When America Went Fascist

[NugaBurd]

Another clueless left-wing clone. Does Chris Rowthorn ghost-write for Alexander Cockburn, or is it the other way around?

Snippets:

"...In the case of Bush and his backers, the tragedy of September 11, 2001 was the catalyst they needed to complete their full takeover of the American government."

Yep -- the same old same old "blowback" meme.

"..soaring energy prices (peak oil); catastrophic weather events caused by global warming; and, of course, the one thing that Bush's entire foreign policy seems almost guaranteed to bring about: another large-scale terrorist attack on American soil."

Peak oil, (man-made) global warming and yet more blowback.

"Thus, a presidential candidate who does not make restoration of constitutional government the centerpiece of his or her campaign should not even be considered..."

yadda yadda yadda

Don't worry, folks, we can vote our way out of fascism. We just need the right man or woman to come riding in on a white horse to save us.

Martin

 

[Rick]

Another clueless left-wing clone. Does Chris Rowthorn ghost-write for Alexander Cockburn, or is it the other way around?

Don't be so easy to dismiss the article based on a just a few of his "clueless" statements. Not everyone is ready to "wake up". You have to find the gems within and the important fact is that the US is already a fascist state. Give him credit for waking up to that fact and presenting it in a clear and concise way.

Don't worry, folks, we can vote our way out of fascism. We just need the right man or woman to come riding in on a white horse to save us.

And what are you suggesting? A violent overthrow of the government? Granted he doesn't recognize the psychopathic disease that allows people like George Bush to assume power and recognizing this is essential before people of conscience can resume control over themselves. But what are you going to do?

 

[Laura]

Find his address and let's send him a copy of Ponerology.

 

[NugaBurd]

"You have to find the gems within and the important fact is that the US is already a fascist state."

No, I do not "have to find the gems..." I am free to draw my own conclusions. And, yes, I regard ""You have to..." as more than merely a turn of phrase.

A red flag went up for me at the very beginning of Rothorn's article, with his citing of an incorrect definition of fascism. Whereas dictatorship is a component of fascism, it does not, in itself, constitute fascism. Whether one bases his objection on set theory or on the flaw in inductive logic, not every dictatorship is fascism. (Not every four-legged animal is a dog.)

Fascism is the total corporate state. It did not begin in the United States with the Supreme Court decision that installed Dubya as President.

The Supreme Court stopped the Florida vote recount. The recount was being held because of the (well-founded) suspicion that there had been vote fraud. Rothorn also did not mention the evidence for vote fraud in Ohio in the 2004 election.

In 2006, the American people went to the polls and elected a Democratic Congress. We were l(i)ed into believing that a victory by the Democrats would end the war in Iraq; Johnny would come marching home, the day after the election.

(OK, so that's hyperbole. The point is that the electorate (what a misnomer!) were propagandized into supporting Democratic candidates. When the Democrats won, we were assured, they would take whatever congressional action were required to end the war.)

Congress could have done so; they've had plenty of opportunities. They could have voted against appropriation bills. They could have voted to overturn PATRI0T Act I and II. They could have abolished the Department of Fatherland, er, Homeland Security. They could have impeached Bush and Cheney.

Bribery and blackmail have always tainted our electoral system. What changed -- and this was under Clinton -- was that vote counting was hijacked from the citizenry. Easily-hacked, corporate-owned computers, programmed with secret, proprietary software, now determine the outcome of elections.

(Yeah, it's called "privatization." That's something that even Orwell couldn't have foreseen.)

I can't see into Rothorn's mind to determine if he's a disinfo agent, or if he honestly doesn't consider any of the above relevant. I can be certain, though, that the above means that we cannot rely on electoral politics to roll back fascism.

The electoral system has devolved into scripted political theater, with a predetermined denouement. The fat lady will always sing the right song.

It doesn't matter that George W. Bush is a psychopath; he doesn't run the country. He is a perfect psychopathic puppet.

Martin

 

[Beau]

You have to find the gems within and the important fact is that the US is already a fascist state."

No, I do not "have to find the gems..." I am free to draw my own conclusions.

I think the point that Rick was trying to make was that to draw the correct, and therefore most plausible, conclusions, one should look in all areas for truth. You are throwing the baby out with the bathwater. You've drawn a conclusion of the whole which is causing you to dismiss small nuggets of truth. Do you like drawing false conclusions?

And, yes, I regard ""You have to..." as more than merely a turn of phrase.

Oh please. Quit being so nitpicky. It's fairly obvious what Rick meant. He is not saying you HAVE to do anything. To put it another way, if one truly wants to find truth, one has to find the gems within all areas, even ones who's larger alignment is not with truth. One takes what is good and throws the rest out. What's wrong with that?

 

[NugaBurd]

I don't find any gems in that article. I don't find any cubic zirconia. I don't even find any rhinestones. All that I find is glitter, held together with paste, mounted in a cheap, base-metal setting

The deception starts with the very title of the article: When America Went Fascist. According to the author, it happened at the moment that the Supreme Court laid down its ruling to stop the Florida vote recount, thus installing Dubya as President.

That is the central tenet of Rowthorn's article. Does anyone here accept that?

I figure that most of the folks here have a solid grounding in US history. Under the Wilson administration, we got the enactment of The Federal Reserve Act, the (probably non)ratification of the 16th Amendment, the cozy partnership of government and big business, in the lead-up to and then the implementation of US combat in World War I, and brutal suppression of war dissenters. No fascism there, right?

Moving ahead, during the Truman years, we got the start of the Cold War, NATO, the Marshall Plan and containment of the USSR, the national security state, with the CIA and the NSA, financial assistance to the French for the French-Indochina War, and the sending of US troops to fight a land war in Asia without a congressional declaration of war.

"War? Did somebody say, 'WAR?' It was a police action, not a war. No need to trouble Congress with only a police action." Still no fascism, right?

During the Eisenhower years, we got more aid for imperial France, the massive expansion of the military-industrial complex, the ouster of Arbenz from Guatamala ("Those natives never elect the right guy!"), support for Cuba's Batista, the introduction of troops and weaponry into South Vietnam (in violation of the Geneva Accords of 1954) and the planning and the training for the Bay of Pigs invasion. Did someone say, "Fascism?" Oh, pshaw!

Another fast forward to Reagan-Bush-Clinton. We can lead off with the transformation of the United States from the world's number one creditor nation to the world's number one debtor nation. Then add in Iran-Contra, support for vicious, murdering dictatorships in Guatamala, Hondoras and El Salvador, kicking butt on labor unions, the destruction of a pharmaceuticals factory in Sudan, and the wars against Iraq and against Serbia. And still, we didn't have fascism.

(Sorry that the list isn't more complete. I'm in my sixties, and my memory just ain't what it used to be.)

Rowthorn leads with a flawed, cherry-picked definition of fascism:

"Fascism: a system of government marked by centralization of authority under a dictator"
-- The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language: Fourth Edition. 2000

An absolute monarchy fits that definition, too, and it is not fascism.

How about this one, instead?

fas•cism \"fa-'shi-zem also "fa-'si-\ noun [It fascismo, fr. fascio bundle, fasces, group, fr. L fascis bundle & fasces fasces] (1921)
1 often cap : a political philosophy, movement, or regime (as that of the Fascisti) that exalts nation and often race above the individual and that stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition
2 : a tendency toward or actual exercise of strong autocratic or dictatorial control <early instances of army fascism and brutality — J. W. Aldridge>
fas•cist \-shist also -sist\ noun or adjective often cap
fas•cis•tic \fa-"shis-tik also -"sis-\ adjective often cap
fas•cis•ti•cal•ly \-ti-k(e-)le\ adverb often cap

(C)1996 Zane Publishing, Inc. and Merriam-Webster, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

The Supreme Court made Bush dictator, and thus began fascism. That's total bullocks, of course. That doesn't matter, though. What matters is that the author acknowledged "...that the US is already a fascist state."

He gets everything else wrong -- 9/11, economic collapse, peak oil, global warming. Who cares? As long as he says the magic word "fascism" we'll give him a pass on all of those trivial issues.

He's trying to play us. He's telling us to stay within the electoral process, kick out the bad people, replace them with good people, and that will solve our problems. Poof -- no more fascism!

He is perpetuating the out-and-out fraud that the people in elective office actually run the country.

Is Rowthorn honestly clueless, or is he a disinfo agent? Does it matter?

Martin

"Sometimes I wonder whether the world is being run by smart people who are putting us on or by imbeciles who really mean it."
-- Mark Twain"

 

[Laura]

"You have to find the gems within and the important fact is that the US is already a fascist state."

No, I do not "have to find the gems..." I am free to draw my own conclusions. And, yes, I regard ""You have to..." as more than merely a turn of phrase.

In this case the "you have to" IS just a turn of phrase. Your reaction to this article reminds me of a Dervish story:

Once, in the tekke, a dervish complained that the door made a disturbing creaking sound whenever anyone came into the room. Mevlana looked at him and said,

"The sound of a door opening is disturbing to you because all doors are closed to you.

I love this sound, for all doors are open to me."

A red flag went up for me at the very beginning of Rothorn's article, with his citing of an incorrect definition of fascism. Whereas dictatorship is a component of fascism, it does not, in itself, constitute fascism. Whether one bases his objection on set theory or on the flaw in inductive logic, not every dictatorship is fascism. (Not every four-legged animal is a dog.)

True, not every fascist government is headed by a dictator - take the UK, for example.

Nevertheless, external considering suggests to us that we always keep in mind the level of understanding of other people in our efforts to present them with information.

External considering is based upon an entirely different relationship towards people than internal considering. It is adaptation towards people, to their understanding, to their requirements.

By considering externally a man does that which makes life easy for other people and for himself.

External considering requires a knowledge of men, an understanding of their tastes, habits, and prejudices.

At the same time external considering requires a great power over oneself, a great control over oneself.

Very often a man desires sincerely to express or somehow or other show to another man what he really thinks of him or feels about him. And if he is a weak man he will of course give way to this desire and afterwards justify himself and say that he did not want to lie, did not want to pretend, he wanted to be sincere.

Then he convinces himself that it was the other man's fault. He really wanted to consider him, even to give way to him, not to quarrel, and so on. But the other man did not at all want to consider him so that nothing could be done with him.

It very often happens that a man begins with a blessing and ends with a curse. He begins by deciding not to consider and afterwards blames other people for not considering him. This is an example of how external considering passes into internal considering.

But if a man really remembers himself he understands that another man is a machine just as he is himself. And then he will enter into his position, he will put himself in his place, and he will be really able to understand and feel what another man thinks and feels.

If he can do this his work becomes easier for him. But if he approaches a man with his own requirements nothing except new internal considering can ever be obtained from it.

Fascism is the total corporate state. It did not begin in the United States with the Supreme Court decision that installed Dubya as President.

Of course not. But most people are just beginning to wake up to the fact that their government is lying to them. They can't yet really grok the fact that said government is actually a gang of criminals and has been - for the most part - for a very long time.

The Supreme Court stopped the Florida vote recount. The recount was being held because of the (well-founded) suspicion that there had been vote fraud. Rothorn also did not mention the evidence for vote fraud in Ohio in the 2004 election.

But most people are just beginning to wake up to the fact that their government is lying to them. They can't yet really grok the fact that said government is actually a gang of criminals and has been - for the most part - for a very long time.

In 2006, the American people went to the polls and elected a Democratic Congress. We were l(i)ed into believing that a victory by the Democrats would end the war in Iraq; Johnny would come marching home, the day after the election.

Do you really think that the American people elected anybody in 2006? I seriously doubt it. That election was just as fixed as any other.

(OK, so that's hyperbole. The point is that the electorate (what a misnomer!) were propagandized into supporting Democratic candidates. When the Democrats won, we were assured, they would take whatever congressional action were required to end the war.)

No, the electorate was not propagandized into supporting a Democratic candidate. They were propagandized into believing that there was actually a Democratic election.

Congress could have done so; they've had plenty of opportunities. They could have voted against appropriation bills. They could have voted to overturn PATRI0T Act I and II. They could have abolished the Department of Fatherland, er, Homeland Security. They could have impeached Bush and Cheney.

No, they couldn't have. As noted above, the whole thing was a farce from beginning to end. As I wrote in my blog Post Election Reality Check:

So you think "the system worked", democracy has won out, and that yesterday's election is the first step to straightening out the mess Bush and the Neocons have made on the planet?

Think again. It's not that "the system" didn't work; it worked very well, but you have again been duped.

Nothing has changed. In fact, many of you have been put back to sleep by the staged Democratic victory which was set up just for that purpose; to make you think you still live in a democracy. The fact is, the Zionist halter is as firmly strapped on the head of American State policy as it ever was, and the American voter needs to realize that it is immaterial which party prevails at elections.

You might enjoy reading the entire blog post.

Bribery and blackmail have always tainted our electoral system. What changed -- and this was under Clinton -- was that vote counting was hijacked from the citizenry. Easily-hacked, corporate-owned computers, programmed with secret, proprietary software, now determine the outcome of elections.

(Yeah, it's called "privatization." That's something that even Orwell couldn't have foreseen.)

I can't see into Rothorn's mind to determine if he's a disinfo agent, or if he honestly doesn't consider any of the above relevant. I can be certain, though, that the above means that we cannot rely on electoral politics to roll back fascism.

The electoral system has devolved into scripted political theater, with a predetermined denouement. The fat lady will always sing the right song.

It doesn't matter that George W. Bush is a psychopath; he doesn't run the country. He is a perfect psychopathic puppet.

Martin

All very true. But again, one must consider the mindset of the population - most people. The SOTT page is not just for "those in the know" about these things; it is for everyone.

 

[Laura]

I don't find any gems in that article. I don't find any cubic zirconia. I don't even find any rhinestones. All that I find is glitter, held together with paste, mounted in a cheap, base-metal setting

I, on the other hand, put myself into the other man's position, remembered how blind and ignorant I once was, and how dearly I clung to my illusions about the U.S., and how painful it was to let go of those illusions, and felt a great deal of hope that if this journalist is beginning to "get" a few things, then, at some point, he can take the next step.

The deception starts with the very title of the article: When America Went Fascist. According to the author, it happened at the moment that the Supreme Court laid down its ruling to stop the Florida vote recount, thus installing Dubya as President.

Well, I used to think that the U.S. started going South after WW II ended. It took awhile for me to realize that it was created the way it was for the very purposes it has fulfilled over the past 200 years.

That is the central tenet of Rowthorn's article. Does anyone here accept that?

But that is not the essence of the "line of force." The "line of force" suggests that this journalist is beginning to see a few things.

I figure that most of the folks here have a solid grounding in US history. Under the Wilson administration, we got the enactment of The Federal Reserve Act, the (probably non)ratification of the 16th Amendment, the cozy partnership of government and big business, in the lead-up to and then the implementation of US combat in World War I, and brutal suppression of war dissenters. No fascism there, right?

Of course, but again, waking up can generally only happen in stages.

<snipped history>

(Sorry that the list isn't more complete. I'm in my sixties, and my memory just ain't what it used to be.)

Rowthorn leads with a flawed, cherry-picked definition of fascism:

"Fascism: a system of government marked by centralization of authority under a dictator"
-- The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language: Fourth Edition. 2000

An absolute monarchy fits that definition, too, and it is not fascism.

Of course. But again, try to remember when you were not awake and aware and how you became awake and aware. It is a process. Most people would go mad if they woke up and saw all the truth at once. And are you really sure that you see it all?

<snip more>

The Supreme Court made Bush dictator, and thus began fascism. That's total bullocks, of course. That doesn't matter, though. What matters is that the author acknowledged "...that the US is already a fascist state."

He gets everything else wrong -- 9/11, economic collapse, peak oil, global warming. Who cares? As long as he says the magic word "fascism" we'll give him a pass on all of those trivial issues.

He's trying to play us. He's telling us to stay within the electoral process, kick out the bad people, replace them with good people, and that will solve our problems. Poof -- no more fascism!

He is perpetuating the out-and-out fraud that the people in elective office actually run the country.

Is Rowthorn honestly clueless, or is he a disinfo agent? Does it matter?

What was interesting to me was the way he phrased it:

Thus, a presidential candidate who does not make restoration of constitutional government the centerpiece of his or her campaign should not even be considered. The first and most pressing order of business must be to repeal the Patriot Act in its entirety. Provisions that Democratic lawmakers deem essential to national security can be restored on a piece-by-piece basis as parts of other legislation. The Military Commissions Act of 2006, which suspended habeas corpus, must be repealed. The Department of Homeland Security must be downsized and brought under full and transparent civilian control.

Now, certainly, we already know that there is not going to be a presidential candidate who will run on such a platform. And that fact just might wake Rowthorn up to the idea that the whole election process is just a staged show to placate the masses, to make them believe they still have a democracy. When he sees that no one steps up to the plate on this one, he might begin to ask himself the next level of questions as to why that might be the case.

So, that Rowthorn sees this much gives me hope that he can see more. And no, I don't think he is promoting belief in the fake democracy because he is doing deliberate disinformation.

But if a man really remembers himself he understands that another man is a machine just as he is himself. And then he will enter into his position, he will put himself in his place, and he will be really able to understand and feel what another man thinks and feels. If he can do this his work becomes easier for him. But if he approaches a man with his own requirements nothing except new internal considering can ever be obtained from it.

 

[vinny]

I'm sorry if this seems a little off topic but, well, this is very interesting because it is not the first time this week that I have read a discussion that involves a certain amount of emotional investment in one side or the other, that then leads to misunderstanding, 'misreading' of the other person's view, and basically a whole load of 'confusion of tongues' going on!

It seems that a big part of our reality is the huge emotional damage that is done to us all, that makes it almost impossible to even discuss the nature of reality, without coming up against emotional barriers. It is amazing how attachment to an idea, to a subjective reality, or an emotional loop of some kind, can make one absolutely blind to something, or to go off on an emotionally-fuelled tangent.

It seems more and more apparent to me, that until we are able to get some 'emotional education', and some control over and knowledge of our inner selves, then trying to discover the 'outer' reality is well nigh impossible. It looks to me like a very big part of the matrix 'fence' is made up of emotional-programming/ignorance. This gives me a lot of motivation to work on my own 'emotional education' - and it is something that I would once-upon-a-time have considered totally unimportant, or irrelevant.

 

[kenlee]

I don't find any gems in that article. I don't find any cubic zirconia. I don't even find any rhinestones. All that I find is glitter, held together with paste, mounted in a cheap, base-metal setting.

Nugaband, why can’t you accept this article in the spirit for which it was written? Rowthorn appears to be just a guy who sees the madness around him and is trying to figure things out as best he could . I found the article to be very interesting and I did not get the impression that he had any kind of deeper agenda to sell people “false gold.” It’s his intent and "willingness to know without prejudice" that you must become more sensitive to and it seems to me that your emotional reaction is blinding you to this sensitivity and you are nitpicking on the details when you should be giving this guy a chance and recognizing that he seems genuine and does not think he knows all the answers and/or have a conscious agenda to disinform. The real gold is his potential, that is, his purity of intent to understand this madness around him for what it is. You seem to to be completely rejecting the value of a gemstone only because of it's imperfections.

 

[Cyre2067]

fwiw I really liked the article. As stated above, not everyone is ready to accept that we live in a fascist state (and here I'm talkin about the US), however it is obvious from various blogs and youtube videos that this is where we are, and likely were we will continue to head.

For example, I went to dinner with my parents last night right after reading this article. It's rare that it's just the three of us, typically my brother and sisters come along. But since i had them all to myself they were inherently interested in my work, my grad school app process, and how I've been feeling (had some digestive issues recently). And I calmly gave them all they asked for, but added that in general I'm kinda scared about where things are headed politically. They gave me the standard "Ah you can't worry about those things, they are beyond your control" and I agreed, not wanting to argue or upset them, and told them that focusing on my work and my situation is probably the best way to gain the ability to influence things on the macro-social scale, and then they agreed as well.

So it really does take a dose of external consideration if you want to a.) communicate and b.) educate. You also have to be aware of the fact that many people have this preformed, often inadequate understanding of "the way things are" (I think Lobaczewski referred to it as "world-view"). Thus in order to change that, they have to be willing and open to new and scary information, and that cannot happen "all at once".

I also think it has a lot to do with Positive Disintegration as discussed in this thread: http://www.cassiopaea.org/forum/index.php?topic=883

 

[GRiM]

http://www.digg.com/politics/Fascist_America_in_10_easy_steps_Signs_of_the_Times_News

1013 diggs

Not often Signs-of-the-times make it to the frontpage of digg!

/sorry for the (semi)off-topic.


edit: Oww.. very off-topic, looks like I posted in the wrong thread. Sorry, no external consideration at all :I

 

[NugaBurd]

Gee golly whiz -- I've been accused of being "insensitive."

You ain't seen nuthin' yet, folks...

Why has no one asked, "Who is Chris Rowthorn?"

I have pretty decent Internet search skills, so I decided to find him. I checked WikiPedia; there is no bio there. So I googled him. The only place that I could find any of his writings was in a few (and far between) blogs on The Smirking Chimp. You can find them here:

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/author/chris_rowthorn

This is the full extent of his bio, as posted on that site:

Chris Rowthorn is an American journalist based in Kyoto, Japan. He has written for the Japan Times and Kansai Time Out.

This is the closest that he's come to questioning the 9/11 fiction:

"It is clear that George W. Bush is a bad president. He may have allowed 9-11 to happen because he ignored clear and repeated warnings about terrorist plans..."

That is the meekest LIHOP that I've ever read. Come to think of it, that isn't even LIHOP -- as in "On Purpose." The date was November 15, 2006 -- just under eleven months ago. Nothing more from him since on the subject. How long are we supposed to wait for his great awakening? Perhaps man-made global warming will be reversed and Hell will freeze over this winter?

google also served up a link to this blog, by Cindy Sheehan:

http://dandelionsalad.wordpress.com/2007/09/27/pro-democracy-means-anti-fascism-by-cindy-sheehan/

She really really really was impressed with Rowthorn's latest. She called it "brilliant." However, she did quibble about one little tiny teensy-weensy itsy-bitsy assertion of Rowthorn's:

"According to Chris Rowthorn, in his brilliant article. When America Went Fascist, we went fascist on December 11, 2000 when the Supreme Court appointed George as our unelected, un-democratic and illegal President. Although it is easy and tempting to blame everything on BushCo, this is about the only assertion that I disagree with in his article."

In other words, she agrees with nearly everything about the article, except for the core of it, as suggested by its title -- "When America Went Fascist."

Perhaps the reason that she went "Cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs" -- oops, sorry, folks -- "Rah-Rah for Rowthorn" is that they share a common agenda -- electoral politics. Moreover, his specifics match up with hers. No wonder that she finds his article "brilliant."

I might be the only one here old enough to remember "Get Clean for Gene." By the fall of 1967, opposition to the war in Vietnam had reached the extent that tens thousands of people were taking part in antiwar demonstrations. Democractic Senator Eugene McCarthy of Minnesota, who had voiced opposition to the war, announced his candidacy for the President of the United States.

Of course, you couldn't have all of those scruffy antiwar hippies on the campaign trail. Nonononono! So it was cut off the hair, shave off the beard and ditch the tie-dye and the bell bottoms for straight clothes. "GET CLEAN FOR GENE!"

McCarthy won the January, 1968 primary in New Hampshire. That was the high point; the campaign then just kind of fizzled out. Hubert "I never hugged Lester Maddox" Humphrey got the nomination, and he lost to Nixon.

The McCarthy campaign, though, was a success, not a failure. It drained six months of momentum from the antiwar movement, and it left its participants burned out and disillusioned.

The year 2004 saw people fall for the carefully-crafted "Anybody But Bush" scam. Even though John Kerry had never expressed even the slightest misgivings about the official story of the events of 9/11, and even though he had never questioned the legitimacy of the US invasion of Iraq, Kerry was the great white hope to unseat Dubya. Even though people saw the "free speech zones" and the cutting off of antiwar speakers during the convention, people still hornswoggled themselves into working for him and into voting for him.

They didn't count on the dirty tricks, the rigging of the vote-counting machines and, finally, the sabotage, by Kerry himself, when he conceded the election.

People responded to the siren call of electoral politics again in 2006. Funniest darned thing -- even with the Democrats in charge of the Congress, even more people are being murdered in Afghanistan and in Iraq, even more people are being foreclosed out of their homes, even more veterans are being warehoused...

I have utter contempt for electoral politics, except at the local level. Even at the local level, it is often the business interests, rather than elected officials, who run the show.

Perhaps I'm wrong. Maybe I'm just a cynical, senile old fart, who can't recognize the obvious truth that electoral politics is the stairway to the salvation of our Republic. Or it could be the map to the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. <insert flowery literary device of your choice>

Who am I to say?

Martin

"Sometimes I wonder whether the world is being run by smart people who are putting us on or by imbeciles who really mean it."
-- Mark Twain"

 

[Laura]

Nugaburd, most people are unaware of the truth of the U.S. electoral system since its inception mainly due to propaganda and brainwashing by the perpetrators of the system. It's going to take them awhile to go there. It's also going to take some fairly serious shocks. Sad, but there it is. I'm just glad that the wider public is, little by little, noticing things and starting to talk about it even if they have not yet plumbed the depths of the evil system.

 

[anart]

Nugaburd, most people are unaware of the truth of the U.S. electoral system since its inception mainly due to propaganda and brainwashing by the perpetrators of the system. It's going to take them awhile to go there. It's also going to take some fairly serious shocks. Sad, but there it is. I'm just glad that the wider public is, little by little, noticing things and starting to talk about it even if they have not yet plumbed the depths of the evil system.

True - and Nugaburd, not sure what this means:

Gee golly whiz -- I've been accused of being "insensitive."

You ain't seen nuthin' yet, folks...

But if you're 'being insensitive' just because you can or just because you think it's an effective way to communicate, you're going to find out really quickly that it doesn't fly here - seems you should know that by now, though. Of course, there is no problem at all conveying what you think, just please consider that how you say it is often as important as what you say. fwiw.