I’m on sabbatical from politics as I rubber-tramp the north east (again) so, as I sit with laptop in a Redcar pub with wi-fi, will confine myself to saying that, as in 2016, I can’t share the despair or despondence of liberals …
… or their media …
… over what looks to be a clean sweep for the republicans: oval office, senate, house of representatives.
In 2016 Hillary had wanted for Syria the no fly zones she’d imposed on Libya. We all know how that worked out but, since Russia – in Syria at the request of the lawfully elected government in Damascus – would have ignored it, what she was advocating was nuclear brinksmanship.
For her part Kamala has spent the past thirteen months arming a genocide, and came to this election promising more of the same in the grotesque name of “Israel’s right to defend itself”.
So will Trump be better? Highly unlikely as regards the Middle East or China, though his presidency may end America’s proxy war on Russia in Ukraine sooner than a Democrat administration would have.
In any case …
… short of their compatriots coming home in flag draped coffins, Americans seldom vote on the basis of foreign policy. So what will Trump do at home? Here’s the British Marxist economist, Michael Roberts:
Why has Trump won? A first thought. Nearly every incumbent government in office during the pandemic slump and post-inflationary period has been ousted from power.
According to the AP Votecast survey, four in 10 voters named the economy and jobs as the most important problem facing the country.
One quote sums up why sufficient numbers of voters switched from Democrat to Republican. “I’ve been a Democrat my whole life and I haven’t see any benefits from that. Democrats have been sending funds to wars and resources to migrants rather than to Americans who are struggling. I trust Trump to put us first.”
The trouble is that Trump will put billionaires, corporations and fossil fuel companies first.
Well of course! How else is a presidential candidate, of red stripe or blue, to raise the vast sums needed to be in with a chance? Waddya think this is – a democracy?
Tweedledum and Tweedledee supporters debate the finer points of their respective candidates
* * *
Superb version of ‘Mother’ from the ‘Lockdown Sessions’ with Roger responding to the question “Should I trust the Government” by lipping “No fucking Way”.
Just about says it all, eh Phil?
Enjoy your sabbatical x
Jim
I’m doing just that, Jim. Lovely walk down the beach from Redcar to Saltburn this afternoon. Pix to follow.
https://caitlinjohnstone.com.au/2024/11/07/the-evil-warmongering-zionist-won-no-not-that-one-the-other-one/
“Turns out campaigning on the promise of continuing a genocide while courting endorsements from war criminals like Dick Cheney is not a great way to get progressives to vote for you.”
Who would’ve thought?
“One interesting point is that Donald Trump appears to have taken the battleground state of Michigan, where Kamala Harris was soundly rejected by the large Arab American population of Dearborn despite their voting overwhelmingly for Biden in 2020. Back in August, Harris famously shushed Muslim anti-genocide protesters at a campaign rally in Michigan by admonishing them with the words “I’m speaking”.
Well, who’s speaking now?”
In this Hobson’s choice of a contest, the outcome is down to the Democrats unbelievably dumb choice of fielding a vacuous empty vessel of a candidate who could not, in fact did not even bother, to win a single primary.
A Trump win is the Democrats fault.
As in 2016
“the Democrats unbelievably dumb choice of fielding a vacuous empty vessel of a candidate who could not, in fact did not even bother, to win a single primary.”
They threw the fight?
There’s a section near the end of this podcast…..
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V22ogRDv1oE&ab_channel=DanielDavis%2FDeepDive
……starting with Daniel Davis’s introduction at 46 minutes 30 seconds which shows a clip from CNN of the USA map showing all the places where Kamala Marionette had outperformed Biden’s 2020 result.
It was like all the lights went out. 58 Counties out of 3,244 ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_counties_and_county_equivalents).
As Caitlin Johnson observed:
“Turns out campaigning on the promise of continuing a genocide while courting endorsements from war criminals like Dick Cheney is not a great way to get progressives to vote for you.”
Or any regular cognitively sentient human being for that matter.
Who would’ve thought?
But those running Numptyland don’t see it as ‘throwing the fight’. They live in their own alternate reality that they are trying to impose and force on the rest of the planet.
As noted in this RT report from a few years back:
“the US political establishment got so used to creating its own reality and imposing it through media and entertainment, upon its own citizens as well as on foreigners, that it simply doesn’t know what to do when confronted with people on whom this trick doesn’t work – in this case, the Taliban.
This sort of thinking was on display last week when a prominent “security expert” advised her colleagues to look away from the images from Afghanistan to avoid getting triggered or traumatized – as if what was happening would somehow stop or vanish if they just averted their gaze.
Nebojsa Malic: RT op-ed. 16/08/2021.
https://www.rt.com/op-ed/532235-afghanistan-empire-narrative-collapse/
That despair and despondence of liberals …
……is taking a familiar turn
https://skwawkbox.org/2024/11/10/scratch-a-liberal-harris-supporters-turn-fascist-at-arab-americans-hispanic-community-over-trump-win/
Apparently, “some want a boycott, not of genocidal Israel, but of Arab-Americans for daring not to support their failed candidate”
Liberals acting like Mardy bums. Who would’ve thought?
Meanwhile, the contradictions of reality, as ever, suck.
Over to Richard Wolff:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fsX_z9nzRao&ab_channel=DialogueWorks
“For the first time, a couple of years ago, bondholders were unwilling to continue to fund the deficits of Great Britain, and [the UK government was thrown out]. Mr. Macron is now heading right down that same path. Bondholders have told the French that they are not going to continue to fund their national debt.
Here’s how it works. Bondholders are telling the French, you have to rein in spending … The bondholders are saying, you have to stop running deficits. And, as every undergraduate knows, the way you would rein in deficits could be to cut spending. But there is an alternative: It’s called taxing. And it’s called taxing corporations and the rich because the others don’t have any more for you to tax – you’ve done all you can [do with taxes on ordinary French citizens].
[However] taxing corporations and the rich … somehow, is not only ‘not doable’, but not debatable. It can’t be put on the table: Nothing. (or, something so minuscule that will never deal with the deficit). We now have too much debt. And it turns out that the government, like the American government, is facing the next few years where it will have to spend as much on servicing its debt as it is on defence. And that doesn’t leave very much for everybody else. And everybody else is saying: no, no, no, no, no, no.
And now the bondholder gets worried, because one way to resolve this would be to stop paying the bond holders and that, of course, must never be. So you’ve got two absurdities. You can’t stop paying the bondholders (when, of course, you can, but with dire consequences). And you can’t tax corporations and the rich. And, of course you can. I think we are reaching a point in which these contradictions have accumulated. You don’t have to be a Hegelian or a Marxist to understand that these accumulating contradictions are very profound, very large, and very fundamental”.
Arguably, the last word should go to Alistair Crooke with his usual sage like substance over style approach:
https://strategic-culture.su/news/2024/11/11/west-very-fundamental-accumulating-contradictions/
“They tell us that on the one hand that the world does not accept the western vision as being of universal application – and on the other hand, the West doesn’t have the financial clout to pursue global primacy – if it ever did: Zugzwang.”
What is really frustrating, for the present, is that one of numerous foodstuff’s I am unable to process is popcorn.