Step right up and vote, but . . .

Empty Hope

So all Bernie supporters need to forget about their hopes and beliefs and get behind Clinton.  Obama and those bigwig Democrats (many if not all are superdelegates) who never gave a shit about us now welcomes us.  You had your fun, but like ol’ Billy Boy said, “Your Toast.”  Look over there at the Republican presumptive nominee.  See what can happen!  The shrill chorus of gloom and doom echo in every quarter; hell even the media is picking up on it.

An historical moment is unfolding.  See there is a woman, the first woman to become the presumptive nominee of one of the two bankrupt parties that dominate this country.  There is nothing more any true American liberal could ever want.  Right?   Bullshit!

You see we been through all this before.  Are we so myopic that we already lost sight of 2008.  Remember that black dude in Colorado who gave his nominating speech in a stadium -- the only place in Denver to accommodate the crowd.  Everyone wanted to be a witness to history.  I must confess that I choked up hearing that young black man talk about hope and change.  I choked back tears when his family came out to join him.  Hell, I was sentimental seeing Oprah in the midst of the masses shedding a tear or two.  Wasn’t that historic?  Wasn’t that a barrier shattered? How absolutely empty that moment was in hindsight.

You see, we didn’t get anything to quell the fever of hope.  Though Obama marched into office with a super majority (a house and senate in his party), though he had one of the grandest inaugural of all time (hell Beyonce sang), we got nothing but the same, save for some tweaks like the Affordable Care Act.  This colossal product of bureaucracy and politics and the private sector was a little short of a national healthcare (I am being facetious here).  It was a nightmare from stem to stern, incomprehensible when first issued, riddled at implementation, and more importantly it had an escape hatch for neanderthals who don’t quite comprehend a social compact.  That insurance companies can raise their rates and the average joe can see his taxes go up speaks to the absolute failure of a program that is essential to living a life of liberty and a pursuit of happiness.  And all the Democrats crowing for unity had a hand in this.  That something was done is good, but let’s assess it for what it really is or should I say isn’t.  It’s not Medicare.

The aforementioned is a way of showing the hollowness of party unity.  Even when the electorate overwhelmingly turns out and follows a dream what it ends up with is little more than a morsel of the slice of the pie.  The big boys get the pie.  

Enter Clinton, or should I say Clintons, either way we are going to get both.  They are a team that is to be sure.  That they can run and steal an election, no doubt about that.  But what is behind this dynamic duo, well fasten your hip boots because it does get murky.

First, they were the architects of the first national health bill that was an unmitigated failure.  It was a testament to their inability to move things.  Say what you will about Obamacare at least it is law and does offer some relief to the disastrous totally private administration of health care.  How about the conservative shift in criminal justice and so called religious freedom.  In the former, you just jailed the poor especially the blacks, and in the later you gave the bigoted religious zealots an avenue to vent their hate.  Oh, as for the economy, let’s give the power brokers free reign to run their scams with other people’s assets.  Should anything go wrong, let’s remember “they are too big to fail.”  Of course, the fact that millions will go bankrupt and lose their homes, well, big is good, but small who cares?  This list of “achievements” can only be elevated by rhetoric.  Also, a budget was balanced but on whose backs?

Yet here we go again.  The choice of course is always framed as the lesser of two evils.  Does anyone ever ask why can’t there be a choice between what is good and what is bad.  Claiming an historical moment when a lifetime politician ascend to high political stature is kind of self serving.  That a black made it to the top was unfathomable though the significance is more in the optics than the substance given the ignorant truculent bigots in Congress and the reluctance of that body elected with him to truly vote against the interests of the special interests.

So I should not be concerned with helping the impoverished to get a decent minimum wage, nor should I worry about students being saddled with debt for improving themselves, and I shouldn’t give a hoot if a bunch of thieves manipulating the market for private gains get away with their criminal acts.  Most of all I should ignore the history of a candidate in matters of personal profit and glaring stupid mistakes.  I should worry about the buffoon bogeyman.  That both of the candidates this term  inspire nearly no one is of no importance.  After all it is about choices in a democracy.  Choose between the lesser of two evils, which sort of mean evil abounds.

Reflection on the Primary (Democratic)

When The Scoundrels Won

Pacino in the movie The Devil’s Advocate tells his prodigy that the devil won when he convinced the people he didn’t exist.  Enter the moneyed class and scoundrels.  They won this election cycle by ensuring that their position is secured.  Clinton is the best example of how to don sheep clothing and get into the flock.  This family dynasty can be counted on to enrich themselves and play any game to get where they are going or want to go and it usually is to stand in front of mirror and fill their empty egos with pride.

John McCain must be drooling at the prospect of becoming Secretary of Defense.  What scoundrel from Wall Street has been promised the keys to the Treasury?  A good guess can be found in the thieves who paid Clinton to speak.  How many pardons will the new president grant that have to do with the shenanigans of Billy-Boy’s friends?  How is the tax department going to study the filings of the Clinton Foundation?  And how much of this dirt is going to roll out in the election?  One thing rich and powerful people like to do is gossip.  Not the gossip the masses get but the real inside stories.  Of course, Trump, the buffoon, will have no trouble spilling the beans.

What is sad, really sad is that again the nation is adrift in mediocrity tinged with a heavy dose of “pay for play.”  The world is going to shit and neither candidate cares.  The first and highest priority is to preserve and expand the legacy of their egos.  Fracking, is any candidate against it?  Wall Street reform?  Outrageous college debt?  Will global warming lose out to Exxon?  Will the minimum wage bill be run by the Waltons?  Can we extract ourselves from the actions of a bellicose Israeli Prime Minister?  How about GMO’s?

We stand on the brink of a world spinning out of control because too few have too much.  I look at the Clintons and compare them with Carters.  There is a world of difference in their approach to public service, a world of difference in their approach to humanity.  Carter serves the poor but not through a foundation where millions, if not billions, is funneled though some pseudo corporate entity.  By the way, didn’t they have to return items that were taken from the White House?

Platitudes coming from Clinton and her minions are attempts to draw on the energy of a campaign of ideas.   Bernie ran a good fight.  He energize the party.  He brought out the disenfranchised.  He is good for the party and the country.  What these statement fail to appreciate is that Sanders campaign was never about Bernie.  If they think they can now draw on his support with this insincere rhetoric, they don’t have a clue what the Sanders campaign was about or why it drew the attention it did.  

Bill Clinton moved this country to the right farther than anyone because he had the support of the Democrats.  His crime bill and welfare reform were creations drawn from the primer on a conservative agenda.  That is why he was able to work with a Republican majority.  Oh, and all those bullshit religious laws that single out gays and transgender folks, well look that up sometime.  And he had such a forward policy on gays in the military, “don’t ask, don’t tell.”  That worked, huh?

The Sanders campaign was all about ideas and beliefs that in this world things can get done.  That to accomplish great things, bold actions need to be undertaken.  It was never about the candidate.   It was about a candidate who dared to go beyond the constraints that has kept this country in a strangle hold.  When was the last time the great Bill Clinton was seen at a public golf course?  Every picture of this man shows him surrounded by influence peddlers and moguls, or laughing and joking with the Bushes.   That people who believe in Democratic principles think that this conservative family is going to deliver something different this go around are engaging in wishful thinking and they definitely have their collective heads in a place where the sun doesn’t shine.  By the way, this cycle is the perfect sting:  You think you have won while the scoundrels walk off with your money.

Analyzing Republican Reaction To Trump's racism

The Hypocrisy of Outrage

To see the Republicans stammer when asked if Trump’s comments were racist shows that even confronted with the reality of their bigoted presumptive nominee they are reluctant to call it what it is.  Irony abounds.  They won’t say it is because they relied on racism to win the house and the senate and every presidential election after 1968.  The only difference is that they prefer to use code words and allusions rather than outright racial slurs.  The only mistake Trump is making by their standards is that he is using actual words rather than the euphemisms they employ.  How dare he pull down the screen and show people what these bigots really think?

There is an historical context to all this.  Way back when the southern bloc left the Democratic party over the Voting Rights Act.  For all those who forget or missed that lesson, the bill was the cornerstone of the Great Society.  This program of President Johnson was a legislative attempt to do what should have been done during the Reconstruction (i.e. period after the Civil War).  The Dixiecrats (they were never really democrats -- they were racists who held on to the antebellum views that men were not created equal) prided themselves on making sure Jim Crow Laws would negate the North win over the South.  How ironic it was the Republicans during that period spoke to the rights of all citizens.  The party of Lincoln held to the principles of equal rights.

Nixon was one who recognize the importance of a southern strategy.  The South was rudderless having been ignored by the Democrats.  So the modern Republican Party, a party of neoconservatives, shifted to the right or should say I dug a deeper hole that allowed the bigoted whites to drain into their hatred.  

Next came Reagan and the California right composed mainly of deviate money men whose only concern was to acquire as much wealth as possible before they croaked.  That Reagan was a man of minimal intelligence and strong emotions made him the ideal candidate to be manipulated.  His skill at memorizing lines and affecting an “Aw Shucks” demeanor made him the ideal empty suit to be transformed into a statesman.  That he didn’t know basic geography or remember a single important thing was easily channeled by keeping him away from any extemporaneous moments that might be recorded.  His image could be sculpted and the B actor was good at playing a role.  You see, the ideal face of the party could not be a strong person with a mind of his own but a “yes” man who could sell soap (literally).

Reagan built the military and the money grubbing industrialists couldn’t have been happier.  There was so much arms being built, the country became the arms dealer for the world even making it a means to prop up dictators and suppress populations in South America, indeed the world.  This is the Reagan legacy, a vast sell out to the military industrial complex, and a presidency guided by operatives, while the aging cowboy, who was losing his mind, nodded off into peaceful naps, while the world fell apart.

Then we have Bush I, with Lee Atwater, using Willie Horton, followed by Rove and the Idiot Son who brought racism and hate politics to an even greater depth of depravity.  With the rich getting richer and allowing their blood money to go untaxed, the Republican party was in clutches of those who used the ignorant to maintain their power and plunder the society.

 

Over time the nation defaulted to democracy and love of neighbor and elected Democratic Presidents , but the Republicans unleashed the bigoted cadre of Elmer Gantries who used their pulpits to preach made up moral issues and corral their flocks into supporting the charlatans who mouthed, though often not believed, their muddled view of Christianity.  Of course, all levels of government ruled by this monolith of hate and ignorance gerrymandered districts insuring only the most reprehensible individuals would be sent to Washington and create a pit where they could wrapped themselves in flags which was good because then they could stuff their pockets without being detected.  

Trump is the natural progression of a party that is based on ignorance and hate and beholding to men who are to the one scoundrels.  It is hard to find one of the so called leaders of industry who isn’t tainted with corruption and fraud.  That they persist promoting policies that are dangerous to all living creatures and the world itself is an indication that it is only their greed that matters for they will be long gone before they experience the devastation of their actions.   

The Republican party made a concerted effort to be a racist bastion of ignorance and hate.  Their leaders are caught in a trap of their own making.  The money men realize that this fool who rose up out of the trash heap they created is about to do something as bold as Nero, who fiddled while Rome burned.  The events of this cycle need a caliber of a writer on par with Shakespeare to bring out the ironies of a party that created what they despise.  Also, there might be some poignant scenes by a Moliere caliber humorist -- one who could show the absolute absurdity of all the Republican players trying to avoid and court the buffoon.  Twain would capture it for sure.  But in the final analysis all we need to do is look at this spectacle and know that “karma” is a bitch.