Sandy English, wsws.org
[dropcap]T[/dropcap]he HBO series Game of Thrones demonstrated its great popularity once more September 17 when it received a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Drama Series, for what has widely been regarded as its weakest (and seventh) season.
The announcement that George R. R. Martin, the author of A Song of Ice and Fire, the fantasy novel series on which the television show is based, will publish a new book (not directly part of the series) in November may placate some fans of Game of Thrones who were disappointed to discover that it would not have an eighth and final season until 2019.
Even if no new book were released, however, the show is so enormously popular that millions will watch it for the first, second or third time and dozens of blogs and podcasts will continue to discuss and review the seven seasons for the rest of 2018.
Game of Thrones, based on Martin’s five novels, has received 47 Primetime Emmy Awards, including Outstanding Drama Series three times, more than any other primetime scripted television series. It began airing on HBO in April 2011, surpassed the popularity of HBO’s Sopranos, and by its seventh and most recent season in 2017 averaged over 30 million viewers per episode. It runs in over 170 countries and has been illegally downloaded more than any other program.
Both the series and the novels concern the fate of members of noble and royal families during a civil war over several years in a fictional world on a continent called Westeros. Palace intrigue, betrayal, coup and counter-coup, sieges and battles occur there for the most part, but other military and political developments in lands adjacent to Westeros also take place.
What explains the popularity of this show?
As several critics have pointed out, the television series was guaranteed a certain degree of success because George R. R. Martin’s books were already well known by 2011. The first in the A Song of Ice and Fire series, A Game of Thrones, was published in 1996. The second novel, A Clash of Kings (1998), and the third, A Storm of Swords (2000), were already on the New York TimesBest Seller List. Martin’s 2005 A Feast for Crows became the number one bestseller in November of that year.
More than 70 million copies of the books have been sold to date, translated into 47 languages, although much of this is undoubtedly due to the prominence of the HBO series. After the box office success of the Lord of the Rings film trilogy (2001-2003), Martin began receiving inquires for film and television versions of the A Song of Ice and Firebooks.
Peter Dinklage and Emilia Clarke in Game of Thrones
The fact that the well-crafted and complex character of Martin’s work is brought to the screen in HBO’s Game of Thrones undoubtedly accounts for its popularity to some degree. The writing is intelligent as a rule and the acting is also at a high level: sometimes it is excellent as in the case of performances by Peter Dinklage as Tyrion Lannister, the dwarf outcast from the powerful ruling Lannister clan, and Lena Headey, who plays Tyrion’s sister, the scheming queen Cersei Lannister.
Game of Thrones breaks down into roughly three plotlines, all of which have a “historical” or even “epic” semblance: Daenerys Targaryen (Emilia Clarke) must lead wars of conquest until she regains her rightful throne; Westeros’s ruling Lannisters must suppress rebellion and defend the capital of Kings Landing; and a small band of guardians in the far north led by Jon Snow (Kit Harington) must alert the world to and make risky alliances in the face of an existential threat.
There are also supernatural and mystical elements. Daenerys Targaryen has fire-breathing dragons at her command. An invasion by telepathically manipulated undead from the frozen north threatens the more civilized lands to the south. Assassinations may be carried out by evoking evil spirits. A boy merges with animal and tree spirits and becomes clairvoyant. The dead come back to life.
These features, cast within a generally medieval social order, fit into the popular artistic genre known as high fantasy or epic fantasy, pioneered in the late 19th and early 20th century by writers such as William Morris and Lord Dunsany. Its most popular and gifted exponents in the aftermath of World War I were J. R. R. Tolkien and T. H. White. High fantasy has an appeal to many viewers, although there are many people who avoid the genre because of its non-rational and semi-religious elements.
The mass popularity of Game of Thrones must have something to do with how its audience feels about the current world, including perhaps their illusions and misconceptions. Masses of people have the desire to be entertained, but ideas of what is entertaining change in different social circumstances.
There is unquestionably something in the show that viewers feel reflects reality in a way that is not, on the whole, present in many other films or books. There is an “epic” sense to Game of Thrones, a big, rough, disturbing quality. The series features grand panoramas, vistas of large groups of people assembled in armies or cities, the hugeness of a wall of ice separating civilization from disaster.
Life for millions of people at present, particularly those in their twenties and thirties (according to one survey, 72 percent of the show’s viewers are aged 18-30), is insecure. War, official violence, social inequality, the ruthlessness and shamelessness of the rich, these are everyday realities. The future seems dark to many.
Moreover, there is no adequate establishment explanation for many dramatic and shocking developments in recent decades, from hijacked elections to illegal invasions and unexamined terrorist attacks. Great numbers of people in their daily lives feel at sea.
There are few artistic works that are oriented toward the conditions and sentiments of masses of people and give them rational and complex representation. In the past, novels with large casts of characters were able to deal with contemporary problems or those within recent history of their times. One thinks, for example, of those written by Scott, Dickens, Balzac, Stendhal, George Eliot and Tolstoy in the 19th century or Thomas Mann, Theodore Dreiser and John Dos Passos in the 20th.
Game of Thrones, Season 7
Works like these, in fiction, film or television, are missing in the 21st century. In fact, high fantasy is one of the few artistic genres in which great issues are fought out—or appear to be fought out—on a broad geographical and historical canvas. In both the Game of Thrones series and in Martin’s books people accomplish, or tragically fail to accomplish, important—distinctly political—aims.
Events in Game of Thrones are undoubtedly serious. People are tortured, betrayed and murdered in the quest for power and wealth. The show’s writers have managed to create enormous tension, since outcomes and personal fates are not easily predictable in typical Hollywood style. Rebellion and political repression are elements in complex plots that involve scores of characters.
For example, several episodes of the HBO series concern a power-play by a leader of a fanatical religion that resembles a militant order within the medieval Catholic Church, or, perhaps, echoes the religious fanaticism that is prevalent in some areas of the United States or other parts of the world today.
Westeros’ noble families, for all their feuding, face the common external threat of invasion by armies of the revivified dead who are barely contained by an enormous wall of ice and a small garrison of watchers in the far north.
In the first season, two characters discuss the art of ruling a people:
Joffrey Baratheon [the heir apparent to the crown, played by Jack Gleeson]: I’d crush them. Seize Winterfell and install someone loyal to the realm as Warden of the North. Uncle Kevan, maybe.
Cersei Lannister [his mother]: And these 10,000 northern troops, would they fight for you or their lord?
Joffrey: For me. I’m their King.
Cersei: But you’ve just invaded their homeland, asked them to kill their brothers.
Joffrey: I’m not asking.
Cersei: The North cannot be held… not by an outsider. It’s too big and too wild. When the winter comes, the Seven gods together couldn’t save you and your royal army. A good King knows when to save his strength …
Game of Thrones, like Martin’s novels, has the “feel” of history to it. Characters refer to the deeds of their grandparents, to wars and strategic victories or defeats in the past and seem to live in a world, while not of their own choosing, that was created by the activity of their forebears. Martin was influenced by classic and contemporary science fiction and fantasy writers and has himself said that his A Song of Ice and Fire novels are modeled on Maurice Druon’s seven-volume series The Accursed Kings (Les Rois maudits) (1955-77), historical novels about the French monarchy at the outset of the Hundred Years’ War in the 14th century.
Lena Headey and Nikolaj Coster-Waldau in Game of Thrones
The spirit of intrigue, violence and dynastic succession in Druon’s books and to some extent in medieval European history itself, finds reflection in Game of Thrones. Others have compared the events in the series to the War of the Roses (1455-87) in medieval England. But this comparison has its definite limits.
While most of life in the television show and the novels looks and feels like Europe in the high Middle Ages, as a rule, life in rural areas, where presumably most of the population lives, is hardly shown. Most of the drama takes place among members of the nobility and those close to them.
Ordinary people play only a small role in Game of Thrones, and the most tragic characters, the “oppressed” of the series, who are generally the most complex and interesting, come from the nobility but are disadvantaged in one way or another: a dwarf (Tyrion Lannister), a bastard (Jon Snow) or female (Cersei Lannister, Daenerys Targaryen). It is they who undergo tests to their courage and perseverance.
One book on the philosophical conceptions in Martin’s A Game of Thrones has called it a “genuine exploration of human nature in uncertain times.” And certainly, many people have the sense that we live in uncertain times now.
But the times in Game of Thrones are not our uncertain times, or any historically concrete uncertain times—neither the end of the Roman Empire nor the age of peasant rebellions in China—that ever existed.
Even the wildest fantasy has to correspond, in the end, to the way life is for us. The series does not present the “human nature” of specific classes in specific societies. The “feel” of history is not the same thing as the drama of human beings acting within definite historical circumstances. Great drama presents the collision of social forces as it finds particular expression. The element of necessity is missing here.
Overall, the representation of high politics fought out in civil war by heroic (or anti-heroic) personalities has only a limited value. Game of Thrones rubs out the real historical process itself. Semi-sentient dragons which can breathe fire to devastate armies—of both humans and zombies—and break monarchies, remove history not only from the physical laws of nature, but also the social limitations of history. It is a false “freedom.”
Game of Thrones inevitably offers only a static, pretend and bowdlerized “feel” for history. It is not history, but pseudo-history, not epic but pseudo-epic. For all the complexity of character, plot, with mixed or indeterminate outcomes, the oppositions within the series and the novels are relatively shallow: lust, greed and perhaps insanity are the great motivators of human behavior. The conflict between individuals, even when they are cast on large scale with armies, over great distances and for high stakes, are personal and, for the most part, petty.
In other words, this version of history—generally speaking—is not going to help people feel any truly less at sea.
Moreover, one senses that both Martin and the series’ writers feel they must make up for the relative absence of the intrinsically interesting behavior of rich and deeply motivated characters with a good deal of sex and, even more so, porno-sadistic violence. Although Seasons 5 and 6 especially were criticized for their scenes of torture and rape, Martin, in fact, has proved to be more excessive in this respect as he has proceeded in his writing career.
On the other hand, there is little in Westeros and its environs that produces the noble characters who might be prepared to sacrifice themselves for a cause or a greater good. The historical Middle Ages had such people, the English rebel John Ball (about whom William Morris wrote a short novel) associated with the Peasants Revolt of 1381, for instance, or the leader of the German peasant uprising of 1525, Thomas Müntzer.
The immense popularity of Game of Thrones indicates the desire for something more than formulaic and cheery fare. The younger generation has little to turn to in the mass entertainment media except action-adventure films vaunting mind-numbing good vs. evil themes or sentimental romances, or some combination of both.
But viewers accept a little too easily that history is merely a sensationalized game of kings and queens, and that political power leads inevitably to corruption or death. “It’s only entertainment,” people will say. Yes, but entertainment too can be more challenging and enlightening.
The exceptions to the current state of affairs, such as the BBC’s excellent version of Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall and Mike Leigh’s Peterloo, prove the rule.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
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Things to ponder
While our media prostitutes, many Hollywood celebs, and politicians and opinion shapers make so much noise about the still to be demonstrated damage done by the Russkies to our nonexistent democracy, this is what the sanctimonious US government has done overseas just since the close of World War 2. And this is what we know about. Many other misdeeds are yet to be revealed or documented.
Parting shot—a word from the editors
The Best Definition of Donald Trump We Have Found
In his zeal to prove to his antagonists in the War Party that he is as bloodthirsty as their champion, Hillary Clinton, and more manly than Barack Obama, Trump seems to have gone “play-crazy” — acting like an unpredictable maniac in order to terrorize the Russians into forcing some kind of dramatic concessions from their Syrian allies, or risk Armageddon.However, the “play-crazy” gambit can only work when the leader is, in real life, a disciplined and intelligent actor, who knows precisely what actual boundaries must not be crossed. That ain’t Donald Trump — a pitifully shallow and ill-disciplined man, emotionally handicapped by obscene privilege and cognitively crippled by white American chauvinism. By pushing Trump into a corner and demanding that he display his most bellicose self, or be ceaselessly mocked as a “puppet” and minion of Russia, a lesser power, the War Party and its media and clandestine services have created a perfect storm of mayhem that may consume us all.— Glen Ford, Editor in Chief, Black Agenda Report
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HELP ENLIGHTEN YOUR FELLOWS. BE SURE TO PASS THIS ON. SURVIVAL DEPENDS ON IT.
A dispatch from Telesur TV
Lawmakers, activists, and citizens fear PES will use the positions granted to them to hamper efforts to advance women's and LGBT+ rights.
[dropcap]I[/dropcap]ncoming Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has handed the right to appoint the head of legislative chairs for the Culture and Health Commissions to the conservative evangelical Social Encounter Party (PES), which formed part of his winning coalition in July, sparking outrage among socially progressive groups and sectors in the country.
Lawmakers, activists, and citizens fear PES, which garnered little support while in the electoral coalition with Lopez Obrador’s National Renewal Movement (Morena), will use the positions granted to them to hamper efforts in the House of Representatives to advance women's rights and LGBT+ issues.
Groups representing the interest of these communities have branded the move as a betrayal of several electoral promises made by AMLO and members of Morena, and have called for a reversal of the decision.
In a collective statement issued by the Mexican LGBTTTI+ Coalition, more than 100 human rights organizations said PES’s ‘anti-rights and anti-democratic’ ideology shouldn't have any influence over legislation, which is “key for the recognition of women, trans and intersex people’s right to make decisions about their own bodies.”
PES has in the past opposed bills to advance abortion rights and gender equality in Mexico, and the coalition said its ideology “goes against those of a leftist government that aims to advance ... equality" in the country.
Morena officials have said their alliance with PES was strategic since they needed as many votes as possible to secure the presidency and a majority in both legislative chambers. However, Morena's landslide victory on Jul. 1 proved that the alliance was unnecessary and the backlash received was much greater than the help it would have accounted for.
Members of Mexico's artistic community have also expressed concern, fearing that PES's privileged position would be used to promote censorship on artistic work based solely on religious beliefs and values.
Arturo Ripstein, a renowned Mexican filmmaker, said the appointments were akin to “giving a lamb as a gift for the ferocious wolf.”
“There’s nothing else to say. Saint Luis Buñuel, save me!” he said. “This is about an evangelical party that will always have an agenda that goes beyond culture. Culture is obviously liberty, everything that goes against this rule is against liberty.”
The Secular Republic Association, backed by lawmakers from political parties of different ideologies, have also sent a protest note to the Political Coordination Board arguing that PES can’t head these or any legislative commissions since it has lost its registry status as a political party and has failed to comply with the principles separating religious values and the state.
PES only received 2.33% of the national popular vote for the Senate and 2.40% in Chamber of Deputies in the July elections, and as such hold no actual political sway over either chamber.
Things to ponder
While our media prostitutes, many Hollywood celebs, and politicians and opinion shapers make so much noise about the still to be demonstrated damage done by the Russkies to our nonexistent democracy, this is what the sanctimonious US government has done overseas just since the close of World War 2. And this is what we know about. Many other misdeeds are yet to be revealed or documented.
Parting shot—a word from the editors
The Best Definition of Donald Trump We Have Found
In his zeal to prove to his antagonists in the War Party that he is as bloodthirsty as their champion, Hillary Clinton, and more manly than Barack Obama, Trump seems to have gone “play-crazy” — acting like an unpredictable maniac in order to terrorize the Russians into forcing some kind of dramatic concessions from their Syrian allies, or risk Armageddon.However, the “play-crazy” gambit can only work when the leader is, in real life, a disciplined and intelligent actor, who knows precisely what actual boundaries must not be crossed. That ain’t Donald Trump — a pitifully shallow and ill-disciplined man, emotionally handicapped by obscene privilege and cognitively crippled by white American chauvinism. By pushing Trump into a corner and demanding that he display his most bellicose self, or be ceaselessly mocked as a “puppet” and minion of Russia, a lesser power, the War Party and its media and clandestine services have created a perfect storm of mayhem that may consume us all.— Glen Ford, Editor in Chief, Black Agenda Report
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HELP ENLIGHTEN YOUR FELLOWS. BE SURE TO PASS THIS ON. SURVIVAL DEPENDS ON IT.
None of the Democrats, the supposed defenders of women, will even forthrightly denounce [Kavanaugh] for his attacks on abortion rights. They’ve all but dropped the issue.
[dropcap]F[/dropcap]ollowing the press and television news in the US on Wednesday might lead one to believe that a kind of madness has seized hold of the American media, along with sections of the affluent petty-bourgeoisie.
The media generated new geysers of filth in regard to the controversy surrounding the nomination of Judge Brett Kavanaugh, Donald Trump’s candidate for the US Supreme Court. On the same day, the degrading impact of its #MeToo campaign could be seen in the hysterical, semi-fascistic tone of the response to the sentencing of comedian Bill Cosby.
The Senate Judiciary Committee is scheduled to hear Thursday from Christine Blasey Ford, who says Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her when both were high school students. But newer allegations against Kavanaugh bumped up against one another on Wednesday. Before the population had time to digest the claim by Deborah Ramirez (reported by the New Yorker magazine September 23) that Kavanaugh had exposed himself to her at a Yale University party 35 years ago, a third woman came forward with even more sensational charges.
Michael Avenatti, best known as the attorney for porn star Stormy Daniels in her legal case against Trump, tweeted a sworn statement by Julie Swetnick, 55, claiming that Kavanaugh and others, while in high school, spiked the drinks of girls at house parties so that they might more easily “gang-rape” them.
Swetnick went on to allege that she herself became the victim of one of these “gang rapes… where [Kavanaugh’s friend] Mark Judge and Brett Kavanaugh were present.”
Avenatti’s tweet became the occasion, in the bland phrase of the New York Times, for “immediate, blanket coverage across social media and cable news.” The cable news channels did indeed bombard their viewers non-stop with the story—if they weren’t reporting on Cosby’s being sent to jail.
MSNBC correspondent Kate Snow, for instance, read the most graphic portions of Swetnick’s statement. The other cable channels followed suit, along with the Times, the Washington Post and the rest. CNN anchor John King asked correspondent Sara Sidner to “walk us through” the allegations, which she obliged by providing every salacious detail. Afterward, King expressed appreciation for the “live reporting” on “a very sensitive and dramatic issue.”
The Times set the stage for the day’s torrent of media smut in its morning edition, which plastered across its front page two lead articles on the Kavanaugh sexual assault allegations and a third on the Cosby sentencing. The report on Trump’s fascistic and war-mongering rant at the United Nations was relegated to a subordinate spot. The opinion pages featured a lengthy editorial (“Questions Mr. Kavanaugh Needs to Answer”) listing detailed questions for senators to ask about his sexual activities.
The American media lowers and demeans itself further with every new scandal.
It is impossible for us to determine the truth of the claims against Kavanaugh. It is certain, however, that the Democratic Party campaign against Trump’s nominee is a reactionary diversion and an effort to bury the most pressing issues. Kavanaugh is a zealous right-winger and enemy of democratic rights. But no Democrat on the Judiciary Committee will ask him, “What was your role in the attempted coup d’état, known as the Starr investigation, against Bill Clinton?” or “Why did you support torture and illegal detention as part of the Bush administration?”
None of the Democrats, the supposed defenders of women, will even forthrightly denounce him for his attacks on abortion rights. They’ve all but dropped the issue.
Speaking on CNN, the Times’ Michael Shear inadvertently alluded to the anti-democratic character of the campaign against Kavanaugh: “One of the dynamics that we’ve seen throughout this entire #MeToo movement is that accusations that start out as a single, a solitary accusation against… a man in power, often don’t pick up the kind of steam that ultimately forces action until there’s a second allegation, and a third allegation, and beyond. And that’s what creates often the kind of pressure—overwhelming pressure that forces some action.”
Five, ten or twenty accusations do not amount to proof. Kavanaugh may have been guilty of sexual misconduct, but Shear and the rest apparently need to be reminded that every witch-hunt in history has also operated on the principle of “numbers.”
The repressive, right-wing character of the middle-class outrage over sexual misconduct, whipped up by the #MeToo campaign, is on view in the frothing reaction to Cosby’s sentencing. The comedian was convicted of sexually assaulting a Temple University employee at his home in 2004 while she was under the influence of a sedative.
The comments on the outcome of the Cosby case in the Times from readers of its article “Bill Cosby, Once a Model of Fatherhood, Is Sentenced to Prison,” are overwhelmingly vengeful and vindictive:
“I’d rather my taxes don’t go toward paying for his 3-10 year confinement. Just put him in with the general population and don’t have the guards intervene to protect him. He would be dead within minutes, but at least his last moments on earth would be filled with terror.”
“He is a beast no matter his physical condition.”
“We can only hope he dies in jail. Such a shame. Good riddance.”
“I really don’t care that he is old and has lost his sight. He should have been in prison decades ago. Let him serve his time in the dark in a cold cell.”
“Only 10 years? He deserved 100!”
She was attacked at the Columbia (DC) country club, where she used to hang out. Wie traurig!
[dropcap]N[/dropcap]either the Times nor the majority of its middle-class readership has ever expressed this degree of outrage about the past quarter-century of bloody, neo-colonial wars and occupations pursued by American imperialism, which has led to more than one million deaths and the displacement of tens of millions more. The destruction of societies in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, Yemen and beyond does not keep this social element awake at night. Drone strikes, “kill lists,” NSA spying, the persecution of Edward Snowden, Chelsea Manning and Julian Assange—none of this merits more than hand-wringing or the occasional tsk-tsk, if not outright assent.
Of no concern either is the industrial slaughterhouse in America: the 5,190 workers (90 percent of them male) who died on the job in 2016, and the 3.7 million workers across all industries who had work-related injuries and illnesses.
The hysteria over the Cosby case and the Kavanaugh nomination has a logic, despite its unhinged character.
On the part of the Democratic Party and the Times, the incitement of a frenzy over sexual abuse is a conscious political operation.
For the American ruling elite, it is a pressing matter to “change the subject” from economic inequality; to weaken, dissipate and divide popular anger toward the wealthy and capitalist rule by pointing to other guilty parties—men or white people. The aim is to reduce and blunt class hatred and feeling, divide along gender lines, prevent as far as possible and for as long as possible independent political and social action by the working class, slow down and ideologically cripple such a movement, and build up a reactionary constituency within the upper-middle class.
This was the response of the Clinton campaign in 2016 to the mass support for Bernie Sanders: the manipulation of the case of Stanford student Brock Turner and the focus on Trump’s alleged sexual carryings-on.
The current furor is a repetition along even more reactionary lines. It is a reaction to the growth of popular hostility to Trump and anti-capitalist sentiment generally, to the movement of masses of the population to the left and to the increase in strike activity. The sex hysteria is meant to poison the atmosphere, pollute political consciousness, stop people in their tracks, numb and confuse them. It has the effect of completely discrediting the entire political system.
The Times and the Democrats are appealing to a well-to-do social layer that has already moved far to the right. These elements oppose Trump on a right-wing, anti-democratic basis, including the #MeToo sexual witch hunt’s explicit renunciation of due process and the presumption of innocence. All of this is entirely compatible with war, dictatorship and savage attacks on the mass of working people.
—David Walsh
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
David Walsh is wsws.org's senior arts and cultural critic.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
ALL CAPTIONS AND PULL QUOTES BY THE EDITORS NOT THE AUTHORS
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Things to ponder
While our media prostitutes, many Hollywood celebs, and politicians and opinion shapers make so much noise about the still to be demonstrated damage done by the Russkies to our nonexistent democracy, this is what the sanctimonious US government has done overseas just since the close of World War 2. And this is what we know about. Many other misdeeds are yet to be revealed or documented.
Parting shot—a word from the editors
The Best Definition of Donald Trump We Have Found
In his zeal to prove to his antagonists in the War Party that he is as bloodthirsty as their champion, Hillary Clinton, and more manly than Barack Obama, Trump seems to have gone “play-crazy” — acting like an unpredictable maniac in order to terrorize the Russians into forcing some kind of dramatic concessions from their Syrian allies, or risk Armageddon.However, the “play-crazy” gambit can only work when the leader is, in real life, a disciplined and intelligent actor, who knows precisely what actual boundaries must not be crossed. That ain’t Donald Trump — a pitifully shallow and ill-disciplined man, emotionally handicapped by obscene privilege and cognitively crippled by white American chauvinism. By pushing Trump into a corner and demanding that he display his most bellicose self, or be ceaselessly mocked as a “puppet” and minion of Russia, a lesser power, the War Party and its media and clandestine services have created a perfect storm of mayhem that may consume us all.— Glen Ford, Editor in Chief, Black Agenda Report
HELP ENLIGHTEN YOUR FELLOWS. BE SURE TO PASS THIS ON. SURVIVAL DEPENDS ON IT.
“A cabal of anti-Trump fanatics cooked up the Russia collusion story, and don't-rock-the-boat bureaucrats went along with it, so we now have a behemoth investigative monster chasing unicorns.”
—Ann Coulter
Coulter: Who would have thought that this woman would one day be talking more sense than legions of unhinged liberals?
When an economic Cro-Magnon can make what passes for a left in America look like political Neanderthals, you know we’ve got big problems. The rush to passionately embrace the “Russiagate” story is only one, though a big one, of the moves of what was once called a liberal progressive segment of the american people so far to the right that mad dog conservatives are fighting to maintain their position as least logical pretenders to sanity. What is going on here?
A system so dangerously troubled that its dominating minority is losing control fast enough to warrant radical message changing to its subjects thereby causing irrationality to rule more blatantly than ever before.
A generation ago conservative anti-Russian-communist fanatics made some liberal types smirk at their backward and narrow-minded political stance but that has now been adopted by progressive anti-Russian-capitalist fanatics swept up in the farce called Russiagate. This dementia-based view finds an American oligarchy of billionaires ruling a minority of the electorate into voting for the capitalist party with two slightly differing factions and calling that “our democracy”.
Decent people have always known that poverty is an aspect of reality that should be changed but market forces, god and whatever other supernatural powers could be blamed made it impossible so the only thing to do was to be kind to the poor, maybe pray for them and send an occasional check to charity and all would be as well as possible. But the appalling and growing inequality rampant in a capitalist dominated market system has made poverty so frighteningly obvious among a former middle class sinking dangerously close to that status itself that the information flow must reflect excuses that explain away the social conditions.
Sun spots were once used as a potential rationale to explain the economic forces of a stock market and as such were no more or less logical than the religious-scientific belief in the buying and selling that relies on investments made by a tiny segment of a population, all of which would ultimately create the best possible world for almost everyone. Alleged primitive people who danced around a fire to bring rain or wore animal bones to ward off illness were more in touch with the universe and the powers of nature than many civilized types sporting degrees in quantifiable spectroscopic economic scat gathering who pose and are accepted as experts in market analysis. Living in a time which has seen the inequality gap between humans grow wider than ever in fairly reliable history while trillions of dollars of wealth are spent on warfare and hundreds of billions on pet care is likely to provoke more thought than usual about the alleged wisdom of such a system. Thus, reality tv, american politics, marvel comics and other fantasy productions to keep the remaining solvent sector occupied with the status of special identity groups and kept divided from one another enough to protect the wealthiest from any chance that unified democratic action might threaten their dominating role.
A generation ago conservative anti-Russian-communist fanatics made some liberal types smirk at their backward and narrow-minded political stance but that has now been adopted by progressive anti-Russian-capitalist fanatics swept up in the farce called Russiagate. This dementia-based view finds an American oligarchy of billionaires ruling a minority of the electorate into voting for the capitalist party with two slightly differing factions and calling that “our democracy”. At beating our minds into such mush it now claims that Putin and Russia are somehow responsible for the electoral college and alienated just enough Americans in a disintegrating system to be swept up in fervor for things facebooked next to photos of our dogs, cats and lunch that allegedly “meddled” in our sacred electoral process. A handful of bumbling Russian financial hustlers picked up dumb items from anti-social American media and furthered their entry into semi-empty American heads. OMG! To think that any foreign power in our wonderful globalized economy would have an interest in another nation’s political economic life is so far fetched it makes American meddling in foreign politics seem, uh, fictional? The Russian wino who led that nation into near disaster was a creature of American foreign policy and the Putin regime has led that nation from capitalist total disaster to only regular capitalist disaster, which is far more than can be said about the present American gang and its recent predecessors.
It’s as though the sinking Titanic crew and passengers were forced into concentrating on who the captain was and how many gay Latinos, Jewish transsexuals, white supremacists or black female impersonators were working in the kitchen while the water approached their lungs and all lifeboats had already left. We may not have reached that moment yet but at the rate things are moving and the near complete vanishing of a real American anti-capitalist left, it could be here sooner than anyone might wish. Opposition to Trump is important but really no more so than opposition to any CEO of a major corporation could be, but the business is the problem and not its chief clerk, bookkeeper or toilet cleaner, no matter how personally pinheaded, egomaniacal or TV famous. And Trump is opposed by the ruling power oligarchs of America and was never supposed to be able to gain his position as powerful figurehead with less power than the figures who own him. But as long as this “new left” takes on the work of the “old right”, the conditions of capitalist America will get worse and bring on material tragedies much bigger than a single oaf, or a single oafish identity group, might be able to fathom. Stop Trump’s worst possibilities, of course, but the worst possibilities of murderous, anti-human and perversely anti-social capitalism are far bigger problems for humanity and must be dealt with by a movement that goes far beyond celebrity leadership personalities and deals with political economic substance by creating radical systemic change. At this sad point, what passes for an American left is a major part of the problem and hardly anywhere near offering a solution.
email: fpscott@gmail.com
email: fpscott@gmail.com.
About the Author
Frank Scott is founding editor of legalienate.blogspot.com. He writes political commentary and satire. He lives in Richmond, California. 
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Parting shot—a word from the editors
The Best Definition of Donald Trump We Have Found
In his zeal to prove to his antagonists in the War Party that he is as bloodthirsty as their champion, Hillary Clinton, and more manly than Barack Obama, Trump seems to have gone “play-crazy” -- acting like an unpredictable maniac in order to terrorize the Russians into forcing some kind of dramatic concessions from their Syrian allies, or risk Armageddon.However, the “play-crazy” gambit can only work when the leader is, in real life, a disciplined and intelligent actor, who knows precisely what actual boundaries must not be crossed. That ain’t Donald Trump -- a pitifully shallow and ill-disciplined man, emotionally handicapped by obscene privilege and cognitively crippled by white American chauvinism. By pushing Trump into a corner and demanding that he display his most bellicose self, or be ceaselessly mocked as a “puppet” and minion of Russia, a lesser power, the War Party and its media and clandestine services have created a perfect storm of mayhem that may consume us all.— Glen Ford, Editor in Chief, Black Agenda Report
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