By Eric Ahlberg
Well this has been one helluva election season.
Some of the old bromides can help. “How can you tell that the politician is lying? Their lips are moving.” Today we have fact checks and video clips to document policy flip flopping opportunism, and we are provided statistics telling us how often each candidate lies. Oh but we love our lies and hate their lies. Nobody is convinced by facts, yet the fear of a fatal email disclosure will rattle the entire structure of capitalism.
How much political spin can we take? Is Hillary a mature experienced politician championing feminism by becoming the first woman president, or is she the epitome of the Neoliberal Corporate Tool, a social liberal/defense hawk who threw black people into prison with the war on drugs, and is planning another military deployment to Syria, and does nothing about DAPL but suggest that there is a greater good to our energy development policies, i.e. , go ahead and let the cops, oil companies, and finance capital run right over the Native Americans, again. Ask around Venice, everybody is adamant.
Hating both candidates provides a good moment of emotional relief from our daily bombardment by big media. John Oliver calls this election: “Shit-Filled Cornucopia That Just Keeps On Giving 2016.”
Speaking of shit, we have a huge lying shit rich celebrity idiot whose political experience is in screwing business partners, and acting with impunity. Is it his sexual assaults, his racist assaults, his classist assaults. or his supporters assaults. Many recognize his demagogery as proto-fascist. You have Michael Moore suggesting that Trump will win, because so many Americans have had their lives ruined by the whole Neoliberal project. NAFTA, Wars, Banks, exported jobs and corporate profits offshored. Insurance, medical, and housing costs and further monopolization and privitization of our economy is “fixing” the economy in the global corporate favor. From here it is easy to go down the road of “Everything is fixed.”, which becomes the ultimate equivalentcy whine, with notes of empathy, and redoubled courage. Whiny little bitch that Trump.
Berners are still burning because it looks very much like Hillary’s operatives in the DNC rigged the primaries in her favor. The media corporations ignored Bernie while giving Trump extraordinary coverage. The DNC seems to want Bernie only to pull Progressives toward the Democrats, and away from third party efforts.
The DNC have adopted many progressive ideas from Bernie’s platform. “We have made enormous strides,” Sanders said. “Thanks to the millions of people across the country who got involved in the political process – many for the first time – we now have the most progressive platform in the history of the Democratic Party.” This is the stuff that gives us hopeium, and we want our drugs, cheap.
As the mediocracy has it, Trump gets high ratings, he is already a brand. He would likely be compliant to their corporate interest because he needs them as much as they need him. If only white males voted, he could get elected today.
Have we had enough sick factoids today, because I am sure Turdblossom has more. Almost every career Republican has endorsed Hillary, yet we hear another poll that Trump is close. We may yet be doomed.