by Ramin Mazaheri exclusive for the Saker Blog
In any sane, modern nation a financial crisis combined with a (due to sub-standard) health care crisis would almost certainly produce election victories for progressive, big-government candidates.
Few call the US sane, and many say it’s not even modern. Iranian relatives of mine visit they US and say: that place is a falling-down dump – and it’s not like the TV show “Friends”, neither. The problem is that they had already seen places like South Korea, China and other modern nations.
Of course South Korea has the technological ability to smart-test and smart-track, and probably smart-cure, the Corona virus into remission: when I was there in 2013, covering the Korean nuclear war hysteria/diversion (version 14.0), I realised Korea had passed a major human threshold when I found that they had done away with physical keys – doors locks are digitised. That is like building a better mousetrap; the door key must be one of the oldest, least-improved upon inventions in human history, but young Seoulians only see them in history books.
I don’t think I’m exaggerating: millions are going to be unemployed in the US as a result of a hugely, hugely drastic shutdown of the West’s two native continents. It defies all Marxist logic that neo-imperial Rome would do this, so I’m quite at a loss. Either it’s mass hysteria, or the 1%ers believe all must be sacrificed to protect the health of the Hamptons, or the West’s leaders don’t know what they hell are doing (as I recently discussed here). The Corona conspiracy thing – sure, nothing is impossible… just give me proof I can print, first.
The reality is that my focus on the economic impact of Corona is just not shared by my many of my journalistic colleagues – they just don’t care about economics, period. Trying to talk economics with them is how they must feel trying to talk Kardashian with me – my thoughts are entirely superficial (as well as unprintable).
So none of them can likely concentrate enough to comprehend this brief paragraph: the West has decided to add an “Everything-Is-Tanking Bubble” on top of the “Everything Bubble”. For those who have followed economic trends since way back in 2008, “Everything Bubble” is really “Everything Bubble 2”, of course. Quantitative Easing and Zero Interest Rate Policies – a.k.a. “helicopter money” and “no-strings attached central bank loans, because the loans will surely trickle-down” – have only re-inflated the 1%er dominated asset classes like stocks and real estate to new record-dangerous levels.
The markets are tanking – and by that I mean every market (although crypto has held on – S. Koreans are big fans). Safe havens like gold are also tanking, so even The New York Times knows that this phenomenon is “weird”. “Weird” is a word that adolescents love to use because it is so vague and can cover anything – it is thus nearly useless,, and one would think that the world’s greatest journalistic enterprise could find better writers than that… but no. It’s a “weird” time precisely because the rich, investor class knows that central banks have since 2008 foolishly wasted all their ammo and can now only print paper.
And what’s wrong with massive money printing? Nothing, sometimes.
It has taken 12 years but we are finally seeing a “People’s QE” possibly being passed in the US. (No MSM is using that phrase, of course – that would be “weird”.) Surely it’s going to be well-written: it is being cobbled together and slammed through Congress as fast as possible in order to prevent more “rich people” markets from tanking. Anyway, giving some $1,000 per American might actually see QE invested into the “real” economy, and thus improve it far more than using it for stock buybacks ever did.
This is good news. I’m all for the downfall of neo-imperial Rome… but I do hate to see the lower classes suffer, and suffer they already are. The stay-at-home orders in the helicopter Mom-dominated Northeast, Chicago and West Coast are being met with a universal cry: “So how do I pay my rent?”
A People’s QE… finally. If, and that’s a big “if”, it is actually passed. Newspaper editorial boards across the country are already screaming that it will be wasted by 99%-er peons, or that it will be uselessly saved, or that we will anger the vengeful one true god – the markets – with such an intervention. How dare we blaspheme? WWHD – What Would (Alexander) Hamilton Do?
Well, does Trump want to get re-elected?
If so, he better jump all over this Huey Long moment.
Huey Long was the Depression Era governor of Louisiana who famously promised “a chicken in every pot”, and was assassinated for it of course.
He was rather character assassinated in the tremendously fine classic novel, All The King’s Men by poet Robert Penn Warren, whose main flaw was that he likely was – like most poets – totally disinterested by economics, that most un-metaphorical of disciplines. The 2006 movie version was an artistic assassination of the novel, but who in 2006 Hollywood was pushing economic populism? Who in Hollywood ever pushed economic populism?
Despite rejecting race-baiting Long is synonymous with the evils of populism in the US. Go watch some of his speeches on youtube: it is incredible to see the type of body language he used, as well as other politicians did back then. If he’s not pounding the lectern he is theatrically twirling an upraised fist over and over before smashing it into his palm. Nobody can do stuff like that in 21st century America – soccer Moms would cower, and hipsters too.
But the Depression Era was not about niceties. And neither is Trump, of course. The screen shot of him crossing out “Corona” virus on a speech and replacing it with “Chinese” virus exemplifies this. Trump is terrible – a neo-fascist – and we all knew this going in. Another Long slogan was “Every man a king”, but Trump always viewed only himself as the one true king.
Well, I can report that in France many fellow Muslims have told me that they have seen the light: many will vote for Marine Le Pen in the 2nd round of the 2022 presidential election IF Macron is the other option (ugh!). Why? Because economics is more important that racism; identity politics is for fake-leftists – class warfare for real ones. Nobody, Muslim or not, wants to vote for Le Pen in 2022, but more Macronism? Nobody in the 99% should vote for that twice.
Maybe Trumpism can be different? He’s certainly running out of time, but maybe Corona is when Trump becomes the not-neo-fascist populist which many had initially hoped for?
Maybe Trump becomes the 21st century Huey Long, which is what the overwhelming majority of America wanted in 2016, given that: no, you stupid MSM journalist, the average Trump voter is not a rabid White supremacist, merely “White Trash” (To use seemingly the only ethnic slur which has not been “reclaimed” in the PC era – it is, of course, a class slur more than an ethnic slur).
“Ramin, why are you writing books about socialism but pushing Trump, then Le Pen, now Trump again and then probably Le Pen again! You are too complicated – no wonder you are unmarried!”
Well that’s not holding back on me, LOL! I can take the tough criticisms, though – can’t dish ‘em out, otherwise. And, fool that I am, I chose to be a journalist so….
I am “pushing” Trump because it seems certain that the Democratic candidate this November will be the senator from America’s tax haven state; the right-hand man of guy who said to Latino media (here),“The truth of the matter is that my policies are so mainstream that if I had said the same policies back in the 1980s I’d be considered a moderate republican,” Barry Obama; and a guy whom in me evokes no sense of warm, sentimental, safe, elderly, youth-fearing nostalgia – Joe Biden.
Biden is terrible. Biden has been a corporate tool his whole career, and that’s why he was placed on the dais next to Obama in 2008, as we all know. Hell, Biden is now senile – that doesn’t get better, you know?
Biden in office means People’s QE remains the same-old Corporate QE. Biden in office means nothing changes – status quo-ism reigns. How can we advance socialism if – out of fear of big, bad, racist Trump – we keep cowering in status-quoism?
So I reject that I am “playing devil’s advocate” – I am not an adolescent (nor French), and I know the devil doesn’t need any more help than he already has. (Or “she” already has – I don’t want to micro-trigger someone here.)
Can Trump become Baby Huey? Well, for those who really want to know: Listen to me – hear what I say: No, I don’t think Trump can.
Trump has never been a neo-populist but a neo-fascist. He is a race-baiter and totally in bed with corporate domination of the lower classes. The MSM can’t talk about neo-fascism and the reality of it in America – because they support it of course – thus they have focused exclusively on the race-baiting part; that allows the soccer moms, hipsters and snowflakes a chance to virtue-signal about how terrible racism is while doing nothing about it structurally other than posting a yard sign about how “Hate doesn’t live here”.
But one can’t blame my imagination for getting fired up when – after a decade of covering QE from Paris – I read about a QE which may not totally go directly into the pockets of private bankers, stockholders, landlords and luxury goods owners. Full disclosure: I, too, am currently rather desperate for $1,000.
Trump is going to have to be some sort of a leftist populist to get re-elected because millions are going to be unemployed in the US. The lower classes will demand it, even in America.
Hell, the custodial class – whom nobody in the US writes about it – is seemingly going to be decimated by corona, right? Why are there no political cartoons lauding them as heroes – only for doctors? Nobody cares about the custodial worker class in the West – not only are they poor, they are also non-White. Such an unheard of view can only be thought of by someone who has embraced socialism in their heart, and one who views no worker as disposable Trash.
But Western capitalism-imperialism certainly does view workers of all colors as disposable. Something drastic has to be done about it – I doubt Trump cares, but he does seem to prefer being president to going back to starring in a reality show.
The Deep State undoubtedly and immediately attacked Trump for his effort to rejigger US foreign policy and free trade policy, but he does appear so very, very ethically malleable; he certainly can connect with the average American. Could he be a new Huey?
Watch some Huey Long, railing here against “the 4%” and you’ll see that the answer is no, of course. Why? because Trump’s huge ego would be tremendously insulted if anyone said he was part of “the 4%” and not the 1%; not part of the .1%; not the .01%!
Unlike Huey Long: “How many men ever been to a barbecue and would let one man take off the table what they intended for nine tenths of the people to eat? The only way you’d ever be able to feed the balance of the people is to make that man come back and bring back some of dat grub he ain’t got no ‘bidness with!”
Huge applause indeed! That’s hilarious and awesome American politics! No wonder they shot him.
The US cannot do better than that, they have proven – America is not even close to socialist revolution. Yes, there are socialists in the US of course, but a Baby Huey is surely the best they can do this November. Hell, they ran to Biden even before the Corona crisis and they probably will stone the “rabble rouser” “socialist” Sanders now.
And it’s not like race-baiting isn’t still ruining the American psyche. But we have the MSM to thank for that, along with doing everything they could have done to inflame – rather than calm – the Corona crisis.
And $1,000 isn’t going to cut it. Not by a long shot.
So no matter how you look at it 2020 is looking tough for America – somebody might even have to pound a lectern?
PS – I am not complicated, LOL! It is Western politics which are unnecessarily complicated! And contradictory! Don’t blame me for trying to bring some sense to it all.
Ramin Mazaheri is the chief correspondent in Paris for Press TV and has lived in France since 2009. He has been a daily newspaper reporter in the US, and has reported from Iran, Cuba, Egypt, Tunisia, South Korea and elsewhere. He is the author of the books ‘I’ll Ruin Everything You Are: Ending Western Propaganda on Red China’ and the upcoming ‘Socialism’s Ignored Success: Iranian Islamic Socialism’.
Many of us, sadly, keep trying to attribute genuine human characteristics to the cartoon villains currently bivouaced in New Rome (DC) and other somewhat similar nestings.
This attempt, though not ill intended, is definately incorrect. Until we decide to stop doing so, we will continue to be completely baffled by their rather bizzare behavior.
After Lunch, or How the Trump Gopher Brain Works
World famous anthropologist and gopher psychologist Dr.Weldone-Gridpipethin G.G. (Belmont & Santa Anna) regarding Gopher President Elroy Trump from his paper ‘The President’s Many Thoughts’ delivered to the AFSCME sanitary workers conference (SWC) Western Burrows 2023. 12.30am.
‘Gopher Ladies and aspiring gopher politicians,before I delve deeper here is a simple explanation of my thesis:
Experimental methodologies for manipulating trumpian mechanisms are nascent and will need rigorous demonstration before studies explicitly testing the relative contributions of genotype, environment, and trumpian interactions are feasible.
Following is the more advanced version:
Let us examine some of our great leader’s writings:
(attrib. Elroy 2019). We now approach a topic of relationships, which, in entertainment, I have some knowledge but obviously in life I have little (working briefly as a burrow excavator and stand-up comic). Every element in a gopher politician can only be considered in its relationship with the other parts.
‘Very revealing I am sure to most of you, particularly the gopher democrats.’
(attrib. Elroy 2022) Let us imagine our life as a burrow and the burrow has a partition. On one side of the partition is a continually moving, changing environment of disorder or chaos. It is populated by all the creatures of the imagination (huge snakes, cats, dogs and eagles) fatal diseases and more than a few not invited. It is a world of the surreal, of dreams and nightmares, of anti-logic and senselessness (members of the gopher press know this well). On the other side of our partition we have order, logic and regular forms, the world of the pyramids, spheres and cubes, the world of habit, health, pattern and order.
‘Those of you who clean the Senate latrine burrows should be well aware of both these elements since the second category tend to stick in the pipes.’
(attrib. Elroy 2020) Some gophers are not comfortable until the partition is forced to one end of the burrow (90% order 10% chaos). Others can live in a 50/50 situation, and yet others rejoice in the high chaos count. Some gophers believe it is a factor of age, gender, right or left brain, or early potty-training. Some refer to it as the famous gopher Heckle and Jyde syndrome while others mistake it as a threat.
I believe most live with both sides of gopher existence and recognize the importance of each. We gophers need chaos to think laterally to be inventive; to associate disparate ideas and concepts. Controlled chaos is the life blood of the a gopher’s creative political idea though this is not to underestimate the value of pattern, order and habit that are the very tools that allow meaning to be drawn from disorder; the foundation blocks of moral and civilized gopher thought.
‘You who work mostly in the sewers will most likely understand what I mean particularly in regard to foundation blocks.’
(attrib. Elroy 2022) Most classical gopher tuition usually concerns itself with the ‘rules and order’ side of the burrow in an attempt to define and symbolize the chaos about us. For some this may have moved the partition back a little. Never mind, just think of what you have learnt as a small toolbox with which the gopher politician can use to assemble and understand whatever the imagination demands. Chaos is not a bag of matted fur, it is rather a wardrobe of sleek pelts to be worn and perhaps cast aside.
‘I know all are concerned with the flippers and goggles you wear as part of your underground wardrobe for work so this will come as no surprise but dirty matted fur is something we all try and avoid.’
(attrib. Elroy 2023) Experiments of political movements are all attempts at dissembling and re-assembling, of moving into chaos to discover some new meaning. We should all similarly experiment, especially when we find order stifling creativity. I view it like this: Gophers don’t resolve things gophers construct relationships.
‘I know all of you are on your short lunch break so I hope these few comments on the thoughts of President Elroy Trump will help you understand better the intellectual sophistication going on above and over your heads in the top tunnels.
Thank you gophers all and goodnight.
OH MY GOD what is that Baby Huey weblink you posted to? I assume you meant Donald Duck in a diaper.
That song is awesome. Who cares about Trump, and certain virus death, when there is Baby Huey to listen to? What else more is wanted?
Why haven’t I heard of him? The cat is ok!
Ramin Mazaheri must know what I am talking about. Great article! Do it again!
Time to get on up!!!!!!!!!!!!! I have had my dreams, and I know what the mean to meeeeeeeeeeeee!
Ohhhhhh how can you sayyyyyyyyyy, thaaaaaat you know the onlyyyy wayyyyy. Iiiiiiiiiiiiif life is a draaaaaaaaaaag, theeeeeeeeeeeen you know the…. rags the way?
Whatevs. Life is a drag at home under quarantine. Very good article, but it’s no Baby Huey and the Babysitters.
I only put the time into learning economics early last year. Once I did, the world made so much more sense. History made so much more sense. I’d love to see more economic articles. I think a lot of readers of this website could definitely use a little more education in this area.
Thanks for introducing me to Huey Long, what a deadset legend!
Check out Michael Hudson’s website. He’s probably the foremost expert on Economics.
Bone, check out “The Great Recession Blog” for economic articles, and fintwit (financial twitter).
You will find a lot of interesting people in @orthereaboot`s timeline and in @TESLAcharts tl, both are more then average interested in (F)elon musk and teslaq so you will learn A LOT about subsidy ponzis and bad bookkeeping too😀
Cheers, folks. I love Michael Hudson.
I’ll check out the recession blog.
I’m a big Elon Musk fan. It seems to me that all the people that don’t like him are very poor people readers. The dude is freeing people from the oilmen and centralised power generation. He’s going to connect the entire world (no matter how remote your location) to the internet. He’s going to be digging tunnels everywhere (useful for all manner of disasters man-made or cosmic). Imagine a world where even the poorest communities can get access to the world’s knowledge combined with access to bitcoin. This will be a great boon for reducing inequality whilst cutting out the parasitic banking system.
Once I get my cubertruck with the solar panel I’m free to pull up stumps and head off camping for as long as I’ve got food and water. Oh yeah!
The virus destroys testicles. Currently the advice is to moniter men of child siring age after infection on an ongoing basis for the development of lesions in the testicles…in other words cancer of the testicles.
The virus is found in semen, urine, feces, saliva, and given asymptomatic carriers likely transmissable via sexual fluid exchanges.
Silymarin prevents entry to the target cell by way clathrin mediated endocytosis because it not only drives the formation of clathrin pits but also modifies the geometry of same such the virus may not enter the cell as cargo in toe with angiotensin-2.
All corona plagues in the histories of the Eurasian peoples were halted by thistles….the noblest vegetable of them all.
Contrary to current super WOKE advice it is a fact smoking confers substantial protection against the virus. Only 15% of hospitalusation in China were smokers. Only 2.5% of fatalities in China were smokers.
Smokers are who survived the Black Death plague.
Grave diggers and doctors smoked to keep the Black Death at bay.
Here’s a link to the actual Huey Long
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eezO5eM9ldA
I so detest the use of the word “progressive” for the pretend agendas of people like Clinton, Obama and Sanders. Anyone who believes that governments deliver more than a fraction of what they absorb is a simpleton IMHO.
”Safe havens like gold are also tanking” … Really? the last time I looked this morning gold had reached $1608.00 per oz. That is the highest level since Nixon took the dollar off the gold standard in 1971.
Donnie,
It had dropped to $1475, thus the NY Times’ declaration that markets were “weird”.
They aren’t gong to stay weird forever, and nothing is more solid economically than gold….
FYI, gold was over $1800 in late 2011.
Paper gold is dropping.
Pretty dang hard to get the real thing at those prices.
Donald Trump is a fake populist. He is the traditional Conservative version of the “Hope and Change” scam.
And those who follow him like the Pied Piper will be led to their own oblivion:
As the coronavirus pandemic continues to spread throughout the world, and as reported cases in the United States increase at a faster rate than in any other country, a definite line is emerging from the American ruling class: “The cure is worse than the disease.” In other words, the lives of millions of workers must be sacrificed in the interests of corporate profit.
Message from big business on coronavirus pandemic: Save profits, not lives
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/03/24/pers-m24.html?view=print
Huey Long’s story of a man at a barbeque taking more than his fair share, is intriguingly similar to Gerrard Winstanley (1609-1675), leader of the True Levellers. There is nothing in the world more threatening to established power than this way of thinking, so it’s really not surprising he was assassinated. I had not previously heard of Huey Long, so I greatly appreciate this information. Moteshakeram, Ramin.
Several years ago when Paul Ryan had control of the U.S. House and was being praised by the MSM, I saved a quote that someone attributed to the New Republic:
“Ryan’s going to get his dream. He can go into every poor person’s kitchen and take out whatever’s in the refrigerator.”
This was probably when talk was on the ground about cutting Social Security and/or Medicaid
Mr Ramin Mazaheri,
Is this proof something was Preplanned?
SEE — COVID-19 Coronavirus: The Crisis —
Guns and Butter Interview with Prof. Michel Chossudovsky and Bonnie Faulkner (hope they stay alive and healthy. the empire is maliciious and vengeful.)
Mentions the proven false 2009 “swine flu pandemic” and then The Event 201 “simulation” in October 2019 about a pandemic coronavirus.
Also, I predicted in New York where I live about two weeks ago after 3 heavy “chemtrail” spraying days that we would see “chemtrail flu” soon after. Lo And Behold. On cue the pandemic struck a week later.
I have a respiratory condition that makes me sensitive to this spayed “stuff”. and It makes my nose run, my breathing tight etc, etc, so I always pay attention to the sky for what its worth.