The Russia hysteria sweeping America’s political-media world has spread to some progressive publications, like Mother Jones, that have forgotten the history of McCarthyism, even how they were smeared, as Mark Ames recalls at The Exile.
By Mark Ames
Mother Jones recently announced it’s “redoubling our Russia reporting”—in the words of editor Clara Jeffery. Ain’t that rich. What passes for “Russia reporting” at Mother Jones is mostly just glorified InfoWars paranoia for progressive marks — a cataract of xenophobic conspiracy theories about inscrutable Russian barbarians hellbent on subverting our way of life, spreading chaos, destroying freedom & democracy & tolerance wherever they once flourished. . . . because they hate us, because we’re free.
Western reporting on Russia has always been garbage, But the so-called “Russia reporting” of the last year has taken the usual malpractice to unimagined depths — whether it’s from Mother Jones or MSNBC, or the Washington Post or Resistance hero Louise Mensch.
But of all the liberal media, Mother Jones should be most ashamed for fueling the moral panic about Russian “disinformation”. It wasn’t too long ago that the Reagan Right attacked Mother Jones for spreading “Kremlin disinformation” and subverting America. There were threats and leaks to the media about a possible Senate investigation into Mother Jones serving as a Kremlin disinformation dupe, a threat that hung over the magazine throughout the early Reagan years.
A new Senate Subcommittee on Security and Terrorism (SST for short) was set up in 1981 to investigate Kremlin “disinformation” and “active measures” in America, and the American “dupes” who helped Moscow subvert our way of life. That subcommittee was created to harass and repress leftist anti-imperial dissent in America, using “terrorism” as the main threat, and “disinformation” as terrorism’s fellow traveller. The way the the SST committee put it, “terrorism” and “Kremlin disinformation” were one and the same, a meta-conspiracy run out of Moscow to weaken America.
And Mother Jones was one of the first American media outlets in the SST committee’s sights.
Adam Hochschild, the founding editor of Mother Jones (and author of some great books including King Leopold’s Ghost), responded publicly to the threats coming out of the Senate in the early Reagan years. In a New York Times op-ed published in late 1981, “Dis-(Mis-?)Information”, Hochschild wrote about a Republican Senate mailer sent out to 290 radio stations that accused Mother Jones of being Kremlin disinformation dupes. The mailer, on Senate letterhead, featured a tape recording of an interview between the chairman of the SST subcommittee, Sen. Jeremiah Denton of Alabama, and a committee witness — a “disinformation expert” named Arnaud de Borchgrave, author of a bestselling spy novel called “The Spike” — about a fictional Kremlin plot to subvert the West with disinformation, and thereby rule the world.
Here’s how Hochschild described the Republican Senate mailer in his NYTimes piece:
“In it, the writer Arnaud de Borchgrave accuses Mother Jones, the Village Voice, the Soho News, the Progressive magazine of serving as disseminators of K.G.B. ‘disinformation’ – the planting of false or misleading items in news media.
“Mr. de Borchgrave provided no specific examples of facts or articles. But, then, the trouble with the K.G.B. is that you don’t know what disinformation it is feeding you because you don’t know who its myriad agents are. So the only safe thing is to distrust any author or magazine too critical of the United States. Because anyone who is against, say, the MX or the B-1 bomber could be working for the Russians.”
Here, the Mother Jones founder describes the menacing logic of pursuing the “Kremlin disinformation” conspiracy: any American critical of US military power, police power, corporate power, overseas power . . . anyone critical of anything that powerful Americans do, is a Kremlin disinformation dupe whether they know it or not. That leaves only the appointed accusers to decide who is and who isn’t a Kremlin agent.
Hochschild called this panic over Kremlin disinformation another “Red Scare”, warning,
“[T]o accuse critical American journalists of serving as its unwitting dupes makes as little sense as Russians accusing rebellious Poles of being unwitting agents of American imperialism. When Mr. de Borchgrave accuses skeptical journalists of being unwitting purveyors of disinformation, the accusation is more slippery, less easy to definitively disprove, and less subject to libel law than if he were to accuse them of being conscious Communist agents. …
“Although if you believe the K.G.B. is successfully infiltrating America’s news media, then anything must seem possible.”
It’s a damn shame today’s editorial staff at Mother Jones aren’t aware of their own magazine’s history.
Classic Putin move to use far right and far left to destabilize the visible spectrum
Rubio in intel commitee: “What we’re talking about here is active measures” taken by Putin to manipulate US pub. opinion during election.
Then again, who am I fooling? Mother Jones wouldn’t care if you shoved their faces in their own recent history — they’re way too donor-deep invested in pushing this “active measures” conspiracy. Trump has been a goldmine of donor cash for anyone willing to carry the #Resistance water.
This is quite literally the case with Mother Jones, which has been a little coy about the deal it cut to “redouble” its “Russia reporting.” That deal involves partnering with a straight-up Red-baiting, Cold War-mongering website project called “PutinTrump” featuring a scary Soviet hammer and sickle in case the Cold War mongering wasn’t clear enough — with no mind to history and the fact that Russia is a neoliberal dystopia with a flat 13% income tax rate hailed as a “miracle” by the Heritage Foundation.
PutinTrump was a project set up last fall by tech plutocrat Rob Glaser, CEO and founder of RealNetworks, to scare voters into believing that voting for Trump is treason. God knows I can’t stand Trump or his politics, but of all the inane campaign ideas to run on — this?
One would’ve thought that the smart people would learn their lesson from the election, that running against a Kremlin conspiracy theory is a loser. But instead, they seem to think the problem is they didn’t fear-monger enough, so they’re “redoubling” on the Russophobia. Donor money is driving this — donor cash is quite literally driving Mother Jones’ editorial focus. And it really is this crude.
Take for example a PutinTrump section titled “Russian Expansion” — the scary Red imagery and language are lifted straight out of the Reagan Cold War playbook from the early-mid 1980s, when, it so happens, Mother Jones was targeted as a Kremlin dupe.
Featuring a lot of shadowy red-colored alien soldiers over an outline of Crimea, Mother Jones’ donor-partner promotes a classic Cold War propaganda line about Russian/Soviet expansionism—a lie that has been the basis for so many wars launched to “stop” this alleged “expansionism” in the past, wars that Mother Jones is supposed to oppose. Here’s what MJ’s partner writes now:
“RUSSIAN EXPANSION
“Through unknowing manipulation, or by direct support, Trump will become an accessory to the continual expansionism committed by Putin.
“Might does not equal right—and it never has for Americans—but Putin’s Russia plays by different rules. Or maybe no rules at all.”
The communist/leftist imagery is there for a reason. In case you haven’t noticed, Clinton supporters have waged a crude pr campaign to blame their candidate’s loss on leftists, whom they equate with neo-Nazis and Trump. I’ve been smeared as “alt-left” by a Vanity Fair columnist, who equated me with Breitbart and other far-right journalists, for the crime of not sufficiently supporting Hillary Clinton.
The larger goal of this crude PR effort is to equate opposition to Hillary Clinton with treason and Nazism. Which was exactly the goal of Reagan’s “Kremlin disinformation” hysteria — the whole point was to smear critics of Reagan and his right-wing politics as pro-Kremlin traitors, whether they knew it or not.
Forgetting the Reagan Scare
What’s kind of shocking to me as someone who was alive in the Reagan scare is how unoriginal this current one is. Even the words and the terminology are plagiarized from the Reagan Right witch-hunting campaign — “Kremlin active measures”; “Kremlin disinformation”; “Kremlin dupes” — terms introduced by right-wing novelists and intelligence hucksters, and repeated ad nauseam until they transformed into something plausible, giving quasi-academic cover to some very old-fashioned state repression, harassment, surveillance . . . and a lot of ruined lives. That’s what happened last time, and if history is any guide, it’s how this one will end up too.
President Ronald Reagan leading a meeting on terrorism on Jan. 26, 1981, with Secretary of State Alexander Haig, Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger and White House counselor Edwin Meese. (photo credit: Reagan library)
Today we’re supposed to remember how cheerful and optimistic the Reagan Era was. But that’s now how I remember it, it’s not how it looked to Mother Jones at the time — and it’s not how it looks when you go back through the original source material again and relive it.
The Reagan Era kicked off with a lot of dark fear-mongering about the Kremlin using disinformation and active measures to destroy our way of life. Everything that the conservative Establishment loathed about 1970s — defeat in Vietnam, Church Committee hearings gutting the CIA and FBI, the cult of Woodward & Bernstein & Hersh, peace marchers, minority rights radicals — was an “active measures” treason conspiracy.
As soon as the new Republican majority in the Senate took power in 1981, they set up a new subcommittee to investigate Kremlin disinformation dupes, called the Senate Subcommittee on Security and Terrorism. Staffers leaked to the media they intended to investigate Mother Jones. Panic spread across the progressive media world, and suddenly all those cool Ivy League kids who invested everything in becoming the next Woodward-Bernsteins — the cultural heroes at the time — got scared.
The image at the top of this article comes from a lead article in Columbia University’s student newspaper, the Spectator, published a few weeks after Reagan took office, on SST committee’s assault on Mother Jones. The headline read:
The New McCarthyism / Are You Now, Or Have You Ever Been…
and the the full-page article begins,
“If you subscribe to Mother Jones, give money to the American Civil Liberties Union, or support the Institute for Policy Studies, Senator Jeremiah Denton’s new Subcommittee on Security and Terrorism may be interested in you.”
It describes how in the 1970s Americans finally got rid of HUAC and the Senate Internal Security Committee, the Red Scare witch-hunting Congressional committees — only to have them revived one election cycle later in the Reagan Revolution.
By the end of Reagan’s first year in office, there was still no formal investigation into Mother Jones, but the harassment was there and it wasn’t subtle at all — such as the Republican Senate mailer accusing the magazine of being KGB disinformation dupes. At the end of 1981, MJ editor/founder Adam Hochschild announced he was stepping aside, and in his final note to readers and the public, he wrote:
“To Senator Jeremiah Denton, chair of the Subcommittee on Security and Terrorism: If your committee investigates Mother Jones, a plan hinted at some months ago, I demand to be subpoenaed. I would not want to miss telling off today’s new McCarthyites.”
Switching Sides
So here we are a few decades later, and Mother Jones’ editor Clara Jeffery is denouncing WikiLeaks — yesterday’s journalism stars, today’s traitors — as “Russia[’s]…willing dupes and propagandists” while Mother Jones magazine turned itself into a mouthpiece for America’s spies peddling the same warmed-over conspiracy theories that once targeted Mother Jones.
So Russia also hacked RNC, but didn’t give that stuff to its willing dupes and propagandists at Wikileaks:
obama-russia-election-hack.html?_r=0
Russian Hackers Acted to Aid Trump in Election, U.S. Says
ICYMI. A scoop from last night: veteran spy gives FBI info alleging Russia op to co-opt Trump.
A veteran spy has given the FBI information alleging a Russian operation to cultivate Donald Trump
Has the bureau investigated this material?
Naming Mother Jones
Jeremiah Denton — the New Right senator from Alabama who led the SST committee investigation into Kremlin “disinformation” and its dupes like Mother Jones — believed that America was being weakened from within and had only a few years left at most to turn it around. As Denton saw it, the two most dangerous threats to America’s survival were a) hippie sex, and b) Kremlin disinformation. The two were inseparable in his mind, linked to the larger “global terrorism” plot masterminded by Moscow.
Jeremiah Denton as a POW during the Vietnam War.
To fight hippie sex and teen promiscuity, the freshman senator introduced a “Chastity Bill” funding federal programs that promoted the joys of chastity to Americans armies of bored, teen suburban long-hairs. A lot of clever people laughed at that, because at the time the belief in linear historical progress was strong, and this represented something so atavistic that it was like a curiosity more than anything — Pauly Shore’s “Alabama Man” unfrozen after 10,000 years and unleashed on the halls of Congress.
Less funny were Denton’s calls for death penalty for adulterers, and laws he pushed restricting women’s right to abortion.
Jeremiah Denton was once a big name in this country. Americans have since forgotten Denton, because John McCain pretty much stole his act. But back in the 1970s and early 1980s, Denton was America’s most famous Vietnam War hero/POW.
Like McCain, Denton was a Navy pilot shot down over Vietnam and taken prisoner. Denton spent 1965-1973 in North Vietnamese POW camps — two years longer than McCain — and he was America’s most famous POW. His most famous moment was when his North Vietnamese captors hauled him before the cameras to acknowledge his crimes, and instead Denton famously blinked out a Morse code message: “T-O-R-T-U-R-E”.
In the 1973 POW exchange deal between Hanoi and Nixon, “Operation Homecoming,” it was Denton who was the first American POW to come off the plane and speak to the American tv crews (McCain was on the same flight, but not nearly as prominent as Denton). I keep referring back to McCain here because not only were they both famous Navy pilot POWs, but they both wind up becoming the most pathologically obsessive Russophobes in the Senate.
Hating Russians
Just a few days ago, McCain said that Russia is a bigger threat to America than Islamic State. Something real bad must’ve happened in those Hanoi Hiltons, worse than anything they told us about, because those guys really, really hate Russians — and they really want the rest of us to hate Russians too.
Sen. John McCain appearing with Ukrainian rightists of the Svoboda party at a pre-coup rally in Kiev.
Everything they loathed about America, everything that was wrong with America, had to be the fault of a hostile alien culture. There was no other explanation for what happened in the 1970s. The America that Denton came home to in 1973 was under some kind of hostile power, an alien-controlled replica of the America he last saw in 1965.
Popular morality had been turned on its head: Hollywood blockbusters with bare naked bodies and gutter language! Children against their parents! Homosexuals on waterskis! Sex and treason! Patriots were the enemy, while America-haters were heroes! Denton re-appeared like some reactionary Rip Van Winkle who went to sleep in the safe feather-bed world of J Edgar Hoover’s America — only to wake up eight years later on Bernadine Dohrn’s futon, soaked in Bill Ayers’ bodily fluids. For Denton, the post-60s cultural shock came on all at once — as sudden and as jarring as, well, the shock so many Blue State Americans experienced when Donald Trump won the election last November.
Sex, immorality & military defeat—these were inseparable in Denton’s mind, and in a lot of reactionaries’ minds. Attributing all of America’s social convulsions of the previous 15 years to immorality and a Kremlin disinformation plot was a neat way of avoiding the complex and painful realities — then, as now.
“No nation can survive long unless it can encourage its young to withhold indulgence in their sexual appetites until marriage.” — Jeremiah Denton
What hit Denton hardest was all the hippie sex and the pop culture glorification of hippie sex. It’s hard to convey just how deeply all that smug hippie sex wounded tens of millions of Americans. It’s a hate wound that’s still raw, still burns to the touch. A wound that fueled so much reactionary political fire over the past 50 years, and it doesn’t look like it’ll burn out any time soon.
Back in 1980, Denton blamed all that pop culture sex on Russian active measures, and he did his best to not just outlaw it, but to demonize sex as something along the lines of treason.
Just as so many people today cannot accept the idea that Trumpism is Made In America — so Denton and his Reagan Right constituents believed there had to be some alien force to explain why Americans had changed so drastically, seeming to adopt values that were the antithesis of Middle America’s values in 1965. It had to be the fault of an alien voodoo beam! It had to be a Russian plot!
And so, therefore, it was a Russian plot.
A 1981 Time magazine profile of the freshman Senator begins,
“Denton believes that America is being destroyed by sexual immorality and Soviet-sponsored political ‘disinformation’—and that both are being promoted by dupes, or worse, in the media. By the mid-1980s, he warns, ‘we will have less national security than we had proportionately when George Washington’s troops were walking around barefoot at Valley Forge.’”
Sexual immorality — it’s a common theme in all the Russia panics of the past 100 years — whether the sexually liberated Emma Goldmans of the Red Scare, the homosexual-panic of the McCarthy witch-hunts, the hippie orgies of Denton’s nightmares, or Trump’s supposed golden shower fetish with immoral Russian prostitutes in our current panic. . . .
To fight the Kremlin disinformation demons, Denton set up the Senate Subcommittee on Security and Terrorism (SST), with two other young Republican senators — Orrin Hatch, who’s still haunting Capitol Hill today; and John East of North Carolina, a Jesse Helms protege who later did his country a great service by committing suicide in his North Carolina garage, before the end of his first term in office in 1986.
Sen. East’s staffers leaned Nazi-ward, like their boss. One Sen. East staffer was Samuel Francis — now famous as the godfather of the alt-Right, but who in 1981 was known as the guru behind the Senate’s “Russia disinformation” witch hunt. Funny how that works — today’s #Resistance takes its core idea, that America is under the control of hostile Kremlin disinformation sorcerers — from the alt-Right’s guru, Samuel Francis.
Another staffer for Sen. East was John Rees, one of the most loathsome professional snitches of the post-McCarthy era, who collected files on suspected leftists, labor activists and liberal donors. I’ll have to save John Rees for another post — he really belongs in a category by himself, proof of Schopenhauer’s maxim that this world is run by demons.
These were the people who first cooked up the “disinformation” panic. You can’t separate the Sam Francises, Orrin Hatches, John Easts et al from today’s panic-mongering over disinformation — you can only try to make sense of why, what is it about our culture’s ruling factions that brings them together on this sort of xenophobic witch-hunt, even when they see themselves as so diametrically opposed on so many other issues.
Beyond Hypocrisy
I don’t think this is something as simple as hypocrisy — it’s actually quite consistent: Establishment faction wakes up to a world it doesn’t recognize and loathes and feels threatened by, and blames it not on themselves or anything domestic, but rather on the most plausible alien conspiracy they can reach for: Russian barbarians. Anti-Russian xenophobia is burned into the Establishment culture’s DNA; it’s a xenophobia that both dominant factions, liberal or conservative, view as an acceptable xenophobia.
New York Times building in New York City. (Photo from Wikipedia)
When poorer “white working class” Americans feel threatened and panic, their xenophobia tends to be aimed at other ethnics — Latinos and Muslims these days — a xenophobia that the Establishment views as completely immoral and unacceptable, completely beyond the pale. The thought never occurs to them that perhaps all forms of xenophobia are bad, all bring with them a lot of violence and danger, it just depends on who’s threatened and who’s doing the threatening…
The subversion scare and moral panic were crucial in resetting the culture for the Reagan counter-revolution. Those who opposed Reagan’s plans, domestically and overseas, would be labeled “dupes” of Kremlin “active measures” and “disinformation” conspiracies, acting on behalf of Moscow whether they knew it or not.
The panic incubated in Denton’s subcommittee investigations provided political cover for vast new powers given to the CIA, FBI, NSA and other spy and police agencies to spy on Americans. Fighting Russian “active measures” grew over the years into a massive surveillance program against Americans, particularly anyone involved in opposing Reagan’s dirty wars in Central America, anyone opposing nuclear weapons and nuclear power plants, and anyone involved in providing sanctuary to refugees from south of the border. The “active measures” panic even led to FBI secret investigations into liberal members of Congress, some of whom wound up in a secret “FBI terrorist photo album”.
I’ll get to that “FBI Terrorist Photo Album” story later. There’s a lot of recent “Kremlin disinformation” history to recover, since it seems every last memory cell has been zapped out of existence.
After Reagan’s inauguration (the most expensive, lavish inauguration ball in White House history), Senator Denton sent a chill through the liberal and independent media world with all the talk coming out of his committee about targeting activists, civil rights lawyers and journalists. Denton tried to come off as reasonable some of the times; other times, he came right out and said it: “disinformation” is terrorism:
“When I speak of a threat, I do not just mean that an organization is, or is about to be, engaged in violent criminal activity. I believe many share the view that support groups that produce propaganda, disinformation or legal assistance may be even more dangerous than those who actually throw the bombs.”
Congratulations Mother Jones, you’ve come a long way, baby!
Mark Ames is co-host of the Radio War Nerd podcast with Gary Brecher (aka John Dolan). Subscribe here. [This article originally appeared at the X at The Exiled at
We’re all playing chess.
They’re cheating. Idiots are stealing the pieces off the board and hopping jets with thumb drives up their rear ends to report to Moscow station. Trump is playing checkers and spilling the beans to keep Russia happy. He doesn’t care if Hope is happy.
ZOO COUP
Enjoy the zoo
And walk down 42nd Street
You wanna be excited too
And you will feel the heat
We eat the night, we drink the time
Make our dreams come true
Hope is dressed to kill.
Mother Moon Hope Shines. Run for your life and don’t get caught and don’t carry a gun. A gun gets you lots of extra time and they take the gun.
“It’s a buyer’s market in war, and the baseline capabilities (shoot, move, and communicate) are at snake-belly prices. Tactical weaponry, like AK-47s are plentiful,rented, and shipped from battlefield to battlefield, and the most lethal weapon U.S. forces encountered at the height of the Iraq War, the improvised explosive device, could be had for as little as $265. Moving is cost-effective too in the “pickup truck era of warfare,” and reports on foreign fighters in Syria remind us that cheap, global travel makes it possible for nearly anyone on the planet to rapidly arrive in an active war zone with money to spare.” Military Victory is Dead
It’s a sellers market in shine and victory is Hope alive. Make shine drones for rural delivery.
Art. You can’t make anything up. The world is now satire and we’re just recording it. We have tapes and fight with tapes. Tapes make you smart. It’s bad and getting worse. Scotch makes you smart. Comey tapes are still a mystery. He’s no lamb. I have the OCB tapes from the day. It’s like the AC racket is now the DC racket with NJ real estate scams as policy. It’ll work for the Russians.
It’s half baked. Kramer v. Kramer. Marriage is suicide. Always be in love and stay single. We have Trump v. Trump. Trump and tonic with the ruskies. Big joke. It’s bloody merry hell in Washington. Blame the NRA for the bloody mess.
They keep building them smaller. It used to be you were handed your head and now it’s given to you with tweezers.
Don’t ever hit a reporter or anybody with glasses and keep a glass wet.
look at the scumbag Trumpanzee cuck down on his knees. TRAITOR.
A friend just sent me the above article by Mark Ames. Here’s my reply to him:
The author of this article you’ve sent, Mark Ames, ends the piece, “It’s a damn shame today’s editorial staff at Mother Jones aren’t aware of their own magazine’s history,” a claim for which he provides no evidence. He appears to have made no effort to communicate directly with the Mother Jones staff. He further claims, at the start of the article, that that staff “have forgotten the history of McCarthyism, even how they [Mother Jones] were smeared.”
Direct e-mail contact with each member of the MJ staff is facilitated by the magazine’s web page, Mother Jones Staff (http://www.motherjones.com/about/staff/). That same page shows that Adam Hochschild, the co-founder of the magazine whom Ames quotes extensively regarding the “Republican Senate mailer sent out to 290 radio stations that accused Mother Jones of being Kremlin disinformation dupes,” is presently a member of the magazine’s board of directors. Did Ames attempt to contact Hochschild to ask him directly whether he and others involved with the publication still remembered or had ever learned about the history of MJ being accused of being dupes for the Soviets? I don’t think so, because this article of his is purely editorial, free of supportive present-time facts.
If we’d like to find out more about MJ’s thinking on Russia, Trump, and related matters, let’s go directly to the source; I’ve Googled on “Mother Jones editorial on Trump Russia investigation”: https://www.google.com/#q=Mother+Jones+editorial+on+Trump+Russia+investigation
There’s a lot of good material work with there, I’d say. Here, I’ll just focus on the first-listed item, the May 12, 2017 piece, “Now It’s About Much More Than Trump and Russia — It’s about which will prevail: truth–or power,” by Monika Baurlein and Clara Jeffrey: http://www.motherjones.com/media/2017/05/facts-trump-russia/
Tell me what your reading of this article tells you about whether Mother Jones is an unwitting or witting dupe of modern-day “McCarthyistic” anti-Russian U.S. imperialists.
> writer Arnaud de Borchgrave
You might want to provide some more info on him in a follow-up article.
In 1981, he was already a notorious disinformation agent of many years’ standing…
To be perfectly honest, I haven’t thought of Mother ‘Jones’ as being actually a Left publication for several decades now.
Which means that you’ve been paying attention!
Pretty pathetic piece here. Edit it down to about half by removing the ranting and crying…there’s some meat beneath the blubber.
I’m eager to find out if the DNC e-mails by themselves did more or less harm than the DNC insisting that they were fakes only to be disproven
It’s not just Mother Jones. A significant portion of the hard left, many of whom are experienced activists, echoes this neo-McCarthyism, and their rationales are pure tin foil hat nonsense. They claim Russia is imperialist, Ghadaffi, Assad, and Putin are fascists, jihadists in Syria are Trotskyists, and Islamic State is a vehicle for the ascendancy of workers’ power. What brought about all this? The simple answers, like the pressures of the establishment media, just don’t seem adequate to explain the oddity of it. It’s like half the left is drinking from the same well, and someone dropped some bad acid into it. These are times that require political discipline, or else we will be tempted to emigrate and wait for the apocalypse.
There’s a “ramping up of the rhetoric” and/or purity testing that ensure that “your silence (and/or tolerance) will not protect you” … I recall so well the sickening feeling as one “liberal” outlet after another ended up with thinly veiled “they brought this on themselves” wrt the Hebdo slaughter … if only they had not provoked them (muslim Jihadist types) when in fact they had been put on a hit-list years earlier …
The virtue signaling and purity testing is already causing many to self-censor continuously … and on so many different subjects … How many conversational subjects do you avoid with casual acquaintances (or even family members) so as to avoid discovering that you have “utterly incompatible” views and — obviously — cannot tolerate one another … To describe this subject as one of Russia alleged involvement in election tampering is already a hot-button because of the word “alleged” … provoking loud and insulting outcries of disbelief
It’s not just MJ. And when you see that it’s pretty much every noteworthy progressive org, it will take your breath away. Will you let it crush you?
It’s shocking how cowardly and unprincipled people have become … I happened to notice a documentary on my “to view” list on Amazon about Charlie Hebdo “It’s hard to be loved by idiots” … which predated the attacks and focused on the legal case(s) against censorship versus right to publish the cartoons originally — Yes, France allowed the Muslim community to sue Hebdo for “hate speech” and Hebdo prevailed (on the basis of the specificity of the carttoon targets NOT being the entire Muslim community, French or international)
There was also a rather vague ground swell of new anti-Israel sentiment based on the mathematical notion that American support of Israel and it’s policies was a “reason” we were attacked … ergo ….
Similarly, at least some of the outrage about “islamophobia” seemed to also be a matter of not providing “reasons” for American Muslims to “hate” us even as many who rail about Islamophobia hate Israel and seem to despise success of “the Jewish lobby” while strongly supporting CAIR … go figure ..
As with racism, I sometimes wonder what’s underneath all the gloss and “all men are brothers” (oops, sexist) and “seldom was heard a discouraging word” posturing … 16 years after 09/11 the press runs “path to jihad” stories like evergreen clockwork
Jill Stein interviewed by Intercepted thinks that Trump will be brought down due to money laundering … for.the.Russians … what-the-ev’. Patrick Cockburn did a radio interview in which he compared the American press with the fabled Arab rumormongering press of post-09/11 … right, all the Jews stayed home … but I should avoid that subject lest the “mossad did 09/11” crowd show up to black-ball me.
sometimes, I think that we’re all brought asunder by our demand for a coherent internally consistent narrative for events that — in fact — do no actually possess any such an internally consistent narrative … we fill in gaps and stovepipe the information conform rather than tolerating the rather scattershot, random and 12-blind-men-describe-an-elephant nature of reality …
Amazon has an outstanding 11 part series on WWI I started last night — highly highly recommend …
Other than the obviously financial gains for pushing Russia xenophobia for some media outlets and of course defense contractors selling more weapons to US and NATO is yes, the squashing of dissent. Last year May the NYTimes had an “straight reporting” article which claimed that resistance to TPP was Putin inspired.
https://www.commondreams.org/views/2016/09/03/attempted-hit-piece-nyt-makes-putin-hero-defeating-tpp
Not too long ago, the huffintonpost had an article bashing Sander supporters as falling for Russian propaganda against Clinton. Clinton as revealed by Wikileaks blamed resistance to fracking on Putin. On some democratic partisan sites there seems to be competition to draw straight lines from the Kremlin to their favorite enemies ignoring the basic rationality.
The only thing I can say is that the Democrats and Tories should have hired Putin as a political consultant as unlike them, he obviously knows how to win elections.
Very good, Kalen. A friend of mine takes the line from the “Star Spangled Banner”, “…land of the free and the home of the brave… “, transmutes it to “land of the greed and the home of the afraid”.
Why is this even possible? Not only deep corruption of so-called leftists media outlets under I suppose threats and intimidation to their bottom line [it happened recently with The Intercept as well] , and dereliction of their duty to their readers but also why such a ridiculous accusations can ever fly and gain any support whatsoever among US population?
Here is why?
Indian scare, black scare, huns’ scare, red scare, communist scare, alien invasion scare, Jap’s scare, Chinese scare, nuclear war scare, ruskis’ scare and Mexican scare and immigrant scare, food scare, polio scare, influenza scare, climate change scare, earthquake scare, economy and stock market collapse scare, zombie scare, terrorist scare, Obama scare, Trump scare etc.
American, as Tocqueville posited have all prerequisites of a fascist man, scared, alienated, unconnected to society and largely estranged from family usually scattered all over the country, with severed human bonds replaced by artificial precarious relationships with cartoonish flat TV characters called friends or acquaintances negotiated by money or influence peddling, full of uncertainty, fear of authority and loathing of change, covering up horrible spiritual emptiness and loneliness with quasi-religious patriotic, highly emotional desire to belong to glorious artifact called USA.
There can be no American nation but a bunch of permanently scared, infantile two legged creatures full of fear and loathing as well as sell-absorbed, narcissistic lust for a false sense of security via a slave like submission to a parent figure such as uncle Sam from DC, unless Americans understand that a default position and attitude of anyone who wants to be called an adult human being is to openly display courage of deep skepticism and innate desire to learn of unknown, both requirements of humanity utterly lacked among Americans splashed by daily doses of $billion dollar a day media brainwashing fluid.
Right on, Kalen !!! A Brilliant Analysis !
It’s one of the more disturbing things I’ve seen in my decades of observing the politico-economic scene: otherwise intelligent and fair minded liberal observers falling for and championing the whole idea that the Kremlin interfered in the 2016 presidential election. To see publications like ‘Mother Jones’ peddle the baloney and witness otherwise excellent congresspersons in the Congressional Black Caucus fomenting the Russophobia is truly tragic.
To see publications like ‘Mother Jones’ peddle the baloney and witness otherwise excellent congresspersons in the Congressional Black Caucus fomenting the Russophobia is truly tragic.
More examples of tribal conformity.
Exactly Mr. Bodden, it’s maddening and chilling.
and as disappointingly predictable, much of it seems to be a matter of “careerism” and who’s paying their bills … I don’t think the question is whether (some) Russians tried to monkeywrench the election (or explored the possibilities wrt the voting machines) but how far they got and if they had any discernable effect … but no one seems willing to acknowledge that such efforts are universal and ongoing by independent hackers and hackers who report back and/or are funded (wittingly or not) by governments … “everybody does it” and has done it and will do it for the duration …
Apparently Sessions wants to attack the internet using the “hot bed of pedophilia facilitation” ruse …. the same one that Ashcroft was attempting pre-09/11 under GWB …. sex trafficking is the corollary rationale, expect it
“Jack” buddhist, as in Jack Kerouac, Skip? We could use a bit of “On the Road”. The dumbing-down of America seems complete, do they really love Big Brother, as Winston Smith finally accepted at the end of “1984”?
“Jack” Mormon is a term used for a non-practicing mormon who drinks alcohol and caffeinated beverages.
They are persona non-grata in the church. A local joke is if you go fishing with a mormon, always bring two, or he will drink all your beer.
But the scary thing is that someone from our neighbor Canada discerns what many feel, that we are being dragged on a train to Armageddon, for what, for Israel? All three “Abrahamic” religions have beliefs of end times, and it feels like we’re headed there even for those with no particular religious belief like myself.
I live in rural Arizona, big time mormon country. A good friend of mine has described himself as a “jack” buddhist. Gotta love it.
One thing that drives me up the wall is the use of Soviet imagery in this new McCarthyism. e.g. the way they do at this stupid website putintrump.org. The Russophobia is bad enough without anti-communism thrown in, but the use of the hammer and sickle and other Soviet-era imagery just makes these neo-McCarthyites look like ignorant fools. Someone should really put the word out that communism collapsed a quarter-century ago, and if you want to reignite the Cold War you really need to do it without the anti-communist propaganda.
The use of this kind of imagery belies the claim that these neo-McCarthyite Democrats are only “interested in the truth” about Putin-Trump ties. What they are interested in is relaunching the Cold War, as if those were some kind of golden years. What I remember from the Cold War is a constant fear of nuclear annihilation, and the day that it ostensibly ended in 1989 was a great day for humanity. The troglodyte Democrats that are trying to reignite the Cold War are a disgrace to the cause of peace that the Democratic Party once claimed to stand for, and using Soviet-era anti-communist imagery is the height of ahistorical propaganda. They should be ashamed of themselves.
Great post, DR-Montreal, it is gaslighting.
It’s what adults do to kids, and then wonder why the kids grow up to be jaded nincompoops. After 12 years of Catholic school I eventually caught on and realised THEY were the crazy ones. THEY were just well-conditioned sheep… or lemmings… take your pick. But there IS a discernable truth out there if you persist in digging for it and dismissing all the bunk thrown your way. Just don’t expect most others to see it.
I had a veritable “Sister Mary Elephant” in 5th grade who was one of the most hate-filled persons I have ever met. Her and a few other nuns in that school were real sadists. And I’m sure the irony of being “wed to Jesus” completely escaped them.
Skip: Have you read “Angela’s Ashes” by Frank McCourt? It appears you and McCourt had some experiences in common.
I have. Great Read. The follow up memoir ” ‘Tis” is good as well.
LOL. I attended parochial school in the Archdiocese of Chicago throughout the 50’s and into the early 60’s… and I saw that movie. The experiences were pretty much the same, with both the nuns (who taught grammar school) and the priests (who taught high school) being absolute hypocritical sadists. Fortunately, I never saw any of the sexual abuse though my mother, who thankfully was not a mackerel snapper, did report that some of her married lady friends were hit on by the priests, one who beat up one of my classmates for objecting to the liberties the “good father” had taken with his mother. I sadly remember the confrontations my mother, raised a Methodist, would have with the nuns in response to some of the fantastical ideas I brought home from their classrooms (such as, all of my non-Catholic relatives were headed straight to Hell after death; sorry, no exceptions, even if they bought the Jesus story).
There was clearly still a hard fought ideological war going on between the RC Church and Protestant denominations into the 50’s and my generation was expected to continue on the front lines of that battle. I think we disappointed them, especially after JFK got elected and neither Satan nor the Pope were given vast power in America and everyone got a lot more blase about religion in general. Part of the Catholic services (what they call the “Mass’) always ended with a group prayer “for the conversion of Russia” (which the Dulles Brothers probably instigated, just like the “nation under God” in the pledge and the “in God we trust” on the currency). In any case the RC Church of that era (McCarythy I) was very anti-Russian, possibly to prove its loyalty to Washington.
I must grudgingly thank the Jesuits for sowing the seeds of their own destruction by teaching such rigorous analytical principles in religion/theology classes. Every Catholic dogma was putatively “proven” in a series of “logical” arguments, applying strict Aristotelian principles. That was good training because when put to the unbiased test the whole dogmatic house of cards inevitably came falling down because their didactic application of so-called logic was strictly ad hoc, intended to lead to a predetermined outcome, not the objective “truth.” Of course, you didn’t let them know that until you were graduated and safely out of their clutches.
Either of you fellows remember the “Baltimore Catechism,” a book of indoctrination which got the Kinder on a path of “right thinking” as soon as they turned about 8 years of age?
Yeah-
I remember the Baltimore Catechism very well. Especially the rote memorization. “Who is God?” God is the supreme Being, creator of all things. “Where is God?” God is everywhere. We also used to have a competition between the boys and girls to collect pennies for the “pagan” babies. Whoever won got to name the baby. Probably the money really went into the nun’s liquor fund.
Your entire country is being gaslit, the critical lights being snuffed out one by one, the boiling frogs analogy.
It’s almost biblical, this feeling that the US and wretched Israel are going to drag the world into Armageddon like a train on a steep grade with no brakes. Unbelievably grotesque levels of mendacity, hypocrisy, venality and abject ignorance. These engines are pulling us forward to our collective doom. Earthquakes, tsunamis, the incinerating bomb-flash of hydrogen bombs going off, even dumb Hollywood sees it coming. The ship is sinking, the rats know it, and they are biting each other with nowhere to jump to. The first casualty in war is the truth.
The myth of American exceptionalism is what drives this train wreck. Even as we continue to circle the drain, denial rules the day. Our only hope is that those who are being most exploited (most of us) can recognize the farce that is the USA and admit that it is destroying the entire planet, including us.
Bravo, DR-MONTREAL !!!!!!!!!
Really good article, really great comments as usual, and I was thinking of Kiza just yesterday, yes it’s nice to see you back. Not a bad suggestion, to learn Russian and go to Russia. My, wouldn’t that twist their knickers if a bunch of Americans defected to Russia? America has reached the apogee of stupidity from too many bored serfs, some even highly-paid, sitting in front of that hypnotic screen listening to psychobabble. My relatives are among them.
I have a friend who has done a lot of reading on electromagnetism, and he says specific frequencies can be used to entrain the brain. There are experiments which do show that, and we are surrounded daily by very sophisticated technology. Whatever the origins of the madness, I can only believe that the US is going nowhere but down, down, down…
To brainwashed minds the truth is the most confusing thing of all. When one who has been deeply conditioned over many years to believe that certain things constitute unquestionable reality is confronted with things directly contrary to these beliefs, psychological defense mechanisms kick in immediately to deny the intruding realities, and brand the new experiences as unreal or concocted by malign others to subvert one’s certain and safe knowledge of things.
It is almost impossible for those who have believed in and supported the democratic party all their lives to wake up and realize that their party now represents the worst values of those who the party had inveighed against over the years. This kind of one-eighty is just too much for sold out democrats to perceive. It just isn’t possible for them to see what is happening right before their eyes. To dump their lifelong allegiance to the party is a bridge too far for them to cross.
As infuriating as their blindness is to those who have seen the true picture of present reality, we have to try to understand why they are stuck in the worldview they are maintaining. After all, this inability to critique and jettison one’s outmoded ideas and beliefs is a core reason we are locked in our seats on the doomsday express…..
Right. And those best able to discern the disconnect, the fallacies, the contradiction of what they thought was reality are those who remain skeptical, objective, at remove, strictly empirical, disinterested as opposed to uninterested… those who will not choose a side just to join a team, or because following a herd confers acceptance and it’s human to want that and the validation that comes with it. That’s right, the alleged kooks and so-called conspiracy theorists seem to have the clearest vision. If you are at this site reading these words you have likely been lumped into that category and dismissed by many of your friends and family. Many of you have flat out said this in pretty much the same terms. The Democratic Party still asks me for money over the internet several times every day of the week. Their pols still send emails and snail mail asking for my input with absolutely zero intention of changing their direction regardless of what I might say to them. They are stuck in a time loop and it’s groundhog day for them seemingly without end. Yes, Mike, they have no idea where they are headed with these ridiculous and rejected policies but they are determined to get there going 100 miles an hour.
I have seen a lot of signs on suburban lawns in New Jersey (where I’m currently a caregiver for my uncle) that says “Hate has no home here.” While I think the sign is wonderful, I think most of the owners of those signs are latte sipping Hillary supporters. They are too indoctrinated by the MSM to realize the utter hypocrisy.
I used to get snail mail from the Democrats asking for my input via pointed questions with multiple choice answers…none of which could satisfactorily express my view. So I would scribble my answers in the margins, refusing to play their game. They don’t send me questionnaires anymore.
Gregory, glad to hear you say that. I’ve never once in my entire life tried to choose answers from a list of choices that I didn’t have alternate choices. Thus, I can’t answer the questionnaire and give up in disgust by the third question at the latest.
Yeah, Ive got the same questionaires and did the same thing. Won’t let ’em fit me in a box.
What I want to know is who raised people like McCarthy, John McCain, Jeremiah Denton, Adam Schiff, Nancy Pelosi, Hillary Clinton, John Brennan, Dick Cheney. Who is responsible for this mess?
Barking mad lunatics who thought they had all the answers when, in truth, they didn’t even know the relevant questions.
The American production in kind of Hillary Clinton, John Brennan, Dick Cheney and such is not surprising – any nation has its share of subhuman psychopaths. But the untouchable position of this dangerous refuse in human shapes – this is amazing.
Backwardsrevolution, I’m sure it is far my complex than I can imagine but reasons which are pretty solid is the way our politicians are vetted by interest groups whose interests are not the same as our nation’s or of most people in America; our addiction to the benefits of militarism which results in waste and gratuitous violence; the sources of information which are controlled by the same forces that vet our politicians, and not least but last, the corruption of powerful Jewish intellectual leaders by Zionism which makes so many of them see all matters through the prism of Zionism. Hence we have an extraordinary number of PEPs, progressives except for Palestine.
What I want to know is who raised people like McCarthy, John McCain, …
In the case of John McCain his father, Admiral John McCain was obviously a big influence. This is the same Admiral McCain who participated in selling the crew of the USS Liberty down the Mediterranean after the Israelis killed 34 of its crew members and wounded many more on June 8, 1967. There are also stories of the admiral saving his brat from punishments that would have gotten others in deep trouble..
What I want to know is who raised people like McCarthy, John McCain, Jeremiah Denton, Adam Schiff, Nancy Pelosi, Hillary Clinton, John Brennan, Dick Cheney. Who is responsible for this mess?
One of the interesting points about this rogue’s gallery is that most, if not all, of the named culprits were graduates of supposedly prestigious institutes of higher learning which triggers a couple of questions: “What are these institutes teaching their students?” “If these colleges, universities and academies are encouraging moral concepts what turned their graduates into immoral and unethical actors?”
Ray McGovern and John Brennan are both graduates of Fordham University. How did they come to be so different from a moral point of view? https://consortiumnews.com/2013/01/08/the-moral-challenge-of-kill-lists-2/
backwardsevolution, who’s responsible ???
Those who sailed on the Mayflower. They wanted a “City on A Hill’,
but it’s been All Downhill since those Maniacs arrived at their destination
and committed their Crimes Against Humanity. And so it goes, on and on.
backwardsevolution, try Ayn Rand and her influence for a start.
Mark Ames – excellent article. Thank you.
I liken this to parents, whether liberal or authoritarian, trying to bring their kids back in line. At the moment it is the liberals who are screaming, “Oh, my God, what’s happening? We were one big happy family, all members were appropriately hyphenated, and all of a sudden some of the natives aren’t happy? Some of the natives don’t feel a part of the family, feel left out? Some of the members see our family as dysfunctional! What?”
Whenever a government steps in (usually after heavy lobbying and manipulation) and starts picking favorites, starts setting up winners (which ends up making others losers), starts giving unfair compensation to special interest groups, starts making dependents out of capable people, starts expecting some to work hard while others don’t, starts expecting others to follow the rules while others don’t, you are going to have a highly dysfunctional and very unhappy family.
Some of the chillen are starting to wise up to what’s going on. They’re starting to disbelieve the myth that there was ever a strong family to begin with. Like a poor parent who doesn’t want to make any changes themselves, they try to bring their children back in line. One of the surest ways is to find an outside enemy, because if they started looking at themselves, then things would really have to change, and they might actually have to start taking their children seriously, start acting not out of self-interest and self-centeredness, but out of what’s best for the family.
It’s like a cult. You attack the dissenters, ostracize and ex-communicate the disbelievers, shun them.
Mother Jones should stick to articles on gardening and stay out of politics. I never read Mother Jones for its politics.
JCLincoln: I agree. I have the same opinion about Mother Jones.
Well, As many of us mature, politically, and others on the real Left who are already ‘grown up’, have come to realize Mother Jones (and, I’m afraid to say, MANY other progressive orgs) is a fake friend of the people. I started to learn about the world in the mid 80s, both because I was maturing and becoming better able to process information (and was always a reader of everything) and because I just happened to read Noam Chomsky’s “Deterring Democracy.” (Sad to see so many leftists dumping on him now. I think we can criticize anyone, but I’m seeing a lot that’s just hate and an effort to smear, including from people I just would not have expected it from. James Corbett’s smear job was awful. – http://bit.ly/2q2XMSv) Anyway, Back to MJ. I gradually increased my stable of links to progressive orgs and therefore wasn’t totally immersed in any single one, although I’ve always had my faves (and they’ve changed over time). During the UK referendum to decide on staying in the EU or leaving it, I put in comments on MJ’s website, and without any comments by them about why, they deleted them all (http://bit.ly/2rtuwUU).
Incidentally, My first exposure to Mark Ames was via his, and Paul Carr’s, bombshell articles on (nazi-enabler) Pierre Omidyar, who showed extreme cleverness in corralling some big name lefty journos (Glenn Greenwald, Jeremy Scahill, Laura Poitras, Marcy Wheeler) and allowed them to create The Intercept. I thought at the time (when I only knew that Omidyar was filthy rich but didn’t know he helped fund the new nazi Ukrainian regime) that it was not a good thing. Sure enough, out of the blue, Murtaza Hussein pens a pro-USAID, pro-White Helmets piece that, to my knowledge, those people have not walked back.
I can’t quite get a handle on Mark Ames’s position. Does this mean he’s left PandoDaily? Does he do it all? In any case, I’m now in the habit of checking funders for progressive orgs and even PandoDaily fails, with 1 percenter Marc Andreesen showing as a major donor (8%). The founder of Pando, Sarah Lacy says a lot of positive-sounding things in Pando’s ‘About’ about getting money from the enemy, but I’m not convinced. And yet, I don’t want to be extreme. Take the writers and their work on their own merits, I suppose. But not always. I kind of let my gut guide me. The best example I’ve seen of not giving these positive sounding arguments for working with the enemy comes from Sibel Edmonds, who carries James Corbett’s stuff. I think that EVERY progressive org (including CN) that I’ve followed for any length of time has proven to be somehow compromised.
The darkness is deep and it’s spreading.
Mother Jones progressive? ? They’re a Neoliberal propaganda outlet just like all the other “liberal” rags named. Those propagandists are so fucking nuts they actually consider the Democrats own words Kremlin “disinformation” when they had nothing to do with Seth Rich giving those emails to Wikileaks. I gotta get the fuck out of here and go to a country that isn’t trying to destroy itself based on lies, America is too far gone.
I suggest doing a ‘Segal’ and become a russian citizen. Lol, isn’t it strange that russia continues to fight against fascism and terrorism (for decades now) while trying to be gradually more democratic and that the Christian orthodox church is becoming more and more followed as russia re-finds it’s morality based on these values.
I suggest doing a ‘Segal’ and become a russian citizen.
Before taking a hike, it might be a good idea to consider Thomas Paine’s words: “Wherever there is injustice that is where I want to be.”
Bill Bodden, sometimes the injustice is so overwhelming,
you feel you can’t breathe freely, and you just have to leave the
stinking cesspool.
Inspirational.
Both.
Hi Bill-
My passport has been expired for a long time. I’m not going anywhere until the Thought Police come for me.
The Russian Orthodox Church, as Philip Kovacevic has explained, is used by Putin to exert soft power. I have zero use for organized religion, all denominations (although I’m Christian). They all betray God and work with the global 1% to exploit the people.- http://bit.ly/2sz3GyX
None of us know, in spite of all the mechanistic models discerned by the most ingenious scientists, philosophers and scholars laboring over the course of many generations, why we are here on this rock, how we got here (we personally, not the species or how it evolved) or what it is we are supposed to do before our brief stay comes to an end. We are bombarded with baseless explanations and instructions from all directions, starting with our family, teachers, preachers, true believers and con artists with notions to push, putative souls to save, alleged infidels to condemn, merchandise to sell, memberships to recruit, promises to make and visions to share, sometimes beautiful, sometimes horrifying.
Ultimately, most of us choose up sides, pick a belief whether well-founded or far out, fully-thought-out or half-baked, sometimes with open arms and fervor, sometimes out of resignation and fatigue, or for a score of possible reasons somewhere in between and then, far too many of us immediately proceed to force that belief on others, especially those young ones still drifting through their uncertainties. To choose to NOT choose is usually considered the very worst choice, as atheists and agnostics are those remaining so close to the natural order of common sense and empiricism that they must be rejected: after all, they didn’t follow the herd and it is the herd that decides what is normal, sane, and acceptable behavior and belief.
Religion and politics have always gone hand-in-hand, as power was generally shared by the crown and the clerics, the emperor and the priesthood, in whatever society, from the time of the ancients to the present day. Don’t kid yourself, in spite of the 1st amendment there is a secular religion in America, it is based on the Christian bible (which can be expediently interpreted to serve any policy) and its high priests pontificate in the U.S. Capitol Building. Say the wrong thing about either power center and you were or are likely to be burnt at the stake, beheaded or packed off to Fort Leavenworth. The American Poobahs in Congress want the heads of Assange and Snowden on a plate every bit as much as the Mullahs wanted Salman Rushdie snuffed in their fatwah.
Even in our “freedom loving” America throughout its history, those on the right thought they were defending scripture whilst persecuting dissenters; and those on the left thought they were defending the enlightenment and reason whilst doing the same though, so we liberals thought, in lesser measure and for only the “correct” reasons (ones that would protect the weak from the strong). According to Liberal (as opposed to Neocon) gospel, we don’t impose our will, we offer our protection, or apply a policy of R2P under which we lay waste to other countries and cultures.
I don’t know if it’s mostly a consequence of repeated frustration, especially for the supporters of two-time loser Hillary Clinton on a personal level, or whether they have simply been co-opted by the lure of corporate money and power, but present-day Democrats (who should certainly not be conflated with “liberals” or “progressives” any longer) have clearly morphed into exactly what they spent generations condemning on the right. So, though it is tragic and a pity, it does not surprise me one bit that “Mother Jones,” MSNBC, the NYT, WaPo and most other “liberal” organs of mass communication have transmogrified into something indistinguishable from the Murdoch empire, Fox News, the Washington Times, the Daily Standard and Info Wars. Turns out that Gore Vidal was right after all. There is only one party, neither elephant nor donkey. It is a snake and, like the Ouroborus, it has caught its tail and is now consuming itself. The question is, when it dies will it take the rest of us with it?
This is Literature. I wish I were a publisher who could offer you an advance to write a book of essays on topics of your own choosing.
Absolutely agree with Gregory. But please be mindful that we, here at CN, also exist in a bubble. We are so isolated that neither paid nor conviction trolls bother to visit us any more. Go check out the comments section at RT for an example of the opposite. Are we so marginalized and that unimportant (lol)?
I agree with Gregory, Realist. This is Literature – for new Enlightenment. To me, it seems like the U.S. is marching very rapidly towards the dark ages, and taking the Whole World with it.
Another staffer for Sen. East was John Rees, one of the most loathsome professional snitches of the post-McCarthy era, who collected files on suspected leftists, labor activists and liberal donors. I’ll have to save John Rees for another post
I hope the author will also do a post at a later date on Orrin Hatch, the serpent from Utah.
David Corn was the only attendee at the 2004 Radio and Television Correspondents Association dinner who had the integrity to walk out when George W. Bush performed his squalid skit making fun of the missing (non-existent) WMDs supposed to have been in Iraq to justify the war. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_and_Television_Correspondents%27_Association#Notable_RTCA_dinners (See “Notable RTCA dinners). This singular act was admirable in my opinion, but I wondered what happened to him when he made regular appearances on Chris “MotorMouth” Matthews’ “Hardball” on MSDNC. Now my question is how much is he involved in Mother Jones’ new role?
“Might does not equal right—and it never has for Americans—but Putin’s Russia plays by different rules. Or maybe no rules at all.”
This is an excellent article. Yet, the author appears to miss the humor of the situation – expressed the best in the statements such as the one above. No wonder the Russians are laughing their asses off at the stupidity of the US fascist left (an oxymoron but yet amazingly true) when they are not preparing for the global nuclear war. Because this feverish subhuman cocktail of stupidity and madness can hardly end up any other way.
On an even higher plane, I believe that the ruling Western elite plays a game with the dumb manipulatable people, switching the same game from the right to left, and possibly in the future if we survive this one as we did the previous one, it will switch it back to the right. Do not you see that they are shouting to us, even screaming – you are sooooooo duuuuuumb!!!!!
But if we do suck this propaganda which keeps the elite in its privileged position, generation after generation, in its right-wing packaging or its left-wing packaging, then do not we deserve the epithet?
Hi Kiza-
Nice to see you back. All I can say is “et tu mother Jones?” Nobody could make this S**t up. Just when you thought things couldn’t get any crazier….
I’m with Skip, nice to see you again Kiza.
Actually for me it was the 80’s during the Reagan years that I took a whole different turn on the Russians. Much of my leanings were confirmed by 1987 when a friend of mind who had sung background for Billy Joel on Joel’s Moscow tour, and my friend after the tour told me of how the Russians weren’t much different than us, and how they loved Rock n Roll. I had also an Uncle who met up with the Russians during WWII, and my Uncle Gil said how these Russians were just like us….just trying to make their lives work.
I also remember back during the Reagan years all of the Steel Workers who got laid off, and besides that most of these hard working unemployed were Vietnam Vets. Watching the unions get torn apart in my mind seemed to fit a capitalistic machine bend on squashing every labor movement organization that ever existed. We were all going to get rich, if only we shed our work overalls for pin striped suits, and if we were to march in lock step with Wall St. then life would be good at half the pay. Amazing how many bought into that world, only to be bought out and sold, and sold again, until you were to old to be employed. There are no careers in the corporate world.
When will America quit with all the prejudices. I have thought for a very longtime how the U.S. and Russia are natural allies, if only the Americans would quit trying to get over on the Russians. Most Americans I don’t think are aware of how Putin has extended his outreached hand on many an occasion, only to have us Americans slap it down. This American war against ISIS, and terrorism is a lie, and a poorly made joke….yet everyone believes it. I think the Russians and their allies are the only ones fighting this war against terrorism. When will America join the fight?
Hi Joe-
I am curious if you are familiar with the Jazz group “Oregon”? They are a great set of muscians whose music really defies classification. They did an album with the Moscow Symphony Orchestra that is really wonderful. I read in the liner notes that they were surprised that virtually all the orchestra members were familiar with their music.
I had just gotten my Radio license during Reagan, and went from being in the Steward’s department (dishwasher) to being an Officer. After Reagan busted the Airline Traffic Controller’s strike, our management came to us and forced an 8 pct pay cut, and a 20 pct vacation cut. The gloves were off, and the Union caved. Now the union I am with is basically “the Kelly Girls” (temps) with benefits. They have separate contracts with different shipping companies, and don’t even have a standardized wage scale.
Joining the fight with the Russians against terrorism would go against the Yinon plan. Ain’t gonna happen any time soon.
Wow first you turn me on to Greg Brown, now Oregon. Thanks.
I’m a small business guy myself, but I grew up in a working class environment. Most of my friends were Steel Workers. I’ll never forget the hardship my friends encountered from back in those Reagan union busting days. Management did get the last word.
You are right the Russians are not included in the Yinon Plan. In my mind America needs new allies, we are definitely on the wrong side of history.
Joe-
Check this out- it’s one of my favorites.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mjjBjGRPCLw
https://youtu.be/Dy7jOqpiGUc
Check this out. This is the guy I was talking about who sang backup for Billy Joel on his Moscow tour.
Also thanks Skip for the link to Oregon….I really enjoyed it, and you have some really great taste in music…..Joe
Joe-
Thanks for the link. A real good bunch of players. Glad you enjoy Oregon. They’ve been around a long time.
Thanks Skip, I loved listening to “Out of the woods” by OREGON. Beautiful music, touches the heart.
Dave-
Glad you liked it. They are one of my favorite groups. They were left over from the Paul Winter Consort and formed their own band. Collin Walcott (sitar/tablas) died in a car wreck, but the new guy is good too, and last I checked they’re still making music.
Joe, Thanks. I always feel uplifted when I read your very informed and heartfelt comments – that there is still hope for a better World.
Russia – a very timely article, by Mark Ames. Russia is Russia. Given its’ economic and social conditions, it can not be be like U.S., and Western Europe – at least in the near foreseeable Future. The West had tried to destroy it, keep it down for more than two Centuries now. They tried in 1918, they failed. Around 1998 – 99, I thought that they have finally succeeded in destroying Russia – and honestly, my heart sank. Growing up reading British Literature, all things British, I also read just about all nineteenth century Russian writers. One gets to know the Russian culture and develop human feelings for their People.
And in 1990’s, The West – with the help of the Russian Collaborators – completely plundered the country. And they were crowing in the Press here that Russia will not recover in one hundred years, if it ever does. But they are again back on their feet to some extent, in their very troubled History. We should be congratulating them on that. Forget about the Political Establishment – they have been Russia’s adversaries for more than a century..But to see how low even our so called progressives have sunk is a new phenomenon – a complete turning point in domestic politics. I do not think they can be called progressives any longer – they have become collaborators of “The Deep State”.
To understand the development of Western Europe, we have to go over the World map for the last four or five Centuries. West Europeans – including Spain. Very Energetic People, they took over this new World; North America, South America, Australia, New Zealand, all the Islands in Pacific, Atlantic, and Indian Ocean. And the Colonies – India, South East Asia, Indonesia, Phillipines, Africa – and China as an Economic Colony – just about the Entire World. All the Resources, Wealth flowed to The West – and it is still flowing in our direction. There are debates in Indian Parliament that about thirty billion dollars flow out of that country every year – the Rich bringing their money to the Western Countries It is true of the whole third World Countries – including Russia.
After the World War II, Western Europe recovered with massive U.S. help. U.S. investment helped build Japan, South Korea, Taiwan. China’s rise is due to hundreds of billions of dollars of Investment by the Western Countries, and Japan, and the industriousness of their people.
And how about Russia! Did not they need some help after collapse of Communism, to develop a free market system from scratch? What they got is the N.A.T.O. bases armed with Nuclear Weapons all around their country. It shows the inhumanity of the West.
In the West, we should not forget that history tells us that Russians are very resilient people, and energetic too. Crossing eight thousand miles of Swamps, Mountains, Frozen Siberia, Bering Sea, they had reached Alaska around 1780, and they had reached Northern California by the end of Eighteenth Century. Compare it to when U.S. settlers reached California. I wonder if these Latte sipping so called liberals like Clara Jeffery, Chris Hayes, and David Corn have read the HIstory of the World.
Not to forget that the Russians helped the U.S. during the American Civil War by putting up a naval blockade to protect our northeastern harbors. Also Russia didn’t receive any aid from the Marshall Plan, instead they got Churchill’s Iron Curtain, and the Cold War was declared.
If only we Americans in mass were to collectively accept people for what they are. We have a bad habit here in America, whereas we seem to think of ourselves as being so exceptional, and we act like all other people’s of the world are backward, and uncivilized. Our culture seems to feel we can lay claim to any land or seaway we wish, and we feel Godly righteous when doing it. Seriously, how did we get so ordained to be this masterful of the universe?
If I lift you up Dave that makes my world all that more complete. Your compliment goes along way with me, and I hope to correspond with you more in the future. Take care…Joe
You are right, Joe. I read recently the History of The Civil War – three volumes – by Shelby Foote. There were three main Imperial Powers at that time – British, France, and Russia. After the Defeats of Potomac Army in 1961 -62, Napoleon III was prodding British to recognize Confederacy. And The British were almost at the point of throwing their support to Southern Confederacy. It is Russia who said NO. It is Russia who saved U.S.A. Imperial Russia had supported America since its’ Independence during the times of trouble with British and French during the early period after Independence.
It is sad to see what is happening here. It seems like that, with some exceptions, the whole Elite – in the Government, and outside of it – have gone insane. Watching TV, which my wife has it on, and looking at L.A.Times -headings only, I can’t bear to read this Neocon rag any more – I have concluded that these people have some sort of poisoned, and deranged minds.
Joe, if you understand Russian (or use some translator, google, microsoft or yandex), this article from a Russian may be revealing: http://pravoslavie.ru/73443.html (The Russia they have lost). It tells a lot about the feelings of the young Russian generation at the end of communism, and how it changed under the strikes of the neocon juggernaut.
Is it this?
https://slavyangrad.org/2014/09/24/the-russia-they-lost/
I was always the iconoclast in my younger years, as I make clear in some postings below. Not overtly, because that might cause trouble I didn’t need, but I always suspected the truth about Russia, and most things in human society, had a lot more unrevealed substance to them than we were being told… or that was accurately understood by our leaders, to whom I suppose I still granted “the benefit of the doubt.”
But, I would read whatever best selling books would be published on real life in the Soviet Union, as a handful of honest American diplomats and journalists did occasionally churn out. Then there was the occasional brave enlightened American industrialist, such as Armand Hammer, who actually did business with the Soviet Union. I also subscribed to a magazine, published by the Russian government, called “Soviet Life.” The photos and the essays sure did not seem to depict the regimented police state taught about in elementary and secondary school. The diplomats and journos always seemed to underscore how much those folks actually loved America and wanted to emulate it and be friends with us. To be sure there was rampant spying and much economic deprivation, most of it caused by the Cold War which America had undeniably initiated.
Eventually, as I matured and was educated further (in the sciences), I got to meet graduate students from Stephen F. Cohen’s old Russian Studies Program at Indiana University. They had Russian professors, immersed themselves in Russian culture by living in the “Russian House” and made periodic trips to Moscow and Leningrad to interface first hand with actual Russian people. Their stories all sounded rather much the same as America to me, except for the lower grade economy but superior educational system over there. Admittedly, you could get in trouble if you tried really hard to buck the government and became a public dissident with intent on bringing down the system. Try being a dissident in America today. It would be a pretty similar scenario. Try being a dissident during the original McCarthy period. How little things change.
What really surprised me was to hear, via these graduate students and their professors, was how pro-American the Soviet leadership actually was. Could be bullshit, but the story went that much, maybe most, of the leadership looked back fondly to the days when the US and the USSR were allies in WWII. That’s what they secretly wanted to get back, allegedly. They wanted the release of tensions, the economic benefits, the peace dividend, the respect and a whole constellation of improvements that they expected from such a transformation. Gorbachev may have been the first Soviet leader to take overt steps in that direction, but he was not the first with the thought, and his reforms would not have been possible without an undercurrent of pre-existing support. I was never an insider privy to any info than what I’ve outlined, but I can say the American people in general were mostly fed dangerous propaganda about the world in general and Russia in particular back during the first Cold War and are getting it again today during this second Cold War, which is so totally unnecessary.
Realist – interesting post. Thanks.
Please bear in mind the importance of framing. ” Elite” a word commonly possessing positive connotations, is well replaced by oligarchies, parasites, deep state, warmongers, financiers, etc.. This is in fact a contest of persuasion and words are powerful.
An invaluable suggestion, BananaBoat. Thank you.
American gullibility run amok. How dumb is the average American? It is really not possible to be more wrong about more issues. We have achieved the pinnacle of sheer stupidity.
Not dumb, tricked. We can see it coming with the used car salesman, but we trust the media.