Last year Senator Bernie Sanders led a public push to reduce the insanely bloated US military budget by a paltry ten percent. His push splatted headfirst against a bipartisan solid steel wall which shut him down definitively.

Sanders’ bill was killed in the Senate by a vote of 23 to 77, with half of Senate Democrats stepping up to help Republicans stomp it dead. It’s companion bill in the House of Representatives was killed by a margin of 93 to 324, with a majority of House Democrats (92 to 139) voting nay.

Contrast those numbers with those who voted to approve Trump’s $741 billion military budget this past December. The House voted to approve the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) budget by a margin of 335 to 78, 195 of those yes votes coming from the Democratic side of the aisle. The Senate passed that same budget by 84 to 13. This was a substantial increase from the previous year’s budget, a trend which has remained unbroken for years.

From Macrotrends:

• U.S. military spending/defense budget for 2019 was $731.75B, a 7.22% increase from 2018.
• U.S. military spending/defense budget for 2018 was $682.49B, a 5.53% increase from 2017.
• U.S. military spending/defense budget for 2017 was $646.75B, a 1.08% increase from 2016.
• U.S. military spending/defense budget for 2016 was $639.86B, a 0.95% increase from 2015.

And those are just the official numbers going directly to the official “defense” budget. As a Nation article titled “America’s Defense Budget Is Bigger Than You Think” explained in 2019, once you add up the full costs of US wars, preparations for wars, and the impact of those wars, the annual budget is actually already well in excess of a trillion dollars.

And now, under the “harm reduction” candidate Joe Biden, it’s about to get even bigger.

BREAKING: Biden proposes a $753,000,000,000 Pentagon budget, a significant increase from last year’s budget.

— Public Citizen (@Public_Citizen) April 9, 2021

“President Biden is requesting a $753 billion defense budget for next fiscal year, with $715 billion of that going to the Pentagon,” reads a new report from The Hill, which notes that the White House said the Defense Department budget “prioritizes the need to counter the threat from China as the department’s top challenge.”

The Public Citizen advocacy group has criticized the move in a statement, saying “The Pentagon budget — which jumped more than $130 billion during the Trump presidency — is replete with spending on overpriced weapons that don’t work, rip-off deals for private contractors, gigantic investments in pointless or outdated weapons systems, and waste and mismanagement so severe the agency cannot pass an audit. It is, indeed, a tribute to the power of the military-industrial complex.”

“There are hundreds of billions of dollars to be saved by appropriate cuts to the Pentagon budget,” Public Citizen adds. “What is most important for the FY22 budget is that it be smaller than FY21, in order to signal that we are finally moving in the right direction and shifting resources from the Pentagon to investments in people.”

We may be absolutely certain that the Biden administration will get the spending increase it seeks, because that’s how it always works. When there’s a push for a ten percent reduction to a military budget which already exceeds that of the next ten countries combined, the move is dismissed as crazy and extremist. Whenever there’s a push to increase that obscene military budget, it’s “Why yes Mister President, anything you wish Mister President, we’ve got the papers all drawn up already for you Mister President.” It slides right in with no inertia whatsoever, like it’s been lubricated with Astroglide.

A political establishment which thinks it’s crazy and extremist to reduce a morbidly obese military budget by ten percent is a crazy and extremist political establishment. A political establishment which thinks it’s sane and moderate to increase a morbidly obese military budget is a crazy and extremist political establishment.

The plutocratic media exist to normalize the inexcusable act of robbing from the citizenry to murder people overseas in unceasing acts of military interventionism to benefit war profiteers and secure unipolar planetary hegemony, to make it seem like this is not such a big deal and mollify the public’s righteous indignation at this atrocity. But it is a big deal. It’s a very, very big deal.

We cannot progress to a healthy world as long as we’re being successfully propagandized into accepting endless slaughter and theft as normal and acceptable. We continue to allow ourselves to be led by murderous psychopaths at our own peril.

caityjohnstone.medium.com

After it was announced that the Biden camp had selected a Raytheon board member as his secretary of defense, I joked in my last article that it would be more honest if Raytheon itself was Biden’s Pentagon chief since the US Supreme Court ruled that corporations are people anyway. Raytheon for defense secretary, Boeing for secretary of state, Goldman Sachs for secretary treasurer, ExxonMobile head of the EPA, Amazon for CIA director and Google for director of national intelligence. Waka waka, I’m so silly.

Anyway, since that rant was published NPR has reported that the the next US director of agriculture will be a man named Tom Vilsack, whose corporate cronyism the last time he occupied the same position earned him the nickname (I shit you not) “Mr Monsanto”. Which is just too perfect for words, really.

Bloomberg reports:

“Some supporters of Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders campaigned against Vilsack when he was under consideration to be Clinton’s vice president, branding him ‘Mr. Monsanto’ and citing his role in brokering a compromise on legislation labeling foods containing genetically modified organisms. Sanders opposed the national legislation, which overrode a stricter Vermont state law.”

Hahaha Joe Biden’s nominee for agriculture secretary, Tom Vilsack, is unironically known as “Mr. Monsanto,” because he’s such a blatant shill for environment-destroying Big Ag corporations.

Biden’s cabinet is as cartoonishly corrupt as Trump’s — just more superficially diverse https://t.co/56cnmNHpas

— Ben Norton (@BenjaminNorton) December 9, 2020

Biden’s inadvertent self-parody of a cabinet is already shaping up to be just as chock full of corporate swamp monsters as Trump’s notoriously corrupt administration, with positions being given to the very last people any ordinary human being with any common sense would want. President Biden is going to be just as much of a corrupt warmongering oligarch crony as his predecessors, and at least as destructive.

Which makes one wonder, what exactly was the point of the #Resistance and what has it been #Resisting all these years?

After Donald Trump’s 2016 election a massive amount of energy went into the creation and promotion of a “movement” branded “The Resistance” which portrayed itself as a revolutionary counterforce against the corruption and malfeasance represented by Trump and his goons. Many a glowing puff piece was written about this carefully constructed plucky band of rebels standing up against the forces of darkness on behalf of the common man, and many a political donation was raised.

The Resistance was aggressively marketed by cynical liberal spinmeisters like Neera Tanden (who in a brazen middle finger to US progressives is also set to play a role in the Biden administration) with the goal of harnessing and maintaining the enthusiastic grassroots anti-establishment energy of the Bernie Sanders campaign and directing it against Trump.

But what did it actually accomplish? In the end, all the so-called Resisters ended up doing was promoting a bunch of Russia conspiracy theories and an impeachment which failed to remove Trump, all while providing no actual resistance to Trump’s most pernicious policies. They’d yell and shriek on social media and MSM punditry panels any time someone was fired from the administration and falsely get people’s hopes up whenever new information came out about the Mueller investigation, but in terms of actually removing Trump from office or stopping him from doing evil things like starving Venezuelans, assaulting press freedoms with the persecution of Julian Assange, tempting war with Iran and perpetuating the mass atrocities in Yemen, they accomplished literally nothing.

Bernie Sanders says Biden would have lost the election without millions of progressive voters, who “deserve representation” in the cabinet. But adds he hasn’t seen any in the cabinet yet. pic.twitter.com/HCzGfs7BFg

— Ibrahim (@Ibrahimpols) December 8, 2020

This is because the #Resistance was never actually intended to resist the evil agendas of the powerful, nor even to resist Trump. The #Resistance was not created to resist the powerful, it was created to resist you. The grassroots anti-establishment populism of the Bernie Sanders movement was cynically imitated by the Democratic establishment to ensure that the establishment is never inconvenienced in any way, and that progressives never take power in America.

On a recent interview with MSNBC Sanders himself — historically far less willing to criticize the Democratic establishment than his supporters — is heard complaining that the progressive base whose votes put Biden over the top in November are so far receiving no representation whatsoever within the incoming Biden cabinet.

“If it wasn’t for the hard work of a lot of progressive grassroots organizations who got young people involved in the political process, working-class people involved in a way that we have not seen, Joe Biden would not have won that election and I think that’s pretty clear,” Sanders says. “And my point has been from day one that those voices, that movement, deserves representation in the cabinet. And if your question is have I seen that yet, no I have not.”

Of course you haven’t, Bernie. You were never going to. Biden might create some sort of fake position to let progressives feel like they’re participating with a name like “Progressive Outreach Team For Yelling Words Into A Hole In The Ground” or something, but in terms of actually directing the policy and behavior of the Biden administration nobody who wants the interests of the people upheld over the interests of the powerful will ever have a hand anywhere near the steering wheel.

The #Resistance spun itself as a revolutionary movement against the insidious forces of darkness threatening the United States of America. What it delivered was support for Trump’s world-threatening cold war escalations against Russia, the mass delusion that America’s problems can be fought from within the establishment, progressives impotently chasing their tails for four years, and a presidency that is going to be just as much of a murderous oligarchic rim job as was delivered by Trump administration.

The engineers of the “Resistance” did not want to eliminate Trumpian depravity, they just wanted to be the ones driving it. And now they are. If you fed into this nonsense in any way over the last four years, this is your reward.

Which begs the question: if an entire political faction needed to sacrifice all its principles, all its values and all its morality to get rid of Trump… what exactly was the point of getting rid of Trump?

caityjohnstone.medium.com

For example:

As-of 5 August 2019, when Forbes headlined “Here Are The Democratic Presidential Candidates With The Most Donations From Billionaires”, the rankings were this:

——

Rank in Billionaire Donors to:

#1 Pete Buttigieg: 23 billionaire donors

#2 Cory Booker: 18 billionaire donors

#3 Kamala Harris: 17 billionaire donors

#4 Michael Bennet: 15 billionaire donors

#5 Joe Biden: 13 billionaire donors

#6 John Hickenlooper: 11 billionaire donors

#7 Beto O’Rourke: 9 billionaire donors

#8 Amy Klobuchar: 8 billionaire donors

#9 Jay Inslee: 5 billionaire donors

#10 Kirsten Gillibrand: 4 billionaire donors

#11 John Delaney: 3 billionaire donors

#12 Elizabeth Warren and Steve Bullock: 2 billionaire donors each

#13 Tulsi Gabbard, Andrew Yang, and Marianne Williamson: 1 billionaire donor each

#14 Bernie Sanders, Julian Castro, Bill De Blasio, and Tim Ryan: 0 billionaire donors

——

And, then, these were the standings among the Democratic Party’s still-active Presidential contenders as-of immediately prior to Super Tuesday, published by Forbes:

——

2 March 2020:

Rank in Billionaire Donors to:

#1 Biden 66

#2 Buttigieg 61

#3 Klobucar 33

#4 Steyer 13

#5 Warren 6

#6 Gabbard 3

#7 Bloomberg 1

#8 Sanders 0

(The others had already dropped out, and were therefore not listed.)

——

The only candidate whom billionaires blacklisted was Sanders. Despite that, Sanders had the most-passionate supporters, and vastly more donors, than did any other candidate in the contest; and, the polls throughout the Democratic primaries showed that he was virtually always either #2 or (occasionally) #1 in the preferences of all of the polled likely Democratic primary voters. But, Sanders got no billionaire’s money. He got as far as he did, only on his mass-base. He was running as the lone progressive in the field. And, unlike any of the others, he focused on the class-conflict issue, instead of on the ethnic-conflict issue – he focused against the money-power, instead of against “racism” (which was his #2 issue). All of the other candidates placed the ethnic-conflict issue (in the form of anti-Black racism) as being America’s most important problem.

Sanders was the only candidate who blamed America’s billionaires (the people who control both of its Parties) for being the cause of America’s problems and the beneficiaries from those problems. He was the only progressive candidate in the entire contest. Sanders’s competitors were blaming the public (as if the majority of it were anti-Black bigots) – not the aristocracy (not the super-rich – the few people who actually control America). So: all of Sanders’s competitors had billionaires already funding them; and, still more billionaires were waiting in the wings to do so for whomever the Party’s nominee might turn out to be – except if it would be Sanders (who would get nothing from any of them). (And, even if Sanders had won the Democratic nomination, what chance would he have had to win against Trump if even the Democratic Party’s billionaires were donating instead to the Trump campaign?)

Back in 2016, the two most-heavily-funded-by-billionaires candidates were Hillary Clinton (#1) and Donald Trump (#2). And they became the nominees. In today’s America, the billionaires always get their man (or their woman). It’s always a contest between a Republican-billionaires-backed nominee, versus a Democratic-billionaires-backed nominee.

What Giraldi blames on “progressivism” is instead actually “liberalism” (which accepts being ruled by its billionaires) but there are more ways than only this that Giraldi misunderstands the difference between these two ideologies.

Besides the distinction that liberals see the big problem as being various sorts of interethnic (or “racial”) conflict (“Black Lives Matter,” etc.), whereas progressives see it as being the billionaires against the public; there is also the distinction that liberals think that their country has a right to intervene in the internal affairs of any foreign country in order to ‘protect’ that foreign nation’s public from its Government (for example, as America has recently done to Venezuela, Syria, Yemen, Ukraine, Iraq, Iran, etc.), whereas progressives reject that viewpoint, and they hold, as being the only justification for invading another country, that other country’s having already invaded their own country – only defending against an invasion constitutes a justification for invading another country. Progressives believe that only the United Nations has the right to authorize an international invasion against a country in the absence of that country’s having invaded another country. Progressives make a huge distinction between any nation’s laws, on the one hand, and international laws, on the other; and they say that no country (including their own) has the right to override international laws. Liberals reject that progressive view, and support international invasions by their own country that are in violation of international law (such as America’s invasions against Yemen, and against Syria, and against Iraq, etc. – all of America’s invasions after World War II), in order to ‘protect’ the people there. Progressives are insistent that the U.N. not get involved in individual nations’ internal affairs. The profoundly anti-FDR, anti-progressive, “Responsibility to Protect” idea (which now has even acquired the status of being represented by an acronym “R2P” catch-phrase), has increasingly arisen recently to become a guiding principle of international relations, and progressives believe that it must be soundly and uncompromisingly rejected by the U.N. But liberals support “R2P,” as, basically, being a ‘justification’ for their own nation’s imperialism.

Giraldi is clearly arguing in favor of the Republican Party, and against the Democratic Party, but both of them (both the conservative Republican, and the liberal Democratic, Parties) are pro U.S. imperialism. He also argues there against the Government’s taking measures to reduce America’s racial and other inter-ethnic conflicts, such as policies to penalize racist actions and to eliminate systemic and Governmentally-mandated racial preferences. For example, he says that any such Governmental measures against racism “increasingly turn government into an intrusive mechanism for social engineering, abandoning America’s traditional meritocracy while also creating categories that some might describe as fostering reverse racism and sexism.” Though liberals do favor “fostering reverse racism and sexism,” progressives (which he claims to be attacking) do not. Furthermore, Giraldi’s implying that all policies against racism are “an intrusive mechanism for social engineering, abandoning America’s traditional meritocracy” is doubly false: Many anti-racist policies are nothing of the sort, but are instead essential in order to reduce inter-ethnic conflict and to achieve a more just and effective system of laws and of law-enforcement – and a more efficient economy. Moreover, his alleging that to do that (to enact legislation against bigotry) is “abandoning America’s traditional meritocracy,” is, itself, ludicrous, regarding a country such as the United States, which had hundreds of years of enforced racist slavery, which were followed until recently by Jim Crow laws that informally continued bigotry by the Government. The scars from all that have still not yet been healed, and to suggest that they have is callous, at best. And, for Giraldi to refer to America’s long prior history of enforced White supremacy as if it had been instead “America’s traditional meritocracy” is beneath even commenting upon.

Giraldi writes as a conservative who uses the falsehoods that are intrinsic to liberalism as cudgels with which to attack progressivism. He doesn’t understand ideology – especially progressivism. Clearly, it’s not within his purview; and, therefore, his intended attack against progressivism misses its mark, and doesn’t even squarely hit its intended target, which is actually liberalism.

Throughout history, the aristocracies have been of two types: outright conservatives, versus the “noblesse oblige” type of aristocrats, which are called “liberals.” The main actual difference between the two is that, whereas the self-proclaimed conservatives boldly endorse their own supremacism, liberals instead slur it over with nice and kindly-sounding verbiage. Whereas conservatives are unashamed of their having all rights and feeling no obligations to the public (even trying to minimize their taxes), liberals are ashamed of it, but continue their haughty attitudes nonetheless, and refuse to recognize that such extreme inequality of wealth is a curse upon the entire society. Progressives condemn both types of aristocrat: the outright conservatives, and the hypocritical conservatives (liberals). Progressives recognize that the more extreme the inequality of wealth is in a society, the less likely that society is to be an authentic democracy, and they are 100% proponents of democracy. Liberals talk about ‘equality’, but don’t much care about it, actually. That’s why aristocrats can support liberalism, but can’t support progressivism. Progressives recognize that the super-wealthy are the biggest enemies of democracy – that they are intrinsically enemies of the public. Progressives aren’t bought-off even by ‘philanthropists’.

Scientific studies (such as this) have documented that the more wealth a person has, the more conservative that person generally becomes. Furthermore, the richer a person is, the more callous and lacking in compassion that person tends to be. Moreover, the richer and more educated a person is, the likelier that person is to believe that economic success results from a person’s having a higher amount of virtue (and thus failure marks a person’s lacking virtue). And, studies have also shown that the wealthiest 1% tend to be extreme conservatives, and tend to be intensely involved in politics. Consequently, to the exact contrary of Giraldi’s article, the higher levels of politics tend to be filled with excessive concerns about how to serve the desires of the rich, and grossly deficient concerns about even the advisability of serving the needs of the poor. Such attitudes naturally favor the aristocracy, at the expense of the public. Confusing liberalism with progressivism advances the conservative, pro-aristocracy, agenda, at the expense of truth, and at the expense of the public, and even at the expense of democracy itself.

Furthermore: throughout the millennia, aristocracies have been applying the divide-and-conquer principle to set segments of the public against each other so that blame by the public for society’s problems won’t be targeted against themselves (the aristocrats), who actually control and benefit from the corruption that extracts so much from the public and causes those problems. Thus: Black against White, gay against straight, female against male, Muslim against Christian, and immigrant against native, etc. This divide-and-conquer strategy is peddled by both conservative and liberal aristocrats, and has been for thousands of years. Giraldi’s focusing on that as being instead generated by progressives, is not only false – it is profoundly false. It is a fundamental miscomprehension.

So, the popular confusion between progressivism and liberalism is beneficial to the aristocracy, but harmful to the public.

The end of the Bernie Sanders campaign always had a destination that was not the White House.

I’ll admit that I anticipated it playing out in a slightly different manner. The wildcard in all of this was COVID-19, but like all good disaster capitalists, the DNC, with the help of the Obama faction, used it to their advantage. I anticipated a contested convention, maybe a little latte-level rioting…… but even that didn’t come to fruition. Sanders flamed out like a crappy defective Roman candle.

I counted myself as a Sanders supporter, of course that statement is interchangeable with “I decided to be an amateur piñata again since it had only been 4 years since I had the shit beat out of me with a stick by the neoliberal establishment. Mmmmm…….. want me some of that again.”

I assume for many like myself, Sanders was a huge compromise, but one we signed on for anyway.

His stances weren’t really that radical—hell, they would most likely not even raise one hair of an eyebrow in most other western nations. It’s testimony to how far right our government has slid that this guy was bandied about as a commie menace. Like he needed the 1980 US Hockey team to take him down. The reactionary damage from the Republicans has been solidified and was magnified surreptitiously through the Clinton and Obama administrations. Many seem to understand the brazen assault during Republican administrations, but the Democrats were like a thief from your family, living in your own house and by virtue of that, not really suspected readily of doing such things. Now we find ourselves in this craggy-ass rugged individualistic Randian state—all problems are the fault of the individual; society has no obligation to do anything for anyone. Sociopaths and corporations thrive.

Now Sanders definitely had problematic behavior in terms of being a member of Empire Inc. (despite a few good takes) — overall he was a clear part of the imperialist team. He didn’t show signs of any radical beliefs that would truly upset the ongoing death march of capitalism. I believe he was a bit of an FDR in that he might have thrown enough bones to the working class to have staved off unrest. The unmitigated greed necessary to not even allow that much change will surely be looked upon as one of the pivotal moments in American history. It of course begs the question — what would have happened without FDR’s New Deal? Misery for sure (short-term) but would something radical have been propelled forward without it? What would this time look like now if a more overt rebellion had ensued? I always thought it was a given that these measures were good and kind, but now I know the whole system is pure trash and always was — it’s seductive though, when you see people suffer through healthcare disparities and debt, you want them to be helped because you’re not a monster. Sanders was a siren song for immediate relief, or at least the illusion of it. Certainly, it’s a trap a lot of people with empathy fall into. It’s terrifying to consider complete collapse when you know so many will suffer — you don’t know what will emerge on the other side. It could be far worse. By the same token, backing Sanders and other milquetoast types could be like pulling off a band aid for decades and then generations — the pain is always there, but you’re able to continue functioning as a proper member of the state, there for them to feed off of. I don’t pretend to know the right way to proceed, but sometimes I’m weak and want the suffering to be mitigated. That could perhaps be at the expense of a truly needed systemic overhaul that might bring real change. I just don’t know, but that is basically why I supported Sanders. I’m just tossing around ideas, not solutions or decrees.

The sheer lunacy of participating in something so completely and fully rigged isn’t compatible with self-esteem though, and a lot of Bernie supporters, who overall are good and genuine people, merely wanted a better life for everyone. These supporters are feeling humiliated and played. Because they were. And they didn’t deserve it. All they wanted was a fair vote and media that was at least somewhat unbiased. They received neither. I really hoped the DNC wouldn’t take the path of dodgy apps in Iowa and causing by whatever means, the mismatches in exit polling extreme enough to indicate fraud. I was not surprised that they did this, but even I was taken aback by their use of voters as hostages. Encouraging in-person voting during a pandemic is an evil that I didn’t consider they would utilize. What else is in their bag of tricks? Kindergarten poisonings? Jesus DNC — you’re some sick fucks. Tom Perez, what the hell are you?  I’m sure that factored into Sanders dropping out when he did. Continued in-person voting would surely increase, umm……. plague issues. The slight traction he could have continued to have in advancing things like universal healthcare during a pandemic wasn’t even allowed to continue. This is a system that has nothing left to offer but wasted time and money from people who can’t afford either.

One thing perplexing about the current situation is this: Does the DNC really even want to win? Continued, generalized venom abounds in their treatment towards the left and even Sanders exudes petulant bitchiness towards his own previous staffers and surrogates. I’m thinking in particular of his statement in regard to Briahna Joy Gray when asked about her refusal to endorse Biden. He snarkily said “She is my former press secretary—not on the payroll.” One shouldn’t be surprised though, because he did the same treatment to surrogate Zephyr Teachout. She had an op-ed piece awhile back saying that Biden had a corruption problem. Bernie apologized….to Biden.  Bernie is very good at letting down his supporters. He would be the dad you come home to and complain that a bully beat you up. He would listen with attention and care, but then march you over to the bully’s house to apologize for sinking to the bully’s level.

More along the lines of do they really want to win???  The Biden campaign had an unbelievable sticker to pull in the vote, I guess….one that showed “plutocrat” and “socialist” crossed out and replaced with “proud democrat”. The inevitable conclusion is that they don’t want the Bernie supporters who identify with socialism and are fueling up to come off as distasteful to the Independent voters who decide general elections. I’m sure the plutocrats aren’t concerned. They win no matter what. The conclusion I come to is that they are ready to lose, in fact are fine with it, as their class will be protected. Despite the obvious embarrassing optics of a Trump presidency, the meat of it is that these types do well under his policies. It’s seeming to be a lot like theater and being continuously dismissive to the left, to the point of overt hostility will keep voters away from Biden. It’s too much to have been played in a rigged process and then to have literal insult added on. The continued gaslighting coming from a progressive talking-points babbling Obama the last few days is enough to replace all the worlds ipecac syrup. But it won’t make Charlie Brown try again for Lucy’s football. Just once I wish Charlie Brown would have beat the shit out of Lucy for that. That might make Lucy stop. Voting for Biden won’t make them stop.

For a time, it looked like they would push a Mayor Pete on us after New Hampshire. He seemed to have the Obama-esque method of flowery nothing-speak down pat. He also carried with him a virtue signaling token for the liberal voter, the of being gay — like Obama being biracial signaled a progressive notion that had no concrete benefit to anyone, but you could “feel” progressive backing him if you were an older voter — as if you were doing something noble ignoring the fact that he wasn’t lily white. Actual leftists have moved beyond that kind of optics only candidate.  Anyway, Mayor Pete for whatever reason, didn’t take, so they went with the guy who seems completely out of his gourd. During this primary fiasco I had a very off-putting dream/nightmare that I went to see my disturbed mother in the nursing home she resides in. While visiting her, I noticed one of the other residents was Joe Biden. I kept trying to tell people after the visit that he wasn’t a good choice for president as he lives at a nursing home in Oskaloosa, Kansas, but nobody would believe me. I woke up and thought “yeah, that’s about right.” That Cassandra thing all over again. The DNC choosing to elevate a character like Biden looks a lot like not caring if you win or lose. He’s that flawed of a candidate.

I did hope that having Bernie in the mix during the primary would also help others come to the conclusion that they matter — that they don’t deserve crippling debt, but I’m thinking COVID-19 is doing more for the left than any Sanders campaign. Suddenly the people who matter as far as keeping us going are being called heroes. Sure, it’s mostly empty platitudes, but the people doing those jobs know it’s fucking true. The notion that they didn’t deserve a living wage even though they are keeping the rest of us alive and fed now seems a bit more obscene than before.  It’s obvious who matters to society and who is needed. The people with bullshit jobs can sit it out, but they are typically the ones making the largest sums of money. This is evidence that is difficult to overlook. It’s evidence of structural dumb-fuckery that exists for no reason other than to keep a medieval class stratification in place. And the sheer incompetence of our government is in full view as healthcare workers wear garbage bags. In this case the emperor has on no clothes and the rest of us have homemade cloth masks. This is not the stuff of a normal society. Nothing is owed to those who treat us in this manner. This would have been evident with or without some of us taking part in the doomed heartbreak of another Sanders run.

The world is in turmoil and the fakery is known. What a bizarre ride we are all on, but if I ever, ever show signs of getting emotionally invested in any of these staged political theatrics….you know like Bernie 2024…….. forget the piñata pretense and just hit me with the nearest large stick to the point of euthanasia.

counterpunch.org

The decision of Senator Bernie Sanders to withdraw from the Democratic presidential contest is a blow to the prospects of democracy in America.

For several years, but especially since 2016, Sanders has been talking of the need for political revolution, by which he means: (1) revitalize democratic institutions and the economy by taxing the rich and closing the gigantic inequality gap between rich and everybody else, including the poor. He would use the revenue from taxing the billionaires for public works paying living wages and employing millions of Americans to rebuild the country’s crumbling infrastructure and fight climate change; and (2) reorganize and strengthen environmental protection and education, offer health care to all Americans, and see that workers had safety and health.

These reforms would raise the living standards and health of most Americans left behind by the present economy and culture dominated by the military-industrial complex and the billionaires.

Sanders would reduce the enormous Pentagon budget and try to bring the great powers together for a join effort to fight climate change with the resources now being wasted in preparing for war.

To understand Sanders, we need to understand reality in the United States. Why is America in 2020 on the verge of civil war? This is despite its persistent trumpeting special status in world affairs and bragging of exceptionalism. Where is the fault line?

The model of the French Revolution 

One hears the words “political revolution” and, immediately, thinks of battles in the streets for power or changing the government. The model for political change has been the French Revolution of 1789.

Two political and intellectual movements prepared the French Revolution. The first was the study of the Greek legacy (of science, democracy, art, and literature) in the fifteenth century and after. That rebirth of civilization, Renaissance, triggered an avalanche of desires and knowledge to imitate the Greeks. Philip Melanchthon (1497-1569), a German classicist and lover of Greek civilization, kept saying, “Embrace the Greeks.”

The Enlightenment, an eighteenth century  movement of scholars and journalists, embraced the science and philosophy of Greek civilization. It was the culmination of the Renaissance. The learned men of the Enlightenment had had it with the tyranny of kings, priests, and landlords. They denounced religion as superstition and equated theology to black magic. They crystalized their message of reason, science, and freedom in the Encyclopedia, a massive summary of knowledge published in Paris in seventeen folio volumes from 1751 to 1772.

The editors of this pioneering and magnificent work were the polymaths Jean Le Rond d’ Alembert (1717-1783) and Denis Diderot (1713-1784). The contributors included men of daring and genius like Francois-Marie Arouet (Voltaire) (1694-1778), Charles-Louis de Montesquieu (1689-1755) and  Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778). Freedom of speech and freedom from tyranny were their battle cry.

The French Revolution was an effort of turning the Enlightenment into policy and civilization. It is the mother of all modern liberal revolutions. Equality, fraternity, and liberty were the goals of the French revolutionaries.

After the storming of the Bastille in 1789, the peasants of France rampaged and burned the homes and castles of many landlords to destroy the evidence of their indebtedness to them.

The French Revolution went through moments of exhilaration in the abolition of old tyranny and moments of terror in the abuse of power by some leaders of the revolution.

Is America of 2020 like France of 1789?

Nevertheless, the legacy of the revolution, and the ideas that made it possible, changed the world. People started trusting themselves more, dreaming of better times to come. That dream has made our civilization. And despite the divisive and destructive religious wars of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries  and the violent reaction of kings and nobles against the French Revolution, going back to the old regime has  been impossible.

Of course, 2020 America is not exactly 1789 monarchical France. However, there are disturbing similarities in feudal farming and abhorrent inequalities.

Opening the glittering food cornucopia of rural America reveals oppressive political and environmental conditions. Like in eighteenth-century France, farm land  in America is in the hands of the few. Huge amounts of poisons and heavy machinery have been poisoning and crushing the top soil, making the land a desert. Thousands of farm workers (mostly imported slaves for rent) do the hard work.

In addition, Trump is not that far removed from being a despot of the ancien regime.

It’s incomprehensible that Trump, a man with so many character defects, primarily those of arrogance, crudeness, greed, hubris, deep corruption and ignorance, was “elected” president of the United States.

His malice came out in the open when he denied the existential threat of climate change and issued a series of executive orders gutting the already weak and vulnerable US Environmental Protection Agency and the laws of the country protecting human and environmental health. Then I knew Trump was a tyrant.

Trump surrounded himself and gave cabinet posts to “billionaires,” telling the world America was an oligarchy and plutocracy.

Trump’s deleterious policies have been pleasing none but the American party of wealth and power. This is the “conservative” Republican Party, populated by men and women equivalent to the land and ecclesiastical oligarchs French kings kept in the palace of Versailles in Paris in order to control them.

Bernie Sanders’ America

The other American politicians are making up the Democratic Party. They hate Trump and the Republican Party. The tension between these two political groups does not bode well for America. They are bringing the country to the precipice of civil war.

Wealth and income inequality is obscene. About 0.1 percent of American citizens own and rule the country. These super wealthy Americans (billionaires) purchase the major television, newspaper, and radio media and  politicians to keep repeating their messages and carry out their policies.

Sanders has been correct in denouncing the billionaire class.

Class divisions are getting sharp and hostile between the overwhelmingly white Republican politicians funded by billionaires and Democrat politicians representing the shrinking white middle class and the white, black, and Hispanic poor.

Sanders votes with the Democrats, but he is Independent. He keeps repeating that Trump is a pathological liar who has to be defeated at all costs this coming November. More than any other Democratic politician, Sanders has had the courage to denounce the billionaires for the injustice they impose on vast number of Americans: millions of them living from paycheck to paycheck, more millions still having no medical insurance, and an unknown number (probably hundreds of thousands) of people are homeless.

Sanders speaks of justice, equality, fairness and freedom. His vision of America is one of universal opportunity for a better life for all Americans, including those who have entered the United States illegally.

On April 9, 2020, from his home in Vermont, Sanders addressed his followers and explained why he suspended his campaign:

“Together, we have transformed American consciousness as to what kind of nation we can become, and have taken this country a major step forward in the never-ending struggle for economic justice, social justice, racial justice and environmental justice.…

“If we don’t believe that we are entitled to healthcare as a human right, we will never achieve universal healthcare. If we don’t believe that we are entitled to decent wages and working conditions, millions of us will continue to live in poverty. If we don’t believe that we are entitled to all of the education we require to fulfill our dreams, many of us will leave schools saddled with huge debt or never get the education we need. If we don’t believe that we are entitled to live in a world that has a clean environment and is not ravaged by climate change, we will continue to see more drought, floods, rising sea levels, an increasingly uninhabitable planet. If we don’t believe that we are entitled to live in a world of justice, democracy and fairness… we will continue to have massive income and wealth inequality, prejudice and hatred, mass incarceration, terrified immigrants, and hundreds of thousands of Americans sleeping out on the streets in the richest country on Earth.

“This current horrific [corona virus] crisis that we are now in has exposed for all to see how absurd our current employer-based health insurance system is. The current economic downturn we are experiencing has not only led to a massive loss of jobs but has also resulted in millions of Americans losing their health insurance. While Americans have been told over and over again how wonderful our employer-based private insurance system is, those claims sound very hollow today as a growing number of unemployed workers struggle with how they can afford to go to the doctor or not go bankrupt with a huge hospital bill. We have always believed that healthcare must be considered as a human right, not an employee benefit.”

This agenda of Sanders goes back to President Roosevelt’s late 1930s-early 1940s New Deal, but, in essence, it is an Enlightenment agenda with enormous potential to set America back to the path of civilization.

Yet, in contrast to the period of the Enlightenment, there are no philosophes or Encyclopedia to fight the greed of Darwinian economics and barbarian inequality while, for the first time in history, America and the world are under the threat of catastrophic climate change.

This suicidal impulse finds inspiration in superstitious religion and the propaganda of the billionaires and their media and academic mouthpieces. It’s as if the country and its elites are frozen in a prayer to the mammon.

Second, with Sanders out in the cold, who is going to struggle for social and environmental ethics and protection? Who is going to insist on global nuclear weapons disarmament, no more pesticides, and family farming?

All eyes are now turning to the former vice president Joe Biden.

Sanders likes Joe Biden. He says he is an honest man whom he trusts. Sanders wants to believe his proposals have entered the mind and agenda of Joe Biden. He said he is certain that Biden will cancel student debt, make public universities free, and he will reduce the age to sixty for joining Medicare.

It’s possible Biden is learning from Sanders. Perhaps, Biden is discovering himself outside the Obama influence. He might keep Sanders as his close personal advisor. And I would hope the emergency of the current plague has shattered any doubts one might have about the vision of Trump and his Republican conservative supporters.

Trump and Republicans remain apart from America. They are taking advantage of the two trillion dollars plague money, seeing that most of it ends in their coffers. They are building their personal wealth, while arming to defend a different country.

Defeating Trump in the November election would empower Biden to turn the country’s and the world’s attention to fighting climate change. In addition, defeating the conservatives and Trump might save the country from a potential bloody civil war.

counterpunch.org

W. JAMES ANTLE III

In his Pat Buchanan memoir The Crusader, journalist Timothy Stanley recalled the final moments of the eventual TAC founding editor’s 1996 presidential campaign. On the eve of the Republican National Convention in San Diego, the Buchanan brigades had spent four years following him into battle against the GOP establishment and were loaded for bear. They had come to hear their man speak at one last rally.

“The mood was ugly. It was a hot, dry afternoon and the rumor was that Buchanan was going to endorse Dole,” Stanley wrote. “After four years of fighting, after coming so close to toppling the kings in their castles, the peasants weren’t ready to accept that.” Pat took the stage and began to speak. “It seemed they would have done anything they asked at that moment,” Stanley continued. “If he had told them to, they would have stormed the convention and taken Bob Dole hostage.”

Instead Buchanan told them to forgo third-party options and vote for Dole, predicting the GOP would one day be a “Buchanan party.” The crowd promptly turned on him.

That is the moment Bernie Sanders finds himself in right now, as he winds down the second of two insurgent presidential campaigns and attempts to rally the Bernie bros (and sisters) behind the uninspiring Joe Biden. Even though in 2020 there are more reasons to believe the Democrats will eventually become the Bernie party than there were in 1996 to think the Republicans would go Buchananite (though the 2016 election of Donald Trump proved Pat was right, as usual), the septuagenarian socialist senator’s supporters will be no more forgiving.

“He hasn’t just run a political campaign; he’s created a movement,” Biden declared of his vanquished rival. In truth, Sanders’ campaign had become less a run for the presidency than an exercise in movement-building by Super Tuesday. Even that was too much for a Democratic establishment whose support is a mile long but an inch deep—they could not let Bernie continue even a futile attempt to accumulate delegates, give young socialists political experience and try to influence the Democratic platform in Milwaukee.

Yet the reason Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez chose Sanders over Elizabeth Warren is precisely because she thought he was better suited to perform that role. “For me, it wasn’t even about helping the senator. It was a moment of clarity for me personally in saying, ‘What role do I want to play?’” she once told NBC. “And I want to be a part of a mass movement.”

As it happened, the movement Sanders started didn’t have enough mass. He made inroads with Latinos but piled up Republican-like vote shares among blacks, especially in the South. His coalition didn’t diversify enough while at least some of his 2016 white working class support was revealed to be anti-Hillary Clinton, just like all the blue-collar whites in West Virginia who voted for Hillary in 2008 were really anti-Barack Obama. The Democratic Party of today looked at its future and recoiled, stampeding toward the exits as soon as Bernie looked like he could snatch the nomination, even if that meant resuscitating Biden’s flatlining candidacy.

We all remember the stories of Barry Goldwater and George McGovern, once landslide losers who would go on to reshape their respective parties. But in recent years, we have seen movements arise from campaigns that didn’t even get particularly close to the nomination. The conservative Christian organizations that took over state Republican organizations in the 1990s sprang from Pat Robertson’s 1988 presidential bid, which peaked with a second-place showing in Iowa. Howard Dean gave life to antiwar progressives representing the “Democratic wing of the Democratic Party,” even though he bombed in the 2004 early states. Ron Paul started the “libertarian moment” with spirited campaigns in 2008 and 2012, despite never improving on his strong third-place performance in Iowa and running second in New Hampshire.

The Paul campaigns were only partly about the young libertarians they inspired to enter politics, though organizations like Young Americans for Liberty remain influential to this day. They also represented politically homeless populists, a bridge between the 1990s paleoconservatism of Buchanan and Trump’s less sophisticated but more electorally potent “America First” nationalism.

Sanders has good reason to hope that the young socialists following him will ultimately grow into the Democratic Party of tomorrow, even if progressives are increasingly animated by race, gender and identity politics rather than economics or class. Even as their candidates prattled about Medicare coverage for illegal immigrants and free abortions for transgender men, rank-and-file Democrats almost across the board rejected performative wokeness. Elizabeth Warren came the closest to exciting this niche and she failed to win her home state.

On the other hand, Tulsi Gabbard hated war, not conservatives, so the erstwhile Bernie backer gained little traction. Her endorsement of Biden puzzled people. Sanders has more clout but his movement could prove to be beyond his command in November. Biden has his work cut out for him if he doesn’t want to be another Dole. And Bernie might hear some boos from his own “revolution.”

theamericanconservative.com

Michael Bloomberg, despite being a massive media player, ran a shockingly boring campaign for the Democratic ticket and now it would seem that the workers who made the cogs in his dismal attempt turn are getting together to file a class-action lawsuit against him. Apparently Bloomberg made the common pledge to support his workers all the way till the end of a “best case scenario” campaign throughout 2020. Essentially win, lose or draw everyone would get paid till the end of the election cycle.

This did not happen, and the former mayor of New York City cut funding for his people the day he cut his campaign short. Impressively Bloomberg was able to spin this defeat as a victory for the greater good of destroying Trump. In his concession speech he said…

“I’ve always believed that defeating Donald Trump starts with uniting behind the candidate with the best shot to do it. After yesterday’s vote, it is clear that candidate is my friend and a great American, Joe Biden,”

Selling the complete and total failure of a campaign from a media billionaire with real political experience as a triumphant step to defeating the great evil of Trump takes a lot of nerve. It also took a lot of nerve for Bloomberg to refuse to pay any health benefits to his campaign workers as a Democrat.

Bloomberg preaches from on high while not paying those at the bottom.

But this betrayal is actually by far not the first time candidates have put the screws to their own campaign workers. Bernie Sanders was unable to pay workers the cherished $15 per hour wage that he feels is almost a human right and has publically spoken for man times. Young volunteers were expecting Sanders-style Socialism but got treated to a big plate full of pragmatic Capitalism instead. Sanders may have officially been offering $15/hour for a 40 hour per work week schedule, but in reality many of this workers were putting in 60 hours a week with no hope of getting any overtime for it. Workers’ rights including things like paid overtime are issues at the core of Sanders’ message, sadly when push comes to shove he is unwilling to make his words match his deeds.

Hillary Clinton during the previous campaign cycle at least had the decency to pay her troops while she may have laundered $84 in illegal campaign contributions. Maybe Sanders should try looking for “alternative sources of funding” as well?

So what’s the big deal? Running a campaign is hard, there is chaos everywhere, the candidates are running all over the country, accidents and missteps are bound to happen right?

Running a presidential campaign is indeed a massive challenge that demands serious organizational skills, but compared to being the President of the United States it’s a walk in the park. Many of the very few people whom we can actually move towards a presidential run are too incompetent or corrupt to even run their campaigns properly.

Bloomberg was too cheap, bitter, distracted to bother fulfilling his promises to his staff that he could easily just write a check for. He could have left the campaign leaving goog feelings and a good reputation but that could have cost a small percent of his yearly earnings so why bother?

Sanders managed to prove his anti-Socialist skeptics right by failing to put into practice even on a miniature scale the policies he wants for all American businesses across a massive nation.

And Clinton, well she does a great job of teaching us how much money you can make even as a destined loser.

There may be a tiny handful of people hiding somewhere across the American landscape who are capable of running a competent campaign and then ascending to the Oval Office. They may be out there but the options we are given to vote for in primaries are just pathetic. When people used to tell children “America’s great anyone can be President” that used to have a positive connotation. Now it seems like anyone no matter how dim their campaign is run could get the nomination given the right connections, cash, and the right look/message.

If someone is completely unable to run a campaign effectively they have no business being President of the United States of America.

If the U.S. can ride through the crisis with a mortality rate of less than 1 percent or so, a strong economic recovery may still happen in the short term: Then President Donald Trump will likely be reelected. That is especially the case if the Democratic candidate, former Vice President Joe Biden maintains his Invisible Man profile of the past few weeks.

Indeed, the Democrats in the United States appear to be totally swamped by a Freudian death wish – entirely understandable and deserved in the party that relentlessly champions unlimited abortion on demand and now even abandoning surviving botched abortions who are deliberately left to die.

Last week, we saw the Democrats in the Senate delay the vital and enormous financial support package unnecessarily for a full five days during which time millions more Americans lost their jobs.

Bernie Sanders shredded what was left of his credibility by demanding his Green New Deal wish list – which is childish absurd economics and climate science combined – to be imposed when the Republicans – actually right on this subject – pointed out that the prime focus for American survival – let alone recovery – was containing and exterminating the virus.

Sanders no longer needs the U.S. Mainstream Media or the Democratic Party establishment to discredit himself. He has been doing a vastly superior job of that on his own: And he has only himself to thank for it. The Democrats can still certainly win in November. But it is now certain they cannot win with Bernie Sanders.

Then, 2016 party presidential candidate Hillary Clinton could not restrain herself from tweeting a repulsive message congratulating Trump on making the United States Number One and global leader in COVID-19 deaths.

A charitable explanation was that she was drunk as usual at the time.

Far more likely, however, she was stone cold sober when she tweeted. Psychopaths do have a sense of humor: Their problem is that no one else finds it funny.

However, already the number of plague cases in the United States has surpassed those in China. Predictably, the Usual Suspects in the American media and politics are saying it really is far worse in China and the Chinese are just lying and underreporting their cases.

This of course leaves open the question how much U.S. authorities have or will under-report their cases. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention figures, for example, are routine reported significantly less than Johns Hopkins University Coronavirus Resource Center ones, which appear more reliable in real time.

It is clear that the epidemic is raging wildly out of control in Los Angeles, San Francisco and New York City – Sanctuary Cities all. The Liberal Elites and governments in those cities will take no responsibility for the catastrophe at all: Liberal Elites never do. Right now they are screaming for massive federal aid. No more proud talk for once of defying the democratically elected federal government in the name of protecting illegal immigrants.

But this will pass. Rob Reiner, a competent movie director and repulsive human being is already trying to scapegoat Trump for the entire plague. At least it makes a change from blaming Russia.

Every year, around 50,000 people die of the winter flu, and larger numbers from cancer or heart disease and then there is the U.S. pandemic of death by gun violence. For all these things no one loses any sleep in our Great Republic.

But if the coronavirus death toll tilts well above one percent, let alone up to three or four percent, expect even Joe Biden to beat Trump in November.

It may yet happen that a delayed Democratic convention could nominate a “hero governor” who can be credibly presented as having done a good job handling his state’s pandemic as an alternative presidential candidate.

However, forget the silly talk about Andrew Cuomo: He showed no indication whatsoever that he was at any time able to prevent New York City from becoming the global epicenter of the pandemic.

Also, note the pace of economic recovery after the pandemic. If it is slow, non-existent or too sluggish with a total population traumatized by the extent of the human loss, then even a sleepwalking Joe Biden can beat Donald Trump.

Even if Trump wins in November, there are profound longer term changes coming. The Ronald Reagan pseudo-conservative/neocon/libertarian zeitgeist that has dominated U.S. politics and public thought for the past 40 years will finally crack if the death toll is high.

Libertarianism and the demonization of government was always filled with empty hot air, bluff and fraud anyway. Once lives were seen to be clearly at stake, all the absurd, obsolete quarter of a millennia old destructive fairy tales of Adam Smith and David Ricardo, Patrick Henry and all the foes of federal power in the 1780s and 1790s were certain to be dumped into the trash can of history. They are going to be dead as dodos.

Therefore, if the death toll in the U.S. is relatively high and recovery is sluggish, expect the Democrats back, with out of control inflation and a Wall Street collapse to rapidly follow.

Finally, the precedent of the political reaction to the terrible pandemic of 1918-20 should be factored in as well. Americans flocked to the least energetic, most reassuring most passive candidate available, Senator Warren Harding of Ohio. They rejected the incumbent party of Woodrow Wilson by record-breaking margins.

In November, if the mortality toll of the pandemic is high, expect Trump and Biden to outrace each other in presenting paternal, grandfatherly reassuring images to the public. Populations do not have wild, ambitious dreams of Making America Great Again or of Green New Deals after any pandemic. They just want to heal slowly and mourn their dead.

The deep state tied to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Michael Bloomberg School for Public Health at John Hopkins, CIA and World Economic Forum obviously would like nothing more than use this crisis to impose a world government and finally rid the world of “outdated nation states”. These four organizations co-sponsored the “Global pandemic” exercise called Event 201 on October 19, 2019 to deal with the “hypothetical” global spread of the coronavirus.

Others would prefer nation states take the reins in defense of their own citizens without a world government running the show from above. I think that Bernie Sanders would generally be placed in this category.

One thing is certain: The current American healthcare system and de-industrialized economic sector cannot handle any outbreak and desperately needs to be reformed. Universal healthcare is thus a no-brainer and the current crisis may force that “socialist” reality onto America.

Observing Bernie’s behavior over the past years, I am having a very hard time believing that he has the capacity to really carry out those noble goals he has tirelessly promoted for decades for the simple fact that he suffers from a very serious Hamlet complex.

Let me explain.

Hamlet in Brief

In Shakespeare’s Tragedy of Hamlet, the young prince has good reason to believe that his newly deceased father (the king of Denmark) has been murdered by his Uncle- who also just so happens to have married the Queen (Hamlet’s mother) before his father’s body was cold.  Hanging above the entire play like a sword of Damocles is an invasion planned by Norway, which is preparing to take over the kingdom.

As the play unfolds, the young prince battles with himself. As a man loved by the people with a strong moral instinct and heir to the throne, he has a great power and responsibility to be Denmark’s leader and raise a resistance to the coming onslaught. His elderly uncle will not live much longer and real political power is at his fingertips.

On the other hand, his burning passion to revenge his murdered father is all-consuming and blinds him to his higher moral duties both to himself and the people.

This schism between two opposing worlds is displayed perfectly in the famous soliloquy where the young prince asks whether he will choose “to be” or “not to be”.

In the end, the young Prince is incapable of breaking from his fears of potency and actually being a historic man. The soliloquy ends with Hamlet saying:

“Thus conscience does make cowards of us all,
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pitch and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry
And lose the name of action.”

The prince gives into his impotent fears and chooses instead “not to be”, giving into his base impulses for revenge which he knows will lead to his own destruction.  After this soliloquy, Hamlet’s fate (and that of Denmark’s) is sealed and the tragedy runs its course.

Bernie’s Hamlet Complex

Unlike most figures campaigning for political office with noble intentions, Bernie has been granted several chances to wrestle with his own fears of success and take a leading role in American politics, but up until now he has chosen “not to be” each time.

The first chance arrived famously in 2016, just as WikiLeaks exposed the sickening reality that the entire deep state apparatus controlling the DNC had conspired blatantly to crush his chances of gaining the party nomination to run in the elections. With the righteous indignation of a disenchanted democratic voter base behind him Bernie knew that he had a peoples’ army on his side, as well as irrefutable evidence of conspiracy to destroy his candidacy in favor of Hillary.

Had Bernie chosen “to be”, then he would have easily swept the elections. But that required intention and courage, two qualities the 2016 Bernie lacked and he demonstrated that by pitifully endorsing the murderous Hillary Clinton.

By some miracle, Bernie again found himself placed in front of another deep state tool four years later as the democratic primaries had narrowed the playing field down to just two individuals: Creepy Joe Biden and Bernie.

Suddenly, as if through divine intervention, Bernie was given a second chance to retake his failed moral test of 2016 and make amends with the conscience that earlier made a total coward of him.

This divine intervention took the form of the Democratic National Committee’s blatant blocking of Tulsi’s right to speak in the March 15 debate with a last minute change in the rules forcing any eligible candidate to have over 20% of the delegate votes.

Here it was.

Bernie had the chance to stand for justice by defending Tulsi’s right to speak and expose the evil agenda of the deep state that had unjustly conspired to destroy his own campaign in 2016. Doing this would have moralized the democratic base profoundly and given the people something to actually believe in. This would have demonstrated that Bernie had the moral capacity to withstand the slings and arrows of the outrageous fortunes of the deep state and carry out the type of reform he had spent a lifetime campaigning for.

But instead, Bernie chose the easy path of not being once again and rendered himself impotent and obsolete by stroking Biden and letting Tulsi hang in the wind.

Perhaps fate will give Bernie yet another chance to redeem himself. Perhaps this path is still available to the old socialist campaigner who might still take a lesson from Trump and go on the offensive against the Deep State. Perhaps this new potent Bernie will take the strength he gains from this crisis and turn the laws of the nation against the Wall Street/City of London shadow government and in defense of the people the way Franklin Roosevelt had done with the crisis of the great depression and rise of fascism in his day.

Or perhaps the old socialist has become too encrusted in the identity of a lifelong “campaigner against injustice” but fearful of actually winning. Perhaps years of studies of Marx’s cynical theory of class struggle have broken the old socialist’s belief in America’s constitutional form of government in ways too grave to heal. Of course his stated ideals assert his belief in this republican system but his cynical inner beliefs that presuppose constant revolution and resistance against the bourgeoisie forbid a faith that one man can actually use the system to win real power and defeat the evil he knows exists within America’s structures of power.

One thing is certain: A new collapse is coming on and the coronavirus (whatever its origins) is being used to trigger that collapse. Within the battle that is now emerging between genuinely non-tragic leaders of nation states like Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping and a growing array of others, no Hamlet can be expected to steer America through the oncoming storm and into safety.

Appendix:

Hamlet

Act 3, Scene 1 Soliloquy
To be, or not to be, that is the question:
Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles
And by opposing end them. To die—to sleep,
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to: ’tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish’d. To die, to sleep;
To sleep, perchance to dream—ay, there’s the rub:
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come,
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause—there’s the respect
That makes calamity of so long life.
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
Th’oppressor’s wrong, the proud man’s contumely,
The pangs of dispriz’d love, the law’s delay,
The insolence of office, and the spurns
That patient merit of th’unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? Who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscovere’d country, from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will,
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all,
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pitch and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry
And lose the name of action.

The author can be reached at matt.ehret@tutamail.com

Now, history has repeated itself.

Four years ago, the evidence was clear that the Democratic National Committee and other Hillary Clinton minions were shamelessly stealing the crucial primary results from Bernie Sanders. At least three quarters of a million people who voted or wanted to vote for him were excluded from the New York State primary alone.

The shameful U.S. Mainstream Medium (MSM) never looked into these realities for a second. On the contrary, they rigorously suppressed the slightest mention of them.

Sanders’ campaign activists understood this. It was well known within the campaign up and down the East Coast. But Sanders stayed silent. He was so horrified enough by the bogeyman of Donald Trump winning the presidency that he was ready to compromise every instinct of courage, judgment and fair play to back down in the end to Hillary Clinton instead.

It is perfectly true the entire Democratic Party establishment was determined to block Bernie Sanders this time too. But he grossly misjudged the breadth and potency of his base and made no serious strategy to expand it.

2016 was – should have been – Sanders’ year. But after a lifetime on the fringe of U.S. politics he forgot the basic rule of success for politicians everywhere: Recognize your time.

For there is indeed a tide in the affairs of men (and women), as Shakespeare says through his character Brutus in “Julius Caesar,” which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune. But Sanders didn’t take that tide.

And four years later, when he tried again – It wasn’t the same.

Sanders had forgotten the warning if the great Greek philosopher Heracletus, “A man cannot cross the same river twice, for it isn’t the same river: And he isn’t the same man.”

The young U.S. voters of 2020 didn’t flood in the same numbers to Sanders as they had in 2016. They had defied the Mainstream Media and the Democratic Party establishment in huge numbers then, why not now?

As former Vice President Joe Biden – who was supposed to be a stumbling shtub but wasn’t in their showdown one-on-one debate, “The momentum isn’t with you – It’s with me.”

And this was true.

Only five days earlier, Biden had won – decisively – 10 out of 14 primaries among Democratic voters. Two days after the debate he won another three important primary elections – in Arizona, Illinois and Florida. They were the death blows to Sanders’ campaign and his credibility as a national candidate.

Where were all the Sanders voters of 2016?

Many of them simply refused to vote for him a second time.

He had folded in the clinch. He had failed to stand up for his cause in 2016. Once bitten twice shy. Too many of his young American supporters had learned that Bernie really was a phony when it came to the crunch.

There was and is a lot to admire in Bernie Sanders: I, like so many, did not foresee his dramatic intellectual and leadership collapse in the face of old Joe Biden over the past few weeks.

But I have covered Biden at the national level for 12 years and I had learned enough never to count out tough, personally decent old Smokin’ Joe.

I did not share the sneering underestimation of him shared across the entire Republican Right, the Progressive Center and Soft Left, and the Mainstream Media.

I had personally watched Biden eviscerate two supposedly brilliant rising Republican superstars – Alaska Governor Sarah Palin and future House Speaker Paul Ryan – in the vice-presidential debates of 2008 and 2012. In both cases he won so thoroughly and dramatically that he shredded their credibility as national candidates forever.

Biden certainly lied or fudged outright several times in his debate with Sanders on Sunday night. But Sanders did as well. That is what politicians too. However, Sanders never grasped the most fundamental rule of televised national political debates in America: It is never about what you say: It is always about how you look – especially when you are not saying anything.

I watched that debate from beginning to end. Biden only made one of his notorious slips of the tongue once in two hours then quickly corrected himself. It wasn’t significant. Throughout, he appeared commanding, relaxed, in control, confident.

Whenever the unforgiving, ever-alert cameras focused in on him during Sanders’ answers, Biden looked amused, dismissive, but always on top of everything.

Sanders, by contrast ranted and raved in his answers. He repeatedly lost the focus in his response. The old Jewish ideologue from Brooklyn lacked the practical cool head for political debate and grand strategy that the supposedly senile, vastly more experienced, cunning old Irishman from hard-scrabble Scranton, Pennsylvania never lost.

The Narrative or theme for the Biden-Sanders debate was clear: Could Sanders demolish Biden and expose him as a senile, tongue-tied old fool? When Biden is relaxed and free associating in public, he often gives that impression. He was already that way 30 years ago.

But when Biden is allowed to engage in one-on-one debate, he is focused, relentless and deadly. And that was the Biden who showed up on debate night. Sanders never laid a glove on him, although he tried hard.

Sanders is a superb debater too. But he relies too much on a loud, commanding voice. That cones across as bullying. It backfires disastrously when he is up against a strong debater who has the chance to refute his many personal attacks.

Despite growing concerns in the U.S. media about Biden’s alleged memory lapses and supposed confusion, he was confident and fluent throughout except for one minor stumble, which he immediately caught and corrected. When it came to relations with Russia, Sanders showed no courage and vision at all: He was as reflexively hostile, ignorant and superficial as Biden.

Biden focused on an immediate much larger response to the coronavirus threat which both men agreed was an unprecedented national crisis.” People are looking for results, not a revolution,” he said.

However, Sanders returned to his favorite theme of demanding a full-scale reorganization of the U.S. health care system during the emergency while Biden insisted that the virus crisis had to be focused on instead.

Sanders’ call really wasn’t what the American public wanted to hear. They wanted a Democratic candidate focused on the here and now. Sanders’ vision, far from attracting the American public, alienated them. He had only himself to blame for that.

The choice for the American people in November is now clear: Joe Biden will be the Democratic presidential candidate. The only hope for any change at all and any remote hope of reining in and controlling the permanent war state will remain with President Donald Trump.