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Page added on November 2, 2016
The Last Gasp of the American Dream
Just at the moment, many of my readers—and of course a great many others as well—are paying close attention to which of the two most detested people in American public life will put a hand on a Bible in January, and preside thereafter over the next four years of this nation’s accelerating decline and fall. That focus is understandable, and not just because both parties have trotted out the shopworn claim that this election, like every other one in living memory, is the most important in our lifetimes. For a change, there are actual issues involved.
Barring any of the incidents that could throw the election into the House of Representatives, we’ll know by this time next week whether the bipartisan consensus that’s been welded firmly in place in American politics since the election of George W. Bush will stay intact for the next four years. That consensus, for those of my readers who haven’t been paying attention, supports massive giveaways to big corporations and the already affluent, punitive austerity for the poor, malign neglect for the nation’s infrastructure, the destruction of the American working class through federal subsidies for automation and offshoring and tacit acceptance of mass illegal immigration as a means of driving down wages, and a monomaniacally confrontational foreign policy obsessed with the domination of the Middle East by raw military force. Those are the policies that George W. Bush and Barack Obama pursued through four presidential terms, and they’re the policies that Hillary Clinton has supported throughout her political career.
Donald Trump, by contrast, has been arguing against several core elements of that consensus since the beginning of his run for office. Specifically, he’s calling for a reversal of federal policies that support offshoring of jobs, the enforcement of US immigration law, and a less rigidly confrontational stance toward Russia over the war in Syria. It’s been popular all through the current campaign for Clinton’s supporters to insist that nobody actually cares about these issues, and that Trump’s supporters must by definition be motivated by hateful values instead, but that rhetorical gimmick has been a standard thoughstopper on the left for many years now, and it simply won’t wash. The reason why Trump was able to sweep aside the other GOP candidates, and has a shot at winning next week’s election despite the unanimous opposition of this nation’s political class, is that he’s the first presidential candidate in a generation to admit that the issues just mentioned actually matter.
That was a ticket to the nomination, in turn, because outside the bicoastal echo chamber of the affluent, the US economy has been in freefall for years. I suspect that a great many financially comfortable people in today’s America have no idea just how bad things have gotten here in the flyover states. The recovery of the last eight years has only benefited the upper 20% or so by income of the population; the rest have been left to get by on declining real wages, while simultaneously having to face skyrocketing rents driven by federal policies that prop up the real estate market, and stunning increases in medical costs driven by Obama’s embarrassingly misnamed “Affordable Care Act.” It’s no accident that death rates from suicide, drug overdose, and alcohol poisoning are soaring just now among working class white people. These are my neighbors, the people I talk with in laundromats and lodge meetings, and they’re being driven to the wall.
Most of the time, affluent liberals who are quick to emote about the sufferings of poor children in conveniently distant corners of the Third World like to brush aside the issues I’ve just raised as irrelevancies. I’ve long since lost track of the number of times I’ve heard people insist that the American working class hasn’t been destroyed, that its destruction doesn’t matter, or that it was the fault of the working classes themselves. (I’ve occasionally heard people attempt to claim all three of these things at once.) On those occasions when the mainstream left deigns to recognize the situation I’ve sketched out, it’s usually in the terms Hillary Clinton used in her infamous “basket of deplorables” speech, in which she admitted that there were people who hadn’t benefited from the recovery and “we need to do something for them.” That the people in question might deserve to have a voice in what’s done for them, or to them, is not part of the vocabulary of the affluent American left.
That’s why, if you pay a visit to the town where I live, you’ll find Trump signs all over the place—and you’ll find the highest concentration of them in the poor neighborhood just south of my home, a bleak rundown zone where there’s a church every few blocks and an abandoned house every few doors, and where the people tipping back beers on a porch of a summer evening rarely all have the same skin color. They know exactly what they need, and what tens of thousands of other economically devastated American communities need: enough full-time jobs at decent wages to give them the chance to lift their families out of poverty. They understand that need, and discuss it in detail among themselves, with a clarity you’ll rarely find in the media. (It’s a source of wry amusement to me that the best coverage of the situation on the ground here in the flyover states appeared, not in any of America’s newspapers of record, nor in any of its allegedly serious magazines, but in a raucous NSFW online humor magazine.)
What’s more, the working class people who point to a lack of jobs as the cause of middle America’s economic collapse are dead right. The reason why those tens of thousands of American communities are economically devastated is that too few people have enough income to support the small businesses and local economies that used to thrive there. The money that used to keep main streets bustling across the United States, the wages that used to be handed out on Friday afternoons to millions of Americans who’d spent the previous week putting in an honest day’s work for an honest day’s pay, have been siphoned off to inflate the profits of a handful of huge corporations to absurd levels and cater to the kleptocratic feeding frenzy that’s made multimillion-dollar bonuses a matter of course at the top of the corporate food chain. It really is as simple as that. The Trump voters in the neighborhood south of my home may not have a handle on all the details, but they know that their survival depends on getting some of that money flowing back into paychecks to be spent in their community.
It’s an open question whether they’re going to get that if Donald Trump wins the election, and a great many of his supporters know this perfectly well. It’s as certain as anything can be, though, that they’re not going to get it from Hillary Clinton. The economic policy she’s touted in her speeches, to the extent that this isn’t just the sort of campaign rhetoric that will pass its pull date the moment the last vote is counted, focuses on improving opportunities for the middle class—the people, in other words, who have already reaped the lion’s share of those economic benefits that didn’t go straight into the pockets of the rich. To the working classes, she offers nothing but a repetition of the same empty slogans and disposable promises. What’s more, they know this, and another round of empty slogans and disposable promises isn’t going to change that.
Nor, it probably needs to be said, is it going to be changed by another round of media handwaving designed to make Donald Trump look bad in the eyes of affluent liberals. I’ve noted with some amusement the various news stories on the highbrow end of the media noting, in tones variously baffled and horrified, that when you show Trump supporters videos designed to make them less enthusiastic about their candidate, they double down. Any number of canned theories have been floated to explain why that happens, but none that I’ve heard have dealt with the obvious explanations.
To begin with, it’s not as though that habit is only found on Trump’s side of the fence. In recent weeks, as one Wikileaks email dump after another has forced an assortment of stories about Clinton’s arrogant and corrupt behavior into the news, her followers have doubled down just as enthusiastically as Trump’s; those of my readers who are familiar with the psychology of previous investment will likely notice that emotional investment is just as subject to this law as the financial kind. For that matter, supporters of both candidates are quite sensibly aware that this election is meant to choose a public official rather than a plaster saint, and recognize that a genuine scoundrel who will take the right stands on the issues that matter to them is a better choice than a squeaky-clean innocent who won’t, even if such an animal could actually be found in the grubby ecosystem of contemporary American politics.
That said, there’s another factor that probably plays an even larger role, which is that when working class Americans get told by slickly groomed talking heads in suits that something they believe is wrong, their default assumption is that the talking heads are lying.
Working class Americans, after all, have very good reason for making this their default assumption. Over and over again, that’s the way things have turned out. The talking heads insisted that handing over tax dollars to various corporate welfare queens would bring jobs back to American communities; the corporations in question pocketed the tax dollars and walked away. The talking heads insisted that if working class people went to college at their own expense and got retrained in new skills, that would bring jobs back to American communities; the academic industry profited mightily but the jobs never showed up, leaving tens of millions of people buried so deeply under student loan debt that most of them will never recover financially. The talking heads insisted that this or that or the other political candidate would bring jobs back to American communities by pursuing exactly the same policies that got rid of the jobs in the first place—essentially the same claim that the Clinton campaign is making now—and we know how that turned out.
For that matter, trust in talking heads generally is at an all-time low out here in flyover country. Consider the way that herbal medicine—“God’s medicine” is the usual phrase these days—has become the go-to option for a huge and growing number of devout rural Christians. There are plenty of reasons why that should be happening, but surely one of the most crucial is the cascading loss of faith in the slickly groomed talking heads that sell modern medicine to consumers. Herbs may not be as effective as modern pharmaceuticals in treating major illnesses, to be sure, but they generally don’t have the ghastly side effects that so many pharmaceuticals will give you. Furthermore, and just as crucially, nobody ever bankrupted their family and ended up on the street because of the high price of herbs.
It used to be, not all that long ago, that the sort of people we’re discussing trusted implicitly in American society and its institutions. They were just as prone as any urban sophisticate to distrust this or that politician or businessperson or cultural figure, to be sure; back in the days when local caucuses and county conventions of the two main political parties still counted for something, you could be sure of hearing raucous debates about a galaxy of personalities and issues. Next to nobody, though, doubted that the basic structures of American society were not merely sound, but superior to all others.
You won’t find that certainty in flyover country these days. Where you hear such claims made at all, they’re phrased in the kind of angry and defensive terms that lets everyone know that the speaker is trying to convince himself of something he doesn’t entirely believe any more, or in the kind of elegaic tones that hearken back to an earlier time when things still seemed to work—when the phrase “the American Dream” still stood for a reality that many people had experienced and many more could expect to achieve for themselves and their children. Very few people out here think of the federal government as anything more than a vast mechanism operated by rich crooks for their own benefit, at the expense of everyone else. What’s more, the same cynical attitude is spreading to embrace the other institutions of American society, and—lethally—the ideals from which those institutions get whatever legitimacy they still hold in the eyes of the people.
Those of my readers who were around in the late 1980s and early 1990s have seen this movie before, though it came with Cyrillic subtitles that time around. By 1985 or so, it had become painfully obvious to most citizens of the Soviet Union that the grand promises of Marxism would not be kept and the glorious future for which their grandparents and great-grandparents had fought and labored was never going to arrive. Glowing articles in Pravda and Izvestia insisted that everything was just fine in the Worker’s Paradise; annual five-year plans presupposed that economic conditions would get steadily better while, for most people, economic conditions got steadily worse; vast May Day parades showed off the Soviet Union’s military might, Soyuz spacecraft circled the globe to show off its technological prowess, and tame intellectuals comfortably situated in the more affluent districts of Moscow and Leningrad, looking forward to their next vacation at their favorite Black Sea resort, chattered in print about the good life under socialism, while millions of ordinary Soviet citizens trudged through a bleak round of long lines, product shortages, and system-wide dysfunction. Then crisis hit, and the great-great-grandchildren of the people who surged to the barricades during the Russian Revolution shrugged, and let the Soviet Union unravel in a matter of days.
I suspect we’re much closer to a similar cascade of events here in the United States than most people realize. My fellow peak oil blogger Dmitry Orlov pointed out a decade or so back, in a series of much-reprinted blog posts and his book Reinventing Collapse, that the differences between the Soviet Union and the United States were far less important than their similarities, and that a Soviet-style collapse was a real possibility here—a possibility for which most Americans are far less well prepared than their Russian equivalents in the early 1990s. His arguments have become even more compelling as the years have passed, and the United States has become mired ever more deeply in a mire of institutional dysfunction and politico-economic kleptocracy all but indistinguishable from the one that eventually swallowed its erstwhile rival.
Point by point, the parallels stand out. We’ve got the news articles insisting, in tones by turns glowing and shrill, that things have never been better in the United States and anyone who says otherwise is just plain wrong; we’ve got the economic pronouncements predicated on continuing growth at a time when the only things growing in the US economy are its total debt load and the number of people who are permanently unemployed; we’ve got the overblown displays of military might and technological prowess, reminiscent of nothing so much as the macho posturing of balding middle-aged former athletes who are trying to pretend that they haven’t lost it; we’ve got the tame intellectuals comfortably situated in the more affluent suburban districts around Boston, New York, Washington, and San Francisco, looking forward to their next vacation in whatever the currently fashionable spot might happen to be, babbling on the internet about the good life under predatory cybercapitalism.
Meanwhile millions of Americans trudge through a bleak round of layoffs, wage cuts, part-time jobs at minimal pay, and system-wide dysfunction. The crisis hasn’t hit yet, but those members of the political class who think that the people who used to be rock-solid American patriots will turn out en masse to keep today’s apparatchiks secure in their comfortable lifestyles have, as the saying goes, another think coming. Nor is it irrelevant that most of the enlisted personnel in the armed forces, who are the US government’s ultimate bulwark against popular unrest, come from the very classes that have lost faith most drastically in the American system. The one significant difference between the Soviet case and the American one at this stage of the game is that Soviet citizens had no choice but to accept the leaders the Communist Party of the USSR foisted off on them, from Brezhnev to Andropov to Chernenko to Gorbachev, until the system collapsed of its own weight.
American citizens, on the other hand, do at least potentially have a choice. Elections in the United States have been riddled with fraud for most of two centuries, but since both parties are generally up to their eyeballs in voter fraud to a roughly equal degree, fraud mostly swings close elections. It’s still possible for a sufficiently popular candidate to overwhelm the graveyard vote, the crooked voting machines, and the other crass realities of American elections by sheer force of numbers. That way, an outsider unburdened with the echo-chamber thinking of a dysfunctional elite might just be able to elbow his way into the White House. Will that happen this time? No one knows.
If George W. Bush was our Leonid Brezhnev, as I’d suggest, and Barack Obama is our Yuri Andropov, Hillary Clinton is running for the position of Konstantin Chernenko; her running mate Tim Kaine, in turn, is waiting in the wings as a suitably idealistic and clueless Mikhail Gorbachev, under whom the whole shebang can promptly go to bits. While I don’t seriously expect the trajectory of the United States to parallel that of the Soviet Union anything like as precisely as this satiric metaphor would suggest, the basic pattern of cascading dysfunction ending in political collapse is quite a common thing in history, and a galaxy of parallels suggests that the same thing could very easily happen here within the next decade or so. The serene conviction among the political class and their affluent hangers-on that nothing of the sort could possibly take place is just another factor making it more likely.
It’s by no means certain that a Trump presidency will stop that from happening, and jolt the United States far enough out of its current death spiral to make it possible to salvage something from the American experiment. Even among Trump’s most diehard supporters, it’s common to find people who cheerfully admit that Trump might not change things enough to matter; it’s just that when times are desperate enough—and out here in the flyover states, they are—a leap in the dark is preferable to the guaranteed continuation of the unendurable.
Thus the grassroots movement that propelled Trump to the Republican nomination in the teeth of the GOP establishment, and has brought him to within a couple of aces of the White House in the teeth of the entire US political class, might best be understood as the last gasp of the American dream. Whether he wins or loses next week, this country is moving into the darkness of an uncharted night—and it’s not out of place to wonder, much as Hamlet did, what dreams may come in that darkness.
The Archdruid Report by John Michael Greer
99 Comments on "The Last Gasp of the American Dream"
HARM on Wed, 2nd Nov 2016 7:59 pm
“That consensus, for those of my readers who haven’t been paying attention, supports massive giveaways to big corporations and the already affluent, punitive austerity for the poor, malign neglect for the nation’s infrastructure, the destruction of the American working class through federal subsidies for automation and offshoring and tacit acceptance of mass illegal immigration as a means of driving down wages, and a monomaniacally confrontational foreign policy obsessed with the domination of the Middle East by raw military force. Those are the policies that George W. Bush and Barack Obama pursued through four presidential terms, and they’re the policies that Hillary Clinton has supported throughout her political career.”
So far so good…
“Donald Trump, by contrast, has been arguing against several core elements of that consensus since the beginning of his run for office. Specifically, he’s calling for a reversal of federal policies that support offshoring of jobs, the enforcement of US immigration law, and a less rigidly confrontational stance toward Russia over the war in Syria. It’s been popular all through the current campaign for Clinton’s supporters to insist that nobody actually cares about these issues, and that Trump’s supporters must by definition be motivated by hateful values instead…”
Aaaaand… that’s where JMG lost me.
Donald Trump is not the stridently pro-working class populist that Greer and other Trump apologists fantasize him to be. He’s an upper .1% scion who inherited his real estate mogul dad’s business and a shameless con-artists, opportunist and narcissist, who clearly puts his own interests above any political “agenda”. As for his “policies”, there isn’t even much there to talk about, and he seems to change course on what little there is on a near daily basis.
Sorry Greer, there was only one genuine populist man-for-the-people who ran in this election: Bernie Sanders. And sadly, he lost.
DerHundistlos on Wed, 2nd Nov 2016 8:06 pm
The Black Swans….
Elsbery, Missouri Animal Mutilations ABC News Affiliate Reports: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K1s8tyWDrAQ
Boat on Wed, 2nd Nov 2016 8:12 pm
“the destruction of the American working class through federal subsidies for automation and offshoring and tacit acceptance of mass illegal immigration as a means of driving down wages”
Lol. Sounds like a Trump speech. First of all there are a million less illegal immigrants than there were. Google it trump supporters. The problem is legal immigration. Trump hires these folks, no problem. Both parties like immigrants.
So build a wall, that makes sense, why not jail a few of those billionaires that hire illegals and see how fast the labor market tightens.
makati1 on Wed, 2nd Nov 2016 8:14 pm
HARM, the Deep State is running this farce the U$ calls an election. Bernie was a sideshow never meant to win or even place. A distraction like everything else the Deep State does. Even Killary seems to be the ‘also ran’ in the race to the finish line, by design. Think about it. The next 4-8 year period is going to see the destruction of America, big time. Maybe TPTB want the Reps to be the fall guy? Or, maybe they see Killary as a potential huge liability in their plans? I guess we will have to wait and see. But, buckle up! It is going to be a very rough and scary ride thru this fun house we call America.
eugene on Wed, 2nd Nov 2016 8:58 pm
In the mid 1990s, I read a couple of people who predicted our present situation. American wages/lifestyles were way above the global average. My opinion is we can bitch about government, off shoring, etc, etc. After WWII, we had the only intact economy and, as is human nature, we became extremely arrogant and self centered. When we refused to accept a lower standard of living or work harder, we chose to charge our way to an illusion of prosperity. Built an out of control military and health care system. We refuse to make the necessary changes to become competitive. It’s a son of a bitch I know but what we’re in is no picnic. Doesn’t matter who is elected, nothing is going to stop our predicament from getting worse. Hillary is just more of the same and Trump is nothing more than a loud mouth adolescent playing to an angry nation.
The situation is far more complicated than either candidate is even capable of addressing and for that matter, speaking to the masses who can’t comprehend anything more than false promises and nasty rants.
makati1 on Wed, 2nd Nov 2016 9:02 pm
Boat, those “billionaires” ARE the Deep State. They are your masters and are above the law. Open your eyes and stop swilling that liquid bullshit American’s call “news”.
Anonymous on Wed, 2nd Nov 2016 9:29 pm
Boatards answer for everything ‘google it'(tm)
LoL.
Even with all of googles ahem ‘expertise’ behind you, you still manage to come across as an utter fool.
Oh look, they are talking about you on the interwebz boatard
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/science/science-news/11507200/Google-makes-people-think-they-are-smarter-than-they-are.html
Disclaimer: I did not google this.
Boat on Thu, 3rd Nov 2016 12:02 am
Yes anonymous,
Google is a great source for facts. You like politicians are fact shredders. Little spinners of fear. You really should learn to fact check using google, would change your life.
Hell, since coming to peakoil.com, through fact checking I discovered most of you doomers are so full of shyt with little fact. You can talk it but can’t back it. A high school freshman debate team would shred your collective asses.
Hubbert on Thu, 3rd Nov 2016 12:05 am
World’s coming to an end. Cubs just won the world Series 2016.
Truth Has A Liberal Bias on Thu, 3rd Nov 2016 12:13 am
And yet despite all his drawbacks Trump still remains the lesser evil.
Truth Has A Liberal Bias on Thu, 3rd Nov 2016 1:18 am
http://libertyblitzkrieg.com/2016/10/31/the-story-of-how-the-doj-tried-to-thwart-an-fbi-investigation-into-the-clinton-foundation/
Theedrich on Thu, 3rd Nov 2016 4:22 am
The Clintoness is a deranged crook. Everyone knows this, but a large number of people want precisely that. The Wall Street hyperbillionaires want her because they are addicted to ZIRP and easy money, as many have pointed out. The Negroes, well, they simply act like Negroes. The women who want a life form with a vulva in the White House could not care less what species it belongs to or what cage it belongs in. The torrent of 3rd-planeteers invading the country demand a feloness that will approve their invasion. And the narcotraffickers need a psychopath who will let them ply their cross-border trade without interference. The mainstream media, of course, are (surprise! surprise!) owned by the oligarchy and incapable of truth.
Stupor immobilizes the masses who, entranced by media hypnosis, are unable to think for themselves. After losing their jobs, they sink into drugs and choose suicide as the solution to a system that tells them they are superfluous. The devil’s dam tells them to vote for more of the same, and so many of them do. The political elites and their paymasters intend to construct a one-party state of mentally defective slaves who will obey their masters until the nation is turned into one vast mulatto slum.
If only the Soviets had had the skill of the Demonic Party!
Philip Harding on Thu, 3rd Nov 2016 7:59 am
Just another alt-right website with a liberal sounding name. You’re 100% blame and 0% solution. Go work for Trump.
Boat on Thu, 3rd Nov 2016 8:41 am
thelostwretch,
Hillary will call for a constitutional amendment to overturn the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision in her first 30 days as president.
The fed is independent. Presidents have no say.
Unemployment is at 5 percent.
No need for a wall. Illegal immigration peaked at over 11 million and is now below 10.
You foreigners should google your facts. Not one was correct.
Davy on Thu, 3rd Nov 2016 8:46 am
Wow MF, this is getting hot!
“FBI Records: The Vault”
“Hillary R. Clinton Part 01 of 04”
https://vault.fbi.gov/hillary-r.-clinton/hillary-r.-clinton-part-01-of-04/view
Hubbert on Thu, 3rd Nov 2016 9:01 am
America is done. This country is beyond bankrupt with endless war in Middle East.
America has become the most corrupt country in the world with fraudulent politicians and their crony capitalist goons.
It is fast turning into a Feudal Kingdom operated by corporate mandarins, banksters and war profiteers.
Boat on Thu, 3rd Nov 2016 9:17 am
Only hot for the Clinton haters. Why anyone gives a shyt about Hillary e-mails is pure politics.
joe on Thu, 3rd Nov 2016 9:24 am
Its worse, many white liberals indifference to the suffering of other whites is because they are brainwashed to think that there’s some historical justice to it all. The problem with the fly-over states is that they are white, thats why nobody cares. To win the sympathy of bleeding heart liberals and thus media coverage and politcal action you need to be either muslim or non-white. Liberals are f**king vampires they feed emotionally from others suffering. Show them a crying muslims child and they collapse in pools of tears, show em poor white child and thats just the economy man.
Apneaman on Thu, 3rd Nov 2016 9:27 am
Boat, can you do a mathematical breakdown for us of those awesome employment stats?
Sissyfuss on Thu, 3rd Nov 2016 9:31 am
Boat, you ignorant slut! You believe that unemployment is at 5 percent with 94 million able bodied citizens on their asses playing Call of Duty 24/7. Deep State loves your kind as it makes their work seem like play.
Boat on Thu, 3rd Nov 2016 9:53 am
ape,
Anything I can do to help. 95 percent working. 5 percent not. Your welcome.
Boat on Thu, 3rd Nov 2016 10:10 am
Sissyfuss on Thu, 3rd Nov 2016 9:31 am
In 2009 gov revenues were down to 3.3 trillion. In 2015 revenue was over 6 trillion. Apparently the deep state/Obama can perform miracles.
Apneaman on Thu, 3rd Nov 2016 10:11 am
joe, you’re getting all wrapped up by emotion inducing propaganda. Political action? Have you ever been to where these non whites live? Ever been to inner city housing projects? I have – a bunch of them in Atlanta and it ain’t pretty. The well to do liberal class doesn’t actually give a shit or do anything for these people either – same as the well to do conservative class. It’s all just talking points. Big concern trolls. The entire working class has been abandoned more and more every year over the last 40 years regardless of race. Whites just notice it more because they had further to fall and a dozen loud mouth alarmist screaming retards like Rush who help them believe they are the only victims – poor things. The political class don’t give a fuck about anyone or anything except their own power, wealth and status (the club). Y’all a bunch of suckers. 4 years ago you was all cheering on Romney – the guy who made many millions killing American jobs and businesses. Left or Right, they could dress a monkey in a suit and nominate him as their candidate and you would all start cheering and writing long winded comments why your monkey is the right monkey to be monkey president and the other tribes monkey is the the wrong monkey and epitome of evil…..evil monkey. This is where that idea of a country/people get the leader they deserve comes from.
Boat on Thu, 3rd Nov 2016 10:19 am
Sissyfuss on Thu, 3rd Nov 2016 9:31 am
This is where you learn the methodology of US unemployment.
http://www.bls.gov/cps/cps_htgm.htm
Davy on Thu, 3rd Nov 2016 10:21 am
Joe, what part of U.K. you from. I have been there and the place is just ahead or behind the US in Screwed.
Davy on Thu, 3rd Nov 2016 10:24 am
Ape man, here is one to fact check:
http://debatepost.com/2016/11/02/breaking-wikileaks-shows-hillary-clinton-may-have-helped-trudeau-win-the-canadian-election/
Baptised on Thu, 3rd Nov 2016 10:58 am
One of the times I have been the angriest in my life, was at a gradation party and a very loud outspoken republican, house builder was so mad because one of his older Mexican workers wanted a W-2 at the end of the fiscal year.” Out of 20 something illegals this one has to be a problem, I guess I will have to let him go, but he is one of my best brick layers.” Then he is going around talking about how all illegals should be herded up and sent home, damn illegals. Now is this not what the wall street bunch claimed in 2008? You should have had stricter laws, you knew we would cheat if possible. P.S. I am against illegals myself, because it is illegal. Change the law with many Preconditions and I might feel different. But the house builders in Nashville TN., which are 99% republicans and then paying them cash and complaining about them using food stamps, free education and health care is evil, evil, evil.
Apneaman on Thu, 3rd Nov 2016 11:05 am
Boat, apparently the Gallup poll people disagree with the government’s ever changing methodology.
Real Unemployment – Department of Labor (U-6) – 9.7%
“Widely reported unemployment metrics in the U.S. do not accurately represent the reality of joblessness in America.
For example, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) does not count a person who desires work as unemployed if he or she is not working and has stopped looking for work over the past four weeks. Similarly, the BLS does not count someone as unemployed if he or she is, for instance, an out-of-work engineer, construction worker or retail manager who performs a minimum of one hour of work a week and receives at least $20 in compensation.”
http://www.gallup.com/poll/189068/bls-unemployment-seasonally-adjusted.aspx
I know what methodology you prefer boat……..anyone that keeps your hopes alive.
Apneaman on Thu, 3rd Nov 2016 11:28 am
Davy, so what? Did you even read that pointless nonsensical piece of shit? Reads like it was written by a remedial 7th grader or boat. It’s attributed to Ashley – just Ashely. “Oh Ashley…I read all her stuff” gimme a fucking break. Talks about an email, but doesn’t produce it nor provide a link to it. There is a link. It’s to another “Debate Post” “article”. By Jason -just Jason. “Oh Jason…I read all his stuff” gimme a fucking break. What’s next Davy, are you going to post links to crayon drawn pictures mocking Hillary done by little angry conservatives?
Davy on Thu, 3rd Nov 2016 12:42 pm
Damn Ape, you are always preaching to the choir to not get emotional and look at yourself. It was just a simple question I figured you had insight on. Chill Bro.
Dredd on Thu, 3rd Nov 2016 12:54 pm
The dream was morphed away in the U.S.eh? (A Tale of Coup Cities – 13).
Boat on Thu, 3rd Nov 2016 1:23 pm
Apneaman on Thu, 3rd Nov 2016 11:05 am
I’m flexible. I like the good job metric. The only problem with it, the lack of history to put 10 percent in context.
Is 10 percent unemployment considered good, bad.
onlooker on Thu, 3rd Nov 2016 1:51 pm
Boat your indoctrination is absolute. If you believe the official US Govt statistics then I have some nice piece of real estate on the Moon to sell you
Apneaman on Thu, 3rd Nov 2016 4:24 pm
Boat, I don’t know. Personally, I’m not feeling any pain. Hey! I know, lets ask all those new heroin addicts and those people living under the overpass and the thousands living in Walmart parking lots. Boat, what’s the student loan debt at now? 1.2 trillion with the highest default rate ever? Something like that. Hard for the millennials to pay down that debt with subsistence level jobs. Methinks the social contract has been broken for some time now. Not for everyone, but enough to see it without needing any stats and make a clown like Trump a serious contender. Doesn’t that say it all?
Boat on Thu, 3rd Nov 2016 4:40 pm
Me thinks if you ask an average Republican they would say the gov should not have a social contract. Let the bottom feeders starve. Unless something happens to them. Funny that.
Sissyfuss on Thu, 3rd Nov 2016 5:15 pm
Boatload, check out Shadowstats for the unmanpulated figures before the gov makes them into something palatable for the corns. Williams has got the figure at 23% but the soup lines are hidden behind EBT cards and all the printing presses working overtime, unlike the masses. Every stat is manipulated by the Deepers, especially interest rates which keep the interest payments on the debt from blowing the Ponzi higher than a Tesla Mars shot.
Apneaman on Thu, 3rd Nov 2016 5:16 pm
Davy, I thought I was being funny N stuff. I was laughing. I guess I have over rated my skill at communicating sarcasm and absurdity.
onlooker on Thu, 3rd Nov 2016 5:24 pm
Are you listening to what Sissy said Boat. Or is it hear no evil,see no evil, talk no evil
Boat on Thu, 3rd Nov 2016 5:25 pm
Sissyfuss on Thu, 3rd Nov 2016 5:15 pm
So your telling me the deep state manipulated unemployment data to make it look much higher before the crash and then during the recovery they switched tactics and now make unemployment look much better. Me thinks you took to many drugs in the 60’s.
onlooker on Thu, 3rd Nov 2016 5:35 pm
Sissy, Boat is delirious. Duh they’re is no Recovery that is why they need to make Unemployment look much better
peakyeast on Thu, 3rd Nov 2016 5:45 pm
what needs to be understood is that no matter how clever an economist or banker you are at manipulation numbers and shovelling wealth around – at the end of the day – the bread on the table is still (if untouched) just a bread on the table.
In most cases the bread will be half gone eaten by the financial wizards, but the accounts will show 99 breads loaned out.
Boat on Thu, 3rd Nov 2016 5:51 pm
onlooker on Thu, 3rd Nov 2016 5:35 pm
http://www.tradingeconomics.com/united-states/unemployment-rate
In historical context unemployment is low. In spite of your disconnect with reality. What happened to the crash idiot.
makati1 on Thu, 3rd Nov 2016 5:54 pm
US Soup Line: ~47 million people in line.
Standing front to back – 9,000 miles of line.
9,000 miles of line = ~4 times across the US.
9,000 miles of line = New York City to Berlin to New Delhi, India. A few million are going to get wet. ^_^
That is one hell of a “Soup Line”!! LMAO
Apneaman on Thu, 3rd Nov 2016 5:55 pm
Boat (AKA Google Wizard) How is that you never spot the obvious goal post moving by TPTB? Everytime I come across it I put up links, yet you completly ignore them every time. It’s called willful ignorance. Many call you an idiot and such, but that’s not the case. You are simply protecting your worldview and trying to avoid the psychological discomfort that comes with cognitive bias. There is a ton of solid research, the world over, showing that the most common response to evidence that challenges one’s deeply held beliefs is to double down.
Goal post moving.
Deconstructing Median Income Bullshit
http://www.declineoftheempire.com/2016/09/deconstructing-median-income-bullshit.html
How facts backfire
Researchers discover a surprising threat to democracy: our brains
“The problem is that sometimes the things they think they know are objectively, provably false. And in the presence of the correct information, such people react very, very differently than the merely uninformed. Instead of changing their minds to reflect the correct information, they can entrench themselves even deeper.”
http://archive.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2010/07/11/how_facts_backfire/
Apneaman on Thu, 3rd Nov 2016 6:00 pm
Humans Will Believe Anything
“Nearly 24 hours have passed since I posted yesterday’s critique of the Census Bureau’s rosy view of household median income (HMI). The huge, historic leap (5.2%) in HMI was simply not credible on the face of it. There had to be something going on. In fact, it turned out there were several interacting factors which inflated the headline HMI number.
(Also, see this important New York Times article from August, 2016, which I incorporated into yesterday’s post. That article describes the Sentier results I discussed yesterday.)
If you do the right Google searches, you will find only two reports critiquing the Census report—mine and the New York Post article I cited. If you do a Google News search, you will find only the New York Post article because Google doesn’t consider DOTE to be a news source.
Today you will find one uncritical discussion after another celebrating the Good News. The dubious Census report was swallowed hook, line and sinker without debate.
It doesn’t matter that all measurements of things like median household income are bound to be flawed, not least because humans with hidden agendas are doing the measuring.
What matters is that the historically standard measurement was modified to make the results look better than they would have been under the previous standard. Moreover, extraordinary factors (e.g., very low energy prices leading to very low inflation) further distorted the Census results, given their standard method for accounting for inflation (see yesterday’s post).
Importantly, those extraordinary factors went unacknowledged by the Census Bureau and those in the media evaluating its household median income results.
With those caveats in mind, let’s call previous, undistorted standard measurements “reality” (even if it is relative, as it always is).
Let’s ask a simple question — how can we explain this astonishing disparity between reality and human perceptions of it?
Well, it’s not that we haven’t seen this kind of thing before. That’s what Flatland is all about. But let’s be specific—
Humans love good news. More than anything, humans want to believe that they’re not fucking up. You can throw out the old adage which says if something sounds too good to be true, it probably isn’t. If the news is good, human credulity is unbounded. If the news is good, humans will believe anything.
For those with a vested interest in the status quo, or those with a particular political bias, confirmation bias makes it self-evident that the good news must be true, no matter how implausible the news is on the face of it.
Humans automatically (unconsciously) submit or defer to authority. The modern incarnation of authority is expertise. The sacred Census Bureau represents authority in this context.
Anyone rejecting the good news, or questioning it, risks social ostracism or marginalization. Doing so poses a subtle existential threat to the existing social order. So it doesn’t happen very often. Regarding marginalization, skeptical voices will simply be ignored (filtered). Under this interpretation, me and the New York Post guy are invisible.
This list is not complete, but that’s what I’ve got for you today.”
http://www.declineoftheempire.com/2016/09/humans-will-believe-anything.html
makati1 on Thu, 3rd Nov 2016 6:45 pm
Anyone who has lived over a half century has a more difficult time accepting garbage as ‘filet mignon’. If they have two functioning brain cells, they have a difficult time accepting the propaganda thrown at us 24/7/365. But, if you are surrounded by it, maybe it takes getting out of the country to see it? Or, at least, have been out of the U$ sometime recently into the real world.
Most of my family falls into the ‘crowd’ described in the article quoted by Ap. I try to part the curtain for them, but they refuse to see. Their loss. I decided to not stay in the U$ just to make them happy at my expense. They can come and live with me if they want, but I doubt they will, until it is too late.
makati1 on Thu, 3rd Nov 2016 7:09 pm
“As we enter the final stretch of this vitriolic, deplorable, venomous, propaganda saturated, deceitful, rigged presidential election spectacle, it becomes painfully obvious this Fourth Turning is careening toward bloodshed, bedlam, confrontation, and civil war. The linear fixated establishment, who fancy themselves intellectually superior to the irredemables, are too blinded by their sociopathic, increasingly audacious subversion of the Constitution, to grasp the level of rage and disillusionment of a white working class that has been screwed over for decades.
As the Wall Street shysters frantically accelerate their embezzlement of what remains of middle class wealth, with the Fed and the corporate media propagandists as their wing-men, the country devolves into a corporate fascist state. The disposition of the nation grows dark like the sky before an approaching deadly blizzard. As passions boil over and violence portends, this Fourth Turning hastens towards a bloody decade ahead with an uncertain climax.”
http://www.theburningplatform.com/2016/11/03/civil-war-ii-fourth-turning-intensifying-part-i/#more-134628
“We are eight years into a Crisis period which won’t end until the mid-2020s. As this bitterly vicious presidential campaign accelerates towards a finale which will leave the country divided and irate, the hostile opposing forces will be seeking revenge, retribution, and retaliation no matter the outcome. There is no doubt the regeneracy is well under way.”
Boat on Thu, 3rd Nov 2016 9:38 pm
Lol,
And the world collapsed. Hey XI is now called the “core”. That makes Putin coreII. mak, who is coreIII. Assad? Duterte? Khamenei? Kim Jong-Un?
makati1 on Thu, 3rd Nov 2016 9:57 pm
Laugh Boat, you obviously have no idea what you read, or maybe, even what you said. You really need to get your meds changed.
Boat on Thu, 3rd Nov 2016 10:49 pm
mak,
Your 70 web sites didn’t inform you?
https://www.neweurope.eu/article/chinas-xi-named-core-leader/
Since taking office nearly four years ago, China’s President Xi Jinping has rapidly consolidated power. He has appointed himself commander-in-chief of the military, even though he already controls the armed forces, and has now been named “core” leader of a group appointed to achieve important economic reforms.
the title “core” puts him on par with strongmen Mao Zedong, Deng Xiaoping and Jiang Zemin.
The title marks a significant strengthening of Xi’s position ahead of an important party congress next year, at which a new Standing Committee, the pinnacle of power in China, will be constituted.
I guess superman, batman, flash, thor and other names had been taken. Dam those US imperialists.