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.

Kindergarten Fascists of the GOP

The mob of regressives is taking its schoolyard bullying routine to a whole new scary level.

Not for nothing has the newest chanted refrain at the Republican Party convention in Cleveland become "Lock her up! Lock her up!"

They're obviously thinking back fondly to the only school setting in which many of them excelled: Recess.

They envision over-achieving Hillary Clinton on the playground in her crisply ironed gingham pantsuit. Somebody (Newt? Toad? Donald?) suggests that she join in their game of London Bridge Is Falling Down. Wanting desperately to be tested, vetted and accepted on their skewed-right playing field, the Goldwater Girl in liberal clothing accepts the challenge.

  Their human arch comes swinging down and traps her. Take the keys and lock her up, lock her up....but then the tune abruptly stops. The play-school reactionaries leave out the "My Fair Lady" ending because it reminds them too much of a Broadway musical, and they're a bunch of homophobes.

So to augment the cries of lock her up, lock her up, one particularly dim Trump toady named Al Baldasaro suggested ending the song by convicting Hillary of treason and executing her by firing squad. The Secret Service hall monitors were duly notified and are said to be investigating the subtle little threat.

Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi helped keep the primordial "Lock Her Up" chant going strong last night at the extended thought-free recess known as the Republican National Convention. You might remember Pam as the hall of justice monitor who promised not to squeal on thieving Donald Trump in exchange for some of his lunch money. And since she, too, studiously avoided the My Fair Lady ending, you also might remember the "sick irony" of her sympathizing with the LGBT victims of the Orlando massacre after fighting against gay rights for the past dozen years.

School misery was on full display in a few other of its endlessly creative forms on Wednesday.

Ivanka Trump was apparently so traumatized by her own school experience that she spent recess time huddled in a janitor's closet, making daily phone calls to Daddy. Thank goodness the bullying that he himself had perfected in military school didn't apply to his own daughter, because he always deigned to accept her calls. His kindness apparently did not extend to calling the school to demand why his kid was locking herself in a closet during recess in the first place.. or asking why the custodial closet was even equipped with a phone. It's very odd - Donald certainly wasn't forking over $35,000+ in private school tuition for his child to attend Dotheboys Hall.

 Or was he?

And then there was the rare playground spectacle of Bully vs. Bully.

Ted Cruz got on the see-saw with Donald Trump. As soon as Donnie was high in the air, crowing in all his narcissistic glory, Ted jumped off his end and let Trump crash right to the ground. All Donnie could do was shake his fist helplessly as the still-traumatized Ivanka sent eye-daggers in Ted's general direction. The hall monitors hastily escorted Heidi Cruz from the playground for her own safety, as various toadies taunted "Goldman Sachs!" in her wake.

Later, a partially recovered Trump clumsily air-kissed his new toady (Mike Pence) right in the middle of his forehead. He perhaps hallucinated a little girl with a little curl lurking there and acting horrid, and then his misogyny got the better of him.

Hillary Clinton, meanwhile, is effectively turning all the bullying to her own advantage. Since people are picking on her at the rate of about once every nanosecond, and since she and her team send out a GoFundMe email blast for every last insult, she is raking in the victimhood bucks at a truly astounding rate.

I got an email from Chelsea Clinton just this morning, going her former BFF Ivanka one better when it comes to parents and schools. Donald only talked to his daughter by phone in a janitor's closet, while Hillary was both a workaholic  and a helicopter parent for the ages. Far from being a GOP caricature, Chelsea wrote,

 My mom is compassionate, kind, and hardworking -- when I was growing up, it seemed like she could do anything. She’d spend all day in court litigating on behalf of children and families, then come home and ask me over dinner what I learned in school, what my favorite part of my day was, and what I hoped would happen tomorrow. And then she would sit with me while I did my homework or practiced the piano or worked on my science project.

Chelsea seemingly was never allowed to goof off, misbehave, play, or even be alone in her room to just think, either then or now. Thus did this very very good 36-year-old woman dutifully beg me to send a buck to her ever-present Mom as a sign of my gratitude.

And then there was the email a few hours later from Clinton's Deputy Communications Director, Christina Reynolds. It was temptingly slugged "Lucifer."

It seems that crackpot theocrat Ben Carson has accused Hillary of being the devil incarnate. To prove that I am exercised enough to disown exorcism as well as to renounce The Donald and all his works, I was asked to send a buck to Hillary. In return, I will receive a "free" sticker. 

Because as Christina so aptly observed: "This is not a normal contest, and no one is playing by normal rules."

 Back When BFFs Still Played by Normal Ruling Class Rules (Kiss, Kiss)