As if to prove my point that, now, Bernie Sanders is essentially campaigning for Donald Trump, I just heard a bit of what he said last night. He is, in effect, going to continue to attack the only candidate who will stand between the country, the world and a President Donald Trump and his appointees. At this point he isn't pushing any agenda to the left, he's running the risk of handing the agenda to the Republicans. That was the biggest fear a lot of us had about the potential of his candidacy from the start of it, he is repeating an all too familiar history of what the left has become in American politics*.
And while he might, at times, pull back a bit on the Hillary hatin' a lot of his fans use his continued campaign to repeat old lines of Hillary hatin' much of it written by the worst of Republican-fascist propaganda mills. I'm beginning to think that the talk of there being a cross-over between the Bernie Sanders voters and those who will vote for Donald Trump in the fall is becaue there is a percentage of his supporters who only know about Hillary Clinton what they absorbed from the Republican-fascist hate campaign against her.
This has certainly been the year that I've had to face in a very hard way that the media of the left has learned absolutely nothing from the past sixteen years. If they didn't learn from the disaster of 2000 they are not going to learn from anything. I looked at the front pages of The Nation, Mother Jones, The Progressive, In These Times, Alternet, Salon and a few other web sites and see they are, as well, still promoting anti-Hillary hit pieces, now, today, when it is clear that it is either going to be her or it's going to be Donald Trump who takes office next January.
I think one of the reasons that the leftist media in the United States doesn't do better is far removed from it talking against the corporate-oligarchic interests, those with the money to control the media. I think one of the reasons the leftist media in the United States doesn't do better is because their frequent immaturity and counter-productive publications discredit themselves among rational people who are more interested in reality than theory. The academic left which writes a good part of leftist media is too lazy to do something that will really change things, it's all academic to them. And the media is too busy trying to attract the attention of the lazy, immature element in the left with click bait. And there are few topics this year that bait them like Hillary hate. Then there are the idiots who dream of revolution magically coming from fascism as they write from their writing desks and their faculty offices and work stations, the kind who Samantha Bee so realistically noted would shit their pants if they were dropped down in a real revolution. The romance about revolution is the most lunatic of all loony and widespread ideas of the play-left. It is ubiquitous in leftist media.
The so-called leftist media has also lost credibility this year. And I don't think they deserve to regain any of it, at this point. We need a responsible leftist media, one that won't be full of the typical names and bylines.
* Not just this year in the United States and not just here. One of the greatest boons for the right, even the overtly fascist right, here and elsewhere, is the willingness for egotistical and irrationally ambitious and, or, vindictive leftists to cut the legs out from under those closest to themselves who have a chance to win elections. I think it's far more likely to happen on the left than on the right for any number of reasons, all I can prove is that it happens far more often than makes maintaining such a "left" reasonable. We need to dump those who do that.
Most of the on-line complaints I read about Hillary (admittedly, a very small sampling from a very select sample) are re-hashing stories and, yes, lies, that have been around for 25 years about the Clintons. It's everything from Whitewater to Benghazi, with Wall Street thrown in as the source of ultimate evil in the world.
ReplyDeleteYes, Hillary made speeches to Goldman Sachs. So did a lot of people. G-S paid for the privilege of having speakers come to them and select audiences and make significant speeches (supposedly). I doubt they were any more significant than a TED talk, but G-S sold them as prestigious. It's how that part of the world works. My guess is G-S owns those words, as a part of the deal; the better to keep the speech "exclusive' and therefore important for G-S's reputation.
But it doesn't mean G-S bought Hillary's soul, anymore than Sanders sold his soul to the NRA in order to vote against laws making gun makers liable for the use of their products.
As for Sanders continuing to campaign, as Hillary pointed out earlier, it's hard to stop. It's over for Sanders, there's no way he gets the nomination, or even forces a contested convention. The super delegates simply won't allow the latter (with good reason), the delegate math won't work for the former. I think his ego has gotten the best of him. Which is quite a tarnish on a guy who's supposed to be so pure, so holy, so in it only to save America from evil (Wall Street, banks, health ins. cos.. Republicans).
As usual every quadrennial, I'm tired of this. Honestly, the "bold vision" of the "Founding Fathers" is beginning to look like a stitched together Frankenstein monster: part Hamilton, part Jefferson, a dash of bad Franklin, and a lot of complete misunderstanding.
I'm starting to expect the villagers with the pitchforks as saviors.....
One of the most serious weaknesses of the federalist system the founders set up is that it was imagined to be a gentlemen's agreement based on some notion of honor. Well, that pretty much went out the window just about immediately, the corruption of the early 19th century is matched only by that of the late 19th century and the period from 1980 till today. And the fat-heads made it almost impossible, in reality, to change the system or even to remove the most corrupt and criminal of presidents or, for that matter, Supreme Court justices.
DeleteI don't think the system is likely to change unless the very rich and powerful are scared into it, the problem is that it won't be pitchforks, it will be automatic weapons and we know who holds that arsenal, thanks in no small part to the founders and their desire to keep slaves.
And yeah, I love this idea of "revolutions." Revolutions occur when people die. The American Revolution didn't descend into blood bath because the British withdrew.
ReplyDeleteThe Civil War was a revolution. The slaughter was incredible. The French Revolution was the norm, not the aberration. Consider the death count in the Russian Revolution. What's going on in Syria and Libya right now, as well as the Sudan? Bloodless overthrows of governments? Or death and refugees and chaos? Those idiots who want revolutions can go find them right now, and dig in.
At least Hemingway and the "Lost Generation" (some of them) had the mettle to fight in Spain, or drive ambulances, at least. That experience put them off their childish dreams of revolution quite permanently.
Revolutions are not for children, and they are not what happens when the economy collapses and the country decides whatever FDR is selling is better than what Hoover wasn't doing. And even that revolution reversed itself after one generation.
The descriptions of revolutions in high-school and even college text books are so bloodless, the depictions of them in movies are so insanely unrealistic, and that is what informs our so-called educated class. The romance of communists and anarchists for revolution is bizarre, in that they would be the most likely losers in one and the bloodbath rather incredible. I think it's because both of those ideologies know they'll never win elections and gain control of governments or be able to really abolish them through peaceful means.
DeleteReading Emma Goldman and her fellow anarchists on "propaganda of the deed" was a real revision of the absurd romantic view of her. She was an arrogant, anti-egalitarian, violence promoting nut case. I strongly suspect if she and her ilk had never been there the labor movement would have made far more progress of a far more lasting kind.