What Were They Thinking?

As this electoral debacle devolves, more and more it looks like not only did Trump sow the wind, so did the ruling clique that now faces as profound a constitutional crisis as last time this sort of thing happened (2000) and are facing a far more resistant Rabble due to events that have transpired since the 2000 abomination.

What were they thinking?

Both major candidates were absurd, and were insults to the rest of us. I think that was quite purposeful, too. Our Rulers fully intended to insult us, and so they did.

Don't think that Trump was somehow some kind of pop up populist who popped out of nowhere to slay the R Establishment Dragon and ride to victory. That's not what I saw going on at all. He was carefully groomed to play a supporting role in the Pageant, and to serve as a sop to the raging crazies on the Right. I think he did his job, and he's still doing it. The trouble is, he wasn't supposed to win.

And I think he wouldn't have if some shadowy force hadn't interfered in the count in just those states where he had to win in order to secure an EC majority. Just. Those. States. Alrighty, then. In other words, something changed in the background dynamic of the factions which produce our  Presidents.

I won't go into all the factional politics that are part of the Deep State that rules us, but the Pageant that passes for an election campaign is just that, a Pageant. And who ultimately rules depends more on which faction gains the upper hand in the background than it does on the Rabble's votes. The candidates are proxies for the factions.

Hillary's faction had the upper hand up to the very end of the Pageant/campaign, and then whoops! the prize was snatched right out of her hand just like that. The tell that this is what happened was Hillary's concession the next day, in which she basically abased herself before the God-Emperor Trump -- or rather his faction -- without a single reference to Putin's Interference or any questioning of the results whatsoever.

Since only those "must win" states flipped -- some by a tiny margin -- at the very end of the Pageant, my sense is that the faction backing Trump, whoever they are, was able to gain the upper hand through strategic vote counting (how well they know how to do it by now) and wah-lah. The prize goes to ... Trump!

The question is, why would they do it? What were they thinking?

Their action has precipitated a constitutional crisis and a crisis of legitimacy, not solely for the incoming president, but for the Ruling Class in its entirety. The situation is very unstable, to the point where it looks like the nation could disintegrate, though I doubt that will happen, at least not soon.

When it was shown that Hillary got more votes than Trump, initially by a few hundred thousand nationally, the Trump partisans simply dismissed it as irrelevant; only the EC mattered, and her margin was too tiny to even notice. But since then, her margin has grown to the point where it may top out at 3-4 million, far greater a margin than any defeated candidate has ever led by. This is the fifth time the popular vote leader has been denied the presidency, the second in the last 16 years, but never has there been such a stunning difference in the popular vote between the vote leader and the person installed in the presidency.

Whoops! The discrepancy has become so great that the Trump partisans are now trying to claim that Hillary jiggered the results in the Blue States, and that in fact Trump won the popular vote. He did! He did! Nyah. Nyah. I don't think they really want to go down that path. But they're going down it out of desperation. The transition simply isn't going well. It's falling to pieces.

At least from what little I've seen of him -- is he bunkered down in his penthouse or what? -- Trump seems to be trying to be a little less childish and tantrumy, but he's obviously not in control of his own raging whatevers. The PTB look to be giving him enough rope to hang himself if you ask me.

So what's the long game here?

I think I sketched out a scenario yesterday whereby he's allowed to take office but then exits stage right -- voluntarily or by force -- in favor of his VP, a right wing religious zealot, who also leaves before the Rabble storms the gates, burns down the palace and hangs every aristo they can get their hands on (figuratively of course.) At that point, some unelected hoo-hah (maybe a general) is installed to bring the disorder in and out of government to a halt, much to the relief of most Americans.

I think a scenario of that sort becomes more likely every day this unstable situation is perpetuated.

I suppose this sort of Deep State factional struggle was inevitable once Our Rulers succumbed to the blandishments of so much cash to be had for their compliance with the wishes of the Few and the Proud and the Rich.

They're not so brave though. And they're not all that smart.

In this context it appears that Trump is way out of his depth -- he had no idea -- and he had no intention for this sort of thing to happen. I don't think he had any idea he'd be the EC victor. Didn't enter his mind, because that wasn't the way it was supposed to go. Hillary was supposed to win, everyone was prepared for Hillary's win, even or especially Trump, and then... something happened. Somehow it got fucked up, and I don't think it was the voters who did it.

Actually, they can't. But that's another story.

No, because of the tiny margins by which Trump appears to have secured Michigan and Pennsylvania, and the somewhat larger margins in Florida, Wisconsin and Ohio (Wisconsin's being the most questionable) I think we've been rooked by a faction of Our Betters who decided among themselves at the last minute that Hillary could not be president. And once she was informed (the night of the election) she said OK, have it your way.

I think she pissed off somebody -- yes, they're that petty -- who could pull the plug on her, and the plug was pulled.

Whoops!

But they didn't think it through, and there is no Plan B.

So. Here we are.

Someone posted a comment at NC yesterday which suggested I wanted to see a "color revolution" in the US. This is nonsense, of course, but the whole Color Revolution and Soros funding CT is coming from a faction of Trump partisans who appear to be desperately trying to hold this hot mess together by throwing whatever they can think of against the wall hoping that something sticks.

Soros is a Devil, of course, because he funds factions of the Rabble which hector the High and Mighty, and he played a role in the Eastern European Color Revolutions that eventually led to the fall of the Soviet Union, much to his personal profit and pleasure.

Of course it's the profit and pleasure part of these efforts I dispute. Color Revolutions basically exchange one boss for another, in Eastern Europe, it amounted to replacing the Communist rulers with NeoLiberal rulers who proceeded to strip the public of every ounce of wealth they could get their hands on, reducing them to poverty, ill health and functional slavery to the profit and pleasure of a handful of greed crazed oligarchs. Which they call "Democracy!" Feh.

You think I want to accelerate that process here through the efforts of Color Revolutionaries? No way!

But that notion got going among Trump partisans when the protests kept growing and growing, spreading and spreading, and they started having a destabilizing effect on the cities where they are taking place, which in turn has a butterfly effect throughout the nation. Obviously, this must be a Soros-funded effort to overthrow the duly elected government, right? Like the Maiden in Kiev, right?
Soros! Nuland! Clintooons!  They're trying to overthrow the government! Just like a Color Revolution!

Obviously.

The CT and paranoia is thick and heavy with those people in part because Trump has been feeding it for years. As president-elect, though, he's been trying to back away a bit from what he used to revel in as recently as the day of the election.

I'll tell you this, though. If it were a Color Revolution type operation, not only would Trump be unable to survive it, the whole rotten apparatus of government including the craven Congress and their sponsors and owners would be swept away as if they never existed. It's not going to happen because what's going on isn't a Color Revolution, but if it were...

But aren't I arguing that something like that is going to happen anyway?

I suppose I am, except that the scenario I've laid out preserves the framework of the present government, and it doesn't sweep away the deeply embedded corruption and its practitioners. It doesn't even necessarily change the background players. All it does is change the face of the operation, and it imposes "order" on the chaos that has been precipitated by the abomination of the so-called election.

The Republic becomes an empty shell; the forms are still there, but they don't function. The game is still played, but it becomes solely sport and entertainment, elections having no consequences. The institutions of rule become more rigid, the pre-chosen President more like a God-Emperor (Hail Caesar!) whose word is law, whose divinity is worshiped by cult followers, and woe betide whoever doesn't bow down.

That's the more likely outcome than a Color Revolution. But ya never know. Things can change in a twinkling, as they did election night.

Whatever the case, Hillary will not be president, and Trump may not be either, at least not for long.

The flop sweat of Our Rulers is stinking to high heaven, and We the Rabble are in for a very rough ride.

Signing off. Your correspondent in the Wilderness. Ché.

Institutional Failure and the Rise of the Rebel

I've been pondering the situations in Ukraine, Venezuela, Thailand, Bosnia, and so many other places where neo-Fascist uprisings are underway with the full support, let it be said, of the EU and the US Government and its dozens of "democracy" NGOs, as well as the no doubt abundant collaboration of our amazing and ever-so-patriotic black ops and security apparats. Not to forget our ever-eager propaganda media spreading lies and half-truths in order to shape American opinion in favor of these neo-Fascist led crises.

Why is this happening now, I wonder, and why is it so easy to bamboozle the masses to accept this bullshit as the genuine rise of the People? Why is it so easy for the propaganda media to evade the whole issue of the violence inherent in all of these revolts and pretend they are all "peaceful" and "innocent" and that they are being brutally attacked by corrupt, tyrannical governments? Never mind that these governments were, by and large, elected and are not behaving tyrannically in any relative or rational sense at all.

I saw Zbigniew Brzezinski on Charlie Rose last night night before last [this post has been in the hopper for a while, and will continue being edited...] prattling like the bitter old man he is about the Ukrainian Thing and going off into fantasies of Russia as Putin "wants it to be." His imagination is obsessed with Russia and "containing the Soviet Union," for in Putin he sees a reincarnation of Stalin and  the reassembled and reestablished Soviet Union, something that the Free World must prevent or destroy at all costs. The Ukrainian Thing has nothing to do with Ukraine, in other words. It's all about preventing the rise of the New Stalin and his perfidious reestablishment of the Soviet Union and its Empire of yore.

The man is mad. The man is out of his frigging mind. He's old and he's bitter and his hatred for Russia and the Russian people knows no bounds. He won't rest until the Russian state is no longer even a remnant of its Imperial and Soviet extent. He won't rest until it is gone altogether, shattered into a thousand pieces, in ruins and destitute. He is our Cato the Elder, I guess, screaming out: "Russia delenda est!!!" every chance he gets.

The horrible thing is that our remnant governmental institutions and much of the corporate sector that owns them believes this shit even more fundamentally than Brzezinski himself does. He's almost mild and sane compared to them. This is one reason why we have been inundated with such relentless and bloodthirsty propaganda about the the troubles in Ukraine -- but have heard and read so little about the almost identical uprisings elsewhere.

It is yet another instance of institutional failure on a massive scale and yet another instance of how the vacuum is filled with madness, brutality -- and wherever possible, with rebellion.

The insane fantasy that Russia under Putin is somehow seeking to re-create and re-assemble the Soviet Union, and Putin himself is trying to become The New Stalin has been driving much of American foreign policy in the region for as long as Putin has been on the political scene in Russia. Anyone who's not the drunk but compliant Yeltsin, in other words, is seen as a threat to be contained and/or overthrown, the sooner the better. The Global Hegemon will not be content with anything less than submission, abject, full and willing.

Our government has never gotten beyond its fantasies of the Soviet Union, and many of our institutions are similarly locked in combat with something that truly never was -- the great and powerful monster they think it was and believe it still is.

And that's why Ukraine is being torn apart by the EU and US. Rent as fully asunder as, oh, say Yugoslavia was, or as the Soviet Union itself was under Yeltsin, back in the day. Our failed institutions, locked in the past, are still fighting the subversive and hot wars they dreamed about winning during the Cold War.

This can be nothing but insanity.

As insane as the behavior of these failed institutions is, it doesn't mean that the rebellions themselves entirely lack legitimacy. As I've said in other posts, people under oppression have a right and duty to rise up against their oppressors. That should be a given.

The question is, do these rebels represent the genuinely oppressed? And what, ultimately, do they want?

In Venezuela, the fact that the people rising up are not oppressed is starkly obvious. The rebels are almost entirely composed of los ricos or their wannabes. They are often blonde, well-dressed, well-coiffed, well-housed, and well-educated. They are the upper crust of Venezuelan society, and they want their power back. They resent being ruled by the Lower Orders, people they consider to be "salvajes"  and "animales" -- people only fit to be ruled, not to rule over los caballeros themselves. The very idea of it, ptui!

These class and race divisions giving rise to rebellion in Venezuela are very stark and obvious as they have been throughout the Bolivarian Revolutionary period under Chavez and Maduro, and as they have been throughout Venezuela's history since it was settled by German immigrants under Spanish rule. Of course they want their power back. They believe it is their right. Democracy? Piffle!

The anti-Bolivarian propaganda in this country has been strenuous and relentless since the establishment of the Bolivarian Revolution in the late '90s. When there was a coup against Chavez in 2002, American media, led by the New York Times, exploded with joy and rapture. Unfortunately for the celebrators, the coup only lasted a couple of days, and Chavez regained his presidential palace to continue on the path he'd set -- toward ever more democracy and social justice, something populations in Latin America had long yearned for, yearnings long thwarted by institutions established to prevent the rise of the People. Ever. Institutions that were enabled by the Spanish, by the governments that won their independence from Spain, and not much later by the United States government which took charge of the Hemisphere as its own private backyard empire.

The Bolivarian Revolution reversed the power structure of Venezuela, putting the long oppressed majority in charge and curtailing the power of los ricos to rule over them. A rather mild version of social and economic justice was instituted. The rich were not deprived of their wealth -- at least not entirely -- only their power over the state, power which was reserved to The People as a whole.

The uprisings of the rich against that state of affairs have been ongoing for close to two decades, and they have often turned bloody. The state, under Chavez and Maduro, has been remarkably tolerant of the mischief made by the rebels, essentially declaring an amnesty for the rebels time and again, in an apparent effort to include them in the Revolution. The burden the rebels are attempting to throw off does not appear to be that of genuine oppression, for it is difficult to find any significant effort to oppress the rich in Venezuela or to confiscate their wealth, or to silence their voices, or to interfere significantly with their ways of life. The burden the rich in Venezuela seek to throw off is a psychological one, the burden of their own sense of powerlessness -- though they are not truly powerless in the Bolivarian system at all, not any more so than anyone else is truly powerless.

One of the remarkable features of the Bolivarian Revolution in Venezuela is the widespread use of direct democratic councils through which Venezuelans of all classes are empowered, and by which the country has been able to progress in the interests of all the people, not just a few.

And it is that very empowerment of the whole people as well as the extensive provision of basic housing, healthcare, education, and justice for all that the rebels seek to eliminate and destroy. When they talk about Maduro's "exit" they're talking about overthrowing the entire Bolivarian system and remaking Venezuela into a version of what it used to be, putting the closed sign on the institution of People's democracy and ending such frivolous nonsense as social and economic justice once and for all.
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Now that the Ukrainian uprising has apparently succeeded in driving out Yanukovych and ending his rule (though it's not entirely certain), rebels in Caracas are no doubt encouraged. If they can only turn the military and police away from Maduro's government, they're home free, yes?

How might they do that?

Money talks, as we've been seeing in almost every corner of the globe, every aspect of life.

The rule of money, the failure of institutions, and the rise of rebels are all tied together. This year may well turn into one for the books.

[Events have intervened to cut short this post, though I'm sure it's quite long enough!]