Election 2016

When it still looked like Bernie Sanders might secure the Democratic nomination, I gave his campaign $27. I never gave a Pol so much as a penny, before or since. For the first time in my life though, I felt like there might be an opportunity for a course correction for America, some kind of spark of positive change for regular people (when Obama took more money from Wall Street than anyone ever had, I knew Hope and Change was Orwellian for More of the Same.)

I wanted Bernie to run as an Independent, after it became clear that the Hillary campaign and the MSM colluded to shut him out. That he did as well as he did, despite the near media blackout (what coverage there was, mostly negative), seemed a sign, a tide had shifted. I was convinced - still am - he could beat both Hillary and Trump in a three-way race. Seriously, how would things have appeared in those debates if Bernie were there? If he had declared Independent and continued his campaign, he would have been well past the threshold of 15% required support, to appear in the debates. Bernie is no savior, just possibly the catalyst of a movement of change.

But Bernie didn't have the stomach for it. And now he is out there campaigning for Hillary, promising at least to challenge her to turn progressive (good luck, Her cabinet will be a Who's Who of neoliberal/neocon globalist elite), while calling Trump the most dangerous candidate for President in at least a generation.

That last part is debatable at least.

Donald Trump is most certainly dangerous. In the third debate he said he thinks America should be run like his business. A corporation is a not a democracy, and Trump is the dictator of his corporation. How do you fire a Citizen, tyrant? Would you fire this citizen because I have worked for several corporations and find the culture inhumane and profoundly distasteful? I have a friend who calls all CEO's and billionaire financier types, Pigmen. Pig-Orange Augustus, going to run America like a predatory dictatorship?

Hillary on the other hand, notwithstanding Bernie's promises to liberalize her, is probably more dangerous than Trump. Russia is the crown-jewel in neo-liberal/neo-con, regime change, global hegemonic doctrine. Five minutes into the third debate and she was beating the war drums. At every opportunity throughout this election, she has raised the spectre of Russian barbarians at the gates, to cover every revelation of the untoward, ugly activity of her campaign, of the revelations of collusion with the DNC and media, of the revealations of her behavior and activity behind the scenes contrary to her public persona - while risking nuclear conflagration and WWIII.

In that third debate she spoke of Mosul in Iraq and the fight there, then moving on to Raqqa in Syria? To Alleppo then? Damascus? First establishing a no fly zone, which she knows well will kill many civilians, and will certainly provoke Russia to all-out war, as they have military bases in Syria. Except invasion of Syria is an act of war, and we are not officially at war with Syria, nor is Congress likely to declare war. But then, the Chief Executive can now go to war wherever, whenever he or she wants, without declaring war or even speaking of it. More like, the Military Industrial Complex decides, and tells the Executive.

This nebulous state of war/not war has made for much mischief, and more blowback. When Hillary says America is Great because we are Good, that is just a political mantra to carry her to the "We came, we saw, he died," of her presidency. Surely she is giddy at the thought of sitting at the head of the greatest military the world has ever known. But again, the Military Industrial Complex is not controlled by the three legislative checks on power in Washington, but by the expectations of Wall Street and GDP. Our weapons makers are undemocratic corporations, requiring 12% growth year on year. While most corporations maintain growth by suppressing wages, decreasing benefits, stealth crappification of their products, and manipulating the tax code, weapons makers (war profiteers), Wall Street and Washington conspire to make more war every year.  

Hillary is the candidate of that status quo. And the momentum toward direct rule by corporation and bank. If you think everything is pretty much ok with that, that America under Hillary would stay on a path of increasing prosperity, tolerance and moral exceptionalism, then vote for Hillary.

Trump is the wrecking ball, who threatens to derail the neoliberal, neocon consensus, while possibly initiating race and gender wars, while dismantling American governance, while handing out the largest tax cuts in history to predatory dicatorial "pigmen" (Animal Farm) - who have been feasting on bailout money and free money from the Fed, but that has dried up mostly - enter the Donald.  Probably nothing about the neoliberal, neocon takeover of the world will change, under Donald, whatever his squaking about draining the swamp. Probably under Donald, his Law and Order will just be a heavier boot on the neck of Americans generally, while he and a GOP controlled legislature, do a slash and burn to America's safety net, and old people and the poor can go back to dying in the street like "God" intended.

So you see, whether it is Hillary's wars or Donald's wrecking ball, 2016 is not like the positive change for regular people and the earth I was hoping for with Bernie.

More of this status quo, and I expect a monster worse than either of these two, 2020.

This is clearly the election consumer America deserves, the triumph of marketing, aka separating you from your money by preying upon your fears and insecurities. Total bullshit is to the Trump campaign, what horseshit is to Hillary. That's what America has neen reduced to, what Americans have been reduced to, in this neoliberal, neocon, direct rule by corporation and bank, eternal warmongering former Republic - proud citizens to consumer debt serfs, slaving away ever harder to maintain the gilded lives our elite betters have grown accustomed to.

What is a conscientious American Citizen supposed to do then, this election? Stock up on canned goods and gunz? It seems to me, to be Democrat or Republican is to be susceptible to group think, participating in mass psychosis, excusing the most inexcusable, unethical, anti-democratic behavior. A Republic needs clear eyed, skeptical, free-thinking citizens of solid character and dignity, incapable of being manipulated, who neither care to rule nor be ruled, who are impervious to group-think.

Your beloved Dem and Repub parties are competing to sell you out to the highest bidder. Neither serves the people, democracy or the Republic - like the monopolies they are, they serve monopoly control, they are conspiring to take the sovereignty of the people and this nation-state, to empower corporations and banks to control the affairs of all people everywhere, to control the earth, that these American elite may become the neo-Internationale, global, untouchable aristocracy.

I will never, ever vote for that. ever.