The left is finally intellectually bankrupt

The election of 2016 proved to have at least one significant virtue—it fully exposed the corruption and ideological emptiness of the so-called "Liberal" class. None of this gives me a scintilla of joy. When I was young, being a good Liberal was actually something to aspire to—at least that was what I believed after I read Ken Galbraith's The New Industrial State. I believed we were the children of the Enlightenment who were responsible for the overwhelming majority of human progress.

As Thomas Franks and Chris Hedges have so excellently described, those kind of liberals only seem to exist in the memories of us aging coots. If Hillary Clinton and John Podesta are any example, liberals have become amazingly shallow, pathetically ignorant, and corrupt to the bone. Their political ideas are limited to schemes that enrich their friends. Their economic ideas can literally be found in the pages of the Economist. Debbie Wassermann Schultz, the Clinton campaign chair is a hired gun for the payday lending people. They seem to draw the line at actual slavery but that is about the only limit to depths of their neofeudal understanding of economic possibilities.

And in their latest excuse for the pathetic political performance of these thoroughly dislikable charlatans, today's liberals have resorted to actual McCarthyism. The claim that they lost because Russia is childish even by "the dog ate my homework" standards. But that's all they have so they are sticking to their fantasies even though it endangers world peace because in their pinched worldviews, it even makes sense. It made sense to Tailgunner Joe too. So there!

Left degeneracy plumbs new depths

by Patricia Greanville, March 24, 2017

An appeal landed in my mailbox yesterday from I suppose the editors of Mother Jones or their marketing machine in conjunction with an outfit called Citizens United. The letter blares across the page something that can only be of interest to people suffering from a bizarre sense of priority, abysmal ignorance or clinical stupidity:

Donald Trump just SLANDERED President Obama!

The implication is that we should urgently do something about this. Aux armes! Further, in what we must accept as a compelling supporting rationale for action, the authors of the appeal, proving they do come from Lalaland, offer this laughable argument:

…Donald Trump is wrong!!! President Obama has always been on our side. He’s been fighting to overturn Citizens United since Day One.

With equal breathless dishonesty, the letter has the audacity to talk about defending “Obama’s legacy”, a supposedly sterling body of work apparently about to be wrecked by the horrid Trumpinator.

By the standards of silliness this marks a new low; by the standards of left thinking, such as it is practiced in the US, it confirms the irrelevancy of this “new”, thoroughly bourgeois identity politics “left” to the problems really threatening humanity. By the standards of honesty, well, it does not qualify in that category, but let’s just say it is yet another contorted effort at bashing Trump. Which would be alright—considering the man offers any serious critic a multitude of valid grounds on which to oppose him— if these guardians of political correctness and truth also looked homeward for many of the curses besetting the nation.

The fact that these liberal champions refuse to recognize the horrid, smoothly hypocritical track record of the Democrats (their darling Obama and the abjectly corrupt Clintons, in particular), and their favorite party’s drive to war, in lockstep with their new pals, the CIA and the resilient Neocon vermin, a posture which now almost guarantees some sort of nuclear confrontation with Russia or China in the near horizon (with unthinkable consequences for this planet as we know it lest we quickly correct course), says all you need to know about the degeneracy of the so-called left in the United States and in the West, in general.

The traditional “left” in the US (always basically a bunch of centrist liberals since the radical left was reduced to ashes by unrelenting campaigns of anticommunism endorsed by the very same liberals) is so wanting these days in essential morality that now even voices that just a few years ago would have been categorized as unqualifiedly on the Right—and therefore by the left’s own reckoning “on the wrong side of history”, are about the only ones saying and doing things that are desperately needed.

Like opposing imperialist wars, for example. Do you see any of the legendary voices on the mainstream “left” uttering a single word of opposition to the dishonest campaign to demonize Russia? Instead, they are busily criminalizing any kind of contact with Russian diplomats or politicians that could lead to a de-escalation of tensions. So, nope. They are not there. Quite the opposite. Which leaves us as I say with the likes of Ron and Rand Paul and other libertarians, or the new French right champion, ultranationalist Marine Le Pen (already in the CIA crosshairs), doing wittingly or unwittingly what the left should be doing.

Incidentally, Le Pen’s banishment from polite society is predicated on her opposition to the EU’s slavish attachment to Washington’s push to war with Russia, and her impatience with NATO. I suppose that were France’s WW2 iconic hero Gen. Charles de Gaulle alive, he too would be promptly consigned to the netherworld of political undesirables since, as a recalcitrant nationalist and one suspicious of Anglo-American intrigues and treacheries, he held almost exactly the same views as Le Pen. This all by itself shows how much the world has changed.

The question arises: Has humanity —with the help of the lying, escapist mainstream media — really forgotten how to use its imagination? Sure, capitalism with its endless economic-insecurity distractions and malignantly convoluted superficial politics does consume a great deal of a person’s psychic space. This certainly stunts the imagination, especially in a culture that boasts a long history of proud anti-intellectualism. But still.

Not too long ago, when some sanity and probity still held sway and when the collapse of liberaloid values was not yet total, most people in these formations clearly understood that the first and foremost duty of a progressive was to avoid wars at all costs, particularly a terminal, horrid war between the nuclear superpowers. This was and is the ultimate sin, the ultimate obscenity. Besides being the most elementary proof of common sense. Avoiding the Doomsday scenario was seen as imperative. People openly pushing for such confrontational policies would have lost much if not all political traction and even the presstitutes would have filed some demurring comment. Some on the liberal left might have even risen to denounce such dangerous warmongering.

This was the basic consensus for generations, ever since atomic weapons came to occupy center stage in world politics.

Even the ever supremacist, devious, and savagely capitalist United States agreed with its nemesis, the Soviet Union, to lower the threat of an Armageddon by signing treaties of weapons parity and reduction in nuclear arsenals, thereby at least assuring a balance of terror: the aptly labeled Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD), a concept promulgated and observed even by reactionaries like Ronald Reagan. Apparently it worked.

The importance of this glimmer of sanity in the engulfing madness cannot be overestimated. But the dark forces never give up and in the intervening years the Anglo-American establishment quietly retired the MAD principle, reinstating the far more dangerous and de-stabilzing “first strike” principle. Meanwhile, nuclear weapons have become even more potent, and there’s now almost open acknowledgement by the Pentagon that DU (depleted uranium) munitions, warheads and other forms of “tactical nukes” are standard choices for field commanders. The Middle East, of course, has been the testing lab, with Iraq, Syria and other victim nations subjected to what many suspect is an international crime of truly horrifying and unprecedented dimensions.

The problem with the development and use of tactical nuclear weapons in the modern battlefield (besides the abject cowardly criminality involved in using such weapons against weaker nations) is that when used by a superpower on another superpower’s troops or “prime assets”, things can get rapidly out of control. A shooting war is no moment for cool heads to prevail, especially in utterly brainwashed and self-righteous chauvinist nations like America, where the public has been systematically denied access to truth in these essential matters. In America, for most people, the first realization that a war had begun would be a huge flash and thunder and then—well nothing. Utter pulverization. In other words, for most Americans the final war and their own death sentences would come as total surprise.

In Russia at least the public is well aware of where the world stands, and some, many I hazard, perfectly understand the context and support their leaders’ struggles to maintain the peace. That said, if attacked by the US and the rest of the NATO mafia, Russia will not back down. It will respond with devastating efficiency. After all, last time Russia was attacked it lost 27 million lives, the equivalent in those days of the whole population of New York, California and Texas combined. This is something the American mind, still obsessed with less than 3,000 casualties on 9/11, can’t begin to wrap its jingoist mind around. So there will not be a repetition of Barbarossa no matter how much the despicable, overwhelmingly Zionist US Neocons push and huff to make it happen. Prominent, highly respectable Russians residing in the US, filed a letter of warning to the American people. The media naturally chose to ignore the document entirely.

The Russians’ warning packed a sobering sentence. It should be obligatory reading:

If there is going to be a war with Russia, then the United States will most certainly be destroyed, and most of us will end up dead. (1)

The dream of nuclear supremacy, the longed for “pre-emptive strike”, the ability to deal Russia a disabling blow, with a “tolerable” level of retaliation, say only 50 to 75 million dead in the US, is talked about seriously in high military policy precincts. The submerged crime that such a war would be provoked and waged to secure not US national security but decisive advantage for its ruling class of billionaires and associated cliques of privileged rulers around the world, is never discussed. How could it? This truly insane posture has also been official Pentagon policy since at least 2006 when some people began to believe the US had attained nuclear supremacy over Russia and China. A paper filed in 2006 by two analysts with Foreign Affairs, a blue-ribbon establishment think tank, summed up the situation rather nicely:

For almost half a century, the world’s most powerful nuclear states have been locked in a military stalemate known as mutual assured destruction (MAD). By the early 1960s, the nuclear arsenals of the United States and the Soviet Union had grown so large and sophisticated that neither country could entirely destroy the other’s retaliatory force by launching first, even with a surprise attack. Starting a nuclear war was therefore tantamount to committing suicide.

During the Cold War, many scholars and policy analysts believed that MAD made the world relatively stable and peaceful because it induced great caution in international politics, discouraged the use of nuclear threats to resolve disputes, and generally restrained the superpowers’ behavior. (Revealingly, the last intense nuclear standoff, the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, occurred at the dawn of the era of MAD.) Because of the nuclear stalemate, the optimists argued, the era of intentional great-power wars had ended. Critics of MAD, however, argued that it prevented not great-power war but the rolling back of the power and influence of a dangerously expansionist and totalitarian Soviet Union. From that perspective, MAD prolonged the life of an evil empire.

This debate may now seem like ancient history, but it is actually more relevant than ever — because the age of MAD is nearing an end. Today, for the first time in almost 50 years, the United States stands on the verge of attaining nuclear primacy. It will probably soon be possible for the United States to destroy the long-range nuclear arsenals of Russia or China with a first strike. This dramatic shift in the nuclear balance of power stems from a series of improvements in the United States’ nuclear systems, the precipitous decline of Russia’s arsenal, and the glacial pace of modernization of China’s nuclear forces. Unless Washington’s policies change or Moscow and Beijing take steps to increase the size and readiness of their forces, Russia and China — and the rest of the world — will live in the shadow of U.S. nuclear primacy for many years to come.

One’s views on the implications of this change will depend on one’s theoretical perspective. Hawks, who believe that the United States is a benevolent force in the world, will welcome the new nuclear era because they trust that U.S. dominance in both conventional and nuclear weapons will help deter aggression by other countries. For example, as U.S. nuclear primacy grows, China’s leaders may act more cautiously on issues such as Taiwan, realizing that their vulnerable nuclear forces will not deter U.S. intervention — and that Chinese nuclear threats could invite a U.S. strike on Beijing’s arsenal. But doves, who oppose using nuclear threats to coerce other states and fear an emboldened and unconstrained United States, will worry. Nuclear primacy might lure Washington into more aggressive behavior, they argue, especially when combined with U.S. dominance in so many other dimensions of national power.

Finally, a third group — owls, who worry about the possibility of inadvertent conflict — will fret that U.S. nuclear primacy could prompt other nuclear powers to adopt strategic postures, such as by giving control of nuclear weapons to lower-level commanders, that would make an unauthorized nuclear strike more likely — thereby creating what strategic theorists call “crisis instability.”

(The Rise of US Nuclear Primacy | By Keir A. Lieber and Daryl G. Press* | Foreign Affairs | March/April 2006)

Goes without saying that enormous, obscene sums are being dedicated by the US to achieve this “nuclear supremacy”, all, as previously stated, under an almost complete news blackout about the subject. Problem is, the Russians and the Chinese are not exactly pikers, and Russia’s nothing short of astonishing rebirth as a first class world power, its Phoenix-like re-emergence from the Western-inspired Yeltsin putrefaction, has created new realities to factor in. Western leadership, of course, we see from their actions, continues to ignore them. And yet, as even some Western news sources have indicated, the Russian nuclear defence/deterrent force is something that should compel attention and respect. Ponder:

Russia Unveils RS-28 Sarmat ‘Satan 2’ Nuclear Missile
Russia has declassified the first image of its new thermonuclear-armed intercontinental ballistic missile.

The RS-28 Sarmat could carry a payload capable of wiping out a landmass “the size of Texas or France,” according to a report by the Kremlin-aligned Sputnik news agency.

Known colloquially as “Satan 2,” the missile will replace the RS-36M — which was dubbed “Satan” by NATO after entering service in the 1970s.

Satan 2 missile: Good bye to all that. Just one can wipe out all of Texas or France. An image of an RS-28 Sarmat missile. Makeyev Rocket Design Bureau.

Robert Kelley, a former nuclear weapons expert at the U.S. Department of Energy, said the new missile was likely an upgrade of electronics — rather than explosive power or range.

“The range of the missiles will be about the same, the explosive destructive power will be about the same [but] the reliability, flexibility and confidence [in the warheads’ ability to hit their targets] will go way up,” said Kelley, who is now a now a distinguished associate fellow at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.

He added: “Your iPhone can do thousands of more things today than in the 1970s when these systems were first deployed. Many of the clunky electronic circuits of that era no longer exist and no one knows how to make them anymore.”

According to Russian media, the missile’s first stage engine PDU-99 was tested in August, while a hypersonic warhead was reportedly tested in April.

The new version of the Sarmat is expected to enter service late in 2017.

(Source: NBC News)

That means that just two of these “Satans” could wipe out the whole US Eastern Seaboard for the next 50,000 years. What do you call a leadership that consciously and recklessly plays with such diabolical weapons of mass destruction? That constantly taunts and provokes the population of a nuclear-armed nation that wishes no conflict with anyone but which has suffered terribly in recent wars?

SILENCE AND MISDIRECTION

The whore media will not talk about these things—things that really matter— because the US ruling class thinks that it can win a nuclear clash with Russia, and that the sooner this is resolved, the better. The thousands of prostituted “strategic analysts” crawling all over the so-called “defence establishment” of the West, the people who furnish the MIC with its excuses and raison d’etre, believe this posture is “rational”, well, their careers and livelihoods depend on that.

The current situation means that a huge war can now occur by choice—following Washington’s unquenchable desire for hegemony— or by a concatenation of absurd grotesque increments, as the Great War of 1914 demonstrated beyond reasonable doubt. This folly which buried a whole generation and destroyed 40 million lives, as documented by historians such as Barbara Tuchman, showed that humanity can indeed bumble its way, inch by inch, into a horrid conflagration. And politicians in 1914 Europe, multiple defects aside, were towering statesmen when compared to the sociopathic dwarves, cowards, and drooling fools running the show these days on both sides of the Atlantic.

This is the backdrop against which we measure the ludicrous sense of priority exhibited by the editors of Mother Jones, their cohorts in the rest of the liberal media, and their millions of low-info, desperately confused followers, as they feed off of these inflammatory messages about Trumpian sins.

MJ wants Trump’s scalp for daring to imply that the saintly Obama wiretapped his phones. But, is Trump so far from the truth in this case? Apparently, to the alarm of his innumerable critics, all zealous guardians of the warmongering imperial status quo, this is a broken clock that manages to tell the right time more than twice a day. Too often for their comfort. Accordingly, and quite possibly dishonestly given the IQ prevailing in this segment, this crowd remains tediously and recklessly fixated on the admittedly ugly idiosyncrasies defining Trump and his regime as if the US had never seen a repulsive chief of state before, well, not so overtly, that is. More than that, they are tilting at windmills. Donald Trump for all his bluster caved in to the Deep State with the firing of Michael Flynn, and these days, stylistic questions aside, he is simply more of the same criminality at the helm of the empire and no longer represents a real neofascist threat, as continually proclaimed.

The only real and credible neofascist threat to the people of the United States and the world at large can now emanate exclusively from the unified councils of the US ruling plutocracy, acting through their favorite tool, the mendacious duopoly, and the power ministries (CIA, FBI, NSA, Pentagon agencies, etc.) operating with the usual support of the whore media (including so-called alternative media such as Mother Jones, which provide a “left” imprimatur to these undemocratic proceedings). In other words, the US will go into full overt fascist mode when the deep state deems it necessary and not a moment sooner, Trump or no Trump in the equation.

Glen Ford, for one, refuses to be swept into the anti-Trumpian frenzy on the basis of stupid or fabricated reasons. Declares the editor of Black Agenda Report, dismissing the charge that Trump is in this case offering just one more of his famous “alternative facts”:

The ruling class/War Party/corporate media campaign for regime change in Washington has moments of pure silliness, with grown men claiming that U.S. presidents don’t have the power to wiretap people. Someone should have informed Dr. Martin Luther King. But, if self-described “progressives” can believe that the CIA is a benign, democratic institution, they can believe anything. “The destabilization of the U.S. bourgeois state is a project, not of the Kremlin, but of multinational and finance capital headquartered in the U.S.” (Corporate Media Counting Cadence to Fascism, BAR)

Facile observers like to compare Trump to Hitler and Mussolini, but those two, despite their criminality, perhaps insanity in the former, at least had the ability in their prime to thread coherent thoughts and even weave a complete ideology. Hitler and Mussolini took pride in writing their own speeches, in an age without teleprompters. They both read voraciously, and even wrote books, without the aid of a corral of ghost writers, not to mention professional spin doctors. Hitler, no chicken hawk, fought with valor in WW1 and entertained dreams of artistic distinction. That Mein Kampf, besides its ugly message, is basically unreadable due to pervasive incoherence and shall we say, “philosophical overreach”, is nonetheless an accomplishment that the Donald could only dream of. What’s more, both Mussolini and der Fuhrer faced at the beginning of their careers a real left, something that Trump has never seen in his entire miniscule tenure. Because a real left has not existed in the United Sates for generations.

Still, by shilling for the Democrats and the imperialist Duopoly, Mother Jones, along with the rest of the bankrupt “liberal intelligentsia”, has become a joke, even if millions of low-info liberals, sold on the largely manufactured anti-Trump hysteria, continue to cheer.

As said many times on these pages and articulated by numerous authors, this is NOT to excuse, defend or endorse Trump, except in those moments when the man, regrettably in a rather incompetent and opportunistic fashion, happened to make noises toward peace and non-intervention in the world. Such worthy ideas —perhaps the difference between life and death for this planet, or at the very least untold suffering for many millions of human beings around the globe—have now been betrayed by Trump himself, or abandoned or neutralized in large part as a result of the machinations of the deep state and their allies in what used to be the left in America.

Should we now kneel and pray on the altar of St. Obama. more