ENDGAME: Why I’m finished with our liberal left

Maybe you’ve noticed this too.

I'm fifty now, and have been on the left my whole life. I remember clearly in the '90s and early 2000s how the single most infuriating thing about debating with Republicans was that they never allowed the conversation to stay on the point under discussion. Whenever you'd get them anywhere near giving a clear answer on something, or recognizing the simple facts you'd raised, they'd quick shift to some tangential issue: "But what about . . . ?" The constant derailment was maddening.

Just this week I've realized how many hours during the past year I've fallen into discussions just like this with Democrats. I've been voting Democrat my whole life, and used to have substantive policy discussions with other Democrats around me. But for a long time now, I keep running into fellow Democrats who are almost zombielike in the mechanical way they deflect. Jittery bullshit machines. It's the same runaround I used to face with most Republicans. The same nervous refusal to get anywhere near certain facts. And worst of all: it feels the same.

Which has finally convinced me of something I began to suspect around 2012. Democrats are the new Republicans. Standard issue GOP Republicans are still the old Republicans, I’d say. But Democrats are the new dumb kids on the block.

Of course now the Democratic topic du jour is the horror of Trump, of his every step and move and utterance. I agree with them on many of these things, but not all. But the key thing they still refuse to recognize: It was our own party’s choice to run Clinton that got Trump elected. It was our own party’s systematic snubbing of Bernie Sanders that led to Clinton’s win in the primaries.

As for Trump himself, putting aside the very serious flaws in his character, which may well prove fatal to his administration, the fact is he has already done three things that should immensely please the left: he summarily killed TPP, he granted union leaders a more cordial and substantive meeting than any Democratic president has given them in decades, and he signed an executive order banning his administration staff from lobbying for five years after their tenure is up.

Would Hillary have dared do any of these things? I highly doubt it. Yet each of them, looked at in itself, is a step in the right direction for American workers and government. Amazingly, on these three fronts Trump is actually to the left of Obama or Clinton.

I say I’ve voted Democrat my whole life, but I did not vote for Clinton this time. I just couldn't. The gulf has grown too vast. In fact I can hardly even talk to lifelong Dem friends about politics these days. They are unhinged. I don't see it as a symptom of fear in the face of Trump either. I see it as a new, uncanny, almost essentialist self-righteousness beyond argument. They assume they were "right", are "right" and will always be "right". Just because they are themselves.

What has happened to the party I long supported? I’m disgusted at the shallowness of political discussions among most Dems. Everything is identity politics and SJW cant. As for any substantive vision of America as a nation of particular people with a tradition and history, forget it. The only history they see is the history of grievances of this or that identity group. Some of those groups have real grievances, yes; others are clearly just riding the grievance cart for all it's worth.

Regarding serious issues, namely the hollowing out of the working class and the corporatization of everything, it’s clearly all peripheral to most Dems. They’re almost uniquely interested in ensuring people don’t say mean things, or offend people through “microaggressions”, or question this or that sub-doctrine of this or that SJW orthodoxy on immigration, LGBT rights, trans bathrooms, whatever. If you don’t agree with the whole list of their established doctrines, they look at you askance and start calling names.

The supposed left party in my country is no longer even on the left. It has become little more than a virtue-signaling gaggle of corporate puppets. And its full-throated adoption of neocon foreign policy makes it harder than ever to distinguish it from the original neocons around George W. Bush.

Last year much of the talk before the election centered on choosing the “lesser of two evils”. My thinking on this question hasn’t changed. Where Trump represents a kind of flailing, all-too-human evil, Clinton represents an incremental, methodical evil: the evil of a steady corporate takeover of what was once a democratic nation and is hardly so any longer.

But the corporate corruption of the Democratic Party is obvious and has been widely discussed. What hasn't been discussed is the intellectual corruption of so many Democratic voters and media talking heads. I don't see any hope for these folks. They've become machine-like in their knee-jerk reactions. This tangible shift, starting around 2012, has pushed me steadily away from this American “left”. And how would it not? I don’t share their social vision, I don’t share their corporate globalizing plans (as in TPP, now thankfully obsolete) and I don’t share their newfound hatred of open debate and free speech. It's this gang that poses the real authoritarian threat to our republic, more so than Donald Trump.

I am no longer with them. I'm actually glad they got their asses kicked in 2016. I will not be helping them in word or vote from here on out.

Check out my book Idiocy, Ltd. and begin the long, hard reckoning.

Russian Interference in Wisconsin Recount: Experts

Eric Mader, The Disassociated Press, Madison, December 13, 2016

Evidence of Russian interference in the recent Wisconsin recount is mounting, according to experts interviewed by the Disassociated Press.

Election and polling experts cite “abnormalities” in the outcome of the statewide recount, and point to Moscow as the likely source of organized meddling that occurred in several key counties across the state.

Final tallies announced Monday showed that Hillary Clinton still had not won the state, and that Donald Trump picked up an additional 131 votes. Final totals put Trump’s count at 1,405,284 votes, 22,748 more than Clinton.

“It is my firm belief that advanced mind-control techniques were employed by Russian-trained agents to throw off this count,” David Swishe, an election expert at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

"Agents of the Russian state were deployed outside county clerk’s offices as the recount unfolded," Swishe said. "They used telepathic mind-control to make election workers visualize Clinton ballots as Trump ballots."

“In Waukesha County, at a Starbucks just next to the clerk’s office, a very Russian-looking man was observed reading Dostoyevsky on more than one day during the recount,” he added. “It’s very suspicious.”

Lisa, a Women’s Studies student and self-described polling expert, agrees that the recount was hacked.

“I conducted exit polls on Facebook the day after the election,” she said. “Every single one of my friends voted for Hillary. Really there is no way Trump won. It's scientifically impossible.”

Both Swishe and Lisa conclude, based on their evidence, that Clinton won the state by at least a couple hundred thousand votes.

“We’re starting a petition to push for a redo of the recount,” Swishe said. “And we’ll be placing Mind Protectors around all the sites where the recount is happening.”

“I had to read Dostoyevsky myself in a lit class,” he added. “The Brothers Raskolnikov. Let me tell you first hand, that book sucks. And these Russians we have today suck even more.”

Check out my Idiocy, Ltd. at Amazon.com and begin the long, hard reckoning.

Hillary More Dangerous

One candidate in this race is talking dangerous nonsense on Syria. Can you guess which?
Both major candidates are unacceptable, everyone knows it, but the constant refrain from the Clinton-backers is that we need to support her because Trump is “dangerous”.

The argument isn’t bad on certain levels. I think Trump’s character is a major major issue, no doubt about it. But in other and maybe more fundamental respects (in concrete policy stances for instance) there are reasons to see Clinton as potentially the more dangerous of the two. And that’s really saying something.

Why do I think she is possibly more dangerous?

Forget pay-to-play, the Wall Street corruption, the glaring attempts to obstruct public oversight of her State Department tenure, etc. All that is bad enough, and should have disqualified her. It maybe would have disqualified her if our FBI director had stuck to the text of the relevant laws in July. But forget all this. The real problem is Hillary’s militarism, which comes out glaringly in her current policy positions.

Soon enough a Clinton administration might very well bring us into open conflict with Russia over Syria, which could end a lot worse for us than anything we’ve ever experienced as a nation. And it’s not a stretch to imagine such a conflict either.

In the third debate, Hillary proposed we establish no-fly zones in Syria. As many have pointed out, this would be a very dangerous move, one that might quickly lead to us shooting Russian fighter jets from the sky. And how would we prevent things from escalating, especially given the thin ice on which we currently stand vis a vis Russia in Ukraine and the Baltic states?

Hillary’s willingness to “go into Syria” is in my mind on a par for stupidity with the Bush administration’s eagerness to take out Saddam. No, it is probably even stupider, given Russia already has a major stake in the Syrian conflict. What would prevent Hillary from pursuing her preferred course?

If corporate finance could convince these people that Glass-Steagall should be repealed (cf. Bill Clinton) and that the financial WMD called “derivatives” are acceptable instruments of trade, then corporate military could convince Hillary that being able to impose our will on Syria is worth risking war with Russia. To listen to her, she is already convinced. Never mind actual WMD this time in the form of Russia’s nuclear capability.

Blowing up the world economy so Wall Street could play blackjack 24/7 with our savings was bad enough. How about blowing up North American and half of Asia?

Our Washington hawks simply can’t seem to let the Middle East fall into a sane balance of power. And Hillary has always been on the hawkish side of the hawk camp. Many of us are getting damned tired of hearing about Russia from these people. That we screwed up massively in Iraq, creating ISIS and giving Baghdad to the Shia--this is not Vladimir Putin’s fault. It’s the fault of our own political class, who can’t seem to say No to a war if the corporate/military lobby wants one.

With all that’s happened since 2003, that the Hillary team can’t simply let Putin protect his ally Assad shows a Washington elite just itching to commit another crime against sanity. Overreach seems the default position for these people. Guess it pays the bills, huh?

As against this, we hear constantly that Trump is dangerous because of . . . racism, bigotry, his attitudes to women. These personal faults, to the extent they exist, don’t stand up to war with Russia in terms of a threat. In any case, I don’t believe Trump could establish American fascism, as some have been screaming. He simply doesn’t have a coherent enough ideology. Trump is no Mussolini, though he may well be an American Berlusconi.

On Syria, Trump is basically right. If Assad falls, it is jihadists who will take over, whether they call themselves ISIS or not. Trump recognizes that the best thing for American interests (to the extent those interests are not identical with corporate interests) is to let Russia continue to protect Assad, and let Russia and Assad knock themselves out bombing the ragtag horde of jihadists now fighting the Syrian state. Hillary, meanwhile, sounds literally nuts on this issue. And it’s a nuttiness we cannot afford--not any more, and certainly not this time, not with Russia deeply involved.

Trump is a loose cannon and narcissist of the first order. He is, however, not nearly as likely to continue trying to remake every state in the Middle East through American firepower. His positions are more trade oriented, isolationist, ultimately pragmatic and domestic in scope. The corporations don’t want pragmatic, or domestic, and so they hate him. But what represents the real danger for us at present--the unfettered military/corporate power Hillary shills for, the ongoing march of aggressive globalization, or the politically incorrect behavior of a Donald Trump?

At the very least, Trump and Clinton both represent serious dangers. The assumption that we must vote Clinton to “protect us” from Trump, however, seems to me a case of willful blindness.

Check out my book Idiocy, Ltd. and begin the long, hard reckoning.

Letter to a Trump Supporter

Dear T-----:

I know you are a Trump supporter, and I know in our conversations that I’ve pointed out aspects of Trump’s approach that I like. I’m writing now to say that I’ve pretty much vetted Trump to my satisfaction, and have come to the conclusion: He should not be in the White House.

The final straw was my review of his foreign policy positions. They don't make sense. They'd sound alright if US foreign policy were a direct business transaction, but it is not.

The benefits the US has gotten from its political and military clout in Asia and the West are immense. Trump's plan, abandoning long-held policies, would create power vacuums in key regions. He talks as if these power vacuums would not be taken advantage of by our enemies. They would. That's the point about power vacuums: the enemy moves in immediately and begins reaping advantages where previously you did.

From a US foreign policy perspective, the main enemies are three: radical Islam, China, Russia.

We cannot afford to let whole regions fall further under the sway of these serious strategic competitors.

The problem with Trump's thinking is that it is based on his life as a businessman. In a large-scale real estate project, you fight for the best prices, bribe the right people, strong-arm the local authorities to bend zoning ordinances, build and promote the building--AND THEN, TAKING YOUR PROFIT, YOU LEAVE.

Trump talks as if American foreign policy is a kind of real estate project. The blindness in this is clear. With foreign policy, you can never do that last part of the deal: LEAVE.

In other words, Trump's whole perspective is not suited to the long game that is statesmanship. Once things get messed up on one part of the picture (as has often happened with Trump's individual business ventures) he cannot just move on to the next big project. No--the world is the whole world; there’s no next project to move on to.

I imagine Trump in the Oval Office fuming that he cannot just let some particular project go bust so he can get up and running on the next: Trump University; Trump Steaks, etc. But he will not be able to. In the White House, when one project goes bust, it just keeps going bust, and you can't really extricate yourself. Because you are in charge of managing America's relations in all of these regions, and unlike casinos, or steak brands, regions can’t be sold off.

If you combine this short-term real estate developer's approach with Trump's erratic flip-flopping, and his nearly pathological narcissism, you will see what I see. A formula for disaster.

And it's no small disaster either. You need to keep in mind, when you think of supporting Trump, that this guy will personally be in charge of the system that keeps your finances in order. In short: When Trump fails on foreign or trade policy, which are closely interlinked, America's economic well-being will take the hit. The market will drop, companies will lay people off, home values will suffer, etc.

You have to try to imagine this guy not as what he's been so far, the loudspeaker in which you hear your justified grievances against the system, but as the one in charge of keeping our whole egg cart from tipping over.

Trump's approach so far is not one to inspire confidence in his skill as a careful egg cart driver.

I don't completely support any of the candidates on offer, as I've said, but I'm hoping the GOP ends up with someone else. You personally don't like Kasich, his demeanor, but he's the most stable of the three who are left. And he has a lot of experience in government. 



We'll see what happens. I'm also furious at all the corruption, both cultural and political, in America. But Trump is not the answer. Yes, he has done the country a service by underlining some of the worst aspects of the problem. But we need a calmer, cooler head, with a better sense of political complexities, to actually fix the problems.

We've discussed Trump several times, and I wanted to send you my current thinking. Hope you’ll reconsider supporting Trump in the Wisconsin primary.

Best,

Eric

My new book Idiocy, Ltd. is now available through Amazon.