Why The Berniecrats Aren't Going To Back Down

The houses above, like tens of thousands of others in Detroit, obviously used to look very different. But then came the advent of what was at first seriously referred to as "free market capitalism," followed by what was initially called "job-creating" free trade, followed by what was at least honestly referred to as the Great Recession. Throughout these developments, most in Detroit and America overall have seen the opposite of freedom or job creation. They've seen their livelihoods taken away for the benefit of a few corporate executives. They've seen their tax dollars used to fund unending wars (the volunteers for which largely came from poor areas of color like the one pictured), along with trillion dollar bailouts for the billionaires who caused the economy to crash. They've seen the system be redesigned to make it much harder for people like them to live happy, secure lives.

They've also seen the way those responsible for their misfortune have overwhelmingly responded to it: by blaming the victims. Just like hatred towards blacks had to be propagated for slavery (and the parts of its legacy) to be widely accepted, hatred towards the poor has been instrumental in selling the neoliberal enterprise. Thus the countless statements over the last few decades from corporatist politicians, right wing media figures, and thus tens of millions of ordinary people about how poor people aren't trying hard enough, how they aren't entitled to anyone else's money, how they should be self-reliant, etc. At no point has the majority of the population accepted this classist ideology, but the fact that it's been pushed so aggressively has had the desired effect: everyone who's grown up in lower class lifestyles throughout the last forty years or so is familiar with the view that people like them shouldn't be complaining about their situation.

The unintended problem with this is that when people are told their struggles are illegitimate and they should just accept the status quo, they do the opposite of become compliant. Except in the statistically rare cases where they've shown to fall for this neoliberal gaslighting, those left behind by the current system have overwhelmingly come to reject the oligarchy's agenda in recent years. This is clear in how the majority of Republicans now support single payer health care, higher taxes on the rich, and ending neoliberal trade despite their different views on these things in the recent past. More importantly, this awakening has shown in the emergence and so far spectacular success of the Bernie Sanders revolution, with tens of millions of people now actively working towards bringing the changes our society desperately needs.

But once again, while the dissenters represent the majority, we haven't been able to do our work for this movement without intense disdain from within the beltway. The attacks against us involving Stalinism have thankfully been relatively rare, but the more mainstream anti-Sandersisms, as articulated by outlets like the Washington Post, haven't been any less disingenuous: Bernie Sanders and his supporters are fringe, are purist, are unrealistic, etc. When the majority of the country backs Sanders and his ideas, the best the oligarchs can do is try to convince those in that majority that they're naive. And once again, as I'll illustrate, such tactics have a way of backfiring.

To the rank and file establishment loyalists, corporate news columnists, and occasional Goldman executives that denigrate what we're doing, I'll say it in a more complete and direct way than I've said it before: the Berniecrats will not back down. Just like we wouldn't accept that the status quo shouldn't be challenged, we will not accept that challenging it is naive.

We will not accept that a party which has hurt people of color through mass incarceration more than Reagan did, reordered the global trade system to benefit large corporations, caused the Great Recession by deregulating Wall Street, made the difference in Senate votes for the Iraq War, set us up for a new crash by refusing to adequately re-regulate Wall Street, escalated Bush's wars, took us to the brink of climate collapse, and so much more is an adequate alternative to the GOP. Nor that this party did not undeniably and directly steal the Democratic nomination from Bernie Sanders, who the majority of the Democratic base has embraced.

We will not accept that goals like keeping corporate money out of politics, ending the paradigm of perpetual war, and single payer health care are unrealistic when all of Bernie's agenda is not just practical, but politically attainable due to the revolutionary dynamics that are emerging amid staggering economic inequity. Nor that the American people, who are found in every public opinion poll to support these reforms, will reject Sandersist candidates in the coming years for offering them.

More to the point, we will not accept that those on the receiving end of the destructive policies Sanders' critics often champion shouldn't see their concerns addressed. We will not tell the Detroit workers who've lost their homes because of neoliberal trade and Wall Street greed that they're naive for wanting these things stopped. We will not act like the tens of millions of Americans now living in third world conditions because of lack of an adequate minimum wage, lifetimes worth of student loan debt, and an outrageously racketeered health care system aren't realistic for wanting these problems alleviated. We will not dismiss the struggles of the millions of people who've been unjustly incarcerated, the tens of millions who can't afford their obscenely overpriced prescription drugs, or the countless families throughout the global south who've been literally torn apart by the U.S. military empire because anyone says doing so would be impractical.

The political establishment essentially used this strategy of telling disadvantaged groups that their concerns are naive as a means to beat Trump last year. As a result, enough lower class and nonwhite people chose to opt out of voting for Hillary Clinton, and enough downtrodden Rust Belt residents chose to vote against Clinton, that the unthinkable happened. And now, as the majority's concerns continue to be sneered at by the members of the McResistance, an insane specter looms: when a major U.S. terrorist attack inevitably occurs sometime soon, and the Trump regime no doubt lays the case for totalitarian lockdown in response, most Americans, I predict, will jump on board the push towards nationalistic fanaticism. Because at least the faux-populist right wing extremists in the White House are different from the "moderates," who mock the very idea of change and barely even pretend to care about the needs of ordinary people.

Society is on the brink of willing self-destruction because of the political establishment's condescending and callous attitude towards the have-nots, and Berniecrats aren't going to stand for it. We will continue promoting our progressively populist message as an alternative to the Trump team's reactionary temptations. It may not be what Paul Krugman wants us to do, but it's what the people who used to live in the houses above would probably want us to do.

Democratic Loyalists Are The Trump Regime's Greatest Asset

I recently learned that I'm a sexist. The news seemed a little unexpected at first, as it was delivered by a man who actively supports an abashedly anti-woman agenda, but since he professed to know so much more than I do about advancing equality, it was only honorable for me to accept his judgement. Namely, that I and all the others who'd like to see Nancy Pelosi replaced by Sandersist insurgent Stephen Jaffe in 2018-and by extension, who want to see the Democratic Party start working for the people-seek these things out of naturally bro-ish contempt for women like Pelosi.

My respect for this columnist's striking insight into the minds of tens of millions of people he's never met was unchanged as I read further. The reason besides misogyny that we want to primary Pelosi, he keenly observed, was because she doesn't support single payer health care, which has no chance of passing anyway despite its now bipartisan majority support, and Pelosi has done some good things despite her otherwise staggering history of betraying progressives, and Jaffe isn't a progressive himself because of his non-policy related personal characteristics, and so on till the Berniecrats are hopefully so overwhelmed by this barrage of baseless attacks and efforts to change the subject that they leave the Democratic establishment alone.

And so on indeed. When we stand up to power, we can always expect to be met with unrelenting efforts from the ruling class' surrogates to gaslight us, to marginalize us, to make us feel like our concerns are absurd. This has always been the case when rulers have been challenged, but in modern times it's different. Never before most people's lifetimes have oligarchies been able to surveil the entire citizenry. To impose themselves and their ideas on all aspects of life. To endlessly perpetuate war with impunity. To wipe out massive populations and resources in an instant. To steal sizable fractions of the world's wealth with such little effort. So the modern oligarchy's propaganda has become naturally elevated as well.

The ruling class controls the vast majority of the media Americans consume, much of our political and legal institutions are engineered to control the outcome of elections. Dissidents can be persecuted with relative ease. So defending the status quo, especially when it comes to the Democratic establishment, has become a convenient task. You're remembering things wrong, the modern establishment propagandist can so easily say; millions of Sanders voters were not disenfranchised last year, Russia was not considered an ally just a few years ago, a new housing bubble did not appear during Obama's term, etc., etc. Nearly all media statements and public records can be revised to fit the oligarchy's narrative, so its deceptions are made virtually unassailable-and its presence is made seemingly unshakable.

I imagine you've guessed by now how this relates to the article's title. When a political establishment like this exists amid a rogue new administration's attempts to create a self-styled dictatorship, it's inevitable that these two forces will merge in their shared mission of dominating society. Numerous instances have come up of the Trump regime working with the Deep State to conquer the world, from new Washington Post columnist John Podesta's praising Trump's military budget increase, to Trump's responding to the neocons' Russiagate outcries by attacking Syria, to Trump's trying to prosecute Julian Assange.

As the geopolitical horror show goes on, the Deep State and the Trump administration will no doubt grow further united, such as when they'll partner in launching the next American imperial war after the next major terrorist attack gives them an opening. The factions within the ruling class are mutually moving in for an unprecedented seizure of power, and it doesn't matter that one of those factions-the Clinton Democrats-claims to oppose the other. They're still both participating in the takeover.

This is what Democratic loyalists like the one mentioned above are working towards when they attack the so-called radical left's efforts. Whether said exposer of my sexism is unaware that Pelosi is on record for supporting a litany of right-wing policies and fully capitulating to the post-9/11 Bush administration, or whether he thinks she's an acceptable Trump opposition leader in spite of this, the message is clear: so many Clinton Democrats are willing to give the Trump regime an easier path to autocracy if it means their favored Democratic leaders stay in power. And this attitude has been observed within all parts of the establishment liberal echo chamber, from the Clintonite columnists who were so eager to defend the Senate Democrats that voted for Trump's cabinet nominees to the Democratic loyalists who continue to insist, against all evidence, that moving left is a bad electoral strategy for defeating the GOP.

But there I go, talking about the standard political horse race like it will have any relevance amid the harsh, not so superficial reality to come. The financial framework is on the verge of collapsing. The Deep State's plans for war with Russia, along with Syria, Iran, and maybe even North Korea, are close to being realized. The nation is a major terrorist attack away from having its ailing democracy blown to pieces by the fanatics in the White House. There's no telling what things will look like by the next midterm or presidential election, but it's certain they'll be radically changed for the worse-perhaps so much that the elections won't take place. Regardless, most Americans will likely be focusing on crisis-induced paranoia and jingoism rather than on any elections, with a great deal of the Democratic base being no exception.

As for those who put their country above their party, be only emboldened by the establishment's attacks against you. In response to Trump's pulling out of the Paris climate deal, join Democratic Socialists of America instead of a professedly pro-climate action group that's unwilling to fight corporate power. Do all you can to help Berniecrat Tom Perriello win the Virginia Democratic gubernatorial nomination on June 13 rather than his unreliably anti-Trump opponent Ralph Northam. And most importantly, don't concede the war of ideas to the defenders of the oligarchy. For all their clout, they can only manipulate the interpretation of reality, not change it. And that will be their downfall.

Reminder To Democratic Loyalists: You're Now The Chief Opponents Of Progressive Change

Inflated leverage over the political system is rarely the main method dictatorships use to maintain their control. Every time an oppressive regime has been established, the powerful have fabricated every kind of justification they can come up with for continuing the status quo. They say it's the will of deities, natural principles, and other larger forces for the hierarchy to have reached astronomical proportions. They say the victims of the self-serving system they've created are poor or powerless because they've made themselves so. They say the current order is inextricably in place, and all efforts at change are naive attempts to rebel against reality itself.

So what do we make, amid this sickeningly advanced stage in maybe the most effective authoritarian takeover in history, of the justifications provided by the power structure's gofers in the Democratic Party? The Republicans have largely rallied support for the oligarchy with the mentioned tactics of claiming natural principles are at work and blaming the victims, but the neoliberal propaganda aimed towards the left has been less blatant-and thus more insidious.

The goal of the Democratic establishment propagandists is not so much to convince ordinary people that the status quo is justified, but to make them accept the institutions and leaders that keep the status quo in place. When Democratic leaders serve the oligarchy's interests, they blame their actions on scapegoats, or hide that they took those actions at all, so that their supporters remain complicit.

Like all pro-status quo deceptions, its laughably transparent nature from the perspective of those who haven't accepted it is matched by its unassailable logic from the perspective of those who have. The downside to this spasm of revolutionary momentum that's come in the last two years is that it's made the pro-establishment strains more vocal as well; as was definitely not the case a few years ago when the neoliberal order was safe and sound, rank and file supporters of the Deep State's Democratic wing are coming out in full force these days.

One of my regular publicizing sites Medium abounds with often very popular articles from former Hillary Clinton supporters who feel the need to keep aggressively pushing their leaders' repugnant agenda. Online forums being besieged by comments from usually rude and hostile Democratic loyalists is more common than ever. And this typical hostility from establishment liberals hasn't just been widely observed on the Internet.

This phenomenon represents an inevitable point in every transformative movement which Sanders campaign organizer Becky Bond calls the counterrevolution, wherein the supporters of the status quo lash out when they see change coming around the corner. In that case, we shouldn't let it bother us as it shows our effort is succeeding. But in the hopes of expanding this movement, I'll give a friendly reminder to the counterrevolution's members: by attacking Bernie Sanders' revolution, you are acting as the biggest obstacle there is right now to progressive change.

When establishment loyalists attack Bernie's revolution, they are attacking the only hope the Democratic Party has of ever again becoming a dominant force. The Democratic Party in its current form, along with the dangerous agenda it represents, are disfavored by respectively around two thirds and at least six out of ten of the country, while Bernie Sanders is America's most popular politician and his goals are supported by the majority in virtually every respect. Naturally, the Democrats have been beyond decimated in the last eight years, while the Berniecrat candidates have so far won by far larger proportions.

Already Berniecrats are breathing new life into the party, with Montana democratic socialist Rob Quist leading in deep red Montana, while establishment Democrat Jon Ossoff has performed relatively poorly in his bid for Congress. By backing the latter type of candidate out of spite for Bernie Sanders, loyal Democrats are ironically exhibiting the same behavior of the Bernie or Busters they like so much to decry.

To be fair, when establishment loyalists judge the Sanders wing to be unworthy of their support, they're not doing so with the same kinds of justifications Bernie or Busters had for not supporting Clinton. Despite all the inaccurate stereotypes and old primary attack lines that Clintonists still direct at Sanders supporters, we're objectively ideal allies in the progressive cause.

Sandersists are disproportionately women and people of color, shattering the "Bernie Bro" characterization. We've shown ourselves to be typically very committed to working for change, as evidenced by how we've built a serious presidential campaign and a major movement without any help from the corporate elite. And our top goals are to get money out of politics, end the paradigm of perpetual war, bring about social and economic equality, and bring about climate action, regardless of which party we're holding accountable in those regards. By demonizing us, loyal Democrats are attacking an essential resource for bringing about positive change.

And when loyal Democrats say Sanders supporters are unrealistic or naive, as I've illustrated, they're directly setting themselves up against the goals many of them want. The image above is satire. But its sentiment is accurate; those who align with the establishment wing of the Democratic Party are supporting an agenda that represents 21st century civilization's endgame, and the consequences of that will soon make themselves impossible to ignore.

Because of the Democratic establishment's embrace of the militaristic foreign policy that's done so much to increase terrorism, a major attack on the United States will soon occur. Because of the Democratic establishment's cheating the only candidate who had any real chance to beat Trump, the administration will use the crisis as an opening for staggering autocratic takeovers and an insane burst of military aggression. Because of the Democratic establishment's pushing lately for war with Russia, the aggression will include just that. And because of the Democratic establishment's refusal to adequately re-regulate Wall Street or fight climate change, this will all take place amid an epic economic crash that's already in its early stages, and yet more increasingly intensified steps towards environmental apocalypse.

History doesn't care whether anyone thinks the status quo is moral or sustainable. Monumental injustice and instability are what await us so long as the status quo is in place, and no number of Medium articles asserting the contrary are going to change that.

It Isn't Working, Mr. Brock

You can leave it to a "liberal" corporate media outlet like Time Magazine to report on something like the launching of David Brock's "Brietbart for the left" organization in an all-too positive way. And that's what Time did. In January, a Time article titled Liberals Plot Revenge As Donald Trump Assumes The Presidency issued some statements about Brock and what he represents which were so appropriately inaccurate that they inadvertently helped me get a firmer grounding in my conviction that Brock and Friends are not advancing a good cause.

Foremost among them, aside from the sketchy classification of Brock as a "liberal" after his aggressive promotion of a highly corporatist and militaristic candidate, was the evident appraisal of the fact that Brock wants revenge through leading what he called a Brietbart for the left. If Brock and other Democratic elites really cared about bringing about a bright future in the face of the Trump regime's rise, they would not be seeking any kind of revenge, let alone trying to emulate the tactics of the infamous alt-right institution Brietbart as a means to do so; they would humbly own up to the role they played in Trump's victory, leave all the grudges and cynicism of 2016 behind, and apply a positive, productive strategy to improving the political situation.

But to Time's strange approval, that's the last course of action which occurred to them in the aftermath of the 2016 election. Not taking a hint from the near-universal rejections Brock is these days being met with from both the Sanders and Clinton wings of the Democratic Party, Brock and his allies, which pretty much just include Hillary Clinton and her top donors and aides, are attempting to continue all the worst aspects of the 2016 Clinton campaign for the long haul. In addition to Brock's "Brietbart for the left" organization itself, which merely employs all the usual cynical partisan hackery, he and the gang are making their in a word deplorable online troll campaign from last year Correct the Record into a permanent operation, having moved all of their now more bitter and motivated than ever employees onto the payroll of Brock's organization Share Blue.

Through this platform provided by Brock, Share Blue's rank-and-file members to this day carry on the proud traditions set down by Correct the Record, setting up numerous fake accounts that typically consist of safely anonymous profile pictures which frequently descend upon unsuspecting opponents of the Democratic establishment to spread propaganda and/or simply stir up confusion, negativity and conflicts.

"In addition to profile pictures depicting Brazilian soccer fans, they use the old HRC primary slimes against Bernie over and over again," reports Amy Sterlin Cacil on the practices of Brock's new troll army. "So, why are these people being paid to do these things? It runs counter to any marketing or community-building advice imaginable. The answer is clear. They don’t want people to communicate. They want people to be isolated, fearful, or simply disgusted with social media and politics, in the exact same manner as an abusive partner wants to isolate, demoralize and control the person they falsely say they love."

It was at this point in the writing of the original version of this article that I composed a rant against the perpetrators of this operation whose unhinged nature was altogether unnecessary and that I decided to delete after taking it up with the first person I showed it to that wasn't as angry as I am at these adult bullies. (Caitlin Johnstone recently experienced something similar, having half-jokingly titled her latest article on the Brock team's tactics ShareBlue Is Now Saying That 'Bernie Bros' Were Actually Paid Russian Trolls. Hold Me Back.) But after sufficiently venting my outrage at the shameful behavior of Brock and Friends (an outrage which Johnstone has reportedly managed to express with "a strange, guttural sound somewhere between a trumpet full of water and a goat getting kicked in the balls"), I've come to the conclusion that to get so worked up about the Brock trolls in the first place is to perfectly play into their hands.

Let's zoom our focus way beyond the unpleasant minutiae so far mentioned and look at what's been lately happening to the actual political system: in at least a hundred small ways, it's seemed, Bernie Sanders' political revolution has won victories since the election. And the fact that these small gains have happened at least once every week for the last five months or so is starting to show on a big scale. Between the many, many elections of Berniecrats to positions in local Democratic parties that have been occurring since Bernie's movement kicked into gear, as I illustrated in my last article, they've pretty much taken over three state Democratic parties in the first three months of this year. The Green Party is making gains as well, with Green congressional candidate Kenneth Mejia having recently gotten more votes than his Republican competitor, making the Greens the new second largest party in Los Angeles.

And the fact that both the Democratic Party reform and third party approaches are extremely difficult to succeed in presents a relatively minor setback to the political revolution. As the increasing economic inequality-provoked societal trend towards revolt against traditional institutions and leaders culminates with the white working class' recent souring of their false messiah Donald Trump, an awakening is taking place that's already started to force change within the political system. Republicans, who have already joined the majority of other Americans in mostly supporting climate action and higher taxes on the 1%, are now stepping on board the push for universal health care as well according to a recent poll that says more Republicans support single payer health care than not.

This emerging consensus among the American people that neoliberalism needs to be counteracted has already made the passage of Berniecare into a near-term prospect, and as I've illustrated, the recent rise of single payer health care is just the first of the supposedly radical ideas we'll see enacted in the months and years to come.

In short, a paradigm shift is taking place. And yet for the past year, the benefactors of the old order have been working quite literally round the clock to trip the potential creators of this shift up in the most petty and psychologically damaging ways possible. I, like pretty much every other Berner, have encountered and admittedly been affected by the online foot soldiers in Brock's sadistic project. I've more than occasionally come across the purposefully offensive and confrontational rantings of the Democratic establishment's social media shills, complete with the still running attack lines against Sanders supporters and the ironic accusations of people like me being secret paid Putin trolls. And they've also more than occasionally gotten under my skin as their composers intend. But no matter how much the Brock trolls have gone on the attack, they haven't prevented me from getting off the social media threads that they like to hijack and doing the work needed to make the political revolution successful.

And the fact that trolls have such a limited ability to waste the time of their target audience is what's resulted in so many other members of the political revolution having lately gotten to work as well. The establishment's direct online trolling efforts are, in a word, failing, along with its more subtle recent effort to discourage the revolutionaries by trolling them with bizarre assertions from the corporate media about them having been mislead into opposing Clinton by Russian trolls posing as Sanders supporters. None of this is stopping us from donating to the various burgeoning Sandersist organizations, contacting our should-be representatives about things like single payer health care, and in most cases successfully seeking elected office. If anything, it's making us more active, with me and virtually every other Berniecrat being motivated to fight back against the cause of the Brock trolls whenever we see them issuing their smug statements about us being destined to fail.

As the insurgents mobilize, the oligarchy is desperate to mount an effective counter-campaign, and because it knows it can't ever put together a grassroots operation, it's invested in fighting its opponents with deceptive and (it hopes) revolutionary behavior-discouraging statements made from online comment sections and Washington Post editorial pages. But revolutionaries are made of sterner stuff than any snide paragraph can overcome-we've signed up to combat the most powerful forces in the world, after all-and the trolling isn't getting to me or pretty much anyone else. And if you feel like it's getting to you, take my example; you, not the trolls, and certainly not the pro-establishment "liberal" article writers, have all the power over what attitude you have and which actions you take.

I'll conclude by quoting this message to Brock and Friends, as put out on March 31 by one of the political revolution's rank-and-file members Don Ford:

So, I feel like apologies are in order...

I'm sorry that my plan to take over the Democratic Party by maintaining our work in the primary into the party organizations is working...

I'm sorry we took over a county party today that makes up 2/3s of Oregon.

I'm sorry [the] New Mexico takeover was so effective it hit the news.

I'm sorry that Arkansas just elected a Berner for state party chair...

I'm sorry to all the internet trolls who got paid to stop us but were ineffective. I'm sorry that you spent millions and we did it on pennies.

I'm sorry because it has to be crushing to find out that whatever plan you are working on isn't as effective [as you thought it would be].

I'm sorry that people were out of the loop and missed the first wave of information not given out on Facebook. We all only have so much time.

As we continue to sweep hand counted paper ballot elections across the country it has to be crippling to find out we did it without your help.

It's not too late, and never will be. In the end, the work we are doing is for everyone whether you want it or not.

I just hope you can recognize the success and enjoy the fruit it bears.

The Revolution is a leaderless swarm coursing through the veins of all 57 states and territories...

Our victory is only a matter of time and staying the course.

Remember, they only win if we surrender.

If We Want The Resistance To Succeed, We Won't Let It Be Hijacked By The Neoliberals

The words on the sign above are of course fake. But the message it articulates is very real. Debbie Wasserman Schultz and the other corporatist members of the DNC, in addition to having engaged in the infamous tactics to undermine Bernie Sanders' campaign that we learned about from Wikileaks, naturally did nothing to stop the numerous incidents of voter suppression and electoral fraud which were perpetrated throughout the primaries by lower-ranking Democratic officials.

This subtle coup against the Democratic candidate who was supported by the majority of their party's electorate, along with the terrible strategies used by the Clinton campaign to win over that majority, is one of the many actions establishment Democrats have taken which played a major part in Donald Trump's election. While you'll never see them admit it, the vast majority of the American people do not share the corporatist, morally relativistic worldviews of establishment Democrats, and this made them the worst ones possible to be in charge of stopping Trump from winning.

So after the election, these Democrats took the only wise course of action: try to fashion themselves as the leaders of the resistance movement to Trump.

While the fiasco of the Democrats' 2016 defeat has convinced some of those who supported Clinton in the primaries that they've been pursuing a dead-end political brand, most of them still aren't willing to acknowledge the deep problems with the current Democratic Party, as evidenced by how all the corporate Democrats who might run in 2020 have the combined support of 45% of the Democratic electorate. And once again, the minority within a minority of the "liberal" oligarchs who fund and organize the charade of the Democratic Party establishment are trying to make claim to the role of opposing Trump and the GOP so as to further their ulterior motive of maintaining the economic and political status quo.

Their attempts to hijack the anti-Trump movement are predictable and occasionally amusing. One of the neoliberal Democrats' media gofers Keith Olbermann has dramatically photographed himself with a concerned expression while draped in an American flag, with the sleek logo of "the resistance" featured in front of him; the neoliberal Democratic mega-donor George Soros has had disturbingly significant involvement with the organization of the Womens' Marches; and establishment Democrats have generally been shamelessly eager to use policies like Trump's Muslim ban to point the finger at progressives who didn't back Hillary Clinton-and that's including those who didn't support her in the primaries.

And once again, the neoliberal Democrats' campaign to make their left-wing opponents compliant by branding themselves as noble allies in the fight against the greater evil is endangering our chances to actually defeat the greater evil. As I've illustrated in depth by pointing to the public opinion polls which show the vast majority of Americans support Sandersism's supposedly radical goals and the inscrutably populist nature of Trump's victory over Clinton in the Rust Belt states, appealing to the left, not the "mainstream" center, is in most cases the best way to win elections these days. And the old guard Democrats' refusal to acknowledge this is already hurting the Democrats' hopes for fighting Trumpism on the electoral level.

"We may very well have one chance to save our party and begin winning elections again," assessed the decidedly Berniecratic Santa Rosa Democratic leader Sarah Coutu in a letter to The Progressive Army regarding the tactics that pro-establishment Florida Democratic officials used last month to shut out reformers in their state. "Florida plays a huge roll in nationwide elections. The Florida Democratic Party had this one chance to recover from the huge losses on November 8th and prove that they were serious about change. I personally feel they have instead sealed our fate to another 8 years of losing elections. Today feels like the beginning of what others are calling 'Trump’s World'. Before today [when the neoliberals took ill-earned victory in the race for the Florida Democratic Party's next leader], there was hope we could start winning elections in 2018 and thereafter, bringing the party back to the people, uniting our forces across the entire party to stand strong against the republicans. I’m afraid we have just opened the door for Trump to do catastrophic damage to our country, with no force to stand against anything he wishes to do."

These so-called resistance leaders aren't putting up much of a real fight to Trump and Friends on the civic level, either. Far too many Senate Democrats have voted to confirm Trump's cabinet nominees, something that I think will prove to be just the beginning of a saga of over-compromises that corporate Democrats, in their eagerness to be "pragmatic" and generally not rock the boat, will make towards the Trump administration. After all, these types of Democrats have no real incentive to block Trump's agenda of increasing racial inequality, perpetuating unnecessary military conflict, escalating the class war on the bottom 99.9%, ending civil liberties, and further making the American pretense of democracy irrelevant, as they themselves for the most part represent all of these goals.

This folly on their part, I expect, will soon become a danger not just to progressive values but to our very republic, as Trump is sure to take on a truly fascist bent when the next major terrorist attack inevitably occurs.

Those who don't represent these things, thankfully, are doing everything they can not to let this movement whose prospects for success are our only hope of saving the planet from ecological meltdown be co-opted and neutered by such narrow and self-serving interests. The Berniecrats have already made great gains in wresting the California Democratic Party from the neoliberals, as well as in many smaller facets of the Democratic Party throughout the country. And while the old guard has managed to occasionally strike back as mentioned three paragraphs above, their only line of defense is evidently an ability to rig the process in their favor which seems to only reach so far. They may be able to set some political booby traps for the progressive insurgency, but stealing every election is all but impossible for them to do. And so the Sandersists, with their unparalleled nationwide network of grassroots activists, are by far in a better position than the establishment is to win elections both within and outside of the Democratic ticket, as well as to influence the actions of those in power generally.

In November, James Howard Kunstler wrote regarding the 2016 election: "Daddy’s in the house and he busted straight into the nursery and now the little ones are squalling in horror. Mommy was discovered to be a grifting old jade who ran the household into a slum and she’s been turned out to solemnly await the judgment of the courts, nowhere to run, nowhere to hide. The kids on campus have gone temporarily insane over this domestic situation and some wonder if they’ll ever get over it." Well, since then the kids have for the most part managed to regain sanity and start directing their panicked energy towards getting mommy out of the house, who's refused to obey her eviction notice. And when they finally get her out of the picture, they can focus on getting daddy, who's not as strong as he looks, tied down to the nursery floor. Then it's playtime.

How To Tell When An Oligarchy Is Scared For Its Life

It's somewhat fashionable these days for a political writer to conjur up a dystopian vision of what things will be like by the end of Donald Trump's first term, so here goes: it's the day after Election Day in 2020, and the president has just been re-elected. If you can call it an election. The results of this contest, as they were with that of 2016, have been fraught with examples of voter suppression and statistically impossible exit poll discrepancies. And the means Trump used to gain support this time around have been similarly sketchy.

In the aftermath of the great economic unraveling of the first half of 2017, the president's approval ratings, along with the public support for the political and economic system he represented, looked like it would never recover from their staggering dip. But then, of course, the United States was attacked by terrorists in an epic breech of national security. Following the tragedy, Trump's poll numbers rose astronomically, along with his tendency towards engaging in corrupt and authoritarian behavior. He (by which I mainly mean the far smarter and scarier people who control him) went on a terrifying rampage, suspending virtually all constitutional liberties, eliminating the few remaining protections set in place to protect the bottom 99% of the population, and ultimately creating the now undeniable climate catastrophe we're experiencing today, all with the blessing of his unwilling-to-fight "opponents" in the Democratic Party establishment.

And when this inevitably started to bring Trump's poll numbers back down, he fulfilled the plan he'd once hinted at of starting a new War in Iraq to "take their oil." All of this, along with the massive efforts made by the Trump administration to take away the voting rights of nonwhites, caused Republicans to continue their eight-year streak of increased domination over electoral politics, with the GOP having retained the House and the Senate in 2018 and "won" the White House by a large margin in 2020. Meanwhile, the economy has become more unfairly ordered than ever, with the bottom 99% being mostly very poor while those at the very top enjoy as much wealth as ever due to the trillions of dollars they were awarded in bailout money after the 2017 economic crash.

As the recent behavior of Trump and Friends indicates, though, they expect a very different future. When one looks closely enough at how the benefactors of the political and economic status quo act these days, it becomes clear that they're trying to mask a deep, sometimes subconscious sense that the system they've created is in its death throes.

It can't be a coincidence that right after the existence of the neoliberal Democratic establishment came into peril with the rise of Bernie Sanders and his army of change-hungry activists, Democratic elites took wildly extreme measures to try to hold their crumbling base of support together, having started a clearly McCarthyite campaign and blamed everyone but themselves for their November defeat.

It's impossible not to at least speculate that Trump and his fellow oligarchs have grown very worried about their beloved neoliberal system being overthrown when, after a series of notably popular movements to take society back from corporate domination emerged in the form of Occupy, the Bernie Sanders campaign, and others, they filled their new government with former corporate executives, planned for the creation of an unprecedented police state, and threw out baseless claims about terrorist attacks to keep the public in a state of useful fear.

It's blatantly clear that those in power have largely become aware that their empire is close to crumbling when many members of the billionaire class have started seriously preparing in recent years for a coming crackup of civilization as we know it, often one which involves an uprising among the lower classes.

That last example is different from the first two, as it reveals certain members of the oligarchy have already surrendered themselves to the fact that their system is certain to fail, but for the most part, it seems, the world's elites are reacting to the growing signs that business as usual can't continue by doubling down on their faith in it. Through the launching of increasingly absurd propaganda campaigns, the prepared assembly of autocratic states, and the wholesale takeover of the government by big business, elites are attempting with redoubled vigor to take more control so that when the uprising inevitably comes, they'll be better suited to counter it.

And they have good reason to expect this challenge. In the 1930's, the last time economic inequality in America was as extreme as it is now, those left behind by an exploitation-based economic paradigm made every effort to break the power of corporations and the super-rich, and they very much succeeded. The 21st century's movement for economic justice (and by extension environmental, social, and geopolitical justice) are quickly moving in for the kill as the ever widening wealth gap forces public sentiment to become more and more favorable towards their agenda. And when this populist energy hits critical mass around the year 2020, a likely nonviolent but highly disruptive and polarizing battle between the masses and the oligarchy will be under way.

Which of these two will prevail, though, and get to define the next phase of history? I'll take my best guess in another hypothetical scenario: It's the day after the election in 2020, and President Trump has just been defeated in a staggering landslide by a non-corporate funded opponent who may or may not be an 80-year-old but still fighting Bernie Sanders. This candidate's long path to victory has been tied in with the enormous gains that their supporters have made throughout these last four years.

Those gains started with the enormous movement ignited right after the 2016 election by Bernie Sanders and his supporters to remake the Democratic Party and the nation in their image. And they very much began to do so in 2017, having earned major victories in California and other states while generally making establishment Democrats uncomfortable. Their efforts picked up a lot of additional support from former Trump supporters and pro-establishment liberals when you-know-what happened to the economy in 2017.

And while things got frightening for those who professed their agenda in the aftermath of that year's terrorist attack, it proved to be a temporary setback. Many of them carried right on with their activism work away from the government's newly dissent-hostile gaze, giving them a wide series of victories in the local elections of November 2017. And as time went on, their fortunes for the most part improved, with Trump's approval ratings falling back to below 50% fairly quickly and many of those who'd thrown their support behind the administration amid the nationalistic fervor of the 2017 terrorist attacks' immediate aftermath moving back into the movement of the Berniecrats. This surprising resilience of anti-Trump and anti-neoliberal sentiments, which was no doubt due to the economic factors of the time, for the most part continued throughout the War in Iraq that the Trump administration launched to provoke renewed compliance from the public.

And the rest is an unsurprisingly uplifting story. Through relentless involvement in electoral politics, Sandersists took the majority in the Senate and the House in 2018 (they won the latter in spite of Republican gerrymandering thanks to Brand New Congress' brilliant strategy of running some candidates on the Republican ticket). Through intense public pressure, they provoked a widespread effort among local, state, and sometimes even national government officials to pursue creating a living wage for all, universal health care, and other necessary measures. And most fortunately, through a great deal of bottom-up climate action on their part, they were able to take advantage of a narrowing window of opportunity for averting climate meltdown.

As a result, the Trump administration became politically tied down in spite of its best (and most maniacal) efforts, poverty began to drop fairly rapidly, and things generally became less uncertain and more hopeful. This has been especially the case throughout the 2020 election cycle, wherein the overwhelming surge of progressively populist energy that elected Trump's successor has correlated with the emergence of a new and more resilient version of Occupy Wall Street. And while the president-elect faced some obstacles when overzealous pro-establishment Democratic primary election officials in several states perpetrated voter suppression and electoral fraud, the Democratic Party's state and local leadership has been taken over by Berniecrats so much throughout these last four years that the rigging of the 2020 Democratic primaries wasn't half as extensive as the rigging of the 2016 Democratic primaries. So like so many other recent efforts from the Sandersists, their presidential insurgency prevailed.

Which of these futures do you think is most likely? Yeah, that's what I thought.

The First Wave

Sometime last year, according to an interview, Jane Sanders was with her husband discussing his choice to run for president. "How can you win? We're from a small state," she said to him. "I know the issues are important, but isn't there another way for these issues to be discussed? Can't you write a book? Can't you start an organization? Can't you go on a speaking tour?" To which he replied, "Yes, I can do all of those things, and it's not going to matter at all. It's not going to change the conversation."

Bernie Sanders's original mission, though he's denied it, was not necessarily to win the presidency but to change the country. In spite of the DNC's best efforts, he's done just that, and more than in the realm of public discourse. He has helped several citizens who are as concerned as he is about inequality, perpetual war, and the environment to succeed in directly changing the political system.

A popular label for this new breed of politician is "Berniecrats." They're Democratic officials who either supported Sanders in the primaries or are backed by him now. And though the future of progressive politics-and American politics, for that matter-is most likely in a third party that hasn't been corrupted by corporate interests, it's important to support them in this election cycle. Here is a list of all of them, along with links to their campaign websites or pages with information about them:

Tim Canova

Keith Ellison

Tulsi Gabbard

Jeff Merkley

Alan Grayson

Zephyer Teachout

Ron Varasteh

Josh Brannon

Peter Jacob

Tim Sheridan

Patrick Malloy

Dimitri Cherny

Arik Bjorn

Justin Bamberg

Terry Alexander

Robert Williams

Joseph Neal

Cezar E. McKnight

Wendell G. Gilliard

Peter Welch

Pramila Jayapal

Tom Fiegen

Bao Nguyen

Preston Picus

Jim Keady

Richard Mcfarlane

Lorna Phillipson

Jane Kim

Misty Snow

Misty Plowright

If this list is incomplete, please let me know in the comments below, but its current length should encourage you.

When Bernie Sanders endorsed Hillary Clinton, it revealed that he thinks the Democratic Party is still fixable; he could have continued to compete all the way to the convention two weeks afterward, trying to expose every bit of voter suppression that occurred during the primaries and explaining how James Comey's decision not to indict his opponent was utterly wrong. But he chose to give the Democrats one last chance to redeem themselves, most likely because he very seriously fears a Trump presidency. You can be the judge of whether he made the right decision, but in terms of helping progressives in the short term, he may indeed have.

The establishment Democrats would have been hurt had he exposed their incurably flawed organization, but so would have those genuine progressives listed above. They are some of the first in a series of populist leaders that will go on for decades, the "first wave" in the movement that was started this year.

So before the Democratic Party is replaced by something better post-2016, let us try to salvage the best parts of it.