QUOTE OF THE DAY, SUGGESTED READINGS, AND MORE!

First up, we have this very interesting, in-depth exploration in the New York Times that sheds some light into how Youtube accidentally (?) became the world's most effective vector for Far Right propaganda, thus radicalizing a generation of young men and boys into reactionary politics. Remember, if you've already reached your quota of free NYTimes articles for the month, just open this article in an "incognito" window.

***

Next up, but definitely related, comes this series of VICE interviews with people who have literally lost family members to the deranged, Trump-centric, post-Pizzagate, conspiranoid hurricane of weaponized nonsense known as "Qanon". It begins:

One of the most disheartening signs of our advancing hellworld are the thousands of people who wholeheartedly believe in the deranged conspiracy known as QAnon. 

It's near impossible to summarize the entire QAnon conspiracy theory, as it’s fluid and ever-changing. The nuts and bolts are that a secret government insider, the titular Q, has taken to the internet forum 8chan of all places to drop clues (known in the community as Q Drops breadcrumbs) about how U.S. President Donald Trump is taking down the deep state. The conspiracy takes some twists and turns into the occult, an ever-present cabal of pedophiles, possible executions, and the idea JFK Jr. may have faked his own death and is cosplaying as an old guy who goes to Trump rallies. 

While the QAnon conspiracy often feels like an elaborate troll, an online community of real, actual people has built up around it. There’s been a lot written about how lonely these people are, how they will cut themselves off from their family ... and poking fun at the whole thing. Rick Ross, a cult deprogrammer and executive director of the nonprofit Cult Education Institute, says the community bears a lot of the hallmarks of a cult: the main character is infallible and everything is part of a greater plan. ...

No one knows how hard it is to break through a bubble one creates around themselves than loved ones. While maybe it’s funny for those outside peering in, what is it like for those who are close to them, the people who experience their loved one's brain being rotted by YouTubers breaking down 8chan posts in real time? 

I decided to seek them out. I found a woman whose husband became so obsessed with YouTube conspiracy videos he would follow her around the house and force her to watch them, someone who avoids their mother because of Q, and someone who was dumped by the man she loved because she actively attempted to debunk QAnon. Here are their stories.

Some of these stories are ridiculous, while some are truly heartbreaking. All of them are disturbing, in that they provide yet more evidence to the increasingly voluminous pile that shows how we are, most likely, up against something that goes far beyond the mere human propensity for occasionally believing stupid things. 

I think it's patently obvious by now that what we are witnessing is an engineered phenomenon, wherein a new generation of propagandists have at their disposal bleeding edge communications tools and predictive psychometric technologies that have allowed them to create "psychiatric software" bordering on literal mind control. 

This is one of the core elements of my "New Fascist International(e)" theory, which I hope to explain more fully in an ebook that I've been working on for the past two and a half years. So keep your eyes peeled.

***

In an important op-ed piece for the Washington Post, Paul Waldman describes the lengths to which a newly empowered Far Right are going in order to prevent those who have yet to be brainwashed into their cult from voting at all, thus maintaining their illegitimate grip on power until the day finally comes when they can do away with the charade of democratic elections altogether, and simply exert their God-ordained right to rule over their lessers entirely unimpeded.

Unfortunately, WaPo is behind a paywall nowadays, so if you find yourself locked out, here is a distillation of Waldman's most important points and revelations:

As we turn our attention toward the 2020 elections, Republican lawmakers across the country are asking: How can we keep people from voting? In Tennessee, which already has lower-than-average rates of turnout, the legislature is on the case: 

"Tennessee could penalize some paid voter registration groups with fines for too many faulty signups and criminal charges for violating new requirements under a proposal passed by the House on Monday. The vote bucked some voting rights groups, who have voiced fear that the bill would create a chilling effect on Tennessee’s already-poor voter participation marks. Republican Secretary of State Tre Hargett has made the legislation a top priority, deeming it important for election security after Shelby County, which includes Memphis, saw a flood of often-faulty registrations that came in on last year’s deadline. But Tennessee Black Voter Project, which led the voter signup charge in Memphis and elsewhere across the state, has said the bill immediately followed the group’s efforts to register 86,000 black voters."

Under this law, organizations that mount voter registration drives will have to be trained by the state, and then they can be fined and face jail time if they have lots of registrations with mistakes. 

Just to provide a bit of context, every group that does registrations gets some faulty ones. When you sit at a table outside a supermarket registering people to vote, there are always jokesters who will fill out the form in the name of Mickey Mouse or Clark Kent, but the group doing the registering is legally required to submit the forms, even if they’re sure they’re false.

The problem here is obviously not that erroneous registrations create some kind of unmanageable burden on state officials, because they've always existed and always will.
It’s that too many black people registered to vote in Tennessee, and something had to be done about it. 

So in addition to using all the other tools in their voter-suppression drawer, Republicans in Tennessee decided to clamp down on registration, knowing full well that liberal groups are much more likely to mount registration drives than conservative groups.

This isn’t the first time something like this has been tried. Before the 2012 election, Republicans in Florida passed a registration law so restrictive that it led nonpartisan groups such as the League of Women Voters and Rock the Vote to suspend their voter registration drives in the state.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), who often makes plain what other Republicans prefer to conceal amid a fog of misdirection, used to say that “low voter turnout is a sign of a content democracy.” More recently he has described Democratic efforts to make voting easier, with measures like making Election Day a national holiday, as a “power grab.” In other words, he makes no bones about the fact that if we made it easier to vote, too many people would vote for Democrats.

Every Republican understands that; McConnell is just one of the few willing to say it out loud. But the truth is that suppressing votes is absolutely critical to Republican success. They know full well that their ability to compete and win in the American political process is dependent on the countermajoritarian features of our system — the filibuster, the fact that the Senate gives the same representation to the fewer than 600,000 residents of Wyoming as the nearly 40 million in California, the electoral college — nearly every one of which works to the advantage of the GOP.

And as the party grows more dependent on older, wealthier, white voters — who are more likely to be registered and more likely to turn out — Republicans know that the harder registering and voting is, the more likely they are to win. No prospect is more threatening to Republican success than high turnout.

Consider the last three midterm elections. Last year, turnout was 50 percent, and Democrats won huge victories, including taking back the House. In 2014, a “wave” election for Republicans, it was only 37 percent. In 2010, another Republican wave, it was 42 percent. Anything that gets more people to the polls will be good for Democrats and bad for Republicans. 

Which is why the GOP will do everything in its power to keep registration and turnout low — and why making it easier to vote is so important for Democrats. So in the coming days we’re almost certain to see a further separation between red and blue states.

It will look like this: Where Democrats are in charge, they’ll institute automatic voter registration, same-day registration, no-excuse absentee voting, extended early voting, and anything else that will maximize turnout and make voting easy. Where Republicans are in charge they’ll employ voter ID, restricted early voting, polling place closures, and anything else that will drive voting down, particularly among African Americans.

And if all that isn’t enough, Republicans will go after the people registering voters, too.

Get the picture yet, folks? It isn't four relatively progressive Congresswomen representing their communities and their constituencies who pose a threat to America and the American WayTM... it's the entire radicalized Far Right reactionary pseudo-religious cult into which the Republican Party has transformed over the past few decades that is the TRUE "enemy of the people".

***

But don't take my word for it! Here's a former intelligence agent who was part of the team who drafted National Intelligence Estimates for a previous White House (Paul Nailer is a pseudonym) to tell you why "The Biggest Threat to Our Country Today is the Republican Party". He begins, in part:

In case you’re not familiar with the finer points of threat assessment within the national security apparatus, the NIE is the big enchilada: the document seen by presidents and members of congress; an objective, non-political, comprehensive piece of work that categorises and prioritises the threats faced by the United States. 

While I no longer have regular access to the complete set of intelligence reports from which the NIE is drawn, I have access to some, and I am an avid reader of the related publicly available information. I’ve developed my own amateur NIE based on this information, and here’s the organisation at the top of the list: 

The Republican Party. 

Shocking as that may seem – and your level of shock may vary widely depending on how closely you’ve been tracking the actions both center stage and behind the scenes of the rapidly toxifying Grand Ole Party – the real problem with this revelation is that we cannot actually do much about this threat in the classic manner. 

The threat from the right is the first national-level “insider threat” the United States has faced since the Civil War. It is insidious, asymmetric, powerful – and existential. ... Let me say it again: the Republican Party is the biggest threat the United States is facing. And without proper attribution, recognition, and a well-articulated and implemented counter-strategy, it could be terminal. There is no other reasonable conclusion to be drawn from the facts. 

An enemy of the United States might seek to sow discord between ethnic groups, or to wage a disinformation campaign, or to highlight moral inconsistencies that weaken the standing of the United States on the world stage. An enemy of the United States might try and degrade the capacity and public trust within our intelligence apparatus. It might use propaganda and weaponised information. It might seek to engage in fraud or other criminal acts to sway an election in their favour. Does any of that sound familiar? 

The Republican Party has steadily embraced authoritarianism, suspect electoral tactics, and racism more and more over the past few decades. That process has been turbocharged with Trump at the helm of the party. We’re now seeing an explicit embrace of white supremacy. Denial in the face of climate change. Deliberate sowing of discord within the FBI and the CIA. Weakening of the rule of law. Brazen criminality. Removing funding for elections oversight. Blatant human rights abuses at the border. 

The explicit nature of these acts is the point. The Republicans mean to bludgeon any and all resistance to their reshaping of the nation’s institutions to their will. And so far, they’ve gotten away with it.

I realize that I've quoted from the article quite extensively, and that you may feel like there's no real reason to go ahead and read the entire thing for yourself. But I suggest that you do, if only to more fully grasp the fact that "Donald Trump and his coterie of criminals have done more in two years to weaken the United States than the Soviet Union was able to achieve in decades."

***

QUOTE OF THE DAY!

“But how do we know for sure that the guy who was fined for refusing to rent to Black people and called for a ban on Muslims and called Mexicans rapists and called Puerto Ricans lazy and called for the execution of innocent Black teens is a racist? If only there were a clear sign!”

- Our old pal Jeff Tiedrich over at Twitter expresses his frustration 

over how difficult it is to figure out whether or not 

President Rotten Pumkin Face is a racist or not.

A COINCIDENTAL ENCOUNTER

Recently, yer old pal Jerky picked up his copy of fin-de-sciecle decadent author Joris-Karl Huysmans' late 19th century novel of Parisian Satanism, La-Bas, and was delighted to find, smack dab in the middle of an extended meditation on the evils of money, a word that has recently gained some notoriety on the international stage. You'll know it when you see it! - Jerky

The rules of money are precise and invariable. Money attracts money, money seeks to accumulate in the same places, money is naturally attracted to scoundrels and those who are entirely bereft of any talent. When, by an exception which proves the rule, money finds its way into the hands of a man who, though wealthy, is neither a miser nor has any murderous proclivities, it stands idle, incapable of creating a force for good, incapable of even making its way into charitable hands who would know how to employ it. One might almost say that it takes revenge for its misdirection, that it undergoes a voluntary paralysis whenever it enters into the possession of someone who is neither a born swindler nor a complete and utter dotard. 

When, by some extraordinary chance, it strays into the home of a poor man, money behaves even more inexplicably. It defiles immediately what was clean, transforms even the chastest pauper into a monster of unbridled lust and, acting simultaneously on the body and the soul, instils in its possessor a base egoism, not to mention an overweening pride, which insists that he spends every penny on himself alone; it makes even the humblest arrogant, and turns the generous person into a skinflint. In one second, it changes every habit, upsets ever idea, transforms the most deep-seated passions. 

Money is the greatest nutrient imaginable for sins of the worst kind, which in a sense it aids and abets. If one of the custodians of wealth so forgets himself as to bestow a boon or make a donation, it immediately gives rise to hatred in the breast of its recipient; by replacing avarice with ingratitude, the equilibrium is established again: a new sin is commissioned by every good deed which is committed. 

But the real height of monstrosity is attained when money, hiding the splendour of its name under the dark veil of the word, calls itself capital. At that moment its action is no longer limited to individual incitations to theft and murder, but extends across the entire human race. With a single word capital grants monopolies, erects banks, corners markets, changes people’s lives, is capable of causing millions to starve to death. 

And all the while that it does this, money is feeding on itself, growing fat and breeding in a bank vault; and the Two Worlds worship it on bended knee, melting with desire before it, as before a God.

Excerpt from La-Bas, by J.-K. Huysmans 

(translated into English as The Damned), 

Chapter 1, pp. 12/13

SUGGESTED READING LIST ~ NOV 27, 2017

This montage is exactly as honest and fair as most of Peterson's polemic!

In this article for Maclean's Magazine (it's kind of like Canada's version of TIME), Tabatha Southey asks the rhetorical question "Is Jordan Peterson the Stupid Man's Smart Person?" before offering up ample evidence to back up her conclusion that the answer to that question is a fervent FUCK YES. It begins:

University of Toronto psychology professor Jordan Peterson was in the news this week—and one imagines this makes the university sad. Peterson first made the news and became a belle of the alt-right when, in September 2016, he announced that he would not use a student’s preferred pronoun if he were asked to, except that he might if he felt the request was “genuine,” and no one had asked him that anyway. 

What that poor man has been through. 

Needless to say, in an economy as desperately short of leadership and ideas as the alt-right’s is, Peterson’s stock went through the roof. He currently has legions of fans hanging on his every YouTubed word; he’s now hauling in around USD $50,000 a month through crowdfunding. ...

“Postmodern neo-Marxism” is Peterson’s nemesis, and the best way to explain what postmodern neo-Marxism is, is to explain what it is not—that is, it is entirely distinct from the concept of “cultural Marxism.” 

“Cultural Marxism” is a conspiracy theory holding that an international cabal of Marxist academics, realizing that traditional Marxism is unlikely to triumph any time soon, is out to destroy Western civilization by undermining its cultural values. “Postmodern neo-Marxism,” on the other hand, is a conspiracy theory holding that an international cabal of Marxist academics, realizing that traditional Marxism is unlikely to triumph any time soon, is out to destroy Western civilization by undermining its cultural values with “cultural” taken out of the name so it doesn’t sound quite so similar to the literal Nazi conspiracy theory of “cultural Bolshevism.” 

To be clear, Jordan Peterson is not a neo-Nazi, but there’s a reason he’s as popular as he is on the alt-right.

What follows is a pretty methodical deconstruction of many of Peterson's most beloved tropes, and a convincing argument for why his plans to develop an AI that "warns" students and their parents of "postmodernist" or "Neo-Marxist" course content poses a far more insidious and direct threat to freedom of speech and thought on campus than him having to treat transgendered people with respect could ever be. The fact that the most substantial rebuttal Peterson's partisans have been able to mount against this article is that it was written by the widely despised ex-wife of the Kids in the Hall's Dave Foley is a pretty good indicator of the devastating accuracy of the article's portrayal of him and his rapidly congealing cult.

***

In a recent edition of the Strait Times, Crispin Startwell has published a bracing jeremiad titled "History, Totally Destroyed", about how the current complex of crises calls into question all previous modalities in the philosophy of history. This excerpt in particular caught my attention, and held it:

As all top intellectuals know, Hegel argued that history, in its essence, is the coming-to-self-consciousness of the Absolute; Marx said that it is the dialectical unfolding of the material conditions of production; Michel Foucault pointed out that it is a succession of "epistemes" (roughly, a body of common shared beliefs), each inscribing its own regime of power; Francis Fukuyama claimed it was over; and Jean Baudrillard said it never actually happened in the first place. 

Before these theories emerged, it was the Great Man view of history that dominated the field. "The history of the world is nothing but a biography of great men", wrote Thomas Carlyle. Or as Ralph Waldo Emerson had it: "It is natural to believe in great men. We call our children and our lands by their names. Their names are wrought into the verbs of language, their works and effigies are in our houses." On this view, the drivers of history are not races or classes or nations, but particular military geniuses, messiahs, kings, dictators, inventors, captains of industry, artists and saints. The Great Men swaggered onto the stage one after another, each capturing and conquering the Spirit of the Age. You will notice, of course, that the Great Man theory involved no women. This made perfect sense to the men writing the theory of history. 

But the true test of philosophies of history is history itself. I suggest that the Great Man Theory, though already battered by Marxism and feminism, isn't likely to survive the historical dialectic between Mr Trump and Mr Kim. These phenomena suggest the need for a completely fresh account of history itself, a new theory that is almost certainly my ticket to a long-anticipated MacArthur "genius" grant. Or it would be, if I could settle on a name for it. 

According to your mood, it might be termed the Jackass Theory of History, the Howling Mediocrity Account, the Colossal Bungler Hypothesis or the Blockhead Conjecture. US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson writes in to suggest the Moron Theory, but this is insensitive towards those with intellectual disabilities.

Read the whole thing. It's short, and worth it.

***

The title of this Seattle Times article pretty much says everything you need to know about the gravity of the historical moment we're currently going through: "A Washington County That Went For Trump is Shaken as Immigrant Neighbors Start Disappearing". This news article reads like a fucking horror story. No, scratch that... it IS a horror story. Or, more accurately, a collection of horror stories about how ICE is operating now in Trump's version of America. Here's just one of those stories:

Agents also targeted Gladys Diaz, in an unusual way. 

According to her longtime boyfriend, who works in the seafood industry and spoke on the condition of anonymity, Diaz posted an online ad for a piñata she had made. The man who answered it asked to meet in the parking lot of a bank rather than the address she offered. 

It seemed a little suspicious. 

“Don’t go, Gladys,” her boyfriend yelled as she drove away that June day with their young daughters. She either didn’t hear or didn’t listen. 

Shortly afterward, while he did yard work around their apartment complex, he saw ICE agents walking toward him with his family. They were handing over the kids and taking Diaz away. His 12-year-old was crying. 

“Why you don’t take us all?” he asked. 

They said Diaz had a prior deportation order. A decade ago, she was caught sneaking across the border, sent back and prohibited from re-entering the U.S. for years, according to her boyfriend. She tried again the very next day, and made it. 

Diaz and two daughters, both born in the U.S., are now back in Mexico. 

“I miss my family. I need my family,” said her boyfriend, who plans to join them but wants to work a little longer to save money.

“Three, four, five, six times a day,” he said he calls to hear their voices.

When even the Trump-voting, John Wayne-worshiping town sheriff thinks something has gone drastically wrong, then you know the situation has gotten FUBAR.

***

QUOTE OF THE DAY

“If conservatives become convinced that they cannot win democratically, they will not abandon conservatism. They will reject democracy.”

- You know things have well and truly gone sideways when yer old pal Jerky begins agreeing with former Dubya speechwriter David Frickin' Frum of all people. I'll be honest... it's been happening a lot lately, and it scares me. But hey, stopped clocks and all that jazz. By the way, if you're planning on buying his upcoming book, Trumpocracy, could you do it through this link please? I really need for people to start using my Amazon codes.

MINUTIA & INCONSEQUENTIA ~ AUG 28, 2017

Before we delve into all the links and stuff that make up the bulk of this "Minutia and Inconsequentia" edition of the DDD, I'd like to point out a few things, just to give any future readers a sense of what the situation is on the ground here in late August 2017.

On Friday, as hurricane Harvey, a category 4 storm, was bearing down on the Texas gulf coast, pushing an insane volume of water ahead of it--thanks in large part, according to experts, to the effects of climate change--President* Donald Trump took time out of what should have been an incredibly busy schedule to do three things.

BUH-BYE!

First, he--or, more likely, John Kelly--finally kicked that ridiculously under-qualified, potato-headed Nazi-loving fraud Sebastian Gorka out of the White House... and if you believe he left willingly, then I've got some Alex Jones brand powdered bone supplement that I can give you an excellent deal on. With Gorka's exit following hot on the heels of his fellow Breitbart co-conspirator Steve Bannon's ouster, that leaves only one man standing in the White House's Triumvirate of Alt Right Twats: Stephen Miller. Watch for that H.P. Lovecraft look-alike's departure in the coming days or, at most, weeks.

"HAHA! FOOLED YA!"

Second, he followed through on his earlier promise to ban transgender troops from serving in the American military by issuing a memo ordering the secretaries of defense and homeland security to lay the groundwork for the implementation of this policy by February 2018 at the latest.

Finally, with ZERO Department of Justice involvement, he issue a historically unprecedented Presidential pardon to the second most unambiguously evil lawman in postwar American history after Alabama's Bull Connor: the former, long-serving sheriff of Arizona's Maricopa county, Joe Arpaio.

It seems obvious at this point that Trump pardoning one of America's most prominent racist folk heroes a mere two weeks after the Far Right's deadly show of force in Charlottesville, Virginia was no coincidence, nor was it evidence of him being oblivious to the symbolism of it all. He knew full well how this pardon would play with the Trumpnik Redcaps. And, even more important to a revenge-obsessed hate-monger like Trump, he knew full well how much it would enrage and disturb his "enemies". Pardoning his fellow racist/Birther buddy Arpaio was a total win/win, with no downside.

It also didn't hurt that the two men have so much in common. For instance, they're both self-pitying narcissists who can't stop complaining about how hard done by they are.

Go ahead and see how long you can watch Trump's pool-boy Sean Hannity tongue-scrubbing Arpaio's butthole clean on FOX News before you have to run off somewhere to puke. If you make it to the part where the scrotum-faced toad whines, ever so ironically: “If they can go after me, they can go after ANYONE in this country!”, then give yourself a Gold Star.

Let's see, what else do Trump and Arpaio share? Oh yes! Their fondness for “watersports” and scat, as evidenced by Trump's notorious Russian “kompromat” pee tape, and Arpaio's online prison shitter porn cam. And then there's the fact that they both have zero respect for the norms, standards, and institutions of good governance, constitutional guarantees, and the law, as evidenced by both of them frequently trying to intimidate judges and attack investigators who dare to look into whatever shenanigans it is they're trying to get away with on any given day. 

Speaking of criminally negligent and/or dangerously insane law enforcement officers, Trump spent much of the weekend angrily tweeting his usual measure of nonsense and vitriol, this time threatening to terminate NAFTA, trying to bully Mexico into paying for his stupid wall, obsessing over the 2016 election... and hawking deranged Milwaukee county sheriff David Clarke's new book.

Meanwhile, this was happening:

***

As #HurricaneHarvey intensifies - remember to #PlanAhead.
☑️https://t.co/FMdmvohypy
☑️https://t.co/YL56ldeqoW
☑️https://t.co/t1s4AL3B47 pic.twitter.com/tpXmOK70ug

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 24, 2017

As long as we're still on the topic of Hurricane Harvey, it was while watching this disturbing and ridiculous Trump PSA about it that I came to a sudden realization about which world leader Trump most reminds me of. No, it isn't North Korea's boy king Kim Jong Un, as many have declared. To me, Trump acts like the former leader of Uganda: Idi Amin! There's a scene in a famous documentary about Amin, entitled Idi Amin Dada, where the former African dictator lectures a room full of doctors about how they should be doing their jobs. Absolutely full of himself, a clueless buffoon bloviating at length about a subject in which he has zero training or expertise... and yet he's being treated like the Buddha himself all the while. To me, Amin is a far better fit than Kim Jong Un.

And finally for today, here are a bunch of links to stories you may or may not find interesting.

• For a number of reasons, some of which are just as scuzzy and gross as you might have imagined, Canada's own version of Breitbart, The Rebel Media, is in the process of collapsing! Good riddance to bad rubbish is all that we here at the Daily Dirt Diaspora media family have to say about that.
• In case you were wondering about the image at the top of today's edition, that just happens to be an artist's recreation of a 540-million-year-old, anus-mouthed creature that is, quite possibly, mankind's most ancient shared ancestor! If this turns out to be confirmed, it sure will explain a lot about the past few decades, I'll tell you what.
• And last, but not least, this Atlantic essay by Julie Beck hopes to prove to you that the incredible amount of personal anxiety you're feeling over the state of the world these days is absolutely and categorically useless, in every sense of the word. So you'd might as well try to develop a sense of humor about it. 

***

QUOTE OF THE DAY

“I'd like to address myself to those people ... who waited for hours in 105-degree heat so that they could have the G-spot of their irrationality properly stroked for them. You're all suckers. You're dim and you're ignorant and you can't even feel yourself sliding toward something that will surprise even you with its fundamental ugliness, something that everybody who can see past the veil of their emotions can see as plain as a church by daylight, to borrow a phrase from that Willie Shakespeare fella. The problem, of course, is that you, in your pathetic desire to be loved by a guy who wouldn't have 15 seconds for you on the street, are dragging the rest of us toward that end, too.”

- The always eloquent Charles P. Pierce, in his Esquire essay “I Have No More Patience for Trump Supporters”, waxes poetic.

SUGGESTED READING LIST ~ AUG 25, 2017

Over at that left-wing bastion of socialist propaganda known as The Business Insider, a question is asked: “How Did George Soros Become the Favorite Boogeyman of the Right?” The answer, which might surprise you, begins thusly:

The day after Donald Trump became president of the United States, thousands of people in pink hats marched the streets. They were protesting Trump's stance on women's rights, among other issues. 

But some looked at the sea of pink and saw something else: the invisible hand of a man they believe is not just funding liberal protest movements but controlling the world's wealth and pushing a global order. 

It's not true, but the man these conspiracy theorists target is George Soros, the prominent billionaire hedge fund manager. 

The 86-year-old has become a Rorschach test. To the left, he's a rich guy openly supporting causes many liberals believe in. But to some on the far right, he's more sinister and nefarious, despite a lack of evidence. For two decades, some have seen Soros as a kind of puppet master secretly controlling the global economy and politics. 

At times Soros has wielded great power. In the early 1990s, he bet against the British pound, which broke England's monetary system overnight and earned him more than a billion dollars. Later in the decade, he took similar steps during Asian Financial Crisis. 

Many saw it as capitalizing off of catastrophes and the Malaysian prime minister even accused Soros of purposefully bringing down the value of his country's currency by more than 15%. 

From there, he's become a singular target of unfounded right-wing conspiracy theories, in part because he has so few peers on the left.

Read the whole thing to learn all the Five W's related to the man who--thanks to a heavy dose of tragically ironic psychological projection--has become the enemy of choice for the rogue Deep State faction that yer old pal Jerky has taken to calling the New Fascist International.

***

If you've been even marginally invested in current events over the past 12 months, then you've probably seen or heard the name "Magnitsky" in one context or another. Sergei Magnitsky is (I mean was) a Russian lawyer who, after helping to expose the epic levels of corruption in contemporary Russian society, was detained on trumped up charges, chained to a prison bed, then tortured and beaten to death. The Magnitsky Act--a law targeting Russian human rights abusers by freezing their American assets and banning them from entering the US--was passed by US Congress in 2012, and was named in his honor. But even if you knew all that, trust me, there's a whole lot more that you don't know yet. And that's where this excellent and thorough NPR report comes in. It begins:

William Browder knows Vladimir Putin's Russia all too well. 

Browder made a fortune in Russia, in the process uncovering, he says, incredible amounts of fraud and corruption. When he tried to report it to authorities, the government kicked him out of the country and, he alleges, tortured and killed the lawyer he was working with. 

In what one senator called one of the Senate Judiciary Committee's "most important" hearings, Browder, a wealthy businessman-turned-activist-turned Putin-adversary shed a chilling new light on a Russian system of government that operates ruthlessly in the shadows — as Browder described it for lawmakers: a "kleptocracy" sustained by corruption, blackmail, torture and murder with Putin at its center. 

"Effectively the moment that you enter into their world," Browder told senators investigating Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, "you become theirs."
Browder's story — how he ended up living in London, after almost a decade of vast success as a businessman in Moscow, is arguably a case study in how Putin's government works: a system of intermediary influential businessmen who aren't directly employed by the Russian government, but who benefit financially from Putin's regime. 

Browder founded and ran one of the largest investment firms in Russia, Hermitage Capital Management, from 1996-2005. When he and his lawyer Sergei Magnitsky discovered a massive corruption scheme, they went to the authorities. 

"And we waited for the good guys to get the bad guys," he told the Senate Judiciary Committee. "It turned out that in Putin's Russia, there are no good guys."

Folks, this is must read material. Whether you're leaning towards Russo-apologetics, or even if you just know some poor, deluded useless alt.right/alt.left goof (yes, the alt.left exists, but not the way Trump thinks) who might be falling for that shit, you need to arm yourself with information. This is a great place to start.

***

In this excellent Truthout interview with Nancy MacLean--author of the current book Democracy in Chains: A Deep History of the Radical Right's Stealth Plan for America--we are introduced to the intriguing character of James McGill Buchanan, an almost completely forgotten economist from the 1950's who nevertheless exerts tremendous influence over the contemporary libertarian wing of Movement Conservatism. In some ways, he's kind of like the their Leo Strauss (long time Daily Dirt readers will know what I mean). Here's how the interview kicks off:

Mark Karlin: Can you summarize the importance of James McGill Buchanan to the development of the modern extreme right wing in the United States? 

Nancy MacLean: The modern extreme right wing I'm talking about, just to be clear, is the libertarian movement that now sails under the Republican flag, particularly but not only the Freedom Caucus, yet goes back to the 1950's in both parties. President Eisenhower called them "stupid" and fashioned his approach--calling it modern Republicanism--as an antidote to them. Goldwater was their first presidential candidate. He bombed. Reagan, they believed, was going to enact their agenda. He didn't. But beginning in the early 2000s, they became a force to be reckoned with. What had changed? The discovery by their chief funder, Charles Koch, of the approach developed by James McGill Buchanan for how to take apart the liberal state. 

Buchanan studied economics at the University of Chicago and belonged to the same milieu as F.A. Hayek, Milton Friedman and Ludwig von Mises, but he used his training to analyze public life. And he supplied what no one else had: an operational strategy to vanquish the model of government they had been criticizing for decades--and prevent it from being recreated. It was Buchanan who taught Koch that for capitalism to thrive, democracy must be enchained. 

Buchanan was a very smart man, the only winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics from the US South, in fact. But his life's work was forever shaped by the Supreme Court's Brown v. Board of Education decision. He arrived in Virginia in 1956, just as the state's leaders were goading the white South to fight the court's ruling, a ruling he saw not through the lens of equal protection of the law for all citizens but rather as another wave in a rising tide of unwarranted and illegitimate federal interference in the affairs of the states that began with the New Deal. For him what was at stake was the sanctity of private property rights, with northern liberals telling southern owners how to spend their money and behave correctly. Given an institute to run on the campus of the University of Virginia, he promised to devote his academic career to understanding how the other side became so powerful and, ultimately, to figuring out an effective line of attack to break down what they had created and return to what he and the Virginia elite viewed as appropriate for America. In a nutshell, he studied the workings of the political process to figure out what was needed to deny ordinary people--white and Black--the ability to make claims on government at the expense of private property rights and the wishes of capitalists. And then he identified how to rejigger that political process not only to reverse the gains but also to prevent the system from ever reverting back. He sought, in his words, to "enchain Leviathan," which is why I titled the book Democracy in Chains. 

Why, until your book, has his importance to the right wing been largely overlooked?

There are a few reasons Buchanan has been overlooked. One is that the Koch cause does not advertise his work, preferring to tout the sunnier primers of Hayek, Friedman and even Ayn Rand when recruiting. Buchanan is the advanced course, as it were, for the already committed. Another is that Buchanan did not seek the limelight like Friedman, so few on the left have even heard of him. I myself learned of him only by serendipity, in a footnote about the Virginia schools fight. 

His importance to the right wing could only be identified by working through the archival sources that provide context for his published work. That's what I did after discovering that Buchanan had urged the full privatization of Virginia's public schooling in 1959, and then learning that he later advised the Pinochet regime on a capital-protecting constitution that could withstand the end of the dictatorship. Even with both of those data points, I don't think I could have gleaned the full import of his project had I not moved to North Carolina in 2010, where a strategy informed by his thought has been applied with a vengeance by the veto-proof Republican legislative majority that came to power in the midterms that fall. After Buchanan died in 2013, I was able to get access to his private papers at George Mason University, where the documentation is incontrovertible. 

You really should read this whole interview, particularly if you want to learn “what a society based on Buchanan's principles and goals would look like”, or to learn more about the intersection of his economics and White Supremacy. Yer old pal Jerky sincerely believes that, for a certain percentage of those reading it, the information contained in this interview is going to be an important, life-changing encounter that leads to the creation of one, or many, antidotes, so to speak. Then, if the spirit should move you, use this link to buy MacLean's book, so that yer old pal Jerky gets a few shekels dropped into his beggin' cup!

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QUOTE OF THE DAY

“America has this back-ass-wards Calvinist streak where calling for the expulsion and genocide of non-white races is just a difference of opinion. But making a sex joke at a corporate mascot who paid money to advertise to you is cause for censure.”

- 30-year-old Alex Boivin provides us with the week's most incisive bit of political wisdom as he reacts to being suspended from Twitter for telling Tony the Tiger he'd "hit that". 

SUGGESTED READINGS FOR AUGUST 23, 2017

Patrick Radden Keefe's Reporter at Large column in the latest edition of the New Yorker, titled "Carl Icahn’s Failed Raid on Washington", asks the rhetorical question: "Was President Trump’s richest adviser focussed on helping the country—or his own bottom line?" Although it falls somewhat short of arriving at a definitive answer, it does a fantastic job of familiarizing the unacquainted with one of the most powerful men in America, whose wields so much power, with so few checks and balances to rein him in, it's enough to make you wonder why the USA even bothers to hold elections at all.

About 1/10th of the way down the article, after a brief review of the massive and obvious conflicts of interest involved in appointing Icahn to a governmental role vis-a-vis industrial deregulation, the following paragraphs, which bear repeating here, appear:

Several weeks after Trump’s victory, Icahn tweeted, “I’ve agreed to serve as a special advisor to the president on issues relating to regulatory reform.” In a press release, Trump said, “Carl was with me from the beginning and with his being one of the world’s great businessmen, that was something I truly appreciated. He is not only a brilliant negotiator, but also someone who is innately able to predict the future, especially having to do with finances and economies.” He added that Icahn would help him address regulations that were “strangling” American business. 

Icahn’s role was novel. He would be an adviser with a formal title, but he would not receive a salary, and he would not be required to divest himself of any of his holdings, or to make any disclosures about potential conflicts of interest. “Carl Icahn will be advising the President in his individual capacity,” Trump’s transition team asserted. 

In the months after the election, the stock price of CVR, Icahn’s refiner, nearly doubled—a surge that is difficult to explain without acknowledging the appointment of the company’s lead shareholder to a White House position. The rally meant a personal benefit for Icahn, at least on paper, of half a billion dollars. There was an expectation in the market—an expectation created, in part, by Icahn’s own remarks—that, with Trump in the White House and Icahn playing consigliere, the rules were about to change, and not just at the E.P.A. Icahn’s empire ranges across many economic sectors, from energy to pharmaceuticals to auto supplies to mining, and all of them are governed by the types of regulations about which he would now potentially be advising Trump. 

Janet McCabe, who left the E.P.A. in January, and now works at the Environmental Law and Policy Center, told me, “I’m not naïve. People in business try to influence the government. But the job of the government is to serve the American people, not the specific business interests of the President’s friends. To think that you have somebody with that kind of agenda bending the President’s ear is troubling.” 

Conflicts of interest have been a defining trait of the Trump Administration. The President has not only refused to release his tax returns; he has declined to divest from his companies, instead putting them in a trust managed by his children. Questions have emerged about the ongoing business ties of his daughter and son-in-law, Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner, who, since early 2016, have reaped as much as two hundred million dollars from the Trump hotel in Washington, D.C., and from other investments. Although Trump promised to “drain the swamp,” he has assembled a Cabinet of ultra-rich Americans, including two billionaires: Betsy DeVos, the Secretary of Education, and Wilbur Ross, the Secretary of Commerce. 

But Icahn is worth more than the Trump family and all the members of the Cabinet combined—and, with no constraint on his license to counsel the President on regulations that might help his businesses, he was poised to become much richer. Robert Weissman, who runs the watchdog group Public Citizen, told me, “This kind of self-enrichment and influence over decision-making by an individual mogul who is simultaneously inside and outside the Administration is unprecedented. In terms of corruption, there’s nothing like it. Maybe ever.” In conversations with me, financiers who have worked with Icahn described his appointment as a kind of corporate raid on Washington. One said, “It’s the cheapest takeover Carl’s ever done.”

That's America they're talking about, just FYI. Anyway, it's depressing as Hell, but still necessary, to educate ourselves. Read this article, top to bottom, and consider it your lesson on civics for the day. Oh, and don't put too much stock in that "Icahn may have messed up royally by hitching his wagon to the Trump Train, with a possible end result that he's broken laws and will soon end up behind bars" jazz. That kind of shit just doesn't happen to people like Icahn. Not in this lifetime, not in this world.

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Timothy Zaal wrote a think piece about Charlottesville for Politico, titled "I Used to be a Neo-Nazi. Charlottesville Terrifies Me". It begins:

When I was a skinhead, living in the Los Angeles area in the 1980s, I remember watching a favorite video with my fellow extremists. It was footage of the 1979 Greensboro massacre, when Ku Klux Klan members shot and killed five people at a workers’ demonstration in North Carolina. A group of cars pulled up. KKK members jumped out of the vehicles, killed a group of communists, then drove away. 

We laughed at it.

This past weekend, the news from Charlottesville brought back that memory—of being surrounded by fellow white supremacists in my old house, watching our odd choice of Friday-night entertainment. Today, of course, you can find clips like these online. In those days, extremist groups had mail-order services where you could purchase VHS tapes. That was where we bought it.

I gave up being a skinhead years ago. But now, I’m getting uncomfortable feelings of déjà vu as I watch footage of the bloody events in Charlottesville. The white supremacist organizations of my day were different, but after researching these “alt-right” groups, and seeing the violence this weekend, I realize they’re all too similar. They hate the same minorities we did. They spew the same conspiracy theories. They consume the same kinds of propaganda.

But there’s one huge difference: These newer offshoots have been far more successful than we could ever have dreamed.

The article continues, giving a brief history of the White Power movement(s) of the 80's and 90's, exploring the parallels between then and now, theorizing how the rabbit hole paradigm that first led the author towards his views is almost infinitely worse today, relating his personal story of emerging from the fog of hate, before ending on an ominous and disturbing note. Nevertheless, this is a highly recommended, must-read op/ed.

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One of my favorite authors currently writing about such outre subjects as Secret Societies, strange historical synchronicities, ritual magick, and other such things is the wonderful Peter Levenda. I am sadly aware that these so-called crackpot subjects often attract crackpots as self-declared "experts", many of whom tilt Far Right... an issue exacerbated by the fact that the media ecosystem where these topics are most often discussed are the domain of Far Right gatekeepers, so when I saw that Mr Levenda had written an op/ed piece on the subject of Charlottesville, I have to admit I was just a little bit worried. Then I read what he wrote:

If anyone doubts where my feelings may be located concerning Charlottesville, you obviously haven’t read my previous work. I’ve written three books on Nazism alone, and even more volumes on the American political and cultural currents that have contributed to the present state of affairs, plus lengthy blog postings on my website. I am not a member of any political party, in case you’re wondering, but I don’t believe that this issue is a partisan one in the sense of Republican versus Democrat, or conservative versus liberal. It’s not my intention to carry water for a politician or a party but to raise awareness of the context of current events, to “connect the dots” as my work sometimes has been described. But there has never been any ambiguity where my feelings are concerned when it comes to fascism, racism, and Nazism. In fact I hesitated to post anything at all about this because … who needs it, really? You all have been inundated with pundits and jeremiads already. Who needs yet another old white guy’s point of view? 

But … if you insist … 

Most of you know I was detained by actual Nazis in South America in 1979, that I was threatened at gun point at midnight by a Klansman in Pennsylvania a little later, and debated neo-Nazis in New York in the late 1970s and early 1980s. I’m no stranger to any of this, unfortunately, and that means I am not fooled by pretentious pseudo-intellectual arguments that attempt to form moral equivalencies between Nazis on one side and those who oppose them on the other. 

The recent Vice interview with the weeping white supremacist who said it was his intention to form an “ethno-state” underlines just how intellectually bankrupt this movement is. What is the ethnos to which he refers? Is “white” an ethnicity? A hundred years ago, the Irish were not considered “white” by American racists. The Slavs were not considered “white” by the Nazis. The Jews still aren’t. Where do we draw that particular line? Catholics were considered “papists” and therefore part of the problem, and I still hear white nationalists refer to Italians, Portuguese and Spaniards as “not quite white” (which is interesting considering Mussolini, Salazar and Franco, but who’s keeping score anyway?). We all know what that guy means, though. He means a state where there are no black people, no Jews, no other people of color. That, of course, would only be phase one of his “ethno state”. Phase two means going after the other shades of white on the Klan’s color card. These guys are so fixated on “white” it gives a whole new meaning to that offensive pejorative “snowflake.”

It only gets better from there. I urge you all to read and share it. Oh, and if you ever want to have your mind blown while simultaneously learning loads of hidden American history, look no further than Levenda's Sinister Forces trilogy (the first of which you will find at the other end of the provided link). Also, if you purchase them through the link provided, yer old pal Jerky hears a tinkle in his beggin' cup!

*** QUOTE OF THE DAY ***

“It’s amazing what I say, and what I do, and what I get away with. It’s amazing.”

- Maricopa County Sheriff Joseph "Joe" Arpaio--Preznit Trump's favorite law-breaking lawman--marvels at how none of the people he was elected to serve were bothered that his department failed to go after predatory pedophiles so that they could instead concentrate on finding and deporting undocumented immigrants. I guess that means the race is on... can Trump pardon Sheriff Joe before being removed from office? Keep watching this space to find out!

QUOTE OF THE DAY

"Nazis are a lot like cats, if they like you it is probably because you are feeding them." 

- John Oliver

QUOTE OF THE DAY ~ JULY 8, 2017

"Next to Fred Trump, Roy Cohn was the single greatest influence in Donald’s life. And Roy is incandescent evil. I would sit with him, and it was enough to make you rush back to church, the Satanic feeling that he would give you. That was Donald’s mentor and constant sidekick, who represented all five of the organized crime families in the City of New York."

— Investigative journalist and long-time Trump investigator/foe Wayne Barrett, who conveniently passed away this November, shortly after the New Yorker ran an article suggesting that we were lucky to have him around to help guide us through the wide-awake nightmare of Trump's ascending to the White House. Oh well... so much for that.

DDD EXECUTIVE SUMMARY ~ MARCH 31, 2017

HOLY FUCKING CRAP!!!

THE "OUTLANDISH" AND "RIDICULOUS" AND "PATENTLY FALSE" RUMORS WERE TRUE... MIKE FLYNN HAS OFFERED TO COOPERATE WITH FBI RE: TRUMP/RUSSIA CONNECTIONS IN EXCHANGE FOR IMMUNITY!

IN THE MEANTIME...

Hey guys! Yer old pal Jerky scored a professional illustration gig with a company here in Toronto, and it's going to be taking up a few hours a day for at least the next five days, which means my blogging will be somewhat more sparse and haphazard for the foreseeable near future. 

Oh, I'll still be posting! But it'll probably most likely be links to other people's stuff (and guest editorials should any of you lazy fuckers decide to participate like in the good old days). 

Anyway, y'all should still check back periodically, as there is some kuh-RAY-zee shit going down after a couple of relatively slow news days, and I'll be focused on bringing you the unheralded side-news and connecting the rogue dots that the mainstream media love to shove aside in the service of their ongoing Master Narratives. They've ALL got one. 

Cheers!

yer old pal Jerky

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SUGGESTED READINGS

1. We've all heard of White Lies, but have you ever heard of Blue Lies? Apparently, that's the relatively new psychiatric terminology for the very specific type of lies that Trump likes to tell, as explained in this Scientific American blog post. It begins:

Donald Trump tells lies. 

His deceptions and misleading statements are easy to unmask. In the latest example—after hundreds of well-documented lies—FBI director James Comey told Congress this week that there is “no information that supports” Trump’s claim that President Obama tapped his phone. 

But Trump’s political path presents a paradox. Far from slowing his momentum, his deceit seemed only to strengthen his support through the primary and national election. Now, every time a lie is exposed, his support among Republicans doesn’t seem to waver very much. In the wake of the Comey revelations, his average approval rating held at 40 percent. 

This has led many people to ask themselves: How does the former reality-TV star get away with it? How can he tell so many lies and still win support from many Americans?
Journalists and researchers have suggested many answers, from hyper-biased, segmented media to simple ignorance on the part of GOP voters. But there is another explanation that no one seems to have entertained. It is that Trump is telling “blue” lies—a psychologist’s term for falsehoods, told on behalf of a group, that can actually strengthen the bonds among the members of that group. 

Children start to tell selfish lies at about age three, as they discover adults cannot read their minds: I didn’t steal that toy, Daddy said I could, He hit me first. At around age seven, they begin to tell white lies motivated by feelings of empathy and compassion: That’s a good drawing, I love socks for Christmas, You’re funny. 

Blue lies are a different category altogether, simultaneously selfish and beneficial to others—but only to those who belong to your group. As University of Toronto psychologist Kang Lee explains, blue lies fall in between generous white lies and selfish “black” ones. “You can tell a blue lie against another group,” he says, which makes it simultaneously selfless and self-serving. “For example, you can lie about your team's cheating in a game, which is antisocial, but helps your team.”

Sound like anything you've heard on the news recently? It sure does to yer old pal Jerky. Keep reading. There's lots of brainy goodness to be had in the rest of the article.

2. Yeah, so all those snooty, snotty, alt.left muckety-mucks who go around saying shit like: "I'll believe that the Trump administration and/or the Trump Family and/or the Trump Organization have a wide variety of deeply entrenched and most likely highly illegal connections with the Kremlin and/or with Putin-affiliated oligarchs and/or with Russian organized crime, ONLY WHEN AND IF I am personally hand delivered irrefutable evidence of said accusations by Eva Green (or Michael Fassbender) while they feed me grapes and tell me what a good and smart little boy or girl I've been for maintaining my saintly, above-it-all skepticism despite the intolerable torture of having the neo-McCarthyite Faux Left say hurtful things about me, day in and day out." This article on WHY the FBI can't reveal everything they currently know about Trump and Russia is for THAT bunch of fucking goofs. It begins:

The Federal Bureau of Investigation cannot tell us what we need to know about Donald Trump’s contacts with Russia. Why? Because doing so would jeopardize a long-running, ultra-sensitive operation targeting mobsters tied to Russian President Vladimir Putin — and to Trump.

It gets more in depth, of course, but the gist--which, quite frankly, was obvious to anyone with more than two brain cells to rub together--is all any civilian really needs to know at this point. And yes, I'm being serious.

3. "Psychic Sexual Time Travel! Evil Reptilian Overlords! That's just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the greatest conspiracy theory of all time: The Redhawk Project!" As the inaugural edition of the DDD's new promise to bring you, the reader, works and creators that are simply TOO GOOD FOR YOUTUBETM, I bring +you the inimitable Bowser Vids, and his beautifully true-to-form take on the kind of shitty conspiritard "documentary" videos that people used to VHS tape off the TV back in the late 80's early 90's.  I guarantee you'll enjoy this short but sweet video, as well as the vast majority of Bowser's output, which includes a strong stable of recurring characters and fresh takes on shopworn sketchcom tropes!

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QUOTE OF THE DAY

“I didn't hear a word she said. I was looking at her James Brown wig. Do we have a picture of James? It's the same wig!”

- Listen folks... I take a backseat to no one when it comes to despising the odious booze-drenched sex pest that is Bill O'Reilly. And I admire Representative Maxine Waters (D-Cali) and her fearless willingness to always speak truth to power. I truly do. But even I have to admit... that James Brown diss was pretty fuckin' funny.

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DDD EXTRAS

• If you want to learn about some cool and/or weird things that happened on whatever day of history that it happens to be when you're reading this, why not check out our sister-site, Useless Eater Blog? You're sure to find something of interest, guaranteed!
• At the Kubrick U blog, you can viddy some very horrosho, very 70's Clockwork Orange bubble gum collector's cards!

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A REMEMBRANCE

This week, I learned that a beloved resident of my adopted neighborhood of Parkdale, Toronto, had passed away under a troubling set of circumstances early in the month of March. The community's sadness at having lost our unofficial "greeter" was sufficiently great that news of Nav's passing made its way all the way up to the CBC, Canada's national public broadcasting corporation. 

Nav was one of those cursed/blessed martyrs who, in their refusal to acknowledge the terrible truth of cosmic futility, make up the volunteer workforce through whose sacrifice the very fabric of the universe is held together. 

As it is my sincerely held belief that said aforementioned universe is a singularity--that it is one thing, which means that, to ever have lived is to be, in a very real sense, immortal--I would like to share a poem with you all, in Nav's memory... 

1=0=INFINITY

The universe is one.

Nothing that is, is not.

All that is, is.

The universe is infinite.

Infinity contains infinite infinities.

Everything that is, is repeated, infinitely.

Thus, infinity is one.

Because the universe is infinite,

And because the universe is one,

The universe does not exist.

It cannot begin until it is finished.

It is finished before it can begin.

One = Infinity = Zero.

Now is the arrow that cuts the air.

We are the air, split by the arrow.

We are not now.

Because we are not infinite.

Because we are not one.

And because we exist.

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