One hesitates to add to “Red Brown Green” — fascism anchored by Putin-Khamenei and the KGB-FSA-VEVAK nexus (attach: Assad, Orban, Erdogan) — a potential Red-Blue “nobility”. However, the democratic open societies must contend with their wealthy — and the will of the wealthy — as well.
In 1980, Feinstein married Richard C. Blum, an investment banker. In 2003, Feinstein was ranked the fifth-wealthiest senator, with an estimated net worth of $26 million.[10] By 2005 her net worth had increased to between $43 million and $99 million.[11] Her 347-page financial-disclosure statement[12] – characterized by the San Francisco Chronicle as “nearly the size of a phone book” – draws clear lines between her assets and those of her husband, with many of her assets in blind trusts.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dianne_Feinstein – As viewed 3/2/2014
And what’s the walk she talkin’ today?
Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) said Sunday that it was “arrogant” for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to presume to speak for all Jews on a potential nuclear deal between the United States and Iran.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/03/01/dianne-feinstein-benjamin-netanyahu_n_6778748.html – 3/1-2/2015.
Let’s take a look at some other respectable sum of money (concentrated around one person):
The J Street lobbying group is running a media campaign opposing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s March 3 speech to the U.S. Congress.
J Street claims to be “the political home for pro-Israel, pro-peace Americans” but is seen by its critics as a far-left, intolerant lobbying group funded by George Soros, that in no way represents American Jews and friends of Israel.
http://www.worldtribune.com/2015/03/01/soros-backed-j-street-mounts-crusade-netanyahus-speech-congress/ – 3/1/2015.
Related:
http://www.ngo-monitor.org/article/open_society_institute_osi_
Also: http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/soros-ford-shovel-196-million-to-net-neutrality-groups-staff-to-white-house/article/2560702 – 2/26/2014.
Add: http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/j-street-accuses-jews-of-racism-blames-jews-for-anti-semitism/ – 8/8/2014.
BackChannels maintains that anti-Semitic expression signals fascist ambitions and intentions, and self-abasing Jews like Feinstein and Soros need not be set apart from non-Jews maintaining and promoting similar sets of attitudes and beliefs.
The Opaque White House
Where is Obama in relation to the cauldron of political poison brewed up on the now fascist far left (post-Soviet, neo-feudal, Putinesque, global)?
In reference below, I’ve included some views on American wealth, class, and related politics, i.e., a new politics of the wealthy. (By way of disclosure, this editor is like the “lawn jockey”, i.e., on the property – housed and fed – but outside the house: the editor does not enjoy even the pleasure of owning a lawn).
While the White House puts animus toward Israel on display, it has nevertheless not “broken” with Israel in numerous areas of practical defense (if not diplomacy).
Then too, while it pumps for social democratic perennials like hikes in the minimum wage, assessing the American left and far left’s own greed and penury wants for some new body of research.
Related Reference
Smith, Joseph. “Steyn: The Obama era’s neo-feudalism.” American Thinker, December 8, 2013.
Steyn, Mark. “The Post-Work Economy: A permanent dependency class means a citizenry deprived of dignity.” National Review, December 6, 2013.
Wealth inequality grows each and every day, while the middle class keeps getting pummeled by this Glorious Free Enterprise System. What used to be good, stable jobs are converted into temp positions or contract work — automated, downsized or simply eliminated entirely, they’re replaced in the labor market by the worst-paying, most utterly dehumanizing low-wage gigs that our much ballyhooed “job creators” can imagine and implement.
The consequences for our democracy and our economy are perilous and unlikely to be easily remedied.
Donovan, Tim. “Clueless rich kids on the rise: How millennial aristocrats will destroy our future.” Salon, July 21, 2014.
W.W. “The President’s Patriotism: It’s Complicated.” The Economist, February 20, 2015.
The Economist. “America’s new aristocracy: As the importance of intellectual capital grows, privilege has become increasingly heritable.” January 24, 2015.
In the Obama years, disseminating either disinformation or no information, a devoted media helped create the intellectual darkness and vacant servitude required to carry out the strategy of their leftist Messiah–a country without any sense of its own history and traditions, where the low-information voter would slouch towards Obama’s imaginary utopia through a combination of governmental coercion and the hedonist nihilism of a painless, amusement-sodden, and stress-free America managed by a nanny-state.
In the Obama years, we see the resurrection of the economic feudalism of the Dark Ages, a system dominated by wealthy special interests that inhibit the upward mobility of the poor and the middle class.
Sellin, Lawrence. “Needed: An American Renaissance.” Western Journalism, February 2, 2015.
California produces more new billionaires than any place this side of oligarchic Russia or crony capitalist China. By some estimates the Golden State is home to one out of every nine of the world’s billionaires. In 2011 the state was home to 90 billionaires, 20 more than second place New York and more than twice as many as booming Texas.
The state’s digital oligarchy, surely without intention, is increasingly driving the state’s lurch towards feudalism. Silicon Valley’s wealth reflects the fortunes of a handful of companies that dominate an information economy that itself is increasingly oligopolistic. In contrast to the traditionally conservative or libertarian ethos of the entrepreneurial class, the oligarchy is increasingly allied with the nominally populist Democratic Party and its regulatory agenda. Along with the public sector, Hollywood, and their media claque, they present California as “the spiritual inspiration” for modern “progressives” across the country.
Kotkin, Joel. “California’s New Feudalism Benefits a Few at the Expense of the Multitude.” The Daily Beast, October 5, 2013.
The president will arrive on Tuesday night with a 900-strong entourage, including 45 vehicles and three cargo planes. Advance security teams orchestrating every last detail have combed Brussels already, checking the sewers and the major hospitals, while American military helicopters were last week given the green light for overflights. The city hosts at least four EU summits a year, with each of these gatherings costing €500,000 in extra police, military and transport expenses. “But this time round, you can multiply that figure by 20,” said Brussels mayor, Yvan Mayeur.
Cendrowicz, Leo. “Barack Obama’s first visit to Brussels to cost Belgium more than €10m.” The Guardian, March 24, 2014.
With chides like “Colonel, President, Emperor Putin”, the rhetoric has the support of the “The Russian Section” readings plus more than enough reportage on neo-medieval adventures.
With President Barack Hussein Obama, there’s less track in either American history — the Nixon White House caught the “Imperial Presidency“ label for what that President wished to do with guard uniforms, and it too became an informationally dark presidency — and we know how it ended. Were BackChannels to knock out a casual “President Caliph Obama”, it would have to be with animosity rather than curiosity matched by observation: he’s just not that.
What may be worrisome is how Obama fits with the presumably opposed spine form by “Putin-Assad-Khamenei”, about whose cooperation should be at this point beyond question.
Add: Putin-Orban (an easy lookup online) and Putin-(khamenei)-Erdogan, where more takes place “behind the curtains” but the style — everyone wants to live in a White Palace! — seems congruent across borders and state interests.
Should one suggest “Putin-Khamenei-Obama” as a unit?
What a troika!
However, I haven’t the data that would bring Obama visibly into the neo-feudal fold, as good as he may be at “political theater” and the separation of a surface politics from the underlying engine room in which his Administration’s realpolitik would seem invented and adjusted.
Post-KGB, now FSB and neo-feudal Putin carry forward the onus of known KGB-Era behavior.
Obama stands forward of only — for the purposes of comparison — the CIA and FBI, which have reputations that overall curry the favor of the American constituency: the press notes their histories and their mistakes, but they are security agencies (include with them Homeland Security, NSA, and all of the defense intelligence offices) believed by the broadest part of the constituency to be operating in the interests of the American public in its totality — and the American Constitution — as opposed to the interests primarily of either America’s plutocrats or America’s “military-industrial complex”.
Related:
Wallender, Lee. “Decadent Monacracy: White House Secret Service Uniforms During Nixon’s Administration. Invisible Theme Park, February 2, 2013.
Alter, Ralph. “Barack Obama & Richard Nixon: Soulmates?” American Thinker, November 1, 2008.
Digital History. “Restraining the Imperial Presidency.” (2014).
America’s most fascistic elements are ultra leftwing organizations like La Raza or the Congressional Black Caucus. These racial nationalists seek gain not through merit, but through the attainment of government privileges. What’s the difference between segregation and affirmative action? They are identical phenomena harnessing state auspices to impose racialist dogma.
The Nation of Islam and other Afrocentric movements, like the Nazis, even celebrate their own perverse racist mythology. Are Louis Farrakhan and Jeremiah Wright conservatives? Is Obama?
Flax, Bill. “Obama, Hitler, and Exploding The Biggest Lie in History.” Forbes, September 1, 2011.
Pragmatism maintains that people are constantly devising and updating ideas to navigate the world in which they live; it embraces open-minded experimentation and continuing debate. “It is a philosophy for skeptics, not true believers,” Mr. Kloppenberg said.
Cohen, Patricia. “In Writings of Obama, a Philosophy Is Unearthed.” Book review. The New York Times, October 27, 2010.
As had Mr. Kloppenberg for his book, one might spend quite a bit of time online looking for the “real Obama”, the “essential Obama”, the “readable-transparent Obama” — and not find it or him.
Advice to self: follow the money, not the man.
The richest 1 percent of Americans, they found, control 40 percent of the country’s wealth, and the top 0.1 percent control more than a fifth—which would mean wealth in the U.S. is still more concentrated than in China.
Larson, Christina. “China’s 1 Percent vs. America’s 1 Percent.” Bloomberg Business, July 28, 2014.
A staggering 35 per cent of household wealth in Russia is owned by just 110 people, the highest level of inequality in the world barring a few small Caribbean islands, a report by a major investment bank says.
The Independent. “110 oligarchs own a third of Russia’s wealth.” October 9, 2013.
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