Monday, April 13, 2020

Pandemic Trumpery

Democratic leaders are in a real quandary. As much as they'd love to give more aid, sustenance and comfort to ordinary Americans suffering so horribly through this pandemic, doing so would only prop up "Trump's economy" and boost his re-election chances. People having more cash in their pockets and food in their bellies would only end up thanking Donald Trump for the relief. And that will never do, Because beating Trump in November is more important to the feckless Democrats than making people's lives better in the here and now. 

As Michael Grunwald chillingly writes in Politico, since putting compassion over winning back power would be "politically clueless," House Democrats are loath to use the enormous leverage they now possess to ram through such measures as emergency single payer health legislation, a guaranteed income package and forgiveness of debt.

Why? Because Trump wants these things too. Not because he's even remotely humanistic, of course, but because he wants a second term, even if it means having to relinquish his own clueless "all Democrats are socialists" manufactured hysteria for the duration of the crisis.

Therefore, the Democrats are effectively claiming that they now have no other choice but  to "resist" Trump from the right wing of the political duopoly.  

Grunwald writes:
For example, they want to pump money into underfunded state agencies overwhelmed by unemployment claims, which makes sense on compassion and policy grounds—but that would also be a political bailout for Republican governors like Florida’s Ron DeSantis. And while Schumer’s call for a “heroes fund” to increase the pay of essential workers during the crisis is a worthy idea, it’s not hard to imagine the heroes being grateful to Trump for the extra cash.
The art of negotiation is about using your leverage to get things that your counterpart doesn’t really want to give you, and Democratic leaders don’t really seem to want to do that.
If millions of people have to needlessly suffer and even die and become martyrs for the Democratic Party cause of retaining Nancy Pelosi as House Speaker and installing Joe Biden in the White House, then that is the price we have to pay. This is not only a matter of Greater Vs. Lesser Evil, it is a matter of Feckless vs. Feckless. Which of our two corrupt parties can win the contest of loathsomeness?

Simone Weil, my favorite French philosopher, was right. The only and ultimate purpose of any political party is to win power and then to hold on to power. Never has her assertion been more glaringly proven than during the ongoing pandemic catastrophe.

Since winning power entails the generation of "collective passions" in the electorate, it's even harder to fathom why the Democrats have put up a senile groper and accused rapist as their presidential candidate. Does the sight and sound of Joe Biden rambling in his basement bunker generate any passion other than disgust - or at best, sheer boredom? 

Weil writes:
"Political parties are organizations that are publicly and officially designed for the purpose of killing in all souls the sense of truth and of justice. Collective pressure is exerted upon a wide public by the means of propaganda. The avowed purpose of propaganda is not to impart light, but to persuade. Hitler saw very clearly that the aim of propaganda must always be to enslave minds. All political parties make propaganda. A party that would not do so would disappear, since all its competitors practice it... Political parties do profess, it is true, to educate those who come to them: supporters, young people, new members. But this is a lie: it is not an education, it is a conditioning, a preparation for the far more rigorous ideological control imposed by the party upon its members."
So Grunwald's premise that the Democrats are "terrified of being seen as obstructionists" if they dare to play hardball with Republicans is just excusing them and ascribing their inaction to well-intentioned timidity. The truth is that the Uniparty actors are simply playing the parts they've been assigned for the ultimate benefit of their oligarchic donors and for the increasingly hollow cliffhanger entertainment of the rest of us.

Propaganda and platitudes and posturing simply don't have the oomph they used to, especially when the thrust of the elites is on "opening up the economy" while ordinary humans in the millions are bleeding from their open veins.

"How the poor people found the insufficiency of those things, and how many of them were afterwards carried away in the dead-carts and thrown into common graves of every parish with those hellish charms and trumpery hanging about their necks, remains to be spoken of as we go along." -- Daniel Defoe, Journal of the Plague Year.

8 comments:

Mark Thomason said...

Right of course.

But Democrats crossed this bridge a long time ago, when they supported war in Syria and Ukraine just because Trump wanted out.

The whole Putin-gate fiasco was an attempt to eject Trump without actually being Democrats for their own base. They were instead doing outreach to disaffected Republicans. Yet who were the other attempted leaders of those Never Trump Republicans? A nasty lot, all of them.

The very choice by our elite to rally behind Banker Biden was throwing under the bus the Democratic base of progressives and many others.

Notice what happened when #Me-Too looked at Biden -- See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil monkey line ups is what happened. It gives away the same ability to face down Trump as Hillary lost from her victim bashing defense of Bill, and her rally of feminists to do that.

They are doing this, but they are doing this AGAIN, and STILL. It is more of the same mistake they just keep making over and over again.

Valerie Long Tweedie said...

I tried to write this comment a couple of days ago in response to your essay, Bye, Bye Bernie. Yet another excellent analysis, Karen, and Annie, every sentence of your comment resonated with me. I realised when Bernie dropped out, as imperfect as he was, that he represented hope. I actually thought that the one thing that might come out of this horrible pandemic would be that Bernie would actually be given the press he needed to win. The foil between Bernie and Orange Man couldn't be starker. I thought, once and for all that the need for a national health care system and appropriate funding for pandemic research would finally be recognised by everyone.

A double blow to me was the demise of Truthdig. There are only a handful of sites I read including Sardonicky but to lose access to such great journalism and to see the ugly behind the scenes kind of corporate "liberal" who talks the liberal line but wants to treat her employees like dirt and silence criticism of the Democratic party - and then manipulatively pulls the emotive sexual misconduct card was just reprehensible to me. As hard as it much be, Karen, maybe you are better off going it alone and controlling your own content with the integrity your conscience demands.

As for this expose - I couldn't dislike the Democrats more after reading this. When are working class people going to realise that the handful of people in their corner must be supported politically and that these people will not come from the corrupted duopoly? The disgusting lack of choice at the next election fills me with dread.


voice-in-wilderness said...

I'm already imagining what things will be like in our Greatest Depression under Trump.

Since late December I've assumed that Trump will not give up office next November, that he will continue to serve as long as he wants. Who will stop him? Even Krugman and others are now writing about such a possibility.

I also assume that many, many millions will be evicted or foreclosed and become completely dependent on the federal government for shelter and food. I expect there to be large camps for these desperate people, a way to control them and remove them from the cities. What will they do? I'm thinking of the various make-work programs of the Great Depression. Well, we can be sure it won't be conservation work. But this would be a wonderful labor force for building a wall with Mexico. And while we are at it, and with so many bodies and boots, why not build a wall with Canada just in case? And no murals of Colonial America to be painted on Post Office walls, but there could be work for artists who could paint and sculpt Trump as Maximum Leader.

I leave it as an exercise for the interested student to get extra credit by suggesting other likely make-work in a Trump regime!!!!

Jay–Ottawa said...


'Party.' It's a nice word. It can refer to a friendly gathering or a political organization whose goal is to get something good done for one interest of another. But given the definitions and descriptions of Simone Weil and Karen Garcia, and the reports from our own lying eyes, it's time we replace the word 'party' as it relates to government with a term more descriptive of reality.

Once we recognize what political parties are really up to, I suggest that the more apt term, instead of 'party,' be 'gang.'

Henceforth, let us say the 'Democratic Gang' or the 'Republican Gang.' The term 'gang' clarifies the whole business with an high degree of precision, doesn't it. Pelosi, Schumer, Trump, McConnell, Cuomo and the rest are gang leaders, nothing more.

The kindly among you will insist there are honorable people in the parties. Right. How many, say, among the 535? Name them. How long do the just last in office? How much have honest politicians all together done for you and people like you in the last five decades? When was the last time those good guys and good gals prevailed in the big deals?

Can we fairly charge the big city street gangs of LA, Chicago and NYC with more harm than the long-established Gangs of DC? Name a crime: the suits of DC top it in degree and number every day of the year. I suggest we start viewing political parties as gangs and calling them gangs. I suspect that was Simone Weil's message, one that Karen keeps reviving from time to time here at Sardonicky and the commentary of the NYT.

The Joker said...

"US for-profit healthcare sector cuts thousands of jobs as pandemic rages.
Health workers are facing layoffs, furloughs and cuts to salaries and schedules in response to declines in revenue."

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/apr/14/healthcare-job-cuts-coronavirus-worker-layoffs

I'm nearly speechless.
All I can say is:
Capitalists --- "God damn you all to hell!!!"

https://youtu.be/mDLS12_a-fk

The Joker said...

@voice-in-wilderness

"other likely make-work in a Trump regime"?

Analogous to the "narcocorrido" ballads, I predict a whole song genre gloryfying our "maximum leader".

But it won't all be glorification. "Entertainment", in various forms, is the universal distraction, even more so in a totalitarian setting. All the better if it's a blood sport. Looks like they are already ramping up:

"WWE deemed essential service in Florida – alongside hospitals and fire departments.
Professional wrestling had been shut down during pandemic.
WWE began broadcasting live shows from Florida on Monday."

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2020/apr/14/wwe-raw-florida-tv-shows-ron-desantis-wrestling-coronavirus

Mark Thomason said...

Jay-Ottawa -- "Once we recognize what political parties are really up to, I suggest that the more apt term, instead of 'party,' be 'gang.'"

We covered this territory before.

New York and Chicago had political "party" organizations that were re-named as "Machines," all of them Democratic Party machines.

Boss Tweed ran Tammany Hall, the first "Machine," in NYC. The Chicago political machine also had a Boss named.

So now we look to new Democratic Political Machines and need to identify their Boss. It was not the front man of the moment, the front man in "the highest office" but the one who controlled putting him there.

Perhaps now we can look at our current Machine, and seek to name the real Boss. That would require digging into things like the donor machinery, that controls money, and the media machinery that manufactures consent.

So, whether gang or machine, the bigger question is "who is the real Boss."

Erik Roth said...


To address all these concerns, this is well worth your attention:

Noam Chomsky On COVID-19 And His New Book: Internationalism or Extinction --

https://therealnews.com/stories/noam-chomsky-book-covid-19-coronavirus-internationalism-extinction-donald-trump-authoritarianism-neoliberalism-capitalism

April 13, 2020
Noam Chomsky analyzes the coronavirus pandemic in the context of neoliberal capitalism's failures, climate change, potential nuclear disaster, and Donald Trump's authoritarianism.

➤ written transcript & video interview in link …
I like the dog barking in the background near the end, as if to underscore Chomsky's calling for conditions on corporate bailouts.

“Because things are the way they are, things will not stay the way they are.”
~ Bertolt Brecht

All we can do, and must do, is keep on keeping on.
Like the Finns say: SISU!