The 2022 midterm elections are expected to cost $9.3 billion. Whether we swallow the just-so story that Trump stole the 2016 election or the just-so story that the Democrats stole 2020, in reality, US elections were long ago stolen and auctioned off to corporate funders. Neither party presents us with viable solutions - they only present obstacles. The United States is a textbook example of a country headed toward civil war. To think the elections are going to remedy the tailspin of our government is naive - it only feeds the beast of predatory politics. Tonight on Ground Zero, Clyde Lewis talks with media journalist and political analyst, Ben Swann about PREDATORY POLITICS.
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https://aftermath.media/podcast/11-7-22-predatory-politics-w-ben-swann/
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The 2022 midterm elections are expected to cost $9.3 billion. Whether we swallow the just-so story that Trump stole the 2016 election or the just-so story that the Democrats stole 2020, in reality, US elections were long ago stolen and auctioned off to corporate funders.
Elections offer us only a choice of which party we hope against all hope would do something for us. Neither corporate party presents us with solutions, they only present obstacles.
Again, we can scream from the rafters that this midterm election is the most important election in our lives. I heard this when Hillary ran, and I heard this when Biden ran undefined It was the overworn axiom of you vote is a vote for democracy.
Saturday Night Live while Lampoon the current President sought equal time about abortion with Amy Schumer speaking about it in her monologue, and Cecily Strong again put herself in the spotlight again. Last time she was a clown that got an abortion and now she is a trucker.. with some other skit that went nowhere and made people feel uncomfortable.
In the midterm elections, a number of Democrats make an issue of voting for them to protect women’s right to choose. However, we can expect women’s right to abortion will be forgotten the day after the election, junked like past Democrat promises to take US troops out of Iraq, create national health care, and raise the minimum wage.
Biden himself had not been a supporter of the Roe v Wade decision on women’s right to choose, even supported a constitutional amendment that would allow states to overturn it and pass their own laws about abortion; basically, the same as the recent Republican Supreme Court decision.
But the media would never cop to that undefined but it is true. Your Left Wing president has a lot of rightwing views no matter how many transgender people and black lesbians are in his cabinet undefined his record is not always full of the squeaky clean platitudes he makes about race, including his cynical choice of vice president.
S. Eliot tells us at the end of his 1925 poem how the world ends. He says the world ends not with a bang but a whimper. With apologies to Eliot, I can tell you how the war continues undefined not with someone demanding it stop but a whimper because those who spoke up worried that they would be accuse for being right wing terrorists.
For almost one day the “leftist” Congressional Progressive Caucus published a letter to Biden asking him to support negotiations to end the Ukraine war. But they almost immediately withdrew it and apologized, scared they would be seen as aligned with “rightwing” anti-war Republicans. They pointed out that the Democrats, like good Bush-Cheney neo-cons, “have strongly and unanimously supported and voted for” every military escalation in the war.
The letter went as far as asking President Joe Biden to try all means of ending the conflict in Ukraine, including “direct talks with Russia.undefined
Penned by Congressional Progressive Caucus chair Pramila Jayapal , the letter called on Biden to “seriously explore all possible avenues, including direct engagement with Russia, to reduce harm and support Ukraine in achieving a peaceful settlement.” Some 30 House Democrats, including Ilhan Omar and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez lent their signatures to the letter as well.
Within hours, Jayapal “clarified” that the progressive caucus still backs Biden’s “ongoing military and economic support” for Kiev, and soon the letter was withdrawn entirely.
In a statement, Jayapal blamed staffers for releasing the letter. She went on to explain that the letter was pulled as it “created the unfortunate appearance” that the progressives were aligning with the growing minority of Republican lawmakers talking about reducing aid to Ukraine.
House and Senate Democrats voted unanimously to allocate $40 billion in military and economic aid to Kiev earlier this summer, with only 68 Republicans across both chambers opposing. However, with the GOP looking likely to retake Congress in the up coming elelction party leader Kevin McCarthy declared last week that the new majority is not “going to write a blank check to Ukraine.”
The retraction brings the progressives’ position on Ukraine back in line with that of Biden and the combined Democrat and Republican establishment. The president has promised to send weapons to Ukraine “for as long as it takes,” and to let Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky decide when to seek peace. Zelensky has ruled out any peace talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin, and has vowed to capture parts of the territory of the Russian Federation, including Crimea.
But keep in mind that true socialists should abhor the war. This is why you see the socialist squad write a letter to later have it removed.
Actual socialists in Congress would demand we stop instigating war with Russia, (now topping $66 billion, and instead eliminate homelessness costing $20 billion, and hunger $25 billion as emergency first steps.
But look at the hypocrisy they possess undefined 100% of the Democrats including Bernie, AOC, and the Squad voted like neo-cons for tens of billions in handouts to military contractors to further war in Ukraine.
Do you still trust the crooks you are looking into voting for?
As you are placing your votes tomorrow maybe you should think about this incident and how no matter how you vote undefined both sides are too stubborn to come to an agreement on our future and so you are placing your vote once again for another round of predatory politics.
Neither the Democrats nor the Republicans are offering anything to alleviate the problems working people face. thus is illustrated by their campaign fear-mongering. their campaign of hate, and the way the media has conducted themselves by using magic words like Democracy and Denier to reinforce the fear people have about another magic word called Fascism.
The Left media uses words like “Fascism” and “Socialism” to prep us for the use of these general words in commonality with stakeholder capitalism in the Fourth revolution.
Other words, that will be used are socialists and radicals. domestic terrorists, dissenters. traitors and I can list more as both Republican and Democratic labels are beginning to fragment.
It is obvious that this is what is happening and there are superstar politicians that are chameleons that weasel their way into top cabinets to push attitudes toward world government.
Several years before Arizonaundefineds Kari Lake embraced the far-right politics of President Donald Trump, she registered as a Democrat just as Barack Obama’s presidential ambitions got a big lift.
The Republican candidate for governor and former Phoenix TV news anchor made the switch the day after Obama’s stunning defeat of Democratic rival Hillary Clinton in the 2008 Iowa caucuses.
Lake has branded herself as the most conservative Republican in the governor’s race.
She tells her constituents that she grew up conservative, and that undefinedher husband and children share those values.undefined
But a review of Lake’s voting history reveals that her support for Obama was part of a significant departure from her conservative roots: She left the Republican Party in 2006 and returned in 2012, as Obama’s fourth year in office began.
Lake’s misgivings about the Republican Party began as early as 2004. She made her first campaign donation that year - to a Democratic presidential candidate.
She says that she changed her mind because of the ward in Iran and Afghanistan.
She also was quoted as saying: “There was a period of time when I really thought the Republican Party had lost its way with the endless wars in Afghanistan and Iraq,”
So would there be some reason to endorse the war in Ukraine while still claiming to be a republican undefined and does the media take pride in calling her an election denier, because they are all part of the deal to allow predatory politics to continue.
The media love to meddle in elections undefined they do it whenever they can. From the January 6th Hearings. to the Roe V. Wade fearmongering.
But now we are learning what we suspected all along undefined that January 6th, was a coup but those that were carrying it out where not the protestors.
Reporter Julie Kelly is breaking news that General Mark Milley possibly ran the show against American citizens during the Jan 6 incident, using armed military personnel, surveillance and intelligence collection platforms.
Here is an excerpt from the breaking article:
Jeffrey Rosen had a secret on January 6, 2021.
The then-acting attorney general—Rosen was appointed on December 24, 2020 to replace departing Attorney General William Barr—had assembled a team of elite and highly skilled government agents at Quantico, a nexus point between the FBI and U.S. military, the weekend before Congress met to certify the results of the 2020 presidential election. At the same time, he was rejecting President Donald Trump’s last-minute appeals to investigate election fraud, Rosen was managing a hush-hush operation in advance of planned rallies and protests in Washington on January 6.
“Rosen made a unilateral decision to take the preparatory steps to deploy Justice Department and so-called ‘national’ forces,” Newsweek reporter William M. Arkin disclosed in a bombshell report earlier this year. “There was no formal request from the U.S. Capitol Police, the Secret Service, or the Metropolitan Police Department—in fact, no external request from any agency. The leadership in Justice and the FBI anticipated the worst and decided to act independently, the special operations forces lurking behind the scenes.”
Those assets, according to Arkin, included “commandos” with shoot-to-kill authority. And among them were members of the military.
Kelly is now releasing information from the DOD IG report which shows DOD was the lead agency in the incident. In short, the U.S. military ran the whole thing in possible violation of the Constitution.
This shows the U.S. Federal government may have broken all trust with the American people and the leadership of today’s American armed forces is acting in a treasonous manner against the founding.
All signs point to a deep involvement by the military working with the Department of Justice before January 6th.
And the media continues to overuse the term The Big Lie- when the whole setup of the modern-day Reichstag fire was a big lie to muddle in the election process. Turning a failed coup into a successful witch hunt to point fingers at the wrong people.
Remember this when you cast your vote for more predatory politics.
You see the left needs to use the magic word fascism to mislead you. The left only needs to use the term fascism only when their customary method of rule breaks down and they face a very direct threat of losing control to revolutionary forces.
The historic function of fascism is to smash the radicalized working class and its allies, destroy their organizations and shut down political liberties when the corporate rulers find themselves unable to govern through their charade of democracy.
This is why you are constantly hearing Biden refer to the MAGA crowd as a threat to their Democracy -and that when you cast your vote you are either voting for democracy or fascism.
Smart people realize they are voting for neither. They are voting in good faith undefined but attitudes can change on a dime- the war in Ukraine proves this. The use of the word denier with regards to election also proves this. No representation is granted to those who question the election undefined they are deniers according to the left and that is the end of the story.
Anything else is either denial or dangerous conspiracy theory.
For decades the U.S. media has worked hand-in-glove with the CIA to reinforce their official lies by calling those who have exposed those lies “conspiracy theorists,” a term that the CIA itself promoted and the media continues to use daily to ridicule dissent. The term has been around since the assassination of JFK.
The phrase “conspiracy theorist” is a handy social usage regularly used now to dismiss critics of any official claim, not just the Kennedys’ murders. Additionally, it is used to lump together the most absurd claims available-Like Bat Boy giving birth to Bigfoot with the exposure of real government conspiracies in order to dismiss both as ridiculous.
None of these so-called candidates are going to address the inhumanity that was shown during the Covid 19 pandemic. Destroying small businesses, crippling the economies, fattening up the elites and the wealthiest classes and corporations, injecting millions with untested mRNA so-called vaccines.
People are now accustomed to accepting further restrictions on their natural rights under the guise of protecting their health while severely damaging their health. Despite the fact that all the official claims have been proven false, the fear of death and disease, promoted for many years, has dramatically entered into the social bloodstream and additional censorship of dissenting voices has been embraced.
In all these examples and so many more, people’s minds have been slowly and insidiously filled with ideas and distorted facts that are false and controlling, similar to a hoarder’s accretion of objects that can overwhelm them. The propagandists have stuffed them with “things” that can assuage their fear of emptiness and the consequent possibility of being able to think clearly for themselves.
The gaslighting of America is again another example of predatory politics.
On Halloween, the Atlantic ran an article that David Knight spoke of when he appeared on Ground Zero last Thursday.
It was headlined:
LET’S DECLARE A PANDEMIC AMNESTY
With the sub-headline:
undefinedWe need to forgive one another for what we did and said when we were in the dark about COVID.undefined
The general perception has been that it is some kind of admission of defeat, perhaps a recognition that the “pandemic” was not real, and that those pushing the narrative had been in the wrong; a genuine plea for understanding or forgiveness.
But while the headline may appear to be suggesting that – and, indeed, was perhaps chosen carefully to create that impression – it’s actually nothing of the kind.
I actually wondered about that too undefined so I read it with one of my trial glances before they want my subscription.
It’s not an apology, a backward step or a segue to our old pre-Covid reality. They are not looking for forgiveness for how they treated us. They want those who were animate about not getting the vaccine, or speaking out against the government to be forgiven.
It’s just more narrative reinforcement.
In February this year, the Guardian ran an article supposedly about how “scientists were admitting their mistakes” over “covid”. And what do you think those “mistakes” were?
Was it about selling out and caving in and going along with the mass deployment of a potentially deadly and totally unnecessary “experimental” vax?
Not at all. They just didn’t trust the narrative enough.
It was nothing new, it was nothing honest. Just the modern equivalent of reformed sinners praising God for their conversion to the light.
Emily Oster, the author of the Amnesty article, basically says the same thing:
“We wore cloth masks outside”, regrets Oster, revealing she now realizes they wouldn’t do anything (but plastic masks inside still work, of course).
“We kept schools closed for too long”, she further laments, without mentioning they never needed to be closed at all, or conceding this was done cynically to create fear and isolation.
And the biggest oops of all?
When the vaccines came out, we lacked definitive data on the relative efficacies of the Johnson & Johnson shot versus the mRNA options from Pfizer and Moderna. The mRNA vaccines have won out. But at the time, many people in public health were either neutral or expressed a J&J preference. This misstep wasn’t nefarious. It was the result of uncertainty.
Not only do the masks gag me but so does this article.
In other words, some of us didn’t realize those Pfizer jabs were as amazing as they turned out to be!
Do you still think this is a genuine recognition of the fact Covid skeptics were right the whole time?
I am sorry undefined I always learn that reading the article is better than assuming that maybe there were some of the doctors that regret they were just following orders.. but I guess they know that this reasoning didnundefinedt work for the Nazis that hanged in the Hague.
It is just like assuming that someone who represents your flavor of politics is either red hot or true blue.
The more I see the political strategies for the midterms the more I realize that the left is saying that you may make the great mistake of voting in a Bogeyman that is a fascist election denying medieval abortion thinking Jason Voorhees- this is why they say that you need to cast a vote for democracy and not fascism.
The definitions are cartoon-like but effective in getting the ravenous left to say that the vote may set the country back 50 years.
It is particularly regretful that many leftists themselves stoop to this low level of seeking to scare people about fascism to get them to vote Democratic. Leftists should be educating people to think for themselves, to organize together to fight for their rights, and not instill fear of some bogeyman.
Neither party has anything to offer to improve our lives that could win us their vote. They offer us fear and hatred of the other party. Ironic, as both parties are substantially the same thing.
Whoever we vote for, we will be voting for the authoritarian corporate rule, with the national security state, the real US government – an unelected one – running the show. The national security state has been more aligned with the Democrats than the Republicans since 2015-16 when Trump began denouncing their wars in the Middle East.
To use the now meaningless terms of “left” and “right”, the Republicans are far more to the left than the Democrats on the war in Ukraine. For instance, 68 Republicans – 57 in the House and 11 in the Senate – voted against the $40 billion Ukraine military package (out of 50 in the Senate and 212 in the House). All the Democrats toed the national security state line on squandering now $66 billion to advance the war against Russia.
People can be pacifists in any party but to tear down Bidenundefineds little missile-wagging contest makes you Hitler and a Putin Boot licker. Politics now are more of a playground affair than a civic duty with a modicum of civil reverence.
A politician is also a brand name as it all appears to be a marketing campaign for a new choice of bogeymen or women.
Many political extremists are trying to force the population to choose sides, in part by demonstrating to citizens that one party cannot keep them safe or provide basic necessities.
Whether the radical left or right realize it or not they are generating support for violent measures if one party takes the wheel. I am sure that there are already police state plans for any party that decides to revolt against a right-heavy or left-heavy vote.
Insurgency experts have wondered whether January 6th would be the beginning of such a sustained series of attacks. This has not yet happened, but the media gleefully tells us that there is still a chance and that the various fragmented militias who declare civil war will be right-wing extremists.
Civil war experts know that two factors put countries at high risk of civil war. The US has one of these risk factors and remains dangerously close to the second. Neither risk factor has diminished since 6 January. The first is ethnic factionalism. This happens when citizens in a country organize themselves into political parties based on ethnic, religious, or racial identity rather than ideology. The second is anocracy.
This is when a government is neither fully democratic nor fully autocratic; it’s something in between. Civil wars almost never happen in full, healthy, strong democracies. They also seldom happen in full autocracies. Violence almost always breaks out in countries in the middle – those with weak and unstable pseudo-democracies. Anocracy plus factionalism is a dangerous mix.
We also know who tends to start civil wars, especially those fought between different ethnic, religious and racial groups. This also does not bode well for the US. The groups that tend to resort to violence are not the poorest groups, or the most downtrodden.
It’s the group that had once been politically dominant but is losing power. It’s the loss of political status – a sense of resentment that they are being replaced and that the identity of their country is no longer theirs – that tends to motivate these groups to organize.
So, are we casting our bets for the midterms undefined who will lose their position of power, and will they resort to massive city-wide riots?
No civil war ever has a single cause. It’s always a multitude of factors that lead to decline and collapse. The current US has several of what the CIA calls “threat multipliers”: environmental crises continue to batter the country, economic inequality is at its highest level since the founding of the country, and demographic change means that the US will be a minority white country within just over two decades. All of these factors tend to contribute to civil unrest wherever they are found in the world.
But the US is more vulnerable to political violence than other countries because of the decrepitude of its institutions. For 40 years, trust in institutions of all kinds – the church, the police, journalism, academia – has been in freefall. Trust in politicians can hardly fall any lower. And there is no reason for trust.
Quasi-legitimacy is what leads to violence. And America’s political institutions are destined to become more and more quasi-legitimate from now on. One of the surest markers of incipient civil war in other countries is the legal system devolving from a non-partisan, truly national institution to a spoil of partisan war. That has already happened in the US.
To think that the elections are going to remedy the tailspin of our government is naïve. It only feeds the beat of predatory politics.
The 2022 midterms don’t matter all that much; they will inform us if anything, of the schedule and the manner of the fall of the republic. The results might delay the decline, or accelerate it, but at this point, no merely political outcome can prevent the downfall. America has passed the point at which the triumph of one party or another can fix what’s wrong with it, and the kind of structural change that’s necessary isn’t on the table. This is a moment between two American politics. The wind has been sown. The whirlwind is yet to be reaped.
The United States is a textbook example of a country headed toward civil war. The trends increasingly point one way, and while nobody knows the future, little – if anything – is being done, by anyone, to try to prevent the collapse of the republic.
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SHOW GUEST: BEN SWANN
Ben Swann has spent 20 years working as a journalist in broadcast news at FOX, NBC, and CBS stations, and is a two-time Emmy Award winner and two-time recipient of the Edward R. Murrow Award.
He’s also been threatened with being fired for daring to speak truth to power, has had his videos shadow banned and removed from social media sites, and has been smeared by The NYT, and the tech giants among others.
All of this is why he has Isegoria.com,(from the ancient Greek meaning “equality of all through freedom of speech”) an uncensored, blockchain-based, decentralized news and entertainment platform with a funding mechanism for independent media. Benundefineds website is https://sovren.media/
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