Something's Going On [With A Follow Up]

Um. I saw that little worm Reince Priebus on the Sunday Shows, George and Chuck. Hm. It looked like he did George's show first. When he got to Chuck's gabfest, he was clearly rattled. Of course, it's unusual for Our Fearless Media to tangle with high ranking Republicans, even if they are worms. So when George lit into Reince and then Chuck skewered him over the reports of the CIA report and Trump's now familiar insults in response, the little worm was taken aback. Sputtering and spluttering, he flailed away, to the point that I almost felt sorry for him.

The subtext is that things are not what they seem and something is very much going on.

Is it a coup?

I think it might be...



[OT: I  think Ms Ché knew Stephen Stills back in the day. I'm not sure. He wasn't one of her primary interests that I can recall. That would have been the likes of Jim McGuinn Who-Became-Roger of the Byrds, and various other noted rockers and folk rockers and ravers of the British Invasion and such like. There were so many of them. Only recently, though, did she get together with Buffy St. Marie, one of her favorites and idols from way back. They acted like a couple of elder Indian women recognizing one another as relatives, sisters, cousins. Their mutual laughter is still ringing in my ears. I'm just a white guy on the edge of all this of course. She, Ms Ché, is now recruiting a whole new generation of Indians and non-Indians alike to go out and be themselves, enjoy life and liberty and grow in spirit, don't let the fuckers get you down. Listen, learn, be.]
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A coup?

I don't know. My spidey sense was sure tingling in the morning, but around evening it went more or less quiet. Nothing to see here, move along, move along.

What is clear enough is that one faction of the ruling clique is contending with another for power.

This does not involve the Left or even the 'left.' This is between a conservative faction and radicals among those who have ruled us in and out of government for generations.

That's as obvious as sin, and the question is whether the contending factions will reach an accommodation with one another. It's not clear whether they will at this point. Furthermore, if it is a coup, we don't know who the golpistas really are. It's almost certainly not the Clinton camp. They may or may not be involved, but if they are, it is unlikely that She Herself will be installed as Queen-Empress should the conservative faction prevail.

That would be a trigger after all. Our Rulers may not have many smarts when it comes to their responsibilities and obligations, but they're not that stupid. They couldn't be. Could they? Please.

Unfortunately, yes they could. It is their culture, after all.

It occurred to me that Saturday today December 10th12th was is the anniversary of the last coup,[h/t lea-p for the  correct date] when the Supreme Court lawlessly intervened in the 2000 presidential election and handed the presidency to GWB. That was an unmitigated disaster, but perhaps it was inevitable given the instabilities already apparent in government and the private sector at least since the Impeachment Follies of 1998. Instabilities that had been building for a generation before that.

That coup anniversary may have been a trigger in itself for the actions underway to overcome apparent election results which would hand the presidency -- and the future of the United States -- over to a gang of "unindicted co-conspirators," some very successful con artists and mobster-wannabes. This is as serious as it gets.

At the time of the previous coup, the losing faction handed the government over to the golpistas out of a misplaced sense of formalism and duty under the rubric: "How bad could it get?" Yes, well. We found out, didn't we?

Certain formalities were observed, even though they were quite outside the Constitutional framework -- for example, the Supreme Court has no constitutional authority or jurisdiction in election matters they were asked to decide; it is specifically up to state governments and legislatures, and they should not have taken the case. Once they did, and once they decided in favor of the Bush-faction, it rent the fabric of the national project, and we are living with the consequences.

And too, the Bushevik faction was a "known quantity" to The Powers That Be. They brought back some of the well-known operators from times gone by, all the way back to the Nixon regime, Bush Jr. was the son of the CIA head, vice-president, and president previous to, under and after Reagan, and Cheney was... well, Darth Cheney, but whatever else he was (Evil), he was a known quantity in the corridors of power. Same with Rummy and so forth. It was initially like Old Home Week. And then it went south, even before the attack on 9/11.

They may have been mostly familiar faces but they were acting like teenagers lolly-gagging around the pool and their media handmaidens were making utter fools of themselves trying to recreate the atmosphere and revenues of the Clinton Scandals around the disappearance of Chandra Levy.

It was a goon show that ended abruptly with the events of 9/11/2001.

While the coup of December 10, 2000, was an example of the political aspect of the Shock Doctrine, the events of 9/11 went way beyond mere politics; it was Shock Doctrine that literally consumed and transformed the very nature of US government, as well as destabilizing the cobbled together social, economic, and psychological agreements that had kept the nation whole through thick and thin.

There was an immediate unity after the attacks, one that very quickly fell apart as the Busheviks demonstrated an almost unbelievable lack of wisdom in the face of crisis. That's not to say they didn't do some things appropriate and right. But their military response and targets were wrong-headed in every way, and the conduct they permitted and encouraged their agents to engage in was criminal.

Their war of aggression against Iraq had the effect of blowing apart whatever fragile stability there had been in the Middle East and North Africa, while their pig-headed Afghanistan adventure is still a major destabilizing factor in South Asia. What were they thinking?

Well, it's obvious they weren't. Thinking that is. They were exploiting opportunities.

It was and still is all reactive and self-feeding crisis. And it's a failure on any rational or public interest plane. But some people got very, very, very rich off of it, so they're all for more, more, more.

Henceforth the world would work in a different way. Well, part of the world...

Now comes Trump. Well, it's obvious he wasn't supposed to win. It's still a question -- that will probably never be satisfactorily answered -- how or whether he pulled off the Upset of History. As we know, there will be no verification of the vote. We've seen sufficient evidence so far that it's literally impossible to verify the vote in critical areas. One must accept the election results on faith because there is no way on earth to be sure the results accurately recorded and reflected the wishes of the voters. Our electoral system is purpose-designed to be opaque in critical areas. We don't know, and we can't know, what actually happened. Intentionally so.

Given the overall results reported so far, however, it's reasonable to assume that the voters did not want Trump and his gang of thieves and mountebanks in the White House; neither did they want Hillary. Ergo, trying to force either one on the People is risky business to say the least. Uncertainty is certain to follow.

Thus the moves to prevent Trump from taking power. Or to circumvent him and his gang if he does.

There was a similar kind of instability until some time after the inauguration of GWB. But it was tamped down by the capitulation of the Democrats on Capitol Hill and the concerted efforts of the media to ignore, discredit and denounce the many protests against the coup.

Combined, the efforts to prop up the Bush Regime both within and outside the government were partially successful. The protests never stopped, and those surrounding the preparation and initiation of the Iraq War were unprecedented. Enormous.

Yet millions upon millions of Americans never considered the  Bush Regime to be legitimate, no matter the efforts of media and Democrats to make it so.

Obama calmed things down -- that was his assignment after all -- but without really changing much of  the internal dynamic of a corporatist government run amok. It is still what it was under the Bushevik Regime, it simply has softer and calmer public face.

Many people understandably felt betrayed by Obama, the longed-for Redemption from centuries of Error.

He hasn't fulfilled his promise. Not even close. But he kept the lid on the growing rage of the discouraged and dispossessed. And that was all that was necessary for him to do in the eyes of the Ruling Clique. Just keep the Rabble tame.

Hillary was supposed to continue the Obama program, maybe with an added bone or two thrown to the Rabble to keep them mostly quiet over the next few cycles of rapine and exploitation by Our Betters.

Trump was supposed to be a sideshow to keep the potential hostiles and trouble makers in line. Oops.

Now that they're planning to take over and install rich and self-righteous rebels in positions of extraordinary power to do harm domestically and internationally, regardless of any "good" they might also do, the High and Mighty are awakening to a clear and present danger to them -- they care not about the Rabble -- should Himself ascend to the throne.

Right now, they're making out like bandits themselves as the stock market soars in anticipation of Trumpian profits without end.

The anticipation of the immense profits to come from the Trumpian crony capitalist pig troughs, and the fortunes to be made from the dismantlement and privatization of Social Security and Medicare, among other public programs slated for the ax, are about the only things that Our Betters are looking forward to with regard to a Trump Regime. The downside of all that money making is collapse. The strain has already built to unsustainable levels -- that was fast. Now what to do?

Whatever is to be done has almost nothing to do with We, the Rabble. We have to be honest about that. This is not our fight. Bluntly, we, the Rabble chose neither of the candidates we were offered. A record percentage of voters stayed home. Millions, of course, were deliberately disenfranchised.

But the overall turnout was pitiful, and the majority of those who did vote, voted against each candidate. That is a majority voted against Hillary, and a similar though somewhat larger majority voted against Trump.

The Trump EC victory may or may not be up and up. We don't know, we can't know. We can take it on faith or not but there is manifestly no way to verify the vote in the crucial states -- nor for that matter can the vote be verified in many jurisdictions all over the country. Our elections are therefore easy to manipulate for the desired outcome.

This one, however, was not the desired outcome. Something went bad-wrong. Whether it is due to "Russian" interference or simply that enough of the voters made the "wrong" choice, I can't say. It isn't up to me in any case.

Nor is it up to any of us. This will have to play out at a higher level. As it apparently is doing.

Stay tuned...

A little Billy Idol to lift our spirits...