Some Propagandists Are More Equal Than Others

President Obama momentarily forgot his conciliatory overtures to President-elect Trump the other day as he grasped at yet another straw man to blame for the ignominious defeat of Hillary Clinton.

Not only did the Real Media fall down on their assigned job of propagandizing Hillary or Bust, complained Obama, but something called "Fake News" has arisen from the Internet swamp and gobbled up all our brains. This sad state of affairs has even taken the self-burnished luster right off his own final propaganda tour of the globe.

As a stalwart example of Real Media in the service of the powerful, the New York Times was its usual commiserating self as it reported on Obama's joint press conference Thursday with German Chancellor Angela Merkel:

But instead of basking in the glow of his valedictory tour of Europe, Mr. Obama used the moment to make a passionate and pointed attack on bogus news stories disseminated on Facebook and other social media platforms, twice calling such false reports a threat to democracy in his hourlong news conference.

(snip)

 “Because in an age where there’s so much active misinformation and its packaged very well and it looks the same when you see it on a Facebook page or you turn on your television,” Mr. Obama said. “If everything seems to be the same and no distinctions are made, then we won’t know what to protect.”

Thank goodness that Obama's own packaged reporting on the Athens leg of his grandiose tour was so outstanding. His press office sent out the equivalent of millions of pretty "wish you were here" postcards of him touring Greek ruins and antiquities. Recipients of his travel diary were gratifyingly shielded from unpleasant scenes of 7,000 desperate and angry Greek citizens being tear-gassed and beaten in the streets mere blocks from his heavily fortified seaside hotel. The people were democratically protesting both American militarism and the austerity measures inflicted upon them by the global banking elite, which Obama has so ably represented and protected during his eight years in office.

Obama knows very well what, and whom, to protect.

So here's what he wants you to watch on TV and read about on the Internet:

The Well-Packaged President

 “And so when you visit a site like this not only are you getting a better understanding of Greece and Western culture but you’re also sending a signal of the continuity that exists between what happened here, the speeches of Pericles, and what happened with our Founding Fathers.

“And it’s a very important role for the President of the United States to send a signal to the world that their culture, their traditions, their heritage, their monuments, are something of value, and are precious, and that we have learned from them." 

 Despite all the noise from the Real Media, its Nate Silver-ized signalling of probabilities and statistics failed abysmally during the recent election. But never mind all that. Obama will keep sending out his own magical signals in hopes of beating alt-Fake News in the brain-gobbling sweepstakes.

And here's the part of the presidential visit that your virtue-signalling Tour Guide to Democracy studiously ignored, and what he'd prefer you to miss as well. Monuments and statues and ancient literature co-opted in the service of self-serving American propaganda are apparently more valuable and precious to Obama than hungry and desperate modern-day human bodies:

From Reuters:

President Barack Obama’s visit to Greece on Tuesday was met by angry protesters held back by riot police firing tear gas. About 7,000 people marched through central Athens while Obama attended a banquet at the presidential mansion just a few miles away. Hooded protesters and members of the Communist Party held up signs reading “We don’t need protectors,” “Yankees go home” and “Unwanted,” while some demonstrators tried to break through police cordons to get to the U.S. embassy. The protest saw violent clashes, with some demonstrators throwing petrol bombs at police. While Obama met with Greek leaders to express support for the debt-stricken country, the protesters appeared to be angry about the timing of the visit. Obama, the first U.S. president to visit Athens since Bill Clinton in 1999, was in town just two days before the anniversary of a 1973 revolt that helped oust a military junta backed by the U.S.

And from Obama's rarified alternate universe of approved bogus news:

 Above, Beyond, and Away From It All

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 "Because what that does then is send a strong signal around the world that we view ourselves as part of a broader humanity and a community of nations that can work together to solve problems and lift up what’s best in humanity.”

 And the last signalling word from the Real World:

Nick Kristof Versus the Poor People

Barely two weeks after New York Times columnist and helicopter humanitarian Nicholas Kristof blasted the poor for smoking too much pot and having too many TVs, one of his targets had the gall to sneak into his unlocked Philadelphia hotel room on Saturday morning. Kristof had neglected to completely shut the door when he went down to the lobby to get some coffee.

But never fear. When Kristof returned and confronted the burglar holding the still-sleeping Mrs. Kristof's purse, he threatened to throw his hot coffee right at the culprit. When the man dropped the purse and fled the premises, our intrepid columnist immediately gave chase while his wife called security.

Kristof didn't even need to think twice. After all, he was in the City of Brotherly Love for a meeting of the American Philosophical Society.

I chase after him, hot on his heels.

“I’ll stab you with a knife if you keep coming,” he shouts at me. I don’t see a knife but I stay a couple of paces behind him just in case. At the second floor, he exits the stairwell. It’s the restaurant level, and he barrels through a screen into the restaurant, sending it crashing to the floor. I chase after him and shout at a horrified waitress to call security. We rush past her and now he takes the main grand staircase into the lobby. At this point, with other people nearby and not wanting him to escape out the main door, I jump him. There’s a tussle, and I pin him in a full nelson. (This is less heroic than it sounds, because he’s scrawny; I only tackle thieves who are smaller than me.)

It's the same way that he only tackles greedy TV owners who are poorer than he.

Last month, it wasn't a homeless man who threatened Kristof, but the stereotypical pit bull terrier in an unkempt front yard in Arkansas, where he had helicoptered down to take a concerned look at how deadbeat mothers neglect their children. Our intrepid columnist was absolutely aghast at the living conditions of Emanuel, the 13-year-old boy living there.

Emanuel has three televisions in his room, two of them gargantuan large-screen models. But there is no food in the house. As for the TVs, at least one doesn’t work, and the electricity was supposed to be cut off for nonpayment on the day I visited his house here in Pine Bluff: Emanuel’s mother deployed her pit bull terrier in the yard in hopes of deterring the utility man. (This seemed to work.)

The home, filthy and chaotic with a broken front door, reeks of marijuana. The televisions and Emanuel’s bed add an aspirational middle-class touch, but they were bought on credit and are at risk of being repossessed. The kitchen is stacked with dirty dishes, and not much else.

(snip)

 What many Americans don’t understand about poverty is that it’s perhaps less about a lack of money than about not seeing any path out. More than 80 percent of American households living below the poverty line have air-conditioning, so in material terms they’re incomparably better off than poor families in India or Congo. In other ways their lives can be worse.

And that was it for that column. Kristof offered no policy prescriptions for, say, an increase in the unconscionably paltry monthly food stamp stipends for poor families. The problem is that not enough of us understand the plight of poor Americans the same way that Helicopter Nick does. And why should we even bother? Kristof reassures his liberal readership that the lives of the poor could always be worse.

Now, back to his thrill-packed weekend hotel adventure. He breathlessly broadcast the details out to the world which he covers like a plastic garment bag -- before, apparently, he'd even had a chance to drink his weaponized coffee:

I’m shouting that he’s a thief, others are screaming, things are flying around, and the members of the American Philosophical Society step out in the lobby to see the fight and figure out what’s going on. A hotel bellman rushes over and assists, and then another, and we restrain him until the police show up. The man is furious and threatening me. Then we all go to the police station to make a statement; he turns out to be homeless and unarmed. I somehow messed up my thumb in the fight but am otherwise just fine; Sheryl and I are both relieved and thankful for the well wishes. Here’s a local news report on it.

Two main takeaways. First, thank goodness he didn’t have a gun. Second, always, always, always, lock your hotel room door, even if you’re only going to be gone a couple of minutes.

My published response: 

 This column reminded me of the slapstick hotel scene in Mel Brooks's "High Anxiety" -- right down to the ironic backdrop of the American Philosophical Society confab.

So, now that we know Nick is a super-hero who can tackle skinny, homeless purse-snatchers, maybe he can devote some future columns to the problem of homelessness itself. How about (despite the sudden elite need to make nice with Trumpy) advocating for a federal guaranteed housing policy? And I don't mean homeless shelters that are more dangerous than the streets, or temporary fleabag hotel rooms. I mean a clean, permanent apartment for anybody needing one. We could even start with Trump Tower, now that Trump has found himself some new digs.

Was the burglar lurking in Kristof's fashionable hotel because he was starving, having had his food stamp stipend cut off in that recent bipartisan move to help the poor get out of their lazy hammocks of luxury? Or was he in search of some quick cash for an opioid fix? Kristof apparently didn't ask, given his throbbing thumb trauma.

But thankfully he doesn't forget the obligatory media Takeaways. The lessons of this whole ordeal in the Age of Anxiety for Well-Off But Very, Very Nervous Philosophers is to be grateful that not all desperadoes have guns, and always lock your doors. You just never know when the collateral damage of our trickle-down society is lurking just outside to steal your money and knock your security as well as your thumbs right out of joint.

It could always have been worse. The columnist-philosopher could have asked the bellhop who'd helped him tackle the homeless guy to bring him up a copy of the Times.  And then, when Kristof was washing off that horrible homeless smell in a hot shower, the annoyed bellhop could have re-enacted the High Anxiety re-enactment of Psycho and attacked him with his own column. 

But thankfully for weekly global destinations and for helicopter journalism, Kristof is safe -- if not quite sound.

Because now that Trump is a done deal despite Nick Kristof's best scare-mongering efforts over the past year or so, our intrepid poor-fighter is now willing to admit that he actually might find common ground with the man he once found so abominable.

Only days before the hungry homeless guy wandered into his luxury hotel room and tried to steal some cash in lieu of the flat-screen TV or contents of the hospitality fridge, Kristof lectured his liberal readers,

When a former Ku Klux Klan leader like David Duke is giddily celebrating a political triumph for his values, how can we not ache for our own selves.Yet, like it or not, we  Americans have a new president-elect, and it’s time to buck up. I’ve seen past elections that were regarded as the end of the world — including, in many Democratic circles, the Reagan triumph of 1980 — and the republic survived. This time as well, our institutions are stronger than any one man. We are not Weimar Germany.

It was disgraceful that many Republicans eight years ago tried to make President Obama fail. That’s not the path to emulate. Today, having lost, we owe it to our nation to grit our teeth and give President-elect Trump a chance.

With any luck, Trump will sign all of Ayn Rand fanboy Paul Ryan's anti-poor legislation and get those TVs and marijuana cigarettes out of the filthy homes of the impoverished right quick. Liberals will just have to philosophically buck up, if only for the sake of themselves. And I hear there's already a booming therapy market for those still achingly and frantically looking for scapegoats, such as working class whites.

Let the poor eat the leftovers, tastefully wrapped in the flaky crust of old Sunday New York Times luxury real estate sections, and sanitized for our protection.

All On the Same Fascist Team

The swiftness with which Barack Obama and the rest of the media-political complex are normalizing the Trump succession and welcoming this depraved man into their cozy inner circle is indicative of one inconvenient truth. This is already a fascist country, and it has been at least since the early 1950s, when the right wing started attacking the New Deal, the surveillance/war state became the fourth branch of government, and Richard Nixon's racist Southern Strategy paved the way for the reactionary New Democrat movement led by Bill Clinton.

The only difference is that Trump's brand of fascism doesn't have the traditional filter, which has enabled glib politicians from Reagan to Obama to put a friendly face on things for purposes of fooling some of the people most of the time, or most of the people some of the time. For too long, we've been conned into believing that this is a representative democracy.

If there is one positive thing to be said about the Trump presidency, it is that the con is dead. If the wool hasn't already been removed from 330 million pairs of American eyes, it will be soon enough.

Barack Obama was able to welcome Donald Trump so easily to the White House on Thursday because the nasty words spewed in this election had all been mainly for show. Obama even admitted that he and Donald are essentially on the same side, that governance is a sporting event, an "intramural scrimmage" between two cohesive factions of the same duopolistic team.

Grotesquely ignoring and insulting the thousands of protesters now marching in the streets, many of them Latinos and African-Americans and Muslims who are now more afraid than ever for their very lives, Obama launched into the same conciliatory pandering that's been his style ever since he won office in 2008 with a super-majority in both houses of Congress. He once again sickeningly caved in the service of the oligarchy by remarking that if Trump succeeds, America succeeds. "America," of course, is code for the ruling class.

And that's why I'm confident that this incredible journey that we're on as Americans will go on.  And I am looking forward to doing everything that I can to make sure that the next President is successful in that.  I have said before, I think of this job as being a relay runner -- you take the baton, you run your best race, and hopefully, by the time you hand it off you're a little further ahead, you've made a little progress.  And I can say that we've done that, and I want to make sure that handoff is well-executed, because ultimately we're all on the same team.

The New York Times, which only the other day was lashing out at Donald Trump's ugly rhetoric, has already done a near-180 since his victory. The paper of record, which also functions as the propaganda mouthpiece of whomever is in charge at any given time, enthused that Obama and Trump, if not exactly enveloped in an instant bromance, at least succeeded in breaking the ice on their first blind date. Their mutual, man-spreading admiration society spoke volumes.

  Everybody was ever so civil about the whole transition-of-power thing. Michelle and Melania had a dainty tea for two. Trump took in the view of the Washington Monument and unsurprisingly gushed out his admiration for the nation's great phallic symbol.

Barack Obama, of course, was well-prepared for the emergence of Donald Trump. That is because he personally helped orchestrate the emergence of Donald Trump.

He saw him coming more than a decade ago, and even then, he welcomed him with open arms. 

It would have benefited neither him nor the Citigroup bankers with whom he was collaborating to actually prevent Donald Trump. Why would they? They knew full well that the working class destruction caused by wage-suppressing global trade deals and the weaponized corporate coups known as CIA regime changes and all-out wars would give rise to social unrest and mass hardship on a global scale.

Back when Barack Obama was still the callow junior senator from Illinois, he was guest of honor at a new Wall Street-funded offshoot of the Brookings Institution, dubbed the Hamilton Project.  Effusively praising corporate globalization, offshoring, deregulation, profits for the few and austerity for the many, he casually remarked that millions of people would be victimized in the process.

In words that make Hillary Clinton's own paid speeches to Wall Street seem mild in comparison, Obama warned his enthusiastic plutocratic hosts of the inevitable populist backlash to their greed. He did not, however, warn them to cease and desist. He only suggested that they prepare themselves for looming social upheavals. And he assured them, in no uncertain terms, that he wanted to be an integral part, parcel and beneficiary of their neoliberal Hamilton Project and the continuing destruction of the working class. In the event of any populist backlash occurring or a strongman arising during his own hoped-for presidency, he would always have their backs.

It was Obama's de facto audition to star as the Democratic presidential nominee. His hosts simply wanted a guarantee that the politician with the golden voice who'd so inspired the nation at the 2004 party convention was still totally on board with their greed program.

Obama's appearance at the inauguration of the Hamilton Project took place two and a half years before the 2008 financial meltdown, and more than a decade before the election of Donald J. Trump. And he was nothing if not prescient, telling the bankers:

 Just remember, as we move forward, that there are real consequences to the work we are doing doing here. There are people in places like Decatur, Illinois and Galesburg, Illinois who have seen their jobs eliminated. They have lost their health care. They have lost their retirement security. They don't have a clear sense of how their children will succeed in the same way they succeeded. They believe that this may be the first generation in which their children will do worse than they do. Some of that, then, will end up manifesting itself in the sort of nativist sentiment, protectionism and anti-immigration sentiment that we are debating here in Washington. So there are real consequences to the work that is being done here. This is not a bloodless process.

People will get bloodied, people will lose their jobs, people will see their wages stagnate, people will suffer and die prematurely -- but as long as Wall Street keeps its avaricious eyes on the prize, the "real consequence" of what turned out to be right wing Trumpism will have been ultimately worth it, both to Barack and all his new buddies:

I think that as long as all of us retain the sense of passion about the ultimate outcome that we want, a stronger more prosperous America than we are passing on to our children, then I think we will do well in this process. I am glad to be a part of it.

That Obama ultimately kept his promise to the plutocracy is all the more grotesque, given the Wall Street meltdown and mass hardships and unemployment and foreclosures that "we" allegedly never saw coming. He kept his promise by refusing to prosecute the oligarchs who made the whole mess and rewarding them with a bailout --  because these were the psychopathic friends who'd rammed through deregulation and bankrolled his own rise to power.

In that now-infamous private Oval Office speech he gave to cowed and cowering banksters in 2009, Obama boasted that he was the only thing protecting them from the pitchfork-wielding rabble. Nobody would lose a bonus. Nobody would go to prison. He more than kept the promise he'd made to the Hamilton Project three years earlier as his own price of admission to the highest office in the land.

It was during the same inaugural Hamilton Project meeting at the Brookings  Institution that Obama had also promised to couple corporate global coups with the continued Democratic unraveling of the New Deal, begun by the Clintons during their administration. Obama euphemized the privatization of the Social Security long desired by Wall Street as "too many of us (Democrats) defending programs as they were written in 1938."

"People often ask me how I keep my idealism," he cynically bragged to his potential backers.

He vowed that working class jobs would be destroyed, and that the working class would then have to endure reduced retirement incomes and other punishments, all in the service of the plutonomy. If the oligarchs succeeded, then Barack Obama would succeed right along with them.

It was only the Monica Lewinsky scandal that had prevented Bill Clinton from at least partially privatizing Social Security in his second term. And it was only the Tea Party that prevented Obama from finalizing his own "Grand Bargain" of Medicare and Social Security cuts with House Speaker John Boehner during his first term. When that planned assault on the working class failed, Obama humorously groused that Boehner had "left him at the altar."

Ironically, Donald Trump's election is what could preclude any further "bipartisan" cuts to the safety net by deposed empress Hillary Clinton and Speaker Paul Ryan. Democrats are always more prone to raise a ruckus when the presidential cutter and slasher is not a member of their own party. And perhaps luckily for us, Trump is not as gifted at talking from both sides of his mouth as Barack Obama, Bill Clinton and Ronald Reagan before him. When and if Trump tries anything dodgy with Medicare and Social Security, he simply won't have the requisite verbal and intellectual skills to fool people into thinking that starvation is actually good for them.

Ultimately, even Obama's legendary glibness and personal popularity have not been enough to protect his legacy through a Clinton restoration. Try as he might, he couldn't delay the "not-bloodless process" until after he was safely out of office, long enough to start raking in the big bucks for his own family foundation slush fund and for the building of an obscene billion-dollar library shrine to himself in Chicago. He won't have the requisite political influence, because he won't have the Clintons as his White House partners. His personal neoliberal Hamilton project may be on the skids, if not a complete wreck. Potential donors, currently in a frenzy of swallowing their liberal pride for purposes of that smooth, successful transition to a more unfriendly fascism, might end up pragmatically deciding that it would behoove them to grovel before the new president instead. 

Maybe Obama can get a gig where he'll feel more at home.The Hamilton Project at Brookings might be an ideal, permanent and lucrative fit, especially since he plans to stay in Washington so that younger daughter Sasha can continue her pricey private high school career without being rudely upended like so many thousands of her evicted American peers.

After all, the Silicon Valley billionaire (Peter Thiel) reportedly heading Donald Trump's transition team also sits on the oligarchic advisory board of the Hamilton Project, as do former Obama Treasury Secretary and current vulture capitalist Timothy Geithner, Obama Catfood Commissioners Laura D'Andrea Tyson and Alice Rivlin, and billionaire Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg  and her Clintonoid mentors Larry Summers and Robert Rubin.

It's a small world in a small-minded intramural town. When they succeed, they all succeed.

So keep on marching, Citizens. But please don't restrict yourselves to Trump Tower. Be sure to include K Street, and the Brookings Institution, and Goldman Sachs, and Citigroup in your busy itineraries. Donald Trump is only the ruling establishment's latest, most hideous placeholder.

"I am upset with those who prefer to remain spectators until it may be too late. I am shocked by those who seem to believe - in Anne Morrow Lindbergh's words of 1940 - that 'there is no fighting the wave of the future' and all you can do is 'leap with it.' I am appalled by those who stiffly maintain that nothing can be done until things get worse or the system can be changed." -- Bertram Gross, Friendly Fascism.

Rich Clueless Liberal Lives Matter

Richie Rich is turning born-again populist in his old age.

From coast to coast, celebrities are gathering in solidarity with their fans and other regular folk to protest the unthinkable election of Donald Trump, and to stand united behind their exiled quarter-billionaire sister, Hillary Clinton. Thousands have turned out in even the hippest, most gentrified neighborhoods in New York City, Austin, Atlanta and Chicago to blast out their love for one another.

 Cher, hostess of a star-studded big ticket Clinton fund-raiser this summer on Martha's Vineyard, peeked out the front door of her New York townhouse and Tweeted out her support to those marching past.

A Yale economics professor has made the final exam optional out of sympathy for legatees who are too traumatized to get out of bed, let alone hold a pencil in their tender fingers in order to figure out the logistics of supply-side and trickle-down.

Aging Pop Queen Madonna -- who'd previously bravely protested Trump's disgusting lechery by promising a free blow job to anyone who voted against him  -- did Cher one better and physically joined the rabble in front of Trump Tower on Wednesday night to voice her own outrage against the outrageous blow to elite womanhood.

Let Us All Lift Up Our Faces and Our Voices

CNN pundit/Democratic operative Van Jones made admiring headlines when he blamed Hillary's defeat on racism, something he cleverly branded as "Whitelash."

The Makeup of Flyover Country

 Gloria Steinem boldly penned an editorial in The Guardian to drum up popular support for a new plutocratic social justice movement, to be led by (who else) the Clintons and the Obamas. "We will not mourn. We will organize!" vowed the corporate feminist who'd once castigated female Bernie Sanders supporters as shallow groupies only "wanting to go where the boys are."

Steinem, just like her candidate, ignores the day-to-day lives of the poor and downtrodden by creating her own false reality - the one where Hillary Clinton never became a quarter-billionaire by serving Wall Street, and never threw millions of mainly minority women off the welfare rolls and sent their mates to prison in record numbers back in the bubble-icious boom times of the 90s.

"That’s why she was, and always has been, supported more by women than by men, more by voters of color than by white voters, and more by scientists than creationists. It’s also why she is deeply and vehemently resented," Steinem hilariously pontificated.

Even though Barack Obama's own national popularity is now reaching a record 60 percent,  the trending liberal meme is that Hillary was defeated because of racism. It also matters not to Gloria Steinem that nearly as many women as men voted for Trump:

Add the fact that many men, especially powerful men, haven’t seen a female authority since childhood, and they felt unmanned, threatened, and regressed by the prospect of Hillary Clinton in the most powerful position in the world. Add those white Americans who are about to become a minority for the first time, and are opposed to everything from birth control (because it lowers the white birthrate disproportionately) to immigration (because it doesn’t have racial and religious restrictions). Of course, this is guilt talking: they fear being treated as they have treated others.

Steinem never once blames the establishment. or the ruling class, or whatever name you care to give to Power, Inc. for this nation's social ills. It's the divide and conquer meme all the way: if wages are suppressed and jobs are scarce, then it's all the fault of the poor white Trump voters who are guilty of bigotry against black and brown people. 

She ends her screed in a similarly tone-deaf fashion:

I think this country is in a time of danger because most of us are escaping control by some of us. Just as we would never tell a woman, man or child to stay in a violent household, we will never go back to the old hierarchy. Despite ongoing threats, at home and in other countries, including a very racialized and gendered terrorism, we have many leaders who inspire democracy, who model it, and who know we are linked, not ranked.

Luckily, real change, like a tree, grows from the bottom up, not the top down. We have Hillary, Barack and Michelle to guide us. We will not mourn, we will organize. Maybe we are about to be free.

Steinem should just have screamed Power to the Plutocrats! or Down With Democracy!

She actually seems to believe that the fabulously wealthy and war-mongering Clintons and Obamas are the best choices to lead a new bottom-up movement. She confuses the emotional rock-bottom of a group of defeated elites with the social and financial rock-bottoms of millions of evicted, powerless Americans -- who this week screamed out their own powerlessness and outrage in the only way that they were allowed.

They voted for Donald Trump.

 To paraphrase Thomas Frank, it's almost enough to make you pity the poor billionaire. 

It's so tempting. So we really will have to work hard to harden our hearts against the plight of these unfortunate fortunates. 

They should so do what poor pundit Paul Krugman did on the Day the Liberal Dream Music Died. Relax a lot in between those annoying, but totally necessary, bouts of elite populism. Give it the tired, stale, tried and untrue "balanced approach" that has always worked out so well for extreme centrists:

That said, does it make sense on a personal level to keep struggling after this kind of blow? Why not give up on trying to save the world, and just look out for yourself and those close to you? Quietism does have its appeal. Admission: I spent a lot of today listening to music, working out, reading a novel, basically taking a vacation in my head. You can’t help feeling tired and frustrated after this kind of setback.

But eventually one has to go back to standing for what you believe in. It’s going to be a much harder, longer road than I imagined, and maybe it ends in irreversible defeat, if nothing else from runaway climate change. But I couldn’t live with myself if I just gave up.

So I guess he'll keep writing his usual New York Times column about how wonderful Obamacare is for the retail clerk who has to fork over a $12,000 annual deductible and co-pay out of her $10,000 precarious annual paycheck. You probably know her very well. She is the woman who never gets to take a vacation anywhere, let alone a luxury vacation inside of her own frazzled head.

Live It Up With Yourself! Lift Your Glass As You Rest Your Weary Ass

Trumpus Triumphans

Er... make that President-Elect Y2K16. The elites are absolutely convinced that their America is going to die.

I am surprised, but not as deep-down shocked as I probably should be, by the stunning Trump upset. It was only the sacrosanct polls that kept me from disbelieving that Hillary Clinton could really "win this thing." (And that type of phraseology from Democratic operatives is one of the many, many, many reasons that the liberal party's identity politics, fear-mongering and virtue-signalling failed so abysmally at winning this thing.) 

So, while the deservedly discredited corporate pundits are busy clutching their pearls* and waiting for Armageddon, let me venture out upon the glass half-full route for now. I'll patiently wait until something that post-victorious Trump actually says or does forces me tear into this personally repulsive man with all the fiber of my being.

-- Flyover Country's giant middle finger to the establishment should make it harder than ever for Barack Obama to ram through the Trans-Pacific Partnership during the lame duck session. Such an action would expose him once and for all as being a tool of the oligarchy and a disbeliever in democracy itself. The people have spoken, loudly, against globalization and trade deals.

-- Clinton Land might add financial bankruptcy to its moral bankruptcy. Since they will have zero influence on anything anymore, the global money spigot to the family slush fund will dry up. The family might even have to sell off one of its properties to help pay the bills. Chelsea might have to get a job that doesn't involve sitting on a board for a million dollars a year. Her previous threats to run for office herself if the current crop of politicians doesn't please her will come to naught. Any more talk of a Clinton Dynasty will send Democratic operatives running for the hills in horror.

-- Peace might actually have a chance. It remains to be seen whether the Neocons will suck Trump into their noxious orbit, and whether his short vulgar fingers will seek out the nuclear button as soon as a foreign dignitary pisses him off.  One thing in his favor is that he doesn't drink alcohol. (The jury is out as to whether cocaine causes his chronic sniffling.)  Also, although liberals have turned a blind eye toward Obama's drone assassination crusade, they might not take as kindly to Trump boasting about every tribal Muslim male of military age he kills, just for the sheer fun of it. Maybe Trump will never develop the taste for bloodshed. Maybe his vices stop at bigotry and fraud.

-- Without a Democrat in office to placate the masses with trickle-down incrementalism, a social and/or labor movement from the left might have an actual chance, especially if/when voters discern that Trump is totally bullshitting about feeling their pain and bringing the jobs back.

-- Fearing that the ears and eyes and brains of their little ones will be damaged by Trumpism, parents might finally cut the electronic cord, permanently, and take the kids to the library for some real entertainment. Free the shackled imaginations of youth. Make America think again.

-- We thought that Clintonoid Neoliberalism was done for when the financial system crashed in 2008, only to have the oligarchs clamp their iron jaws down on the rest of us and suck up all the gains for themselves, widening the wealth gap to historic proportions. Now that Hillary is toast, maybe the experts will realize that tender liberal market solutions to social problems are a total sham. Of course, the greed industry will die over our dead bodies.  

Like many of you, I got maybe four hours of sleep last night, and that sleep was tortured by some pretty weird dreams. Part of me still thinks I'm dreaming this whole thing, and that any minute now I'll wake up to the strident tones of Hillary's acceptance speech, lethal shards of glass from the cavernous Javits Center ceiling falling all around like joyless confetti as the rest of us take desperate cover.

So fasten your seat belts. Let the pundits roar their terrible roars and gnash their terrible teeth. Let the Wild (T)rumpus start. Let's try to make the best of another in a whole series of long national nightmares. Because there are always plenty of monsters to tame, plenty of battles to be fought. Giving up is never an option.

No Joke: Obama Reads "Where the Wild Things Are" to America's Children

* If there was a diplomatic post for Pearl Clutcher in Chief, I would nominate the New York Times' Paul Krugman for the honor. In a Tweet last night he actually blamed Jill Stein (who gleaned a whopping .07% of the vote) for costing Hillary the state of Florida.

Today, in a morning-after futile attempt at awareness, he bemoans the death of the "romantic vision" of the America he still loves: a concept he castigated only a few short months ago during his mean spirited spree of Bernie Sanders-bashing in the futile service of his failed candidate.

My response to the Pearl Clutcher of Wisdom:

The crash of '08 not only wasn't the kiss of death to neoliberalism (private control of the public sphere), it actually strengthened the resolve of oligarchs who destroyed lives and livelihoods by sucking up more than 90% of the "recovery." So maybe the election of Trump will be a wake-up call, rather than the coup de grace that liberals fear.

I can't see him lasting a full term. Perhaps he won't be impeached, but criminal indictment is not out of the question. And that leaves Mike Pence a couple of years to do his damage. We can only hope that the Dems turn the tables and become the new Party of No.

And maybe Krugman will rethink his critique of the left. His call today for a romantic vision for the US would be funny were it not so tragic. In May, he sneered at it:

"Romantics: This kind of idealism shades over into something that’s less about changing society than about the fun and ego gratification of being part of The Movement. (Those of us who were students in the 60s and early 70s very much recognize the type.) For a while there – especially for those who didn’t understand delegate math – it felt like a wonderful joy ride, the scrappy young on the march about to overthrow the villainous old. But there’s a thin line between love and hate: when reality began to set in, all too many romantics reacted by descending into bitterness, with angry claims that they were being cheated."

My romantic vision of Krugman losing his column space out of sheer ineptitude and careerism is not, unfortunately, likely to be part of an American dream come true. The neoliberal concept of meritocratic experts "failing upward" will hold steady, at least until the results of climate change fry the grid.

Donald Trump: Candidate Y2K16

Remember the late 90s, when everybody was in a tizzy over the imminent end of the world because the geeks hadn't fixed the clocks in computers? And remember how we woke up on January 1, 2000 to an intense hangover of continuing life, our money still in the bank, electricity still thrumming through the grid.. and most important of all, intact and crystal clear cell phone and Internet connections?

This time around, the disaster hysteria revolves around the very slim chance that a different kind of virus known as Donald J. Trump will usher in Armageddon.  If Trump is elected, Putin will invade America, take over the Internet, and super-rich people will be fleeing the country in droves. It couldn't get any worse than that last part.  

And it would be all your fault because, even if you personally voted for Hillary Clinton, you obviously didn't work for her hard enough, guilt-tripping your friends and neighbors into voting for her too. This failure to work for free for a quarter-billionaire is the new original sin. Because only Hillary can save the planet. The Guardian said so right in a front page editorial over the weekend.

What really had the serious people freaking out over the weekend was revered odds-making guru Nate Silver giving Donald Trump about a 35 percent chance of beating Hillary. As a result, he is being declared a jerk and a traitor by the HillHuffPo. How dare he crunch numbers that are not, at minimum, one hundred percent favorable to Hillary Clinton? Nate Silver is causing unnecessary "waves of panic" all across the landscape. By putting his thumbs on the math scales, he is almost as dastardly as FBI Director James Comey himself.

The declaration of treachery in turn unleashed an F bomb-laced, 14-part Tweet-storm from Nate Silver, who in his own defense was even forced to partially plagiarize Michelle Obama.

"When you go low, I go high 80% of the time, and knee you in the balls the other 20% of the time," the math whiz fumed.

But Nate Silver's feelings getting hurt is nothing compared to the angst that The Market is experiencing in the End Times. They're in a downright shuddering frenzy. With Donald Trump's poll numbers improving, the S&P 500 was down for the ninth straight day on Friday, something that hasn't happened since 1980. The Donald Bug has led to the most prolonged selloff in stocks since the '08 financial crisis.  Even the manufactured Y2K Bug-Panic of '99 didn't have the power of Trump.

So it's only natural that media pundits would also be scared out of what passes for their wits.

Frank Bruni, who only last week vowed to quickly get over his Trump coverage addiction, isn't quite there yet. He admits to being "terrified" by Election Armageddon. Even if we all wake up Wednesday morning breathing a sigh of post-Trumpian relief, our fear will linger on like a really bad case of the measles:

There’s no end here, just a punctuation mark, a measly comma between the rancor that has built until this point and the fury to come. And there’s no way to un-see what all of us have seen over these last 18 months, to bottle up what has been un-bottled.

Election Day will redeem and settle nothing, not this time around. No matter who declares victory, tens of millions of Americans will be convinced — truly convinced — that the outcome isn’t legitimate because untoward forces intervened. Whether balloons fall on Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump, there will be bolder divisions in America than there were at the start of it all and even less faith in the country’s most important institutions.

I know exactly what he means. The FBI, which has been in its own frenzy of fear-mongering through entrapment of marginalized people into fake terror plots while ignoring warnings of real terrorists like the Tsarnaev brothers, is a prime example. It's been such a well-regarded public institution for well over a century. And just look at it now. James Comey's re-opening of the Clinton email investigation and meddling in our free and fair elections has seriously tarnished its stellar reputation. It has effectively neutered its recent noble accomplishment of secretly scanning millions of our Yahoo email accounts. If we can't all be considered terrorists until never proven otherwise, we might as well become atheists and refuse to recite the Pledge. If we're going to be divisive, we may as well go whole hog and be boldly divisive.

And the rest of the world respecting us? Forget about it. Donald Trump has been such an embarrassment. He is doing untold damage to the reputation of Barack Obama, so beloved throughout the globe for his humanitarian wars and drone assassinations. If Trump wins, the rich and famous people had better think of emigrating to Waziristan so they can huddle in the safety of the tribal regions. Better to hear drones constantly buzzing above your heads than to have to listen to Donald's potty mouth all the time.

In its recent survey of global attitudes,  Pew researchers discovered that the majority of residents of other countries strongly disapprove of both the Obama administration's drone attacks and its widespread surveillance upon ordinary citizens. Trump would seriously erode these ratings, because he would probably be prone to bragging about the atrocities. The United States might not get as many Likes in the global popularity sweepstakes under Trump. It would lose the favorability it still enjoys, against all odds. Even Nate Silver might be flummoxed.

And what a toll a Trump presidency would take on freedom of the press. His serial insults of news agencies and reporters might even cause the USA to drop from its current dismal 41st place in Reporters Without Borders' annual ranking list. What a dreadful blow to our national reputation it would be for Mauritania or Slovenia or Niger to beat us in the event of a Trump victory. It's already bad enough that the highly ranked Scandinavian countries are as transparent about informing the public as they are generous in their "people first" social welfare programs.

Of course, much of the fear-mongering about the Trump of Doom is for crass purposes of last minute fund-raising for the Democrapublican Party and its respective offshoots. So any email you're receiving slugged "Dead Heat!"  is bound to contain a panic-stricken appeal for cash.

Here's former Bernie Sanders supporter Robert Reich mongering on behalf of  MoveOn, one of the biggest Democratic veal pens in existence:

By now, we all know the stakes of this election—and the choice between a dangerous authoritarian demagogue or a woman of great experience and commitment, running on the most progressive major-party platform ever.

We all know the real threat that Donald Trump could win. The polls have tightened to a dead heat this week, with Trump ahead in many battleground states.

Even the normally cool President Obama is siding with Nate Silver and pretending to push the Trump panic button. “This should not be a close race, but it’s going to be a close race," he warned North Carolina voters last week.

Obama should just relax. 

I, for one, am feeling very relaxed. I just mailed in my ballot, and feminist that I am, voted for four fine women: Jill Stein of the Green Party for president; Robin Laverne Wilson of the Green Party for U.S. Senate; Zephyr Teachout of the Democratic Party for U.S. House of Representatives; and  Pramilla Malick of the Democratic Party for New York State Senate.

(Malick is really something of a miracle in these parts. Although the GOP incumbent has run unopposed for decades, more people have chosen "blank" on their ballots than have actually voted for him. Senator Blank has been the real victor for way too long. So it's nice to actually have a real human choice for change.)

I'll be back after Election Day... assuming that there is no shocking TrumPutin Armageddon and I still have an Internet connection.

Vote! And don't let anybody tell you you're throwing your vote away if you choose to diverge from the Duopoly. That line of bull got stale a long time ago.

As Corey Robin lays out in an excellent post, we mustn't let the inevitable gaslighting by Hillary supporters get to us:

 Liberals in the media, academia, political circles, and on social media who support Clinton act as if your one vote—out of the more than 100 million cast—determines the fate of the republic. If you vote for Stein (whether in a safe state or not), you are personally responsible for Trump’s inauguration.
These voices are often the very same people who, when challenged about Clinton’s voting record in the Senate or Obama’s policies, will say: Clinton was only one voice in a Senate, out of…a hundred voices. Obama was one lonely man arrayed against…three veto points.
Somewhere in The Theory of Moral Sentiments, Smith has a passage about how we identify with the trials and travails of a king, giving him all of our sympathy and understanding, yet are so repelled by the tribulations of the lowly that we can scarce understand what they’re going through.

"No one is useless in this world who lightens the burdens of another.” ― Charles Dickens

 

Where There's Disgust, There's Hope

With a new poll revealing that more than eight in ten voters are disgusted with politics, the big unanswered question is this: what in holy hell is up with that other 16-20 percent?  Are they on drugs?  More likely, they're in the same smug crowd as the top quintile of earners who've escaped the lasting depredations of the 2008 financial crisis. But that variable wasn't part of the polling agenda.

  You see, in corporate Thought Leader World, there's no such thing as the class war.

The 1,300 people contacted by the New York Times/CBS pollsters were asked only to divulge their party and candidate preferences, as well as to rate government performance and to voice their opinions on where the country and the "economy" are headed. They were even idiotically pressed about their feelings about Presidential Consort Michelle Obama.

 But were they ever queried about their own financial and employment status in order to determine whether widespread political disgust correlates with widespread precarity and depression? Of course not!  Because this poll, like so many others, was mainly designed to give the oligarchs who commissioned it a rough idea of how firm or tenuous their grasp on the governed is likely to be after Election Day.

The questions were designed, much as Hillary Clinton so generously explained to Wall Street bankers in one of her paid speeches, to help politicians coordinate their public positions with their private positions. After they pretend to feel the mass disgust, they then can choose to address it, ignore it, castigate it, or downplay it, depending on the situation and results of further polling and focus group testing.

So the latest poll is not especially good news for the ultra-wealthy donor class which runs the place. Judging from the results, they have much to fear, especially from those mythical, toothless, barbaric hordes of incipient Trump revolutionaries they've dreamed up, gathering even as we speak at the gates of their dream home-fortresses. If we won't vote out of love and admiration, then let us vote out of sheer terror.

The Times imparts the grimmest of grim news to the plutocrats:

In a grim preview of the discontent that may cloud at least the outset of the next president’s term, Hillary Clinton and Donald J. Trump are seen by a majority of voters as unlikely to bring the country back together after this bitter election season.

With more than eight in 10 voters saying the campaign has left them repulsed rather than excited, the rising toxicity threatens the ultimate victor. Mrs. Clinton, the Democratic candidate, and Mr. Trump, the Republican nominee, are seen as dishonest and viewed unfavorably by a majority of voters.

How transparent the New York Times is, characterizing the natural disgust of voters as "toxic" rather than representative of healthy, functioning intellects. If the candidates are only passively "seen as" dishonest, then perhaps the fault is in the voters themselves. Something must be wrong with them, or maybe it's just the optics or the narrative.

If I were a seriously wealthy mover or shaker, I would seriously consider goosing the jobless stats by hiring a disgusted down-and-outer as my personal food and beverage taster. Somebody has to protect my august self from all that populist poison threatening my cosseted way of life. I would even pay them three times the minimum wage, with all the benefits, including a no-deductible, no co-pay platinum Obamacare plan.

  Sadly for many movers and shakers and opinion-manufacturers, the mass disgust orchestrated by the timely release of Donald Trump's repugnant Access Hollywood tape has not been as long-lived and as beneficial to Hillary Clinton as her campaign might have hoped. Those revolting Trump voters have largely recovered from being revolted at his misogynistic language, and are now back to being revolted about the rotten state of either their own financial lives, or the troubles of their neighbors and relatives. And of course, some of them are indeed as genuinely racist and psychopathic as US imperialism itself.

People are mad and scared, but not about the things that the oligarchy would prefer them to be mad and scared about. Disgust at Trump's racism, sexism and xenophobia does not necessarily translate into support for Hillary Clinton's crony capitalism and unabashed war-mongering. There are too many varieties of loathing experience to even count.

But back to Times/CBS: Since timing is everything whenever plutocrats choose to take the pulse of the populace, the corporate media pollsters conveniently began calling people immediately upon the release of James Comey's shocking announcement that the FBI's investigation of the Clinton emails would continue.

Most voters who were contacted said they had heard about the development. More voters said they were aware of accusations that Mr. Trump had made unwanted sexual advances toward several women.

Yet about six in 10 voters over all said the 11th-hour disclosures about each candidate would make no real difference in their votes. However, more people said the allegations about Mr. Trump were likely to negatively affect their votes than those who said the new email developments would discourage them from voting for Mrs. Clinton.

The horror. Those damned voters care more about their own situations than they do about palace intrigues, and backbiting in high places. The proles made up their minds a long time ago that they couldn't stand whoever it was they couldn't stand. October Surprises apparently don't mean as much as they used to.

To the ruling class racketeers, the electorate are like a plague of locusts who come out of hibernation every four years, instead of a more reasonable 17. They raise a fearful cacophony for a very short time, and then presto-chango - all that's left to remember them by are their harmless, silent little husks.

But where there's disgust, there's always the hope that the whirring masses will stick around a bit longer than expected this cycle. Species do evolve, even suddenly and unexpectedly mutate every once in a great while. 

As far as the increasingly furious and paranoid media/political complex is concerned, disaffected voters of the right and left might not hail from the same ideological places, but they are eminently interchangeable when it comes to their denigration by rulers. Whether they're in a Basket of Deplorables, or whether they're Berniebro Basement Slackers, they're equally extremist and ignorant. If they refuse to vote as they're expected to vote, then it can only be blamed upon the one horrible thing guaranteed to send chills up the spines of oligarchs: Populism.

  As French philosopher Jacques Rancière has rightly pointed out, the Establishment is actually a cabal of democracy haters. Citizen-consumers -- the "formless and squawking horde" -- are periodically allowed to vote, but only so that oligarchies can give themselves renewed power and legitimacy. Therefore, the term "representative democracy" is an oxymoron for the ages.

"It is because democratic man is a being of excesses, an insatiable devourer of commodities, human rights and televisual spectacles, that the capitalist law of profit rules the planet," Rancière writes. "With politics forgotten, the word democracy thereby becomes a euphemism designating a system that one no longer wants to call by its name, and the name of the diabolical subject that appears in place of that effaced word: a composite subject where the individual subjected to this system of domination and the one who denounces it are amalgamated. To paint a robotic portrait of democratic man, the best thing to do is to combine these characteristics: the young idiotic consumer of popcorn, reality TV, safe sex, social security, the right to difference and anticapitalist or alterglobalist illusions. Thanks to him, the denouncers have what they need: the absolute culprit of an irremediable evil."

The system that nobody wants to call by its true name is, of course, Oligarchy.

And the consumer-citizens know it. Whether right or left, Democrat or Republican, Libertarian or Green or Socialist or Anarchist or Independent, we're getting sick and tired of being called idiots and extremists for daring to want decent lives. 

That 80+ percent disgust rate is actually cause for optimism. Those who govern or who strive to govern actually fear democracy as much as they hate it. Their constant refrain that job destruction and wage suppression and racist globalization are just like the weather, and that we'll all just have to get used to it and lower our expectations and share the sacrifice and bow down to market-based "solutions" simply doesn't fly any longer.

And what is true democracy, anyway, but the constant struggle to wrest a little power away from the oligarchs?