For just a few minutes, let’s put aside all the bullshit about the meaningless polls, the magical thinking of what people want to imagine will happen, and Hypothetically Perfect Democratic Candidates The Media Will Love and Definitely Not Attack From Moment One.
Instead, let’s pretend we’re all actually adults for a moment, and engage in a simple thought exercise.
Have you ever noticed that billionaires don’t ever really attack each other? You don't ever really see the “pro-Democrat” billionaires calling the “pro-Republican” billionaires fascists, or conversely the latter calling the former class traitors.
They’re all chums. They play golf together, go to galas together, go to Davos together. None of these pedantic little disagreements seem to make a difference to them with regard to how they treat one another.
Why do you suppose that is?
It’s because they are, indeed, all on the same side. The class war is alive and well, as it has been for the last 10,000 or so years. Look at how openly they identify by their class: here’s billionaire Nick Hanauer openly and freely addressing his fellow plutocrats. His words, not mine. And it’s very easy to understand the mechanisms of why they’re all in the same boat. (For the record, the Royal Society for Arts is not some fringe outfit, and neither is David Harvey a crazy person.)
It’s very easy to understand if you think about it for more than five seconds.
Some billionaires openly support Trump to scare you with all the money he’ll be getting.
Some billionaires demand Biden drop out so they can run their own candidate who is beholden to their demands.
Everyone goes, “Vote Blue no matter what!” because of the existential threat Trump and Project 2025 appear to pose. (Although if you pay close attention you’ll notice the billionaires were not even remotely so distressed that they were donating like it was the last election they might ever donate for, which tells you they did not—and still do not—regard Trump as an existential threat to them. And of course they don’t: they look forward to tax cuts.)
If the issue was that Biden was fading (not that he is despite all the talk), well, that’s what Harris is there for. That’s why we elect a ticket, not just a single candidate. The solution would be to just throw more money at the campaign to make up the difference. They clearly don’t like her either.
You see, the two of them, Biden and Harris, just aren’t… pliable… enough.
That is to say, they are beholden to pesky things like voters, not just their financial backers.
Imagine letting the plebs have a say in governance! How gauche!
So they try to coax Biden into dropping out, knowing full well that you’re so terrified of Trump that you’ll, “Vote Blue no matter what.” You’ll hold your nose, and pick the other billionaire’s pet that they’ve rammed down your throat, because a cyberpunk hellhole still seems kinder and gentler than a fascist theocracy.
Thus, no matter which of their two puppets win, they win: they cut taxes, cut spending, cut entitlements, and sip mojitos in Key West or Hawaii while you fight to stay alive in whichever flavor of dystopia you voted for.
Has it ever occurred to any of you that they have you precisely where they want you?
This is what they wanted.
This is what they’ve always wanted. The last time they were serious started with a Bush too. You might call this Business Plot 3.0, as Business Plot 2.0 was the rather half-baked early efforts to make the Tea Party into a bipartisan movement. I think we all know the New York Times is in on it this time, but have some vintage 2010 reporting on that boondoggle, free to read.
All of this should sound very familiar to you if you follow foreign affairs.
I’d like to share with you probably the most important article I’ve ever read: Phantasmagoria by Ned Resnikoff on Medium, first published on September 25, 2016. You really should read the whole thing and come back here when you’re done, but maybe you’re pressed for time. To briefly summarize, Resnikoff talks about Karl Rove, before moving on to Viktor Orban, Vladimir Putin, and a certain Vladislav Surkov, “also known as Putin’s Karl Rove”. I’ll give you a few choice quotes:
[BBC documentarian Adam Curtis described Surkov’s politics by saying] His aim is to undermine peoples’ perceptions of the world, so they never know what is really happening.
Surkov turned Russian politics into a bewildering, constantly changing piece of theater. He sponsored all kinds of groups, from neo-Nazi skinheads to liberal human rights groups. He even backed parties that were opposed to President Putin.
But the key thing was, that Surkov then let it be known that this was what he was doing, which meant that no one was sure what was real or fake. As one journalist put it: “It is a strategy of power that keeps any opposition constantly confused.”
A ceaseless shape-shifting that is unstoppable because it is undefinable. It is exactly what Surkov is alleged to have done in the Ukraine this year. In typical fashion, as the war began, Surkov published a short story about something he called non-linear war. A war where you never know what the enemy are really up to, or even who they are. The underlying aim, Surkov says, is not to win the war, but to use the conflict to create a constant state of destabilized perception, in order to manage and control.
Is this perhaps starting to sound familiar? Haven’t the last few weeks felt like “a bewildering, constantly changing piece of theater”?
[As Richard Sakwa said:] “Surkov’s philosophy is that there is no real freedom in the world, and that all democracies are managed democracies, so the key to success is to influence people, to give them the illusion that they are free, whereas in fact they are managed. In his view, the only freedom is ‘artistic freedom’”
Artistic freedom: the freedom to adopt political affiliations as a purely aesthetic exercise.
Are we hitting a little closer to home now? What do you think an election where your choices are one billionaire’s pet or another, with this or that flavor of dystopia, even is besides “the freedom to adopt political affiliations as a purely aesthetic exercise”? I’ll give you just one more:
Personally, I like Orban’s coinage more than Surkov’s. “Managed democracy” implies a sort of benign technocratic elite that keeps the state humming along while we’re busy cloaking ourselves in dead ideologies and pretending to debate the future of the country. Illiberal democracy, on the other hand, suggests a nation nominally governed by popular assent but stripped of any substantive commitment to an open society.
And good riddance. After all, without an independent reality to be collectively uncovered and debated, what’s the point of an open society?
I will here drop the coy mask.
Make no mistake: all the talk here on Daily Kos about anyone other than Biden being at the top of the Democratic ticket is nothing more than us being “busy cloaking ourselves in dead ideologies and pretending to debate the future of the country.”
It will never have been your decision.
It will never again be your decision.
It will be a plutocracy where your choices are made for you, where you are so bamboozled and bedazzled by influence operations and money that you might actually think you came up with the “bright ideas” in the first place.
It will be Putin’s Russia.
I think you can see from the efforts of quaoar and (formerly) annieli how well that’s gone for the Russians.
The only way to actually keep whatever semblance of democracy we have heretofore enjoyed in America is to reject the second half of the billionaire’s gambit: ignore your fears and go with Joe. That is the only way to put a stop to their machinations to finally and fully convert this republic into a plutocracy.
I wrote a diary recently about what FDR might say in the present circumstances. It was wiped out by the news that there had been an assassination attempt on Trump. So I give you the most important line again as it is just as pertinent now as it was when I included it last:
let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself—nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance
I must, however, also direct your attention to another quote of his: “They had begun to consider the Government of the United States as a mere appendage to their own affairs. We know now that Government by organized money is just as dangerous as Government by organized mob. Never before in all our history have these forces been so united against one candidate as they stand today. They are unanimous in their hate for me—and I welcome their hatred.”
I will leave you with one final thought from a founding father, Benjamin Franklin: “As to the other two acts, the Massachusetts must suffer all the hazards and mischiefs of war rather than admit the alteration of their charters and laws by Parliament. ‘They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.’“
If you give up the essential liberty of your political self-determination in exchange for the billionaires’ little temporary safety, you shall neither have, nor shall you deserve, liberty nor safety.
