Why I'm Still Talking About Russiagate

You may be wondering why in Heaven’s name I am dredging up Russiagate at this moment when it is not in the news cycle and it hardly seems relevant. To which I would reply that it never was relevant. But to be less smug about it, I am mentioning Russiagate now because to follow the news cycle is to always be one step behind the corporate-owned and intelligence-influenced media. I wish to remind people of a few things in a moment when their ability to reason is not hampered by their raw hatred of Donald Trump.

Russiagate is not in the news now because the media always buries its embarrassments. Nobody talks about the young lady who told us Iraqi soldiers were ripping babies from incubators and throwing them to the floor anymore, even though it should be brought up from time to time to remind us how easily we and our media are misled. Nobody mentions that Weapons of Mass Destruction were not found in Iraq and that the pretext for the war in Iraq was a lie. Even if they do mention it, they never mention the fact that nobody was held accountable and everyone who got it right thinks Russiagate is a joke and everybody who got it wrong still hold positions of influence.

The reason I am bringing Russiagate up at this point is because, though the media may bury their embarrassments, they resurrect them as indisputable truths whenever they feel the need. It’s astounding what a little time out of the spotlight will do to rehabilitate a lie or a liar. Just look at how liberals are now embracing George W. Bush.

I am most concerned that the whole Russian hacking, interference, meddling, mischief-making narrative is going to resurface with a vengeance, a full-throttled media push lacking both evidence and any tolerance for skepticism. When it does, it will spring from nowhere and everyone who’s bought into similar stories will gobble it up unquestioningly. And those who have seen such stories come and go a hundred—nay, a thousand—times without merit, will still have to spend days ferreting out the facts of the story in order to find the nothing-of-substance that will lie at its root. Therein lies the strength of this story; the ability of those who push it to dump a load and move on to the next pile before the facts can be sifted through.

Here, then is the most compelling reason why I call bullshit on the entire Russiagate narrative, as immense and seemingly beyond questioning as it is to those invested in it: the mountain of evidence of a massive propaganda campaign. I have never seen the likes of it in my entire life and I lived through a few. My eyes unblinded by an irrational hatred of Donald Trump, I was able to go to bed on the night of the election without worrying which of the two candidates would be president. When Trump won, I had no more of a feeling that my world had been torn apart than I did when I realized it was down to Trump/Clinton. Therefore, I had no vested interest in finding an explanation to the inexplicable. I did not need Russiagate.

So when the Russian interference narrative burst upon the scene without tangible evidence but with absolute certainty, I found it a little more than odd. And when I and others expressed our doubts about the story, those doubts were not responded to with evidence but with the kind of bullying tactics one would associate with Joe McCarthy. Story after story hit the airwaves and the internet, each of them exhibiting a nearly-identical pattern: screaming headlines, authoritative opening sentence, gradually falling into distraction, and at some point—a point beyond which 99% people read, apparently—an admission that there was no actual proof to the assertion.

The articles—too many to count—had the required links that are the hallmarks of serious online journalism, but almost without fail they could be traced back to the Washington Post citing anonymous individuals within intelligence agencies. I cannot tell you how often people I know and respect sent me such empty exercises in journalism as definitive proof of Russian interference. Their very consistency in structure led me to the inescapable conclusion that Russiagate was a massive propaganda campaign that was feeding on the zeitgeist of the moment. Anyone with any knowledge of U.S./Russia relations and pro-imperialist players could tell you who was behind it, but that goes beyond the scope of this article.

Russiagate, the absolute obsession of the liberal media for nearly two years, was nowhere to be found in the lead up to the 2018 elections. Perhaps it was because it had already served its purpose and pushed Trump into the arms of the military-industrial complex. Perhaps it was because the Democrats realized that nobody cared enough about it to make a decision on it come election day. Because, as demonstrated by a Gallop poll, less than 1% of Americans believe Russia is a problem.

Think about that: two years of the greatest propaganda blitz seen in our time, perhaps of all time, and less than 1% think it’s the biggest problem. It has been compared to 9/11 and Pearl Harbor, and yet it could not muster the number one spot. Rachel Maddow has spoken about it nearly exclusively for two years, and the only people she’s reaching are already in the choir. Maddow has been paid $7 million a year, backed by the media machine that is an army in lock-step with those who have been pushing this story, and they could not sell it. Worst return on investment ever!

Take a look at the Russians, on the other hand. They flipped an election with $100,000 worth of Facebook ads, over half of which ran AFTER the election. Now I’m not saying the ads run after the election did not influence the election, but let’s for the moment concentrate on those that ran before. The sum total amount of money spent on these ads is roughly the equivalent earned by Rachel Maddow for a day and a half of work. Best return on investment ever!

Keep in mind, now, that when Congress asked Mark Zuckerberg to report on any evidence of Russian interference in the U.S. elections, he initially came back and told them he found nothing. It was only when they insisted he try harder that he came back with the absurd bundle of spamming which the media seized upon like ravenous wolves.

So how is it possible that $45,000 of Facebook ads were capable of flipping an election when billions in propaganda could not flip the American public? Could it be that the Russians are so adroit at the art of propaganda that they can sell refrigerators to Eskimos? If that were the case, wouldn’t we all be drinking Russian vodka and swapping borscht recipes on Pinterest? Let me offer you an alternative viewpoint.

Perhaps you can only stray so far from the truth before the narrative stops working. If that is true—and I dearly hope it is—I believe we are about at that point now. Whatever else the media is telling us to believe, the principle story they want us to accept is that the corporate media is trustworthy, and that story has consistently been proven false. The story they push is that their primary concern is to give you the information you need to make informed decisions. This is demonstrably false, and sooner or later trust must evaporate. The Russiagate narrative may well be the deciding moment. To swallow it you must once again swallow the “trust us” story.

The truth is, and provide me a counter-argument if you can, corporate media exists in order to attract the attention of viewers. Your attention they then sell to advertisers who will try to part you from your money. In this regard, they are no different than those Russian spammers who play upon Facebook users’ emotions by showing them pictures of puppies or Satan. The difference between the spammers and the media is that the media is beholden to their advertisers to spread their view of the world. Thus big pharma, the oil industry, and even weapons manufacturers advertise on corporate media, and corporate media would never bite the hand that feeds them because their only real motivator is profit.

I ask only that you look at the Russiagate narrative for what it is, that you rid yourself for the moment of the need of it as a substitute for a meaningful way of resisting all that Donald Trump stands for. If you are able to do that, you will see that Russiagate is a narrative that has required bullying and fanaticism rather than frank discussion. It has required secrecy, deception and censorship rather than openness. It cannot exist otherwise, and anything that requires such bad company deserves to be laid to rest.

The Greater Battle Behind The Persecution Of Julian Assange

Can someone remind me of the reason we are supposed to be against Julian Assange? I’ve not been following the matter too closely so I wouldn’t know. Not being an expert on the subject I would not bother to write about it were it not for the fact that the hatred expressed towards Assange, and the trouble he is in, seem at odds with everything I was taught about who we are as a society. I believe it had something to do with him reporting unpleasant facts about Hillary Clinton. Are facts bad because they are unpleasant?

Have we really gotten to the point where we feel we can punish people for reporting truths we don’t like? Oh, I’ve heard it said the real problem is that he doesn’t give a fair and balanced picture of what’s going on. If that were a real journalistic concern, Woodward and Bernstein should have said “Yeah, Richard Nixon was involved in a cover-up of the Watergate break-in, but let us also tell you about some bad things Democrats do.” Journalism doesn’t work that way. You dig into a story and you follow it to the end. It is your job to report news/truth as best you can and tell the story as you come across it. A clue brings you to more information, which starts to reveal a narrative which you then report. In the case of Julian Assange, I believe he released information that was given to him.

When a journalist or editor is given timely information, he does not sit on it until an equal amount of information is found that gives counter-balance to it. But the fact that Assange is tied to inconvenient truths about Hillary Clinton and the DNC is enough to cause liberals looking for anybody to blame for their candidate’s loss other than their candidate to irrationally hate and blame him. It is enough for liberals to betray their basic notions of freedom of the press and demand imprisonment for someone who did nothing more than release truthful information about a candidate running for the highest office in the United States. I cannot escape the feeling that it is at its core an assault on our appreciation for truth.

Of course, the fact that said information (allegedly) influenced the outcome of the election, giving us Donald Trump, leads many to believe Assange had some ulterior motive in releasing the information he did. Many believe he was working with the Russians, although no evidence is provided for this belief. This theory (accepted as gospel fact by many) has some very important questions to be answered, which our own media might be interested in working on were they not so busy condemning an honest journalist for showing them how to do their job. The first and foremost question to ask is, did the Wikileaks information actually even have any impact on the election?

But let us assume for a moment the unproven, that Russia was really the source for Assange’s information: so what? Yes, so what? If we had this sort of information on Vladimir Putin, would we not be just in sharing it with the world? Would we be wrong to do so? Moreover, Julian Assange is not an American but an Australian. His duty lies not in loyalty to the United States and the secrets of its political parties but to truth. There is no reason other than the wrath of an imperial nation that he should not release it. A very powerful reason, no doubt, one which silences the overwhelming majority of newspersons all over the world. It is to Assange’s greater credit that he did not let this very real threat dissuade him.

Is it wrong of Julian Assange to report information even if he did so with a personal agenda? Would he be the first to do so? I think we can state with confidence that American journalists do so all the time. Do you honestly believe that Assange’s truth swayed the voting public more than Rush Limbaugh’s lies and half-truths? Should Assange, in reporting truth, be punished rather than merely de-platformed, as was the punishment received by hate-monger Alex Jones?

We speak of election interference as the ultimate crime, and it is indeed something that should not be done. But when it comes to sharing truths, embarrassing as they may be, I believe it is better to know than not know. And election interference needs to be proven before we can mete out punishments for it. In the case of Russia in the 90’s it was not merely undeniable but openly discussed. It was not merely the U.S. telling some unpleasant truth about Russian officials but blatant manipulation of the political process. Similarly, nothing Assange could ever do could come close to what the CIA did to his own government. If our interest was one of law and fairness, should we not first jail those responsible for the ouster of prime minister Gough Whitlam before going after Julian Assange?

As I have said, the case of Julian Assange is one I have not been following closely. But the precedence that would be set—has been set—by punishing a journalist for releasing embarrassing but true information is a very dangerous one. It changes who we are as a nation, or at least changes who we have pretended to be. It changes each and every one of us in that it places our personal narratives above the search for truth. It weakens our arguments when we talk about censorship, renders laughable the call to defend Jim Acosta. Indeed, it is a very potent weapon in the war between truth and political expediency. Such a war has been waged for quite a while now, with the truth in constant retreat. But there are moments in retreat when one has to rally the army to defend certain key positions in order to prevent the retreat from becoming a rout. I believe the case of Julian Assange to be one of those vital points around which we must rally.

We are at a crucial juncture at this time in this nation, even globally. There is an undeniable resurgence of fascistic practices and ideology. Fascism as an ideology which promotes narrative over truth. Those on the (alleged) left are trying to combat a rise in fascistic ideologies with a counter-narrative, but it too is at war with the truth. Abandoning the search for truths, pleasant or otherwise, is not an effective means of combatting fascism. It in fact gives power to the notion that narrative supersedes truth. Democrats are at a point where they are willing to compromise principles in order to win the larger battle, but it is the very abandoning of principles that has gotten us to the point we are now. Abandoning truth for narrative is a cowardly action. There is no action the fascist would rather see us take, no response he would more greatly relish. Narrative is the battlefield of his choosing. Truth should be ours.

News Items From Time Magazine In 1923

A collection of items from Time Magazine from 1923. These are real.

March 3:
Kansas: A bill is before the Legislature to make the possession of cigarettes an offence punishable by imprisonment. Kansas already has a law against selling or giving away cigarettes, but none against smoking them.

March 24:
Connecticut: The lower house of the Legislature defeated a bill to legalize Sunday football and baseball by 139 to 86.

Florida: The system whereby convicts are delivered under contract to turpentine camps at $20 a head profit to the sheriff sending them there has been abolished by the Florida legislature 31-1. State Senator Wicker, who voted against the measure, said: "There are two things I know about--mules and Niggers. Corporal punishment is the only way a convict Nigger can be controlled.


May 28
Washington: By decision of the Attorney General it is legal for women to wear trousers where and when they please.

April 14
Director Lord of the Budget Bureau announced three weeks ago an expected deficit for the Treasury of $180,000,000 ($180 million). With income taxes yielding an unexpected $63,000,000 and the tariff another $100,000,000 over expectations, the deficit is in a fair way of being wiped out.

Nov. 3
One day of the Texas State Fair at Dallas was devoted to the Ku Klux Klan. From 75,000 to 200,000 (according to the persuasion of the estimator) assembled wearing "100% American" buttons, Dragons, Klabees, and Cyplopses were present in robes of gold, purple, scarlet.

Dec. 24
The Supreme Court has declared the Minimum Wage Law in the District of Columbia unconstitutional by a vote of 5 to 3. This sweeping decision threatens the minimum wage laws already established or about to be enacted in several states, including New York, California, Kansas, Oregon, Wisconsin, Washington. The decision of the court held that the District's law was a price fixing act and as such an abridgment of the right of contract...Samuel Gompers, President of the American Federation of Labor, has already issued a vigorous statement in which he asserted taht a tendency of the court was "to decide against humanity in favor of property".

Oct. 15
Some of the more important resolutions proposed by the American Federation of Labor.
--For a Constitutional Amendment prohibitng child labor.
--For investigation of the American Bell Telephone Co. as a monopoly, taking monopoly profits.
--For giving Porto Rico (sic) the status of a state.
--For the abolition of motion picture censorship as a danger to free speech.
--For condemnation of Fascisti organizations.
--For a separate political party for labor.

March 3
The military expenditures of the United States, England, France, Italy will be well over a billion dollars this year (the U.S. military spending was $251,250,231).

April 7
Germany: Ten thousand undaunted warriors followed their beloved leader, Adolph Hitler, into battle. The occasion was the first military maneuvers held by the Bavarian Fascista Army, wholehearted supporters of the monarchy.

Oct. 22
The animals in the Berlin Zoo were stated to be so hungry that they keep Berlin awake at night.

Nov. 12 Senator La Follette of Wisconsin arrived in the U.S. fresh from a European tour. He was principally impressed by what he had seen in Germany: "The Germans are suffering for want of food, fuel, and clothing. Young children and old people are dying daily from hunger and disease. Emaciated, despairing, they are waiting the end. Food riots are common. The crisis which is at hand involves possibilities too awful to contemplate. It menaces more than Germany. There is no time for debate."

Aug. 3
William Randolph Hearst, largest individual landowner in Mexico, has filed a formal protest against the threatened seizure of his Barbicora ranch of  acres by the state of Chihuahua.

Oct. 27
Challenged by charges of cowardice and indifference, the Church issued a manifesto on the subject of "Industrial Relations and the Churches." All American churches of any considerable membership took part and the manifesto...was edited by a Catholic and a Protestant to explain Catholic, Jewish, and Protestant teachings on the subject.
   The Catholics emphasize: "Industrial relations are human relations, and therefore subject to the moral law." Wages must be sufficient to suppor the wage earners in reasonable and frugal comfort. Labor organizations are permitted.
    Judaism points out that the primary purpose of industry is to free men and equip them for the "larger life."
    The Protestant position: the intrinsic worth of personality makes "even the least" to be of greatest importance to God and society; the motive of service makes property subordinate to spiritual needs.

Dec. 17
The U.S. is now the only civilized country, with the possible exception of Japan, which places absolute legal restrictions on the dissemination of information on methods of preventing conception.

The Option Of Two Disturbed Children: A Political Parable

I’m worried about my kids Donny and Rachel. They’re not right in the head, they argue all the time. Oh, I know siblings argue when they’re young, but the kind of behavior they’re exhibiting may require serious medication. Possibly, if it's still an option, lobotomies.

Rachel is the older one. She’s supposed to be the more mature of the two, and she can at least act it when she’s not around her brother. Don’t get me wrong, she’s got other issues, but at least she knows how to behave in public. But get her around Donny and she loses her shit. Completely. She’s the one that gets good grades in school, and all the teachers tell me what a joy she is to have in class, but get her around her brother and she behaves in ways that makes me wonder if she’s got any brains at all.

Little Donny, on the other hand, well… when God was handing out brains, Donny thought He said blame, and Donny said he would never take any of that. Nevertheless, despite his modest IQ and limited self-awareness, he knows how to play his little sister like a violin. A very highly-strung violin. How shall I put this? Let’s just say she’s brittle. You have to mind your words around her and if things aren’t done the way she expects them to go, well, imagine the sound of a violin being played by a badger. God, the shrieking can be unbearable. But that shrill sound is music to Donny’s ears. He lives to get a rise out of her, and she never fails to take the bait. It seems there’s nothing Donny would rather do than make his sister cry. The kid has empathy issues.

Of course, Rachel’s not innocent either. As much as she says she hates Donny, she always seems to be needling him as well. And as much as she says she’s polite and sensitive to the feelings of others, she’s always making fun of his hair and his hands and his weight. And she’s always saying he likes to kiss other boys. I tried to teach her better, I don’t know where she got that from.

And there’s nothing she likes better than to be able to snitch on Donny. Rachel has a thing for authority figures and is always trying to get either my wife or me, or a teacher, to punish Donny. Because even though Rachel is older and smarter and stronger, she’ll never stand up to Donny. Whenever push comes to shove, she caves to him.

But as much as she loves to rat out her little brother, as much as she wants to see him get in trouble, she only seems to care when it’s about her. Here’s a little story that I’m reluctant to share, but it gets the point across.

The other day I had to take the cat to the vet, and the kids came along for the ride. On the way home, the two of them were unusually quiet, which worried me. Then I get a whiff of something and after a moment I realize it’s the smell of burning hair. I turn around and there’s little Donny with a lighter, holding it to the cat kennel. I yell “What the hell are you doing?” And then I realize Rachel’s in the back seat and hasn’t said a thing. She must have seen what he was doing, must have smelled the burning hair smell, but she didn’t make a peep. She lives to draw attention to Donny’s misdeeds, and yet whenever he does something really horrible, she’s more worried about him being on her side of the seat or something. It seems she'd rather point out his use of bad Grammar than the fact that he's trying to torch a cat.

So I ask her why she didn’t say anything about her brother holding a lighter to the fucking cat and she just curls up into a fetal position and starts muttering “Russ, Russ, Russ,” over and over again. This is something she does every time she thinks she’s about to be blamed for something. (Russ is a kid at her school she blames for her not getting the role of the faerie princess in the school play. Why she blames him, she has never made clear, but she’s been freaking out about it for like two years now. When I talked to her teacher on parent/teacher night, she said Russ is one of the few kids who doesn’t do whatever Rachel asks of him on the playground. Now Rachel has it in her head that Russ is helping Donny steal her stuff around the house. She’s really obsessing about it, it scares me almost as much as the cat-burning incident. Hell, they’re both so creepy.)

I know they’re the only two kids I have and I should try to think more kindly of them. But here’s the thing: my wife and I aren’t getting any younger and we’re starting to think about getting our affairs in order both for when we won’t be able to take care of ourselves and for after we’re gone. We had a will made up and my wife said we would need an executor to take care of our business and assets once we couldn’t. She asked me which kid we should put in charge and I couldn’t even consider such an idea. “Come on,” she said, “which child do you trust to take care of us?”

“Neither,” I said. “All politeness aside, one’s a moron who likes to torch felines, and the other has a paranoid obsession about a boy at her school. Neither one is qualified for such an important task.”

“You have to decide,” she said. “You only have two choices, so just choose one.”

As succinctly as I could, I said, “No. Fucking. Way.”

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Voting Is A Cheap, Tawdry Affair

A great blue wave crashed upon the shores of America last night, leaving in its wake nothing but the tired and lusterless pearl that is Nancy Pelosi. Like a bad penny, you just can’t seem to get away from it.

So this is what it has come to, this is the sum total of all the last two years’ violent passion. All the Sturm Und Drang, the loud wailing and pussy hat wearing has resulted in this. Pay Go and a promise to investigate Donald Trump’s taxes. A bit of an anti-climax.

Was it good for you, too? Have we saved the environment yet? What is our next step in preventing climate catastrophe, nuclear war, and authoritarian government? Like you, I’m too spent from the moment to contemplate right now. How about a cigarette and a long sleep. When we’ve awoken in the morning, we can start contemplating choosing electable candidates for the 2020 election.

The problem with the kind of lifestyle we’ve chosen is we wake up to find Dianne Feinstein in bed next to us. My God, what were we thinking? How lonely and insecure must we have been, how intoxicated with rage at the other party to engage in such sleezy behavior? But as they say, politics makes for strange (and regrettable) bedfellows.

Let me ask you a question, and be honest with me. Does it leave you feeling cheap and empty inside? Was the whole elaborate dance with the strumpet we call the Democratic Party worth this? Do you really feel loved? Was there any genuine connection between the two of you or was it all about the voting? Because you know deep in your heart that that was all that mattered to her. Last night she was willing to say anything to get you to vote, but when you wake up in the morning, she’ll be gone, without so much as a note on the pillow.

And you know where she’s gone, don’t you? She’s already whoring around with her oily sugar daddies, taking money for tricks. Engaging in the most debased of behavior, all for the money they toss her way. Oh sure, she always acts like they are worst of enemies, but they play footsies under the table as they make faces at each other above it. Most likely, they’re laughing at what a sucker you are at this moment. And you won’t see her again until the next time she needs you. 

But you’ll take her back again, won’t you? You’ve really got to work on your self-esteem issues.

But at some point, don’t you want someone who really cares for you? Don’t you want someone who will tell you the truth even when seductive lies are a lot sexier? Wouldn’t it feel good to have someone who has proven themselves true to you time and again? Someone who doesn’t try to manipulate you? Don’t say you’re not good enough, don’t ever say that about yourself. That’s her speaking, she’s taken all the fight out of you, reduced your ego to a shriveled pea. That’s what a bad woman will do to you.

It’s time you settled down and left your indiscreet and immature ways behind you, you’re too old for that sort of nonsense. As one who’s never walked very far down the road of meaningless hookups, let me tell you how good it feels to have self-respect. Even being alone is better than meaningless voting with a lying harlot. You're going to get some incurable disease if you keep that up, and you will have to explain it to your children. And there is someone better for you out there, you have to believe it. You just have to start working on building healthy relationships if you're ever going to get what you deserve.

You don’t love her, you can’t love her. And if you don’t love her, it’s time to walk away. Admit it, when you were doing the nasty, marking your ballot, you had your eyes closed and were thinking of Bernie, weren’t you?

Tomorrow's Election Winners: Corporations

There’s money to be made for those who can predict the future. If you can pick the right stocks they call you a market guru. Pick the right teams to win and you are an oddsmaker. If you’re sharp enough to see where a society without morals is going to fail, they’ll call you a prophet. But point out the painfully obvious results of elections and they call you a useful idiot and a Kremlin puppet.

Nevertheless, I am willing to prognosticate on your behalf. Allow me to save you the bother of staying up late tomorrow in order to hear the results. The business you work for will appreciate having you well-rested and able to turn a profit for them.

The winners of tomorrow night’s elections will be corporations. I can’t tell you if it is the Republicans or the Democrats who will have a greater opportunity to serve them, but they shall be served regardless. That’s because, blue wave or crimson tide, nobody is going to come gunning for those corporate conglomerates that run every aspect of our lives.

Once upon a time, Social Security was the third-rail of politics, meaning that nobody dared even think about attacking or even questioning that beloved social contract. But today the corporate entity, the corporate way of structuring our society, the necessity for pooled money to make profit über alles, is a principle so ingrained in our thinking that to merely utter objections out loud would be blasphemy. This goes far beyond politics into the realm of religion. Commandment number one being: God has given corporations unto you as the source of all life. Though shalt not question their need for profit nor put any stumbling block before them.

When was the last time you heard either a Republican or Democrat say anything disparaging about the sacred institution that is the corporation? When the economy was falling apart because of the actions of the corporate banks, not a word was whispered about how someone within said banks should be held responsible. Instead, there was a great reaching across aisles in order to come together to save those banks that were too big to fail. Individuals were left to fend for themselves. Victims of unwise/greedy corporate policies found themselves crushed in the gears of the economy by the millions, but not a thought was given to them. Instead, Democrats and Republicans showered failed banks with money the way a horny sheik would an attractive belly dancer.

Likewise, the automotive industry was bailed out by the government, which used the taxpayers’ own money as incentive for them to buy new cars they didn’t need and throw away cars that were still serviceable. Democrats had no problem with it, and the same Republicans who make sure poor people aren’t spending their food stamps on potato chips were okie dokie with it too. Why? Because it benefited corporations.

Corporate media isn’t going to tell you the real winners are corporations. Corporations are going to have half the country hating the other half. They’ll break all of society down into different interest groups but they won’t even mention, in regards to the election corporations, the biggest and boldest special interest group of all.

The corporations are now completely in charge of our foreign policy. This used to be a bit of a secret, but it has become such a fait accompli that nobody bothers to hide it anymore. Given the fact that our country’s number one export is weaponry, this is a truly scary thought. Our President has pointed out that it would be inconvenient to hold our allies responsible for their actions when they are buying so many of our arms. Even our religious leaders are now worshiping at the altar of corporate profit.

So when you go to vote tomorrow, keep in mind that whatever you are voting for, it is not going to matter to the true power structures in this country, and indeed, around the world. The people of New Zealand did not want the TPP. 94% of New Zealanders did not want it. And so they voted out their conservative government that was pushing it and elected a more liberal government. The result was a new trade deal, basically the TPP with a couple added letters to it (the CPTPP). It passed 110-8, with only members of the Green Party voting against it.

I do not tell you not to vote tomorrow, nor do I tell you who not to vote for. I only suggest that you do not invest yourself too fully in the results. Do not stay up too late wondering who will win the Senate or the House, because that has already been determined. Instead, calm your emotions, and try to get a good night’s sleep. Because real change will not occur in the sand box the corporate system has relegated for you to play in. Real change will occur when we realize we have to fight the system outside of the parameters they have set for us, outside the game that they have rigged.