Life Behind the Velvet Curtain

Imagine that you could turn the tables on mainstream media for a week, so that normally-blacklisted news reporting and analysis was all you got on cable and network news, whereas the type of content found CNN, MSNBC, and Fox News only reached niche demographics through Facebook and YouTube. I believe that most people, if they realized what they're missing, would step up and demand that mass media get its act together. Most Americans' values are compassionate and progressive, when you poll them on specific issues rather than on polarized labels like Left/Right or Liberal/Conservative. The problem isn't that people suck, but that society is in many ways designed to bring out the worst in people while stifling their better angels.

American mass media doesn't tell the "whole story:" it's a la-la land of lies, half-truths, and spin engineered by warmongering sociopaths. The most brilliant thing about this, especially when compared to political models where the dominant media organizations *openly* collude with state actors, is that America's "Velvet Curtain" is so well-camouflaged in partial truth and allowed press freedoms that most people don't see it right in front of them. This doesn't totally absolve individuals of the responsibility to think for themselves, but the pervasive influence of social engineering in media makes this very difficult. Ego differentiation—learning to think outside of a tribalistic mindset and question common social assumptions—is an arduous uphill battle, filled with disillusionment and cognitive dissonance. It's also a lonely road, generally being the one less traveled.

Why is the dark side so good at winning? The short answer is that those who are aligned with the more compassionate and logical aspects of human nature are always trying out new ways of doing things. They are always moving forward, adapting, and changing, which requires a lot of voices coming to the table and can leave progressive movements scattered and undirected at times. The dark side, on the other hand, has a single, ancient system of social control best summed up in the word fascism: their overarching purpose is dominion by the fewest people. To achieve this, they must continually ensure that the most morally compromised people co-opt media, government, and economy and merge them into ever-more-centralized autocracies.

The Dark Forces on Earth don't waste time arguing over methods or ethics, because they are an unchanging hive mind. They just do the same tried-and-true method over and over, which invariably produces increases in poverty, war, and social divisions along with lawlessness, totalitarianism, mob rule, and an overall breakdown of infrastructure and civil society. They know that they have this effect on human civilization, too; the messes they leave all over the world suggest something more sinister than ordinary incompetence. In the upper echelons, it is often their actual intent to make things worse for millions of human beings, in order to benefit a tiny few. One of the greatest long cons in history is Western media's default position of assuming that politicians are moral people. The line is "They're moral people just like you, who want what's best for the public. They just disagree on how to get there." No, no, no... when people act like straight-up sociopaths, we should call a spade a fuckin' spade.

 In terms of the balance of good and evil, fascists ascend the ladders of power by hiding the fact that they don't represent status quo morality in the slightest. That said, I find it quite encouraging that they need to hide, because they know that they are actually outsiders who don't share most people's policy views or ethical values. They HAVE to dress in sheep's clothing, misrepresenting their actual agendas and ethical codes (or lack thereof) in order to garner enough public support to stay in power. They never stop influencing society in hopes of turning good people into cruel monsters like themselves (it's the only way to justify their depraved existence), as seen in MSNBC trying to make the Democrats over as an openly pro-war party. A lot of it doesn't take, because the human heart is magic.

Democrats: Musings on Losing [time-dated archive]

When you get down to it, the leading Democrats in Congress no longer have a message, a unified strategy, or even a point. Republicans recognize this, and they are gleefully capitalizing on their opponents' weaknesses, because they're ruthless Social Darwinist playas.

The GOP is snatching up up every talking point that ever gave Democrats an edge in the polls. They've already rebranded themselves as the Pro-Union party (see: NAFTA, TPP, labor leaders' press statements on Trump meetings), and after Obama's 6 wars of aggression, they even have a slight edge as the *more* Anti-War party (see also: Trump's "America Can't Afford More Regime Change" platform in the 2016 campaign, along with nearly everything that Ron/Rand Paul have ever said against U.S. wars of aggression).

In terms of labor alone, consider the chilling implications of a recent statement by Teamsters General President James P. Hoffa, on President Donald Trump signing an executive order to formally withdraw the United States from the Trans-Pacific Partnership:

“Today, President Trump made good on his campaign promise to withdraw the United States from the Trans-Pacific Partnership. With this decision, the president has taken the first step toward fixing 30 years of bad trade policies that have cost working Americans millions of good-paying jobs. The Teamsters Union has been on the frontline of the fight to stop destructive trade deals like the TPP, China PNTR, CAFTA and NAFTA for decades. Millions of working men and women saw their jobs leave the country as free trade policies undermined our manufacturing industry. We hope that President Trump’s meeting with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto on Jan. 31 opens a real dialogue about fixing the flawed NAFTA.
“We take this development as a positive sign that President Trump will continue to fulfill his campaign promises in regard to trade policy reform and instruct the USTR to negotiate future agreements that protect American workers and industry."

And last but not least, we have the formerly leftist narrative during the Cold War, the height of GOP saber-tattling against the Kremlin: "We can't afford to escalate military tensions with Russia," and it seems like the Right has learned all the lessons about populist electoral mobilization that the Left should have learned by the late 1970s. Looks like the GOP has appropriated this Leftist platform too; Trump is all of a sudden the grownup in the room on military escalation with Russia, at least compared to MSNBC and half of the Democratic leadership... because these clowns have set the bar THAT low!

What happened, Democrats? I keep asking this of friends who seem to trust most politicians with a [D] after their name, but all I get back is people saying "Dude, you're killing The Resistance by questioning the need to have faith in corporatists and centrists who are basically 1980s Republicans. They are the leaders of The Resistance. They won't say how they plan to lead, but they're quite clear that Trump is really bad."

My response: "Umm... yeah, no shit. What's your point? What policies? What ironclad values? Any resistance to mass surveillance? How about Obama signing off on indefinite detention for anyone in the 2012 NDAA that he promised to veto if it included those exact previsions?"  Sometimes, it almost seems as if there is just one authoritarian party, which comes in "hard" and "soft" flavors...

Please tell me, Democratic Party policymakers: WHAT'S THE PLAN?! If you hold public office and these questions send chills down you spine, it's quite possible that you are a sellout. Seriously, is anyone in the party going to stand up to these crony-capitalist clowns? Call me a hypocrite, since I'm out with the DemExit and can't even influence the [D] primaries any more. Like that loathsome Vermont Indpendent Bernie Sanders, who's broadly despised within The Party for "not being a Real Democrat," I no longer have street cred. if I did, I'd be sure to spearhead a doomed attempt at a Progressive insurgency against corporatist millionaire Democrats like Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer.

I'm not sure how. but I bet that given a week, the overlords controlling the Republican Hive Mind could get millions of people to associate building oil pipelines with the idea that "Climate change is real, and the Democrats are responsible." Republicans have vile ethics, but the Left could learn a lot from their amazingly successful strategies for turning out votes. Or it may just be that the competition doesn't even rank in terms of persuasive messages, decisive "I will do A, B, and C" platforms, or the projection of strength, all of which play well with American voters across the board.