Well that escalated obviously over 4 years!
None of us who have been watching the Cavalcade of Political Hate that has been Trump’s obscene term of malice can pretend that the Orange Lives Matter Insurrection we all witnessed was a surprise.
The attempt to nakedly usurp Democracy has been building every hour of his toxic Presidency.
This was the very obvious conclusion to the alternate reality of spiteful chaos that Trump has championed.
But as I watched Trump lunatic after Trump lunatic interviewed as they rampaged through the Capital Building, I didn’t feel angry at them, I honestly felt a terrible, terrible pity for them.
They have had their fear and their ignorance manipulated by forces far beyond their tiny insignificant intellects.
These morons are suffering from a shared collective mental illness! They believe a Satanic child sex cult is running the world, bioengineering the Covid virus to be spread by 5G to bring about a shadowy one world government for fucks sake.
I’d put money on the table that at least 50% of them think the Earth is flat, 30% think dinosaurs are a hoax and at least 15% who think Elvis is still alive.
Those delusional Orange Lives Matter nutters are a symptom of a much nastier and far more wicked disease, and that’s where the blame should go.
The blame should go on Trump whose Presidency from candidate announcement to this current bleak scaring of democracy has been one corrosive stain after another on the institutions that protect the American people. He has grown this tumour, he has lit a fuse by falsely claiming a rigged election and he told the crowd to march on the Capital Building after enflaming them with lies.
The blame should go on the gutless Republicans who have refused to stand up to the worst excesses of this Orange Fascist.
The blame should go on Fox News for enabling his lies and his fantasies.
The blame should go on Facebook for weaponising his disinformation with algorithms designed to make them profit from deceit and manipulations.
We should pity Trump’s followers but we should punish him and his enablers who set this abomination in motion.
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These people aren’t mad, they are reacting to fear of the end of their secure, comfortable privileges living in the No 1 global imperialist. They are still living the dream of frontier freedom where whites wiped out whole peoples to advance ‘civilisation’. It’s their historic decline that has thrown them, and they respond by pulling up the moat. Trump has served to unite this reactionary political movement into a force to be reckoned with. Workers cannot afford to under-rate what motivates this force as it poses a mortal threat. Its about the breakdown of the capitalist economy, and that has to be our target. No deals with ‘sane’ bosses, or petty bourgeois labour leaders. Workers’ Party, workers’ councils and militias, workers’ power and Workers’ State.
“Pulling up the moat’… genius right there Dave! You are waaay more of a threat to human welfare, but fortunately even less influential, than the Trumpistas!
Indeed.. ‘Pulling up the drawbridge”, db?
The mistrust of any powers other than continuation of US world economic, political and military dominance has been around for a few decades in the US. Plus, there long been factions who distrust US state power -probably not without reason.
It is probably based in the vast economic inequalities. Trump has mobilised the disaffected. Some of them probably still cling to the longtime US propaganda of exceptionalism, individualism, militaristic solutions, and meritocracy. A muddle of ideas and ideals.
I recall spending a night in an LA hotel when travelling between the UK and NZ in the 1980s. Couldn’t sleep and tuned into a radio station with a woman talking about her research. She sounded so matter of fact and rational. But she was talking about some codes on the back of road signs throughout rural US. She was claiming that these were codes to direct UN troops WHEN they took over the US.
I never did hear who she was or who she was speaking for. Later I read about the US militias, etc.
Mistrust of US and any government authorities or international organisations probably has a basis in the vast economic inequalities, and corporate power in the US.
Dave I have given you shit in the past but here I think that you have greatdr grip on the fundamental issue than Bomber.
The way I see it showing such contempt for Trump supporters on such subjects as Elvis etc is to place onself outside of this obviously working class group. It is to declare intellectual superiority, just basically being “better” whatever that means. It is to throw your hat in with Hillary, these are “deplorables”. This is tribalism, Liz and Martyn think their views superior to these inferiors and in doing so they declare their hand alongside the corrupt corporatist regime that impoverishes the “deplorables”.
I fully understood Dave why a Marxist would describe intellectual and academic lefties as “running dog capitalist roaders and lick spitgle oppressors of the proletariat”.
Trump has done nothing to serve anyone but himself, when will you ever learn?
I agree Dave. The cause of more immediacy than “breakdown of the capitalist economy” has been the neoliberal agenda of globalisation which has resulted a blunt force redistribution of the world’s wealth largely at the expense of the first-world’s working class. This has come with a great deal of pain for those whose expectations were raised by the post war economic bubble. It is also a shock to the huge sense of entitlement held by most western populaces; the belief that being poor is domain of shithole countries, not western democracies. Mix such bewilderment and resentment with demagoguery and the results are predictable.
it’s easy to criticise and belittle people we disagree with. Unfortunately nearly 50% of US population feels seriously disenfranchised with the current political situation, this has to be a very serious concern, even if you don’t like these people. From the few American friends I have, it appears this class of people feel particularly disenfranchised by the woke SJW cancel culture mob, who largely side with the Democrats in US politics. Writing off these Trumpo-supporters for their “tiny insignificant intellects” is not really going to help the problem (the one US guy I know who is strongly pro-Trump has 2 PhDs and works in medicine, not a ‘tiny insignificant intellect’ at all). The parrallel in NZ is when all white males are immediately assumed to be racist priveleged rapists, it does not do much for future social cohesion.
The marginalisation of any part of society is always a bad thing. In the US this is becoming the more conservative part of the population away from the liberal coastal cities. ironically the marginalisation of the largely white middle class does not appear to be decreasing the marginalisation of minority groups, everyone is becoming marginalised except the political elite. In NZ the marginalised class may be everyone not favoured by the woke identitarians. It is so easy to see that if NZ Maori or US minorities are marginalised they will develop a grievance, why is it so hard for some people to see if white middle class NZ or US get to feel marginalised it will also cause massive social issues?
Yes. Well said.
“Why is it so hard for some people to see if white middle class NZ or US get to feel marginalised it will also cause massive social issues?”
So why then, do both those groups currently have the attitude that marginalised people choose to be marginalised?
The “middle class” whatever the fuck that is, is not a stable point of objective reality. I could tell you how not to feel marginalised, but you aren’t listening, and aren’t interested. Fine, continue in your wimpering threats, but be sure that we know your current attitude is simply you deliberately intending to hurt other people while claiming innocence and victimhood.
Hi Ethnic Jedi,
Not sure if your last paragraph was aimed at me, but if it was, it would appear to be a personalised attack against someone you don’t know based on preconceived prejudice without any knowledge of who I am… which actually serves as an excellent example of the issues I was trying to address. Why do we spend so much effort trying to find something to dislike each other about? This is how society becomes massively polarised, we just need to look at USA right now to see how this plays out.
All the best.
Dead right.
Yes, informed analysis and comment. Thankyou.
Everyone dies, it is the final and only everlasting justice. Evil exists, it is intelligence in the service of entropy.
When a mountain landslide destroys a village and kills all inhabitants, this is not evil as it requires intent. Should a sentient beings cause that landslide then there is evil and requires justice as a consequence so that civilization can exist.
There is no greater good than justice, and only if the law serves justice is it at all a good law.
It is said correctly that the law does not serve the just but the unjust because the just carry justice within there hearts and do not need to call it from afar.
I bow to no one and give service only to human rights.
Spurred on by a terrible spiteful MSM that chose to inaccurately report news to suit their biased agenda.
Trump was a terrible president, what a fkd up 4 years the damage he caused over his term is exactly what was feared but the inaccurate, sensationalism that was spewed out from the MSM gave strength to Trump. He could point to the MSMs blatent in accuracies strengthening his horrendous conspiracy theories.
The MSM need to just report the news not try to shape it.
1000% Ben
ONLY, 15% believe Elvis is still alive? Closer to 50%
As a leftist I completely agree with feeling sorry for these people, but the real question we must answer is how was it possible for Trump and the enablers to take advantage of them, what is the material analysis that helps make sense of this?
I think it is because neo-liberal economic policies of the last 50 years have devastated the working and middle classes and they Democrats have abandoned them. Bill Clinton broke the traditional alliance between Democrats and Unions and instead got into bed with Wall St then started a trajectory that delivered for them and that every successive Dem and Republican administration followed. I bet if you interviewed those Trump supporters who stormed the Washington DC you would find a large proportion of them or their families impacted by one or more of; tours of duty in pointless wars, loss of manufacturing jobs, house loss from 2008 GFC, opioid epidemic, poor health care etc. In that environment any latent white supremacy and racism will rise. The Democrats have allowed the space to open up for Trump to walk into. Bernie understood this and would’ve got some votes back, but Trump still got the second largest Presidential vote in history in losing to Biden.
On the flip side of Trump are the Dems who celebrate women and POC being in senior military and deep security state roles and a Corporate technology alliance in Silicon Valley that can control what opinions will be allowed. Trump’s presence on SM needed to be controlled but I am uncomfortable with the lack of any real process or oversight in the way this was done – leftists will now be easier to close down as Biden continues to go after Venezuela, Bolivia, Iran and possibly China. And then there’s Assange, the greatest journalist of the last 20 years who broke the biggest stories since the Pentagon Papers – the smears against him allow cowardly liberal journalists to not have to engage with what he actually revealed about western Govts and corporations and to not care about the grave threat to press freedom that the US extradition represents.
Sorry, not much to cheer about in all this.
Agree with a lot of what you’ve written, Bob e.g. on the history of the Democrats.
The collusion of the Dems with Big Tech, social media, etc is a worry. It’s continuing Obama’s strong connection with ‘Silicon Valley’ (See Shoshana Zuboff’s “Age of Surveillance Capitalism” on this).
Banning Trump from social media is not the way forward. Corporate controlled social media, and the enabling power given to it by the coming Biden presidency is a big worry. Private corporations should not be able to decide who gets to speak, and who is censored.
Team Biden and the Democrat establishment have now turned their backs on women. In their promised policies, they will make it legal for any male who says they feel like they are a woman, to be classified as a woman, legally and socially. In law and in practice, that will mean there is no female sex. This hugely benefits misogynists in male-dominated big tech.
Actually, at the moment Team Biden is confused about what exactly a ‘woman’ is. In some of their speeches they seem to be talking about women as biological females, and at other times, ‘gender identity’ (whatever that means).
They will turn back the clock on hard won rights, services and protections for females. The Biden presidency will not be progressive, only a slightly more benignly-presented form of capitalism and patriarchy.
Apart from the tragic deaths I thought the storming of the US capital buildings was an awesome moment and a timely reminder that politicians as corrupt and self serving as those in the US deserve to have the sh#t scared out of them from time to time.
Trump is a symptom and the anger he has tapped into is legitimate. These are not stupid people they are angry and power less and they have every right to attack their government when it fails to serve them as spectacular as it does in the US.
Sadly the situation will be used as cover by the Democrats who will do almost nothing fundamentally different in terms of policy and will expend their political time and energy on the theatrics of Trump bashing. Policy on healthcare, police reform, the environment and inequality, mean while, will all be carefully avoided.
” Sadly the situation will be used as cover by the Democrats who will do almost nothing fundamentally different in terms of policy and will expend their political time and energy on the theatrics of Trump bashing ”
Yes Mr Bradley well written.
That’s the key isn’t it.
“Trump is a symptom”.
He is the inevitable result of a populace who are angry and frightened of what the future holds, and decided they want change.
Sure, Trump was never going to deliver the change they wanted, but at last they have a voice.
Don’t underestimate the feeling of having a “voice” in US politics.
In NZ, I don’t feel I have a voice anymore, as someone who’s ancestors arrived in 1840. I can now see clearly why Maori have been so disenfranchised.
You can despise Trump all you like, but there is a good chance NZ is heading down the same path.
Let’s just hope we don’t have to wait for a Trump to make it happen.
The disenfranchised are not going away. Decades of falling incomes, rising living costs and wealth inequality led to the election of Trump. The only other person in the 2016 election to address these people was Bernie Sanders but the DNC stopped his nomination. In the rustbelt states Sanders did get buy in with socially progressive policies especially M4All over Hillary Clinton who as we all know went on to lose the rustbelt to Trump. Despite four years of deplorable politics and ultimately losing the election he increased his popular vote by over 9 million. These numbers include people who have been struggling to keep their heads above water for decades. The Clintons steered the DNC towards Wall Street and away from the working class and the party has never gone back. Can the Dems speak to these people again or have they travelled too far down Wall Street? If this is so then surely the time is right to create a party that can deliver policies that feed the progressive left and also make a bridge to all struggling Americans. Otherwise could the GOP come through the middle as evidenced by the passing of the Florida state referendum on 15 dollar minimum wage. Angry people need to be listened to, to find the true cause of their anger. The sleeping giant is now awake.
Yes spot on. The identitarian liberals will demonise Trumps supporters as “deplorables” but will ignore and even exacerbate the underlying causes. Biden still represents the elite.
Of course the probability is that TRUMP and his 80 million actual voters have been right royally shafted by the REAL swamp nasties. Experts in the arts of deceit deception and provocateuring. Drawn into a complex series of gambits and trumped at every turn. Ably assisted by MOCKINGBIRD media assets pretending journalism (simon marks for instance) to the point that in the land of the free; where constitutional freedoms of speech are the first rank of importance, the sitting President is denied his by order of a company manager-zuckerberg-.
That would have to be the actual definition of fascism. Corporate governance.
Not sure how Donald will go without his Twitter account. Like Jaron Lanier, I too believe Donald has a social media addiction.
Seeing Trump staring at a telly during the riot and him knowing that he had instigated this act of terrorism because in his insane delusional thought patterns the election was ‘stolen’ from him made me think of that part of history about when Rome was burning Nero fiddled.
Trump could have called his supporters to tell them not to invade the Capitol but no. Instead he stood there watching the telly of the events and probably enjoying that moment of adulation towards his supporters and his supporters adulation towards him.
He could have told them to stop and if he had done this adult thing then 5 people would still be alive today.
Therefore to me the deaths of those 5 people means that Donald Trump now has blood on his hands.
It was only later on after the mob had done the damage did Trump tell them to go home. But I believe he also praised them for their actions. How mentally sick is that guy(Trump)???!!!!
Lets be well assured Donald Trump will never be held accountable for his actions and lack of actions either in the riot of a couple of days ago or his disdain and hatred of a democratically held election.
He is behaving like a tinpot dictator running and ruining a country and making it into a banana republic.
Those rioters and even those in the above photo look uncouth and poorly educated. They are what one would call the lower classed individuals of a country. Their eagerness to support Trump shows they are what even Trump has called others as Stupid.
Whilst social media outlets are closing off access by Donald Trump to spread his venom of hatred and lies he still can destroy this world by pushing one button. And in his little insane world of make believe I think he is quite capable of doing that.
Lets just hope the more intelligent Republican politicians have the guts to remove this lunatic because along with giving America a bad name he is also giving the Republican Party a bad name. And I am sure the Republican Party still want to exist once Donald Trump is no longer a part of it.
“Trump is a symptom and the anger he has tapped into is legitimate”
No, they are fucked in the head,if they were legitimate, then all 74 million would have descended upon the capitol, only the stupid ones did, look at the way they dressed and one stupid fuck had his ID badge!
Oh the mental health expert once again shows his true colours and sneering disdain of anyone who has a differing opinion, to his own.
Walk a mile in someone’s shoes.
Ever heard that saying?
Thank’s Pedro.
I listened to a woman from the US today who is recovering from covid 19 say how lucky she was to have access to her husbands health insurance cover. She needed an ambulance to hospital and without insurance cover the cost is 5000 dollars plus her testing and overnight stay which would be many thousands of dollars. She paid a copay of 50 dollars. Joe Biden clearly and publicly stated that if a M4All bill came through congress to the floor of the senate he would immediately VETO it. Tens of millions of Americans have no health insurance which creates an underclass who struggle to find a way to survive, literally. That is where the monstrous Trump came in, promising to make America great again and while he has fed Wall Street he has starved main street. The question is how far will the US descend before it shakes off the shackles of corporatocracy and rampant capitalism? The disenfranchised around the globe are watching as the sleeping giant wakes up.
The health issue is a great example of the difference between US and NZ. All NZ political parties support state-funded health and education, even National and ACT are left wing by US standards in this regard. Most of the differences in NZ politics are about how to achieve best results, not about whether we should be doing it at all.
I donate to health services as I can, but a couple years back watching one of my sons being taken to hospital in a helicopter after a motorcycle accident (with ambulance ground crew attending as well) really did bring it home to me how lucky we are. Helicopter trip, hospital stay, several surgeries, on the taxpayer. In USA his medical bill would have bankrupted me. It is hard to understand the US attitudes towards this, finding instructions for DIY medical procedures online really brings it home. The fact that some NZers describe others as ‘far right’ or ‘radical left’ etc when in reality all our politics are very centrist by international standards is not helpful.
Your views of America and especially Republican America are based on what exactly? Have you been there? Have you worked there? Like I have.
No. Like most people here, they’re based on what you’re fed via the mainstream media. Our local media is just a copy & paste of material from CNN, New York Times, Washington Post, CNBC etc and they’re all Democrat owned propaganda machines that have spent the last 4 years trying to drag down a duly elected President.
Trump wasn’t supposed to get elected in the first place. The Democrats and many of their Republican allies were overconfident and underestimated the effectiveness of his campaigning online. Prior to his election success, all the smart insider money was on Hillary, deals were done, backs were scratched and appointments allocated to favoured friends. Because that’s how Washington DC works. In order to progress in politics in the US one has to do deals; initially at local level and then later at national and even international level in order to obtain sufficient funds to run election campaigns. Each deal comes with a policy constraint so that by the time we get to Presidential level all the candidates completely tied down. The lobbyists run DC and have for a 100 years.
Now along comes a guy with his own money, with no constraints with the ridiculous notion of doing what he thought was best for the USA rather than what was best for the billionaire class who were sponsoring his opponent. He had to be dragged down. They had to prevent him bypassing the filter of mainstream media. They used the FBI to spy on him. They used ‘lawfare’ to pick off his allies, they ginned up physical violence against his supporters. They tried to impeach him. They claimed his supreme court nominee was a rapist. They claimed he was a Russian puppet. They claimed he was a racist. All lies.
So under an intense barrage of propaganda plus an unknown (but significant) amount of electoral fraud they got rid of him. They will now destroy him and rewrite the history books.
So who have Americans got instead? They’ve got ‘business as usual’. The corporate shill Biden and the equally corrupt Harris will be power. The southern border will open up to bring in illegal labour so as to continue depressing the wages of working class Americans. Zuckerberg, Dorsey & Co will get an endless flow of cheap H1B visa workers to do the same in their area. Jeff Bezos and the Waltons will continue to crush what little remains of small business over there by resuming the free flow of cheap Chinese goods into the USA.
The bad guys won. The USA is an oligarchy.
Sorry Andrew documentary evidence says he is in the pockets of the Russian mafia and in thrall of Putin. Who is definitely in the pocket of the old school kgb and russian mafia, who helped him become mayor of St Petersburg and also helped him pull off the terrorist attacks at the school and Theater to increase his popularity.
Trump did not need anyone to bring him down he did that when he opened his mouth .Many voted for him but more saw how he had lied about covid and caused the death of many by trying to turn it into some macho cause that tough Republicans did not get it only the weak Democrats did . No need for face masks or social distancing. His not condemning of racially motives killings and trying to make out all Muslims as the enemy. Being to scared to fight in a war but happy to belittle those that did and in some cases their grieving parents. All politicians lie but he turned it into an art the sad part is 75 million believed him and many of those thought he was sent by God .
I know little of American politics but after the life I have led I know a lot about people. Who to trust and who to avoid and not listen to and Trump and his type are on that list
“Your views of America and especially Republican America are based on what exactly?”
Republican Party history of science denial.
Republican Party history of dismantlement of public education
Republican Party history of attempting to install religious (christian) dogma into government and secular institutions.
Republican Party history of opposition to any form of national public heath system or reform.
Republican Party history of removing environmental guardrails.
Republican Party history of artificially subsidising the fossil fuel industry .
Republican Party history of opposition to green energy initiatives.
Republican Party history of employing dog whistling political tactics to encourage racism and division.
Republican Party history of voter suppression.
Plenty more available to list.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/randalllane/2021/01/07/a-truth-reckoning-why-were-holding-those-who-lied-for-trump-accountable/?
We should pity Trump’s followers but we should punish him and his enablers who set this abomination in motion.
Well that would be the Democrats then I guess. Replacing progressive Bernie Sanders in 2016, with proven War Criminal and Wall St whore, Clinton.
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