"Big Buttigieg Bloviations: Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix"
by Caitlin Johnstone, caitlinjohnstone.com (February 9, 2020)
https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2020/02/09/big-buttigieg-bloviations-notes-from-the-edge-of-the-narrative-matrix/

[illustrative graphic of Pete Buttigieg deleted but quoted caption reads]:

Prediction: if Sanders somehow manages to win the primary, a majority of the centrist pundits screaming “vote blue no matter who” at Bernie supporters right now will help amplify smear campaigns against him and undermine his campaign against Trump.

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The UK media’s shrieking, deceitful smear campaign against Corbyn last year far exceeds anything we’ve seen against Sanders so far in terms of intensity and egregiousness. I point this out to highlight the fact that there’s still plenty of room for it to get a whole lot worse.

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Bernie’s most important job is being a very reasonable thing that the people want and the establishment refuses to let them have. Force them to kill his run openly and you can wake more people up to the reality that they’re not living in the kind of nation they thought they were.

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Fun fact: Amy Klobuchar’s support base consists of nothing but TV news pundits and mainstream op-ed writers.

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Fun fact: the most dangerous synthetic material ever invented in a laboratory for public consumption is Pete Buttigieg.

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Most politicians are experts at the art of spouting eloquent-sounding bloviations that never actually say anything. Pete Buttigieg is like the Mozart of that art.

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Buttigieg has almost no political history and still has to deal with significant scandals from his tiny mayoral stint. Yet he’s still polling well. Very interesting.

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Nobody’s shocked that the Democratic establishment is rigging the election, but some are shocked that they’re being so brazen about it. Don’t be. Remember, there are no consequences for these people: they know they’ll never lose their jobs, and they’re fine with Trump winning.

If you’re suffering under the status quo, you’re much more likely to care about changing it. If you’re benefiting from the status quo, you’re more likely to care about protecting it and making sure you never become one of those poor suckers who are being crushed to death by it. Establishment lackeys benefit from it.

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One under-appreciated establishment-friendly perk of the Iowa caucus rigging is that the scandal completely eclipsed the big story of the day: the spectacular face-plant of the anointed king Joe Biden. If not for the scandal, that’s all anyone would be talking about right now.

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At some point the establishment narrative managers are going to realize that criticizing “Bernie bros” for being angry isn’t an effective strategy, because the answer coming back is only ever going to be “Oh you have no fucking idea.”

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By July establishment Democrats are going to be literally urinating on progressives and telling them they’re helping Trump if they react in any way.

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Any political issue which doesn’t directly threaten the interests of oligarchs and the military-industrial complex is incapable of delivering meaningful political change; it will be hijacked and used as a carrot or a stick by the two-headed one-party system to distract from anything that threatens existing power structures.

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Anyone who claims the left is starting a “class war” is claiming that the billionaire class has not already been waging war on normal people on a multitude of fronts for many years. They’re saying that the exploitation, oppression, manipulation, corruption and poverty is all in your imagination.

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There is a large and influential political faction which has spent the last three years subtly indoctrinating the American public into assuming that all of America’s problems will go away once Trump is out of office. These people are doing far, far more harm than good.

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All the major power players are perfectly fine with Trump getting reelected; he’s been advancing all their key toxic agendas. Democratic Party leaders are fine with it too; they’ll all keep their jobs, wealth and influence regardless of what happens in November, and they know it.

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Trump supporters who can’t see that their guy is as much a part of the establishment machine as Pelosi are just as dumb as the pussyhatted #Resistance liberals YASS-QUEENing about Nancy ripping some paper. Just because the Dems look extra dumb right now doesn’t mean you’re smart.

You’ve been had. You were duped by narrative and empty words into supporting a garden variety Republican president. Your anti-establishment sentiments were successfully corralled by propaganda into a standard GOP ideology with some edgy window dressing.

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The CIA website has a kids section with games where children can “solve puzzles, crack codes, and discover clues like a real CIA officer”.

This is like ISIS starting an ice cream truck business.

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I said back in September that I won’t be authoring any essays about the stupid impeachment side-show because it’s boring and irrelevant, and I never did the entire time, even on days when it was the only thing in the news. I am awesome.

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Everyone with a brain knew Russiagate and Ukrainegate would fizzle, including leading Democrats. They only pushed them to distract from their own failures and scandals in 2016, and to avoid making any meaningful changes to their party or its policies. Trump supporters who claim it was a major Deep State coup attempt are premising that belief on the idea that the Deep State was capable of orchestrating a massive domestic regime change operation but was incapable of counting Senate seats. There was never any real establishment threat to Trump, because Trump is fully aligned with the establishment.

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When it comes to Julian Assange, if you zoom out from the noise of propaganda, the question that is very clearly being asked here is this: Should publishers and journalists be jailed for exposing war crimes? Our answer to that question will shape our world for decades to come.

This is the actual thing we’re pushing against. Every partisan angle that people come up with is just trying to avoid tackling the central question that Assange’s case hinges on. Try to keep the debate focused on this one question. Keep hammering it home. Liberals will tell you it’s about Russia Russia Putin Putin, Trump supporters will babble some gibberish about it having something to do with fighting the Deep State, but the real issue is and always has been about whether we should punish journalists and publishers for exposing war crimes.

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Superhero comic writers often envisioned variations on an evil nerd inventing some powerful technology and trying to use it to take over the world. Their work turns out to have been prophetic, except the technology is more boring, and there are no superheroes to stop them.

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As far as the empire is concerned Palestinians have no more rights than whales dying from Navy sonar tests or wildlife in a prime military base location. Israel is a nuclear-armed imperial military outpost, and Palestinians, as far as the empire is concerned, are just in the way.

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A nation which requires endless violence to maintain is not a real nation, anymore than a house which requires nonstop, round-the-clock construction work is a real house. If your house needed 24/7/365 construction work to prevent it from collapsing, you’d either move or come up with a radically different design plan.

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Those pushing the continuation of wars, military expansionism, oligarchic corruption, exploitative neoliberalism, police militarization and Orwellian surveillance are the ones to oppose. Those pushing the opposite way are the ones to support. This perspective should be common sense and obvious to everyone, but it’s been twisted by propaganda into a “fringe” opinion. This is the primary obstacle to sanity right now.