Tag Archives: US election 2016

My Old Predictions on Election 2016

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During last June (the CA primary, 7 June 2016) I wrote that “a vote for Hillary Clinton before July is a vote for Donald Trump in November.” By all kinds of cheating, bribery, rigging, collusion with corporate media and procedural underhandedness, the Clinton mafia, the DNC and professional Democrats managed to shut out the popular will (and its spokesman, Bernie Sanders) from the electoral process. Okay, so the corporations won. But it seems increasing clear now that Hillary Clinton’s political legacy for America will be the Trump Administration. <> (29 September 2016)

Donald Trump is the popular response of the white working class to its nearly 40 year degradation by neoliberal economics. Donald Trump is not Hitler, neoliberalism is Dracula. The neoliberal plague was unleashed in 1979 by Margaret Thatcher (in the UK) and Ronald Reagan in 1981, and has continued to be propagated in the US by a succession of corporate-owned factotums: George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama and — if the Democratic Party can rig everything to come out just right — Hillary Clinton. <> (8 September 2016)

It is abundantly clear that should Hillary Clinton lose the November election (as seems more likely with each passing day) it will be a richly deserved loss. <> (8 September 2016)

The American electorate may arrive at a consensus of voting for a train-wreck they can be assured of seeing unfold in every detail, instead of voting for a stealthy railroading of them all, under the guise of social progress. <> (8 September 2016)

If Donald Trump does actually win the November election it will be because of all the Democratic Party regulars and Clinton faithful, who “voted for him” by late July, by voting for Hillary instead of Bernie: that is to say by rigging the voting processes, and collusion with corporate media to sabotage the Sanders campaign, in addition to simply casting their votes for Hillary during the primary elections and at the Democratic Party convention. <> (24 August 2016)

Had the Democratic Party really been concerned about beating Donald Trump in the November election they would have nominated Bernie Sanders, who is heavily favored over Donald in just about every electoral district, and in every single poll taken on that question (still). But, the Democratic Party regulars and the Clinton faithful are far more concerned about preserving their own situations of personal gain, and they did not want to “lose control” of the Democratic Party to the “popular will” (Jean-Jacques Rousseau) for the good of the country. <> (24 August 2016)

So today, the 25th of July 2016, is undoubtedly the first day of the Trump presidency, the beginning of its preamble which will reach a crescendo on November 8, and then be legitimized on the 20th of January 2017. The best hopes for the next four years in America, and perhaps for a generation, were strangled in their Democratic Party crib today. I will always hate all Hillary Clinton voters, and I will always pity all Donald Trump voters. <> (25 July 2016)

Trump voters are too stupid to do any better, and many of them are justifiably angry over how they have been exploited economically. It is perfectly understandable that they would rebel against their political impotence by throwing the monkey wrench of a vote for Trump into the gears of the system. So, I pity them. Hillary voters, on the other hand, are smart enough to realize just how stupid their identity politics vanity is. Is the advancement and enrichment of one very corrupt woman really worth the many sacrifices the nation and its people must endure to sustain it? Is the thrill of being able to say “I voted for the first American woman president” really more important than the futures of our children, and the welfare of so many hard-pressed people? For Hillary Clinton voters it is, and so I hate them. <> (25 July 2016)

The Democratic Party has done a superb job of ensuring that many millions of young Americans will never look on it with respect and trust ever again. It has also done an outstanding job at demonstrating — for all Americans and all the World — one of the clearest and most vivid counterexamples to the concept of integrity that has ever been devised. Seed corn has been wasted by the gluttony of the privileged, and of the stupid. Fortunately for these Democratic party “loyalists,” delusion and self-absorption will save them from ever noticing the consequences. Until karma surprises. <> (14 June 2016)

The 2016 election is between the people and the corporations. Independents will determine who wins in November (they outnumber registered Democrats and registered Republicans). Bernie is the overwhelming favorite nationally (and in swing states), and would easily defeat Trump. If the DP fields Hillary Clinton against Trump, Trump will win. <> (5 June 2016)

Among the people: Bernie’s supporters are the most alert, Trump’s supporters are the most bitter, and Hillary’s supporters are the most deluded. <> (5 June 2016)

If the Democratic Party apparatchiks (the paid minions of the 1% oligarchs) can beat back the hostile-takeover Sanders insurgency of popular and populist democracy, and put Hillary Clinton forward as the party’s champion in the general electoral joust, then President Trump will be inaugurated in January 2017. The Democratic Party apparatchiks are first and foremost fighting to preserve their patronage positions (to hell with the country). A President Trump is no threat to their ambitions, but a nominee Sanders — whether subsequently president or not — would mean that a revolution had occurred in the Democratic Party, and the Obama-Clinton apparatchik gravy-train derailed. <> (27 February 2016)

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President Trump

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President Trump is popular America’s (as opposed to institutional America’s) equivalent of a Brexit from neoliberalism and globalization.

Part of the political rejection elevating Donald Trump to the presidency is a popular emotional rejection of social attitudes and would-be social norms (as advocated by “advanced” worldly people) that are taken as threats to local distinctiveness, local traditions and old “religious” and ethnic customs, where those old customs are largely forms of bigotry passed down through families as basic elements of social and personal identity.

As is true with ISIS, the Taliban, Syria’s Assad, Turkey’s Erdogan, Iran’s ayatollahs, Egypt’s generals, the Chinese geriatrocrats, and every “conservative” authoritarian regime around the world, all socially “liberal” ideas like women’s rights (reproductive, marital, sexual) and equality with men (political and economic), secular parliamentary government, the illegality of institutional racism, the illegality of the persecution of homosexuality and gender relativity, are all seen as part of “world governing” capitalist globalization taking over and diluting (to zero) local power structures (which are basically certain types of regional-national male classes defining the nature of their societies, and compelling all others to fit into their assigned places in these inequitable hierarchies).

This rejectionist and xenophobic nationalism is keenly and emotionally felt as “patriotism,” the defending and maintaining of “our (local) way of life” against the invasions by heartless, impersonal, unpatriotic trans-national and exploitative world economic forces, with no loyalty locally or nationally (e.g., job offshoring, foreign tax-haven sheltering “world capital”), and whose human faces are self-aggrandizing elitists who have personally removed from themselves any localisms and “backwardness” that would connect them to the communities they would rule over from afar, in order to be most efficient in advancing their own personal ambitions. Hillary Clinton is a perfect example of such an elitist, happy to homogenize (and “feminize”) the USA in order to make its exploitation by “world capital” more efficient.

Hillary Clinton is certainly more capable than Donald Trump would ever be at managing the economic system that currently owns the USA. But the popular preference for a President Trump is an angry rejection of that Wall Street neoliberal globalized system. They don’t want Trump to run it better than Hillary, they want Trump to destroy it and give them something new, which makes them feel good within their local distinctiveness, as they imagine they would have “in the good old days.”

It looks like my prediction yesterday wasn’t too good (today, 8 November 2016, at 10 PM Pacific Time, Trump seems likely to win). Personally, I wish the Democrats had run Bernie instead of Hillary. Oh well, you reap what you sow.

I voted for Jill Stein of the Green Party.

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P.S. 11:44 PM, 8 November 2016, Pacific Time:

Donald Trump wins 276 Electoral College votes, 6 more than needed to gain the presidency (270). The New York Times estimates that when all votes are finally counted, Trump will have gained 310 Electoral votes (and Hillary Clinton will have gained 228). Both the US House of Representatives and the Senate will have Republican Party majorities in 2017.

Trump has triumphed, and all the institutions, who were uniformly against him (including a significant portion of the Republican Party Establishment), have been shamed. The American people have unleashed their political berserker.

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What Have I Learned From The 2016 Election

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0. I am out of synch with Americans today, old and young, and it is better for me to keep it that way even if it seems isolating. I would do best living happily as a quiet, invisible loner.

I am unable to engage with society without puncturing other people’s idea bubbles, because I am unable to keep my analytical mind from seeking the foundations of those ideas and the limits of those bubbles. I usually find the foundations weak, the limits narrow, and the bubbles flimsy – but held to be sacred. Trying to expand those bubbles (to “be helpful” and “inform them”) or pop them (to be critical and “wake them up”) just creates hostility, and that produces disturbances (when I lose my patience), which then suck the oxygen out of my good spirits, and poisons some of the time I could otherwise be spending enjoying my own thoughts and actions.

What I have now been taught, in these modern times, is that I would do best to “respect others” by simply saying nothing to them as they babble on without interruption, even as they fall off their own delusional cliffs and ensnare themselves in their own chosen sufferings. I get it: It’s your life and you’ll choose how to live it and fantasize about it.

For my part, it’s best I do my thing alone without seeking an audience, which seeking is just a waste of time that yields no appreciation, nor has social benefit. People only have an interest in me to sell me something (get money), or for me to play a supporting role in one of their self-focused social dramas (women are big on this), or to be a momentary entertainment fill-in.

Since there is such a wide variety of human types, the above analysis is not true for everyone.

1. You never help anyone by calling them stupid, even if it’s true. Stupidity is like gravity, it’s constant and impervious, and you can’t do anything about it – unless it’s your own. I must be patient about the reality of stupidity, for my own good.

2. Everybody is racist.

3. Attention deficiency is the norm. Most people do not have an attention span greater than 20 seconds. I think this is why hand-held electronics are so popular, and reading paperbacks in public is so rare.

4. I’m on my own (and it’s best). Nobody cares about what I think, say or write. And, I feel the same way about most other people.

5. Conversation is dead. Most people prefer to talk than to listen, where “talk” is either actual audible verbalized output, or broadcast written speeches, or internal mental self-talk.

6. Thinking is dead. Most people do not think reflectively and use logic, they react emotionally selecting instantaneous judgments from a list of pre-programmed prejudices. They only “think” mechanically and procedurally (like robots) to implement the task at hand, whether that task is a chore (something they “have to” do), or a step in self-focused activity (something they “want to” do).

7. Americans have been trained to vote on the basis of avoiding their fears (i.e., emotionally). Where fear is lacking, voting decisions can be based on personal biases (more emotions) and personal pecuniary impact (the beginnings of thought). The character of political candidates, and the public good (or damage) of the policies they would champion, are not thoughtfully considered by the majority of American voters.

“The most frightening feature of the civic melancholia in present-day America is the relative collapse of integrity, honesty, and decency — an undeniable spiritual blackout of grand proportions. The sad spectacle of the presidential election is no surprise. Rather, the neofascist catastrophe called Donald Trump and the neoliberal disaster named Hillary Clinton are predictable symbols of our spiritual blackout.” – Cornell West (3 November 2016)

8. Political amnesia and personal denial are the psychological anesthetics of choice. Voters never notice and never remember the damages their winning candidates cause, so they can remain willfully ignorant of their own responsibilities in helping to create those damages. For example: Ronald Reagan’s “trickle down” and butchery in Central America, Bill Clinton’s “welfare reform” and deregulation of the banks, George W. Bush’s Iraq War, tax cut for the rich and US financial collapse for the not-rich, Barack Obama’s generous giveaways to and protection of Wall Street, whistleblower persecutions and drone massacres. Have Reagan, Clinton, Bush and Obama voters ever taken ownership of the disasters, catastrophes and persecutions they backed?

American identity-politics voting on the basis of vanity (latest version: “first woman president”) subsequently requires many foreign brown-skinned dead bodies in tribute to “the cause,” and the camping out on sidewalks in the homeland of more and more “deplorables” and “welfare cheats,” and every other kind of out-of-scratch nonperson. I pity America’s exploited and discarded Red Necks, now raging with neofascist ignorance, as mirrored by their hero Donald Trump; and I am disgusted by the smug narcissistic vanity of America’s comfortable parasites, emoting or conniving and colluding, as mirrored by their heroine Hillary Clinton.

9. Predictions: Hillary Clinton will win the election on November 8th. The Electoral College vote will be decisive, but the popular vote will be close. Hillary Clinton will follow through on her promises to Goldman Sachs (Big Money), Saudi Arabia (Big Oil) and Israel (War Inc.), but will entirely ignore the Democratic Party platform (dumping the Bernie Sanders Democrats the morning after getting their votes), except as a useful repository of progressive rhetoric she can cherry-pick for use as political camouflage when needed. The mainline Republicans (finally able to ditch Trump and his Tea Party excludeds) will stonewall President Hillary in the same way they stonewalled President Obama, as a careerists versus careerist battle for political power, except at those times and in those areas where Big Money, Big Oil and War, Inc. tell them to cooperate to meet the owners’ needs and wants, just as they did during the Obama Administration. Hillary is closer (more pliant) to the Big Owners than Barack was, but she’s unlikely to be as adept as he was at managing the public. So, the Big Game will go on as before, but it may not look as pretty at the retail level of infotainment. The treacly celebrations of “breaking the glass ceiling” and “first woman president” will be overlong and overplayed despite quickly wearing out for all but Hillary’s sentimental cultists.

10. It’s time for me to renew my Zen.

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22 November 2017

I sure made a blunder in #9. I made the mistake of watching TV, Larry King interviewing a mainline Republican pollster (attuned to the Bush administration period), on the night before the election, and I fell for his seemingly rational and professional judgements, which favored a Hillary win. “Reason” and the overwhelming media propaganda in Hillary’s favored made me think my gut feeling that American ignorance, stupidity and bigotry were really the dominant forces among the populace, was too unlikely to be the complex of decisive factors. Gut was right, brain was wrong. Lesson: don’t look for truth in TV (as if I didn’t already know this!).

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If Hillary Goes Down It’ll Be For Secrets Lost

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If Hillary Clinton goes down next Tuesday, it will be because of hubris, arrogance: she thinks she is above the rules and the law. Most Americans hate that attitude, and detest members of their elite, their aristocracy, their “leaders,” who are publicly exposed for having an egregious level of UNPATRIOTIC arrogance.

Hillary Clinton’s chickens are coming home to roost, and they are CLASSIFIED E-MAILS. Hillary and then Huma Abedin really, really blew it. Because so many of you are fans of Hillary Clinton (“the first US woman president”), I will explain why she has a very good chance of losing next Tuesday (to Donald Trump no less!) so you have some possibility of coming to terms with that disappointment, should it occur.

I spent 29 years working in a classified environment: a US nuclear weapons laboratory. I had safes filled with highly classified documents, and computers with highly classified files: nuclear bomb blueprints and nuclear bomb performance (details of the complete course of the explosions and release of radiation). I also had copies of classified documents describing programs and activities (classified of course) about the use of energy (lots of energy) for purposes of “national defense.”

Needless to say, these documents and computer files would be of interest to every one of the USA’s allies, friendly competitors, unfriendly competitors, and enemies. The only types of “secret” US documents that are considered even more sensitive than nuclear weapons documents are Executive Branch documents (the US policies in action now), that is to say the “Top Secrets” of the President and his cabinet and staff, such as at the State Department. It is more damaging if “the enemy” learns of your leadership’s intent, than if “the enemy” learns technical details about items in your country’s war-making technology.

As part of my security training, I was reminded (more than once) that in 1953 American citizens Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were executed by the electric chair after being convicted of passing nuclear weapons documents to the U.S.S.R during World War II. The stuff I had in my safes was way more detailed than what the Rosenbergs were fried for passing on. Now, in actuality up to 90% of the information in documents and files that are marked classified is unclassified and often very boring. But, the fact that the rules and procedures mandated for the running of the nuclear weapons labs (and generally any US government classified environment) required these documents and computer files to be marked and handled as “classified,” put on us workers the burden of doing just that: use handle and store according to classified procedures.

This is the key point. It was not up to us to “judge” whether a classified item really was secretly “significant” or not. It could in fact be worthless gibberish (to proud advanced-degree scientific minds), but we were not being paid to make such judgements. Our job was to use classified information as needed for the scientific job, and to handle it as required by the security procedures (which I detested, but obeyed).

To be clear, there are procedures to have documents and files reviewed to determine if they can be declassified, or if they should be destroyed. I used these procedures a number of times in order to publish “pure physics” papers. What I never ever did was to move classified “privately,” or take it home to have it conveniently available when I wanted to work on a problem. It is ALWAYS much more inconvenient and time-consuming to follow classified procedures. I was always frustrated by the slowness and waste associated with working with classified information, and I was very glad to leave the whole classified arena. But I never ever forgot the basic commandment of classified work: absolute security of classified information is more important than solving any problem or achieving any useful result. Yes, I know that sounds crazy, but it really is “the prime directive” of classified work. Security is more important that results.

During my career in the classified arena, I saw numerous individuals play fast and loose with the rules because they were lazy, and because they had decided they were important enough to “deserve” to define their own work style. In every case, once security lapses were discovered such individuals were tumbled from their pedestals. Nobody is that important, the powers-that-be can ALWAYS find an equivalent (or better) talent who can also follow classified procedures. Realize that every boss, and the entire chain of command, would feel vulnerable (in the bureaucratic court politics of the organization) should an underling commit a security lapse. So, cowardly higher up muckity-mucks covering their asses could self-protectively come down hard on lower level security lapses, and put on the “patriotic” act of “being resolute,” for public relations (“protecting the nation is our highest priority”).

Now, what Hillary Clinton has done with her very fast-and-loose use, insecure transport, and all-too easily hackable storage of a mountain of State Department “secrets” (even if it is only a small percentage of really significant “Top Secret” data buried in 90+% of worthless drivel) is egregious beyond belief to the millions of Americans who are or were ever in a classified environment. This is like the Rosenbergs times thousands. Hillary’s arrogant disregard of classified procedures was so extensive that she caused a number of her employees, like Huma Abedin, to be drawn into this illegal activity, and now into significant legal jeopardy. And, because of the porosity of her private little “bypass the classified rules” e-mail system, we now know from the hacks of that system that she had even tarred her very own muckity-muck, POTUS himself, who carelessly allowed himself to send e-mails to Hillary outside the secure government channels.

The average citizen is revolted by the now-revealed flouting of the rules – without penalty (so far) – and puts this down to a surfeit of arrogance coupled with a deficit of patriotism. A high government official disregarding classified protocols so blatantly is betraying millions of classified workers, by failing to set a good example. To the simple-minded public the entire affair is just unpatriotic: despite high position, power and wealth, Hillary Clinton did what was good for just her, with complete disregard “for the security of the nation.”

If Hillary Clinton fails to achieve the presidency, it will be a well deserved failure. The irony here is that had she followed classified procedures, and not allowed her employees to violate them (nor entrap POTUS into violating them also), her State Department e-mails would never have been hacked, and she would have been able to maintain the fiction of being much more reputable – and patriotic – than she actually is.

Coin-flip Election of 2016

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Coin-flip Election of 2016

Hillary Clinton ran against herself and lost.
Donald Trump ran against Hillary Clinton and won.
The American people – and the world – had lost the election in July.
From then until November it was a coin-flip
—– between corporate head and corporate tail.
The parasite elite was heartbroken with the result
but relieved the lumbering beast they fed off
—– remained under control.
The beast had settled on profound ignorance and honest bigotry
over profound corruption and dishonest ambition,
—– and for denial of its own complicity.

Hillary Clinton ran against herself and won.
Donald Trump ran against Hillary Clinton and lost.
The American people – and the world – had lost the election in July.
From then until November it was a coin-flip
—– between corporate head and corporate tail.
The parasite elite were ecstatic with the result
and relieved the lumbering beast they fed off
—– remained under control.
The beast had settled on profound corruption and dishonest ambition
over profound ignorance and honest bigotry,
—– and for denial of its own complicity.

1 November 2016

Donald Trump’s Medal of Honor Citation

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Classified Citation for the Secret Medal of Honor, for Donald Trump

In the Classified History of the United States, Donald Trump will go down as one of the greatest heroes of the early twenty-first century, for almost single-handedly saving the republic from the anti-capitalist insurrection of Bernard Sanders, thus allowing our neoliberal economic order, guided by its Wall Street conservators, to continue without any foreseeable domestic threats for the remainder of the century.

Donald Trump accomplished this feat by his uncanny insights into public relations, his personal investments and losses, and his unsurpassed personal sacrifices in accepting near universal condemnation for his public policies, and opprobrium for his personal behavior. By willingly exposing himself to the public as the villainous foil to our designated successor for the presidency, Hillary Clinton, and carrying through with this boundlessly difficult and distasteful role to the bitter end, Donald succeeded in repelling a majority of the American public into the embrace of Hillary Clinton, and thus satisfactorily under our continuing control.

Donald single-handedly ruptured the Republican Party, creating the opportunity for it to repudiate its obstreperous and discredited populist “Tea Party” elements, and to realign itself once again under the full control of its long-standing and stable professionals of our bipartisan national leadership class. By creating what has been called “the most powerful negative pole of political policy and activity ever exhibited in an American presidential election,” Donald caused the fragile and insecure positivity of Hillary Clinton’s “political pole” to be exponentially enhanced in public perception. As a consequence of this felicitous enhancement, the luster of Bernard Sanders has been significantly dimmed, and the rabid enthusiasm of his anti-capitalist followers has been satisfactorily quenched into a mass disappointment that has excellent prospects of enduring as long term apathy.

Barack Obama has been the most successful tool for public guidance we have ever been fortunate to acquire, so it was natural we would once again turn to the Clinton-controlled Democratic Party for his successor. Hillary Clinton is the outstanding choice for that role, because of her lifetime of loyalty to our interests, and the singular confluence of politically useful characteristics she possesses: her female sex, which immediately guarantees her capturing half the votes in America, her absolute freedom from moral impediments, her salubrious cupidity (the bedrock of her loyalty), and her mastery of dissimulation and political manipulation. Where this “dream candidate” has weakness is in the area of easily rallying the public, and we had great apprehension earlier in her campaign with the surge of Bernard Sanders in opposition to her. It required the coordinated efforts of our operatives in the Democratic Party, the media, the corporate donor class, and the Obama Administration (including the president himself) to bring the Sanders insurgency to heel. But, essential to making the anti-Sanders counteroffensive successful were the enormous contributions of Donald Trump in the public sphere, as described earlier.

Truly it can be said that no man has knowingly shown greater loyalty to our class interests, and at greater sacrifice, than Donald Trump. For his unbounded and effective energy, sacrifices and success in our interests, we bestow on Donald Trump the Secret Medal of Honor.

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Hail to the Chief

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Hail to the Chief

Democracy is so precious that it has to be rationed,
voting must be guided least it undermine the nation.
A confederation of complacent parasites
triumphs over a panic of anguished bigots’ fright.
The great zombie beast, dazed and confused,
plows on forward, prodded and amused.
The ruptured traditions all have been preserved,
the fragile ideals have successfully been reversed:
The task of public schools
is to press children into tools,
the goal of private schools
is to carve robots out of fools.
Dynasties arise and ancient unions fail,
memories turn over, and to the chief we hail.
No dreams have been deferred, they’ve simply been forgotten,
corrupted as ambition, or as despair turned rotten.
With clarity intact, and old visions of uplift,
with your world I’m out of time, athwart your synchronism.
With insights you attack, I’m now thankfully adrift,
this solitude of mine is freedom from your prison.

22 October 2016

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Fear & Loathing in American Voting, 2016

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In the diagrams above:
“tax Wall Street” = “deal with climate change” = “socialism” = “no wars.”

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The following rather moralizing (and no doubt futile) essay is a bonus with today’s posting.

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When The You We See Is The You You Are

My response to Charles Eisenstein’s essay (cited just below) follows:

The Lid Is Off
by Charles Eisenstein
http://charleseisenstein.net/the-lid-is-off/

Charles Eisenstein presents the dilemma posed by modern electronics communications and recording technology eroding the ease of concealment of unsavory personal behavior and attitudes, which ease of concealment was up until recently an intrinsic aspect of human society. He describes three examples:

1. Exposure of lewd “locker room” talk about women by Donald Trump, audio recorded a decade or more ago,

2. Exposure of Hillary Clinton’s speeches to Wall Street bankers (her actual political beliefs, opinions, and promises to the financial industry); by hacked e-mail.

3. Exposure of many instances of police brutality (e.g., beatings, fatally shooting unarmed civilians, even non-fleeing unresisting ones); by cell phone video.

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When I began work in the classified arena (1978) I instantly learned to consider every communication, and even research inquiry, whether face-to-face and verbal, or written, and especially through any electronic means (via computer networks), to be the equivalent of a postcard: it would be readable by anyone and everyone who could come across it, or eavesdrop (or “wiretap,” or “hack”). This was a procedural form of “say what you mean, and mean what you say.” In other words, understand and accept the consequences of what you are saying (or writing, or making research inquiries about). So, it never occurred to me to try running any money-making schemes, or seek out porno through my employer’s computer/internet systems (not so hard to do since I had no interest in these things, but people who did were invariably caught and fired).

At a more basic level, the “solution” to the dilemma posed by Charles Eisenstein is simply to not be a hypocrite. “Oh what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive.” Speak and act as if every moment is a “postcard” entirely visible to any and all, and easily recorded by them. Naturally, no actual human could ever maintain a perfect record in this regard, but making the effort to do so will improve your character and thus self-esteem, and it is very likely to keep you out of a lot of trouble.

The way to do this is to become self-aware, either by the luck of good parenting and education (when you are young), or by the luck of learning this truth as a result of the blowback from your own folly that you (also) luckily escaped from and got to live down (and then reform yourself). Once self-aware, you identify any disparities between your persona (the public you) and your shadow (the hidden negative aspects of your personality), and you breach the wall of hypocrisy and denial you had maintained between these two, letting in disinfecting light (and public view) that clears up your hidden rot: mean what you say and say what you mean.

So, for the Trump part of you: enjoy your sex dreams within the vast expanse of your own mind, but leave them there. There is no need to share them as part of boasting and ridicule expressed to boost comradeship, which is in fact a form of intimacy (between boys and boys, and girls and girls) that you veil with bravado to hid from yourself your embarrassment about it. Don’t act to demand attention and dominate, but command respect and gain trust by how you consistently act.

For the Hillary part of you: enjoy your daydreams of Machiavellian manipulations of people that result in your glorification, because like Walter Mitty, Billy Liar and all brides, it is so enjoyable to be the star of your own movie. But, keep these dreams (of inadequacy desiring power) within the vast expanse of your own mind, and make sure you do not deceitfully actualize them, thus splitting yourself into a persona that is a lie, and a shadow of hidden corruption as your motivating core. Instead of “me against the world” (like Rastignac at the end of Balzac’s “Le Père Goriot”), seek to be in and with the world in a way that maintains an honest self-respect.

For the chest-thumping alpha-male gorilla in you: play by the rules when exercising your power, be unbiased in how you treat others, and never forget your humanity when dealing with another person, whether you like them or not. Every moment of your life is a postcard. Make sure that any unbiased (and ethical) observer who happens to read any of your postcards of the moment can conclude he/she would have acted as you did if he/she had been in your place; or he/she can accept the choices you made in those circumstances. When acting as an agent of society to maintain order (peace and safety), do so in a manner that upholds the ideals of that society. You will be proud to have served honorably and ethically, and with a consistency of such action you will earn appreciation and gratitude.

Developing and maintaining good character during the course of your life will prevent the occurrence of many possible regrets when it comes time for you to die.

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National Character & Old Gals for Empire

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The Character of a Nation

The lower the moral and intellectual development of the masses, the less effective are democratic processes for solving national problems, improving the lives of people, and making wise use of national resources.

Elites can only control and exploit a people who have allowed themselves to become culturally primitive, socially degraded and disunited.

The fate of a nation is set by the character of its people.

 

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Old Gals Just Want To Have Fun (with Hillary’s Bill)

The easiest way to destroy a man’s career today is to accuse him of being nasty to the ladies. However, this is only true for abusers of women who are unpopular with women, like Donald Trump. Abusers of women who are popular with women, as John Kennedy was and Bill Clinton remains, are immune from such censure. A majority of American women retain favorable opinions of Bill Clinton, and many thousands would be delighted to flop on their backs and spread their legs for his enjoyment, despite him being a narcissistic sexist clod.

This masochistic devotional fervor is all to the benefit of Hillary Clinton’s political ambitions. She is America’s Livia Drusilla who aspires to be America’s Margaret Thatcher, and now seems likely to gain the White House to become America’s most successful influence peddler, much to the delight of the Wall Street banksters by whom she is bought and paid for. Hillary Clinton is cashing in on the yearnings of a majority of America’s older female voters, for compulsory celebratory recognition.

This is the popular force that is overwhelming any concern over climate change, nuclear war with Russia, securing fair and just futures for America’s youth, and stopping the “genocide by indifference” [1] that accompanies American foreign policy and imperialism. Such is the force of American middle-aged female vanity longing for adoration.

So, screw the kids and their desires for worthy futures in Bernie’s revolutionary social democracy; screw the brown people in foreign lands getting bombed to support American weapons sales; screw the dumped American labor force whose jobs are offshored and whose housing unaffordable in order to fatten the Wall Street take; screw the future desperate patients of Veterans Administration hospitals, who will have absorbed the incoming from America’s wars-of-tomorrow; and screw everybody who is going to get burned out or washed away by climate change, necessary to fill the corporate treasure chests.

For too much of the older double-X portion of the electorate, the self-image paragon to be deified is Hillary Clinton, along with her co-enabling super-predator Bill Clinton, barking and humping at the end of a long leash. Everybody else, worldwide, will just have to suck it up and bow down to the old girls’ triumph in becoming vicariously powerful; it’s their turn to come out on top. Nothing else matters.

[1] Robert Pearsall.

Voting For Against

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Voting For Against

There’s a sucker born every minute, and they all vote for the lesser evil.

Bernie Madoff is in jail for life for running a Ponzi scheme that defrauded the rich. His colleagues running similar scams are free, rich and celebrated because they defraud the working and workless poor. From their legally protected offshore treasure chests they fund the lesser evilism of a rigged electoral system that keeps governments under control by corruption that shakes down the public to slop the troughs of the high rollers.

Election night is always a heartbreak for the old-timers who’ve seen the lesser evil scam cycle over and over again, and wish they could see it killed off before they die.

Election night is a big yawn to the nonchalant youth busy playing in their chill sandboxes without a thought to their unbroken futures as sucker carrion and cannon fodder.

Election night is an exciting drama to the vain shallow-minded selfish useful idiots who think what’s good for them is good for the country, and that either of those is offered by lesser evilism.

Today’s politicking is a furious clash between hot air and vapid prattle, devoid of truth while demurely united in criminality, to entrance the hollow-headed with a circus that spoofs attentiveness, so as to allow the hidden hand to continue stealing the public bread.

To be alert, compassionate and ethical is to resign yourself to being marooned in a moral wasteland on a lost planet.