GOP Confab: Tony Soprano Complains About "The Mob"

The  oligarchic bickering within the suffocating confines of our two-party system has reached full throttle this week with the Republican side's version of reality.

  Who even needs a party platform, when the GOP train already left the station quite a while ago? But if you act now, perhaps you too can catch up and score a one-way ticket to hell on the Donald Trump special.

But first, you have to dodge all the "socialist mobs" that are fleeing the crime-ridden cities to attack white people in the pristine suburbs. And stay patriotically paranoid at all times, because Joe and Kamala are popping up at every curve, blocking the tracks with their hammers and sickles and threatening to derail the freedom train with all that Marxism. (If only!)

To help set the mood and the desired tone, the notorious St. Louis couple arrested for aiming their guns at peaceful Black Lives Matter protesters earlier this summer showed up in the first class dining car to warn passengers that Joe Biden's party wants to "abolish the suburbs" and allow low-income apartments to replace big single family homes. (again - if only!) 

"Make no mistake," recited Patricia McCloskey. "No matter where you live, your family will not be safe in the radical Democrats' America!"

"If you don't stand up for yourself, the Mob will try to destroy you!" subtly chimed in her aggrieved multimillionaire husband Mark.

You really do have to hand it to the Trump Crime Family, who have the chutzpah to cast themselves and their supporters and sycophants as the victims of mob (read: Black. progressive) oppression. The real oligarchic mob bosses, the real usurpers of democracy, will say whatever it takes to transform themselves into the Usurped. As the late Christopher Hitchens once said about the Clinton wing of the Democratic Party, Donald Trump's whole shtick is similarly all about "co-opting populism in the service of elitism."

So. semi-adept conductors that they are. the Trumpies have  thoughtfully staffed their virtual Dog-Whistlestop campaign train with dozens of token Black Pullman porters - even one renegade Black congressman, Democrat Tim Scott - as supposed proof that Donald Trump is not the hardcore racist that those damned Wall Street socialist elitists are always making him out to be. If you hop aboard his train, he'll punch your ticket so many times that you'll barely feel him punching you right in the face.

Despite trying to beat the Dems at their own shallow diversity/identity politics game, however, Trump still hasn't quite mastered the art of pandering and co-opting the pain of others with the finesse necessary to pull it off. He simply cannot resist making himself the centerpiece of every hard luck story. Each of the designated sufferers who appeared on opening night to tell their sad stories were also required to proclaim themselves saved by Trump and by Trump alone.  One cancer patient as much as suggested that Trump had single-handedly cured her disease by fast-tracking an experimental drug.

 This is a huge step up from Biden trying to beat the Republicans at their own cruel right-wing game by throwing cold water all over a dying Medicare For All advocate with a feeble "I get it, man" as he vowed to veto any future single payer healthcare legislation. 

Trump doesn't merely play a quack doctor on TV. As another regular person convention speaker testified, Trump has nobly abandoned his previous carefree billionaire lifestyle in order to sacrifice himself for the country.(doing, I suppose, the unaccustomed hard work of personally looting the public treasury on his own behalf rather than relying on lawyers and bribed politicians.)

 This buffoonery was designed to be in such stark contrast to last week's very serious Democratic convention, where Joe Biden marketed the notion that his personal warmth and "decency" and shared national grief over the death of his son should erase any desire or need that voters might have for health care and other frivolous things

So it's a real quandary. Do we cast our lot with the death by a thousand cuts/ benign neglect, liberal interventionist imperialism, and syrupy platitudes of the Democrats, or do we join the screaming brutal descent into fascist hell with Donald Trump?

Neither of the above, you say? Well, it turns out that there might be a third choice after all, an option which, for some strange reason, the corporate media are not bothering to tell you about. 

There's going to be a separate People's Party Convention, to be held online this coming weekend, And everybody is invited.

Now, before you scream the word "spoiler" at me, please rest assured that this convention is not (yet) an actual third party with a place on the ballot. For now, it's all in the planning stages to explore how we can finally wean ourselves away from the toxic teat of the corporate duopoly. 

Call it a pipe dream if you like, but even failing at this goal is certainly better than never having tried at all.