Kim Iversen. We don’t need another “Woke, Con-Spiritualist, Gen X Libertarian”. White Supremacy apologetics, Anti-Vax Paranoia, etc., by Quinton Mitchell

She’s not a horrible person, but I don’t get much from her opinions and they seem highly biased, reactionary, reactionary, and not reasearched that well. I think she has learning to do on issues, but she has a platform to spread her “contrarian” ideas to the masses and add to the paranoia that’s already out there. You hear the word shill a lot online, and in many ways despite her seeming “against the man”, I think she’s only libertarian as a rebuttal to progressive politics so conservatism can be sustained without verbally admitting it, yet, her Fruedian slips in her Tweets reveals a lot of where she is coming from.

Idaho, where Kim is from, is a lovely state with its own unique albeit small progressive elements, but hearing Kim Iversen talk it reminds me of a conservative person from Idaho who really didn’t grow up around a lot of diversity despite her having family who are Asian. Yet, she was indoctrinated within a largely white environment – which isn’t bad – yet, that can shape a person’s biases similarly to if it were the opposite. Put it this way, I’m sure many Right Wingers love her, despite her coming off as “progressive”. I feel she is closeted cheerleader for white supremacy without even realizing it because she equates the talks around white supremacy as being hostile towards white people but fails to get its a conversation about a system.

This take by Kim Iversen and Joe Rogan…is stupid. I’m sorry, it’s stupid. White Supremacists can’t be threats because they…wear khakis? Kim is so paranoid that white people will be “criminalized” that she’ll actually downplay people in a movement that has done violence in the USA such as terrorism.
Another goofball take by Kim. So liberals are leaving supposedly. OK. But Ryan Grim rebuts her claim by saying liberals are moving to liberal areas and her best comeback is “well, they’re not the same sort of Demcrats”. Oh really, can you elaborate more? She also doesn’t address the larger reasons behind the housing crisis such as the Federal Reserve’s easy money policy making home prices soar, innovations in online homebuying making home buying faster, etc.

I’m glad that Kim Iversen runs her mouth. Seriously. She could easily slip away as another innocuous ambiguous newscaster, yet, by her talking and her Tweeting, her true biases, thought process, and beliefs become more apparent.

See exhibits below….

.
She can’t understand why people are mad that a vigilante went to a protests which resulted in two deaths? She doesn’t get the symbolic nature of the case considering it was a BLM protests but Kyle being acquitted is a form of the state scaring people to not protests etc.

Forward: Before I get into the article, I want to write a quick list of white supremacists hate crimes, since it seems Kim Iverson is skeptical that white supremacy is a threat, largely since she feels doing anything about it would violate some sort of libertarian principle. But I’m not sure if she’s a libertarian necessarily, and could simply be a free thinker, yet her segments on Rising by The Hill to me have been helping to stoke a sense of mistrust, conspiracy, and even apologetics for right wing ideology.

After I wrote this, it struck me that Kim Iversen is following in the tradition of former MTV VJ, Kennedy, and MTV contributor, Kurt Loder, who are both libertarians. Yet, Kim’s style on her show, Rising by The Hill, seems to be picking up notes from Fox News’ Tucker Carlson, i.e., opining in real time, firmly anchored by a bias, rather than giving in-depth analysis of the issues she’s talking about and with nuance. Kim Iversen seems like a decent person. She’s continuously worked and built a career for herself, and that is commendable. However, I notice that she seems flat-footed when it comes to having a good pulse of what’s going on, and in many ways, I think her upbringing has left her a bit ignorant or unable to understand nuance on many issues, such as those relating to race. Her politics are all over the place, which isn’t problematic in and of itself, but discerning what Iversen believes is task. To me, she’s ultimately a “progressive Republican” with a tendency of spreading paranoid energy, and seems strongly influenced by her upbringing in Idaho, but she takes the “hip position” of being a libertarian (without stating it publicly), meaning she’s really nothing more than a Republican. As she decries the tyranny of the state, her political position ends up being nothing more than apologetics for Republican politics. She can be the most progressive conservative pundit on YouTube if she wants, but in reality, the Republican Party doesn’t care about any of her “progressive ideas”, yet she continuously muckrakes the Democratic Party – a party, which of course, can be embarrassing and counter-productive, but still the Democratic Party gives more people across the country, regardless of background, a sense of belonging (as opposed to the monolithic politics of the GOP).

White Supremacist Violence and/or Mass Shootings by White Suspects Crimes:

Payton S. Gendron (10 kills in Buffalo NY). Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols (168 Kills and 680 wounded). Dylan Roof (9 Kills at a church in Charleston, SC). Stephen Paddock (60 Kills and 411 wounded). Eric Rudolph (1 Killed and 111 injured at the Atlanta Olympics). James Huberty (21 Kills and 19 wounded at McDonalds during San Ysidro Massacre in 1984). Devin Kelley (26 Kills and 22 wounded at the Southerland Church Shootings in TX). Robert Long (8 Kills and 1 Wounded in Atlanta). Dimitrios Pagourtzis (10 Kills and 14 wounded at Santa Fe HS in Texas who was found with Nazi and Soviet regalia). Brenton Tarrant (51 Kills and 40 injured at a mosque in Christchurch, New Zealand). Buford Furrow Jr. (1 Kill and 5 wounded at a LA Jewish Day Care). John King, Lawrence Brewer, Shawn Berry (1 Kill of James Byrd Jr who was decapitated by being dragged by a truck in Jasper, TX). Frazier Glenn Miller (3 Kills at a Jewish Synagogue in Kansas). Robert Bowers (11 Kills and 7 wounded at a Jewish Synagogue in Pittsburgh). Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold (15 Kills and 17 wounded at Columbine HS, where the sole black victim was called the N-word before being shot while calling for his mother). James Harris Jackson (1 Kill with a sword of a black homeless man collecting cans in New York City, NY). Jeremy Joseph Christian (2 Killed and 1 Wounded in Portland OR). James Alex Fields (1 Killed by car and 35 wounded in Charlottesville. Trump supporter). John Earnest (1 Killed and 3 Wounded at Poway Synagogue). Gregory Bush (2 Killed in Jefferson Town KY). Kenneth Murray “Death” Mieske, Kyle Brewster, and Steve Strasser (1 Killed by baseball bat beating. Mulugeta Seraw was beated by Neo Nazis of W.A.R. in 1988 in Portland, Oregon. Brewster was found fighting alongside Proud Boys in Oregon in 2021). Jonathan Russell Kennedy (1 Murder and two attempted murders in Huntington Beach, CA, 1994). Erik R. Anderson (1 Fatal Stabbing of Native American, George Mondragon in 1996 in Huntington Beach, CA). Samuel Woodward (1 Kill of Ben Bernstein in Lake Forest, CA).

Intro in Kim Iversen’s Questionable Analysis on Ethan Crumbley and the Patriot Front March

There’s some controversy around Kim Iversen. I don’t hate her, and I will try to put her into context. Yet, she is quite a mystery. For a public figure she doesn’t have a Wikipedia page, not even a locked account that prevents public edits. Basic Google searches pulls up some information but not much about her background.

I don’t think she’s an evil person and I feel she’s fairly interested in the topics she speaks on. Yet, the controversy around Kim has been going on for a while but it really came to fruition with her “interesting” take of Oxford High School mass shooter, Ethan Crumbley. According to Kim, the reason the Sun publication showed an angelic photo of the mass shooter was because the media was trying to make it seem like all innocent white Christian males appear to be terrorists. She didn’t really miss the point as to why people were disappointed at the photo of Crumbley, in that she acknowledged that when people of color are shown in the media they are often depicted with the worst imagery, yet, Kim decided to be a contrarian for the sake of being one, by spinning as if showing an innocent photo of Crumbley was another attempt to “demonize” white males.

Honestly, it caught everyone off guard and left people scratching their heads. It is as if when progress about fair coverage relating race is happening, she felt she had to insert a contrarian opinion for the simple sake of doing so, which could be authentic, or could be for money reasons, i.e., it’s her job, but when you see her Twitter account response to criticism she doubled down on her defense of white Christian males (which makes sense considering she was raised in white society and has a white father and family members).

Traditionally, black people for example were always stigmatized via the media (something that Kim Iversen has acknowledged), e.g., just peek at George H.W. Bush’s campaign ad referring to Willie Horton. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AUxAMG8UqIw

Yet, even if we can all agree that racialized news coverage is bad, the fact that white supremacy is being analyzed seriously seems to have many people feeling uncomfortable, either out of fear of being unfairly associated with the movement, some who are angry that they feel black crime rates are displayed (despite has already stated there’s historical use of stats when referring to black people), or some people are living with a sense of false consciousness, in that America is largely based on white supremacy and people are naturally wired to act as if it doesn’t exists because that defies a certain set of morals mythologized within American culture such as “we are all individuals” or “all people are equal”, when in fact, many groups are not treated equally.  Talking about and combating white supremacy isn’t anti-white, where certainly in the past talking about black crime was anti-black considering the U.S has an explicit anti-black history.

The backlash to speaking about white supremacy comes from fear, in which there’s an inherent fear centering around reprisal, which is ironic because if people are terrified for reprisal (which isn’t or won’t happen), what they’re admitting is that in the past they used similar tactics to make minorities live in fear. Basically, their unfounded fear of reprisal is based on them understanding the horrible past of this nation. If logic were to persist, if white supremacy is not a thing, then why are there so many people eager to point out black crime statistics? If America wasn’t built on racism, then why do so many white people fear “reverse racism”?

If we were to isolate this take by Kim on Ethan Crumbley, sure, OK, we can leave it as an “agree to disagree, but really disagree” moment. Yet, just a few days later Kim Iversen on her Rising program by The Hill released a segment titled, “Kim Iversen: Joe Rogan Calls BS on Patriot Front March, Is the Group Backed by Feds?”, published on 9 December 2021, which when accessed by me on 13 December 2021, amounted a total of 512,000+ views. In this segment it is important to notice that Kim is strategically positioned in the segment in the middle of her two co-hosts, meaning she is the focal point of the video and steering the conversation. In the video, she referenced a Joe Rogan segment, featuring Matt Taibbi (Episode 1745), in which Joe calls into question a recent march of white supremacists called Patriot March that occurred in late November 2021 in Washington, D.C. Joe claims that because they’re “in shape”, and wearing the same clothes, etc., that they look like the Feds. Joe does state jokingly that he’s an unreliable source because he’s a comedian (which is interesting because if that’s the case they why take you seriously anytime?), but still double downs on the fact that they can’t be white supremacist because…they have drums, and they have Khakis?

Kim event got the leader of Patriot Front’s age wrong by claiming he’s eighteen years old (I’m assuming she read an article from 2017) but is about 23 or 24 years older having been born in 1998 according to the Southern Poverty Law Center (2021). Further, Kim if she just read a little more into this or at least provided more context for her audience, she would have discovered that Patriot Front has ties to the Daily Stormer, being one of the most popular white supremacist websites. According to the Southern Poverty Law Center (2021), “On November 3, 2017, roughly 30 members of Patriot Front marched through the University of Texas at Austin to the campus’s George Washington statue where Rousseau delivered a torchlit speech. The following day, Patriot Front members convened at Austin’s Monkeywrench Books with members of Daily Stormer and The Right Stuff meet-up groups for a flash demonstration.”

The fact that Patriot Front employs Flash Demonstrations seems to more evidence to detract from the idea that the November 2021 march was a Federal Law operation.

“The origins of Patriot Front lie in neo-Nazi organizing that began in 2015 at the message board IronMarch.org, itself an outgrowth of the community of dedicated fascists who commented at online forums such as 4chan and Stormfront, and allegedly founded by Russian nationalist Alexander Slavros. IronMarch in turn spun off the activist group AtomWaffen (German for “Atomic Bomb”) Division, whose members engaged in various far-right actions earlier this year.” (Southern Poverty Law Center, 2021). Lastly, Southern Poverty Law Center (2021) stated, “After an AtomWaffen member in Florida shot and killed two other members in May 2017, telling authorities the group was planning to blow up a nuclear plant, a number of AtomWaffen participants joined ranks with Vanguard America.”

Relating to Alexandr Slavros stated within the Southern Poverty Law Center (2021) article about Patriot Front, I find it interesting that Matt Taibbi being Russian (which is not a crime, and I don’t want to promote Russophobia) spoke against the Russia-Gate situation during the Trump Administration. I can understand and accept that the case was likely fraudulent, yet, it wasn’t entirely fraudulent in my opinion. My opinion, is that Russia-Gate took facts, omitted some facts, and conflated others in order to check the balance of power of Trump who did display a sense of being imbalanced himself, and also threatening to unravel US foreign policy especially with Russia whom he and others in his administration such as Rex Tillerson of Exxon Mobil and Michael Flynn had relations with. It was a flex of power not only to the Trump Administration who were creating their own unauthorized foreign policy, but it was a sign to leaders abroad, like Vladimir Putin, that the US State will go to about any means to protect our democracy from foreign influence.

Taibbi and other commentors such as Michael Blumenthal and Andrew Mate of The Grey Zone, rallied against Russia-Gate, but nowhere to my knowledge did they or have they admitted that Russia was providing online Far Right propaganda which influenced the Alt-Right which therefore fell under the tent camp strategy of Steve Bannon and Donald Trump. The only sort of Far-Right ideology spoken about by members of the Grey Zone often revolves around the Azimov Battalion in Ukraine, who were revealed to have received US military financing against Russia. In essence, Taibbi and others will call out Eastern European fascism and Nazism when it comes from a US ally to discredit US foreign policy, yet they remain silent on Russian Far Right ideology such as the popularity of thinkers like Aleksandr Dugin who provided essential literature for many in the Alt Right (alongside the writings of thinkers like Julius Evola). Taibbi and others effectively “threw out the baby with the bathwater” as an analogy. Yet, the US government has endangered the US public with Russia-Gate because they didn’t focus hard enough on the far-right ideology actually coming into the USA and West, but rather appropriate facts for their own Machiavellian politics.

Yet, back to Iverson, after showing the Joe Rogan segment laughs before going into the history of plausible or proven examples of state-sanction terror cells. Kim also shows screenshots from Twitter by people like Mr. Reagan, an obvious right-wing pundit, who did have a YouTube channel for a long time and went so far as alleging that Alexandria Ocasio Cortez was a fake politician and actress.  Kim goes into the background of Patriot Front in which she explains the group was a splinter group that broke away from a group called Vanguard who were the group that set up the Unite the Right Rally in Charlottesville, VA. Yet, Kim inserts some interesting commentary by stating they are “non-violent”, which might be true in theory, or at least that what’s they say to not bring poor press to their movement, yet, it seems Kim is saying they are non-violent as a way of dissuading any sort of threat by Patriot Front or influence they may have on other groups.

It’s as if Kim is undermining the potentiality of the movement because she’s coming from a libertarian mindset, e.g., she states, “the big question is, how big of a threat are these things though? Yes, do these things exists, yes. Do terrorists exist in all forms, yes. But how large of a threat? What are the American people willing to give up to root out this threat?”.

Before I criticize what Kim just said there, to be fair, the group, where leader Thomas Ryan Rousseau spoke, was relatively small (numbering around 100), and this is according to Ellie Silverman (2021) of The Washington Post, who further stated that the event was pushed by fake Twitter account. “It shows how a small troupe of fascists in uniform can … exploit the loopholes around a social media company like Twitter and absolutely make themselves look much more fearsome, look much more scary,” said Michael Edison Hayden, senior investigative reporter and spokesman for the Southern Poverty Law Center, “and give themselves a much better shot at getting the mainstream coverage they so desperately crave.” (Silverstein, 2021).

The likelihood of what happened at the march is either A) the anonymous Twitter account as owned by a person associated with Patriot Front who sent the message to rally, employing their “flash mob tactics”, but then quickly erased their account, or to give more credence to the idea that the Federal Authorities were involved, is B) the account was set up by law enforcement, with them knowing their “flash mob tactics”, to snuff out Patriot Front to get evidence of its members and gain intelligence on the group. Even if masked, the members had to get to the Capitol somehow, so traffic cameras or other means such as triangulating cellphones can easily build a possible registry of suspects.

But, saying the group was a false flag set up by the federal government seems unlikely, if not disingenuous (my favorite Joe Rogan word he uses a lot), since the authorities would have to recruit about 100 people to march and with 100 people you get the chance that at least one person would spill the beans, or a person that any of those 100 people knew could become suspicious and possibly spill the beans, thus jeopardizing the operation. The possibility of a leak would jeopardize any sort of integrity the government has and be disastrous, culminating in Congressional hearings, firings, even possible cause for actual white supremacists to appeal their cases or convictions, etc.

Joe and Kim’s take on the event possibly being a false flag event has an underlying element of conspiracy, and what one could extrapolate from that claim is that other hate marches or even the Capitol Insurrection itself was a false flag. This therefore takes away from the severity of these situations in an attempt to sweep them under the rug as quickly as possible since they are ammunition for government or activist to continue seeking reform against topics such as white supremacy.

Kim also offers some very thin and weak arguments about the group. She claims that because they have a “polished website” and that they seem well-organized, and that the leader is allegedly only an eighteen-year-old person, somehow means this group can’t be real or be a threat. What Kim and Joe seem to be missing is that white nationalist groups aren’t unsophisticated and have adapted to not looking like traditional Skinheads with red-laced jackboots, being out of shape Good Ole Boys reading Soldier of Fortune with a cache of weapons, or Klansmen. It’s not that hard to get a professional website made if you have a lot of people and tap into someone’s talents or even pay someone do set up your site for you. Also, even if the supposed founder of the movement is young, it doesn’t mean that he doesn’t have funding from powerful people who have fascist sentiments, similarly to how Richard Spencer came from money, set up the National Policy Institute (ran from his mother’s $3 Million dollar home), and had powerful connections such as with Stephen Miller from the Trump Administration whom he attended Duke University with (Graeme Wood, The Atlantic, 2017).

White Nationalists are not all junkies or meth-heads, or disenfranchised angry white youths, or men who have spent time in the prison system who are tatted up with Swastikas, but as Charlottesville proved, they can be a computer programmer, a cop, a military servicemember, a real estate agent, a college student, a bailiff, or even an adult actor, etc.

Note: The adult actor is Paul Kryscuk, whom according to Joseph Wilkenson (2020) of The New York Daily News, is a 35-year-old reported porn star, who sold multiple manufactured weapons to 21-year-old then-Marine Liam Collins, the feds said. Kryscuk allegedly mailed the illegal DIY weapons from his homes in New York and Idaho to Collins in North Carolina. Kryscuk and Collins were regulars on the online neo-Nazi forum Iron March back in 2017 before the site was shut down, according to the feds. During that time, they recruited Jordan Duncan, a 26-year-old ex-Marine and military contractor, and Justin Hermanson, a 21-year-old current U.S. Marine. According to the feds, the crew filmed a “training montage” of themselves shooting guns near Kryscuk’s home in Boise, Idaho. The video ends with all four giving the “Heil Hitler” salute under a black sun flag, a Nazi symbol. The phrase “Come home white man” then appears on screen to conclude the video. Kryscuk’s vehicle was also spotted at two different Black Lives Matter rallies in Boise, Idaho, over the summer, according to the indictment. Kryscuk and Duncan later discussed shooting the protesters, with Kryscuk calling their group a “death squad,” the feds said. Collins, who was enlisted until September, and Duncan had moved to Boise to work closer to Kryscuk before they were all arrested in late October, according to the Justice Department. (Wilkerson, 2020).

As we can see with Mr. Kryscuk, who lived in Idaho where Kim Iverson calls home, he was attached to IronMarch, similarly to Mr. Rosseasu of Patriot Front, where these groups interface with the Daily Stormer, Atomwaffen SS, and possibly even foreign Neon Nazi sources in Russia.

The analysis of Joe and Kim are both weak and lazy at best. The burden of proof to prove if this is a false flag is on them, but Kim especially didn’t do any sort of investigative research to prove if they aren’t real. Her skepticism is based on a libertarian position, mixed with historical precedent that the government has been involved with groups like this before (for example, Red Squads that infiltrated Leftist groups in the 1960s), but no actual investigative muscle to back up her opinion, despite being an employee of a multi-billion-dollar media corporations that owns hundreds of new stations across the USA.

It’s my suspicion that Joe had his take because he’s tired of Left-Wing politics particularly that centering around the topics of white privilege, wokeness, gender inclusion, gender assignment, etc.

Joe seems agitated by the Left because he’s a comedian and many in the comedian community are revolting against cancel culture. In the segment with Matt Taibbi, Rogan when talking about the Rittenhouse Case, insinuated that black people were so passionate about racial issues that they didn’t even know the victims were white, alleging he has black friends – who remain unknown – who told him they didn’t know the victims were black (I am assuming this is Charlamagne da God who was on the JRE with comedian Andrew Schulz on episode 1314).

Joe then shares a meme, showing the gas station owners of the Car Source that Rittenhouse was allegedly defending who are possibly from the Indian subcontinent, and the victims who were white. This is important because when showing the meme, Joe smugly says “I have a bunch of memes. I have a folder of my phone”, and this seems to be in reference to the backlash Rogan has received on his Instagram in which he’s posted questionable memes, such as one insinuating that the authoritarian right makes strong men and the libertarian right makes good times (silly, because conservatives don’t really care about personal freedoms including the marijuana Joe likes to smoke), but the left spectrum makes weak men and hard times. It’s easy for him to tap into the already existing mistrust of the mainstream media, take out his annoyance with the way things are, and use his platform/popularity to convince people that it’s all a hoax.

Lastly, Kim in this segment states that she was raised in Idaho which in the past was the headquarters of the Aryan Brotherhood near cities like Coeur d’Alene and Lake Hayden (now located in West Virginia) in the upper panhandle of the state. She states that people never really saw them as a threat, which is partially true, considering I grew up in the Pacific Northwest as child and later as a young adult, and remember counter-protestors at these events when showed on the local news. People would show up to protest the Aryan Brotherhood and other groups when they marched, yet, what Kim fails to admit is that this isn’t the 1980s or 1990s anymore. Back then, the United States and specifically Idaho still operated with a sense of white racial majority politics. White America could afford to not take them seriously since society then was still largely controlled by white people, e.g., most TV sitcoms featured white families (and, to even show an interracial relationship for example even in the 1990s was still taboo as to not anger the “Middle America” demographic), every President up to that point had been a white Christian male, etc.

Yet, fast forward, come after the election of the first black/bi-racial President in Barak Obama, the election of the first black and Indian American Vice President with Kamala Harris, and an evolution in society as far as acceptance of gay marriage, the inclusion of immigrants such as those from Latin America, the growing popularity of socialist or progressive politics, and the fight to include Trans people into everyday life, one could argue that white nationalists are gaining steam from this progress. The time Kim grew up in Idaho, gay marriage wasn’t even legal anywhere in the United States, the word Socialism was a political campaign killer, and BIPOC liberation politics had been largely anesthetized by the corporate white-wash appropriation of the MLK “can we all get along” iconography (despite MLK having socialist sentiments merged with Christian ideology). The change in the overall culture of America from when Kim grew up in Idaho to now is further amplified by advancements in technology where at the time Kim is referring to the fastest internet speed as dial-up, whereas now is lightspeed broadband communication across the globe, as well newer notions such as the dark web, using crypto currency, having aliases, etc. For example, the company Gab, located in Clarks Summit, PA., BitChute based out o of the United Kingdom, and Epik, located in Sammamish, WA, host white supremacists and Neo-Nazi websites, blogs, videos, torrents, etc., where Gab was associated with the 2018 Pittsburgh Synagogue shooting. The world Kim is nostalgically looking back on didn’t have 8chan, BitChute, Gab, Parlor, Epik, etc.

When you add the differences between the past to the present with clear examples of white terrorism, then it’s unwise at best for Kim Iversen to simply be downplaying the threat movement of white supremacy. Hell, Fox News itself with commentators like Tucker Carlson openly panders to fascists rhetoric bordering upon “blood and soil” politics, and let’s not forget, Emperor Nero in exile himself, Trump and all the toxicity he and his administration platformed (including Steve Bannon going on a tour of Europe to inspire nationalists, influence EU elections, and set up a training center in Italy to train Right Wing activists).

According to Silverman (2021), “There were more than 5,000 cases of white supremacist propaganda in 2020, a near doubling from the prior year, the ADL found. The Patriot Front accounted for more than 80 percent.”

Is Kim Iversen really “Anti-Establishment”?

Kim Iversen despite appearing as if she’s anti-establishment, is establishment in that she is employed by The Hill and represented by N.S. Bienstock, which is a major TV talent agency representing the likes of establishment news figures such as Dan Rather, Chris Matthews, Anderson Cooper, Bill O’Reilly. United Talent Agency acquired N.S. Bienstock on 22nd Jan 2014. Grace N.S. Bienstock is owned by the private company United Talent Agency which is one of the top 7 talent agencies in Hollywood.

When it comes to the Rising segment, The Hill is owned by Nexstar Media Group, NASDAQ symbol NXST, which had Fiscal Year 2020 revenue streams of $4.5 billion with a Fiscal Year 2016 total equity position of $284.35 billion. Nexstar, owns TV stations across the United States who are affiliates with the major TV networks (e.g., CBS, ABC, NBC, etc.), and owns shares of Food Network.

According to OpenSource.com (2021), Nexstar Media Group has donated to both Democrats and Republican politicians such as in 2014 with $2,600.00 to Mitch McConnell; $1,000 to Adam Kinzinger in 2014; $5,000 to both Hillary Clinton, Chuck Schumer, and Donald Trump in 2016; $2,500 to Joe Manchin in 2016, $5,000 to Jim Jordan, and $10,000 to Team Graham in 2020 which I assume is Lindsay Graham who went up for re-election in South Carolina, etc.  So, Nexstar does lobby and donate to politicians like most corporations do.

What happened to Krystal Ball and Seegar Enjeti?

Before the current cast of Rising with Kim Iversen, Ryan Grim, etc., it features Krystal Ball and Seegar Enjeti. Krystal representing more of leftist viewpoint and Seegar representing more a conservative view, were quite popular, but were oddly fired from the segment. It is my belief that The Hill, being an extension of Nexstar (a major corporation most know nothing about, yet, that’s the nature of many corporations), were trying to overstep the traditional monopoly of the big TV corporations so they focused on YouTube in a way that touched into alternative media market yet still trying to keep the traditional news segment feel.

Yet, it seems that Krystal and Seegar were too good at their jobs, where in many cases Krystal’s left leaning commentary that rallied against corporatism likely sealed her fate. She worked for a corporation arguable with conservative politics, spoke against capitalism, became a relatively popular figure, and then she was canned. Yet, Kim Iversen was brought on with an enhanced model of focusing on click-bait and to covertly anchor the show with libertarian, i.e., right wing, i.e., capitalist, sentiments. Whether, Kim thinks she’s simply defending libertine ideals, or our notion of individualism based on classical liberal ideals like David Hume, the truth is that ideology has largely manifested itself obviously as Republican, and therefore as corporatist by nature. Essentially, sure we have our individual rights, but this notion of individual rights is also the basis for corporate personhood, which is no surprise that libertarian billionaires like the Koch Family funding right-wing grassroots movements.

Kim Iversen seems progressive enough, but underlying her psychology is what could be considered “red pilling”, i.e., opening the window to turn listeners into right wing viewers suspicious of authority and slowing attempting to chip away at the progressive gains the left has made. Her left leaning counterpart in Ryan Grim, though often inserting his counter opinion to Kim is often overshadowed, which to me insinuates that Ryan Grim is coming for a centrist position. What we’re left with is what we have if we were to look at Congress, i.e., a centrist’s democratic party lethargically talking about progressive talking points stolen from the few progressives in that party (as seen through Ryan Grim) but accompanied by an ever-growing fascist Republican party.

She’s hungry for clicks, she’s not doing this for free (she’s in it for a pay check and career), she comes from the radio world so she knows the power of sensationalism, it’s a matter of time before she’s on the Joe Rogan Podcast, she’s fairly stubborn when dealing with criticism instead of seeing it as an opportunity to grow her worldview, and likely will get crowned by the Right Wing as a darling sooner than later. A part of me feels she’s just being controversial for the sake of controversy because he’s aware that it’s about the algorithm and clicks, and this likely comes from experience in radio, where such shock tactics are needed, but this is amplified by the medium of social media like YouTube.

Another contrarian in a landscape of contrarians competing for attention.

Unpacking Kim’s politics

Kim Iversen has an ambiguous politics, similarly to that of Joe Rogan (note: if interested read by article titled, Is Joe Rogan a Neoplatonist? The syncretic politics of Starship Troopers, zany ESP, magick, the Human Potential Movement, Howard Hughes, Disney and the RAND Corporation by Quinton Mitchell).

But, that’s her right. Not everyone has to fit into a proper definition, necessarily, but I don’t really like Kim’s political analysis. I think she comes off as “progressive” but her underlying worldview is libertarian, where libertarianism despite having representation on the left, e.g., socio-anarchism in the tradition of thinkers like Noam Chomsky (author, of Manufacturing Consent (1988) with Edward S. Herman). However, the truth is that libertarianism within US political history has always been an extension of conservative and Far Right politics – the prevailing ideology for most of the United States history – and in many ways libertarianism has been a politically correct way for the Far Right to appeal to mainstream audience. For example, the libertarian positions of individualism and property rights often translates to segregation (such as with State Rights used the desegregation debates), not supporting social services which might go the poor/minorities/or immigrants, and maintaining an economic ideology – capitalism, i.e., a variant of colonialism – which exploits labor so owners who traditionally are predominately white keep ownership over the means of production. The very basis of property rights in the United States were originally written for white male landowners who were originally intended as being the only ones allowed to vote considering many had a Republican model idea to government, before Democratic ideas came about to expand the franchise to common people.

Whether she admits it or not, she’s a libertarian, but I define her as a Gen X 3rd Position syncretic libertarian and contrarian wavering in postmodern fashion between New Age, Far Right, the Left, etc., while using click-bait and suspiciously stupid opinions (considering, she’s represented by one of the top talent agencies in Hollywood, even though I thought Hollywood was now called “Hollyweird” by the Qanon crowd). How can she ever allege a conspiracy or shadowy “deep state” when in fact she’s an extension of institutions of power? The conspiracy is she’s a populist libertarian talking on a corporate media network. She’s really a libertarian, leaning in the vein of libertarianism one would find in the ideology that Joe Rogan displays. With her coming from a radio background and now getting more notoriety via the internet, Kim is picking up on hot button issues like COVID-19, China vs. the United States, buzzwords like the Deep State, or any other hot topic floating in the collective consciousness, i.e., the zeitgeist.  

She like Russell Brand really dug into COVID-19 skepticism. She is a supporter of Palestine which might give her points with elements of the political Left coming from a de-colonialist tradition but also, she might get points from the racist elements of the Right Wing where supporting Palestine or even radical Jihadism is because they are antisemites (for example, the case of Devon Arthurs, who is Neo Nazi associated with Atomwaffen SS, converted to Islam and his roommates were planning on blowing up a nuclear facility in Florida, per the source A.C. Thompson, 2018, ProPublica. Also, Ethan Melzer, a former private in the US Army, was charged with treasons for divulging information about his Army unit to a Satanic Neo Nazi group called Order of Nine Angels, per Kyle Rempfer, 2020, Army Times).

She has spoken against US interventionism in Latin American nations, which is good. Yet, she doesn’t believe that white supremacy isn’t as big of threat as what the media is saying, even though the media never talked about it in the past at least as being indicative of a growing social trend, so the fact the media is finally acknowledging white supremacy doesn’t mean it’s a false story but, more so we’re finally pointing the light at white supremacy. Sure, we can debate the scope of white supremacy, for example, there’s not hundreds of thousands of hate crimes occurring, yet, white supremacy can’t be measured with a scope of simply being large or small, because all it takes is a few individuals to conduct terrorist attacks, and white supremacy isn’t always with terrorism but cast with ballots at the voting booth. Whether she wants to admit it or not, Donald Trump’s MAGA is an expression of white supremacy, or what I like to call “white settler politics”.

Deconstructing the aesthetics of Kim’s political ideology

Before I go on, I must state that I don’t think everyone in list below is bad or entirely problematic, yet, some are, yet, all of the people listed below represent the “alternative space”, and this space seems influential on Kim Iversen’s ideas.

Kim could be best associated with the alternative media sphere that has Jimmy Dore (who spends a lot of his time attacking progressives for not being aggressive enough despite not realizing that a person such as Alexandria Ocasio Cortez is just one person in the House of Representatives who has to send legislation through a burdensome progress of drafting, committee, vote, Senate review/approval/or kick-back, and Presidential signature); Russell Brand; Graham Elwood, Joe Rogan (who has platformed and joked around with figures like Gavin McInnes – founder of the Proud Boys -, Alex Jones who shilled for Donald Trump and has ties to Roger Stone, Jordan B. Peterson [multiple times], figures of the Intellectual Dark Web, and any array of thinkers bordering upon being kooks); the Useful Idiots with Katie Halper (who really isn’t problematic at all – whom, interestingly hasn’t been invited to the Joe Rogan Experience. Kim Iversen has participated on Katie Halper’s podcast), and Matt Taibbi (a critic of Russia-Gate, yet, being Russian he seems to have bias and can’t seem to acknowledge the fact that even if Russia-Gate was fraudulent it doesn’t mean it entirely was, but even if it was entirely false, Far Right ideology from East Europe such as Russia and Ukraine, e.g., the concept of a Nazbol or monarchism, did influence the American Right Wing which therefore falls into the spectrum of MAGA politics. For example, Richard Spencer and his follower sang at Charlottesville, “You will not replace us” but also “Russia is our friend”), Glenn Greenwald from The Intercept, possibly The Grey Zone with Max Blumenthal and Aaron Maté (critics of NATO, Russia Gate, Israel, the CIA, etc.), maybe a little Peter Schiff (an proponent of Austrian Economics spanning Fredrich Hayek, Murray Rothbard – a father of anarcho-capitalism, the Mont Perelin Society, and Ludwig Von Mises), sprinkle in some Ron Paul (an influential figure in anti-Federal Reserve politics, the Tea Party, etc. But, we can’t forget about Libertarian Presidential nominee, Gary Johnson, whom Joe Rogan admitted to voting for in 2016), and Tulsi Gabbard (who is pretty much the presidential choice for everyone listed before, yet Tulsi is an active duty military officer, who seems to be playing the same game that Kim Iversen is playing, i.e., being appealing to the Leftism developed by Bernie Sanders, the state via her ties to the Pentagon via her committee assignment to the Armed Services Committee, but also appealing to post-Tea Party libertarianism one finds on the political right).

Loose cultural markers or aesthetics that float around the world that Kim’s ideology wavers around are the following: A distrust of mainstream media (MSM) especially those associated with liberal politics such as CNN or MSNBC (where the MSM have issue of ethics and integrity, yet, to assume that mainstream media doesn’t do any good job at all is false, and for some reason conservatives don’t consider Fox News to be MSM), Naturalism, holistic medicine, anti-vaccinations (an easy way to gain followers in a heated debate on vaccines, but anti-vax culture often revolves around conspiracy theorists in the traditional of the New World Order, fears of racial replacement or de-population, the Christian Right, etc.), con-spirituality (i.e., conspiracy spirituality, the nexus between conspiracy theory culture and New Age spirituality such as zodiac, charms, UFOs, parapsychology, etc., where New Age spiritualism is a successor of older Occultic and Neoplatonic ideologies mainly from the late 19th to early 20th century such as of Alastair Crowley, Austen Osman Spare, or Madame Blavatsky, where some these older ideas did have intersection with right-wing ideologies, i.e., Nazi Occultism. For example, take the curious case of the MAGA Shaman arrested for the January 6th Insurrection. Think of it as when the Right Wing trips too much acid at Burning Man or when hippies and paleo-conservatism merge), Boomerism, Generation X MTV generation cynicism (a spoiled generation, despite being the product of the divorce generation of their Boomer Parents, from America’s Goldie Lock’s era of the 1990s after the Cold War but whom where anti-establishment largely because corporations appropriated anti-establishment fashion, e.g., punk, rap, grunge, etc.), comedians revolting against cancel culture (despite comedy often being a cover for actual oppression or further stigmatizing historically marginalized groups), a cynicism towards wokeness (e.g., insinuating that corporate America is only being inclusive now for profits as opposed to being humanist, when this argument fails because capitalism catered to white supremacy but I guess people didn’t have a problem with them?), the Manosphere (appealing to men’s rights in the face of what some consider to be the radical feminist takeover of institutions and culture, particularly at the detriment of white heteronormative males, which has spawned a subculture of dating gurus, Incels, but also women who can profit by simply saying what these men want to hear, i.e., “I’m not like other women”), T.E.R.Fs (Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminist), skepticism towards government or central authority (despite displaying a sense of disassociation because the right wing is anti-government in many ways, often because they feel they can’t benefit from government as they use to, but in other ways many support police and militarism, but they seem to fix this my favoring “paramilitary” culture, i.e., militia culture), liberalism based around the rights of the individual which naturally leads more so towards a favoring or apologetic of capitalism (despite having some socialist sympathies, but we have to remember Gen X was born and indoctrinated during the Cold War, so the recent Millennial and Zoomer generation acceptance of Leftism isn’t as strong necessarily within Gen X, i.e., it’s still a taboo ideology that defies their materialist needs, career ambitions, etc., considering many are in managerial positions now), decentralization, etc.

Her politics could be understood as a synchronistic 3rd position that merges elements of left and right. An overlap between the anti-establishment left of old mixed with elements or right-wing libertarianism, yet she seems firmly based on conservatism (her default position), which could be from the fact she was born and raised in a very conservative state, with one of the largest white populations, during the Cold War, etc. Then we must consider her personality, which could be naturally contrarian for the sake of being so (which is just one possible element of her personality, i.e., I am not saying she’s an overall bad person, i.e., we all have our quirks), and when you compound this by the fact that she is a career-woman (I’m assuming she identities with feminism) she likely has a chip on her shoulder. I am not saying that being a strong empowered career driven woman is bad at all (I support it), but when factoring in her own personality, it could translate that she essentially double-down hard on her beliefs to not relent since relenting even if she has a bad take on a subject is a form of losing. Appearing wrong or giving credit when due might be possibly hard for Kim in that she’s possibly self-conscious about what people think of her (getting into Twitter beefs), yet she doesn’t see it this way and double downing on bad takes.

It’s anti-establishment and seemingly progressive so it can appeal to actual progressive people, yet the issue with 3rd Position politics is that even though it seems natural, and many are prone to moderate politics, when you’re platforming 3rd position politics to a mass audience, typically through an opinion piece format such as what Kim Iversen does, then you do pose the risk of legitimatizing actual Far Right ideology and end up seeming likely a disingenuous centrists who cherry picks elements from whatever side of the spectrum they feel comfortable with.

Generation X

All these people, expect for Jimmy Dore, could be grouped into the Generation X demographic, i.e., millennials before millennials, but unlike millennials, they’re more influenced by the precursor Baby Boomer generation, and weren’t as emersed with technology as Millennials. For Generation X, technology was there but it was still speculative, such as William Gibson Cyberpunk, Johnny Mnemonic, The Matrix, etc., but the physical world wasn’t as technologically integrated as it was with Millennials and Zoomers. In other words, Gen X being older now, isn’t as nuanced around technology despite using technology, and their worldview whether they admit it or not is influenced by a nostalgia of how things were. In other words, sometimes Gen X misses the mark because they’re not as technologically emersed as what they think they are. For example, understanding certain memes might go over the heads of some Gen Xers because they’re older and not as culturally engulfed in the levels and sublevels of contemporary pop culture.

What I notice with people like Joe Rogan for example, is that he sounds old or lacks a sense of gravitas where the world is now. His podcast ends up simply being “Joe talking to Joe”, where it’s a platform for him sharing his opinions more so than really challenging his own opinions or even that of others. As a Millennial myself who is about to be 35 years old, I’m getting “up there”, yet Generation X is already “up there” yet Generation X was one the most prolific “youth generations”, probably on par with teenagers right after World War II, i.e., they were the MTV Reality TV (Real World, Road Rules) generation meaning that they defy age in a traditional sense. They’re older but are frozen in youth. Kim Iversen’s news coverage could be defined as when Tool listeners, with all of its Jungian psychology and appeals to the hippie moniker of “It’s all a lie man!” from the 1990’s enter institutions of power but end up not being as progressive as what they think they actually are.

Generation X was defined by postmodernism. Postmodernism being a philosophical worldview that was a reactionary movement to the objective truth claims (grand narratives or meta-truths) proposed by modernism or structuralism, e.g., the postmodernist rejecting the claim that science will save us all. To the postmodernist there is no grand truth but various truths meaning reality is ultimately subjective since most alleged truths are often biased by those who state such truths, or there are limitations in what humans can understand. The goal of presenting this subjective worldview was to undermine oppression that postmodernist blamed on the objective truth claims of objective truths. Postmodernism resulted in a merging of high-art with low-art (pop culture), a general sense of nihilism considering no truth could be objectively determined, but overall postmodernism, outside of being a philosophical worldview, is also a condition resulting from when capitalism reaches its zenith, i.e., late-stage capitalism.

If postmodernism could be easily defined, I refer to it as modern people existentially living as individuals within late-stage capitalism, in which the landscape is dominated by corporations who recycle culture but also use clever ways of shrouding power, conspiracy theories are endemic since people can’t discern between factual information or misinformation, people communicate through pop culture references, and no one really knows who is running the show system systems are highly complex and interwoven often creating problems by proxy of being so complicated.

Generation X was defined by this. They were the byproducts of Reaganomic consumerism, consumption, TV, the declining crime rate from the 80s into the 90s, and the general sense of global peace and American exceptionalism after the Cold War ended. The United States was the sole hegemonic force in the world, exploiting global supply chains built off cheap labor from America’s now competitor in China, and corporatism dictated culture. Yet, Gen Xers despite living in this relatively peaceful time, have a tendency for punk rebelliousness, where punk itself emerging in the 1970s, could be considered a form of postmodern music in that it revolts against order and plays with nihilism, yet, it became just another commodified movement of capitalism considering there is no real escaping capitalism.

I know all this because I was born in 1987, so I am an older Millennials, i.e., I’m Gen X’s baby brother who grew up with same tropes and cultural influences despite not being old enough to adequately partake, yet my childhood was still dictated by a sense of corporate culture (Beavis and Butthead, Daria, Liquid TV, The Simpsons), aggressive campaign marketing to children, etc. If you ever read the book White Noise (1985) by Don DeLillo, my generation of Millennials are the baby charter of Wildmer, i.e., a baby born into a nineteen-eighties household absorbing CNN doomsday footage.

Idaho and Bio.

Boise is like a smaller Denver, yet development has grown rapidly largely since people form California migrated to the state for affordability reasons, similarly to how Californians flocked to states like Arizona. What do you notice about both states? They are traditionally very conservative such as Arizona being known not only for suntans, retirement communities, a love of John Wayne aesthetics, strict watering laws, and memories of late 1990s commercials featuring Arizona State University Girls Gone Wild footage, but also Barry Goldwater and John McCain neoconservatism. Not only do you have a local conservatism, but you have a conservative influx by newcomers mainly from places like California who fear taxes, dislike big cities, support the police, but want the convenience of nice homes, shopping centers with everyone favorite Cheesecake Factory or P.F. Chang’s, perfect suburban high schools, etc. It’s as if Orange County in the heyday of its John Birch Society paleoconservative phase landed in Arizona and Idaho. Cities and towns centering around Boise (located in the region called the Treasure Valley) include Nampa, Eagle, Meridian, Star, Emmett, Caldwell, etc.

I am familiar with Idaho. I lived in the Pacific Northwest in Washington State, and with my father being military, I stayed at Mountain Home Air Force Base for a short period of time since my family moved all over the place, but later in life, my first serious relationship in college was with a woman from a small town just outside Boise. When I traveled to Idaho to meet my girlfriend’s family and attend her cousin’s wedding (as the only black person there which wasn’t a problem), Boise was growing, but it was still relevantly new as far as being a “happening city”. In other words, Zillow or Realtor.com hadn’t gotten its hands on Boise quite yet. This was right around the time of Boise State’s iconic win versus Oklahoma in the Fiesta Bowl with the famous Statue of Liberty play.

She was born and raised in Idaho on March 28, 1980 (Alchetron.com, 2021). She attended Capital High School in Boise, ID (Metrobiography.com, 2021), and is a trained jazz drummer (Alchetron.com, 2021). It probably wasn’t until she got to college at The University of California – Davis (majoring in philosophy), where she first got her true sense of diversity and be able to break free, with UC-Davis being accessible to both metropolitan Sacramento and San Francisco. Yet, even California itself isn’t the most diverse state overall. Sure, in metropolitan regions, yes, but the State of California itself – same as everywhere else in the United States – does have a history or racism and segregation which culminated in segregated and often poorer/people-of-color communities. We often hail the West Coast as progressive but in many ways the West Coast is symbolic of the Dream of Manifest Destiny, i.e., white Zionism, where Western states did purposely segregate people of color, e.g., Portland, Oregon with Sunshine Laws (curfews), The Oregon Territory barring African Americans from settling after the Civil War in which Confederate settlers moved into the territory, the eradication of Native Tribes, discrimination against Hispanics even if they were native to California before the American take-over, etc.

In other words, whatever diversity Kim was exposed to when was attending college in late-1990s, it likely wasn’t the best depiction of diversity and even if there was diversity this was in a time when people didn’t analyze structural racism or oppression as much. This was the time of the MTV era 1990s where it seemed the “world was perfect” under corporatism and corporate America.

Kim being from Idaho which for most of its existence has been a predominately white state, expect for pockets of Tribal Lands such as those of the Nez Perce tribe, a significant Hispanic population due to the state’s reliance on agriculture, and others such as small demographic of Asian Americans, yet, very few African Americans traditional (outside of college towns like Boise, i.e., Boise State University). There’s also a very large Mormon population, arguably with the second largest Mormon population outside of Utah. There is also a significant Basque community in Idaho who hail from Basque Country in Northern Spain and Southern France.

According to Alchetron.com (2021), Kim worked for radio stations such as in California such as KDVS, KDND, and KWOD, but also co-hosted a show in Indiana called WAZY Wake-Up Crew with Big Jake and Kim Iversen on WAZY-FM. Yet, she received her own show in Austin, TX, Your Time with Kim Iversen on KAMX, and she has co-hosted the radio show Loveline. She has done stints as news reporter for News 12 Networks and as a VJ for Concert TV. Kim as a diverse portfolio of experiences which is good for her and her career.

Kim’s Ethnicity, Biracialism in White Spaces, and understanding orientalism (the sexualization and mystification of Asian Women) in relation to white supremacy

Kim is of Vietnamese and Danish-American descent. Her Vietnamese lineage likely comes from the Vietnam War Era where many Vietnamese refugees were resettled throughout the United States such as California, Louisiana, etc. So, likely she has anti-Communist beliefs because her family fled Communist Vietnam. I am not sure if her father is a war veteran but many veterans (just like Earl Wood’s, i.e., Tiger Woods dad) took Vietnamese wives. She was also raised in the Cold War in a conservative state meaning she likely grew up in a home that favored Ronald Reagan. Being in a home led by a white father, which isn’t bad, it’s easy to see that Kim grew up “white”. Sure, she was a minority in many ways and likely had connections to her Asian roots, but the environment around her was overwhelmingly white conservative, so she was indoctrinated with that belief structure of Republicanism.

Being partially Asian likely wasn’t a problem since Asian Americans were often treated as “model minorities” and it’s not uncommon for white men to marry Asian women. There’s nothing wrong with interracial marriage or love, yet, in relation to white supremacy, Asian woman are often victims of orientalism, i.e., Asian women are casted or lusted over as being mysterious exotics with submissive and consoling characteristics, and often not burdened by white supremacy as other groups of color traditionally.

Since Asian Americans are often seen to be treated with model minority status (which is a controversial term as stated by Audrea Lin (2018) in which she stated the model-minority myth obscures the vast differences among Asian-Americans), the truth is that Asian woman are often sexualized through orientalism. One could assume that the Far Right does tolerate Asian Americans despite when they need to activate white supremacy against Asian Americans to remind who is “on top of the totem pole”. It might sound off record, but for example with the Alt-Right online communities there is a love of anime for example, where women are often depicted with hyper-sexualized and white-washed features.

Audrea Lin (2018) of The New York Times wrote about white supremacy’s fetish for Asian women in an article titled, The Alt Right’s Asian Fetish. The article discusses how Andrew Anglin (founder of the Daily Stormer), Richard Spencer, Mike Cernovich, John Derbyshire, and Kyle Chapman all dated, had sexual relations, and/or married Asian women. Lin (2018) even references Charleston AME Church shooter, Dylan Roof, who stated that Asians “could be great allies of the white race,”. Lin (2018) also references Adolf Hitler, who stated, ““I have never regarded the Chinese or the Japanese as being inferior to ourselves,” Adolf Hitler said in 1945. “They belong to ancient civilizations, and I admit freely that their past history is superior to our own.””. Lastly, Lin (2018) interestingly points out that the Alt-Right fetish for Asian woman could be in part due to white women more so adopting feminism.

We must remember that Japan as an Axis power and to this day is a homogenous nation that has visible nationalist parties, paramilitary groups, etc., and this fact of course resonates with the Alt Right. For example, when it comes to showcasing history in the West, history is often dominated by Greco-Roman or Dark Ages European culture, yet, there is a soft spot for the aesthetics of Asian cultures such as that of the Japanese (for example, Samurai), yet, the cultures of let’s say Africa before slavery is pretty much non-existent within mainstream historical documentaries, etc.   

Like many minority children living in predominately white spaces or multi-racial children, especially before society started talking about Critical Race Theory, often have a sense of identity crisis. Children of color are often the sole representatives of what other’s think their group is or how they see them on TV. For example, being a black child in suburbia but people assume that child to be like black people they see on TV, i.e., hip, tough, athletic, not academic, etc. Kim likely experienced this to a varying degree. For example, particularly as a female in a white environment and in a nation where beauty standards for the longest were catered to a European aesthetic of beauty, she likely had some issues with identity. Assuming she is cisgender heteronormative, most of the boys she likely liked growing up where obviously white. In other words, she was fitting into a culture that was predominantly white and emulated that culture’s view on the world (remembering this was the 1980s and 1990s – nowhere near as progressive as what we have now), becoming an apologist or defender of that culture, despite always being slightly on “the outside” of it.

If she adopted the worldview, politics, beauty standards, gender roles, and possibly even racial biases or racial lack of awareness (cultural sensitivity) of the predominate group, she was able to fit in and be just like any other kid, yet, I’m sure she’s experienced at least a little racism or ignorance while growing up as a kid.

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/06/his-kampf/524505/

https://alchetron.com/Kim-Iverson

https://web.archive.org/web/20210119133721/https://www.oregonlive.com/news/2021/01/kyle-brewster-convicted-in-notorious-1988-hate-crime-killing-seen-at-pro-trump-rallies-in-salem-portland.html

https://www.baltimoresun.com/tn-dpt-me-hb-robert-rundo-20181026-story.html

https://www.opensecrets.org/political-action-committees-pacs/nexstar-broadcasting-group/C00567388/expenditures/2014

https://www.opensecrets.org/political-action-committees-pacs/nexstar-broadcasting-group/C00567388/expenditures/2014

https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2021/12/06/white-supremacist-dc-march-patriot-front/

https://sports.yahoo.com/porn-star-three-marines-white-193600121.html

https://www.opensecrets.org/political-action-committees-pacs/nexstar-broadcasting-group/C00567388/expenditures/2020

https://web.archive.org/web/20190622084327/https://www.kimiversen.com/

https://mobile.twitter.com/kimiversenshow?lang=en

https://www.armytimes.com/news/your-army/2020/06/22/us-soldier-plotted-with-satanic-neo-nazis-to-ambush-his-own-unit-overseas-feds-say/

https://www.propublica.org/article/california-murder-suspect-atomwaffen-division-extremist-hate-group

How the system helped curtail police reform by Quinton Mitchell

How the system helped curtail police reform by Quinton Mitchell

Photo Credit. David Ryder of Getty Images

Quick Summary:

First off, I don’t hate police officers. I think that police are needed, yet, police and the entire correctional system needs reform, especially when it comes to dealing with the public as opposed to legitimate criminals that pose a legitimate threat to society. There’s always room for improvement, ranging from tougher barrier of entry when wanting to become a cop, centralized oversight and a national database of all police and any misconducts they do, a national gun violence database, house arrests over incarceration, solving the homeless and housing crisis, improving mental health, gun control, smart legalization of drug, intelligence gathering before engaging suspects, wellness and job programs in prisons, reducing radicalizing material on social media such as on YouTube, and reducing the number of laws on the books so there’s less laws to enforce.

I don’t worship police, but police need to leave good people alone and we need to minimize petty altercations that turn violent. I would argue that cops are effective at enforcing civil penalties (fines), which in and of itself is questionable because it reveals that police are largely serving in a tax collector capacity, yet, their track record when it comes to preventing violent crime is questionable. Many victims of police brutality weren’t necessarily violent criminals or weren’t criminals at all, yet, it seems actual violent criminals just gang members, bikers, etc., tend to operate with immunity. In other words, police need to focus on violent crimes (assaults, murders, trafficking, rape, gun violence, etc.), rather than focusing on enforcing civil penalties which can lead to police altercations.

Cops acting like tax collectors with guns, or hallways monitors who issue citations to enrich local governments, is one of the root causes of police altercations, and at-risk communities who suffer from low employment, gentrification, rising real estate prices, environmental pollution, etc., are most vulnerable to over-policing ordinary citizens. Many victims of police violence aren’t career criminals, terrorist, drug cartel leaders, but everyday Americans who are often profiled for how they look or who are brave enough to state their constitutional rights in the face of a police officer.

Comprehensive Police reform was never going to happen and the system, i.e., the nexus between private and special interests, corporations, the media, police agencies, and state and federal governments, employed an array of tactics ranging from (1) poor Congressional political strategy resulting in incrementalism at the federal level, (2) media shell games relating to the showcasing of examples of blatant police abuses versus cases that were morally ambiguous to cause doubt and division amongst the public, (3) politicians talking about reform, but many politicians and the White House continue to fund police agencies such as through Program 1033 relating to the militarization of police, (4) divisive marketing campaigns such Defund the Police, (5) discrediting the Black Lives Matter Movement and using the media to undermine black liberation politics, e.g., using the Jussie Smollett fiasco and debates relating race involving the Kyle Rittenhouse Case versus the Darrell Brooks Waukesha Parade Attack, to undermine the black community who were at the forefront of police reform, (6) unleashing dangerous criminals who commit crime so the public wants more police, (7) the media blowing up the Crime Wave Panic without providing any context about the root causes such as the obvious fact that society is slowly reopening after the COVID-19 spikes, (8) Copaganda, i.e., propaganda showing cops in a good light as opposed to a realistic light, and (9) the politicization of police with by way of Right Wing politics and the erosion of political impartiality within cops.

In other words, the system used mind games, reverse psychology, waiting out the storm, shell games, etc., to stall and undermine police reform.

Table of Contents

I. Introduction. Police Reform fails and strategies going forward.

II. Media Shell Games

III. Saying Reform but Really Funding Police behind the scenes

IV. Poor Marketing

V. Political Dialectics and the Illusion of Political Differences

VI. “Let the Children Tire Themselves Out” and waiting out the storm

VII. Discrediting, Race Play, and Reverse Psychology

VIII. Unleashing the wolves to harass the sheep

I. Introduction. Police Reform fails and strategies going forward

Police Reform has failed after all the hard work, energy, protests, riots, conversations, and a general heightened sense of awareness around race and police. All the system had to do was “hold out the storm” and let the public “tire itself out”.

Hassam Kamu (2021) of Reuters stated, “The promising effort to reform American policing that was trumpeted as an all-out endeavor in Congress following the largest racial-justice protests in a generation has culminated into nothingness.” Per the article by Kamu (2021), Democratic Senator Corey Booker led negotiations in the Senate, but Republican Senator Tim Scott from South Carolina stated the legislation ultimately failed because of the “defund the police” slogan, going so far as stating on 22 September 2021, that “Democrats said ‘no’ because they could not let go of their push to defund our law enforcement,”. Yet, Kamu (2021) stated that, “None of (“the”) Democrats’ proposals during the months-long negotiation actually sought to defund police, by the way.” In other words, Tim Scott lied and tried to scapegoat Democrats but being the only black Senator who is a Republican, Tim Scott did his job, i.e., providing black optics, but still holding the line for the predominately white Republican party.

The article by Kamu (2021) talks about how local governments will have to champion the cause of police reform by citing Christy Lopez, former deputy chief of the Justice Department’s civil rights division and now professor at Georgetown University Law Center.

Essentially, comprehensive national police reform has failed, and what we are left with is the same old sense of incrementalism based on federalism (local politics and decentralization), but also the fact, which will be presented later in this article, that police have received further funding including new innovations in technology to potentially violate the public’s civil liberties.  

This is highly problematic because the source of police corruption and abuse stems from the fact that police organizations are organized around the concept of localism, and localism therefore creates a smokescreen when it comes to abuse. With laws such as the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878, which was created in the late eighteen-hundreds after the Union Army withdrew federal forces (acting in a police capacity to protect black people) from the post-war Confederate South. Posse Comitatus means that federal authorities don’t interfere in local matters relating to policing unless a Civil Rights violation or similar federal violation arises. Even, though the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 relates to a separation of military from local affairs, the precedent set by the act translates to modern policing considering the military at the time when the act was passed served in a police capacity. The general rule is that policing is a local matter, unlike other nations where police in many regards are centralized forces supplementing local or provincial police forces such as with the Royal Mounted Police in Canada, or the concept of the gendarmerie in nations like France and Italy.

Lack of federal muscle on police reform is the equivalent to the scenario if the federal government didn’t apply Civil Rights laws by way of the Interstate Commerce clause in the 1960s, i.e., the federal government can only reform police and Republicans know this. If the Federal Government didn’t use Interstate Commerce to justify Civil Rights legislation, then state governments such as those of the Jim Crow South would have been able to continue “separate but equal” segregation policies.

There are so many jurisdictions in the United States, that reforms to police abuse are often reactionary, i.e., after the fact, as opposed to preventative.

People protests, and agencies pay out restitution to victims (at taxpayer expense), but cops often are acquitted or transferred. Every agency is influenced by its locality meaning there’s different atmospheres and sentiments relating to race, politics, income levels, etc. Every community has its own “ingredients”, thus every community needs its own progressive policy yet there needs to be an overarching centralized mandate to ensure frameworks are being appropriately applied, enforced, and tracked (e.g., with analytics). For example, a police agency in an area that overwhelmingly voted for Donald Trump, which might have a history of racial segregation and/or existing racial disparity influencing crime or arrest policies, likely will not stand for any sort of police reform (as seen by the fact that no Republicans voted for police reform). Or, even in a state like New Jersey, which is one the wealthiest states, but still has issues with segregation, e.g., predominately white, and upper income communities such as those of Bergen County as opposed to poorer people-of-color communities in places like Essex County (home to Newark).

The bill that stalled in the Congress is the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act (House Resolution 7120), which cleared the Democrat controlled House 236–181 (that’s a total of 417 votes, meaning 236 out of 417 is about 57% voting yes, yet there are 435 representatives meaning 236 out of 435 is about 54%). Only three Republicans voting in support included Will Hurd as the only black House Republican (just let that sink in) on June 25, 2020.

After clearing the House in the summer of 2020, it advanced to the Senate as S. 3912 with Corey Booker sponsoring the bill, yet, Tim Scott, the only Black Republican helped to stall and gut the bill, such as not bending on the question of qualified immunity, and the year ran out, i.e., Congress went on its break and the bill died in committee.  In 2021, the bill was reintroduced for a second time by the House after being kicked back by the Senate, with the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act of 2021, and it was introduced again by California Democrat Karen Bass as H.R. 1280, who chairs the Congressional Black Caucus. The Resolution passed the House on March 3, 2021 with a (220–212) yes vs no spread, with zero Republicans supporting the bill (432 votes in total, meaning 220 yes votes amounts to about 51%, yet there are actually 435 representatives meaning 220 out of 435 is about 50.1%). Yet, by the fall of 2021, Corey Booker stated that “negotiated had failed”, but what does this really mean? It means they know they have no clear path of having Senate approval, so…they’re “giving up for the meantime as Democrats await better representation in the Senate as opposed to a simple tie-break vote provided by Kamala Harris in the 50/50 Democrat to Republican Senate”.

The differences between House votes between 2020 to 2021 relating to the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, i.e., 54% versus 51% could have been because of vacancies, abstain votes (present or no votes), etc., considering there are 435 house seats appropriated unchanged between the two years (Source: Ballotpedia.com, 2021). This could mean that the original bill was passed when some members weren’t able to vote, but after the 2020 election and going into 2021, more representatives showed up and voted against the bill, such as “Stop the Steal” Republicans being sour after Donald Trump lost to Joe Biden. The few Republicans who voted for the bill in 2020, quickly changed their tune and voted against it.

According to Ballotpedia.com (2021), “Elections to the U.S. Senate will be held on November 8, 2022, and 34 of the 100 seats are up for regular election. Those elected to the U.S. Senate in the 34 regular elections in 2022 will begin their six-year terms on January 3, 2023.  Fourteen seats held by Democrats and 20 seats held by Republicans are up for election in 2022. Republicans are defending two Senate seats in states Joe Biden (D) won in the 2020 presidential election: Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Democrats are not defending any Senate seats in states Donald Trump (R) won in 2020.  Following the 2020 Senate elections and the January 2021 runoffs in Georgia, Democrats and Republicans split the chamber 50-50. This gave Vice President Kamala Harris (D) a tie-breaking vote, and Democrats control of the U.S. Senate via a power-sharing agreement.”

There are some factors to ponder regarding the Democrat strategy come the Fall 2022 Senate Races.

Democrats could lose seats considering Republican’s across the nation have been inserting voting reform bills making it harder for people to vote. Also, Kamala Harris could become president in the event Joe Biden steps down or his age and health take a toll on him, yet, if Kamala Harris becomes President either by rules of succession or by running outright herself, she could simply elect a new President of the Senate (her acting VP), thus maintaining a plausible 50/50 tie breaker vote, yet this could be highly unlikely. With Joe Biden assuming the Presidency in January 2021, in theory he has until January 2025, so if Kamala were to step in, she would have possibly a few years as President until she would be required to run outright herself.

Yet, Democrats could lose a Presidential race and not gain any power in the Senate and lose seats in any House race, etc. It makes sense that Democrats would wait to gain Senatorial power, considering Republicans are a monolithic “lock in step” party (unlike Democrats who have Senators like Kirsten Sinema and Joe Manchin), yet, all these scenarios do call into question as to whether comprehensive police reform will pass soon. Joe Biden could get tougher with Republicans, but Biden’s strategy as seen in the Infrastructure and Reconciliation Bill debates seems to be let the Congress handle it even though he states his wanted outcomes. Biden could figure out bills that Republicans highly prize and threaten to veto any such bills if Republicans don’t get more in alignment with police reform. Biden could also issue Executive Orders directing the Executive agencies who answer to them, to freeze funds for police unless reforms are made. It’s all an utter tragedy regardless because Biden could do the strongman tactics of Trump, yet Biden seems more about restoring a sense of normalcy. You can’t blame him, but then again, he only has one real chance to enact true reform. Why play nice and be honorable, when Republicans have proven they are willing to support a President like Donald Trump who cares nothing about “gentlemen rules”. The US public is being held hostage by unsympathetic Republicans who still must walk the fine line as to whether Donald Trump in exile, the modern equivalent of Emperor Nero, still approves of them.

Yet, Democrats could come out on top. Six Senators announced retirement from the Senate with five of them being Republicans. Richard Burr of North Carolina (a swing state), Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania (a swing state), Rob Portman of Ohio (a swing state yet growing more conservative), Richard Shelby of Alabama (historically very conservative), and Roy Blunt of Missouri (historically a purple state) are all Republicans (Source: Ballotpedia.com, 2021). Patrick Leahy of Vermont is the only Democrat retiring but Vermont has solidly been a Democratic state with many progressive elements embedded into its culture. Peter Welch, already a House Representative from Vermont, and a friend to the late Civil Rights leader John Lewis, is running to fill in for Patrick Leahy. Brandaun Dean, an African American, is running to take Richard Shelby’s seat in Alabama, and if he’s able to win in a very conservative state, even though Alabama has a large African American population, he could help turn Alabama into a “purple state”. Yet, Dean’s climb will be much steeper in my opinion that what Stacy Abram’s faced in Georgia considering you have Atlanta as the largest source of votes, and she still lost her election.  

Yet, many seats are up for grab, besides those where Senators stated they are retiring, and many Democratic candidates are running for the same seats meaning it’s going to be dirty fight internally as well as with Republicans clawing for those seats (not to mention any third-party candidates such Independents, Greens, Libertarians, etc.). For example, Senator Raphael Warnock in Georgia who beat Kelly Loeffler is up for re-election since he was elected in a special election when Senator Johnny Isakson stepped down giving Kelly Loeffler an non-contested victory. Basically, Warnock beat Loeffler who stepped in for Isakson, but Isakon’s terms in which Warnock won after beating Loeffler is due to expire in 2023 meaning Warnock must run for a full 6-year term.  

The Police Reform Bill included some innovative measures to help such as creating a database to track police misconduct and disciplinary actions, restrict giving military weapons to police via the Department of Defense Program 1033, requiring body cameras and dashboard cameras, revoking qualified immunity (one the largest issues) by revising 18 United States Code Section 242, ban no-knock warrants and choke holds, and issue funding for training on anti-discrimination. The House in committee hearings had a diverse crew of guests, including Fox New’s Don Bongino (Source: Burn, 2020, Vox), whom as we know is an ardent Trump supporter. The insertion of Don Bongino into Congress, similarly to when Congress foolishly platformed Candace Owens to speak on matters of race, proves that hearings in part are essential but can take on certain elements of a circus show, giving free press and credentials to people who want to stand in the way of progress.

So, the United States not only lacks a national database of gun violence, where such violence is tracked by non-profits (charities), the United States also failed to create centralized accountability systems of police abuse and misconduct.

Section Sources

Ballotpedia.com (2021), United States House of Representatives., Retrieved on 12 December 2021., Source: https://ballotpedia.org/United_States_House_of_Representatives

Ballotpedia.com (2021), United States Senate elections, 2022, Retrieved on 12 December 2021., https://ballotpedia.org/United_States_Senate_elections,_2022

Burns, K. A Republican witness at a congressional hearing on police brutality didn’t mention police brutality., (published on 10 June 2020)., Vox., Retrieved on 12 December 2021., Source: https://www.vox.com/identities/2020/6/10/21286605/dan-bongino-fox-news-police-brutality-hearing-congress

Kamu, H. Congress fails on police reform. Now what?., (published on 12 October 2021)., Reuters., Retrieved on 12 December 2021., Source: https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/congress-fails-police-reform-now-what-2021-10-08/

II. The Media Shell Games:

The media inserts ambiguous stories to overshow stories of blatant police negligence, abuse, and killings, and by doing this it causes the public to call into question or raise doubt about police reform. I call this the shell game, where the shell game is an ancient game in which a person has an object like a ball underneath three cups and quickly shuffles the cups around, so a person can guess which cup has the ball, often involving a wager of money, i.e., a bet. This is like what the media seems to be doing. Shuffling stories around, getting the public to bet on cases, but if the public ever comes out wrong, the house ultimately wins overall. Further, many shell games are rigged to begin with, for example having trap doors on a table or magnet in a cup so people always guess wrong.

When people are passionately calling for police reform, the media can insert stories to effectively play reverse-psychology games, so when the facts of ambiguous cases are revealed, it serves as a “Aha, gotcha moment”, and this helps to undermine or shame police reform advocates. For example, Tamir Rice (November 22, 2014) and Eric Garner (July 17, 2014) were blatant examples of police abuse, yet, later downstream as the larger police discussion raged on, the media showed cases such as Jacob Blake in Kenosha, Wisconsin, Ma’Khia Bryant in Columbus, OH or Willie Henley in Buffalo, NY. The Blake, Bryant, and Henley situation, though tragic, were also more complicated, in that police were responding to potentially violent situations such as Jacob Blake having a knife, Ma’Khia Bryant having a knife (with photo evidence of her trying to use the knife), and Willie Henley having a mental health breakdown. Despite, having some radical voices who don’t want any police officers, the public in my opinion was more so disappointed that police consistently kept using deadly force or, even after the larger police reform discussion about using alternative methods had been ongoing for years.

Yet, the Blake (August 2021), Bryant (April 2021), and Henley (September 2021) situations were much later than the initial beginnings of the current police reform movement, where from its beginnings to the present there are many examples of blatant police abuse.

The beginnings of the modern police reform movements can be traced back to the blatant murder of Eric Garner (July 17, 2014) in New York City, and the Michael Brown shooting in Ferguson, Missouri (August 9, 2014), where the energy displayed in the Ferguson Protests/Riots could be traced further back to the sociological effects of social media, over the acquittal of George Michael Zimmerman over this murder of Treyvon Martin (February 26, 2012).  When Treyvon was murdered that energy was boiling in the public, so once more and more police shootings occurred, that energy merged with the police reform movement.

In summary, even though Treyvon Martin’s murder in 2012 wasn’t explicitly calling out police, the racial implications of the case, started the energy that would later coalesce with actual police killings or abuse (a larger, yet separate issue but often straddling the issue of race), and this energy would create the Black Lives Matter movements, which was the strongest and most visible of all police reform movements, and even though it was intended to speak up for injustices against black people, the movement absorbed other police reform movements making it more multi-racial (since anyone with a YouTube account can see videos of police abusing all types of people). The reaction to BLM therefore created the reactionary movements of All Lives Matters (which never called for police reform but was simply a way of alleging that black people are ‘reverse racist’, emotional, or selfish) and then the Blue Lives Matters movement. So once an actual police reform movement was established, the system picked up on this, largely to farm votes, make promises, and have a steady stream of media coverage. Yet, as time went on, the police reform movement (a grassroots movement) became more powerful, especially when the domestic and international protests occurred during the George Floyd situation, so the system started to insert more morally ambiguous cases to control the public, i.e., using a form what can consider to be psychological warfare (for example, read into concepts such as white, grey, and black propaganda).

Showing ambiguous cases helped to overshadow blatant cases of police abuse and undermine police reform movements.

III. Saying Reform but Really Funding Police behind the scenes

The system (i.e., a nexus between private special interests, corporations, government, institutions of violence, and the media) never truly wanted to reform police. If anything, the government has continued to fund police such as the Biden-Harris Administration issuing the Cops Hiring Program (CHP) by way of The Department of Justice, that has allocated $139 Million to police agencies across the USA. According to the Justice Department (2021), “The awards provide direct funding to 183 law enforcement agencies across the nation, allowing those agencies to hire 1,066 additional full-time law enforcement professionals.” Further, per the Justice Department (2021), “Since its creation in 1994, COPS has invested more than $14 billion to advance community policing, including grants awarded to more than 13,000 state, local and Tribal law enforcement agencies to fund the hiring and redeployment of more than 135,000 officers. CHP, COPS’ flagship program, continues to be in demand today: In FY21, COPS received 590 applications requesting nearly 3,000 law enforcement positions. For FY22, President Biden has requested $537 million for CHP, an increase of $300 million.”

Also, under the Trump Administration by way of William Barr at the Justice Department, police agencies started increasing the use of facial-recognition software by firms such as Clearview A.I., a part of a larger “pre-crime initiative”. According to Elizabeth Lopatto (2020) of Verge, “More than 2,400 police agencies have entered contracts with Clearview AI, a controversial facial recognition firm, according to comments made by Clearview AI CEO Hoan Ton-That in an interview with Jason Calacanis on YouTube.” According to the US Senate in a public release dated June 10, 2020, “U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH), Ranking Member of the U.S. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs, Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR), Ranking Member of the U.S. Senate Committee on Finance, and Senator Cory Booker (D-N.J.), today sent a letter to Attorney General William Barr and Acting Secretary of Homeland Security Chad Wolf expressing concern about the use of facial recognition technology to gather information on those Americans who joined in protest of systemic racial injustice. Americans in more than 350 cities across the nation have taken to the streets while law enforcement agencies have unregulated access to inaccurate and biased facial recognition technology.”

We also can’t forget that the militarization of police agencies by way of excess Department of Defense surplus is still going. Police agencies receive surplus military hardware via the National Defense Authorization Act and the Pentagon’s Program 1033. Since 2021, there is likely even more rampant transfer of military hardware to police considering the drawn down from Afghanistan. Alice Speri (2021) of The Intercept, reported, “Nearly $90 million worth of military equipment was transferred to police last year alone, and more than $7.4 billion since 1990.” Further, Speri (2021) stated, “The proposed amendments to the defense budget have been introduced by Democratic Reps. Nydia Velázquez and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts, and Hank Johnson of Georgia. (Johnson’s bill has a Republican cosponsor, California Rep. Tom McClintock.) Velázquez’s, the most aggressive among them, seeks to end the program altogether by striking the NDAA provision that authorizes it. Ocasio-Cortez’s seeks to prohibit the transfer of a number of items, including ammunition, grenade launchers, and mine-resistant ambush-protected vehicles. The vehicles, known as MRAPs, have become a symbol of the program after they were dispatched to protests and home raids. Pressley’s seeks to issue a moratorium on 1033 transfers of what is known as “controlled party,” which includes military items like weapons, vehicles, and night vision equipment. And Johnson’s seeks to limit the transfers but offers a series of carveouts and exceptions, including for counterterrorism purposes. The language of Johnson’s bill already cleared the House as part of a the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, which has languished in the Senate.”

Cops haven’t been reformed, but more so police agencies could by toying with the public by not dealing with crime. They’re holding out, while the media simplistically talks about the “crime wave” of late 2021, so the public crawls back to police (despite cops still being paid by taxpayers). The media is helping this by playing “shell games” to discredit protestors no different than how previous administrations such as Nixon or J. Edgar Hoover used nefarious methods to undermine progressive grassroots movements, such as Red Squads. But we need to realize the “system” has decades of practice and contingency in place, and there’s methods largely due to social media and technology as more efficient at exploiting the masses.

Section Sources:

Lopatto, E., Clearview AI CEO says ‘over 2,400 police agencies’ are using its facial recognition software, (published on 26 August 2020), Retrieved on: 12 December 12, 2021, Source: https://www.theverge.com/2020/8/26/21402978/clearview-ai-ceo-interview-2400-police-agencies-facial-recognition

Speri, A., Lawmakers Take On Militarization of Police in Defense Budget Talks. Biden failed to take action on the Pentagon’s 1033 program. Now four lawmakers have proposed NDAA amendments that would limit or end it., (published on 20 September 2021)., Retrieve on: 12 December 2021, Source: https://theintercept.com/2021/09/20/ndaa-military-equipment-police-1033/

The United States Department of Justice – Office of Public Affairs., Justice Department Announces $139 Million for Law Enforcement Hiring to Advance Community Policing, (published on 18 November 2021) , Retrieved on : 12 December 2021, Source: https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-announces-139-million-law-enforcement-hiring-advance-community-policing

United States Senate – U.S. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs., Brown, Wyden, Booker Seek Answers On Federal Use Of Facial Recognition Technology To Monitor Nationwide Protest, (published on 10 June 2020), Retrieved on: 12 December 2021, Source: https://www.banking.senate.gov/newsroom/minority/brown-wyden-booker-seek-answers-on-federal-use-of-facial-recognition-technology-to-monitor-nationwide-protest

IV. Poor Marketing

When the slogan, Defund the Police, came about it immediately received criticism that simply fed into conservative status quo politics. Even, though there is context and nuance around the slogan of Defund the Police, i.e., it really means diverting funds into social investments such as mental health, poverty prevention, after school programs, let’s be honest…most people don’t really dig as deep when trying to find context or nuance, especially in a polarized political environment. The slogan easily could have been “Reallocate Police” or “Freeze the Police”, i.e., taking a police officer phase of “freeze” when trying to apprehend suspects, in an attempt freeze funding for police while further legislation and reforms were drafted and hopefully passed by state and federal lawmakers. I have no proof of what I am going to say next, but it seems that Defund the Police was purposely inserted into the lexicon or into the “zeitgeist” (collective consciousness) to be controversial so people would likely not support police reform largely since people were fearing “radical Leftist politics”. It seems like an easy trick to pull. Insert a controversial phrase into the public so it helps create a larger wedge on an already existing wedge issue. Once the term was inserted or “downloaded” into the collective consciousness, no one could really stop it because conservatives pushed it to undermine police reform, and people who are liberal or on the Left felt they needed to support the slogan as to not be seen as not being “down enough with the cause”. I am not sure who created the slogan of Defund the Police, but once could speculate that such as slogan could have easily been inserted into the public to create a further divide.

V. Political Dialectics and the Illusion of Political Differences

The Democratic Party serves the role of “calming” or “anesthetizing” the public by hearing out the concerns of the public, often using this for political gains, i.e., farming votes, such as appealing to minorities communities by promising to acknowledge their concerns in good faith, yet the Republican Party adamantly defends the police state. So, what you end up with is one side being apologists (losers) and the other side being defenders of the status quo, yet neither side are concerned about reform, since the very nature of Congress at this point is juggling the public who often doesn’t have monetary power yet are essential for the number game of winning votes, with that of powerful corporate interests (passing spending bills where tax money goes to powerful entities or special interests). Even if there are a few politicians who are true believers in police reform, they’re far and few, and the complicated process of creating legislation in the Congress between the House, Senate, and President, makes promises of police reform nearly futile. Democrats promise, give fiery “woke speeches”, say the right things to be considered “down” with whatever communities they represent, but often promise things can’t deliver on, yet, the politicians can simply blame the opposition.

VI. “Let the Children Tire Themselves Out” and waiting out the storm

 The nexus between the Department of Justice, Congress, police agencies, and media, simply wait until the public “tires itself out”, so nothing changes. The media uses race to tire out the public on racial conversations, so the underlying agenda of reforming police doesn’t happen. It could be summarized as using and elevating black people, but then scapegoating black people downstream, so nothing changes, but the black community is left with the resent of other communities.

VII. Discrediting, Race Play and Reverse Psychology

Since police abuse often has a racial connotation to it, elements of the media try to shame communities such as black community by insinuating that the black community obsesses over race, can’t think outside of a racial worldview, and black organizations such as Black Lives Matters are fraudulent entities (where the right wing has even compounded this allegation by inserting everyone’s favorite boogeyman of George Soros – as if Soros is the only billionaire funding movements, e.g., the Mercer Family who donated to the Trump Campaign where involved in the Cambridge Analytica data scandal).

This use of racial tropes of black people being “emotional or irrational”, therefore feeds into the larger collective consciousness of society in which, for example, many white people become disillusioned, some often insinuating a sense of reverse racism or the media giving minorities preference over the grievances of white people, and all of this is used by conservatives to grow their base, yet, it seems as if this “farming operation” is purposeful between both political parties.

For example, take the Jussie Smollett case. Jussie Smollett selfishly appropriated the larger racial conversation which in many ways was in opposition to the white supremacists’ dog-whistles of Donald Trump, where this larger conversation includes police reform. When Smollett was found guilty of lying about a hate crime, even though he wasn’t directly linked to police reform, the fiasco he caused helped undermine police reform, since, as already stated, police reform was an element of the larger racial conversation. Many people in the public see Smollett as being indicative of alleged bias for minorities within the liberal media, and this energy feeds further into opposing progressive politics such as feeding into the energy and talking points of people such as Donald Trump, Candace Owens, etc. The goals are to make black people (serving as the more visible force when speaking up for BIPOC issues), to appear “irrational”, “emotional”, “playing the race card to their own advantage”, etc. It’s a form of reverse psychology or employing “gotcha moments”, by making it seem as if minorities are racially obsessed emotional beings who will “believe anything”, and this helps to undermine the legitimate concerns raised by BIPOC communities.  

Another example of trying to discredit black people where black people are at the forefront of police reform, is how Black Lives Matter as an organization was attacked. The Right Wing as already stated tried to tap into the George Soros conspiracy theories, where those conspiracy theories in and of themselves harken back to antisemitic tropes, e.g., Z.O.G (Zionist Occupied Government) or the Protocols of the Elders of Zion (thus, feeding into the right-wing fringe elements of the Donald Trump administration, and by right wing elements, I’m not saying people who disapprove of Israel which has been alleged as being antisemitic in our Bari Weiss redefinition of the word of antisemitism, but actual people who hate Jewish people and wish them harm).

Yet, critics of BLM, including legitimate outlets where people get news from such as The New York Post (despite it having a reputation for spin tactics), alleged that BLM was engaging in real estate fraud, when Black Lives Matter co-founder Patrisse Khan-Cullors was discovered to have purchased multiple properties. Rick Rouan (2021) of The USA Today, in a fact check of the allegations made by conservative non-profit National Legal and Policy Center Chairman Peter Flaherty, stated “But there is no evidence to support the idea that Khan-Cullors used donations that poured in amid nationwide protests in 2020 to bankroll the purchase of four homes.”

Rouan (2021) stated, the claim that Black Lives Matter co-founder Patrisse Khan-Cullors bought four luxury homes is MISSING CONTEXT, because without additional information it could be misleading. While some social media users suggested that the purchases were evidence that Khan-Cullors had been enriched by the movement, our research revealed no evidence that Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation funds were used to purchase property. Khan-Cullors has held several other jobs in addition to her work as the organization’s volunteer executive director, including writing a memoir and developing content for Warner Brothers.

Robert Gaetry (2020) of Fox News, spoke about Sir Maejor Page, who was a founder of a chapter of Black Lives Matter in the Metro Atlanta area. Gaetry (2020) stated, “Page founded Black Lives Matter of Greater Atlanta in 2016 and this year took in more than $466,000 in donations in June, July and August, Desorbo said. “In sum, Page has spent over $200,000 on personal items generated from donations received through BLMGA Facebook page with no identifiable purchase or expenditure for social or racial justice,” he said. According to the bureau, Page also used $112,000 of the donated money to purchase a house for himself in Toledo, Ohio. The transaction took place last month. Black Lives Matter of Greater Atlanta could not solicit donations after losing its tax-exempt status as a charity in 2019 for failing to submit to the IRS 990 tax returns listing donations and expenditures.”

Lastly, Gaetry (2020), stated, “The FBI in Toledo said Page pledged to use those donations “for George Floyd” but instead used the money make purchases related to food, dining, entertainment, clothing, furniture, a home security system, tailored suits and accessories.”

So, even if Black Lives Matter was corrupt, what does their alleged corruption have to do with actual police reform or the fact that the United States has a history of racism and reality of structural racism? The goal of conservatives is to use race to discredit the overarching goal of police reform, e.g., alleging BLM is a global “Jewish” conspiracy meant to “agitate black people” against white people and that the organization is a money laundering scheme, using situations such as Jussie Smollett’s fake hate crime to discredit the entire black community, and insinuating that black people are so passionate about their race – indifferent to the needs of others – that they will believe anything indifferent to the facts such as insinuating that most black people didn’t know the victims of the Kyle Rittenhouse shootings were white (i.e., calling black people’s emotional and intellectual state into question which harkens back to old racial tropes that black people need guidance and paternalism from “wise, civilized, and more calm” white people).

Within any organization structured like Black Lives Matters which seems to be based upon decentralized franchises or chapters, the likelihood of corruption will always be there, but to state that all or most chapters weren’t engaged in legitimate public engagement, training, community initiatives, etc., seems false. Any corruption that occurs with Black Lives Matter is unacceptable, and it is my personal belief that Black Lives Matters hasn’t done enough to truly impact or improve the material conditions of the black community. Yet, regardless, BLM doesn’t represent or have sole-ownership of the entire history of the treatment of BIPOC people withing Western Civilization.

Black Lives Matter does have a responsibility to ensure the funds gathered from donors is being adequately distributed – with accountability – to impoverish communities across the United States such as providing scholarships to colleges be they HBCU, HIS, Tribal Colleges (Historically Black Colleges and Universities/Hispanic Servicing Institutions); assisting in America’s housing and homeless crisis such as providing temporary living assistance; establishing transitional programs for newly released inmates; organizing voter registration campaigns; donating to other educational institutions such as museums that represents the history of BIPOC peoples; safe sex campaigns by partnering with organizations such as Planned Parenthood, and standing up for sex workers – many who are people of color – who suffer violence such as working with SWOP (the Sex Worker’s Outreach Program).

It does seem that Black Lives Matters has faded from mainstream public view after the 2020 Presidential Election (not saying there’s still grassroots communication continuing), which does raise the plausibility that the organization was used to “farm” black people’s votes to benefit the Democratic Party machine, particularly to counter the power of Donald Trump, who upon his election controlled both chambers of Congress, and by the end of his presidency put three conservative Supreme Court Justices into power (who have the power to see cases over Voting Rights, Civil Rights, reproductive rights, etc.). Yet, as already stated, BLM whether it’s entirely good, entirely bad, or partially good and bad, doesn’t solely represent the goals of black, Hispanic, Indigenous First Peoples, bi-racial/multi-racial, or AAPI liberation. Essentially, if BLM were to completely fade away tomorrow and die in infamy, it doesn’t mean racism also disappears, it doesn’t mean the Republican Party is catering to white supremacy (such as Marjorie Taylor Greene advocating for a White Anglo Saxon Caucus), nor does it mean that police abuse isn’t an issue.

Section Sources

Gaetry, R. Atlanta activist spent $200G in Black Lives Matter donations on house, personal expenses: FBI, Sir Maejor Page, 32, is facing fraud and money laundering charges., (published on 26 September 2020)., Retrieve on 12 December 2021, Source: https://www.foxnews.com/us/atlanta-activist-spent-200g-in-black-lives-matter-donations-on-house-personal-expenses-fbi

Rouan, R. Fact check: Missing context in claim about Black Lives Matter co-founder’s property purchases., (published on 19 April 2021)., Retrieved 12 December 2021., Source: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2021/04/19/fact-check-misleading-claim-blm-co-founders-real-estate/7241450002/

VIII. Unleashing the wolves to harass the sheep & race relating to Kenosha – Waukesha – and Oxford High School

When you look at the case of Darrell Brooks in Waukesha, Wisconsin, but also, the shooting of Joseph Rosenbaum in Kenosha, Wisconsin, you notice that both men were criminals. Why were the released from jail or release from the authority of a mental health facility? There are many people in jail that don’t have the sheer amount of baggage these two men have yet are still wasting away in dangerous and unsanitary prisons across the US. Ironically, the same system that police are a part of, i.e., the state, let these men out of jail, where one could argue not only do police use excessive violence often against people who aren’t threats, but they also release dangerous people from jail who end up terrorizing the public. Is this by coincidence? Or, maybe these lags in the system are due to the fact the system (that police are a part of) is too big to fail but constantly fails being so big and disorganized (unaccountable). It’s like a machine that spits out problems naturally, but it’s so big and embedded into society that no one notices until it’s too late.

For example, Joseph Rosenbaum was a pedophile, having been released from jail, but he was in a later relationship with a woman, yet he was living a nearly destitute or transient existence. He never should have been out of the care of mental health professionals but for some reason he was released. His aggressive behavior that night toward Kyle Rittenhouse (who never should have been out that night to begin with) helped spark the shootings that commenced. It’s interesting, as well that with Rosenbaum being a pedophile (who was also assaulted himself at a young age), the pedophile category has been applied by the political right culturally towards the political left in other arenas, such as with Qanon, the notion of “Hollyweird”, etc. The political right trying to take ownership of the pedophile category to attack liberals or the Left, is simply a strategy to undermine progressive politics, even though pedophiles come from all racial, ethnic, gender and political backgrounds. The fact Rosenbaum was a pedophile in theory helped give the political right more ammunition in their campaign to underline the political left in the larger Culture Wars, even though Rosenbaum was an individual acting on his own accord.

Just because Rosenbaum was at the protests doesn’t mean he was there to protests and it doesn’t mean he was there to stand up for what the protestors were standing for. Basically, he was likely there to cause issues to take out his rage against the world, i.e., the riots were an excuse for him to express his rage against the system, his own failures, his own demons, etc. Those who supported the protests or the cause underneath it, were not necessarily angry a pedophile was murdered, but more so a counter-protestors or vigilante had showed up to a protest which resulted in the deaths of people even if Rittenhouse was found innocent of all charges. The implications of having counter-protestors such as those in typical militia garb such as Proud Boys or Boogaloo escalating violence was the concern, considering these groups are extensions of MAGA politics (“Stand back, stand by”, as said by Donald Trump when asked about militias during his debates with Biden which happened before the eventual January 6th Capital Insurrection).

Relating to Darrell Brooks, the conservative media was very quick to try to bring up Darrell Brook’s race, because they felt that the liberal media during the Rittenhouse Trial was against “white people”. Aesthetically, in the minds of many, Rittenhouse is symbolic of “MAGA, Blue Lives Matter, Police worship”, whereas Darrell Brooks is symbolic of “easy on crime, ‘liberal policies’, black radicalism”, etc. In other words, to many, Darrell Brooks represents to the cultural Right Wing as being the result of soft-on-crime policies, racial double standards, and the need for more cops, i.e., “this is what happens when we don’t have police and this what happens when you let “Demon-crats” have power”. Yet, what people fail to understand between the two cases of Rittenhouse and Brooks is that everyone knows that Brooks is a criminal, everyone regardless of race can agree he’s a criminal, and he’s already on his way to being fully persecuted by the law, whereas the Rittenhouse was more ambiguous as to whether he was or wasn’t a criminal, but from first impression, based on his profile (a cop loving, Donald Trump rally attending young white male, who made suspect comments about using violence against protestors), there was reason to be highly suspect of Kyle Rittenhouse. Rittenhouse inserted himself into a larger cultural debate that encompasses a wide array of values, aesthetics, movements, symbols, interpretations, a remind of a history of white vigilante justice, etc. Therefore, the media bit so hard into the Rittenhouse case. It is because there was ambiguity and ambiguity lead to conversations, panel experts, segments (commercial break included), etc.

After the Rittenhouse acquittal, there was the Waukesha Parade Attack by Darrell Brooks, but then came the tragic Oxford High School shootings on November 30, 2021. Per conservative logic, such as the rhetoric by pundits such as Candace Owens or Steven Crowder, one would have assumed the “liberal MSM media” (MSM is mainstream media) would have instantly called out the shooter’s, Ethan Crumbley’s, race. But, they didn’t. Why? Once could only assume that there’s are different reporting procedures and different rules (even, if only “gentlemen’s rules) when it comes to reporting various categories of crimes, e.g., mass shootings/school shootings versus terror attacks (which could include mass and/or school shootings) versus possible hate crimes versus “everyday crimes”.

What I notice here regarding the Right Wing’s take to these events after the Rittenhouse Trial is that Republicans are desperately seeking to establish “racial parity”. They feel that liberals or the Left have more of a tool in their pocket, e.g., Critical Theory, Intersectionality, etc., to challenge the status quo, so naturally conservatives are desperately trying to find “gotcha moments” to undermine the larger conversation relating to systemic oppression, racism, lack of diversity in certain institutions of power, etc.

All of this does deal with cops, because cops as a symbol are a part of the larger cultural debates, so by conservatives trying to establish “racial parity” in the media, they help grow the sentiment of police worship (the residuals of Blue Lives Matters, etc.).

IX. Copaganda in Hollywood

Many police shows paint police in a popular or sentimental light, where there is always justification for using violence rather than de-escalation tactics.

X. Crime Wave Fears.

After the failure of the Congress to pass legislation, the system giving a few wins to police reformists such as the arrests of Derek Chauvin after the George Floyd Trial, a general sense of ennui in the public as the police (and racial) conversation dragged on, and other things I spoke about above, come late 2021 going into 2022, the media, especially conservative media is pushing the “Crime Wave” panic. This further helps to justify the presence of police. Yet, the Crime Wave could be simply boiled down to the slow recovery and normalization of life with COVID-19. People have been staying inside, remote working, not commuting to work, online shopping, etc. Naturally, as more people leave their homes, there will be a higher probability of crime, where one could even call the notion of crime as being subjective, e.g., more people committing traffic violations or minor civil infractions could be considered crime. Regardless, the fact that more people are out and about, crime will naturally occur. Crime is further compounded by social issues (which conservatives rarely acknowledge) such as the insane real estate market in many major US cities causing homelessness or economic desperation, the fact that unemployment naturally causes crime but also suicides/mental health situations. Interestingly, the Federal Reserve central bank in many ways is helping to inflate real estate prices ranging from homes, apartments, and even trailer parks.  

What is Biden Doing? Keeping Track of the Biden Administration. An Objective Viewpoint by Quinton Mitchell

I believe in the United States. I want it to succeed. I believe that any issue can be solved if you put effort into it. I considering myself a “patriot”. My ancestors were slaves, we worked this land without respect, my family served in major battles such as World War II and Korea, The Cold War, but also the Iraq-Afghanistan conflicts, I served, and I consider myself a proud American. Yet, I am a Leftist (a Sound Money, cautious Keynesian, market democratic socialist – in my head) because based on my patriotism, I side with the working classes. I have no patience for racism or sexism, and I generally want everyone to live a content happy life confident in their identity no matter what race, gender, sexual orientation, sexual assignment, religion or lack thereof, ethnicity, physical ability, etc., they happen to be. I am proud to be “woke” because I see all the criticism against it, and I realize that people are getting in the way of progress because of fear. They fear losing whatever idea of social privileges they think they have, yet elevating others who were pushed to the margins of society is not a threat to anyone and if anything will help to get over the closeted issues that conservatism helps perpetuate since conservatism doesn’t adequately deal with issues, yet, instead it tries to cover them up, e.g., conservatives demonizing gay people thus denying their very being and thus subjecting them danger such as lack of health care access. One can easily say the same thing for minorities such Native Americans who live in rural ghettos or women who have always been second class citizens when relating to the egos of men. I don’t hate conservatives and in many ways I admire the Norman Rockwell-esque iconography of the United States which I grew up in even as a black man, but this country includes other people.

I am happy that Biden is President. I sleep better at night. I function better during the day knowing that there isn’t as much drama as what happened under Trump. Being in my now mid-thirties, an older Millennial, my entire adult life has been defined by drama from 9/11, to the wars in the Middle East, to stock market crashes, to the fall of with in institutions regarding topics such as spying which helped to create a rampant online conspiracy theory culture, to new discussion around race or gender, etc. I am a progressive. I am a Leftist, but I do accept Realpolitik and pragmatism, so Biden despite being the “system” is in theory the best we can have at this point. It’s not necessarily inspiring, but at least

‘There’s a lot of hate of President Biden but considering most of it is the residue of the Qanon MAGA verse but also even from progressives within his own party because he’s not progressive enough. Yet, I see myself as an average American guy, college educated, decent job, a home, and I’m glad Biden is president because I feel like 2016-2020 destroyed the United States. A very depressing time seeing Far Right racist with Russian sympathies be platformed, but also my mind being constantly prodded by the postmodern assault of social media, the news, etc. I see Biden as a boring sense of peace and stability after a time of intense over-thinking, philosophical thinking, adapting to new technology, etc. It’s ok to take a “chill pill”, yet, Biden does need to push forward, i.e., the time IS NOW, to push forward with Green Energy, police reform, reinvigorating the labor movement in a new paradigm of technological innovation (e.g., computer programmers are often not unionized despite working a very stressful job, but there are also people within traditional industries such as manufacturing or production who aren’t unionized despite federal mandated wages not rising since 2008).

Yet, as a former economics student in college in my youth, I do think about macroeconomic policy and the future of the USA. I’m not a doomsday person. I feel that doomsday people often using fear to enrich themselves such as pushing up the price of gold for their own benefit or even pushing crypto-currency. I joke, I am a “fiat bro”, i.e., I do support the “paper money regime” because…this is what runs the global economy. Why would I bet against something I get paid in? Why would I bet against something that the world uses? I find it funny that people who championed gold or silvers, are not crypto advocates but to me digital currency is even worst than paper dollars, i.e., I can’t hold it.

Who will be a strong enough leader to do the right thing? No President be they Democrat or Republican wants to raise taxes to help pay down the national debt. Sometimes in my head I think what if were to implement the “Economic Crucible”? By this I mean higher taxes, higher interest rates, slashing spending, but to cover the harder environment we de-regulate, legalize, and/or privatize certain aspects of the economy? Yet, I am sure this would have dire consequences at this point. However, debt isn’t entirely bad, considering all industrialized nations are in debt and most of these nations are allies who vouch for each other’s debt. It’s not like the US is some weak nation who can’t stand up for itself in the face of creditors and many nations would never even dare to stand up to the United States on debt, e.g., a strong military with global scope, a consumer population who buys goods and services, relative political stability, and safety, etc.

Debt to the average person is bad, i.e., you trying to pay of a credit card (revolving credit), but to a nation it’s not the same thing, because the state is the state, i.e., the state is the law, can use force, and represents the entirety of its citizens. Debt levels may be high, but all other strong nations have a similar situation, yet, no country has the global leadership role that the United States does and many of our allies have consented to the US having such a role of global leadership, i.e., we do the dirty work that other nations don’t want to do, and the US can be the key negotiator between other parties. One could even argue that the ability to rack up large amounts of debt is a special privilege granted to industrialized nations because they have the geo-strategic alliances, assets, core competencies/intellectual property when it comes to producing advanced goods and are the consumer base of the world.

So, I’m not a doomsday person when it comes national debt (I am not a hardcore Austrian economics gold-standard lover or anarcho-capitalist “down with the system” Bitcoin bro), however, to sustain the global economic system between the major powers, one does have to show good faith payments on their debt, and therefore taxes need to go up. Even though all the allies are friends in this debt exchange system that affects foreign exchange rates and trade, there still is a level of mistrust as far as one’s ability to effectively pay their bills. Taxes are needed to reduce the amount of deficit spending already on the books but also show creditors (our allies) that we are willing to do the hard thing to show good faith. Sure, they won’t call our debt, but the ability to make good faith payments with taxes doesn’t help to restore a sense of faith, i.e., it reduces the sweating of our lenders, i.e., bond holders.

Yet, what has Biden does so far?  

  1. Passed a 1.2 trillion Infrastructure Bill where according to Lobosco & Luhby (2021) of CNN, “the bill will deliver $550 billion of new federal investments in America’s infrastructure over five years, touching everything from bridges and roads to the nation’s broadband, water and energy systems. Experts say the money is sorely needed to ensure safe travel, as well as the efficient transport of goods and produce across the country. The nation’s infrastructure system earned a C- score from the American Society of Civil Engineers earlier this year.” Yet, according to the Congressional Budget Office, the package would add $256 billion to the deficit over the next 10 years (Lobosco & Luhby, 2021).
  2. Passed the 1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan
  3. Will sign the nearly 800 billion annual National Defense Authorization Act funding the military, special forces operations, intelligence, etc.
  4. Will sign the I Am Venessa Guillen Bill which is a provision in the NDAA which takes sexual assault investigations away from military Chain of Commands, and instead creates a separate investigative board since Chain of Commands such as those at Fort Hood helped bury sexual assault cases.
  5. With NATO Leadership support, President Biden followed on the Trump Era Doha Agreement between the US and Taliban and withdrew US forces from Afghanistan (Liptak and Sullivan, 2021, CNN). This withdrawal from one perspective was just in that the war in Afghanistan did achieve some things such as helping women, but overall, the war was very costly to US taxpayers considering it was funded on debt as opposed to tax increases, so the war bill will continue to grow with interests’ payments. Yet, one could argue withdrawing from Afghanistan has remove the US from The Grand Chessboard, i.e., the strategic location of Central Asia near Russia, Iran, China, and Pakistan. Therefore in my opinion even liberal outlets decried Biden’s removal of troops, and they used “social justice”, i.e., “tear jerking tactics”, e.g., Vice News showing aggrieved veterans who felt the war wasn’t won or showing the blight of Afghan women, to convince the President to stay in the region, yet, these goals aren’t necessarily from humanitarianism but a way to continue militarism in the region, i.e., funding the military industrial complex and its contractors. One could argue that leaving Afghanistan makes the region more of a security threat to the Russians, Chinese, and Pakistanis, i.e., them focusing on Taliban or their enemies with ISIS in the region will keep them preoccupied. For example, Russia can’t just focus on the Eastern European theater but now must worry about their vast border with Central Asian nations, i.e., this help divert Russian resources away from Eastern Europe and towards Central Asia (where the Russians didn’t have much luck such with the Soviet Afghan War).
  6. Biden has threatened Russia with sanctions such as sanctions relating to the SWIFT (The Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication) system if Russia continues military action in Ukraine and decides to conduct a second wave of invasions into the country.
  7. Sources vary but around 65,000 to 70,000 Afghan refugees were brought to the United States. When Joe Biden withdrew from Afghanistan both sides of the political spectrum have Biden criticism, yet surprisingly even certain figures on the political-right tried to use the humanitarian catastrophe card. Yet, according to Hennessey-Fiske (2021), of the LA Times, “Since the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan in August, 124,000 people have been evacuated to the U.S., including 67,000 Afghan allies. Of those Afghans, 10,000 have been resettled with the help of nonprofit agencies in communities across the nation, according to the Biden administration.”. Lastly, under the Biden Administration, $6.3 Billion has been allocated to resettlement efforts (Hennessey-Fiske, 2021, LA Times). Yet, according to Caitlin Doornbos (2021) of Military.com, as of December 7, 2021, only 34,000 refugees remained on US bases such as Fort Bliss in Texas, Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst in New Jersey, Fort McCoy in Wisconsin, Camp Atterbury in Indiana, Holloman Air Force Base in New Mexico, and Fort Pickett and Marine Corps Base Quantico in Virginia.
  8. Opened Cops Hiring Program (CHP) applications worth ~$139 million to police agencies across the country
  9. Opened nearly 80k acres of offshore drilling in the Gulf of Mexico
  10. Yet, Biden has also re-entered the Paris Climate Accord after Trump withdrew from the agreement, largely with Trump feeding off his base’s climate change skepticism, but also his view that the US would fall behind if nations like China or India would continue to use dirty energy. Yet, when you see Biden’s offshore drilling policy, it calls into question his honest intentions around combating climate change and hitting carbon emission reduction targets. According to Matt McGrath (2021) of the BBC, “This new target, possibly for 2030, and President Biden’s commitment to reaching net zero emissions by 2050, will be the guide rails for the US economy and society for decades to come.”
  11. Convinced Australia to purchase US submarines as opposed to French submarines
  12. Extended the moratorium on student loan payments and interests’ payments into spring 2022
  13. Kept the Trump Era Title 42 health risk loophole to maintain the Stay in Mexico asylum seeking policy, i.e., asylum seekers must claim asylum from their own country or from Mexico (where many Central American refugees travel to)
  14. Made Juneteenth, i.e., the official day that slavery in the United States ended (not to be confused with the Emancipation Proclamation) a Federal Holiday

What needs to be done?

The George Floyd Justice in Policing Bill needs to be signed considering police are still getting funding, and systemically one could argue the justice system hasn’t reformed much. This bill passing is something that BIPOC peoples but also many white people want, despite the police issue often being framed through a black liberation versus the system framework. Passing the bill, I would argue would help evolve policing and even help police officers, i.e., I see the potential passage of it as continuous improvement, and restoring trust equates to civilians not being so fearful when approached by police. With the First Step Act passed under Trump alongside the hopeful passage of the MORE Act and George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, the United States will still have police officers but society will have a more progressive criminal justice system such as people not being arrested for marijuana offenses, people who have used marijuana be given the change to seek better paying employment or military service (helping recruiting), and the public will feel the system actually listens to them.

Biden has been effective but not the most effective, but he’s keeping the lights on, and things are improving slowly. I am trying to write this objectively, i.e., above progressivism and conservatism. In many ways, Biden is quite boring. Yet, Biden is doing what needs to be done in certain regards such as trying to restore faith in alliances that Donald Trump in theory helped to jeopardize such as Biden meeting with NATO leaders, considering the United States doesn’t want to lose a foothold over the historically nationalistic, multi-ethnic, and multi-lingual region (remembering WWI, WWII, the Napoleonic Wars, Thirty Years Wars, various wars of successions, etc.) especially as ambitious leaders such as France’s Emmanuel Macon (who isn’t anti-American, but more so, competitive) wants to assert French primacy. The fact that France and Germany can use their economic leverage to balance the West versus Russia increases if NATO fails and this in theory might be great for those who are dovish on foreign policy, yet in theory, a Europe without a strong unified bond with the United States to take the bad publicity for Europe could unleash a chaotic mix of nationalistic sentiments as Europeans don’t see themselves as living in solidarity with mutual interests, but rather might start seeing themselves as competitors where such competition can be easily exploited by emergent or wannabe emergent superpowers such as China and Russia (remembering that China has heavily invested in European infrastructure projects and Russia also has a near monopoly on natural gas pipelines). For example, the Far Right “ethno-nationalist” ideology coming from Kremlin through thinkers such as Aleksandr Dugin, has affect European politics, but the truth is that an “ethno-state” would effectively isolate a nation to be exploited or bribed by a nation such as Russia. In other words, if NATO ever fails, which is what Russia and China wants, sure, this could help Germany or France become the de-facto leaders of the European Union (which in theory they already are, i.e., Germany and France providing most of the bailout money via the European Central Bank during the Greek sovereign debt crisis), yet the erosion of the NATO alliance which does force cooperation between the various ethnic states, could lead to unleashing old-fashioned nationalistic tensions, which could therefore be exploited by the Russian Kremlin’s hope of returning to its former glory days, and potentially in-debt now isolated European states to Chinese financing. In theory if NATO fails, so would the European Unions, and thus the European Central Banks, and this would have major consequences on international financing and markets, e.g., if the Euro Dollar were to go away and nations started adopting their own nationalistic currencies, this could not only make currency conversion/trade more problematic but could also pose a risk for smaller nations would suffer currency short selling by speculators.

Yet, what I wrote above is such a microcosm of the various issues that the United States has to juggle, and I would argue that Biden is helping to catch up on certain domestic needs (like roads), but there was hope he would be more ambitious in his vision to not just catch up but to rocket forward, considering he won off the energy of progressive populism who do want green energy, police reform, women’s rights, the rich paying higher taxes to fund society, etc. Progressives don’t want faux progressivism, such as the military or intelligence community keeping things the same but simply adding “woke recruiting campaigns”, but they want material (real world) change.

Yet, Biden (or, even let’s say a Republican in an alternative universe) has a decent excuse to go at the pace he’s going at because with COVID-19 still railing, Biden does have an excuse to sell moderate temperance to the public. So, considering the situation he’s doing decent, but one can say the opposite, e.g., this dire situation should have been a way to redistribute the wealth/debt of the nation to the working classes instead of focusing on hedge funds like BlackRock, etc. COVID-19 revealed many issues such as a lack of affordable housing, the fact that the US minimum wage hasn’t been raised and adjusted to inflation since 2008 despite an increase the money supply, and that offshoring US labor has made the United States too dependent upon volatile global supply chains.

But objectively, Biden isn’t the worst president, nor is he doing a horrific job. He’s just “business as usual”, yet many might appreciate this “business as usual” because people are burnt out of all the social arguments that occurred under the Trump Era. In theory, Trump going Far Right gave Centrist Democrats a good alibi to not push forward, i.e., Democrats are saying “we might be boring, but at least we’re not as terrifying and paranoid as the conservatism that Trump unleashed”.

Biden is returning a sense of peace and calm on the global stage with our very needed allies who buy our weapons – and, yes, I know this is problematic, but it is a fact of life, yet, our allies grant us access to their airspace/ports, and vouch for our debt, e.g., Japan is one of the largest holders of US Treasuries as they attempt to fund their pension system for their elderly population, but Japan is also geo-strategically important in Pacific, creating a triangle with South Korea and Taiwan/The Philippines near the South China Sea versus China.

Even with the Build, Back, Better Act dead in negotiations, I am not personally stressing over BBB, even though it would have been awesome if it passed. A perk to BBB failing is that we can all agree that Manchin, as well as Sinema, can’t be trusted. Biden is exercising a different managerial approach as compared to Trump. Trump used a micro-manager authoritarian approach to managing power often using Executive Orders to circumvent the legislative process, but Biden is using a traditional balance-of-power approach by following the constitution, i.e., relying on the legislative branch to create laws, the judicial branch to review and approve laws, and the executive branch to sign laws after they garner the required votes in Congress. You can judge Biden on this though. If Trump was a strongman leader, then why doesn’t Biden do the same across the board and not just on COVID-19 mitigation? It’s my opinion that Biden doesn’t want to continue the precedent set by Trump as far as authoritarian rule by the Executive Branch, so he’s being “boring” yet constitutional by relying on the other two branch of government. Yet, this is good, but also gives the administration an excuse to go slow, and this slowness doesn’t equate to progress, and gives an alibi to not fulfill campaign promises.

Yet, despite thinking on the negative, I decided to write out what has been accomplished so far. Even with BBB dead in the water as of 2021, it doesn’t mean something akin to it can’t be passed soon or through other bills or strategies, i.e., breaking up BBB and padding other bills with its provisions. The Democrats, who I support aren’t in a bad situation but are in a vulnerable situation considering 2022 Congressional elections especially those in the Senate are on the horizon. Unless the Democrats get a large majority to sure up power, then they’re left with negotiating or developing different strategies to pass progressive policy. In theory, Biden could use ideas that Steve Bannon on behalf of Trump tried to do but in a progressive way. For example, Bannon if my memory is correct (I’m searching for the article that vividly remember seeing) tried to use the Defense Priority Act to subsidize the coal industry and nuclear energy. So, if this idea was floated, then why use it for green energy, i.e., green energy is a national defense priority?

Yet, despite BBB failing, the United States is and isn’t in as dire of situation, yet President Biden has been doing a decent job of keeping the lights on and signing bills that invest in America’s future. Even as a person who sympathizes with Leftism, I could easily be angry at Biden if I wanted, but I’m already such a skeptic that I figure “eh” at least the lights are on, and the Democrats have power to a degree. Anything is better than conservatism. It sucks it comes down to that, but in the face of 3rd Way corporatism (a type of fascism) there’s not much one can hope for since the ruling classes dictate democracy.

President Biden signed the $1.2 Trillion Infrastructure Bill (11/15/2021) into law and is expected to sign the annual National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) which passed the Senate on (12/15/2021) which has a price tag of $778 Billion which is a $23.9 Billion top-line increase from the previous NDAA.  So, our roads/bridges/ports/airports/levies and military will be funded. I consider that win. Sure, there’s many pacificist and Leftist decrying the Military Industrial Complex, but every nation needs a military where we like it or not (a sad truth of the human species), and even as a Leftist, I do support the military and American primacy. Sure, I know all about the crimes of the CIA and can still call them out and would pray we could figure out better ways of doing diplomacy besides hardcore covert overthrowing government operations, yet, still I support the troops considering most of the troops are of the proletariat. I can support socialism from a Western and American perspective while still detesting Chinese socialism for example. 

We are also still living under the $2.2 Trillion CARE Act (3/27/2020) which was supplemented with the $484 Billion PPP (Paycheck Protection Program) & Health Care Enhancement Act (4/24/2020), and the Consolidated Appropriation Act of 2021 at $2.3 Trillion (signed on 12/27/20, which merged $900 Billion with a $1.4 Trillion Omnibus Spending Bill) which were passed under Donald Trump, yet President Biden supplemented these with a $1.9 Trillion American Rescue Plan (3/11/2021). Note: An omnibus spending bill is a type of bill in the United States that packages many of the smaller ordinary appropriations bills into one larger single bill that can be passed with only one vote in each house. There are twelve different ordinary appropriations bills that need to be passed each year (one for each appropriations sub-committee) to fund the federal government and avoid a government shutdown.

Yet, the easy simple math I did below:

CARE Act (3/27/2020) – 2,200,000,000,000

PPP HCE Act (4/24/2020) – 484,000,000,000

Consolidated Appropriation Act (Omnibus) (12/27/20) – 2,300,000,000,000

American Rescue Plan (3/11/21) – 1,900,000,000,000

Infrastructure Bill (11/15/2021) – 1,200,000,000,000

2022 NDAA (projected 12/31/2021) – 778,000,000,000

= 7,600,000,000,000 trillion + (484,000,000 + 778,000,000 = 1,262,000,000,000)

= 8,862,000,000,000 in appropriate spending since 3/27/2020, yet, appropriate spending doesn’t mean it will be charged at once, but rather a lot of the money such will be divvied up over fiscal years, and after viewing the National Debt Clock, I’m assuming that all the bills I listed above from the Infrastructure Bill and previous are factored into this national debt number in some way, shape, or form.

Yet, according to National Debt Clock,

$29 Trillion in Debt vs $23 Trillion in GDP vs $4 Trillion in Tax Revenues, and these numbers were pulled on 12/24/21 at 6:25 AM EST, but I’m unsure if the $1.2 Trillion is already factored into this number, but if not then we may be around $30.9 Trillion since the Infrastructure Bill was passed before I checked the Debt Clock. So, roughly we’re at about a $7 Trillion detriment as far as Debt vs GDP, and we’re not nearly paying the amount of money need in taxes at $4 Trillion to really dent the $29 Trillion in debt, or in other words taxes amount to around 13.9% out of the national debt (4/29 * 100). This 13.9% is odd because this means that even though the highest marginal tax rate bracket is 37%, effectively on average, i.e., the average of effective tax rates, is only 13.9%, meaning that someone isn’t pay thing taxes, i.e., even though on paper it says the highest you can pay is 37%, in reality only 13.9% is being paid by all taxpayers (billionaires included), meaning there’s a tax rate detriment of 23.1%. Everyday people, from the lower working classes to the high middle class like a successful business owner might pay the highest 37% rate on all their total earned income, yet, billionaires are likely avoiding so much in taxes that the average of all tax revenue received is 13.9%. If I take the $30.9 Trillion and compare that to the $4 Trillion in taxes raised, it’s even worst at 12.9%.

So, assuming the $8 trillion in bills from the CARE Act to the Infrastructure Bill is factored into the standing $29 Trillion as shown on the Debt Clock, or even assuming they are not thus making the debt 30.9 trillion, the taxes being raised in relation to debt is only 12.9-13.9%, making the tax revenue pulled in fall short of the highest tax rate that can be charged at 37%, thus making a tax revenue detriment in relation to national debt be 23.1-24.1%.

This means that the government is borrowing to cover this spread somehow on top of what it already borrows but is also not effectively taxing those who should be paying at a minimum 37%.

The government has a few options. Better enforcing existing tax laws especially on higher income earners, raising tax rates so you have a better chance of catching tax revenues, and/or revising the tax code. Even if let’s say we add that 23-24% detriment I speak of to the 37% highest tax rate, then we get a 60-61% rate, which interestingly would not be the highest historical marginal tax rate. The harsh truth is…we’ve been slacking on paying taxes collectively in relation to the type of first-world society we live in. We use credit more than taxation. Yet, older generations, whom we consider to be “tougher” actually paid higher taxes and the Golden Era of Democratic Capitalism occurred under higher taxation to pay for society so that future generations wouldn’t incur as much debt, or their money be less valuable. Yet, the Boomer generation once they entered the workforce in the late 70s despite having initially higher taxes, actually ended paying on average lower taxes than their parents and likely even their children who will have to bear the burden of higher taxes (to pay for entitlement programs such as Social Security, Medicare, etc.).

Yet, all this money from these bills…what are the people truly getting from it? The realized impact among the people I would argue is minimal. Sure, some people got COVID relief checks but those checks truly don’t cover the cost of living such as housing or rent, food, gas, education, debt principal or interests, expenses. We’re spending all this money, but the truth is that most is going to large businesses or corporations who win grants, awards, contracts, and direct payments, etc., via contracts by the federal government under the Federal Procurement Data System, Federal Acquisition Regulation, etc.

President Biden has accomplished things by signing legislation into law that gives support to business, individuals, and will help repair/rebuild America’s declining and crumbling infrastructure.

As far as national security, Joe Biden has met with Pacific nations and even snubbed France over a submarine deal between Australia, thus tightening Australia’s bond with the USA via the AUKUS Alliance as China becomes more ambitious regarding Taiwan (a major source of semiconductors), The Belt and Road Project, The South China Sea (the world’s most vital shipping lane), etc. The submarine deal will sell $153 billion and USD $171 billion worth of US military equipment according to the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) (NDTV.com., 12/15/21).

Also, within the NDAA there is the I am Venessa Guillen Bill, which will take away the military’s authority to prosecute sexual assault and harassment cases and instead, create an independent investigation separate from the chain of command (Grace White, KHOU-11, 12/22/21).

In addition, despite Blue Lives Matter being a Trump adjacent movement, The Department of Justice under President Biden has announced $139 million in grant funding through the department’s Office of Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS Office) COPS Hiring Program (CHP). The awards provide direct funding to 183 law enforcement agencies across the nation, allowing those agencies to hire 1,066 additional full-time law enforcement professionals (The Department of Justice, 11/18/21). Further, within the NDAA which is due to be signed soon by President Biden, there still exists the controversial Program 1033 where the military gives surplus military equipment to police agencies. Even, though I support police reform, it is a lie to state that President Biden isn’t funding cops.

Further, according to Annie Nova (2021) of CNBC, “Amid concerns about the new omicron variant of the Covid-19 virus, the Biden administration will extend the payment pause for federal student loan borrowers until May 1.” This extension allows people to stop paying student loan debt without incurring interests.

Biden released 80 million acres in the Gulf of Mexico to auction for drilling, despite him attempting to use an Executive Order to pause drilling, but this pause was blocked in court by 13 oil/natural gas friendly states (Ella Nilsen, CNN, 11/17/21). So, with Biden opening 80 million acres for offshore drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, from a progressive perspective this is horrible and a deviation from his campaign promises to help fight Climate Change and start encouraging higher green energy investing, yet, from a conservative or at least let’s say business perspective, opening offshore drilling could help keep energy prices low, and lower energy prices might help to stave off the inflationary pressures hitting the USA. Lower energy costs is the foundation that affects many aspects of the supply chain such as more affordable utility energy costs which could help divert rising costs for consumers but also commercial entities, cheaper transportation costs, generating revenues for manufacturers of tools and machinery related to the oil and natural gas industry, and maintaining employment. Yet, Biden is likely opening up the oil leases because the truth is that Big Oil and Gas has a lot of influence, so Biden is really trying to garner favor, considering many rich people can fund bad publicity against a President who goes against their business interests.

Biden has also kept Title 42 restrictions relating to immigration and asylum seekers. Biden is using the Trump Area Title 42 loophole that restricts entry into the US on the grounds of preventing the spread of contagious health risks, to keep asylum seekers out of the United States under the Remain in Mexico asylum seeker policy. It’s controversial, yet, it’s interesting that conservatives don’t give Biden much credit for maintaining this nativist Trumpian policy.

Such a policy was brought into further controversy after Haitian refugees fleeing earthquakes, hurricanes, and a government coup, migrated through Mexico and attempted to enter the USA. Border Agents, at this time under the leadership of Biden, used controversial tactics to keep the Haitian immigrants out of the United States. Yet, Biden later started removing restrictions on travel from eight African countries, where these the travel restriction was originally implemented to monitor the Omicron variant of COVID-19. Yet, this move to remove travel restrictions on African countries raises the question as to why the Haitian refugees weren’t allowed to claim asylum which is a right under international law.

But, despite Joe Biden doing things such as supporting the military and bolstering the economy in relation to COVID-19 and its variants, he is falling behind on what he promised to do for those who voted for him. The George Floyd Justice in Policing Act has failed in negotiations as of the fall of 2021, and this bill was introduced twice by Democrats but no success largely due lack of Republican support (zero vote for the second attempt at the reform bill). 

There’s also issues such as 800,000+ Americans having died from COVID related illnesses while there is a universe of conspiracy theory and misinformation regarding vaccines; there is a homelessness epidemic largely caused by drug addiction (such as Feytanyl coming from South of the Border)/mental health and workers being priced out of real estate markets such as Seattle, Los Angeles, and the San Francisco Bay Area; a “Crime Wave” as life normalizes after the initial COVID-19 lock-downs where crime could be traced to the lack of job opportunities/rising cost of living among the working classes; a very hot housing market where foreign investors are unfairly buying multiple homes (if not entire communities) and pricing out first-time homeowners; Roe v. Wade as always is under attack from Republicans; Trans people still lack legal protections over employment, healthcare access, and being protected if incarcerated; there is a threat of domestic terrorism such as by White Supremacy Extremists (WSEs); outstanding student loan debt in the U.S. has surpassed $1.7 trillion and burdens Americans more than credit card and auto debt (Nova, 2021, CNBC), and generally, there is lack of trust in institutions including the media.

Yet, from all this spending, where the money isn’t truly reaching the working classes, despite whatever sort of COVID stimulus checks or PPP Loans that individuals, families, and small-to-medium size businesses have received. The sheer amount of money spent so far since COVID started around March 2020 is…insane, and it could be argued that it is just another form of “trickle down” corporatism, rather that direct social investments in the people. It’s as if the government spends money just to say to the working classes that “we can’t afford this now”. The Buy Back Better Bill was intended to be a way for the people to get a cut of all this debt creations and deficit spending. It is disheartening that the American public will foot the bill for all this spending, yet, not really get a direct “in their pocket” benefit, granted the NDAA does stimulate employment across the thousands of contractors supporting the defense industry in the web we call the Military Industrial Complex, paying soldiers, and the Infrastructure Bill will help create employment with construction jobs, engineering projects, and improving roads/bridges/ports that naturally stimulate economies.

Works Cited/References

Doornbos, C., (2021), 34,000 Afghan Refugees Remain on Seven Military Bases in the US Three Months After Evacuation Mission, Military.com, source: https://www.military.com/daily-news/2021/12/07/34000-afghan-refugees-remain-seven-military-bases-us-three-months-after-evacuation-mission.html

Hennessey-Fiske, M., (2021), Why are most Afghan evacuees still housed at U.S. military camps?, The Los Angeles (LA) Times, source: https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2021-10-30/why-have-afghan-refugees-been-held-for-months-on-u-s-bases

Liptak, A., & Sullivan, K., (2021), NATO leaders at summit back Biden’s decision to pull troops out of Afghanistan, CNN, source: https://www.cnn.com/2021/06/14/politics/president-biden-nato-summit/index.html

Lobosco, K., & Lubhy, T., (2021), Here’s what’s in the bipartisan infrastructure package, CNN, source: https://www.cnn.com/2021/07/28/politics/infrastructure-bill-explained/index.html

NDTV.com (2021), Australia’s Nuclear Submarine Fleet Expected To Cost Over $121 Billion, source: https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/australias-aukus-nuclear-submarines-fleet-may-cost-over-usd-121-bn-report-2652589

Nova, A. (2021), Biden administration extends payment pause for student loan borrowers until May 1, CNBC, source: https://www.cnbc.com/2021/12/22/biden-administration-extends-payment-pause-for-student-loan-borrowers-until-may-1.html

Orem, T. (2021), 2021-2022 Tax Brackets and Federal Income Tax Rates, Nerd Wallet, source: https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/taxes/federal-income-tax-brackets

Probasco, J., Understanding the Infrastructure Bills, https://www.investopedia.com/here-s-what-s-in-the-usd1-trillion-infrastructure-bill-passed-by-the-senate-5196817

Shannon, J., Yancey-Bragg, N., Stanton, C., (2021), Biden administration to lift travel restrictions on 8 African countries; 500 flights canceled: COVID-19 updates, USA Today, https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/health/2021/12/24/omicron-covid-surge-canceled-flights/9008997002/

The Department of Justice, Office of Public Affairs (2021), Justice Department Announces $139 Million for Law Enforcement Hiring to Advance Community Policing, source: https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-announces-139-million-law-enforcement-hiring-advance-community-policing

US Debt Clock.com (2021), source: https://www.usdebtclock.org/#

White, G. (2021), President Biden expected to sign Vanessa Guillen legislation soon, family says, KHOU-11, source: https://www.khou.com/article/news/local/vanessa-guillen/vanessa-guillen-legislation/285-70070dc1-5bee-4b6b-968b-304b9fdbdec5

The Political Left are the Blue Coats. 1776 was a Workers’ Strike. Revealing the Leftist Tradition of the Revolutionary War. Dealing with the Left’s Patriotism optics issue. By Quinton Mitchell

The American Revolution was a worker’s strike and the modern Left needs to embrace this tradition to alleviate the accusation that it’s not “patriotic”. The colonists were subjects (contracted workers, i.e., contractors), within chartered colonies (corporations) – thirteen departments to be exact (the Thirteen Colonies)-, whose labor was being exploited for the benefit of shareholders back in the United Kingdom. Our understanding of the Revolution was crafted by the business class who used the proletariat class, for their “hostile takeover of the corporation”, to emphasis a radical worship of individual liberty and anti-taxation, which translates to power for the most powerful private interests.

Part 1. 1776 as a Worker’s Socialist Movement

Part 2. The Left Has a Patriotism Problem, in theory.

I. 1776 as a Worker’s Socialist Movement

Imagine it’s 1776 and somehow, we have TV and the modern mainstream news. Imagine the news talking about a guerilla army in a place called America revolting against the business interests of the British Empire. The news, imaging Tucker Carlson in a powered wig, would likely call the American Revolutionaries, terrorists, and Communist agitators for propaganda purposes.

When we’re taught about American Independence stories of Paul Revere, The Boston Tea Party, the crossing of the Delaware River, etc., come to mind, yet, what we’re not taught is that the energy of the American Revolution wasn’t purely about freedom in the way we understand it now, i.e., individual rights, personal property rights, etc., – which, in and of itself were used by the business class to advance their own interests at the expense of the people – but, also within the American Revolution there was a very Socialist energy. By Socialist it doesn’t necessarily mean Marxist, considering Marxism is just one of the many theories of Socialism, but since Marxism had the most indelible impact on the Socialist movement by providing a scientific framework for analysis, then what I’m saying is partially influenced by Marx such as his notion of class struggle, dialectical materialism, etc.

The colonists were subjects (contracted workers, i.e., contractors), within chartered colonies (corporations), thirteen departments to be exact (the Thirteen Colonies) whose labor was being exploited for the benefit of shareholders back in the United Kingdom.

The colony is the basis for the concept of the corporation where the first corporation, The Dutch East India Company, later inspired other companies such as The British East India Company. Colonies were business enterprises, often risky, which required private military contractors, inmate labor, human trafficked labor (slaves), and volunteers.

So, when the American Revolutionaries revolted, they as workers/slaves were revolting against a corporation, i.e., a capitalist enterprise.

We are often told one side of the coin when it comes the energy of the American revolution. It was not only libertarian in nature, but also socialist in nature. I suppose a merger of these traditions would be what we consider socio-anarchist.

For example, we often hear revolts against taxes as being American, yet even though the colonists (workers) were being taxed unfairly, there’s not much difference between taxes and wages. The workers were basically not being paid well enough, i.e., they weren’t fairly compensated for their labor to begin with, even before on the back end when they had to pay taxes, stamp duties, tariffs, etc. Colonists were getting the “double whammy” of being underpaid (slaves not paid at all) and then taxed (which likely caused harsher exploitation of workers/slaves by managers to make up for losses).

The energy of the revolution could only have happened if the worker classes revolted. In a way you could say the energy of the Revolution was a union movement, or, we could say the American Revolution is the birth of the American workers’ rights movement.

So, how did our conception of the American Revolution come to be? Those with power dictated the narrative, divided the public naturally with a capitalist system that created class struggle, but also layered it all with a racial caste system, so the white poor would identify, i.e., vicariously live through, the white elites.

I do feel that the Founders, some well-read into Enlightenment philosophers, might have speculated of the possibility of what would later become socialism as being a possibility, yet, since “mob rule of the people” would negate their own plans, but by not taking caring of the people would lead to disaster, they left an ambiguous statement within the Preamble, i.e., providing for the good will. Therefore, this one of the reasons why I believe in the Living Document interpretation of the constitution as opposed to the Originalist interpretation such as that of Supreme Court Justices such as Amy Coney Barrett, where the Originalist believe you must view the Constitution based on the time it was written, which is ridiculous, because that method denies the realities of the time at hand, its nuances, etc. (people were also slaves in this time, women had no right to vote in those times, etc.). The Founders were smart enough to know that the Enlightenment Tradition, such as what they were seeing in France, i.e., America’s fraternal brother, had utopian scope that not only emphasized the individual but also the collective.

We often hail the Founding Fathers as sage-life wisemen of virtuous character, but in essence they were of the gentry class, i.e., the middle-management classes, i.e., the managers of trading houses, labor agencies (slave depots), estates, warehouses, and law firms that served British investor interests. They were of the class had Anglophile sensibilities particularly in their education, and we can see this in the schism of the Loyalist gentry class versus the Revolutionary gentry class where Loyalists of the same class migrated to what is now Canada.

The American Revolution was two things, (1) A revolt of the proletariat, i.e., working classes subconsciously channeling what we could consider a Socialist energy, and (2) a “Hostile Takeover” by the middle-management of the colonies who wanted to cut out their foreign investors and become the de facto board of chairmen themselves.

Essentially, middle managers used the working classes, exploiting their unrealized concept of Socialism and worker’s rights, and then applied a concept of unfettered economic liberty which would always serve the ruling classes which the Founders after their victory now owned. It’s no different than workers revolting against a firm, but the leader of that firm simply uses them and turns around and does the same thing.

The very fact that the signers and framers from the upper classes didn’t trust democracy which they called “mob rule” is proof that the conscious and subconscious construction of the USA was based on classism. We can even add to the rebellions which came after the Revolution which weren’t simply about taxes, but about people fearing their wages would be eaten into since they likely didn’t make that much to begin with, such as in Shay’s Rebellion. Shay’s Rebellion on the surface seems like American’s simply protesting taxes, but really, they were protesting the merchant class passing down costs on to them for them to pay their own creditors. It’s no different than a bank steadily increasing your withdrawal fees, as a means of covering their own overhead. The people who revolted at what is now called Shay’s Rebellion were suppressed by a private army funded by the merchant class and commanded by General Benjamin Lincoln, which foreshadows how today private military contractors are used to suppress workers across the globe.

However, the framers and signers of the constitution all had their own personalities and reasons, and their occupations spanned from doctors, lawyers, military, and land holders, etc. We can’t lump all Framers and Signers together since they all had their own philosophy, yet the one thing they did have in common, is they were, even if they had moral reservations about it, were a part of a class system, where many of the signers by the time of Independence had their own special interests in mind, and not necessarily the good will of the American people as claimed.

To add to the claim that the American revolution had a Socialist element to it is that the Enlightenment philosophy of the revolution encompasses Leftist thought, i.e., individualism versus collectivism, both have roots in an Enlightenment thought through the centuries of European history.

Yes, what we consider to be notions of radical freedom, democracy, capitalism, and socialism all have a common ancestry dating back to the Renaissance (thinkers such as Giovanni Pico Della Mirandola), yet over time as history carried on and democratic experiments were burgeoning there was a splintering of ideas, yet, what we consider to be libertarian and socialists both have the same ends but through different strategy, e.g., one posits that individual rights and private property rights somehow ensures liberty, whereas the other posits that collective control over the means of production or an empowerment of the larger collective working class ensures that individual rights are respected, i.e., equality. The issue with the capitalist argument is that you can’t have equality even if equality or liberty exists on paper because the accumulation of capital, often created by robbing one’s labor, i.e., underpaying, creates too much of a vast spread within a hierarchy, i.e., there’s a larger difference between the haves and have nots. Socialism, particularly the specific, I repeat specific framework (since other types of socialism exist) of Fredrich Engels and Karl Marx, i.e., Scientific Socialism or Marxism, is more based within reality, whereas notions of capitalism, despite what we’ve been told, are more based on romantic idealism, i.e., ideas over real-world conditions.

The notion freedom by way of a capitalist system is based more in ideas (romanticism, religion, non-empiricism), rather than realism (understanding negative effects of systems, i.e., externalities, using a scientific framework to study human interactions, the interconnection of things, the inherent social nature of humans and the social nature of transaction, etc.), thus the American notion as we know it of liberty is more in aligned with Hegelian idealism, which is something that Marx disagreed with. Instead of living under “grand ideas”, Marx rather called capitalism what it is, which is a system based on the exploitation of labor for the benefit of a few or an individual. It exists to have people work for you, but you underpay them and collect the surplus yourself.

We can put Karl Marx in the same umbrella of Western philosophy as the thinkers who inspired the Revolutionaries, even though Marx came later, and many thinkers went in their own directions. For example, both Marx and Jefferson were influenced by J.J. Rousseau. Hegel, Kant, Spinoza, Smith, etc.

Both Marx and Jefferson had a materialist view to reality, though unique and modified to themselves, which could be translated as a scientific (observation of nature) or a realist view to nature, i.e., science, such as the science influenced by Newtonian thought. Yet, to not get too much into religion, it could be argued that Jefferson would be agnostic in a modern-day sense with Christian apologetics, whereas Marx would have been an atheist on the deeper end of scientific realism.

Jefferson stated, “Nature has, in truth, produced units only through all her works. Classes, orders, genera, species, are not of her works. Her creation is of individuals.” If Jefferson had survived to read Charles Darwin, he may be interested in the works Darwin such as the interconnectivity of all life.

Marx stated, ““Darwin’s work is most important and suits my purpose in that it provides a basis in natural science for the historical class struggle”.

“Like many other contemporaries he read—e.g., Hutcheson, Kames, Bolingbroke, Tracy, and Hume—Jefferson was an empiricist, and in keeping with Isaac Newton, a dyed-in-the-wool materialist.”  

[Source of quotations: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/jefferson/]

II. The Left Has a Patriotism Problem, in theory.

The Left as a Patriotism problem. It’s not that those on the Left, Progressive, or Left Liberal side of the house don’t like the United States. Their efforts to improve conditions is proof they do care about America. Yet, the Left as largely lost the “Patriotism optics” war, despite winning the Culture War as far as mainstream media as mainstream media has become more inclusive over time. Many on the Left might think that not being a radical patriot, waving the Stars and Stripes, posting things about supporting the troops, etc., is all that necessary, and some might even think it’s cringe or nonsensical to do such things because they could be seen as mere figurative gestures that don’t improve material conditions of the American people.

Yet, by not owning more of the Patriotic aesthetic this gives easy ammunition to the political right who can simply rebut any progressive idea as being “un-American”, etc. The Political Right as far as culture, i.e., fashion, optics, aesthetics, attempts to own the soul of the military, police, and even the Revolutionary War. Why do Leftist let this happen? It’s ok to be critical of the American system while still honoring the aesthetics of it. It’s ok to have a post-colonial framework, or even a Critical Theory viewpoint, or to apply intersectionality, and still have the appearance, but also the innate belief of loving your country.

Basically, we need to see more marketing campaigns to stitch the Leftist Framework with Patriotic imagery. Having American Flags at a rally for Bernie or Alexandria Ocasio Cortez is something simple to do. Unifying progressive veteran organizations and focusing on veteran care for troops while still honoring their service, even though the Left might lean towards pacifism, is fine. But the major point is to present the truth that the American Revolution was a worker’s strike (more to come on this below).

Republicans can easily have no policy besides enriching the rich even more, but they capture people with the allure of belonging to a Patriotic Tradition. Yet, the issue with how we understand this tradition is that the Revolutionary War for example wasn’t merely a war to free ourselves from taxes, but was also a worker’s strike, meaning the energy of the Revolutionary had a Leftist framework.

I’m frustrated as an everyday “heteronormative” guy wanting to see the Left succeed.

I surf the internet and on Instagram I constantly see beautiful models with Bible quotes above their LinkTree link (leading to OnlyFans) covering themselves with the US flag (something you wouldn’t see on the political left – which is fine, but it is a powerful tool), I see gun enthusiast pages, Don’t Tread on Me flags, people selling T-Shirts such as “Liberty or Death” or “1776”, truck or off-road vehicle pages, Blue Lives Matter pages, etc. The appeal of the political right is that it makes itself seem like a fun place for the normal person. “We got beautiful woman, we love our country, we admire our heroes, we eat meat, watch sports, we use our hands, we’re manly men and the women who love these men”, etc., etc.

Yet, on the Left things aren’t as monolithic and homogenous, which is fine, but due to ideologies such as Identity politics the Left is left in state where it can’t even agree internally on what can be done without people feeling they’re offending someone of another intersectional component. There’s a lot of “you aren’t down” enough shaming tactics on the Left which further divides things so the unified right can easily pick it apart or obstruct. How can the Left unite if the ideology of feminism (which isn’t bad) does posit itself against men and don’t really care what men think (not necessarily in theory as what a person criticizing this would say, but just look to social media where you see pages after pages essentially not…liking men), and I would say the same thing in reverse, when men on the Left might feel stunned or unable to feel they can articulate their thoughts without fear of being lectured? As crazy as it wounds, sexual politics are a big part of the appeal of the political-right because it coddles the heteronormative ego, whereas the left questions it, yet women on the right are willing to “stand by their men” because it’s beneficial for them to do so, i.e., they get adoring love and admiration.

I’m not saying that women on the Left need to be sexually objectified to lure men to the Left, but what I am saying is that the Right does do that. For example, look at the links of Babes for Bernie vs Babes for Trump. (https://www.instagram.com/babesforbernie/?hl=en) (https://www.instagram.com/babesfortrump2024/?hl=en)

Also for more into the sexual politics of the American Right Wing, see my post about Sex and Fascism relating to the band Tool and murder of George Floyd. https://mitchellrg.com/2020/08/29/tool-pulp-fiction-fascism-frauleins-cops-and-george-floyd-how-pulp-fictions-pawn-shop-scene-is-analogous-to-george-floyds-death-by-quinton-mitchell-c/  

You can apply this feeling of awkwardness across race, gender, orientation, assignment, etc. Yet, it’s not bad what the left has achieved as far as advancing the conversation. I almost feel a sense of “existential” growth at pondering intersectionality and I would say the Left has made me into a better person, but what I feel in my head even if it on the right track, and how the world outside of my head are two different things. The Left might feel enlightened but it’s a flimsy reality on the streets, where people like see it as “weak”, “intellectual”, etc.

I always had the idea of trying to reconcile heteronormative masculinity with Leftist thought. And, sure, I bet a critic with the typical “eye roll” response as if attempting such as thing is just proof of “male insecurity”, but I would argue it’s essential since this identity does exists in the material world, and the Right Wing is able to exploit masculinity and make it seem “explicitly” Right Wing. As a man, to be honest, this erks me. Maybe the American Left needs a “Men of Steel” tradition, where the notion of steel goes back to old Socialist imagery of the hammer, and this could help in hedging the culture war of the political right.

Regardless, the Right Wing is a unified force that markets itself with the high horse position of patriotic imagery and it also appeals to a “safe space” of non-intellectual, Football watching, beer drinking, firework shooting, Redneck rigging, “chicks” in daisy duke loving Americana. As a Leftist who grew up an old school Democrat before the passage of NAFTA, in many ways the culture of the right wing, is my culture (I’m watching Sunday Night Football with a beer right now), despite me coming from a tradition that always sympathized with the worker, had disdain for Wall Street, etc.

In many ways, the American Left lost its style of the “Roseanne America” or Axel Foley’s Detroit in Beverly Hills Cop. And, sure, these might not be “representative” of America as is, but ask yourself this question, “How do you help a Southern guy with a truck actually embrace Leftist ideology?”. Beau the Fifth Column for example is a refreshing attempt at inserting culturally conservative chic with the Leftist framework.

The last attempt at making the Left an actual fun place was decried at being “Bernie Bros”. Remember that? When men who supported Bernie were lumped into this category of a “Bernie Bro” because Bernie Sanders posed an ideological threat to Hillary Clinton, yet Bernie’s message even after the loss of Hillary in 2016 helped to re-energize the Democratic Party, going so far as helping first-time female candidates such as Alexandria-Ocasio Cortez, Rhasida Tlaib, and Ilhan Omar, even though the powerbase of the Democrats are neoliberal capitalist.  Were Bernie Bros toxic, or even a thing, or where they simply believers in Leftist ideology, simply using their masculine energy to rebut the appropriate masculine energy of the right-wing, who posed a risk to neoliberal female candidate whose decisions over her long (and impressive) career lead up to the issues we face today?

Seeing how radical Trump supporters are, the Left needs some All American “Bernie Bros” in the mix right alongside strong females, BIPOC communities, service workers, the LGBTQ community, veterans, etc.

It comes off as too erudite now, walking on eggshells, brainy, etc., yet ironically also living off a neoliberal “hipster” culture. It lacks the older aesthetics of the beer drinking truck driving union card holder, or the striking union organizers fighting the Rockefellers at coal mines in Colorado or Appalachia. It lacks the aesthetic of the “anti-war yet still patriotic veteran” such as how things were during the Vietnam War era, i.e., the men who might ride motorcycles with a POW/MIA flag.

The Left to survive needs to figure out its Patriotic and Americana problem, even though I know many intellectuals, content creators, podcasters, etc., on the Left will see this all as a silly attempt that doesn’t improve material conditions. But, why let your opposition have free ammunition, especially when that ammunition is easy the Left’s as well?

It has to also figure out a way of reconciling certain positions such as gun rights, which is a culture war aspect that the right holds onto firmly. There are actual liberal and left leaning gun clubs who could be used to advocate for gun ownership but also with progressive policies for safer gun controls. For example, the Socialist Rifle Association (https://socialistra.org/) and The Liberal Gun Club (https://theliberalgunclub.com/)

The Right-Wing Canadian Infiltration of the United States? When something silly sounding is very real. How the film Canadian Bacon (1995) kind of foreshadowed the actual Alt-Right invasion of the United States. This is not a joke…

Why are all of these pundits coming from Canada? Seriously…. They’re all Canadian. It’s always the ones you least expect… Jordan Peterson, Steven Crowder, Gavin McInnes, Stefan Molyneux, Nina Kouprianova, Ezra Levant, Laurent Southern, and the movie poster to Canadian Bacon (1995) by Michael Moore

Is the film Canadian Bacon by Michael Moore prophetic? Was it on to something without even realizing it? South Park by Matt Stone and Trey Parker even has its comedic take on Canadians. But, in reality…why are all these Right-Wing pundits…Canadian? Seriously? Have we become so cynical that people who want to do harm to the United States simply have to partake in our cynicism and disbelief? Laugh with us? There was the curious case of Anna Chapman along with nine others back in 2010 who were caught as being Russian spies and were given back to Russia in a spy exchange at an Austrian Airport (Sources: Russia spies plead guilty in US amid swap rumors by the BBC, 8 July 2010; The secrets of Anna Chapman by the BBC, 28 March 2011). We all should know the odd case of Maria Butina in the GOP NRA scandal. The agenda that is most prevalent to me right now, at least a piece of it, is how Right-Wing Canadian pundits that have gained influence in American politics but these people are simply the proxies of an international Zionist cabal spanning MAGA in the USA, the British Right Wing, Israel, and Russia. Trust me… I know that last sentence sounds silly. It will be called that. But I assure you, if you have not heard of people like Lauren Southern, Gavin McInnes, or Stefan Molyneux and their effects on American populism, you are the one who is out of touch. The global phenomenon of the Right Wing revolution isn’t organic but is actually a constructed movement unbeknownst to those who participate (you’re average Trump rally attendee), to build up mobilization for the defense of Israel and to link a newly rebranded traditionalist Russia with the West and USA on conservatism (whiteness).

The film Canadian Bacon I saw as a kid in the mid-nineties, and it did not leave much of an impact. Yet, I am watching it right as I write this. Be warned the film is full of 90s cheese (which is rather enjoyable in the dark times of late 2020) with some grunge music playing by people who are way too old to be listening to it (trying to capture the 90s Fugazi college crowd?), and a black character even drops the 90s phrase, “Can we all just get along”. Yet, brilliantly in satire fashion, akin to that of Don DeLillo’s 1985 book White Noise, Moore uses absurdity and hyperrealism to capture the time immediately after the Fall of the Soviet Union (I was a child) in which the USA was figuring out where to go considering there was no major enemies and the USA throughout the nineties enjoyed relative peace despite defense contractors trying to figure out how to create new revenue streams (sometimes going as far as fraud). It features a ragtag bunch of local cops (John Candy, Rhea Pearlman, Bill Nunn, etc.) who help foil a plot to start a new arms race. The film begins with the closure of a factory owned by a major defense contractor named Hacker Industries in a blue-collar community near Niagara Falls.

The film deals with the conflict of employment in the time of peace considering many US jobs are based within the Military Industrial Complex. The president of Hacker Industries working with a Washington insider, the President’s National Security Advisor Stuart Smiley (played by Kevin Pollack), tries to stir contempt to help boost the arms industry, even though the President (played by Alan Alda) wants peace. However, the President later meets with the Russian President, named Vladimir of course, to reignite Cold War tensions to help boost his popularity and employment numbers. The Russian President jokingly states that Russia is now concerned with state-of-the-art plumbing equipment and America should not be sore winners. The Cold War was costly to Russia. Later on after their plan to reignite war with Russia falls through, General Dick Panzer (played by Rip Torn) while conducting a briefing in the war-room (alluding to the Dr. Strangelove war room) goes through a list of enemies spanning Mao Zedong, Ho Chi Min, and even floats the ideas of an alien invasion. The President floats the idea of international terrorism (an ominous reference considering the Council of National Policy in real life was prepping for the Global War on Terrorism, and other Hollywood films, like True Lies, foreshadowed the emphasis on the Middle East) but Rip Thorn states that terrorist are just a bunch of people blowing themselves up in rental cars. The President then floats the idea of Canada.

The President’s National Security Advisor later consults a veteran CIA agent named Gus (who is still salty about the Cuban Missile Crisis and Korean War) who argues that Canada is the enemy. While strolling a hallway to talk in private, a hallway adorned with photos such as that of Henry Kissinger, Gus and Stuart have a conversation: “You remember the big New York blackout?” “Yea” “Caused by a Canadian hydroelectric plant, Niagara Falls. The Canucks claims it was a faulty transmitter, we have reason to suspect otherwise…” “Why is that?” “These Canadians suffer from a serious inferiority complex. That’s why they built this (whipping out a photo of the Canadian National Tower). World’s tallest free-standing tower. Our scientist cannot figure out what it is for. Canadians are always dreaming up a lot of ways to ruin our lives. The metric system, Celsius, Neil Young…Jesus. We admired them… Clean streets, no crime, no minorities” “How’d they pull that?” “No slavery…. Their entire government is run by socialist” “But it’s not the real stuff”, Stuart responds, before Gus continues, “No no no…that is where you are wrong…they’ve always had these tendencies”. Stuart reads a newspaper cutout, “Capitalism must be destroyed in all its forms? What is this??”, before Gus interjects, “We think they are a little weird with the socialism stuff… They provide free healthcare, education…. free condoms!”. Later, back at the war council room, the President and his staff float the idea of labeling Canada an enemy. One advisor, an African American man, states, “Hell, they’re whiter than we are!”. Yet, the President agrees to manufacture consent against the Canadians, later slipping the story to the media who starts their campaign of muckraking, Charlie Rose-like panel discussions, CSPAN knockoff updates, etc.

Gus later appears with a CIA team posing as Canadians to blow up a power-plant, but the power station is of course being guarded by John Candy and his crew. The event goes viral and causes the American public to believe the elaborate rouse even more.

A funny line so far is when a character, Kabral Jabar, played by Bill Nunn, while attending an auction of surplus military gear of a recently closed plant owned by Hacker Dynamics (maybe a ploy on General Dynamics, though the logo does reflect Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, etc.), says, “Listen, can we get out of here? All these guns and white people have me feeling nervous”, but John Candy playing Sheriff Bud Boomer, says, “Can you knock it off with the white stuff. You got me looking at em funny”. The fact Michael Moore gave Candy’s character the surname of Boomer obviously alludes to the Baby Boomers but considering this was the nineteen-nineties the term Boomer wasn’t used then as it is now, e.g., a term meant to prove the Baby Boomer’s general sense of selfishness and ambivalence to everything while simultaneously having the need for authority such as surface level politics, cops, simplistic dynamics of good guys versus bad buys, religion, etc.

But the plot of Canadian Bacon aside… There is something sinister coming from Canada in our reality.

The next stuff is serious. I am not…joking.

Canada used to send us quirky comedians. People who came from a higher latitude of the English speaking realm that we assumed had a natural predilection for left-wing, center-left, or moderate politics – granted they do have an important rural heritage as well – considering their single-payer healthcare system, the general perception of cleanliness, a general acceptance of cosmopolitanism, bilingualism, the fact that most of their population centers around urban areas doting the various provinces, and unlike Americans, the Canadians kept closer to their British roots which in itself is seen as more well-read, artistic, capable of understanding the “abstract”, and parliamentarian in nature. The Canadians or Canadiens are our slightly smarter younger sibling who stayed closer to our “parents” as we rebelled to be free but ended up like David Hasselhoff eating a cheeseburger off the floor in a drunken stupor or a film like Robocop makes so much sense it deserves a statue in Detroit.

Americas always saw Canada as the better place to the North with its own unique quirks. Nasally accents and using words like gee, or an over usage oh, or phases like don’t ya know. Something innocent about it. Yet, in recent times, especially in the times that led up to Trump America, I must admit that things have changed about Canada’s export of entertainers. They are all Right-Wingers and often extreme Right-Wingers. This isn’t the era of Jim Carey, John Candy, Mike Myers, Catherine O’Hara, Eugene Levy, etc., but rather we got a ragtag incendiary bunch comprising Steven Crowder, Lauren Southern, Gavin McInnes, Jordan B. Peterson, Nina Kouprianova (Richard B. Spencer’s allegedly – I believe her – abused ex-wife), Stefan Molyneux, and Ezra Levant (a Jewish-Canadian Right Wing Zionist) with his “Breitbart of Canada” media outlet in Rebel Media (an outlet that has hosted controversial figures such as Alex Jones and was linked to helping organize the United the Right Rally in Charlottesville, VA). I am sorry but Ezra Levant looks a lot like the main character from the Cohen Brother’s A Serious Man. Just saying. Is the United States being invaded by Canada? It sounds funny, it sounds like a movie-plot straight out of South Park or Canadian Bacon, but I am not joking even though it is amusing but…not. It is quite easy to do. We in the United States scrutinize people from South of the Border but is the same treatment given to those North of the border, and if not, gee I wonder why?

How clever of an idea when you think about it. Culturally similar nations with a predominately white population which can at times be reactionary to change, in right-wing politics at least, especially that which challenges the notions of conscious and subconscious supremacy (immigration, gender equality, people of color in lead roles, etc.). If the United States were to be invaded, sure, it could come from South of the Border with Mexico, or be from some shadowy terrorist cell, but we often don’t see Canada in the same light, even though the chances of espionage or infiltration is much higher with our Canadian sibling. It is not the Canadian government that is the issue, but rather non-state actors who are betrothed to a well-funded religious-political agenda that spans the United States, U.K. and Commonwealth, Israel, and Russia. More to come on this later.

Gavin McInnes, formerly of Canadian media outlet Vice Media (which interestingly has links to the Manhattan Institute founded by former CIA head, William Casey, via Vice’s former correspondent, Raihan Salam and this institute also has ties to PayPal founder, Peter Thiel – an ardent Trump supporter and owner of the infamous IT firm, Palantir), represents the Oi! Oi! Right Wing takeover of the British late-seventies punk scene and he uses the prevalence of political correctness, “wokeness”, and the elevation of marginalized groups to turn conservatism into “punk” against the mainstream. McInnes created the Proud Boys harkening back to the right-wing street thugs of the National Front in Margaret Thatcher’s right-wing 1980s England. The Proud Boys, supposedly started as a joke by McInnes, despite being known in the public sphere for years were elevated even further in Trump’s debate against Biden in which Trump stated, “Stand back and stand by” when asked about if Trump would denounce white supremacy, specifically when asked about the Proud Boys. The Proud Boys employ a strategy of surface level silliness to divert attention away from their chauvinistic West is the Best ideology. The Proud Boys require a beat-down initiation in which a man must read off as many as ten breakfast cereals while getting beat up. It seems childish and borderline like suppressed homoeroticism (considering McInnes has made-out with Milo Yiannopoulos) or MGTOW behavior (Men Gone Their Own Way) especially with the prevalence of nude male Greek statues representing logos within the Alt-right sphere of thought. The Proud Boys are a sausage fest of angry males who need identity. This playful silliness is not just common to the Proud Boys who have documented cases of using violence, but also Boogaloo, who took that name from a nineteen-eighties pop cultural reference, who gained notoriety when US Air Force Sergeant Steven Carrillo was indicted for the murder of two deputies in North California in 2020 using the Black Lives Matter protests as cover and a means of inciting a race war.  

Lauren Southern and Nina Kouprianova with their “fraulein” looks aer the anti-feminists who represents femininity’s subservience to masculinity yet are outspoken in favor for militaristic masculinity protecting the “race” – a notion notable in the Right Wing [Note: Nina Kouprianova has been interviewed by vlogger, Jay Dyer, who converted to Orthodox Christianity, i.e., the main religion of Russia, and most of his work are directed at the United States and not at the current events happening in Russia. Dyer to me seems to have an affinity with “people groups”, i.e., differences as being ordain in his words by God). Lauren Southern not only went to South Africa to show a biased view of the racial situation in South Africa such as proliferating the white farmer murders (something Trump has tweeted about) but she has also flown to Russia to interview Alt-Right Anti-American intellectual Aleksandr Dugin.

Jordan B. Peterson and Stefan Molyneux represent an intellectual basis for Darwinism with concepts like “fitness”, “Bell Curves”, the strongest survives, etc., which are notable tropes of the Right Wing even though it hides in high-brow discussions of capitalism, intelligence, systems theories, i.e., alluding to the natural tendency to form social hierarchies which in and of itself insinuates a rejection of egalitarianism, etc. Steven Crowder represents the “bro” of the bunch. A frat boy beer drinking mentality which tries to out masculine you and harkens back to the days where the white male viewpoint of reality, including criticisms of others, dominated the landscape.

The fact that many are comedians helps deliver their messages into the public because they can simply state, “I’m just telling a joke”, so there is a level of solipsism and postmodernism in their tactics, where postmodernism comes into the mix because of the prevalence of memes, vlogs, and conspiracy theories/”true history” videos spanning or touching upon Indo-European studies (a gateway into Aryan studies such as the videos created by British Alt-Right vlogger, Survive the Jive), rejection of peer-reviewed and intensive studies such as the Out of Africa Theory in exchange for fringe theories such as Hyperborea, aliens (where aliens only seem to help people of color and not Europeans), etc., in the digital landscape. Postmodernism simply put (if it can be) is when the world has no reference of what the truth actually is, so truth is utterly subjective and an existential process, and the notion of objective truths or grand-narratives are false. Postmodernism was first a reaction to the atrocities of the right-wing after World War II, but now it seems like it’s being cleverly used by conservatives to deconstruct the new accepted truths of modern human rights, diversity, gender equality, etc. These types of individuals in the right-wing sphere in which I am speaking of broaden their base by being elevated on even more popular outlets such as the Joe Rogan Experience. Yet, whenever this side is called out, they can default to victim status by making it appear those who are fed up with traditionalism, patriarchy, racism, etc., are in effect nothing more than “commies”, “fascists”, “Marxist radicals” or “Social Justice Warriors” who are simply shaming white boys and women who love them. To stir this atmosphere of them being the oppressed or muzzled victims, any time a person is de-platformed they cry fascism, even though their very own ideology is the basis of fascism. They are playing games is where I am getting at. Using amorphisms and ambiguity to Trojan Horse their regressive ideology into the mainstream.

I’ve said this before but we truly live in the era of the Postmodern Conservative who uses deception tactics to de-evolve the modern liberal state back into a conservative homogenous state, but it claims to detest postmodernism in the vein of people like Pat Buchanan who popularized “Cultural Marxism”, despite utilizing postmodernism (asymmetric, shapeshifting, “what is truth?” – tactics, etc.) as a tool for its own agenda. Ironically, Donald Trump himself could be compared to Max Headroom, a Canadian character of a former Canadian TV show, where Max Headroom is a digital avatar and Trump in effect is the same with his use of the online arena to bypass the political process and stir up conspiracy theories to protect himself. The right-wing conspiracy culture that led up to Trump was the clay which gave us a Golem like Trump. Interestingly, certain portions of the Alt-Right, those more in line with the quasi-Nazi Occult elements, have even stated that they are using “magic” or magick when they troll online, i.e., they are willing their wants into existence using meme warfare.  

In relation to the Russian elements regarding my “Canadian Cabal” theory, 541,810 people in 2016 claimed Ukrainian descent, there were 622,445 people in 2016 who claim Russian or partial Russian descent in Canada, and in 2016 about 20,710 people claimed Belarusian descent in Canada. In 2016, Canada had a population over 35 million (compared to the United States with is around 300+ million). The number of people of Eastern European descent might not stand out as being significant, but for a much smaller nation than the USA, the amount of cultural influence cannot be calculated. As far as cultural influence all it takes is one person or a few to gain a large audience to disseminate and proliferate messages. Further, it’s much easier to “fit in” with their American counterparts, especially those in the Right-Wing, which is an arena spanning household “normal” center-Right politics all the way to fringe Nazism, the John Birch Society, the Tea Party Movement, Christian Extremists, Traditionalist Mormons who practice polygamy, Qanon, the Rise Above Movement, Boogaloo (which resulted in the murders of two law officers where the assailant wrote Boogaloo in blood at a crime scene – yet, our media unfairly characterizes the Black Lives Matter movement  as terrorists), the Right Wing occult (Order of Nine Angels, Atomwaffen SS, etc.), race realists, etc.

I am not saying espionage is happening from the Canadian government necessarily since they are US allies, but rather individual actors have the ability to infiltrate and change the culture of the United States by appealing to a sense of sameness. The United States could clamp down on these individual actors if they wanted to such as scrutinizing their visa status, look to see if they’re paying taxes, etc., but considering it is Trump America and he needs these people, it seems the Department of Justice is more concerned with a Hoover like condemnation of the left than it is protecting the USA from actual domestic and international agents who just so happen to be “good ole white boys”.

Most of the people I named are conservative and they speak on American politics more than they do Canadian politics. Is this not strange? Do American conservatives even call them out on this? No. Why? Because the white conservative base of America is so lost in fear than they will take anyone that looks like them and tells them exactly what they want to hear. This fear has created not only a business opportunity for entertainers but also a world-shifting opportunity for influencers who are attached to the agendas of larger and shadowy organizations, which I feel links to the controversies surrounding Trump. Most of these pundits are Trump supporters, even if they cannot vote in American elections. These pundits to me are in the web that spans Russia-gate (Israeli-Russian Gate), Trump, the Alt Right, and the US-UK & Israeli Zionist connection.

So, let me explain my beliefs based on that last statement I made. Russia was not alone in influencing the 2016 election, but rather Israel had the technological means and cultural connections within the United States to help sway the election in favor for Trump. For example, the Republican Jewish Coalition with people like Eliot Brody brought up in the Mueller investigation. Israel was displeased with the Obama Administration for abstaining on a United Nation’s vote over Israeli settlements on disputed Palestinian lands. This abstain vote by Obama resulted in a toxic backlash against his administration especially in the Israeli press and thinking that Hillary would follow suit with the Obama Administration’s policy (and that of previous American administrations who preferred to broker peace between Israel and Palestine), the Israeli lobby backed Trump, despite saving face and managing relations on both side of the political spectrum, particularly by denouncing antisemitism even though many people on the right are Jewish. So, in order to get the majority of the USA, which is white, to back Trump, the US Zionist and Israeli lobby spanning politics, media, alternative media (podcasting such as Ben Shapiro, Alex Jones, even Joe Rogan during his phase of platforming Alt-Right guests), Wall Street, and Washington insiders, effectively created and elevated the Alt-Right. This strategy has in part helped to metastasize into movements such as Qanon, which might still seem harmless to the average American, but people running for Congressional seats are openly pushing Qanon, Islamophobia, Pizzagate, and “Holly-Weird” theories.  It could be argued that Qanon is a cult but a cult for the internet age and it preys on the vulnerabilities of those in conservative politics. Qanon has a Zionist undertone to it, which therefore not only feeds into a support of Israel but also Western conservatism. It sounds strange by Qanon could be what helps turn the United States into something akin to the Handmaid’s Tale. A radical religious reactionary state where the courts are run by Noahide worshiping judges. Noahide is a form of Jewish proselytizing to non-Jews in which non-Jews are encouraged to worship the Jews as the Chosen people and to follow the Noahide Laws issued by Jewish clerics.

This reactionary Right Wing (predominately white) movement is filled with the fringe of conservatism (as we saw at Charlottesville) and is protecting Israel even if many of the people in this arena are not cognizant of it. I say this because many people in this arena have antisemitic beliefs but even antisemitic beliefs can be used by Zionist to increase their power. For example, appealing to a Christian Crusader “Dues Vult” mentality in defense of the Holy Land is essentially getting WASP Christians with Punisher skull tattoos, subscriptions to Soldier of Fortune, and a habit of dropping N-bombs while playing Call of Duty, to defend Israel, but these people must be convinced that they still are the majority, in supremacy, or are in jeopardy of being replaced. Basically, certain factions of the Zionist lobby are willing to fund Nazis as a diversion to what they’re doing but also to build a “street team” for Trump, but really Trump is an ally of Israel who will do what they want which can be seen in Trump naming Jerusalem the capital of Israel, landmarks being named after Donald Trump, the annexation of the Golan Heights in the wake of the Syrian War, leaving the United Nations Human Rights Commission, and leaving ambiguity around the contested Dome on the Rock between Jews and Muslims (which is where the Kusher relationship with the Saudis comes into play since the Saudis are the landlords or trustees of the property).

All these Right-Wing Canadians will shame minorities, the LGBTQ community, welfare, etc., but you notice they never talk about Jews. It is not that I want them to, but rather, they are all Zionists or tied to some sort of Zionist organization. They are the cover for the Zionist lobby simply put there to mobilize the majority that leans right into doing that lobby’s bidding. The marriage between White Supremacy and Jewish Zionism is not new and can trace roots in part back to the United Kingdom in the nineteenth century where there were British movements such as British Israelism where white Britons felt they were the chosen people in order to justify the British Empire. This grand origin story mythology is common among most empires or aspiring empires such as the Nazis trying to trace roots to Central Asia or India largely because they simply wanted that land, or even to the United States with notions like Manifest Destiny. Religions such as Mormonism were created during Manifest Destiny and used Zionist undertones to demonize Native Americans so they could take their land and bolster their own credibility (I do not hate modern, every day, and normal Mormons by the way).

The British elite establishment and the Jews who became prominent in the United Kingdom created a symbiotic relationship, and many prominent imperial administrators were Jewish such as Benjamin Disraeli, and, yes, the Rothchild Dynasty (responsible for helping acquire the Suez Canal, raising capital against Napoleon, treasurers of the Bank of England, etc.).

This symbiotic relationship or marriage of “mafias” resulted in the basis for the establishment of Israel in which the British helped the Jews acquire Palestine after World War I when King George defeated his cousin, Kaiser Wilhelm’s, allies in the Ottoman Turks who owned the area. Further, even though it is debatable, King George and the British Establishment with the help of American financiers, may have supported the Bolsheviks in order to overthrow the Czar of Russia in order to obtain the lucrative oil fields of the Caucuses. This symbiotic relationship surrounding being “Chosen”, i.e., supremacy, bled into the United States and Commonwealth nations thus influencing the treatment of the indigenous First Peoples and people of color in these regions (such as African-Americans with slavery which was argued with a misinterpretation of the Bible such as the Mark of Cain, Aborigines, Indians of the Asian Subcontinent, Africans in colonial Africa, etc.). The Rothchild’s did fund Cecil Rhodes’ DeBeer Diamonds in Africa and it is well known Rhodes was a Mason and racist, where Masonry in itself, at least that of the English realm has Judeo-Christian undertones.

Manifest Destiny in the United States was simply White Zionism similarly to how the British Empire was White Zionism, but the Zionism aspect is what links them to the Jews, even though these factions at times are in conflict (Waspy elitism of the Anglo-American establishment or the condescending tones that some Jews have of gentiles), but their working relationship as far as global control outweighs the negatives. In effect, these two groups of white Gentiles and white Jews can effectively merge with each other and have time and time again throughout history, even within some old European noble families such as Sophie von Hohenlohe (who spied for the Nazis) or Prince Rupert Lowenstein (the Rolling Stones former manager). Even though the common average white person or Jewish person might not mix as much, when you get to the upper echelons of power, then what’s ethnicity when all that matter is money?

It is my personal belief that all the weird events that happened from 2016 to 2020 in the present were simply this cabal coming to light for the first time to most Americans. The curtains had fallen and the system went into clean-up trying to get ahead of stories by pretending they were actually covering the stories in full, even though they were simply doing what a street hustler does when they play a “shell game”, i.e., moving around cups with a ball underneath it and making people wage money on where the ball actually is (sometimes the ball being taken away with a contraption so no one wins). For example, the Bronfman Clan of NXVIUM with their ties to the United Nations (via Sara Bronfman’s husband Basit Igtet who negotiated a peace deal in Libya after Hillary’s Benghazi situation), Edgar Senior’s ties to the World Jewish Coalition (where he advocated for improved Russian and Israeli relations) and Edgar Junior’s ties to the music industry; Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell’s ties to the British Royal Family and even the Iranian Contra era with characters spanning William Barr as a CIA operative around Reagan’s White House, John Kerry as a blue-blood old money Senator, Robert Mueller (classmate of Kerry) as a young investigator who worked on Iran Contra, Judge Robert Morgenthau (a relative to the Bronfman Clan), Adnan Khashoggi (uncle to killed journalist Jamal Khashoggi and Princess Diana’s lover, Dodi Fayed), the Clintons and the Trumps. This is deep stuff.

The Israeli lobby, at least that led by Benjamin Netanyahu (he does face opposition in Israel) and his allies in the USA and English speaking Commonwealth (various non-profits, social clubs, etc.), understand that hiding behind hyper-Republicanism of the majority in the United States is the best way to keep the light off of them and since Right-Wing politics are often Christian or Judeo-Christian in nature, this religious crux is a helpful variable that increases the power of this strategy. They can appeal to sense of Revelations, Armageddon, Holy War against Muslims, etc.  

Ok, so keep all that in mind, but what about Russia? The truth is that Russia and Israel are closer than what most Americans realize. In the Cold War, the United States utilized Christianity and Zionism as a means of psychological warfare to differentiate ourselves from the godless Soviets. The truth is many Israelis and American/Canadian Jews, or Jews of the Commonwealth are of Eastern European “Pale Settlement” or Russian Jewish descent. Prominent Canadian billionaire, Edgar Bronfman Sr., of the Seagram’s Dynasty, is the father of Claire and Sara Bronfman (incriminated in the NXVIUM scandal), younger brother to Phyllis Lambert (who bailed Ira Einhorn, the Unicorn Killer, out of jail before he pulled a Roman Polanski and fled the USA), and father to Edgar Junior (music mogul with links to Jeffrey Epstein), was the president of the World Jewish Coalition (WJC) and promoted Russian emigration to Israel. Edgar Bronfman, Sr., who was a racist (disapproving his son’s marriage to an African American woman, foreshadowing to me the racist rant of LA Clipper’s owner Donald Sterling), advocated for increasing Israeli and Russian ties. Israel is the crux between the USA/West and the East typified in Russia, and Israel can leverage those multi-national bonds to its favor if the policy of one deviate away from Israel’s own ambitions (consolidating its borders to that of the Kingdom of David and bring forth their messiah, the Mashiach). As an analogy, Israel has positioned itself to the be the woman that two powerful suitors are courting and play them off each other, even though the future of this strategy is for all to…share Israel or Israel to control both, as the Russians and the Americans by way of the Republicans (the party you would least expect) try to join forces.  A White Zionist alliance where the Israelis are the heart of the operation.

So, in 2016, Russia did have a major reason to favor the election of Donald Trump considering the sanctions they faced due to their invasion of Crimea and their tendency to generally annoy the United States by them conducting a “parallel policy” to the USA, e.g., if the USA has issue with Venezuela or Syria, then Russia steps in to show they are friends to these nations in the face of “American Imperialism”. Trump had done business in Russia, ex-Soviets turned businessmen had conducted business out Trump’s properties, Trump has links to many ex-Soviets in one way or another (Tevfik Arif, Tamir Sapir, Lev Leviev, etc.), many people in his cabinet had ties to Russia such as Rexx Tillerson for Exxon Mobil, Michael Flynn was called into suspicion, Rand Paul delivered correspondence to Moscow for Trump, and Mitch McConnell and other prominent Republicans have ties to Leonard Blvatnik etc.

The fact that Melania Trump is of Slovenian descent and Trump’s first wife, Ivana Trump, is of Czech descent, both former Soviet nations (which in and of itself is not a problem, i.e., they shouldn’t be shamed for this), I could imagine Donald Trump has a large following in former Soviet States as far as the media, tabloids, and news. Nations such as Hungary, Austria, Germany even (especially in the former Soviet Eastern part of the country which is under-developed in relation to the Western part of the nation), etc., has seen a rise in Right-Wing populist politics emulating the success of Donald Trump, and Russia sees this Right-Wing Revolution as good since they have ditched the Soviet style and in exchange are marketing themselves as Orthodox traditionalists against the depravity of liberal democracies, modernity, secularism, human rights, etc. This Right-Wing revolution in Eastern Europe which benefits Russia in its “rebranding campaign” can weaken the primacy of the United States by threatening NATO and calling into question the usefulness of the United Nations (the United Nations has always been a target of Right-Wing organizations such as the John Birch Society which helped coin concepts such as a one-world government. Interesting fact is that the Neo-Nazis in America trace roots back to an internal conflict within the John Birch Society in which a Revilo P. Oliver left the organization because he claimed the JBS was becoming too Jewish, which, even though I reject Nazism and white supremacy, he may have had a point considering post-war Neo-conservatism had many notable Jews such as Henry Kissinger, Barry Goldwater, Milton Friedman, etc.).   

In conclusion, Canada is awesome. It is still seen as an example of a modern and developed nation that fosters diversity, education, public investments, and a rational well-balanced foreign policy. Yet, all of that aside, many Right-Wing pundits are coming from Canada. This to me is no coincidence but rather proof of a larger cabal using these low-level actors, podcasters, and vloggers, to infiltrate the United States political arena by appealing to a sense of sameness and being the “online street team” for Trump. The question is will American conservatives start to call it out, or are they so enthralled with the insanity of Trumpism, that they will take support from any source no matter how nefarious it truly is?

#film #politics #review #canada #american #zionism #2020