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May 7Liked by John Steppling

I share Shaenah’s mistrust of Naomi Wolf even though I have liked Wolf’s output in the past and note how she was much preferable to that other Naomi – Klein. But Wolf has fallen into that “pincer movement” as I think of it i.e. that phony division between “Left” covid/climate/trans shillers and the “Right” sceptics but anti-Marxists. Wolf has made a big fuss about “her new friends on the Right” – she seems to be quite happy about this. You think it’s something she might have wondered about and ought to have realised the “pincer strategy”.

She has also gone into the Christian thing in a big way. I noted the same thing from Russell Brand and I wonder what the hell is going on.

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(This is Shaenah) Lol! Good points there. I think that there is a large shift to the right of people who were formerly liberals, which is interesting. Then the disaffected liberals call the current liberals Marxists . It’s all so absurd and at the same time deeply unsettling. I too wonder what the hell is going on…

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It has been part of the (deliberately intended) fallout of this “pincer movement”. Those – and I speak as one of them! – who always identified as “Left” but who, on refusing to bow to the ferocious covid mantra, found themselves being forced down Right Wing channels, become more and more exposed to that Grand Conspiracy, occult, interpretation of history – the one that e.g. would cast Marx as an “agent of the bankers” etc. At the same time, increasing exasperation with those on the Left who cheerfully went along with the vaccine/lockdown chant only reinforced a sense of alienation from the Left.

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Positively Dickian...PKDick, that is. Left and right is in actuality another way to divide us. Finding commonality is the road to solidarity. I sure don't know what to make of the new found religion though, but like you George, I found myself communing digitally with more people who were considered right once the scamdemic was happening full force. I had more in common with those who refused to be shepherded into following orders, but not for all the same reasons. I certainly was not waving an American flag and chanting USA USA USA and calling the capitalist ponzi scheme and coup a commie plot. And that is where we would always bump heads, my new friends on a "freedom" side. I also found myself within a very small group that had looked into the pandemic from all sides and discovered the deep fraud and how it was perpetrated, which lead me to take a deeper look at the medical cartel, one of capitalism biggest and most profitable arms of the vampire system next to the military industrial complex. I understand that the poor do not have access to health care that the rich have, but those who do have insurance, either medicare or job-provided, need to wake up and see that the petroleum based meds being shoved down our throats aren't making us healthy. So I think it not so much capitalist healthcare, but a healthy environment that is lacking, clean air and water, fresh food, less stress (stress is a huge killer) and dignity for human beings and animals and the natural world and life itself. I am with Corey on that.

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That there is no resistance to the increasing impoverishment and acceleratingly unbearable demands on more and more of the population may be seen as an inevitable outcome of a populace that no longer even thinks in terms of protest – perhaps because there is less sense of solidarity than ever before. Everybody feels isolated, demoralised.

I recall a book called “Going Postal” by Mark Ames which drew a connection between the outbursts of violence in modern day work places and similar occasional outbursts in the old slave communities of the south. Ames noted that the only slaves likely to try and escape were those who were newly captured i.e. those that were not brought up to be slaves. Those who were born into slavery thought of slavery as their natural condition and would be supremely unlikely to rebel. Perhaps the modern atomised masses now have this instilled sense of impotence.

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very demoralizing indeed

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