Tuesday, April 4, 2023

The Myth of the Decent President

It's OK to be disgusted by the Democratic Party. It's also OK to be mad at "It's OK To Be Angry About Capitalism," the just-published book by Bernie Sanders.

Even though Bernie is more than adept at writing an impassioned stemwinder of a screed, railing against the evils of corporate greed and bemoaning the outsized influence that oligarchs now wield in the erstwhile party of working and poor people, he not only largely gives individual Democrats a pass, he mostly avoids even mentioning their names. Sanders euphemizes Barack Obama, for instance, as the "Status Quo" which in a purely passive voice convinced centrist Democrats like Pete Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar to leave the 2020 primary race (while Sanders was still leading in the polls) and close ranks around Joe Biden.... Bernie's "very good friend."

So it's the title of Sanders's book that is so misleading, not to mention his introductory claim that the older he gets, the more radical he gets. But radically what, you may well ask yourself as you turn the pages. It's like reading a bowdlerized, Censorship-Industrial Complex version of The Communist Manifesto, in which Karl Marx divides his time and his chapters between urging the workers of the world to unite, and canoodling in the House of Lords, where he is ever so grateful to be barely tolerated by the In-Crowd.

You can't call for a socialist revolution and celebrate the politicians who serve capitalists at the same time and in the same breath. You just can't.  When Bernie demands of Democrats to decide "which side are you on?" he can't even seem to answer his own question.

 Sanders confesses that Biden was only able to beat Donald Trump in 2020  because Bernie himself had convinced enough of his disaffected supporters that Uncle Joe would be the reincarnation of FDR, if they would only show up to vote for him. After all, Bernie had already strong-armed Uncle Joe into making such grudging concessions as lowering the Medicare eligibility age to 60, outlawing private, for-profit prisons and immigrant detention centers, and creating a government-run public health care insurance option.

Granted, the ink on the new Sanders tome was barely dry when Biden made his utterly predictable return to his right-wing roots this year with the installation of a private equity mogul as his chief of staff, aided and abetted by a duo of husband-wife corporate lobbyists. And not only is Biden continuing Donald Trump's harsh immigration policies, his creation of a climate change task force to placate progressives during his campaign has now morphed into allowing oil company drilling on federal Alaska land and in the Gulf of Mexico. And as far as FDR's safety net is concerned, Biden and his party have been absolutely mute as tens of millions of people are losing their Medicaid coverage and having their food stamp stipends drastically reduced. This is because politicians in both parties have made a conscious choice to ignore a still-raging pandemic.

These realities make reading Bernie's book, with its frequent praise of Biden as a "decent man" all the more poignant, if not downright cringeworthy.

This long-running media myth of Joe Biden's alleged innate decency making up for his "gaffes" and hypocrisy and corruption is getting more bizarre by the day, in fact - especially given the president's rank bellicosity as regards both the proxy war with Russia and his undisguised belligerence toward China.

Come to think of it, America's warmongers have usually been "decent" men, faithful to their wives and devoted to their families and pets and polite to their colleagues as they've gone about the business of displacing, maiming and killing people all over the world with their invasions, their bullets, their bombs, and their economic sanctions. It's no surprise, therefore, that other than blasting America's obscene military budget to make the point that this money could be better used for the health care of our own citizens, Bernie Sanders does not engage in any antiwar rhetoric in his book. The proxy war in Ukraine? What's that?

The biggest enemy in the book is, of course, Donald Trump.

 Trump is not a decent man. He is a slap in the face to all that is proper and moralistic among his fellow thieves and plutocrats. Why else would the Democratic machine and its prosecutors choose to indict him for a payoff to a porn star rather than, say, for inciting a riot in the Capitol and openly trying to bribe and extort various officials into overturning the 2020 election?

"It;s OK To Be Angry About Capitalism" zigzags uncomfortably and discordantly between the fight for social and economic justice and an obsequious homage to the very figures in the American political system who have thwarted social and economic justice for decades. For example:

"Yet while Joe was a good deal more conservative than I was on domestic and foreign policy issues, I liked him personally. He was a decent man, down-to-earth, family-oriented, warm and good humored. He talked a lot about his working class roots, which I appreciated, as I did his enthusiasm for organized labor."

Yes, Biden would soon prove to be so enthusiastic about organized labor that he enforced a strikebreaking contract for railroad workers that denied them their own decent life with enough time off to be even minimally devoted to their own families.

Nevertheless, Bernie persists:

When Joe served as President Barack Obama's vice president, he invited me several times to the Naval Observatory, the vice presidential residence in Washington. He took an interest in my 2016 presidential campaign and while he remained neutral in the competition between Hillary Clinton and myself, he was not shy about offering insights and advice. That drew us closer, as did the fact that my wife, Jane, and Joe's wife Jill developed a friendship as Senate spouses."

Why am I getting a flashback of Sally Field's "you like me, you really like me!" Oscar acceptance speech?

Sanders goes on to fondly reminisce about soaking up all the Biden flattery when Bernie livestreamed his official endorsement of Uncle Joe.

Joe accepted the endorsement warmly, saying "You don't get enough credit, Bernie, for being the voice that forces us to take a hard look in the mirror and ask ourselves if we've done enough. And we haven't... I'm going to need you, not just to win the campaign, but to govern." 

Sanders proclaimed himself satisfied that Biden then appointed various task forces to explore his progressive agenda. Medicare For All was off the table. So was full student debt forgiveness. Baby steps are better than Trump, though. 

Fast forward a couple of years, and Biden has installed a former Bain Capital vulture to rule the West Wing. He took a hard look in the mirror and apparently decided he hasn't done enough to immiserate already desperate people, those people who are not members in good standing of the Democratic voting base - that is, the top 20 percent of income earners.

If Bernie Sanders ever retires from the Senate, perhaps he can write a sequel called Fooled Me Once, Fooled Me Twice. Maybe he can even pick a side.

8 comments:

  1. Bernie fooled me once. Never again. Thank you for so clearly describing the "real" Bernie. I don't need to read his book.

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  2. How about a biography of Bernie Sanders titled 'The Myth of the Decent Congressman Claiming to be Independent', subtitled 'Sheepdogging for Democrats'.

    But hey, it's OK to be angry at phony politicians.

    I'm not buying BS's bs anymore. Even Trump is more believable.

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  3. Ralph Nader: Trump Arrest Was “Massively Overdue” After Turning White House into a “Daily Crime Scene”
    https://www.democracynow.org/2023/4/5/ralph_nader_trump_criminal_charges
    April 5, 2023
    ... It’s important to say also that all presidents violate laws. He’s just taken it to a new and diverse height. But he’s doing it so brazenly that if he gets away with it, he will continue to contribute to the institutionalization of lawlessness by presidents of the United States. Let’s face it, both Bush, Obama and Trump have violated all kinds of laws in extending the empire. Obama, for example, decreed, informally, that he could pick out anybody in the world and, as prosecutor, judge, jury, executioner, and in secret, wipe that person out. And he did it. Of course, Bush was the big war criminal, with Cheney, invading Iraq. But then Obama took out the regime in Libya without a congressional debate, without a congressional authorization, appropriation of funds or declaration of war. And that’s, to this day, producing chaos and violence, goaded by Secretary of State Clinton, who pushed Obama to do this, and he later admitted it was the biggest mistake of his administration. ...

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  4. I like Bernie. He is the most progressive voice in the Senate. However, anyone that chooses to work "within the system" is going to disappoint. The system is rigged and is designed to compromise anyone and everything that gets sucked into it.

    In terms of tactics, the electoral system will never bring the changes needed for economic equality, justice and so many other issues. But they can be a platform to educate and organize people to some degree. Just be careful. Don't get sucked in.

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  5. voice-in-wildernessApril 6, 2023 at 8:26 AM

    So where do we turn for our political leadership? The only way I can see a turn-around for average citizens to change things, is via unions. But the trend is the wrong way and rebuilding union membership would take decades what we don't have. Every time I think about the future, it looks like we are doomed, that the question is the form that will take.

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  6. RFK Jr is running. Will Bernie endorse him or stick with Biden?

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  7. ‘Every time I think about the future, it looks like we are doomed…”

    QED.

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  8. Rumble with Michael Moore —
    Episode 286: Is it possible that every Republican President since Ike has had treason in their heart?
    https://rumble.media/episode/is-it-possible-that-every-republican-president-since-ike-has-had-treason-in-their-heart/
    March 25, 2023

    A Four-Decade Secret: One Man’s Story of Sabotaging Carter’s Re-election —
    A prominent Texas politician said he unwittingly took part in a 1980 tour of the Middle East with a clandestine agenda.
    https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/18/us/politics/jimmy-carter-october-surprise-iran-hostages.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare
    March 18, 2023 ~ by Peter Baker

    A Short History of Everyone Who Confirmed Reagan’s October Surprise Before the New York Times —
    A lot of people beyond Ben Barnes have said that Reagan’s 1980 election campaign conspired to keep American hostages in Iran.
    https://theintercept.com/2023/03/24/october-surprise-ben-barnes/
    March 24, 2023 ~ by Jon Schwarz

    Iran Hostages, Carter, Reagan, and Bush: What the NY Times Missed —
    https://whowhatwhy.org/politics/elections/iran-hostages-carter-reagan-and-bush-what-the-ny-times-missed/
    03/27/2023 ~ by Russ Baker

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