I figured out a few days ago that this campaign to railroad Joe is about dark money.
Such electioneering practice (now the norm) is no longer a matter of soliciting voter support and listening to their input. It has become threat on one side because of the massive influence one or a few Uber-rich can exert; and compromise of principle and political action on the part of those who are supposed to be representing the interests of all/ a majority of their constituents.
Joe takes PAC money. In the beginning he didn’t, but his campaign was impoverished and floundering, so I (and others?) wrote in and encouraged him to do so. Three days later he met with his accustomed PAC donors and the rest is history.
We know that in Joe’s case these were donations; support; a gift, not compromising quid pro quo’s (aka bribery) because of Joe’s positions on labor and taxation of corporations and the wealthy.
With the other party leaders — from what we can see happening now, clearly different story. Katie Porter in particular had to go because of her positions on dark campaign funding; so, sad to say, Adam obliged them.
Given this political reality, of our most trusted and respected leaders’ evidently being the tools of corporate interests, we desperately need rid of Citizens United (as corrupt and democracy-destroying a decision as our massively corrupt SCOTUS ever spewed out).
Catch-22, though: how can that ever be brought about since by definition (as it seems, judging by Pelosi’s actions) accepting bribery from dark money is a condition of being elected — and without being elected, one cannot be in a position to do anything about this entrenched system of bribery? Ergo, virtually no politician who gets elected is going to do anything to betray or disempower the oligarchs who got them elected.
Re: Pelosi’s group, therefore, their fealty is being bought — along with their silence. How not, since to spill the beans they would also have to incriminate themselves?
So it appears we are in the condition of being owned and controlled by oligarchs, both through the media; and/or (for those of us who don’t fall for that), through election funding.
In order to escape this and outlaw these enslaving practices, we would need a moment, an election cycle, in which we stand a chance of electing at least one candidate to a position of power and visibility who can and will spill the beans and galvanize the citizenry to the de facto situation: I.e., functioning democracy gone, plutocrats ruling.
Such a rare and unlikely opportunity to put such a voice in office would need to have the following ingredients:
1/ a candidate, probably for President, whose views and intentions on this matter are fully democratic and incorruptible;
2/ thus a candidate not motivated by careerism (so an older one and/or one not needing, in order to be effective, to get lots of allies also elected);
3/ one with a lot of name recognition, so less in need of campaign blitzing;
4/ likely an incumbent, therefore, whose values and intentions are a known quantity;
5/ ideally an incumbent President, who has instant and automatic, free media access nationwide, most particularly given the guaranteed exposure at the party’s Presidential convention, where
s/he can get the message out that this issue is number-one for the functioning of the democracy;
6/ a general election opponent who is a no-brainer as being unqualified; even perhaps visibly insane and identified as such by mental health experts; so corrupt and ideologically noxious as to pose an existential threat to the country; a proponent of nearly universally unpopular policies; high-level immoral; a known liar and a known quantity (thus ideally also an incumbent, whose prior tenure was clearly and dramatically disastrous).
Thus an opponent requiring that there be less in the way of funding in order to expose him for what he is (to voters who are not already braindead or brainwashed).
Finally — we would need for there to be an orchestrated move against our ideal candidate during the run-up to the general election that called to the attention of those who were paying attention (and who were not corrupt themselves) just how bad our situation has become.
In other words, Guys — we actually need a situation in which it is clearly honorable Joe vs the blatantly execrable Trump; in combination with a situation in which it is tax-reforming, working-class-championing Joe vs the Dem leadership cabal, who are for some inexplicable reason working to undermine the incumbent candidate who is best-positioned to defeat the dangerous maniac.
The touted excuse for this undermining? One of two is, Polls! Polls taken so early as not to mean much (as is well known); and polls that have so much wrong with them it’s pretty easy to see (plus The Polls have been proven wrong in recent elections). POLLS! as evidence, whose very nature it is to be inherently manipulable by untruths and mind-manipulation.
They’re like a gun being waved around that one doesn’t know whether it is loaded or not, which means what it unquestionably does is cause uncertainty and hysteria, which tends to engender a violent reaction and thereby fulfills the threat of danger introduced by the gun even if it was empty.
The emergence of the hit-job against Joe gives him a clear opportunity to speak directly and unequivocally to the nation about this threat to our political system from the moneyed class, on the ‘left,’ as the mirror of that coming from the moneyed right. If/when Joe does speak out about this, it will be clear it is not under-motivated and just how disruptive this political maneuver to take him down has been.
The juxtaposition of these two situations, Trump and Dem oligarchs’ smear campaign, makes it crystal clear (or should make it clear) that Dem leadership + MSM are less aghast at Trump than at Joe’s lifelong stutter (or at least are pretending to be) (and thus are corrupt and are actually carrying out the oligarchs’ hidden agenda).
It makes clear that this whole Ditch Joe thing has been cooked up using specious justifications in order to hide this real agenda; to wit:
Joe’s age? A painfully obvious red herring. His health is very good. (FDR’s wasn’t, and he saved the world from his wheelchair.) Trump, as the alternative, is certifiable. Vice Presidents are always there to take over at need. Administrations are comprised of many dozens of people and are the ‘legs’ of Executive power for any President, and Joe’s Administration is stellar; and the most highly-qualified medical pros are on the case, watching Joe.
We on this site reiterate these obvious points endlessly. The media do not. IT’S NOT AN OMISSION OR AN OVERSIGHT on their part. It’s deliberate.
Look: Pelosi & Co want Joe out. They’re not screaming these simple truths and debunking the Joe’s age bs, either. Why the hell not?? Answer: they’re not being truthful. They’re in on the snow-job. They’re on the side of the lying media (and oligarchs) — and thus unfortunately cannot be trusted.
Question: do we side with those lying? Or with those telling the truth? Do we follow the lead of those lying because we’ve been mesmerized by panic, a la, ‘Will we win, we might not win, who can win???’
Since that’s what the liars want me to focus on — I’m not going to focus on it. I’m going to focus on ferreting our the liars and doing what they DON’T want me to do. Joe’s age is god’s own distraction from the real issue: I.e., his intention to roll back the oligarchs’ progress on enslaving the American working classes.
Ageism: have you never had occasion to observe how youthful, mentally and physically, the majority of professors at universities tend to stay? Using one’s mind in challenging ways constantly, having to puzzle through things anew, is what does it. Senior scholars are recognized as more valuable — ‘smarter’ — than the younger ones because, whatever they may have forgotten, they have accumulated a larger knowledge database, and have mentally forged more relationships and connections among them, than younger scholars have. They have more and better insights. They are regarded as having better judgment.
MAGA supporters, or even many non-scholarly occupations, tend not to have mentally agile and sophisticated elders, so their Grampses do mentally drop off much younger.
Joe’s on the scholarly model. PhD wife. His mental sharpness is therefore actually predictable. He fails to closely examine nothing that he deals with. That debate? Speaking for myself (and I am a scholar), I would have no chance at coherence if I were being ranted at, as Joe was by Trump. Viewers could not hear what Joe was being subjected to (Trump’s mic was off). This is known or should be known. But it is being suppressed.
Then there is, ‘Doesn’t matter what we know to be true — only what others think is true. That’s what must run OUR decisions and actions.’ There’s a word for that mentality — for jumping this way or that out of fear of what someone else will or might think or do: and that word is ‘victim mentality.’ Hand over your wallet so you don’t get shot.
Another word for it, if it is systematic and part of one’s personality: ‘coward.’ Cowardly victim: you’ve let them deprive you of your choice and your right (and responsibility) to live your own life according to what you think/ know is right.
Another word for it: ‘slave.’ I’ve heard it referred to here as ‘obeying in advance.’ Joe does it remarkably little for a lifelong politician. But I’m sure he could do with our showing him a little spine, to hearten him, which we have the freedom to do because we’re not politicians. We as ultimate buyers have a responsibility to speak and act the truth.
‘Democracy dies in darkness’ is metaphoric for ‘Democracy dies without the truth.’ Manipulation is an unavoidable factor in numerous human situations and contexts; manipulation of animals; of children; the insane; the ignorant; the dupable; the trusting; the gullible fool. Politicians who systematically manipulate voters and each other as an ambition strategy are pretty deplorable, if they make it their policy to hide their real opinions/ intentions/ feelings.
Some things need to be hidden; masked: that is what socialization requires. But to trade on it to take advantage of others is immoral. Joe from all appearances a good-humored straight-shooter, of good will toward others, who minimizes duping people ( because he likes and redirects them). Which, in a politician, is extremely rare. To me (as a result) he is exemplary of the ideal politician qua public servant.
Manipulation, even in the interests of a good end or to protect self or others, must be limited and, in matters of importance, must end somewhere sometime — the truth must be spoken in the end.
My point is that you can’t have a democracy in which votes are being cast and choices being made that aren’t honest, in the sense that they reflect trying to second-guess, anticipate, and counter, how others will react. We can’t go along with ousting Joe, as excellent, as invaluable and rare, in all salient respects as he is, because we figure others have his or that opinion of him — and most especially if we know that opinion is wrong. Otherwise we’re just appeasing and trying to manipulate people we know are unworthy to make the decisions. We’ve acknowledged that they’re the ones with power; we’re just their victims trying to schmooze them into not doing their worst. This is leadership? This is ‘democracy’? Excuse me while I go off myself.
So it is in the absence of truth, from rulership all the way down to the terrified voting electorate, that democracy dies. (‘Land of the free’ only if and because ‘the home of the brave.’)
Speaking of truth: given that we are never going to have oligarch donors funding advertising that tells people that they are themselves the owners of our trusted political leaders (nor are the trusted leaders going to admit to being corrupted), our only shot at ripping our democracy back out of the grip of the CA tech oligarchs is going to lie in their giving themselves away by sending our ‘trusted leaders’ into battle against a virtually unimpeachable true democrat (small-d) who justifiably wants to tax them — AT A TIME when all attention should instead be focused on the unthinkably dangerous lunatic running in opposition. We must not sleep through this but must instead seize and capitalize on this serendipitous alignment of events that is simply begging to be writ large in the public awareness, alerting everyone to the takeover of the country by the moneyed ‘left.’
But who can get that message out? Who can command such wide public attention to it? Answer: incumbent President Joe. AND NO ONE ELSE can or will. Joe must therefore stay.
Also: when is/would such an alignment of factors maximally favoring our ballot-box success at overthrowing this plutocratic takeover that has occurred ever come our way again? How could the obfuscation of that takeover ever be exposed, if not by someone like Joe and in his position? (Oh, look — there’s superannuated Nancy scurrying into a smoke-filled back room. No hope there for sure.)
By definition, any candidate known to favor reining in the oligarchs is going to be hit with all their evil money can manufacture and drum up. It won’t just be Joe and his criminal old age; it will be any who would dare to try to fix the tax code and restore the working class before they all disintegrate into exploited pitchfork-wielders.
Not all ultra-rich politicians are bad of course. The very fact of their independent wealth can immunize them and their constituents from this form of corruption — witness JB Pritzker, the very fine, noble, enlightened, and courageously leaderly Governor (thank God) of my own State of residence, Illinois: a place that has famously had to struggle with entrenched corruption long-term.
Some such enlightened rich guy might ride to our rescue nationally at some point — but Joe, for so long content to be the poorest guy in Congress, we know to be immune to bribery; and he is at this moment poised, if not to be able to cure this in a second Administration, owing to a corrupt GOP Congress and SCOTUS, at least is poised to ensure that when he/Kamala leave office, everyone knows the score on this politically existential matter and might be apprised enough to elect reformers free of needing to rely on such a wealth of dark-money funding in order to get elected — so that unlimited dark money can be eliminated once and for all.
I will therefore add my voice to those urging that the drumbeat to force Joe out has to stop. Rather, PRECISELY BECAUSE he’s at this moment in the very crosshairs of this dark-money national corruption of our political process, sort of as its in-the-moment poster child, he MUST STAY. Even if Congress is as a result lost to us this time as a result, HE MUST REMAIN IN OFFICE in order to be able to alert the electorate to this endemic and slow-rolling, democracy-eviscerating crisis.
AND to send a message to the oligarchs that their tactics aren’t so sure-fire and we’re not so stupid and malleable after all.
And what value a Congressional majority anyway, that is nominally ‘Democratic’ but is in fact bought and sold?
(As for Kamala, have you yet seen that Kingmaker Tech Oligarchs are now saying they’re just not sure about her, either — that a wide-open convention instead would be so ‘exciting’? But I’ll save my discussion of the psycho-physiological effects on an electorate of chronic hyper-stimulation and state of crisis for another time. Suffice it to say here, those effects are monkifying and not good. (In brief — they predispose to hysteria and promote herd mentality.) (Thank you, Trump; thank you, unregulated internet.)
(And thank you, Joe, for gifting us with three and a half years of more-normal levels of calm and stabilizing respite. We could certainly do with four more.)
There is of course no accountability possible for those moneyed brats who are dictating the hypocritical Great-Granny Pelosi’s moves. We don’t even know their names; and even if we did, we have no power over them. Unlike strutting popinjay Vance, I really do hail from Appalachia and can tell you this is what untouchable, behind-the-scenes, puppeteering political bosses look like. And once they become solidified as to their network and propaganda — centuries can go by while the only change is in the increasingly squalid conditions in which their enslaved, demoralized, ignorant, obedient, and medically broken and suffering underclass exist.
And we shouldn’t forget: other nations — our besieged planet — are counting on us to keep Joe in office so that they can perhaps survive. If Joe’s re-elected, the plutocrats can’t stop him or Kamala from acting to protect the rest of the world for four more years, whatever else happens here. We all know no one else has Joe’s expertise or influence internationally.
Not to be paranoid, but at this point how sure can we be of the real loyalties of any alternate that might be (de-)nominated instead? I mean, if it seems a better bet to trust Adam Kinzinger than Adam Schiff, what world are we in?
And this much I feel confident in: if the oligarchs are signing off on some new nominee — I’m not.
I know it’s a risk to roll the dice on standing by Joe — but an open convention and election battles in fifty States isn’t a risk? Come on! We mustn’t allow our politics and our own and our fellow countrymen’s lives to be the play toys of bored oligarchs.
And as for the risk of losing our democracy to plutocracy — there’s none because it’s already happened. These events, that show that they do not shun, and that they have the clout, to go after and bring down a spectacularly successful SITTING PRESIDENT even AFTER he’s won overwhelmingly in the primaries, show unarguably that the deed is done, fait accompli. Their hybris speaks volumes in terms of how much power those maniacs feel confident that they at this point have. (And we’re not going to draw a firm line and contest that? We’re actually going to give them what they want??)
Guys; the only ‘risk’ lies in letting this go on effectively unchallenged, and waiting and hoping that in two or three decades every State in the Union doesn’t look like robber-baron-raped-and-devastated West Virginia, because some conscienceful billionaire (generally itself a contradiction in terms) has ridden to our rescue in the meantime — all without getting shot for his/her efforts.
My take, in sum: we’re in more of an inescapable morass than we have thought; and if we don’t stand by Joe before things get even more hopelessly intractable, in terms of our allowing ourselves to go quietly to becoming the puppets of the obscenely wrealthy, no one else is going to arrive who can/ will help pull us out of it.
Listen up especially to this, please: in what we do in response to this situation, it cannot but send a message to every politician out there, present or future, never to buck the orders of the oligarch class in favor of constituent interests — because if one does, one cannot possibly survive. Because the constituents one is trying so valiantly to stand up for will obediently and cluelessly turn on you.
Can it be that this is not evident?