We've gone about this all wrong...

 It's now obvious to me that the best way for the Left to change society is to start producing our own media.

 "What?" you ask, "Are you daft, Wannabehero? The Left produces, and has produced, a great deal of media! Where have you been?"

 Oh, I've been around. But we've gotten it wrong, folks. We've been producing the wrong kind of shit. What we need to start creating is utterly meritless schlock that appeals to mass audiences and disseminates leftist propaganda. I'm thinking along the lines of a film, directed in the style of Michael Bay, about the Spanish Civil War. Or a reality TV show about organizing a union in the style of Rupaul's Drag Race. 

 How did I arrive at this realization? Well, like most occasions when I have an idea, I was in the shower this morning and....

 In 2005 I was working for SEIU, the Service Employees International Union, as a field organizer. It was my first real foray into professional activism. A few weeks into the job another organizer, who for the purposes of this story I will name Anne, and I were conducting site visits in Maryland as part of a campaign to organize Aramark and Sodexo workers. I cannot remember the exact location, but at one point a fire alarm went off at either a hospital or college campus we were visiting where Aramark had subcontracted cafeteria workers, and we found ourselves outside waiting in a crowd of people. Anne started chatting with some nearby folks to see if any of them were cafeteria staff. Finding none that were, she nonetheless made pleasant conversation.

 I'm not sure how the subject of Hillary Clinton came up, but it did. A woman Anne spoke to felt strongly that Hillary Clinton demonstrated her ambitious character by not leaving Bill following his admission that he'd had an affair with Monica Lewinsky. Anne, on the other hand, found it endearing that Hillary had decided to stay with Bill and fix their marriage. I remained silent. Having been in high school in the mid-to-late nineties, I was sick of the Clintons. This discussion was the product of utterly meaningless tabloid drivel, drivel that had completely dominated political discourse for a decade. The United States had just re-elected George W. Bush to the presidency, a man who had blundered the US into an illegal war in Iraq, a war Clinton had voted for and her husband had laid the groundwork for. I, at that time a committed anarchist, had become a labor organizer specifically to cut through the nonsensical image-based politics of the Democratic and Republican parties in order to wage class war. What Hillary Clinton did with her personal life was the farthest thing from my mind then. 

 Now, it is absolutely true that Bush and his clique were bad and Clinton did vote for the war (and rightfully suffered for it), and the subject of whether Clinton chose to stay with her husband was and is superficial. But whether we like it or not, and as Trump's election has clearly demonstrated, more people relate to politics through themes found in entertainment than through breaking down their real interests and seeing how they line up with the political process. I could have probably engaged with the Clinton hater on why her hatred  only served to distract her from questions like "Why has the purchasing power of the average worker consistently dropped for 40 years?" or "What is happening to our civil liberties?" Perhaps such a conversation could have yielded results, but unlike asking whether Bill Clinton is really all bad or whether his wife's decision to stick with him means something, the former questions are systemic questions and systemic questions aren't easily answered. 

 For the many, many Americans disengaged from politics due to a lack of knowledge, interest, or both, the decision of who to vote for can easily come down to simple assessments of carefully curated media images of who you'd rather have a beer with, or who seems more charismatic and optimistic, or who is better at business. If you are the type who absorbs 80 hours of television a week, then Bush's compassionate conservatism,  Obama's hope and change, and Trump's "YOU'RE FIRED", mean a great deal.

 Therefore, we need to start over and start thinking simple. Really simple. Like pea-brain simple. We have to approach the MASSES, people! I'll actually start this off with my second idea: A Rupaul Reality TV show centered around union organizing... I don't have the faintest idea how to write a Reality TV script, but can't we just imagine the shenanigans that would ensue with Rupaul training people on how to salt a workplace? Or teaching people how to effectively negotiate across the table from a union-busting lawyer? I actually think Rupaul would be perfect for the latter because....

 Yeah, exactly, you don't even know what to do with yourself after looking at that picture. All you want to do is reward this fierceness with higher wages and better health insurance.

 Ok, next is the Spanish Civil War movie idea, a la Michael Bay. I'll begin the process with this intro scene, and hopefully far more qualified people can take it from there:

FADE IN
EXT - SUPPLY DEPOT

Camera pans around and around, and around, like ten times, our heroine MEGAN FOX, who is covered in honey and is only wearing a thought. 

Camera pans back, MEGAN is revealed to be a platoon commander in the P.O.U.M, a revolutionary Marxist militia operating in Catalunya. 

Cue explosions, multiple cuts, like a million edits so we get 30 angles on the fireball 

NIC CAGE emerges from the fire as General FRANCO. 

FRANCO

MWA HAHA! We will have Fascism!

Camera spins... and spins, and spins again around MEGAN FOX, who is slowly standing up, determined, completely unintimidated. She's glistening. 

MEGAN

It's on now! 

FRANCO is screaming. The whole world explodes behind him. MEGAN runs at FRANCO, she's completely unhinged, explosions everywhere, she's got like crazy mad shiny honey titties. They both leap into the air, screaming, and as they collide...

FADE OUT
TITLE SEQUENCE BEGINS  

 Now I know what some of you are thinking: This is incredibly condescending. I'm literally talking about the people I want to influence like they are morons. And you'd be right. I am. They are morons. And as evidence I offer this fucking pig...

...who is now the President of the god damned United States. He attained this office by fooling 63 million mouth-breathers into thinking he knows how to run a country in spite of the fact that he's never run a successful anything, let alone a business or marriage, in his entire fucking life. He wasn't alone in this effort. He benefited from a media system that sold his sorry brand and manipulated people for profit for years. They did it with some of the stupidest, shallowest programming they could. All I'm saying is even though him and all other stupid, pop-culture trash shouldn't matter, it inevitably does, and we should start employing the same idiotic weapons to serve a higher purpose, namely indoctrinating those same masses with some class consciousness and leftist ideas. 

 Because if we don't then major media companies, Trump, the GOP and the Democrats, will. 

Broodings on Bay-ing

  

  The Rock (the film, not the former wrestler) may be the single most important cultural contribution ever by someone masturbating furiously with an American flag wrapped around their penis, i.e. Michael Bay. I learned this when I was unable to sleep last night due to my brain running at light-speed the moment I lay in bed, and I decided a Michael Bay film would be the ideal form of media to take advantage of the passive, mind-erasing relationship between film and viewer. I was, indeed, successful as I only got about half-way through the film before passing out.

  The film's principle contribution to AMERICA FUCK YEAH-ness definitely lies in its total commitment to just how bad the troops, in this case personified by Ed Harris, have been betrayed. They get no respect, so they come up with a way to get even and get the attention they deserve by invading Alcatraz Island, taking a bunch of tourists hostage, and threatening to fire missiles with VX nerve gas at San Francisco. Ultimately Ed Harris can't follow through with his threats to do this because he could never harm all those innocent people (minus the hostages, apparently). The real troops don't do that! But Ed Harris gets betrayed again, this time by the troops who stopped being real and started selling out for money. There are also great conversations between two dudes who I think were in the West Wing talking about all the secrets and dirty lies they've covered up, and how they have to keep Sean Connery locked up in federal prison. See, he knows the location of a roll of microfilm containing The Truth™ regarding the alien landing at Roswell and JFK's assassination. The Truth™ was really big in the 90's, by the way. Everybody was looking for it.

  Ed Harris is the true American, embodied in the selfless soldier, betrayed by feckless, power-obsessed bureaucrats and greedy capitalists. The Rock was truly a film with a statement in the somber days of the Clinton presidency. Oh, America! Would that you had not lost your soul then! Morality and honor no long occupied the White House, and no one cared about all those poor, forgotten, highly-equipped and excellently trained soldiers!  What was to be done? What indeed!?

  Aside from all that, I should point out that I was able to learn at least one life lesson from the film: If I'm ever in a firefight, and I'm trying kill this one loner determined to stop what's going on, and neither I nor any of my comrades can seem to land a shot... well, I'm just putting my gun down and walking away because, clearly, I'm the bad guy. It probably wouldn't even get that far, though, because I'd pick up on earlier clues. Like the fact that the dude I'm trying to kill keeps saying witty shit about being in way over his head before masterfully finding his way out of his present situation. I mean, if you can talk like that during a gun battle you are probably a will-to-power type, and have more control of your reality than you think

  The Rock, directed by Michael Bay, and starring Nicolas Cage (RAGE), Sean Connery, and Ed Harris, is like a microscope for those seeking to explore the wonders of Trumpanzee land. I highly recommend watching with friends, colleagues, and fellow will-to-powerists. I give this film 50 stars and 13 stripes.

How'd We Get Here...

  I suppose it goes without saying that everything I said in previous posts about Trump being incapable of winning the Presidency belongs in the dustbin of history. I've chosen not to erase any of it, though, perhaps as a reminder to never take anything for granted again.

 Since the day after election day, I and many other people have tried to figure out how all of this even happened. How did everyone left-of-center get it so wrong? The answer is provided in Adam Curtis' Hypernormalisation, released by the BBC in 2016. The documentary was released before election day, but Trump plays a prominent role nonetheless. I've attached a youtube link, because the BBC iPlayer only works in the UK. If you happen to live in the UK, I'd recommend watching it from their site as the quality of the youtube vid is simply not as good.

 Once you've watched it, you'll wonder why you thought the election would end any other way...

Nah, he's just that nuts.

Back when Bernie still had a chance, I remember thinking that the "electability" argument that supposedly favored Clinton was empty given that she was the anti-thesis of everything being fought over in the 2016 primaries. Drumpf, I thought, was going to make mince-meat out of her by pointing out how he had, in the past, extracted favors from Democrats for political donations. He could talk about how she might not be a Republican, but she's still part of the Belt-way "in-crowd" that led us into Iraq, or at least refused to use their political capital to stop it. He could have hammered her on flip-flopping on trade, or being married to the man who signed off on Glass-Steagal... he could basically have made himself out to be the embodiment of the populist sea-change many were predicting. Back then, there was a collective assumption that somehow Drumpf's verbosity, immaturity, and thin skin were all a brilliant ploy to defeat his Republican foes in a time when many Americans wanted someone to shout down the establishment. Behind all the bluster, as awful as it was, we thought, there was a shrewd tactician, a deal-maker, a man with a plan. I mean, a really racist plan, but a plan nonetheless.

This assessment wasn't irrational given what we knew then. In fact, the only flaw in this logic was that it was rational at all and completely over-estimated The Donald's capacity for strategic planning. After months of gaffs, Drumpfs doubling down on his accusation that President Barack Obama was the founder of the Islamic State firmly grounded his campaign in another plane of reality. If one needed anymore confirmation that Drumpf simply has no idea what he's doing, that was it.

This is all irrelevant if Hillary Clinton wins the presidency, which is likely. But Drumpf's ascendance in spite of his lack of capability reveals something a bit frightening: Ascribing agency to a complete imbecile was likely an attempt to avoid confronting the reality that one of the most powerful political parties on the planet managed to nominate one of the most incompetent and dangerous nominees ever. Just as conspiracy theorists construct elaborate plots to give order to a universe they don't want to admit is actually quite chaotic, lefties like myself simply didn't want to face that the Republican Party is actually racist and insane. I admit now, freely, that I held out some kind of hope that wasn't the case.

I really wish I was wrong.

It's Not the Wolf, It's the Pack.

  Let's get this out of the way: Donald Trump is not going to be the President of the United States. The only reason he is doing as well as he is in the Republican primary race is the paucity of good options in their candidate field, the insurgent nature of their party base, and the rules of the election itself which allows any candidate to win by plurality.

  The concern about Trump should therefore not be about him actually having access to nuclear missiles. Nor should anyone bother anymore with the question of Trump's sincerity, i.e. whether this is all just a big publicity stunt. Such speculation is irrelevant because whether he truly buys into the parade he's marshaling, all that matters is the parade itself. Trump's negative impact on electoral politics in the United States will be felt in ways both immediate and long-term. In all manifestations, his impact will be negative.

  First, American Liberals, along with everyone else on earth, rightfully disparage Republicans for their denial of scientific facts, so being unconcerned with truth is nothing new for the GOP. In every GOP primary race since 2008, candidates from Rick Santorum, to Hermann Cain, to Michele Bachman have had their moments in the sun, and when enough light was shined on them and the kind of ignorance they represented they were required to go back to the shadows. Trump, however, pushes the envelope of fact-denial well beyond global warming, evolution, and vaccinations.Trump lies consistently (Check out Politico's summary covering just one week of false statements), and commits gaffs ("Rapists!", and "Megan Kelly's a woman!") that would end the campaigns of virtually any other candidate in recent memory.  Trump, however, has survived, and one cannot simply conclude that his charisma and media savvy are alone responsible: his supporters just don't give a damn about facts.

  A broad base of support that just does not concern itself with truth is dangerous for many reasons, but even more so when combined with the the oldest political tradition in the United States, one which predates the Republic and has been with us since the colonial period: Racism. Pat Buchanan's two primary campaigns in the 1990's seem tame compared to Trump's, if only because after winning New Hampshire in '92 Buchanan's unwanted endorsement from David Duke rightfully hurt his campaign. Trump has remarkably survived his David Duke moment, which he should never have gotten to in the first place given his proposed policy of blocking Muslims from immigrating to the United States, or of expelling all undocumented immigrants en masse from the country and forcing Mexico to build a wall along our southern border.

  While Republicans are obviously guilty of starting the so-called "Southern Strategy" by attracting the old Dixiecrat vote using code words like "law and order" and "welfare queens", there hasn't been, in nearly 50 years, a space deliberately created for White Nationalists on the national political scene. That has changed. Beyond simply playing with racism, Trump's campaign has actually provided a space for out-right ideological racists to operate in plain sight. They openly talk of attending his rallies, and mingling with his supporters, and of ditching the Confederate Flags and Swastikas and picking up Trump signs. While it is true most Trump fans don't see themselves as racists, polling done right before the Iowa Caucus and New Hampshire Primary demonstrates that a majority of his supporters do hold racist views, particularly towards Hispanics, Muslims, and people of middle eastern and south Asian descent.

  This direct link with fascists adds a certain color to what happened in Chicago this past Friday night. Trump claims he shut his rally down voluntarily after consulting with the Chicago PD, but was quickly refuted by CPD spokesman Anthony Guglielmi. It's impossible to know for sure what was going through Trump's mind, but as Rachel Maddow pointed out on her show Saturday, it's hard not to see a more deliberate hand in all this. Trump may not have known for certain the Chicago rally would lead to larger protests than he'd expected, but it was an opportunity to avail himself of a quintessential strategy in the demagogue playbook: Invent or distort a narrative, inflame passions, provoke angry responses, and then present yourself as the only person who can fix it. How convenient that African-Americans had so far escaped his worst vitriol, right up until he had the opportunity to refute and attack David Duke. He waffled, and then planned rallies in cities that are experiencing heightened racial tension due to high-profile police shootings of unarmed black men. There was no question activists would seek to disrupt his events. Shutting down his Chicago rally was the equivalent of saying to his supporters, "See folks, this is what democracy gets you. This is what you have to put up with if I'm not in charge."

  All of this, the willful and prideful ignorance, the acceptance of racist elements, and the incitement of violence as a means of drawing attention, are a toxic brew. Nonetheless, if we think of Trump as the id of the American psyche, an ugly impulse, the worst manifestation of the noxious and myopic nationalism fomented since 9/11, perhaps the anger he promotes will simply fade when he does. Or, even if he can't achieve higher office, what will be the outcome of millions of Americans who felt energized by his campaign meeting up with some of the most dangerous fringe elements in the country? What will they plan? What will they organize?

  What of the impact on electoral politics? Major realignments in the American political party system have depended on whether a party's more racist elements are on board with changes being made at a national level. The revolt of southern Whigs in the antebellum period led directly to the formation of the northern, anti-slavery Republican Party. The endorsement of the civil rights movement by northern and western democrats led to the Dixiecrat revolt in 1948-68. If you're a Democrat, a fracturing of the Republican Party might sound like a good thing, but if either of those historical examples teach us anything, it's that if a faction leaves one party, it is often absorbed by another. Pro-Slavery Whigs became Democrats, and Dixiecrats became Republicans. Already the Neo-Con wing of the GOP, the extremely twisted and mis-guided ideological architects of the Iraq War, has openly stated it will side with Clinton if Trump wins the nomination. If the collapse of the Republican tent leads to an increase of the size of the Democratic one, how soon before a neo-conservative wing of the Democratic party fissures with what is emerging as the Social Democratic wing led by Bernie Sanders?

Pentagon knew Kunduz MFD facility was a hospital

  The Associate Press reported yesterday that the Pentagon knew a hospital run by Doctors Without Borders (MSF) in Kunduz, Afghanistan was, indeed, a hospital, and that they had ordered the site be placed under surveillance prior to the hospital's destruction. Special Operations analysts apparently suspected that the site was being used by a Pakistani ISI agent to coordinate Taliban attacks against Afghan and US forces.

  Whether the commanders who ordered the strike had this information in hand when the order to attack the site is unclear. The Pentagon has shifted its position, as well as its narrative of events, several times. The report cites anonymous analysts claiming the strike was "justified" due to their assumption the Pakistani agent was killed. No evidence suggests any Pakistani nationals were present in the office, and MSF flatly denies this assertion.

  This means that a civilian facility was flagged, prior to being destroyed, as a potential hostile target. The Pentagon can also no longer claim they didn't know the MSF facility was a hospital, which means a case can now be made this act was, in fact, a war crime.

Bernie Sanders' Lost Opportunity

  At the Democratic Party Primary Debate held last night in Las Vegas, I think I anticipated more of a grudge match between Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, and Martin O'Malley, fueled partly by Jim Webb and Lincoln Chafee attempting to make strong use of what was sure to be limited air-time. All of the candidates had something to gain, and some a lot to lose, with good showings. CNN's intro may have hyped up my expectations as it was clearly modeled on a pro-football broadcast, or maybe American Idol. It was a ridiculous way to introduce such an event, yet I may have been subconsciously amped by it.

  Boy, was I disappointed.

  Just to get it out of the way, Webb and Chafee are completely finished. Whatever policy positions they may advance from here on out are irrelevant given the incredibly awkward nature of their delivery and their clear discomfort as public speakers (btw, Jim Webb killed a guy?). So they're done. Gone. Finis. Oh, and Martin O'Malley accepted money from the NRA in 2012. He was also Baltimore's worst mayor and the basis for Littlefinger running that city in The Wire. So his whole performance was just that, a performance.

  Chafee, nonetheless, in spite of sounding like an awkward science teacher, should be given some credit for at least being the only candidate to directly challenge Hillary Clinton's integrity. However, when asked by CNN moderator Anderson Cooper if she had any response, she simply retorted "No." The audience cheered and applauded, and that was that. No further discussion, no further concern.

  Perhaps the crowd reaction can explain Bernie Sanders' decision to emphatically state that he's tired of hearing about Clinton's emails, a decision akin to a poker player knowing he has four aces in his hand but deciding to fold anyway. Anyone on that stage could rail against the rich (and they did) and demand a bigger share of the national wealth for working people (and they did), but only Sanders has a consistent track record of truly working for both of those things. Integrity is the one thing that Bernie Sanders can lord over every other politician in Washington, not just Hillary Clinton, and to so readily dismiss its importance could only have been the product of shrewd political calculus. Yes, he probably thought, I could make this an issue, but it could backfire given the party faithful simply don't seem to care if a Clinton breaks the law.

  On the subject of whistleblowers Clinton was given even more leeway:

"[Snowden] could have been a whistleblower. He could have gotten all of the protections of being a whistleblower. He could have raised all the issues that he has raised. And I think there would have been a positive response to that."

  But as Dan Froomkin of The Intercept pointed out:

Snowden, as a contractor, was not covered by whistleblower protections. He did try going through established channels, but he said his concerns fell on deaf ears.  And the response to his leaks has made abundantly clear that no one in his chain of command was the least bit interested in going public with the information.

  That Clinton could say such a thing with a straight face is demonstrative of how comfortable she is with the double standard she and every Washington insider benefits from: when they break the law, it's at most a political liability, but when people like Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden do it for the public benefit their lives are ruined. They, along with journalists like Barrett Brown, were made examples of by the Obama administration, which she was part of, for relaying information to the public that we would never have known about without their sacrifice. In the universe of privilege Clinton exists in, the use of leaks for political advantage are ok, but when they actually force those in power to answer for their actions, then and only then are they considered legitimate breaches of national security.

  It's no wonder, given the free pass she was given last night, that every major liberal periodical in the country, from the Wall-Street-controlled New York Times to the guns-in-America obsessed Guardian, are running headlines declaring the debate a resounding victory for Clinton. She was not challenged on her principal weakness, and she will never be. It is a stark indicator of how little change will be coming to the Democratic Party, and the American Left, anytime soon.