If Repeating History Is Lucrative To Elites, History Will Repeat

     With pleasure a few days ago I saw a headline from The Los Angeles Times: "Kamala Harris drops out of the presidential race"
     I laughed, I felt mirth, a real sense of relief, with chuckles, that a vicious human rights violator couldn't ultimately summon enough enthusiasm among ordinary people to justify a presidential campaign desired by some Democrat billionaires and millionaires who saw in her a combination of Hillary Clinton's neoliberal policies and a dedication to "the rule of law."
     "Rule of law," when invoked by cable news pundits and politicians refers to procedures and protocols followed properly, with decorum, but never does it suggest condemnation of an authority figure for making aggressive war on other nations, for killing civilians.  Friendly-looking Senator Elizabeth Warren, Senator Harris's now former rival for the Democratic nomination, has no problem agreeing with President Trump's murderous sanctions against Venezuela.  Like Harris, Warren won't recognize the November 10 coup d'etat against Evo Morales in Bolivia, even as it followed CIA/State Department step by step procedures as seen in Ukraine in 2014.
     To be a normal and acceptable American politician means saying yes to subversion, deceit, and sedition (by assets of the U.S. Intelligence Community) against governments unwelcome to U.S. foreign policymakers.  Donald Trump's sin for which he's being subjected to the impeachment process involves a "rule of law" violation.  For a few weeks last summer he withheld "aid" to Ukraine--though President Zelensky wasn't aware of this until after the fact--contingent, allegedly, on the Ukrainian leader's agreement to investigate Joe Biden, his son Hunter, and the nature of the latter's absurd position serving on the board of that country's natural gas and oil company, Burisma Holdings.
     That Trump briefly held back the military aid (also withheld by President Obama just a few years ago) "needed" for Ukraine's war with Russia constitutes an unforgivable violation of decorum, linked with the accusation of a quid pro quo in which Trump sought to gain advantage over a political rival, the former Vice President.
     Trump, in any event, exported military aid worth 391 million dollars to Ukraine, fueling further a five year long war stoked by U.S. arms manufacturers, hawkish Democratic politicians (including the President's main impeachment process inquisitor and Russiagate propagandist, the odious Adam Schiff).  Since the weapons made it to their hoped for destination, what's the problem?
     Trump, through his alleged "quid pro quo" with Zelensky, sought damaging information against a political rival, Biden.  It's opposition research, but by asking for help along those lines from the leader of another nation, Trump allegedly violated a rule respected only by elites: it's okay and expected to mess up the lives of ordinary people but not the life and reputation of a highly placed political figure like Joe Biden, longtime practitioner of neoliberal policies dominant in the furtherance of American Empire and international capital.
     Harris's withdrawal from the Democratic Primary is blamed by some of her Twitter-using mouthpieces on "racists" and "sexists" who supposedly can't tolerate the idea of a woman of color as President.  Harris herself didn't go that far, thankfully, but emphasized a lack of money for her campaign.  "I'm not a billionaire," she tweeted.  "I can't finance my own campaign."
     Right.  Forty-six billionaires gave money to Kamala Harris.  The more money she received, the less she supported Medicare For All and any other Progressive ideas she earlier on remarked about favorably.  Mayor Pete Buttigieg's relationship with the donor class is identical.  When he withdraws from the Primary (we can hope that happens) his failure will be blamed on "Homophobes" unwilling to give the first gay presidential candidate with a chance at the job a chance.  In both their cases, though, they lose from a lack of compelling ideas.  I've taken to imagining Buttigieg as a robot because every time he offers his canned rehearsed responses he sounds like a huge shiny computer in a 1950s science fiction film speaking English in the form of programmed phrases arranged in various ways according to need.  Buttigieg, like Harris, also relies on rich people.  When he drops drastically in the polls like she did, those donors will abandon him and get behind some other candidate fitting the requirement, Help Us, the Rich, Don't Help the American People.
     Harris's complaint about no longer having the money to run for President reveals a glaring truth about the quality of her ideas: unlike Bernie Sanders and Tulsi Gabbard, who rely solely on small individually offered donations, four million so far in Sanders' case, Kamala Harris needed tycoons.  Once her poll numbers began to fall last July, after Tulsi Gabbard spoke truth about her record in the second debate and Harris backed away from Medicare For All, the donors began to look elsewhere.
     Harris and Buttigieg don't stand for anything except their own self-glorification in seeking the nation's highest office, seeking, in reality, power for its own sake.  Ordinary people don't sympathize with such an ambition.
     Her campaign was "muddled," "had trouble with messaging," and as far as I could tell, was concerned chiefly with "restoring decency" and dedication to "the rule of law."  Again, voters don't give a fuck about that shit.
     Still, the attempt to knock down Donald Trump in the increasingly ridiculous and hopeless impeachment process (doomed to fail in the Republican-controlled Senate) indicates the weakness of the Democrats' position--as also exemplified by Democratic Primary candidates who believe bashing Trump is the way to the Oval Office, even though several Republican challengers and Hillary Clinton tried that and failed.
     Attention in mainstream news media focuses on anyone but Sanders, Gabbard, and Andrew Yang (a billionaire with unusual ideas, including the institution of Universal Basic Income).  MSNBC and CNN will ignore Sanders--who typically draws to his personality and ideas thousands of people at campaign rallies--while doing stories on struggling candidates like Cory Booker, Amy Klobuchar, or, new to the race, billionaire media mogul Michael Bloomberg.
     Exposure creates name recognition.  What Joe Biden has going for him is name recognition.  But really, is a well-known name the best qualification for the presidency?  Should Brad Pitt run the country?  Better yet, Beyonce Knowles; she's Black, she's a woman, she performed in concert for the totalitarian leader of Turkmenistan, meaning she apparently understands it's okay to be friendly with that privileged club of human rights-abusing dictators who qualify as acceptable U.S. allies.
     It's now obvious to me that the play of the Democratic Establishment when it comes to the 2020 election is to rely on an old failed strategy.  Find someone acceptable to the elites; that person can supposedly win against Trump, even as the people (some Trump supporters included) need the revolutionary change offered especially by Bernie Sanders and also, with less support, by Tulsi Gabbard.
     Can they, the Democrats, learn from recent history?  No, they can't.  They don't want to.  They like their privileged positions.  Trump's destructive policies aren't their problem.  Trump and Pelosi belong to the same magnetic lump drawing to itself money and power.  Trump's outrageous action prompting the impeachment process consisted of an interference in exporting arms to Ukraine so that ethnic Russians and Ukrainians can be endangered, injured, displaced, and killed in a five year proxy and civil war involving, at the top, Russia and the U.S.  Trump now seeks to send even more military aid to Ukraine, so what the fuck is the problem?
     He went after Biden, that's what, but honestly, Biden should be gone after.  The impeachment process has exposed Biden's "soft" corruption.  "He did nothing illegal," Democratic pundits screech. "His son Hunter did nothing illegal, either!"
     Had the Intelligence Community capped its knowledge of the July 25 phone call between Trump and Zelensky, most of us would've never known about Vice President Biden's shenanigans in Ukraine, yet Biden is the "frontrunner," the steady hand that will restore "decency" to the United States, will heal the wounds Trump has caused in dealing with NATO.  Decorum is all-important.  A working man might need tests to determine the progress of some possibly fatal condition, costing him many thousands of dollars he doesn't have in his bank account, but he can feel reassured that Democrats are fighting hard to maintain the correct tone of discourse in Washington.  The working man dies, broke, his debts passed on to his family, but at least Trump's been put in his place, decorum along with the rule of law has triumphed over indecency and crassness, and Ukraine's Neo-Nazi soldiers (their extreme political beliefs never mentioned in mainstream news media) have their weapons to fight Russia and the separatists in Donbass, "So that," as one Judiciary Committee impeachment witness, a Constitutional lawyer, said, "we don't have to fight them here."
     The film Red Dawn must've made a deep impression on her, but I guess she forgot that during World War Two the U.S. fought Nazis; that's how most Americans look upon it, and with approval.  After that war the U.S. and the Soviet Union removed and seeded Nazis into the nascent aerospace industry, the governments of East and West Germany, the Stasi and other intelligence agencies.
     Americans to this day live in a country run by people who won't confess to our links with and aid toward Nazis.  Most people don't even know about this horrible subject.  It floats in the same pool of YUCK with arms sent by the Obama administration getting distributed among ISIS fighters.  With U.S. support of al-Qaeda, with making children suffer because of food stamp program cuts.
     You have to have the luxury of not being troubled with real problems to be concerned about what the impeachment process is about.  It's really just a TV show, but not reality TV, because it has nothing to do with the reality of Americans living day by day, struggling to make it, given choices like the phony Buttigieg or the just departed Kamala Harris, both of whom are paid attention to in mainstream news media, unlike Bernie Sanders, who can actually help us.

          Vic Neptune

   














  
   
   

     Trump, Not a Dog Person

     I watched a three minute Fox News clip on YouTube.  Thumbnail shows Donald and Melania Trump, Mike Pence, a man holding onto a leash, and a Belgian Malinois.  I haven't seen President Trump by an animal before, nor have I seen him in a natural setting except in a clip showing him inspecting a burned part of California.
     The military working dog, Conan, a member of Delta Force, was injured October 26 in the blast from Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi's suicide vest.  Recovered, Conan was taken to the White House to meet two people who, from their body language, obviously don't give a shit about dogs.  As President Trump talked outside to reporters, he praised the dog's courage, while sneaking in a Trumpian putdown, saying, "I said to his handler maybe Conan should be muzzled."
     The dog responded well to Vice President Pence, who petted his head and scratched behind his ears.  It's the only time I've ever seen Mike Pence behave like a human being.  He demonstrated a liking for dogs, an ease in their company.
     Melania Trump kept her distance, standing apart from the dog and the three men.  Her presence in this display had something to do with a First Lady's duties celebrating human interest situations, I guess, although the hero dog took part in an illegal operation in Syria's Idlib Province.  Anything done by U.S. ground troops in Syria, where they haven't been invited to operate (unlike Russian military forces), constitutes a violation of international law, but who cares?  The U.S. is a major international state criminal with a permanent seat on the U.N. Security Council.
     Trump's mention of a muzzle suggests his immediate below the surface fear of an attack dog clamping teeth into a billionaire's small hands.  If the handler gave the command, would Conan rip out the Trumps' throats?  Probably so.  Conan, like most soldiers, follows orders.
     The ISIS leader's suicide in this time of impeachment obsession didn't earn Trump kudos from pundits and other mainstream news personalities.  An often shown photograph of Obama and his people watching "in real time" the alleged "raid" on Osama bin Laden's "compound" in Pakistan was displayed on cable news next to a picture of Trump at the head of a long table along with brass and advisers, watching "in real time" the hunting of al-Baghdadi.  Trump remarked to the press, "It was like watching a movie."  I guess so, in that they were looking at a screen with images moving on it.
     Kathryn Bigelow's Zero Dark Thirty, an orthodox account of the Seal Team 6 "raid" on bin Laden's "compound" in Abbottabad depicts the official version debunked thoroughly by Seymour Hersh, who found that al-Qaeda's leader was captured just a few years after 9/11 by Pakistani forces, held prisoner in the "compound," and used as a bargaining chip with the U.S.  A show raid, Pakistani authorities had removed soldiers guarding the place.  When Seal Team 6 arrived, rappelling from helicopters they of course met no resistance, otherwise they would've been shot and shot at while vulnerable in mid-air.  Nor did bin Laden put up a fight, as first reported.  The Seal who executed him "canoed" his head on purpose.  It's a fun killing technique requiring good aim whereby the shooter sends a bullet along the skull's top, making a blood- and brains-filled trench.
     In Dick Cheney's "Long War," some Seals, deployed numerous times in war theaters, have gotten very good at their psychopathic hobbies.  Trump, whose naked love for cruelty can't be realistically disputed (he's defunding the food stamp program but isn't getting impeached for that) has spoken in defense of a Seal who murdered a captured young ISIS fighter and then posed for a picture with the corpse.  This representative of America's finest also enjoyed shooting people at random.  Navy authorities wanting to prosecute this Seal have struggled with the case; they're running up against the will of a president who praises supposedly tough motherfuckers who actually engage in casually committed murder, funded by U.S. taxpayers, but then, that's the nature of the war Americans are sleeping through.  
     Whether or not the raid in Idlib Province is a pile of shit truth-wise, bear in mind our only sources for its sequence of events are the Trump administration and the U.S. military, both entities engaged in making illegal war in Syria, a war favored by Republicans and Democrats.
     "In war, truth is the first casualty," a line attributed to Greek playwright and military veteran Aeschylus.
     Spending a few minutes in the presence of a dog gave Trump a chance to further advertise his vanquishment of an ISIS leader, now replaced by another who may be destined to die in a fake raid.  U.S. policy now and before, during Obama's eight years, favors ISIS and al-Qaeda at times, but in my way of looking at it, if you supply weapons to a terror group, it means you're on their side.  Like al-Qaeda, ISIS is sometimes useful in the thinking of Pentagon and CIA geniuses who really don't give a shit about Congresswoman and Iraq War veteran Tulsi Gabbard's alarm that the United States funds terrorists.
     Trump's report about his "anti-terror" "raid"--"like watching a movie"--hints perhaps at the fakery stage-managed by political leaders and mainstream news media propagandists, all of whom try to convince us, often successfully, that bad guys go down and our patriotic American will is ever strong.  Even Obama engaged in this kind of deception when he "attacked" a feeble man held prisoner for years, someone offered by Pakistani authorities to be killed and dumped into the sea, just as al-Baghdadi's remains were swiftly disposed of.
     If Conan the Belgian Malinois could tell us what really happened, would his account differ from the official version?

           Vic Neptune