Win One for Mrs. Gipper

There's nothing like the political-media complex invading your water-poisoned city to make your situation feel even more toxic than it already is.

Vanderbilt heir and CNN moderator Anderson Cooper immediately set the tone for last night's Democratic debate:

Before we begin tonight, we want to take a moment to remember former first lady Nancy Reagan. As probably know, she passed away this morning at the age of 94. Her grace and elegance in the White House, her deep love for President Reagan, and her strength and advocacy in the fight against Alzheimer’s and drug abuse will always be remembered. We would like to pause of a moment of silence in honor of Mrs. Reagan.

Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders and an audience full of lead-poisoned Flint residents were then forced to bow their heads in remembrance of the Reagan Revolution against non-rich people. And thus did the ghosts of Ronnie and Nancy waft over the proceedings of an increasingly right-wing Democratic party. It was a sad spectacle of Clintonian bromides, pandering catch-phrases, and slick political deflections. As for Bernie Sanders, would it be cruel of me to posit that it was one missed opportunity after another? There's unfortunately a grain of truth in the corporate media's castigation of him as a "one-note" candidate who blames generic billionaires and generic Wall Street for all that ails us. What about the Clinton Foundation itself?

What establishment pundits won't say is that he should be calling out Hillary Clinton's wars and corruption, and explaining in more detail the entrenched Clintonian neoliberal ideology. He should be explaining how the Clintons have continued right where the Reagans left off. He should have called Hillary a scion of Reagan, if not a Goldwater Girl. He is a little too nice, despite the best efforts of the media to cast him as an arm-waving rudenick.

I'll give you just a couple of examples of lost opportunities from last night's debate. 

First, there was the standard boilerplate exchange over guns. Hillary actually faulted Bernie for the probable failure of a lawsuit being brought by Sandy Hook parents against gun marketers and manufacturers, pointing to his Senate vote against holding sellers accountable for subsequent crimes committed with the weaponry.

CLINTON: The gun manufacturers sell guns to make as much money as they can make.....

CLINTON: I was in the Senate. And they said, “give us absolute immunity.” No other industry in America has absolute immunity...

(CROSSTALK)

CLINTON: ...and they sell products all the time that cause harm...

(APPLAUSE)

SANDERS: So let’s say this. Let’s say this.

CLINTON: ... and they’re held responsible.

COOPER: Senator Sanders.

SANDERS: You know, I think it is a little bit — it is a little bit — look, what happened at Sandy Hook, what happened in Michigan, what has happened far too often all over this country is a terrible, terrible tragedy, and we have got to do everything we can, as I mentioned a moment ago, to end these mass killings.

But, as I understand what your question is — and, you’re not the only person whose heart was broken. I know, I was there in the Senate when we learned about this killing. It is almost unspeakable to talk about some lunatic walking into a — I mean; it is hard to even talk about it.

We all feel that way. But it, as I understand it, Anderson, and maybe I’m wrong, what you’re really talking about is people saying let’s end gun manufacturing in America. That’s the implications of that, and I don’t agree with that.

Wow. The USA is the largest arms manufacturer and weapons dealer on the entire planet. Hillary Clinton, as Secretary of State, personally brokered the sales of billions of dollars in lethal weaponry to the Saudis, who have used them to kill innocent civilians in Yemen and elsewhere. She's sold products that have caused great harm all over the world.

 Sanders also didn't mention revelations published last month in the New York Times that Hillary Clinton not only wrecked Libya, she enabled illegal weapons sales to Syrian rebels by way of Libya. He never mentioned her role in the right- wing coup in Ukraine. He never mentioned how the recipients of her official largesse have funneled countless millions to her family's private charity/slush fund.

He could so very easily have called Hillary out for her chutzpah in criticizing the greed of the gun lobby. He could have pointed out that she and her husband have been longstanding recipients of all kinds of legal immunity. But he preferred not to. All he said was that he doesn't think that we should end gun manufacturing in America.

And now for something completely new and corrupt:

(APPLAUSE) COOPER: Senator Sanders, on the — on the campaign trail, Senator Sanders often refers to a fundraiser in January that was hosted by executives from a firm that has invested significantly in domestic fracking. Do you have any comment on that?

CLINTON: I don’t have any comment. I don’t know that. I don’t believe that there is any reason to be concerned about it. I admire what Senator Sanders has accomplished in his campaign. I have more than 850,000 donors, most of them give less than $100. I am very proud of that.

And I just want to make one point. You know, we have our differences. And we get into vigorous debate about issues, but compare the substance of this debate with what you saw on the Republican stage last week.

This is just one example of how both Sanders and the media allow Hillary Clinton to get away with murder. She contemptuously refuses to comment on her corruption, whether it be donations from polluters or her refusal to release transcripts of her speeches to Wall Street. After she smarmily deflects the question by petting Sanders and reminding us that Republicans are much, much worse, neither Sanders nor Anderson vigorously insist that she actually answer the questions and accusations. That she would prefer not to is honored and respected. When she snidely responded she'd release her speech transcripts if the Republicans do, for instance, Sanders should have accused her of embracing the alleged ethics and playground tactics of the GOP. "I'll show you mine if Donald shows me his" displays nothing but cynicism and contempt for the American voter.

To be fair to Bernie, he did call Hillary out for NAFTA and welfare reform. But he also should have told the viewing audience that Marian Wright Edelman, whom Hillary constantly name-drops as proof of her undying devotion to children, actually cut the Clintons off decades ago when they condemned millions of mothers and children to poverty. He appeals to nationalism when the problem is global. He seems willing to go only so far in his attacks. He is especially loath to attack President Obama, who actually cut funding for lead testing in every year of his tenure, and only partially restored CDC funding for lead amelioration in this year's budget. He didn't mention that Obama himself refused to visit Flint after a recent visit to nearby Detroit, where he chest-thumped about the auto bailouts and mouthed only one tiny sentence about the water crisis. Why doesn't Sanders demand that the president deploy the Army Corps of Engineers to make immediate repairs to the Flint infrastructure? Why wait until a Sanders presidency for an immediate federal response? Delivering water in toxic plastic bottles is no solution. It's only a photo op for pandering politicians and cable outlets.

Needless to say, the corporate press's ridiculous main complaint about Sanders today is that at one point in the debate, he'd rudely asked Clinton to stop rudely interrupting him. There are  reports that the Clintonoids, irked at Bernie's staying power, want to goad him into becoming another Rick Lazio. Lazio was the weak, last-minute GOP opponent replacing a cancer-stricken Rudy Giuliani in her first Senate run; his campaign finally imploded when he "invaded her space" by approaching her podium at one of the debates. She played the victim card then, too... and she won.

The media are also complaining about Bernie's rather muddled answer to a Don Lemon question about racism, in which he seemed to park all black people into ghettos. A Tweet frenzy duly erupted from the faux-outraged media/political class. They really, really can't stand it when he tries enhance their race trope with his own message of an all-encompassing economic inequality. And he acts unreasonably flustered whenever they bring it up.

And thus is the underlying class/plutocratic cause of the Flint water crisis largely ignored in favor of sniping over partisan and identity politics. Both Sanders and Clinton shockingly demurred when asked about bringing criminal charges against the culprits, who hail from both political parties. They want to wait and see how it all plays out. They want Republican Governor Rick Snyder, who ignored the poisoning for well over a year, to simply resign from office. They didn't mention that the mayor of Flint herself is a Democrat. Ditto for the emergency manager, appointed by Snyder, who orchestrated the catastrophe by piping in corrosive water from the filthy Flint River to save money in the name of austerity.

As I have previously pointed out, the catastrophe in Flint can be legally classified as genocide under the standards laid out by the United Nations. A state or a ruler does not have to actually kill people, or even have the intent of killing people, to be guilty of genocide. A pattern of depraved indifference and damage to human life also qualifies as genocide. Henry Giroux rightly calls the Flint crisis an example of domestic terrorism. Flint is just the latest, most blatant example of what happens when democracy dies, and corporations rule.

Let us now bow our heads, contemplate what Reagan wrought, and then get back up and fight. Getting sucked in to endless presidential racehorse elections is anathema to bottom-up democracy... even when you like and support one of the candidates.

Grey Lady Gossip Girls

Everything that is so, so wrong with national political coverage in just four paragraphs: 

Carolyn Ryan, the Times political editor, says that one of the thrills and pleasures of her job is hearing from reporters about what they see on the campaign trail.

The national political reporters Amy Chozick and Patrick Healy have been crisscrossing the country: Ms. Chozick’s reporting focuses on Hillary Rodham Clinton and her candidacy; Mr. Healy has covered the presidential campaign generally. In a lively, dishy conversation between campaign stops, the reporters chat with Ms. Ryan about Mrs. Clinton and her campaign.

 Informal and high-spirited, their conversation includes Mrs. Clinton’s snack of choice (jalapeño peppers, whole), her “badass” State Department look, her confidence level, the comparative political skills of Hillary versus Bill Clinton, and questions about the candidate’s authenticity. (Complete with revelations: “She’s brilliant at selfies.”) 

With a few seconds for bellyaching about bad coffee in certain parts of New England.

The above babble is a teaser for the latest entry in a new New York Times feature called "Insider," which also happens to be the name of a tabloid TV program about both Hollywood and Washington celebrities. The Times Insider, shockingly enough, is reserved for those special insiders willing to pay extra to enter a digital gated community recently built behind the pre-existing paywall, itself designed to keep out the lower orders without the bucks to spare for the elite content and government propaganda that the Paper of Record churns out on a near-constant basis.

In other words, the Insider is news for the affluent, who are not too concerned about the day-to-day angst of normal people. Why read about single payer healthcare and crumbling schools when you can learn about Hillary Clinton's snacks and selfie skills, and what a "badass" dresser she was over at the State Department?  Oh yes. To give that spicy edginess to coddling the wealthy behind closed digital doors, the Grey Lady has finally become laid-back enough to utter the word "badass!" Too bad that it took the paper nearly a decade to go big and bold enough to admit that "enhanced interrogation" is really torture.

I must be more privileged than I thought, because I could actually access the gossipy podcast behind the gated community behind the paywall as part of a temporary free admission policy in hopes that I might part with more money to become privy to Insiderism on a regular basis. Based upon what I heard, though, I would not join Times Insider even if it were free.

The above teaser was actually a blessedly short synopsis of the very tedious and strained verbal "conversation" that ensued.

In case you were wondering, the "everything else" that Patrick Healy covers is named Bernie Sanders, who is not mentioned any more often than the Times can help, lest the mere mention of his name destroy Hillary's chances. Healy, to my utter shock, comes to his Bernie Beat directly from the Times' theater beat. After all, he tittered in the podcast, what is politics but performance art? No wonder that his Bernie articles are so heavily dismissive of Sanders' hair, accent, posture and couture as well as so snidely critical of his lack of schmoozing and baby-kissing skills.

Amy Chozick, who covers the Clintons exclusively, is disappointed that Hillary is not more like Bill, who has this "incredibly high energy and people skills" that his wife sorely lacks. This, after Chozick helpfully leaked her strategy to become more authentic and funny. Hillary is still pretty much a living, breathing "Policy Pez Dispenser," cheerfully chuckled Chozick within the safe confines of the gated digital salon. Oh, and although Hillary doesn't much care for political reporters,  she absolutely adores Mark Landler, who covers the State Department for the Grey Lady. Chozick is s-o-o-o jealous that Hillary doesn't seem to like her as well, even though she is always unfailingly polite.

Meanwhile, Healy wallowed in his own shallowness by remarking, without a hint of irony within his gated community behind the Wall: "Hillary Clinton thinks reporters are interested in the story behind the story, and that's just not tru-u-u-e!"

I think I'll go choke on a jalapeño pepper.

Anti-Democracy Democrats

The Democratic Party may have belatedly kicked Jefferson and Jackson out of its annual dinners for reasons of political correctness (having apparently just found out that both presidents were a tad on the racist side). But that doesn't mean the Democratic Party has suddenly changed for the better after its nearly two centuries of existence.

To the contrary.

Having just limited presidential primary debates to a maximum of six, and even threatened sanctions against any candidate who goes outside the party to hold informal debates, the 21st century Democratic Party is still operating very much in the Jacksonian tradition. And that tradition is speaking up for the common folk out of one side of its mouth, and pledging fealty to its wealthy benefactors out of the other.

To their credit, two of the national candidates -- Martin O'Malley and Bernie Sanders -- both spoke out against the undemocratic nature of the Party at the DNC's annual confab last week, rightly noting that the game is rigged for the establishment and against the voter. Left unspoken was the common wisdom that the less the electorate gets to see the robotic and ethically compromised Hillary Clinton juxtaposed with other, more populist candidates,  the better are her odds of securing the nomination based purely upon her money and her weighted press coverage and her powerful connections and her shallow progressive rhetoric.

 As told by Howard Zinn in his A People's History of the United States, the recently banished Andrew Jackson was the Clinton prototype. Jackson was the first American politician to pretend to "feel your pain" in order to get your vote. "He was the first President  to master the liberal rhetoric - to claim to speak for the common man."

 Despite the fact that he owned slaves, exterminated Indian populations and sent federal troops to beat striking workers into submission, he still enjoyed widespread support from the newly-enfranchised working class.

It was the new politics of ambiguity- speaking for the lower and middle classes to get their support in times of rapid growth and potential turmoil. The two-party system came into its own in this time. to give people a choice between two different parties and allow them, in a period of rebellion, to choose the slightly more democratic one was an ingenious form of control.

 Fast forward to 2015, and the Democratic establishment is still ingeniously, albeit desperately, trying to keep controlled debates largely confined to those between its own centrists and crazy Republicans. They don't want us to see arguments between centrist Dems and leftist Dems. Bernie Sanders is starting to give the plebes too many bright ideas and the power brokers too many conniption fits. The party establishment does not want the general public to see him and Hillary in too many head-to-head TV appearances. She might stumble. She might fall. She might start losing the super delegates who, she seems to undemocratically think, are not beholden to the wishes of actual primary voters.

America is in another of its periods of incipient rebellion, because the Precariat has gotten wise to the fact that we live under an oligarchy. Hillary Clinton openly admitted that she is anxious for a battle of the sexes and the hairdos between her and Donald Trump -- not a discussion about the malefactors of great wealth with Bernie Sanders. Even the four-to-six debates she has grudgingly agreed to are an inconvenience, a pesky bump in the road to her coronation. She and the Party establishment would prefer to give voters the choice between neoliberalism (free market solutions to social and economic problems, for the benefit of free market capitalists) and fascism (Trump's roaring xenophobia and racism for the benefit of free market capitalists) rather than a choice between neoliberalism and Sanders-style democratic socialism (for the benefit of ordinary people.)

That Sanders and even O'Malley are now shaking up the inner party structure from within is a stroke of genius. Sanders has long recognized that the establishment party system is anti-social to its very core and by its very nature.

Earlier this year, as the Democrats were formulating their electoral game plan at their ambiguous winter "issues retreat" they were also busily banning press coverage and otherwise acting in a distinctly totalitarian fashion. We could have seen that their summer agenda would try to consist of more of the same. This time, though, they had to let the media in. It might have looked undemocratic had they not allowed Bernie and other candidates to speak. Since he is running within the establishment and not as an independent, they had no choice but to let him in. Pure political genius on Bernie's part to make a public, in-house stink.

Meanwhile, an #AllowDebate movement has sprung up. From The Hill:

(Ben) Doernberg said he launched #AllowDebate earlier this month after realizing that many Democrats like him are frustrated with the DNC’s handling of its presidential debates this election cycle.

It now boasts 30 active organizers, he added, and approximately 500 members.

“The DNC exists – at least in theory – to reflect the will of the voters,” Doernberg said. “It is incredibly obvious that the DNC apparatus views us a nuisance and purely wants us to go away. That just seems wrong to me.”

Doernberg said #AllowDebate is inspired by the stark contrast between this election cycle’s debate rules and the DNC’s 2008 approach.

He said his organization is exasperated with the DNC’s unwillingness to let candidates participate in outside debates, which was allowed the last time the Democratic nomination was up for grabs.

 In the 2008 cycle, eventual nominee then-Sen. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton debated each other 27 times, including outside debates.

“I think telling the candidates that they are banned from participating in outside events is incredibly undemocratic,” Doernberg said.

As French philosopher Simone Weil wrote 70 years ago in the wake of the last outbreak of global fascism, political parties are inherently undemocratic. She believed they should be abolished outright. Like capitalism itself, they exist only for the sake of their own existence. Their goal is to maintain power and enrich their leaders. Ordinary people are permitted to register for token membership and thereby become"sheepdogged" into compliance and obedience and loyalty to the designated plutocratic power broker. Ordinary people are not ordinarily permitted to have independent voices within the confines of the strict party system.

During this endless American election season, the standard complaint has been that the media are covering it as a horse-race rather than as a dialogue about issues. But political parties by their very nature are devised to be a game and a sport to which we are invited to participate as mere spectators, biting our nails in shock, awe and suspense, as we root for our favorite team.

 During this endless War on (and of) Terror, it's also apropos to remember that the very concept of the political party was born in the post-revolutionary Reign of Terror. Weil wrote:

The evils of political parties are all too evident; therefore, the problem that should be examined is this: do they contain enough good to compensate for their evils and make their preservation desirable?

It would be far more relevant, however, to ask: do they do the slightest bit of good? Are they not pure, or nearly pure, evil? If they are evil, it is clear that, in fact and in practice, they can only generate further evil.

Simone Weil observed that the extermination of Jews would have been just as evil under the Weimar Republic as it was under Hitler. And so too are the forever-wars and the mass deportations and the global trade deals and the record incarcerations and the political corruption and the police brutality and the racial profiling and the erosion of civil liberties and the pollution for profit just as evil whether they're performed under a Republican majority or under a Democratic majority.

Once political parties gain power, they always seem to forget the basic social contract. Their goal becomes greed itself: more votes, more power, more members, more money. Weil wrote, "Once the growth of the party becomes a criterion for goodness, it follows inevitably that the party will exert a collective pressure upon people's minds. This pressure is very real; it is openly displayed; it is professed and proclaimed. It should horrify us, but we are already too much accustomed to it."

Or are we? 

This could be one of those infrequent moments in history when we are actually starting to become horrified. It is, ironically, this very sense of mass horror that should be giving us hope. No matter our social status, our race, our ethnicity, our nationality, we can all join together in horror and outrage over the fact that unfettered capitalism is literally killing us.

 People are beginning to discover their own agency and their own anger.

The abolition of the two major political parties is not likely to happen, of course. But the fact remains that both of them are being rattled from within, without, and below.

Whether these upheavals will lead to Trump-style fascism, or whether they will lead to a new New Deal, is still an open question.