How Skeptical Are You? Read the Legalienate Challenge . . . .

Journalist circles in particular like to describe the press as a "great power" in the state. As a matter of fact, its importance really is immense. It cannot be overestimated, for the press really continues education in adulthood.

Its readers, by and large, can be divided into three groups:  First, into those who believe everything they read; second, into those who have ceased to believe anything; third, into the minds which critically examine what they read, and judge accordingly.

Numerically, the first group is by far the largest. It consists of the great mass of the people and consequently represents the simplest-minded part of the nation. It cannot be listed in terms of professions, but at most in general degrees of intelligence. To it belong all those who have neither been born nor trained to think independently, and who partly from incapacity and partly from incompetence believe everything that is set before them in black and white. To them also belongs the type of lazybones who could perfectly well think, but from sheer mental laziness seizes gratefully on everything that someone else has thought, with the modest assumption that the someone else has exerted himself considerably. Now, with all these types, who constitute the great masses, the influence of the press will be enormous. They are not able or willing themselves to examine what is set before them, and as a result their whole attitude toward all the problems of the day can be reduced almost exclusively to the outside influence of others. This can be advantageous when their enlightenment is provided by a serious and truth-loving party, but it is catastrophic when scoundrels and liars provide it.

The second group is much smaller in number. It is partly composed of elements which previously belonged to the first group, but after long and bitter disappointments shifted to the opposite and no longer believe anything that comes before their eyes in print. They hate every newspaper; either they don't read it at all, or without exception fly into a rage over the contents, since in their opinion they consist only of lies and falsehoods. These people are very hard to handle, since they are suspicious even in the face of truth. Consequently, they are lost for all positive, political work.

The third group, finally, is by far the smallest; it consists of the minds with real mental subtlety, whom natural gifts and education have taught to think independently, who try to form their own judgment on all things, and who subject everything they read to a thorough examination and further development of their own. They will not look at a newspaper without always collaborating in their minds, and the writer has no easy time of it. Journalists love such readers with the greatest reserve.

For the members of this third group, it must be admitted, the nonsense that newspaper scribblers can put down is not very dangerous or even very important. Most of them in the course of their lives have learned to regard every journalist as a rascal on principle, who tells the truth only once in a blue moon. Unfortunately, however, the importance of these splendid people lies only in their intelligence and not in their number - a misfortune at a time when wisdom is nothing and the majority is everything! Today, when the ballot of the masses decides, the chief weight lies with the most numerous group, and this is the first: the mob of the simple or credulous.

------Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, pp. 240-2

Are Americans Too Dumbed Down To Understand the News?

Hillary Clinton Extends Lead Over Trump - CNN.

Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump are Deadlocked - New York Times.

In Related Developments . . .

Vaccines Save Lives

Vaccines Kill

Global Warming Is Dooming Us All

Global Warming Is a Hoax

Trump Is the anti-Christ

Hillary Is the anti-Christ

Immigrants are Renewing America

Immigrants are Destroying America

Brexit and "Hate"

The problem is capitalist globalization, not "hate." Even with a fairly low growth rate, say two to three percent, a global population rapidly headed for 10 or 12 billion can't help but occasion massive social and cultural dislocation via "immigration," whether legal or illegal. To interpret all complaints about the loss of local control entailed in being swamped by newcomers and governed by phony internationalists as a form of "racism" makes it impossible for political dialogue to occur. "Hate groups," "hate crimes," and "hate speech" are all very vaguely defined buzz words that contribute heavily to the "divide and conquer" strategy sensible people rightly dislike. 

So let's stop using them.

You Can't Make This Shit Up Dept.

New law supports first responders who treat injured pets

The law will allow first responders to, without fear of liability, provide oxygen, perform mouth-to-snout resuscitation, try to stem bleeding, bandage and even administer the overdose antidote naloxone to dogs or cats that have ingested opiates.

Liability has been a concern because owners of pets have sued first responders who treated animals that ended up dying.

Brexit & Economically Incorrect Identity Politics

Brexit, a loss for not only British but also European and global capital, is ultimately a victory for humanity even though the mentally beleaguered brigades of all-is-always-lost are made to see it as a triumph of the racist right. Those who insure the growing strength of a reactionary right are the barely existent left, too often acting as echo chamber for establishment politics even while posing criticism which amounts to hiring a woman captain, a multicultural crew and installing gender fluid toilets for the Titanic. We should understand that the movement in England, a truly democratic expression in which more than 70% of the electorate voted, has also reared its head in the USA through the Trump and Sanders campaigns. While neither Republicrat says a word in criticism of capital they are both hopeful signs of its future democratically arranged demise, even as motivated-by-the right voices in Europe join a smaller but more economically conscious left in a unity many of them remain unconscious of but will hopefully soon act upon.

The ravages suffered by increasing populations who see wealth growing for tiny minorities while life becomes more difficult for them are causing breakdowns and uprisings that panic established power and its often innocent but sometimes conscious professional classes. The opinion shapers and consciousness creators work overtime to depict any reactions against a failing system as the work of neo-nazis on the one hand or cultural-Marxists on the other, with both labels vastly over stated while understating the profound problems facing humanity which are sometimes causing seemingly irrational responses from people who have an economic floor collapsing beneath their feet while a political roof crashes down on their heads.

While capital has advertised its global aspects in glowing terms and made a new middle class in nations previously lacking one, it has added greatly to poverty and loss that must necessarily be absorbed in order for others to profit. The system of minority private gain which supposedly trickles down to insure a better life for the majority was always a lie, understood by many even back in the 19^th century. But the speed at which electronic change has joined with the inherent greed of blind individualism, which is contradictorily still seen by innocents as ways to improve life for everyone, has increased the assault on nature by commodity capital’s marketing process to the point of creating terminal danger to the most important part of that nature; humanity itself.

While savage austerity policies have been used to slash public spending to benefit private profiteers in Greece, France and England, they have also run rampant in the rest of the world and the USA.This global rule, which is making more billionaires, has also created millions more paupers and lowered what was once a fairly secure middle class to one that just barely gets by. Meanwhile, the upper percentile of professional servants to capital, especially those operating in the mind managing and systems strengthening fields of education and media, have shared in the gains, though at a much lower level of course, but fallen prey to support by inactivity except to opt for what are forms of affirmative action that make life better only for some selected groups while continuing to make it much worse for most others, even in the supposedly targeted demographic-ethnic-racial-identity subdivisions divide and conquer politics uses to assure the status remains quo. Thus, for one obvious example, an American Black Bourgeoisie increases in some numbers thanks to more college educated people, while prisons bulge with a much larger number of blacks who are of the economic class – the overwhelming majority! – who remain un-“affirmed”. What was originally criticized as a system to “send one to Yale and send ten to jail” has turned out to be even worse than that.

Whether formerly middle class people reduced to indebted workers trying to pay off loans or formerly working class people reduced to lower incomes, vanishing pensions and a tax burden to carry the social costs of benefits which accrue to fewer and fewer, anger and frustration are shared with few offers of solution from a barely existing left and far more from a populist right. Mislabeling all this simplistically as racism, especially in a society born of racist oppression in which all current residents, whether members of ethnically hyphenated groups, gay, straight, legal, “undocumented” or of any skin tone, live in and on land stolen from original inhabitants, is the plan and program of the divide and conquer rulers. Continuing to play into it will only make the worst outcomes a matter of fact rather than fantasy.

The fact that 400 billionaires in America have more combined wealth than 60% of the nation cannot be reduced to a problem of one or another identity group other than rich people having too much wealth and power. The fact that only 20 of those at the top command more wealth than 50% of the people  - that’s more than 150,000,000 – cannot be dealt with simply by hiring more professionals to serve them and seeing to it that they are a multi-cultural politically correct group. With such staggering economically tyrannical realities to deal with, reducing matters to whether one uses proper speech on what are often knee jerk issues of as much significance as ball scores is what our rulers want and all too often get. And yes we can all get thrilled or excited about rooting for the homies but when it’s time to come up with the rent or mortgage the landlord or bank will not accept “yay team” in lieu of payment.

Opposing immigration may sometimes involve racism, but so can supporting it. Those who finance national capital’s cheap labor employment agency which opens its doors wide for some immigrants while slamming it shut for many americans – often “people of color” – are not heaven’s gift to a higher state of being but may simply be decent folks economically uninformed.

Of course, if they are among the groups that directly profit from that cheap labor, whether from agribusiness, the mills, foundries, or homes that get cleaned, gardened and child cared by that cheap labor, immigration is great. But if they are denied the jobs, both entry level and beyond, that go to a newer, cheaper labor force, or have to pay the taxes to support the social costs of that immigration there is a very different view. Rather than reducing a political economic problem to a simplistic good vs. evil which conveniently forgets or excludes the evil of economic and war policies throwing people out of their home lands which is a responsibility we all share, we need to act on that responsibility as a majority and stop blaming it on supposedly politically incorrect minorities.

 Instead of enabling some to feel good about themselves for being accepting of situations which either profit them directly or cost them nothing at all while others who show the loss protest and are treated as evil, we need to understand the economic roots which are costing all of us, to different degrees, and understand that even if it looks profitable to some for the moment, it can turn out disastrous in the next. Not only in a fast changing natural environment crisis called climate change, but in a more immediately dangerous one called terrorism, also a result of political economic policies which go unchanged while people allow themselves to be toyed with and shaped into fear and even hate for other people like them and often worse off, while remaining helpless, or unmindful, or supportive of the tiny group in ownership and operation of our political economic reality.

 The British people took a step in the direction of saying “enough”. We need to go much further but we can only do so by ending the divisions that make democracy impossible, and that means ending this destructive fear mongering play upon emotions that may as well see every reaction to a reality that needs radical change as an assault on those poor 400 billionaires, and their global “identity group”.

The Orlando Response: Heartfelt Or Unctuous, Mostly In Denial

The latest mass tragedy has seen the usual shock, sadness and fear expressed by ordinary people, and the usual professional grieving, intellectual hypocrisy and moral disability by most of what passes for American leadership. While various political, professional and identity group spokespeople claim the tragedy as suffered by all but especially their own communities and seek both real and imagined sources of the horror unleashed at Orlando, the so-called war on terror that has murdered millions elsewhere and has repeatedly come home to America in brutal fashion still seems useful only in mostly ignorant rhetoric.

While the new antichrist for liberals, Trump, is charged with bigotry in calling for a ban on immigration of Muslims, he and his even narrower minded nationals of what some Islamic fundamentalists call the “satanic” forces of the USA go on killing Muslims on their native soil before they can ever think about escaping. Expressing compassion for immigrants who would not have to seek refuge if we weren’t destroying their homelands is like an exceptionally violent rapist offering sympathetic counsel to the victim of his brutality. Yet this mental disorder that would shame the label of schizophrenia is honorably practiced by hate labelers who commit massive hate crimes across the globe while claiming civilized, democratic and humanitarian labels for themselves.

 And attributing the Orlando murderer’s action to gay hatred, Latino hatred, woman hatred, violence worship, gun loving or overuse of anti-social media may all be at least partly true, but claiming that birth is a definite path to death is even more true but just as reductionist.

Whether this man was cruel to his wife, had a violent nature, hated gays or was himself gay might have played a role in his terrible deed had it occured in some social vacuum, but the material reality of this crime goes far beyond his possibly tortured psyche and ability to procure weapons in the american marketplace of madness and is only a small part of the story.

The much larger part is this:

 

American nationally sanctioned slaughter of millions of Muslim people in mass terrorist attacks that destroy nations in the Middle East and create hundreds of thousands of refugees fleeing the chaos is the root cause of why an occasional Muslim or small group of Muslims engage in mass slaughter of Americans in a terror attack in the USA. Their horrible retaliation does not come out of a social vacuum even if some wish to place it entirely on the backs of deranged individuals or minority identity groups taking vengeance on other minority identity groups.

Of course more than one billion Islamic people are not responsible for the actions taken by a relative handful driven to fanaticism, but Americans who profess superiority by virtue of being an exceptional nation of freedom loving people – in the words of all their leaders – but who act more like a master race of self chosen global rulers bear more responsibility for what is done in their name. And in truth far more given that relatively few rise in outcry after every slaughter performed by the USA or one of its client-lap dog regimes. For instance, no political speeches about the sanctity of life or mournful American candle-lit processions took place when more than 60 Afghan family members and friends at a wedding party were blown to bits by a U.S. drone several years ago, and that is only one loss of innocent life unacknowledged by mostly decent citizens only guilty of ignorance.

But if we advertise ourselves as a democratic people, all of us are ultimately responsible and in danger of paying a price for what only some of us really do. We can’t have it both ways.

The real message of the Orlando slaughter is not to sink even lower in a political debate already emanating from and in keeping with an increasingly popular subject of identitary reductionists in power and out; the toilet. Too many forget that Chelsea Manning is not deprived of lavatory freedom but has been thrown into a cell for thirty-five years because she, actually he at the time of the crime, informed fellow citizens as to just what a murderous crime was being perpetrated under this hate-label “war on terror”. In fact, Bradley became Chelsea while incarcerated in a lesson of just how insignificant gender is, whether fluid, solid or gaseous, in comparison to the much more significant truth of humanity.

Indulging in further ignorance that finds a difference between supporting mass murder in the middle east while opening arms to its victims, and closing those arms with as little thought as to why people might find it maddening to have their nations destroyed by Americans kept obsessed with alleged evils outside while their inside festers and decays can only make the decomposition faster and more deadly. This process is creating a political stench powerful enough to make much of the world and a significant part of the American electorate desperately gasp for breath.

The crackpot realism of lesser evilism that consciousness control substitutes for democracy in the USA is about to offer a choice for the 400 billionaires whose combined wealth exceeds that of more than 190 million Americans. Will they continue to have an employee leader at the White House who uses a Men’s Room while on the road, or will it be, historically we are told, a user of the Ladies Room? If we cannot confront the sordid and hypocritical nature of a political economic system that makes it more profitable to practice war and sell pet food than to practice peace and build housing, we will support continued murder and mayhem that threatens us all, so long as it is performed by members of the politically correct identity group.

Bradley Manning took conscious heroic action and as Chelsea is still paying the price in hopes that we would face the fact that the un-hyphenated human beings murdered, whether in Orlando, Beirut, Yemen, Palestine, New York or any of the countless other places where they have fallen, would not continue to die if we’d put a stop to the dreadful state of terror we have created. We owe it to all their memories, and all our future. Rest in Peace, Orlando victims, and Wake Up, America.

SHOCKING NEWS! WHO COULD HAVE KNOWN?

Obama Endorses Hillary Clinton, and Urges Democrats to Unite

"We thought surely that he would endorse Donald Trump" said Alister McAsswipe, chair of the National Commission on Toiletry. " No seasoned observer of political life,  expert intellectual or celebrity name dropper could have anticipated he would take such bold, brave and controversial position."

Other experts, media illuminati, hollywood financial agents and their wealthy owners were equally shocked.

"It's in keeping with his completely unpredictable positions since taking power. Like, who could have imagined he'd continue billion dollar support for Israel and total disregard for the Palestinian people? Or bending over for private insurers in creation of the private health insurance protection racket, or Obamacare? The man has been everything his followers believed he would be; a total enemy of the establishment and furious fighter for the rights of the common people. Um, I think."

The spokesperson, wearing a propeller beanie and having forgotten to wash his-her-its hands after leaving a trans-species comfort station for pets  ( no homeless humans allowed!) asked to remain anonymous, claiming relatives in Syria who might be threatened by Assad, or Putin, or somebody foreign.

ECONOMIC CLIMATE CHANGE: NOW

Failing institutions, nations or empires are often run by people whose capacities reflect the deteriorating material conditions. The greater the crisis, the more likely that morally crippled, mentally challenged or psychologically disturbed leadership may assert command. But when disastrous conditions are systemic and transcend borders, the weapons handled by the incompetents are the most lethal in recorded history and the area blanketed in propaganda and ignorance extends from municipality to province to nation, far more than a local population is under assault.

As the international political economic crisis becomes more serious the reaction from capital takes on a more desperate nature. Growing evidence of environmental disaster under the popular marketing title of “climate change” combines with national struggles against the amassing of incredible minority profits while the burden of losses spreads to a greater majority than ever and leads to more vicious suppression and more angry reactions. As each new social rupture and ecological threat makes the situation more dangerous, at the same time previously silent masses are aroused into serious democratic activity that makes it more hopeful.

All over the world people are showing their disgust with establishment political rule and even if seemingly moving in all political directions at once, so much popular movement is itself a positive sign for humanity.

Many of those once doing reasonably well in the developed world, dubbed a middle class even in supposedly class free societies, are slipping into greater hardship and with good reason fear the future. The majority of humanity absorbing loss so that a relatively tiny minority can profit has grown in numbers and at the same time has access to communications tools that threaten minority power as never before. This positive change among budding democratic majorities is unfortunately more than balanced by that minority ruling class and its loyal employees still in control of enough wealth and weaponry to destroy everything and everyone if their regime continues.

Capital’s counter-attack has been perhaps more bloody than ever in places like the middle east where nations have been destroyed, hundreds of thousands murdered and refugees scattered as never before, and more political where it is not powerful enough to use military brute force and relies on money with which to buy governments, media and rely on mental rather than physical control.

An attempted military coupe in Venezuela when the charismatic Chavez was alive was quickly over turned by popular power. But now, even with a much less popular leader, capital can only work through its economic channels to make the economy “scream” - the policy of the USA that destroyed Chile’s attempt at liberation from imperial rule in the 1970s - rather than attempt a military takeover. Nevertheless, it is blatantly activating major steps within its rule of law – guaranteed to maintain minority control – to bring down a democratically elected government desperately trying to represent the previously disregarded. The same is true for Brazil, where an elected leader is threatened with impeachment by the minority power of financial wealth, both Brazilian and international, but with no military steps as yet taken.

After economic bludgeoning of these and other nations which attempt to govern on behalf of majorities instead of minorities, masses of people are manipulated into blaming the elected forces attempting to perform on their behalf despite national and global impediments, thereby hopefully softening them into acceptance of anti-democratic but not blatant military takeover as in the past. That situation can change in a moment as desperation grows and the mental crisis center atmosphere drives the homicidals among the ruling group to take more drastic action.

This is part of the growing weakness on the part of capital that makes it more susceptible to democratic movements for change and at the same time more threatening to take irrational actions that could be much worse than anything in the past. Those actions can be more viciously economic, as in Greece and now attempted in France, quietly but just as savagely carving up Africa into post colonial market enclaves assuring more poverty and suffering among that continents majority, or carefully and nervously watching events unfold at the diminished and weakening but still center of global capital in the USA.

There, contradictions can be seen in a presidential campaign in some ways as long and boring as usual, but in others more exciting a harbinger of change than at any time in recent history. Two populist candidates from what passes for a left and right are representative of the disgust with regular party politics, fear of what is happening to ordinary people and the economy, and real desire to remake and reshape the nation. Whether that desire ultimately brings America closer to achieving peace, social justice and environmental balance remains to be seen since that can only come through radical political economic change. While that is hardly being offered even by the left populist, its desire seems to be growing in popular consciousness as movements include not only old political activist groups but now newer and larger ones including some who have never had political experience before.

While major media and much of what passes for alternative voices continue the skepticism that helps make such change impossible, an uncommon out pouring of citizens seem to be making it inevitable, even if lacking a united majority at this moment. Rest assured, whatever and whomever the candidates of the major party may be, the social ferment will continue and demands for radical change will grow because they have to in order to assure a future for not only the majority, but really humanity.

The increased pressures on imperial control are leading to dangerous situations regarding newer capitalist states like China and especially Russia, where U.S. government and media portray a menace seemingly beyond the past fiction of communism. Hardly a day passes without the main establishment voices carrying items about Russian treachery, Putin’s maniacal lust for power, China’s arrogance and other fictional tales accepted by citizens with nowhere else to find news or analysis given that much of what passes for alternative media adopts the same party line.

Some previously sober sounding observers of the international scene invoke near panic over potential nuclear war and even if they over react, the situation warrants reasoned intervention by a democratic force before the irrationals destroy far more than their own personal fortunes. Fears of a future environmental breakdown to be experienced by our children and grandchildren miss the potential for political breakdown of a far more deadly and serious nature. This can come about much sooner than later if we allow control to remain in the hands of minority billionaires ruling over a private profit motivated scheme that worships market forces as a perverse deity threatening all of humanity. There needs to be a crisis intervention exercised by global forces of democracy that represent the interest of the overwhelming majority now paying the deadly price for a small group to live in obscene but temporary luxury that can bring about permanent, disastrous and final poverty for all of us if it isn’t stopped.

Donald Trump Could Threaten U.S. Rule of Law, Scholars Say

Jeepers Creepers Golly Gosh, what could that mean for  2.3 million inmates of the U.S. penal colony,  prisoners say?

Note:

The overwhelming majority of these prisoners, held in 1,719 state, 102 federal, 3,283 local and 942 juvenile jails and prisons, are not college graduates. 

All scholars, like a minority of Americans, have college degrees.

A majority of Americans, like those prisoners, have no such degrees.

Former Trump University Workers Call the School a ‘Lie’ and a ‘Scheme’ in Testimony

They were joined in making those charges by former workers from Yale, Harvard, Stanford, Dartmouth, Princeton,Yeshiva, Columbia, UCLA, Texas A&M, LSU, Brigham Young and 257 other colleges and universities.