It’s a Cult

~ Clarissa

I don’t even know what to say to this level of complete delusion. It’s sad and scary to see people anaesthetize themselves with these ridiculous slogans.

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Published by Clarissa

21 thoughts on “It’s a Cult”

  1. Geez.

    I research this every bloody day, trawling the real estate listings for a house we might be able to afford.

    I bet he makes over $100k shilling for the establishment.

    And the fed just dropped interest rates again, so zero hope of prices going down for a while. They were just starting to crest, too.

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  2. For the record:

    Inflation is higher than ever, they’re just lying about it now. The price of everything that really matters is going up faster than wages: housing, food, clothing, education, professional credentials, transport… up up up. (but hey, squeak the weasels: smartphones are cheaper than ever!)

    Unemployment numbers are continually being goosed to cover for the increasing number of people who have left the workforce for economic reaons: can’t find a job that will actually support them, so why bother working? Left taxable employment for the gray market, because self-employment taxes made the business insolvent. Got on disability.

    The stock market is a big virtual casino. Why the eff should anybody care? Let’s rephrase that: “More horses than ever are winning at the downs, so the economy must be great!”

    Crime *reporting* and successful criminal prosecution have plummeted.

    Border crossings… frack where do you even start on that one? The best way to rephrase that seems to be: Internet media silo-ing is more wildly successful than ever before.

    More Americans are forgoing regular doctor and dentist appointments than ever before, due to increasing cost and conflict with insurance over payment, as well as increasing distrust of mainstream medicine. Immunization for common childhood diseases is reaching historic lows in many regions of the US. The CDC is either experiencing an amazing data backlog, or they are withholding information on the last two years of national cancer, diabetes, and kidney disease data. The smaller datasets I’ve seen on it are alarming.

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    1. In what concerns crime, as a result of depolicing many crimes no longer get charged. It’s been discussed ad nauseam but if people are motivated not to notice, they won’t.

      Border crossings is a ridiculous term because what gets counted as an illegal crossing and what actually happens with migration numbers are very different things. One has got to be either a congenital idiot or an inveterate liar to suggest that the Biden-Harris administration didn’t throw the doors wide open. There is, for instance, the CHNV parole program under which the Biden-Harris administration flew over half a million migrants into the US and legalized them on the spot. They aren’t considered illegal crossings, so they aren’t part of those numbers. This is only one of such programs. The total stands, I believe, at something around 8 million. These 8 million that came in just under the Biden-Harris administration are in addition to the illegal crossings, whether through ports of entry or not. 8 million people, all paroled on the spot with residence and work permits and shuttled to small towns in Red America. Their visas will run out at some point but who will have the resources to look for them and deport them at that time? Harris promises to cut ICE funding even more, so in practice this means all these people will be staying. And how many more million will Harris bring if elected?

      This is one of the many, many ways in which the border crossing numbers are fudged and we all get screwed.

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  3. It’s way too embellished, but he has some point. The economy is not too bad now. The two more relevant economic criteria for incumbency reelection are in favor of Harris:

    1. No recession this year.
    2. Per capita GDP growth was better in the Biden administration than the mean GDP in the previous 2 terms (Obama, Trump).

    In fact, the main problem for the Democrats is more about military success/failure: right now, they suck ass in Ukraine and Gaza. What the hell they are doing there????

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    2. What kind of incomes are people pulling in that they don’t notice the raging inflation? I mean, I’m very happy for them but how do they manage to get these incomes and what are we doing wrong that we can’t remotely catch up?

      We have never driven new cars. We travel, yes, but it’s all covered with points. I don’t understand how one can be middle-class or even upper middle-class and not notice the inflation.

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    3. Agreed. All things considered things are a lot better than some people predicted. Not long ago people were predicting a recession and a “hard landing.” But that has not happened: the economy is chugging along, inflation is still high but stopped increasing, gas prices are low, unemployment is manageable, etc.

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      1. Unemployment numbers are fake, and completely fail to account for the growing pool of working-age, able-bodied people who have simply dropped out of the workforce and are no longer searching for employment.

        Gas prices have been manipulated repeatedly by tapping the SR.

        How are you figuring inflation? The CPI is a flagrant lie: everything that matters is still going up, but they are hiding it by saying: Oh, toys, electronics, and luxury items that you can’t afford anyway, are now cheaper! Yay! We’ve defeated inflation! Meanwhile, our rent went up. And I’m supposed to think we’re doing OK because if I wanted to, I could buy a smartphone for less.

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  4. It’s way too embellished, but he has some point. The economy is not too bad now. The two most relevant economic criteria for incumbency reelection are in favor of Harris:

    1. No recession this year.
    2. Per capita GDP growth was better in the Biden administration than the mean GDP in the previous 2 terms (Obama, Trump).

    In fact, the main problem for the Democrats is more about military success/failure: right now, they suck ass in Ukraine and Gaza. What the hell they are doing there????

    Source: Lichtman’s 13 Keys.

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    1. Per Capita GDP growth is a meaningless number of the “growth” is all going to the top 1%. Cancer is also a growth.

      “No recession this year”

      Do you even buy your own groceries, or do you have domestic staff who do that for you?

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      1. The really funny thing is that everybody on the left always knew that GDP growth was not a good metric for anything. It was repeated endlessly (and correctly) that you could have GDP growth while the population was getting impoverished. We knew this, we talked about this. What happened to us? How did we get trapped into repeating these neoliberal mantras in exchange for feeling like fighters against non-existent fascism? It’s such a rapid and dramatic transformation that I’d never think it was possible.

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        1. Didn’t the left used to talk about the wealth gap? How terrible it was that the gap between the top 1% and the bottom 80% (90?) just kept growing?

          WTF happened? Amnesia? Somebody walloped them all over the head with a bat and they forgot? And now “GDP” is the same as “a rising tide lifts all boats” and somehow magically means that everybody’s doing better, even though all the growth went into the parasite sectors and benefitted only the wealthiest of the super-rich?

          One yearns for the day when democrats at least pretended to be the party of the common workingman.

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        2. Hmmm, not my first rodeo, the Fed dropping the interest 0.5 is very inflationary. They are probably scared of growing recessionary pressure impacting the election, but we can now worry about !@@###@@ stagflation.

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