Todd Lewis is joined by Keith Preston, Right Ruminations and Swithun Dobson to discuss the recent electoral upset in the UK in particular and the general populist uprising which includes Trump and La Pen.
The Panarchist Solution to a World Divided Reply
By Nicky Reid aka Comrade Hermit
Exile in Happy Valley
In these days of epic collapse, with the established order rapidly disintegrating before our very eyes, mankind seems to be tearing apart at the seems and resorting to the bipolar extremes of the far-left and the far-right. And why the hell not? Poor people across the globe have grown weary of the false promises and bald faced lies of the so-called moderates. The one thing the warring camps of extremes seem to agree on is that the mass democracy of neoliberal globalism is an epic wash. A rigged shell game that only pays out to the house, and now the house is on fire.
So we witness the spectacle of populism on both the left and the right. Record numbers of young people embracing the once tainted label of socialism while the kind of xenophobic nativism which was once only uttered in hushed tones at the far corners of church potlucks has now become mainstream fodder, openly brandished like Hermann Goering’s revolver. These are the times that we live in but we’ve seen them before. Whenever empires crumble and the fixed markets of state capitalism find themselves in peril. The people who stand to gain the most from the cataclysm find themselves divided on the opposite ends of the barracks. Stalinists and Brown Shirts. Antifa and the Alt-right. It’s times like these when the call of Samuel L. Jackson’s prophetic DJ in Spike Lee’s classic dissection of urban upheaval, Do the Right Thing, rings like tinnitus through my eardrums. “Can we live together?! Together, can we live?!!” I’ve spent my life in search of an answer to that existential question. I believe I’m getting closer.
I’ve always found myself on the far-left end of the barracks, even while the proletariat was still drunk on the delusions of progress that came with a first black president and Apple Store commodity fetishism. I discovered Marx young and Chomsky shortly after. I spent the lion share of my teens flirting with a caraselle of Libertarian Socialist ideologies, Chomsky’s Syndicalism, Red Rosa’s Council Communism, Subcomandante Marcos’ Zapatizmo. All set to a hard driving soundtrack of Billy Bragg, Joe Strummer and Zack de la Rocha.
R.I.P. Paul Volcker, the Last “Good” Central Banker Reply
By Jp Cortez, Money Metals Exchange
The last true enemy of inflation the Federal Reserve has seen died earlier this week.
Paul Volcker, former chairman of the Federal Reserve from 1979-1987, has passed away.
Credited with tampering incredibly high levels of inflation during the Carter and Reagan administration by jacking up interest rates to unpleasant levels, Volcker’s passing harkens back to a time when central bankers weren’t afraid to make tough choices.
Volcker instinctively knew that central planning of the economy by tugging on monetary policy levers was not only a tall order, but also wouldn’t ultimately succeed.
In an interview the former chairman said about the Keynesian “religion,” “…I was a bit turned off by the precision and certainty that these people attached to the doctrine. The analytical framework was very convincing but this feeling they had, that they could press the right buttons and manage the economy pretty exactly, for some reason it turned me off.”
Tall Paul (Volcker was reportedly 6’7”) was also the last chairman of the Federal Reserve who maintained plausible political independence, publicly butting heads with President Carter and President Reagan.
Though Volcker was one of the main architects of closing the gold window and once declared that “gold was the enemy,” he nevertheless seemed at least to understand the severe damage that inflation causes.
In an interview with PBS, Volcker said, “inflation is thought of as a cruel, and maybe the cruelest, tax because it hits in a many-sectored way, in an unplanned way, and it hits the people on a fixed income hardest. And there’s quite a lot of evidence, contrary to some earlier thinking, that it hit poorer people more than rich people…”
At a lecture in Singapore in 2008, when asked about a return to fundamentals of the Austrian school of economics as a response to the Great Recession, Volcker acutely answered, “you know, they [Austrian school economists] have some insights that maybe we have forgotten about…The idea of credit creation being important as one symptom of what is going on has certainly been vindicated.”
Volcker continued, “[Financial firms, investment banks, and commercial banks] all built up the balance sheet on the liability and asset side because of a sense of easy credit and no problems. That’s what’s come home to roost because suddenly they haven’t got enough capital to support the credit, which wouldn’t surprise most Austrian economists, I suspect.”
Former Chairman Paul Volcker wasn’t an Austrian economist – or even a strong proponent of sound money, despite including the term in the title of his memoir. But he understood the perils of inflation and the harm wrought by technocratic manipulation of the economy.
Volker’s approach stands in sharp contrast to that of current Fed Chairman Jerome Powell and his ilk. Far from fighting inflation, they are openly engaging in a campaign to push it higher.
Jp Cortez is a graduate of Auburn University and a resident of Charlotte, North Carolina. He is the Policy Director of the Sound Money Defense League, an organization working to bring back gold and silver as America’s constitutional money. Follow him on Twitter @JpCortez27
Gringolandia en Mexico: A Paradise Lost 4
I have arrived in Mexico last March, at a time when I had previously lived in Denver. The state of Colorado is known for its brutal cold and mercurial weather, where the climate may change nearly a half a dozen times per day. I was paying $1700 per month for a 500 square foot apartment in the center of the city. The majority of my acquaintances and neighbors were hardened Politically Correct Ideologues and radical leftists. As it happens, my former Jiu-Jitsu instructor from Denver has recently been found guilty of a sexual assault that he almost certainly did not commit.
Mexico is famous for its picturesque beaches, tropical climate and hospitable culture. For good reasons, it is the seventh most visited country in the world, just behind France, Spain, the United States, China, and Italy. All of these aforementioned countries boast a highly developed economy and a significant percentage of visitors arrive for professional rather than recreational purposes. However, the overwhelming majority of the visitors in Mexico are tourists and that much is obvious: few foreigners find Mexico to be an enticing place to conduct their business.
Mexico is attractive to tourists for obvious reasons: the prices are low, it’s close to the United States and the weather is ideal in the winter, just when the snowbirds seek to escape the brutal cold that characterizes this season in most of North America. Yet, in recent years, Mexico witnessed a different type of a “gringo”. Not only are North Americans visiting Mexico on a short-term basis, but many are also becoming increasingly likely to live here for an extended period of time. The status of permanent residency is easy to acquire here and at one point, I encountered a crooked government official who was willing to sell that privilege to me for merely 80,000 Mexican Pesos, which is a little more than four thousand U.S dollars. For many compelling reasons, I have politely declined, yet in my place, many would have gladly jumped on that opportunity.
Sorry Lefties, Your Impeachment is Bullshit 1
By Nicky Reid aka Comrade Hermit
Exile in Happy Valley
The ongoing impeachment of one Donald J. Trump is bullshit. There, I said it and I’ll say it again just to make sure you heard me right. This impeachment is fucking bullshit, and I’m tired of pretending otherwise. I don’t care if this makes me a bad leftist or a bad libertarian or whatever, its the stone cold honest truth and I stand by it.
The left has poured so much of their identity into apposing Trump for the very sake of apposing Trump that they’ve lost all touch with reality. Their entire identity has become as defined by this moronic ass-wipe as his unblinking supporters. The Resistance has become a mirror image of what they despise, a pack of hyperventilating paranoid deplorables who have lost themselves 5 miles up their own asshole after crashing the Hybrid in their own fucking shit. They’re a bunch of inconsolable babies and they desperately need a good slap on the ass to clear their throats.
This isn’t to say I’m defending Trump. Not by a long shot. If it were up to me, he’d be in shackles at the Hague, answering for the cold-blooded murder of little Nora al-Awlaki and his putrid children’s concentration camps on the border. Trump can burn in hell. What I hate is this Ukrainegate nonsense. Just like Russiagate, it’s little more than a hodgepodge of rumors and second-hand gossip being trafficked by the only class of people more deplorable than Trump. What’s worse is that the entire spectacle is so obviously a complete and total farce designed to self-destruct just in time for that other complete and total farce known as the 2020 Election.
The Democrats know full well that this media circus will die on the vine once it reaches the GOP packed Senate, but they also know that it will drive the campaign conversation away from anything mildly resembling the radical change that their loverboys Joe Biden and Mayor Pete have zero intention of delivering on, while keeping the irate electorate distracted by empty partisan shit-slinging. This suits Trump just fine as well. He gets to play the anti-authoritarian martyr that Middle America relates too, even while he robs them blind and sends their sons and daughters to die in a dusty oilfield.
"Liberal CIA" and New Left Foundations, Media, and Activist Groups Reply
The involvement of the CIA and other state security services in the US Left is a topic that is all-too-frequently ignored. This would certainly explain why so many “left-wing” and “anarchist” groups in the US take positions that amount to anarcho-Democratic Partyism, anarcho-MSNBCism, or anarcho-State Departmentism.
By Joel van der Reijen
NGO Study Center
An interesting collection of articles and links.
Federalism in Proudhon and Ostrom 1
By David S. D’Amato
Libertarianism.Org
When people, libertarians included, think of federalism, chances are good that they do not think of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon. More likely, they think of the The Federalist and its authors, and of the Constitution and its particular federalist structure. Federalism scholar S. Rufus Davis refers to Proudhon’s treatment of federalism, The Principle of Federation, as “a teasing puzzle,” long neglected as a bizarre and unwelcome entry in the story of the federal idea. Published in 1863, shortly before his death, The Principle of Federation arguably represents Proudhon’s mature thought and offers a robust account of federalism deserving of study among students of the idea, particularly libertarians. As we shall discuss here, certain libertarian thinkers, notably Vincent Ostrom, have perceived the importance and relevance of Proudhon’s federalism to a thoroughgoing approach to the idea itself and to a theory of the free society generally.
It is frequently argued that a variety of collective action problems demand a single central decision maker, one uniquely empowered to make final determinations. But centralized, hierarchical organizations are actually ill-equipped to provide effective solutions to collective actions problems, constrained both by their distance from the problems at hand and by the incentive problems associated with monopolies, which are insulated from feedback and competition. Indeed, as both Elinor and Vincent Ostrom’s work demonstrates, successful and efficient collective action requires just the opposite—a polycentric political and social order in which there are several centers of decision-making power, often even overlapping. Here, Proudhon’s federalism remains highly relevant and applicable to contemporary social and policy problems.
Alan Moore: Anarcho-Marxist? 3
Alan Moorey, who recently announced his intention of abandoning the common anarchist practice of non-voting in order to vote for Jeremy Corbyn, was photographed some years ago wearing a hammer and sickle T-shirt. Like a lot of anarchists with leftist leanings, Moore seems to be a Marxist at heart.
Why Racists and SJWs Are Wrong 4
Recently, in the main N-AM group someone asked this question:
“Is race “real”, or a social construct? What does science and biology show? If real then are the White Nationalists correct in their views? If a social construct then are the Anti-racist SJW types correct?”
This was my response:
“In a social context, I’d say race is like religion. It’s a real as you want to make it. Definitely a social construct in that sense. From a purely scientific perspective, “race” is a continuum that contains many variables, not absolute or easily quantifed categories. The real question that makes race controverisal from a scientific perspective involves claimed differences in intelligence. That’s really what the argument is about. Do differences in intelligence exist, and if so are they genetic or environmental or both? Some IQ testing seems to indicate such differences, althought there is also evidence that IQ is elastic for both individuals and populations and impacted by social factors such as malnutrition. Also, high IQ does not equal high functioning. Therefore, racial/IQ determinism like many race realists promote misses the mark, I think (it’s like the Marxist view that all of history is economic categories fighting for power, or the vulgar economism of many neoliberal and libertarian economists). For instance, in the USA Nigerians have basically achieved the same model minority status as East Asians even though according to race realist theory they’re not supposed to. Also, I consider transracialism to be a legitimate personal identity. There is plenty of historical precedent for members of different tribes being adopted by other tribes and subsequently adopting the norms, appearance, and practices of their new tribe. In early American history, there were whites adopted by American Indian tribes, for example (and vice versa).”
Why Hate Speech Laws, Gun Control, and Vigilantism Will Not Prevent Fascism 1
On the free speech question, it’s interesting to consider that the Weimar Republic actually had hate speech laws, along with stricter laws against obscenity and libel than what is the norm in most Western countries today. Weimar also had gun control laws, along with anti-fascist vigilantes that were regularly engaged in not only brawls but also gangland-like shootouts with the NSDAP-affiliated groups. Both the KPD and the SPD had their own private military armies just like the brownshirts, and the KPD was receiving support from the Soviet Union. None of that prevented the Nazi coup. As the CATO Institute explains:
“In my research, I looked into what actually happened in the Weimar Republic and found that, contrary to what most people think, Germany did have hate-speech laws that were applied quite frequently. The assertion that Nazi propaganda played a significant role in mobilizing anti-Jewish sentiment is irrefutable. But to claim that the Holocaust could have been prevented if only anti-Semitic speech had been banned has little basis in reality. Leading Nazis, including Joseph Goebbels, Theodor Fritsch, and Julius Streicher, were all prosecuted for anti-Semitic speech. And rather than deterring them, the many court cases served as effective pubicrelations machinery for the Nazis, affording them a level of attention that they never would have received in a climate of a free and open debate.
In the decade from 1923 to 1933, the Nazi propaganda magazine Der Stürmer — of which Streicher was the executive publisher — was confiscated or had its editors taken to court no fewer than 36 times. The more charges Streicher faced, the more the admiration of his supporters grew. In fact, the courts became an important platform for Streicher’s campaign against the Jews.
Alan Borovoy, general counsel of the Canadian Civil Liberties Foundation, points out that cases were regularly brought against individuals on account of anti-Semitic speech in the years leading up to Hitler’s takeover of power in 1933. “Remarkably, pre-Hitler Germany had laws very much like the Canadian anti-hate law,” he writes. “Moreover, those laws were enforced with some vigour. During the 15 years before Hitler came to power, there were more than 200 prosecutions based on anti-Semitic speech… As subsequent history so painfully testifies, this type of legislation proved ineffectual on the one occasion when there was a real argument for it.”
The maintenance of civil society, the vigorous defense of all civil liberties across the board (the ones outlined in the Bill of Rights and beyond), maintenance of a social and cultural consensus in favor of at least some bare minimum of democratic, libertarian, or egalitarian values, sanctioning those who engage in political violence (whatever their ideology) is the best way to prevent totalitarian/authoritarian groups (right, left, religious) from gaining genuine political power.
"Trump's policies have made him very unpopular in Europe" 1
Russia says is ready to extend new start nuclear arms control treaty with US 1
Why the war hawks are wrong. Defending Gabbard against neo-con slander. Reply
This video is a response to Kevin Castley of “Liberal Hawk Memes for Moral Universality teens” and “Superpower broadcasting” video against Tulsi Gabbard. His video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6uEJU… As promised, all of my sources which I sight in the video are verified in the link below, read and learn for yourself. Eisenhower’s meeting with Khrushchev https://www.history.com/this-day-in-h… American support for Turkish atrocities. https://www.hrw.org/reports/2005/turk… https://www.reaganlibrary.gov/researc… American support for operation ajax and the Shah https://www.npr.org/2019/01/31/690363… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DqrHQ… Khomeini’s opposition to WMD, and Saddam’s use of chemical weapons during Iran Iraq war. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/… https://foreignpolicy.com/2014/10/16/… https://www.nonproliferation.org/wp-c… https://www.cia.gov/library/readingro… https://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/wo… Saudi human rights abuses and American support for them https://www.hrw.org/news/2009/09/03/s… https://news.un.org/en/story/2019/03/…. https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/… https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articl… https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle… https://georgewbush-whitehouse.archiv… https://www.politico.com/story/2015/0… https://www.tulsigabbard.org/tulsi-ga… Syrian minorities support for Bashar Assad. https://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/28/wo… https://theintercept.com/2019/10/26/s… https://www.theatlantic.com/internati… Threats of thermo-nuclear war. https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buz… https://www.tulsi2020.com/issues/end-…
Will Anarchism Always Fail? 12
Styx/Tarl is an excellent commentator on many levels but he gets a lot of stuff wrong in this. Although many anarchists portray anarchism in the worst possible light, so it’s not surprising there are so many misconceptions about the philosophy.
As everyone probably knows, I’m anarchist, although I have my own approach and generally distance myself from the “mainstream” anarchist movement. For instance, I reject much of the standard left/right paradigm and I certainly reject the blue tribe/red tribe dichotomy that defines much of US politics.
I reject both the conservative/right-libertarian plutocratic approach as well as the leftist/socialist/progressive statist approach. I’m more about individual liberty, voluntary association, decentralization, bottom-up organization, confederalism, voluntary federalism, localism, cooperativism, autonomism, mutual aid, direct action, self-organization, self-management, direct democracy (contextually), etc.
In a historical context, I am obviously far left, although tactically I would consider myself a radical centrist (or revolutionary centrist) as opposed to establishment centrism (the neoliberal/neocon duopoly). I would distance myself from much of what passes as “left” nowadays. I embrace the full range of anarchist, libertarian, decentralist, anti-state, or anti-authoritarian thinking, with the emphasis being on decentralized, voluntary, pluralism. I see different political and cultural groups as the modern equivalent of religious sects and ethno-cultural tribes (which is what people used to fight over in the past). My main emphasis would be on self-determination for all to the greatest degree possible.
I see my political outlook as basically the same one I would have taken if I were a Native American or African tribesman during the period of colonialism, where you had hundreds or thousands of tribes fighting each other with all of these eventually being overrun by the colonial empires. “Hey, we gotta forget about this petty shit and look at who is coming over the mountain and from the ocean!”
I think the main thing that would set me apart from the mainstream anarchist movement is that I reject the progressive/reactionary dichotomy as being the essence of political conflict. The kinds of social conflicts that leftists emphasize are real (class, race, gender, “culture war,” global North/South, etc) are real but they’re not all that there is. Also, what “constitutes” progress is often debatable. Eugenics and Prohibition were considered progressive in their time. I’m more about power vs anti-power. The problem with most leftist thinking is that it is simply about replacing one ruling class with another. I generally agree with Burke’s critique of the French Revolution, Bakunin’s critique of Marxism, and the left-communist/anarchist critique of Leninism on all that. I think that kind of approach has failed too many times in the past. I’m also opposed to reductionism (for example, the idea that everything can be explained by race or class). I hold to an analysis of power relations that is more like that of Max Weber or the elite theorists.
Anarchist hero Murray Bookchin was a Zionist who whitewashed Israeli colonialism and war crimes 2
Bt
Murray Bookchin is something of a saint in the anarchist community. His ideas on social ecology and what he termed “libertarian municipalism” and “communalism” have influenced generations of self-declared leftists, and he was frequently cited as an ideological force behind the anti-globalization and Occupy Wall Street movements.
Bookchin became especially influential in Kurdish circles after Abdullah Öcalan, the imprisoned leader of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), adopted his ideas to advance a vision of “democratic confederalism,” a vision his followers later attempted to implement in northeast Syria — with the help of the US military.
What is not often mentioned, however, is that — like many of his anarchists and “libertarian socialist” peers — Bookchin was very soft on imperialism, and in some cases downright apologetic.
Specifically, Bookchin was a Zionist who publicly whitewashed and even rationalized Israel’s crimes against humanity. He also frequently demonized independent post-colonial governments in the Global South, echoing imperialist propaganda and chauvinistic myths about countries targeted by the United States for regime change.
Not on Our Side: On Bernie Sanders and Imperialism Reply
By Doug Enaa Greene
Left Voice
n February 19, 2019, Vermont Senator and “democratic socialist” Bernie Sanders announced his plans to run for the Democratic Party nomination for President. The announcement was met with cheers from large swaths of the American left who identify with his support for expanded labor rights, Medicare for All, free college, and a litany of other progressive issues. Those appear to be very compelling reasons to back the Sanders’ campaign. However, when it comes to American imperialism and war, Sanders may offer slightly different rhetoric than other Democratic candidates or Donald Trump, but his record proves him to be no alternative at all.
Voting- Right or Privilege? Reply
By Libertarian Heathen
There is no right to vote, universal sufferage was the fatal blow to the Republic, and its elimination the quickest way to save America.
The United States of America is a Republic, and it was founded by men who hated Democracy with a passion, recognizing it for what it is, the tyranny of the majority. In contrast, a Republic the rule of law, and protects the rights of the smallest and most important minority, the individual.
“It has been observed by an honorable gentleman, that a pure democracy, if it were practicable, would be the most perfect government. Experience has proved, that no position in politics is more false than this. The ancient democracies, in which the people themselves deliberated, never possessed one feature of good government. Their very character was tyranny; their figure deformity.”
-Alexander Hamilton,
Speech to Congress, June 21, 1788
The Constitution provided a house of the people they could elect congressmen to. It had a Senate the state legislatures appointed through various processes to prevent the circus we watch every election. Laws had to pass both the House and the Senate, so people had veto power but the mob could not get its way by ballot alone. The electoral college was also designed as a barrier to Democracy and the madness we see now in directly elected presidential campaigning.
Lyceum Round-Table #7: Republics and Democracies Reply
Todd Lewis is joined by Right Ruminations, Keith Preston and Swithun Dobson to discuss Hoppe’s conflation of Republics and Democracies and the broader political debate on how they relate to each other.
Precious Metals Dealer, Sound Money Group Rank the 50 States’ Gold and Silver Policies Reply
Charlotte, NC (December 2, 2019) – “Is Your State Destroying Your Money?” asks the Sound Money Defense League and Money Metals Exchange with the release of the 2019 Sound Money Index.
The Sound Money Index is the first index of its kind, ranking all 50 states using twelve different criteria to determine which states maintain the most pro- and anti-sound money policies in the country.
The Sound Money Index evaluates each state’s sales and income tax policies involving precious metals, whether a state recognizes the monetary role of gold and silver under the U.S. Constitution, whether a state holds pension, reserves, or debt denominated in gold or silver, whether a state has imposed precious metal dealer/investor harassment laws, and other criteria.
Wyoming, Texas, and Utah emerged as the best states on sound money in the nation, and South Dakota, Alaska, New Hampshire, and Washington are not far behind.
Maine, Tennessee, Ohio, and Kentucky joined Vermont, Arkansas, and New Jersey as the worst states on this issue.
Money Metals Exchange, a national precious metals dealer recently ranked “Best in the USA,” and the Sound Money Defense League, a national, non-partisan sound money advocacy group joined together to produce the authoritative ranking
“Federal policy and the privately owned banking cartel known as the Federal Reserve System are the root causes of inflation, instability, and currency devaluation,” noted Jp Cortez, Policy Director at the Sound Money Defense League.
“However, there are steps states can take to protect their citizens from the ill effects of America’s unbacked paper money system, and many of them are taking those steps,” Cortez noted.
Dennis Kucinich, Tulsi Gabbard and the Slow Death of the Democratic Delusion 2
By Nicky Reid aka Comrade Hermit
Exile in Happy Valley
As a practice, I despise both major parties with a passion usually reserved for religious zealotry. But I’m not ashamed, even as a lifelong leftist, to admit that I hate the Democrats most of all. In fact, it’s precisely because I’m a leftist that I hate the Democrats most of all. The only thing worse than a racist horde of war hungry zillionaires is a racist horde of war hungry zillionaires who try to pass them selves off as the high handed voice of egalitarianism. It’s like having Strom Thurmond throw on a Rasta wig and wax poetic about how he understands why the n*ggers feel cold and the slum’s got so much soul (compliments to Jello Biafra). It doesn’t exactly make me feel better that I use to be a member of that limp-wristed blackface fraternity.
But it was 2008, the scoundrels of the Bush junta were on their way out the revolving door to cushy no-show jobs in the defense industry and there was one candidate left in that party that I still believed in, and I’m not talking about Joe Lieberman’s designated black dauphin. Dennis Kucinich was the last of a dying breed. He seemed to have stepped out from a different era, like the long lost munchkin lovechild of George McGovern and Joan Baez. He didn’t just want peace, he wanted revenge against the war machine; 50% cuts in defense spending, shuttering all foreign bases, Nuremberg Tribunals for the retreating Bush junta. He didn’t have a chance in hell and I didn’t give a shit. He was on a crusade that was bigger than any election, and I was willing to swallow my vomit and leave the Green Party to join him.
I look at the ten clown car pileup that is the 2020 Democratic primaries and there is no Dennis Kucinich to be found. Just a multicultural graveyard of hyper-statist partisan corpses. For five fucking minutes we had Mike Gravel’s beautiful crusty old ass, but the glorified carnies who rig the debates quickly erased all signs of his existence until his shallow well ran dry. What we have now is a contest largely between two separate but equally deceptive cliques of creeps. The “Moderates” or, as I call them, the Obama Revivalists, and the “Revolutionaries” who are really little more than blood and butter social democrats (to quote the late Dr. Thompson, “You people voted for Humphrey… and you killed Jesus!)
The Obama Revivalists have to be the most comically delusional conglomeration of convoluted cunts since Obama himself sold half my generation on an 8 year extension of the Bush regime with Hopelandic gobbledygook lifted straight from a Chicken Noodle Soup paperback he found at the airport. The basic pitch of these neoliberal imbeciles, who only the Clinton News Network would have the gal to call “Realists”, can be summed up by Cher’s tattooed ass on a battleship, ‘If we could just turn back time. If we could just find a way…’ They seem to all suffer under the grand-mal delusion that all of America’s woes began in February 2017, and just 8 more years of Obama (or 24 of Bush) can cure the American Empire of an authoritarian collapse that has been a longtime coming. Donald Trump is not the problem, he is the symptom. Voting for one of these mass media approved Obama Revivalists would be the equivalent of treating a brain tumor with a shotgun blow to the head.
Attack the Source: The Establishment Loyalist's Favorite Online Tactic Reply
By Caitlin Johnstone
Consortium News
If you’re skeptical of western power structures and you’ve ever engaged in online political debate for any length of time, the following has definitely happened to you.
You find yourself going back and forth with one of those high-confidence, low-information establishment types who’s promulgating a dubious mainstream narrative, whether that be about politics, war, Julian Assange, or whatever. At some point they make an assertion which you know to be false–publicly available information invalidates the claim they’re making.
“I’ve got them now!” you think to yourself, if you’re new to this sort of thing. Then you share a link to an article or video which makes a well-sourced, independently verifiable case for the point you are trying to make.
Then, the inevitable happens.
“LMAO! That outlet!” they scoff in response. “That outlet is propaganda/fake news/conspiracy theory trash!”
Or something to that effect. You’ll encounter this tactic over and over and over again if you continually engage in online political discourse with people who don’t agree with you. It doesn’t matter if you’re literally just linking to an interview featuring some public figure saying a thing you’d claimed they said. It doesn’t matter if you’re linking to a WikiLeaks publication of a verified authentic document. Unless you’re linking to CNN/Fox News (whichever fits the preferred ideology of the establishment loyalist you’re debating), they’ll bleat “fake news!” or “propaganda!” or “Russia!” as though that in and of itself magically invalidates the point you’re trying to make.
And of course it doesn’t. What they are doing is called attacking the source, also known as an ad hominem, and it’s a very basic logical fallacy.
