"Insiders" vs. Sanders/Unspoken DC Credo: Check Your Conscience at The Door Before You Proceed/We Need More Politicians Like Debs, More Writers Like DuBois, More Bottom-Line Truth-Seekers
There really is something fucked up inside the world of DC Insiders that I don't think we can even begin to get our heads around. It's a hermetically-sealed place of Yes Men, routinely cutting deals with the devil, furthering-yourself-above-all-else politicking which rules the roost of those on the "inside" and where they'll chose to stand when the chips are really down. The revolving door is greased to perfection. The highest order of business it seems is to make sure you come out on the "winning" end of your term with a "consulting" position or a lobbying job for a salary of 5 or 10x that paid by the People of the United States.
Apparently a press release by Sherrod Brown was trotted out today that included this:
"As Ohio’s working families continue to recover from the worst economic recession in our country’s history, we need a president who’s committed to growing our economy by lifting up the middle class, From opposing unfair trade deals to fighting for a fair financial system, Hillary Clinton has shown she puts working families first."
What?
Hasn't he been saying almost the exact same things about Wall St/corporate control and its decimation of the middle class, as Sanders has for years? So then where does this come from? It almost feels like it was written by the campaign for him, in the same way that lobbyists literally write legislation and hand it over to the Congressmen/women they've purchased.
If this is not one of the most Orwellian press releases of Doublespeak seen in a long time I beg your consideration. Does he actually believe what has been attributed to him here?
Will Brown now actually go out on the campaign trail stumping for, and do interviews defending, Clinton's tough-on-banks/support for the middle class credentials, in which he'll have to say with a straight face that, on these issues, he honestly, truly believes Clinton would be better than Sanders on these issues? This I can't believe.
Or is it something else? Of course it is.
This is a pure and naked power play by the Clinton campaign, an attempt to undercut Sanders' very popular economic inequality platform position by getting Brown to sign on. They’re not going to leave anything to chance this time around, and will seek to crush Sanders first with tremendous insider pressure to line up against him, before calling out the sic dogs to go after Sanders personally if all else fails. Bush perfected this brusque style of intimidation to his detractors around the world with the infamous, "if you're not with us you're against us." Fuck people like that.
The whole thing is laughable if it weren't deeply sad, and angering. It makes me even more cynical than I've become in this Golden Age of Oligrachy.
This is why people don't believe in government and why Congress has such overwhelmingly high disapproval ratings. Everybody knows that politicians never (or very rarely, see Bernie) have the courage of their convictions to speak directly and honestly about how deeply broken the system of elections and governing truly is. Sherrod Brown's decision today is Exhibit A of this. This is pure craven cover-your-ass politicking 101, in a system that will ultimately reward the Browns of the DC world with quid pro quo favors. The Clinton machinery is putting a turn to the screws early.
Today's astonishing Brown endorsement is proof positive of what this will boil down to this and next year:
DC insider endorsements vs. The People of the United States endorsement.
I was talking with a 20yr old this weekend who mentioned he was thinking of becoming a hedge fund director. The only explanation I could think of for his interest in such a deservedly vilified profession is keeps hearing the term and associates it with big bucks (The American Dream, right?). But of course being young, and both naïve and under societal and familial pressure to be a “success,” this was apparently an option for him. I took a breath and explained that banking and its get-rich-quick practices have sent the word’s economy into a tailspin, and that the banks' stealing money from workers pensions and sucking out so much young brain power out of colleges to develop and further more and more elaborate schemes to defraud people of money, is not a noble venture. “On the first day of your job,” I told him, “they won’t tell you this, but in order to do the job they want you to, you will be required to check your conscience at the door."
Why give a shit about any of this? Fuck the Constitution, The Bill of Rights and the Declaration of Independence; none of this quaint bullshit has any standing in DC anymore.
“Check your conscience at the door” is the unspoken pact you make as a member of the United States Congress.
“It is what it is…you gotta play the game” and other vapid euphemism responses are what I hear echoing through my head, when I ponder the inevitable words of the venal protectors of the status quo.
In times like these I find myself looking for the words of Eugene Debs, who also ran for President:
"As long as there is a lower class, I'm in it. As long as there is a criminal element, I'm of it. As long as there's a soul in prison, I am not free."
It’s clear that the time has past for elected representatives like Brown to be familiarizing himself with some truly great Americans such as Debs.
So I say to the American People: fuck the insiders. "I'm an outsider by choice, but not truly," said the great sagacious comedian George Carlin. "It's the unpleasantness of the system that keeps me out. I'd rather be in, in a good system. That's where my discontent comes from: being forced to choose to stay outside."
Stay outside the system, but work to change it. Vote your conscience, always. The ruse of fear-mongering as the main incentive to vote must go unheeded. W.E.B Dubois understood this, when he proclaimed this during the election of 1956, and giving clear-eyed reasons for "Why I Won’t Vote”, which I first read in the wonderful, must-have 150th Anniversary of the The Nation Magazine (and which incidentally I wasn't able to provide a preferred link to the Black Agenda Report, even after multiple tries and from various web browsers; Cointelpro, anyone?)
I believe that democracy has so far disappeared in the United States that no “two evils” exist. There is but one evil party with two names, and it will be elected despite all I can do or say. There is no third party. On the Presidential ballot in a few states (seventeen in 1952), a “Socialist” Party will appear. Few will hear its appeal because it will have almost no opportunity to take part in the campaign and explain its platform. If a voter organizes or advocates a real third-party movement, he may be accused of seeking to overthrow this government by “force and violence.” Anything he advocates by way of significant reform will be called “Communist” and will of necessity be Communist in the sense that it must advocate such things as government ownership of the means of production; government in business; the limitation of private profit; social medicine, government housing and federal aid to education; the total abolition of race bias; and the welfare state. These things are on every Communist program; these things are the aim of socialism. Any American who advocates them today, no matter how sincerely, stands in danger of losing his job, surrendering his social status and perhaps landing in jail. The witnesses against him may be liars or insane or criminals. These witnesses need give no proof for their charges and may not even be known or appear in person...
This Administration is dominated and directed by wealth and for the accumulation of wealth. It runs smoothly like a well-organized industry and should do so because industry runs it for the benefit of industry. Corporate wealth profits as never before in history. We turn over the national resources to private profit and have few funds left for education, health or housing. Our crime, especially juvenile crime, is increasing. Its increase is perfectly logical; for a generation we have been teaching our youth to kill, destroy, steal and rape in war; what can we expect in peace? We let men take wealth which is not theirs; if the seizure is “legal” we call it high profits and the profiteers help decide what is legal. If the theft is “illegal” the thief can fight it out in court, with excellent chances to win if he receives the accolade of the right newspapers. Gambling in home, church and on the stock market is increasing and all prices are rising. It costs three times his salary to elect a Senator and many millions to elect a President. This money comes from the very corporations which today are the government. This in a real democracy would be enough to turn the party responsible out of power. Yet this we cannot do...
Democracy is dead in the United States. Yet there is still nothing to replace real democracy. Drop the chains, then, that bind our brains. Drive the money-changers from the seats of the Cabinet and the halls of Congress. Call back some faint spirit of Jefferson and Lincoln, and when again we can hold a fair election on real issues, let’s vote, and not till then. Is this impossible? Then democracy in America is impossible.
How much has changed since then, and if anything has, has it not been because radical social movements forced the hand of the legislators? Let this truth ring clear from out of Daily Kos.
Stop the charade of horse race politics and the obsession surrounding it here.
Until money is taken out of politics, our only true power lies with organizing movements to push against this fraud.