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.

Your Inner Propaganda Radar Is Right: The Late Night Comedians Are Establishment Mouthpieces

You're watching John Oliver, Bill Maher, Samantha Bee, or another given member of the late night comedy crew that's become so successful in the Trump era. As usual, their jokes about whatever ludicrous developments have that come of late are top-quality amusing, as are the videos and images they've made to accompany it all. But then (hopefully) you see something that gives you a certain, uneasy feeling.

You know what I'm talking about. It's that off-guard sense every free thinking person has gotten at some point while extolling the segments of these late night self-described liberal comedians, one which vaguely but undeniably tells you you're watching a slyly presented piece of establishment propaganda. This feeling used to only appear from time to time, being triggered mainly by the occasional production of drone war propaganda slipped into the comedy crew's programming. But since Bernie Sanders kicked off the battle to take back the liberal class, modern late night liberal comedy's true colors have shown frequently and with all their characteristic ugliness.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but their attacks on Bernie and what he stands for seem to have begun in April 2016, when Sanders was finally getting successful enough in the primaries for most of the beltway to take his candidacy seriously. That was when Samantha Bee-who, as we'll see, is the most blatant establishment mouthpiece of them all-did a segment wherein she interviewed a group of Sanders supporters. Despite Bee's professed motive to get an understanding of the optimism these Berners were feeling, the scene had a "well I'm glad you guys are keeping your heads up despite not being able to win" message that reeked of veiled condescension. And that was just the start of it.

By mid-May Bee's treatment of Bernie Sanders supporters had turned from condescending to negatively generalizing to outright lying about us and our concerns. In response to Sanders supporters' crying foul about the Nevada Democratic Party's inexcusable and blatant pro-Clinton rule changes, she blamed them for being excluded from the event by the dozens and used it as an opportunity to call out Berners' similarly sore loser attitudes towards the numerous other primary contests that Clinton had stole fair and square. Jon Oliver followed suit, ending his segment on the Nevada convention with an extremely deceptive monologue debunking an array of potential ways Sanders supporters could claim the primary had been rigged while addressing exactly zero of the concerns we actually had.

After Bill Maher gave his own non-address post-stolen California primary to Sanders supporters who dared  dispute the results of the primaries, it was on to the attacks against those who dared not to accept the Democratic candidate that "won" under these circumstances. Samantha Bee devoted her episode on the Democratic National Convention to mocking the grievances being aired by the Bernie Sanders protestors there, throwing in all the disingenuous epithets about "white privilege" and accusing them of disregarding the concerns of disenfranchised groups while declaring the millions of Sanders supporters who'd had their voices taken away during the primaries to be sore losers. Then in October, Jon Oliver paid a similarly honest tribute to those disenfranchised Sanders supporters who'd defected to Jill Stein by shamelessly smearing Stein and third parties in general.

And late night comedy's war on genuine progressives hasn't let up a bit since the election. In February, Samantha Bee finally let her true feelings on Bernie Sanders show by calling him a "mansplaining prick." In March Bee went out of her way to inform us that the Deep State-i.e. a system that allows elites to primarily call the shots-doesn't exist. In April Trevor Noah, usually a less blatant member of the dissent-crushing late night comedy team, essentially excused Obama's serving Wall Street as president by saying "fuck you!" (I quote) to those complaining about his taking Wall Street speaking fees. And recently Bill Maher spoke similarly to the Bernie or Bust movement, which, while I wasn't part of, I should defend from Maher's disingenuous attacks (he didn't acknowledge the major concerns Bernie or Busters had with Hillary Clinton, such as her wanting to start war with Russia).

In case you're wondering after seeing me state that last fact, the reason I wanted Clinton to win was so that those beholden to her and her party could see for themselves the horrors that would come from supporting neoliberal, warmongering leaders. We'd likely be in combat with Russia by now had Clinton won, but at least this would get the other half of the left to wake up. Since this hasn't happened, though, the Democratic establishment's media gofers have been able to more easily point to Trump and the GOP as the source of every problem, as the audiences of those late night comedy gofers cheer uproariously at their wry observations and critics hail them as righteous gatekeepers of democracy.

To state the by now painfully clear, your built in establishment propaganda radars aren't overly sensitive. These comedians, talented as they are, have been admitted into the upper ranks of corporate media punditry for more reasons than talent: they're up there because they aren't willing to challenge the status quo. Even the late night comedians who seem to personally resent the Democratic establishment, like Seth Meyers with his pointed criticisms of the Senate Democrats who voted to confirm Trump's cabinet nominees, are not really speaking truth to power. In those instances they've criticized Democrats without focusing on parts of the big picture, like the Democrats' push for war with Russia or their unacceptable embrace of corporate cash.

And don't assume these figures are simply trying to toe the line between the Clintonist and Sandersist facets of their audience. They could do this without making the dishonest statements mentioned, and while fully addressing the problems with the Democratic establishment.

In short, whether or not these skilled spokespeople for the plutocrats like it, they know they can't challenge the status quo in their positions. When you make political jokes on the corporate media outlets while presenting yourself as a progressive, you can only go so far as the standard partisan cracks about how awful those Republicans are before the boss starts to get uneasy. And until the proportions of media company ownership, along with the prevailing political culture within the Washington beltway, are brought back to their post-New Deal states, there's no use in replacing the current late night comedy cast. As long as there's an oligarchy, there's going to be laugh out loud jokes continually presented to us which promote the oligarchy.

My fellow progressives, we need to stop pretending the celebrity clowns are on our side. As I just illustrated, they're decidedly not, and we need to reject their power serving material as we reject the joke-free power serving material from the CNN pundits. Because when we do that, we can start focusing not on pushing against what we don't like but pushing for what we want. Call members of Congress about supporting the H.R. 676 single payer health care bill. Voice your support for Bernie Sanders' likely 2020 successor and all around bane to the establishment Tulsi Gabbard, and donate to her campaign for peace. And do so while leaving behind the naysayings of the status quo's defenders so you can focus on the fact that we can and will win this.

We Need To Call The "Centrist" Democratic Establishment What It Is: A Dangerous Extremist Group

When you're in a position of privilege, even the relative kind, it can be easy to dismiss the concerns of those on the receiving end of your leaders' destructive actions. If you have access to health care, it's no challenge to say the idea of single payer universal health care is unrealistic or that it's not politically feasible. If you haven't felt the effects of neoliberal trade deals like NAFTA, haven't been impacted by a criminal justice system designed to keep poor and nonwhite people incarcerated, or haven't had to live on a $7.25 minimum wage, you can comfortably say those who want to get rid of these policies are unserious radicals. And if your community isn't being literally pummeled by another operation of the U.S. military empire, you can feel reasonable in saying "we're always at war, what's one more?"

So it's only natural that as Democratic Party loyalists were responding to my previous article with all the obligatory hostility towards anything not approved by the party bosses, among the far more typical ad hominen attacks were actual arguments like "as I've said, if you want to beat the far right you need to go through the center." That remark's author was concurred by the other pro-establishment liberals on the thread; indeed, this silly Berniecrats' calls for things like health care for all and living wages are just the ravings of an extremist. You need to appeal to the center if you want to get anything done in the first place.

Oh right, the "center." I hadn't thought of that. No matter that representing such supposedly radical goals would be a dynamic electoral strategy, as both the public opinion polls and the fact that Bernie Sanders won last year point towards. And no matter that those goals are the only path we have to addressing climate change, ending the paradigm of perpetual war, and bringing about social and economic equality.

All those mainstream polls saying Berniecrats' goals are supported by the vast majority of the country are fake, after all, and all those well documented incidents of voter suppression and electoral fraud in the 2016 Democratic primaries are conspiracy theories. So let's pat each other on the back for defending the "center."

Meanwhile, the politicians, top Democratic officials, and major media figures who these sensible "centrists" support for also representing "moderation" aren't exactly living up to those values. They're going on television calling the Syrian missile strikes that have killed 9 civilians, including 4 children, as well as brought us within an inch of World War Three, "beautiful."

They're using the most incendiary language possible in regards to America's extremely delicate situation with Russia-which, it can't be reiterated enough, is a nuclear power. They're helping confirm Trump cabinet nominees that want to further expand America's already Orwellian surveillance and police states.

This isn't the first time the "center" hasn't quite exemplified moderation. It was "moderate" Democrats in the House and the Senate who enabled the passage of the Fourth Amendment-obsolescing 2001 Patriot Act, and it was a "moderate" Democratic president who's expanded Bush's surveillance state to Thought Police-esque levels.

It was the same "moderate" president who's committed the country to thirty years and a trillion dollars of new nuclear weapons program spending while pushing us into a new Cold War with Russia in the last weeks of his term.

And more broadly, it's the "moderate" Democratic Party that's done half the work towards creating an unprecedented plutocracy, bringing the climate to the brink of collapse, and destabilizing the middle east several times over.

And when the circumstances provide the Trump administration an opportunity for really letting loose in regards to authoritarianism and military aggression, perhaps in the form of a North Korean nuclear attack that can easily be blamed on Russia, there's little doubt how these "moderate" leaders will take charge. Only in the interests of not approaching things through too extreme an ideological lens, they'll go along with the war effort, the Trumpian autocracy effort, and all the rest.

No use standing up for constitutional freedoms and an at least survivable degree of world conflict; if we want to stop the far right, we need to go through the center.

Then enter the one part of this coming development that isn't so certain: will the present defenders of these "centrists" change their views on so-called moderate liberalism when establishment Democrats are partnering with Trump to end the pretense of democracy?

To be fair, I'm sure many of them will. But the unfortunate reality is that sometime soon, we're going to see liberals joining in on the coming frenzy of self-destructive nationalism in jingoistic solidarity with the authoritarian right. Fortunately, those on both the far left and the far right largely don't feel comfortable enough with the status quo, as those in the "center" evidently are, to support it.

And as the anti-establishment left and right unite around our shared goal of taking down the power structures these "moderates" feel the need to defend, I suggest we should stop playing into their rhetorical hands by calling them centrists. It's time to refer to the "center" as what it now represents: an extreme and completely immoderate agenda.

The Democratic Establishment's Strange Behavior

Foreword: I recommend you read this linked article before continuing.

The Washington Post put out a column yesterday, titled Bernie Sanders' strange behavior, which expressed some adamant concerns over the need for unity among the Trump regime's opponents. But the Post, like the Democratic Party establishment that it represents, is not really helping in regards to that cause.

Over the last few years, the DNC and its media gofers have at times offered some odd comments and actions for a group pushing for party unity.

To wit:

• They actively conspired within the DNC leadership to interfere with the 2016 Democratic presidential primary, and at one point considered painting Bernie Sanders' Jewish heritage in a negative light as a way to hurt his campaign.
• They went far beyond just considering interfering in the democratic process, having rigged or allowed their allies to rig the Democratic debate schedule, the major media coverage, and even the voting system itself against Sanders.
• After nakedly attacking Bernie Sanders in both personal and ideological ways on a notable amount of occasions, the Washington Post and other pro-Democratic establishment publications like it ran a similarly disingenuous and hateful campaign against Jill Stein and then Tulsi Gabbard. They're currently working on a Bernie smear campaign 2.0, with pro-establishment liberal columnists having started to frequently put out articles attacking him and his supporters as "purists," "Russian agents," etc.
• Speaking of which, McCarthyism, McCarthyism, McCarthyism, and-wait for it-McCarthyism. 

But the most puzzling development this week is their reaction to Sanders' deciding to keep Georgia special election candidate Jon Ossoff candidate at arms length. When Sanders hesitated to endorse Ossoff (which he's done today) no doubt partly because of the favorable treatment Ossoff is receiving from the DNC and the DCCC in comparison with their abandonment earlier this month of Kansas Berniecrat James Thompson, establishment Democrats acted strangely outraged that someone they know stands against them in almost every way would be wary of jumping on their latest public outreach effort.

"It's an odd statement to make about a guy who has been running in such a high-profile race and in whom Democrats have invested so much money and blood, sweat and tears," reads said Post article about Sanders' bizarrely sensible statement on Ossoff.

Establishment Democrats qualify this baffled response to Sanders' behavior by the fact that they don't seem to really know much about what he stands for and what his mission is, so perhaps it should be taken at face value-that they truly don't know enough about Sanders to view his actions correctly. But it's an odd thing for them to do in regards to a guy who they've so happily claimed to want to be like.

Here's a tellingly strange response to Sanders' Ossoff statement from Daily Kos Elections' David Nir, as quoted from two of his tweets the other day:

"Bernie Sanders isn't helping—he's hurting. He should either endorse Ossoff and raise money for him, or keep his silence."

"On second thought, Sanders shouldn't endorse Ossoff. He should just remain silent and not hurt the efforts of those of us helping in."

Perhaps the strangest thing about this is that the Democratic establishment isn't vouching for the progressivism of more eagerly Sanders-endorsed candidates like Montana's Rob Quist, even as they're doing so for another Democrat of pretty questionable credentials. That would be how unlike Quist, Ossoff does not seem to support a $15 minimum wage despite running in one of the poorest states in the country.

As Heavy.com notes, Ossoff does want to raise the federal minimum wage from its current slavery status of $7.25, but not explicitly to $15, and only to the loosely defined extent that it's "indexed to cost of living." Indeed, there's a lot in that for progressives to be suspicious of.

Yet establishment Democrats defend their full-on support for Ossoff by noting the terrain on which Democrats are trying to win. Ossoff's more ardent supporters like to say he's simply doing the best he can to advance progressive goals while running in an area that's highly conservative, but partisan labels aside, those in the overwhelmingly impoverished southwest would probably receive a platform of populist economic reform very well.

That entire justification-we can't step outside the perceived mainstream of the political spectrum, or else voters will dismiss us as fringe-can be applied in the minds of establishment Democrats to seemingly every situation, even the one of Ossoff in the radical change-eager south. Sure, they like to reason, the majority of the country is behind Bernie Sanders on virtually every issue, but he and candidates like him just can't win because he's a "socialist" or a "radical."

It all makes the Democratic establishment's decision not to back Thompson, Quist and others even more conspicuous. Perhaps they're much more concerned, as their behavior over the last four decades or so suggests, with helping their corporate and wealthy donors than the voters they need to succeed. But they're really contradicting themselves here, creating divisions where they say they want unity by continuing to favor oligarchy-friendly candidates and goals over most of the electorate that they're counting on to bring them back into power.

Whether this is all a series of wayward comments and actions or something more targeted at Sanders' brand of progressivism, it's unlikely to help Democrats "come together" very soon. And the current Democratic leadership, perhaps unsurprisingly, is proving a questionable messenger for that cause.

This Is How We're Going To Break The Democratic Establishment's Control Over The Anti-Trump Movement

Things are looking up. Bernie Sanders' poll numbers are at all-time highs while his opponents wallow in increasing unpopularity and public distrust. Political involvement among young people and those in among the progressive majority in general is quite possibly higher than it's been for a generation. As a result, despite the U.S. government's behavior being ever more militaristic and authoritarian, corporate power and economic inequality in many ways being at record levels, and the climate being on the brink of catastrophe, society is looking a lot like it's on track to overcome all these obstacles.

And then, on April 19, 2016, the revolution is dealt a big setback.

Largely because of the voter suppression and electoral fraud that occurred in the 2016 New York Democratic presidential primary on April 19 (which, by the way, were so substantial that even the New York Times was prompted to report on them), the nation's political trajectory was sent into an unprecedented tailspin last year. But even as Bernie Sanders' supporters are making enormous gains in turning the situation around by essentially doing outside of presidential politics what they were doing this time last year, the power structure has the potential to pull off the 2017 equivalent of stealing the New York primary.

Yes, they can do it again, and they can do it even more stealthily than last time. By co-opting the anti-Trump movement, and at the same time aligning themselves with Trump and Friends in regards to the goals they share, the neoliberal Democrats, the Deep State, and their many allies in the corporate media are essentially smothering the effectiveness of the effort to defy the Trump regime. In other words, without genuine progressives in charge of The Resistance, a lot of focus may be put on things like Trump's tax returns and unpleasant personality, but things like his wars, neoliberal policies, and infringements upon civil liberties will get dangerously insufficient attention seeing as the Democratic establishment very much shares these parts of Trump's agenda.

And as the specter of a Trumpian bout with fascism provoked by a world war and/or terrorist attack looms closer than ever, with Trump and the Deep State's newfound mutual enemy Russia continuing to issue far more blatant threats towards the United States than usual, ending this fake resistance movement is an urgent need. There's no hope for defying the regime, after all, without a sincere and united effort behind that defiance, and this goes not just for the ineffectual "McResistance" movement but for the currently elitist and politically inept Democratic Party.

So how do we take The Resistance away from these narrow and ulterior motive-filled interests? Easy: by simply letting those interests make their intentions so blatantly narrow and ulterior motive-filled that they ultimately drive away their initial supporters.

Throughout these last eight years, with the epic electoral failure of corporate Democrats post-2008 and the rise of a progressive movement within the Democratic Party whose victory could only be prevented last year through actual electoral fraud, the traditional Democratic bosses have been confronted with the harsh reality that Americans aren't going to support predatory capitalism and real-life Orwellianism whether an R or a D is involved. So since the virtual collapse of the Democratic brand on November 8 last year, they've decided to transfer their political investments into another letter: "A" for anti-Trump movement.

For some this bait-and-switch of theirs has been apparent from the start, but a great deal continue to assume anything "resistance" is good news. But as the months have passed, allegiance towards the leaders of the McResistance has in many ways started to drop-and not so much because of what anti-McResistance commentators like me have done, but because of what those McResistance leaders themselves have done.

The first self-induced partial tear-down of the McResistance facade began in February, when progressives responded to the fact that more than a dozen Democratic senators had been voting for all of Trump's cabinet nominees by starting a PAC called We Will Replace You. Its goal was to primary any Democrats who cave into the Trump agenda. This organization, unlike groups like Justice Democrats and Our Revolution, was impossible for establishment Democrats to denounce as GOP-helping "purity testers" without exposing themselves as the true obstacles to countering the Trump agenda, because it only went after Democrats who were acting as direct assets for the president. Thus, I've encountered otherwise devout Democratic Party loyalists who fully agree with We Will Replace You's objectives, because the last thing they want is to be a Trump enabler.

Of course, that hasn't stopped the Democratic establishment's most zealous defenders from attacking the effort to remove Trump-helping Democrats, as exemplified in a slightly unhinged column from a few days ago that stated supporting We Will Replace You is "suicidal." But its message falls on liberal ears that are currently distracted by the second big "I'm not on your side" announcement from the leaders of the  McResistance: the voicing of support from top Democrats for Trump's Syria strike earlier this month. While I've witnessed some incredible incidents of liberals wishing Hillary Clinton were president as Trump ordered the attack, the fact that Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, and droves of other party bosses including Clinton herself support Trump's action has no doubt caused a lot of anti-war liberals who like to think Democrats share their foreign policy views to stop and think.

And as this general unraveling of the old political order which is 2017 drags on, the McResistance will only  further unravel as well. Virtually no rank-and-file Democrats, however much they think they can count on their party's leadership now, will stand for public figures who call themselves members of "The Resistance" while helping Trump and GOP carry out their dangerous agenda. When Democrats like John Kerry and Hillary Clinton voted for post 9/11 Bush proposals like the Patriot Act and Iraq War, the former was nearly defeated in the 2004 primary by the (more) principled Howard Dean and the latter lost the 2008 primary to the (at least marginally) more principled Barack Obama. And the backlash this time towards Democrats who are unwilling to counter a Republican administration bent on autocracy will, it seems, be far greater.

Then again, don't let my somewhat anecdotal case for the Democratic base's intolerance of Trump-enabling party leaders make you become complacent. I could be wrong about the McResistance being so politically vulnerable, especially considering the formidable propaganda machines its string-pullers have in place. To be safe, let's do all we can to expose the hypocrisy and inadequacy of this "resistance" movement whose top members so often do the opposite of resisting, and of this Democratic Party that claims to represent an opposition to Trump while acting as his greatest asset.

We can turn both said movement and said party into a genuine force for good, and if the leaders of the McResistance keep capitulating to Trump as they of course intend to do, our job will be easy.