By Ramin Mazaheri for the Saker Blog
How many years, or decades, does it take to unlearn national propaganda? In any country it’s not easy because it starts in the cradle, or at least at preschool. Despite the false claims of moral relativists, not all national worldviews are equal – some propaganda is good and furthers modern ideas, while some are as repugnant as yesterday’s bathwater.
Firstly: who is “The Man”? “The Man” was a term which was so ubiquitous in the US until the 1980s that I find it hard to believe that anyone reading this doesn’t know what I’m talking about – such a person would have to be quite young and rather unusually culturally illiterate.
So I turn to a youth-oriented website – UrbanDictionary.com, where one can find the meaning of any slang word: 1. n. (derogatory, semi-proper) Term used to describe any class of people who wield power and are seen as oppressive. See also whitey, big brother, corporate America, the establishment (Please note, these synonyms are used as examples of groups who have been called “The Man,” and should not be construed as a racist attack).
It is definitely not a racist term but entirely a class term: 1970s Blaxploitation movies were filled with Black-to-Black admonishments not to join “The Man” in his nefarious schemes of exploitation against all colors (excepting green). In many ways it was the equivalent of today’s “1%” – you were either for against “The Man” just like today you are either against the “1%” or aspire to join them.
It’s not like The Man was ever routed, but what ever happened to “The Man”…? Algeria has “le pouvoir” (the power) and Turkey has derin devlet (deep state) but in America “The Man” has lost its power, which only proves how much stronger “The Man” is today in the US than He was 40 years ago.
Hey – I’m still using it and am against “The Man”. Don’t let Him get you down.
Unfortunately the total uniqueness of the Trump phenomenon in American history has allowed the Mainstream Media to focus entirely on the man (Trump) instead of “The Man” even though any intelligent reading of recent history leaves no doubt: Trump is in office because half the country was fed up with “The Man”, i.e. the US establishment.
This explains why so few young voters in 2016 supported Trump – they simply could not see that he was the “protest vote” against a corrupt and aristocrat-protecting system. The reason for that is because their youth necessarily makes them inexperienced regarding “The Man”, and also because they are so very, very indoctrinated: they believe in the US system because that is what has been forced down their throat since birth; what has been reinforced by a global media dominated by the US, which never broadcasts its sins, shames and failures; and what has been reinforced by a post 9/11 jingoism unseen since WWII.
The youth class has to overcome all of those obstacles to see Trump’s “virtues”… and then they also have every right to dismiss Trump anyway because he has been such a letdown (mainly because he really has no coherent political ideology at all).
But, despite his failures, how hard is it for a 20-year old to realise that Trump is not at all “The Man”? Trump pulled out of NAFTA, still talks about leaving NATO, wanted detente with Putin-led Russia – these anti-free trade and anti-war stances are exactly why “The Man” has done everything to demolish Trump and to smother support for such “anti-The Man” stances. Trump may be the US president, but bringing these totally unprecedented anti-mainstream political stances into the US mainstream make him not really “The Man”, and I’m sure the older US class will agree with me.
And yet many young people, who are just a few years from the correct test answer being “the Protestant work ethic”, “Manifest Destiny”, “to end the war with Japan”, etc., foolishly believe that the Western liberal democratic system is good, just, egalitarian and functioning at a high level. They fear that Trump is threatening all this shining goodness whereas half the country voted Trump expressly to stick it to “The Man” for His failures, lies and unpatriotic betrayals.
Compare the US youth class with their French peers: in 2017 20% of the country voted for a candidate (Jean-Luc Melenchon) whose campaign rested upon abolishing the 5th Republic – a good chunk of France clearly realises that Western liberal democracy (whose socio-intellectual-economic progress remains permanently frozen in 1916) is totally outdated and rigged in favour of the aristocratic/privileged class. If just 1.72% more of French voters had not been so indoctrinated against the idea of a new, modern 6th Republic then Melenchon would have faced Emmanuel Macron in the 2nd round instead of Marine Le Pen and France might not be the cynical, resentful, Yellow Vest mess it is today.
So France may have fallen short, but do 20% of US voters un-believe enough in the 18th-century US system to vote for a 2nd US Republic? Not hardly…. such a program would likely lead to jail for its proponents, certainly government surveillance and intimidation, and widespread social ostracisation. “The Man” is still stronger than omnipresent, if not ever-more omnipotent, in the US, and this certainly pre-dates Trump.
Of course, to the US MSM all the problems in the US today are attributable to Trump – a naive US youth class often swallows that stinking tripe whole.
“The Man” has turned the threat into the scapegoat. You have to admit: He is good at what he does….
Biden is ‘Da Man” to save us all from ‘The Man’ (i.e. Trump)?
At some point in the 1980s being called “The Man” become “(you) Da Man”, and being “Da Man” meant you were exceptional and superlative.
But how on earth can “Corporate” Joe Biden ever be “Da Man”? At best he is – essentially by his own admission – a placeholder, and at worst he is a senile train wreck which will force the Democratic Party to once again snatch defeat from the jaws of certain victory.
Corporate Joe Biden is without a doubt “The Man” infinitely more than Trump is. Trump is a lowlife slum lord with cubic zirconia plating and a trophy wife, whereas Biden has the scope and reach to gut the resources of Third World nations populated by scores of millions of people just to give his son a phony job.
A vote for Biden is a vote for the establishment, and that is so obvious that anyone who disagrees can only disagree by changing the subject away from the problems caused by “the establishment” and towards the problem of Trump the individual.
Here’s a rare barometer: one of the Secret Service agents who took a bullet for Ronald Reagan in 1981 just retired, and it got me wondering – who on earth would take a bullet to save Joe Biden? Absolutely nobody outside of the Secret Service – any common citizen would hesitate, due to Biden’s “The Man”-ness, and that’s all the time a bullet needs. Contrarily, some Americans would – I imagine – actually take a bullet for Trump, strange as that may seem to many. I know a ton of people will take a bullet for Khamenei, Ahmadinejad and Rouhani, and we can’t just chalk that up to religion – China’s Xi and Cuba’s Diaz-Canel are two guys who worked their way up the civil service ranks via their ability and character, gaining more and more faithful comrades along the way, and for sure the only people who think they are in league with “The Man” live in Hong Kong or Miami. The 25-year China-Iran partnership is not new, but it finally got taken seriously last week – may I please suggest reading my books on China and Iran to discover the basis of this match, and for discussion of the 25-year plan?
And yet the youth class bats their big eyes at Biden, pleads about the need to get out the vote, and dutifully repeats that Biden is the second Messiah to save us all from the anti-Christ… no way that they actually believe it, but they say it. In my opinion the majority of the US youth class views the establishment as a problem only in how they throw up road blocks against Blacks, non-heterosexuals and other minorities even though “The Man” is not all White. Didn’t Obama prove that emphatically? (With that crowd it’s, “To hell with poor Whites”, I guess. “How dare they be just White in 2020?!” A very progressive and egalitarian crowd, indeed….)
Bernie Sanders is, despite everyone’s wishes to the contrary, also “The Man” because he repeatedly does whatever the Democratic Party establishment wants no matter how bad it is for the average person. Bernie is no socialist – it can’t be said enough because he keeps lying about it – but what a very, very different July 2020 it would be if the US had him to look forward to in November instead of Biden? “The Man” won yet again there….
Undoubtedly Hillary Clinton was more “The Man” than either Biden or Obama, proving that “The Man” is not based around either race or gender but, again, class. (What do you want: “The Person”? That sounds totally unhip and would never catch on as slang – “The Person” would be totally ineffective class warfare propaganda.) Politics without “class” – “The Man” certainly did pull a fast one in the West there… thank God the whole world is not “the West”, even though many Westerners assume that it is.
The obfuscation of the class struggle makes “The Man” today a KKK member even though it’s not 1916 anymore, even though the KKK is powerless, and even though the KKK is not the group which has caused the government/bankocracy to abandon Black neighborhoods via disinvestment. It’s absurd beyond belief, outdated, economically-neutered, not even close to the biggest problem facing all citizens in July 2020, and also on the brink of failure: it depends on if Biden’s dementia hasn’t grown during the Great Lockdown’s isolation, as it has for so many US seniors, sadly. To get that answer we’ll have to wait until the debates – it’s a pretty bad system when the assumed future president can be hidden away for so long….
The failure to properly locate “The Man” isn’t confined to the youth class of the US, of course – but they are the only age group which has a decent excuse (inexperience and poor guides) for such a mistake. I’m humbly hoping to show them an alternative logic before they turn into the Trump Derangement Syndrome sufferers of the older age groups. Those people are long gone, sadly – many of them are “The Man” and they don’t even know it.
Pull the sheet off Biden and you’ll find an establishment creation down to the whiteness of his human bones. He’s “The Man” all right – will America’s youth get hip by November?
Of course, given Trump’s failure to deliver – where is hip?
*********************************
Corona contrarianism? How about some corona common sense? Here is my list of articles published regarding the corona crisis.
Capitalist-imperialist West stays home over corona – they grew a conscience? – March 22, 2020
Corona meds in every pot & a People’s QE: the Trumpian populism they hoped for? – March 23, 2020
A day’s diary from a US CEO during the Corona crisis (satire) March 23, 2020
– March 25, 2020
Tough times need vanguard parties – are ‘social media users’ the West’s? –
March 26, 2020
If Germany rejects Corona bonds they must quit the Eurozone – March 30,
2020
Landlord class: Waive or donate rent-profits now or fear the Cultural Revolution – March 31, 2020
Corona repeating 9/11 & Y2K hysterias? Both saw huge economic overreactions – April 1, 2020
(A Soviet?) Superman: Red Son – the new socialist film to watch on lockdown – April 2, 2020
Corona rewrites capitalist bust-chronology & proves: It’s the nation-state, stupid – April 3, 2020
Condensing the data leaves no doubt: Fear corona-economy more than the virus – April 5, 2020
‘We’re Going Wrong’: The West’s middling, middle-class corona response – April 10, 2020
Why does the UK have an ‘army’ of volunteers but the US has a shortage? – April 12, 2020
No buybacks allowed or dared? Then wave goodbye to Western stock market gains – April 13, 2020
Pity post-corona Millennials… if they don’t openly push socialism – April 14, 2020
No, the dollar will only strengthen post-corona, as usual: it’s a crisis, after all – April 16, 2020
Same 2008 QE playbook, but the Eurozone will kick off Western chaos not the US – April 18, 2020
We’re giving up our civil liberties. Fine, but to which type of state? – April 20,
2020
Coronavirus – Macron’s savior. A ‘united Europe’ – France’s murderer – April 22, 2020
The same 12-year itch: Will banks loan down QE money this time? – April 26,
2020
The end of globalisation won’t be televised, despite the hopes of the Western 99% (2/2) – April 27, 2020
What would it take for proponents to say: ‘The Great Lockdown was wrong’? – April 28, 2020
ZeroHedge, a response to Mr. Littlejohn & the future of dollar dominance – April 30, 2020
Given Western history, is it the ‘Great Segregation’ and not the ‘Great Lockdown’? – May 2, 2020
The Western 1% colluded to start WWI – is the Great Lockdown also a conspiracy? – May 4, 2020
May 17: The date the Great Lockdown must end or Everything Bubble 2 pops – May 6, 2020
Reading Piketty: Does corona delay the Greens’ fake-leftist, sure-to-fail victory? – May 8, 2020
Picturing the media campaign needed to get the US back to work – May 11, 2020
Scarce jobs + revenue desperation = sure Western stagflation post-corona – May 13, 2020
France’s nurses march – are they now deplorable Michiganders to fake-leftists? – May 15, 2020
Why haven’t we called it ‘QE 5’ yet? And why we must call it ‘QE 2.1’ instead – May 16, 2020
‘Take your stinking paws off me, you damned, dirty public servant!’ That’s Orwell? – May 17, 2021
The Great Lockdown: The political apex of US single Moms & Western matriarchy? May 21, 2021
I was wrong on corona – by not pushing for a US Cultural Revolution immediately – May 25, 2021
August 1: when the unemployment runs out and a new era of US labor battles begin – May 28, 2021
Corona proving the loser of the Cold War was both the USSR & the USA – May 30, 2021
Rebellions across the US: Why worry? Just ask Dr. Fauci to tell us what to do – June 2, 2021
Protesting, corona-conscience, a good dole: the US is doing things it can’t & it’s chaos – June 3, 2021
Why do Westerners assume all African-Americans are leftists? – June 5, 2020
The US as Sal’s Pizzeria: When to ‘Do The Right Thing’ is looting – June 6, 2020
The problem with the various ‘Fiat is all the problem!’ (FIATP) crowds – June 9, 2020
Politicisation of Great Lockdown result of ‘TINA’ economic ignorance & censorship – June 14, 2020
Trump’s only hope: buying re-election with populist jobless benefits – June, 16 2020
US national media is useless – so tell me the good local news sources? – July 4, 2020
Hamilton movie: central banker worship & proof the US has no left – July 8, 2020
News flash: Capitalism has no answer for 50 million jobless people – July 11, 2020
Ramin Mazaheri is the chief correspondent in Paris for PressTV 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 NEW ‘Socialism’s Ignored Success: Iranian Islamic Socialism’.
Very entertaining article. Unfortunately for Americans all ballot choices will lead to failure in this election. This country is run by mentally incompetent, retarded, corrupt, psychopathic, lunatics. There are just way too many of them, and they have way too much power. Even more unfortunate is the fact that the fake revolution is being led by individuals with the same charcteristics. A revolution based on easily disproven lies, circular logic, and tyranny is not a revolution. It is the same old thing, and it was by design to get ahead of a resurgent Occupy Wall Street movement. Even the protesters of the lockdown were pro Wall Street, or at least they were totally uncritical of it. From faked 9/11 attacks in which Muslims were the enemy, and the holocaust on Muslims with 23 million Muslim deaths, to the plandemic scamdemic that has killed more people in starvation than the coronavirus, and has increased poverty, indebtedness, and unemployement, where EVERYONE IS THE ENEMY. It has taken 19 years for the media to even begin to start acknowledging that the 9/11 plane attacks were faked, after the 2000 Dotcom crash. How long will it take for them to admit that this was just a psy-op and a fall guy. There is no way to deny that this coronavirus response is nothing more than a cover-up, a fall guy, a psy-op, and a method of silencing all dissent against Wall Street for their long, evil, sadistic, crime spree.
Hear, hear! Better question might be: how long will it take America’s youth class (at this point, they’re the only class remaining who has a hope in hell of waking up) to wake up to the fact that these sham elections are nothing more than time-honored but increasingly threadbare divide and conquer devices? Anecdotal evidence gathered from the local populace, who seems to be quite enthusiastically adopting the increasingly stringent mask mandates, are not promising in the least. I have no doubt that “The Man” will have us all locked down in toto by this fall and that life as we previously knew it will never return again. All with the apparent quite willing support of a nation of compliant sheep being led merrily to the slaughter – all “for their own good,” of course.
At this point, I’d be willing to settle for “Da’ Lunatic,” if it was someone who genuinely spoke truth to power and got the fires of public inquiry reignited. Where’s our modern day Rasputin when we need one?
Mazaheri, as a foreign who doesn’t live in USA and has no real interaction with everyday Americans, you lack the essential knowledge just how incredibly dumb and indoctrinated the average American is. You may think you do but you really don’t. You will need to join some groups and chatroom such as Reddit and/or 4chan /pol and observe them for a while. You will be literally terrified out of your mind. I recommend 4chan /politics channel highly. I want to see how long you will be able to handle it without going berserk and become incoherent and just start screaming at your screen.
Another simple way to make the distinction between the modern American and the one from 50 years ago is to simply watch some 1970s show such as All in the Family and you’ll immediately notice the difference. Back then, the Americans KNEW who was the real enemy and talked about it; while today, they have been so well conditioned/brainwashed they think the biggest problem is the fathom “Libtards” who supposedly control everything. The fathom Antifa/BLM/LGB~whatever are their biggest issues; NOT the Fed who gives trillions to the banks. It’s horrifying.
I was on the bus about a week ago and started talking to another poor soul about everyday issues. We talked about the biggest problem in USA. When I mentioned the FED he totally ignored me and told me the biggest problem is how Oprah Winfrey is the one who controls a lot of America. No, he wasn’t crazy. He was just your average poor American idiot who has no clue.
As for the circus of trump vs Biden, that’s just for the American idiots and the other sheeple abroad cheap entertainment. Nobody with 2 working brain cells even think that’s worth watching or spending time on. I mean Reagan, a two bit actor became president in 1080s. USA is a total circus show, cleverly designed to catch our attention while the real show is going off stage. It’s not even worth talking about and discussing.
That’s true of all the pundits who’re far ahead of most of us concerning international, but who’re lost trying to figure out American’s social mentality. The result of 50 years of media propaganda has to be experienced to be believed. When you try to discuss any of the topics in question rationally, their eyes sort of glaze over as they search for sound bytes the media’s given them to explain the hard stuff to them. It’s the result of almost a century of social manipulation.
”No, he wasn’t crazy. He was just your average poor American idiot who has no clue.”
At least he didn’t blame Vladimir Putin — that’s a start 😀
Well, my understanding and use of “the man” usually applies to sports figures or individuals who were particularly proficient in the sports or areas of expertize. I have never heard the term pertain to “describe any class of people who wield power and are seen as oppressive. See also whitey, big brother, corporate America, the establishment”, and I grew up in the 60s and 70s, albeit in Canada.
People like Stan “the man” Musial in baseball or Stan “the man” Mikita in ice hockey are examples, particularly since “stan and “man” rhymed. Also, anyone who performed a particularly effective feat could also be referred to as the man – the one who solved the problem, resolved the issue.
This might have applied to Trump if he had actually performed some extraordinary feat, but, frankly, he hasn’t accomplshed anything significant in his term of office. You cannot be “the man” or even “da man” until you have done so. It is for past accomplishments, not future expectations.
Anyway, just nitpicking.
Oh, Stanley Fischer, doing God’s work at the Federal Reserve by his own account, who moved to Israel with his family before things got ugly here in America.
Blue, look back at Ramin’s second and third paragraphs. The term “The Man” goes back at least to the 1940s and might best be illustrated by the person of J. Edgar Hoover; someone in charge of an all powerful police force and who wiretaps and keep records on anyone he deems to be a danger to civil society or subversive.
A gender neutral hip expression would be “the Boss”.
The Boss, or Al-Rais in Arabic. This was Nasser’s nickname in the ’50s and ’60s.
Antoinetta III
How is Mazaheri spelled—is it مظاهري ? Just curious.
US Americans are too brainwashed, ignorant or stupid to correct anything or do anything against their elite.
Not even a civil war can correct, humble or snap any sense into these Americans.
America needs their own version of Hiroshima/Nagasaki or the defeat of Nazi Germany.
This is what Ramin is talking about. For What It’s Worth by Buffalo Springfield.
Paranoia strikes deep
Into your life it will creep
It starts when you’re always afraid
Step out of line, the man come and take you away
Step out of line, the man come and take you away.
We’re sort of in a rerun of the 60’s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u8gjo5r6yuA
Trump has not failed to deliver, he just has not delivered what you would order. He has effectively destroyed the WTO, he is pulling funds from the UN. He has cut of the Palestinian grave train.He has kicked the smug europeans right where they deserve it. The more you hate him, the more we love him. Your hatred of him only invigorates us. I am greatly looking forward to your next article about your three aforementioned heros. Can you explain why Iran has started to be honest about the corona. When we see honest from your heros, we know they are nervous. You think maybe Trump had something to do with all those unexplained fires in iran. If so, we would consider that another success. After all, this is a fight to the death. The only question is who is going to end up dead.
“Who’s going to end up dead” why the people of course don’t they always?..Now Reagan started the out sourcing of American jobs and its still going on,Trump has failed in every promise he ever made to a dumb down people,gave the 1% an early Christmas gift with his huge tax cut for them, $6.1 trillion to protect the wealth of the 1% meanwhile you play the game that your supposed to play, that’s to demonize all of those that Trump deems as enemies of Israel,which in my mind makes you an enemy of America as you sit and watch the destruction of the country from the inside out, being warned long ago that the enemies were already inside the gates,and the ones you vote for are their front men and Trump really is “the man”>!!!
Please explain.
Once again, Ramin, you fail to grasp that “The Man” has turned the electoral process in the USA into Kabuki Theater and he is in the process of consolidating his power via a total reset of the world’s economy under the cover of the bio-weapon, COVID-19. It was meant to attack the USA just as much as it did China and Iran. It was aimed squarely at the US working class and is in the process of “culling the herd” of the elderly, the unemployable, and especially people of color. They are dying in record numbers. It’s kinda like what The Man did in the 19th Century giving small-pox infested blankets to Native Americans.
Trump is the only man who can stop this process, desperate as he is to win in November or face the courts in the Southern District of NY for his crimes. As he sees his chances of reelection slip away he will follow Pompeo’s lead and start a war with Iran. This would help his buddy Netanyahu stay out of prison as well. It might come as the result of some false-flag attack similar to 9/11 that the Iranians would be blamed for, whatever.
It will be the end of the USA as we know it. It will be the end of the US dollar as the world’s reserve currency. If Americans are lucky we might be able to go back to being a normal unexceptional country that works for a living, pays its bills, and takes care of its people with a decent social safety net. The Man will have skedaddled off to who knows where long ago and we can get on with the process of nation-building just like the Russians did in the 1990s.
to Tommy Apeiron:
to you last sentence in your last para: ….”and we can get on with the process of nation-building just like the Russians did in the 1990s.”
Does USA have experience in it ? Russia has had it during the 20th century.
USA didn’t have any direct wars on its soil the last century ! Or at least a real civil war/revolution where millions moved not only a few thousand. US people are extremely silent like sheep.
You are so right. Here’s a joke that explains America’s inexperience with “starting over.”
An American and a Russian go into a bar. The American is going on about how he has lost all his money in the Stock Market, his house, and even his wife. It seemed to him that it was the end of the world. The Russian replied, “You poor man, is this your first time?”
No amount of theorizing or postulating will change anything. America is well beyond redemption now, its population totally brainwashed and inveigled beyond rational thought. America will crash under its own weight of endless wars and genocide. Its illegal sanctions and trade wars, coupled with its incredulous belief in exceptionalism and devine right to worldwide rape, pillage and plunder will cause an implosion of unbelievable magnitude. It will re-emerge as a third world country, torn apart by the very horrors it inflicted on others for a quarter of a millenia and it’ll be a long road to anything approaching normality.
You wish, right along with the Globalist Luciferian “Elite” of a Garbage Can, Séamus.
Not very “Christian” of them ….or YOU….now is it???
Funny (odd, not haha) to see victims fully duped and aligning themselves with the victimizers instead of victimized Americans who are probably waking up at a faster rate than other victims anywhere else! Interms of fixing this mess they allowed fester far too long.
For, as badly as they have behaved for many decades……they share ONE thing with Russians who also have a national identity that their nation….USA or Russia …and themselves as individual citizens of that nation COULD affect the whole world for the worse….or the Better!
This sense of potency exists within rare extra-creative members of smaller nations who are Universal Thinkers…..but among average citizens, much, much more rare than among an American or Russian who is in good moral and psychological shape.
My favorite use of “The Man”???
Right Here: https://youtu.be/5hid10EgMXE Proud Mary
Left a good job in the city
Workin’ for The MAN ev’ry night and day
And I never lost one minute of sleepin’
Worryin’ ’bout the way things might have been
Big wheel keep on turnin’
Rollin’, rollin’, rollin’ on the river
Cleaned a lot of plates in Memphis
Pumped a lot of pain down in New Orleans
But I never saw the good side of the city
‘Til I hitched a ride on a river boat queen…………..
Big wheel keep on turnin’
Proud Mary keep on burnin’
Rollin’, rollin’, rollin’ on the river
Rollin’, rollin’, rollin’ on the river
NOW HERE COMES some Cajun “Socialism”:
If you come down to the river
Bet you gonna find some people who live
You don’t have to worry ’cause you have [if you got] no money
People on the river are happy to give
Big wheel keep on turnin’
Proud Mary keep on burnin’
Modernity is a catastrophe, this was proven a while ago by Kaczynski and Evola… The industrial materialists will get to witness the tragic mistake of a world order they built continually falling apart and reeking more and more as the pollution piles up, and there will be no more pristine nature left to run away to or rape for resources. Whether The Man or the millenials are in charge, it will be a catastrophe because no strong army is going to put lucid people in charge, and no modern proletariat is going to listen to lucid people. The atheist-materialists will triumph in the most illusory manner until they die and realize YOLO was a scam, as the good propagandists have been saying for thousands of years…
The common American man or woman has found her way out of this mess. Lot of pills, powder and puff. Work is hand to hand combat, life is full of bills to pay and everything else is a drag.
Today they are quiet because of the $650/week sedative that helps them self medicate and chill. The 1% has already taken its share of the pie with the $6T printing and before that via stock buy backs and repatriation of money.
When the music stops, at it always does, the common is going to be more hurt than 2008 and will regress even more in every aspect of life. But then, the democrats will come to their rescue just with lip service while they fatten themselves and their cohort 1% bandits.
The future may be a lot grimmer than that. There is evidence that wearhouses are drawing down their inventory and that same said inventory is not being replaced, buying fire pits now to be used one month a year b/c if one does not get it now, it wont be around when one needs it. These are people who have made a living by ordering things and knowing how many are in stock, they are seeing the stock dwindle, and not being replaced.
If this is true to about any extent, eventually there will be a supply disruption and once it can no longer be hidden ,suddenly, the wagon drives off the cliff and the economy starts grinding to a halt, sort of like oil cliff our companys just jumped off of. Probably appliances are first hit, have you tried to buy a new freezer the past four or five months? They are not even available to store owners and no reason is given as to what happened to the supply chain with this product.
You can financially fatten yourself and your cohorts up, but if you cant risk shopping or have no product to buy, you are as desperate as the homeless on the street looking for help..
I can explain the freezers. The supply disruptions were real. A lot of meat missing from the markets for many weeks. Those that still had a means to get a lot of meat like a whole pig, half a steer, did so and added another freezer. I will say that it forced me to look at local wholesalers and ranchers. They are friendly and will give a reasonably good deal. Craigslist is your friend, even if it means taking a long drive to get 6 mos of meat.
Another thought on this whole crisis– you’d have to admit it’s an evil genius plan. No other way you could end up with 40% unemployment, loss of local businesses, loss of choice of products, killing off non-corporate restauranting, consolidating Amazon as the near entire source of your goods. And having people be “thankful it’s not worse” and willing to have it continue on for the rest of the year at minimum. Now, some of that runaway consumerism should die, but it just got drive-by’ed good and fast. Will it mean the return of jobs from overseas? Maybe. Or it’ll be a new industry of those who can build the robots to do menial tasks. Of course, that will eventually get messy too (remember that Saudi Arabia granted citizenship to a robot named Sophia). Interesting times indeed.
Costco has plenty. Buy one, they’ll drag it to your door tomorrow. Prolly same with Best Buy etc…
Q: How many years, or decades, does it take to unlearn national propaganda?
A: Depends, inter alia, on what nation we’re dealing with. Case in point: Poland. The Poles’ national delusions about being the West’s indispensable avant-garde have really withstood the test of time. They never learn and have zero interest in learning. The Polish case could be said to be generally applicable to any nationalism which venerates stupidity, pride, and ugliness.
Then we have the US and the Zionist Entity. To point out that there is a certain air of stupidity, pride, and ugliness pertaining to Exceptional and Indispensable folks is taking understatement to the point of caricature. They are, at bottom, anti-Life and, therefore, not too much time should be wasted on their ”emotions”. Once defeated, they can be tasked with back-breaking work such as demining, road construction, and plantation labour — at gunpoint, if need be.
Germany learned the hard way to dispense with its sense of superiority when the allegedly racially inferior Red Army defeated the Nazi rabble pushing back the latter all the way from the Volga to Berlin proper. Today’s Germans have got very little in common with the Nazis of a bygone era.
Good post;
I live in the USA, I fear Biden is what we will get…and a return to neocolonialist*/neoliberal wars…before Trump so rudely interrupted “the Man’s” plans.
*prefer the term neocolonialist to neocon as it is both more descriptive and accurate.
ah Ramin , it’s impossible for you to understand. Not that you are thick or stupid , no , on the contrary : you are a very sensitive, cultured , learned person ! Take it from someone who left the usa more than 40 years ago : it’s hopeless. Many americans are fine people but they take everything for granted, have no political education and worst of all no interest or knowledge of other cultures. It’s sad , but that’s the way it is.
Exactly. As they love to say themselves: “America — love it or leave it”. They will never leave, not even as the US crumbles. Imagine the psychosis when the living standards plummet everywhere.
Problem is that it happens so slowly that it all seems so natural, people adapt, they stay busy, and miss the beauty of the forest as they walk thru the falling trees.
Having been around for a while, I can testify, living standards have plummeted everywhere in the “Anglo” world.
I do not have personnal experience in western Europe, but from news and literature, it seems to be the case there, also. Eastern Europeans still remember the war.
“How many years, or decades, does it take to unlearn national propaganda?”
Some propaganda last a few days, some last a few millennium.
Ancient Egypt did quite well and it lasted a few thousand years. Then came the Greeks, Romans, Chinese, Persians, Arabs etc.
We are currently running on the East India Company model which is due to expire soon. What will replace it? is the big question.
‘Pull the sheet off Biden and you’ll find an establishment creation down to the whiteness of his human bones. He’s “The Man” all right – will America’s youth get hip by November?’
There is nothing like Shakespeare to get the blood boiling. Trump is not Caesar but if he were and with the present cast of politicians and influence peddlers what might happen? Augustus did rescue Rome for a while but the parallels of empiire are somewhat alarming. Et tu Brute?
Short video of the results …
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ght0P-tWwaI&t=6s
Updated and changed the link … https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6oRUEOsEfGE&feature=youtu.be
Trump is a Capitalist, he is by definition just another part of “The Man”. It was naive to think he could be anything else, naive to think he would do anything else.
True. However, it is a credit to the US propaganda apparatus, and a measure of people’s desperation, that they still think, ‘if only we can get a good president’.
”if only we can get a good president”
If Pindos and Euro-trash really wanted to unnerve their superiors, they could at least vote for Vladimir Putin (or his party) in their own national elections. But, no, forget about it: Scratch a Western ’individualist’ and marvel at the little invertebrate that peeps out beneath’.
” However, it is a credit to the US propaganda apparatus, and a measure of people’s desperation, that they still think, ‘if only we can get a good president’.
Evaluation is always a function of purpose and not everyone has the same purpose, and contingently not the same evaluation.
Some do perceive “it is a credit to the US propaganda apparatus..”
Some others do perceive “it is a credit to the US propaganda appartus that they likely perceive such as a credit/comfort, whilst likely failing to perceive that such “comfort” facilitates vectors of transcendence for others to engage the complicity of the US propaganda apparatus in rendering such “discomforts”, whilst some upon whom the US propaganda apparatus seek to rely are engaged in waiting for Godot with increasing “discomfort”.
As Mr. Donne asserted “no man is an island” but some still hope that this is not the case.
“How many years, or decades, does it take to unlearn national propaganda? ”
The salient question is how to “unlearn” which determines the outcomes of the contingent/subsidiary question “how many years, or decades………”
Consequently if someone offers an answer to how to, you are likely being played, including if the answer is a derivative of the Papa Czar gambit of “If only the czar (people) knew then they would have unlearned (a tautology) sometimes known as dances/trances around a fixed point.
This is facilitated by some believing that their significance is sufficient for them to “deserve”, “have the facility”, and/or “have the right to receive” an answer, allowing dispensers of “answers” to re-enforce/increase “how many years, or decades”.