If you vote for Trump, then you the voter, you, not Donald Trump, are standing at the border like Nazis going ‘you here, you here’.
– Donny Deutsch on MSNBC last week
Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.
– Friedrich Nietzsche
With each passing day, Trump’s hardcore supporters and detractors become more deeply entrenched in their respective corners and grow more hysterical. With every turn of the news cycle, we see two groups increasingly and equally convinced that only they and their allies can save the nation from total ruin. As someone who isn’t a cheerleader for any politician or political party, it’s fascinating to watch. It’s also made me consider where to draw the line when it comes to political action or commentary.
First off, we need to understand that an increasingly centralized, corrupt and unaccountable government making decisions for 325 million people will be inherently and systemically abusive toward the citizenry. To confront this reality we need resistance, but it can’t be the superficial, purely partisan kind.
Superficial resistance is what you see from establishment Democrats and MSNBC, peddling the fairytale that Trump the person is the problem, not the system itself. In contrast, genuine resistance is admitting and confronting our root problems which are deeply engrained and systemic. It means coming to terms with the fact we’re largely living in an imperial, executive-driven government structure as opposed to a Constitutional Republic. Congress doesn’t even bother to seriously weigh in on war and military operations anymore, essentially outsourcing its most awesome responsibility to whoever happens to be president. Trump the man isn’t our huge problem; excessive, secret and unaccountable government power is.
We need to admit that whoever happens to be elevated to the presidency will invariably abuse such misplaced power. Obama’s terrible policies were deserving of intense criticism as are Trump’s, but thinking that merely switching out the president is going to magically fix our problems is deranged. This is why I have no patience for “the resistance” to-date, which focuses all its energy and passion on Trump the man, versus they imperial leviathan he happens to be in charge of at this moment in time.
Obsessing about Trump the man has caused many of his high profile detractors to become overly hysterical, myopic and downright foolish. A perfect example of this occurred last Friday when Donny Deutsch, an advertising guy and pundit, explicitly instructed people to consider Trump voters Nazis.
What Deutsch manages to do is take an already existing obsessive focus on Trump the individual and move it in an even more counterproductive and mindless direction. Blaming Trump the man apparently isn’t superficial enough for him, so he encourages you to demonize the voter. You know the average person who’s intentionality given two awful candidates to choose from every four years. They’re the real problem according to him. Moreover, he doesn’t just want you to blame Trump voters, he wants you to consider them Nazis. This is the sort of clown they put on political television.
The fact that such nonsense so seamlessly flowed from his mouth demonstrates a total lack of capacity for reason. According to this logic, every Obama voter should be seen as a reckless imperialist murderer directly responsible for the destruction of Libya and the emergence of slave markets there. Feel free to use this sort of logic, but you won’t like where it leads.
Even worse for Deutsch, blaming voters is a surefire way to achieve noting politically.
Sorry, you can't guilt people into voting the way you want by calling them Nazis.
Perhaps you could think about creating opportunities so that people can pay rent without eating dog food.
— Michael Krieger (@LibertyBlitz) June 22, 2018
Trump supporters expressed outrage over what Deutsch said, and I’m sympathetic to that. What he said was ludicrous, dangerous and petty. That said, many of those same people got equally bent out of shape over the fact Trump press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders was asked to leave a Virginia restaurant by its owners. On this front I disagree, and think it’s important to draw a distinction between what Deutch said and what the owner of the Red Hen restaurant did.
If you work in government you are voluntarily putting yourself in the arena in a unique way. There are boundaries you shouldn't cross, but don't put these people on a pedestal irrespective of where you lie politically.
— Michael Krieger (@LibertyBlitz) June 25, 2018
Of course, I’m not arguing “anything goes” when it comes to government officials and bureaucrats, but kicking Sanders out of a restaurant is a non-violent political statement specifically directed at someone who voluntarily works for government. Standing up to and making government officials uncomfortable is part of our political heritage. We should also never forget how uncomfortable our unaccountable and overbearing government makes us feel all the time.
Finally, the action may herald the beginning of a new sort of activism based on grassroots action as opposed to the superficial, nonsensical and completely phony resistance promulgated by cable television pundits and washed up corporate Democrats such as Nancy Pelosi and Chucky Schumer.
This is why the move scares people of both parties in D.C. Because they want deference. In fact, they demand it. But politicians and government bureaucrats should only be respected when they earn respect. They work for us. We need to remind them of that.
— Michael Krieger (@LibertyBlitz) June 26, 2018
Obama wasn’t the problem, Trump isn’t the problem, and one slice of desperate, irritated voters isn’t the problem either. If we want to start blaming voters then we should look in the mirror, because all of us allowed this to happen. Demonizing and dehumanizing our neighbors because they voted differently might feel good, but it won’t get us anywhere.
However, giving government officials a hard time for doing terrible things is a reasonable tactic, irrespective of which party happens to be in power. They work for us, and if they’re screwing us over (which is at least 95% of the time) we shouldn’t just bow down and accept it.
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The hollowness of social media is partially to blame, as is the spiritual vacuum left by the secularization of our culture. But its only skin-deep, after all. No matter the arguments and ugly scenes, nobody has any power to move national policy one way or the other, and the cure to all this so-called madness is to put the damn phone down and realize the Trump-hating jerk is just as inconsequential as the Trump-loving idiot.
Mark my words, though: this cannot go on forever. The hysteria of social media feeding this crap, and the censorship being implemented to make the hysteria one-sided will be the one prop to take Facebook to zero. The other prop will be investigations into the fraudulent ad click process Zuckerberg is currently using to defraud every single advertiser on Facebook.
> The hollowness of social media
…is hollowness of what survives Google/Twitter/Facebook and other pseudo-private branches censorship.
It is not the natural hollowness of American culture (though it has its share there), but it also is the “chilling effect” imposed by the same 1%
What Hana said. Along those lines, one good thing to come from all this pointless, repetitive, unproductive posturing and talk is just that: It reveals itself for being pointless, repetitive, unproductive posturing and talk. If you can’t see it for what it is, as ugly and stupid as it is, should we expect you should see it for being ugly and stupid by having us continually harping on how ugly and stupid it is?
That is, at some point a person has to choose their own way of making it through all the sound and fury, signifying nothing. Along those lines, this is why I don’t pay to read or support writers with any kind of agenda — if I do, this makes the writer dependent on other people to continue their agenda, and if they won’t do it for their own reasons, that’s okay with me.
I think a point that is not emphasized enough is that this stigmatization of one’s opponents dehumanizes them and allows the next step to violence. In the current environment, the Left seems to be chumming the water for its violent sharks. Phrases like “punch a Nazi” and the implication that those who did not vote for you deserve to be “punished” are going to lead us to a place that civilized people on both sides do not want to see.
I am somewhat of a history buff and have been looking back at the newspapers and public speeches that I can find from between 1855 and 1860. There are terrible and startling parallels. The basis for the abolitionists was that slavery was immoral and slave owners deserved to be killed. The slave owners obviously became defensive and paranoid. When people threaten to kill you, it can happen.
I am not sure how Trump voters can not take the threats and epithets personally, especially when the same people threatening are trying to disarm those voters. I can understand why the Trump supporters might get paranoid.
Their support for the one person in power who seems to be on their side would grow and solidify. I think that this would be natural.
What I am pretty sure of is that you can’t ask just one side to stand down. That is essentially suicide for the them. What I fear is that Democrats believe that this churning of violence will lead to the dreamed of revolution that brings in socialism and the new utopia. That apocalyptic dream is dangerous to all of us. There is no clear outcome that preserves a constitutional Republic.
We are cursed to live in interesting times.
We have been here before, and quite recently. It was 50 years ago, when nearly every city in America was burning and assassinations were happening every other week. Rioting hippies mixed with racial warriors and ruthless terrorists and murderers to spill unholy violence on the streets while wholesale massacres stretched across the whole length of Vietnam. Some of us were kids back then, oblivious to everything except Walter Cronkite’s nightly reports on the horrors.
Sorry Hansa, I get your point. It just at that time I was a little distracted trying to stay alive half a continent away. You reminded me of history I need to review.
Divide and conquer…
The Hegelian Dialectic, and how is it used to control the populace.
The mainstream media is now overtly the Ministry of Propaganda.
Thesis is delivered daily by NBC,CBS, ABC and CNN.
Anti-Thesis is delivered daily by Fox News Network.
The Solution will always serve the few at the expense of the many who participate in either side of the Dialectic.
Now they are ramping it up to a fever pitch ahead of the mid-terms, and anything even approaching civility is out the window.
Keep them fighting among themselves while we maintain control and stay in power.
Either you stop falling for, and playing into, the Dialectic, or you’re just another Lemming jostling for position as you run towards the edge of the cliff. The law of gravity applies to all of the Lemmings equally.
Yes, And who is largely responsible for engineering our idiotic populace?
http://www.911nwo.com
Mike, I respect your writing and your thoughts. I like what you have to say. I only wish I could get people as yourself to evaluate my point of view. I posted a response to Caitlin yesterday.
https://steemit.com/collectiveintelligence/@cmw/reply-to-caitlin-johnstone-2 I think you should read it. My premise is that I believe we technologically have the ability to form a type of Collective Intelligence. This would be in a sense a type of artificial intelligence. You can read more on my blog at Steemit or Medium under user CMW. I have family and this is the only real solution I see to solve the issues we face. You and Caitlin are valuable writers and activist, it will take more though to secure our future. What needs to be understood is that you can view our reality from two different perspectives. Each perspective gains relevance from how human logic (our most valuable tool) is applied. In the world we know now we operate as individuals relying on our perceptions and conclusions we as individuals formulate, even if we choose to adopt the beliefs or conclusions of others. This approach has served us well for millenniums, yet now in our technological age poses a existential threat. The problem is that humans make logical errors In the formation of their belief systems.
The topic of your article today was about abuse of power and how to counter these abuses. If you look at this issue from two perspectives; Individual Intelligence and Collective Intelligence it is easier to navigate. “where to draw the line when it comes to political action or commentary”. The call;
“To confront this reality we need resistance” and that “we shouldn’t just bow down and accept it” has been echoed throughout history. It always leads to violent conflict in the end. Why? Because as humans we have never had the means to sort out our different beliefs and conclusions in an acceptable manner. You say; “genuine resistance is admitting and confronting our root problems which are deeply engrained and systemic”. This is true but it must go deeper than “coming to terms with the fact we’re largely living in an imperial, executive-driven government structure”. This result is only the product of our environment. The environment human logic functions within, and that is a world dominated by Individual Intelligence. It is a systemic issue as you said; “Trump the man isn’t our huge problem; excessive, secret and unaccountable government power is” “Obama wasn’t the problem, Trump isn’t the problem, and one slice of desperate, irritated voters isn’t the problem either. “We need to admit that whoever happens to be elevated to the presidency will invariably abuse such misplaced power” and “imperial leviathan he happens to be in charge of at this moment in time.” What we should all understand is that Individuals have failings. We all make mistakes but more, we all make errors (fallacies) in our logical reasoning. As you said; “The fact that such nonsense so seamlessly flowed from his mouth demonstrates a total lack of capacity for reason’ and you pointed out how we are “Demonizing and dehumanizing our neighbors”, which is a fallacy or error. This highlights the question of how to solve our issues; through the use of human logic as applied by Individuals or human logic expressed as a form of Collective Intelligence. Which will serve us better for the future in the new world we find ourselves in? We can continue to approach our newfound technological environment with fixes we used 5,000 years ago or we can find a solution that measures up to this age we live in and addressed the only one real issue; that being the fractured state of human logic and the resultant abuse. All you have to do to see it is turn on the T.V.
But I already know who I am. Hillary Clinton told me. I am a “Deplorable.” I am a “Despicable.” And I am now going to be a Nazi?
If President Trump runs for re-election in 2020 he has my vote. Have some more names you want to call me?
All President Trump has to say is: “We are ending all immigration from ALL countries effective immediately.” That means building the wall. That means documentation. If the IRS knows where every taxpayer is then the government can track everyone here in this country. If the seventeen (17) deep state agencies know everything there is to know about each citizen, then why not every one?
All Trump has to do is say that he will deport everyone already here illegally. If he has to take 85-percent of the military budget to pay for deporting 10-million illegals that’s 10-million fewer illegals in my country and 85-percent less endless war and endless war-mongering.
Our government is like an irresponsible teenage driver. Time to take the keys to immigration away from them. Shut it down.
The voices who will come closest to the truth will be those who work hardest not to align with either side of any given issue/party/politician. For this I commend you, Michael. You’re one of the few who has stayed relatively on the sidelines.
The one point I would make, however, about what you are accepting as ‘healthy political protest’ is that you are working from a premise of rational actors. While this breed of people exists, it is not often found in politically charged mobs. For either side (in this case, what I will call the “Maxine Waters liberals”) to specifically call to deny safe harbor in the public sphere to the other side is extremely dangerous. In any crowd such as Waters is calling for (and on a smaller scale, the restaurant owner congregated), it takes only a small number of morons to spark violence.
It is one thing to gather as many of your supporters as you can to draw attention to a policy or injustice. It is quite another to use such a crowd to explicitly disallow people you disagree with appearing in public.
So no, this behavior is not appropriate political discourse. On this I strongly disagree with you.
Also Deutsch, also on the same show, “just get the damn guns” a few weeks ago.
Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS) cuts both ways. One one hand, people crazy enough to think Trump is the root of their problems need to acquaint themselves with the deluge of circumstances that made his ascendancy possible. They need to learn that he is a symptom, that a profound level of alienation around the country allowed an opportunist like Trump to seize on it. When average Americans are ignored/mistreated for so long, their anger may manifest in ways the arrogant establishment doesn’t like. Watching Trump turn negative press into poll gains during his campaign should have clued them in.
On the other hand, TDS shows when his supporters actually believe that one guy, a glorified carnival barker at that, can solve America’s deep seated financial problems by going even further into debt. It’s made worse by cognitive dissonance, where Trump can claim US unemployment is 42% a few months before his election, then turn around 18 months later and claim sub-4% with a straight face, and nobody calls him on it. His famous flip flops are explained away as “9D chess” and that he only appears confused sometimes because in reality he’s so brilliant that our normal human minds cannot comprehend his genius.
If our national struggle is between Trump (and his minions) and his many wild eyed detractors, the best move is to sit back and let them tear at each other. America is financially lost, probably from around the time of Greenspan’s infamous “irrational exuberance” speech, and certainly by the time of TARP and “too big to fail”. There’s nothing at stake here besides the posturing and preening. The inevitable downfall will be ugly, but I wish all the non-TDS people luck!
Great post! Trump is just an individual leader. We need to make individual leaders obsolete or very much less important. Will the perfect candidate ever be elected? Perfect? I don’t think so.
Both sides are useful idiots.
The master plan is to divide and conquer, to disrupt and destroy this nation from the inside. The media is complicit.George Soros is funding it to the hilt.
Step back from the insane disruption being presented and realize that these things never just happen, they are artfully orchestrated.
Agreed. Very purposeful. People going crazy over the issues presented on TV/radio, but Zero media coverage of major evidence presently being presented in congressional hearings showing collusion between DNC, heads of FBI/DOJ/NSA, Shillary, British Intelligence, Soros, and Media corps in Anti-Trump /Pro- Establishment operations 2016 – the present. Nobody cares about the real, deeply entrenched issues that affect everyone.
I strongly disagree with Mike about the Red Hen incident.
When you start refusing service to people because you don’t like them because of their political affiliations you’ve started descending down a very slippery slope.
Resist not evil.
To be clear, I am not advocating people “start refusing service to people because you don’t like them because of their political affiliations.” I do agree that starts down a slippery slope. I am specifically talking about government bureaucrats and politicians.
I’m not even saying I would personally do it, I’m saying I think it’s a reasonable tactic when applied to people who work in government and engage in direct harm. I would not advocate using this tactic against average people you disagree with.
The Red Hen incident is simply a poor business decision made by an unqualified small business owner.
The irony of it all: Those homosexual employees that were so triggered will soon be seeking new employment due on her inability to properly manage her staff.
This is precisely why the congressional censure of Maxine Waters must proceed.
I don’t know where the “line” is, exactly, but she, quite clearly, stepped over it.
And nothing will serve to so clearly define its precise location than how Congress treats Ms. Waters recent actions.
Once the locus of that line is determined, then all of us can tread right up to the edge of it in our daily lives, as well, with no fear of repercussions.
There are many, many, on the left, who will not particularly enjoy living under the new rules they have created.
Michael,
This song ran through my head after reading your article.
https://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/grandfunkrailroad/imyourcaptain.html
Rock On!
http://freefall555.blogspot.com/2018/06/lost.html
The first bass line I ever learned!
The FED and the CONgress are the 2 most responsible for this nations demise….as in OPEN Borders and UNDECLARED conflicts…UNLIMITED spending…..for the past 50 + years…..aided by ALL of the presidents and the policies GIVEN to them by their MASTERS…..remedies are few (1) OBEY the CONSTITUTION..verbatim….(2) Bring ALL troops home (3) CLOSE our borders (4) Have a REAL BALANCED BUDGET,.(5) END the FED (6) DO NOT FUND ANY NGO…NONE (7) INDICT AND TRY ALL WHO HAVE BEEN INVOLVED FOR THE PAST 2 YEARS ..in the Obama Administration CONgress and NGO’s as are SHOWN in the INVESTIGATIONS..COMPLETED…. and may be this could start to correct this sinking’ship of State’…imo
https://financearmageddon.blogspot.com/2018/06/what-will-global-economic-collapse-look.html
Mike,
“I’m not even saying I would personally do it, I’m saying I think it’s a reasonable tactic when applied to people who work in government and engage in direct harm.”
Understood, and I know you wouldn’t personally do it.
But the reason I wrote, “Resist not evil” is simple. If you harm someone in any way that you have determined is guilty of engaging in “direct harm” and thus offended you, then all you have done is lower yourself to their level, and further empowered them in the process.
Whether that manifests as refusing to serve them in your restaurant or yelling at them in a public place, doesn’t matter. What matters is the fact that all you have done is weakened yourself by handing them your power.
“Self-importance is man’s greatest enemy. What weakens him is
feeling offended by the deeds and misdeeds of his fellow men.
Self-importance requires that one spend most of one’s life offended
by something or someone.”
A perfect example would be Maxine Waters reaction to what happened to Sarah Sanders. She foolishly thinks that she has a right to be so offended by all things Trump, that she can act even worse than Trump and up the ante.
In reality, she just gave him a great big helping of just the type of political red meat that he loves.
Excellent post Mike. People get lost in the labels and superficial agendas.
It’s actually quite simple: rich against everyone else, who are pitted against each other:
https://therulingclassobserver.com/2018/06/24/allegory-of-the-clenched-fist/
“I agree to this Constitution with all its faults, if they are such: because I think a General Government necessary for us, and there is no Form of Government but what may be a Blessing to the People if well-administered; and I believe farther that this is likely to be well administered for a Course of Years and can only end in Despotism as other Forms have done before it, when the People shall become so corrupted as to need Despotic Government, being incapable of any other.”
– Benjamin Franklin
A Corrupt People will elect Corrupt Leaders.
The mechanisms that served to bind the diverse peoples that came to this country over the years have all been eroded or obliterated.
The 21st Century has witnessed the death knell of God in this country and replaced it with TV, social media, and yoga.
The twin pillars of our political founding, the 1st and 2nd Amendments: our right to a voice and the means to defend it; are under attack from a minority of people wielding e-megaphones so they can scream louder than the coherent multitudes… multitudes that are bewildered that these rights are even questioned, but have accusations of bigotry hurled upon them when they object. SO they will sit in cowed silence until their rights are stripped away, only to die having mortgaged the freedom of their grandchildren to their naively idealistic children.
Somehow, the recent election of an openly Communist politician is being celebrated as some sort of victory for The Good. Communism, which sounds great to the poor and unlearned, has been tested in multiple forms and across multiple cultures and been proven, without fail, to be a failed economic model, thus no longer worthy of consideration.
Yet…. this fool will be trotted across the talk show circuit over the coming weeks, to spread her poison.
I have nothing against someone pointing out that things aren’t working… but you have to bring a solution that works… promoting communism is like having your electricity go out and proposing the family start a candle factory.
Liberty doesn’t stand a chance… this is the fate we have chosen.
‘
Best to accept and build your net worth.
I hope you will read my post above and perhaps even my blog on Steemit under CMW. I believe you are right in your pessimism in how things devolve. The real issue in my view is not the “issue” whether it be gun rights, immigration, socialism etc. The real issue is that the “issues” evolve in an environment highly influenced by perception, and held hostage by human authority based in the individual mind or intellect of individuals. Sounds like “well yeah” I know. You have to think though, why do you believe what you believe? Where is the logic behind your assertions. That is the important element, not who has the biggest microphone or the trendiest haircut. So create an environment (through technology) where human logic and reason are the supreme moderator, arbiter, authority not the self-serving, fallacy (error) loving and accepting individual human intellect and person and their associated mobs and sheeple. At some point we have to stop crying about it, accept that it will never get better, we are only putting band-aids on gut wounds and find something that will bypass all this non-sense. An avenue which will carry us into the future and put an end to all this idiocy. I believe a Collective Intelligence is that vehicle. One of the major problems with communism and socialism is that at the end of the road there is always some “authority” and that authority is always some individual or group of individuals. As you know with individuals; there are always “issues” as the whole of human logic and understanding gets to be filtered and corrupted by the wants, needs and distortions of the individual. You could I am sure also add many other “reasons” why communism is the wrong direction. But who is listening? your words, your effort and your logic will all evaporate in a week or two..That is the real problem/issue?
https://www.rawstory.com/2018/07/theres-mysterious-web-linking-trump-family-anthony-kennedy/
Night, she’s not a “communist”, she’s a Bernie Sanders socialist, who also shares some of Ron Paul’s views on US militarism overseas and reigning in Wall Street.
Like Bernie, a lot of what she is proposing in her platform regarding social issues like free education for all, etc. are based in a fantasy dream world where everyone is born equal, instead of “created” equal.
Everyone is not “born” equal, but everyone was originally created equal. Big, big, difference. The Christian, Jewish, and Muslim belief system that we all live one life and then either go to heaven or hell (at least Roman Catholics throw in purgatory) leads to the extremely flawed belief that every person who is born in this country is somehow equal to every other person born in this country.
All you need are basic observational skills to know that someone born into a family that is dirt poor, or born with a severe handicap, is not equal to someone born into a wealthy family that is perfectly healthy.
Samsara says otherwise.
Great post loved it! Haven’t been able or willing to watch US news for awhile now living in Thailand, but I think you kept me up to date that I haven’t missed a darned thing!
Those unholywood smiles
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8FM5DRjq9ZY
If that is how they look at the Congress one may wonder how they lok at Americans….