What the ‘Sore Losers’ Want

Disappointed Democrats are blaming Hillary Clinton’s defeat on Russian hackers, an establishment-promoted conspiracy theory that serves the interests of America’s “war party,” says Diana Johnstone.

By Diana Johnstone

If the 2016 presidential campaign was a national disgrace, the reaction of the losers is an even more disgraceful spectacle. It seems that the political machine backing Hillary Clinton can’t stand losing an election. And why is that? Because they are determined to impose “exceptional” America’s hegemony on the entire world, using military-backed regime changes.

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.

Donald Trump seems poised to spoil their plans. The entire Western establishment — roughly composed of neoconservative ideologues, liberal interventionists, financial powers, NATO, mainstream media and politicians in both the United States and Western Europe committed to remaking the Middle East to suit Israel and Saudi Arabia and to shattering impertinent Russia – has been thrown into an hysterical panic at the prospect of their joint globalization project being sabotaged by an ignorant intruder.

Donald Trump’s expressed desire to improve relations with Russia throws a monkey wrench into the plans endorsed by Hillary Clinton to “make Russia pay” for its bad attitude in the Middle East and elsewhere. If he should do what he has promised, this could be a serious blow to the aggressive NATO buildup on Russia’s European borders, not to mention serious losses to the U.S. arms industry planning to sell billions of dollars worth of superfluous weapons to NATO allies on the pretext of the “Russian threat.”

The war party’s fears may be exaggerated, inasmuch as Trump’s appointments indicate that the United States’ claim to be the “exceptional,” indispensable nation will probably survive the changes in top personnel. But the emphasis may be different. And those accustomed to absolute rule cannot tolerate the challenge.

Bad Losers On the Top

Members of the U.S. Congress, the mainstream media, the CIA and even President Obama have made fools of themselves and the nation by claiming that the Clintonite cabal lost because of Russian President Vladimir Putin. Insofar as the rest of the world takes this whining seriously, it should further increase Putin’s already considerable prestige.

Director of National Intelligence James Clapper (right) talks with President Barack Obama in the Oval Office, with John Brennan and other national security aides present. (Photo credit: Office of Director of National Intelligence)

If true, the notion that Moscovite hacking could defeat the favorite candidate of the entire U.S. power establishment can only mean that the United States’ political structure is so fragile that a few disclosed emails can cause its collapse. A government notorious for snooping into everybody’s private communication, as well as for overthrowing one government after another by less subtle means, and whose agents boasted of scaring the Russians into re-electing the abysmally unpopular Boris Yeltsin in 1996, now seems to be crying pathetically, “Mommy, Vlady is playing with my hacking toys!”

Of course, Russians would quite naturally prefer a U.S. president who openly shies away from the possibility of starting a nuclear war with Russia. That doesn’t make Russia “an enemy”; it is just a sign of good sense. Nor does it mean that Putin is so naïve as to imagine that Moscow could throw the election by a few dirty tricks. The current Russian leaders, unlike their Washington counterparts, tend to take a longer view, rather than imagining that the course of history can be changed by a banana peel.

This whole miserable spectacle is nothing but a continuation of the Russophobia exploited by Hillary Clinton to distract from her own multiple scandals. Now, she must blame Russia rather than recognize that there were multiple reasons to vote against her.

The propaganda machine has found a response to unwelcome news: it must be fake. The Washington conspiracy theorists are outdoing themselves this time. The Russian geeks supposedly knew that by revealing a few Democratic National Committee internal messages, they could ensure the election of Donald Trump. What tremendous prescience!

Obama promises retaliation against Russia for treating the United States the way the United States treats, well, Honduras (and even Russia itself until blocked by Putin). Putin retorted that, so far as he knew, the United States was not a banana republic, but a great power able to protect its elections. Washington is loudly denying that. The same mainstream media that brought you Saddam’s “weapons of mass destruction” are now bringing you this preposterous “Russia-did-it” conspiracy theory with straight faces.

When intelligence agencies become aware of the activities of rival intelligence agencies, they usually keep the knowledge to themselves, as part of the mutual spook game. Going public with this wild tale shows that the whole point is to persuade the American public that Trump’s election is illegitimate, in the now-lost hope of defeating him in the Electoral College or of crippling his presidency by labeling him a “Putin stooge”.

Bad Losers On the Bottom

At least the bad losers on the top know what they are doing and have a purpose. The bad losers on the bottom are expressing emotions without clear objectives. It is false self-dramatization to call for “Resistance” as if the country had been invaded by extraterrestrials. The U.S. electoral system is outmoded and bizarre, but Trump played the game by the rules. He campaigned to win swing States, not a popular majority, and that’s what he got. The problem isn’t Trump but a political system which reduces the people’s choice to two hated candidates, backed by big bucks.

A sign at a Bernie Sanders rally in Washington D.C. on June 9, 2016. (Photo credit: Chelsea Gilmour)

Whatever they think or feel, the largely youthful anti-Trump protesters in the streets create an image of hedonistic consumer society’s spoiled brats who throw tantrums when they don’t get what they want. Of course, some are genuinely concerned about friends who are illegal immigrants and fear deportation. It is quite possible to organize in their defense.

The protesters may be mostly disappointed Bernie Sanders supporters, but whether they like it or not, their protests amount to a continuation of the dominant themes in Hillary Clinton’s negative campaign. She ran on fear. In the absence of any economic program to respond to the needs of millions of voters who showed their preference for Sanders, and of those who turned to Trump simply because of his vague promise to create jobs, her campaign exaggerated the portent of Trump’s most politically incorrect statements, creating the illusion that Trump was a violent racist whose only program was to arouse hatred.

Still worse, Hillary stigmatized millions of voters as “a basket of deplorables, racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic — you name it.” These remarks were made to an LGBT rally, as part of her identity politics campaign to win over a clientele of minorities by stigmatizing the dwindling white majority.

The identity politics premise is that ethnic and sexual minorities are oppressed and thus morally superior to the white majority, which is the implied oppressor. It is this tendency to sort people into morally distinct categories that divides Americans against each other, every bit as much – or more – than Trump’s hyperbole about Mexican or Islamic immigrants. It has served to convince many devotees of political correctness to regard white working-class Americans in the “fly-over” regions as enemy invaders.

Terrified of what Trump may do, his opponents tend to ignore what the lame ducks are actually doing. The last gasp Clintonite campaign to blame Hillary’s defeat on “fake news,” supposedly inspired by The Enemy, Russia, is a facet of the growing drive to censor the Internet – previously for child pornography, or for anti-Semitism, and next on the pretext of combating “fake news,” meaning whatever goes contrary to the official line. This threat to freedom of expression is more sinister than 11-year-old locker-room macho boasts by Trump.

There will and should be strong political opposition to whatever reactionary domestic policies are adopted by the Trump administration. But such opposition should define the issues and work for specific goals, instead of expressing a global rejection that is non-functional.

The hysterical anti-Trump reaction is unable to grasp the implications of the campaign to blame Hillary’s defeat on Putin. Do the kids in the street really want war with Russia? I doubt it. But they do not perceive that for all its glaring faults, the Trump presidency provides an opportunity to avoid war with Russia.

This is a window of opportunity that will be slammed shut if the Clintonite establishment and the War Party get their way. Whether they realize it or not, the street protesters are helping that establishment delegitimatize Trump and sabotage the one positive element in his program: peace with Russia.

Adjustments in the Enemy List

By its fatally flawed choices in the Middle East and in Ukraine, the United States foreign policy establishment has driven itself into a collision course with Russia. Unable to admit that the United States backed the wrong horse in Syria, the War Party sees no choice but to demonize and “punish” Russia, with the risk of dipping into the Pentagon’s vast arsenal of argument-winning nuclear weapons.

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani meets with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Nov. 23, 2015 Tehran. (Photo from: http://en.kremlin.ru)

Anti-Russian propaganda has reached extremes exceeding those of the Cold War. What can put an end to this madness? What can serve to create normal attitudes and relations concerning that proud nation which aspires primarily simply to be respected and to promote old-fashioned international law based on national sovereignty? How can the United States make peace with Russia?

It is clear that in capitalist, chauvinist America there is no prospect of shifting to a peace policy by putting anti-war activist David Swanson in charge of U.S. foreign relations, however desirable that might be. Realistically, the only way that capitalist America can make peace with Russia is through capitalist business. And that is what Trump proposes to do.

A bit of realism helps when dealing with reality. The choice of Exxon-Mobil CEO Rex W. Tillerson as Secretary of State is the best step toward ending the current race toward war with Russia. “Make money not war” is the pragmatic American slogan for peace at this stage.

But the anti-Trump “resistance” to Trump is not likely to show support for this pragmatic peace policy. It is already encountering opposition in the war-loving Congress. Instead, by shouting “Trump is not my President!” the disoriented leftists are inadvertently strengthening that opposition, which is worse than Trump.

Avoiding war with Russia will not transform Washington into a haven of sweetness and light. Trump is an aggressive personality, and the opportunistic aggressive personalities of the establishment, notably his pro-Israel friends, will help him turn U.S. aggression in other directions. Trump’s attachment to Israel is nothing new, but appears to be particularly uncompromising. In that context, Trump’s extremely harsh words for Iran are ominous, and one must hope that his stated rejection of “regime change” war applies in that case as well as others.

Trump’s anti-China rhetoric also sounds bad, but in the long run there is little he or the United States can do to prevent China from becoming once again the “indispensable nation” it used to be during most of its long history. Tougher trade deals will not lead to the Apocalypse.

Failure of the Intellectual Establishment

The sad image today of Americans as bad losers, unable to face reality, must be attributed in part to the ethical failure of the so-called “1968 generation” of intellectuals. In a democratic society, the first duty of men and women with the time, inclination and capacity to study reality seriously is to share their knowledge and understanding with people who lack those privileges.

The bodies of Vietnamese men, women and children piled along a road in My Lai after a U.S. Army massacre on March 16, 1968. (Photo taken by U. S. Army photographer Ronald L. Haeberle)

The generation of academics whose political consciousness was temporarily raised by the tragedy of the Vietnam War should have realized that their duty was to use their position to educate the American people, notably about the world that Washington proposed to redesign and its history. But the new phase of hedonistic capitalism offered the greatest opportunities for intellectuals in manipulating the masses rather than educating them.

The consumer society marketing even invented a new phase of identity politics, with the youth market, the gay market, and so on. In the universities, a critical mass of “progressive” academics retreated into the abstract world of post-modernism, and have ended up focusing the attention of youth on how to react to other people’s sex lives or “gender identification.” Such esoteric stuff feeds the publish or perish syndrome and prevents academics in the humanities from having to teach anything that might be deemed critical of U.S. military spending or its failing efforts to assert its eternal domination of the globalized world. The worst controversy coming out of academia concerns who should use which toilet.

If the intellectual snobs on the coasts can sneer with such self-satisfaction at the poor “deplorables” in flyover land, it is because they themselves have ignored their primary social duty of seeking truth and sharing it. Scolding people for their “wrong” attitudes while setting the social example of unrestrained personal promotion can only produce the anti-elite reaction called “populism.”

Trump is the revenge of people who feel manipulated, forgotten and despised. However flawed, he is the only choice they had to express their revolt in a rotten election.

The United States is deeply divided ideologically, as well as economically. The United States is threatened, not by Russia, but by its own internal divisions and the inability of Americans not only to understand the world, but even to understand each other.

Diana Johnstone is the author of Fools’ Crusade: Yugoslavia, NATO, and Western Delusions. Her new book is Queen of Chaos: the Misadventures of Hillary Clinton. The memoirs of Diana Johnstone’s father Paul H. Johnstone, From MAD to Madness, are soon to be published by Clarity Press, with her commentary. She can be reached at [email protected] . [This article previously appeared at Counterpunch, http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/12/19/the-bad-losers-and-what-they-fear-losing/ .]

35 comments for “What the ‘Sore Losers’ Want

  1. Oleg
    December 25, 2016 at 03:43

    I join the others here who commend Ms. Johnstone for her excellent article. The “spoiled brats who cannot accept that they do not always get what they want” pretty much nails it. And I should say that actually the outcome of these elections showed once again the power of democracy. As is clearly demonstrated now by their behavior after the elections, Ms. Clinton and her supporters are just unfit to govern, and in the end they were rejected by the American voters exactly because of that.

  2. Skip Edwards
    December 23, 2016 at 17:31

    This article is point on from top to bottom and is the best, most concise explanation of the results of what is this ashamable excuse for an election in the US. Hopefully we are done with the Clintons and the Democratic Party establishment forever (I left the Dem Party this year after a lifetime of 71 years).

    “Whether they realize it or not, the street protesters are helping that establishment delegitimatize Trump and sabotage the one positive element in his program: peace with Russia.”

    The above quote from the article must be repeated until it is understood. Donald Trump won whether people like it or not; and, the corruption by Hillary Clinton and her Party establishment shown to Bernie Sanders precludes any attempt to discredit Trump Republicans in their election conduct. Let the Clinton’s and their wreck of a Party disappear into where ever they choose to disappear and leave the rest of us alone. As for those Clinton supporters, who still back cheaters, get over it. Accept the fact that you lost and you lost by the election rules in place. I too hope that we don’t see another Bush disaster, but Clinton put us in this position, and the word hope has lost all meaning.

     “A government notorious for snooping into everybody’s private communication, as well as for overthrowing one government after another by less subtle means, and whose agents boasted of scaring the Russians into re-electing the abysmally unpopular Boris Yeltsin in 1996, now seems to be crying pathetically, “Mommy, Vlady is playing with my hacking toys!”’

    For any thinking person, the above article quote is another example of what we, as citizens, have allowed our country to become. Our government has set one despicable precedence after another and then when it gets it back in their face they cry foul and scream the invented term, “fake news” to try and persuade us that some awful act has been done to us. Bullies get their due, whether on the playground, or in the world. It is heartwrenching to finally come to the realization that our government is the bully and we are sure at some point to suffer the consequences.

    A very good, on point article with many more quotes to heed.

  3. Fran
    December 23, 2016 at 01:40

    i wish writers and journalists would stop calling Democrats liberals…there is nothing liberal about the Democratic party and the label of neo-liberals is also a misnomer. There is nothing liberal about the US instituted system of governing and controlling the global community.

    I am a liberal and that definition does not fit the crowd in control of that beltway power elite. Nothing open handed or generous, or favoring egalitarianism about either prominent political party in this USA.

  4. P Henry
    December 22, 2016 at 13:43

    Brilliant article. My only gripe is that, it assumes that the Wikileaks DNC emails were hacked by Russia when Assange flatly denied they were and strongly implied they were the result of a leak by Seth Rich, the DNC supporter of Sanders who was killed in a robbery where nothing was stolen.
    I remember reading about his suspicions death and figuring there was more to it. The eureka moment came later.
    Here’s another incident to put on your radar screen. The same day that the Russian ambassador to Turkey was killed another high ranking diplomat named Petr Polshikov was shot in Moscow. The western media ignored it but it’s an interesting data point to me. Sounds like the CIA hopes to get Russia to respond in kind so they can pick a fight.
    I always try to read between the lines these days. For example when I read Trump is keeping his own private security team I figure it’s because he doesn’t trust the Secret service. Does anyone remember all those security breaches like the guy who jumped the fence and ran into the White House or the even more threatening bullet holes found around the window of Obama’s children’s bedroom several days after the incident occurred? It may not be coincidental that shortly thereafter Obama began to make decisions more consistent with the “Give war a chance ” crowd. My guess was that the message was given that they could take him and his family out whenever they wanted and he’d better play ball.
    Trump may not be as stupid and out of touch as many assume.

  5. Herman
    December 22, 2016 at 11:16

    Great article, but I enjoy reading the mostly thoughtful, sometimes funny comments. Yes, the game is afoot. For those with power, there has never been so much to lose.

  6. Socratizer
    December 22, 2016 at 09:49

    Excellent piece. Know that unabashedly humanistic, anti-capitalist, and anti-militarist teachers still flourish in the academy, despite the ubiquitous post-modern (anti-truth, hyper-individualistic, relativistic) nonsense currently fueling “identiy politics.”

  7. backwardsevolution
    December 22, 2016 at 03:33

    Diana Johnstone – great writing! What a privilege to read it.

  8. Bob
    December 21, 2016 at 19:56

    Flash: Urgent
    Abel kills Cain: CIA Suspects Kremlin Involvement.
    Did Putin Give the Order? US has long been alerted to Russian interests in Eden, known to hold vast energy reserves. Reports are that Russian crack troops have suffered a major defeat at the hands of Gate Angels with flaming swords. Russia may have hacked heaven to obtain secret plans for developing flaming swords that may be used in anti-Angel counter strike. US Military spokesman call this is an existential threat to upend the divine plan. Russia is warned to cease provocations or risk retaliation. NATO is sending Navy strike force to Black Sea.

  9. David F., N.A.
    December 21, 2016 at 18:28

    The references to the “identity politics” is spot on. Over a year and a half of the msm phony groveling and the msm wannabees, half the progressive media, real groveling. So this gives us time to relax because the next election starts in 2 years

  10. David F., N.A.
    December 21, 2016 at 18:11

    The big problem with our downwardly spiraling fascist duopoly is that not only after every election do we have sore losers, we also have vindictive sore winners as well. It’s the Republicans turn to lead the fall. But don’t worry the North will rise again to regain their turn at power. It’s the 4-8 year cycle. So choose a side and join the fighting.

  11. Annie
    December 21, 2016 at 17:24

    Not only did Ms Johnstone provide a wonderful assessment of what has happened in this country since Trump was elected president, but she did it without the need to distance herself from him by turning him into the devil himself. Too often authors on this site and other’s attack the media and intelligence agencies for creating fake news, as well as spewing unproved accusations to hopefully overturn an election, but then try to distance themselves from Trump by calling him every name in the book least anyone think they are supporting his agenda. Ms. Johnstone had the guts not to do that!

  12. F. G. Sanford
    December 21, 2016 at 16:58

    Her Way: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6E2hYDIFDIU

    And now, the end is clear-
    And so I’ve lost my last election.
    It’s true I’m insincere,
    My phony ways invite detection.
    I’ve lived to lie and cheat,
    I had a scheme to bury Bernie.
    I pulled a scam and used deceit, ’cause it was my turn!

    Discrete, I never was-
    But that’s because I lack compunction.
    I hid my Goldman speech and I denied my own disfunction.
    I planned each breach of trust and broke the rules without concern-
    And more, much more than this, ’cause it was my turn!

    Yes, there were times, I broke the law-
    In politics, that’s not a flaw!
    But through it all, indictments failed-
    The system’s rigged, I can’t be jailed!
    I faced it all and I stood tall, I think it’s my turn!

    I changed a few regimes,
    I even armed some jihad rebels.
    But now, my world war dreams will never profit weapons cartels.
    To think the bombs will stop-
    When they were mine, all mine to drop,
    Oh no, oh no not Trump, it should be my turn!

    We neocons, what have we got-
    If not a war, then not a lot-
    We want to conquer every land, for profit’s sake we had it planned!
    The record shows what we proposed, if I got my turn!

    [instrumental]

    Yes, it was my turn!

    • Joe B
      December 21, 2016 at 19:59

      To the tune of “My Way”? I especially like “To think the bombs will stop- When they were mine, all mine to drop” and “The record shows what we proposed, if I got my turn!”

    • Lois Gagnon
      December 21, 2016 at 21:42

      Brilliant.

    • backwardsevolution
      December 22, 2016 at 03:18

      Sanford – good stuff! Your name always brings to mind that funny show, Sanford & Sons. Loved that guy!

  13. Sam F
    December 21, 2016 at 16:06

    Excellent article with clear perceptions. I cannot say that the “1968 generation” abandoned its responsibilities as much as it lost its way in assuming that the Democrats would not be corrupted by money as they were. But the present generation of academics and the Dems have led young liberals away from the real issues to the upper middle class fashion issues of identity politics, using the bribes and threats of the MIC/WallSt/zionist oligarchy. They have rejected their “primary social duty of seeking truth and sharing it” because fake liberalism is where the money is. Thanks for the humorous view of the hacking scam as “Mommy, Vlady is playing with my hacking toys!”

    We have averted war with Russia, the worst of the two evils, and the pendulum will swing back over four years. But if the Dems distract from their corruption by money, they will just field another fake liberal to catch the backlash, funded again by Israel/KSA and the MIC/WallSt/zionist oligarchy.

    Without a party that represents the true interests of the people, prepared to eliminate the power of money over mass media and elections, eliminate corruption among politicians and judges, replace most of the military with full employment and foreign aid programs, and provide health and stability to the people, the US is ruined forever. Dump the Dems; we need a true progressive party.

    • Anna
      December 21, 2016 at 16:44

      “…we need a true progressive party.”
      This is not what the plutocracy (MIC/WallSt/zionist) would tolerate.

      • Ragnar Ragnarsson
        December 21, 2016 at 17:03

        “In loyalty to their kind
        They cannot tolerate our minds
        In loyalty to our kind
        We cannot tolerate their obstruction”

        Jefferson Airplane – Crown of Creation – 1968

        • Richo
          December 22, 2016 at 15:09

          You are the crown of creation.

          You are the crown of creation.

          And You Got No Place to Go.

      • Uranus Hertz
        December 22, 2016 at 06:14

        problem is … what would be the planks and goals ? Too many good ideas and concepts are weighed down by the sheer lack of forethought as well as being malleable to adjust so as to meet the expectations of all as well as considering the necessary tax revenue streams to make even the most negative opinions give room for the concept to move forward.

        • Sam F
          December 22, 2016 at 08:38

          The planks are sketched in my comment. Please choose a non-obscene pen name.

  14. Drew Hunkins
    December 21, 2016 at 15:34

    This is a phenomenal essay on this whole imbroglio. Here Ms. Johnstone’s written the finest piece thus far — along with a couple of Robert Parry’s articles — on this sad and farcical affair.

  15. Zachary Smith
    December 21, 2016 at 15:12

    At the first pass I liked this essay, but I do have a quibble with one part:

    At least the bad losers on the top know what they are doing and have a purpose. The bad losers on the bottom are expressing emotions without clear objectives. It is false self-dramatization to call for “Resistance” as if the country had been invaded by extraterrestrials.

    I fear that the churning out of all the hysterical BS is part of a larger strategy – to provide a broader base for a future attack on the policies and perhaps even the Presidency of Donald Trump.

    Call it background noise for the impeachment.

  16. Ernest Spoon
    December 21, 2016 at 13:09

    Hahahahahah! The writer of this op-ed column must live in the same bubble as Naomi Klein. I love these leftist apologists of reaction saying the poor, downtrodden workers voted as a revolutionary cry against the neoliberal economic system that laid them economically low.

    What unmitigated bullshit. While I cannot speak from personal experience on who voted for the Brexit–though one pro-Brexit interviewee on All Things Considered owned a recreational hovercraft factory that depended on an EU customer base–but I can on just who voted for one Donald J. Trump. Believe me, the majority were not brokeass whites living in ramshackle trailer courts. White, yes, but far from downtrodden and far from broke.

    The Trump voters I personally know or have acquaintance are form the most part comfortably working-middle or coordinator/permanent administrative class and want nothing more than to live like rich guys, ie pay nothing in taxes yet enjoy all the benefits taxation affords.

    And, please, do not get the idea these people are peaceniks. They are the beer-bellied slobs who never served a day in our military services saluting the flag as Air National Guard jet fighters scream overhead at the nearest taxpayer bought-privately owned sport stadium. They are the people at the post office processing plant who cheered The Deified Reagan the night in 1986 he ordered the bombing of Muammar Gaddafi’s compound in retaliation for the bombing of a German nightclub frequented by Uncle Sam’s Paid Killers.

    And one more thought to leave you: Poor people, the people who really do live in ramshackle trailer courts, do not vote. They know there is nothing in voting for them. They know that all politics takes place within and for the benefit of the Investor-Upper Managerial Class.

    • Ragnar Ragnarsson
      December 21, 2016 at 15:41

      I happen to live in a part of the country that is considered poor by most standards, where voter turn out was the highest it has been in years. I don’t happen to live in a trailer, but neither am I looking forward to “living like a rich guy” because of tax cuts. Many of my neighbors just want to be able to keep their jobs in the coal mines or it’s supporting industries. I suspect that’s why they voted for Trump.

      The reason I voted for Trump is because he wants friendly relations with Russia and he seems to understand that endless war and regime change is damaging to the USA unlike Hillary Clinton the neocon mouthpiece.

      You may know a few people who voted for Trump, but you certainly can’t claim to speak for all them.

    • Brad Owen
      December 21, 2016 at 16:08

      My experience is vastly different from yours. I’m a blue-collar white guy (maintenance electrician), surrounded by blue-collar white guys (plumbers, hvac guys, sheet metal workers, carpenters, building operators, heating plant operators, cooling plant operators, etc…all in maintenance/construction); while I voted Green after Sanders threw in with the Clinton machine, the vast majority of my fellow workers went with Trump, MAINLY because of his economic speeches (which I had to catch up on, as I never entertain the idea of voting republican, so knew nothing of Trump’s speeches). Many of us (me included) have seen better days economically (in the days of strong unions and factories on every corner). Many of them have no patience with trendy upscale-liberal causes like saving the snail darter and throwing the lumberjacks and forestry industries under the bridge (famous case from the seventies if I recall correctly). They know they live in rust belts, they’re LIVING IT. They want good jobs and factories back, and protected (none of that free trade bullshit; they’re not portfolio managers, they work with tools, often in rough or harsh conditions), and EXPECT all able-bodied to partake in the work-at-hand (that’s a particular sore point with them. I don’t get into future trends with them, like automation progress means fewer workers needed, which means a compulsory share-holder economic system will be devised). And MANY of them are vets…almost all of them got their blue-collar training there, seeing it as their ticket out of trailer park world (slick trick of the Empire builders: induce poverty, then build your Legions of “cannon fodder” for wars-of-conquest). THAT is the reality, pal. They mostly see government as the enemy (what with well-connected political hacks always calling them “deplorables” in one way or another, as the hacks go get another fistful of $ from some wall street turd), and they absolutely fucking hate them for what they’ve done to their communities, in the name of free trade and globalization (they had damn-well better fly over THESE communities, too many deer hunters for comfort)…rust belts, pot-holes, dark street lights, and cracked empty parking lots with weeds growing in them, as far as the eye can see. It’s not “fly-over” country to them; it’s home and they can’t afford to fly, nor escape, nor want to, like some chickenshit expat run-away…they’ll see the problems corrected, one way or another…it’s what maintenance guys do…I just have a different, Green/social democrat/New Deal approach, while they are either the original, or the sons of, the Reagan democrats.

    • rosemerry
      December 21, 2016 at 17:13

      You obviously have no idea of the work of Diana Johnstone (often in counterpunch) and have misinterpreted the present article as well.

    • Uranus Hertz
      December 22, 2016 at 06:07

      you’re just as bad as a hillary-bot … highly opinionated and totally clueless

  17. Joe Tedesky
    December 21, 2016 at 12:02

    Hillary loss the election due to her poor Electoral vote strategy, pure and simple. This wasn’t a Trump secret strategy, because he said it more than once of how his campaign planned on a Rust Belt vote win. Hillary simply loss because of her hubris, and arrogance.

    When it comes to foreign policy the U.S. must start using diplomacy instead of making the weapons manufacturers richer by the hour, as we love bombing people back into the Stone Age. I hate that term, but that’s the term that we most threaten nations with when they don’t play ball with our corporatocracy.

    • Novus Ordo Seclorum
      December 22, 2016 at 00:45

      And Powell loves that term! He threatened to bomb Pakistan to the stone age.

      Then presented false WMD proofs to the UN in order to invade Iraq. He should be proud for helping kill millions of Iraqis and Afghans.

      • Joe Tedesky
        December 22, 2016 at 01:46

        This kind of jingoistic lingo is what makes it easy for China with One Border One Road to make new friends, and to the detriment of American interest as It be. Just look at the nations who are attempting to break away, or at least these nations wish to do less with the U.S., and avoid the financial nonsense. The U.S. has loss it’s mine, and it’s all due to a hubris, and one hell of a military arms industry to boot. In time this bully boy foreign policy turns nations sour. Each separate nation by itself is nothing up against the big Goliath, but collectively these smaller nations add up and can make a big United statement. If America has any chance to make it through this century, without a devastating war, it will be because America decided to join the rest of this world working on peaceful projects, as instead of the U.S. dominating the whole of this planet simply because it feels it has to. This shouldn’t be any one nations century it should be every nations century.

      • akech
        December 22, 2016 at 17:18

        quote

        “And Powell loves that term! He threatened to bomb Pakistan to the stone age”
        unquote

        That was U.S. Deputy Secretary of State, Richard Armitage. Here is his face:

        http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/5369198.stm

    • Rongomuna Chibema
      December 22, 2016 at 05:09

      You are spot ON man! But of course that’s not how the US deploys it’s foreign policy!

    • Uranus Hertz
      December 22, 2016 at 06:05

      Odd that Miss Hillary and crew purposefully avoid discussing their electoral strategy. They knew electoral votes is all that mattered, yet keep screaming they should have won based on the popular vote. And Miss Hillary admonished Trump for not saying he would respect the results of the election. Hubris is the wrong word.

      • incontinent reader
        December 26, 2016 at 06:47

        And Hillary’s hertz too.

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