[blind-democracy] Transferred nationalism, like the use of scapegoats, is a way of attaining salvation without altering one's conduct. - George Orwell
- From: "Bob Hachey" <bhachey@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 21 Feb 2017 09:10:28 -0500
Hi all,
Here's an interesting post that takes a good hard look at both Hillary
Clinton and Vladimir Putin. While I do believe we need to have an
investigation into Russia's connivances relative to our election process, I
am not one to give the lion's share of blame to Putin for the results. That
dubious distinction goes to Clinton. Yes, I do realize that some of the
negativity she faced was not fair, but life rarely is.
Bob Hachey
Get Another Goat
by
<https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__bracingviews.com_autho
r_wjastore_&d=DwMFaQ&c=cBOA5YEoZuz9KdLvh38YxdrPtfJt83ckXekfBgq5xB0&r=CK8oOj7
-JYZnTDmB5orNTVZXar6NrsnGtGHfQ5m79Do&m=KN-FVVWnCkJP4wnXQscTiXiFlU9D6x1Pkkm2s
xxzvP0&s=alewSyLARQNx_s9OVT6hpydRs_cNCRL6AntzUJ_ZU58&e=> wjastore.February
4, 2017
Michael Murry
Democrats need an honest post-mortem - not dishonest scapegoating - in the
aftermath of their devastating 2016 defeat.
Transferred nationalism, like the use of scapegoats, is a way of attaining
salvation without altering one's conduct. - George Orwell, "Notes on
Nationalism" (London: Polemic, 1945)
Many have written about the recent Women's March in Washington, D.C. - and
in other cities across the United States - which occurred in response to
President Donald Trump's early executive orders, cabinet appointments,
in-your-face culture-war media-baiting, and (of course) his signature
late-night twitter trolling. Lots of things to legitimately oppose and
protest, surely, but to my knowledge, few of these articles have analyzed
the women-led protest marches from the standpoint of exculpatory political
scapegoating, if not transferred nationalism, as George Orwell explained the
meaning of that term in his famous essay. For my part, I would like to try
and address this imbalance.
First off, several signs that I saw from the Women's March addressed
President Donald Trump personally in terms that I had difficulty connecting
with Women's Rights, such as I understand them. I don't have a problem with
either the imagery or the language, however crude or even profane, since
Donald Trump himself seems to delight in offending as many persons, nations,
and institutions as he possibly can if it serves his purposes. So, if he
receives rough treatment, in picture or word, then he has it coming. He gets
no sympathy from me. My problem with these signs stems not from their tone
of deserved disrespect, but from their strange fixation on Russia and
Russian President Vladimir Putin who - as far as I can tell - has no power
to deny an American woman equal pay, access to a safe abortion, maternity
leave, or quality public education for her children, among other issues that
women - as women - typically consider important.
For example, take the following piece of work, a pointed paraphrase of an
old children's nursery rhyme:
tinkle
I saw other signs of a similar nature, another of which I will cite later as
a further example. I cannot speak to the generality of such sentiments, and
I would hope that only a few persons harbor them, but this unfortunate
expression of malignant partisan irrelevancy immediately gets to the point
raised by Robert Parry in
<https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__consortiumnews.com_201
7_02_01_dangers-2Dof-2Ddemocratic-2Dputin-2Dbashing&d=DwMFaQ&c=cBOA5YEoZuz9K
dLvh38YxdrPtfJt83ckXekfBgq5xB0&r=CK8oOj7-JYZnTDmB5orNTVZXar6NrsnGtGHfQ5m79Do
&m=KN-FVVWnCkJP4wnXQscTiXiFlU9D6x1Pkkm2sxxzvP0&s=0clbRTO4iRji-aVC_zvi42qNlNE
XzGmIynb8K5NZSS0&e=> an article he wrote for Consortium News (February 1,
2017): namely, "Dangers of Democratic Putin-Bashing - Exclusive: As national
Democratic leaders continue to blame Russian President Putin for their 2016
defeat, they're leading their party into a realignment with the neocons and
other war hawks."
While I concur with Mr. Parry's article in the main, I have to disagree with
his use of the present progressive tense and the word "realignment." As a
matter of fact, the alignment of the Democratic Party with "neocons and
other war hawks" took place decades ago, with President Bill Clinton.
President Barack Obama and the hapless Democrats in Congress, for their
part, have only reinforced and strengthened this alignment. To speak of
this dreadful reality as if it exists only as a possible development in the
future rather misstates the truly grim and long-established reality.
Otherwise, and specifically as this article relates to the Women's March,
consider a comment I came across in response to Robert Parry's article:
"evelync"
February 1, 2017 at 11:35 am
I have to admit that I was unable to drag myself to the women's march
because I was unsettled by the concern that it was being used, perhaps, to
try to keep Hillary Clinton's foot in the door.
Another commenter wrote:
"D5-5"
February 1, 2017 at 2:15 pm
I don't know that having allowed themselves to sink into the behaviors
employed to knock off [Senator Bernie] Sanders, then expanding these to
Russia-bashing, as the Dems and Clinton did, will likely take them in the
direction of an 'oh, let's get honest here and see why we lost the election,
and straighten ourselves right out to become an actually decent alternative
to offer to the American people.'
Two points here:
(1) Why not blame the Democratic Party and its deeply unpopular,
demonstrably inept, largely unaccomplished, and repeatedly discredited
candidate, You-Know-Her [Hillary Clinton], for losing instead of crediting
the political rookie Donald Trump - and by extension, Russian President
Vladimir Putin - for "winning"?
(2) Why not insist that the losing Democrats conduct a long-overdue autopsy,
summarily purge their Wall-Street/Permanent-War "leadership" (the names
Clinton and Obama come to mind here), and reform themselves into a truly
working-class, anti-war party capable of winning back the loyalty of those
impoverished Americans whom they have betrayed and abandoned for Ivy-League
University degrees and swell vacations on Martha's Vineyard with other newly
rich members of their privileged "professional" class?
But attaining emotional salvation through scapegoating - so as not to
require actually doing anything to cure the real political and economic
disease of neoliberalism - does seem the order of the day among these
marchers, most of whom one must suppose voted for You-Know-Her and the
neoliberal status quo that downwardly dropping American workers hate with an
abiding and vengeful passion. The Damsel of Distress has done it again,
snatching defeat from the jaws of victory as only a "New Democrat" named
Clinton could manage. How that must hurt!
Moving right along, I came across another image from the Women's March that
showed a man holding a mask of Vladimir Putin in front of his face while
holding what looked like marionette strings from which dangled the image of
Donald Trump as a puppet.
puppet
Now, I know You-Know-Her openly called Donald Trump a "puppet" of Vladimir
Putin during one of the fall campaign debates, so it does not surprise me
that some of her partisan supporters would credulously accept this
gratuitous slur without bothering to think through the preposterous illogic
behind it. For as those who have read the WikiLeaks documents have
explained, the Clinton campaign tried everything they could to promote the
candidacy of Donald Trump on the theory that he would make the weakest
opponent, one whom You-Know-Her would have the least trouble vanquishing.
Consider the following excerpt from
<https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__www.politico.com_magazi
ne_story_2016_11_hillary-2Dclinton-2D2016-2Ddonald-2Dtrump-2D214428&d=DwMFaQ
&c=cBOA5YEoZuz9KdLvh38YxdrPtfJt83ckXekfBgq5xB0&r=CK8oOj7-JYZnTDmB5orNTVZXar6
NrsnGtGHfQ5m79Do&m=KN-FVVWnCkJP4wnXQscTiXiFlU9D6x1Pkkm2sxxzvP0&s=z9P-CCwTUVL
XLvwynG2-YQy5uqzVBoncWHfOG5OVS6w&e=> the article "They Always Wanted Trump:
Inside Team Clinton's year-long struggle to find a strategy against the
opponent they were most eager to face", by Gabriel Debenedetti, Politico
(November 07, 2016):
Clinton's team drew up a plan to pump Trump up. Shortly after her kickoff,
top aides organized a strategy call, whose agenda included a memo to the
Democratic National Committee: "This memo is intended to outline the
strategy and goals a potential Hillary Clinton presidential campaign would
have regarding the 2016 Republican presidential field," it read.
"The variety of candidates is a positive here, and many of the lesser known
can serve as a cudgel to move the more established candidates further to the
right. In this scenario, we don't want to marginalize the more extreme
candidates, but make them more 'Pied Piper' candidates who actually
represent the mainstream of the Republican Party," read the memo.
"Pied Piper candidates include, but aren't limited to: Ted Cruz, Donald
Trump, Ben Carson
We need to be elevating the Pied Piper candidates so that they are leaders
of the pack and tell the press to [take] them seriously."
Now, aside from the arrogant (but not implausible) notion that
You-Know-Her's campaign could tell [as in, "command"] the press whom to take
seriously, no one has ever questioned the accuracy of these memoranda from
John Podesta to You-Know-Her's campaign. But just consider what they tell
us.
First, if Donald Trump owed his candidacy to You-Know-Her's campaign to
promote him as a Pied Piper over all the other Republican candidates, and if
Russian President Vladimir Putin somehow contrived to make all this happen,
then that would credit Vladimir Putin with first manipulating one puppet,
You-Know-Her, to control Trump, another puppet. In the interest of
metaphorical accuracy, then, the marching protester here should have worn a
Putin mask while holding the strings to a puppet of You-Know-Her holding the
strings to another puppet, All-About-Him [Trump].
Second, if President Putin had successfully pulled off this convoluted
manipulation of both presidential candidates, then why would he possibly let
that fact come to light in these WikiLeaks memos? Wouldn't he want to keep
his sinister Machiavellian machinations a secret, so as not - as America's
CIA spooks like to say - reveal his "sources and methods"? As a former KGB
intelligence officer, surely he knows his espionage tradecraft better than
that. So, logically, President Putin would have no interest in revealing his
omnipotent control of America's two hapless presidential candidates. It
makes no sense that Russia would leak anything about this to WikiLeaks or
any other journalistic source. That would only discredit Trump as a dupe of
both You-Know-Her and Vladimir Putin.
Complete bullshit, either way. It would appear that - in truth - John
Podesta and You-Know-Her got just the opponent they wanted to run against:
Donald Trump. Then they lost to their own "Pied Piper" puppet. But still
they want to scapegoat Russian President Vladimir Putin for their own
manifest failure to recognize and respond to the seething desperation of
America's working class. The people want jobs and incomes, not more NAFTA or
TPP trade deals. You-Know-Her promised more of the latter. Trump promised at
least some of the former. Gee whiz. Who could have ever figured out which
way that "choice" would go?
Not that Republican Donald Trump will necessarily deliver anything more than
tax cuts and deregulation to the Corporate Oligarchy while shoveling loads
of crappy culture war to the proles who voted for him, but sheer luck, some
media-sense, and good timing have given him the chance. I seriously doubt
that he has the knowledge and competence to pull off anything resembling
PEACE, but he does now have that opportunity. Who knows if he has the wit to
seize it?
At any rate, it appears as if the defeated Democrats have chosen Russian
President Putin as an attractive scapegoat simply due to (1) his
"foreignness" and (2) the nature of transferred nationalism. This
psychological transference, Orwell wrote, "has an important function. . It
makes it possible for [the nationalist] to be much more nationalistic - more
vulgar, more silly, more malignant, more dishonest - than he [or she] could
ever be on behalf of [their] native country, or any unit of which [they] had
real knowledge."
Americans know little, if anything, about the Russian Federation or its duly
elected, competent, domestically popular, and internationally respected
president. Creative costumes and too-clever-by-half slogans aside, it seems
like a monumental waste of time, energy, and limited American attention span
for the Democrats to scapegoat President Putin for their own stupidity,
arrogance, and insensitivity to their party's traditional base.
The Democrats had better look inward and get their own act together. Either
that, or get another goat.
Michael Murry is a Vietnam Veteran, gargoyle sculptor, and poet. A loyal
correspondent to Bracing Views, he is also a contributor to The Contrary
Perspective.
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<https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__bracingviews.com_tag_h
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<https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__bracingviews.com_tag_j
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<https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__bracingviews.com_tag_m
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on Washington,
<https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__bracingviews.com_tag_n
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<https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__bracingviews.com_tag_p
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presidential election 2016,
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<https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__bracingviews.com_tag_s
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<https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__bracingviews.com_tag_w
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Women's March on Washington.
URL:https://bracingviews.com/2017/02/04/get-another-goat/
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Other related posts:
- » [blind-democracy] Transferred nationalism, like the use of scapegoats, is a way of attaining salvation without altering one's conduct. - George Orwell - Bob Hachey
- » [blind-democracy] Re: Transferred nationalism, like the use of scapegoats, is a way of attaining salvation without altering one's conduct. - George Orwell- Miriam Vieni
