National Democrats have used hyperbolic Russia-bashing to shield themselves from blame for Hillary Clinton’s defeat and to block progressives from pulling the party away from Wall Street, writes Norman Solomon.
By Norman Solomon
After Hillary Clinton’s devastating loss nearly six months ago, her most powerful Democratic allies feared losing control of the party. Efforts to lip-synch economic populism while remaining closely tied to Wall Street had led to a catastrophic defeat. In the aftermath, the party’s progressive base — personified by Bernie Sanders — was in position to start flipping over the corporate game board.
A sign at a Bernie Sanders rally in Washington D.C. on June 9, 2016. (Photo credit: Chelsea Gilmour)
Aligned with Clinton, the elites of the Democratic Party needed to change the subject. Clear assessments of the national ticket’s failures were hazardous to the status quo within the party. So were the groundswells of opposition to unfair economic privilege. So were the grassroots pressures for the party to become a genuine force for challenging big banks, Wall Street and overall corporate power.
In short, the Democratic Party’s anti-Bernie establishment needed to reframe the discourse in a hurry. And — in tandem with mass media — it did. The reframing could be summed up in two words: Blame Russia.
By early winter, the public discourse was going sideways — much to the benefit of party elites. The meme of blaming Russia and Vladimir Putin for the election of Donald Trump effectively functioned to let the Wall Street-friendly leadership of the national Democratic Party off the hook. Meanwhile, serious attempts to focus on the ways that wounds to democracy in the United States have been self-inflicted — whether via the campaign finance system or the purging of minorities from voter rolls or any number of other systemic injustices — were largely set aside.
Fading from scrutiny was the establishment that continued to dominate the Democratic Party’s superstructure. At the same time, its devotion to economic elites was undiminished. As Bernie Sanders told a reporter on the last day of February: “Certainly there are some people in the Democratic Party who want to maintain the status quo. They would rather go down with the Titanic so long as they have first-class seats.”
Amid great luxury and looming catastrophe, the party’s current hierarchy has invested enormous political capital in depicting Vladimir Putin as an unmitigated arch villain. Relevant history was irrelevant, to be ignored or denied.
‘An Evil Empire’
With dutiful conformity from most Democrats in Congress, the party elites doubled, tripled and quadrupled down on the emphatic claim that Moscow is the capital of, by any other name, an evil empire. Rather than just calling for what’s needed — a truly independent investigation into allegations that the Russian government interfered with the U.S. election — the party line became hyperbolic and unmoored from the available evidence.
Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
Given their vehement political investment in demonizing Russia’s President Putin, Democratic leaders are oriented to seeing the potential of detente with Russia as counterproductive in terms of their electoral strategy for 2018 and 2020. It’s a calculus that boosts the risks of nuclear annihilation, given the very real dangers of escalating tensions between Washington and Moscow.
Along the way, top party officials seem bent on returning to a kind of pre-Bernie-campaign doldrums. The new chair of the Democratic National Committee, Tom Perez, can’t bring himself to say that the power of Wall Street is antithetical to the interests of working people. That reality came to painful light this week during a live appearance on national television.
During a 10-minute joint interview along with Bernie Sanders on Tuesday night, Perez was a font of exactly the kind of trite empty slogans and worn-out platitudes that oiled the engines of the dismal Clinton campaign.
While Sanders was forthright, Perez was evasive. While Sanders talked about systemic injustice, Perez fixated on Trump. While Sanders pointed to a way forward for realistic and far-reaching progressive change, Perez hung onto a rhetorical formula that expressed support for victims of the economic order without acknowledging the existence of victimizers.
In an incisive article published by The Nation magazine, Robert Borosage wrote last week: “For all the urgent pleas for unity in the face of Trump, the party establishment has always made it clear that they mean unity under their banner. That’s why they mobilized to keep the leader of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, Representative Keith Ellison, from becoming head of the DNC. It’s why the knives are still out for Sanders and those who supported him.”
While Bernie Sanders is hardly a reliable opponent of U.S. war policies, he is significantly more critical of military intervention than the Democratic Party leaders who often champion it. Borosage noted that the party establishment is locked into militaristic orthodoxies that favor continuing to inflict the kind of disasters that the United States has brought to Iraq, Libya and other countries: “Democrats are in the midst of a major struggle to decide what they stand for and who they represent. Part of that is the debate over a bipartisan interventionist foreign policy that has so abjectly failed.”
For the Democratic Party’s most hawkish wing — dominant from the top down and allied with Clinton’s de facto neocon approach to foreign policy — the U.S. government’s April 6 cruise missile attack on a Syrian airfield was an indication of real leverage for more war. That attack on a close ally of Russia showed that incessant Russia-baiting of Trump can get gratifying military results for the Democratic elites who are undaunted in their advocacy of regime change in Syria and elsewhere.
The politically motivated missile attack on Syria showed just how dangerous it is to keep Russia-baiting Trump, giving him political incentive to prove how tough he is on Russia after all. What’s at stake includes the imperative of preventing a military clash between the world’s two nuclear superpowers. But the corporate hawks at the top of the national Democratic Party have other priorities.
Norman Solomon is the coordinator of the online activist group RootsAction.org and the executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy. He is the author of a dozen books including War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death.
During the Cold War, Soviet biting and bashing was an institution. I can only think of a handful in Congress who dissented from the war talk. They were overwhelmed by business, the media, and the entire elite establishment.
I’m getting too old for this s#&t. So what I told the dnc was that they needed to get rid of the superdelegate system and unite behind Bernie’s medicare for all stuff. Think they’re gonna do it? Hell no. So me and the rest of Bernies supporters go back to sleep unemployed. I found out as a disabled author/activist that the disease is deeper than political or cultural, it is programmed into us at an early age that poor people are crap and the house niggers like Obama are proof positive of that. He could’ve done so much more for them than he did. And we just keep waiting for a future while it keeps on getting stolen from us. I didnt hear near enough about poverty from the repugnicrats. How long have we been waiting getting strung along? And its not like Americans dont get it. Theyve just given up and that is how the maggot infested system is set up too. To elicit participation while betraying the good efforts, to just keep on stringing us along.
The Democrat Party is now the worst. The Republicans were never a beacon of progress, but the Democrats are the most two-faced with a foreign policy that imitates fascism. They turn truth on its head unleashing a propaganda barrage teeming with lies. According to them, we should forget that Israel and the US trained and armed the Georgian invaders of South Ossetia, assisted and encouraged the Bandera coup in Ukraine, gave Turkey and Saudi Arabia the means to introduce chemical attacks by rebel extremists into Syria, and went on a rampage of anti-Putinism. Does Trump and his ally, Clinton, think that Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, etc will turn their swords into ploughshares and run?
Q;
Why is anyone still talking about Hillary Clinton ?
She is gone, why not let he be forgotten ?
Isn’t she a spent force, yesterdays woman ?
It looks like a reluctance to throw out ones worn out & out of date coat.
Out with the old & in with the new, isn’t there any potential talent worth speculation over ?
Tomorrow is a new day.
Because Mrs Clinton has lost, she and her Democrat friends are ready to destroy whole world and go to nuclear war. They are short sighted and think everybody like king salman and other Angelo Zions are their servant.
To end the brownscent guy, this conversation has been a good one, and since I did not know Maxine Waters’ age till you told it, Susan, she may be senile. Too long in DC can surely do that, and those folks probably drink lots of aspartame in their Diet Cokes and Diet Pepsi. Not to mention the boring environment of hearing those long-winded debates. I think McCain is senile but functioning enough on his Wargasms to keep active promoting more war.
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Abe, that is the best description of Maxine Waters mental breakdown, “her brain operating at the cartoon level”. Black Agenda Report should be on every truth seeker’s websites to follow. Lee Anderson, good on your blog; but with the level of corruption today, and also the astonishing evil that is being carried out for the corporate and zionist predators, who will stop at nothing, getting through to the somnolent masses is difficult. I wonder if we even have enough time before economic collapse or ecocide of Earth occurs.
From California, I was always proud to have Maxine Waters as our placeholding “angry black woman from California” … however, she’s apparently 78 years old and prone to ferocity and quite effective emotional responses over substantive policy … I saw a Salon article wanting her to run for president or be anointed leadership of the resistance (I suspect in an “anyone but Bernie” move) …
Another war-baby generation, (pre baby boomer), who needs to find a someone to mentor and pass on the torch to … imho.
“When Maxine Waters goes gung-ho crazy for the War Party, it tells us that the Black political class — overwhelmingly Democrats — are utterly useless to any movement for peace and social justice. In the throes of a terminal case of ‘Anti-Russia Dementia,’ otherwise known as ‘Putin Derangement Syndrome,’ the California congresswoman told a Tax March crowd in front of the U.S. Capitol that President Trump and Russia’s Vladimir Putin somehow conspired to arrange both the chemical event that killed dozens in northern Syria and the U.S. missile strike on a Syrian military airfield that followed. In a interview with a Huffington Post reporter, Water said:
“’I don’t believe there’s any real tension’ between Trump and Putin. ‘I think they’re putting on a show. And I think Putin is gonna come back and make it look as if he’s gonna hold the line somewhat on Syria now, and then want something in exchange for that — and that exchange is, lift the sanctions.’
“Waters has clearly lost her mind, her brain operating at the cartoon level. But, her mental and moral disintegration differs only in degree from that of the Congressional Black Caucus as a body, which has been drifting to the dark side on war ever since the First Black President got his hands on the nuclear button. Even Barbara Lee, the only member of Congress to vote against the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, appears to accept the manifestly false allegation that the Syrian military used chemical weapons in al-Qaida controlled Idlib province. She demands only that the U.S. Congress be allowed to play its part in the aggression […]
“Congress didn’t have an opportunity to vote on President Obama’s threatened air strike against Syria in 2013, because Obama backed off, reportedly after hearing from National Security director James Clapper that the evidence of Syria’s guilt wasn’t “a slam dunk.” Polls showed that nearly six out of ten Americans opposed bombing Syria at that time. However, more Blacks than whites — 40 percent vs. 38 percent — favored an air strike, the first time in polling history that Black public opinion was more warlike than whites. There is no doubt that the sea change in the Black stance on war had everything to do with newfound Black identification with U.S. power (imperialism), in the person of the commander-in-chief.
“The current Washington Post-ABC poll shows 54 percent of the public supports Trump’s bombing of Syria, with the results dramatically skewed by party. Only 37 percent of Democrats approve of the air strike, while Republicans seem jubilant, at 86 percent. However, there is no racial breakdown in any of the major polls — and, no wonder, since there is little organized Black fight-back against Washington’s (formerly) proxy war against Syria, and virtually no principled opposition among the Black Misleadership Class and its denizens on Capitol Hill. The corporate media perceive no Black peace opinion worth measuring.
Maxine Waters Loses Her Mind to “Anti-Russia Dementia” – Like the Rest of the Black Caucus
By Glen Ford
https://www.blackagendareport.com/maxine_waters_loses_her_mind
I think Waters (like the Congressional Black Causus) is generally DNC beholden and consequently loyal … Waters got a lot of attention as a hold-out Clinton supporter in 2008 … She had pledged early and was watched closely ..
In Ford’s piece I found
about that conference: http://www.unacconference2017.org/
this is more correctly United National Anti-War Coalition … which I have never heard of, and a quick google reveals a fracas between “in these times” IN THESE TIMES: U.S. Peace Activists Should Start Listening to Progressive Syrian Voices – A U.S.-centric view of the conflict gives Assad a free pass.. Decrying the usual claimed pro-Assad/anti-rebel American liberal bias
and UNAC’s response to what they call an attack: New Cold War: Response.
I can’t find evidence that UNAC existed prior to the November election … which is neither here nor there … but, usual caveats … Margaret Kimberly of BAR is on the administrative board.
United for Peace and Justice is currently holding a week of action on military funding
http://www.unitedforpeace.org/2017/04/11/gdams-2017/
UFPJ is not one of UNAC’s participating organizations
http://www.unacconference2017.org/p/participants.html
The article is spot on, the banksters controlled Democratic Party is the reason for trump. They will not accept responsibility for habitually dumping progressive candidates: Kucinich, Sanders, Stein and rabidly blame Russia. This portends badly for future because they will always dump real progressives. Tulsa Gabbard may be our next great hope, but I say this in earnest. We need to fight them on all fronts. We Ned to form a coalition of powerful progressives and not play one off against the other. Along with those named above we need to include and expand the remark include economics advisors/strategists such as Michael Hudson, Ellen Brown and Paul Craig Roberts. They can gain support from Ron and Rand regarding the Fed at least. I’d add Cornell West as all around advisor and strategists too.
I have written quite abit on these issues please read my blogs on Seizing the Commons, Public Banking and Public Media. The media us a tremendous advantage in defining and steering the conversation, to their own ends, so we have to have at least one major station to have real news and open PUBLIC discussion
Please see 024-025 blogs in the link below and comment and spread around. I try to deal with action responses.
http://youtopia.guru
[48 Hills] Trump Means War
http://48hills.org/2017/01/10/17978/
Just now on NPR is that Jehovah’s Witnesses in Russia have been declared an extremist organization by the Supreme Court for inciting hatred with leaflets, claim is it’s been an ongoing issue for some years now but some activity in St. Petersburg brought this to a head. Same city where the metro bombing just occurred. This will help increase Russia bashing, as also the alleged torture of gays in Chechnya, which Kadyrov, the president of Chechnya denies, and he further says the US will do whatever it takes to bring Russia down. Chechnya, I read, is Islamic and has much violence, warlords, being a North Caucasus mountainous state. The US ignores its own serious human rights problems, particularly with blacks, but has to tell the rest of the world how to live.
Also on news is chaos in Paris near Champs Elysee, some police got shot just 3 days before the election. Perfect timing…
Democracy is dead.
I believe if we had a functioning justice system there would be mass arrests of the war criminals in our midst. But: Who Will Arrest The War Criminals? Or Has Justice Been Subverted?
[much more info at link below]
http://graysinfo.blogspot.ca/2017/04/who-will-arrest-war-criminals-or-has.html
The judicial branch was subverted long ago, and now serves only the oligarchy, from top to bottom in all 50 states. Same with the state judiciaries. My professional experience in Maine, Massachusetts. DC, Georgia, Florida, and California finds no exceptions, which leaves little doubt about the other states.
To use the title of one of Greg Palast’s books, it’s an “Armed Madhouse”! I do like the “two wings of a rabid, blood-sucking vampire bat”, is it from Realist? Caligula could not have been crazier!
I made a copy of the article cited by Paul Craig Roberts by John W. Whitehead of The Rutherford Institute, now circulating on the internet from April 10, “Beware the Dogs of War: Is the American Empire on the Verge of Collapse?” One projection on Zero Hedge stated that if things continue as they are, the debt, now nearly $20 trillion, will be $40 trillion by 2040. Should be widely circulated. The Emperor has no clothes!
If things continue as they are, $40 Trillion will be reached in 8 years/2 terms, Obama doubled it in 8 years/2 terms. Bush doubled it in 8 years/2 terms. (+or- we’re screwed anyway)
If our news media were to have spend as much time shredding apart Hillary’s & Podesta’s emails as the media has wasted all this time accusing Putin of election interference what a difference this would have made. I continually meet people who although they feel threaten by Russian interference, they feel this way even without any evidence, and it totally goes over their heads to how Clinton sabotaged the Sander’s campaign. Oh and Bernie didn’t help his cause by his endorsing Hillary either. It’s pretty clear Americans are screwed when it comes to the two major political parties.
What’s the old Voltaire truism? You can find out who controls you by seeing who you can’t criticize.
No one in US politics can criticize the endless war. That’s who controls us.
Question everything and everyone, or live in ignorance and illusions.
Truth never resists being questioned.
Glenn Greenwald interviews high level Bernie staffer who was born in Russia and has worked on Russian campaigns as well as on the Obama presidential campaign before working with Bernie. They discuss his take on the explosive dangers and unintended consequences of the Democratic Party’s political ploys baiting and attacking Putin/Russia:
https://theintercept.com/2017/04/19/a-sanders-campaign-adviser-was-a-russian-vitali-shkliarov-speaks-out/
I wondered how the Chinese president felt and thought at the news over chocolate dessert of the cruise missile attack. Trump may have reminded of the immature young man Lyutov in the Jewish Russian writer Isaac Babel’s short story who kills an innocent goose to be accepted by the tough cavalry soldiers?
https://youtu.be/ZHDsYuKAgo0
Hard to know … apparently Trump had already breached protocol by arriving at dinner after Xi …
according to podcast (I just happened to listen to this morning), the Chinese are “back to the drawing board” wrt Trump who announced some sort of understanding that has — to date — never been explicated … see also the Chinese pulling out of a much publicized deal with Jared .. .and then Trump’s subsequent almost-incoherent threatening behavior towards Korea** — my impression is frosty frosty days ahead, podcast suggests it may go beyond the temperature in the negotiating room…
https://audioboom.com/posts/5836724-dining-missiles-and-north-korea-at-mar-a-lago-with-president-trump-and-president-xi-gordongchang
Team Trump is filled with loud-mouthed idiots … whose utterances keep being contradicted by “reality” … we threaten to preemptively blow up Korea’s missile launch and then — 2 days later — admit we probably don’t have the capacity to do so.
The silence of the international community is deafening.
Predictable results of Trump’s “diplomacy.” Those who can’t talk, threaten to shoot.
Sheepdog:
“While Bernie Sanders is hardly a reliable opponent of U.S. war policies, he is significantly more critical of military intervention than the Democratic Party leaders who often champion it.”
Bad dog!
Interesting that the Vault 7 leaker is now supposed to have come from inside the intelligence community, with Snowden’s saying that was the only possibility . . . hence smoke-blowing at Russia is thinning, along with Trump’s proving himself with his mighty strikes (and verbiage) here and there.
https://www.rt.com/usa/385350-cia-traitor-fbi-wikileaks-manhunt/
Thanks for the link. From there I found the RT Wilkerson and Snowden video from a couple of days ago discussing the hysteria against whistleblowers, what it means and why it is such a threat to democracy:
https://www.rt.com/viral/385213-snowden-interview-democracy-under-surveillance/
I think Edward Snowden is perhaps the most articulate and intelligent person discussing the essence of our democracy today.
He is f…… amazing!
Thanks, Norman Solomon! for your wisdom and Robert Parry for yours, too!
Democrats, republicans, Trumpians – it doesn’t matter, the deep state that controls the nation moves relentlessly to fulfill it’s dream of world domination, and untold riches for the rich. No political party or leader can stop that very real insane force. It is not at all clear at this point that there is anything that will stop these evil people short of nuclear war or total ecological collapse. Apparently the only way these insane “leaders” can be stopped is for every human on Earth to die, with them dying in their bunkers last of all.
“An astonishingly good idea…” “…with a spirit of bold curiosity for the adventure ahead!”
“Level 7”, 1959, by Mordecai Roshwald
You’re absolute right Mike K. Normal decent people who don’t war and want get trade flourishing and the environment sorted are like ten sheep trying to get past a pack of twenty wolves. We are always hearing about surgical strikes, well if war with Russia does break out, lets hope Putin does a surgical strike on the war mongers that inhabit Washington.
Hey Mike, why not let these war criminals die first so we can watch and then die knowing that the hateful people have been extinguished. I would hate to die not knowing whether these swines might have actually made it!!
sorry, left off the nyt link (other versions of Page story appears on other sites)
NYT: Trump Adviser’s Visit to Moscow Got the F.B.I.’s Attention. (This “visit” was in 2013 …. )
I have begun to wonder if there is some intention to create a Democratic led Whitewater (great white whale of a pointless investigation) of Trump (if not, of course, the Republicans). It is serving as a massive distraction from the latest humanitarian outrages in Syria and Iraq and the ongoing devastation of Yemen (war crimes and impending famine) and Somalia (famine, drought and cholera) (Somalia being the site of our recently announced boots on the ground escalation).
Today’s poster-boy in the Russian “scandal” is Carter Page … who has apparently been “known” as a Russian sympathizer (he disagrees with America’s punitive foreign policies) for years and years and surveilled for months and months and months — before and after a brief official tenure as a Trump advisor. Various insinuations that he’s a “spy” or an “agent” … but where’s the beef?
My “spidy sense” is that much as the Benghazi investigations never got around to discussing arm shipments from Libya to Syria** , this investigation of “Russian ties” (most of which appear to be business as usual with perhaps some tax/reporting issues) may be obscuring a more appropriate examination of international organized crime involving Trump and many (too many) influential associates.
** with or without alleged use of proxy cargo ships, and/or laundering via interim destinations and/or actual iran/contra like money changing hands — off-book sales or payments.
Carter Page makes the NYT front page while
intercept: Republicans Sell Access to Congressional Staffers, Flouting Cardinal Ethics Rule
Documents show that the National Republican Senatorial Committee and the National Republican Congressional Committee are both offering donors….
and
IBT: (Sirota) How Billionaire Trump Adviser Evades Ethics Law While Shaping Policies That Make Money For His Wall…The billionaire CEO of Blackstone, untethered by ethics law, oversees Trump’s economic policies in ways that are already helping his Wall Street…
This really appears to be a case of “fiddling while Rome burns”
Susan, people here are quite fed up with Hillary apologism and Trump attacks, and are not fooled. This sort of effort has prevented Trump from doing the one good thing he intended, reduction of foreign wars for Israel. So whose benefit do you seek? Surely not that of the US people. We all know that these are distractions from Dem corruption and Israel-gate. We all know that Trump impeachment would lead to the worse Pence. These comments belong on a site like Truthout.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t75EhlBy9Sg
I don’t believe it is possible for the progressives to win the war within the democratic party. They are all too bought and paid for. Sanders made a big mistake when he caved to the Clinton machine. No matter what he says now, he’s lost his credibility to a lot of his former supporters, including me. Tulsi Gabbard is our only hope now, and I think she has to go independent or signup with the Greens to move the progressive agenda forward. We need a real populist/peace movement that doesn’t cave to the establishment. The power structures (Wall St./the MSM/ the MIC) all need to be brought down simultaneously. Hopefully it won’t be a mushroom cloud that does it.
“Tulsi Gabbard is our only hope now, and I think she has to go independent or signup with the Greens to move the progressive agenda forward.”
Agreed!
We need peace more than anything. If we could elect a president dedicated to peace with the other great powers on earth, we could begin negotiating the other major problems including the economic and environmental ones.
The only high profile politicians doing this right now are Ron Paul, Rand Paul, Dennis Kucinich and Tulsi Gabbard. Ron and Dennis are probably too old to realistically be considered for the job. Neither the Dems nor the GOPers are going to nominate either Rand or Tulsi, as they are considered dangerous outsiders by the Deep State and its various factions of insiders. If neither of them will formally quit their party and run as third party or independents, the Libertarians and Greens should ally, at least for this one election, and draft one or both of them for their P-VP ticket. There must be a lot of Bernie supporters who could join such a coalition and emphasize what thieves the Dems were and what betrayers the GOPers were in the previous election. This would be something new and fresh which the millennials seem inclined to get behind. The attitude would be, we are not just acceding to a choice of the establishment being pushed at us, we are grabbing the initiative and thrusting a man and/or a woman whom we trust into the office. The country elected Trump because it desperately wanted change (same reason it picked Obama in ’08). This would up the ante, imposing actual change by the voters rather than phony change by the hucksters who interface between the people and the pols. I’d like to see the experiment performed, even though the last two (Obama and Trump) were failures. Just don’t let any established party types organise or run the movement. No corporate money and no professional campaign managers. If elected, fire all the extant spooks and generals on inauguration day. The major remaining obstacle will be the entrenched lying corporate media. Find a press secretary as capable and principled as Robert Parry. Name a national security advisor as knowledgeable and pragmatic as Stephen F. Cohen. Remaining clear thinking and articulate while acting decisively, unlike Trump’s erratic approach to the office, will go a long way towards long-term success and approval by the voters. A person can dream.
Hey, if you’re gonna dream, dream big! I don’t know if it fits with your moniker, Realist, but I’m with you.
Unless of course Tulsi Gabbard is controlled opposition, which is a lot more plausible, I don’t think it matters where you put your ‘Hope’ it’s all manufactured , why not…. “”Maxine Waters 2020″” it makes no difference.
“Universal literacy was supposed to educate the common man to control his environment. Once he could read and write he would have a mind fit to rule. ? Edward L. Bernays – from the book Propoganda
I tend to agree with Robert Steele: The two parties are two wings of the same bird and thus certain areas are not up for too much debate: Hegemony, funding the military-industrial complex & questioning the FED system, Big Pharma.
It was U. Sinclair who called them 2 wings of the same bird.
and the same bird = the vulture and so to “vulture capitalism”
Think outside the aviary. Two wings of the same rabid blood-sucking vampire bat.
I call them (elected officials) the forked tongue of a snake that only benefits the snake! The snake has absolute control of its forked tongue!
The total control of the democrats by the neocon element including Sanders, who has decided it is more prudent to parrot their fascist line on foreign affairs and Trump’s lack of political courage probably lead to the Syria attack, which was a war crime on behalf of el qaeda type thugs. Unless a serious antiwar force can emerge, perhaps spearheaded by Tulsi Gabbard, our situation is terminal.
Agree that the US government is made of cowards, with very few exceptions like the courageous Tulsi Gabbard.
The American political environment has shown that anti-war candidates and war heroes will be crushed (McGovern, McCarthy), insulted (Kerry), and even killed (RFK). Speaking out against Endless War before being elected is suicide.
Yes, we need such an anti-war force. We American dissidents also need a program that goes beyond denunciation of our country’s war mongering, financially predatory governing elite and that transfers real power from the few to the many. So, let’s consider that most Americans carry burdensome debt for their mortgages, student loans, credit cards, payday loans, etc. Many debtors must make painful sacrifices just to meet the interest charges on those debts. In effect, lots of people are living in debt bondage to the very financial institutions that have wrecked their prospects. We need a debt Jubilee for Main Street that makes up for the debt Jubilee that Wall Street has enjoyed: an immediate cancellation of all mortgage, student loan, credit card, and loan shark debt. Such a Jubilee would help almost all people and damage only a very few. Surely a country that could put men on the moon can figure out how to manage a debt Jubilee.
Here is an article that compares the approval ratings of Donald Trump, Barack Obama and Vladimir Putin:
http://viableopposition.blogspot.ca/2017/04/vladimir-putins-unflagging-popularity.html
America’s presidents can only dream of Putin’s approval and trust ratings.
Really Sally? You think you have to pump up Putin in order to face the reality of the Democratic Party’s corruption? One has absolutely nothing to do with the other.