The WAWG Blog

Are profit-centric media and supporting profit-centric defense contractors promoting a new cold war, via Russian Hack hysteria, and boosting support for more defense spending? Are regime change neocons fanning the flames for a new cold war to remove Putin from power? Will a new cold war require an even larger, all ready unprecedented, war budget? Will the Republican controlled Congress require cuts in remaining FDR/LBJ social programs to offset new, questionable, war spending? Will dear-in-headlights Democrats support war and social program cuts or will they consider other options and views?

The CIA has provided misinformation for past regime change efforts as in Iraq and in other nations. Are they now promoting regime change in America?

As Robert Parry of Consortium News puts it:

“So, as the Democrats chart their future, they need to decide if they want to leapfrog the Republicans as America’s “war party” or whether they want to pull back from the escalation of tensions with Russia and start addressing the pressing needs of the American people.”

This was a response to part of business editorial on DJT’s “Wheeling and Dealing” over the Carrier jobs.

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I agree that DJT’s approach to governing is frightening.

What I take issue with is this statement from the editorial:

“The government’s job is to provide an educated workforce, quality infrastructure and a regulatory environment that fosters fair competition in a free market.”

What that statement says to me is that government is all about protecting and empowering businesses and that the people will some how benefit from “trickle down” in the form of jobs. Jobs with low pay, limited hours, and no benefits.

I prefer a definition of government that is about We the People and one that charters businesses to support the people:

Government of, by, and for the People requires both:
– A government with the moral purpose to equally protect and empower all the People such that
– The People’s individual freedoms are maximized and
– Economic, social, racial, and environmental injustices are minimized, and
– The active participation of a majority of these People to maintain such a government.

To contrast these two views of government, I’ll reference phrases from the above editorial statement:

– “educated workforce” Yes, the People must be educated, but the primary purpose of that education is to create competent citizens first, then enable them to succeed through employment of their choice. Education as a workforce is secondary to being a responsible citizen and maintaining government of, by, and for the People. Citizens must be knowledgeable of the different systems which affect their lives and must be able to elect government officials who can maximize those systems to support the People.

– “regulatory environment that fosters fair competition in a free market” Yes, we want fair competition, but today’s free market fundamentalists don’t want any regulation that limits their freedom to maximize profit. Regulations, however, are about protecting the People from abuse by those with power who can’t self-regulate their freedoms.

– “quality infrastructure” Again the primary purpose of infrastructure is to protect and empower the People. The fact that this also benefits private enterprise is necessary for the economy but also secondary to the purpose of the People’s government.

The People are not here to serve enterprise. Enterprise and government are here to serve We the People and we need to re-establish government that protects and empowers the People and regulates enterprise to eliminate abuse of the People.

Remember the Tea Party motto Take Our Country BACK? Back to where, I once asked a local Tea Party leader?

As a boomer, I enjoyed a well-regulated economy that wasn’t influenced by the many conservative think tanks of today and free market fundamentalism that grew out of the 1971 Powell Memo. What I, especially as a white male, also enjoyed was a world economy dominated by the United States. I had a lifetime of wage growth that out paced inflation. I had great benefits. My veteran status helped me secure my BS degree. My single, divorced, mother helped purchase our first home and purchase my teenage cars.

That kind of life is gone for my daughter and the millennials. But it’s what those, who voted for Obama in 2008 and DJT in 2016, are familiar with and would like to go BACK to. Also, DJT is a boomer, except he was born into extreme wealth and remembers this time too.

What enabled those pre 1980 decades of American dominance in the world economy? It was WWII. Asia and Europe had to rebuild while the United states was the country getting paid to help them rebuild.

So, might DJT’s answer to the MAGA question be another world war! He’s hiring several generals. He’s identified the enemy. Now all he needs is a military and as soon as he takes the oath as president, he has control of the largest and best equipped military the world has ever seen.

On the other hand, he wants to kill the pork program called the F-35.

Right-wing authoritarian Republican politicians, like Paul Ryan, believe that the individual is solely responsible for their success or failure. Their moral righteousness is based on one’s self-discipline and ability to plan for every contingency. That leaves the 99% to fend for themselves regardless of circumstances beyond individual control, like anyone who abuses their individually, self-regulated, power over others. This leads to a government that ignores all citizens except the financially successful.

They also believe that unfettered capitalism is the best tool for their “self-made man” to achieve success.

All this leads to the privatization of all government programs like free public education, non-profit public utilities, socially/citizen financed Social Security, and socially/citizen financed Medicare, all of which protect and empower the 99%. Privatization shifts government priorities to protecting and empowering the 1% and that’s morally wrong as are the greedy right-wing beliefs.

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To highlight the two different views on government, here are two definitions. There are two parts to each: Government Purpose and Citizen Participation. These definitions are independent of the economic system used, but address the control/freedom of that economic system.

Progressive government:
A Government of, by, and for the people requires:
– A government with the moral purpose to equally protect and empower all the people such that their individual freedoms are maximized and such that economic, social, racial, and environmental injustices are minimized, and
– The active participation of a majority of the people to maintain such a government.

Conservative government:
A Government of, by, and for the successful requires:
– A government with the purpose to protect and empower only the successful such that their individual freedom and wealth are maximized, and
– The active participation of only the successful to maintain such a government.

Since 2005, I’ve written 425 blog posts, , and most of them have been about America’s growing authoritarian state. I’ve had a lot of help along the way from many others more knowledgeable than me.

It started with a paper given to me by a friend written by Lawrence Britt, on the 14 traits of a proto-fascist government. After reading John Dean’s 2006 book, Conservatives Without Conscience, I posted this article on Fascism in America and three related posts. This last post is my most viewed post and has been seen almost 3,800 times since it was published in 2006.

Now America’s authoritarian state is about to take a quantum leap and become a bigger threat to all of us who don’t follow the new leader. There will be a select few who will follow.

Probably about 20 to 25 percent of the adult American population is so right-wing authoritarian, so scared, so self-righteous, so ill-informed, and so dogmatic that nothing you can say or do will change their minds. … And they are so submissive to their leaders that they will believe and do virtually anything they are told. They are not going to let up and they are not going away.

— John Dean, Conservatives Without Conscience

Authoritarians were taught all their lives, under threat of abusive punishment, to respect and follow their chosen leader without question. They have selected DJT. DJT is already a corporate dictator and he will take that punishing leadership style to The People’s House. On top of that, the Republican right-wing authoritarians will unquestioningly follow DJT’s orders, as will a few authoritarian Democrats. Luckily, there is a small number of progressive Democratic Senators who have already drawn a line in the sand and will resist, but they need a lot of people support and acknowledgement by the media.

I hope this election is as low as America will go, but I’m not yet seeing a public that is paying attention or responding en masse. I’m also not seeing a profit-centric media that will forego profit for the sake of exposing this threat to our democracy and act as a catalyst for the People. (There is, however, one media exception, Free Speech TV.)

Based on the work of others, primarily Professor George Lakoff, an expert in cognitive linguistics – how the brain uses and responds to language, here is what I’ve come to understand about those who support people like racist, misogynist, DJT and other right-wing authoritarians who prefer using dog whistle language.

First here is a quote from John Dean (Nixon White House counsel) from his 2006 book Conservatives Without Conscience:

“Probably about 20 to 25 percent of the adult American population is so right-wing authoritarian, so scared, so self-righteous, so ill-informed, and so dogmatic that nothing you can say or do will change their minds. … And they are so submissive to their leaders that they will believe and do virtually anything they are told. They are not going to let up and they are not going away.” (Keep in mind that DJT secured about 26.7% of the eligible voters and they vote!!!)

The following is what I have taken from Lakoff’s work. This right-wing group adhere’s to a set of beliefs, or moral values, and related understandings which drive their policies and the people they support. These beliefs are foreign to your’s, mine and all progressives, but explains a lot about them and how their brains are wired differently.

First of all, they have a strong belief in a moral hierarchy for humans and all things non-human. At the top of this hierarchy is a Christian God. Next is Christian/successful white men. At the bottom are poor, single, black women with kids who all follow Islam. If you are successful (self-made), as DJT appears, and white, you must be Christian because only white Christians have the self-discipline to succeed. This belief in hierarchy then leads to an understanding that inequality must be normal and immutable. This then justifies harming of those inferior and pillaging the Earth’s natural resources with no fear of consequences or concern for systemic impacts.

These fellow Americans also believe individuals have singular control over their success – there are no external factors you can’t work around if you just work hard enough. If you have self-discipline, you will become a self-made success. So, successful corporations and billionaires deserve government welfare as reward for their singularly self-made success. Conversely, if you are not successful, it’s singularly your fault. You lack self-discipline and deserve what you have. You also deserve nothing from fellow, successful, Americans, especially via government controlled wealth transfer. Also, this self-discipline/self-made success begets a self-righteousness and moral superiority for those at the upper levels of the hierarchy.

Their self-made man belief is also based on a fundamental, easily observed and demonstrated, process called direct causation. (If you do ‘A’, ‘B’ will happen immediately and without question.) We have all learned it as part of growing up. The problem is that most right-wing authoritarians have only limited understanding of systemic causation (‘A’ will occur provided ‘B’ occurs, provided that ‘C’ happens, and ‘C’ happens provided ‘D’ happens, etc.), which plays a major role in one’s success or failure. This is why this group can’t accept concepts like global warming – there is no direct relation between extracting fossil fuels from Texas shale and extreme warming of the atmosphere over the North Pole.

Direct causation also contributes to a black and white view of the issues and those who support an issue. There is no grey. There are no extenuating circumstances. Issues/policies are morally right or wrong – no compromise. You are with them or against them. You are for the war on non-white terrorists or you are a traitor. Your success or failure comes singularly from your self-discipline and has nothing to do with when or where you were born, what family you were born into, who their friends are, the teachers or preachers who came and went, the laws in effect and whether they equally protected and empowered all or only those who were successful, etc.

Their favorite tool for reinforcing direct causation is abusive punishment, starting as early as 18 month’s of age. Refuse to learn their right-wing moral values and the punishment will escalate until you comply – thus a belief in war at any cost and torture. They believe that all children are born evil and severe punishment will make them good, self-disciplined, adults. Only severe punishment teaches what is morally right: hierarchy, inequality, torture, and self-made success.

Another side effect of abusive punishment is the severe reduction of one’s ability to empathize. Research shows that empathy, through mirror neurons, exists in every healthy brain at birth. However, abusive punishment suppresses empathy wiring to allow acceptance of social hierarchy and inequality. Abusive punishment combined with a social hierarchy liberates these folks from concern for other less equal/successful Americans.

Systemic causation, compassion, shades of grey, equality, all threaten the right-wing authoritarian worldview and their self-identity. Our beliefs are key to our self-identity. Any facts to the contrary are a threat and result in a loud and violent defensive response. Those on the right will apply abusive punishment, including civil and international war, to preserve their self-identity and it’s foundation – their beliefs.

These right-wing beliefs also lead to acceptance of government welfare for large corporations, to-big-to-fail banks, and billionaire hedge fund managers, and, conversely, to purposely leaving those without self-discipline to the vagaries of unrecognized systemic causation.

As John Dean said, these neighbors are “so right-wing authoritarian, so scared, so self-righteous, so ill-informed, and so dogmatic that nothing you can say or do will change their minds.” They are who they are because of what they believe. In their mind they are morally right and they don’t have the neural wiring to understand otherwise.

You cannot change their beliefs without rewiring decades of neural hard wiring and isolating them from endless hours of right-wing media that reinforces their beliefs.

What is killing our middle class is the replacement of a more SHARING economic system, which considers all STAKEholders in the economic system, with a free market fundamentalism, or neoliberal economic policies based on maximizing GREED for the few!

Greedy neoliberal economic policies that:

• Above all replaces rewarding the hard work of productive workers with rewarding only those at the top of the corporate pyramid
• Lets our public infrastructure and public services decay while providing excessive cuts in citizenship dues (taxes) for the extremely wealthy,
• Privatizes our public services, like public education and prisons, which transfers accountability from our elected representatives to major corporate share holders who prioritize profit above service and are only accountable to major stockholders,
• Grants human rights to non-human entities called corporations which are no longer required to support the public good,
• Provides greater freedom of speech to those with greater wealth,
• Gives huge sums of money to corporations to-big-to-fail, in the form of bailouts and corporate welfare, while forcing austerity and excessive debt on citizens,
• Replaces tariffs, that protected jobs, with free trade agreements that move jobs overseas and labor costs to the lowest common denominator in a world market,
• – Replaces professionally managed and corporate funded pension plans with personally managed and self-funded 401Ks,
• Replaces company paid benefits, like sick-leave and vacation, with fewer benefits,
• Lets corporations consolidate into larger and larger financial entities while ignoring our anti-trust laws,
• Provides greater protection to corporations while at the same time eliminating citizen’s abilities to individually, or as a group, to take legal action against corporate abuse,
• implemented the pro-corporate Powell Memo of 1971 by the world’s richest families like the Kochs,
• Believes in self-made individuals and can’t fathom the external effects of systemic causation on their success

The distraction of Widdle Donnie Thwimpie is all over the news as the worst ever candidate for an American president, while mainstream media ignores the real enemy of our democracy:

This should be no surprise. The corporate take over of our government was detailed in the 1971 Powell Memo and has been funded by families like the Kochs ever since. It’s been a slow process and was foisted onto the public by the corporate purchase of our free press.

In addition to top-level Executive branch staff appointees referenced in this article, there are hundreds of permanent civil service employees who were hired by corporate stooges/staffers in past administrations.

In terms of foreign policy, pro-war, regime-change, neocon stooges have been hired into our government by those key staffers to get us into war in Iraq and soon with other countries. There are also plenty of neocons in our military leadership to support our pro-war civilian leadership.

In terms of economic policy, free market fundamentalists, or neoliberals, have also been embedded to promote austerity, defunding of public education, profit over people, and privatization of all government functions except execution of war.

(Social Security is very likely the next privatization victim. Just as corporate-funded, guaranteed-income, pension plans were replaced by employee-funded, mostly shrinking, market-dependent 401Ks, so too will the wealth of government managed SS be replaced by self-guided 401Ks and transferred to the ONE%.)

Beware of the distraction promoted by profit-centric media. They must keep their profit masters content or learn to live like the rest of the 99%. Question what’s behind this distraction and realize what is at stake: our democracy.

Then understand, you have only one option left: Vote.

Here are links to three articles on American Authoritarianism and selected quotes from each:

The Rise of American Authoritarianism

Trump embodies the classic authoritarian.

Donald Trump could be just the first of many Trumps in American politics

The political phenomenon we identify as right-wing populism seems to line up, with almost astonishing precision, with the research on how authoritarianism is both caused and expressed

Authoritarians are a real constituency that exists independently of Trump — and will persist as a force in American politics

If this rise in American authoritarianism is so powerful as to drive Trump’s ascent, then how else might it be shaping American politics?

The social threat theory helps explain why authoritarians seem so prone to reject not just one specific kind of outsider or social change, such as Muslims or same-sex couples or Hispanic migrants, but rather to reject all of them

Non-authoritarians who were sufficiently frightened of threats like terrorism could essentially be scared into acting like authoritarians

Authoritarians generally and Trump voters specifically, we found, were highly likely to support five policies:

• Using military force over diplomacy against countries that threaten the United States
• Changing the Constitution to bar citizenship for children of illegal immigrants
• Imposing extra airport checks on passengers who appear to be of Middle Eastern descent in order to curb terrorism
• Requiring all citizens to carry a national ID card at all times to show to a police officer on request, to curb terrorism
• Allowing the federal government to scan all phone calls for calls to any number linked to terrorism

If Trump loses the election, that won’t remove the threats and social changes that trigger the “action side” of authoritarianism

We may now have a de facto three-party system: the Democrats, the GOP establishment, and the GOP authoritarians

After Trump: How Authoritarian Voters Will Change American Politics

This is a big group of people now, and it’s not going away

The GOP had already become the party of American authoritarianism

There are now two Republican parties, and neither can win the White House

Congress in the authoritarian era: more divided, more extreme, more unruly

The problems in the Republican party aren’t just problems in the Republican party. They’re problems for all Americans.

Democratic agendas, which often involve expanding programs or imposing new regulations, Skocpol pointed out, are more likely to require new laws. Republicans, on the other hand, can count inaction as a win when they manage to block that kind of expansion. Worsening polarization will exacerbate this.

Perhaps GOP voters in those states will divide, or perhaps authoritarian-minded voters will nominate Trump-style candidates who alienate the rest of the state, thus allowing Democrats a shot at winning otherwise unwinnable races.

That level of partisan bias gives the GOP a great deal of protection against its voters defecting to the Democrats. In other words, there is something that still unites Republican voters in both the authoritarian and non-authoritarian camps: They really, really don’t like Democrats.

What matters is not just that authoritarians’ influence within the party is rising, but when it is happening: at a moment when the party is institutionally far weaker than it has been in the past. Its leadership is less in control of rank-and-file, less able to steer voters, and often contradicted or undermined by party elites, such as donors, who have a growing ability to push their own agendas.

The Republican establishment, less able to control a party that is increasingly driven by donors acting on their own agendas, has grown weak and fractured. The scale of the authoritarian movement would have shaken any party, but today’s GOP is especially unable to resist or control it.

Donald Trump’s tactics are disturbingly similar to those of actual dictators

But now that the Donald has made a career shift, abandoning the boardroom in favor of the campaign trail, he could use some role models of his own. In fact, one could be forgiven for thinking that he’s already found them: Whether Trump is aware of it or not, he appears to be increasingly following the unwritten playbook of tricks used by dictators and autocratic leaders the world over.

Rule 1: Wink at violent supporters to intimidate the opposition

Rule 2: Tell your supporters that your political opponents are enemies of the state

Rule 3: Intimidate or co-opt journalists to ensure positive coverage

Rule 4: Use strict libel and sedition laws as weapons

Rule 5: Hint that if the election doesn’t go your way, your supporters will respond violently

Step one is to claim that the election was wrongfully stolen from you. Step two is to unleash your supporters, who now believe their chosen candidate was denied rightful office, on the streets to cause riots or violent chaos. Step three, the end goal, is to graciously accept the presidency, or perhaps a significant role in a “government of national unity” in exchange for telling your supporters to stand down.

Here are two interviews comparing Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. One with Dr. Henry Giroux and the other with Dr. Cornel West:

This Is Hell! | On violence, neoliberalism and the hallucinatory anti-politics of the Trump era

If we can’t change consciousness, if we can’t get people to identify with the issues in a way that make them appear very real to their lives, then all of a sudden anger gets distorted and rerouted into something worse – it becomes racism, it becomes a movement mobilized by the need for saviors, it becomes a movement that embodies the worst possible political alternative.

Cornel West: Why I Endorse Green Party’s Jill Stein Over “Neoliberal Disaster” Hillary Clinton

Hillary is a neoliberal disaster:

A neoliberal disaster is one who generates a mass incarceration regime, who deregulates banks and markets, who promotes chaos of regime change in Libya, supports military coups in Honduras, undermines some of the magnificent efforts in Haiti of working people, and so forth. That’s the record of Hillary Clinton. So there was no way—when my dear brother, who I love very deeply, Bernie Sanders said she will make an outstanding president, I said, “Oh, I disagree with my brother. I think she’ll—I don’t think she’ll make an outstanding president at all.” She’s a militarist. She’s a hawk. She could take us into war with Russia. She could take us into war with Iran. So, I mean, I think she’s—she’s dangerous in terms of her neoliberal ideology—not as a woman, because I’m supporting, of course, my dear sister Jill Stein.

Trump is a neofascist disaster:

Now, Trump is a neofascist in the making. There’s no doubt about that.

Because neofascism in the United States takes the form of big money, big banks, big corporations, tied to xenophobic scapegoating of the vulnerable, like Mexicans and Muslims and women and black folk, and militaristic policies abroad, with strongman, charismatic, autocratic personality, and that’s what Donald Trump is.

With Trump we get our version of corporate sponsored Fascism and internal war plus world war. With Hillary we get corporate driven neoliberal austerity with rioting mobs of the abused at home and world war.

So, austerity is better than concentration camps, right?