So this is how American political parties are supposed to unify at the end of the primaries: everyone is supposed to vote for the winner, even if that winner is anathema to everything most members of that party believe in. Best system anyone ever invented, eh?
This is How We Unify the Party
Ted Rall
Ted Rall is a syndicated political cartoonist for Andrews McMeel Syndication, WhoWhatWhy.org and Counterpoint. He is a frequent contributor to The Wall Street Journal, a graphic novelist and author of many books of art and prose, and an occasional war correspondent. He is, recently, the author of the graphic novel "The Stringer."
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Now it’s time to embrace the candidate who doesn’t care about us and who stands for everything we totally despise.
A vote for Hillary is a vote for Trump, and vice versa, policy-wise: one a billionaire and the other owned by the billionaires.
“All my means are sane,” Ahab says, “my motive and my object mad.”
Both Hillary and Trump have mad motives and objects.
But Hillary more readily convinces that she is sane. That makes her more dangerous. Hillary is the more effective evil, not he lesser evil.
Trump, like the imprisoned former governor of Illinois Rod Blagojevich, does nothing that other corrupt politicos would do, but come out openly in doing it.
By that standard it’s not bad to be racist in action, only bad to be racist in speech.
Release your Wall Street speech transcripts, Hillary. Show us your mad motives and objects.
other corrupt politicos wouldn’t do,
This is how the duopoly takes nuanced choice and re-manufactures it as a “left/right” paradigm. Wannabe’ pro-choice and anti-war? Wups, the round pegs don’t fit in them square holes … no different than the “pro-life/anti-war” rube, in the land of the free, it’s up to the voter to fit the corporate media’s playbook..
It’s all prepackaged politics in ‘murica. Hillary and Trump and Sanders? They’re just part of that fantasy rep league. The last time I voted for a candidate that made some promises I liked, I chose the guy who said he’d close GITMO and have the most transparent administration ever produced in America. Instead, I got a BarryHO who robotically murders innocents and wants to TPP me into their abject global slavery. The only difference between him and the dude he replaced is that the Mulato can kill “niggers” without a fear of “racist” criticism. Duopoly politics and computer voting machines. We’ve been living in a fascist state for close to half a century now at least.
One thing I’m sure of, if Trump ever got selected, at least we’d be a bit closer to that secretly desired alternative of a real revolution … or maybe not.
DanD
Sure it’s fascist…minus the only good thing about fascism–the nationalist part.
The election of Trump is the only thing that can stave off the revolution.
“This is how the duopoly takes nuanced choice and re-manufactures it as a “left/right” paradigm.”
This is a great appraisal of what “Left” and “Right” have come to mean in this country, and also the underlying meaninglessness of these words.
I prefer to use the words “Upstairs” and “Downstairs”, bringing in the conceptual distinction between the master’s and servant’s quarters.
Killory hasn’t actually won yet. If the rest of the states voted sanely and the stupor delegates cared about the people Bernie could still take it.
Not that I’m expecting that to happen, but I do wonder how much effect the Lamestream media’s premature coronation had on Tuesday’s primaries. (along with all the previous primaries)
This is stupid. Why can’t we do all primaries on the same day with no results published until *after* all the polls close? (note: rhetorical question.)
I suspect Trump would actually be the better victor. Why? Hillary is owned by the bankers. Period. There’s no dispute there. Her Clinton Foundation slushfund has been channeling the funds for years. Trump, just possibly, might have an epiphany or simply go after the bankers because he’s rich on his own and doesn’t owe them anything.
But in either case, as soon as Hillary is crowned or Donald is sworn in, I’m going to explore ways to get to Canada. I no longer understand the U.S. I no longer want to. I am tired of being told, “Oh, you’re right. No one should starve.” and then being told that I have to let a millionaire or a billionaire gradually bring us creepingly closer to that reality.
Enough.
Everyone is more focused on the commercial bankers–and they are a yuge problem. But they wouldn’t be at all without the central bankers. All efforts to bring the commercial bankers to heel or to improve the economy will be in vain if the central banks are not abolished. The average American’s wages haven’t gone up since Nixon removed the dollar from the last vestige of real money. That’s no coincidence.
For whatever reason, the Left fails to recognize the main culprit that has made endless war and such a massive wealth transfer possible.
> the main culprit that has made endless war and such a massive wealth transfer possible …
…”The Right”
Once again you prove you’re the biggest fool I’ve yet to encounter.
The Right is the only place to find understanding of and opposition to central banking. Central banking has fuck all to do with capitalism or classical liberalism or fiscal conservatism. Even fascists hate bankers but being socialists they’re more Left than Right.
You Lefties can take the neocons. They belong with you, loving big government, runaway deficit spending, political correctness, social engineering, mass immigration, federal dominance of education, government “stimulus,” MLK, goddess worship, foreign aid, “humanitarian interventions,” and supranational organizations. The Right isn’t buying their shit anymore.
And of course, central banking and funny money. I don’t think I can stomach again reading Krugman going on about how wonderful counterfeit money is.
Let’s see now, you won’t believe a guy who won the Nobel Prize for economics, but you do believe in magic rocks. I don’t think you have any room to be calling anyone a fool, Jack, but maybe it would be more accurate to call you a Tool.
Let’s take a look at reality, shall we? Check out this chart.
As we see – the highest inflation rate and the wildest fluctuation was at the beginning of the century, starting BEFORE the Fed was established. (It started approximately 1840, coincidentally right after the second central bank’s charter expired.) We were still on the gold standard, and there was lax regulation of industry. According to your voodoo economics, it should have been a period of stability and low inflation.
We see that in the ensuing years, particularly after WWII, inflation smoothed out as the Fed evolved. Now look at the right hand side. Nixon took us off the gold standard in 1971, and all the gold bugs predicted that the sky would fall. It didn’t. In the forty five years since, it STILL hasn’t fallen. Inflation has remained far more stable than it was at the beginning of the century.
The whole idea of the gold standard is that you want to standardize on something with low volatility. In 1971, the price of gold was $39, today, it is over $1200. That’s a change of 3000%
Inflation between 1970 and today is a change of only 617%.
In the past five years, the price of gold has fluctuated between 1000 and 1800 – an 80% change; while inflation has varied from 1.6% to 3.2%. What do you think it would have done to the economy if consumer prices had fluctuated 80% in that same period?
Insult lefties all you like, Jack, but it won’t change objective reality one whit. The real world economy simply doesn’t work the way you’ve been told.
At this point you should realize that you’ve been lied to. Maybe your time would be better spent figuring out who is lying to you and why.
«> the main culprit that has made endless war and such a massive wealth transfer possible …
…”The Right”»
Quite right, CrazyH, so long as by «The Right», you don’t confine yourself to Republicans. Most of those who call themselves «Democrats», such as Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton, have been equally enthusiastic about endless war and massive wealth transfers (to the super rich)….
Now it would seem that US voters are once again to be faced with the choice between two visions of endless war and massive wealth transfers to the rich. Welcome to the real world !…
Henri
Nolo contendere
The Democratic Party has put itself in a bind – by throwing its weight behind a candidate who seems, from the polls, to have almost no drawing power among so-called «Independents» and whom to many is the very epitomé of an establishment that is almost universally abhorred, it runs a great risk not merely of losing the US presidency, but of being decimated in the House and Senate as well. This, of course, under the assumption that winning office is the goal ; if, on the other hand, the main goal was to prevent a New Deal Democrat like Bernard Sanders from having a chance at the office and bringing in a lot of other politicians on his coattails, well then they’ve done a pretty good job, even if it took them an inordinately long time to manage it….
I can’t help wondering if the US general election of 8 November 2016 is not going to be like a remake of the German general elections of 6 November 1932, with only Adolf Hitler and Franz Joseph Hermann Michael Maria von Papen zu Köningen (sic !) allowed to run, and both Otto Wels and Ernst Thälmann safely in prison….
Henri
Perhaps nothing illustrates the differences between the two camps as much as how “uniting” is understood. Hence the effectiveness of the cartoon.
From the point of view of representative democracy, a movement that has substantial support (if not quite a majority) expects many of its central tenets to be taken up by the majority candidate, thus uniting the country. The concerns of the minority factions are expected to be addressed, in this case e.g. measures against wage dumping would be taken, though not by building/entrenching a wall along the Southern border. Simply ignoring the concerns of organized parties representing even 10% let alone 40-something percent is not representative democracy but dictatorship of the majority.
One would naively think this is especially true in a primary, which after all is a contest between members of an electoral alliance, if said alliance is to endure. In the case of the Sanders insurrection which got close to 50% of the vote (and 80% of the youth vote) with the deck stacked against it, the movement would expect all of its tenets to be made center stage and several of them addressed in a major way.
It needs to be stressed that Sanders was careful to champion progressive causes which already have majority support in the population overall, so this is not about minority positions getting more play than they should due to political maneuvering. In this particular case something more tangible than promises would be in order giving the history of “triangulation” and downright deceit from the other camp.
Apparently the Democratic establishment has another interpretation altogether of what winning means. This appears to come down to: all the voters (including even their own supporters) can suck it until they’re called up again in 4 years (and for the mid-terms in 2 years for which voters inexplicably don’t show up). Meanwhile the politicians are free to do whatever brings in the most money – while not scaring away the voters too completely – to secure power which is then distributed to lackeys in the form of government positions, contracts, drafting of laws, and access in general. Trust the experts and nothing to see here until the next press conference.
It is interesting that while we’re bombarded with the results of this mindset – “enough already, Sanders needs to drop out and announce that he supports the anointed one” – the mindset itself is rarely stated explicitly because it is understood that doing so would be crude. People who reject this arrangements can safely be derided as naive, which has a element of truth to it since this is how the game has been played for a while now.
What remains to be seen is how the people – both the Sanders but especially the Clinton supporters – will react when this comes to a head. Especially since Clinton doesn’t have anywhere near the level of trust and likability that Obama still enjoys even after his second term.
« This [i e, «the Democratic establishment[‘s] … interpretation of what winning means]» appears to come down to: all the voters (including even their own supporters) can suck it until they’re called up again in 4 years (and for the mid-terms in 2 years for which voters inexplicably don’t show up).» I trust, andreas5, that that «inexplicably» was meant ironically ?…
Henri
It must be an ironic “inexplicable.”
The party can then blame the no-shows for the failure to get what the people need on the obverse side, while the oligarchy materially benefits from the reverse side of the failure, getting its upside.
A lot of Republican columnists say, ‘Vote for Hillary.’ After all, she’s a real Goldwater Republican. Not the actual Goldwater, she’s the Goldwater who is in the Johnson ad that shows a little girl picking flowers. Sanders would have destroyed the US economy by cutting back on defence and putting controls on banks. There are 1 billion goatherds armed with sinister staffs and cruel crooks who would overrun the US immediately, force all churches to become mosques, and impose strict Sharia Law if the planned increase in the defence budget is cut by one penny. And the US banks can only do their jobs if it’s legal to make predatory loans.
So it’s a very good thing that Secretary Clinton is almost certain to be our next president.
Sad to think that this describes a really existing mindset.
Indeed ! Or as Hermann Wilhelm Göring, who was not without experience in these matters, put it :
«Natürlich, das einfache Volk will keinen Krieg […] Aber schließlich sind es die Führer eines Landes, die die Politik bestimmen, und es ist immer leicht, das Volk zum Mitmachen zu bringen, ob es sich nun um eine Demokratie, eine faschistische Diktatur, um ein Parlament oder eine kommunistische Diktatur handelt. […] Das ist ganz einfach. Man braucht nichts zu tun, als dem Volk zu sagen, es würde angegriffen, und den Pazifisten ihren Mangel an Patriotismus vorzuwerfen und zu behaupten, sie brächten das Land in Gefahr. Diese Methode funktioniert in jedem Land.»
Henri
I must be turning German because I recognize the quote without going to Google Translate.
And I’m sure, Glenn, that you not only recognise the quote, but also the procedure described therein….
Henri