Mafia Nation

 

 

 

Isn’t it time to just come out & admit that we’ve thrown in the towel and given up on democracy? We’re certainly not fooling the rest of the world, they are scratching their heads in confusion as to how we could’ve elected such a corrupt moron as Trump to represent us. And two thirds of the American public know full well what a racist & sexist megalomaniac Donny is but I guess that third of the electorate that are in the Trump cult must cling to the charade that America is still a republic. I refer to these people as the Duck Dynasty Klan because they have clearly drunk Trump’s Kool-Aid & are living in Trumptown waiting for the signal to self-destruct.

Jim Jones cult weren’t that different from Trump’s

 

Here’s a brief overview for those of you in post-literate America, of Donny the misanthropic misanthrope’s background.

 

Donald Trump brands himself as a builder and manager of luxury developments, including Trump Tower, where he resides. He is surrounded by marble and gold, as well as the finest furniture. However, what most people fail to see that the roots of his fortune were built on the lower and middle classes, largely with the assistance of the government.  http://www.renewamerica.com/columns/ignatoff/160219 

the humble populist his supporters find so reassuring

 

If your memory hasn’t calcified, you’ll note that Donny with the girly hands & bone-spurs, came to power proclaiming his defense of the real Americans i.e. the working class & the ever-dwindling middle class. But if you’ll do even a little reading & research, you’ll soon learn that Donny & his daddy built their “real estate empires” on the backs of those same people Donny now claims to be defending. The Trumps took advantage of government loans to build many of their low-income projects (recall how much Donny hates the government?) & basically, became slumlords who often refused to make necessary repairs for their tenants. Moreover, the Trump crime family often turned-down rental applications from people of color.

People on Welfare Bad! People who get govt. contracts to screw the welfare people, Good!

Furthermore, in Atlantic City, Donny got a special building permit which allowed him to erect one of his casinos right next to a freeway offramp because of his promise to build low-income housing which he never delivered on like the tens of thousands of promises & lies he has made in his road to success. And if you give a damn about facts & truth, you know, those concepts so foreign to Donny boy, one of the best historians of Trump’s rise to celebrity & wealth is the late, Wayne Barrett in his book; “Trump: The Greatest Show on Earth.”

 

You see, Trump like so many corrupt politicians & businessmen count on people’s intellectual laziness & pitiful memories. Here’s another insightful little snippet from the link I provided above:

 

The Trump Organization was built by his father, Fred Trump, and later headed by Donald Trump from 1971. The senior Trump built small homes in the boroughs of New York City after WWII, largely with the help of low interest government loans. He also built and managed apartment complexes that were far from luxurious, also with help from the government. He built the Beach Haven Apartment complex in Brooklyn, New York over swampland, and the foundations were continually settling. These and other developments would eventually bring in great wealth from the United States government, utilizing the federal Section 8 housing program, which was designed to assist low income people.

 

Yep! That terrible government of ours which Trump refers to as The Swamp but if it weren’t for that same government, the Trump tyranny might very well never have come into existence? So, it seems the Trumps have been promising to “drain the swamp” for decades but they failed to mention the swamps under their building projects & how it affected their trapped tenants. I don’t know about you, but I’ve known more than my fair share of slumlords in my life, owners who refused to make repairs & always seem to find an excuse to not give me my security deposit back when I moved out? Yet Trump’s Walking Dead believe he’ll protect them from the government which helped make him obscenely wealthy by manipulating building codes & permits and gave him fraudulent tax breaks at the same time?

 

Again, with just a little bit of effort & research, you’ll discover that the super-rich, the G.O.P., & many, if not most of the sell-out Democratic party, have been manipulating the government via their armies of lobbyists who help or literally write the legislation that protects their wealth & gives them perpetual loopholes to avoid paying taxes, ignore regulations, & make the public pay for all their “mistakes” i.e. environmental destruction, pollution of our rivers, create the infrastructure for them to do their business, etc. etc. etc. And their refrain is always the same i.e. we can’t afford universal health care, a quality public education system, welfare, food stamps, etc. No, whatever money is available must go to the military/industrial complex which the 1% coincidentally happen to own.

 

 

Returning to that lovable liar in chief of ours, who learned the three most important tactics of his business & political life from the infamous, mob lawyer, Roy Cohn. And they are; Deny, Divert, & Detract. If you’ll make an effort to remove your rose-colored glasses while watching any video of Trump, you’ll see countless examples of him sticking to these three tactics 100% of the time.

 

Another bit of historical background is the fact that Roy Cohn, one of the most disgusting & despised lawyers of his time, served as Senator McCarthy’s hatchet-man during the McCarthy hearings that destroyed countless American writers, journalists, etc.’s lives & with little to no evidence to support their character assassinations. McCarthy relied on the lies, the gossip, the propaganda, etc. supplied to him by Cohn who built his fortune on defending the mafia crime bosses of New York, New Jersey, & Philadelphia to name a few. And Cohn, a self-hating homosexual who kept it in the closet until his battle with AIDS could no longer remain hidden, introduced Donny to his mob boss friends/clients.

 

Of course, the fact that many, if not most of these new friends of Donny’s happened to be in the construction business & concrete in particular, had nothing to do with Trump’s growing real estate empire. Nope! Donny didn’t receive any special rates on the cement he used in his building projects that he bought from the mafia bosses. Moreover, Trump didn’t benefit from his new friends’ control over labor unions in the construction business either. And once again, it was just a stroke of good luck that when all the other casinos’ employees went on strike in Atlantic City, Trump’s employees didn’t go on strike as well.

 

We’re supposed to believe that it was Donny’s business savvy that made him so rich, just ignore those countless mafia movies we grew up on, especially The Godfather which was so popular. Nothing to do with reality, right? But the “reality” of T.V.’s avalanche of “reality T.V. shows over the past 20 years is “real,” right? Obviously, the fact—remember Kellyanne’s ‘alternate facts?’ —that Donny, the self-proclaimed billionaire who demanded that every time his name was mentioned on the show, must be followed by the words; “the billionaire,” also had nothing to do with his “success” & clearly wasn’t a major factor in his becoming president.

 

Here’s another troubling fact for the blowhard in charge, King Trump the Dumb, appointed the most corrupt cabinet in U.S. history but hey, remember, he has always felt most comfortable in the company of crooks. And here’s another inconvenient truth for you Trump zombies who prefer to remain willfully ignorant (from the same article I quoted earlier)

 

When the former Soviet Union immigrants arrived in New York in the late 80’s and early 90’s, they needed a place to live. The Trumps were more than accommodating. First, they bought condemned buildings in Brighton Beach, Brooklyn, New York and brought them barely up to code to rent to them. However, they also had multiple apartment buildings that they could convert to Section 8 for low income people, and the immigrants fell into that category. Most came from the Ukraine, and many were released from Soviet prisons.

They could only take the equivalent of $200 American dollars out of the Soviet Union, and these people had no jobs waiting for them. Also, most did not speak English, and the possibility of work seemed remote. However, they were eligible for Welfare, Medicaid, Food Stamps, Education, Job Training, and Section 8 housing.

 

Gee? Guess Russian immigrants are okay in Donald’s world-view? Just not Mexican or Muslim immigrants. I can’t help but wonder if this was when Donny boy started his love relationship with Vladimir Putin & the other Russian mobsters who took over Russia’s government? Of course, now that Trump is supposedly so wealthy, he’s declared war on all those programs that assisted Trump’s Ukrainian friends because now he’s concerned with assisting his best buddies in the 1% of America’s wealthiest who are suffering under the weight of their billions of dollars. How I would love to be there to watch each of Trump’s blind followers when they lose their food stamps, public assistance, section eight housing, Medicaid, etc. I wonder if they’ll still be chanting; Make America Great Again?

 

So obviously, Trump has expanded his network of friends from the Italian mobsters who terrified the working class in New York, etc. to the Russian mobsters (oligarchs) who terrorize the entire Russian public. Are you beginning to understand why Trump the Mendacious loves & respects the world’s most vicious, bloody dictators like; Saddam Hussein, Vladimir Putin, Kim Jong-Un, Duterte, Xi Jinping, Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi (Egypt), Erdogan (Turkey), Mohammad bin Salman (Saudi Arabia), Netanyahu (Israel), Bolsenaro (Brazil), & President Modi (India). And because these days, one can’t even assume that most people even have common sense, let me spell it out for you i.e. the people you admire says a lot about you—your values, your ethics, your principles. Gone are the days when our leaders & especially our presidents used to proclaim our respect for & our support for democracy, freedom, equality, and the law. Now we have a brazen lover of authoritarians & murderous dictators & a despiser of many of our former allies. So, what did all our friends & family members die for in the non-stop wars we’ve been involved in all my life (since 1952)?

Why do we have this vile, crude creature from the Black Lagoon sitting behind the desk in the oval office? One of the two forces we fought against in WWII was fascism which originated in Italy & the Nazis whom Trump & a sizeable number of his staunchest supporters love & respect i.e. the Neo-Nazis who attacked & beat the anti-Trump protestors in Charlotte, South Carolina and killed one young woman & Trump said; “They’re many good people on both sides.” Be careful what you wish for you Walking Dead & morally-bankrupt because Trump & his kind have brought fascism to a large extent to America already.

 

Continuing on with Trump’s reign of error & terror against America’s citizens, Donny has been laundering money for the Russian mafia for decades & mostly through his condos & other real estate holdings. Again, if you can bother to take the time or aren’t afraid of having your little world collapse, read on. After Trump declared bankruptcy on three of his casinos, Trump Plaza Hotel, Trump Hotels & Casino Resorts, & Trump Entertainment Resorts, American banks would no longer loan him the money to buy even a hot dog. And don’t forget his long list of business failures like Trump University which was proven a scam from the beginning & the countless Trump products that failed.

 

But for the Russian mafia, Trump was the ideal business partner because they could launder the billions they stole from the Russian people by buying condos in Trump’s gaudy & tasteless hotels, etc. & in return, they loaned him all the money he needed to keep from going completely belly-up in his businesses. American banks didn’t prosecute Trump for the hundreds of millions he still owed them because they figured they might eventually recoup some of their losses from this business tycoon that all the country rubes believed in.

 

Here’s some food for thought? Why is it that not only the republicans but also the corporate democrats keep attacking Bernie Sanders as being a socialist like it’s some sort of horrible crime yet Donald sings the praises of communist leaders from China & Russia and etc. & does business with them but I don’t hear any criticism of Donald for being in bed with communists & his supporters don’t seem to mind one bit? And here’s another historical tidbit that very few seem to remember or having ever known, if it hadn’t been for the Russian communists in WWII, we might have lost the war. The Russians lost something like 20 million of their citizens but overnight, after the war, they were all of a sudden Public Enemy Number One? Could it be the machinations of that slimy 1% who have all of us under their boot-heels?

 

Note that all authoritarians need a scapegoat to focus the citizens anger & hatred while they rob us all. Trump has clearly distracted his zombies on the vulnerable Mexican immigrants who are fleeing the drug cartels & even more obviously corrupt than our own government, their government leaders. Also significant is the fact that the Mexican crime lords have been murdering journalists in record numbers & Trump would obviously like to be able to do the same thing here.

 

Like all successful dictators, you must discredit the press because they investigate corruption & report the facts. Trump hates the media, especially the New York Times because they had an investigative team that spent over a year & a half investigating Trump’s claim to be a self-made billionaire who only received a small loan of one million dollars from daddy. They discovered & reported that in fact, Daddy Warbucks bailed his failure of a son out repeatedly & used his political contacts to get special deals for Donald in his real estate endeavors like tax breaks, special zoning permits, etc. And in fact, Donald the Dip-shit actually got more than $400 million dollars from daddy. My bet is that it’s probably far more than that but the investigative team could only substantiate the $400 million.

Here’s another conjecture for you, my imaginary reader, that is definitely not my original idea but I do add my personal touch to it. It just dawned on me today as I’m writing this essay that even though Al Capone committed numerous crimes including murder many times, the government couldn’t convict him on anything until they nailed him for tax evasion. Think about it, why do you think Donald Duck has been fighting tooth & nail for decades to keep his tax reports hidden? The most obvious reason that many have suggested is that if his tax records were revealed, they’d most likely show him to be the biggest phony & liar that he’s always been because he’s not really a billionaire.

 

I read somewhere that Trump used to call in to radio shows when he was still struggling to gain fame and he’d pretend to be someone else & would sing his own praises & grossly exaggerate and lie about his business successes & the amount of wealth he had. In fact, he lied about how much he was worth to Forbes magazine so he’d be placed on some list of the super wealthy. This is the guy who keeps proclaiming “fake news?” Wake-up people!

 

Trump has been a bully all his life & this too is why he loves dictators because after all, they’re bullies on a grand scale with their imprisonment, torture, & killing of their dissenters. You see, Trump has been on a non-stop self-promotion tour all his life because his most valuable commodity is the brand he’s built up over the decades i.e. his name which he leases out to corporations because of its name recognition. But sadly, most of his cult believe he actually owns everything that bears his name & therefore believe he’s nothing but one huge success story & that they too can become successful if they just listen to his wisdom & accept his principles as their own, that is to say, having no principles.

 

And this is why we have the first Twitter president who behaves more like a malicious, teen-age bully attacking every single person who dares to point out his lies & contradictions. So much for the “social media,” and its illusory bringing people together. No, Trump is like that Wizard in the Wizard of Oz who hid behind a curtain & used a loud, bellowing & spooky voice to intimidate his subjects and only the seriously challenged mentally & morally could fall for such a scam & sham as P.T. Barnum Trump.

 

Need I point out the obvious like the fact that the mafia uses verbal threats, then physical intimidation, & finally if all else fails, murder to keep people fearful & turning over their hard-earned money? Particularly revealing is when Trump in his Nazi rallies calls on his henchmen to beat the hell out of a protestor & get them outta here. I am truly fearful that this may only be the beginning of these brown-shirt tactics?

Also like his mafia role models, Trump hands out favors to those who are loyal to him & publicly kiss his ass or do his dirty work but when they get busted every now & then, all of a sudden Donny declares; “I don’t know that guy.” That’s girly man’s idea of loyalty, a person who will take the fall for him even when he publicly claims he doesn’t know you or had nothing to do with whatever crime you committed at his request.

 

Talk about a nation of suckers, roughly a third of America’s citizens are slavishly loyal to this fake megalomaniac & we have now reached a point where it can literally mean their lives! Yep! When the coronavirus first came to our attention, Trump declared it a hoax created by the Democrats to hurt him in the 2020 presidential election. And this declaration as well as advising people to go to work even if they’re feeling sick proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that he doesn’t give a damn about anyone except himself & his reelection because as long as he’s president, he can’t be prosecuted for his long list of crimes.

 

It really boggles the mind that his supporters will back him on every dirty deed he commits no matter how egregious & now, no matter how deadly believing in him can be. If this isn’t the hallmark of an authoritarian wanna be dictator, they’d better change the definition? Like mafia bosses whose words were absolute & anyone who didn’t follow their orders to the T, are silenced one way or another.

 

Returning to the pandemic now terrifying the world, Trump’s cult also conveniently ignores the fact that Trump in his obsession to eliminate every single act, no matter how valuable it may have been to the general welfare of all Americans;

 

“In 2018, the Trump administration fired the government’s entire pandemic response chain of command, including the White House management infrastructure.”  https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/01/31/coronavirus-china-trump-united-states-public-health-emergency-r

 

“Building on the Ebola experience, the Obama administration set up a permanent epidemic monitoring and command group inside the White House National Security Council (NSC) and another in the Department of Homeland Security (DHS)—both of which followed the scientific and public health leads of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the diplomatic advice of the State Department.”

 

The last quote is from the same link above & for the record, “Foreign Policy” is a conservative & highly respected journal among America’s academic & military elite, hardly a liberal publication.

 

“But other White House efforts included reducing $15 billion in national health spending and cutting the global disease-fighting operational budgets of the CDC, NSC, DHS, and HHS. And the government’s $30 million Complex Crises Fund was eliminated.”

 

Doesn’t this make you feel safe & secure? Yeah, about as safe & secure as living in an inner-city ghetto controlled by drug lords or cartels. Trump’s hatred of everything Obama is clearly pathological & my perhaps simplistic take on it —but then again, we are dealing with a guy who reads & speaks on a fifth grade level—is that Obama humiliated Trump at the White House Correspondent’s Dinner in 2011, showing him for what he is i.e. a fake who built his political base by starting the “Birther Movement” that just wouldn’t stop in its obsession of proving that Obama wasn’t born in America.

 

Of course, this stirred the blood of America’s racists & bigots who refused to accept the fact that a black guy had been elected president & Trump’s base to this day is primarily made up of such patriots. Here’s the video clip if you’d like to enjoy a few laughs?

 

https://youtu.be/HHckZCxdRkA

 

But returning to the deadly seriousness of our situation re: the coronavirus, here are a few more details of how mind-bogglingly irresponsible this moron in the oval office has behaved;

 

“In May 2018, Trump ordered the NSC’s entire global health security unit shut down, calling for reassignment of Rear Adm. Timothy Ziemer and dissolution of his team inside the agency. The month before, then-White House National Security Advisor John Bolton pressured Ziemer’s DHS counterpart, Tom Bossert, to resign along with his team. Neither the NSC nor DHS epidemic teams have been replaced. The global health section of the CDC was so drastically cut in 2018 that much of its staff was laid off and the number of countries it was working in was reduced from 49 to merely 10.” (again, from the same article as above)

 

I could continue citing more depressing info from the article but I’m sure you take my point already. Perhaps some of you may recall how another great Republican president, George W. Bush, responded after the disaster of Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans? Well this time it’s not only the Black residents of New Orleans who are going to be thrown under the bus, but all of us.

But don’t say the G.O.P. doesn’t have a sense of humor, no, because they clearly do i.e. George Bush Sr. declared that under his leadership, America was becoming a “kinder & gentler nation.” I’ll leave it to you to decide for yourself as to the veracity of that claim. And not to be outdone by daddy, George W. Bush, declared that under his stalwart leadership, the Republican party were now known as “Compassionate Conservatives.” Yeah, I’m sure the Iraqis would agree with that self-assessment as well.

 

Okay, back to our present “compassionate conservative” who proves his patriotism by hugging a U.S. flag in a somewhat perverse manner, Donald of the Duck Dynasty Klan aka Mafia Don.

 

Because I have a habit of trying to educate people by way of my writing, my essays are often lengthy & in this post-literate society of ours, very few are likely or perhaps even capable of such sustained attention. So, I’m going to just list the rest of the points I’d like to make in my assessment of how we, the U.S., who have been kicking ass & taking the resources of a large part of the Developing Nations for decades now while under the banner of; ‘”Bringing Freedom & Democracy to the World,” have de facto become a nation ruled by Mafioso but legal mobsters because they got the stamp of approval by their captains in Congress.

 

  • Forget the obsession by the DNC that Russia put Trump in the White House (this is a distraction by the DNC to avoid their own incompetence as a major factor in why Hillary lost But the Russian government is made up of & headed by a mobster & Russian troll farms did spread millions of false rumors, etc. about Hillary & pro-Trump ads and Facebook sold Americans’ data to Cambridge Analytica which it used to zero in on the “persuadables” which they bombarded with their fake news & this did indeed play a major role in Trump’s theft of the presidency.</li>
  • Rule #1 in the Mafia, keep your mouth shut & we’ll take care of you & this is Trump through & through though he rarely keeps his word to his flunkies who fall on their swords for their amoral boss
  • And like mafia bosses who have judges, police commissioners, D.A.s, etc. in their pockets, Mafia Don has the Attorney General in his pocket & the Justice Dept. so it’s “All Skate Day” for Trump’s cronies
  • The girly-man also hands out favors like mob bosses to those who have been loyal to him
  • The Emoluments Clause of our Constitution, the bedrock of our legal & political system, (the Constitution) is crystal clear i.e. a sitting president can’t receive money, expensive gifts, etc. or in other words profit off the presidency. Trump says fuck that! And even more brazenly, he tells foreign leaders, etc. to stay at his properties so he collects tributes (bribes) in full display but no one has the balls to nail him on his blatant disregard of our laws.
  • Donald Duck has been a consistent business failure throughout his career but daddy bailed him out time & time again, then the Italian mafia bailed him out in his Atlantic City casinos, then the Russian mafia when U.S. banks wouldn’t loan him any more money because he was already in debt over $4 billion but Donny Boy’s skillful manipulation of the media throughout his life has enabled him to dodge, bury, & switch the attention of the media, to scapegoat selected targets & divert the attention from his failures, incompetence, & corrupt business practices</li>
  • Like mafia loan sharks, Donald tells his Walking Dead cult members to beat people up i.e. “get him out of here & if you get sued, I’ll pay for your legal fees” Mafioso start with breaking people’s knees, then burning their businesses or their homes, & finally in “eliminating” their public enemies not unlike in Las Vegas where they end up buried in the desert
  • Donny follows similar tactics Mussolini, the fascist leader of Italy in WWII whom many of our top business leaders loved, & coincidentally, the American mafia got started in Italy, Sicily in particular
  • One of the most nauseating facts about this swine in the White House is that he was able to dupe so many poor & working-class people into believing he was/is their champion. This is akin to the mafia bosses who took over America’s labor unions, claiming they’re the defenders of the American workers, who fought for a decent wage, overtime, workplace safety, etc. for decades i.e. the Teamsters being the most infamous case. American mobsters ran a decades long program of intimidation, beatings, & killing of union leaders. And now, Trump has fooled the gullible, though understandably fed-up with the spine-less Democrats who sold them out in the 1970s, into believing he, a guy who has screwed poor, working class tenants & employees, & contractors throughout his artificial rise to billionaire status. So, if you believe a mafia boss is your friend & champion, you clearly need to remove the scales from your eyes.
  • Like mafia bosses, Trump is eliminating every program that offers help to the poor, the unemployed, the homeless, and the dying, so you will have no one to turn to for help but him, the Emperor with No Clothes who decides your fate like the Kings & “nobility” in the feudal ages depending on his mood at the moment. No laws, no rights, no nothing unless you bow, scrape, & grovel at his feet and praise him as he does himself
  • “Fake News?” Yeah, the duplicitous duck knows all about this subject because he has mastered it over the course of his fake life. Trump clearly believes in Joseph Goebbels (Hitler’s Minister of Propaganda) major insight i.e. the bigger the lie & the more often you tell it, eventually will become a “truth,” or a “fact” in Kelly Anne’s “alternate facts” universe. “Inconvenient truths” are dismissed as “fake science” or “fake facts” and only the almighty Oz (Donald) knows what is fact & what is fake i.e. anything that is critical of him is fake, and anything that says he’s a genius & etc. ad nauseam, is a fact!
  • Here’s a little-known fact for you—here in the real world where the laws of gravity for example, are a real fact—Donald the Insecure demanded that every time his name was mentioned on “The Apprentice,” they must say “billionaire.” The creators, producers, & writers of the series have openly admitted that the show was fake from beginning to end but evidently, many, if not most Trump believers took it as proof of Trump’s superiority & business expertise. And for-the-record, I’m going to interject here & brag about myself—Trump does it 24/7 but I’ll probably be accused of making this all up just to tarnish the image of Little Lord Fauntleroy, the Fuhrer from Queens. I watched one episode of “Survivor” over 20 years ago which I believe was the first “reality” t.v. show & was immediately turned-off. I thought & I said to any who would listen, first of all, there’s something wrong here when we watch T.V., an artificial medium designed to dupe us into buying products we don’t need, to get a picture of reality.? This is an oxymoron or blatant contradiction in terms. And secondly, from the beginning of this tragic phenomenon, these shows all have one thing in common & that thing is what Trump has built his fortune on i.e. lie, cheat, steal, do whatever you have to do to come out on top. And this is our national leader? The kind of role model we want our children to emulate? So, Hell yeah, I’m proud as Hell that I saw through this bullshit from the get-go!
  • And America’s election system has become almost as indistinguishable as that of the so-called “Banana Republics” we love to look down our noses at. In other words, our political system is just as corrupt as any mafia’s hierarchy where he who has the most money & the most politicians & judges in their pockets, “wins.” I have long recognized the fact that the Democratic Party is basically spineless but I deluded myself into believing that at least they cared a little about the poor & the working class but I no longer believe this. Bernie Sanders is not perfect by any means, but he clearly has a very long track record of fighting for the common man. Yet, I have to face the fact that the DNC with the help of the so-called “liberal” MSNBC cable network is blatantly sabotaging Bernie’s bid for the presidency. Why? Quite simply because he represents a very real threat to their corruption as usual policies & practices just a little less overt than the G.O.P. Again, not that different from the mafia-controlled unions who pretend to defend the American worker. By-the-way, I have not forgotten that the supposedly “liberal news network, MSNBC, fired Phil Donahue for his unforgivable crime of having on one “anti Irag invasion guest for every two, pro Iraq invasion guests.” So much for MSNBC’s reputation as a bulwark against the Right wing’s assault on Democracy. (there are many other examples but I need to get to the point of this essay)

 

 

In conclusion, I was going to end this essay without including one of the most obvious facts which I’d forgotten i.e. it was the Italian/American mafia that built Las Vegas & Atlantic City so they could launder the hundreds of millions they’d gained from their criminal empires. And Trump clearly never would’ve made it to where he is without being in bed with the American mafia in the beginning of his ‘career.’ So now our president is a former casino owner i.e. laundered millions for both Italian mobsters & Russian mobsters? Boy has the bar dropped in terms of the caliber of man we’ll allow to be president of the most powerful nation on Earth. At this rate, we won’t be on top much longer!

 

Then the Russian mafia saved his stupid ass i.e. how dumb a businessman do you have to be to fail as an owner of a casino? For example, it never dawned on Donald the Dip-Shit that opening other casinos in the same town would be competing against yourself for business. And only mafia figures who had so much to gain by backing Donald the Moron,  no matter how stupid he was because he was very valuable as a circus master to distract the public & the government from looking too close in to their shady deals, would loan this loser money.

 

And like the millions of suckers every year who lose their money, sometimes their entire life-savings in gambling, all those who voted for Trump & bet on his making a real change for the better in their lives, will maybe someday realize what a fool’s errand they were on? The house always wins & the house is the mafia dons, the corporate cockroaches, & the political “leaders” like Mitch McConnell who have sabotaged every single piece of legislation that could help us, the poor, working (well, sometimes?) class to live with just a modicum of dignity or self-respect?

 

You see, my imaginary reader, the common factors between mafia organizations, drug cartels, dictatorships, etc. is that in order to maintain power, you must rule with an iron fist. And to do so, you must master the techniques of effective threats, intimidation, & fear. Say what you want about Donald’s inability to speak in coherent sentences or a semblance of logic or rational thought, but he is a master manipulator & fear monger.

 

And a “successful” mafia boss must never be troubled by things like a conscience, empathy, sympathy, morality, or principles. Donald is clearly at the top of that class along with his favorite despots around the world like Putin, Duterte, Erdogan, Xi, Bosonaro, & his love interest, Rocket Man of North Korea, to name just a few, in terms of not being hampered by those irritating humanistic qualities.

 

Unfortunately for humanity, all those who are not members of the 1%, the mob bosses are gambling with our lives & if the coronavirus doesn’t kill us, global warming, or a possible nuclear exchange which Trump with his 5th grade intelligence level & impulsiveness & preference for running the American government via Twitter just might be tempted to launch in one of his frequent temper-tantrums at imagined or real, public sleights or criticisms?

Rob DeLoss, Gold Beach, OR March 8, 2020

 

 

 

 

The American Taliban under Trump

 

 

 

I first heard the term; “The American Taliban,” on the series; “The Newsroom,” which was created & written by Aaron Sorkin. But as is often the case, intelligent television doesn’t go over well with American viewers so it was a short-lived series.

However, we were fortunate in that Sorkin laid out the key features of the American Taliban in one of the series’ episodes & I am using them as an outline for this essay. Determine for yourself how accurate a portrait they give us of America as of January 21, 2020, the day the farce of the Impeachment against the miscreant in the White House began.

 

“Ideological purity: Fundamentalism is an term used to describe religious movements that reject modernism (particularly scientific thought and secularism), that claim to find all truth, including science, history, and psychology, in their sectarian scriptures, and that often try to impose some degree of religious law on all citizens of any government they are able to control. The type species is the Christian Fundamentalism of the 1920s, which is a reaction against Darwin’s theory of evolution; by extension the term is applied to Haredi Judaism and Wahhabism in Islam. In more abstract terms, it can refer to any movement to recapture an ideological “purity” within a religion, that supposedly has been lost by mainstream adherents of the religion at large;”

    • This “ideological purity” is an absolute that all fundamentalist leaders must strictly stick to whether they be Christian, Muslim, Jewish, or whatever. They must claim to know the Will of God & therefore, any who dares to question their claims is a heretic & must be driven out or killed in order to preserve the purity of their version of the truth. One would think that the founding values & principles of a religion would also have to adhere to this “ideological purity,” but clearly this isn’t the case when it comes to American “Christian” evangelicals. Why? Because Trump is the poster boy of how to violate every one of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount guiding principles for self-professed Christians but they love him anyway.
    • Compromise as weakness: and again, I’m confused because if compromise is weakness, why have the 60% to 70% who proclaim absolute support for Trump, compromised their “principles” & “values” by supporting such an evil person? Of course, the GOP who have gotten nearly everything on their wish list, won’t compromise an inch with the Democrats because they, the GOP have the upper hand because they control the Senate. And Mitch McConnell stated it very clearly from the beginning of Obama’s presidency that the GOP was going to block every single act or law that Obama tried to pass. This shows clearly that McConnell & the GOP don’t give a damn about the American people, only about maintaining & expanding their power. And again, the “Christians” believe that any compromise with non-Christians, especially Secular Humanists is a de facto bargain with the devil.

      Obama bent over backwards trying to compromise with GOP & as a result, we got Trumped!
    • A fundamentalist belief in scriptural literalism: Yep! Like back in the days of the Old Testament, people really did live for 800 to 900 years, Noah actually took two of every animal species on Earth into the Ark, etc. etc. etc. And if you dare to question such things, you are guilty of heresy and may be stoned like the Islamic fundamentalists enjoy doing in Afghanistan but it’s usually women who are the ones getting stoned for some reason?
    • Denying science: this one goes almost without saying as the one I just covered makes clear i.e. Science easily proves the absurdity of such claims as people roaming the earth with dinosaurs, etc. so organized religion has been at war with science throughout most of history. Just reflect on the fate of  Galileo for example. In fact, the modern variation of Christian fundamentalism basically sprang from the days when Darwin’s Theory of Evolution started being taught in our public schools. And tragically, in Trump’s reign of ignorance, Climate destruction denial which denies the scientific proof of the overwhelming majority of climate scientists on the planet & the Christian fundamentalists are tickled pink about it because they can’t wait for the destruction of our planet & believe Jesus is going to thank them for their ignorance & their help in bringing an end to the world. Remember, Jesus loves you!
    • Unmoved by Facts: Yep & as Trump’s resident witch, Kellyanne Conway tells all their faithful,” there are alternative facts. “Of course, there are in their alternate realities. I wish someone would dare Kellyanne and Trump to demonstrate their alternative facts by jumping off a high roof to prove that gravity isn’t a fact either. Naturally, the Trump team spout alternate facts daily but we, non-believers have always referred to alternate facts as lies. In fact, I think Trump is going for the world record in alternate facts with his list of lies which is somewhere around 16,241 but hey, who’s counting?
    • Undeterred by new information: a polite euphemism for stubborn as a mule, willfully ignorant, and you may as well give up hope of them ever opening their minds. They have their “faith” and that’s all they need. These are just the kinds of people who make good, little Nazis, cult followers, etc.

      a third of the U.S. public has drunk Trump’s Jonestown Kool-Aid
    • A hostile fear of progress: like their fear and rejection of science & facts, progress is seen as a threat to their calcified beliefs that they desperately cling to or else their entire belief structure could collapse. This scares the hell out of these pea-brains & they’ll kill you rather than admit their errors. Of course, they conveniently ignore things like the automobiles which they drive were invented due to progress. And it never ceases to amaze me how they constantly love to portray themselves as the victims of our society. When they are the bullies & the ones who persecute people, who don’t accept their hypocritical principles & values & seek to enslave us all.
    • A demonization of education: this is a subject that is dear to my heart because I have loved education all my life, been an avid reader since second grade, & have worked as an educator for the majority of my work career. In fact, my first book is about the Christian fundamentalists war on secular humanism which they see as a clear & present danger to their reign of error & terror. It’s not a coincidence that Trump appointed Betsy DeVos as our Secretary of Education, a person who never attended public schools, who is rich, & who is pushing Charter Schools down our throats.
      “It Can’t Happen Here,” right?

      Also bear in mind that one of the first things that all dictators, whether religious (theocrats) or oligarchs do is either shut down all the public schools or take them over. Why? Because as people slowly become more & more informed, they begin to question established “authorities” like the Church & the State. {if you’d care to spend 10 mins. watching this video, you’ll gain a great overview of how the GOP has duped so many Americans into focusing their anger on the govt. rather than the corporate cockroaches who deserve the lion’s share of the blame for why we’re in this terrible state of being}</li>

    • A need to control women’s bodies: this is one of those aspects of fundamentalists’ beliefs that I can only speculate on because it is hard for me to fathom their fear of women? Perhaps it’s as simple as their insecurity as men & their wish to always remain in control over their families? And by being the authoritarians in their communities as well as in their families, they never have to worry about pleasing their wives sexually?

      Trump’s “Christian” values i.e. “Grab them by the pussy.”
    • Severe xenophobia: strangers & foreigners who are by definition strangers, like knowledge, new information, etc. are a threat to their belief systems which are clearly very fragile or they wouldn’t be so insecure about it. Why? Because contradictory ideas may slowly infect their communities, their families and they will lose their precious control. Of course, this also helps to justify or rationalize their racism & their desperate attempts to maintain the purity of their ideology. And once again, they just conveniently ignore all inconvenient truths & facts i.e. that America is a nation made up of immigrants from all over the world. If these frightened & dangerous children had their way, they’d live in a nation not unlike what Hitler wanted for Germany where everyone was blue-eyed & blonde.
    • Tribal mentality: well, as I just pointed out, fundamentalists ideally would like to live in a world where there are as few physical differences between their faithful as possible but given the realities of this world, a close second is a common mentality or way of thinking about the world. And this is why they paint a picture of you’re either with us or against us as our illustrious, chicken-hawk president, George W. Bush, the Coward from Crawford declared when he launched his “War on Terror.” This simplistic & obviously ignorant Manichean view of the world makes it easier for their faithful to carry out their crimes against humanity in the name of Jesus, God, Allah, or whoever.
    • Intolerance of dissent: this attribute of the fundamentalist mindset is one of the scariest in my book & again reveals how dangerously ignorant these people are. Jesus was clearly a dissenter in his time in that he spoke out against the Roman authorities & committed civil acts of disobedience. And in America’s history, our founding fathers were all dissenters from British rule. The United States would’ve never even come into existence without dissent but fundamentalists don’t want us to remember these facts or to ever even learn about them. Again, showing how weak their faith is!
    • Pathological hatred of U.S. government: and here we have another one of those very convenient crossing of paths by the “Christian” fundamentalists & the Republican party. You see, my imaginary reader, the Republicans swore that they’d overturn every single part of FDR’s “New Deal” which established much of what we now refer to as the “Social Safety Net,” for all of us not born with a silver spoon in our mouths. And they’ve been spreading their anti-government propaganda ever since i.e. you too can become rich if you don’t rely on the government for unnecessary handouts which only make you lazy & prevent you from becoming self-sufficient & wealthy. We’re supposed to ignore the fact that most of the rich & the giant corporations who have monopolies over us, have been subsidized by that same evil government. Yep! The same government that keeps handing out tax breaks to the rich, subsidies for their Research & Development, tariff protections, the infrastructure that allows them to do business, the military to protect their corrupt businesses overseas, etc. etc. etc. And no, this isn’t a free pass in terms of excusing our government’s long track record of crimes against humanity. But, the government is the only force capable of standing up to the corporations when their greed is just too far overboard. Moreover, it does occasionally stand up for us & does provide some assistance to we, the people, every now & then. The corporations behind this decades long propaganda war against the government want to abolish everything the government does to help us but preserve every handout & protection it provides them with our tax dollars. So, when I hear these morons i.e. Alex Jones, Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, etc. railing against the government, I wish that I had a public forum from which I could call out their hypocrisy. Hell, if it weren’t for our government allowing the corporations to steal our public airwaves, these conspiracy theorists & traitors like Jones, Limbaugh, & Beck wouldn’t have the platforms they do to spew such bile and fear & hate.

 

Unquestionably, the Trump campaign team knew they’d have to throw these dangerously crazy evangelicals a big bone to gain their support for Trump, hence Pence as his running mate.

Trump is clearly one of those with the attention span of a goldfish

 

Some argued no big deal, the vice president does nothing of any significance but the fact that were Trump to have a heart attack or something, we could end up with this American Taliban as leader of the free world. Yeah, pretty scary shit, right?

 

A lot of us who live on either coast tend to forget or perhaps never knew just how powerful these “Christian” fundamentalists are & how many millions of regular Americans listen to them on the radio daily as well as to the Rush Limbaugh show. And we ignore these people at our own peril!

 

How soundly can we sleep knowing we have someone who prays for the end of the world, a heartbeat away from the presidency? Remind you of anyone? Osama bin Laden perhaps but with the mightiest arsenal of nuclear weapons on the planet at his fingertips?

 

Scare tactics you say? Fuckin’ A! But bear in mind that the corporate cockroach masters who own the media & Washington D.C., are using scare tactics day-in & day-out and have been for well over 40 years to scare us into spending over half our budget on weapons of mass destruction while letting our health, education, & welfare go to ruin.

I am trying to warn you but we have become so used to the steady barrage of fear mongering by the powers that be that honest warnings like mine fall on deaf ears I fear? If the public knew of how many close calls we’ve had regarding nuclear exchanges between the U.S. & Russia, they’d be shaking in their boots.

 

Conclusion, we have a 73-year-old who is obviously cognitively impaired to many, if not most of our mental health professionals. And he is also clearly morally bankrupt to all but the willfully blind & ignorant who proclaim they’ll support him no matter what. Gee? I wonder if they’d still support him if he raped their 12-year-old daughter? After all, he was buddies with Jeffrey Epstein though of course he now denies it.

I wonder what Trump’s buddy, Jeffrey Epstein might have told us about Trump?

But he did hire Epstein’s lawyer, Dershowitz, to help with his fight against his impeachment. And Dershowitz succeeded in getting Epstein a mind-boggling deal after being convicted of sexually trafficking teenage girls.

 

Yeah, once again we see on full public display those good, wholesome American values the American Taliban love to brag about along with their GOP (Greedy Old Pigs) pals.

 

So, we have this spoiled, rich brat as president who more resembles a teenage girl spending the majority of her day on Twitter spreading gossip & rumors and viciously attacking other girls’ character with lies. And our “commander in chief” who can’t even be bothered to read his daily briefings because he’s most likely not even able to comprehend their complexity, is sitting in the White House playing with matches in a gasoline-soaked room. And if he continues playing with the powder kegs in the Middle East, he may just make the American Taliban’s dream of the Apocalypse a reality?

“Christian” evangelicals’ Wet Dream

 

As for me, I’m an atheist who believes in Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount and that’s how I live my life.

 

Rob DeLoss, Gold Beach, OR on January 22, 2020

 

Barbarians at the Gate

 

 

 

My title is a reference to several sackings i.e. raping, pillaging, & plundering of Rome by various “barbarians” in ancient history. Yet today in another one of those perverse or ironic twists of history, we have a barbarian setting on the throne in 21st century America?

 

Yeah, except our “barbarian” would be king, is a girly-man who likes to strut around like he’s a bad-ass mafia boss but he’s actually a cissy-boy. And I’d be willing to bet that he’s never been in a real fight in his life unless you consider his beating-up smaller kids on the playground “fighting?”

 

You see, Donny has always known that he’s a coward & if it weren’t for daddy protecting him every time he got in trouble as he grew up, he’d be a lot more humane. His insecurity is so obvious to all but his die-hard zombie cult. As Sam Elliot says; “You must be some special kind of stupid?” if you fail to acknowledge this fact about the girly-man.

 

This essay was begging me to release it and it’s a collection of several observations of mine. First of all, in regards to the term, “barbarian,” here’s the definition of the term; “uncivilized, culturally inferior, brutal, cruel, insensitive, etc.” And again, to all but the willfully blind or willfully ignorant, Trump is indeed a barbarian.

The “Great Business Negotiator” in action

 

And poor baby Trump has been crying outside the gates of the posh, upper East side of Manhattan & its intellectual and cultural elite ever since he came of age and began his lifetime of begging to be let in. This is why he is so venomous in his perpetual attacks on The New York Times i.e. “The Paper of Record,” (the newspaper that sets the standard for all other newspapers in America) & the other cultural institutions that reject his pleas for inclusion. You see, New York City had Trump’s number decades ago i.e. a vulgar, low-class, no taste impostor & their rejection has been like an acid eating away at his vanity all this time.

An investigative team from The Times proved Trump’s a liar re: his fortune

 

Obviously, this is the politics of resentment & hate which Trump knows only too well. And Trump has masterfully tapped into that poison well that roughly a third of America is immersed in. Always blame the “other” and deny any self-responsibility.

 

Trump’s fragile, little boy ego could never accept the fact that he’s not liked is because he’s just a crude, ignorant, egomaniac & bully so he has cleverly substituted his jealousy & hatred towards the intellectual elite, or perhaps transferred would be the better word, on to the poor immigrants struggling to feed their families & flee the drug lords, corruption, etc. of their home countries because this dove-tails so perfectly with the racists & bigots so easily manipulated by demagogues & their rhetoric.

 

And this blows my mind & truly saddens me to my core because those Trump supporters have so much more in common with the immigrants they persecute & blame than with a slime-ball, fake billionaire, fake actor, fake success like Trump of the Duck Dynasty Klan. Of course, the 1% have allowed this all to happen not because of some grand conspiracy but simply because they don’t give a fuck & are probably laughing their asses off as we self-destruct & they continue to rape, pillage, & plunder “our” federal treasury.

 

Returning to the word, “barbarian,” I believe many of you would or do consider bikers to be a sort of modern variation of the barbarians who sacked Rome? Well, I’d just like to interject here that 20 years ago, I lived a few blocks from a “biker bar” in Portland, Oregon & because I wanted to avoid getting a D.U.I., and this bar was walking distance, I started hanging out there. In fact, I became somewhat of a “regular,” for the approximate six months I lived in the area. They would back their Harleys up to the curb out front & I’d ride my old-fashioned, cruiser type bicycle there & lock it to a nearby tree.

 

One day, a gal who was sitting at one of the outside tables with her boyfriend, I presume, said; “Hey, go ahead & park your bike next to the others!” I gave her a quizzical look & they both said; “Yeah,” so I did and we all laughed. In brief, I never had one ounce of trouble, was never threatened, never even insulted by any of the biker crowd who were regulars there. The manager befriended me as well as the owner & one night, a regular & his girlfriend invited me back to their place to continue partying & offered me their couch for the night.

 

You may be wondering why I brought this all up? I mention these experiences because I felt & still do that they were far more cultured, sensitive, & civilized than that poser in the White house who, unlike any other president in U.S. history as far as I know, continually has his pep rallies of fear, hate, & ignorance.

 

And speaking of ignorance, if you know much about modern history, have you ever wondered why the Nazis burned books in their reign of terror which culminated in the murder of over six million Jews, and another couple of million gypsies, homosexuals, intellectuals, etc.?

Books are the stored-up wisdom of all those who came before us. From Aristotle, the author of the first encyclopedia to Freud & beyond. As some have noted, we stand on the shoulders of those intellectual giants who came before us. And hopefully not to sound like an admirer of warmongers, but I used to have an old, blacklight poster that was a giant, peace sign made up of interlocking swastikas (which originally was a symbol of peace) & this quote by Napoleon Bonaparte; “There are but two powers in the world, the sword and the mind. And in the end, the mind always conquers.”

You see, books, which represent knowledge & hence, freedom or independence because of their liberating power, are a threat to the powers that be who wish to keep us ignorant & vulnerable. So, it’s obvious, keep the people ignorant (to simply not know something) and you keep them under your control. And this is why both the State & the Church want to keep you ignorant. But good news comrades! You can empower yourself by going to your public library & devouring every great author you can. If you’d like some suggestions as to who to read, simply start with the “Great Books of the Western World” published in 1952 by Encyclopedia Britannica. This could take you many years to wade through but it would definitely render you a well-read person capable of facing the world on your own!

Poster girl for anti-intellectual “Christians,” married into Amway fortune, & sister to Eric Prince, America’s most infamous mercenary

 

You see my imaginary reader; the root of racism is fear of others whom you don’t know much if anything about. And fear is the root of hatred. So, if you keep people ignorant, it’s much easier to whip-up peoples’ fear & hatred and turn that to your political advantage.

 

Naturally, destroying the books of all those who have differing points of view from yours especially when it comes to politics, religion, culture, civilization, etc. is an important first step in destroying those “dangerous” others. And here in America, there has been a pervasive strain of anti-intellectualism throughout our history. Richard Hofstadter wrote the classic book on the subject & I have dissected his book not once, but twice because I used my notes from it in my major work; “Truth Against the World.” And no, this doesn’t make me an authority but I have definitely earned a fair hearing in that I have conservatively spent over 50,000 hours researching, reading, writing, watching documentaries, etc. over a 30-year period.

 

And unlike Trump, I can back my claims. That fuckin’ national embarrassment actually believes that simply because he says something, it makes it so. If he’s such a “genius” as he proclaims to be, why has he threatened every school he’s ever attended if they dare to release his grades?

 

Unfortunately for the rest of us Americans who haven’t drunk Trump’s Jim Jonestown’s Kool-Aid, and the rest of the world who are vulnerable due to the U.S.’s obscene level of militarism, the whole world lives in fear of a boy-child with the mental age of a third-grade student & the playground bully.

 

Yes, this is what willful ignorance, apathy, & utter indifference has brought us. Seems far too many of my fellow citizens hoped that they could escape their responsibilities as citizens & we’d be magically protected forever from the dark forces like Trump & his insatiably greedy masters of the universe. But no, life is not a Sci fi fantasy where the good overcome simply because they’re good.

 

Goodness, fairness, equality, freedom, etc. has always been a struggle & sometimes it has won out & sometimes it has lost. But one thing is for certain, if we shirk our duties to defend these values & principles, we will certainly go down with the ship. The ship of the damned, the ship steered by the likes of Trump!

“Christians” praying for the end of the world? Is this what Jesus taught them?

 

Addendum

 

I showed my own ignorance when some time back, I asked my friend & mentor, Noam Chomsky, something like; So, when or what was the first instance of the joining of the Church & the State and their domination over the people? As usual, Noam was sensitive in his response & simply pointed out that it was when the Roman empire declared Christianity the official religion of the empire.

 

Think about it my friends, the so-called “Christian” fundamentalists and/or evangelicals have been waging a perpetual war against secular humanism for decades. Why? Quite simply because they reject superstition & supernaturalism and encourage us to use our reason & to think for ourselves.

Trump loves spreading Alex Jones’ conspiracies like the Sandy Hook massacre that killed 20 six & seven year old students & six adult staff was fake.

 

Most organized religions like many governments, including our own, also expect blind obedience. And they both fear the individual who dares to think for him or herself & dares to question their dogma.

 

In a nutshell, Trump, like the hypocritical “Christians” who support him no matter how vile his actions or words, only want your blind obedience & your dollars. I may sound like a preacher myself but if so, my hope is that you’ll think of me as a preacher of love & peace and that you will stand-up on your moral & intellectual hind-legs and; “Rage, rage against the dying of the light. Do not go gentle into that Dark Night!” (Dylan Thomas)

—Rob DeLoss Gold Beach, Oregon, Dec. 27, 2019

 

 

 

America’s Zombie Cult

 

 

 

First and foremost, I can relate to Trump’s followers’ anger & frustration at our establishment because I have been battling the establishment ever since I went AWOL from the U.S. Army back in 1972. And for a young man of 19 years, that was one of the scariest periods of my life.

The darkest days of my life until I lost my wife

 

As I matured, I began to see what a pack of lies my generation had been told. I saw how our public education system was built on a mountain of lies & false promises. And as I worked at one Mickey Mouse job after another, I began to realize that this was perhaps one of the cruelest myths of all. Hard work & dedication to your job rarely paid off. No, it was usually those who were related to the owner of the company or those who were the biggest brown-nosers who “succeeded.”

A real patriot, Ron Kovic, who spoke the truth after realizing the lie of Vietnam war.

 

In brief, if you had integrity & couldn’t bring yourself to suck-up to the bosses, you were usually marginalized or gotten rid of. I busted my ass pursuing higher education for 14 years. I rode a bicycle five miles to a community college, four nights a week after working an eight-hour day in a golf club factory for a couple of semesters at one point. I studied business administration, oceanography, & liberal arts and often dropped-out half way or even three-quarters of the way through a semester because I was bored & not inspired by what I was learning.

 

I pursued my dreams of adventure & hitchhiked up & down the West Coast dozens of times, across America, & around Europe several times often on a one-way ticket with a couple hundred bucks in my pocket.

 

I had been raised mostly by a single parent, my mom. She often worked two or three jobs at a time to feed us & keep a roof over our heads. I basically raised my brother & sisters & fought everyone’s battles. I got 40 cents a day for lunch when I was in high school. And I held down two paper routes to earn my spending money & pumped gas as a senior in high school.

 

I stood up against some of my mom’s boyfriends who were cruel to us or raised a hand to my mom. I clearly didn’t have a happy childhood but through it all, I kept my dreams alive & read like a person possessed.

 

And after my experience in the army, I thank God that I trusted my gut instinct & didn’t let them send me to Vietnam. I wasn’t politically aware but I had seen enough of the army’s lies to know that they couldn’t be trusted. I got out of the army with an undesirable discharge & began to read a lot of books on history, philosophy, & politics due largely to some very smart people I’d met on my travels. And slowly the veil of ignorance was removed & I began to connect the dots.

I read this book 30 years ago & it’s truly scary how ignorant we are as a nation

 

This is the major difference between me & Trump’s cult of zombies. They, often through no fault of their own, haven’t read the great authors like Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn, or Michael Parenti & because of this, they haven’t developed their critical/analytical thinking skills and are much more susceptible to the propaganda & bullshit of people like Trump.

 

And this is not only sad but dangerous because Trump’s followers are so easily aroused to anger & hatred because he is a master at manipulating their emotions to direct their anger at fellow victims rather than our true enemy i.e. the 1% who are the masters of the political establishment.

isn’t it interesting how the “Christian” agenda & the corporate cockroach agenda go hand-in-glove?

 

I call these “masters,” the corporate cockroaches because they hide in the dark & they have succeeded fantastically over the past 40 years or better in blaming the government for their dirty deeds. And no, I’m not saying that the politicians are innocent. Not by a longshot but if we are to survive this onslaught, we must focus our energies on the corporate sector.

smile & laugh because they are too, all the way to the bank as they steal your pension, your home, etc.

 

I must say that it really baffles me how the poor, the struggling working class can actually believe an established habitual liar who claims to be a self-made billionaire, is their champion. Trump failed at nearly every business venture he got into but daddy kept bailing him out & gave him hundreds of millions of dollars & a million dollars annually so he could never fail totally. And he has a long track record of screwing contractors & employees out of the money he owes them. This is your hero?

this is why Trump hates the Times more than any other newspaper

 

Daddy Trump made his fortune by being a slum-lord & discriminating against Black American citizens. And this is the key to Trump’s success in becoming our president, he played the race card brilliantly in his own, evil way.

 

Nothing takes peoples’ minds off their troubles easier & better than by focusing their anger on scapegoats. This is standard operating procedure for all demagogues, dictators, fascists, & authoritarians. And Trump clearly loves dictators i.e. Putin, Duterte, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, etc. Moreover, Trump fancies himself an authoritarian because he’s always gotten his way as a spoiled-child whom daddy always bankrolled & protected from the law with a platoon of lawyers. And Donny got to play the part of a successful billionaire on television—which was almost entirely a work of fiction. Check it out for yourself by seeing what the producers of The Apprentice have revealed.

Do you actually need testimonies as to Trump’s colossal ignorance on just about everything? Open your eyes!

 

And speaking of revealing, here are my revelations for those of you who give a fuck about who Trump really is behind all those Hollywood staged rallies. Moreover, I can back my shit up unlike Trump who just makes outrageous claims daily but can never back them up with facts. Why do you think he threatened every school he ever attended with lawsuits if they dared to release his grades? This mental & moral midget hides behind his wall of lies always protected by lawyers & publicists or P.R. people like Kellyanne Conway with her “alternate facts.”

would your teachers in public school accept these “arguments” for your laziness & stupidity???

 

Facebook and the other “social media platforms” like Twitter & our ‘Smart phones,” are reducing us to our basest, reptilian minds & we simply react on a flight or fight level.

 

The more successful these platforms are at pushing peoples’ emotional buttons like fear & hate, the more addicted people become to these platforms. Hence, the more time they spend on Facebook, Twitter, etc., the wealthier the owners like Zuckerberg become from the advertising revenues they collect. And what’s really spooky is the fact that over 50% of Americans get their news from Facebook. By-the-way, Zuckerberg refuses to accept responsibility for the truthfulness of the political ads on Facebook & Breitbart—the Neo-Nazi & White Nationalist epicenter—is the largest political advertising customer on Facebook. And Breitbart via its former editor, Steve Bannon, hired Cambridge Analytica which bought the personal data of over 80,000 Facebook users & by extension got all their friends as well, and this is how they targeted the Facebook users they knew would be receptive to the fake news stories about Hillary & put Trump in the White House.

The beginning of wisdom is knowing that you don’t know. (Socrates)

 

Can you understand now how perversely hypocritical it is every time Trump lashes out at “fake news” when he has benefitted more than anyone else from fake news? Let alone the fact that he received at least 23 times the media coverage running up to the election than Bernie Sanders by the “mainstream media.”

 

Continuing, so like the movies that most of us who weren’t born with the silver spoon in our mouths like Donnie was watch, they’re becoming ever more violent, bloody, gory, etc. in a constant effort by Hollywood to outdo itself in a deescalating road to the darkest pits of Hell even more horrifying than anything Dante could imagine.

I’m not a religious person but if I were, this is the anti-Christ i.e. no compassion whatsoever

 

Call me a sissy, I don’t give a shit. But I could only stomach about ten minutes of one episode of The Walking Dead series, once. It was nauseating in its gory & gruesome details of hacking a zombie to death. I thought, this is definitely not my idea of entertainment. So, you can imagine my sad surprise at the popularity of this series.

 

Another factor in how we have come to this sad state of affairs is the fact that our attention spans are growing ever shorter. Yep! The average American’s attention span has now shrunk to less than that of a goldfish. I shit you not. Does this not embarrass you? And again, we can thank Hollywood to a large extent for this tragic phenomenon.

 

Our brains have been conditioned to needing ever faster visual stimulation & an escalating volume of images mostly action or emotionally themed. We are like rats in a maze, hamsters in a cage.

 

Need more convincing? Scan your T.V. guide & look at the most popular movies of the last several years. T.V. shows & movies about vampires & zombies are amongst the most popular. Movies about the dystopian future and the coming apocalypse are amongst the biggest blockbusters along with superhero movies. Our psyches need to believe some superhero like a Donald Trump are going to rescue us from the dreaded liberals & democrats who have destroyed our once idyllic America (Make America Great Again) & ignore the fact that there never was a time when America was great for everyone.

 

Furthermore, consider what passes for news nowadays. The “mainstream” media (corporate owned) & cable news has indeed become infotainment. News reporters & pundits have become interchangeable & pass back & forth through the revolving door that has blurred fact & fiction.

the journalist who dared to take on the witch-hunter McCarthy who terrified Hollywood & the national media

 

Journalists in Edward R. Murrow’s day were supposed to be objective reporters of the facts. Of course, Murrow’s personal opinion pieces were hugely popular but they were clearly identified as editorials & in the main, the news divisions were objective & factual. Today they have abandoned almost entirely this journalistic ethic. And for the record, I was shocked & saddened from nearly the beginning of FOX “News’” introduction to our airwaves. FOX is clearly the closest thing to Russia’s Pravda that we’ve ever known. (look it up if you can spare the time)

McCarthy & Roy Cohn, Trump’s mentor i.e. Distract, Deceive, Deny & above all else, keep your name in the public’s mind whether positive or negative

 

We now have a president who relies on The National Enquirer to protect him from some of his most damning actions & words. A president who openly believes in & promotes conspiracy theories from his buddy, Alex Jones who called the Sandy Hook massacre of over 20 elementary school students a grand hoax. A president who refuses to read his daily briefings & can barely form a coherent sentence and that’s becoming ever rarer.

 

In short, we’re drowning in a sea of crap. It’s all junk food for the senses with very little to absolutely nothing in the way of nutritional value for our minds or our souls. And this is why it’s far easier for us to remember the books we’ve read. Books require your mind to engage on a deep level i.e. remembering the plot, the characters, your thoughts as you ponder the actions & words of the characters, etc. But when we watch television or movies, our minds are passive & are just receiving the images & emotions and very little if any reflection takes place. This is why we, myself included, so often forget the movies we’ve watched. I’ll sometimes be halfway through a movie before I realize that I had seen it before. Movies & T.V. are like candy & taste good until they’re over but then we’re still hungry for something nutritional or substantial. This unhealthy diet of action & violence is a drug and most of us are addicted to it, especially those who fell for Trump’s snake-oil medicine show. And this addiction may very well spell the end of American democracy?

 

You see, my imaginary reader, the United States is one of the most violent societies on Earth, if not “the” most violent. And yeah, I know this is going to piss some of you off because we’ve all been indoctrinated from childhood on that America is the champion of the world. The protector & promoter of freedom & democracy. I obviously can’t distill down for you what it’s taken me over 30 years of research to learn about our ignoble past & present. And if you’re not willing to even entertain the possibility that this might be the truth, why should I waste my time & energy trying to reach you?

This is a key reason why Trump appeals to those who don’t or can’t read & those who prefer to remain ignorant. Trump again is like that candy that tastes so good for a minute but as soon as it’s  gone, you need another fix. Another fix of fiction, hatred, & blaming a convenient scapegoat who Trump is an expert on. You can’t help but remember Trump’s myriad areas of expertise because he graciously & generously reminds of them every time he opens his foul mouth.

 

To return to reality and no, not Kellyanne Conway’s “alternate reality/facts,” America is now the most feared nation on Earth—and yeah, I know earth is not supposed to be capitalized but I feel it should be because we are a planet— even more feared than terrorists.

Why, you may ask? Because of our actions like Obama’s illegal & immoral Drone warfare program and his weekly meetings in which they chose the target of the day. Yep, they were judge, jury, & executioner and even killed a couple of Americans they suspected of terrorist activity but couldn’t be bothered to taking them to trial.

 

We are feared because our C.I.A. and several of our other intelligence agencies have been overthrowing other nations’ democratically elected leaders for decades. It’s so absurd for us to get so self-righteous about the supposed Russian interference in our 2016 presidential election by hacking our system when we have assassinated world leaders who we felt threatened “our” corporate interests. And no, this doesn’t mean that I accept Trump’s conspiracy theory of the “Deep State,” and its secret mission to overthrow him.

And this is just one example amongst dozens & dozens of others.

 

Though there might be a small element of truth to the idea that our intelligence agencies would love to see Trump gone because of the very real threat that he poses to our government, I’m not going to get sidetracked by that grand conspiracy because that is just what the zombie puppet masters like Steve Bannon want us to do so we won’t notice the very real threats & destruction that Trump is getting away with.  Trump is to my mind, a clear & present danger to all of America and to the world by extension.

 

We have over 900 military bases around the globe & who knows how many secret bases where we’ve tortured or farmed-out torture to willing accomplices, those we’ve extraordinarily rendered i.e. kidnapped. I believe Russia has about nine or eleven bases and they’re on Russia’s borders? And no, in no way am I a defender of Putin, that’s your zombie leader Trump’s hero. Putin is a bloody dictator plain & simple and it strikes me as absolutely mind-boggling that the pundits warn us that if the democratic presidential contenders are labeled as being Socialist, the democratic party will once again lose & Trump may very well get another term.

 

The G.O.P. has waged a steady propaganda campaign ever since F.D.R. passed the New Deal. And they’ve been extremely successful in painting any programs or politicians who defend the rights of workers or the public are socialists or worse yet, communists. And here we have a president who openly & consistently defends the dictator of Russia but hey,  don’t let the democrats dare defend or call for socialist things like universal health care, free university, etc because that is the road to communism. Remember, that trivial thing called the Cold War & our arch enemies, Russia & China who are now Trump’s pen pals? . This is truly Alice in Wonderland. Why won’t the democratic party stand up on its hind legs and call out the contradictions & hypocrisy of this bullshit propaganda?

 

That was a rhetorical question because I know why they won’t. It’s because they are part of the same corrupt & rotten to the core system that infects our establishment i.e. everything is for the 1%.

 

Again, we have been so brainwashed over the decades as to the imperative need for a powerful military that no one dares—well almost no one, Bernie & Elizabeth speak to it to some extent—to challenge the bedrock premise of our entire military/industrial/congressional complex i.e. the barbarians are at the gates & we must be ever vigilant (was “the commies are coming” now, it’s “the terrorists are coming.”)

As a result of this relentless propaganda campaign that has existed all my life & I’m now 67 years old, we supposedly never have enough money to pay for a quality public education system, universal health care, and all those other unnecessary programs that only benefit the poor, the working class, & the middle class. Nope! We need more of those $900 hammers & billion-dollar weapons systems that don’t even work and some of which the Pentagon doesn’t even want.

 

And what has your champion, Trump done for you? Nothing, that’s what. He spews out lies nonstop because he knows that you won’t check out the facts & that you blindly believe every lie he tells you because you’re his zombie cult, unthinking & unfeeling unless he winds you up with his Hitler-like rallies.

 

In conclusion, if the 1% were to stop feeding us their propaganda of fear & hate which keeps us divided against one another, we might unite & take back our country. Of course, this would hurt them where it matters most i.e. in their financial portfolios.

 

None of this is new in world history, the elite from every nation throughout history have used the time-tested & reliable tactic of Divide & Conquer. Yep! Keep us blaming one another for what they’re doing to us all and the rich can & do get away with murder again & again. And we die in the gutters homeless, alone, & humiliated, blamed for not having made good choices in our lives.

 

Meanwhile, to some extent their propaganda has become a self-fulfilling prophecy because our never-ending wars in which we rape, pillage, & plunder the rest of the world keeps the hatred of America alive in the hearts of terrorists & helps recruits new terrorists. This is why 9/11 was a godsend to the powers that be, they now had the pretext for their hidden agenda of becoming masters of the universe.

 

Whenever you hear them use the phrase; “It’s a matter of National Security,” hold on to your wallet because that’s code for bend over suckers, we’re taking more of your hard-earned money & tough shit if you don’t like it.

 

Trump is little more than a circus ring-leader not unlike in the days of the mighty Roman Empire where they threw Christians to the lions for public spectacle to keep the Roman citizens distracted from the corrupt practices of their Senate,  who were the obscenely wealthy like Donald of the Duck Dynasty Klan.

A very dangerous clown who definitely shouldn’t be taken lightly!

 

My guess is that a large portion of those who defend Trump no matter how vile his words or actions, are, are probably huge fans of The Walking Dead but while they are vicariously getting a thrill out of watching the zombies being butchered, they don’t realize that they are the zombies in real-life who are being slaughtered by the Trumps of this world!

P.S. By-the-way, Trump hasn’t honored a single one of his campaign promises but his tax break did give this gift to his crime-partners;

Trump’s Tax Cuts Are the Biggest Wealth Grab in Modern History  https://fortune.com/2017/11/03/trump-gop-tax-plan-cuts-2017/

P.T. Barnum said, “There’s a sucker born every minute,” and boy was he right

How’s that for “draining the swamp?” (Hint; Reagan’s tired old lie is still alive & well i.e. his trickle-down theory that by giving the rich tax breaks, they’ll hire more workers & give their workers raises, etc. In reality, they piss on us & tell us it’s raining golden benefits on us. But hey, wait a minute, doesn’t Trump like golden showers from Russian hookers???

Addendum

I almost forgot. I sent Noam Chomsky—many consider him the most important intellectual alive—an e-mail a few days ago (October 23, 2019) about my belief that Facebook is mainly responsible for the election of Trump. Noam replied; “It’s a plague.”

 

 

Facebook’s Friendly Fascism

 

 

“When fascism comes to America it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross.”  —Sinclair Lewis

Did you say wrapped in a flag or humping a flag?

 

“Fascism is when corporations take over the government.” —Bill Maher

Pat Robertson, the good “Christian” worth $100 million-crooks of a feather hang together

 

 

 

 

Because of American’s aversion to history and as a result, our general ignorance of history, I’m going to start by giving you a brief history of American business’ fondness for fascism. Note; Pence carries the Cross for Trump & that’s all they had to do to win-over the “Christian” evangelicals’ vote.

 

“Mussolini’s regime received particularly warm praise from America’s business leaders. In his 1972 work, Prof. Diggins writes (pp. 146-47): “With few exceptions, the dominant voices of business responded to Fascism with a hearty enthusiasm. Favorable editorials, could be read in publications such as Barron’s, Journal of Commerce and Commercial Bulletin, Commerce and Finance, Nation’s Business (the official organ of the US Chamber of Commerce), and the reputable Wall Street Journal. Aside from the press, the list of outspoken business admirers reads like a Wall Street ‘Who’s Who’.”

http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v15/v15n3p6_weber.html

 

 

Moreover, here is just a partial list of American corporations who not only did business in Nazi Germany but actually had the gall to sue our own government for damages done to their factories in Germany during the war & won reparations. Yeah! I shit you not:

 

  • Coca-Cola
  • Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM)
  • Chase Manhattan Bank
  • Dow Chemical
  • Brown Brothers Harriman (Bush family)
  • Woolworth (Woolworth’s 5 & 10 cent stores)
  • Alcoa Aluminum
  • Ford Motor Company
  • General Motors
  • B.M. (International Business Machines)

 

https://www.toptenz.net/top-10-american-companies-that-aided-the-nazis.php

 

And lastly but certainly not least, here’s a bit of history for you that really shocked me when I first learned of it:

 

The Business Plot was an alleged political conspiracy in 1933 in the United States. Retired Marine Corps Major General Smedley Butlerclaimed that wealthy businessmen were plotting to create a fascist veterans’ organization with Butler as its leader and use it in a coup d’état to overthrow President Franklin D. Roosevelt. In 1934, Butler testified before the United States House of Representatives Special Committee on Un-American Activities (the “McCormackDickstein Committee”) on these claims.[1] No one was prosecuted.

 

This is from a Wikipedia entry & yeah, I know, you might choose to lump me in with the likes of Alex Jones—whom I detest & know to be a fear and hate monger like his buddy Trump—but it’s common knowledge that Congress is & has been bought & paid for by Corporate America so is it any wonder that they’d brush this attempted coup under the rug? (Note Trump’s fondness for conspiracy theories except when they’re ones he’s involved in)

And no, this isn’t peculiar to only America but as the most powerful nation on Earth, we bear the majority of the responsibility for corporate corruption around the globe & it is my duty as an American citizen to hold my government accountable first & foremost before I criticize other nations.

 

Guess whose name came up again in this “alleged” plot? Yep! Prescott Bush, the senator & the father of George H.W. Bush. (the Business Plot to overthrow F.D.R., not the Red Car conspiracy) Here’s one last tidbit for you:

 

“He mentioned that the Remington arms manufacturers would supply the army, thanks to a working relationship with the DuPonts. “We need a Fascist government in this country,” he told the reporter, “to save the nation from the communists who want to tear it down and wreck all that we have built in America. The only men who have the patriotism to do it are the soldiers and Smedley Butler is the ideal leader. He could organize a million men overnight.”

 

https://timeline.com/business-plot-overthrow-fdr-9a59a012c32a

 

I took the time to provide you with this lengthy warm-up to my essay so as to show you that the only loyalty that many, if not most of “our” largest corporations have is to the almighty dollar. They have & they continue to betray us day in, day out i.e. NAFTA.(remember it was Clinton who signed NAFTA into law) Trump is nothing more than a circus clown whose job is to distract us while the corporate cockroaches rob us. Reagan did pretty much the same thing but he clearly wasn’t anywhere as crude & vulgar as Trump.

Stephen King should make a horror movie of this guy

 

Trump’s “win” showed the world how truly stupid we are because only in America, could such a colossal moron be elected president. And my life’s mission is to chip away at our ignorance so in that vein, here we go.

 

This essay is basically my attempt to connect the dots of the fantastic documentary just released on Netflix; “The Great Hack.” I’ll try to use quotation marks consistently but if I forget from time to time, I don’t mean to plagiarize it’s merely an oversight on my part?

In brief, this film exposes how the British firm, Cambridge Analytica, bought Facebook user’s personal data to target people they knew were susceptible to fake news & propaganda ads so they’d vote for Trump.

 

Mussolini, Italy’s fascist dictator who inspired Hitler, said that fascism should more rightly be called Corporatism because it’s a marriage of the state & corporations. Zuckerberg has proven that he’s a fascist because he sold our data to any company that’d pay for it & he willingly provides our data to the government. And as a result of Zuckerberg’s greed, we have a president who is clearly only out to make as much money for himself & his family and doesn’t give a shit about us as citizens, about the environment, or anything else except what feeds his ego.

Thanks buddy!

 

Returning to the film, Brittany Kaiser is a central figure in this nightmare become reality. She was “a key employee at Cambridge Analytica but before that, she worked for the Obama campaign then the Trump campaign.”

 

The narrator of the film points out that “our behavior is being accurately predicted” (via all our personal data that we freely provide to Facebook). Enter David Carroll, associate professor at Parsons School of Design. He basically got the ball rolling for this film by suing in a British court, Cambridge Analytica to get his personal data back. He informs us that they (Cambridge Analytica) are “creating specific ads for us as individuals, through the data we have supplied on Facebook & other social media platforms.”

 

“It (Facebook) began as a dream where we could all become connected via the Internet. It became our matchmaker, personal entertainer, guardian of our memories, even our therapist, but these data trails of ourselves are being mined into a trillion dollar a year business.”

 

Yeah, “we are now the commodity.” And I assert that we are no longer the consumer except in a perverse way we are because we’re consuming ourselves, a sort of cannibalism, & we are being served up to the fascists who rule the world. Moreover, it’s our “content” i.e. our stories, pictures, etc., that is the product being sold—we lose our intellectual property rights as soon as we post something on Facebook.

 

“We were so in love with all those ‘free’ gifts (on Facebook) that no one bothered to read the terms & conditions.” I am reminded of the old adage, Beware of Greeks bearing gifts. “All our interactions, credit card swipes, web searches, locations, ‘Likes,’ etc. are being collected in ‘real time,’ and are attached to our Identity.”

 

Perhaps you think this is an exaggeration? If so, then why did they build a data storage center in Bluffdale, Utah supposedly for the NSA & our “Intelligence Community” which covers over a million square feet & collects data on the order of “exabytes” or larger?

Home sweet home for every American’s data. Thanks Big Brother!

 

The exabyte is a multiple of the unit byte for digital information. In the International System of Units (SI), the prefix exa indicates multiplication by the sixth power of 1000 (1018). Therefore, one exabyte is one quintillion bytes (short scale). The unit symbol for the exabyte is EB.

 

You’re probably in the dark like me when it comes to having the foggiest idea of how big a quintillion is, so here’s an example;

 

The entire Earth contains about 326 quintillion gallons of water.

 

We’re supposed to believe “our” government when they tell us that all this data they’re collecting is for our national security. Yeah, right! Just how many times & in how many ways do they have to screw you before you wake-up and smell the coffee? That brave soul & true patriot, Edward Snowden, gave up his freedom, his ability to ever see his home country again to spend the rest of his life in exile with the ever-present possibility of being imprisoned & tortured by our “Intelligence community,” to reveal the truth about what the NSA, CIA, FBI, etc. are really doing with all our data. And he only mentioned it briefly in the stupendous documentary by Laura Poitras; “Citizen Four.” In a word, Snowden said it’s about “Control.”

Let that word roll around in your mind for a few minutes. Facebook & most of the other “social media platforms,” our Intelligence agencies, & the corporate cockroaches all have one thing in common i.e. their desire to control not only our buying habits but our obedience to the political elite, whoever they may be at any given point in time.

 

And no, this isn’t the latest science fiction movie blockbuster, this is the cold, hard reality that is enveloping us like a menacing fog. Okay, now that I’ve probably depressed you considerably, let’s return to the documentary; “The Great Hack.” But first let me remind those of you who are old enough to remember, COINTELPRO, to bear that in mind while we reflect on the NSA’s abilities today & Facebook’s reach (two billion users). Still feel free here in the land of democracy?

The narrator goes on to inform us that our data willingly sold by Facebook to any buyer, “gives them direct access to our emotional pulse” as well. I immediately thought of our “Hearts and Minds” strategy employed by our “military intelligence” during the Vietnam debacle. Yep! Win the people’s whose country you’re invading, gratitude & cooperation by “Pacifying” them i.e. burning their villages down & imprisoning them in concentration camps.

 

Need I remind you of how well that strategy worked out in Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, etc.? Gee! I sure do regret not being a “good soldier” & participating in the humanitarian agenda in Vietnam. (this is sarcasm for those of you who may not catch on?)

 

Analogously, I view corporate America’s & the “Intelligence community’s” agenda for winning our hearts & minds is also doomed to fail because of its inherent evil.

 

The narrator continues; “Armed with this (emotional) knowledge of us, they (social media platforms) compete for our attention feeding us a steady stream of “Content” built for & seen by only me.” In other words, their algorithms are so finely-tuned that we don’t even realize that we’re being manipulated i.e. we feel that we are not alone in thinking/feeling the way we do & have magically stumbled upon like-minded individuals because just about every post that comes through our Facebook feed, confirms what I know & believe.

 

“And this is true for each and every one of us i.e. what we like, what we feel, what gets our attention, what our boundaries are, & what it takes to cross our boundaries.” Speaking of feelings, here’s an insider who revealed what your “Smart phone,” is doing to you;

Does this not horrify you? At least in the horror sci-fi genre of movies we watch, we can take comfort in knowing that these are merely Hollywood techniques meant to give us a thrill by scaring us. And perhaps naturally, we’re unwilling or unable to face the ugly reality of what is creeping up on us?

 

Speaking of nightmares, Trump is every sentient being’s living image of the worst of humanity, I believe? It’s truly unfathomable that a more despicable person could occupy the oval office? And as the narrator points out, “We saw the fallout of our filtered reality in the 2016 election. The real world became a deeply divided refuge site.”

 

Giving proof, in my opinion, that the introduction of “reality T.V.,” is partially responsible for our social & intellectual decay. Case in point, as I recall, “Survivor” was the first of the onslaught of these ignorant & obnoxious television series. I believe that I watched one complete episode before turning to my dear wife, Jeri, and commenting; Jesus! What is this teaching our kids? It’s teaching them that lying, cheating, stealing, backstabbing i.e. anything is okay in the pursuit of victory. And here’s a bit of “reality” for those of you not afraid to be truly real; https://www.inverse.com/article/13603-psychology-tv-how-reality-programming-impacts-our-brains

 

Fast forward a decade and voila, we have the epitome of all that is worst in people as president. Who just coincidentally starred in “The Apprentice.” Yeah, it should’ve been called “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice,” or more accurately, “The Devil’s Apprentice.” I have often felt like a sort of modern-day Don Quixote because of some of my observations over the years i.e. how is it that we watch an artificial medium (mode of communication) to supposedly get a view of “reality?” This is like a double-negative in mathematics i.e. it cancels itself out. I think this may have all contributed to our enfeeblement?

Getting back to the narrator’s last comment, my question for you, my imaginary reader, is where are we able to find true refuge in this mad world we’ve created? And yeah, I know that many of you will offer suggestions like meditation, yoga, etc. but I’m asking about help for the average Joe who doesn’t have the time or the inclination to pursue these more esoteric paths.

 

The narrator asks, “How did the dream of a connected world tear us apart?” Well I would answer that this documentary is precisely about trying to answer that very question. Or, in brief, I’d say that human greed & stupidity is what’s tearing us apart. And don’t forget apathy, willful ignorance, & anti-intellectualism (a particular trait of Trump fans who’ve been angry for most of their lives for being put-down or ostracized for their ignorance but will never take responsibility for their lack of education or do anything about remedying the fact).

 

Moving along, the narrator asks; “Who is feeding us Fear and how?” Well duh? Trump is the most glaring example but yes, we need to look beyond the obvious reptilian from the Black Lagoon that Trump is. In a nutshell my friend, the corporate cockroaches i.e. those who see themselves as the Masters of the Universe—who just announced & not coincidentally, “U.S. Space Command will launch this month, ahead of Trump’s Space Force.” (USA Today, 8/20/19) —are as serious as a heart-attack.

Moreover, I submit for your consideration that Trump & his evangelical eunuch, Pence, aren’t the first space cadets. No, Reagan’s “Star Wars program,” was the tip-off for these dangerous loonies. After God knows how many billions of our tax dollars were flushed down the toilet under Reagan, the program was supposedly halted but I don’t believe it.

 

In 1997, the U.S. Air Force announced its goal of “Full Spectrum Dominance.” Hint: America’s true agenda isn’t freedom & democracy for the world but “our” total domination of all lands & all peoples i.e. we spend more on our military than all the other nations on Earth combined & we have over 900 military bases around the globe & God knows how many secret “black op” sites? And you wonder why we can’t afford free, high quality health care for our citizens?

 

Returning to the subject of who the fear mongers are, the next most glaring example is “Fox news.” I’ve been saying since roughly a year after Fox “news,” came into existence (roughly 20 years ago) that it is America’s version of Russia’s “Pravda” state newspaper. Sadly though, Goebbels (Hitler’s minister of propaganda) was correct when he said that the bigger the lie & the more often you repeat it, the more it becomes truth or fact—my paraphrasing. I have dubbed Fox “news,” the Fear & Hate channel & here’s another bit of history for ya; FDR declared; “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”

 

You see, my imaginary reader, through time immemorial, the powers that be have sought to scare their subjects, or their citizens into submission to their authority. In other words, the old tactic of Divide & Conquer which military leaders have used probably even before recorded history? And what better & easier way to divide & conquer us than with the help of the social media platform, Facebook which has over two billion “commodities” formerly known as human beings.

 

Following this further, I didn’t notice how appropriate the name of the Trump’s campaign project to steal the election was until just now. They dubbed it “Project Alamo.” This really shouldn’t come as any great surprise given the fact that Trump, launched the “Birther movement” against Obama & his campaign to become president, was built upon his xenophobia & never-ending racist rhetoric primarily focused on Mexicans & to a slightly lesser degree, Muslims.

 

A recent guest on Ian Master’s program, “Background Briefing,” which I’ve been following off & on for over 30 years, noted that “Trump is a strategic racist” i.e. his racism isn’t just willy-nilly, no, it’s purposely planned & delivered so as to keep the public confused & divided.

 

“He uses racism by triggering two major sources of anxiety for many white people: economic insecurity and demographic change.”  https://haasinstitute.berkeley.edu/trumps-racism-isnt-just-racism-its-strategy  —Ian Haney Lopez

 

Think about it, “Project Alamo.” The perfect name for a campaign based on scapegoating Mexicans or Latinos in general. Perhaps the most vulnerable segment of our society? And the Alamo being the location of our mythical & courageous stand against the marauding Mexicans—we’re supposed to forget that it was us who invaded their country & stole:

 

The whole states of CaliforniaNevadaUtahArizonaNew Mexico and Texas, as well as parts of WyomingColorado, Oklahoma and Kansas,

 

from Mexico. And this is precisely why U.S. history as taught in our public education system is so packed with lies i.e. the powers that be realize that they must brainwash us into believing we’re always the good guy & the victims of invading hordes of criminals, rapists, drug dealers, etc. as Trump proclaims ad nauseam.

 

Furthermore, the narrator tells us that the Trump presidential campaign’s “digital arm i.e. Project Alamo at its peak was spending a million dollars a day on Facebook ads.” Naturally, Marky Mark Zuckerberg neglects to mention this whenever he tries to defend Facebook against its critics.

 

Moreover, the team from Cambridge Analytica worked in the same room with Trump’s campaign team but in their own corner of the room while working jointly on Project Alamo. And as the narrator pointed out; “Cambridge Analytica was the brain of the data center” in which both groups worked.

 

Enter “Paul Olivier Dehaye, a mathematician based in Switzerland who had been following Cambridge Analytica for over a year & became suspicious.” Dehaye & David Carroll, the narrator who brought the law suit against Cambridge Analytica, “realized that in order to send people personalized messages, you needed to be able to access their data.”

 

In their sales pitch to perspective customers, “Cambridge claimed to have 5,000 data points on every American voter.” Let me break down for you what these data points are referring to;

 

When people take surveys for statistical purposes or when the Census Bureau comes around and gets everybody’s information, information from one person is one data point for them. At the end of its research or survey, the company will have gathered many bits of information from many people. One bit of information equals one data pointhttps://study.com/academy/lesson/data-points-definition-lesson-quiz.html

 

 

In other words, from those seemingly innocent “personality tests” that Facebook suckered us into taking again & again, and other tools, Cambridge Analytica was able to accumulate over 5,000 bits of personal information on all of us who fell for the ruse. Things like what we read, our political leanings, our buying habits, hobbies, friends, drinking habits, etc. etc. etc. and this gave them the weapons they could turn around & use on us to manipulate us (some easier than others) into voting for Trump or not voting at all, etc.

 

As the narrator pointed out; “But this information was invisible & the question became, how to make the invisible visible?” Continuing on, “Dehaye’s hypothesis was that U.S. voter data was processed by Cambridge’s parent company in the U.K. & if this were true, the narrator, David Carroll, could sue using a British lawyer to force Cambridge Analytica to give him his data.”

 

Enter, Alexander Nix, CEO of Cambridge Analytica. “Nix focused on building an election business using people’s data to steer elections around the world—including Obama’s election to some extent.”

 

Let’s stop & reflect on this for a bit. Here was a company that bought our personal data from Facebook & then used our data to manipulate elections around the globe. Obviously, Zuckerberg has a lot more to answer for than the election of Trump but is he in prison? No, he got a light slap on the wrist financially speaking & continues doing business & claiming ignorance & innocence regarding these global crimes which have had serious consequences for people’s lives.[I’m adding this here after having aleady completed this essay; the fact that we are now a “post-literate” society & images and videos are the dominant mediums used to manipulate us, ponder the ramifications of this short video clip: Exhibit A: Donald Trump brought to us by “Reality T.V.” how about a nightmare brought to us by fake television?]

 

First of all, bear in mind that Facebook has two billion users around the world, obviously that’s quite a data base to draw from in terms of manipulating the hearts & minds of people. Cambridge meddled in & steered elections for their clients in Australia, India, Kenya, Malta, Mexico, U.K., and the U.S.

And Cambridge Analytica’s executives said in 2018 that the company had worked in more than 200 elections around the world, including in Trinidad and TobagoNigeria, the Czech RepublicArgentina,[57] and the Philippines (Rodrigo Duterte).[154]

 

I’m going to keep searching for a comprehensive list of all the elections that these British bastards rigged but this was all that I could find for the time being. I don’t know about you but this just staggers the mind, the fact that a single corporation could wreak such global havoc? Perhaps we’re headed for a global fascist state?

 

An important thing to keep in mind as we delve deeper into this colossal scandal is that all this data wasn’t gained by some nefarious hackers but was freely sold by Facebook to Cambridge Analytica. Zuckerberg, already one of the wealthiest men in America, a billionaire several times over, wasn’t satisfied & craved more power & more wealth. As the old adage goes, a capitalist is a guy who will sell you the rope with which to hang him. I for one, would love to see Capitalism fail and a truly Social form of economics take its place.

 

I want to emphasize here that we must never forget that it was good old Saint Obama who prosecuted more whistleblowers than all our other presidents combined. Yep! The full force of the U.S. government is brought down on whistleblowers who are the true patriots, like Edward Snowden, Thomas Drake, Edward Binney, John Kiriakou, J. Kirk Wiebe, Edward Loomis, & Chelsea Manning, but these companies like Facebook, Cambridge Analytica, or our NSA who ignored our Constitution, supposedly the bedrock of U.S. law & government, either receive a slap on the wrist or aren’t punished at all for their massive criminal acts.

 

Admittedly, I voted for Obama in his first bid to become president but a few weeks after he took office & he appointed Summers, Geithner, & Bernanke to just name a few, I knew that I had been duped & I thought I was pretty politically sophisticated with my 30 years of studying politics. Yeah, it became abundantly obvious that Obama was in the pockets of Wall St.

 

Do you remember Obama’s mantra “Change” that was literally on the lecterns he stood at in nearly every political speech he made during his first campaign for the presidency? And how he swore that his presidency would be the most transparent presidency ever? Well as the cynical point out, they are all liars. And I have to agree. Obama was & clearly still is in the pockets of the military/industrial/congressional complex and his crimes against humanity i.e. his drone war, his deportation of millions of immigrants, etc. will soon, if they haven’t already, disappear down the memory hole of the American public. Here’s a fragment on the “crimes” of a few of the whistleblowers he persecuted & prosecuted;

 

The story goes back to 2002, when three of the whistleblowers—Loomis, Wiebe and Binney—asked the Pentagon to investigate the NSA for wasting “millions and millions of dollars” on Trailblazer, which had been chosen as the agency’s flagship system for analyzing intercepted communications over a smaller and cheaper in-house program known as Thin Thread.  https://www.thenation.com/article/obamas-crackdown-whistleblowers/

 

 

Continuing with the Cambridge Analytica crime spree, after helping Obama in his election campaign, “they were then contracted to work for the Republican party & Ted Cruz went from last place to first place before Trump got the nomination.”

 

The film then shows a presentation by Nix called “The Power of Big Data and Psychographics.” To reiterate, the crucial data that Cambridge Analytica relied on to create their data base for manipulating people politically came from mostly those personality tests—several of which I took myself. Here’s a bit of insight into how the data gathered from those tests was used;

 

Psychometrics, sometimes also called psychographics, focuses on measuring psychological traits, such as personality. In the 1980s, two teams of psychologists developed a model that sought to assess human beings based on five personality traits, known as the “Big Five.” These are: openness (how open you are to new experiences?), conscientiousness (how much of a perfectionist are you?), extroversion (how sociable are you?), agreeableness (how considerate and cooperative you are?) and neuroticism (are you easily upset?). Based on these dimensions—they are also known as OCEAN, an acronym for openness, conscientiousness, extroversion, agreeableness, neuroticism—we can make a relatively accurate assessment of the kind of person in front of us. This includes their needs and fears, and how they are likely to behave. The “Big Five” has become the standard technique of psychometrics. But for a long time, the problem with this approach was data collection, because it involved filling out a complicated, highly personal questionnaire. Then came the Internet. And Facebook. And Kosinski.  https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/mg9vvn/how-our-likes-helped-trump-win

 

I don’t know about you but this kind of makes me feel like a lab rat? And I hate to sound so pessimistic but with all that this film has revealed & the knowledge that gerrymandering, tampering with election machines, etc. etc. etc. I am tempted to just give up and run away to some deserted island. But that’s soon not even going to be an option with the rising seas thanks to global warming & Trump’s sabotaging of every govt. agency whose mission is to protect the environment.

 

However, I still have some fight in me & will continue to fight the good fight even though I feel like I’m often spitting in the wind especially in post-literate America.

 

The narrator then shares with the audience that Cambridge targeted those “who were persuadable.” (I’d simply say, those who were/are weak-minded and/or ignorant) Consequently, “personality drives behavior and behavior influences how you vote.” Logically, “they then started to target people with highly targeted video content” i.e. fake news & videos claiming Hillary Clinton ran a child sex ring out of a pizza parlor & they drank children’s blood, etc. —the sort of stuff right up Alex jones (Trump’s confidante) alley. Or as I refer to these ridiculously gullible people, The Duck Dynasty Klan (Trump’s base).

 

Of course, after their success in putting Trump in office, “Cambridge felt they were on their way to becoming a billion-dollar company.”

 

Enter Carole Cadwalladr, “investigative journalist for The Guardian, she’d been investigating Cambridge and its ties to the Brexit campaign.” And enter, Nigel Farage “with the Brexit campaign who is a friend of Steve Bannon’s.” And for those of you who may not follow politics very closely, Steve Bannon was like George W. Bush’s Darth Vader, Karl Rove. Except Bannon was kicked to the curb early in Trump’s triumphant reign of terror in the White House, well at least publicly—he may still be operating behind the curtain?

 

Bannon had to leave because of his comments to a reporter about Trump & my guess is that it may have also had something to do with the exposure of Breitbart News as an extremist “conservative” media outlet. Yeah, they’re about as “conservative” as the John Birch Society. Bannon is a fear & hate monger par excel lance. And since his departure from Team Trump, he’s been sowing the seeds of hate & racism in Europe. One last note regarding Breitbart of which Bannon was the executive chairman, uh, correction, this deserves a bit more than one last note. Robert Mercer is a hedge fund billionaire who has played a significant role also in the rise of the Trump Terror Tyranny (my phrase).

 

Robert Mercer is the money behind Donald Trump. But then, I will come to learn, Robert Mercer is the money behind an awful lot of things. He was Trump’s single biggest donor. Mercer started backing Ted Cruz, but when he fell out of the presidential race he threw his money – $13.5m of it – behind the Trump campaign….

The billionaire funding Breitbart that inspires mass murderers like the guy in El Paso who wanted to kill as many Mexicans as possible

 

One of its funds, Medallion, which manages only its employees’ money, is the most successful in the world – generating $55bn so far. And since 2010, Mercer has donated $45m to different political campaigns – all Republican – and another $50m to non-profits – all rightwing, ultra-conservative. This is a billionaire who is, as billionaires are wont, trying to reshape the world according to his personal beliefs….

 

so to gauge his beliefs you have to look at where he channels his money: a series of yachts, all called Sea Owl; a $2.9m model train set; climate change denial (he funds a climate change denial thinktank, the Heartland Institute); and what is maybe the ultimate rich man’s plaything – the disruption of the mainstream media. In this he is helped by his close associate Steve Bannon, Trump’s campaign manager and now chief strategist. The money he gives to the Media Research Center, with its mission of correcting “liberal bias” is just one of his media plays. There are other bigger, and even more deliberate strategies, and shining brightly, the star at the centre of the Mercer media galaxy, is Breitbart.

 

It was $10m of Mercer’s money that enabled Bannon to fund Breitbart – a rightwing news site, set up with the express intention of being a Huffington Post for the right. It has launched the careers of Milo Yiannopoulos and his like, regularly hosts antisemitic and Islamophobic views, and is currently being boycotted by more than 1,000 brands after an activist campaign. It has been phenomenally successful: the 29th most popular site in America with 2bn page views a year. It’s bigger than its inspiration, the Huffington Post, bigger, even, than PornHub. It’s the biggest political site on Facebook. The biggest on Twitter….

 

But there was another reason why I recognized Robert Mercer’s name: because of his connection to Cambridge Analytica, a small data analytics company. He is reported to have a $10m stake in the company, which was spun out of a bigger British company called SCL Group. It specializes in “election management strategies” and “messaging and information operations”, refined over 25 years in places like Afghanistan and Pakistan. In military circles this is known as “psyops” – psychological operations. (Mass propaganda that works by acting on people’s emotions.)

 

…. We’re not quite in the alternative reality where the actual news has become “FAKE news!!!” But we’re almost there. Out on Twitter, the new transnational battleground for the future, someone I follow tweets a quote by Marshall McLuhan, the great information theorist of the 60s. “World War III will be a guerrilla information war,” it says. “With no divisions between military and civilian participation.”

By that definition we’re already there.

 

Guess what? These six paragraphs that I copied and pasted here are from an article by none other than Carole Cadwalladr https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/feb/26/robert-mercer-breitbart-war-on-media-steve-bannon-donald-trump-nigel-farage

 

 

Are you beginning to see the big picture i.e. it’s the super-wealthy, the 1%, who again & again we witness, are/have already de facto bought governments around the world & will never cease in their agenda of enslaving us all? An exaggeration? Consider the fate of unions in America. “Fifty years ago, nearly a third of U.S. workers belonged to a union. Today, it’s one in 10.” https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2015/02/23/385843576/50-years-of-shrinking-u

 

 

I’m going to assume that you’ve at least heard of how Walmart crushes any employee who dares to mention the word “union?” The G.O.P. (Greedy Old Pigs) declared publicly as soon as FDR established the New Deal to help alleviate the destruction done to American workers & families because of the Great Depression that was brought on by the greed of the Wall St. wolves, that they’ll fight tooth & nail to destroy every single aspect of the New Deal. And they’ve been true to their word. Also note the G.O.P.’s declaration after Obama was elected that they’d do everything they could to block every single piece of legislation he introduced & they did and he kept saying; “Can’t we just get along?”

 

I’d like to remind you of a few nuggets of wisdom; It’s better die standing than to live on your knees. And, if you don’t stand for something, you’ll fall for anything. This reminds me of why I’m so opposed to Nancy Pelosi i.e. she keeps blocking the DNC from impeaching Trump with her rationale that they couldn’t succeed because the Senate is controlled by the G.O.P. Well my response is that this is total bullshit! You don’t only take on fights that you know you can win, it’s a matter of principles & values. All Americans should see all the evidence of Trump’s reign of error & terror and decide for themselves as to his guilt or innocence. I believe what would obviously become a long & detailed investigation would persuade many of Trump’s supporters to abandon him. So, it doesn’t matter really if the Dems were successful in impeaching him, what matters is that his phenomenal incompetence, greed, & destruction would be out there and more comprehensible. I am simply befuddled as to how they could impeach Clinton for a blow-job yet Trump has committed thousands of illegal & immoral (sexually molested dozens of women) acts but Nancy says No, we shouldn’t take on this fight? We’ve witnessed the DNC’s brilliance in terms of their political strategies, time & time again and that’s why we’re in this unholy place!

 

Please excuse the long-winded diatribe but this shit gets my blood boiling. Okay, back to the drawing board. Ms. Cadwalladr (Carole) goes on to say that “she tracked down all the ex-Cambridge employees & found Chris Wyley who said he’d talk to her & that he had helped set up Cambridge Analytica.”

 

Enter Chris Wyley, data engineer; “Cambridge is a full-service propaganda machine.” The narrator then informs us that Steve Bannon was the editor of Breitbart & said; “If you want to fundamentally change society, you first have to break it.” This should send chills down all our spines, well those of us who aren’t mere globs of protoplasm with no hearts, souls, or any resemblance of a human being.

 

Bannon’s statement isn’t just another asinine comment by a right-wing nut, No, this is precisely what Trump & what those who pushed for Brexit are all about i.e. the utter destruction of their societies. Need I remind you of Trump’s first actions as president? He appointed as the head of every one of our most critical agencies, not only the least qualified people he could find but also those whose sole mission was to sabotage the very dept. or agency they headed.

 

Ben Carson, Betsy DeVos, Rick Perry, Mike Pompeo (Christian Fascist), Steve Mnuchin (who got rich illegally foreclosing on thousands of California homeowners), Wilbur Ross, Rex Tillerson. Supreme Court—Kavanaugh (sexual predator), Press Secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders-Propaganda Minister along with Kelly Anne Conway, Attorney Generals, Sessions (spineless racist), & Barr (mafia lawyer for Trump). The list goes on & on & on. You’ll have to do your own homework from here if you give a damn? Oh yeah, we definitely mustn’t forget Vice President Pence, the Christian soldier like Eric Prince (Betsy DeVos’ brother & mercenary for despots around the world who love murdering in the name of God).

 

Before winning (stealing) the election, Trump campaigned on “Draining the Swamp.” His quaint euphemism for cleaning up Washington D.C. Yeah, right. This tantrum throwing tyrant has been doing just what Bannon told him he should do i.e. break the whole system so the Alex Jones racists & corporate cockroaches could have a free hand in creating a Fascist New World Order.

 

You might be thinking just about now that I’m off in Alex Jones’ Conspiracy Carnival but if you’ll take five minutes to look up what’s called PNAC (Project for the New American Century), and realize that the fascists among us have been plotting & steadily working towards their ideal state for decades—sometimes they go below the radar for a while when their agendas are a bit too public. Here’s a partial list of their alumni & believers;

 

Newt Gingrich, Dick Cheney, Elliot Abrams, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, William Bennett (Secretary of Education under two presidents), Jeb Bush, Steve Forbes (Forbes Business magazine), John Bolton (currently strongest cheerleader for war with Iran), & Richard Perle to just name a few of the most recognizable names in this Hall of Shame. {Need I remind/inform you of the role these fascists played in starting the wars in Afghanistan & Iraq?}

 

Obviously, Trump didn’t really want to drain the swamp but rather, re-stock it with the slimiest creatures from the Black Lagoon in which he has resided his whole life. Besides, if he actually did drain that proverbial “swamp,” where would his Duck Dynasty “Deliverance” homeboys find their dates for the Deviant’s Ball? Yep! Trump’s cabinet picks are like placing his buddy, Jeffrey Epstein, in charge of security at a girls’ summer camp. Doesn’t that just warm your heart?

recall the video of Trump bragging he could grab women by their pussy? Here he is giving Jeffrey Epstein some tips

 

Admittedly, I veer off-course perhaps a bit here & there but that’s because I know how ill-informed most of my fellow citizens are & I hope to help them connect the dots. Not that I have the corner on the truth but I have spent over 30 years in serious pursuit of that elusive truth & therefore feel that I have earned the right to speak with some degree of authority. Hell, look who we have as president. It’s a pretty safe bet that he’s never read a single book of substance from cover to cover.

 

Returning to our film, Chris Wylie who filled us in on Steve Bannon, goes on to quote Bannon; “It’s only when you break it (our govt.) that you can then remold it into your vision of a great society.” I want to interject here that sure, our government & our business culture is corrupt as Hell but to dismantle our govt in the name of saving it is like burning your house down because a forest fire was close by & thinking you’d save it from a worse fire. This is utter absurdity & madness and only misanthropic & mercenary minds could think this the right path to a healthy society.

 

Wylie continues; “This was the weapon Bannon wanted to use to wage his Culture War.” Note how frequently the so-called “Conservatives” whine of the culture war being waged against them. “Wylie went to professors at Cambridge University (how appropriate) to ask for their ideas on how to pursue their mission & they showed him the ‘one click personality test.’

 

They got special permission to use apps on Facebook to harvest the info & also go into their entire friend network & pull out all their friends’ data as well. They didn’t just target you as a voter but also as a personality. Their app only needed to tap into a couple hundred thousand people to build a psychological profile of every voter in America. People had no idea their data was being taken in this way. This was a grossly unethical experiment, the psychology of an entire country without their awareness or consent.”

 

But hey, I’m just exaggerating things, right? And it’s unfair of me to label Facebook as fascist for this simple & innocent oversight on their part, right? Remember, fascism is the combination/marriage if you like, of big business & government with the common goal/agenda of controlling the public or the people. And if this form of control & spying on us doesn’t bother you, you’d be right at home in Putin’s Russia & are probably understanding of Trump’s consistent kissing of Putin’s ass. How patriotic of you? I bet your ancestors are rolling over in their graves in disgust with your betrayal of what America used to stand for.

 

Continuing on, “They were playing with the psychology of an entire nation within the context of a democratic process.” I take umbrage with the use of the word ‘playing’ and ‘within the context of a democratic process.’ First of all, this wasn’t mere playing unless you’re referring to a diabolical game played by would-be Masters of the Universe. And secondly, unless the author of the phrase “within the context of a democratic process” means that this was a legitimate act in a democratic system of government, I am lost, confused, & couldn’t disagree more!

 

How in the Hell does democracy come into play within a corporation? Corporations are private tyrannies & the moment an employee walks through their employer’s door, their rights go out the window i.e. your employer can listen in on your phone calls, search your locker, forbid you from talking about forming a union, etc. etc. etc. And note that bars/pubs are private corporations & that’s why they can stop us from talking about politics in their bars. Food for thought?

 

Yeah, many, if not most people have no idea of just how little power or rights we have in our workplaces. Of course, Walmart is perhaps the most blatantly anti-union corporation & many of us realize that. Gee, I wonder why Walmart is the most profitable corporation in America & the Walmart family are among the richest in the U.S.?

 

Here’s a claim made by Alexander Nix, remember him? He was the CEO of Cambridge Analytica; “We don’t have Facebook data & we don’t use Facebook data, but we do use Facebook as a platform to advertise on.” Can you believe such audacity? In Cambridge’s sales videos, etc. they bragged about having 5,000 data points on every American voter but I guess all that data just somehow magically appeared in Cambridge’s lap?

 

I wonder why the Trump campaign was paying Cambridge a million dollars a day? Could it be that their advertising was that costly but didn’t have any of our personal data? Wylie commented; “When people see the extent of the surveillance, I think they’re going to be shocked.”

Maybe? But like everything else in this mad world, the public gets upset for a minute or two & soon goes back to their smart phones & checking the latest number of “likes” they got.

 

Well I’m definitely not one of the Walking Dead like my fellow Americans & like a bulldog, I keep on keeping on in my fight against the corporate cockroaches & their fascist assault on us all.

 

David Carroll, who brought the lawsuit against Cambridge; “It’s crazy that I have to mount a risky, year-long court battle to get my Voter Profile.”

 

A bit of good news though; “Facebook stock falls by 6% or $120 billion because of Carroll’s lawsuit finally getting some attention. Facebook knew of this data collection by Cambridge over two years ago but didn’t go public about it until Carroll’s lawsuit caused Cambridge’s headquarters in London was raided.”

 

Isn’t it interesting to note how CEO’s memories often seem to lapse, just like many politicians, after they’ve been exposed for wrongdoing? I remember when Reagan was finally made to testify behind closed doors re: the Iran/Contra Scandal & out of something like 280 questions put to him, roughly 265 times his response was; I can’t remember, I don’t recall, etc. If you or I tried that in court, our asses would be behind bars in short order.

 

Yep! “Facebook claimed to not notice that 50 million people’s data had been breeched but every time it’s my sister’s dog’s birthday, I get a notification.” (some comedian’s witty observation)

 

However, what’s not funny is expressed by Carroll; “People don’t want to admit that propaganda works because to admit it means confronting our own susceptibilities, our horrific lack of privacy, & our hopeless dependencies on tech platforms that are ruining our democracies on various attack surfaces.”

 

Yes indeed! If you’re around my age (66) you grew up hearing about communist propaganda but there was never any mention of American or capitalist propaganda. In fact, in the early days of Advertising & the Public Relations industry, it was more honestly referred to as propaganda. And as Chomsky points out, these are powerful institutions in America. May I suggest that you look up Noam Chomsky on You Tube re: this subject, it’ll definitely be worth your time.

 

Moreover, I can definitely attest to the fact that people don’t want to acknowledge the power that advertising has over us. I’ve been trying to clue people in for decades but I’m usually dismissed as some good-natured nut case.

 

Wylie continues to discuss the U.K.’s enquiry into ‘fake news.’ “When you’re busted for doping in the Olympics, you lose your medal, but we allow cheating in our democratic process. What about next time? What about the time after that? You shouldn’t be allowed to win by cheating.” But of course, Trump did and the spineless DNC won’t even impeach him! In this new age, morality & ethics are a joke, its dog eat dog & we have the most immoral president in U.S. history flouting the U.S. legal system daily & grinning his ass off in arrogant defiance.

 

“We have met the enemy and he is us.” —Pogo

 

I included this famous quip from a comic strip to point out that we are now witnessing the steady dismantling of our democracy albeit it has been on shaky ground for quite some time preceding Trump. Our general apathy & our intellectual laziness coupled with the harmful aspects of this new technology i.e. Smart phones, social media platforms & apps., etc. has all but rendered us as helpless as a turtle on its back. And the rapacious Republican party has no conscience & clearly craves power so much it’d rather watch America descend into chaos & anarchy than stand up to Trump & call him out for the vile, most despicable individual imaginable. Here is a guy who laid out the toxicity of social media clearer than anything I’ve come across;

Without a doubt, apathy in combination with innocent ignorance & willful ignorance will be on America’s tombstone as future generations look back on this stage in history, perhaps the final stage at the rate we’re destroying our environment. And this in conjunction with a dope in the oval office who knows even less about world history than the average third grade student, presents a truly frightening scenario.

 

Though I could be way off base because the generations after mine have been raised in a game & movie world of zombies & vampires—some of which are portrayed as having some redeeming human qualities such as sensitivity. Moreover, it seems the majority of Hollywood’s top hits are doomsday & apocalyptic visions of our not too distant future so maybe a large portion of Americans aren’t as worried as I am about the way we’re headed?

 

For example, early in this film, Carroll, the protagonist is talking about what these “social media” platforms are doing to us & a young, female student in his class says that the ads don’t really bother her perhaps because she grew up in this world. She goes on to ask him; “So, at what point do things become sour (I assume she means bad?)

Ah! Here we arrive at perhaps a vital turning point? I argue that we have already passed the critical juncture because for young people like this student to admit they’re not troubled by the gross manipulation we’re already experiencing is a telltale sign that we’re half-way lost already.

And for-the-record, Snowden again gave us fair warning about how Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, Pal Talk, AOL, Skype, You Tube, & Apple to only name the most prominent amongst these corporate betrayers, willingly assists the status quo in their on-going agenda of enslaving us.

 

Does this worry the younger generations? Apparently not. They gleefully & blindly carry on using these platforms & tools of enslavement. I know, I’m sounding a bit Alex Jones? Sorry, but for an old fart like me who grew up in a very different America in which we didn’t even have voice machines to record our missed calls, I am perhaps much more aware of these intrusions into our privacy & it sure as Hell does bother & anger me. By-the-way, perhaps this will cause your heart rate to at least go up a few points, these same corporate giants who are making billions exploiting us via our data, pay next to nothing in taxes. Do you give a shit about that?

 

Getting back to the documentary, Wylie speaking before a U.K. enquiry commission re: fake news; “Someone else you should be speaking to is Brittany Kaiser.” Now the plot really begins to thicken because Ms. Kaiser is the other central character in this drama, & she played a very significant part in this coup overthrowing democracies around the globe. And I must confess that I had my suspicions while watching this film for the first time.

Cute & pixie-like as a teenager to this; the price of selling your soul?

 

But watching it again a few days ago, I have become a lot more distrustful of whatever she says in her defense. For now, I’m just going to toss out there a few observations & my reactions in case I forget them later on. First of all, the film starts out at a “Burning Man” festival in Nevada & shows Brittany, dressed like a typical tribal person at this annual event, write with a marker on this wooden structure where participants inscribe something profound, I assume? She writes on it; “’Cambridge Analytica.”

Like I said, I glossed over this seemingly insignificant act in my first viewing of this film but now, I wonder if this could be a sort of Freudian Slip? In other words, could it be that her work for Cambridge Analytica is what she’s actually the proudest of?

 

You see, once the full extent of Cambridge Analytica’s crimes begins to be revealed, Kaiser starts pretending that she’s a whistleblower who helped bring them down. But she knew what they were doing for at least two years prior to the fall & took great pride in helping Trump “win” the U.S. election. She was as critical to their success as Chris Wylie was. His talent was in data engineering & her’s was in developing their business model & their PR face if-you-will.

 

Kaiser’s ego was glowing in the limelight of the attention she received in photo ops with Trump, the fact that she had her own set of keys to Steve Bannon’s townhouse in Washington D.C.,  etc. And we see her throughout the film staying at very expensive & posh hotels around the world, sipping a cocktail in one of those “Infinity” pools at some luxury resort in Thailand, etc.

 

Yet, once again, after Cambridge is on public trial so-to-speak, Kaiser tells us that her family lost their home after the 2008 economic crash & her father’s brain cancer and she had to make money to help her family out. Yeah, that’s suppose to excuse her Faustian deal with the devil i.e. the Republican party & Trump in particular.

 

Moreover, at another point in the film it is revealed that she admits to carrying two sets of business cards. They don’t specify as to what these two sets are but it doesn’t take a brain surgeon to guess. I’m confident that one set is for playing the concerned environmentalist & worker for human rights when she was young and the other set is for her rich patrons in the corporate/political world.

 

Admittedly, what I’m about to say could be seen as chauvinistic or misogynist or something but what the fuck, here goes; earlier glimpses of Ms. Kaiser when she was young & working on human rights campaigns, etc., she looked physically cute, cheerful, & positive but after her entry into the nefarious world of the corporate cockroaches & their political lapdogs, I believe you can see her physical being manifest her moral decay? And for-the-record, in the film we witness a scene in which she is being questioned by some sort of judge or attorney, I presume? And she is asked something like, “Have you ever provided data to an intelligence agency?” Her eyes say it all i.e. she stops dead in her tracks verbally-speaking, her eyebrows raise up & her eyes nervously twitch back & forth for a while before she answers in the negative after a pregnant pause.

 

Okay, back to the script from the documentary; “She (Kaiser) was the go-getter, the initiator of the Cambridge contract with Trump (my phrasing). “She spoke at the CPAC (Conservative Political Action Conference) with Kelly Anne Conway in 2016.” Hopefully I don’t have to explain to you who Kelly Anne Conway is? Just in case I do? Kelly Anne is Trump’s number one apologist & she can rationalize whatever horrible thing he says or does i.e. she’s his greatest ass-kisser or brown-noser!

I wish she’d go back to her alternative planet

 

Continuing; “She (Kaiser) was at the lavish party on election night for Trump along with Rebecca Mercer” (Robert Mercer’s daughter, owner of Breitbart) and proudly posing for pics with Donald the Dastardly (my phrasing). To reiterate my opinion, Kaiser tried to save her ass by informing on Cambridge once their records, documents, etc. were seized by the British police.

 

Kaiser, “The reason why Facebook, Google, Amazon, etc. are so powerful is because last year, ‘Data’ surpassed Oil as the world’s most valuable ‘commodity.’” Remember friends, we are that commodity, in other words, all the data we supply these so-called “social platforms” with is our ‘value’ in this Brave New World (Aldous Huxley).

Enter Paul Hilder, writer & self-described, Political Technologist. In my opinion, he was basically an apologist & spinmeister for Kaiser during & after her fall from the jet-set insiders’cabal of wealth & politics. And here’s a fun fact for you, “When Kaiser met with Trump’s campaign manager in 2015, she wondered why it looked familiar & then realized they were on the set of ‘The Apprentice.’ Trump’s campaign headquarters was a ‘Reality T.V. set.’”

 

I’m sure this bit of trivia doesn’t bother or strike those of you who grew-up watching ‘Reality T.V.,’ as out of the norm. Let me be clear, this is “reality” turned on its head & again reveals just how far down the rabbit hole we have fallen. “Reality T.V.” is for ignorant & intellectually lazy people who are accustomed to spectacle, superficiality, & not straining their brains. Yep! I said it loud & proud. And I don’t give a fuck if you dismiss me as just another example of those “East Coast elite who look down their noses on everyone who isn’t a member of their club.” Again, I grew up in a single parent, working class family & my mom worked two or three jobs at a time trying to make ends meet so go fuck yourselves if you think/believe me an elitist!

 

Furthermore, I’d better say it again for those of you who may not grasp the simple facts of life i.e. T.V. is an artificial medium (it’s not reality). Reality is going to work every day, paying your bills, raising your kids, worrying about losing your job, whether your pension will be there when you retire, your loved ones’ health, etc. etc. etc. This crap posing as reality is pure bullshit i.e. staged drama to suck in the gullible. Therefore, watching & believing an artificial medium (mode of communicating) and on top of that, believing the circus acts they claim are true/honest portrayals of life, is akin to believing everything a used car salesman or a politician says. Comprende? (Spanish for Comprehend?)

 

By-the-way, I bet many of you haven’t caught on yet that Trump’s continual dismissal of “fake news,” is or would be very amusing if it weren’t so devastating to us all because like his fake “reality” show that made him so familiar to millions of Americans who watched it, everything about Trump is fake i.e. his wealth, his celebrity, his business success, etc. etc. etc. This is why he’s on a constant pep rally to his base (lacking or indicating the lack of higher qualities of mind or spirit)

“base.” I don’t think there’s ever been a political leader since Hitler, that felt the need to keep on holding public rallies after having won the presidency?

 

To me this just reveals how great his sense of insecurity is & that he must keep on feeding his ego or he’ll deflate like the hot air balloon that he in fact is & he will fly away into obscurity & infamy. And speaking of “infamy”

Very bad reputation; notoriety.

The condition of being infamous; disgrace.

An evil or criminal act that is publicly known.

 

I’m not normally a betting man but I’m absolutely positive that Trump will go down in history as the most infamous, notorious, noxious president throughout the history of the United States & I bet that the majority of all those who voted for him & cheered him in his Nazi rallies will hang their heads in disgrace for the rest of their lives. How I wish I could be there & smirk as I said to each of them; Yeah, you were abysmally (Resembling an abyss in depth; unfathomable)

stupid to have fallen for such a grotesque (Characterized by ludicrous, repulsive, or incongruous distortion, as of appearance or manner. synonymugly.)

human being’s con job!

 

Some may ask why I’m so harsh in my comments here? Duh! Consider all those poor immigrant children who were separated from their parents & the psychological devastation on their lives. I could go on ad infinitum about the harm physically, mentally, emotionally, & spiritually caused by this denizen (An inhabitant; a resident.) of the deepest, darkest parts of the human psyche who only cares about enriching himself at the expense of all of humanity! So yeah, I have no qualms (
An uneasy feeling about the propriety or rightness of a course of action.) whatsoever about insulting those who helped empower this human monster.

 

In simple terms, in the mid to late 1980s, I was an ESL (English as a Second Language) teacher in L.A. both during the day at the secondary level & at night as an Adult Education teacher. Many of my students were from El Salvador, Nicaragua, & Mexico and they had seen things I hope to never witness!

 

One student in particular, Maria, who was from Nicaragua told me a story that chilled me to the bone. The Contras captured her sister who was nine months pregnant, and slit open her belly, pulled out her baby & slit its throat in front of her as she was dying. Reagan championed the Contras throughout his presidency & likened them to our Founding Fathers claiming they were defenders of freedom & democracy. I could go on & on but if you give a shit, you’ll do further research on your own.

 

Bottom-line, Reagan was the precursor to what morphed into the Trump phenomenon i.e. Reagan marked a turning point in American history, a clear betrayal of the working class & the middle class by scapegoating immigrants & all the victims of the rapacious rich. Another historical flashback for ya; One of Reagan’s first acts as president was to fire the air traffic controllers who were on strike due to unsafe skies, for life! And this sent a clear message to corporate America i.e. it’s open season on unions.

At times, yeah, I can somewhat relate to those who prefer to be blind & ignorant to this tsunami of terribly depressing information & knowledge but to turn a blind-eye to these crimes against humanity is the coward’s way out!

 

Why is it that we never tire of all the Hollywood blockbusters that glorify our soldiers in their physical acts of valor but rarely acknowledge let alone, glorify the intellectual & ethical heroes who stood up against our warmongers or the corporate cockroaches who like termites, have weakened our house to the point of collapse?

 

Returning to the film, Hilder points out “The reality is that a large-scale data-mining company identified the triggers that are going to ‘move’ people.” Translation: Cambridge Analytica simply refined the age-old “hot button topics” guaranteed to fire-up the rubes (An unsophisticated country person.)  formerly summarized as “God, Guns, & Gays.”

 

You know, the unholy trinity by people like our president of vice, Mike Pence, who doesn’t even trust himself to have lunch with a woman without his wife present. So much for that “Christian” faith in the power of belief in God & Jesus i.e. says more about the moral/ethical weakness of the Jesus-Jumpers than it ever does about the so-called sinners.

 

I apologize again, it’s so hard not to elaborate on these seemingly unrelated details but believe me, they aren’t unrelated, they’re all connecting dots in the general unraveling of our government, our society, & our culture. And like Bannon & Trump’s goal of destroying every last vestige of what we used to call America, the Mike Pence Walking Dead “Christians,” also pray for our complete disintegration in their fervent hope of turning us into an American version of the Taliban where women who dare to speak-up can be stoned to death.

I can only presume & hope that any who may be reading these words must care about our fellow human beings otherwise, they wouldn’t be reading such religious or political blasphemy?

 

Hilder then asks a very profound question; “What does this say about individual freedom, autonomy, and democracy? To my mind, this is the crux (The basic, central, or critical point or feature) of the film. In other words, have we ceased to be autonomous, free agents with free will as the “Christians” claim we are, or have we morphed into automatons easily manipulated into following our master’s agenda?

 

In ancient times i.e. the 1950s & 60s as I was growing up, the powers that be had at least a modicum of respect for our intellectual abilities hence the appeals to our rational faculties. Yet with the so-called “technological advances,” we have gradually become enslaved by our lower functioning, primal or reptilian brains. As a consequence, it’s become far easier to manipulate us today than it was when I was growing up. And the prima facie evidence is none other than Trump, the lowest common denominator on the human scale.

 

And Trump’s handmaiden of evil, Brittany Kaiser, attempts to rationalize her dastardly deeds with; “We’re educating people about other options and if they’re on the fence, they can be persuaded to go another way. This is their own choice.”

 

I almost gagged when I heard this! Yeah “we’re educating people about other options,” as if it were some innocuous (not harmful or injurious; harmless) agenda on the part of Cambridge Analytica in their neutral, good-natured campaign paid for by Robert Mercer under the direction of Steve Bannon to help their buddy, Donald Trump in his honest campaign for the presidency of the most powerful nation on Earth.

 

In my not so humble opinion, this campaign by Cambridge Analytica was waged against every American voter & citizen and was about as “harmless” as the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Indeed, this obscenity Kaiser submitted was akin also to Mao’s “Re-education Camps.”

 

Throughout history, intellectuals have been frequent targets of tyrannical regimes to suppress political dissent. But Chinese communist leader Mao Zedong himself boasted about taking it a step further.

After the Chinese Communist Party took power in 1949, Mao had instilled a climate of fear and terror.  In the late 1940s to early 1950s, he mobilized Chinese peasants to kill off the landlord class, resulting in a death toll that various estimates place from the hundreds of thousands, to up to several million. In some areas, public trials became the norm, and Mao’s politicized peasants became judge, jury, and executioner of the landlord class in China. Amid the repressive climate, intellectuals seemingly lacked a voice to say anything about the communist party.

 

https://www.theepochtimes.com/the-biggest-anti-intellectual-movement-in-history_2234683.html

 

You see, my imaginary friend, there has been a major & consistent thread amongst all authoritarian regimes or dictatorships throughout history & that is anti-intellectualism. What is that you may wonder? [don’t forget that this was/is Communist China whom we fought the Vietnam war against supposedly but soon thereafter became our trading partner & Communist Russia now under the control of the Russian mafia i.e. Putin, is Trump’s dearest friend along with North Korea’s perverted dictator]

 

Well, it’s been a significant part of our culture since the beginning of our nation although it’s a sort of oxymoron to combine “culture” and “anti-intellectualism” in the same sentence. In brief, look at Trump’s repeated attacks on the “East Coast elites.” This is code or dog-whistle politics for blaming intellectuals for just about everything that is wrong with America. {Did you notice the mention of Mao’s use of fear & terror? Sound familiar? Trump’s never-ending rally.}

 

Of course, Trump is counting on his base not knowing much about Trump’s own history & his massive inferiority complex because of his rejection by the New York elite. And Trump capitalized on the general sense of frustration & anger by so many of our citizens who’ve been fucked-over by the elite of Wall St. But what really blew my mind was that so many who had been screwed by the 1%, the corporate cockroach elite, could actually believe that Trump who is clearly a member of their class at least financially & in terms of not giving a fuck about employees or the environment or the law etc. etc. etc., was one of them & qualified to speak for them? Here’s a look into Trump’s family business that clearly shows his claim to fame of being a self-made billionaire has all been a grand scam. I suggest you watch it before any of the other videos because it may very well be pulled soon by either Trump lawyers or Showtime?

Do you recall that quote from the comic strip “Pogo,” that I printed above? Get it? We are our own worst enemies because we internalize the “social propaganda” fed to us by the corporate owned media. And it’s gotten so absurd that those who believe in Trump, actually think he’s going to help them. Yeah, one of the greediest bastards to ever walk upright & never ceases in his bragging about his mythological talents, intelligence, accomplishments, etc. is their Knight in Shining Armor.

 

I know that it’s highly unlikely but if you’d care to invest a few minutes in your well-being, you should research the history of how Trump has screwed the vast majority of people who’ve worked for him as both short-term contract workers or full-time employees. Then tell me again what a wonderful guy he is.

 

Speaking of “wonderful,” it’s time to return to Cambridge Analytica’s most admirable Ms. Kaiser; “Working for Human Rights wasn’t satisfying because I couldn’t see the results of my work but when I worked for the U.S. Republican party, I could.”

Translation: She made very little money working for noble causes such as human rights but when she moved to the dark side, she was amply rewarded & clearly enjoying the lifestyle as evident in the film.

 

Pursuing Ms. Kaiser’s personal degradation, she was approached by Alexander Nix, the CEO of Cambridge Analytica who unabashedly (
Not disconcerted or embarrassed; poised.) said, “Let me get you drunk and steal your secrets.” Apparently, that’s all it took to turn Ms. Kaiser from the former fighter for human rights to a lackey for the rich & famous. So much for her personal “integrity.” Funny that Mr. Nix was so up-front about his agenda because this is just what the “social media” has done to us i.e. it’s gotten us drunk on the intoxicating illusion of meeting new people & making thousands of friends around the globe while it steals our secrets & sells them to corporate cockroaches & gives them to the government surveillance agencies who have been overthrowing other governments for decades with propaganda, murder, etc.

“She turned ‘Conservative’ and started dressing posh & speaking more ‘refined.’ She became an NRA member & said, I think the main problem in U.S. politics is that people are so polarized (neglecting to mention her role in polarizing the American public) and therefore can’t work together & can’t get anything done (again neglecting the fact that the G.O.P. stated from the beginning of Obama’s presidency that they had one goal i.e. to block every single piece of legislation that he attempted to pass).

 

Evidently, Ms. Kaiser was so “wired-in” that right on camera in this documentary, she showed that she was able to pose a question to Zuckerberg that would be asked by one of the U.S. senators the next day in the hearing before Congress that Zuckerberg was forced to appear before.

 

Her question? “How much of Facebook’s revenue comes directly from Facebook’s monetization of people’s personal data?” Yes, a damn good question but clearly an attempt to distract from Cambridge Analytica’s responsibility in this high crime against democracy & free elections.

 

A “devil’s advocate” might’ve asked in return; And how much did your company profit from this illegal & immoral contract with the G.O.P. and Trump’s campaign & your companies use of the Facebook data you used to manipulate the U.S. election in Trump’s favor?

 

Moreover, Kaiser goes on to say; “We always spent the vast majority of our money for ads or political campaigns on Facebook because it gets the best results.”

 

Stop for a minute! In one breath she is criticizing/attacking Facebook for the money it took from the Trump campaign & in her next breath, she’s admitting that Cambridge Analytical used Facebook because “it gets the best results.” Does “speaking out of both sides of her mouth,” seem an appropriate accusation here?

 

Don’t get me wrong, I am in no way defending Facebook or Zuckerberg’s amoral business model & behavior. No, personally I’d love to see Marky Mark along with many others, handcuffed and led away to prison for at least 30 years & not to some plush, federal prison but to prisons like Pelican Bay. And I include Ms. Kaiser, Mr. Nix, etc. in that chain-gang of rotten criminals.

 

Moreover & above all else it’s imperative that when Ms. Kaiser mentioned above that they spent the majority of their money for ads on Facebook because it got the best results, it sounds like they were just paying for innocuous (1. Having no adverse effect; harmless. 2. Not likely to offend or provoke to strong emotion; insipid.)  political ads.

 

Talk about an understatement, this was a whopper! The “ads” that Cambridge Analytica ran on Facebook rarely had a scintilla of truth or factual accuracy in them. Over the course of my lifetime, political ads have gradually sunk to lower & lower standards. Political campaign managers used to advise their candidates to not stoop to “negative ads,” until they became an absolute necessity. Well clearly not so these days. And I believe that if an award was given out to which party aired the vilest political ads, the Republicans would win hands down. Why? Because they are clearly the least ethical of the two parties we’re unfortunately saddled with.

 

For example; they ran an ad claiming that Hillary Clinton ran a child sex ring out of a pizza parlor & that they drank children’s blood. Yeah, I shit you not! This is the sort of trash that is worthy of “The National Enquirer,” and Alex Jones’ conspiracy “news” program; “Info Wars.” Two of Trump’s trusted news sources as contrasted with the “fake news” outlets like The New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN, etc. And Kaiser’s again seemingly innocent statement; “…because they get the best results,” is bullshit as well.

 

Cambridge went with Facebook because they knew damn well that Facebook had over two billion members world-wide & that if they just targeted a hundred thousand or so of strategic (gullible, less educated) Facebook members, their vile ads would spread like a deadly virus & corrupt or at least throw into chaos & doubt, Clinton’s campaign for the presidency & make Trump look like the voice of reason.

 

Yeah, pretty mindboggling that someone like Trump could be made to look like the voice of reason but this is the power of the so-called “social media,” in this day & age.

 

Kaiser is clearly no dummy & that’s why she was paid a phenomenal salary—by outward appearance of her lavish lifestyle. (she’s worth a million & a half dollars) So, she acknowledged; “Regarding those personality tests, the truth is that we didn’t target all Americans equally, we spent more money targeting those whose minds we thought we could change.”

 

No shit Sherlock! In other words, they targeted the least educated, which wasn’t hard to do when you had everybody’s personal histories & on your page where they ask you to list your favorite books, movies, t.v. shows, etc. and a person can’t remember the title of a single book & lists the latest Hollywood action blockbuster for a movie & “The Walking Dead,” for their favorite television show.

 

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that this person would be a “persuadable” voter they could steer towards the Trump campaign of racism & hatred for everybody not a Duck Dynasty fan. Remember that Kaiser first worked for the Obama campaign & headed the “social media” arms of his campaign for the presidency. And she worked for “human rights” organizations but got tired of not seeing the results of her work (translation; not making any or making very little money). It’s evident in the film that she enjoyed the jet-set lifestyle that working for the corporate cockroaches like the G.O.P. and the Trump campaign gave her a taste of.

 

Kaiser continues; “they’re (the persuadables) are everywhere in the U.S. —Duh? …but the ones that mattered were in the Swing states like; Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, & Florida. They broke the states down into precincts and if you targeted enough of the “persuadable,” the state turned from Blue to Red in key precincts.”

 

Are you beginning to understand the undeniable power & influence that Facebook had in bringing the most despicable human being imaginable to occupy the oval office? And note how Zuckerberg to this day still claims that Facebook is still following its original agenda of “connecting people.” Yeah, Facebook is about as good at connecting people as Trump is on his never-ending Fear & Hate Tour.

 

More specifically, do you see why I titled this essay, “Facebook’s Friendly Fascism?” I purposely used the word “friendly” as a pun & play on Facebook’s charade of helping people make “friends.” By-the-way, the reality behind Facebook is that it helps you to make enemies because its structure/design encourages the negativity in people to be expressed because the negativity or anger, hatred, etc. draws more people in than the positive emotions like love & peace. And the negativity spreads like wildfire, just the sort of atmosphere that Trump thrives in.

 

Consequently, Facebook was the perfect vehicle to spread all the racism & division of the Trump message; immigrants, people of color, liberals, democrats, etc. are the cause of your troubles, they take your jobs, they’re draining our economy because they’re taking advantage of our too generous & too liberal programs like food stamps, welfare, etc. By-the-way, Breitbart, I just learned, is the biggest political advertiser on Facebook.

 

Naturally, what the Trumps of this country will never admit to is that they, the 1%, who own everything, are the true cause of our poverty, poor educational system, pitiful health care, loss of our jobs, etc. etc. etc. And it absolutely blew my mind that the poorest amongst us could actually fall for Trump’s posing as their hero. I won’t go off on a tangent here but that charade was breathtaking & very depressing to say the least.

 

Returning to the reptilian Ms. Kaiser, she goes on to state; “Our creative team developed/designed personalized content to target these voters.” “Creative team?” This phrase almost made me gag because this is somewhat akin to saying that Hitler had a creative team that developed/designed solutions to the Jewish problem.

 

And again, my imaginary reader, I am equating Facebook with Fascism because it exemplifies just how destructive a force it is in not only the major role it played in bringing a wannabe dictator like Trump to the most powerful position in the world, it also exposes the fascist nature of megalithic corporate conglomerates.

In a nutshell, every natural resource in the world & every human being that is not part of the 1% has only one purpose for living i.e. to serve their masters & keep on increasing their masters’ wealth. These corporate cockroaches sincerely believe they deserve half a billion-dollar yachts & the rest of us should be grateful for a Big Mac if we know our place, keep our mouths shut, & work till we drop!

 

Furthermore, Kaiser provides more details in her obvious attempts to curry favor & hopefully escape prosecution for her crimes; “We bombarded them with blogs, articles, websites, ads, etc. until they saw the world the way we wanted them to.”

 

Bear in mind the fact that Cambridge Analytica’s parent company was in the business of developing psychological warfare operations/programs for governments for decades. I’m not sure if they’re still doing so? But in the context of this essay, Cambridge was waging a de facto psychological warfare advertising (propaganda) campaign against the American voting public. Yet this doesn’t seem to bother many Americans or perhaps they just haven’t connected the dots yet?

 

Moreover, my intellectual hero, Noam Chomsky, clued us in a long time ago regarding the Advertising industry as well as the Public Relations industry and informed us that in the early days of Advertising & Public Relations, they were more honest & referred to them as propaganda; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PfIwUlY44CM

 

Mull this over for a bit because it’s a critically important point for us all to reflect on. I feel that sometimes I may come across as lecturing or preaching but at the risk of sounding like one of those hated, intellectual elite, I see daily the deterioration of our intellectual standards & critical/analytical thinking skills.

 

In magazines, newspapers, books, radio, television, & movies, editing/proofreading seems to be vanishing and few seem to care? And this intellectual apathy regarding standards of quality or accuracy is clearly reflected in terms of what is available for us to watch on television.

 

It seems the dumber, the more crude, vulgar, backstabbing, etc. you are in television series, the more popular your program becomes & therefore the more money your show brings in. And it’s a race to the bottom, just look at who’s occupying the oval office. Perhaps I should remind people here that I grew up in a poor, single parent home, and am definitely not from some elitist background. I have worked my ass off for my whole life in terms of trying to educate myself to the best of my abilities. So, if you try to dismiss me as just another elitist snob, you’re only showing your ignorance & prejudice against anyone who can read beyond a sixth-grade level.

 

Another way of looking at Cambridge’s “ad campaign,” for Trump’s presidential campaign is the casual manner & tone of Kaiser’s last statement; “…until they saw the world the way we wanted them to.” This is uttered in an almost blasé (unconcerned) tone & attitude. Of course, Mao Zedong’s “Cultural Revolution” in China from 1966 to 1976 killed anywhere from 500,000 to over 2,000,000 Chinese citizens in their “re-education” program, but it occurred to me, what if China’s leaders or any world leaders referred to that horror as casually with; “until they saw the world the way we wanted them to?”

 

America is supposed to stand for freedom, democracy, liberation but we seem to have become so complacent (unbothered) regarding the horrors being committed around the world by bloody tyrants & dictators that a propaganda campaign employed by the Republican party & executed by a company like Cambridge, receives little attention by the media & little concern by our citizens?

It appears to me that we—American citizens—have become numb not only mentally but also ethically/morally. Yet we still love to strut around proclaiming to the world how wonderful & powerful we are as a nation? And the only time we get passionate is when the politicians & their handmaidens, the media, manipulate us into a frenzy regarding an American or small number of Americans has been captured or killed.

 

And when the latest “crisis” is over, we slip right back into our somnambulant (sleepwalking) stupor (a condition of greatly dulled or completely suspended sense or sensibility). America’s hypocrisy regarding our professed principles & values and the reality of the millions of innocents killed around the globe by our bombing and our support of so many bloody dictators i.e. Trump’s heroes & idols, has made a mockery of our hollow rhetoric.

 

Above all, as some historian has pointed out, the way a nation treats the people of other nations, eventually comes home i.e. think of how our soldiers have treated Iraqi civilians, and the people of Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen, etc. etc. etc. And think of the way American mercenaries like Blackwater, assaulted the people of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina or the militarization of our police forces around the country. Before I move on from this topic, think about this warning from Pastor Niemoller in Nazi Germany as the brown shirts (Trump’s idea of fine people; see his speech re: the violent protest in Charlottesville):

 

First they came for the Communists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Communist

Then they came for the Socialists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Socialist

Then they came for the trade unionists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a trade unionist

Then they came for the Jews
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Jew

Then they came for me
And there was no one left
To speak out for me

 

Finally, I ask you, where are all those “good Christians,” who believe in Christ? Again, just more flagrant hypocrites who choose when to observe & when to ignore Christ’s “Sermon on the Mount.” I stopped calling myself a Christian, decades ago and am probably a borderline atheist or agnostic but I know in my heart that I am far more of a Christian than the majority of those who do consider themselves Christians.

 

Admittedly, I may have veered slightly off topic a bit but not really. One of our gravest problems as citizens of the United States is our moral laxity (careless or negligent). And please don’t lump me together with those phony or faux “Christians,” when I point out these glaring contradictions.

 

Okay, let’s get back to Cambridge Analytica but first I just want to insert; I bet Cambridge University wishes that this company hadn’t used its name because Cambridge University is one of the oldest & most revered universities in the world.

 

Moreover, speaking of this ancient hollowed university, I am sadly reminded that in the overall analysis of higher education today, there is very little pretense anymore of pursuing a university education because it is the mark of a well-rounded or cultured person. No, it’s pretty blatant now that young people pursue a college degree with one aim in mind i.e. a high-paying career.

And I can anticipate your response, yeah, culture & all those lofty ideals are all fine & dandy but money is more important than all that stuff. Well perhaps I can show you the utility of pursuing the humanities & yeah, I know that public education today especially at the secondary level (middle & high school) has been forced to teach only the material that will be on the standardized tests.

 

But here’s how we can beat them at their own game! First of all, I can show you a simple mnemonic strategy/technique that will blow your mind because it makes memorizing data, facts, information so much easier & that will take a great weight off your mind when taking those pointless standardized tests.

 

Consequently, your mind & your spirit will be freed-up to pursue the truly valuable knowledge that will help you in the big picture of what our lives can be. It dawned on me somewhere in my twenties that what we should study is what the rich study. Simplistic? No, not if you reflect on it for a bit.

 

Let’s start at the top because if you’re going to be the best at whatever profession you wish to excel in, you must set your sights on what skills the best in your field possess. And in academia, the most prestigious scholarship you can win is a Rhodes Scholarship. I actually visited Oxford University on one of my trips to Europe because I had long been curious as to exactly what Rhodes Scholars studied & the simplicity of their course of study was refreshing.

 

First of all, you must’ve already earned a B.A. and must have excelled in not only your academic subject but also in athletics & as a leader. And the core of your studies as a Rhodes Scholar boils down to your meeting with a professor—they call them dons—once a week, I believe? They give you reading assignments in the classics & a writing project on what you read then you meet & the don quizzes you to gauge the depth of your understanding of the material you read & guides your efforts.

 

For over 40 years, I’ve been trying to get this simple but powerful point through to family & friends but I’m usually dismissed as being out there in left field or something. So, answer me this; If studying the classics in literature, history, philosophy, political science, etc. is such a waste of time, why do the elite, the 1%, study these subjects?

 

I’ll tell you why, it’s because pursuing academic excellence develops an excellence of mind i.e. superior critical & analytical thinking skills. I can personally attest to the truth of this. When I first started taking courses at a local community college, I had to take the English Placement Test. Well, I scored so low that they told me that I’d have to take remedial English which consisted of setting at a desk with a cassette player & headphones on as I listened to; “See Dick & Jane, see Spot,” etc. I put up with that bullshit for about a week and dropped-out.

 

I then started taking business courses not because I was interested in becoming a businessman but because I thought they might be useful at some point in my future. I dropped-out of many courses over the next several years, sometimes half-way or even three-quarters of the way through. I was bored to tears & I worked at a wide variety of what I called Mickey Mouse jobs i.e. pumping gas, flipping burgers, etc.

 

I was a young man in search of adventure so I started going to Europe, sometimes on a one-way ticket with a couple hundred bucks in my pocket. And I met some very intelligent people on my travels & picking their brains for good authors to read, I fell in love with some of the greatest writers i.e. Hemmingway, Dostoyevsky, Hesse, Steinbeck, etc.

It had been five years since I’d taken that first English Placement Test but I decided to give it another shot because I wanted to take some courses in writing & literature but was told again that I must take this damn test. And to my utter surprise, this time I scored in the top 10% on the test so now I could take any courses in the English dept. that I wanted to. And lo & behold, I ended-up earning a B.A. in English lit. How’s that for going from bone-head English (that remedial class with the cassette player) to graduating in English.

 

I realized some time later that the only logical explanation for this phenomenon had to be the fact that by reading great writers, your vocabulary, comprehension, & writing abilities can’t help but improve significantly.

 

I’ve tried many times over the years to explain or defend this course of study & here’s an analogy I’ve often used; let’s say that you’re going to be in a foot-race against the fastest runner in your school. Clearly, you’re going to have to give every last ounce of energy, effort, spirit or whatever you want to call it, if you truly want a shot at winning that race.

 

The same goes for intellectual excellence i.e. you must pit your brain against the best minds that have ever lived. Of course, it’s very unlikely that you’ll surpass them but by engaging with that level of thinking, you’re going to push your mind to the greatest level it is capable of attaining & this will set you head & shoulders above most of your competition in the modern marketplace of work.

 

Furthermore, here are some other arguments for striving to develop your intellect that I copied from watching a short, You Tube video I stumbled across a few weeks ago; “Why You Should Read Books; 15 Benefits:”

 

Acquire knowledge

Improve memory

Strengthen critical & analytical skills

Advance your career

Improve writing skills

Reduce stress & anxiety

Improve focus & concentration

Boost inspiration & motivation

Learn at your own pace

Stimulate imagination

Improve conversation skills

Become more empathetic

Sleep better

Source of companionship

Increase your lifespan

 

Okay, you’re probably wondering what this side-trip of mine has to do with the whole Cambridge Analytica scandal and Facebook? In a nutshell, if we had stronger critical & analytical thinking skills, we wouldn’t be so easily suckered by the bogus types of posts, ads, propaganda that inundates us on “social media” platforms like Facebook. By-the-way, here’s a valuable tip for those of you who are serious about developing that other 90% or more of your brain that is lying dormant, buy a copy of “Problem Solving & Comprehension” by Whimbey & Lochhead, $11 on Amazon.

 

By-the-way, a Jesuit scholar (some of the best scholars in the world) suggested this book to me when I went to the remedial learning lab in the library at Cal State University at Long Beach after doing horribly on a test in a history course. Find a friend or relative or two who’d like to stretch their minds as well & work the problems in this book together. I’m sure you’ll be amazed & very pleased at what you will accomplish.

Bottom-line, our public-school system has been neglected & undermined for decades so we must take our education into our own hands. And if you care about not only your own welfare but the well-being & the future of your loved ones, you now know some concrete steps that you can take to empower yourself.

 

“Social media,” is weakening us mentally & helping the powers that be to enslave us. The clock of history is gradually being turned back to the days of feudalism. Bullshit? Look at what they’re doing to the hard-won progress of the Women’s Movement. Those “Christian” fundamentalists are salivating at the growing prospect of overturning Roe vs. Wade so women will have to go back to back-alley butchers for abortions. Ignore what’s going on around us at your own peril.

 

Perhaps you don’t remember or maybe you’ve simply never learned about the Dark Ages & what feudal life was like? In short, the nobility i.e. lords, kings, priests, etc. got the best of the crops that their serfs & the peasants who worked the fields produced and peasants’ families usually went hungry & begged for scraps from the lords’ tables gorging themselves at their banquets. Look around at the wealth of Jeff Bezos & the Walmart family whose wealth equals half of the American public.

 

American workers’ wages have basically been stagnant for the past 40 years & most of us are forced to work two or three jobs desperately trying to keep our heads above water. So, if none of this bothers you, just keep on amusing yourself to death by watching the crap served up on T.V. and keep attending those Trump rallies where he makes you feel good by scapegoating those even worse off than you i.e. the Mexicans & other Latinos from Central America fleeing the drug lords, drought, & the in your face corruption of their governments—who followed our own government’s model.

 

My intention when I started this essay was to thoroughly go through the entire documentary & break it down step-by-step but I know that only perhaps one out of a thousand or maybe even ten thousand who might stumble across this essay, would take the time to read. We’ve become a people with the attention span of a gold fish & we’re obsessed with pictures i.e. selfies & video and I’m growing very weary of expending so much energy in trying to communicate with the intellectually lazy. And Trump is merely a symptom of this sad state of our society. I can’t and I choose not to waste my spirit & my intellect on those who don’t give a shit. So, more power to you but I feel no sympathy for those who have the ability to improve their lot in life but prefer to sit on the couch & watch “The Walking Dead.”

 

Addendum

 

I was in a bar on my birthday back in 2018 and got into a lively discussion with a few guys around me, we got to the subject of Facebook. This guy tried to tell me that he loved it because it was free. I told him, oh yeah, then why does Zuckerberg make billions from it?

I didn’t feel it was worth trying to explain to this guy who was obviously one of the unthinking masses how Facebook sells our data to corporations who then target us with their ads. In a nutshell, we are being stalked by corporate America & the federal government. We are their prey and we are a helluva lot less free than we imagine. And what people can’t see, they basically don’t care about i.e. I used to work in industrial x-ray & welders would walk through the areas we were x-raying in—and which we had roped-off with warning signs—and when we’d confront them they’d say, I don’t care, I’ve already had my children. What we don’t see is Zuckerberg’s ego. Facebook just had to pay a $5 billion dollar fine but it was less than 1% of Facebook’s worth & the next day, their stock went up by $6 billion. And Marky-Mark feels so smug that he refused requests from both Canada & the U.K. to appear before their committees scrutinizing disinformation & online election influence campaigns.

I’d say that Zuckerberg, like the countless other corporate cockroaches, clearly feel that they are above the law because they are never held accountable for their countless criminal acts & this basically makes them fascists. And the most important thing to bear in mind is that these oligarchs like Zuckerberg, strut the world stage like they’re the untouchables just as Al Capone thought he was. Note that Trump’s best buddy, Putin and his circle of comrades are often referred to as oligarchs as well but that’s just a polite cover for what they really are, the Russian mafia!

 

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/facebook-uk-canada-parliaments-invite-mark-zuckerberg-to-first-ever-com 

 

I’ll boil-down a key lesson I have learned from the 40 years or better that I have been studying politics in America. Whenever you hear someone make the claim that our government is the problem, the enemy, etc. Bear in mind that this is the result of the “con”-servatives propaganda campaign that they began as soon as FDR enacted the New Deal. And what they really want is for us to get rid of all regulations that prevent them from making even greater profits i.e. environmental regulations, IRS regulations, labor regulations, etc. etc. etc. But they definitely don’t want to get rid of all the government subsidies they get. The oil industry, the pharmaceutical industry, the high tech industries, etc. all depend on & receive billions of dollars in subsidies from us the taxpayers. Take the Internet for example. We subsidized its invention mostly through tax dollars given to the Pentagon but as soon as an invention proves successful, the government gives it to private corporations who receive all the profits but we don’t get a share of those profits or even a discount on the invention or product. Listen to what the beloved FDR had to say about our rights as Americans, as human beings & tell me again how corporate America is so wonderful & Trump is your hero.

The Early Warning Signs of Fascism

 

  • Powerful and continuing nationalism
  • Disdain for human rights
  • Identification of enemies as a unifying cause
  • Supremacy of the military
  • Rampant sexism
  • Controlled mass media
  • Obsession with national security
  • Religion and government intertwined
  • Corporate power protected
  • Labor [sic] power suppressed
  • Disdain for intellectuals & the arts
  • Obsession with crime & punishment
  • Rampant cronyism & corruption
  • Fraudulent elections