America Moving to Left ???

 MAGA Red and other right wingnuts are now proclaiming that America has been "moving to the left."

That's funny, because the America I live in has been steadily moving to the right all my life.  This has been analyzed many times: the rightward shifting of The Overton Window of mainstream acceptible politics is described in a large number of books.  Many have observed we still live in The Reagan Era with both parties emulating Reagan with one twist or another, but not really fundamentally changing matters.

In my lifetime, the New Deal era started by FDR gave way to the Neoliberal/Neoconservative era, which is clearly much farther to the right.

President Johnson unveiled the War on Poverty, Nixon unveiled the War on Drugs, and Clinton unveiled the War on the War on Poverty, ending the most fundamental aid program, AFDC, which guaranteed income support for needy mothers, and replacing it with a cheap limited duration and highly contingent substitute.

One key metric of social democracy (now called "leftist" because we've moved so far to the right) is union membership, which has been declining all my life.  Likewise, income inequality has been increasing all my life, to the extent that we now live in a second Gilded Age reflected by our current President who likes gold toilets.

Under Biden, universities were pressured by the US government to lock up students.  Trump took this one step further by threatening the funding of the universities unless they make even more draconian policies.

An apparent disciple of Ayn Rand has been given free reign to hack away at US government programs that he doesn't like.  It's worth noting that Naziism was most fundamentally about the elimination of socialism (European Jews were targeted because socialism was believed to have come from them).

We've moved so far the the right that fascism is now centrist in America.

We can only choose how much and how far, and with Trump Americans are going to see good and deep right now.

Fighting Darkness

The best way to fight darkness is with light.  (Heat isn't quite as much helpful.)

First thing, Fascists strangle expression of opposing views for that reason, and we must not let them.

Sadly, it's hard to light a single candle when faced with the high powered wind blowers of mass media.

AI is the perfect Fascist tool

 One of the first big uses of AI in society was the targeting of Palestinians in Gaza for assassination.  Hundreds of doctors, journalists, and others were targeted, part of the overall effort to make Gaza unlivable for Palestinians going forwards.

Apparently the Trump project to crack down on critics of Israel is also using AI, a fact briefly mentioned in this report by Jonathan Cook.  We can imagine AI has become useful in cracking down on critics of Israel in Germany and UK as well, whose prosecutions point to social media postings.

With AI, robots can scour people's social media accounts, with little fear that the AI itself might change it's mind or learn from the writing of the people it is reading.

So, by just "obeying orders," it's the perfect fascist tool.  If it's unable to make the fine distinctions that a well educated and thoughtful person might be able to do, that's a plus in these applications.

The Tesla Implosion

 Fairly straight up version from a marketing guy.

"Autopsy" from a sustainability guy.

From about 2011-2017 I was sure a Tesla was going to be my next car.  Then the Model 3 (on which I had purchased a "reservation") was very disappointing to me.  No dashboard, back window too high, and too wide for my garage.  By then I was becoming more and more disappointed that Tesla was not ushering in a new era of EV's, like a Henry Ford, but only making increasingly cranky statement pieces for whitewashing the unsustainable lifestyles of the rich people who buy them.

Back in 2009, I was impressed that Musk had done what others had long said was impossible: and EV with a range similar to a gasoline powered car.  It wasn't really that it was impossible, but there weren't enough moneybags to invest in it.  Somehow Elon got that done, so I respected him a lot.

Now I've lost all respect.  Elon Musk is Ayn Rand in drag and Hitler with a chainsaw.  Other people had actually designed the Tesla, all the ideas (and in all his other companies) were nothing new, Musk was simply able to sell them better to the corrupt and stupid capitalists of the western world.

And EV's aren't The Answer anyway, perhaps not even a help if not employed to actually reduce overall environmental destruction.  So what if one's car doesn't produce greenhouse gasses but the new infrastructure to build them toasts the planet?

The key point of being sustainable is to give up everything excessive.  And Teslas are full of excessive.

  

Pivoting to China and World War 3

 A decade ago, Professor John Mearsheimer was calling for greater peace with Russia and preparing for war with China instead.

Going back even further, around 1969 Gore Vidal also called the US fixation on fighting Russia stupid.  He argued for allying with Russia to keep China from taking over.  China was clearly going to have the top position eventually, and other major powers needed to ally ensure they wouldn't dominate.

About three decades ago for a brief moment we had something like peace (and lots of trade) with both Russia and China.  That started disappearing as soon as the Clinton Administration started reneging on the previous administration's promises not to expand NATO...  Then NATO sponsored wars in the former Yugoslavia, Libya, Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Ukraine.  The US sponsored Color Revolutions in many countries--including 2 in Ukraine because the first didn't run as intended--to oust Russian-friendly governments in Russia's backyards and replace them with highly dependent, corrupt, sold-out, and mostly unpopular western client states.  And here we are, at the precipice of WW3. 

 Brian Berletic argues the Trump Administration is not making the change (a reset with Russia) that it advertised and many of its fans believe (and that Maga Blue Democrats wrongly deplore).  Instead, he shows what the Trump Administration is doing is really just a continuation of previous policies.  They are unloading and outsourcing the proxy war against Russia in Ukraine to Europe, in order to free resources for war (and Berletic emphasizes that the moves make it clear that US has hot war in mind, not just economic war or cold war) with China.

So, yes, WW3.

The West's Moral Authority to Disparage Putin

None whatsoever, according to former UK diplomat Craig Murray.

I agree completely.  Craig states the basic case:

The plain truth is that the Western powers interfere far more in other countries than Russia does, through massive sponsorship of NGOs, journalists and politicians, much of which is open and some of which is covert.

I would have also explicitly mentioned the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, and Syria, and the sanctions the US levies and enforces on many countries.  In the last 30 years alone, many millions of people have died as a result of US foreign wars, weapons, and sanctions.  (I've seen one believable estimate of 10 million.)  Nothing Russia or China have done in this epoch has come close, and this pattern holds all the way back to the end of WWII when US fought big wars in Korea, Vietnam and other countries, and funded 80 deadly coups also responsible for the deaths of millions.  US has been #1 in deaths from war, sanctions, and coups for some time now.

Craig also rejects a claim many of my friends nearly always make:

There is simply no evidence of Putin having territorial goals beyond Ukraine and the tiny enclaves of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. It is perfectly fair to characterise Putin’s territorial expansion over two decades as limited to the reincorporation of threatened Russian-speaking minority districts in ex-Soviet states.

That it is worth a world war and unlimited dead over who should be mayor of the ethnic Russian and Russian-speaking city of Lugansk is not entirely plain to me.

The notion that Putin is about to attack Poland or Finland is utter nonsense. The idea that the Russian army, which has struggled to subdue small and corrupt, if Western-backed, Ukraine, has the ability to attack Western Europe itself is plainly impractical.

Then, Craig points to the obvious inconsistency between how Russia is disparaged and Israel is defended:

Strangely, the same “logic” is not applied to Benjamin Netanyahu. It is not argued by neoliberals that his annexations of Gaza, the West Bank and Southern Lebanon mean he must have further territorial ambitions. In fact, they even fail to note Netanyahu’s aggressions at all, or portray them as “defensive” – the same argument advanced much more credibly by Putin in Ukraine, but which neoliberals there outright reject.

Many Zionists including members of current Israeli government have recently made aspirational visions of a Greater Israel which not only includes Gaza and other parts of Palestine, but Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, and beyond.  Craig doesn't venture that far in this post.

Then Craig states how the current European chest thumping looks in Russia:

The economies of Western Europe are being realigned onto a war footing, led by the utterly transformed European Union. The enthusiastic proponents of genocide in Gaza who head the EU now are channelling an atavistic hereditary hatred of Russia.

The foreign policy of the EU is propelled by Kaja Kallas and Ursula von der Leyen. The fanatical Russophobia these two are spreading, and their undisguised desire to escalate the war in Ukraine, cannot help but remind Russians that they come from nations which were fanatically Nazi.

To Russians this feels a lot like 1941. With Europe in the grip of full-on anti-Russian propaganda, the background to Trump’s attempt to broker a peace deal is troubled and Russia is understandably wary.

Then he states the basic case where we concur:

But Putin is not Hitler. It is only through the blinkers of patriotism that Putin appears to be a worse person than the Western leaders behind massive invasion and death all around the globe, who now seek to extend war with Russia.

First Amendment Rights

While most legal experts I follow are adamant that the Constitution explicitly (and with many Precedents) applies to all People in the USA--not just Citizens--and that includes the Bill of Rights*, it seems that the Trump Administration is not the first to test this.

 (*I love how Judge Nap's eyes grow very big when he emphasizes this point.)

It was the Biden Administration which argued that Julian Assange did not have First Ammendment rights to free speech.  When UK judges questioned if this wouldn't violate the principle of non-discrimination in international human rights agreements, in 2015, the Biden administration quickly settled the Assange case rather than answer the question.

But many wonder why Khalil was chosen when there were surely much better cases around where protestors had actually been accused or convicted of a crime.  I guessed that it was because Khalil was "one of ours" who was politicized (aka radicalized) by the Genocide in Gaza.  It turns out, I was right.  Khalil worked for the British government in toppling Assad (as shown in Craig Murray's article linked immediately above).  He wasn't a spy but an asset used by British Intelligence because of his local knowledge and connections.  He was likely apolitical and on the track to a much better economic life for himself in the West.  Murray lays out two other possibilities, including that he might have been a double agent all along, but finds the idea that he was politicized by the Gaza Genocide to be the most credible.