The GRIM, PERHAPS HOPELESS, PRESENT
Fear not sweet readers! Just because thwaperino isn't dealing with the current atrocities, it doesn't mean this blog isn't relevant! My opinion about the current protests sparked by the brutal murder of George Floyd is that, sadly, little will be accomplished. I hope I'm wrong. But I've been watching this stuff since the Rodney King riot. Also, congregating in huge crowds during a pandemic caused by an airborne, respiratory virus is going to have a horrible impact on public health. Things are going to get still worse before they get better. (I'll add that it's not my place to tell oppressed people, targeted for hundreds of years by violent racism, when the proper time for protesting is. And these protests appear to have had some important impacts that I didn't anticipate when I wrote those words a few days ago.)
But, as this six-part series [i, ii, iii, iv, v] has been building towards and based on, ... real change in the United States of America (still the single most important country in the world) will NOT come from the political process. Because, obviously, the Republican Party is a degenerate shit-show with no redeeming qualities. The Republican voter base has become so ignorant and bigoted that they see a shambling tower of fat and lies sprayed bright orange and they think "There's a PRESIDENT!" These people are incapable of doing anything right about global heating, militarism, police brutality, racism, inequality, or anything. Obviously, they'll just make everything worse.
But the Democratic Party appears to have successfully resisted a progressive insurgency and remains tightly controlled by its corporatist leadership. In order to defeat the candidacy of Bernie the corporate Democratic leadership and the corporate media smeared, lied, cheated, obfuscated, with a ruthlessness that they never employ against the Republicans. In response, Sanders has thrown in the towel and is asking his followers to support the racist, corporate whore Joe Biden. Biden has repeatedly lied about his civil rights activism (really, fabricated it entirely), has attacked Social Security his entire career, wrote a crime bill and an "anti-terrorism" bill that has shredded civil rights, wrote a pro-corporate bankruptcy bill that is an abomination, pandered to racists to attack school integration, and has been credibly accused of sexual assault. And, on top of that, he appears to be descending into dementia. (It isn't every time that Biden opens his mouth to talk that he gets confused or incoherent. He's often quite capable of making small-talk for minutes at a time. But when he has to talk policy for any length of time, he often stumbles and loses himself in ramblings. He also demonstrates the quick temper of the early stages of dementia, lashing out at people asking honest questions of a person seeking their vote.)
The rest of the Democratic progressives (Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Tulsi Gabbard, have all been neutralized and have voted the party-line, seeing how the weight of the Democratic Party apparatus can be used to attack and destroy their careers. I believe that AOC has integrity. But I think she's deluded herself into thinking she can play "the long game" against the establishment. But in this time of global heating THERE IS NO LONG GAME. We have ten years (at most) to radically transform our entire civilization away from energy-spewing, economic growth policies towards sane, ecological-reality policies, and "pressuring" corporate Democrats to implement mewling reforms while waiting for some magical process to eventually transform the party four to eight years from now is a complete waste of time.
During the two stolen terms of the cretinous george dubya bush, the US financial sector engaged in a process of brazen fraud. A real estate bubble built up out of Wall Street financing of toxic mortgages that were sold as "mortgage-backed securities" (MBS) to an unsuspecting, gullible world. It all imploded in 2008 and would have led to a total economic collapse had not governments bailed somebody out with public monies. The first to design a bail-out was the dying days of the bush II regime. And they chose to bail-out the criminals.
But once Obama came to power, he told the banksters that he'd protect them from the mob with the torches and the pitchforks. He continued the public subsidies for Wall Street of his predecessors. In fact, his entire presidency was the continued maintenance of tax-cuts for the wealthiest and austerity on everything except for the military.
He chose to ignore the damning evidence of bush II regime war crimes (probably because Democratic legislators were complicit in them) and allowed bush and Cheney to get away with torture. Obama went farther than anyone else on deportations. And he insanely granted himself the power to assassinate US citizens overseas with impunity. [And it's stuff like that that make me sneer with contempt when liberals screech about Donald Trump's dangerously fascist tendencies. Yes, Trump is a menace. But the laws stripping away the rights of US-American citizens have been a bipartisan affair.)
All that Obama did was to implement a healthcare bill that was based on Republican Mitt Romney's plan for the state of Massachusetts (and which had failed to contain spiraling costs by the 2016 federal election). He did try to normalize relations with Iran and Cuba. The Iran Treaty was very harsh on Iran. He deported more undocumented immigrants than any previous president.
Look, I've said it before and I've said it enough and the evidence is all over the history books. Obama was a tool of the oligarchy. He was an authoritarian. He allowed himself to be used to suppress rapidly growing dissent with the neoliberal agenda. The best that can be said for him is that he was better than the maniac Hillary Clinton.
Bernie Sanders knew that Hillary Clinton would be a disaster. He tried to get Elizabeth Warren to run against her because Warren had a track record as a sincere, and intelligent critic of the bankster class. But Warren no doubt thought as a one-term senator that she didn't have the ability to launch a serious campaign. And running against Clinton would have engendered the anger of the party's leadership. Faced with this, Sanders ran. And he ran on a platform of social democracy that turned out to be surprisingly popular all around the country. Let's face facts; Bernie Sanders filled stadiums wherever he went while Hillary Clinton had trouble filling highschool gymnasiums. Centrist Democratic hacks might stupidly challenge this, saying: "Hold on Sport! If Sanders was doing so well, why did he lose?"
The answer to that is because there are 330 million people in the USA. The number of people who actually pay attention to politics on a daily basis is a small percentage of that total. Of that number, half to two-thirds are shit-heads or ignoramuses who might show up for a Trump rally or who masturbate themselves to fantasies of Ayn Rand. The rest are the group that are going to follow the Democratic Primaries. And of that group, the number of people that actually got excited about the candidacy of Hillary Clinton (incompetent, entitled, corrupt, arrogant, elitist) was, naturally, quite small. The number of people excited about a politician who would actually work to provide healthcare as a human right and who spoke out against endless imperialist wars, was much larger.
But, combined with an almost total media blackout (interrupted by the occasional attack piece) and with numerous instances of fraud during the primaries, the Sanders campaign was stopped and he put his support behind her and campaigned hard for her and Hillary rewarded him by shitting on his supporters and the policies they wanted.
Still, Hillary won the popular vote. She lost the Electoral College vote. But even then, according to Greg Palast, she won. But Republican fraud was greater than her powers of elite backing:
Hillary, being the scum that she is, blamed Sanders, his supporters, and also invented the shit-for-brains "Russiagate" conspiracy theory (which I've written about and linked to its complete and utter demolition too many times to bother recounting). And while Hillary and the other fools at the head of the Democratic Party shriek about Russia and Putin notice they have been almost silent about the actual fraud and manipulation and voter suppression of the Republicans. Just like they wail about the "authoritarianism" of Donald Trump and his being a danger to "democracy" while continuing to grant him the same surveillance powers and military budget and tax-cuts of his predecessors. (Which is not to say that Trump isn't dangerous. He is. Just not much more so than monsters like Biden, Clinton or Obama.)
Donald Trump is a disgusting piece of shit. Raised by an abusive, racist father, he is a deluded, arrogant, entitled, sexist, racist, rapey bully. He's a monumental crook. A mental wreak. He's absolutely contemptible. He's been a disaster. He's been a lightening rod for all sorts of vile, semi-fascist and fascist political bowel movements. He's a disaster for the environment. (So is our whole society but Trump doubles-down on everything, thinking that belching fossil fuels into the atmosphere is the equivalent of having a huge penis.)
If I had any say in the matter I would have led an attack on his racist immigration policies; his ruinous economic policies; his brazen corruption and incitements to violence. Instead, like the cynical, perhaps deluded asswipes they are, the Democrats spent three years harassing Trump for something he didn't do. ("Russiagate.") Because the Democratic leadership isn't all that inconvenienced by Trump. He embarrasses them and the country. But he's great for fund-raising. He's so awful that they think all they have to be is "Not Donald Trump" and they can coast to victory. Or not. It doesn't really matter. Because of the fund-raising benefits of being Trump's only realistic opposition.
Think for ten seconds: If Trump is really such a menace, such an existential threat, shouldn't the Democrats make his upcoming challenger someone better than Joe Biden?
But the Democratic Party appears to have successfully resisted a progressive insurgency and remains tightly controlled by its corporatist leadership. In order to defeat the candidacy of Bernie the corporate Democratic leadership and the corporate media smeared, lied, cheated, obfuscated, with a ruthlessness that they never employ against the Republicans. In response, Sanders has thrown in the towel and is asking his followers to support the racist, corporate whore Joe Biden. Biden has repeatedly lied about his civil rights activism (really, fabricated it entirely), has attacked Social Security his entire career, wrote a crime bill and an "anti-terrorism" bill that has shredded civil rights, wrote a pro-corporate bankruptcy bill that is an abomination, pandered to racists to attack school integration, and has been credibly accused of sexual assault. And, on top of that, he appears to be descending into dementia. (It isn't every time that Biden opens his mouth to talk that he gets confused or incoherent. He's often quite capable of making small-talk for minutes at a time. But when he has to talk policy for any length of time, he often stumbles and loses himself in ramblings. He also demonstrates the quick temper of the early stages of dementia, lashing out at people asking honest questions of a person seeking their vote.)
The rest of the Democratic progressives (Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Tulsi Gabbard, have all been neutralized and have voted the party-line, seeing how the weight of the Democratic Party apparatus can be used to attack and destroy their careers. I believe that AOC has integrity. But I think she's deluded herself into thinking she can play "the long game" against the establishment. But in this time of global heating THERE IS NO LONG GAME. We have ten years (at most) to radically transform our entire civilization away from energy-spewing, economic growth policies towards sane, ecological-reality policies, and "pressuring" corporate Democrats to implement mewling reforms while waiting for some magical process to eventually transform the party four to eight years from now is a complete waste of time.
The OBAMA BETRAYAL
During the two stolen terms of the cretinous george dubya bush, the US financial sector engaged in a process of brazen fraud. A real estate bubble built up out of Wall Street financing of toxic mortgages that were sold as "mortgage-backed securities" (MBS) to an unsuspecting, gullible world. It all imploded in 2008 and would have led to a total economic collapse had not governments bailed somebody out with public monies. The first to design a bail-out was the dying days of the bush II regime. And they chose to bail-out the criminals.
But once Obama came to power, he told the banksters that he'd protect them from the mob with the torches and the pitchforks. He continued the public subsidies for Wall Street of his predecessors. In fact, his entire presidency was the continued maintenance of tax-cuts for the wealthiest and austerity on everything except for the military.
He chose to ignore the damning evidence of bush II regime war crimes (probably because Democratic legislators were complicit in them) and allowed bush and Cheney to get away with torture. Obama went farther than anyone else on deportations. And he insanely granted himself the power to assassinate US citizens overseas with impunity. [And it's stuff like that that make me sneer with contempt when liberals screech about Donald Trump's dangerously fascist tendencies. Yes, Trump is a menace. But the laws stripping away the rights of US-American citizens have been a bipartisan affair.)
All that Obama did was to implement a healthcare bill that was based on Republican Mitt Romney's plan for the state of Massachusetts (and which had failed to contain spiraling costs by the 2016 federal election). He did try to normalize relations with Iran and Cuba. The Iran Treaty was very harsh on Iran. He deported more undocumented immigrants than any previous president.
Look, I've said it before and I've said it enough and the evidence is all over the history books. Obama was a tool of the oligarchy. He was an authoritarian. He allowed himself to be used to suppress rapidly growing dissent with the neoliberal agenda. The best that can be said for him is that he was better than the maniac Hillary Clinton.
2016: The FIRST SMASHING OF BERNIE SANDERS
Bernie Sanders knew that Hillary Clinton would be a disaster. He tried to get Elizabeth Warren to run against her because Warren had a track record as a sincere, and intelligent critic of the bankster class. But Warren no doubt thought as a one-term senator that she didn't have the ability to launch a serious campaign. And running against Clinton would have engendered the anger of the party's leadership. Faced with this, Sanders ran. And he ran on a platform of social democracy that turned out to be surprisingly popular all around the country. Let's face facts; Bernie Sanders filled stadiums wherever he went while Hillary Clinton had trouble filling highschool gymnasiums. Centrist Democratic hacks might stupidly challenge this, saying: "Hold on Sport! If Sanders was doing so well, why did he lose?"
The answer to that is because there are 330 million people in the USA. The number of people who actually pay attention to politics on a daily basis is a small percentage of that total. Of that number, half to two-thirds are shit-heads or ignoramuses who might show up for a Trump rally or who masturbate themselves to fantasies of Ayn Rand. The rest are the group that are going to follow the Democratic Primaries. And of that group, the number of people that actually got excited about the candidacy of Hillary Clinton (incompetent, entitled, corrupt, arrogant, elitist) was, naturally, quite small. The number of people excited about a politician who would actually work to provide healthcare as a human right and who spoke out against endless imperialist wars, was much larger.
But, combined with an almost total media blackout (interrupted by the occasional attack piece) and with numerous instances of fraud during the primaries, the Sanders campaign was stopped and he put his support behind her and campaigned hard for her and Hillary rewarded him by shitting on his supporters and the policies they wanted.
Still, Hillary won the popular vote. She lost the Electoral College vote. But even then, according to Greg Palast, she won. But Republican fraud was greater than her powers of elite backing:
On Tuesday, we saw Crosscheck elect a Republican Senate and as President, Donald Trump. The electoral putsch was aided by nine other methods of attacking the right to vote of Black, Latino and Asian-American voters, methods detailed in my book and film, including “Caging,” “purging,” blocking legitimate registrations, and wrongly shunting millions to “provisional” ballots that will never be counted.
...No, not everyone on the list loses their vote. But this was not the only racially poisonous tactic that accounted for this purloined victory by Trump and GOP candidates.
For example, in the swing state of North Carolina, it was reported that 6,700 Black folk lost their registrations because their registrations had been challenged by a group called Voter Integrity Project (VIP). VIP sent letters to households in Black communities “do not forward.” If the voter had moved within the same building, or somehow did not get their mail (e.g. if their name was not on a mail box), they were challenged as “ghost” voters. GOP voting officials happily complied with VIP with instant cancellation of registrations.
The 6,700 identified in two counties were returned to the rolls through a lawsuit. However, there was not one mention in the press that VIP was also behind Crosscheck in North Carolina; nor that its leader, Col. Jay Delancy, whom I’ve tracked for years has previously used this vote thievery, known as “caging,” for years. Doubtless the caging game was wider and deeper than reported. And by the way, caging, as my Rolling Stone co-author, attorney Robert F. Kennedy Jr., tells me, is “a felony, it’s illegal, and punishable by high fines and even jail time.”
There is still much investigation to do. For example, there are millions of “provisional” ballots, “spoiled” (invalidated) ballots and ballots rejected from the approximately 30 million mailed in. Unlike reporting in Britain, US media does not report the ballots that are rejected and tossed out-because, after all, as Joe Biden says, “Our elections are the envy of the world.” Only in Kazakhstan, Joe.
Hillary, being the scum that she is, blamed Sanders, his supporters, and also invented the shit-for-brains "Russiagate" conspiracy theory (which I've written about and linked to its complete and utter demolition too many times to bother recounting). And while Hillary and the other fools at the head of the Democratic Party shriek about Russia and Putin notice they have been almost silent about the actual fraud and manipulation and voter suppression of the Republicans. Just like they wail about the "authoritarianism" of Donald Trump and his being a danger to "democracy" while continuing to grant him the same surveillance powers and military budget and tax-cuts of his predecessors. (Which is not to say that Trump isn't dangerous. He is. Just not much more so than monsters like Biden, Clinton or Obama.)
TRUMP
Donald Trump is a disgusting piece of shit. Raised by an abusive, racist father, he is a deluded, arrogant, entitled, sexist, racist, rapey bully. He's a monumental crook. A mental wreak. He's absolutely contemptible. He's been a disaster. He's been a lightening rod for all sorts of vile, semi-fascist and fascist political bowel movements. He's a disaster for the environment. (So is our whole society but Trump doubles-down on everything, thinking that belching fossil fuels into the atmosphere is the equivalent of having a huge penis.)
If I had any say in the matter I would have led an attack on his racist immigration policies; his ruinous economic policies; his brazen corruption and incitements to violence. Instead, like the cynical, perhaps deluded asswipes they are, the Democrats spent three years harassing Trump for something he didn't do. ("Russiagate.") Because the Democratic leadership isn't all that inconvenienced by Trump. He embarrasses them and the country. But he's great for fund-raising. He's so awful that they think all they have to be is "Not Donald Trump" and they can coast to victory. Or not. It doesn't really matter. Because of the fund-raising benefits of being Trump's only realistic opposition.
Think for ten seconds: If Trump is really such a menace, such an existential threat, shouldn't the Democrats make his upcoming challenger someone better than Joe Biden?
The 2020 DEMOCRATIC PRIMARIES
After 2016, obviously we had Donald Trump (described above). But we also had the emergence of a determined group of young female Congresswomen, including Rashida Tlaib, Ayanna Pressley, Ilhan Omar, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (who became known as "The Squad") who articulated a very progressive viewpoint as well as a direct challenge to the conservative leadership of the party. They became very popular for their principled condemnations of oligarchic cruelty and imperialist criminality. There were numerous progressive challengers to the status-quo during the Trump years and some failed only because massive elite resources were channeled to their opponents. Throughout this time, the allegedly misogynist, radical, out-of-touch, grouchy old man Bernie Sanders polled consistently as the most popular politician in the USA.
This was a sign of the growing realization among sane US-Americans that the traditional Democratic Party leadership was either corrupt, incompetent, or some combination of the two. Their policies were uninspiring and failing. They were elitist assholes. Hillary Clinton was an entitled psychopath and her loathsome husband was her equal and then he went farther by cavorting with convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein. The Democratic leadership, in their turn, were appalled by this insurrection and they continue to behave like the entitled bubble-people that they are. The epitome of this behaviour comes from the loathsome Nancy Pelosi. Rich herself and married to an even wealthier man, her personal fortune is in excess of $100 million. Aided by a talented staff of mercenary scumbags, she serves as a conduit for bribes from Silicon Valley billionaires and other oligarchs to lesser denizens of the Democratic Party. She is occasionally portrayed as a brilliant legislator and political leader but in reality she's a tone-deaf, lazy, ignoramus who can hardly string two coherent sentences together. Pelosi has been offensively contemptuous of progressives (including "The Squad") and of the mass of traditional voters who demand more from the political system than theft and abuse.
The United States of America, in 2020, is still the only major industrialized economy in the world without a national healthcare program. The Democrats, over the years have produced programs that mitigate the horrible outcomes of the system for the most poorest people, especially Medicare and Medicaid. The Republicans propose nothing at the national level and are proud of it. They rely on the ignorance and/or stupidity of their own voting base to allow them to maintain this state of affairs. Ever since Michael Moore's dracumentary "Sicko" there have been louder and louder cries for an end to this nightmare and for the United States government to provide healthcare as a human right for every individual. Obviously, Pelosi and her ilk resist this movement. Mainly because it would inconvenience their wealthy benefactors. The fact that 60,000 US citizens die every year because of lack of healthcare, while hundreds of thousands more go bankrupt by medical bill is of no importance to these pieces of shit. Because they're scum. The enemy of the people. At the same time, the USA spends TWICE on health than the other OECD countries and delivers about the same quality of care (for those who can afford it). Inexcusable waste.
Bernie Sanders made "Medicare For All" the center-piece of his 2019-2020 campaign. It is popular across the political spectrum. Even a majority of Republican voters want it. But the Democratic leadership and their masters do not want it. And so it will not happen as long as they remain in power.
The 2019 Primaries began with Bernie Sanders running mainly against former-VP (under Obama) Joe Biden. Joe Biden is an idiot. Joe Biden is an arrogant, entitled, soulless psychopath. He freely admitted to desiring to prostitute himself to wealthy constituents at the start of his career. He has long characterized himself as a "conservative" Democrat. He stood loudly opposed to post-Civil Rights school integration programs, capitalizing on white bigotry to win votes. At the same time he brazenly fabricates a personal history of Civil Rights activism. He's a habitual liar. A shameless liar. He's an opponent of Social Security. As a senator he served the credit card industry and pushed through a monstrous bankruptcy bill that punished ordinary US-Americans on its behalf.
Joe Biden is an arrogant shit-head who loves to hear himself talk because he's convinced that he's a brilliant statesman of world-historical importance.
He pushed for "tough on crime" legislation that contributes to the USA's soaring incarceration rates (as well as the lack of accountability for police brutality). All of this, obviously, has impacted on targeted minority communities (Black and Latino) disproportionately. He has said that he would veto a "Medicare For All" bill if it crossed his desk when he was president. In short, he is yesterday's man. And yesterday was a shitty day.
Biden's evilness and cluelessness soon made their impact on his campaign. His idiotic stammering and his bullying personality sent him to the bottom of what became a large pack of fellow candidates. As well, more and more rumours began to swirl that his behaviour showed signs of senile dementia.
Sanders soon rose to the top of the polls against one candidate after another. Each one would be a temporary media darling and thereby briefly attract Democratic voter interest, and each time, everyone of these cynical mercenaries would have to say something to the real electorate (the oligarchs) to demonstrate that they were a "safe" candidate for the billionaires. And each time, the inevitable result would be that their kow-towing to the oligarchs caused them to fall from favour in the polls, allowing Sanders to maintain his lead.
Kamala Harris, a Senator and former DA (who allowed Steve Mnuchin to get away with massive financial crimes while incarcerating the parents of truant children) started off hot with an empty, platitudinous campaign ad. As a woman of colour she was an awesome symbol of how the oligarchy doesn't really care if you're male, female, gay, straight, or the colour of your skin. As long as you serve up the majority on a silver platter to rapacious oligarchs, they're cool. But when she backed-off on her vague support for medicare for all she started to fizzle. Eventually her past as an enforcer of the USA's Prison-Industrial-Complex came back to bite her and her defeat was assured.
Of the rest, Elizabeth Warren lasted the longest. But she began to decline when the mercenaries from the other failed campaigns began to advise her. (These people are all highly connected party insiders who leverage their experience at the top so as to appear to understand how things work. I suppose that if you already buy into the total bullshit that passes for received wisdom in Washington DC they could appear knowledgeable and charismatic and make you forget their long history of failure.)
Warren showed herself for the self-interested, nasty person that she is at her core when she attempted to smear Sanders with accusations of sexism. They failed and only contributed to her own irrelevancy. It really looked good for Bernie Sanders and the media (sensing they couldn't ignore Sanders as completely as they had in 2016) switched into insane fear-mongering instead. It got so far as to have airhead TV pundit Chris Matthews telling people that Sanders would have his supporters executing rich people in New York's Central Park.
Sanders won every primary that had manual ballot counting. But even then, the media and the Democratic Party would come up with bullshit "errors" and "gaffes" and "accidents" that always seemed to go against Sanders and deny him a clear victory and the subsequent momentum. This happened in Iowa, California, Texas. Finally, all of the cyphers dropped-out right before the South Carolina Primary. A useless toady named Jim Clyburn endorsed the decrepit Joe Biden and so did all the ex-candidates except for Elizabeth Warren, who stayed in to deny Sanders a win in Massachusetts. And after that, it was essentially all over. All the activists, all the ordinary people whose small donations propelled Sanders to the top of the fund-raisings, because they believed in him, were abandoned and betrayed. I could go on, there have been many more betrayals and embarrassments, but the story has been essentially told. The energy and enthusiasm of millions of progressive US-Americans (who would have taken that enthusiasm to convincing others to vote) was destroyed by official corruption, bullying and fraud, by a coterie of slimy sycophants of an evil oligarchy. A corporate media narrative of censorship (not talking about Sanders or his policies or his victories) and smears (on the rare occasions when they did talk about him) helped to commit this crime. As a result, the Democrats, going up against the "existential threat to democracy" of Donald Trump, has rallied behind a tired, befuddled, racist corporate tool named Joe Biden.
SO, WHAT TO DO? (THERE IS NO LONG GAME)
Personally, I think Sanders' behaviour is akin to that of an abuse victim. In the small world of Washington DC, where actually repulsive personalities like Ted Cruz, John McCain, Strom Thurmond, Tom Delay are all crawling about in large numbers, Bernie Sanders would want to associate with Democrats. (Though it's said that even Republicans trust him as a fair-dealer.) And after 2016, the bulk of the Democrats falsely and stupidly blamed him for Hillary's loss. They slandered him and his supporters. The media excoriates him on a daily basis for the sin of bringing Donald Trump on to threaten the USA and the world. I think it all got to him and he doesn't want to be blamed for Trump getting a second term. But up until COVID-19 it was more the case that Biden would give Trump a second term. Biden the useless, contemptible uninspiring moron.
And I don't know why Sanders still cares about his senatorial career. He's almost eighty. He's only continuing to disgrace himself at this point.
A lot of progressives are coming down hard on Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. The very young, very progressive young woman who defeated a powerful establishment Democratic Congressman from NYC and who became the face of the young, socialist movement that was trying to save that goddamned party from itself. Once, early into her first term, some "conservative" put together a video montage purporting to show AOC as being a babbling, economic illiterate. I watched it thinking it might be edited to distort what she had been saying, but there were enough extended clips that I'm positive some of these embarrassing gaffes were genuine. On the other hand, there have been undeniable moments when she has clearly articulated sophisticated (and passionate) critiques of the oligarchic system, and when she has stood her ground and been vindicated. (For instance her little dig at her moronic "haters" when she was proved right about rejecting a ruinous deal to attract maniac billionaire Jeff Bezos' "Amazon" to NYC.)
One of the most touching moments of the 2020 primaries was when AOC endorsed Sanders. It has been remarked by others that Bernie Sanders has enormous energy, and not just for a man his age. People half his age (including Matt Taibbi who I definitely remember saying this) say they have had a hard time keeping up with him on the campaign trail. During the 2020 primaries, Sanders suffered a mild heart attack and after getting a stent went back to campaigning. Of course this was one of the times the corporate media was interested in talking about Sanders. Obviously he was physically unfit to be President. Perhaps he should now do what they'd always been telling him to do and quit. (This same media continues to pretend that Joe Biden's mind ... never a top-of-the-line model to begin with ... was turning into mush.) It was at that moment that AOC chose to publicly endorse him, reinjecting vigor and hope into the campaign. All of the witless fools in the Democratic leadership had been thinking that AOC would inevitably endorse one of the female candidates because of gender and solidarity and who cares that they were either corporate stooges or Elizabeth Warren who by that point already morphed into a shambling sell-out.
I don't think that AOC has "sold-out" since Bernie Sanders defeat. I think she has come to realize that the Democratic leadership has the power to destroy anybody it wants to if it puts its mind to it. Her own primary victory took them by surprise. With Sanders she saw what a concerted, organized campaign is capable of. I believe she has pulled in her claws for the moment and intends on playing a "long game" to try to gnaw away at the party leadership's control. But this program will harm her more than it will the corporate Dems. By long-term exposure to their propaganda and manipulation and abuse she will make one stupid compromise after another, blighting her in the eyes of progressive outsiders and warping her ability to tell right from wrong.
But, more importantly, there is no time for any "long games." Global heating is coming and it's not going to wait for an eight-year insurgency to produce a "progressive" Democratic Party USA that will then BEGIN to implement "real reforms" of our economic system to blah, blah, blah.
And this is why it doesn't matter if Trump or Biden wins. Both of them are dedicated to the perpetuation of a system that will destroy the Earth's ability to support human civilization. Trump is, undeniably, the more personally repulsive of the two of them, but Biden has clearly stated that "nothing will fundamentally change" if he becomes President. He is the torch-bearer of a rotten status quo. A status-quo that must be quickly overthrown.
Please understand: The Earth will not be able to support human civilization under capitalism's insane assaults upon it. BOTH Trump AND Biden are dedicated to the continuation of this suicidal system. Biden might be more amenable to token policies that acknowledge reality. Trump stupidly imagines that environmentalism based on reality is a conspiracy theory invented by faggots and retards. But very soon, these differences won't matter. Put it this way: Two men want to feed you poison tomorrow. The first guy says he wants to kill you. The second guy says he'll offer you a sedative to go with the poison, and also a glass of water. Either way, you're dead.
With a Trump victory, it's possible that progressives would react adversarially and, therefore, effectively against him. On the other hand, it's also possible that this would leave the opposition leadership in the hands of status-quo villains like Nancy Pelosi and other corporate Dems who would waste time inventing conspiracy theories like "Russiagate" to distract their followers from the necessary radical transformation of society that is necessary. As well, progressive would waste their time brainwashed into thinking that Democratic electoral victories two years from now are the most realistic form of activism.
If Biden wins, it's possible that progressives would go to sleep, the way many of them did under Obama. (And the way so many Canadian progressives --- eg. "Montreal Simon" ... have done under the Trudeau Liberals.) They will think that now that they have a "friend" in the Whitehouse, all they have to do is put [non-]existent "pressure" on him and this corporate tool will miraculously see the light and go on to save the world.
No. More than ever, electoral politics in the USA is a complete waste of time. What is needed is a militant mass movement, of sufficient gigantism, so that when it acts, it compels, FORCES the politicians (of whichever bought-and-paid-for party) to implement the changes demanded. It must be a mass movement, ORGANIZED, of such immensity that it is beyond the resources of the state or of the oligarchy to deny it. The people of the USA must realize the gravity of the situation and produce leaders who can ORGANIZE them into nationwide campaigns that effectively strip away the powers of the death system whether the death system agrees or not. (And, obviously, the death system will disagree.)
That's basically what I wanted to say when I started this series. What I've produced isn't perfect but it'll have to do.
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