The Saker

A Saker is a large bird, a falcon.  It is also the name of a popular Leftist blog.  The blogger is anti-American, anti-Israel and quite paranoid: It was of course George Bush who blew up the twin towers.

The Saker is an example of an older Leftist type that precedes the modern-day Democratic party.  As Trump points out, the modern-day Democrats are the establishment, the people in charge of most things in American life. They would still control the Presidency if they had put up Sanders against Trump but the personal ambition and deep pockets of Hillary Clinton derailed that.

But there is an older leftist type that is anti-establishment.  They used to complain about "the system", "The bosses",  "Wall St.", "Big business" etc. They yearned for a "workers' paradise".  They saw themselves as ground-down and the victim of all sorts of conspiracies, including "The capitalist press".

And they still exist. A majority of Democrat voters still believe that George Bush blew up the twin towers.  So how come those people now vote for the establishment?  It's because the old and new Leftists have one thing in common: hate.  And in classic Leftist style it is an inchoate hate, a hate that is always in its infancy and therefore flits here and there from one hate to another:  One day it can be traditional marriage and the next it can be statues of Confederate heroes.  As long as the Establishment can find hate-objects to campaign against, it sounds right to the old-style Leftist.  He knows he will always be ground down so all he hopes for is that the status quo is under attack, somehow, somewhere.

But Trump has disrupted all that.  He has declared that the establishment "Emperor" has no clothes.  He has pointed out that the Left in fact control the country -- via the "swamp" -- and that they therefore are the proper hate-object. Instead of chasing after small hate-objects, he has given individual Leftists one big hate object to oppose.  And for that reason, many former Democrats voted for him, upsetting all expectations.  The combination of anti-authority Leftists and anti-authority conservatives gave Trump a big win.

Sadly, however, the anti-authority Leftist still believes in all the old nostrums, false beliefs about why the world is all wrong -- including "The Jews". He still believes that behind the facade we all see are Jews pulling all the strings of power and impoverishing little guys like him.  And with Ashkenazi names like Blankfein and Goldman frequently found among the great powers of Wall St., one understands their mistake.  They don't understand why the world really works so they resort to conspiracy theories.

And so we come back to The Saker. Both America and Israel are great conspiracies to him and he loves Hizbollah, Muslim terrorists. He is an "Anti-Zionist". And because the official Left no longer preach all the old suspicions, The Saker has got himself a big audience for his theories.  He has become a spokesman for the non-establishment Left.

So it is amusing that some of his articles are half-right.  One such article is "Fascism?  Surely not", in which he correctly notes the pervasive control wielded by modern States and compares it with Fascism in the first half of the 20th century.  He doesn't actually seem to know much about historical Fascism but notes the tendency of businesses to expand by mergers etc and become semi-monopolies in their respective fields.  That is indeed not too different from the "corporations" set up by Benito Mussolini.

But the things he blames on corporations are eccentric.  I quote:

"The issue of Vaccination is just one area of concern. There are many others that are appearing on the horizon that society has never had to think about or, debate before. The long term safety of water fluoridation, the spraying of our crops by Monsanto chemicals or, the consumption of GMO foods are just a few issues that raise serious concerns for millions of people. Instead of having a public and scientific debate to ensure safety, we instead see cover-ups, studies funded by the very Corporations who make the products or, paid experts appearing in the Media assuring us that everything is okay. Orwellian!"

He seems simply unaware that we have in fact already had a most extensive "public and scientific debate" about vaccination, fluoridation, GMO foods and chemicals on crops.  Because he doesn't understand those subjects, he resorts to conspiracy theories.

So, Yes.  Modern states are very reminiscent of historical Fascism, but it is not because of vaccination, fluoridation, GMO foods and chemicals on crops.  It is because of government controls on so much in our lives.  More on historical Fascism here

The Saker and his cohorts are in fact an example of the old saying that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing.  A real understanding of the world we live in requires a knowledge of economics and psychology, particularly economics.  And most people don't have that knowledge so give up attempting to understand why things happen. But the Saker and his cohorts don't give up.  They are intelligent people with enquiring minds so try to find explanations that make sense to them.  And conspiracy theories are a classic resort of those who don't actually understand.

They read far and wide and still find puzzles. And only a conspiracy theory explains why so many bad things happen for no apparent reason.  So only a theory of bad men secretly getting together to do bad things fits the facts as they know them.

I found the same thing in my studies of neo-Nazis long ago.  They were people with a real interest in world affairs and a considerable knowledge of what was happening. But only a Jewish conspiracy made sense of it all from their point of view.

For both the neo-Nazis and the Saker crowd, a course in economics would have given them a real understanding of what was going on -- but economics is hard.  Ricardo's law of comparative advantage, for instance, runs up hard against everyday assumptions about trade -- so requires real thought. Commonsense will get you nowhere in economics

An example of how things are non-obvious in economics is the  effects of the velocity of circulation of money.  Major Douglas built his Social Credit movement on a misunderstanding of that  and both Left and Right at times use that misunderstanding to demonize "the banks".

It is such a powerful misunderstanding that my own brother believed it for many years and I had the devil of a job to show him where the error lay.  More on Social Credit here.

So one can't blame the Saker for his errors but it is a pity that he propagates them. Humility would better become him -- JR

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Tracking Progressivism's Progress
 
If the expression déjà vu had any competitors, likely they would be found in 2017’s proliferation of diatribes exploding from the lips of Donald Trump’s opponents. In fact, “opponents” barely touches the stridency of the president’s antagonists; enemies and death-wishers more fully embrace descriptions of journalists, academics, and Hollywood types — America’s true one-percenters — whose words often color the air bluer than the industries that employ them and the states they call home. Although the country has witnessed name-calling since George Washington was at the helm, one needs only to sample political invective from the past century to understand how far progressives have, well, progressed.

Consider, for instance, Woodrow Wilson’s offerings to enrich the dictionary definition of “scathing.” His opponents were:

imbeciles, pinheads, dolts: Of all the blind and little provincial people, they are the littlest and most contemptible… They have not even got good working imitations of minds. They remind me of a man with a head that is not a head but is just a knot providentially put there to keep him from raveling out. But why the Lord should not have been willing to let them ravel out, I do not know, because they are of no use… They are going to have the most conspicuously contemptible names in history. The gibbets that they are going to be erected on by future historians will scrape the heavens, they will be so high… If I did not despise them, I would feel sorry for them.

Pretty strong stuff, and in 1919 one might surmise it hardly seemed logical that denunciations could get any worse. Except logic was another thing Wilson said he didn’t give a d—n about, and things did get worse as the progressive ethos permeated every institution in American society.

Which brings us up to now, 2017, a good time to take stock of progressivism’s progress, which the Media Research Center has recently catalogued. Joe Scarborough insists that insiders believe Trump is mentally unfit and suffering from early stage dementia. MSNBC acolytes label him as a madman, unhinged, not fully rational, and dangerously out of control. So far, largely Wilsonian, but it gets worse. Thus, CNN characterized Trump as a sociopath, malignant narcissist (how did it miss that with Obama?) who was vomited up by the electoral college system, constitutes a stain on our country and a danger to the world. Trump has done more damage than Osama bin Laden and ISIS combined; he is the Charles Manson of American politics, and by the way, only a white nationalist like Trump would condemn communism (nice to know where media sentiments lie, thank you). Naturally, these samplings do not include Keith Olbermann-types trying to obliterate Trump with F-bombs.

Nothing new here by today’s standards, but the important question is what to make of it. Several explanations come to mind. First, much foaming-at-the-mouth rage against Trump reflects infantilism of many commentators who never outgrew the “I’ll double dog dare you, stinkpot!” stage of intellectual development, especially among those in positions to avoid a contrary thought; their word toys changed, that’s all. Second, Freud’s concept of projection-transference, which has been part of public discourse for the past century, helps us better understand the fascist Left’s obsession with assigning characteristics to their opponents that define themselves. Calling Trump and Republicans fascist would be amusing if the politics and psychology behind the charge were not so serious, especially given progressivism’s totalitarian yearnings to control every aspect of American life — the very definition of fascism.

Now, President Trump utters many foolish things, but that isn’t the point; if it were, critics would have relished the inanities of Mr. Corpse-Man-in-Chief himself, Barack Obama, a glib mediocrity propelled by narcissism and media sycophancy into the presidency. But Obama was untouchable because he is “one of us,” so progressive media launched a “slobbering love affair” instead.

Third, this point suggests that facts don’t matter, which Roger L. Simon explained in I Know Best: How Moral Narcissism Is Destroying Our Republic, If It Hasn’t Already. Moral narcissism embraces “ideas and attitudes, a narcissism of ‘I know best,’ of ‘I believe therefore I am.’” Simon states further, “It doesn’t matter that [your ideas] misfire completely, cause terror attacks, illness, death, riots in the inner city, or national bankruptcy. You will be applauded and approved of.”

Trump fits into this scheme in that narcissistic elites believed, to thundering self-applause, that in 2016 America’s rubes got it colossally wrong; how dare they elect someone who like Woodrow Wilson doesn’t give a d—n about what they think! Thus, narcissists conjured Russian collusion and threw that into the mix as well; never mind that Hillary Clinton’s self-serving tenure as secretary of state produced one tragedy and embarrassment after another, including a real Russian debacle with national security implications. No matter, remember this impenitent shrew is still “one of us.”

Unfortunately, a deeper tragedy awaits America when progressive narcissists resume power, which inevitably will occur. Joachim Fest, whose research into the Third Reich’s leadership leaves readers easily imagining him shaking his head in puzzlement, confessed that “The chronicler of this epoch stands almost helpless before the task of relating so much incapacity, so much mediocrity and insignificance of character, intelligibly to their extraordinary results.”

So far, “extraordinary results” in America have included progressives’ efforts to end free speech, supersede the Constitution, and micromanage the economy — this is the short list. More extreme measures to expunge the Trump interregnum likely will follow, because if there’s one lesson progressives have taught us, it is this: Hell hath no fury like an elite scorned by its inferiors.

SOURCE

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