Since the January 20, 2017 inauguration of Donald Trump, the vitriol from the left, especially on social media, has been like a swarm of American drones attacking a Yemeni wedding.
As disturbing as it is that Rex Tillerson could be our Secretary of State, equally disturbing is the remarkable rage coming from the left without even knowing why, for example, Rex Tillerson would be the most dangerous Secretary of State in United States history.
Tillerson, as you should know, is the CEO of Exxon Mobile. He has antagonized China to engage in war by saying that the Chinese don’t have the right to control the South China Seas. Now, why would he say that?
Here is the basis for my frustration with the McLiberals of our nation: They never ask why. They are the most privileged among us, usually growing up in upper middle class if not well-to-do households. They had the luxury of being hand picked for some of the best schools in our country. They walk away from these sterling educations with a feel-your-pain, enlightened attitude and this idea that being a Democrat is the more humanitarian of the fake duopoly that controls our politics.
And yet, they don’t know why Rex Tillerson felt he was well within his right to publicly say that China does not have complete control of the South China Seas. That public statement alone should have disqualified him immediately. These statements are declarations of war and milk toast Americans don’t even realize it.
The reason Tillerson is antagonizing China is because Exxon Mobile has a deal with Vietnam to sell Vietnam oil that sits in the South China Seas. That’s the reason: Antagonizing a war against China over oil. This might also be the reason why Trump made a massive gaffe by calling Taiwan and congratulating their leader on his democratically elected position. Taiwan thinks of itself as a sovereign nation, whereas China disagrees and believes Taiwan is still a part of the Peoples Republic of China. Everyone should know that there is this unspoken rule that the United States does not speak to Taiwan directly but rather gives a respectful nod to China and speaks directly to China. To call Taiwan directly is a slap in the face to China on an existential level. This is the kind of nuanced policy that a Bernie Sanders or even a Hillary Clinton or heh, even me, would have understood.
The entire administrative team of the State Department walked off their White House jobs on Wednesday, January 25, 2017. So, thank God we have some critical thinkers working in the White House who realize that brazen statements made by Tillerson to antagonize war with China isn’t probably the greatest for American morale, which is already at an all time low.
I wonder if the vitriol from the left over the installment of Trump would be equally as ferocious if Hillary Clinton were installed. I say installed because I know we don’t have clean elections. And no, Russia did not hack our 2016 presidential elections. The most Russia may have done is hack into the DNC and hand over the private emails of Clinton’s campaign to Julian Assange, Wikileaks founder, and that is just a theory and can’t even be proven.
Our elections aren’t real. We know this because we witnessed what happened in Arizona during the primaries. Arizona had hundreds of polling places and just before the 2016 elections, suddenly most of the polling places were quietly shut down without any notice. After this shut down, there were only a total of about 60 polling places for the entire state. For decades, Republicans have been using voter repression such as Crosscheck, and provocative gerrymandering by both parties is so common it may as well be embedded in our Constitution. Even here in California, so many people voted in the primaries using “provisional” ballots. They may as well have just thrown their vote in the trash and lit it on fire. Bend over, voter, because this feels like obstructionism, not democracy.
In social democratic countries there is something called Rank Choice Voting, meaning you can choose your first, second and third choice of leader. And if you are a part of the Green Party in Sweden, for instance, but you like the policy of the Labour Party leader, you don’t have to be a member of the Labour Party to vote for that leader. And, you vote from an app on your mobile device. Voting is a natural order of business like enrolling your kids in school. It’s not the crazy-making spectacle it is here in the USA. It’s still tense, of course, because you want the best representation for the needs of the people. But in the United States, our elections are these massive, corporate-financed, media engorged spectacles that look more like a Super Bowl game than anything really policy based. And it always, always, always comes down to the “lesser of two evil-ism” that is nauseatingly manipulative and uses fear to highjack your vote, and create squabbling among the populace. You always, always, always fall for it.
The lefty vitriol is genuine, I will give them that. But where is the vitriol for the disastrous austerity programs that stemmed out of neoliberalism? It’s these policies that built up an absurd reality TV star to the tune of $9 billion worth of free air time. It was all about ratings, and Trump is a ratings gold mine. Right, CNN? History tells us all we need to know, and it seems as though the Democrats have a disconnect when it comes to basic, simple policy which gave rise to someone like Trump.
In the 1990’s Bill Clinton put America in an Eric Garner-like chokehold that sucked the lifeblood out of our incoherent and easily distracted Republic. He signed the North American Free Trade Agreement which stole the jobs from the American middle class working men and women and handed those jobs over to countries where slavery is still legal. Our government made a killing, while we, the American people were left out of the deal.
He also put the Crime Bill on steroids, targeting well-meaning and successful communities of color, who were actually infusing a local, sustainable, living wage into their towns all across America. These were the sons and daughters and grandsons and grand-daughters who grew up listening to the speeches of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. And since Dr. King’s movement in the 1960’s, they spent the next 30 years or so practicing what he preached: they took his message to heart and became the driving force to bring those jobs back to America. They were the economy that was making America work again. It was a success. But Bill and Crony Capitalism felt this was a direct threat to the NAFTA program, so targeted these communities of color with the implementation of the Crime Bill. And, with Hillary Clinton at his side, calling the children of these communities “super predators” they waged war on an entire population and installed the for profit prison industry which has now made us the most incarcerated nation in the world. The factory jobs are gone and have been replaced with detention centers and prisons and a militarized police force.
In conjunction with the Crime Bill, Bill Clinton also passed the Telecommunications Act which shut down about 500 differing voices filtered out through media, and paired it down to six corporations, and these corporations ran a looped script, where “journalistic” voices parroted the message of the corporate state, and any opposition voices in the 1990’s regarding this masterful assault on our people were silenced. This is not democracy. This is the seizure of your First Amendment Rights. Where was your outrage in the 1990’s? Your critical thinking skills? What was your college education for if not to question the assault on your human right and your intellectual right to question your government? I was only about 22 at the time in the early 1990’s and could easily see the comparison between his dystopian-making policy and George Orwell’s “I984,” which I had just read. I was able to critically think ahead 20 years. And here we are.
While imprisoning those who were useful to society and making us all believe it was the right thing to do because it was all we heard in the media, Bill gutted welfare programs which were meant to help families along until they could get back on their feet. 70% of the people who relied on these programs were children.
When Bill Clinton and Newt Gingrich secretly met and signed legislation to gut social security as we know it, it wasn’t the American people who finally gasped, “I can’t breathe,” but a few well meaning politicians and journalists who worked behind the scenes to prop up the Monica Lewinsky scandal, exploit the puritanical American mindset, and like clockwork, just as these well meaning politicians and journalists knew we would, we demanded impeachment. Thus, Social Security was saved. The gutting of this necessary life-saving program would have, hopefully, at this point, caused the American people to riot in the street. But to be honest, I don’t think so. I believe, like all the disastrous policy we let Bill pass, we would have rolled over and let him gut Social Security, just like we let him gut and decimate communities all across our land.
When Barack Obama took office we were waging two interventionist wars. He increased that number to seven. Sustainable employment has plummeted with Barack in office – the jobs that are available are part time, gig economy jobs that don’t pay enough, have no opportunity for advancement and provide no health benefits. Barack Obama is a corporatist out of Chicago, IL. A Harvard educated mixed race man with a Constitutional Law degree, yet he violated habeus corpus regularly, has tossed more immigrants out of our country than any President in history, has no explanation and has offered no accountability for the American drone that murdered a 16 year old American citizen, and has incorporated language in the National Defense Authorization Act that makes it perfectly legal to arrest and incarcerate journalists. He has taken the moderate ideology of Bush’s idea of a surveillance state in this continued “War on Terror” and given it growth hormones by violating every American citizen’s Fourth Amendment protections. We have no privacy. Each and every private American citizen’s meta data is handed over to 14 agencies of the National Security Agency, for scrutiny. This is a violation of our human rights. This is a war waged out on the American people. This is pathological sociopathy. Meanwhile, he pardons non violent offenders by the thousands while continuing to pass legislation for more detention centers and prisons to be built out. And he hands this mastery over to a mentally unstable demagogue with a cabal of gluttonous rapacious war mongerers, and magical thinkers. (Congress)
He, like so many silicon valley billionaires who are secretly building opulent bunkers, knows what’s next. There are no jobs, war for oil is imminent and constant, and the military industrial complex lubricates a global economy that sustains these wars. It is no longer the African American that will be targeted for profit, but all of us now that Trump has hand picked his Deplorable congress: intellectuals, critical thinkers, those who question the status quo, artists, and journalists. Where is your outrage over Barack Obama? Trump isn’t our first reality TV star to be President. It was Barack Obama who flashed his smile across daytime talk shows, Saturday Night Live, who charmed us through mainstream media more than any other President had before. You handed over your First and Fourth Amendment protections like slaves handing over their freedoms to their master. You have Stockholm Syndrome. And now you are outraged? Your jailer just handed you over to another jailer. And like infantile, mentally ill lobotomized cretins, you scream that you want him back?
When Barack took office, the economy crashed because of Wall Street’s waste, FRAUD and abuse of the American people. He inherited the mess that the hucksters under Bush had left behind. All the bankers and financiers walked into the Oval Office with their hat in their hands, shameful and nervously expecting to lose their jobs, convinced the return of Glass Steagall was imminent and a massive bailout of the American people was to come, something not unlike what the leaders in Parliament did in Iceland when the Icelandic citizens were on the brink of economic meltdown for the same reason. The Icelandic people kept their houses, and their pensions and savings and were able to sustain their lives while the financial crooks went to jail, or were exiled. But no. Barack Obama bailed out Wall Street, increased taxes on the Middle Class and gave the fraudsters pension checks, and bonus checks and the economy trickled up even more, squeezing out the voices and usefulness of the Middle Class, hurling us to third world economic status and relegating us to the status of a cracked democracy.
And he, along with Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State, sold millions upon millions of dollars worth of weaponry to Saudi Arabia, our ally who sits on the Human Rights Commission at the United Nations. You know – the Saudi Arabia that has engaged in an orgasmic bloodbath of slaughter of Yemeni schools, hospitals, and churches? The Saudi Arabia that practices Wahabi-ism which is the worst version of Islam imaginable. They chop off hands for stealing a packet of skittles. You know the Saudi Arabia that infused billions of dollars into Uber and Lyft? Yes, that Saudi Arabia. They are our ally. Why didn’t you at least stop the Saudi Arabian regime from infusing money into Uber? Why didn’t you take to the streets back then as this deal was being made? Why are you still even taking Uber? Why don’t you divest from this company, remove the app and stop giving it business? Ride your bike for fuck sake, or take a taxi.
Where was the vitriol as these decrepit 40-year policies of neoliberalism were laying siege to our humanity, our economy and our freedom? Where was the lefty rage as we watched with horror as the United States engaged in proxy war after proxy war, in a rabid deluge of mania as we binged on drone strikes and bombing all across the Middle East? Where was your disgust when our own military men were calling small Iraqi boys “fun sized terrorists” as they bombed these children with impunity? Where was your righteous anger then?
And, when Barack Obama took office we had a Democratic majority in Congress, we had single payer healthcare signed and ready to present to the American people, for that was what he promised in his campaign of Hope and Change. But, to the surprise and delight of Big Pharma, he opted out of the single payer system which every other modern nation has (even Russia has it) and instead he went with a Republican program that was originally devised by the Heritage Foundation, a right wing think tank, to thwart the Clintons talk of single payer back in the 1990’s. Staying true to his corporatist background, he bailed out Big Pharma by reviving this Republican program and named it “Obamacare.” He shredded single payer before the ink was dry, hijacked a Republican program, slapped his name on it, took credit for it, and became the darling of American national healthcare. No wonder the Republicans hate him so much. He took credit for their original idea. Barack Obama has never ever been obstructed from putting forth progressive policy. He never supported progressive policy to begin with. He is a corporatist through and through, and it’s time to grow up, and accept that.
This fist shaking at Donald Trump feels weak, watered down and completely misdirected. You’re not mad at Donald Trump. You’re mad at yourself for allowing someone like him to rise to power. You’re mad because these manipulations of our corporate state that have seized every agency in our government and have allowed every politician in our government to guzzle their pay to play machinations for personal profit, have hijacked our democracy, our opportunity for real progress, and real freedom. To think that America means freedom, and opportunity, and that if you work hard and keep your head down and stay focused and do the right thing all the time you’ll have enough to retire on, and enough to leave to your children or grandchildren, is complete fantasy.
Ignorance of this assault on you is no excuse. You had more opportunity, more education, and more money than I have ever had. And yet, I know these things. You chose to remain blind and focused on fringe policy. You think we live in a racist society. Yet, you fail to realize that we can’t have this idea of racism without the Crime Bill of the 1990’s. That bill, all on its own, revived slavery and made the targeting of African Americans fodder for sport. When you grow up under a 20-plus-year bill like this and see so many African Americans being targeted, you become racist because you think they must be doing something to deserve that targeting. If you knew policy, you’d know you were being manipulated. You lack the intellectual skill-set to understand that this policy is why we are here today, despite your advanced degrees and education.
The 40-plus-year assault on the American people and our ideological idea of American freedoms may implode as every carefully crafted, scientific environmental study will be incinerated and replaced with magical thinkers, and climate change deniers. You failed to push the Bush, Clinton and Obama Administrations into a position where they had no other choice but to implement ecological programs that would have banned fracking, for instance, the way so many democratic socialist countries have already done. You failed to push hard to bend them to your necessary will. You are weak, and self involved and have fallen prey to the hive mind mentality that the corporate state has hypnotized you with through the media.
Your freedom to marry who you want, your need for universal healthcare, your increase in a federal minimum wage, your human right of choice won’t mean anything if there isn’t a sustainable environment in which to live to make these demands.
You fell for the biggest con: hope. You put your hope in a person. You failed to understand the simple idea that 43% of American progressives already understand: that without a PUSH for progress, a DEMAND for reform, you have lost the battle and the corporate state that has infused every facet of our country from the local librarian to the members of Congress does not feel threatened by you. You fell for Bernie Sanders and threw your hope at the feet of a fallible man, a cuddly Senator who espoused hope just like Barack Obama did. Bernie claimed to be a socialist, yet unlike any actual socialist I know, he didn’t think of the populace when the obvious electoral fraud that was taking place all over the country during the primaries was a glaring sign of things to come. His own attorney even advised him to do something about it, take notice of it, and call it out. Yet, unlike a socialist, he remained silent and taciturn on the subject, to the dismay of his newly registered 14 million democrats who were all pleading with him to turn away from the Democratic Party and run as an independent or take up Jill Stein’s offer and run on the Green Party ticket.
But Bernie Sanders was paraded out in front of us for one reason: bring in the registered voters. And he fulfilled his obligation dutifully. For, over the last decade or so the democratic party had alienated its base through the systemic and constant dwindling down of the American middle class and Bernie was a strategically placed sheepdog of inspiration to infuse the party with shiny new registered voters, who the party could suck the marrow off of when Hillary Clinton would be installed.
The country has failed all of us on a massive level that is an incoherent truth to most, especially those of us who live in more progressive states, like California. We in California live in a bubble of privilege, especially given we are the 6th largest economy on the globe. We have a smattering of progressive politicians that keep us going to the right at an albeit slower pace than the rest of the country. But, we as a state are undoubtedly centrist, with a massive population that will rally in droves when grotesque austerity programs infringe on our rights.
In France, when the word got out that the Labour Party had lost its teeth and workers Rights had been decimated, Parisians took to the streets and created “Up All Night” or “NuitDebout”. They rioted and used Blackbloc tactics to stop traffic and voice their extreme opposition to establishment politics that had thrown them under the bus. The protestors move through the streets with precision, unafraid. A force of nature, they destroy and vandalize anything establishment or corporate in their way. The very tactics that the police use on peaceful American protestors in this country are used by these protestors on the foreign police. They are not afraid of pain, or death or jail time or injury. They antagonize the police to come out of hiding and they rush the police, and utter a battlecry that sends shockwaves throughout the european nations that surround them. They make the establishment afraid. They pushed, and still push to this day, years later, the oligarchical state into feeling threatened by them. They understand this is war waged on them and they understand the true meaning of revolution.
Soon NuitDebout movements, much like Occupy here in the United States, formed all over Europe. They understood their vitriol was not aimed at a man, but an ideology that destroys their very humanity, and that is what they fight against. They fight against the corporate state.
This vitriol that you are targeting at Trump is misdirected, and some fear is over 40 years too late. Trump is a malignancy, to be sure, an infant with a personality and emotional disorder. But he can be controlled by the populace in the same way Congress has made him their puppet.
It is time to seize the streets, go to war, make the establishment fear you, become that force no longer manipulated by fear, no longer duped by false hope. There are more of us than them and it is time to make up for forty plus years of lost rage and vitriol.
You can’t keep quiet. You can’t keep still. You proved this on an historic day that will be emblazed in our history books: January 21, 2017. You do not fight fascists because you will win. You fight fascists because they are fascists.