The appointment of a longtime anti-Sanders troll to the Biden government is an impressively petty end zone dance by Democrats celebrating the crushing of their left flank
Honestly, between this article & Greenwald's latest piece about how the CIA used Saint Obama as the perfect face to sell endless war I'm starting to think it's all pretty hopeless here in our little red, white & blue trailer park/strip mall.
No matter who rises up in opposition to the corruption of our lovely leaders, they will be derailed or, like Trump, effectively impeded by imaginary scandals & intrigue.
It's pretty obvious that Trump only survived his 4 years of attack because he was such a belligerent mouthy asshole.
Any well meaning civil populist would have melted down much sooner.
The fact is there are think tanks continuously gaming every conceivable scenario that could possibly oppose corporate rule and endless war.
And they have a list of strategies to counter that opposition.
If one doesn't work they just move on to 2, then 3 & so on.
It's not that I wasn't aware of all of this I guess I just hoped the average American was smarter than that.
But watching Biden's installation as the only corporate approved candidate & then watching every neoliberal news agency spin racist, sell out, corporate whore Joe into Sir Lancelot I no longer believe this.
I used to think anyone with half a brain could see through this bullshit.
Sadly I don't believe many Americans have even half a brain anymore.
When Saint Obama unveiled his "Hope & Change" slogan I thought, "Geez, could you be any vaguer. It sounds like you're selling soda." Of course he was selling soda. The kind of soda produced by Raytheon & Dow. The kind of soda that eats out your innards & leaves you a hollow shell. Yet it worked. And it worked in a big way.
In my opinion we, as a nation, are comfy, apathetic & cowed.
What we really seem to want is a friendly face like Joe's to look at while we're being bent over the table.
What we really want is a nice polished leader who knows how to murder but makes the murders look humanitarian, freeing our consciences so we can nap & enjoy what we really like to think about which is sports & porn.
Like Greenwald said, they hated Trump, not for his lying because they're all habitual liars, they hated Trump because he was incapable of putting a friendly face on empire & he inadvertently told the truth about the American empire. 2 huge no-nos in 21st century America.
So glad I voted for Trump even though I voted for Bernie in the primaries. If the Dems cheated progressives, why would you EVER vote for them? Why would you EVER listen to the smears they say about Trump knowing they smeared Tulsi and Bernie?
Progressives who stayed and voted for Biden have Stockholm syndrome. It’s fine if you voted third party or didn’t vote at all. Good for you! You at least didn’t contribute to the party that cheated the progressives. But if you not only voted for Biden, but also shilled for him, you are absolutely a useful idiot.
Watching my fellow progressives, repeat the media propaganda about Trump and vote for Biden makes me feel both pity and disgust. Pity because they are buying the bullshit lies repeated by progressive leaders (why are they repeating this crap from the MSM?!) and disgust because they will still vote for a candidate who is absolutely worse than Trump on foreign policy, trade, jobs in America, and has videos of him creepily groping young girls. Gross!!!
Just go look up the “fine people” hoax. Go watch how the media edited the video of Trump. You’ll just take the word of the media, which you know to be a wing of the Dem establishment, about Trump? The same media that didn’t fact check Biden while he lied during the debate against Bernie about social security? You’d take their word KNOWING they lie about progressives and about almost everything?
So glad I’m not a progressive anymore. I refuse to stay in a voting block that grovels at the feet of the people who abuse them. Get out of the mental plantation. Stop voting Dem. #WalkAway
So.... when did Democrats allow themselves to become the party of Hollywood, Wallstreet & Tech Bros? And why does pop culture still accuse Republicans as being the party of the rich? We are too big of a country to have just 2 parties. How many of us are unrepresented? I’m fairly moderate and could lean toward center republicans or center democrats but I’m fully onboard with universal health care as is almost everyone I know. But neither party represents me at all.
Sad truth be said, Bernie had the ideology, had the charisma, had the right timing, but lacked the personal courage to lead a “revolution”. And I’m talking about 2016, post primary loss. 2020 was too late.
In a nutshell, the Democratic power centers bet hard on identity politics to build a coalition that brushed concerns about their tightness with Wall St. under the rug. And now corporate America is returning and leveraging the favor by taking their side in the culture wars. Pay no attention to the forced Uighur labor making our shoes, we're with "the Cause" that you care about most!
It worked in the 2016 primaries and failed in the election. It would have failed completely in 2020 except for the pandemic. From the GOP's taking of 26% of the minority vote, about double what it was a decade ago, it doesn't look like it's going to work for much longer at all.
The D-RNC, a uniparty of extreme wealth, loath humanity. The 99%, are but slave labor, or even more, obstacles, to their imagined utopia, of lavish lifestyles, sycophantically in service, to the 1%. This is entirely predictable. We warned the world, tax cuts, and reshuffling capital gains, the endless creation of loopholes and shelters, would lead to the rise of an Oligarchy, where it's rarified air of inheritance, would only tolerate super transnational elites, easily able to buy and sell policy and legislators, and nations.
Economic Power is exponentially more meaningful that petty political power. And we, the people, have sponsored this disparity.
Neoliberalism or neo-liberalism is the 20th-century resurgence of 19th-century ideas associated with laissez-faire economic liberalism and free market capitalism.
What neoliberalism is NOT, is a new way to describe “liberals” (in 2020 popular context) Both the DNC and RNC are neoliberal organizations
Neoliberalism is more closely aligned with Libertarianism, Conservatism (although there is NOTHING conservative about it, it is in fact, Extremist)
Neoliberals abhor competition, (despite promoting "free markets"),but LOVE monopolies, cartels, and organization of capital
Neoliberals abhor "public debt", but LOVE "private debt".
Neoliberals abhor organization of Labor, but LOVE monopolies, cartels, and organization of capital.
Neoliberals abhor “regulations” on business, but LOVE regulation of the people
Neoliberals abhor shared resources of “the commons” (public land, water, air, energy), But LOVE Privatization of Everything (for rent extraction purposes)
10 Dem Party/MSM rules re “centrists” vs the left in the US:
1. The left advocating for policies that most Americans want and every other major country in the world takes for granted (e.g. healthcare as a right) is “radical”, “pie in the sky”, “How on earth are we going to pay for it?”; “centrists” opposing those policies is “pragmatism”, “the adults in the room”;
2. The left is “divisive”, a “spoiler”, must unite behind a “centrist”, and must never criticize a “centrist” because that “helps the Republicans”; “centrists” can do whatever they like;
3. The left is “toxic”, “angry”, “uncivil”, “bros”, “just like Trump”, and must constantly be tone-policed and called upon to apologize; “centrists” can say whatever they like however they like;
4. The left finding common ground with Independents/Republicans on ANYTHING = “the horseshoe theory”, “fascist-enabling/adjacent”, “canceled”; “centrists” embracing and being embraced by ANYONE, including Bush-era neocon war criminals/propagandists, Islamophobic anti-choice/LGBT Republicans, lying CIA/FBI/NSA surveillance ghouls and billionaire oligarchs and their lobbyists = “bipartisanship”, “coalition-building”, “electable”; “big tent”;
5. Anyone “centrists” don’t like is “a Russian asset” and “what Putin wants”; “centrists” are “real Americans”/“patriots”, “what Putin hates the most”;
6. Identity (race, gender, LGBT etc) only matters if it can be weaponized to help a “centrist” and/or slam their opponents;
7. Anything a leftist (or anybody who endorses them) has ever said or done is “racist”, “sexist” or otherwise “disqualifying”; not “disqualifying” for a “centrist”: being funded by/doing the bidding of billionaires/big corporations, supporting disastrous interventionist wars based on lies, alleged sexual misconduct/assault, history of segregation-adjacency/racist policies/statements, pathological lying/plagiarism, corruption, cognitive decline;
8. “Centrists” fighting tooth and nail to stop healthcare as a right, a living wage, free public college and ending the wars is NOT “privilege”; the left daring even to consider withholding support from a Dem who OPPOSES all of the above IS “privilege”/“purity”;
9. Only a “centrist” is ever “electable”/can win the general election;
10. When a leftist loses, it is proof that voters reject leftist policies and Dems must move further to the right; when a “centrist” loses or underperforms, it is proof that voters reject leftist policies and Dems must move further to the right. (“Centrists” must never face accountability or suffer consequences for failure; in fact, “centrists” can never fail; they can only ever BE failed, by the (fucking!) voters.)
I'm kind of digesting the article and I don't know if this is necessarily a loss for the left. The Democratic Party is slowly losing the younger vote and even some of us oldsters. We'll see what Biden/Harris do but so far it's not seeming super inspiring. What people with massive quantities of money - as most of the people who make decisions in this country are - don't realize is that those of us nearer the economic bottom know that money is power and an economic message works. I am a first generation American whose parents were immigrants from Mexico - they worked hard only to retire on $850 per month SS payments. You tell me which message they were going to hear - one of some nebulous racial justice or one of UBI...
Well done piece but depressing. Bernie failed his supporters (especially his delegates) in 2016 and failed them all again in 2020. His "lesson learned" in 2016 was to adopt inter-sectional language and to broadcast his support for less progressive candidate Elizabeth Warren --possibly so he couldn't be accused of sexism? that didn't work --and of course for his good friend Joe Biden. I wish someone would do some reporting on who in Bernie's campaign really made these awful decisions. Glenn Greenwald in an off the cuff moment in an interview suggested that Jane was behind a lot of it. Could this be? All that money and all that campaigning and the reward is the elevation of Neera Tanden and shortly, perhaps when Biden has fractured a hip not a foot, Kamala Harris as President. Hillary really won this one.
Well, Bernie blew it. He should never have become an "obedient afterthought"; but he didn't learn anything from his rejection in 2016, and he suffered from Trump Derangement Syndrome. Indeed, I don't think that he's now even an afterthought. He should have gone third party, but he couldn't face Trump being re-elected. The Democratic Party cannot be reformed. It has to be destroyed. Trump did pretty well in busting up the Republican Party (so many of them supported Biden and became liberal heroes. People like Bill Kristol, George W. Bush, and John Bolton); Trump just didn't do well enough. Sanders is just getting what he asked for. Soory, I wishe it were otherwise, but it isn't.
I wouldn’t go near the Democratic Party if it wasn’t for Bernie. The DNC arguement is basically as long as it is a Latinx Tranny telling me to go fuck myself for wanting Medicare for all, I can’t say shit as a straight Latino. You can’t message away that bullshit.
I've never really been all that excited about Bernie. I have some old Bernard Sanders audio albums covering the life Eugene Debs. Debs and Sanders stories are of two divergent political trajectories. Debs walked away from a promising career in the Democratic Party to help start a socialist movement in the US. Bernie made his name as a socialist mayor in Vermont before moving to the "People's house" and then ultimately to the US Senate were he voted with the Democrats 98% of the time. Bernie has supported US military interventions and wars over his political career. Eugene Debs went to prison because he chose to openly oppose WWI. Bernie at the height of his political power, and after it was proven that DNC colluded with the Clinton campaign to derail his campaign, O' Bern chose to support a candidate (Clinton), of which, he spent his entire campaign exposing as a pure unapologetic Wall Street candidate. Debs ran his last presidential campaign from prison. Debs is a story of principles and courage. Sanders is a story of cynical pragmatism and political survival at all cost.
Biden cabinet is pure, utmost corporate identity politics. I voted Obama in 2008 based on his antiwar and universal healthcare stance. He did not deliver, and I soon found answers in old Matt's Griftopia. So I did not vote in 2012. In 2016 I wrote in Bernie, and this time I held my nose and voted for Biden. Next time I sure as hell will vote for Trump IF ONLY he pardons Assange and Snowden (don't care too much about Snowden since he's pretty free already). Why? Because there is no hope in this duopoly to have a president that represents middle class, so let's vote for someone who at least allows people the right to know.
There's no turning back what happened in 2016. Bernie is now irrelevant and even if the country supports many of his policies, they will NEVER support a weakling again. I know I won't. People talk about ending "Trumpism"...all I hear is "ending any possibility of the people having an actual say". I could give a fuck about Trump's naughty language at this point. The DNC has ensured at least half the country will never support them again and the RNC will also lose their support if they try to turn things back to the way they used to be. There will be a massive revolution if this election isn't fairly audited and I will gladly be a part of it. My (our) future is fucked. But that doesn't mean I have to watch it happen with my hands tied. I will not pretend any of this is okay for one second longer.
Honestly, between this article & Greenwald's latest piece about how the CIA used Saint Obama as the perfect face to sell endless war I'm starting to think it's all pretty hopeless here in our little red, white & blue trailer park/strip mall.
No matter who rises up in opposition to the corruption of our lovely leaders, they will be derailed or, like Trump, effectively impeded by imaginary scandals & intrigue.
It's pretty obvious that Trump only survived his 4 years of attack because he was such a belligerent mouthy asshole.
Any well meaning civil populist would have melted down much sooner.
The fact is there are think tanks continuously gaming every conceivable scenario that could possibly oppose corporate rule and endless war.
And they have a list of strategies to counter that opposition.
If one doesn't work they just move on to 2, then 3 & so on.
It's not that I wasn't aware of all of this I guess I just hoped the average American was smarter than that.
But watching Biden's installation as the only corporate approved candidate & then watching every neoliberal news agency spin racist, sell out, corporate whore Joe into Sir Lancelot I no longer believe this.
I used to think anyone with half a brain could see through this bullshit.
Sadly I don't believe many Americans have even half a brain anymore.
When Saint Obama unveiled his "Hope & Change" slogan I thought, "Geez, could you be any vaguer. It sounds like you're selling soda." Of course he was selling soda. The kind of soda produced by Raytheon & Dow. The kind of soda that eats out your innards & leaves you a hollow shell. Yet it worked. And it worked in a big way.
In my opinion we, as a nation, are comfy, apathetic & cowed.
What we really seem to want is a friendly face like Joe's to look at while we're being bent over the table.
What we really want is a nice polished leader who knows how to murder but makes the murders look humanitarian, freeing our consciences so we can nap & enjoy what we really like to think about which is sports & porn.
Like Greenwald said, they hated Trump, not for his lying because they're all habitual liars, they hated Trump because he was incapable of putting a friendly face on empire & he inadvertently told the truth about the American empire. 2 huge no-nos in 21st century America.
So glad I voted for Trump even though I voted for Bernie in the primaries. If the Dems cheated progressives, why would you EVER vote for them? Why would you EVER listen to the smears they say about Trump knowing they smeared Tulsi and Bernie?
Progressives who stayed and voted for Biden have Stockholm syndrome. It’s fine if you voted third party or didn’t vote at all. Good for you! You at least didn’t contribute to the party that cheated the progressives. But if you not only voted for Biden, but also shilled for him, you are absolutely a useful idiot.
Watching my fellow progressives, repeat the media propaganda about Trump and vote for Biden makes me feel both pity and disgust. Pity because they are buying the bullshit lies repeated by progressive leaders (why are they repeating this crap from the MSM?!) and disgust because they will still vote for a candidate who is absolutely worse than Trump on foreign policy, trade, jobs in America, and has videos of him creepily groping young girls. Gross!!!
Just go look up the “fine people” hoax. Go watch how the media edited the video of Trump. You’ll just take the word of the media, which you know to be a wing of the Dem establishment, about Trump? The same media that didn’t fact check Biden while he lied during the debate against Bernie about social security? You’d take their word KNOWING they lie about progressives and about almost everything?
So glad I’m not a progressive anymore. I refuse to stay in a voting block that grovels at the feet of the people who abuse them. Get out of the mental plantation. Stop voting Dem. #WalkAway
So.... when did Democrats allow themselves to become the party of Hollywood, Wallstreet & Tech Bros? And why does pop culture still accuse Republicans as being the party of the rich? We are too big of a country to have just 2 parties. How many of us are unrepresented? I’m fairly moderate and could lean toward center republicans or center democrats but I’m fully onboard with universal health care as is almost everyone I know. But neither party represents me at all.
A slide back into Clinton-era neoliberalism just ensures a 2022 House flip and likely a 2024 presidency lost.
Sad truth be said, Bernie had the ideology, had the charisma, had the right timing, but lacked the personal courage to lead a “revolution”. And I’m talking about 2016, post primary loss. 2020 was too late.
In a nutshell, the Democratic power centers bet hard on identity politics to build a coalition that brushed concerns about their tightness with Wall St. under the rug. And now corporate America is returning and leveraging the favor by taking their side in the culture wars. Pay no attention to the forced Uighur labor making our shoes, we're with "the Cause" that you care about most!
It worked in the 2016 primaries and failed in the election. It would have failed completely in 2020 except for the pandemic. From the GOP's taking of 26% of the minority vote, about double what it was a decade ago, it doesn't look like it's going to work for much longer at all.
The D-RNC, a uniparty of extreme wealth, loath humanity. The 99%, are but slave labor, or even more, obstacles, to their imagined utopia, of lavish lifestyles, sycophantically in service, to the 1%. This is entirely predictable. We warned the world, tax cuts, and reshuffling capital gains, the endless creation of loopholes and shelters, would lead to the rise of an Oligarchy, where it's rarified air of inheritance, would only tolerate super transnational elites, easily able to buy and sell policy and legislators, and nations.
Economic Power is exponentially more meaningful that petty political power. And we, the people, have sponsored this disparity.
Neoliberalism or neo-liberalism is the 20th-century resurgence of 19th-century ideas associated with laissez-faire economic liberalism and free market capitalism.
What neoliberalism is NOT, is a new way to describe “liberals” (in 2020 popular context) Both the DNC and RNC are neoliberal organizations
Neoliberalism is more closely aligned with Libertarianism, Conservatism (although there is NOTHING conservative about it, it is in fact, Extremist)
Neoliberals abhor competition, (despite promoting "free markets"),but LOVE monopolies, cartels, and organization of capital
Neoliberals abhor "public debt", but LOVE "private debt".
Neoliberals abhor organization of Labor, but LOVE monopolies, cartels, and organization of capital.
Neoliberals abhor “regulations” on business, but LOVE regulation of the people
Neoliberals abhor shared resources of “the commons” (public land, water, air, energy), But LOVE Privatization of Everything (for rent extraction purposes)
there is no easy way out of this condition.
10 Dem Party/MSM rules re “centrists” vs the left in the US:
1. The left advocating for policies that most Americans want and every other major country in the world takes for granted (e.g. healthcare as a right) is “radical”, “pie in the sky”, “How on earth are we going to pay for it?”; “centrists” opposing those policies is “pragmatism”, “the adults in the room”;
2. The left is “divisive”, a “spoiler”, must unite behind a “centrist”, and must never criticize a “centrist” because that “helps the Republicans”; “centrists” can do whatever they like;
3. The left is “toxic”, “angry”, “uncivil”, “bros”, “just like Trump”, and must constantly be tone-policed and called upon to apologize; “centrists” can say whatever they like however they like;
4. The left finding common ground with Independents/Republicans on ANYTHING = “the horseshoe theory”, “fascist-enabling/adjacent”, “canceled”; “centrists” embracing and being embraced by ANYONE, including Bush-era neocon war criminals/propagandists, Islamophobic anti-choice/LGBT Republicans, lying CIA/FBI/NSA surveillance ghouls and billionaire oligarchs and their lobbyists = “bipartisanship”, “coalition-building”, “electable”; “big tent”;
5. Anyone “centrists” don’t like is “a Russian asset” and “what Putin wants”; “centrists” are “real Americans”/“patriots”, “what Putin hates the most”;
6. Identity (race, gender, LGBT etc) only matters if it can be weaponized to help a “centrist” and/or slam their opponents;
7. Anything a leftist (or anybody who endorses them) has ever said or done is “racist”, “sexist” or otherwise “disqualifying”; not “disqualifying” for a “centrist”: being funded by/doing the bidding of billionaires/big corporations, supporting disastrous interventionist wars based on lies, alleged sexual misconduct/assault, history of segregation-adjacency/racist policies/statements, pathological lying/plagiarism, corruption, cognitive decline;
8. “Centrists” fighting tooth and nail to stop healthcare as a right, a living wage, free public college and ending the wars is NOT “privilege”; the left daring even to consider withholding support from a Dem who OPPOSES all of the above IS “privilege”/“purity”;
9. Only a “centrist” is ever “electable”/can win the general election;
10. When a leftist loses, it is proof that voters reject leftist policies and Dems must move further to the right; when a “centrist” loses or underperforms, it is proof that voters reject leftist policies and Dems must move further to the right. (“Centrists” must never face accountability or suffer consequences for failure; in fact, “centrists” can never fail; they can only ever BE failed, by the (fucking!) voters.)
I'm kind of digesting the article and I don't know if this is necessarily a loss for the left. The Democratic Party is slowly losing the younger vote and even some of us oldsters. We'll see what Biden/Harris do but so far it's not seeming super inspiring. What people with massive quantities of money - as most of the people who make decisions in this country are - don't realize is that those of us nearer the economic bottom know that money is power and an economic message works. I am a first generation American whose parents were immigrants from Mexico - they worked hard only to retire on $850 per month SS payments. You tell me which message they were going to hear - one of some nebulous racial justice or one of UBI...
Well done piece but depressing. Bernie failed his supporters (especially his delegates) in 2016 and failed them all again in 2020. His "lesson learned" in 2016 was to adopt inter-sectional language and to broadcast his support for less progressive candidate Elizabeth Warren --possibly so he couldn't be accused of sexism? that didn't work --and of course for his good friend Joe Biden. I wish someone would do some reporting on who in Bernie's campaign really made these awful decisions. Glenn Greenwald in an off the cuff moment in an interview suggested that Jane was behind a lot of it. Could this be? All that money and all that campaigning and the reward is the elevation of Neera Tanden and shortly, perhaps when Biden has fractured a hip not a foot, Kamala Harris as President. Hillary really won this one.
Well, Bernie blew it. He should never have become an "obedient afterthought"; but he didn't learn anything from his rejection in 2016, and he suffered from Trump Derangement Syndrome. Indeed, I don't think that he's now even an afterthought. He should have gone third party, but he couldn't face Trump being re-elected. The Democratic Party cannot be reformed. It has to be destroyed. Trump did pretty well in busting up the Republican Party (so many of them supported Biden and became liberal heroes. People like Bill Kristol, George W. Bush, and John Bolton); Trump just didn't do well enough. Sanders is just getting what he asked for. Soory, I wishe it were otherwise, but it isn't.
I wouldn’t go near the Democratic Party if it wasn’t for Bernie. The DNC arguement is basically as long as it is a Latinx Tranny telling me to go fuck myself for wanting Medicare for all, I can’t say shit as a straight Latino. You can’t message away that bullshit.
I've never really been all that excited about Bernie. I have some old Bernard Sanders audio albums covering the life Eugene Debs. Debs and Sanders stories are of two divergent political trajectories. Debs walked away from a promising career in the Democratic Party to help start a socialist movement in the US. Bernie made his name as a socialist mayor in Vermont before moving to the "People's house" and then ultimately to the US Senate were he voted with the Democrats 98% of the time. Bernie has supported US military interventions and wars over his political career. Eugene Debs went to prison because he chose to openly oppose WWI. Bernie at the height of his political power, and after it was proven that DNC colluded with the Clinton campaign to derail his campaign, O' Bern chose to support a candidate (Clinton), of which, he spent his entire campaign exposing as a pure unapologetic Wall Street candidate. Debs ran his last presidential campaign from prison. Debs is a story of principles and courage. Sanders is a story of cynical pragmatism and political survival at all cost.
The fact that Sanders remains silent...says it all....Bernie doesn't have the guts to lead a progressive revolution. He's pop-gun revolutionary.
Biden cabinet is pure, utmost corporate identity politics. I voted Obama in 2008 based on his antiwar and universal healthcare stance. He did not deliver, and I soon found answers in old Matt's Griftopia. So I did not vote in 2012. In 2016 I wrote in Bernie, and this time I held my nose and voted for Biden. Next time I sure as hell will vote for Trump IF ONLY he pardons Assange and Snowden (don't care too much about Snowden since he's pretty free already). Why? Because there is no hope in this duopoly to have a president that represents middle class, so let's vote for someone who at least allows people the right to know.
There's no turning back what happened in 2016. Bernie is now irrelevant and even if the country supports many of his policies, they will NEVER support a weakling again. I know I won't. People talk about ending "Trumpism"...all I hear is "ending any possibility of the people having an actual say". I could give a fuck about Trump's naughty language at this point. The DNC has ensured at least half the country will never support them again and the RNC will also lose their support if they try to turn things back to the way they used to be. There will be a massive revolution if this election isn't fairly audited and I will gladly be a part of it. My (our) future is fucked. But that doesn't mean I have to watch it happen with my hands tied. I will not pretend any of this is okay for one second longer.