Authored by Caitlin Johnstone via Medium.com,
The outrage over the Iowa caucus scandal has continued to burn white hot as more and more establishment manipulations against the Bernie Sanders campaign come into view.
At the beginning of a CNN town hall with Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg last night, immediately following the network’s town hall with Sanders, the event’s host Chris Cuomo announced that 100 percent of the caucus results were now in and the former South Bend mayor had narrowly won the contest. These results had been announced by the Iowa Democratic Party moments before Buttigieg’s town hall appearance.
There is no reason for anyone, let alone a major news outlet, to believe these results are legitimate. They are full of easily demonstrable errors and discrepancies which have been highlighted by both the Sanders campaign and The New York Times, and they have yet to be addressed. Furthermore, Sanders has a perfectly legitimate claim to the win given the undisputed fact that he received thousands more votes. This is without even getting into all the other extremely shady shenanigans with the now-infamous Shadow app whose crash has given the media days to sing Buttigeig’s praise, which has in turn given him a major polling bump for New Hampshire.
But Chris Cuomo (who is the brother of a Democratic New York governor and the son of another Democratic New York governor) declared Buttigieg (who because of his establishment grooming and alt-centrist ideology is beloved by billionaires and spooks) the winner anyway. In front of millions of people. While Buttigieg was standing right there in the spotlight. Immediately after the “results” were released.
Think about the level of coordination it takes to try to pull off such a brazen fraudulent move. It takes the Iowa Dem Party, the DNC and CNN. All working in cahoots.
— Secular Talk (@KyleKulinski) February 7, 2020
We’re watching a major US election being rigged in real time, right in front of our eyes, and it’s intense. And it’s only just getting started.
In the 2016 race between Sanders and Hillary Clinton, the Iowa caucuses saw some suspicious activity and there was some controversy over improbable coin toss results, but nothing like the furor we’ve been seeing over Iowa for the last several days. It wasn’t until the Nevada caucus that things really started to get crazy in the 2016 race, and we’re still a couple of weeks out from that.
So we’re way ahead of schedule in terms of emotional intensity tied to this presidential primary race, and possibly at a more heated point after the very first 2020 primary contest than at any point in the 2016 race between Sanders and Clinton. And it’s only going to get crazier from here.
And that’s just looking at the US Democratic presidential primary. Later this month we’ve got the beginning of Julian Assange’s extradition trial, we’ve got the OPCW narrative managing its own scandal by smearing the whistleblowers who revealed that the US, UK and France almost certainly bombed Syria in 2018 under false pretenses, we’ve got continuing revelations that pretty much everything the Trump administration told the world to justify the assassination of Qassem Soleimani was a lie, we’ve got an escalating new cold war between the US and Russia, increasing establishment attempts to censor the internet, an increasing propaganda war against China, the general militaristic belligerence of the US-centralized empire, and God knows what else.
As I said back in November, things are going to get weirder and weirder throughout the foreseeable future. We’re coming to a point in history where the only reliable pattern is the disintegration of patterns, and 2020 has come storming out of its corner swinging for the fences working to establish this pattern with extreme aggression. We’re not going to hit a point of stability or normality this year, we’re going to see things get crazier and crazier and crazier. I don’t know what’s going to happen, but I know it’s going to be nuts.
Things Are Only Going To Get Weirder
"I often hear people in my line of work saying 'Man, we’re going to look back on all this crazy shit and think about how absolutely weird it was!'
No we won’t. Because it’s only going to get weirder."https://t.co/z5ivGMEMoY— Caitlin Johnstone ⏳ (@caitoz) November 1, 2019
In such an environment, it’s going to be absolutely essential to take exceptional care of your psychological health if you want to remain engaged with what’s going on in the world in a positive way.
And I do mean exceptional. Whatever you’re doing now, do more. Start cultivating new habits to keep yourself lucid and serene, and start now before things get super crazy. Work out your issues with your family and with yourself. Remember to move your body in ways that feel good to you. Carve out some time out each day for just being quiet with yourself. Notice the beauty around you. Give cuddles, get cuddles. Take a shower and sing your heart out. Feel your feet on the floor, nestle your bum into your chair and listen to yourself breath like it’s a song on the radio. Yawn. Belch. Stretch. Roar. Put on some loud music and rock out. Whatever you know works for you to get you out of your head and back in to your body, remember to do it, and remember to do it regularly. Make it habitual.
Be proactive with this rather than reactive; if you wait until you have to react to things going ass-side up later on it’s going to feel like you’re fighting to get your head above water. If you do it now you’ll have the mental space needed to navigate tumultuous waters.
This is what will be necessary if you want to engage with the increasingly frenetic narrative matrix in the future. The only alternative will be to disengage completely and throw your attention into escapism, or at least away from politics and news. And if you don’t make the cultivation of mental well-being your first and foremost priority you will be forced, in a very unpleasant way, to disengage anyhow.
And honestly this is something all activist types should be doing anyway. Believing you can help the world without doing serious inner work is like believing you can clean the house while covered in raw sewage. You can always spot the political activists who engage without doing any inner work by the chaotic, unskillful and frequently counterproductive form their actions take. They can’t see clearly enough to operate efficaciously, because their vision is clouded with unresolved suffering and conflict. Get in the shower and wash the yuck off yourself before trying to clean the house.
Some of my readers want a Sanders insurgency in the Democratic Party, some support third parties or independents, while others eschew electoral politics altogether and endorse other approaches to pushing for real change. But in my experience you all care deeply about the world, regardless of your preferred path toward doing so, and that’s going to take a heavy toll as all manner of things unravel over the next year if you don’t have the psychological spaciousness to navigate it lucidly.
Above all, be gentle with yourself. We got a ways ahead of us, and we need you fresh and feeling good. You won’t be able to help wake the world up if you let the chaos and confusion drag you down. Know when to take a break from the information stream and all the babbling narratives trying to twist your perception of it. Use your tools to distance yourself from the narratives so that you can perceive them objectively. Ground yourself, find your center, then, when you’re ready, wade back in.
No matter how chaotic things get, your ability to navigate that chaos skillfully needs to be your first and foremost priority. Put your mental well-being first, and everything else will fall into place.
Be the peace and harmony you want to see in the world.
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Juxtapose this article with the one from Fred Reed.
The entire US political system is one giant farce and yet people vote to keep it alive so the highest order of criminals in the world can continue screwing the US population.
China is being helped by the voting morons in the US population which is rapidly bringing the country into an ungovernable state. The US’s response will be a war with someone to focus the few neurons the average voter possesses on to something other than the real issue, namely that the Fed Gov is THE problem.
You can’t make this stuff up. China will gain the top spot internationally because they’re not stupid. The US is majority stupid.
Agree with much you’ve written. However, I just don’t think the majority of very smart Americans engage very much with Caitlin or Fred or vice versa.
In a faux democracy, the smart don’t count; they are vilified and pushed aside by the majority morons. I doesn’t matter what the relatively few smart USians think because in a fraudulent system, like the one in the US, they have no voice.
The folks in control are the smart and ruthless. They know exactly which buttons to push to manipulate the masses. There’s no hope to ever ‘Make America Great Again’ because all the enshrined policies are destructive to that end.
I am certain the US Fed Gov will fail like the USSR failed, the only difference being in the US’s case it will turn violent and possibly involve nuclear war.
Ah, the myth of the USSR “failing”.
A half dozen books have been written uncovered that fraud that people are still purposely promoting today. The USSR simply re-branded itself and spent the last 30 years consolidating and re-arming.
When the USA “fails” billions of shithole dwellers will be caught with pallets of freshly defaulted-on 100 dollar bills when trillions are vaporized in the default.
PLEASE FAIL USA.
The ChiCom Rulers picked up on the same re-branding trick, with a different twist. They traded in their machine guns for one of The Creature From Jekyll Island’s used printing presses. The Creature sold ’em cheap – they didn’t need them any more when they could make our DemBux “Not worth the paper they’re not printed on”.
Why blame the victim voters? The Many Thugs In Charge will count them whether they show up or not, then declare their oligarch the winner.
The “victim” voter?
The voters sanctify this fraudulent process by showing up. The voters are co-conspirators in this criminal enterprise that installs a mafia where the only choices on offer are those already vetted to suit TPTsB’s agenda.
Yes, there is fraud in the actual tabulation of votes, but not even the swamp can manufacture millions of votes and get away with it. If fewer and fewer people showed up, eventually the whole population would conclude that elections are worthless, something smart people who don’t vote already figured out.
“If fewer and fewer people showed up, eventually the whole population would conclude that elections are worthless”
… and if this took place, what exactly would change? would the “criminal enterprise” shut down? please recall that throughout human history governance has been autocratic by the “criminal enterprise” minority.
What would change is the overall dynamic of governance, probably a real revolution. Even the terminally stupid would realize that everything they thought was true is a lie.
It would take the imposition of a dictatorship out in the open as opposed to the one now to get people to see that the gov’t has no legitimacy. That’s when a few hundred million people and their guns might decide that a change is in order as opposed to a smattering of 2nd amendment types that want to play Rambo.
“a few hundred million people and their guns might decide that a change is in order”
but a few hundred million people with guns won’t enact discrete change, they’ll just enact war-of-all leading to over-all chaos – until someone wins. and someone will win, as demonstrated in history. see, “criminal enterprises” are not independent of the culture they stand over, rather they are the outcome of the culture from which they arise. now the united states was supposed to be different from historical governments in that it represented the people at large and was responsive to them. the problem with this government is not that it is a “criminal enterprise” but that the citizens have not supervised and controlled it properly, thus allowing to be overtaken by outside forces who degraded it to its present condition. the answer is not to dispense with it and return to the old ways, but to restore it.
citizens have not supervised and controlled it properly
You can’t be serious. There is no way for the citizenry to control the gov’t without violence. Asking politely doesn’t work. If the gov’t wants to go rogue, it will, and apparently has.
the answer is not to dispense with it … but to restore it.
I can’t disagree more. The answer is to kill it and have 50 much smaller entities pick up the pieces where 50 experiments can run simultaneously and have the citizenry vote with their feet to determine winners and losers.
The US is simply too big to be governed and currently provides a one stop shopping experience for the lobbyists to bribe their wishes into law. Making them do it 50 times would be much more difficult and their wishes would probably never get a 100% reception.
“is no way for the citizenry to control the gov’t without violence.”
sure there is. it would seem however that that’s the only answer you operate on, so that’s your go-to answer – “The answer is to kill it” ….
“50 much smaller entities pick up the pieces where 50 experiments can run simultaneously”
except there won’t be 50. there will be a few ten million experiments, all striving out of sheer greed and out of sheer self-defense to gain control over their local space and then to gain control over their local area and then to gain control over their local region etc. “only to recreate the bloody history of europe” and all that.
look, you have your little libertarian (or whatever) dreamspace and envision it as expanding. but it can’t. it’s just yours. and worse, it’s parasitic – it can only exist within the social structure headed by a government that you decry as a criminal enterprise. when the criminal enterprise and its social structure falls (and it will) then your space will too. guaranteed.
Below the Fed Gov are 50 state gov’ts. There is no need for the Fed Gov as there’s enough gov’t excess at the state level already.
When the Fed Gov fails, the states are still there as are all the current Fed Gov resources; they don’t evaporate.
Smaller countries like Switzerland, Luxembourg, Austria, etc function in much the same way the states could function once the Fed Gov disappears.
China has a lot of smart people who exist in an incredibly stupid and totally inflexible system. When I worked for Sinopec, our Canadian EVP used to call them The Borg. They collect and assimilate everything they can get their hands on (e.g., oil exploration and production licenses in this case), and in the process of assimilation they destroy everything that was unique and flexible about that thing. It is the old adage, “There are none of us a dumb as all of us put together.”
Their system is both their strength (huge brainwashed population, totalitarian) and their greatest weakness (chain of command removed from where action is, only positive news goes up the ranks, hyper-centralized control, inflexible orders to the point of idiocy). You cannot expand something that cannot adapt without that thing eventually breaking. And these guys have never been tested in foreign conquest other by financial means, they have had no “Defeat of the Spanish Armada” moment although they have a very long dynastic history of killing and enslaving each other. Take away the flow of foreign currency into the country and they are defeated.
I wouldn’t sell them short on brains or adaptability.
They’ve put a lander on the far side of the moon. Their electronics are the best in the world. They have 1.4 billion people and in a few dozen years managed to go from dirt farmers to a power that is the manufacturing center of the world. They have major construction projects all over the world.
They use commerce to win friends and influence people as opposed to shooting at them and stealing their resources.
The 21st Century will belong to the Chinese or the Asians in general if the current trend continues. At any rate, the US is finished in every possible measure, so the Chinese may just win by the US losing.
Worked for them for 6-1/2 years. Seen them up close – fairly high level guys in industry – in their native state of decision apoplexy.
And the chain of command regarding information – they don’t call that children’s game “Chinese Whispers” for nothing.
“And these guys have never been tested in foreign conquest other by financial means, they have had no ‘Defeat of the Spanish Armada’ moment”
mao started with a few dozen peasants armed with bamboo spears. they’ve done quite well.
Cortez had 52 – and it was a foreign conquest. Mao kicked ass against a spent Nationalist force but in the end fought strictly within the Sino-Tibetan realm.
The DNC has admitted in legal filings that they threw the 2016 primary to Hillary, and claims every right to do so. The mass of commies, morons and fembots that make up the Democrat base have done nothing to demand change or accountability in the years since. The only good thing the GOP has going for it is that the DNC is even worse.
At least we have the sense to vote for the lesser of two evils, imagine if we ever lost that moral compass?
This has been litigated before…
Ron Paul got screwed by the Republicans in 2008 and in 2012. He was never going to win, but they wanted absolute ‘unity’, so they screwed him during various state conventions, and again in the national convention…effectively screwing the nominees because the RP supporters either didn’t vote for President, vote for Obama (just to screw the Rs), or stayed home.
And before you dismiss this as inconsequential, note that Romney lost Michigan, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Florida, I believe, by fewer votes than RP received in the primaries…
Anyway, some of the RP groups sued because the Republican Party violated their own rules…blatantly…in multiple public, videotaped ways. The courts came back and basically said that all of the rules were party rules, and the party can violate them to their heart’s content…nothing civilly or criminally wrong…just an internal matter…
“There is no reason for anyone … to believe these results are legitimate”
(shrug) for most people, “legitimate” is just another word for “what I want no matter what!”
2020 has been a tough year for many of us in terms of mental health. I realized that I needed support and help. It may be time to think about ACT therapy. I heard about it from https://us.calmerry.com/blog/therapy/what-is-acceptance-and-commitment-therapy/ which provides such services. ACT therapy can help me develop flexibility in my thinking and learn to accept my experiences. Considering this option may be the first step towards restoring mental well-being and support during difficult times.