The Great Socialism Experiment

by | Dec 10, 2024 | Politics, psychopaths, The Psychopath Epidemic

WHY DID COMMUNISM FAIL?

I’ve spent decades trying to understand what happened to the “Communist” (although they are better describes as “Socialist”) experiments in the twentieth century, including having spent many years producing a podcast about the Cold War. And the answer to the question “why did the Communist countries fail” is, as you might expect, because you’re pretty smart – complicated. Not only complicated, but also it’s the wrong question because not all of them did fail. China, for example, is doing pretty great by most measurements, and still run by the Chinese Communist Party. In discussions about communism, people often forget about China or they go to great lengths to argue that China isn’t really a Communist country today – which is debatable. 

This post is going to be my attempt to lay out the basic framework for understanding what happened to communism – and why it matters today.

TL;DR

The short version of the story is this:

    1. The major advantage Communism, as a socio-economic theory, has over Capitalism, is that a vision for a better world is central to its vision. Communism dreams of a world of peace, harmony and equality. Marx and Engels provided a broad, albeit abstract, vision for a communist society in their works, emphasizing the abolition of class distinctions, the communal ownership of the means of production, and the end of exploitation. Their vision was centred around a society where human potential could flourish once freed from the constraints of class oppression and material deprivation. Capitalism has no central vision for a better world. It simply assumes that things will just all work out in the end. The largest and longest- running Capitalist experiment, The United States of America, demonstrates the flaws in that assumption. The country has enormous socio-economic issues (economic depressions, huge wealth inequality, wars driven by greed, corruption in the political system, racism, violence, an inability to effectively deal with major threats such as climate change or the COVID-19 pandemic, etc) and doesn’t seem to be able to pull itself out of the tailspin of Late Stage Capitalism.
    1. We should think of the early Communist / Socialist countries, as flawed experiments, not as proof whether or not a theory of social co-operation can or cannot succeed. These early experiments had many problems, but so has capitalism over the course of its history. Like all scientific experiments, we should learn from what went wrong and not throw the baby out with the bathwater. Imagine if someone in 1901 said the idea of people flying in aeroplanes was a “vain fantasy”. Oh wait, someone did – The Engineer-in-Chief of the U.S. Navy.

      1. The early experiments in Communism tried (for good reasons) to quantum leap their countries from being largely agrarian and illiterate societies, barely out of Feudalism (USSR, China) and/or Colonialism (Cuba, Vietnam, North Korea), over the Capitalist phase, and straight into a Socialist transitionary phase, which would lead to the Communism phase. This runs counter to the Marxist view of the progression of society, which envisioned Socialism as the phase to emerge out of an advanced Capitalism.

      1. The early experiments in Communism faced early civil wars, plus immediate, significant, and genuine threats of war and/or invasion from the much more economically and militarily developed Capitalist countries, as well as economic sanctions which blocked their attempts at rapid economic development. They were forced to spend enormous amounts of wealth and labour just to defend themselves against external threats. In some cases (USSR, Vietnam, North Korea) they did have to deal with invasions from foreign Capitalist enemies during the early years of their development, which lead to death and destruction of the meagre infrastructure they had to work with in the first place. They had no “Big Brother” they could turn to for economic and military support.

      1. The Capitalist countries did have the advantage of a Big Brother, The United States of America, which, due to geographic good luck, was not directly attacked during WWI or WWII, did not lose millions of its men and women in those wars, did not have its core infrastructure destroyed by bombs, and therefore emerged in the middle of the twentieth century as the global superpower. It was able to use its economic wealth to isolate the developing Socialist countries, both economically and militarily, and bleed them dry over the next seven decades, by bribing and coercing most of the world to join their economic and trading bloc. Capitalism largely succeeded due to geographic luck.

      1. The attempt by the early Socialist countries to use central planning to manage rapid economic development was hampered by the level of technology in the early twentieth century. They did not have the advantage of having the internet, smart phones, and satellites. Today, in the world’s most advanced countries, government and corporations use “centralised planning” every single day to manage their domestic and global affairs. Central planning requires sophisticated technology.

      1. Some of the early Socialist experiments were co-opted by psychopaths. Psychopaths are a problem everywhere – in every country, and in every organisation. They are defined by a strong drive for power and wealth, low levels of empathy, a high appetite for risk, and a superiority complex, which is often reinforced by early successes derived from the first three, which enables them to do things that most “normal” people aren’t willing or able to do. Psychopaths also rise to the top of Capitalist countries, but they are spread widely, as there are more opportunities to take advantage of, across government, business, religion, the military, the police, the legal system, etc. In developing countries, the opportunities for psychopaths to get wealth and power are more limited, so they tend to end up concentrating in government, the military and religion.

     

    For those of you with an old fashioned attention span, let’s drill down in these ideas in more detail.

    A Vision For Humanity

    The 20th century witnessed unprecedented efforts to reimagine human societies. Socialism and communism—rooted in the revolutionary ideals of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels—promised to end exploitation, eliminate inequality, and create systems where resources were distributed based on need. Yet, history shows us that most attempts to implement these ideologies on a national scale encountered significant hurdles. These failures have often been used to dismiss socialist ideals entirely, but a closer examination reveals that the issues were far more complex, rooted in historical, economic, and geopolitical realities.

    This post examines the reasons behind the struggles of 20th-century socialism, compares them to capitalism’s own failures, and explores the relevance of these debates in addressing today’s pressing global challenges.

    Trying To Skip Over Capitalism

    The starting point should be to clarify something at the outset. None of the countries that usually come up in these discussions – the USSR, China, Cuba, Vietnam, North Korea, etc – were actually examples of “communism”. Communism was the stated goal of each country. It was an ideal, a vision for the future, a dream to work towards. But in Marxism, communism is the end point of a long journey, not the starting point. Those countries were trying to implement socialism, which is just a stepping stone on the journey to communism, or, as Marx called it, “a political transition period”.

    “Between capitalist and communist society lies the period of the revolutionary transformation of the one into the other. Corresponding to this is also a political transition period in which the state can be nothing but the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat.” (Critique of the Gotha Programme)

    Marx and Engels believed that societies would transition from feudalism to capitalism, then through socialism (where the state managed the political transition period) and, finally, into communism (where the state is no longer required).

    It was important for countries to go through capitalism in order to build out the required infrastructure (“material forces of production”) to allow for the socialist transition period. It was also important for the people to be literate so they could read and educate themselves.

    “No social order is ever destroyed before all the productive forces for which it is sufficient have been developed, and new, higher relations of production never appear before the material conditions of their existence have matured in the womb of the old society.” (Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy)

    However, socialist revolutions in the 20th century often occurred in nations far removed from the advanced industrial economies Marx and Engels had envisioned. Russia, China, Vietnam, and Cuba—all significant examples of socialist experiments—were primarily agrarian societies before their revolutions. In these contexts, the necessary economic foundations for socialism were missing. Marx’s framework assumed that capitalism would first fully develop the forces of production, creating a strong industrial base and a politically active proletariat. Yet, in these countries, revolutions were often led by rural peasants rather than urban workers, and the economies were anything but industrialized.

    For instance:

    • Russia in 1917 was a nation devastated by World War I, with an economy heavily reliant on agriculture. The Bolsheviks inherited a country with little infrastructure to support industrial development.

    • China in 1949 faced similar challenges, having endured decades of civil war, Japanese occupation, and economic stagnation.

    • Vietnam and Cuba were even less industrialized, transitioning directly from colonial or semi-feudal systems to socialism.

    Skipping the capitalist phase meant that these revolutions had to industrialise from scratch, a monumental task compounded by political and military pressures.

    It’s important to point out that they didn’t just try to skip the capitalism phase just because they were in a hurry to modernise. There was a worldwide inherent distrust of capitalism in the early decades of the twentieth century, especially after the two world wars, which were seen by many to be the result of capitalist greed, and the Great Depression. The countries who tried to implement socialism had also had direct confrontations with capitalist countries who tried to exert control over each of them. The United States and the United Kingdom both invaded Russia shortly after the Russian Revolution in support of the Czars. The United Kingdom had forced its will on China during the Opium Wars and the United States sided with the Kuomintang during the Chinese civil war. The United States supported France’s colonial occupation of Vietnam during the First Indochina War. And the United States supplied Cuba with planes, ships, tanks, and other technology such as napalm, which was used against the rebels during the Cuban Revolution.

    Centralised Planning Before Computers

    In an attempt to move an entire country quickly forwards – to be ready for invasions by, or war with, the capitalist countries, and famines – these early socialist experiments attempted to use central planning to quickly modernise their countries and to manage the activities of hundreds of millions of people – decades before computers, the Internet and satellites. The population of the Soviet Union in 1920 was estimated to be about 135 million people living in over 22,402,200 square kilometres (8,649,500 square miles). In 1950, China had a population of 552.0 million people in approximately 9.6 million square kilometers of land.

    While they aimed to drive rapid modernisation, their attempts often led to inefficiencies and terrible tragedies. Central planners lacked the real-time information that would have been required to manage such a large effort, leading to misallocation of resources. Factories produced goods that no one wanted, while basic necessities like food and clothing were often in short supply.

    For example:

    • The Soviet Union’s Five-Year Plans achieved rapid industrialisation but often at great human and environmental costs. Quotas were met on paper but ignored quality and usability.

    • Mao’s Great Leap Forward in China attempted to transform the country’s agrarian economy overnight, leading to one of the worst famines in human history.

    These inefficiencies were not inevitable but rather a result of the technological limitations of the time. Today, corporations and governments use modern technology to centrally plan their affairs every day. It isn’t that centralised planning is inherently a faulty concept, it was just impossible at the time.

    Socialism Does Not Equal Political Repression

    Many socialist regimes became authoritarian, concentrating power in the hands of a single party or leader. This centralization often led to political repression, surveillance states, and the erosion of individual freedoms. However authoritarianism is not inherent to socialism. There is nothing in the writings of Marx or Engel that suggest authoritarianism is required. On the contrary, they argue for the “dictatorship of the proletariat”, which they as a temporary phase of working-class rule, fundamentally democratic in nature, aimed at dismantling class distinctions and transitioning toward a classless, stateless society.

    Unfortunately, every society has psychopaths. Experts suggest that between one and four percent of the population at any given time might score highly on the psychopath test. In every country, psychopaths gravitate towards opportunities for power. In the past they have become kings, dukes, popes, and prophets. In modern times, they often become corporate executives, politicians, military leaders, police chiefs… and kings, popes and prophets. We have not yet figured out how to prevent them from getting their hands on power in capitalist countries, and socialist countries weren’t any better.

    However, because these socialist countries were less developed economically, there were fewer places for the psychopaths to find power, so most of them gravitated towards politics and the military. As the countries were all re-building after the destruction from long periods of civil and international war, these countries also had very few institutions that could protect them from having psychopaths rise to power.

    In addition, these countries were constantly on a war footing from day one, with endless threats and attacks from external enemies and their attempts at overthrowing the socialist governments through spies and agents. This lead to the socialist states having to enact harsh measures to prevent destabilisation of their new governments. It’s worth pointing out that capitalist countries also enacted harsh measures against external threats during times of war, for example, McCarthyism in both the U.S.A.and the U.K., the Japanese internment camps in the U.S.A., etc, but these weren’t newly-established governments of extremely poor and developing countries, so their reactions weren’t as harsh.

    The Economic Cost of The Cold War

    Socialist countries faced intense external pressures, particularly during the Cold War. The United States and its allies sought to destroy socialism, employing economic sanctions, propaganda, and even military interventions. For example:

    • The Soviet Union was forced into an arms race that drained resources from domestic needs.

    • Cuba continues to endure decades of economic embargoes that crippled its economy.

    • Vietnam faced catastrophic invasion and bombing campaigns during the war with the United States.

    • North Korea also faced an American invasion.

    These external pressures exacerbated internal economic challenges, making it nearly impossible for socialist economies to thrive. Unlike Western Europe, which benefited from American aid through the Marshall Plan, socialist nations received little support and were often isolated. Their ability to trade with the more developed countries was hampered, and their ability to invest in domestic infrastructure was limited by the need to maintain an arms race against a far more wealthy enemy.

    Capitalism’s Failures: The Other Side of the Coin

    While socialism’s struggles are often highlighted, capitalism is far from a flawless system.

    A quick survey of capitalism’s first century demonstrates that it took a long time to stabilise and find its way.

    In early capitalist societies, child labour became a cornerstone of industrial economies. The factory system, with its insatiable demand for cheap labour, capitalised on the vulnerability of children from poor families. Children worked in textile mills, coal mines, and other industries under hazardous conditions. In mines, children as young as five crawled through narrow tunnels hauling heavy loads of coal. Workdays often lasted 12-16 hours, six days a week, leaving children physically exhausted and deprived of education. Poor ventilation, exposure to dangerous machinery, and lack of safety measures caused frequent injuries and illnesses.

    Slavery played a crucial role in the early development of capitalism, particularly in the Americas and Europe, as a source of cheap labor for plantation economies and industries. In fact, a large part of the financial strength of the capitalist West by the time of the Cold War can be attributed to its history of slavery.

    Financial institutions like the Bank of England and insurance companies profited from underwriting slave ships and plantations. In the United States, slavery was integral to the Southern economy and a key driver of global trade. The cotton industry, powered by enslaved labor, supplied raw materials to British textile mills, fueling industrial growth.

    The rapid urbanization driven by industrial capitalism created overcrowded cities with dire living conditions for the working class. Workers lived in cramped, poorly ventilated tenements often located near factories, exposing them to pollution. Lack of sewage systems led to outbreaks of diseases like cholera and typhoid. While industrialists and factory owners amassed wealth, workers faced subsistence wages and squalid living conditions.

    The expansion of capitalism was deeply tied to imperialism, as European powers sought raw materials, markets, and cheap labor in colonized regions. Colonies supplied raw materials like cotton, rubber, and minerals, which were processed in European factories and sold back to colonial markets at inflated prices. Local economies were often destroyed as subsistence agriculture gave way to cash crops, leading to food insecurity. Indigenous populations were displaced, enslaved, or massacred. The Belgian Congo under King Leopold II is a harrowing example, with millions killed or mutilated in the pursuit of rubber and ivory profits.

    Early capitalism operated without labor regulations, subjecting workers to inhumane conditions. Factory owners maximized profits by keeping wages low and demanding long hours from workers. Workers had no legal protections, no sick leave, and no recourse against abusive employers. These abuses spurred the growth of labor unions and socialist movements, which fought for better wages, reasonable working hours, and safer conditions. Strikes and protests were often met with violent crackdowns by state and private forces, highlighting the alignment of early capitalist states with business interests.

    The rise of industrial capitalism brought about significant environmental destruction. Factories discharged pollutants into rivers and the air, turning urban centers into smog-filled, disease-ridden environments. The destruction of forests for agriculture and industry caused widespread ecological harm. The unregulated extraction of coal, iron, and other resources fueled industrial growth but left landscapes devastated.

    And of course we could talk about The Great Depression of the 1930s, the 2008 financial crisis, the rise of Donald Trump and the billionaire class of politicians and other far-right parties around the world, endless wars fought to grow and maintain American hegemony, the inability to deal with climate change, and growing income inequality demonstrate that capitalism has its own systemic issues.

    However western commentators don’t look at all of these historical issues and say “capitalism failed”. We just accept that capitalism has problems and hope that somehow, some day, someone will fix them. In the meantime, they just seem to grow. And this is partly because there isn’t a coherent vision for the end point of capitalism. There’s no utopian vision that everyone in capitalist countries is striving towards. There is no better tomorrow. Communism, for all of its struggles in the last century, at least has an articulated vision for a better tomorrow.

     

    China’s Hybrid Model: A Unique Case Study

    China’s economic success offers an alternative narrative. After Mao’s death, Deng Xiaoping was able to restructure the Chinese socialist experiment. He had long realised that the CCP leadership had failed the people by trying to do too much, too quickly and with the wrong mechanisms. As he once said:

    “These were not just Mao’s mistakes, they were all our mistakes. Many of us made mistakes; we lacked experience and had poor judgment.”

    “Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China”, Ezra F. Vogel

    He introduced market reforms while retaining state control over key sectors. This hybrid model lifted hundreds of millions out of poverty and transformed China into a global superpower. While many people in the West seem to believe that China is no longer socialist, the CCP itself refers to its current economic model as “Socialism with Chinese Characteristics”.

    “Only by upholding socialism with Chinese characteristics can we bring together and lead the whole Party, the whole nation and the people of all ethnic groups in realizing a moderately prosperous society by the centenary of the CPC in 2021 and in turning China into a prosperous, democratic, culturally advanced and harmonious modern socialist country by the centenary of the People’s Republic of China in 2049, so as to ensure the people greater happiness and the nation a brighter future.”

    Xi Jinping: The Governance of China

    China’s success in the last 50 years demonstrates that socialism didn’t “fail” as many people in the West seem to think. The Chinese socialist experiment took a while to find its way – and is still developing – as is true of capitalism.

    A Scientific Perspective: Socialism as Experimentation

    Drawing a parallel to scientific discovery, socialist experiments can be seen as part of an iterative process. Early failures in aviation did not discredit the concept of human flight; rather, they provided crucial lessons that led to eventual success. Similarly, the failures of 20th-century socialism could inform future attempts to create equitable systems.

    Advocates argue that modern technology, combined with democratic frameworks, could address many of the issues that plagued earlier socialist experiments. Ideas like universal basic income, participatory budgeting, and worker cooperatives represent modern adaptations of socialist principles.

    Conclusion: Rethinking the Debate

    The debate between socialism and capitalism is not merely historical but deeply relevant to today’s global challenges. As the world grapples with inequality, climate change, and political instability, reimagining economic systems is more critical than ever. While 20th-century socialism struggled under the weight of its contradictions and context, its ideals continue to inspire movements seeking a more just and sustainable future.

    Modern technologies, from smartphones to satellites and machine intelligence, allow us to plan and manage a better society in ways the twentieth century socialists could only dream of. The same technologies can also be applied to make it difficult for psychopaths to derail the transition to communism.

    Rather than dismissing socialism outright, we should view its history as a source of lessons for building better systems in the 21st century.

     

    American Hypocrisy Over China

    by | May 9, 2024 | capitalism, climate change, Politics, propaganda, Propaganda Watch, Public Relations, US politics

    I’m not an expert on world trade disputes, but it seems to be that the U.S.A.’s current whining about Chinese manufacturing is pathetic and hypocritical. American manufacturers, with the full support of the U.S. Government, has spent 40 years outsourcing their manufacturing to China in order to benefit from lower Chinese wages and TCO, so they could sell their cheap products to the world. Those same policies that benefited U.S. companies in the past now pose an economic threat, as Chinese companies make and sell their own goods to the world. There’s a stunning level of hypocrisy criticising China while having benefited from these manufacturing dynamics, but try to find that perspective articulated in the mainstream U.S. media. Instead they just continue to act as the P.R. arm of the U.S. government and its corporate owners.

    And surely we want the world for have as much cheap, high quality green energy products as possible, don’t we? On one hand, the U.S. government says that climate change is a top global priority – on the other hand, they don’t want China to produce too many products to solve the problem.

    Me:

    The U.S. government is complaining that China is “creating an oversupply of clean energy products”. They are also complaining that China is “overproducing” products and “dumping” them on global markets. This seems churlish to me. I thought the US believed in “open markets” and capitalism? Don’t the US also use tariffs and government funding to make their manufacturers more competitive?

    ChatGPT:

    You’re picking up on the contradictions that often emerge in international trade rhetoric. The U.S. has long championed open markets and free trade, but that support is sometimes tempered by national interests and the desire to protect domestic industries.

    Let’s break down the criticisms you’re mentioning:

       

        1. Oversupply of Clean Energy Products: China has heavily invested in clean energy manufacturing, like solar panels and batteries. The oversupply issue is essentially that China can produce more than the global market demands. This drives down prices, benefiting consumers and countries looking to transition to renewable energy but also putting pressure on non-Chinese manufacturers who struggle to compete with lower-priced imports.

        1. Dumping Allegations: Dumping refers to selling products abroad at prices below their normal value (often below production costs) to capture market share. Critics in the U.S. argue that China’s subsidies and state support lead to artificially low prices that damage U.S. manufacturers.

        1. U.S. Use of Tariffs and Subsidies: Yes, the U.S. has its own protectionist policies, such as tariffs and subsidies. The Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, for instance, incentivizes U.S. clean energy manufacturing, while tariffs imposed during the Trump administration continue to impact trade with China.

      In essence, while the U.S. preaches free markets, it’s not above using government interventions to protect its industries. The complaints about China are often rooted in the notion of maintaining a “level playing field,” where countries are expected to follow a similar set of market rules. However, these rules are often defined through political and economic lenses that favor the rule-maker’s interests.

      These dynamics reflect broader tensions in global trade, where the line between fair competition and protectionism becomes blurry, especially with strategic sectors like clean energy.

      Me:

      Can you give me examples of where the US used its economic and military power to make sure its manufacturers didn’t have to worry about a “level playing field”?

      ChatGPT:

      The U.S. has often wielded its economic and military power to protect and advance its manufacturers’ interests, sometimes at the expense of the concept of a “level playing field.” Here are a few notable examples:

         

          1. Marshall Plan (1948-1952): After World War II, the U.S. implemented the Marshall Plan to aid Western European reconstruction. While it provided crucial support for European economies, it also tied many of the aid recipients to American products and markets. The plan ensured European countries remained aligned with U.S. interests and created a favorable trading environment for American manufacturers.

          1. Operation Ajax (1953): The CIA-backed coup in Iran removed Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh and reinstated the Shah. The overthrow protected U.S. oil interests and their control over Iran’s oil resources, ensuring that American and British oil companies retained profitable operations in the region.

          1. Intervention in Latin America: Throughout the 20th century, the U.S. supported coups and regimes in Latin America to ensure stability favorable to American businesses. In Guatemala (1954), the U.S. supported a coup to protect United Fruit Company’s interests after land reform threatened its dominance.

          1. Trade Agreements and WTO Disputes: The U.S. has leveraged its negotiating power in international trade agreements like NAFTA and the WTO to secure preferential treatment for its manufacturers. At the same time, it has challenged other countries at the WTO for practices that disadvantage U.S. companies, winning cases like the one against China for rare earth export restrictions.

          1. Tariffs on Japanese Electronics and Cars (1980s): As Japan became a significant competitor to the U.S. in cars and electronics, the U.S. used tariffs and quotas to restrict Japanese imports and protect its own manufacturers.

          1. Recent Trade Wars with China: The U.S. imposed tariffs on a wide array of Chinese goods to counter what it claimed was unfair competition due to Chinese government subsidies, currency manipulation, and intellectual property theft. The tariffs effectively protected certain U.S. industries, even as they strained global supply chains.

        These actions demonstrate how the U.S. has historically prioritized its national and economic interests, often invoking the language of free markets but frequently resorting to state intervention, military action, or diplomatic leverage to secure advantages for its industries.

        Using ChatGPT to Analyse The News

        by | Apr 5, 2024 | Culture Jamming, israel, Lifehacks, Politics, propaganda, US politics

        One of my hobbies at the moment is to use ChatGPT to help me analyse the news. I imagine this will be come pretty standard in the near future, and there will be better tools to use. At the moment it seems the ABC has blocked ChatGPT from reading its articles, so I have to copy and paste the article into GPT. But then I run a couple of prompts to get it to breakdown the story for me. My basic objective is to get GPT to act as a second brain, helping me uncover the biases in news stories and highlight the gaps in the coverage.

        Here’s GPT’s analysis of a recent ABC article about the US and Israel. It gave the original article a rating of 6 our of 10 for journalistic quality.

        Media Is Politics

        by | May 19, 2019 | activism, Australia, Australian media, Australian politics, Culture Jamming, media 2.0, Podcasting, Politics, propaganda, psychopaths, The Psychopath Epidemic, TheWarOnYourMind, TPN, You Are Blind

        I’ve been saying it for 20 years. If you want political influence in a democracy, you need to control the media. That’s why I started TPN. That’s why Murdoch is king. Don’t blame the voters. They get their opinions from the media. Don’t blame the politicians. They were chosen by the media to do a particular job. It’s the media. If we want change, we need to control the media. We need to invest in independent media. Not the ABC. Truly independent media. That’s why you don’t want advertising to find your podcasts. That’s why you don’t want VC firms to invest in New Media. That’s why you don’t want Facebook to be the new publishing platform. Those things just subvert the opportunity to wrest control of the future from the rich white psychopaths.

        What can you do? You can make the media. Make podcasts. Write blog posts. Write books. Make documentaries. Make comics.

        TAKE CONTROL.

        My Thoughts On Mueller and Russiagate

        by | Apr 21, 2019 | Politics

        The tl;dr version:

        1. My basic policy is that most people in power are possibly psychopaths (see my new book The Psychopath Economy) and therefore we should investigate them as often as we can. Trump especially falls into this category, as do many of the people around him.

        2. I had no problem with the Mueller investigation. Ever.

        3. My main issue with it has always been that some people on the left seemed to treating collusion as a fact, despite there being no (or not enough, if you prefer) evidence to conclude that. As I’ve always maintained – meeting with Russians, in and of itself, was neither illegal nor evidence of collusion. Neither was hoping Russians would release hacked emails.

        4. The media hype around collusion for the last two years, in my opinion, was not justified by the evidence.

        5. The Mueller Report, rightly or wrongly, declared there (and I quote): The investigation did not establish that the contacts described in Volume I, Section IV, supra, amounted to an agreement to commit any substantive violation of federal criminal law-including foreign-influence and campaign-finance laws, both of which are discussed further below.”

        6. Therefore Mueller seems to agree that there wasn’t enough evidence to conclude a conspiracy / collusion – and so why all of the hype about it for the last two years? Why were people so convinced it was a fact?

        7. As for Russian interference, the FBI already investigates that, so there’s no need for a separate investigation, as far as I can tell. That does seem like a waste of money, but hey, the US has money to burn, so why not.

        8. As for who hacked the DNC, I acknowledge that Mueller concurs with the intelligence agencies – which isn’t surprising, seeing as he’s a former Director of the FBI. I, of course, don’t trust the FBI or the CIA, because they have been caught out lying continually in the past. That doesn’t mean they are wrong in this instance, but they have a shitty track record at telling the truth, especially when it involves Russia. Does that mean you should or shouldn’t trust his findings on collusion? I don’t care. Trust or don’t trust. Up to you.

        9. Assange, on the other hand, has an excellent track record of exposing lies and telling the truth, at least as far as we know. That said, he might be lying in this instance, or just plain wrong. I have no evidence either way. So I’m neutral on the issue.

        10. If Russia *did* hack the DNC and leak it to Assange, I don’t really care. Good on them both. The leak exposed the Clinton / DNC corruption, and a lot more, including France’s motivations for destroying Libya, so the leak was in the public interest and I applaud whoever was behind it.

        11. Was all of the hype around collusion justified? Apparently not, if Mueller couldn’t find enough evidence to charge anyone with conspiracy. So why did the hype exist? Maybe the media, supposedly made up of professional and highly trained journalists and editors who are good at being objective, just got carried away? Like they did when they told us Saddam had WMD. But Cicero told us to always ask “cui bono” (who benefits)? Who benefited from two years of collusion delusion? The media sold a ton of papers and tv advertising, which boosted their revenues. The DNC got to distract people away from their own corruption (as revealed by the leaks) and how they screwed the Sanders campaign during the primaries – and eventually lost the election to a buffoon who didn’t even want, or expect, to win. Did these parties deliberately distract the American population with the collusion delusion? I don’t know. I have no evidence to support those theories. But I would love to know.

        The LONG version:

        To avoid having to repeat myself over and over: my point over the last could of years has never been that Trump isn’t dirty or guilty of all sorts of crimes. On the contrary – I assume he is dirty. What I’ve been going on about for the last couple of years has been that the COLLUSION narrative that everyone has been obsessed with was based on zero evidence. Having meetings with Russians was not illegal or evidence of collusion – it was evidence of having meetings with Russians.

        As for people saying there was evidence but just “not enough for indictment”, I think that’s heavy spin doctoring. Conspiring is like being pregnant. It’s a binary situation. Saying “but they french kissed” does not mean there is evidence they are pregnant. An agreement to conspire on something is black and white. Either they agreed to conspire or they didn’t. There isn’t any way to have a partial agreement.

        Over the last couple of years, a lot of people told me I was insane / naïve / a dupe because I wouldn’t agree with the collusion narrative. They assumed Trump (or his campaign’s) guilt, I gather, because it’s what they wanted to believe. But, of course, it turns out I was right (at least according to the Mueller Report).

        And I’m highly amused that those same people are now either: a) denying they ever claimed there was / believed in collusion, b) trying to spin it into “but but but what about cover ups?” or c) saying “but but but he’s a criminal.” Instead of being honest and saying “yeah we sure did jump the gun on that one and maybe we should learn to think before we buy into media narratives.”

        I think the questions we should be asking now are:

        Who created the narrative?

        What did they hope to gain?

        Why did the media push it for two years when it was obviously bullshit from the get-go?

        And why did you buy into it?

        And before you say something about “Russian interference in the democratic process”, a) that isn’t new, b) we didn’t need this investigation to tell us that and c) there’s already ongoing investigations into that, has been constantly for 100 years.

        Investigations are fine, have as many as you want. But investigating the foreign interference in domestic politics is something the FBI gets paid to do and has been doing for nearly a century. Russians attempting to interfere in American elections has been going on since 1930. Nothing surprising about it. FBI files are full of it. Pretty much all J. Edgar Hoover ever thought about.

        It should be pretty clear to everyone by now that the whole COLLUSION!!! narrative we’ve had for two years was overblown and that *someone* had an agenda behind it. Was it the Obama administration trying to deflect attention from their failure to stop the Russians? Was it the DNC trying to deflect attention from how they fucked Sanders and lost the election? Was it the media just profiting from the chaos? Was it Wall Street who continued to bleed America dry and run their foreign wars while everyone was distracted by nonsense? Was it a little of all of those things? I don’t know the answer – BUT I think those are the right questions to be asking about now because THAT is what is destroying America’s democracy. Not the Russians. Not Trump. It’s the forces that allowed Trump to get elected in the first place.

        Amy Goodman interviewed Noam Chomsky recently and asked him to explain the Trump presidency. At the 48 minute mark he nails the move of both major parties to the right since the 1970s, and how the GOP managed to balance their primary constituency – big business and the wealthy – whilst also targeting small but passionate niches – the religious right and gun owners. He also explains why Russiagate was such a bunch of nonsense.

        I would have hoped that after the whole “Saddam has WMD!” furor 18 years ago, Americans – especially those on the “left” – would have developed a better bullshit filter when it came to interpreting the US media. Apparently they aren’t ready yet. Here’s a handy guide for what to do the next time you hear something in the news which maps into your confirmation bias.

        The way people are doubling down on their commitment to the Russiagate narrative reminds me of how members of a doomsday cult act then the big day doesn’t happen. They don’t acknowledge they were wrong. They are too invested in their beliefs. So they often become more fervent than ever before. American politics has become, more than ever before, a matter of religious fervour – even for the atheists.

        One other thing I’ve suspected over the last year or so is that Trump (and his father before him) actually has real connections to Russian mafia via Semion Mogilevich, Bayrock, Felix Sater, etc. We talked about those on BFTN 4 and BFTN 18. I’m quite surprised Mueller didn’t report on that or Trump’s reported tax fraud (as discussed that on BFTN 21).