Uncomfortable Truths for Americans

I rather hate to do this, but I feel I must.

We're not the good guys anymore.

There, I said it.  We're not the good guys anymore.  We were once.  After WWII, we were the heroes of the world.  We rebuilt Europe and Asia, we went into space, we cured polio, we were freaking fantastic.

But then came the cold war, and multinationals, then came Vietnam and Panama and waterboarding and endless corporate promotion of American interests, even at the expense of the culture or environment or economy of other countries, then came decades of blind support for increasingly right-wing and fanatical governments abroad, especially in Israel, where our massive military assistance is, even now, creating genocidal conditions for those living in the Palestine.  We're not the good guys anymore.

This is not, of course, to say that Russia or China ARE the good guys.  No, no, no, their human rights records, economic imperialism, and environmental destruction are generally even worse than ours.

At best, we are the same as they are:  Wealthy corporate run oligarchies with little interest in anything that isn't profit or power.

The vaunted two party system of America is run by two degenerate and corrupt political organizations.  One, the GOP, has, in the quest for power, turned it's back on conservatism as a philosophy to endorse racism, hatred of women, xenophobia, and jingoistic nationalism as a means to power.  The other, the Democratic Party--once the bastion for the working man and woman--has embraced Wall  Street, disasterous trade agreements,  voter suppression, and fracking as a means to power.  Both will do any amount of back room dealing, lies, voter suppression, vote rigging, even violence, to silence voices that object.  Both will drop to their knees for whosoever writes the biggest check.

The two parties stay in power by being progressively worse than the other, using fear that the OTHER party might win to encourage votes, even if it is against the best interest of American citizens and their families and futures.

The American press, now owned mostly by only 6 gigantic corporations, is complicit in this.  As exposed by recent Wikileaks revelations, they cooperate and coordinate with the two parties to suppress dissent, stifle criticism, and further their corporate aims.

You are not the good guys anymore.

Police in America, heavily armed, tattooed, and armored, routinely humiliate, beat, and even kill members of the public for no other real reason than that they can.  Most of the victims are Black or Hispanic, and the line of racism in Policing runs deep in the U.S., but they also are certainly not above beating, framing, torturing, or killing those they deem "uppity."  No penalty is ever paid, no justice ever offered to the victims.  Police cruise through minority neighborhoods and target some poor slob who then turns up dead because the police felt "threatened."  That's normal.  Anyone striking back is a "terrorist."

American corporations, once welcomed abroad and adored, are now almost universally hated.  Their coming in the third world means corruption, environmental devastation, economic extraction, and death.  One of the DNC's most vaunted "pro labor" candidates received nearly $24m for making sure sweat shop workers in Haiti didn't get a raise to 61 CENTS an hour.   Not a 61 cent RAISE, mind you, 61 CENTS AN HOUR.  That would be, I should note, up from a minimum wage of $.21 an hour.

We drop bombs, we do drone strikes, we pay for death squads, whole families die, communities are wiped off the map, and yet we are told that "they hate us for our freedom".  No, dumbf**k.  They hate us because we killed their children.

We are not the good guys anymore.

But we could be.

We could be the good guys by disenfranchising the two corrupt parties that run America, by refusing to vote our fears and instead insisting on voting our morals and convictions.  By voting FOR something rather than against a false and manipulated choice of boogeymen.  We could be the good guys by standing FOR something for a change, rather than just profit or strategic position.  The world would welcome us, and with the strength of all the world, we would triumph without even trying.

We could be the good guys by demanding our allies and correspondents and client states and trading partners play fair with their people--with ALL of their people-- or we will walk with all our considerable skills, resources, and astonishingly large market.  We could do that.

We could be the good guys by making sure our people--AMERICAN people, American citizens--have good lives, healthcare, clean water, safe streets, safe food, and good educations.  We could be the good guys by treating our own people as something other than corporate cannon fodder.

We could be the good guys, you know.  We could be the people we've always been told we are.  We could spend a few pennies of our fantastic wealth to clothe kids and give them clean water, to treat the sick and help people to find their own voices rather then insisting that ours be the only one heard.

Now you can feel free to tell me this isn't practical, that it isn't realistic or "the way the world works."  That's fine, I guess.

But the world, ours and everyone else's, was better when we were heroes.

We could do that again.  I still have the cape.

Really.


M

Hilary Clinton, and the existential threat

I have never seen, in my 6+ decades of life, an election season like this one, with all the utter disfunctionality of the last three decades on such awe-inspiring display.  We have seen the GOP essentially self destruct, disintegrating into a party of madness, raciscm, and corporate greed, electing a carnival barker for a candidate.  We are now watching the Democrats in the same process, drowning in quid pro quo payments, arrogance, and privilege.  It seems that both parties are about to create a new first:  fielding two candidates that are not merely disliked, but absolutely reviled by the American people.

One could see the GOP debacle coming:  With the growing power since Reagan of the most angry, racist, discontent wing of the party, the GOP fielded in 2015 what had to have been the most spotted and weak field of candidates in the party's long history, only to devolve into picking the absolute worst of them:  A reality TV show host with no governmental experience and the emotional control of a nine year old.  Win or lose, Donald Trump is auguring the party in at a high velocity, and the fallout of that impact will go on for decades.

For their part, the Democrats are especially sad:  This election was theirs to lose.  After years of Republican intransigence, overt racism, and obstructionism, and riding a new populist wave on the left, this should have been a sweep for the Democratic party.  Both houses of Congress and the Presidency should have been a cinch.  Clinton, with the embrace of the new left, was to have ridden in glory into office.  Now it is questionable if or in what form the party will even survive, and I look on in astonishment. Dirty tricks, back room deals, a corrupted and complicit mainstream media, and outright vote fraud have so poisoned the waters, so fouled the downy bed that the Dems hath made, that it is approaching lethal toxicity, and they have only themselves to blame.

The DNC, though their own mechanations, have now three utterly unenviable choices:

1)  Elect Hilary Clinton:  always the presumptive front runner, Clinton has proven a deeply flawed candidate, and, to be honest, person.  Her acceptance (and the party's) of almost unbelievable amounts of money from some of the most venal of corporate sources, along with huge amounts flowing from foreign governments into Clinton Foundation coffers, have left her motives and veracity deeply suspect.  Faced with a revolt from her left from what must be regarded as one of the only truly honest people in politics, Senator Sanders, the Clinton campaign responded with backroom deals, paid internet trolls, a cavalcade of dirty tricks and slurs, all accompanied with a patently deliberate mainstream media blackout on the Sander's campaign, voter suppression campaigns, suspicious vote tallys, and what I suspect will wind up being found to be deliberate vote rigging fraud.  All of this has had the opposite effect on the Sanders' campaign from the one I suspect was intended:  The Sanderistas became angry and energized.  Originally mildly supporting Clinton at the beginning of the campaign season, the Sanders supporters--composed largely of the young, the well educated, and a huge number of independents who joined the party to support him--now hold her in such contempt that anything up to and including the possibility that witnesses against her have been murdered is now openly discussed.  Somewhere between 40 and 90% of the Sander's supporters (depending on which polls you believe) say they will, under NO circumstances, support or vote for Hilary Clinton.  As this comprises about half the Democrats and most of the left-leaning independents, this is a disaster for the DNC.  And, as it includes a very large number of young, first time voters, it may continue to be a disaster for decades.

2)  Bring in a "White Knight":  Faced with such a wildly unpopular candidate, the DNC inner leadership could choose to broker the convention and bring in someone else, likely Joe Biden, to save the day.  Biden would likely win.  He's the kind of unoffensive and fairly competent party politician that parties love to run.  He comes across as serious, vaguely working class, and relatively untarred by scandal.  But his selection, with not a single vote being cast for him, would drive most of the Sander's supporters out of the party (if that hasn't happened already), leaving the Dems with the White House and Senate, but with no remaining party for future elections and with a Progressive Caucus that views the Dems as being as much an enemy as they view the GOP.

3)  Nominate Bernie Sanders:  This would seem a natural.  If one removes the favoritism shown by the DNC toward Clinton, the dirty tricks, the voter suppression and the like, the likelihood is that Sanders actually won this primary.  Indeed, as I write this, the California vote count edges him closer and closer to parity, and some 30 lawsuits across the country may result in significant changes to the vote tally.  With the support of the young, easily half the party, and most independents and a career utterly untouched by scandal and huge corporate donations, Sanders would give the Democrats a generation of control in the government.  But Sanders is a Social Democrat, despised and feared by those--especially large Banks and the fossil fuel industry-- who have written the DNC and the Clinton campaign HUGE checks in this election cycle, and foreign governments who have had such influence in US Politics, especially the Saudi's and Israel's powerful money funnel, AIPAC, appear to despise him, as much as he is beloved by most of the rest of the world.  Regardless, this would seem a natural choice, but to party insiders, the choice would be impossible.

There will be winners, of course.  The Green Party, long languishing as a "fringe" party in the press's eyes, has made a very smart move (largely due to Dr. Jill Stein, who is becoming more and more a force with which to be reckoned) in inviting the Sanders supporters (with whom they have much in common) to join, up to and including inviting Sanders, himself, to join their ticket.  The Greens will likely, at minimum, have a showing this fall in the millions because of disgusted independents and the Sanders disaffected, and are likely to become a viable third party in the years to come, perhaps displacing the Democrats much as the GOP displaced the Whigs.

Trump, regardless of outcome, will make millions and will bask in the limelight.  Sanders will rise in influence and respect in the Senate if not nominated, and will continue to affect US politics for a decade.

But the Clintons, even if they win, will never be trusted or respected again.  The Democratic party, even if they win, will likely remain shattered, never trusted or respected again.  No one has respected or trusted the Republicans for years.  The losers, the big losers, will likely be the American people, who will have to deal with the outcome of this sorry mess.