When I was all of 9 or 10 years old, I told my aunt, who was visiting us out in the country, that we should all stock up on toy guns.  At that time you could get a realistic all-black toy M-16 or Uzi at practically any department store. The trend towards plastic toy guns coming tipped with orange muzzles was very disturbing to my young mind.  It wasn’t necessarily that I thought Western civilization was being eroded, but I wouldn’t be caught dead carrying a toy gun with an orange tip.

 

We never did stock up, and I suppose I regret it to this day.  My nephew will need to rip his toy guns apart, or slap them with paint, to make them look realistic.

You know, it just occurred to me that I don’t remember owning a toy AK-47.  I wonder if that was a consequence of anti-Soviet bias on the part of toy manufacturers in the 80s, or if I just never happened upon one.

I get a similar feeling of cultural degeneration when, driving across the windswept plains, my eyes are assaulted by the piercing blue of those unnatural LED Christmas lights.  I don’t like any LED Christmas lights, but I suspect the blue lights in particular of being a Chinese or possibly alien plot to destroy America.  And really, there is no escape from them unless you are living like the Unabomber; an ubiquitous feature of household electronics, even my crappy new coffee maker sheds enough light to give the appearance of a TV being on in the kitchen when the other lights are out.

I long for the warm light of incandescent bulbs, which are hard to find these days.  I sincerely do not think that the electricity that is saved using fluorescent lights in the home is worth the decrease in our quality of life.  Light is, of course, very literally the image of life.

Each of us has our own pet peeves about modern life, and most will seem ridiculous to our peers.  But we do need to ask, in our “liberal” quest for a safer, more efficient society:  is the cost worth the benefit?

One of the most disturbing trends on the modern political scene is the rehabilitation of the neocon architects of the Iraq War.  The guilty parties are very often Democrat-voting liberals, which frustrates me tremendously because those people should know better.

I asked the people in the above thread if they were being serious, and the only one who replied said “I am.”  Even if the people above were putting on a satire, there were literally thousands of others who most definitively were not.  This is all in the name of fighting Donald Trump, whose coarse speech and vulgar tweets have offended liberal sensibilities.

I am especially pained to say anything good about Trump today (December 6, 2017), when people woke up to find out that he is moving the U.S. Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, with an acknowledgment that the latter city is the true capital of Israel.  This is bound to set Israeli and Palestinian relations back decades, and has already ignited the ire of the entire Middle East.

I suppose the good news is that the White House and Capitol Hill will not be moved to Israel.

Some commentators have speculated that the move by President Trump may have a positive impact by drawing international attention back to the plight of the Palestinians.  But that is a long shot.

Also on this day (December 6, 2017), Russian President Vladimir Putin announced that he will run for re-election this Spring.  Witnessing the many tweets about Putin’s alleged control of Trump, I was compelled to troll a few people, pointing out that Trump’s Israel bombshell should be the nail in the coffin of the Russia Collusion conspiracy theory.  Unlike the U.S. government, Putin has absolutely no desire to see the Middle East destabilized.  Russia is allies with Syria and Iran, both of whom have been in U.S. crosshairs for quite some time.  There is speculation that the embassy move is part of a neocon plot to incite Muslim attacks on Israel, which, depending on how it turns out and how it can be spun, might give the U.S. an “excuse” to attack Iran.

Sadly, the brilliance of the Russiagate narrative is that it has generated support for censorship, increased defense spending, and military aggression among the normally recalcitrant liberal crowd, the nominal foes of such policies.  As we have been seeing, these so-called liberals have been reveling in their newfound ability to reach across the aisle and cozy up to unrepentant neocons like Bill Kristol.  But I would be remiss if I did not confess that simultaneously, leftists like me have been discovering new friends of our own among nationalists, libertarians, and even some true conservatives.

I will say right now that if people are enjoying the spectacle of the Trump investigation, more power to them.  I hereby consent to my tax dollars being spent on this quixotic mission, for it entertains you like a football game.  I’ll give it the go-ahead even if the investigation’s success would be the biggest Pyrrhic victory since 279 B.C., seeing as how I can’t imagine evangelical neocon President Pence as any improvement.

What I will not consent to is the indictment of an entire country on false charges.

In my last few posts, I have made a clumsy effort to point out the unprecedented internet censorship and abuse of FARA that the new Cold War has heralded.  I will not belabor that particular point here.  Since my last post, the Washington Post has dutifully published pieces of bigoted anti-Russian propaganda at every opportunity.  They are now claiming that Russia went back in time to collude with Hitler in order to throw the 2016 election:

“What Russian collusion with Hitler reveals about interference in the 2016 election”

Well, it is possible I summarized that article incorrectly… but such a claim does not require more sci-fi suppositions than the one actually posited to this day.  That is, that Putin had the power and foresight to get Trump elected, but his crystal ball malfunctioned before it could foretell how the Clintonist camp and globalist media would subsequently put so much pressure on Trump that détente with Russia would be impossible.  (As far as I know, the legendary Caitlin Johnstone was the first person who illustrated the absurdity of the conspiracy theory in the aforesaid manner.)

Dissecting pieces like the WaPo gem above is child’s play and I can’t resist.

1)  All this is not “to tempt people to entertain yet another ill-judged Hitler-Trump comparison.” = With this inoculation, surely no one can accuse us of making ridiculous historical analogies!

2)  Headline itself: “What Russian collusion with Hitler reveals about interference in the 2016 election.” Dumb much?  This should be case-closed already.  But the article goes on to describe desperate Russian dissidents and Tsarist exiles in the ’20s who attempted to ally themselves with Hitler.

3)  Article’s conclusion: “The graveyards holding more than 20 million Soviet citizens killed by Hitler’s men should act as somber warning about the dangers of the pursuit of a hazardous geopolitical strategy.”  But the article has the gall to say that the “secret collusion” of a few Russian dissidents in the ’20s laid the groundwork!

4)  Desperate commentators try to make connections out of the nonsense:

The commentator’s analogy is inverted. The “least” ridiculous historical analogy to be drawn here would be between the dissidents in the ’20s and the current domestic anti-Putin “Russian liberals” who “collude” with NATO. But they are all ridiculous comparisons, and frankly the article is brazen propaganda and insulting, on a jaw-dropping level, to the sacrifice made by the Russians during WWII.

Unfortunately, the repetitive chanting of the “hate Russia” crowd is hypnotizing a huge portion of the U.S. population.  Everything the intelligence community has offered as proof that Russia “threw” the election turns out to be laughable (Pikachu, puppy ads airing after the election, etc), but the Red Scare warmongers are not interested in giving up the narrative.  The reason for that is obvious.  It’s working, and people are gullible enough to go along with it, just as a lot of the same people went along with the “WMD” narrative in ’02-’03.  The Russians are being crucified right now for sharing their “ideas” with us.  That is the threat.

I don’t find that argument compelling.  I acknowledge the power of ideas, but I am not afraid of them.  If I suspect someone on twitter might be a foreign agent of some sort, I have the choice to mute, unfollow, or block that person.  In reality, I don’t even do that, because again, I am not afraid of ideas.  Can you say the same for yourself?

The hour grows late and I don’t have the time here to pontificate on the seemingly-intractable problems that our nation faces.  I don’t have time tonight to talk about the tragic farce of the International Olympics Committee (I.O.C.) banning Russia from the 2018 Winter games, presumably under pressure from Western governmental forces– but the great Phil Butler tackles the lurid affair at the independent outlet Russia Insider.

But domestically, it would help if the Democrats would take a look at themselves in the mirror, man up, and take responsibility for Clinton’s loss.  I did.  I’ll admit it was painful, but I am glad to have my head out of the sand.  For anyone who is still teetering on the edge, I recommend the following segment from comedian Jimmy Dore, who absolutely nails the stunning deceit at the core of Russiagate.  If you are not afraid of ideas, give it a chance.