Post Election Thoughts, Aged for you Pleasure  

2017.04.11
14:15

I haven't posted my dopey views on current political and other events for quite a while.  Mostly because of a combination of chronic illness, and being chronically disheartened in the state of our nation and us peoples therein.

So, I have two significant (imho) thoughts that are way overdue, and I'll toss them onto the table.  One of my current favorites, Chris Arnade, on medium, at the guardian and more regularly @Chris_arnade, provides the reason why. "To be blunt. I don't want to write about Trump just like most of you who yell at me don't want him to be President -- but reality."


I.  The Election of Thump Is A Symptom
(most of this written weeks ago)

Thump as president is not going to destroy some golden age of America.  He is but a symptom of many many bad things in this country that have been going on for years.  Our ruling class gave us the Iraq war and all the other stupid horrible wars; the trillion dollar bailouts of crooked Wall Street banks; the loosening of the few remaining bonds on corporate power; the electoral system completely captured by big money, wholly owning the congress and the judiciary.  The real clown show was there, in full force for decades, on November 7.  The Thump presidency is just pulling back the curtain.

It is facile and natural to seek one or maybe two causes to explain away a shocking election result such as Thump.  The reality is many forces coincided for his nomination and election.  Russian manipulation is not one of those forces, but that is it's own farce.  These forces were also represented in the millions of voters/supporters of Bernie.  I won't bore you with a recitation of those forces as I see them, but I will name one.  Despair.  Again, from Chris Arnade, his work was compiling a chronicle of drug addiction in parts of the country,  He said, "(a)ddiction is a byproduct of despair; so is voting for Trump."

What should never be discounted or forgotten is the role and responsibility of the Democrats and the so-called left/actual neoliberal garbage of the past 25 years in preparing the ground for a successful Thump candidacy.  Far beyond the fixed nomination of a horrible candidate, and her horrible and stupid failed campaign.  (Uh-oh, here he goes on Hillary.  Again.) Nope, my dear reader, no need for another screed on  denied Queen Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton, as a brit comedian summed it up beautifully for me and for all of us.

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GLG9g7BcjKs

"How shit have you got to be, to lose to that!"

That succinct summation of the ultimate (we fervently hope) failure of Clinton is just as accurate when extended.  How shit a country have you got to be, to elect Thump as your president?


II. Repeat A Lie Until It Becomes What Everybody Knows is True
(again, most of this is older thoughts from weeks ago.)

“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.”

We are seeing this maxim of propaganda technique in full effect these days.  The list of accusations levied against Putin/Russia grows, and despite the glaring absence of evidence to back these accusations, they are repeated.  Incessantly.  And, with repetition, more and more people come to accept them as truthful.  And actual evidence, much less proof, becomes superfluous.

Even sensible people whom I read regularly have been beaten down by the repetition, such that they grant the possibility that some of these allegations are true, in the absence of any evidence beyond so many people think so, it might be a little bit true.  Yep, repetition fucking works.  Unless you consciously fight it.