Class Not Race Is The Dividing Line In American Politics

realclearpolitics  |  Batya Ungar-Sargon, the deputy editor of Newsweek and author of the new book, Second Class: How the Elites Betrayed America's Working Men and Women, speaks with RCP Washington bureau chief Carl Cannon on Thursday's edition of the RealClearPolitics radio show.

"People don't talk about it like it is an outrage," she said about the transformation of the Democratic Party into something other than a party for the working class. "It is such a fait accompli at this point that we forget that it is outrageous for a party that used to represent labor, the little guy against big corporations and the rich, completely abandoned that constituency to cater to an over-credentialed college elite on one hand, and the dependent poor on the other. And it is double outrageous because that party still masquerades as the party of the little guy, even though it is not the case anymore."

"It started with the handshake agreement between both parties that we're going to become an economy that embraced free trade," she said. "That was Bill Clinton's contribution to this, signing NAFTA into law and trade agreements that resulted in the offshoring of 5 million manufacturing jobs to China and Mexico."


"And then President Obama showed up and said repeatedly those jobs are not coming back, and pioneered this idea that everyone was going to go to college and become part of the knowledge industry, and that was going to be the pathway to the American dream. And then it became the only pathway to the American dream!"

"Joe Biden played his part by effectively opening up the border, decriminalizing illegal border crossing, and welcoming in 11 million new migrants to compete with working-class Americans for the jobs that remained here," she said.

"It's true that immigration raises the GDP in the aggregate. The problem is nobody lives in the aggregate. GDP is not equally distributed across the nation. We know the top 20% now has 50% of the GDP at its disposal. The very people who love to rail against the 1% are the people who have made the largest gains in the last 50 years, and they are the consumers of low-wage migrant labor, which is why, of course, they want more of it. It is an upward transfer of wealth from the working class to the elites who consume that labor."

"If you bring in 11 million people and you know they are going to be employed as cleaning people, landscapers, and in construction, you have effectively stolen wages from the Americans who were employed in those jobs. It is just obvious supply and demand."

Carl Cannon asked: "Do they really hate the working class, or are they just in their politically correct bubble and don't see what they're doing?"

"They can not stand the idea that they will lose, even if they lose in a very obviously democratic way," Ungar-Sargon said. "They are very comfortable when they can sit there on cable news making millions of dollars to sneer at the working class. They're comfortable when the working class can't clap back."

"This was really Obama's revolution, the idea that the 'smart set' should run things. We should have an oligarchy of the credentialed. But when the working class has their audacity to vote in their own interest and clap back by putting somebody like Donald Trump in power, that sneering contempt turns to hate."

Master Arbitrageur Nancy Pelosi Is At It Again....,

🇺🇸TUCKER: HOW DID NANCY PELOSI GET SO RICH?

Tucker: "I have no clue at all how Nancy Pelosi is just so rich or how her stock picks are, like, way better than Warren Buffett's. How does that happen?"

Tulsi Gabbard: "There should be no perception that our elected leaders are… pic.twitter.com/8SnFsWkbG8

— Mario Nawfal (@MarioNawfal) March 26, 2024

sputnik  | Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) raised eyebrows recently with the revelation the former US House Speaker placed a big bet on a little-known San Francisco tech startup. A disclosure made last week showed the powerful Democratic Party politician purchased $5 million in stock of the privately-held company Databricks, a cloud data company. The stake is one of dozens Pelosi holds in US tech companies, some obscure and some well-known such as Tesla and Microsoft. The lawmaker has reportedly invested more than $120 million in stock purchases since entering federal government in 1987. Her net worth is thought to be over $100 million, although her current salary as a US congresswoman is just over $220,000. Pelosi has never been convicted of criminal wrongdoing in her investment activity, although her portfolio’s impressive return of 65% last year might suggest the legislator is more informed than average traders. US stock indices grew an average of 26% in 2023.

“From an ethical perspective, I believe it is extremely harmful for politicians to trade individual stocks,” said Chris Josephs, the founder of a stock trading service, to US media. “There are numerous jobs out there that don’t allow employees [to conduct] trading, yet our most powerful Americans can.” Pelosi opposed attempts to ban lawmakers from buying and selling stocks in 2021 under the claim such activity could be viewed as insider trading. “We are a free-market economy,” she said at the time. “They [Congress members] should be able to participate in that.” Former director of the US Office of Government Ethics Walter Shaub slammed the argument as “ridiculous.” “She might as well have said ‘let them eat cake,’” said Shaub, referring to famous comments by the French queen Marie Antoinette. “Sure, it’s a free-market economy. But your average schmuck doesn’t get confidential briefings from government experts chock full of nonpublic information directly related to the price of stocks.”

Late last week it was announced that an activist involved in pro-Palestine protests at the California lawmaker’s home had been arrested on felony vandalism charges. Cynthia Papermaster, 77, is reportedly being held on a $50,000 bond. “We want to see a permanent and immediate ceasefire,” said Papermaster in an interview recently. “We can’t control what the Israelis do, but we can control what our own government does, or at least that’s the aspiration.” Pelosi called for the anti-war activists to be investigated by the FBI in an appearance on US television after the incident earlier this year. Pelosi first claimed the demonstrators were being paid by China, then later clarified she believed Russia was behind the act of civil disobedience. The former House speaker joins the ranks of opponents of US civil rights with her comments; detractors frequently claimed racial justice protests in the 1960s and 70s were fomented by Russia to sow discord in the United States.

Senseless Bloodbath In The Moscow Region

sonar21  |  Americans are by-and-large decent, genial folks. But when it comes to history, most have the memory of an Alzheimer’s patient. Sam Cooke was speaking for most Americans when he crooned, “Don’t know much about history …”. So I will make this simple — America’s hatred of Russia has its roots in the U.S. Government’s post-WW II embrace of Nazis. Tim Weiner writes about this in his essential book, Legacy of Ashes. In the immediate aftermath of the fall of Berlin, U.S. Army intelligence recruited and relied on German General Reinhard Gehlen:

“During World War II, General Gehlen had tried to spy on the Soviets from the eastern front as a leader of the Abwehr, Hitler’s military intelligence service. He was an imperious and cagey man who swore he had a network of “good Germans” to spy behind Russian lines for the United States.

“From the beginning,” Gehlen said, “I was motivated by the following convictions: A showdown between East and West is unavoidable. Every German is under the obligation of contributing his share, so that Germany is in a position to fulfill the missions incumbent on her for the common defense of Western Christian Civilization.” The United States needed “the best German men as co-workers…if Western Culture is to be safeguarded.” The intelligence network he offered to the Americans was a group of “outstanding German nationals who are good Germans but also ideologically on the side of the Western democracies.”. . .

“But in July 1949, under relentless pressure from the army, the CIA took over the Gehlen group. Housed in a former Nazi headquarters outside Munich, Gehlen welcomed dozens of prominent war criminals into his circle. As Helms and Sichel feared, the East German and Soviet intelligence services penetrated the Gehlen group at the highest levels. The worst of the moles surfaced long after the Gehlen group had transformed itself into the national intelligence service of West Germany. Gehlen’s longtime chief of counterintelligence had been working for Moscow all along.”

In the wake of this debacle, the CIA failed to recruit and run any significant sources in the Soviet Government. The CIA had very few officers who spoke Russian and swallowed whole hog the belief that the Soviets were intent on conquering the world and that it was up to the United States — relying heavily on the CIA — to stop the Soviets. That became the cornerstone of American foreign policy and explains the CIA’s obsession with regime change. No one in the intelligence hierarchy was encouraged or permitted to raise the alternative view — i.e., the Soviets, fearful of a Western invasion, took firm control of the European nations on its western border and installed governments that would served the Soviet interest. The CIA started its life as a new bureaucracy in Washington firmly committed to destroying the Soviet Union.

One of its first projects was recruiting and funding an insurgency with Ukrainians who had sided with the Nazis. While that effort was crushed by the Soviets, it served to further convince Stalin and others in the Soviet hierarchy that the West was in bed with Nazi survivors and could not be trusted.

The failure of the CIA to predict critical world events was an early distinguishing feature of the CIA from the start. The Soviets detonated their first nuke on August 29, 1949. Three weeks later a U.S. Air Force crew flying out of Alaska detected traces of radiation beyond normal levels. Weiner recounts what happened next:

“On September 20, the CIA confidently declared that the Soviet Union would not produce an atomic weapon for at least another four years.”

The CIA’s leaders knack for getting it wrong continued with the failure to heed warnings that China was going to intervene on behalf of North Korea in 1950. Here is Weiner’s account:

“The president left for Wake Island on October 11, 1950. The CIA assured him that it saw “no convincing indications of an actual Chinese Communist intention to resort to full-scale intervention in Korea…barring a Soviet decision for global war.” The agency reached that judgment despite two alarms from its three-man Tokyo station. First the station chief, George Aurell, reported that a Chinese Nationalist officer in Manchuria was warning that Mao had amassed 300,000 troops near the Korean border. Headquarters paid little heed. Then Bill Duggan, later chief of station in Taiwan, insisted that the Chicoms soon would cross into North Korea. General MacArthur responded by threatening to have Duggan arrested. The warnings never reached Wake Island.

At headquarters, the agency kept advising Truman that China would not enter the war on any significant scale. On October 18, as MacArthur’s troops surged north toward the Yalu River and the Chinese border, the CIA reported that “the Soviet Korean venture has ended in failure.” On October 20, the CIA said that Chinese forces detected at the Yalu were there to protect hydroelectric power plants. On October 28, it told the White H ouse that those Chinese troops were scattered volunteers. On October 30, after American troops had been attacked, taking heavy casualties, the CIA reaffirmed that a major Chinese intervention was unlikely. A few days later, Chinese-speaking CIA officers interrogated several prisoners taken during the encounter and determined that they were Mao’s soldiers. Yet CIA headquarters asserted one last time that China would not invade in force. Two days later 300,000 Chinese troops struck with an attack so brutal that it nearly pushed the Americans into the sea.

Are you beginning to see a pattern here? While it is true there were some solid intelligence officers in the ranks of the CIA, any attempt to raise a warning that flew against conventional wisdom or defied what the leaders wanted to hear was ignored or punished. The failures of the CIA leadership to correctly predict the Soviets producing a nuclear bomb and the Chinese invasion of Korea are not isolated incidents. When it comes to big, critical issues — e.g., the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Tet offensive, the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the fall of the Shah of Iran and the rise of the Ayatollah Khomeni, Saddam’s 1990 invasion of Kuwait, the collapse of the Soviet Union, the 9-11 plot, weapons of “Mass Destruction in Iraq” and Russia’s ability to survive western sanctions and spin up its defense industry to outpace the U.S. and NATO countries combined — the CIA missed them all.

Weaponizing Victimhood

twitter  |  So why is Israel doing this? Is there anything in it for Israel but virtually global hate? Because it doesn't seems like there is.

A couple days ago I said I was going to provide an explanation why Israel has chosen to conduct itself like it has. Here it is. It's very provocative, and it's going to mess with your mind quite a bit.

I will also remind you that I am Jewish and I have the perfect right to my own opinion on Jewish affairs.
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Before I go on, and as I know many people are going to read this, make sure that you follow me. What I have to say doesn't end here. Stay connected.
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Throughout these months, I am sure you have asked yourselves why Israel is acting as if its design is to maximize the amount of hate it stands to receive from a global community of shocked and terrified people.

There have been so many occasions for this, but I'll bet last week, when IDF soldiers executed 3 Palestinian men in a hospital, it stood out to you as outrageously brazen.

That's because the IDF took special care to get it televised. They didn't confiscate cameras or servers, and didn't hack or destroyed files. It's almost as if they were acting for the cameras.

A world wide audiences got the message, and everyone was talking about Fauda, the TV series meant to portray the humane face of Israel's apartheid.

How peculiar, right? And wait, what about all those videos by soldiers of themselves joyfully blowing up stuff? And what about the naked men filmed in their humiliated hundreds?

Let me reminds you, for contrast, that in two years of Russia's was in Ukraine, not once have you seen Russian soldiers celebrating the destruction of civilian infrastructure. And you've never seen naked and humiliated Ukrainian soldiers loaded on trucks, or sitting on the ground, eyes covered.

There may have been things like that happening. We don't know. But if scenes like these actually occurred, the Russian military took special care to conceal them from us. The IDF did not. Why?    
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Keep this question in mind, and let's make it ever more interesting. Let's ask: what is the justification, the reason, or cause for the existence of organizations such as AIPAC and ADL? I mean, seriously. Are American Jews in so much danger, and face so much persecution in the US, that perpetual billion-dollar operations are required to guard them from harm? Are Jews disproportionally jailed in the US? Designated victims of violent crime? Harassed by the authorities? Cannot be out on the street? Is American society that laser-focused on hating Jews? Aren't there other American communities who are more exposed to danger, harassment, poverty and crime? I mean, seriously?

And say an organization like AIPAC does have some nostalgic reason for being, what is doing pushing for wars? More specifically and currently: why are Jewish organizations in the US, alongside Israel, doing all they possibly can to place Jews at the epicenter of a possible world war?

Why are organizations that are supposed to keep Jews safe making Jewish affairs the formal declared  reason for a clash and a war the could destroy civilization as we know it? Isn't it the opposite of what they're supposed to be doing? Say like a military that constantly broadcasts its own astonishing cruelty, and destroys its own image?
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We are getting closer. But one more hurdle needs to be removed for us to see the answer. Stay sharp.
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Two very obvious opposites in seeing the world: paranoia and basic trust. This is true for people, but it is just as valid for political societies. Some societies are more paranoid and some are more relaxed, but no society on earth is more paranoid than the super-mega-ultra Jewish part of the Jewish people, or wider society. There is no other group on earth the world is so contently on its feet defending.

No other society, too, decided to use trauma as the center of its identity. I know many of you, especially Americans, have come to see this as just Jewish. But it is not so (and maybe you need a Mizrahi Jew to tell you this). It is one strand of Jewish perception that derives its sense of identity from pogroms and the Holocaust. Israel and IPAC act like this is natural and the only way to be Jewish. That's nonsense.  

Pogroms and the Holocaust were not all the experience of all the Jews. Many Jewish communities knew long percids of safety and prosperity. Not all Jews were victims all the time, and Jews are definitely not the only victims humanity has even known.  
Personally I always found it more than a little offsetting  to hear American Jews refer to their misery and victimhood constantly, in a country where millions of natives, organized in hundreds and thousands of flourishing communities, were wiped of the face of the planet. A country and culture that operated industrial scale slavery of black people for hundreds and hundreds of years, and fought not to recognize them as equal humans for centuries more.

I would never do that.

A country that has so much terrible, dehumanizing poverty and homelessness, so much pain. How come the most successful, heavily represented in all things power and money minority in this society is also its greatest victim?

I know this is the norm and this is the description of reality I should conform to, but no. It doesn't make sense.
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You can choose trauma and paranoia or trust and basic optimism as your guide in life. But the biggest Jewish organization in our lifetime chose one clear path: that of trauma, suspicion and what can be called Armageddonism. Always alert. Always someone out there to get you. Everybody hates us.

And as we're almost at the end of it, I will say the final part a little more directly. In choosing trauma and paranoia, both Israel and AIPAC found and unexpected source of false power.

Because existential fear can bring a society of people together, but it's not going to be a society many people would want to live in.

So you keep people afraid all the time, and you make sure they are feeling, or actually being, hated all the time. This is how you maintain your power over them.

And as Jewish trauma has become such a huge international political thing (again: I wouldn't do that), the incentive was always there to keep this mentality alive. To organize around it. To make sure it remains the formal doctrine of Jewish institutions. Such as AIPAC and Israel.
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So Israel and American Jewish organizations took it upon themselves to keep Jews afraid and isolated. This strategy of intentional paranoia has been working for a while, but it gradually eroded. It especially eroded in the US, as younger Jews became increasingly aware that the stories they've been told are lies, and that no one really cares about their ethnicity.
 
That erosion in the power of instilled exceptionalism, isolationism and existential fear poses a very serious problem for Jewish organizations built around paranoia. The Palestinians and Arabs were a wonderful solutions for this problem for a while: by keeping Palestinians oppressed and thus hostile, the old myth of antisemitism as a huge international force could be kept on life support.

But this, too, began to fade, as younger American Jews started getting more familiar with Palestinian perspectives.
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And then October 7th hit. And the right wing, nationalistic, paranoid section of the Jewish political spectrum, realized it could be translated into political gold.

This could be used to revive the old sentiments. The ghetto, the pogroms, the trains to the east. All of it.  This is why Nazis were invoked so early on. Jews were once again the persecuted minority AIPAC and Netanyahu always told you they were. How wonderful for them.    

But October 7th was not enough, because people would immediately put it in the context of the occupation. They would ask the eternal human question: why did this happen? What happened before?

If you're Netanyahu or AIPAC, putting Jews in the context of normal human behavior is the last thing you want. What you want is boiling rage and fear to be extensively covered in all the media and all the briefings.

Need I say I would not do that, either?    
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And this is where my final point arrives. It doesn't seem like Israel is trying to be hated globally. It is actually what it's doing. It is intentionally airing its cruelty and barbarity so that it will remain closed up to the world, thus guaranteeing the continued rule of the paranoia camp.

They are doing it on purpose, for cynical political gains, out of a twisted reading of history and of human nature. Palestinians are just crash test dummies in this scenario. They count for nothing. Their deaths are used to get people angry and Israel hated, so it becomes even more paranoid.  
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For the same reason, AIPAC is putting the Jewish issue at the epicenter of the lead up to WW3. They cannot not know that Jews will be called as responsible, or at least a major factor in it.

Can you imagine millions of dead Americans, destroyed cities, populations stressed into panic and despair - all because of a war Jewish organizations pushed for? How does anyone who purports to represent Jews and care for them not recoil from this scenario? Do these people have any idea at all of what they're doing?

And I am sorry for sounding this impolite an not nice: we are on the eve of a potential world war. As a Jew I am terrified.

The last thing I want is to be blames for a world war. But the Jewish paranoia camp seems to relish the opportunity. Maybe they are sure this is how the messiah comes. I have my reservations.
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Finally, Jewish organization centered around trauma found a very welcoming and happy to help friend in American imperialists. It is so wonderful when you can market middle east invasions as battling antisemitism. Who could argue with you? In the name of defending Israel, the US can do whatever it wants. It has the perfect moral cover. It will support an actual genocide. It will go completely insane.

What they - both AIPAC and US establishments - are not including in their calculations is that a big war in the middle east can have very devastating results for both the US and Israel. In their quest for creating a Jewish psyche and a world beneficial to their paranoid vision (which America shares as a colonial power), that don't take into account that reality is a whole different business from propaganda.
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But this is why they do it, and televise and broadcast it. So that we are hated, isolated, fearful  and controlled by Bibi and AIPAC forever. There's nothing that reassures those people as hate for Israel.
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Don't fight people who thrive on hate with hate. Fight them with clarity and resolve.

Barack Obama Created Illegal Psyops Against The American People

WOW 🚨 On The Record Testimony & Evidence That Barack Obama Created An Illegal Psyop Against The American People To Interfere In Future Elections

“2 days ago, my colleagues and I published the 1st batch of internal files from the Cyber Threat Intelligence League, which show US… pic.twitter.com/1d2WpWcNe8

— Wall Street Apes (@WallStreetApes) December 27, 2023

twitter  |  Oh wait until the truth gets out on ALL the things started by Obama. That is of course if they don’t double down using new resources to mass censor and play psyops games on American citizens again. Obama was pissed when Trump won because Obama had almost completed everything going on right now. Trump stopped it. Well delayed it that is. Trump cut funding to the WHO and stopped the Obama DOD Biodefense Council from fully being formed. It is now formed under Biden using your tax dollars. 

Did the Obama and Biden Administration lay down an impressive enforcement foundation for the W.H.O., Climate agendas, global health agendas and World Economic Forum ideologies using the NDAA and DOD? Lets break it down into a few parts: FY23 NDAA: Fiscal Year 2023 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) W.H.O. & Pandemic Preparedness Did our representatives use the NDAA to establish foundations for a massive power grab under the W.H.O. U.N. Under the guise of pandemic preparedness, climate crisis & global health? https://open.substack.com/pub/matthew1315/p/fiscal-year-2023-national-defense?r=2z8r4w&utm_medium=ios&utm_campaign=post 

2023 DOD BIODEFENSE COUNCIL: FY23 NDAA funded the DOD Biodefense Posture Review and funded the new DOD Biodefense Council Is the Biodefense Council an enforcement arm for pandemic preparedness, climate issues, global health security and other “Evergreen” agendas? https://open.substack.com/pub/matthew1315/p/fy23-ndaa-funded-the-dod-biodefense?r=2z8r4w&utm_medium=ios&utm_campaign=post 

W.H.O. PANDEMIC TREATY: Is the Biden Administration and W.H.O. Using the new pandemic treaty to gain sovereignty over nations under the guise of “pandemic preparedness”? Is this a globalist push using the FY23 NDAA, DOD Council, W.H.O., and U.N. to push WEF ideologies and a “great reset”? https://open.substack.com/pub/matthew1315/p/is-the-biden-administration-and-who?r=2z8r4w&utm_medium=ios&utm_campaign=post 

DOD CONTRACTS WITH BIG TECH AND PRIVATE CORPORATIONS FOR THINGS LIKE “DISINFORMATION” AI SOFTWARE BIDEN EXECUTIVE ORDERS FOR THINGS LIKE FCC, ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE REGULATIONS, DEFENSE PRODUCTION ACT FOR GREEN AGENDAS DOD contracts with Big Tech and private corporations for “disinformation” control Alethia, LCK strategies, Accrete - Biden Administration Executive orders and FCC changes Have they established a massive tool for the Censorship Industrial Complex? https://open.substack.com/pub/matthew1315/p/biolabs-in-wuhan-china-odessa-ukraine?r=2z8r4w&utm_medium=ios&utm_campaign=post 

OBAMA, BIDEN, FAUCI CONNECTIONS WITH BIOLABS IN WUHAN, CHINA, ODESSA, UKRAINE, AND NIH LAB IN HAMILTON MONTANA IN REGARDS TO CORONAVIRUS AND OTHER ZOONOTIC THREATS https://open.substack.com/pub/matthew131

Did Neocon Vermin Robert Kagan Call For The Assassination Of Donald Trump?

They’re obviously green-lighting assassination. pic.twitter.com/rSocx7WFKc

— Matt Gaetz (@mattgaetz) December 4, 2023

WaPo  |  This is the trajectory we are on now. Is descent into dictatorship inevitable? No. Nothing in history is inevitable. Unforeseen events change trajectories. Readers of this essay will no doubt list all the ways in which it is arguably too pessimistic and doesn’t take sufficient account of this or that alternative possibility. Maybe, despite everything, Trump won’t win. Maybe the coin flip will come up heads and we’ll all be safe. And maybe even if he does win, he won’t do any of the things he says he’s going to do. You may be comforted by this if you choose.

What is certain, however, is that the odds of the United States falling into dictatorship have grown considerably because so many of the obstacles to it have been cleared and only a few are left. If eight years ago it seemed literally inconceivable that a man like Trump could be elected, that obstacle was cleared in 2016. If it then seemed unimaginable that an American president would try to remain in office after losing an election, that obstacle was cleared in 2020. And if no one could believe that Trump, having tried and failed to invalidate the election and stop the counting of electoral college votes, would nevertheless reemerge as the unchallenged leader of the Republican Party and its nominee again in 2024, well, we are about to see that obstacle cleared as well. In just a few years, we have gone from being relatively secure in our democracy to being a few short steps, and a matter of months, away from the possibility of dictatorship.

Alexandra Petri: I’m starting to think Donald Trump is sounding like Hitler on purpose

Are we going to do anything about it? To shift metaphors, if we thought there was a 50 percent chance of an asteroid crashing into North America a year from now, would we be content to hope that it wouldn’t? Or would we be taking every conceivable measure to try to stop it, including many things that might not work but that, given the magnitude of the crisis, must be tried anyway?

Yes, I know that most people don’t think an asteroid is heading toward us and that’s part of the problem. But just as big a problem has been those who do see the risk but for a variety of reasons have not thought it necessary to make any sacrifices to prevent it. At each point along the way, our political leaders, and we as voters, have let opportunities to stop Trump pass on the assumption that he would eventually meet some obstacle he could not overcome. Republicans could have stopped Trump from winning the nomination in 2016, but they didn’t. The voters could have elected Hillary Clinton, but they didn’t. Republican senators could have voted to convict Trump in either of his impeachment trials, which might have made his run for president much more difficult, but they didn’t.

Throughout these years, an understandable if fatal psychology has been at work. At each stage, stopping Trump would have required extraordinary action by certain people, whether politicians or voters or donors, actions that did not align with their immediate interests or even merely their preferences. It would have been extraordinary for all the Republicans running against Trump in 2016 to decide to give up their hopes for the presidency and unite around one of them. Instead, they behaved normally, spending their time and money attacking each other, assuming that Trump was not their most serious challenge, or that someone else would bring him down, and thereby opened a clear path for Trump’s nomination. And they have, with just a few exceptions, done the same this election cycle. It would have been extraordinary had Mitch McConnell and many other Republican senators voted to convict a president of their own party. Instead, they assumed that after Jan. 6, 2021, Trump was finished and it was therefore safe not to convict him and thus avoid becoming pariahs among the vast throng of Trump supporters. In each instance, people believed they could go on pursuing their personal interests and ambitions as usual in the confidence that somewhere down the line, someone or something else, or simply fate, would stop him. Why should they be the ones to sacrifice their careers? Given the choice between a high-risk gamble and hoping for the best, people generally hope for the best. Given the choice between doing the dirty work yourself and letting others do it, people generally prefer the latter.

A paralyzing psychology of appeasement has also been at work. At each stage, the price of stopping Trump has risen higher and higher. In 2016, the price was forgoing a shot at the White House. Once Trump was elected, the price of opposition, or even the absence of obsequious loyalty, became the end of one’s political career, as Jeff Flake, Bob Corker, Paul D. Ryan and many others discovered. By 2020, the price had risen again. As Mitt Romney recounts in McKay Coppins’s recent biography, Republican members of Congress contemplating voting for Trump’s impeachment and conviction feared for their physical safety and that of their families. There is no reason that fear should be any less today. But wait until Trump returns to power and the price of opposing him becomes persecution, the loss of property and possibly the loss of freedom. Will those who balked at resisting Trump when the risk was merely political oblivion suddenly discover their courage when the cost might be the ruin of oneself and one’s family?

We are closer to that point today than we have ever been, yet we continue to drift toward dictatorship, still hoping for some intervention that will allow us to escape the consequences of our collective cowardice, our complacent, willful ignorance and, above all, our lack of any deep commitment to liberal democracy. As the man said, we are going out not with a bang but a whimper.

Elon Musk Comes To Blows With Cancel Censorship

zerohedge  |  Media Matters has opted for new tactics in its campaign to drive advertisers from X. Media Matters has manipulated the algorithms governing the user experience on X to bypass safeguards and create images of X’s largest advertisers’ paid posts adjacent to racist, incendiary content, leaving the false impression that these pairings are anything but what they actually are: manufactured, inorganic, and extraordinarily rare.

Media Matters executed this plot in multiple steps, as X’s internal investigations have revealed.

First, Media Matters  accessed accounts that had been active for at least 30 days, bypassing X’s ad filter for new users. Media Matters then exclusively followed a small subset of users consisting entirely of accounts in one of two categories: those known to produce extreme, fringe content, and accounts owned by X’s big-name advertisers. The end result was a feed precision-designed by Media Matters for a single purpose: to produce side-by-side ad/content placements that it could screenshot in an effort to alienate advertisers.

But this activity still was not enough to create the pairings of advertisements and content that Media Matters aimed to produce.

Media Matters therefore resorted to endlessly scrolling and refreshing its unrepresentative, hand-selected feed, generating between 13 and 15 times more advertisements per hour than viewed by the average X user repeating this inauthentic activity until it finally received pages containing the result it wanted: controversial content next to X’s largest advertisers’ paid posts.

Media Matters omitted mentioning any of this in a report published on November 16, 2023 that displayed instances Media Matters “found” on X of advertisers’ paid posts featured next to Neo-Nazi and white-nationalist content. Nor did Media Matters otherwise provide any context regarding the forced, inauthentic nature and extraordinary rarity of these pairings.

However, relying on the specious narrative propagated by Media Matters, the advertisers targeted took these pairings to be anything but rare and inorganic, with all but one of the companies featured in the Media Matters piece withdrawing all ads from X, including Apple, Comcast, NBCUniversal, and IBM—some of X’s largest advertisers. Indeed, in pulling all advertising from X in response to this intentionally deceptive report, IBM called the pairings an “entirely unacceptable situation.” Only Oracle did not withdraw its ads.

The truth bore no resemblance to Media Matters’ narrative. In fact, IBM’s, Comcast’s, and Oracle’s paid posts appeared alongside the fringe content cited by Media Matters for only one viewer (out of more than 500 million) on all of X: Media Matters. Not a single authentic user of the X platform saw IBM ’s, Comcast’s, or Oracle’s ads next to that content, which Media Matters achieved only through its manipulation of X’s algorithms as described above. And in Apple’s case, only two out of more than 500  million active users saw its ad appear alongside the fringe content cited in the article—at least one of which was Media Matters.

Media Matters could have produced a fair, accurate account of users’ interactions with advertisements on X via basic reporting: following real users, documenting the actual, organic production of content and advertisement pairings. Had it done so, however, it would not have produced the outcome Media Matters so desperately desired, which was to tarnish X’s reputation by associating it with racist content. So instead, Media Matters chose to maliciously misrepresent the X experience with the intention of harming X and its business.

Further, X CEO Linda Yaccarino - who has reportedly been under pressure all day by various ad companies to resign - defended the company in a statement on Monday.

"If you know me, you know I'm committed to truth and fairness," she posted.

"Here's the truth. Not a single authentic user on X saw IBM's, Comcast's, or Oracle's ads next to the content in Media Matters' article. Only 2 users saw Apple's ad next to the content, at least one of which was Media Matters. Data wins over manipulation or allegations. Don't be manipulated. Stand with X."

Public's Michael Shellenberger noted that:

"Despite the lack of verified evidence behind Media Matters’ claims, its tactics are highly effective."

Sllenberger concluded, by asking on X:

Why is Media Matters leading a disinformation campaign and advertiser boycott against Elon Musk’s X?

Who is Media Matters, exactly?

And what’s its real agenda?

...before going into detail on Substack about why Media Matters is a Democratic Party front-Group:

The attacks on X make clear that the real concern of Democratic Party elites is their lack of control over the public conversation.

From 1996 to 2016, Democrats felt they controlled the elite policy and political conversation through the news media. After that appeared to fall apart in 2016, and as Democrats, including Podesta, blamed social media for Clinton’s loss, they stepped up their effort to take control over Twitter and Facebook, which they did, demanding and winning the censorship of the Hunter Biden laptop, and deplatforming Trump.

The strategy of Democratic Party leaders, including Clinton, Podesta, and Obama, has been, since 2016, to label Trump-supporting Republicans as racists, Nazis, and antisemites. The attacks on Elon Musk’s X must be taken in this context.

The real agenda behind the Media Matters attack on X is the same as the one behind the Democrats’ attack on Trump and the Republicans. Democrats want to control the conversation.

Without censorship, voters can see that the border is a disaster, the Ukraine war was a tragic failure, and that Democrats have been censoring them.

...

...we must have greater control over the content we receive through social media platforms.

What's Left Of Biden Still Believes The Lie About "Team America World Police!"...,

sputnik  |  Asked whether there should be a ceasefire in the conflict between Israel and Hamas, US President Joe Biden said in an interview for CBS that Israel has to go after Hamas and called them a “bunch of cowards.” “Israel is going after a group of people who have engaged in barbarism that is as consequential as the Holocaust. And so, I think Israel has to respond. They have to go after Hamas. Hamas is a bunch of cowards. They’re hiding behind the civilians,” Biden said. Gaza is a small, densely populated 140.9 square meter area with over 2 million people. Travel in and out of Gaza is heavily controlled by Israeli forces. Biden emphasized that Hamas needs to be “eliminated entirely.” Biden also said that he is in talks with Egypt and Israel about the establishment of a humanitarian corridor in the area.

“We’re also talking to Egyptians whether there is an outlet to get these children and women out of that area at this moment. But it’s hard,” Biden said in the interview. The US President also responded “yes” when asked if he supported humanitarian aid being sent to Gaza, something Israel has been blocking, including food, water and electricity, though Israel announced on Sunday that some water services had been turned back on. At least 13 Americans have been missing since Hamas’ attack, and 30 Americans have been confirmed dead. Biden said that the US is trying every avenue they have to see its remaining citizens returned safely but would not provide details. The interviewer noted that Biden had called the missing Americans’ families and spoke to them on Zoom.

While Biden consistently stressed throughout the interview that the United States supports Israel in their fight against Hamas, he suggested that they do not attempt to occupy Gaza. “I think it’d be a big mistake. Look, what happened in Gaza, in my view, Hamas and the extreme elements of Hamas don’t represent all the Palestinian people. And I think that … It would be a mistake … for Israel to occupy … Gaza again,” Biden said. Biden added that he does not think committing American troops will be necessary in the conflict. The President stressed that he still supports a two-state solution in the area, which has long been the official US policy, but said that right now is not the time to press for it. He also said that the normalization of relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia is not dead because of the conflict. “The Saudis, and the Emiratis, and other Arab nations understand that their security and stability is enhanced if there’s normalization of relations with Israel,” Biden said. “It’s just going to take time to get done.”

Biden also addressed the conflict in Ukraine, saying that the United States can handle both it and Israel at the same time. “We’re the United States of America for God’s sake, the most powerful nation in the history– not in the world, in the history of the world. The history of the world. We can take care of both of these and still maintain our overall international defense.” The United States has provided at least $111 billion to Ukraine since the start of Russia’s special operation. Earlier this month, an additional $24 billion in aid was blocked by a group of House Republicans. That debate resulted in the ousting of House Speaker Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) and Congress is now frozen until a new speaker is elected. The White House has continued to ask Congress for aid for both Ukraine and Israel. When asked if the situation in Congress threatens world security, Biden responded “yes,” putting the blame on “MAGA Republicans.”

They Must Really Think You're Stupid!!!

attorneycox  |  The “they” is our government (federal and state). The “we” is you and me, and the other 300+ million Americans across our country.

Alas, here we are, entering the final quarter of 2023, and we have the United States government, and many state governments (including New York’s former Governor Andrew Cuomo, current left-wing Governor Kathy Hochul, and the super-majority Dem legislature) proclaiming for all to hear that they did not force anyone to do anything detrimental these past 3.5 years. UNBELIEVABLE! Did you hear this? They are actually saying with straight faces that they didn’t force you to wear a mask, or lockdown and shutter your businesses, or choose between taking an experimental drug or losing your job… Nope! They did none of that. And you - well, you are flat out crazy if you think they did. You are lying. You are exaggerating and totally overreacting.

Unfortunately for Big Brother, ooops, I mean unfortunately for our 100% reliable, never-lies-to-us government, we have actual documents (including lawsuits), news stories, social media posts, and videos of the government at all levels mandating and forcing us to do all of those things, and more. Here’s just one example of Biden himself, the “Big Guy,” mandating the C19 shot:

Biden is not alone. No, no. His entire administration is right there with him. His head of OSHA, Douglas Parker, is also now lying through his teeth about the OSHA mandate that REQUIRED (not suggested) that all employers in the entire nation with 100 or more employees force their employees to get the C19 shot, otherwise they had to wear a mask and test constantly for C19. (That OSHA mandate was struck down by SCOTUS last year because it was unconstitutional, by the way). Then there’s the head of HHS, Xavier Becerra, saying there was never a mask mandate. What?! Another blatant lie.

Please take the 2 minutes to watch this Congressman Kevin Kiley clip. You truly won’t believe your ears with the bullsh#* these Biden agency heads are spewing! As Congressman Kiley says in the video, the government is trying to tell us that “2 + 2 doesn’t equal 4.” You don’t get much more Orwellian than that!

CLICK HERE TO LISTEN

Why are they backtracking now?

Easy answers: 1) they didn’t have the authority to do any of it (all of it was unconstitutional) so they can’t justify and defend it now, and 2) if they can convince you they didn’t do it before, then you won’t mind as much when they do it again.

This should make your blood boil. It’s particularly infuriating to those of us who were speaking out from basically day one trying to tell people that the lockdowns, the masking, the shots, the limited number of people at your wedding or at your Thanksgiving table were all violations of the Constitution and our basic human rights!

Bill Gates: People Don’t Realize What’s Coming

medium  |  Gates is now talking about artificial intelligence, and how it’s the most important innovation of our time. Are you ready for what’s coming?

Bill Gates doesn’t think so.

In fact, he’s sounding the alarm on a future that many of us don’t realize is just around the corner. He thinks AI is going to shake things up in a big way:

“Soon Job demand for lots of skill sets will be substantially lower. I don’t think people have that in their mental model.”

“In the past, labors went off and did other jobs, but now there will be a lot of angst about the fact that AI is targeting white-collar work.”

“The job disruption from AI will be massive, and we need to prepare for it”

Think you’re safe from the job-killing effects of AI?

Think again.

BIG CHANGES are coming to the job market that people and governments aren’t prepared for.

I’m not here to scare you, I am here to jolt you out of your comfort zone.

The job market is in for some serious shaking and baking, and unfortunately, it seems like nobody’s got the right recipe to handle it.

Open Your Eyes and You Will See
“If you are depressed you are living in the past.
If you are anxious, you are living in the future.
If you are at peace you are living in the present.”
― Lao Tzu

Imagine waking up one day and realizing that the job you’ve held for years is no longer needed by the company.

Not because you screwed up, but simply because your company found a better alternative (AI) and it is no more a job that only you can do.

You have been working at the same company for over a decade, and suddenly, you are told that your services are no longer needed.

Won’t you feel lost, confused, and worried about how you will support yourself and your family?

It’s a scary thought, but the truth is, it’s already happening in many industries.

We’ve already seen the merciless termination of thousands of employees at tech giants like Google, Microsoft, Amazon, and Meta, and that’s before AI even began flexing its muscles.

It’s only a matter of time before the job market starts feeling the full impact of this unstoppable force.
Sure, some of them may adapt, but where will you fit the rest of the workforce when the need for labor itself will decrease?

AI is inevitably going to reduce the demand for jobs, particularly those on the lower end of the skills spectrum.

Of course, companies will get the benefit of cost-cutting and spurring innovation.

But that’s likely to come at a cost — joblessness and economic inequality.

Our ever-changing world demands a moment of pause, a chance to contemplate what the future holds.

For it is in this stillness that we may gain a deep understanding of the challenges that lay ahead, and thus, prepare ourselves with the necessary tools to navigate them successfully.

The industrial revolution was fueled by the invention of machines. It enabled companies to increase productivity and reduce costs.

The whole education system was designed to serve the needs of the industrial revolution.

It trained people to become cogs in a machine. Perform repetitive tasks without questioning the status quo.

The focus was on efficiency and standardization, rather than creativity and individuality.

Companies relied on humans as a form of labor only because it was cheap (and reliable).

In the past, a single machine replaced the work of a hundred men, and all it needed was one operator.

The game we’ve been playing for years, well, it’s not the same anymore.

The future is here, and it’s not pretty.

In the coming age, one person will command an army of software agents.

They will build things at a breakneck speed, replacing tens or even hundreds of operators in the blink of an eye.

It’s a brave new world where the traditional constraints of human labor are no longer a limiting factor.
The repercussions of that will soon be felt in all sectors, and tech won’t be an exception.

The software industry, born from the industrial revolution, has undergone two productivity revolutions:
The creation of higher-level programming languages and the ascent of open source.

Apple And Google Laid The Foundations For A Dystopian Industry Which Should Not Exist

haaretz  |  We’re being monitored. It’s a universally acknowledged truth about this digital age. Technology firms and advertisers know almost everything about us: where we are, what we buy, which apps we download and how we use them, our search histories and past purchases, even our sexual orientation and what fetishes we’re into. There’s only one thing that advertisers don’t or aren’t supposed to have access to: our identity. The world of ads and the data behind them is meant to be anonymous.
We’ve all been there. We read the post of a friend who just got back from vacation, and a few hours later an ad for a hotel pops up on our screen, and similar ones hound us for days, following us across websites and social media – but few of us have any idea how or why this happens.

Whenever we open an application or a website on our phone, without our noticing, a rapid process of mass negotiation takes place, and a complex and aggressive market embodying the whole economy of the internet plays out: In a split second – a fraction of the moment that elapses until the page we want opens – an automatic bidding process occurs between hundreds of thousands of different advertisers. They are fighting to advertise exactly to us at this exact moment in time. The more accurate the information the advertisers have about us, the more segmented and targeted the data, the greater the chances that we’ll actually click – and thus the price of the ad increases.

But some have the ability to take advantage of that fraction of a second to perform a much more malicious mission: to send people a distinctive, seemingly innocent, ad that contains advanced spyware. Though the ad looks completely standard, it is in fact a cyberweapon that is capable of infiltrating our phone or computer. 

In the past, it was believed that only state intelligence organizations had this capacity. It exploits the world of digital advertising, which is supposed to be completely anonymous, to bypass the security mechanisms of Apple, Google and Microsoft and install advanced spyware on our devices.
“These capabilities can turn any ad into a kind of digital bullet,” says a source familiar with the technology.

The new technology has also begun to trickle out into the commercial defense market. An investigation by Haaretz Magazine and the paper’s National Security & Cyber digital investigation desk has discovered that in the shadow of the coronavirus pandemic – when certain tools were developed and deployed to track the spread of the virus – a new and disturbing cyber and espionage industry has come into being in Israel. A number of Israeli firms have developed technologies that are capable of exploiting advertising to collect data and monitor citizens. Hundreds of thousands – if not millions – of people can be monitored in this way.

The investigation, which is based on interviews with over 15 sources from Israel’s offensive cyber, security systems and defense industries, further reveals that a small group of elite companies have taken things a step further: They have created technology that use ads for offensive purposes and injecting spyware. As millions of ads compete for the right to penetrate our screens, Israeli firms are clandestinely selling technology that transforms these ads into tools of surveillance – or even into weapons that are capable of penetrating our computers or phones.

One of these companies is Insanet, whose existence is being made public here for the first time. As its name suggests, it possesses insane capabilities, according to sources in the industry. Founded by a number of well-known entrepreneurs in the fields of offensive cyber and digital intelligence, the company is owned by former ranking members of the defense establishment, including a past head of the National Security Council, Dani Arditi. The investigation reveals that the company has developed technology that exploits ads both for tracking and for infection. It’s not by chance that the company has named their product Sherlock.

Langley's Mouthpiece Said Biden Should Not Run Again

WaPo  |  Joe Biden launched his candidacy for president in 2019 with the words “we are in the battle for the soul of this nation.” He was right. And though it wasn’t obvious at first to many Democrats, he was the best person to wage that fight. He was a genial but also shrewd campaigner for the restoration of what legislators call “regular order.”

Since then, Biden has had a remarkable string of wins. He defeated President Donald Trump in the 2020 election; he led a Democratic rebuff of Trump’s acolytes in the 2022 midterms; his Justice Department has systematically prosecuted the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection that Trump championed and, now, through special counsel Jack Smith, the department is bringing Trump himself to justice.

What I admire most about President Biden is that in a polarized nation, he has governed from the center out, as he promised in his victory speech. With an unexpectedly steady hand, he passed some of the most important domestic legislation in recent decades. In foreign policy, he managed the delicate balance of helping Ukraine fight Russia without getting America itself into a war. In sum, he has been a successful and effective president.

But I don’t think Biden and Vice President Harris should run for reelection. It’s painful to say that, given my admiration for much of what they have accomplished. But if he and Harris campaign together in 2024, I think Biden risks undoing his greatest achievement — which was stopping Trump.

Biden wrote his political testament in his inaugural address: “When our days are through, our children and our children’s children will say of us: They gave their best, they did their duty, they healed a broken land.” Mr. President, maybe this is that moment when duty has been served.

Biden would carry two big liabilities into a 2024 campaign. He would be 82 when he began a second term. According to a recent Associated Press-NORC poll, 77 percent of the public, including 69 percent of Democrats, think he’s too old to be effective for four more years. Biden’s age isn’t just a Fox News trope; it’s been the subject of dinner-table conversations across America this summer.

Because of their concerns about Biden’s age, voters would sensibly focus on his presumptive running mate, Harris. She is less popular than Biden, with a 39.5 percent approval rating, according to polling website FiveThirtyEight. Harris has many laudable qualities, but the simple fact is that she has failed to gain traction in the country or even within her own party.

Biden could encourage a more open vice-presidential selection process that could produce a stronger running mate. There are many good alternatives, starting with now-Mayor of Los Angeles Karen Bass, whom I wish Biden had chosen in the first place, or Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo. But breaking up the ticket would be a free-for-all that could alienate Black women, a key constituency. Biden might end up more vulnerable.

Politicians who know Biden well say that if he were convinced that Trump were truly vanquished, he would feel he had accomplished his political mission. He will run again if he believes in his gut that Trump will be the GOP nominee and that he has the best chance to defeat Trump and save the country from the nightmare of a revenge presidency.

Biden has never been good at saying no. He should have resisted the choice of Harris, who was a colleague of his beloved son Beau when they were both state attorneys general. He should have blocked then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan, which has done considerable damage to the island’s security. He should have stopped his son Hunter from joining the board of a Ukrainian gas company and representing companies in China — and he certainly should have resisted Hunter’s attempts to impress clients by getting Dad on the phone.

Biden has another chance to say no — to himself, this time — by withdrawing from the 2024 race. It might not be in character for Biden, but it would be a wise choice for the country.

Biden has in many ways remade himself as president. He is no longer the garrulous glad-hander I met when I first covered Congress more than four decades ago. He’s still an old-time pol, to be sure, but he is now more focused and strategic; he executes policies systematically, at home and abroad. As Franklin Foer writes in “The Last Politician,” a new account of Biden’s presidency, “he will be remembered as the old hack who could.”

Time is running out. In a month or so, this decision will be cast in stone. It will be too late for other Democrats, including Harris, to test themselves in primaries and see whether they have the stuff of presidential leadership. Right now, there’s no clear alternative to Biden — no screamingly obvious replacement waiting in the wings. That might be the decider for Biden, that there’s seemingly nobody else. But maybe he will trust in democracy to discover new leadership, “in the arena.”

I hope Biden has this conversation with himself about whether to run, and that he levels with the country about it. It would focus the 2024 campaign. Who is the best person to stop Trump? That was the question when Biden decided to run in 2019, and it’s still the essential test of a Democratic nominee today.

The Profound Irony Of David Brooks Sermonizing On Moral Formation In Collapsing America

theatlantic  | A modern vision of how to build character. The old-fashioned models of character-building were hopelessly gendered. Men were supposed to display iron willpower that would help them achieve self-mastery over their unruly passions. Women were to sequester themselves in a world of ladylike gentility in order to not be corrupted by bad influences and base desires. Those formulas are obsolete today.

The best modern approach to building character is described in Iris Murdoch’s book The Sovereignty of Good. Murdoch writes that “nothing in life is of any value except the attempt to be virtuous.” For her, moral life is not defined merely by great deeds of courage or sacrifice in epic moments. Instead, moral life is something that goes on continually—treating people considerately in the complex situations of daily existence. For her, the essential moral act is casting a “just and loving” attention on other people.

Normally, she argues, we go about our days with self-centered, self-serving eyes. We see and judge people in ways that satisfy our own ego. We diminish and stereotype and ignore, reducing other people to bit players in our own all-consuming personal drama. But we become morally better, she continues, as we learn to see others deeply, as we learn to envelop others in the kind of patient, caring regard that makes them feel seen, heard, and understood. This is the kind of attention that implicitly asks, “What are you going through?” and cares about the answer.

I become a better person as I become more curious about those around me, as I become more skilled in seeing from their point of view. As I learn to perceive you with a patient and loving regard, I will tend to treat you well. We can, Murdoch concluded, “grow by looking.”

Mandatory social-skills courses. Murdoch’s character-building formula roots us in the simple act of paying attention: Do I attend to you well? It also emphasizes that character is formed and displayed as we treat others considerately. This requires not just a good heart, but good social skills: how to listen well. How to disagree with respect. How to ask for and offer forgiveness. How to patiently cultivate a friendship. How to sit with someone who is grieving or depressed. How to be a good conversationalist.

These are some of the most important skills a person can have. And yet somehow, we don’t teach them. Our schools spend years prepping students with professional skills—but offer little guidance on how to be an upstanding person in everyday life. If we’re going to build a decent society, elementary schools and high schools should require students to take courses that teach these specific social skills, and thus prepare them for life with one another. We could have courses in how to be a good listener or how to build a friendship. The late feminist philosopher Nel Noddings developed a whole pedagogy around how to effectively care for others.

A new core curriculum. More and more colleges and universities are offering courses in what you might call “How to Live.” Yale has one called “Life Worth Living.” Notre Dame has one called “God and the Good Life.” A first-year honors program in this vein at Valparaiso University, in Indiana, involves not just conducting formal debates on ideas gleaned from the Great Books, but putting on a musical production based on their themes. Many of these courses don’t give students a ready-made formula, but they introduce students to some of the venerated moral traditions—Buddhism, Judeo-Christianity, and Enlightenment rationalism, among others. They introduce students to those thinkers who have thought hard on moral problems, from Aristotle to Desmond Tutu to Martha Nussbaum. They hold up diverse exemplars to serve as models of how to live well. They put the big questions of life firmly on the table: What is the ruling passion of your soul? Whom are you responsible to? What are my moral obligations? What will it take for my life to be meaningful? What does it mean to be a good human in today’s world? What are the central issues we need to engage with concerning new technology and human life?

These questions clash with the ethos of the modern university, which is built around specialization and passing on professional or technical knowledge. But they are the most important courses a college can offer. They shouldn’t be on the margins of academic life. They should be part of the required core curriculum.

Intergenerational service. We spend most of our lives living by the logic of the meritocracy: Life is an individual climb upward toward success. It’s about pursuing self-interest.

There should be at least two periods of life when people have a chance to take a sabbatical from the meritocracy and live by an alternative logic—the logic of service: You have to give to receive. You have to lose yourself in a common cause to find yourself. The deepest human relationships are gift relationships, based on mutual care. (An obvious model for at least some aspects of this is the culture of the U.S. military, which similarly emphasizes honor, service, selflessness, and character in support of a purpose greater than oneself, throwing together Americans of different ages and backgrounds who forge strong social bonds.)

Those sabbaticals could happen at the end of the school years and at the end of the working years. National service programs could bring younger and older people together to work to address community needs.

These programs would allow people to experience other-centered ways of being and develop practical moral habits: how to cooperate with people unlike you. How to show up day after day when progress is slow. How to do work that is generous and hard.

Moral organizations. Most organizations serve two sets of goals—moral goals and instrumental goals. Hospitals heal the sick and also seek to make money. Newspapers and magazines inform the public and also try to generate clicks. Law firms defend clients and also try to maximize billable hours. Nonprofits aim to serve the public good and also raise money.

In our society, the commercial or utilitarian goals tend to eclipse the moral goals. Doctors are pressured by hospital administrators to rush through patients so they can charge more fees. Journalists are incentivized to write stories that confirm reader prejudices in order to climb the most-read lists. Whole companies slip into an optimization mindset, in which everything is done to increase output and efficiency.

Moral renewal won’t come until we have leaders who are explicit, loud, and credible about both sets of goals. Here’s how we’re growing financially, but also Here’s how we’re learning to treat one another with consideration and respect; here’s how we’re going to forgo some financial returns in order to better serve our higher mission.

Early in my career, as a TV pundit at PBS NewsHour, I worked with its host, Jim Lehrer. Every day, with a series of small gestures, he signaled what kind of behavior was valued there and what kind of behavior was unacceptable. In this subtle way, he established a set of norms and practices that still lives on. He and others built a thick and coherent moral ecology, and its way of being was internalized by most of the people who have worked there.

Lots Of Talk About Depopulation Agendas

⚠️Holy shit⚠️

US Congressman @RonJohnsonWI alleges that covid was “pre-planned by an elite group of people. Event 201”.

In reference to the John’s Hopkins Center tabletop exercise with the WEF and the Gates Foundation.

Pretty substantial allegations!pic.twitter.com/IfziWIE3SB

— Clandestine (@WarClandestine) August 11, 2023

merylnass  |  Here is another wonderfully researched and written look into the long morbid history of how the powerful repeatedly sterilize the powerless. Hard to believe, but California was still sterilizing women in prisons until about 20 years ago, that we know of. The Midwestern Doctor has produced another tour de force.

The Forgotten Side of Medicine

How Did We Know That the COVID-19 Vaccines Would Decimate Global Fertility?

When I started this Substack, my goal was to draw attention to the things with the vaccines I felt would create significant problems in the future if something was not done about them. One of the initial topics I decided to cover (on April 2nd 2022) was the history of elitist population control initiatives because I saw a lot of different signs that re…

Read more

15 days ago · 442 likes · 334 comments · A Midwestern Doctor

Michel Chossudofsky discusses actual news reports of meetings on depopulation:

https://www.globalresearch.ca/secret-may-2009-meeting-of-the-good-club-billionaire-club-in-bid-to-curb-overpopulation/5742626

“Billionaires Try to Shrink World’s Population”: Secret Gathering Sponsored by Bill Gates, 2009 Meeting of “The Good Club”

Is Worldwide Depopulation Part of the Billionaire's "Great Reset"

For more than ten years, meetings have been held by billionaires described as philanthropists to Reduce the Size of the World’s Population culminating with the 2020-2022 Covid crisis.

Recent developments suggest that “Depopulation” is an integral part of the so-called Covid mandates including the lockdown policies and the mRNA “vaccine”. 

Flash back to 2009. According to the Wall Street Journal: “Billionaires Try to Shrink World’s Population”.

In May 2009, the Billionaire philanthropists met behind closed doors at the home of the president of The Rockefeller University in Manhattan.

This Secret Gathering was sponsored by Bill Gates. They called themselves “The Good Club”. 

Among the participants were the late David Rockefeller, Warren Buffett, George Soros, Michael Bloomberg  Ted Turner, Oprah Winfrey and many more. 

In May 2009, the WSJ as well as the Sunday Times reported: (John Harlow, Los Angeles) that

“Some of America’s leading billionaires have met secretly to consider how their wealth could be used to slow the growth of the world’s population and speed up improvements in health and education.”

The emphasis was not on population growth (i.e Planned Parenthood) but on “Depopulation”, i.e,. the reduction in the absolute size of the World’s population.

To read complete WSJ article click here—and I have a subscription so have reproduced the full text at the bottom of the page—Meryl