To: The People of the United States, October 9, 2020
Tale of Two Conventions
As there is a degree of depravity in mankind which requires a certain degree of distrust: So there are other qualities in human nature, which justify a certain portion of esteem and confidence. Republican government presupposes the existence of these qualities in a higher degree than any other form. Were the pictures which have been drawn by the political jealousy of some among us, faithful likenesses of the human character, the inference would be that there is not sufficient virtue among men for self-government; and that nothing less than the chains of despotism can restrain them from destroying and devouring each other. Publius[1]
* * * * *
Joe Biden has been officially crowned as the Democrats’ standard bearer for the November plebiscite. A candidate who ran for the Oval Office before, twice; but, could never win a state. This time he has a lot of help . . . owing to circumstances. . .
Biden is a forty-seven year servant of the corporate masters: NAFTA; the wreckage of the Telecommunications Act; the demise of the Class-Steagall Act; Patriot Act; Iraq War; bailout of Wall Street, just to name a few. . . His loftiest office, thus far, was vice president, as second-fiddle in the Obama Administration. This, alone, does not qualify him for the highest political office in the land; but, perhaps his indentured servitude to his corporate paymasters will see to his reward.
Yet opportunity came knocking with the collective capitulation of competing challengers—Pete Buttegieg, Kamela Harris, Elizabeth Warren, Amy Klobachar, to name a few, . . . “gracefully” bowing out so as to leave the field to Delaware’s favorite son.
The Bernie Sanders campaign was as terminal in 2020 as it was in 2016. Vermont’s “independent” senator did not measure up to the donors of the privileged set; so, the DNC dutifully arranged the deck chairs to insure the demise of his “progressive” campaign. And, as in 2016, when he chose to back the victor, Hillary Clinton, he stuck to the script withJoe Biden for 2020. Selling out his supporters who labored mightily to change the course of the Democratic denomination.
Covid 19, thus far, has not hurt Biden. Mother Nature, the real blessed virgin—has seen fit to vent her wrath, instead, at the religious right’s vulgar champion of family values—if this is the best the Religious Right can field, atheism sure merits consideration. For novenas, rosary beads, scripture, and lighting candles have as much chance of stopping Covid 19 as do ouiji boards, dowsing rods and links of garlic. For not only is Mother Nature reaping a grisly harvest of humanity, but is accelerating the demise of American Capitalism with her savaging of the economy; a demise to which America’s addiction to empire has already forecast the inevitable collapse . . . for Imperialism is the Endgame of American Capitalism.
Biden, too, has reaped the benefit of corporate spokesmen who correctly see the present exercise in buffoonery ensconced in the Oval Office for what it is . . . a threat to the Dictatorship by Committee that is the American Corporate State.[2] John Kerry, former Secretary of State under Obama, was among an array of Democrats taking Trump to task. And they were joined by such types as Jack Weinstein, retired U.S. Air Force Lieutenant General and, the former Deputy Chief of Staff for Strategic Deterrence and Nuclear Integration[3]. Colin Powell, former Secretary of State for the Bush-Cheney Oil Junta and Minister of Prevarication who sold the fictional justifications for aggressive war against Iraq at the U.N. He was joined by other Republicans like Chuck Hagel, John Kasich, Christine Todd Whitman, William Cohen, Christopher Shays, Mitt Romney . . . Officials from the Bush, Jr., Administration even started a PAC, 43 Alumni for Biden. Upwards of 300 former administration officials are working to galvanize Republicans to support Biden. Many staffers who worked for the deceased senator from Arizona, John McCain, as well as some staffers from a current senator, Mitt Romney, are joining the effort to unseat the vulgar émigré from Queens. Some seventy former National Security officials proffered a letter supporting Biden for the White House. A group that includes Richard Armitage, Eliot Cohen, John Negroponte, David Kramer; in addition to the Lincoln Project, chaired by Neocon, Rick Wilson.All are representative of the Establishment and therefore, lend to why many in the Working Class voted for Trump in the first place . . . distrust of the Establishment. Forty years ago we had Reagan Democrats; today, Biden Republicans. Meanwhile . . .
. . . in Munich, North Carolina, the lunatic fringe that is representative of much of today’s Republican faction gathered to pay homage to their “Glorious Leader, God Emperor.”[4]
Their Glorious Leader is that Duce of the Dumb, as he dismantles mechanisms of national cohesion such as the Post Office and the Census. . . ; while Democrats, too, seem to have an aversion to the Electoral College, contributing to the undermining of the unity of the country.[5] An example of how the Electoral College brings the country together politically was Joe Biden, from Delaware, picking as his running mate, Kamala Harris from California. The Post Office delivers 1.2 billion packages of medicine annually to Americans around the entire country. The Census, to be taken every ten years, accounts for American citizens from across this great land.
The lack of Establishment support at the Republican Convention together with Republican Establishment support for Biden shows the fractured nature of American politics. With elements of the Republican Establishment closing ranks with the Democrat Establishment could very well be an indication that they are finding that perhaps now is the time to rid the Beltway of this Robespierre of the American sans-culottes or Working Class. Yet . . .
. . . in 2017, Trump catered to the Establishment, as opposed to his promise to his faithful that he was going to “Drain the Swamp?” He sold his minions down the river as did Obama with his “Hope and Change.” Just as Sanders, too, sold out his followers in 2016 by backing Hillary Clinton and now Joe Biden, both corporate caretakers.
But Trump, the other “anti-Establishment” candidate, who picked up a sizable percentage of the White Working Class, catered, instead, to America’s Royalty: Generous tax breaks in 2017; bequeathing federal lands to developers, energy drillers and other opportunists; continuation of the American Empire, despite promises to end the American presence in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria, failing to do so on all counts; indeed, he has doled out trillions of dollars to the Nation’s grandest monopoly, the Military-Industrial-Financial-Security-Congressional Complex.
For the Establishment, Trump has proved a necessary evil. Unlike the DNC, which held up its end to prevent the anti-Establishment candidate, Bernie Sanders, from obtaining the nomination, not once, but twice, as opposed to the RNC which proved itself inept. Having been a Republican, the road to the present situation is easy to discern.
During the Reagan years, I began to notice an influx of ultra-Rightists, Racists and those who could indeed be construed as being of a questionable religious character. Of course, they have a right to be heard. They also have the right to put forth those they consider as best representative of their interests, such as Mike Huckabee or a Rick Santorum. . . Yet, the party always chose a standard bearer more acceptable to a broader array of interests, like a Reagan, Bush, both father and son, Bob Dole, Mitt Romney, John McCain. . . But in 2016, it did not work. Like with the Democrats, Establishment control had no intention of answering the concerns of those not representative of the Corporate State, and one of these was the Working Class. The Democrats, who were once considered the party of the Working Man, abandoned this constituency decades ago for that touch of mink.
Following the Bush, Sr. presidency, Republicans were pushed more and more to the Right by Clinton, as he savaged the FCC and hastened the contraction and corporatization of major media; NAFTA, which was not nor was it ever intended to result in the rejuvenation of the American job market; and, of course, the demise of the Glass-Steagall Act, resulting in transforming the American financial structure into a mega-ATM for America’s Royalty.
With the continuum of corporate-serial wars, export of many Working Class and Middle Class jobs, the looting of the country by America’s tinseled aristocrats, declining education and healthcare standards, income inequality, the subversion of clean air, water and other environmental protections . . . caused a mild backlash—teachers in Wisconsin in 2011, Occupy Wall Street, followed by the Tea Party which, in turn, gave way to the rise of the extreme Right in the form of pro-Fascist, neo-Nazi, White Supremacist groups; and the increase, too, in non-White groups such as those of the Black Nationalist variety, as more and more people feel as though the system is passing them by.
I vacated the Republicans just after the mortgage crisis, owing to the fact that the GOP, once known as the Grand Old Party, no longer subscribed to Buckley Conservatism, while the Democrats ceased being the party of the Working Man.
Trumpism, now, has split the Republican ranks. The Dictatorship by Committee, that loose confederation of Big Finance, Big Energy, Big Tech, Major Media, Pharmaceutical Giants and Health Insurance Corporations, the Military-Industrial-Financial-Security-Congressional Complex, . . . that took control of the American economy and political structure is now having to deal with the fallout of undermining a functioning system of representative government. Indeed, 2016 showed that they went to the well once too often. Anti-Establishment factions from the Right as well as the Left, have risen, as they were going to do . . . as history demands that they do
At the top, Establishment Democrats and Republicans have sought association to curb the threat to the Corporate State. A threat I saw in embryo some 35 years ago. Those from the extreme Right are in the process of dismantling government; while those of the corporatist variety want to maintain government because its structure represents profits, since they bought it in the first place.
Candidates such as Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump and Joe Biden are not the disease; rather they are symptoms of a disease known as the Lack of a Functioning System of Representative Government. An affliction, by the way, that is terminal . . . as long as the Corporate State exists.
A multitude, then, have taken to the streets, as they seek to address the issues that plague them; calling into session the only Chamber of People’s Deputies open to them, the Pavement Parliament, elections to which are not required since elected officials need not apply, as it is emblematic of the failed state that is America.
Endnotes
[1] See page 378, “The Federalist No. 55,” February 14, 1788, by James Madison, The Federalist.
[2] Including such blocks of power as Big Energy, Big Finance, Big Pharma and Heath Insurance monoliths, Major Media, Big Tech, and of course, the Military-Industrial-Financial-Security-Congressional Complex. . .
[3] U.S. Air Force Biographies, December 1, 2018, www.af.mil/…/lieutenant-general-jack-weinstein
[4] “We won, brothers. Our Glorious Leader has ascended to God Emperor. Make no mistake about it: we did this. If it were not for us, it wouldn’t have been possible.” This appeared on the website of Daily Stormer, a White Supremacist, Neo-Nazi, Holocaust denier groupfounded by Andrew Anglin on July 4, 2013. His previous effort was Total Fascism. The name Daily Stormerwas reputed to have been taken from Der Sturmer, a low-rent, pornographic publication denigrating those of the Jewish persuasion. Anglin stated that he had supported Trump for seventeen months prior to the election in November 2016.
Daily Stormer and groups like it feel emboldened by the ascension of Trump. And these groups do form part of Trump’s base. They can become Trump’s Freikorps, for taking Trumpism to the streets. And for those who are ignorant of the Freikorps, these were groups of para-militaries in post 1918 Germany. Many were comprised of men who were unemployed, cashiered out of the army and navy . . . used by the German Army to attack the Communists. Indeed, such street-toughs, many with military training, staffed upwards of the more than 70 of these groupings that sprouted up all over Germany, some of which had 3,000 to 5,000 men each. Many would gravitate to Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Party, filling out the ranks of the SA or Sturmabteilung, Storm Troopers; and later, of course, Heinrich Himmler’s SS.
[5] The Post Office can be found in the United States Constitution, Article I, Section 8, paragraph 7, duties of the Congress, “Establish Post Office . . . “ The Electoral College or Electors can be found in Article II, Section 1, “Electors . . . “
