Rising fascism in the US

Thank god we’ve found the culprit of two full years of a half a billion dollar FBI treasonous grab for the presidency, right?? Aren’t you all glad that Justice has finally prevailed??

I’m sure you are.

You just really WANT to believe it's true. It's kind of endearing, and frightfully fascist.

glitterbag wrote:

You just really WANT to believe it's true. It's kind of endearing, and frightfully fascist.

Amen!

Although I would have described it as laughable.

Frank Apisa wrote:

glitterbag wrote:

You just really WANT to believe it's true. It's kind of endearing, and frightfully fascist.

Amen!

Although I would have described it as laughable.

I like equality, accountability, and honesty.

Hillary Clinton is a poster child for the opposite of each of those concepts. She has no scruples; she thinks the rules don’t apply to her. She lies like a rug and has always gotten away with it.

You think she should get away with it. That’s everything that’s wrong with the world. Thanks for your contribution.

The way I feel about Hillary Clinton is based solely on her attitude toward regular people, her lies, her ability to get away with dishonesty, law breaking etc.

I base my opinions of everyone on their own behavior.

She’s a criminal. She fabricated the Russia hoax, wasted hundreds of millions of tax payer dollars trying to deflect from the fact that a braying huckster beat her in a popularity contest.

She should spend the rest of her life in prison.

Lash wrote:

The way I feel about Hillary Clinton is based solely on her attitude toward regular people, her lies, her ability to get away with dishonesty, law breaking etc.

I base my opinions of everyone on their own behavior.

She’s a criminal. She fabricated the Russia hoax, wasted hundreds of millions of tax payer dollars trying to deflect from the fact that a braying huckster beat her in a popularity contest.

She should spend the rest of her life in prison.

Hillary Clinton shows more charity, good attitude, consideration of others, honesty and intelligence than you do...BY FAR...and does so on a regular basis.

You should spend the rest of your life locked up somewhere for your own safety.

Frank Apisa wrote:

Lash wrote:

The way I feel about Hillary Clinton is based solely on her attitude toward regular people, her lies, her ability to get away with dishonesty, law breaking etc.

I base my opinions of everyone on their own behavior.

She’s a criminal. She fabricated the Russia hoax, wasted hundreds of millions of tax payer dollars trying to deflect from the fact that a braying huckster beat her in a popularity contest.

She should spend the rest of her life in prison.

Hillary Clinton shows more charity, good attitude, consideration of others, honesty and intelligence than you do...BY FAR...and does so on a regular basis.

You should spend the rest of your life locked up somewhere for your own safety.

You’ve been a tried and true useful idiot for some of the most effective criminals in US government. Hillary Clinton’s culpability in the ridiculous Russia hoax is proven — and without breaking your mindless strident belief in it — you keep approving and/ or ignoring her crimes against American democracy.

This time, her crime is treason. She put in place more than one attempt at stealing the American presidency.

You brainless sycophants are equally guilty.

When I look at the world today, I see something chilling. Collapse is already here — and it’s spreading. And next to it is the curious juxtaposition of pretending that life will go on “normally.” I’ve warned for some time now that we’re entering an age of collapse, where our great systems will fail — and if you look around now, you can see it beginning to happen.

We’re going to talk about this in three forms — political, economic, and social systems — and on two levels, national and global systems. What’s alarming — oh no, am I an alarmist? — is that now our systems are visibly beginning to fail, and fail incredibly swiftly, in all of those ways.

Let’s begin with some obvious examples. In America, at the moment, you can’t get…baby formula. Think about that for a second. The richest country in the world can’t provide baby formula for its people. What on earth? It’s a vivid example of system failure. What kind of system? In this case, economic systems.

Could you have imagined a world without…baby formula…a decade or two ago? You’d better start imagining one now. What economic system failure means, boiled down to it’s most brutal and simplest level, is that our economies will not be able to provide the basics, as we enter the Event, the climate cataclysm that will cleave history in two.

Right now, a wave of mega-inflation is surging around the globe. It’s driven largely by climate change — and our nonexistent “response” to it. Harvests are failing, goods are getting harder and harder to distribute and ship, raw materials harder to source and attain. Inflation is going to keep rising — for the rest of our lives, with maybe a pause here and there. And as inflation goes on rising, the average person will get poorer.

But poorer doesn’t just mean “less money,” thought that’s bad enough. Poorer, on a civilizational level, means what happened in America. You can’t get things anymore. Basic things. Baby formula. But there’s a long, long list of things you can’t get in America, too. Decent healthcare, affordable medicine, safety from gun massacres, bodily autonomy if you’re a woman. This is what happens when societies get poorer. Shortages become the norm. You can see them beginning to happen in vivid, shocking detail now. Empty shelves are becoming the new normal. The age of abundance is over.

Our economies have failed. And they’re going to continue to fail. That brings me to failing social systems.

Think of how many generations our economies have failed at this point.

Boomers were the last ones to really live the dream — since then, our economies have been in decline, and that decline has accelerated rapidly. Gen X had it worse than Boomers, but not so bad as to cause total despair — enough to be comical. Millennials had it worse than Gen X — and they can’t afford to move out of their parents’ homes, or start families, so birth rates are declining. Zoomers have it far, far worse than Millennials — they’ll never be able to retire, they can’t get decent jobs, their lives are over before they began.

There’s a word to sum all that up — intergenerational inequality. What does intergenerational inequality do? It destroys the possibility of functioning social systems. Someone has to pay for them, after all — from retirement systems to post offices to hospitals and universities and so forth. Social systems must be funded from the public purse. But when people are struggling harder, generation after generation, getting poorer, there’s less left over to invest.

This is the real reason why young people are apathetic about politics. They know they can’t change anything even if they try. They don’t have the money, so what’s the point? Sure, they can vote in politicians who want to build social systems — and sometimes they do, like AOC or who have you. But those politicians are left powerless in the end, because societies in which generation after generation is getting poorer cannot afford to be functioning societies at all.

This isn’t just an American problem, of course — America never had many social systems thanks to the bitter legacy of apartheid, since social systems are for all. It’s a European problem, a worldwide problem. Even European social democracy is barely hanging by a thread at this point. In gentle Canada, extreme conservatives rise time and again. People who get poorer give up on politics. Downward mobility is the end of democracy. It creates a vicious spiral of poverty, apathy, resignation, because even if you want a functioning society, nobody can afford one, so what’s the point?

What happens without good social systems, though? People’s lives fall apart, even faster. They grow uneducated. Ill. Distrustful and hostile. Their minds narrow and their spirits wither. There is nowhere common to rub shoulders. Life becomes individualistic, a bitter struggle, in which everyone else is regarded with suspicion, an enemy. In the absence of community provided by real social systems, from libraries to parks to great and grand ones like retirement or educational systems, people turn to pre-modern forms of community in their search for belonging and meaning. They turn to fundamentalist religion. Conspiracy theory. They grow radicalized and look to crackpot theories like “The Great Replacement” in despair and confusion. Hate takes over when community dies.

Hate is spreading like wildfire through our societies. Read this terrible, heartbreaking story about a teacher in Florida who had to resign because she couldn’t tell her kids the truth if they asked her who she was married to — even after those kids, curious about her, because they loved her, found her wedding videos online. To another woman. You can’t even say the word gay to kids in her state.That is a form of annihilation. And that kind of hate is a cancer now metastasizing in our social bodies. Everyone from women to kids to minorities is under constant, relentless, brutal attack — and sometimes, more often, now, in the form of a massacre. Hate leads to violence. It’s an iron law of history.

In this way, economic collapse leads to social collapse. When people grow poor, when systems can’t provide basics, what happens? People turn on each other. They turn backwards, to fundamentalist religion, in a search for belonging, in a quest for the safety of the tribe, just for salvation, even just an explanation. They turn to fascism, fanaticism. They look to strongmen to bring order to the chaos surrounding them.

Conflict becomes the new normal. Have you noticed how our societies are now in intense, bitter, prolonged conflict? The far right against everyone else? This is why. Economic system collapse has led to social collapse. The bonds between people have ruptured, been torn apart, to the point where they don’t exist at all. The far right regards everyone else — women, gays, minorities, liberals, social democrats — as subhumans. That is how badly social bonds have frayed. And where once it used to be a tiny fringe, now it’s a potent political force, from America to Canada to France and beyond.

That brings me to my next form of collapse.

Conflict is taking over as our societies collapse. And that conflict is worsening. In America, accelerating violence on a shocking scale now barely even makes the headlines. There have been 198 mass shootings this year alone. And we’re not even halfway through. And that is just the terrifying surface of a deeper conflict, over who gets to be a person at all. The far right openly now wants to take away basic freedoms from anyone who doesn’t agree with it, and just as openly proclaims it’s going to end democracy in a year or two’s time.

In Europe, that conflict might still seem civilized, and it is. But it will spread there soon enough, too, as the far right continues to gain power globally. What happens when the first great European social democracy falls? What happens to NATO, the EU, the project of peace in Europe? Europe too will not escape this mega trend of conflict spreading — and of course, this is what Russia’s war on Ukraine is about: hate and violence, ignited by economic failure.

Underlying all of that is a dismal truth.

Our democratic systems barely work anymore. At all. They are failing in spectacular ways now. In America, a Supreme Court is taking autonomy from women — in ways Europeans would find absolutely shocking. They won’t be able to cross state lines, their personal information will be monitored, even buying a pregnancy test will be risky, “aiding and abetting” them will be a crime. That Supreme Court is doing it against the wishes of 70% of Americans. Think about what a thunderous failure of democracy that is.

Of course, this is the leading edge of a revolution America’s fanatics and theocrats and supremacists have long wanted. After they make women breeders, and turn their lives into Gilead, they’re going to come for minorities. Already, they talk about reinstituting segregation — under the guise, of course of “freedom.” Hey, I should be free not to have to sit next to you! They’ve already come for gay people — imagine, if you’re a European or Canadian, that saying the word gay to a kid is now against the law.

This is where the fanatics want to take us — and they won’t stop at America. They will come for Europe and Canada and everyone else next. That is because they are a global movement, with global aims. They want to create a kind of theocratic Western super-state. They believe the “white race” is “being replaced” or “going extinct.” They don’t understand that failing birth rates are a function of failing economies, not immigrants and liberals colluding to perform genocide on the master race. Their vision is a kind of Caliphate for the West — a religious super-state, governed by Christian Sharia Law, in which only the pure of blood and true of faith are really people at all.

They meet one another and talk to one another and learn from one another, these fanatics. Tucker Carlson is friends with Viktor Orban is friends with Marine Le Pen and they’re all backed by Rupert Murdoch and now Elon Musk. They are a global movement, and increasingly, people back them. People back them because our systems are failing. Failing to the point of not even being to provide baby formula. And so people are choosing to regress, to revert back to older forms of order. Better to be a peasant under Duke Carlson and Sh*tlord Musk — at least that way, I have a place. I have a chance. I have belonging to something again — even if it’s the ridiculous fantasy of a theocratic-fascist Western Caliphate for the master race, which is the victim of a genoical global conspiracy to drink its kids blood.

This is how badly our systems have failed. People believe this stuff, ardently, to the point that they will back lunatics, hate their neighbors, give up on democracy, and revert right back to feudalism, fascism, and theocracy. The average person in life — what do they want? Belonging, meaning, stability, security. That’s about it. But if systems don’t give them that in a positive way — a community of equals, relationships, trust, meaningful work, a stable position in social life, a social contract that guarantees a certain level of stability — then they will seek it in a negative way. They will revert back to just wanting someone to obey, someone to hate, something to kill, and something to worship. The average person will happily, stupidly, blindly, desperately go right back to the Stone Age, in what are microseconds to history, if and when systems fail — and that is what is happening to our world now.

And it’s accelerating. Right now, you can’t get baby formula because of oligopolies and supply chain issues. Tomorrow, it’s going to be much worse. Think of everything that’s made with wheat. Think of everything that’s made with water — which includes you. Think of everything that needs to be shipped across an ocean. Everything that’s made with tiny bits of rare earths. The list goes and on and on, and it includes everything. How long does an air conditioner work at 51 degrees Celsius? How long does an energy grid last when an entire continent scorches? How long does an economy last when it can’t afford, find, manufacture, produce the basics anymore? How long does a society last when it can’t get them?

The primate brain takes over when the project of civilization dies. Peace and understanding are only possible when there is enough to go around. When there’s not, hate takes over. This is of course why poor countries have always struggled to be democracies. But now this is the future for all of us.

Our systems are failing now, just like I warned. You can see it happening in almost every headline — it’s the story behind the story. It will accelerate from here, and only get worse. Unless we ever do something about it.

I think a lot of people will think that piece hyperbolic; I don’t think so.

The conclusion drawn by the Wall Street Journal editorial board is stark and damning.

“[T]he Russia-Trump narrative that Mrs. Clinton sanctioned did enormous harm to the country,” it reads. “It disgraced the FBI, humiliated the press, and sent the country on a three-year investigation to nowhere.” Then: “Vladimir Putin never came close to doing as much disinformation damage.”

The editorial is titled: “Hillary Clinton Did It.”

A fiery, furious bit of rhetoric. Also rhetoric that is indefensible given the evidence. It is rhetoric aimed at scratching a long-frustrating itch rather than accurately informing readers.

The trigger for the editorial was testimony from Clinton’s 2016 campaign manager, Robby Mook, on Friday, as part of a criminal trial targeting a lawyer who worked for a firm hired by the campaign. Mook told the jury that Clinton had approved the leak of an allegation tying Donald Trump’s private business to a Russian bank as the election neared. This, the Journal argues, is what Clinton “did.”

The criminal trial centers on whether the attorney, Michael Sussmann, was working for the Clinton campaign when he brought the rumored digital link between Alfa Bank and the Trump Organization to the FBI and, if so, whether he failed to disclose that relationship to the bureau. Special counsel John Durham — appointed by Trump Attorney General William P. Barr to investigate the origins of the Russia probe, which so annoyed the then-president — appears to be hoping to bolster the idea elevated by the Journal: that Clinton was a primary trigger for allegations about Trump and Russia.

So let’s evaluate that, first in the context of the Alfa Bank theory.

There are two important things to recognize about the idea that a Trump Organization server was communicating in an unusual way with that bank. The first is that it was debunked almost immediately, including by me. There was no real evidence that anything suspicious or election-related was afoot, and there were lots of reason to think that the communications were an innocuous artifact of automated systems. It didn’t even make sense in the abstract. If you were setting up a weird back channel (for some reason!), why use a Trump-branded server?

In other words, the story didn’t even generate much static, beyond a community of fervent conspiracy theorists. Which is the second point: that community was already well-populated, thanks to months of speculation about Trump’s interactions with Russia.

In the event you don’t recall the 2016 election, we can illustrate this with data. Google searches and mentions on cable news channels show that a lot of attention was being paid to Trump’s possible interactions with Russia well before the Alfa Bank rumor became public at the end of October. There was a surge in Trump-Russia searches when that story came out, but only for a limited period.



Why was there already so much chatter about Trump and Russia? Because so many things had emerged to draw attention to the unusual nature of the candidate’s approach to that country.

In mid-June 2016, The Washington Post reported that Russian hackers were believed to have accessed the network of the Democratic National Committee. Material from that hack was published by WikiLeaks the following month, shortly before the Democratic convention. This deployment of material stolen by Russia and aimed at harming Clinton and the Democrats drew immediate suspicion. As did Trump’s public declaration at the end of the month that he welcomed Russian efforts to hack Clinton.

There was a robust conversation about possible business links between Trump and Russia. Conservative columnist George Will speculated that Trump wasn’t releasing his tax returns because he wanted to hide ties to Russia. Trump’s campaign manager gave an evasive answer about possible ties when asked — telling in part because that campaign manager, Paul Manafort, had his own known ties to Russia’s leadership. In June, The Post published a lengthy look at what was and wasn’t known about Trump’s business interests in Russia, a report that took on a different appearance after reports that Trump allies had softened anti-Russia language in the Republican Party’s 2016 platform.

All of that was the public understanding of the Trump-Russia question. But privately — like, at the FBI — things were more complicated still.

Manafort, for example, had been on the FBI’s radar already, being interviewed by the bureau even before he joined Trump’s campaign team. In early July 2016, another adviser to Trump’s campaign — someone who’d once been flagged as a potential target for recruitment by Russian intelligence — had traveled to Moscow. The release of the material stolen by Russia near the end of the month triggered an Australian diplomat to inform U.S. law enforcement that an adviser to Trump’s campaign had told him a few months prior that Russia had emails belonging to Clinton.

Law enforcement also understood that Russia was continuing to try to influence the election, publishing a warning in early October about possible threats to state elections systems. By that point, a federal probe of possible campaign-Russia ties was already underway, sparked by the information from the Australian diplomat. That probe was well underway by the time Sussman, the attorney who is on trial, showed up at the FBI with the Alfa Bank data (which the FBI quickly dismissed).

What’s interesting about the Journal’s effort to identify the Alfa Bank rumor as the point at which Clinton “did” the invention of the Trump-Russia conspiracy isn’t simply that it’s obviously not true. It’s also that this is the second attempt by Trump sympathizers to do so.

The first came even before Trump left office. He’d appointed John Ratcliffe as the director of national intelligence, hoping that Ratcliffe might do what Trump had first hoped would come from Durham: prove true his long-standing complaints about the Russia probe being a witch hunt. (Those complaints, incidentally, began even before Trump took office.) Ratcliffe set about declassifying information that might build that case.

That included the release in October 2020 of information claiming that then-CIA Director John Brennan had briefed President Barack Obama on the “alleged approval by Hillary Clinton on July 26, 2016 of a proposal from one of her foreign policy advisers” to amplify questions about Trump’s ties to Russia. In other words, the same allegation in broad strokes that the Journal is elevating now based on the Mook testimony, just at a different point in time.

But — as with the Mook testimony — there’s a simpler answer. A lot of attention was already being paid to Trump and Russia by July 26, 2016, as detailed above. That includes attention drawn by Mook, who’d already been on TV before that date claiming that Trump and Russia might be linked. (As it turns out, incidentally, what Brennan appears to have been briefing Obama on wasn’t this alleged approval but that his intelligence indicated that Russia believed Clinton had approved such a plan on that date.) The Clinton campaign was following the conversation to undercut its opponent, not leading it.

We must of course also acknowledge the dossier of allegations compiled by former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele. Steele was working for a firm hired by Sussman’s law firm, and Trump’s allies have long claimed that his dossier (now largely debunked) was instrumental as a trigger for the Russia investigation. The dossier was influential in coloring perceptions of Trump’s interactions with Russia once it was made public, after the campaign. It was also cited as part of a warrant application to surveil Carter Page, the Trump adviser who had been previously been a Russian intelligence target. But that application came after he left Trump’s campaign.

The Sussman trial is ongoing, and the defense has yet to make its case. Perhaps there was a ploy to use contrived information to trigger an FBI investigation of Trump, as Durham appears to hope to prove. But, crucially, it didn’t. And, just as importantly, an investigation was already underway both by law enforcement behind closed doors and in public by the media.

Put another way: Hillary Clinton didn’t do it.