"Driftglass": Evil or Stupid?

To hear him tell it, the blogger "Driftglass" is a precariously employed former managerial sort who has been fucked-over by corporate imbeciles and right-wing economic policies. Intelligent, aware, embittered, "Driftglass" spends a lot of his time exposing right-wing idiocy and perfidy.

I first encountered his blog in the dark days of the bush II regime when liberals and leftists were all on the same team; in that we knew who the enemy was and we all knew bullshit when we saw it. "Driftglass" (I'll drop the quotation marks from here on in.) is especially good at trashing the hypocrisies and absurdities of right-wing, mainstream pundits, especially the detestable David Brooks.

And this is one thing about liberals: They make sense. They criticize their right-wing opponents in ways that more thorough-going leftists can appreciate. Whereas with right-wing critics of liberal or leftist politicians, you get stuff like "He's a fag." "Kill the bitch." "Cuck!" or some variant of racism. And of course there's the colossal hypocrisy of right-wingers and scandals. A right-wing politician can be found standing over a recently murdered body with blood dripping from their hands and anyone who accuses them of murder is a "leftard conspiracy theorist." Just look at how these "lock 'em up or hang 'em high" "law and order" types stuck by massive hypocrite/buffoon Rob Ford: He of the infamous "zero tolerance for drugs and gangs" who ended up getting caught smoking crack with gangsters. And right-wingers will accuse leftist protesters of being angry to the point of derangement, five seconds before writing about how they'd like to lynch a liberal politician, execute their libtard supporters and then drop a nuclear bomb on Mecca.

Alas though! When one of their own is elected, too many liberals throw all their critical thinking and (worse) principles, out the window. Barack Obama hasn't expanded the war in Afghanistan! Paul Martin did not rob the unemployment insurance program to finance tax-cuts for the wealthy! Bill Cliinton did not throw millions of poor US-Americans into poverty and prisons! Jean Chretien did not slobber over Indonesian despot Suharto and decide that the UBC campus should be a "Charter-free zone" to neutralize protesters. Hillary Clinton didn't back jihaadist nut-bars against Libya's Qaddafi and destroy a country of six million people. Justin Trudeau hasn't pointedly ignored a legal order to provide adequate funding for First Nations youth services, even after cynically voting for an NDP motion that he obey said order and increase that funding. Obama and Hillary haven't backed more jihaadist monsters in Syria forcing millions to flee (thousands drowning in the Mediterranean Sea) while killing tens of thousands in Syria itself!

Memorial

Ted Rall on a Clinton Victory

Ted Rall writes about something I considered composing, and comes up with pretty much what I would have. (Just with more details.)

"Hillary's Lost: Should We Care?"

Here's some highlights:

The Cabinet: ... Hillary Clinton’s cabinet would have been composed of the neoliberal militarists who’ve been running things for Obama.
Taxes and the Economy: Clinton proposed a slightly more progressive tax structure during the campaign. She only wanted a $12/hour minimum wage — less than many states and cities. Even though NAFTA and trade were her Achilles’ heels, she didn’t propose a job retraining program or welfare plan for workers displaced by globalization. Largely, she pledged to continue the gradual Obama recovery, which has left most workers behind. 
Privacy and the NSA: Even in the wake of the Edward Snowden revelations (when she called the whistleblower a traitor), Clinton stridently defended the government’s illegal spying against every American.
Healthcare: Obamacare would have remained in place in its present form. A few vague promises to add a “public option” do not amount to a pledge to spend political capital to get it past Congressional Republicans. But premiums are skyrocketing, so Hillarian inaction might have led to wider calls for ACA repeal, a big step backward. (No one knows what Trump will do. Not even him.)
War and Peace: Hillary has a long history of hawkishness. She didn’t push through any peace deals as Secretary of State. During the campaign, she called for a no-fly zone over Syria, a tactic designed to provoke hostilities. And her hot rhetoric so freaked out the government of Russia that Kremlin military analysts worried about World War III if she won. Trump is a hothead. But Hillary might have been more likely to start a war.
And in 2020, we’d be right back where we are now. Four years into President Hillary, the anger that unleashed Trumpism would turn into boiling rage.

So, to summarize: A Cabinet full of right-wing, neo-liberal militarists. Continuance of the economic policies that have impoverished millions and grotesquely reward a tiny few. Expansion of the surveillance state.

About ObamaCare: As I understand it, the ACA denied blood-sucking insurance companies from denying coverage to people with pre-existing conditions, ... BUT, ... being the pro-market piece-of-shit that it is, the ACA does nothing from allowing the capitalist scum to raise their premiums on everybody to compensate them for having to insure sick people. So, while Hillary-bot, Democratic die-hards are bloviating about how Trump is going to take away their insurance, Obamacare was going to make it unaffordable for a lot of people anyway.

So, I really have to stop and point out the obvious hypocrisy and derangement of Hillary supporters: She did not have ordinary people's best interests at heart. She, like Obama, was a servant of Wall Street. Both parties are. Both parties grovel before the plutocrats for donations.

All of a sudden, because of Donald Trump, progressives think the economy has been doing great under Barack Obama. It hasn't. Wages have stagnated for years. Wall Street engaged in criminal behaviour that almost tanked the global economy were it not for trillions of dollars in taxpayer subsidies, and yet Obama protected the banksters and illegally assisted in the destruction of the Occupy Movement that protested this criminality. As a result, 95% of the economic growth since 2008 has gone to the wealthiest 1%.

Democrats delude themselves that this is all the fault of Republican obstructionism. But time and time again, Obama has shown himself unwilling to press hard against them. When he isn't offering them "grand bargains" he's supporting "Blue Dog" Democrats against progressive challengers.

Stop fooling yourselves.

And listen: Yes, the Koch brothers funded the Tea Party. But they Tea Party members have minds (such as they are) of their own. That's why the were able to take down Eric Cantor. That's why the whole Repugnican establishment was shocked and appalled about Trump. Trump was promising to bring back factories by reversing free trade. He was going to force the pharmaceutical companies to bargain with the federal government, rather than just get the taxpayers to sign a blank cheque. He was going to get rid of Obamacare, which, however much liberals might like Obama, was making health care more expensive for people.

Now, I always thought Trump was a con-man. I never supported him. But he was saying things that ordinary US-Americans liked. Because they were and are hurting. And no matter how much deluded, simpering liberal fuck-faces want to believe it; Obama has not been their friend, he has not tried to help them; the capitalist system is still corrupt and inhuman and a failure. (I knew how extensive Trump derangement syndrome can get when I read Antonia Zerbisias praising NAFTA and getting a quote from elitist prick Mickey Cohen, just because Trump says he'll repudiate it.)

Listen: Hillary "won" the popular vote. But people knew the Electoral College existed before the 2016 election. Hillary's people encouraged the Trump candidacy because they thought she'd trounce him easily. Because (as they still refuse to admit) she's actually a really shitty person with a horrible record.

It turns out that Trump isn't going to pursue better relationships with nuclear powered Russia. But liberals wanted us to vote for a candidate who said straight-out that she'd pursue policies that could lead to goddamned fucking war with Russia. The depths of liberal insanity and delusion! Un-fuck you all you insane sons of bitches!

"Lesser evil"? I'm sure the degree of "lesser" is irrelevant to the dead and traumatized across the Middle East and in much of the rest of the Global South as well.

So Trump conned people. Some of them were salt-of-the-earth racists. Some of them just wanted job
opportunities and didn't care about the racism.

GASP!

Yeah. Just like you fucking Hillary-bots don't care about her victims. The homeless refugees being attacked by neo-Nazis in Europe. The Libyans living under the nut-bar jihaadists Clinton backed in that country's uprising.

Just like we all type on lap-tops powered with raw materials mined by African child-slaves and assembled in Chinese hell-holes that have suicide nets around them to save the trouble of cleaning up the corpses of employees seeking an end to their miserable existences.

The Tea Party is angry. They lash out stupidly because they're stupid and they don't understand the system that's ensnared them. But more and more I have to ask if they're any more stupid that the liberals who delude themselves that Hillary Rodham Clinton was a brilliant humanitarian and not a racist, elitist, corrupt, mass-murderer.

And the people who stayed home? Who didn't vote? Well, maybe they looked at their miserable existences, the falseness of the "hope and change" that the cynical Obama campaign sold to them back in 2008 and decided it simply wasn't worth it. Things are going to suck under Trump and they sucked under Obama and they would have sucked under Clinton.