Evil-Echo Empire Update
I always feature comments with related articles on how the rightwing echo-chamber continues to dumb-down their audiences, constantly dishing out rhetoric which is demonstrably nonsensical & false. And the echo-crowd is still being fed this ridiculous crap about there not being evidence of collusion? And what’s maybe even worse is that audience is swallowing the crap, being told it’s filet mignon & they’re buying it! Especially as of late, the circumstantial evidence of the Trump campaign colluding with Russia is overwhelming. In the latest polling, Americans now believe overwhelmingly the Trump campaign did have a lot or some coordination with the Russians. Once it can be proven Trump was personally involved in the coordination or at the very least the subsequent obstruction, he will no longer be eligible to be our President, since he would have crossed over the threshold to being a criminal.
For months now the Trump & echo response to any new allegation/revelation is the automatic knee-jerk response to attack the accuser or attack Hillary. They’ve cried wolf so often with all their concocted so-called scandals, it begs the question how many hundreds of times are their fans going to accept the lying until they finally catch on. And does the echo have an ultimate goal of impeaching Hillary? I know they’re totally out of touch with real news, but somebody ought to tell them Hillary’s not in power. The links below are swimming in articles how the echo keeps inventing Hillary scandals, much of the time dredging up old stories from years ago. In echo-world, that’s always a crowd favorite!
Let’s review some specific articles. In the first link, some brave reporter took on an assignment which is basically similar to pumping toxic liquids from an IV into the vein that travels to the head & could do grave damage within brain cells. But at great risk of personal harm he was willing to do the unthinkable in reporting back to us the poisonous effects on the mind from watching non-stop three straight weeks of Fox News. And if we’re horrified at the psychological impact three weeks can have on one’s mind, just imagine those poor people who’ve been watching Fox for years! I’ve run into some of them & it’s not a pretty picture. But the writer did pay compliments to some of the anchors, mentioning by name Shepard, Cavuto & Baier, & saying “Geraldo sometimes speaks truth to stupid,” plus he likes The Five in a weird sort of way (I’ll admit to being amused by the show when Bob Beckel was on the panel). The author Justin Peters bemoans it’s so disturbing Fox could be a reasonable platform for conservative news & commentary, but chooses not too, instead resorting to “stupid,” stirring up a righteous rage easily exploited by wealthy demagogues. He comments how watching Fox poisons the minds of viewers through repetition to the point of exhaustion, which you can read more particulars of his observations in the article.
In the Thomas Friedman interview inside the next link titled, Trump thrives in accelerated news cycle, he points out both parties are still relying on stale old policies with last century remedies dramatically disconnected from the modern-day world. So with the frustrated voting base both parties are crumbling (see similar articles in part 1) & the 2020 election may be unlike anything we’ve ever seen. Friedman goes on to explain China is blowing right past us in harnessing advanced technologies as U.S. leadership continues to lack direction being bogged down in partisanship & gridlock. Another poignant point he makes, Trump is a chump & doesn’t know anything. The third link below from the LA Times discusses what I’ve warned about repeatedly, that Trump seems to be the leader of a cult movement with his pundits & echo serving as his messengers. We also see in a few links the logic behind why Fox pulled Steyer’s impeachment ads.
In the last group of links, Trump’s authoritarian instincts are relentlessly attacking a free press, with examples of him & those in his orbit seeking, threatening & in some cases following through on physical violence towards journalists. Being a reporter can be dangerous enough without our President inciting his henchmen followers to attack them. Perhaps he longs for a kingdom like Putin’s where journalists face the severest of all punishments. Trump has already conditioned his fans not to trust the basic institutions which provide the underpinnings to our constitutional democracy, such as the media, legal system & intelligence community. The echo is helping to cultivate this mindset of a violent attitude, where the more unhinged among their audiences could use their 2nd Amendment rights to conduct horrific acts of civil disobedience, especially if their man-child hero is forced from office. The echo-influence even recently helped get a deranged Montana rep elected only a day after assaulting a reporter. These are very dangerous trends! Even politicians are being threatened & beat up (what’s up with Rand Paul’s neighbor?). It’s not only gotten dangerous for journalists & politicians, but also threatens democracy itself when such a fascist mindset is catching on with so many in a radicalized far-right audience.
I’ve copied below the final paragraph from a Newsweek article if Trump were to call his Trumpeters to violence, those same racist mental midgets who threatened violence against their perceived tyrannical takeover from Obama a few years ago, would ironically be willing to take up arms in support of a true fascist tyrant:
And there would be a crushing irony. The people who claim that the Second Amendment can be justified as protecting the right of the people to resist tyranny and despotism would be engaging in violent rebellion in defense of Donald Trump, the man who—arguably more than any other politician in US history— threatens to become a tyrannical despot. It would be funny if it was not so scary.
Economy Section
The latest jobs report showing a high number of new jobs created & the lowest unemployment rate in years (which Trump was quick to claim credit it’s all because of him), yet again belies the persistent structural problems we’ve seen for a long time, that of stagnant wages & low participation rates. These issues certainly aren’t going away anytime soon without some kind of smart intervention. The big corporations have the leverage & hold all the cards, continually suppressing workers stuck in dead-end jobs doing more work for less pay. What we often hear from progressive leaders is indeed true, that the system is rigged against the working class. But the political debate & proposals from both parties are inadequate & mostly miss the point, so even if bills could actually pass in DC, their usefulness would be limited.
The dismissive among us are quick to suggest those disgruntled workers should go work somewhere else, but the reality of the current workplace environment is these workers to a great extent would just face more of the same. That angry working class largely gravitated towards Trump & Bernie in the previous campaigns, wanting a leader willing to shake up the system. So Trump got elected as an anti-establishment outsider, being a successful businessman vowing to drain the swamp. Turns out he’s not draining but facilitating the swamp with lots more snakes, alligators & smelly muck. Great Presidents take the attitude the buck stops here, but Trump never takes responsibility & his motto is more like the muck stops here. The swamp does indeed need drained, but it is represented by crony capitalists in both parties that are bought & paid for by big donors tied to big corporate interests, from which a politician’s longevity is hitched to that wagon with constituents being a lesser priority.
It’s urgent we fix capitalism to where it starts offering up shared prosperity, otherwise it may soon disappear altogether. The next generation is leaning towards a type of socialism to the left of Bernie. Just see the articles where the younger generation favor socialism to capitalism, which should give us pause. We could be heading towards a dependency economy, when we see those extremely dire signs where our free-market capitalist system could be rejected if we don’t find a way to create an economy providing an opportunity for all to prosper. I’ll emphasize again since time might be running out & we’re still not seeing the type of big thinking we need to see out of DC leadership, it’s soon getting to the point where we either find a way to fix things, or we’re trending towards socialism coming about through the voting process, if not possibly more serious means as an article below reveals.
The struggles of the working class are very entrenched & extremely difficult to solve. The economic challenge of our time as technology/automation can increasingly replace the more menial jobs, is to implement a variety of measures in laying the foundation for putting Americans into more productive careers. That alone would go a long ways towards fixing a variety of societal ills. It could result in raising wages & participation rates, reducing debt & deficits, getting many off public assistance, alleviating drug problems like opioids, incentivize people to work & hopefully restore that old-fashion work ethic, & just generally help mitigate the pressures & stress of families living under constant financial duress. It could even help reduce the threat of terrorism if our new shared-benefits economic system can be adopted throughout the world, where so many of the disenfranchised can become engaged through productive work opportunities. Sure, it will take substantive creative thinking to change the way we view jobs & careers, but it must become our overriding goal if we ever expect to get at the core of our economic problems. This modern-day gilded age with the growing separation of haves & have-nots cannot & will not be allowed to stand, which the only way to save capitalism will require a fundamental change to the system.
Recapping the related articles below, you can find links on the misleading jobs report, millennials embrace of socialism & other such economic concerns. We keep seeing how Trump’s mouth, featuring egregious dishonesty & insults, keeps getting him in trouble & hinders getting things done. Most of the links are on tax reform, a GOP obsession, but the articles reveal the many troubles & pitfalls. See the link for the critical Supreme Court upcoming decision on gerrymandering. On Puerto Rico, many are still suffering with no electricity or drinkable water. In the final links, another senseless horrific shooting. It’s as though these evil copycat murderers are trying to outdo each other. But the level of gun violence in America can be correlated to lax gun laws, since that’s the one variable making us different from other free societies. Yes, mental health does play a huge part & we need a much better system for diagnosing & handling that, but in this church shooting we see an example where our inadequate background checks allowed the system to fail us, & fail us miserably. Semi-automatic weapons in particular should always require the purchaser to undergo very strict background checks, if they even should be allowed at all. We should make it harder for such deranged killers to get these deadly weapons.
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