No, Capitalism Being Obsolete Destroyed Politics

That and the fact that the obsolescence had so much to do with the electrification of Greed, and Corruption. "Asymmetric Opposition" may have certainly exacerbated the situation, to be sure, but the plain fact of the matter is that it is the mutation by electrified technological change that has made the most difference. The very situation that has made figuring out what is going on so difficult, as so few truly understand what the situation really is. And certainly the "money" involved has no interest in helping to preserve a truly Informed Electorate.

What the Republicans are doing is more probably a simple power grab, for as much power as they can get, however they can get it, because they already know that the political system has been rendered illegitimate; just as illegitimate as the Supreme Court has become, and they're holding out hope that enough supporters of Authoritarianism can be elected in the meantime to make a final power grab possible when things start falling apart enough for them to use fear to demand dictatorial power; only to restore order you understand, and until such time as the Nation can have the "real disruptors" in the "fake media:, and the "Communists" who pretend to be "Socialists," put in the kinds of "reeducation camps" the Chinese have now become so fond of; irony of irony as former stalwarts of "Communism" now embrace the full corruptive power of mutated Capitalism. And of course, as with inventing outside enemies to scare people with (because Authoritarian Dictatorships have a habit of creating a never ending list of enemies), that same kind of dictatorship is also its own guarantor of continued corruption that will be easily blamed wherever the leadership wants to cast such aspersions.

What is really scary here is that the Democrats might be on the verge of playing right into the hands of what is left of corresponding mutation of the "Republican Party, and they will do that by trying to load up things with a major Progressive, Socialist, legislative agenda (assuming they can get past a still Republican controlled Senate, and a Presidential Veto).  And when they do, the money interests now supporting the mutated remains of the Republican Party, will do whatever they can to sabotage the economy, and make the voters as miserable as they can for new "Republican Authoritarianism" to come in and "save the day," so to speak. And don't think this is as far fetched as it may seem at first glance, because there will be numerous, outside, authoritarian players, who would certainly find it in their interests to help mess with things internally here, to an even greater degree than they already have, because we all know that "Birds of a feather, flock together."

Admit it. Republicans have broken politics.

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A million Muslims are held in detention camps that China now portrays as 'humane'

[Post Note: I guess we can see a very big reason, now, why there are now so many desperate people trying to come up here to find sanctuary. But do you think the real issue here is just "Asymmetric Opposition?" I didn't think so. J.V.]

The biggest corruption scandal in Latin America’s history

While All Of This Is Going On...

We ignore the great need (to our great shame) not only in the rest of the world, but within our own borders, because now we create refugees here as well. Disastaster refugees, of one sort or another, who may get some immediate help, to ease the immediate impact of the loss of place; whether that be the loss of a former economic status, a home, or a business, or some some very significant aspect of your ability to live at all (as in a serious new health condition), hardly matters. From that point on you are marginalized to the point of horrible economic abstraction; abstractions that might get reported, or might not, but even if it is, in the great, almost cosmic, flood of information that we are now awash, and saturated, in, and now manipulated to so many different degrees, and from so many different angles, of need, and intent; even with all of that what would the chances be of your ever finding it anyway? Even assuming you were starting to become active, and involved.

And the really sad thing is that this "marginalization" gets baked in because so much of what happens to create it, and from the unintended, collateral damage, caused by it, becomes a new, potential source of profit for a system that always craves monetizing that which has not yet been monetized. And from that you then get a new interest group always quite eager to keep their industry going because, quite naturally, livelihoods are now dependent on that new industry. And so it goes.

The other thing here is that trying to continue to ignore the great need that surrounds us now is also a good deal more damaging than the brutally simple fact that we are killing the planet. And that is the fact that you feel that need whether you think you have put it out of your mind or not. You feel it because you are entangled into this entire web of life in far more ways than you realize now. You feel it in fact in a part of you that most of you refuse to recognized at all: That creative, feminine wild, body meaning space, part of our existence. The part where you have a vagina, whether you actually have a vagina or not. And because you feel it, while also trying to deny it, you create a new kind of, emotional, cognitive dissonance; a dissonance that can, and will, tear you apart from the inside out; unless, of course, you can find a way to self medicate enough to keep functioning... Sort of... Which is certainly where a good portion of us are now, if not an outright majority, which I think is the more likely situation.

The bottom line, though, is that you cannot solve any of these issues piecemeal. Hard as it might be to accept having to take on so much now, at the same time, with so much in the process of going wrong, you must still realize that any true solution must be a fully, and comprehensively (to the best practical degree possible, anyway), integrated solution. It absolutely must be. Or it just isn't going to work. And for that to happen, you are just as absolutely going to have to find a way to start cooperating with each other on every basis of location; because where you live now is only one place, and that is the place that is dying; collectively, and singularly, at the same time.

The only remaining question is whether you will fully realize, and act on, this in time.

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The Absurdity Of Continually Profiting Off Of Disaster

But that's what you do when you buy into the idea that anything can be commoditized, and monitorized. Assuming, of course, that you've got the right portfolio of "take advantage of this," or "take advantage of that," bad situation stocks; of which dangerous competitions in resources, in military technology, and in the markets, to sell each other all of the damnable stuff that populates all of them, but especially those first two competitions, which can then offer all of the opportunities for tremendous profits these provide (which, conversely, doing the right thing hardly ever provides).

They also, unfortunately, don't offer much opportunity to try to start cooperating, instead of competing, to get important things, affecting everything, and everyone. attended to. Like... You know, maybe saving the planet and all. And because we have to cooperate anyway, precisely because we are so interconnected, whether we like it or not; interconnected, and interdependent. We are because we are in a new, and vastly more capable, environment of electrified instrumentality; stuff that is outpacing science fiction now on an almost daily basis.

And so now it becomes so crazy obvious that the situation that we are seeing here is that all of the players seem to be running way too hard to try and outcompete the other guy, and getting way too mired into their own, internal variations of "chaotic getting by," within a new operating environment they don't understand, while maintaining the "too much fearful effort," so as to force them into using the old "us vs. them" gambit to leverage nationalism, and fear, to keep the keep the people who like power, in power; which then only serves to make things even worse still.

And through it all is the mutated monster. The thing that is not Capitalism really, at all, anymore. How could it be when we have exposed it to the new, hard radiation of hard sell, to the point of weaponizing almost every aspect of human interaction anymore; all because you can't afford the other guy to get the competitive upper hand, making information itself one of the sorriest aspects of that weaponization; assuming, of course you do want to have workable civilizations.

Think this through carefully, I beg of you. The Chinese people are not our enemies. The Russian people are not our enemies. That mutated thing that creates the hothouse conditions, not only in our physical environment, but in every other social environment, that we operate in now, is. Hothouse conditions that play on one extreme tendency or another, without any sense of balance whatsoever, so that a few can profit without regard for the rights of the rest of us. That system is our enemy. For all of us on this planet. Make no mistake.

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THE AI COLD WAR THAT COULD DOOM US ALL

Is This The Way To Show Real Change?

As Kristen Soltis Anderson indicates. in answering Mike Barnicle's question on why the Terrible Mr. T's negatives don't affect the polling for the midterms so much, it is both a factor of the economy seeming to be doing so much better, and the fact that, lying con man though he might be, the Right's base stills sees him as the agent of most change. Even if that change is more of the wrecking ball variety, it still seems to be coincident to the supposedly better economic numbers (and let's be clear on that notion, the numbers lie just as much as the Terrible Mr. T. does, as I have demonstrated in these posts, to list only a few:
"Depending On A System That Can't Handle Uncertainty, Much Less Ever Accelerating Change" "We’re Measuring the Economy All Wrong, Even When We Are Allowed To Measure At All", and
"The Real Problem Is That Smart Capital Doesn't Sit Still At All Any More").

And here is where the Democrats, as represented by normal "Liberalism," are in finding themselves in a bind. They are as much a part of "Business As Usual," now as the movers and shakers on the right are. Many of them espouse more progressive causes, but as a lot of other sources have indicated, big pocket Elites, of either ilk, don't want the real changes that a completely new operating environment demands of a hopelessly outdated, and now mutated, operating system. And the few "Socialists" that have become prominent may be setting themselves up for a big fall in thinking that they can get big, progressive changes, into a new House of Representatives, when, in fact, anything they might get passed will be so either watered down at the beginning, hamstrung by an administration hostile to its implementation, and operation, and so subject to outside sabotage, by economic interests of various sorts, looking to weaponize disinvestment, capital movements, and any other means to sour the economy while the new "Progressive" Dems try to do Socialism inside a completely corrupted system. All of that will derail anything they try to do from the inside, and perhaps to the point where the Dems won't ever be able to recover from; at least in time to start tackling the real issues of whether we can save the planet or not. As well as if we can redefine work so that it makes sense again in a new world of fantastic instrumentality.

The bottom line here is that the planet is dying and yet so few of the usual players in this game are willing to say what needs to be said about mobilizing the country, so that we can get started on the huge task of implementing the long lead time, initialization efforts; the kind of thing you have to have in order to get the staggering production levels going on the things that will do the most to actually fix what has gone wrong. And in all of that, if you do not see how money will just get in the way of getting anything done, than you really have drunk the Kool-Aid of that man you know is a lying, self serving, con man.

The Hidden Money Funding the Midterms

See Also:

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Can You See How Hard It Is To See

The important things. The things that we should take action on when so much is at stake. So hard to see, though, because we are caught up in so many Dangerous Competitions.

And what, you might ask, is behind all of these dangerous competitions? Well now. Lets see...

Oh, wait. There are just too many dollar signs in the way, aren't there. Oh well. There's also the competition to see who can get the best AI, and the best VR, and the best, most entertaining content anything can think of, to keep you not minding at all.

No worries. No worries at all.

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Money And Corruption, Corruption And Money

It's a match not made in heaven, that's for sure. And it seems to have become our major import, and export now.

Aren't you so proud.

The people who support Criminal Capitalism Inc. certainly think so. They have leaders now in a growing assortment of countries (closer to home than you want to think), and non boundary affiliations, because corruption knows no bounds now, and why should it if you don't care what the bounds should be, anywhere. But of course, a lot of organized people are spending significant amounts of that same, amazing, now universal trouble maker, called INFORMATION, to have you stay as you are. Commoditized now to the Nth degree by the ever increasing speed of electrified acceleration; the very bits of every bite they take out of us now as electrons moving in electrical circuits, and seeking to move everything even faster yet.

No worries. Something will emerge to take control, just before we plunge over the final abyss of denial, avoidance, and willful ignorance, to our cataclysmic end. Or at least, one can only hope, because maybe, just maybe, it will be dementedly powerful enough to snatch a new kind of survival, out of a deserved end, to launch itself into an unsuspecting universe; to begin absorbing the rest of existence into something even Captain Picard couldn't stop.

And if you continue to choose to do nothing you are, in effect, choosing to let this continue. So I say again, Aren't you just so proud.

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Number Crunchers Are Number Crunchers No Matter What Guise They Might Appear In

You may not realize it, but these two stories have a common thread. Let me explain.

In the first story here we have another version of what "crunching numbers," just to get more numbers, can do for your profit potential; especially if you can crunch new debt into an old institutional framework, work every end you can on fees and interest charges, because you also own the companies that can do that for your new target; and then you just cost it into bankruptcy so that you can cash in, perhaps one last time, on some newly cheapened real estate.

That this might also crunch out of existence a whole community of working people, and the larger community they helped support in more ways than just providing objects to consume, in wake of it all, hardly matters to the people who benefit from this sort of thing.

In the other story you have the fear that simply crunching numbers to organize them better, and to make it easier for people to find, and use stuff, in meaningful ways, in all of the numbers, because they do represent things beyond mere count, after all: pictures. thoughts, new expressions of old problems, new understandings of old expressions of problems that still exist. We call it art. We call it science. We call it poetry, and whatall else; because in that you have the fear that not enough money is being made (even though tracking clicks has given you a great data lead in doing web advertising, in the first place). And so the demand goes out to try and crunch out more numbers by cramming in more of the stuff that the click bait artists of the "social media" sites thrive on; the habit forming, selfy-indulgent, and over manipulated, chitter-chatter, of excessively shared, properly branded, and actively purchasing, personal lives. And you end up with something that seems ever more to be nothing anybody wants.

And so another community, of sorts, gets crunched out of existence. A community of people who put some really good content (working every bit as hard as I have to do it I imagine) into Google+ (via copying things over from Google Blogs, or not, as I did). I started using it, and wanted to continue to do so, precisely for that reason (and also because Google used to be a name you could count on for stuff that just worked). Mind you, I will still be able to post what I need to post from Google Blogs, but that doesn't come across nearly as meaningfully as when you see my stuff from the "plus.google.com/+JeffVale address." To me it really was more of public speaking place. Like a virtual public square to put up something of a "booth" and "soap box," all rolled into one, to shout out what you thought was beautiful, or enchanting, or funny, or illuminating, or just very important, or whatever else. Perhaps even some criticism of your own company when it forgets itself.

It ought to break everybody's heart, to not only see another user community (with me included, because, nieve as this may be, having a trust broken hurts) treated so badly, but also the dedicated employees of a company that started out promising a lot more than just making more money than even a deity could imagine; as well as a company I think a lot of us used to depend on, at least when things started taking off with desktops, for not only finding hard to find stuff, in a newly growing, "wonder world," they created stuff that worked. But now it seems you have to be cold, and uncaring, to protect yourself from being used-hurt again. And more of that is the pitty, I can assure you.

In any case, though, so what if a crazy guy in another "social media" site is making a bit more than you? You fear you might get swallowed whole by a suddenly much bigger fish?

Maybe. Just maybe, mind you. It might be time to seriously consider that the system that presents you with all of these various contradictions, and examples of outright, outrageous immorality; maybe that system just isn't working properly any more. And that it isn't because it can't; because how could it when it wasn't designed to handle what we are now capable of doing to ourselves, the planet, and pretty much every ideal, and good notion, we've ever aspired to. The people who tried using Google+ in good faith, as well as the workers of Google, deserve better than this. It is too bad that the senior manage there doesn't see that.

But then, "deserving" has got nothing to do with it now, does it. In the end, a lot of it boils down to "you get what you believe you deserve to demand." What, exactly, do you believe you deserve to demand? Are you sure you are being fully informed as to all of your choices?

Better wake up and make up your mind while you still can.

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See Also:

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