Sunday, February 9, 2020

First As Tragedy, Then As Chris Matthews

The paranoia of the plutocrats is morphing from farce to insanity at the speed of the Coronavirus. Loath to share their wealth with the rest of us, they are nevertheless magnanimous enough to share with the rest of us their abject terror of the unthinkable prospect of ordinary people having better lives under a Bernie Sanders administration.

"Fear the Bern" is their imaginative theme.

We're supposed to magically forget, of course, that "ordinary people" and "the rest of us" are the exact same entity. The spidery elites are thus cordially inviting us, the Lower Slobbovians of the Bottom 90 Percent, in to their luxury parlors, just long enough to become the victims of a new strain of Stockholm Syndrome. We are asked to transfer their abject fear of the mass of people into an abject fear of our own selves. They euphemize this disease of victims identifying with their oppressors as "party unity."

It's gone beyond the more or less subtle "manufacturing of consent" as explained by Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky. This is the forcing of their raw pathological sewage into the mass communication feeding tube attached to too many of our brains.  After all, since they've already primed us to become true-believing anti-Trump resistance fighters in the service of the FBI, the CIA, Wall Street, Hollywood and the trillion-dollar military monster, they might as well also prime us to ditch the creeping menace of Bernie's FDR-style liberalism and the dangerous hope of better lives for ourselves.

Leading the surge in the media's unabashed psychological warfare campaign against the American voter, MSNBC personality Chris Matthews insinuated that a Bernie Sanders presidency would even usher in mass public executions. Here's his reverse Joe McCarthy somersault with one and a half spittle-inflected twists:




Chris Matthews is, of course, doing nothing less than embracing his own inner Trump, engaging in the fascistic tactic of psychological projection. The socialists were the targets of the HUAC and McCarthyite 50s Cold War domestic purges and persecutions - not its executioners. Former, current and suspected lefties were the victims of a coordinated right-wing bipartisan campaign to destroy labor unions and the social welfare programs of FDR's New Deal. With this diminished Left now threatening to come back to life, Cold War McCarthyism also is coming back to life bigger and better than ever. 

The big tell in Matthews' diatribe is that these supposed socialist executions -  cheered, if not directly ordered, by a President Bernie Robespierre Sanders - would take place in Central Park, the gentrified back-yard of many a luxury penthouse and corporate boardroom. What Chris Matthews and his cohort are really afraid of is not getting literally shot, but of being parted with the tiniest smidgen of their obscene wealth. "Castro and the Reds" is code for the bottom 90 Percent of Lower Slobbovia having the unmitigated gall to demand universal health care, guaranteed affordable housing and a debt-free education.

Ordinary people wanting better lives for themselves and their families, friends, neighbors and co-workers are even described as a "cult" by Matthews' MSNBC colleague,Democratic consultant and Clinton campaign operative James Carville. He raved last week that he is "scared to death" that a Sanders victory would transform the party into a "cult that alienates large swaths of America."

Since teachers top the professions which donate to the Sanders campaign, Carville's description of Bernie supporters as a "cult" is an oblique smear of teachers themselves. It used to be that it was only the Republicans who so vociferously attacked public education.

These liberal paranoid plutocrats can do psychological projection every bit as ruthlessly as the reactionary president whom they only pretend to despise. The truth is that it's the oligarch-owned Democratic Party - not the Sanders campaign - which has worked so hard and so adeptly to alienate such huge swaths of the American electorate that millions of these swaths stayed home rather than submit any longer to the Neoliberal Gospel Cult  - led by the decidedly uncharismatic Hillary Clinton. It was the party leadership under Barack Obama that lost nearly a thousand seats in ten years.

The class war against the bottom 90 percent is being fought by two competing oligarchic political factions: the Republicans (de facto Trumpians) and the Democrats (soon to be renamed the Bloombergians). These factions are utterly united in their desire to defeat Bernie Sanders and to smother the lives and hopes and dreams of the electorate.

Lacking any human decency or morality or any intellectual heft to speak of, the elites' desperate bipartisan tactic is the manufacture of consent via the manufacture of fear. It's the creation and enhancement of hatred between and among the increasingly desperate factions of the working class and the outright down-and-outs. 

Fear and hate are the traditional weapons that elites have always used to keep the "swaths" of humanity under control. You really have to hand it to Donald Trump, though. He has successfully lowered the bar on how these twin assault weapons are utilized to Limbo stick proportions. The weaponized propaganda no longer needs to be well-polished. They simply fire wildly in all directions in hopes that at least some of their dummy bullets maintain enough smart black-ops magic to keep us under their spell.

Since that seems to be happening with less and less frequency, the special media psy-ops teams are going totally bonkers. They're flailing with their fists and their inchoate verbal spittle is reducing their manufactured narrative into one great big sodden mess.

The only thing we have to fear is the prospect of even a few of our fellow citizens taking these farcical experts even remotely seriously.



James Carville: Beatings Will Continue, So Join Us!

8 comments:

  1. Just watched Mathews implode in that clip. Wow. I don't watch these shows so I don't get exposed to it much but it is sickening to watch as the fear of finally getting knocked off his elite platform literally drips from his lips. Let us remember that Robert Kennedy was a top aide to Joe McCarthy and he and his brother John were rabid cold warriors. Chris Mathews no doubt shares their commitment to the capitalism system that made them ultra wealthy and shares their ideological rejection of a more equitable use of the national treasure.

    Karen has once again summed it all up with a remarkably righteous post.

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  2. They're not worried about Bernie as much as they're scared of us. The only threat is if Bernie doesn't deliver his 'cult' to the nominee not named Sanders.

    That's why we hear Hillary still berating Sheepdog Bernie for not enthusiastically corraling every single one of us into her camp last time. That's also why Bernie repeatedly offers unsolicited assurances that he will support the nominee, no matter who, implying that we should do the same.

    The attacks on us are also meant to pressure Bernie into disciplining us to get in line and disavow us if we don't. Hillary is disturbed (indeed) because the 2020 Bernie Boot Camp looks deficient.

    Even if Bernie realizes that the fix is in for Bloomberg, he also realizes that the game requires him to build up troop strength to try to convert into concessions later from the nominee. Since Bernie's treading lightly and won't mention Bloomberg by name, I suspect it's because he's not trying to win the nomination as much winning maximum votes as leverage. Obviously he can't reveal the game or the fix to his cult or we might lose faith and not vote, or he might lose donations.

    When a billionaire oligarch throws money at the DNC, superdelegate Mayors and Governors, and the media to buy the nomination and the Presidency, there aren't a lot of options. But the nominee needs votes, and those will be Bernie's most valuable currency later, for what it's worth. Concessions are always things that won't cost the ruling class anything, like more cheap immigrant labor - legal.

    When Bernie warns "We can't let 'Pete's billionaires' buy the nomination", I don't hear him worrying about billionaires or he'd mention the $62 billion oligarch in the living room. I hear him worrying about losing currency to Pete that he could spend later at Bloomberg's.

    Bernie knows the game and the score.

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  3. Through the 1992 campaign Bush Pére presided over a limping economy. Lest any Clinton campaign worker forget, Carville pasted this sign on the wall: "The Economy, Stupid."

    It's 2020. The stock market's up for the rich, and unemployment's down for the rabble. America is great again. Everybody's happy except Miss Manners. Thank you, JC, but Trump's doing just fine with the economy.

    Inside Democratic ranks Bernie Sanders persists in sticking to money issues and, while no red-handed Robespierre himself, calls for a revolution––just so long as it's velvety and Democrat Blue.

    For those who care to look, millions of commoners are indeed restless and not that attached to velvet blue. This must explain the recent switch by Carville and friends to: It's the Proletarian Cult, Stupid.

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  4. I laughed out loud when I read the headline, which prompted my wife to ask me what I was laughing about.

    Even Centrist Democrat Mrs. chuck agrees that Tweety needs to retire.

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  5. To date in the Democratic primaries most of us have been focused on the wrong characters. Sanders, Biden, Warren, Buttigieg, Klobuchar, Gabbard and the rest lack the right stuff to run for the presidency in 2020. They will fade like crocuses in May. The right stuff is money, and the latest entrant has billions to outclass those lesser candidates' mere millions.

    Read Nathan Robinson's long piece on Michael Bloomberg. Whatever Bloomy wants, Bloomy gets, and he is making serious headway in outbidding every other candidate for the Democratic nomination. He knows how to target his money to receive support and endorsements that count. For instance, with each dollar he bestows upon the DNC, the DNC changes rules to help him gather his pile of delegates and superdelegates.
    https://www.currentaffairs.org/2020/02/a-republican-plutocrat-tries-to-buy-the-democratic-nomination

    As mayor of NYC for twelve years, he afflicted the afflicted and comforted the comfortable. We can expect more of the same if he succeeds in outbidding everyone else in buying the White House.

    The enemy for Bloomberg, the DNC, Mathews and Carville is Bernie Sanders. He's the one who worries big money, the elites and their dependents. Donald Trump, an embarrassment to both parties, will easily be displaced by Bloomberg. He is a smoother fit for the capitalist machine and will carry on as before with the starving of the proletariat and the glutting of the greedy. As a consolation, comrades, he's very, very Green.

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  6. "Michael Bloomberg is trying to buy the presidency – that should set off alarms.
    If the choice comes down to tyrant or oligarch, we must choose the latter.
    But our democracy would still be in peril."

    https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/feb/09/michael-bloomberg-donald-trump-presidential-election

    9 Feb 2020 ~ by Robert Reich

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  7. Let's not expect the obvious about Bloomberg to be spoken about openly. It wouldn't be to anyone's benefit other than voters, and they aren't going to want to believe it.

    Candidates especially want to maintain the impression that they have a chance because they need to keep the donations flowing. Media wants as many candidates as possible to keep buying ads and appearing on their programs. Pundits want to keep jabbering and stay in demand. I really feel sorry for the campaign staffs who will keep working their hearts out when it's futile.

    Bloomberg still has only one toe in the water and no primaries have weighed in yet, but Real Clear Politics odds show him behind only Bernie, with Buttigieg next, and he's ahead of both Biden and Warren. Just imagine when Bloomberg gets into the campaign with both feet and even more of his money. It's smart of him to get in the water slowly so as not to make waves or even barely a ripple.

    There's only one thoroughbred in this horse race and he's at the finish line already and we're being prepared to support 'the eventual nominee' just so we can rid of Trump. Anyone remember when Bernie used to say Trump was only the symptom and not the disease which is why we had to change the system? Well now he's saying 'defeating Trump is #1' and pledges his support to the highest bidder to the DNC.

    So who will Bloomberg pick as a running mate? It has to be Pete Buttigieg. He's already Wall Street's darling, he's sympatico with Bloomberg, young, attractive, religious, clean cut, combat veteran, eloquent in glittering generalities, ruthlessly ambitious, and with the professional credentials to impress the ruling class.

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  8. Oh dear, Annie, I fear you're right.
    All I can add, for what it's worth (and I do feel we all need what can be found here) --

    Ronnie Lane & Pete Townsend - Annie
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9w5Vg12N2jg

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