The Russian Conspiracy as RI subject

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Re: The Russian Conspiracy as RI subject

Postby liminalOyster » Sun Jun 17, 2018 1:07 pm

Conspiracy Nuts Flood the DNC's Lawsuit Against Russia
‘If we don’t change the narrative Mankind will cease to exist by October 12th, 2050. This is not a prophecy or prediction but a mathematical certainty.’
Kevin Poulsen
06.16.18 9:35 PM ET

The election interference lawsuit Democrats filed last April against Russia and the Donald Trump campaign is becoming a magnet for other aggrieved parties working to expose their own conspiracy theories.

In the last two months the court docket in Democratic National Committee v. The Russian Federation et al has been virtually overrun with dozens of filings by two conspiracy theorists, one who believes Trump-Russia is in the center of a conspiracy that resulted in the bank repossession of his home, and the other a New Orleans man warning that the U.S. government let loose a chemical weapon during Hurricane Katrina.

Available on the web for 10 cents a page, federal court dockets in newsworthy cases, like those linked to Russiagate, are followed slavishly by hundreds if not thousands of journalists and devotees of law.

“It is not that easy to get on social media when you’re talking about the things I’m talking about,” said one of the filers, David Andrew Christenson, in an interview with The Daily Beast. “My only outlet, I realized a long time ago, would be the courts.”

A 60-year-old Navy veteran from New Orleans, Christenson saw his house condemned after Hurricane Katrina hit the area in 2005. He believes, based largely on self-guided research, that a deadly chemical weapons agent that he’s dubbed the “Katrina Virus” was released from top-secret CIA and Defense Department facilities during the hurricane, and has been quietly chalking up a global body count ever since.

Christenson has been featured in conspiracy blogs, and is the author of seven titles available on Amazon, including The New York Times and the Supreme Court Are Murdering Mankind via Direct and Indirect Suicide(s). The End Result Will be the Genocide and the Extinction of Mankind via the Katrina Virus, and An American Born Terrorist’s Emails To The Department of Justice, which consists of 422 pages from Christenson’s outbox.

Christenson said he turned to court filings as a last resort after his YouTube channel, Twitter account, and website were all shut down, and his direct outreach to government officials got him arrested on suspicion of cyberstalking an FBI agent (he was released with no charges after about two weeks in jail). He estimates that he’s filed motions and letters in about 100 different cases over the years, though most judges have taken a dim view of his efforts. In February, a committee of federal judges in Chicago took the unusual step of blocking Christenson’s email addresses entirely from the court’s system, complaining that his emails were “straining judicial resources.”

When Robert Mueller started handing down indictments last year, Christenson hit those cases like a graffiti artist on a freshly painted wall. “Everything Mueller has brought I’ve filed in,” he said. But the Washington, D.C., court handling most of them is taking a hard line on docket spam, and virtually none of Christenson’s motions have made it into the case record. “The Court recognizes that the movant sincerely believes that he has information to share that bears on this case, and that, understandably, he wishes to be heard,” wrote Judge Amy Berman Jackson in a minute note last November in the Paul Manafort case. “There are many places and means available for a private citizen to express his views about matters of public interest, but the fact is, the Court’s docket is not one of them.”

Last March, Christenson’s “Emergency Motion to Intervene Filed on Behalf of All Americans” slipped onto the Manafort docket, and Jackson dignified the filing—a screed against Mueller—with a formal ruling denying the motion. At the same time, Jackson ordered that no further Christenson filings would be permitted into the case.

But the judge overseeing the Democratic National Committee’s civil lawsuit in New York, John Koeltl, has been more tolerant, and Christenson has filed 30 letters and motions by U.S. mail in six weeks. “The continuing cover-up of what happened in New Orleans will ensure the Genocide of Mankind,” he wrote in one. In another: “If we don’t change the narrative Mankind will cease to exist by October 12th, 2050. This is not a prophecy or prediction but a mathematical certainty.”

“There’s two court cases now where they’ve sort of given me carte blanche,” said Christenson. “There’s this one, and there the BP Oil Spill appeal of mine to the 5th Circuit… It took me a long time to get to this point. I’m putting everything in writing and putting it in the docket.”

Christenson isn’t the only one using the Russiagate lawsuit as a soapbox. He’s competing for eyeballs with Patrick Farrell, a Florida man whose two filings place both Trump and Russia in a complicated conspiracy that he says resulted in a bank foreclosure on his home, and that involves “the Jews.” He credits his own whistle-blowing with spawning the entire Robert Mueller investigation, and writes that he’s faced retaliation ever since.

One of Farrell’s filings concludes on this note: “WHEREFORE, I the Living Man, demand this court to monetary award for a 10 year frivolous filing, leave to amend and jury trial.”

Christenson has encountered Farrell before on other cases, and doesn’t think much of his work. “I run into him all the time,” he said. He confesses he even harbors suspicions that Farrell is part of a government plot to discredit Christenson’s filings. “He may not exist.”

https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-dncs- ... acy-magnet
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Re: The Russian Conspiracy as RI subject

Postby liminalOyster » Wed Jun 20, 2018 4:17 pm

Russian trolls are exploiting family-separation stories 'to sow discord among Americans': Senator
'It is important for social media companies to expose it so everyone knows what is fake'
By Stephen Dinan - The Washington Times - Wednesday, June 20, 2018

Russian bots and internet trolls are stoking the U.S. debate over family separation, a Republican senator said Wednesday, dropping a bombshell into the middle of the immigration debate.

“Trolls and bots are still active on Twitter trying to deceive us. They’re even using the current family separation & immigration debate to sow discord among Americans,” Sen. James Lankford, Oklahoma Republican, said on Twitter.

He added: “It is important for social media companies to expose it so everyone knows what is fake.”

He linked to a Wall Street Journal report that detailed ongoing Russian efforts to troll hot-button issues in U.S. politics such as comic Roseanne Barr.

Mr. Lankford’s office declined to share the tweets that spurred his new warning.

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/20 ... paration-/
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Re: The Russian Conspiracy as RI subject

Postby Sounder » Thu Jul 19, 2018 5:08 am

This has been my POV for awhile now. The lies come so fast, furious and repetitively that folk cannot keep up so they give up. Congratulations, you as well as Russia are being gassed.


https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/ ... hting.html

Patrick ARMSTRONG | 17.07.2018 | WORLD / Americas, Europe
Psychoanalysing NATO: Gaslighting

NOTE: Because "NATO" these days is little more than a box of spare parts out of which Washington assembles "coalitions of the willing", it's easier for me to write "NATO" than "Washington plus/minus these or those minions".

Home Secretary Sajid Javid has called on Russia to explain "exactly what has gone on" after two people were exposed to the Novichok nerve agent in Wiltshire. (BBC)

The Russian state could put this wrong right. They could tell us what happened. What they did. And fill in some of the significant gaps that we are trying to pursue. We have said they can come and tell us what happened. I'm waiting for the phone call from the Russian state. The offer is there. They are the ones who could fill in all the clues to keep people safe. (UK security minister Ben Wallace)

Leaving aside their egregious flouting of the elemental principle of English justice, note that they're uttering this logical idiocy: Russia must have done it because it hasn't proved it didn't. Note also, in Javid's speech, the amusing suggestion that Russia keeps changing its story; but to fit into the official British story "novichok" must be an instantly lethal slow acting poison which dissipates quickly but lasts for months.

This is an attempt to manipulate our perception of reality. In a previous essay I discussed NATO's projection of its own actions onto Russia. In this piece I want to discuss another psychological manipulation – gaslighting.

The expression comes from the movie Gaslight in which the villain manipulates her reality to convince his wife that she is insane. Doubt the official Skripal story and it is you – you "Russian troll" – who is imagining things. Only Russian trolls would question Litvinenko's deathbed accusation written in perfect English handed to us by a Berezovskiy flunky; or the shootdown of MH17; or the invasion of Ukraine; or the cyber attack on Estonia. Only a Russian troll would observe that the fabulously expensive NATO intelligence agencies apparently get their information from Bellingcat. Argumentum ad trollem is everywhere: count the troll accusations here or admire the clever anticipatory use of the technique there.

This is classic gaslighting – I'm telling the truth, you're the crazy one.

We may illustrate the eleven signs of "gaslighting" given in Psychiatry Today by Stephanie A. Sarkis with recent events.
They tell blatant lies.

The Skripals were poisoned by an incredibly deadly nerve agent that left them with no visible symptoms for hours but not so deadly that it killed them; at least not at Easter; nor the policeman; a nerve agent that could only have been made in Russia although its recipe was published in the open media; that poison having been administered on a doorknob that each had to have touched at the exact same minute that no one else touched; a nerve agent so deadly that they only bothered to clean up the sites 51 days later. And so on: a different story every day. But your mind must be controlled by Putin if you smell a falsehood at any point. And, now we have it all over again: apparently the fiendishly clever Russian assassins smeared the doorknob and then, rather than getting out of town ASAP, sauntered over into a park to toss the container. (Remember the fiendishly clever Russian assassins who spread polonium everywhere?)

And, speaking of proven, long term, repeating liars: remember when accusing the British government of complicity in torture renditions was a conspiracy theory? Well, it turns out the conspiracy was by the other side. "Conspiracy Theorist" is the perfect gaslighting accusation, by the way: you're the crazy one.
They deny they ever said something, even though you have proof.

The Skripal case gives a perfect illustration: here's the UK Foreign Secretary saying Porton Down told him it was Russian ("absolutely categorical") And here's the UK Foreign Office disappearing the statement: We never said Porton Down confirmed the origin. It's rare to get such a quick exposure of a lie, so it's useful to have this example. Here is an obvious fake from Bellingcat. Already the Douma story is being re-polished now that the OPCW has said no organophosphates.

Most of the time it takes years to reveal the lie: gaslighters know the details will be forgotten while the impression remains. 64 years later we learn the "conspiracy theorists" were right about the CIA/UK involvement in the Iran coup. It's rather amazing how many people still believe the proven liars this time around.
They use what is near and dear to you as ammunition.

Russians cheat at the sports you follow, scatter nerve agents and radioactive material in places you could be in, sneak into the voting booth with you, blow up airplanes you might be on and tear up the "very fabric of our democracy." Your favourite actor tells you "we are at war with Russia".

And the children! The boy on the beach. The boy in the ambulance. Bana from Aleppo. Miraculous recoveries. Dramatic rescues with camera! Dead children speaking. And finally, the little girl, Trump and the Time cover.

If it's a child, they're gaslighting you.
They wear you down over time...........

All these things will continue as long as coercion remains a central element of our mentality.
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Re: The Russian Conspiracy as RI subject

Postby 82_28 » Thu Jul 19, 2018 5:27 am

Exactly, Sounder. That's the whole point of this shit. But, the amount of victims are rife. I personally don't know what to "react" against when I once think I did.
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Re: The Russian Conspiracy as RI subject

Postby liminalOyster » Thu Jul 19, 2018 7:11 pm

This person has a PHD. I find that amazing.

Historian: Americans are right to wonder if the Great Experiment has failed
By Heather Cox Richardson
Updated 3:25 PM ET, Thu July 19, 2018

Heather Cox Richardson is a professor of history at Boston College. Her most recent book is "To Make Men Free: A History of the Republican Party." The opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author. View more opinion articles on CNN.

(CNN)Americans are right to wonder if, at long last, what George Washington called the Great Experiment has failed, and that our founders have lost their extraordinary wager that regular people could govern themselves better than a few rich men could.
Consider that in his disastrous press conference in Helsinki Monday -- and again in a comment before a Cabinet meeting Wednesday -- President Donald Trump sided with a hostile foreign oligarchy over our own democracy.

Asked by a reporter Wednesday, "Is Russia still targeting the U.S., Mr. President?," Trump responded, shaking his head "Thank you very much. No." (Later, his press secretary, Sarah Sanders, offered that he was saying "no" to answering questions.)

Trump's alliance with Russia's Vladimir Putin, in defiance of America's own intelligence community, the Department of Justice, and the bipartisan report of the Senate Intelligence Committee, forces us to face that the fundamental principles of our nation are under attack.
History suggests the game is not yet lost. Three times before, in the 1850s, the 1890s, and the 1920s, oligarchs took over the American government and threatened to destroy democracy. In each case, they overreached, and regular folks took back their government.

Democracy was always a gamble. In 1776, the founders rejected the old idea that government should be based on hierarchies according to wealth or birth or religion. They declared it "self-evident" that "all men are created equal," and they created a popular government based on the radical idea of equality before the law.

For all that they got around the problem of slavery by defining "all men" as "all white men," and that they wrote women out of self-government altogether, their vision was still astonishing. Could regular men really govern themselves?

Three times in our history, a wealthy elite has thought the answer was no.


In the 1850s, wealthy southern slaveholders laid out the argument. They said the founders were wrong: all men were not created equal. God had made some men better than others. South Carolina Senator James Henry Hammond explained that those better men must rule the rest: most folks were "mudsills" he said, supporting their betters just as the sills of a house were driven into the mud to support the house itself. The mudsills were society's menial workers, dull, unambitious, and good only for creating wealth that better, civilized people with educations and connections would use to advance the economy and society. Mudsills must not vote, for they would want a fairer distribution of the wealth they created. Limited resources would cripple the ability of society's true leaders to shape progress.

So convinced were the slaveholders that they were right, they tried to destroy the nation and start a new country. During the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln noted that the idea of equality was no longer "self-evident," but rather "a proposition." The slave owners lost, of course, but their worldview reappeared in the late 19th century with the rise of industrialists and their influence over Congress. Steel magnate Andrew Carnegie defended the robber barons as stewards of the nation's wealth, using it meaningfully, unlike workers, who would fritter it away. This argument, too, failed in the face of the Progressive Era. But when a similar argument in the 1920s brought the Great Crash, Wall Street executives blamed the economic disaster on overpaid public workers.
We are in the newest incarnation of this age-old struggle. Since Democratic President Franklin Delano Roosevelt reorganized the government in the 1930s to give a "new deal" to the American people -- regulating business, promoting basic social welfare, and providing infrastructure -- wealthy men have howled that such a government is socialism, for the taxes to fund such policies redistribute wealth from the haves to the have-nots. While most Americans recognize the New Deal state as the foundation of our stability and prosperity since WWII, today's Republicans are determined to destroy it.

Trump's deliberate attacks on our democratic allies and on NATO play into Putin's hands, but there is more to Trump's friendliness to the Russian oligarch than fear of kompromat. President Trump doesn't really know what makes America great Trump and Putin share the same worldview: that the world should be governed by a few wealthy men who should not be hamstrung by regulations or human rights because they know better than the rest of us how to manage the economy, the government, and, therefore, society.

To make that happen, Trump is destroying the post-WWII New Deal state, and today's Republican leaders are cheering him on. After a series of presidents who believed that government should serve the people, they have found their man at last.

Never before has a president sided with a foreign oligarch, but in the past, oligarchs have rejected government regulations, suppressed opposition voters, gamed the system, and finally taken refuge in the Supreme Court to retain control. In each instance, regular Americans ultimately reclaimed democracy. Will it happen again? As George Washington said, we walk on untrodden ground.

https://www.cnn.com/2018/07/19/opinions ... index.html
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Re: The Russian Conspiracy as RI subject

Postby JackRiddler » Thu Jul 19, 2018 7:39 pm

.

I guess I should forget about finishing mine. Or just write up some mythical nonsense. Jaysus H. Kee-Rist! Shows ya any bullshit can fly, as the founding fathers also knew.

But I guess we have identified the exact 3 (three) times when American oligarchs thought democracy was for the birds. The rest of the time they loved it. ("To three ye shall count, and no more than three. Ye shall not count to one, except for the purpose of proceeding to two. Ye shall not count to two, except...")

.
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Re: The Russian Conspiracy as RI subject

Postby liminalOyster » Thu Jul 19, 2018 9:11 pm

JackRiddler » Thu Jul 19, 2018 7:39 pm wrote:.

I guess I should forget about finishing mine. Or just write up some mythical nonsense. Jaysus H. Kee-Rist! Shows ya any bullshit can fly, as the founding fathers also knew.

But I guess we have identified the exact 3 (three) times when American oligarchs thought democracy was for the birds. The rest of the time they loved it. ("To three ye shall count, and no more than three. Ye shall not count to one, except for the purpose of proceeding to two. Ye shall not count to two, except...")

.


Quick thought but what's the evidence against Clapper and co having dreamt up and facilitated #Russiagate following Snowden landing in Moscow? Broad strokes of course but the general idea.

Because it's rather amazing that we now have the majority of the country so passionately united against oligarchy (by proxy) as if to channel the passions of the preeminent threatening anti-plutocratic social movement into "preserving the republic" and demanding the restoration of business as usual.
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Re: The Russian Conspiracy as RI subject

Postby JackRiddler » Fri Jul 20, 2018 7:46 pm

liminalOyster » Thu Jul 19, 2018 8:11 pm wrote:Quick thought but what's the evidence against Clapper and co having dreamt up and facilitated #Russiagate following Snowden landing in Moscow? Broad strokes of course but the general idea.


I try not to do "evidence against." What's the evidence against me being my grandmother, eh? It's possible, of course. Until evidence for your idea appears, I sure find it interesting that the evidence for "Russian meddling" still has not gone beyond that generated by Crowstrike, a front of dodgy rich characters from the Ukrainian right-wing diaspora with spook connections. Plus the laughable story about $100K in FB ads for the Bernie coloring book and such.

Because it's rather amazing that we now have the majority of the country so passionately united against oligarchy (by proxy) as if to channel the passions of the preeminent threatening anti-plutocratic social movement into "preserving the republic" and demanding the restoration of business as usual.


Not at all. People are not falling for it, in fact they're barely aware of it. Those who are pushing it are 100% of the non-FOXish corporate media, 90% of non-Trumpet politicians, and the gaggle of spooks and war criminals of the Clinton/Bush/Obama years and ancient neocons who are on TV all day. They are trying to make it seem that "America" is in a united uproar. There are thousands of people additionally going nuts over it and posting on it all day. But in the big seasonal poll just out, Russian meddling in U.S. is cited by 0.5% as the most serious problem facing America. Which is completely my experience in the world. People don't care about this. More people care about the real vote manipulation, the voter suppression. Unfrotunately not enough. Most people politically care about how they are being screwed ecoomically. Is this unutual?
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Re: The Russian Conspiracy as RI subject

Postby Belligerent Savant » Fri Jul 20, 2018 8:59 pm

.

...and yet, some members within these forum walls will (repeatedly) proclaim otherwise, dedicating quite a bit of forum space -- be it via regurgitation of google news and/or echo chamber reassurances -- to the endeavor.

People can opt to see what they want to see, and ignore what they want to ignore. "Truth" has become increasingly subjective; like-minded individuals/groups can more easily filter out views/persons they prefer not to hear. We can customize our truth as easily as a cloud-based music playlist.
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Re: The Russian Conspiracy as RI subject

Postby liminalOyster » Sat Jul 21, 2018 1:34 am

JackRiddler » Fri Jul 20, 2018 7:46 pm wrote:
liminalOyster » Thu Jul 19, 2018 8:11 pm wrote:Quick thought but what's the evidence against Clapper and co having dreamt up and facilitated #Russiagate following Snowden landing in Moscow? Broad strokes of course but the general idea.


I try not to do "evidence against." What's the evidence against me being my grandmother, eh? It's possible, of course. Until evidence for your idea appears, I sure find it interesting that the evidence for "Russian meddling" still has not gone beyond that generated by Crowstrike, a front of dodgy rich characters from the Ukrainian right-wing diaspora with spook connections. Plus the laughable story about $100K in FB ads for the Bernie coloring book and such.

Because it's rather amazing that we now have the majority of the country so passionately united against oligarchy (by proxy) as if to channel the passions of the preeminent threatening anti-plutocratic social movement into "preserving the republic" and demanding the restoration of business as usual.


Not at all. People are not falling for it, in fact they're barely aware of it. Those who are pushing it are 100% of the non-FOXish corporate media, 90% of non-Trumpet politicians, and the gaggle of spooks and war criminals of the Clinton/Bush/Obama years and ancient neocons who are on TV all day. They are trying to make it seem that "America" is in a united uproar. There are thousands of people additionally going nuts over it and posting on it all day. But in the big seasonal poll just out, Russian meddling in U.S. is cited by 0.5% as the most serious problem facing America. Which is completely my experience in the world. People don't care about this. More people care about the real vote manipulation, the voter suppression. Unfrotunately not enough. Most people politically care about how they are being screwed ecoomically. Is this unutual?


Oh I agree. My 2nd paragraph has nothing to do with Russiagate necessarily so much as the shell game of Trump the big bad oligarch as effigy of the 1% (as brought to us by the 1%).
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Re: The Russian Conspiracy as RI subject

Postby American Dream » Sat Jul 21, 2018 6:34 am

That Fox vs. MSNBC, Democrats vs. Republicans is itself part and parcel of the Spectacle should be taken as a given. Which sort of larger view we may take is not necessarily justified by a rejection of that official Spectacle, as one could go any number of directions from there.
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Re: The Russian Conspiracy as RI subject

Postby Luther Blissett » Sat Jul 21, 2018 4:49 pm

I thought this was a good thread for this. From Jeff’s fb:

Rania Khalek wrote:I find it incredibly puzzling how many smart people who I respect and admire have bought into the notion that Putin controls Trump.

Was Putin controlling Trump when Trump sold lethal arms to Ukraine, something even Obama refrained from doing to avoid provoking the Russians? Was Putin controlling Trump when Trump repeatedly bombed Syrian government installations? How about when Trump imposed new sanctions on Russia? Or what about when Trump backed out of the Iran nuclear deal, a move Putin criticized during that press conference everyone is freakin out about? Surely Putin is behind Trump's demands for increasing the budget of NATO, an explicitly anti-Russia alliance dedicated to keeping the Cold War alive. And who can forget the time Putin the puppeteer got Trump to undermine that Russian natural gas pipeline.... I could go on but I think I've made my point.

I've never seen hysteria like I witnessed this past week.
What makes it even more depressing is to watch all the smart and usually skeptical people buy into it.


Once these are considered, the insinuations become a little more woo-like. I’m guilty of having not read this thread (yet) but has it already been established that the most obvious explanation is that both sides are controlled by different factions of the same old “powers that be” for different ends, which often overlap.
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Re: The Russian Conspiracy as RI subject

Postby liminalOyster » Sat Jul 21, 2018 5:43 pm

American Dream » Sat Jul 21, 2018 6:34 am wrote:That Fox vs. MSNBC, Democrats vs. Republicans is itself part and parcel of the Spectacle should be taken as a given. Which sort of larger view we may take is not necessarily justified by a rejection of that official Spectacle, as one could go any number of directions from there.


But the point of the Spectacle is the onset of an infinitely regenerative techno-media sublime within which we can't function as rational actors or continue to believe we are the same kind of subjects/agents. There's no way to "reject" it nor an official version of it (vs a grassroots one, for instance) which we can parse, compartmentalize and decide to discard or what to otherwise do with.

You have greater faith than I, IIUC, that Trump (and/or Putin) can actually function (in a meaningful way) as a single instance of proto-fascist oligarchy etc and so passions being channeled against him need not be at odds with a greater movement against those things he represents. I am perhaps too catastrophic in my own thinking because I see a passion play designed to hold the equilibrium of the status quo and its supporting political field by offering a release valve on populist rage by symbolically enacting the slaying of a dragon.
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Re: The Russian Conspiracy as RI subject

Postby Elvis » Sat Jul 21, 2018 6:21 pm

liminalOyster wrote: I am perhaps too catastrophic in my own thinking because I see a passion play designed to hold the equilibrium of the status quo and its supporting political field by offering a release valve on populist rage by symbolically enacting the slaying of a dragon.


Whatever the design, that's the effect. I picked up this following piece from the FB comments at Luther's link above:


https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/07/19 ... residency/

July 19, 2018
The Blue Pill Presidency
by Jennifer Matsui


Image
Photo by nguyengurl | CC BY 2.0


Who would have predicted that in 2018, the FBI, the CIA, John McCain, Jeff Bezos, and now the monarchy would be be feted as the vanguard of ‘The Resistance’ by the American ‘left’? Suddenly Trump’s presidency makes sense. To paraphrase a leaked Deep Squid memo from the deep swamps of Deep Space: “When they are forced to eat shit sandwiches around the clock, eventually deep fried vampire squid will appear delectable by comparison. Mission almost accomplished. Mwaah ha ha . . . !”

Our cephalopod overlords know us better than we do. After all, they created and control the devices that keep us under surveillance, and the algorithms that accurately predict at what point we will press ‘accept’ on the terms and conditions of a Trumpless, Squid-led world order that builds walls, empowers banks, oligarchs and polluters, while privatizing and militarizing everything that isn’t nailed down. We now identify with our captors – at least the ones playing the ‘good capitalist’ role, rather than recognizing that all the players in this absurdist spectacle of ‘Curtains for the Anthropocene’ are complicit profiteers of impending planetary collapse.

Fighting fascism is a noble and worthy pursuit. Unfortunately, we haven’t quite figured out how to do it. Flaming pitchforks or pussy hats? Collective struggle or individual belief in the power of existing institutions to rein in their own power? (Cue evil laugh track here) Allowing oligarchs, tech billionaires, war criminals, secret police agencies and monarchs to lead the charge is like treating a worsening chronic ailment with skin burrowing predator aliens from a deep space wormhole. Once you let ’em in, they will feast on your organs and prey on everything in their path. Don’t believe it? Just ask your local polar bear, honey bee or independent bookstore owner.

Notice how the Left establishment is suddenly enraged that a ‘classless’ dotard Bingo hall barker doesn’t know how to curtsy all proper-like on his tax-funded tour of Downton Abbey. Fancy that! Ten million slated to die of disease and starvation in Yemen? Whatever . . .

Before we all break out into a Beyonce led chorus of “God Save the Queen – She’s a Stellar Human Being – She Smote the Tangerine – Let’s Put Her Name on a War Ship’s Submarine”, here’s a little reminder: The old lady might look like she’s luring yet another loose cannon lunatic into a Paris tunnel with her super monarch powers, but QE2 would sooner submit to a golden Trump shower before she would relinquish her role in the feudalism that keeps her in jewels and corgis. The oaf in office is just another necessary evil the class system’s crypt keeper has to contend with for the survival of her undead progeny.

Post-Trump, we will never question the tentacled Master Race again, or doubt their wisdom. Eternal warfare and worsening poverty will be viewed through a ‘blue pill’ haze of relief. The nightmare ends. We are none the wiser, having taken the option to forget and move on. An escape back into reality, as the metaphorical ‘red pill’ suggests, would require a brutal confrontation with truth and the permanent discomfiture that comes with knowledge. Instead, we will once again swallow the same pill that transformed George W. Bush [into] a beloved and unfairly maligned statesmen a few short years after his presidency unleashed those still burning hellfires across much of the earth. Her Majesty will once again be properly genuflected to by a visiting American head of state with better hair plugs.

FLOTUS will be decommissioned, disassembled, and sent back to the offshore factory that makes state-of-the-art Living Dolls for moneyed incels. With any luck, she will be rebooted as a life sized Barbie companion for a lonely 12-year girl old in Dubai. Worst case scenario: A shipping invoice mishap will have her sent to Barron on his 30th birthday.

The ceaseless bombing and starvation will continue under a different Twitter feed, and POTUS 46, after proving he can clip on his own tie before launching a nuclear strike on Iran will be embraced by woke folk, arms dealers, spooks and crowned heads of states alike.

After being hogtied and injected with near-lethal doses of absurdity, we find ourselves collectively hallucinating a tinpot tycoon blowing up Twitter one day, a giant orange clown in a diaper floating over London the next. Carefully sowed confusion will give way to an equally orchestrated acceptance of the war-as-usual status quo when the blue pill kicks in. A return to normal will be a much welcome steel-toed boot to the face.


Jennifer Matsui is a writer living in Tokyo.
“The purpose of studying economics is not to acquire a set of ready-made answers to economic questions, but to learn how to avoid being deceived by economists.” ― Joan Robinson
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Re: The Russian Conspiracy as RI subject

Postby American Dream » Sat Jul 21, 2018 6:37 pm

liminalOyster » Sat Jul 21, 2018 4:43 pm wrote:
American Dream » Sat Jul 21, 2018 6:34 am wrote:
You have greater faith than I, IIUC, that Trump (and/or Putin) can actually function (in a meaningful way) as a single instance of proto-fascist oligarchy etc and so passions being channeled against him need not be at odds with a greater movement against those things he represents. I am perhaps too catastrophic in my own thinking because I see a passion play designed to hold the equilibrium of the status quo and its supporting political field by offering a release valve on populist rage by symbolically enacting the slaying of a dragon.


You may not be understanding my position. I spend very little time worrying about Trump and/or Putin as the root of all Evil.
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