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greg hunter just put out an excellent interview with catherine austin fitts.
among other topics is the recent disclosure that $9 trillion is "missing" from the defence budget.
that's $30,000 per man, woman, and child in the united states.
CAF speculates that the neocons may use war with russia to cover-up this astronomical theft.
many of us remember how on sep 10th 2001, rumsfeld disclosed that $3 trillion was "missing" from the defence budget.
then the next day sep 11th happened, and the missing trillions was the last thing on anyone's mind.
curious timing, that - it's almost as if the bush administration knew what was about to happen the next day.
CAF gives some great insight, but is still a bit naive, talking about how the constitution would work if only the rulers would obey it. she refuses to accept that the very system of government itself is a system of control fraud, a system of enslavement of, and plunder from the people, for the benefit of the ruling class.
at any rate, we live in interesting times…now would be good for any last minute prepping.
James Wesley Rawles loves the Military Grade (Mil-Spec) 3rd generation night vision monocular PVS-14. I gotta admit that I would love to get one. But they are expensive: $3,000!
JWR Replies: If you want to buy the best, then you need to get a military specification Gen 3+ AN/PVS-14 monocular that comes with a Litton factory data sheet. Have one hand-picked for the maximum number of line pairs and minimal scintillation. (Scintillation is an image degradation commonly called “the sparklies”.) If possible, make arrangements visit the seller’s store on an evening, and do side-by-side tests with multiple scopes. (Or offer to pay the vendor to do so, if you can’t travel there.) Even with data sheets, the image quality differs a bit. This is because even though night vision equipment is mass produced, their michochannel plates are hand-assembled into image tubes in a clean room. This is very delicate and precise work. It is as much an art as it is a science. Some of ITT’s assemblers have been doing these tasks for 20+ years.
You can order a mil-spec night vision monocular with confidence from any of SurvivalBlog’s advertisers. But beware of those fly-by-night sellers who’s idea of “re-manufacturing” is rebuilding surplus scopes on their kitchen table. There are also a few vendors that are selling scopes with forged data sheets. Again, buy only from reputable dealers.
Just wanted to give my 2 cents on the Monocular NVGs. The cost of PVS-15s (binocular, standard issue for special forces when I left the military) is astronomical unless you're swimming in money, but in my estimation the benefit is hard to put a price on. The main beef I had with PVS-14s (the ones I used in the military) was the lack of depth perception. Driving without depth perception was one of the hardest things I had to do, and any sort of light, even from over the a ridge from a city 20 miles away would wash out the foreground and leave you with little ability to see directly in front of you. Add to this a lack of depth perception and you're in trouble, like off the road onto a hillside trouble. 15s wouldn't solve the washout problem, but they would give you depth perception. On patrols, I regularly fell when crossing wadis, rough terrain, off the backs of helicopters, etc. because of the lack of depth perception. It didn't happen every patrol, but it made it so much more difficult.
However, if you don't plan on walking, driving, patrolling with your NVGs then maybe you don't need depth perception. The 14s worked great when pulling guard.
With that being said, not sure if anyone has experience with NVGs that have a binocular ouput but that feed from monocular input like the PVS7-3 below. If these offer depth perception, I would personally spring for these over a monocular any day of the week based off of my experiences overseas. Like Sand_Puppy said above, it doesn't seem unreasonable to test out your NVGs prior to buying them and I would include a field walk or walk over somewhat rough terrain if you can include this in your test of the product.
The 26th Amendment to the United States Constitution was adopted on July 1, 1971. I turned eighteen on January 5, 1972 and was eligible to vote for the first time in the presidential election of 1972. Nixon vs. McGovern.
The Vietnam war had been raging for a number of years. The student anti-war demonstrations had come and gone for a number of years. Kent State was still a fresh scar in everyone’s mind. Young men had been arbitrarily called up to serve. Snatched from their classrooms, jobs and homes to be given rudimentary basic training and then to be dumped into the killing fields of south-east Asia. Many died. We all knew men who had died in the war. Many were lost. Many returned home injured and lost. Many served honorably and returned home to a county that was embarrassed by their presence, that didn't want to be reminded of what we had wrought. In September 1972, at my freshman orientation to college there was a table with volunteers who would assist you in avoiding the draft. There was also a table with clean shaven young men in uniforms advertising the college’s ROTC program. The country was schizophrenic. It appeared ready to tear itself in half and then have each side attempt to devour the other.
My contemporaries were old enough to remember the Cuban Missile Crisis, the assassinations of John Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Robert Kennedy. We witnessed the inner city riots and watched the horror of the war with dinner each night. The culture was engaged in a battle between Mayberry/Leave it to Beaver and the Timothy O'Leary world of free sex, free drugs, no rules, no authority. When I think back I realize that we had grown up very early. The world put unavoidable life and death demands on us while we were still teens.
I took my first vote very seriously, as I have taken every vote since that election. For the first time in forty-four years I am completely confounded. None of the four candidates have any appeal for me. I see my country propelling itself down a very dark path. None of the candidates has a real plan. For that matter, none have a clue, as to how fast we are approaching the abyss. My present inclination is to not vote at all. Which would be a first.
The vice presidential display last night was pitiful. My high school debate coach would have pulled both of them from the team and removed the moderator from being a judge. Nothing of substance was addressed, discussed or clarified.
Having taken the red pill, in the midst of the financial explosion of nine years ago, I have now come to this. The entire thing seems no more than a sham. Window dressing. Kabuki theater. Farce. Image over substance. The real issues are not addressed. The truth is buried in lies. Fending off ad hominem attacks to preserve an image is more important than the lives of the people and the success of the republic.
My normal pessimism has kicked into overdrive.
(Salus Populi Suprema Est Lex) The welfare of the people is the ultimate law. (Cicero)
An ideal not honored in this election.
JT
7 years ago. If you had, you'd have realized that the reality that you'd been living (voting and thinking that one candidate was different than the other…and many more things!!!) was a false reality.
Wake the FUK up people.
I have extensive experience with PVS7s and they offer no depth perception. Two screens looking at one tube. No one uses these any more. Buy the 14s. Trust me.
Rector
I'm not an internist but that has never stopped me from having an opinion Dryam.
It was Sept 11th. Hillary was standing there in front of the foul and bloody deed. She thought she could tough it out. She failed.
Doctor What is it she does now? Look, how she rubs her hands. 30 Gentlewoman It is an accustomed action with her, to seem thus washing her hands: I have known her continue in this a quarter of an hour. LADY MACBETH Yet here's a spot. Doctor Hark! she speaks: I will set down what comes from her, to satisfy my remembrance the more strongly. LADY MACBETH Out, damned spot! out, I say!--One: two: why, then, 'tis time to do't.--Hell is murky!--Fie, my 40 lord, fie! a soldier, and afeard? What need we fear who knows it, when none can call our power to account?--Yet who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him. Doctor Do you mark that? LADY MACBETH The thane of Fife had a wife: where is she now?-- What, will these hands ne'er be clean?--No more o' that, my lord, no more o' that: you mar all with this starting
Chris:
I have respected and admired much of what you have said and written over the years, but I have to admit that I am surprised at your conclusion that Trump would be a good thing for our country and the world.
In writing what I am about to write, I am not endorsing Clinton, as I have serious reservations about her. However:
Your teachings have been to focus on Environment, Economics, and Energy in understanding the world, its problems, in finding solutions. Central to your concept of working through things has been the focus on Community. I have embraced your words in many ways. For those reasons, I cannot imagine how a Trump presidency would further those ideals. He has built his business by focusing on self over anyone else and has done very little to engender community. All of his power seems to be based on threat, fear, and jealousy of what he has. Many of his supporters embrace his history of stereotyping and division while others look beyond it for the vision of success and his promises that are largely backed with only his word and his reports of his greatness and success.
A Trump presidency would likely have little regard to protecting the environment from exploitation for the present at the expense of the future. In fact, it would likely be an acceleration of that process.
His stated economic concepts, from the limited plans that have been outlined, are so clearly beneficial to the super elite, that they would only exacerbate the social divides and more likely lead to a chaotic battle between the classes with a racial edge. The supply side economics that he supports clearly undercuts the concept of sound money, as it will be based on further debt.
I agree with concerns of veracity from both sides, but Trump has consistently said one thing and then lied about it later. With all of his double speak, you cannot trust a thing out of his mouth.
He has a history of aggressively attacking his opposition, and will likely have a real struggle with congress that is as bad if not worse than what Obama has gone through (largely because the Republicans simply wanted his Presidency to fail, leading to the need to exert more executive power simply to get anything done). Additionally, an egocentric, rule from the top president who has little understanding of constitutional law or process could be catastrophic to our democratic institutions. While the power elite is not guiding us well now, our institutions have guided us through times of transition in the past more peacefully than could otherwise have occurred when you compare our experience to other countries.
In the end, I do understand your desire for a change in the way things work, but going with a Trump path is likely to create chaos and hurt many of the people that we desire to help. Once unleashed, chaos can quickly spiral out of control.
My hope is that Trump loses, but that the winner understand the gravity of the experience that has lead to whatever strength he and Bernie have demonstrated such that the democratic process can work to positively change while maintaining our community and keeping us out of undesired and unneeded external conflict.
We should not confuse the office of the president with the person. The power of office has not grown as the result of the greed of the individual, or even group of individual office holders, but the desire of those behind the scenes to circumvent what little is left of the shell our democracy.
I would argue the more powerful the office has become the more impotent the actual office holders has become. What could be more telling than reading of "My Pet Goat" while the intricate machinations of the military industrial complex pulled off one of the most frightening crimes in American history. Which still remains shrouded in mystery, for which no one has been held in account for. Yet we still walk around as if everything is OK, things are normal, we have not changed…yet.
We are sold candidates the same way we are sold tooth paste. "I am not a doctor, but I do play one on TV…". There has not been substantive discussion on policy in an election in years. All the discussion revolves around strategies, how to play the game, which is what our elections have been reduced to. They are marketing campaigns to appeal to this "vote" or that "vote". The gay conservative vote, the straight ethnic liberal vote, the women's vote, the conservative white vote, on and on and on, sliced in some many directions that it make your head spin. Yet nary a whisper about actual substantive policy.
Yet still there is brand loyalty out there, like Pepsi vs. Coke, Yankees vs. Red sox, Democrats vs Republicans. This is understandable, to be politically passionate is normal, to want to have a voice in the course of ones nation. But it is a fraud, through and through. If GW didn't discredit the office how possibly could Trump? We have already sunk to the depths of incoherence, if we read recent history in a novel, we wouldn't believe it. Have we lost our sense of self dignity and self respect?
You thought the problem was that we just had white males as presidents, ha! Now you have a African American president, nothing changed. Next you'll have women, nothing will change. We can buy and control everything…ultimately what we are are really being sold is hopelessness. Don't buy what is being sold.
We collectively still hold all the cards, we still have all the power. It is ours for the taking once we abandon the idea that voting for either Trump or Clinton has anything to do with it.
The deeper truth is that I don't think it matters in the slightest who's president because there's a machine running in the background, the gears of the deep state grinding along, and this machine is especially powerful and violent.
The nation has had in its possession for forty years the Zapruder films which clearly show Kennedy's head rocketing backwards and to the left, so he was shot from the front and right. F=MA.
Despite having that right there on film, when the 50 year anniversary came along the press dutifully repeated the lone gunman angle, but a few allowed that maybe there was still some controversy but that it was too far in the background now to ever know. Nope. F=MA 50 years ago and it will still be as true 50 years from now. It's not controversial in the slightest. It's just physics. It's also not subject to debate or differing expert opinions. It just is.
Then, as you mention, 9/11 comes along and the president is sitting in a classroom while the security apparatus knew one of two things; (1) a major terrorist event was underway or (2) an event they had helped stage was underway.
If it was (1) then the first duty of the Secret Service would have been to immediately spirit the president away from a scheduled public event but they did not do this. And, no, the SS does not take orders from the Chief of Staff when it comes to safety. They act.
So you are right, we had all the confirmation we needed right then that the office of the president was irrelevant, and you're even further correct that if GWB didn't prove to the public that having a complete moron sitting in the seat was reason to limit the powers of the office, then maybe Trump wouldn't either.
Heck, I don't know.
I do know that Hillary is with the neocons and they are working overtime to gin up a new war, this one with Russia. I do hold out hope that the president could, should they choose to, provide a stumbling block to their ambitions, as Obama has done recently in Syria.
Obama, has proven to be a real pain in the butt to the neocons by refusing to bomb Syrian and Russian forces and they've recently gone around him (which is what the bombing of the Syrian government forces was, in my opinion; an attempt at goading Russia into doing something in response and therefore a unilateral declaration of war by the deep state).
So maybe it doesn't matter who is in the president's seat, or maybe it slightly does. Maybe it is just Coke vs. Pepsi and we're still getting sugar water with a very powerful sugar industry in the background rubbing its hands with glee.
But anything that can help pull the cover back for people so we can finally have a substantive conversation is something I support. Hillary will be more of the same, guaranteed. Further, she's up to her eyeballs in supporting whatever the neocons want, and they want more death and destruction.
I've just written a very long report on Russia which will be coming out on Friday, unless something happens sooner requiring us to hit the 'publish' button today.
It is a sobering alignment of dots that conclusively point to the fact that Russia is being goaded into war, by the US, for reasons that are entirely unclear, but deadly serious.
Meanwhile, Clinton's campaign is hiring child actors to ask fake questions at fake "rallies" so Clinton can expound on the importance of women's body image and self-confidence, as if that were either the most important thing to be discussing even as a major nuclear super power is being herded into a corner, or something Clinton herself has any actual interest in.
In the end, I know a lot of people who are desperately afraid of Trump precisely because they think he would be an embarrassment. There's nothing more terrifying to an intellectual than being outed as dumb…not one of the "in" crowd, smart and witty.
Projecting that outward, it would be a disaster if Trump somehow got in the office, reflecting to the world that the US is neither smart nor witty, but crass and crude.
I guess once you've decided that the president runs very little and the deep state runs a lot, it takes the pressure off of erecting the right president…it really doesn't matter…and because of this all that's left is picking one that soothes your inner ego because they will reflect best on how your wish to see yourself. Not at all unlike "picking" a preferred sports team or forming an identity with a car brand.
The brand is there to soothe your ego, not confront any of the falsities that lie beneath the surface ("Hey, I'm not actually a rugged outdoorsman that needs a FWD pickup truck, I'm sort of a wimp really."), and create a bonded indentity that gets you to choose the same brand/team/party over and over again without putting any additional thought into the matter.
So before we get all wrapped up in which president is the best flavor of president (and let's face it, they are both awful reflections on the actual condition of the US) maybe we need to start with this question; does it even matter who is president at all?
in Scotland. I read an article in a political paper of some description that was trumpeting the virtues of the SNP.
Within the article, they had interviewed Sturgeon. "Who would you most like to go on a dinner date with" was one of the questions. She answered "Hillary Clinton".
Need I say anymore!
My back is completely turned to politicians in every respect in the UK. Because they know who pays the piper! And so do you and I!
Another excellent articulation of the situation - it must be tiring screaming at the mountain.
In my mind I constantly return to the "why" and I have come to the understanding that the "deep state" has always existed - it is just now unbridled and unmasked. This is possible because so many of us (members of Western Civilization) have allowed it to prosper. Each of us falls into some category of individual indifference. I invite your expansion and correction of this breakdown.
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The great mass of zombie-like citizens who occupy the bottom half of every distribution. The world has always had these folks and they are not aware of, interested in, nor do they apprehend what is happening. Nascar, cheetos, pornography, Kardashian, poverty, "The Bachelor", zero savings, no job, no education (real education). Many of these are good people that happened to grow up in a toxic culture. 60% of the population.
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Those who are fully capable of understanding but are totally uninterested in what the hell we are talking about. Think "man on the street" interview. Can't name the Vice President etc. Many talented professionals fall into this category - as they are "too busy" to "worry about" the real predicaments. This is the friend you shared The Crash Course with two years ago, but hasn't had time to "check it out". 20%
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Partisans who have bought the left/right paradigm and branding hook, line and sinker. The ends justify the means for some in this crowd. Others are "true believers" - Bernie and Ted Cruz supporters come to mind. Deeply principled, but they cannot see the deep state without an epiphany. This is our target audience. No one else can concentrate long enough to read an article written by Chris. 15%
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The evil ones who are consciously (or not) part of the machine and are actively working to screw up our society, culture, politics, etc. - Hillary's staffers, corporate thieves, criminals in office, insurance scammers, Media, lobbyists, etc. This crowd operates some portion of the deep state's apparatus. 3%
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Us. We disagree over the particulars perhaps, but see the situation and are able to work out a solution set using civilized methods, compromise, principles, etc. 2% Expect this group to be criminalized in the idiocracy to come.
This situation persists because we are too self interested and too comfortable to see it and stop it. This is why I think a collapse is the only solution, albeit a risky proposition. I don't know who will come out on top in the shake up - but it can't get worse. (I hope).
Rector
Im not sure if your Clinton explanations were directed at me,but I never voiced a political preference.That was a projection of another reader.As a women there are many issues that matter to me.The Mylan fiasco was a result of a ground swell from women.Who dragged there rear ends up to the hill?A women.Who created the the Consumer Financial fraud Bureau?A women.Who is in the precess of forming an alliance to prevent crony capitalists from entering the financial walls of power if elected?A women.Toxic chemicals in our childrens food?A women.When a political party believes they have a say in reproductive rights and has shut down planned Parenthood clinics in rural Indiana who will have a say over that?WOMEN.The neocon agenda is very popular here at peak prosperity.That is only one of many that I care about.Supreme Court justices up for grabs?Who will make sure to the best of there ability they have a say?A women.So yes,voting does matter…The insults hurled on this thread by a so called like minded community?I have no words…
Chris,
Fantastic post. Knocked it far out of the ballpark!
5000x thumbs up
Chris, I hear what you're saying 100%. One thing that gives me pause before thinking about voting for Trump is the possibility of his election leading to racially/ethnically motivated violence or oppression. What is your take on this?
a so called like minded community?I value diversity of opinion.
There's is always a slim chance I can learn something new from people with a different point of view. Thus I grit my teeth and examine other peoples' silly ideas. A search for diamonds requires the sifting of a lot of dirt.
That you prefer harmony may be be biological in origin.
I'm cannot see the value of tribal diversity.
Well, let's start with the facts. There is already a huge amount of racial violence and oppression in the US, and much of that can be seen on video in the horrid actions of a few police against minorities.
Or in the constant mistreatment of Native Americans - to this day - with cultural erosion and broken agreements a matter of systemic policy within the US government.
And on and on.
Step one with any problem is to recognize it exists.
Second, I think that the racial angle has been heavily overplayed by the US press, to create more of an issue there than may exist. Perhaps I'm wrong, but I am highly sensitive to propaganda and belief-oriented language that is designed to sway me at the emotional rather than rational levels. I see a lot of this sort of emotional appealing going on in this presidential race and, as usual, I tune it right out.
But to respond a bit more completely on that front, I thought this piece on ZH did a good job of opening up this dialog:
Here are some powerful excerpts from the piece: I Listened to a Trump SupporterI talked at length with a Trump supporter I grew up around. I wanted to understand. I respected her growing up. I wanted to know why a person as kind and compassionate as I remember her is voting for someone like Donald Trump.
She was a family friend, a good person. In rural Ohio, everything was tight. Money, jobs. If you really needed quick cash, she’d put you to work doing landscaping. She’d pay fairly and reliably for the area.
She’s voting for Donald Trump. I disagree with her choice, but I understand why she rejects Clinton so fiercely, and why she’s been swept up in Donald Trump’s particular brand of right-wing populism. I feel that on the left, it’s increasingly easy to ignore these people, to disregard them, to write them off as racists, bigots, or uneducated. I think that’s a loss for everyone involved, and that sometimes listening can help you to at least understand why a person is making the choices they make, so you can work on the root causes. For her, the root cause isn’t racism. In fact, I remember her as one of the only people in the area who proudly hired black workers, in a place where that was a huge issue. She fought over that choice.
But that’s enough background. Let me relay a bit of what she told me.
She’s a person who built her business from the ground up. She wasn’t rich, but was very comfortable for the area. She had a nice house, a nice car, and was stable. She achieved the American dream of not having to struggle. Things changed during the housing crisis. A landscaping business requires customers who need landscaping, and people who don’t own homes just don’t need landscaping. In some of these neighborhoods, one in five people lost their homes. That almost immediately turns a successful landscaping business into a struggling one.
Then there was a domino effect. She couldn’t pay for her lawn-care equipment leases and loans. That hurt her work efficiency. Then, she lost her car. But that didn’t stop the payments. Then, she lost her house. She slowly had to let go all of her employees, until it was just her, hand-mowing lawns for cash the way you might expect a high school student in the summertime.
She told me that every week, it seemed there was another default letter, another foreclosure, another bank demanding more blood from her dry veins. To her, that pile of default notices and demands for payment looked suspiciously similar to Hillary Clinton’s top donor list.
She lost everything she worked so hard for. Obama swore he was going to help. The Wall Street bailout did seem to help Wall Street. But it did absolutely nothing for her. She turns on the news and sees how the Dow Jones is doing better than ever. But that didn’t bring her house and livelihood back. Liberals insist that Obama’s made her life better.
But, now she’s driving a car that falls apart randomly while having to pay those same banks for a car she doesn’t own and never will. It’s difficult to convince someone whose life is objectively worse that their life is better. And it’s disingenuous to try. You can break down the specifics, sure. But when someone’s hungry, and you’re busy silencing their complaints by telling them how well world hunger is improving, you’re just going to upset them.
This is not a person who is stupid or racist. She knows Bush caused the economy collapse with his irresponsible tax policies and wars. But she saw liberals as fighting for the banks’ recovery, to hell with her needs. She sees in Hillary someone who celebrates that approach. Who measures US success by the success of multinational mega corporations?—?corporations who undercut and destroy local businesses.
This is a person who grew up in a town with a friendly neighborhood general store, a locally-owned hardware store, farmers’ markets, florists, and auto shops. All of these businesses closed when Walmart moved into town. All their owners now work at that Walmart for a fraction of their previous wages, no benefits, and no hope for something better, something of their own. And now, she sees a free trade supporting former Walmart executive about to come in to office, and it feels like salt in her community’s wounds.
This is a wounded person. Insulting her or continuing to hurt her isn’t going to help. She’s swept up in Trump’s message because she feels someone’s finally listening. Right-wing populism is an awful thing. But desperate people with their backs against the wall will grasp on to whatever they feel will bring a change. Neoliberal capitalism is not sustainable for these people.
Over the past few years, she tried getting back in her business. But a corporation moved in and is operating far cheaper, using undocumented immigrant labor. I should note: She specifically said she doesn’t hold it against the migrant workers. As she said, “They’ve got to take whatever jobs they can get. Just like we do. It’s not their fault. They didn’t choose to make prices so low that legal businesses couldn’t compete.” She was literally a “job creator”. And she was being priced out by the very people Donald Trump insists are pricing her out. That hurts everyone, and it adds an air of authenticity to what he says.
I asked her if she supports Trump’s Mexico wall. She told me, “It doesn’t matter if I do. Hillary wants a wall, too. That wall’s gonna happen.” She wasn’t simply making this up. She’s heard this from many sources, Clinton being one of them. So to her, the idea of a border wall is a non-issue. I pressed her on the issue, and she said she thinks, “It’s a waste of money. If someone wants to cross the border, they’re gonna cross the border.”…
A few times, she seemed ashamed of things Trump’s said or done. I’d ask her to unpack her feelings. She said he sometimes upsets her, but “If you wait and wait for a flawless candidate, you’ll never find one.” She said she’d be much prouder to vote for Trump if he’d tone down his rhetoric.
I talked to her a bit about Bernie Sanders, to see what she thought of him. She told me, “He seemed like a nice enough guy. But I didn’t pay him much mind because there was no way he was gonna beat Clinton.” I talked with her about his platform, his policy proposals. She lit up. She told me, “It’s a real shame he didn’t make it.” She told me that if she knew him, his record, and his proposals, she’d have voted for him. I said that since the primary concluded, Hillary’s shifted some to adopt policies similar to his, and I asked if that changed her mind. She told me, “It doesn’t matter what she says. It matters what she’s done.”
No amount of insulting her from an ivory tower is going to change her mind. No amount of guffawing about her lack of education, her self-deception, her racism, or her internalized misogyny is going to change her mind. The only thing she’ll listen to is a promise of real change to the system that’s hurt her. If the Democratic Party can’t offer her a viable alternative, we’re going to see another neck-and-neck election in 2020, and in 2024, and in 2028.
These people need a populist answer. They need someone willing to listen to their very real concerns, and offer solutions that don’t look like Band-Aids on bullet wounds. If they had that on the left, we wouldn’t even be discussing Ohio as a “swing state”.
Right now, this is the discourse we’re seeing about Trump supporters. This only emboldens those attitudes. To people like her, this feels like the left is laughing at her for her unwillingness to get in line and support the things that have left her broke and broken.
[Mike Krieger insert] This doesn’t mean that Trump won’t betray his supporters and prove to be the Republican version of Barack Obama, but it does mean that the dominant media narrative characterizing Trump supporters as a bunch of racist, uneducated brutes is pretty much just dishonest, elitist propaganda.So, the question was would racism and oppression be worse under Trump. Beats me. But these things are already bad with the economic oppression outlined above being a very real thing. At least now it gets to be talked about.(Source - ZH)
If this were a Bush v. Clinton affair again you can bet your bottom dollar such issues would never have seen the light of day. That alone is a good thing. Finally oppressed people get to express that frustration, for better or worse.
We seriously need to be having different discussions right now about a lot of new and different things.
In my brain I have a fantasy candidate who is not Trump who could destroy Clinton with ease by simply having the context we all seem to have here. This person would be calm, centered, and unyielding.
They would be armed with facts. They would reveal the truths that nobody ever talks about. they would have solutions and responses that align with the realities.
sigh
Back to reality…the press thought it could browbeat the disenfranchised back in line, but they are failing this time and it's driving them nuts.
Heck, even Obama got angry and yelled at 'his people' because they were not falling back in line neatly behind Clinton.
I thought that was a very telling insight into the mind of the DC power elites…they just don't understand why people are no longer excited by the status quo. They literally don't know the woman from Ohio's story and even if they heard it it wouldn't mean anything to them…it's too far from their reality.
That's what's happening in the US. And Austria. And France.
This populism scares the bejeezus out of the elites and they don't understand it. So they whip up their media troops and always try to paint these large gatherings of people as racist, uneducated, ill-informed, and never a good idea.
Which, wouldn't you know it, serves to harden these same people against those assaults. Go figure. ;)