222 Comments

Thanks for this article. Now I don't feel quite so alone in my withdrawal from politics. I just don't belong anywhere now except outside what is going on.

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It's not only the 'far right' who believe that vaccines can sometimes cause autism, or indeed that EMF pollution and the Covid vaccines etc etc present risks to health. It's also people like me - left-wing environmental activists who believe that our unfettered, capitalist-driven technological progress and our technocratic solutions to our environmental, social and health crises are doomed to failure. I resent being lumped in with 'far-right' conspiracy theorists - a simple and false way of marginalising the common sense views of people, mainly women, who stand for a sane relationship with the planet, it's miraculous complex ecology and the sentient beings that inhabit it. I'm also grateful to you, Chris, for being mostly excellent.

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we have been in this place before, in 1775, in 1860, in 1932, we had the Founders, Lincoln, and FDR to pull us out of it, people around whom many in the nation could gather. People that were on the whole honorable, that served something good outside themselves. Whatever their failings, they believed in something larger and better for all of us. I don't see anyone on the horizon now that can do that for us. Chris articulates the problem and situation very well. I worry about civil war, about world war, about complete collapse, about what rage unleashed looks like when a system breaks. Every time, the solution represents certain ideals and pulls us back from the brink. Every time, the rich and the corporatists ignore the lessons and begin again to destroy the system to gain more money and power. And eventually here we are again. It is tiresome, filled with the sound of weeping, and terribly frightening. As Alice Walker said once, long ago, "If it is true that you reap what you sow, then our country is in deep, deep trouble."

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A key observation in this post: “No one mentioned the disastrous trade deals that have deindustrialized the country and impoverished the working class.”

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Starr liking it. The middle class is picked clean and tossed aside, and politics, like economics, increasingly resembles a no-holds barred zero sum winner takes all game.

You will be seeing more and scarier, as people lash out.

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Interesting article - but I am confused by people on the left who criticize vaccine opponents/skeptics. I won't get into the autism discussion - but you can't pretend to be against Wall Street, then bow down to the drug industry. The drug industry - like the war industry - wants profits. The drug industry is part of the Wall Street that the left supposedly hates. I believe the CEO of Moderna became a billionaire last year, and at least some of the R&D - not to mention the vaccine doses themselves - were paid for by the taxpayers. Corporate and state power combined is what?

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Thanks Chris for this article. It is so hard to find voices of sanity and you are one.

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The only way this gets better is if the Anti-swamp right and Vehemently anti-Citizens United left, put aside every other issue and join together. This government will never work for the citizens again without strong regulations on money in politics and term limits.

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"The televised spectacle of the January 6th hearings will not restore democracy"

Someone please explain to us in detail this meme that democracy is in need of restoration related to Jan-6. On Feb-20 2011, 12,000 liberals marched in angry protest over Wisconsin's right to work legislation and they occupied the state capitol for weeks. As I recall the same people breathless with hand-wringing that Jan-6 was an insurrection were applauding the Wisconsin spectacle as people freely expressing their political opinions through some civil disobedience. Is the perspective here that clear abuses of government power persecuting the protestors of Jan-6 for politics is a threat to democracy? I would agree with that perspective... however, I doubt that is the point made here.

"or halt the rise of the far right."

There is no material threat of any far-right rising. This is liberal political mythology.

"The hearings are a desperate ploy by a doomed political class."

Here we agree completely.

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The challenge its to build from the bottom up an alternative system. We must do this. In fact it's happening already. Revolution is like mycelium, growing from thew soil up. There are decent people out there...

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Chris nailed it with this article and I want so badly for it not to be true. We are being bombarded by political ads that are just total fabrications of what the other side is doing and they don't even attempt to address any real issues, it is all just make-believe nonsense, theater. I have never before sat out an election in my 66 years but this year I will because there are no candidates on either side that appear to be honest or trustworthy. Our country is being destroyed by the 1%.

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If I were going to an insurrection, I would bring a gun. And so would the several hundred innocent people the State is persecuting for engaging in a protest, or in a few cases, a riot. We don't believe in angels or any of the other stupid ideas you accuse us of, and only a real fool would believe those lies about us. Our crime is not loving the security state and having the idiotic simplicity to imagine that the political class should follow the will of the people. Unlike you and apparently many of your readers, we have permanently turned off our televisions and after the real insurrection of 4 Nov 2020 we are able to clearly see the world.

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"There was no acknowledgement by committee members that the “will of the people” has been subverted by the three branches of government to serve the dictates of the billionaire class.

No one brought up the armies of lobbyists who are daily permitted to storm the Capitol to fund the legalized bribery of our elections and write the pro-corporate legislation that it passes.

No one spoke about the loss of constitutional rights, including the right to privacy, because of wholesale government surveillance. No one mentioned the disastrous trade deals that have deindustrialized the country and impoverished the working class.

No one spoke of the military fiascos in the Middle East that cost taxpayers over $8 trillion, the for-profit health care system that gouges the public and prevents a rational response to the pandemic, already resulting in over a million deaths, or the privatization of institutions of government, including schools, prisons, water treatment, trash collection, parking meters, utilities and even intelligence gathering, to enrich the billionaire class at our expense.

The gaping hole between the reality of what we have become, and the fiction of who we are supposed to be, is why spectacle is all the ruling class has left. Spectacle takes the place of politics."

But spectacle does nothing to improve our lives or reduce suffering so the corrupt ruling class are only fooling themselves. We in the working class live with reality and payback will be ugly.

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Thank you, Chris -- a masterpiece, including the image !!!

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Hi Chris,

Some of the narratives you ridicule are not conspiracy theories, but are grounded in reality and fact.

Vaccines certainly don't "cause" autism, but are undoubtedly a strong contributing factor. I would encourage you to examine some of the well researched work RFK Jr has done for years.

I'm surprised you're skeptical of elite sex trafficking being commonplace. Besides the suspicious circumstances of Epstein's death, the amount of evidence uncovered that was never looked into further, or the Depp trial getting an absurd level of coverage compared to Maxwell with developments happening at the same time much of it is displayed in plain sight. One could reasonably argue how prevalent it is, but it's quite clear a large amount of elites are into some sick, disgusting things (some of which is clearly satanic). Sorry I don't have as good sources for you on this one, but even just look at some music videos of today or some of the crazy things actors say. They serve the elite so they emulate them, hoping for approval and validation.

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Yeah, it seems the old Republicans have lost the party and so they slink up with the Democrats to try and tag team the new populist threat from the right.

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