All:
Blaming someone else is a fundamental part of the dogma of being a Democrat.
Richard
On 12/23/2016 10:26 AM, Miriam Vieni wrote:
Truthdig
Blaming Russia Is Irresistible to the Democrats
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/blaming_russia_is_irresistible_to_the_de
mocrats_20161222/
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Posted on Dec 22, 2016
By Paul Street
Russian President Vladimir Putin. (Alexei Nikolsky, Sputnik, Kremlin Pool
Photo via AP
(http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Russia-Putin/76141ebf19ee44a4908721e
e5aadf0f2/12/0) )
It has been remarkable to behold masses of American liberals and
progressives become convinced-or claim to be convinced-that Russian hackers
under the command of Vladimir Putin attacked "our great democracy" to meddle
in the 2016 U.S. presidential election and hand it to Donald Trump. This
extraordinary, supposedly CIA- and New York Times-certified claim has
garnered wide currency in liberal and Democratic Party circles despite the
lack of smoking-gun substantiation
(https://theintercept.com/2016/12/14/heres-the-public-evidence-russia-hacked
-the-dnc-its-not-enough/) on Putin's involvement, not to mention the
election's outcome.
Did the probably Russian "Guccifer 2.0" and Julian Assange's WikiLeaks
obtain and advance embarrassing hacked emails and other documents showing
the Hillary Clinton campaign and Democratic National Committee's underhanded
machinations against Bernie Sanders, including corrupt dealings with the
corporate media? Sure.
Did this happen on orders from the Kremlin? None of the Times-citing
liberals who have spoken or written as if that is the case know it to be
conclusively true. The proof has not been given, and they seem to have an
almost childish faith in the notion that the CIA must know more than it can
publicly say.
Did these leaks cause Clinton to lose to Trump? The top folks advancing the
Democratic Party hacking narrative don't have the gall to make that full
assertion. Clinton, other top Democrats and the Times editorial board seem
content to leave it as a suggestion for lesser Democrats-including Times
columnist and Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman-to run wild with. I
have spoken with many less-well-placed Democrats eager to do precisely that.
But the most that Clinton's campaign chief and top target of the leaks, John
Podesta, can say for sure is that Russian interference "distorted the
election."
What Great Democracy?
I am struck by six telling aspects of the liberal and Democratic Russia
hacking narrative. First, there's its rapidly disseminated pervasiveness
alongside a dearth of proof. It's eerily reminiscent of the Donald Rumsfeld
argument that "the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence."
Second, there's liberals' curious embrace of the CIA as a great organ of
truth. So what if the CIA is one of the leading (if not the leading)
institutional agents of systematic political deception, with a long history
of falsifying intelligence to suit political purposes
(https://www.amazon.com/Failure-Intelligence-Decline-Fall-CIA/dp/0742551105)
?
Third, there's the hypocritical chutzpah of being outraged at outside
interference in American elections when the U.S. and its CIA have long
subverted elections and otherwise meddled in the political processes of
other "sovereign" nations around the world, which Uncle Sam and his
intelligence agencies continue to do. As secretary of state, Clinton herself
helped subvert democratic election results
(http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/the-us-has-been-meddling-in-other-count
ries-elections-for-a-century-it-doesnt-feel-good_us_57983b85e4b02d5d5ed382bd
) in Honduras in 2009.
Fourth, there's the real or pretend cluelessness on why Russian intelligence
agencies would have wanted to encourage the defeat of Clinton. It wasn't
just because Putin had some strange personal "beef with Hillary." The real
historical meat of the matter is that candidate Clinton
(https://www.akpress.org/queen-of-chaos.html) was a militantly anti-Russian
New Cold War warrior and dedicated NATO-expansionist who promised to
instigate dangerous conflicts with Moscow over Syria, Ukraine, internal
Russian affairs and Eastern Europe more broadly.
Fifth, there's the avoidance of any serious engagement with-or (as goes
almost without saying) guilt about-the dreadful stuff that Hillary and Bill
Clinton and the DNC did to candidate Bernie Sanders
(http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/08/03/leaked-dnc-emails-confirm-anti-sande
rs-conspiracy/) , the Democrats' best chance to defeat Trump. It's as if
we're all supposed to forget that terrible story, which might be considered
a way in which establishment Democrats rigged the election for Trump.
Clinton Democrats don't deny or question the accuracy of what the
WikiLeaks/Guccifer 2.0 document dumps (https://wikileaks.com/dnc-emails/)
showed on this score. But they seem to want us to wipe it from our memories
in the name of outrage against Russia and its nefarious attack on the
supposed grand "integrity of our elections" in what is supposedly the
world's greatest "democracy."
Last but not least, there's the brazen falsehood of the widespread belief
that the U.S. is a "great democracy" in the first place, to be subverted by
Russia (or anyone else). Over the past three-plus decades, leading academic
researchers Martin Gilens (Princeton) and Benjamin Page (Northwestern), both
establishment, liberal political scientists, have concluded, the U.S.
political system has functioned as "an oligarchy," ruled by the few wealthy
elites and their corporations. Examining data from more than 1,800 different
policy initiatives in the late 20th and early 21st centuries, Gilens and
Page found
(https://scholar.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/mgilens/files/gilens_and_
page_2014_-testing_theories_of_american_politics.doc.pdf) that wealthy and
well-connected elites consistently steer the direction of the country,
regardless and against the will of the U.S. majority
(http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/princeton-experts-say-us-no-longer-de
mocracy) and irrespective of which major party holds the White House and/or
Congress. "The central point that emerges from our research is that economic
elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial
independent impacts on U.S. government policy," Gilens and Page write,
"while mass-based interest groups and average citizens have little or no
independent influence." As Gilens explained
(http://talkingpointsmemo.com/dc/princeton-scholar-demise-of-democracy-ameri
ca-tpm-interview) to the liberal online journal Talking Points Memo two
years ago, "ordinary citizens have virtually no influence over what their
government does in the United States."
Such is the harsh reality of "really existing capitalist democracy
(http://www.alternet.org/visions/chomsky-us-poses-number-threats-future-huma
nity-our-youll-never-hear-about-it-our-free-press) " in the U.S., what Noam
Chomsky has called "RECD"-"pronounced 'wrecked' by accident."
The Inauthentic Opposition
The late Princeton political theorist Sheldon Wolin considered U.S.-style
RECD a form of "corporate-managed fake-democracy" and "inverted
totalitarianism." He called it "democracy incorporated." It's a "democracy"
in which the only two officially viable and corporate-captive political
organizations, the Democratic and Republican parties, both stand well to the
right of majority progressive-populist public opinion. The right-wing
leadership of these two corporate and militarist parties skews the game
against those in their party who would campaign and perhaps govern in accord
with that public opinion.
Few thinkers have written about the deeply conservative essence of the
Democratic Party more perceptively than Wolin. Near the end of the George W.
Bush presidency, Wolin, in his book "Democracy Incorporated: Managed
Democracy and the Specter of Inverted Totalitariansim
(http://press.princeton.edu/titles/9175.html) ," captured the shady,
dollar-drenched nothingness of the "dismal Dems" (journalist Doug Henwood's
phrase) in the neoliberal era:
The Democrats' politics might be described as inauthentic opposition in the
era of Superpower. Having fended off its reformist elements and disclaimed
the label of liberal, it is trapped by new rules of the game which dictate
that a party exists to win elections rather than to promote a vision of the
good society. . Should Democrats somehow be elected, corporate sponsors make
it politically impossible for the new officeholders to alter significantly
the direction of society. At best Democrats might repair some of the damage
done to environmental safeguards or to Medicare without substantially
reversing the drift rightwards. By fostering an illusion among the powerless
classes that the party can make their interests a priority, it pacifies and
thereby defines the style of an opposition party in an inverted totalitarian
system. . While the Republican Party is ever vigilant about the care and
feeding of its zealots, the Democratic Party is equally concerned to
discourage its democrats. . The timidity of a Democratic Party mesmerized by
centrist precepts points to the crucial fact that for the poor, minorities,
the working class, anticorporatists there is no opposition party working on
their behalf. . By ignoring dissent and assuming that the dissenters have no
alternative, the party serves an important . stabilizing function and in
effect marginalizes any possible threat to the corporate allies of the
Republicans.
Wolin's dark reflections seem more than a little prophetic eight years
later. Yes, milquetoast center Democrats were "somehow elected" in 2006 (the
House) and 2008 (Barack Obama in the White House and a slight new Democratic
majority in the U.S. Senate). George W. Bush's fiasco in Iraq and the onset
of the financial crisis saw to that.
But so what?
What followed under Obama (as under his Democratic presidential and
neoliberal-era predecessors Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton) was the by-now
standard corporate-neoliberal manipulations of campaign populism and
identity politics in service to the usual big-money bankrollers and global
empire-to capitalism and its evil twin, imperialism, with underlying white
supremacism and sexism essentially unchallenged. There were some mild
repairs, at best, as "the rightward direction of society" continued
unabated. The Wall Street takeover of Washington and the related aggressive
military and imperial agenda of the Pentagon was advanced more effectively
and extensively by the nation's first black president than they could have
been by stiff and wealthy white Republicans like John McCain or Mitt Romney.
Reformist Democrats with their lingering "vision of the good society" were
kept in check as the Democrats depressed and demobilized their own purported
popular base.
Peak Neoliberalism
The vapid 2016 Hillary Clinton campaign epitomized Wolin's notion of a
"timid . Democratic Party mesmerized by centrist precepts." It defeated a
progressive-reformist uprising within its own party-that of the Bernie
Sandernistas. Having made sure that the party remained one of "inauthentic
opposition" devoid of any remotely serious "vision of the good society," the
Democratic National Committee (DNC) helped the party resume its normal
neoliberal-era role as an out-of-power junior partner to the in-power and
more radically reactionary and regressive Republicans. Sanders, after all,
would have stood a far better chance of defeating Trump than Clinton did;
and a more sincerely reformist and progressive Sanders presidency (mild and
hedged in as it would have been) would not have pleased the corporate,
finance-led sponsors.
As Conor Lynch noted at Salon
(http://www.salon.com/2016/11/19/neoliberalisms-epic-fail-the-reaction-to-hi
llary-clintons-loss-exposed-the-impotent-elitism-of-liberalism/) last
month:
The Clinton campaign tried to make this election all about Trump's
hatefulness ("Love Trumps Hate") and his "basket of deplorables," while
offering no real vision of progressive and populist change. And when those
on the left raised legitimate concerns about Clinton's uninspiring message
or her political baggage during and after the primaries, they were
ridiculously labeled sexist or racist "bros" by establishment figures (even
though some of Clinton's harshest progressive critics were in fact women and
people of color).
Earlier in the year, journalist Daniel Denvir described Clinton's strategy
(http://www.salon.com/2016/02/19/hillary_clintons_cynical_race_appeals_the_r
evenge_of_neoliberal_identity_politics/) as "peak neoliberalism, where a
distorted version of identity politics is used to defend an oligarchy and a
national security state, celebrating diversity in the management of
exploitation and warfare."
The predictable consequence of all this is that the "inauthentic opposition"
hands power over to the more openly right-wing major party.
No Serious Soul-Searching Yet
Recently on CNN, Daily Beast columnist Patricia Murphy reported on
interviews she'd conducted with Democrats across the country. She found no
soul-searching or critical self-reflection among the Clinton voters with
whom she spoke. To the contrary, they told her that "we won" because their
candidate bested Trump in the popular vote-as if the Electoral College is
just an irrelevant technicality. Murphy also reported that the Democratic
voters she spoke with seemed absurdly content to write off a huge part of
the U.S. electorate-the white working class-as a mass of appalling racist
and sexist brutes ("deplorables") whom they'd rather keep at a distance.
Will the Democrats' 2016 "peak neoliberal" humiliation show them that they
have no choice but to make themselves over as a progressive champion of all
working people against the wealthy few?
Don't hold your breath.
The recently installed new Senate minority leader isn't a liberal or
progressive Democrat like Sens. Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders or even
Sherrod Brown. It's the neoliberal Wall Street Democrat Chuck Schumer. The
House minority leader is still the San Francisco pro-war corporate Democrat
Nancy Pelosi
(http://www.garlicandgrass.org/The_Truth_About_Nancy_Pelosi.cfm) ,
idiotically endorsed by the supine AFL-CIO over the pro-union, heartland
progressive Democrat Tim Ryan.
(Yes, the Bernie Sanders-affiliated Congressman Keith Ellison is considered
a top contender for the chairmanship of the DNC. But don't be surprised if
that falls through. He's getting bashed for past association with Nation of
Islam leader Louis Farrakhan and for making some "anti-Israel" comments as a
law student in the 1980s. Ellison's ascendancy to the job of party chairman
could cost the Democrats big money. CNN recently quoted
(http://www.cnn.com/2016/12/03/politics/haim-saban-keith-ellison-anti-semite
/) one of the party's biggest donors, Haim Saban, as saying that Ellison is
"clearly an anti-Semite and anti-Israel individual.")
It's all pretty pathetic, like Hillary Clinton's failure to set foot in
Wisconsin after the Democratic National Convention even once.
Three Calculations
If Russia "stole the election," shouldn't President Obama consult with
Congress, the Supreme Court, Homeland Security and the Joint Chiefs of
Staff, and then go on national television to explain that a new national
election would take place ? That's not going to happen, of course.
If the point of the Russia hacking narrative was to recruit "faithless"
Electoral College electors to throw the election over to the House of
Representatives, that logic died Monday. Republican electors predictably
refused to block the Trump ascendancy. And, besides, the House is controlled
by the Republicans.
But expect the "Putin did it" Russia hacking narrative to live on in
Democratic circles for some time. It's not about keeping Trump out of
office-an impossibility. It's about shaping the political and policy
environment in coming months and years.
Understood that way, the narrative is just too irresistible for the
Democrats to drop, for three reasons.
First, top Democrats and their media allies obviously want to delegitimize
the incoming administration. Painting Trump as a Kremlin puppet and
beneficiary of Moscow's nefarious meddling is useful in that regard.
Second, elite NATO-expansionist, Russia-hating New Cold War warriors in high
places in both the Democratic and Republican Parties (e.g., John McCain)
want to keep the heat on Moscow during the Trump presidency. Candidate Trump
promised a Putin-friendly stand-down from Obama and Hillary Clinton's
reckless Brzezinski-esque provocation of the Kremlin in Eastern Europe and
Syria. The hacking charge is a way for New Cold War camp to hedge in Trump's
promises of rapprochement with Russia.
Third, the hacking charge seems designed in part to help the DNC and the
neoliberal Democratic Party elite more broadly avoid responsibility for
blowing the election. The Democrats went with a wooden, Wall Street-captive,
and corruption-tainted candidate and campaign that couldn't mobilize enough
working- and lower-class voters to recreate the Obama coalition and defeat
the hyper-noxious, highly unpopular Trump in key states like Pennsylvania,
Florida, Michigan and Ohio. The "Moscow stole it" narrative is a fancy
version of "The dog ate my homework" for a dismal dollar-drenched Democratic
Party that abandoned the working class and the causes of peace, social
justice and environmental sustainability long ago.
The "inauthentic opposition" party would rather not take a long, hard and
honest look at what it has become. It does not want to concede anything to
those who dream of turning it into an authentic opposition party with a
progressive "vision of the good society." The "Russia did it" charge works
for establishment Democrats hoping to stave off demands from
leftish-progressive-populist types in their own party.
So much better to blame external others
(http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/12/15/the-anti-trump-uprising-forging-a-pa
th-forward-in-uncertain-times/) -like the Green Party (which barely reached
1 percent in the national elections); the mythical big, white
racist-sexist-nativist "rust-belt rebellion" of the "deplorable" white
working class; FBI Director James Comey (whose creepy intervention probably
did matter); or, of course, the Kremlin.
Thanks to these three great benefits, we can expect the "Russia elected
Trump" storyline to have a long life in Democratic hands. It is more
proof-as if we needed it-that we cannot expect much from elite Democrats
when it comes to building a serious resistance movement against the coming
racist, sexist, militarist, nativist, arch-plutocratic, quasi-fascist and
ecocidal Trump administration.
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