Month: July 2017

I couldn’t get all the way to the end of February before I gave up in disgust.

Happy Birthday, America!

The North Korean missile that soared high above the Sea of Japan on Tuesday was hailed by state-run television as a “shining success.” But to U.S. officials, it was a most unwelcome surprise: a weapon with intercontinental range, delivered years before most Western experts believed such a feat possible.

Hours after the apparently successful test, intelligence agencies continued to run calculations to determine precisely how the missile, dubbed the Hwasong-14, performed in its maiden flight. But the consensus among missile experts was that North Korea had achieved a long-sought milestone, demonstrating a capability of striking targets thousands of miles from its coast.

Initial Pentagon assessments said North Korea had tested a “land-based, intermediate-range” missile that landed in the Sea of Japan just under 600 linear miles from its launch point, Panghyon Airfield, near the Chinese border. The State Department later confirmed North Korea had launched an intercontinental ballistic missile, or ICBM. Government and independent analyses showed the missile traveling in a steep arc that topped out at more than 1,740 vertical miles above the Earth’s surface.

If flown in a more typical trajectory, the missile would have easily traveled 4,000 miles, potentially putting all of Alaska within its range, according to former government officials and independent analysts. A missile that exceeds a range of 3,400 miles is classified as an ICBM.

“This is a big deal: It’s an ICBM, not a ‘kind of’ ICBM,’ ” said Jeffrey Lewis, director of the East Asia program at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies. “And there’s no reason to think that this is going to be the maximum range.”

Anyone with even one ounce of sense in their brains understands that we urgently need to replace our commander in chief. So, let’s get on with it.

This shit is not a reality show.

The following began as a response to a comment by Oui in his post Cambridge Analytica (Mercer) the Real Election Cycle Culprit, which itself was basically about (apparently quite successful) attempts at mass subliminal opinion skewing using bots and other AI-related forces on social media. It grew. Here it is in its entirety.

*************************

Yes, Oui!!!

Of course, this is nothing new. It is merely a new vessel for the same old advertising-morphs-into-propaganda shit.

From Wikipedia:

David Mackenzie Ogilvy CBE (ˈoʊɡəlviː; 23 June 1911 – 21 July 1999) was an advertising tycoon, founder of Ogilvy & Mather, and known as the father of advertising. Trained at the Gallup research organisation, he attributed the success of his campaigns to meticulous research into consumer habits.

—snip—

At Gallup (1938-1948)[edit]

In 1938, Ogilvy persuaded his agency to send him to the United States for a year, where he went to work for George Gallup’s Audience Research Institute in New Jersey. Ogilvy cites Gallup as one of the major influences on his thinking, emphasizing meticulous research methods and adherence to reality.

During World War II, Ogilvy worked for the British Intelligence Service at the British embassy in Washington, DC. There he analyzed and made recommendations on matters of diplomacy and security. According to a biography produced by Ogilvy & Mather, “he extrapolated his knowledge of human behaviour from consumerism to nationalism in a report which suggested ‘applying the Gallup technique to fields of secret intelligence.'”[4] Eisenhower’s Psychological Warfare Board picked up the report and successfully put Ogilvy’s suggestions to work in Europe during the last year of the war.

Also during World War II David Ogilvy was a notable alumnus of the secret Camp X, located near the towns of Whitby and Oshawa in Ontario, Canada. According to an article on the:[5] “It was there he mastered the power of propaganda before becoming king of Madison Avenue. Although Ogilvy was trained in sabotage and close combat, he was ultimately tasked with projects that included successfully ruining the reputation of businessmen who were supplying the Nazis with industrial materials.”

—snip—

There it is, in black and white. The U.S. + British intelligence forces have been all over this idea since the end of W.W. II. They have adapted with the changing technologies of information warfare ever since…radio, print, movies, TV, the internet and now social media.

They were already at it back in the early 2000s in places like the Daily Kos.  It was primitive compared to today’s attempts…but it was a start.

Here is a post I originally made on dKos…no longer available there (of course), but I have reposted it here a couple of times. (http://www.boomantribune.com/comments/2012/7/21/231043/468/30/post#here)

However…for those here who might still think that Dkos is some kind of honorable leftiness site rather than a digital version of the same sort of clomp clomp clomping no-think that destroyed the U.S. Communist Party in the late ’40/early ’50s, I will post the part of one of my diaries that proved “beyond a shadow of a doubt” that there are indeed entities on that site that are constructs. The diary itself seems to have been scrubbed and I did not save my work at that time. However, this part is still available on Booman Tribune and I really have no reason to make the shit up.

He [DHinMI] isn’t even one person.

Or if he is…he’s a championship speed reader and touch typist. Who shoots from the hip for hours at a time.

I did a time study of his posts once…somewhere around the time that I got dKrossed…and came up with some ridiculous timing things.

DHinMI and one of his allies.

Addison.

Here are the facts…you could look ’em up, if they are still on the site.

Otherwise…trust me. I have no reason to lie.

At BEST…shallow like a MOTHERFUCKER.

At worst…piecework in a virtual sweatshop.

DhinMI.

07/07/05 Comments.

One comment every 7 minutes and 20 seconds for 4.5 hours. Including one 11.5 minute break, one 15 minute break, and one 11 minute break.

Some bladder!!!

First burst…one every 9.5 minutes.

Second burst…one every 3.24 minutes. Breathtaking.

Third burst…one every 3 minutes. Final burst of speed. A real sprinter, but with great endurance as well.

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Addison

Comments+ diaries, Sun., 07/03

Average 9.25 minutes per comment. PLUS two diaries.

First burst…1 every 33 seconds. Astounding!!

Followed by a diary.

Then a 14 minute break.

Followed by two in the space of one minute.

Then another 12 minute break.

Then a burst of one every 5.5 minutes

Followed by a diary.

Followed by a burst of one every 2 minutes.

Piece work.

07/03/2005 23:03:50 PDT

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Diary: Jul 3rd, 2005 at 22:51:06 PDT

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Diary: Jul 3rd, 2005 at 21:14:57 PDT

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Nice.

Choose your poison.

A group of piece workers.

A VERY industrious hireling.

Or a truly insane obsessive compulsive .

No win any way you cut it.

YAY Big Orange!!!

YAY Dem Central!!!

Today I have nothing to do with Twitter and I only use social media for well defined interests…music, mostly…and damned little of that. Beware the managed flow of opinion. It is very strong and very easily done. Dkos was just the beginning. Its results are appearing…with some amount of  success…right here as far as I am concerned. Whether some of the neocentrist drivelers here are bots, paid trolls or simply people who have been essentially brainwashed by controlled mass media/social media efforts is beyond my ability to know for sure, but every time I hear someone defend the current, totally nonfunctional in any progressive sense DemRat national organization I am hearing echoes of the mainstream, intelligence-funded-and-overseen disinformation system at work.

AG

P.S. For those among us who use Google News to watch the ebb and flow of managed information…have you noticed the new setup they are using? It looks to me like a psyops-ceated attempt to manage how people use the site. It has been very clear and easy to use for…oh, I don’t know. What? 20 years? All of a sudden it seems to be set up to push people away from actually “searching” for something of real import. Yesterday the top headline…the most important news of the day…was as follows!

 “Exclusive: Warriors’ Kevin Durant is taking even less money than we all thought.”

Now…I am a pro basketball fan, and of course other people will have other ancillary interests. I most certainly click on national and international news stories much more often than I do on basketball news. But their AI system tried to track me away from the pursuit of important info and onto a harmless little sidetrack. Harmless to the PermaGov, at any rate. Repeat this bllions of times a day…mostly involving peple who have no goddamned idea of what is going on…and you have mass mind control at an incredible level!!!

Stay awake, folks.

They’re on us like white on rice.

White rice doesn’t even know it’s white. In fact, it’s been bran-washed. That’s like “brain-washed” without the “i.” Eliminate the human “I” and what do you get?

Clomp clomp clompers galore.

The Zombiefication of the United States of Omertica.

Bet on it.

As Donald Trump prepares to travel to Germany for the G20 summit, he has succeeded in getting the country he leads defriended:

In their campaign program for the German election, Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservatives have dropped the term “friend” in describing the relationship with the United States.

Four years ago, the joint program of her Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and its Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union (CSU), referred to the United States as Germany’s “most important friend” outside of Europe.

The 2013 program also described the “friendship” with Washington as a “cornerstone” of Germany’s international relations and talked about strengthening transatlantic economic ties through the removal of trade barriers.

But the words “friend” and “friendship” are missing from the latest election program – entitled “For a Germany in which we live well and happily” – which Merkel and CSU leader Horst Seehofer presented on Monday ahead of a Sept. 24 election.

The German people are similarly unimpressed with our new president.

A survey by the Pew Research Center last week showed that just 35 percent of Germans have a favorable view of the United States, down from 57 percent at the end of President Barack Obama’s term.

I don’t really care if this helps or hurts Trump politically here at home. It’s an indication that he’s failing to lead the Western world and putting American interests at risk.

“The juxtaposition of the course of the civil wars in Libya and Syria and the
related human suffering should cause anybody who promotes non-intervention
on the grounds of human welfare to take notice.  I opposed the intervention in
Libya at the time but watching Syria burn I’m no longer convinced of my position.”

Jeez … non-intervention? What a stupidity … the US/UK/France alliance chose to intervene militarily. Ever heard of color revolutions?

Sometimes I need to check as I appeared to be lost in McCainesque comments of warmongering, choosing wrong sides in proxy wars and promoting ill-founded ideas based on fiction or plain US propaganda. Obama promised to misinform the American people and many right-wing groups followed or preceded him in that domestic policy.

○ Bosnia: Pentagon formed a secret alliance with Islamist groups in an Iran-Contra-style operation

Neocons in Congress at the forefront to send arms to Jihadists flown into Bosnia during the War on the Balkans under president Bill Clinton in the 90s.

Bosnia, Kosovo, and Now Libya: The Human Costs of Washington’s Ongoing Collusion With Terrorists | Truthout |

U.S. interventions in the Balkans and then Libya were presented by the compliant U.S. and allied mainstream media as humanitarian. Indeed, some Washington interventionists may have sincerely believed this. But deeper motivations – from oil to geostrategic priorities – were also at work in both instances.

In virtually all the wars since 1989, America and Islamist factions have been battling to determine who will control the heartlands of Eurasia in the post-Soviet era. In some countries – Somalia in 1993, Afghanistan in 2001 – the conflict has been straightforward, with each side using the other’s excesses as an excuse for intervention.

But there have been other interventions in which Americans have used al-Qaeda as a resource to increase their influence, for example Azerbaijan in 1993. There a pro-Moscow president was ousted after large numbers of Arab and other foreign mujahedin veterans were secretly imported from Afghanistan, on an airline hastily organized by three former veterans of the CIA’s airline Air America. (The three, all once detailed from the Pentagon to the CIA, were Richard Secord, Harry Aderholt, and Ed Dearborn.)2 This was an ad hoc marriage of convenience: the mujahedin got to defend Muslims against Russian influence in the enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh, while the Americans got a new president who opened up the oilfields of Baku to western oil companies.

Why would bloggers @BooMan express any likes for well known warmongers and interventionists linked to John McCane or anyone connected with Dick Cheney and his Neocon cabal durin eight years of George W. Bush. That’s truly beyong me and explains Martin Longman’s tormenting: “I don’t recognize my own neighborhood.”

The Applebaum and Sikorski Show

I’m thrilled we always differ on our analysis of what is reality … get a life.

Continued below the fold …

The current leader of the Polish parliament (Sejm) is former Foreign and Defense Minister Radoslaw Sikorski, a former U.S. resident and British citizen. Sikorski is married to the neocon columnist Anne Applebaum, a member of the editorial board of The Washington Post.

Sikorski served as a fellow of the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), which provides employment for a number of anti-Russian warhawks, including Fred Kagan, brother-in-law of Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Victoria Nuland.

Lynne Cheney, wife of former Vice President Dick Cheney, and former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton also serve as AEI fellows.

Sikorski is also a close friend of neocon media mogul Rupert Murdoch . Sikorski has been at the forefront of calling for increased European Union sanctions against Russia and the further expansion of NATO to the east.

Sikorski accused of subversion, removed as head of Polish parliament

○ Sheer Ignorance of Polish Contribution In WWII

From my previous diaries/comments …

○ Anne Applebaum employed by Legatum in London
○ Anne Sikorski-Applebaum the Raving War Lunatic – Aug. 2014
○ Radoslaw Sikorski as British ‘journalist’ in Afghan War handing over Stinger missiles to Saudi’s mujahideen
○ Lieberman Support for Bush, Israel, Iraq War and Mujahideen
○ EU/NATO Propaganda It’s About Daesh and Russia

Who Are These Guys?

Weiss and Pomerantsev ^[3]  are an unlikely pair. Weiss, youthful yet professorial in manner, has become a nearly constant presence on cable news because of his supposed expertise on, among other things, Russia, Syria, and ISIS. A longtime neoconservative journalist, he began his rise to cable-news ubiquity as a protégé of the late Christopher Hitchens.

After working with Hitchens, he made his way to the Henry Jackson Society (HJS), a London-based bastion of neoconservatism that, according to a report in The Guardian, has “attracted controversy in recent years–with key staff criticised in the past for allegedly anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant comments.”

[2] See my finding of the connect between The Interpreter, Henry Jackson Society and Khodorkovsky in 2014 at the height of the Maidan protests and the coup d'état in Kiev:  Ukraine Partners Chesno (Honestly) - USAID
[3]  From the link, CEPA's Information Warfare Initiative conducted in partnership with the Legatum Institute - which employs
 Anne Applebaum

○ Reactionary Censorship in the UK: The Case of SpinProfiles | RightWeb – 2010 |

○ Bannon Down, Pentagon Up, Neocons In?

Trump exploited the angst by US voters. Four reports have been written by group of academics.

• Political Divisions in 2016 and Beyond
• Race, Religion, and Immigration in 2016
• The Story of Trump’s Appeal
• The Five Types of Trump Voters

#CatoConnects: Findings from the Democracy Fund Voter Study Group

Featuring Emily Ekins, Ph.D., Research Fellow, Cato Institute; and Rob Griffin, Ph.D., Senior Policy Analyst, Progressive Studies, Center for American Progress; moderated by Matthew Feeney, Policy Analyst, Cato Institute.

The Democracy Fund Voter Study Group, a new research collaboration of nearly two dozen analysts and scholars from across the political spectrum, recently released new data and analysis exploring voter perceptions before and after the 2016 election.

The Cato Institute’s Emily Ekins, a member of the study group, created a “typology” of Trump voters finding five unique groups: American Preservationists (20%), Staunch Conservatives (31%), Anti-Elites (19%), Free Marketeers (25%), and the Disengaged (5%). Despite media narratives seeking out a single explanation of the Trump vote, these results indicate there is no such thing as “one kind of Trump voter” who voted for him for one single reason. Rob Griffin, another member of the study group, also finds that long-term economic stress combined with anxieties over immigration and cultural concerns, profoundly shaped the 2016 election. Ekins will discuss this and her findings that have several implications from the libertarian perspective.

Plus video of debate over result …  

More on Cato’s Emily Ekins …

○ Public Attitudes toward Federalism: The Public’s Preference for Renewed Federalism
○ Reason-Rupe public opinion on immigration

During the primaries …

○ Racist Group Finds a Friend in Donald Trump

Thus the opinion about a large group of swing votes is a myth? The pre-election polls in both the UK and the US have been so terribly wrong! from my earlier diaries:

○ What Everyone Gets Wrong About Independent Voters
○ Islamophobic Geert Wilders aligned with his master Donald Trump – using Fake News
○ GOP Nominee Donald Trump and His EU Bed Partners

So a new study came out, and guess what, it wasn’t so much economic anxiety as…yep! …. immigration anxieties.

voters study group

H/T digby

So they voted for the black guy, then got scared of what they had done and refused to give him a third term.

“He hates the same people I hate, give me the damn ballot”

.

A good place to stick a link to a news article that one wants to share and for which one has little to nothing to add.

(I’ve stopped my use of “O/T” comments in FP threads because it had become another thing for the neos to crab about.  Putting them in diary threads is often less than desirable.)

Would have been a good place for the DT and Mika and Joe spat.  That one now appears to be on holiday (after the old Trump/McMahon wrestling video tweet) as rating are up for both (the WWE wrestling lady McMahon was two points more popular in CT and DT), they may be saying, “mission accomplished.”

Today, NJ provides the fun

On Saturday he said the beach house was separate from Island Beach state park and his family would not be using any state services.

Asked if this was fair, Christie said: “Run for governor, and you can have a residence there.”

Maybe not for long if the existence of a summer beach house for the exclusive use by the Governor of NJ is news to NJ residents.  Can’t find any history on this beach house.  May be an open secret among NJ govt elites and the media, but they appear to have been mum about it.  (Unlike Drumthwacket, the NJ governor’s mansion since 1981.)

UPDATE — NJ.com, July 7, 2017 Bye-bye beach house? Guadagno wants to sell Christie’s Island Beach retreat

Blasting Gov. Chris Christie’s summer home as “a private luxury paid for with public money,” a Democratic state lawmaker is proposing legislation to lease out the property, and Lt. Gov. Kim Guadagno is calling for it to be sold outright.
…
“There is no real burning need to have a private beach house,” state Assemblyman John Wisniewski (D-Middlesex) said. “Especially in a state as small as ours.”

On Friday, Wisniewski, a former Democratic candidate for governor, introduced two pieces of legislation addressing what’s become known as “Beachgate.”

The first bill (A5131) would require the state-owned beach house located at Island Beach State Park to be offered for rent to the general public.

“Run for governor, and you can have a residence there,” Christie said when asked about his use of the facility earlier this week.
…
But Wisniewski’s second bill (A5132) would change that, too. Except for Drumthwacket, it would prohibit the use of “any residential property owned by the state and provided exclusively or primarily for the governor’s use – including the beach house at Island Beach State Park — during a state budget-related government shutdown.”

Privatizing a beach house located within a state park is a terrible idea. However renting it out could easily produce a half a million dollars in gross revenue per year with minimal additional costs to the state.
UPDATE

State parks, beaches to reopen on Independence Day. Interesting that ridicule and public outrage can sometimes work. Bullies do cave when the sand gets kicked into their eyes and kneecap spanners begin to appear.

Observation — I’m thoroughly enjoying all the different directions this thread has taken. Learned some interesting stuff. My heartfelt thanks to all the contributors so far.

One of the first freakouts the right engineered after Barack Obama became president occurred only one week after he took office in 2009. They managed to win a full article in the New York Times dedicated largely to the fact that the new occupant of the Oval Office showed up to work on the weekend in business casual attire and allowed his staff to do the same.

If Mr. Obama’s clock is looser than Mr. Bush’s, so too are his sartorial standards. Over the weekend, Mr. Obama’s first in office, his aides did not quite know how to dress. Some showed up in the West Wing in jeans (another no-no under Mr. Bush), some in coats and ties.

So the president issued an informal edict for “business casual” on weekends — and set his own example. He showed up Saturday for a briefing with his chief economic adviser, Lawrence H. Summers, dressed in slacks and a gray sweater over a white buttoned-down shirt. Workers from the Bush White House are shocked.

“I’ll never forget going to work on a Saturday morning, getting called down to the Oval Office because there was something he was mad about,” said Dan Bartlett, who was counselor to Mr. Bush. “I had on khakis and a buttoned-down shirt, and I had to stand by the door and get chewed out for about 15 minutes. He wouldn’t even let me cross the threshold.”

This would not be the last time that President Obama was accused of not having a proper respect for the dignity of the office.

I have a really bad memory except for certain things. It’s a long time ago now, but I still remember the story the new Bush administration engineered in the early days of Dubya’s presidency about the freaking dress code and its importance. I will quote this at length:

One of the very first decisions President Bush made after his inauguration was to reinstate the White House dress code. Like much of what he does, this move seemed to be primarily aimed at pleasing his father. It can’t be easy having George Sr. for a dad, and it’s too bad about the president’s inner child, but it’s hard to watch Bush use policy to gain his father’s approval and not feel uncomfortable — it’s like we’ve walked in on something really private.

The dress code was established initially by the first Bush administration, and, at the time, it specified that women wear knee-length skirts and stockings in the West Wing. In other words, during the administrations of Ronald Reagan and Bush the Elder, only the boys wore pants. Because this was an idea whose time came — and went — in the Paleozoic era, the minor style revolution that followed with the election of Bill Clinton was totally inadvertent.

“On Inauguration Day, I was wearing a pantsuit,” Dee Dee Myers, Clinton’s former press secretary, told Chris Bury on “Nightline” two days after George W. Bush’s inauguration. “It was a very cold day in Washington and when I came into the West Wing, I actually broke what had been a Reagan and Bush protocol rule, which was: Women weren’t allowed to wear slacks. And so we sort of changed that protocol right from the very beginning, accidentally. I don’t think any of us realized there was a dress code that officially or unofficially discouraged or barred women from wearing slacks.”

The no-pants rule was never rehabilitated, so after the recent dress code announcement, many feared the worst: nude pantyhose. When Bush press secretary Ari Fleischer eventually declared that “the [women’s] pantsuits can stay,” women outside the Amish community breathed a collective sigh of relief.

He made it clear, however, that in this administration, West Wing women would be required to wear “appropriate business attire” and men would be expected to wear suits and ties at all times. The point, as one aide told the New York Times, was “to treat the office with respect.”

In case that isn’t clear enough for you, even back in 2001, the right-wing media was geared up to amplify the point.

“Mr. Bush is restoring the dignity that used to be associated with the Presidency,” wrote Tom Barrett on Christianlink.com. “Gone are the blue jeans, tie-dyes, T-shirts and jogging shorts that were considered appropriate attire during Clinton’s Presidency.”

“Out are the 20-something, denim-wearing, pony-tailed Clintonites known for strewing pizza boxes throughout the halls,” wrote Joseph Curl of the Washington Times. “In are the 30- and 40-something, box-cut, scrubbed-clean, suit-and-tie-wearing Bushies.”

This whole narrative was tiresome from the beginning, but it was at least in part based on the fact the new president wanted to run his White House in a way that would meet the approval of his father. Running the executive branch of the federal government is a serious job and Poppy Bush thought his staff should look the part.

This is what I think about when I read President Trump’s tweets.

It’s not that I ever thought criticisms that the Clinton administration (as opposed to the president himself) didn’t uphold the dignity of the office were serious. It’s just that I look at what Trump does and I try to imagine how Poppy must feel about it.

I wrote a post here recently called Losing Begins To Tune Up the Dems. It was about my observations during a couple of recent Friday round trip car rides from the Bronx to a rural area about 60+ miles from Boston and back. Long story short, I saw and heard intimations that the whole Russiagate thing was losing steam and that Dem voter types at the local level were beginning to look anew at the possibility of reforming their own party…cleaning out the leftish side of the DC swamp.

There were several reasonable comments, but at the end there appeared two snark posts…both from long-time supporters of the “Don’t blame us Dems, blame the Russians!!!” faction of the party.

One said “Russiagate is bullshit. It’s all just a huge conspiracy lunacy,” and the other…from our long-suffering host…simply said “On second thought, drop the Counterpunch and go back to porn.”

Sigh…

So I wrote a response.

It grew.

Here it is in full. Read on.

Russiagate is not bullshit…or maybe better, it’s one-sided, politically motivated, partisan bullshit. The partisanship is not as well or as clearly defined as usual because the DemRat and RatPub factions have somewhat united to get rid of Trump and whomever is really running him, a rival gang that is basically going after some important part of their currently shared territory.

The Trumpistas initially got their win due to the awful way(s) that the Rats and Dems have been running this country since Clinton I if not before, treating its workers as disposable, indentured servants for the corporate ruling class. The Trump win was a reaction to total, bipartisan incompetence at anything other than theft and propaganda in Washingtoon, DC.

We need to drain the swamp on both sides of the current contretemps, and there is no real movement afoot…no nationally publicized movement, for sure…to do this. Sanders/Warren comes close, but no cigar.

Why no cigar?

Because the corporate-owned and controlled media won’t cooperate in letting that cigar be lit, that’s why. The media will oppose any and all tendencies towards change…of any sort, from socialism right on through whatever is being plotted by the Trump controllers…aims which appear to me to probably be governmental collapse and some form of partially disguised totalitarian rule. Partially disguised at first, anyway.

And so…here we jolly well are, aren’t we. Deluged by the centrist media with all of the (at least partially true) info regarding the nasty machinations of the Trump forces to gain power.

That’s only going to stop the invaders…if it works, of course…from further polluting the DC swamp. That swamp will still be filthy.

What to do, what to do?

I’m pretty much in agreement with the prognostications of the scholar that Booman referenced in his latest post, myself. (Go to Booman’s post for links, please.)

Back in April, when the BBC talked to Thomas Homer-Dixon, chair of global systems at the Balsillie School of International Affairs in Waterloo, Canada, about the prospects for the collapse of Western Civilization, they were told that things do not look good.

The Syrian case aside, another sign that we’re entering into a danger zone, Homer-Dixon says, is the increasing occurrence of what experts call nonlinearities, or sudden, unexpected changes in the world’s order, such as the 2008 economic crisis, the rise of ISIS, Brexit, or Donald Trump’s election.

I guess you can call that an updated version of the four signs of the Apocalypse. These nonlinearities aren’t so much causes of our current problems as they are consequences of them. Many have noted how the invasion of Iraq cascaded into the Syrian civil war, and also how a drought brought on by climate change contributed to the disintegration of Syria’s political consensus. The financial collapse of 2008 was foreseen by relatively few experts but came about as a natural consequence of a failure to adequately regulate financial instruments. And both Brexit and the election of Donald Trump are widely regarded as hard to foresee consequences of growing income inequality and anxiety about immigration and refugee patterns.

For Homer-Dixon, there are echoes in all of this of the end state of the Western Roman Empire:

Also paralleling Rome, Homer-Dixon predicts that Western societies’ collapse will be preceded by a retraction of people and resources back to their core homelands. As poorer nations continue to disintegrate amid conflicts and natural disasters, enormous waves of migrants will stream out of failing regions, seeking refuge in more stable states. Western societies will respond with restrictions and even bans on immigration; multi-billion dollar walls and border-patrolling drones and troops; heightened security on who and what gets in; and more authoritarian, populist styles of governing. “It’s almost an immunological attempt by countries to sustain a periphery and push pressure back,” Homer-Dixon says.

—snip—

Booman apparently thinks that ousting Trump might slow this new nonlinearity down. I do not think so, myself. If successful, it will probably just prepare the groundwork for yet another nonlinearity, and on and on and on the nonlinearity circus will continue…gaining speed and torque… until it accelerates into some sort of cataclysmic collapse.

I personally do not know what to do to stop this acceleration, let alone how to do it. I spent last week in a rural area outside of a small city in eastern PA, teaching at a jazz camp that is run and administered by local, small-town people. Good people, well-meaning people, hard-working people. Besides an occasional shrug and raising of the eyes heavenward when politics was mentioned, they were almost totally clueless about what is happening in DC now. They were not only clueless, they were also eyes wide shut about it. They have been mediaed-out. They are exhausted. “Let the fools do whatever they’re going to do” was the prevailing attitude. “We’ve survived them before; we’ll survive them again.”

Like dat.

i felt pretty much the same thing in the diners, gas stations, markets etc. of the area.

Maybe they’re right.

I hope so.

Later…

AG

P.S. Bernie Sanders, yesterday:

Last month more than 4,000 people gathered in Chicago for the People’s Summit. Independent senator, former presidential candidate Bernie Sanders delivered the keynote speech. During his speech, he repeatedly criticized the Democratic Party, calling it an “absolute failure,” and blaming it for the election of President Trump. “I’m often asked by the media and others: How did it come about that Donald Trump, the most unpopular presidential candidate in the modern history of our country, won the election?” Sanders said. “And my answer is that Trump didn’t win the election; the Democratic Party lost the election. Let us be very, very clear: The current model and the current strategy of the Democratic Party is an absolute failure.”

Like dat, too.
Every time any one of you leftinesses support the current Dem machinations and line, all you are doing is postponing (or quite likely making totally impossible) the re-formation of the Democratic Party into a true, effective resistance party to the current neocentrist government.

Do not continue on this path until it is simply too damned late.

Please!!!