I am sick of hearing that the Parkland students (such as this one) represent hope. Some idiot on teevee actually used the term "youthquake," a coinage I have not heard since the McGovern campaign.
Stop kidding yourselves. There is no hope.
Look, I've been around a while. (How long, you ask? When I was a boy, men still wore tricorner hats.) So I've seen what happens: A politicized young person invariably turns into a reactionary older person.
I've seen the demonstrators against the Vietnam War turn into Reagan voters. Jane Fonda got up in front of a huge crowd and said "Don't trust the government" -- and within five years, those words became Reagan's mantra.
I used to know the founding editor of the East Village Other, the first and foremost of the great hippie newspapers of the 1960s. He turned into a Bircher, or something very similar. Even as he faced old age without means, he decried Social Security and the nanny state. A similar "evolution" happened to another guy I knew, former SDS leader Carl Oglesby. We all know what happened to David Horowitz of Ramparts. Hippie icon Mike Oehler lived long enough to see himself become a neo-fascist icon.
I met a number of the naive young anti-Reagan activists who coalesced around the Christic Institute. In short order, they turned into right-wing conspiracy maniacs, singing the praises of Douglas McArthur while passing around the writings of Eustace Mullins and Bill Cooper. One former CI stalwart assured me that Proctor & Gamble really did place a hidden 666 in their old logo. (Why? Because Satan.)
Remember when all progressives were saying that the popularity of Bernie-ism insured a bright, socialist future? We now know that the Bernie movement was a creation of Russian fascists and the Alt Right, designed to sell anti-Demcoratic conspiracy theories to naive would-be progressives.
Similarly, Fox News is talking about American election meddling in countries like Chile. I can recall being called a commie whenever I would dare to bring up that bit of history. How things have changed!
So here's my prediction for the Parkland kids: Being politicized, they will soon discover conspiracy theory. In this country, "I've become interested in politics" is just another way of saying "Gimme some paranoia fodder." CT is an addictive substance, and most addicts become desperate for ever-stronger doses. Sure, there are a few left-wing conspiracy theorists out there; I'm often considered one of them. We hand out pot. The right-wing conspiracy theorists hand out meth and krokodil. Once the kids get hooked, they will inevitably make a left-to-right shift.
Within a few years, most of the high schoolers now being praised on Democratic Underground and MSNBC will start to sing a very different tune. I've seen it happen before. If you're young, idealistic and politically engaged, you're doomed.
Maybe the process will start when someone hands them a book about the JFK assassination. (Probably one of the really crappy books, like Roger Stone's.)
After that, perhaps someone will hip them to John Judge's theory of Jonestown.
Then they'll discover the unmitigated horror that is the Federal Reserve: "Do you realize that the Globalists create money out of thin air?"
Then they'll pass around fear-stories about the artwork at the Denver airport. Or maybe there will be a batch of new public art somewhere in this country that the fear-mongers can read things into.
Then they'll start talking about "spirit cooking," or whatever might be the 2025 equivalent of that rumor.
The historically-minded among them will spew nonsense about Whitewater and Vince Foster and the Evils of Clintonism. They ones who stay focused on current affairs will spew equally nonsensical bullshit about Kamala Harris or whoever else is the rising Democratic star.
They'll start out reading books by Chomsky and Taibbi -- but over time, their ebook libraries will bulge with works by Nesta Webster and Eustace Mullins and John Coleman.
In order to prove that they are nobody's fool, they will smugly assure potential critics that both parties are equally corrupt and that they themselves are beyond right and left, because that's how fucking "woke" they are. Being typically ill-educated Americans, they will not know what Europeans have known for decades: Anyone who claims to be "beyond right and left" is on the far right. Invariably.
Finally, at a certain point, the Parkland kids will decide that Cruz really was an MKULTRA victim.
Mark my words: The same young activists now asking the Florida legislature to enact modest gun regulations will become convinced that we need an AR-15 in every home to protect us from Hillary Clinton and the Globalist Menace. They will assure one and all that the Great Gun Round-Up is scheduled to happen "sometime next year" -- a prediction I've heard, in one form or another, since 1970 or so.
By that point, the Parkland kids will no longer be kids: They'll be cocky young smirkers heading into their 30s. Like all others of that age, they will consider themselves hip -- incomparably hip, hipper than your wildest dreams of hipness, hipper than all other hipsters who came before.
They will never cop to being what they truly are: Sheeple.
Whenever Conspiracy Theory Incorporated hands them a new vial of junk, whenever Big Conspiracy barks out an order to "Inject this stuff right fucking NOW!" they will obediently bare their arms and try to find an un-scarred vein.
Watch it happen.
I probably won't be around to interview Delaney Tarr in 2030, but you may well be. At that time, this post will still be available somewhere on the net; call it up and check out the accuracy of my forecasts. Obviously, these predictions won't be fulfilled in all details, but the general principle will be proven correct. Hell, don't be surprised if Delaney confesses to being a crisis actor. She may actually believe it.
America is doomed because right-wing conspiracy theory is more addictive than heroin.
Speaking of self-deception: I've read and heard a lot guff from liberals who don't feel bothered by the fact that Alex Van Der Zwaan pled guilty without being a cooperating witness in the Mueller probe. Once again, optimism has blinded everyone to an obvious truth.
Why wouldn't Van Der Zwaan cooperate? Why did he decide to keep his lips zipped even in the face of jail? Because he knows that Trump will pardon him once he shuts down the Mueller probe. (Which he will. Van Der Zwaan knows something you don't.)
I'm am quite certain that Van Der Zwaan has been contacted and told "Don't play ball with Mueller."
I'm also certain that "Person A" is Russian agent Konstantin Kilimnik, Manafort's Russian contact (and likely handler) during the campaign. Kilimnik is the key to proving the case for collusion. Mueller needs someone to blab about Kilimnik.
In a normal probe, Van Der Zwaan would cooperate in order to stay out of jail. Yet he has decided to play the role of Johnny Tightlips, even at the risk of doing some time. It isn't difficult to imagine what kind of carrot and what kind of stick prodded him to make this decision.
Something very similar can be said about the sudden case of cold feet that seems to have hit Rick Gates. It's very obvious -- to me, at least -- that someone got to Gates and told him to tough it out. If he refuses to talk, he'll get a pardon and millions of dollars; if does talk, some Russian hard guy will put him six feet under. It's the same conundrum Eddie Izzard made famous: Cake or death?
That's what I think is going on. Perhaps I'm wrong. If you know of a good counter-argument, please share it.
Will someone please tell Bill Palmer that information disclosed during proffer interviews is not courtroom-quality evidence? The person making the proffer needs to testify. If he suddenly decides not to testify, the information he had privately disclosed would immediately fall into the category of "Things cops know but cannot prove."
Robert Mueller understands this. He brought down mob boss John Gotti. In previous trials, Gotti gained the nickname "John Forgotti" because witnesses against him would suddenly develop amnesia. These same witnesses had spilled many a bean during their proffer interviews. Yet time and again, Gotti walked.
This blog is an optimism-free zone. You want to wander through life in a haze of jolly self-deception? Go elsewhere.
9 comments:
The right wingers are shrewd, mean and have infinite amounts of money.
Disappointed idealism dies painfully, leaving people open to manipulation, and the residue, as you point out, is often rancid.
Occasionally someone will publish a book proclaiming that a bright liberal majority here in America will soon manifest itself. But like you mentioned in this post, after swallowing that idea for awhile I was reminded that most of the counterculture hippies and other children of love from the 1960's eventually became consumerist yuppies and voted for Reagan.
The monkey wrench in the national political machine I can't figure out is how will this all workout as racial demographics reach the point that whites are just another minority. Seriously, I'm asking because you got one side saying we'll all join hands and joyfully sing in unity. While another group thinks the country is going balkanize like Yugoslavia.
What drear future you see. Until the Parkland survivors morph into republican they just might bring about change how Americans view gun culture.
The emails that supposedly incriminated Kevin Kuhnert, Nogroko poster boy and leader of the SPD youth section in Germany, showing he was in cahoots with Russian trolls, have been exposed as fake.
The role of Titanic magazine in Germany seems to be similar to Private Eye's role in Britain - a safety-valve. Who they're working for in this I've yet to form a hypothesis on.
Meanwhile, there has been a fake story about a dog joining the SPD so as to vote Nogroko. Complete with photograph. Plastered all over the media.
In Britain, the "Jeremy Corbyn worked for the StB/KGB" story may have neen thrown out to help German intelligence or at least some faction. Momentum International is actively helping the Nogroko campaign in Germany, and in fact the chairman of that campaign is Steve Hudson, who is British.
Whether or not there's a CDU-SPD coalition in Germany looks to be very important to some people. More stories will come.
Curiously, Timothy Garton-Ash, whom some may suppose is not wholly naive in matters relating to SIS, is also backing Nogroko, penning a specious article in the Guardian with that aim. Apparently if you understand "history" as well as Garton-Ash does, you'll realise that a CDU-SPD coalition would make Germany league up with Macron to stop Greece from starving the next time the finances go wobbly, which would help the German far right. And we can't have that. Oh no. And remember, people like Tim really understand the foreign mind. That's the kind of propaganda shit that this Oxford academic comes out with. Sure, it won't influence many SPD members, but nonetheless I am getting the feeling that a powerful Brit faction plans to help unseat Angela Merkel and to do it fast - before a non-caretaker government is formed in Germany.
There have been a number of unexplained events at a high level in German politics in the past few days.
"Bild further assured readers that it had contacted several IT experts who told it that the emails had originated from an SPD server."
Yeah right, so it wasn't just Titanic pranking or making a point, then.
Joseph wrote…"Anyone who claims to be "beyond right and left" is on the far right. Invariably. " end quote.
I have heard the same thing said by conservatives, except the conservatives claim the person is on the far left.
@Alessandro - Those conservatives are wrong. The "beyondists" they have in mind probably include not just centrist pragmatism merchants, but mainly far-rightists such as neo-Nazis, whom they would call "leftwing" and "socialist".
It is a fact that "neither left nor right" and "beyond left and right" have a long fascist pedigree.
(It's true that there have also been some genuine ultra-leftists who describe themselves as "against the left, right and centre" - I used to be one - but they have been FAR fewer in number and far less influential.)
Leftwingers who say the same as Joe and me and Charles Péguy [*] and Loren Goldner are correct.
For a current case of "beyond left and right", see the Five Star Movement in Italy.
(*) For Joe there's the added bonus with Charles Péguy that he was keen on Joan of Arc :-)
Joseph, I just want to thank you for your comments. You provide a wealth of thoughtful grist to think on. So different from the tripe that passes for commentary. I very often think you are spot on. I wish it weren’t so, though! But I love reading and often re-reading what you write. Many thanks for what you do.
How far-right/fascist conspiracy theories are getting mainlined into (and subverting) people on the left is something I've really been noticing over the last decade.
On this general topic....I've come across some interesting material lately.
The French have a word for some of what we're seeing - "Confusionnisme"
As the lefty blog Tendance Coatesy notes: "The growth of political “confusionism”, the mixture of “conspi” (conspiratorial), nationalist, far-right and apparently ‘left-wing’ has been one of the features of the last years."
Some discussion on this general topic:
Confusionnisme.info
http://www.confusionnisme.info/index.php/vous-avez-dit-confusionnisme/
"An Investigation Into Red-Brown Alliances: Third Positionism, Russia, Ukraine, Syria, And The Western Left."
https://ravingsofaradicalvagabond.noblogs.org/post/2018/01/15/an-investigation-into-red-brown-alliances/
"Exposing and Defeating the Fascist Creep"
http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/40143-exposing-and-defeating-the-fascist-creep
[Alexander Reid Ross, who wrote "Against the Fascist Creep", has also written some decent articles regarding Russian influence campaigns - e.g.
https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2018/02/21/internet-research-agency-behind-shadowy-network-meddled-2016-elections ]
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