Protest in the Era of Trump

The best way to control the opposition is to lead it.

I am of the strong belief that any administration which comes into power in the current environment of nearly unrestrained executive authority, a lawless and sprawling intelligence agency complex, and a debt-driven, rent-seeking rewarding fraud economy should be assumed to represent a serious threat to the civil liberties and remaining freedoms of the American public. This would’ve been true under Hillary, and it’s also true under Trump.

Personally, I think Trump will be reacting to events outside of his control more than he will be controlling his own destiny given the extremely precarious point we are in during this geopolitical, cultural and economic cycle. This is a very dangerous period, and it will likely only get more dangerous as the years unfold. Not because of Trump, but because of the circumstances we have allowed ourselves to be boxed into as a people. As such, I fully understand and appreciate the role of non-violent protest and civil disobedience in the Trump era, just like I understood it and advocated for it during Obama’s transgressions.

Trump’s administration got off to a serious bang with the Women’s March over the weekend, which were unquestionably large events. While I think protest is important, and I don’t want to minimize the achievement of getting that many people out in the streets, there were many aspects of it that left a very foul taste in my mouth. Let’s start off with some of the people actively involved.

From the LA Times:

The Women’s March on Washington may have been filled with celebrities, singers and all sorts of Hollywood A-listers, but it was longtime feminist and writer Gloria Steinem who really revved up the crowd. 

Upon exiting the Women’s March after her keynote speech in which she emphasized that protest means more than hitting the “send” button, a crowd formed around Steinem. Mothers rushed up to introduce their daughters to her; protesters held out their signs for her autograph.

Gloria Steinem, feminist icon and CIA-operative in the 1950’s and 60’s. Oh, you didn’t know that?

From The Chicago Tribune:

CIA agents are tight-lipped, but Steinem spoke openly about her relationship to “The Agency” in the 1950s and ‘60s after a magazine revealed her employment by a CIA front organization, the Independent Research Service.

While popularly pilloried because of her paymaster, Steinem defended the CIA relationship, saying: “In my experience The Agency was completely different from its image; it was liberal, nonviolent and honorable.”

Wait, what? The CIA was headed up by one of America’s most notorious psychopaths during that time, Allen Dulles. She must be aware of this fact. This is an interesting person for women to hold up as a role model, and to help lead the “resistance.”

One of the many nefarious things the CIA was up to during this time period was mind control program MK Ultra.

Project MKUltra – sometimes referred to as the CIA’s mind control program – is the code name given to a program of experiments on human subjects, at times illegal, designed and undertaken by the United States Central Intelligence Agency. Experiments on humans were intended to identify and develop drugs and procedures to be used in interrogations and torture, in order to weaken the individual to force confessions through mind control. Organized through the Scientific Intelligence Division of the CIA, the project coordinated with the Special Operations Division of the U.S. Army’s Chemical Corps.

The operation began in the early 1950s, was officially sanctioned in 1953, was reduced in scope in 1964, further curtailed in 1967, and officially halted in 1973. The program engaged in many illegal activities, including the use of unwitting U.S. and Canadian citizens as its test subjects, which led to controversy regarding its legitimacy. MKUltra used numerous methodologies to manipulate people’s mental states and alter brain functions, including the surreptitious administration of drugs (especially LSD) and other chemicals, hypnosis, sensory deprivation, isolation, verbal and sexual abuse, as well as other forms of psychological torture.

How liberal.

For more on the CIA at that time, see: How America’s Modern Shadow Government Can Be Traced Back to One Very Evil Man – Allen Dulles

But it gets worse. Steinem was a key factor in the election of Donald Trump by irrationally supporting Hillary Clinton and belittling Sanders supporters with some very un-feminist type commentary. In case you forget about this episode back in February, Desperate for Hillary – Feminist Icon Gloria Steinem Claims Young Women Support Sanders to Attract Boys. The only revolution this woman is going to lead is one that slams straight into a brick wall.

Naturally, Gloria wasn’t the only icon of female power to attend. The, always painfully desperate for attention and continued relevance, Madonna was also celebrated. Here’s some of what she had to say, courtesy of USA Today:

NEW YORK (AP) — Madonna is defending her fiery, expletive-laden speech at the Women’s March, saying her words were “taken wildly out of context.”

The singer said at the Washington, D.C., march Saturday that she had at times been angry after the election and had thought “an awful lot about blowing up the White House.”

Power to the imbecile.

Moving along, another red flag about the march were the amount of Democratic lawmakers present and actively protesting. Considering Trump rose to power based on the intense anger from much of the American voting public about how things were going, I find this to be incredibly ironic, and certainly not empowering. As The Hill notes in the article, Lawmakers Join Women’s Marches in DC and Nationwide:

Democratic lawmakers are are marching with women in Washington and across the nation one day after President Trump’s inauguration.

Hundreds of thousands took to the streets of D.C. on Saturday for the Women’s March on Washington, joined by a large contingent of lawmakers.

Other Democrats attended satellite protests in other cities across the country.

Sens. Ron Wyden (Ore.), Kirsten Gillibrand (N.Y.), Ben Cardin (Md.) and Tammy Duckworth (Ill.) as well as Reps. Tim Ryan (D-Ohio), Bonnie Watson Coleman (D-N.J.) and Peter Welch (D-Vt.) and others shared images from marches in Washington and their home states.

“And others.” Yes, there were many more Democrats out there “resisting” who went unmentioned in that article. Such as my Congressman Jared Polis, who shared many pictures of his defiance via Twitter.

Pharmaceutical company prostitute Cory Booker was also there.

Of course, former Senator and Secretary of State, John Kerry, was also out there voicing people power. Goldman Sachs executives must be shaking in their boots.

The whole thing makes me wish the Care Bears has led this march, they would’ve been a far more focused and threatening opposition force. At least the care bear stare gets things done.

Finally, to put an oligarch cherry on the sundae, there considerable links between everyone’s favorite Hillary Clinton supporting billionaire financier and the marches. As reported by Asra Q. Nomani via Women in the World, in association with The New York TimesBillionaire George Soros Has Ties to More Than 50 ‘Partners’ of the Women’s March on Washington:

In the pre-dawn darkness of today’s presidential inauguration day, I faced a choice, as a lifelong liberal feminist who voted for Donald Trump for president: lace up my pink Nike sneakers to step forward and take the DC Metro into the nation’s capital for the inauguration of America’s new president, or wait and go tomorrow to the after-party, dubbed the “Women’s March on Washington”?

 The Guardian has touted the “Women’s March on Washington” as a “spontaneous” action for women’s rights. Another liberal media outlet, Vox, talks about the “huge, spontaneous groundswell” behind the march. On its website, organizers of the march are promoting their work as “a grassroots effort” with “independent” organizers. Even my local yoga studio, Beloved Yoga, is renting a bus and offering seats for $35. The march’s manifesto says magnificently, “The Rise of the Woman = The Rise of the Nation.”

It’s an idea that I, a liberal feminist, would embrace. But I know — and most of America knows — that the organizers of the march haven’t put into their manifesto: the march really isn’t a “women’s march.” It’s a march for women who are anti-Trump. 

As someone who voted for Trump, I don’t feel welcome, nor do many other women who reject the liberal identity-politics that is the core underpinnings of the march, so far, making white women feel unwelcomenixing women who oppose abortion and hijacking the agenda

To understand the march better, I stayed up through the nights this week, studying the funding, politics and talking points of the some 403 groups that are “partners” of the march. Is this a non-partisan “Women’s March”?

Roy Speckhardt, executive director of the American Humanist Association, a march “partner,” told me his organization was “nonpartisan” but has “many concerns about the incoming Trump administration that include what we see as a misogynist approach to women.” Nick Fish, national program director of the American Atheists, another march partner, told me, “This is not a ‘partisan’ event.” Dennis Wiley, pastor of Covenant Baptist United Church of Christ, another march “partner,” returned my call and said, “This is not a partisan march.”

Really? UniteWomen.org, another partner, features videos with the hashtags #ImWithHer, #DemsInPhily and #ThanksObama. Following the money, I pored through documents of billionaire George Soros and his Open Society philanthropy, because I wondered: What is the link between one of Hillary Clinton’s largest donors and the “Women’s March”? 

I found out: plenty…

Much like post-election protests, which included a sign, “Kill Trump,” were not  “spontaneous,” as reported by some media outlets, the “Women’s March” is an extension of strategic identity politics that has so fractured America today, from campuses to communities. On the left or the right, it’s wrong. But, with the inauguration, we know the politics. With the march, “women” have been appropriated for a clearly anti-Trump day. When I shared my thoughts with her, my yoga studio owner said it was “sad” the march’s organizers masked their politics. “I want love for everyone,” she said. 

The left’s fierce identity politics and its failure on Islamic extremism lost my vote this past election, and so, as the dawn’s first light breaks through the darkness of the morning as I write, I make my decision: I’ll lace up my pink Nikes and head to the inauguration, skipping the “Women’s March” that doesn’t have a place for women like me.

The protest felt like a march for the DNC while it was occurring, and much of what I’ve read since has only reenforced that perspective.

Moving along, you can get some sense for the tenor of the protests based on the signs. Looking through pictures of protests from around the world, a few things become pretty clear. First, one of the most common sign was “Love Trumps Hate,” which was a straight up Hillary campaign slogan. There were also plenty of “With Her” signs; so what was this, a march for women or a march for Hillary?

That said, I’d say the most common sign seems to have been some derivative of “Women’s Rights = Human Rights.” I unquestionably agree with this statement, which begs the question, who doesn’t? Well many of the barbaric, feudalist monarchies in the Middle East for starters. Saudi Arabia being a prime example, a place where women are not permitted to drive. Fortunately for them, their money is still green and the Clinton Foundation took plenty of it (between $10 million and $25 million to be exact). Democrats protested that by rigging the primary for her.

The Katy Perry revolution will be televised.

I didn’t personally attend any of the protests, so I asked my followers on Twitter who did attend to reach out to me and tell me about what they saw. I received lengthy responses from three people. One was a Gary Johnson voter, one a Hillary voter and one didn’t vote at all. They all pretty much confirmed what you could deduct from the signs. It was a message of “women power,” seemingly focused on women’s rights, specifically abortion and contraception.

This brings me to another observation, which will serve as a segue to the final thrust of this article. It appears the emotional driver of the protest was two fold — a serious concern that certain women’s rights will be rolled back, and a form of catharsis for people still reeling from the election loss. This is interesting, because the focal point appears to be not just driven by identify politics, but on preserving already existing rights.

Ok, fine, but what about all the ills currently at play? The destruction of the middle class, the surveillance state, the fact that Wall Street owns every single administration no matter who wins. What about the wars and the rapidly metastasizing military-industrial-intelligence complex. These are things that are currently happening, and have been getting worse under both Republican and Democratic administrations. Does it make sense for all this energy to be focused on a potential threat, as opposed to all of the many ongoing unethical, destructive aspects of American life in 2017?

Which brings us to the most important point of this entire article. I don’t want to be too judgmental here. While much of the messaging from the Women’s March seems to have been pretty unserious and divorced from the reality of the many serious issues plaguing the nation, I want to see a silver lining here. I think there’s little doubt that Trump’s election resulted in a certain percentage of the population finally waking up to how much trouble this country is in. The problem is that many of these people see Trump as the problem to be eliminated, as opposed to the symptom of a sick, destructive society that he actually is. This is where the entire “resistance” can be easily co-opted by the DNC and the rapidly emerging neocon/neoliberal alliance rooted in identity politics, which poses no actual threat to the people actually in power. In this sense, all of this potentially productive energy could tragically be redirected into simply bringing back the same Democratic types that were forcefully rejected during the 2016 election.

Once again, I want to quote Nafeez Ahmed, because he summarized it so perfectly:

New ties of solidarity are emerging across the left and right of the political spectrum. Constitutional conservatives and anti-Trump Republicans are finding themselves on the same side as progressives.

There is a powerful lesson here. In the wake of Trump’s victory, many of my American friends and colleagues who lamented Clinton’s failure see the future as essentially one-track: we need to get the Democratic Party back in power in another four or eight years.

Yet this utter banality in our political imagination is precisely what allowed the Trumpian moment to arise in the first-place – the abject deference to the inevitability of working within a broken two-party structure, regardless of its subservience to narrow vested interests, regardless of its accelerating distance from the American people.

The solution is not to react to Trump as if he, too, is the Other, but to recognise him as little more than the Great Orange Face of regressive social forces that we all enabled, forces tied to a global system that is no longer sustainable. That means raising the stakes, and shooting to build something bigger, better and brighter than merely an ‘anti-Trump’ movement.

In the Trumpian moment, we must be neither Republicans, nor Democrats, left nor right, conservative nor liberal. We are humans, together, not merely resisting a broken system that is beyond fixing, but planting the seeds to build a new system as we travel deeper into the post-carbon century. Yes, Trump is a psychotic blip in this great transition. But he is also the culmination of a state of political psychosis which began long before him, and which we’ve all been part of.

So the question is no longer what we’re against. The question is this: what are you really standing for? And what are you going to do to build it?

He’s exactly right, and I didn’t see much of that kind of thoughtful and forward looking thinking from the Women’s March. Nevertheless, let’s try to turn a negative into a positive.

Everyone reading this had to become politically aware at a certain moment in time. None of us were born with knowledge of how things work, and how completely messed up the planet is today. Moreover, even those of us who are relatively well informed are still pretty ignorant on all sorts of topics. Indeed, I am consistently amazed at how little I actually know as I continue along the path of understanding, a path that if done correctly, never ends by the way.

Less than ten years ago, I was a well educated, very financially successful imbecile. It took the financial crisis and the inexplicably corrupt government response to it to shake me out of my slumber. While I remained blissfully ignorant for much of life, many people were out there fighting the good fight. I rest on the shoulders of the giants that came before me, and I learned so much from them. You don’t have to agree with thoughtful dissidents on every topic to gain tremendous value from their insights. Noam Chomsky is a great example. I strongly disagree with him on several issues, but when it comes to government propaganda and the nefariousness of U.S. militarism, he has few equals.

If you recently became aware of how bad things are, then maybe you should pay attention to those who have been saying it for a while. If you thought everything was fine and then your world fell apart once Trump got elected, perhaps you haven’t been paying enough attention. If you see Trump as the problem to be solved, as opposed to a symptom of a discredited and failing system, you present more of a danger than a solution. In fact, you’ll likely stand in the way of the paradigm level change necessary.

Getting angry is step one. Getting informed is step two. Those of us who have been in this fight for a while understand this, and we need to do whatever we can to steer the latent human energy into productive purposes, as opposed to unwitting henchmen and women for the neocon/neoliberal DNC. Time is short and the establishment is fighting for their lives. Protesting like sheep will lead to nothing good. 

If you enjoyed this post, and want to contribute to genuine, independent media, consider visiting our Support Page.

In Liberty,
Michael Krieger

Like this post?
Donate bitcoins: 35DBUbbAQHTqbDaAc5mAaN6BqwA2AxuE7G


Follow me on Twitter.

34 thoughts on “Protest in the Era of Trump”

  1. the largest problem is actually thinking mr. krieger that humanity at any level is able to govern itself , history proves other wise . reality is truly a bitch . i have always stayed as far away as i can from politics and i don’t see that changing , live life one day at a time , be a decent human being and leave what you can’t control alone .

    Reply
  2. The entire feminist movement can be summed up (and dismissed) in this one quote:

    “Just like all Western women, all you are good at is ordering in restaurants… and spending a man’s money!”

    – Pai Mei (Kill Bill Volume 2)

    Reply
  3. I think the vast majority of women there were sincere in their beliefs which seemed to range from Planned Parenthood, alarmed over a Trump administration, climate change, hands off my body and equality issues, etc. I didn’t view them as sheep at all. Wide range of opinions expressed in the signs. I’m not surprised the politicians/celebrities jumped on board for face time. That was just too huge an uprising to be some corporate/CIA gimmick. Now if we can get that amount of people to stop the assault on civil liberties, endless war, corrupt Wall St types, we’d really get somewhere. Maybe this protest will rub off on the rest of society.

    Reply
    • It looked very corporate to me. Like a giant pink parade ushering out a dying order. Very commercial. Nothing like Woodstock and the anti war protesters.

    • I think the point of the article is exactly that this Women’s March changed, and will not change anything unless directed at the real issues at hand. Much like the Occupy Wall St. that got infiltrated and had it’s energy purposefully misdirected and exhausted, the Women’s March got hijacked way before it even happened.

  4. The truly scary thing about these protests is that everyone seemed to be more like they were on vacation enjoying themselves and their Starbucks mochaccinos, rather than struggling for fundamental rights. I suppose this is the best metaphor for the arterial thrombosis of a left-wing engorged on its own ghastly materialism. We saw precursors to this in 2010 when Stephen Colbert organized his “March to Keep Fear Alive” as a Roman-style Triumph for idiocracy, and nearly a million slackers showed up. This was followed in 2011 when the Nouveau-Left organized Occupy Wall Street to make a legitimate stand against tyrannical banker bailouts — only to fail to issue a single demand.

    And now we have this Fantasy Land Protest.

    Reply
    • Are you referring to ALL the marches in the U.S. AND the world, or the Los Angeles March?

      What I find truly scary in the comments and the articles like this, is the deliberate attempt to minimize and discredit the impact of the millions of people turning out for genuine reasons and with heartfelt concerns. The insulting and offensive idea that women are just dupes of these manipulative controllers is really over the top.

      I was at the Asheville, NC march and no one there was “funded by George Soros”!!, The signs were homemade and our carpools were our own. There were all ages, women, men, children; all colors, creeds, and orientations, families, nuns, church groups veterans – and it was POWERFUL!! People weren’t there because of Gloria Steinem, Hollywood actresses, or any other suggested nonsense being spouted here.

      Of course, since none of you, including the author, actually went, how would you know? You don’t. What’s happening here is regurgitation of spurious information being latched on to to invalidate those who turned out in droves. And no, I’m not a democrat (or a republican), and I did not vote for Hillary, if that matters.

      But the people commenting here, including the author, weren’t even at the marches Are we supposed to believe that the millions of people who turned out in the U.S. and worldwide were secretly funded by billionaires?? All these men and women and children??

      Instead of working so hard to de-legitimize this amazing outpouring of citizen power that any thinking person SHOULD be celebrating, perhaps you should be examining why this apparently feels so threatening for you.

      If ya’ll are concerned about billionaires funding things, perhaps you should take note of the massive financial conflicts of a new billionaire president and his sociopathic cabinet picks. And their absolute agenda of destruction of what remains of public resources and rights. There’s your elite globalist puppeteers right there.

      And if you don’t find THAT scary, than you’re probably too stupid for democracy.

    • Dear Anne White,

      Neither I nor Michael Krieger nor indeed the vast majority of working class people in America had any business attending ANY of the so-called “marches” since Nov. 8th, for they have been fantasy protests.

      There is NO power to be found in the circus freak show that has come to epitomize the lackluster left. The citizen power is gone. It is a joke. A very ugly, sick joke.

      The only ray of hope in the last couple of months was the election, where disaffected working class people gave the circus-feting establishment that mighty middle finger — and it actually worked!

      There is yet hope that a serious challenge to corporatism through community action can happen.

      But NOT through ghastly displays of culture-hate by indignant hedonists.

  5. ” the focal point appears to be not just driven by identify politics, but on preserving already existing rights.”

    Having failed to get Roe v. Wade reversed outright, the money behind the religious right has managed to mount a back door attack on women’s reproductive rights by regulating Planned Parenthood out of business through senseless,onerous regulations legislated in the various states, including here in Texas.

    This has been aided by a campaign of misinformation using videos of so-called undercover interviews that were intentionally edited and redacted to make it appear that PP was out to make money selling fetal tissue, which was patently false. Never mind that Planned Parenthood was,until this all happened, the primary medical care provider for many thousands of young women. Not anymore.

    The is no real doubt that a woman’s right to choose (and access to reproductive medical care) is under full frontal assault here in Texas and in many other states. The march Saturday, which brought about 50,000 out here in Austin, has everything to do with a growing backlash against the political hardball of the pro-life religious right.

    Whatever American women might want, a return to the days of back alley abortions and “barefoot and pregnant” is NOT part of it. Ascribing the nationwide. massive, peaceful protests last weekend to “identity politics” is naive and indicates a failure to grasp the real issues, Mike.

    “Existing rights” are well on their way to non-existence.

    Reply
    • You have misunderstood the thrust of this excellent article. Michael is not belittling the importance of the various issues that belong under the rubric of ‘women’s rights’, but questioning the suspicious timing of the march, and the deliberate conflation of motivations for marching. Does anyone seriously think that there would have been such a widely publicised protest march in the event of a Hillary inauguration, despite the fact that her policies would have hurt the interests and endangered the very lives of millions of women worldwide? Michael is questioning the partiality and blinkered vision of those ‘feminists’ whose ignorance of the complexities of global politics and economics allows them to fixate on identity politics shibboleths, such as abortion rights, whilst ignoring the blatant human rights abuses that occur in a world-wide context, perpetrated by the very people they claim as saviours. His words are a sorely-needed plea for context and perspective; this was the purpose of his comment on the need to constantly strive to expand our knowledge.Otherwise we will forever be at the mercy of those unscrupulous people who co-opt legitimate issues to mask their perfidy. My one slight criticism of the article is that perhaps he should have made this more explicit, for the benefit of those commenters who, evidently, completely missed his point.

    • Thank you Anna, I couldn’t have put it better myself.

      Unfortunately, what I have learned over the years is no matter how hard you try to make your points as clear as possible, people will always misinterpret. Sometimes based on a lack of understanding and sometimes based on malice.

    • You’re right – some people just will not accept reality. As for the root causes, fear and laziness definitely play a part. It takes courage and mental energy to moderate our prejudices, resources that are in short supply for all human beings (some more than others!).

  6. The “protests” were nothing more than a distraction to keep us separated. The Left thinks they’re righteous, the Right thinks they’re righteous.

    Humans’ gift of cooperation is our strength. When that is stunted in anyway, confusion and anger follow.

    Look at the past 28 years, what have been the themes of distraction played over and over again? Terrorism, Racism, Misogyny. Always an Us vs. Them mentality.

    What’s really happening? Theft. Nice Wealth gap!

    Only vote that counts is your dollar. Buy quality, don’t support criminal enterprises masked as “your friends” or “knows best”, inform, sift, research, read the Constitution, again.

    And put some cardio in your life, go for a walk, talk to your neighbors, create an awesome life…

    Be a professional human, whatever that looks like to you! That would be a cool world.

    Reply
  7. Truly some superb insight on the situation in America and replicated elsewhere throughout the western ‘democracies.’ It is the system that is unjust not those faces with names who are just the managerial staff. Those who are informed know this and are the core of the resistance. Those who have their opinion handed to them and look no deeper will be easily mislead or co opted should they stumble upon or otherwise take up the ’cause.” I always liked the Stevie Wonder line that I use out of context from the song ‘Superstition’…”when you believe in things you don’t understand then you’ll suffer.”

    Reply
  8. IF you belong to a TRIBE, you don’t have to think , you just follow along with the tribe. Several of my friends went to the marches, i did not. It seems to me a feel good event to let off some steam. I will be , where i always have been, doing the work, legalizing weed, labeling GMOs, supporting standing rock. I wish half those women had supported Standing Rock, they NEED the help. THAT would be standing against REAL EVIL, and it is no party. Still i am glad they had fun. It was reactionary. An almost purely emotional exercise. I hope they are waking up, and yes, Gloria is despicable, always has been. When i heard she was there…. it pissed me off. CIA taint is on her forever. I have been awake a long time. These newbies are just letting off steam. Time will tell if they really are serious. I hope so.

    Reply
  9. Mike, the sooner you realize a huge cult has formed among many on the left the better it will be for you to see why these people act this way and why they will never be rational because of it.

    I also think you need to tone down the whole certainty that Trump is going to be bad. Nothing he’s done so far has been negative (seemingly some cabinet picks aside but even there, one should wait and see) so just wait and see before automatically forming a conclusion that he is going to be bad for the country. I am skeptical of Trump but at the same time, he has been positive in actions in this brief period since being elected so I will wait and see how it all goes before assuming the worst.

    It is absurd people are protesting a guy the day after he takes office and protesting him before he’s even done anything to deserve it. Maybe saying he wants to put the country first which should be the main job of a country’s figurehead is negative. If it is, humanity truly has regressed big time. I’m not an American but I can assure that I want the figurehead and government of my country working for me and my fellow citizens first.

    This sham protest was very amusing since what are they protesting? Women’s rights? Where is the evidence Trump is going to take away women’s rights? I also liked how apparently pro-life women were told they weren’t welcome at the sham march and I am sure women who support Trump (apparently the majority of white women who voted) were also not allowed. That’s inclusive and showing love trumps hate and women are standing together!

    The funny thing with the cultists on the left is the more Trump makes statements that are inclusive and positive for all Americans, the more they ramp up their hissy fit and slam the guy. I can’t wait to see what will happen if he actually does end up being positive for the country and improving things and these people will still be there trying to make him out to be some mythical monster.

    It’s obvious that those people do NOT care about the lives of their fellow citizens and they do NOT want Trump to be successful and actually “make America great again” because it’ll shatter their cult beliefs. If they truly did care for the country and its citizens, they would want Trump to do well and would give credit when he does something good and only wait to criticize when he does something bad.

    You may think that isn’t true but just watch and see how things go and whether they ever change their tune if he keeps doing positive things for Americans.

    Reply
  10. @ Anna Van Z

    It is not my fault that despite their fervent claims to be “feminists”, the vast majority of western (primarily American) women are “shallow” and materialistic, Anna.

    If you lost all access to clean drinking water, heat, and food, your independent feminist ideological bullshit would go right out the door, and any man that could provide you with those essentials would be welcomed with open arms.

    On a physical level women are the weaker sex. That is just a biological fact. There’s no reason to feel shame for that reality. Yet Gloria Steinem and her ilk purposefully created and then exploited that shame to their own personal monetary benefit.

    The words I would use to describe any woman who kills their own perfectly healthy unborn child as an alternate form of birth control merely because that child would be an inconvenience would make “shallow and ignorant” look like a huge compliment by comparison.

    When Ms. Steinem leaves this particular plane of existence she’s going to reap that which she has sown, and it is not going to be a pleasant crop to reap.

    Reply
  11. “Are we supposed to believe that the millions of people who turned out in the U.S. and worldwide were secretly funded by billionaires??”

    No, you’re not supposed to “believe” it. You’re supposed to know it, because it is a reality based in fact.

    Reply
    • Plus they don’t need to “secretly fund” all the women that have attempted the march. Just the organizers! The principle “organize the organizers” works wonder all the time. The rest is routine.

  12. Mike,
    some good points here.
    “The best way to control the opposition is to lead it.”
    Yes indeed….and you must be aware of an all too common method of doing that, used by the ‘Alt Media’, which is as a ‘Limited Hangout”.
    “Noam Chomsky is a great example. I strongly disagree with him on several issues…”
    Could this be a result of the fact that Chomsky is among the founding fathers of the ‘Limited Hangout’?
    He’s a highly intelligent man, but doesn’t pass a fundamental litmus test of veracity, since he accepts the official conspiracy theory for what occurred on 911, and dismisses any relevance of investigation, with neurolinguistic finesse.
    Having written Manufacturing Consent and specializing in linguistics, Chomsky is a master at utilizing techniques for truth suppression.
    His favorites include:
    ‘Reason backward’, using the deductive method with a vengeance. With thoroughly rigorous deduction, troublesome evidence is irrelevant. Indeed, Chomsky acts as if addressing the actual evidence is beneath him.
    Another of the techniques whose use by Chomsky might not be quite so obvious is to ‘Invoke authority.’ It is not obvious because the authority that he invokes is none other than himself, and he does it with his manner.
    He embellishes his authoritative image by ‘Characterizing the crimes as impossibly complex and the truth as ultimately unknowable.’
    Exalted academic figure though he might be, Chomsky is not above using the old schoolyard bully technique of ‘Calling the skeptics names.’ Well, he doesn’t exactly call them “conspiracy theorists,” but he says that they engage in conspiracy theories, which is pretty much the same thing, and he says it in a very dismissive fashion.
    A thorough investigation of Chomsky will elucidate a great deal of other evidence that he is willingly being used as a gatekeeper to misdirect genuine truth seekers.
    In other words, he’s a Fraud.
    At best, he’s a case study in how to Manufacture Consent.
    Cheers

    Reply
  13. Hopkins OB/GYN-This misogynistic article will be reported to the advertisers on your space in order to bait click to generate money for yourself….

    Reply
    • Dear Hopkins OB/GYN, sorry you were triggered.

      I encourage you to spend countless hours on your hopeless crusade to deprive me of income because you didn’t like something you read on the internet. It would please me more than you could ever imagine for you to waste your time on this pointless endeavor, knowing that it will keep you away from whatever other moronic activities you might otherwise be pursuing.

    • Have at it Hopkins! It’s obvious that you never took any marketing courses in college. Because you’ll rapidly find out how little advertisers care about your personal opinion about what does or does not constitute a “misogynistic article” that helped generate additional clicks.

  14. Howdy, Michael. First time, long time. Your stuff is always rationally thought out, well stated and is greatly appreciated here. It’s a shame more people with a “mic” can’t/won’t conduct their business in a similiar fashion. Speaking of mics, Doug Stanhope has a spot-on bit about about protesting and what-not. Good stuff. The bit is on Youtube called “Occupy Elsewhere”. NSFW. I’d link to it, but I’m not really sure how to do it on my phone. Hell, this sentence took me a minute and a half to to type correctly on this little fucking keyboard. Keep up the good man, my man!

    Reply
    • Hey Vanpire73, are you sure it is called ‘Occupy Elsewhere’? Just searched for it but couldn’t find it. There are other ‘Occupy’ clips from Stanhope, but not that one.

    • Anna- I thought it was… It is from his Beerhall Putsch special. It’s streaming on Netflix if you wanna catch the whold thing. Funny shit.

  15. Here’s the link. Pretty damn funny, and true. Especially the unbelievably annoying drum circles that served no purpose other than to repel anyone who might have an interest.

    Reply
  16. @ Eloriel

    “Curious you have such a negative take on “TRIBE” while also seemingly supporting the efforts at Standing Rock. Very curious indeed.”
    ————————————————————————————

    Tribalism as a mindset did what for the Native Americans?

    Answer: It allowed a much larger Tribe with superior weapons to take over all of their individual Tribal lands in smaller easier to defeat segments. While using other Indian Tribes who were mortal enemies of the other Tribes to help the largest Tribe (Europeans) defeat the other Tribe and take their territory.

    Don Juan Matus (who himself was a Yaqui Indian) said it best:

    “The collaboration rooms are full of the bones of the collaborators.”

    Also, Standing Rock is much ado about nothing other than another phony cause for self-aggrandizing useful idiot attention whores like you to let the world know how important you are and how much you love yourself. So of course you band together with other like minded members of the self-aggrandizing useful idiot attention whore Tribe in order to maximize your exposure.

    So that’s some of the reasons why I have a negative take on “TRIBE”. Which is why even as a small child I had a problem with being forced to recite the Pledge of Allegiance every morning before the rote memorization boredom fest began. Because if we really were ensured “liberty” as citizens of this country, we wouldn’t be forced to recite a pledge of allegiance to that same country (See:Tribe) every morning.

    Reply
  17. “Love Trumps Hate” was Bernie Sanders slogan. It was co-opted by the Hillary Clinton campaign. If you’re going to blather atleast blather with correct attributions.
    Your points have some validity but your straw men are a bit overly stuffed.
    Any march against the lunatic the fringe eeked into the White House, mostly thanks to Shenanigans pulled by the leading Democrats during the Primary, is still a good thing, spontaneous or organized. Are keep in mind that organization of a protest happens at a much quicker pace in these high speed 4G times.
    Sure, everybody is a complicit scheming asshat because you personally see through their transparent posturing. Congratulations.
    Now climb down off your high horse and pick up a sign.

    This is our lives down here in the muck, us the disenfranchised, the poor, the huddled masses fighting a treasonous racist unAmerican mysogynist punk for not a country but the principles that guide our democracy.
    So shut up or put up.

    Reply

Leave a Reply