The Unblackening of Clinton Critics: Why the Voice of Larry Wilmore Had to Be Silenced

The biggest lie of the 2016 presidential election is the whopper Democrats routinely tell about their appeal to minorities.

These minorities are supposed to include the Latino population, but that's obviously not true--since Barack Obama earned the title Deporter-in-Chief by ordering the deportation of 7,000 immigrant children without so much as a court hearing on the subject. Even though some of those children came from countries savaged by Hillary Clinton's anti-democratic policies throughout Latin America, the Democrats like to pretend (without a scintilla of evidence) that America will treat Latinos at home and abroad better under Clinton than we have under Obama. (We won't.)

Minorities are also supposed to include Muslims, but it's hard for a president who uses drone strikes for extra-judicial assassinations of Muslim civilians (whether they are American citizens or not) to make the case that Democrats are as mindful of Muslim rights as they pretend to be. Clinton's unwavering commitment to interventionism should lead Muslims to expect her foreign policy to boil down to three sentences: "We went to the Muslim world. We saw the Muslim world. The Muslim world died." [Laughter.]

Minorities are also supposed to include the LGBTQ community--a community that is protected within the U.S. by laws and customs, not the presidency. Outside the U.S., if you want to torture, imprison, or execute people for their sexual orientations/identities, you'll need to make significant donations to the Clinton Foundation.

So who are these minorities that are so drawn to the Democrats? The way the Clinton media machine tells the story, there's only one minority community that really matters: the African-American community.

A central component of the DNC narrative in 2016 has been that Hillary Clinton appeals to "diverse" communities, but when Clinton was trounced by Bernie Sanders in Hawaii (the most ethnically diverse state in the country--with whites comprising less than 25% of the population), Clinton's surrogates refused to budge from their position that Sanders had no appeal in "diverse" communities. 

So when the Democrats accused Sanders of failing to appeal to diverse populations, what they really meant was that he wasn't appealing to black Americans.

But is that true?

The Clinton media machine doesn't care what's true. It doesn't care what Michelle Alexander has to say or how many people are listening to her (both inside and outside the black community).

It doesn't care what critics from the black left (such as Benjamin Dixon and others associated with Black Agenda Report) have been telling us for decades about how the Democratic Party shamelessly exploits black Americans for the political power it then uses to exploit those voters as citizens.

It certainly doesn't care if a Hindu from Hawaii (Tulsi Gabbard) wants to make a speech on Sanders' behalf at the Democratic National Convention.

But it cares a great deal about whether a black woman from Cleveland (Nina Turner) wants to do the same thing.

In fact, in Turner's case, the DNC cared enough to interfere by scrapping her speech at the last minute--because the worst sin that can be committed by corporate media in 2016 is to devote airtime to black voices that dare to be critical of Hillary Clinton (even if that criticism boils down to nothing more than supporting an alternative to her).

Accordingly, Larry Wilmore's The Nightly Show had to be canceled.

The official story from Comedy Central is that Wilmore's show was canceled because of poor ratings. Wilmore's show inherited the time slot that used to belong to The Colbert Report and is down to just over half as many viewers as the Colbert vehicle claimed.

By that logic, however, The Daily Show with Trevor Noah should also have been canceled, since Noah has retained just over half of the viewers who used to tune in to The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.

Ratings aren't the issue. The issue is that Wilmore dares to be critical of Hillary Clinton and DNC hypocrisy while Noah dares nothing and does nothing.

When Clinton first announced her candidacy, Wilmore brilliantly compared her to Khaleesi from Game of Thrones and suggested (based on a line of dialogue from the series) that Clinton's campaign slogan should be: "Hillary for America. I will take what is mine with fire and blood. I WILL TAKE IT."

At the White House Correspondents' Dinner, Wilmore created anxiety among white liberal elites by observing: "Bernie's been hanging out with Killer Mike, or as Hillary Clinton calls him, Superpredator Mike."

If Wilmore were white, he would be able to get away with this kind of schtick because the corporate media has done everything possible to accommodate the DNC myth of the Bernie Bro. White males can make cutting comments about Clinton because their criticism fuels the argument that the only people opposed to warmongering corporatism are white, privileged misogynists.

But when Clinton is criticized by one of the people who is supposed to be part of her firewall (a black man working in corporate media, no less!), that is cause for alarm.

It's hard to say that Clinton is a friend of African-Americans when she does everything possible to prop up the school-to-prison pipeline.

It's hard to say that Clinton is a friend of African-Americans when her response to Black Lives Matter is less political (i.e. supporting reform of police departments throughout the country) than politically expedient (i.e. co-opting Black Lives Matter though a cynical manipulation of Mothers of the Movement).

It's hard to say that Clinton is a friend of African-Americans when her closest political allies include Rahm Emmanuel (who has essentially sold out Chicago's minority communities to Wall Street) and Debbie Wasserman-Schultz (who advocates for the payday lending industry that exploits minorities throughout Florida).

In fact, it's so hard to say that Clinton is a friend of the African-American community that the only way the networks can manage to say it with a straight face is to ensure that NO black voices of criticism are ever heard in response.

If one such voice ever got through, then the balloon of Clinton's arrogance about her firewall might pop.

And we can't have that--so take a long walk off a short dock, Mr. Wilmore.

The Only Escape from the Corporate State Is for Us to Become Our Own Media: Khadi-the-Cord

Corporate media's job is to deceive and distract the population. Whether you're watching a dramatic series, a sporting event, a news program, or an advertisement, corporate television has the hypnotic effect of making you accept whatever is on the screen as a substitute for reality.

We need programming that reflects reality the way it is rather than the way a handful of corporate sponsors want us to see it.

For a model of a practical solution to such a quandary, we should turn to Mohandes K. Gandhi.

Everyone knows that Gandhi helped Indians use non-violence to address the lingering problems of colonialism. Those who have heard Gandhi's speeches or read his quotations know that he was also a gifted rhetorician capable of shining a spotlight on injustice.

But too many people have forgotten the practical component of Gandhi's plan for resisting colonialism: khadi (the reliance on homespun clothing).

It's not enough for us to recognize that neoliberalism is just as repugnant as colonialism.

It's not enough for us to applaud the rhetoric of those who expose the injustice of our political system and the hypocrisy of our political leaders.

We need to do something practical in our daily lives that will make a difference in the way we see and interact with the world. For Gandhi's supporters, the most practical form of resistance was to make their own homespun clothing so as not to support a British textile industry that exploited them both as producers of fabric and as consumers of clothing made from that fabric. For us, the most practical form of resistance should be to make our own media so as not to support the corporate entities that are misinforming us and misdirecting our energies with news coverage that is as vacuous as it is constant.

If you watch corporate media, you will (whether you like it or not) participate in sprawling debates about Barack Obama's legacy. There will be plenty of approaches to take, plenty of points and counterpoints to consider. But the one position you won't be presented with is that the more obvious it becomes that American police officers oppress communities of color, the more urgently our first black president promotes the Trans-Pacific Partnership.

Obama the neoliberal isn't concerned about his legacy. He certainly isn't concerned about the people of this country. He's concerned about doing the bidding of his donors as effectively as possible before leaving office. If that means putting in an appearance in Dallas to let the police know that he will do everything possible to protect them from citizens (while doing virtually nothing to reassure citizens that he will protect them from police), then he can and does get away with such nonsense only because the corporate media knows how to frame the coverage he receives.

There are no reasons to think Hillary Clinton the neoliberal will be any better--and abundant reasons to conclude that she will be much worse. But corporate media won't let viewers go anywhere near those reasons. Instead, our neoliberal pundits will focus on Donald Trump's thin skin as a problem that might get the U.S. into unnecessary military conflicts (which it might), but they will never consider the ways in which the DNC's hysterical accusations against Russia are likely to serve as a pretext for open war in Syria and the Ukraine.

The next time corporate media tries to make you feel angry about symbolically charged (but practically meaningless) topics such as Obamas's "legacy" or flag burning or restroom access, please try to remember the second verse of the Talking Heads' "Found a Job":

We've heard this little scene, we've heard it many times.
People fighting over little things and wasting precious time.
They might be better off ... I think ... the way it seems to me.
Making up their own shows, which might be better than TV.

Cutting the cord doesn't just have immediate financial consequences on some our most despicable corporate oppressors (such as Time Warner and Comcast). It also has a liberating effect on people who would otherwise spend their lives inside the echo chambers of Fox News and MSNBC.

The Indians who took Gandhi's advice on khadi didn't just deny revenue to the textile industry that exploited them financially; they also asserted their humanity, their agency, and their collective will. They essentially found a way to unionize against an insidious economic force.

Progressives in America must take a similar approach. We must unionize against the corporate media's insistence on distorting reality in such a way as to make us believe that politics-as-usual is acceptable even though we all know that politics-as-usual is killing us.

Maybe you'll donate the money you save on your cable TV bill to the Green Party or to causes such as Brand New Congress. Maybe you'll donate it to the brave progressives on YouTube that rely on contributions from viewers to create new content. Maybe you'll use it to buy the equipment necessary to make your own scripted dramas (as David Byrne's Judy did when she decided that it was better to spend time in "her bedroom inventing situations" instead of watching the garbage on TV in the living room).

There are lots of practical things that progressives can do with the money they will save by cutting the cord, just as there were lots of practical things Indians could do with the money they saved by making their own clothes.

But the first step is to realize that as long as we continue to allow corporate media to use pretty scenery and good-looking pundits to distract us from the ugly reality we live in (featuring toxic food, endless war, and a planetary meltdown), we will self-destruct before we ever break out of this self-destructive cycle.

So please: khadi-the-cord.

For Berners, Dr. Jill Stein Inspires More Enthusiam than Confidence

I first /facepalmed myself in response to one of Dr. Jill Stein's media gambits when she tweeted to Samantha Bee:

Let's show @FullFrontalSamB Greens are just as fun as Libertarians! Ask her to interview me: https://t.co/aeEMmKtTBp pic.twitter.com/8J7mwfAiLc

— Dr. Jill Stein (@DrJillStein) July 1, 2016

For crying out loud, Dr. Stein, if you and your advisors can't spot a raging neoliberal when you see one, you're going to squander the golden opportunity being handed to third parties by the toxic Trump-Clinton binary.

Unfunny comedians such as Bee (along with Seth Meyers, Bill Maher, Jimmy Fallon, Stephen Colbert and Sarah Silverman) are all propped up by one thing and one thing only: their willingness to service the corporate agenda of the networks that sponsor their tiresome schtick.

They are professional neoliberal apologists. Their only role in life is to seem compassionate toward and connected to the people who are most beleaguered by the neoliberal agenda while pushing narratives designed to support that agenda. This is something that most American TV watchers grasp instinctively as teenagers, so it doesn't inspire confidence in us to see that such an intuitive life lesson has sailed over the heads of those leading the opposition to the two-party duopoly.

I'm not saying that Stein's inability to spot a neoliberal is a symptom of stupidity; it's probably just a function of the fact that she doesn't spend much time watching TV.

But she needs to be better advised by people who have some understanding of how the corporate media works 24/7 to keep Americans happy with the debt-slavery that our culture has successfully rebranded as freedom.

As the Green Party Convention was getting underway in Houston, supporters were called upon to contribute $27 to a money bomb campaign for the Stein/Baraka ticket.

I happily did so--and then /facepalmed myself again when I learned that the money would go to buy ads on MSNBC.

Are you Greens seriously that clueless?

MSNBC is the network that you can most reasonably expect to sandwich your ads between segments from pretend-journalists who will present Stein's skepticism about pharmaceutical companies controlling the FDA as somehow akin to an anti-vaccination position.

If the Greens imagine that their target audience includes the neoliberal zombies who are still watching Rachel Maddow, then they have absolutely no idea what they're doing--which is especially galling when they're doing it with money donated by those of us who grasp that the most significant problem facing the U.S.A. is neither Trump nor Clinton, but the phenomenon that spawned both candidates: neoliberalism.

Trump is, as Chris Hedges points out, a predictable neofascist response to neoliberalism. And Clinton is simply the cancer of neoliberalism manifesting itself in human form.

So I'm going to beg Dr. Cornel West, who speaks so compellingly about jazz and the blues, to make Stein understand the landscape of the corporate media in 2016.

The GOP and the DNC both have the resources necessary to staff full orchestras with woodwinds, strings, brass, and percussion. The Greens simply don't have that kind of personnel available. They may appeal to the odd Lisa Simpson character who can play a mean saxophone, but they can't afford a dedicated rehearsal space or quality recording equipment, and the music they play on the major networks is going to sound amateurish compared to the offerings of the major parties.

If Stein tries to poach voters from the DNC by advertising on MSNBC, the only winners will be the DNC and MSNBC, who will put the Green Party's money into the pockets of talking heads who will perform siren songs about how those who vote Green will end up crashing the ship of state on the rocks, whereas those who support Clinton will steer clear of Trump-as-Charybdis. (They'll be sure to cut to commercial before mentioning that Clinton is Scylla--but the point is they know she's Scylla --and are delighted by the fact that she feasts on the part of the population that doesn't include them.)

Dr. West, please familiarize yourself with the social media uprising that took off around the Sanders campaign. Don't make the mistake of looking to the major networks for the Green Party's John Coltraine. The corporate media doesn't know how to improvise, but improvisation is happening throughout the Bernie-or-bust movement with the work of people such as Tim Black, Jimmy Dore, Debbie Lusignan, Benjamin Dixon, and Mike Figueredo. A hugely underappreciated part of the appeal of watching someone like Black instead of corporate media is that his show, even if it lacks high production value, happens live.

There isn't enough money in the world for the Green Party to fight neoliberalism via corporate media because the only people still watching corporate media are the ones who are committed to neoliberalism for financial (rather than moral) reasons. Those folks don't want to have their assumptions challenged by a rousing anthem from Stein; they watch TV to be distracted or soothed by syrupy ballads.

So instead of wasting your money on networks whose viewers hold the Greens in contempt, please consider spending that money on campaign infrastructure. Rent offices and vehicles. Set up bases and networks of support for your volunteers--and leave the media blitz to the arenas (Facebook, Twitter, YouTube) where the jazz and blues musicians of anti-neoliberalism are already making headway.

This battle is going to have to be won in the real world because the phony world of television already belongs (lock, stock, and barrel) to the neolibs.

Hitler Gave Us Quislings; The Clintons Give Us Quoslings

A quisling (named after Norway's Vidkun Quisling) is someone who collaborates with an enemy occupying force. A quosling (my word for followers of Hillary Clinton) is someone who collaborates with corporate interests to perpetuate the status quo.

While I was protesting the DNC in Philadelphia last week, I met some Democrats who are so disappointed in the nomination of Clinton that they intend to vote for Donald Trump. I can't follow their logic, but I can paraphrase it:

"Clinton is such a heinous liar that I have to vote for Trump, even though I know he is also a heinous liar."

"Clinton is such a despicable fraud that I have to vote for Trump, even though I know he is also a despicable fraud."

"Clinton is so shamelessly self-serving that I have to vote for Trump, even though he's every bit as shamelessly self-serving."

I think these folks just feel betrayed by the Democratic Party right now (as they should), and I expect most of them to wake up to the realization (before November) that it makes no sense to reward Trump simply for not being Clinton. In fact, this is exactly the sort of nonsense logic that led the Nobel Committee to award a Peace Prize to Barack Obama simply for not being George W. Bush (even though Obama, after accepting the prize, would turn out to be more committed to wars of choice than any president in U.S. history).

I'm not terribly worried about the Democrats who say they will vote for Trump, but I am terrified of those who say that they will hold their noses and vote for Clinton--especially in swing states.

For heaven's sake, why?

Clinton isn't just a flawed candidate; she's unconscionable. And those who say otherwise are lying to themselves and the people around them. If Trump supporters are driven by raw stupidity (the stupidity of believing that Trump actually has the political skill to defeat the TPP as he promises), then Clinton supporters are driven by raw cynicism (the cynicism of pretending that she has the political will to defeat the TPP as she promises).

The pro-Clinton arguments are just as inane as the pro-Trump arguments:

"Trump is such a heinous racist that I have to vote for Clinton, even though I know that the war on drugs to which she remains committed is unabashed racism masquerading as policy for the benefit of prisons-for-profit and the pharmaceutical industry."

"Trump is such a despicable xenophobe that I have to vote for Clinton, whose indifference to human lives all over the globe led to the coup in Honduras, the destabilization of Lybia, the rise of ISIS, and the Syrian diaspora."

"Trump is such a shameless climate change denier that I have to vote for Clinton, who will sell out the future of the planet to her fossil fuel sponsors just as eagerly as Trump, but who at least knows better than to seem gleeful about it."

Clinton supporters don't mind institutional racism; they just want a candidate who knows how to keep racism on the down low, where it's sustainable (unlike the obnoxious and unsustainable racism of Trump). Clinton supporters don't object to xenophobia; they just want a candidate who can slaughter innocent non-American civilians all over the planet without calling too much attention to the phenomenon. Clinton supporters don't care about whether future generations will have clean air and water; they just want someone who knows how to present the illusion that the climate situation is improving even as it continues to deteriorate.

Clinton supporters aren't dumb; they're just selfishly committed to the status quo because they believe it's their turn to reap their rewards for having supported self-serving corporatists such as Clinton over the years.

Clinton supporters are quoslings because they are actively and deliberately collaborating with the enemy--the corporate interests for whom the TPP amounts to a hostile takeover of the U.S. government.

Clinton supporters are quoslings because they are actively and deliberately working to perpetuate the institutional racism associated with the carceral state, the erosion of privacy associated with the surveillance state, and the genocidal impulses associated with the imperialist state.

Clinton supporters are quoslings because they are actively and deliberately working to help the Clinton media machine pretend that talking about climate change is the same as doing something about climate change.

They're quoslings because they know exactly what they're doing--and that's what makes their attempts to bully the rest of us into supporting Clinton even more repugnant than the anger that is driving some misguided Democrats into the Trump camp.

Quoslings are going to keep attacking Jill Stein for her lack of experience and her supposed non-viability because they don't understand that what draws us to Jill isn't her experience or her viability, but her fundamental human decency. They don't understand that no matter how flawed a candidate Trump may be, the monstrous indecency of Clinton will never become acceptable to those of us who know that the status quo has got to go.

Democrats keep telling me that I have to face the binary they're focused on: Trump v. Clinton. I'm not allowed to have a third choice because the political reality is such that anyone who doesn't support Clinton becomes a supporter of Trump. I don't accept that premise, but even if I did, it's plain to me that Clinton (who is spoiling for fights with Russia, Iran, and Syria) is a greater danger than Trump to the safety of Americans and people throughout the world.

But don't worry. I won't vote for Trump because I refuse to confine myself to your binary. If I'm going to be trapped in a binary, I choose this one: After the way the Democratic Party treated my candidate and my values in 2016, am I down with Dems or done with Dems?

That question is way easier to answer than choosing between the twin nightmares of Trump and Clinton.

I am done with Dems--done.

Also, I've seen Jill Stein in person, so I'm a lot more excited to discover what she can do than I am worried about whatever frivolous distinctions there might be between Trump and Clinton.

The DNC Has "Deployed the Recommended" to Deal with Guccifer 2.0--Whatever That Means

Joe Uchill of The Hill has written three articles about Guccifer 2.0 since July 13th. All three conclude in much the same way (by reminding readers that unidentified sources consider Guccifer 2.0 to be part of a Russian disinformation campaign).

Here's the final paragraph of "Guccifer 2.0 releases new docs" (7/13):

“Our experts are confident in their assessment that the Russian government hackers were the actors responsible for the breach detected in April, and we believe that the subsequent release and the claims around it may be a part of a disinformation campaign by the Russians,” a senior DNC official said in a written statement.

Here's the antepenultimate paragraph of "Celeb phone numbers included in Guccifer 2.0 hack" (7/18):

Many have suggested that Guccifer 2.0 is a front for Vladimir Putin in the Russian leader’s efforts to influence American politics, something Guccifer 2.0 denies.

And here are the final two paragraphs of "New Guccifer 2.0 dump highlights 'wobbly Dems' on Iran deal" (7/18):

The DNC declined to issue a new comment but reiterated a prior statement from a senior official.

“Our experts are confident in their assessment that the Russian government hackers were the actors responsible for the breach detected in April,” that statement read, “and we believe that the subsequent release and the claims around it may be a part of a disinformation campaign by the Russians. We’ve deployed the recommended.”

Note that the last conclusion is almost identical to the first. However, Uchill knows better than to conclude two out of three articles on the same subject in less than a week in exactly the same way. So he presents the illusion of changing things up by moving the attribution of his unnamed source to the middle of the paragraph and tacking on a puzzling piece of extra information: "We've deployed the recommended."

The recommended what? It seems as though the article ends on a challenge to the reader to fill in the blank--something that's very easy to do if we remember one of Guccifer 2.0's earlier leaks concerning "Reporter Outreach" strategies from the DNC: "pitch stories with no fingerprints and utilize reporters to drive a message."

I therefore suspect that if Uchill had included the final sentence of his latest conclusion in full, it would have read something like this: "We've deployed the recommended strategy of ensuring that reporters muddy the waters around Guccifer 2.0 by concluding every single article they write about the hacker with speculation about his being part of a Russian disinformation campaign."

Will the UK Treat Jeremy Corbyn the Way Brazil Treated Dilma Rousseff?

2016 has not been kind to left-leaning government leaders who dare to oppose neoliberal policies and systemic corruption.

Dilma Rousseff, the democratically elected leader of Brazil, was ousted in May on bogus charges of corruption by the very people whose corruption she was in the process of exposing.

Bernie Sanders, who challenged a foreign policy based on regime change and proposed a domestic policy based on infrastructural reinvestment, appears to have lost the nomination of his nation's so-called liberal party to Hillary Clinton, who sees spending cuts at home as the easiest way to finance wars abroad.

Earlier today, Jeremy Corbyn, the overwhelmingly popular leader of the UK's Labour Party, lost a no-confidence vote conducted among his own Members of Parliament, retaining support from only 20% of them.

But even though political officials may have lost confidence in Corbyn, the people of the UK apparently still consider him their best bulwark against neoliberal encroachments. According to an instant (and unscientific) poll conducted by The Guardian in the wake of the no-confidence vote, more than 90% of the people who voted to put Corbyn in charge of the Labour Party intend to vote for him again if presented with the opportunity to do so.

For his part, Corbyn has indicated that he will fight to represent the people who put him into his current position of power instead of kowtowing to the MPs who consider him unfit to lead:

I was democratically elected leader of our party for a new kind of politics by 60% of Labour members and supporters, and I will not betray them by resigning. Today’s vote by MPs has no constitutional legitimacy.

If Corbyn had to run against likely challenger Angela Eagle today, I don't doubt that Corbyn would win.

But such a vote won't happen until UK officials (in conjunction with their media spokespeople) have had a chance to educate the hoi polloi concerning the dangers posed by Corbyn's leadership. I suspect the process will follow (in broad strokes at least) the outline of what happened in Brazil.

The corporate media of Brazil worked actively to plant seeds of doubt concerning Rousseff's leadership (often by using the airwaves to make staged protests look far more widespread than they were). That campaign to undermine Rousseff was effective enough to shake the confidence of the electorate in the one person in the national government who was working most conspicuously to weed out corporate-sponsored corruption--with the result that the bought-and-paid-for politicians against whom Rousseff fought most fiercely were the ones who ended up in power.

Here in the US, I know plenty of people who see through what MSNBC is doing when it trots out Barney Frank to agree with Chris Matthews about what a tremendous threat Bernie Sanders poses to America's future. But I know plenty more who don't. Even people who fundamentally distrust news broadcasts end up repeating "facts" they "learned" from networks that they consider unreliable.

The media machinery that misrepresented Rousseff in Brazil and Sanders in the U.S. will doubtless give Corbyn the same treatment. I'm already hearing an overlap in the dismissive rhetoric applied to all three figures. Pundits and fellow politicians acknowledge that they are "decent" people, but go on to assert that they lack the fundamental "leadership" qualities necessary to steer their ships of state through the troubled waters ahead. After that grave pronouncement is made, the speaker pauses for a beat to let it sink in before adding something along these lines: "Look, I'm just as committed to breaking out of this neoliberal cycle as anyone else, but the global situation is simply too volatile right now for us to take the drastic steps proposed by Rousseff/Sanders/Corbyn. The only reasonable course of action is for us to temporarily entrust the government to the guidance of a compromise candidate such as Temer/Clinton/Eagle."

Corporate Media Drains You of the Energy to Consume Anything but Corporate Media

Fellow American citizens, you are surrounded by clear-headed individuals who are using plain language to report on the world exactly as it is, but you'll never even notice these folks as long as you keep staring into the black hole of corporate news.

You know full well that the job of CNN is to distract you from troublesome facts and inconvenient information by ignoring some stories and coating others in a veneer of impotent moral outrage. You don't (and can't) expect Wolf Blitzer to diagnose the 2016 election with anything approaching lucidity. But since it's no trouble to turn on the tube and passively soak up lies and distortions, you let access-based reporters tell you how the world isn't instead of letting research-based journalists such as Chris Hedges tell you how it is, as in this excerpt from a recent article for TruthDig:

The liberal class refuses to fight for the values it purports to care about. It is paralyzed and trapped by the induced panic manufactured by the systems of corporate propaganda. The only pressure within the political system comes from corporate power. With no counterweight, with no will on the part of the liberal class to defy the status quo, we slide deeper and deeper into corporate despotism. The repeated argument of the necessity of supporting the “least worse” makes things worse.

People ignore such points out of convenience, not stupidity. It's easy to follow Hedges' logic, but even easier to have a newscast playing in the background while doing household chores. Why should you spend time reading thoughtful political commentary when the only result of doing so is the sense that you're now duty-bound to demand accountability in government?

Your job is hard. Your family is demanding. You're tired and you need a little downtime, so you drown out your own memories of how terrible the Clintons have been with fanciful narratives from MSNBC about how terrible Trump might be. You let Rachel Maddow spew nonsense into your ear instead of heeding Michael Howard when he writes:

[T]he notion that voting third party is a reckless and ultimately dangerous decision is losing its cogency, if it ever had any to begin with. Third-party voters—and hopefully there are many more of them this time around—understand that meaningful change in this country presupposes a subversion of our inveterate two-party (or two-factions-of-the-same-party) political system. By “holding your nose” and voting for Wall Street’s vetted candidate, you are casting a vote for the system itself, and you’re hindering real progress. And all for the sake of… what, exactly? Expediency? It’s always rich to hear establishment pundits charge the #NeverHillary crowd with myopia. Nothing could be further from the truth. In trying to establish a viable third party, one not subservient to the economic elite, these voters have an eye to the distant future, one in which the U.S. actually functions as a democracy. How short-sighted of them!

Do Hedges and Howard sound like petulant brats--or like adult human beings who have seen firsthand what we accomplish by electing the less obnoxious servant of plutocracy every four years?

The main lesson we should all have learned about Hillary Clinton by now is that she wouldn't be inevitable if we weren't already convinced of her inevitability. The important corollary of this lesson, however, is that we wouldn't be convinced of her inevitability if not for a few dozen highly paid, well-placed Clintonite mouthpieces assuring us of her inevitability 24/7.

Let's say that you're a person with a sweet tooth who is trying to lose weight. You take pains to eliminate all forms of candy and dessert from your house, but your paper boy starts including a complimentary chocolate doughnut with your daily paper. Is the paper boy helping you out--or tempting you to backslide into self-destructive behavior?

Now let's say that you're a person with limited free time trying to help build a better future. You take pains to educate yourself about political realities, but the New York Times and Washington Post and every other major news publication in the country keep inserting themselves into your Facebook feed with stories about how you had better settle for Clinton to avoid Trump. Are those news sources helping you out--or tempting you to backslide into self-destructive behavior?

We're killing each other. We're killing the world. We're killing ourselves. And the only reason we accept this reality is because the articles we read from the Wall Street Journal, the stories we hear from NPR, and the reports we soak up from cable news all tell us this is the way things have to be and that any attempt to bring change will only make things worse.

Please dig deep enough within yourself to find the energy required to tune that garbage out. Please don't allow the corporate shills to manufacture your consent for the destruction of your political voice.

Why Should We Doubt Anything Asserted by the DNC, Repeated by the Company They Hired (CrowdStrike), and Confirmed by that Company's Industry Partner (Fidelis)?

According to news sources all over the internet, the verdict is in concerning the hack of the Democratic National Committee. A headline from Business Insider UK reads "Yes, Russia Really Did Hack the Democratic National Committee." Similar headlines have poured in from other sources, such as The Washington Post ("Cyber researches confirm Russian government hack of Democratic National Convention"), Computerworld ("Russian hackers were behind DNC breach"), and Neowin ("The Russian government hacked the DNC after all").

Apparently the world can breathe a sigh of relief and rest assured that the matter has been settled once and for all.

These headlines are generated with such certainty primarily because a cybersecurity outfit called Fidelis has independently corroborated the assertions of CrowdStrike, the company hired by the DNC to mitigate the damage done by the breach.

But none of the stories attached to the headlines question how "independent" the analysis of Fidelis really is. Certainly none of them mention that Fidelis joined a 7-member intelligence exchange program sponsored by CrowdStrike in August of 2014. Nor do they point out that a press release from General Dynamics that same month characterized Fidelis and CrowdStrike as "partners" rather than competitors in the cybersecurity industry.

The Washington Post attempts to bolster its case by referring to a statement from Marshall Heilman, a researcher from Mandiant (long considered a genuine rival of CrowdStrike), according to which "the malware and associated servers are consistent with those previously used by 'APT 28 and APT 29,' which are Mandiant’s names for Fancy Bear and Cozy Bear, respectively."

The Post article doesn't explain how Heilman obtained his malware samples, but gives us a hint in its invocation of yet a fourth cybersecurity firm, ThreatConnect, which "followed up on CrowdStrike’s analysis by looking at computer Internet protocol addresses that CrowdStrike said it had found while investigating the DNC intrusion." (Neither Mandiant nor its parent company, Fireeye, responded to my queries about how Heilman obtained the DNC malware samples.)

So for those keeping score, we know that Russians hacked the DNC because 1) The DNC told us so; 2) CrowdStrike (the cybersecurity firm hired by the DNC) told us so; 3) Fidelis (one of CrowdStrike's industry partners) told us so; 4) Mandiant (based on an examination of malware samples presumably provided to them by CrowdStrike) told us so; and 5) ThreatConnect (based on an examination of IP addresses admittedly provided to them by CrowdStrike) told us so.

Guccifer 2.0 and the Corporate Media's Credibility

If you googled Hillary Clinton over the weekend, you had a hard time finding mainstream stories about Guccifer 2.0 because they were all buried beneath layers of commentary on the birth of Clinton's newborn grandson Aidan.

That's not evidence of an elaborate plot to forge a media narrative; it's simply business as usual for our corporate news sources, which routinely privilege distractions over substance.

The limited coverage of the Guccifer 2.0 story appeared in news outlets such as Gawker and The Inquisitr and on fact-checking websites such as Snopes.

Guccifer 2.0 was barely mentioned (if at all) in more high-profile/mainstream publications, and the stories concerning the leak that did appear in such publications (e.g. Wired and The Wall Street Journal) focused far less on the content of what was made public than on arguments about culpability for the breach.

Here's a representative paragraph from the Wired article by Andy Greenberg:

But just as lurid as the leaked data has been the fingerpointing that came after. Earlier in the week, the security firm Crowdstrike, which the DNC brought in to remediate the breach, published a blog post claiming that a pair of hacker groups based in Russia and associated with the government’s intelligence apparatus carried out the intrusion. The post pointed to the specific malware and tactics linked with the Russian groups known as Cozy Bear and Fancy Bear. Both have a history of hacking high-value international intelligence targets.

Note that Greenberg can't vouch for the veracity of CrowdStrike's assertions; his purpose here is merely to summarize what their website claims. This tone of responsible skepticism is the most striking distinction between the way the Guccifer 2.0 leak is being handled in the mainstream press and the way it is being handled in more partisan outlets.

The notoriously right-wing New York Post, for example, ran this headline on the 16th: Leaked document shows DNC wanted Clinton from start. The purpose of that article isn't to establish the authenticity of the Guccifer 2.0 leak, but to presume its authenticity and spin a specific point as negatively as possible against the likely Democratic nominee.

We saw a similar slant taken by the The New York Observer (owned by Donald Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner and therefore presumably more sympathetic to Trump than Clinton). On the 17th, the Observer ran this piece by Michael Sainato: Guccifer 2.0 Leak Reveals How DNC Rigged Primaries for Clinton.

The Sainato article is especially noteworthy because of its final paragraph, which reads more like an excerpt from a Bernie Sanders speech than a piece of journalism concerning cybercrime:

The Democratic primaries exhibited a stark disregard for the values endemic to democracy, nearly solidifying an oligarchy in which corporations and wealthy donors use the government as a means to perpetuate their own agendas. These interests circumvented democracy to help Hillary Clinton out-raise Bernie Sanders by over $80 million from Super-PACs. These are the companies who offshore thousands of American jobs, who pushed for a Wall Street bailout when their greed and recklessness delivered our country into the worst recession since the Great Depression, and who have destabilized foreign regions around the world through unnecessary military intervention. Hillary Clinton represents an extension of disastrous policies, and her coronation by Establishment Democrats ensures corruption and dirty politics will continue as the status quo for years to come.

Although The Observer isn't backing Sanders, egging Sanders supporters on in their resistance to Clinton could definitely play to Trump's advantage, so it's not hard to see why this article ends on such a polemical note.

Just think how the title of Sainato's piece would have been edited before appearing in something like The New York Times: "Guccifer 2.0 Leak (If Genuine) Suggests Premature Partnership between DNC and Clinton."

But The New York Times didn't run any such headline because it wasn't interested in the Guccifer 2.0 story.

The Grey Lady's editors may, as many Sanders supporters suspect, have chosen to ignore this story because they think it would be too damaging to their darling candidate.

But what if they're ignoring the Guccifer 2.0 leak because they have good reason to believe it's a hoax?

This possibility keeps nagging me as I see prominent alternative media analysts (including Jordan Chariton and Jimmy Dore of TYT) arguing that the Guccifer 2.0 leak must be authentic simply because the DNC refuses to go on record denying its authenticity.

I love the zeal of Chariton and Dore, but I urge all Sanders supporters to proceed with extreme caution concerning anything on the Guccifer 2.0 website. So much of the leaked information is a matter of public record that we should be skeptical about anything that isn't already part of the public record--such as a letter that neatly confirms all the suspicions of outraged Sanders supporters being posted on a newly launched website by some unknown person/people claiming to have hacked the DNC.

C'mon guys--let's calm down.

Less than five years ago, CrowdStrike's president (Shawn Henry) used the notorious LulzSec/AntiSec hacker Sabu to deceive the world when both he (Henry) and his informant (Sabu) worked for the FBI. It is therefore entirely possible that Henry is using Guccifer 2.0 to deceive us in the same way.

Remember that CrowdStrike officially works for the DNC, not the public interest. The DNC has, under our noses, mounted a months-long disinformation campaign concerning Hillary Clinton. That disinformation campaign has largely failed because its primary vehicle (the corporate media) is widely distrusted by the American public.

Please consider the obvious ways in which the Guccifer 2.0 leak--if it proves to be a hoax--will simultaneously discredit all the alternative media sources that embraced it and restore credibility to the mainstream corporate news entities that ignored it.

Again, proceed with caution.

Who Better Than Hillary Clinton to Help Stephen Colbert Betray Jon Stewart's Legacy?

If Jon Stewart could be relied upon for anything, it was his unflinching commitment to exposing the many ways in which corporate media failed the American people by using faux journalism to distract Americans from meaningful political discourse.

Stewart proved that in the face of a failed fourth estate, satire could routinely and compellingly do a better job of informing viewers about the important news of the day than any conventional anchorperson reading from a teleprompter.

In the wake of Stewart's retirement, some of us hoped that Stephen Colbert would emerge as the heir to Stewart's legacy. That position is plainly untenable in light of the video above, which is more Kafkaesque than Kaufmanesque in its approach to cringeworthiness.

For Those Living Inside the Corporate Echo Chamber

Sometimes the financially expedient choice is also the ethical choice, as when people refuse to pay for their own brainwashing.

The main argument I hear for cutting the cord is that doing so will lower your bills without limiting your access to quality programming that is readily available via hulu, Amazon, or other streaming services.

But there’s a more important reason to cut the cord: Going cold turkey on cable television means no more FOX on a loop, no more CNN on a loop, no more MSNBC on a loop. 

If you’re living in that corporate echo chamber right now as a true blue Democrat, you’re hearing no less a luminary than Rachel Maddow insist that the Sanders campaign should be doing more to raise money for down-ticket Democrats.

Maddow may not be conscientious, but she is conscious. She knows that in addition to its own fundraising capabilities, the Clinton campaign can count on support from many Democratic incumbents and party officials who will be receiving (or have already received) cash infusions from the same people who are already bankrolling Clinton’s super PACs.

Maddow's line of questioning exposes that she, like Clinton, is completely tone-deaf to those of us who keep sending our money to Sanders because he isn’t bought off by the same interests that exert so much influence over Clinton. Telling us that Clinton is better for Democrats because she can distribute payola to her crony underlings better than Sanders can is tantamount to saying, “Hey Bernie, we’re really starting to see the limitations of your grassroots campaign in terms of your inability to deliver sufficient cash incentives to Democratic incumbents for their support. What gives, bud?”

Never mind that Sanders will achieve far more than Clinton could dream of achieving for down-ticket candidates simply by turning out enthusiastic droves of progressive and independent voters (who will be eager to install any candidates sympathetic to the Sanders agenda). Never mind that the Sanders campaign has more important things to think about than down-ticket races just now, such as winning delegates and developing a strategy for the convention (since the true mathematical situation, which the corporate media is forbidden to discuss, is that neither candidate is currently likely to clinch the nomination before the convention). Never mind that given the incredible obstacles the Sanders campaign has overcome so far, Maddow’s question suggests that if she had rowed out to interview Gertrude Ederle in 1926 while the swimmer was making her way across the English Channel, she would have begun by flinging Ederle a rope from her dinghy and asking for a tug back to shore. “You’ve shown tremendous strength and resilience to this point in your efforts, Ms. Ederle,” Maddow would begin, “but the real question is, ‘Why aren’t you showing even more strength and resilience?’”

If anything, the main story of the upcoming week should concern the laughable disconnect between establishment tools (ranging from the talking heads of corporate media to the political figures those heads talk incessantly about) and the electorate. Those of us who are talking to each other face-to-face and online know very well that we are not figments of anyone's imagination (as is so often the case with the implied audience addressed by the media). We also know that the major news outlets are all uninterested in the subjects that interest us. 

We’re stepping outside the strange bubble of corporate news—a bubble in which nonsense is simply repeated until it substitutes for truth despite never having been accepted as true. We hear the talking heads explain that Hillary will somehow make the world safer from terrorism by working diligently to promote the conditions in which terrorism thrives. We may not accept this lunacy ourselves, but we come away with the impression that somewhere out there, people do accept it.

No one accepts it—not after they cut the cord. 

And that’s a good thing. Those of us who can’t get mainstream coverage of the Sanders campaign end up watching great stuff like this on YouTube:

Instead of watching Sanders discuss important issues, those of you who are still stuck in the establishment media bubble will spend the early part of the week talking about such nothingburger material as how 1) Clinton struggled with a MetroCard while trying to board a New York subway (linked via FOX); 2) SNL did a slapsticky sketch about the incident (linked via CNN); and 3) Clinton jokingly blamed Mayor Bill de Blasio for this infrastructural failing of his city (linked via MSNBC).

It doesn’t matter whether this media narrative makes you think of Clinton negatively (“She’s clumsy!”) or positively (“I like a candidate who can chuckle at herself!”). Either way, the corporate tools will encourage you to spend time imagining that this subway nonsense is somehow relevant to the election in November. But it isn’t relevant, and its purpose is to be irrelevant. Stories like this are never about Clinton; they are always about ensuring that political discussion remains unrelated to matters of policy.

Cutting the cord means making this stuff painfully obvious to yourself and everyone you live with.

Try it. And please get the people you love in New York to try it before April 19th.