On this day....

 ... 73 years ago, my mother and I were landed immigrants (that means LEGAL) in New York - having been displaced persons in Germany who left our native country, thus escaping Communism - more accurately named Bolshevism - before they arrived.

We were war refugees in Germany during 

and after WW2.

BTW - a landed immigrant had to have a sponsor who would be financially responsible for the newcomer - no welfare!

We survived the relentless bombing of German cities by the both American and British bombers - one place we lived in was reduced to rubble. Contrary to most media reports, most targets were civilian - including the fire bombing of Dresden and Hildesheim - we had just left Hildesheim. Incidentally,  the historic facts which I cite were not learned in American public schools, but were made available by American authors who researched beyond the common 'history' as taught in school.

As you can read on my foundational website - www.crushlimbraw.com - I became assimilated into American society and culture through my public schooling. Having an aptitude for language and having no accent of speech,  you could not tell me from any American born here - in essence, I became an American.

I supported the war in Korea, Vietnam and the countless other wars of 'liberation' since then - after all, we are DaGoodGuys! Right?

Were we grateful to come to America? You betcha - more than grateful! After all, we came to 'the land of the free and home of the brave'!!

And I believed it with my heart and soul - no ands, ifs or buts.

Again, as you can read on my website - WTF has happened to MY country which adopted me and which I gladly accepted as my new everlasting 'land of the free and home of the brave'?

I now watch people walking with masks even though they have been thoroughly discredited by actual medical testing - but the authorities like CDC, FDA continue with their ridiculous mandates and edicts. Where have we left our brains, America?

We allowed an invasion of 50 million people since 1965 (both legal and illegal) from nations whose population will NEVER assimilate into America - the biggest in world history, and we somehow expect America to continue unharmed. Delusional! Who made that decision? Just ask the natives of European countries how their import of alien immigrants has worked out - again decisions by their rulers - who made them?

Our ruling oligarchs and their paid politicians are doing everything they can to have an actual war - even nuclear - with the greatest nuclear power like Russia - and most of us don't bat an eye, much less raise a voice of protest. Are we insane?

Furthermore, if you READ actual history and the political and economic factors involved, it is increasingly clear that Russia has every right defend itself from Neo-Con American AGGRESSION. Yes, you read that correctly - NEO-CON AMERICAN AGGRESSION!

Who are DaNeoCons? BTW - I used to be one, I admit......until about 15-20 years ago.

In America, we have have 36 million young American men between the ages of 25-35 whose main purpose in life is playing fantasy football - they know nothing else and care less of that fact. What a freaking waste of manhood!

We now excel in IGNORANCE! Our population has been dumbed down, morally corrupted and somehow DaBoomers still keep touting DaLand of DaFree and home of DaBrave as if it's MAGIC DIRT!

WE - yes.....WE LOST IT.....and I was part of that mess as I state on my website.

It happened on OUR WATCH!

I can go on and on, but I know that at least some of you reading this do care - because I occasionally hear from you by email - and it is encouraging to me more than you can imagine.

Start asking questions:

Who wants wars?

Who rules us?

How did we lose our culture?

Are we governed by humans?

Are we Christians or Churchians?

What about Western Civilization? Where did it go? Who is trying to destroy it?

Servants of Satan - Russia or America? What exactly are America's 'values'?

Who, what, where, when, why and how - begin there!

Begin here - www.crushlimbraw.com - and never quit.

BOTTOM LINE - it is time for us to.......or get off DaPot! NOW! The future of our kids and grandkids depends on it.

Who Wants War?

Did anyone ask you?  Have you ever asked the fundamental question?

My first 8 years of life – 6 were spent in a war – the last 4 I remember well. I don’t recommend it!

The years after the war were no picnic either – but we survived!

If you read - Beware the Vengeance of the Afghans - The Death of Arms Control - The First of Many Cauldrons Form in the Middle East – have you ever asked: Who EXACTLY wants war?

Furthermore, do you really want to know? You might not like the answer! Does truth matter anymore? Did it ever?

I asked the simple question: Who wants war? (from my library) – the answer is here - https://crushlimbraw.blogspot.com/search?q=who+wants+war – a compilation of articles, including the one by General Butler - War Is A Racket - “I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested. Looking back on it, I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents.”
― Smedley D. Butler, War is a Racket: The Antiwar Classic by America's Most Decorated Soldier

On a related note - America’s Wealth Hinges on Its Ability to Borrow Big – or Else - isn’t that reassuring? Ah – how much do we spend annually on just our FOREIGN policy military adventures? Don’t ask!

Yeah, I know, your neighbor said we need to fight’em over there and not here. What else do you depend on your neighbor? And besides, who’s ‘em? Also, ask him about our borders which apparently are not worth defending – yeah, I know – don’t ask!

Oh, you’re scheduling a church service to ‘support our troops’? Christian War Fever - By Chuck Baldwin

Here are more articles by Chuck Baldwin on American wars.

Who are we, America?  Reaching for Enlightenment - By Anthony J. DeBlasi

Godless primitivism is not the answer - Without Christianity, without the European nations, without the Graeco-Roman legal and philosophic traditions, there is no Western civilization. Which, of course, is why the only solution to the undermining and subversion of the West is to return to the three core pillars of the West.

The Christmas Truce of 1914 - By Gary G. Kohls, MD

The Folly of Irrational War-mongering and Other Unlearned Lessons from World War I

“Enemy” soldiers in World War 1 fraternizing at Christmas

“…the ones who call the shots won’t be among the dead and lame
And on each end of the rifle we’re the same” — John McCutcheon

In World War I, as happens to be true in most American wars, the Christian church leadership joined in the patriotic fervor with very un-Christ-like, nationalistic and racial/religious domination stances. Astonishingly, religious leaders on every side of the conflict truly believed that God was on their particular side. And so the pulpits all over Europe, including British, Scottish, French, Belgian, German, Austrian, Hungarian, Russian and Italian reverberated with flag-waving fervor, with clear messages to their doomed warrior-sons that it was their God-given Christian duty to march off to kill the equally brain-washed young Christian soldier enemies, who were also certain that God was on their side.

(I have watched this movie several times.......it should be mandatory in every church! - CL)

So who wants wars? Yes - PERPETUAL WARS - and guess the NUMBER ONE country doing his bidding? - 

https://crushlimbraw.blogspot.com/2022/12/satans-wars-christians-killing.html?m=0 - Christians killing Christians!

Read Gary G. Kohls, MD article full text at: https://www.lewrockwell.com/2023/12/gary-g-kohls/875978-2/ 

Who Rules Us? Does Anyone Care? Because no one knows – but we sure feel the effects! Another day to connect some dots!!!

Six months ago I posted an article by Eric Zuesse which I entitled ‘’Who Rules Us?’’ – will be linked later. Since it was a report on a study, it was most likely received as an academic exercise without much further reflection. Without any doubt whatsoever, those who do rule us DO NOT want us to know!

Today I posted two items on immigration - Trump's new asylum policy a game-changer on immigration and  This bipartisan immigration bill will change the face of America 

The first is about trying to slow the bleeding of America – the second is another stab at delivering a killer blow to the American middle class by our representatives in Congress that WeDaPeople elected.

On a different note, but definitely related to ‘’Who Rules Us?’’ - Doug Casey on Why Jeffrey Epstein Is a Perfect Example of a "Philanthropist" – it’s a racket – plain and simple! Subsidized by tax exemptions! Perfectly legal! Who asked you?

And speaking of rackets - The college bubble is bursting – I hope so! Unfortunately, too many families have committed Retirement Suicide: Families Borrow to Pay for Kids’ College

Another question from the past – Who Wants Wars? Did anyone ask you?

All of America’s billionaires want to conquer both Iran and Russia, but they disagree with one-another about the order in which it should be done.

The debate between Obama’s and Trump’s policies on Iran is basically a dispute between America’s billionaires. America’s electorate are just observers. The actual decisions will be made by only the big-money people, because they are the gate-keepers to power, certainly in America, even if not necessarily in some other countries.

Oh, did you know about The Progressive Sandwich With The Conservative Middle? – you can read both the Z-Man full text with comments by Vox Day. Forget about the D vs. R puppet show – it’s designed to keep you distracted from reality!

Is there a ray of hope? Maybe - Is Trump at Last Ending Our ‘Endless Wars’? - by Patrick J. Buchanan and How to Get Justice Back into the Criminal Justice System – seemingly unrelated, but is it? We can sit and accept our rulers or begin the process of fighting back.

BTW – if you are new here and trying to get your arms around this site, you should start at my website to get your bearings. After reading, you can link back any time.

All I promise is ‘blood, sweat and tears’!

No, I didn’t forget to connect the dots. Now read Eric Zuesse’s piece from 6 months ago.

We are being squeezed by a multi-headed python which controls our government, politics, media, education and culture – even many of our churches - but that’s for another day!

As I keep saying – mentoring is hard work!

They Wouldn’t Really Go Nuclear, Would They? By Jeff Thomas

(Friend - about that 'sovereign Ukraine' and other factors.....

......and here's the big question: Whose cannon fodder are the Ukrainian soldiers that have already paid with their lives and continue to do so?

As I recall, it was you who introduced me to false flag events purposely designed or allowed to start and engage young soldiers to wage wars and thus become cannon fodder for their lords and masters - history shows that to be true time and time again - psychopaths as leaders and eager young men ready to serve as their willing sacrificial boobs are an insanely deadly combination. 

Who wants wars? The answer is clear - https://crushlimbraw.blogspot.com/search?q=Who+wants+wars&m=1 - some of these headnotes deal with my personal history of learning about life's realities. - CL)

In 2014, the US funded a coup d’état in Ukraine, ejecting the democratically elected president and installing an American puppet. The new regime then set about attacking the republics of Donetsk and Luhansk, which were predominantly Russian. Russia did not intervene, even though the US was messing in Russia’s “back yard.” It did, however, draw some “red lines,” warning the Ukrainian government in Kiev that if it tried to take Crimea, join NATO, or become a nuclear state, Russia would invade.

In February 2022, Ukrainian puppet-President Zelensky announced at the Munich Security Conference that Ukraine would go nuclear. That was the trigger that caused Russia to invade Ukraine, days later. The US declared outrage and sought to involve NATO in retaliation. The American media was filled with angry reports of the “unprovoked invasion,” stating that Russia’s goal was to seize all of Europe.

Since that time, the US media have maintained a constant barrage of propaganda regarding the war. The theme is always the same: The Russians are a murderous army, killing civilians and bombing hospitals and schools. But they are also incompetent, poorly led, their troops riddled with deserters, losing battle after battle, and experiencing far more casualties than the Ukrainians.

And yet, even though the Russians are claimed every day on the news to be losing badly, somehow, they have continued to advance. Kiev has been continually desperate for more from NATO in order to survive, and the US and other countries never seem to be offering enough materiel, advisors and funding for Ukraine to win.

Eventually, rumours began to leak out of Ukraine: Their casualties are eight to Russia’s one. The seasoned Ukrainian troops have been decimated. Kiev is barely surviving with green conscripts, outside contractors and depleting resources. Meanwhile, Russia has built up a force of over 500,000 fresh troops that are well trained and well-armed with substantial supply lines. A winter campaign is under way that’s expected to make short work of the collapsing Ukrainian defense.

The US has done all it can to appeal to the thirty-nation NATO, but the NATO countries, for the most part, are staying as far away from the fight as possible, not even wanting to provide materiel.

At the beginning of the war, Joe Biden stated, “The idea that we’re going to send in offensive equipment and have planes and tanks and trains going in with American pilots and American crews, just understand … that’s called ‘World War III.’”

Yet, in January 2023, he announced that the US and Germany would send 45 tanks to Ukraine. It might as well be sending 45 school children with pop guns, as they’d last nearly as long on the field of battle as 45 tanks.

Not only is the US running out of options, but the American people are beginning to realise that they’ve been lied to, and while inflation is raging in the US, the US government is pouring billions into Ukraine. All is not well on the home front.

US leaders have begun to suggest that a “limited nuclear war” might be the one remaining option. This suggests that if the US were to fire a few nuclear missiles, it would scare Russia into throwing in the towel.

The trouble is Russia has the largest number and most advanced nuclear weapons on the planet. The chances of it not retaliating to “limited” nukes are nil. Instead, they’re likely to unleash the full force of their nuclear armaments.

The media has said that the present situation is “unprecedented.” But in fact, this has happened before.

In 1962, it was the Soviets that had the temerity to move into America’s “back yard,” sending missiles to Cuba. The US was as justifiably outraged then as Russia is now.

At that time, President Kennedy called the Joint Chiefs together to advise him. Today, that meeting has been largely forgotten, but it’s important to recall that the joint chiefs unanimously said, in essence, “Press the button immediately. Don’t wait another day.”

Mister Kennedy was alone in the hope that nuclear Armageddon could be avoided. With no other option open to him, he called Soviet Leader Nikita Khrushchev and asked him to call back the ships that carried the missiles. Mister Khrushchev advised him that his own generals were telling him, too, to push the button immediately.

The two men ignored their respective generals and worked out an agreement in which both sides would de-escalate. Armageddon was avoided by two sane men.

But here we are again, possibly on the brink of Armageddon. All that’s required is for one side to push the button. The missile systems of the other would then respond.

But would anyone actually push the button?

Well, Mister Putin, as formidable as he is, is a pragmatic man and may well respond as well or better than Mister Khrushchev. But the man in the White House is no John Kennedy; he’s a cardboard cutout of a leader. The real decisions in Washington are being made by the Deep State… and it’s running out of options.

Russia holds virtually all the cards: Its economy is expanding. The US sanctions have caused two-thirds of the world to seek new treaties with Russia and China. The new agreement between China and Saudi Arabia will effectively end the petro dollar. And the US is not only broke but in debt beyond the ability to even pay the interest.

The last thing the Deep State wants is a loss of face, leading to a loss of power. And their last hope may well be to bluff that they will go nuclear.

So, if this were to happen, how would it play out?

Well, based upon past performance, the most likely scenario would be that the US would fire a low-yield (perhaps 0.3 kiloton) B61 missile at, say, Kiev, and claim that it was a Russian missile, then call on all of NATO to join the fight against Russia.

The danger of this is that the pre-programmed missile systems in both the US and Russia would take over, carpeting the US, Europe and Western Russia with nukes. The volleys would be brief, lasting only a few hours, but their total volume would be sufficient enough to obliterate those countries, as seen in the 2017 Princeton nuclear simulation (video below).

The casualties are estimated at 91.5 million. Deaths from fallout would significantly increase this number, as fallout would cover much of the Northern Hemisphere, moved by trade winds and ocean currents. (As the Southern Hemisphere has a separate weather system and virtually all targets would be in the north, the Southern Hemisphere would fare far better than the north.) Beyond this damage, a nuclear winter would ensue, lasting months and perhaps years.

In reading the above, the natural reaction for each of us, as sane people, would be to say, “That can’t possibly happen. Nobody would be that crazy.”

Yet, as is so often the case, many of the world’s political and military leaders are certifiably sociopathic. And as history shows, when sociopaths vie for power, reason tends to go out the window.

In looking back to 1962 once again, it’s instructive to note that, when Fidel Castro was advised by Mister Khrushchev that de-escalation had been agreed upon, he was furious. He is reported to have advised Mister Khrushchev that he would have preferred Armageddon for his country rather than to have been left out of the negotiations. Such is the nature of sociopaths.

It should be emphasised that nuclear war is by no means a certainty… but we are dangerously close.

Reprinted with permission from International Man.

Copyright © Phyle1, LLC

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2023/02/no_author/they-wouldnt-really-go-nuclear-would-they/ 

 

US Generals Lied, Lost Wars, And Looted Those They Claimed To Serve - By Josiah Lippincott

Military leaders failed to properly account for their own efforts, misled the public, and then racked up cushy paychecks after the war. They deserve to be punished.

 

Gen. Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told Congress in June that he wanted to understand “white rage,” why “thousands of people” tried “to assault this building and … overturn the Constitution of the United States of America.”

If Milley really wants to understand the “rage” of the American people he should start by asking why he and his fellow generals can’t win any wars. As a Marine Corps officer who served at the tail end of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, I saw firsthand the rapid ideological transformation pervading the military in the wake of these disasters in the Middle East.

Unable to win wars overseas, the military’s leaders went “woke.” Currying ideological favor is easier than trying to end insurgencies. It is also necessary if military leaders want to keep the gravy train of taxpayer funding. Donald Trump’s America First foreign policy and his devastating critique of George Bush and Barack Obama in the run-up to the 2016 election put the military-industrial complex on high alert. Trump was pushing the American right-wing away from the expensive and unending foreign interventions the military-industrial complex needed in order to justify its existence.

For too long, America’s generals have relied on a “stab in the back” thesis to justify their failure on the battlefield. The narrative set in after Vietnam and has calcified today. Former national security adviser and Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster tweeted on July 8 in regards to the sweeping march of the Taliban that the “US media is finally reporting on the transformation of Afghanistan after their disinterest and defeatism helped set conditions for capitulation and a humanitarian catastrophe.”

McMaster’s attempt to deflect blame for military failure on an insufficiently obsequious media is unacceptable. He and his fellow generals knew full well that Afghanistan was unstable and that our strategy wasn’t working. Instead of speaking up, they lied to the public and then jumped into the private sector to reap the reward of misbegotten trust.

Milley and his fellow generals deserve, richly, to feel the full weight of the American people’s anger. For 20 years, these leaders lied consistently to the American people and their political masters about the wars in the Middle East. In December 2019, Craig Whitlock of the Washington Post published a devastating series of articles on America’s failure in Afghanistan. Using 600 “lessons learned” interviews with top military staff and diplomatic personnel collected by the Special Inspector General of Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR), Whitlock illustrated just how pervasive the gut rot in America’s military really was.

Milley himself claimed, in Kabul in 2013, that “[The Afghan] army and … police force have been very, very effective in combat against the insurgents every single day.” He was lying. More than 60,000 Afghan police and military were killed during our occupation compared to just 42,000 alleged Taliban. Afghanistan’s military and government were utterly corrupt. American officials, in private admitted that at least 40 percent of the $103 billion in reconstruction funds spent in Afghanistan went into the hands of insurgents, Taliban, and corrupt “allied” warlords.

If the generals knew this and said nothing to the people, they deserve to be excoriated. If they didn’t know, they should have never been placed in positions of responsibility in the first place.

Instead of profiles in courage, America’s military leaders deserve profiles in grifting. Current Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin made $7 million once leaving the service. Gen. James Mattis is reportedly worth $5 million, including $150,000 annual payouts from Theranos for serving on their board. Theranos was a blood-testing company indicted for fraud. Not a single senator asked Mattis about the connection at his confirmation hearing as secretary of defense. Gen. David Petraeus, after leaving the CIA in disgrace after revelations of leaking classified information to his mistress and personal biographer Paula Broadwell, went on to a successful career in academia, public speaking, and private equity. His net worth is estimated at $2 million.

The generals lied, America lost, and the people got looted.

We need accountability. The American people need a full accounting of the military mission to Afghanistan. Only 10 percent of the names of the 600 interviews conducted by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction who gathered the “Afghanistan papers” have been released. That needs to change.

Congress should create an Afghanistan War commission. The House and Senate Select Committees on Intelligence should use their declassification authority to shine a spotlight on the Afghanistan papers in full. Every CENTCOM and ISAF commander should be required to testify in public on the war and their role in the disaster. Spending a trillion dollars and 2,300 lives without any serious attempt at accountability is incompatible with the republican form of government.

Those military leaders who failed to properly account for their own efforts, mislead the public, and then racked up cushy paychecks after the war deserve to be punished. Generals who lose wars should lose their pensions. At the very least. It isn’t right for thousands of America’s sons and daughters to lose life and limb in service of idiotic policy goals while their leaders get rich.

If current congressional leaders won’t lead the charge for accountability, then patriots outside the swamp should. Joe Kent, who is currently running for Congress in Washington state, is a former Green Beret who deployed 11 times to the Middle East and lost his wife fighting ISIS. Many combat veterans from the Middle East have become increasingly critical of the foreign policy they implemented. Those, like Kent, who served at the tip of the spear are in the perfect position to demand answers from those doing the wielding.

Without accountability, a republic falls. America’s generals deserve the cleansing fire.

Josiah Lippincott is a student of politics at Hillsdale College. He is a republican, in the best sense.

 

https://thefederalist.com/2021/08/06/americas-generals-lied-lost-wars-and-looted-the-people-they-pledged-to-serve/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=the_federalist_daily_briefing_2021_08_06&utm_term=2021-08-06 

The New Rules of the Game - Chris Hedges

If Sanders gets the nomination it will be due to the Keystone Cops ineptitude of the Democratic leadership, one that as Taibbi points out replicates the ineptitude of the Republican elites in 2016. But this time there will be a crucial difference. The ruling elites, once divided between Trump and Hillary Clinton, with most of the elites preferring Clinton, will be united against Sanders. They will back Trump as the least worst. The corporate media will turn its venom, now directed at Trump, toward Sanders. The Democratic Party’s mask will come off. It will be open warfare between them and us.

The quadrennial political game of least worst, or how to scare the public to vote for presidential candidates who serve corporate power, comes this season with a new twist. Donald Trump, if he faces Pete Buttigieg, Joe Biden, Amy Klobuchar or Michael Bloomberg, will continue to be an amalgamation of Adolf Hitler, Al Capone and the Antichrist. But should Bernie Sanders manage to evade the snares, traps and minefields laid for him by the Democratic Party elites, should he miraculously become the party’s nominee, the game of least worst will radically change. All the terrifying demons that inhabit Trump will be instantly exorcised. But unlike in the biblical story of Jesus driving the demons into a herd of swine, they will be driven into the senator from Vermont. Trump will become the establishment’s reluctant least worse option. Sanders will become a leper. The Democratic and Republican party elites, joining forces as they did in the 1972 presidential election, will do to Sanders what they did to George McGovern, who lost in 49 of the 50 states.

“If Dems go on to nominate Sanders, the Russians will have to reconsider who to work for to best screw up the US. Sanders is just as polarizing as Trump AND he’ll ruin our economy and doesn’t care about our military,” former Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein (net worth $1.1 billion) tweeted. “If I’m Russian, I go with Sanders this time around.”

Blankfein, who calls for cuts to Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid and who headed Goldman Sachs when it paid Hillary Clinton $675,000 for three speaking engagements in 2013, laid out the stance of the billionaire class that controls the Democratic Party. The New York Times reported that Mike Novogratz, “a Goldman Sachs alumnus who runs the merchant bank Galaxy Digital, said Mr. Sanders’s oppositional nature had prompted ‘too many friends’ to say they would vote against him in November. ‘And they hate Trump,’ he said.”

“Nobody likes him, nobody wants to work with him, he got nothing done. He was a career politician. It’s all just baloney, and I feel so bad that people got sucked into it,” Hillary Clinton says of Sanders in a forthcoming television documentary.

The courtiers in the press, pathetically attempting to spin Sanders’ New Hampshire win into a victory for the corporate-endorsed alternatives, are part of the firing squad. “Running Sanders Against Trump Would Be an Act of Insanity” read the headline in a piece by Jonathan Chait in New York magazine. “No party nomination, with the possible exception of Barry Goldwater in 1964, has put forth a presidential nominee with the level of downside risk exposure as a Sanders-led ticket would bring. To nominate Sanders would be insane,” he wrote. David Frum — now a darling of the Democratic elites, like many other Republicans who morphed from George W. Bush supporters into critics of Trump — announced in The Atlantic that Bernie can’t win. “Sanders is a Marxist of the old school of dialectical materialism, from the land that time forgot,” Frum wrote. “Class relations are foundational; everything else is epiphenomenal.”

Jennifer Rubin declared in The Washington Post that a Sanders nomination would be a “disaster for the Democrats.” “Sanders’s campaign, like all primary campaigns, is a preview of the general-election race and, if elected, the administration he would lead,” Rubin wrote. “A nominee who insists on personally attacking all doubters and the media might be a model for the Republican Party, but Democrats are not going to win with their own Donald Trump, especially one who has burned bridges and stirred resentment in his own party.”

Thomas Friedman, in a column supporting Bloomberg, the newest savior in the protean Democratic firmament, wrote of Sanders: “On which planet in the Milky Way galaxy is an avowed ‘socialist’ — who wants to take away the private health care coverage of some 150 million Americans and replace it with a gigantic, untested Medicare-for-All program, which he’d also extend to illegal immigrants — going to defeat the Trump machine this year? It will cast Sanders as Che Guevara — and it won’t even be that hard.”

MSNBC commentator Chris Matthews, descending to the Red baiting employed by Blankfein, said that “if Castro and the Reds had won the Cold War there would have been executions in Central Park and I might have been one of the ones getting executed. And certain other people would be there cheering, okay?”

Despite the hyperventilating by corporate shills such as Matthews and Friedman, Sanders’ democratic socialism is essentially that of a New DealDemocrat. His political views would be part of the mainstream in France or Germany, where democratic socialism is an accepted part of the political landscape and is routinely challenged as too accommodationist by communists and radical socialists. Sanders calls for an end to our foreign wars, a reduction of the military budget, for “Medicare for All,” abolishing the death penalty, eliminating mandatory minimum sentences and private prisons, a return of Glass-Steagall, raising taxes on the wealthy, increasing the minimum wage to $15 an hour, canceling student debt, eliminating the Electoral College, banning fracking and breaking up agribusinesses. This does not qualify as a revolutionary agenda.

Sanders, unlike many more radical socialists, does not propose nationalizing the banks and the fossil fuel and arms industries. He does not call for the criminal prosecution of the financial elites who trashed the global economy or the politicians and generals who lied to launch preemptive wars, defined under international law as criminal wars of aggression, which have devastated much of the Middle East, resulted in hundreds of thousands of dead and millions of refugees and displaced people, and cost the nation between $5 trillion and $7 trillion. He does not call for worker ownership of factories and businesses. He does not promise to halt the government’s wholesale surveillance of the public. He does not intend to punish corporations that have moved manufacturing overseas. Most importantly, he believes, as I do not, that the political system, including the Democratic Party, can be reformed from within. He does not support sustained mass civil disobedience to bring the system down, the only hope we have of halting the climate emergency that threatens to doom the human race. On the political spectrum, he is, at best, an enlightened moderate. The vicious attacks against him by the elites are an indication of how anemic and withered our politics have become.

The Democrats have, once again, offered us their preselected corporate candidates. We can vote for a candidate who serves oligarchic power, albeit with more decorum than Trump, or we can see Trump shoved down our throats. That is the choice. It exposes the least worst option as a con, a mechanism used repeatedly to buttress corporate power. The elites know they would be safe in the hands of a Hillary Clinton, a Barack Obama or a John Kerry, but not a Bernie Sanders — which is a credit to Sanders.

The surrender to the “least worst” mantra in presidential election after presidential election has neutered the demands of labor, along with those organizations and groups fighting poverty, mass incarceration and police violence. The civil rights, women’s rights, environment justice and consumer rights movements, forced to back Democrats whose rhetoric is palatable but whose actions are inimical to their causes, get tossed overboard. Political leverage, in election after election, is surrendered without a fight. We are all made to kneel before the altar of the least worst. We get nothing in return. The least worst option has proved to be a recipe for steady decay.

The Democrats, especially after Ralph Nader’s 2000 presidential run, have erected numerous obstacles to block progressives inside and outside the party. They make ballot access difficult or impossible for people of color. They lock third-party candidates and often progressives in the Democratic Party, such as Dennis Kucinich, out of the presidential campaign debates. They turn campaigns into two-year-long spectacles that cost billions of dollars. They use superdelegates to fix the nominating process. They employ scare tactics to co-op those who should be the natural allies of third parties and progressive political movements.

The repeated cowardice of the liberal class, which backs a Democratic Party that in Europe would be considered a far-right party, saw it squander its credibility. Its rhetoric proved empty. Its moral posturing was a farce. It fought for nothing. In assault after assault on the working class it was complicit. If liberals — supposedly backers of parties and institutions that defend the interests of the working class — had abandoned the Democratic Party after President Bill Clinton pushed through the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement, Trump would not be in the White House. Why didn’t liberals walk out of the Democratic Party when Clinton and the Democratic Party leadership, including Biden, passed NAFTA? Why didn’t they walk out when the Clinton administration gutted welfare? Why didn’t they walk out when Clinton pushed through the 1999 Financial Services Modernization Act, which abolished the 1933 Glass-Steagall Act, designed to prevent the kind of banking crisis that trashed the global economy in 2008? Why didn’t they walk out when year after year the Democratic Party funded and expanded our endless wars? Why didn’t they walk out when the Democrats agreed to undercut due process and habeas corpus? Why didn’t they walk out when the Democrats helped approve the warrantless wiretapping and monitoring of American citizens? Why didn’t the liberals walk out when the party leadership refused to impose sanctions on Israel for its war crimes, enact serious environmental and health care reform or regulate Wall Street? At what point will liberals say “Enough”? At what point will they fight back?

By surrendering every election cycle to the least worst, liberals proved they have no breaking point. There never has been a line in the sand. They have stood for nothing.

Bernie Sanders arose in 2016 as a political force because he, like Trump, acknowledged the bleak reality imposed on working men and women by the billionaire class. This reality, a reality ignored by the ruling elites, was spoken out loud. The elites were held accountable. The Democratic elites scrambled, successfully, to deny Sanders the 2016 nomination. The Republican elites squabbled among themselves and failed to prevent Trump from becoming the party nominee.

The 2016 chessboard has reappeared, but this time in the Democratic Party primary. The Democratic hierarchy, as horrified by Sanders as the established Republican elites were by Trump, is flailing about trying to find a political savior to defeat the Red menace. Their ineptitude, Sanders’ primary asset, was displayed when they mangled the Iowa primary. They, like the Republican elites in 2016, are woefully disconnected from their constituency, attempting to persuade a public they betrayed and no longer understand.

Joe Biden, long a stooge of corporate America, for example, is frantically attempting to paint himself as a champion of poor people of color after his defeats in the largely white states of Iowa and New Hampshire. The onetime vice president, however, was one of the driving forces behind the strategy to take back the “law and order” issue from the Republicans. He and Bill Clinton orchestrated the doubling of the prison population, the militarization of the police, and mandatory minimum sentences along with juvenile boot camps, drug courts, policing in schools and the acceleration of the deportation of “criminal aliens.” During Biden’s leadership in the Senate — where he served from 1973 until 2009, when he became Obama’s vice president — the Congress approved 92 death-eligible crimes in an almost identical period. These Democratic “law and order” policies landed like hammer blows on poor communities of color, inflicting untold misery and egregious acts of injustice. And now Biden, who pounded the nails into those he crucified, is desperately trying to present himself to his victims as their savior. It is a sad metaphor for the bankruptcy of the Democratic Party.

Biden, however, is no longer the Democratic ruling elite’s flavor of the month. This mantle has been passed to Bloomberg, once the Republican mayor of New York and a Rudy Giuliani ally whose indiscriminate stop-and-frisk harassment of, mainly, African Americans and Latinos was ruled unconstitutional. Bloomberg, whose net worth is estimated at $61.8 billion, said he is ready to spend $1 billion of his own money on his campaign, what The New York Times has called “a waterfall of cash.” He has bought the loyaltyof much of the ruling Democratic establishment. He spent, for example, $110 million in 2018 alone to support 24 candidates now in Congress. He is saturating the airwaves with commercials. He is lavishing high salaries and perks on his huge campaign staff. Sanders, or anyone else defying the billionaire class, cannot compete financially. The last desperate gasp of the Democratic Party establishment is to buy the election. Bloomberg is ready to oblige. After all, Bloomberg’s money worked miracles in amassing allies to overturn New York City term limits so he could serve a third term as mayor.

But will it work? Will the Democratic elites and Bloomberg be able to smother the Democratic primaries with so much money that Sanders is shut out?

“As with Republicans in 2016, the defining characteristic of the 2020 Democratic race has been the unwieldy size of the field,” Matt Taibbi writes. “The same identity crisis lurking under the Republican clown car afflicted this year’s Democratic contest: Because neither donors nor party leaders nor pundits could figure out what they should be pretending to stand for, they couldn’t coalesce around any one candidate. These constant mercurial shifts in ‘momentum’ — it’s Pete! It’s Amy! Paging Mike Bloomberg! — have eroded the kingmaking power of the Democratic leadership. They are eating the party from within, and seem poised to continue doing so.”

If Sanders gets the nomination it will be due to the Keystone Cops ineptitude of the Democratic leadership, one that as Taibbi points out replicates the ineptitude of the Republican elites in 2016. But this time there will be a crucial difference. The ruling elites, once divided between Trump and Hillary Clinton, with most of the elites preferring Clinton, will be united against Sanders. They will back Trump as the least worst. The corporate media will turn its venom, now directed at Trump, toward Sanders. The Democratic Party’s mask will come off. It will be open warfare between them and us.

https://www.truthdig.com/articles/the-new-rules-of-the-game/ 

Our Enemy, the Alt-Left - By Jack Kerwick

James Kirchick’s latest article at The Daily Beast—“The Jews Begging to Join the Alt-Right”—is a ramshackle assemblage of nonsequiturs, ad hominem attacks, and straw man fallacies that Kirchick, himself a Jew, tries to pass off as a reasoned argument.

The first thing of which to take note is that at the core of Kirchick’s propagandist piece is an intractable contradiction. The “alt-right,” he tells us, is a “nebulous” phenomenon. The Oxford Dictionary informs us that the nebulous is that which is “indistinct,” “unclear,” “ill-defined.” Thus, if he was intellectually honest, Kirchick would, at the very least, proceed with caution and humility while treating his subject matter.

This, though, is decidedly not the course that Kirchick takes. Rather, he purports to know all that there is to know about the nebulous object of his contempt.

Kirchick identifies “leaders” and assures us that “alt-righters” must consent to be “contemptuous of mainstream conservatism.” They must agree to “politicize whiteness.” Those wishing to become members of the “alt-right” must oppose those “hordes of Muslims, Black Lives Matter activists, and campus totalitarians” that are resolved to “destroy” “Western civilization.”

Oh yeah, and anyone who wants to be in the “alt-right” must subscribe to “anti-Semitism.”

Despite this, though, Kirchick informs us that there are “self-hating” Jews who “are lining up” to join the “alt-right” and “shout ‘Seig Heil’ and ‘Hail, Donald’” (Kirchick’s use of the argument ad Hitlerium, though all too predictable, should not go unnoticed here).

The “alt-right” is nebulous and not nebulous, to hear Kirchick tell it.

Second, Kirchick speculates that those legions of Jews aching to ally themselves with “an explicitly racist” movement that “explicitly embraces an exclusionary white identity” and “that frankly doesn’t want them” may be inclined to do so because of Paul Gottfried, “one of the alt-right’s founders [.]”

Gottfried, you see, is Jewish.

He is also a Jew whose family had to flee the Nazis.

Beyond this, Gottfried is hardly the “the crank” that Kirchick would have us think. He is a scholar of European and American intellectual history and retired professor who has authored numerous highly acclaimed books and articles over his illustrious career. He was an adviser in the Reagan administration and became friendly with a retired Richard Nixon after the former President publicly expressed his affection for one of Gottfried’s more philosophical works. Professor Gottfried was also friends with William F. Buckley and, in fact, wrote for the latter’s National Review—a publication for which Kirchick now writes.

In 2008, when Gottfried first used the term “alternative right” at a conference over which he was presiding, he did so in order to distinguish himself and the attendees from those who had, quite wrongly, become associated with “the right” in popular media.

Gottfried, in other words, presented the movement of sorts that was coalescing around him as an alternative to the movement of GOP-friendly apparatchiks, the scribblers and talking heads whose names and faces had become synonymous with “conservatism” and “the right.”

Gottfried’s alternative right, however, had nothing to do with “exclusionary white identity,” “racism,” and whatever other “isms” and “phobias” Kirchick wants to pull from his Politically Correct arsenal in his quest to demonize his opponents.

Rather, Gottfried is a conservative liberal, a classical conservative with libertarian impulses who is much more at home in the tradition of Edmund Burke than in the communist and socialist milieus from which Kirchick’s ilk hail.

This brings us to our third point.

“Alternative right” is a misleading moniker insofar as it implies that there is a right to which it is an alternative. Yet as Gottfried (and others) have insisted, the so-called “right” in America today is no right at all. Politically, ideologically, and culturally, the official “right” in contemporary America is predominately a neoconservative “right,” another version of the left.

This is why I refer to it as the “alt-left.”

A final word: Even when he is making his case that “Jews need not apply” to the “alt-right,” Kirchick can’t cite anyone except for anonymous commenters who have made genuinely disparaging, deplorable remarks about Jews. And as for those who send memes of Jews being gassed in ovens, a meme that Kirchick claims to have received, the decent have no use.

This being said, it is telling that neither Kirchick nor anyone else can identify a single rally or article, much less a video, featuring any instances of “alt-righters” visiting violence, or even calling for violence, against anyone.

Take as a prime example those “hordes of Muslims” that Kirchick derides the “alt-right” for (allegedly) detesting. With missionary zeal, the neocon alt-left led the charge for the democratization of the Islamic world in the Middle East, wars of aggression that left hordes of Muslims—well over a million—including women and children, dead. Many, much more have been displaced and maimed, and hundreds of thousands of children have been orphaned. Ancient Christian communities and those of other religious minorities have been decimated.

In glaring contrast, Paul Gottfried and some others with whom the Kirchicks of the world would associate the “alt-right” stringently opposed the alt-left’s neo-imperialist wars of aggression. For this, they were vilified by such alt-leftists as David Frum for being “unpatriotic.”

The alt-left strains out the gnat while letting in the camel.

I am neither a member of the “alt-right” nor a Jew. I am simply an independent-minded, conservative-leaning, Roman Catholic Christian who despises injustice in all of its forms.

And it is unjust indeed for alt-leftist neoconservatives like James Kirchick to spoil the well of discourse by taking cheap shots at folks, particularly fellow Jews like Paul Gottfried while remaining as blind as a bat to their own glaring vices.

Originally published by Townhall.com.

Jack Kerwick [send him mail] received his doctoral degree in philosophy from Temple University. His area of specialization is ethics and political philosophy. He is a professor of philosophy at several colleges and universities in New Jersey and Pennsylvania. Jack blogs at Beliefnet.com: At the Intersection of Faith & Culture.

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2016/12/jack-kerwick/enemy-alt-left/