O/T:- Trump Presidency 2.0 [hic sunt dracones]

[the_anticlough]

But it?s all part of the corporate (ie., right agenda): get people arguing over what toilet they can and can?t use while you gut their health care, slash their wages and benefits, and provide diplomatic cover for genocide and the usual regime change operations on behalf of oil companies and the MIC.

Yes, the above can't be repeated often enough - divide and rule ascended to whole new levels with this trick.

Superb couple of pages of posts here, great reading, just when it seemed like NCM had lost it

[Med Pie]

I'd also add that all nuance has been lost from political conversations. People seem to jump to the worst conclusions and brand others as this or that, partly because it makes their opposition to certain ideas easier to maintain, but also because of this obsession with everything being about sides.

So if someone is concerned about the impact of high immigration on public services and societal cohesion, they are "racist" or "far right". Likewise, if someone thinks Trump is a pathological liar and deeply flawed human being but a better option overall than Kamala Harris, they are "far right" and "love Trump". No doubt the same happens to those left of centre too.

What about people like me who think both of those things?

[SmiffyPie]

Is this man a complete muppet?

"But US President Donald Trump said he was "disappointed" by Ukraine's reaction.

Speaking to reporters at Mar-A-Lago, he was asked by the BBC what his message was to Ukrainians who might feel betrayed.

"I hear that they're upset about not having a seat, well, they've had a seat for three years and a long time before that. This could have been settled very easily," he said.

After the meeting between US and Russian officials in Saudi Arabia, Trump said he was "much more confident".

"They were very good. Russia wants to do something. They want to stop the savage barbarianism."

"I think I have the power to end this war," he said."

[BigFatPie]

Is this man a complete muppet?

"But US President Donald Trump said he was "disappointed" by Ukraine's reaction.

Speaking to reporters at Mar-A-Lago, he was asked by the BBC what his message was to Ukrainians who might feel betrayed.

"I hear that they're upset about not having a seat, well, they've had a seat for three years and a long time before that. This could have been settled very easily," he said.

After the meeting between US and Russian officials in Saudi Arabia, Trump said he was "much more confident".

"They were very good. Russia wants to do something. They want to stop the savage barbarianism."

"I think I have the power to end this war," he said."

People think Putins got dirt on him but probably the reality is Russias a gangster state and he admires gangsters and bullies.

[andy6025]

I don't recognise the categories you've described, personally. If we take Corbyn as the epitome of a true socialist, he was very active in both of the areas you mentioned.

I would agree with you that there are two camps on the left - one obsessed with identity politics and one much less interested in it, perhaps even against it - but I don't think we can somehow exempt socialists from the recent lunacy. Identifying and combating perceived or real discrimination and oppression is an integral part of being a socialist, so I think it's natural for many socialists to be front and centre on these kinds of issues.

I don't know exactly what I would call the two groups instead. Maybe intellectual left (using the word intellectual extremely lightly) and traditional left?

Falling back on clich?s, intellectual left would be the blue haired self-defined activist who is terminally online calling everyone a racist and proposing Maoism, abolishing borders, or defunding the police, all from a comfortable suburban bedroom.

Traditional left would be old school industrial heartland Labour /Democrat voters (red wall in UK / rust belt in US) who want their government to reopen their factory / mine.

Actually, maybe utopian left is a better description than intellectual left?

I think you might have missed this part:

These categories are often confused because in the context of modern politics the socialists and liberals are often allied with one another on most issues, but by no means are they necessarily so.

[since41]

Is this man a complete muppet?

"But US President Donald Trump said he was "disappointed" by Ukraine's reaction.

Speaking to reporters at Mar-A-Lago, he was asked by the BBC what his message was to Ukrainians who might feel betrayed.

"I hear that they're upset about not having a seat, well, they've had a seat for three years and a long time before that. This could have been settled very easily," he said.

After the meeting between US and Russian officials in Saudi Arabia, Trump said he was "much more confident".

"They were very good. Russia wants to do something. They want to stop the savage barbarianism."

"I think I have the power to end this war," he said."

Thou 'll get the sen locked up youth insulting muppets like that

[Jampie]

The fork does he mean "they had a seat"? They had a seat with their invaders and could have surrendered at any time?

It's going to be a very long four years isn't it

[andy6025]

And this is I think why mainstream parties are losing support and minor parties are gaining it, I think. The major parties don't represent us anymore. They represent their corporate sponsors and pay lip service to the bare minimum of the ideals they used to. That and a generational shift where people don't identify as as "labor" or "liberal/tory" voter for life anymore.

Combine that with the recent inflation episode (now recovering) and you would expect incumbent governments to take a beating at the polls at the moment.

I don't fully understand why the media have gone so bonkers. I think part of it is that Trump stories get clicks like nobody's business. Part of it is that they can't get traditional advertising revenue like they used to, and it's ALL about getting clicks now. Extreme views get clicks. Stuff that makes people angry gets clicks. Rational news does not. Putting things in context does not. Sensible, meaningful headlines are out, clickbait, rage-inducing nonsense is in. And so their primary responsibility - to make sure we're informed of actually relevant facts and context - goes unfulfilled.

I don't see a big conspiracy. Like a cabal of wealthy/powerful people at the top who planned all this. Nobody planned this BS. The status quo evolved chaotically like everything else. But those in power (real power) now benefit from it, so they're happy to maintain it as is. Or even accentuate the parts that protect them. But I don't think this is wise. This is far from a stable model. Trump is far from the last "burn it all down" populist candidate. There will be more. People will vote for destruction and chaos over a status quo that's slowly strangling the life out of them.

Sorry for the barely-coherent rant.

I think one possible reason that the media has gone so bonkers is the same reason that our main stream political parties have gone bonkers:

They don’t want to address, or even acknowledge, the very serious issues that are afflicting the majority of people in the west: falling living standards, chronic indebtedness, dropping life expectancies, rampant corruption, inflation significantly higher than the CPIs are reporting and that have long overtaken wage increases, housing prices that are far out of reach for anybody other than a small and shrinking percentage of the population, falling health care services, crumbling infrastructure, unaffordable public transportation, a safety net that is entirely inadequate and getting worse, skyrocketing energy costs, etc., etc.

These are all economic issues that the media left and main stream party left (ie. Labour, Democrat, Liberal, etc.) have long disavowed themselves of addressing. Sure, they might tinker a bit around the edges of them, but it is much easier to raise fund raise and be part of the Davos team if you instead drop buzz words like inclusion, diversity, democracy (and the supposed threat to it) safe spaces, and other things of that nature. Everyone and everything else is either ignored entirely or labelled as outdated, chilling, and/or toxic.

They do this because they are all part and party to the same club. In political circles they are the uni-party (or the war party as some prefer to call them). In the msm circus, they are all owned by the small handful that own everything, and they tightly gatekeep who can get into their ranks. They are the ones that got us wondering and debating whether or not Saddam Hussein has/had weapons of mass destruction, as if it was somehow a given that if they did America had the right to invade, despite America and the UK having plenty that nobody seemed bothered about. Have we not noticed that, despite being from supposedly different companies, the msm all even use the same catchy phrases and puns as one another in relation to any particular new item?

We already know, and just seem to shrug about it, that the intelligence agencies or various state departments often vet what the media can and cannot say, or that these same alphabet soup agencies have a direct line to social media companies in order to remove content and ban accounts that do not coincide and conform with official narratives. We were not allowed to speculate that Covid leaked from a lab (despite there being one next door from the wet market it supposedly sprang from). If you did question anything in relation to Covid then you were pegged as an imminent threat to society that somehow believed that our earth is flat and controlled by lizard-people.

Some of them are the fine upstanding citizens that visited Epstein island. They easily have enough money to buy elections. They can take the stock market up or down in a whim. In America, their insider trading is perfectly legal and often bragged about. Everywhere else it is just overlooked by the relevant authorities. In the rare cases that they do ever do go to prison, they have special luxury ones built especially for them. They have different school systems for themselves so their children all meet one another and intermarry.

And the list goes on and on until I get tired of writing and you have long gotten tired of reading.

So I will end it here.

In short, the msm are all bonkers because they are in the same club as their owners. That clubs existence is threatened if we start talking about the state of our old age care home facilities, our wages, or anything economic that is actually relevant. So they instead get us arguing about bullsh?*t. And we fall for here.

There was actually an election here in Canada around a decade ago that hinged on the question of whether or not an immigrant woman should be allowed to wear a face covering (hijab) when she took her citizenship loyalty oath. Seriously… that is what our media focused on. And boy did we eat it up.

[andy6025]

The fork does he mean "they had a seat"? They had a seat with their invaders and could have surrendered at any time?

It's going to be a very long four years isn't it

I think he referring to the negotiations that took place in Istanbul.

[DoddingtonPie]

I think one possible reason that the media has gone so bonkers is the same reason that our main stream political parties have gone bonkers:

They don’t want to address, or even acknowledge, the very serious issues that are afflicting the majority of people in the west: falling living standards, chronic indebtedness, dropping life expectancies, rampant corruption, inflation significantly higher than the CPIs are reporting and that have long overtaken wage increases, housing prices that are far out of reach for anybody other than a small and shrinking percentage of the population, falling health care services, crumbling infrastructure, unaffordable public transportation, a safety net that is entirely inadequate and getting worse, skyrocketing energy costs, etc., etc.

These are all economic issues that the media left and main stream party left (ie. Labour, Democrat, Liberal, etc.) have long disavowed themselves of addressing. Sure, they might tinker a bit around the edges of them, but it is much easier to raise fund raise and be part of the Davos team if you instead drop buzz words like inclusion, diversity, democracy (and the supposed threat to it) safe spaces, and other things of that nature. Everyone and everything else is either ignored entirely or labelled as outdated, chilling, and/or toxic.

They do this because they are all part and party to the same club. In political circles they are the uni-party (or the war party as some prefer to call them). In the msm circus, they are all owned by the small handful that own everything, and they tightly gatekeep who can get into their ranks. They are the ones that got us wondering and debating whether or not Saddam Hussein has/had weapons of mass destruction, as if it was somehow a given that if they did America had the right to invade, despite America and the UK having plenty that nobody seemed bothered about. Have we not noticed that, despite being from supposedly different companies, the msm all even use the same catchy phrases and puns as one another in relation to any particular new item?

We already know, and just seem to shrug about it, that the intelligence agencies or various state departments often vet what the media can and cannot say, or that these same alphabet soup agencies have a direct line to social media companies in order to remove content and ban accounts that do not coincide and conform with official narratives. We were not allowed to speculate that Covid leaked from a lab (despite there being one next door from the wet market it supposedly sprang from). If you did question anything in relation to Covid then you were pegged as an imminent threat to society that somehow believed that our earth is flat and controlled by lizard-people.

Some of them are the fine upstanding citizens that visited Epstein island. They easily have enough money to buy elections. They can take the stock market up or down in a whim. In America, their insider trading is perfectly legal and often bragged about. Everywhere else it is just overlooked by the relevant authorities. In the rare cases that they do ever do go to prison, they have special luxury ones built especially for them. They have different school systems for themselves so their children all meet one another and intermarry.

And the list goes on and on until I get tired of writing and you have long gotten tired of reading.

So I will end it here.

In short, the msm are all bonkers because they are in the same club as their owners. That clubs existence is threatened if we start talking about the state of our old age care home facilities, our wages, or anything economic that is actually relevant. So they instead get us arguing about bullsh?*t. And we fall for here.

There was actually an election here in Canada around a decade ago that hinged on the question of whether or not an immigrant woman should be allowed to wear a face covering (hijab) when she took her citizenship loyalty oath. Seriously… that is what our media focused on. And boy did we eat it up.

Good post and I agree entirely

[slack_pie]

Good post and I agree entirely

Seconded.

[Jampie]

Yeah, solid stuff Andy. I might quibble with you on some details, but why bother? In broad strokes you're bang-on, and arguing over the details is exactly what they want us to do.

[Mapperleypie]

Difficult to argue with much of that Andy.

The powers that be would rather the plebs argue amongst each other about the square root of f-all whilst they help themselves. Throw some scraps of disinformation into the mix and they can go about increasing their wealth and power with little to no pushback whilst others suffer the consequences.

[SmiffyPie]

Words fail me.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c36wn949jxno

[Elite_Pie]

Words fail me.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c36wn949jxno

I've read that today with utter disbelief.

Trump has to be be one of the most vile human beings on the planet.