Primary Notes from a Shithole Superpower: crashing the party from the top down

Posted by collectivist:

". . .12 noon: Just to be clear, the Dem establishment will gladly enable a second fascistic and ecocidal Trump term before it will get behind a progressive Dem/Sanders nomination. The neoilberal Dem masters will do everything they can, including sabotage of Sanders, to sustain the party’s status as a thoroughgoing ruling class institutional asset. They are the ones with ideological purity tests, and they are loudly and clearly announcing their preference for Trump over Sanders in 2020 as in 2016.

You will not get a popular revolution through electoral politics under the U.S. party and elections system. Sorry if that makes me sound “negative.” Always start with the truth.

1:17 pm: I glanced at “liberal” MSNBC host Stephanie Class-Ruhle (SCR) this morning. Her theme: voters will not support a democratic socialist. What else? This woman, a former leading global derivatives trader who lives in luxury in East Central Park, is obsessed with demeaning and defeating Bernie Sanders. She regularly invites on experts from Third Way and a bunch of non-Trump Republicans like Jeb Bush’s former 2016 campaign director. SCR is just a caricature of herself at this point. She would never admit it, but she wants Trump back for a second term. Demented Orange is very profitable for right-wing fake progressive MSDNC and CNN chattering skulls like SCR.

2:18 pm: Go to 3:15 of this CNN clip and look at how insanely ORANGE this fascistic dip-shit Trump’s head is compared to all the other whites up on the stage. How bizarre. As someone wrote me, he looks like he broke out of a mental hospital and locked himself in a make-up room.

2:49 pm: No surprise here: “Superdelegates ‘Willing to Risk Intraparty Damage’ to Block Sanders at Contested Democratic Convention.” I keep saying it here and to anyone who will listen: the Democratic Party’s corporate-imperialist establishment would rather lose to the right-wing capitalist party, even to an increasingly apocalyptic and fascistic right, than to the progressive, moderately social-democratic and environmentalist left wing of its own party. That was the basic story of 2016 – a tragedy the bourgeois Democratic Party leadership is trying to re-enact in 2020.

3:37 pm: The two most remarkable things I’ve seen in the last 24 hours: : (1) the New York Times report on how the Dem super-delegates will be perfectly happy to throw the election to Trump by screwing over Sanders at the Democratic National Convention; (2) footage of Malignant Orange trying to blame the Coronavirus-caused stock market drop on the “radical Left Democrats.”

6:20 pm: Demented Orange is muzzling govt. scientists on c-virus, making them clear statements with Christian Fascist Pence. He’s such an Antichrist.

7:31 pm: Many of us on the Left have been trying the crash the Democratic Party for a long time. It looks like super-rich oligarchs like Bernard “Stop Sanders” Schwartz may do it for us.

Just Shoot Me

9:18 pm: So neoliberal globalist guru Thomas Friedman just went on CNN to call for a post-Trump “government of national unity” ala “Team of Rivals.” Friedman then proceeded to trash the shit out of Bernie Sanders, the front-running progressive Dem presidential candidate adored by tens of millions. As was clear from his conversation with Chris Cuomo. Friedman sees the Coronavirus as a great opportunity for his friend Mikey Moneybags Bloomberg to emerge as the leader of this coming “national unity” state. Friedman thinks Bloomberg will arise as the “crisis manager” we the people need. You can’t make shit like this up. Well, you can, but I didn’t.

9:50 pm: Thomas Friedman and Steve Bannon are both stuck five feet apart in the middle of a busy street with an out of control bus bearing down on them. You have been ordered by a man with a gun to run out and save just one of them by knocking the one you choose out of the bus’s way (hopefully keeping yourself clear from the bus). The man with the gun will shoot you in your left leg if you don’t try to save one and just one of them. So do you: (a) let them both die and take the bullet; (b) save Friedman and let Bannon go under the bus; (c) save Bannon and let Friedman go under the bus?

My answer is (a): just shoot me

10: 15 pm: Corn Pop-a-bin-Biden bin clown’n and ly’n agin: “Joe Biden Admits He Did Not Get Arrested Trying to Visit Nelson Mandel During Apartheid.”

What Would it Take?

February 28

9:15 am: In a surprise announcement this morning, Donald Trump cited concerns that “the Coranavirus will return next November due to cold weather” after it “magically disappears this April due to warm weather. It goes away but then it comes back. Because of this disease, developed by China and the do-nothing Radical Left Democrats, the 2020 presidential election will have to be cancelled until further notice.” Trump added that “the spring and summer of 2021 are looking very chilly from what my weather people are telling me. They are unbelievably good at what they do and according to them the whole year, maybe the whole decade, is looking like sub-zero. So we’ll just have to see.” (I made this up, but the scary thing is it almost sounds believable.)

10:53 am: U.S.-Americans, your ruling class pushes the envelope a little bit more each day: “what can we get away with before you’ll get off your asses and take to the streets?” So far, so good for them. What in the name of God (or whatever) would it take? Is there ANYTHING that would do the trick? Please let me know so I can decide whether or not to try to flee this shit-hole Superpower — not that you can ever completely escape the long dark shadow of Uncle Sam.

12:13 pm: Like the noxious and practically illiterate and innumerate predator Trump or not, many in the upper bourgeoisie are contributing to his record-setting re-election campaign finance war-chest ($253 million raised by January 31st of this year, more than half from large donors). If the Lords of Capital were seriously offended by or worried about his fascistic and ecocidal conduct and policies, they could easily end his presidency with weapons they would certainly use against a Bernie Sanders presidency: capital strike and a constant propaganda war on how the administration was crippling prosperity. Expressing sentiments common across the commanding heights investor class, Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein, a lifelong Democrat, has voiced preference for the neofascist Trump over the Democratic Party’s presidential front-runner Bernie Sanders, a moderate social democrat advancing policies that qualify as centrist in capitalist western and northern Europe. The corporate-captive Democratic Party’s openly authoritarian, anti-democratic Wall Street-friendly “super-delegates” are ready to hand Trump a second term by super-voting to deny Sanders their party’s nomination even if he comes to the Democratic National Convention (DNC) with a large plurality of primary delegates. Deep-sixing the highly popular progressive Senator at the DNC will likely wreck the party, crippling it for the general election – a risk that the super-delegates are perfectly willing to take. So what if Trump is a malignant hyper-narcissist and an at least instinctual fascist, racist, sexist and eco-exterminist who the world’s leading intellectual (Noam Chomsky) reasonably describes as “the most dangerous criminal in human history”? And so what if another corporate-Democratic presidency of the kind some of Trump’s ruling class detractors would prefer would be likely to give rise to a 2025 Republican presidency even more horrific than Trump’s? The oligarchs don’t care.

Read the Times Between the Lines

12:39 pm:  Is there a problem with a Marxist or left anarchist intellectual reading the New York Times and citing it? Only in Idiot World. The Times is tasked with providing accurate information on what’s actually going on in the world to business and professional-class elites who the system needs to be reasonably informed. It has astonishing resources and covers a broad swath of developments and events often in great detail. Its own class-and Empire-slanted coverage and commentary is itself part of the story of how the ruling class and its Empire rule. Of course, one must control for its bourgeois and imperial filters and, as Lenin used to say, “read between the lines.” Of course, one must supplement, correct, and criticize its ideologically slanted coverage and commentary. Bit its’ moronic to denounce a lefty for reading and citing the NYT or for that matter the Wall Street Journal or the Washington Post or CNN, etc.

Fascism Treadmills On

2:07 pm: Not often am I transfixed by the talking heads on CNBC: “Dow Slides 350 points As Wall Street Caps Worst Week Since 2008.” I pray for capitalism’s collapse daily, in the name of Mother Earth.

2:10 pm: Please tell anyone you know in South Carolina that they have to be a complete moron to vote for Joe Biden. Please email/FB/tweet/smoke-signal/passenger pigeon these pieces (in this post and in my first 3 or 4 comments) into South Carolina. Joe Biden is a ridiculous LIAR, PLAGIARIST, CORPORATIST, IMPERIALIST, RACIST, SEXIST, BUFFOON, and sadly, a dementia victim. I have written a number of pieces about this: here’s just oneamong many.

5:06 pm: See corporate bootlicker James E. Clyburn’s top campaign contributors here.

6:33 pm: Fascist Hate Rally happening now in Charleston, SC. Tangerine Antichrist whipping his demented Amerikaner Trumpenvolk into a frenzy after the stock market’s worst week since the Great Recession —- this while the nation stands on the verge of a major public health crisis that he says will disappear like “magic.” The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse await the nod from the fascist Antichrist. Coronavirus Czar Mike Pence prepares for Rapture.

Putting Mike Pence in charge of the federal Coronavirus response is like making Richard Speck a live in Sorority Dad.

8:49 pm: My FOX News-White Male survey at the X-Sport Fitness gym in the 800 block of South State St. in Chicago’s South Loop is now at 31 for 31. I am not joking. Since I started paying attention last week sometime, I have seen FOX News on active treadmills, bikes, and ellipticals 31 different times. In each and every case, the person using the machine is a white male. Now bear in mind, this gym’s users are half female and at least 2/3rds nonwhite. All kinds of folks watch the televisions when they work out. But nobody other than a white male ever watches FOX News. 31 for 31. Just because the city is blue doesn’t mean it doesn’t have a nice big chunk of racist-sexist-fascist white male FOX News watchers. Of course it does.

10:09 pm: So, Chicago police shot a guy for moving between cars on the L today. Here’s something amazing: the victim wasn’t Black.

Learn Where They Live

Assignment: Find the home and work addresses and phone numbers and emails of each one of these people…..the DNC “superdelegates.” These agents of abject authoritarianism, primed to subvert the will of the people, are going to need to know that we know where they live and work.

Wash Your Hands

February 29, 2020

11 am: Is this for real (I’m guessing yes): “FOX News is showcasing coronavirus analysis from a guy who said he hadn’t washed his hands in years and doesn’t believe in germs”? So, he’s one of those guys who walks straight out of the public toilet stalls without a stop at the bathroom sink and then goes and shakes your hand at the conference right before you reach for a croissant?

11:45 am: Sanders is way ahead of Elizabeth “Capitalist to my Bones” Warren in Massachusetts. What a richly deserved humiliation that will be for her after she joined Beavis, I mean Buttigieg, in accusing Sanders of valuing ideological purity over “getting things done” (the standard neoliberal insult against anyone left of the Center for American Progress). . . ."

https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/03/03/primary-notes-from-a-shit-hole-superpower-crashing-the-party-from-the-top-down/