By Mike Krieger of Liberty Blitzkrieg blog,
While it might sound strange, a coronation of Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primary will mark the end of the party as we know it. There’s been a lot written about the “Sanders surge,” with much of it revolving around Hillary Clinton’s extreme personal weakness as a candidate. While this is indisputable, it’s also a convenient way for the status quo to exempt itself from fault and discount genuine grassroots anger. I’m of the view that Sanders’ support is more about people liking him than them disliking Hillary, particularly when it comes to registered Democrats. He’s not merely seen as the “least bad choice.” People really do like him.
The Sanders appeal is twofold. He is seen as unusually honest and consistent for someone who’s held elected office for much of his life, plus he advocates a refreshingly anti-establishment view on core issues that matter to an increasing number of Americans. These include militarism, Wall Street bailouts, a two-tiered justice system, the prohibitive cost of college education, healthcare insecurity and a “rigged economy.” While Hillary is being forced to pay lip service to these issues, everybody knows she doesn’t mean a word of it. She means it less than Obama meant it in 2008, and Obama really didn’t mean it.
– From the post: It’s Not Just the GOP – The Democratic Party is Also Imploding
Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders have done America a great deal of good. By running from the political fringes, they have shattered status quo taboos and exposed the two party political system for the monumental sham it is.
Whether you like either one of them is irrelevant. The truth about how undemocratic our elections actually are, and the disturbing overlap when it comes to establishment Republicans and Democrats needed exposing, and that’s exactly what’s happened this election season. Personally, I wanted to see Trump vs. Sanders in the general election. I think the public deserved two non-mainstream choices for President for once in their lives, and such a match up would have provided two distinct non status quo visions for the future. That said, Trump vs. Clinton is the second best option.
The process of awakening that’s been happening across the electorate this campaign season is in large part due to the presence of Trump and Sanders, and this awakening is far more important than who wins in November. As Edward Snowden was quoted saying in yesterday’s piece, A Whistleblower Manifesto:
Fundamentally, in an open society, change has to flow from the bottom to the top.
He’s right. If you want fundamental, long-term change consistent with Constitutional principles, it needs to come from an informed citizenry. America has not had a remotely informed citizenry in over a generation. The divide and conquer tactics of both establishment parties have proven tremendously successful in pulling the wool over everybody’s eyes and convincing them that there’s actually a real difference, when in reality both parties maintain the exact same position on a vast majority of the nation’s key issues. These include:
1) Support for interventionist wars of imperialism abroad.
2) An embrace of cronyism and corruption throughout the public and private sector.
3) A total pandering to Wall Street and support for taxpayer bailouts without accountability.
4) Support for the inhumane failure that is the war on the drugs.
5) Support for fake free trade deals that are actually corporate giveaways to insiders and donors.
6) Support for the unconstitutional and unaccountable mass surveillance of the American public.
I could go on, but you get the point. The interesting thing about the 2016 election is that millions of Americans are finally coming around to rejecting the policies listed above. The status quo, of course, has not; and therein lies the status quo’s problem.
Between Sanders and Trump, the status quo policy planks listed above have all come under attack. This cannot be allowed, which is precisely why the establishment has relentlessly fought both men in their attempts to win the nomination of their respective parties.
The status quo doesn’t actually care if a Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio or Hillary Clinton wins the U.S. Presidency. The status quo wins either way. Not only because those individuals unquestionably will support the status quo agenda, but more importantly, they will largely refrain from bringing up any real issues during their campaigns. Rather than being fought along the lines of trade deals, Wall Street corruption and disastrous foreign policy, a Bush vs. Clinton matchup would largely be centered around debate about guns, abortion, transgender bathrooms and disingenuous talking points about the free market vs. big government. This distraction provides fertile ground for continued status quo theft.
The problem with Trump is Trump brings up some real issues he’s not supposed to talk about, just like Sanders has done in the Democratic primary. This is extremely dangerous to the status quo because it teaches the American peasants to question issues and think about stuff they aren’t supposed to think about or have an opinion on. There’s nothing more dangerous than a public filled with critical thinkers. As George Carlin brilliantly explained so many years ago:
The real owners are the big wealthy business interests that control things and make all the important decisions. Forget the politicians, they’re an irrelevancy. The politicians are put there to give you the idea that you have freedom of choice.
You don’t. You have no choice. You have owners. They own you. They own everything. They own all the important land.
They own and control the corporations. They’ve long since bought and paid for the Senate, the Congress, the statehouses, the city halls. They’ve got the judges in their back pockets. And they own all the big media companies, so that they control just about all of the news and information you hear. They’ve got you by the balls. They spend billions of dollars every year lobbying lobbying to get what they want. Well, we know what they want; they want more for themselves and less for everybody else.
But I’ll tell you what they don’t want. They don’t want a population of citizens capable of critical thinking. They don’t want well-informed, well-educated people capable of critical thinking. They’re not interested in that. That doesn’t help them. That’s against their interests. They don’t want people who are smart enough to sit around the kitchen table and figure out how badly they’re getting fucked by a system that threw them overboard 30 fucking years ago.
You know what they want? Obedient workers people who are just smart enough to run the machines and do the paperwork but just dumb enough to passively accept all these increasingly shittier jobs with the lower pay, the longer hours, reduced benefits, the end of overtime and the vanishing pension that disappears the minute you go to collect it.
And, now, they’re coming for your Social Security. They want your fucking retirement money. They want it back, so they can give it to their criminal friends on Wall Street. And you know something? They’ll get it. They’ll get it all, sooner or later, because they own this fucking place. It’s a big club, and you ain’t in it. You and I are not in the big club.
This country is finished.
That’s all you really need to know. Politicians are irrelevant. They are there to spin issues and make sure the public remains as ignorant, distracted and divided along inconsequentially themes as possible. The thing the status quo really fears is a population that begins to think outside the box, which is why both Trump and Sanders have been seen as existential threats to their corrupt and putrid sandbox of power.
So with all of that out of the way, it makes perfect sense that some establishment Republicans have announced they will support Hillary Clinton. Go back and read my status quo policy planks outlined earlier. Any Republican in favor of them will naturally support Hillary Clinton, because Hillary Clinton will protect and coddle their racket. This is guaranteed. Trump may also end up coddling the establishment, but the status quo can’t be 100% sure. He’s a wildcard and he’s uncaged. They can’t have someone like that causing them headaches and potentially getting the plebs all wound up.
Now let’s turn to Politico, to see a little of what I’m talking about. From the article, Republicans Consider Clinton over Trump:
While many conservative stalwarts are conflicted and stuck in a state of paralysis, some are considering the ultimate betrayal.
Hours before Indiana polls closed Tuesday evening when it was becoming clear that Trump was headed for a decisive win, some prominent Republicans were moving away from him. Mark Salter, John McCain’s former campaign speechwriter, signaled his support for Clinton via Twitter. Conservative pundit Ben Howe did the same.
Schmidt predicted that “a substantial amount of Republican officials who have worked in Republican administrations, especially on issues of defense and national security, will endorse Hillary Clinton in the campaign.”
But the most absolutist opposition to Trump is largely held by the GOP’s donor class and Washington-based establishment—the very people Trump and his supporters have delighted in offending from the start.
These four paragraphs tell you everything you need to know. It’s one thing to dislike Trump and decide you are unable to support him. Given some of his rhetoric in the primary, I can certainly understand and respect this position. However, supporting Hillary Clinton, one of the most shady, dishonest, warmongering, corrupt animals the world has ever seen, is a whole other ballgame. It tells you who these so-called “conservatives” really are: status quo sycophants.
But it’s not just Republicans coming out in favor of Clinton. There’s increasing evidence that Clinton will target establishment Republicans for votes. The AP reports:
ATHENS, Ohio (AP) — With Donald Trump all but clinching the Republican nomination for president, Hillary Clinton is beginning to explore ways to woo Republicans turned off by the brash billionaire.
“I’m with her,” tweeted Mark Salter, a top campaign aide to 2008 Republican nominee John McCain, on Tuesday.
Democrats caution their effort to win over Clinton Republicans — or Hilla-cans, perhaps — is in its earliest stages, but could grow to include ads and other outreach targeted in particular at suburban women in battleground states. Already, aides say, a number of Republicans have privately told Clinton and her team they plan to break party ranks and support her as soon as Trump formally captures his party’s nomination.
“We have an informed understanding that we could have the potential to expect support from not just Democrats and independents, but Republicans, too,” said Clinton spokesman Brian Fallon. “There’s a time and place for that support to make itself known.”
Clinton has begun casting her candidacy in recent days as a cry to unify a divided country. After a series of victories last week, which all but ensured she will capture her party’s nomination, Clinton called on Democrats, independents and what she called “thoughtful Republicans” to back her bid.
Guy Cecil, chief strategist of Priorities USA Action, the super PAC backing her campaign, echoed that language Tuesday night, calling on “Democrats, independents and reasonable Republicans” to reject Trump’s “outdated ideas.”
Irrespective of what you think of Trump, his continued survival in the Presidential circus is undoubtably good. Not because he’s some sort of savior who will “Make America Great Again,” but because he’s bringing up issues he’s not supposed to bring up. Because he’s getting people who have given up on the political process engaged again. Because he’s convincing tens of millions of Americans that it really is possible to give the status quo the boot.
At the end of the day, it’s not the actions of any particular individual that instills true fear in the U.S. establishment and deep state government. What really scares them is a population capable of critical thought beyond false left-right paradigm talking points, and both Sanders and Trump should be applauded for their roles in this regard.
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