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jfz9580m

(16,840 posts)
Fri Mar 6, 2026, 09:29 AM 16 hrs ago

Chris Ketcham: Clowns to the Left of Me, Fascists to the Right

If I had a brother, he would no doubt be incredibly annoying not awesome like Ol’ jfz9580m (a satiric non-homage to Ol’ Orlick from Great Expectations).

But, if I could have had a brother I actually respected it would be Chris Ketcham. Extra points for slamming the sleazy Jacobin, where writers like Ben Wray write brainless opeds referring to women’s rights as “popular” (that is encouraging..it is one of those minor conveniences I like..women’s rights) and quotes mindnumbingly brainless Indian economists still supporting this cancerous model of pointless, nuisance growth that exploits desperation, deregulation, human overpopulation and drives a race-to-the-bottom via global migration, straining the limits to growth everywhere (including on my own damn street here in India).

To no one is it more cruel than the poorest immigrants: the 70,000 immigrants languishing in hells, the blind Rohingya refugee..But no discussion of a root cause separate from the usual ICE versus DEI wars, which leave Mark Cuban, Vinod Khosla, Reid Hoffman and Elon Musk out of the equation survives on social media. In this environment Ammon Bundy is seen as pro-immigrant. Superficial, ahistorical wrt any discourse more than a week old..

A nauseating war-monger called Hagar Chemali whose husband works in private equity is considered on the left in this vile environment.

Preach it brother:

https://www.counterpunch.org/2024/03/08/clowns-to-the-left-of-me-fascists-to-the-right/

What’s a thinking person to do in this foul political landscape? On the Right, there’s the clear and present danger of the Amerikanischer Trumpenvolk, a horde of monied burghers, resentful professionals, Christian fundamentalists, conspiracy peddlers, racists, gun nuts, and trigger-fingering militias, all wishing to see their strongman line the hated liberals up against a wall.

On the Left, to oppose this threat, there’s a clown car. Behold the rickety wheels, the doors falling off, the tailpipe belching smoke, and the disgorged passengers: the worthless “social justice” Left.

Remember that the “Left,” as it was once understood, no longer exists, there being no actual movement in this country of, by, and for the working and lower classes, no movement staunchly opposed to blood-sucking rentiers, industry oligarchs, and idle rich parasites, broadly the upper classes. There is no Left in this country that would have those folks hung, beheaded, or flown to an airless planet (they can have Mars).

This lipstick on the Dimon pig satisfies the rule on the Left that language also trumps class. The banksters can keep on preying on us so long as they follow the proper speech codes. Dimon laughs all the way to the bank as the puritanical children sit goggle-eyed and distracted by nonsense purity tests.
The world this brain-dead Left hopes to bring about is not one in which fundamental power relations are moved an iota in the direction of tangible justice (which is economic and also ecological). The world they are seeking is one in which a black-hispanic trans lesbian (take your pick of aggrieved identities – it doesn’t matter) will gain enough power within the confines of the vicious system, so that, for example, she/he/they/it can order the delivery of bombs to wedding parties in Yemen. After all, we want an empire that allows everyone, no matter creed, color, or gender, the possibility of committing state-sanctioned mass murder. In fact, the mass murder will be better done if committed by historically disadvantaged groups. DEI in the Pentagon!

[

A military vet William Astore made the same point:

https://www.salon.com/2023/10/15/beyond-the-rights-woke-slurs-what-would-a-progressive-us-military-really-look-like_partner/

]

An enlightened Left would center on two matters: class and the protection of the biosphere. The obvious intersectionality of the two: growthist capitalism, driven by the rich, means the strangling of the biosphere as capital transforms the living world into inert exchange value, leaving always less of nature alive.
Where you stand on class and ecology — on class war from above that amounts to ecocide — should determine your allies. The upper classes who are Republican or Democrat, right or left, they are Upton Sinclair’s wings of the same bird of prey, and they need to be set afire tout de suite.
I’d suggest that we turn our flamethrowers on the socialist technocrat Left, too (as distinct from the woke left). These simpletons — see any issue of Jacobin for their exemplars — envision the permanent growth of the megatechnic human enterprise and care not that it comes at continuing ruinous cost to the natural world. The technocrat Left, divorced from biophysical reality and lacking any respect for limits to growth on a tiny planet, seeks a super-populated, hyper-industrialized, high-tech, Star-Trek-redistributionist utopia. Virulently anti-environment, anti-ecology, anti-green, abased worshippers of the Megamachine — making them little different from their putative enemies, the machine-loving capitalists — these red Lefties are as lost as the woke Lefties.

In the meantime, the Trumpenvolk remain unbowed — malevolent, ambitious, engaged, organized — and, if the polls are an indication, their now openly fascist leader could take the presidency again this November. The woke mob howls at the injustice of it all, full of sound and fury that signifies nothing, builds nothing, accomplishes nothing. The rest of us have no idea where to find allies worth having.


Chris is awesome.
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Chris Ketcham: Clowns to the Left of Me, Fascists to the Right (Original Post) jfz9580m 16 hrs ago OP
Here I am OKIsItJustMe 15 hrs ago #1
Too many damn people jfz9580m 15 hrs ago #2
The role of Russia in our country's increasing polarization is underappreciated OKIsItJustMe 13 hrs ago #3

jfz9580m

(16,840 posts)
2. Too many damn people
Fri Mar 6, 2026, 11:11 AM
15 hrs ago

I was sardonically observing more candidates for the Darwin Awards continuing to disgrace my street pushing the limits. As I have enough reason after 14 years to press charges in any realistic sense, at this point I view further encroachment and failure to get what is going on here as falling for entrapment, whether you are a corrupt public official, corrupt data scientist/“researcher” etc etc or just a random little misogynistic creep.

Dogville already bared its teeth far too often encouraged by exploitative trash like that Gita Gambhir style race-baiting and my lefty/pragmatic pushback is just starting and it won’t be pretty. I have no use for the Unabomber.
Sane law enforcement over corrupt pseudo elites and mobs I can work with.

“Open Borders”, “Defund the Police” and China/Russia/ etc humping are the worst ideas/strategies of the left.

I am anti-stupidity, sleaziness, serious logical inconsistencies and heartlessness, left or right.
The roots of the left to me are compassion not moralizing, bullying and celebrity culture.

For instance I support Zelensky and Ukraine, but not a sleazy spook propagandist like Malcolm Nance. Hagar Chemali is a war-monger not left.

All sided sleaziness and stupidity. I rarely pay attention to the right, so I don’t really follow it. But I can say I care as little about Taylor Swift, Oprah, Beyonce, this new Bad Bunny person ( who was the last straw somehow) as Hulk Hogan, Jordan Petersen, Robin Hanson and those completely brainless IDW creeps.

The average human has to rise up against this noxious, heartless, brainless media environment.

After 14 years of trying to grin and bear through intense stupidity, I have hit my limits. I am on the rampage because I have to go back to my field, which is not compatible with this bullshit.

I tried to stay in my lane and do my duties and now I have had enough. This is too stupid.
I am a neutral party in these cultures wars of all sided brainlessness.

But they have continued to piss off Ol’ jfz9580m and that won’t end well. I am done trying to be a silly Indian lady…
These motherfuckers need to get what is not kayfabe and what is not a game world and who not to mess with, not for 8 months, not 2 years but 14 bloody years and counting.

I have lost all patience. I have never had any mental illness. But I was more prone to being bullied as an only child and a solitary woman.
I am going Straw Dogs on these creeps. I have never seen that movie, but it vaguely fits.

I mean not vigilante justice or violence. This is a chaotic time and draconian legal precedents can transform a world that will be ripped apart of those platforms continue to bleed into real life and everyone just sits around gaping vacantly.

I cannot afford that. I never lie or play games or bullshit. It doesn’t serve me and this should be uncomfortable not exciting or funny. Well..it is funny for Ol’ jfz9580m, who is a nice person, but in whose veins battle lust is the sole form of lust that has ever flowed and I am a bit sick of trying to hide that.

OKIsItJustMe

(21,762 posts)
3. The role of Russia in our country's increasing polarization is underappreciated
Fri Mar 6, 2026, 01:18 PM
13 hrs ago
https://faculty.washington.edu/kstarbi/examining-trolls-polarization.pdf
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00963402.2025.2488676
https://theconversation.com/i-investigated-millions-of-tweets-from-the-kremlins-troll-factory-and-discovered-classic-propaganda-techniques-reimagined-for-the-social-media-age-237712

The polarization is not exactly new, but, then, neither are efforts by Russia/The Soviet Union to encourage it.
Protecting the environment/climate (or not) is just one more issue for them to exploit.
https://grist.org/article/russian-trolls-shared-some-truly-terrible-climate-change-memes/
https://www.climateinformationwatch.org/post/the-emerging-problem-of-climate-trolls

At the recent invitation-only inauguration, the news told us that there were tech billionaires present! The aspect which seems to have been missed is that these billionaires included the CEO’s of the major social media firms’ the same guys who decided to let a certain former president back on their platforms after banning him "for life.”

You see, his playbook, strangely similar to Russia’s, is to foment division, and key to that effort is “social media."
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