Authoritarianism Changes Dreams

An absolute MUST read. So many Americans cannot and will not believe that what happened in Germany could never happen here... Think again, it could, roots have already taken hold. thinkingblue

Excerpt:  The final chapter of “The Third Reich of Dreams” is reserved for those who—in their dreams, at least—resisted the regime (“I dreamed that it was forbidden to dream, but I did anyway”) and those who were Jewish. Beradt writes that such dreams “constitute a separate category, just as the Jews themselves were a separate category under the Nazi regime” and were the focus of “direct, not indirect terrorization.” A Jewish doctor dreams he’s the only physician in the Reich who can cure Hitler. When he offers to donate his services, a blond youth in Hitler’s entourage cries, “What! You crooked Jew—no money?” Later, a Jewish lawyer dreams of travelling through icy Lapland to reach “the last country on earth where Jews are still tolerated”—but a customs official, “rosy as a little marzipan pig,” throws the man’s passport onto the ice. Ahead, unreachable, the promised land shimmers “green in the sun.” It is 1935. Six years later, the mass deportations would begin.
In Germany, “The Third Reich of Dreams” was reviewed as “surprising and gripping evidence” and an “important historical document.” As the psychoanalyst Frances Lang has noted, it’s strange, then, that Beradt’s book has gone “virtually unrecognised” in America. Perhaps it was difficult for such an idiosyncratic history to compete with the more urgent, straightforward accounts that appeared in the nineteen-sixties. (The book is contemporaneous with both Arendt’s “Eichmann in Jerusalem” and Raul Hilberg’s “The Destruction of the European Jews.”) And yet there is still time for the collection to enter the canon of Third Reich literature, and perhaps for it to gain wider circulation. Lang, who practices in Boston, learned of Beradt’s work via a footnote in Freud’s “The Interpretation of Dreams” and wrote about it in the Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association. In her own practice, she has noticed a widespread uneasiness following Trump’s election. She has asked her friends and colleagues to begin collecting dreams.

 https://www.newyorker.com/books/second-read/how-dreams-change-under-authoritarianism

A QUESTION TO ALL TRUMP REPUBLICANS

By Bruce Lindner

So here’s my question for today’s Republicans. In fact, before I proffer it, let’s clear the deck of EVERYTHING else. Forget for the moment about the Mueller investigation. We surrender, Mueller came up short. No collusion, no obstruction, yada yada. Set aside his manic tweeting, the revolving door at the White House, the corruption, the clear evidence that he’s a few marshmallows short of a s’more. Forget even about the Ukraine scandal and the near-certainty that he’s going to be impeached over it.
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Forget about ALL OF THAT!
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And riddle me this:
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Why are you all mum about Trump’s subservience to Vladimir Putin? And don’t you DARE try tell me he isn’t. There’s not a single one amongst you who’s that fucking stupid. He’s been blowing this thug kisses and giving him reach-arounds since the day he oozed into office. He’s met with him not in just conditions of privacy, but in absolute SECRECY. He even confiscated the hand-written notes of an aide who documented one such meeting. He passed classified intelligence directly into the hands of two Russian agents in the Oval Office, yet nary a peep from any of you. In fact, had it not been for the Russian media, the American people would have been none the wiser, since Trump booted our own media out of the room minutes before.
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He’s divided us from our allies seven ways from Sunday, inched us closer to totalitarianism, parroted the fascist policies of none other than Nazi Germany!
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But no condemnation from any of you. Not so much as a discouraging word.
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You Republicans, the very people who like to boast that you’re the “party of national security,” the political descendants of the mantle of Eisenhower, Goldwater and Reagan, who wrap yourselves in Olde Glory and sing the Star Spangled Banner at your NRA meetings and Trump’s hootenannies... you don’t seem to have ANY problem with him carrying out the agenda of Stalin’s ideological successor.
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Look at that face in this picture.

Take a long, hard look at it. I challenge you to sift through the millions of pictures online of Donald Trump and come up with one remotely similar. That’s not the face of a Commander in Chief. That’s the face of a man who knows how to greet his superior. Or at minimum, the face of a man who wants to impress.
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But enough about him. What’s YOUR problem?

Bruce Lindner writes on Facebook, read more here: https://www.facebook.com/macbruce

Basket Full of Deplorables Tampa Florida

The Trump rally in Tampa Florida, proved that Donald Trump’s supporters are “deplorables,” meaning people who are racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic or Islamaphobic, you name it. (Especially non-thinkers who are easily duped) thinkingblue

Trump approvingly tweets video of his rally crowd harassing a journalist
One of the most chilling aspects of the Trump presidency for anyone with a baseline familiarity with history is the way his rhetoric has whipped up crowds at his rallies. The “lock her up” chants against Hillary Clinton, the time a protester was beaten at a campaign event and Trump offered to pay the attacker’s medical bills, the president threatening to “gently” DNA-test Sen. Elizabeth Warren — all of it is cheered by his audience.
The atmosphere had gotten so toxic that at a Tuesday night rally in Tampa, Florida, the president didn’t even need to encourage his crowd. Before his speech, large numbers of audience members harassed CNN reporter Jim Acosta while he was trying to cover the rally — crowding around him threateningly, giving him the middle finger, and leading chants of “CNN sucks.” https://www.vox.com/

VIDEOS

Precious Memories Erased By A Spoiled Rotten President

I have a picture frame hanging on my living room wall that includes different snapshots of my grandchildren. I would occasionally look at it and smile. Now since the Trumpian Rule was enacted making it legal to grab someone else’s kids and hide them somewhere unknown with the intent of using these frightened children as pawns, so that a cruel, merciless, spoiled rotten president can get his own way. I now look at this collection of precious memories with a different perspective. 

As I gaze upon the picture, I imagine crying babies' pleading with their captors, "Mama" "Papa" and think about the horror of having your babies, taken away by force, perhaps, never to see them again, and I cry.

thinkingblue aka mema

Help I'm Trapped in an Absolute Ignorant Nightmare!

Watch these women EXPOSE their total ignorance. thinkingblue

Excerpt:   "You are looking for a way to impeach my president that I worked very hard for,” Dr. Lynnett Bryant said.“Worst case scenario, if he slept with her, whatever,” Linda Churchwell later added. “That’s between him, the Lord, and his family. That is not about the job that he is doing in running our country, which he is doing an amazing job.”

Watch the clip

An Opinion on What Mainly Causes Depression

An Amazing Article telling us that our depression may be caused mainly by social injustices brought about by political neoliberalism, rather than biological. In the times we are living most of us are bombarded with advertisement /propaganda using smiling people (actors) telling us if you buy this or that (or take this or that drug) you will be happy. Without a doubt, this is false and the only ones who wind up happy are those who have lined their pockets perpetuating this garbage. Beyond sad…
thinkingblue 

Here’s an Excerpt from http://inthesetimes.com/article/

How capitalist culture is making us sick.

BY JOHANN HARI

All humans crave connection—to other people, to meaning, to the natural world. So we have begun to live in ways that don’t work for us, and it is causing us deep pain. We live as deeply lonely individuals, primed to believe life is about acquiring the unnecessary products we see in advertising, left to scream at each other through screens to mask how distressed we feel. Yet during the rise of neoliberalism, an alternative explanation for this distress was sold to us, largely by for-profit drug companies: the biomedical model.
They told us our distress is due to spontaneous chemical imbalances in our brains. This was promoted largely by pharmaceutical company PR departments rather than by scientists.
So, neoliberalism makes us miserable by creating a society designed solely for buyers and sellers. Then it uses the pain caused by such a dystopian project as an excuse to tell us our brains are broken and that they’re going to have to sell us even more things—drugs—to fix them.

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PS: Really brings new meaning to Bill Hicks comedy routine on Marketing… https://vimeo.com/62006235

https://player.vimeo.com/video/62006235

Neoliberalism

POLITICAL AND SOCIAL SCIENCE WRITTEN BY: Nicola Smith

Neoliberalism is distinct from modern liberalism. Both have their ideological roots in the classical liberalism of the 19th century, which championed economic laissez-faire and the freedom (or liberty) of individuals against the excessive power of government. That variant of liberalism is often associated with the economist Adam Smith, who argued in The Wealth of Nations (1776) that markets are governed by an “invisible hand” and thus should be subject to minimal government interference. But liberalism evolved over time into a number of different (and often competing) traditions. Modern liberalism developed from the social-liberal tradition, which focused on impediments to individual freedom—including poverty and inequality, disease, discrimination, and ignorance—that had been created or exacerbated by unfettered capitalism and could be ameliorated only through direct state intervention. Such measures began in the late 19th century with workers’ compensation schemes, the public funding of schools and hospitals, and regulations on working hours and conditions and eventually, by the mid-20th century, encompassed the broad range of social services and benefits characteristic of the so-called welfare state.

Neoliberal ideology and policies became increasingly influential, as illustrated by the British Labour Party’s official abandonment of its commitment to the “common ownership of the means of production” in 1995 and by the cautiously pragmatic policies of the Labour Party and the U.S. Democratic Party from the 1990s. As national economies became more interdependent in the new era of economic globalization, neoliberals also promoted free-trade policies and the free movement of international capital. The clearest sign of the new importance of neoliberalism, however, was the emergence of libertarianism as a political force, as evidenced by the increasing prominence of the Libertarian Party in the United States and by the creation of assorted think tanks in various countries, which sought to promote the libertarian ideal of markets and sharply limited governments.

More Here: https://www.britannica.com/topic/neoliberalism

Alabama Kept Doyle Hamm Alive So They Could Legally Murder Him.

The Republican Party in all its lack of wisdom is behind the preservation of the Death Penalty. They tout baby killers at a woman’s right over her body, yet the mantra kill, kill, kill they display when thoughts of war or state murders rear its ugly head. It doesn’t matter that there are those who lack funds to get them out of horrible mistakes they’ve made in their trek through existence (as the wealthy have available). Locking criminals up who murder and maim for the rest of their life is not enough for this bloodthirsty mindset. They (the R people) advocate death without ever considering critical thought and shades of gray (or even mistakes made during trials), black and white is all that they can see. The more life I go through the luckier I feel about being free from such hate that embodies those who pull the lever for a Republican leader. If we keep going in the direction of such hate, a collapse of all that is good, all that is decent for we humans is drawing near. Scary is too mild a word to define it. thinkingblue
PS: BTW, they kept Doyle Hamm alive even though he was dying from terminal cancer, just so they could inject lethal serum into his body that would legally murder him. 

Excerpt From https://www.reuters.com/

Excerpt “It was a gory, botched execution. They gave up when they could not find a vein,” Bernard Harcourt, a professor at the Columbia University Law School who is representing Hamm, said by email on Sunday.

The execution has come under federal court review, with a U.S. district judge calling for the state to preserve evidence, including the clothes Hamm was wearing.

Alabama Department of Corrections officials were not immediately available to respond to Harcourt’s comments.

States including Oklahoma and Arizona have also conducted botched executions that raised questions about death chamber protocols in the 31 U.S. states with the capital punishment.

“I wouldn’t necessarily characterize what we had tonight as a problem,” Jeff Dunn, Alabama Department of Corrections commissioner, told reporters shortly after the execution was called off.

There were two sets of medical personnel who tried to place a line in Hamm’s groin area or in an area between his knees and feet, Harcourt said, adding the inmate, who was examined by a doctor after the execution attempt, had at least 12 puncture wounds.

In court filings in the days before the planned execution, Hamm’s lawyers said he had terminal cancer and a history of intravenous drug use that had severely compromised his veins.

They said Alabama was rushing through a specialized execution protocol, increasing the chances of a flawed procedure.

The state responded at the time it knew what it was doing and could handle the lethal injection. It has not indicated if it will seek a new execution date.

The plan called for the insertion of intravenous catheters into Hamm’s leg or central vein, legal papers showed.

“Our case was that this would be tortuous and bloody and they wouldn’t succeed,” Harcourt said.