Trump Derangement Syndrome "The Next Pandemic"? Don't Make Me Laugh!

"Da Donald can do no wrong! He da man! It da left dat derange!"

One of the tropes still circulating amongst the Trumpkins is that the Left is hysterical and over-reacting to their beloved, brain dead buffoon - manifesting in TDS or "Trump Derangement Syndrome".  In the fantasies of these Right wing pundit knuckle draggers, most of the Left  as well as Democrats are in the throes of TDS and now even going through "five stages".  So writes the latest imp to make such a claim, Joseph Epstein (WSJ, July 10, p. A17,  'The Next Pandemic: Trump Derangement Syndrome' )

  This balmy bozo-  because that's precisely what Epstein is-   given  his reputation for sloppy thinking and misleading  journalism precedes him, e.g.

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2019/07/22/when-misleading-op-ed-wall-street-journal-irks-academics-its-time-fact-check-faculty


Trots out this latest codswallop as all Trump's poll  numbers are sinking, even eroding among his  base.  This has incited them to flail and render any kind of crappola to try to convince us it's all the Dems' fault,  or else that this animated pustule isn't as degenerate as we know he is.  Anyway in his WSJ op-ed  Epstein confabulates five "stages" as integral to the TDS   onset  and I cite these below:

Stage (1) The "afflicted decides before 2016 that Trump has serious, even strenuous character flaws that disqualified him from the presidency or any other public office".

Well, let's see. How about advocating pussy grabbing (in that 2005 'Access Hollywood' tape with Billy Bush)  as well as assaults on various women including at Miss Universe pageants?  One of the women  (Summer Vernos)  even brought a lawsuit after Trump "thrust his genitals at her."  Sounds disqualifying enough to me and I will take Summer at her word 1 million times before the lying Trump.  (Who's now amassed over 16,000 lies according to the running WaPo tally over the last 3 1/2 years.)

Stage (2) "One dwells upon Donald Trump's looks", the hairdo and golf apparel.

Actually, I could care less about this bloated buffoon's looks.. But I do castigate the orange imp for how he's consistently disparaged the appearance of women,   e.g.

https://www.businessinsider.com/trumps-worst-insults-toward-women-2018-10


whether calling 2016 Reep candidate Carly Fiorina and  the adult-film actress Stormy Daniels "Horseface,"  or calling other women "sluts", "dogs" or worse.  All of these examples say more about this reprobate's basic character than anything any critic could say about his appearance.   Knowing that, it's incredible to me Epstein would even go there.

Stage (3)  "One is ready to believe anything- pernicious or salacious- about Mr. Trump - and to reject anything that might be good for the country."

Oh, oh, you mean like Stormy Daniels taking  the Donald across her knee and spanking him with a copy of FORBES?   E.g.

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2018/01/why-do-white-evangelicals-worship.html


Wherein we learn:

The spanking was revealed in a string of emails.  Subsequently,  Mother Jones basically confirmed all the sordid details that Daniels described from her 2006 encounters  For reference, see:

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2018/01/stormy-daniels-trump-spanking-forbes-and-shark-week.html

"According  to a trove of  2009 emails exchanged between political operatives (advising Daniels at the time on a possible political campaign), the adult film actress claimed that her affair with Trump included spanking him with a copy of Forbes.  By one account,  a political consultant to Andrea Dubé related in an email that:

"He made her sit with him for three hours watching Shark Week. Another time he had her spank him with a Forbes magazine," 

The magazine used evidently had Dotard's  face on the cover which no doubt provides endless material for any Freudian school psychiatrists and psychologists. "

Stormy having sex with this turd then whacking his fat ass?  Sounds pretty perverse - and convincing to me. Not to mention allowing Russian prostitutes to urinate all over him in a Moscow hotel while the Miss Universe pageant was held in Moscow in 2013.  All integrated into the dossier prepared by Christopher Steele - which the Right's  nitwits now try to disparage.

According to an earlier (2017)  AP report in the Denver Post ( 'Ex Spy Regarded as Dependable') :

"Three British intelligence agents interviewed by the Associated Press described Steele as well regarded in the intelligence community, with excellent Russian skills and high level sources."

According to one Financial Times account, Steele was the "UK intelligence expert on Russia".

James Nixey, the head of Chatham House's Russia and Eurasia program, informed the AP that sections of the dossier document created by Steele "read exactly as reports from the secret services"

In other words, professional through and through, no exaggerations and no fillers that hadn't been  sourced.  So the Trumpkins and their hacks like Epstein,  Dan Henninger,  Holman Jenkins Jr. or Kim Strassel can squawk all they want about the "corrupt Steele dossier"  but I will make a Vegas bet on its veracity any day before anything coming out of Trump's piehole. Or that of his enablers and acolytes.

Epstein then inserts the example of TDS "afflicted" going so low and over the edge as to aver "he secretly admires King Jong Un's wardrobe"".   Actually, I  was more concerned with how he's openly professed love for the North Korean tyrant, i.e after saying numerous times he's "in love" with Kim.  And Kim sent him a "love letter."  These are all well documented, not fantasies or ideations.

Stage (4) "One imputes evil to Mr. Trump."

Actually, as an atheist I am averse to appending the term "evil" to anyone.  Having said that,  I do maintain a human can over time reach such a level of moral turpitude and character degradation he can at least asymptotically approach evil.  That is Trump, as when he had  migrant children locked up in cages, separated them from their parents.  Also, when he equated Charlottesville (2017) protesters with the Nazis and white nationalist scum who attacked them, including killing one woman (Heather Heyer).  Trump  claiming there were "some very fine people" on both sides. No, only on one!  As Nicole Wallace put it at the time:

"There are not two sides to this. There are hideous, hateful enemies of America, enemies of freedom, and there were people truly exercising their free speech."

Stage (5)  "One is weighted down with all the symptoms of the first four stages but brings to them an added choleric intensity of anger."

If Eppie means anger at the way Dotard has totally fucked up the response to the coronavirus so that over 130,000 if our fellow citizens are now dead- he has it right!  Or how Trump has not  only botched the initial U.S. response but is now actively inciting an even larger death toll by pushing for a premature opening of schools.  As Michelle Goldberg wrote(NY Times, 'Trump Threatens To Turn Pandemic Schooling Into Culture War'):


"Donald Trump has approached the extraordinarily complex challenge of educating children during a pandemic just as he’s approached most other matters of governing: with bullying, bluster and propaganda."

Reinforcing what Chris Hayes' timely take two nights ago:

"Also today he said he disagreed with the CDC guidelines for opening the schools. So he's now pushing the CDC to override their own guidelines.

So if I've got that right, we don't want the guidance of the nation's top health agency on how to stay safe in a pandemic to be the reason why we don't send our kids to school,  while we're suffering from the worst outbreak in the world.  So the president will tell them to change the guidance.  And it's not the first time he's done that.  He did it back in April and May when he didn't like the CDC reopening guidance for business.  He even pressured governors to ignore that guidance, just like he pushed the CDC to change their guidance for reopening churches. And now he's not happy with the CDC guidance on schools.

So what do you think is going to happen? Look, the last person in the world you can trust right now with the safety of your kids is Donald Trump."

 Epstein ends by saying those he fancies suffering from TDS can end the malady and "they don't even have to put on a mask" only "turn off the television set."  

Yeah, but see, Eppie, Trump will find a way to get back into our attention by again insinuating himself in some other outrageous way, whether via a new, demented executive order - maybe trying to fire Anthony Fauci, or threatening to send active military against Black Lives Matter protesters.

Methinks Eppie has got the wrong derangement syndrome and the wrong cast of victims who are afflicted.  

The great Dem Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan once described ever lowered thresholds for accepting deviant and disreputable behavior in terms of "defining deviancy down."  With Epstein's article on a "TDS pandemic"  we now see just how low Trump's media apparatchiks are prepared to go to justify his deviancy.

Update:  We can now add WSJ columnist Barton Swaim to the stable of Trump defenders and  acolytes determined to 'define deviancy down' for their master.  This after his op-ed piece today ('Will Democrats Accept A Trump Victory', p. A13), writing:

"The president now seems likely to lose. But if he wins may I suggest an alternative theory (to stealing the election)?   A Trump victory in November will have nothing to do with the Russians, the Chinese,  the coronavirus or 'voter suppression'.

It will have everything to do with Democrats' foul behavior over the previous four years."

Democrats' foul behavior?  Is Swaim living on an alternate Earth, or simply blind and fucking nuts?  Did Dems lock migrant kids - often as young as two or three- in cages and separate them from their parents:? Did Dems side with marching Nazis and KKK'ers in Charlottesville?  Did Dems appoint a toady to foul any concept of justice and turn the DOJ into Trump's personal protectors?  Did Dems seek help from a foreign nation (Ukraine)  to take out his political opponent? Thereby violating his oath of office by using it for personal gain?  Did the Dems call the pandemic a 'hoax' for two weeks, wasting valuable time to control the virus, then upend CDC guidelines while also failing to organize a national response? Instead letting states compete with  each other for personal protective gear as is happening again now? Did Dems embrace the notion that masks are for 'elites'  - thereby setting the unmasked against the masked and enabling the virus to spread?

The answer to all the above is 'NO!' - leaving Trump as the only foul entity to be singled out.  As well as now Swaim in his perverse effort to defend him. And no, there is no way in hell we will accept a Trump election win, after the way this demented orange maggot has sought to undermine mail ballots-- which  elimination even he admitted would be the "only way to win".  


See Also:

2020 Elections | Election Integrity

Recruiting Poll Workers Is Key to Thwart Trump’s Attacks on Our Voting Systems

And:

The worst president ever keeps getting worse

Excerpt:

"Think about all that has happened since April 5. That was before security forces attacked peaceful protesters  in Lafayette Square so that Trump could stage a bizarre photo-op. 

Before he pushed to send the armed forces into the streets. Before he embraced white  power and called Black Lives Matter a  symbol of hate.  Before he vowed to veto the defense authorization bill to prevent the renaming of military bases named after Confederate generals. Before he used the novel coronavirus as an excuse to  shut down immigration and threatened to revoke  the visas of college students unable to attend classes in the fall. 

Before he ignored reports that a Russian intelligence unit had placed a bounty  on U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan. Before he moved to pull out of the World Health Organization."

• Cartoon: Trump's monuments

Author Joseph Epstein Fails To Grasp That Trump Must Be "Nullified"- There Is NO Option "B"

"Yeah, I look forward to the wonders of my next term as president!"


 Joseph Epstein is an author, one of many, whose mental faculties appear to have been deranged and eviscerated by Trump.  Perhaps, like his fellow brain- eviscerated compadre (Lance Morrow) he lost his reason and logical capacity by being inundated  by Trump's tweets and verbal garbage. Or perhaps he became infected by the same false equivalence virus that has felled so many in or around the 4th estate.

We know this much, on reading his latest WSJ op-ed ('The American People Have Been Spoken To',  June 10, p. A15) it appears he's not only compromised by the false equivalence bug but fails to grasp how essential it is to see the back of Trump by January, 2021.   In regard to the former, Epstein continues to make the specious case that "the American people" (voters namely) are being led around by the nose by both parties. Essentially being lectured to, i.e. "Politicians (no distinction) lecture us on what we want, need, deserve and are really interested in."

Not stopping there but further amplifying this egregious claim, by writing:

"What each of our two parties is chiefly concerned about, and has been over the past two years, is putting down, degrading and humiliating the other party."

Hmmm....funny, but the ONLY party I've detected doing that, as well as degrading and humiliating the whole nation, is the GOP - as they bend over backward to kiss the ass of the criminal narcissist in the White House.  Jeezus peace, you'd think they were defending the Prince of Peace himself, and not a 2-bit grifter, con man, traitor and felon who ought to have been hung long ago.  The Democrats, by contrast, have bent over backwards to try to bring a semblance of sanity and rectitude back to this country, daily being pounded into a cesspool by Trump and his cabal.

As the WaPo's Eugene Robinson argued Monday a.m. on 'Morning Joe', and kudos to him for having no blinkers on like Epstein, and the other members of the 'Trump can do no wrong' stable:

"I think you have to go back to the Harding administration at least to find this level of corruption. I mean let's call it what it is. Just work your way through that swamp creature cabinet of Donald Trump's and then down in the agencies and you just see the most amazing sort of self-dealing, and self-enrichment.  That's what he's brought to Washington. That's what he's after. He follows perhaps the cleanest administration we've seen in a long time. In the Obama years nobody got indicted, nobody got arrested and nobody got convicted.

And here we are in what is really a cesspool. It is breathtaking. But again that's what Donald Trump is."

None of what Robinson noted was false or "fake news" especially about the Obama administration being among the cleanest in American history. So why isn't Epstein able to see that, or admit it, instead tossing out the tired old worn out trope that "all politicians are liars and slime balls". Or better, "both parties treat Americans like they just fell off a turnip truck." Well, because it serves his cynical purpose, i.e. that he isn't really about damning the politicos of both parties at all, but finding a clever, indirect way to provide more cover for Trump by seeming to damn both parties..  As he goes on, fully exposing his motivation:

"Since Hillary Clinton's loss in the 2016 presidential  election, the Democrats have been seeking a way to nullify Mr. Trump's victory.  Republicans, meanwhile, have done all they can to ensure Democrats are never viewed as anything other than obstructionist, malignant creeps."

But the two charges are nowhere near equal in gravitas. The first, for anyone perceptive enough to see it, is far more insidious because it tries to call into question the Dems as they've rightfully questioned Trump's legitimacy.  As time has gone on that withholding of legitimacy has been more than substantiated.  Indeed, it's clearly evident Trump is not qualified to lead this nation, and moreover - had the electoral college done its due diligence - never would have been elected on the basis of Electoral college votes.

Epstein's one -sided hammering of the Dems, in a piece one would have thought should be balance, then goes on:

"The forthcoming election figures to be not in the least about what is 'best' for the American people. But whether power can be wrested from Donald Trump....To be sure many would say that defeating Mr. Trump is in itself what is best for the "American people"."

Well, I am in that camp and make no apologies for it. Especially as we've learned (NY Times yesterday) Trump is only interested in peripheral aspects of his campaign and has no firm plans for a 2nd term, other than doubling down on his daily tweets from the toilet, attacking all perceived political enemies, telling 100,000 more lies and sowing more chaos and division. In meetings with aides he wants to focus on campaign songs, selection of campaign merchandise and other twaddle.  It's also been reported he has never even asked to see a budget for 2019.  Most alarming, Trump has no clue what he'd even attempt to accomplish in a second term - assuming voters were dumb enough to grant him one.  According to the Times' piece:

"Mr Trump rarely if ever speaks to aides about what he hopes to accomplish in a hard won second term....He's shown no interest in formulating a new message for his campaign, instead continuing with the slogan 'make America great again' and adding that he 'also wants to keep America great.""

But it can't be so long as Trump is fouling the nation with his lies, despicable behavior and crimes against the Constitution. It can only go further into Trump's cesspool and will be totally unrecognizable if he's given a 2nd term.

After co-host Willie Geist presented the gist of the NY Times account on the same 'Morning Joe' episode, Mike Barnacle - also on the panel - responded  while saying there is way too much overthnking:

"This is a man who only cares about himself. Every day is just an extension of his show with set up villains - it's either Joe Biden, the Mexican government, whatever .  This guy is just obsessed with himself, not the country, not any formulation of plans to improve the country, Not any goals for his administration's first term and certainly not for what would be a second term set of goals. It's only himself."

This is a guy, in other words,  who's played out, who has no new ideas if he even had any in the first place. He needs to resign,  to get the hell out of office, willingly, even if not officially sent packing by the voters (who may be too enamored of their 401k balances to protect the nation's welfare.).  He simply isn't qualified to manage this country.  As Eugene Robinson  added, appropriately:

"This is what Donald Trump has been from day one.. He runs the country the way he ran the Trump organization. He sort of ad libs his way through an episode of the Trump show. That's what he's doing with the country. That's  why nobody in his administration has any idea what's coming out in the next tweet, or what the next policy change will be. It's always been all about Donald Trump.  My question is whether people in the country begin to understand  he's really about himself, and not about them."

All of which skewers Epstein's brain dead claim at the end of his piece, in regard to the next election:

"Whoever wins, the loser figures to be - the American people."

Nope, sonny. The winner will be the American people, if we can evict Trump the toad from office!  This is a no -brainer!

 In line with this, former Sen. Claire McKaskill put in her important 0.02 on that  same 'Morning Joe':

"Over forty percent of the country thinks this guy is okay.  I mean if you're us and you're watching this president, and watching his lying and undermining the country on the world stage you're saying 'How in the world can forty percent of America think this guy is okay. So as long as his number stays above thirty percent I think the Democrats are going to continue to panic but I think that panic is perfect and appropriate."

Well, rather than panic, I would say the Dems (especially Pelosi)  need to be seen acting and bringing impeachment proceedings to break the Dotard stonewall. Look, despite the Mueller Report describing how this nation was attacked by a hostile foreign adversary in that 2016 election,  Epstein accuses the Dems of wanting to "nullify" (with damned good reason) Trump's election. Failing to process it should be nullified!  Trump, his campaign team and family KNEW about the Russian skullduggery and welcomed it using a form of "coded" conspiracy exchanges with GRU assets. Then to top it all off, Trump tried to obstruct the ensuing investigation into it.

Worse, the Russians are still at it as I write, seeking to undermine the 2020 election and Trump hasn't said a damned word about it, Hell, as Janice puts it, he "bloody wants their help again".   So long as he keeps getting it no wonder he yaps about being "a president for life".

McKaskill and the rest of us with more than air between the ears have to nonetheless recognize that there are millions of blinkered, brainwashed zombies among our fellow citizens. People who likely don't read (i.e. the full Mueller report) and are incapable of thought outside FOX news.  Those like letter writer Elaine Little (in Monday's Denver Post) who scribbled, in reference to the House Democrats:

"No legislation passed, nothing! It appears the only thing they're bent on doing is rehashing the Mueller report and trying  to discredit the president and prepare for the next election.  Their self-importance is disgraceful and their service to the country is minimal."

Well, I could likewise say this woman's brainpower is minimal especially if she sincerely believes the Mueller report is being "rehashed".   Her moral compass is also affected, either by the sort of propaganda meted out by the likes of Epstein, or FOX News, as when she claims the Dems are "trying to discredit the president".  Nope, that reprobate has discredited himself, now by over 10, 700 lies at last count, and committing obstruction right in front of our very eyes by his stonewalling on lawful subpoenas.

That this ninny doesn't even grasp the  Article I powers granted congress under the Constitution tells me she ought to have her citizenship revoked.  And the fact she isn't aware of how Bitch McConnell is burying every bill that makes it to the Senate  - over 140 so far - suggests to me she needs to ease up on the Xanax.  If the majority of citizens are more like this zombie than wide awake and alert to Trump's perfidy, then yeah, it is time to push the panic button!

On an end note, the other thing Epstein gets wrong is how Aristotle perceived politics. Epstein claims he defined it "as the practical science for making citizens happy".    But in his great work, 'Politics' Aristotle is clear (cf. Book I, cc.I, a:)

"The ultimate object of the state is the good life.. The naturalness of the state is proved by the faculty of speech in man....It is founded on a natural impulse that tends toward political association."

The emphasis by Aristotle on the 'good life' transcends "happiness" which is predicated on mercurial emotions. One can "feel" happy after his team wins the Superbowl, but crushed and depressed if it doesn't,  after all. It is the stuff of mainly trivial concerns and fleeting subjective emotions. By the "good life",  Aristotle instead meant one based on the judicious exercise of  will which consistently chooses the maximization of  faculties, such as reason, to attain maximal good in society.   Thus, a moral compass is also essential  . In his Book V of The Nichomachean Ethics, Aristotle writes:

"We see then that all men mean by the term Justice a moral state such that in consequence of it men have the capacity what is just and actually do it, and wish it. Similarly also with rspect to Injustice, a moral state such that in consequence of it men do unjustly and wish what is unjust.."

Aristotle didn't rest there, but actually demanded a proportionality to Justice in its particular expressions.  If he was faced with the political world of Trumpism today, Aristotle would be appalled at the lack of justice and the reign of injustice. As Epstein ought to as well, if he were not so blinded by Trumpism.

John Hickenlooper - Properly Jeered in San Francisco For Dumbo Comments On "Socialism"

John Hickenlooper, who got booed in San Fran for remarks against socialism, gained notoriety in 2015 for his PR stunt in drinking water from a polluted river in Colorado.  Can we trust a Neolib clown like this in the presidency - say more than a Socialist like Bernie Sanders? No way in hell!

As might be expected, the Neoliberal press got into a fit after Dem presidential candidate John Hickenlooper showed up at the California Democratic state party convention and got resoundingly booed for remarks made on socialism.  "Hick"   began soundly enough saying:

"Trump is threatening our democracy, not to mention dismantling our health care, destroying our planet and creating a culture of hate."

He then make the mistake of blabbing on, about a topic he's clearly uneducated on:

"If we want to beat Donald Trump and achieve big progressive goals, socialism is not the answer."

Whereupon most of the gathered state Dems rained down lusty boos and jeers.  No surprise the primary organ of finance capital, The Wall Street Journal tore into the SF Dems for their effrontery in an editorial three days ago ('When Democrats Jeer Democrats', p. A17)   The Denver Post - owned by Alden Global Capital (a hedge fund) then joined the bandwagon yesterday with its own editorial ('Hickenlooper is right to reject socialism and bad policies', p. 21A) basically regurgitating the same twaddle as the WSJ, but with a slightly softer tack, i.e. that if socialism isn't roundly rejected by all D-candidates then "Trump may be able to sow a seed of doubt in voters" .  Translation:  If Dotard and his cabal of traitor enablers keep screaming "Dems want Socialism!"  a new "red scare" will be generated, and independents and ignorant centrist Dems will either not vote D, or vote Trump. Again. Personally, I dispute voters - apart from Trumpies - could be that stupid, but who knows?

Outdoing even these two editorials was the one in the local right wing rag (Colorado Springs Gazette) yesterday. which fairly screeched: 'Facing a hive of booing bullies'.     Writing in part - referencing what Hick said earlier:

"This was friendly and honest advice for a party Hickenlooper loves. A rational crowd would have listened and contemplated the words of man successful in business and politics - the leader who completed two terms as governor in a swing state wit the country's best economy."

Yeah, but how did this swing state achieve that "best" economy?  By Hick bending over backwards as a puppet for the frackers - sacrificing citizens' health and now despoiling nearly 25 million gallons a day of our precious water for fracking operations. A guy who sat on his butt after a number of incidents including the home explosion in Firestone  that killed two men. The incident was blamed on a leaky flowline from a nearby well that hadn’t been capped properly.   Hickenlooper, willing tool of the Colorado frackers  (c/o the Colorado Oil & Gas Commission) that he is, has also ceaselessly inveighed against common sense measures including Proposition 112 on the ballot last November, i.e.

The passage of Proposition 112 would have spared front range families from noxious fracking fumes, as well as noise and soil toxicity - which have triggered myriad health problems. Oh, and let's not forget Hick's PR stunt of drinking (supposedly) polluted water from the Animas river in an effort to double down on his earlier stunt of drinking just- fracked water - complete with benzene and all the other chemicals. Only this time two eagle-eyed Denver Post reporters spotted the fool dropping iodine tables into his water bottle before slugging the yellowish sludge down. Probably to protect himself from giardia and E. coli. as well as minimize the effects of the pollutants, like cadmium, lead,  etc.

And THIS is the "business and political leader" the yahoos at the Gazette bid us to respect?    What all of Hick's stunts have shown is that he's a full fledged capitalist exploiter and propaganda purveyor,  quite happy for families to continue to get sick -  then  lose their health care and jobs  - as long as the profits for frackers remain on the rise  The Gazette's resident editorial apes then barked:

"Instead of considering his logic, Hickenlooper's fellow Democrats acted like barbarians at a cage match"

Not at all! In my humble opinion, they knew in advance that Hickenlooper has zero vested interest in the common welfare, and also they were likely aware of his previous PR stunts. They weren't buying the snake oil this fucker was selling and they let him know in no uncertain terms. Good on them!  The worst mistake, as Janice pointedly noted, is that Hick was conflating social democracy with socialism.  But why be surprised when most Americans have zero knowledge of the difference between socialism, communism and Marxism.

The real problem, as with the coverage of Trump and his asinine tweets, is the boundless ignorance  concerning socialism in the neolib (and rightist) media and its circulation to the reading and viewing public. We have already seen examples concerning this, some of which I've written about, e.g.

Corporate Media Pushes Socialism Bogey To Scare ... - Brane Space

brane-space.blogspot.com/2018/09/corporate-media-pushes-socialism-bogey.html

In that post I skewered  the WaPo's resident Neolib  cartoonist Lisa Benson and her idiotic cartoon - actually a clever form of agitprop, see below:


Writing:

"The asinine brainwashing of the American masses has occurred in many forms, but no where as consistently and insanely as the campaign against socialism (as embodied, for example,  in the cartoon above)."

I then described living in a city (Milwaukee) under socialist Mayor, Frank P. Zeidler:
 
Did Milwaukee go to hell in a handbasket as the current wave of anti-socialist media buffoons would have you believe? ? Not in any way! In fact, what Mayor Zeidler implemented were really more social democratic programs than socialist ones.   We saw that  the living conditions, opportunities in the city were never better. Jobs proliferated, especially in major manufacturing (Allis –Chalmers etc.) while the breweries hired thousands with excellent pay and benefits, including health care. Housing abounded as well, affordable housing off of Greenfield Ave. and Teutonia and in other suburbs to the north and west. Parks, meanwhile, were the envy of many other cities for their beautiful layouts, amenities and services. I can still recall going to Washington Park (across the street from where my family lived on W. 48th and Cherry Streets) on the 4th of July for band performances and later fireworks..

As I further noted:

"So my appreciation for a respectable, beneficial socialism commenced at a very early age, and was reinforced by further study of many different socio-economic systems as part of a wide-ranging liberal arts education."

Alas, that type of education seems not to have extended to much of the Neoliberal fourth estate which continues stoking hysterical fears, as Hickenlooper tried to do, and which imho - was answered appropriately.

In that  same Sept. 2018 post  to which I linked above I also referenced Oprah Winfrey's own badly needed education re: socialism. (And social democracy) This was after she raised misbegotten fears of socialism and the welfare state.e.g.

• Oprah got perfect response from Danish woman on their social welfare state 

As Oprah rumbled on  about "socialism" with a fearful expression, a Danish citizen on Skype quickly informed her: "We think of it as being civilized. As taking care of each other...the elderly, the sick."   The Danish woman had clearly exposed Oprah's brainwashing - and Oprah is not a dumb American.

Want to see a "welfare state?"  Look at the trillions Trump's rich cohort are packing away (from his corporate and wealth tax cuts) as they laugh all the way to the banks, or their hedge funds. Look at how the loyal Trumpie MAGA voters - who thought they were getting such a "deal" for the working class - barely snatched $620 from Trump's tax cuts last year and now face the (effective) tax imposed from his Mexico and Chinese tariffs.

See e.g.

Dotard Doubles Down On Crashing The Economy By ... - Brane Space

brane-space.blogspot.com/2019/06/dotard-doubles-down-on-crashing-economy.html

All of this as Americans under Trump's one man fascist oligarchy now face the fact that there is no city, no county in these United States where a person earning minimum wage - at even two or three jobs - can purchase affordable housing. (In Denver one needs an income of at least $91,000 /yr. to buy a median value home. How many teachers do you suppose can make that cut?)

The programs and policies of social democracy - such as peculiar to Rhine capitalism - seek to address these anomalies. But we can't do so when we have histrionic know -nothings spouting off ignorant bollocks like in a recent WSJ op-ed ('Socialists Don't Know History', May 31, p. A15)  when it is THEY that don't know history.  Else they wouldn't conflate socialism (democratic socialism) with social democracy or communism, or the magazine Jacobin with The Daily Worker, or the Soviet Pravda. (As the uninformed WSJ author Joseph Epstein did). 

Fortunately, despite the flood of rubbish about socialism in the press lately, one can find the occasional rational and well thought out article, even in The Wall Street Journal.  For example, Greg Ip  in his piece 'Parsing the Lessons of True Socialism'  (Feb. 7, p. A2)  In which he wrote:

"Medicare for All wouldn't  nationalize doctors and hospitals, though it might drive private insurers out of business- putting the U.S. where many industrial countries already are."

Yet to have heard Hickenlooper's codswallop one would have thought a vast "central committee' would suddenly  be taking over everyone's medical care- as opposed to simply an evolutionary step, a dying out - akin to Blockbuster videos giving way to the Netflix model.

In contrast to Hickenlooper's bitching about the Green New Deal i.e. "We should not try to tackle climate change by promising every American a government job"  - which no Green dealer ever claimed, Mr. Ip noted:

"If the federal government ends up financing significant expansion of renewable energy under a Green New Deal, it wouldn't be unprecedented.  It created the Tennessee Valley Authority in the 1930s and the Interstate highway system in the 1950s."

So once again, we aren't talking about a radical takeover of the means of production, just a redirection of capital for the common good.  Moreover as author Naomi Klein has noted ('This Changes Everything: Capitalism Vs. Climate Change'  ), we now know the extent to which capitalism's growth dynamic has stoked global warming.  It is also directly based on reckless  resource extraction, so she uses the term, "extractionism" for the relentless plunder of scarce reources.  (Including using scarce supplies of water here in Colo. for fracking operations.)

The worst, most egregious blather comes from the Gazette is when its editor yaps:

"Socialism by nearly every definition is the bully's philosophy. In soaking the rich and burdening the middle class socialism takes by force the rewards created by constructive endeavors. In doing so it raids capital that would otherwise fund additional achievement, charities and 'big progressive goals'.

But they've got it backwards. In fact, it is unchecked, unregulated capital that plunders the tax commons to advance the wealth of the few and becomes the de facto bully.  This is nowhere better demonstrated than in the Pareto economics our grafting system is grounded in,  e.g.

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2011/06/modern-economics-its-evil-basis-pareto.html
and:

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2011/06/modern-economics-its-evil-basis-pareto_13.html

Hence, no surprise that the billionaires that make up the Forbes 400 list have more wealth than the bottom 64 percent of Americans.  Process that!  In addition, the system is set up to literally take by force from those who have the least, in multiple ways. All to kowtow to the shareholders of large corporations.  This is also why wages in the U.S. have remained literally at a standstill. No progress despite the "great economy", so 40 percent of our countrymen- in the same middle class the Gazette's cretins talk about being "burdened" by socialism  -  cannot even finagle $400 for an emergency.  They are burdened all right, by cowboy capitalists dominating corporations what would rather use their tax cut monies for share buybacks than paying higher wages.  As for the claim this capital would "otherwise be available to fund additional achievement, charities etc." - that doesn't even pass the most basic smell test.  As set up the system is geared to keep plying shareholders with $$ not contributing anything to the commons.

The Gazette's pro-capitalist cowboys don't stop there, further babbling this idiocy:

"Socialism creates nothing. A parasitic ideology it survives on the ill gotten gains of confiscation:

Which is, of course, total unadulterated horse shit. Again, most of this local Reich rag's baloney can be traced to abject ignorance and conflating socialism (under a more rigid Marxist interpretation, i.e. control of means production) with social democracy within which capitalism is present - but not run amuck. As Barnard College's Prof.  Sheri Berman articulates the relationship:

"Communism certainly failed, but social democracy has arguably been the single most successful movement.  Look at the rise of  stable European democracies after World War II...because a stable social consensus married relatively free markets and private ownership with expanded welfare states, progressive taxation and other forms of gov't intervention in economics and society."

Did the European democracies suddenly lose it and start drinking a socialist 'kool aid'?  No, they grasped the powerful meme of self interest and survival, and if they didn't enable free markets with welfare states, there'd be no more free markets, period. To quote one commenter on smirkingchimp: "The elite better be prepping with their underground bunkers to ward off the hordes stat."    

In other words, the populist hordes - already making their mark on Europe - would come with their pitchforks and torches for the self same elites.  That is, unless states directed the more equitable distribution of critical resources, wealth.  Let's also bear in mind "wealth" is another term for captured limited resources from a finite Earth, hence such extraction affects all the inhabitants of the planet.

State direction of resource allocation generally has gone by the term "dirigisme" and was what JFK attempted to use in his  'Alliance for Progress' and in his own domestic tax policies. However, in the latter he lacked the majorities in congress to implement.  (See, 'Battling Wall Street - The Kennedy Presidency', 1994, Donald Gibson).  As Prof. Gibson, as well as Prof. Berman have taken pains to point out, capitalism as a proper engine of job creation and wider benefits can work - but not if it is allowed to exploit resources relentlessly, engender massive pollution along with  producing goods, and fill up every landfill in the world with trash and plastics that rebound to literally strangle all the planet's denizens, e.g.

Including us.  Naomi's Klein's point in 'This Changes Everything' is yes, we do need an engine of creation of wealth such as capitalism provides.  But it has to be a regulated capitalism,  not a deus ex machina, to control and dominate us - its ultimate creators!  This is what the so-called socialists, actually more social Democrats, are about, i.e. when they call for a more forgiving, equitable health care system.  This as opposed to one in which cancer victims can be driven into bankruptcy by outsized medical bills in no relation to the services.  Merely because the private system allows providers to package each service  and bill it separately without regard to cost or benefit. Greed dominates, and greed is what needs to be controlled for the larger good.

As for John Hickenlooper, his candidacy doesn't pass muster for even the most basic laugh test.  Not merely because of his transcendent ignorance re:  socialism and the Green New Deal, but because he's simply one more clown politico aspiring to a position he doesn't merit.  A tamer, less bilious Dem version of Trump if you will - who has no business running a whole nation. He's damned near turned our state into a fracking hell. We can't let him do that to the country. Wait! Can't let him? In fact his current polling (0.5%) shows he won't even make the cut for the first Dem debates in Miami in 2 1/2 weeks.  So perhaps the San Francisco 'greeting' was the last we'll see and hear from him.

See also:

Economic Policy

The Same Old Scare Tactic about Socialism

by Robert Reich | June 7, 2019 - 7:10am | permalink

And:

Wealth Inequality

In an Unequal America, Empathy, Not Just Housing, Has Become Too Pricey