SCAM

 

The weekend I decided to watch my Poor Things Blu-ray, for which Emma Stone won the Best Actress Oscar, which I found perplexing since she already won an Oscar for La La Land and the erstwhile “favorite,” Lili Gladstone, would have been the first Native American to win a Best actor/actress award for Killers of the Flower Moon, about the victims of a massive scam operation by whites to steal the Osage Indians “head rights” to oil on their lands, many of whom were murdered by poisoning, as Gladstone’s character was meant to be. But apparently the Oscar committee not only didn’t think we needed a history lesson about a subject that nearly everyone didn’t even know occurred, but completely shut-out Killers of the Flower Moon of any wins at all.

Of course Poor Things had a “political” slant, right in line with “MeToo,” but it was meant to be a “sci-fi comedy,” and in that sense I felt that I had been scammed, because I never once cracked a smile through the whole thing, maybe an occasional feeling of "bemusement"; I suppose a certain kind of audience was supposed to find "amusement" in it, but only the kind I would have to question the motives of. 

“Ironically,” the movie’s “message” of “equality” and “liberation” did not encompass race, since the black character in film expressed “conservative” attitudes about the subject, at least in regard to poverty; but he was right about the “pointlessness” of “giving,” since Stone’s character naively was herself the subject of a scam by a couple of crooked sailors, giving them all of Mark Ruffalo’s  money they had to live on merely on the “promise” they would go ashore and give his box of money to the “poor.” All she did was leave them “poor” too.

How to get a “name” actress to do lots and lots of nekkid scenes, especially playing a character who needs to find quick “employment”? Make an “art” film supposedly about gender “equality” set in some late-19^th Century time capsule. But wait, this looks like a European “art” film straight out of the 70s, this one made by a Greek director. I happen to like 70s “art” films, and for the most part I found this movie an interesting view as long as you observed that naïve views about the “real world” had consequences, and it was also a pleasant surprise to see 80-year-old Hanna Schygulla—Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s  old “muse”—make an appearance in a film.

But did my opinion change about Stone deserving to win the Oscar over Gladstone? No. She spent most of the movie with one facial expression, that of a kind of semi-"Frankenstein" with a brain transplant after being "saved" from a suicide attempt, first as a pouty overgrown child smashing things or spitting out food she didn’t like, and eventually “growing” into a pouty, arrogantly naïve “adult” who destroys people’s lives (mainly that of men) out of naïve “principles.”

Director Yorgos Lanthimos uses all kinds of “arty” camera work and odd-ball settings, and apparently his clever lensing "enhanced' in viewers eyes Stone’s one-note performance, and together with her “courage” in doing so many nekkid scenes it was  transformed into something Academy voters thought needed “rewarding.” But to me, people needed to see Killers of the Flower Moon; they didn’t need to see this, as "artful" as it admittedly is.

Meanwhile, it you are looking for “subtlety” in this year’s presidential election, you can forget it; it’s all just a world-class scam, mainly from the Republican side where the truth is worthy only of a continuous yada, yada, yada response. There was also no subtlety about Democratic bed-wetting after Joe Biden’s debate “performance,” but in reality it was a “gift” to both many lawmakers concerned about the “down ballot” vote, and campaign donors fearful of wasting their money on a “loser.” 

So Biden succumbed to unsubtle pressure in favor of Kamala Harris, for now, anyways. Are Democrats the victims of a “scam” in believing someone who had even worse approval ratings than Biden has a “better” chance of beating Donald Trump, even a man who is clearly unfit to be anything but the occupant of a jail cell? If Bob Menendez is heading for jail, what makes Trump so special, or for that matter Clarence Thomas, who is guilty of far worse:

 

Of course Democrats like to eat their own. I have to admit it was kind of hard to take Harris seriously because she smiled too often and thus didn't appear to be “serious” enough. If she is the nominee she needs to ditch the “happy face” and make clear there is nothing to “smile” about another term of advanced Trumpism.  It is not even “certain” at this point that Harris will be the nominee; hell, if people wanted something “different,” they could nominate Bernie Sanders, since his support for working people is far more credible than Trump’s—I thought he would beat Trump in 2016 because he would be the more “palatable” side of the same coin as Trump to enough voters in “swing states” in the Midwest—and that of “hillbilly” J.D. Vance, who proclaimed at the convention

“We won’t cater to Wall Street, we’ll commit to the working man,” he said. “We won’t import foreign labour, we’ll fight for American citizens. We won’t buy energy from countries that hate us, we’ll get it right here from American workers. We won’t sacrifice our supply chains to unlimited global trade, we’ll stamp every product ‘Made in the USA.’”

None of what Vance said is true. Trump doesn’t give a shit about working people, he is contemptuous of them. He even told us he was:

 

Republicans have scammed working people into thinking that tax cuts for corporations and deregulation as “fighting for working people” rather than padding the pockets of the rich and setting back environmental health decades in just one year (hell, just one day). Hey, people, if you got a problem with your pay, why don’t you ask your employer what they did with all that extra cash they got from Trump? What? You don’t think that Trump the “businessman” wasn’t using his office to enrich himself by pushing for that tax cut? No, all Trump and Vance’s proposed “pro-worker” suggestions are just a scam that they think you will be dumb enough to believe.

It’s all meant to “cater to Wall Street” and their profits; I mean if Trump’s and the Project 2025’s goals for America were “for” working people, why are billionaires and Wall Street lining up to fill Trump’s campaign coffers and sell working people a worthless bill of goods? If they are going to pour in billions of dollars that could have gone into working people’s paychecks into getting Trump elected, they surely expect to receive something back for them, right? 

Trump’s billionaire and corporate backers are only interested in profits, and the only thing that matters is how to do it; if that means doing things that have a disastrous effect on the labor market, well tough luck; Trump’s border crisis scam means to stop migrant labor from keeping jobs, consumer spending and taxpayers inside this country, meaning his deportation scheme will have a disastrous effect on the labor market, the economy and drive back up inflation and lead to that long delayed recession. 

Besides, the US  gave up the “Made in USA” label long before China was allowed to enter US markets when it was allowed in the WTO. According to a story in Business Insider that appeared as the Trump tax cut for the rich was being passed in 2017,

The problem didn't start in the 1990s, it started in the 1980s, when Ronald Reagan — a hero of the Trump administration — was president, and neoliberal economics were first making their mark on policy. Reagan and his ilk distrusted government and believed that the private sector could make the best decisions when left on its own. You've heard about this — it's called laissez faire economics.

This ideology ultimately led to the financialization of the US corporation — the process of putting shareholders first, often at the expense of workers and consumers — and its emergence as an actor that takes resources from the economy rather than creating them. This, combined with a government zeal for lowering taxes rather than spending, means no one — not the government, and not the private sector — is investing enough in America to keep the economy strong across social classes.

But I'm jumping ahead — let's go back to the Reagan era. That was also the time Japanese manufacturers had developed a superior management style to their American rivals and, frankly, started eating our lunch.

Instead of keeping a wall between management and workers, Japanese manufacturers adopted “organizational integration,” which put technical specialists and shop-floor workers together. The result was better products made faster in Japan, and jobs lost permanently in the United States.

"The adverse impact of Japanese competition on US employment became particularly harsh in the double-dip recession of 1980-1982 when large numbers of good blue-collar jobs disappeared from US industry, as it turned out permanently (Bednarzik 1983).

"Previously, in a more stable competitive environment, US manufacturing companies would lay off workers with the least seniority in a downturn and re-employ them when economic conditions improved. Now companies were much more likely to shutter whole plants (Harris 1984; Hamermesh 1989).

"From 1980 to 1985 employment in the US economy increased from 104.5 million to 107.2 million workers, or by 2.6 percent. But employment of operators, fabricators, and laborers fell from 20.0 million to 16.8 million, a decline of 15.9 percent (US Department of Commerce 1983, 416; and 1986, 386)."

Industries like consumer electronics, automobiles, machine tools, steel and microelectronics were all hit especially hard by Japan's advancement.

Most never recovered. Some companies disappeared from the face of the earth, like consumer electronics maker RCA. In 1981 it was a global leader, by 1986 it was bought by GE and then chopped up and sold for parts.

And yes, all this occurred during the tenure of a Republican president bent on tax-cutting and deregulation, and overseeing the advance of the wealth gap in the name of “trickle-down economics,” which Trump’s 2017 tax cut was just another version of, and of course did nothing for working people except make their tax refund checks smaller by at least 50 percent (for me, anyways, despite having no exemptions).

And all this time Democrats wasted attacking their own man didn’t do anything to remind voters what is at stake in this election and not falling the Republican scam, and all this allowed was a new poll claiming that Trump has set a “new record” with his “surprisingly” high approval ratings. But as Eric Lutz pointed out in Vanity Fair, much of the country is suffering from “Trump amnesia” and in dire need of “reminding”:

It’s an absurd thing to say: Next Monday will mark four years since the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a global pandemic, which brought shutdowns, mass death, social and economic upheaval—and, of course, daily efforts by Trump to downplay the whole thing or to convince Americans to inject bleach into their bodies. “Do these people have amnesia?” Virginia Democrat Don Beyer asked Wednesday.

If not collective amnesia, a whitewashed view of the Trump years seems to have set in among some: Polls consistently show Trump leading Biden ahead of their November rematch, even with the latter’s accomplishments and the former’s four indictments, two impeachments, and insurrection. Part of the reason for that is because the former president retains a cult-like hold over his base, which seems to share in his grievances and delight in his viciousness. But Trump also appears to be benefiting from Americans’ short political memory.

Polls indicate that voters recall Trump’s ultimately tumultuous economy more fondly than they rate the sturdy one Biden is overseeing now. That seems to be true on other issues, too: In a New York Times/Siena poll released this month, 40 percent of respondents said Trump’s policies had helped them personally; only 18 percent said the same of Biden’s. In an NBC News poll last month, 40 percent of respondents said they regard Trump’s presidency as better than expected, compared with 14 percent who said the same of Biden.

As pointed out last week, Trump’s presidency saw an actual net loss in employed persons (-2.7 million) from the end of the Obama administration, and even if one subtracts the job losses during the pandemic (the highest since the Great Depression),  the number of new employed under Trump is still less than half of the job increase during the Biden administration. Yet Trump and his supporters lie and lie and lie that working people were “better off" under his administration, and a shocking number of people believe this scam that can only be explained by willful ignorance and the politics of hate and division that blinds people to the truth.

Trump’s “America First” scam is also revealed in his complete incompetence and ignorance in foreign affairs (as testified to by John Bolton), highlighted by the fact that not only did he make Iran and North Korea more dangerous because of his bungling, his apparent quid-pro-quo idea of “diplomacy” makes him just this side of treasonous (i.e., not “patriotic”), perhaps even over that line on occasion. 

He allowed the Taliban to occupy all of Afghanistan in exchange for not attacking U.S. troops during the 2020 election year, and tried to withhold aid to Ukraine in "exchange" for "dirt" on Biden. What was he “promised” in exchange for the suspicion that he gave Putin the names of informants in Russia? Why did he think he needed box loads of classified documents sitting a bathroom in Mar-a-Lago? Were they useful to him for “trade” with our enemies (but his “friends”)? We know that Trump is a self-serving crook, so why not take these suspicions seriously?

But now in the aftermath of the assassination attempt on Trump, we are now being bullied into “toning down” the truth about Trump while his allies continue to hurl flamethrowers of lies:

 

Now we can’t say that democracy is not under threat by the kind of fascism we see in Florida today, that people should be allowed to continue to be “confused” about what the stakes are in this election, and foolishly vote for a man who is no more trustworthy to protect this country’s institutions than, say, Hitler in overturning the Weimar Republic? But wait, you better “watch what you say” for the sake of a “lone nut”:

 

There has been nothing “subtle” about this election. Fears of Biden’s mental state reached a feverish pitch after the first debate. I don’t think that Biden’s memory issues had anything to do with his character; it is Trump and his supporters who lack such things as empathy, compassion—hell, simple human decency, even so-called “Christians” like Mike Johnson. Just fire the grape shot of lies upon more lies as Trump as expected did at the Republican Convention, especially about migrants. Most people in this country are admittedly ignorant about what is going on in Central America, and it is easy to “scam” them into believing anything to "justify" their hate.

The failure to tell the truth is because it might induce “empathy” for migrants and their plight, so Trump twists the reality of why El Salvador—a country long rocked by U.S. interference in its internal affairs—has seen a 70 percent drop in murder rates. Trump is claiming that the drop is “explained” by the country sending all its “murderers” to the US border. The truth is far different, as a 2021 story in Business Insider tells us.  Nayib Bukele—the world’s “coolest dictator,” has issued repeated “state of exceptions,” meaning suspensions of basic human rights: 

More than 60,000 people, mostly working-age men, have been arrested, while signs along roadways feature cinematic images of heavily-armed police ridding the country of ‘terrorists.’ Just as commercial fishermen trawl their way through columns of water to maximize their catch, Salvadoran authorities have rounded people up indiscriminately and with flimsy explanations. Even before authorities crushed in tens of thousands in a span of mere weeks, El Salvador's prisons were overcrowded and disease-ridden. It now tops the list of countries with the highest percentage of their populations behind bars, according to the World Prison Brief, a distinction that has been previously held by the United States. 

Of course this is a better “explanation” for why murder rates are going down in El Salvador than the one Trump hopes uninformed people (no thanks to the U.S. mainstream media) will believe. Insider points out that the current problems in El Salvador are not due to the support of right-wing murder regimes against “communists” of yesteryear, but the “exporting” of US-bred gangs who are more “American” than they are Salvadoran:

The supposed targets, MS-13 and Barrio 18, began in Los Angeles in the late twentieth century and arrived in El Salvador by way of gang members deported from the US. In 2018, then-President Donald Trump referenced MS-13 to say the US had allowed "animals" to cross into the country, and to justify draconian immigration policies. In El Salvador, the gangs have become one of the country's biggest employers, and they have cemented their power through backroom deals with elected leaders. 

Bukele, despite his “tough on crime” stance, made a “deal” with the gangs to commit fewer killings in order to aid his reelection—meaning, of course, that he’d leave them alone. When the “deal” broke down there was a wave of killings that led to more waves of mass arrests that netted at least as many of the innocent as the guilty.   

This has been a PR stunt for Bukele, and a majority of people in the country have bought into it. That doesn’t mean that individual “deals” with gang leaders are not continuing, and that 40 percent of the murders are actually committed by police (but not counted as such) who today are busier targeting brave anti-government and anti-gang protesters than gangs “hiding” in plain sight. One media outlet looked at “690 arrests between March and April, and found that, overwhelmingly, the police are using criteria like ‘looking suspicious’ or ‘acting nervous’ to justify the arrests.”

And you wonder why completely law-abiding people don’t feel safe living in El Salvador, trying to survive between the violence of US-bred gangs and by police sanctioned by the government? No, you have to believe the lies of Trump and Laura Ingraham, and “Christians” like Johnson.  Or for that matter, Latinos who think that parroting a racist line will get them in “good” with racists. The Miami Herald reported on the “phenomenon” of Latinos supporting Trump despite the racist rhetoric:

“We are facing an invasion on our southern border. Not figuratively. A literal invasion…. Every day, Americans are dying. Murdered, assaulted, raped by illegal immigrants that the Democrats have released,” said Cuban-American Senator Ted Cruz, of Texas, who lost against Trump in the 2016 GOP primary. Berrios told the Herald that Latinos who support the Republican presidential nominee disassociate themselves from those negative depictions of new arrivals. “When we talk to Latinos, they’re not hearing, ‘Oh, he’s calling Latinos like me rapists and criminals, even though I’m also an immigrant,’” he said. “He’s talking about those actual criminals that are over there.”

Hector Clark, an immigrant from Venezuela who came to the U.S. 20 years ago on a student visa, believes that Trump should prioritize merit-based immigration of people who will contribute to the United States. “We should know who the person is before saying they can enter. But to open the door for everyone to come in, I don’t agree with that,” he said. “We should have a system to know who is entering and not leave the door open for anyone who wants to pass through.”

This is the arrogance and ignorance of racists—even the Hispanic kind who need to feel “elevated” over “them.” “Merit” is always used to discriminate against people who actually contribute more to the life of people in this country. Isn’t farm work to feed people in this country worth any “merit”? How about construction work? You know, the kind of work “nobody” wants to do? What is so “meritorious” about a college degree that is only good for data processing and answering phones?

Is Harris the right person to go on the offensive and put Trump on the “defensive” on the border and immigration issue? I don’t know, but do we have a “choice” if it means anyone but Trump? If so people are going to have put 100 percent of their energy into exposing Trump for the faker he is—and that includes his lies about this country's racist  immigration policy instead of crawling under a hole every time the border is mentioned. 

This country dug its own hole after 60 years of disastrous and stupid immigration policy that instead of recognizing the need for migrant labor, only made it more difficult to legally enter the country to do the work; hell, even Dwight Eisenhower was aware enough of the reality by increasing the number of legal work permits for migrants to cover the loss of deported migrant workers during “Operation Wetback.” But then came the ending of the Bracero program in 1965 during the heat of the civil rights movement, the result of which was not the “rush” to replace those workers with the “natives”—presumably black labor—but the beginning of the “border crisis” of today.

No time to be “subtle” or clever about politics anymore. There are only two kind of voters today: the informed and the uninformed. Unfortunately the informed voter is in the minority, while the uniformed seem to get their information  from Trump or whoever shouts the loudest or has a bigger platform to spread misinformation, like say Elon Musk on X, who recently had a case thrown out of court in which he complained about a media watchdog recording all the racist, anti-Semitic and far-right conspiracies on X. Musk is a “native” of South Africa, so his far-right views and racism shouldn’t be all that surprising. He even tried to enlist tech billionaire Vinod Khosla  to support Trump, who responded to Musk's entreaty thus:

Hard for me to support someone with no values, lies, cheats, rapes, demeans women, hates immigrants like me," Khosla replied. "He may cut my taxes or reduce some regulation but that is no reason to accept depravity in his personal values. Do you want President who will set back climate by a decade in his first year? Do you want his example for your kids as values?

But none of that matters to power-mad MAGAmaniacs like Musk, who are willing to admit Trump’s little “failings” but those are “nothing” in comparison to his “promise” to protects people’s “freedoms”—or  in truth to protect Trump from his crimes so that he can continue committing them:

 

It is a lie to say that the far-right aim is to “protect” people’s rights, other than gun ownership—which is just another example of hypocrisy for a party that wails about “crime” in this country, when their even worse crimes are protected by the special “immunity” they give themselves (Clarence Thomas again):

 

If Florida is any example, “liberal” views would be essentially banned from public schools, universities and public functions. Extremists on the right claim they are for “parental rights,” but only for those who want schools that promote white nationalist “patriotism” and “Christian” values (i.e. culture war hypocrisy).

It is only a matter of time when the freedom of the press is also under assault in Florida. In the meantime is having an abortion a “freedom”? If so, how does banning it “protect” freedom? How is telling someone they cannot “identify’ themselves the way they “feel” not banning their “freedom”? How is not being able to protest police brutality without getting your skull cracked open “defending” freedom? People like Ron DeSantis and Musk claim to be “free speech” advocates but only for the causes they personally approve; we have to move beyond accusations of “racism” because, you know, it’s “justified,” and Musk has the “proof,” posting all those graphs from “scientific” racists and eugenicists.

Yet House Republicans are attacking social media platforms for their “liberal” bias while ignoring the far worse ways that Musk is using X to promote Trump and his lies. His racist and sexist views that mirror Trump’s are hardly without “real world” effects:

In 2023, as CNBC previously reported, Owen Diaz testified in a San Francisco federal court that his colleagues at Tesla regularly used racist epithets to denigrate him and other Black workers, made him feel physically unsafe at the factory, told him to “go back to Africa” and left racist graffiti in restrooms.

Diaz’s Tesla colleagues also left a racist drawing in his workspace, he said. The drawing was a rudimentary reference to Inki the Caveman, a 1950s-era cartoon whose main character is a Black boy portrayed with large lips, wearing a loincloth, earrings, and a bone through his hair.

Diaz’s lawyers initially called for Musk to publicly denounce the racial harassment at Tesla in exchange for dropping the case, but he refused to make any such statement. After Diaz was awarded $3.2 million in an out-of-court settlement, Tesla continued to deny any wrongdoing. Musk’s other “baby,” SpaceX, has been accused of being a hotbed of sexual harassment and discrimination. Last month, eight women who claimed sexual harassment in an open letter to Musk and were subsequently fired have now filed a lawsuit against him and SpaceX.

Arrogant far-right racist elitists like Musk (again, is a South African native) keep claiming the country (like his former country was) should return to a segregated past where there was never any such thing as a meritocracy. Even in Musk's case, "merit" is a questionable term; what he proven himself "best" at is selling off his PayPal venture, and then using that money to convince people like the Tesla board to give him a $46 billion pay package for his "brand." What Tesla has actually gotten for its money is a 30 percent drop in stock price and mass layoffs worldwide.

The admittedly cash-poor Musk has seen his almost entirely stock-based wealth rise to $300 billion one year to less than $100 billion the next. He was forced to sell-off a huge chunk of his Tesla stock to pay for buying Twitter, and regardless of what he calls it now, it is also a money-loser for him with advertisers abandoning the platform because of its embrace of far-right extremism.  

So we can say that “merit” can be and has been based solely on societal and racial hierarchies, and anyone who doesn’t “look” like Musk is not “qualified.” As noted, on X Musk has posted eugenics and scientific racism screeds to justify his own beliefs.

And it’s all bullshit; the CEO of Scale AI, Alexandr Wang, posted that he was all for a “return” to “MEI” and dump DEI because he only wanted to hire the “best” and "smartest" people, and of course Musk jumped on that bandwagon, as if it isn’t dangerous for morally and ethically-challenged people to be involved in creating “artificial intelligence”—think HAL from 2001: A Space Odyssey. Wang has become an instant billionaire, but some call his company a scam, while others say not but that Wang doesn’t hire based on “merit."  This from a former employee of his company on Reddit:

Can confirm everything that has been said in this thread. They are not a scam, but an entity that doesn't communicate, doesn't give feedback, doesn't answer to any concerns, people get kicked out without notice and explanation, has incompetent people working at every level, hired as freelancers for jobs they don't have human qualities to do and so forth... salaries are often late, sometimes a month, they are frequently off by few hours here and there, and bonuses are paid after like 4 months if ever. Absolutely the worst company I have ever worked for hands down.

 In an article last month, Fortune posted

“I think there’s been a sentiment of late where people have this idea that they want to return to this meritocratic past. The unfortunate part of that, though, is that meritocratic past doesn’t exist,” says Adia Wingfield, a professor of sociology at Washington University in St. Louis who researches racial and gender inequalities in professional occupations. Historically underrepresented groups including people of color and women were largely excluded from many jobs, she notes. “When we talk about advancing DEI, the idea is, yes, to move away from this past, but to move away from a very non-meritocratic past into a future where everyone really does have opportunities, and access to various jobs, forms of work, and so forth.“

“People that think that we‘re over the hill when it comes to diversity and inclusion, both from a racial as well as gender perspective, are delusional,” says Lisa Simon, chief economist at people analytics platform Revelio Labs. “We’re not in a moment where you can get rid of all these policies and hope they will continue. As soon as you remove these things, people go back to hiring people that look like themselves.”

The Trumpian scamming of America is on and it’s no “laffin’” matter. One can only hope that the Democratic convention will be the place where the far-right agenda will be put on notice that lies will not be enough to win the election, and that their freak-outs will finally put the question in voter’s minds that something is just not right about what they are being told by Trump and his stooges, that they are being made fools of by the real “elites” who control this country, the kind of people Trump himself belongs to and is using the office of the presidency not just to enrich himself, but to protect him from his crimes.