“The Democrats are bought and the Republicans even more so. They don’t represent us. They represent their donors. We have taxation without representation, just as we did before the American Revolution.”
Reasons for optimism.
Like scraping diamonds from a dust-bowl, not so readily a reflex in this arse-end-of-an-era.
Justice is Coming, is absolutely not to be muddled with the skin-crawling billionaires book club, pluto-tickling, bedside yacht reads of tycoon’s pet authors such as Yuval Noah Hariri & Philip Dwyer, who are disturbingly given so much agency & inches in your sunday supplement’s gloss over.
No! this one comes from the rather splendid & increasingly relevant Cenk Uygur, founder & chief antagonist at the excellent & trailblazing The Young Turks (TYT) independent online-media platform based out in “sunk ship” USA.
“That’s why decade after decade, since we have been living under corporate rule, the only thing that passes consistently is tax cuts for the rich and for … corporations.”
I have personally only really come to fully appreciate TYT & the author recently, after being deprived of daily newspapers for a sizeable section of my regular information intake.
“If 80 percent of people want a policy and their so-called representatives refuse to give it to them, do you really live in a democracy?”
The network & it’s news had periodically provided excellent intel & research for some of the more eclectic & obscure Trump Disintegration faecal mania phenomena. “Protected” offenders from his criminal entourage, characters like Jared Kushner, along with lesser covered dirt spew from the Pricktator’s brain-numbing corrupt & criminal rampancy, such as the Mar-a-Lago bribe mill (which was so well captured in the epic book The Grifter’s Club-Trump, Mar-a-Lago & the Selling of the Presidency), were the kind of critical but sparsely investigated filth that TYT had the stones & forthrightness to cover & cover.
The thorough, bat-&-ball style breakdowns shredded out by Cenk & his regular co-host, Ana Kasparian, were frequently bold, well researched & passionately argued.
“Calling news with a corporate bias “objective” was the best trick the media ever played. Corruption is the goose that laid the golden egg for the media as well as politicians. You know who doesn’t want to rock the boat? The guy that owns it.”
Along with piling up Rupublicans on the scrap heap, they would also ruthlessly dispatch “corporate Democrats” with similar aplomb.
Cenk has acquired my genuine respect on a wealth of issues, & his displays of a very vigorous, committed, & authentic pursuit of justice & the just cause, in a non-partisan & universal standard that I think is highly honourable.
“Special interest groups run Washington. And I don’t mean that metaphorically, I mean, literally.”
The platform also operates as a kind of watchdog & documentarian cache, as the ruin & ransacking cascades so fast & extensively in these absurdly troubling times. Foregone episodes targetting specific & spectacular criminal onslaught & wrongdoing are vital deposits & reference – perhaps even future prosecution material – for the murrain of marauding bandits, corruptorcrats & despoilers surfing the shitstorm & cashing in on bloating crisis & political decay.
So when I heard that he had written a book, & then was/is running for president in 2024, I knew that I needed to read what he had to write (especially with a title as optimistic as this this – an age like now).
Another subject that made me want to read this book, was that it apparently contained almost a full chapter on Sheldon Adelson (it does).
Adelson was one of the worst, most malign, corrupt & corrupting “mega donors” & political poisoners this side of the century, & he was also one of Runt’s largest & staunchest paymasters & overlords. A preposterously harmful & withering force for wrong, with extraordinary criminal connections & misdeeds (he quietly “got off” a major criminal trial for a set of serious corruption, racketeering, bribery, murder & organised crime charges relating to his casino empire & overseas gambling operations in Macau in 2015), as well as an arch Zionist & ethno-fascist-supremascist, he was, & is, barely covered by mainstream media (why is that then?)
in fact, as far as I am aware, this is the first book I know that has given him a “chapter” or made any substantive effort to cover this absolute, total & utter fucking monster of a man.
Again, Uygur seems prepared to go where many others don’t, & pursue some of the most damaging, most destructive & most dangerous individuals & events of the era.
“George Soros has nothing on the Koch brothers, the late Sheldon Adelson, or the Mercer family. These guys give way, way more to Republicans than Soros does to Democrats. I would definitely take all their money out of politics, including Soros’. Otherwise we don’t have democracy, we have an auction.” – “They wouldn’t change it if their (political) lives depended on it because they do. They’d never win another election if we ended private financing of elections. The whole party is built on corruption.”
Cause for reading the book aside, how does Justice is Coming measure up exactly & what does it offer?
The guy just goes off, on a wide arc of contemporary & historical flashpoints that have led to this critical eve of collapse & corrupto-overgrowth in the modern American crisis & meltdown.
There is a very large pool of disaster & hidden history covered – from the Powell Memo, the crazed & catastrophic Citizens United bill (unlimited campaign contributions/dark money) & the kind of corporate capture absolutism that has effectively taken the country over. The long running & now ascendant moneyed, corporate, libertarian & “private interests” criminal conspiracy to hijack, derail, subvert, neuter & reverse “all/any positive gains” of government & state, flipping it to a kind of pluto-corporate concierge for the wealthy to joyride & bleed according to their business whims & authoritarian urges.
How did this happen? At which point? Which individuals, collectives, were responsible? How were such harmful, detrimental & unpopular vandalisations ever passed or permitted?
In a remarkable summary, Cenk sets about arguing the case & laying out the politics & history behind this surreptitious demolition & confiscation.
Cenk also acts as a Runt slayer, resoundingly exposing the double-crossing, conman-supremo fabulist’s betrayal, fraudulence, treason & falsity with crushing clarity. Runt’s gigantic tax break for the wealthy & corporatisations – strangely omitted from memory by his cack-cult – is just one of the boil lancing beat-downs & bare-alls that are launched against the Faecal Fuhrer in a weltering scribe of affirmative elimination & straightening out of “reality TV” enhanced hoaxer trash that seems to have so many rats scurrying for the cliff edge.
“That’s what the press and Democrats never understood about the appeal of Donald Trump to Republican voters – they didn’t mind the lies, they wanted to be lied to! They wanted to be told they were still special, that their race made them better than others, and that they deserved to have power forever just because of who they are. They needed that sense of unearned entitlement. And if your looking for someone to tell you lies, who better than the biggest liar in the country? Trump will tell you any lie you need to hear to get what he wants out of the deal. His ability to lie at that scale was not the bug, it was the feature.”
“Powell [Lewis Powell] had told the Chamber of Commerce that business interests could use an “activist-minded Supreme Court” as “the most important instrument” in acquiring power. He was right. This was an end run around democracy. Pack the court with “activist-minded” judges in favour of the wealthy, and they’ll change the laws with just a couple of people on the bench.”
Justice is Coming details a veteran observer, commentator, campaigner & activists concerted, of-the-moment, overview, antidote & strategy under the pall of oblivion & augmented ignorance.
It is extremely interesting, provocative & informative.
The willingness & ability to focalise & chase rarer key points & crux phenomena is also both richly rewarding & pivotal to a stronger realpolitik & no-prisoners style of dilemma & threat busting.
This is very necessary now, & Cenk’s blend of reason, common good, truth & a form of “bare knuckle” defence of protections, freedoms, justice & morals – all of which are in serious jeopardy with the kind of corrupto-authoritarian false nationalism that are circling the tank – are a worthy weapon for good in this grave moment.
His work is worthy of your attentions.
It is a very valuable & stimulating read – from a seasoned veteran – covering subjects & individuals that are extremely pertinent to the imploding structures.
If you want a hugely incisive, informed & unrestrained take on the crisis, it’s origins, & the progressive tool box/ammo crate that can fight us out of this shit-sty, this is one of the most crucial voices on the matter.
Cenk Uygur, 2023, St Martin’s Press, 272 pages.