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The Demobilization Of The American People & The Spectacle Of Election 2016
Submitted by Tom Engelhardt via TomDispatch.com,
You may not know it, but you’re living in a futuristic science fiction novel. And that’s a fact. If you were to read about our American world in such a novel, you would be amazed by its strangeness. Since you exist right smack in the middle of it, it seems like normal life (Donald Trump and Ben Carson aside). But make no bones about it, so far this has been a bizarre American century.
Let me start with one of the odder moments we’ve lived through and give it the attention it’s always deserved. If you follow my train of thought and the history it leads us into, I guarantee you that you’ll end up back exactly where we are -- in the midst of the strangest presidential campaign in our history.
To get a full frontal sense of what that means, however, let’s return to late September 2001. I’m sure you remember that moment, just over two weeks after those World Trade Center towers came down and part of the Pentagon was destroyed, leaving a jangled secretary of defense instructing his aides, “Go massive. Sweep it all up. Things related and not.”
I couldn’t resist sticking in that classic Donald Rumsfeld line, but I leave it to others to deal with Saddam Hussein, those fictional weapons of mass destruction, the invasion of Iraq, and everything that’s happened since, including the establishment of a terror “caliphate” by a crew of Islamic extremists brought together in American military prison camps -- all of which you wouldn’t believe if it were part of a sci-fi novel. The damn thing would make Planet of the Apeslook like outright realism.
Instead, try to recall the screaming headlines that labeled the 9/11 attacks “the Pearl Harbor of the twenty-first century” or “a new Day of Infamy,” and the attackers “the kamikazes of the twenty-first century.” Remember the moment when President George W. Bush, bullhorn in hand, stepped onto the rubble at "Ground Zero" in New York, draped his arm around a fireman, and swore payback in the name of the American people, as members of an impromptu crowd shouted out things like “Go get ‘em, George!”
“I can hear you! I can hear you!” he responded. “The rest of the world hears you! And the people -- and the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon!”
“USA! USA! USA!” chanted the crowd.
Then, on September 20th, addressing Congress, Bush added, “Americans have known wars, but for the past 136 years they have been wars on foreign soil, except for one Sunday in 1941.” By then, he was already talking about "our war on terror."
Now, hop ahead to that long-forgotten moment when he would finally reveal just how a twenty-first-century American president should rally and mobilize the American people in the name of the ultimate in collective danger. As CNN put it at the time, “President Bush... urged Americans to travel, spend, and enjoy life.” His actual words were:
“And one of the great goals of this nation's war is to restore public confidence in the airline industry and to tell the traveling public, get on board, do your business around the country, fly and enjoy America's great destination spots. Go down to Disney World in Florida, take your families and enjoy life the way we want it to be enjoyed.”
So we went to war in Afghanistan and later Iraq to rebuild faith in flying. Though that got little attention at the time, tell me it isn’t a detail out of some sci-fi novel. Or put another way, as far as the Bush administration was then concerned, Rosie the Riveter was moldering in her grave and the model American for mobilizing a democratic nation in time of war was Rosie the Frequent Flyer. It turned out not to be winter in Valley Forge, but eternal summer in Orlando. From then on, as the Bush administration planned its version of revenge-cum-global-domination, the message it sent to the citizenry was: go about your business and leave the dirty work to us.
Disney World opened in 1971, but for a moment imagine that it had been in existence in 1863 and that, more than seven score years ago, facing a country in the midst of a terrible civil war, Abraham Lincoln at Gettysburg had said this:
“It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom at Disney World -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish for lack of vacations in Florida.”
Or imagine that, in response to that “day of infamy,” the Pearl Harbor of the twentieth century, Franklin Roosevelt had gone before Congress and, in an address to the nation, had said:
“Hostilities exist. There is no blinking at the fact that our people, our territory, and our interests are in grave danger. With confidence in our airlines, with the unbounding determination of our people to visit Disney World, we will gain the inevitable triumph -- so help us God.”
If those are absurdities, then so is twenty-first-century America. By late September 2001, though no one would have put it that way, the demobilization of the American people had become a crucial aspect of Washington’s way of life. The thought that Americans might be called upon to sacrifice in any way in a time of peril had gone with the wind. Any newly minted version of the classic “don’t tread on me” flag of the revolutionary war era would have had to read: “don’t bother them.”
The Spectacle of War
The desire to take the American public out of the “of the people, by the people, for the people” business can minimally be traced back to the Vietnam War, to the moment when a citizen’s army began voting with its feet and antiwar sentiment grew to startling proportions not just on the home front, but inside a military in the field. It was then that the high command began to fear the actual disintegration of the U.S. Army.
Not surprisingly, there was a deep desire never to repeat such an experience. (No more Vietnams! No more antiwar movements!) As a result, on January 27, 1973, with a stroke of the pen, President Richard Nixon abolished the draft, and so the citizen’s army. With it went the sense that Americans had an obligation to serve their country in time of war (and peace).
From that moment on, the urge to demobilize the American people and send them to Disney World would only grow. First, they were to be removed from all imaginable aspects of war making. Later, the same principle would be applied to the processes of government and to democracy itself. In this context, for instance, you could write a history of the monstrous growth of secrecy and surveillance as twin deities of the American state: the urge to keep ever more information from the citizenry and to see ever more of what those citizens were doing in their own private time. Both should be considered demobilizing trends.
This twin process certainly has a long history in the U.S., as any biography of former FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover would indicate. Still, the expansion of secrecy and surveillance in this century has been a stunning development, as ever-larger parts of the national security state and the military (especially its 70,000-strong Special Operations forces) fell into the shadows. In these years, American “safety” and “security” were redefined in terms of a citizen’s need not to know. Only bathed in ignorance, were we safest from the danger that mattered most (Islamic terrorism -- a threat of microscopic proportions in the continental United States).
As the American people were demobilized from war and left, in the post-9/11 era, with the single duty of eternally thanking and praising our "warriors” (or our "wounded warriors”), war itself was being transformed into a new kind of American entertainment spectacle. In the 1980s, in response to the Vietnam experience, the Pentagon began to take responsibility not just for making war but for producing it. Initially, in the invasions of Grenada and Panama, this largely meant sidelining the media, which many U.S. commanders still blamed for defeat in Vietnam.
By the First Gulf War of 1991, however, the Pentagon was prepared to produce a weeks-long televised extravaganza, which would enter the living rooms of increasingly demobilized Americans as a riveting show. It would have its own snazzy graphics, logos, background music, and special effects (including nose-cone shots of targets obliterated). In addition, retired military men were brought in to do Monday Night Football-style play-by-play and color commentary on the fighting in progress. In this new version of war, there were to be no rebellious troops, no body bags, no body counts, no rogue reporters, and above all no antiwar movement. In other words, the Gulf War was to be the anti-Vietnam. And it seemed to work... briefly.
Unfortunately for the first Bush administration, Saddam Hussein remained in power in Baghdad, the carefully staged post-war “victory” parades faded fast, the major networks lost ad money on the Pentagon’s show, and the ratings for war as entertainment sank. More than a decade later, the second Bush administration, again eager not to repeat Vietnam and intent on sidelining the American public while it invaded and occupied Iraq, did it all over again.
This time, the Pentagon sent reporters to “boot camp,” “embedded” them with advancing units, built a quarter-million-dollar movie-style set for planned briefings in Doha, Qatar, and launched its invasion with “decapitation strikes” over Baghdad that lit the televised skies of the Iraqi capital an eerie green on TVs across America. This spectacle of war, American-style, turned out to have a distinctly Disney-esque aura to it. (Typically, however, those strikes produced scores of dead Iraqis, but managed to “decapitate” not a single targeted Iraqi leader from Saddam Hussein on down.) That spectacle, replete with the usual music, logos, special effects, and those retired generals-cum-commentators -- this time even more tightly organized by the Pentagon -- turned out again to have a remarkably brief half-life.
The Spectacle of Democracy
War as the first demobilizing spectacle of our era is now largely forgotten because, as entertainment, it was reliant on ratings, and in the end, it lost the battle for viewers. As a result, America's wars became ever more an activity to be conducted in the shadows beyond the view of most Americans.
If war was the first experimental subject for the demobilizing spectacle, democracy and elections turned out to be remarkably ripe for the plucking as well. As a result, we now have the never-ending presidential campaign season. In the past, elections did not necessarily lack either drama or spectacle. In the nineteenth century, for instance, there were campaign torchlight parades, but those were always spectacles of mobilization. No longer. Our new 1% elections call for something different.
It’s no secret that our presidential campaigns have morphed into a “billionaire’s playground,” even as the right to vote has become more constrained. These days, it could be said that the only group of citizens that automatically mobilizes for such events is “the billionaire class” (as Bernie Sanders calls it). Increasingly, many of the rest of us catch the now year-round spectacle demobilized in our living rooms, watching journalists play... gasp!... journalists on TV and give American democracy that good old Gotcha!
In 2001, George W. Bush wanted to send us all to Disney World (on our own dollar, of course). In 2015, Disney World is increasingly coming directly to us.
After all, at the center of election 2016 is Donald Trump. For a historical equivalent, you would have to imagine P.T. Barnum, who could sell any “curiosity” to the American public, running for president. (In fact, he did serve two terms in the Connecticut legislature and was, improbably enough, the mayor of Bridgeport.) Meanwhile, the TV “debates” that Trump and the rest of the candidates are now taking part in months before the first primary have left the League of Women Voters and the Commission on Presidential Debates in the dust. These are the ratings-driven equivalent of food fights encased in ads, with the “questions” clearly based on what will glue eyeballs.
Here, for instance, was CNN host Jake Tapper’s first question of the second Republican debate: “Mrs. Fiorina, I want to start with you. Fellow Republican candidate, and Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal, has suggested that your party’s frontrunner, Mr. Donald Trump, would be dangerous as president. He said he wouldn’t want, quote, ‘such a hot head with his finger on the nuclear codes.’ You, as well, have raised concerns about Mr. Trump’s temperament. You’ve dismissed him as an entertainer. Would you feel comfortable with Donald Trump’s finger on the nuclear codes?”
And the event only went downhill from there as responses ranged from non-answers to (no kidding!) a discussion of the looks of the candidates and yet the event proved such a ratings smash that its 23 million viewers were compared favorably to viewership of National Football League games.
In sum, a citizen’s duty, whether in time of war or elections, is now, at best, to watch the show, or at worst, to see nothing at all.
This reality has been highlighted by the whistleblowers of this generation, including Edward Snowden, Chelsea Manning, and John Kiriakou. Whenever they have revealed something of what our government is doing beyond our sight, they have been prosecuted with a fierceness unique in our history and for a simple enough reason. Those who watch us believe themselves exempt from being watched by us. That’s their definition of “democracy.” When “spies” appear in their midst, even if those whistleblowers are “spies” for us, they are horrified at a visceral level and promptly haul out the World War I-era Espionage Act. They now expect a demobilized response to whatever they do and when anything else is forthcoming, they strike back in outrage.
A Largely Demobilized Land
A report on a demobilized America shouldn’t end without some mention of at least one counter-impulse. All systems assumedly have their opposites lurking somewhere inside them, which brings us to Bernie Sanders. He’s the figure who doesn’t seem to compute in this story so far.
All you had to do was watch the first Democratic debate to sense what an anomaly he is, or you could have noted that, until almost the moment he went on stage that night, few involved in the election 2016 media spectacle had the time of day for him. And stranger yet, that lack of attention in the mainstream proved no impediment to the expansion of his campaign and his supporters, who, via social media and in person in the form of gigantic crowds, seem to exist in some parallel universe.
In this election cycle, Sanders alone uses the words “mobilize” and “mobilization” regularly, while calling for a “political revolution.” (“We need to mobilize tens of millions of people to begin to stand up and fight back and to reclaim the government, which is now owned by big money.”) And there is no question that he has indeed mobilized significant numbers of young people, many of whom are undoubtedly unplugged from the TV set, even if glued to other screens, and so may hardly be noticing the mainstream spectacle at all.
Whether the Sanders phenomenon represents our past or our future, his age or the age of his followers, is impossible to know. We do, of course, have one recent example of a mobilization in an election season. In the 2008 election, the charismatic Barack Obama created a youthful, grassroots movement, a kind of cult of personality that helped sweep him to victory, only to demobilize it as soon as he entered the Oval Office. Sanders himself puts little emphasis on personality or a cult of the same and undoubtedly represents something different, though what exactly remains open to question.
In the meantime, the national security state’s power is largely uncontested; the airlines still fly; Disney World continues to be a destination of choice; and the United States remains a largely demobilized land.
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>> Obama is a facist fag who got a peace prize for black and married a man with tits
>> Hillary is a liar bitch , bengahzi email beast whos husband in a pediphile
It would logically follow from this article that election participation will continue to decline. I certainly hope that is the case.
Open primaries disenfranchise.
If you control the choices, you control the outcome...that's the bottom line. Elections are a fraud. Voter turnout generates the appearance of legitimacy, with no risk to the establishment.
Queue mandatory voting.
The fucking Baby Boomers, like my Dad, who never went to Vietnam are the ones propping up these Fox News Zionist wars, how pathetic. The same "hippies" who fought on the streets to stay out of Vietnam, as it was a useless war, have propped up and voted for all these sickos. I guess the power of TV and the "war on terror" was able to "sell" them even beyond Vietnam. Surreal. My life will never be normal because of it.
I'm confused. Who do I vote for if (Like many) I would like to see all the troops brought home, the Military budget cut in half, the NSA and most of the other 3=letter spy Agencies disbanded, the Constitution restored, the Fed disbanded and the budget balanced?
Kirk out!
Let's not forget all that the Afghanistan war has accomplished.
1.) Spent $6 TRILLION.
2.) ... ummm, ok, *cough*
3.) Fool me, can't get fooled again!
(BTW, I like this new Guy Debord version of Tyler!)
We all wish for that, philipat. But the entrenched shadow government (neocons) and their elite sponsers will never allow it. It appears that they will be the source of their own doom, however. Financial collapse? WWIII? Maybe both? Let's pray that they get vaporized before they can reach their Deep Underground Military Bases. If we are still around after that, we can pick up the pieces.
Putin.
Wrong answer Billy! My brother calls Tahoe the "Dude Vortex" because of all the 20 something zombie snow and wake boarders wasting their youths away. They certainly aren't out protesting the tyranny, they are merely making the most they can out of it just like their boomer elders.
As a boomer, I look back at how my father, a Korean War veteran, was totally oblivious to what was really going on. He loved professional sports. Baseball was invented during the war of Northern Agression, so Englehard should really start there.
Englehard also mentions Roosevelts speach after Pearl Harbor, but fails to mention that that war, like vietnam, grenada and all of the ones in the ME are Zio-wars. The chosenites have been practicing their lies and hate on the goy for a long, long time. The only real difference is that the Millenials are the ones that are going to learn first hand about what the chosenites did to the Kulaks and the German Volk during the last century.
I agree Confederate. Our parents were so patriotic it almost appears a form of brainwashing, or mental illness. They believed everything Big gov told them. Tahoe's got it all wrong, unless his parents suffered the same illness ours did, which is not out of the question. From early adulthood, I've always felt that something was wrong, and searched hard to find the answer. It took a lot of time. Today, with the advent of computers and the net, it's relatively easy to see what's going on. No more scouring endless newspapers and magazines looking for a clue. What took years in a different time can now be found instantaneously.
Tahoe just doesn't get it. He doesn't understand how fortunate his generation is. While we are toiling away, living paycheck to paycheck, supporting his generation, he SHOULD be protesting the tyranny. He SHOULD be out organizing and mobilizing his generation. What else is there to do? There are no jobs. As for us boomers, we're getting old now, worn to the bone. But I've got some news for Tahoe, I didn't vote for any of those politicians he blames us for. I vote libertarian or constitutionalist. Always have. This time I just might vote for Trump, not that he'll be able to accomplish much against the shadow government. I just like him because he's doing a great job at giving the establishment a migrane, and that alone is priceless.
Rounders, the game the Americans call baseball, is so old nobidy knows exactly
how old it is.Certainly pre middle ages and 1492.
Rounders? Is that the game played by schoolgirls in Europe? Oh, and men in stretch pants in the US....
Billy, you say your life isn't normal but you assume that your dad a normal baby boomer. I can tell you as another baby boomer that you are quite wrong and as a vietnam vet I did not vote for what you call 'sickos'. How many of your friends are vietnam vets and give you the right to speak for them. If that's a big number then you are right about one thing, 'My life will never be normal'. Get to know some younger people and get aquainted with people who can think and aren't sickos.
The GOP cares.
Yeah, you're kidding... right?
Maybe not.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeffrey_Epstein#Solicitation_of_prostitution
You might want to stay away from the 1st comment, you might get some of it on you.
>>George Bush et al are Woar criminals
>>Dick Cheney is the Sith Lord in drag
Ya' fucked up when you portrayed Honest Abe as a patriot, Tom.
I quit reading right there.
Perhaps you can still be forgiven. It's not my decision to make.
Rather than freeing slaves, The Despot Abe Lincoln, created more of them.
Abe only freed the slaves in the South, and during the war as a way to disrupt the Confederates. The slaves in the Northern states were the LAST slaves to be freed and Lying Abe had nothing to do with it.
Yea, when this cat started to quote Abe and then marvel at fucking Bernie Sanders I knew his article was full of shit.
Eisenhower Farewell Address (Full) - YouTube
"Eisenhower Farewell Address"
One of my better moments....
Now study my profile name and learn why I warned of the MIC...
I've been here a long time. I never study profiles. In fact, your blocked in contacting me. Just like everyone else.
You can't imagine the amount of people that don't exist on Zerohedge. They come and go after the years.
If I picked on you, and pissed you off. It's about the love of United States of America.
We have to help the next generation. Not a easy task.
Buy them an iPhone protector?
and disney has state of the art biometric scanners, they have more fingerprints on record than the NSA, well, not since they send them there at the close of business each day.
Pitiful article.
I agree. This is very poorly written.
And some discussion of the role of a controlled corporate media seems fundamental to the issue of Americans' ignorance and lethargy.
that most people believe the 9/11 narrative has many causes, but the stunning (STUNNING) lack of dissent or doubt has to be the (or 'a') sine qua non.
You can not question 9/11 even though 20 minutes of effort looking into inconsistencies and open questions should convince even the Faux News crowd that the story we got was so incomplete and inaccurate as to constitute a massive and deliberate fraud on the public.
A fraud to justify spending half our money on an insane laundry list of long-planned, needless, disgusting wars.
The good ole standby excuse of blame it on Bush. This article is crap
He blamed it on Nixon.
"blame it on Bush."
The "pivotal" dupe was Reagan. Structurally, the Demand-side, Fiscal policy economy was dismantled overnight for Supply-side, Monetary Policy (what we still have today even stronger)....
Most here have never experienced an economy "other than" Supply-side, monetary policy...
So you have nothing to compare it to.
Parties don't matter, as Barry is now carrying the torch for the SSDD....
That's because, since 1980, the ultra wealthy have had a ball building up to the full-tilt, micro-managed mind control war that we today call the "American Political Economy"...or, "Fascism" by definition.
How anybody could think that there has been a discontinutity in policy, direction, intent in the last 20+ years is very myopic.
I have watched since the '50s and Ike, remember exactly where I was on Nov 22 '63 and there hasn't been a minute change in direction since Reagan at least. And he was only president for a short time, then it was bush presidency(since assasination attempt).
The rate of shit has only increased thats all.
The rate of shit is increasing exponentially.
I want liberty back.
What many seem not to understand about socialistic countries is that a socialist government towers big business. Even the FED. Not sure if anyone can do it from this establishment that is US political system though. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IngLjwQPkXU
"What many seem not to understand about socialistic countries"
"Socialism", "Communism", "Fascism", are not interchangeable ideologies to argue in favor of "Capitalism".
A lot of gall using Marx's avatar. Ever actually "read" him?
Why does he have a lot of gall? Are you in charge of avatars?
Two quotes of note:
"No revolution is successful until significant elements of internal security defect or refuse to protect a discredited regime" --Chris Hedges (quoting someone else, I think)
"The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear.'" --Antonio Gramsci
One quote of note:
The USSA is an Oligarchs disneyfied version of tailgate bacon burger with extra mayo perched on the nipples of a 20-something college grad for hire
_Money Boo Boo
Another quote of note:
Pull my finger.
I'm done with voting and the psychopaths that run our government. I do not agree nor do I comply iwht their edicts.
Oddly, I got a jury summons, If I make it to a jury some lucky fucker is getting away with what ever they did.
The Fix is in, for quite a while. The "bought-and-paid-for" Jeb vs Clinton (their delegates are in place, for many months now) will be it. Either way the votes go, this 2016....the Establishment wins (they never lose). They will not let outsiders Trump nor Sanders (or any other non-Establishment) in. These nomination contests are, just for show..it is all, but a farce.
http://theconservativetreehouse.com
"American People"
Another bullshit article pushing the "ass"umption that there is a "we" in this country.
When 1% owns over 50% of the economic assets, that ain't "we"....
It never will be.
I had to choke down the words in this article and I wasn't even talking. Rubbish it is.
He said "we" have been sidelined.
On the 1% deal re-read what he said about billionaires.
And who could forget GDuubya's exhortation to 'go out and shop'? Consume. Be Happy. Die.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fxk9PW83VCY
If 100 million people would have read this article, I wonder how many of them would have said:
Well...I get up at 3:30 AM to get ready for work, do all kinds of shit around the house, jump in my car and go to work. Work all day, come home, mow the lawn and other crap and then about 8:00 PM this evening I sat down and read this article on this website.
But I guess instead of reading this article on this website, I actually should have jumped back in my car, driven downtown and protested all the injustice in the world, so I could be firehosed, beaten, and arrested.
you forgot tear-gassed, pepper sprayed and shot in the head.
The lesson there is to skip the protesting stage.
Vote from the rooftops.
The American people need to be replaced
It would solve a lot of the problem if they would leave for Europe as refugees
America may be a lot of things, but it damn sure ain't Red China or the hodgepodge of sad, defeated nations known as Europe.
The the illusion of freedom may just prove to be as powerful or more powerful than actual freedom.
It ain't over until the fat lady sings bitchez.
It's over, many just don't know it yet. The band is still playing and some are still circling the musical chairs. When the tune stops there will be no chairs for anyone. It is going to get ugly.
It will matter who is in charge then, so keep on trying and be prepared.
Time (and attention) is of the essence...
the issue of Control is a concise one...
the overly verbose either don't get it,
or enjoy first of all their own words,
flinging time and attention to the wind...
Suitably oracular.
The sole purpose of the American middle-class - I cannot call you 'native' American so I shall call you 'traditional' American - is to keep breeding and produce an endless supply of grunts to garrison the world.
We like it that way. We certainly don't want you thinkng for yourselves.
Least of all do we want another batch of Vietnam Vets, grinding about on Harleys and flipping Zippos.
We have 1.4 million active military - so that is about .4 (.004) of the population. Only 1 out of every 250.
Even if you look at all that have served it is only about 7%.
BTW - the military has been downsizing.
Maybe you should try thinking for yourself.
Three questions; 'What are they doing to us?', 'Why are they doing it?' and 'Who are they?'.
We know the why, the who, and the what. We just aren't allowed to say it outloud without being shouted down.
Why is it that the Republican Debates are on every major 'unfriendly' news channel, but the Democrate Debates are fewer and held on only Democrat 'friendly' channels ie.. PBS, NBC, CBS? Notice, none scheduled on Fox. The RNC continues year after year to set its candidates up for failure by getting hostile questioners on CNBC and CNN who will only setup 'gotcha' questions and attempt to instigate cage matches amongst the candidates. Reince Priebus should be fired along with all the rest of the RNC leadership as they have full knowledge what will ensue on all of these debates. Its been going on for years and untill the RNC leadership is changed to take care of its candidates instead of leading them to slaughter like the've done the last 30 years there will be little chance of winning the presidency.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/politics/2016-election/debates/schedule/
golden, you are right, but really? the ans is worse than you suppose. there is one party - the big government party one nation not of god,for the elite by the elite.
People still send Ron Paul money. Ron Paul has done nothing in terms of sponsoring legislation that was passed into law.
Quite a shtick Ron has.
Outstanding.
I can see the reptiles, can you? look at the head of the IRS, or his agent ms lerner. look at hillary in the correct light, such as her " what diff does it make? moment.. her husband in any light. watch "They Live" to obtain the ability to see. then study the elite of .gov, msm, news talking heads, wall street, look at heads of google, amazon, all the big banks.
warning once you can see, your life will change.
George Washington turned troops against the citizens right off the bat.
By 1794 he was already killing Americans (The Whiskey Rebellion).
We are all deceived. We are tax sheep, period. We beg for the permits, licenses and paperwork to conduct business , to buy and/or carry a weapon, pay tolls to drive on certain roadways, etc. it is all smoke and mirrors. The city of Chicago city council just approved a new budget that increased property taxes by 550 million dollars. Want to know why? To fund the police and firefighter pension plans.
Illinois credit rating I believe was just lowered to B-?
It is all theater except for we band of sheeple , the working middle class. I have paid hundreds of thousands of dollars in my life time in income and property taxes. For what ? Simply to feed the beast.
I heard the school board president of I believe the East St Louis public school system seemingly unphased when asked how they could be demanding pay raises when fewer than 6% of their high school graduates are college ready. Crickets . No accountability.
My city pays police department recruiters to travel from Illinois to Arizona and New Mexico to recruit Mexican police officers for my city police department. Seems we don't have enough local Mexicans who want to become policia here though about 45% of my city is Mexican ready.
It is not fixable. Know your neighbors. Know your neighborhood. Know its strategic choke points. You think for one second the government wouldn't turn off the EBT spigot you better guess again. People do strange things when faced with the real possibility of empty bellies.
Me? I will be in the woods with the bow and arrow all weekend. The bucks are starting to chase in earnest. Time to refill the freezer.
America; I hardly knew ya. I too remember exactly where I was when JFK was murdered.
Good weekend to all.
If Sanders isn't another billionaire pawn, we will know. How? Because he won't be on the ballot.
When the GOP controls the White House you will have news coverage of war protesters -
When the dems are in the White House not so much.