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.

Get Over It, Establishment Democrats

Hillary Clinton in December after giving a speech on the problem of fake news. Because there's no time in her schedule these days to focus on things like the political ineptitude of the current Democratic Party.

What upsets me the most about the benefactors of the current political and economic system is not that they support environmental, economic, and social exploitation. It's the fact that they deny their support for these things. If someone is poor, the elites figure, it's not because they've been denied the path to success by an economic system that's massively slanted to benefit the already successful-it's always because they've made bad choices. If the planet is becoming ecologically crippled, it's not because of environmentally destructive actions on the part of corporations-it's because the interests of the natural world aren't as important as business interests. If large portions of the electorate are rendered unable to vote by archaic voter ID laws and limited opportunities for coming to the polls, it's not because they're the victims of an electoral process designed to shut out poor people and minorities-it's because these groups haven't earned their right to vote or are too lazy to vote.

So it's no surprise that when those who don't hold this worldview tried to gain control of the political system last year with the Bernie Sanders campaign, the same people who believe the things above didn't acknowledge that the process was massively rigged against us. A corporate media blackout on Sanders' campaign, a Hillary Clinton-helping debate schedule, a grossly unfair Nevada Democratic caucus, a disgustingly Clinton-slanted Nevada Democratic State Convention, closed primaries in eleven states, and widespread instances of voter suppression and electoral fraud in Iowa, Massachusetts, Oklahoma, Michigan, Missouri, Arizona, New York, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Kentucky, Oregon, Puerto Rico, and California didn't mean a thing to Clinton's supporters. All claims of bias in the primary process from Sanders supporters have been met by establishment Democrats with denial, or at the very least significant downplaying, and accusations of us being sore losers.

Get over it, the Clintonists have said time after time. We rigged the contest fair and square, and we and our friends in the corporate media are never going to admit it, so you might as well accept the falsehood that you're in the minority and unite behind us.

Now, of course, the tables have been turned. The Democratic establishment's political viability has been utterly repudiated with Clinton's coming-from-in-front loss to Trump last year, and it's now an undeniable reality that corporatist "liberalism" is not supported by the vast majority of the American people. Except the corporatist liberals are denying it.

The excuses that Hillary Clinton supporters have come up with for their candidate's loss are almost completely without basis and often sound far fetched in and of themselves. The notion that the Russian government "hacked" the election by providing Wikileaks with the DNC emails is backed up by no real evidence and is very likely no more than a tool for the McCarthyite campaign that Democrats have been running. The grievances about an online epidemic of fake news having hurt Clinton's reputation with false scandals would no doubt be unnecessary if Clinton hadn't made herself a vulnerable target for such attacks, baseless or not, by having recently provoked an FBI criminal investigation. The case for James Comey's actions right before the election having swung it for Trump is very hard to make. The claim that third party voters tipped the election is simply not supported by the numbers. And as for the assertion that Bernie Sanders is responsible for Clinton's loss...well, there's a reason most of even the most ardent Clinton apologists don't seem to believe that.

And establishment Democrats' denial has naturally included a baseless view that most support their political brand in addition to their claims about the election being rigged against them. In December, Nancy Pelosi infamously said that she doesn't think Democrats want a new direction, in spite of the fact that 46% of Democrats do not feel represented by either party. And that number would doubtless be well above 50% if it were to include the tens of millions of people who have left the Democratic Party since the days of false hope and change in 2008.

Corporate Democratic congressman Adam Schiff said in January in regards to the Democrats' relationship with the electorate: "Did we lose because we were too far to the left and we had too small a tent, or did we lose because we are too mainstream and didn’t energize the base?" This was in contradiction to the fact that the left's tent makes up the vast majority of the American population, meaning what he considers to be "mainstream" is anything but.

And perhaps most absurdly in this collection of elitist fantasies is the claim from neoliberal Democrat Al From that economic populism based on promises of increased governmental intervention can't be effective because "Too many in the forgotten middle-class have already lost faith in government’s ability to help them." By that logic, we should simply ignore the wishes of the 86% of Americans who think government should do more to fight poverty because they know the government is currently too corrupted by corporate and billionaire interests to be able to do so.

It isn't 1992 anymore, and every aspect of the political landscape is hostile towards the old "Third Way" Democratic brand. And yet its supporters continue to cling to the belief that it remains robust, and that the Democrats' staggering losses throughout these last eight years are due to anyone but themselves. This is what being a sore loser looks like. This is what turning to conspiracy theories when one doesn't get their way looks like. This is what being naive looks like. The elegant irony of the situation is that everything the Clintonists accused the Sandersists of being last year, the Clintonists themselves are now perfectly exhibiting.

So as establishment Democrats continue to chastise Sanders supporters for not overlooking the fact that last year's primaries were enormously tilted towards one candidate (the latest attempt to bury what happened is a piece titled Shame On Bernie Supporters Who Claim The Primary Was Rigged), I'd like to do a little chastising of my own for something that's in this case legitimate. I'm calling out all of the old guard Democrats who refuse to accept that their candidate lost fair and square, and thus that their political brand is not accepted by the vast majority of the American people.

The Democratic elites lost because they ran into the battlefield with a political bomb strapped to their chest, and they'll lose again in 2020 if they're allowed to run into the battlefield again with that very same bomb. That's why in the meantime, the Sandersist majority will be working to change the Democratic Party's leadership at every level so that the old guard won't be able to steal the 2020 Democratic primaries from our new candidate. At that point, the system of economic exploitation, environmental destruction, rampant militarism, and violations of the democratic process will quite possibly have come to an end, regardless of whether its defenders believe there's a problem with it.

Don't Count On Establishment Democrats To Stand Up To Trump

As 2017 gears up to quite possibly become the new 1933, the two thirds or so of Americans who oppose you-know-who are spending this bleak political winter doing their best to prepare for taking part in the massive resistance effort which is certain to bloom in the spring. But as history has shown us, a significant portion of that two thirds might not stay committed to the fight.

Before I continue, I'd like to make it clear that this piece is not intended as a means to divide Trump's opposition between the moderate and far left. While I hold no allegiance to the Democratic Party until fundamental changes are made to it, and I will under no circumstances embrace the neoliberal agenda that it currently represents, I know that in the context of resisting Trump, it's important to know that the enemy of your enemy is always (to an extent) your friend. The main way in which I'm about to attack the moderate left has do to with how it can't be relied upon to remain part of said resistance.

Enter the instance of what happened after 9/11. In the aftermath of the attacks, the Bush administration used the circumstances to go on a rampage, infringing on many constitutional liberties in the name of security and doing you-know-what in the middle east. What enabled the U.S. government's reign of terror, though, was not just the compliance of Republicans, which was to be expected, but the compliance of many liberals, namely the ones of the centrist persuasion.

Mainly among these "liberal" enablers of the administration were the ones in the House, the Senate, and much of the major media. Throughout the years following the attacks, far too often did most House and Senate Democrats vote in favor of Bush's proposals, such as when all but one Democratic Senator approved the Patriot Act and when enough of said Democrats supported the Iraq War for it to be able to pass. Others in this effort to unite the left and the right at whatever cost included those in charge of "liberal" publications like The New York Times and the "liberal" UK prime minister Tony Blair.

"I hold Blair more responsible for the Iraq War than I do George W. Bush," Michael Moore has said in a brutally honest assessment of the role that Blair and others like him played in this shameful affair. "Because I expected that of George W. Bush. That wasn't a surprise, all right. But Bush only got away with it because he had the cover of Tony Blair, because he had the cover of liberals, the liberal New York Times, the liberal New Yorker magazine, the 'liberal' Tony Blair."

Now enter the situation we're going to be in when Donald Trump is president. While I, like too many others, used to view the claims that Trump is a threat to the republic as alarmist, I've lately come to believe that image many have gotten of "Fuhrer Trump" has a lot of merit. While I have every reason to believe he'll govern in a relatively center-right, congress-restrained fashion at first, at a certain point I expect things to indeed get very scary. Namely, when a terrorist attack similar to that of 9/11 inevitably occurs, the only way one can realistically imagine the Trump administration reacting is with an amount of authoritarianism and reckless military action which may be unprecedented in the history of America's government.

Right after the crisis hits, Trump and his party will no doubt get an enormous boost in popularity, giving them a powerful political aura throughout the next several years which allows them to get away with a lot more corrupt and/or dangerous deeds than usual. Just how useful this aura turns out to be for them, however, depends on what his opponents do. And from everything we can tell, those in the moderate, corporatist wing of the Democratic Party will abandon their initial (supposed) effort to resist Trump right when the attacks occur.

Again, I make this prediction not because I want to provoke division within Trump's opposition due to the ideological differences I have with establishment Democrats, but because I have good reason to doubt said Democrats, who are unfortunately the main people in charge of the resistance movement, will share any parts of my cause after a certain point. If my prediction seems implausible now, just look at what these Democratic leaders did during the post-9/11 period of the Bush administration.

Take the case of Nancy Pelosi, the House minority leader who voted for and outspokenly supported the Patriot Act, the Bush tax cuts, and the Iraq War. She's also on record for stating that "We stand shoulder to shoulder with the president" when asked about how she viewed Bush's efforts to violate civil liberties. Chuck Schumer, the Senate minority leader, can be trusted even less than Pelosi to continue opposing Trump, having both supported the Bush policies mentioned above and having been named by the president-elect as more likable than the Republican leadership because of his articulated willingness to compromise. And given how the agenda of the rest of the Democratic Party's leadership generally matches up with the corporatist, militaristic views of these two, I suspect most other House and Senate Democrats will act similarly compliant to the wishes of the GOP.

In short, after these "liberals" have inadvertently helped Trump win with their embrace of the politically impotent Clintonist ideology, they're no doubt going to aide him in the second phase of his rise to power by capitulating to his agenda after the next 9/11 occurs. If progressives and anti-Trump conservatives want to weather the coming fascist storm, they'll rally around leaders who can't just be considered "liberals," but genuine advocates for systemic change.

Democrats Are Trying To Fight Fascism With Fascism Lite

In recent weeks, Democrats and others have responded to Hillary Clinton's loss by creating what James Kunstler describes as "The Deepening Deep State." Amid legitimate concerns over the effect that fake news has had on this election, those with the power to regulate online traffic have taken actions which infringe on free speech. For instance, the solution to fake news that Google and Facebook have come up with is cracking down on sites which they deem, based on often unfair standards, as unreliable.

What's really troubling about this rush towards censorship, though, is that the U.S. government is joining in. On November 30, the House passed a bill, called H.R. 6393, which, if approved by the Senate, will empower the state to follow Google and Facebook's precedent by censoring websites that they consider part of Russia's disinformation campaign. This measure, as you can imagine, would also open the door for online censorship on the part of the state.

And the justification being provided for these actions is similarly worthy of suspicion. The Washington Post's evidence for certain websites being tied to the Russian government is highly questionable, as is the CIA's supposed proof for Russia's role in the DNC email leaks. 

In other words, if there's a government campaign to spread false information which advances a corrupt agenda, it's likely coming from the U.S. government. And needless to say, the Democratic establishment is very much participating in this cynical effort. This tactic, in addition to being McCarthyite, is what Glen Ford, the editor of Black Agenda Report (one of the supposed Russian propaganda websites listed by the Post), rightly calls "Fascism with a Democratic Party Face."

"The term 'fascist,'" writes Ford in an explanation for this charge of his, "is bandied about today more than at any time since 1969, but there is little discussion of what fascism actually looks like in the 21^st century. The truth is, it looks like Democrats and Republicans; it operates through the duopoly, the political apparatus of the ruling class. Donald Trump’s fascism is largely the residue of the fascism of apartheid America, under Jim Crow, which had many of the characteristics of – and in some ways presaged – the “classic” fascism of pre-World War Two Europe. The establishment corporate Democratic and Republican brand of fascism is far more racially, sexually and culturally inclusive, but just as ruthless. And, at this moment in history, the corporate Democratic fascists are the more aggressively warlike brand."

And indeed, these Red-baiting antics are just the latest in a long series of similarly authoritarian actions that Democratic elites have taken since their shift to the right began around forty years ago. The modern Democratic Party, as Ford iterates, is a branch of the corporate state which (not coincidentally) has also emerged throughout the last forty years, and this fact has naturally led it to adopt the same fascist tendencies as the institution that it serves.

Namely, though the Democratic Party isn't classically fascist as Ford acknowledges, its brand of fascism takes on a more subtle form than that of Donald Trump: inverted totalitarianism.

The invertedly totalitarian method of fascism, as I've focused on in detail before, gains consent from those it oppresses not through nationalist propaganda, but through convincing the population that they are not in fact being oppressed. And the Democratic Party's political model of making its neoliberalism and militarism seem acceptable to its largely anti-corporatist, anti-war base perfectly fits inverted totalitarianism's description. For decades, the Democratic establishment has used an abundant means of propaganda tactics to keep the left from revolting against it, from the always useful "but the Republicans are worse" excuse to an outright effort to keep the Democratic base ignorant of its party's true agenda, and for the most part, this has effectively kept the Democratic Party safe from replacement or reform.

And even as this dynamic heads toward what will most certainly be political extinction, with most on the left now working to fundamentally change the Democratic Party for the better or, should that plan fail, build a third party such as the Greens, Democratic elites are evidently doubling down on the inverted totalitarianism.

From David Greenberg, the L.A. Times columnist who recently argued that Democrats don't need to shift away from their current economic elitism because, as he insists, their message has "always included a central commitment to economic fairness along with social inclusion and equal rights," to Nancy Pelosi, the re-elected House minority leader who thinks that Democrats don't need to be set on a direction which supports America's working families because "our values unify us and our values are about supporting America’s working families," establishment Democrats are continuing to deny, against all evidence, that their party has become too neoliberal to succeed.

The reason I'm leveling these complaints against the Democrats when a party that's even worse is about to come to power is that, as we've seen in the case of the 2016 election, the current Democratic Party's model of status quo centrism is no match for the populist right. And if we want to defeat right-wing populism in time for the pivotal 2020 election, we'll need to work towards the rise of the politically formidable ideological model presented by the left.

Hopefully by then, this site won't be shut down on suspicion of it being a Russian fake news outlet.