Which Way Do You Swing? - Politics

Most conservative policies seem to help big business and entrepreneurs by extending tax breaks, incentives and reducing red-tape. These policies assist those already managing.  Sometimes by a little, sometimes a lot. It is the politics and policies of capitalism that fuel the age of the billionaires, and the promise that everyone can achieve those heights. 

These same policies tend to leave those not managing untouched, or, on occasion, worse off, usually in real terms across time, making it harder to quantify any direct disadvantage from an individual policy.

These are policies promoted as celebrating success and allowing the 'job-makers' to take advantage of the system, up to and including, rorting that system. Success and financial power seem to make all these indiscretions tolerable.  

The left finds these greedy, grifting, profiteering examples intolerable and they shout about them as if these are the only examples that exist. They are not. These policies help and support some truly deserving business models, across the economic spectrum, to survive and thrive.

The progressive left puts forward policies that reduce the ability of the successful to make higher profits and placing more restrictions and oversight on businesses. This makes the difficult early years of small business and small sole traders even more precarious. The left also seeks a basic minimum standard of living for all, universal health care, they look to environmental issues at the expense of corporate profits and ensure those on the lowest rungs of society can maintain an equitable standard of living.

These policies are designed to raise the greatest number possible out of poverty and ensure that working full time is rewarded with a liveable wage that covers life's basics and provides for a family. This also allows some to choose not to work and live solely off welfare. 

The right finds these greedy, grifting, freeloading examples intolerable and they shout about them as if these are the only examples that exist. They are not. These policies help and support some truly deserving individuals being let down by a system purported to be looking out for everyone.

I've always felt things work best when liberals and conservatives exchange power at around a 2 to 3 ratio. The right builds up the wealth with a strong economy and the left reforms social policies to help those who slip through the net of the conservative economic lift.

The ratio has slipped across the world because the right has outplayed the left at politics. This has happened because the left regard morality in politics as a badge of honour, and the right has long ago recognised that badges are worthless. 

Once morals counted for something in life and in politics, but then came the age of spin where both side's spokespeople focused only on the faults of the other side, and never with themselves. Where no mistake is owned or corrected and doing the right thing, a standard that was once the default, or at least the desired position, is now the exception.

How did we get here? 

It began when those charged with holding leaders responsible, the fourth estate, the news journalists, became confused with being personalities and entertainers. 

When equal representation of both points of view became more important than facts as determined and checked by multiple sources by professionally trained, skilled and schooled journalists whose reputations depended on their accuracy, facts became irrelevant.

When the politically correct ideal of regarding every view as relevant and worth scrutiny on official news broadcasts became a benchmark, this worthy notion was exploited by those looking to hide issues, spin alternative facts and obfuscate truths. You can shoot a man on Fifth Avenue and get away with it provided you do something provocative enough to misdirect people from your crime. Throw in some 'what-about-ism', cloud the facts with suggestions the victim had a gun or a record, and alert the press that many other people shot people on the same day, and your crime will hardly rate a mention. 

When the opinion/editorial/op-ed piece began to be presented alongside news with little or no delineation, news reporting stopped being news and became political propaganda. The ultimate extension of this is the dedicated partisan network that says whatever is needed by the government to convince people it's news. It is believed for no other reason than it looks like a news channel.

The multiplatform social media landscape has allowed every opinion to be a truth as the presenter presents it. All too often the term 'do your own research', a term intended to mitigate legal issues over commentary of stocks and investments has permeated into every opinion put forward as a phrase to legitimise that opinion by alerting you to the existence of any number of 'opinions' online that back up the opinion being put forward. 'Do your own research' now means, go and read equally dubious opinion pieces posted online by others who share my views.

If you see spokes-people introduced from two sides of politics or from two sides of a contentious issue, what is the point of staying to watch? Professional press agents now spruik their well-rehearsed talking points without ever listening to the other side, and those talking points are always extreme examples. For their team, they put forward positive outliers, for the other side, the negative outliers, and each example gets promoted as examples of the norm - which they are definitely not.  

Politics has stopped being an avenue of service to do the greater good and is now an avenue to get what lobbyists want and stop the will of the people from participating. Journalists began this slide into the darkness of opinions based on wants instead of facts, and the internet has sped it up and made us all contribute to the demise of facts.

How many false stories have been reposted on scientific, medical, political and even current events?

   

What happened to common sense and genuinely doing your own research? Question opinions by seeking out multiple sources of facts as published by respected and accredited institutions and experts with current accredited standing. I want to hear other people's opinions, but I want to know they've taken some time and given some effort towards forming them. Reading a headline and reposting something without scrutiny becomes a waste of everyone's time, or worse, another nail in the coffin of our entire democratic system.

Hasan Minhaj in his address at the correspondent's dinner said: "I don't have a solution of how to win back trust, but I know in the age of Trump, you guys (the media) have to be more perfect than ever because you are how the President gets his news - not from advisors, not from experts, not from intelligent agencies - you guys. So that's why you've got to be twice as good, you've got to be on your A-game, you can't make any mistakes, because when one of you messes up - he blames your entire group; and now you know what it feels like to be a minority." 

In the dawning age of conspiracy, where friends and family regularly state alternative facts as truth, and when challenged, remain defiant and tell you to do your own research, clear thinking, factual journalism and finding alternative sources to double-check alternative facts seems to have become the individual's job. The news media has become entertainment. Politicians have become infallible. Special interest groups have become public relations spokes-people, and facts have become subjective, to be massaged, manipulated, and misrepresented as the truth. 

George Orwell saw this future in a misdirected democracy that delivered authoritarianism. His chilling dystopian tale is starting to feel all too real - the only thing George got wrong was the date.

“War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.”

“The best books... are those that tell you what you know already.”

“Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them.”

“It's a beautiful thing, the destruction of words.”

"How can I help but see what is in front of my eyes? Two and two are four."

"Sometimes, two and two are five. Sometimes they are three. Sometimes they are all of them at once."

― George Orwell, 1984

President Trump presents, The Greatest Show On Earth!

Remember The Donald, before he was The President Trump? 

Remember how he held a press conference and all the journalists and networks were waiting for hours, cutting into their programming and holding off shows as they waited with bated breath?

And they waited and waited and waited some more.

Then The Donald arrived and made his big announcement. It was little more than an infomercial promoting Trump products and Trump Hotels. Remember that? I always thought it was Donald J just testing how far he had hooked his suckers.

The angry journalists waved their angry little fists and flapped their angry little gums in the middle of their angry little faces and decried, "He played us! There was no big announcement. He promised us a big announcement, and he didn't deliver!. He used us to gouge a little more of the billion dollars in free media coverage we're giving him! What a complete rogue!"

Then the media went back to giving him their undivided attention and promoting fake news they'd sourced from facebook, twitter or by quoting someone else who'd sourced the idea from facebook or twitter.

It's journalism 21st-century style... where unvetted information is raced to air in a bid to be first and Dulcie from Bachas Marsh has just tweeted, 95% of all foreigners are assassins according to a man wearing a white coat and holding a clipboard. Fascinating, Dulcie.

So jump forward a year and President The Donald is under some heavy scrutiny. First, there were claims he was part of a conspiracy with the Russians. There were claims those pesky Russlanders had infiltrated social media to the extent that they had posted unbelievable crap on facebook and Americans had failed to spot that Hillary wasn't in fact possessed and controlled by Honey-Boo-Boo and had adjusted their vote as a result. Those Russians! How did they ever come up with such an ingenious plan? Zuckerberg - Arghhh! The name of an Eastern European sleeper agent if ever I heard one.

If you submerge yourself in the exabytes of metadata the government is now legally allowed to keep on all of us, you'll find The President, The Donald's head of security was shown to have been discussing things with Russia before the election. Gadzooks! 

What had they been discussing? Fake news? Fake science? Fake reality show drama? We may never know because they removed Mike Flynn as the National Security Advisor. It's time to go - Mike Flynn - and don't answer any questions on your way out unless you get immunity, granted by The Donald's people. Tick, tick, tick - won't be a moment with that immunity - just take a seat.

Then Jeff Sessions, The Trump - The Donald - The President's appointment as Attorney General, suddenly came under even greater scrutiny as the next Babushka doll in the Russian election scandal.

 
That's the moment P.T Barnum - The Donald - The President Trump tweeted that Obama had Wiretapped the Trump offices leading up to the election. It was finally a scandal that could have used the suffix. "Gate," because it was an accusation of spying on your opponent during the lead up to an election. It would have made sense to add "Gate" to the end of it, but the media had finally worn "Gate" out.

NIPPLEGATE

Hardly a word has been heard about the controversy surrounding Jeff Sessions or any implications surrounding his connections with the Russian scandal since that bombshell was tweeted by The Leader in Tweet.

The Donald, The J, The Trump, The Tweeter in Chief, The President created a bigger news story. With the skill of a world-class showman orchestrating a misdirect, he caused all the investigative journalists to run off, following the sign he planted reading, "This way to the egress."

Jeff Sessions was in the clear. This left him as the Attorney General, with his first job being to put in place and oversee a thorough investigation into the Russian influence scandal - and I am predicting, and I know it will shock many, that the verdict he returns will be that he, Jeff Sessions, did not done it.

But the pesky journalists were like a dog with a bone and they just kept digging into the story. Russia would not go away.

Kaboom! A US airstrike took out a Syrian airbase. And not just any Syrian airbase. This was the one that launched O-Zone's Dragonstea Din Tei or Numa Numa on a poor, defenceless, unsuspecting world. 

I'm sorry, I'm just being told that was Moldova, not Syria, but in Trump's world, a world of fake news - it's close enough.

Then the angry Russians waved their angry little fists and flapped their angry little gums in the middle of their angry little faces and decried, "He played us! He should have asked us first! He doesn't know the first thing about bombing ettiquete. Now we don't like him at all."

That's why relations between Russia and The Donald's USA are at an all time low - low - low! But wait! They can go even lower - if they need to.

Trump was quick to agree. Things with Russia are bad. Biggly bad, which is the very worst type of bad and let's all hope they don't become bigglier badder.

Within a month, The Donald's love fest with Putie dived into a hatefest. And coincidently, it was the very same month when the investigations into Putin giving The Donald a reach-around, election wise, was building up steam. 

But now, the bigglier baddest relations between the two ever proves how wrong those suspicions were. THIS WAY TO THE EGRESS PEOPLE!

To summarise, Russian and American relations are at an all time low. Anyone thinking there was a collaboration between Russian oligarchs and extremely wealthy American business interests, to gain a sweetheart deal with billion dollar oil pipelines or other environmentally questionable, but extremely profitable infrastructure, is simply wrong. 

Even though those very profitable projects that stalled or were impeded by global politics, ostensibly blocked through lobbying by the Obama administration and the Democrats, are now мертвый. There is no communication between the two countries at all. If people thought those billion dollar projects were more likely to go through now that Trump and his Droogs are in office - Подумайте еще раз - it's just not going to happen.

So, that's the state of affairs in Trump's American administration. Mike out, Jeff in, look over there, me and Putin aren't friends, and mind your own business or I'm going to call you a name. 

There will be no civility or agreement reached anytime soon between Donald.J.Trumperica and Vlad the Terrible's Rossia. And certainly not complicated contractual business agreements between Russian and American superbusinesses to make lots and lots of money flow. That's just not on the cards - because relations have never been so biggly bad. 

You rogue, Donald.J, you rogue - now, can you point me towards the egress?