Seems Like A Mistake To Me To Think That Taylor Swift Is An NPC

wired  |  Taylor Swift remains inescapable. Tales of her reign are legion, as are her fans. Next to Beyoncé, her power and influence have reached heights so unbridled it’s almost unfathomable. Her Eras Tour made nearly a billion dollars in 2023, and the concert film of that tour has brought in nearly $250 million worldwide. When rumors started swirling in the fall that she was dating Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce, they upended American football. Still, when Time named her Person of the Year, conspiracy theorists saw only one explanation. They allege Swift is a psyop.

If you’ve lived on the internet long enough, you will have heard this kind of thing before. Back in 2016, when she was largely apolitical in her public life, Swift was a hero of the so-called alt-right who some believed was actually red-pilling America to further a racist, conservative agenda. When she piped up about politics in 2018, some people online (somewhat jokingly) theorized she’d been replaced by an NPC. The latest twist? “The regime has plans to weaponize her just in time for 2024,” the @EndWokeness account posted on X Wednesday, adding that if you didn’t find this plausible “you clearly have not been paying attention.”

@EndWokeness has 1.9 million followers, and, as of Monday morning, the post had more than 788,000 views. On Telegram, a QAnon influencer account posted that “we need to wake the next generation up to the occult forces colluding with their favorite celebrities.” Right-wing commentator Jack Posobiec posted on X that “the Taylor Swift girlboss psyop has been fully activated.”

Last week’s Person of the Year honor was also followed by resurfaced allegations that Swift is performing witchcraft to further her success and that the left is using her to influence the 2024 US presidential election. Stephen Miller, a senior adviser during Donald Trump’s presidency, posted a message on X saying that “what’s happening with Taylor Swift is not organic.”

All of this happened the same week WIRED reporter David Gilbert published an investigation into a pro-Russia campaign that used fake Swift quotes in a series of Facebook and X posts attempting to seed anti-Ukraine sentiment, reinforcing—in a totally different way—that celebrity is a powerful tool for manipulation. A few days later, Microsoft researchers revealed a similar effort by an unknown Russian group to alter Cameo videos by celebs like Elijah Wood and Mike Tyson to make it look like they were being critical of Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky.

Swift exists as a unique example of the intersection of celebrity and politics, and how it operates globally, says Jonathan Dean, a professor of politics at the University of Leeds. “An important feature of culture and politics over the past 10 years, certainly in the UK and the US and I think probably more broadly as well, is that there’s been a significant convergence in the grammar and style and mode, if you like, of pop culture fandom and political citizenship,” he says, referencing the similar ways fandoms and political parties can operate. “Taylor Swift is interesting in that sense because I think she’s a real embodiment of those convergences.”

 

Hoodboogers Aren't Born, They're Engineered And Systematically Groomed...,

Corporate America disproportionately targets Black and Hispanic consumers with junk food, such as candy, sugary drinks, snacks, and fast food, more than any other race. 

The Rudd Center for Food and Policy Health at the University of Connecticut found Black youth and adults were subjected to 21% more junk food ads than their white counterparts. Researchers said corporate America boosted their advertising budgets on Spanish-speaking television stations as a total proportion of their ad budget.

As the advertising industry drastically changes, companies are embracing celebrities and influencers to promote their products on television and social media. Researchers said advertisers hired celebrities from Black and Hispanic communities to encourage young people of color to purchase junk food. 

Many of these celebrities are idolized by consumers and will mimic their trends, even if that's unhealthy eating habits. 

In the midst of the worst obesity epidemic this nation has ever faced, corporate America employs an army of influencers to bombard people of color with ads for junk food. Data shows nearly 20% of all children are obese, and rates are much higher among children of color: 26.2% of Hispanic children and 24.8% of Black children. This is compared with 16.6% of white children. 

dailymail  |   Highly-processed foods should be reclassified as drugs because they are as addictive and harmful as cigarettes, scientists argue.

Researchers claim items like donuts, sugary cereals and pizza meet the meet official criteria that established cigarettes as a drug in the 1990s.

These include causing compulsive use and mood altering affects on the brain, and having properties or ingredients that reinforce addiction or trigger cravings.

Ultra processed foods - which also include things like soda, chips, pastries and candies - contain high amounts of unnatural flavorings, preservatives and sweeteners.

These properties give them their delicious flavor — but also make them high in calories, fat, sugar or salt, which raise the risk of obesity and other chronic illnesses.

Researchers led by Dr Ashley Gearhardt, a psychology professor at the University of Michigan, told DailyMail.com these foods are more like a drug because of how distant they are in taste and texture from natural foods.

'They are industrial produced substances designed to deliver sugar and fat,' Dr Alexandra DiFeliceantonio, a health behaviors research professor at Virginia Tech University, said.

'They are not foods anymore. These are these products that have been really well designed to deliver addictive substances.'

 

Inside-Baseball Details On The Takedown Of Kanye West

pagesix |  Beloved celebrity trainer Harley Pasternak appeared to threaten to “institutionalize” Kanye West so that the rapper would be medicated into “Zombieland forever.”

Following his anti-Semitic rants, West shared texts purportedly sent by Pasternak, who is Jewish, that began by offering to have a “loving, open conversation” with him based on “fact.” Pasternak also asked his former friend and client to refrain from “cuss words” or “crazy stuff.”

“Second option, I have you institutionalized again where they medicate the crap out of you, and you go back to Zombieland forever. Play date with the kids just won’t be the same,” the message continued.

West, 45, tweeted the screenshot Thursday and wrote that he was “mentally misdiagnosed and nearly drugged out of my mind to make me a manageable well behaved celebrity.”

“This is how a Hollywood trainer speaks to a far more influential black celebrity when we get out of line,” West added in a follow-up tweet.

Pasternak, 48, didn’t immediately return Page Six’s request for comment. He did, however, change his Instagram profile to private.

The texts purportedly sent by Pasternak, who has worked with Jessica Simpson, Jack Black, Lady Gaga, Rihanna and more celebrities, confirm reports that he made the phone call that resulted in West’s 2016 hospitalization.

The Grammy winner’s treatment came after he had a meltdown onstage right before the rest of his tour was canceled.

“He’s been suffering from exhaustion and sleep deprivation and went to the hospital today on his own will and under the consultation of his physician,” a source close to West said at the time.

The Los Angeles Police Department told The Post at the time that its officers responded to a call for a “disturbance,” but once they arrived at the address, the incident was classified as a “medical emergency.”

The rapper-turned-fashion designer has been under fire in recent months for his anti-Semitic remarks. While friends close to West claim he’s in the midst of a “psychiatric episode,” others maintain that his mental state does not exempt him from consequences, which include losing lucrative partnerships with Adidas and Balenciaga.  Fist tap Dale.

 

 

 

American Negroes Got Massively Suckered By Celebrities Into The Crypto Dip...,

FT  |    “We do not like to get left behind when it comes to new technology,” she said. 

The promise of cryptocurrencies as a wealth builder has been supercharged by celebrity endorsements, sponsorships and advertising. Prominent black Americans including the musicians Jay-Z and Snoop Dogg, the boxer Floyd Mayweather, the actor Jamie Foxx and the film-maker Spike Lee have promoted crypto to their communities. 

Lee appeared in commercials for crypto ATM operator Coin Cloud last year, saying that “old money is not going to pick us up; it pushes us down” and “systematically oppresses”, whereas digital assets are “positive, inclusive”. Last month, Jay-Z announced a partnership with former Twitter chief executive Jack Dorsey to launch a “Bitcoin Academy” literacy programme in the Brooklyn public housing complex where he grew up. 

Such celebrity endorsers have faced heavy criticism for getting paid to sell high-risk investments to people who may not have the resources to weather crypto’s volatility. “Ninety-eight per cent of these cryptocurrencies were not designed to do anything other than extract money from people’s bank accounts,” said Najah Roberts, a former financial adviser and the founder of cryptocurrency education centre Crypto Blockchain Plug. “This is not ‘get rich quick’,’’ Roberts added. “There are massive targeting ads that are targeting our community.”

Bellanton said it is not adverts but the prospect of financial freedom, a lack of the investment minimums common for mutual funds, and a feeling that the blockchain distributed ledger is more transparent than big banks that draws in first-time investors. 

“The reason that minorities at a higher rate than others are adopting crypto is precisely because if you’re not already rich, it’s way cheaper to send [USD Coin, a stablecoin asset] than to send a wire,” said Brian Brooks, chief executive of blockchain company Bitfury, at the Aspen Ideas Festival last month. “It’s just cheaper. 

The entire system is cheaper and faster. It doesn’t have all these entry barriers where you can only get it if you’re already rich.” Despite the risk of losses, many black investors are staying invested in the market. Dennis McKinley, 41, has been buying the dip against the advice of his financial adviser. He said his crypto coins now constitute roughly 30 per cent of his overall portfolio, held alongside equities. 

“Young black America is just now getting to a point where we have the amount of freedom to have the opportunity to invest in alternative strategies besides just real estate,” said McKinley, a small-business owner in Atlanta. “I think that it’s important to learn and get out there.”

While You Obsessed Over Will Smith's N***a Moment, Klaus Schwab An'Em Was Talm'bout You In Dubai...,

thelastamericanvagabond  |  While much of the “mainstream” world has spent the last few days obsessing over and debating the celebrity spectacle surrounding American actor Will Smith slapping American comedian Chris Rock, the international elitists were meeting in Dubai for the 2022 World Government Summit.

From March 28th to the 30th, corporate media journalists, heads of state, and CEOs of some of the most profitable companies in the world met for discussions on shaping the direction of the next decade and beyond. Anyone with a functioning brain should ignore the tabloids and instead pay attention to this little known gathering of globalist Technocrats.

Let’s take a look at the speakers and the panels, starting with Mr. Great Reset himself, Klaus Schwab, founder of the World Economic Forum.

Schwab gave a talk entitled, Our World Today… Why Government Must Act Now?.  “Thank you, to his excellency for enabling this initiative to define a longer-term narrative to make the world more resilient more inclusive and more sustainable,” Schwab stated during his address. The use of the term narrative is important because in January 2021, Klaus and the World Economic Forum announced the next phase of The Great Reset, The Great Narrative.

As with The Great Narrative event, the World Government Summit was also held in Dubai. As I wrote during the Great Narrative meeting:

“While the political leaders of the UAE and Klaus Schwab may promote themselves as the heroes of our times, we should judge them according to their actions and the company they keep, not the flowery language they use to distract us. The simple fact is the UAE has a horrible record on human rights. The nation is known for deporting those who renounce Islam, limited press freedoms, and enforcing elements of Sharia law.”

During Schwab’s short talk he also mentioned his pet project “the 4th Industrial Revolution“, which is essentially the digital panopticon of the future, where digital surveillance is omnipresent and humanity uses digital technology to alter our lives. Often associated with terms like the Internet of Things, the Internet of Bodies, the Internet of Humans, and the Internet of Senses, this world will be powered by 5G and 6G technology. Of course, for Schwab and other globalists, the 4IR also lends itself towards more central planning and top-down control. The goal is a track and trace society where all transactions are logged, every person has a digital ID that can be tracked, and social malcontents are locked out of society via social credit scores.

Immediately following Schwab was a panel which made no attempt to hide the goals of the globalists. The panel, Are We Ready for A New World Order?, featured Fred Kempe, president and CEO of the Atlantic Council since 2007, as well as an anchor for CNN and a former advisor to former US president George W. Bush. Before joining the Council, Kempe was a prize-winning editor and reporter at the Wall Street Journal for more than 25 years.

In fact, the Atlantic Council had a fairly large presence at the World Government Summit, including appearances by Defne Arslan, senior director of the Atlantic Council IN TURKEY program, and Olga Khakova, Deputy Director of Global Energy Center of Atlantic Council.

For those who are unfamiliar with the Atlantic Council, I first reported in May 2018 that Facebook had partnered with the thinktank connected to NATO. I wrote:

“The Atlantic Council of the United States was established in 1961 to bolster support for international relations. Although not officially connected to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the Atlantic Council has spent decades promoting causes and issues which are beneficial to NATO member states. In addition, The Atlantic Council is a member of the Atlantic Treaty Organization, an umbrella organization which “acts as a network facilitator in the Euro-Atlantic and beyond.” The ATO works similarly to the Atlantic Council, bringing together political leaders, academics, military officials, journalists and diplomats to promote values that are favorable to the NATO member states. Officially, ATO is independent of NATO, but the line between the two is razor thin.

Essentially, the Atlantic Council is a think tank which can offer companies or nation states access to military officials, politicians, journalists, diplomats, etc. to help them develop a plan to implement their strategy or vision. These strategies often involve getting NATO governments or industry insiders to make decisions they might not have made without a visit from the Atlantic Council team. This allows individuals or nations to push forth their ideas under the cover of hiring what appears to be a public relations agency but is actually selling access to high-profile individuals with power to affect public policy. Indeed, everyone from George H.W. Bush to Bill Clinton to the family of international agent of disorder Zbigniew Brzezinski have spoken at or attended council events.”

Masks Are For Peasants...,

washingtontimes |  If you’re among the Hollywood elite at the Emmys, you don’t need a face mask. If you’re a simple school student in most of the rest of America, you better have a face mask. Any questions?

This is the tale of two emerging societies in America: those who have to obey coronavirus restrictions and those who don’t. And guess which category you fit.

Cedric the Entertainer, the host for the evening, tried to quiet criticisms before they had a chance to brew — but was largely unsuccessful.

“No Masks at the #Emmys because rules are for the little people,” one social media poster wrote.

“The Only People Wearing Masks At the Emmys Were Servants,” another wrote.

“Is ‘science’ the reason celebrities don’t need masks at the Emmys but all the hourly employees do?” yet another wrote.

“Emmys = no masks. Our college and high school sons = masks. Where’s the outrage?” yet one more wrote.

It’s not that the Emmys’ attendees should have been forced to wear masks. It’s that everybody else in the country shouldn’t be forced to wear masks, either.

The fact some can skate on the Anthony-Fauci-recommendations-slash-mandates while others cannot shows clearly the growing two-class society in America: the thees — the Democrat voters, the socialist types, the leftist leaners — but not for me’s — the conservatives, the Donald Trump base, the tea party types, the individualists.

It’s the coronavirus version of apartheid.

“Masks are for peasants,” another wrote on Twitter.

And that very succinctly describes the attitudes from the far-left.

The Boutique Left Strikes Again..., (Thirsty BLM Biddies Big Mad Cause No Met Gala Invitation)

dailymail |   A huge crowd of protesters have gathered outside the 2021 Met Gala in Manhattan just as a host of A-listers arrive for the biggest night in the fashion calendar. 

Multiple arrest have been made as dozens of NYPD officers clashed with the BLM protesters outside New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art on Monday. 

Police can be heard yelling at demonstrators lining the streets to 'Move back!' in cellphone footage of the event, while the protesters chant 'Black Lives Matter'. 

'The NYPD has a total financial allocation of $11 billion per year. This money goes towards racist policing that destroys Black and brown communities while people who are struggling do not get the resources they need. CARE, not COPS, is the answer,' the flyer read. 

It is still unclear how many protestors were arrested. 

The gala's theme this year is a celebration of the Costume Institute’s newest exhibition, 'In America: A Lexicon of Fashion.' The exhibit will open to the public in the Anna Wintour Costume Center on September 18th.   

The gala usually takes place on the first Monday in May, but was delayed due to Covid-19 fears until tonight. The 2020 event was cancelled entirely due to the pandemic.   

Public Health Celebrity Lil'Fauci Says "Guns A Public Health Emergency"

aier |  For decades, Anthony Fauci was an unrecognizable government bureaucrat to anyone who lived outside of the D.C. Beltway. He would pop up out of obscurity and into the conversation every few years in the event of a niche issue involving infectious diseases. That all changed with the COVID-19 pandemic, which elevated the once-irrelevant mandarin to stardom. Today, he is a media mainstay. The celebrity doctor, who has become best known for his routine peddling of quackery related to the coronavirus, has developed a cult following thanks to his consistent political activism and regular appearances across a plethora of media platforms.

The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) — where Fauci has held the top post for 38 years — now accommodates their celebrity doctor by maintaining a dedicated list of his media appearances. Scroll through the “Fauci In The News” tab on the NIAID website and you will find page after page of Dr. Fauci’s seemingly endless schedule of media hits. By my count, he has accumulated well over 300 media appearances over the past year alone. On Sunday, Fauci got a high dose of his television fix, racking up 4 separate TV appearances on ABC, CNN, CBS, and NBC.

The partial list, which was last updated on April 19, shows that Fauci has collected 309 media appearances over the past year alone. By comparison, in 2019, Fauci made about 1 media appearance per week. Additionally, the “Fauci In The News” list does not account for many of Fauci’s appearances on random celebrity YouTube channels, podcast hits, radio interviews, livestreamed conferences and the like, which easily send his average media hits over the past year to well over one appearance per day. 

When Anthony Fauci isn’t in front of a camera, he’s said to be on the front lines battling the pandemic as the nation’s “foremost infectious diseases expert,” a label that is somehow justified by his track record of being a government bureaucrat for half a century. However, other than working his way up the ranks of a government bureaucracy, and using crafty political maneuvers to build his personal status in Washington, D.C. and around the world, it’s unclear what exactly Fauci has accomplished to deserve this label.

With all of that time in front of a camera, it might make some wonder if the celebrity bureaucrat has time to actually follow the latest data and statistics on the pandemic. Given his routine blunders, his lack of transparency, and his advocacy for continued shutdowns (there are now over 50 published scientific studies that show lockdowns don’t work), it’s safe to say that the NIAID director is either ignorant and clueless and/or purposely advocating for measures that do not work to “stop the spread.” 

NYTimes Defends Lil'Fauci - America's Highest Paid Public Health Celebrity

Conspiracy theorist Naomi Wolf on FOX News Primetime: "[Anthony Fauci] doesn't work for us... He got a million dollars from the state of Israel..." (h/t @kampeas) pic.twitter.com/Z6KECpc2tf

— John-Paul Pagano (@johnpaulpagano) April 20, 2021

NYTimes |   “Fauci” was a dirty word uttered from the stage of the Conservative Political Action Conference in Florida in February. “Fauci” is a dirty word prevalent in conservative publications. In Breitbart News several days ago, Fauci was dismissively referred to as America’s top “public health celebrity.” “Fauci Fallacies at All-Time High” was a recent headline in The Washington Free Beacon. In the span of one week this month, National Review published articles titled “Anthony Fauci Has Worn Out His Welcome,” “Anthony Fauci’s Misadventures in Fortune-Telling” and “Another Dismal Sunday-Show Circuit for Dr. Fauci.”

Just a few days ago in The Washington Post, Dan Diamond mentioned Fauci antipathy in the opening paragraph of a report about people who refuse to get vaccinations against the coronavirus. The message from one focus group of such people, he noted, was that “if you’re trying to win over skeptics, show us anyone besides Dr. Fauci.”

Philip Bump, one of Diamond’s colleagues at The Post, correctly observed that “Fauci has become what Trump always wanted him to be: the scapegoat for unpopular government recommendations.”

But it’s even bigger and weirder than that. “He doesn’t work for us,” the writer Naomi Wolf said on Fox News on Monday, referring to Fauci and reacting to a $1 million prize given to him by a philanthropy in Israel as a recognition of his, yes, public service. She cast the money as evidence that he was “so conflicted” and not sufficiently guided by concern for the “public health of the American people.”

 

 

Morgan Freeman Out'Chere Pitching The Mark Of The Beast - How Appropriate...,

thehill |  Morgan Freeman says if you trust him, you'll take his advice and get vaccinated against COVID-19.

"I'm not a doctor, but I trust science. And I’m told that, for some reason, people trust me," the "Vanquish" star says in a public service announcement released Monday by the arts advocacy group The Creative Coalition.

Freeman, 83, has played God in multiple films and is a popular choice for narrating documentaries and science specials.

“So here I am to say I trust science and I got the vaccine," he tells viewers in the PSA.

"If you trust me, you’ll get the vaccine," Freeman adds.

Morgan, I don't trust you as far as I could spit on you. First, there's your recent Russiagate foolishness and phukkery:

And then, there's that deeply disturbing personal failing from several years ago when your nasty old ass was simultaneously on those blue pills and your own step grand daughter!!! Now, low-information, short-memory, IQ-75 may have forgotten what you were up to, but these liminal views of consensus reality CANNOT UNSEE what they have seen:

Barely Average Pair Get "Fun Little Bonus Things" That You And Yours Could Never Have...

scarymommy |  Poet Amanda Gorman and Kamala Harris’s stepdaughter Ella Emhoff both land modeling contracts after the Inauguration

Joe Biden and Kamala Harris’s 2021 Inauguration was groundbreaking for a number of reasons. The 2021 Inauguration proved that democracy does work, Kamala Harris made history as the first ever female Vice President, the world was introduced to the work of the great poet Amanda Gorman, and — it was the day that Gorman and Kamala Harris’s step-daughter Ella Emhoff pivoted to modeling careers, which is just a fun little bonus thing that happened to these cool and talented young women as a result of the Biden administration.

Though 22-year-old Gorman is still, and most importantly, a writer, a Harvard grad, and the first person to be named National Youth Poet Laureate, she is also totally stunning and after her appearance at the Inauguration, landed a contract with IMG Models, who represent a few little models you might have heard of like Gigi Hadid, Kate Moss, and Gisele Bundchen.

But Gorman isn’t the only budding supermodel in the Inaugural mix. Harris’s step-daughter Ella Emhoff (who has already become a Gen Z darling for her stylish Inauguration look) is a 21-year-old college student studying fashion design at Parsons School in New York, and she also landed an IMG models deal this week.

 

AOC Is An Attention-Whoring Liar Who Was Nowhere Near The Capital Building On January 6th

narrativesproject |  On February 1st, Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez hosted an Instagram live-stream where she discussed her experience during the Capitol breach of January 6th. This morning the hashtag #AOClied began trending on Twitter.

Here’s part of the transcript*

*with filler words removed

And I go back to scrolling through lunch options for what we're gonna order, when all the sudden I hear "Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom!" on my door. And then I hear these huge violent bangs on my door and then every door going into my office. Just "Bang! Bang!" [phone falls down] Shoot, see look I'm banging it over again [laughs]. "Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!" like someone was trying to break the door down. And there were, there was no voices, there were no yells, no one saying who they were, nobody identifying themselves, and just "Boom! Boom! Boom!" And I just get up like this and I run over to the legislative office, and I run over to Gee [the legislative assistant]. And Gee just looks at me back, and he just goes "Hide! Hide! Run and Hide!" And so I, I run back into my office, I slam my door, there's another kind of like back area to my office, and I, I open it and there's a closet and a bathroom, and I jump into my bathroom and I close the door, and I just keep hearing these "Bang! Bang! Bang!" and I jump into my bathroom and I close the door and then I realize that I, the bathroom was the wrong choice, I, I should've jumped into the closet and so I start opening the the, the, I start opening the door to the bathroom so that I can—oh sorry you guys can't hear me [adjusts phone]. 

So I start, I hear these "bang bang bangs" and I start opening the door to my office and I start opening the door to my bathroom and I'm gonna run across to the closet—sorry you guys said I was a little bit muffled so let me repeat this part a little bit over again. Sorry this is a little bit hard to hear guys I'm trying to like, as you know my phone keeps falling.

Fact-check pic.twitter.com/tLoJ3HxcQP

— Jack Posobiec 🇺🇸 (@JackPosobiec) February 3, 2021

And so basically I go into the back and there's a bathroom and then there's a closet, and I jump into the bathroom and I immediately realize that I shouldn't have gone into the bathroom I should've jump in the closet, and so I, I open the door when all of the sudden I hear that whoever was trying to get inside got into my office. And then I realized that it's too late, that it's too late for me to get into the closet, and so, I tried to kind of, I go back in and I, I hide back in, in the bathroom behind the door and then i just start to hear these yells of "Where is she?! Where is she?!" And I just thought to myself, "They got inside." And so I hide behind my door [stands up against the wall] like this. Like I'm here, and the bathroom starts going like this [gestures to her front] like the bathroom door's behind me or rather in front of me and I'm like this, and the door hinge is right here [sits back down]. And I just hear "Where is she?! Where is she?!" And this was the moment where I thought everything was over.

And the weird thing about moments like these is that you lose all sense of time. In retrospect, maybe it was 4 seconds. Maybe it was 5 seconds, maybe it was 10 seconds, maybe it was 1 second, I don't know. It felt like my brain was able to have so many thoughts in that moment between these screams and these yells of "where is she, where is she" and so I go down and I just. I mean I thought I was going to die. And I had a lot of thoughts. You have a lot of thoughts [laughs] I think when you're in a situation like that, and also one of those thoughts that I had was—I just happen to be a spiritual person and be raised in that context and I really just felt like if this is the plan for me, then people will be able to take it from hear. I had a lot of thoughts, but that was the thought that I had about you all. I felt that [voice wavers] if this was the journey that my life was taking, that I felt that things were going to be ok. And that I had fulfilled my purpose.

So far, this account sounds like a violent attacker is hunting the Congresswoman, and that she was within inches of her life. However, she continues:

Anyways, sorry you guys [wipes both eyes]. So anyways, as I'm hiding in this bathroom. I'm hiding in this bathroom, hearing these yells of these men, or just this a man. Just one man going "where is she, where is she," I start to look through the door hinge to see if I can see anything, and there's like a door here and like another door here so I'm like, I'm like trying to look through like two door hinges and so I look through this door hinge and I see this white man in a black beanie bump just open the door of personal office and come inside the personal office and yell again "Where is she?!"

And. I have never been quieter in my entire life. I was just, I don't even know if I held my breath but I was just, here, behind there [gestures door hinge] and I just start sliding down. And then all of a sudden my staffer Gee yelled out, and he, he's like, "Hey hey hey hey it's ok, come out! Come out!" So, I'm like, I don't know so deeply rattled, I'm still processing the end of my life when I come out, and I come out, and this man is a Capitol police officer.

The second part of this account clarifies that the Congresswoman was incorrect in thinking it was an intruder. However, it is not the part of the story that people have focused on. This is because “I incorrectly thought I was in danger” is a much less compelling story than “I was moments from being murdered.”

 

We Fail Because Our Elites Are Decadent, Parasitic, Ignoble Frauds

ianwelsh |  Let’s chalk this up to aristocratic elites. Aristocrats, unlike nobles, are decadent, but don’t stop with that word; understand what it means.

Elites who are not aligned with the actual productive activities of society and are engaged primarily in activities which are contrary to production, are decadent. This was true in Ancien Regime France (and deliberately fostered by Louis XIV as a way of emasculating the nobility). It is true today of most Western elites; they concentrate on financial numbers, and not on actual production. Even those who are somewhat competent tend not to be truly productive: see the Waltons, who made their money as distributers–merchants.

The techies have mostly outsourced production; they don’t make things, they design them. That didn’t work out for England in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and it hasn’t worked well for the US, though thanks to Covid-19 and US fears surrounding China, the US may re-shore their production capacity before it is too late.

We also have a situation where Western elites are far removed from the actual creation of the systems they run. This is most true in in the US, and to a lesser extent in the UK, which did not suffer the massive bombing and destruction of most of the rest of Europe (the Blitz was minor compared to the bombs dropped on Germany, for example). Of course, reconstructing bombed societies is not the same as pulling oneself out of poverty.

The best handling of the coronavirus crisis in the world was possibly Vietnam, who are run by a generation that just pulled themselves out of poverty. Other excellent handling has happened in societies which still remember times of poverty or which were conquered and set free (Japan/Germany). China’s Xi, probably the most incompetent, also managed the crisis badly, but still better than the US/UK: Once he got serious, he got really serious. Xi, while a princeling, had a hard early life and was forced to work on the communes and so on.

This is all standard three-generation stuff: The first generation builds, the second generation manages, and the third generation wastes and takes it for granted because they’ve never known anything else. Sometimes that extends to four generations or more, but that requires a system which properly inculcates its elites, plus something to force the elites into at least some of the same experiences as the peons. We do not have that kind of a system.

Nobles, as Stirling Newberry explained to me years ago, are elites who make a point of being better than the people below them: better fighters, better farmers, and so on. Aristocrats are people who play court games, which is what financialized economies supported by central banks and bought politicians are. These people aren’t even good at finance. They were actually wiped out in 2008, but used politics to restore their losses and they were/are wiped out by this crisis, but are using politics (the Fed/Congress/the presidency) to restore their losses. The Fed is doing one trillion of operations a day.

You Peasants Are All In This Together

off-guardian |  The rush to elevate self-isolation to Olympian heights as a way to combat the spread of COVID-19 has gotten to the celebrities. Sports figures are proudly tweeting and taking pictures from hotel rooms (Formula One driver Lewis Hamilton being a case in point). Comics are doing their shows from home. Thespians are extolling the merits of such isolation and the dangers of the contagion.

All speak from the summit of comfort, the podium of pampered wealth: embrace social distancing; embrace self-isolation. Bonds of imagined solidarity are forged. If we can do it, so can you.

The message of warning varies in tones of condescension and encouragement. Taylor Swift prefers to focus on her cat. “For Meredith, self-quarantining is a way of life,” she posted on Instagram. “Be like Meredith.” Meredith, of course, had little choice in the matter.

John Legend delivered a concert on Instagram, wife Chrissy Teigen beside towelled and quaffing wine. “Social distancing is important, but that doesn’t mean it has to be boring. I did a little at-home performance to help lift your spirits.”

Then there was Arnold Schwarzenegger, who actually boasted two miniature ponies. “We will get through this together.” So good of him to let us know.

Others, like model Naomi Campbell, can barely hide their revelations, moments of acute self-awakening amidst crisis. 

A long dormant, cerebral world, awoken by a virus. 

Similarly, singer Lady Gaga has found that within that deodorised, heavily marketed form of celebrity is the heart of a human. “This is reminding me I think a lot of us,” she reflected on Instagram “what it is to both feel like and be like a human being.”

Self-isolation has seen the rich with their entourages making an escape for holiday homes and vast retreats. Then come the eccentric and the slightly ludicrous options: the well-stocked and equipped bunker; the safe room. Such an approach is far more representative of the estrangement between haves and have-nots.

We Won't Pretend Biden is Turd Solo if You'll Admit He's a Big Stinky Floater

"The fact that my predecessor had a son who was paid $50,000 a month to be on a Ukrainian board, at the time that vice president Biden was leading the Obama Administration’s efforts in Ukraine, I think is worth looking into." - VP @mike_pence

theintercept |   The problem for Democrats is that a review of Hunter Biden’s career shows clearly that he, along with Joe Biden’s brother James, has been trading on their family name for decades, cashing in on the implication — and sometimes the explicit argument — that giving money to a member of Joe Biden’s family wins the favor of Joe Biden. Democrats have been loath to give any credibility to the wild rantings of Trump or his bagman Rudy Giuliani, leaving them to sidestep the question of Hunter Biden’s ethics or decision-making, and how much responsibility Joe Biden deserves. Republicans, though, have no such qualms, and have made clear that smearing the Bidens as corrupt will be central to Trump’s reelection campaign. The Trump approach is utterly without shame or irony, with attacks even coming from failson Eric Trump.

Biden has been taking political hits over of the intersection of his family’s financial dealings and his own political career for some four decades. Yet he has done nothing publicly to inoculate himself from the charge that his career is corruptly enriching his family, and now that is a serious liability. By contrast, one of his opponents in the presidential primary, Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., went so far as to refuse to endorse his son Levi Sanders when he ran for Congress, saying that he does not believe in political dynasties. In defending the Biden’s nepotistic relationship, Democrats would be forced to argue that, to be fair, such soft corruption is common among the families of senior-level politicians. But that’s a risky general-election argument in a political moment when voters are no longer willing to accept business-as-usual. For now, Biden’s opponents in the presidential campaign appear to all hope that somebody else will make the argument, while congressional Democrats don’t want to do anything to undermine their impeachment probe. And so Biden skates.

Obamamandius - Peak Globalist Bullshitter

ChicagoTribune |  “We have a sense of urgency about this project (and) when we started, we wanted the public to know we would break ground as soon as possible,” said Michael Strautmanis, the vice president for civic engagement for the foundation. “But we also knew there were some things that were not in our control. We insist on going through the process with integrity and without rushing.”

READ: Federal lawsuit accuses Obama center organizers of pulling an 'institutional bait and switch' »

Before the presidential center can be built, the federal government will review its impact on Jackson Park, which is on the National Register of Historic Places, and evaluate the project’s environmental effects. Any impact that the review highlights will have to be resolved before construction can be allowed.

There have already been two public federal review meetings. A third was scheduled in June, but then it was delayed until July. Now it has been delayed until late summer, according to the city of Chicago’s website.

The federal review process has to be conducted because of Jackson Park’s historic status and because it involved closing and expanding major streets.

The news of the delay comes just a day after activists gathered on the South Side at a meeting to discuss placing a community benefits agreement proposition on the February ballot.

“We have a new window of opportunity before the next election to protect the most vulnerable people in our community,” said Parrish Brown, an activist with the Black Youth Project 100 Chicago Chapter, in a written statement. “We’re gathering to make sure Mayor (Rahm) Emanuel and the local aldermen do the right thing, or we’ll have to elect people who will.”

The coalition wants an ordinance that would require that 30 percent of all newly constructed housing near the presidential center be set aside as affordable housing. They want a property tax freeze for the longtime homeowners closest to the site and an independent monitor to make sure local residents are hired to work on the project. In addition, they are now calling for a community trust fund and support for the neighborhood schools.

Crushing On Yeezy And Hating On Michelle?

villagevoice |  Conservatives raging at a comedian who hurt their feelings, as they did over White House Correspondents’ Dinner entertainer Michelle Wolf last weekend, is pretty much standard behavior for the folks who think everyone else is the snowflake. But the spectacle of white right-wingers rejoicing over the recent pro-Trump ravings of Kanye West may confuse you, especially considering they probably know him more for his many public self-embarrassments than for his music. Why would members of a white revanchist movement fawn over a black rapper who famously said George W. Bush didn’t care about African Americans?

Well, for one thing, conservatives conveniently abandoned Bush years ago. For another, it all makes more sense when you consider their historic lack of popularity with black people and their weird jealousy over it.

Even if you only casually follow politics, you know that since the days of Nixon’s Southern strategy Republicans have had a contentious relationship with people of color. This has only gotten worse under Donald Trump, a hyper-obvious racist whose rants about Colin Kaepernick and John Lewis, not to mention his treatment of Mexicans, Muslims, and Puerto Ricans, have helped speed the GOP’s conversion into the White People’s Party.

Thanks to gerrymanders and white rage, Republicans have so far been able to hold their majorities just fine without black support, so it’s fair to assume they feel about black votes the way James Baker felt about the votes of Jews. But the conservatives who use the GOP as a host body are more conflicted.

On the one hand, many conservatives reflexively portray blacks as violent thugs who must be subdued by militarized police, particularly right after a racially charged news story has engaged their lizard brains, or if they are Heather Mac Donald.

On the other hand, conservatives seem genuinely hurt and confused when black people call them names like “white supremacist.” You can see this most clearly in their annual aggrieved Martin Luther King Jr. Day essays in which they either try to claim MLK as one of their own (“King’s Orthodox Christianity is one of those inconvenient truths that a lot of people on the left tend to ignore” — Da Tech Guy) or tell black people to stop persecuting them with their contempt (“MLK Day proposal: Give the race card a rest” — Michelle Malkin).

Sure, white conservatives applaud when Charles Murray tells them black people are their intellectual inferiors, but in their view that’s just science (and free speech!), not anything to take personally. And anyway, it’s the liberals who are the Real Racists, keeping blacks enslaved on what conservatives like to call the “Democratic plantation,” from which conservatives only want to rescue them by ending affirmative action and food stamps, which will give them the bootstraps they need to succeed.

Yet despite this helpful hectoring, most blacks keep voting Democratic, so conservatives sulk and brood, only occasionally brightening when a black celebrity says something that can be charitably interpreted as right-wing. Bill Cosby, with his pull-up-your-pants shtick, was their go-to for years, but for obvious reasons you see much less of that now. Chris Rock is their usual backup; here’s National Review’s Kyle Smith kvelling, “When he speaks about the destructiveness of porn he sounds like Ross Douthat.” (And I thought I was the only one who found Douthat hilarious!)

So when West busted out his pro-Trump tweets last week, notwithstanding that he also said, “I haven’t done enough research on conservatives to call myself or be called one,” the brethren were juiced. Walter Williams and Thomas Sowell are all well and good, but here was a black guy ordinary people had actually heard of and could stand to listen to!

Also, West wasn’t just saying things that could be read, if one squinted and had had a few drinks, as conservative policy statements. In fact, West didn’t stipulate any conservative policies that he approved of. (I’m not sure he knows what they are.) Yeezy was just saying out loud, in a variety of peculiar ways, that he loved Trump and his dragon energy.

Feeling and Imagination Is No Match For Thinking and Working

WaPo |  The scenario in “Ready Player One” seems extreme, but it’s not so different from the fundamental dynamics at work between fans and corporations in the entertainment industry today. Wade and his friends, including Aech (Lena Waithe), Art3mis (Olivia Cooke), Sho (Philip Zhao) and Daito (Win Morisaki), don’t love the Oasis not because it represents some ideal of independent artistry — in fact, it’s flooded with licensed versions of video game, superhero and anime characters. They love it because the game gives them the opportunity to live inside their fantasies, whether that means dressing in Buckaroo Banzai’s suit to go to a club or wandering around the Overlook Hotel from “The Shining.” And Sorrento and his fellow IOI honchos differ from contemporary entertainment executives mostly in that they aren’t very good at disguising their eagerness to monetize fans’ passions.

Though the conflict between Wade and Sorrento is meant to seem epic, there’s something strangely small-scale about the core of their disagreement. As BuzzFeed critic Alison Willmore put it on Twitter, “Ready Player One” is “a super dark story about how the world is a disaster but all its main character cares about is keeping ads out of his [massively multiplayer online role-playing game].” It’s as if “Ready Player One” were an epic movie about whether it’s okay for the streaming service Hulu to charge a few extra dollars a month to let viewers skip the 30-second spots that air a few times per episode.

While Cline’s novel and Spielberg’s adaptation both suggest that it’s probably good for people to spend some time outside of the Oasis developing their real-world relationships, neither is capable of grappling with the idea that, whoever owns it, preserving the Oasis means preserving the status quo.

If IOI wins control of the environment, spending time there may be more expensive and irritating, given the ad placements IOI hopes to sell. If Wade and his diverse group of friends win control of the Oasis, they intend to preserve it as a purer experience and run it without the abuses routinely practiced by IOI, including encouraging people to rack up debt they can’t pay off, purchasing those debts and moving the debtors into IOI labor camps.

But as bad as debt peonage is, the biggest problem with the world of “Ready Player One” isn’t that IOI is press-ganging people into spending their time in the Oasis. It’s that reality is such a hopeless mess that everyone would rather escape it. Closing the Oasis for a couple of days to force people to spend time with their actual friends and family doesn’t actually make a country defined by savage economic inequality, environmental degradation and social unrest a more appealing place to live. If Wade and his friends make the Oasis a more appealing place to spend time, saving it from becoming an ad-cluttered wasteland, they may make escape even more enticing, sapping energy from making the world habitable and enjoyable again. Tweaking the exact organic composition of a drug doesn’t make it something other than a narcotic.

(It’s also true that “Ready Player One” quietly rebukes the idea that giving women and people of color the opportunity to tell their own stories would automatically result in very different stories getting told. Aech’s race and gender don’t mean that she plays as a version of Audre Lorde; rather, her avatar is a formidable, orc-like brawler and engineer, and Wade spends much of the movie assuming she’s a man. Art3mis isn’t just a woman; her avatar is the Oasis’s version of a Cool Girl, an expert gamer who looks equally good in leather motorcycle gear or a ballgown, drives a motorcycle and is lethal with a gun.)

On a smaller scale, this dynamic is also at play in conversations about the contemporary American entertainment industry. None of this is to say that fighting to get power and opportunities in Hollywood for women, people of color, people with disabilities and members of other underrepresented communities is a worthless task. Money is valuable. Chances to decide who gets employed on a project are valuable. The ability to tell your story is valuable. But it’s possible to acknowledge all of this and to recognize that putting Kathleen Kennedy in charge of Lucasfilm or tapping Ava DuVernay to direct a $100 million adaptation of “A Wrinkle in Time” is proof that the corporate entertainment industry is very good at adapting just enough to endure in its present form. Developments such as these are preemptive reforms made by savvy companies aimed at heading off a revolt, not proof that some revolution is underway in Hollywood, much less the wider world.

Black Panther: Keeping Negroes Broke But Feeling Fabulous

CounterPunch |  Whereas the fictional rulers of Wakanda preserve their wealth by pretending to be poor, using advanced to technology to mask their vast fortune, the real Studio City tycoons behind the film have conjured their own bit of subterfuge in order to receive corporate handouts. Hence the main reason why the principal shooting for Black Panther took place in Atlanta, Georgia: tax breaks.  Over the last decade, in fact, Georgia has become known to producers as the Hollywood of the South thanks to the state government doling out more than $1 billion in tax credits to industry behemoths like Disney and Sony.  In return Georgia has become the leading runaway-production site for Hollywood films, despite few if any economic benefits.

Of course proponents say that hundreds of millions given to Hollywood studios will eventually trickle down to the population, but there’s no way of knowing since the state hasn’t developed a mechanism for evaluating its impact.  Furthermore, because these incentives typically go to productions that shoot on-location, they require little in the way of long-term investment and produce mostly temporary employment.  Even when they do beget jobs, they’re not great: after ten years of tax subsidies, for example, Georgia has added only 4,209 film jobs, just under 2 percent of the industry total, and those jobs don’t pay well: on average film-industry workers in Georgia are the lowest waged.

This is why Vicki Mayer and Tanya Goldman (following Thomas Guback) call such movie production incentives “welfare for the wealthy:” because they function “like every other bloated financial system in the U.S., moving capital between elites while workers live with exaggerated job insecurity, declining market value, and uncertain futures that make up the rest of the workforce.”

Of course revenue lost from tax credits means lower government spending in other areas like education.  And indeed since 2003, Georgia has ranked among the nation’s austerity leaders in cuts to public school funding.  As of the 2018 state budget plan, the state’s schools will have been slashed by a cumulative total of $9.2 billion.  Those cuts in turn play out in places like Atlanta, a city that currently ranks first in the US for income inequality, and where 80 percent of black school students live in areas of high poverty and 75 percent qualify for meal assistance.  Not coincidentally, it’s also a place where local rap stars like T.I.—“The King of the South”—have teamed up with corporate sponsors like Walmart to make sure those same kids who can’t eat still get to go see Black Panther.

Is it any wonder, then, why this city, located in the same state which has lost millions in tax revenues to one the most profitable industries in the US, is now obliged to its pop culture “royalty” for taking its kids to the movies?

Certainly this scenario is not out of step with a blockbuster about monarchical superheroes doing good under the specious cloak of poverty.  Nor is it out of step with a Hollywood system that delivers such high-priced spectacles on the basis of an overall political economy of regressive wealth redistribution, neoliberal governance and precarious labor.

That a billion dollar industry might capitalize on such conditions and still be considered a champion of black empowerment is telling.  Indeed it’s agreeable with a hegemonic model of identitarian wokeness that considers films about mega-rich superheroes to be progressive insofar as those superheroes (and the stars that play them) aren’t all white and male.  The fact that those same heroes emerge at a time when intensifying economic inequality is acutely affecting black communities is enough to recall Theodor Adorno’s dictum about the false promises of the Culture Industry: wherein “the idea of ‘exploiting’ the given technical possibilities, of fully utilizing the capacities for aesthetic mass consumption, is part of an economic system which refuses to utilize those same capacities when it is a question of abolishing hunger.”

Obviously, that’s not the way the film’s promoters would have it. For them, Black Panther affords “positive images” that take the form of African nobility—something most welcome at time of Trump and other noxious emitters of anti-black bigotry.  But to classify such images as racial uplift is to confuse the symbolic value of highborn black superheroes with the ostensible communities they represent.  Indeed it clouds the way we might think about the inequalities that prevent such communities from seeing the film in the first place.  As Joseph told the Wall Street Journal in the successful wake of #BlackPantherChallenge: “I understand that there are other struggles that these children have, whether housing, food or education. [But] it’s not just any movie. It’s a symbol that you can transcend in this turbulent era.”  By this logic, which assumes “representation and inclusion are essential to creating dreams for yourself,” the main thing poor black kids need is inspiration, not money.

When Feeling Fabulous Seems More Important Than Your Fixed Position...,

Guardian  |  RuPaul likes to speak in deeply heartfelt but somewhat opaque rhetorical flourishes, so I ask if he means that Drag Race has a political message about humanity.

“Yes! It doesn’t have a political agenda in terms of policies in Washington. But it has a position on identity, which is really the most political you can get. It has politics at its core, because it deals with: how do you see yourself on this planet? That’s highly political. It’s about recognising that you are God dressing up in humanity, and you could do whatever you want. That’s what us little boys who were maligned and who were ostracised figured out. It’s a totem, a constant touchstone to say, ‘Don’t take any of this shit seriously.’ It’s a big f-you. So the idea of sticking to one identity – it’s like I don’t care, I’m a shapeshifter, I’m going to fly around and use all the colours, and not brand myself with just one colour.”

Pinning him down on precisely what all of this means can be tricky, in part I think because he doesn’t want to offend anyone by explicitly acknowledging the contradiction between his playfully elastic sensibility and the militant earnestness of the transgender movement. The two couldn’t be further apart, I suggest.

“Ye-es, that’s always been the dichotomy of the trans movement versus the drag movement, you know,” he agrees carefully. “I liken it to having a currency of money, say English pounds as opposed to American dollars. I think identities are like value systems or currencies; there’s not just one. Understand the value of different currencies, and what you could do with them. That’s the place you want to be.” But to a transgender woman it’s critically important that the world recognises her fixed identity as a female. RuPaul nods uneasily. “That’s right, that’s right.”

What I can’t understand is how transgender women can enter a drag contest. Last year RuPaul’s Drag Race was widely acclaimed for featuring its first openly transgender contestant, called Peppermint – but if transgender women must be identified as female, how can they also be “men dressing up as women”?

“Well, I don’t like to call drag ‘wearing women’s clothes’. If you look around this room,” and he gestures around the hotel lobby, “she’s wearing a shirt with jeans, that one’s wearing jeans and a T-shirt, right? So women don’t really dress like us. We are wearing clothes that are hyperfeminine, that represent our culture’s synthetic idea of femininity.”

In the subculture of drag you do occasionally find what are known as “bio queens” – biological women who mimic the exaggerated femininity of drag. Would RuPaul allow a biological woman to compete on the show? He hesitates. “Drag loses its sense of danger and its sense of irony once it’s not men doing it, because at its core it’s a social statement and a big f-you to male-dominated culture. So for men to do it, it’s really punk rock, because it’s a real rejection of masculinity.”

So how can a transgender woman be a drag queen? “Mmmm. It’s an interesting area. Peppermint didn’t get breast implants until after she left our show; she was identifying as a woman, but she hadn’t really transitioned.” Would he accept a contestant who had? He hesitates again. “Probably not. You can identify as a woman and say you’re transitioning, but it changes once you start changing your body. It takes on a different thing; it changes the whole concept of what we’re doing. We’ve had some girls who’ve had some injections in the face and maybe a little bit in the butt here and there, but they haven’t transitioned.”

There’s something very touching about RuPaul’s concern to stay abreast of subcultural developments and find a way to embrace even those he finds confronting. “There are certain words,” for example, “that the kids would use, that I’d be like, ‘Wait a minute, hold up now.’ But I’ve had to accept it because I understand where it comes from.” Such as? “Well, one of the things that the kids do now is they’ll say, referring to another drag queen, ‘Oh that bitch is cunt, she is pure cunt’, which means she is serving realness,” by which he means presenting herself as realistic or honest. “They say it knowing it’s shocking, knowing it’s taboo, and it’s the same way that black people use the N-word.”