The Democrats Have a Donor Problem that Even Bernie Sanders Can't Solve

Like a lot of people, I'm woke because of Bernie Sanders.

And like a growing number of people, I'm too woke for the post-election DNC propaganda Sanders is peddling to have its intended effect.

Correct-the-Record operatives on Twitter harass me non-stop about how my antipathy for Hillary Clinton helped elect Trump. That doesn't bother me. I believe we're better off with Trump than we would have been with Clinton because—asJimmy Dore has long argued—Trump puts an ugly face on the ugly policies at the center of American life.

Progressivism would have remained asleep under Clinton the same way it's slumbered under Barack Obama for eight years. Although I don't expect Trump's Department of Justice to protect children like Tamir Rice from homicidal cops any better than Obama's did, I do expect people to pay closer attention to such injustices under Trump.

But there's a different form of Brockbot harassment that does bother me because I see it working on some people. It takes the form of tweets like this:

.@EtsiSusi @rosiebudpisces @PoliticsPeach @chrislhayes why are we re-litigating teh primaries and general. There is real work to be done now

— Michael Lockett (@mal2091) November 18, 2016

The purpose of Lockett's tweet is 1) to remind people that a Trump presidency is a horrifying prospect (which it certainly is); and 2) to drive those horrified people back into the arms of the Democrats as their only protection (which the Democrats certainly aren't, as their neoliberal corruption is precisely what led to Trump's rise in the first place).

Instead of acknowledging the glaring flaws of Clinton's candidacy (FBI investigations are no big deal) and platform (even though the generals know that a no-fly zone in Syria will lead to war with Russia, that doesn't really count as long as CNN finds something else to talk about), Brock's minions continue to focus on fearmongering about the GOP:

The #GOPPlaybook since 1968. https://t.co/H2GQVnYuJL

— Michael Lockett (@mal2091) November 18, 2016

If Brock had not just met behind closed doors with George Soros, Neera Tanden, Keith Ellison, and the other neolib masterminds who brought us the Trump presidency, this hillbot nonsense would be easy to ignore.

But it's difficult to ignore when Sanders himself participates, as he does in this speech:

"When you lose the White House to the least popular candidate in the history of America... It is time for a new direction." #FeelTheBern pic.twitter.com/QJh2VzmFZd

— Bernie Wan Kenobi (@Old_Bern_Kenobi) November 17, 2016

It's great to see Sanders calling out the failure of the Democratic Party, but chilling to see him transition immediately to cheering for a Soros puppet like Ellison, who is simply a male embodiment of Clinton's warhawkishness. (The fact that Ellison also happens to be black and a Muslim is simply part of the identity politics screen behind which the DNC loves to hide its most destructive and oppressive policy priorities. Just as Obama's pigmentation was an effective diversion from the racist incarceration state over which he presided, Ellison's religion deflects attention from his eagerness to bomb Muslim children in Libya and Syria and anywhere else Soros desires.)

I don't deny that Ellison supports some genuinely progressive policies. The problem is that the Democratic Party funnels all progressives to the same group of donors, and the insidious influence of those donors invariably compromises the progressive instincts of these candidates. Ellison's progressivism is the window dressing that makes him palatable enough for voters to support him. But the end result is that the donors always get what they want from these candidates--while the voters who put them into office never do.

That's too grand a claim for me to prove in one blog post, but I hope to make the case watertight with additional entries in the coming weeks.

For the time being, I want to make my overarching thesis as clear as possible:

Since the Democratic Party is, as Kshama Sawant observes, a "graveyard" for progressives, the most important step the woke community can take towards defeating Trumpism is to move away from the Democrats as quickly as possible. I'm not saying we automatically have to get behind the Greens. I'm not saying we automatically have to form a new national third party. But I am saying that any progressive energy expended on behalf of the Democratic Party will be systematically opposed and dissipated by that party--even if the great Sanders says otherwise.

This truth is as painful for me as it is for anyone else who simply wants to fall back in line behind Sanders, but I have reached this conclusion based on evidence that I look forward to examining publicly (via this blog) as systematically as time permits.

The upshot is that when a hillbot asks me what I'm doing to stop Trump, my answer is that I'm trying to persuade Nina Turner to leave the Democratic model of fundraising-via-bribery. Accepting such a challenge will require bravery on her part, as she would have to cut her ties to the dark money (almost certainly from Soros and other prominent DNC donors) that taints 501c4 outfits such as Our Revolution.

I look forward to donating my time, energy, and money to the first political leader with nationwide recognition who has the courage to stand up to Trump by recognizing that we must first stand up to the Democratic machine that created him. In the meantime, the hillbots harassing me are wasting their time (except that I guess they aren't, since they're getting paid by Brock, who's getting paid by Soros, who's also paying Ellison).

For now, I'll just let this tweet from Smithee sink in:

Best single sentence description of Democratic dimwittedness I've seen yet. https://t.co/w5XlAk8tF0 pic.twitter.com/4GZwpLxkvM

— Alan Smithee (@ActualFlatticus) November 17, 2016

The Claim that Guccifer 2.0 Is Part of a Disinformation Campaign Is Itself a Disinformation Campaign

Some folks say there was a time when the primary function of the mainstream media was to inform people.

That sounds pretty crazy in 2016, when the obvious function of the mainstream media is to keep us misinformed.

Consider Thomas Fox-Brewster's article in Forbes concerning Guccifer 2.0 earlier this week. Brewster, a journalist specializing in cybersecurity, couldn't be bothered to maintain the distinction between Guccifer and Guccifer 2.0 beyond the first sentence of his article.

An editorial appeal to journalistic style when it comes to shortening names after their first appearance might make sense under ordinary circumstances, but not in a case in which so many details have become blurry in the public mind.

Do most casual readers of the Forbes article really know the difference between Guccifer (who has recanted his claims of access to the clintonemail.com server) and Guccifer 2.0 (who has repeatedly demonstrated his access to internal documentation from the DNC)?

Regrettably, Guccifer and Guccifer 2.0 have morphed into a collective headache in the minds of readers who aren't sure which one (if either) has anything to do with the Clinton email scandal. (The correct answer is Guccifer, who discovered the clintonemail.com account when he hacked Sidney Blumenthal's AOL account.)

How many of the news aggregating applications that quote snippets from paragraphs 2-6 of Fox-Brewster's article (without including the first paragraph--as routinely happens with sample excerpts in Google searches) will insert [2.0] for clarification in a sentence such as this one: "By extension this would suggest Guccifer worked for Putin’s regime"?

Poll 100 Forbes readers. How many know the claim doesn't concern a Romanian hacker named Michel Lazar Lehel who is serving time in a Virginia prison? 

And does anyone really think that the way the mainstream media handles the Guccifer 2.0 story is meant to enlighten readers? On the contrary, it seems calculated to make us confused and susceptible to propaganda, as when Fox-Brewster writes:

America’s politicos fear Russia is attempting to disrupt the upcoming election. US intelligence specialists and security companies – most notably CrowdStrike – have blamed Russia for the attacks on the DNC. By extension this would suggest Guccifer worked for Putin’s regime. Guccifer has previously denied any association with the Russian government, whilst the latter has claimed innocence.

The blur cultivated by the stylistic standards to which Fox-Brewster adheres is typical of a mainstream media that wants to keep the public confused about the motives, reliability, and identity of Guccifer 2.0 instead of focused on the content of the material the hacker has revealed.

For instance, in CNN's 7-paragraph report on Guccifer 2.0's latest leak, Daniella Diaz uses her first paragraph to indicate that the authenticity of the material has not been confirmed ("released more DNC documents Tuesday that reportedly reveal more information about the group's finances"--emphasis added), her second to point out that the materials aren't "damaging," her third to acknowledge the resignation of Debbie Wasserman-Schultz as head of the DNC, her fourth (the centerpiece of the article) to warn readers against looking at the leaked materials--since they might include malware, her fifth to quote Donna Brazile's remarks about Donald Trump (an odd choice in an article that doesn't quote one word from its putative subject, Guccifer 2.0), her sixth to point out that Guccifer 2.0's conference remarks were delivered by proxy (an opportune spot to quote some of those remarks if the article is really about Guccifer 2.0 instead of Donna Brazile), and her seventh to repeat the obligatory claim that unnamed people somewhere in the world continue to assert that Guccifer 2.0 is probably a Russian operative (without mentioning that the loudest such people work for CrowdStrike and are therefore on the DNC payroll).

Use of passive constructions and unidentified sources is typical of mainstream media commentary on Guccifer 2.0, as in the latest piece of cyber-alarmism that Cory Bennett churned out for Politico:

Guccifer 2.0 has claimed responsibility for both the DNC and DCCC hacks, although multiple private cybersecurity firms have tied the digital assaults back to a hacking group known as “Fancy Bear,” which is believed to be connected to Russia’s military intelligence service. Researchers believe Guccifer 2.0 is a front for these Moscow-backed hackers.

The last thing a journalist in 2016 would want to do in such a paragraph would be to indicate WHO is doing the relevant believing or which specific researchers were consulted.

But the grand prize for nebulous attribution for the week has to go to the L.A. Times for resorting to meta-reporting instead of assertion concerning purported ties between Russian intelligence and DCLeaks (a website with ties of its own to Guccifer 2.0):

The emails were obtained by the website DCLeaks.com, which has been reported to have links to Russian intelligence, MSNBC reported.

See how that works? The L.A. Times isn't saying that DCLeaks has ties to Russian intelligence. In fact, it's not even saying that MSNBC says so. It's just saying that once upon a time, MSNBC said somebody else said so.

All of which is a tiresome but effective way of not engaging anything substantive about the leaks at all, which suits corporate journalists and their oligarchic sponsors just fine.

Trump's Climate Change Denial Plays in the U.S. Because Our Corporate Media Ensures That Voters Value Advertising over Education

The echo chamber of corporate news has completely displaced reality for my parents.

My mother has always been patriotic. When I was a child, she wanted to prove America's superiority to Europe to me, so she showed me pictures of European children my own age who were missing limbs because their mothers had taken Thalidomide while pregnant. "We didn't have birth defects like that in America," she boasted, "because the FDA refused to approve that drug."

But after decades of listening to Fox News, she is now convinced that government regulation of the marketplace is the root of all evil.

My father has always been capitalistic. He used to say that climate change was a hoax made up by people jealous of the money raked in by the oil industry.

But after listening to Rush Limbaugh for years, he now argues that climate change is probably for the best because huge swaths of Canada will soon be comfy and warm.

My parents are hardly unique. There are millions of Americans just like them--mostly in their retirement years, mostly nostalgic for the America of their youth (the 1950s), and mostly responsive to Donald Trump's "Make America Great Again" slogan.

But the problem of a worldview warped by disingenuous reporting isn't limited to people like my parents. It includes plenty of people my own age (and younger) who believe that corporate media only distorts the perspective of older people who lean right.

We want to pretend that corporate media doesn't have a toxic effect on younger people who lean left (or at least left enough to think that there shouldn't even be a discussion about restricting abortion rights or LGBTQ rights or any of the other issues that the Democratic Party attempts to conflate with progressive values).

But how many people under 50 remember (or even acknowledge) the critical role that The New York Times played in securing the re-election of George W. Bush by postponing the publication of James Risen's story about warrantless wiretapping?

How many people under 50 object to the fact that our media spends more time covering Ryan Lochte than the flooding of Louisiana? How many of us grasp that corporate news outlets are choosing to focus on Ugly Americanism abroad so as to distract us from how ugly we are to our fellow citizens at home? After Hurricane Katrina in 2005, our professional reporters began calling the American citizens displaced by flooding "refugees." One reason these same media voices have such a hard time talking about the Louisianans displaced by flooding in 2016 is that "refugees" is now being applied to Syrians. The Syria problem stresses our vocabulary because we are temporarily out of words that can refer to poor (and mostly black) Americans without quite acknowledging their American-ness.

And how many people under 50 understand how bizarre it is that here in the U.S., our two major presidential candidates either deny that climate change exists (Trump) or pretend that it's under contol (Clinton)?

Trump and Clinton don't represent alternative solutions to the problem of pollution; they are simply two different brands of the same response. 

How does that happen? Is it really all because of Fox News? Or is it that one so-called journalist after another (in print, on radio, and on television) finds something other than the carbon-poisoning of the atmosphere to talk about?

It's not hard to understand how it happens once we recognize that Americans value advertising over education.

What we learn in school is less important than whatever agenda our advertisers promote via the airwaves. I learned all about the greenhouse effect of carbon emissions as an eighth-grader in public school (even in a state as backwards and oil-dependent as Texas!). But understanding the chemistry behind the problem is irrelevant in a nation in which no one ever talks about it. And we won't talk about it as long as almost every journalist gets a paycheck from an organization that is receiving hush money from the fossil fuel industry.

This is why I think that UK professor Ryan Thomas has no idea what he's talking about in a diatribe he released earlier today.

Thomas thinks MSM-bashing is dangerous because citizen-journalists lack the training/discrimination/critical thinking skills necessary to replace the journalism done by the mainstream media: "I’m unconvinced that rubbishing the BBC and The Guardian and getting your news from some bloke who makes graphs on Twitter is a wise move."

If Thomas confined his anti-MSM-bashing to his own side of the pond, then his article wouldn't be so irritating to me because the BBC isn't nearly as brain-deadening and tunnel vision-inducing as network TV in the US.

But the purpose of Thomas' piece is to stress the importance of entrusting journalism to the professionals--a notion that, if applied in the US, means leaving journalism in the hands of the very people who are being paid to subvert it.

Should I trust some "bloke who makes graphs on Twitter" more than Wolf Blitzer, Chris Wallace, Rachel Maddow, and whatever corporate shill NPR has hired to lecture me for an hour about how the threat of terrorism requires the US to bomb more people who might become terrorists?

The answer obviously depends on the bloke in question because I can't know in advance whether the graph on Twitter might actually be designed to inform me. But I do know in advance that whatever the newscasters are telling me has been designed to deceive and distract me.

I don't mean to suggest that professional journalism is entirely dead. Lee Fang of The Intercept is just one clear example of print journalism being alive and well. Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez of Democracy Now! routinely conduct eye-opening interviews with experts from around the world concerning topics that might otherwise receive zero attention. The idea that we must choose between network propagandists and blokes on Twitter is obviously a false dichotomy.

But when people outside the US pontificate about the dangers of bashing the MSM, I have to assume it's because they don't really understand the extent to which our MSM frames the discussion of everything in this country.

We're never allowed to examine the fact that Hillary Clinton sold influence to foreign governments in her time as Secretary of State because our MSM reporters are always eager to talk about something else--whether it be the latest preseason NFL football game, the "racist" overtones of a picture tweeted by Ellen DeGeneres, or the schadenfreude we can all experience when discussing Ryan Lochte.

Americans are going bankrupt every day because of skyrocketing healthcare expenses, but the lobbyists of our big pharmaceutical companies bribe our politicians to convince us that the only solution is to pass the Trans-Pacific Partnership so that our medications can become even more expensive.

Jimmy Dore is the bloke on Twitter who exposes that faulty logic by asking, "How can Americans possibly afford cheaper medications?"

If I understand Thomas correctly, I should tune Dore out to listen to all the network and newspaper reporters who want to talk about anything and everything in the world that doesn't matter at all so that the exploitative status quo can chug along unimpeded.

On my side of the pond, we almost never use the word "bloke," so I'll leave it to Thomas to determine whether I've used it correctly in this blog post. He can also be the judge of whether I'm correctly employing another idiom I associate with the UK as I say "Bugger off" to him and anyone else who imagines that corporate media in the US is anything less than a sustained and coordinated propaganda campaign by corporate interests that have already transformed the US into a market rather than a society and are intent on doing the same throughout the world.

Go ahead, Professor Thomas. Take your potshots at citizen journalism. Prop up the powers that be. And when the BBC and The Guardian become as manipulable by corporate interests as ABC and The New York Times currently are, you can choose between elected officials who refuse to acknowledge or address any of the issues that matter most to your fellow citizens. Enjoy.

Trump Is the Ruse de Guerre That Justifies Every Other Ruse de Guerre

Yesterday's word-of-the-day from the Oxford English Dictionary was "ruse de guerre," defined as "A stratagem; esp. one intended to deceive an enemy in war. Hence: a justifiable trick or deception."

The idea that deceptions and betrayals are acceptable under certain circumstances is really the defining feature of the Hillary Clinton campaign.

Clinton's supporters aren't just willing to overlook the lies and corruption of their candidate. They're positively eager to do so in the name of defeating Donald Trump.

Do they know that she's lying about her opposition to the Trans-Pacific Partnership? Yes, but they have to support her anyway . . . because Trump!

But wouldn't they prefer it if she would just be honest about her support for the TPP? No--because honesty might cost her some votes. 

Will they be disappointed when she signs the TPP into law as president? Of course not, since her phony opposition to it is simply a ruse de guerre to defeat Trump.

The same logic applies to every lie Clinton tells, every question from a reporter that she dodges, every vulnerable community that she sacrifices on the altar of "centrist appeal." It's all justifiable--every bit of it . . . because Trump!

As long as Clinton supporters accept Trump as the "existential threat" to the U.S. that he's made out to be, they will feel completely justified about their own betrayals of the democratic process, the Constitution, and their fellow citizens.

But Trump isn't an existential threat to anything.

He's simply the ruse de guerre that makes it easy for the Clinton media machine to justify every other ruse de guerre.

Trump is the neo-fascist strawman that allows Clinton to define herself negatively (as "not-Trump") instead of positively (which would be impossible, since there isn't any "there" there with Clinton).

I've been on the fence about Trump's intentions until today. Sometimes it looks like he doesn't know what he's doing, but sometimes it looks like he's trying to lose.

I considered the rumors that his campaign is a false flag operation for Clinton. I understood why some people believed that, but I never saw evidence that struck me as conclusive.

But when Fortune reported that the Trump campaign hired CrowdStrike to deal with a recent hacking episode, the scales fell from my eyes.

Cybersecurity companies like CrowdStrike can't do what they're hired to do without having access to the computer networks of their clients, so such clients must be willing to trust their data guardians with their most important secrets. 

The fact that CrowdStrike is a high-profile cybersecurity firm with a track record of investigating hacks of political campaigns is perhaps a good reason to trust them.

But the fact that CrowdStrike is already working for the DNC is a much better reason for the RNC candidate not to trust them.

I don't know what this hire looks like to the rest of the world, but to me, it's a plain signal that the data networks of the Clinton campaign and the Trump campaign have now been fused through CrowdStrike.

And when we later learn that CrowdStrike was able to coordinate Clinton's coronation through an analysis of data voluntarily provided to them by Trump's campaign, the Clinton supporters will smile at the impoverished and imprisoned people of a toxic, smoldering planet and say that merging the campaigns was a ruse de guerre. 

With Enemies Like Donald Trump, Does Hillary Clinton Need Friends?

Short answer: No.

Long answer:

Every politician in history has intuitively grasped the importance of kissing babies and sympathizing with the grieving parents of young veterans who died in the service of their country.

So either Donald Trump is a new kind of politician--or he's not a politician at all.

Many of us are betting on the latter option at this point because Trump does not appear to be trying to win.

Instead, his role appears to be to distract as much attention as possible from the glaring flaws of Hillary Clinton's candidacy by making one outrageous political blunder after another. The nonsense isn't even limited to Trump. It extends to his supporters (such as Rudy Giuliani, who conveniently forgot the 9/11 attacks in a recent speech in which he contended that there were no successful terrorist attacks in America during the presidency of George W. Bush).

Trump has already won the GOP nomination, so at this point he should be working to build a coalition with independent voters outside his party--if he is trying to win.

But he isn't trying to win, so he's focused strictly on shoring up the support of voters who are already behind him (the evangelical Christians, homophobes, and anti-immigration zealots who were never going to vote Democratic in any case).

As I've observed previously in this blog, Trump has already gone over as a heel with the American electorate, but Clinton has yet to go over as a face.

What I haven't fully appreciated until now is that the DNC doesn't care whether Clinton goes over as a face or not. As long as Trump is sufficiently repugnant, the Democrats expect voters to settle on Clinton by default.

Considering the stranglehold the two-party system has on Americans, this strategy from the DNC will probably work.

The only thing that can stop what appears to be a scripted coronation of Clinton is a sudden surge by a third-party candidate. so the Democrats are (predictably) dedicating themselves to smearing the candidacy of Jill Stein. They don't really care if they offend left-leaning voters by wrongly accusing Stein of being opposed to vaccinations.

What a lot of people concerned with social, economic, racial, and environmental justice fail to see is that the Democrats don't care if they alienate us in 2016. They don't need friends as long as Trump has a sufficient number of enemies.

For a sample of how deaf the Democrats have become to the cries of their own progressive base, please treat yourself to this analysis of how a purportedly progressive talk show host (Thom Hartmann) bullies and berates a caller who dares to express how tiresome that Democratic deafness has become:

My favorite bit is when Hartmann claims that Clinton "isn't half bad" as a candidate.

This is the same Clinton who just appointed Ken Salazar to head her transition team for the White House, which is only a red flag for anyone concerned about the habitability of our planet. Salazar has contended that "there's not a single case where hydraulic fracking has created an environmental problem for anyone."

Hartmann would never serve as an apologist for the Trump campaign. How could he associate himself with the likes of Giuliani, who claims that there were no terrorist attacks in America during the Bush presidency?

But Hartmann is eager to serve as an apologist for the neoliberalism of Clinton. It's not "half bad" for him to be on the same team as a politician/lobbyist who denies that fracking poses any danger at all to the environment.

Wise up, progressive voters. 

Clinton doesn't need to be your friend. She only needs to turn folks like Trump and Hartmann into your enemies to persuade you that there's no place left on the political spectrum for your point of view. If Trump is your enemy and Hartmann is also your enemy, then you and your movement don't exist. And now that you realize progressivism doesn't exist, you should find something better to do with your time than to oppose the TPP, the carceral state, perpetual war, and the fact that Americans are dying every day because they can't afford medications that are readily available to ordinary citizens throughout the rest of the industrialized world. 

Game. Set. Match. Inevita-Hillary.

Chris Hedges Vs. Robert Reich on Differences That Simultaneously Make No Difference and All the Difference in the World

If you haven't watched the debate on Democracy Now! between Chris Hedges and Robert Reich (7/26/16--linked above), please do yourself the favor of reviewing the last 90 seconds, in which Hedges says:

I don't think it makes any difference [whether we elect Trump or Clinton]. The TPP is gonna go through whether it's Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton. Endless war is gonna be continued whether it's Trump or Clinton. We're not gonna get our privacy back whether it's under Clinton or Trump. The idea that at this point the figure in the executive branch exercises that much power, given the power of the war industry and Wall Street, is a myth.

Hedges' points are not only true, but virtually indisputable.

Nevertheless, Robert Reich roars back with heartfelt resentment: "I just wanna say equating Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton is absolute nonsense."

The video closes out before Hedges can explain that he isn't equating the person of Donald Trump with the person of Hillary Clinton. All his argument does is highlight the absence of any practical distinction in the ways their policies will affect people in the U.S. and throughout the world.

That bitter and brutal truth is difficult for Clinton supporters like Reich to swallow even though they have already accepted it on some level. They know that Clinton will support the TPP once she's in office and that she'll promote aggression by the U.S. military throughout the globe and that she'll expand the powers of the surveillance state instead of curtailing those powers.

To people like Reich, however, it's preposterous to say that a Trump presidency and a Clinton presidency will come to the same thing because Trump will make them feel horrible about such policies and Clinton will make them feel good about the exact same policies.

Will Clinton stop police brutality against people of color in the U.S.? Certainly not--but every now and then she'll get some of the members of a choir in a black church to go on camera and forgive the police. Trump, by contrast, will laugh openly at the oppression of communities of color.

Will Clinton stop the U.S. military from murdering innocent civilians all over the globe? Certainly not--but she'll make long, incomprehensible speeches with lots of irrelevant (but nevertheless correct) facts that seem to warrant continuing the murders. Trump, on the other hand, will make short, incomprehensible speeches with a few irrelevant (and completely incorrect) facts that seem to warrant continuing the murders.

When Trump signs the TPP into law, he'll simply give the middle finger to the white working class people who voted him into office. When Clinton signs it into law, she'll just avoid press conferences for the next 200 days while occasionally appearing on The Rachel Maddow Show to deny that she is avoiding press conferences.

Trump will make us feel terrible about the moral bankruptcy of our country, but the Clinton media machine will do a top-notch job of distracting us from that moral bankruptcy.

So that's why Chris Hedges is crazy to suggest that it makes no difference whether we elect Clinton or Trump--because he's just focusing on what will happen instead of how we'll feel about what will happen.

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.

Hillary Clinton's Policies Are LESS Dangerous Than the Rhetoric That Belies Them

If you support Hillary Clinton because she is at least willing to acknowledge the reality of climate change (as opposed to Donald Trump, who continues to deny the phenomenon), then you apparently believe it's okay to overcook the planet as long as we have the paperwork to show that we smelled it burning a long time ago.

If you support Clinton because she hides her warmongering behind convoluted diplomatic relationships (as opposed to Trump, who talks cavalierly about murdering innocent civilians simply because they're related to suspected terrorists), then you apparently believe that World War 3 won't affect you as long as the corporate media agrees not to cover it.

If you can make peace with Clinton's dogwhistling brand of white supremacy (which is commendably circumspect compared to Trump's overtly racist rhetoric), it's probably because you think that disproportionately imprisoning people of color for nonviolent crimes only becomes a problem for Americans when our leaders use language ill-advised enough to make us confront it.

Over and over again, people insist that Clinton is somehow a "lesser evil" than Trump because even though she will make the same mistakes, she will at least dress those mistakes in palatable language for the population. Whereas Trump would argue, "Let's get rid of freedom of the press because I don't like what reporters are writing!", Clinton knows to say, "Because we can't afford to have journalists tipping the hand of investigators to our ISIL opponents, I'm afraid the authorities will be unable to comment further on [insert tragedy/scandal here] at this time, and we're asking our friends in the press for a temporary suspension of all coverage relating to the subject."

Clinton is a lesser evil than Trump in the same way that a coral snake is less deadly than a garden hose. Sure, the hose can kill people if someone turns it into a noose--but such a noose would be crude and inefficient and prone to breaking. The coral snake, on the other hand, knows how to kill silently and repeatedly without calling attention to itself.

Trump isn't just wrong about everything. He's obnoxiously wrong--wrong in a way that will catalyze American citizens and the rest of the world to oppose him.

Clinton is wrong in a different way: the politically expedient way of Obama. She is wrong about Wall Street the same way that Obama was wrong not to jail the CEOs of the big banks (or even to break up their institutions). She is wrong about race in the same way that Obama has been wrong to defend the trappings of the carceral state (the school-to-prison pipeline, the war on drugs, and a two-tiered system of justice). She is wrong about the environment in the same way that Obama has been wrong to use non-binding agreements (such as the Paris climate deal) as sops to people who want their grandchildren to have fresh air and clean water.

Trump's brand of wrong will essentially provoke change, whereas Clinton's brand of wrong is carefully designed to perpetuate the status quo.

And yet thoughtful people continue to assert that Clinton is somehow less dangerous than Trump.

I'm talking about people like Benjamin Dixon, who fell headlong into the Clinton bungee pit on last night's installment of The Benjamin Dixon Show:

Twenty-three minutes into the video, Dixon says, "If you are a black person supporting Trump, you may not be a white supremacist, but you're sure as shit standing next to white supremacists this week at the Republican National Convention . . so I need people to explain [their] thinking and [their] rationale and give me [their] priorities."

One rationale is this: If we really want to address the institutional racism that compromises our justice system (from the beat cop to the local district attorney all the way to Attorney General Loretta Lynch and President Barack Obama), then we have to confront the inequities of that system. The fact that Lynch and Obama are both black only muddies the waters around the inherently racist nature of the oppressive system they support. If Trump is elected president, then when he attempts to appoint an avowed white supremacist as attorney general, the public will be galvanized into opposition (instead of blithely accepting the enforcement of white supremacist policies by Obama and Lynch simply because they happen not to be white themselves).

Dixon goes on to say: "Donald Trump may not be a Grand Master of the Ku Klux Klan, but he has the support of all the Grand Masters of the Ku Klux Klan." He knows perfectly well that Hillary Clinton also has their support, but he seems to take comfort in the fact that she knows better than to brag about it. Does that really make her less dangerous than Trump? Really?

"I want to know how a gay person can vote for Trump," Dixon demands at the twenty-four minute mark. But why doesn't he want to know how any LGBTQ person of voting age can justify supporting Clinton after witnessing her absurd mental gymnastics on the question of gay marriage? 

"I want to know how a poor person can vote for Trump," he says just 20 seconds later--and goes on to argue that in a single-factor analysis based on poverty, a voter would almost certainly choose Clinton over Trump.

Why? If two people are equally committed to robbing me blind, but I know that one will later deny having robbed me and the other will brag to the police about what he did--then I would definitely prefer to be robbed by the braggart. At the very least, his bluster will make it easier for me to convince the people around me that I was robbed. And at most, it might embolden those people to stand up for me.

Dixon is plainly conscious of identity politics. He is astute in his critique of the left's inability to talk about intersectionality as effectively as neoliberals do, but that doesn't seem to keep him from assuming that someone who overtly champions the oppression of the marginalized (Trump) is less likely to lead to an overhaul of the system than someone who covertly champions their oppression (Clinton).

Despite apocryphal reports to the contrary, Abraham Lincoln probably didn't credit Uncle Tom's Cabin (by Harriet Beecher Stowe) with starting the U.S. Civil War. But he may as well have done so in light of the novel's tremendous popularity (which made it second only to the Bible in U.S. sales in the 19th century). Even though Stowe's novel didn't start the Civil War all by itself, it helped solidify public opinion against slavery in the 1850s by presenting millions of readers with a despicable slave owner named Simon Legree. If a fictitious Legree could have such an effect in the age of the printing press, just imagine what a flesh-and-blood Trump will do for progressive values in the era of social media.

With an option like Jill Stein available to us, I believe that only a lunatic could vote for either Trump or Clinton. But if you are a) committed to change and b) convinced that you have to choose between either Clinton or Trump, then I don't see how anyone (from ethnic minorities to the LGBTQ community to environmental activists and peaceniks) can doubt that Trump is the far saner choice.

Donald Trump Knows How to Be a Heel; Hillary Clinton Has No Clue How to Be a Face

No pollster, historian, or political scientist has ever offered as succinct and accurate a definition of American politics as the one attributed to musician Frank Zappa: "Politics is the entertainment division of the military-industrial complex." Perhaps it should come as no surprise that it took an entertainer to see our political system for what it is.

Neither should it surprise us that people with experience in the wrestling world (such as Jesse "The Body" Ventura and Donald "The People's Billionaire" Trump) are capable of translating that experience to success in politics.

Professional wrestling does something that all political parties attempt to do by creating a contest between a face (the good guy) and a heel (the bad guy). Before the 2016 election, however, the job of the two major political parties has been to depict their own nominees as faces and their opponents as heels.

Things are different in 2016 because the Democrats and Republicans seem to agree about who the face is (Hillary Clinton) and who the heel is (Donald Trump).

Establishment Democrats and establishment Republicans are essentially united in their support of Hillary Clinton. They can all see plainly that she's the more "presidential" candidate--so why can't the voters see it?

Why can't the voters understand that even though neither Trump nor Clinton will lift a finger as President to curtail police shootings of civilians (especially people of color), Clinton will be at least as effective as Obama when it comes to bemoaning such events as tragic?

Why can't the voters understand that even though both Trump and Clinton are lying about their opposition to the TPP, Clinton will do a better job than Trump of convincing voters, once she's in office, that it's a good idea to make our regulatory procedures subject to corporate oversight because the only way to save the American economy is by killing American democracy?

Why can't the voters understand that since the atmosphere is going to choke on carbon emissions anyway, Clinton will do a much better job than Trump of making people all over the world feel optimistic about the business opportunities associated with climate change?

Why can't the voters understand that it takes a delicate touch to use the U.S. alliance with Israel to simultaneously provoke war with Russia and Iran--and that Clinton has spent her political career developing the fine motor skills in the diplomatic fingers necessary to execute that maneuver, whereas Trump will probably bungle things and only end up going to war with one country or the other?

The answer is too simple for political pundits to understand, but right up the alley of wrestling afficianados.

The fact of the matter is that Trump has held up his end of the bargain. He has "gone over" as a heel--to the point that when people ask if Trump is serious about becoming president, his most vocal supporter in the media (Roger Stone) can get away with saying he's "fairly certain" Trump would serve as President if he were to win the election.

"Fairly certain"? C'mon now--if that isn't a guy from the crowd charging into the ring to break a chair over the head of a wrestler, what is it?

And what about yesterday's story that Trump's daughter Ivanka is under consideration as a vice-presidential candidate? That's right out of heel shenanigans 101--designed to get some folks in the audience to ooh and aah while most of the people around them boo.

Trump's longstanding relationship with Vince McMahon (of World Wrestling Entertainment) was mutually beneficial because Trump got to be in the limelight and McMahon got the services of a man who has an instinct for doing whatever it takes to go over with crowds.

But Hillary Clinton has no such instinct. She has never gone over as a face--not even in her unelected position as First Lady. There's nothing surprising about a face claiming to stand up for the rights of women and children, but it isn't enough to make the claim. Real faces--successful faces--manage to convince their audiences that they have a natural instinct to stand up for the helpless (which is difficult for Clinton to do with Marian Wright Edelman exposing Clinton's cynical reliance on her own ties to the Children's Defense Fund to sidestep criticisms that she and Bill have done more to harm vulnerable communities of color in our nation than any other couple in history--including Ronald and Nancy Reagan).

Hillary Clinton didn't go over as a face in Berta Caceres' opinion. She isn't a lovable champion of human rights in the minds of Syrians caught up in a disastrous diaspora. She didn't charm minimum wage workers in New York by refusing to support the fight for $15 until it was over.

It's time for the establishment to stop blaming voters for Clinton's failure to go over as a face.

Sure, wrestlers who are despicable human beings can come across as faces within the tightly scripted and confined world of the WWE. That's because the version of the wrestler that the WWE shows us is the only one we get to see.

But no matter how many staffers Clinton hires, she can't keep her public life as scripted and confined as is necessary for her claims of faceness to ring true. We see her for the heel that she is.

That's why it's starting to look like she'll lose to Donald Trump no matter how hard he tries to throw the match to her.

Clinton Vs. Trump: Voters Choose between America Destroying the World and the World Destroying America

In 2016, American voters are being told to make a very difficult choice that turns out to be no choice at all--because we're going to destroy our species and our planet either way.

If we elect Clinton, we'll get to watch America destroy the world. Hillary Clinton will talk sweetly and incessantly about the importance of protecting women, children, and other vulnerable people around the globe as she forges diplomatic, economic, and military alliances with their oppressors.

She will say that she has kindness in her heart for all Muslims and that America has always stood for freedom of religion. Her rhetoric sounds positively mellifluous compared to anything coming out of Trump's mouth, but what she really means is that she will provide the Saudi royal family the weapons and credibility necessary for them to quash dissent among their subjects. 

She and her husband have always been sneaky that way. And they're very good at what they do. The honeyed words of the Clintons are toxic--but so sweet that the people they poison often die with smiles on their faces.

As the atmosphere chokes on its carbon content, Clinton will say just the right things to make distracted folks believe that important work is being done behind the scenes to improve matters.

As populations are displaced throughout the world by the various military campaigns that Clinton will doubtless sponsor in the name of "humanitarian relief," Americans will take solace in the fact that they are "winning" because widespread human misery will be confined (at first at least) to other people in other regions.

Under Clinton, America will be #1 again . . . by virtue of seeing to it that the rest of a blighted world has to fight over scraps for several decades--perhaps even the better part of a century--before we have to do the same here.

If we elect Trump, we'll get to watch the world destroy America. Donald Trump will talk angrily and provocatively about how everything that's going wrong is the fault of people outside our borders. When it becomes plain that no one really believes climate change is a hoax perpetrated by the Chinese, Trump will acknowledge that it's a real phenomenon--but nevertheless the fault of the Chinese . . . and the Russians . . . and every Muslim nation on the planet . . . and any other perceived threat that he can get a vocal segment of the American population excited about bombing out of existence.

He has already alienated Muslims everywhere, and for his success with his base in America to continue, he will have to keep antagonizing disaffected Muslim-Americans. If only we could predict what kind of fallout there might be from ratcheting up antagonisms within the American population . . .

Unlike Clinton, however, Trump lacks the political skill, the patience, and the connections to start wars all over the globe and destroy/displace populations before they have a chance to strike back.

Unlike Clinton, Trump will make his enemies scared (instead of persuading them that they are dying because of humanitarianism gone horribly wrong). He will unite his enemies in opposition to the U.S.A. Even Canada will realize that unless we are stopped, we'll simply end up killing everyone. Our loyal Israeli allies will begin to wonder whether it's more important to accept our financial aid or to prevent us from deploying tactical nuclear strikes just outside their borders--because radiation has this pesky habit of not staying where one puts it.

Donald Trump will make America look like the Death Star that it has become, and all the orphans that the Clintons, the Bushes, and Obama have worked so hard to create will aspire to become Luke Skywalkers. Sooner or later, one of them will identify and destroy the exact right vulnerable target in our system to cause the whole shebang to collapse under its own weight.

The worldwide resistance to the Trump agenda will be strong enough to stop us and destroy us--but not before we do enough damage to the planet and other civilizations to ensure that those who defeat us end up as smoking ruins a few decades thereafter.

The strange thing is that refusing to choose between these two equally genocidal alternatives prompts scorn and derision. If I would rather support Jill Stein than the idea of America destroying the world or the world destroying America, then I'm apparently just a chump guilty of throwing my vote away.

But it's hard for me to believe that as Trump and Clinton compete over who will get to throw away the future, the only chumps in this picture are the ones willing to take a gamble with their votes.

I present these thoughts on Juneteenth to support YahNe Ndgo and the Revolt Against Plutocracy as outlined in the #GoGreen619 video. I recommend that everyone hear Ms. Ndgo out.

My Dog Has More Sense Than Noam Chomsky

My dog Twinkie fears two household items: vacuum cleaners and bathtubs.

The roar of the vacuum scares her simply because it’s loud and annoying. She’s never had an unpleasant experience with a vacuum. There’s no traumatic tale of a suction accident in her puppyhood. She just hates and fears the racket instinctively—so much so that she will do whatever gymnastics are necessary to avoid coming within five feet of a running vacuum. 

As for bathtubs, they didn’t scare her until she learned to associate them with becoming wet and miserable.

She reacts to the sound of the vacuum running and of tap water filling the downstairs bathtub in exactly the same way. As soon as she hears either one, she freezes and then, sneakily, peers left and right, plotting the course of her escape.

One night I happened to be vacuuming the hallway just as my wife was preparing the bathtub for Twinkie, who was napping in the bedroom between us.

The nightmare clatter of the vacuum and the filling tub roused her to the doorway.

First she looked my way—presumably to see if the vacuum cleaner was far enough down the hall for her to clear it at a safe distance on her way to the doggie door.

No chance. The hallway was blocked.

She looked the other way and saw my wife approaching with her sleeves rolled up and a towel over her shoulder.

We chuckled at each other as poor Twinkie gulped in terror. For a moment, she seemed paralyzed. 

But then she made up her mind. She bolted towards me and leapt over the vacuum.

She fears the vacuum because of what it might do to her—not because of anything it’s actually done. But the bathtub makes her miserable every time she’s plunged into it, so her decision wasn't difficult.

She evaluated her options and made the correct choice.

I wish Noam Chomsky could be as clear-headed as my dog.

On one hand, Chomsky must be smarter than Twinkie because he explains the role the corporate media plays in manufacturing consent far more lucidly than my dog can. 

But on the other hand, Twinkie must be smarter than Chomsky because she understands that sometimes we have to overcome our fears of the unknown if we want to avoid an outcome that we know in advance to be miserable.

Donald Trump is as loud and annoying as any vacuum. Most of us share the instinct to steer clear of him.

Hillary Clinton makes a much more soothing sound. The gentle whoosh of flowing water is attractive to us even if there’s lead in it.

But what do Clinton’s benign words about fighting for ordinary folks really portend? Presumably the same things they’ve always portended: 1) people of color being shipped off to prisons at disproportionate rates to perform slave labor; 2) fossil fuels being called “clean” as long as their pollution takes the form of invisible methane leaks instead of visible smoke; 3) helpless women and children being championed on camera while they are systematically murdered and displaced behind the scenes as a direct result of compulsive international meddling; and 4) American citizens being deprived of the basic protections of citizenship against international corporate profiteers through instruments such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership.

Clinton calls herself a progressive who gets things done.

She’s right—as long as your idea of progress involves enslaving an ever-broadening swath of the American population to pay for wars that they never asked for—wars that are somehow supposed to make us safer from terrorists by killing innocent civilians all over the world.

If that thoroughly predictable future is less frightening to Chomsky than the unknowns associated with a Trump presidency, he needs a phobiametric recalibration.

But the most frustrating thing about Chomsky’s coerced-by-the-circumstances endorsement of Clinton is that it buys into the very binary logic we must explode. When you get trapped in a binary, the mistake is almost always to race towards one extreme or the other.

Twinkie didn’t charge towards the vacuum to embrace it. She took the risk of coming too close to it so that she could escape to safety. Life presented her a choice between the vacuum and the bathtub, and she selected option #3: the doggie door.

For me, option #3 will be Bernie Sanders until he refuses to run any longer. I think the abundant evidence of election fraud and voter suppression in this year’s primary process may yet prove that Clinton’s campaign lacks much of the support it claims. I think it’s possible (though improbable) that James Comey of the FBI and Attorney General Loretta Lynch will hold Clinton to the same standard of law as any other American entrusted with classified information. I admit that superdelegates are unlikely to betray their donors by representing their constituents, but I remain hopeful that enough Americans will rally in Philadelphia on July 25th to pressure the Democratic Party as dramatically as Icelanders pressured their government leaders in the wake of the Panama Papers scandal. Non-violent assembly can be very persuasive when it occurs on a large enough scale. 

Maybe that’s all wishful thinking.

Maybe the Democrats really will decide that the recipe for winning the presidency is to nominate a widely despised candidate under criminal investigation—as long as her opponent is Donald Trump.

If that’s their decision and Sanders subsequently endorses Clinton, then Chomsky is free to run towards misery with his vote.

As for me, I prefer to face the dangers associated with coming too close to Trump in order to move towards a brighter, safer, healthier, saner world. Even if Sanders becomes a fearmongering party hack on Clinton’s behalf, I’ll attempt to jump over Trump by supporting Jill Stein.

The strategy of jumping will work if enough people who are paying attention (such as Chomsky and the swing state voters he hopes to influence) are willing to vote out of hope instead of fear. 

But what if it doesn’t work? What if Stein shaves off just enough votes for us to land on the surreal comb-over of an orange-faced vacuum?

That’s still preferable to ending up miserable for a minimum of four years.

The vacuum will be loud and annoying. Everyone who hears it will try to turn it off or unplug it. Frightening though it sounds, the vacuum probably isn’t going to eat us even if we land on it. 

As for the tub, we know for a certainty that it will leave us wet, shivering, and miserable. 

I don’t care how pleasant the bath tap sounds relative to the vacuum. I cannot in good conscience choose the path that leads to poisoning the planet, enslaving my fellow citizens, and murdering/displacing innocent civilians all over the globe.

I won’t be taking my cue on this one from a graying academic—however highly regarded he may be. Instead, I’ll be following the lead of a mutt rescued from a local pound. This vacuum-bathtub binary is unacceptable, so I’m taking my chances on reaching the doggie door whether I succeed or not.

Call me a low-information voter if it makes you feel better. Depict me as an unwashed mongrel if you like. But even if there is something canine about my rationale, I fail to see anything humane about Chomsky’s.

It’s really that simple. Bernie or bust.