(Succuri is now being totally paranoid about links in almost any form. Go to the original for links from the article. (https:/www.counterpunch.org/2019/03/12/its-time))

Emphases mine:

It’s Time.-by Randall A. Shields

I’ve lost all patience with moderates, centrists, incrementalists and mainstream establishment Democrats who think the status quo is not so bad, just needs a little tweaking around the edges. They’d be satisfied just getting rid of Trump – which is fine as far as that goes, it just doesn’t go nearly far enough.

Anybody with a clear-eyed view of the status quo understands the horror of US foreign policy and the shameful neglect of US domestic policy. The system has failed us. The duopoly has frustrated all serious efforts to change things for the better. The owners of the USA, the billionaire class, like things just the way they are. There is no profit in peace or taking care of the needy or delivering justice to the masses. America is owned and dominated by greed monsters who don’t care that their money comes drenched in the blood of patriots and innocent victims of US war crimes.

I’m still furious with the DNC for ripping off Bernie and his millions of supporters and ushering in the Trump presidency.

Mainstream Democrats have failed us. They like to claim to be progressives, liberals and/or part of `the left’ but in truth they are none of those things.

I’m done with those who think war is okay or that the Military Industrial Complex is just a conspiracy theory or that the wildly unfair distribution of wealth in this country is remotely okay. I’m sick and tired of those who insist that the Main Stream Media is equivalent to the “free press,” and NOT the propaganda organs that lied us into Vietnam, Iraq, Libya and Syria (among others) and now Venezuela and Iran while helping to undermine anything smacking of true change or real reform of our screwed up and hopelessly corrupted system. That is not to say that they don’t occasionally say something that is true, just that they can’t be trusted not to lie for the oligarchy, as that is their top priority.

Read on…if you can handle it.

And if you can’t?

Skip to the reply section and leave some kind of pissy comment.

I don’t really give a shit.

MSNBC Yet Again Broadcasts Blatant Lies, This Time About Bernie Sanders’s Opening Speech, and Refuses to Correct Them

MSNBC IS A dishonest political operation, not a news outlet. It systematically and deliberately refuses to adopt a defining attribute of a news outlet: a willingness to acknowledge factual errors, correct them, and apologize. That they not only allow their lies to stand uncorrected but reward their employees who do it most frequently — especially when those lies are directed at adversaries of the Democratic Party — proves that they are, first and foremost, a political arm of the Democratic establishment.

—snip—

Who Owns the Media?

The trend of media conglomeration has been steady. In 1983, 50 corporations controlled most of the American media, including magazines, books, music, news feeds, newspapers, movies, radio and television. By 1992 that number had dropped by half. By 2000, six corporations had ownership of most media, and today five dominate the industry: Time Warner, Disney, Murdoch’s News Corporation, Bertelsmann of Germany and Viacom.

Mega-Corporations controlled by the super-rich determine what information is broadcast to the world and how it is framed. Sandwiched in-between the straight news are poison pills of rank propaganda meant to shape the thinking of the entire culture – such as the present daily drumbeat for war on Venezuela so our rich guys can take their oil, or how they’re all attacking and smearing Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ilhan Omar. The corporate-owned media consciously manipulates the public mind to get people to think and believe what the elite wants them to – which all ends up supporting and enabling their robbing, raping and pillaging of the world. The worst thing about all of this is how appallingly effective it is.

—snip—

“It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.” ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti

Those who support the status quo are complicit in the crimes against humanity that the global elite have committed. You don’t get to call yourself “progressive” if you have propped up the status quo and worked against any meaningful change. Having some moderately liberal social ideas doesn’t make up for all the rest. The lesser evil is still evil. The Establishment is still the Establishment.

Establishment dems are only superficially better than establishment Republicans. At the deepest level they are functional equivalents. Both groups serve the empire and the wealthy elite. They all take the dirty money. They are all okay with war and corruption as long as they get theirs. Anyone who doesn’t understand that by now, understands very little.

“It is the job of thinking people not to be on the side of the executioners.” ~ Albert Camus

The type of society we live in has a huge bearing on our happiness and well-being. The following article goes back to 2015 but is still valid and relevant.

—snip—

Mainstream establishment-supporting democrats are a fine example of people who don’t want to understand what is actually true. They are willing to settle for that which confirms their own biases and that which makes them feel good: Democrats, team blue, those with Ds next to their name. They reduce governmental and social policy to a simplistic team sport and juvenile popularity contest, never noticing that the outcome is always the same: Democrat or Republican, it’s all war all the time, austerity for the people, tax cuts for the rich, bonuses for banksters and crimes against humanity dressed up in pretty rhetoric and a big fat NO to any effort to reform this despicable system.

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citzenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together. ~ Dwight D. Eisenhower

—snip—

We’ve become now an oligarchy instead of a democracy. And I think that’s been the worst damage to the basic moral and ethical standards of the American political system that I’ve ever seen in my life.” ~ Jimmy Carter

We’ve descended into oligarchy and fascism. The billionaires and millionaires at the top don’t care about us. To them we are merely pawns to be manipulated and preyed upon. Everything else about our government is sheer kabuki, slight of hand and rank bullshit.

—snip—

Establishment Democrats are every bit as corrupt as Republicans. They are not serving the public interest, only their own. Corruption is rife from the bottom to the top.

Democrats in Congress who oppose Medicare for All have taken vast sums of money from the pharmaceutical and medical industries. Pelosi took over a million dollars.

Nancy Pelosi is worth $16 million and Dianne Feinstein is worth 58.5 million. (According to Wikipedia.)

American politicians in the modern era invariably get rich while in office.

“You can’t get rich in politics unless you’re a crook.” ~ Harry S. Truman

Now the mainstream Dems want us to all pull together, which would be fine but what they want is for us to unite behind some neoliberal, war-mongering, elitist millionaire who will only betray us to Wall Street and the great American war machine on day one while they cheat any real change agent out of the opportunity to serve the people and history. We’ve seen this movie before.

It didn’t work in 2016 and it won’t work in 2020. Even some of the dead-enders get it now.

A Clinton-era centrist Democrat explains why it’s time to give democratic socialists a chance.

The baton rightly passes to our colleagues on our left.

The result, he argues, is the nature of the Democratic Party needs to shift. Rather than being a center-left coalition dominated by market-friendly ideas designed to attract conservative support, the energy of the coalition should come from the left and its broad, sweeping ideas. Market-friendly neoliberals, rather than pushing their own ideology, should work to improve ideas on the left. This, he believes, is the most effective and sustainable basis for Democratic politics and policy for the foreseeable future.

IMHO, we shouldn’t be trying to unite or make nice with those who still don’t get it. We should be uniting with all of those who DO get it and who have been ignored, belittled, preyed upon and shut out of the process for forever. It’s time for a new deal – and a great big giant new deal. All those people who have been sitting at home on election day need to be given real reasons to come out and choose a new and better destiny. The same old tired crap wrapped in a shiny new box won’t get it. We need a new deal.

I’ve long believed that nothing short of a bold departure from the conventional wisdom will change anything – and most people, when they aren’t being freaked out by propaganda boogymen, want change: better living conditions, greater opportunity, a brighter future for posterity, a viable ecosystem, less violence, more peace, greater equality, less hate, a more benevolent and less corrupt government, a friendlier and more supportive society, etc.

A world of hate and war, fear and loathing, resentment and strife are not what people want and not what they deserve.

The tide of history seems to be turning at long last.

It’s time to get radical and force the changes that are needed – and we should have less than zero patience for anyone who stands in the way – whether it be through ignorance, incompetence, misplaced loyalty, gullibility or malevolence. Too many of these people are impervious to education or reason, they simply need to be defeated or left behind.

It’s time.

It’s time to reform our society from the prisons to the presidency. Don’t listen to the status quo defenders who will tell you that the only thing that matters is beating Trump. That’s the tune the establishment Dems will be singing. We need to be rid of Trump to be sure, but getting rid of the present establishment is paramount. If we shed ourselves of Trump but are still saddled by the same old establishment, we’ll still be just as screwed.

Remember that things have been screwed up in this country since long before Trump came along. His ridiculous reign has simply brought it all into sharp focus – but Trump is a symptom of a much older disease, the logical end result of a corrupt and hateful rightwing government that serves only the myopic, greedy, selfish mega-rich. We are all out of time for putting up with this greed, corruption and madness.

It’s time.

Time to do the right thing.

Randall A. Shields is a well-known blogger posting as One Pissed Off Liberal or OPOL at DailyKos for over a decade, before leaving over their mistreatment of Bernie Sanders and the site’s inexplicable support for Hillary Clinton. He is a 60’s survivor, Woodstock alumnus, a human rights/anti-death penalty/anti-war/prison reform/anti-drug war activist, an artist/poet/writer, a dharma bum, a freedom-fighter and an original Southern hippie.

I repeat:

…we should have less than zero patience for anyone who stands in the way – whether it be through ignorance, incompetence, misplaced loyalty, gullibility or malevolence. Too many of these people are impervious to education or reason, they simply need to be defeated or left behind.

My sentiments exactly.

On this blog as, well as everywhere else.

…ignorance, incompetence, misplaced loyalty, gullibility or malevolence.

A precise definition of the possible reasons…if the word “reason” has any place whatsoever in defining this group of fools…make it “excuses,” I suppose.

A precise definition of the possible excuses being used by the neocentrists here and elsewhere for their mulish refusal to welcome the new.

Welcome or not…

It’s TIME, folks.

Get used to it.

Out with the old, in with the new.

The old became so…so stupid, so plainly criminal with the ascension of Donald Trump to top dog and the mean-spirited dogfight beneath him to maintain at least some position of power in the greed-controlled duopoly…that all pretenses of “truth” were dropped in favor of a false news-promoted he said/she said big lie contest.

And the marks…a supermajority of them, apparently..have finally begun to catch on.

Have a nice day.

I am.

Later…

AG

P.S. Update [2019-3-12 16:53:47 by Arthur Gilroy]: By the way…The Washingtoon Post is already shifting its editorial feet to combat the New Democrats…who in many respects are a more serious threat to the Neocentrist Dems than is Trump. He’s gonna be gone…one way or another…soon enough. They’re here to stay. Bet on it. I will pay the the NY Times, because:


1-It is not under the direct and total control of the Deep State, it’s more of an outlier…and an out(ed) liar when necessary, of course. (See the buildup to the invasion of Iraq for more on that account…Judy Miller at al.)


and


2-It’s my local “paper of record.”


God help me.


However, I have been watching WAPO’s slide rightward with great glee. All you really need is the headlines, most times.


Here’s one that struck me from today:


Ocasio-Cortez’s misleading complaint: Trump did not transfer funds for the opioid emergency.


NICE!!!


Injure two opponents with one headline.


Priceless.

The WAPOctopus squirming sideways with both ends towards the middle at the behest of its controllers.

Gotta love it.


You?