The Digital Revolution: How it Started, How it’s Going

That Donald Trump will fail or betray his conservative white American supporters is a better bet than its opposite. But as it remains only a probability for now, at the moment I wish to praise him, maybe for the last time, for his under-appreciated destruction of “Barack Obama”—put in quotes here to indicate the failed psy-op and kulturkampf that we knew as “Barack Obama”, as opposed to just the enigmatic and opaque human kernel around which this propagandistic operation was built, the very human and very flawed Barack Obama. The public manipulation campaign “Barack Obama” was a covert revolution producing its own not-so-covert counter-revolution, Donald Trump’s “Maga”. The man whose epic rise set in motion this historical sequence still playing out, Barack Obama, was last seen slouching about the Kamala Harris campaign, noticeably diminished both physically and psychically, weakly slinging the rhetorical grenades about misogyny and black men with which his handlers had armed him before sending him out on—let’s hope for his sake—his last mission. Pity was the most charitable possible reaction and a stunning fall from grace was confirmed.

Needless to say I reject the charges that Obama controls the Biden Administration or the Democratic Party. I do not assign to him a sinister genius like many of his other detractors (an idea almost as silly as “Big Mike” and his giant penis), just as I never assigned to him the charismatic genius that his opponents and acolytes alike claimed back in the day, falling for the feel-good psychological operation that was “Barack Obama” in 2008 (were we ever that young?). Holding yourself apart from one of these domestic propaganda campaigns is all but impossible—one either falls under its spell or resists with effort; either way he’s manipulated and his rational self-interest derailed. And yes it is quite fitting that it was Obama who signed the repeal of the law against domestic propaganda.

My resentment of Obama is of another sort from those who see him as evil, and, yes, it is resentment I confess to, replete with the envy of the obscure man for the famous and celebrated man. Still, it resembles somewhat the resentment of Obama I see in Donald Trump, leading to his early opposition to the Obama presidency, long before the fateful escalator descent. From our wildly divergent vantages, one high one low, Trump and I both saw Barack Obama as a thorough-going fraud.

Donald Trump, who flirted with (and through others was flattered by) the idea of running for president his whole life, saw the mediocre and false Obama lifted on a wave of hysteria, and was affronted (both the obscure like me and the notable like Trump think the same thing when they see such a high-flying mediocrity: it should be me!)

And while Donald Trump may prove equally fraudulent, may have been equally fraudulent this whole time, I see in his political career human vanity working its traditional role as a confounding, random historical factor, in this case upsetting a meticulous, expertly constructed and massively funded operation in public manipulation:

Obama’s sudden rise in 2008 offends the vanity of Donald Trump, who then takes up the birther cause; this in turn offends Barack Obama (made megalomaniacal as he succumbs to the same propaganda directed on the public); Obama, along with his equally oblivious acolytes, indulges in a public humiliation ritual of Trump at the infamous and fateful National Press Club dinner; the traumatic experience compels Donald Trump to run for president in 2016; Trump wins and Obama’s revolution is derailed, his legacy in tatters; Obama’s last desperate foray against Trump on behalf of Kamala Harris—another token and fraud—end what remains of the Obama myth in a pathetic whimper. I wonder if it occurs to Obama or the masters of manipulation responsible for him, but it should: if only they had left Trump alone…

Trump, picking up on a crank conspiracy theory and setting out to expose Obama as a false citizen (as if his passive aggressive attitude toward the United States and its people would have been negated by legal status) exposed something more important, the false nature of his identity and the malice behind his myth.

“Obama is running the Democratic Party” is just more accidental cover for the people and money that actually run it. But none of this is really what I’ve come to talk about. Obama’s handlers took for granted a historical shift would be effected by young people on social media, and they further took for granted these young people would be doctrinaire in their leftist leanings and thus easily manipulated further, a willing herd.

I boarded this train of thought after reading this piece by David Samuels in Tablet:

Something big changed sometime after the year 2000 in the way we communicated with each other, and the means by which we absorbed new information and formed a working picture of the world around us. What changed can be understood as the effect of the ongoing transition from the world of 20th-century media to our current digital landscape. This once-every-five-centuries revolution would have large effects, ones we have only just begun to assimilate, and which have largely rendered the assumptions and accompanying social forms of the past century obsolete, even as tens of millions of people, including many who imagine themselves to reside near the top of the country’s social and intellectual pyramids, continue to imagine themselves to be living in one version or another of the long 20th century that began with the advent of a different set of mass communications technologies, which included the telegraph, radio, and film.

The time was ripe, in other words, for a cultural revolution—which would, according to the established patterns of American history, in turn generate a political one.

In 2008 things were still more in the old order than in the new. Old media was still in charge. Middle-aged columnists equated technological aptitude with use of email. Obama was presented as tech-savvy because of his attachment to his Blackberry. His campaign benefitted from its capture of Silicon Valley and held a clear advantage organizing via the internet. But nothing had really changed yet in how the public accesses and shares information. The old order still commanded the media heights, even if things seemed to move so much faster. “Print” was dying but the dynamics of top-down narrative control had yet to change, and even those who spoke of a new, democratic world of information took for granted this would pose no threat to the false idols of egalitarianism or any other means of control.

The new order was new, revolutionary, democratic, therefore benign and progressive-liberal. Wrongthink—about race, or Jewish power, or feminism—had so long been so effectively suppressed no one could imagine its resurgence via this youthful, technologically advanced—and thus “enlightened”—new order.

Most of the old guard—as they still do—saw nothing false about the contours of the post World War II order. And no one saw Trump coming.

What I did not imagine at the time was that Obama’s successor in the White House would not be Hillary Clinton but Donald Trump. Nor did I foresee that Trump would himself become the target of a messaging campaign that would make full use of the machine that Obama had built, along with elements of the American security state. Being physically inside the White House, it turned out, was a mere detail of power; even more substantial power lay in controlling the digital switchboard that Obama had built, and which it turned out he still controlled.

As I said already I don’t see Obama controlling anything, but Samuels’ point is correct: democracy, by electing Trump twice now, is in direct opposition to the powerful forces that now struggle to maintain control over information and opinion.

Samuels does not oppose top-down manipulation and control of opinion mind you. He cites approvingly Walter Lippman’s ideas about “manufacturing consent” (I learned by his article this was not originally Chomsky’s phrase but Lippman’s approving phrase for media control). In Lippman’s and Samuels’ view the right people would guide the dull mob to ensure order and continuity, if not by telling the truth then by creating a “metaphoric” facsimile of it:

What mattered here was no longer Lippmann’s version of “public opinion,” rooted in the mass audiences of radio and later television, which was assumed to correlate to the current or future preferences of large numbers of voters—thereby assuring, on a metaphoric level at least, the continuation of 19th-century ideas of American democracy, with its deliberate balance of popular and representational elements in turn mirroring the thrust of the Founders’ design. Rather, the newly minted digital variant of “public opinion” was rooted in the algorithms that determine how fads spread on social media, in which mass multiplied by speed equals momentum—speed being the key variable. The result was a fast-moving mirror world that necessarily privileges the opinions and beliefs of the self-appointed vanguard who control the machinery, and could therefore generate the velocity required to change the appearance of “what people believe” overnight.

Forget “democracy”, we should hedge our bets by having only a representation of representative government, “mirror[ing] the thrust of the founder’s design”. Samuels sees the problems as technical—the wrong algorithms. He laments a “self-appointed vanguard” using the speed and reach of the internet to manipulate opinion overnight.

Well that “vanguard” (more like the entrenched forces of old power than a revolutionary vanguard, but) still exists and still operates by creating (not finding) fads. Witness Brat Summer and the quick transformation of Kamala Harris from ridiculed Vice President to frontrunner by virtue of a media and internet full court press.

That sort of manipulation isn’t new, even if its dynamics and tools are different. What’s different is the popular and less controlled forces that defeated it and revealed the hoax portraying Kamala Harris as popular and capable.

To Samuels this probably looks like chaos. Samuels is struggling to here to lament what he can’t say outright: “we have lost control of the media.” Witness this week’s dustup between rootless billionaire weirdo Elon Musk and the populist element of Maga. If the populists lose this battle it won’t be because the forces of, yes, misinformation succeeded in creating the illusion of popular support for Musk’s position or of his position being in the national interest.

Trump and Musk will have to openly defy the popular will. It may not matter—they will get away with it—but it will not be able to mischaracterize it, because the consent part can no longer, at least here on the right, be manufactured. Musk failed in his effort to pose as a populist hero. While Trump has acquired his own “tech bro” faction, people seem to barely recall Silicon Valley’s role in the grand hoax that was “Barack Obama”; it was Silicon Valley that originally facilitated, as part of the Obama coalition, the “woke” revolution Musk makes a great show of opposing. Samuels:

The Obama Democratic Party (ODP) was a kind of balancing mechanism between the power and money of the Silicon Valley oligarchs and their New York bankers; the interests of bureaucratic and professional elites who shuttled between the banks and tech companies and the work of bureaucratic oversight; the ODP’s own sectarian constituencies, which were divided into racial and ethnic categories like “POC,” “MENA,” and “Latinx,” whose bizarre bureaucratic nomenclature signaled their inherent existence as top-down containers for the party’s new-age spoils system; and the world of billionaire-funded NGOs that provided foot-soldiers and enforcers for the party’s efforts at social transformation.

Obama campaigned on “change” but the only genuine change effected was the advent of woke rule and identity politics. Continuity reassuring to the elite reigned in the more substantial aspects of the world order: the wars raged on, Israel’s control over foreign policy continued, demographic and economic displacement continued apace. Another thing lost in this history I find amusing: Joe Biden was selected as Vice President to reassure a nervous elite that it could trust Obama, despite all the heady talk of “change”. What more conventional and pliable figure could they have found to sit co-pilot?

Samuels goes on to lament the woke revolution Obama wrought—very different from the revolutionary “change” he promised, as well as the serial hoaxes beginning with Russiagate, but it’s his obsession with the Iran nuclear deal, which, in his zionist interpretation, is self-evidently against US national interests somehow; he even sees the Iran deal as the first, formative campaign in the long war of misinformation against Trump

Having reported on the Iran deal made it easy to see that Russiagate was a political op, being run according to a similar playbook, by many of the same people. Familiarity with the Iran deal made it easy for reporters at Tablet, particularly Lee Smith, to see Russiagate as a fraud from the beginning, and to see through the methods by which the hallucination was being messaged by the mainstream press.

Samuels’ self-delusion or dishonesty thus works against the value we can draw from his otherwise useful analysis. But his combination of opposition to wokeness and a pro-Israel rightwing position is in line—maybe, maybe not deliberately—with a whole movement we’ve seen take off after Hamas’ October 7 attack. Indeed, Samuels’ own juxtaposition of a supposedly reckless Iran nuclear deal with the woke revolution and the war of misinformation against Trump wouldn’t survive the same critique he applies here generally. Unless of course you accept his apparent position that Israeli and US interests are one and the same.

I’ve written before about the post-October 7 campaign to bring the unruly Trump movement in line with pro-Israel and pro-Jewish sentiment by equating wokeness with opposition to Israeli genocide and “antisemitism”. This campaign reveals another aspect with Musk’s recent revelation as a pro-immigration extremist: his anti-woke pose works as if deliberately to lull immigration restrictionists into forfeiting their concerns and economic nationalism. Forget your displacement and join me in snickering at woke blue-hairs. I suggest not falling for it.

Don’t forget that Musk, while quick to tell you to “fuck yourself in the face” for daring to disagree with him on H1Bs, even to tell another oligarch “fuck you” regarding censorship, rolled over with a whimper when confronted by the ADL, and now combines censorship of disagreements over immigration with censorship of “antisemitism”.

Look for Musk to adopt the “woke right” angle of attack if he hasn’t already.

But hope remains. Despite Trump’s apparent alliance with Musk on H1Bs, his remarks were far from definitive, despite the New York Post’s characterization. Politics are about who gets betrayed. It’s entirely possible Trump can betray Musk before he betrays us.

But if and when Donald Trump betrays you he will have to do it openly, and he will have to weather the storm to follow. To repeat myself, the consent hasn’t been manufactured, and power—thanks to the irascible horde of conditional Trump supporters, the “subtards” and “antisemites”—can no longer front as if it’s doing anything other than defying popular will and national interest to appease money and greater power.

If Trump does in fact betray his base, let’s hope he has his own humiliating denouement a la Obama’s, at least.

An Offer We Don’t Get to Refuse

There’s a taste in my mouth, as desperation takes hold –Joy Division

Trump’s self-image as the consummate deal-maker has its advantages and its disadvantages. His willingness to bargain with Putin to end the war in Ukraine, for instance, promises to break the current administration’s determination to keep the slaughter going–if an act of war party desperation between now and the inauguration doesn’t succeed in queering the possibility of peace.*

But Trump’s faith in his dealmaking abilities also means he’s more likely to bargain away his voters’ mandate. This is of course assuming he intends, or intended, to honor it in the first place. Trump loves populist rhetoric because it’s won him the presidency twice; populist governance perhaps not so much. The difference is between the instant gratification of adoring crowds on the campaign trail and governing, where gratification is long deferred or never forthcoming.

Talk is cheap and in Trump’s case the action he promises may not even be possible. He may in fact be counting on the impossibility of his promises. As absolution for his previous failures, the hopeful refrain we hear now, “this time will be different”, is lent plausibility by the reality we witnessed in 2016, when the system formed like a tumor around the unwelcome cells of Trump and populism. The dejection and demoralization of the system’s media personalities now gives hope (and a good deal of entertainment) to those who see in Trump revolutionary change, but we can expect those enemies in the true commanding heights–those above lowly functionaries like Kamala Harris and television’s talking heads, those who are writing the checks–are made of sterner stuff. True power abides like the seasons, and this time there will be no next time.

But also we must account for the very real possibility–some would say certainty–that Trump was in fact merely allowed to win this time, that regarding presidential elections now the fix is always in, or always in reserve, and in this case the fix (as exemplified by polls and a media chorus about her “flawless” campaign) was withdrawn and the voters were not impeded.

One thing is clear, the Democrats lost the confidence of the Israel lobby and Zionist-leaning donors, suffering from both a lack of leadership above and a base below, of younger leftists and non-whites who are culturally foreigners, that increasingly despises Israel and its actions. If American politics are now a veiled battle between pro-Israel factions, dove and hawk, the Republicans represent the hawks, who are currently in ascendance.

That Donald Trump enters office “the most pro-Israel president ever” is not to be dismissed out of hand, no matter how much one is committed to resisting “conspiracy theories”. (Why one would be so committed to that after the last few years, other than faltering mental acuity due to age, is beyond me.)

There is no accountability where there is no one to hold to account. Trump is, as in 2016, a boon for his enemies, despite the histrionics of (ironically) low information media personalities who don’t understand the game. The specter of Trump as dictator is invaluable in manipulating the ill-informed and emotional, enabling all manner of censorship and public acceptance of, for instance, extreme Covid policies cast as the “scientific” alternative to Trump’s supposed denialism (despite Trump’s implication in the whole sorry story through Operation Warp Speed). Trump worked wonders for his putative enemies, creating among the “liberal” set strange new respect for the CIA and FBI, enthusiasm for censorship and skepticism toward democracy itself.

Because the establishment doesn’t accept the legitimacy of Trump or his policy proposals, there’s no one to hold him to account for failing to deliver on them–including his supposed anti-interventionism in foreign policy. Equally terrified of populism and of peace, Trump’s powerful enemies leave that money on the table. This leaves only the “far” right to hold him to his word.

But Trump’s already closed the deal with his voters. Negotiations are ended. In addition to the inherent disadvantage of electoral politics—that citizens grant their vote up front, left to hope politicians deliver on their promises—Trump enters office this time a lame duck from the start. Trump has been paid and is at his leisure. A glorious thing it would be if he somehow decided to betray his donors rather than his voters, but there’s no chance of that; you paid nothing to vote after all, but donors ponied up serious cash. Trump the businessman respects that.

So, promises aside, what exactly is the deal Trump is granting in return for your vote? What is the bargain voters have won, now taking shape with his cabinet selections?

It appears the Trump administration will wage political war on “woke” policies at home and wage literal war for Israel abroad, with the outside chance of some economic populism in the form of tariffs.

But I must concede it’s only a sizable fraction of his base he stands to betray and not the majority. The true-believers and most fervent of his supporters, the Fox News viewers and anons posting from behind body-builder avatars on X, are getting exactly what they ordered. They love America and Israel (not necessarily in that order) and they hate wokism and Muslims.

I’ve written before about the cultivation after October 7 of that pro-Israel pro-Trump faction through everything from the rise of Chris Rufo to the belated celebration of Steve Sailer and “race realism”–denigrating Arabs and Muslims and revering Jewish IQ. Operation Al Aqsa Flood and the panic it’s inspired in Zionists and diaspora Jews alike may have more to do with Trump’s victory than anything else, as witnessed by the conversion of Bill Ackman to enthusiastic Trump supporter.

The cabinet picks indicate Trump intends to pivot away from the proxy war on Russia via Ukraine to support for Israel’s military expansion in the Middle East—note how this gibes with the views of his least favorite pick, Marco Rubio, obsessively devoted to Israel but skeptical of our involvement in Ukraine.

The shift is embodied by Pete Hegseth, tapped for Defense Secretary, a combat veteran and Christian Zionist who argued for bombing Iran after Trump assassinated Iranian general Qasem Soleimani and for the construction of the Third Temple on the site of Al Aqsa Mosque. Hegseth has written about detrimental woke policies in the military and opposes women in combat. His role is to shape up a degenerate military and its leadership ahead of war with Iran.

Curiously the cabinet is shaping up to be far less Jewish than we’ve come to expect, while being more ferociously Zionist than we could have ever feared, with the risible Mike Huckabee as Ambassador to Israel.

Most of the worst nominees–Elise Stefanik, Huckabee, Rubio, Mike Waltz–will sail through confirmation. Those that represent the people’s end of the bargain will have a harder time. Robert F Kennedy Jr could be sunk by Republicans beholden to Big Ag. The nomination of Jay Bhattacharya to lead the National Institutes of Health probably has better chances, and I expect the doctor to school his challengers in the Senate in entertaining fashion. This is by far Trump’s best pick and welcome in particular because Trump is willing to abandon somewhat his promotion of Operation Warp Speed as a first-term accomplishment. Bhattacharya will be in a position to select the next head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), Anthony Fauci’s old post from where he was the de facto overlord of the nation’s health bureaucracy despite being ostensibly subordinate the the director of the NIH.

There’s a lot more support for Trump’s worst instincts than for his best where it counts, in the halls of power and the minds of donors. Where there is already a powerful if largely hidden impetus, such as with war for Israel, he will be allowed to succeed, while where the genuinely powerful are opposed or indifferent he will be ferociously opposed or left to succeed or fail on his own merits–such as with the election. If Trump has a mandate from voters it is for economic nationalism, and opposition to that is unfortunately bi-partisan. The worst-case but likeliest scenario is “centrists” uniting to support Trump’s worst Zionist impulses and uniting to oppose his best populist impulses.

This administration will be closer to Israel than any before without meaningful opposition to that aspect. Now the faction most likely to save us from war with Iran might be Benjamin Netanyahu’s political opponents in Israel and our fate may hinge on Bibi’s prospects in his current corruption trial. Should his opponents manage to unseat Netanyahu, perhaps then all bets are off. Whatever opposition to war with Iran in Israel (and I haven’t a clue) is likely counting on and contributing to his conviction.

Donald Trump might still pull back on his own, he might still be trying to give his donors everything they want short of war with Iran, he might still experience a conversion and turn about, but at the moment everything we see suggests a second Trump administration gearing up to send the US military into the breach on behalf of Israel yet again.

One problem is his commitment to Israel looks far more solid than his commitment to us. I find his use of the kitschy anti-Christian satire and pro-sodomy anthem YMCA unfortunate, but maybe Trump has been signaling the truth to us the whole time: you will get screwed, but isn’t this fun? check on in…

*I’d like to re-introduce here the classic verb usage of “queer” as to spoil something’s prospects. Oh happy day that will be when “gay” and “queer” are restored to their traditional meanings and the current definitions are relegated to being listed as “archaic”–Merriam Webster’s online dictionary currently defines the verb form of “queer” as, basically, to make something gay as hell (lot of that going around) with the traditional meaning above perched on the transitional edge of the remainder bin as “old fashioned”.

MAGA is as MAGA Does

Somebody tell me it’s not just that stupid, that Donald Trump, lame duck president, is picking Cuban closet-case and AIPAC favorite Marco Rubio as Secretary of State to reward Hispanics for voting for him, as if Mexican construction workers in LA will be hiring mariachi bands for the grand parties they will throw in celebration. ¡Dios Mío!

Donald Trump is expected to tap U.S. Senator Marco Rubio to be his secretary of state, sources said, putting the Florida-born politician on track to be the first Latino to serve as America’s top diplomat once the Republican president-elect takes office in January.

Of course he’s being selected to satisfy the Israel Lobby and the Widow Adelson while mollifying the Maga base by not being Mike Pompeo or Nikki Haley, but I can just see Trump thinking combining these concerns with a totemic sop to my Hispanics is cutting a brilliant deal.

Trump does pay attention to the base on X though, and this Reuters article is almost certainly the Trump people floating the idea to see how much Secretary of State Rubio will cost in popular support.

While the famously mercurial Trump could always change his mind at the last minute, he appeared to have settled on his pick as of Monday, according to the sources, who requested anonymity to discuss private conversations.

The apparent Rubio selection has generated concern among some Trump allies who see the Florida senator as having a world view and establishment credentials at odds with the more isolationist stance favored by the Republican hard right.

Some cautioned on the social media site X that the choice of Rubio had not been finalized, although it was unclear where their information was coming from.

Caroline Wren, a pro-Trump fundraiser, mocked Rubio, comparing him unfavorably to former ambassador to Germany Richard Grenell, who was also in the running to be secretary of state.

“Why would we have wanted someone totally loyal like Ric Grenell when we can have a Senator who is ‘totally owned by lobbyists’ and a ‘lightweight with the worst voting record in the Senate’?” Wren posted on X, referring to Trump’s own past statements about Rubio.

For the Trump supporters who had higher hopes the cabinet picks will come like unwelcome sunlight creeping in through the blinds after an all night coke bender.

First the Romance, Now the Reality

Now it is only a question of how deep will be our disappointment. Enjoy the losers’ tears before they dry up, but know as monumental as the election was, it’s but a blip against the longer term trend line tracing the successful progress of their long war. Their histrionics are all the more remarkable in light of their still commanding position. Brace for their fury.

This time, as in 2016, Donald Trump’s biggest advantage was his competition. I think Kamala Harris’ campaign adopted “joy” as an early theme to turn to its advantage Harris’ habit of nervous laughter–because her habitual “cackling” appeared to be just that, the nervous laughter of someone out of their depth.

Harris didn’t make her own way to prominence in the Democratic Party. She was picked out of the chorus line and guided along like a starlet in the old Hollywood studio system, which is the model to which the two political parties aspire. Someone in the film industry once said “the audience will know what they want when we show it to them”– the only defensible position for an artist to take. Big donors and political honchos aren’t supposed to be in the business of entertainment and diversion, but they view the American voter the same way; they have no intention of letting you write the script.

It’s easy to forget now after Kamala Harris’ humiliating last four years, but she was considered the strong horse of the Democratic field going into 2020. Despite failing miserably in the primaries the Democratic leadership still thought enough of her to foist her on Joe Biden, who was supposed to play the role of place marker, before going off script declaring his intention to run in 2024.

Harris was not selected for ability, but for pliability. Ability is still a virtuous necessity for doctors and lawyers, accountants and mechanics. But in a presidential candidate exceptional ability, leading as it might to grander ambitions beyond personal advancement, is as dangerous and unreliable as exceptional character, to those for whom the president is the hired help. Harris, like Biden, like all candidates will be going forward should the powerful get their way (and there’s no reason to think they won’t, the glitch that is Donald Trump notwithstanding), was chosen because her lack of loftier ideals precludes the threat of her acquiring loftier ambitions.

Harris’ qualifications were supposed to be entirely theatrical. And she tried, a little too hard: the guffawing and contorted expressions were the affectations of a ham actor on stage. To be fair she was supposed to have had more time to prepare for her big run when Joe Biden sputtered out. She was in over her head in a way none of us could imagine. She did what people tend to do; she resorted to what she knew. Willie Brown’s former mistress played on her feminine wiles, as she saw them, combined with her impersonation of a television girl-boss (“I am speaking, sir!”); beyond that there was nothing.

Substance was out of the question; the Democrats had spent the Biden Harris years wreaking deliberate havoc. Kamala running on her personality was Kamala running away from her record, or lack of one. So the campaign tried to make the candidate’s lack of gravitas work for her. Thus the companion to “joy”, the “brat” theme. She wasn’t lacking in seriousness; no, she was fun-loving, relatable. The definition of brat, the internet tells me, is “confidently rebellious, unapologetically bold, and playfully defiant.” It must have seemed genius to the girls of Team Kamala at the time. But how is this–rebellious, bold, defiant--not an apt description of Trump as politician? If not for the fact the campaign seemed incapable of sizing up the competition, I would have thought they’d decided to out-Trump Donald Trump.

Joy failed them. The laughter was a little too loud to be genuine. All the joy was on the other side. Trump’s often vulgar humor started as a political consultant’s nightmare in 2016 but by 2024 not only had his initial admirers not grown weary of it, more of the fence-sitters and even detractors had been worn down. Because through the increasing madness prescribed by the ruling elite and their obvious disdain for us Trump’s persona, like his outsized confidence, wavered not a bit. Trump was stable, familiar, normal (achieving his opponents’ dreaded “normalization”) as his enemies became increasingly unstable, abnormal and relentless in their ongoing war on the familiar–no one recognizes the country they grew up in.

By 2024 the Democrats and progressive left had finished their unspoken transition from a class-based conspiracy of power–an elite faction conspiring with the economically disadvantaged to disempower the middle class–to its present conspiracy: an elite faction cultivating and conspiring with the psychologically damaged, to disempower us all.

This is what we all see. This is why the Trump revolution succeeded. This is why the election is legitimate cause for celebration. But to think we will see it go away, with the mere election of a president, especially this president, is naive.

Trump enters office a lame duck, with no more elections to run. This only leaves him more susceptible to the designs of the cabal of “advisors” that will ultimately control him. These people, if drawn from elite ranks, will have no interest in the success or failure of his term and no ultimate interest in the fate of the country; they have other ideas and other loyalties. The high profile renegade heroes that joined the campaign–Robert Kennedy Jr, Elon Musk, Tulsi Gabbard–are not going to be in the most crucial posts. It’s notable none of them, with the possible exception of Gabbard, who sold Trump as a peace candidate in apparent ignorance of Trump’s record and statements regarding Israel, dares challenge the capture of US foreign policy by the Jewish State. Even if Musk is somehow allowed to reform wasteful government and RFK to revolutionize public health–very long shots–the status quo order will have hardly deflected from its present course.

They’re already hard at work to maneuver Trump into war with Iran, and leading the effort is the same intelligence apparatus that conspired against him.

An Iranian national and two Americans have been charged with involvement in a murder-for-hire plot to assassinate President-elect Donald Trump, as well as an Iranian dissident, the US Department of Justice has announced.

Farhad Shakeri, Carlisle ‘Pop’ Rivera and Jonathon Loadholt were named in the criminal complaint unveiled on Friday by the Southern District of New York. Rivera was arrested in Brooklyn and Loadholt in Staten Island. Shakeri is “believed to reside” in Iran and remains at large.

“The charges announced today expose Iran’s continued brazen attempts to target US citizens, including President-elect Donald Trump, other government leaders and dissidents who criticize the regime in Tehran,” FBI Director Christopher Wray said in a statement.

And Trump has in fact already committed to hostilities with Iran in his first term, withdrawing from the Iran nuclear deal and drawing first blood in any assassination games.

While the DOJ noted that the defendants are presumed innocent until proven guilty in court, Wray and Attorney General Merrick Garland  have held up the indictment as proof that Iran is “actively targeting nationals of the United States and its allies living in countries around the world for attacks” motivated by vengeance for the 2020 death of IRGC Quds Force commander, General Qassem Soleimani.

Trump ordered Soleimani’s assassination in a drone strike carried out near the Baghdad airport in Iraq.

Primarily Trump’s victory is a victory for Israel, specifically Israel’s hardline Zionists; everything else is secondary and can be countered by the deep state.

Every candidate for foreign policy positions is fiercely pro-Israel and hostile to Iran. There’s virtually no chance of establishing independence from Israel barring a sudden, drastic change in direction:

Brian Hook, a hawkish fixture of the first Donald Trump administration who formerly served under George W. Bush, is reportedly getting the call to start staffing the State Department for a new Trump term. Hook, known as a major Iran hawk who helped lead the “maximum pressure” campaign of sanctions, sabotage, and assassinations that characterized Trump’s approach to Tehran, has been appointed to help oversee the formation of a new foreign policy team, according to reports from Politico and CNN.

Hook served as U.S. Special Representative for Iran and advisor to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo during the last two years of Trump’s presidency, which saw the killing of Iranian general Qassem Soleimani and expansion of crushing sanctions intended to spur regime change in Iran. That approach ultimately failed to collapse the Iranian government, or compel it to reduce its support for its network of armed proxies in the region. Instead, it wound up escalating the hostility between the two countries while Iran ramped up its nuclear enrichment following Trump’s withdrawal from the Obama-era nuclear deal.  

On the day of Trump’s reelection Benjamin Netanyahu fired his defense minister Yoav Gallant, a hard-liner himself but one pushing for genuine negotiations with Hamas over hostages:

While Netanyahu has called for continued military pressure on Hamas, Gallant had taken a more pragmatic approach, saying that military force has created the necessary conditions for at least a temporary diplomatic deal that could bring home hostages held by the militant group.

Celebrants online have posted the I’m assembling a team meme featuring the higher profile and more popular supporters of Trump:

Notably not a one of them is a proponent of our independence from Israel’s foreign policy, and meanwhile Trump is in fact assembling a less glamorous team for the dirty work. Those in line for cabinet posts:

Elise Stefanik, who led the Congressional charge to censor anti-Israel protests on college campuses and boasts of backing “every measure to aid Israel”:

[update, Nov 11: Stefanik has been chosen to be UN ambassador]

Mike Lee, in line for Attorney General (and to wage a crackdown on anti-Israel dissent), whose qualifications the American Jewish Congress celebrates here:

Senator Lee opposed the Iran nuclear deal. He opposed UN Security Council Resolution 2334 that claimed that Israel’s settlements have no legal validity. He has cosponsored a resolution that opposes the discriminatory Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement and the delegitimization of Israel.

In 2018, Senator Lee cosponsored the United States-Israel Security Assistance Authorization Act, a legislation that supported full funding of security assistance to Israel as outlined in the 2016 U.S.-Israel Memorandum of Understanding.

In 2019, he voted for the Strengthening America’s Middle East Security Act which, among other things, strengthens Israel’s security and allows a state or local government to adopt measures to divest its assets from entities that boycott Israel.

The aforementioned Brian Hook, leading the transition team, is a confidante of Jared Kushner, a Bush II regime veteran, led a neocon purge of the State Department’s Policy Planning Staff during the first Trump term, and crafted a grand plan to “reform Islam”:

Founded in 1947, the Policy Planning Staff is the department’s in-house think tank. It is headed by the hawkish former Bush administration official Brian Hook, who was in charge at the time the memo was produced. According to the department’s website, Hook and his team “take a longer term, strategic view of global trends.” The document was finished shortly after Hook had purged career staffers he considered to be insufficiently loyal to Trump or too friendly with Iran. Sahar Nowrouzzadeh, for instance, was pushed out of Hook’s policy department following a right-wing smear campaign that questioned her loyalty to the United States, reporting falsely that she was born in Iran.

The policy shop, shorn of expertise and stocked with ideologues, is now producing material unlike anything it has before, according to a range of former State Department, Pentagon, and NSC officials, advisers, and lawyers consulted by The Intercept. They said that they had never seen the contentious and inflammatory phrase “Islamic Reformation” — a call for a Martin Luther-like figure to bring Islam into modernity that is rooted in tropes that presume Islam to be inherently violent and backward — used in an official U.S. government document before.

Also in line for Attorney General is John Ratcliffe, former Director of National Intelligence. Here he is making his pitch for a role in the next Trump administration in this Real Clear Defense article:

While Israel works to fend off terrorists, the Biden administration is withholding both intelligence and military aid – placing a key ally in jeopardy and putting America’s own national security at risk.

The administration is refusing to share valuable information regarding Hamas with Israeli intelligence until Israel halts its Rafah offensive – a decision that follows close on the heels of the administration’s announcement that it would halt weapon shipments to Israel. Yet these appalling decisions are only the most recent in a long string of poor policy choices…

This misperception led the Biden administration to divert critical assets away from terrorist groups like Hamas – ultimately leading to the failure to anticipate or disrupt the events of Oct. 7. In November, senior administration officials admitted that, following 9/11, U.S. intelligence agencies almost completely stopped spying on Hamas and other violent Palestinian groups, believing that Hamas constituted no direct threat to the U.S.

Last time I checked it doesn’t.

Indeed, Washington deprioritized the Middle East as a whole. After the Biden administration’s takeover, the Central Intelligence Agency decided to reduce the number of civilian intelligence analysts tasked with monitoring the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In the aftermath of Oct. 7, more than a dozen current and former U.S. officials, lawmakers, and congressional aides testified that this deprioritization of the Middle East had left the U.S. vulnerable and unable to anticipate the attacks.

Congressman Mark Green of Tennessee is being considered for the Department of Homeland Security. An aside in his pro-censorship article in The Hill:

Even more sickening are the actions of some American political leaders. Multiple Democrat members of Congress have yet to sign a resolution stating Israel has the right to defend itself. Several members have also introduced a resolution calling for a cease-fire, which is the same thing as calling for Israel to allow Hamas to stay in control of Gaza. Iran is our enemy. Hezbollah is our enemy. Hamas is our enemy. Islamic terrorism is our enemy. Yet these elected officials refuse to admit it.

At this point there isn’t a single person under consideration who might temper the devotion to Israel of the rest.

Beyond foreign policy and the welcome addition of Tom Holman to lead Immigration and Customs Enforcement there is little to cheer, just uncertainty and the likelihood Trump will be maneuvered by his new elite friends like Elon Musk into globalist strategies for monetizing the environment. Whitney Webb on what Trump’s victory means for carbon tax proponents:

Chief among these is Howard Lutnick, the co-chair of Trump’s transition team who has stated that he is tasked with finding the “talent” for the incoming administration. Lutnick is the long-time and current head of Cantor Fitzgerald, which was one of the earliest players in emission trading and has since become a global leader in ESG investing, “sustainable infrastructure” financing and green bonds. For example, Cantor’s sustainable infrastructure fund is expressly committed to “digital transformation, decarbonization and the improvement and modernization of aging infrastructure,” while “a primary focus for the Fund will be to invest in issuers that are helping to address certain United Nations Sustainable Development Goals through their products and services.” In addition, the top constituent of another Cantor infrastructure fund is Invenergy, a renewable energy company that has received a significant amount of subsidies from the Biden’s controversial Inflation Reduction Act and is run by the country’s first “wind billionaire” Michael Polsky.

Transition team co-chair Howard Lutnick is a thorough-going globalist master of the universe type and “sustainability” enthusiast.

Elon Musk is representative of the Trump dilemma. His enthusiasm is genuine, his liberation of Twitter heroic, but so are his connections to the surveillance state, his enthusiasm for carbon taxes and his thorough acquiescence to Zionism and Jewish power.

This is the elite faction behind Trump, grand scourge of the Elite. Their determination to serve Trump is suspect; their determination to serve Israel is not, and it won’t stop them from joining with anti-Trump efforts elsewhere. They might on one hand encourage him into becoming a war president on behalf of Israel, while also helping his political enemies determined to foil populist domestic policy. This is all setting up the second Trump administration to be a complete failure for America and a historic boon for Israel.

The Revolution is in Capable Hands

Seattle antifa plans to riot on election night fizzled after a small group of about 40 was set upon by about 100 police officers, making arrests for blocking the road.

Not helping was a confusing flyer Seattle antifa put out, mis-dating election day as the 3rd, something I missed when I posted on this earlier:

Meanwhile Portland antifa appears to have been a no-show for their planned action downtown. A friend there reports seeing a column of SWAT vehicles speeding down the freeway in the early evening, but there are no reports of anarchist action to be found.

Of course the Northwest’s wokest cities are not out of the woods yet. Seattle antifa may have something planned for tonight, November 6–though they might have messed up the date again on this poster for an “election rally” (on the left):

Riot on Schedule

A New York Times “analysis” of Telegram activity breathlessly warns of the potential for rightwing violence on election day.

More than 4,000 of their posts went further by encouraging members to act by attending local election meetings, joining protest rallies and making financial donations, the analysis found. Posts from other right-wing groups reviewed by The Times urged followers to be prepared for violence. These calls to action extended the right-wing language typically found on other major social media sites into the physical world.

In New Hampshire, one Telegram channel instructed people to question local officials in person about absentee ballot tallies. In Georgia, followers of a local Telegram channel were urged to attend election board meetings to argue for limits to absentee voting. In New Mexico, people were told to monitor voting stations with cameras, file police reports if necessary and be ready to “fight like hell.”

You might find it hard to discern the threatened violence there, but, as the Times points out, we’re talking Telegram here:

Katherine Keneally, a former intelligence analyst with the New York Police Department, said views shared on Telegram should not be dismissed as the musings of a fringe minority but rather seen as a warning about what could happen on Election Day and beyond.

“Telegram is very often central to actually organizing people to engage in offline activity,” said Ms. Keneally, who now works for the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, a research firm that monitors Telegram. She recalled attending a meeting in 2022 of election skeptics in Montana, where participants taught one another how to use Telegram. Among more extreme movements, she said, Telegram is used “very strategically to radicalize and recruit.”

Remember the CEO of Telegram was arrested in France in August for “illicit material” on the site and not enough content moderation, as if that was a crime.

The company’s growth — it now has more than 900 million users — has been driven partly by a commitment to free speech. Telegram’s light oversight of what people say or do on the platform has helped people living under authoritarian governments communicate and organize. But it has also made the app a haven for disinformation, far-right extremism and other harmful content.

That paragraph betrays a remarkable lack of awareness on the part of the Times, which sees nothing authoritarian in the media’s knee-jerk response to shut down any suspicion of election fraud without bothering to investigate claims. Telegram CEO Pavel Durov appears to have relented to authorities after his arrest, making changes to the app that may be the reason the Times and US government are able to monitor it more effectively now–one of the demands made of Telegram was to take on more moderators, and some surmised with good reason this meant spies working for authorities.

Telegram played a small but significant role in the 2020 election as an organizing tool for planners of the Jan. 6 attack. Today, its influence is greater and potentially more ominous, according to The Times’s analysis.

Right-wing media channels post a stream of news, memes and misinformation about perceived voting irregularities, which are then picked up by other groups that use them to argue that the Democrats have begun to steal the election. Mixed in are calls for citizens to show up at the polls and to monitor and report irregularities — or fight if necessary.

An objective observer will find it difficult to judge the veracity of the various charges of fraud leveled in this election year, in no small part because the media refuses to engage them honestly, choosing only to dismiss with a wave of the hand all but those that can be easily disproven. Rash or flaky accusations are welcomed and used to cast doubt on the practice of questioning of the integrity of elections as a whole.

Note how the treatment of election skepticism (from the right, one is still allowed to traffic in the “Russian collusion” hoax) works just like the media’s defense of the Covid regime: media mobilizes to discredit charges immediately without testing their veracity and skepticism itself is demonized for degrading our trust in whatever institution is coming under fire. Damaging the reputation of authority is criminal now, whether it’s charges of Covid disinformation–destroying trust in the medical establishment; reporting on the shenanigans of the intelligence community re Donald Trump–disparaging the heroes of the CIA; and, now, doubts about questionable practices besmirching election officials. Most notable of course is how skepticism of those first two has proven warranted.

My take on the question of election cheating in 2020 and now has always been that it strains credulity to believe the establishment would have spent these last eight years breaking every rule of decency and fair play to be rid of Donald Trump only to slam on the brakes when it comes to election interference. Indeed, their actions everywhere else–the serial hoaxes and cross-institutional collusion since 2016–constitutes what we should call governing interference in the same sense as there is a thing called election interference. This governing interference even can’t help but effect and constitute a level of election interference, by hamstringing and slandering an administration you lessen its chances in the next election and this is just one consequence of your malfeasance. I think those engaged in this factored that in. Making Trump un-electable was a motivation; if they couldn’t get him thrown out of office they would at least wreck his chances at re-election.

Beyond that, if you voted for Trump in 2016 the media, the intelligence community, the Democratic Party, elements of the Republican Party and others all colluded to disenfranchise you over the ensuing four years by digging in their heels and refusing to play fair, and then they colluded to fix the 2020 election. They had already won–because they’re at all the levers of power–by the time Trump’s supporters were reduced to relying on Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell and nobody was–or is now–talking about the massive crime that transpired over four years. To say nothing of the boon that Trump, specifically the panic manufactured around Trump, was for the forces of authoritarianism and anarchy: the increased censorship and warping of the legal system through lawfare, just for starters; and the gaslit, deranged half of the American public ready to accept it and more to–cry tears of laughter, cry tears of pain!–“save our democracy”.

Meanwhile we can be assured antifa will be mobilized on November 5 and must wonder if it’s with some encouragement from the establishment they profess to hate but whose bidding they always seem to be doing–they have been quite silent during the Biden Administration after all. Time to get the band back together.

Seattle’s antifa action is scheduled for Cal Anderson Park downtown on election night.

Cal Anderson Park was a hotspot in during the BLM riots of 2020 (another Trump election year, by coincidence) helping to birth the nearby Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone, site of the wretched Black Lives Matter Garden and scene of what might have been the most gruesome murder ballad to come out of Seattle’s “Summer of Love”.

Portland antifa will be convening at Chapman Square downtown. That’s a small park block in between the city hall and the police station and federal courthouse on the other side. It was occupied by antifa for much of the summer of 2020.

Meanwhile in DC they are boarding up and some are even pretending this is in anticipation of rightwing violence:

Now is the nervous time, now is the fun time.

Lawsuit Establishes “He Who Smelt it, Dealt it” Precedent

Columbia University is paying a student 395,000 dollars to settle a lawsuit claiming he was unfairly suspended for spraying a group of pro-Gaza protesters with a noxious chemical.

Columbia University has reached a $395,000 settlement with a student who was suspended in January after spraying student protesters with a foul-smelling substance at one of several campus demonstrations in support of Palestine.

The Israeli student who received the payout had been suspended until May.

The case was first described as a possible chemical attack involving the use of skunk spray, an agent developed in Israel and used as a crowd-control weapon, most commonly in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. But Columbia has said the spray used was novelty, non-toxic fart spray, bought on Amazon for $26.11, and not a chemical agent.

“Liquid Ass” is available on Amazon, of course.

It’s also used for realistic training in the medical field and military:

Liquid Ass even made its way into military training operations, as Mary Roach describes in her book Grunt. It’s a key ingredient in fake bowels filled with dyed oatmeal, used in a device called a Cut Suit, a creation of a training company called Strategic Operations in San Diego, California which trains some members of the US military. The Cut Suit is a wearable prop that realistically mimics wounds; it starts off looking like healthy skin, and when you cut into it, it looks and smells like a real body would if it were cut open. The suits have been used, for example, by Navy medics practicing attending to wounded soldiers during an ongoing battle.

“Skunk” is the name for the more noxious “malodorant” the IDF developed for use on protesters and is sold abroad for use in crowd control, including in the United States.

Skunk is liable to cause physical harm, such as intense nausea, vomiting and skin rashes, in addition to any injury resulting from the powerful force of the spray. Examinations by police and army medical teams in the past also indicated that the excessive coughing caused by exposure can result in suffocation.

Apparently there’s no market in India for it, because, you guessed it:

A bomb that smells like sewage and was intended to be used on protesters in Kashmir and elsewhere has been found to be a dud. Reason: the “high threshold of Indians to tolerate stench”.

Skunk is deployable in projectiles. In October the IDF deployed some sort of malodorant using tank rounds against Irish UN peacekeepers in Lebanon.

At around 6:40 a.m., peacekeepers at the same position reported the firing of several rounds 100 metres north, which emitted smoke. Despite putting on protective masks, fifteen peacekeepers suffered effects, including skin irritation and gastrointestinal reactions, after the smoke entered the camp. The peacekeepers are receiving treatment.

It was January 19 of this year when the Columbia protesters were stink-bombed.

During a rally on Friday, according to attendees, two individuals sprayed a hazardous chemical that released an odious smell. Dozens of students have reported an array of symptoms, such as burning eyes, nausea, headaches, abdominal and chest pain, and vomiting.

The campus chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine publicized the incident on Saturday morning, identifying the substance as “skunk,” a chemical weapon used by the Israel Defense Forces against Palestinians and one that U.S. police departments have reportedly acquired in the past. SJP also alleged that the assailants have ties to the Israel Defense Forces, a claim that The Intercept could not independently confirm.

CSP students’ allegations will not get a hearing now that the lawsuit is settled.

Columbia eventually identified one of the alleged assailants and suspended him until May of next year. Soon its Task Force on Antisemitism, formed on November 1 2023 and headed by three Jewish professors, took up his cause, writing up a sort of amicus brief for the suspended student, arguing the charges were unfounded and the punishment excessive.

The task force continues its work but isn’t going to tie itself down by actually defining antisemitism.

The task force is not going to parse words on the definition of antisemitism but will take an “experientially oriented approach,” Fuchs said. She added that they would not delve into which of the “25 definitions of antisemitism” the group would subscribe to, because “that’s not the purpose of what we’re doing.” 

They’ll know it when they smell it I guess.

Clown at Large

Nothing good happens after midnight or at the mall food court on Halloween:

One person was killed and two injured in a shooting at the Vancouver Mall food court around 7:30 p.m. Thursday, police said, as shoppers described hearing shots ring out and ran for the doors while others sheltered in place.

Police received an early report that the shooter was seen dressed all in black wearing a clown mask and last seen running toward JCPenney. The shooter was still at-large late Thursday.

Officials are worried the killer clown fled over the river into Portland where he’ll blend right in.