Necessary Splits

 Should things hold as they are now, then the following separations are necessary.

First, should Trump retain control of the Republican Party after Biden is inaugurated, then regular Republicans must leave the party.  They must leave the Republican Party in the hands of the Trumpublicans and form their own party.

Why must they leave? It is for the sake of integrity. Under Trump and the Trumpublicans, reality has been under constant assault. And what the Trumpublicans consider to be real today depends on what serves the needs of the President. This assault on reality started early during Trump Administration with the resorting to 'alternative facts' by a Trump spokesperson. It has continued throughout his Administration down to what is true about the Covid-19 virus and the election. 

The attack on reality has been aided by cults. By cult, I am referring to any pro-Trump group that has its members believing that the only news sources they can go to are those that support Trump. Certainly Trump has his own cult. But there seems to be a multitude of Trump supporting religiously conservative Christian groups that operate as cults as well. As a result, we have a number of Trumpublicans, both rank-and-file members as well as office holders, who cannot accept any reality that does not favor Trump in some way shape or form. Such people easily and passionately latch onto conspiracy theories and false individual claims about a number of subjects especially the election.

Should Trump retain control over the Republican Party after Biden becomes President, Republicans with integrity must leave their party and form their own political party so that their conservatism can be heard by the public and be represented in government with integrity. I say that not as a fan of political conservatism, but as someone who wants people who hold to political conservatism to be well represented in government.

On the flip side, Biden's nomination to be the Democratic Party's Presidential candidate should tell the progressives of that Party that the Democratic Party establishment is far more interested in the votes provided by progressives than their ideas.

Like the Republican Party, the Democratic Party is controlled by the wealth of business interests, especially those of Wall Street. That reality should have become clear by now since Clinton was President with his repeal of Glass-Steagall and promotion of NAFTA. That should have been clear by now by Obama's refusal to criminally prosecute the Wall Street execs whose fraud significantly contributed to the economic collapse of 2008 and his attempt to fast track the TPP. And that should have been clear by the Democratic Party's treatment of Bernie Sanders's attempts to earn the Party's Presidential nominee.

Progressives in the Democratic Party cannot hope to fight the influence that money has over the Democratic Party. While progressives could easily protest and oppose Trump's appointments of corporate lobbyists and executives to important government positions, they should also be significantly riled by Biden's corporate appointments. After all, wasn't it credibly reported that Biden told Wall Street supporters that 'nothing would change' should he be elected?

Certainly there will be some cosmetic changes in policies with the Biden Presidency. And we will be relieved from Trump's attempts at strongman rule over the nation once Biden is inaugurated. But what won't change is the general direction of the nation under a Biden Presidency. That general direction's destination is that of furthering corporate rule over the nation. With a Biden Presidency, that general direction will undergo a major facelift. The new facade will be more appealing, more attractive to look at. But the direction will not be any different than that of direction pursued by President Trump.

Again, should Trump retain control of the Republican Party, we need splits in both parties. We need exoduses of those who are more purist in their ideologies from our two major political parties. Without those separations from the two major parties, we will can only be assured of worse and worse major party candidates for President.

Are Non-Conservatives Losing The Right To Vote?

Consider the following:

1. 131 House Democrats helped passed the current military budget that is significantly higher than the last military budget (click here for the source).
   
2. Democrats from both the House and the Senate voted to ease Dodd-Frank regulations on most banks. 33 House Democrats voted with the GOP while 17 Democratic Senators did the same (click here and there).
   
3. 6 Democrats vote to confirm Gina Haspel as CIA Director despite her past involvement in the use of torture on detainees (click here).

What we should note about the above stories is that they are very recent. In fact, all but one of the above links to their respective stories were posted in May. The link to the story about Senate Democrats supporting a rollback on Dodd-Frank regulations was posted in March.

In addition, why not travel back to the Presidential election of 2016. The Democratic Party's nominee played an essential roll in the recent U.S. assisted  regime change in Libya and lent strong support, if not assistance to the process, to the results of the 2009 coup in Honduras. And that Democratic nominee also supported the TPP despite the fact that such trade agreements weakens American democracy by making U.S. laws accountable to trade agreement tribunals when there is a dispute.

At this point it is important to remember the following line from Martin Luther King Jr.'s I Have A Dream speech (click here):

we cannot be satisfied as long as the Negro in Mississippi cannot vote, and the Negro in New York believes he has nothing for which to vote.

We should note two points here. First, look at how similar, according to King,  having nothing for which to vote became to not having the right to vote. Second, we should note that when one replaces key words in King's speeches with fill-in-the-blanks, some of the problems experienced back then become all too similar to the problems suffered by even more people today.

We non-conservatives can't afford to be satisfied when the only reason we have to vote for a given Democratic Party candidate is that they are not a Republican Party candidate. For when that happens, we find that we are no longer voting for Democratic blue candidates over Republican red candidates. Instead, we find that we are voting for x shades of grey candidates where the color grey is given to almost all of the candidates from both parties indicating that they really belong to the same political party: the party that protects wealth and power.

Yes, we can't afford to be satisfied and yet our voting shows that we are. It's not until we untie our lines to the Democratic Party that we will have a significant voice in our government. And my guess is that we have some conservative counterparts who feel the same way about the Republican Party and its candidates.



 

 

Rebounding From Party To Party In The Two-Party System

Some of the most recent elections indicate that the country is looking for rebound politicians. Good examples of that occurs when an election that is usually controlled by one party is actually won by candidates from the other party. Doug Jones's victory over Roy Moore for a Senate seat from Alabama and Conor Lamb's win over Rich Saccone for Pennsylvania's 18th Congressional seat are two examples of where voters were choosing rebound candidates. For it seems that many voters have been greatly disappointed by President Trump's performance And in trying to recover from that Presidential choice, rebounding voters had only one option.

George W. Bush was a rebound President for those who were the first to suffer from Clinton fatigue. And then Obama was the rebound Presidential choice for those who had had enough with Republican Presidential policies. After that, Trump was the choice not just for those who feared that liberals had too much say in our country, but also for those who had had it with the Republican establishment. And so Trump ran as the only rebound candidate for the Republican nomination. 

And needless to say, Hillary Clinton was the long awaited choice for those who were legitimately looking to rebound from the long line male Presidents. And like our two-party system, people had only one option to choose from for that rebound vote.

As things stand, it seems that the American voter is the ball in a game of pong between the Democratic and Republican Parties. The American voter rebounds with one party only to find out that they need to rebound again. And so back and forth voters go to rebound from one party's politician to another party's politician.

We could point to the two-party system for the American voter's endless need to rebound from the candidates of one party to another. And though the two-party system is very deficient, it doesn't provide the sole, or even the major, reason why we constantly go back and forth between the two parties. The major reason why we are constantly rebounding between the two political parties is because we don't want to constantly participate in our nation's political processes. As a result, we vote for the leaders whom we think we can ignore until the next election. The problem is that our choices rarely work out that way.

Our choices don't work out because the more we ignore our elected officials, the less accountable they become. The less accountable our politicians become, the more likely they will act in their own interests. And the more they act in their own interests, not only will we become disillusioned with them, the more they will be imitating us, the voters, who voted for politicians in order that we could act in our own interests.

Now the above theory doesn't answer why we have so many incumbents in Congress who are constantly reelected time and time again. There are other explanations for that. But it certainly might help explain why we keep switching between Republican and Democratic Presidents. And it also explains why the political activities of many Americans are restricted to election related activities.

Occasionally, we run into causes that move us to take time out of our busy schedules to speak out to our politicians. The March For Our Lives movement is such a movement for it has awakened many people to an important cause. And certainly reducing gun violence by passing good, effective gun control laws is a worthy cause to take a stand on. And in case some have not noticed,  the level of participation in the March For Our Lives movement is modifying some of the rhetoric and stands some of our politicians are taking. And that should tell us something. What if the American showed the same level of participation in advancing other causes as they have in the March For Our Lives movement? What would happen is that our politicians would become more accountable to us and we would gain some power over them.

There is much corruption in our political system today. Certainly, our politicians deserve some of our anger for the corruption. But the corruption is not all their fault. Some of the corruption is due to the fact that, just like art imitates life, so politicians sometimes reflect the moral values of us, their constituents. And some of the corruption is due to the fact that we think we have more important matters to attend to than to constantly hold our politicians accountable. Indeed, we do have other important matters to tend to such as caring for our families and managing our jobs and careers. But still, to not make time so that we can hold our politicians accountable for their voting records and actions is to almost ask them to get away with as much as they can. And until we are more willing to participate as citizens in the available political processes such as activism, we should expect nothing else from our elected leaders than to cheat on us.


 

Election Bullies And Debate Audiences

In the last two weeks, I've encountered two different kinds of Clinton supporters. The first kind are voting for Clinton because she best represents them. And though I disagree with them on what should represent them, I respect their choice. The other kind of Clinton supporters are what I would call 'election bullies.' Why the moniker? It is because in trying to persuade those of us who are planning to vote for third party candidates, they try to manipulate us by shaming or insulting us to vote for Hillary. Such is an authoritarian move.

I found 2 examples of such bullies while on the internet. While one such bully derogatorily labels anyone who would dare criticize Clinton while heavily filtering the information they say supports their candidate, the other kind of bully wants third party voters to be blamed if Trump is elected. This is nothing more than a repeat of the way how some Democrats treated Nader supporters in 2000. But what if instead of blaming Nader for Bush's election, people were encouraged to continue to vote for Nader or other third party candidates in 2004? If that happened, we might not have to choose between Hillary and Trump today. For not only could we possibly have more than 2 viable candidates to vote for by now, both the Republican and/or Democratic Parties might have produced better candidates this year.

Currently, both of our major political parties take many of their voters for granted. The Democratic takes minorities and political liberals for granted much in the same way that the Republican Party takes religiously conservative Christians for granted. And just as the Democratic Party has more often than not failed to keep their promises to minorities and liberals, people from these groups often  feel compelled to vote for the Democrats simply because the Democratic candidates are not Republicans. And likewise, even though Republicans have failed to successfully advance the conservative agenda on some key social issues like abortion or reducing federal spending, many conservatives automatically vote Republican because Republican candidates are not Democrats. Here we should note that for as long as either major political party can take significant blocks of voters for granted, they don't have to prove themselves by performing well while they are in office.

Thus, I am voting for a third party candidate for president because neither of the candidates from the two major parties represent me. In addition, it seems that the Republican and Democratic candidates have also quit trying to represent the voters they say they represent. 

Currently I plan on voting for Jill Stein. I am doing so despite a few glaring flaws she has exhibited as a candidate. The reason why I am voting for her is because of the direction she wants to pursue if she is elected. Yes, Trump knows business to an extent and, like George W. H. Bush was, Hillary is the résumé candidate. But neither of them have earned my vote. Why? It is because, IMO, both, in their own individual ways, want to pursue neoconservative foreign policies and neoliberal economic policies. And just one set of these policies, let alone both, are very destructive and thus immoral. So neither Trump's "tell it like it is" behavior nor Hillary's experience represent me as a voter. And if the Democrats really wanted to get me to support their stop-Trump campaign, they would have nominated someone who really represents me. I refuse to vote for Hillary because she is not Trump.

The second part of this post deals with debate audiences. We should note that Trump really did not behave any differently in the Republican primary debates as he did in his debate against Clinton. And yet, he did not get the same results in his debate against Hillary as he got in the primary debates. Some have attributed the difference solely to Hillary's political savvy. But in all honesty, we should note that the first person to predict Trump's failure in his debate with Hillary was Jeb Bush. We should remember that Bush repeatedly told Trump that he could not insult his way into the Presidency.  The public perception of Bush after he gave those warnings was negative, but Bush's warnings came true. Why? The difference could at least partially be explained by noting that the audience for the first debate with Hillary was far more diverse than the audiences were for the primary debates. What a difference an audience makes!

For Trump to compete with Hillary for the Presidency, he will have to be able to broaden his appeal to more than just disgruntled, anti-establishment conservatives. And such appears to be another episode of Mission Impossible given Trump's record. It was those conservatives who could either laugh with Trump when he spoke inappropriately or, because they were angry at the Republican establishment, they could ignore him. Trump's problem now is that with the general election comes a more diverse audience. And with a more diverse audience comes an intolerance for what got him through the primaries.

However, Trump's past and present record of actions and statements provides another problem for the nation during both the remaining debates and the rest of the campaign. That problem is that the bar that Trump sets for Hillary to succeed is rather low. And thus the more Trump messes up, the better Hillary looks because she is not Trump. And such shows how she can take our votes for granted.


 

Herding The Sheep

In the year 2000, it was John McCain, a Republican who played this role. He was the self-described "maverick" of the Republican. The Democratic Party counterpart to McCain was played by Howard Dean in 2004. Two Democrats played this role 2008. These candidates were Dennis Kucinich and Mike Gravel. And in 2012, Republicans had a few candidates playing this role. These candidates included Herman Cain, Michelle Bachman, and Ron Paul. In the 2016 election, it is possible that Bernie Sanders could be the Democratic representative to play this special role and who knows what Republican(s) will do the same? What role are we talking about here? The role is that of representing the outliers of a major political party during the primaries with the purpose of preventing their followers from leaving their respective parties.

Sometimes these outlier candidates become mainstays of their respective parties. Both John McCain and Howard Dean did just that by becoming the Presidential nominee in McCain's case and party chairman in Dean's case. But the purpose of these outlier candidates is to prevent the outlier voters from leaving their respective parties. What tells us this? A simple comparison between the candidates' primary speeches and their actions after the nominees has been chosen. 

In the end, what the two major parties' outlier candidates do is to preserve the Two-Party system by reducing the number of voters who end up voting for third party candidates. My guess is that most followers of these outlier candidates end up voting for the party's nominee of the outlier candidate they supported while the rest will either vote for third party candidates or end up not voting. In this way, the Two-Party system is saved.

The result of preserving the Two-Party system is that those who control the two major parties, which are those who contribute the most money to the parties and the campaigns,  rule over our political and economic systems. In other words, while the Two-Party system rules the status quo remains the same and nothing changes, including the current direction of our country.

However, controlling the vote is not the only way to direct the sheep. Co-opting groups is another way. Co-opting a group is where protesters are being used rather than heard. They become used in that they begin to accomplish someone else's purpose than their own. Groups are vulnerable to being co-opted when friends and allies are not fully vetted. It isn't that one must be a purist while protesting; it is ok and can even be beneficial to demonstrate in heterogeneous groups. My first protests, both of which saw hundreds of thousands of participants, included all sorts of non-conservatives, namely Democrats, who quickly quit protesting after they gained control of the House. 

But as with revolutions, such as the Iranian Revolution of 1979 and Egypt's revolution, groups and movements can be hijacked and used to fulfill the goals of others including maintaining the status quo. This is the fear of writers like Arun Gupta (click here) and Cory Morningstar (click here) as they looked at the sponsors of the then upcoming climate change protest. We know that seriously addressing climate change will require major structural changes in society. So, they ask, how can a protest that is sponsored by those interested in maintaining the status quo initiate the necessary changes to reverse the damage our way of life is forcing on our world? The worst case scenario for this last protest is that people went out thinking they initiated a change when, in reality, they reinforced the structures whose way of business attacks our environment. 

We need to achieve a balance here. We need to protest in heterogeneous groups because being purists limits our numbers to insignificant levels. At the same time, we want to succeed at accomplishing our goals, not someone else's. And this is the dilemma groups have. On the one hand, the purist's tent is too small. On the other hand, you don't want to end up in another tent.

Of course, there is a third way to herd the sheep. That way is to steer sheep away from a particular direction. This occurred during the Occupy encampments when at least saboteur disrupted a protest. I remember being in one of the Occupy encampments during a particular protest where a saboteur deliberately provoked a security guard into action and one of our protesters paid for that by being sprayed at point blank range with pepper spray. That protester could not open his eyes for around 20 minutes after being sprayed. As for the protest, it was terminated at that point by security. And it is possible that some were discouraged from joining us because of the incident. I witnessed other incidents of interference as well.

We should note the strong efforts of some to control many and to stifle a fuller democracy. And so far, their efforts are paying off because our way of life primarily consists of the accumulation of things and profits. Martin Luther King Jr. described our society as 'thing-oriented' society in his speech against the Vietnam War (click here):

I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin the shift from a "thing-oriented" society to a "person-oriented" society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.

Even if they had the ability to deliver, neither major political party has the will to implement the kind of revolution which King foresaw as being necessary.  And so we are herded, like animals into chutes, by voting for candidates of the two major parties and thus maintaining the 'thing-oriented' society which King opposed. Those who venture off to work for a 'person-oriented' society are sometimes wooed by candidates from the major political parties while at other times are marginalized. Those who think differently are sought and courted by outlier candidates. They are first seduced into following the candidate and then consoled into biting the bullet by voting for their candidate's political party even if they have to hold their nose to do so.

In the meantime, we will be encouraged to congratulate ourselves for small victories while the basic structure of our thing-oriented society remain in tact.

So is Bernie Sanders the newest outlier candidate? Only time will tell. The same goes for events like the latest climate march that just occurred in New York City. Did the protest call for a necessary change from being a thing oriented to being a person-oriented society so that we can reduce our ecological footprint while ensuring a reasonable chance for more to have a sufficient lifestyle? Again, only time will tell. But if we see time telling us what we don't want, then we need to abandon those candidates and groups designed to prevent change.