Blowhard Bernie

Further thoughts on the pathetic revolutionary fizzle that was Bernie's campaign

My Facebook Feed still cranks out messages from Bernie...

"The Pandemic ought to have taught us the need for Medicare for All...

"Workers need to be kept on the payroll...

"It's unacceptable that people should be evicted during the crisis...

"Bail out working people, not corporate executives...
 
"We cannot lose sight of the climate emergency around us. ...
 
"The workers on the front lines of this crisis are heroes. They must be provided hazard pay, child care and safe working conditions.

"While working people struggle to survive, the rich reach unthinkable levels of wealth. We can and must build a system based on justice and dignity for all. It is fundamentally immoral that health insurance companies make billions in profit every year by denying care...”

The usual. Typical Bernie.

I don't disagree with any of it. Earlier this year I was sending money to promote all of it.  Now I find it obnoxious and want to say

OH SHUT UP ALREADY

Why?

Because there's a difference between a message with content and one without.  Or, put another way, between political rallying and moralistic speechifying.

Once Bernie threw in the political towel by suspending his candidacy and -- worse yet -- endorsing his rival, his words lost their political content.  They became noise from the sideline rather than shouts from within the game.

My sister said a nasty thing about Bernie. She called him a "whiner."  Of course, she was for Warren whom, she said, at least had done something.  I shrugged it off as the rationalization from yet another System-Invested Boomer.  But after Bernie capitulated I began to think twice about my sister's perjorative.

Bernie was certainly no revolutionary.  Not even a work-within-the-system revolutionary.  A real revolutionary would never had thrown in the towel to back his "good friend Joe," the Banker's Whore par excellence. 

Bernie's program was no more revolutionary than Rerum Novarum, Pope Leo XIII's 1891 encyclical calling for the establishment of the social welfare state

Funny how most Ah'murkans have never heard of it... not from Fox News nor the New York Slime's resident Catholic, Ross Douhat  The one thing the Huckstocracy of this  country does not want is for its hapless dumfucks to realize how reactionary and just plain 'tarded the country is. But I digress.

For those who don't bother with the likes of the New York Slime or MSNBC, it is hardly news that Bernie's program was warmed over New Deal. But it is worth reminding ourselves that the New Deal was itself just psuedo social democracy which in turn was nothing but fake socialism. We are three cousins removed from any fundamental structural change.  Regulating capitalism, curbing its excesses, remediating its economic cruelties is not the same thing as replacing it with a system not based on the use of money to make money (to put it simply). 

 In my view, New Dealism won't work.  It won't work because Pope Leo XIII did not understand the inherent contradictions of capitalism.  He, like Bernie, attributed capitalism's excesses to GREED; that is, is to a moral failure of the ruling, wealth-owning class.  

This is not to say that greed is not a problem.  In the United States, greed has been a virtual pandemic for the past 40 years, ravaging whatever pathetic distribution of social product there might have been.  Greed certainly needs to be curbed ... preferably with a sharp blade.

But other countries, where wealth is more moderate and certainly more discreet -- Germany, France, Sweden --, have still been cutting back on social benefits.  Why?  Why do Germany, Sweden, France outsource jobs to Eastern Europe, China or third world countries?  They do it out of economic necessity; that is to say, under the imperatives of the way capitalism works and the way it generates wealth.  Again, to put it simply: PROFIT IS NOT POSSIBLE WITHOUT CHEAP LABOR.  This is not a "failing" of capitalism; it is its essence and its inherent contradiction. 

America's high standard of living immediately after the Second World War was not due to the superior merit of our system but simply because we were victors.  America had all the gold's world (literally, except for a relative sliver held by Argentina).  We were the only country with an intact industrial infrastructure. We could dictate whatever terms we wanted and we had virtually free oil.   

We were rich in the manner of Attila the Hun and could fling our money around to create an artificial "middle class."  When the money and the free oil ran out, the Huckstocracy began the process of social triage which it has carried out for the past fifty years.  And things will only get worse.

So... from a revolutionary socialist point of view, Bernie's program was a mere panacea.  But what the fuck. Some respite on the road to collapse is nothing to sneeze at. More than that, it is always foolish to exalt theory over practice.  In real life, things happen organically if unpredictably. Transmogrification ("change") emerges from and with failure and contradiction. Let us suppose that the U.S.  were to adopt a full social-democratic, welfare policy within an operative capitalist system.  Let us suppose that it worked well for 15 years and that at the end of that time Capital started screaming that it couldn't "afford" all the welfare anymore; that the demand for investment and profit made paying for the welfare state impossible.  At that point a choice would arise: abandon social welfare and return to economic liberalism or scrap capitalism in favor of genuine socialism.  In abstract theory the choice was always one or the other: clean slate A or clean sweep B.  In practice no one can say what the choice will end up being except that it will be a mish-mash on the road to furthr mish-mash.  Half measures like the New Deal lead to experiential choices by which people at least reject going backward.  Stumbling forward is nothing to sneer at.

The reader might have noticed that "not being able to afford" the cost of welfare sounds rather familiar.  Indeed! It was the panic cry of Reagan, Thatcher, Blair and Clinton and, in Germany, Schröder.  In 2008, when the Flawless Obambi was elected, Nancy (La Bon Bon) Peelousy said "Don't expect a new New Deal."  Nancy understood that social democracy "won't work" -- which is the Huckstocracy's way of saying that it won't work within a capitalist system intrinsically based on cheap labour. If Nancy understand this, Jim Bezos and Jamie Dimon certainly do as well.  They are just hoping Dumfuck won't.

In my opinion, we don't need second experiential run to realize that New Dealism ultimately can't and won't work. But again, what the fuck. Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good.  At the same time, however, it is well to bear in mind how tepid Bernie's demands really were the next time some Huckster's Helper over at the DNC begins blabbering about the need to “compromise.”  Bernie's progam was the compromise.

In the end, I supported Bernie because there was nothing else to get behind.  His program offered desperately needed relief to masses of workers and sub workers and non-workers suffering in need.  The alternative was to demand a real socialist revolution and, if one thing was clear, the 'Murkan working class completely lacked the class consciousness required for fundamental change.   

So as not to sound too hifalutin' "class consciousness" is just a doctrinaire way of saying "butt hurt awareness" and the Huckstocracy has been so expertly good at promoting dumbfuckery that this country's lumpen plebes are either numb to the pain or have been convinced that the pain is their own fault or worst of all don't even fucking notice no more.  They say that if you get butt-fucked long and hard enough you "grow" to like and even hunger for it.  

All that said, somewhere in the middle of 2019, Bernie's message underwent a subtle shift. He stopped hawking his Basket of Benefits and began to talk about taking over and cleaning out the Democratic Party.  My ears perked up.

It can be assumed that if Bernie were to have become the nominee, the party would in great measure fall under his control.  However, that would still leave quite a few "centrist" Democrats (i.e. Republicans in Kumbaya Clothing) in the Senate eager to block any change at all. Bernie's reply to this problem was to say (1) that his election was only the beginning of the fight and (2) that as president he would use his office to back real progressive candidates against corporate Democrats.   Now that sounded revolutionary.  It was not substantive revolution. Bernie's program remained the same. But it hinted at procedural revolution and that is more important than it might sound.

Let me explain. Any movement or political faction has a set of substantive goals and changes it wants to achieve.  However, the means of bringing those goals about itself requires a change in how things are being done. Bernie was no longer trumpeting just a program, he was aiming to take control of the levers of the party and, through the party, of government.  This more than anything else scared the shit out of the corporate whores and hucksters who comprise the DNC. Bernie had declared war on that cabal that controlled the means of politics.

Even here, Bernie's procedural revolution was tepid. A real procedural revolution would aim to scrap the Constitution even if it nominally kept capitalism.  It would not simply "overturn Citizens' United," it would abolish the Senate and institute a ministerial parliamentary system.  It would forbid presidential reelection and give the prerogative of appointing the judiciary to a non-partisan commission.  A real revolution in "how things are get done" would entail more than just taking over the Democratic Party.  It would be based on the understanding that the means of politics is related to maintaining or changing control of the means of production.  A true procedural revolution would realize that the Constitution was designed to protect and enable the Huckstocracy and that if the distribution of wealth is to be changed the means of politics also has to be changed.  As the much overlooked Lucy Parsons put it over a century ago,

Never be deceived into thinking that the rich will allow you to vote away their wealth.

Certainly not with a Senate controlled, always, by some shameless, Huckster-whore, without an ounce of  human sentiment. 

But at least Bernie was doing more than advertising a platform.  He openly realized that to achieve a set of goals he would have to wage a war of means. A limited engagement, as it were, but about time nonetheless. 

Whether "revolutionary" or not, he was more of a politician than the country had seen in decades.  This statement might at first seem baffling until one distinguishes a politican from a political huckster... a person who sweet talks, puff talks, razzle-dazzles and equivocates all the while serving the Masters of the Status Quo. Obama was (and remains) a political huckster.  Bernie was offering a real economic-political choice within a battle for control of political means. 

He came close. The array of empty weaslings the Demorat Party threw in his path in an effort to eat away at a first ballot victory proved too vapid for even an electorate brainwashed into accepting cornflakes and cheerios as meat.

Panic in Alberich's Cave on the Upper East Side.  One wonders how many niebelungen at the Slime got taken out back and whipped for failing to sufficiently omit facts and obfuscate issues.  The panic of the ruling Demorat Party Cabal was typified by the most ridiculous editorial endorsement, not only in American history but in all of journalism anywhere.  Bernie had them on the run.

Then came South Carolina. The proximate reason Bernie lost the state was that he failed to get the endorsement of Rep. Jim Clyburn, Kingfish to the majoritarian Black demographic of the party and personification par excellence of Demorat racial identity politics.  Clyburn is the political foreman of a dumbfuck demographic that does what it is told under the aura of Negro Iconograhpy.  The usual chicken feed for the poor wrapped in Overcome Talk.

 It is hard to see how such an endorsement was possible given that Kingfish is the very type of fake "liberal" corporate Demorat Bernie had vowed to sweep from power.

The only alternative left to Bernie was to do an end run around Kingfish by appealing directly to the state's black voting block. This did not, as Bernie's campaign evidently thought, mean appealing to Black millenials but rather to Black Boomers.  But Bernie's campaign consistently failed to address the needs of seniors.  "Protecting Social Security" -- a meaningless political slogan as it is -- only got mentioned every once in a while.  The most radical thing Bernie ever said about social security is that he would "expand it"  by a hundred bucks here and there for the poorest recipients.  In other words, do no more than Kingfish routinely promises to do.  The failure to address the needs of Not OK Boomers -- whether Black or White -- was a major defect in Bernie's Youth Folk Rock Movement and it cost him the state and the next state and the next.

Even so, Bernie's defeats were not a rout.  Of course, the DNC AgitProp Apparat swung into full gear, ballyhooing the inevitability of a Biden triumph.  Plus ça change.  But the difference between politics and a battlefield is that is Bernie still had the accumulated balance of prior wins and this gave him leverage over Biden until and through the convention

Two scenarios were foreseeable: (1) Biden was the inevitable nominee and (2) Biden was not the inevitable nominee.  DUH, right?  The second option arose from the fact that Biden is a terrible gaff prone candidate who managed to flub two prior runs. We are not dealing with winged Pegasus fleet of hoof.  A disastrous exploitable gaff was not only possible, it was a probability.

The first alternative would have been harder and more complicated but it basically boiled down to using his accumulated delegate count to blackmail the party into committing itself is an actionable way to pushing at least two of Bernie's signature programs.  The blackmail is simple: either commit or I run as an independent.

The Covid pandemic actually dovetailed with the strategy of political blackmail.  Bernie could have demanded a postponement of the primaries.  He should have vigorously, publicly, and inscesesantly accused Saint Obama and Lunch Pail Joe of murder... of aiding and abetting a killer virus.  He should have tied up the issue in the courts and, if necessary, reduced the convention to one huge cluster fuck.  A real revolutionary understands that at times you have to press your advantage to the point of destruction.

Disgracefully, Bernie lacked revolutionary guts.  In fact he lacked ordinary political guts.  He was summoned by the Flawless One and emerged, whimpering and contrite.  A true Sanbenito.

And what was the confessorial cant that accompanied this miserable revolutionary fizzle?  "We can't afford to let Trump win."  Standard Corporate Demorat Lesser Evilism.   A Bankers' Steppinfechit to save us from the Pathological Liar.... as if anyone in Washington were addicted to truth.   Let us be clear.  When it comes to lying the difference between Trump and Obama, Hillary or Biden is that Trump isn't good at it.

The propaganda that we need to "stop" Trump at all costs is just routine political scare mongering. What we need to stop is the economic and environmental trajectory we are on.  Not a single politician in the last 60 years, at any level, from either party has done jack shit to alter the direction of this trajectory.  At best, the Demorats merely slow the rate of devastation.  But the trajectory has now reached the point where the complete collapse of bourgeois civil society and the complete destruction of the environment are at hand.  When the next step is off the cliff, lesser evilism is not only not an option, it is irrelevant.

Let me put it another way.  Lesser-evilism is part of the system.  It is the "gear" the mechanism routinely slips into.    If you accept it, then you will always be tricked out power and out of change.  If you reject it, then you are willing to destroy the party in order to gain control of it.   

One had thought that Bernie actually understood what was happening to our society and our planet. He said all the right things that had not been said before, at least not in our lifetime.  And yet when the Flawless Obama blew his dog whistle, Bernie fell into line as much as Karamela Harris, Pogey Bait Pete, What's my name Warren and the rest of the gaggle of DNC hacks for hire.   And so now we get,

"The Democratic Party must stand up to powerful special interests and fight for economic, social, racial and environmental justice. I'm pleased that some of the strongest progressive leaders in the country will work with the Biden campaign to unify our party in a transformational and progressive direction."

Does Bernie really think that his "good friend Joe" will let him inch the party to left? Do you, dear reader, think that having anguished and connived to stop Bernie at all costs, the Demorat Establishment will now adopt his program?  Oh sure!  NOW we believe in Medicare for All! 

Really?   It is so utterly beyond belief that the question I now have is whether Blowhard Bernie wasn't all along Bait and Switch Bernie.

Even the New York Slime has gotten into the act.  This Gentrified Liberal rag, which but four six months ago begrudged Bernie so much as a column inch, is now loaded with progressive sounding op-eds, suddenly denouncing our health “care” system, our educational system, our housing system our justice system our anything system all as ineffective and unfair.  These days Slime is starting to sound like a progressive blog; surely this shows that the party, the establishment, are “moving to the left!”

DO NOT BELIEVE IT. It is a farce and sham; the Huckstocracy at its most cunning and vilest.  The Slime knows full well that it can print all the progressive homilies it wants but, in the end, the Senate will be there to protect it from its own hot air.

Bernie at face value was the last stop chance to change the Sheissestaat  from within the Muckway. Whether he blew it or was never serious, that path to a change in trajectory no longer exists.

Stay tuned, dear non-existent reader. Upcoming... what next?

©2020 WCG

Soap Box Bernie

Bernie* is continuing to bang the gong and clang the cymbal on progressive issues on social media.  In this morning's Facebook Feed, Bernie* pronounced that the Covid 19 virus had laid bare the defects in our for-profit health care system, showing -- now more than ever -- why Medicare-for-All was necessary.........

I really don't understand the point of this. By withdrawing from the race, by foregoing the threat of abstention or running a third party ticket, Bernie gave up any all leverage he had to bring about "our" agenda.

Does Bernie really think the pandemic was needed to make people see the need for medicare for all? Rubbish. Through January polls showed that a substantial majority of all ordinary, working Americans favored Medicare for all. THEY didn't need a pandemic to make them see the necessity.

Does Bernie really think the Flawless Obama, or Nancy (La Mousse) Pelosi, Furious Hillary, the New York Slime or any Centrist Democrat didn't understand the imperfections of the for-profit health excuse industry? Of course not. They just don't give a damn. Corporate profit is what they are about and the system works great for that purpose.

It pains me to say this but Soap Box Bernie is just talking himself into irrelevance. He got his NYT op ed. By summer the media will have forgotten him and progressive reform will be buried under a heap of commissions.

The Democratic Party is just a tool. The tool remains in the hand of corporate puppets. So it's back to square one. Either progressives gain control of the tool or find another one. To that end, the progressive movement needs a leader, someone who will not just talk but talk, act and win political control over something with tangible political consequence.  Bernie* is no longer the leader of anything because there is nothing for him to take control of, neither the party, nor the presidency.   As such he is just another voice in the din.

©2020

The Hucksterism of Political Homiletics

Typically, my Facebook Feed provides a more or less steady diet of homilies of one sort another: the importance of being kind, the need to help those in need or to have our neighbour's back, the way to find balance amid the turmoil, to bring out the positive in life or to achieve a sense of community while being mindful, cheerful, hopeful... and so on.  These gently nagging but uplifting thoughts are accompanied by pictures of a sunset, a rose mandala, a firefighter, a giggly sweet child or an adorably cute puppy and, of course, of Jesus.   

Since the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic the number of such moralizing posts has surged, compounding the usual number of homiletic exhortations one could expect at Easter.  And so it was I learned the other day that someone out there was looking for the "opportunity" to love me in order to be able shout ..Alleluja, Alleluja. Alleluja, Christ is risen!"  Evidently, the solution to the economic and health crisis we are in is to smile on your brother; everybody love one another right now!

Arrgh!!!   Arrgh!!!  Arrrgh!!!

I've had it with religion. Throughout its history Amurkans have confused homiletics with politics. Politics is about how to organize obligations and benefits within a society; how to produce and distribute social product. You don't need a lot of aspirational feel good/do good stuff for that. It is a practical question.

To the extent it arises at all, a moral issue arises with the primary question of what is the purpose of living together at all? There are two possible answers: either society exists as fodder for hucksters or it exists to provide fodder to all.

The question was posed at the beginning of Plato's "Republic." Thrasymachus gave the first answer stating that what is called "justice" is simply the advantage of rulers who manipulate and exploit the demos as sources for their own profit. The second answer, given by Socrates, was that justice consisted in promoting the well being of all in accordance with the capacities of each.

You don't need religion to make the choice. A study was done some 20 years ago with Bonobo apes in which a group of six apes were given a task to do at the end of which they each got a banana. For several weeks the apes did the task and got their bananas. Then, one day, they did their task and everyone got a banana except one who got nothing. The apes immediately raised a ruckus, threw their bananas at their keepers and refused to cooperate further.

Evidently, the apes did not need Buddha or Jesus or Mahomet or Swami Prachtamuchtananda to make their choice. Unfortunately, Amurkans are all but genetically predisposed to substitute preaching for political discourse whenever possible.

In fact, homiletics is just the other side of hucksterism. De Tocqueville noted that while "acquiring the good things of this world" was the prevailing passion of Americans, certain momentary outbreaks occurred, "when their souls suddenly burst the bonds of matter by which they are restrained" and whole families trekked off into the woods to listen for several days on end to wandering preachers who hawk about the word of God from place to place. "Religious insanity is very common in the United States."

But just as common is hucksterism. Just as whole businesses are devoted to religion, whole business (lucrative ones at that) are devoted to branding and marketing one worthless box of cereal over another. Worst of all are the political hucksters who sell aspirational cornflakes while shoveling public treasure to banks, corporations and those whom Thrasymachus called the "true rulers."

In fact, the homiletics is used to detract attention from the hucksterism. As Clemenceau famously said of Wilson "He talks like Jesus Christ but acts like Lloyd George." Our politicians are always tear jerking us with hopeful homilies about this and that while they lead us to economic slaughter. Meanwhile gaggles of preachers, do-gooders, self-improvement specialists, and swindling swamies of one sort or another detract us from the task at hand with vague nostrums about finding self and helping others. It is all beside the point. Social activity must never be based on philanthropic flim-flam, but rather must aim at the elimination of the basic deficiencies in economic and cultural life that lead to the degradation and degeneration of the individual.

I have nothing against harboring private religious sentiment or practicing goodwill toward men; but eliminating the basic deficiencies in our economic life does not require Jesus. It simply requires counting bananas.

========================

Post Script. The day after I wrote this, David Dole posted the latest tee vee ad from Joe Biden which serves as a perfect, paradigmatic example of how homiletics substitutes for real politics and carries water for political hucksterism.  Watch and Gag.

https://youtu.be/_68E2ghjNis

©WCG, 2020

The First Golden Brioche Award for 2020

In normal times, Barfo waits until the end of the year to make a decision as to the winner of the year's Golden Brioche Award.

But these are not normal times.  Already there is a surfeit of incidents providing jaw-dropping examples of the imperviousness to reality of the ruling class.

First there was Senawhore Lindsay Graham worrying that a one time $1,200 check might "disinsentivize" wage slaves from working two or three jobs to keep nose just above water. 

Then there was the New York Slime columnist who wrote an article about the incidental pleasures of self-isolating and working at home, among which, we learn, are relaxing baths and pouring one's self a cool glass of wine....

While these benefits were being extolled in the nation's so-called paper of record, the Administration announced it was cutting back on food stamps for the poor and unemployed. 

Masks? Let them use scarves.

And we are not even through April.  At this rate, by the end of the year the one thing there will be more than enough of us is runner ups for the award.

But Nancy Peelousy has managed to trump all trumps, and it is hard to see how the Golden Brioche Aware could possibly go to anyone else.

As of this last week 17 million people are counted as unemployed over a three week period.  Tens of thousands lined up for food at food at food banks which announced that they were at the limit of their capacity to provide food baskets to the thousands needing them.

There are probably those who have never looked into one of these food baskets.  Suffice to say that they are not choc' full of choice cuts and fresh organic produce.  They are bags stuffed with cheap fats and carbs with the occasional apple, orange or banana thrown in.  Stuff to survive on when starving but nothing better. 

While tens of thousands of stunned and shocked unemployed lined up for these food baskets, Nancy Peelousy gave a a Zoom-Chat interview with an English talk show host, during which, while sitting in front of two large, brushed steel refrigerators, she explained, how she and her family enjoyed stocking up on designer chocolates.

Nancy's Delights Basket (For Herself)

"How much of your diet is chocolate and candy."    "Ah well.... as much as possible..."

Back at the start of the Great Depression, Herbert Hoover was asked why he allowed pictures of himself in a dinner tux to be published.  "To uplift the people's spirits," came the earnest reply. 

No doubt Peelousy felt that her sweet toothed good cheer would bring a smile to all of our faces; you know... to take our minds off unemployment, rent due and hunger.

The French invented a contraption for this sort of thing and a wise thing that.  But we Chipsters will content ourselves with awarding Peelousy the first (Dipped Chocolate) Golden Brioche Award for 2020. 

The Gentrified Progressive

The setting says it all....

Liz Endorsing Joe

She never spoke for a class she never knew

Pro Quo

The New York Slime printed a gushing story about how Bernie has endorsed Biden.   We've got to make Trump a one-term president said the erstwhile "political revolutionary."   That's nice.  

Do Big Banks and Big Oil and Big Inc.  support a candidate without a pro quo?  

I am a student burdened by a life-long debt; where's my pro quo?

I am working two dead-end jobs each paying a minimum wage under $10; where's my pro quo?

I am a renter whose rent eats up half my income and who can't afford health insurance; where is my pro quo?

I am a senior trying to survive of $1400 a month out of which $400 a month goes toward my medicare "copay" and drug plan; where's my pro quo?

Pro quo me, Mr. Biden

(c)

The Shit that didn't Stick

Sneaky Pete sneaks out. Good riddance. But why? Just yesterday he was swearing to stay in the race to the finish. I have no inside line to his inner counsels, but to unfold my theory we have to go back to that secret DNC conclave held at one of Bernard Schwartz's billionaire hideaways.

As the New York Slime reported, centrist Democratz, including Karamela Harris and Sneaky Pete Buttigieg, were in attendance at the meeting, the topic of which was: What to do about Bernie. The Slime did not reveal what the strategy was, but subsequent events made it obvious. The centrist strategy was to fling as much shit around as it could and to hope some of it would stick. Translation: field as many “safe” and “reliable” candidates and see which one did best against Sanders. The obvious fall back position was (as we theorized at the time) that, if nothing else, the more candidates in the running, the greater the chances Bernie would never get a first ballot majority.

And so we got Casserole Charisma Amy, Karamela for the (Top) People, Uncle Blue Chip Joe and Sneaky Pete running on his overtly anti-Bernie mantras. It was the obvious hope of Deep Party that Sneaky Pete would be something of a white Obama. In fact, if Obama had been able to pass off as white there would be little difference between the two other than Pete's combat zone “uber driver” (his words) record. Both talked the down home accent to the folks down home while turning around and talking haute English to the haute folk. Both delivered endless orotund fatuous, faux homiletic platitudes that down home would be called “bullshit.” But if Karamela bombed among Blacks was there seriously any hope that a largely Baptist demographic would thrill to a white “abomination.” ? It didn't matter. Shit is shit and who knows what will end up sticking.

Well Pete did not stick. And even though he was more than willing -- determined even -- to stick around to see if he stuck or struck something, someone thought the better of it. The volt face was so sudden that one can be excused for thinking that someone's leash just got jerked and if so, who oh who, might have done the yanking? Q.E.D.

Deep Party is now banking on Uncle Joe to claim the field and take us back to the era of Retro-Normalcy. His is the less fancy bullshit. “I've been there; I've fought for you.” Never mind that it's a total lie, in South Carolina it stuck. But never fear. Sneaky Pete is an ambitious prick. He'll be around to sell his soul in order to sell the rest of us out in some way or another. If Biden could do it, why not him? Let things cure for a while. 

©barfo 2020

Someone is Meddling

Once again, the New York Slime reports that the Russkies are "meddling" in our elections, yet again.  Although "Russia’s interference measures and their intensity remain murky"  (oh those pesky details!)  Nevertheless, 

"Russia’s interference on behalf of both Mr. Trump, the dominant force in the Republican Party, and Mr. Sanders, a stalwart of the left, underscores its efforts to sow chaos across the political spectrum. Undermining the democratic system remains at the core of Russia’s effort to raise its own stature by weakening the United States..."

Chaos... is that what the Slime calls democracy?  

Let us assume for the sake of argument that Russia is "interfering" on behalf of Mr. Trump and Mr. Sanders.  Whatever the murky details which have not been disclosed we can reasonably infer that Russia is doing something to boost Trump's chances while at the same time doing something else to boost Sander's chances.  That's what "on behalf" implies.  

What might this mean in practice?  Well... it would mean that Russia is taking out ads which praise Mr. Trump while attacking Mr. Sanders.  At the same time, it is taking out ads or funding bots that praise Mr. Sanders while attacking Mr. Trump.

So fucking what?   Is it suggested that in an election contest between Mr. Trump and Mr. Sanders either will not take out ads attacking the other?   The only thing Russia will have done is save Trump and Sanders some money.  In all events, Russia will have done no more than promote a vigorous contest.  How in the fuck does that undermine democracy?

Well, it might be said, Russia promotes nasty ads.  Of course since murky details have not been disclosed we have no idea what quality of ads Russia has promoted.  But suppose they are of the nasty sort. As if American elections needed tutoring in nastiness and gutter tactics from Russia?  Oh puleeze.

What would the Slime prefer?  The subtext of its complaint is that contentious political elections weaken the United States.  That is an axiom adopted only by tyrants and oligarchs.

In 1933 Hitler made a campaign speech excoriating the fact that Germany had 30 competing parties.  In a rhetorical tour de force he went through each of the parties ridiculing their platforms and narrow self interests.  Then, after noting that the leaders of these parties had accused him of not working with them, he said: These gentlemen are right.  I am intolerant.  I have given myself one goal: to sweep these thirty political parties out of Germany!"  No more squabbling.  No more backbiting.  No more disunity. No more chaos. Nothing that will weaken the German State!

No doubt the pundits and pharisees of the Slime will taken the greatest offence and umbrage at being compared to that monster.   But, I ask, what else is the implication of their complaint that sowing chaos across the political spectrum is a tactic that weakens the United States?

For over two hundred years the assumption across the spectrum has been that the American democracy is stronger for the chaos.  Ours is an adversarial political system.  It is an adversarial judicial system .  And it is an adversarial economic system.  Competition and conflict is integral to what America is.  

In his famous Federalist Paper No. 10, James Madison discusses precisely this issue.  He notes that it is the nature of democracies to be riven by political factions.   He notes further "The latent causes of faction are thus sown in the nature of man" and behind the factions is "the human propensity to fall into mutual animosities, such that where no substantial occasion presents itself, the most frivolous and fanciful distinctions have been sufficient to kindle their unfriendly passions and excite their most violent conflicts."  Sounds pretty chaotic to me. But listen to Madison's answer:   

There are again two methods of removing the causes of faction: the one, by destroying the liberty which is essential to its existence; the other, by giving to every citizen the same opinions, the same passions, and the same interests.   It could never be more truly said than of the first remedy, that it was worse than the disease. Liberty is to faction what air is to fire, an aliment without which it instantly expires. But it could not be less folly to abolish liberty, which is essential to political life, because it nourishes faction, than it would be to wish the annihilation of air, which is essential to animal life, because it imparts to fire its destructive agency.   The second expedient is as impracticable as the first would be unwise.

It is evidently the second expedient which the Slime would conveniently prefer, allowing it to be the arbiter of what opinions can safely and unchaotically be held. 

Madison's constitutional system was designed to blunt the effects of faction through an institutional system of checks and balances.  Chaotic, emotional, violently passionate liberty would be preserved but no one party or faction would ever get the sole upper hand.  That system has served its purpose well enough.  It does not need the Slime to impose  acceptable orthodoxies on the public in the name of "clean and orderly" elections.

If anyone is subverting American democracy it is the Slime.

However, behind the subversion (as behind all subversions) there lies a partisan interest.  Mr. Sanders himself alluded to it.  According to the Slime article,

Mr. Sanders said he was briefed about a month ago. Asked why the disclosure came out now, he said: “I’ll let you guess about one day before the Nevada caucus. Why do you think it came out?”

Why do you think?  Did Russia leak the information?  Not likely.  Did Trump?  Also not likely since he "called the disclosures a hoax and part of a partisan campaign against him."   Did the Sander's campaign leak the information?  Obviously not.   Who then?  Qui bono?

Gee.  Let me see if I can figure out this brain-cracker of a puzzle. 

Sanders is leading in Nevada.

A news story in effect calling him a Russian dupe or asset is leaked.  

The expected effect of this libellous bombshell would be....?

The beneficiaries of the leak would be....?

Hmmmm.   Something in the back of my mind....  What is it? Ah yes!  Russian asset.  Where have I heard that before.  Seems to me someone else was recently accused of being a Russia asset.

Ja!  The shadowy claws of Hillary Clinton and her centrist, corporate demawhores.   Once again the DNC unleashes its Russian Troll Bullshit to undermine the opposition and preserve its power, privilege and prestige.

Once again the the New York Times obediently does the sliming.

Defence de cracher, svp. 

 ©barfo 2020

 

The Supreme Court's Frisk-A-Negro Doctrine

Billionaire Bloomberg is trying to explain away his notorious "stop and frisk" policy while mayor of New York City.  The squabble between his attackers and apologists is over whether he misused the policy in a racist manner.


This teapot tempest overlooks the more salient point.  The Supreme Court's stop and frisk doctrine undermined the Fourth Amendment for everyone.  Moreover, the nature of the doctrine was such that only a congenital imbecile could fail to see that it would be applied, invariably, in a racist manner.

The right of the people to be secure in their persons....shall not be violated , and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, ...

In 1968, the Supreme Court rewrote the Fourth Amendment so as to allow people to be detained without probable cause. This shameless decision was enabled by a previous one which allowed automobiles to be stopped without a warrant.

The Carroll brothers were known bootleggers.  One night, the police saw their Model T driving down the highway.  They had no information that the car contained contraband. Nevertheless they stopped it without a warrant. No matter.  The Supreme Court ruled that so long as the police had probable cause a warrant was not needed. (Carroll v. United States, 267 U.S. 132 (1925).)  The only problem was that the police did not have probable cause either. No matter.  The Supreme Court left that wrinkle to another day.

That other day came around in 1968 when the police detained three Negro youths on suspicion of being up to no good. It was admitted that the police had no probable cause to detain the youths.  Nevertheless, the Court held that the boys could be briefly detained on a "reasonable suspicion” that they might be up to no good. (Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1 (1968).) The Court did a predictable semantic dance around the difference between a "mere hunch" and a "reasonable suspicion."  They were not the same.  Hunch bad. Suspicion good.  What makes a suspicion good?  Well it had to be "articulable" ... you had to be able to put something into words.  What kind of something?  Well, Officer McFadden testified that he saw the Negro youths walking back and forth in front of a store for about 15 minutes and sometimes stopping to talk to one another.  Uh huh.   Oh... and in his experience and expertise as an experienced officer on the beat this "indicated to him" that the youths were engaged in behaviour "typically associated" with "casing a joint."  On this rock-solid basis, far be it from us to hold that an officer may not "approach" an individual to ask routine non invasive questions. 

Oh but wait....Far be it from us to hold that an Officer of the Law, a Man in Blue on which the safety of all our properties depends, should have to expose himself to potentially lethal danger upon approaching an individual!  Nay! Nay!  An officer may of course, of course, conduct a "limited superficial patdown" of the person detained to insure that he is not carrying a weapon. No probable cause needed for that either.  In fact, no reasonable suspicion even.  A mere unarticulated possibility is good enough.

It did not take long for the police to realize that the Supreme Court had invited them to walk all over the Fourth Amendment at will.   Police "expertise" became expert at knowing all sorts of "potential" nefariousness.  Their tactile senses became adept at detecting "hard" and "soft" bulges indicative of.... whatever... a weapon .. possible contraband.   New courses were given in police academies on how to create "escalating probable cause" where each "legitimate" step gives rise to further cause for further suspicion and further investigation. 

Despite the pious semantics, Terry v Ohio let loose a war on minorities who, in the expertise and experience of tried and true officers in blue, are all "potentially suspect" [sic].    Or as Bloomberg put it

“Ninety-five percent of your murders — murderers and murder victims — fit one M.O. You can just take the description, Xerox it and pass it out to all the cops, ...

“They are male minorities, 16 to 25. That’s true in New York. That’s true in virtually every city,” the clip continues. “And that’s where the real crime is. You’ve got to get the guns out of the hands of the people that are [sic] getting killed.”   

Bloomberg was just a sheriff without the white sheet.  But it is equally the case that the men in black robes were hardly so stupid as to not see that among the articulable reasons not to be articulated was the fact that the "youths" in question were minorities.  Just come up with some other feeble, thin, plausible expert excuse.
 

As McReynolds dissented 95 years ago....  "The damnable character of the "bootlegger's" business should not close our eyes to the mischief which will surely follow any attempt to destroy it by unwarranted methods."

©barfo, 2020

Dazzled by Bullshit

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Writing in the  UK's Alt Fem Guardian, Moira Doengan had this to say about Pete Buttigieg,

"He responded to questions ... with his accustomed air of rehearsed imprecision, never deviating from his robotic affect and never giving a straight answer

"His answers sounded more like marketing copy for a nefarious tech start up than like statements of political principle. He looked, more than anything, like a man who has not relaxed since he was a child.

"Through his cloud of consultant-speak and imprecision, it became clear that Buttigieg was trying to attack Sanders..."

Good copy!  Barfo has previously discussed Buttigieg's rehearsed emollient, reasonable sounding consensualism that covers all bases and none.    He is a master of evading the question in an ever forming cloud of words that say absolutely nothing but create an aura of high minded purpose. 

Or, as they might say down home, he dazzles 'em with bullshit.

And yet, his "demographic" is affluent, college educated whites - the profesional and managerial class that comprise the Nine Percent.    So I have been pondering: how is it that the better educated and erudite of our country are dazzled by bullshit?

The first answer is obvious: they want to be.  As I have said before, investment in a capitalist system is what fealty was in the feudal.  Gentrified Liberals are invested in the system and are its loyal vassals.  They instinctively appreciate it just as they instinctively resist anything that threatens the status quo.  Of course, they like to think of themselves as being in favor of change. After all, there are so many injustices out there!    Some may even feel a nagging guilt about that surely reasonable,  and hardly blameworthy injustice that is called "being comfortably well off."    In either case, they look for causes to fret about and injustices to change all of which have the one common feature of not affecting their real estate holdings or 401k's.

But there is another factor at work as well.  Precisely because they are well educated and erudite they tend to think (money aside) in conceptual categories.   They don't think of "fish" or "shoes" -- that would be too childish -- but of "goods" and from "goods" to summi boni

Aristophanes made fun of Socrates by depicting him as floating about in a basket hanging from the clouds.  Aristophanes was being most unfair because if anyone, it was Socrates who made a point of lancing the balloon of people's abstractions 

There is even on dialogue in which Socrates meets Pete Buttigieg -- although at that time he was called Gorgias.   "What do you do for a living?" Socrates asked.   Gorgias replied

Gor. Rhetoric, Socrates, is my art.

Soc. Very good then; as you profess to be a rhetorician, and a teacher of rhetoricians, let me ask you, with what is rhetoric concerned?

Gor. With discourse.

Soc. What sort of discourse, Gorgias?   To what class of things do the words which rhetoric uses relate?

Gor. To the greatest, Socrates, and the best of human things.

Soc. That again, Gorgias is ambiguous; I am still in the dark: for which are the greatest and best of human things?

Gorgias:   What is greater than treating of justice in the courts and of governance in the assembly?

And so it went... Socrates trying to find out exactly what Gorgias believed in and what compass he used to guide his counsel and conduct; Gorgias ever sliding about in evasive generalities which sounded impressive so long as they were swallowed without being chewed.   In the end, Gorgias never provided an answer as to what he actually professed.  His discourse was committed to nothing above the technique of persuading.

In Socrates' day, rhetoricians were barristers or pleaders of causes.  Today Gorgias would just as easily be a branding or media consultant. In either case, what is involved is peddling an image.  It doesn't really matter what the image is so long as it sells.  Indeed, where everything is viewed as a commodity, selling is all that matters.

All of which leads back to the question of why Bootigieg's particular imagery is so attractive to the affluent educated?  We might begin by asking what the imagery itself is.  Its nature is to give the impression of treating an array higher goods in a disinterested fashion bearing in mind principles which are both fundamental and transcendent, uplifting and unifying.  By the same token, its nature is to ignore the specific class interests of the professional-managerial class; to act as if they somehow were not in the game or at issue.  Black lives really do matter!  Women's Right to Chose!  But not a question of the tax breaks I got simply because I am wealthy enough to "earn" them.

And so... we are left with our original hunch.  The "better sort" in our country are charmed by Mayor Pete because he presents no threat to their survival and distracts the "less fortunate" from seeing what is necessary for theirs.  

They talk of "working together as a country" or some such vaporous nostrum at which Buttigieg exells.   How come never sharing together as a country?

©barfo 2020

 

Enough Democracy!

Predictably enough, the vote-tallying snafu engineered by the DNC in Iowa coupled with Iowa's weighted caucus system that gives rural counties a more equal vote than others, has evoked cries to change the system. What's wrong with a simple majority vote?! Why should Iowa be the first pirmary anyway?! While these rhetorical questions are valid, they miss an underlying issue. Once again, Rome.

As the three or four students of Roman history in the United States might recall, the history of the Empire is one of chronic wars of succession relieved by shorter or longer periods of “stability and peace” in which a grateful and exhausted nation sought to recover. Most texts portray these wars as or battles between ambitious ego-maniacs grasping at the throne. But they were more than that. For the most part, the protagonists were point men for rival class, economic, or regional interests. More than just ego-driven “revolts,” they were the equivalent of an electoral process, in which different partisans compete. It has been said that in Rome politics was a blood sport.

The common feature of a “battle” and an “electoral process” is that both require and represent a tremendous martialing of resources. Then as now, behind every arrow or sword lies a legion of hewers of wood and blacksmiths and smelters, to say nothing of tanners and tailors and all the craftsmen needed to equip an army. But the social product does not end there. Then as now every campaign also included publicists and image consultants to make the contenders' case to the Senate and to the public. Making the case included putting on spectacles or “donating” some kind of public work. Running for emperor was an expensive proposition.

The greatest and most devastating effect, however, was the fact that the legions “lived off the land” which is a polite way of saying that they stole their food from the inhabitants who were unlucky enough to be in their campaigning path. Imperial elections in Rome were quite literally devastating.

Presidential elections in the United States are equally exhausting. Of course the media talk about elections as if they were “battles” but they do so in an insipid way that considers this to be “just a metaphor.” Not. While electoral campaigns are increasingly -- and outrageously -- costly, it is true that their proportional economic impact does not equal those of Rome's electoral wars. Instead, the devastation of American elections is wreaked upon the country's social capital.

As with individuals, a healthy civic society needs to be psychologically balanced. Societies, as individuals, can “only do so much.” Both must apportion their attention and energies. To give a simple example: exercise is necessary and good, but a man who becomes consumed by running or weight lifting or tennis neglects other aspects of his life which are equally required for health. He falls into being an obsessive fetishist. All individuals must devote a portion of time to the work of survival, but also to pleasures of leisure. They must devote time to their children and to forming relationships outside the family circle. Lastly, in a democracy, they need to set aside time for for civic participations and to thinking and discussing the needs of their greater “home”. The point of discussion is not to have a discussion but to make some correction or improvement in our collective life - the building of a school, the policing of streets, the preservation of water quality and so on. The expectation is that with such things accomplished we can go on to other things that make life enjoyable and worth living. With too much politics, the means consumes the ends.

But it gets worse. As with spectator sports, spectator politics is simply junk action. The man who sits in front of a teevee getting a vicarious thrill of combat while munching cheezoh's and drinking beer doesn't even get the benefit of exercise. The same can be said for the “political junkie” whose brain gets filled with endless political chatter devoid of civic accomplishment Both simply become useless, pathetic addicts. The endless chatter and clatter ultimately becomes uniform and meaningless. I would wager that one could run news interviews, reports and talk shows from 1988 and no one would notice the difference. People who value their time and sanity simply tune out.

No ruling class ever wants the ruled to have a say in their affairs. The trick is to engage the masses while disengaging them. Politics as the opiate of the masses is precisely want the ruling oligarchies want to see. A politics that consumes energy and focus while accomplishing only exhaustion after, perhaps, a brief moment of euphoria Endless democracy ends up being no democracy.

American democracy is a farce on many levels. But the worst aspect of the farce is turning a four year electoral cycle into an never ending electoral war. What gets devastated is the citizen's civic tolerance. The whole thing becomes tiresome; oft repeated promises ring hollow and meaningless rhetorical generalities dissipate in their own vapour.

There is no reason for a two year long election cycle, in which one and a half years are handed over to organizing, speechifying and primaries spread over successive months followed by a pointless carnival convention and a grand finale of sturm und drang. No other country handles elections in this manner. Elections in European countries are over in a matter of months. Voting is uniform and conducted on a single day with at most a run-off shortly thereafter.

This is not to say that politics goes to sleep at all other times. Of course not. But, at those other times, politics arises in connection with the ordinary, daily business of government. To promote a bill, to read about a policy, to discuss a particular pending issue that is of personal interest is not the same thing as being overwhelmed by the multi-front battle-ballyhoo of a campaign.

It is time to put some real democracy into the political circus. Personally, Barfo would prefer scrapping the current system altogether and reverting to a Parliamentary democracy. Way short of that, the primary season should be reduced by requiring all primaries to be held on a single day in the Spring when the weather is good and people are not snowed in. Winner-take-all voting should be eliminated. Voting should be unweighted with no preference to any geographic area. Conventions should also be held on the same day, in June. Elephant hats, donkey whistles, streamers and baloons should be prohibited. 

Next, we kill all the consultants!

©barfo 2020

Raging at One's Own Frustrated Incompetence

The New York Slime is outraged -- positively outraged -- that  the Senate has failed its constitutional duty by refusing to call witnesses in the “trial” of President Trump, thereby insuring his acquittal on the impeachment charges.  Fie! Ne'er more vile a thing.... and blah, blah, blah.  The inevitable acquittal will serve only to bring a second disgorging of more blah, blah, blah.

Was there any doubt that a Republican controlled Senate would stonewall the trial or -- if it came to that -- acquit?  Not a scintilla of doubt.

As if taken by shock and surprise, the Slime goes on to rant: “the Senate has become nothing more than an arena for the most base and brutal — and stupid — power politics.”

But what of the House?  Was it any less “power politics” to bring charges that were foreseeably certain to fail?  What then was the point if not to score  stupid political points in an election year?

The Demorats and the Slime refuse to grasp the very simple fact that Constitution sets a very high bar for the removal of a president.  This bar has nothing to do with the meaning of “high crimes and misdemeanors” -- a semantic issue on which too much blather has been expended.  The bar is set by the simple and positive fact that, in order to convict, a vote of two thirds of Senate present is required.  (Art. 1, § 3 ¶ 6-7.)   That is the equivalent of what is required to table an amendment to the Constitution. 

One has to return to 1789 to grasp the significance of this threshold.  Then, as now, the House represented the people.  The Senate, however, represented the States as such and as sovereign entities.  Senators were not elected by, and did not represent, the people in the various states. That would be a ridiculous duplication of what was already provided for by the House of Representatives.   No -- the Senate was, in effect, a diplomatic council of legates from the States.  More to the point, it was the equivalent of a House of Lords, representing various estate and incorporated interests.  It was understood by the Founders that each State comprised certain geographical-economic interests and that each state would be ruled by oligarchies of leading and propertied men. The Senate represented not people but clusters of economic interests.   Thus to require a two-thirds vote on anything was to require a very high degree of political consensus on the issue in question. Not unanimity; but certainly more than a partisan plurality. A consensus that included a majority of citizens and a super majority of all political-economic interests in the land.

The reason for such a high bar was that removing a president had a revolutionary character akin to deposing a monarch.  The president, of course, is not a king but neither is he a mere minister.  The powers the Framers endowed him with fit to a “T”  Edward Gibbon's definition of a monarchy -- a definition published in 1776.  The obvious difference is that the president is (1) elected for (2) a short term of years.  Another difference, which Hamilton points out, is that the president can be impeached whereas the removal of a monarch requires the “crisis of a revolution.”   But it is that very distinction which points to the nature of impeachment.  It is not merely a forfeiture of office for malfeasance; it is an act which, at the very least, rattles the settled and regular order of the state, which presuposes a non-interruption of its fundamental processes.  The president was elected by a majority of the franchise plus two thirds of the state electors; he should be deposed by no less an equivalent process. 


Did such a consensus exist on whether Trump should be removed for office?  The Democrats might have been united in heart, mind and desire but -- oh surprise -- the Democrats are not the country.  In fact by the looks of how they have managed to loose governorships and legislatures they are far less than the country.  The same sense of petulant entitlement that afflicted Hillary Clinton appears to have infected the Democrat Party.  No, Scarlett, you don't get what you want because you want it.  Or were the Democrats simply pursuing “base...and stupid power politics”?

In law, substance and process go hand in hand.  One never gets to the merits of a criminal's case without meeting a procedural threshold, one of the most important of which is the requirement of unanimous jury verdicts.  Because they never get to trial, the public seldom reads about all those cases which a prosecutor choses not to bring because he knows (for whatever reason) that he will not be able to convince 12 jurors of the defendant's guilt.  A prosecutor who brought a case knowing it could not be won would be guilty of using his office for no other purpose than to vex and harass.

The New York Slime was intent to analogize the situation to that of a criminal trial.  Witnesses should be called!  The Republicans refused!  “Faced with credible evidence that a president was abusing his powers,  .... the Senate abandon[ed] its role as the ultimate guard against a dangerous president.”

    “Faced with credible evidence” is precisely the situation that daily faces a prosecutor who must decide whether or not to pursue the case against an arguably dangerous person.   That is a necessary condition for prosecution, but under our system it is not a sufficient one.  It could never have been in doubt that votes did not exist to convict Trump in the Senate.  With that point in mind it can only be concluded that the entire charade was nothing but stupid power politics aimed at vexing the president and scoring demagogic points.

What is colossally stupid is that there are no demagogic points to be scored.  Trump's base is unmovable and impervious.  The progressive working class wing of the Demorat party has more immediate and substantial things on their minds.  The only groundswell is the one in the brains of media pundits in Le Petit Trianon assembled.   Nancy Pelosi and Adam Schiff might as well have paraded down the Mall, hand in hand, under a sign reading WE ARE OUT OF TOUCH.  Brioche anyone?

But just for the hell of it let us reach the merits of the case against Trump.

According to the Slime, Trump “was abusing” his powers.  That sounds terrible.  But labels are facile.  How is Trump abusing his power?  In what way is he dangerous?  Saith the Slime,

"The core of the impeachment case against Mr. Trump: his extortion of Ukraine by explicitly conditioning hundreds of millions of dollars in military aid on the announcement of investigations into his political rival."

So... he leaned on a clown turned president in an effort to dig up dirt on a possible opponent in the upcoming president.  This undermines the Republic?  Really?  Not only is digging up dirt on rivals as old as democracy itself, it is an essential element of all politics.  Not only is extorting a foreign country an essential element of all diplomacy, it is one that the United States has excelled at perhaps more than any other in the past 200 years.  Do the self-infatuated pundits of the Slime really believe this garbage?  No.  Their duplicitous unbelief is proved by the way they try to metamorphose the “extortion” of the Ukraine into a “vital national security issue.” 

This is how the theory goes.  The stability and defence of the Ukraine is a vital national security interest to the United States.  By threatening to withhold military aid, Trump was, playing fast and loose with the country's national security.

The first defect with this line of reasoning is that the whole point of any blackmail threat is the expectation that it will not have to be carried out. The kidnapper does not want to kill the daughter; he want's the ransom and, at the end of the day, he doesn't have to kill his hostage. It's a nasty form of gamesmanship, but until the murder has actually been committed that is all it is.   Because military aid was never withheld from the Ukraine for more than 48 or so hours, it simply cannot be argued that Trump prejudiced the national security of the United States.  We are left with “fast and loose.”

    Beneath all of this is the assumed premise that the Ukraine is some kind of cornerstone to America's national security.  Since when?  Never, in the 200 plus years of the Republic has the Ukraine ever been regarded as vital to American interests.  Panama was far more vital.  It was always recognized that if anything the Ukraine fell in Russia's sphere of influence.  Never, at least, until 2000 when the Neocons espoused the doctrine of “pushing America's security perimeter eastward.”  (Rebuidling America's Defences , P.N.A.C., Sept.2000.)    Neocon doctrine is nothing other than the Terminal Dementia of empire, but the notion was that the United States had not only to contain Russia but to constrain her.  “To push her back beyond the Urals” as Hitler would have put it.   Yes, dear reader, this is what the Neocons area about.  But it is only under that demented Neocon premise that the Ukraine becomes a “vital piece” of America's movable security structure. 

    What is truly beyond belief is that the Demorats and the Slime should espouse a premise that was rejected by one of its chief architects.  Before he died, Zbignew Brezinski recanted his own theory of hedging in and breaking up the "Russian Empire." This policy, he admitted, was simply wrongheaded.  If tightening a noose around Russia is wrongheaded then Ukraine is simply not in the vital interests of the United States.

    Yet its precisely on this wrongheadedness that the entire case of impeachment hangs.  It is stupid beyond belief.  The average American might never have heard of Brezinski's The Grand Chessboard but they know in the intuitive way that common people know things that Ukraine means nothing to us.   We can undermine its elected government with the help of neo nazis, we can “stand by it” by funding the fascist Azov Brigade, we can use it to annoy and tweak Russia or to make money from IMF loans... but none of this is in the vital national security interests of the United States.

    The case against Trump simply fails to rise to even a serious level much less to cause for institutionalized revolt.

  

    This is not to say that Trump is not a threat to democracy, to what is called civil society and to the planet.   But if that is the case to be made, the Democrats have failed to make it.  Nor is it clear that they can make it given that the worst of Trump's policies have always been drawn behind a tissue of legality. The way to run him out of town is the way the Constitution provides: by not renewing his contract at the end of his term.   But that is not the way the Demorats have chosen and they have not chosen it because the DNC is nothing more than the alter-ego of a resentful, vituperative, narcissistic bitch. 

©barfo 2020

New York Slime slams Bernie Bros as Deplorable.

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After months of strenuously dis-reporting on Bernie Sanders' campaign and ignoring his supporters in much the way that it ignores the homeless and anyone else not within the palace gates, the New York Slime finally did an “in depth” report on the movement.   In its frenzy and its panic it could think of nothing better than to call Bernie supporters *deplorable.*

What is the world coming to!?  Bernie Bros have dared to push-back against the corporate Democrat narrative!

As is usual with gutter hit jobs, the Slime's article is short on facts and long on labeling.  Typical are lines like

“Some progressive activists who declined to back Mr. Sanders have begun traveling with private security after incurring on line harassment.”

Well now... When I was a cub reporter FOUR WORDS were drilled into me: who, what, when, how.   It seems that the Slime's polemicists have forgotten them

Some progressives... who? how many?  In logic, “some” means “one or more but at least one.”  

Harassment.... when? how?   Anything can be labelled anything... this is the chief smear tactic of sophists and demagogues.  A real reporter would abide, “Just the facts m'am”

Further down in the article we are told that “former Senator Barbara Boxer of California, a Clinton supporter who had been at the Nevada convention said she worried for her safety after being booed off stage.”

Is that the “some” progressive the Slime had in mind?  Being booed is a threat?  Maybe the Slime ought to do an article on Boxer's narcissistic paranoia?  Since when is booing not permitted in a public forum in a democracy?

Since whenever it is directed at the self-annointed sacrosanct of the corporate democrat elite.

According to the Slime, “Sanders fans were sharing details of Ms. Harris' recent fund raising swing in the Hamptons with Hillry Clinton donors.” 

Awh...it's really unbelievable the depths to which these Berni Bros will sink!

Worse! Worse!  Senator Sanders himself “elevated” the message by himself saying that “I don't go to the Hamptons to raise money from billionaires.”

Shameless!  Pure shamelessness to point out that Harris was a willing whore of the wealthy elite just as she was a chief prosecutor in a justice system designed to be both oppressive and sadistic, while giving a pass to fraudulent bankers.

No doubt fearful that this kind of arrogance by itself would be seen for what it is, the Slime wrapped its gutter tactics in the unassailable mantel of Feminst Identity.... which, in the United States today, serves the same function as La Santa Virgen del Pilar in Spain.  Wanna get ripped to pieces?  Attack either.

"Several well-known feminist writers said they had received death threats...."

Not nice.... but nicer still would be to know what was actually said and in what circumstances.   As the United States Supreme Court has recognized a statement which is facially a threat can be legitimate and legal rhetorical hyperbole. (Watts v. United States, 394 U.S. 705 (1969).)   Back in 1969, when Boxer herself was either at Woodstock or protesting the war,  a draft protestor publicly stated “I am not going. If they ever make me carry a rifle the first man I want to get in my sights is L.B.J. . .”  The Supreme Court held that, in context, the statement was not a criminal threat.  “The language of the political arena ... is often vituperative, abusive, and inexact.” In order to objectively qualify as an illegal “threat”  the words spoken must state a threat, must be intended as a threat and must be capable of being realized in the circumstances. A person's neurotic over-reaction does not ipso facto turn something into a threat.    Without being told what was allegedly said, it is not possible to form an opinion as to whether these feminists writers were seriously threatened or not.

"A Portland lawyer saw her business rating tumble on an online review site after tussling with Sanders supporters on Twitter."

Uh huh.  Post hoc ergo propter hoc, right? 

Let's just put the shoe on the other foot... or the fork in the other mouth.  Would the pro-LGBTQ bastion of political correctness be aghast and outraged if a certain baker saw his “ratings” tumble after exercising his First Amendment Rights not to bake a cake?   Of course not.  They would gleeful cheer his bankruptcy were it to happen.  So then....

Since when are certain people immunized from the consequences of their publicly stated opinions?   Ah ha... when they are (a) feminists, (b) corporate centrists, (c) Hillary supporters and (d) those whom the Slime has anointed as Sacrosanct.

The Slime can play this card all it wants, it holds water only in an ever shrinking circle of Narcissist Affluent Feminists, who thinking “all politics is personal”  (that's their motto) take everything personally.

Last but not least, the Slime's screed notes that “for some perceived Sanders critics, there has been mail sent to their home addresses. ... The message is clear: We know where you live.”

No.  The message is whatever was written in the mail.  Since when is it unlawful to send political mail to someone?  Since when do certain people deserve to live in an “off-limits” security bubble that immunizes them from any contact with fellow-citizens.   Is that the kind of Open Society a George Soros would support?   Evidently, for the Slime, there is “open” and then there is “open to a few.”   Par for the course.

Let's get one thing clear.  The New York Times has ever and always been the organ for American Corporate Imperialism.  They are very good at hiding assumptions under a veneer of reporting and very good at varnishing their real agenda under a coating of “humanistic” and “liberal” causes.   They will adhere to a high-minded, disinterested tone so long as things are going their way... but when faced with a real threat, the fangs are bared, the hissing starts and the lashing out begins.  

©barfo, 2002