THE ECONOMY, STUPID (THE BLAME GAME)

Over the last week I have read more articles than I can count, critique of the election outcome and critique of the critique... like the reflection of a mirror in a mirror in a mirror...

Much of what I’ve read is a visceral response to the shocking victory of a candidate whose hate spewing rhetoric endangers the very population he has been (s)elected to lead. If you read The Missing Point with any frequency, you may understand why I am shocked by, but not surprised at this outcome. There are plenty of articles with detailed analysis of what it means that a racist, misogynist, xenophobe, has just been elected president, this is not one of them.

And then there are the blame game pieces, chasing (casting) shadows in a pathetic attempt to save face, to cast the DNC and the Clinton campaign as hapless victims after the fact, as if no one was aware that decades of neglect and economic devastation might be a factor in the 2016 election. I’ve seen this written about as sidebar to, and as response to, the previous articles I mentioned. What is disturbing here is that these ideas are mostly being written about in a dualistic fashion; essentially, racism/misogyny/xenophobia vs. economics, as if the very mention of economic factors is some sort of defacto negation or blanket appeasement of systemic racism, sexism, xenophobia, etc.

Perhaps we should try a little harder not to fall into a conflict narrative trap that ultimately benefits the ruling class. They would like nothing better than to see us escalate the battle over whose particular oppression is the more righteous cause. Desperation born of oppression can lead to volatile results, and 1% is always looking for an opportunity to “save the day” and secure their power.

Is there a way that we can attend to all our needs, rather than elevate one at the expense of the other? What can we do to empower one another so that our people can break free of this existential threat requires patriarchal savior paradigm?

The decimation of the middle class didn’t start with the crash in 2008. It’s been 22 years since NAFTA went into effect, but it was in negotiation even before Bill Clinton took office. 22 years of Democrats and Republicans pushing free market/free trade neoliberalism while the country bleeds jobs, benefits, retirement, anything and everything that we used to call the American Dream.

Jimmy Carville’s legendary Clinton War Room sign from 1992

The democrats have run on a protectionist platform for multiple election cycles, promising to secure the gains we have made. Women’s right to choose, civil rights, voting rights, immigrant rights, LGBT rights... But their steadfast protection of these rights does little to address the free market economic free fall that has been going on for decades. Insuring equal access to the pie doesn’t really work when there’s no pie to begin with.

Say you live in one of the rust belt states. The factory, or the mine, that practically the entire town worked in, has been closed for more than a decade. If you’re not unemployed, you’re likely living paycheck to paycheck, careful not to rock the boat cause service jobs are hard to come by. Hell, if it weren’t for the prison, there wouldn’t be enough income in the town to keep the Walmart going. You can barely keep up with the interest payments on your mortgage, if you still have your home. Maybe someone in your family is fighting an illness, and you can’t afford the care they need. You are praying that they are going to pull through.

You hear democrats on the TV saying that they are going to fight to protect the gains we’ve made. You’re not sure what the hell gains they are talking about. Their slogan is “Fighting For Us,” but you don’t feel like that us includes you. You heard from a friend at work that their candidate called you a racist, a bigot, a “deplorable.” You don’t think you’re any of those things. You’d tell them so, but they never come to your town. Your former union sends you a flyer that says “I’m with her.”

Along comes a snake oil salesman. Everyone you know is coming out to hear him speak. You’ve seen him before, he’s been pushing get rich quick schemes every night on the TV for as long as you can remember. He’s got a book called “The Art of the Deal,” which he brings up at every opportunity. He says he will “entirely renegotiate NAFTA,” which he calls the “worst trade deal in history.” Everyone at the rally is wearing those red hats that say “Make America Great Again.”

When Bernie Sanders was winning rural and rust belt primaries, the mainstream media pointed out that these were white male voters, that he wouldn’t be able to mobilize the Obama Coalition. No stories about how the democrats had ceded these poor white voters to the Republicans years ago, choosing to focus exclusively on the (fading fast) “middle class.” Rather than looking at this as a potential reintegration along economic class lines, similar to MLK’s Poor People’s Campaign, the DNC used these wins to reinforce the narrative that people of color were already on board with the presumptive nominee.

Looking at the initial results after the election, it would appear that this strategy failed to produce the DNC’s expected outcome. While Republican party vote totals were similar to prior presidential elections, Democrat numbers dropped markedly. It is easy to correlate this drop to lower voter turnout (voter suppression?) in communities of color, but focusing on this racial polarization narrative may be counterproductive. Poor whites may have been more likely to vote Republican in 2016 than poor blacks and latinos, for obvious reasons that have been covered ad infinitum, but there is a common thread that the status quo blame game is bending over backward to avoid dealing with:

Given that the election results are accurate, poor people, across the board, were even less likely to vote Democrat in the 2016 general election.

In a year of anti-establishment populist uprising, righteous reaction to decades of suffering from bi-partisan neoliberal austerity policies, the Democratic party establishment chose a candidate that only offered more of the same.

This should have been obvious. Why was it not? Who benefits from this narrative?
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Related articles:
Three Myths About Clinton’s Defeat in Election 2016 Debunked – Lambert Strether
The Clinton Campaign Was Undone By Its Own Neglect And A Touch Of Arrogance, Staffers Say – Sam Stein
Democrats, Trump, and the Ongoing, Dangerous Refusal to Learn the Lesson of Brexit – Glenn Greenwald
Goodbye, American neoliberalism. A new era is here – Cornel West

And a related video:
President Trump: How & Why – Jonathan Pie

THIS ISN’T LEADERSHIP – WHERE’S OBAMA?

And understand this, if American workers are being denied their right to organize and collectively bargain when I’m in the White House, I’ll put on a comfortable pair of shoes myself, I’ll walk on that picket line with you as President of the United States of America.

It isn’t the first time I’ve referenced this line from Barrack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign. Where was Obama when Wisconsin workers’ “right to organize and collectively bargain” was under attack? Where was he when Republicans were gutting democracy in multiple Michigan cities through an “emergency manager” privatization scheme, resulting (most visibly) in the Flint water crisis? Where was he when Occupy Wall Street was being forcibly and systematically suppressed all over the country? Where was he when the people were demanding justice in Ferguson?

I marched with 40,000 people in DC to tell Obama to say NO! to Keystone XL Pipeline, even though I had no faith in Obama’s resolve to move away from his “all of the above” (“clean” coal, fracked gas, new nuclear plants!) energy strategy. Now that KXL has shell game shape shifted into DAPL (Dakota Access Pipeline), where’s Obama? A private corporation is essentially invading the sovereign land of the Sioux Nation with the assistance of local law enforcement and the National Guard – where’s Obama?

Jill Stein stands with the Standing Rock water protectors. Bernie Sanders has come out vocally against DAPL. And Clinton? A popular meme answers “crickets.”

For almost eight years, any critique of the current administration has been countered with the polarization narrative. Essentially, Obama was a progressive that simply did not anticipate the resistance he would receive as president. Furthermore, it is amazing that he has been able to accomplish all that he has in the face of such overwhelming Republican opposition and obstruction. The problem with this narrative is that it assumes that Obama was actually a progressive to begin with, that he was actually a man of the people, and not a product of Chicago school free market ideology.

Here’s the thing: Obama’s strategy of pragmatic across the aisle compromise is not really about change, it’s about getting you to believe that the only reasonable course of action is to accept the inevitable, to make the best deal you can under the circumstances, rather than mobilize for something you actually want.

A “progressive that gets things done” Clinton administration will likely rely even more heavily on the polarization narrative, to explain away why they can’t enact progressive policy proposals that currently enjoy wide popular support. If only we had the majority in the House, if only we had 60 votes in the Senate, if only we weren’t spending all our time defending the President against these outrageous Republican attacks...

And this is why, as much as I can recognize the potential of the President standing up to stop the oppression of the Standing Rock water protectors, as much as I recognize the potential of Obama and Clinton showing true leadership at this historic moment, I understand why they cannot. Put simply, neoliberals have no interest in supporting a popular people’s movement whose success would undermine their authority, disrupting their carefully balanced polarization narrative.
 

I know you’ve heard this song from Washington before. I know you’ve often heard grand promises that sound good but rarely materialize. And each time, you’re told this time will be different. But over the last few years, I’ve had a chance to speak with Native American leaders across the country about the challenges you face, and those conversations have been deeply important to me.

I get it. I’m on your side. I understand what it means to be an outsider. I was born to a teenage mother. My father left when I was two years old, leaving her -- my mother and my grandparents to raise me. We didn’t have much. We moved around a lot. So even though our experiences are different, I understand what it means to be on the outside looking in. I know what it means to feel ignored and forgotten, and what it means to struggle. So you will not be forgotten as long as I’m in this White House.

  
Prove me wrong Obama. Put on those comfortable shoes and make history.
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Related articles:
How to Talk About #NoDAPL: A Native Perspective – Kelly Hayes
“A Shameful Moment for This Country”: Report Back on Militarized Police Raid of DAPL Resistance Camp – Democracy Now!
Indigenous Youth Occupy Hillary Clinton Campaign Headquarters to Demand She Take Stand on #DAPL – Democracy Now!

COKE OR PEPSI REVISITED – OPEN THE DEBATES!

The first presidential debate of the 2016 election cycle will take place next Monday, September 26th at Hofstra University (Hempstead, NY). How many candidates will appear in this debate?

Why is the presidential debate important regardless of the outcome of the vote?

One – the Bernie Sanders campaign clearly showed it is possible to run an issues based presidential campaign, and garner wide support from the electorate. Bernie presented a plain spoken challenge to the establishment that transcended their “vote for the lesser evil” conflict narrative, shifting the dialogue from a restrictive vision of what we don’t want to a dynamic vision of what we do. Clinton paid lip service to this idea at a news conference she held after her recent bout with pneumonia, but it is unlikely she will transcend this fear based narrative in the upcoming debate.

Two – the presidential debates are particularly important to the large segment of the electorate not involved in the primary process, that wait until late in the electoral cycle to decide who they will vote for. 129 million voted in the 2012 general election, while only 28 million voted in the primaries that year. 67 million people watched the first debate of 2012, 10 million more than cast votes in the entire 2016 primary. The debate offers a unique opportunity for the candidates to introduce themselves and outline the policies they wish to enact, provided they are allowed to participate...

Listening to Sanders warn against casting a “protest vote,” I can’t help but think of his critique of superdelegates, repeatedly citing how more than 400 had pledged to back Clinton before his campaign even began. Is this fundamentally different from how the Commission on Presidential Debates (CPD) has preemptively excluded third party candidates from participating in the upcoming debate, before the vast majority of the electorate has even had a chance to hear their positions?

The CPD is a private corporation started by former heads of the Democratic and Republican National Committees. It replaced the League of Women Voters in 1988 and has been sole sponsor of every presidential debate since that time.

The LWV press release from October 3rd, 1988 reads:

“The League of Women Voters is withdrawing its sponsorship of the presidential debate scheduled for mid-October because the demands of the two campaign organizations would perpetrate a fraud on the American voter,” League President Nancy M. Neuman said today.

“It has become clear to us that the candidates’ organizations aim to add debates to their list of campaign-trail charades devoid of substance, spontaneity and honest answers to tough questions,” Neuman said. “The League has no intention of becoming an accessory to the hoodwinking of the American public.”

 
The CPD decides the format of the debate, what topics will be “debated,” and who gets to debate. Yes, the folks already in the debate decide who gets to debate, and who does not – a conflict of interest? 

Level the Playing Field in conjunction with the Green Party of The United States and Libertarian National Committee filed a lawsuit against the Federal Elections Commission in June of 2015. The following is just one point from the lawsuit – you can read the document in its entirety here.

3. This case concerns violations of federal law by two institutions the Democratic and Republican parties have used to perpetuate their duopoly: the Commission on Presidential Debates (“CPD”), an organization the two parties created for the express purpose of keeping third-party and independent candidates out of debates, and the Federal Election Commission (“FEC”), a “bipartisan” agency run by members of the two major parties, which refuses to carry out its statutory mandate to enforce the federal election laws that the CPD is blatantly violating.

With little fanfare, the lawsuit was dismissed last month by George W. Bush appointed U.S. District Court Judge Rosemary Collyer.

Forth Position Design created the above graphic in order to highlight two points that might become more apparent if we had open debates.

Weapons dealer: Secretary Clinton’s approval of transfers (sales) of weapons from United States based manufacturers to countries/governments that the US State Department has criticized for human rights abuses is disturbing, especially when both the companies and the countries involved in these transactions have donated large sums to the Clinton Foundation. Repeatedly pointing out that donors to the Clinton Foundation did not get highly coveted meetings with the Secretary does not address this issue.

Button Pusher: Trump really has no definable policy positions, his campaign exists solely as a reactionary response. His racist, sexist, xenophobic remarks appeal to an audience conditioned to quell their own feelings of powerlessness by attacking “others.” The entire spectacle is ultimately just another self aggrandizement scheme, tracking back to Trump & the Trump brand. If the contrast between the candidates is essentially policy vs. no policy, does it really qualify as a “debate”?

If we really believe in this democracy thing, then we should make the changes necessary to insure that it is actually possible – open debates, instant runoff voting, automatic voter registration, to name a few. The conflict is a distraction, to limit knowledge that could neutralize their dualistic narrative. It’s easy to keep one person out of the debates, it’s much harder to convince an informed public that you are the one and only “choice.” More voices – more choices – open the debates.
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I wrote a piece in 2012 calling for the Commission on Presidential Debates (CPD) to recuse itself for conflict of interest. They didn’t. I guess they don’t read my blog.
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Related articles:
Two-Party Tyranny: Ralph Nader on Exclusion of Third-Party Candidates from First Presidential Debate – Democracy Now!
There’s No Debate – Bill Moyers and Michael Winship
Only 9% of America Chose Trump and Clinton as the Nominees – Alicia Parlapiano and Adam Pearce

STAR TREK – BEYOND THE CONFLICT NARRATIVE

I should like this new Star Trek film: Star Trek Beyond. After all, it’s wrapped around an idea that is core to my writing at The Missing Point. If you haven’t seen the film yet, you might want do that before reading further... or not.  **SPOILERS BELOW**

I should like this film, but I don’t. Ever since J.J. Abrams “rebooted” the franchise, creating an alternate timeline outside Star Trek canon, Star Trek creator Gene Rodenberry’s essential ethos has been more set dressing than central theme. For me, this ethos has always been one of transcendence, a vision of humanity’s future beyond the petty conflicts we presently use to define our existence.

Gene’s vision has, at times, proven difficult for Star Trek writers to embrace. It doesn’t fit into a western narrative structure defined by conflict:

Ok – so what kind of story would it be without the conflict? Would it be a story at all? English 101 instructs that a story has a beginning, middle, and an end. This is referred to as the three-act structure: Setup (exposition), Confrontation (conflict), and Resolution. Accordingly, the conflict moves the plot forward and fuels the reader’s interest. It is the central feature of the dramatic arc, building tension and leading to the climax of the story. Man against man, man against society, man against nature, man against self – this is our accepted model of narrative structure. No conflict – no story.

Star Trek boldly asks, what does a story look like that begins on the other side of this dramatic arc?

Some of the best Trek, cheats this a bit by backtracking into conflict in order to showcase the transcendence itself, rather than purely focusing on a vision of what follows. Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, a particular favorite of mine, is an excellent example of this.

In that film, director Nicholas Meyer cast Kirk himself as the character that must transcend his own prejudice and hatred. This thematic choice was met with protest from both William Shatner and Gene Rodenberry; Shatner objecting to Kirk exhibiting this kind of naked prejudice, and Gene objecting to the very presence of prejudice in a Star Trek film. Again, Gene’s vision begins after humanity has transcended prejudice, greed, hunger, war, etc.

The new film, Beyond, presents a dualistic narrative pitting “unity” against “struggle.” Three years into their Five Year Mission, an exhausted crew is confronted by a ruthless adversary, who pointedly argues that strength only comes through struggle, that unity makes the Federation weak. And of course, this adversary, Krall, is hell bent on destroying the Federation to prove his point. Much later in the film the crew uncovers that Krall is one of our own, a soldier who cannot let go of the long fought wars preceding the Federation’s formation.

There are a number of similarities between this new film and Star Trek VI. The adversary in STVI also turns out to be one of our own, an entire cabal of politicians and generals in fact, who prefer their familiarity with war to their uncertainty of peace. But STVI goes deeper to reveal the enemy within – Kirk’s prejudice, and how it blinds him to the true motivations behind the unfolding events.

The adversary in Beyond is certainly not the first Star Trek villain to be presented as beyond the reach of reconciliation, but given this film’s emphasis on the distinction between “unity” and “struggle,” it seems odd that the Federation crew would seek to resolve the conflict through more struggle. An argument could be made that it is the “unity” of the crew that allows them to prevail in this conflict, but ultimately it is Kirk that confronts this too far gone enemy in a knock down drag out fist fight. Again, not particularly uncharacteristic for Kirk, but also not particularly indicative of United Federation ideals either.

Is the Federation, and Star Trek in general, simply a vision of unity in the face of adversity, against a common foe? What about Gene’s vision of unity for the sake of the common good?

Krall’s backstory provides an opportunity for this “united” Federation to show what it really takes to make peace, to take responsibility for the chaos our wars create. We train our soldiers to be killers, to set their humanity aside, symbolically shown through Krall’s monstrous transformation. How do we bring them back into the fold once the war has ended? Is there really no possibility for resolution or reconciliation here? Is the only solution to destroy the monster we have created in order to save ourselves? Is there honor in this? Is this the message of Star Trek Beyond?

While I found the dualistic narrative presented in beyond lacking, it does feel strangely appropriate for our time. People around the world are refusing to fall into line with the fear based neoliberal narratives used to control them. Here in the States, Bernie Sanders ran on the slogan “A Future to Believe In.” Hillary Clinton went with the perennially popular “Fighting for us.” Now we are all supposed to be “Stronger Together.” Stronger than what? Stronger than who? In order to do what? Do we really need a common enemy to define our unity? Perhaps we should start thinking about how we might address the needs of the people beyond the conflict narrative, from the other side of that dramatic arc.

As Kirk says in STVI – “People can be very frightened of change.”



Gets me every time.
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Want MORE Trek? Check out our latest Missing Point video!

Related posts on The Missing Point:
CONFLICT NARRATIVES AND THEIR POWER TO INFLUENCE
Are we courageous enough to face the why?
WHY ARE WE SO SURPRISED?
AFTER THE MARCH

PURPLE? YEAH, NOT SO MUCH.

Politics, Power and Purple – twelve minutes of Missing Point madness wrapped around a quote from Mr. Spock and a cool little chart from Tony Brasunas.



Dedicated to Leonard Nimoy, LLAP–IDIC!

WHY ARE WE SO SURPRISED?

I’m working on a Missing Point video currently, a bit of an experiment, something that I have been hammering away at for more than a month now. But the events of the past month have got me feeling like we’re on a downward spiral to who knows where. Orlando. Istanbul. Dhaka. Baghdad. Baton Rouge. Falcon Heights. Dallas... So many tragic stories. So many questionable narratives. One thing I am not hearing: we train people to kill.

We reinforce these lessons with honor, nobility, and heroism narratives, not to mention the promise of monetary reward for a job well done. When these individuals do what they have been trained to do, we hold them individually responsible for their actions (or not responsible at all), scrambling to define what dark motivations they may have been harboring all along. Politicians tell us we need to make sure that guns don’t get into the wrong hands. Clearly it is much more than this.

Teaching that killing is not only acceptable, but necessary; empowering the powerless with a sense of purpose that revolves around the domination and control of others, with the power to decide who lives and who dies, is it really surprising that this course of action leads to undesirable outcomes?

Several years back I saw a film called Jarhead. It got me thinking about what happens when we take young men searching for a sense of purpose, and provide them with a task to perform to establish a sense of self/self worth. If killing, and doing a good job of it, is at the core of this sense of self/self worth, what happens when they come home? When we train young men (and women) to expect conflict and resolve it through force, and reward them for this, why does it surprise us when this pattern becomes the norm?
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Related posts on The Missing Point:
Are we courageous enough to face the why?
PAYING FOR WAR
AFTER THE MARCH

“SORRY” IS NOT DEMOCRACY

I have read multiple articles reporting on the purge of 126,000 Brooklyn Democratic voters, but I have yet to see anything that explains how this specifically impacted the vote in Brooklyn. Brigid Bergin quotes Mayor Bill de Blasio in her WNYC article,

“This number surprises me,” said de Blasio, “I admit that Brooklyn has had a lot of transient population – that’s obvious. Lot of people moving in, lot of people moving out. That might account for some of it. But I'm confused since so many people have moved in, that the number would move that much in the negative direction.”

The New York Daily News writes,

Of 62 counties statewide, 61 saw an increase in total voter enrollment since November — including Hamilton County, the smallest in the state. And then there was Brooklyn — the state’s single most populous county. The borough lost an off-the-charts 8% of its active voters (102,717) and 6.5% of its total voters over that brief period.

A statement released from the Mayors office on primary day begins “It has been reported to us from voters and voting rights monitors that the voting lists in Brooklyn contain numerous errors, including the purging of entire buildings and blocks of voters from the voting lists.” It ends with the line, “The perception that numerous voters may have been disenfranchised undermines the integrity of the entire electoral process and must be fixed.”

NYC Comptroller Scott Stringer sent a letter to Michael J. Ryan, Executive Director of the New York City Board of Elections, expressing his “deep concern over widespread reports of poll site problems and irregularities as New Yorkers headed to the polls on Primary Day, ranging from faulty ballot scanners and polling locations that opened late (or not at all) to poorly staffed polling sites and voters whose registrations were seemingly purged from the rolls without any effective notification.”

The voter hotline set up by the NYS Attorney General’s office received more than 1000 complaints on primary day, compared to 150 on the day of the 2012 general election. AG Eric Schneiderman also issued a statement concerning voting irregularities, and will be launching an investigation. 

And the cherry on top? NYC Board of Elections sent out a registration confirmation notice to some 60,000 newly registered voters with an incorrect September primary date. Then they sent out postcards with the corrected September 13th date, but didn’t bother to mention the April 19th presidential primary. William Neuman at the New York Times writes,

Officials initially played down the contretemps. But on April 5, Mr. Schneiderman sent a letter to Michael J. Ryan, the election board’s executive director, saying that the mix-up “may have misled eligible voters and could prevent their participation” in the primary. He asked for “immediate corrective actions.”

Ultimately, this isn’t really about who won or lost for me. As much as I might have liked to see Bernie continue his winning streak in New York, I am much more concerned with the disturbing pattern of voter suppression that seems to grow more acceptable with each passing caucus/primary. The New York Post is suggesting a single individual is being “scapegoated” for the Brooklyn voter purge. Certainly not the first time I have seen voter disenfranchisement disappeared through a campaign of distraction.

My partner and I were excited to finally have the opportunity to vote for Bernie Sanders. Over the weekend we had rallied and marched in Manhattan with thousands of other New Yorkers who were feeling the bern. Our favorite sign of the day simply read: “FINALLY A REASON TO VOTE.”

On election day, I was frankly amazed how light turnout seemed at my Brooklyn polling place. The calm trickle of voters stood in stark contrast to the tens of thousands of cheering Bernie supporters we had witnessed at multiple NYC rallies over the last weeks. We knew that a Sanders win in New York was all about turnout. We knew there was a surge of new voter registrations across the state, my partner just one of the many volunteers registering new voters for weeks prior to the March 25th deadline.

We knew that a huge number of Sanders supporters would not be able to vote for him, because they were not registered Democrats. Election Justice USA filed a lawsuit on Monday asking for an emergency declaratory judgment that would make Tuesday’s primary open, allowing independents (some 27% of New Yorkers) to vote in the primary. They pressed the lawsuit as a remedy for a group of New Yorkers whose saw their party affiliations mysteriously switched and would therefore not be able to vote for the candidate of their choice in the primary.

The morning of the vote I spent some time consoling folks online who felt they had been forced into voting for Clinton delegates. For example, our ballot listed 7 Clinton delegates and only 6 for Sanders, instructing us to “vote for any 7.” Our poll worker told us we could vote for less than 7 if we wanted, but he didn’t really know why that was the case. My understanding is that this is a preference vote: delegates go to convention only if the candidate they are pledged to gets a large enough percentage of the vote to send them. So, while voting for a Clinton delegate without voting for Clinton may increase the likelihood of that particular delegate going in place of another Clinton delegate, it doesn’t cause that delegate to go in place of a Sanders delegate. Make sense? That’s ok, it’s not supposed to.

I mention this to demonstrate how opaque the voting process actually is in New York. There are only two things on this ballot to vote for, yet one would be hard pressed to find folks who can explain how the delegate vote actually works. What is the minimum percentage of the vote your candidate needed to receive any delegates at all? Do they need that percentage statewide, or just in your district? If your candidate gets 100% of the vote in your district do they get all their district delegates regardless of their percentage of the vote statewide? Shouldn’t we know all this before going to the polls? 

Even before I went to vote, I had already heard Mayor de Blasio and Comptroller Stringer “demanding” answers from the New York Board of Elections. I couldn’t help but think of Arizona – again.

Maricopa County – the largest in Arizona, with over 60% of the state’s population. The largest county in the United States to contain a capital city (Phoenix). The fourth most populous county in the United States: Los Angeles County, Cook (Chicago) County, Harris (Houston) County, Maricopa. For comparison: Kings (Brooklyn) County, the most populous in New York State, comes in eighth.

Maricopa County is home to the 5th largest Hispanic/Latino population in the United States, approximately 1,250,000 people (in a state of 8 million). By comparison, the Bronx (County, the only majority Hispanic/Latino borough in New York City) has a Hispanic/Latino population of approximately 750,000 (in a city of 8 million, in a state of 19 million).

In 2008 there were 400 polling places in Maricopa County.
In 2012 there were 200.
On March 22, 2016 (primary day) – there were 60.

In other counties there was, on average, one polling place for every 2,500 voters.
In Maricopa there was, on average, one polling place for every 21,000 voters.

As if this isn’t bad enough, within Maricopa itself, the breakdown appears even more extreme. In a letter requesting a U.S. Department of Justice Investigation Into Disparate Distribution of Polling Locations in Maricopa County, Phoenix Mayor Greg Stanton writes,

For example, in Phoenix, a majority-minority city, County officials allocated one polling location for every 108,000 residents. The ratios were far more favorable in predominantly Anglo communities: In Cave Creek/Carefree, there was one polling location for 8,500 residents; in Paradise Valley, one for 13,000 residents; in Fountain Hills, one for 22,500 residents; and in Peoria, one for every 54,000 residents.

The limited number of polling places, resulted in 5 hour lines. Ari Berman at The Nation writes,

Previously, Maricopa County would have needed to receive federal approval for reducing the number of polling sites, because Arizona was one of 16 states where jurisdictions with a long history of discrimination had to submit their voting changes under Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act. This type of change would very likely have been blocked since minorities make up 40 percent of Maricopa County’s population and reducing the number of polling places would have left minority voters worse off.

Republican Governor Ducey issued a statement calling the long lines “unacceptable,” but then, Ducey did sign that budget cutting election funding. Similar to the New York statements, Ducey goes on to say, “Our election officials must evaluate what went wrong and how they make sure it doesn’t happen again.”

Maricopa County Recorder Helen Purcell apologized (repeatedly) to the voters and took full responsibility for her error. But as it turns out, “sorry” is not democracy, so no one that lost their vote will be getting it back.

On April 14th the DNC released a statement concerning a joint lawsuit over voter disenfranchisement and voting irregularities in Arizona,

The Democratic National Committee and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee are filing a joint lawsuit in the United States District Court of Arizona on Friday on behalf of voters affected by voting irregularities resulting from the actions of state officials. The suit is a response to decisions that caused extremely long lines and needlessly disenfranchised voters, especially minority voters, during the state’s March 22nd presidential primary election, and includes affected voters, Former Chairman and First President of the Navajo Nation Peterson Zah, the Arizona Democratic Party, and the Ann Kirkpatrick for Senate campaign as plaintiffs.

The Clinton and Sanders campaigns joined the lawsuit after it was filed on the 15th. Bernie’s lawyer, Chris Sautter, was on the ground in Arizona immediately following the voting “fiasco.” According to the Washington Post, Arizona will be the fifth state that Marc Elias, Clinton campaign general counsel, has sued.

Wow – Democrats are all over this shit. Or are they? All but the Arizona lawsuit, were filed before this primary cycle. These lawsuits seek to “fix” problems in the future, not to make sure that every voter gets to vote and every vote is counted now. While our elected officials express their “deep concern” over “voting irregularities,” and the DNC positions itself as fighting the good fight against Republican voter suppression, the votes lost in this primary cycle go uncounted.

And this brings me back to what I mentioned earlier – the normalization of disenfranchisement. I’ve written frequently about the patriarchal (matriarchal), defensive posturing of the Democratic Party; protecting all of us from Republican efforts to strip us of our rights. Throughout this election cycle, we have seen two dramatically different outlooks. While the Clinton camp adheres to this pragmatic protectionist ideology, a hallmark of the Obama administration (and DNC election strategy), the Sanders campaign looks forward to what we can accomplish when we come together for the common good. When the DNC goes after Republican voter suppression, are we expecting outcomes that will insure free and fair elections, or is this just another “fighting for us” talking point? Is the public “outrage” of the Clinton endorsers I cited earlier – the NYC Mayor, the NYC Comptroller, the NYS Attorney General, and even the Mayor of Phoenix – meant to satiate our thirst for justice?

Thank goodness someone is doing something. Be prepared.


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Related articles/updates:
BOE boss finally apologizes for 126,000 vanished voters – Rich Calder
Over 120,000 NYers Were Forced To Vote Via Affidavit Ballots In Last Week’s Primary – Nathan Tempey

Get involved:
Election Justice USA
Common Cause

BREAK THEM UP

Over the last few weeks the mainstream media (MSM) has had a field day recontextualizing a few cherry picked moments from a lengthy interview with Bernie Sanders conducted by the New York Daily News Editorial Board. MSM points to the interview as validation of their relentless months long campaign to smear Sanders as an imposter who can’t back up his political rhetoric with policy specifics. As Hillary Clinton expresses her heartfelt concern for (chastises) young people that “don’t do their own research,” the MSM is banking on their sound bite consumers not having the time, nor the inclination, to actually read (or even listen to) the damn thing all the way through. Conflict narratives always work best when their given “truth” is untraceable...

The Missing Point is, in part, a conscious response to 24-hour news cycle sound bites and 140 character reductive reasoning. In a culture that seeks to keep us trapped inside the vacuum of vicarious second hand “experience,” taking the time to actually do it yourself can be an act of rebellion. So I listened to the damn thing – all the way through. Such a rebel.

But I get it – too busy, maybe later, how’s your schedule looking next month? My last post was a two cuppa coffee marathon, so I’m gonna keep this one brief, and just call attention to one particularly ironic moment in the interview. You may have heard a line or two of it already in the MSM:

Daily News: Okay. So, um, you would then leave it to JPMorgan Chase or the others to figure out how to break, it, themselves up? I’m not quite...

Sanders: What you’ve determined is that if a bank is too big to fail, it is too big to exist. And then you have the secretary of treasury and some people who know a lot about this, making that determination. And if the determination is that Goldman Sachs or JPMorgan Chase is too big to fail, yes, they will be broken up.

Daily News: Okay. Um, you saw, I guess, what happened with Metropolitan Life. There was an attempt to, um, bring them under the financial regulatory scheme, and the court said no. And what does that presage for your program?

Sanders: It’s something I have not studied, honestly, the legal implications of that.

It’s that last line the MSM jumped on as proof that Sanders hasn’t put in the time to research what he is talking about. But what the hell is the interviewer talking about?

Well, I did some research, and here’s the basics: MetLife is branded as “too big to fail” (Systemically Important Financial Institution or SIFI) under Dodd–Frank, the first “nonbank” (yes, that is a word) to be categorized as such. MetLife sells off its banking assets in order to give the appearance that they are not a potential threat to the economy (look ma – no bank!). MetLife sues the Financial Stability Oversight Council (set up under Dodd–Frank specifically to do the kind of “determination” that Bernie references in the above quote) in order to remove the “too big to fail” label and WINS the case. This didn’t happen last year, or even last month – it was literally last week! The Daily News Editorial Board brings it up in the interview just days later and Bernie says he doesn’t know the legal implications of that. GOTCHA! Told ya so :b

So what is the take away? Is it that Bernie doesn’t know what he is talking about? Or is it that Dodd–Frank isn’t getting the job done, as Hillary has been claiming it will in every single debate? This is exactly why Bernie has consistently said we need a modern Glass–Steagall.

The interviewer is using the court decision as an example of how the banks will push back against anyone who tries to break them up, but SO WHAT? Does that mean we’re supposed to back down and just leave the fate of the world economy in their grabbing hands? The financial institution in question isn’t even a “bank,” which may have given them just enough legal wiggle room to escape being labeled “too big to fail.” Probably not a winning strategy for Goldman Sachs or JPMorgan Chase.

The New York primary is tomorrow – BREAK THEM UP.

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Oh yeah, there’s also this from last week. And Happy Birthday Mom!

WHOSE POLITICAL REVOLUTION IS IT? (SPEAKING THEIR LANGUAGE PART II)

Today is the 13th anniversary of the start of the Iraq War – will there be a protest?

Will we see any mention of this in the media? The anniversary? The protest? Perhaps a temporary news cycle spike of attention to the issues of war and peace on the campaign trail?

In my last Speaking Their Language post I dove into the “tax and spend liberal” conflict narrative and how it is employed by both Republicans against Democrats and Democrats against other Democrats. When I come up for air I ask the question whose taxes are they anyway? Who gets to decide how we are going to spend them, and who is going to get paid?

I actually started writing Part I prior to Count Every Vote, so all three pieces are related. It has been an odd couple of months politically. Within such a deluge of doublespeak, it can be challenging to keep track of who said what, or even to decipher what the hell was actually said. Language once easily tracked back to a particular political perspective, is ever more fluid; blurring boundaries, demanding deference. It’s the filmic dream within a dream sequence, where you wake up only to find that you are still asleep.

The other day I read this on Reuters:

“LaVoy was not ‘charging’ anyone. He appears to have been shot in the back, with his hands in the air,” the family of the Arizona rancher said in a statement through their attorney.

And this in the Washington Post:

Michele Fiore, a Republican assemblywoman in Nevada who is close to the occupiers, though, tweeted that Finicum was “murdered with his hands up.”

Robert “LaVoy” Finicum is, or rather was, the de facto spokesman for the militiamen occupying the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge. He was killed on January 26th.

The initial media frenzy surrounding this latest flare up of the so called Sagebrush Rebellion saw armed militiamen widely referred to as simply “occupiers.” Dena Takruri produced several informative videos questioning double standards in response to the “protest.” Some questioned why men who had participated in an “armed takeover of a federal building” were not being called “terrorists”?

Janell Ross brings up some interesting points regarding the specificity of language used in conjunction with these events (or lack thereof) in her article for The Washington Post blog The Fix, but I find myself coming at this from a slightly different angle. Take this quote from her interview on Democracy Now:

And the fact that these occupiers have come to this space, they certainly have a right to assemble, they have a right to protest—this is the United States, that is certainly true. But to occupy a building is perhaps a different thing. It is not exactly the same as a protest.

Certainly, not all occupations are protests, and not all protests are occupations. The armed occupation of Iraq for instance, clearly not a protest. But while I can appreciate the passionate pursuit of specificity, I think we must take care not to demand an equivalency of terms that cedes control of the larger narrative. For example, how would the narrative surrounding the 2013 Dream Defenders occupation of the Florida State Capital be affected if we were to allow “occupation” to be defined as “not exactly the same as a protest”? How about the narrative concerning the 2011 occupation of the Wisconsin State Capital? The occupation of Liberty Square (Wall Street)? The occupation of Hillary Clinton’s NYC Senate office the day before her Iraq War vote? Five students occupied her office for 9 hours while she delivered her speech, “Therefore, on no account should dissent be discouraged or disparaged. It is central to our freedom and to our progress, for on more than one occasion, history has proven our great dissenters to be right.”

Photo by Fred Askew

Some things to consider from a slightly different angle. Is trespass the same as terrorism? Can the militiamen be called terrorists in the absence of actual violence? Does property damage count as violence? Does it make a difference if that property is private or public? Is “armed takeover of a federal building” an accurate description when the Refuge headquarters was, in fact, empty at the time of the “takeover”?

It’s not rocket science – those who wish to suppress dissent benefit from our acceptance of a narrative that limits protest to marching and chanting (with a permit of course), that delegitimizes any action beyond that narrow definition, that characterizes civil disobedience and direct action as inherently violent. When that doesn’t work, they use the “threat” of violence to justify a forceful response. As I have pointed out in multiple earlier posts, those who struggle against oppression must be cast as a malevolent force in order to make a defensive response seem reasonable. If they can be successfully cast as a threat, then their oppression appears warranted. If we accept this justification, in a rush to judgement, or out of some desire to see a more uniform response to address a double standard, then who gets to define what constitutes that “threat” going forward?

At the same time I’d just like to say, Chris, that you know, the answer isn’t to necessarily treat these white protesters the way that black protesters have been treated. The answer quite frankly is just the reverse. To say hey, if we don’t need the National Guard to deal with armed white men, maybe we don’t need the National Guard to deal with unarmed black men.

Former NAACP president Ben Jealous makes a good point here. If we demand that these armed “occupiers” be met with a pre-emptively violent response, does this set precedent for some sort of perverse equality of oppression, some blanket validation for the equal use of force elsewhere? Who benefits from this narrative?

Taking this a step further, who gets to define the demonstration (protest) narrative, its objectives, etc.? The authorities charged with keeping the “protest” under control? The media? Politicians and pundits that were not even in attendance? Whose revolution/rebellion is it anyway?

On that same show Chris Hayes asked then presidential candidate Rick Santorum about the “standoff in Oregon.” I imagine many of my readers probably don’t give a rat’s ass what Santorum thinks, but the way that Occupy Wall Street gets pulled into the conversation is pretty telling...

CH: Let me just sort of ask you about this finally about this standoff in Oregon.

RS: Yeah

CH: Which it feels weird to even call a stand off because there’s only one side to the standoff. There’s these folks occupying the sanctuary, there’s not like…

RS: Yeah and I mean people are talking about violence, I mean there’s no violence. Nobody’s threatening any violence. Everyone’s basically…

CH: Well they’re all armed right?

RS: Well…

CH: I mean it’s a little different. Look I mean I’ve watched protestors sit in Rahm Emanuel’s office in Chicago right? It would have been real different if they were all packin’. I mean let’s be honest.

RS: Well you had the Occupy Wall Street people and you had no idea what the heck was going on in those places. So…

CH: Well they weren’t – yeah, but you knew that they weren’t…

RS: You don’t know, you don’t know what was going on there…

CH: But it would have been very different if they all had long guns on them

RS: Well…

CH: If they were saying we’re here armed.

RS: Yeah, but, but the point is no one is threatening – if – just because they have those guns doesn’t mean there threatening to do something with those guns.

CH: But do you support what they’re doing?

RS: I support the cause. I mean – what the cause is that the Federal Government is through eminent domain and regulation basically robbing these people of their livelihood. Yeah I mean this is a huge issue in the West. It’s not just an issue in the West, it was an issue in Pennsylvania. This is a huge problem of government overreach and I think at some point people are just saying you know hey (ay?) if you guys aren’t going to pay attention to us we’re going to do something to make you pay attention. Now, do I support the fact that people are sitting there with guns? I…I.. You know I’d probably feel a little bit more comfortable if they didn’t have guns. And I don’t think frankly that they need to have guns, but the bottom line is they have every right to protest this. (CH: Sure, yeah. Well, to protest of course yeah) They have every right just like the Occupy Wall Street people. I didn’t agree with everything they wanted to do, but I agreed with their right to protest. And…

CH: Well there was… we should just make the distinction right? There was a protest, and then there was this occupation. I mean there were folks that did the protesting thing, and that’s the sort of majority, and then there’s this small group of people that are actually occupying… a bird sanctuary. (hahaha)

RS: Well… and the same thing… well…they were occupying… you know… what… Bryant Park… whatever the park was here…

CH: Zucotti Park, Yeah…right.

RS: Yeah whatever the park was here… they occupied and they did so for a long time and the government did what I think the government should do here – practice restraint.

Photo by Louise Macabitas

I think a major part of my inspiration for this post comes from repeatedly hearing Hillary Clinton attack Bernie Sanders with what sound like Republican talking points. But it is more than that – it is the disinformation that she vociferously presents and that is subsequently parroted by an acquiescent media. As I mentioned earlier, it can be hard to even keep up – another deceptive new talking point revealed with every debate. Sanders campaign manager Jeff Weaver released a statement addressing some of these falsehoods a while back.

Clinton delivered this carefully crafted attack during the Flint, Michigan debate:

Well — well, I’ll tell you something else that Senator Sanders was against. He was against the auto bailout. In January of 2009, President-Elect Obama asked everybody in the Congress to vote for the bailout.

The money was there, and had to be released in order to save the American auto industry and four million jobs, and to begin the restructuring. We had the best year that the auto industry has had in a long time. I voted to save the auto industry.

He voted against the money that ended up saving the auto industry. I think that is a pretty big difference.

This kind of language is typical of Clinton’s attacks. Qualifying statements mixed in with half-truths, dependent on a lack of specific information on the part of the audience. She launched a similar attack during the New Hampshire debate concerning the Commodity Futures Modernization Act. Let’s see if we can decipher the truth:

1. Bernie was not against the auto bailout.

2. Bernie Sanders voted against Bush’s $700 Billion Wall Street bailout (TARP) in October 2008. Clinton voted for it despite widespread opposition and protest across the country: “you broke it, you bought it – the bailout is bullshit.” Bush’s Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, former Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Goldman Sachs, would oversee the distribution of the TARP funds.

3. Sanders supported and voted for a separate $14 Billion auto industry bailout bill in December 2008. Clinton also voted for this bill. The bill failed due to Republican opposition.

4. In January 2009 Sanders voted against the second disbursement of Bush’s TARP funds. This is the vote that Clinton is referencing when she says “In January of 2009, President-Elect Obama asked everybody in the Congress to vote for the bailout.” This was not specifically an auto bailout vote, but the release of the second half of the original $700 Billion Wall Street bailout. He released this statement after the vote passed:

Today I voted to withhold more funding from the Troubled Asset Relief Program.  I have deep respect for President-elect Obama and I very much appreciate the difficult job he has in trying to remedy the economic damage done by the Bush administration’s reckless policies.

Nonetheless, I have strong reservations about continuing this bailout without strong taxpayer protections written into law. I also object to using middle-class taxpayer money to bail out the exact same financial institutions whose greed and recklessness led to the greatest financial crisis since the Great Depression. 

Furthermore, we need a major investigation into how this financial crisis occurred and who exactly was responsible.

5. In lieu of the passage of an actual auto bailout bill, $80 Billion in TARP funds was ultimately used to provide bridge loans and capital injections to the auto industry. There was no congressional vote to approve this specific use of the TARP funds.

Political revolution isn’t about deference to authority. It’s not about desperately handing over the people’s power to the “smartest guys in the room” so that they can decide how best to save us from a crisis they themselves have engineered.

It’s a strange kind of leadership that retrospectively validates delivering our treasure (our taxes, our labor, our resources, our commons) into grabbing hands by citing how much worse off we would be if some small part of that treasure had not been generously given back to us. Reagan’s “smartest guys” called that trickle-down economics. I don’t know what Hillary calls it but the proper term is neo-liberalism, and the Clintons are big fans.

When Clinton attempts to justify her Wall Street war chest by pointing out that “President Obama took more money from Wall Street in the 2008 campaign than anybody ever had,” citing his record of “taking on Wall Street” and “getting results,” she gets applause. But the point falls flat. Three of the four largest financial institutions are 80% bigger today than they were before we bailed them out, and there has not been one single arrest (or prosecution) of any senior Wall Street executive in connection with the events leading up to the 2008 financial crisis. Obama’s Attorney General Eric Holder has returned to corporate defense law firm Covington & Burling, that counts among its clients Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo and Citigroup.

“Break them up.”

Clinton claims that she is a “progressive that gets things done.” In 1984, Orwell gives us the concept of doublethink, where two contradictory ideas are accepted as true simultaneously. At face value it sounds like she could be touting her progressive policy accomplishments (whatever those may actually be), but underneath, the statement seems to be a coldly calculated jab at progressive policy makers who can’t get things done. It presents progressivism as ineffectual with the exception of the specific manner in which she claims to practice it. Her statement serves to give her ownership of the terminology while simultaneously neutralizing its actual meaning. Her claim on the term during the debate seems based on her ability to cite other “progressive” legislators who have taken corporate cash/Wall Street money.

I was looking around for my foam brick when Clinton brought up Paul Wellstone in this context. I was yearning for a Lloyd Bentsen moment via Bernie Sanders: Secretary, I served with Paul Wellstone. I knew Paul Wellstone. Paul Wellstone was a friend of mine. Secretary, you’re no Paul Wellstone.

Speaking of Wall Street money (and doublespeak), during the New Hampshire Town Hall Clinton said “I’m proud to have 90% of my donations from small donors and 60%, the highest ever, from women, which I’m really, really glad about.” As a percentage of contributors this 90% number appears accurate, but as a percentage of money raised the small donor number is actually only 24%. Taken one way, likely the way it was intended, it sounds like Clinton has a small donor base that rivals the Sanders campaign. But in actuality the 90% is simply a mirror of income inequality in the United States: 90% of donors giving small donations that add up to less than a quarter of her total money raised. More than three quarters of her total coming from 10% of her donors.

For comparison, the Federal Election Commission shows small donations to the Sanders campaign for the same period made up 85% of total money raised.

Even the language regarding delegates is doublespeak. Pledged vs. unpledged delegates. “Pledged” delegates are awarded proportional to the vote. Superdelegates are classified by definition as “unpledged,” but it would appear that a whole lot of these have already pledged to support Clinton. Of course, unlike the proportional pledged delegates, superdelegates can change their affiliation at any time. Despite this flexibility, these pledged unpledged superdelegates are being added into the totals we see in media coverage, as if they have actually been awarded through the election process. For example, Bernie Sanders won New Hampshire 60% to 38%, and the proportional pledged delegate split was 15 to 9 respectively. Clinton had 6 New Hampshire “unpledged” superdelegates (Sanders had 0), so the delegate totals were reported as 15 to 15. So who won the state? Was it a tie?

One person, one vote.

When I saw the CNN video of the protestors that shut down the Trump rally in Chicago, my first thought was how the incident could be spun to fit into a Chicago 1968/72 George McGovern narrative. The protestors are out of control – those peace loving hippies are actually violent communist radicals! As I mentioned earlier, I’ve seen many protests derailed and delegitimized through this kind of manipulation. I was concerned about the role of infiltrators and instigators. I thought briefly about who stood to gain from provoking a conflict – who would look more reasonable, who would look more presidential, who would play the victim and “need to defend themselves.” But when I looked more closely at the video, the “protestors” didn’t look like the usual provocateurs I have seen deployed at other “protests” in the past. They looked, strangely, like – the people. Imagine that.

Photo by Tannen Maury

Back in January, during the South Carolina debate, 23 year old vlogger Connor Franta asked “how are all of you planning on engaging us (young voters) further in this election?” Clinton (the only candidate allowed to answer his question) brought up making college affordable, helping people pay off student debt, and creating more good jobs. All solid campaign talking points, but utterly predictable. She then moved into (just as predictable) defending our rights, saying “turning over our White House to the Republicans would be bad for everybody especially young people.”

Here was a young man asking a specific question about political engagement and being given an answer that basically amounted to, vote for me (us) or else (you risk losing everything). Growing up with supportive parents, that taught me to see my young self as an equal to the adults around me, has allowed me to recognize and value young voices, young people, in a way that many in our hierarchical society do not. Engagement is more than just “voting,” it is about being part of the process all the way through. It is about mutual respect and empowerment. It is about creating space for everyone to speak for themselves rather than forcing them to choose among sanctioned choices.

I think Bernie gets this. The political revolution he speaks of, and the decentralized organizing model his campaign is using are a demonstration of these ideas. One that over time, with each new person that gets involved, gradually replaces a top down vision of what we don’t want with a self actualized vision of what we do.

I don’t think the so called “enthusiasm gap” in the Clinton campaign is really about young voters. It is more likely a systemic organizing problem, one that I have seen countless times before. A kind of organized demobilization. Asking (or threatening) people to support something that they are not passionate about already, is a non-starter. Engaging people where they are is essential, but this only works if you genuinely care where they (we) are, and what matters to them (us). And ultimately, you have to be willing to prioritize caring for one another, over controlling one another. Savior politics just will not cut it anymore. “They don’t have to be for me, I’m going to be for them,” isn’t a dialogue, and there’s no democracy without dialogue.  

The media is spending a helluva lot of time building fear, pushing us to feel that events are beyond our control. Fear of a Trump presidency. Fear of a political revolution. There is a lot of hand-wringing and shoulder shrugging. Who will save us from ourselves? The air is thick with inevitability. So, just for a moment – S T O P.

Take a breath. In... and Out...

Remember. You are living in a democracy. This “political revolution,” it’s not just yours – it’s YOU. You, in solidarity with all your sisters and brothers, can and will make this all happen. The fear is meant to immobilize you, to restrain you, to distract you. Don’t let it. Move past it. The doublespeak is meant to confuse you, to mislead you, to discourage you. Don’t let it. Move past it. You know the score. You’re no spring chicken. The establishment (or are they the anti-establishment? whatever they call themselves) is trying its damnedest to provoke a fight, because that is what they do best, and because that is all they got. It’s up to you, to us, to all of us, to decide how we want to move forward.

I’ll end with this bit from an earlier post appropriately called SHUT IT DOWN:

You decide to make some vegetable soup. The recipe calls for Thyme, but all you have on hand is Oregano. You could always switch the labels on your spice bottles. Of course renaming your spices will not change the flavor of your soup. But then sometimes soup is like that - made out of whatever is on hand. Now, if you switch the label every time you need another spice, you’re just going to end up with a big pot of Oregano Soup. Not a particularly desirable outcome unless you’re in the business of selling Oregano. Politics is like that. Lots of politicians in the business of selling Oregano (or weapons, or oil, or debt, or indentured servitude, or some other damn thing), constantly switching the labels to make it more palatable to the public, but no matter what you call it - Oregano is always Oregano. This political switching of labels isn’t just about not having the right spice, it’s about making sure that no one uses any other spice. That’s what we used to call a monopoly, and we used to have anti-trust laws that guarded against it. Switching labels is also great strategy for keeping constituents off balance and dependent on “knowledgable” leadership. After all, how can you hope to make your own soup when you can’t tell one spice from another? With all this label switching can you tell Republican Soup from Democrat Soup? With so many of the same ingredients can you taste the difference between Neo-Liberal and Neo-Conservative Soup? Switching labels ultimately makes the selection process meaningless. You never know what you are going to get in that bottle. More importantly, it makes dialogue concerning the process equally meaningless by removing any common point of reference. This obfuscation is the real objective 1% is after, a complete disruption of your ability to make any political decision for yourself. He’s not just looking to discourage you from choosing what kind of soup you want (voting), but looking to make it impossible for you to write your own recipes - grow your own spices - make your own soup.

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Related articles:
The Six Questions Missing From the 2016 Election Debates – Andrew J. Bacevich
These Quakers Are Asking Tougher Questions Than Many in the Press – Lee Fang
Goldman Sachs chief: Sanders’s criticism is “dangerous” – Peter Schroeder
The End of the Establishment? – Robert Reich
The Problem With Hillary, Chez, Is I Don't Vote Republican – Russ Belville
The Nation is Not Divided and Still Prefers Bernie Sanders – Gregory Harms