http://www.mysteriesmagazine.com/articles/issue18.html

New Age COINTELPRO and the Optimism Gestapo
by Jaye Beldo


Why has there not been a mass transformation of consciousness, culminating in peace on earth, as so many promised back in the early days of the New Age movement? The answer is that there may be a metaphysical COINTELPRO at work, all under the cover of love and light.

Most people remember COINTELPRO from the days of the Black Panthers, Yippies, and other revolutionary groups who threatened our government during the civil rights movement and the Vietnam war. Sensing that these groups might incite American citizens into radical action, the FBI sent in agents to agitate members of these various groups, often pitting them against each other through various forms of subterfuge, such as blackmail.

It appears that the CIA, FBI, and NSA are now sending their goons into the metaphysical marketplace, making sure that people who think they are aspiring to higher and positively transformative things are, in reality, only becoming more self-indulgent, disconnected, and confused.

The biggest influx of these agents occurred during the blossoming of the "human potential" movement in the early '70s, through such institutions as Esalen. Legions of people threw away their protest banners and followed their bliss during a time when directly addressing the socio-political problems of the day was imperative.

Since then, the emphasis on personal development—and more recently, the You Create Your Own Reality movement—a significant segment of the population has been brainwashed into disdaining all socio-political issues. For what better way to disempower people than to have them focus on their personal evolution at the expense of their families, communities, and the countries they live in?

Metaphysical Double-Speak

Probably the most flagrant examples of New Age COINTELPRO are channelers who convey disturbing messages from supposedly highly evolved discarnate entities. For example, when the war in Iraq first started in 2003, a well-known channeler in Santa Fe, NM, who channels the ancient Egyptian goddess Sekhmet, allegedly claimed that the war was an "ultimate expression of [Sekhmet's] compassion for the human race." It would take a considerable amount of gullibility to swallow this kind of nonsense, but swallow it the New Agers did.

With such multidimensional "logic" at hand, practically any injustice, whether torture, environmental destruction, or manipulation of the economy by global powers, can be justified as an act of compassion. This is no different from the theocratic stance of George W. Bush when he said that God told him to invade Iraq! Such metaphysical double-speak is dangerous, yet is nevertheless seeping into popular culture.

Of course, not all channelers are working for the shadow government. Rather, we should use much discernment in regard to channeled information. If channeled information through predictions of global cataclysm, for instance, creates fear and makes us feel ungrounded, unsure, and mistrusting, then it probably is coming from a COINTELPRO source and should be taken with an immense grain of salt.

The Optimism Gestapo

However, perhaps the most insidious aspect of the New Age movement is what I call the Optimism Gestapo, or those who regulate and insist on positive thinking by any means necessary, where any criticism or expression of negative or painful emotions are disdained.

I once brought up to an Ashtar Command "ascencionist" (i.e. someone who believes that extraterrestrials will come and save her), the fact that democratic senator Paul Wellstone may have been murdered in order to get republican Norm Coleman elected. Before I could elaborate, she cut me off by saying, "It was just his time." She was intolerant of the fact that I dared interfere with the reality she was creating, free of conspiracy, cutthroat politicians, and skullduggery. And the more I have played devil's advocate with New Agers, the more I have discovered that such intolerance is the norm. For there currently is a belief amongst New Agers that anything negative that one expresses will only further magnetize negativity. However, those who pursue this line of thinking just end up repressing their negative emotions, only to have them burst forth in uncontrollable ways.

As an example, I once was in a massage therapist's office proofreading a manuscript for him. I was reading how he had a deep respect for his Japanese ancestors who originated the massage techniques he used in his practice. The phone rang and I heard him say, "Just dial 911," then slammed the phone down. He then turned to me and explained, "That was my wife. My kid just fell down some stairs. I can't deal with it."

On the surface, the massage therapist conveyed an aura of humaneness and caring, all the while repressing his shadow side, as evidenced by his coldness towards his wife and child. Dr. Carl Jung recognized the danger of such repression and recommended confronting the nether-regions of our psyches—primarily through dream work—as a way of achieving healthy psychological equilibrium.

Anyone seeking a supportive metaphysical community should first ask themselves if their ability to think independently is being compromised. For keeping one's metaphysical radar functioning is most important in a world crawling with "forced cheer" gurus, COINTELPRO channelers, and self-help authors.

http://i19.photobucket.com/albums/b158/kellymarano/Toledowelcome1-1.jpg

"Why has there not been a mass transformation of consciousness, culminating in peace on earth, as so many promised back in the early days of the New Age movement? The answer is that there may be a metaphysical COINTELPRO at work... It appears that the CIA, FBI, and NSA are now sending their goons into the metaphysical marketplace, making sure that people who think they are aspiring to higher and positively transformative things are, in reality, only becoming more self-indulgent, disconnected, and confused."

What proof is offered? None. It must be the FBI. Otherwise, how can we account for New Agers being so "self-indulgent, disconnected, and confused"?

"Anyone seeking a supportive metaphysical community should first ask themselves if their ability to think independently is being compromised. For keeping one's metaphysical radar functioning is most important in a world crawling with "forced cheer" gurus, COINTELPRO channelers, and self-help authors."

Anyone seeking a metaphysical New Age community should first ask themselves whether suicide is not a more socially beneficial option.

http://psychicinvestigator.com/demo/IMG00195.GIF

Chlamor posted an essay that began:


Why has there not been a mass transformation of consciousness, culminating in peace on earth, as so many promised back in the early days of the New Age movement? The answer is that there may be a metaphysical COINTELPRO at work, all under the cover of love and light.

To which Anaxarchos replied:


What proof is offered? None. It must be the FBI. Otherwise, how can we account for New Agers being so "self-indulgent, disconnected, and confused"?

To which I say there is proof aplenty:

First though it is essential we recognize that COINTELPRO was only one part of a huge offensive by the capitalist Ruling Class -- an offensive that was thus government-wide -- against the Counterculture from which not just the anti-Vietnam War protests but feminism, environmentalism, the Back-to-the-Land Movement, the resurrection of goddess-worship and the so-called New Age Movement were all born. The following is from a 2006 issue of U.S. News and World Report:

“The war on the (Countercultural) press, which at its peak claimed some 7 million readers a month, included efforts by the FBI, the CIA, Army intelligence, and local police to spy on and disrupt alternative newspapers…The CIA, despite a ban on domestic spying, ran Operation Chaos, with a database of 1.5 million Americans that included composer Leonard Bernstein and author John Steinbeck.”

http://www.usnews.com/usnews/news/artic ... 9spy.b.htm (http://www.usnews.com/usnews/news/articles/060109/9spy.b.htm)

Here are five documentary links that detail the facts summarized above:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_CHAOS

http://www.cia-on-campus.org/surveil/chaos.html

http://www.serendipity.li/cia/lyon.html

http://www.icdc.com/~paulwolf/cointelpr ... rtIIIi.htm (http://www.icdc.com/~paulwolf/cointelpro/churchfinalreportIIIi.htm)

http://www.utwatch.org/archives/cjr_dissidentpress.html

Note that each of these document-excerpts states clearly that the operations to which the CIA admitted were only those that had already been compromised. Which awareness clearly informs the following four commentaries. The first of these is from the perspective of the Countercultural music and poetry community; the second from the perspective of the Socialist Workers Party; the third from an African-American perspective, the last an interdisciplinary overview:

http://www.maebrussell.com/Mae%20Brusse ... Chaos.html (http://www.maebrussell.com/Mae%20Brussell%20Articles/Operation%20Chaos.html)

http://www3.niu.edu/~td0raf1/1960s/Free ... xcerpt.htm (http://www3.niu.edu/~td0raf1/1960s/Freedom%20Under%20Fire%20excerpt.htm)

http://www.stewartsynopsis.com/Stanton% ... _press.htm (http://www.stewartsynopsis.com/Stanton%20Files/sham_of_freedom_of_the_press.htm)

http://home.swipnet.se/allez/Local/3/chaos.htm

Moreover, while CHAOS was supposedly discontinued in 1974, I can personally attest to the fact that CHAOS-type operations continued long afterwards. Examples include a succession of efforts to destroy The Seattle Sun (1974-1981), an alternative newspaper that was unique in both its founding by a cadre of professional journalists and its nationally recognized reportorial excellence (it exposed the largest municipal-bond bankruptcy in human history a decade before the bankers admitted the loss); the destruction of an entire community of Countercultural businesses in Bellingham, Washington c. 1972-1976; the concurrent destruction of the communal, Back-to-the-Land society those businesses helped to support; and the agitation of police-protected vigilante terrorism against communards (and later against people suspected of paganism) that began in 1969, continued well into the 1980s and characterizes life in some parts of rural Western Washington even now.

The mysterious 1983 fire that destroyed my life’s work has to be viewed in the same context. The material that was burned included journals and camera work begun in my teens and spanning every year until the fire; the investigative-journalism files I amassed from 1963 through 1981, with detailed notes on several pivotal stories (including my 1970 exposé of the heroin-addiction epidemic inflicted on the U.S. by the Vietnam War and the federal government’s effort to keep it secret); approximately two dozen award-certificates and commendations I had earned by my reporting; and the research and photography for two books in progress -- each a challenge to core doctrines the Ruling Class regards as essential to the maintenance of the status quo.

One of the destroyed manuscripts, still untitled at the time of its destruction, was the summation of a five-year effort in collaboration with the late Helen Farias to catalogue some of the archaeological and linguistic evidence of pre-Columbian European presence in the Pacific Northwest. Using a method I had derived from Neolithic and Bronze Age applications of certain solar and lunar azimuths, the two of us had discovered, explored, photographed and mapped a dozen widely dispersed mounds, standing stones, trenches and other sites of undoubted significance, most of them deep in the Western Washington back-country. Meanwhile Helen herself had begun searching the indigenous Salish language for foreign words and references to encounters with outlanders, building the first-ever comparative Salish vocabulary to do so. All of this work we undertook in informal cooperation with the late Barry Fell and the New England Antiquities Research Association. At the very least, it was our intention to add our findings to the growing body of evidence that North America was a cultural melting pot even 4,000 years ago -- academically accepted truth everywhere on the planet save (ironically) in the U.S. itself, where since the early 1980s all such knowledge has been methodically suppressed for theocratic and political reasons.

The chief culprits in this astoundingly brazen act of intellectual robbery are the Christians, politicians acting on their behalf and American Aboriginal peoples who have been seduced into joining the theocratic coalition, all seeking to obliterate -- often by unabashedly violent means (note for example the federal government‘s methodical destruction of the Kennewick Man site) -- any evidence that suggests significant non-Amerindian presence in North America before Columbus. The Christians are terrified by the implications of the achievements of the pre-Christian settlers, which left continent-wide oral traditions of peaceful and cooperative relations with native populations -- the very reason the tribes were so often initially friendly to the likes of Myles Standish or Lewis and Clark. The oral traditions thus support the hypothesis that genocide and imperialism are not definitively Caucasian or European but are instead Abrahamic (or at least patriarchal) in origin -- a conclusion the Christians, for obvious reasons, want suppressed at any cost and by whatever means necessary. The aboriginals have meanwhile been frightened into supporting the Christians by rational fears the capitalists will use such discoveries to deny land and reparations claims.

Thus in a very real sense the loss of the information Helen and I had assembled was a triumph for the forces of ignorance and oppression. One of the most important archaeological sites has since been destroyed by developers (something we had hoped to prevent), and all but two of the remaining sites are permanently off limits due to state-imposed closure of the back country -- access to which is now effectively limited to members of the horse-aristocracy. Most of our material -- especially the photographs, site drawings and map coordinates -- is irreplaceable, now and forever.

But the worst fire-loss of all was the project on which I had been at work since 1959, a compilation of evidence that began with my suspicion the folk-music renaissance was a genuine anachronism, especially given that era’s predictions of an ultra-technocratic future, and that the sudden anomalous popularity of a definitively antique art-form was therefore significant and revealing -- if I could but discern its meaning. Eventually I discovered that the most popular traditional ballads were the secularized remnants of the lays of magic and invocatory liturgies of goddess-worship: Jack Orion was once the Star Lord, another of the many once-and-future kings, as were John Barleycorn and Tam Lin, while Janet, Willy’s Lady and Katharine Jaffrey were once the Great Goddess herself. Finally, after years of informally studying folklore, myth and contemporary sociology while pursuing a full-time journalism career, I became convinced the Counterculture‘s “revolution in consciousness” was nothing less than the spontaneous resurrection of that entire pagan ethos, complete with restoration of the epicentral role of the bard (the musicians), the once-sacred prerogatives of women (feminism) and the implicit divinity of nature (environmentalism and the Gaia Hypothesis). Indeed it was as if certain ancient combinations of words and music, even in disguised or modified forms, had retained a power not merely to invoke imagery but to shape society as well -- perhaps the ultimate proof that art may indeed structure life. Ever more sure of my conclusions, by 1976 I had drawn the material together into a (hugely controversial) Bachelor of Arts thesis, and by 1982 it had become a rough draft of approximately 105,000 words (350 pages in typewriter elite) complete with photographs, bibliography and the support of an entire filing cabinet full of notes. By this time its working title described its contents perfectly: “Glimpses of a Pale Dancer.”

When I returned to New York City in 1983, I left this work too in Washington state, stored with all my other papers and photographs at my friend Helen’s rural home, a cedar-log farmhouse built in the 1880s by her pioneer ancestors.

Though I knew “Dancer” was significant, a Marxist friend in Manhattan -- a seasoned book-editor with strong publishing-house connections -- became convinced merely on the basis of an oral précis and a few of the photographs it was even more pivotal than I dared imagine: she believed it was (or could be shaped into) literally the missing link between materialism and spirituality. If I would let her edit the text, she would guarantee its publication. I agreed, but on the very date I was to meet my friend and a literary agent to finalize our agreement -- not just on 1 September 1983 but at the precise moment, 7:30 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time which is 4:30 p.m. Pacific Daylight Time, Helen’s house mysteriously “caught fire” and burned to the ground.

The cause of the fire was never adequately explained -- supposedly an electric clock had short-circuited at exactly 4:30 p.m., a newly installed breaker-box had somehow failed to open the circuit and the overheating clock had thus ignited a stack of newspapers which then fired the entire house -- a finding every expert I consulted said was patently unbelievable. Moreover when I pressed for additional information I ran into something that as an investigative reporter I recognized all too well: the wall of fear thrown up by one who has been threatened to silence. Not that I was surprised: the message of the synchronous times -- classic psychological warfare -- was (and remains) too obvious to ignore.

Helen was unhurt by the fire, and her most vital work (which included the founding materials for two cutting-edge women’s-spirituality journals, the quarterly Beltane Papers and the monthly Octava) survived because they were stored at her Western Washington University office. Helen’s tragic death, 11 years later by cancer, was (seemingly) unrelated.

I however was utterly destroyed by the fire, precisely as I believe the arsonist(s) intended: like most males, my work was both my identity and my proof of relevance, and without it I was nobody, a non-person. Predictably I sank into clinical depression, was eventually sifted through welfare-bureaucracy gender quotas and discarded into official permanent disability. The resultant odium condemned me to inescapable obscurity. I will never photograph again -- even after all these years the process is too excruciatingly painful. And though I constantly write (which for a writer is after all no less essential than breathing), it is with the certain knowledge that because of my aforementioned disreputability it will come to nothing at all.

Was this eternally devastating fire truly set by CHAOS, still secretly operational in defiance of Congress? I have no idea. But I have no doubt it was something like CHAOS -- which is why I do not for a second question the accusation implicit in Chlamor’s post: that there is a “metaphysical COINTELPRO” at work even now. Indeed especially now, as the dread reality of U.S. theocracy becomes ever more obvious.

Note too the eerie frequency of cancer deaths among women associated with the resurrection of the goddess and the pagan renaissance: not only Helen in 1994, but two others just within the past four months: Marione Thompson-Helland, the editor of Beltane Papers since 1996, died 3 September 2007, and the deservedly legendary musician/bard Shekinah Mountainwater died on 11 August 2007. Is the Jack Ruby option still in official use?

However -- though I am surely no optimist (which anyone familiar with this site knows very well) -- let me point out there are other forces at work too. Quoth Taliesin, probably the First Taliesin, the Taliesin who lived 2600 years ago and wrote pagan prophecy:

The tops of the beech-tree
Have spouted of late
Are changed and renewed
From their withered state…

His meaning remains obscure until we discover that the beech in European tree-wisdom is said to represent the Great Goddess.

Loren Bliss
(1 January 2008)

_________
Edits: minor typos.

Wolf man, the article is about how it must be the CIA "channeling" bad metaphysical Karma at the New Age movement in order to turn the New Agers into self-obsessed assholes (I can think of an alternative explanation) and to defeat the era of universal peacefullness that would have arrived through New Age naval contemplation, IF the CIA had not intervened. There is no mention of the physical actions of the CIA in the COINTELPRO vein, which are entirely believable.

If you want to lend any credence to this nutty bullshit, that is of course your choice but don't do it because you misread the thesis of the article.

http://www.centerforlightandhealing.com/images/channeling.jpg

Anax wrote:


Wolf man, the article is about how it must be the CIA "channeling" bad metaphysical Karma at the New Age movement in order to turn the New Agers into self-obsessed assholes (I can think of an alternative explanation) and to defeat the era of universal peacefullness that would have arrived through New Age naval contemplation, IF the CIA had not intervened. There is no mention of the physical actions of the CIA in the COINTELPRO vein, which are entirely believable.

If you want to lend any credence to this nutty bullshit, that is of course your choice but don't do it because you misread the thesis of the article.

Actually I think you missed the point. The key graf -- unless my laryngitis-fevered brain is truly heat-warped -- seemed to me to be this:


...the emphasis on personal development—and more recently, the You Create Your Own Reality movement—a significant segment of the population has been brainwashed into disdaining all socio-political issues. For what better way to disempower people than to have them focus on their personal evolution at the expense of their families, communities, and the countries they live in?

In this context, I didn't think he was giving credibility to channeling and channelers (not to mention their marks...er, customers the channeloids), but rather was reporting that the entire ship of channel-seeking fools was being co-opted (or COINTELPROed) onto fascist reefs. Sort of a New Age version of the old Brooklyn warning: doan youse be suckahs.

Beyond which I assumed it was common knowledge the so-called Human Potential Movement (which became the New Age), had not only spook origins but Nazi roots. Which means that even if somebody claimed to be channeling the Buddha himself it would come out as quotes from Mein Kampf or at least Ayn Rand.

Anyway, that's how I took it, which left me thinking -- obviously incorrectly (for which I apologize) -- you were denying the possibility CHAOS/COINTELPRO had continued into the present.

Hence I responded with what I believe is solid evidence -- evidence that also happens to be deeply painful first-hand experience -- that such operations have never stopped, the Church Committee eyewash not withstanding.

Anax wrote:

[quote]Wolf man, the article is about how it must be the CIA "channeling" bad metaphysical Karma at the New Age movement in order to turn the New Agers into self-obsessed assholes (I can think of an alternative explanation) and to defeat the era of universal peacefullness that would have arrived through New Age naval contemplation, IF the CIA had not intervened. There is no mention of the physical actions of the CIA in the COINTELPRO vein, which are entirely believable.

If you want to lend any credence to this nutty bullshit, that is of course your choice but don't do it because you misread the thesis of the article.

Actually I think you missed the point. The key graf -- unless my laryngitis-fevered brain is truly heat-warped -- seemed to me to be this:


...the emphasis on personal development—and more recently, the You Create Your Own Reality movement—a significant segment of the population has been brainwashed into disdaining all socio-political issues. For what better way to disempower people than to have them focus on their personal evolution at the expense of their families, communities, and the countries they live in?

In this context, I didn't think he was giving credibility to channeling and channelers (not to mention their marks...er, customers the channeloids), but rather was reporting that the entire ship of channel-seeking fools was being co-opted (or COINTELPROed) onto fascist reefs. Sort of a New Age version of the old Brooklyn warning: doan youse be suckahs.

Beyond which I assumed it was common knowledge the so-called Human Potential Movement (which became the New Age), had not only spook origins but Nazi roots. Which means that even if somebody claimed to be channeling the Buddha himself it would come out as quotes from Mein Kampf or at least Ayn Rand.

Anyway, that's how I took it, which left me thinking -- obviously incorrectly (for which I apologize) -- you were denying the possibility CHAOS/COINTELPRO had continued into the present.

Hence I responded with what I believe is solid evidence -- evidence that also happens to be deeply painful first-hand experience -- that such operations have never stopped, the Church Committee eyewash not withstanding.[/quote:2hlkvugj]

I see the ambiguity now. I assumed "metaphysical COINTELPRO" as using metaphysical methods (gleaned from the "anecdotes"). You saw it as using conventional methods. Either way, its silliness. I prefer to simply agree with you on both counts: COINTELPRO or its descendents probably remains alive and healthy and NEW AGE is a "COINTELPRO racket", infiltrated or not.
.

From "They Come And They Go- See Ya' Later Progressive Independent"

http://populistindependent.org/phpbb/vi ... .php?t=760 (http://populistindependent.org/phpbb/viewtopic.php?t=760)


Another year and Tin's going to be in the New Age tank herself.

"Everyone is on their own path.."

New Age subversion by people like Tinoire (who should know better) and the co-optation of her on-line Pop-In Club is clearly another aspect of the ongoing COINTELPRO/CHAOS.

Which makes it all the more indicative/ironic that she so viciously denounced some of us -- especially me -- as COINTELPRO infiltrators.

Was this straight out of some operations manual with which she became familiar during her military career?

In this context, what is even more interesting -- in fact I would call it absolutely compelling -- is how Tinoire's ultimate messianic hero Dennis Kucinich has now obviously fulfilled his true Ruling Class role as political wrecking-ball. Showing his true bourgeois/reactionary colors -- remember the newspaper reports I dug out exposing what a vindictive tyrant Kucinich was as mayor of Cleveland? -- he commanded his disciples to support the race-camouflaged corporatist Obama’s effort to defeat the semi-populist Edwards, thereby destroying the Edwards candidacy forever.

So what? Big deal?

Reflect on the fact Edwards was the only candidate in the nation that offered even a glimmer of hope for Working Class betterment -- not just that Edwards was the only such candidate, but that (given how Kucinich has destroyed Edwards by mobilizing the entire New Age pseudo-left against him), Edwards was undoubtedly the last such candidate who will ever run in a U.S. election.

Reflect too on the fact that Edwards’ most recent ideological predecessor was Robert Kennedy -- himself (and all the Working Class hope he evoked) terminated via the extreme prejudice of assassination.

Then reflect on what all this means:

(1)-Once again, and devastating enough, the alleged U.S. “left” is revealed as a pseudo-left: a band of bourgeoisie corporatists -- that is, fascists precisely as defined by Trotsky -- who behind their New Age soft-speak are as viciously anti-Working-Class as any Nazi-loving Republican;

(2)-Far worse, Kucinich and his supporters have robbed us of the last remaining hope of avoiding the Concentration Camp Nation for which Congress is already laying the foundation via such measures as HR2640 (enacted), HR327 (enacted), S1237 (pending), HR1955 (passed by the House and pending in the Senate) and S1959 (pending in the Senate). These measures are supported with equal zeal by the Clinton and Bush factions alike, and if enacted they will nullify the entire Bill of Rights, thereby completing the process begun by the Coup of 22 November 1963 -- the conversion of the U.S. into the world's largest, most powerful (and therefore truly everlasting) fascist autocracy. Here are two links to analyses previously posted:

http://populistindependent.org/phpbb/vi ... .php?t=677 (http://populistindependent.org/phpbb/viewtopic.php?t=677)

http://populistindependent.org/phpbb/vi ... .php?t=690 (http://populistindependent.org/phpbb/viewtopic.php?t=690)

Edwards in this context might have ameliorated a future too many denial-bound U.S. citizens still regard as genuinely inconceivable -- too unspeakably blood-drenched grotesque for anyone to imagine who has not already witnessed such reality firsthand, as in the Third-World subject nations of the American Empire, the rural and urban ghettos here in the United States or in such cantonments of methodical genocide and euthanasia-by-neglect as post-Katrina New Orleans. Indeed an Edwards victory might have even rescued public opinion from its miasma of sullen resignation, perhaps triggering a process of once-again rising expectations that would have rebuilt the backbone of the Working Class into genuine resistance -- and so enabled us to avoid entirely the hideous slave-pen future that awaits us under Clinton/(Bush) or Obama-Kucinich/(Bush).

But now, thanks to the class-traitor Kucinich and his disciples -- among whom surely must be reckoned Tinoire herself -- all such hope is truly dead forever.

But now, thanks to the class-traitor Kucinich and his disciples -- among whom surely must be reckoned Tinoire herself -- all such hope is truly dead forever.

Its not dead Wolf. WE'RE not dead. The teeming masses you talk of -- those living in de facto indentured servitude, lawless slums, embattled, embittered urban hellholes, the mean streets with vultures circling overhead, war torn gangsterlands, areas so polluted that they are basically toxic to humans -- a group which also includes hundreds of millions of rural peasants and also 100+ million Americans living below event the deplorable government poverty standard -- THEY. ARE. NOT. DEAD.

John Edwards wasn't going to individually change shit. In fact, he wouldn't willing do so if he could. I say you're right. The thunder's gonna roll in. We summon the lightning.

Wolf it seems that your estimation of Edward's is quite high.

I'm not sure I understand this.

There is of course no hope in any of the things that we are conditioned to hang our hats upon. Take heart in that.

Edward's is a capitalist asshole of the most deceptive sort. His advisers are composed of military lobbyists. He would only be a pro-business candidate of a different shade. His talk about the poor and working class is empty rhetoric and furthermore the system in place is so labyrinthine that dismantling this will take grass roots upheavals on many fronts.

At present America ain't ready but keep priming the pump.

I have no illusions about Edwards' penchant for treachery: less than two years ago he was peddling maximum-interest credit cards to minimum-income exploitees, claiming the cards were access-keys to opportunity and good living, fronting them for the Rockefellers' First National City Bank of New York -- the Wall Street cartel which (as I hope we all remember) is the international bank of apartheid, Pinochet and global fascism (today renamed "CitiBank" in an expression of kinder, gentler cutsie-speak).

Remember too I am the one who repeatedly predicted the Democrats would do with the 2006 elections precisely what they have done: vast expansion of the universe of persons who are prohibited weapons and thus reduced to statutory prey in one of the most dangerous nations on the planet, this coupled with brazen fuck-you betrayal of every one of the promises that conned the public into returning the Democrats to Congress. (Indeed I "misunderestimated" their tyrannical malevolence: not even I imagined how broadly they would assault the entire Bill of Rights.)

But even in this context Edwards was nevertheless the only candidate who (1) dared articulate the notion of resurrecting the New Deal (thereby reminding us Working Class folk the United States was not always a global sweatshop) and (2) dared promise a health insurance program that would presumably lead to single-payer care, precisely as the professional cynic Michael Moore has observed:

http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/messa ... php?id=220 (http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/message/index.php?id=220)

While I happen to think Moore is more a part of the problem than the solution -- the underlying theme of his reporting seems to be to be that no solutions are possible, which is thus added compulsion toward the consumption of opiates whether New Age, theocratic or chemical (precisely why the Ruling Class gives him a free hand) -- I also recognize he has a huge following.

And whether Edwards ever fulfilled the hopes that people might have placed in him, his nomination would have at the very least raised the public's expectations.

Because I often think in terms of history, I recognize one of its major lessons is that heightened expectations are not just AN essential precursor to Working-Class socioeconomic progress -- they are THE ONE precursor without which such progress is impossible. Populations reduced to utter hopelessness -- just as most of the U.S. population has long been reduced -- do not even think of reform, much less change of greater magnitude. But raised expectations are a form of hope, and hope breeds empowerment, whether at Lexington Green, the Bastille or the Winter Palace.

Thus the Comintern and the Communist Party U.S.A. supported Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

Thus too however thoroughly Edwards betrayed his supporters -- and I have no doubt he would have betrayed us at least as viciously as the Democrats of 2006 betrayed us -- the legacy of the expectations he aroused might have nevertheless found mass expression.

In this context note that the other candidates whether Demopublican or Republicrat -- whether Hillary/(Bush) or Obama-Kucinich/(Bush) or Huckabee-Bush or McCain-Bush or whomever -- all seek to solve the health insurance crisis by giving us no hope at all: that is, mandatory insurance to make our victimization by corporate profiteers permanent and inescapable, thereby further shackling us in the bottomless degredation of the indentured servitude the Ruling Class originally resurrected by "bankruptcy reform." This will happen no matter which sneering aristocrat is voted into office by whatever dwindling numbers bother to vote. Hence all of us in the Working Class -- voter or non-voter -- recognize that the removal of Edwards is the suppression of even the faintest the whisper of a possibility the conditions of our lives will do anything but worsen.

Moreover, Edwards' presence not just raised hopes but even -- ever so implicitly -- re-animated the respectability of socialism.

In which context think of the raised expectations -- labor-rights and land reform and an end to war and famine -- that in their methodical betrayal culminated in the events of 1917, especially near the end of the month the Old Style calendar of the Czars called October.

No disagreement with any of that Wolf

Don't know if DK's miniscule support for Obama hurt Edwards any, but it's the thought that counts.

Someone over at DU opined that the results of the caucus was a blow to the "immigration issue". Any thoughts on that?

How about that Huck? I'd give a quarter to anyone who can divine how his appeal breaks down, ie, social/economic issues. They're all aflutter over yonder but the economic aspect of his candidacy completely goes over their heads. Real economic issues always go over their heads.

Don't know if DK's miniscule support for Obama hurt Edwards any, but it's the thought that counts.

Someone over at DU opined that the results of the caucus was a blow to the "immigration issue". Any thoughts on that?

How about that Huck? I'd give a quarter to anyone who can divine how his appeal breaks down, ie, social/economic issues. They're all aflutter over yonder but the economic aspect of his candidacy completely goes over their heads. Real economic issues always go over their heads.

Thats the thing, their biggest lie is that Huckabee is "George Bush with brains". Its also hilarious that after 7 years of George fucking Bush they are predicting the end of the world if a "theocrat" were to get elected

First, some First Principles about each candidate:

For vital background on Huckabee (and the ideological parameters of the present struggle within the Republican Party), go here:

http://populistindependent.org/phpbb/vi ... .php?t=735 (http://populistindependent.org/phpbb/viewtopic.php?t=735)

It's a quick read that confirms a fact that should deeply alarm every one of us -- that (as a direct result of the Huckabee candidacy) there is far more class-consciousness developing within the GOP than within its Democratic doppelganger.

For THE vital background on Obama, go to his own writing here:

http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20070701f ... ip.html%20 (http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20070701faessay86401/barack-obama/renewing-american-leadership.html%20)

From the cited work:


The American moment is not over, but it must be seized anew. We must bring the war to a responsible end and then renew our leadership -- military, diplomatic, moral -- to confront new threats and capitalize on new opportunities.

In other words, Obama's claims to represent "hope" and "change" are Big Lies to disguise the truths expressed above. He will "confront new threats" (which clearly means suppressing Working Class activism, which the Ruling Class sees as an even greater "threat" than Jihadist Islam). He will also "capitalize on new opportunities" (which just as clearly includes the enslavement of all U.S. residents via a system of compulsory health insurance that very literally forces us to maintain and expand the obscene profits of the insurors). Thus Obama reassures the Ruling Class two ways: that whenever the Plutocracy needs goons to suppress Workers, Obama will provide them, and that whenever some Sultan of Sick wants to buy diamonds or a new mink coat for his favorite whore, Obama will ensure that we the people are forced to pay the bill.

Huckabee on the other hand is either a genuine theocratic populist -- can we say "Taliban"? -- or is taking a page from the Josef Goebbels handbook of political ploys (remember the bogus "socialist" in N.S.D.A.P.?) to convince blue-collar America they have a true friend in a self-anointed Friend of Jesus.

In which context the various recently-published demographic analyses of the two parties are profoundly significant:

Election-relevant data from various sources (I beg off the task of linking these as this is a working day and I simply don't have time) -- all reasonably authoritative and all in agreement -- fully confirms the late Jack Newfield's long-ago hypothesis that the Democratic Party was becoming the organization of the (incipiently fascist) bourgeoisie even as the Republican Party, already the (overtly fascist) organization of the aristocracy, was also becoming -- due to the combination of induced Moron Nation ignorance and relentlessly vicious, Vietnam-related Democratic hostility toward blue-collar folk -- the default party of the U.S. Working Class.

Thus last night's Iowa results and what they portend:

Huckabee easily captured Iowa's genuine blue-collar faction, which is predominantly agricultural and predominantly Fundamentalist, but which despite its Ku Klux bigotry has never been mobilized by Bible-thumping alone. Thus -- significantly -- it was turned out by the anti-Big Business populism of Huckabee's rhetoric. If Huckabee continues his populist appeal (and he probably will), it could easily make him the Republican nominee. But is Huckabee truly a populist? Only time will tell. If not, he will betray his supporters. If yes -- if he truly is a populist -- the Ruling Class will do everything in its power to stop him -- everything. One real (and absolutely terrifying) possibility is that if Huckabee is denied the nomination, he and his followers will break with the GOP to form a "Party of God" -- a genuine American Taliban with all the horror that implies -- an outcome all the more probable since religious surveys indicate at least 65 percent of the U.S. electorate is doctrinally Fundamentalist Christian even if not so self-defined.

Meanwhile the Iowa fight inside the Democratic Party was only minimally reported in class-struggle terms, but its parameters were obvious in what unions endorsed which candidates. (Again please forgive the lack of links imposed by time limits; I'll return to this evening and post links if the discussion so warrants.) Edwards was endorsed by the many of the same blue-collar unions that have broken with the AFL/CIO over its pro-management policies and unquestioning, reflexive support for the Democratic Party, also by key industrial and construction unions. Obama's endorsements, which came mostly from union locals rather than national organizations, were so few as to be insignificant. Clinton however was endorsed (and heavily funded) by the defense-industry unions -- machinists, aerospace workers and the like -- and by the two most notoriously obstructive, most thoroughly despised unions in the U.S.: the American Federation of Teachers, and the American Federation of State, City and Municipal Employees. Indeed, these unions are as despised within the labor movement as without -- AFT for its active role in the dumbing-down of America and its constant obstruction of education reform, AFSCME for the hateful bureaucratic arrogance, vindictiveness and malfeasance it stubbornly protects. Thus -- with the very notable exception of the Edwards candidacy (and as further underscored by Kucinich's endorsement of Obama) -- the Democratic struggle in Iowa was merely a clash between factions of the bourgeoisie.

Thus too, Edwards loss has national implications. While the union officials who endorsed Edwards will probably in the end endorse whomever the Democrats finally nominate -- my bet is on a Clinton/Obama (or Obama/Clinton) ticket -- the blue-collar rank-and-file of these unions will invariably be seduced by Huckabee's populism to vote Republican: the only question is to what extent, and whether labor's rank-and-file will do as it did in 1980 (a default vote at least partly in response to Carter's war on the poor) and swing overwhelmingly to the Republicans.

Once again, the Democratic Party is spitting in the face of the self-identified Working Class.

Huckabee's candidacy is thus the candidacy to watch, particularly since it could easily capture -- note again the estimate that at least 65 percent of the electorate is Fundamentalist -- the Working-Class voters alienated by Edwards' defeat and the Democrats' anti-blue-collar attitudes in general.

Wolf, whatever else there is to talk about there's no possible way either Huckabee or Edwards are sincere in acting out a populist program even close to what they're campaigning on. I'll defer to Chlamor for the overwhelming evidence of that, he's the links man :)

EDIT: and by 'campaigning on' I don't even mean proposals or platforms just the rhetoric. AFAIK neither one is putting forth anything that, as Huch would say, makes word flesh.

Wolf, whatever else there is to talk about there's no possible way either Huckabee or Edwards are sincere in acting out a populist program even close to what they're campaigning on. I'll defer to Chlamor for the overwhelming evidence of that, he's the links man :)

EDIT: and by 'campaigning on' I don't even mean proposals or platforms just the rhetoric. AFAIK neither one is putting forth anything that, as Huch would say, makes word flesh.

Huck's wife grew up in a home with dirt floors and no running water. It seems to me the folks who popped the myth of social mobility and made it real in their lives are the most dangerous ones of all.

I once worked for the sorry son of a an Oklahoma wildcatter who'd made a coupla million before being killed in a head-on accident with a Frito-Lay truck on a country road a few miles from the family home north of OKC. The settlement netted the family $54 million.

I commented once to a person who knew this guy's mamma that she reminded me of a character in a Beverly Hillbillies episode whose still down-to-earth, self-made husband lamented that everything changed after she got her first pair of shoes.

Mamma, btw, was real big into Ken Copeland along with her significantly wealthy friend met through the ministry who came about her several hundred million after selling the Georgia carpet mill she built over 30 years from scratch (a tin roofed shack sewing carpet remnants together) after her husband died on top of another woman. The guy that died of terminal orgasm was a real character; he'd buy up a whole farm to get the antique car in the barn. He had 523 when he died. We got a notice at the office one day to get the weeds mowed on a piece of near-downtown Dallas property he owned. It was the first the estate had ever heard of it.

that anybody with a lick of sense should take the rhetoric of Edwards or Huckabee seriously. I surely don't -- and I'm surprised (not to mention a little insulted) I have to keep repeating this point.

What IS significant, however -- and what I do take seriously -- is the fact so many likely voters take it seriously. That reflects a new mood in U.S. politics, one that (had we a genuine Left) could be focused into genuine achievement. But since we have no true Left, the Right (which we have in super-abundance) will no doubt direct it into its own purpose: moving the U.S. ever closer to publicly declared fascist theocracy.

Back tonight; I've stayed way too long at the keyboard already.

I dunno about that Wolf, I'm sure there are some polls that indicate as much, I just question their significance. People might say that, but what does that mean? There is a great tendency for Americans wear their religion on their sleeve and I think that affects such polls. I've been living in what might be thought of as a Tribal area of the American Taliban for nigh a quarter century now, and it seems to me that fundamentalism is a stream 100 yds wide but 3 inches deep. To be sure there is a minority, maybe 10%, who would pass up the Rapture for a chance to string up everyone on this site. They are loud, hateful and know how to push buttons. Fuck those assholes. The rest of those people are regular folks who follow their father's religion. As the economy turns to shit material considerations will trump social issues which do nothing to help people day to day for all but that 10%. Could be there's opportunity for commie agitators.

It would be a piece of genius, sweet honey from the rock, if Huck and Edwards were to rile up worker's passions only to have those passions captured by the socialist banner.

that anybody with a lick of sense should take the rhetoric of Edwards or Huckabee seriously. I surely don't -- and I'm surprised (not to mention a little insulted) I have to keep repeating this point.

What IS significant, however -- and what I do take seriously -- is the fact so many likely voters take it seriously. That reflects a new mood in U.S. politics, one that (had we a genuine Left) could be focused into genuine achievement. But since we have no true Left, the Right (which we have in super-abundance) will no doubt direct it into its own purpose: moving the U.S. ever closer to publicly declared fascist theocracy.

Back tonight; I've stayed way too long at the keyboard already.

OK, thats what I figured so I probably misread sorry

...there is far more class-consciousness developing within the GOP than within its Democratic doppelganger.

I concur completely. This is a new problem for the Republicans. Democrats are well practiced at suppressing class consciouness, but it is catching the Republicans off guard.


Huckabee's candidacy is thus the candidacy to watch, particularly since it could easily capture -- note again the estimate that at least 65 percent of the electorate is Fundamentalist -- the Working-Class voters alienated by Edwards' defeat and the Democrats' anti-blue-collar attitudes in general.

So obvious, to me anyway. How pitiful must the Democrats be that the leading Republican is running to the left of their two main cadidates?

Edwards even has the "right" positions on all of the cultural war issues that the liberals love, yet they still hate him. Class consciousness must be suppressed in the Democratic party at all costs.

that anybody with a lick of sense should take the rhetoric of Edwards or Huckabee seriously. I surely don't -- and I'm surprised (not to mention a little insulted) I have to keep repeating this point.

What IS significant, however -- and what I do take seriously -- is the fact so many likely voters take it seriously. That reflects a new mood in U.S. politics, one that (had we a genuine Left) could be focused into genuine achievement. But since we have no true Left, the Right (which we have in super-abundance) will no doubt direct it into its own purpose: moving the U.S. ever closer to publicly declared fascist theocracy.

Absolutely. Why is this so difficult for people to comprehend? Why do we always have to hear "so and so is a capitalist war-monger too" every time we try to discuss political events. Of course so and so is a capitalist war-monger. There are only a handful of people in the entire country who are not contributing to and defending capitalism and war.

As Wolf says:

"Damnit, no way am I suggesting that anybody with a lick of sense should take the rhetoric of Edwards or Huckabee seriously."

I too am surprised and insulted that after all this time this point still needs to be made again and again.

"The fact so many likely voters take it seriously reflects a new mood in U.S. politics, one that (had we a genuine Left) could be focused into genuine achievement."

I mean WTF folks, this is an argument that we should have long since settled and moved on. Saying that "your wonderful guy is not the right personal choice for us to be making" is the same fucked up context that everyone else is using to look at politics. Not the right choice, is the right choice...it is the same bullshit.

To say that we should not see anything positive in the Edwards candidacy - the fucking candidacy not the man as a prince on a fucking white horse - because of what it might tell us about the public mood - suggests that we SHOULD be waiting for the right prince charming on the right fucking horse, but it just isn't Edwards.

Time to fucking grow up and discuss things as adults.

I am MUCH more interested in us looking into the mirror - that is where you will see some fucking complicity and compliance and cooperation and corruption, as well as a profound , absolute and stubborn refusal to get serious about resisting what is happening.

I dunno about that Wolf, I'm sure there are some polls that indicate as much, I just question their significance. People might say that, but what does that mean?

Right. Most of those people are best characterized as traditionalists. Vehement critics of Christianity - what it is for the average person - are missing something very important.

For however fucked up the churches are, don't the critics realize that everything is so fucked up in this country that by comparison the church looks good? Maybe for some privileged liberals life is just swell, all and all, and getting rid of religion is just another important component in their drive to personal self-perfection - becoming progressed and enlightened superior beings - but in hundreds of urban neighborhoods, minority communities, and poor rural communities the little local church is the only thing holding the community together and doing anything to help people at all. It is the only place that people hear any sort of message of compassion and charity and brotherhood.

For many, criticizing the churches is a way to deny and ignore how fucking bad things are for people across the board - nothing to do with religion.

Blur collar people are susceptible to the worst of fundamentalism - yes. That is because of OUR utter failure at offering any alternative whatsoever.

This is not a defense of Christianity, but a person would have to be blind not to see that the churches have moved in because of the vacuum created by the disappearance of the left, and that the churches - many of them, and maybe by now most of them - are the most leftist organizations in the country. Now, what is our excuse? How can churches be to the left of the political left? What does that tell us about ourselves?

And do people think that if a true left emerged that the churches would be in the vanguard of opposition to that movement? Highly unlikely. More likely the churches would be in the forefront, just as they were in the Abolition movement and the Civil Rights movement.

But in the cardboard cut-out adolescent two-dimensional world in which we live, it must be all or nothing - Edwards: the saint or the devil; Christianity: evil empire or glorious salvation. The real world is just not that way.

But the worst fire-loss of all was the project on which I had been at work since 1959, a compilation of evidence that began with my suspicion the folk-music renaissance was a genuine anachronism, especially given that era’s predictions of an ultra-technocratic future, and that the sudden anomalous popularity of a definitively antique art-form was therefore significant and revealing -- if I could but discern its meaning. Eventually I discovered that the most popular traditional ballads were the secularized remnants of the lays of magic and invocatory liturgies of goddess-worship: Jack Orion was once the Star Lord, another of the many once-and-future kings, as were John Barleycorn and Tam Lin, while Janet, Willy’s Lady and Katharine Jaffrey were once the Great Goddess herself. Finally, after years of informally studying folklore, myth and contemporary sociology while pursuing a full-time journalism career, I became convinced the Counterculture‘s “revolution in consciousness” was nothing less than the spontaneous resurrection of that entire pagan ethos, complete with restoration of the epicentral role of the bard (the musicians), the once-sacred prerogatives of women (feminism) and the implicit divinity of nature (environmentalism and the Gaia Hypothesis). Indeed it was as if certain ancient combinations of words and music, even in disguised or modified forms, had retained a power not merely to invoke imagery but to shape society as well -- perhaps the ultimate proof that art may indeed structure life. Ever more sure of my conclusions, by 1976 I had drawn the material together into a (hugely controversial) Bachelor of Arts thesis, and by 1982 it had become a rough draft of approximately 105,000 words (350 pages in typewriter elite) complete with photographs, bibliography and the support of an entire filing cabinet full of notes. By this time its working title described its contents perfectly: “Glimpses of a Pale Dancer.”

I didn't realize you had been working on this. This is a tragic loss. What is sad - so sad that it is almost too much to bear for me - is the knowledge that there are very few people in the country who could even begin to imagine the scope of the loss, or that such a loss was even possible, or that anyone could care, let alone care themselves.

Capitalism has completely destroyed our culture. What too many people don't realize is that while capitalism was ruthlessly and highly visibly destroying Aboriginal cultures, that the culture of our ancestors was also being destroyed. Those on the edges of the empire are savagely suppressed, but capitalism needs the subjects of the republic to accomplish this and for us a seemingly more benign and pleasant fate is meted out - we are gelded and then trained to lick the boot of our tormentor in gratitude and thank him for it, and dedicate every minute of our lives and every ounce of our energy to assisting him in his murderous and destructive goals.

There are thousands of people who have been frustrated and silenced and bashed down the way that you were. There are many others who got the object lesson from examples such as yours, and mine, and never attempt any serious work, merely cringing their way through life in some sort of delusion about their freedom and good fortune. The clever ones never tried. Almost all who have tried have been crushingly suppressed. If victims of cultural suppression even try to talk about it, some strange burden of proof is placed on them and they are accused of having "delusions of grandeur" or "being paranoid" or having some sort of personal mental problem.

that anybody with a lick of sense should take the rhetoric of Edwards or Huckabee seriously. I surely don't -- and I'm surprised (not to mention a little insulted) I have to keep repeating this point.

What IS significant, however -- and what I do take seriously -- is the fact so many likely voters take it seriously. That reflects a new mood in U.S. politics, one that (had we a genuine Left) could be focused into genuine achievement. But since we have no true Left, the Right (which we have in super-abundance) will no doubt direct it into its own purpose: moving the U.S. ever closer to publicly declared fascist theocracy.

Absolutely. Why is this so difficult for people to comprehend? Why do we always have to hear "so and so is a capitalist war-monger too" every time we try to discuss political events. Of course so and so is a capitalist war-monger. There are only a handful of people in the entire country who are not contributing to and defending capitalism and war.

As Wolf says:

"Damnit, no way am I suggesting that anybody with a lick of sense should take the rhetoric of Edwards or Huckabee seriously."

I too am surprised and insulted that after all this time this point still needs to be made again and again.

"The fact so many likely voters take it seriously reflects a new mood in U.S. politics, one that (had we a genuine Left) could be focused into genuine achievement."

I mean WTF folks, this is an argument that we should have long since settled and moved on. Saying that "your wonderful guy is not the right personal choice for us to be making" is the same fucked up context that everyone else is using to look at politics. Not the right choice, is the right choice...it is the same bullshit.

To say that we should not see anything positive in the Edwards candidacy - the fucking candidacy not the man as a prince on a fucking white horse - because of what it might tell us about the public mood - suggests that we SHOULD be waiting for the right prince charming on the right fucking horse, but it just isn't Edwards.

Time to fucking grow up and discuss things as adults.

I am MUCH more interested in us looking into the mirror - that is where you will see some fucking complicity and compliance and cooperation and corruption, as well as a profound , absolute and stubborn refusal to get serious about resisting what is happening.

I agree that's pretty obvious, but you were reading to much into the exchange here. I was replying to this:


But is Huckabee truly a populist? Only time will tell. If not, he will betray his supporters. If yes -- if he truly is a populist -- the Ruling Class will do everything in its power to stop him -- everything.

I dunno about that Wolf, I'm sure there are some polls that indicate as much, I just question their significance. People might say that, but what does that mean?

Right. Most of those people are best characterized as traditionalists. Vehement critics of Christianity - what it is for the average person - are missing something very important.

For however fucked up the churches are, don't the critics realize that everything is so fucked up in this country that by comparison the church looks good? Maybe for some privileged liberals life is just swell, all and all, and getting rid of religion is just another important component in their drive to personal self-perfection - becoming progressed and enlightened superior beings - but in hundreds of urban neighborhoods, minority communities, and poor rural communities the little local church is the only thing holding the community together and doing anything to help people at all. It is the only place that people hear any sort of message of compassion and charity and brotherhood.

For many, criticizing the churches is a way to deny and ignore how fucking bad things are for people across the board - nothing to do with religion.

Blur collar people are susceptible to the worst of fundamentalism - yes. That is because of OUR utter failure at offering any alternative whatsoever.

This is not a defense of Christianity, but a person would have to be blind not to see that the churches have moved in because of the vacuum created by the disappearance of the left, and that the churches - many of them, and maybe by now most of them - are the most leftist organizations in the country. Now, what is our excuse? How can churches be to the left of the political left? What does that tell us about ourselves?

And do people think that if a true left emerged that the churches would be in the vanguard of opposition to that movement? Highly unlikely. More likely the churches would be in the forefront, just as they were in the Abolition movement and the Civil Rights movement.

But in the cardboard cut-out adolescent two-dimensional world in which we live, it must be all or nothing - Edwards: the saint or the devil; Christianity: evil empire or glorious salvation. The real world is just not that way.

Mike, two lines that I think are important to counter. First, there is a wild claim being made that all of Huckabee's support came from religious nutjobs pouring out in droves. Apparently, the "evidence" for this is that 2/3s of his supporters said they were Christians.

Secondly, liberals have branded Huckabee "George Bush with brains" allowing them to easily shift gears and attack him on cultural grounds, including religion as indicated above. Suddenly his positions on abortion, evolution, etc are front and center. And they get to ignore his economic message, the platform that lifted him to victory in Iowa and makes him a possible threat to win the nomination.

Suppression of class consciousness in motion. Of course any objection will be lost in a sea of funny looks and baleful glares since it will obviously be inferred that anyone crazy enough to make such an objection must support the Huckster.

It also lets them go in both barrels blazing against their hobbyhorse of "theocracy"

Mike, two lines that I think are important to counter. First, there is a wild claim being made that all of Huckabee's support came from religious nutjobs pouring out in droves. Apparently, the "evidence" for this is that 2/3s of his supporters said they were Christians.

Secondly, liberals have branded Huckabee "George Bush with brains" allowing them to easily shift gears and attack him on cultural grounds, including religion as indicated above. Suddenly his positions on abortion, evolution, etc are front and center. And they get to ignore his economic message, the platform that lifted him to victory in Iowa and makes him a possible threat to win the nomination.

I agree.

You can almost see the smoke coming out of the ears of some liberals and hear the gears in their head clashing and grinding. They have completely bought into all of the illusions about the Religious Right, taken all of the propaganda at face value. Being "against" it doesn't change that.

Mike I think you have just paid me the second-finest compliment of this life, for which you have my heartfelt gratitude:


I didn't realize you had been working on this. This is a tragic loss. What is sad - so sad that it is almost too much to bear for me - is the knowledge that there are very few people in the country who could even begin to imagine the scope of the loss, or that such a loss was even possible, or that anyone could care, let alone care themselves.

Capitalism has completely destroyed our culture. What too many people don't realize is that while capitalism was ruthlessly and highly visibly destroying Aboriginal cultures, that the culture of our ancestors was also being destroyed. Those on the edges of the empire are savagely suppressed, but capitalism needs the subjects of the republic to accomplish this and for us a seemingly more benign and pleasant fate is meted out - we are gelded and then trained to lick the boot of our tormentor in gratitude and thank him for it, and dedicate every minute of our lives and every ounce of our energy to assisting him in his murderous and destructive goals.

There are thousands of people who have been frustrated and silenced and bashed down the way that you were. There are many others who got the object lesson from examples such as yours, and mine, and never attempt any serious work, merely cringing their way through life in some sort of delusion about their freedom and good fortune. The clever ones never tried. Almost all who have tried have been crushingly suppressed. If victims of cultural suppression even try to talk about it, some strange burden of proof is placed on them and they are accused of having "delusions of grandeur" or "being paranoid" or having some sort of personal mental problem.

The finest compliment ever paid me in this life was spoken by Helen Farias after she read an early draft of “Dancer”:

“You have given me the vocabulary to describe what I always knew to be true but never until now had the words to express,” she said, “and I don’t think I can ever thank you enough.”

What Helen subsequently did with her life is more thanks than anyone could ever ask. A formidable scholar, she became a major force in the resurrection of the goddess and thus in the ultimate reunification of materialism and spirituality. She also helped us re-discoverer our theocracy-suppressed past -- the fact Western Civilization began not with the Cross (which in reality should be the symbol of its death) but with the Standing Stone, and the corollary fact that Westernesse (which in this context includes Western Asia and North Africa) is at least 3,000 years older than our Christian overlords want us to know.

Thus too what we fight against -- what Helen herself fought so valiantly against -- is not just crushing oppression that includes the destruction of the culture of our ancestors, but proof the Ruling Class is terrified to toxic frenzy by the possibility those ancestors might provide us examples of consciousness and achievement around which we might again mobilize and rally.

That we are each expressions of forbidden knowledge (else why would we be together on this site) is implicit in my signature statement: “In these times, survival is a revolutionary act.”

Wolf, whatever else there is to talk about there's no possible way either Huckabee or Edwards are sincere in acting out a populist program even close to what they're campaigning on. I'll defer to Chlamor for the overwhelming evidence of that, he's the links man :)

EDIT: and by 'campaigning on' I don't even mean proposals or platforms just the rhetoric. AFAIK neither one is putting forth anything that, as Huch would say, makes word flesh.

That is completely irrelevant.

What the Hell does some politician's sincerity have to do with anything?

This business of looking at personalities, and then judging their perfection is such a trap. It is pervasive. How do we break out of it? "He is not the guy" is as useless and idiotic as "he is the guy."

It is as though we were talking religion instead of politics, or talking about buying a commercial product. Actually the two - religion and commercialism - have become so co-mingled that it is probably both. Either we think someone is the savior, or we arrive at the conclusion that he is one of the evil ones. Either way, there can be no discussion. Choices have been argued over and made, and that is that.

What the Hell is a "populist program?" Why are we thinking in terms of "programs?" What is a "program?"

"Are they going to deliver the product they are advertising" reflects a consumerist mentality. "Who do we believe in" reflects a religious mentality.

Mike, two lines that I think are important to counter. First, there is a wild claim being made that all of Huckabee's support came from religious nutjobs pouring out in droves. Apparently, the "evidence" for this is that 2/3s of his supporters said they were Christians.

That would mean that Huckabee voters include a lower percentage of Chritsians than the general public.

By the way, I have a great "in" to the Huckabee campaign tonight. A close friend of mine will be meeting with him in a small intimate setting. He is going to try to get some idea as to how hooked in Huckabee is with the religious right power base. We both suspect that Huckabee is not very well connected and is appealing more to traditionalists in the general public - the core of the rank and file religious right are better described as traditionalists than theocratists - than he is doing the bidding of the religious right.

Wolf, whatever else there is to talk about there's no possible way either Huckabee or Edwards are sincere in acting out a populist program even close to what they're campaigning on. I'll defer to Chlamor for the overwhelming evidence of that, he's the links man :)

EDIT: and by 'campaigning on' I don't even mean proposals or platforms just the rhetoric. AFAIK neither one is putting forth anything that, as Huch would say, makes word flesh.

That is completely irrelevant.

What the Hell does some politician's sincerity have to do with anything?

This business of looking at personalities, and then judging their perfection is such a trap. It is pervasive. How do we break out of it? "He is not the guy" is as useless and idiotic as "he is the guy."

It is as though we were talking religion instead of politics, or talking about buying a commercial product. Actually the two - religion and commercialism - have become so co-mingled that it is probably both. Either we think someone is the savior, or we arrive at the conclusion that he is one of the evil ones. Either way, there can be no discussion. Choices have been argued over and made, and that is that.

What the Hell is a "populist program?" Why are we thinking in terms of "programs?" What is a "program?"

"Are they going to deliver the product they are advertising" reflects a consumerist mentality. "Who do we believe in" reflects a religious mentality.

Mike, thats the second time you've taken the same statement out of context. Wolf posted something along the lines of "If they're sincere in their populism.."

They're not. Thats, quite literally, all I was trying to say. My response was prompted because I couldn't believe Wolf was raising the question in the first place. Apparently, he wasn't. I don't really know what he was trying to say actually. Partially because I've forgotten the train of conversation and partially because I was confused at the time and remain confused now.

Its not a witch hunt Mike. Sometimes a straightforward reply is as straightforward as it seems. I could give two shits about Huckabee, Obama, Edwards, or any of the rest.

(1)-Regardless of the treachery of politicians, the relative attractiveness of their propaganda is critically important as sociological and anthropological data. For example, the winning appeal of Hitler reveals the hideous truth about the nature of the German majority consciousness; likewise the winning appeal of Nixon/Carter/Reagan/Bush/Clinton/Bush tells us the hideous truth about our own majority consciousness (social-Darwinist, violently racist/imperialist, incipiently fascist in a manner so deeply rooted it transcends party labels).

(2)-The content of any political campaigns thus provides useful indices -- often more usefully revealing than polls -- to the mindsets of both classes.

(3)-The relevance of the 2008 presidential campaign is its disclosure of the factional politics of the Ruling Class and the extent to which the Working Class is responding to each faction: the unitary fascism of the GOP mainstream (whether symbolized by the Wall Streeters Romney and Guiliani or the military strongman McCain); the theocratic fascism of Huckabee (enormously appealing to Ku Kluxers and -- sadly -- to a huge segment of the religion-opiated Working Class); the Evita Peron fascism of Clinton (hugely appealing to the white upper bourgeoisie and maliciously satisfying to the multitudes of bitterly disempowered women therein); the pseudo-populism of Edwards (powerfully attractive to those among whom class-consciousness is at last awakening); the snake-oil politics of Obamus-with-deception (ultimate proof of the Barnum Hypothesis and the terrifying truth of Moron Nation: "step right up").

Attentive members will remember that I have been arguing for some time that the chief Ruling Class achievement since the Coup of 22 November 1963 is reduction of the intellectual level of the U.S. electorate to a Dark Age ignorance analogous to that of the late Czarist Russia -- this with the added enslavement-insurance provided by a variety of zombifying opiates (drugs legal or illegal, 12-Step Recovery, Jesus, New Age, workaholism, consumeroid acquisition etc.) -- all to guarantee the masses remain forever in chains.

Thus the presidential campaigns of 1964 through 2004: peace-candidate LBJ revealing himself as the ultimate war-monger; Nixon declaring in early 1973 that henceforth the sole purpose of government is protection of the aristocracy; Carter the phony save-social-services candidate imposing theocracy and betraying the Working Class by the denial of publicly funded reproductive choice; Reagan and the first stage of combating poverty and disability with overt policies of euthanasia by neglect; Bush and the New Order (the term borrowed from Hitler); Clinton and second-stage euthanasia by neglect (the deliberate and everlasting belittlement of single-payer healthcare, since lavishly rewarded, and welfare "reform" to hurl the poor into inescapable wage-slavery); Bush II (the Reichstag Fire of 9/11, the message delivered to African-Americans via the aftermath of Katrina -- for which note white AmeriKKKa's huge unspoken support -- plus the forcible disarmament of the population and the nullification of the Bill of Rights in general).

Yet in this headlong march toward the Fourth Reich and the overt Nazism of the concentration-camp state, one candidate -- Edwards -- has dared yell, in effect, "whoa, wait a minute, we've got to return to our democratic ideals" while another candidate -- Clinton -- has responded by eerily echoing the words of Czar Nicholas II: "“we don't need to be raising the false hopes of our country about what can be delivered.”

Regardless of who wins -- and I think the Diebold-determined (and instantly media-rationalized) outcome of New Hampshire already tells us who that will be -- the fact Edwards has defied the future-Czarina's admonition and raised the nation's hopes is profoundly significant: especially to the furtherance of the socialist cause. While a betrayed Huckabee fundamentalist will never be more than a Christofascist, a betrayed Huckabee populist or a betrayed Edwards supporter -- just as Hillary understands -- is a potential Marxist.

In which context we damn well better stop quibbling over absurdities and begin thinking of ourselves as what we truly are: an extension of the Fourth International, and quite possibly the embryo of a Fifth International.

This is not the Church, and Marxism is not the Nicene Creed. The Nicene Creed is fixed in the oppressive cement of centuries, while Marxism -- once the quibbling over heresy ends -- is the most powerfully dynamic ethos on Earth.