KATHLEEN WALLACE
MARCH 19, 2026

We have all come across those in our lives who display the characteristics now known as Dark Triad Personality. It’s a combination of narcissism, psychopathy, and Machiavellianism. In short, it creates a person devoid of empathy, and they use manipulation as the preferred tactic to achieve their goals. They do not feel remorse for their behavior, nor do they typically learn from their mistakes. The only guardrails are consequences that they can’t avoid with their trickery, and even then, it’s more of a containment system rather than any type of meaningful growth on their part.

We have seen the chaos such individuals sow, how they seem to thrive in such conditions. We know that they seem to bring out the worst in other individuals who don’t exhibit such cluster b disorders. They simply react to the surrounding mayhem in a grasping and desperate manner. The best course of action when individuals like this are in your life is to diminish their ability to impact you, but this is of course, easier said than done. People like this are never content, even when they seem to achieve their so-called goals. It seems that the real truth of their soul is that they constantly try to establish and create misery in others to match the rot inside their own core.

We are now seeing what occurs when such personality types are given unfettered power in government. The many enablers along the way that have simply gone along to get along have been integral pavers on this path to hell. The types who were there for Trump, I knew what they were signing up for. These ghouls paved the way for Trump II, which, of course, is loaded with characters who suffer the same defining toxic traits that he does. We are seeing the domestic violence presidency emerge fully formed and grotesque. The culpability lands on every politician who has diminished the possibility of improving life for the multitudes, while expanding the horrific accumulation trends of billionaires. This falls on all of them.

When partners trapped in such situations try to extract themselves, they find that they are in the most dangerous of times. Dark Triad personalities do not take rejection lightly and they do seem to enjoy having an enemy to identify and project all of their own loathsome qualities upon. Sometimes they kill the individual trying to leave. Another possibility occurs if their focus falls upon new victims, and of course, in a broad sense, this is just a new tragedy, not a solution. Think Venezuela, then Iran, then maybe Cuba……

Our current government is operating in the very same manner as a deranged domestic partner. It’s always been this way, to some extent, due to the inherent nature of power. Those that want it often desire it for all the wrong reasons and power self-selects for the morally degenerate. The difference at this time is the lack of limiting influences. We have men who will literally wear shoes far too large for them to please a strong-arm dictator. One remembers stories about Stalin and how he would require his men to drink all night with him, punishing those who tried to substitute water in their glasses. This is certainly “never be the one to stop clapping first” standard cult behavior. Humiliation is the goal and weak men who all go along with such nightmarish clown shows help launch the horrors to the general population.

This would be but a footnote in history if the maniacs at the helm didn’t have at their fingertips the weapons to murder untold millions and crash the world economy. Many of us would say that this economy, with its cancerous growth model, needs to be brought down, but few would say that this is the way to do it. This method will plunge the vast majority into complete and utter poverty with a Caligula Plus class to lord over it. Palantir tech will be there to make sure the net is inescapable.

Through all of this, the US has treated its allies with a disgust that wouldn’t even make logical sense to cast upon enemies. It’s almost difficult to imagine how someone could take the helm of the US and bring it down any more quickly, leading one to question whether it is incompetence or outright sabotage.

I think the most likely answer is just that this is what you get when you have such damaged and compromised individuals. They love the murder, the power and are quite vulnerable to being shoved in certain directions because of the likely kompromat that is out there. Lindsey Graham went from Trump is the most dangerous man rhetoric to the seemingly drunk all the time war mongering lickspittle we see today. If we had these men in our neighborhood, we’d avoid them on our daily walks. Yet, we have elevated them to power over us. As the realization that this situation is absurd lands upon the majority, most have no idea how to combat an enemy such as this– one who occupies the Dark Triad.

Women attempt to flee abusers by running away sometimes, but our nation has made it impossible to do just that. Like a guy controlling all of the household funds, citizens have had their finances controlled to the extent that most can’t miss two paychecks before a catastrophic collapse. They probably can’t run off to Portugal in that situation. And like most abusers, alliances have been severed anyway; they like to isolate and confuse the victims. If you don’t have allies, you don’t have a place to run to. Most Americans truly don’t realize at their core how much harder it is to live here than all the other developed nations, either. This is the dog-eat-dog style of existence we all have normalized. Americans have been indoctrinated to fear “socialism” like the battered partner fears the unknown. The abuse you know versus a mysterious world you’ve been told exists but can’t quite let yourself believe in because it almost sounds too good to be true.

The US has allowed for an explosion of poverty and accompanying homelessness, not because the money isn’t there to remedy it (it’s obviously available to murder Iranians). No, that money is there, but the feature/not glitch is to force the citizens into a domesticated state of fear 24/7.

In the past, much more effort was put into maintaining the illusion, in convincing US citizens that they were at risk from other nations and it was necessary to go on Imperial Adventures. The chaotic and epic losing going on right now will perhaps pierce the illusion that this type of society can continue. The very absurdity and accompanying horror are enough to break just about anything, including our brains. The invasion of other nations before has been met with acceptance, but this blind trust is eroding.

The end of US hegemony seems near, and the loss of the petro-dollar seems to be a foregone conclusion. It’s like the abuser is about to be served papers, but he unfortunately still has a massive arsenal.

We are definitely in that most dangerous time when the victim wants to get away from the abuser. Here is to hoping that when we look back on this time, it will be seen as the tipping point before a new and better world was born. The alternative is unthinkable and we must fight it with all we have.

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Kathleen Wallace writes out of the US Midwest. Her writing is collected on her Substack page.

First Published on CounterPunch.org.

Shared via Creative Commons.

KATHLEEN WALLACE
FEBRUARY 11, 2026

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I’m not sure what else will be required as evidence that our government and society is being run by men who view the rest of us as poor quality commodities. They say as much in their “Dark Enlightenment” nonsense, in the Project 2025 Temu Ayn Rand papers, and of course, by their own actions. That is the best indicator of all. The use of children as pawns to abuse in order to compromise individuals of wealth and power is clear to anyone not firmly with scales on their eyes. There is no need at this point for a point of “disclosure”. It is grossly evident and to continue to ignore it will most certainly lead to more deaths and misery for the vast majority of people.

We have a group of men who are actively preparing themselves for a societal collapse. In fact, by their own writings, they invite it. They build bunkers to hurriedly protect themselves from the fallout of their own actions. They seem to only want enough humans around to serve them in ways that AI cannot and even that looks to be an infinitesimally small number. Perhaps they need enough to breed children to abuse? There are no plans coming forth to replace income with a UBI when jobs are lost to AI, and of course that is already occurring. In a nation flush with cash, but not for you, millions are cast off on Medicaid, in what can only be considered a premeditated murder of the masses.

But you see, they don’t care. It’s not an unfortunate side effect or a required austerity measure in a time of crisis. It is a class of individuals who do not see themselves as one of us. The concept of empathy, solidarity and working for a beautiful future is not a consideration for individuals wounded so profoundly at the core. If anything, this is why Empire comes down so hard on those who do show empathy, think of Alex Pretti helping the woman who was shoved to the ground by the enabler goon squad. They don’t have it in themselves to feel that profound warmth that comes from belonging and having others care for them in anything but a transactional manner. And for this, they want to eradicate others who show this concern for the well-being of their own neighbors.

The propaganda is relentless, but of course it must be. If these derangements of society came easily, then of course such a firm hold on the narrative would not be necessary. I once saw it mentioned that if women were truly to be subservient and this was indeed the natural order of things, it wouldn’t be so imperative to keep reminding them of it via religious dogmatism. These hierarchies are unnatural and to keep them from toppling, massive amounts of glue, tape and violence are needed. Every step of the way, whether it was taking away the commons or strong-arming labor into factories, it’s always been the same. It takes violence and unnatural coercion to plunge the vast majority of the populace into lives that don’t make sense, to lives less free than animals in nature.

There is no reason for technology to have been used to further subjugate us. In a just society, these advances would be used for things like mitigating natural disasters and allowing the lives of citizens to be meaningful and connected. Can you even imagine what would be possible if most of the populace weren’t scared of ruin via one misstep? What grand inventions have we missed? What works of art? They say the average medieval peasant had more days off than current workers. Think of the inherent cruelty in a society taking away the right to choose to be a mother and then not even giving said mother one single required paid day off before needing to return to work. That’s not allowing meaningful lives. It’s the factory farming of humans. In such a setting, there is little time for anything but base existence. Is it any wonder there might be a need for massive anti-depressants, stimulants and whatever else can numb the pain? None of this is necessary; it’s simply to prop up a class of individuals who got there via a profound ability to step on others in a manner most of us would find repellent and impossible.

These tech bro nightmare freaks also have sickening fantasies of AI immortality. They see a future without biological humans at all, save their own uploaded consciousness. They have aligned with simple, sick, malignant narcissists of the political class who serve as their accomplices on this dystopian road.

Until they can hack immortality, they seem to be holding something of a breeder fetish like we have seen with Elon Musk. Father to what……14 or so kids that he doesn’t see or care for? I wonder if he can even remember their names. And this is the ketamine riddled man given the DOGE keys? In what universe is this anything but an attempt to destroy?

We’ve gotten a taste from the disgusting Epstein files that that guy had a breeder fetish as well. So many DNA tests were ordered that the manufacturing company said WTF? These men are so profoundly disturbed and with the dangerous mix of certainty that they are a completely different species than the 99.99999%, it seems to be a bit dangerous to give them such power over us. Again, they view the populace as mere commodities and most of us have aged out of what they deem useful.

The pedophilia is so telling about not just their sick enjoyment of torturing the innocent, but also how they view our entire world. They voraciously take in the most destructive manner, and they leave the damage in their rear-view mirror. You don’t have to feel for the victims or for the earth if you see yourself as some kind of demi-god. The fact that so many don’t realize the endgame of the oligarchs is troubling. It’s quite terrifying to realize that you are surrounded by monsters, but keeping your eyes closed really won’t do anything but allow them to take you without a fight.

Many are placing their hopes on Democrats standing up and staunching the bleed. If you are looking to a tool like Chuck Schumer to do anything beyond his role of keeping Israel in the manner she is accustomed to, you will be sorely disappointed.

The Epstein files and their bizarre release/not release have opened up a bit of the tawdry world that the middle-level accomplices occupied. They were enamored to be in that world and open to any level of class traitorship in order to be near power and lack of accountability. Looking at you, Chomsky et al.

We have had dozens of women come forward to say what had been done to them as children by these men. Some even went to the FBI— it looks like as far back as what…the 90s? I’m sure nasty men like Michael Cohen have threatened many of them. I’m guessing some have even likely died, whether by their own hands or not.

It’s ridiculous that we seem to need a corrupt government to hand us the files in a package with a bow to take this seriously. We have goddamn Donald Trump saying pedophile/incest adjacent crap out loud over and over through the years. Red MAGA hat after Red MAGA hat (I’m replacing red flag with that). You know, maybe when people tell you who they are, believe it, as they say.

I believed the women who came forward then, and I believe them now. Instead of playing Bondi’s game with file drippings and wondering who is under the black lines, I think we should believe the critical mass of victims.

One important aspect of this is to realize that in the same manner as the Palestinians have been treated, you and yours will be treated likewise. This is the case with the “disposable” girls in the Epstein class. Our lives mean nothing to them. It is intersectional in all the terrible ways. An older man without a job any longer due to AI will not be treated with any more deference than the Palestinian woman, the trafficked child. This is our great difficulty, because most Americans certainly do not realize this, but they are getting a hint at it when they see white moms shot in the face after saying “I’m not mad at you”.

You don’t need to wait for a government that lives by lies to tell you your truth. Does it feel correct that a man like Epstein would fade away into that good night? On a night that the cameras weren’t working and the guards were sleeping? When a mortician of regard says…hmmm, those photos of “dead Epstein” don’t look all that dead? You don’t have to feel you are a Q-Anon Wayfair box nut to ask some questions about what the wealthy will do for each other and what they will do against you.

But the strongest takeaway is to know that none of this depravity is accidental, be it the Medicaid cancellations or the pedophilia. It’s an ethos these powerful men share and there is nothing for the rest of us but misery, subjugation and death if we allow it to continue.

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Kathleen Wallace writes out of the US Midwest. Her writing is collected on her Substack page.

First published on CounterPunch.org.

Shared via Creatie Commons.

KATHLEEN WALLACE

MARCH 28, 2025

The current mayhem going on in the US is of course, nothing new—but for citizens, it’s more of a blinders off situation, where the pathology is clear to all who remotely open their eyes. The ongoing struggle for humanity can be simply distilled to a few clear dilemmas. The overarching issue with a clear subgroup of individuals is that they view all matter present in the world as a commodity, including fellow humans, and simply cannot fathom a world of reciprocity or any kind of decency obligation. Instead, they only understand the dynamics of domination and subjugation, a worldview not linked to happiness in any way shape or form. This, of course, is integral to their plunge into even deeper personal madness with others as collateral damage. Sadly, we haven’t come up with a successful way to curb the influence of these, the worst of our kind. In fact, being bloodthirsty and without empathy has been more of a path to material success and power than behaving with kindness and decency. Those individuals are the poison pills of society.

A connected pathology is the overarching need to control others. The hoarders and manipulators tell a tale; they say that they believe in personal freedom, when in fact the only freedom they believe in is their own ability to control and own others in the form acceptable to their times. If slavery is legal, they opt for that, if wage control and limiting others through economic hardship is the current paradigm, then they come up with systems that enhance this kind of society. If times allow for religion to be the most effective means of mass control, then you see the church as the dominant factor in corralling human potential. Currently we see an amalgam of retrograde religiosity paired with a plan for a sterile AI dominated technological future, both of which view the vast majority of actual human emotional needs as relatively insignificant. It is all part of the broad push towards something that only benefits those holding the levers of power.

The founders of the US put in some protections against situations that they felt might rear up and bite their own asses in the future. They spelled out that there was to be religious freedom and freedom of speech (which doesn’t seem to be holding, of course). This was paired with the glaring anachronism of slavery and the continued subjugation of half the population. The pursuit of happiness wasn’t ever meant to include all of us, and we continue today with oligarchs of the same basic nature. The world is meant to advance the pursuit of their own happiness, which I think we’ve established is a non-starter because happiness cannot be found via domination and subjugation. They simply want more as they gorge themselves on money and power. They avoid the reality that once they die they will be drops in the same ocean of humanity we all are a part of. And they avoid the truth that they are in fact a part of that same ocean of humanity while living as well. Their sense of disconnectedness is an ego-trip, making them feel superior and above the vagaries of life. It is a false notion, and their refusal to accept the connectedness is the reason they will never be satisfied. But we can’t continue to be trapped by their soulless limitations.

As I’ve written before, we are trapped in a nightmare created by these others. Most of us, deep down, just want connection, love and security. The thing is, we have been steeped in a culture that allows pretty much none of that to be a given. We get hints of the loveliness that life can contain, but insecurity is baked into the mix. The foundational level panic we all own from being born and raised in this culture can lead many of us to an arrested development. Scores of individuals cede to authoritarian and abusive daddy figures for some semblance of perceived safety. These are enormous problems of culture and society and they are simply coming to an ugly unavoidable head at this time.

So what are the core components that bring about happiness and how do we use these to combat the shackles they have us in? Of course, having needs met such as shelter and food is the base need. We are now in a situation where previous safety nets (even with their enormous holes) are disappearing. They want us terrified; they want us subservient.

One way forward through this is commitment to mutual aid on a more local level. Dog killing, western-version apparatchiks want to get rid of basic decent entities such as FEMA. No, they don’t want to overhaul it to make it more useful and kind–it’s to presumably get rid of one basic aspect of a functional government that isn’t privatized. It’s telling how everything is terrible to them that isn’t privatized, with the major exception being the huge fiscal and life sinkhole that is our US military. That is just fine to have as a communal resource but nothing else works like that. Convenient worldview when you are a warmongering POS, right? Libraries don’t work!!! Socialism! Enormous, bloated military? Yummy!

Getting rid of FEMA during a time of unprecedented climate change risks in a setting of escalating poverty is uniquely unhinged and evil. In this environment, we can’t simply wait for problems to occur and then discuss the lack of support. We need to begin creating webs of influence locally to care about and support each other. As much as is humanly possible, we need to remove ourselves from the sociopaths who would own us. I am hopeful the chaos will allow for areas of the nation to begin to unchain themselves from the center and become more community minded. They would have us send riches to them while receiving nothing in return, a true subjugated population.

I’m going to divert wildly now to discuss the basic need we all have to be free and I don’t mean free to exploit others. It might be freedom in terms of waking up in the morning to the sun, not an alarm. It might be the “freedom” to rest and stay in bed when you are sick instead of being forced to go make wild profits for others while ill. It might be the freedom to actually enjoy your life and spend most of it with those you love rather than spend more of that time in artificial conglomerations at the workplace. We give them so much of our time and life just for them to hoard resources.

The slicing of life into two realms, that of work and that of life isn’t going unnoticed by mass media and entertainment. Look at the wild success of a show like Severance-this beautifully done series explores the concepts of creepy corporatism, cult like behavior and the consideration that employees are basically livestock. It looks at the current corporate notion that employees only matter if they are fulfilling a greater purpose which conveniently is that of advancing the corporate entity. The show explores the logical end sci-fi actions that one could imagine a company would perform to achieve their goals. In this series, that includes a procedure to allow for a work personality severed from the off-hours personality. In a related strain, I’m sure it’s fine that Neuralink is a real thing—this is all just science fiction, right? It’s not like science fiction has shown itself to be really, really good at predictive modeling…..oh right. Sorry Octavia Butler.

You can tell a lot about a culture or time period by the stories that take hold and capture the wider imagination. Well, here’s one for you. There was a dog named Scrim in New Orleans who gained national attention for being….well, ungovernable. He was a rescue dog that simply could not be captured. He was seen on home security camera footage flying out a 2^ndstory window while at a foster type home. He hit the ground running, evading capture multiple times. I urge you to look that one up and watch, it defies description how he was not injured seriously. If I recall correctly, his ultimate downfall after months of attempted captures, was a trap loaded with Popeye’s chicken (who hasn’t been there, right?). But the saga of his adventures kept a city and then the nation (when New York times took up his tale) enthralled. You might even consider that many were living somewhat vicariously through his exploits, rooting on his refusal to be contained. Yes, the little guy most likely had some PTSD issues, but the point is– the narrative caught fire because deep down we all have a bit of an urge to be ungovernable. We fantasize about escapes from the corporate world, from overloaded assignments and untenable numbers of patients in healthcare—from escaping mind-numbing “bullshit” jobs as David Graeber would put it. The fact that the story of Scrim and his escapades, of him avoiding capture for as long as he did, kept so many fascinated, says a lot more about the wants and desires of the population than it really did about the story of a skilled escape artist dog.

I’ve covered some broad territory, now it’s time to tie it all together. The foremost point I’m trying to make is that we all want and deserve a measure of freedom and respect, whether you, me, or Scrim. We are not commodities, and we deserve our time back. It is simply bad enough as it is; we cannot allow the situation to become worse. The only way we can even imagine a measure of success on those grounds will require us to support and assist each other and contribute to the zeitgeist that this push to further dehumanize us is not okay. And if we all must take the lead from a dog, that is to say become “ungovernable” then so be it. It’s time to claw our way out of that nightmare created by the oligarchs.

Kathleen Wallace writes out of the US Midwest. Her writing is collected on her Substack page.

First published on CounterPunch.org.

Shared Via Creative Commons

By Kathleen Wallace
January 29, 2025

Now that Trump and, as some have termed it, the broligarchy, are firmly in power, it might make sense to look at what conditions made this possible and where it might all lead. It’s a bizarre and unsettling time for those of us who were screeching at the tops of our lungs about the misdeeds of the Democrats in power during the Biden administration. It’s jarring– like you were pissed off before about a psychotic family member who enjoyed gaslighting you, but now you have an honest-to-goodness monster trashing your house, and he also might be interested in eating you.

But on the road to this place we now find ourselves at, it was as if a flaming pile-up of cars could be seen on the horizon, ahead in that expanse of highway. There was ample time to pull over before reaching the steaming impassible knot of metal–to turn around, to take exits. These options were all in place before reaching the conflagration, but the car being driven by the corporate-controlled Democrats steamed forward. Biden had his lead foot on the accelerator, licking on that damn Aricept-flavored ice cream cone–all the crew in the backseat. Pelosi with her stock picks, Bernie with a very awkward reach around for his friend, AOC making mention of stopping at the billboard-advertised road-side attractions: “See THE THING…….a possible New Deal to make life a little better for the citizens.” But nothing more than a shrug from her as the billboards get passed by—she just wanted to make some noise. And, of course, Harris announcing, “I’m Speaking,” to nobody in particular; nobody is listening.

The liberal Democrats would have you believe that it was those who did not give unadulterated adoration to a genocider, to a man who couldn’t even give a quick and informal fundraising talk in private homes without a teleprompter—that somehow those individuals were the problem in their failed election, not the candidates or the entire rotten system. Once upon a time actual primaries were held that somewhat vetted candidates and in real-time advanced the individuals who might actually win. This is now a bridge too far for the Democrats, instead, they rely on bullying and obfuscation. Promises and hypocrisy. Decisions made privately and court-sanctioned that they are a private entity with every right to do so, never mind the consequences. They pick who will continue to do the corporate bidding, of course, nothing more, nothing less.

The Democrats campaign on the notion that the alternative will simply be the boogeyman, all the while, when said boogeyman wins, they sit with him and joke, showing just how much they believed that rhetoric they spewed. If they truly believed that Trump was the existential threat to democracy that they proclaimed, why on earth would you show up to normalize the royal ascension? A liberal Democrat would probably try to say, well this shows the inherent class of an Obama, of the Democrats, but does this make sense? Would one sit with any of the WW2 pantheon of fascist dictators and giggle and bond due to having “class”? This lack of backbone and palpable ethics reeks to voters and the result is evident.

I will admit for a micro-second when Harris lost, I felt the most disgusting feeling—that is, a feeling that made me embarrassed of my own pettiness. I had that very low-level, not enlightened lizard brain kick in…..it was like, “Well, there you go, you dumb fuckers—that’s what happens when you don’t listen to those of us on the left screaming about your shit candidates”. But that feeling is right up there with the kind of things you yell in an argument and immediately know you didn’t really mean them. Yes, you want consequences for the disgusting corporate Democratic class, but those consequences will only fall on your fellow working-class citizens, even the ones muddled enough in their heads to think MAGA will somehow work out for them. Obama can joke and schmooze because his life won’t change one bit with the onset of the broligarchy. It’s all the same when you reach a certain level of wealth.

I do not see an effective change, of course, coming from the Democrats. They did a Hillary 2.0 insulting voters, placing Zionists to go speak in places like Michigan. As I’ve said before, it almost makes you wonder if they wanted to lose. Is this the game? Good cop/bad cop, but all cops, all the way down, not turtles. You get a shock and (awful) administration, then you get an “oh, we are trying to make it better, but our hands are just plain tired” placeholder subsequent administration. But the unrelenting momentum is that of enshittification (look it up, it’s a word) and more difficult lives for all. The push-pull of the Democrat-Republican dynamic keeps almost everyone entranced and their eyes off the magician lifting the money, but this one won’t give you a coin back from behind your ear. He even keeps that. Most liberal Democrats believe that Trump is the cause, rather than a symptom, of this very corrupt, up-to-the-highest-bidder society. They don’t realize that toxic mold won’t grow unless the conditions are pretty squalid.

So what will all of this mean? I suspect a lot of experimentation and then backpedaling after colossal failures. Of course, the end goal is that of privatization of largely everything, a rollback or complete destruction of environmental protections, and a large dollop of economic pain. All of this coupled with techno-surveillance state tactics going after more resources.

What do I mean by said techno-surveillance tactics? I think a wonderful and easily understandable example would be the continuation of the gig economy/surge pricing effect. Cory Doctorow did a marvelous job illustrating this aspect in his short piece “Nurses Whose Shitty Boss is a Shitty App”. He describes “Shiftkey”–it’s an app that healthcare workers sign up on to take specific shifts from random healthcare entities needing staff but not wanting to pay full-time employees –you know the ones with all those pesky needs like health insurance and sick leave. The app offers shifts, and the healthcare workers are presented with a wage offer for the open slots. The thing is, the app taps into commercially available financial data that lets it know how much money the nurse has in the bank and how much they owe. Then a variable amount of money is offered for the shift. Of course, this enables a low-ball offer when it is evident that the person is in dire financial straits. I think this is one of the best examples of what this economy will try to get away with. A tax on poverty—it’s always existed but now it’s feeding on steroids and Chernobyl level radioactive waste.

So this is basically the utopia all the tech billionaires want. A series of city-states operating as separate entities of commerce with the workers operating in a similar manner, as a fluid collateral to be exploited as much as possible. The idea is for the worker to feel like they are in some sort of control in this Libertarian wet-dream economy, but in fact, these workers will be easily pushed into working in crummy situations and will be paid less if they are clearly desperate. This tech-bro dream system is not based on adequate reciprocity, but on aggressive “kick one when they are down” techniques. They would tell you this is just the natural course of things, but we all know how well this technique “works” as we watch our world go up in literal flames. The only reason humans have made it this long is because so many small groups over millennia have worked together and have come up with measures to control the worst impulses of their sociopathic members. But our world today celebrates these excesses and pathologies, making predatory apps like the one used by Shiftkey. Actual products built to screw over the healthcare workers taking care of sick and vulnerable people. It’s magnitudes of predation.

Another example of the tech crossover to worker and citizen exploitation that is in the works is that of facial recognition software. Monopolistic entities like Kroger’s plan to utilize these new toys. Though they deny they will use any sort of surge/individual pricing with this, the ability will most certainly be there to charge certain people extra using technology of this sort. It’s enough of a threat that one of the few members of Congress with a spine, Rashida Tlaib, has raised the alarm for just these sorts of possible practices. To say this isn’t possible or likely, one should re-read what entities like Shiftkey are doing and extrapolate. Of course, it’s possible–and it’s probable.

We are simply living through the Business Plot being enacted in the current day. Trump is the crowd-friendly (well, to the MAGA crowd, that is) symbol, but make no mistake that the real work of funneling the fruits of your labor is being hashed out in the form of these new apps and technologies. Workers will simply feel like they are in quicksand, that it just keeps getting harder and harder to keep up, but the clear reasons for such hardship won’t be immediately obvious. It will be algorithms behaving parasitically by design, draining us and sustaining them. We will all be Brian Johnson’s son. Blood bag Economies. I wouldn’t be shocked to know we are referred to in such a manner within those circles. If you haven’t heard about him, Brian Johnson is the tech-bro guy trying to live forever by, among other things, juicing his son for blood. So that’s fun, right? And I don’t have hope that the Democrats will become anything beyond a less overtly racist/less anti DEI version of corporate power. They will be the ones patrolling vocabulary and clutching pearls, funding genocide and not mounting any sort of effective counter to reactionary policies.

I do feel the need to address that the all-out assault on DEI and don’t forget A (accessibility) would not be going on in this same manner without the Trump administration pushing this cruel policy. This is one of the actual differences between the two parties. The Democrats definitely did not put in safeguards during times of super majorities however, most likely as a calculated risk for ongoing fundraising. But anyway, many individuals like disabled veterans voted in the very policymakers who will implement eugenics-type programs that simply try to shake off the non-productive (in their eyes) members of society– be it to more abject poverty or even death in terms of social murder by eliminating compassionate and supportive programs. It’s easy to mock those who voted against their own interests but it is so important not to—we have to keep our empathy intact and realize that not everyone is able to see a charlatan even in the bright light. And for many of those people the last time they felt that they had an extra bit of  extra money in their pockets was during the Trump Covid check era. I’ve heard that opinion voiced out loud in my red state often. It’s no wonde since they have seen their lives get harder in the last four years that they have reached out to the “strongman” persona. It is the most predictable outcome—we have seen it over and over in history.

There is a large portion of the population who haven’t advanced much beyond the dynamics of a dysfunctional parent-child relationship, and they see the whole world through that lens. Many of these people sidle up to movements like MAGA to try to feel powerful, to feel like they will make Daddy proud. It’s easy to feel anger at them, but probably sympathy is the higher road to take. It’s difficult though, because they are truly dangerous, being under the spell of a leader they don’t question. They feel the intoxicating mix of anger towards the “other” and belonging to what they perceive as a supportive in-group. Of course, the neo-liberals can be just as deprived of rationality in their decision making, but it’s more difficult to picture a NIMBY Democrat going all Hutu-Tutsi on your ass than the current crop in power.

But here we are, stuck living through these times; it’s what we all have in common. Whatever fate is to befall the United States, it will likely accelerate toward more difficulty and misery for the working class. The fuel for much of this despair will be in the form of these extractive tech advances. They will hope that our apathy and listlessness will carry the day for them as we fall into this new paradigm. But I mention all of this because I think an important initial aspect of dissent will be to understand what is truly going on. Does Kroger’s seem to be targeting you for higher prices with noxious tech? Go to your local Farmer’s Market, try to grow what you can, make alliances with those who already grow food. An app like Shiftkey is screwing you over? Refuse to work for them.

The only power we have right now is that of our pocketbooks and our labor. I suspect that events like ICE roundups will slow when our nation’s food supply drops precipitously. Much of this will come down to what is profitable for those in power to be doing. The chaos works to help them get privatization, but there’s a sweet spot I don’t expect them to purposely exceed in terms of disruption. They still want the spice to flow,right?

Overall, I expect it will resemble a Dumpster/Cybertruck fire much of the time. Just an aesthetically unappealing mess. Try to avoid being collateral damage and live to fight another day–work and be kind in your immediate vicinity. And as always, it comes down to a need for fostering local connections. We have to stay informed about which monster company is trying to harvest us (probably all of them, but avoid the most egregious). We need to focus on mutual aid, all of those things that we definitely already know about. And probably the most important takeaway, if you get nothing else out of this piece……. DO NOT let Brian Johnson have any of your blood. He needs to make his own like the rest of us. That man is walking symbolism for what we are going through and putting up with in this, the already trying year of 2025.

First Published on CounterPunch.org

Shared via Creative Commons

BY KATHLEEN WALLACE
April 5, 2024

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Those who knew the history in terms of the plight of the Palestinians and the details for the creation of the modern Israeli state knew what was going on and what was about to happen late last year. We watched in horror as our news media reported in their always slanted manner, calling murdered children minors, using that vile passive voice in every instance of outright murder. We watched fellow Americans taken in by the very well-documented practice of hasbara and largely shook our fists at the sky while our nation funded the ongoing atrocity.

The clarity in terms of a politician’s zealousness in defense of Israeli genocidal practice lines up very well on a graph compared to his or her AIPAC donations (I’m looking at you, you Fetterman, you absolute lumbering, lurching ghoul). This has always been clear to anyone paying attention. The slinging of the ever-loved “antisemitism” branding has been launched towards anyone, even with temerity, voicing “Maybe it’s not okay to level hospitals and murder kids”. Idiotically, this antisemitism branding has even been used against Jewish individuals speaking out against the ongoing atrocity. They’ve been brutalized and beaten for voicing this humanity in the streets of Israel. But it’s only antisemitism if it’s against Zionism by these ridiculous rules. It’s a very bizarre state of affairs well beyond the average American’s ability to parse out. It’s definitely a level of the surreal that is difficult to comprehend.

Those in power offering platitudes for Israeli state actions know in their hearts why they are doing it, and I can’t imagine it sits well if a person has even 1% of functioning humanity within. It’s most certainly spurred by motivations of self-interest, not because they truly support ongoing genocide. The leaders never were the best of us, and it probably isn’t all that difficult for them to compartmentalize. But they should be aware that in the eye of history, they will most certainly be looked at and paired with the most barbaric, their names mingling with the Himmlers and Goebbels for future descendants. Their children’s children will want to change their surnames; it will carry such shame that they came from such utterly depraved ancestors.

The proof of this genocide is already there for anyone looking. Every phone that has captured the sniping of children, of doctors—the bulldozing effects on bodies….it’s all there, in unthinkable detail. It is certainly not secret or hidden; there are even Telegraph accounts showing these atrocities with accompanying “likes” and jokes in Israel. They truly have succeeded at dehumanizing those just miles away from them.

The PR has been fantastic in other nations, nothing so brazen as “likes” with Palestinian snuff films, but more the weaponizing of guilt that decent individuals feel. It’s the rightful shame of humanity due to what was done to the Jewish populations during the Nazi period. The hasbara PR has performed well– purposeful mucking up of the water. It has led those who wish to never again see such inhumanity to blindly support another genocide—it is stolen valor from holocaust victims and it is being used to victimize a whole new group of individuals.

The average American has been either feeling that support for Israel is mandatory because of the holocaust or is merely hiding behind an ignorance of current events. Life is hard here so they really aren’t paying attention to what happens elsewhere. The irony is that part of why life is hard here is because the resources of the state are being shuffled elsewhere, and the safety net here has been shredded worse than old fishnet stockings. 2,000-pound bombs would fund a lot of healthcare.

CNN continues to frame this as the “Israel-Hamas War” and pre-existing anti-Arab racism has conveniently been there to weaponize with some of the population as well. Xenophobic Americans say things like “they are just a bunch of religious nuts” in terms of any group who is primarily Muslim, but ignore that a murderous theocracy is the one doing the theft of land and murder. Palestinians in many instances opened their homes to refugees in the past only to face betrayal–definitely a situation along the lines of what indigenous peoples faced in the Americas. They helped refugees and settlers, then had their land stolen and their loved ones murdered. When they fought back, they were branded “savages”. It is not even a new story that Israel is peddling. So no, this isn’t the “Israel-Hamas War”. This is more along the lines of ….say, a coveted Southern California climate region with great canal potential (and can serve as an outpost of continued Western hegemony) Murder-Theft situation. A home invasion.

The truth is trickling out now in America, though–one would have to be completely blind or unfathomably evil to continue to support what is going on in Gaza. The beyond tone-deaf manner of the Biden administration hosting an iftar dinner (breaking the fast of the recent Muslim holiday) when a full-scale starvation situation is being created is difficult to fathom. Gaslighting is the fuel they are using to cook the food for that celebration, I would say.

So of course the munitions, the backing needed to complete this genocide—it’s all being supplied by the United States. You don’t get to supply all the needed equipment to murderers and then come to the funeral and pretend to care. That’s definitely serial killer actions, Joe Biden. Perhaps that’s the best analogy for the behavior of the United States government right now. Ted Bundy hugging the murdered girl’s mom by the casket kind of actions. I’d even go so far as to say it’s perhaps worse than a run-of-the-mill unhinged serial killer. I say this because in many ways it is a measured and rationalized support to advance the aims of the military-industrial complex. You know, the great evil warned about by Eisenhower. These people know full well that to advance this, it will be required to clear out an entire group of souls who already live there. This is an evil form of deranged pragmatism that is so skewed that in the end it won’t allow the perpetrators to have anything but continued strife abroad and internal strife as well, since even the most callous and uninvolved Americans are getting pissed about the sheer amount of money being spent on anything and everything but the well being of Americans.

Thaer Ahmad, a Palestinian-American physician, walked out of a White House meeting as a form of protest due to the atrocities he has seen– after handing Biden a letter from a Palestinian orphan begging for it to stop. At least this has made the national news. One hopes that even the more slow-witted begin to question their nation’s unwavering support for murder, maiming and starvation. The knee-jerk “well they have hostages” makes little sense when the number of Palestinian hostages held in Israel is taken into account as well. Desperate people try desperate measures, and people will fight back to free their own people. Not to mention that collective punishment is a war crime. Insane Republican politicians in the US are even saying things like “Palestinian babies may not be innocent’. It’s disgusting, and the immediate, visceral response to that is the correct one. You can’t cage people in an apartheid situation intermittently mixed with ethnic cleansing. It is amazing that our level of humanity (in terms of governmental actions) hasn’t progressed beyond this behavior that would have been at home during the Roman Empire.

The absolute audacity of the World Central Kitchen aid worker murders should clarify even further who the villain is in this story. They don’t want people to be fed. Starvation is the goal. Of course, targeted attacks on intellectuals, healthcare workers, reporters…it’s all been happening with great regularity, but this one is getting a bit more traction in the news cycle. Sadly, it’s probably because some white aid workers got killed. But Israel got its way; the agency has ceased activity in terms of feeding the starving.

The fact that we are facing an unprecedented number of pediatric amputees in this world right now says it all. Every single time you see one of these monstrous political class talking heads making excuses, think what your response would be to sending a bomb down that kills or maims kids– and if that kid lives, keeping food from reaching them until they starve. There is no reality or plane of existence where this is acceptable to perpetrate or abet. Yes, I think we’ve hit a tipping point where even the masterful obfuscation will no longer work. There are more of us who believe this is depravity and those in power need to realize that their serial killer hold on all of us is vanishing.

Kathleen Wallace writes out of the US Midwest. Her writing is collected on her Substack page.

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First published on CounterPunch.

Shared via Creative Commons.

By Richard Moser
September 22, 2023

Twenty-first-century fascism is the dictatorship of big money. Finance, fossil fuels giants, other large corporations, and the military-industrial complex, have effectively merged with the state, calling the shots in Washington. An immense surveillance and propaganda machine is at their disposal. Narrative and information control is the first line of defense but the militarized police state acts when all else fails. Big money wants total control and tolerates no rivals.

The dictatorship of big money is impossible without institutional racism paving the way to a new form of institutional fascism.

New Fascism for a New Century

Common understandings of fascism rely heavily on 20th-century European history. By those terms, there is no fascism in the US today, except the small neo-fascist gangs. Trump does not check all the boxes by the old definition.[1] If fascism is to have any real meaning — beyond a deceptive get-out-the-vote strategy by Democrats — then we need to rework old interpretations to find the fascism that evolved specifically to our time. 

While Trump is no fascist by 20th-century standards, he is by the conditions of the 21st century. The problem is — by those same measures  — the Democrats are fascist too. Both parties have managed the rise of corporate fascism and the systematic racism that underlies fascism old and new.

The new neoliberal fascism emerged as the corporate order hollowed out all democratic institutions standing in their way, leaving only empty shells behind to dull the mind and distract the eye.[2]  There was no way they could maintain total control and boost profits — in the face of imperial decline, austerity, and climate crisis — without gutting democracy.

The earlier, easy-to-recognize, fascism with goose-stepping troopers, explicitly racist ideology, industrial-style death camps, and ultranationalist war machines has been complemented by harder-to-see and harder-to-resist systematic forms.

From Institutionalized Racism to Institutional Fascism

There is no better way to understand 21st-century fascism than to look at fascism’s evil predecessor: racism.

Black radicals and scholars have argued that African people in the US already live under conditions of fascism and that fascism’s main ingredient is race.[3] Slavery and its aftermath is fascism with American characteristics. As Black Panther Kathleen Cleaver wrote, “Black People have always been subjected to [a] police state and have moved to organize against it, but the structure is now moving to encompass the entire country.”[4] Racism was the soil in which fascism grew.

But, what makes racism and fascism so hard to combat is that it is institutionalized as well as individual. When Kwame Ture and Charles V. Hamilton wrote Black Power: The Politics of Liberation in America, in 1967 they innovated a new understanding of racism that could guide the redefinition and resistance to fascism.

“Racism is both overt and covert. It takes two, closely related forms: individual whites acting against individual blacks, and acts by the total white community against the black community. We call these individual racism and institutional racism. The first consists of overt acts by individuals, which cause death injury or the violent destruction of property…. The second type is less overt, far more subtle, less identifiable in terms of specific individuals committing the acts….The second type originated in the operation of established and respected forces in the society, and thus receives far less public condemnation than the first type.” [5]

Fascism, like racism “takes two closely related forms.” Overt and covert, individual and institutional, respectable and condemnable, reactionary and preemptive, racism is expressed and enforced across a wide spectrum of political actions — so is fascism.

Notice how institutionalized racism does not rely exclusively on open racist ideology.  All the big racists must do is command and fund the institutions controlling and exploiting Black and Brown people. Democrats and Republicans alike manage the penal system, police, prison labor, and the intricate web of laws that ration housing, healthcare, education, and employment.

Systematic racism is cold, calculating work. Cold, because it does not require hot-blooded hate — even claiming to be “colorblind.” Calculating, because it counts money. Look at how institutionalized racism works and systematic fascism also becomes visible.

“Full Spectrum Dominance” is Fascism’s First Principle. The Preemptive Strike is its First Strategy. 

Systematic fascism uses continuous warfare to impose fascist conditions on war-torn regions and forge alliances with fascist forces. War promotes the most viciously anti-democratic and politically powerful sectors of the US ruling class, as represented by Raytheon and Black Rock. 

But it is the doctrine of “full spectrum dominance” that became the guiding principle of the institutional fascists — at home and abroad.[6] The drive to be “preeminent in any form of conflict” is ruling class religion. Any rival, any alternative systems, social experiments, or mass resistance are treated as existential threats, no matter how small or distant.

So while the US working class is not poised to launch a general strike or depose our corporate masters, and union officials are securely tethered in the Democratic stable, the railway workers’ strike must be crushed nonetheless.

Neither is the Green Party an immediate threat to corporate government. A web of state and federal law poses serious obstacles to any third parties. They must, nonetheless, be suppressed and harassed as the lawsuits against Matthew Hoh and the non-stop smear against Dr. Cornel West are but the most recent examples. If “everyone knows the Green Party cannot win” then why has “vote blue no matter who,” lesser evil voting, the “spoiler” and other political commands almost totally replaced open debate on the burning questions of class, racism, war and environment?

The DNC lawsuit against Ranked Choice Voting in Washington DC proves the point: a district without voting Congressional representation must nonetheless be stopped from even considering electoral reform. Similarly, Gavin Newsome had to guard even the deepest blue of all blue states from modest electoral reform by vetoing Ranked Choice Voting passed by the CA legislature in 2019.

Attacks on free speech, journalism, and privacy, are glaring examples of neoliberal fascism. A surveillance and propaganda system, unparalleled in scope and sophistication, aims to impose a totalitarian political discourse via corporate media. The endless partisan drama of the so-called two-party system diverts our attention away from the dictatorship of big money.

The Twitter Files are just a recent example of how corporations, political parties, the military, and secret police join forces to shape public opinion and preempt resistance. The fascist corporate state is tightening information and narrative control. Ask Julian Assange or Omali Yeshitela.

If dominance everywhere — all at once — is the guiding principle of the new fascism, there is no need for the imminent threats to the capitalist order that triggered fascism in 20th-century Europe. But still, the war at home remains the decisive front. If the master class loses control here in the imperial core all is lost. That is why the fascists are preparing for just such a war.

In 2020, when the people arose in mass, disrupting total domination by protesting police violence, the full gamut of fascist action came into play. Protests were blunted with symbolic gestures, cold hard cash, and the fall-into-line factory of yet another “Get Out The Vote” campaign. But the police were so threatened by 20 million protesting racist violence that they cracked heads and broke the law to protect their own power. They tried to crush what could not be bought or assimilated.

The Militarized Police State Fights What Cannot Be Preempted

US police are the third best-funded military in the world. They kill at least 1,300 people — year in and year out — and wounding countless others. No other wealthy country even comes close. Police associations lobby governments, local and national. They help make laws. They rule.

The struggle to “Stop Cop City” contests that rule. Cop City will include a military-style training facility to teach urban assault tactics. A new facility has already been built in Chicago, and there are plans for more across the county.

In Atlanta, the forces of institutional fascism — media, corporations, police, intellectuals, and political officials from both parties — worked through a non-profit, the Atlanta Police Foundation, to promote and fund Cop City. Behind the liberal veneer of a city run by Black Democrats, the police assassinated one protester and charged other non-violent protesters with terrorism, money laundering, and racketeering in an effort to criminalize not just protest but dissenting ideas. Even the most routine forms of democratic input, like petition drives required for a public referendum and public commentary before the city government, have been ignored or blocked. According to AP, prosecutors have linked Stop Cop City with the 2020 protests.

Not to be outdone by the cops on the street, the so-called “intelligence community” has become directly involved in national politics protecting some candidates — as in the Hunter Biden laptop operation — and attacking others — as in Russia-gate and Bernie Sanders’s 2020 presidential bid. The real meaning of Jan.6th will remain unclear until the role of the FBI, DHS, and Capitol Police is revealed. Was it gross incompetence, collusion, provocation, or all three?

The police do not simply enforce the law; they are major political players. 21st-century fascism does not need a fascist militia, a mass fascist movement, or a “properly” fascist party like its 20th-century predecessors. The six hundred thousand uniformed police and the 18 secret police forces do a far better job.

Those who speak confidently about living in a democracy are in deep denial.

The spy and propaganda machines and cop army fight on the front line of 21st-century fascism. But, headquarters is the corporate order. 

Austerity, Ruling Class Unity, and the New Fascism

Austerity is class warfare. It is an attack on the home front to maintain control. The gradual and legal redistribution of $50 trillion from the working class to the very richest is fascism itself. Plus, the desperation it creates sets the stage for the rise of demagogues and the use of scapegoats. Why do you think the mainstream political discourse of Democrats and Republicans is so empty of real issues and so full of scapegoats?

Austerity is classic systematic fascism. It makes the suffering of millions of people appear as the natural working of a free market. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Austerity is premeditated policy. It’s a blunt instrument that preempts resistance by weakening and dividing the working class while unifying different wings of the ruling class.  

In “The Capital Order: How Economists Invented Austerity and Paved the Way to Fascism,” Clara E. Mattei documents austerity’s essential role in the rise of fascism.

Class war was the common ground where liberals shook hands with fascists. The alliance between UK and US business and political leaders and Italian fascists is a historical fact we cannot lose sight of because the cooperation between seemingly different elite sectors has become routine in the day-to-day working of 21st-century fascism.[7] 

The corporate-state merger may be peak 21st-century fascism but the merger evolved from older forms dating all the way back to capitalism’s early days. However, it wasn’t until the 20th century that activists, authors and politicians became conscious that corporations commanded state power and resorted to fascism to maintain their rule.

“Fascism begins the moment a ruling class, fearing the people may use their political democracy to gain economic democracy, begins to destroy political democracy in order to retain its power of exploitation and special privilege.”

— Tommy Douglas (Seventh Premier of Saskatchewan 1944-1961. Considered “The Greatest Canadian” largely for achieving universal healthcare.)

“It is exactly because of the disintegration of Capitalist-Imperialism that it became necessary for the ruling class of Germany to discard bourgeois democratic institutions and resort to open terroristic dictatorship in order to maintain their position.”

–George Padmore (leading Pan-Africanist, socialist, and author.)

“Their final objective toward which all their deceit is directed is to capture political power so that, using the power of the state and the power of the market simultaneously, they may keep the common man in eternal subjection.”

– Henry Wallace (Vice President of the US 1941-45)

“That, in its essence, is fascism — ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power.”

– FDR (President of the US 1933 -1945)

Who can tell me with a straight face that big money does not own the US government?

Get Out The Vote — But Not For The Fascists.

We are going to hear a lot about “saving democracy” and “fighting fascism” in the coming months as a get-out-the-vote strategy for Democrats. The Democrats want our thinking about fascism safely contained within the old 20th-century European definition of fascism, for if we use the 21st-century definition, they lose Trump as a foil and enemy and gain him as a brother in arms every bit as committed to systematic racism, the merger of the corporation and state and total dominance as they are.  

Capitalism, Socialism, and Fascism do all have something in common: they change over time. 

Can we afford not to?

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Notes.

1. Enzo Traverso, “Trump’s Savage Capitalism: the Nightmare is Real” in The US Anti-Fascism Reader eds. Bill V. Mullen and Christopher Vials. While I disagree with the editorial slant that sees only the 20th-century European definition as valid, the collection includes many useful articles. In their introduction, the editors apply the old standards and find Trump a danger but something short of a fascist. For example, “His political rhetoric often uses a fascist grammar, but it lacks a properly fascist party or a fascist state.” As I argue, the old definitions are inadequate to our time.

2. Chris Hedges has popularized this view using Sheldon Wolfin’s concept of “inverted totalitarianism.” I also want to thank Darvish Shirazi for his concise formulations of contemporary fascism.

3. See Chapter 9 in Cedric J. Robinson: On Racial Capitalism, Black Internationalism and Cultures of Resistance, ed H.L.T. Quan for a lucid and well-grounded account.

4. Kathleen Cleaver, “Racism, Fascism and Political Murder,” The US Anti-fascism Reader, p. 266.

5. Kwame Ture and Charles V. Hamilton wrote one of the great classics of US revolutionary thought, Black Power: The Politics of Liberation in America. p.4 

6. Ajamu Baraka, “The Delusional Commitment to the Doctrine of Full Spectrum Dominance is leading the US and the World to Disaster,” Black Agenda Report.

7. See also Cedric J. Robinson, p.88-90 155-157 and Gabriel Rockhill, Liberalism and Fascism: Partners in Crime, Counterpunch.

Richard Moser writes at befreedom.co where this article first appeared.

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Shared via Creative Commons.

by KATHLEEN WALLACE

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