Simon Robinson

Husband, father, coach, educator. in that order. Usually. (Inclusion advocate - Coaching for All)

[Simon Robinson @coachrobbo]

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[Caitlin Johnstone @caitoz]

Awakening from the propaganda matrix is like being a conservative: you’re frequently disgusted with society and where it appears to be headed. But unlike a conservative, you’re disgusted by actual problems instead of imaginary nonsense.

Also unlike a conservative, your problem is not with relatively new societal developments like recent immigration waves and LGBTQ acceptance; your problem is with abusive dynamics which have been plaguing civilization for centuries. Capitalism. Imperialism. Militarism. Settler-colonialism. Genocide. Plutocracy. Exploitation. Consumerism.

Many rightists warn urgently that our society is on the verge of plunging into a nightmarish authoritarian dystopia, but if you’re truly unplugged from the indoctrination of the empire you understand that the dystopia is already here, and has been for a long time. The overwhelming majority of the people in our society are already thinking, speaking, working, shopping, spending, voting and behaving pretty much exactly how the ruling class wants them to. If they put microchips in our brains which allowed them to fully control our minds, they’d have us moving around in more or less the same way we’ve been moving for generations. We are seeing increases in authoritarianism as our rulers tighten their grip on power, but those measures are being rolled out to keep the current system in place, not to create a new one. They’re not changing anything about the prison, they’re just installing better locks on the doors.

Until you’ve fully liberated yourself from the indoctrination of the mainstream imperial worldview, you don’t truly understand that this is dystopia. You don’t understand how nightmarish it is to live in a society where everyone is marching to the relentless drumbeat of profit and domination. You think it’s fine and normal for people to go their whole lives with their entire identities wrapped around their careers and the goals that they have accomplished within them. You don’t notice anything amiss with the way human lives are being psychologically shaped by propaganda and advertising to make them identify primarily as workers and consumers, and for them to be imprisoned or made homeless if they can’t or won’t be hammered into those shapes.

When you’re still plugged into the imperial worldview, you don’t think much about the horrors your government is unleashing upon people in other countries. If you think about politics at all, “foreign policy” is just one of many issues of consideration, and is much less worthy of your attention than whatever hot partisan topic is being pushed in mainstream discourse on any given day.

When you take the blinders off, you’re not able to ignore that stuff anymore. You’re acutely aware that unfathomable suffering is always being unleashed by your rulers upon foreigners whose lives matter just as much as yours does, and that atrocities are being inflicted in your name which are just as horrific as they would be if they were happening in your neighborhood.

These things disgust and outrage you. This whole dystopia does.

The way people in your life mindlessly regurgitate war propaganda about this or that empire-targeted nation. The way movies and TV shows manufacture consent for this hellscape. The way almost every product you interact with came into your life through depraved acts of international exploitation. The way none of the artists you’ve admired seem remotely interested in truth or justice, serving up nothing but vapid distraction in pretty shapes. The elections. The advertising. The phoniness. The way everyone’s always running around in circles frenetically trying to avoid experiencing even one single moment of true sincerity.

It looks more and more unwholesome the more lucid you become. You look at a US presidential debate, or MrBeast, or Jake Paul staging a glitzy exhibition match with an ancient Mike Tyson, or the way people are using all kinds of exploitative gig economy apps to sell off more and more of their time, labor and dignity in order to survive, and you just want to howl like a wounded animal. Some primordial eruption at this twisted thing our species has become.

This doesn’t mean you become bitter and jaded — at least not if you remain dedicated to the experience of truth. All it means is you stop looking for joy and satisfaction in the places this perverse civilization tells you to look for it. Instead of chasing after this dystopia’s warped definitions of success and trying to look like what you’ve been told a well-adjusted member of society ought to look like, you begin finding enjoyment in real things. Love. Real human connection. The thunderous beauty of the natural world. The crackling delight of the raw sights, sounds, smells and sensations which come with living a human life on this planet — even in the thickest manifestations of our madness. True romance, if you dare.

And as trying as it can be, it’s the only path toward real happiness. None of the people who are plugged into the matrix are really enjoying themselves, as hard as some of them try to pretend otherwise. How could they be? It’s impossible to be truly happy when deep down you know something’s profoundly wrong. That’s why antidepressants and anti-anxiety meds are being shoveled out like Halloween candy. Everyone’s getting more and more miserable, because you can’t build real lasting happiness on a foundation of propaganda and lies. The products never satisfy, the false definitions of success never deliver fulfillment, the toil never ends, and the cognitive dissonance grows stronger and stronger.

A devotion to truth can get ugly. It can get uncomfortable. It’s sometimes downright agonizing. But it’s the only path toward a healthy world. We can only begin moving toward health by facing the truth, as unpleasant as it might be. Our future as a conscious species lies on the other side of some confrontations that take us way outside our comfort zones. We come to nirvana by way of samsara.

[Simon Robinson @coachrobbo]

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[IndependentAustralia @independentaus]

#4 TOP IA STORY OF 2024: ABC complaint over Insiders’ collaboration with Murdoch’s News Corp
~ @AlanAustin001
https://t.co/0H4M3C6y21
via @IndependentAus

[Simon Robinson @coachrobbo]

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[Craig Mokhiber @CraigMokhiber]

Israeli propaganda is entirely constructed on easily debunked lies. But to fully understand the Zionist narrative from Palestine to Amsterdam, in which Israeli perpetrators claim to be victims, we must also understand that (1) to someone who has only ever known impunity, accountability feels like persecution (2) the stripping away of privilege feels like discrimination (3) criticism of their racism feels like a racist attack on them (4) holding them to the same standards as everyone else is an intolerable denial of their superiority, and (5) facts, truth, law, human rights norms, and anything else that contradicts their political ideology feels like a personal threat. This is how a racist political ideology morphs into a kind of mental illness-and a very dangerous one.

[Simon Robinson @coachrobbo]

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[Drop Site @DropSiteNews]

🧵1/ @piersmorgan yesterday berated his guest @DanBilzerian for denying that women were raped on October 7, citing the Pramila Patten UN report as evidence: “You say there was no raping… The United Nations report into all this established it absolutely did happen and was horrific.”

This claim, which Piers has made multiple times, is false. A thread👇🏼

[Simon Robinson @coachrobbo]

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[Jason Hickel @jasonhickel]

All the takes are correct and yet they also miss the point.

Yes, it was insane for the Democrats to think they could win by running a soulless candidate, without a shred of progressive policy vision, pursuing endorsements from neocon war-hawks everybody hates, while arming and funding a genocide, and belittling and crushing those who have enough morality to protest it.  It is enraging that the Democrats are so smug and blind to this.

But these are all just symptoms.  The deeper reality is that liberalism has failed, liberalism is dead, and people urgently need to wake up to this fact and respond accordingly. It is a defunct ideology that cannot offer any meaningful solutions to our social and ecological crises and it must be abandoned.

Democrats have proven over and over again that they cannot accept even *basic* steps like public healthcare, affordable housing, and a public job guarantee - things that would dramatically improve the material, social and political conditions of the working classes. And they cannot accept a public finance strategy that would steer production away from fossil fuels and toward green transition to give us a shot at a liveable future.

Why? Because these things run against the objectives of capital accumulation. And for liberals capital is sacrosanct. They will do whatever it takes to ensure elite accumulation, it is their only consistent commitment.  At home, they suppress and demonize progressive and socialist tendencies. Abroad, they engage in endless wars and violence to suppress input prices in the global South and prevent any possibility of sovereign economic development.

The Democrats have done all this purposefully and knowingly, for my whole life, not as some kind of "mistake" but in full consciousness that it is in the interests of capital.

And because liberalism cannot address our crises, and because it crushes socialist alternatives, it inevitably paves the way for right-wing populism.  They know this pattern, and yet they risk it every time - this election being only the most recent example. They did it in 2016, when they actively crushed the Sanders campaign and sent Trump to the White House. They do it because ultimately they (and I mean the liberal ruling class here) don't really mind if fascists take power, so long as the latter too ensure the conditions for capital accumulation. They 100% prefer this to the possibility of a socialist alternative.

So, progressives have to face reality. The dream of "converting" the Democratic party is dead. This is now a fact and it must be accepted. The only option is to build a mass-based movement that can reclaim the working classes and mobilize a political vehicle that can integrate disparate progressive struggles into a unified and formidable political force and achieve substantive transformation. This will take real work, actual organizing, but it must be done and that process must begin now.

[Simon Robinson @coachrobbo]

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[David Milner @DaveMilbo]

The rest of our lives will just be observing/trying to survive the damage of American empire's death throes

[Simon Robinson @coachrobbo]

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[Brent Terhune @BrentTerhune]

He drove Trump’s garbage truck

[Simon Robinson @coachrobbo]

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[Brent Terhune @BrentTerhune]

Roast of Trump’s make up.

And I didn’t even call anyone garbage while doing it.

[Simon Robinson @coachrobbo]

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[DOZA🧐 @lil_doza]

The Interviewer, Ezra Levvannt was Tommy Robinson’s former Boss.

He interviews a lovely Irish lady around the grand canal.

He got completely destroyed with logical responses,a big smile and kindness.

We live in a world where you’re interrogated if you practice humanity.

[Simon Robinson @coachrobbo]

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[Prof. Steve Keen @ProfSteveKeen]

Private Debt Feeds Economic Collapse.

[Simon Robinson @coachrobbo]

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[Simon Robinson @coachrobbo]

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[William Dalrymple @DalrympleWill]

Of all the propagandists out there delighting in the mass slaughter of Palestinians and Lebanese over the last months, few are more irredeemably vile than Douglas Murray

[Simon Robinson @coachrobbo]

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[Stephanie Kelton @StephanieKelton]

Hardship for borrowers, windfall for bondholders and banks passively sitting on idle balances at the Fed. All in the name of fighting inflation that largely abated on its own.

[Simon Robinson @coachrobbo]

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[Steven Miles @StevenJMiles]

By popular demand: 100kg bench press challenge with Jon Wyeth and the Wolf of Brisbane. Thanks for spotting, boys.

[FINDING THE MONEY Film @FindingMoneyDoc]

Where will the UK government ‘find the money’ with the £22 billion 'black hole'?
Hint: for a currency issuing govt like the UK, ‘finding the money’ is never the problem…
Watch FINDING THE MONEY doc on Vimeo:
https://t.co/OodqD9bFEd

[Simon Robinson @coachrobbo]

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[Jonathan Cook @Jonathan_K_Cook]

Former British ambassador Craig Murray, who served on the Foreign Office's South Africa desk during the apartheid era, writes:

"Under today’s legislation, every single one of those people writing in support of the African National Congress or out campaigning for the release of Nelson Mandela [in the 1980s] would have been liable for arrest under Section 12 1 (a) of the Terrorism Act.

"That is the danger of allowing the state to dictate whom you must consider a terrorist and punishing those who disagree with the state.

"In 1985 the official position of the British state was that the ANC were terrorists and apartheid South Africa were the good guys.

"In 2024 the official position of the British state is that Hamas and Hezbollah are terrorists and apartheid Israel are the good guys.

"The state can be wrong."

More here:
https://t.co/GnFiiYjCp4

[Simon Robinson @coachrobbo]

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[Bob Jeruncle @bobjeruncle]

@Qldaah His policies?

[Simon Robinson @coachrobbo]

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[Spirangelos @spiroferrer]

Reminder that vacancy control works, making rents lower and tenures longer.

https://t.co/PjPiRz029s

[Simon Robinson @coachrobbo]

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[Patton Oswalt @pattonoswalt]

“I know I screwed up the Four Seasons Landscaping booking but PLEASE you gotta let me redeem myself.”
“Okay, fine. We need a walk-on song that says men RULE, that they REIGN.”
“‘Reigning men.’ I got just the song. Get ready to be proud of me again.”

[Simon Robinson @coachrobbo]

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[Pavlina R Tcherneva @ptcherneva]

A good time to reshare that The Case for a Job Guarantee is available in 9 languages
https://t.co/XoHTZzYiEY