W.J. Astore
And don’t ask questions or demand action
At the presidential level, the U.S. political scene is grim. Donald Trump is the likely Republican candidate. No other Republican approaches him in terms of popularity. Yes, he’s been indicted four times, complete with a mug shot, but these indictments aren’t enough to derail his campaign. If anything, they may make Trump look like more of a populist gangster/rebel, instead of the billionaire tool that he is.
The Democrats are going all-in on Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, but there’s no platform of substance they’re selling. The basic message is vote Biden because Trump. In a fundraising letter I received from the DNC, the message was that Republicans are too dangerous, too extreme, and otherwise beyond the pale. So I was urged to give money to the DNC so that Joe and Kamala can “finish the job.” Which job they’re supposed to finish was left unspecified, though there were glittering generalities about freedom, safeguarding abortion rights, and the like.
Interestingly, Democrats continue to argue that any third-party candidate, and especially Cornel West of the Green Party, is a spoiler for the Democrats. The idea that more candidates might spoil Republican chances as well isn’t addressed. This tells us something about the reality Democrats are facing. Support for Biden is shallow and mostly unenthusiastic. Hence the tacit recognition that additional candidates will hurt Biden’s chances more so than Trump’s, whose supporters are more keen on their guy.
Maybe, just maybe, the Democrats should recognize this problem and run a new candidate that can garner stronger and more enthusiastic support at the polls? Nah, that’s crazy talk. Let’s go with Joe and see what happens. And if he loses, you can always blame the voters for voting for West or some other third-party candidate.
Honestly, the DNC would rather lose with Biden than win with a more progressive and charismatic candidate. This is because the DNC represents the corporate capture of the Democratic Party. To win with a truly progressive candidate is a loss for the party as it’s constituted today. To lose with Biden is a win in the sense they can fundraise off “resisting” Trump. The DNC goal is that nothing shall fundamentally change in the way they do business, meaning that Biden is the most “leftist” and “progressive” candidate Democrats are ever likely to see. (Biden, of course, is a pro-war, pro-business, pro-banker, pro-fossil fuels, pro-prison, pro-status quo president. In your heart, you know he’s right.)
What is to be done? As I’ve said before, I know what I’m going to get with Trump. I know what I’m going to get with Biden. And I know that’s not what I want. So count me among the “spoilers.”
Bracing Views 
Also count me among the spoilers.
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The emergence of a 3rd Party candidate here in 2023 should not surprise anyone who follows the political scene. There is SUCH disappointment — yes, disappointment — in how the Joe Biden who was sworn in in January of 2021 has handled his administration of the office of POTUS, guys like Cornel West had to have thought long and hard before throwing his hat in the ring. And he’s already got enough of a following, enough support, to lead us to believe he’ll take votes away from Joe B.
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Bernie Goes FULL BLOWN Trump Derangement Syndrome!, Jimmy Dore Show (September 1, 2023)
[Introductory blurb]:
For many Americans who supported Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaigns in 2016 and 2020, the Vermont Senator’s establishmentarian turn since then has been a disappointment, to put it mildly. Earlier this year Bernie raced to endorse Joe Biden for president in 2024 and is now pushing progressives to vote for Biden rather than Cornel West or any other third party candidate as a means of defeating “fascism.”
Guest host Craig “Pasta” Jardula, along with Jimmy Dore and Americans’ Comedian Kurt Metzger, discuss the sad and pathetic decline of Bernie Sanders.
My take: Jimmy and associates go full-blown “knock off the fucking bullshit” savage on Biden, Sanders, and West. What have any of these oxygen thieves done for America’s working people? Short answer: “Not a fucking thing.” So why don’t they just STFU and give us all a break from their tedious tendentious twaddle?
As the three program hosts remind us all, these “Leftist” political pretenders love to prattle on about “Fascism” and Donald Trump without ever mentioning that Italy’s Benito Mussolini (and he ought to know) defined Fascism as Corporatism, precisely the corrupt system that America’s political Uni-party “elite” have instituted in the United States. Good job Jimmy, Kurt, and Craig. If Biden, Sanders, and West had anything of value to offer, they would insist on repealing the Supine Court’s disastrous Corporations United ruling just for starters.
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As usual, a scintillating report.
Re “(Dems) can always blame the voters for voting for West or some other third-party candidate.”: In 2004, I was the Hawaii volunteer coordinator for obtaining ballot access for the great Ralph Nader. (I failed him miserably.) I met RN twice that summer, and I clearly recall his saying “The Dems will blame me for taking votes from them. Hell, why are they worried about my probable 5 percent or less of the vote when they should be out on the hustings, busting their butts, to persuade mega-numbers/percentages of disaffected voters to negate any chance of Reps’ success?”
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Let me share something with You about Ralph Nader, Robert. It’s something i wrote back in July, 2004 just as that election was starting to crank up.
CONTRA MICHAEL MOORE: Resurrecting The Biggest Lie of Election 2000
It’s no secret that Michael Moore is a Kerry Regime Insider Wannabe. So, it was no surprise when he turned the MoveOn.org June 28, 2004 live webcast about his new movie FAHRENHEIT 9/11 into a Kerry Love-Fest. But when he attacked Ralph Nader, he went a bridge too far.
In so doing, he resurrected once again The Biggest Lie About Election 2000: that Ralph Nader, the Green Party, and the people who voted for Nader cost Al Gore and the Democrats the election, and are thus directly responsible for all the evil unleashed by the Cheney White House on the planet and on this nation, in general, and on liberals, progressives, and the victims they champion, in particular.
As uncomfortable as I know it is for Michael and the rest of these people, let us consider one simple, incontestable FACT first. Who was it that said “facts are such unpleasant things”?
IF YOU TOOK EVERY VOTE THAT NADER GOT IN EITHER TENNESSEE (GORE’S HOME STATE) OR ARKANSAS (CLINTON’S HOME STATE), AND GAVE THEM TO GORE, GORE WOULD HAVE STILL LOST THEM BOTH. THIS WOULD MAKE HIM THE ONLY CANDIDATE IN HISTORY TO LOSE THE STATE OF HIS OWN PARTY’S INCUMBENT PRESIDENT, AND ONLY THE SECOND CANDIDATE IN HISTORY (AFTER MCGOVERN IN 1972) TO LOSE HIS OWN STATE. IF GORE HAD WON EITHER OF THOSE TWO STATES — HIS OWN HOME STATE OR THE STATE OF HIS BOSS AND TITULAR HEAD OF HIS OWN PARTY — GORE WOULD HAVE WON THE ELECTION, REGARDLESS OF WHAT HAPPENED IN FLORIDA.
To ignore this FACT and to instead focus blame for Gore’s loss on Nader and the people who voted for him in Florida is to deny an uncomfortable but deniable reality. However, if Michael and his gang want to focus on Florida, then consider another, final, simple, incontestable FACT.
The Gore challenge to the election results in Florida deserved — and in fact looks like it was intended — to fail. Instead of demanding a STATEWIDE recount, the Gore braintrust chose only to demand recounts in those areas they thought they would win. But even more important than that, the Gore folks apparently had neither the balls or brains to challenge the legality of the removal of more than 50,000 voters from the registered voters lists.
Then let’s consider another simple, incontestable fact.
Because liberals, progressives, and radicals did not have the balls to vote their conscience, but instead voted for what they thought was a sure-fire way to win, GORE COST NADER THE ELECTION.
Because these people voted for one of the biggest thugs, liars, hypocrites, and thieves in Washington DC, they turned their backs on the ONLY true liberal, progressive, and radical in the campaign…the ONLY candidate with a life history consistent with true alleged Democratic, liberal, and progressive values, principles, and ideals.
And, they got what they voted for. And what they deserved.
How is that?
My guess is that it was understood by all concerned that the Clinton/Gore wing of The Party had had its time in power (eight years to be exact), and that they had accomplished what they had been sent there to do: keep the Sanctions Going in Iraq; facilitate globalization (on whose watch did NAFTA, GATT, and the WTO come into being?); facilitate the corporatization of medical care in the U.S.; de-regulate the media and communications industry; start letting people learn more and more about the evils of fundamentalist, radical Muslim terrorism; continue the tradition of un-declared, un-challenged, un-controlled War (Yugoslavia, Sudan, Afghanistan, Iraq, etc etc etc); run a couple of 9.11 dress rehearsals (WTC bombing, Oklahoma City bombing); normalize post-Tiananmen Square relations with crypto-capitalistic Communist China; and piss off enough people with a President dumb enough to get caught getting a blowjob in the Oval Office from a woman young enough to be his daughter and then get caught lying about it. But how else could something like MoveOn.org be spawned?
And that it was thus now time for the other guys in The Party to have their time at the helm, and to continue The Long March. You know….. The 8-On-8-Off Deal: “you guys take the Executive Branch for eight years and get your fair share of the loot, and then we’ll take it for our eight and our fair share.”
Thus, while The Cheney Regime has accomplished just about everything that they were sent there to do (except perhaps to more totally and effectively rape, pillage, and plunder the U.S. Treasury), it’s unlikely that Kerry is anything more than a dutifully sacrificial Burning Bunny in the tradition of Bob Dole and Walter Mondale.
In any event, Michael Moore should stick to movie making, and leave the King-Making to people who have a lot more experience and expertise than he does in that realm.
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Super-super-super excellent! Thank you!
Ralph Nader, whom I see interviewed on DemocracyNow! periodically, continues to wow anyone with any sense of integrity and national purpose with his facts, statistics, rationality, and sanity. I think by now he’s 89 yo….
In this 2023, I guess I’d take mild exception only to your “…normalize post-Tiananmen Square relations with crypto-capitalistic Communist China.” Yes, I’m an unrepentant Sinophile…who, as it happens, just read this morning that China’s relationship with Taiwan goes back 1,800 years…. (Might you have ever read Edgar Snow’s (1937?) “Red Star Over China”?)
Many cheers!
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Hi Robert. Glad You liked it. It came from the mind, heart, and gut.
But i’m not sure what You’re mildly taking exception to, even as a Sinophile.
For one thing, i’m a bit of one myself, particularly when it comes to Chinese Philosophy [specifically, Taoism and Buddhism], Traditional Chinese Medicine, the Yi Jing, and, as a retired US military type who spent two years in Vietnam in the 60s, the Chinese philosophy and practice of War, particularly as described and detailed by Sun Tzu and Mao.
But more importantly, the initial bridge that Nixon had built between the US and China after the death of Mao and the rise of Deng was all but totally dismantled after the Tiananmen Square Massacre.
And the beginning of the renewal and re-normalization of US-China Relations came during the Clinton regime and it’s “‘U.S.-China Relations Act of 2000’ in October, granting Beijing permanent normal trade relations with the United States and paving the way for China to join the World Trade Organization in 2001. Between 1980 and 2004, U.S.-China trade rises from $5 billion to $231 billion.” See the Council on Foreign Relations writeup on this at https://www.cfr.org/timeline/us-china-relations .
Or are You objecting to my calling China “crypto-capitalist Communist”?
In any event, that was what the Clinton administration did re China and the re-normalization of relations after Tiananmen.
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Thanks for the elucidation. I’m far from historian or economician, and I do admit to confusion with “c-c Communist” — and didn’t bother to look into it. At any rate, a great overview and appreciated.
I was also “in” the American War On Vietnam…but never got there, thank God. The Army lost track of me on Okinawa in 1966, and I didn’t help it to find me. I was enlisted, trained as an ‘intelligence’-MOS “interrogator of prisoners of war.” My mentioned “Red Star Over China” was discovered and read by me during my year-plus on Okinawa; I was discharged in mid-1967, my worldview and humdrum life changed forever….
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i would imagine that just being trained as a POW Interrogator would definitely change one’s worldview about a lot of things. i can only imagine what happens to folks who actually do those interrogations.
And i also imagine that RED STAR OVER CHINA was a worldview changer for lots of folks back in those days. The most important book i read while in Vietnam that definitely changed mine was Joseph Heller’s CATCH-22.
But what i’m really curious about is how the Army “lost track of You.” Especially if You were in Intelligence. That sounds like a very interesting story.
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Where to start? I enlisted in 1/1963 and after 15 months applied for the Army Language School (Defense Language Institute) in Monterey, CA…was accepted to immersion-study my number 3 choice: Arabic (asked for Russian, then Mandarin Chinese) for one year, 8/’64-8/’65…finished Honor Graduate among 27 officers/EMs (had a couple of Navy and a couple of USAF enlistees in the class). Went to Fort Holabird, MD, for 2 months’ IPW training. Found myself on orders for Okinawa: my reaction = huh? Okinawa? I’m not even sure where that is, but it’s surely not in the MidEast. On the military plane over the Pacific in 1/’66, I noticed Okinawa on a straight line down to Vietnam. It was then that I intuited that the Army didn’t want me for Arabic per se; it merely wanted GIs who had been exposed to a (any) foreign language and culture. Okinawa 1/66-May’67; the Army did indeed “lose track” of me, even though I was assigned to a civil-affairs group and barracked with Special Forces continually spinning back and forth between Oki and Vietnam. I got involved in simple classroom/unit training activities; supervised a finance unit for several months, and was at last (allowed to be…that surprised me in that 1967, when I expected that all enlistments would be extended until the VWar’s end) discharged in 5-1967. In those days, I had little regard or respect for “Army personnel management” — until 1972 and the Saudi oil-shock interlude. I again intuited that the Army had assigned me to learn Arabic in anticipation of just such an upheaval and had been/was interested in “growing” an Arabic-capable “team” to translate, do intelligence duty in the Beirut Embassy, etc., and I found some grudging awareness of the Army’s “forward looking” vision. I even expected that I might be approached for return to active duty in that 1972, but it didn’t happen….and I guess that’s as good a place as any to end this reminiscence.
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Your story is so typical of the military.
I was the Dean of Students at DLI in Monterey from 2002-05. My qualifications? I was a project engineer with a BSME and a historian with a D.Phil. in History and six years of teaching it at the AF Academy.
I had virtually no background in foreign languages.
The military didn’t care. A slot had to be filled with an O-5 and I was an O-5 up for reassignment. End of story.
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Wow. Fascinating. You had a varied educational and military-career path, and they all gelled to make you the well-rounded, intensely activist person you are today. That’s kinda the fabric of our America, isn’t it?–a mosaic of individual talent and individuality and happenstance that “makes the world go ’round” — and, in the right circumstances and maturation and ‘Eureka! moments,’ can enrich humanity, the humanity of every living soul on this fractured planet. Is there hope for ‘civilization’? At the jaded age of 80, I continue to hope and pray so, even though my/our generation all too often makes one wonder in angst…even in shuddering “shock and awe” at what we have wrought. Thank you, sir!
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