John Helmer: The Levada poll reveals that Russian public opinion trusts the Army to do what’s best, and Putin to say what’s right. by chakokat in WayOfTheBern

[–]BerryBoy1969 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

It's pretty obvious that most people outside the golden billion feel much the same way.

The clowns who run our owners government can only wish for a fraction of the credibility Russia and the BRICS nations have gained with simple diplomacy.

Something the incompetent appointees of Government Inc. have no concept of.

@jvgraz: I want my money back. by Maniak in WayOfTheBern

[–]BerryBoy1969 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

2016's actual Pied Piper.

I will not vote for Joe Biden in 2024. I’m sure many trashy liberals will say I “must” vote for Biden because the Republicans are worse. Yes, I’m sure they are worse in most ways. But you have to draw lines. Enabling genocide in Palestine is my line. Where do you draw your lines? by RandomCollection in WayOfTheBern

[–]BerryBoy1969 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Where do you draw your lines?

Anyone running in either the Democratic or Republican branches of Government Inc. At some point people have to admit to themselves that they can't win a shell game without a pea.

The DemPublican duopoly exists for the sole purpose of keeping the pea out of the game.

There is no "lesser" evil choice in our owners selectoral system. There is only overt evil, and covert evil provided for the hoi polloi to choose between.

So vote citizen. Our owners depend upon the support of people just like you.

The Democrats Do Have a Way to Get Rid of Joe Biden ¦ Two-thirds of Democrat-leaning voters don’t want to see President Joe Biden to run for a second term, a CNN poll released last month found. by RandomCollection in WayOfTheBern

[–]BerryBoy1969 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

What difference, at this point, does it make?

Are there still good citizens who believe that the President of the Corporate States of America, no matter which of their owners parties they're "elected" from, has any power greater than that they were authorized to use by their owners?

@DagnyTaggart963: ❗️Russia and China vetoed the US resolution on the situation around Israel and the Gaza Strip in the UN Security Council - Nebenzya called the resolution a license for Israel to conduct ground operations. by therazorx in WayOfTheBern

[–]BerryBoy1969 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Today's UN votes in two pictures show the state of the world.

Pay attention to the wording of each resolution and the votes.

Example 1:

Example 2:

Some people see what they see, while others just change their minds for the sake of expediency.

As the spokesman for his owners rules based international order, he's just letting the world know how it all works. It's nothing personal, it's just business...

@ChristianDrakes: "The story that was confirmed, then got unconfirmed, then reconfirmed, then unconfirmed a second time, only to be re-reconfirmed, is now unconfirmed." by Maniak in WayOfTheBern

[–]BerryBoy1969 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

so just like Sex Panther cologne, you know it's good.

Never tried it. My preferred seduction sauce was Hai Karate. Seemed to work well as a cougar attractant back in the day. ;D

@ChristianDrakes: "The story that was confirmed, then got unconfirmed, then reconfirmed, then unconfirmed a second time, only to be re-reconfirmed, is now unconfirmed." by Maniak in WayOfTheBern

[–]BerryBoy1969 7 insightful - 1 fun7 insightful - 0 fun8 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Has this been unconfirmed by a source close to the matter, who wishes to remain anonymous because they're not authorized to speak publicly about it?

Don't Confuse Me With The Facts... by BerryBoy1969 in WayOfTheBern

[–]BerryBoy1969[S] 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

There are fashions in anticipating and writing about armed conflict, its nature, its causes, its purposes and its consequences, just as there are in everything else. These fashions don’t necessarily reflect realities as they are now and as they change, and in fact may run counter to them. So it’s essential to try to separate genuine changes in aspects of conflict both from excitable exaggerations on the one hand, and from the denial of changing reality on the other. That said, I have a feeling that we are at the beginning of a genuine transformation of conflict, for the first time in many years, after a generation or more in which some conceptual models of conflict have become briefly fashionable, only to become almost instantly outdated. Others can perhaps explain the nature of this transformation better than me. For this week I want to focus on the main obstacle to it being widely recognised: the fixation of the Western Security Complex (WSC) on things it thinks it knows, and its determination to deform everything that happens into models it thinks it understands.

You can see this a bit in the way that the conflict in Ukraine is described: I don’t mean in terms of victories and defeats , or even the performance of individual weapons systems. Rather it’s the discourse—that word again—that interests me. If you’ve read some Ukraine article by a pundit that seems illogical and even incomprehensible, it’s usually less a problem of expression than a problem of understanding. Writers who don’t understand what’s going on, and can’t make sense of events as they unfold, nonetheless have to try to find words to describe it, so they use the words and the verbal and intellectual formulas they have to hand, even if they are detached from the reality. At its simplest, we can say that a half-recalled vocabulary from wars of manoeuvre and counter-insurgency has been called into service to describe a war of attrition. The discourse of the war of attrition is simply not well enough known or developed for it to be used and understood correctly, and anyway, the consequences of using it might be politically dangerous, because the wrong side might appear to be winning. Thus, the endless, nerdish obsession with square metres gained and lost. At least that’s easy for everyone to understand.

Put simply, most people who write on the war in Ukraine don’t really understand what it’s “about” in any important sense. That is to say, they may notice individual events, but they have no idea of how to fit them into a wider framework that makes any kind of overall sense, because the words and concepts they have at their disposal—the totality of the discourse—is not the right one. It’s like trying to describe a cricket match while being limited to the vocabulary and concepts of rugby. So far as I can see, the same thing seems to be happening with Gaza.

Trust the experts.

US in Neoliberal Death Spiral ¦ There are counties in the U.S. where you’re beating the odds if you make it past 70, writes Richard Eskow. The country should stop tinkering around. It needs Medicare for All. by RandomCollection in WayOfTheBern

[–]BerryBoy1969 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Our owners government exists for the sole purpose of ensuring that their investors profit extraction, is never threatened by the will of the people through the democratic process.

Having witnessed, and survived our owners PMC's embrace of "The Science" of profit extraction, behind the veil of a deadly pandemic that was 99% survivable, who would trust highly trained and educated medical professionals employed by the for profit Medical Insurance Hospital Groups in these Corporate States of America, not to embrace "The Science* of our owners once again?

Meanwhile, in the greatest demockracy the world has ever been the victim of, people still fight each other over which of our owners private political corporations will be the firewall in power, protecting their owners from us.

YCMTSU...

"The Dam's About To Break On The Establishment Control Of The Party" by Blackhalo in WayOfTheBern

[–]BerryBoy1969 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Democrats and Republicans? We all know, perfectly WELL we ALL know, that both are agents of our Common Enemy… yet in our conjured, shared madness we agree to pretend that one is worth fighting for, and the other must be fought against. Neither has an answer, let alone THE answer… Pick one… It doesn’t matter which… Then rage against the other…

Thus do our Ruling Elites command us…

Too much the Fool to even know… I will never tell you who I am…

"The Dam's About To Break On The Establishment Control Of The Party" by Blackhalo in WayOfTheBern

[–]BerryBoy1969 6 insightful - 1 fun6 insightful - 0 fun7 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

The message they're sending by feigning concern about messaging, is that they're concerned about messaging because they care what people think.

Nothing could be farther from the truth. They don't need to care beyond the optics of caring, because they know how well trained the populace is in choosing either the red, or blue team because those are the only viable options they have for winning not a goddamn thing for themselves with.

Their owners Demockracy's been saved from the people for another election cycle, the reds and the blues are still in charge of managing their owners government, and the people are presented a new slate to fill with the most effective bullshitters they can find between election cycles, to replace the bullshitters who bullshitted them so effectively the last time.

And the wheels on the bus go round and round, but you already know that.

"The Dam's About To Break On The Establishment Control Of The Party" by Blackhalo in WayOfTheBern

[–]BerryBoy1969 10 insightful - 3 fun10 insightful - 2 fun11 insightful - 3 fun -  (0 children)

In other news, frogs are about to grow wings in order to keep their asses from slapping the ground every time they jump, and "progressive" Democrats have commissioned a study, to prove to the American people once and for all that *you can, in fact, pick your nose with boxing gloves on if you progressively expand the circumference of your nostrils to accommodate them.

The secret to success for the Democratic party is their ability to convince millions of Americans that by putting in the work of taking as many baby steps as you can today, and progressively adding to those steps as your stamina allows, you will eventually arrive at a bus stop, where like minded people congregate in order to board a blue bus that will take them closer to a destination that has yet to be determined, but is infinitely better than any destination the red line is traveling to.

The key takeaway is don't stop thinking about tomorrow, because it takes a village to raise a child who understands that we can keep hope alive by standing stronger together, and working toward a future to believe in where the Democratic party strives to ensure it's owners that *nothing will fundamentally change.

The Circle D Corporation has no problem with messaging. They know the demographic they're tasked with managing like the backs of their hands. Winning elections and serving the needs of society is of secondary importance in maintaining the security firewall Government Inc. protects it's institutional investors from the people with.

Win or lose, the Uniparty goes back to work the next day like nothing ever happened, secure in the knowledge that the American people are content with eating shit, but knowing them well enough to understand that they're particular about the color of the bowls they eat it from, and the volume of shit they contain.

Same as it ever was...

Russia will never tolerate Ukraine as a member of NATO by jerryk in WayOfTheBern

[–]BerryBoy1969 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Americans have been so successful for most of their history that they simply cannot conceive of the possibility that anyone could possibly disagree with them about anything, and be right.

Yup...

Lavrov's UNGA Speech, Documents & Presser by BerryBoy1969 in WayOfTheBern

[–]BerryBoy1969[S] 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Good read for Americans who are interested in world events our owners media distort for narrative purposes, and for those who might remember what diplomacy looked like before The New American Century.

Politico: The earmarks Adam Schiff delivered for donors by MeganDelacroix in WayOfTheBern

[–]BerryBoy1969 3 insightful - 2 fun3 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 2 fun -  (0 children)

Suggested official government photo for Schiff's Senate page, because you know California will send him there...

What Our Owners Need Parents To Know by BerryBoy1969 in WayOfTheBern

[–]BerryBoy1969[S] 3 insightful - 2 fun3 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 2 fun -  (0 children)

I feel you sdl5.

While not a native, I've been here since the mid 70's. Kicked around for a while and accidentally met the craziest, most unpredictable, meanest, most loving schizophrenic woman on the planet.

So I married her, and much to our constant amazement, we loved/hated each other so much we decided to buy a home, raise a family, and build a life here.

Sadly, we've determined that this state we've chosen to call home is getting crazier than we are. They've won. We no longer have the insanity required to compete with the pro's.

We live on the fringes ourselves, far enough from the Bay Area and it's refugees to have a little buffer from the professionally manufactured corporate beings who infect the place.

Or so we thought initially... the plague spreads.

Two of our three adult children want out as well, so we plan...

What Our Owners Need Parents To Know by BerryBoy1969 in WayOfTheBern

[–]BerryBoy1969[S] 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

There's still a lot of details that need to be worked out yet. Once we collectively decide on the where, the individual details surrounding the hows need to be ironed out.

The misses and I are retired, and very soon to be, so those things aren't as important to us as they are to the kids who still need to support their families in their new environment. If and when it does evolve, I'll post blurbs about the Berry family's excellent exodus from old insanity to new.

What Our Owners Need Parents To Know by BerryBoy1969 in WayOfTheBern

[–]BerryBoy1969[S] 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

We're fortunate that two of our three adult children, along with their children, want to GTFO of here as well. The remainer is single, and doing relatively well for himself here.

We're looking to sell out here, buy some acreage large enough to subdivide amongst ourselves so that we're close, but not so close as to be in each other's business all the time. When my wife and I are finished living, our portion of the "compound" will become theirs to do with as they wish.

It's all still all up in the air right now, but we've made some inquiries and have a few prospects to consider. Yeah, on the one hand it's definitely going to be a PITA, but on the other hand, the consensus among us is that it will be an adventure worth embarking on.

We'll see...

More And Better Bullshitters... by BerryBoy1969 in WayOfTheBern

[–]BerryBoy1969[S] 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Doh! Fixed - and thanks.

What Our Owners Need Parents To Know by BerryBoy1969 in WayOfTheBern

[–]BerryBoy1969[S] 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, is expected to sign the bill into law. Under it, parents who refuse to participate in transgenderism by pretending that their child is a different gender could be guilty of failing to provide for the “health, safety, and welfare” of their child—therefore losing custody to another parent or the state.

If Newsom has any presidential aspirations at all, he won't sign this bill into law. On the other hand, if our owners believe it's beneficial for them to have him in the White House, the people's voices will be counted accordingly.

The wife and I have decided it's long past time for us to leave this failed social experiment of a state, and spend our remaining years in a community that isn't umbilically tethered to the current thing our owners media needs us to believe is the current thing.

What Our Owners Need Parents To Know by BerryBoy1969 in WayOfTheBern

[–]BerryBoy1969[S] 5 insightful - 1 fun5 insightful - 0 fun6 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Just a PSA for all you parents, and those considering parenthood.

In other news... California's "leading" the nation once again as the bastion of liberal values.

More And Better Bullshitters... by BerryBoy1969 in WayOfTheBern

[–]BerryBoy1969[S] 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Excerpts:

Let it be said clearly. We have always, in politics, been adrift in an entirely post-truth environment. Read Plato’s Republic – the very first complete book about politics – to see how this is the oldest problem in politics. (Plato, too, like Matthew d’Ancona, Evan Davis and Sam Leith, wanted to defend truth from mere opinion: doxa in Greek.)

The reason this has become a problem in the last few centuries is because of the imperial expansion of politics. Since 1789 we have witnessed a vast politicisation of the world. And with that vast politicisation we have seen the usually admirable extension of the liberal antithesis of wisdom/folly into our daily politics. Toleration of others, justified opposition, and all that. But as the state has extended its activities beyond the usual ‘law and war’ of a hundred years ago, to health, education, and the entirety of what Germans call the ‘life-world’, creating secular religions of various sorts, and funding scholarship, so we have entered a new earth in which it is hard to tell the difference between the two things which Plato was extremely concerned to keep distinct.

The point is that before our modernity there was a world of truth/falsity outside or beyond the inner world of politics and wisdom/folly. In our modernity it is hard to tell the difference between them. For most of us there is only the monopolistic doxa of the mainstream institutions who are constitutionally incapable of recognising their own biases. Here we have the ideology of ‘settled science’ and ‘established consensus’: the world of the IPCC, the WHO, the Royal Society, Nature and Science, the Meteorological Office, the EU, the BBC, and other twisted-distorted-corrupt-established institutions. Including the Universities. This is a world in which politicians see no clear distinction between public service and private activity, pay for censorship by offering or withholding advertisement revenues, and behave conspiratorially in the service of mostly failing but sometimes successful corporate assaults on the mountainous possibility of monopolistic wealth.

~snip~

Let me be exact. The problem is that the political field – the field of wisdom/folly – has expanded. In expanding, like a red giant, it has encompassed other fields, including the great outer field of truth/falsity.

I do not expect politicians to tell the truth. I suppose I am Machiavellian about this. But I do expect politicians to leave the truth alone, and not to usurp truth/falsity for the sake of holding onto power and serving whatever interests they serve at any particular moment. I am not Machiavellian about that.

Now, this may be too fine a distinction: but I think anyone who 1. understands anything about politics and 2. shares my judgement of the politics since COVID-19, has to make such a distinction. If one is too Machiavellian, then one has no way of criticising the COVID-19 policy. And, indeed, alas, Ankersmit seems to have supported it. But if one is not Machiavellian at all, and perhaps too many people are not Machiavellian enough, then they tend to believe politicians, especially when flanked by scientists. The fact that Johnson’s words about COVID-19 are still ‘the narrative’ despite his own fate and reputation is a sign of how effective the entire trick was.

What we call ‘mainstream’ political culture is simply incapable of understanding the importance of a genuine, non-rhetorical, non-politicised insistence on truth, whether this truth is religious, as a sheer alternative, or, of course, scientific, in the sense of genuine, modest science: not the sculpted and politicised narrative of the Lancet, Nature, Science, the American Political Science Review and many others.

The ‘post-truth’ language is an attempt by the established wisdom/folly brigade to illegitimately use the language of ‘truth’ against any of us – including odd bods like Russell Brand – who are honestly trying to remember what ‘truth’ is so that we can resist the use of it against us.

Sixty years later, Free Speech has done a complete 180, and "progressives" rejoice...

Zelensky's Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad D.C. Snubfest by BerryBoy1969 in WayOfTheBern

[–]BerryBoy1969[S] 6 insightful - 2 fun6 insightful - 1 fun7 insightful - 2 fun -  (0 children)

Not much to say really.

Any day now. The walls are closing in on Putin's Russia. Mikey's gonna take him out shimself...

The Ashes Will Come First by BerryBoy1969 in WayOfTheBern

[–]BerryBoy1969[S] 9 insightful - 1 fun9 insightful - 0 fun10 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Representative democracy in the United States is irredeemably corrupted. The sprawling permanent apparatus of empire in Washington has become an irreversibly metastasized malignancy on the American body politic, and an existential threat to the world.

Many believe it can be cured by finding and electing “the right people”. I’m sorry folks, but we’re far past that. The people for whom you are permitted to vote are individually and collectively powerless against the real potentates who rule and reign in America.

Senator JD Vance demands Biden admin reveal if Ashton-Cirillo has US intelligence ties by MeganDelacroix in WayOfTheBern

[–]BerryBoy1969 8 insightful - 1 fun8 insightful - 0 fun9 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

A little off topic, but I think Mikey's bringing a plastic spoon to a knife fight with Maria Zahkarova...

Some context: and Zakharova.

Are You On The Political Left But Vote For The Circle D Corporation? Maybe You're Just A Democrat... by BerryBoy1969 in WayOfTheBern

[–]BerryBoy1969[S] 8 insightful - 2 fun8 insightful - 1 fun9 insightful - 2 fun -  (0 children)

One of the benefits of being a shitlib is the ability to redefine words as easily as they're able to redefine themselves.

Where else can people declare that they're progressive leftists who support the blue wing of their owners corporate government? When it's the only system you have, you need delusion in order to keep participating in the system that's joyfully fucking you every time you use it.

Are You On The Political Left But Vote For The Circle D Corporation? Maybe You're Just A Democrat... by BerryBoy1969 in WayOfTheBern

[–]BerryBoy1969[S] 6 insightful - 1 fun6 insightful - 0 fun7 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Essential observations every "progressive" shitlib, or faux leftist culture warrior should think long and hard about, while asking themselves why they believe the Circle D Corporation isn't exactly who they show themselves to be, every single day of the year.

There's a difference between optimism and insanity. I think the pragmatism shitlibs hide behind is their firewall between the two.

The Green Party has been problematic for leftists, and there are all kinds of reasons why third parties may be doomed within the US electoral system anyway. But as a general principle, a third party that is not willing to, does not understand it must, make Democrats lose elections is a third party that will never go anywhere. It's just a pressure group on the Democratic Party.

This goes to the central point of how one understands the relationship between the left and the Democratic Party. We have this bizarre notion in the United States that there's some intrinsic relation between the left and the Democratic Party, that leftists are naturally closer to the Democrats. It goes back to the aura surrounding FDR, but has been repeated among cohorts that gravitated to the Democrats because of Nixon and Watergate or Bush and Iraq (forgetting things like the party of the Klan, and LBJ and Vietnam).

Most leftists today consciously understand that in the post-Clinton Democratic party, the progressive social or peaceful international party they may have been seeking is gone, baby, gone, and never coming back. Still, there lingers in many an unconscious, implicit belief that there's something in the Democratic Party as an institution or in its nominee personally—some essential quality, no matter how well hidden—that is or wants to be a force for significant progressive change, and that the Republican Party is the primary obstacle to any such change. Therefore, in a political contest between the Democrats and Republicans, the left must always ultimately support the Democrats as the only politically possible check against the essentially more reactionary Republicans.

This is the notion that leftists are Default Democrats.

This is a pernicious, paralyzing assumption that we must extirpate from our minds. Being a leftist has nothing to do with being a Democrat. The political left and right, in my understanding of it, do not correlate with Democrat and Republican. They correlate with class positions.

As some of us have known for a long time, and is now clear to most leftists, the Democratic Party is not a party of, or for, the working class. If it ever was, it has now, as Chuck Schumer has stated, explicitly renounced any such role. It now strains—and only intermittently—to attract working-class support, precisely because its programs and politicians do not advance working-class interests against those of corporate and finance capital in some way that is crucially different from the Republican Party.

Despite any conjuring of the ghost of FDR past, the Democratic Party is, as increasing numbers of Americans recognize, an enemy of the working class. Despite any prior demonizing of Bush, the Democratic Party fully internalizes his war-mongering, imperialist spirit, and is an enemy of world peace.

It is therefore not a party of the left. And the idea that there's any natural connection between being a leftist and supporting Democrats, that leftists are Default Democrats, is ridiculous, and a manacle in our minds. We absolutely must do away with that. Extirpating that persistent and pernicious assumption from people’s minds is, in fact, one of the most important missions of any independent left third-party movement. The intrinsic relation between the Democratic Party and the left is that they are enemies. The Democrats know this, and leftists should.

The Democratic party is not an essentially more progressive institution than the Republican. Its job is to be, and it is, as Glen Ford of Black Agenda Report said, the most effective obstacle to any serious progressive reform. It does that by co-opting the movements for such reform and killing them, as it did with Medicare for All, the prime example.

Talking specifically about Biden or Trump: Neither candidate has any claim, by any leftist metric, to be substantially better than the other. Joe Biden is a proudly reactionary politician, who, over his fifty-year political career, has done more damage to the American people, to the multiracial working class—particularly to Black Americans—and to millions of people around the world, than Donald Trump has done or is likely to do. I repeat, by any leftist metric, by far.

l dare anyone to argue otherwise.

There’s a fundamental difference between the left that understands itself as Default Democrats and the left that’s indifferent to the pretension that Democrats are less of an enemy than Republicans. It was nicely demonstrated when Kyle Kulinski said to Briahna Joy Gray: “Let's just say it's election night, 2024. It is all of our worst nightmare: Biden versus Trump...It's going to be Biden or Trump winning. Are you sitting there like, yeah, of course, I would prefer Biden win over Trump,” and she said, “Honestly, I don't care.”

Voting for democrats and republicans is against our class interests by [deleted] in WayOfTheBern

[–]BerryBoy1969 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Some people walk their talk. Some people who make documentaries about them, aren't allowed to.

The Democrats' Oliver Anthony Problem by penelopepnortney in WayOfTheBern

[–]BerryBoy1969 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

They're dyed in the wool shitlibs, snowflake "progressives," and young kids who don't know any better yet.

What they should do is never a part of the equation for them. Stopping the Republican party from destroying their view of what their owners demockracy should look like, is the only thing that matters to them.

Smugnorance is an ingrained personality trait endemic to the Blue Magoos who infect the Democratic party. If they choose to identify as the adults in the room, no amount of evidence proving otherwise will shake them from what they believe themselves to be.

It's who they are.

Boys and Men in the United States Are Struggling. The Left Should Talk About It. by RandomCollection in WayOfTheBern

[–]BerryBoy1969 2 insightful - 2 fun2 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 2 fun -  (0 children)

Jacobin is a leading voice of the American left Snowflake Empire, offering socialist WEF elite perspectives on politics, economics, and culture.

Fixed it for them...

The Democrats' Oliver Anthony Problem by penelopepnortney in WayOfTheBern

[–]BerryBoy1969 11 insightful - 1 fun11 insightful - 0 fun12 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Progressives need to apologize to Oliver Anthony. He understands working people better than they do, he can talk to them better than they can and if Democrats ever want to regain their lost working-class support they need to shut up and listen to guys like him instead of telling him to shut up and listen to them.

The problem with progressives, and their shitlib brethren who automatically default to the Circle D Corporation, is the fact that they don't believe they have an Oliver Anthony problem. They still believe that after their owners have selected the final two candidates they're allowed to elect, they will have brow beaten the ignorati into pragmatic acceptance of their half bowl of shit.

They're confident in their status as the adults in the room, to convince the children that they know what's best for them, and for their own good, but more importantly, for the good of others, they should practice harm reduction by choosing the half bowl of shit Democrats Inc. have on offer.

If it wasn't for all the college educated people out there reaching out to us dumb fucks, we'd probably vote against our own best interests forever.

Has the West Closed All Its Project Ukraine Exits? | naked capitalism by RandomCollection in WayOfTheBern

[–]BerryBoy1969 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

“We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality — judiciously, as you will — we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.” - Karl Rove

Our reality means we don' need no stinkin' exits...

‘Abandoned by the Democratic Party’: Behind the UAW’s frustrations with Biden by RandomCollection in WayOfTheBern

[–]BerryBoy1969 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

If union leadership wasn't more concerned with maintaining their PMC status, than maintaining the welfare of the workers they pretend to represent, they would have told the Circle D Corporation to kick rocks when Billy Bob signed NAFTA on his owners behalf.

Business unions are working exactly as they were designed to work. The AFL exists for the sole purpose of sucking off it's donors.

It's membership is not it's donors. Kinda like Democratic party voters don't matter because they're not members of the party.

Not today satan. by [deleted] in WayOfTheBern

[–]BerryBoy1969 10 insightful - 1 fun10 insightful - 0 fun11 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Stop it, Robert...

Some people vote for, no matter how hard you shill for the maintenance of the status quo you've found your life long niche in.

In Case Anyone Wonders How Society Became So Infected With The Self-Important PMC Class Of Parasites... by BerryBoy1969 in WayOfTheBern

[–]BerryBoy1969[S] 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

So sorry but no, I do see our 'self appointed overlords' being mostly a North Atlantic infection. Yes, not just confined to the continental US, but Washington is certainly the main locus of their power base, along with London, Paris, Brussels, etc. and some beachheads further afield.

If we're being truthful, most people don't have a clue about BRICS, China, Russia, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, South America, the Middle East, or whats happens in the next state, or even the county that borders their own. Agree 100% with your North Atlantic observation.

Apparently you're not one of those people who know, but for the sake of convenience, forget.

Poll: Democrats are satisfied with Harris but not as enthusiastic about her by rundown9 in WayOfTheBern

[–]BerryBoy1969 7 insightful - 1 fun7 insightful - 0 fun8 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Harris' perceived impact on the Biden administration is net positive for Democrats, though not overwhelming in magnitude. That is, Democrats say she's made them think better rather than worse of the administration by four to one, but another half say the job she's doing doesn't really matter to their views of it.

The Blue Heeler mentality of the Democratic party faithful in a nutshell. Doesn't matter who, or what a particular Democrat is, as long as they're not an Evil Republican.

In Case Anyone Wonders How Society Became So Infected With The Self-Important PMC Class Of Parasites... by BerryBoy1969 in WayOfTheBern

[–]BerryBoy1969[S] 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Which country does this describe? If you can’t quite tell, well, that’s the point. For many citizens of the West, the systems of governance under which we live increasingly feel uncomfortably similar to what appears [on] offer in the People’s Republic of China.

Thanks for making the obvious point that I completely lost in his sea of words. People forget our self appointed overlords are a global infection, not just confined to the continental US.

One religion, one government, one people, one world.

And you'll be happy...

In Case Anyone Wonders How Society Became So Infected With The Self-Important PMC Class Of Parasites... by BerryBoy1969 in WayOfTheBern

[–]BerryBoy1969[S] 5 insightful - 1 fun5 insightful - 0 fun6 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

I agree that he comes off as a pompous ass in his foreign critiques, but he seems to know his PMC class intimately, and that's what stood out to me at least.

In Case Anyone Wonders How Society Became So Infected With The Self-Important PMC Class Of Parasites... by BerryBoy1969 in WayOfTheBern

[–]BerryBoy1969[S] 6 insightful - 1 fun6 insightful - 0 fun7 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

It's a long read, especially so for the saidit/reddit folks, but it goes a long way into explaining who these useless fucks are, and why they exist at all.

YMMV, of course.

Excerpt:

Despite a rhetorical commitment to egalitarianism and “democracy,” the elite class deeply distrusts and fears the people over whom it rules. These elites have concentrated themselves into a separate oligarchic political body focused on prioritizing and preserving their rule and their own overlapping set of shared interests. Wracked by anxiety, they strive constantly to maximize their control over the masses, rationalizing a need to forcefully maintain stability in the face of dangerous threats, foreign and domestic. Everything is treated as an emergency. “Safety” and “security” have become be the watchwords of the state, and of society generally.

This elite obsession with control is accelerated by a belief in “scientific management,” or the ability to understand, organize, and run all the complex systems of society like a machine, through scientific principles and technologies. The expert knowledge of how to do so is considered the unique and proprietary possession of the elite vanguard. Ideologically, this elite is deeply materialist, and openly hostile to organized religion, which inhibits and resists state control. They view human beings themselves as machines to be programmed, and, believing the common man to be an unpredictable creature too stupid, irrational, and violent to rule himself, they endeavor to steadily condition and replace him with a better model through engineering, whether social or biological. Complex systems of surveillance, propaganda, and coercion are implemented to help firmly nudge (or shove) the common man into line. Communities and cultural traditions that resist this project are dismantled. Harmfully contrary ideas are systematically censored, lest they lead to dangerous exposure. Governing power has been steadily elevated, centralized, and distributed to a technocratic bureaucracy unconstrained by any accountability to the public.

~snip~

Sometime around the second half of the 19th century a revolution in human affairs began to take place, occurring in parallel to and building on the industrial revolution. This was a revolution of mass and scale, which upended nearly every area of human activity and rapidly reorganized civilization, first in the West and then around the world: the limits of time and space produced by geography were swept away by new technologies of communication and transportation; greatly enlarged populations flowed into and swelled vast urban centers; masses of workers began to toil in huge factories, and then in offices, laboring through an endless paper trail trying to keep track of it all; in politics new opportunities arose for those who could seize on the growing power of the masses and their votes, along with new challenges in providing for their growing needs and desires. In government, in business, in education, and in almost every other sphere of life, new methods and techniques of organization emerged in order to manage the growing complexities of mass and scale: the mass bureaucratic state, the mass standing army, the mass corporation, mass media, mass public education, and so on. This was the managerial revolution.[1]

Rapidly accelerating in the 20th century, the managerial revolution soon began to instigate another transformation of society in the West: it gave birth to a new managerial elite. A new social class had arisen out of the growing scale and complexity of mass organizations as those organizations began to find that, in order to function, they had to rely on large numbers of people who possessed the necessary highly technical and specialized cognitive skills and knowledge, including new techniques of organizational planning and management at scale. Such people became the professional managerial class, which quickly expanded to meet the growing demand for their services. While the wealthy families of the old landed aristocratic elite at first continued to own many of these new mass organizations, they soon were no longer capable of operating them, as the traits that had long defined mastery of their role and status – land ownership, inherited warrior virtues, a classical liberal education, formal rhetoric, personal charisma, an extensive code of social manners, etc. – were no longer sufficient or relevant for doing so. This meant the managerial class soon captured de facto control of all the mass organizations of society.

As I stated, it's a long read, and the excerpts I provided barely scratch the surface of the information in this essay, but it leads to what we're dealing with in the here and now.

Worth the time IMHO...

Of Optimists and Fools by BerryBoy1969 in WayOfTheBern

[–]BerryBoy1969[S] 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

You could certainly be forgiven, if it is your habit to trawl through the mainstream western news media to see what’s going on, the emergence of a certain…optimism. A certain general feeling that paradigm shifts are taking place, that tectonic plates, figuratively, are on the move and the world is shuddering, changing. And it is; no denying that. But a simple manipulation of language is fostering the belief – as it was designed to do – that the nature of the battle for Ukraine is altering; that the Ukrainians are focusing on something other than frantic mouselike jumping against the walls and that something…something long anticipated is at last emerging. There is a great sussuration of whispering throughout the west, led by the state media outlets, and the word they are whispering is ‘breakthrough’.

Once again, optimism raises its battered head.

And what did Hemingway teach us about optimism? Come on; it’s not hard, it’s right there at the top of the page. Yes, that’s right – optimism can keep a fool from accepting failure.

~snip~

We’re getting around to cut-to-the-chase time again, because other sources are rich in detail on current happenings and there is no need for me to repeat them all here. I think we can agree that the western policy since the Glorious Maidan Revolution of whatever-it-was has been to jolly the Ukrainians along with honeyed words about what social standouts they are, particularly when contrasted against the brutish Orcs of Russia – noble in their purpose, brave beyond measure, and so technically adept that on their first on-the-job acquaintance with the Patriot anti-air missile system, they ‘tweaked’ it to allow it to successfully engage hypersonic missiles from Russia; a capability its designers some 25 years ago were unable to achieve. Western leaders show up at work in embroidered shirts on Vyshyvanka Day, looking like runaway tablecloths, promoting the impression they are totally in tune with Ukrainian culture, and billions upon billions in loosely-accounted-for cash have passed into the hands of the Ukrainian government to assist it to keep its population gainfully employed fighting the Russians. As ghouls like Lindsey Graham remind us frequently, best money the USA ever spent – Ukrainians are dying by the tens of thousands, sure, but Russians are dying, too, and it’s not costing the United States a single soldier. It’s probably why US Secretary of State Blinky is in Kuh-yiv now – shoring up the agreements which keep Ukrainians fighting on and on, until no more remain. And then there were none, you might say.

I don’t think I need to explain how reprehensible I find that policy, either, and I think most of you are with me there. Regardless what you thought about Ukraine before or think about it now, there’s something deeply unsettling about a partnership in which rich developed nations pay the poorest country in Europe to send its people to be slaughtered in fruitless assaults against a much-more-powerful adversary whose capabilities those same rich developed nations consistently obfuscate and minimize, even as they elevate being Ukrainian to the highest plane mankind can achieve. The purpose of all the happy talk now – the optimism, we could certainly call it – is to prevent the fool from glimpsing his failure; to bend the jerking, dancing marionettes to continued service to American foreign-policy goals which remain as unachievable as they ever were. Even as some western sources begin to cautiously warn of the horror being perpetrated on Ukraine, others shriek enthusiastically that ‘the progress’ it is making justifies pressing on until every single Ukrainian has been expended to the cause of ‘fighting for democracy’. The last but for the bearded clown in his combat jammies who is revered – by the west – as their leader, I suppose

Remember next year as you struggle to elect the lesser evil faction of our owners government. It's the "lesser" evil faction that's pulling the strings attached to their Ukrainian puppet right now.

Meanwhile, the Ukrainian Army, along with the devastating sanctions levied by the US and their Europoodles, don't appear to be doing what our owners media tells us they're doing.

Keep that chin up folks...

CNN: There is no way to spin this, America is deeply unhappy with Joe Biden by MeganDelacroix in WayOfTheBern

[–]BerryBoy1969 9 insightful - 1 fun9 insightful - 0 fun10 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Most Democratic voters hope for change at the top of the ticket...

But they'll vote against the Republican nominee. Most Democratic voters hope their owners blue team beats the red team, so they can keep hope alive by hoping that their votes mean something more than legitimizing the system they're guaranteed to lose with, no matter which of their owners parties are assigned the task of managing their expectations for the next four to eight years.

We don't win shit by losing to the "lesser" evil in order to stop the greater one. Our owners wouldn't have bought our former government to protect themselves with if the democratic process wasn't a threat to their business model.

At some point, despite the never ending barrage of FUD disseminated by our owners fear mongering media mouthpieces, you would think people would recognize it for what it is, and start asking themselves, and each other, why our government is hell bent on "othering" every segment of what passes for society in these Corporate States of America, and who that "othering" benefits besides the people behind the curtain of government they hide behind.

Thing is, when I talk with human beings who inhabit the actual meatspace outside the digital world of shills and bots, very few people have any faith and trust in our corrupted system, and even fewer believe their votes are worth the millions spent to harvest them when it comes down to the well being of the average citizen.

Most people I've talked to don't see the utility of wasting their time with the process any longer.

Which makes me wonder if these people are full of shit, or mail in ballots are the new golden egg our owners can buy a few more selection cycles with.

But people are at a loss for what to do about the whole situation, because every person elected that's shown even a modicum of leadership ability has either turned around to lick our owners asses, or met with an untimely death.

Xi Jinping avoids Biden meeting. BRICS more important than G20 by RandomCollection in WayOfTheBern

[–]BerryBoy1969 5 insightful - 1 fun5 insightful - 0 fun6 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Xi Jinping avoids Biden meeting. BRICS more important than G20

I think it's fair to say that Xi, and the other leaders who make up the BRICS+ coalition of nations, understand that the G20 isn't exactly what it claims to be as the "premier forum for international economic cooperation.".

The East, along with many of the nations that make up the Global South, probably see the G20 more along the lines of it being the "premier forum for international economic exploitation" by the rules based international order of rules for thee, but not for me.

Michael Hudson has a pretty good take on how the US put one foot over the other before pulling the trigger that was supposed to kill russia, instead of their own feet.

Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall

Humpty Dumpty had a great fall

All the world's horses, and all the world's men

Saw no utility in repairing him again...

A Dire Message For All Loyal Democrats Concerned With The Preservation Of Our Owners Demockracy by BerryBoy1969 in WayOfTheBern

[–]BerryBoy1969[S] 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

No doubt.

What I find heartening about the situation IRL, as opposed to the machinations of TPTB on social media, is that a large percentage of the people I casually discuss geopolitics with, understand that what they read from our owners approved narrative experts, don't jive with what they see happening in real time on the channels that circumvent the protections put in place to protect us from the inconvenient truths that might undermine our full faith and trust in Government Inc.

One of the benefits of being a citizen of the great melting pot that is the USA, is that it has a wealth of different cultures that use social media to keep up with the news in the countries they have families in. That news rarely coincides with what the AP and Reuters fills the information spaces with, and I'm sure our alphabet agencies have no idea how to stanch the flow of unapproved narratives entering their information battlespace, without criminalizing wrongthink and declaring martial law in the greatest demockracy the world has ever known.

Some of the sheep are fleeing their pens all over the world. The U.S. sheep still seem a little slow on the uptake. We've been trained well.

Biden's better than Trump because he sends rockets to Ukraine," neo-Nazi Blood Tribe leader Christopher Pohlhaus stated at a 9/2 Florida rally Kent "Boneface" McLellan, ex-volunteer for Ukraine's state-backed Azov Regiment, sieg heigled and bellowed, "Slava Ukraini!" by yaiyen in WayOfTheBern

[–]BerryBoy1969 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

The people who made Trump possible by coming out to run roughshod over the 2016 Democratic party primary, along with the media who worked in tandem with them to fill the American electorate with hate against the man who thwarted the coronation of our owners chosen one for the entirety of his presidency, and beyond, find themselves between a rock and a hard place of their own making with the machinations that transformed themselves into vapor with the slightest inquiry into the truth behind the scurrilous accusations levied against him.

Any method of painting Trump as the existential threat he is, to their comfortable hiding place behind the government they to protect themselves from the people with, will be used by them in an effort to convince the great unwashed that their demockracy is safe as long as the Great Orange Satan (not to be confused with Daily Kos) is kept as far from the levers of our owners power as humanly possible.

From an article written in July 2022:

And just what is so terrible about Trump anyway? I get many of his critics’ points, I really do. I hear them all the time from my mother. But even if we were to stipulate them all, do Trump’s faults really warrant tearing the country apart by shutting out half of it from the political process?

Love him or hate him, during Trump’s presidency, the economy was strong, markets were up, inflation was under control, gas prices were low, illegal border crossings were down, crime was lower, trade deals were renegotiated, ISIS was defeated, NATO allies were stepping up, and China was stepping back (a little). Deny all that if you want to. The point here is that something like 100 million Americans believe it, strongly, and are bewildered and angered by elite hatred for the man they think delivered it.

Nor was Trump’s record all that radical—much less so than that of Joe Biden, who is using school-lunch funding to push gender ideology on poor kids, to cite but one example. Trump’s core agenda—border protection, trade balance, foreign restraint—was quite moderate, both intrinsically and in comparison to past Republican and Democratic precedent. And that’s before we even get to the fact that Trump neglected much of his own agenda in favor of the old Chamber of Commerce, fusionist, Reaganite, Conservatism, Inc., agenda. Corporate tax cuts, deregulation, and bombing Syria: These are all things Trump’s base doesn’t want, but the oligarchs desperately do, which Trump gave them. And still they try to destroy him.

If paid SorosNazis can add to the wall of hate our owners buy to keep red/blue partisans jumping through the required hoops that keep their selectoral system the only option for the systems dependent consumers of the Corporate States of America to "affect change" with, they'll happily use them.

Just another day in paradise. Same as it ever was...

A Dire Message For All Loyal Democrats Concerned With The Preservation Of Our Owners Demockracy by BerryBoy1969 in WayOfTheBern

[–]BerryBoy1969[S] 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

YCMTSU... but they do it as easily as sucking their next breath of air, and millions of people still believe them.

A Dire Message For All Loyal Democrats Concerned With The Preservation Of Our Owners Demockracy by BerryBoy1969 in WayOfTheBern

[–]BerryBoy1969[S] 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

How successful can a so-called defensive military alliance be when it willfully depleted its own weapons stockpiles while simultaneously provoking Russia to rebuild its own military capability to a level it hasn't had since the 1980s. Add to that the treacherous conduct of the US against its NATO "allies", making them even more dependent on US military might that is itself a shadow of its former self.

Good question, and it seems that more people than our owners are comfortable with see through the rain of bullshit coming down on their heads 24/7 for what it is.

What if our owners have decided that their Republican wing of Government Inc. will take the helm of their ship of state in the next selection contest, and negotiate another Nixonian peace with honor in order to extricate their collective tits from the wringer they've fed them into?

Here's an excerpt from this article that alludes to such a possibility:

After years of Western leaders openly fantasizing about regime change in Russia, frankly entertaining Zbigniew Brzezinski-style visions of collapse and disintegration, publicly insisting that the embattled kleptocracy in the Kremlin was under greater daily strain and in more imminent peril of bursting at the seams than Kate Upton’s bra…after all that, word now suddenly comes that a Putin-less failed state would actually be a really bad thing – and that we better make sure it doesn’t accidentally happen by us overdoing our let’s-weaken-Russia-via-Ukraine strategy. Seems counterintuitive, considering that we’re supposedly right on the brink of total victory and the achievement of all our geopolitical goals, among which was a wrecked Russia, doesn’t it? But no. Wiser heads know better.

Writing in The New Statesman last month, in the wake of the Wagner uprising, noted British intellectual John N Gray – famous for his party-pooper works of nihilism-flavoured philosophy that would depress even Nietzsche – turned his flinty, unflinching gaze to the Russia Question. What he saw troubled him.

“The chain of command is fragmenting,” he asserts. “The logic of events points to further disintegration.” Russia, in fact, underwent a skin-of-its-teeth moment when Wagner mutinied: “The Russian state was shown to be deeply hollowed out. Along with Putin, it survived because the Chechen warlord Ramzan Kadyrov and, for reasons that are unclear, Prigozhin himself chose to keep it in being.” Wow. It was worse than we thought. The whole house of cards nearly came down. Apparently privy to all sorts of facts that support these claims (though he doesn’t mention any), Gray nevertheless doesn’t gloat. He worries. Because although Russia collapsing is a good thing, it’s actually too much of a good thing. Or so he wants you to believe.

Yes, it seems that Yevgeny Prigozhin’s weekend-long imitation of Rambo has proven to be something of a gift to a certain sort of Western off-ramper, like Gray—not so much as bias-confirmation of his fondest fantasies, “proving” that Putin is weak, but as a useful “out.” For Gray recognizes quagmire when he sees it. He knows that the coming winter forecasts for Kiev will be chilly with a 99.9 per cent chance of Kinzhals, and that the ongoing military mismatch that is the Donbass front will lead to nothing but further Ukrainian immiseration and even deeper discontent among European publics. “Western support is nearing exhaustion,” he notes. “Munitions are running out in the midst of a cost-of-living crisis, with a manufacturing base weakened by offshoring. Deindustrialized societies cannot sustain a protracted conflict when Russia is operating as a fully fledged war economy. The pro-Putin parties of the far right that are gathering strength throughout Europe will not endorse indefinite assistance, while Biden fears facing an anti-war Republican in the next presidential election.” Shit, he very sensibly concludes, we’ve lost. How do we withdraw our support from this debacle without it looking like another awkward Kabul Airport Moment? Some sort of volte-face that doesn’t look like a volte-face seems called for. So—cue the misgivings, the grimly cautionary tone, the realpolitiky-type considerations that must in the end, alas, outweigh our altruistic wish to help Ukrainian democracy:

“A larger version of the ethnic mayhem that followed the break-up of Yugoslavia, intensified by wars for control of unevenly distributed natural resources, is more likely [following a Russian ‘collapse’]. A humiliated Russia would be driven back into an impoverished, nuclear-armed Muscovite redoubt. Floods of refugees would head for Europe, destabilising governments across the continent. We may not be far from a point at which a Chinese takeover of Russia would be welcomed with relief.”

Boy, was that close! Look at all them bullets we dodged when we wisely pumped the brakes of our blue-and-yellow freedommobile, right before it went ploughing into that gas-station with nuclear weapons and blew the whole backward place sky-high! Good thing people like John Gray are now wisely counseling a rethink on our Ukraine policy. Maybe the best thing to do at this point is just…put this whole business behind us. More trouble than it’s worth, in the end. “Unless the West shakes off its liberal delirium regarding the future of Russia, Ukraine’s tragedy could be swallowed up in a still greater calamity.” Ya see? Larger calculations, about greater calamities, have to govern our thinking. “The West is staking its endgame on regime change. What if that has the same result as it did in Iraq and Libya? What if there is then no state in Russia with the authority to enforce a grim peace?”

Forget the failed counteroffensive, folks. The Ukraine, thanks to us, has seriously destabilized Russia. One more putsch and Putin’s kaput. Sure, this was what we wanted all along, but now we don’t, because we can’t have chaos, so we need to support Russia…or at least not not support it…or something.

Confused? Me too. But as disguised backpedalling in the service of imminent policy change, Gray’s piece makes perfect sense. And as Mark has pointed out, Gray is not alone. This kind of face-saving spin is likely to become more and more common.

A Dire Message For All Loyal Democrats Concerned With The Preservation Of Our Owners Demockracy by BerryBoy1969 in WayOfTheBern

[–]BerryBoy1969[S] 4 insightful - 2 fun4 insightful - 1 fun5 insightful - 2 fun -  (0 children)

Oh noes...

Be afraid citizens.

A sure-fire can't-fail US exit ramp from Ukraine by spindz in WayOfTheBern

[–]BerryBoy1969 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Now you have to decide whether it is more important to hand the US an embarrassing public defeat, and maybe risk them escalating to nukes, or whether it is better to quietly end the conflict, save hundreds of thousands of lives, and put the genii back in the bottle.

We have no say in what's important, or not. Those decisions are made by our government's owners, and they couldn't care less about saving hundreds of thousands of lives that aren't their own. Whether or not they're in close enough contact with reality to understand that they won't have time to flee to their super secure survival bunkers, and most of them will perish along with the hoi polloi they show so much contempt for, remains to be seen.

At this point in my life, our owners have given me no reason to believe their rationality extends one nanometer beyond their immediate wants and needs. Humanity is merely an inconvenient conglomeration of useless dependents to them, that need to be culled, and the worthy, properly managed.

A sure-fire can't-fail US exit ramp from Ukraine by spindz in WayOfTheBern

[–]BerryBoy1969 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

The problem with the West, and the U.S. in particular, is the fact that it no longer has any face to save in an increasingly multi polar world. The fact that it has it's ass hanging out for the world to see in Ukraine, is just a symptom of the psychopathy of the ultra rich, who hide behind the governments run by the weak and corrupt whores they bought to do their bidding.

They've created a clusterfuck of weak and incompetent managers, failing upwards all along, to the point where it's raining idiots from the high places logic would normally dictate be inhabited by competent, qualified, knowledgeable people.

If there's any off ramp to be had in Ukraine, Russia will designate what exit the U.S. and it's Europoodles are authorized to use, and the time it will be available for their use.

The whole mess is sometimes explained as a result of a miscalculation by the western élites. The situation, however, is far worse than that: The sheer dysfunctionality and the prevalence of institutional entropy is so obvious that there is little need to say more.

The dysfunction of the West runs far deeper than just the situation around the Ukraine project. It is absolutely everywhere. Public and private institutions, especially those of the state, find it difficult to get anything done; government policies resemble hastily drawn-up wish lists, which everyone knows will have little practical effects. That is why policymakers have a new priority: ‘not losing control of the narrative’.

Hartmut Rosa’s ‘line’: Frenetic standstill seems particularly apt.

Will people weep for the West? No …

Escaping Attrition: Ukraine Rolls the Dice by RandomCollection in WayOfTheBern

[–]BerryBoy1969 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Ayanna Pressley - Can you chip in $10, $20, $50, your life savings to help stop Vivek Ramaswamy from calling me a modern KKK leader? Think of what this could do for you and your family. by rondeuce40 in WayOfTheBern

[–]BerryBoy1969 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

JusticeUs Democrats. Experts at the art of creating diverse and inclusive demographics of good faith and hope to sell to their owners.

"Lesser" evil my ass...

Escaping Attrition: Ukraine Rolls the Dice by RandomCollection in WayOfTheBern

[–]BerryBoy1969 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Just made it through karlof1's piece about recent interviews with Maria Zakharova and Sergei Lavrov.

Love them both for what they do. Apropos of nothing, or maybe everything that has to do with the ideological chasm that exists between the West and the rest of the world, here's Maria's take on Cancel Culture. She's a remarkable person.

Imagine our press secretary making such an intelligent presentation.

Escaping Attrition: Ukraine Rolls the Dice by RandomCollection in WayOfTheBern

[–]BerryBoy1969 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

If you haven't read it yet, here's today's offering with his assessment of Ukraine's pin prick campaign against Russia.

Obviously Ukraine will be able to inflict damage in Russia with drone attacks, but in the larger scheme of things, nothing they have done thus far is of any real consequence either tactically, or stragetically in shaping the outcome of the SMO.

Andrei Martyanov gives a brief explanation on his blog regarding the challenges Russia faces on the vast expanses of it's border when dealing with rogue operators. Armies are a lot easier to see rolling up on your doorstep than small groups of guerilla's slinking about in the woods.

Tucker: We're speeding toward a Trump assassination by MeganDelacroix in WayOfTheBern

[–]BerryBoy1969 7 insightful - 1 fun7 insightful - 0 fun8 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

They're confusing the public's loathing for themselves for popularity for Trump. Every time they ratchet up the lawfare and patently unfair and political attacks on Trump, they remind people why they hate the people doing this to Trump, and this translates into 'support' for Trump. It's not. It's a measure of how much the deep state is loathed.

Per Fred, and he's not the only person to feel the way he does:

I despise Trump. He is a mean-spirited son of a bitch. His licking the boots of those revolting pseudo-Cubans in Miami and increasing sanctions, utterly unjustified, on Havana, are grounds enough for putting him behind bars. Trying to starve thirty million Venezuelans into giving up control of their oil, trying to assassinate Maduro are grounds for rehabilitating the guillotine. Beginning a cold war against China and driving a growing crop of countries into alliance against America gives new meaning to “stupidity.” This is Trump. I wouldn’t use him for dog food. I like my dog.

But: He isn’t Biden. He has my vote.

~snip~

But none of this is why I or half the country, will vote for Trump. Columnists talk about politics because they have to talk about something. The reason for the potential electoral explosion is much deeper, a nauseated, murderous, loathing for Washington and everything it is, does, and wants. a revulsion too deep to be expressed sometimes even among friends, a feeling that if someone blew up the Capitol with both houses in joint session, and exterminated the whole nest of bloodsuckers, we might get our country back. It would at least be worth trying.

Also, this guy.

And more...

Just because the Circle D Corporation acts like the gang that couldn't shoot straight, doesn't mean they are, and they're not going to convince me that they don't know exactly what they're doing in dividing the population the way they are.

What do you think of this electoral system, could it work? by randyjohnson in WayOfTheBern

[–]BerryBoy1969 7 insightful - 1 fun7 insightful - 0 fun8 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Up till now, it's worked like a charm every time.

Since the 2016 selection season, when the Circle D Corporation was forced to come out of the shadows in order to protect it's owners from the voters, and the 2020 Democratic National Convention, where the worst factions from both our owners parties embraced each other in bipartisan unity in order to protect the power their owners wield behind the facade of government of, by, and for the people.

Given the murmurings of dissatisfaction bubbling to the surface among the great unwashed units of production here in these Corporate States of America, one might think they're on to the game being played on them by their elected expectation managers.

Fortunately for our owners, the American people have embraced the concept of harm reduction, where voting for the candidate selected for us to "elect," that represents the least shitty option available in the two choice system our owners provide for us, is as good as it gets, because that's all we're allowed to do if we truly want to win absolutely nothing.

From our owners perspective it makes perfect sense to keep doing what they do, because the American people keep insisting their vote is their voice, without understanding that their voices mean nothing to the people they mistakenly believe are listening.

With 2024 being the most important election in our lives, again, in order to save our owners demockracy from the current dark evils our owners media will soon be amplifying, I see no reason to believe our owners selectoral system won't once again deliver the numbers required to legitimize it's existence for another cycle.

Same as it ever was.

What if employers could gauge the ‘moods’ of workers? A dangerous new tech gains ground in India by therazorx in WayOfTheBern

[–]BerryBoy1969 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Imagine the level of disconnect involved when an employer needs technology to tell them what they could find out for themselves by spending a day doing what they demand their workers do.

Here's an example of the universal mood of the average worker if they were really interested in understanding, vs. managing the 'moods' of their units of production.

The realities playing themselves out in the lyrics of this song, speak for a lot more of humanity than just the relative few that are affected by our owners managers in the swamplands north of Richmond Virginia.

This shit isn't going to fly for much longer.

It can't.

Oldie but goodie: The Turn (2021) by penelopepnortney in WayOfTheBern

[–]BerryBoy1969 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Good article that explains what a lot of people have been going through since the Circle D Corporation nominated Hubert Humphrey to protect themselves from the left with back in 1968.

How bout a little background music to go along with a short Sunday read?

Sanders hits at Cornel West over criticism of Biden by CollisionResistance in WayOfTheBern

[–]BerryBoy1969 10 insightful - 1 fun10 insightful - 0 fun11 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Good Boy Bernie. You appear to be quite content at the end of that blue leash you're tethered to.

That's the way to protect the hands that feed you ol' fella...

Paul Craig Roberts: Washington Shot Itself in Head by Facilitating De-Dollarization by SmockSignals in WayOfTheBern

[–]BerryBoy1969 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

This comment should be broadcast as a SOTU address, and read into the congressional record as the official cause of death in our nation's autopsy.

Daily dose of TDS: liberal terrified by Trump's mugshot by MeganDelacroix in WayOfTheBern

[–]BerryBoy1969 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

It may be time for Emily Oster to pen an appeal for TDS amnesty as well...

@jvgraz: "You could wipe your ass with your ballot and it would be less embarrassing than checking the box next to Joe Biden's name." by Maniak in WayOfTheBern

[–]BerryBoy1969 3 insightful - 3 fun3 insightful - 2 fun4 insightful - 3 fun -  (0 children)

Why would a person use paper that's already covered in bullshit to wipe their ass with?

FNDP: Rain dance! 🌧☔⛈🌦☂🌂🌈 by Martini in WayOfTheBern

[–]BerryBoy1969 5 insightful - 2 fun5 insightful - 1 fun6 insightful - 2 fun -  (0 children)

ELO - Showdown

The Weather Girls - It's Raining Men

Supertramp - It's Raining Again

James Taylor - Fire and Rain

Temptations - I Wish It Would Rain

Nilsson - Rainmaker

Otis Taylor - Rain So Hard

Otis Taylor - Blue Rain In Africa

B.J. Thomas - Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head

SRV - Texas Flood

CCR - Have You Ever Seen The Rain

You don't have to sell it to me! (So salty) by Martini in WayOfTheBern

[–]BerryBoy1969 4 insightful - 2 fun4 insightful - 1 fun5 insightful - 2 fun -  (0 children)

That'll make Biden lose

No it won't. Biden wins whether he remains president or not. The only losers are the clapping seals, trained to cast votes for the only "viable" options our owners supply, in the selectoral system our owners control.

I'll be voting for West myself, not that I believe for a minute that our owners would allow their government to have a faction, that could undermine the bipartisan collegiality they enjoy with their present ownership of the Uniparty.

It's Really Happening: Mask Mandates, Contact-Tracing Re-Implemented At Colleges, Offices by MeganDelacroix in WayOfTheBern

[–]BerryBoy1969 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Deez Nuts...

Why the News Is Not the Truth | Harvard Business Review by SmockSignals in WayOfTheBern

[–]BerryBoy1969 6 insightful - 1 fun6 insightful - 0 fun7 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Almost 30 years later, the song remains the same. You'd think at some point people might start asking each other who keeps setting their hair on fire.

EXCLUSIVE: 6 Leaked Plot Points From Disney's 'Snow White' Remake by penelopepnortney in WayOfTheBern

[–]BerryBoy1969 5 insightful - 3 fun5 insightful - 2 fun6 insightful - 3 fun -  (0 children)

From what I understand, the new production will be called ‘Snow Brown and the Seven They/Thems.’

According to film critic Jerry Asshat, “It’s really a genius move.”

The Decline of America's Military Reflects the Overall Decline of America Itself by RandomCollection in WayOfTheBern

[–]BerryBoy1969 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Performative Theater has taken the place of competency as a Western "value."

Not to say that diversity and inclusion shouldn't be inherent to the great "melting pot" that is the USofA, but when it becomes the guiding principle of our owners government, at the expense of the people who depend on the systems in place, I think it's safe to assume that our owners government no longer has the institutional power to act on it's citizens behalf.

Our infrastructure is crumbling beneath our feet. Our "education" system leaves no child left behind. Our medical system is nothing more than billing opportunities for Hospital Groups to extract profit from the insurance companies of those fortunate enough to be medically insured. The most "online" generation of Americans, who coincidentally comprise the generation most sought after by our MIC, are the most physically, mentally, and emotionally unfit generation we've produced so far, but thanks to diversity and inclusion, they'll be given the opportunity to "be all they can be" in the greatest fighting force that's never had to fight an existential battle for their country's survival.

Other than those seemingly inconsequential things in the greatest demockracy the world's ever known, everything's just fucking peachy.

WaPo op-ed piece argues that the West shouldn't feel gloomy about the Ukraine war because it has resulted in a strategic windfall by CollisionResistance in WayOfTheBern

[–]BerryBoy1969 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Chief among the common misconceptions about the way official propaganda works is the notion that its goal is to deceive the public into believing things that are not “the truth” (that Trump is a Russian agent, for example, or that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction, or that the terrorists hate us for our freedom, et cetera). However, while official propagandists are definitely pleased if anyone actually believes whatever lies they are selling, deception is not their primary aim.

The primary aim of official propaganda is to generate an “official narrative” that can be mindlessly repeated by the ruling classes and those who support and identify with them. This official narrative does not have to make sense, or to stand up to any sort of serious scrutiny. Its factualness is not the point. The point is to draw a Maginot line, a defensive ideological boundary, between “the truth” as defined by the ruling classes and any other “truth” that contradicts their narrative.

~snip~

In short, official propaganda is not designed to deceive the public (no more than the speeches in an actor’s script are intended to deceive the actor who speaks them). It is designed to be absorbed and repeated, no matter how implausible or preposterous it might be. Actually, it is often most effective when those who are forced to robotically repeat it know that it is utter nonsense, as the humiliation of having to do so cements their allegiance to the ruling classes (this phenomenon being a standard feature of the classic Stockholm Syndrome model, and authoritarian conditioning generally).

The above excerpts are from an article written in 2017, describing the "official narrative" our owners government and media mouthpieces were tasked with disseminating at the time. While the "official" narrative is subject to change as it benefits our owners, the means and methods remain the same because they're effectively tried and true.

If we look back at 2017, and the totally (not) organic, grassroots #Resistance movement that emerged, this paragraph is almost prophetic in it's description of what was to follow:

The point of all this propaganda is to delegitimize Donald Trump, and to prophylactically reassert the neoliberal ruling classes’ monopoly on power, “reality,” and “truth.” In case this wasn’t already abundantly clear, the neoliberal ruling classes have no intention of giving up control of the global capitalist pseudo-empire they’ve been working to establish these last sixty years. They’re going to delegitimize and stigmatize Trump (and any other symbol of nationalist backlash or resistance to transnational Capitalism), bide their time for the next four years, and then install another of their loyal servants … after which life will go back to “normal,” and liberals will do their best to forget this unfortunate period where they pretended to believe this insipid neo-McCarthyite nonsense.

And here we are - same as it ever was...

FNDP: We're so over you! 📴👋🛑⛔🚫 by Martini in WayOfTheBern

[–]BerryBoy1969 5 insightful - 2 fun5 insightful - 1 fun6 insightful - 2 fun -  (0 children)

AOC, and all the rest of the elite creeps.

They've got nothing any sentient being, capable of thinking outside the defined parameters of our owners propaganda networks, have any need of in the real world. Billy Preston wrote a song about their values some 50 years ago.

Same as it ever was... only the faces have changed.

Attorney General Garland appoints a special counsel in Hunter Biden probe by Blackhalo in WayOfTheBern

[–]BerryBoy1969 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Shower Thoughts For Shitlibs - Or - What Can You Do When Things Need To Be Done? by BerryBoy1969 in WayOfTheBern

[–]BerryBoy1969[S] 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Also, for the "lesser Evil" apologists of the VBNMW persuasion, a little something the voters you need to help you win your next game can see with their own lying eyes, despite the wailing and gnashing of teeth being done in defense of the only viable alternative to the Evil Republicans our owners provide in their two choice selectoral system.

I think the Blue Bus has reached the end of the line, and the people getting off it realize they're farther, rather than nearer, the destinations their daft driver was supposed to deliver them to.

Shower Thoughts For Shitlibs - Or - What Can You Do When Things Need To Be Done? by BerryBoy1969 in WayOfTheBern

[–]BerryBoy1969[S] 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Long but interesting article about how things may play out for the peasants ruled by the professional idiots of our rules based international order.

A small portion for your reading enjoyment:

It’s perhaps hard to realise just how far government has become performative and virtual in recent decades. It’s not simply that governments have lost capability, it’s also that they don’t care. For modern political parties, the imperative is that of the Party in 1984: to be in power. Actually doing things is dangerous: you might fail, and even if you succeed you could annoy potentially powerful groups. Talking about doing things, on the other hand, is fine. Blaming others (especially outside forces), condemning your opponent’s or your rival’s plans on ideological or financial grounds, successfully burying a problem or even denying that it exists, are the standard tools of government today. The Covid crisis illustrates this very well. A decision had to be taken in various countries about whether to close schools. It was argued that doing so would harm children’s intellectual and social development, which was true. It was argued that not doing so would only make the epidemic worse, which was also true. Like Buridan’s ass stranded between two bales of hay, governments were torn in both directions, faced with the terrible requirement to actually make a real decision. The result was confusion, order and counter-order, until finally the magic bullet of vaccines came along, and governments could avoid having to take any more such decisions. We’ve seen the same with Ukraine: western policy, for all its bombast and aggression, is largely about pretending to deal with the crisis, not least by adopting panic measures of sanctions and arms deliveries, and then continuing with them when it was obvious they were ineffective and counter-productive. But it looks good and gives the appearance of action, which is what counts.

So I think we are at a point where action and influence (if not necessarily formal power) will increasingly devolve upon those who can Do Things, as it always does in difficult times, especially at a local level. Otherwise, we will perish. On the other hand, there is no point in capable people just sitting around waiting to be asked: we shall all have to do what it is within our power and expertise to do, as it becomes necessary. But unlike the past, we also have the problem of performative speech to contend with. By that, I mean that something over 90% of the public commentary on today’s crises is not analysis or advice, but insults, allegations, expressions of anger, personal attacks, attacks on the integrity of others, attempts to get noticed, attempts to stop others being noticed … and so on. Now there has always been controversy, but in the past the barriers to entry were much higher, and the time to print and distribute even ephemeral pamphlets was relatively long. This meant that the signal to noise ratio was reasonably high, whereas these days it’s hard to find any real signals at all among the noise, except the signalling of virtue. Money and clicks come from anger and engagement: thus, the proliferation of sites and tweets and comments that amount to: “I saw this stuff on the Internet and it made me angry so this is what I think, even if I don’t know anything about the subject.”

Genuinely important arguments are simply lost among the noise, the chaos and the anger, and that’s fine with our political leaders, because useful ideas, valid criticisms and pertinent comments all disappear and are overlooked in the fog. The world has no need of my views on, say, the US political system, the potential for the end of the Dollar as a reserve currency, or the internal politics of Venezuela, since I have no special insight into any of these, and no desire to needlessly make myself angry, or to infect others with my anger. There’s too much of that already.

So how do we preserve a decent society in difficult times, since I increasingly think that’s what the argument comes down to? Well, we might first remember that there have been difficult times before. The western world has been at peace within itself since 1945, and we have forgotten what a crisis is like, and what humans are capable of, for good and ill. If you don’t do so already, it’s worth looking at records of the experiences of ordinary people in the nineteen thirties and up to the end of the War: not front-line combat or the death camps, but their ordinary fear, insecurity and mundane sufferings. At one extreme, check out, for example, the autobiography of Aaron Appelfeld, born in Rumania of German-speaking parents, interned in a ghetto at the age of seven, sent to a camp, escaped and lived in the woods for years before being picked up by the Red Army, finding his way to a transit camp in Italy and entering Israel clandestinely … Or at another extreme, one of my favourite authors, Jorge Semprun, who wrote mostly in French: the son of a diplomat loyal to the Republic, fled to France joined the Resistance and the Communist Party, arrested and sent to Buchenwald, where his life was saved because the clandestine Communist Party apparatus in the camp falsified the records to make him look like a skilled labourer … What comes out of these experiences, as with tens of millions who never recorded theirs, is less sudden drama than mundane everyday heroics in the face of hunger, despair, deportation, racketing and exploitation, violence and the complete destruction of all social bonds. Of course, a large part of the world lives like this now anyway: who is to say that we will escape all these things, and how would we deal with them if they happened to us?

It’s not for me to give advice. But it seems clear that if we abandon performative gestures and impossible demands, if we recognise that our enfeebled states are likely to be overwhelmed by the challenges of the near future, then we are of necessity thrown back on the collective resources of ordinary people. In times of stress, these have often turned out to be considerable, and our energies might be better devoted to doing things ourselves and with others, than striking poses to demand action from institutions that increasingly lack the capability to act. You can certainly demand your “rights” but, as Spinoza was probably not the first to notice, rights do not enforce themselves in the absence of power.

Of course, this implies a massive change in mentality: figures who are now conspicuous may simply disappear because they have nothing useful to contribute, and others may come to the fore. But heroics are not essential: what keeps society turning, after all, is the activities of ordinary people, not governments, doing their jobs and living their lives honestly. Here, I’m going to lean on my Protestant heritage and invoke the idea of “Calling,” ironically probably more familiar in its Latin form “Vocation.” We are used to the idea of vocation in certain careers: religious people, of course, but also doctors, teachers and others who work for the public good. But Calvinists, in particular believed that God had “called” each of us to do something, and that any task, trade or profession, no matter how humble, was of value and pleasing to God if it was done conscientiously. Now in our Liberal and secular age this is laughed at: a mathematician who goes into teaching when they could become a bond trader is an object of pity. But when you think about it, our society needs maths teachers more than it needs bond traders, and the honest shopkeeper, the competent and reliable tradesman, the dedicated home helper, the conscientious cleaner, for that matter, the caring parent, are all part of the glue that keeps society together. So perhaps it would be useful if we were to consider how we spend our lives, and try to do what we are doing to the best of our ability.

And we may be called to do other, more challenging, things, if the situation deteriorates. Like many people, Jorge Semprun joined the Resistance because it was the right thing to do: he doesn’t seem to have thought twice about it. One of my personal heroes Jean Moulin, the only Prefect to refuse to serve Vichy, made a dangerous escape to London, only to be sent back to France to organise the Resistance there into a single movement. He accepted what he realised was a probable death sentence because, with his political and administrative skills, he was the only man available who could do it. He was duly captured by the Gestapo and died under torture without giving even his own name, but he had united the Resistance and helped to avoid a civil war in France in 1944-45. And finally, I’ve had the privilege of knowing some white South Africans who fought, militarily and otherwise, against the apartheid regime, giving up a comfortable lifestyle for obscurity, exile, danger, poverty and often imprisonment and torture. But then as one friend said to me about his decision to go into exile at a low point in the fortunes of the anti-apartheid struggle, “I couldn’t do anything else.”

Perhaps we will be called on to make a personal contribution when the time comes, or perhaps we just cultivate our personal gardens as best we can, which is not a small thing in itself. But given the series of crises that are drumming their fingers in anticipation of an interesting future, we will not be helped by performative actions or performative words, but only real actions, no matter how humble, of ordinary people.

Let’s leave it at that for this week.

Maybe It's Up To US! was more a warning to prepare for the inevitible, than it was a campaign slogan for a candidate who would never be allowed near the levers of power in our owners government.

What The American People Are Beginning To Understand About The Lies They're Told by BerryBoy1969 in WayOfTheBern

[–]BerryBoy1969[S] 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

After the success of the Occupy Wall Street protests, that focused on class struggle, the “woke” thermostat was turned up to boiling by the elite-controlled media, the elite-controlled state and the elite-controlled corporations; the classic divide and conquer tactics that had always worked in the past, this time on the basis of “identity”. But this let rip the toxic post-materialist, post-modernist brew throughout a society where so many were damaged by nearly four decades of neoliberalism, stripped of their identities as well-paid competent workers with futures, or even stripped of the hope of that for the younger generations. Desperately competing with any weapons available for the few remaining “good” jobs. ...

My bolding emphasizes what many of the people I talk to realize about their country, and the government that betrayed their good faith in order that they may harvest the "trickle down" wealth associated with serving their corporate masters at the peoples expense.

Our futures were sold as commodities on a trading floor, and replaced with the "ideas" of a more prosperous future, working in the jobs of tomorrow that never materialized to the extent that could support the majority, who struggle to survive the rentier class burden put upon them by the lucky few who won the birth lottery in the greatest demockracy the world's ever been the victim of.

Day 820 of Build Back Better by penelopepnortney in WayOfTheBern

[–]BerryBoy1969 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

;D

Day 820 of Build Back Better by penelopepnortney in WayOfTheBern

[–]BerryBoy1969 5 insightful - 2 fun5 insightful - 1 fun6 insightful - 2 fun -  (0 children)

Well, if I remember correctly, Biden's voters were wet with anticipation to vote for the most progressive presidential candidate since FDR, who promised them that "nothing would fundamentally change."

Is it any wonder that they want to prolong their winning streak with a second term of more of the same? You need to get in touch with your inner pragmatic incrementalist, so as not to let rational thought interfere with choosing the lesser evil.

Everyone knows we can't win unless we vote for one of the candidates our owners have selected for us to elect. It takes a village of hope and change, to be stronger together for a future to believe in, in order to Make America Great Again by building back better one baby step at a time.

Having said all that, I hope you understand how important it is that you VBNMW this selection season, because if you don't, it will be the Republican party building nothing back better instead.

Is that what you want?

What The American People Are Beginning To Understand About The Lies They're Told by BerryBoy1969 in WayOfTheBern

[–]BerryBoy1969[S] 9 insightful - 1 fun9 insightful - 0 fun10 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

If you talk to anyone at all about what you see happening around you, it's not at all uncommon that people recognize that they have no power to affect change for the betterment of society with a government that's been bought out from the city council to the state department.

Despite what our owners media would like the majority of us to believe, an ever growing number of citizens are beginning to understand why the rest of the world is eager to disconnect from the U.S. and it's rules based order.

What happens to us as a nation in the near future is anybody's guess, but I fear the Great Depression of the last century will be looked upon as a cake walk compared to what appears to be on the horizon for us... Assuming our idiots don't decide they can win a nuclear war.

We Went To a Trump Rally: What We Heard Will Shock You by therazorx in WayOfTheBern

[–]BerryBoy1969 15 insightful - 1 fun15 insightful - 0 fun16 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

These are American citizens talking about the issues they confront every day of their lives. If you're not a blind partisan traveling in your own insulated circles, you know these conversations are had, and they're had by more "normal" people than our owners media would like you to believe.

You see it every day from TPTB, trying their best to keep people distracted from the real issues, by bombarding them with inconsequential, current thing culture war battles for the heart and soul of the snowflakes who seek safety and protection from a corrupt government that has no power to provide it's citizens protection from it's owners and operators.

More people, every day, are processing the reality that surrounds them, and are following rational thoughts through to their logical conclusions.

People aren't looking for political saviors anymore. Too many people understand the system is institutionally incapable of reform, and that both parties are subservient, submissive whores to their capitalist masters.

2024 promises another long, hot summer of discontent for our managers...

Nancy Pelosi Declares America Will Cease To Exist If Trump Becomes President Again by Super_Soviet_Gundam in WayOfTheBern

[–]BerryBoy1969 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

FTFY

Spot on.

@Kwin71459566449: "I am thrilled that my 3rd party vote upsets you. Anyone who sits on their sofa and cheers for war waving another country's flag? Can kiss my ass. I'm voting 3rd party to destroy the Democrat Party. You don't like it? Tough 💩. 2024 is about revenge on Biden voters like you." by Maniak in WayOfTheBern

[–]BerryBoy1969 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

There are far too many people in this country who think they've won something because the private political corporation they backed in their owners selection contest, is now empowered to manage their expectations for the next four years.

Nobody wins squat but the two viable options the system provides it's dependents in our owners demockracy.

Nancy Pelosi Declares America Will Cease To Exist If Trump Becomes President Again by Super_Soviet_Gundam in WayOfTheBern

[–]BerryBoy1969 7 insightful - 1 fun7 insightful - 0 fun8 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

She says that like it's a bad thing...

WTF is America anyway beyond a legal profit extraction enterprise, where capital uses the government it bought, to exploit a country's citizens with laws they wrote, for their politicians to protect them with.

There's Not Enough Lipstick To Disguise The Pig Of Our Owners Demockracy by BerryBoy1969 in WayOfTheBern

[–]BerryBoy1969[S] 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

It is getting very messy. Verging on insanity. A new indictment with four charges in respect to the events of 6 Jan has been issued to former President Trump – who has now been charged with more than 75 crimes. These latest charges however are likely only to further eradicate confidence in the Federal Justice process, and in the integrity of the American political system itself. The indictment is to be heard in the District of Columbia which is notoriously politicised, and unlikely to empanel anything but a wholly hostile jury (the saying in DC is that the Justice Dept could convict a hamburger with a DC jury).

Charging Trump with conspiring to ‘steal’ the 2020 Presidential election entrenches more deeply than before that the country is headed for a great reckoning – in the courts and at the ballot box. It poses questions that cannot but further lead to an unravelling of politics in the U.S.

~snip~

What seemingly is happening here, as Naoïse MacSweeney writes in The West, is that the “origin myth of the West as a grand narrative that constructs history as a thread running singular and unbroken, from Plato to NATO” is now widely understood across the globe as both factually incorrect – and ideologically driven.

She asks: “Where does the West go from here? There are some who would have us go backwards”. Most people, however, she argues, no longer want an origin myth that serves to support either racial oppression or imperial hegemony. She postulates that the original narrative of “the West” is being replaced by a de-territorialised, structure-fluid western narrative centred around tolerance, rights for minorities, diversity, gender fluidity and ‘democracy’.

The problem however is that the new ‘grand narrative’ is as factually incorrect and as ideologically driven as the ‘from Plato to NATO’ myth. It is the substitution of one flawed repressive narrative by another.

Briefly put, if the traditional western myth ‘is fallen’ like the ancient city of Troy (in this analogy), the invaders of Tradition (Troy) are now inside the city walls – burning and looting.

May we live in interesting times...

NYT: BOMB EVERYTHING, also you're racist by MeganDelacroix in WayOfTheBern

[–]BerryBoy1969 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

From what I understand from the NYT, and almost every other outlet of our owners communication networks, I'm also a sexist, misogynistic, homo/transphobic white male basking in the ignorance of my white priviledge.

It's so hard to keep up with what's wrong with me these days. If it wasn't for the valiant efforts of the intrepid reporters of our owners fourth estate, I may never have known...