The Causey Consulting Podcast

Bonus Episode: Controlled Opposition & the Exploitation of "Useful Idiots"

March 06, 2023
The Causey Consulting Podcast
Bonus Episode: Controlled Opposition & the Exploitation of "Useful Idiots"
Show Notes Transcript

"In political jargon, a useful idiot is a term currently used to reference a person perceived as propagandizing for a cause—particularly a bad cause originating from a devious, ruthless source—without fully comprehending the cause's goals, and who is cynically being used by the cause's leaders. The term was often used during the Cold War to describe non-communists regarded as susceptible to communist propaganda and manipulation." -https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Useful_idiot

"Give the public the false illusion of choice by presenting a political party or organization that superficially speaks to the desires or frustrations of the people but whose actions do not further the stated goals of the organization." -https://www.facebook.com/reform2025/photos/a.1098774270262629/1669867339819983/?type=3

Links:

https://www.amazon.com/Coddling-American-Mind-Intentions-Generation/dp/0735224897

https://www.amazon.com/Liberty-Justice-Some-Equality-Powerful/dp/1250013836

https://www.amazon.com/Other-Peoples-Money-Corporate-Mugging-ebook/dp/B0041G6RTW

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2017/02/17/corporations-gave-millions-donald-trump-inauguration/98056554/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Osoaviakhim


Links where I can be found: https://causeyconsultingllc.com/2023/01/30/updates-housekeeping/

Need more? Email me: https://causeyconsultingllc.com/contact-causey/

Unknown:

Welcome to the Causey Consulting Podcast. You can find us online anytime at CauseyConsultingLLC.com. And now, here's your host Sara Causey. Hello, Hello, and thanks for tuning in. In today's episode, I want to talk about controlled opposition and the exploitation of useful idiots which I put in air quotes. I debated about how to record this episode, or even if I should record this episode because 100% I will get hate mail. I will have people or who knows bots, trolls paid shills, whatever, writing into me and telling me how wrong I am and how offensive this episode is. But I don't care. I would rather get on here and record something of real value and real meaning. And if I get hate mail, it's not that difficult to hit the delete button and go on with my life. I've talked before about the cesspool that you can find on social media these days. And it really runs the gamut it can be. Let's talk about gossip amongst the celebrities who's getting divorced who's getting married, who's pregnant, she said this about someone else on Tik Tok, and now they're in a war and it's like, who cares? Who gives a damn about any of that it is not going to help you in the slightest. And I'm not totally opposed to bread and circus as we know. I enjoy popping up some popcorn and watching a good movie or a good football game. I'm not saying that you should never turn your brain off, let off some steam play. Have fun. Enjoy life have some joie de vivre. Of course you should. Not long ago, I read the coddling of the American mind. And one of the things that the authors talk about in that book is the idea of free play, allowing kids to go outside and play to create games and run around and have fun. Not everything has to be about a monetizable skill for the future, or something that's going to advance their education. Because from the time they pop out of the womb, you should be thinking about how they're going to get into an Ivy League school, like, let them play. Let them invent some games and just play for the sake of play. Because that's something that all mammalian creatures enjoy doing. So believe me, I'm not telling you that you should never blow off steam and have entertainment and just go out for fun, fun for the sake of fun. Really, what I'm saying is if that's your whole life, if your whole life has become streaming on Netflix, or celebrity gossip, or these political tropes I'm not sure you're going to make it and this is something else that we see ad nauseam. Orange Man bad Orange Man Great. Orange Man is the Antichrist. Orange Man is sent here by Christ. How hyperbolic you know, but you see these things? Okay. And then you also have senile old man is great. And he's cleaning up the mess left by the Orange Man. Or Orange Man had everything running right. But now senile old man has fixed it. And we hope Orange Man will come back and refix the problems that he fixed the first time but that now senile old man has messed up. It gives you a headache. I feel like okay, it's just my opinion. I could be wrong. But I feel like if you are a sane, rational person, looking at all of that junk, gives you a big headache. It's like this is this is absurd. At least it feels that way to me. One of the things that I wanted to talk about in this episode is the idea of controlled opposition. In other words, give you the illusion of free choice when really not so much. There's an old saying all roads lead to Rome. And so it is with politics, in my opinion. I don't think it matters that much. If you vote Republican or Democrat, if you would label yourself as a con or a lib. I affiliate with the donkey Well, I affiliate with the elephant so we cannot be friends. We have to be very vitriolic against each other and I have to Say you are literally Hitler. And you have to say that I am literal Stalin and it's like, oh my god. Please stop. I feel like the man in the mean, who's crying saying please don't do this. Please stop. There's a good post on Facebook, I'll drop a link to it. It shows the cartoon, the classic cartoon, which can be made in a lot of different ways. The cartoon says controlled opposition projects the illusion of choice on the left hand side, you have Democrat on the right hand side, you have Republican, but both of these choices lead the cow to the slaughterhouse. Just long pause, so you can think about that for yourself. And then the caption that goes with the photograph this Facebook page called human reform politics, which I admittedly don't know anything about, I don't know who these people are. I'm not telling you I endorse their Facebook page. I don't know them. I think that the quote that I think that the cartoon that they've posted is smart. And I think that the quote that they put from someone named James McClurg, on Quora, from 2018 has some good verbiage in it. I think it's not a bad summation of what controlled opposition is or how we might start a working definition of it. And in this post, we find, give the public the false illusion of choice by presenting a political party or organization that superficially speaks to the desires or frustrations of the people, but whose actions do not further the stated goals of the organization and quote, and it goes back very nicely to the cartoon, give you the illusion of choice. So that you think, oh, this person bad, this party bad this segment of the population bad, whereas we're good. See, this is also predicated on these good versus evil, us versus them. Rhetorical battles, like the intense, insane language that oh, this is literal Hitler, oh, this is literal Stalin. And I think it's quite insulting and reductive towards people who had family members die in the Holocaust, or the Hello, demoed, or in a gulag somewhere to say, my neighbor down the street who belongs to a different political party than me. Now he doesn't beat his wife, he treats his kids well, he goes to work every day, and he pays his taxes but he because I disagree with him. He is literal Hitler, or he is literal Stalin. And it's like, no, do you do you not understand what the word literal or literally actually means? And can you please tone it the F down? That is very offensive to someone who had family members die in genocide, to say, oh, this person down the street is literal Hitler or literal Stalin because I disagree with him. What? What have we come to? Chapter Three of the book, The coddling of the American mind is titled, The untruth of us versus them. Life is a battle between good and good people and evil people. And there's a quote underneath that from Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks from not in God's name. And the quote reads, there is the moral dualism that sees good and evil as instincts within us between which we must choose. But there's also what I will call pathological dualism that sees humanity itself as radically divided into the unimpeachably good and the irredeemably bad, you are either one or the other. It seems that we have slipped into this kind of untrue thinking. You good? You agree with me? You are in my echo chamber. I like you. You disagree with me. We belong to different parties, we might vote for a different candidate and have different ideas or we might belong to different religious groups you bad, you evil. Okay, so who benefits from that? You don't you living in an echo chamber, and never stepping outside your comfort zone to have conversations with people of other cultures or other belief systems you don't benefit from it. So who does? Think about that? Who benefits from all of this divisive rhetoric? And people not getting together? People not talking? I lambasted that article where some billionaire was saying, I just don't think that you should read. I don't read books. I think it's a waste of time. It's taking time away from my ability to make money. I don't like putting other people's thoughts inside my head. And I was like, i i It's rare that I'm rendered speechless, but damn, I don't want other people's thoughts in my head. I don't want to take the time to read I'd rather be me Making money. Your money is important. Like Bill Hicks always said, if you think you're living in a free society, try going somewhere without money and see how far you get. Your landlord is not going to accept rent payment in the form of let me tell you about these awesome books I've been reading. I understand that money is a practical necessity. I'm just concerned about the idea that every activity that you do had damn well better be monetized. It had better be to the use of corporate America, or it's just waste. No, it isn't. There's room and alive for working hard, playing hard. There's room and alive for intellectual pursuits, personal development, professional development, and reading for pleasure, or watching some kind of educational programming for pleasure listening to a podcast that maybe you typically wouldn't, or having a conversation with a neighbor or a colleague that you know, is from a different viewpoint than you because you want to understand okay, I don't under I don't get why you think this way, I don't get the lens through which you see the world but I want to try the the what to the desire to try and understand is there who benefits from you not reading who benefits from you remaining in the dark? Who benefits from you not having those conversations with people of other groups to understand better? Because see, even though I may come across as a pessimist, and at times, I would say I probably am. I'm not pessimistic about everything. And I think that the more that we can have those conversations, the more that we discover, we have some true commonalities. You may sit down at the table with somebody and realize, okay, on politics, we're miles away, we're, we're not there politically. But when it comes to spirituality, we're hand in hand, or we're not going to agree about religious practices. We're miles away on that. But we love the same movies and music and art, or our sense of humor is hand in glove, we can sit for hours and just crack each other up. If you're not having those conversations with other people, it's easier, quite frankly, to keep you in this dichotomy of good versus evil. We are fighting against literal Hitler, we are fighting against literal Stalin. Meanwhile, it's just some dude down the road, who's of a different religion, or who's of a different political party than you? Do you see how damaging that kind of overpowering exaggerative rhetoric can be. This is another area where I know I'm going to get hate mail, unfortunately, from people who are still engulfed in this dichotomy of us versus them. Ironically, those are the folks that probably need to hear this episode the most, but they're also the most likely to turn it off. Or to get mad and to send me some shots of how wrong I am. And this guy is going to save us and the system itself is fantastic. We've just always had the wrong people leading the country. It's hard to even say it with a straight face. But here we go. You know, that's that's what I can expect from from doing this. I saw a poll the other day on social media. And the question boiled down to do you trust Orange Man? And in reading the responses to this poll, I just had to shake my head. Because the people who voted that yes, they did trust Orange Man. To some degree, I mean, it's like why are we even still talking about this? Where it why is it still relevant, but okay, I'm not gonna go down that path. of the people who said that, yes, they did trust Orange Man. It was generally boiled down to if the mainstream media hates him. He's all automatically good in my book because of that. Were people saying the other politicians, the other party, the other individuals in Washington hate Orange Man really bad. So that tells me that orange man must be good. And I just put my head in my hands, rubbed my temples, you know, like Gordon Ramsay when he goes into a bad restaurant on Kitchen Nightmares, and they're giving him every excuse in the book about why they can't make changes. And I just thought, like, Do you Do you not know the concept of controlled opposition? Do you not have any idea about how the system actually really for real for real works? And just to be clear, I'm not saying 100% for certain that Orange Man was or is controlled opposition My point is a coherent, sane person could make that argument. one facet of controlled opposition is funding both sides of the conflict, so that you're a winner either way. Another way it can be done is funding both of the political parties so that whoever wins, you are a winner either way, and it doesn't really matter. Plus, you've greased the poems of power that can help you. So if you donated to one party, and they won, you went to, if you donate it, also to the party that lost, you're still a winner, because at some point, those folks are going to be back in power. Again, и так ичто, same stuff, different day. And they'll remember that you gave money to them. It's not hard to figure out. I mean, she used the phrase does your Come on, man, it's not that difficult to figure this out. At least it shouldn't be. I want to read now from other people's money, the corporate mugging of America by Nomi Prins. I'm on page 13 of the introduction, the version that I have, it was updated. It's not the original version, the version that I have was updated as of April 2006. So one of the cool things about going back through this book is it really gives you a walk down memory lane of what was going on late 90s, early aughts. And I'll talk about this in a separate episode because this deserves its own episode and want to really talk about people being pushed into 401 K's trusting their pensions to the stock market and then being ruthlessly manipulated by the system. I mean, one of the things is, younger generations want to look at the greatest generation and the baby boomers and be like, well, they had it so good, and we don't understand why we got screwed. And unfortunately, they tend to blame the people of those generations themselves, rather than blaming the system. Hello, controlled opposition, a very particular narrative. Blame the people don't blame the system, the jacked up rigged up system that did it blame the individual people. Right, because that's going to help. Alright, so from page 13, let me let me get my lamp over here so you can see better from page 13 of the introduction we find the amount of clout the financial sectors wield in Washington can't be underestimated. The fire financial insurance and real estate sector tops the list of contributions to Washington every year. It has donated over$1.3 billion since 1990 57% to Republicans and 43% to Democrats. Hmm. During the three election cycles that spanned 1998 through 2002. That ratio tilted towards the GOP who received 60% of fires political funds. Goldman Sachs led contributors in the Securities and Investment subcategory in seven out of eight election cycles. It forked over $7 million in donations during the 2002 and 2004 election cycles, and had doled out a grand total of $17 million since 1990. The only year Goldman plays second in its category was 1994 when it gave 9005. No, wait a minute, sorry, you know, I get just a slightly dyslexic with numbers sometimes when I'm reading$957,045, just behind Merrill Lynch's $1.3 million. Such consistent support undoubtedly paved the way for ex Goldman knights to take highly visible routes into key government positions. Examples include Robert Rubin, John Corizon, and Steven Friedman. Hank Paulson may join their ranks at some point. After all, he began his career working at the Pentagon for the Nixon administration in 1970. Where do you go after you run the most politically influential firm on Wall Street? If not to Washington and quote? Well, you can bet the numbers have gone up since then, you know, since this is an older book, The edition that I have only being updated from 2006, you can bet the numbers are higher. Now. You can also bet that the ratios are about the same. If it looks like the Republicans are going to win toss a little bit more money in their direction. If it looks like the Dems are going to win toss a little bit more money in their direction. But nevertheless, the outcome is the same. You win either way. And you also because you've put the money into the kitty. Hmm. Do we really think that there's no control? Do we really think that there's no influence after you've given wads and wads of cash to a candidate? Do you really think that he or she is going to look the other way and be like, well, I know that you bought and paid for my way to get into this office. I know I made certain promises. But now that I'm here I'm going to ignore that money. And I'm going to ignore those promises and do what I think is best for the average working class citizen. How likely do you think that is? Just a long pause so that you can consider that for yourself. I mean, some people feel like Kennedy went in that direction. He didn't want to dance with the ones that brung him and look at what happened. Not saying that's the case. But again, I think a coherent rational adult could make the argument that things didn't go so well for him because he didn't play the game the way that he was supposed to. We have this system where everybody pretends to dislike each other. The elephants are at the throats of the donkeys and the donkeys are at the throats of the elephants. And they're all talking about how terrible it will be if the other one wins. But then when it's all over with, they shake hands, and they go out drinking and carousing together, and they all buddy up to one another. I mean, it's such showmanship, it's such a pageantry. This even happens at the local level. I remember watching a political debate if we can call it that, between two individuals, I'm going to be just be vague here. Two individuals that were running for local office around here in my part of the Midwest, and oh, they got into it. Funny enough. The main thing that they were debating about the main bone of contention between these two people was one claimed that he had been an ardent supporter of Orange Man from the very beginning. Whereas the other one stood accused of not supporting Orange Man, and in fact, saying bad things about Orange Man. So they go on and on and on for like an hour and a half, about this bullshit nonsense of who's going to swear the most fealty to the Orange Man, and who is a traitor? What is this going to solve? You know, like, how is this going to improve anybody's life in any meaningful way? So they go out and they're sniping each other and playing some pretty dirty pool in terms of a political debate for you know, hour, hour and a half at the end of it. Before the cameras stopped rolling, they embrace each other. They're laughing and hugging and oh, hey, how's your wife in them? Sure. Good seeing you. It's all for show. In my opinion, it you are watching a pantomime play act. If you watched senile old man's inauguration, you saw the very similar thing play out people from different political parties who are supposed to be diametrically opposed in everything, hugging, embracing, laughing together, having a good old time. Like, here we go. Business as usual, will pretend that we hate one another and that there's a huge difference between us when we're supposed to put on that part of the pantomime for the unwashed masses. But in reality for Hell, come on. This is one big club and we all like each other and it's a little bit different behind closed doors. In Glenn Greenwald's book with liberty and justice for some he talks about countless instances of the good old boys club, protecting one another. And he brings up Scooter Libby, who I will be honest, I had completely forgotten about him until I was reading this book. And I was like, oh, yeah, I remember all that mess. So he talks about how Scooter Libby had been, I guess, indicted, or found guilty of four out of five felonies. And he was convicted of two counts of perjury one count of obstruction of justice and one count of making a full statement. Okay, so when we go over to page 41 of the hardback copy of this book, he tells something that is like, Okay, if we were to wrap the whole thing up with a bow, here you go. Shortly after Libby sentencing times, Joe Klein was just one of the numerous prominent media figures fuming over the prospect that one of their own might end up in prison. In a piece titled thoughts on sentencing, Klein actually prefaced his defensive Libby by insisting that it was of the utmost importance for Paris Hilton to receive jail time for driving with a suspended license because it is exemplary. It sends the message that even rich twits can't avoid the law. That same reasoning, however, apparently did not apply to Dick Cheney's top adviser. And now he's quoting from Joe Klein. I have a different feeling about Libby his perjury, not telling the truth about which reporters he talked to wouldn't Never be considered significant enough to reach trial much less sentencing much less time in the stir if he weren't Dick Cheney's Hatchet Man, jail time. Do we really want to spend our tax dollars keeping Scooter Libby behind bars? I don't think so. This perjury case only exists because of his celebrity. There are so many false and misleading assertions crammed into these few sentences that it is difficult to know where to begin. It is worth the effort to unpack them though because Klein's defense of liberty reveals just how our media class reasons when it comes to the political figures whom they claim to hold accountable. And quote to me This is sad, but it's not surprising. Now we're on page 44 Klein's in indignation over Libby's unfair treatment was echoed by many in the establishment media. The former time editor in chief Norman pearlstine wrote a book denouncing Fitzgerald's investigation while the New York Times columnist David Brooks condemned the prosecution in multiple venues as a force. But perhaps the most revealing pro Libby defense came from the Washington Post Richard Cohen, who, as we just saw, had gleefully celebrated the pardon, bequeath to his Safeway buddy Caspar Weinberger, and quote, there's another nail I hadn't thought of in years until I started reading this book. I'm going to scoot back to page 29 of the hardback copy. And like Ford's pardon, Bush's won praise from the overwhelming majority of politicians and journalists. Weinberger, after all, was a member in good standing of the political class generally, and the Washington establishment in particular. He had been a close associate of Reagan's since the 1960s when Reagan was Governor of California, and he had held a number of key posts under Nixon, including Director of the Office of Management and Budget, where his merciless cost cutting measures had earned him the nickname cap the knife. In a pattern no one considers unusual anymore, cap the knife and then converted the praise. Earn as Nixon's OMB cost cutter into a plum position as Vice President and General Counsel of the Bechtel Corporation, which must have found his contacts in DC to be very useful indeed. In other words, in the eyes of the political and media establishment Weinberger was not someone who belonged in a prison, so not even when there was clear evidence that he had committed serious felonies. As Robert Perry detailed and consortium news. Journalists and political operatives from across the political spectrum closed ranks to celebrate the immunity bestowed on Weinberger and his co conspirators. The Washington elites rally to wine burgers defense in the salons of Georgetown. There was palpable relief in December 1992 when President Bush pardon Weinberger and five other Iran Contra defendants effectively ending the Iran Contra investigation. Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen spoke for many insiders and a column on December 30 1992. Cohen described how impressed he was that Weinberger would push his own shopping cart. Hence the Georgetown Safeway often called the Social Safeway because so many members of Washington's establishment shop there. Based on my Safeway encounters I came to think of Weinberger as a basic sort of guy candid and no nonsense which is the way much of official Washington saw him Cohen wrote in praise of the pardon, Cap my safe way buddy walks, and that's all right with me and quote. So the guy shops at the same grocery store and he pushes his own cart as opposed to what having a designated servant to push the cart for him, and he deserves to be pardoned for whatever he was accused of because of that. Are you kidding me? Are you looking for more? Don't forget, you can find Sarah on her blogs at Causey consulting llc.com. And at Sara causey.com. You can also read her content on medium and substack on with the shore. I feel like Glenn Greenwald's book is so good. It deserves its own episode and that's something that I intend to do. For the time being, I want to really ask the question, do you think it is fair to assume that the mainstream media and other people in Washington saying that they don't like Orange Man, do you think that is reason enough to find him trustworthy? They're not praising him for shopping at the beltway Safeway and pushing his own cart. Okay, I get that. But is that enough to say that he He must be inherently trustworthy, because these people are not overtly kissing his behind out in the media. You have to make that decision for yourself. For me personally, no, that's not enough for me to say, Oh, well, sure. This rich person must be trustworthy just because the media hasn't kissed his behind. And the people in Washington claim that they dislike him. Surely that's good enough. Well, for me, it's not. It's just not. Let's go over to an article from USA Today published on February 17 2017, titled corporations gave millions to Donald Trump's inauguration. In this article we read corporations with big interest and federal policy contributed millions to help underwrite President Trump's recent inauguration federal record show Pfizer, Dow Chemical and Bank of America gave $1 million a piece to the Inaugural Committee which raise private funds for the balls, receptions parade and other events celebrating Trump's January 20. swearing in. More than two dozen companies have reported giving a little more than $7 million total through December 31. A USA Today tally of recently filed lobbying reports show inaugural organizers have said they collected about $100 million for last month's event a record sum that's nearly double the $53 million in private money President Obama took in for his first inauguration. Obama did not accept corporate donations for the two now 2009 event but did take corporate funds for his second inauguration in 2013. A full accounting of Trump's inaugural fundraising and spending isn't due until April but recent filings with Congress from lobbyists and the companies that employ them offer a snapshot of the efforts by corporate America to support Trump once he captured the White House. Are you surprised by that? It says Pfizer which spent nearly $9.8 million on federal lobbying last year which would have been 2016 made its $1 million inaugural donation on December 21 record show and quote right oh the media but the media says Orange Man Bad and The Washington insiders say Orange Man bad so in my mind, he must be trustworthy. Man Some of y'all gonna get real hard lesson if you can't figure out the concept of controlled opposition you are going to be in for such a difficult time in your life seriously. Also in the USA Today article we find industries are bracing for big change under the Trump administration for moves to rollback the so called Dodd Frank regulations on the financial sector to efforts to drive down drug prices. Shortly before he took office. Trump said pharmaceutical companies were getting away with murder and pledged that he would allow Medicare, the federal insurance system for the disabled and elderly to negotiate prices with drug makers and quote hmm hmm. Yeah, I wonder which segment of the market made out like him effing bandits during his administration? Wonder if it was the company's coming up with stabby swabbies. Hmm. Could it be could it be could it be also in USA Today, we find records show other Trump's inaugural donors include Exxon Mobil, Amgen, Florida crystals, tobacco giant Altria, and Microsoft, each of which donated half a million dollars. Half of Microsoft's donation took the form of inkind products and services. Other companies previously have announced contributions to the Inaugural Committee Boeing, which faced a Twitter attack from Trump in December, over the cost of the company's work on the next generation of Air Force One fleet donated $1 million to the Trump inaugural festivities matching the amount it gave to the Obama events in 2013. Yeah, but somehow you're supposed to believe that there's a big difference between the one and the other. I'm not sure how you can think that mean? Okay. The people who responded to this poll on social media could be bots, trolls, pieces of AI programming, paid shills, misinformation bots of some kind, all of that is possible. I think my fear is that they actually are at least some of them flesh and blood human beings who think that who really think that anybody who gets in that office is going to somehow fight for the little guy, and they're not going to stick up for corporate America, they're not going to look out for the interests of other Washington insiders, they will be the one to solve the problems. To me this goes back to the hopium, that the system itself is good. The system itself was anointed by God Almighty, the founding fathers were anointed by God Almighty, and that these documents are irrefutable. They they're not malleable in any way, if we just had better politicians, if we just had better overlords, everything would be fine. I can't I can't get there. I just I can't get there in my mind. Let's play pretend, just for a few minutes here. Let's imagine that we wanted to write a novel, or we wanted to create a screenplay for a movie totally fictional. What we are sitting down and doing is completely and utterly a work of fiction and should not be taken otherwise. Alright, so as we're brainstorming how we're going to write the novel, how we're going to write the movie, okay, let's say that we created a system. And the system set up a false dichotomy. And it said, on one side of the spectrum, if you take right wing politics too far, you have fascism. If you take left wing politics too far, you have communism, both of these political ideologies are totally different. That's why they're on opposite sides of the spectrum. And then you would ask again, in our novel, or our movie, wholly fictional, then you would ask the people, the plebs in this fictional scenario, to believe that the systems are totally different. And they would have to ignore the fact that both of those systems lead to things like genocide, mass murder, dictators, starvation, a lack of individual freedom, financial enslavement, and so on. You would be less you would you would have to lead the plebs in this novel or movie to believe that these systems really are like totally different. And you would have some useful idiots in the book or the movie, who would say things like, well, fascism could actually work? As long as we had a benevolent dictator, as long as we had an outsider who was hated by the establishment. As long as you had someone who wasn't power hungry, that totally wouldn't abuse power, then it would be alright to have a benevolent dictator. If we had money in the bank and food in the larder, I think people would go along with having an emperor, I think fascism could work. You have those useful idiots on one side, then you would have other useful idiots on the other side of the spectrum in our book, or our movie, who would say, communism could work, it just never has been done appropriately. We could do communism, and everybody would be like utopia, shiny, happy people holding hands, they would be like so shameful. It would never lead to hunger and famine, it would never lead to abuses of power, it would never lead to the Gulag. It would not enrich the people that sit at the very top of the pyramid. It would only help average working class people. And things would be totally fine. It just hasn't been appropriately maneuvered just yet. If we were writing the book, or making the movie, you know, that's a scenario that we could use. What do you think? What does it mean to be a quote, useful idiot? Well, let's go to Wikipedia, and political jargon. A useful idiot is a term currently used to reference a person perceived as propagandizing for a cause, particularly a bad cause, originating from a devious, ruthless source without fully comprehending the causes goals, and who is cynically being used by the causes leaders. The term was often used during the Cold War to describe non communist regarded as susceptible to Communist propaganda and manipulation and quote, here is another area where I will 100% get hate mail. I think you can find in my opinion, useless idiots who will shill for the state who will shill for corporate America who will try to convince you that the system itself is not right rigged, the system itself is not broken. We just don't have the right politicians in there yet. Fascism could work if we had a benevolent dictator who was an outsider, and who really cared about the needs of the public. Communism could like totally work and be a utopia if it was just done correctly. You notice how similar these arguments sound. I also think you can find useful idiots among deniers of reality, people that are smoking hopium, for example, the economy is fine, we're not in a recession and we won't have a recession, housing prices will only go up. We would just never have another 2008 RTO will not happen. People can make petitions and they can have a nationwide strike. And everybody will just lay at home and say hell no, we won't go and demand remote work, the companies of the future will all be remote. The companies that don't allow full remote work will all go out of business and everyone will hate them. As Dennis Miller has always said, that's just my opinion. And I could be wrong. But I personally put those types of people into the useful idiot bucket. And I believe they are being manipulated by the system to serve the system. It's controlled opposition, you create the illusion of freedom by allowing people or bots or trolls or whatever, to go online and make these arguments and get everybody all rah rah and seal clap up. Like yeah, yeah, we won't have our to Yeah, it's not 2008 Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then, but but we're about has Jared a Brock pointed out in his fantastic article, the hyper elites want your stuff. If someone is caught off guard, caught unaware, they don't see what's coming, they haven't prepared adequately, and they get smacked upside the head. By an economic collapse or a meltdown of some kind. It is easy to take their stuff foreclosure eviction repossession debt default. That's what I see coming. And I find it heartbreaking that you have these people, whichever one of these people actually like, our flesh and blood humans, as opposed to trolls and bots and pieces of AI programming, flesh and blood real humans that actually think, okay, the MSM really does hate Orange Man. And so he must be trustworthy because of that. The big companies don't trust Orange Man, even though they donated to him, you know, the things that he did with the stabby Whammies must be totally legit. Must not have anything to do with all of that money and all of those corporations. Right? Yeah, of course. Of course. For all of those reasons. I'm sure you can totally put your trust in Orange Man. In American Horror Story in when I see Sandra Bernhardt plays a character named Fran. And in the third episode of that series, Fran starts telling a doctor about Operation Paperclip, and the facility that was used on Plum Island. And when I saw the episode, part of me was like, Holy shit, I can't believe that they're being allowed to talk about this. And then another part of me was like, Well, of course they are, because people will watch this, assume it's fiction. And then if you try to say, well, you know, that stuff really did happen, right? You know that some of the same people that were around at that time with what was going on with the health situation that's covered in American Horror Story, NYC, were also on the scene very recently, you should look at this. They'll say, Oh, you just wearing a tinfoil hat? You do some kind of conspiracy thirst, but never happened? Yeah, it did. Look, if you want to have the scales removed from your eyes, reading about Operation Paperclip will definitely do it. And please do not assume that the Soviets had clean hands in this either. Because again, we go back to this binary opposition. Communism was supposed to be theoretically, as far on the opposite side of the spectrum from fascism as you can get but they had their own Operation Paperclip, Операция Осоавиахим. Look that up to look that up to people who should have faced justice being given immunity because supposedly their information and their skill set was just too good to let go. And the whole premise was, well, we have to do this because the dirty commies will get these folks if we don't. And then on the other side of the table, it was, well, we have to get these folks because the dirty Americans, the decadent west will get them if we don't. How? I mean, how, how can you see any difference here? I don't get it, I don't get it. What it boils down to for me is you have got to be willing and able to make up your own mind. The narratives that get pushed the important information that gets swept under the rug or ignored completely. You have to be able to make your own decisions. I've said many times that I feel like whatever this economic downturn is how deep it goes, however long lasting, I believe it will separate out the people who paid attention from the ones who didn't. And I think it will also separate out people who have used good critical thinking and caveat emptor. And they've really tried to get good information and judge for themselves as opposed to people that just went along with the herd. So I come back to the cartoon I talked about at the beginning. You have this ideology and that ideology, this party and that party. But you're like the proverbial cow standing in front of two doorways, both of which lead to the slaughterhouse if you haven't woken up already, if you're still listening to hot air and Hi, man explainers, bots, trolls shills, people who actively want to part you from your money, or who want to push an agenda on you. It may be too late. I understand. That's Debbie Downer. And I'm not supposed to say that. But if you're behind the eight ball going into this mess, I don't know how you would ever get ahead of it when we're in the thick of it, and you're finally allowed to know just how bad it is. Stay safe, stay sane. Use your brain read. Think Critically, please. And I will see you in the next episode. Thanks for tuning in. If you enjoyed this episode, please take a quick second to subscribe to this podcast and share it with your friends. We'll see you next time.