Jeremy Scahill is one of the best journalists around and on a recent appearance on Bill Maher’s show, he talked about what he sees as extremely dangerous trends in recent US politics and that all of the current candidates Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, and Bernie Sanders share culpability in varying degrees in creating them.
Ralph Nader also weighed in on the current state of politics.
A lifelong critic of the mainstream media, Nader sees this election season as bringing out its worst instincts, goading viewers into “that kind of vacuous, wild, charge-counter-charge, slur-and-slander that brings them high ratings and high advertising rates.”
But in an interview with U.S. News, Nader expressed more positive thoughts about Trump’s candidacy than Clinton’s.
The liberal activist says Trump has brought some important issues to the fore.
“He’s questioned the trade agreements. He’s done some challenging of Wall Street – I don’t know how authentic that is. He said he’s against the carried interest racket, for hedge funds. He’s funded himself and therefore attacked special interest money, which is very important,” Nader says. “But he’s lowered the level of political debate to unheard-of depths of salacious, slanderous and vacuousness, garnished with massive self-boosterism and repetition.”
“And that’s not good, because that brought a lot of money into the media and that’s the kind of debates they’re going to want to goad.”
…Nonetheless, he says Sanders’ candidacy was meaningful because it simultaneously pressured and exposed Clinton.
“I think he made very few mistakes. He raised a lot of money, so he was viable, from small contributions. He didn’t back down on his record of 35 years. He wasn’t given enough debates … he couldn’t do anything about closed primaries. And he couldn’t do anything about the superdelegates. But he almost won and he would’ve won,” Nader says. “He would’ve defeated Trump easily, much more easily than [Clinton] would’ve defeated him. He doesn’t produce gaffes. He’s very consistent and he’s scandal-free. What politician 35 years in office is scandal-free?”
Wow, it’s as if Nader wasn’t content with the evil he did in 2000, now he wants to help Trump take the White House too!
Got to this one late and the video appears to have vanished. As best I can tell this is a current link to the interview:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Axeyw-9zys
And the next part:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=50x8fWjewFM
My personal opinion is pretty anti-war. And yes, bombing people from drones is waging war on them even if you’d prefer to call it something else. I don’t think these kinds of military intervention help anyone except the people who get more powerful when everything falls down. If you disagree, just imagine how much it would help the US to go after drug sales, an essentially hidden harmful practice done by a few, If we had drones gathering information and using only that information to bomb people suspected of being involved in the drug trade. Might sound great at first to blow up problems and people you disagree with but it quickly snowballs with an error-ridden opaque process, no accountability, and absolutely no vision for what happens in the aftermath.
The people who benefit the most profit from self-fullfilling prophecies. They’re like wacko street preachers talking about how the end times are coming but they have a few bombs ready in case it’s running late. Some of them are in the areas being bombed but the most profitable of them live here, making the munitions and war machines we use to do these things.