A lot of people who accused others of “sheep herding” are now doing a lot of herding themselves. I thought we were supposed to be fighting the duopoly 🤷🏻♂️ Strange bedfellows
I went with Stein despite the many red flags, some of them literal, because of Gaza.
Progressive complicity in Gaza -- that's what a Harris vote means -- delegitimizes a good chuck of the liberal project. Complaints about fascism, racism, white supremacy, etc., mean very little when the same do-gooders line up to vote for extermination. So domestically, the footing has been knocked out of wokeness (good riddance). At the same time, internationally, anything about human rights, international law, etc., will be seen, if it isn't already, as a tool of the stronger, which doesn't bode well for cooperation. It also makes our support for Ukraine look cynical. (Not good, just like how liberal failure in 1848 set Europe up for decades of reactionary Realpolitik that crashed in WWI. European civilization hasn't regained its self-confidence since.)
I voted Jill Stein strictly because of Gaza. It’s a national disgrace and both Trump and Harris support it. If Trump wins, I hope RFK, Jr. really will clean up the FDA and NIH like he’s promised. If Kamala wins, I hope she stays in perfect health so we never have to say “President Waltz” and know he has the nuclear codes. My expectations are very low.
One positive part is that I don't think the liberal project really has any say on stopping the genocide, anyway, nor Westerners in general or any of these corrupt international institutions whose purpose is to protect the strong against the weak. So it's probably inconsequential, there are already better people trying to stop it than anyone in any failed Western state could possibly put forth as a leader, and the West has humiliated itself so much that nobody internationally really cares what any Westerner has to say or do about the genocide anyway.
It is Lebanon, Yemen, and Iran that will determine the fate of Gazans and whether they live or die, as well as that of occupied Palestine and "Israel." So far, the Resistance's long term strategy has been overwhelmingly successful against the US and its puppet state, and very few even understand what their strategy is to be capable of opposing it since they are operating on obsolete paradigms of strategy and warfare. Hezbollah has been decimating the IDF in all domains of warfare with far greater superiority than Russia had shown the AFU.
We'll see what happens, but those of us who oppose genocide have reason to be optimistic regardless of how the US election goes.
Appreciate your work but feel Trump is by far the better choice for a variety of reasons. We are in DEEP trouble as a nation and I hope he slows the descent at least
"Trump is explicitly pledging to use coercive state power to more aggressively crack down on “anti-Semitic” political speech."
This is interesting. Prior to the #TwitterFiles, and revealed therein, we might have been able to say that the hard left bias of universities and social media platforms would nullify most of Trump's worst speech antics. It was far easier for them to see 1st amendment impingement when it was done by a man they hated, a man who may have motivated many of them to take the job in the first place.
Now I wonder. There has been so much scrutiny of universities and media outlets that, while nothing conclusive seems to have happened, it seems unlikely that anyone can continue with business-as-usual. Even Elvis Chan the FBI man needs to keep his head down. Here, in the upside-down, I wouldn't expect that to mean more open speech but rather more subtle ways of limiting and de-amplifying speech the boogie-people don't like.
Were that we had some way of knowing. Alas we only caught the tiniest peep into the backroom before the curtain closed shut forever.
I agree with you MT, and your position has been my position since maybe 2004? As the kids in Meatballs shout, "It just doesn't matter! It just doesn't matter!" The US is determined to be the global hegemon until we implode. That mission comes with a whole lot of baggage including never dealing with actual problems of the state until they interfere with the state's problems.
For my part, I will be voting for Cornell West for president. Why? Because I like the cut of his jib and he calls everyone brother. What better reason do I need? He won't win, but at this point my strategy is to always be on the side of independents. Perhaps if independents win more than 0.00001% of the vote, say 0.00002%, people might take notice and start to believe we don't have to live in a perpetual dog race where we're the rabbits.
I actually woke up feeling very zen today because at this point, I have done what I am going to do (vote) and it is out of my hands and ultimately nothing in my life is going to fundamentally change regardless of who wins today (This week? This month? This year?).
Michael has called out the Scylla and Charybdis in this election cycle better than anyone. For those still undecided, I interviewed both candidates last night on mushrooms so that we could get to the bottom of their views once and for all. I hope it helps for the voting booth:
Is immigration an issue at all for you? What about drug trafficking and crime? How about the Ukraine war? Do you think the Kamala and Trump camps are identical on these issues?
Trump supports immigration and is going to bring in more immigrants than ever, giving anyone with a degree a pathway to citizenship. Republicans are the ones who spearheaded the mass immigration policy many decades ago.
If he thinks this will ensure immigrants are above average, he's wrong, because college students are now close to average and their mean IQ is 102. This policy will also make colleges into degree mills like Canada, making it easier than ever for someone to pay their way into the US.
Trump and Harris do not substantially differ on immigration policy. Both will flood the US with millions more immigrants and are strong supporters of immigration.
Trump is a supporter of the Ukraine war and now fighting all others, including permanent occupation of Afghanistan. He is why the Ukraine bill passed a while back giving billions more dollars to them.
According to the Polish foreign minister who those Russian pranksters got to spill state secrets, Trump's campaign informed the Polish state that their brilliant plan to bring peace to Ukraine is to thuggishly threaten Russia with sending more weapons! What a great idea, the Biden-Harris strategy is sure to work if Trump does it.
So far nobody has mentioned the national debt. In one day last week the national debt rose by $100 billion dollars. And the cost of that debt keeps going up.
I need simple examples to help me comprehend stuff. At one time this formula was easy to find on the internet. The result varied within 1000 years:
- if one were to earn $1.00 every second of every hour of every day of every year, it would take approximately 37,000 years to reach/earn $1 trillion (TT) dollars.
In the last year the national debt has increased from $34TT to $37TT.
Foreign purchase of US debt has slowed (I am still learning how bonds and treasuries work).
The value of the US dollar has dropped by some estimates, approximately 20%. That’s about the same as the average grocery and gas inflation we have experienced since January 2021 (I have receipts, actual receipts).
Harris and her puppetmasters believe that raising taxes is the answer. It’s simply impossible. The country will never be solvent; but the cost of that debt can be brought down.
Trump world has different ideas - ones not recently tried. His basic premise is that economic security is national security.
Given the deep problems our nation faces, I would like to see something new tried out.
There is no one person who is ever going to do everything the way that any of us prefer. As long as we sit on the sofa in front of our devices and ignore the governance of our immediate communities, we remain vulnerable to the absolute tyranny the globocap world order intends for the entire world population.
Oh, and by the way, the debt has been increasing by $1TT every hundred days or so. The deal former Speaker McCarthy made regarding the debt led directly to his ouster. The face value of this debt will never ever be paid.
Dismay is a good word. I've been dismayed that ALL of the activists who spent two years fighting Trump's "virus" tyranny have flipped into Trump cultists. What were they fighting? Don't they remember? I guess not.
Trump derangement syndrome turns out to sometimes progress to Trump denouement syndrome, thinking this final act of his will finally be the resolution to all things. They willingly forget his role in the scamdemic or exercise wishful thinking saying "well, the other guy would've been worse."
A change of language has been key in this, for example that "deep state" has been rebranded from the prior definition of referring to unelected officials to being used to refer to elected officials who are democrats, such as Biden. Vote in a new elected official to replace the previous elected official, and this time, the (s)election process will defeat the deep state!
If elections could implement real change, the public would obviously not be allowed to participate in them. Most of the activists and many who have popped up in the past several years in the mainstream alternative media are sycophants and proponents of the system. So unlike Tracey, I am extremely unsurprised by their capitulation and flattering coverage of Trump. If they were rebellious, their political transformation would have occurred many years ago, not in the post-Trump years; in fact, they would have never needed one since they would have been unorthodox, anti-state or anti-authoritarian, and always questioning what is truth since they were children or teenagers.
Truth is unfortunately most people are easily duped. The people who were duped time and time again by propaganda such as WMDs, the pandemic, etc, have not gotten wiser or learned critical thinking, but been lulled into a sense of false security thinking they're "informed" by the mainstream alternative media.
Trump denouement syndrome! BRILLIANT! And a magnificent explication. THANKS!
Elections are a gimmick for sure. Rigging the vote is unnecessary because all true alternatives are blocked from entering the whole process. Parties withhold media and money from unorthodox candidates, so they can't reach the starting gate.
You're undoubtedly right that the activists I'm discussing were not true independents. Most of them are journalists by training, which means they're natural team players, accustomed to working for ratings and clicks. They go where the clicks are.
For what it's worth (not much) here's my take on the final result. Faster and more obvious decay helps alternatives develop faster. Time to focus on the alternatives and stop trying to "fix" the totally broken system.
Trump is hanging out with a lot of neo-cons, but I think he has a different relationship with them than Harris would. He has talked about John Bolton like he was a rabbid-dog he kept on a leash to scare countries into doing what he wanted. Not exactly warmoning.
I felt a wave a neocon nausea when I read your report that at a Trump rally yesterday were: Pompeo, Rubio, and Tom Cotton--vicious neocon murderers as bad as McCain, Lindsey, Nuland, and Robert Kagan: "Trump parading around with Mike Pompeo, Marco Rubio, and Tom Cotton, all of whom were present at the rally I attended yesterday as featured Trump endorsers." In recent months I've read countless commenters saying things like, "hopefully Trump won't bring Pompeo back," or "I'm sure Trump has learned his lesson and won't have people like Pompeo back." Poor Venezuela. They've been trying to get back to normal after Trump and Rubio turned off their electricity in 2019.
Trump doesn't control the Rs, at all, and many people he's endorsed have lost their races. The R establishment's acceptance of Trump is skin-deep and they will fight him like mad dogs if he follows through on trying to do what his supporters want, e.g., let Elon fire 90% of the bureaucracy and see what happens; deport millions of illegals from 190 different countries, most of which hate the US and all its ideals; and put some people in jail over profiteering in food and drugs policies. Personally I'm most worried about the last one, since RFK Jr is a big-govt guy who's not going to make libertarian choices in those areas. So.
Trump said he's going to expand legal immigration to give a green card to anyone with a diploma, so don't worry, those millions of illegals will be swiftly replaced with millions of other immigrants to displace Americans and your country's culture. You will be displaced more or less the same way the Native Americans were, but less messily and more efficiently.
Nobody will ever be asked to support policies like this, they will be told. See one of the relevant UN documents that is followed, "Replacement Migration: Is it A Solution to Declining and Ageing Populations?" Trump is a major supporter of this, he loves immigrants. Projections given by the UN plan are as high as that by 2050 up to 73% of the population of the US might 'have' to be post-1995 immigrants or their descendants.
Trump also is a major supporter of digital currency and ID that will be used to control you in the future, and is selling this essential component of the UN's 2030 plan and of globalist digital control already used in states like China as part of a solution to immigration, the same way Prime Minister Kid Starver did in the UK.
Thanks for the view from whatever country you call home. Interesting to see the wacky rumors others are spreading. "Interesting" as an anthropological observation, like being aware that there are people who wear N95 masks alone in their cars, pressure their children toward chemical and surgical mutilation, or believe everything (or anything) they read in the propaganda press. People are funny, I've always said.
A lot of people who accused others of “sheep herding” are now doing a lot of herding themselves. I thought we were supposed to be fighting the duopoly 🤷🏻♂️ Strange bedfellows
I went with Stein despite the many red flags, some of them literal, because of Gaza.
Progressive complicity in Gaza -- that's what a Harris vote means -- delegitimizes a good chuck of the liberal project. Complaints about fascism, racism, white supremacy, etc., mean very little when the same do-gooders line up to vote for extermination. So domestically, the footing has been knocked out of wokeness (good riddance). At the same time, internationally, anything about human rights, international law, etc., will be seen, if it isn't already, as a tool of the stronger, which doesn't bode well for cooperation. It also makes our support for Ukraine look cynical. (Not good, just like how liberal failure in 1848 set Europe up for decades of reactionary Realpolitik that crashed in WWI. European civilization hasn't regained its self-confidence since.)
I voted Jill Stein strictly because of Gaza. It’s a national disgrace and both Trump and Harris support it. If Trump wins, I hope RFK, Jr. really will clean up the FDA and NIH like he’s promised. If Kamala wins, I hope she stays in perfect health so we never have to say “President Waltz” and know he has the nuclear codes. My expectations are very low.
One positive part is that I don't think the liberal project really has any say on stopping the genocide, anyway, nor Westerners in general or any of these corrupt international institutions whose purpose is to protect the strong against the weak. So it's probably inconsequential, there are already better people trying to stop it than anyone in any failed Western state could possibly put forth as a leader, and the West has humiliated itself so much that nobody internationally really cares what any Westerner has to say or do about the genocide anyway.
It is Lebanon, Yemen, and Iran that will determine the fate of Gazans and whether they live or die, as well as that of occupied Palestine and "Israel." So far, the Resistance's long term strategy has been overwhelmingly successful against the US and its puppet state, and very few even understand what their strategy is to be capable of opposing it since they are operating on obsolete paradigms of strategy and warfare. Hezbollah has been decimating the IDF in all domains of warfare with far greater superiority than Russia had shown the AFU.
We'll see what happens, but those of us who oppose genocide have reason to be optimistic regardless of how the US election goes.
The reason for Trump's popularity: Harris and the Democrats.
Appreciate your work but feel Trump is by far the better choice for a variety of reasons. We are in DEEP trouble as a nation and I hope he slows the descent at least
❓❓WHICH ECONOMIC APARTHEID SECTORS WILL SCREW U.S. AVERAGE-INCOME PEOPLE THE MOST IN TRUMPs REIGN ❓❓
F.I.R.E. -> Finance, Insurance and Real Estate
Prepare For MORE HOMELESSNESS, Higher Insurance Premiums and EVEN SHITTIER HEALTH CARE by EVER MORE CONCENTRATED MONOPOLIES
press the bars of the bar graph for $ Totals
https://www.opensecrets.org/2024-presidential-race/donald-trump/industries?id=N00023864&src=t
"Trump is explicitly pledging to use coercive state power to more aggressively crack down on “anti-Semitic” political speech."
This is interesting. Prior to the #TwitterFiles, and revealed therein, we might have been able to say that the hard left bias of universities and social media platforms would nullify most of Trump's worst speech antics. It was far easier for them to see 1st amendment impingement when it was done by a man they hated, a man who may have motivated many of them to take the job in the first place.
Now I wonder. There has been so much scrutiny of universities and media outlets that, while nothing conclusive seems to have happened, it seems unlikely that anyone can continue with business-as-usual. Even Elvis Chan the FBI man needs to keep his head down. Here, in the upside-down, I wouldn't expect that to mean more open speech but rather more subtle ways of limiting and de-amplifying speech the boogie-people don't like.
Were that we had some way of knowing. Alas we only caught the tiniest peep into the backroom before the curtain closed shut forever.
I agree with you MT, and your position has been my position since maybe 2004? As the kids in Meatballs shout, "It just doesn't matter! It just doesn't matter!" The US is determined to be the global hegemon until we implode. That mission comes with a whole lot of baggage including never dealing with actual problems of the state until they interfere with the state's problems.
For my part, I will be voting for Cornell West for president. Why? Because I like the cut of his jib and he calls everyone brother. What better reason do I need? He won't win, but at this point my strategy is to always be on the side of independents. Perhaps if independents win more than 0.00001% of the vote, say 0.00002%, people might take notice and start to believe we don't have to live in a perpetual dog race where we're the rabbits.
I like your view. I think Dr. Shiva would be wonderful in the White House but that’s a pipe dream.
I think you’re fantastic Mr. Tracey. One of the few real people on the internet. Keep up the great work Sir.
I actually woke up feeling very zen today because at this point, I have done what I am going to do (vote) and it is out of my hands and ultimately nothing in my life is going to fundamentally change regardless of who wins today (This week? This month? This year?).
Michael has called out the Scylla and Charybdis in this election cycle better than anyone. For those still undecided, I interviewed both candidates last night on mushrooms so that we could get to the bottom of their views once and for all. I hope it helps for the voting booth:
https://constantinemarkides.substack.com/p/my-interview-with-kamala-and-donald
Is immigration an issue at all for you? What about drug trafficking and crime? How about the Ukraine war? Do you think the Kamala and Trump camps are identical on these issues?
Trump supports immigration and is going to bring in more immigrants than ever, giving anyone with a degree a pathway to citizenship. Republicans are the ones who spearheaded the mass immigration policy many decades ago.
https://www.cnn.com/2024/06/20/politics/trump-green-cards-gradutate-college/index.html
If he thinks this will ensure immigrants are above average, he's wrong, because college students are now close to average and their mean IQ is 102. This policy will also make colleges into degree mills like Canada, making it easier than ever for someone to pay their way into the US.
Trump and Harris do not substantially differ on immigration policy. Both will flood the US with millions more immigrants and are strong supporters of immigration.
Trump is a supporter of the Ukraine war and now fighting all others, including permanent occupation of Afghanistan. He is why the Ukraine bill passed a while back giving billions more dollars to them.
According to the Polish foreign minister who those Russian pranksters got to spill state secrets, Trump's campaign informed the Polish state that their brilliant plan to bring peace to Ukraine is to thuggishly threaten Russia with sending more weapons! What a great idea, the Biden-Harris strategy is sure to work if Trump does it.
So far nobody has mentioned the national debt. In one day last week the national debt rose by $100 billion dollars. And the cost of that debt keeps going up.
I need simple examples to help me comprehend stuff. At one time this formula was easy to find on the internet. The result varied within 1000 years:
- if one were to earn $1.00 every second of every hour of every day of every year, it would take approximately 37,000 years to reach/earn $1 trillion (TT) dollars.
In the last year the national debt has increased from $34TT to $37TT.
Foreign purchase of US debt has slowed (I am still learning how bonds and treasuries work).
The value of the US dollar has dropped by some estimates, approximately 20%. That’s about the same as the average grocery and gas inflation we have experienced since January 2021 (I have receipts, actual receipts).
Harris and her puppetmasters believe that raising taxes is the answer. It’s simply impossible. The country will never be solvent; but the cost of that debt can be brought down.
Trump world has different ideas - ones not recently tried. His basic premise is that economic security is national security.
Given the deep problems our nation faces, I would like to see something new tried out.
There is no one person who is ever going to do everything the way that any of us prefer. As long as we sit on the sofa in front of our devices and ignore the governance of our immediate communities, we remain vulnerable to the absolute tyranny the globocap world order intends for the entire world population.
Oh, and by the way, the debt has been increasing by $1TT every hundred days or so. The deal former Speaker McCarthy made regarding the debt led directly to his ouster. The face value of this debt will never ever be paid.
Dismay is a good word. I've been dismayed that ALL of the activists who spent two years fighting Trump's "virus" tyranny have flipped into Trump cultists. What were they fighting? Don't they remember? I guess not.
Trump derangement syndrome turns out to sometimes progress to Trump denouement syndrome, thinking this final act of his will finally be the resolution to all things. They willingly forget his role in the scamdemic or exercise wishful thinking saying "well, the other guy would've been worse."
A change of language has been key in this, for example that "deep state" has been rebranded from the prior definition of referring to unelected officials to being used to refer to elected officials who are democrats, such as Biden. Vote in a new elected official to replace the previous elected official, and this time, the (s)election process will defeat the deep state!
If elections could implement real change, the public would obviously not be allowed to participate in them. Most of the activists and many who have popped up in the past several years in the mainstream alternative media are sycophants and proponents of the system. So unlike Tracey, I am extremely unsurprised by their capitulation and flattering coverage of Trump. If they were rebellious, their political transformation would have occurred many years ago, not in the post-Trump years; in fact, they would have never needed one since they would have been unorthodox, anti-state or anti-authoritarian, and always questioning what is truth since they were children or teenagers.
Truth is unfortunately most people are easily duped. The people who were duped time and time again by propaganda such as WMDs, the pandemic, etc, have not gotten wiser or learned critical thinking, but been lulled into a sense of false security thinking they're "informed" by the mainstream alternative media.
Trump denouement syndrome! BRILLIANT! And a magnificent explication. THANKS!
Elections are a gimmick for sure. Rigging the vote is unnecessary because all true alternatives are blocked from entering the whole process. Parties withhold media and money from unorthodox candidates, so they can't reach the starting gate.
You're undoubtedly right that the activists I'm discussing were not true independents. Most of them are journalists by training, which means they're natural team players, accustomed to working for ratings and clicks. They go where the clicks are.
Yo, Michael! Excellent writing and great job being out there "in the terrain", getting real responses from real people. That's what it's all about!
For what it's worth (not much) here's my take on the final result. Faster and more obvious decay helps alternatives develop faster. Time to focus on the alternatives and stop trying to "fix" the totally broken system.
https://polistrasmill.com/2024/11/06/got-what-they-wanted/
Trump is hanging out with a lot of neo-cons, but I think he has a different relationship with them than Harris would. He has talked about John Bolton like he was a rabbid-dog he kept on a leash to scare countries into doing what he wanted. Not exactly warmoning.
I felt a wave a neocon nausea when I read your report that at a Trump rally yesterday were: Pompeo, Rubio, and Tom Cotton--vicious neocon murderers as bad as McCain, Lindsey, Nuland, and Robert Kagan: "Trump parading around with Mike Pompeo, Marco Rubio, and Tom Cotton, all of whom were present at the rally I attended yesterday as featured Trump endorsers." In recent months I've read countless commenters saying things like, "hopefully Trump won't bring Pompeo back," or "I'm sure Trump has learned his lesson and won't have people like Pompeo back." Poor Venezuela. They've been trying to get back to normal after Trump and Rubio turned off their electricity in 2019.
So glad to have your clear, truly unbiased voice in the sea of propaganda, Michael. Keep up the good work.
Trump doesn't control the Rs, at all, and many people he's endorsed have lost their races. The R establishment's acceptance of Trump is skin-deep and they will fight him like mad dogs if he follows through on trying to do what his supporters want, e.g., let Elon fire 90% of the bureaucracy and see what happens; deport millions of illegals from 190 different countries, most of which hate the US and all its ideals; and put some people in jail over profiteering in food and drugs policies. Personally I'm most worried about the last one, since RFK Jr is a big-govt guy who's not going to make libertarian choices in those areas. So.
Trump said he's going to expand legal immigration to give a green card to anyone with a diploma, so don't worry, those millions of illegals will be swiftly replaced with millions of other immigrants to displace Americans and your country's culture. You will be displaced more or less the same way the Native Americans were, but less messily and more efficiently.
Nobody will ever be asked to support policies like this, they will be told. See one of the relevant UN documents that is followed, "Replacement Migration: Is it A Solution to Declining and Ageing Populations?" Trump is a major supporter of this, he loves immigrants. Projections given by the UN plan are as high as that by 2050 up to 73% of the population of the US might 'have' to be post-1995 immigrants or their descendants.
Trump also is a major supporter of digital currency and ID that will be used to control you in the future, and is selling this essential component of the UN's 2030 plan and of globalist digital control already used in states like China as part of a solution to immigration, the same way Prime Minister Kid Starver did in the UK.
Support him at your own peril.
Thanks for the view from whatever country you call home. Interesting to see the wacky rumors others are spreading. "Interesting" as an anthropological observation, like being aware that there are people who wear N95 masks alone in their cars, pressure their children toward chemical and surgical mutilation, or believe everything (or anything) they read in the propaganda press. People are funny, I've always said.