Because when a good thing is used to mass-murder, it becomes a bad thing
So sorry, Opie (and many of my dear friends) but Liberalism has been weaponized, and has become the new death-dealing supremacy, imperialism, Klansman-righteous hubris, and yes, disgusting evil
Hey folks
I’ve got several really great openings for relevant history essays that I intended to finish before now, but the ground keeps shifting (and the bullhorn dishonesty-indicators of BigMedia keep wildly misdirecting everyone) making some messages especially hard to deliver, under these funhouse-mirror circumstances.
But I did recently see a very particular problem, where my anti-tribalism calls me to clearest duty.
I have to start off with a full disclaimer – not just to be honest, but also in hopes that my reasoning might not be so easily dismissed, by those who have still not brought their thinking out of tribalism.
I have myself made countless, and in many cases outright snarky defences of Liberalism (especially twenty years ago, when that still seemed the natural balance for so many ‘advanced western nations’). Including the simplest (and most foolish) formulation: “What have you got against Liberty, dummy?” (which is a trivial logic operation on words, not at all a sincere engagement with the argument).
There is a great deal to be said for the philosophy itself (big fan of John Stuart Mill’s take, especially) and there are many policies which stemmed from it, which have been widely beneficial for many.
But what year do we think this is, exactly? – and where did we get (or more clearly, how have we kept any of) the idea that we are THE (or even A) repository of moral standards, principle and sanity?
To be brutally blunt about both of those – the ‘Civilized’ West has been at war against the poor of the global East and South for this entire century, non-stop (since Sept 12th 2001). We normal citizens don’t actually feel as if we are at war, because there is no draft, so most of those being sent to fight are poor people we don’t know, and the whole thing is being run on credit, so it will have to be paid by our grand-kids, not us – and meanwhile, our politicians mouth grand pieties, wag fingers, and smile a lot.
But then – War really isn’t the right word for this – because none of the countries where we have all gleefully mass murdered for corporate profit and glorious empire ever threatened us – AT ALL – IN ANY WAY. So we should really call this a quarter century of industrial lynching of the poor, by ‘civilized’ us, as a collective.
Problem is, if we were that honest with ourselves (even once, for five minutes) we could no longer pretend to be the good and enlightened ones of the earth, who are here to teach all the unwashed barbarians how to act properly at the point of our sophisticated Liberal “ethical” bayonets (despite the fact that as a population, we are clearly the least happy, sane, hopeful or satisfied humans on earth).
This, I’m afraid, is all that is left of once vital Liberalism – a shrill assertion of continued moral supremacy, even amidst an endless pattern of mass murder (and please note I have taken shots at the once vital left and once vital right, many times already – so this clique of centrist sanctimony is not being singled-out in particular, but rather, just getting an overdue glance out of fairness and principle).
It isn’t just that we insist things like stigma and “hateful speech” are crucial, whereas the endless slaughter of the foreign poor for corporate profit is just business as usual (though we, especially the relatively comfortable middle-classes in the west, absolutely do, do that), it is that in our determined tribalism, we have taken up the habit of endlessly defending the entirely indefensible. We rationalize killing as moral, we back delegated (and much hidden) mass murder, and lie constantly to dehumanize whole populations we know nothing about, all with truly fantastic self-righteous (supremacist) pride in our supposed ‘anti-racism’ the entire time.
Liberalism is now the state-serving power-block faction most directly opposed to PRINCIPLE ITSELF.
Obama was soothing, articulate – he made it look good, and made people who supported him feel good – but IT was all still one hundred percent EVIL. from the day he saved the bankers bonus packages, renewed the anti-freedom patriot act, and foreclosed on five million homeowners (the greatest theft of Black American wealth in history) to the day he destroyed diplomatic relations with Russia on his way out the door, just to leave a world-destabilizing time-bomb to bother incoming Trump.
No really, I mean that, Obama is a charming war criminal, same as W (and Biden, and Trump, too).
Liberals, we can’t help noticing, still completely adore Obama. They lick all that African blood off their hands and grin – so tasty! So enlightened of us.
If we were a sane and moral society, the way we keep claiming, if Liberal institutions really were in charge here, the way only those (mostly boomers) who are comfortable and isolated from the harsh realities faced by the western young, can still believe, then all of those war criminals would be in, or on their way to, prison, the western states as a group would be on a path of peace, prosperity and renewal, and we’d all be working hard on making the future not just survivable, but also utterly fantastic.
What we are doing here instead, is concentrating ever harder on increasing our debt to boost profitable death and supremacy industries (why we keep starting all these wars all around the world, and for which we keep borrowing money, while signing our grand-kids name on the note – I mean honestly, can you think of a sleazier scam than making our babies pay, to kill their babies?)
THAT’S LIBERALISM! (our own debased, demented and degraded popular insult to it, anyhow)
And while I’m on that future of indentured servitude (and/or nuclear hell on earth) which we have collectively decided to gift our young, let’s not forget, the collective west has not only been murdering the foreign poor all century without any shame or pause whatsoever, we’ve been eating our own young even longer than that – four straight generations now – which means we shouldn’t even be calling ourselves a civilization anymore, we’re more of an all-things-must-go fire-sale, really.
A civilization is a vast and complex array of forces of survival, thriving, creativity, belief and cohesion which together, aspire to impart the maximum bequest of wealth, inspiration, growth and potential to their young, so their whole culture will flourish over time, reaching ever higher levels of sophistication and more humane living.
That is so not us, it isn’t even funny.
You know what we do to cultures all around the world which are like that?
We despise and bomb them (and/or do our best to utterly destroy them, economically).
In China, roughly sixty percent of young people (under thirty) are now home-owners, not just renters, in the US and Canada, we’re well under twenty percent now, and still sinking fast. But we’ve been going the wrong direction on all of those basic survival and thriving metrics for a half a century without any pause, (or any popular demand whatsoever from Liberals to fix it), so to call this a short-term crisis is either dumb or dishonest. This is long term a plan for ruin, which is now bearing fruit, as designed.
I hate to return to the demented cult in which I was raised so often, but the false doctrine I experienced there, and the shockingly persistent denials I have observed ever since, continue to be incredibly illuminating to this strange historical moment (so filled with denied harm and false righteousness).
The weird thing is that for all the arguments I have seen about that commune gone sour, dissecting the fine details of what was wrong (on multiple dimensions, to be sure), no one just cuts the Gordian knot. The downfall was complex, but the refutation of any similar community project is very simple – if you destroy your own young, you aren’t a community at all, you are a gang of cannibals (psychic, or otherwise).
For Liberalism to be a real thing here, we’d need to be consistently producing youth in great numbers who were energized, empowered, hopeful and proud to be joining the ranks of our rising and thriving civilization – again, this is so not us, it is actually tragic. We waste potential on a staggering scale.
Among the key details which still confuse many (though by no means all) of my boomer friends, is the confusion of felt-rights with economic realities. Women are now free to work anywhere, men are free to experience emotions, and my gay friends can all get married – so why aren’t we all happy yet?
Because those were not actually the key problems, those are civilizational luxury goods – second-order problems that we can each dig into, and advance with our own willpower and determination – provided we aren’t locked into a desperate, tortuous, debilitating and endlessly frustrating struggle for survival.
But we are though, Blanche, we are.
So yeah – all the stuff that made that boomer cohort feel so heroic counts, but while they were making themselves feel great, dancing on the top of Maslow’s pyramid, they bought into the main con of our historical age, which has undermined every right, for every subsequent generation, so their ‘gains’ don’t count for anyone but them (can you still call them rights, when you take them away with you, as you go?)
What do I mean by “The Main Con?” Well, try this thought exercise. Imagine if, for the last half a century, all of that boomer pension money which has, (through plans like 401k and RRSP) gone into the capitalist games of stocks, bonds and derivatives markets, had been invested at home, in the communities where it was earned, and the surplus so-generated was then used to spread enduring community good elsewhere (as the gifting community itself, saw fit).
That is, what if, instead of giving all of the power of our collected labour over to capital, letting them exploit, extort and mass murder (as long as we get our annual return) and thus making sure they have ultimate control over all projects and planning, and a skim of every game in town, at every level...
...what if we used what we earned, to make our lives (and those of our kids and communities) better.
Would our returns look more like a steady two to five percent, than a rocky ten or twelve? Why yes they would. But if we had spent the last half a century responding to our communities with the capital they generated, we would not have a shortage of housing or jobs, because we wouldn’t look at offshoring as a simple clear paper-gain in immediate returns, we’d also consider the long term loss to the community – and then WE WOULD SIMPLY SAY NO. That is, take responsibility, like adults.
Put another way – how do we feel about rich bastards who make a lot of money with a nation’s workers and market, and then run off with that money to a different economy which didn’t help to generate it, but offers better short-term returns?
We think those people are immoral, don’t we? Stupid, too. Evil greed-heads.
So why have we got so used to thinking we have a right to do that ourselves, to our own communities?
This was a long term social engineering process (not just TV – but many of Chomsky’s “Properly Educated People” in the high culture branches of BigMedia also) – to train a vast wave of self-described idealists to proudly destroy every ideal they proclaimed, and it is crucial that we notice this evil plan worked.
It isn’t very pleasant to think that we’ve been that far wrong, for this many years, compounded (and we really do like to keep our heads very firmly up our asses, to avoid any chance of running into mirrors) but it is very simply true, by every objective measure you can name. Rebels became slave-masters by corporate proxy, without even sacrificing their obnoxious sanctimony.
That most especially self-congratulatory generation has spent the last half a century investing in Corporate Satan for the sake of ten percent compounded – simultaneously claiming the status of plucky underdogs “against the system” – but also fully-entitled market-profiteering psychopaths.
All while loudly proclaiming immaculate LIBERALISM as the great cure-all tonic which made them the fabulous and morally superior beings you see today before you on facebook, whining endlessly about every single catastrophe their own infantile rejection of responsibility has caused the world.
Need a head-picture? Liberalism is Nancy Pelosi glaring a silent “F@ck you” and saying “Can you repeat the question?” as if she didn’t understand she was being called-out for obvious and grotesque corruption.
Liberalism is the name for a thief and a cheat and a rapist, who is also a tiresome and moronic scold.
There is no spanking big enough (I mean there is, but I hate radioactivity, even if we do probably deserve it, for our endless violence and the always present infuriating side-order of sanctimony).
So in the meantime, with the greatest of respect and affection both, maybe we ought to try working on some cranial-posterior undocking, and perhaps hunting down an overdue mirror? Pausing the righteousness, just a sec’.
Sure, we might not like what we’ll see, but at least we’ll be finally looking, not sneering and mass-murdering in a mindless tribalist fugue.
You never know – down that sort of road (as opposed to this already ruined and exhausted foot-path) we might even begin to learn to actually BE the kind of people who could make Liberalism function once again, and DO good works in the world, instead of just serving to rationalize endless racist and generational predation, while the idiot arsonists whine about all of the fires they set themselves.
Couldn’t hurt to at least try that approach – just once – right?
(Not saying St. Peter is going to want a persuasive excuse, at very least – still – legacy, folks)
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I came across a few unusually strong pieces which don’t fit anywhere in particular (that is, they bring their own theme, rather than easily fitting into one of mine) but are very much worth thinking about.
So rather than sorting or saving, and letting them get stale, I’ll just share them below.
Below that are some first rate sources for genuine information (because BigNews really is shamelessly devoted to BigWar – making you a big fat backer of supremacist mass-murder, every time you buy-into their always evil spin).
But before I dig in, I should share a great comedy line from the year of Obama’s election, which has stayed with me ever since (sorry I can’t find attribution for it, I always prefer to give full credit - but even AI couldn’t chase it down for me!)
“Gay marriage?” the black comic said, with strained incredulity, “My house is worth eight dollars!”
Important to remember that back then (not so long ago), Obama and Hillary were both still making passionate speeches AGAINST gay marriage, on ‘MORAL’ GROUNDS. This too is what passes for Liberalism, now.
Very sad, for sure. (It was a mostly-good thing while it lasted, and with some serious soul-searching and revitilization, it might still become a vital force again).
Now here’s something truly wonderful from the brilliant French Historian Emmanuel Todd – once again, cutting the Gordian knot directly, in a way we all ought to do, far more often (what the long-view is for).
Here’s a cartoonist whose work I’ve not seen before, once again demonstrating how simple, modest and inoffensive means can sometimes bring the full-freight, hard, with truly extraordinary concision.
Here is journalist-hero Glenn Greenwald with an extended answer to a viewer question which is both stunningly relevant (in several ways at once) and also long overdue. Nuanced intelligent and incredibly on point. Yes, Ted Kaczinsky was truly crazy, but that still doesn’t mean he was entirely wrong. (no tennis with Caravaggio!)
Now – some of the best places to hear sane people who don’t want to kill the world for corporate profit (which is, sadly, a position no longer represented AT ALL on BigMedia – BigWar’s faithful sales-arm)
For some I will share a particular story (but do check-out the channel in general) for others, I’ll just have the channel-link itself – but do have a look, eh? – many serious antidotes to boredom and cluelessness, I promise!
A lot of kids have a phase when they want to be a fireman or astronaut, and then later outgrow that – very few of our heroes survive information and experience, and endure in our hearts. But even though Glenn Greenwald is much younger than I am – he’s still who I want to be, when I grow up!
No really – I’ve always seen myself as operating from the kind of principle that makes rebels think you like them, (rather than principle) until they get corrupt and off-track and find that you are now infuriatingly calling-out their imperial nakedness. No one does this like Greenwald. Singlehandedly saved Lula from Prison (no kidding) then turned right around to criticize the excesses of his supreme court – outstanding!
Yes there is still moral clarity, clear principle and sheer guts in journalism – just watch Glenn.
System Update with Glenn Greenwald – On Rumble
Brian Berletic is calm, rational, brings clear and irrefutable evidence for his points, and is without question one of the most cynical and depressing people on the web.
He is also correct about the direction things are going in, so damn often it is outright scary. Geopolitical analysis genius.
The New Atlas - A trap for Putin? Minsk three at best
Professor Glenn Diesen is a great example of what one person can do if they believe in their cause. He is an expert on European history and diplomacy, in particular the peace of Westphalia, which followed a hundred years of ruinous war, and laid the foundation for Europe’s great rennaissance flowering. His manner is still self-effacing and professorial (not a media influencer type) but the people he speaks with are so intelligent and interesting, and his own questions so useful, we always learn a lot (often, as he does too!)
Glenn Diesen – With Guest ex CIA analyst Ray McGovern
I am so very grateful for Nima and Dialogue works – because his own pleasant and intelligent manner always brings out the best in his interviewees – and his guests are often diplomatic, economic, intel community and military whistleblower-superstars. People who saw the evil sausage being made, and have burned all their bridges back – so they are telling all the truth they can, to any who will listen (Liberals, mostly not).
Dialogue Works (with guest Pepe Escobar – who is superb on BRICS in particular)
I listen to Alexander and Alex pretty much every day (sometimes both of their own solo stand-up shows, and a Duran episode also). Alex is funnier (and very sharp) Alexander has encyclopedic detail and also a breadth of experience and memory which often shines light on a key angle that our BigNews analysts never go near, but once you see it, you just know it is the main reality which is being obscured so hard.
The Duran - Ukraine Battlefield reality (will shock TV addicts, but it is needed)
For my old leftist chums, Danny Haiphong is a tonic and a reminder about what REAL rebellion looks, sounds and feels like. Unapologetically anti-war and Anti Imperialism like no one else – and gleeful with it!
So many great guests, too (and you can tell they really enjoy his spirit and fire).
Danny Haiphong (Here with Brian Berletic and KJ Noh)
Sean Foo is comparatively new for me. I’ve heard him on Danny Haiphong’s excellent high-energy show several times, but I’m also very impressed with his own short youtube stories. Well presented, up to date, and extremely insightful pieces on macro-economics, trade policy, markets and currencies.
It is INCREDIBLY helpful to see what we look like, to the not-so-crazy side of the world (again, something BigNews has clearly taken an oath never to mention, even once, lest we start asking useful questions).
Sean Foo - The Dollar is Done (yes a tad hyperbolic and clickbait-ish – also happens to be true, though, structural and irreversible, only exacerbated by Trump’s flailing)
The Electric Viking is more of an enthusiast than a journalist (though I do not mean that as an insult, the way it might sound). What I mean is that he is a keener, so he actually cares about the subject he is into. Sometimes he gets excited about stuff he is then disappointed about, later – but he is consistently honest about that, and I very much enjoy the sense of activity and energy he conveys, in terms of the heartening global investment in post-petroleum transport.
I also REALLY wish our local politicians had a few keeners like him advising them, instead of the plodding bureaucrat planners we can practically feel, setting fire to our tax money, so that we could be nimble and ‘on it’ when it came to electric vehicles and the practical future. Instead of obsolete, three steps behind and dying (in an industrial sense – which is a whole lot of quality of living, for Ontario).
The Electric Viking - 10 Game changing battery types in 2025
(why a battery plant planned years ago on then-current tech, will go bust, if plans are not rapidly and then also continuously updated - it’s log-balancing, not chair-endowing!)
Finally, here’s one of the best sources for under-recognized business information you’ll find today – how does global business look from the perspective of a western analyst in (and sympathetic to) China? Bracing and informative, every time!
This particular story is beyond hilarious – our Hubris has matured – bearing fruit now!
Inside China Business
Boeing and Airbus and bullshit western threats and utter absurdity! (we so done).
Wow – just after I suggest listening to the superb Glenn Diesen, he does a show with former British diplomat Ian Proud which makes my EXACT POINT – only with tons of extra scholarship and credentials to back it up (just in case you think I’m going too far – nope, we are WAY off course).
Thank you so much for this one, gentlemen – not only superb, but oh so timely!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q9WSFZfY9bU