Tuesday, December 20, 2016
Friday, December 16, 2016
Comey, not Putin, "Hacked" the election
FBI Director Comey influenced the 2016 election more than just about anyone by holding a special press conference in October about Hillary Clinton claiming "new evidence" with regards to Hillary Clinton's email server when she was Secretary of State, "new evidence" which was apparently not very important because the whole matter was dropped not long later. Comey is a Republican hard liner so it is not surprising he would attempt to influence the election to favor the Republican candidate. To say he is a republican hard liner is just about the same as to say he is a fascist. The constant refrain about Hillary's email server was heard throughout the election at Trump rallies. It was the #1 issue that was used (along with the phony Benghazi "scandal") to claim Hillary was a lawbreaker and a liar.
Meanwhile, the only specific allegations heard so far about Putin involve a much earlier event, the release of DNC emails through Wikileaks in the spring. These revelations were part what should have been an important part of news, that the DNC was not operating in good faith and fairness, but were trying, in every way they could, to crush the Sanders candidacy so the corporate candidate Hillary could have won.
Sadly, this news did not get very far (the mainstream media never mentioned the contents of the leaked emails, and only made a story that the leaking had occurred, even then making it sound like a heinous act with Hillary the victim) and had almost no effect on the primaries. People who might have been concerned were Sanders supporters who already had much evidence that this was happening. On the other side, as far as many Hillary supporters were concerned, the DNC was doing the right thing by clearing the way for the candidate they believed (albeit probably wrongly) had the best chance of winning.
So these revelations had almost no effect on the primaries (so the DNC could keep on stealing the nomination for Hillary) and by the time of the general election, they were almost completely forgotten, and they wouldn't have been very relevant to that either.
Now the National Insecurity types who are pushing the deliberate smear about Putin "hacking" the election (based essentially only on the Wikileaks release of DNC emails) are not really concerned about dumping Trump. This whole blast of allegations is really designed to do just 3 things:
(1) Continue the war against whistleblowers, like Assange, Manning, and Snowden, who have heroically risked their careers and lives to bring important truths to the public (they are all heroes in my book). The leaking of the DNC emails were a Good Thing in my book, real news, regardless of who was behind them.
(2) Continue the Cold War against Russia, which is worth a trillion dollars a year to military contractors and their ilk.
(3) Put Comey off the hook, making the world safe for crypto fascists like him.
This sort of misdirection is extremely common in the reporting of "news" (by organizations tied into the media/military industrial complex). This is precisely how phony memories are manufactured. Now people may come to believe that events that had little to do with the general election results were decisive, and forget about the actually decisive events, like the Comey press conference.
Update: I read one commenter on Friday say that the whole phony hacking thing, as well as the current relentless barrage of media about Putin's atrocities, etc [we've killed millions in the past 15 years, how many have they killed? we've bombed hospitals, entire cities like Faluja, I'm sorry, but my over outrage over them will have to wait until they catch up] is to force Putin to make the war with Russia that they thought they had in the bag with Hillary*, and to get the people behind it. (*They might not have, perhaps everything as SOS was just a rouse to get her elected President, and then she'd shut down empire like a peace nik. Just kidding. There was hope enough she would stay clear of actual warfare to vote for her (with Trump looking unpredictably worse or better, sadly more likely worse). But in either case, the drumbeat would begin, the pressure would be applied until the President had to Command the Forces. The Media and Deep State would be applying the same forces, Hillary would not get some kind of pass.)
Many many technical specialists are saying the DNC leaks must have come from a physical transfer, an internal source, not electronic hacking. Among other details, NSA captures all such stuff, and could have known immediately about electronic transfers involving Russia or Russian agents.
And then there's all this hyperventilating about a bit of imporant news that came out, when we pull of military regime changes in countries we don't like. There's no doubt that we are pushing information that suits our interests everywhere, and certainly some of it is phony or crookedly obtained. Where are the saints in this room? Why are we being so hypocritical all of a sudden?
Hypocrisy and the absolutism that it engenders dry the kindling for war.
Jesus Christ said to deal with the log in your own eye before chastising your neighbor's speck.
And we're far from dealing with our own problem--our extension and operation everywhere only makes us less safe. We either perform, support, or protect continuing disasterous (for the recipients) military operations all over, and have done so nearly continuously for decades.
It was our desire to keep Russia out of the Middle east that had led to the current Syrian conflict and many preceding ones. We encouraged protest and resistance, we supported rebel military forces with very deadly weapons, which then ended up in the hands of even more ruthless military forces. It could only have been expected to lead to things that we have seen.
Further comments on December 18: A friend claims the US is not "worse" than Russia. She admits that US actions in Iraq and other places has been horrifying, but wonders how I determine we are worse, since Russia has also performed clear atrocities in many places, such as Checnya and now Syria. So, we're the same, i.e., war criminals.
First, to be clear, I'm thinking about the excess deaths caused by our activities. Excess deaths refer to the full counterfactual, had we taken no actions at all, and what would have been the difference.
In many places, violence has arisen because of actions we've taken which some might not consider "violent" at all. But clearly in many countries we've seeded information and mis-information (as it should be remembered, all information is also disinformation, because no information is complete) to foment regime change, and this has had terrible effects, violence caused, for example, in the efforts of governments towards crushing rebel militias.
By this reckoning, virtually all of the major armed violence in the middle east in the past 40 years has been caused by US actions, even and especially including the currently headline crushing of resistance in Aleppo by Russia and Syria.
We could have predicted that as the consequences of our meddling starting years ago, if not decades.
I'm not alone in assessing that, Pat Buchanan also points to the US history of meddling as the essential cause of recent turmoil in the middle east, including the violence of the retaking of Aleppo.
And then, of course we've done sanctions (sanctions against Iraq in the 1990's alone were said to have killed one million, and that's probably an underestimate...did you hear much about this on the News while it was happening...and that's just one page in the collection of books on our sanctioning activities). We've provided arms to countries (say, Israel is a good example, we give them $3B weapons a year, but our history of giving weapons of all kinds is very long...we gave rifles to Pinochet for example, and most recently arms to "moderate" rebel groups in Syria...what if other countries were openly arming anti-US groups within the US borders?
And then, drone attacks, no-fly-zones (which are essentially shooting ranges) and so on, have killed a large number.
Covert activities of all kinds, leading to violence through the collapse or near collapse of governments.
And then, huge wars, the most memorable having been Vietnam, for no good reason, except intimidating democracy movements in other countries. Iraq and Afghanistan are in that category too (most would concede Iraq had not good reason, but the war in Afghanistan had no justification in international law either, the then-government of Afghanistan promised to cooperate in fair terms with the extradition of bin Laden, and even if they hadn't an action through international system of justice should have been taken).
And I'm sure I'm forgetting things. But since the beginning of the cold war, I think I may have heard numbers as high as 50 million excess deaths caused by US activities.
So on the other hand, what about Russia? Here I see I must have been wrong, most likely the number is in the millions...I'm guessing 25 million or so. So it's only about 2-to-1 greater deaths on our side.
But actually that was under the old Soviet Union, which hasn't existed since 1990. So perhaps we have to only really compare since that time frame.
But this still does include the millions (from both sanctions, war, and occupation, and so on) of deaths in Iraq. And really it also should include the virtually all of the deaths in Libya, Syria, Egypt, and so on, because we were fomenting rebellion from way back, backing rebels, and turning a blind eye to what was being done with our support. And it should include all the deaths of Palestinians, because of both our military hardware support and diplomatic support of Israel.
Meanwhile, wrt Ukraine, I'd count the blame mostly on the US side. Once again, we essentially created the rebellion, armed it, supported it, and so on. The action on the Russian side was actually a counter-attack, more toward restoring the previous order. How does that count? I think generally it counts less, but also it's possible to say that excess deaths may have been caused by both countries.
I'd apply the same rule in Syria. We're responsible for essentially all the excess deaths, we started the mess by fomenting trouble certainly as early as 2003 and perhaps as early as 1946. Russia is responsible for that share of deaths it caused in the counter-attack recently. Our share is greater almost by definition. And there's could be negated by arguments such as saying the violence on the Russian side was for the purpose of defending a sovereign state (Syria), a once greater sovereign state. And on our side, the usual laughable "Freedom and Democracy" (meaning, they weren't following OUR orders). Of course we used as justifications "Chemical Weapons" even when the best evidence suggested it was our chemicals used by rebels. Even if violence is in someway defensible like that, however, it may have still been avoidable by better actions, so it is still excess. Probably the fairest accounting is for all the excess deaths, regardless of the defensibility of the reason.
The argments one hears from within the US (on, say, NPR) would make one almost always believe it was the US actions which are legally and morally justified, not the reverse. But when I look at the map of countries, and my understandings of international laws, and morality, it most often seems, that most actions the US has taken are not legally and morally justified, hardly not a single case I can think of, whereas sometimes the Russian actions are.
Anyway, I still believe, by any fair standard, our level of excess deaths is far greater, though it might not be 200x compared to Russia in the 1991-2016 time frame, possibly as low as 10x.
But then, why not say "we're all the same, war criminals?" Because in saying that, we're not dragging ourselves to the Hague, but we're always suggesting the Russians should be countered, perhaps even in some disruptive or violent way.
And this really gets to the final aspect of the morality of all this. We are morally responsible for our own actions, and not for the actions of others. And we have no moral authority to protest the actions of others, so long as we continue our own, either.
And that's why, we should keep our focus on our own imperial wrongdoing, and work towards stopping it, far and away above being "concerned" about the immoral actions of others.
What is sometimes proposed, is that in some cases (which seem to happen inordinately often wrt US intervention) we have an Obligation to act. But the truth is, we have no obligation to act to further our own interests, to interfere with the legitimate internal decision making of other sovereign states, or to act in any way militarily except through internationally established institutions. Any other action, as we often do, is actually illegal. But because we do it, it's not illegal.
Even wrt these international institutions, the lines are such that military action is almost never a moral or ethical obligation. It may be a moral obligation to accept refugees, especially refugees created by a destabilized region one was the initial and major causative factor for. So in that regards, we are actually morally obligated to accept all Syrian refugees who are not terrorists. But we prefer the non-obligations of making more refugees, by conduction, supporting, and otherwise helping military operations achieve more deaths, displacements, and other damages.
(Actually, it's quite possible that international institutions lack the moral authority to act as well, though I usually presume the UN does, as it does nominally represent all countries.)
The ultimate truth in "can one ever be morally required to act militarily" is boiled down to the simpler question. Can one ultimately be morally required to kill someone else. I believe the answer to that is no.
Meanwhile, the only specific allegations heard so far about Putin involve a much earlier event, the release of DNC emails through Wikileaks in the spring. These revelations were part what should have been an important part of news, that the DNC was not operating in good faith and fairness, but were trying, in every way they could, to crush the Sanders candidacy so the corporate candidate Hillary could have won.
Sadly, this news did not get very far (the mainstream media never mentioned the contents of the leaked emails, and only made a story that the leaking had occurred, even then making it sound like a heinous act with Hillary the victim) and had almost no effect on the primaries. People who might have been concerned were Sanders supporters who already had much evidence that this was happening. On the other side, as far as many Hillary supporters were concerned, the DNC was doing the right thing by clearing the way for the candidate they believed (albeit probably wrongly) had the best chance of winning.
So these revelations had almost no effect on the primaries (so the DNC could keep on stealing the nomination for Hillary) and by the time of the general election, they were almost completely forgotten, and they wouldn't have been very relevant to that either.
Now the National Insecurity types who are pushing the deliberate smear about Putin "hacking" the election (based essentially only on the Wikileaks release of DNC emails) are not really concerned about dumping Trump. This whole blast of allegations is really designed to do just 3 things:
(1) Continue the war against whistleblowers, like Assange, Manning, and Snowden, who have heroically risked their careers and lives to bring important truths to the public (they are all heroes in my book). The leaking of the DNC emails were a Good Thing in my book, real news, regardless of who was behind them.
(2) Continue the Cold War against Russia, which is worth a trillion dollars a year to military contractors and their ilk.
(3) Put Comey off the hook, making the world safe for crypto fascists like him.
This sort of misdirection is extremely common in the reporting of "news" (by organizations tied into the media/military industrial complex). This is precisely how phony memories are manufactured. Now people may come to believe that events that had little to do with the general election results were decisive, and forget about the actually decisive events, like the Comey press conference.
Update: I read one commenter on Friday say that the whole phony hacking thing, as well as the current relentless barrage of media about Putin's atrocities, etc [we've killed millions in the past 15 years, how many have they killed? we've bombed hospitals, entire cities like Faluja, I'm sorry, but my over outrage over them will have to wait until they catch up] is to force Putin to make the war with Russia that they thought they had in the bag with Hillary*, and to get the people behind it. (*They might not have, perhaps everything as SOS was just a rouse to get her elected President, and then she'd shut down empire like a peace nik. Just kidding. There was hope enough she would stay clear of actual warfare to vote for her (with Trump looking unpredictably worse or better, sadly more likely worse). But in either case, the drumbeat would begin, the pressure would be applied until the President had to Command the Forces. The Media and Deep State would be applying the same forces, Hillary would not get some kind of pass.)
Many many technical specialists are saying the DNC leaks must have come from a physical transfer, an internal source, not electronic hacking. Among other details, NSA captures all such stuff, and could have known immediately about electronic transfers involving Russia or Russian agents.
And then there's all this hyperventilating about a bit of imporant news that came out, when we pull of military regime changes in countries we don't like. There's no doubt that we are pushing information that suits our interests everywhere, and certainly some of it is phony or crookedly obtained. Where are the saints in this room? Why are we being so hypocritical all of a sudden?
Hypocrisy and the absolutism that it engenders dry the kindling for war.
Jesus Christ said to deal with the log in your own eye before chastising your neighbor's speck.
And we're far from dealing with our own problem--our extension and operation everywhere only makes us less safe. We either perform, support, or protect continuing disasterous (for the recipients) military operations all over, and have done so nearly continuously for decades.
It was our desire to keep Russia out of the Middle east that had led to the current Syrian conflict and many preceding ones. We encouraged protest and resistance, we supported rebel military forces with very deadly weapons, which then ended up in the hands of even more ruthless military forces. It could only have been expected to lead to things that we have seen.
Further comments on December 18: A friend claims the US is not "worse" than Russia. She admits that US actions in Iraq and other places has been horrifying, but wonders how I determine we are worse, since Russia has also performed clear atrocities in many places, such as Checnya and now Syria. So, we're the same, i.e., war criminals.
First, to be clear, I'm thinking about the excess deaths caused by our activities. Excess deaths refer to the full counterfactual, had we taken no actions at all, and what would have been the difference.
In many places, violence has arisen because of actions we've taken which some might not consider "violent" at all. But clearly in many countries we've seeded information and mis-information (as it should be remembered, all information is also disinformation, because no information is complete) to foment regime change, and this has had terrible effects, violence caused, for example, in the efforts of governments towards crushing rebel militias.
By this reckoning, virtually all of the major armed violence in the middle east in the past 40 years has been caused by US actions, even and especially including the currently headline crushing of resistance in Aleppo by Russia and Syria.
We could have predicted that as the consequences of our meddling starting years ago, if not decades.
I'm not alone in assessing that, Pat Buchanan also points to the US history of meddling as the essential cause of recent turmoil in the middle east, including the violence of the retaking of Aleppo.
And then, of course we've done sanctions (sanctions against Iraq in the 1990's alone were said to have killed one million, and that's probably an underestimate...did you hear much about this on the News while it was happening...and that's just one page in the collection of books on our sanctioning activities). We've provided arms to countries (say, Israel is a good example, we give them $3B weapons a year, but our history of giving weapons of all kinds is very long...we gave rifles to Pinochet for example, and most recently arms to "moderate" rebel groups in Syria...what if other countries were openly arming anti-US groups within the US borders?
And then, drone attacks, no-fly-zones (which are essentially shooting ranges) and so on, have killed a large number.
Covert activities of all kinds, leading to violence through the collapse or near collapse of governments.
And then, huge wars, the most memorable having been Vietnam, for no good reason, except intimidating democracy movements in other countries. Iraq and Afghanistan are in that category too (most would concede Iraq had not good reason, but the war in Afghanistan had no justification in international law either, the then-government of Afghanistan promised to cooperate in fair terms with the extradition of bin Laden, and even if they hadn't an action through international system of justice should have been taken).
And I'm sure I'm forgetting things. But since the beginning of the cold war, I think I may have heard numbers as high as 50 million excess deaths caused by US activities.
So on the other hand, what about Russia? Here I see I must have been wrong, most likely the number is in the millions...I'm guessing 25 million or so. So it's only about 2-to-1 greater deaths on our side.
But actually that was under the old Soviet Union, which hasn't existed since 1990. So perhaps we have to only really compare since that time frame.
But this still does include the millions (from both sanctions, war, and occupation, and so on) of deaths in Iraq. And really it also should include the virtually all of the deaths in Libya, Syria, Egypt, and so on, because we were fomenting rebellion from way back, backing rebels, and turning a blind eye to what was being done with our support. And it should include all the deaths of Palestinians, because of both our military hardware support and diplomatic support of Israel.
Meanwhile, wrt Ukraine, I'd count the blame mostly on the US side. Once again, we essentially created the rebellion, armed it, supported it, and so on. The action on the Russian side was actually a counter-attack, more toward restoring the previous order. How does that count? I think generally it counts less, but also it's possible to say that excess deaths may have been caused by both countries.
I'd apply the same rule in Syria. We're responsible for essentially all the excess deaths, we started the mess by fomenting trouble certainly as early as 2003 and perhaps as early as 1946. Russia is responsible for that share of deaths it caused in the counter-attack recently. Our share is greater almost by definition. And there's could be negated by arguments such as saying the violence on the Russian side was for the purpose of defending a sovereign state (Syria), a once greater sovereign state. And on our side, the usual laughable "Freedom and Democracy" (meaning, they weren't following OUR orders). Of course we used as justifications "Chemical Weapons" even when the best evidence suggested it was our chemicals used by rebels. Even if violence is in someway defensible like that, however, it may have still been avoidable by better actions, so it is still excess. Probably the fairest accounting is for all the excess deaths, regardless of the defensibility of the reason.
The argments one hears from within the US (on, say, NPR) would make one almost always believe it was the US actions which are legally and morally justified, not the reverse. But when I look at the map of countries, and my understandings of international laws, and morality, it most often seems, that most actions the US has taken are not legally and morally justified, hardly not a single case I can think of, whereas sometimes the Russian actions are.
Anyway, I still believe, by any fair standard, our level of excess deaths is far greater, though it might not be 200x compared to Russia in the 1991-2016 time frame, possibly as low as 10x.
But then, why not say "we're all the same, war criminals?" Because in saying that, we're not dragging ourselves to the Hague, but we're always suggesting the Russians should be countered, perhaps even in some disruptive or violent way.
And this really gets to the final aspect of the morality of all this. We are morally responsible for our own actions, and not for the actions of others. And we have no moral authority to protest the actions of others, so long as we continue our own, either.
And that's why, we should keep our focus on our own imperial wrongdoing, and work towards stopping it, far and away above being "concerned" about the immoral actions of others.
What is sometimes proposed, is that in some cases (which seem to happen inordinately often wrt US intervention) we have an Obligation to act. But the truth is, we have no obligation to act to further our own interests, to interfere with the legitimate internal decision making of other sovereign states, or to act in any way militarily except through internationally established institutions. Any other action, as we often do, is actually illegal. But because we do it, it's not illegal.
Even wrt these international institutions, the lines are such that military action is almost never a moral or ethical obligation. It may be a moral obligation to accept refugees, especially refugees created by a destabilized region one was the initial and major causative factor for. So in that regards, we are actually morally obligated to accept all Syrian refugees who are not terrorists. But we prefer the non-obligations of making more refugees, by conduction, supporting, and otherwise helping military operations achieve more deaths, displacements, and other damages.
(Actually, it's quite possible that international institutions lack the moral authority to act as well, though I usually presume the UN does, as it does nominally represent all countries.)
The ultimate truth in "can one ever be morally required to act militarily" is boiled down to the simpler question. Can one ultimately be morally required to kill someone else. I believe the answer to that is no.
Saturday, December 10, 2016
Inequality and Eduation
If perhaps inequality and poverty were not the entire cause of poor educational and life performance, directly and indirectly, it would almost certainly be vastly reduced in a society of vastly reduced inequality and poverty.
If only we could have and arm and eliminate inequality and poverty, which is of course what politicians sometimes do, especially of the conservative streak, or make outrageous claims that unloading tax from the top will somehow cure all, when it typically has the reverse effect, enabling the top to cash out more freely from social investments. So we have fewer factories, and fewer laboratories than we should have, and way more gilded on great mansions.
Well, actually, we could. Poverty and inequality are greatly affected by public policy choices. A modern society requires a large and useful social democratic state. Free healthcare and education for starters (not unknown in the world). Ultimately, there should be nobody unfed, unhoused, uneducated except by truancy.
And how could this be paid for? Well, the USA is the richest country in the history of the world, has incomparable advantages, incomparable resources, many of the world’s smartest people, and an informative history. We spend a vast fortune on a fantastically wasteful imperial enterprise, almost just for the sake of spending the money, and in fact
actual citizens (if not foreign investments) would almost entirely be safer if the whole project were abandoned, and defense became an entirely internal affair, such as building badly needed renewably energy based infrastructure.
actual citizens (if not foreign investments) would almost entirely be safer if the whole project were abandoned, and defense became an entirely internal affair, such as building badly needed renewably energy based infrastructure.
For starters, resume taxing corporations, high incomes, speculative trading. Add to that carbon, offshoring, rents of all kinds. Everything but consumption.
Of course, the trend of the past 36 years is exactly the reverse, and the current scenario is acceleration simultaneously into the sinkhole and over the cliff. And while the democratic socialist approach gained some appeal recently, there has been a longstanding effort of eliminating all such thinking, and mainstream america believes somehow that the source of all their problems will be the cure for it.
This could be reversed by better education, historical and scientific. So maybe the bug is a feature?
Well, there’s another part to this. Are the financial and administrative elite themselves so uneducated as to believe their doing the right thing, that somehow they can continue to live in their isolated sanctums accumulating accounting wealth while the rest of the world collapses? Don’t they understand that true wealth is the ability to create, and that is maximized by having everyone doing their best?
Saturday, November 12, 2016
Political Correctness is bad
Shaming people for speaking their mind, for communicating in the words they know, is hurtful and harmful. And it is capably argued here, that the rise of Trump was because he was so clearly smashing it.
I was pointed to this not by some right winger but from Richard Stallman's Political Notes.
I have never understood this issue until reading this article.
However despite being what one could call a leftist elitist, I've never thought shaming people is a good approach to anything. I have disliked seeing people (and me) shamed as Communists, Socialists, etc. I prefer talking about ideas and principles, not tribes, identifications or labels (though, I can talk about that too, and I would not offended by being called any of the things I just mentioned).
Does the badness of shaming people as a rhetorical technique extend to shaming them for being racist, xenophobic, anti-Jewish, anti-Muslim, misogynistic?
Yes, absolutely.
First, if there isn't an argument, it isn't necessary to always make one. Here I deviate from legions of leftist theorists, but not from practical philosophers.
Second, if there is an argument, one doesn't have to take on the total field. One should argue at the key weakness, which is always a mutually agreeable point, such as all people should have equal rights. Starting from agreement, or close to it, and moving forwards is the only way to argue with anyone. And to even make one small step forwards a day is all that is usually even remotely possible.
Starting from an attack, which shaming is perceived as, one cannot possibly move forwards.
OK, sometimes I may have forgotten this.
I was pointed to this not by some right winger but from Richard Stallman's Political Notes.
I have never understood this issue until reading this article.
However despite being what one could call a leftist elitist, I've never thought shaming people is a good approach to anything. I have disliked seeing people (and me) shamed as Communists, Socialists, etc. I prefer talking about ideas and principles, not tribes, identifications or labels (though, I can talk about that too, and I would not offended by being called any of the things I just mentioned).
Does the badness of shaming people as a rhetorical technique extend to shaming them for being racist, xenophobic, anti-Jewish, anti-Muslim, misogynistic?
Yes, absolutely.
First, if there isn't an argument, it isn't necessary to always make one. Here I deviate from legions of leftist theorists, but not from practical philosophers.
Second, if there is an argument, one doesn't have to take on the total field. One should argue at the key weakness, which is always a mutually agreeable point, such as all people should have equal rights. Starting from agreement, or close to it, and moving forwards is the only way to argue with anyone. And to even make one small step forwards a day is all that is usually even remotely possible.
Starting from an attack, which shaming is perceived as, one cannot possibly move forwards.
OK, sometimes I may have forgotten this.
National Defense should mean National Defense
George Washington had it right: No Foreign Entanglements
Since then, however, James Monroe and Teddy Roosevelt have added some very bad ingredients to US policy, let alone nearly all Presidents since Teddy.
National Defense as provided by the US Government should mean exactly that: National Defense.
It should mean defending US Citizens within the US Borders, and nothing more.
If a US citizen decides to go outside the US borders, that's fine. The US should not be a giant prison. However, once they leave the US Border, they are not entitled to US National Defense. They are entitled to Diplomatic Services when and where those are available, including refuge in a US Embassy, but not a traveling defense shield against any and all threats.
Similarly, the US should not be defending other countries, or even other peoples in other countries, either.
That is not the responsibility of the US, and if the US tries to do it, it will get it wrong. Even if it were to do the impossible, and get everything right, it would still be blamed for doing it wrong, but the fact is, this job is impossible to do correctly for the US, which is the national government of the United States, not the policeman of the world.
This is pretty obvious to most people most of the time, but the US has been way off track for a long time.
In all the time of the existence of the United States of America there has only been one arguable exception: World War II. However, the US did not officially enter WWII until it was attacked, showing that to some degree US planners and US citizens were not far from thinking along these lines.
One problem then was that we hadn't been sticking to anything like neutrality beforehand. When we were attacked by the Japanese, we deserved it. We had already been contributing to the war in a non-neutral way.
While I would agree that WWII can be argued, I would stand on the side of those saying strict neutrality from beginning to end would have been preferable. And providing humanitarian services, such as permitting more Jews to immigrate to the US--that would have been good.
Here I am disagreeing with my favorite documentary movie producer, Oliver Stone, who argues in his historical TV series The Untold History of the USA that not only was US participation in WWII morally and strategically necessary, it was delayed too long.
In my view that US participation in WWII created and essentially guaranteed the uber imperial state we have become ever since, to the detriment of the world and ourselves.
Here I am disagreeing with my favorite documentary movie producer, Oliver Stone, who argues in his historical TV series The Untold History of the USA that not only was US participation in WWII morally and strategically necessary, it was delayed too long.
In my view that US participation in WWII created and essentially guaranteed the uber imperial state we have become ever since, to the detriment of the world and ourselves.
Friday, November 11, 2016
Clintapolcalypse
Trump lost the popular vote by a small margin, but won the small-state-tilted Electoral College by an even smaller margin post hoc; it's easy to see how a few additional votes in a few states could have swung the Electoral College vote to Hillary.
This is the Electoral College working as designed. You can argue about it, and should whenever people speak of a "Mandate" for Trump. He barely squeaked through the system rigged to favor the small-state-preferred candidate, which for at least 100 years if not more has meant the more Republican candidate. Changing the blatantly and deliberately unfair system is another matter, to meaningfully change the system you'd have to get voters in the Red states to agree to the change...another Feature of our Constitution. And it gives them an advantage which they still can claim they need. So I wouldn't personally waste any effort trying to change it. Thank the oligarchs of the late 18th century who wrote the US Constitution. The less-Republican candidates have often gotten sufficient votes to overwhelm this creaky and creepy mechanism many times, and will have to continue doing so for the forseeable future.
And I should add that the system is increasingly rigged by voter restrictions and the like which have the same effect as the Electoral College. So in reality we have rigging on top of rigging. But once again, you need the red states to agree to stop rigging, which of course they won't.
So what happened? According to experts, the answer is that polls failed to show the Trump victory because they generally only consider "likely voters," people with an established voting history. Trump apparently drew in some new folks who hadn't voted recently. Bringing in new voters is generally considered a very good thing, so Trump should be thanked.
It's Hillary who should be blamed and forgotten because, in so many ways, she blew it. She in fact lost the very same "new" voters that Barack Obama brought in during 2008 and 2012.
Hillary took not the least responsibility which many believe she nevertheless had for the financial meltdown of 2008. She was absolutely unreformed and unrepentent about things like the repeal of Glass Steagal and the de-regulation of financial deriviates that were performed during her husband's administration (which many including me believe she was thickly involved with, probably even the ultimate boss). Larry Summers, who was a key architect of the financial deforms (by all reports the "bully" who helped push them through) was riding the Clinton bandwagon presumably as the next Treasury Secretary or something.
Hillary was also mostly unreformed and repentant about NAFTA, GATT, and the like. She relucantly distanced herself from TPP (which she had helped negotiatate) without any general critique of things like that (which I can easily provide: Go read Jamie Galbraith's book Predator State, it is NOT untutored to be highly opposed to such things, and the smartest and most caring people should be opposed to them In Principle). Meanwhile, in the greatest display of political deafness ever, Obama kept pushing for TPP and was set to push TPP into law during the lame duck session, freeing Hillary of any of the blame for it. Obviously it was more important to Obama to please his corporate backers than to see the Democrats win the next election.
Hillary was unreformed and unrepentant about her regime change boosterism and the enormous damage it caused, which most people in the USA still do not understand. The US promoted unrest throughout the entire middle east going at least back to 2003 if not 1946 by supporting anti-government groups throughout the region. The Arab Spring was a US sponsored thing and probably not much would have happened without US support. This was bad enough, but in some cases, notably Libya we went further and actually militarily engaged those governments. That led to collapse of legitimate governments, creating the vacuum which strengthened groups like ISIS and especially ISIS. Finally, Benghazi was used as a weapons depot to gather up weapons (some illegal) from the Libyan conflict and ship them over to Syria, where we had another government destruction operation in progress. All this and far more was going on under the strong arms of Hillary Clinton.
The result is what we see today, millions upon millions of refugees and broken lives and deaths. THAT is what Hillary had already done, years before running for President where she would likely do far more.
Here I'm applying the "you break it, you bought it" principle. Sure, there were other actors involved who in some cases were actually the ones killing or threatening people. But if we had not provided the gunpowder and sparks, the whole disaster would have never happened, millions of lives would have not been lost.
The upshot is clear: Don't Go Out And Break Things!!! And don't say you weren't warned by me. The best Foreign Policy is the Prime Directive. Do Not Interfere. Then, and only then, can you not be blamed for an entire disaster. This is intuitive to most people ("let them run their own country") but never has been for US Imperials. We Must Save the world, by sending them leaflets and guns.
And there's more which Hillary was unrepentant about. The Welfare Deform of 1996, which she boosted. The Crime Bill, which decimated black communities. Famously, Hillary made speeches about "Superpredators." Perhaps no wonder that, in the end, she lost much of the new black vote Obama had secured in 2008 and 2012. Democratic voting was WAY down in 2016. And you can't blame the Greens, their vote was down too.
Add to all this, Hillary wasn't really campaigning for anything new. As far as most people could correctly see, it was just a continuation of the Clinton-Bush-Obama policies, which have not done well inside the USA and far worse in the imperial sphere.
Instead, Hillary was going to win, HAD to win, ONLY because her opponent was a slimy misogynist bigot, and, of course, we can't let people like that into the White House (conveniently forgetting that most of the previous occupants of that residence have been precisely like that--including the sometimes revered Woodrow Wilson, the "intelligent person's" liberal).
The Media grabbed on to the least shred of Trump's misogyny and bigotry and played it to the max. Every drunk screaming at a Trump fest became instantly a national celebrity showing how bad Trump was (even though Trump would not ever have sponsored such idiocy, he had to put up with it). (A special note wrt the "anti-semitic" shouter. Trump would certainly not have wanted this, it was a form of heckling, and I personally believe the shouter knew this and did it deliberately to discredit Trump. Key players in Trump's campaign were Jews, including his biggest backer Adelson, his daughter, and son-in-law. Sadly this also means we can't expect any progress for Palestinians, and probably the reverse.)
Some people weren't getting the media programming, however. Including a majority of white women who voted for Trump. Including blacks who didn't bother to vote. Including a fair number of latinos in swing states who voted for Trump. If Trump really was as bad as many gasped, would votes have gone like this?
My friends and relatives haven't gotten over this. I doubt they will ever blame Clinton as much as I do.
The Neoliberal Democratic Party created by the Clintons in 1992 was immensely unpopular from the start. The Democratic Congressional majorities which had existed since 1932 evaporated in the first Neoliberal mid-term of 1994. Newt Gingrich rose to power in the House, then G.W.B to the White House.
And now, the Neoliberal Democratic Party has lost it all at the federal level, the Presidency, the House, the Senate, and currently just evenly balanced on the Court.
As Thomas Frank writes in all his books, Democrats should abandon Neoliberalism. It hasn't worked in any way except raising useless campaign funds from Wall Street.
And that means abandoning the remake of the Democratic Party the Clintons completed in 1992 (actually, Jimmy Carter was the first Neoliberal Democratic President, because of deregulation and Volker).
The Clintons were a pair of spies aimed to destroy or at least de-radicalize the anti-war movement in the early 1970's. Bill Clinton traveled through Europe without a dime of his own from one anti-war convention to another, sometimes staying in the most prestigious hotels, almost certainly on the CIA's dime, a nobody from nowhere curiously enabled to meet all the key players. He never actually fulfilled the Fulbright scholarship he got through political insiders. Hillary speecified Democratic neoconservatism in her famous 1970 commencement address, cutely cutting out the radical movements, and praising the virtues of "humanitarian interventionism." After gaining the attention of the neoconservative establishment of the time, including Henry Kissinger (who she has continued to admire...even after we know so much about Cambodia, Chile, and his other disasters) then rose quickly in Washington power circles to become a chief investigator in the Watergate affair, where she became one of the few people ever to hear the most secret tape, the tape that even discusses the Kennedy assassination. The Clintons then parlayed that first round of anti-radical skulduggery into actual government power, once again using their chameleon skill at looking-like-liberals to undermine the liberal Democratic party. If you listened carefully, you can tell they aren't really liberals at all, in virtually everything they say or do. Just as one easily verified example, Hillary famously says she wants to reduce the number of abortions, rather than emphasizing that every women who wants one should be able to get one. The Clintons made the formerly-liberal Democratic Party into the Neoliberal Democratic Party, and Neoconservative as well (but that wasn't new...Truman was Neoconservative...but they helped halt the peacenik rebellion within the party).
The Clintons should not be seen as opponents to Reaganism, they were the people who used the new rhetoric of neoliberalism to make Reaganism sound good to Democrats, or at least the wealthier Democrats. Obama largely follows the same pattern, with a few good surprises. BTW, both of Obama's parents were also spooks, involved in US operations in Kenya and the Phillipines. While this garners no positive feelings from me (the Phillipines!!! we backed really bad guys there!), someone I know sympathizes that poor Obama doesn't get the respect some might feel due a child of national heroes who himself had to put up with a lot--no doubt.
Essentially we've had CIA rule in the USA ever since the Kennedy assassination. GHW Bush was a key figure, a Texan working for the CIA at the time of the Kennedy assassination. He managed to get himself elected as President 3 times, twice with Reagan as the figurehead. Then his son elected twice. Almost a second son. Who knows if we'll see more.
It's no secret whatsoever that both Hillary and Bill hate leftists. Not only unemployed anarcho communists handing out leaflets, but establishment figures such as Jeremy Corbyn. As such, you would never imagine the Clintons being a unifying force on the left. And pretty much since 1994 they proved to be a destructive force for liberalism and the left, more and more expressing conservative ideas while imposing neoliberalism and neoconservatism, essentially the same as Republicans were doing, with some important social policy differences--going far enough for no one and too far for most. The vaunted Clinton Expansion of 1996 to 2000 was partly good timing, partly the good effect of higher income taxation, and partly a bubble conveniently engineered (but ultimately drowned out by banskster-promoted deficit reduction in place of real social investment). You could say that about relative the lack of wars also (not forgetting Balkans, for which I now believe it would have been better for most if we had not gotten involved), though I do believe Bill Clinton (advised by Hillary) was more effective and less destructive than GWB. But when Hillary became SOS, she put proof of her willingness to see others die in service of her career take the upmost. Millions died and/or were displaced in Libya and Syria as a result of her actions, for which she has been unrepentant.
Interestingly, the moment that uber spymaster GHW Bush becomes President, the Soviet Union "collapses." I have always believed this to be a coup, not a "collapse," it is known that the US helped it go. I see the ultimate master cold war spymaster GHW becoming President and calling in favors, getting his wish.
With US-provoked and backed wars in two Russian client states, Ukraine and Syria, Hillary would be in the catbird seat to finally finish the job with Russia that her predecessor hadn't quite finished. After proving her military determination in Libya and elsewhere in a highly militaristic term as Secretary of State, she would have been ready for the final coup, the coup that would make Russia a US client state.
I think it is possible in this election we may have dodged the ultimate bullet, nuclear war with Russia. I can also list a large number of very well studied people who saw Hillary as the greater (and proven greater) warmonger than Trump. Chomsky said he thought Hillary to be the lesser danger, but he was not (in that video) going to argue that point with others who might feel differently, and they should adjust their Lesser Evil strategy accordingly.
However even I didn't take that threat, or any other, not to vote for Hillary (as if it could have made a difference). I did vote for Hillary, even though the value of my vote in Texas would be almost certainly unlikely to make a difference, and I had earlier decided on the Chomsky-recommended "Lesser Evil" strategy, which includes NOT voting for either evil in non-swing states but and making an alternative vote for some kind of good. However, by the time I voted, some pollsters were painting Texas as pink, which could possibly make a difference. At the time various polsters were assigning probabilities from 85% to 99% of a Hillary victory nationwide, and a 20-25% chance in Texas even. I figured on a Hillary victory so solid that even if Texas were in-play, it would be in the context of a Clinton victory without Texas. So, it was extremely extremely unlikely for my vote to make a difference except for the symbolism, I figured (correctly). And I didn't want to get blamed, as I had been in 2000, for the Gore loss, which I myself have strongly regretted and felt some guilt for. And as I have sometimes argued, the actual popular vote context has some meaning, particularly if your candidate loses (which again, I figured as almost impossible). Anyway, with all these factors, and the seeming lack of popularity of the Green candidate anyway (I would never be a Green Party person as long as they allow themselves to be potential spoilers, but I might give them a DNC-protest vote because they are nontheless closest to my views of the 4 largest parties), and the arguments by some that the Green VP was a holocaust denier (which I suspected to be be crap, but didn't want to spend time investigating) with all this, a single vote being of almost no importance to the actual election or even the popular vote statistic, I just voted Hillary as the easiest simplest thing to do, as many argue almost not worth bothering to do (but it IS worth bothering to make all the other votes BTW, just President is barely worth it, statistically) and of course I would never vote for a Trump, just never, for a whole host of reasons (though he did sound good on a few things sometimes, if I really believed him on those I could change my mind) though that doesn't mean I'd become a Hillary lackey either.
I liked it when Trump opposed trade agreements (I think NAFTA, WTO, all of their ilk should be abolished), I liked it when he said that he would be a fair player between Israel and the Palestinians (something he quickly retracted), and that he would create jobs, and not touch Social Security and Medicare. Like Sanders I would support him in doing things like that.
When I think of people who actually voted for Trump, and I know a few, I don't feel condescending or suspicious or outraged or anything. I see them as people who may or may not have saved us all from the ultimate Clintapocalypse. We'll never know actually.
Actual events have also made the partial responsibility of Hillary voters for any bad things Hillary might actually done evaporate. And since Hillary voters took the strongest* action against the election of Trump, they bear no responsibility for anything he does.
(*Actually, nobody takes the strongest possible action, which would be working as hard as possible from the beginning to the end of the election. So everybody bears some responsibility for Trump's actions. But it is greatly lessened just by voting for the strongest opponent.)
***
When the DNC put it's thumb down on one side of the scale, favoring Hillary, it did itself, the party, and the country a great disservice. Though many polls showed that Bernie would decisively defeat Trump in double digits, and Hillary barely squeaking by, while I concede the polls could be wrong, chances are they were not wrong, it was already well known Hillary had extremely high negatives, even among Democratic voters. But by taking one side, by not being 100% impartial, on the grounds that their selected candidate was more electable, the DNC then "owned" the election. If they failed to win, as they did, they then bear 100% of the responsibility for the loss. That's the way responsibility works. If they had been entirely 100% fair to the nth degree, then they would have no responsibility, and it the responsibility would be on the shoulders of the voters, as it should be.
The failure is also the responsibility of the nags who told us endlessly that Bernie was not electable in the general election, and that even if he were much better than Hillary, one should vote for Hillary instead. Now at least one side of that bet has been proven wrong.
I believe in one's own major party, one should never sell out for the Lesser Evil. In the long run, even any short run, it doesn't pay off. This is the same kind of half-loaf thinking that led to the rise of Clintonism in the first place. "If we're only a bit more like Republicans..." That's wrong, it never works, we should have never gone down this path.
Though it is true that Democrats have won 4 elections since 1992, they lost Congress, and the party has lost its soul.
We need the guy Bernie wants to bring the soul back. Bringing back national victory could be just 2 years. (Though highly unlikely, this all could lead to the greatest midterm revolt ever. And midterm revolts are the typical thing. Though...worry about voter suppression...)
After all is said about elections, the important part of politics is the creation of the ideas it uses, and those ideas come from stories, which assume and become frameworks of ideas and thinking.
What's really necessary now is to be able to tell and hear those stories. One very inefficient way to do this is by having parties representing (well, as if they did) the self and the others, and those parties alternate in power. To the degree each President expresses different sets of values, voila, we have self/other communication.
Much much better to have the best presidents and better ways of communicating.
Who would have been the best President? Of all the candidates running, Bernie Sanders! The very guy the DNC and Hillary with Wall Street in tow could barely stop.
It has to be understood, in complete reversal of what Hillary has said since 1970, that humanitarianism is necessarily humanitarian, never militaristic. It cannot be militaristic, or even involve leadership or "advice." All such things are not humanitarian, they are imperialistic. They assume we know better, and can therefore take responsibility for being right. We can't, and we shouldn't.
If we actually want to help people, we don't gun down their enemies. We don't take sides at all. Many conflicts are very complex. We can never know let alone understand the whole story, as much as we know. Therefore we should not try to change things, we should definitely not try to make them our way.
Humanitarianism is giving people food, shelter, asylum, immigration, employment, property, and success. Not to say you can or always must do all those things, but that's what humanitarianism is.
That is what I am suggesting as my modified version of the Prime Directive.
Especially, most especially we don't want to be providing military actions, even allegedly "defensive" ones as they are always offensive to someone. We don't want to be giving out weapons, or even stoking a conflict. It is fine to provide diplomatic services, but they should be just that, and not any kind of advice or persuasion.
This is what a leviathan, a country, should do. It may not be what one person does, on his own sponsorship, though I suspect similar karmic rules may be applicable.
NOW, what about Trump? Well, that is not the topic of this post, and there has not been a Trumpocalypse just yet, though we can believe one may be shortly forthcoming, best in 2 years at the mid-term elections. Then we might reset out of the Clinton-lock, and get back to a fully Democratic Congress. I'm not the only dreamer.
Trump is not just any hodlum, he's a globe trotting billionaire deal maker who lives in a palace on 5th Avenue on New York City, among other similar places.
You would be insane not to believe he's been brushed by spooks from the world over, not to mention Presidents and dictators. His mentor Ray Cohn had a deep connection with neoconservative politics going back to the McCarthy era, and was an attorney for the mafia. Trump's dad was a rich landlord in New York City, and known for being openly racist.
Though for all I know he could have been in Dallas in 1963, I do not believe he was one of the inner sanctum neocons surrounding Henry Kissinger and George HW Bush from the 1970's who have run the country following the same foreign policy line since 1980 (notably, not in the direction John F. Kennedy seemed to be drifting to by November 1963). He's from a different tribe than that club, for the first time in a long time.
Our best hope would be that he would be steered by the better paleoconservatives, such as Pat Buchanan, and his associate Paul Craig Roberts, in the area of foreign affairs. They're not neophytes, they've been in Washington forever, and they argue forcefully for a full withdrawl from empire, right now before it's too late. As of course do all real leftists. This is our well known area of "far right and far left" agreement.
Sadly, it's looking more like plain old institutional endless war Republicans are all around and over him now.
I believe sometime in the last few months he's been dealmaking with the Washington establishment. There is no doubt of this, he finally had a glorious reception at a central hub of neoliberalism, the AIPAC conference, in March.
But it seemed perhaps he hadn't made all the required establishment deals until just before the election. The operators of the vote stealing machinery were prepared to go either way, with proven warhorse Hillary or Trump, if he subjected himself to a neoconservative implant.
The imperialist US media was breathlessly trying to cut Trump down, practically breathing Hitler on every breath. I can see why many people were panicking on November 9th. Get real, this is a 250 year old republic, and Trump is not a once imprisioned and hardened activist organizer leading a putsch, he's a reality TV star who drew a lot of undesirables because of his brash braggadocio.
In the end, just as in 2004 the actual vote counts went the other way from endless polls, including exit polls, and leading to a Trump victory in the electoral college, further indicating cooperation with the vote stealers, which is required if not strongly suggested by a close race.
Notably Hillary didn't fight, as one might have if Hitler had actually been rising to power. She got the memo, Trump was stamped OK. There were certainly fair grounds on the basis of voter suppression in key counties, to fight this and win. But once Trump signed off on all the requirements, he was actually the favorite of the right leaning establishment because, well, tax cuts and cuts to poor people, moreso than the other guys.
Friends were dazed and deeply depressed after weeks of Trump-as-Hitler from all the media. But the Imperialist media got what it wanted in the end. Trump had made the deals. And as a bonus the media itself couldn't be blamed for the outcomes of the Trump presidency. And had a very TV centric personality to cover for the forseeable future.
Of course the media itself never believed the Trump-as-Hitler meme. But it was good for business.
This is the Electoral College working as designed. You can argue about it, and should whenever people speak of a "Mandate" for Trump. He barely squeaked through the system rigged to favor the small-state-preferred candidate, which for at least 100 years if not more has meant the more Republican candidate. Changing the blatantly and deliberately unfair system is another matter, to meaningfully change the system you'd have to get voters in the Red states to agree to the change...another Feature of our Constitution. And it gives them an advantage which they still can claim they need. So I wouldn't personally waste any effort trying to change it. Thank the oligarchs of the late 18th century who wrote the US Constitution. The less-Republican candidates have often gotten sufficient votes to overwhelm this creaky and creepy mechanism many times, and will have to continue doing so for the forseeable future.
And I should add that the system is increasingly rigged by voter restrictions and the like which have the same effect as the Electoral College. So in reality we have rigging on top of rigging. But once again, you need the red states to agree to stop rigging, which of course they won't.
So what happened? According to experts, the answer is that polls failed to show the Trump victory because they generally only consider "likely voters," people with an established voting history. Trump apparently drew in some new folks who hadn't voted recently. Bringing in new voters is generally considered a very good thing, so Trump should be thanked.
It's Hillary who should be blamed and forgotten because, in so many ways, she blew it. She in fact lost the very same "new" voters that Barack Obama brought in during 2008 and 2012.
Hillary took not the least responsibility which many believe she nevertheless had for the financial meltdown of 2008. She was absolutely unreformed and unrepentent about things like the repeal of Glass Steagal and the de-regulation of financial deriviates that were performed during her husband's administration (which many including me believe she was thickly involved with, probably even the ultimate boss). Larry Summers, who was a key architect of the financial deforms (by all reports the "bully" who helped push them through) was riding the Clinton bandwagon presumably as the next Treasury Secretary or something.
Hillary was also mostly unreformed and repentant about NAFTA, GATT, and the like. She relucantly distanced herself from TPP (which she had helped negotiatate) without any general critique of things like that (which I can easily provide: Go read Jamie Galbraith's book Predator State, it is NOT untutored to be highly opposed to such things, and the smartest and most caring people should be opposed to them In Principle). Meanwhile, in the greatest display of political deafness ever, Obama kept pushing for TPP and was set to push TPP into law during the lame duck session, freeing Hillary of any of the blame for it. Obviously it was more important to Obama to please his corporate backers than to see the Democrats win the next election.
Hillary was unreformed and unrepentant about her regime change boosterism and the enormous damage it caused, which most people in the USA still do not understand. The US promoted unrest throughout the entire middle east going at least back to 2003 if not 1946 by supporting anti-government groups throughout the region. The Arab Spring was a US sponsored thing and probably not much would have happened without US support. This was bad enough, but in some cases, notably Libya we went further and actually militarily engaged those governments. That led to collapse of legitimate governments, creating the vacuum which strengthened groups like ISIS and especially ISIS. Finally, Benghazi was used as a weapons depot to gather up weapons (some illegal) from the Libyan conflict and ship them over to Syria, where we had another government destruction operation in progress. All this and far more was going on under the strong arms of Hillary Clinton.
The result is what we see today, millions upon millions of refugees and broken lives and deaths. THAT is what Hillary had already done, years before running for President where she would likely do far more.
Here I'm applying the "you break it, you bought it" principle. Sure, there were other actors involved who in some cases were actually the ones killing or threatening people. But if we had not provided the gunpowder and sparks, the whole disaster would have never happened, millions of lives would have not been lost.
The upshot is clear: Don't Go Out And Break Things!!! And don't say you weren't warned by me. The best Foreign Policy is the Prime Directive. Do Not Interfere. Then, and only then, can you not be blamed for an entire disaster. This is intuitive to most people ("let them run their own country") but never has been for US Imperials. We Must Save the world, by sending them leaflets and guns.
And there's more which Hillary was unrepentant about. The Welfare Deform of 1996, which she boosted. The Crime Bill, which decimated black communities. Famously, Hillary made speeches about "Superpredators." Perhaps no wonder that, in the end, she lost much of the new black vote Obama had secured in 2008 and 2012. Democratic voting was WAY down in 2016. And you can't blame the Greens, their vote was down too.
Add to all this, Hillary wasn't really campaigning for anything new. As far as most people could correctly see, it was just a continuation of the Clinton-Bush-Obama policies, which have not done well inside the USA and far worse in the imperial sphere.
Instead, Hillary was going to win, HAD to win, ONLY because her opponent was a slimy misogynist bigot, and, of course, we can't let people like that into the White House (conveniently forgetting that most of the previous occupants of that residence have been precisely like that--including the sometimes revered Woodrow Wilson, the "intelligent person's" liberal).
The Media grabbed on to the least shred of Trump's misogyny and bigotry and played it to the max. Every drunk screaming at a Trump fest became instantly a national celebrity showing how bad Trump was (even though Trump would not ever have sponsored such idiocy, he had to put up with it). (A special note wrt the "anti-semitic" shouter. Trump would certainly not have wanted this, it was a form of heckling, and I personally believe the shouter knew this and did it deliberately to discredit Trump. Key players in Trump's campaign were Jews, including his biggest backer Adelson, his daughter, and son-in-law. Sadly this also means we can't expect any progress for Palestinians, and probably the reverse.)
Some people weren't getting the media programming, however. Including a majority of white women who voted for Trump. Including blacks who didn't bother to vote. Including a fair number of latinos in swing states who voted for Trump. If Trump really was as bad as many gasped, would votes have gone like this?
My friends and relatives haven't gotten over this. I doubt they will ever blame Clinton as much as I do.
The Neoliberal Democratic Party created by the Clintons in 1992 was immensely unpopular from the start. The Democratic Congressional majorities which had existed since 1932 evaporated in the first Neoliberal mid-term of 1994. Newt Gingrich rose to power in the House, then G.W.B to the White House.
And now, the Neoliberal Democratic Party has lost it all at the federal level, the Presidency, the House, the Senate, and currently just evenly balanced on the Court.
As Thomas Frank writes in all his books, Democrats should abandon Neoliberalism. It hasn't worked in any way except raising useless campaign funds from Wall Street.
And that means abandoning the remake of the Democratic Party the Clintons completed in 1992 (actually, Jimmy Carter was the first Neoliberal Democratic President, because of deregulation and Volker).
The Clintons were a pair of spies aimed to destroy or at least de-radicalize the anti-war movement in the early 1970's. Bill Clinton traveled through Europe without a dime of his own from one anti-war convention to another, sometimes staying in the most prestigious hotels, almost certainly on the CIA's dime, a nobody from nowhere curiously enabled to meet all the key players. He never actually fulfilled the Fulbright scholarship he got through political insiders. Hillary speecified Democratic neoconservatism in her famous 1970 commencement address, cutely cutting out the radical movements, and praising the virtues of "humanitarian interventionism." After gaining the attention of the neoconservative establishment of the time, including Henry Kissinger (who she has continued to admire...even after we know so much about Cambodia, Chile, and his other disasters) then rose quickly in Washington power circles to become a chief investigator in the Watergate affair, where she became one of the few people ever to hear the most secret tape, the tape that even discusses the Kennedy assassination. The Clintons then parlayed that first round of anti-radical skulduggery into actual government power, once again using their chameleon skill at looking-like-liberals to undermine the liberal Democratic party. If you listened carefully, you can tell they aren't really liberals at all, in virtually everything they say or do. Just as one easily verified example, Hillary famously says she wants to reduce the number of abortions, rather than emphasizing that every women who wants one should be able to get one. The Clintons made the formerly-liberal Democratic Party into the Neoliberal Democratic Party, and Neoconservative as well (but that wasn't new...Truman was Neoconservative...but they helped halt the peacenik rebellion within the party).
The Clintons should not be seen as opponents to Reaganism, they were the people who used the new rhetoric of neoliberalism to make Reaganism sound good to Democrats, or at least the wealthier Democrats. Obama largely follows the same pattern, with a few good surprises. BTW, both of Obama's parents were also spooks, involved in US operations in Kenya and the Phillipines. While this garners no positive feelings from me (the Phillipines!!! we backed really bad guys there!), someone I know sympathizes that poor Obama doesn't get the respect some might feel due a child of national heroes who himself had to put up with a lot--no doubt.
Essentially we've had CIA rule in the USA ever since the Kennedy assassination. GHW Bush was a key figure, a Texan working for the CIA at the time of the Kennedy assassination. He managed to get himself elected as President 3 times, twice with Reagan as the figurehead. Then his son elected twice. Almost a second son. Who knows if we'll see more.
It's no secret whatsoever that both Hillary and Bill hate leftists. Not only unemployed anarcho communists handing out leaflets, but establishment figures such as Jeremy Corbyn. As such, you would never imagine the Clintons being a unifying force on the left. And pretty much since 1994 they proved to be a destructive force for liberalism and the left, more and more expressing conservative ideas while imposing neoliberalism and neoconservatism, essentially the same as Republicans were doing, with some important social policy differences--going far enough for no one and too far for most. The vaunted Clinton Expansion of 1996 to 2000 was partly good timing, partly the good effect of higher income taxation, and partly a bubble conveniently engineered (but ultimately drowned out by banskster-promoted deficit reduction in place of real social investment). You could say that about relative the lack of wars also (not forgetting Balkans, for which I now believe it would have been better for most if we had not gotten involved), though I do believe Bill Clinton (advised by Hillary) was more effective and less destructive than GWB. But when Hillary became SOS, she put proof of her willingness to see others die in service of her career take the upmost. Millions died and/or were displaced in Libya and Syria as a result of her actions, for which she has been unrepentant.
Interestingly, the moment that uber spymaster GHW Bush becomes President, the Soviet Union "collapses." I have always believed this to be a coup, not a "collapse," it is known that the US helped it go. I see the ultimate master cold war spymaster GHW becoming President and calling in favors, getting his wish.
With US-provoked and backed wars in two Russian client states, Ukraine and Syria, Hillary would be in the catbird seat to finally finish the job with Russia that her predecessor hadn't quite finished. After proving her military determination in Libya and elsewhere in a highly militaristic term as Secretary of State, she would have been ready for the final coup, the coup that would make Russia a US client state.
I think it is possible in this election we may have dodged the ultimate bullet, nuclear war with Russia. I can also list a large number of very well studied people who saw Hillary as the greater (and proven greater) warmonger than Trump. Chomsky said he thought Hillary to be the lesser danger, but he was not (in that video) going to argue that point with others who might feel differently, and they should adjust their Lesser Evil strategy accordingly.
However even I didn't take that threat, or any other, not to vote for Hillary (as if it could have made a difference). I did vote for Hillary, even though the value of my vote in Texas would be almost certainly unlikely to make a difference, and I had earlier decided on the Chomsky-recommended "Lesser Evil" strategy, which includes NOT voting for either evil in non-swing states but and making an alternative vote for some kind of good. However, by the time I voted, some pollsters were painting Texas as pink, which could possibly make a difference. At the time various polsters were assigning probabilities from 85% to 99% of a Hillary victory nationwide, and a 20-25% chance in Texas even. I figured on a Hillary victory so solid that even if Texas were in-play, it would be in the context of a Clinton victory without Texas. So, it was extremely extremely unlikely for my vote to make a difference except for the symbolism, I figured (correctly). And I didn't want to get blamed, as I had been in 2000, for the Gore loss, which I myself have strongly regretted and felt some guilt for. And as I have sometimes argued, the actual popular vote context has some meaning, particularly if your candidate loses (which again, I figured as almost impossible). Anyway, with all these factors, and the seeming lack of popularity of the Green candidate anyway (I would never be a Green Party person as long as they allow themselves to be potential spoilers, but I might give them a DNC-protest vote because they are nontheless closest to my views of the 4 largest parties), and the arguments by some that the Green VP was a holocaust denier (which I suspected to be be crap, but didn't want to spend time investigating) with all this, a single vote being of almost no importance to the actual election or even the popular vote statistic, I just voted Hillary as the easiest simplest thing to do, as many argue almost not worth bothering to do (but it IS worth bothering to make all the other votes BTW, just President is barely worth it, statistically) and of course I would never vote for a Trump, just never, for a whole host of reasons (though he did sound good on a few things sometimes, if I really believed him on those I could change my mind) though that doesn't mean I'd become a Hillary lackey either.
I liked it when Trump opposed trade agreements (I think NAFTA, WTO, all of their ilk should be abolished), I liked it when he said that he would be a fair player between Israel and the Palestinians (something he quickly retracted), and that he would create jobs, and not touch Social Security and Medicare. Like Sanders I would support him in doing things like that.
When I think of people who actually voted for Trump, and I know a few, I don't feel condescending or suspicious or outraged or anything. I see them as people who may or may not have saved us all from the ultimate Clintapocalypse. We'll never know actually.
Actual events have also made the partial responsibility of Hillary voters for any bad things Hillary might actually done evaporate. And since Hillary voters took the strongest* action against the election of Trump, they bear no responsibility for anything he does.
(*Actually, nobody takes the strongest possible action, which would be working as hard as possible from the beginning to the end of the election. So everybody bears some responsibility for Trump's actions. But it is greatly lessened just by voting for the strongest opponent.)
***
When the DNC put it's thumb down on one side of the scale, favoring Hillary, it did itself, the party, and the country a great disservice. Though many polls showed that Bernie would decisively defeat Trump in double digits, and Hillary barely squeaking by, while I concede the polls could be wrong, chances are they were not wrong, it was already well known Hillary had extremely high negatives, even among Democratic voters. But by taking one side, by not being 100% impartial, on the grounds that their selected candidate was more electable, the DNC then "owned" the election. If they failed to win, as they did, they then bear 100% of the responsibility for the loss. That's the way responsibility works. If they had been entirely 100% fair to the nth degree, then they would have no responsibility, and it the responsibility would be on the shoulders of the voters, as it should be.
The failure is also the responsibility of the nags who told us endlessly that Bernie was not electable in the general election, and that even if he were much better than Hillary, one should vote for Hillary instead. Now at least one side of that bet has been proven wrong.
I believe in one's own major party, one should never sell out for the Lesser Evil. In the long run, even any short run, it doesn't pay off. This is the same kind of half-loaf thinking that led to the rise of Clintonism in the first place. "If we're only a bit more like Republicans..." That's wrong, it never works, we should have never gone down this path.
Though it is true that Democrats have won 4 elections since 1992, they lost Congress, and the party has lost its soul.
We need the guy Bernie wants to bring the soul back. Bringing back national victory could be just 2 years. (Though highly unlikely, this all could lead to the greatest midterm revolt ever. And midterm revolts are the typical thing. Though...worry about voter suppression...)
After all is said about elections, the important part of politics is the creation of the ideas it uses, and those ideas come from stories, which assume and become frameworks of ideas and thinking.
What's really necessary now is to be able to tell and hear those stories. One very inefficient way to do this is by having parties representing (well, as if they did) the self and the others, and those parties alternate in power. To the degree each President expresses different sets of values, voila, we have self/other communication.
Much much better to have the best presidents and better ways of communicating.
Who would have been the best President? Of all the candidates running, Bernie Sanders! The very guy the DNC and Hillary with Wall Street in tow could barely stop.
It has to be understood, in complete reversal of what Hillary has said since 1970, that humanitarianism is necessarily humanitarian, never militaristic. It cannot be militaristic, or even involve leadership or "advice." All such things are not humanitarian, they are imperialistic. They assume we know better, and can therefore take responsibility for being right. We can't, and we shouldn't.
If we actually want to help people, we don't gun down their enemies. We don't take sides at all. Many conflicts are very complex. We can never know let alone understand the whole story, as much as we know. Therefore we should not try to change things, we should definitely not try to make them our way.
Humanitarianism is giving people food, shelter, asylum, immigration, employment, property, and success. Not to say you can or always must do all those things, but that's what humanitarianism is.
That is what I am suggesting as my modified version of the Prime Directive.
Especially, most especially we don't want to be providing military actions, even allegedly "defensive" ones as they are always offensive to someone. We don't want to be giving out weapons, or even stoking a conflict. It is fine to provide diplomatic services, but they should be just that, and not any kind of advice or persuasion.
This is what a leviathan, a country, should do. It may not be what one person does, on his own sponsorship, though I suspect similar karmic rules may be applicable.
NOW, what about Trump? Well, that is not the topic of this post, and there has not been a Trumpocalypse just yet, though we can believe one may be shortly forthcoming, best in 2 years at the mid-term elections. Then we might reset out of the Clinton-lock, and get back to a fully Democratic Congress. I'm not the only dreamer.
Trump is not just any hodlum, he's a globe trotting billionaire deal maker who lives in a palace on 5th Avenue on New York City, among other similar places.
You would be insane not to believe he's been brushed by spooks from the world over, not to mention Presidents and dictators. His mentor Ray Cohn had a deep connection with neoconservative politics going back to the McCarthy era, and was an attorney for the mafia. Trump's dad was a rich landlord in New York City, and known for being openly racist.
Though for all I know he could have been in Dallas in 1963, I do not believe he was one of the inner sanctum neocons surrounding Henry Kissinger and George HW Bush from the 1970's who have run the country following the same foreign policy line since 1980 (notably, not in the direction John F. Kennedy seemed to be drifting to by November 1963). He's from a different tribe than that club, for the first time in a long time.
Our best hope would be that he would be steered by the better paleoconservatives, such as Pat Buchanan, and his associate Paul Craig Roberts, in the area of foreign affairs. They're not neophytes, they've been in Washington forever, and they argue forcefully for a full withdrawl from empire, right now before it's too late. As of course do all real leftists. This is our well known area of "far right and far left" agreement.
Sadly, it's looking more like plain old institutional endless war Republicans are all around and over him now.
I believe sometime in the last few months he's been dealmaking with the Washington establishment. There is no doubt of this, he finally had a glorious reception at a central hub of neoliberalism, the AIPAC conference, in March.
But it seemed perhaps he hadn't made all the required establishment deals until just before the election. The operators of the vote stealing machinery were prepared to go either way, with proven warhorse Hillary or Trump, if he subjected himself to a neoconservative implant.
The imperialist US media was breathlessly trying to cut Trump down, practically breathing Hitler on every breath. I can see why many people were panicking on November 9th. Get real, this is a 250 year old republic, and Trump is not a once imprisioned and hardened activist organizer leading a putsch, he's a reality TV star who drew a lot of undesirables because of his brash braggadocio.
In the end, just as in 2004 the actual vote counts went the other way from endless polls, including exit polls, and leading to a Trump victory in the electoral college, further indicating cooperation with the vote stealers, which is required if not strongly suggested by a close race.
Notably Hillary didn't fight, as one might have if Hitler had actually been rising to power. She got the memo, Trump was stamped OK. There were certainly fair grounds on the basis of voter suppression in key counties, to fight this and win. But once Trump signed off on all the requirements, he was actually the favorite of the right leaning establishment because, well, tax cuts and cuts to poor people, moreso than the other guys.
Friends were dazed and deeply depressed after weeks of Trump-as-Hitler from all the media. But the Imperialist media got what it wanted in the end. Trump had made the deals. And as a bonus the media itself couldn't be blamed for the outcomes of the Trump presidency. And had a very TV centric personality to cover for the forseeable future.
Of course the media itself never believed the Trump-as-Hitler meme. But it was good for business.
Thursday, September 1, 2016
Corruption: The Worst thing? The best thing???
Corey Robin has an uncharacteristically short and reactive post regarding corruption at his own institution. He says that corruption is pure poison and destroys everything. That's a pretty commonplace view. Usually Corey is more leading edge.
I have somewhat the reverse view, as I made in two consecutive posts:
I have somewhat the reverse view, as I made in two consecutive posts:
- The greatest of science, art, literature, and philosophy are all the residue of earlier corruption. Charles Darwin was a gentleman, and it is impossible to imagine otherwise. That’s to say he was the beneficiary of an ancient corruption, the original theft.It is precisely the successors of that original theft who would be the beneficiaries of the perfect investment, if it were possible, which would benefit only the investor and neither be a cost nor a benefit to anyone else in society.That is to say that all the benefits to anyone and everyone else have come through the corruption of capitalism, rather than its perfection.
Wednesday, August 10, 2016
Chomsky Endorses Lesser Evil Voting
Chomsky has just written an "8 point brief" defending Lesser Evil Voting, which he calls LEV, as the most moral choice.
I agree completely, and I am grateful for this.
His telling of LEV is that the outcome (winner) is all that matters. Those people who can affect the outcome (those who live in swing states wrt the President) have the capability to possible make things better by electing a less bad President. Slightly less bad means better. The alternative slightly worse choice will negatively impact, possibly in horrible ways, millions of people, even though it may not as likely affect comfortable voters as much, we should beware of their fate, being concerned for the actual welfare of others--that's the meaning of morality. It's far less important to identify oneself as moral by picking a "moral" person, that's self image not morality according to Chomsky.
Now he makes it clear that those not in swing states can and should vote their true preference, or a protest vote, non vote, or whatever. That's part of Chomsky's definition of LEV.
He's also making it clear that it's another issue entirely whether one candidate or another is the militarily less dangerous choice. He feels that Trump is the worse choice, but some have made interesting claims that Hillary is likely to engage more warfare. He's feels Hillary is safer than Trump, but he's not going to argue the matter. Your disagreement may change your definition of the LEV for the President this time from the otherwise standard choice--Democratic Party. (I'd add "when possible" as they don't always run in some Texas districts. In those cases vote Green, or even Libertarian, as opposed to Republican. Republicans generally don't believe in Global Heating, and are the worst on all issues, sometimes unbelievably so. It is very important that non-Presidential Republicans be universally defeated. They've done dastardly things like shutting down the government and threatening default to get their way without actually passing new law, all in service of the plutocracy.)
Chomsky says voting shouldn't be taken as a big deal. LEV makes enough difference to bother doing, but not much more. There isn't much choice really on offer through electoral politics. Other aspects of politics are more important, and you should devote more time to them.
I can only quibble. I think the image matters a tiny bit. I think the hope for change matters a tiny bit, though not enough to change LEV in any way.
I think we should watch polls for a surprise upswing of a 3rd party. Several times they have fielded winning candidates, though just once (in over 200 years) with Abraham Lincoln, did a former 3rd Party become one of the 2 dominant parties. It's very very hard to do, I'd never count on it happening again by way of persuasion (I've been thrice burned by John Anderson, Ross Perot, and Ralph Nader...is your hero going to do better?). I'd want to see data, though I understand for Lincoln it was a complete surprise to experts of the time (I don't think polling was quite as serious either). And then, in order to change the system, it needs to be not just one of the two dominant parties but a super majority party. Show me the numbers. Surely a supermajority wants a similar kind of change, say--full employment and everyone taken care of, but they've been very capably distracted into different clans who disagree on how it can be done. And the solution is poison to the other. Diabolical.
I agree completely, and I am grateful for this.
His telling of LEV is that the outcome (winner) is all that matters. Those people who can affect the outcome (those who live in swing states wrt the President) have the capability to possible make things better by electing a less bad President. Slightly less bad means better. The alternative slightly worse choice will negatively impact, possibly in horrible ways, millions of people, even though it may not as likely affect comfortable voters as much, we should beware of their fate, being concerned for the actual welfare of others--that's the meaning of morality. It's far less important to identify oneself as moral by picking a "moral" person, that's self image not morality according to Chomsky.
Now he makes it clear that those not in swing states can and should vote their true preference, or a protest vote, non vote, or whatever. That's part of Chomsky's definition of LEV.
He's also making it clear that it's another issue entirely whether one candidate or another is the militarily less dangerous choice. He feels that Trump is the worse choice, but some have made interesting claims that Hillary is likely to engage more warfare. He's feels Hillary is safer than Trump, but he's not going to argue the matter. Your disagreement may change your definition of the LEV for the President this time from the otherwise standard choice--Democratic Party. (I'd add "when possible" as they don't always run in some Texas districts. In those cases vote Green, or even Libertarian, as opposed to Republican. Republicans generally don't believe in Global Heating, and are the worst on all issues, sometimes unbelievably so. It is very important that non-Presidential Republicans be universally defeated. They've done dastardly things like shutting down the government and threatening default to get their way without actually passing new law, all in service of the plutocracy.)
Chomsky says voting shouldn't be taken as a big deal. LEV makes enough difference to bother doing, but not much more. There isn't much choice really on offer through electoral politics. Other aspects of politics are more important, and you should devote more time to them.
I can only quibble. I think the image matters a tiny bit. I think the hope for change matters a tiny bit, though not enough to change LEV in any way.
I think we should watch polls for a surprise upswing of a 3rd party. Several times they have fielded winning candidates, though just once (in over 200 years) with Abraham Lincoln, did a former 3rd Party become one of the 2 dominant parties. It's very very hard to do, I'd never count on it happening again by way of persuasion (I've been thrice burned by John Anderson, Ross Perot, and Ralph Nader...is your hero going to do better?). I'd want to see data, though I understand for Lincoln it was a complete surprise to experts of the time (I don't think polling was quite as serious either). And then, in order to change the system, it needs to be not just one of the two dominant parties but a super majority party. Show me the numbers. Surely a supermajority wants a similar kind of change, say--full employment and everyone taken care of, but they've been very capably distracted into different clans who disagree on how it can be done. And the solution is poison to the other. Diabolical.
Saturday, August 6, 2016
Let's Hope it remains Trump v. Hillary
Because, obviously, a nosediving Trump gives Hillary a chance to beat the Republican.
But, conversely, and as my friends and I have always said, we prefer Trump to the likes of Cruz (especially) and Rubio, et al. At least with a Trump you feel there's a chance at something other than theocracy, neoconservatism, and neoliberalism.
That chance has moved other commenters I respect to support Trump, notably many at NakedCapitalism (Yves went for Trump when he said he'd tear up TPP if congress deemed to pass it during the lame duck session) and a few even at Crooked Timber. And far more who are NOT taking a gung ho Hillary approach simply because they don't see it as a race to much to care about, and in many cases, to care enough to hold their noses. BTW for me the vote doesn't make any difference and that is the only reason I probably won't vote for Hillary.
I do indeed see this week as "the establishment media fights back," even fearing a Trump dictatorship might bring media persecution, though, generally, they've loved the ratings of Trump--a unfolding disaster, 24+/7, I wouldn't think they'd ever want it to end.
Am I supposed to care that Trump has hinted at not supporting our NATO "committments"? I'm with those who thought NATO should have been abolished in 1991 and even perhaps never even created.
Am I supposed to care that he might not back our ongoning proxy war in Ukraine with Russia? I wish we'd denounce any possibility of NATO for Ukraine, just before packing up NATO itself.
We have no business being the policeman of the world. We're not trusted anyway, and for good reasons...centuries of conquest and imperialism. Given our position in the world, we shouldn't even take sides. Let the Prime Directive apply to the USA.
And about the bomb? Well, such problems shouldn't even exist, and I don't feel they actually do. I think the system itself works against a hypothetical "mad man" President so that that's not the danger (accidents are THE danger, primarily). Trump is not actually schizophrenic, he's a very successful con artist primarily. He's in his element being more far out than anyone else, the #1. But not actually blowing things up. (...unlike Clinton...) he has no history of physically blowing things up, just IBGYBG.
I'm sure the "would you want this man in charge of The Bomb" will be trotted out for anyone anti-Imperialist of any stripe, let alone Leftist of any stripe, just as it had been for Barry Goldwater.
So, I'm not going to be swayed by any of those "he's not our man for Empire and Stability" arguments sway me. What I fear more is that despite Trump's possible somewhat liberal nature, his election would further the advance of anti-abortionism, erode progress in LGBT rights, and erode the financial underpinnings of the welfare state and the economy itself, as Republicans have done since Hoover.
His not being the great man of Empire is for me a plus. Just not enough of a plus.
But, conversely, and as my friends and I have always said, we prefer Trump to the likes of Cruz (especially) and Rubio, et al. At least with a Trump you feel there's a chance at something other than theocracy, neoconservatism, and neoliberalism.
That chance has moved other commenters I respect to support Trump, notably many at NakedCapitalism (Yves went for Trump when he said he'd tear up TPP if congress deemed to pass it during the lame duck session) and a few even at Crooked Timber. And far more who are NOT taking a gung ho Hillary approach simply because they don't see it as a race to much to care about, and in many cases, to care enough to hold their noses. BTW for me the vote doesn't make any difference and that is the only reason I probably won't vote for Hillary.
I do indeed see this week as "the establishment media fights back," even fearing a Trump dictatorship might bring media persecution, though, generally, they've loved the ratings of Trump--a unfolding disaster, 24+/7, I wouldn't think they'd ever want it to end.
Am I supposed to care that Trump has hinted at not supporting our NATO "committments"? I'm with those who thought NATO should have been abolished in 1991 and even perhaps never even created.
Am I supposed to care that he might not back our ongoning proxy war in Ukraine with Russia? I wish we'd denounce any possibility of NATO for Ukraine, just before packing up NATO itself.
We have no business being the policeman of the world. We're not trusted anyway, and for good reasons...centuries of conquest and imperialism. Given our position in the world, we shouldn't even take sides. Let the Prime Directive apply to the USA.
And about the bomb? Well, such problems shouldn't even exist, and I don't feel they actually do. I think the system itself works against a hypothetical "mad man" President so that that's not the danger (accidents are THE danger, primarily). Trump is not actually schizophrenic, he's a very successful con artist primarily. He's in his element being more far out than anyone else, the #1. But not actually blowing things up. (...unlike Clinton...) he has no history of physically blowing things up, just IBGYBG.
I'm sure the "would you want this man in charge of The Bomb" will be trotted out for anyone anti-Imperialist of any stripe, let alone Leftist of any stripe, just as it had been for Barry Goldwater.
So, I'm not going to be swayed by any of those "he's not our man for Empire and Stability" arguments sway me. What I fear more is that despite Trump's possible somewhat liberal nature, his election would further the advance of anti-abortionism, erode progress in LGBT rights, and erode the financial underpinnings of the welfare state and the economy itself, as Republicans have done since Hoover.
His not being the great man of Empire is for me a plus. Just not enough of a plus.
Friday, August 5, 2016
Trump: A Historic Opportunity?
My favorite blogsite Crooked Timber hosts my favorite political scientist Corey Robin, who has invested more than one Original Posts (OP) examining the predictably overheated hyperbole about the unique historic badness of The Donald, and not just concluding that but showing exactly how it breaks down. I couldn't imagine him as a Trump supporter, but like me he does these things. One thing, for example, it helps to re-examine the myths about Ronald Reagan, and be glad he was lazy, and Barry Goldwater, and be glad he wasn't elected, but also aware that he and his people engineered the ultimate Reagan era in politics which continues to this day. And, it's always interesting that Donald may well take the most heat because of saying some things that are actually true. Corey notes Trump saying the US is not always the best exemplar and therefore messenger in Human Rights, which is true.
The comments section likewise is not a great bastion of Trump support, out of a universe of a few hundred Crooked Timber commenters (I'm one sometimes) there are just a few, it's hard to know how many, Trump supporters, just that there aren't many. Crooked Timber is famously left, with just a few sturdy stragglers and trolls on the right.
Quite a few Greens and others unwilling to go along with the corporate side of the Democratic Party, best exemplified of course by Hillary Clinton, however.
But one of the most notable pro-Trumpers following this recent OP by Corey goes by the name Kidneystones (which I imagine as meaning one who has been pissed for a long time) who makes a forceful leftist (as he seems to be leftist) case for being affirmatively pro-Trump (this is a link to the main article and all 800+ comments)..
His most positively memorable comment is (or was, beware of possible change) 278:
But about this "neocon in a dress" thing? He later denies that is sexist. So we see he has some weaknesses. His case for Trump is interesting. If Trump is elected, I hope that Trump is as Kidneystones says. As I write, Trump has been on a downhill spiral in the Huffington Post and lefter media. I don't pay attention to anything else, I can only imagine the mainstream media is the same, possibly with some exceptions. The above blog is from more than a week ago.
Sadly I think Kidneystones seems to have lack of memory for things Trump had already said and done when he wrote the above. He's worked hard--too hard--to ensure he isn't seen as secular or pro-choice or liberal in any way. It seems in many areas--if not all--he's sold his soul. That's what immediately came to mind with his VP choice. Anyway, for me I also fear the disolution of social democracy, I'm still more hopeful that electing Democrats is the best chance (though hardly perfect) for preserving social democracy.
One pundit I respect mostly who remains solidly Trump is Pat Buchanan. Pat has written some of the best articles on the encroachment of Russia by NATO expansion. He has been though of as having racist views, but I think I'd love to see him running foreign policy, as I expect it would be away from foreign entanglements. I'm not sure of his domestic policy, and then there's his party, the Republicans, and their horrible influence on the courts.
Another pundit is Yves Smith of NakedCapitalism, who endorsed Trump after hearing he would tear up TPP if passed by Congress in the lame duck session.
People think of voting as an individual act, but really it's a collective process, by which at great cost the people only make small changes.
I remain firmly in support of voting Hillary in contested states, and voting Democratic when possible otherwise, and Green if no Democrat, and nearly anything but Republican.
A friend points out that Lincoln's party when from nowhere to being, well, the most elected party since 1860 in just a few years. But I don't have any special hope of this happening now. Now the most important thing is indeed defeating Republicans, and that is unquestionably the only way a new alternative majority party can be created.
I strongly don't see Donald Trump as not being that kind of agent of change. Sadly no.
Frankly, I don't see anyone.
That probably says something too.
The comments section likewise is not a great bastion of Trump support, out of a universe of a few hundred Crooked Timber commenters (I'm one sometimes) there are just a few, it's hard to know how many, Trump supporters, just that there aren't many. Crooked Timber is famously left, with just a few sturdy stragglers and trolls on the right.
Quite a few Greens and others unwilling to go along with the corporate side of the Democratic Party, best exemplified of course by Hillary Clinton, however.
But one of the most notable pro-Trumpers following this recent OP by Corey goes by the name Kidneystones (which I imagine as meaning one who has been pissed for a long time) who makes a forceful leftist (as he seems to be leftist) case for being affirmatively pro-Trump (this is a link to the main article and all 800+ comments)..
His most positively memorable comment is (or was, beware of possible change) 278:
[...]
I continue to support Trump because I don’t believe his record shows him to be anything worse than a vulgarian egomaniac brimming with bombast who loves nothing more than garnering attention for himself in the most grandiose fashion.
Trump doesn’t want to start anymore wars and he wants all people in America to enjoy the same legal protections. And for all his public and private intemperate behavior and bad judgment, Trump has yet to appear allow himself to be filmed laughing about people he helped kill during a CBS interview. So, there’s bad judgment and bad judgment.
Finally, a question. Which is more important – electing another neocon cause she wears a dress, or helping destroy Ted Cruz’s GOP by electing a NY liberal billionaire who promises to remake the party of Lincoln?
I mean, if we’re talking about big ideas and the fierce urgency of now. For real.First, let me say even if I don't agree with this, in some parts I'm very moved by it. It represents the best defense of Trump, and the best reason the Presidential race needs to be Trump v. Clinton.
But about this "neocon in a dress" thing? He later denies that is sexist. So we see he has some weaknesses. His case for Trump is interesting. If Trump is elected, I hope that Trump is as Kidneystones says. As I write, Trump has been on a downhill spiral in the Huffington Post and lefter media. I don't pay attention to anything else, I can only imagine the mainstream media is the same, possibly with some exceptions. The above blog is from more than a week ago.
Sadly I think Kidneystones seems to have lack of memory for things Trump had already said and done when he wrote the above. He's worked hard--too hard--to ensure he isn't seen as secular or pro-choice or liberal in any way. It seems in many areas--if not all--he's sold his soul. That's what immediately came to mind with his VP choice. Anyway, for me I also fear the disolution of social democracy, I'm still more hopeful that electing Democrats is the best chance (though hardly perfect) for preserving social democracy.
One pundit I respect mostly who remains solidly Trump is Pat Buchanan. Pat has written some of the best articles on the encroachment of Russia by NATO expansion. He has been though of as having racist views, but I think I'd love to see him running foreign policy, as I expect it would be away from foreign entanglements. I'm not sure of his domestic policy, and then there's his party, the Republicans, and their horrible influence on the courts.
Another pundit is Yves Smith of NakedCapitalism, who endorsed Trump after hearing he would tear up TPP if passed by Congress in the lame duck session.
People think of voting as an individual act, but really it's a collective process, by which at great cost the people only make small changes.
I remain firmly in support of voting Hillary in contested states, and voting Democratic when possible otherwise, and Green if no Democrat, and nearly anything but Republican.
A friend points out that Lincoln's party when from nowhere to being, well, the most elected party since 1860 in just a few years. But I don't have any special hope of this happening now. Now the most important thing is indeed defeating Republicans, and that is unquestionably the only way a new alternative majority party can be created.
I strongly don't see Donald Trump as not being that kind of agent of change. Sadly no.
Frankly, I don't see anyone.
That probably says something too.
Trump: A Historic Opportunity?
My favorite blogsite Crooked Timber hosts my favorite political scientist Corey Robin, who has invested more than one Original Posts (OP) examining the predictably overheated hyperbole about the unique historic badness of The Donald, and not just concluding that but showing exactly how it breaks down. I couldn't imagine him as a Trump supporter, but like me he does these things. One thing, for example, it helps to re-examine the myths about Ronald Reagan, and be glad he was lazy, and Barry Goldwater, and be glad he wasn't elected, but also aware that he and his people engineered the ultimate Reagan era in politics which continues to this day. And, it's always interesting that Donald may well take the most heat because of saying some things that are actually true. Corey notes Trump saying the US is not always the best exemplar and therefore messenger in Human Rights, which is true.
The comments section likewise is not a great bastion of Trump support, out of a universe of a few hundred Crooked Timber commenters (I'm one sometimes) there are just a few, it's hard to know how many, Trump supporters, just that there aren't many. Crooked Timber is famously left, with just a few sturdy stragglers and trolls on the right.
Quite a few Greens and others unwilling to go along with the corporate side of the Democratic Party, best exemplified of course by Hillary Clinton, however.
But one of the most notable pro-Trumpers following this recent OP by Corey goes by the name Kidneystones (which I imagine as meaning one who has been pissed for a long time) who makes a forceful leftist (as he seems to be leftist) case for being affirmatively pro-Trump (this is a link to the main article and all 800+ comments)..
His most positively memorable comment is (or was, beware of possible change) 278:
But about this "neocon in a dress" thing? He later denies that is sexist. So we see he has some weaknesses. His case for Trump is interesting. If Trump is elected, I hope that Trump is as Kidneystones says. As I write, Trump has been on a downhill spiral in the Huffington Post and lefter media. I don't pay attention to anything else, I can only imagine the mainstream media is the same, possibly with some exceptions. The above blog is from more than a week ago.
Sadly I think Kidneystones seems to have lack of memory for things Trump had already said and done when he wrote the above. He's worked hard--too hard--to ensure he isn't seen as secular or pro-choice or liberal in any way. It seems in many areas--if not all--he's sold his soul. That's what immediately came to mind with his VP choice. Anyway, for me I also fear the disolution of social democracy, I'm still more hopeful that electing Democrats is the best chance (though hardly perfect) for preserving social democracy.
One pundit I respect mostly who remains solidly Trump is Pat Buchanan. Pat has written some of the best articles on the encroachment of Russia by NATO expansion. He has been though of as having racist views, but I think I'd love to see him running foreign policy, as I expect it would be away from foreign entanglements. I'm not sure of his domestic policy, and then there's his party, the Republicans, and their horrible influence on the courts.
Another pundit is Yves Smith of NakedCapitalism, who endorsed Trump after hearing he would tear up TPP if passed by Congress in the lame duck session.
People think of voting as an individual act, but really it's a collective process, by which at great cost the people only make small changes.
I remain firmly in support of voting Hillary in contested states, and voting Democratic when possible otherwise, and Green if no Democrat, and nearly anything but Republican.
A friend points out that Lincoln's party when from nowhere to being, well, the most elected party since 1860 in just a few years. But I don't have any special hope of this happening now. Now the most important thing is indeed defeating Republicans, and that is unquestionably the only way a new alternative majority party can be created.
I strongly don't see Donald Trump as not being that kind of agent of change. Sadly no.
Frankly, I don't see anyone.
That probably says something too.
The comments section likewise is not a great bastion of Trump support, out of a universe of a few hundred Crooked Timber commenters (I'm one sometimes) there are just a few, it's hard to know how many, Trump supporters, just that there aren't many. Crooked Timber is famously left, with just a few sturdy stragglers and trolls on the right.
Quite a few Greens and others unwilling to go along with the corporate side of the Democratic Party, best exemplified of course by Hillary Clinton, however.
But one of the most notable pro-Trumpers following this recent OP by Corey goes by the name Kidneystones (which I imagine as meaning one who has been pissed for a long time) who makes a forceful leftist (as he seems to be leftist) case for being affirmatively pro-Trump (this is a link to the main article and all 800+ comments)..
His most positively memorable comment is (or was, beware of possible change) 278:
[...]
I continue to support Trump because I don’t believe his record shows him to be anything worse than a vulgarian egomaniac brimming with bombast who loves nothing more than garnering attention for himself in the most grandiose fashion.
Trump doesn’t want to start anymore wars and he wants all people in America to enjoy the same legal protections. And for all his public and private intemperate behavior and bad judgment, Trump has yet to appear allow himself to be filmed laughing about people he helped kill during a CBS interview. So, there’s bad judgment and bad judgment.
Finally, a question. Which is more important – electing another neocon cause she wears a dress, or helping destroy Ted Cruz’s GOP by electing a NY liberal billionaire who promises to remake the party of Lincoln?
I mean, if we’re talking about big ideas and the fierce urgency of now. For real.First, let me say even if I don't agree with this, in some parts I'm very moved by it. It represents the best defense of Trump, and the best reason the Presidential race needs to be Trump v. Clinton.
But about this "neocon in a dress" thing? He later denies that is sexist. So we see he has some weaknesses. His case for Trump is interesting. If Trump is elected, I hope that Trump is as Kidneystones says. As I write, Trump has been on a downhill spiral in the Huffington Post and lefter media. I don't pay attention to anything else, I can only imagine the mainstream media is the same, possibly with some exceptions. The above blog is from more than a week ago.
Sadly I think Kidneystones seems to have lack of memory for things Trump had already said and done when he wrote the above. He's worked hard--too hard--to ensure he isn't seen as secular or pro-choice or liberal in any way. It seems in many areas--if not all--he's sold his soul. That's what immediately came to mind with his VP choice. Anyway, for me I also fear the disolution of social democracy, I'm still more hopeful that electing Democrats is the best chance (though hardly perfect) for preserving social democracy.
One pundit I respect mostly who remains solidly Trump is Pat Buchanan. Pat has written some of the best articles on the encroachment of Russia by NATO expansion. He has been though of as having racist views, but I think I'd love to see him running foreign policy, as I expect it would be away from foreign entanglements. I'm not sure of his domestic policy, and then there's his party, the Republicans, and their horrible influence on the courts.
Another pundit is Yves Smith of NakedCapitalism, who endorsed Trump after hearing he would tear up TPP if passed by Congress in the lame duck session.
People think of voting as an individual act, but really it's a collective process, by which at great cost the people only make small changes.
I remain firmly in support of voting Hillary in contested states, and voting Democratic when possible otherwise, and Green if no Democrat, and nearly anything but Republican.
A friend points out that Lincoln's party when from nowhere to being, well, the most elected party since 1860 in just a few years. But I don't have any special hope of this happening now. Now the most important thing is indeed defeating Republicans, and that is unquestionably the only way a new alternative majority party can be created.
I strongly don't see Donald Trump as not being that kind of agent of change. Sadly no.
Frankly, I don't see anyone.
That probably says something too.
Friday, July 22, 2016
Will Neoliberals Ever Learn ?
Dean Baker paints the familiar Brexit story I was among the first to advance, that of not just the racist xenophobes (whose campaign indeed most likely carried the day) but of a wide range of people impoverished by neoliberalism, not at all because of the EU itself in Britain's case but because of conservative leadership (though the Euro Zone is intensely neoliberal, to the "ordoliberal" school of exacting fiscal rectitude, Britain has effectively escaped all of that so far, but only until a point in the future, I heard, with the ordoliberalism ultimately taking hold of Britain, perhaps giving a reasonable justification for voting Leave, but maybe that's wrong, I'm not exactly sure of the facts, but anyway any of the austerity in Britain so far has been largely the fault of Tory and New Labour, not the old Labor types like Corbyn--though they may be paying the political price, the world being so messed up and all.
But anyway, I love the place where he refers to the austerity dogmas prevalent in the EU, Belgium, and Germany, if not ruling nearly everywhere in the EU:
In other news, for me, I just discovered that JFK used the manueuver of bypassing the FED and just, well, printing the money and spending rather than having to go in hock to the FED (in the National Debt, which is actually a leading savings instrument, US Treasury Bonds) for the money, the way it's done, strange when you think of it that way.
This is, I believe, what MMT and/or many similar economic theorists maintain, and it's not particularly inflationary, perhaps with some limitations. It costs far less, with less inequality created (less huge bankster salaries involved) and no messy debt to drag down the future. Krugman claims it's too politically risky, that it would lead to the situations which led to the creation of the FED in the first place. I'm not on the extreme downside of the FED since the departure of Alan Greenspan. I think it's been a comparatively positive player in maintaining a prosperous economy. But I'm inclined to believe MMT deserves a careful examination, and may provide a better way, if ultimately people could come to believe in it.
People, including me, might have to find other "safe" investments. You could say there is little public good coming from the availability of a safe investment (actually, the same could be said about any financial investment, but I digress), and it does ultimately burden society. If it were my direct money, I'd put it in a bank, but being pension fund money, I chose from a set of investments with few or no public guarantees, so I choose the fund that buys Treasuries. Either case, nowadays, interest rates are about zero. If Treasuries went out of business the fund would find something similar.)
But the benefit of people like me looking for safe investments, far from the folly of US banks and corporations, is less important to the overall prosperity and progress that an MMT policy combined with guaranteed work and massive green investment could provide. One economist estimated the cost of not immediately (just borrowing and) spending $6T/yr on green infrastructure was unfathomable--as unfathomable as the ultimate costs of Global Heating will be.
Kennedy, however, may have done it merely to show political resistance to a reactionary FED, not as part of switching the US to MMT.
Anyway, his confrontations with banks was just another thing leading up to the date of the assassination. (BTW, I believe the story the a mob hitman did it, many mobsters tried but one had the lucky place, behind the grassy knoll, to get a clear shot with a suitable weapon. Oswald was a planted patsy, set up to take the heat, the cheap gun perhaps to ensure he couldn't make it. Many have confessed. The official story cannot be true. Oswald himself was CIA, involved in infiltrating leftist groups, may well have infiltrated the actual assassin groups, or be one of them, by association, it's hard to tell. Whether he tried or not he lacked the means and it was not his magic bullet that against all odds did the trick without getting damaged, but several bullets from the real assassin, James Files, IIRC, not in public hands and probably lost to history.)
But this is along with the long usually listed cast of subjects including the mob, LBJ, the CIA, CIA-connected insiders, George HW Bush, oil producers threatened with the end of the Depletion Allowance including many big timers in Texas like Hunt, millitary builders, proto-neocons, the list of those with an axe to grind is endless. The banks is another on the list.
But anyway, I love the place where he refers to the austerity dogmas prevalent in the EU, Belgium, and Germany, if not ruling nearly everywhere in the EU:
ut the leadership of the euro zone, especially the Germans, seems intent on continuing austerity. This is not based on economics – there is no serious support for their position — it is based on things their parents told them about the virtues of balanced budgets.If the EU leadership continues to set policy based on folk wisdom from their parents rather than serious economics, the hardships among the population will continue.
In other news, for me, I just discovered that JFK used the manueuver of bypassing the FED and just, well, printing the money and spending rather than having to go in hock to the FED (in the National Debt, which is actually a leading savings instrument, US Treasury Bonds) for the money, the way it's done, strange when you think of it that way.
This is, I believe, what MMT and/or many similar economic theorists maintain, and it's not particularly inflationary, perhaps with some limitations. It costs far less, with less inequality created (less huge bankster salaries involved) and no messy debt to drag down the future. Krugman claims it's too politically risky, that it would lead to the situations which led to the creation of the FED in the first place. I'm not on the extreme downside of the FED since the departure of Alan Greenspan. I think it's been a comparatively positive player in maintaining a prosperous economy. But I'm inclined to believe MMT deserves a careful examination, and may provide a better way, if ultimately people could come to believe in it.
People, including me, might have to find other "safe" investments. You could say there is little public good coming from the availability of a safe investment (actually, the same could be said about any financial investment, but I digress), and it does ultimately burden society. If it were my direct money, I'd put it in a bank, but being pension fund money, I chose from a set of investments with few or no public guarantees, so I choose the fund that buys Treasuries. Either case, nowadays, interest rates are about zero. If Treasuries went out of business the fund would find something similar.)
But the benefit of people like me looking for safe investments, far from the folly of US banks and corporations, is less important to the overall prosperity and progress that an MMT policy combined with guaranteed work and massive green investment could provide. One economist estimated the cost of not immediately (just borrowing and) spending $6T/yr on green infrastructure was unfathomable--as unfathomable as the ultimate costs of Global Heating will be.
Kennedy, however, may have done it merely to show political resistance to a reactionary FED, not as part of switching the US to MMT.
Anyway, his confrontations with banks was just another thing leading up to the date of the assassination. (BTW, I believe the story the a mob hitman did it, many mobsters tried but one had the lucky place, behind the grassy knoll, to get a clear shot with a suitable weapon. Oswald was a planted patsy, set up to take the heat, the cheap gun perhaps to ensure he couldn't make it. Many have confessed. The official story cannot be true. Oswald himself was CIA, involved in infiltrating leftist groups, may well have infiltrated the actual assassin groups, or be one of them, by association, it's hard to tell. Whether he tried or not he lacked the means and it was not his magic bullet that against all odds did the trick without getting damaged, but several bullets from the real assassin, James Files, IIRC, not in public hands and probably lost to history.)
But this is along with the long usually listed cast of subjects including the mob, LBJ, the CIA, CIA-connected insiders, George HW Bush, oil producers threatened with the end of the Depletion Allowance including many big timers in Texas like Hunt, millitary builders, proto-neocons, the list of those with an axe to grind is endless. The banks is another on the list.
Thursday, July 21, 2016
never Trump
Trump said a few good things (among far more bad things) during the runup to the RNC. (Not that I would ever vote for or support him, the good things not going far enough and not seeming guaranteed enough to outweigh the bad.)
But with his VP now chosen, it appears the bad has won, the usual way.
But with his VP now chosen, it appears the bad has won, the usual way.
Wednesday, July 13, 2016
Voting Stein but remaining Democratic
As I have previously explained, voting for a candidate not in my party is not necessarily "disloyal" to my party. There are times when it is necessary to "discipline" the party, to keep it from losing its soul. And for the Democratic Party, and for me, this is one of those times. I actually don't have to make a very hard choice, for if I were to vote for Hillary Clinton in the state of Texas where I live, it could not possibly make a difference to the electoral college to help Hillary Clinton get elected President. Given this fact, I can freely chose to vote for Hillary or someone else and still not be accused of "electing Trump" by not taking the strongest possible reverse vote in a simple majoritarian system.
If I did live in a state in which Hillary probably would, might, or might possibly win, it would be a different story for me. I would have to think harder, because I would, in my mind, consider myself somewhat responsible for Trump getting elected if he did get elected.
I though about this a lot, because of the unexpectedly horrible and often criminal actions of George W. Bush. I had been thinking there wouldn't be much difference...but the result proved to me the possibility of failure of imagination, a very common human foible. You can fail to imagine how horrible things might be under another Republican President.
Even if a state were almost certainly a win for Hillary, it would still be worth voting for her, to be part of that. To deviate from voting begins to incurr some actual electoral risk, because we wouldn't know how many people were going to make that, possibly last minute, choice. If enough people all of a sudden decided to hardly discipline the party, they might cause an electoral loss.
At this point, my sense is, right now anyway, I wouldn't want to risk that myself, but I'd also want to hear more, and I could change if Hillary "veered to the center" of an already center stance.
But for me, I have an easier choice. Since my vote cannot help the party anyway, I can only apply soft discipline, and in this case I strongly feel I should.
Especially after the Platform debacle in which TPP and it's ilk were not completely denounced, and the illegal occupation and settlements in Palestine denounced too.
Trump is doing better on TPP, saying he would tear it up. I know one person who essentially endorsed Trump for the first time merely on hearing that. I'm a bit more than a one issue person, though, and I barely trust either Trump or Clinton. Both are the very highest calibre of liars.
Trump also sounds less Zionist than Clinton, and that's a plus. And he sounds less aggressive towards Russia in the Ukraine and Syria, those are more pluses.
But the Zionist media and Zionist blogosphere is constantly reminding me of the 20 or so reasons I cannot possibly let Trump be president. And I suspect that's true, but I'm impotent on that.
Actually, in 2000, I did not feel guilt over my useless-anyway vote for Nader. What made me feel guilty was that I sent $20 to the national campaign, and that could have been used in Florida, the ultimately critical state.
I realize that election and many others were simply being stolen in many ways anyway (such as the 91,000 erronously disqualified voters described by Greg Palast, that's the #1 way Florida was stolen) but a sufficent majority can defeat a limted theft, and the theft ultimately is usually limited. Because the outcome including all errors and thefts was so close, a bit of Nader campaigning in Florida could have made a difference, in my view since 2001.
This time, a hardened Clintonite could say I'm messing with the election even worse this time by blogging, posting to social media, and talking to friends about it.
In that regards, if someone hypothetically were to think that, the answer is, for me, what I'm doing is more important than any Presidential campaign. It's shining the light around and trying to find the truth. This is my most important political work. Voting, campaigning, and that stuff, is a distant second. Furthermore, I reject Alinskyism. Alinsky wrote that organizers, and everyone ultimately must lie in the sense of telling partial truths...and then he would strip them down even more for rhetorical and political effect. My model of democracy, "mass democracy", is different. Until you can achieve a mass victory the right and honest way, it isn't worth trying to steal it through Alinskyism, Trotskyism, or anything like that. In my view, always retaining honesty, is the most important thing. I say "vote with your eyes open, but nose held firmly closed if necessary (as it usually will be)." Only that way can you be immune to the partial truths, smears, of others. You realize the world is a very messy place. That's the only kind of stance in which I could vote for someone like Hillary Clinton anyway. If I became squeamish at the sight of any shadow, I could not use voting effectively. I would have no alternative but to vote for botique party candidates who are pure of heart and mind because they've never done any governing and never will.
One thing I won't do, however, is leave the Democratic Party by choice. That is still my Party, I am being the loyal person, and a true leader, merely by saying that, and explaining how and why it must be disciplined, softly, for this election.
Merely a soft discipline could cause miracles. What if Jill Stein, the Green Party Candiate, got more than votes than Hillary in Texas? That couldn't change the electoral outcome, but it would make serious history, and a strong point. (BTW, I fear the possibility of this is quite low, and even lower after the customary vote theft. Remember: in a "democracy" you must have a supermajority to blow past the stops, not just whine that the stops aren't there.)
And this can be done without even in the slightest affecting the result of the election.
Meanwhile many people, friends and co-bloggers wonder why I remain committed to the Democratic Party. It's quite simple, really. Until the Green Party actually wins national elections it is not really an electoral party, it's a proto-electoral party. Someday, maybe, it will win. That certainly happened with the Republican Party in 1860 when out-of-the-blue it won with Abraham Lincoln. The Republican Party became from that moment onwards a major electoral party that has continued to win national offices at a middling probability.
Where is the Green Party? Has never won a national election...not close...down in the small percents so far.
I suppose that could change, but I'd like to see some evidence as such, not just be asked to believe, as I was in so many elections in my life (starting for me with John Anderson, who I did not vote for, but I did not vote at all in that election, not feeling too motivated to re-elect Carter). So we got Reagan who turned my world upside down. Later, when I supported the Greens in 2000, Nader got a few percent but GWB became president and my world went far downer.
Now, boutique parties like the Greens could do immense good, IMO, if they focus on actually pressing national issues, such as TPP, endless wars, and so on. But in reality, actual 3rd parties spend about 90% of their time trying to program their listeners that the "two party system" is evil (yes it is, but only a supermajority party could change that, and your stinky % party doesn't get close enough to do anything but spoil), the two parties are identical (no they are horrible and far horribler, and not to see the latter is profound failure of imagination, as has happened to me to my deep regret at least twice).
You may think this stuff ("the two parties are identical") is fine and good, but it's not for me and I won't be supporting it.
I'm a loyal Democrat, in the Party of FDR and Kennedy. This is a party that has won many elections, represents the self-identification of a majority of the people in the country, and has created the most important social democracy, starting with Social Security and Medicare. Marx said it best, get in front of the largest People's party, or even Bourgeois Party if that's the largest and lefter one, and lead it, and that's what I choose to do. I "lead" by being me.
When another party can possibly become the largest People's party, when you have solid evidence that it can win, and not just hope and faith, then let me know.
WRT my other candidates, I will vote Democratic all the way except when there aren't any Democratic candidates. I have mostly felt good about my Democratic representatives, and bad about my Republican Governors and Senators.
Sanders, btw, did what he had to do in endorsing Hillary softly, by saying what he would do. I continue to have the greatest respect, though I agree with critics if he had waited until the delegate vote it would have been better. I suppose the problem is...the fundraising...and the endless clamour of Clintonites to get on with it, based on unofficial counts of the superdelegates. The only official count is the first one on the Convention Floor, and that is what I always wanted to wait for, and still am wating for that, and want to see it done properly.
I'm not privy to the discussions and agreements, getting an endorsement now may have meant something to Hillary's fundraising and she may have given gifts or made threats, we'll never know. Sanders was no doubt under serious pressure from the inside as well as endless Clintonite pundits.
I (will) accept Sander's loss, my loss, our countries loss not to find the better person, even more well liked, and with a renewal of New Deal type promises, and to get back towards the country. Now at best we'll have Clinton's neoliberalism or Trump's fascism (at best).
Move on to the next thing to do, which IMO is vote Green if in a solid Red state, otherwise Hillary.
I'm still reading the news, though.
If I did live in a state in which Hillary probably would, might, or might possibly win, it would be a different story for me. I would have to think harder, because I would, in my mind, consider myself somewhat responsible for Trump getting elected if he did get elected.
I though about this a lot, because of the unexpectedly horrible and often criminal actions of George W. Bush. I had been thinking there wouldn't be much difference...but the result proved to me the possibility of failure of imagination, a very common human foible. You can fail to imagine how horrible things might be under another Republican President.
Even if a state were almost certainly a win for Hillary, it would still be worth voting for her, to be part of that. To deviate from voting begins to incurr some actual electoral risk, because we wouldn't know how many people were going to make that, possibly last minute, choice. If enough people all of a sudden decided to hardly discipline the party, they might cause an electoral loss.
At this point, my sense is, right now anyway, I wouldn't want to risk that myself, but I'd also want to hear more, and I could change if Hillary "veered to the center" of an already center stance.
But for me, I have an easier choice. Since my vote cannot help the party anyway, I can only apply soft discipline, and in this case I strongly feel I should.
Especially after the Platform debacle in which TPP and it's ilk were not completely denounced, and the illegal occupation and settlements in Palestine denounced too.
Trump is doing better on TPP, saying he would tear it up. I know one person who essentially endorsed Trump for the first time merely on hearing that. I'm a bit more than a one issue person, though, and I barely trust either Trump or Clinton. Both are the very highest calibre of liars.
Trump also sounds less Zionist than Clinton, and that's a plus. And he sounds less aggressive towards Russia in the Ukraine and Syria, those are more pluses.
But the Zionist media and Zionist blogosphere is constantly reminding me of the 20 or so reasons I cannot possibly let Trump be president. And I suspect that's true, but I'm impotent on that.
Actually, in 2000, I did not feel guilt over my useless-anyway vote for Nader. What made me feel guilty was that I sent $20 to the national campaign, and that could have been used in Florida, the ultimately critical state.
I realize that election and many others were simply being stolen in many ways anyway (such as the 91,000 erronously disqualified voters described by Greg Palast, that's the #1 way Florida was stolen) but a sufficent majority can defeat a limted theft, and the theft ultimately is usually limited. Because the outcome including all errors and thefts was so close, a bit of Nader campaigning in Florida could have made a difference, in my view since 2001.
This time, a hardened Clintonite could say I'm messing with the election even worse this time by blogging, posting to social media, and talking to friends about it.
In that regards, if someone hypothetically were to think that, the answer is, for me, what I'm doing is more important than any Presidential campaign. It's shining the light around and trying to find the truth. This is my most important political work. Voting, campaigning, and that stuff, is a distant second. Furthermore, I reject Alinskyism. Alinsky wrote that organizers, and everyone ultimately must lie in the sense of telling partial truths...and then he would strip them down even more for rhetorical and political effect. My model of democracy, "mass democracy", is different. Until you can achieve a mass victory the right and honest way, it isn't worth trying to steal it through Alinskyism, Trotskyism, or anything like that. In my view, always retaining honesty, is the most important thing. I say "vote with your eyes open, but nose held firmly closed if necessary (as it usually will be)." Only that way can you be immune to the partial truths, smears, of others. You realize the world is a very messy place. That's the only kind of stance in which I could vote for someone like Hillary Clinton anyway. If I became squeamish at the sight of any shadow, I could not use voting effectively. I would have no alternative but to vote for botique party candidates who are pure of heart and mind because they've never done any governing and never will.
One thing I won't do, however, is leave the Democratic Party by choice. That is still my Party, I am being the loyal person, and a true leader, merely by saying that, and explaining how and why it must be disciplined, softly, for this election.
Merely a soft discipline could cause miracles. What if Jill Stein, the Green Party Candiate, got more than votes than Hillary in Texas? That couldn't change the electoral outcome, but it would make serious history, and a strong point. (BTW, I fear the possibility of this is quite low, and even lower after the customary vote theft. Remember: in a "democracy" you must have a supermajority to blow past the stops, not just whine that the stops aren't there.)
And this can be done without even in the slightest affecting the result of the election.
Meanwhile many people, friends and co-bloggers wonder why I remain committed to the Democratic Party. It's quite simple, really. Until the Green Party actually wins national elections it is not really an electoral party, it's a proto-electoral party. Someday, maybe, it will win. That certainly happened with the Republican Party in 1860 when out-of-the-blue it won with Abraham Lincoln. The Republican Party became from that moment onwards a major electoral party that has continued to win national offices at a middling probability.
Where is the Green Party? Has never won a national election...not close...down in the small percents so far.
I suppose that could change, but I'd like to see some evidence as such, not just be asked to believe, as I was in so many elections in my life (starting for me with John Anderson, who I did not vote for, but I did not vote at all in that election, not feeling too motivated to re-elect Carter). So we got Reagan who turned my world upside down. Later, when I supported the Greens in 2000, Nader got a few percent but GWB became president and my world went far downer.
Now, boutique parties like the Greens could do immense good, IMO, if they focus on actually pressing national issues, such as TPP, endless wars, and so on. But in reality, actual 3rd parties spend about 90% of their time trying to program their listeners that the "two party system" is evil (yes it is, but only a supermajority party could change that, and your stinky % party doesn't get close enough to do anything but spoil), the two parties are identical (no they are horrible and far horribler, and not to see the latter is profound failure of imagination, as has happened to me to my deep regret at least twice).
You may think this stuff ("the two parties are identical") is fine and good, but it's not for me and I won't be supporting it.
I'm a loyal Democrat, in the Party of FDR and Kennedy. This is a party that has won many elections, represents the self-identification of a majority of the people in the country, and has created the most important social democracy, starting with Social Security and Medicare. Marx said it best, get in front of the largest People's party, or even Bourgeois Party if that's the largest and lefter one, and lead it, and that's what I choose to do. I "lead" by being me.
When another party can possibly become the largest People's party, when you have solid evidence that it can win, and not just hope and faith, then let me know.
WRT my other candidates, I will vote Democratic all the way except when there aren't any Democratic candidates. I have mostly felt good about my Democratic representatives, and bad about my Republican Governors and Senators.
Sanders, btw, did what he had to do in endorsing Hillary softly, by saying what he would do. I continue to have the greatest respect, though I agree with critics if he had waited until the delegate vote it would have been better. I suppose the problem is...the fundraising...and the endless clamour of Clintonites to get on with it, based on unofficial counts of the superdelegates. The only official count is the first one on the Convention Floor, and that is what I always wanted to wait for, and still am wating for that, and want to see it done properly.
I'm not privy to the discussions and agreements, getting an endorsement now may have meant something to Hillary's fundraising and she may have given gifts or made threats, we'll never know. Sanders was no doubt under serious pressure from the inside as well as endless Clintonite pundits.
I (will) accept Sander's loss, my loss, our countries loss not to find the better person, even more well liked, and with a renewal of New Deal type promises, and to get back towards the country. Now at best we'll have Clinton's neoliberalism or Trump's fascism (at best).
Move on to the next thing to do, which IMO is vote Green if in a solid Red state, otherwise Hillary.
I'm still reading the news, though.
Tuesday, July 12, 2016
Statistical Analysis Reveals Hillary Stole Primary
http://alexanderhiggins.com/stanford-berkley-study-1-77-billion-chance-hillary-won-primary-without-widespread-election-fraud/
Where there was a voting paper trail, Bernie won. The deviations from exit polls in states without a voting paper trail could not have happened by chance and favored Hillary.
According to these studies, it appears the electronic votes were hacked to make Hillary win. The alternative to this hypothesis would be that there is some other factor which I may have failed to imagine.
*****
I once met the vote counting czar in Bexar county, who attended a discussion party I hosted regarding voting machines. This was in the aftermath of the 2000 election, where vote counting had been a major concern. Some time earlier the County had decided to buy and deploy new electronic voting machines.
He saw nothing wrong with electronic voting machines and no good reason for a paper trail. All of the others at the party were very concerned about the hackability of electronic voting machines and thought there should always be a paper trail, if not fully hand counted paper ballots.
Based on some off topic comments he made wrt Israel and the Palestinians, it would be fair to guess that he was a Zionist. In my reckoning, his views did not seem fair to the Palestinians.
In order to rig an election run county by county, one would need people acting in secret and trusting one another over a wide geographical area. Such people would need a strong shared interest which they would consider more important than honesty and fairness to other groups. They would need to be part of a society, perhaps partly public, in which they are bound to others. Such people cannot be purchased, anyone merely purchased could later be a turncoat.
The Bernie Sanders delegates at the Democratic Party Platform meeting tried to get a plank into the Democratic Platform that called for an end to the occupation and illegal settlements in Palestine. It was rejected by all of the DNC and Hillary Clinton representatives.
Bernie Sanders himself is Jewish, and he strongly supports the existence of the State of Israel. But since he also supports fairness to the Palestinians, it would be unfair to characterize him as a Zionist--which is a derogatory term from the standpoint of liberal minded people who believe in universal rights and are opposed to religious discrimination of any kind. (There used to be a middle ground term "liberal Zionist" but that has only served to describe occasionally apologetic Zionists.)
Noam Chomsky is a Jew who is very critical of Israeli policies, though he considers himself a friend of Israel and a person who supports the existence of an Israel (side by side with Palestine on the internationally recognized borders, as he says) but wants to see it become an international law abiding state (which, btw, it is not). Meanwhile there are many Jews who are critical of the very idea of a one-religion-supremacist state such as Israel, they believe there should be one state for both Jews and non-Jews in all of Israel and Palestine, and in which all have equal rights, including rights related to immigration, so there would be an axiomatic right-of-return for all displaced Palestinians and their successors. That is the so-called "One State" solution advocated by many supporters of the Boycott, Divest, and Sanctions movement for Palestine, and supporters of the "One State" solution sometimes call themselves Anti-Zionists. Anti-Zionism is the morally superior view based on the idea of equality of all people and no discrimination based on religion.
The Sanders delegation was also unable to remove language strongly critical of the B.D.S. movement from the Democratic Platform, blocked by the Clinton and DNC delegations. Unfortunately we can't see exactly what this language is--because the Democratic National Committee does not make the draft Platform public. Nevertheless, they are claiming it represents the most progressive Democratic Party Platform in history.
Noam Chomsky does not believe the uniquely pro-Israel policies of the USA stem from some kind of Zionist conspiracy. (BTW, one need not at all be a Jew to be Zionists, there are many Christian Zionists, such as Hillary Clinton herself.) He argues it is simply a long standanding part of the internal rules of the deep imperial state. Just after the 1967 war, Israeli forces were seen as being so effective in controlling other states in the Middle East, the US war establishment decided to buy into it. Israel became, and still is, a key part of the US empire. And that, rather than the feelings of a small number of Jewish voters, explains why the US is uniquely pro-Israel (for example, continually vetoing US Security Council resolutions that would force Israel to live up to international laws, supplying military assistance, and massive military aid).
A view such as "A Jewish secret society is running the world" is often characterized as being not just a conspiracy theory, but a specifically anti-semetic conspiracy theory, of the kind that led to the rise a Naziism in Germany.
However, if you use the word Zionist, since that does not uniquely apply to Jews, I would say it is not necessarily anti-semitic, to a well informed person who understands what I've said above.
I provide the weakest possible anecdotal connection for an actual Zionist conspiracy above. However, many many people do believe there is a Zionist conspiracy--and the extreme preference for Israel results not from just the deep imperial state that Chomsky opines, nor honest politics, though the "contributions" might go a long way toward explaining it), nor the relatively small proportion of Jews strongly identifying with Israel. I think it's possible that a strong US preference for Israel could result from the combination of large financial campaign contributions from the likes of Sheldon Adelson, combined with the actions of a well organized minority. And that kind of anti-democracy would best be limited by keeping private money out of politics.
However if actual vote stealing *is* being done, there would have to be a kind of secret organization, and it would best be held together with a strongly shared interest not unlike Zionism.
A friend of mine who served 20 years in the Air Force starting in the 1970's, did not feel there was any preference for Israel in the military or state apparatus as such, as far as he could tell. In fact, he sensed a certain degree of loathing, such as over the US ship bombed by Israel in the 1960's. His sense was that all the preference for Israel came from politicians, appeasing voters and milking donors. I have argued that he might not have any awareness of feelings at the highest levels. But his argument turns away from the deep state being the source of the preference.
If indeed the preference ends with politicians, and perhaps their direct appointments, this would suggest it's all in the voter appeal and money raising. We assume politicians are controlled in those ways, in one way essentially corrupt and in another not as much. If preferring Israel didn't pay in one way or the other or both, it wouldn't happen.
Of course there are also the commercial interests such as military hardware makers, who have lots of money. For the task force, that could be provided by: the mob, the CIA, the FBI, lot's of groups are geographically distributed and may have authorized and unauthorized agendas--though it's hard to necessarily imagine any aligning with Zionism as well as, well, Zionists.
Regardless of who did it, or even if it's happening--which may be impossible to prove, a big help to democracy would be voting apparatus with a paper trail. Some states do that. There isn't anything anti-semitic about that.
Hillary Clinton's national political career is widely believed to have started with a commencement speech she gave at Wellesley College in 1970. From that moment onward, she climbed the ladder very quickly, becoming one of the youngest lawyers examining the Watergate Tapes, for example, including the super top secret "Tape of Tapes" which some believe may give information regarding the JFK assassination. But not long after that she left Washington DC and moved to Arkansas with the man she already believed would be President. Bill Clinton also had a strangely meteoric rise, starting with his Rhodes Scholarship, which he apparently never completed, instead spending time organizing anti-war protests and going on a long tour of Europe and Russia with no known source of income. I have read and do strongly believe that both Bill and Hillary were CIA recruits, recruited right out of college. They were recruited to infiltrate the peace movement and report back about radicals. Both became successful in their initial anti-establishment careers almost instantly, as if someone were pulling strings. Neither had principled reasons for being anti-establishment, Bill for example was only apparently concerned about personally evading the draft, not in confronting the injustice the war actually represented, as outlined by Martin Luther King. Then they as quickly as they rose in the "anti-establishment" they quickly became successful in their fully establishment careers, such as Hillary becoming being the youngest lawyer on the Watergate Commission, or Bill becoming the Attorney General of Arkansas, suggesting even more strings being pulled. Victor Thorn has written a book on Hillary which fills in the CIA apparent details of both Clinton's lives. (I mostly believe the chapter about how and why the Clintons were recruited to the CIA, I do not necessarily believe anything else in this volume and I believe Thorn's other volumes even less. The thing is...the CIA won't be telling us whether or not the Clintons were involved with them, so we will never know for sure, but the shoe fits and explains the otherwise inexplicable. In other parts of this and other similar books, there's nothing essential in the flow of the Clinton's lives to explain repeated rape or murder...there's no essential fit or not. It's more reasonable to believe too much of this would have sunk the Clinton boat long ago, unless their true agency had a smaller recruitment base than the CIA and had no alternative to the Clintons. And people harmed by the Clintons WOULD be telling us, so we've already heard these stories, some have already been debunked, some may be true, and there are many who could fabricate stories for various reasons. By the way, this book actually seems like a composite which itself was written by different authors. The person writing the CIA section has more of a left view than not and makes it clear the Clinton's were not and never could have been leftists, they were spies snitching on leftist groups, and they've been spoilers for the left ever since, so the shoe really does fit. They were right Republicans recruited into the Nixon-era CIA. Nixon's Cheney was Henry Kissinger, who would have been ultimately responsible for them. No wonder Hillary is still a Kissinger fan today, it was during his rule that she was brought on, possibly personally selected by him.)
Now the selection of people for such intelligence work would be based on specific talents. One of the very most important talents for any secret agent or operative is lying, and the Clintons both do that effortlessly. It's easy to see that they could have been the best in their recruitment class.
It is said in Thorn's book that you cannot find the words of the speech Hillary actually gave at Wellesley. It is said it did not follow the bland speech she had actually written. It was a specific attack on the black Republican Senator, Edward Brooke, who had just finished giving his commencement address. An amazing array of top government officials was present that day, but news recordings and even notes were forcibly destroyed.
I notice that the period 1967-1970 was also the time frame in which US policy shifted towards Israel, when the USA became the leading defender of Israel. Chomsky ascribes this to self-interest in the deep imperial state.
FWIW, Edward Brooke took a tour of Israel and said nice things about it some time after his presence hearing Hillary's speech. Was he sent on this tour for some kind of corrective reasons, to correct his "misunderstanding" of what Israel is all about?
Where there was a voting paper trail, Bernie won. The deviations from exit polls in states without a voting paper trail could not have happened by chance and favored Hillary.
According to these studies, it appears the electronic votes were hacked to make Hillary win. The alternative to this hypothesis would be that there is some other factor which I may have failed to imagine.
*****
I once met the vote counting czar in Bexar county, who attended a discussion party I hosted regarding voting machines. This was in the aftermath of the 2000 election, where vote counting had been a major concern. Some time earlier the County had decided to buy and deploy new electronic voting machines.
He saw nothing wrong with electronic voting machines and no good reason for a paper trail. All of the others at the party were very concerned about the hackability of electronic voting machines and thought there should always be a paper trail, if not fully hand counted paper ballots.
Based on some off topic comments he made wrt Israel and the Palestinians, it would be fair to guess that he was a Zionist. In my reckoning, his views did not seem fair to the Palestinians.
In order to rig an election run county by county, one would need people acting in secret and trusting one another over a wide geographical area. Such people would need a strong shared interest which they would consider more important than honesty and fairness to other groups. They would need to be part of a society, perhaps partly public, in which they are bound to others. Such people cannot be purchased, anyone merely purchased could later be a turncoat.
The Bernie Sanders delegates at the Democratic Party Platform meeting tried to get a plank into the Democratic Platform that called for an end to the occupation and illegal settlements in Palestine. It was rejected by all of the DNC and Hillary Clinton representatives.
Bernie Sanders himself is Jewish, and he strongly supports the existence of the State of Israel. But since he also supports fairness to the Palestinians, it would be unfair to characterize him as a Zionist--which is a derogatory term from the standpoint of liberal minded people who believe in universal rights and are opposed to religious discrimination of any kind. (There used to be a middle ground term "liberal Zionist" but that has only served to describe occasionally apologetic Zionists.)
Noam Chomsky is a Jew who is very critical of Israeli policies, though he considers himself a friend of Israel and a person who supports the existence of an Israel (side by side with Palestine on the internationally recognized borders, as he says) but wants to see it become an international law abiding state (which, btw, it is not). Meanwhile there are many Jews who are critical of the very idea of a one-religion-supremacist state such as Israel, they believe there should be one state for both Jews and non-Jews in all of Israel and Palestine, and in which all have equal rights, including rights related to immigration, so there would be an axiomatic right-of-return for all displaced Palestinians and their successors. That is the so-called "One State" solution advocated by many supporters of the Boycott, Divest, and Sanctions movement for Palestine, and supporters of the "One State" solution sometimes call themselves Anti-Zionists. Anti-Zionism is the morally superior view based on the idea of equality of all people and no discrimination based on religion.
The Sanders delegation was also unable to remove language strongly critical of the B.D.S. movement from the Democratic Platform, blocked by the Clinton and DNC delegations. Unfortunately we can't see exactly what this language is--because the Democratic National Committee does not make the draft Platform public. Nevertheless, they are claiming it represents the most progressive Democratic Party Platform in history.
Noam Chomsky does not believe the uniquely pro-Israel policies of the USA stem from some kind of Zionist conspiracy. (BTW, one need not at all be a Jew to be Zionists, there are many Christian Zionists, such as Hillary Clinton herself.) He argues it is simply a long standanding part of the internal rules of the deep imperial state. Just after the 1967 war, Israeli forces were seen as being so effective in controlling other states in the Middle East, the US war establishment decided to buy into it. Israel became, and still is, a key part of the US empire. And that, rather than the feelings of a small number of Jewish voters, explains why the US is uniquely pro-Israel (for example, continually vetoing US Security Council resolutions that would force Israel to live up to international laws, supplying military assistance, and massive military aid).
A view such as "A Jewish secret society is running the world" is often characterized as being not just a conspiracy theory, but a specifically anti-semetic conspiracy theory, of the kind that led to the rise a Naziism in Germany.
However, if you use the word Zionist, since that does not uniquely apply to Jews, I would say it is not necessarily anti-semitic, to a well informed person who understands what I've said above.
I provide the weakest possible anecdotal connection for an actual Zionist conspiracy above. However, many many people do believe there is a Zionist conspiracy--and the extreme preference for Israel results not from just the deep imperial state that Chomsky opines, nor honest politics, though the "contributions" might go a long way toward explaining it), nor the relatively small proportion of Jews strongly identifying with Israel. I think it's possible that a strong US preference for Israel could result from the combination of large financial campaign contributions from the likes of Sheldon Adelson, combined with the actions of a well organized minority. And that kind of anti-democracy would best be limited by keeping private money out of politics.
However if actual vote stealing *is* being done, there would have to be a kind of secret organization, and it would best be held together with a strongly shared interest not unlike Zionism.
A friend of mine who served 20 years in the Air Force starting in the 1970's, did not feel there was any preference for Israel in the military or state apparatus as such, as far as he could tell. In fact, he sensed a certain degree of loathing, such as over the US ship bombed by Israel in the 1960's. His sense was that all the preference for Israel came from politicians, appeasing voters and milking donors. I have argued that he might not have any awareness of feelings at the highest levels. But his argument turns away from the deep state being the source of the preference.
If indeed the preference ends with politicians, and perhaps their direct appointments, this would suggest it's all in the voter appeal and money raising. We assume politicians are controlled in those ways, in one way essentially corrupt and in another not as much. If preferring Israel didn't pay in one way or the other or both, it wouldn't happen.
Of course there are also the commercial interests such as military hardware makers, who have lots of money. For the task force, that could be provided by: the mob, the CIA, the FBI, lot's of groups are geographically distributed and may have authorized and unauthorized agendas--though it's hard to necessarily imagine any aligning with Zionism as well as, well, Zionists.
Regardless of who did it, or even if it's happening--which may be impossible to prove, a big help to democracy would be voting apparatus with a paper trail. Some states do that. There isn't anything anti-semitic about that.
Hillary Clinton's national political career is widely believed to have started with a commencement speech she gave at Wellesley College in 1970. From that moment onward, she climbed the ladder very quickly, becoming one of the youngest lawyers examining the Watergate Tapes, for example, including the super top secret "Tape of Tapes" which some believe may give information regarding the JFK assassination. But not long after that she left Washington DC and moved to Arkansas with the man she already believed would be President. Bill Clinton also had a strangely meteoric rise, starting with his Rhodes Scholarship, which he apparently never completed, instead spending time organizing anti-war protests and going on a long tour of Europe and Russia with no known source of income. I have read and do strongly believe that both Bill and Hillary were CIA recruits, recruited right out of college. They were recruited to infiltrate the peace movement and report back about radicals. Both became successful in their initial anti-establishment careers almost instantly, as if someone were pulling strings. Neither had principled reasons for being anti-establishment, Bill for example was only apparently concerned about personally evading the draft, not in confronting the injustice the war actually represented, as outlined by Martin Luther King. Then they as quickly as they rose in the "anti-establishment" they quickly became successful in their fully establishment careers, such as Hillary becoming being the youngest lawyer on the Watergate Commission, or Bill becoming the Attorney General of Arkansas, suggesting even more strings being pulled. Victor Thorn has written a book on Hillary which fills in the CIA apparent details of both Clinton's lives. (I mostly believe the chapter about how and why the Clintons were recruited to the CIA, I do not necessarily believe anything else in this volume and I believe Thorn's other volumes even less. The thing is...the CIA won't be telling us whether or not the Clintons were involved with them, so we will never know for sure, but the shoe fits and explains the otherwise inexplicable. In other parts of this and other similar books, there's nothing essential in the flow of the Clinton's lives to explain repeated rape or murder...there's no essential fit or not. It's more reasonable to believe too much of this would have sunk the Clinton boat long ago, unless their true agency had a smaller recruitment base than the CIA and had no alternative to the Clintons. And people harmed by the Clintons WOULD be telling us, so we've already heard these stories, some have already been debunked, some may be true, and there are many who could fabricate stories for various reasons. By the way, this book actually seems like a composite which itself was written by different authors. The person writing the CIA section has more of a left view than not and makes it clear the Clinton's were not and never could have been leftists, they were spies snitching on leftist groups, and they've been spoilers for the left ever since, so the shoe really does fit. They were right Republicans recruited into the Nixon-era CIA. Nixon's Cheney was Henry Kissinger, who would have been ultimately responsible for them. No wonder Hillary is still a Kissinger fan today, it was during his rule that she was brought on, possibly personally selected by him.)
Now the selection of people for such intelligence work would be based on specific talents. One of the very most important talents for any secret agent or operative is lying, and the Clintons both do that effortlessly. It's easy to see that they could have been the best in their recruitment class.
It is said in Thorn's book that you cannot find the words of the speech Hillary actually gave at Wellesley. It is said it did not follow the bland speech she had actually written. It was a specific attack on the black Republican Senator, Edward Brooke, who had just finished giving his commencement address. An amazing array of top government officials was present that day, but news recordings and even notes were forcibly destroyed.
I notice that the period 1967-1970 was also the time frame in which US policy shifted towards Israel, when the USA became the leading defender of Israel. Chomsky ascribes this to self-interest in the deep imperial state.
FWIW, Edward Brooke took a tour of Israel and said nice things about it some time after his presence hearing Hillary's speech. Was he sent on this tour for some kind of corrective reasons, to correct his "misunderstanding" of what Israel is all about?
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