It Depends On Whose Dead Bodies We’re Talking About.

October 27, 2016 12:19 am

The Dakota Access Pipeline has “environmental disaster” written all over it. It’s a senseless destruction of land and culture and a blatant disregard of treaty with the Standing Rock Sioux Nation. I hate this pipeline and would love to see it scrapped. But it’s time to be truthful. The protest against it near Cannon Ball, North Dakota is a tragic exercise in futility.

Many of the “police” at the site are privately contracted security guards, not unlike the ones the US military had in Iraq and Afghanistan. They are a heavily armed, paramilitary force and really answerable to nobody other their employers who pay them very, very well. Local and state government stand to benefit greatly when the pipeline is operational so they are going to be of no help. Quite the contrary, they apparently are all too thrilled to throw as many of the protesters behind bars and to be blunt, people are crazy to think they will lift a finger to stop any violence when it happens.  Some in this country may even welcome a forcible crushing of this protest, the First Amendment be damned. As such, in the absence of direct intervention at the Federal level, the self-described “water protectors” out there are sitting ducks. When the time comes that the corporate overseers of this project back in Dallas decide they are bored with this nuisance, those guards will be given leave to do whatever they want.

Let me say that again. They can and will do whatever they want.

If those security contractors, or the Morton County Sheriff’s office, or the North Dakota State Police, or any of the myriad enforcers with a badge and a gun out there decide to go in and kill fifty protesters, they will likely do just that and there isn’t a single court with any jurisdiction in these United States that will send a single one of those men to jail. The law, right or wrong, will call the protest “trespassing on private property” and that is all that will be required to initiate a legal mass execution.  At the rate we are going, there is nothing to indicate that this will not end in a brutal and violent crackdown. Why? There has never been a point in our national history where the needs and rights of Indigenous Peoples have ever trumped private interests. This pipeline is 60% completed, has cost almost $4 billion and despite the injunctions currently in place, construction will resume sooner than later and it will resume through Indigenous land. It’s oil, people. Nobody is going to get in the way of the flow of oil which everybody needs and loves. And ugly as it sounds, obscure petitions on even more obscure websites, appeals to the United Nations or a protest that is smaller than the average Grateful Dead concert will do little if anything to dislodge a powerful oil developer like Energy Transfer Partners.

I’m very upset at this. Not so much because of the construction of the pipeline itself. I’m upset because it’s only when the abuse of the Indigenous people of this nation reach an absolutely horrendous point such as this exigency do white people start to care and that is the rub. This is why it’s now acceptable for the rich and famous to now make “appearances” in opposition to the project. Rarely, however, are the elite of Hollywood’s activist class actually going anywhere near North Dakota. Some do, but it’s always best to play it safe. Protests in New York and Washington, DC are great.  So are interviews on YouTube, primetime cable news shows and of course, what could be better than the ever popular hashtag activism on their Twitter feed? They want you to know that they “stand with Standing Rock”.

Well, so what?

Well-known entertainers and media stars don’t want trouble. They just want exposure. Honestly, who wants to go to where there’s the potential for real danger to life and limb? Especially theirs, since they have a vested interest in maintaining those faces and bodies that keep them so very well compensated at the box office. Does anyone think these celebrities will go to North Dakota and stick it out long-term to fight a real injustice? Hell, no. They want a photo-op and then they are gone.  Lawrence O’Donnell will not lose a day of sleep once the protest has been successfully terminated. America barely knows who Amy Goodman is now much less cares. So when she was arrested for reporting on this travesty, it was hardly noticed.

Worse yet, the endless parade of celebrities who never trouble themselves with Indigenous matters at any other time will still be able to enjoy their lives of luxury when this protest inevitably ends. It’s a disgusting spectacle. Think about it. What do Leonardo DiCaprio, Susan Sarandon, Pharrell Williams, Rosario Dawson, Mark Ruffalo, et al really have to lose if the pipeline goes through? Not a damn thing. Riley Keogh is out there taking promotional selfies with people there like she’s at a family barbecue, for God’s sake. Now, I’ll give credit where credit is due. Shaliene Woodley went to Standing Rock and got herself arrested and humiliated and brought attention to the cause. Good for her. On the other hand, Ms. Woodley is privileged enough to have the best of attorneys at her disposal to get her out of jail as quickly as she can get thrown in. Plus, as soon as her agent calls with the latest Divergent script, she is on the next plane back to Los Angeles. Guaranteed. Who do the people who live there all the time have to turn to when they get beaten, strip searched and imprisoned? Nobody, that’s who.

Dr. Jill Stein has been out there, but seeing as her future in politics is up in smoke, she may as well take up professional activism full-time. As for the Rev. Jesse Jackson? He just goes where the cameras are and has for the last thirty years. As nice as it may appear, it’s all just famous people making themselves feel good by going somewhere to have a camera pointed at them and say “Look at me! I’m progressive! I care about issues! And by the way, check out my new movie.” Don’t believe me? Then ask Ben Affleck about the attachment of this protest with promotion of the new Justice League movie set for 2017 release. Wow. Now that’s what I call heroism.

So what’s the solution? Let the Dakota Access Pipeline go though.

Seriously.

Let it go through and wait for catastrophe to strike. When white people start dying after the pipeline breaks down, which at some point in the future it will, you can rest assured that the Powers That Be will get their collective asses in gear and fast. When rich white people are getting hurt then things get done. That’s a fact. Things never get done when the people who were here thousands of years before America even existed are the ones getting hurt.

This Isn’t Denmark

September 22, 2016 11:54 am

Let me make this perfectly clear. You can vote for whatever third-party candidate you want to. It’s your right as an American to vote for whomever you please so long as they meet the qualifications set forth in Article II of the Constitution. But here is your quandary. None of those candidates have any mathematical hope of winning the Presidency and that is an inescapable fact. A protest vote in this election is crazy, petulant and above all extremely dangerous.

In case this frightening reality managed to elude anyone, Donald J. Trump is the Republican nominee and he may very well win. It’s easy to say “If not now, when?” OK, that’s a fair question. How about when you don’t have a certifiably crazy demagogue who demeans and insults every person he comes into contact with, calls for racial profiling, banning all members of a religion totaling 1.6 billion followers worldwide from entering the U.S., building a wall on the southern border and forcing another country to pay for it, punishing women who exercise their right to choose and holds foreign dictators in high esteem as models for “strong leadership”? Do it when Paul Ryan is the Republican nominee in 2020, that’s when.

Has anyone else noticed that so many people who want to cast a “protest” vote are young, mostly white and can’t imagine that a Trump presidency will be all that different from the 44 that preceded it? Well, it’s easy when you have enough advantages or privilege granted to you from birth that you feel insulated enough from the machinations of Donald Trump and his ilk. It’s easy when you’re somebody like Susan Sarandon and can watch society burn from the comfort of your penthouse in New York because you have enough money to shield you. It’s easy to shout slogans like CORRUPTION! OLIGARCHY! CORPORATE MEDIA! It’s easy when you think a Trump presidency won’t affect you that much.

Believe me it will and not for the better.

Yes, yes, yes, we all know that money is the root of all evil in politics. But let’s also be a little realistic. You need it to run an effective campaign and neither of the two major “third” parties have much of it. As of August 22, 2016, Jill Stein and the Green Party had $1,876,899 in their campaign coffers. You can purchase two taxi medallions in New York City with that but it’s going to be awfully hard to run a full-blown presidential campaign with the same amount. The Libertarians don’t fare much better. As of the same date, they have $2,953,292 in their campaign war chest. That’s less than the amount of money proposed to upgrade the public swimming pools in Lexington, Kentucky.

Also, consider this. There are 8,163 Federal, state and territorial offices in the United States, starting with the President, Senate and House of Representatives all the way down to state and territorial governorships and seats in their respective legislative bodies.  Do you know how many the Green Party holds? Zero. The highest public official in the United States who is a member of the Green Party is Bruce Delgado, who is the mayor of Marina, California. How about the Libertarian Party? Nope. They don’t have any either. Libertarian Robert Stephens is the mayor of Springfield, Missouri. A third-party needs to have far more candidates at the local, state and Federal level if they want to begin building coalitions and working with Democrats and Republicans to get effective and positive legislation passed. Just shooting for the top office isn’t enough.

It would also help to not have candidates who appear as crazy and unprepared as Trump. Libertarian Gary Johnson doesn’t know what or where Aleppo is and was under the impression that nobody was hurt in the recent bombing in New York. These aren’t gaffes. They’re ignorance. Green Party candidate Dr. Jill Stein, the ultimate liberal conspiracy theorist, states that Donald Trump would be better than Hillary Clinton or even Barack Obama, that unemployment figures are manipulated as part of a government cover-up to oppress the masses and is more concerned with childhood vaccines and GMOs than how to combat terrorism. Come on, people. You can find more qualified candidates than that.

Here’s something else. Do you know how many electoral votes the Green Party has won in their entire history as a political party? The answer is none. How about the Libertarian Party? They can boast one electoral vote and that was courtesy of an unfaithful elector in 1972. But any third-party can sure throw a monkey wrench into an election with disastrous consequences. Just ask Ralph Nader.

I can sympathize with many eager revolutionaries who were crushed when Bernie Sanders wasn’t the nominee of a party he eschewed for the whole of his political career. But let’s be honest.  He was as cold and calculating a politician as any of the other big-ticket candidates for President. His campaign was pure political calculus. He remained either an Independent or a member of the old Liberty Union Party stretching all the way back to 1981 and became a Democrat in 2015 solely because he knew you can’t  win the White House as an independent. But for so many people left enthralled by his campaign, they came to the conclusion if they vote third-party, even at this most dangerous time in our history, you could conceivably have everything you and the rest of the country is entitled to: free education, a decent place to live, free medical care, good jobs, etc. because they have it Denmark, right?

This Isn’t Denmark.

This Isn’t News: Donald Trump is Racist Pig (But Don’t Let The News Try to Tell You That).

September 17, 2016 12:22 am

In its infinite stupidity and quest to forever appeal to the lowest common denominator, NBC News reported today that Donald Trump “conceded” that President Barack Obama was, in fact, a US citizen by birth. Not to be outdone, CNN reported that Trump “finally admitted” Obama’s legitimacy to be President under Section I, Article II of the Constitution.

Other news outlets covered this non-story in a similar fashion with headlines like “Trump accepts Barack Obama was born in US” (BBC) and “Trump Believes Obama Born In US” (CBS) as if this were a major policy address. Even the Washington Post, who is no friend of Donald Trump, had a headline that read “Trump acknowledges Obama was born in U.S.”  Only the New York Times started its coverage of this pointless, idiotic story by printing “Unwinding a Lie: Trump’s Long Embrace of ‘Birtherism’”. They were one of the few media outlets that called out this whole affair using the appropriate term: LIE. But hey, as for the rest of you in the press, we understand. Donald Trump’s tirades are fantastic for ratings. It makes for great copy, too.

Even it is political vomit.

What a service the mainstream media provides in covering truly breaking news. It was certainly magnanimous of Donald Trump to legitimize Barack Obama for us. If not for the press hanging on his every word as if something intelligent and useful were to emerge from that twisted mind of his resembling actual policy or proposals, we would have missed this most important announcement. Thanks to the national press corps assembled at his brand new luxury Washington, DC hotel (no doubt the penthouse of which will be his official residence should he win in November) we can breathe a sigh of relief that we actually have 44 Presidents of the United States instead of 43 and maybe 1 impostor because…shhh! That last one is black!

Forget for a moment the moronic statement by Trump preceding this that: “Hillary Clinton and her campaign of 2008 started the birther controversy. I finished it, I finished it.” What is far more amazing is that after eight years, we are still talking about this issue. Let’s not be coy anymore about Donald Trump and everyone else who embraced this belief, even for a moment. The fact that the Democratic nominee for President in 2008 was an African-American ignited the so-called “birther” conspiracy theory and nothing else. This story is the end product of racism. It was a desperate attempt to discredit Barack Obama by those who could not conceive of a successful and well-educated African-American ascending to the highest office in the land. To these “birthers”, this whole lunacy is little more than a coping mechanism to try to wrestle with the reality that the people who to them are little more than the descendants of the house help and those who used to work the cotton fields are now everywhere in government, education, law, medicine…even your next door neighbors. Even the President of the United States.

I, for one, am sick of this “white fragility” that Donald Trump personifies. This notion that he and other straight white men like him are just “Americans” with the sole right of defining our national culture needs to stop. People like Trump have always been challenged by the presence of these “others” in society. To Trump, these “hyphenated” kinds of Americans mean trouble for his ilk. They aren’t part of the old dominant structure of this country like he was and therefore must be something less than him. You can tell by the way he talks about people. “Oh, look at my African-American over here. Look at him.” Who the hell says something like that and is unaware of how that sounds? He knows. He just doesn’t care. He also knows the press will give him a pass on it because they are dying to hear the next crazy thing he utters and it gives him and his ego a hard on long enough to seal the southern border.

Donald Trump believes America is being smothered by Undesirable People. It has gotten under his skin to the point that he has lashed out and the press keeps letting him do it. But as for us? We let the press get away with it each and every time. Well, no more. It is Privilege by any other name and it’s stupid. Americans of all kinds knew from the beginning that Barack Obama was an American. Why can’t Trump? It’s because he’s a bigot. He’s Archie Bunker without even the courtesy to be funny. But we have allowed the media to cover this and all the other dreck he utters like legitimate news items and that is something that needs to be stopped just as surely as any racial hatred. Want to see a real conspiracy? How about the one perpetrated by the national press with the public’s help that “both candidates are equal”; a notion which is patently untrue and you’d have to be blind not to see that.

I guess we shouldn’t expect more than this. When we have so little in terms of anything else from the Republican nominee we shouldn’t expect much more. But we should. Shame on you, American news media, for the cowardice you show and sensationalism you foist on us as “news”. You breathe life into the never-ending stream of lies this perversion of a man spews out on a near daily basis and that is unforgivable. Walter Cronkite is spinning in his grave. So is Edward R. Murrow.

And shame on you, too, Donald. You’re a racist and if any of your supporters believed this line of bullshit at any point then so are they.

And that’s deplorable.

We Are Not F***ing Kidding About Donald Trump and Nuclear Weapons.

September 10, 2016 10:35 pm

First, a history lesson because context is everything…

In October of 1962, nearly 54 years ago, President John F. Kennedy squared off against Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev in what would become known as the Cuban Missile Crisis. This political and military standoff over the installation of Soviet nuclear missiles in Cuba, just 90 miles from the United States, prompted almost everyone around the nation to conclude that the world was on the brink of nuclear war and the end of civilization as we know it was imminent.

In his now famous televised address to the nation on October 22, 1962, President Kennedy revealed the presence of the missiles in Cuba to the American people and announced his decision to enforce a naval blockade to prevent any further buildup of such weapons there. He also made it clear that the United States was prepared to take whatever action was necessary to compel the Soviet Union to remove this doomsday threat to our country. In his address, President Kennedy said:

“…Aggressive conduct, if allowed to go unchecked and unchallenged, ultimately leads to war. This nation is opposed to war. We are also true to our word. Our unswerving objective, therefore, must be to prevent the use of these missiles against this or any other country, and to secure their withdrawal or elimination from the Western Hemisphere….It shall be the policy of this nation to regard any nuclear missile launched from Cuba against any nation in the Western Hemisphere as an attack by the Soviet Union on the United States, requiring a full retaliatory response upon the Soviet Union.”

In the waning days of the standoff, US Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara said of October 27, 1962, “I thought it was the last Saturday I would ever see”.

Whether it was because of strong American diplomatic efforts and military resolve, Divine Providence or just sheer unadulterated luck, cooler heads ultimately prevailed. Khrushchev agreed to remove the missiles if the United States would pledge that there would never be an attempt to invade Cuba, along with a further agreement from Kennedy to remove US nuclear missiles in Turkey that were aimed at the USSR. As a result of clear thinking and sound judgment, you and I get to sit here and read this today.  It is no exaggeration to state that had there been even the slightest alteration in the events of those Thirteen Days, if anyone on either side made just one wrong move, our planet would have quickly been reduced to a lifeless, radioactive rock. Those days in 1962 were as real as it gets.

So far.

This is the crux of the discussion now taking place about Donald Trump and nuclear weapons. When we walk into the voting booth in November, we must consider his temperament and judgment, or the lack thereof, and the near limitless ability that we have granted our Commander-in-Chief with regard to the decision to use the most powerful weapons ever constructed. Each American President has been obliged in some way to deal with provocations from hostile nations. Countless decisions are made in the White House with regard to foreign policy and military action, but since the end of the Second World War, all those decisions are tempered by the knowledge that we now live in a world where we can wipe each other out completely in a matter of minutes. The decision to use the Atomic Bomb against Japan was said to have tormented President Harry S. Truman until the day he died. And the weapons that exist today in our nuclear arsenal far outweigh the destructive power that was first unleashed at Hiroshima. The “Little Boy” Bomb dropped there on August 6, 1945 had a blast equivalent to 18 kilotons of TNT and we’ve all seen footage of the destruction that device was capable of. Now consider that the most common type of warhead in the US nuclear arsenal has a yield of 1.2 megatons of TNT.

Now imagine Donald Trump, who is so unbelievably thin-skinned he is that is easily goaded into apoplexy when simply asked about why he hasn’t released his tax returns, having control of about 4,500 such warheads.

There are numerous threats that face our nation today. Between large-scale aggression from nations such as Russia, China and North Korea to a seemingly endless parade of unconventional threats from terrorist factions, the next Commander-in-Chief will have many tools to work with. Diplomatic and economic pressure, intelligence gathering and cyber warfare, covert special operations and yes, large-scale conventional troop deployments are all options the President has. But as one who remembers a time when the Berlin Wall was still very much standing, the threat of global annihilation is still very palpable to me. It should make everyone shake with terror a when we consider a man who can barely keep his hands off of Twitter when he’s angry having direct access to the Football, which is the briefcase that gives the President the ability order a nuclear strike from anywhere.

We cannot allow any candidate from any party to the nation’s highest office to cavalierly treat the nuclear option as simply one of many that can be employed to deal with whatever threat might come our way. Economic sanctions and special operations should not be considered as reasonable a choice as a nuclear strike. You can’t nuke terrorism out of existence as much as you might want to.  Smaller nations attempting to get nuclear capability of their own or just saber-rattling cannot be casually blasted off the map just because they piss us off.

And you most certainly cannot use the threat of nuclear destruction as leverage for negotiation, to make you “unpredictable” or to extract the behavior you want or political concessions from a nation because they fear you might make them glow in the dark for the next 25,000 years. There is a term for that. It’s called nuclear terrorism. Is that what you want in the White House?

In her speech at the Democratic National Convention, Hillary Clinton said:

“Donald Trump can’t even handle the rough-and-tumble of a presidential campaign. He loses his cool at the slightest provocation. When he’s gotten a tough question from a reporter, when he’s challenged in a debate, when he sees a protestor at a rally…imagine, if you dare, imagine — imagine him in the Oval Office facing a real crisis. A man you can bait with a tweet is not a man we can trust with nuclear weapons.  I can’t put it any better than Jackie Kennedy did after the Cuban Missile Crisis. She said that what worried President Kennedy during that very dangerous time was that a war might be started – not by big men with self-control and restraint, but by little men – the ones moved by fear and pride.”

There is perhaps no better definition of the Little Man moved by Fear and Pride than Donald Trump.

A President must accept the responsibility of having such awesome power at their command with grim seriousness and profound reverence. Does Donald Trump have grim seriousness or profound reverence about anything save his own fragile ego? Can any of us imagine this ego, this hypermasculine Id amplified by the ability to completely level a whole a continent on a whim? Contrary to popular belief, there really are no checks against a President if he chooses to order a nuclear attack. There’s nobody to act as a counterbalance. If he wants a missile to be fired, it will be fired.  A person must be absolutely f***ing crazy if they believe someone like Donald Trump would act with anything resembling restraint if given power that our forbears once believed was reserved for God.

It’s not an easy thing to be able to literally blow up the world and nobody should make light of it. President Truman understood all of this. He made the choice to use the Ultimate Weapon to end the most terrible conflict the world had ever witnessed and even then he only used it against two cities. But the consequences were so profound that we debate his use of it to this very day and continually struggle to limit the presence of this destructive force on our world. President Kennedy was without a doubt confronted with far worse. He stared down the greatest fear our species has ever faced. In 1962, humanity faced extinction by our own hand. He knew that the penalty of miscalculation or arrogance would be planetary suicide. Kennedy understood that nuclear aggression could not be left unchallenged. But he also understood what a nuclear exchange would mean for the people of the United States and…well, everyone else on the planet. He made difficult decisions and each carefully calculated move was fraught with risk. The consequence of failure with any decision regarding the use of nuclear weapons could mean total, complete and absolute destruction of our world.

We have done this dance as nation already. Let’s not do it again.

Why Are You Complaining? These Are Exactly The Candidates You Wanted.

September 8, 2016 3:54 pm

According the Pew Research Center, 2016 was a big year for people turning out for the presidential primaries. More than 57.6 million people voted between the Democratic and Republican contests, a number that fell just short of the 2008 record.

Think about that.

With over 28% of eligible voters casting ballots this past spring, it is crystal clear that there were quite a lot of people who wanted a say in who the 45th President of the United States would be. So I remain baffled at recent polling data reported in the Washington Post that shows so many people are dissatisfied with the two candidates they have to choose from this November. OK, so exactly who were over a quarter of American voters going to their polling places to vote for? If the current narrative is to be believed, they must have been voting for Ferris Bueller or Santa Claus, because according to the Post’s research, and who am I to question this august publication, neither Trump nor Clinton are likely to change Americans’ generally pessimistic feeling about the state of American politics after November. This malaise is probably not helped the infinitesimally small chance of any third-party candidate successfully winning White House…and this was before the Libertarian candidate for President shoved a grenade into his campaign on national television by admitting he had no idea what Aleppo was. Ouch. It would seem that the guy from behind the deli counter and the neighbor’s cat are re-emerging as America’s best hope at ending the hyperpolarization and gridlock in Washington. My apologies go out to delicatessen proprietors and feline lovers everywhere.

So what happened? Well, as it was, it appears that neither Democrats nor Republicans had much to complain about during the primaries, with a grand total of 23 major candidates who announced their intention to seek the nomination of one of the two parties. Republican voters are in the worst position to bemoan their nominee for President in 2016. There were twelve candidates for GOP voters to pick from when the primary season began in Iowa on February 1, 2016. An additional five candidates dropped out before the primaries even began and that may have made a significant difference in who the nominee would ultimately have been if only support for those five had been greater. Yet they still wound up with Donald Trump…but how? This was a guy who seems to have based his quixotic campaign for President in 2012 on demands to see Barack Obama’s birth certificate and college transcripts and ended it only when NBC renewed Celebrity Apprentice for the 2011 season.

The answer was disturbingly simple. The GOP establishment assumed, incorrectly, that Trump was going to be a flash in the pan; a fringe candidate who would quickly wither away under the unforgiving scrutiny of the press due to his total lack of policy proposals and sheer naked bigotry. But the base of the party, who the GOP had inadvertently yet carefully cultivated to be drawn to authoritarian loudmouths courtesy of a steady diet of Fox News and right-wing radio fed over the span of nearly 20 years, loved and adored him. He was entertaining. A real celebrity running for President! He was giving the people what the Roman satirist Juvenal called bread and circuses…and were they ever happy! The activist Republican base wanted only two things in their candidate: someone to spout unceasing hatred of the Democrats and loudly marginalize people who the right-wing media had long deemed undesirable. Anyone who would assume that mantle in the most vocal way would have little trouble getting the nomination. It was amazing to watch. Nobody knew how to deal with him. I almost think some of the other candidates in the GOP failed to confront him simply because they were afraid that either Trump himself or one of his supporters would actually physically assault them. It was, to coin a well-worn phrase, a disaster. The Republicans had 17 total options and the one candidate who absolutely could not be managed or controlled by the party elite, who would not stay on point, who was actually a Democrat as early as 2008, is the guy they picked as their standard bearer. When the Dallas Morning News hasn’t endorsed a Democrat for President since Franklin Roosevelt in 1940, not even fellow Texan Lyndon Johnson in 1964, but nevertheless feels compelled to endorse the one now because of your current nominee, you know you have a problem and a big one.  Well, he’s yours now. Have a blast.

As for the Democrats, only six major candidates were ever in the running for the nomination and that number was quickly whittled down to two after Iowa was all said and done. But I have yet to hear of a single Democrat who laments the fact that Jim Webb, Lincoln Chaffee or Lawrence Lessig didn’t make it to the primaries. As for the eventual nominee herself, I sometimes wonder whether the opposition to Hillary Clinton lay almost exclusively in the common perception that it was “her turn” to be the nominee. Let no one deny that long before she even announced her candidacy, there was a general consensus that her nomination was “inevitable” and that any challengers would be squashed like a bug. Maybe so. The problem is that people generally dislike the feeling of entitlement for anybody. Nobody likes a coronation.

Enter Bernie Sanders. Once decried as a heretic by many progressives for openly suggesting President Obama be primaried from the left during his bid for re-election in 2012, he became a darling among those seeking somebody other than “the chosen one” on the Democratic ticket. In any other year, he probably wouldn’t have even made it past the first few primaries. Even his announcement wasn’t taken very seriously: a hastily arranged press conference in Washington on April 30, 2015 after which he just walked back inside and returned to work. But looks can be deceiving and it turned out there was a genuine desire for somebody to stand in opposition to “The Clinton Machine” (remember that phrase?) and at least give her a run for her money. At worst he could pull her a little to the left. At best he could secure the nomination so why not? And so there was much crying, screaming and gnashing of teeth in the Democratic Party. Had it not been for Sanders, Clinton could have strolled through the primaries, secure the nomination and have all the time in the world prepare for the Republican nominee who was certainly not going to be Donald Trump. Wasn’t it supposed to be Jeb Bush? Things never work out the way anybody plans. I think many progressives came after Clinton because they simply wanted a choice and to be honest it could have been anybody. The base of the party just lucked out with Sanders. But the race to Philadelphia became so embittered that even now so many Democrats remain upset and therefore ambivalent about their choice in November. Remember, it wasn’t just the GOP waving signs that said “Never Hillary”. She isn’t electrifying. She isn’t revolutionary. But like the Republicans, she’s yours now. Have a blast.

I really don’t believe Americans are that pessimistic about their choices at the ballot box this year. My impression is that because of a very tumultuous primary season for both parties, coupled with very early conventions, we are just getting worn down by the near saturation coverage of who the final two are. In this nonstop blitz of talking heads analyzing every move each candidate makes, more warts are coming out than most of us are prepared to tolerate.

The Republican Party clearly has the most amount of buyer’s remorse. Donald Trump’s persona is no longer the hard and practical businessman who talks tough and channels the anger of the common man. Now he’s just a blithering idiot; a bombastic demagogue with little or no grasp of domestic or foreign policy and completely uninterested in the nuances and complexities that are a part of national governance. In short, we are being confronted with terrifying reality that the man the Republican Party chose as their candidate in 2016 is in no way qualified to be the next President. He is in constant state of agitation; always appearing unhinged, unbalanced, unprepared and sometimes just good old-fashioned nuts. Is this an act? Does he even want the job? It would certainly be a step down in both pay and residence as far as what he is accustomed to. Donald Trump has been vilified by the press and 99% of the time rightfully so. But whether he believes it or not, there is such a thing as bad press and his will hang around his neck like an albatross until Election Day.

As for Hillary Clinton, she is more than qualified for the job, but as her round-the-clock coverage continues, she is actually emerging as a fairly dull candidate. She has strong and sensible policy positions and would make a highly effective Chief Executive. Regrettably, it also makes her stunningly boring for a television audience that craves political intrigue. Hence, this ceaseless obsession with emails and trying to find something, anything to make her interesting to the mainstream media. Nothing makes for good ratings like scandals. But I’m curious to know when Americans suddenly became fixated on the idea that everyone running for higher office must be pure of heart in word and deed? Hillary Clinton is often called “untrustworthy” and “a liar” with little evidence to support anyone’s contention that whatever lies she may have told or whatever breaches of trust may have occurred in her years of public service actually disqualify her for the Presidency. That is the perception, however, whether she likes it or not, and like Trump’s perceived lunacy, it’s a problem that will dog her to Election Day.

America, for better or for worse, these are the people you have picked. These are the candidates you wanted. You had plenty of other options earlier, but as I once wrote, only one of these two has any mathematical chance of becoming the 45th President of the United States. You can’t go back in time and it’s a hell of a wait until 2020. Election Day is coming up fast and it is ill-advised that any American relinquishes their sacred right to vote in these uncertain times and just sit at home. So choose…

But choose wisely.

Barbarians At The Gate

August 31, 2016 1:56 pm

Do you know what the most crucial component of social media is?

In a world where the internet provides us with news every hour of every day and countless views on every subject, it’s the ability to leave a comment that has proven so invaluable to the average person online. It is the means by which we can, among other things, challenge established ideas and openly question political and religious dogma. The anonymity that most online comment platforms provide allow us to ask hard questions and discuss social issues without fear of being ostracized or ridiculed. We are able to interact with people around the globe for the free exchange of information. There are few tools that can give one person so much ability to have their voice heard. It may be the one of the few instruments for social change that rivals the effectiveness of the ballot box.

The ability to leave a comment, however, is also perhaps the most insidious and destructive component of social media. It gives the angry, spiteful, bigoted and ignorant among us all a method to spew hatred for its own sake. Blogs, online media outlets, Facebook, Twitter, digital newspapers, etc. have all had to contend with this problem. It’s a new kind of predator that exists only in cyberspace: the troll. We all know what one is. The dictionary refers to a troll as an ugly creature from Scandinavian mythology that typically lived in caves or under bridges and was rarely helpful to humans. In some stories, the troll would exact some kind of task or toll from unsuspecting travelers who dared cross his path.

It’s no wonder that the troll was the perfect choice to describe the vilest inhabitants of the internet. Wikipedia describes an “internet troll” as a person “who sows discord on the Internet by starting arguments or upsetting people, by posting inflammatory, extraneous, or off-topic messages in an online community (such as a newsgroup, forum, chat room, or blog) with the deliberate intent of provoking readers into an emotional response or of otherwise disrupting normal on-topic discussion, often for their own amusement.” Suddenly, the verb “trolling” takes on a much more sinister meaning than just quietly searching for fish. It becomes synonymous with people searching for conversations to infect with hate and rancor.

There is nothing good about a troll, not one thing, so I’m utterly astonished at how many there seem to be out there. Some people will read articles posted online and in their own twisted minds conclude the writer is making a personal attack on them. Safe and secure in our Liquid Crystal Fortresses, many of us have become unbelievably thin-skinned.  So it was that I found myself in awe lately while reading my own comments page. It’s unnerving and I believe everybody who takes the time to post or reply to comments on a blog has had this feeling. You write something, not even anything incendiary or controversial, and then POW! You feel like someone reached through the screen with and swung at you with a baseball bat. Wow. Unsettling, isn’t it? So as a public service to one and all, let’s get a few things crystal clear, shall we?

There isn’t a single blogger I know, amateur or professional, who doesn’t appreciate positive and grateful commentary. Even comments from those who disagree with you but have something intelligent and logical to say are of great use because in no small measure, that’s how we learn things. That’s what democracy is all about. As for myself, I like to think I’m a fairly tough cookie. I really don’t care what you say about me personally. I’m a big boy who understands that writing about politics will subject you to a lot of abuse. But even if you disagree with everything I write, making a strong and compelling argument will get you a lot further and a lot more respect than just calling me a f***ing idiot.

As to my most recent blog, I find it wildly ironic that so many supporters of Donald Trump, a man who insults everybody under the sun, uses 5th grade name-calling and boorish tweets as the centerpieces of his campaign, has put forth no serious or credible policy proposals and as I previously wrote, “makes racism, sexism, misogyny, nihilism and ultra-nationalism the pillars of his candidacy” are upset when somebody says their support of him is stupid. It amazes me just as much when people perceive I am actually telling not to vote for whatever third-party candidate they want to. It’s your right as an American to vote for whomever you please so long as they meet the qualifications set forth in Article II of the Constitution. What I do state unequivocally is that such candidates have no mathematical hope of winning the Presidency and that is an inescapable fact. In any case, if I bruised delicate feelings, then mea culpa. I’m not trying to change your mind. That appears to be a lost cause which is why the piece was written to begin with. I will, however, point out how completely absurd your support for Donald Trump is or how a vote for anyone else under in the present political system will accomplish nothing…at least not this year.

On the other hand, there were far too many individuals who made comments, and not at me, but at others that crossed an intolerable red line. There is a maxim on the internet of “Please Do Not Feed The Trolls”. Good advice. Well, just this once, I’m going to. So here it is.

Do not call any woman who reads and comments online, or anywhere else for that matter, the C-word. Ever.

It’s galling that somebody needs to make this plain to grown people and to do it this clearly and forcefully. It apparently has to be done, though, so I may as well do it. That is a repugnant and disgusting term and you are scum if you use it. Believe me, I’m no choir boy when it comes to cursing up a blue streak. I freely admit there are plenty of times I need to wash my mouth out with soap. But on a public forum, what kind of person in God’s name uses that word in so cavalier a fashion toward people they don’t even know? I know what kind does and probably so do you. They are little people, in mind and everywhere else, who are threatened by intelligent women with an opinion regardless of what that opinion is. For context, see Scott Baio. And by the way, you shouldn’t even use it when talking about the candidate, either. Granted she is in politics and is therefore is open to scorn and derision from her detractors. Love her or hate her, there is no doubt she can take care of herself. But I don’t care if you’re madder than holy hell about whatever offense you think she has committed or whatever character flaw you perceive she may have. Were you raised in a barn?

Some readers of late may have been put off or offended by the liberal use (forgive the pun) of the F-Bomb and my sarcastic tone; that it perhaps detracted from the argument or obscured what were otherwise good points. Those are very legitimate critiques and I heard those of you felt that way. Fair enough. To be honest, however, being a little profane and snarky was kind of the point. Given the subject matter, my aim was to shake the reader up and I seem to have succeeded.  But don’t believe for a second that gives anyone carte blanche to be abusive and needlessly vulgar. It’s like people using the N-word when talking about President Obama. It was rotten in 2008 in and it’s rotten now. And while we’re on the subject, do not use racial or ethnic slurs at people you think are supporting Hillary Clinton simply because they are black or brown because yeah, I’ve had to read that garbage along with everyone else. Do you talk to people like this in their face? Probably not, but if you do, I suggest having your Thorazine intake adjusted.

I want to get your attention because with so many pundits on TV and online who analyze absolutely everything about this year’s election, it’s hard to make even one singular point unless you metaphorically slap somebody in the face. I want to use words like a proverbial bucket of ice water and pour it over the reader’s head when discussion, debate, reasonable arguments and well, just being polite haven’t worked. When facts are dismissed as “your opinion”, “talking points” or just “lies”, I will sometimes write like my keyboard is on fire because like so many of you, I also get angry.

But I will never deign to use bile and filth aimed randomly and applied at point-blank range like a shotgun to demean people who are just trying to put their two cents in. If everybody were to think and speak a little more sensibly and calmly, for lack of better terms, maybe the climate of political discussion everyone finds so abhorrent wouldn’t be so negatively charged. It would be so much easier to make our stands as voters and citizens. How’s THAT for a contrary idea?

Aristotle once said “Anybody can become angry. That is easy. But to be angry with the right person and to the right degree and at the right time and for the right purpose, and in the right way, that is not within everybody’s power and is not easy.”

In short, if you’re just a troll, if you can’t stop hating and denigrating ordinary people using the most base and contemptible terms possible because they disagree with you, then yes, you are a moron, you are stupid and yes, you deserve every rotten epithet I can muster. Your bridge is over there. Go crawl back under it.

NOTE: This was dedicated to readers who made comments and then were verbally abused. You didn’t deserve to be. The offending trolls have had their comments deleted.

The Moron’s Case For Hillary Clinton…because some of you really are that stupid.

August 24, 2016 9:02 pm / 39 Comments on The Moron’s Case For Hillary Clinton…because some of you really are that stupid.

An old colleague and I were having breakfast this morning when he looked up at the news (I can’t remember which network …MSNBC, I think) and noticed a split screen of Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. He lamented long about how terrible both candidates are in this election and I guess we just have to choose the lesser of the two evils or, as he put it, “…put on a blindfold and just pick. It doesn’t really make any difference.”

And that’s when I went off.

I am really sick and tired of people saying both candidates are equally horrible choices, how much America thoroughly hates both of them to the core, that there’s not a single positive trait in either one of them and wow, if only we had voted for that guy behind the deli counter or the neighbor’s cat, America would be WAY better off.

Fuck you. Fuck the deli guy and fuck your neighbor’s cat.

There are only 2 candidates who stand any mathematical chance of prevailing in this year’s election and one of them is, in fact, eminently qualified to become the 45th President of the United States, perhaps more so than any of the other 44 previous office holders. She (that’s right…SHE) has been dedicated to public service in one capacity or another since 1971.  Her accomplishments are tremendous. To name a few (edited from the list once provided by Daily Kos for space):

  • First ever student commencement speaker at Wellesley College.
  • Distinguished graduate of Yale Law School.
  • Editorial board of the Yale Review of Law and Social Action.
  • Co-founded Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families.
  • Former civil litigation attorney.
  • Staff attorney for Children’s Defense Fund.
  • Faculty member in the School of Law at the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville.
  • Former Director of the Arkansas Legal Aid Clinic.
  • First female chair of the Legal Services Corporation.
  • First female partner at Rose Law Firm, the oldest and one of the largest law firms in Arkansas.
  • Twice named by The National Law Journal as one of the 100 Most Influential Lawyers in America.
  • Former First Lady of Arkansas.
  • Arkansas Woman of the Year in 1983.
  • Chair of the American Bar Association’s Commission on Women in the Profession.
  • Created Arkansas’s Home Instruction Program for Preschool Youth.
  • Instrumental in passage of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program.
  • First Lady of the United States.
  • Promoted nationwide immunization against childhood illnesses.
  • Successfully sought to increase research funding for prostate cancer and childhood asthma at the National Institutes of Health.
  • Worked to investigate reports of an illness that affected veterans of the Gulf War (now recognized as Gulf War Syndrome).
  • Helped create the Office on Violence Against Women at the Department of Justice.
  • Initiated and shepherded the Adoption and Safe Families Act.
  • First FLOTUS in US History to hold a postgraduate degree.
  • Helped create Vital Voices, an international initiative to promote the participation of women in the political processes of their countries.
  • Two-term New York Senator and the first ex-FLOTUS in US History to be elected to the United States Senate.
  • Served on five Senate committees: Budget (2001–2002), Armed Services (2003–2009), Environment and Public Works (2001–2009), Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (2001–2009) and the Special Committee on Aging.
  • Member of the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe.
  • Leading role in investigating the health issues faced by 9/11 first responders.
  • Worked with Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York on securing $21.4 billion in funding for the World Trade Center redevelopment.
  • Former United States Secretary of State.
  • Brokered a ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas in 2012.

Go ahead and try to show what the other candidate has done in the public interest during his whole worthless life.

Go on.

Try.

You can’t and why?

The other candidate who is supposedly “equally bad” is a real estate developer and television personality who was born into a family whose wealth has been estimated to exceed $300 million and makes racism, sexism, misogyny, nihilism and ultra-nationalism the pillars of his candidacy.  So far he has called for:

  • Building a wall across the southern border that Mexico is supposedly going to pay for.
  • The deportation, by force if necessary, of 11 million undocumented immigrants (and stop saying “illegal”, you jackass).
  • Banning and deporting all members of a religious faith that total over 1 billion adherents worldwide, even if they are American citizens, because “everybody knows” they’re just a bunch of murdering terrorists.
  • Lists among his associates known white supremacists and eugenicists.
  • Speaks admiringly of ruthless foreign despots and encourages espionage against the United States by hostile governments.
  • Ruminates about not defending our NATO allies against Russian invasion.
  • States openly and freely that using nuclear weapons should always be an option simply to make him more “unpredictable”. That’s not a strategy. That’s insanity.

Did I mention his blithe refusal to offer concrete policy proposals on how any of this neo-Nazi wish list could possibly be achieved? And all the while still finding the time to be rude, nasty, loud, mean, cruel, hateful and boorish.

And it’s still August.

But they’re supposedly “equally awful” and “everybody hates them both”. Yes, you can’t vote for Hillary Clinton over Donald Trump because, you know…emails. And Benghazi. And Foundations. And Wall Street. And secret assassinations. And pantsuits. And, and, and.

OK, listen up. Nobody cares about emails that show Bono wanted State Department assistance to stream his music from the International Space Station. You should thank Almighty God and Jedi Jebus he failed. So far all we have seen is a public official in extraordinary circumstances who should have known better demonstrate “extreme carelessness” to which I believe she has owned up to sufficiently and which, by the way, no wrongdoing was ever uncovered even after a year-long investigation by the FBI for the love of God. We all know that trustworthiness is important in a President. But if absolutely no slack is given at all, and I mean none, if this is how we treat people who make public service their life and profession, then you will always get “crooks” as politicians because who in their right mind would want the job? It’s like being a firefighter. When there’s a fire everybody runs out. You run in. It’s a maniac’s job but it has to be done so let’s have the best do it and not get wrapped up in what amounts to paperwork. That’s all this really is. Paperwork. You would rather stay at home or vote for someone George Orwell or Edgar Allan Poe couldn’t have dreamed up over emails? Then you’re even dumber than you look.

Furthermore, I want to know why everyone has their knickers in a twist over the tragic deaths of 4 State Department personnel in Benghazi in 2012 when nobody raised a peep about, count ‘em, 241 armed and ready US servicemen who were blown to bits by a suicide bomber in Beirut in 1983? Well? WHY NOT? We all know why but I won’t denigrate the deaths of brave people serving their country in the diplomatic corps and the military while performing what is often a filthy and difficult job. But other people love to bring it up as often as possible as a political weapon. They want you to believe she is some kind of cold and diabolical monster without any concern for the lives of people who often must work in really dangerous places in the name of peace and diplomacy. That is also a load of steaming horseshit and if you spread it around then you ought to be ashamed to show your face in public. So please stop. Now.

I know, I know. Damn it all! Wouldn’t it be nice if we could just forget all of that pesky accomplishment stuff of hers and remember that what really matters is the thrill of waiting for indictments which makes for great television? That way we could finally “lock her up” and enough with these stupid women who think they can run a country. Well, enough out of YOU, you moron. This isn’t the lesser of two evils. This is a choice between one great and qualified candidate for the nation’s highest office who you really should be excited about and a dolt with a bad toupee who if you were honest with yourself you wouldn’t trust to manage a Dairy Queen much less the Oval Office.

And by the way, don’t give me any of your crap about Bernie, Martin, Ted, John, Marco, Jeb, Chris, Rand, Carly, Ben, Lindsey or any of the others because they aren’t running anymore. And I certainly don’t want to hear some fantastic load of tripe about Gary or Jill because they can’t win either and that’s simply the way it is. Deal with it. Those two are just like all of the other hundreds of people legitimately on the ballot to become President in November who are never going to get within spitting distance of the White House. Ever heard of Rod Silva? Me neither, but he’s running for President on the Nutrition Party ticket. Don’t believe me? Look him up. Here’s the bottom line: only two people can win and it’s not going to be anyone on this Rogue’s Gallery of wannabes…or the guy behind the deli counter or your neighbor’s cat so wake up.

We have a great opportunity here, people. We also have the potential for real catastrophe and that’s not being hyperbolic. You know damn good and well which is which.

Don’t be stupid.

Thank you.

 

I really, really, really, really, really, really like you: The Facebook Election

April 2, 2016 3:22 am

Here’s a sobering thought. Although little has been made of what the FiveThirtyEight blog once termed “The Facebook Primary”, that is the process of trying to extrapolate votes, election trends or general support for a candidate based on “likes” on his or her Facebook page, it is curious to see just how much support there may be for a candidate based solely on Facebook likes. Of course, this metric ultimately isn’t very reliable as it pertains to actual votes. The Pew Research Center states that 58 percent of American adults use Facebook. However, in what I will call “The Facebook Election”, one must note how many Facebook users are NOT over 18 and therefore cannot vote but are still politically aware and active to the extent that they can. Facebook provides the medium for which this group can express their views.

Further, according to FiveThirtyEight, users are in general “…disproportionately young (although not as young as users of other social media networks), low-income and female”. And because Facebook likes are obviously not votes and because Facebook use, regular or casual, is not a representative sample of the electorate, any discussion of a candidate based on support in social media must begin from the premise that there are limitations on what may or may not be extrapolated based exclusively on Facebook likes.

Much of what Facebook brings to the table is what one erstwhile popular comedian once termed an enhancement of personality. Beyond the ability to comment on posts and express views, Facebook likes may reflect what people in general may think of a candidate simply as a person. I became curious about this one metric and found some interesting numbers. As of March 31, 2016, Hillary Clinton had 3,078,534 likes on their personal Facebook page while her opponent for the Democratic nomination Bernie Sanders had 3,721,242 likes on his. These numbers are deliberately not taken from any campaign page, as many of these are simply unofficial groups of supporters or localized campaigns, but from a candidate’s own official “personal” page.

What does this metric indicate? Well, for one, depending on the number of likes Sanders had prior to his candidacy, it’s fascinating to see how much support he has garnered, especially from the young and tech-savvy, 2 demographics that skew strongly in his favor. It also would indicate that Hillary Clinton is not nearly as despised a public figure that some within the media or her opponent’s campaign would lead the public to believe. However, these numbers of likes are not necessarily large. Neither candidate can boast the numbers of likes of the New Orleans Saints, the lackluster NFL franchise who went 7-9 last year and missed the playoffs, with 4,063,945 as of this writing. Nor are either them as popular as comedian Seth Rogen, whose was most recently famous for playing a man who among other things threw up during a Christmas mass in the movie The Night Before, with 4,291,154 likes. Go figure.

Now here’s where it get’s interesting. Republican frontrunner Donald Trump has 6,816,379 Facebook likes as of March 31, 2016. This is more than both Democratic candidates combined by over 16,000 likes. Granted he was a popular celebrity before his run for the White House, so that certainly padded his numbers. Also, if it’s any comfort to people who find the idea of a Trump presidency nauseating, take comfort in the knowledge that all 3 candidates combined still do not challenge the Facebook popularity of Avenged Sevenfold. No, I’ve never heard of them either, but they’re a California-based heavy metal band that hasn’t recorded anything since 2013, if you must know. But considering all that the media has made about Trump’s lack of any redeeming qualities as a person, much less his qualifications as contender for the presidency, coupled with the ability to un-like any Facebook page, this number jumps out at me. If the Democrats, and Bernie Sanders in particular, are going to assert how much popular support they enjoy based on social media and go on to use the idea that they have far greater advantage in November over the Republicans as a talking point, then somebody within their campaigns needs to rethink using the concept of social media popularity as an electoral strength.

Who do 58 percent of American adults, especially young, low-income females, like?

Donald Trump, it would seem.

I, Berniebot

March 15, 2016 11:45 pm

There has been a surge in outbreaks of violence at Donald Trump rallies over the last few months; violence that in no small measure are being encouraged by the candidate himself. It has even been suggested that such incidents are being wholesale underwritten by the Trump campaign, up to and including now famous offers to cover his supporters’ legal fees if they are arrested and charged with assault. What these displays have done that is positive, however, if anything truly positive can come from a riot, is to provoke a wide national discussion about civility, or the lack of it, in the current presidential election cycle. But while Trump is pilloried in the national media for his supporters’ epileptic outbursts of rage, another type of violence has been going on for months unchecked and virtually unreported.

The crusade to elect Bernie Sanders the 45th President of the United States, and it is a crusade, has generated its own ranks of angry supporters engaging in vitriol which has often devolved into downright hate and abuse. It is not the streets or in his opponent’s campaign rallies that these zealots wander, but on the pages of Facebook, Twitter feeds and blog articles written on the premise that any attempt to stop Bernie Sanders is a useless, ill-fated, stupid and futile gesture. Hillary Clinton is a monster. This can be easily demonstrated even to the meanest observer by the fact that she gave paid speeches (that’s right…speeches) before Wall Street executives. She and her husband have a foundation. A foundation! Surely there can be no greater disqualifier to the nation’s highest office than being associated with a foundation. But there is. Worst of all, her campaign has money, lots of it, and it comes from just the worst sort of people. Nobody is quite sure who entirely, but the mere existence of a PAC to Sanders is damning enough.

These and other exhortations that in their totality sound eerily like passages from Quotations of Chairman Mao have made the Sanders campaign into a virtual caricature of itself. People have come to expect wide-eyed throngs at rallies for the candidate. What has been unexpected, the upset in Michigan and run of low delegate contests in the West notwithstanding is that Sanders is rapidly losing any hope of securing the nomination. National perceptions of Bernie Sanders, which translates into votes and the resultant delegate math, may at this stage have left his campaign hopelessly crippled, or more to the point mortally wounded.  Like the ill-fated emperor in Julius Caesar, those who are the most steadfast and loyal, those who are closest to him, may be the very ones that wielded the daggers.

Back in July, I wrote a brief observation that garnered little attention which stated using no offensive terminology that I was just not feeling the Bernie Sanders mojo and I wasn’t. I’m still not and that is the fine point of it. To be a Bernie Sanders supporter is to be all about political revolution. It’s not about fixing or reforming Washington politics or ending the crippling gridlock that has plagued Congress for years. It’s not about compromise or bipartisanship. It’s about blowing up the system completely. It’s about approaching every issue that confronts this nation, from the environment to taxes, Middle East policy to guns, healthcare to energy, as a simple matter of income inequality. You aren’t even a Bernie Sanders supporter. You’re a believer. It is a movement that claims to be an honest, sincere and legitimate effort by Sanders to upend the system in Washington. But by the same token, every political candidate in every election, regardless of party or ideology, says that Washington is broken, corrupt beyond repair and needs to be ripped out like a moldy, old rug. So…you want to be President? Well, strange line of work you want to be going into, then.

I should like to state unequivocally that I wrote this long before his campaign and its accompanying hashtag became a national sensation on social media to propel the self-described democratic socialist to national prominence. It was clear at least to this observer that the entire Sanders campaign appeared to be little more than a figment of MSNBC’s fevered imagination. The classic, liberal Democratic candidate, with a curious and somewhat uncomfortable appeal almost exclusively to progressive, college educated white voters under 40, lay firmly in the fact that he wasn’t even a Democrat. Bernie Sanders had only become a Democrat in 2015, being an independent and a member of the old Liberty Union party prior to that. The move looked cynical. It appeared quite clear to almost everyone at the time that running as a Democrat was the only way he logically compete for the Presidency. How quickly we forget.

Of course, no discussion of Sanders’ quixotic campaign would be complete without noting the endless hashtag advocacy mentioned earlier that has become a hemorrhoid on the rear end of political discourse on social media. It is unbelievably irritating and nothing seems to relieve the “Berning Sensation” to coin an overused phrase. Virtually anything can be said, regardless of how outlandish or offensive, if one simply follows the statement with #FeelTheBern. It’s like Catholic indulgences in the Middle Ages. There is no sin that cannot be expunged with just a simple hashtag expressing the love and support you feel for your beloved candidate. You could put a picture of your child holding her new puppy or a statement wishing someone a speedy recovery after an appendectomy and invariably some moron would come along to post “F*** YOU! #FeelTheBern”.

A friend of mine recently described Bernie Sanders online media enthusiasts as “smug, entitled, clueless, and overall annoying”. Another friend showed me a screen print from a so-called “liberal chat room” demonstrating how she was subjected to interminable abuse from male Sanders supporters incensed at Clinton’s interruptions of the Revolutionary Leader at a televised debate, something permissible to him but never to the unrighteous. Even on her own Facebook page, my friend found herself on the receiving end of needless haranguing after posting an article from the blog Blue Nation Review that had the heretical temerity to question Sanders’ integrity. Any argument that was brought up to defend the author’s viewpoints or, heaven forbid, show any support for Hillary Clinton, was met with a barrage of insults and name-calling more suited to an elementary playground. One especially passive-aggressive Sanders supporter went so far as to dismiss any statement favoring Clinton as illogical and made only because my friend had “an emotional investment” in Clinton. Only by divorcing herself from emotions could she make a rational argument, which naturally would bring her around to Sanders. It was like listening to Spock with no Dr. McCoy to even him out.

On November 7, 2012 Rachel Maddow said: “…In this country, we have a two-party system in government. And the idea is supposed to be that the two sides both come up with ways to confront and fix the real problems facing our country. They both propose possible solutions to our real problems. And we debate between those possible solutions. And by the process of debate, we pick the best idea. That competition between good ideas from both sides about real problems in the real country should result in our country having better choices, better options, than if only one side is really working on the hard stuff.” This is the problem so many Sanders supporters fail to comprehend. There is one small obstruction to the glorious revolution that will reshape the future of America: the Republican Party. Like it or not, there is a firmly entrenched, well-funded and frankly rather numerous party that stands in solid opposition to everything both Democratic candidates want and stand for. For her part, Hillary Clinton, as unpopular as the notion may be with the progressive activist wing of her party, is keenly aware of that fact. Bernie Sanders, however, seems only keenly aware of Hillary Clinton.

This past January, in an installment of “The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell”, MSNBC asked for representatives to appear from both campaigns to discuss foreign policy. The Clinton campaign sent Christopher Hill, a lifelong diplomat who served as deputy Secretary of State, former US Ambassador to Iraq, Korea and Poland and is currently dean of the Korbel School of International Studies at the University of Denver. The Sanders campaign sent…nobody. Thom Hartmann, a progressive radio commentator, volunteered to offer his thoughts as a supporter. Does anybody see the problem here? Again, this is a cult of personality. The Bernie Sanders message is about domestic oligarchy and doesn’t concern itself with the intricacies, nuances and sheer complexity of American foreign policy. It’s just about War and Peace broadly. Occasionally it may drift to his opponent’s vote on the Iraq War in 2002 if he’s in a particularly feisty mood. But that’s really it.   Fundamentally, the Sanders view on foreign policy is the same as his take on domestic issues: Are the rich or corporations involved? Then it’s not important.

Regardless of whether one believes in the ideas of his campaign or not, the question of judging Sanders as a candidate on the merits has become a dangerous game if one wants to tackle it online. There is genuine violence that occurs every day in the relative physical safety of social media. It is violence directed against Hillary Clinton and anyone who supports her that has been generated by many backers of Bernie Sanders. Although obviously not all Sanders supporters are like this, online cooler heads are very much in the minority. Primarily driven by young, college educated white men, the so-called “Berniebros” or “Berniebots” do not allow for the possibility of eventual party unity and that it a concern that must be discussed immediately, before Donald Trump locks up the Republican nomination. These fanatical Sanders supporters, who are legion on social media, are so caught up with the cult of personality that is his campaign (or crusade, or revolution, depending on your perspective), that they cannot conceive of an America that does not include a President Sanders after the election. The “Bernie or Bust” crowd from within the Sanders movement, sworn to vote for him or nobody, has enormous pitfalls inherent within it. As Bill Maher noted, “They’re revolting against the plutocracy. No, actually you’ll be helping elect a plutocrat who’s revolting.” It is, to use Trump’s own words, “a mess…a disaster” just waiting to happen.

The bile from these “Berniebots” is often directed straight at women and people of color. One begins to wonder if the Sanders campaign feels such people support Clinton because they are women or people of color and therefore are corporate trolls like she is who must be eradicated. There are strong racial overtones in this rhetoric that cannot be ignored. Statements such as “We are now moving out of the Deep South and into states more favorable to us” do not subtly imply that “us” are generally white and that is no way to build a coalition for victory in November. The “Berniebots” are approaching the election with all the enthusiasm and poor judgment of a fraternity keger and are beginning to rival Trump’s campaign for rancor. It is time for such people to be called out for what they are: mindless diehards who in their zeal may hand the White House to the GOP if their attacks continue to divide the Democrats. It is the Last Stand of White Male Privilege and it is coming from the left. Martin Luther King and Robert F. Kennedy died trying to stave off this kind of division almost 50 years ago. It’s very disheartening to think that perhaps they were spared in not being able to see the great progressive movement come off the rails like this.

Say what you will, but Hillary Clinton supporters do not even come close to this kind of anger. Any objective observer can go on Facebook and Twitter and see whose supporters are the loudest and most petulant. Remember that she has a campaign. Bernie Sanders has a movement, perhaps even a cult by the Oxford definition standard.  Certainly he has a revolution and thus believers and followers. Any opponents to the cause are thus being inordinately harassed, harangued and abused in an attempt to purge heretics from the pure faith and it needs to stop. Bernie Sanders is a good, decent and thoughtful man who wants only the best for his country. He needs to tell the more fanatical elements of his movement to back off, relax and remember who the enemy really is.

Hint: it’s NOT Hillary Clinton. It’s a loudmouth carnival barker with a bad toupee who will be very, very dangerous if allowed to reach the White House.

Contrarian Quick Take: Article II, Section 2

February 25, 2016 10:13 pm

I didn’t watch the GOP Debate, which again are not debates but essentially WWF matches with suits and ties, and also apparently a form of self abuse I do not wish to indulge in. I would rather swallow glass. Instead, I found much better fare in the MSNBC College Tour Special with Bernie Sanders. It’s amazing how soothing it is to hear a reasonable person speak reasonably about the issues. I did, discover, however, one critical aspect of the junior senator from Vermont’s platform that in one fashion or another will probably doom him in a general election; one that until tonight has been largely glossed over by the mainstream media.

The role of the President as Commander-in-Chief is clearly one that if Sanders could work his will would be divorced entirely from the job as Chief Executive. He has very few substantive stances on foreign policy issues other than he voted against the Iraq War. That fact will carry him only so far against any GOP nominee, as I think Americans in general want to feel safe and be confident that there is no nation or group they cannot demolish on the world stage, anywhere at any time, militarily.

Sanders was clearly extremely uncomfortable with Chris Matthews’ line of questioning and awkwardly pivoted from the discussion about being Commander-in-Chief to what he stated is unequivocally far more important. You guessed it: Wall Street. Campaign finance reform. Millionaires and billionaires.

Sooner or later, Sanders must realize that either Hillary Clinton or the Republicans are going to press him about what he is going to do as President if he is brought to the situation room because America is under attack. Terrorists are not going to care about his vote against the AUMF or the Patriot Act 15 years ago. His campaign and their supporters must come to grips with the reality that Sanders will be pressed about this hard and mercilessly. Matthews went easy on him. Clinton will be vicious. The Republican nominee will be savage. The voters? Cruel, relentless and totally unforgiving.

Let’s not even ponder what will be going through the minds of the ones carrying out an attack.

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