Russian Bounties you say?

As Jane's Addiction sang it many years ago, Nothing's Shocking anymore. Making this statement, unproven assertion perhaps, you could infer a myriad of meanings to it. Am I referring to police riots or extrajudicial murder by police? Am I referring to the economic collapse? Continued pandemic? The unbelievable fact that doughfacedonny still has support in whole numbers? Any one of those things should be utterly shocking but we have all been slammed so hard with catastrophe after catastrophe that so many Americans are just bewildered and overwhelmed. As citizens of a republic though it is our duty to think about current events and our country, to abdicate this responsibility is to leave the future to the lowest among us. But no, what I am failing to be shocked at is that mob Russia has been caught paying bounties to militants to kill American soldiers. I also cannot muster outrage that doughfacedonny's administration knew about this and did nothing. And finally, I will not be shocked when America's veterans fail to abandon their support for trump and the republican party. 

Clausewitz theorized that war is the continuation of political intercourse and policy with the addition of other means. I recently reviewed an excellent book on the continuity of policy in Russia vis a vis the West that is due to be released tomorrow called Rigged: America, Russia, and One Hundred Years of Covert Electoral Interference that I cannot recommend highly enough. To begin in 1917 with the Russian Revolution really doesn't convey the century's long effort by that country to undermine and challenge the West, though but it still demonstrates the long standing policy of Russia to try and mess with other countries' elections. Rigged is a shocker that can punch through and remind all of us that RUSSIA INTERFERED IN OUR 2016 ELECTION AND PUT DOUGHFACEDONNY WHERE HE IS! I doubt Putin could have imagined a military battle with America that could kill over 120,000 of us, collapse our economy, multiply by several orders of magnitude our national debt, destabilize and polarize Americans to the point of Civil War, and have a puppet who will do his bidding. This is Russia's policy and is being carried out by means other than those of civilized nations. It is akin to a war for them, and we are failing to fight back. 

So, as if to really drive the point home about how far we are at Russia's mercy, the NYTimes and others break the story that Russia was/is paying bounties to Taliban fighters for killing Americans. Though it could prove the hubris that breaks the authoritarian back, at the moment there is simply generalized outrage that doughfacedonny did nothing to answer this bombshell. Lies, lies, and more lies is what we are likely to get from both authoritarians but the Russian embassy thinks throwing insults at American intelligence and media is funny too.

In the absence of reasons to #BlameRussians, @nytimes is there to invent new fake stories.@mschwirtz @EricSchmittNYT @charlie_savage obviously lack information on cooperation between Russia and #US on the Afghan peace process, on Syrian, North Korean, Venezuelan, Iranian agendas pic.twitter.com/tqO7hVRVGv

— Russia in USA 🇷🇺 (@RusEmbUSA) June 27, 2020

The Russian Foreign Ministry has rejected a @nytimes report claiming Moscow offered to pay jihadi militants to attack US soldiers in Afghanistan. It said such 'fake news' merely betrays the low skill levels of US spy agencies (which is quite a burn). https://t.co/xPPbpWEPGu

— Bryan MacDonald (@27khv) June 27, 2020

If you're shocked, you haven't been paying attention. But I forgive you because better to get to the battle in progress than not at all. Any decent, self-respecting veteran would drop donny and the death cult of human suffering he represents like a soiled, maggot-filled diaper. But most of them will not, and I think it right to explore why. The first step in authoritarian follower rationalization is simply denial, donny was too busy with the economy or his magnificent pandemic response to know about some chatter from a long-forgotten war. You know how the deep state has relentlessly pushed the fake news of Russian interference anyway right? Then they will take marching orders, like during the Iraq War, about how every soldier is a volunteer and knew what they were getting into. What's the difference if Russia paid them? Islamists are genetically programmed to be violent and want to kill Americans, so they were gonna do it regardless. Then the aggression will kick in. Something something, you liberals want to kill our troops or leave them out to dry. Why don't you move to a socialist country, you mask-wearing sissy. How they will finally brush it off and make this somehow Hillary Clinton's fault is going to be an amazing performance of authoritarian discipline.

If this is your first time witnessing the depravity of right-wing authoritarian followers, well I guess I envy you because there is no low to which they will not sink to defend the indefensible. How could veterans throw their brothers and sisters under the bus like this? Well, the point of military indoctrination is to wear you down, destroy your individuality, and fill you back up with discipline and sycophantic devotion to the chain of command. Some people, like me, bounce back after that initial indoctrination, for the same reasons Dr. Bob Altemeyer lays out for low RWAs. Namely, we've seen those authority figures screw up, we've broken the rules and got away with it once or twice. But I highly recommend you go to the authoritarians site and read the book (it's free). I have always been fascinated by his research on the ability of high RWAs to compartmentalize ideas and turn on an ideological dime when their leaders demand it. 

How do I know high RWA veterans will throw non-RWA veterans under the bus? Because they do it all the time, they did it to me. I wouldn't toe the line and suddenly my service didn't count. I had the nerve to ask a question and Army buddies' removed me from their contacts and blocked me without a second thought. You're either with them or against them, and the worst traitor in high RWA's estimation is the apostate, the one who "should" be in their tribe but isn't. 

And Wear Your Damn Mask

Okay, confession time. I am horrible at this writing thing. The last four years have been this constant fire hose of bad news and it is impossible to keep up. I cannot even just pick one story to write about because by the time I sit down to start clicking keys five other things have popped up. I have periodic reboots where I have been away for a while and then promise myself and any readers that have still stuck in there to write a little something every day. And every time, thus far, I have failed. Mrs. Kraken has often remarked that I don't actually blog, I write comprehensive essays or just long thinkpieces. Sea monster see, Sea monster do, the bloggers I have enjoyed and followed over the years do the same thing. Maybe I need to be more Digby than Driftglass, just throw a story and link up, pull the relevant quotes, provide a few comments and call it a post. Another thing is I just don't seem to have a niche anymore. I started out trying to use my historical training and knowledge to provide context for current events. But most of what is going on is unprecedented, especially in American history. And trying to compare events from Roman or Medieval history to today just falls flat. Besides that, nobody cares.

So today, how about I just try tossing out some ideas that have been on my mind after watching TV news, scrolling through Twitter, and other random sources. I thought I said just about everything that needs to be said about republicans with the post The Pandemic was never going to fix Republicans, but then legitimate protests started. Now, historically, when mass protests begin they usually expand greatly. It was not surprising in the least to first of all see the cops go into insurrection quelling mode, rolling out the tanks and military riot gear. The term for when cops hit first is "police riot" but it was so much more than that. The worst thing to assume is that any group of oppressed people are automatically angels, but the fact that there were white supremacists, MAGA assholes, and random nihilist provocateurs jumping in to commit violence and vandalism for the explicit purpose of tarnishing the righteous anger of demonstrators by doing exactly what republicans always accuse black people of doing. There is no excuse for gang members and criminals caravanning around Chicago and other cities looting stores, though. My point is just that when things get started they tend to grow out of control.

As much as the provocateurs showing up to break things and paint legitimate protests as riots was disconcerting, I am more dismayed that this is probably just a warm up for the elections in November. But then again, after four years of doughfacedonny's minions in government all but broadcasting that white riots aren't going to be punished, this was the best the incels and boogaloos could do. I mean, I was expecting death squads from day one after donny was inaugurated. Certainly not worth cheering about, what has transpired since those 63 million assholes and Jill Stein voters decided to throw American Democracy out the window has been bad enough. But we should be glad the trump brownshirts are such cowards. I guess they are waiting for the Tom Cotton Administration before they really get bloody. 

I can't believe, as a card-carrying graduate of the Joe Strummer finishing school, that I'm going to say this but Leftists need to chill out. One, you have a lot less leverage than you think. Two, good ideas get drowned out when you deliver them wrong. Three, the "holier-than-thou" look is just as ugly on a left-wing authoritarian who wants to burn it all down as on a fundamentalist wingnut. Honestly, there are still roughly 60 million republicans out there who really wanted to declare BLM protests an insurrection and roll in the Army to start gunning people down, a good number of them make jokes about black men getting killed by police, and itch for the day someone who "fits the description" breaks into their home so they can finally murder a black person for themselves. I throw up in my mouth a little every time I see progressives on social media trying to "out-woke" each other. While the ultra-pure woke people are busy policing liberals for microaggressions, unintentional racial insensitivity, and screaming at anyone who disagrees with them to EDUCATE YOURSELF"!" the right is installing fascist judges for life and mainstream political media is both sider-ing "the extremes on both sides" and welcoming bloody Bill Kristol and Rick Wilson onto the show as the sensible moderates balancing whatever MAGA fascist is sitting on the other side. But I guess, this is the way we're going to do it, again.

Another thing I noticed is that the 'bot accounts and Russian twitter trolls are getting better at their jobs. It's going to be harder and harder to pin them down and call them out. The best practice is to be skeptical of everything posted on Twitter unless it is someone you trust. And even then, it shouldn't be a hill to die on. 

To no one's surprise, the business press is still awful

I recently titled a post "the pandemic was never going to fix republicans" and the continuing protests at state capitols and elsewhere by wingnuts with guns but not masks has thus far vindicated the idea. But I really thought there was an outside chance that maybe, just maybe, the mainstream media/political and business press would have learned something about the world they have been covering. Yeah, I live to be disappointed. 

Today's entirely predictable shaming of the regular folks by the business press comes from CNN Business:

Americans are slashing their spending, hoarding cash and shrinking their credit card debt as they fear their jobs could disappear during the coronavirus pandemic.

US credit card debt suddenly reversed course in March and fell by the largest percentage in more than 30 years. At the same time, savings rates climbed to levels unseen since Ronald Reagan was in the White House. 

The dramatic shifts in consumer behavior reflect the unprecedented turmoil in the US economy caused by the pandemic. Although caution is a logical response to that uncertainty, hunkering down also poses a risk to the recovery in an economy dominated by consumer spending. A so-called V-shaped recovery can't happen if consumers are sitting on the sidelines.

More than 33 million Americans have filed for initial unemployment claims since mid-March, and economists warn the jobs market won't return to pre-crisis levels for years. [emphasis mine in all quotes]

This gem by Matt Egan is entitled "Americans create new economic threat with their own savings" and I think I should retire from this gig now, because there really is no hope for this society. These shaming stories are a regular feature in the business press; "you working people better get out there and spend until you are blue in the face or the economy will collapse!" I used to take them somewhat seriously, not sure exactly when I realized what bullshit it is to scare people into going into debt just to keep the system that keeps them permanently a paycheck away from homelessness running. 

The business press used to run stories in the long, long ago decrying the evils of federal budget surpluses. Thank God the Supreme Court gave the presidency to the most irresponsible drunk to ever contend for high office (to that point) and saved us from that horror. It's hard to believe that once upon a time there was a president who sacrificed brownie points with the oligarchs (temporarily anyway) to get a small tax increase through and clean up the Reagan/Bush mess. Though I'm pretty sure budget surpluses or even approaching balance in revenue vs. spending is a pipe dream forevermore. 

But this is really some fascinating projection. Americans have been running faster and faster on their treadmills to stay afloat financially for decades, a pandemic hits, tens of millions are tossed out of their jobs through no fault of their own, everyone is scared, no one knows exactly how hard doughfacedonny will try to screw them so of course anyone who can cut spending and improve their positions is going to try and do so. But here's CNN Business to wag their fingers at us. Egan even qualified his awfulness by writing:

The unemployment rate soared to 14.7% in April — the most severe unemployment crisis since the Great Depression — and Americans are bracing for more challenging times ahead. 

The perceived probability of losing one's job over the next 12 months soared to nearly 21% in April, according to a New York Federal Reserve survey released Monday. It was the second straight month of a record high for this metric in the survey, which the NY Fed launched in 2013. 

Workers are also worried about how they'll land another job if they lose theirs. The perceived probability of finding a job in the next three months tumbled 6.1 percentage points to 47% in April, the largest monthly decline ever recorded. 

The survey described "considerable deteriorations" in household expectations, including record lows for expected earnings, income and spending growth. 

"We know that Covid has not gone away," said Danielle DiMartino Booth, CEO and chief strategist at Quill Intelligence. "That is going to keep in place an element of uncertainty and fear and hold back consumers' ability or desire to spend."

Who exactly is this story aimed at? Everyone I've seen react to this shaming is outraged. Giant corporations that were raking in unprecedented profits and paying next to nothing in taxes in January couldn't lay people off fast enough and now cry poverty to swipe as big a slice of bailout money as they can. Meanwhile, some of us got $1,200 and a Blue Angels flyover. No shit people are scared for their lives! Now let's compare two subheadings in the story.

Credit card debt collapses

And...

 Savings rate spiked to Reagan-era levels

Aren't reporters usually wagging their fingers at people for not having savings? Aren't they also usually complaining that Americans have too much credit card debt? In the fine print Egan admits that the "collapse" he irresponsibly splashed on the page is due in large part to banks canceling credit lines people had because they lost their jobs. Why did we abandon using stocks on people who are a public menace again? I think my favorite line is here:

Visa has warned that payments volume in the "hardest-hit" categories of travel, fuel, restaurants and entertainment plunged by more than 50% in April. Travel spending collapsed by about 80% last month.

Gee, I wonder why that happened? Oh right, there's a highly contagious virus loose in the country with no cure and the national government is too hobbled and incompetent to give a damn about regular people. But feel sorry for oil companies, chain restaurants, the torture factories called airlines, billionaire sportsball owners, and a Hollywood that hasn't had an original idea in a decade. Boo-fucking-hoo! 

The shifts in consumer behavior are another reminder of the pain on Main Street that often gets lost given the near-euphoria on Wall Street. The US stock market has raced back to life since late March as investors have celebrated the response from the federal government and signs of hope on the health front.

Remember when the stock market took a hit and it looked like investors would actually have to suffer some losses? That lasted about 3 days I think before the Federal Reserve acted with lightning speed to dump $1.5 trillion into it, and #MoscowMitch and #doughfacedonny sprang into action to propose a $500 billion slush fund for corporations. I saw a tweet recently that said something to the effect that the stock market is just a measure of rich peoples' feelings. I don't think there is any other way to look at it now, Noam Chomsky once quoted a government economist in a South American military dictatorship as saying "the economy is doing fine, it's just that the people aren't." People are scared, food pantries are bare, nobody can be sure they'll have a job tomorrow but hey, Wall Street investors are euphoric. 

The most frustrating thing is, no matter how many blog posts get written about how awful the entire business press is, no matter how uniformly negative the responses are on Twitter, or even if regular people continue to lose jobs, homes, and go hungry; Matt Egan will wake up tomorrow still employed.

Because there is no change when there are no consequences for behavior. The teabaggers protesting at state capitols today because they can't get a haircut or go to Applebee's, got away with pretending to be independents who never heard of George W. Bush a decade ago. They get away with threatening elected officials and violating rules because they are insulated from COVID-19 by dint of living in the wilderness. If there was any competition in the elite press club for news, most of these writers would have been kicked out a long time ago. It's amazing, the owners and managers of the political and business press must also be totally insulated from the real world if they just keep doing this crap over and over. If Matt Egan ever did grow a conscience he'd probably be out on his ear in a news cycle or two.

A nearly unprecedented time of pandemic with an unprecedented level of fascism from a major political party, and an actual traitor in the White House and CNN Business still finds time to shame working people for doing what in other times mainstream media implores them to do. 

Comparing Mondale vs. Reagan to 2020

The infamous 1984 presidential election in which Americans had their first chance to repudiate the Reagan revolution of massive tax cuts for the wealthy to spawn equally massive budget deficits and income/wealth inequality, and failed miserably, should be studied this year with a cringe. Now that Joe Biden is the the presumptive nominee (ironically he got a vote at the same 1984 nominating convention) we have to consider what happened the last time a former Vice President of a Democratic administration that was tasked with cleaning up a Republican mess (Watergate in Jimmy Carter's case, EVERY ASPECT OF DUBYA'S DISASTROUS MISADMINISTRATION/ GRIFT/ CRIMINAL SYNDICATE for Barack Obama) faced an incumbent Republican who was unqualified and extreme. History has a way of rhyming and the stakes are just too damn high to let doughfacedonny steal another term.

These numbers should seriously unsettle Democrats. pic.twitter.com/d73kU2mQbB

— John Nichols (@NicholsUprising) April 21, 2020

This is the picture and tweet that got me thinking about possible rhymes in 2020 of the 1984 presidential election. In the latter year it was possible for people to go about their daily lives without politics affecting every aspect of them. This year, one has to retreat pretty far into themselves to escape the ramifications of authoritarian rule by incompetent gangsters. There was however, another epidemic concerning a novel disease that was little understood. AIDS had killed over 5,500 people prior to the 1984 election and it was still a joke to the republicans in office. Reagan left office with over 89,000 deaths under his belt from this joke and did nothing to help slow or stop the spread. We're already over halfway to that mark after about 3 months from COVID-19 and doughfacedonny has done worse than the nothing that Reagan did, in 2020 the republicans are actively trying to undermine containment and mitigation efforts for partisan gain and profiteering.

And the main reason that the awful, extremist republican got into office in the first place in both years is due to ratfcking and treason. In both instances the unqualified hack republicans denied just how much they cheated to manipulate voters. The Smithsonian magazine refers to “'individuals associated with the Reagan-Bush campaign of 1980 met secretly with Iranian officials to delay the release of the American hostages,' promising Tehran a cache of Israeli weapons in return" as a conspiracy theory. But historian Kai Bird wrote in the LA Times about a memo supporting the theory that future CIA director William Casey did in fact travel to Madrid, Spain to pass along the wink and nudge to an Iranian operative that the Islamic Republic would get a better deal for releasing hostages from Reagan than from Carter. Just as evidence now exists that Nixon sent envoys to South Vietnam in 1968 arguing practically the same thing, that he could get a better deal for Saigon than Humphrey if they dragged out peace negotiations until after the election.

Amazingly, the republican-controlled senate intelligence committee released a report on April 21 that concluded that the Russian government did in fact interfere with the 2016 election to help elect doughfacedonny. So for all the detractors on the right and the far left who claimed that Russian interference was a hoax and it was Hillary's bad campaigning and general ineptitude that lost her the election this would be a body blow to their confidence. But as we know nothing means anything anymore. Denial can be super-extra bulletproof when one's ego is on the line, though I rarely see Berniebros gloating about what a bad candidate Hillary was anymore. And MAGA republicans are basically unchallengeable because mainstream political press outfits only interview them on their feelings, trying to capture and scoop each other on when they finally flip on donny to see the real world. Never, ever do republicans get shamed for supporting this moron. 

In a decent world, the political press would be able to frame this election realistically but we don't live in that world. What will they do to give republicans an unearned even playing field this year? Joe Biden doesn't have a secret email server and doughfacedonny isn't a political outsider who refuses to release his tax returns. How will they frame reality this time? How will the Russians and other authoritarian regimes who love to see the US hobbled from within work to keep the game show host in office? Americans had the chance to arrest the Reaganite republican neoliberal agenda in 1984 as we have the chance to arrest the cancer of authoritarianism, treason, and incompetence this year. In case you forgot how Americans reacted to reaganism (republicanism) then:

The electoral college has been a broken system for much longer than when Dubya's Supreme Court pals gave him the win with a popular vote minority. Mondale won his home state by 0.18% to keep the map from being entirely red though he 40.5% of the popular vote. Four years ago, through voter suppression and Russian propaganda with a big assist from the political press's desperate need for balancing an utter incompetent with a hypercompetent candidate, team evil was able to steal Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania's electoral votes by a razor-thin margin. Whatever happens this year, no matter how inept the Biden campaign is, no matter how the political press puts their thumb on the scales, no matter how much republican and foreign ratfcking and dirty tricks it is up to us to change the tune. Whatever your motivations, restoring the Supreme Court, flipping the Senate, just hating doughfacedonny with the heat of a thousand suns, or having Diamond Joe as president, that map above has to be inverted to the greatest extent possible.

Then the real work begins. 

The Pandemic Was Never Going To Fix Republicans

So if doughfacedonny states that the virus is contained and that coming warmer weather will cause it to fade away, does that mean the opposite of truth? As over 12,000 other statements he has made have been lies? What do we make of the official "correction" of the stock market, that bastion of pure capitalism that has been the major marker behind the claim of a strong economy by republicans? Or can we finally cut the crap that stock market gains mean anything? If $3.4 trillion can evaporate in a week, maybe all those rural white republicans who keep claiming everything is great and fuck you libtards will have a crack in their Dunning-Krueger armor and ask a few questions. CNN has been awfully candid in this story, repeatedly stating that Wall Street loves doughfacedonny's "low tax and light regulation approach" so a Coronavirus outbreak could mean his defeat, which they wouldn't like. Because fuck democracy, the rule of law, and the ability to govern Wall Street demands more sacrifice.

Good God, I wrote that on February 28 and not only has that crack in the Dunning-Krueger armor failed to materialize, it has militantly hardened the MAGA idiots to science and facts. This is what freedom means to them:

Freedom is the freedom to dress up like a soldier, tote guns around the state capital, block traffic in front of hospitals in the middle of a pandemic, ignore safety protocols, and threaten a governor because she's a Democrat and a woman. 

These are the same shitheads who were clamoring for laws making protest illegal, making it legal for drivers to run over protesters, and screaming about respecting election results.

BECAUSE THEY ARE IRREDEEMABLE. As Driftglass often says, "never underestimate how much republicans hate this country." A corollary to that Driftism is Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr.'s characterization of Hitler, "he is a man on a bicycle, has to keep moving forward or he'll fall." Meaning that if any of these militant moron MAGA republicans ever questioned, ever doubted, the absolute sanctity of their cause to destroy America as it was intended they would implode from the weight of irony crashing down on them. That is what I mean when you try to interpret their mantras of freedom and liberty, for words to mean anything we have to agree on their definition. Freedom to republicans like the protesters above means the freedom to submit to authority, the freedom to reject whatever facts do not fit their prejudices, and the freedom to act in absolute opposition to common sense. Liberty is the freedom to abuse constitutional rights in bad faith. Freedom of speech is used to attack and bully others, freedom of assembly is for them alone, and obviously the perversion of the second amendment that supports their right of bullying and intimidation.

So never, ever waste a moment's thought on "winning them back" or educating them. It is exactly that, a waste. We must study them to be sure, to find the best ways to defuse them and make them get out of politics. But they have abandoned reason, so there is no reason for us to entertain their delusions, respect their positions, or grant them any influence. That must be our freedom from now on. In 10-14 days there will be a flare-up of COVID-19 cases in the rural wastelands that these shitheads sprang forth from, oh well. This protest isn't even close to the apex of republican crimes against civilization this month. I just led with it because of the evidence it provides that nothing has really changed, crisis or no crisis.

Even if it has had an unexpected result, the Wisconsin primary election last week was a case study in republican hatred of democracy. Brother Charlie Pierce put it about as well as possible in his immediate reaction titled: 

You'd Have to Be a Newborn From Mars Not to See Wisconsin Was a Test Run for November

And, as usual he has words for the meatbag Michigan protesting republicans that put mine to shame.

Of all the screwy moments that we have experienced since the founding of Camp Runamuck, this is going to rank very close to the top. And it is not going to be a surprise to anyone if another AstroTurf movement similar to the Tea Party rises, especially if the president* “opens up” the country at the beginning of May... This is less AstroTurf than it is a spreading poisonous kudzu fed by the toxic sludge that has flowed under the conservative movement for decades.

And we all know what a great job the political press did when presented with a "mass" movement of supposedly "new voters, never before interested in politics" sprang up in 2009-10. So look forward to another round of flattering their every republican whim in the nightly news and on cable... Unless we stop it.

How many of you have seen crap like:

When trump starts sending out these 1000 dollar checks all you “he’s not my president “ people better not cash that bitch!! Just saying !

Irredeemable.

A friend from high school posted this trolling piece of garbage while trying to appear reasonable, just like he does every time he can punch down on us 'libs:

just ignore everything that I did during the Obama years to obstruct and inspire obstruction, and forget that trump inherited the results of all of Obama's work

So it isn't just meatbags with guns parading across the Capitol in Michigan, they are all irredeemable and nothing will fix that. Right after the inauguration of doughfacedonny I saw this meme, no idea where it's from or what metrics were used to come up this number but I have to say I like the sentiment and even more so in the middle of a pandemic:

because fuck'em if they can't take a joke

An Enlightened Moderate

Chris Hedges is possibly the gloomiest leftist to darken our political discourse I have yet encountered. I was working on some articles by David Dayen and Matt Stoller to show a better way to look at the Democratic Party establishment than a dismissive hand-waving conspiracy theory when this one from Hedges came to my attention. Subtitled "The culture wars give the oligarchs, both Democrats and Republicans, the cover to continue the pillage" this jeremiad from gloomy Chris has every unhelpful far left conspiracy I have yet seen and to top it off, takes Bernie Sanders off the pedestal as barely acceptable in his mind. He starts out decently enough:

...there is a natural antagonism between the rich and the rest of us. The interests of the rich are not our interests. The truths of the rich are not our truths. The lives of the rich are not our lives.

Okay, I'm on board with this sentiment. It is definitely in keeping with this blog's mission of renewing our knowledge of past truths, this one being central to those memories.

 Neoliberalism, deindustrialization, the destruction of labor unions, slashing and even eliminating the taxes of the rich and corporations, free trade, globalization, the surveillance state, endless war and austerity—the ideologies or tools used by the oligarchs to further their own interests — are presented to the public as natural law, the mechanisms for social and economic progress, even as the oligarchs dynamite the foundations of a liberal democracy and exacerbate a climate crisis that threatens to extinguish human life.

Yup, those are really bad things. We should remember how hard our ancestors fought to rein in company towns, Pinkertons, blacklists, monopolies, and their modern equivalents that keep the majority down.

There are few substantial differences between the two ruling political parties in the United States. This is why oligarchs like Donald Trump and Michael Bloomberg can switch effortlessly from one party to the other.

Oh, that's where we're going. Okay, please continue, I would like to hear all about how the Democrats launched wars of aggression and tore babies from their mothers while having a beer party to celebrate taking healthcare away from millions of Americans.

Donald Trump may be a narcissist and a con artist, but he savages the oligarchic elite in his long-winded speeches to the delight of his crowds. He, like Bernie Sanders, speaks about the forbidden topic — class. But Trump, though an embarrassment to the oligarchs, does not, like Sanders, pose a genuine threat to them. Trump will, like all demagogues, incite violence against the vulnerable, widen the cultural and social divides and consolidate tyranny, but he will leave the rich alone. It is Sanders whom the oligarchs fear and hate.

Right. No substantial differences. A Democratic president will certainly keep Stephen Miller on to terrorize immigrants and will further dismantle the pandemic response team at the CDC. Consolidating tyranny and inciting violence, those are two qualities I totally ascribe to Barack Obama or Bill Clinton. Now Hedges turns to that ultimate of intellectual laziness, quoting himself:

“Sanders’ democratic socialism is essentially that of a New Deal Democrat. His political views would be part of the mainstream in France or Germany, where democratic socialism is an accepted part of the political landscape and is routinely challenged as too accommodationist by communists and radical socialists. Sanders calls for an end to our foreign wars, a reduction of the military budget, for ‘Medicare for All,’ abolishing the death penalty, eliminating mandatory minimum sentences and private prisons, a return of Glass-Steagall, raising taxes on the wealthy, increasing the minimum wage to $15 an hour, canceling student debt, eliminating the Electoral College, banning fracking and breaking up agribusinesses. This does not qualify as a revolutionary agenda.”

Nope, no substantial differences there.

...Most importantly, [Sanders] believes, as I do not, that the political system, including the Democratic Party, can be reformed from within. He does not support sustained mass civil disobedience to bring the system down, the only hope we have of halting the climate emergency that threatens to doom the human race. On the political spectrum, he is, at best, an enlightened moderate.” [emphasis mine]

Belief. There's the word I've been waiting for. What else can it be called when you state in no uncertain terms that:

The Democratic Party elites will use any mechanism, no matter how nefarious and undemocratic, to prevent Sanders from obtaining the nomination.

Then cite as your evidence a NYTimes interview with less than one seventh of the superdelegates who stated they would not support Sanders on a theoretical second ballot at the convention if he did not have a majority of pledged delegates. I don't have a subscription to the NYTimes so I can't easily check if that is what the article truly says or not.

Now, just to provide some contrast I wanted to post something Ed Burmilla (the bountiful wisdom of Gin and Tacos and an actual political scientist if such a thing truly exists) wrote about the Democratic Party, and if you've watched any of his social media you know he's no fan of moderates or elites controlling it:

Inevitably, there are already conspiracy theories everywhere. Party coordination is not a devious or underhanded activity, and in fact it is a thing political parties are *supposed to do*. Pete & Klob dropping out together and everyone (including Beto, who I forgot existed) coming out to endorse Biden the day before Super Tuesday is not just a bunch of stuff that happened coincidentally.

I wrote weeks ago that, if the Not Sanders democrats wanted to stop him, they needed to coordinate around one candidate. The problem is I think they picked the worst one to coordinate around, not that Coordinate means Devious Conspiracy to Cheat.

Noel et al "The Party Decides" is a useful and accessible book on this subject. Parties are not obligated to be neutral observers of their own nomination processes. "Some power players apparently decided it's time to throw everything behind Biden and they talked some other candidates into withdrawing" is...not only is it not a conspiracy, it's just kind of what parties try to do.

It is unfortunate that the Democratic Party is just one party that encompasses all legitimate political factions in the United States instead of a coalition of parties representing the center-left to the left as in many parliamentary systems. So there are only so many leadership positions and a lot less jockeying for position as smaller parties would do to coalesce into a governing alliance. But we have to work with what we have, something that seems entirely lost on Hedges. It is the condescending attitude with threadbare evidence to back it up in broad generalizations like this that piss me off:

 The Democrats, like the Republicans, serve the interests of the pharmaceutical and insurance industries. The Democrats, like the Republicans, serve the interests of the defense contractors. The Democrats, like the Republicans, serve the interests of the fossil fuel industry. The Democrats, along with the Republicans, authorized $738 billion for our bloated military in fiscal 2020. The Democrats, like the Republicans, do not oppose the endless wars in the Middle East. The Democrats, like the Republicans, took from us our civil liberties, including the right to privacy, freedom from wholesale government surveillance, and due process. The Democrats, like the Republicans, legalized unlimited funding from the rich and corporations to transform our electoral process into a system of legalized bribery. The Democrats, like the Republicans, militarized our police and built a system of mass incarceration that has 25% of the world’s prisoners, although the United States has only 5% of the world’s population. The Democrats, like the Republicans, are the political face of the oligarchy.

The leaders of the Democratic Party—the Clintons, Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, Tom Perez—would rather implode the party and the democratic state than surrender their positions of privilege. The Democratic Party is not a bulwark against despotism. It is the guarantor of despotism. It is a full partner in the class project. Its lies, deceit, betrayal of working men and women and empowering of corporate pillage made a demagogue like Trump possible. Any threat to the class project, even the tepid one that would be offered by Sanders as the party’s nominee, will see the Democratic elites unite with the Republicans to keep Trump in power.

 Ugh. I can't even deal with this.

Go buy one will 'ya!

Driftglass and Bluegal actually sell bumper stickers and other merch that says "Both Sides Don't" and spend a considerable amount of time demonstrating this fact. The late Christopher Hitchens developed a theorem often referred to as "Hitchens' Razor" that states "That which can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence" so can we dispense with the grand conspiracy theory that "The Democrats, like the Republicans, are the political face of the oligarchy."

I know Hedges has written several books about this stuff, it can basically be boiled down to "both sides are bad". I tried reading American Fascists but it was so obtuse and arrogant while not making a well supported argument that I had to give up on it. Maybe you had a different impression of him.

You have to wonder what kind of candidate Gloomy Chris could support? What sort of thing would make him happy? Apparently only the kind of violent revolutions that went so well in places like Russia and France. No thanks.

I'll stick with the enlightened moderate. If that fails, I'll support whoever makes it to the nomination. Because both sides are not the same.

America Rarely Faces This Kind of a Threat

The title of this essay by Mark Sumner really caught my attention.

America is about to get a godawful lesson in why health care should never be a for-profit business

I first saw it on Crooks and Liars and have linked back to Kos where it seemed to have been first published. It is a very strong indictment of all that wonderful "efficiency" and "disruption" that has been imposed on America by profit-maximizing corporations for decades now. Especially our ramshackle healthcare industry has taken cost-cutting and productivity enhancement to such an extreme that the system is running at near capacity in normal times because that is how to maximize profits. Needless to say it is extremely fragile and operates with almost no margin for error.

Sumner contrasts the "super-lean, infinite-sigma healthcare system, absolutely dependent on every cog remaining in place" operating principle of corporate medicine with NASA's joke about "all the components being built by the lowest bidder" but notes that spacecraft have redundant systems built in all over them while hospitals walk a tightrope of "just-in-time" deliveries and nurses worked to exhaustion. It's a system designed to fold up with the smallest amount of stress on it. Somehow republicans claim that our healthcare system is the best in the world and people don't want to change their plan. No amount of protest or lobbying by mere mortals who get sick seems to penetrate the corporate armor or into Congress.

Previous outbreaks of disease allowed some sporadic improvements and plans to get through in public systems but the private healthcare industry balk at any attempts to increase their costs for such silly reasons as people dying or emergencies that might never materialize. Digby made a note that doughfacedonny and the other cynical bastards made real hay out of the Ebola outbreak in 2014 that had my mother-in-law so worried.

From all reports, the president is extremely unhappy with this turn of events, primarily because he believes it could interfere with his re-election. It’s easy to see why he thinks that: He and his Republican friends worked hard to gin up the Ebola outbreak into a national panic in 2014, and there’s good evidence that it had an effect on the outcome of the midterm elections that year, when the GOP made major gains.

But this time we don’t have a competent administration in charge to deal with the actual crisis while gadflies like Trump and Fox News play political games. Just as he has corrupted the DOJ and the director of national intelligence’s office, purging the ranks of experts and professionals by any means necessary, so too he has degraded the nation’s public health system, first and foremost by firing the White House pandemic response team and cutting the CDC’s efforts to prevent global disease outbreaks by 80%.

As I understand it, cutting CDC funding and the pandemic response team was a priority because President Obama had those things and everything the black guy did has to go. Besides, there are corporate tax cuts to pay for. Public health be damned. Digby also linked to this article in the Pacific Standard magazine that found correlation between republican fear-mongering over Ebola and their election gains in 2014. The research found that fear made people more likely to vote for conservative candidates. If there is anything I want for Christmas, it is the fact that republicans are not conservative to go mainstream. These are authoritarians, an actual conservative would not be interested in corporate "disruption" and "efficiency" that lead to instability. But I guess that's neither here nor there.

Another thing an actual conservative understands is that disasters happen, and when you are entrusted with public office it is your responsibility to serve the public to the best of your ability. I just saw a comment, "does anyone else get the feeling that the trump administration isn't taking the Coronavirus seriously?" in response to Mick Mulvaney the chief of staff whining about how the media was portraying doughfacedonny's shortcomings. What an understatement. Digby noted in her article that donny's primary concern is his reelection and money. CNN's Matt Egan relayed Goldman Sachs "concerns" that Coronavirus might endanger that reelection and money but now that Bernie Sanders has the premature triumphalism of being the frontrunner that all the capitalists can rest easy. So while donny has been working hard finding excuses to visit his properties on your dime, spending an entire third of his term there, the rest of his henchmen are hard at work censoring experts who could inform the public.

Unlike the rest of the world, America has been relatively insulated and privileged to have avoided invasions of either foreign soldiers or pathogens. This is why, in my opinion, our corporate and republican elites take such a cavalier attitude towards preparedness. A nation that was aware that outside threats are more varied than a terror attack would not run a trillion dollar deficit in a "peacetime" and "full employment" economy. It never fails to amaze me how much tunnel vision our corporate executive overlords have. On the one hand every management buzzword traces back to "disrupt!" but this seems to only pertain to causing as much insecurity and instability as possible for workers and families. Stretching supply chains all over the world, leaving deliveries to the magic of "just in time" manufacturing, and concentrating so much power in the hands of monopolist companies that don't really compete and therefore don't care about real disruption is a recipe for disaster. The American system of manufacturing used to be about interchangeable parts, logical progression of assembly on moving lines, and precision machinery. Now it is, as Mark Sumner wrote extensively in his essay, all about running things at the edge of failure with no margin of error on purpose because that is how investors can maximize profits.

Running heathcare like this is absolutely ludicrous. If hospitals and clinics are stressed to the breaking point in normal times, the smallest disruption will cause cascading failures at every point. Real disruption, like an epidemic or concerted terror campaigns, will in short order completely collapse American society. The executives know this and run their calcified, unwieldy monopolies lean and fragile anyway. Why? Partially because they have to answer to that shady group of a$$holes called "investors" who always push for more. Catastrophes are unusual, rare occurrences... and someone else's problem. When Goldman Sachs and other Wall Street parasites collapsed the housing market in 2008, someone else became the American taxpayer. They screwed us all both ways and got away with it, Uncle Sam came to their rescue and asked for nothing in return. Executives as a class expect the same pampering every time they collapse the economy but what happens when Uncle Sam has been hollowed out and sabotaged by republicans?

Wash your hands, avoid crowds, take vitamins, and do everything you can to protect yourself and your family because we're on our own.