Non-violent grass roots reform and Democracy: Is Oligarchy Creating Second Wave Of Fake Progressives? If So Why?

During the 2016 election an old pattern, of politicians pretending to be progressive for the duration of the campaign, became even more obvious to anyone paying enough attention. Hillary Clinton didn't even do a good job pretending, so she was incredibly easy to spot, which is why Trump got elected, but that raises the question of why she couldn't have done a better job pretending to care, when she had so many political advisers, and she'd been preparing for this run for years if not decades.

But there's also been a massive increase in sincere support for progressives at the grassroots; and it's even resulted in a few wins, or at least it seems to, although like in many other cases, once politicians get elected they often show that they're more willing to compromise, or in many cases serve the corporate interests they pretended to oppose during campaigns.

Part of the problem is that the consolidated media and political establishment has acted as if some simple basic principles are above reproach and aren't even subject to criticism, even when they're wrong, then they repeat them over and over again so often that a shocking percentage of the public accepts them without criticism. Sometimes this even seems reasonable, like when morning high profile politicians or celebrities, even when they spend their life supporting wars based on lies, like John McCain. Some of this seems like basic manners, which is reasonable; however, in the political establishment it doesn't work both ways like when John McCain called Code Pink "Low-life scum" for protesting wars based on lies.

So progressives like Washington Babylon who wrote How Long Was Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Planning Her Run For Public Office? 08/28/2018 have a legitimate concern when they complain about her tweet about John McCain after he died:

Rep. Pramila Jayapal was one of the few progressives that won in 2016 and she also tweeted The halls of Congress will never be same with out Senator John McCain. A man who devoted his life to serving this country, Senator McCain had an unwavering commitment to our democracy, even in his final days. 1/3 08/25/2018 but they both opposed the Iraq War, and although Andrew Stewart from Washington Babylon expressed concerns about her ties to the Ted Kennedy campaign, he also opposed the Iraq War.

Relentless support for the false claim that we're "fighting for freedom" in all these wars around the world is routinely used to justify one war after another based on lies, and it's accompanied by an enormous amount of propaganda to glorify the veterans that blindly follow wars based on lies automatically declaring them all to be heroes, without looking at their records. Not that I'm opposed to the majority of the veterans that sign up with good intentions, but their government has been lying to them from the beginning and they've been going along with the propaganda; and some of the best veterans that have done the most to solve major problems are veterans that have spoken out against wars based on lies, in some cases even refusing to serve; but though these might be the real heroic veterans, exposing lies from politicians that betray us all, they're the ones demonized as cowards.

One of the other biggest issues that is accepted almost without question is the media's control of the election process, and the fact that they're controlled by only six corporations that dominate over ninety percent of the national media, and a handful of the biggest other sources, like the Washington Post or Los Angeles Times, are controlled by billionaires so these oligarchs can decide which candidates are viable by simply refuses to cover them, which is far worse than anything that the Russians could do, assuming there is something to this story, yet Rep. Pramila Jayapal jumped on the Russia conspiracy bandwagon without questioning the media's role in rigging the elections when she tweeted: The president just can't get his story straight about that Trump Tower meeting with Russian operatives. He doesn't tell the truth. And that's why the Mueller investigation is so critical. 08/05/2018

Another major issue that is almost never questioned in the traditional media is that we have to chose between a strong economy and the protection of the environment; however they never dump enormous amounts of toxic waste in the backyards of the wealthy to preserve the strong economy, and this incredible double standard is almost never questioned in the traditional press, nor do they ever remind the majority of the public of the full cost of energy when it means polluting areas where the working class or poor live.

Another major issue they never remind the public is the fundamentals of insurance, which is pooled risk, meaning that the money they spend on ads comes from premiums, and when they compete by spending more on this then it makes all competitors less efficient not, more, and this is even worse when you consider the fact that they spend even more of your premium dollars lobbying against Single Payer of to confuse the issue and create propaganda bout how inefficient government health care is, despite the fact that many other countries that already have it are much more efficient than our system.

In all fairness the current wave of progressives looks better than past candidates, and some of them seem to have a better chance of wining, including Ayanna Pressley and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez who are both considered shoe-ins, in their districts, now that they've won the primary; and polls seem to indicate that Andrew Gillum and Stacey Abrams both have a good chance of winning, partly because they're both up against extremist supporters of Trump who are also catering to racists viewpoints with their campaign.

However there's an incredibly long track record of them looking much better during the campaign but then showing their true intentions after they get elected like when Barack Obama promised not to hire lobbyists and put on a "comfortable pair of shoes" and march with protesters in office if he won, both promises that he broke among many others, and he also added insult to injury with his joke about taking big payments from Wall Street before leaving office, then showing that it wasn't just a joke after he started doing that, and now he wants us to believe he's trying to rally us against Trump, as if he's better than him? Ben Jealous hasn't done any better with his calculated slur saying "are you fucking kidding me?," after being asked if he was a Socialist. It's virtually guaranteed that he understood this would attract some attention, presumably catering to people that might not rush to embrace the Democratic Socialism that was supported by Bernie Sanders, who made an effort to educate the public about it correcting false assumptions from media propaganda, showing that he's a calculated politician and still losing in the polls.

Ben Jealous is one of Sanders supporters that blatantly began defending Hillary against Trump while the primaries were still going on as if it was a foregone conclusion that she would win, raising major doubts about whether his support for Sanders was all that sincere in the first place, since speaking out at that time could have made a difference, and prevented Trump from being elected in the first place.

But why is the entire political establishment behaving in such in insane manner in the first place?

Something simply isn't making sense. The political establishment knows how to do a better job rigging elections or convincing the public that they're at least trying, yet they aren't doing it and that's why Trump is in office.

It's virtually guaranteed that there are undisclosed objectives that partly explain what is going on and why; and that if they were disclosed there's a strong possibility that many people will be reluctant to believe it. However, there are somethings we can be sure of regardless of those undisclosed motives are, including the fact that the vast majority of the control of powerful institutions, including the media, oil companies, military supply corporations and other Wall Street corporations along with the entire political establishment are controlled by a small fraction of the public.

These corporations use their control of the media to give coverage to politicians that pretend to serve the interests of the majority, and routinely demonstrate that they don't once in power. They study how to manipulate emotions and distract people with their prejudices and social political beliefs, including single issue voters that only pay attention to gun control or abortion.

One of the strongest critics and leading organizers of progressives fighting to reform this corrupt system, Chris Hedges, even adopted a claim that occasionally raises doubts about him, although it's extremely hard to believe that he would cave to corporate interests. If he was incline to cave to corporate interests, then he would simply get in line and work his way back into traditional media like many other journalists that have been fired for being overly progressive, even though they almost always look for another excuse to officially fire them; and he certainly wouldn't be rallying protesters year after year.

For one reason or another, Chris Hedges adopted a slogan, during the Occupy Wall Street protests that rose in 2011 and peaked in 2012, before fading, that says that, "It’s Not Our Job To Take Power, It’s Our Job To Fight Power!" His justification for this was partly that according to Karl Popper people attracted to power, “rarely been above average, either morally or intellectually, and often below it.” He follows this up with a story from Henry Kissinger’s memoirs where he quotes Nixon saying, "'Henry, Henry, they're going to break through the barricades and get us!' And that's exactly where we want people in power to be." This version might not be the exact quote from Kissinger's memoirs, but it was repeated over and over again in Link TV for a couple years.

This is very amusing, but allowing the elite political establishment to continue controlling all these major institutions and counting on them being afraid of us to motivate them to doing the right thing isn't working, instead we need to get people in both the media and in elected office, along with other powerful positions that actually want to do a good job, and, since they're going to be under pressure from the oligarchies that have been trying to convince politicians to cave for hundreds of years, they still need pressure from a well informed public to ensure that they do a good job.

In all fairness Chris Hedges was one of the leading creators of alternative media outlets, and he's repeatedly endorsed Green Party candidates, even though they can never get enough media attention to win at statewide or national elections and only win a handful of local elections where people are more educated and organized. And, the current batch of progressives does seem to be better than past groups, thanks, perhaps in part to extreme measures being carried out by the Trump administration and that the Democratic Party helped him get into office, since the people recognized how bad their propaganda was in the first place, so without making any major changes within the establishment there are more people at the local level voting for better progressives.

But there's still one example after another of progressives looking like the great hero only to turn around and sell out to the same corporations that progressives are protesting against, including Colin Kaepernick who went to all that trouble to stand up against police brutality then sold out to Nike, and apparently this deal was made years ago.

Something about this simply doesn't make sense, it's turned out to be a disaster for Nike who may have tried to appeal to progressives with this sponsor, and they might have accompanied it with some online social media bots, that are almost certainly paid for, but it's predictably failing as many well informed progressives recognized this as a sell out and some of them immediately wrote about it, while the right wing, that is often more susceptible to deceptive advertising are boycotting.

It's a disaster for Nike and they have educated people that understand marketing and social trends that must have seen it coming.

This is actually relatively trivial, but there are dozens of these trivial things to distract us fro more important issues and if you look at them carefully little or nothing the mainstream media and political establishment is doing makes any sense; and there are an enormous number of these pundits and politicians that have demonstrated that they're really not quite that stupid, even if some of them might be. Even Trump, or perhaps I should say especially Trump isn't that stupid; he's demonstrated in the past when he left the Reform Party and rejected David Duke, that he knows that in politics that the racist fringe are a dead end in politics, or at least they were and they still would be if the political establishment wasn't behaving in a fanatical manner taking advantage of the right wing to such an insane extreme that even they're recognizing they've been fooled and giving Trump the obsession coverage that he needed to make him seem like a rational alternative, to people that respond to emotions and irrational and racists arguments.

They're constantly reminding us that Donald Trump has access to the greatest and most reliable espionage information, which they refer to by it's propaganda term, "intelligence," in the world, yet relies on the most absurd conspiracy theories; yet the mainstream media also has access to many of the best scholars and history books in the world without needing secret information that is often unreliable from the espionage organizations, as well. this should clearly mean that they must understand that environmental damage causes by climate change can't go on forever without doing massive amounts of damage; and if it's combined with a constant state of war that it will inevitably get out of control as many previous empires have collapsed in the past, only with modern technology it'll be even worse, yet they're obsessed with irrational conspiracy theories as well.

They have to know that if they keep arguing around in circles about fabricated stories that these will eventually catch up with them and even destroy the people behind their gated communities. Are they suicidal?

Caitlin Johnstone points out in some of the absurdities in the following article, although she may not go far enough:

We Are Being Played 09/06/2018

If any evidence existed to be found that Donald Trump had illegally colluded with the Russian government to rig the 2016 presidential election, that evidence would have been picked up by the sprawling surveillance networks of the US and its allies and leaked to the Washington Post before Obama left office.

Russiagate is like a mirage. From a distance it looks like a solid, tangible thing, but when you actually move in to examine it critically you find nothing but gaping plot holes, insinuation, innuendo, conflicting narratives, bizarre mental contortions to avoid acknowledging contradictory information, a few arrests for corruption and process crimes, and a lot of hot air. The whole thing has been held together by nothing but the confident-sounding assertions of pundits and politicians and sheer, mindless repetition. And, as we approach the two year mark since this president’s election, we have not seen one iota of movement toward removing him from office. The whole thing’s a lie, and the smart movers and shakers behind it are aware that it is a lie.

And yet they keep beating on it. Day after day after day after day it’s been Russia, Russia, Russia, Russia. Instead of attacking this president for his many, many real problems in a way that will do actual damage, they attack this fake blow-up doll standing next to him in a way that never goes anywhere and never will, like a pro wrestler theatrically stomping on the canvass next to his downed foe. (Which Trump has faked in a famous video clip) ......

You don’t have to get into any deep conspiratorial rabbit hole to consider the possibility that all this drama and conflict is staged from top to bottom. Commentators on all sides routinely crack jokes about how the mainstream media pretends to attack Trump but secretly loves him because he brings them amazing ratings. Anyone with their eyes even part way open already knows that America’s two mainstream parties feign intense hatred for one another while working together to pace their respective bases into accepting more and more neoliberal exploitation at home and more and more neoconservative bloodshed abroad. They spit and snarl and shake their fists at each other, then cuddle up and share candy when it’s time for a public gathering. Why should this administration be any different? .....

Would a billionaire WWE Hall of Famer and United States President understand the theater of staged conflict for the advancement of plutocratic interests, and willingly participate in it? I’m going to say probably. Complete article

Caitlin Johnstone seems to imply plutocrats are motivated solely by greed, which I don't doubt is a major part of their motivation, and there's an enormous amount of evidence, which isn't hard to find assuming people want to see it to support this motive; however, they're taking it to an extreme so insane that it won't serve their own greedy interests since they have to know that it will eventually lead to their own destruction, unless they think they can at least save themselves, although they don't seem to concerned about the rest of us. There have been some recent articles about members of the oligarchy having a secret plan to survive the "Apocalypse," or what ever damage is expected to come from Climate Change; however it's hard to imagine how they could possibly do that if the society that enables their wealth starts to fall apart then they're at risk of more extreme retaliation than many former tyrants in the past.

Previously I wrote another article that included a citation of another similar conspiracy theory from Caitlin and went a little father speculating that it might be part of an even bigger conspiracy theory where Philip Corso claimed he shared alien technology with multi-national corporations, which would have had enormous implications on recent development of modern technology of all kinds including space travel medical advances, computer technology and much more. This could potentially be big enough to explain a large number of unsolved mysteries, once all the details are worked out, including how ancient megaliths were moved, and the mysteries surrounding many mystics. I'm sure I notified her of it, but she didn't respond, and when I noticed her respond to another person claiming that she was "a secret Nazi" I notified her again when I tweeted Can't believe "Caitlin is a secret Nazi" conspiracy theory; however I suspect she might be a secret supporter of #AncientAliens theory about researching #ClimateChange with controlled #Disclosure by those that have inside knowledge! 08/21/2018 and she didn't respond to that as well.

This may seem hard to believe, especially for those who haven't looked at many of the major unsolved mysteries, however, there's an enormous amount of evidence to challenge some of the most prominent beliefs of both science and religion. Skeptics routinely claim that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, which is a reasonable request, and there is extraordinary evidence of a major unsolved mystery in the form of ancient megaliths weighing over a hundred tons, including the Colossi of Memnon weighing 720 tons moved 420 miles to a slightly higher altitude, that have been moved by ancient civilizations, allegedly without the use of advanced technology. However experiments to replicate this feat had limited success up to ten tons proving that they could move it with an enormous amount of effort and coordination breaking many ropes and other problems, experiments between ten and forty tons were rare and involved cheating and still only moved megaliths short distances if at all, they didn't even try to move bigger ones.

This raises major doubts about whether or not society evolved naturally without the influence of an unknown advanced intelligence or not. There are also major unsolved mysteries surrounding many mystics throughout history including those that inspired or reinforced religion. This might raise the question or whether or not there is a god after all, and if this evidence supports it.

However if there is something perceived as God there are obvious doubt about some of the assumptions about him raises by Epicurus over two thousand years ago who said, “Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?”

George Carlin raised similar objections phrasing them a little differently.

The vast majority of notable explanations for this fall into one of two categories, and both of them are seriously flawed. Religious people believe in a God that is good and make up incredibly bad excuses for all the atrocities inspired by religion, and can't explain why, if this isn't what God had in mind, he couldn't find a way to say that this isn't what he wanted and provide better advise, instead of all these superstitions. So-called scientific people routinely pretend that some of the biggest unsolved mysteries don't exist at all, and often come up with incredibly lame excuses or distractions to prevent people from taking them seriously, then resort to ridicule when all else fails.

The most common assumption about these ancient megaliths and the ancient aliens theory is that it's part of the version featured by the History Channel; however that is full of an enormous number of colossal blunders, which anyone can see with a basic background in science. And they typically try to fit their explanations into one of the two leading categories, in some cases dividing the aliens up to good and evil battling each other.

None of these high profile pundits from either the pseudo-scientific skeptics or the religious believers ever seem to consider the possibility that an unknown advanced intelligence of some sort with an undisclosed motive might be the explanation for this. Ancient Aliens theorists often do consider the motives of the aliens, but unfortunately they mix it up with an enormous number of blunders or jump to the conclusions that religious myths are literal truths and base their assumptions on those, even though there is often evidence to indicate that so-called revelations, whether they come from God or Ancient Aliens mistaken for God, are clearly false with evidence to prove it.

If my own theories about Ancient Aliens as I've described in previous articles including Spectacular Heart Transplant for Sophia But at What Cost; Researching Poor, Slaves, Prisoners, To Benefit Ruling Class With Alien Technology?; and Hurricane Apocalypse Coming With or Without Fringe Conspiracy Theory, are close to the truth then there might actually be some kind of plan as disclosed in an unreliable manner through alleged revelations from an unknown advanced intelligence religious people think of as God, which might actually be aliens.

If God or Ancient Aliens plan involves an undisclosed research project, it could be for a limited time, and once it is over then the benefit of the research could theoretically be shared with everyone. This isn't a guarantee, of course, and if they were looking out for the best interest of the human race they wouldn't have been shrouding their activities in secrecy and deception for thousands of years, so even if it were true we wouldn't be able to trust them to follow through on any promises they might have made with the people they're sharing technology with.

After the article about an alleged member of the White House administration wrote "I Am Part of the Resistance" in the NYT several people including Caitlin Johnstone raised doubts about his or her motive and whether or not he or she really was looking for the best interest of the majority, especially since the article claimed that he or she supported large portions of the agenda from the Trump administration. If you accept it as it's being portrayed, even if he was trying to prevent Trump from doing something so drastic it would threaten our country, this isn't the most effective way to prevent it, and it would be far more effective to do so public even if it meant getting fired or resigning. Caitlin Johnstone accurately pointed out that if they wanted to take major steps to remove him they could, instead they keep arguing back and forth without accomplishing anything except to distract people from more important issues.

However, if there is something to my Ancient Aliens theory, and they have some kind of plan for controlled disclosure, and perhaps some of them even convinced themselves that they'd be looking out for the best interest of everyone if they shared all this technology they could think of themselves as the resistance that is eventually planning to bring about disclosure. If so they would run into the same absurd flaws in logic. If that was the case then the most effective way would be to come out with the truth and share the technology with everyone, and start reforming the political and economic system while repairing the massive amount of damage done to the environment.

Some things are simply not that complicated.

Perhaps they come up with the same old excuse that was famous long before Jack Nicholson said, "You Can't Handle the Truth!" However, if that is what they thought, then the way to address the situation would have been to do their best to prepare people so that they could handle the truth, then share it with them, instead of jumping from one scam after another.

If "Ye shall know them by their deeds," then they've shown their objectives with their deeds, which is to continue manipulating people with one scam after another. If this is part of a way of ushering in some kind of reform when, and only when, it suits their purposes, then the clear implication is that they don't want complete reform, perhaps instead enough reform to usher in some environmental protection that will save those in on the scams, and perhaps enough to get people to go along with the scam and continue abandoning those without political power.

For one reason or another there are a long list of arbitrary blunders that don't make any sense by many people allegedly trying to disclose the truth, including claims that an astronaut can see a tractor trailer from space, that someone saw sputnik orbiting the planet, that her husband made seismograph in his garage, that someone needed to know how many people were in a building in order to install air conditioning, or that Easter Island even supported 150,000 people while they were carving the Moai, which are all false, yet don't seem to have any relevance, except to raise doubts about the credibility of the people making the statements in a way that few or any people would notice or attach any relevance.

Even if this theory isn't true, however, there's still evidence to indicate that all high profile pundits or reformers seem to make their share of blunders, and many of them are so obvious that it's hard to believe that it's accidental.

It should also be clear that complete reform should enable everyone to get a reasonable education so that they can sort through all these details. In the short term major steps can be taken to allow people from all segments of life to participate in the political process, accessing the information they need to make decisions, and this should include allowing diverse groups of people to control the media.

There should be no doubt that the First Amendment was designed to prevent a small fraction of the public from controlling almost all of the media which is the situation we're in now, enabling them to rig elections by simply refusing to cover candidates they don't like; or that point out flaws in wars based on lies; remind the public about the fundamentals of insurance showing our current system is a scam; remind the public how Single payer could fix this; or how patents are being given to corporation even though the government is financing the research for drugs; or that it should just as illegal for corporations to poison people through pollution as it is if they intentionally put arsenic in their drink.

The list of simple principles that most people should understand without question could continue but the media establishment repeats spin over and over again to scam the public, whether or not the Ancient Aliens theory is true or not.

But if it is partly true then people should be prepared for it; and if it's not then the skeptics should be able to provide a better explanation for major unsolved mysteries.

And if there were part of the "resistance" that knows something about it they should stop fooling themselves to believing that they're trying to bring about disclosure by going along with the deception. If people involved in this cover up they're not part of the "resistance" unless they come out with the truth ASAP unconditionally.

If we can get more progressives elected to office thanks in part to the insane policies of the Trump administration inspiring people to vote against him, great, but we need to be prepared for the so-called progressives that have been promoted, secretly or not by the political establishment to try to back pedal, and we need to pressure them to keep their promises every step of the way. And, no matter why the political establishment is behaving so insane, we need to do more to teach rational thinking to the majority of the public so they're be able to participate in the process. Right now, as the media has even pointed out the people in the South are the ones that are being hit the worst for their irrational denial of science about climate change and North Carolina that is currently going through one of the worst storms they've seen recently passed a law to ban climate change science from impacting government policy. Other Southern States have been doing similar things for decades; if they can use this to educate the voters and help elect the two relatively progressive nominees that's a start; but much more has to be done.