There is never a moment in Trump’s tenure that one can say “now I’ve seen everything.” Melania Trump led the Florida rally in the Lord’s Prayer with the orange freak standing next to her, his raccoon eyes beaming with approval. What next in the festival of reactionary idiocy?

Glenn Greenwald’s ignorance about capitalism & his goofy theory of the Deep State

I liked Glenn Greenwald better when he actually knew what he was talking about. Since he achieved guru stature they expect him to be an encyclopedic commentator. Regrettably, he doesn’t have the modesty to admit he doesn’t have a clue about a lot of issues so he improvises & argues discombobulated or opposing positions at the same time.

In a Democracy Now interview titled “Empowering the “Deep State” to Undermine Trump is Prescription for Destroying Democracy,” he makes a mockery of political analysis. He has no idea how capitalist governments work but that doesn’t stop him from tooting from the nether regions about Trump, Russia & the alleged US proxy war in Syria. He’s a classic libertarian bullshit artist.

His ignorance doesn’t excuse him. On the contrary, a responsible guru, or even just an honest journalist, would attempt to understand an issue deeply before operating as an authority. That’s beyond him.

160,000 protest in Barcelona for refugee rights

Barcelona protest Feb 18 2017

This is the lead banner of over 160,000 protesters who marched in Barcelona, Catalonia yesterday demanding the Spanish government take in more refugees in response to the humanitarian crisis in the Mediterranean with thousands of refugees drowning.

The banner reads “Enough excuses! Welcome them now!” Other banners said “Refugees welcome.” A Catalan movement named “Our Home, Your Home” representing 300 associations, NGOs, cultural groups, & citizens sponsored the march. They marched from the Barcelona city center to the Mediterranean coast as a symbolic act of protest against the thousands of refugees allowed to drown.

Ada Colau, the mayor of Barcelona who was among the protesters, said the protest was sending a clear message to the European Union that “the current EU policies don’t represent us; we want to welcome refugees”. She said Barcelona will a “city capital of hope, humanity & ethics” to counter the racist & xenophobic response elsewhere in Europe.

Spain has only accepted 516 of the 10,500 refugees proposed for the country by the European Union, to be completed in two years. Barcelona has initiated its own hosting program to accept thousands of refugees.

This is what humanity looks like. This is what solidarity looks like.

So is Bowling Green in Sweden? Was there another massacre there? Is this a “Je suis Sweden” moment? Or another one of Trump’s screw-ups?

Kashmiris tribute to Syrian revolution

Reposting this moving expression of solidarity from Kashmiris in December when Assad forces, allied with Iranian & Russian forces, were occupying east Aleppo.

Assadist triumphalism against the popular revolution is premature. Social revolutions are tectonic struggles & we know that true about Syria because Assad’s counter-revolution requires military intervention from Russia, Iran, & other forces. Unarmed civilians are no match for squadrons of bombers & special forces. Setbacks are inevitable.

Kashmiris understand setbacks in struggle against tyranny. They also understand the revolutionary commitment to freedom. This is not a requiem but a tribute to the Syrian revolution against dictatorship.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wSe5Wr9JH9I

Tariq Ali’s move to the right

So Tariq Ali has moved from supporting the disastrous strategy of guerrilla warfare in Latin America in the 1970s to supporting Assad’s dictatorship & counter-revolution in Syria, using Eva Bartlett (who believes reptilian Jews run the world) as documentation, & now is supporting the capitalist government of Ecuador as a “left-wing success story.”

Time for requiems on the left that once was when its prominent figures can’t tell their ass from their elbows about politics & reek of intellectual laziness & corruption.

Trump threatens freedom of the press

When an orange freak with raccoon eyes says fake news media is “the enemy of the American people,” it’s just the dumb stuff halfwits say. But when that freak is president of the US, then it becomes a threat to freedom of the press.

No matter what you think about the character of US media, journalism is essential to democracy & journalists all over the world are killed, disappeared, murdered trying to get the story. Unless you’re embedded with the military like those allowed into Syria, Iraq, & Afghanistan, then it’s one of the most dangerous occupations in the world, including in the US (witness Gary Webb & Michael Hastings).

When Trump goes after major media for criticizing him consider what he would do with free rein to go after bloggers who spare him no contempt.

The antidote to nihilism

There is no more powerful antidote to the toxic miasma of nihilism & misanthropy emitted by Trump, Assad, Putin, & Modi apologists than a political commitment to supporting Palestinian & Kashmiri Intifada & Arab revolutionists in Syria, Bahrain, Egypt, Yemen who still resist tyranny against all odds.

Let the nihilists obsess about fake news. Our inspiration is freedom fighters vilified as terrorists–the motherlode of fake news–who have never let such calumnies force them to stand down from the struggle for freedom.

Nihilism & the nonsense about fake news

Judging from social media, now that Trump seconds the deceits of Assad propagandists about all the fake heroes, fake wars, fake victims, fake news, there’s nothing left to believe in. Nihilism is the gestalt of our times. They’ve got us just where they want us, unable to tell the difference between what’s real & what’s not. In the politics of nihilism, it doesn’t matter what’s real or not; facts are a matter of indifference because there are always “alternative facts” & we live in a post-truth truthiness kind of world.

Nothing is worth investigation because our lives are controlled by nefarious forces like the deep state or the reptilian Illuminati; everything is orchestrated by undercover operatives so there is no meaning except paranoia. Conspiracy theories abound because reality is all facade, dissembling, theatrics.

On the one hard, nihilism is the stuff satire is made for. On the other hand, it expresses a profound conservatism, an oppositional critique rooted in cynicism & misanthropy that is easily exploited by propagandists. It can’t be reasoned with because it isn’t rational & has lost all trust.

Thank heavens that nihilism on social media is not the measure of our times but only of an aggressive current trying to bully the rest of us into political passivity. The gestalt of our era is shown in the tens of thousands of youth who protested against Trump’s election, in the millions who marched in the Women’s March, in the tens of thousands who protested the ban on Muslim refugees. The gestalt of our times is not rooted in hating on others nor in justifying barbarism but in human solidarity.