 42. As such, it’s disconcerting to see Crawford, overweight with greying temples and looking close to retirement age, attending to his collegiate studies in law.  

Crawford speaks with an accent that doesn’t belong to anywhere in particular but sounds far more New York than Louisiana or anywhere else in the American South, and his cadences are oddly stilted for a supposedly rabble-rousing politician, though that might be on Rossen. As with Huey Long, Stark is impeached. As with Long, Stark’s supporters stage mass rallies at the capitol which are either spontaneous demonstrations of popular affection, staged attempts to intimidate the legislature, or both. Once the threat abates, Stark addresses them in a torchlight speech. Rossen adds touches to the dialogue that make it spectacularly awkward:

This much I swear to you. These things you shall have: I’m going to build a hospital. The biggest that money can buy. And it will belong to you. That any man, woman, and child who is sick or in pain can go through those doors and know that everything will be done for them that man can do to heal sickness, to ease pain. Free. Not as a charity. But as a right. And it is your right. Do you hear me? It is your right. 

“These things you shall have.” Huey Long didn’t talk like that. Nobody talks like that. It’s not just the words, though, but Crawford’s elongation of every period in the passage above. “I’m going to build a hospital. [A PAUSE SUFFICIENT TO GO TO THE LOBBY AND BUY MORE POPCORN.] The biggest that money can buy. [ANOTHER LONG PAUSE. HOW ABOUT GOING BACK FOR SOME RAISINETTES?]” 

For all its flaws, this scene is the heart of the film and still valuable. It’s a shame that the Hollywood 10 missed it as it does indict the very idea that an elected leader could give the people anything that should have belonged to them in the first place. Stark promises the people a glorious hospital so that they might have free healthcare, and asserts various other rights: The right to a complete education, to fair taxation, to toll-free roads. He concludes, “It is the right of the people that they shall not be deprived of hope.”

Burden watches the speech with Adam and Anne Stanton, both of whom will find themselves among the King’s “Men” in the course of the film. Hearing Stark’s summation, Anne asks, “Does he mean it, Jack?” Adam answers, “That’s his bribe.” Adam’s conclusion may do a disservice to the motives of both Stark and Long, but on the whole it’s true: Even the most beaten-down people don’t just sign up to be under the thumb of a dictator. You have to offer something in return, an incentive to get them to take their eye off the ball, which is, always, their own freedom. 

If the film of All the King’s Men was to shift the focus of the story away from Jack Burden to Willie Stark, it would have been helpful for it to provide a realistic origin story for the character. Unfortunately, Rossen failed to improve on Warren, who gives Stark a thoroughly risible beginning as a small-town politician who objects to a schoolhouse being built with subpar bricks purchased through a kickback scheme. When the schoolhouse collapses, killing or injuring several children, he gains statewide notoriety. His “fall” from that place into Longism is not realistically dramatized, or realistic in any sense. Long was a megalomaniac, and his career was not a fall from a higher state of politics but a fulfillment of his nature. That reality is much more frightening: As Willie Stark himself says, man is born in corruption. 

“Megalomaniac” is a melodramatic term, but an apt one. Perhaps all presidential candidates are touched by the disease. That is not to say they are possessed by it to the degree Hitler was, but that the very nature of their desires indicate an abnormality. In 1986, the British fantasist Alan Moore wrote this dialogue for the character John Constantine:  “Me? I’m just an ordinary person with ordinary needs: Food, shelter, sleep, sex, recreation, and a safe world to enjoy it all in. That’s all most ordinary people want, all us poor, uncomplicated buggers. We’re harmless. It’s all the extraordinary people who are dangerous. The ones who wake up thinking, ‘Will I conquer Europe today?’ instead of ‘What’s for breakfast?’ That sort needs warning.” People who wake up thinking, “Sure, I could be the leader of the free world with the power of life and death over millions” are possibly just as dangerous, and we’re all dependent on their motives being benign.

If those who seek power are flawed to begin with, we’d be safer judging our own susceptibility to a rising Stark or Long by looking at our own circumstances. Then and now, the governor and his fictional alter ego were defined as populist demagogues. “Populist” was also applied to the diametrically opposed presidential candidates Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders in the 2016 election. Given the loose way the term has been used, it’s important to try to define it. A populist politician is one who does his campaigning from the point of view of what is essentially class struggle, blaming elites for the problems of the masses. Those elites can be big business or a shadowy cabal of international bankers, “the establishment,” fascists, or Communists. In short, populism is about us versus them. 

Thus a Trump and a Long/Stark can be two sides of the same coin. The former aimed his appeals at a sector of the electorate that felt under attack by coastal elites on a social and economic basis. It’s jobs were, it felt, being exported, people who didn’t look like them were being imported, and both were being masterminded by a corrupt leadership exemplified by Hillary Clinton, who gave secret speeches to Goldman Sachs, used her foundation to enrich herself, and cared so little for any restraints on her own self-aggrandizement that she couldn’t even be bothered to cooperate with simple regulations about government emails. Long articulated vastly different goals than Trump’s—an alteration of the basic terms of capitalism as we know them—but his approach wasn’t all that different. He too railed against a corrupt alliance of business and government that bled the middle class and the poor. The appeal of both men, running for office in times of economic dislocation, was identical: I’m going to kick the money-changers out of the Temple. 

What’s most interesting about this is that in both cases, neither attracted the support of the poorest members of society. They attracted people on the bubble. Thus when we say “economic dislocation,” we have to define that, too. Long was in power from 1928 through his assassination in 1935. That is, his appeal was rooted in the heart of the most severe economic crisis the nation had ever faced, the Great Depression. The appeal of radical approaches in such a desperate environment is obvious. Trump ran in what are, relatively speaking, good times: There are few who would argue that the “Great Recession” that began in 2008 isn’t over and that we’re on to something else now; if things aren’t as good as they were, they’re surely a lot better. Yet the aftershocks are still being felt, the healing isn’t equally distributed, and some ongoing pain, like the loss of industrial and mining jobs to technological change, has been understandably misattributed by its victims to elite-originated dislocation. 

Thus, what historian Alan Brinkley wrote of Long’s followers still applies: They were not the worst victims of the Depression. “In many ways they suffered less. What set them apart from many of their colleagues was that they usually had more to protect: a hard-won status as part of the working-class elite, a vaguely middle-class life-style, often a modest investment in a home… They were people with something to lose. They were, therefore, people particularly susceptible to the messages [Long] transmitted: the defense of local institutions, the excoriation of distant power centers. Such men and women sense, if only vaguely, that the networks of local associations which gave their lives meaning were threatened by the emergence of a modern, integrated economy… What they shared was an imperiled membership in a world of modest middle-class accomplishment.”

For those who followed the last presidential election closely, those words, written in 1982, should have a vivid familiarity. They represent the foundation of the Trump movement. 

Willie Stark can be no guide to our future, nor can Huey Long, for each was murdered before we could learn what happens next. In The Populist Persuasion, Michael Kazin wrote:

Populism in the United States has made the unique claim that the powers that be are transgressing the nation’s founding creed, which every permanent resident should honor. In this sense, American populism binds even as it divides… The fact that the political actors were fighting over a shared set of ideals helped Americans to avoid the terrors to body and mind that have characterized the hegemony of revolution ideologies in other nations: fascism, Nazism, Leninism, Maoism, and the type of Islam that currently rules in Iran… Through populism, Americans have been able to protest social and economic inequalities without calling the entire system into question.

Except, and this is a big except, populism never before won a national election, and its very success may obviate the safety-valve function Kazin identified. What made Long threatening is that he broke with established American norms of political behavior. The same goes for Trump, either because of the nature of his white nationalist and nativist supporters, who are out of the American mainstream (or at least were until now); because his manner of comportment, whether on the stump, in business, or with women would have heretofore placed him beyond the pale of acceptability; or because of the intuitive understanding that you can’t respect what you don’t know, and Trump clearly knows neither our history or theory of government. 

In Long’s day, with Hitler and Mussolini ascendant and the nation in disarray, the obvious sequel to the Kingfish’s rise seemed to be fascism. Even before Warren had begun his Long-inspired novel, Sinclair Lewis had published It Can’t Happen Here (1935, never filmed), about a Long-like figure establishing himself as a dictator. Lewis, as always, aimed towards satire, but the scenario wasn’t unrealistic. “There is no dictatorship in Louisiana,” Long said. “There is a perfect democracy there, and when you have a perfect democracy it is pretty hard to tell it from a dictatorship.” This is the chameleon nature of fascism as alluded to in Riefenstahl, and is similar to what George Orwell concluded in 1944 as he struggled to define fascism against overbroad use of the term: “It is impossible to define Fascism satisfactorily without making admissions which neither the Fascists themselves, nor the Conservatives, nor Socialists of any colour, are willing to make.” Long concluded, “A perfect democracy can come close to looking like a dictatorship, a democracy in which the people are so satisfied they have no complaint.”

In 1935, journalist Raymond Swing identified four preconditions for the rise of fascism in the United States: “the impoverishment of the middle class; economic stagnation; the paralysis of democratic government; and the threat of a strong Communist movement.” It seems likely that any other “ist” or “ism” can be substituted for “Communist” at this late date to serve as a galvanic threat. Thus the United States of 2016 is 4-for-4 on the Swing scale. Yet Swing may have missed one other element: The presence of a demagogue to exploit the issues populism raises. 

“Demagogue” is not a well-defined term either, but a useful shorthand is that a demagogue is a parasite who feeds off the needs of the people to form a mass movement for his own benefit. He himself might have galvanized that movement; it doesn’t matter. The people have fears and frustrations. The potential leader perceives those emotions and channels them into a movement that builds something. The potential demagogue channels them into the acquisition of power for its own sake, the pursuit of anti-democracy. Long’s biographer, T. Harry Williams, defined a demagogue as “one of those swaggering blusterers, those base fellow who have throughout history deceived the masses with turbulent rhetoric, cynical promises, and clownish tricks.”

It was this stick that the great editor and columnist William Allen White was gnawing at when he wrote, “Fascism always comes through a vast pretense of socialism backed by Wall Street money… Huey Long is the type we must fear. Huey Long, backed by the Wall Street money on the quiet, rabble-rousing the morons into a belief that he was going to give them pancakes three times a day, is a menace.”

Well, you might say, there are a lot of people who need pancakes. Would it be so bad to give ‘em some? The answer is, “No, of course not,” but it matters who is giving them and how and why. You can’t debauch a constitutional system to any end, altruistic or selfish, and expect it to spring back into its old shape like it was made of memory foam. Once deformed, it stays deformed. 

This is an issue that All the King’s Men raises, although the film, in its eagerness to beat the story into an dull-witted morality play, nearly throws it away. It’s no surprise that an adaptation would attenuate the characters’ longer speeches from the book, but in truncating this passage of Stark speaking to Adam Stanton, bits of which are thrown away with cinematographer Burnett Guffey’s camera hugging tightly to Crawford’s right ear (Guffey would later win Oscars for shooting From Here to Eternity and Bonnie and Clyde, but he and Rossen made some bizarre choices when shooting King’s) the film misses an important point:

“Goodness. Yeah, just plain, simple goodness. Well you can’t inherit that from anybody. You got to make it, Doc. If you want it. And you got to make it out of badness. Badness. And you know why, Doc?” He raised his bulk up in the broken-down wreck of an overstuffed chair he was in, and leaned forward his hands on his knees, his elbows cocked out, his head outthrust and the hair coming down to his eyes, and stared into Adam’s face. “Out of badness,” he repeated. “And you know why? Because there isn’t anything else to make it out of.” Then, sinking back into the wreck, he asked softly, “Did you know that, Doc?”

Then the Boss asked, softer still, almost whispering, “Did you know that, Doc?”

In reacting to All the King’s Men, those critics who clearly haven’t read it distort the meaning of the title, saying the allusion to the nursery rhyme “Humpty Dumpty” is about Willie Stark, the metaphorical king (standing in for Long, The Kingfish) taking a great fall. No, nope, sorry. Warren wasn’t that on the nose. If you think too much of Humpty Dumpty himself you’ve been misdirected. The title of All the King’s Men refers exactly to who it says it does: all the men (some of whom are women) who surround, support, and enable the king. These characters, all of whom are deeply wounded in some way, are corrupted just by being in his orbit and ultimately bring about his downfall. Stark’s destruction happens not through the direct actions of any of them, but because their behaviors are dictated by the environment he creates, they make decisions that inevitably have negative consequences. They disprove the philosophy expressed above: “Out of badness” only comes additional badness.

Long, one last time: “There are all kinds of demagogues. Some deceive the people in the interests of the lords and masters of creation, the Rockefellers and Morgans. Some of them deceive the people in their own interest.” But, no. It doesn’t work that way. As the historian Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. told Ken Burns, “Machiavelli long ago said a great man cannot be a good man. But there are limits to the methods a great man can employ in order to do good.”

This is an important thing to understand in terms of our own choices of leaders. Morality may be a pain in the ass and coloring within the lines boring, but the rules exist to constrain the possibility of bad outcomes. To take Richard Nixon as one example, the president created a win-at-all-costs environment in which his subordinates felt empowered to undertake a series of what they called “dirty tricks.” These in turn created circumstances in which Nixon himself committed crimes (obstruction of justice, among others) which ultimately resulted in the termination of his presidency. Unfortunately, the film of All the King’s Men does away with all such complexities. By making Stark obviously, loudly corrupt and the King’s Men shocked at his behavior, it isolates him, makes him an outlier, when in reality he’s a metastasizing cancer who causes his own great fall.

In an introduction to a later edition of his novel, Warren wrote that Stark was inspired by Huey Long, but was not meant to be him. “For better or worse, Willie Stark was not Huey Long. Willie was only himself.” Stark, Warren notes, was a symbol of “the kind of doom that democracy may invite upon itself.” That’s the kind of thing All the King’s Men could have shown us, but didn’t. As Hodding Carter wrote of Huey Long and surely would have written of Willie Stark, “Had all Americans lived some of those years under him, democracy would be more secure today, because democracy would have come to have a more precious meaning.” 

BIBLIOGRAPHIC NOTE: Sources for the quotations found in this essay include Voices of Protest (Alan Brinkley), Robert Rossen: The Films and Politics of a Blacklisted Idealist (Alan Casty), The Populist Persuasion (Michael Kazin), Freedom From Fear (David M. Kennedy), The Aspirin Age (Isabel Leighton, ed.), The Politics of Upheaval (Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.), Huey Long (T. Harry Williams).

[acoolchristianchick]

What Will The Last Days Be Like?

What Will The Last Days Be Like?  (We are already HERE)

By David J. Stewart | March 2009 | Updated April 2012

2nd Timothy 3:1, “This know also, that in the LAST DAYS perilous times shall come...”

Increasingly, we are hearing people talk about “The Last Days” or “The End of the World,” and for good reason, because the wickedness is so horrible nowadays. The newsmedia is filled with so much horrible stories and hatred, and the media has no hesitation about destroying someone's life with their manure spreading. Society has become ruthless, craving the bloodiest and most horrid stories in the news... give us more, more, more!

The word “perilous” in 2nd Timothy 3:1 means “hard to endure, dangerous, difficult to bear.” Hence, God is warning us that mankind will spiritually deteriorate in the Last Days, to the point where it will be difficult to bear. Certainly, it is difficult to live in a time when same-sex marriages have become a nightmarish reality, and now President Barack Obama wants to expand their adoption rights as well.

The Bible calls these “perilous” times . . .

2nd Timothy 3:2-4, “...lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, without natural affection, trucebreakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good, traitors, heady, highminded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God.”

This accurately describes today's society. American society has become so rotten.

Increasing Wickedness

America has turned her back against God, praising vile homosexuals and teaching innocent children that it's ok to be homosexual. No it's not! It's a dirty, rotten, vile sin which brings the judgment of God upon sinners (Romans 1:24-32). We've even nicknamed one of our most popular cities, “SIN CITY,” mocking the holy God of the Bible. I assure you whoever you may be, no sin will go unaccounted for by God.

The Bible tells us that the LAST DAYS will be a time of woeful wickedness, when people will become selfish, self-centered and self-righteous. The majority of people these days have become sinfully proud, disobedient, unholy, unthankful, highminded, especially today's youth who are void of genuine Biblical faith and knowledge of Christ. Satan has been working relentlessly through demonic Rock 'N' Roll and other heathen types of music to influence the past few generations. Today, the Rock 'N' Roll superstars of the 1970's and 1980's have a cult-like following of middle-aged and older Americans. It is wickedness in the eyes of God.

America has become so wicked that little children are now being sexually exploited by television producers to make money. Consider the rotten show, DANCE MOMS. According to a study released in December of 2010 by the Parents Television Council (PTC): “Hollywood is shockingly obsessed with sexualizing teen girls, to the point where underage female characters are shown participating in an even higher percentage of sexual situations than their adult counterparts: 47 percent to 29 percent respectively.”

Philippians 3:18,19, “For many walk, of whom I have told you often, and now tell you even weeping, that they are the enemies of the cross of Christ: Whose end is destruction, whose God is their belly, and whose glory is in their shame, who mind earthly things.”

Increased Apostasy In The Churches

1st Timothy 4:1-2, “Now the Spirit speaketh expressly, that in the latter times some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits, and doctrines of devils; Speaking lies in hypocrisy; having their conscience seared with a hot iron.” ...

2nd Timothy 4:3-4, “For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears; And they shall turn away their ears from the truth, and shall be turned unto fables.”

There is much heresy in the churches today. Bible-preaching has been subtly replaced with secular psychology. The mourner's bench has been replaced with video-projection entertainment system. Singing the old hymns of the faith have been replaced with religious Rock music. Repentance and regeneration have been replaced with reformation and rehabilitation. The gospel has been replaced with amending one's ways and making a commitment to Christ. Our churches are dead. Our preachers are puppets to a pulpit committee (over my dead body).

The Bible has been replaced with a corrupt counterfeit. Think about what has happened. Satan has taken everything decent, true and good and has replaced it with the world, entertainment and religion. God deliver us from New World Order false ministers like Pat Robertson, James Robison, Max Lucado, Joyce Meyer, Benny Hinn, John Hagee and Joel Osteen. Satan has tens-of-millions of people getting spiritual food-poisoning, feeding out of the hands of a dozen false ministers.

Instead, we ought to be feeding from the Word of God (John 5:39) and those who skillfully handle the Word of God. I wouldn't give you a dime for any televangelist nor New York Times Bestseller List minister. People are so gullible. It is a shame that hundreds-of-millions of people worldwide don't know anything more about God than what floats in front of them. Instead of seeking out THE TRUTH, the average person today only goes by what they see on TV. Literally, Satan came to you instead of you coming to God.

Here's a great Bible study on the entire Bible by J. Vernon McGee. You'll never see him on TV (because he's in glory). And you won't find his books on a New York Best Seller List (owned and controlled by globalists). I don't agree with everything pastor McGee says, but he's 100% correct on salvation and the fundamentals of the Christian faith. I love his knowledge of secular history, his extensive knowledge of geography from having visited the Holy Land himself, his candor and down-to-earth style of preaching. You will be blessed! Turn off the TV and listen to pastor McGee or Dr. Jack Hyles if you really want to hear some Old-fashioned, Biblical, Christ-honoring, red-hot preaching. Most preachers can't preach their way out of a paperbag.

With all the apostasy in today's churches, I wouldn't trust anything theological from ministers today who stand to gain a profit. I recommend the older preachers who are now in Heaven. All women preachers are false prophets.

Increased Hatred of Christians

John 16:2, “They shall put you out of the synagogues: yea, the time cometh, that whosoever killeth you will think that he doeth God service.”

There is much anti-Christian, anti-patriotic and anti-masculine authority in the home propaganda being used nowadays to brainwash today's youth. Anti-hate speech laws are being introduced by liberal lawmakers and are being approved little-by-little by godless judges until their accomplishments are mounting significantly against what's left of decent people in America today. Just as Islamic Muslims who follow closely to the core teachings of the unholy Qur'an, so are staunch Bible-believing Christians today being wrongfully labeled as "extremists."

Yet, in some sick, twisted, insane sense, the abortionists don't consider the murdering of children as extreme. The brutal torture of the precious and innocent Terri Schiavo wasn't considered extreme, but it was Nazi-fascism in the extreme! As more and more lesbians, feminists and homosexuals rise to power as judges, lawmakers, politicians, and law enforcement in the United States, Christians WILL increasingly be violated Constitutionally, abused physically, harassed, arrested without probable cause and prosecuted, as terrorists.

The Word of God teaches that in the Last Days, hatred toward Christians will increase. 1st John 2:18, “Little children, it is the last time: and as ye have heard that antichrist shall come, even now are there many antichrists; whereby we know that it is the last time.” The word “antichrists” here comes from the Greek word antichristos and means “opponent of the Messiah.” The Bible teaches that in the Last Days there will be many opponents of Jesus Christ, showing indeed that it is the Last Days.

It is now 2012 and Christianity is hated worldwide. The uprising homosexual movement in America is synonymous with hatred of Christians. In a short time, Christians will be completely silenced concerning the evils of homosexuality. Already, Christians have been silenced on the matter of abortion. Homeland Security Unites with the Abortion Industry(pro-life Christians charged with stalking for protesting outside abortion clinic).

As evidence of the increasing hatred against Christians, consider that on March 4, 2012 ABC debuted a new sitcom TV series called “GCB” (Good Christian Bitches). Neither the newsmedia nor the ACLU cared. If that had been a show called “Good Jewish Bitches,” the Jewish-controlled newsmedia would have had a frenzy. The world hates Christians, just as they hate Jesus Christ (John 15:19).

People Will Become Cold, Insensitive and Calloused

Jesus said:

Matthew 24:11,12, “And many false prophets shall rise, and shall deceive many. And because iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall wax cold.”

Although Matthew chapter 24 deals primarily with the 7-yeat Tribulation Period, we are already witnessing these events in society today. The Greek word for “iniquity” doesn't mean sin; it means, “injustice, i.e., unpunished sin.” Jesus said that the love of many would wax cold because of injustices like Enron, the 911 attacks and the theft of trillions of dollars of taxpayer money in Washington D.C. There's a mother in Kansas, sitting in prison for life, for possession 1/16 ounce of cocaine. Yet, the criminals from Enron who stole hundreds-of-millions of dollars all walked away free.

There is much injustice in our legal system these days, and people are getting tired and frustrated. Anyone with a brain, who's done even a little bit of study, knows that the 911 attacks were an inside job, that the Bush Administration orchestrated the entire plot, and the primary reason America invaded Iraq was to steal their oil. This is what the Bible says the LAST DAYS will be like—cut throat, fierce, out of control, greedy, boastful, sinfully proud, arrogant, liars, false accusers, ungrateful, trucebreakers, traitors, unholy, without genuine affection, phony, despisers of those who are good, disobedient to parents, blasphemers, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God, et cetera. And this is to be expected from an immoral heathen public school generation which kicked God, prayer and Bible out the door in 1962.

It Will Be as it Was in the Days of Noah

Jesus warned that the LAST DAYS will be as it was in the time of Noah, when the flood suddenly came and destroyed the wicked from off the earth.

Matthew 24:36-39, “But of that day and hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels of heaven, but my Father only. But as the days of Noe were, so shall also the coming of the Son of man be. For as in the days that were before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noe entered into the ark, And knew not until the flood came, and took them all away; so shall also the coming of the Son of man be.”

The Word of God teaches us that in the Last Days, people will become “lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God” (2nd Timothy 3:4). We are living in these “perilous times” of pleasure-seekers. One need look no further than the television to find greed, covetous, fornication, murder, lust, false accusers, lies, adulterers, lasciviousness, high-mindedness, arrogant sinful pride, immodestly dressed lewd women, homosexuality, lying propaganda, heathen feminism, abortion, witchcraft, et cetera, et cetera.

The LAST DAYS will be a time of utter wickedness, such as the world has never seen before. As man's technological skills advance, so does his capacity to commit sin and evil, to hurt others. Nearly everything in life is a double-edged sword. Unfortunately, the evil caused by man's inventions these days far outweighs the good. Life was much simpler in the good old days of America past.

American society today has become a large insane asylum, where a man urinated in a jar, placed an upside-down crucifix with Jesus into the jar, and did so with taxpayer money under the pretense of "art." Meanwhile, millions of Americans are without employment. It's just crazy.

We've got elderly people driving to Mexico and Canada by the busloads because our lawmakers and politicians allow the pharmaceutical companies to charge us outrageous amounts of money for necessary medications. It's a big scam to make trillions of dollars for the drug companies and the government officials they lobby to. We do not respect our elderly as we ought to in the United States. They shouldn't have to cross the border to buy inexpensive medications.

Shame on America! It is WORSE today than it was in the time of Noah, because we have been blessed with so much more in the areas of medicine, technology, education and convenience. And yet we spit in God's face by legalizing abortion, homosexuality, booze, dirty dancing, gambling and teaching children the fairy tale of Evolution. Only a blinded fool would claim to believe Evolution.

America is a pleasure-seeking society—eating, dining out, music, romance, pornography, dancing, sports, movies, booze, gambling, cigarette smoking, video games, recreational drugs, videos, television, radio, traveling, hobbies, et cetera. Most people today have no time for God. Moses told the Israelites in Deuteronomy 6:12, “Then beware lest thou forget the LORD...” America forgot God a long time ago. Our love for sin as a nation is unparallel in the world. And yet in some sick, twisted and demented way we still think God is going to bless America??? No way! Why should God bless us? So Americans can abort more children? So Americans can fornicate more in Las Vegas? So Americans can spend billions more on Harry Potter's witchcraft?

Today's youth have no respect nor gratitude for their parents. All they want to do is have fun, party, cruise the streets, hang out at the shopping mall, and expect mom and dad to pay for it. Jesus said that in the LAST DAYS, family members would turn against each other . . .

Matthew 10:36, “And a man's foes shall be they of his own household.”

There is new U.N. legislation in the works that will allow children to prosecute their own parents if they aren't happy with their parent's rules or manner of discipline. Husbands and fathers, in particular, are under attack by the New World Order, because God has designated the man as the head of his home and family. The fastest way to destroy the God-ordained authority in a marriage and home is to pass new laws, as were passed in Daniel's time to prevent the doing of right, or in the case of modern times, to prevent husbands and fathers from exercising their proper authority in the home. Daniel was forbidden to pray, but he did so anyway, and was punished wrongfully.

It is wickedness. Likewise, husbands and fathers today must be extremely careful how they speak to their wives and children, because even yelling at them can land you in jail for verbal threatening and assault. Our grandfathers would have laughed at the notion of such a thing, back when children were properly taught to respect authority, were disciplined for having AN ATTITUDE, and wives reverenced their husbands as the head of the home.

Not so anymore. In sharp contrast to 60-years ago, children today are taught to have a bad attitude, to question everything, to do their own thing, and to accept the homosexual lifestyle as good and wholesome. May God have pity on Christian families who have to live through these trying times of woeful wickedness. Today's society is saturated with demonic influences.

It is a matter of authority. Divorce agreements even specify that the “husband no longer has any authority” over his wife. Divorce is a wife refusal to submit anymore to her husband's AUTHORITY over her. 1st Samuel 15:23 warns, “For rebellion is as the SIN of witchcraft.” The government wants total authority, which means that husbands and fathers must be vilified by the State.

It's interesting and hypocritical that the same government that believes in punishing criminals, inflicting harsh and cruel treatment upon them, even denying many of them needed medications while incarcerated, will turn around and demonize Christian parents for spanking their own children. The government doesn't want parents to be allowed to indoctrinate their children with the Bible, nor to exercise proper physical punishment upon their children when they misbehave; yet the government is eager to punish your children when they break the law.

It's insane! A properly disciplined child is going to become a productive, respective and character member of society. Today's teenagers are without disciple because parents are afraid to discipline them, and the kids are growing up to be punks, pleasure-seekers, criminals and it's the government's fault for hindering.

2nd Peter 3:3-4, “Knowing this first, that there shall come in the last days scoffers, walking after their own lusts, And saying, Where is the promise of his coming? for since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation.”

2nd Timothy 3:1,2,4, “This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come. For men shall be lovers of their own selves... lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God.”

2nd Timothy 4:3, “For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears.”

[nebris]

Donald Trump’s greatest allies are the liberal elites

The liberal elites, who bear significant responsibility for the death of our democracy, now hold themselves up as the saviors of the republic. They have embarked, despite their own corruption and their complicity in neoliberalism and the crimes of empire, on a self-righteous moral crusade to topple Donald Trump. It is quite a show. They attack Trump’s “lies,” denounce executive orders such as his travel ban as un-American and blame Trump’s election on Russia or FBI Director James Comey rather than the failed neoliberal policies they themselves advanced.

Where was this moral outrage when our privacy was taken from us by the security and surveillance state, the criminals on Wall Street were bailed out, we were stripped of our civil liberties and 2.3 million men and women were packed into our prisons, most of them poor people of color? Why did they not thunder with indignation as money replaced the vote and elected officials and corporate lobbyists instituted our system of legalized bribery? Where were the impassioned critiques of the absurd idea of allowing a nation to be governed by the dictates of corporations, banks and hedge fund managers? Why did they cater to the foibles and utterings of fellow elites, all the while blacklisting critics of the corporate state and ignoring the misery of the poor and the working class? Where was their moral righteousness when the United States committed war crimes in the Middle East and our militarized police carried out murderous rampages? What the liberal elites do now is not moral. It is self-exaltation disguised as piety. It is part of the carnival act.

The liberal class, ranging from Hollywood and the Democratic leadership to The New York Times and CNN, refuses to acknowledge that it sold the Democratic Party to corporate bidders; collaborated in the evisceration of our civil liberties; helped destroy programs such as welfare, orchestrate the job-killing North American Free Trade Agreement and Trans-Pacific Partnership deal, wage endless war, debase our public institutions including the press and build the world’s largest prison system.

“The truth is hard to find. The truth is hard to know. The truth is more important than ever,” reads a television ad for The New York Times. What the paper fails to add is that the hardest place to find the truth about the forces affecting the life of the average American and the truth about empire is in The New York Times itself. News organizations, from the Times to the tawdry forms of entertainment masquerading as news on television, have rendered most people and their concerns invisible. Liberal institutions, especially the press, function, as the journalist and author Matt Taibbi says, as “the guardians” of the neoliberal and imperial orthodoxy.

It is the job of the guardians of orthodoxy to plaster over the brutal reality and cruelty of neoliberalism and empire with a patina of civility or entertainment. They pay homage to a nonexistent democracy and nonexistent American virtues. The elites, who live in enclaves of privilege in cities such as New York, Washington and San Francisco, scold an enraged population. They tell those they dismiss as inferiors to calm down, be reasonable and patient and trust in the goodness of the old ruling class and the American system. African-Americans have heard this kind of cant preached by the white ruling class for a couple of centuries.

Because the system works for the elites, and because the elites interact only with other elites, they are mystified about the revolt rising up from the decayed cities they fly over in the middle of the country. They think they can stuff this inexplicable rage back in the box. They continue to offer up absurd solutions to deindustrialization and despair, such as Thomas Friedman’s endorsement of “a culture of entrepreneurship” and “an ethic of pluralism.” These kinds of bromides are advertising jingles. They bear no more connection to reality than Trump promising to make America great again.

I walked into the Harvard Club in New York City after midnight on election night. The well-heeled New York elites stood, their mouths agape, looking up at the television screens in the oak-paneled bar while wearing their Clinton campaign straw hats. They could not speak. They were in shock. The system they funded to prevent anyone from outside their circle, Republican or Democrat, from achieving the presidency had inexplicably collapsed.

Taibbi, when I interviewed him in New York, said political power in our corporate state is controlled by “a tripartite system.” “You have to have the assent of the press, the donor class, and one of the two [major] political parties to get in,” said Taibbi, author of “Insane Clown President: Dispatches From the 2016 Circus.” “It’s an exclusive club. It’s like a membership system. They all have to agree and confer their blessing on the candidate. Trump somehow managed to get past all three of those obstacles. And he did it essentially by putting all of them on trial. He put the press on trial and villainized them with the public. I think it was a brilliant masterstroke that nobody saw coming. But it wouldn’t have been possible if their unpopularity hadn’t been building for years and years and years.”

“It’s a kind of Stockholm syndrome,” he said of the press. “The reporters, candidates, and candidates’ aides are all thrown together. They’re stuck in the same environment with each other day after day, month after month. After a while, they start to unconsciously adopt each other’s values. Then they start to live in the same neighborhoods. They go to the same parties. Then it becomes a year-after-year kind of thing. Then after that, they’re the same people. It’s a total perversion of what’s supposed to happen. We’re [the press] supposed to be on the outside, not identifying with these people. But now, it’s a club. Journalists enjoy the experience of being close to power.”

At first the press, especially the television press, could not get enough of Trump. He received 23 times the coverage of Sen. Bernie Sanders, who spoke about things that do not make for great television – inequality and corporate corruption. Trump brought in the advertising dollars. 2016 was CNN’s most profitable year. Then, alarmed at Trump’s ascendancy, the press set out to destroy him. The press applied its Darth Vader Force choke. It did not work. They tried it again and again. The Force had deserted them.

“When a candidate makes a mistake and steps in it – [2004 presidential hopeful] Howard Dean is the classic example, the scream – then they [TV news shows] replay it every hour, 100 times a day,” Taibbi said. “The critical part is that Dean was already in violation leading up to that moment. He was not the right person because he was anti-war. He got his donations from the wrong people. He makes the mistake. The press pig-piles on the person just instinctively. All this negative attention. The candidate freaks out and apologizes. He disappears for a while. He tries to soldier on. The next thing you know, there’s a Page 16 story: Candidate exits the race. It’s a script. But it didn’t work with Trump.”

The press, like the Democratic Party, is an appendage of the consumer society. These institutions are not about politics or news. They are about imparting an experience. They create political personalities, marketed as celebrities, to make us feel good about candidates. These manufactured emotions, the product of the dark arts of the public relations industry, determine how we vote. Issues and policies are irrelevant. It is marketing and entertainment. Trump is a skillful marketer of his fictitious self.

“When you work in that environment long enough you unconsciously become an agent for whatever that commercial strategy is,” Taibbi said of the press in our corporate-run political theater.

“What we call right-wing and liberal media in this country are really just two different strategies of the same kind of nihilistic lizard-brain sensationalism,” Taibbi wrote in “Insane Clown President.” “The ideal CNN story is a baby down a well, while the ideal Fox story is probably a baby thrown down a well by a Muslim terrorist or an ACORN activist. Both companies offer the same service, it’s just that the Fox version is a little kinkier.”

The pseudo-events on television displace reality. This is how a reality star becomes president. Sixty million people think Trump’s manufactured persona – the predominate tycoon – on “The Apprentice” is real. Our perception of the truth is determined by what appears on the screen. If an event is never broadcast, it somehow never happened. The electronic image is the word of God. The corporate state controls most of what is seen and heard on television, what ideas and events can be discussed in the mainstream media and what orthodoxies, including neoliberalism and the war industry, must never be questioned. We suffer an intellectual tyranny as pervasive as that imposed by fascism and communism. Trump, who is as gullible as the most habitual television viewer, exemplifies our cultural and political death. He is no more “authentic” than Hillary Clinton. But he appears on our screens as more authentic because he is more deeply embedded in the medium that controls our thoughts. He is what is vomited up from the perverted zeitgeist of a nation entranced and dominated by electronic hallucinations.

“People have this idea that Trump has no connection with the ‘common man,’ but he does,” Taibbi said. “He has exactly the same media habits that ordinary people have. He believes the stuff that he reads on the internet and watches on television implicitly and unquestioningly. That is what gives him that connection with people. He thinks like they do. He has the same habits they have. A classic example is the thing with the so-called 3 million illegal … voters. He reads that, probably in an Infowars story, it’s policy like two minutes later. He doesn’t go through the process of asking himself if it’s untrue. He’s a perfect consumer in that respect. That’s what makes him so dangerous.”

“[George W.] Bush was child’s play compared to what we’re dealing with now,” Taibbi said. “Bush was a puppet. He was a vehicle for a very familiar form of right-wing capitalist politics. This Trump thing is totally different. Trump really is the actual engine behind this phenomenon during the entire campaign. There were no people behind the man, I don’t think. The presidential campaign has no relation to the issue of whether or not you can govern effectively. The campaign is a television show. The values that decide whether a person becomes a candidate or can’t become a candidate are more or less arbitrary. It has a lot to do with the commercial value of the candidate. You can’t have an unentertaining candidate because the press needs to make money. They will unconsciously gravitate towards someone who does what Trump does, which is get [website] hits and eyeballs and ratings.”

Trump’s popularity increased the more the establishment condemned him. This would have sent a profound and disturbing message to anyone not as clueless as our liberal elites. They did not get it. They thought they could trot out Bill Clinton, Barack Obama and Hollywood celebrities and get the rubes to fall for their routine one more time. They thought the country would again obey.

The liberal class, by embracing neoliberalism and refusing to challenge the imperial wars, empowered the economic and political structures that destroyed our democracy and gave rise to Trump. Multiculturalism, when it means, to use the words of Cornel West, nothing more than having a president who is a “black mascot for Wall Street,” betrays the disenfranchised and endows the ruling elites with a false progressivism, a false humanism and a false inclusiveness.

Hillary and Bill Clinton, Joe Biden and the current Democratic Party leadership designed and built the massive system of imprisonment, essentially ended welfare, expanded our wars and pushed through NAFTA. They destroyed the lives of hundreds of thousands of poor and working-class families and are responsible for the mounds of corpses in the Middle East. Yet these liberal elites speak as if they are champions of racial and economic justice. They appear in choreographed pseudo-events to demonstrate a faux compassion. Now they have been exposed as fakes.

A genuine populism, one defined and often articulated by Bernie Sanders, could sweep the Democratic Party back into power. Regulating Wall Street, publicly financing campaigns, forgiving student debt, demanding universal health care, bailing out homeowners victimized by the banks, ending the wars in the Middle East, instituting a jobs program to repair our decaying infrastructure, dismantling the prison system, restoring the rule of law on the streets of our cities, making college education free and protecting programs such as Social Security would see election victory after election victory.

But this will never happen within the Democratic Party. It refuses to prohibit corporate money. The party elites know that if corporate money disappears, so do they. The party’s hierarchy, pressured by Obama and the Clintons, elevated Tom Perez over Keith Ellison – whom a major donor to the party, Haim Saban, condemns as an “anti-Semite” because of Ellison’s criticism of the Israeli government – to head the Democratic National Committee. They will press forward repeating the same silly slogans and trying to use the now ineffective Force choke on their political enemies. They may have lost control of the Congress and the White House and hold only 16 governorships and majorities in only 31 of the states’ 99 legislative chambers, but they are incapable of offering any meaningful alternative to neoliberalism and empire. They are devoid of a vision. They can only moralize. They will continue to atrophy and enable the consolidation of an American fascism.

Fyodor Dostoevsky excoriated Russia’s bankrupt liberal class at the end of the 19th century. Russian liberals mouthed values they did not defend. Their stated ideals bore no relationship to their actions. They were filled with a suffocating narcissism.

In “Notes From Underground,” Dostoevsky lampooned the defeated dreamers of the liberal class, those who preached goodness but lived in moral squalor. These defeated dreamers denounced the social and cultural depravity they had largely created. They had an open disdain for the uneducated, the poor, the working class, the lesser breeds beneath them. And in the end, they ushered in a moral nihilism to empower a dangerous class of demagogues, killers and fools.

“I never even managed to become anything: neither wicked nor good, neither a scoundrel nor an honest man, neither a hero nor an insect,” the Underground Man wrote. “And now I am living out my life in my corner, taunting myself with the spiteful and utterly futile consolation that it is even impossible for an intelligent man seriously to become anything, and only fools become something. Yes, sir, an intelligent man of the nineteenth century must be and is morally obliged to be primarily a characterless being; and a man of character, an active figure – primarily a limited being.”

http://www.nationofchange.org/2017/03/07/donald-trumps-greatest-allies-liberal-elites/