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I would rather have it that readers read the Chris Hedges article to be found at http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/we_are_all_deplorables_20161120 than to read what it inspired me to say. My piece reflects critical elements of my thinking since the race for the presidency began and after the election of the unacceptable. How we came to elect a president Trump seems beyond comprehension. This is what so many who were against Trump, especially those in the Hillary would like it to be, beyond comprehension and they wish this because to comprehend it to understand things about Hillary and her supporters that do begin to explain how the impossible came to be real. Few in the democratic party wish to develop an honest assessment of what transpired. They do not want it said that Donald Trump did not win so much as Hillary lost. They do not want to talk about how their candidate, adored beyond reason, was absolutely the wrong candidate, so wrong a candidate that the likes of Donald Trump could vanquish her in an election. Stupidly, idiotically, too many Hillary supporters are pointing at the number 1.7 million to explain the calamity. Indeed, she had more actual votes than Trump. But she did actually, without any doubt lose the election. In the interview with Chris Hayes discussed below, Joan Walsh used this argument which argues what? What of any value to considering how we got into the miserable situation we are in.
Those sincerely concerned with what really matters should concern themselves with the issues Hedges raises and, if they have the time and energy to do so, with those I raise.
My assessment:
I have written to the fact that the democratic party is far from being a party of the people and not at all a party dedicated to democracy. I have argued that Hillary Clinton was a candidate of the neoliberal elite who would rather party with the likes of Beyonce and Whoopie Goldberg than sponsor forums and debates that include voices often not heard in public venues, people like Noam Chomsky and Chris Hedges, for instance, Bernie Sanders, too, and others who have been saying for a long time that establishment politics works for the wealthy class, serves its desires always at the expense of those whose quality of life is constantly diminished as the wealthy use them to insure the opulent life style. The democratic claims a link to liberalism but it is not liberalism that stands for liberal principles, rather, it is neoliberalism that links to liberalism though a few social issues but only those and only in a way that does not interfere with a good life for a few at the expense of the many, that many without any other place to go but the democratic party because it, at least, says nice things about the not privileged and supports the rights of these people to be what they are, gay or black or female or muslim or whatever, as long as they do not do anything to expose democrats for what they really are.
Most of the people I know who supported Hillary Clinton supported her because they too are neoliberals, either because they have what they need and most of what they want or because they understand that it is easier to get to the point of having what they need and most of what they want by licking the feet of neoliberals with power, doing some party work, being allowed to hang around and, maybe getting invited to party with the party, get near its stars.
Indeed, the democratic party is autocratic and the existence of stars within expose its non egalitarian propensities. There are, in the democratic party a good many high ranking members who do indeed look down upon those with lower and no rank. I was at the Nevada Democratic Convention, yes, as a Bernie Sanders representative and I expected that Hillary would win the vote of the people there. My reason for attending was to have a chance to make my voice heard so that the reasons for my support of Mr. Sanders might be understood and, in someway, have a say in the direction the party would take through the campaign and after, my ideas based in my belief that the party should be a sincerely inclusive one where people, the people, came together to determine how to make the nation a better place for all to live.
I was truly bothered by Ms. Clinton’s long standing relationships with a good many people who I had good evidence to suggest were a part of the problem, part of a corporate/capitalist force that had taken over all aspects of the political system and, through Ms. Clinton, along with Ms. Clinton were advocating more of the same. Ms. Clinton was not going to release transcripts of speeches to the kingpins of America, the very people and companies that had twisted the economy until the wealth of the many was just about squeezed out, that wealth flowing rather steadily into the bank accounts of those who already had a lot of what was available already.
I never heard the elites of the democratic party push for investigations into the economic crash manufactured by absurd and esoteric–exotic–fiscal manipulations, most of which had been made possible–legally possible–by actions taken by the democrats, by Hillary’s husband in particular. I did not see many tears shed by the likes of Debby Wassermann Schultz, Nancie Pelosi, Barbara Boxer, or even Barrack Obama. I did watch all of them parade before the public in stylish suits and repeat over and over again how they were the solution to the problems before us.
All of these people, Obama an exception, perhaps, has been in politics for many, many years and had hardly ever, if at all, explained the failed side of their tenures. Maybe the state of the nation has gotten better, according to someone’s accounting, for periods of time. However, by the time we arrived at 2015, the state of the state was not seen as being good at all. Good numbers of people were still suffering from the effects of the economic meltdown that deprived them of everything they had worked to earn. Default and repossession and foreclosure became terms as well known and understood as fast-ball, touchdown, and three-pointer.
It should have been that the system in place would be scrapped and a new one built or, at least, the system in place would have been scrutinized and adjusted to insure that it would not and could not tear apart the nation again in such substantial ways. The people had been fucked and they had been fucked with and party leaders continued to find ways to get along with those who had fucked us.
The Clintons made millions by being friends with millionaires and billionaires and suffered nothing by the incredible misdeeds perpetrated by the millionaire and billionaire classes and their entities, the banks and the insurance companies and the hedge funds and the corporations that made it big by giving their employees little, employers who did everything to satisfy the investors even when doing so meant screwing the regular people, reducing their wages and cutting their benefits, sometimes sending the work out of country if domestic workers were the least bit hesitant to working harder and earning less.
The Clintons sat at the dinner table of the Trumps, just a part of the lifestyle that put them with celebrities of all kind, some obviously of the most toxic kind. Hillary served on the Walmart Board of Directors. No shame in that. They did create a rather wonderful foundation, wonderful in deeds, indeed, though shady in some respects–who donated, why they donated, what the Clintons got when the foundation got, and so on and so forth.
This is not to say that the Clintons are in anyway evil people or to in anyway take away from them what they deserve in terms of accolades. They have accomplished a lot and a lot of what they have accomplished is good, very good. But, the candidacy of Hillary Clinton could not speak only to the good because that would never have been allowed by those who opposed her and those who opposed her had at their ready the very issues I have brought up here. She may not have ever acted unethically, for instance, but one could find behavior that at least appeared to be unethical. There were actions taken that both liberals and conservatives could take her to task on, as Bernie Sanders did, for which she had little sensible defense. This caused her to use a senseless defense, senseless in that by staying quiet about what she was being accused, she did noting to make sense of what she had done and been doing.
Hillary, in my mind, was one of the most brilliant candidates to ever appear the American electorate. And, because she was so damned smart, it was difficult for someone like me to buy into the “mistake” defense. That she should have known better? I could not believe that she did know better. What I saw was a person who would have major difficulties getting elected if she were to be wholly candid and even more problems if she tried to duck the good questions that should have been asked of her. Indeed, whatever she would do to make herself the viable candidate would not make her a good candidate. She did support Bill Clinton’s law and order agenda. She did support Bill Clinton’s rewriting of financial regulations. She did support NAFTA. She did support T.P.P until…
So I went to the convention and that the rules we, the convention, had adopted, would not allow for me to have a say. Nor would anyone not in line with the party line–the Hillary line–have an opportunity to speak. And when those who had been told that they would not be allowed to voice their positions demanded that they be heard, first in regard to the nature of the rules of conduct themselves, resisted the powerful of the party by demanding floor time, they were told that they were hoodlums. Barbara Boxer herself took the stage to admonish the stupid little people who were making such a fuss and all I could think to say was fuck you Barbara Boxer. ‘Deplorables!’
Of course, it has come out in honest reporting that those little people weren’t quite as bad and nasty as the party hierarchy said they were to the press, that there was considerable good reason for them to object to the manner in which the meeting was being conducted (done deal before the proceedings had begun, hundreds of folks traveling long distances to get to Las Vegas only to be told to be quiet and obey) and that their behaviors were far from being what the convention chair had described them to be—violent and criminal—to the national press.
The convention and the alleged bad behavior of Sanders supporters did make national news and the national party, through its upstanding surrogates, used the events of that day to continue its campaign to discredit both Sanders and those who stood with him. My party acolyte friends harangued those like me who were on the Sanders side for days until a few investigative reporters began to write stories discrediting the party version of what had happened at the convention. In truth, there had been no violence except the explosive verbal rebuke of Ms. Boxer who thought it an affront—she was after all a party stalwart and superstar—to have those protesting not sit down and shut up as she had demanded. She was appalled at their disobedience, the refusal to forget all that they found problematic about Ms. Clinton and all they found right with Bernie Sanders and join the team of good sense.
Actually, to have done so, to have obeyed would have made no sense, democratically speaking because it would have meant that the Sanders’ supporters had decided to be for party above principle, going along with the dictates of the party powerful without having sound reason—a good political reason—to do so. Democracy is about advocacy and it is about debate and at this democratic party convention only one side was allowed to advocate so that there could be no debate. The democratic party, its leadership represented by Ms. Boxer, was interfering with democratic process in a most blatantly vile manner, vile because of what it represented in terms of a political party’s disregard for democracy. A party, a major party, in a nation that was built on democratic principles was violating those principles and working to humiliate those trying to enforce those principles so as to have a say in who the party would nominate and to whom the nominee and the party would have to answer once the nomination process was completed.
The deplorables at the convention were vindicated, at least in the press, the party locally and nationally never issuing an apology for its deplorable behavior and for the anti-democratic nature of the party exposed by events at the convention. And then the wikileaks stories began to appear, the e-mails between the party powerful that showed that what had happened in Las Vegas, was symptomatic of the attitude of party higher-ups toward those who were questioning the party line. The party, before the nominating process had begun, had decided on who would be the party’s nominee and the “process” was but a pretense, a show well planned to anoint Hillary as the democratically chosen democratic party candidate. The anger displayed by Ms. Boxer and others who took the stage to castigate those in protest for making the party look bad were being castigated for exposing the real nature of the process that was really meant to display solidarity even if the illusion necessitated that solidarity be forced and enforced.
Debby Wasserman Schultz was forced to resign her position as party chair. The leaked documents in the Wikileaks collection showed that she and others of the party elite had worked to rig the process from the beginning. There had never been a democratic process and the contest between Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton would be no contest at all, a whole half of those were democrats being disenfranchised and disrespected by those who were running the party.
The elitist tendencies of the democratic party, its officers ties to America’s rich and famous, its disregard for the consequences of these ties for policy making and for those who would continue to suffer because of those policies and party unwillingness to push for real reform where real reform was needed because of these relationships, these were subjects made taboo and at gatherings like the one in Las Vegas and every Bernie Sanders’ rally, the real danger for the party was exposure of the relationships and their consequences. Party powerful wanted what the relationships had for them and they didn’t want to be criticized for having those relationships.
If one looks at who they are, those who run the party, Clintons, Boxer, Wasserman Schultz, Schumer, Donna Brazil (who stole debate questions and handed them over to Hillary Clinton!!!), John Podesta, and so on and so forth, it would be difficult to find one of these who suffered from the economic crash. If you looked at how each of these people lives, it would be found that they live very good lives. The same with most of my friends who are good friends with the party. It would, I think, become evident, too, why no one in the party really pushed too hard to have those responsible for the economic crash and the subsequent theft of home and wealth from those in the middle and, too, the almost poor and the really poor, prosecuted. The friends who kept the leadership out of the mess were the same ones who had caused the mess.
These folk had done nothing much over the years to address the taking of wealth held by the “lower” classes by the upper classes and they can hardly ever be found initiating or participating in investigation into how and why this was happening. Many of them actually made it clear that concern about this phenomenon was tantamount to promoting class warfare. The solution to the increasing numbers being pushed out of the middle class and the downward spiral of those on the fringe and below it they argued was entrepreneurship, the creation of more businesses to create more jobs.
What they did not talk much about was the problem that could occur, that was occurring, was that business was operating in a world where to compete, overhead had to be kept low and overhead was kept low by keeping wages and benefits low. Americans, as the productivity figures clearly showed, were working harder and only entrepreneurs and those holding stock in their companies were benefitting by that productivity.
This is what Bernie Sanders was talking about and by talking about it, he was exposing the complicity of the democrats who ran the democratic party and those it elected in creating and keeping in place the conditions that allowed the swindle to continue.
That said, it needs be said that Donald Trump did not win the election. Hillary Clinton lost the election because of who she is and that for which she actually stands, who she stands up for. The e-mail scandal, was not the straw that broke the back, nor were revelations about the Foundation. What took her down was the attitude that comes with being a celebrity, a good friend of the rich and famous. Along with this, of course, the kind of distain for those “below” her, the same kind of disdain Barbara Boxer expressed for those like me who wanted to call the party out for its elitist tendencies and disregard for the conditions of life their polices forced the many to live under.
It was these people who destroyed America by helping to get Donald Trump elected and it is these people who refuse to take responsibility for the hell they have brought upon us. I heard Hillary talking to the Save Our Children Foundation a week or so after the election. She was up beat when I felt beaten. She smiled her way through a speech that was so very positive that it reflected either ignorance or disregard for the pain that was to come because of the election outcome. She asked that we work together to make our great America even greater, the greatness of America a prominent theme in her campaign that, before the election was bullshit, insensitive to the plight of the majority of Americans, and totally absurd following the election.
I have watched as party powerful try to divert attention from the enormity of the loss, its meaning for the future in terms of both long and short term consequences. Consider for a moment, if you dare, the meaning of Donald Trump president with a congress in which both houses are held by republicans, a congress and president that will anoint new Supreme Court Justices and legislate the lives of the people of this nation, Any honest liberal politician would be over the top petrified by what has happened and what it means. But there was Hillary, smiling, looking like a celebrity deserving of applause and acting like she was somehow the people’s hero.
Chris Hayes, the other night, had a segment concerning statements Bernie Sanders made on Meet the Press on Sunday, November 20 (http://www.nbcnews.com/meet-the-press/meet-press-november-20-2016-n686451). Sanders had said such things as this:
Chuck, I don’t know that it does a whole lot of good to look backwards. We’ve got to look forward and we’ve got to hear what those workers were saying just a few moments ago. And what they were saying is, they’re sick and tired of seeing their standard of living go down. They’re sick and tired of seeing their jobs go to China and other low-wage countries.
“Which means that we have to transform our trade policies and tell corporate America to start investing in this country and not in countries all over the world. It means we’ve got to raise the minimum wage. It means we need pay equity for women workers. It means to say that we have to create jobs by rebuilding our crumbling infrastructure. It means to say that we have to make public colleges and universities tuition-free.
In other words, what all of that is about is the working class of this country, for the last 40 years, has been decimated and the rich are getting richer. People are tired of it. They want real change. And I’m going to do everything that I can as part of the new leadership of the Democratic party to bring about that change.
Hayes guest, Joan Walsh, a regular contributor on MSNBC and a writer for The Nation magazine responded to Sanders’ comments by saying that it was nothing but Bernie Sanders taking the opportunity of Clinton’s election defeat to say “I told you so.” God damn it Ms. Walsh! You take no responsibility!!!
Ms. Walsh was an ardent Clinton supporter and with regularity during the campaign had offered commentary on the race that was as Hillary biased as it could have been. She attacked Sanders for the duration of the campaign, one of many who tried to explain the ridiculousness of his candidacy. Prior to the election, I had usually found Joan Walsh to be a sensible commentator. Once the election cycle started I watched her become increasingly unhinged, her desire to have Hillary elected the first woman president unbalanced, not in the sense that she did not treat the two candidates with an even hand, but unbalanced in regard to the way her support for Hillary distorted her thinking. She excused all that came up that was critical of Clinton, denying at every turn the validity of charges that seemed to be very much valid.
She did not do much to answer the charges, whether they came from republicans or Sanders’ supporters or elsewhere as to dismiss them as either absurd or irrelevant. She was not only bias, but off base and a contributor to the politics of distortion and seeding of doubt used so well by the likes of Lee Atwater, Roger Ailes, and Carl Rove to win elections through deceit, deceit predicated on that disrespect for voters that led them to believe that voters were so stupid as to accept as real and true what they knew to be deceitful.
Ms. Walsh, of course, was using these tactics for the side of the good and she and those like her did not care too much about the truth as long as what the public believed coincided with their goals. In a big way, what Ms. Walsh had done and was doing on Hayes’ show was exactly the thing that had caused me to drop my membership in the democratic party. I dropped out not because of who they nominated but the way they had gone about promoting a single candidate and manipulating a dumb democratic party proletariat to bend to their will despite, in spite of what was real’
Arrogance! Ugly arrogance. Elitism. Disrespect.
And so the article attached!
