Santorum Sweeps 3 States In Stunning Victory! Wins Zero Delegates! Media Hypes His New “Momentum!

I guess my title pretty much sums up what just happened in Missouri, Colorado, and Minnesota. Meaningless “votes” by a few tens of thousands of arch-reactionary whites that didn't even choose convention delegates. Excuse enough for the corporate propaganda system to indulge in two of its favorite games, Presidential election as horse race, and hyping “momentum.” (“Big Mo!”)

For example, these meaningless glorified opinion polls among small bunches of reactionary fanatics “gave him an important  lift,” the NY Times “reported.” As if that's a fact and not an opinion. [“Another Twist for G.O.P.  As Santorum Fares Well,” 2/8/12, p. A1.] “With his unexpected victories, Mr. Santorum was also suddenly presenting new competition to Newt Gingrich as the chief alternative to Mr. Romney, the front-runner.” “His performance added another twist to an unruly nominating contest that has seen Republican voters [cadres of arch-reactionary whites] veering among candidates...”and blah blah blah. It's extra-exciting because Santorum's “candidacy [was] all but dismissed just days ago...;” by the mediaocracy, I guess they mean. Santorum's pointles victory [sic] comes “after Romney won Nevada, a “contest” in which a grand total of 16,000 (white reactionaries) voted for all four of the GOP horses still in the race.

The corporate media breathlessly narrates the competition among the reactionary politicians to be President exactly like a horse race: “Gingrich is surging, HE PASSES ROMNEY! But now Romney's in the lead, AND NOW SANTORUM HAS COME FROM BEHIND TO OVERTAKE HIM! and Ron Paul's at the back of the pack. Folks, this is the most exciting race we've seen in a long time!”

Gee, I can hardly wait to see which extreme right-wing Republican politician wins! Will it be “moderate Mitt,” a centimillionaire who insists that “corporations are people, my friend,” and thinks the poor are sitting pretty in America? (Go check out the things he's been saying during his campaign, and indeed during his last run for President, and in the intervening years, to see what the corporate oligarchy's propaganda system means by “moderate.”) Or Gingrich, a crazed liar who has declared his intention to ignore court decisions he decides are “wrong,” thus crowning himself an absolute monarch? Or maybe it'll be Rick Santorum, the sex-hating fanatic who wants to control everyone's sex lives through brutal state repression, equates homosexuality with bestiality and pedophilia, is chomping at the bit to go to war with Iran, destroy the EPA (but he's not the only one). Or could it be Ron Paul, who “the” media would have us believe is beloved by youth, a Texas Confederate who would revert to “states' rights” racism (his naked racism is thoroughly documented in his newsletters, which he now claims to have never read  and was unaware of their content, an absurd claim now refuted by ex-employees who state that he assiduously proofed each issue prior to publication) and who wants to abolish the Federal Reserve? (Who needs a central bank anyway? We got along fine in the 18^th century without one.) Can we even measure the difference between these sick bastards under a microscope?

Thus does the corporate media continue provide a running narration of the thrilling horse race between a gang of extreme reactionary politicians, one worse than the other, hyperventilating the whole time, while legitimating the extreme ideology and vicious policy promises on display by treating them as wholly normal and respectable. Indeed, since now in America “conservatism” is the ONLY respectable ideology, even “liberal” denigrated as weak and surrenderist on “national defense,” “hollowing out” the military, coddling of criminals, spoiling of “welfare cheats,” (those lazy [black] poor people,) “conservatism” owns the commanding heights of political and ideological legitimacy.

Of course “conservatism” is a respectable-sounding euphemism which dignifies the most vile, anti-human, immoral policies, namely; even more aggression abroad, killing masses of Third World people; ever-increasing immiseration of the poor domestically; making the cancer epidemic even worse by eliminating environmental regulations; more and more power for the secret police state and increased repression of dissent [the Democrats are doing that too, as much as the GOP, so there's no difference there- we dissidents are now subject, thanks to Obama, to permanent imprisonment in military gulags with no legal process whatsoever, merely by having the label “terrorist” applied to us, as the FBI and police routinely do to protesters of all progressive stripes]; virtual elimination of taxation of the rich with an increasing tax burden on the middle and lower classes; elimination of the basic human right of women to control their own bodies by terminating pregnancies and using birth control; elimination of the few remaining workers' rights, targeting their organizations for destruction or impotence; continued mass imprisonment (with 5% of the world's population, the U.S. already has 25% of the world's prisoners) which is another bipartisan policy; and ever-increasing amounts of money shoveled into the maw of the military-industrial complex. (The Democrats what to level it off at the current enormous amounts.)

The extreme reactionaryism and racism of the GOP makes the evil conniver Barack Obama look good by comparison, if only because he isn't openly demented in what he advocates. His policies are typical Democratic policies, Republican-Lite. I've documented many of his evil crimes in other essays. So we're supposed to breathe a sigh of relief that the next wave of vicious assaults on our lives aren't as bad as we were made to fear they could be, had we failed to panic and rush to the polls to save ourselves by voting for the lesser evil once again.

This sick con game actually dates back to Woodrow Wilson, who inaugurated the systematization of political repression in America with the Alien and Sedition Act. It's long past time for people to see through the game and organize a genuine political opposition. Why more people don't rally to the Green Party, for example, or vote for Ralph Nader, which are just the first steps towards actually seizing real power and changing this evil system, is somewhat unfathomable. In historical terms it's analogous to trying to puzzle out the phenomenon of Adolf Hitler; while there are lots of explanations, at some fundamental level it seems inexplicable.