The Political Elite and the Rise of Global Populism

"What the two sets of party elites also share is contempt for their parties’ base of activists, voters and non-donor constituencies. Aside from paying them lip service during election season, Republican elites have no use for their base of religious voters, anti-immigrant activists and small-business people...

Similarly, Democratic Party leaders have no use for the priorities of their voters and activists, who by large margins support Medicare-for-all, the Green New Deal and an end to our militarized foreign policy...

The realization of how little the agendas of ordinary people matter to the elites of both parties has made it a lot more acceptable for their betrayed bases to look for alternatives, which would have been unthinkable a decade ago. In fact, this realization is the genesis of the populist moment in current American politics."

Bill Blum, Democratic [and Republican] Elite Could Care Less About the Life of the Party


“Incestuous, homogeneous fiefdoms of self-proclaimed expertise are always rank-closing and mutually self-defending, above all else.”

Glenn Greenwald


“People with advantages are loathe to believe that they just happen to be people with advantages. They come readily to define themselves as inherently worthy of what they possess; they come to believe themselves 'naturally' elite; and, in fact, to imagine their possessions and their privileges as natural extensions of their own elite selves.”

C. Wright Mills


"Propaganda is the executive arm of the invisible government."

Edward Bernays

There is no point in trying to persuade and cajole the various party elites, of either side of the aisle, to redirect their attention back to the American public. Their minds and hearts belong to the donor class and the power elite, and while they may pay lip service to reform and rights and the public welfare, their venal instincts bring them around to follow the money, every time.

Obama betrayed the progressiver trust in the mandate he was given for reform.  That is a difficult but key admission towards freeing oneself from the unthinking herd.   And abandoning the ''lesser of two evils' rationale.

Have you ever wondered why there are effectively only two parties in this vast America?

Trump talks a good game as well, albeit more loudly and more crudely and more shamelessly, but he is betraying his own base of supporters as well.  He is remarkably adept at shifting the blame, and blowing all the familiar dog whistles when his natives get restless.   The benefit to him is that he is riding a wave of irrational anger and backlash, and he feeds and channels it like most unscrupulous demagogues do so well.

The American people soundly rejected Hillary and her party apparatus which was made evident in the last election. And as a result of what could have been a learning experience the Democrats may talk a good game about change, and then the party elite serve up who— the corporatist party hack Joe Biden, probably the least reform-minded and progressive candidate in the field.  And all the courtiers to corporate power in the media and the other enabling organizations fall immediately into line.

And try to shame anyone who disagrees or dissents from the prevailing narrative.

Liberals like to pride themselves with their intellectual sophistication and high-principled judgement, as compared to 'the deplorables.'   Conservatives do the same thing, with a strong emphsis on morality and common sense.

But when it comes to it, they both will stand by and accept terrible injustice, if not outright crimes, and toss aside the very principles for which they apparently stand. For the sake of winning.  But oh no, not for their own benefit, but for the sake of 'justice' for the right kind of people.  Never mind the methods they must regretfully employ.

They will bend themselves into logical knots, and paint their hypocrisy with rationales designed to let them keep their pride and sense of being better than the rest, whom they despise.  They are the most noble, untainted by the things that they despise.  But they embrace what they hate in other guises.

They will do it for the sake of 'the party,'  for winning, for the continuing power of an organization which has been waylaid by a relatively small group of the servants of the powerful few, and primarily serves itself, while couching its actions as 'the lesser of two evils.'

For the sake of victory over the forces of evil these jokers will make Faustian bargains, for the sake of expediency and some higher good, with the same thought and care with which they change their underwear.

Change will come. But it will be jarring, and disruptive.

Winning....

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Civilisation - Risk On

“I believe that order is better than chaos, creation better than destruction.  I prefer gentleness to violence, forgiveness to vendetta.  On the whole I think that knowledge is preferable to ignorance, and I am sure that human sympathy is more valuable than ideology.  I believe that in spite of the recent triumphs of science, men haven't changed much in the last two thousand years; and in consequence we must try to learn from history. History is ourselves.

I believe in courtesy, the ritual by which we avoid hurting other people's feelings, by satisfying our own egos.  And I think we should remember that we are part of a great whole, which for convenience we call nature.  All living things are our brothers and sisters. "

Kenneth Clark, Civilisation


"At the root of America's economic crisis lies a moral crisis: the decline of civic virtue among America's political and economic elite. A society of markets, laws, and elections is not enough if the rich and powerful fail to behave with respect, honesty, and compassion toward the rest of society and toward the world."

Jeffrey Sachs


"Assange is a deeply polarizing figure.  That’s almost certainly why the Trump DOJ believes it could get away with indicting him based on a theory that would clearly endanger core journalistic functions: because it hopes that the intense animosity for Assange personally will blind people to the dangers this indictment poses.

But far more important than one’s personal feelings about Assange is the huge step this indictment represents in the Trump administration’s explicitly stated goal to criminalize journalism that involves reporting on classified information.  Opposition to that menacing goal does not require admiration or affection for Assange.  It simply requires a belief in the critical importance of a free press in a democracy."

Glenn Greenwald


“If all the world hated you, and believed you wicked, while your own conscience approved you, and absolved you from guilt, you would not be without friends.”

Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre

Stocks were enthused by the Chinese export data, and the futures were sharply higher in the morning.

It was risk on all the way around, and so the VIX and the Dollar and gold were lower.

As Chalmers Johnson noted, 'Nemesis, the goddess of retribution and vengeance, the punisher of pride and hubris, waits impatiently for her meeting with us.'

And no one could have seen it coming.

As previously noted, we are in a time of hysteria, and people are doing and saying some very headstrong things, that may be sowing the seeds for their future troubles.  And we may expect a reckoning, one which will be remembered.

Need little, want less, love more. For those who abide in love abide in God, and God in them.

Have a pleasant weekend.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - As the Blood Flows - Madness for Your Minds and Hearts

Atë, Goddess of Delusion and Ruin, daughter of Strife and Zeus

"The mood among Germans is really bad.  There is a lot of frustration and verrohung. The common people work and can hardly make ends meet. Envy and resentment are widely spread in Germany.  When both the global financial crisis and the euro disaster come back with a vengeance, things will get pretty nasty.  You don't have to be a prophet to make that prediction. 

You just have to extrapolate the current mood in this relatively crisis-free period. Aside from the old and the dying, most Germans today have never experienced any real crisis."

Lars Schall, To Marshall Auerback on His Essay on German Voters


"Administration and Main Stream Media (MSM) say 'booming', much faster GDP and jobs growth than previous decade, but the reality is an occasional 1 or 2 quarter surge but baseline 2% growth rate trends remain unchanged.

Only growth in the stock market, other Fed inflated assets, and debt. Maybe we should ask MSM what is 'booming'. Official jobs numbers obscure 1/3 of labor force without jobs and not job seeking; job holders are a mix of full and part time; average hourly wages are rising because 'supervisors' (managers) wages are rising but flat for 90%.

Flawed startup jobs guesses (Birth Death Model) added to lift feeble  jobs created.  Payroll tax receipts are falling—  could the tax receipts decline be explained by tax cuts?

Tax cuts have primarily assisted corporations. They have had a negligible effect on payrolls taxes. Weak withholding receipts reflects continuing rise in part time workers and low wage substituting for full time workers.

And keep in mind the little growth that did take place was debt driven. Despite all the 'booming economy' cheerleading, the data shows a flat trajectory for growth at around 2% for the last decade, despite mountains of 'stimulus'.

A chart of the Dow looks rather different, suggesting all the stimulus went into the stock market instead.

The US economy is not booming. It has begun gradual slowdown. Housing and autos slump is just the most visible indicator of broad based downturn-"

Harold Malmgren

And into the pockets of the one percent.  QED

Trump was on the TV after the close, emphasizing that there is indeed a crisis on our border, even though the imminent threat of the caravan is laughable, and easily shown to be made up spin for the election.  They want to scare you into obedience for their own benefit.

He led off his speech this afternoon with the notion that unworthy immigrants are flooding into our country, and straining our resources, greedily and ungratefully taking things that should be used by honest hard-working and law-abiding people.   They are obviously parasites, bringing disease and crime and drugs.

This is the same argument, and similar imagery, that was widely used to prepare the German people for the detention and eventual holocaust of the disabled, and the different, and political opponents, and the Jews.   They were literally depicted as rats, overrunning the productive economy, and draining and poisoning it for those who are worthy.

Most will write this off as nonsense from unscrupulous politicians and their enablers ahead of the mid-term elections.   And that may very well be the case.  Trump is as changeable as the wind in his lying.  And a liar he is, from the beginning.

But like my German friend whom I quote above, there is concern that this penchant for unreasoned anger and accommodating retreat into the lies will lead to much worse things, and likely, blood in the streets, when the next crisis comes.

Glenn Greenwald just delivered a warning about this 'fire in men's minds' from Brazil.

Those who have been looting and rigging the economy for years are backing a campaign to create distractions and set up scapegoats.  Ask yourselves, who benefits from all this?  Who is ending up with most of the money and assets, and dishing out the lies and the pain and division for everyone else?

We in America are insular, and are accustomed to looking down our noses at the problems in the rest of the world, and thanking God for our exceptionalism and national virtue.

Let us be reminded that here, already, because of this filthy hate and these endless lies, we have just witnessed the worst incident of antisemitic murder in the history of this nation. 

And that it was perpetrated by a man who allowed his mind to be poisoned by this filthy rubbish from the alt-media, nurtured in a bed of lies, and stoked to a white hot fire of hate in online commentary.

Let that sink in.   The murders have begun.  Sociopaths may welcome this.   You will not.

This is not who we are.

Pray for the faith and the strength to shun the lies, and remain standing until the end.  And don't spend your time worrying about the speck in your neighbor's eye and their shortcomings;  tend to yourself, and you will have more than enough to do.

If you think you have already reached perfection, pray to God to show you your sins, so that you may repent of them here and now.  And that will keep you busy for the rest of your life.

And in this lies your hope, and a light worth following. 

Need little, want less, love more.  For those who abide in love abide in God, and God in them.

Greenwald: Lessons From Bolsonaro's Victory in Brazil

In the video below Glenn Greenwald discusses the recent election of Jair Bolsonaro, and what makes him substantially different from Donald Trump.

But he also ties in the dynamics that led to this election with the other recent political scenarios in Western democracies, like the US and the UK.

It is a short video and worth watching.

"The Right wing authoritarian Jair Bolsonaro cruised to a 10-point victory on Sunday night in Brazil, becoming president-elect of the world’s fifth most populous country and the most extremist leader in the democratic world. While some of the dynamics driving his victory are unique to Brazil, many of them are similar to prevailing political currents in North America, Eastern Europe and, increasingly, Western Europe.

Bolsonaro’s victory is highly consequential in its own right: For the 210 million people who live within the borders of the country, as well as for the region and the globe, he and his tyrannical movement now dominate. But beyond those consequences, there are valuable lessons to learn for all of the democratic world by understanding the sentiments that led Brazilians en masse to support someone who, a very short time ago, was relegated to the far fringes of political acceptability and whose ascension to power was unimaginable. I explored some of those key lessons in the eight-minute video."

Glenn Greenwald

You may see the original at The Intercept.

Déjà Vu All Over Again - The Rise of Far Right Authoritarians and Bully Worship

"In Brazil, a far-right presidential candidate, Jair Bolsonaro, came close in Sunday’s national election to winning the 50% of the vote needed to win without a run-off (he received 46.2%), and is now highly likely to prevail on October 28 against his opponent, the liberal Workers’ Party’s Fernando Haddad, who finished a distant second with 29%.

That result, by itself, is stunning, given that Bolsonaro is an undiluted, explicit authoritarian in the model of Duterte and Sisi – one could easily say 'fascist' even using the narrowest and most most rigorous sense of that term – who had been a fringe figure in politics for decades but is now poised to assume the presidency."

Glenn Greenwald, The Stunning Rise of Brazil's Far Right


"We have now sunk to a depth at which the restatement of the obvious is the first duty of intelligent men.  It is not merely that at present the rule of naked force obtains almost everywhere.  Probably that has always been the case.  Where this age differs from those immediately preceding it is that a liberal intelligentsia is lacking.  Bully-worship, under various disguises, has become a universal religion."

George Orwell


"Through his first year in Germany [1933], Dodd had been struck again and again by the strange indifference to atrocity that had settled over the nation, the willingness of the populace and the moderate elements in the government to accept each new oppressive decree, each new act of violence, without protest...

Dodd continued to hope that the murders would so outrage the German public that the [Hitler] regime would fall, but as the days passed he saw no evidence of any such outpouring of anger

The controlled press, not surprisingly, praised Hitler for his decisive behaviour...In a letter to Hull, Dodd forecast an even more terroristic regime... 'The people hardly notice this complete coup d'etat. It takes place in silence...I would swear that millions upon millions have no idea what a monstrous thing has occurred.'"

Erik Larson, In The Garden of Beasts


It can only be hoped that American democracy will thoroughly realize, and this before it is too late, that fascism is not confined to any one nation or any one party; and it is to be hoped that it will succeed in overcoming the tendency toward dictatorial forms in the people themselves.  Only time will tell whether the Americans will be able to resist the compulsion of irrationality or whether they will succumb to it.”

Wilhelm Reich, The Mass Psychology of Fascism


"He who makes a beast of himself gets rid of the pain of being a man."

Samuel Johnson

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Three Day Holiday Weekend - Non-Farm Payrolls Next Week

"A great deal of intelligence can be invested in ignorance when the need for illusion is deep."

Saul Bellow


“State propaganda, when supported by the educated classes and when no deviation is permitted from it, can have a big effect.”

Noam Chomsky


"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by an endless series of hobgoblins, most of them imaginary.”

H.L. Mencken


“The term propaganda rings melodramatic and exaggerated, but a press that—whether from fear, careerism, or conviction—uncritically recites false government claims and reports them as fact, or treats elected officials with a reverence reserved for royalty, cannot be accurately described as engaged in any other function.”

Glenn Greenwald


“The point of modern propaganda isn't only to misinform or push an agenda.  It is to exhaust your critical thinking, to annihilate truth.”

Garry Kasparov

Stocks were shoved around the plate by picky speculators who were not quite sure what to do at these levels when faced with a three day holiday weekend and continuing uncertainty with emerging markets and trade talks.

The 'NAFTA' talks between the US and Canada ended without a resolution today. They have agreed to continue speaking again on Wednesday.

Gold and silver came in strongly, but faded as the day went on and the Dollar appreciated modestly.

These jokers seem to be keen to keep the metals under wraps. If they lose control of the price, then a lot of dominoes will be falling.

But the setup here is very interesting.

"Commercials are currently net long (futures &options) in both gold & silver, 1st time ever for silver, at least going back to 95, which is as far back as my data goes."

Bill Fleckenstein

Smells like teen spirit.

Since today is the end of August, we will be seeing a Non-Farm Payrolls Report for this month next week.  I have included a calendar of upcoming economic events for next week as the third chart below.

As you may recall, the US markets will be closed on Monday for Labor Day.

In honor of Labor Day, Trumpolini issued an order to freeze the pay of about two million Federal workers.

And he is considering a unilateral action to provide another $100 Billion in tax breaks for the .1% by indexing capital gains to inflation.

A recent Gallup poll indicates that 78% of Democrats believe that Hillary lost to Trump because of Russian interference in the elections.

Who says that the power of propaganda has been blunted in the era of the internet and alternative news sources.

Need little, want less, love more. For those who abide in love abide in God, and God in them.

Have a pleasant weekend.

Silencing Dissident Voices: Consortium News Interviews State Department Whistleblower Peter Van Buren

"In a corporatist system of government, wherein there is no meaningful separation between corporate power and state power, corporate censorship is state censorship."

Caitlin Johnstone, Rogue Journalist


"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."

Constitution of the United States, Amendment I


"Never forget that everything Hitler did in Germany was legal."

Martin Luther King

"On the premiere edition of Consortium News Radio we speak with Peter Van Buren, a former State Department official, whistleblower and victim of Twitter censorship.

Van Buren speaks about his experiences in Iraq, the critical book he wrote about those experiences and how the Obama State Department eventually attempted to have him tried under the Espionage Act.

This week Van Buren had his Twitter account permanently shut down and seven years of his Tweets wiped from the record. Why? Because he challenged mainstream journalists who contested a Tweet from journalist Glenn Greenwald that mainstream reporters support America’s wars and help bring them about.

One corporate journalist decided to silence Van Buren by complaining to Twitter, which, within two days, and with no due process, obliged.

Joe Lauria, editor-in-chief of Consortium News, interviewed Van Buren on Wednesday, August 8 for 40 minutes."

You can view the Consortium News website here.

I am sure most of us have forgotten Van Buren, and the other 'whistleblowers, activists, and dissenters' that were prosecuted, and sometimes vindictively persecuted, by Obama/Clinton.

Julian Assange comes to mind as well, among others.  How he has been treated is disgraceful and an abusive use of state power and 'the letter of the law.'   But going forward it will set the tone for freedom of the press for everyone who chooses to say things that are at odds with, or even unflattering to, the prevailing narrative.

Pervastive platforms like Google, Facebook, Twitter, and so forth should be treated like common carriers.   That would relieve them from having to bear the burden of defining what is to be censored and what is not.  This places that burden on the government, subject to all the checks and balances and recourse therein.

It is all too easy for government to pressure private companies to excess, and then point the finger at them, holding them as scapegoats.

And those on both right and left should be able to see the excesses that may be justified by this current climate of hysteria, which truth be told, emanates from the corporate Democrats as much as any of the many excesses of the GOP.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - The Madness of Crowds - Panem et Circenses

“In reading The History of Nations, we find that, like individuals, they have their whims and their peculiarities, their seasons of excitement and recklessness, when they care not what they do. We find that whole communities suddenly fix their minds upon one object and go mad in its pursuit; that millions of people become simultaneously impressed with one delusion, and run after it, till their attention is caught by some new folly more captivating than the first...

Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, one by one.”

Charles Mackay


“The true measure of a man is not his intelligence or how high he rises in this freak establishment.  No, the true measure of a man is this: how quickly can he respond to the needs of others and how much of himself he can give.”

Philip K. Dick


"When a population becomes distracted by trivia, when cultural life is redefined as a perpetual round of entertainments, when serious public conversation becomes a form of baby-talk, when, in short, a people become an audience, and their public business a vaudeville act, then a nation finds itself at risk; culture-death is a clear possibility.”

Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves To Death

Stocks finished mixed on the day as the earnings reports for the 2Q are starting to roll in.

Their valuations seem a bit thick at these levels, and are vulnerable to news that does not support ideal pricing.

Gold finished unchanged, while silver was off a few cents.

The dollar finished slightly higher.

There will be a stock option expiration on Friday.

There were some intraday postings, of videos from Thomas Frank and Glenn Greenwald respectively.  You can scroll down to watch them.

Watching or reading any of the specialty news outlets is like observing a group of people who exist within isolated conclaves,  on ideological islands, engaging in insular feedback loops of simulated conversations, and bending the events of the day to fit their particular hysteria of the moment in their own parallel universe.

One can only step back and wonder what it is that has driven them to run in a mad herd from one place to another, seemingly without self-awareness.  And unless you drink deeply of the particular flavor of their kool-aid, it makes little sense because it has become unmoored from the common experience.

Truly, life imitates high school.

Need little, want less, love more. For those who abide in love abide in God, and God in them.

Have a pleasant evening.

Debate on the Trump-Putin Summit Between Cirincione and Greenwald

The original posting with transcript of this debate between Joe Cirincione and Glenn Greenwald about the Trump-Putin Summit can be found here.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Modern Discourse

"These violent delights have violent ends
And in their triumph die, like fire and powder,
Which, as they kiss, consume."

William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet


"When once the forms of civility are violated, there remains little hope of return to kindness or decency."

Samuel Johnson


"...in the gross and scope of mine opinion
This bodes some strange eruption to our state."

William Shakespeare, Hamlet


"She closed this observation with a common and trite moral reflection; which, indeed, is very ill-founded, and does great injustice to animals: 'I wonder what pleasure men can take in making beasts of themselves.' 'I wonder, Madam,' replied the Doctor, 'that you have not penetration to see the strong inducement to this excess; for he who makes a beast of himself gets rid of the pain of being a man.'"

Anecdotes of the Revd. Percival Stockdale, Johnson Miscellanies

Today was another sleepy day on the trading markets,  the action characteristic of the dog days of Summer.

Stocks were mixed, with the financials strong, but real world stocks off on weakness in the economy outside of the paper chase.

And so in the balance, it was a mixed to unchanged sort of day.

Netflix announced its earnings.  And it bombed after the bell, and the stock was down sharply. This may affect the stock indices tomorrow given that Netflix is one of the big cap bubble darlings.

How aggressively Wall Street defends the stock price and buys the dip may give us some indication of where we are on this leg of the bust and bubble cycle being produced by lax regulation, hot money injections, and Fed policy errors.

I had the occasion to look into some heated twitter exchanges, starting with one cited by Glenn Greenwald.   And I broke with recent custom and  read some comments sections of web sites that are high volume and popular, and do little to moderate their sites.

And the image of this modern discourse, with truncated comments thrown back and forth with even less content than characters, seems like monkeys throwing feces at one another.

Seriously.  If you step back and look at the quality of conversation, there isn't any, no matter how hard some participants may try to use reason and coherent expression.

Like bad money with good, this modern style of thought exchange tends to predominate, and pushes out more meaningful discussion.

This is our clicks culture, such as it is. And it has been elevated to an instrument of public discussion and policy announcements now with this Administration.  Although I hasten to add that they are all doing it, on both sides of the professional political spectrum, albeit some more gracefully than others, but with the same effects. Fraud is the colors of the day, while truth, such as it may occasionally dare to appear, is led down blind alleys and strangled.

“Whoever commits a fraud is guilty not only of the particular injury to him who he deceives, but of the diminution of that confidence which constitutes not only the ease but the existence of society."

Samuel Johnson

The anticipation and reaction to Trump's visit to Russia is a great example of lots of sound bites being tossed with much heat but little light and less thought.  The Russia hysteria is becoming a genuine cultural phenomenon.  And there are mainstream media outlets that have become virtual sewer pipes for it, that destroy thought and trust, and then are all too ready to blame malevolent foreign powers for the erosion of confidence that follows.

This is nuts.  So why does it thrive?

It thrives because it pays in our systems of metrics and valuations, which are money and power so far above all else that hardly anything else enters into consideration.  We have become so distracted and spin-frenzied that we can only think in sound bites that are tossed around, rise to prominence, and then forgotten.

Even though the public opinion TV shows have become slightly better organized, they are even more cynically motivated feces throwing contests between highly paid talking heads.  Professional tossers if you will.

Speaking of monkeys throwing feces, let's see if Goldman's earnings tomorrow morning can do anything for the financials.

But the thriving financials are largely parasitic and extractive. And they will not help to continue to support the weighty valuations of our modern god of the markets.

Need little, want less, love more. For those who abide in love abide in God, and God in them.

Have a pleasant evening.