Russiagate hysteria is a complete distraction from the very serious, critical problems

There’s barely a profession that AI isn’t going to wind up taking over in the next 10-20 years

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Paul Jay of the Real News explains perfectly how the Russiagate hysteria is being used as a useful tool by the elites to distract the American public from the flood of rapid changes and challenges of the close future:

[Bernie Sanders] is actually one of the few politicians and has a mainstream stage who does focus on a lot of the issues of substance of the Trump administration, and does focus on the real issues of the electoral system. You know, gerrymandering and Citizens United, and the unlimited corporate and billionaire money involved in the political system. Sanders speaks way much more about that than he does about the Russia stuff.

But there’s a mood, and to some extent it’s affected Sanders and others. It’s a McCarthyite mood that if you don’t get in on this, denouncing the Russians’ interference here, you’re disloyal. You know, back to this betrayal conversation. How many liberals had to come out and denounce the Communist Party of the United States and name names? People that were progressive in many ways. But they had so much - I’m talking during McCarthyism in the House Un-American Activities Committee.

People had a fairly progressive views, but the pressure was just so enormous that you didn’t come out against the communist conspiracy, you were a traitor. And there’s that same kind of pressure coming on.

But the bottom line here is we need to tell the whole truth. And the whole truth does not prettify the Russian state. And it certainly doesn’t prettify the American state. But we don’t succumb to this feeling that Americans are all in the same boat. Like, Obama used to have this line, no red states, no blue states, just the United States. That’s a crock. This society has got very, very serious class divisions.

Again to his merit, Bernie Sanders often talks about the American oligarchy. And he talks about the five individual men have more wealth than 50 percent of the American population. These are the real serious divisions within the country. And just like McCarthyism, this current Russiagate mania is a complete distraction from the very serious, critical problems.

A crisis, existential, even, starting with climate change. The renewal of this kind of geopolitical rivalry that we saw lead to two world wars in the 20th century. The expansion of America’s nuclear arsenal. And underlying all this, a completely parasitical and enormously powerful finance sector which is just sucking the wealth out of the whole global economy, gambling in a crazy casino against multimillionaires and billionaires betting against each other, sucking wealth that should be put into more productive uses so the economies grow in a real way.

The rich essentially heading for the hills. They got their escape routes ready, and they imagine a world where artificial intelligence does most of what working people do. And these people protect themselves from the climate crisis. But there’s no question that one of the great threats that are coming in the next 10-15 years - it’s already starting - is massive unemployment as robots, artificial intelligence, start driving trucks and driving taxis and delivery cars and flying airplanes. They’re even talking about AI being able to do most of what doctors do. There’s barely a profession that AI isn’t going to wind up taking over in the next 10-20 years.