One of the things I learned from Daniel Ellsberg today, is that Eisenhower set
up a system by which people at various levels in the military can make a
decision to use nuclear weapons. We've been lied to. It is not just the
president who has this power. Eisenhower wanted to ensure that if the president
were incapable of retaliating should the Russians attack, someone further down
the line of command, could do so. There was also a plan for war within the
military that was kept secret from Kennedy. He and his white house staff didn't
know it existed. The military guys believed that no politician had the
knowledge or the right to make decisions about war. I guess they still do.
Remember that article that Michael Hastings wrote about General McCrystal and
what he and his staff said about Obama?
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
<blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> On Behalf Of Carl Jarvis
Sent: Monday, June 18, 2018 6:48 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: Et Tu, Bernie?
Actually, as a young boy in a very pro FDR house, I believed that we were on
the road to democracy. But even as a youngster, with Harry Truman stepping up
and declaring, "The buck stops here", I had cause to wonder if democracy were
not a fragile veneer. Ike was a "comfort"
president, making us feel good about holding the line against Communism, and
was best remembered for what he said as he left the office rather than what he
accomplished. Kennedy would have been a White Obama, all smooth talk.
Johnson, whom I voted for...holding my nose all the way to the poll, actually
made enough smoke that working class families seemed to be on the upward move
once again. But Nixon had no empathy to the majority of American's needs, and
he was too busy trying to create his own twist on history. Carter was such a
"nice guy" that we forgave him his kowtowing with Corporate America and the
Pentagon.
Reagan, with much working class support, began dismantling the New Deal for
good. Bush, Carter, Bush, Obama and now Trump all sucked up to the Empire's
Ruling Class. I skipped over Ford because he lost his only run for the office.
He became president, briefly, on the backs of one legislative district
election in Michigan.
But taking this broad overview, democracy has always been on the defense, even
with FDR's heavy handed influence. It's been like trying to pull crab grass
from the lawn. Grab a handful and it breaks off, leaving the root. All the
time the lawn is looking good and prosperous, the crab grass roots are growing
stronger and creeping underground among the grass roots. Until we get the
roots, democracy will become lost among the crab grass.
Pulling Donald Trump out of the lawn is not going to change much. We need to
root out Corporate Capitalism and bring to Justice the Corporate/Military
Complex that is destroying America.
Carl Jarvis
Carl Jarvis
On 6/18/18, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Yes, we're stuck with a corporate capitalist state or as Hedges would
say, "inverted totalitarianism", and only the truly deluded thought
that Hillary would turn anything around. Most of us who used to be
truly deluded, had an epiphany after Obama took office. And I agree
that our lives will continue to become more and more difficult under
the system that is now in place. But the system is definitely in
place, backed up with unimagineable power. This book by Ellsberg is
one of the most terrifying books I've ever read because he describes
in great detail, what our nuclear defense system is like and how it
got to be this way. You can see the power of the military and of
America's continuing efforts for domination over Russia and China.
The excused used to be that the Communist powers were a Communist
block wanting world domination. So now America still wants to dominate.
Russia isn't a communist country and China is not trying to convert countries
to Communism.
It focuses on its own economic development and to this end, it is
involved in economic projects throughout the world. So America has
change its rhetoric, but its laws and political structure, its service
to its large corporations and its banks, remain the same.
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
<blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> On Behalf Of Carl Jarvis
Sent: Monday, June 18, 2018 1:48 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: Et Tu, Bernie?
Whether we slide down the slippery slope quickly or slowly, it's still
a downward trend. Hillary Clinton would not have turned anything around.
Maybe we would be some better off, but Corporate Capitalism would
still Rule the American Empire. I will probably vote for the lesser
of the many Evils, but only because another Donald Trump could well
close all doors to future change. It's bad enough we have a conceited
braggart in office, but imagine if we "elected" a Donald Trump with a real
brain instead of pudding?
Carl Jarvis
On 6/18/18, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
In 2020, I can't predict who I'd vote for, for president. I suppose
that it doesn't really matter, except to me. But voting must
certainly matter, or else there wouldn't be so many efforts to stop
certain groups of people from voting. It obviously mattered in the
swing states. And regardless of my abhorrence of much of what Hillary
stands for, we wouldn't be having these horrors at our borders right
now, nor the disappearance of environmental protection, nor
expressions of overt racism on a daily basis, nor the withdrawal from
the Iran deal or the Paris climate deal if she'd become President.
It's all a matter of degree.
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
<blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> On Behalf Of Carl Jarvis
Sent: Monday, June 18, 2018 12:05 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: Et Tu, Bernie?
I'm trying hard to get past being judgemental. Bernie Sanders will
do what he does, and some change will circle out from his actions.
Eugene Debbs ran, as have many others, for president. That fact may
not have advanced a better life for the Working Class, but it did
keep his name and his many good works in people's minds.
Even though I would most likely never support Bernie Sanders for
president again, his effort did bring new thinking and did help move
a portion of the public to left of center, politically.
Carl Jarvis
On 6/18/18, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Great article? It was a really upsetting article! It reminded me of
stuff I really would have preferred to forget. Anyway, aside from
remaining ethically pure, I'm not sure what Eugene Debbs
accomplished by running for President from jail. Did politics
change? Is Bernie selling out or is he just trying to accomplish
change, even a tiny bit of change?
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
<blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> On Behalf Of Carl Jarvis
Sent: Monday, June 18, 2018 10:58 AM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: Et Tu, Bernie?
Great article! Hedges reminds us that we must learn to think on our
own two feet. Under the constant pressure of the Corporate Media,
we are misdirected into believing we need a strong leader to bring
about change.
But we forget that change bubbles up. Control by the Ruling Class
comes from the top, down. And the change that bubbles up is only
effective when, like the rising tide, it carries all of us to a
higher plain. We, the Working Class, are the collective leader.
Carl Jarvis
On 6/18/18, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Et Tu, Bernie?
Mr. Fish / Truthdig
There are two versions of Bernie Sanders. There is the old Bernie
Sanders, who mounted a quixotic campaign for the Democratic
presidential nomination as a democratic socialist who refused
corporate cash and excoriated corporate Democrats. And there is the
new Bernie Sanders, who dutifully plays by the party's rules,
courts billionaires, refused to speak out in support of the lawsuit
brought against the Democratic National Committee
(DNC) for rigging the primaries against him and endorses Democratic
candidates who espouse the economic and political positions he once
denounced.
Sanders' metamorphosis began in December 2015 when he saw the
groundswell of support for his candidacy and thought he could win
the nomination. He dropped the fiery, socialist rhetoric that first
characterized his campaign-he had given whole speeches on
democratic socialism shortly after he announced his candidacy in
May 2015. He hired establishment Democratic Party consultants such
as Ted Devine, who, ironically, played a role in the creation of
the superdelegates that helped fix the nomination victory of
Hillary Clinton. He would spend tens of millions of the some $230
million he raised during the campaign on professional consultants.
When it was clear he would lose, Sanders and his influential
campaign manager, Jeff Weaver, began coordinating closely with the
Clinton campaign. By May of 2016, Sanders had muted his criticisms
of Clinton and surrendered to the Democratic Party machine. He has
been an obedient servant of the party establishment ever since.
Sanders was always problematic. His refusal to condemn imperialism
and the war industry-a condemnation central to the message of the
socialist leader Eugene V. Debs-meant his socialism was stillborn.
It is impossible to be a socialist without being an anti-imperialist.
But at least Sanders addressed the reality of social inequality,
which the Republican and Democratic establishment pretended did not
exist. He returned political discourse to reality. And he restored
the good name of socialism.
Weaver and Clinton's campaign manager, Robby Mook, built a de facto
alliance in the weeks leading up to the convention. As the
convention was about to begin, WikiLeaks exposed the Clinton
campaign's nonaggression pact with the Sanders campaign. Many
Sanders delegates, by the time they arrived in Philadelphia in July
2016 for the convention, were enraged at the theft and fraud
orchestrated by the DNC. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the DNC chair
and the architect of the theft, stepped down. Some DNC staff
members were fired.
Sanders delegates were deluged on the eve of the convention with
messages from the Sanders campaign to be respectful, not to disrupt
the nominating process and to support Clinton, messages that often
turned out to have been written by Clinton staffers such as Mook
and then sent out under Sanders'
name. Sanders was a dutiful sheepdog, herding his disgruntled
supporters into the embrace of the Democratic Party machine.
The scope of fraud in the primaries was breathtaking. Donna
Brazile, who took over the DNC after Wasserman Schultz was removed,
later revealed the existence of a joint fund-raising agreement
among the DNC, the Hillary Victory Fund, and Hillary for America.
"The agreement-signed by Amy Dacey, the former CEO of the DNC, and
Robby Mook with a copy to Marc Elias-specified that in exchange for
raising money and investing in the DNC, Clinton would control the
party's finances, strategy, and all the money raised," Brazile wrote.
"Her campaign had the right of refusal of who would be the party
communications director, and it would make final decisions on all
the other staff. The DNC also was required to consult with the
campaign about all other staffing, budgeting, data, analytics, and
mailings."
Sanders, although he knew by September 2016 that the process was
rigged, said nothing to his supporters. He was tacitly complicit in
the cover-up.
It
was left to one of the architects of the fraud, Brazile, to reveal
the scam.
But by then it was too late.
Sanders' capitulation in the face of the overwhelming evidence of
the rigging of the nomination process was political and moral
cowardice.
He missed his historical moment, one that should have seen him
denounce a corrupt, corporate-dominated party elite and walk away
to build a third-party candidacy. Sanders will never recover politically.
To see the future, he has only to look at the campaign events he
held on behalf of Clinton after her nomination. His crowds dwindled
from thousands to a few hundred after he endorsed Clinton. Data
collected by Harvard Harris Poll charted the downward spiral of his
favorability ratings as he became more and more obsequious to the
Democratic Party establishment. His 2020 campaign for the
presidency will be a pale reflection of 2016. His "political
revolution" slogan has been exposed as another empty public relations
gimmick.
If we are to defy corporate power, which is vicious when it feels
threatened, we need leaders with the fortitude to withstand the
onslaught.
Debs never sold out. He was sent to prison in 1919 and ran for
president in
1920 from his prison cell. If we are not willing to pay this price
we better not play the game.
"There is but one thing you have to be concerned about, and that is
that you keep foursquare with the principles of the international
Socialist movement," Debs said in a June 16, 1918, speech in
Canton, Ohio, that led to his being sentenced to 10 years in prison
on a charge of violating the Espionage Act. "It is only when you
begin to compromise that trouble begins.
So far as I am concerned, it does not matter what others may say,
or think, or do, as long as I am sure that I am right with myself
and the cause.
There
are so many who seek refuge in the popular side of a great question.
As a Socialist, I have long since learned how to stand alone."
Those who support Sanders' capitulation, including his high-priced
establishment consultants, will argue that politics is about
compromise and the practical. This is true. But playing politics in
a system that is not democratic is about becoming part of the charade.
We need to overthrow this system, not placate it. Revolution is
almost always a doomed enterprise, one that succeeds only because
its leaders eschew the practical and are endowed with what the
theologian Reinhold Niebuhr calls "sublime madness." Sanders lacks
this sublime madness.
The quality defined Debs. And for this reason Sanders is morally
and temperamentally unfit to lead this fight.
"I never had much faith in leaders," Debs said. "I am willing to be
charged with almost anything, rather than to be charged with being
a leader. I am suspicious of leaders, and especially of the
intellectual variety. Give me the rank and file every day in the
week. If you go to the city of Washington, and you examine the
pages of the Congressional Directory, you will find that almost all
of those corporation lawyers and cowardly politicians, members of
Congress, and misrepresentatives of the masses-you will find that
almost all of them claim, in glowing terms, that they have risen
from the ranks to places of eminence and distinction. I am very
glad I cannot make that claim for myself. I would be ashamed to
admit that I had risen from the ranks. When I rise it will be with
the ranks, and not from the ranks."
Heather Gautney, the author of "Crashing the Party: From the Bernie
Sanders Campaign to a Progressive Movement" and an associate
professor of sociology at Fordham University, has detailed the
numerous ploys used by the Democratic Party establishment to deny
Sanders the nomination. These tactics included the party elites'
appointment of
718 superdelegates-Democratic senators, governors and members of
Congress, party officials, dozens of registered lobbyists or
"shadow lobbyists" and wealthy corporate donors.
More than 400 were pledged to Clinton before Sanders announced his
campaign.
The party also banned those who were registered as independent
voters from voting in many primaries, although the taxpayers pay
for the primaries. It orchestrated the theft of the vote in
caucuses such as Nevada's. And it limited the number of debates to
deny exposure to Sanders. Brazile passed on the CNN debate
questions in advance to the Clinton campaign.
"Over a third of under-30 voters-Sanders's core
constituency-weren't registered to any political party," Gautney
writes in an article in The Guardian. And when they got to the polls they
were turned away.
In the New York primary, she notes, "between 3 and 4 million
'unaffiliated' voters were disenfranchised due to a statute that
required changing one's party affiliation 25 days prior to the
previous general election."
The Democratic Party in New York in the upcoming primary requires
unaffiliated voters to register as Democrats 11 months before the
primary, a condition that will cripple the progressive candidacy of
Cynthia Nixon for governor. Sanders, bowing to the demands of the
party elite, has refused to endorse Nixon's bid against Gov. Andrew
Cuomo.
Gautney calls the system broken, but it works exactly as it is
designed to work. The Democratic Party elites have been refining
the mechanisms and exclusionary rules since the presidential
election, along with purging the party of progressives, to ensure
that an insurgent candidate like Sanders will never get close to
the nomination. Sanders, no doubt, thinks he can overcome these
obstacles by being obedient to the party hierarchy. This is a
terrible miscalculation.
In state after state, as Gautney details, Sanders was
systematically robbed.
And he and any other insurgent can expect the same treatment in 2020.
Yes, the party formed a tripartite Unity Reform Commission with
representatives from the Clinton campaign and the Sanders campaign
to review the rules. But the Unity Reform Commission is cosmetic.
It cannot make changes to DNC rules, only recommendations, which
have to be approved by the rules and bylaws committee and the DNC members.
The rules and bylaws committee and the DNC are stacked with
lobbyists, consultants, establishment and Clinton loyalists, and
people, like Brazile, who rigged the election against Sanders. They
retain control over any changes to the rules. The public has no say.
There is not one Sanders supporter on the committee. The final
recommendations submitted by the commission said nothing about the
chief source of corruption that grips the Democratic
Party-corporate and billionaire money. It didn't mention campaign finance
reform.
Any attempt at reform is meaningless until corporations and
billionaires stop bankrolling the party.
The Democratic Party is neither democratic nor in any real sense a
political party. It is a corporate mirage. The members of its base
can, at best, select preapproved candidates and act as props in a
choreographed party convention. Voters have zero influence on party
politics.
"I'll never forget watching the primary votes being counted for
Michigan, one of the key states that decided the 2016 election,"
Gautney wrote in The Guardian. "Sanders' 'pledged delegate
count'-which reflected the number of votes he received from
rank-and-file Democrats-exceeded Clinton's by four.
But after the superdelegates cast their ballots, the roll call
registered 'Clinton 76, Sanders 67.' "
"In Indiana, Sanders won the vote 44 to 39, but, after the super
delegates had their say, Clinton was granted 46 delegates, versus
Sanders' 44," she wrote. "In New Hampshire, where Sanders won the
vote by a gaping margin (60% to 38%) and set a record for the
largest number of votes ever, the screen read '16 Sanders, 16 Clinton.'
"
Sanders, who calls himself an independent, caucuses as a Democrat.
The Democratic Party determines his assignments in the Senate. Sen.
Chuck Schumer of New York, who oversees Wall Street campaign
donations to Democratic candidates, offered to make Sanders the
head of the Senate Budget Committee if the Democrats won control of
the Senate, in exchange for the Vermont senator's support of
Clinton and the hawkish, corporate neoliberal Democratic candidates
running for the House and Senate. Sanders, swallowing whatever
pride he has left, is now a loyal party apparatchik, squandering
his legacy and his integrity. He routinely sends out appeals to
raise money for party-selected candidates, including the 2016
Democratic senatorial candidates Katie McGinty in Pennsylvania,
Maggie Hassan in New Hampshire, Ted Strickland in Ohio and
Catherine Cortez Masto in Nevada. Sanders made a blanket
endorsement of every Democrat running in the 2017 election, including the
worst corporate Democrats.
There was about $6 million left from the Sanders campaign, and it
was used to form an organization called Our Revolution in August 2016.
The organization was set up ostensibly to fund and support
progressive candidates. It was soon taken over by Weaver, who
ensured that it was not registered as a political action committee
(PAC), a group that can give money directly to campaigns. It was
set up as a 501(c)(4), a group prohibited from having direct
contact with candidates and giving donations directly to
candidates. The
501(c)(4) status allowed it to take and mask donations from wealthy
donors such as Tom Steyer.
Sanders' decision to quietly solicit contributions from the
billionaire oligarchs who funded the Hillary Clinton campaign and
control the Democratic Party betrayed the core promise of his
campaign. Yet, even as he created a mechanism to take money from
wealthy donors he continued to write at the bottom of his emails
"Paid for by Bernie Sanders, not the billionaires."
Eight of the 13 staffers of Our Revolution resigned in protest. The
organization is now adding a PAC.
Meanwhile, the DNC rules and bylaws committee has recommended a
rule that any candidate in a primary be required to demonstrate he
or she is a "faithful" Democrat. This loyalty test, intentionally
vague, gives the DNC, which will consider the rule change in
August, the power to disqualify candidates and block them from
appearing on the ballot. If the party elites feel threatened, they
can nuke any candidacy, including one mounted by Sanders, before it even
begins.
The Democratic Party elites in an open process and without
corporate backing would not be in power. They are creations of the
corporate state. They are not about to permit reforms that will see
themselves toppled. Yes, this tactic of fixing elections and
serving corporate power may ensure a second term for Donald Trump
and election of fringe candidates who pledge their loyalty to
Trump, but the Democratic elites would rather sink the ship of
state than give up their first-class cabins.
The Democratic Party is as much to blame for Trump as the Republicans.
It is a full partner in the perpetuation of our political system of
legalized bribery, along with the deindustrialization of the
country, austerity programs, social inequality, mass incarceration
and the assault on basic civil liberties. It deregulates Wall
Street. It prosecutes the endless and futile wars that are draining
the federal budget. We must mount independent political movements
and form our own parties to sweep the Democratic and Republican
elites aside or be complicit in cementing into place a corporate
tyranny. Sanders won't help us. He has made that clear. We must do
it without him.
Chris Hedges
Chris Hedges is a Pulitzer Prize-winning
