In the Self-Proclaimed "World's Greatest Democracy," the Candidate With the Most Votes Just Lost

Democrat Hillary Clinton won more votes than Republican Donald Trump, but Trump won because of one of the U.S.' peculiar institutions, the "Electoral College." Presidents are actually elected by "electors," as per the U.S. Constitution. There are 538 of these electors, apparatchiks of the two ruling political parties. Clinton may end up with 2 million more votes than Trump after California is fully counted. (Clinton currently is ahead by 1 million.) But the so-called "popular vote" isn't what elects a U.S. president. The Electoral College vote does, and Trump won there, because he won enough of the 50 states to win a majority of the "Electors." [Later in this essay I explain the system in detail.]

This is the FIFTH U.S. presidential election in which the winner lost. It happened previously in 2000, 1888, 1876, and 1824. In fact, in 1824, the "winner," John Quincy Adams, didn't win the popular vote OR the Electoral College vote.

You would think the need to change this anti-democratic system would be obvious. Apparently it's not obvious to the elites who wield power.  The Democratic Party, having lost in 2000 and 2016, you'd think would be calling for change. But it isn't. Instead its two current leader, Obama and Clinton, immediately called for all citizens to fall in line behind Trump, to respect the "democratic process" and genuflect before the nobility of "our democracy." Obama immediately rushed to invite Trump to the White House and pledged to do his upmost to achieve a smooth transition of power and help Trump have a "successful" presidency.

Needless to say, their rivals, the GOP (Gang Of Plunderers) doesn't return the favor. Trump repeatedly announced his intention to claim he was cheated if he lost the election. ("The system is rigged, Folks!" was one of his repeated lines in the weeks before November 8.) And when Obama was elected in 2008, the Republican Senate leader, Mitch McConnell, announced at the outset that his number one priority was to make sure Obama had a failed presidency. (The U.S. corporate media doesn't want anyone to remember these things, so they don't mention them.) Newt Gingrich, a smarmy opportunist who has attached himself like a barnacle to the Trump ship, practiced the same sort of "politics of destruction," trying to delegitimize the Democratic Party. But it goes back even further, to the post World War II GOP strategy of redbaiting Democrats, which is how Richard Nixon got elected to Congress and to the U.S. Senate, before Eisenhower elevated him to the vice presidency. Even earlier, in the 1930s, reactionary Republicans acted as ideological police against Democrats.

Those who genuinely oppose not just the racist, reactionary, deformed narcissist Trump and the horrible anti-human policies of the GOP, but those of the Democrats and this entire oppressive system cannot look to the Democratic Party to lead an opposition. The top Democrats have already announced their intention not to oppose Trump and the GOP agenda! (Harry Reid doesn't count as he is retiring.) They won't even block the arch-reactionaries Trump has vowed to elevate to the Supreme Court, even though the Republican Senators blocked Obama from filling the Antonin Scalia vacancy for almost a year. The Democrats in general knuckle under to every GOP power play. Plus, the Democrats are a corporate imperialist party that fundamentally opposes real changes in the U.S. system.

Why some people have a hard time seeing this is baffling. The history of the Democratic Party since the extreme racist Woodrow Wilson, who inaugurated the modern U.S. police state with the Espionage Act and the Palmer raids, makes it crystal clear that Democrats are no allies of true progressives. [In fact the Democratic Party was the party of white racism from the 19th century until the 1960s.]

I'm sure almost no non-Americans, and probably most Americans, don't understand the Electoral College. Therefore, here is an explanation.

The U.S. Constitution as originally written set up this crazy system, part of the conscious design to maintain elite class control over political power. In other words, the U.S. was created as a oligarchy, not a democracy. Originally only white male property owners could vote in the U.S.- not even all white men! Women could not vote until 1920, which means as of today they could vote during less than half of U.S. history, and Southern blacks not until the 1960s, with the exception of a few years immediately after the Civil War ended in 1865.

Article II, Section 1 of the Constitution set up the Electoral College. The Xii Amendment to the Constitution, ratified in 1804, tweaked the College a bit. The Constitution calls for state legislatures to choose the Electors who in turn would vote for U.S. President and Vice President. But problems, such as deadlocked legislatures that couldn't decide on Electors, caused all the states except South Carolina to allow white men generally to vote for the Electors by 1832. South Carolina finally threw in the towel on state legislators having sole voting power for president in 1860, the same year that state became the first state to secede from the U.S., in December.

By the way, for 125 years state legislators picked their states' U.S. Senators, until 1913, when the XVII Amendment switched to "popular" election of U.S. Senators.

Today there are a total of 538 Electors. The Democratic Party and Republican Party choose the Electors. The American people are actually voting for these rival slates of Electors, unbeknownst to them.

These 538 party loyalists actually elect the president. Each state is apportioned a minimum of 3 electors. The number of electors per state corresponds to the number of a state's U.S. Congress people. As each state has two Senators and at least one Representative in the House, each has at least 3 electors. California, the most populous state and thus the state with the most House Representatives in the U.S. Congress, has 55 Electors. With 435 Representatives and 100 Senators (2 per state), that equals 535 Electors. The 3 remaining Electors were granted to the District of Columbia in 1964, 188 years after the United States was declared, when the residents of the capital city of the "World's Greatest Democracy" were finally allowed to vote.

The reason the "popular" vote and the Electoral College votes can differ is quite simple. All but two states gives 100% of their electoral votes to whoever wins the popular vote in the state. They don't have to do this, they could apportion the electoral votes according to the popular vote percentages, as this is entirely up to the individual states. But that is what they do. So say one candidate gets 55% in enough states to win a majority of electoral votes, but only 35%, say, in states he/she loses. They would have fewer "popular" votes nationwide, but a majority in the Electoral College.

The actual election by the Electoral College will occur this December, when the Electors meet in their respective state capitals and in the District of Columbia to vote. Not all of themn are legally bound to vote according to their state's popular vote, but since they are disciplined party hacks, they will. Trump is expected to receive 290 votes (270 required to win) and Clinton 228. The over 7 million votes that went to other candidates (including write-ins not on the ballots) get zero Electoral Votes, as if they don't exist. (The establishment media never mentions these votes, contributing to their invisibility.)

The U.S. territories Puerto Rico, Guam, U.S. Virgin Islands and Northern Mariana Islands, get no votes from the Electoral College because they aren’t states and they don’t have a special Constitutional amendment to recognize them. 4.4 million U.S. citizens live in the territories, a population almost equal to the total of 6 states.  (There are 4.5 million combined in North and South Dakota, Wyoming, Vermont, Alaska, and Delaware.)

Other people who can't vote are millions of people convicted of felonies in states that strip such people (mostly blacks) of the right to vote permanently.

If no candidate wins a majority in the Electoral College, the House of Representatives votes for the next president, and the U.S. Senate for the vice-president. Which in practice would mean the controlling party in each chamber would pick its own party's candidate, barring some weird political deal. This happened just once, in 1824.

In the very first U.S. presidential election in 1789, there was only one candidate- George Washington. See how "democratic" the U.S. was even at the very beginning? I found an interesting article that describes how U.S. presidential politics has really been a battle between competing elites from the very start- and indeed is still today. [1] Rival gangs of rich people and corporate interests cluster around the two oligarchic parties and compete with each other for state power. They use demagoguery and dishonest propaganda slogans and
"ideas" to psychologically manipulate various sectors of the populace to vote for them.

Here is the breakdown of the "popular" vote and the prospective Electoral College tally. Notice that over 7 million voters who voted for someone other than the two candidates of the two-party dictatorship don't count at all, as they get zero Electoral College votes.

http://uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS/national.php

Here is a useful historical timeline from Wikipedia.org ["Voting rights in the United States." Footnotes at Wikipedia.]

                                            Milestones of national franchise extension

Abolition of property qualifications for white men, from 1792 (Kentucky) to 1856 (North Carolina) — see: Jacksonian democracy.[5]

Citizenship in both the United States and U.S. States by birth or naturalization, 1868 — see: Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.

Non-white men, 1870 — see: Fifteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.

Direct election of Senators, 1913 — see: Seventeenth Amendment to the United States Constitution gave voters rather than state legislatures the right to elect senators.[11]

Women, 1920 — see: Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.

Native Americans (for all who did not already have the vote, which nearly two-thirds did[12]), 1924 — see: Indian Citizenship Act.[13]

Residents of Washington, D.C. for U.S. Presidential Elections, 1961 — see: Twenty-third Amendment to the United States Constitution.

Poll tax, 1964 — see: Twenty-fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution, prohibiting imposition of poll tax in federal elections.

Protection of voter registration and voting for racial minorities, later applied to language minorities, 1965 — see Voting Rights Act of 1965; this has also been applied to correcting discriminatory election systems and districting.

Poll Tax, 1966 — see: Harper v. Virginia Board of Elections, 383 U.S. 663 (1966), prohibiting imposition of poll tax or property requirements in all U.S. elections.

Adults between 18 and 21, 1971 — see: Twenty-sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution,[14] were granted the vote in response to Vietnam War protests which argued that soldiers who were old enough to fight for their country should be granted the right to vote.[11]

Requirement that a person reside in a jurisdiction for an extended period — 14th Amendment; Dunn v. Blumstein, 405 U.S. 330  (1972).[15][16][16]

Washington, D.C., for restoring local elections such as Mayor and Councilmen, after a 100-year gap in Georgetown, and 190-year gap in the wider city, ending Congress's policy of local election disfranchisement started in 1801 in this former portion of Maryland, 1973, — see: D.C. Home rule.

United States Military and Uniformed Services, Merchant Marine, other citizens overseas, living on bases in the United States, abroad, or aboard ship, 1986 — see: Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act.[17]
Finally, here's an interesting paragraph from the Federal Government's National Archives and Records Administration webpage on the Electoral College:

Reference sources indicate that over the past 200 years, over 700 proposals have been introduced in Congress to reform or eliminate the Electoral College. There have been more proposals for Constitutional amendments on changing the Electoral College than on any other subject. The American Bar Association has criticized the Electoral College as “archaic” and “ambiguous” and its polling showed 69 percent of lawyers favored abolishing it in 1987. But surveys of political scientists have supported continuation of the Electoral College. Public opinion polls have shown Americans favored abolishing it by majorities of 58 percent in 1967; 81 percent in 1968; and 75 percent in 1981.

Well, so much for democracy and the "will of the people."

For more details on the Electoral College, see the following:

"U.S. Electoral College: Frequently Asked Questions," National Archives and Records Administration.

"Electoral College, (United States)," Wikipedia.org.

"Breaking down the US elections: Your biggest questions answered," RT, November 8, 2016


1] "Presidential Elections," History.com, website of the History Channel cable TV channel. Oddly for a corporate entity, I've found the articles there mostly pretty objective.

Trump Is Destabilizing the U.S.- Should Progressives Worry?

Donald Trump is aggravating the fissures in U.S. society. A narcissist running a demagogic campaign for president of the U.S., his aim is his own self-aggrandizement.

He is rabble-rousing elements of the broad, discontented, white working class and anxious "middle" classes which the establishment power system seeks to keep passive as the system of corporate oligarchy slowly and relentlessly grinds them down economically. In classic fascist/reactionary fashion, he diverts attention from understanding the actual structure and nature of society and instead scapegoats "outsiders," in his case "illegal" immigrants and would-be refugees seeking asylum from war zones. He has also identified the various trade treaties as a cause of the economic squeeze on workers, which is valid as a factor.

Trump has made a frontal assault on these so-called "free trade" deals, violating an establishment ideological taboo observed by Democrats and other Republicans alike. Trump has done more to incite opposition to these treaties than labor unions, which supposedly represent the interests of workers, and certainly more than the Democratic Party, whose dominant figures largely support these corporate-power-enhancing treaties.

And while pressing the same hot button "culture war" issues that "respectable" "conservatives" do, being a political vulgarian he doesn't do it in a muted fashion as standard-issue reactionary Republicans do but does it very sharply, as was on display in the third and last "presidential debate" last night between him and Hillary Clinton, the Democrat. (This sort of crudeness is referred to by Republican operatives themselves as tossing "red meat" to "the base." Apparently GOP voters are like pet ocelots. Trump threatens to take them off their leashes.) These issues are guns, abortion, and immigrants. (The immigrant issue of course is tied to the economic insecurity felt by millions, with racism and xenophobia in the mix.)

Trump laid down his marker on immigrants early on when he branded virtually all Mexican immigrants as rapists and murderers- a trope others have picked up, some implying that all murders in the U.S. are the work of illegal immigrants, an absurdity that goes unchallenged. Instead we get from Democrats and "liberals" heartstring-plucking stories of hardworking immigrant families (it always has to be families) and children caught in a legal bind not of their own making. Which is fine, but insufficient, as it leaves the murderer-immigrant theme unrefuted.

Trump lately has also been destabilizing the legitimacy of U.S. elections by claiming they are "rigged," to cheat him of his victory. He continued this tact last night. This is very cynical on his part, as he is doing it because he is apparently going to lose. [1]

But the irony is, U.S. elections ARE corrupt, only not in the ways Trump means. [2] For example, the last two times a Republican "won" the presidency, it was by stealing it. Bush  the Younger stole Florida in  2000, aided and abetted by his brother Jeb, the then-governor of Florida, Jeb's GOP (Gang Of Plunderers) minions there who disenfranchised thousands of eligible voters, and most importantly by five Republican Supreme Court justices, who illegally blocked a recount in Florida. In 2004 Ohio was stolen, with the connivance of GOP officials there, led by Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell.  Since 2000, the Republican-owned corporations that make the crooked voting machines have connived to steal numerous elections by programming them to switch votes from Democrats to Republicans. (The Democrats refuse to make an issue out of any of this. As for 2000, they blame it all on Ralph Nader. Talk about scapegoating!)

But the Republicans (or elements of the secret police state acting on their behalf) are more ruthless than that.
Both Paul Wellstone and Mel Carnahan were murdered by plane sabotage to help the GOP control the U.S. Senate. And a devout Christian computer programmer, who helped the Republicans steal elections, had an attack of conscience and spoke out. While flying to testify in a civil case against Karl Rove, the top Republican electoral operative, his plane too was downed, and the evidence he was carrying to the trial was removed from the crash site, never to be seen again.

We can add mass disenfranchisement by various chicanery of Democratic voters, which the Democratic Party barely objected to until very recently.

Nor does it help that the Republicans who constituted a majority on the Supreme Court before the death of arch-reactionary Antonin Scalia last year gutted the Voting Rights Act, opening the door to even more ruthless disenfranchisement of "black" citizens in the erstwhile Confederacy.

Trump has even damaged the Republican Party, which he has hijacked for his ego trip. Contrary to universal handwringing by the establishment blatherariat, this is a good thing. It is to be fervently desired to see that evil, noxious weed break up into two or more parties. (That would also have the salutary effect of weakening the extortionist power of the Democratic Party to force people to vote for them as "the lesser of two evils" to avoid a Republican victory.)

You would think that progressives would welcome things that weakens the stability of the current oppressive, imperialist, and incorrigible U.S. structure. That assumes that they understand the problems they complain about are structural in nature and deeply rooted in the nature of U.S. society. Many apparently don't understand that, but they should.

But instead, as happens every time there is the one-day-every-two-years when some actual democracy has to be allowed- democracy to the very limited extent that some people (not millions of disenfranchised people, mostly blacks) are allowed to vote from a menu of two choices presented to them- Democratic Party politicians or Republican Party politicians- what progressives and special interest "leftists"* virtually all do is line up like obedient ducklings behind the Democrats. [3] Because "the Republicans are worse." They are exhorted by Democratic Party political auxiliaries like Robert Reich (a Bill Clinton cabinet member) that "now is not the time" to seek an alternative, not even a Senator Bernard Sanders, who ran as a Democrat for president against Hillary Clinton in the Democratic Party primaries and then supported her when he was blocked from victory. But there will never be a "right time" as long as the Republican Party exists.

Preserving the faux "unity" of the American populace under the current political and economic power structure is precisely what those in power want! Why would anyone who struggles against this system want to help do that?

The media created Donald Trump, making news stories out of even his random idiotic tweets. Now they are trying desperately to destroy his drive to the White House with sex scandalizing. To be sure, he is loathsome, and a probable rapist, as I will explain in a separate essay. (Bill Clinton is a confirmed rapist- cf. Juanita Broaddrick- and that IS relevant because he will have immense power if/when his wife achieve her goal of the presidency, her compensation for setting aside her own ambitions in Arkansas and when her husband got to be president. It's a family affair, you see.  Now it's her turn. The other relevance is that Hillary was a driving force in the character assassinations of her husband's various paramours. And it went into actual terrorism. When Kathleen Willey reported a rebuffed sexual advance on her by Bill C. in the White House, her cat was killed, after which a man jogged up to her outside when she was along and mentioned the dead cat. A scary threat indeed, the implication being that he could kill her right then and there.)

Here's a good reason to look forward to the end of the election: the media obsession with Donald Trump will abate. (If we're very lucky, it will even end.) But the barbaric soul of the Republican Party has had its genteel veil torn off by Donald Trump.


1] Trump also has broken new ground, at least in the past century, by openly attacking the legitimacy of his two-party opponent. Trump at the previous debate said he would jail Hillary Clinton if elected. Last night he said she shouldn't even be allowed to run because of her "many crimes." If he had meant crimes against humanity, he would have been onto something. He just meant her private email server, destroying 30,000 emails, an allegedly lying to the FBI.

This attack on the legitimacy of the official opposition can be seen as rooted in the GOP attacks on Obama's legitimacy, including the claims that he was born in Kenya and thus Constitutionally ineligible to be president. The GOP didn't overtly push that line, but its auxiliaries in "talk" radio promoted it. Trump took that "issue" and ran with it in the years when he was preparing the ground for his attempt to grab the presidency.
Nor are fraudulent claims of election-stealing by the Democrats new. The myth has long been nurtured that JFK stole the 1960 election from Nixon by stealing Illinois. That myth is easily refuted by simple arithmetic. Just subtract the Illinois electoral votes from Kennedy's total and add them to Nixon's. Kennedy still wins. But as Reagan said, "facts are stupid things."

In fact, the Republican Party, by pushing relentlessly to the right (with the help of almost the entire U.S. media) over the last almost 50 years, a campaign of reaction and rollback that was a response to the upsurges of the 1960s, has really opened the door to a demagogue like Trump. The years of rightwing extremism have validated the derangement and inculcated the rightwing segment of the populace in irrational beliefs an animosities.

2] Trump claims illegal immigrants are voting, "dead people" are voting, illegal immigrants are not just voting once, but "fifteen times," etc. etc. This is of a piece with his general cynical demagoguery designed to rabble-rouse the racists and xenophobes, who number in the millions.

3] I use "leftists" for want of a better single word, and also because that is how the power structure thinks of them, especially the secret police agencies, "talk" radio, hard-rightwing media, and rightists generally, even though that is a stupid way to think of them. I am referring to single-issue people such as those categorized as environmentalists, gay rights activists, "civil" i.e. black rights people, and so on, dozens of such splinter groups with no unity, each applying a modicum of pressure on the system to achieve its own ends within the current system without changing its basic imperialist, corporate oligarchic nature one whit.

The truth is, the vast majority of progressives are frightened of pulling down the temple of power. That's why their distress at Trump's refusal to validate the fairness of the election has them in a tizzy as much as it has the establishment media the the Democrats. Even as I'm writing this, one Kristen Clarke is talking to Amy Goodman on Democracy Now! (the first segment of the day's show) and prattling on about U.S. "democracy" being the "model for the world" and how "distressing" it is that Trump would question the legitimacy of a U,S. election. Then she segued into a total non sequitur about voter suppression against blacks! Which would seem to undercut her boilerplate propaganda about legitimacy and a Model for the World. She keeps referring to "conspiracy theories," and brushes aside a question about Gore v. Bush in 2000 ("We're not going to relitigate [that]" i.e. not going to discuss, remember, or learn from) and denies U.S. elections can possibly be rigged. "Rigged elections, pure mythology, pure fiction..."! [What, 2000 wasn't? 2004 wasn't?]

Clarke is also bent out of shape that Obama's nominee for the "broken" Supreme Court, Merrick Garland, a conservative former prosecutor, hasn't been given a Senate confirmation hearing. "A Constitutional Crisis" she calls it. "I am deeply concerned about this era of political obstruction we are in," she says, parroting Democratic Party rhetoric.

Clarke is President and Executive Director of the "Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law," founded in 1963 at the request of president John F. Kennedy. That political pedigree maybe tells you all you need to know about where Clarke is coming from.

John McCain, Political Weathervane, Blows With the Wind

John McCain unwittingly planted some seeds of irony last year that have now sprouted. At the time, summer 2015, McCain openly bemoaned the xenophobic demagoguery of Donald Trump. Trump came to Arizona, McCain's state, to do some rabble-rousing among white racists, towing behind him as a stage prop the father of a person murdered by an undocumented (aka “illegal”) immigrant. [1]

The political mobilization of white racist xenophobes in Arizona presented a threat to McCain, because of his vulnerability to an extremist far-rightwing challenger in the Republican primary for his U.S. Senate seat. (U.S. Senate terms last 6 years, and McCain is running for reelection for a 6th term this November.)

McCain fretted of Trump's agitprop rally that “This performance with our friend out in Phoenix is very hurtful to me. Because what he did was he fired up the crazies.” “We have a very extreme element within our Republican Party,” in Arizona. “Now he galvanized them. He’s really got them activated.”

These are the comments that irked the schoolyard bully Trump, prompting him to denigrate McCain for only being called a hero for being “captured,” making McCain a “loser” in Trump's eyes. (As Trump avoided the draft, and certainly didn't volunteer, he was never in any danger of capture and possible Loserhood himself. It was mostly the poor and other lower economic classes who were subjected to impressment into the U.S. military to attack Indochina. McCain was descended from a military family and entered the U.S. Naval Academy to pursue a career as a navy officer, later finding politics more to his taste.)

Now here are some excerpts from an article in a haute bourgeois U.S. publication that ran in July of last year. I have highlighted certain phrases:

McCain is an ardent backer of his good friend Senator Lindsey Graham, who is languishing in the G.O.P. Presidential primary polls. He noted that Graham has been one of the few Republicans to condemn Trump in strong terms. On Sunday, Graham said on CNN, “I think [Trump]’s a wrecking ball for the future of the Republican Party with the Hispanic community, and we need to push back.” He added that Republicans “need to reject this demagoguery. If we don’t, we will lose, and we will deserve to lose.”

McCain, who is eighteen years older than Graham, sounded like a proud father. “Lindsey said this is a moral test for our party. He put on a very strong performance,” McCain said. “Of course, Lindsey was one of the eight of us who negotiated immigration reform. Lindsey never backed away from it.”
McCain, who had a testy relationship with Senator Marco Rubio, another member of the Gang of Eight who is running for President, couldn’t resist adding, “Rubio backed away from it.”

I noted that Rubio, like many other Republican politicians, has been hard to follow on the issue and no longer supports the compromise approach that the Gang of Eight took in 2013: combining a pathway to citizenship and tough new border measures in a single bill. McCain licked his finger, held it up in the air, and laughed.

“You know that old song from before you were born?” McCain said, speaking of the Bob Dylan classic “Subterranean Homesick Blues.” “You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.” [2]

Indeed.

So McCain, who hops on the Trump bandwagon, laughed at Rubio as someone who, like a weathervane, points in whatever direction the political winds are blowing. Note that McCain's political compadre Graham, and the Bushes, and Mitt Romney, and many other prominent Republicans, have publicly disavowed Trump. And McCain said Amen to Graham's call to resist the demagoguery of Trump. Not just as a political necessity, but as a “moral test.”

Read my previous essay, just below, about McCain, and see if you can spot more ironies. [“John McCain Has No Pride.”] 

As they say in those English-speaking isles across the Atlantic, Cheers!

1] Trump and his ilk have been raising a terrible stink about two murders committed by non-citizens present in the U.S. without permission. Given that there are an estimated 11 million such people here (out of an estimated population of 315 million), no one should be shocked if some of them commit murder. There were 16,121 homicides in the U.S. in 2013, according to the CDC. (Over two-thirds of the homicides were committed with firearms, by the way.) Doubtless the vast majority were the crimes of U.S. citizens. But of course racism and xenophobia are impervious to rational thought, so this is a case of, in the immortal words of Ronald Reagan, “facts are stupid things.”

Or in the satirical stylings of comedian Steve Colbert, “truthiness” trumps mere truth. Because emotions are stronger than reason, feelings are more vivid, thus “truer,” than facts, which are intellectual abstractions. You could say that much of the problems of humanity are rooted in this basic structural and existential fact of the mind/psyche. We have (some of us, anyway) rational capability, but it is very hard to be rational, to live guided by reason.

2] “John McCain Has a Few Things to Say About Donald Trump,” New Yorker, July 16, 2015.

The new logo for the Republican Party. (Replaces the elephant, an intelligent, brave, loyal creature unjustly besmirched by involuntary association with the Gang Of Plunderers.)

 

John McCain Has No Pride

U.S. Republican Senator John McCain of Arizona is endorsing the man who sneered that McCain wasn't really a war hero, he was only a hero "because he was captured" and then gratuitously added "I like people that weren't captured," callously brushing aside with contempt McCain's five and a half years of captivity in Vietnam. I refer, of course, to one Donald J. Trump, Billionaire Narcissist, Sociopath, and Dangerous Demagogue. [1]

McCain has already been a Senator for almost 3 decades, and is 79 years old, yet is so desperate to stay in the Senate that he is willing to demean himself this way because, it was reported, he fears the white bigots (my term) who dominate Arizona politics (especially Republican primaries) and who are infatuated with Trump. (These are people he previously referred to as "crazies" being riled up by Trump, which provoked Trump The Bully to then piss on McCain's war record.) Even a militarist and hard right-winger like McCain fears being unseated by someone even more extreme in a GOP Senate primary.

McCain's inseparable partner in the Senate, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, won't endorse Trump because, he says, Trump called McCain "a loser for being captured" and Trump said nice things about Vladimir Putin, The Bogeyman of Russia.

McCain is a man who actually has already had some practice in pride-swallowing concomitant to hailing someone who humiliated him. In 2000 he ran against George W. "Warrior" Bush for the GOP presidential nomination. In order to destroy McCain in white racist South Carolina, the Bush gang, under the direction of the Machiavellian Karl Rove, spread the rumor that McCain had a secret, "illegitimate" black child. The "dirty trick" worked. Loser McCain fell in line behind Bush, ultimately. [2]

This is the man the corporate propaganda system dressed up for public consumption as a "straight-shooter" and "maverick," a man who marched to his own drummer.

If what it takes to be a Republican Senator is this sort of self-abnegation, then the GOP (Gang Of Plunderers) must be recognized as having cultlike properties, forcing its acolytes to surrender their self-respect in return for acceptance by the group and for power. (The classic existential situation of selling one's soul to the devil for temporal gain.) In place of self-respect is substituted ersatz self-respect, namely arrogant self-regard, and vanity. These are brittle, shallow psychic properties which render the individual psychologically vulnerable, and thus even more manipulable by the cult.

This sacrifice of the human self in return for a share of power is a key mechanism by which anti-human power systems like the U.S. perpetuate themselves.

 McCain was "heroic" enough to bomb the Vietnamese, which was immoral, but politically and ethically he's now proven himself to be a Profile in Cowardice.

John Sidney McCain III has been a U.S. Senator since January, 1987; 29 years. He will be 80 years old in August. Still, he apparently cannot abide the thought of leaving the Senate. McCain, it seems, is a man who will degrade himself in order to be a Senator for Life. [3] 


1] Trump's classic sociopathic traits include his cunning instinct for homing in on others' vulnerabilities, and his indifference to the interests and feelings of others in pursuit of his own advancement.

2] Yes, South Carolina is that racist. One would think that such a despicable ploy would boomerang on the perpetrators. Au contraire, mon amis! Nor do such tactics earn opprobrium from the Chatterocracy of the corporate propaganda system (aka "the media). Hell, if treasonous actions such as Nixon sabotaging the Paris peace talks between the U.S. and North Vietnam in 1968 (by advising South Vietnamese dictator Thieu to boycott them) and Reagan arranging for Iran to hold on to the "hostages" in 1980 until Carter's last day in office are kept "secret" with the connivance of the bourgeois blatherariat, what's a little sexual/racial smearing? It's not as if U.S. power elites have high ethical standards (their obnoxious pretentions to same notwithstanding). [The underhanded method Rove used to plant the idea of "McCain's illegitimate black daughter" in people's heads was a push poll. Lee Atwater was another GOP political thug who used the same technique in 1980.]

Bush is a war hero in his own right, having spent the Vietnam war in a safe stateside berth in the Texas Air National Guard, secured for him by his daddy, a posting from which he went AWOL (absent without leave-that's military jargon). He also flew in a jet which landed on an aircraft carrier in 2003 and proclaimed Victory in the invasion of Iraq. ("Mission Accomplished," proclaimed a boastful banner suspended from the carrier's superstructure, photogenically strung behind the rostrum placed on the carrier deck from which Bush addressed the assembled sailors and airmen.)

Yet Bush's self-serving evasion of "service" to the murderous U.S. imperialist project in Indochina is far preferable to what McCain did. McCain was a very avid bomber of Vietnam, as we know from his own and others' accounts. He asked for a combat assignment, and helped bomb North Vietnam from a navy aircraft carrier as part of Operation Rolling Thunder during the Johnson regime. After an accident on the carrier injured him and put the ship out of action, he got himself transferred to another carrier so he could keep bombing. Shot down over Hanoi on his 23rd bombing mission, he was captured, imprisoned, and tortured at first. (Although what was done to him wouldn't be considered "torture" if the U.S. were doing it to prisoners.)

3] McCain's father and grandfather both rose to the rank of 4-star admirals in the U.S. Navy. McCain, who graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy at the bottom of his class, achieved the rank of captain, equivalent to a colonel in the other main three branches of the U.S. military (army, air force, and Marine Corps.).

"Sen. John McCain sticking with GOP nominee Trump," Arizona Republic, May 6, 2016.

"Now I'm endorsing HIM?? I'll do ANYTHING to stay a Senator until I die!" 

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Trump vs. Clinton Means Democrats Once Again Force You To Vote For Them As Lesser Evil

Well, another presidential election, another electoral extortion by the Democrats coming up. Every four years Americans who have decent instincts (and in some cases are politically conscious and non-deranged) have the same choice- Evil or Worse Evil. Vote for imperialism, reductions in government programs that serve human needs, and a more repressive police state, or vote for possibly even more aggressive imperialism (although given the Democrats war record going back to World War I, through Korea, Vietnam, Carter's instigation of the anti-Soviet war in Afghanistan and beginning the assault on Nicaragua and sanguinary repression in El Salvador- by the way Carter also increased the military budget 50% in just four years, contrary to the "hollowing out" of the military under Carter you may have been led to believe by the GOP and U.S. media- and now Obama's numerous wars, force one to wonder whether the GOP, notwithstanding their louder barking, actually has a worse bite), more savage assaults on human services, and a more repressive police state. This stark choice is used every time to repress arguments for the need to break decisively with the two-party dictatorship that fronts for the corporate oligarchy of America, and offer a real alternative. More importantly, it smothers in the cradle the necessary building of a political movement to actually change things fundamentally in the U.S. [1]

This endless postponement of creating a true opposition movement (with the party-building that must be part of such a movement to give it coherence, institutional continuity, and strategic direction) means nothing really changes in the U.S., except for the worse. As the U.S. has relentlessly moved rightward over the past few decades, the populace increasingly feels confused, trapped, angry, and demoralized.

On the right this manifests in the schizophrenic extremism of the Tea Party mentality. The narcissistic demagogue Donald Trump sensed his opportunity here and has seized it. That's what good opportunists do- take advantage of circumstances in ways that only serve themselves.

On the left, once again a figure has arisen to raise false hopes, later to be dashed. In 2008 it was Barack Hussein Obama, a product of the Daley machine of Chicago, a hustler and con man whose first job out of college was with a CIA-front company, and who then became an infiltrator of grass roots progressive movements in Chicago (getting close to ex-Weatherman Bill Ayers in the process) as a "community activist." In 2016 it's Bernard Sanders, an independent allied with the Democratic Party, another Pied Piper whose ultimate role will be to urge his followers to vote for the mega-corrupt, two-faced political chameleon Hillary Clinton.

Well, at least this is more interesting than the originally-scheduled choice between the Clinton and Bush dynasties.

Clinton will probably prevail, although it is no sure thing. Trump will suddenly deny he ever said anything bad about Mexicans (he has a habit of saying an outrageous thing one day and the next day bluntly denying saying what he said, and the corporate propaganda system- aka "the media"- let him get away with it every time. [2] One should not underestimate Trump's flexibility. He feels not the slightest compunction to respect consistency. He changes his words as easily and often as his underwear. And his fealty to accuracy and truth is obviously zero. Presumably Clinton will hammer on his self-contradictions, but most people are too intellectually lazy to keep track of facts, and the skillful demagogue Trump will parry the attacks and counterattack with lines that change the subject to Clinton's email server, the attack in Benghazi that killed the U.S. ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and three American staffers, and whatever else, plus the usual juvenile insults and put-downs. (Maybe instead of vulgar references to menstruation, he'll mock Clinton as menopausal.)

Still, if I were to bet on the outcome, I'd bet on Clinton prevailing. it will be a slough for her. But she's used to that. And have you noticed something? She's become a much better politician. Her speeches, while predictably mendacious and misleading (she's bellowing progressive rhetoric at her primary victory rallies for example), are effective and have the proper emotional affect. She sounds passionate about things she has no intention of doing, just like Obama.

Of course, her husband, a natural politician/con man, has had years to tutor her.

1] As best I can tell, the only real difference between the two oppressor parties is on abortion. Democrats pay lip service to the right of women to control their own bodies and not be forced to bear offspring against their will, like some breeding animal, but precious little beyond lip service, while the GOP (Gang Of Plunderers) fight relentlessly to strangle the right to death- with great success so far. In practice, they are eliminating or greatly impeding the option of abortion for millions of women in states like Texas, and Mississippi (down to one clinic, clinging to existence by its fingernails under relentless state assault).

And this year, with the blessed death of Supreme Court "Justice" Antonin Scalia, and the GOP-controlled U.S. Senate announcing that Barack Obama will not be allowed to appoint a successor, the Democrats can play their Supreme Court card yet again, dangling the prospect of "losing" the right to abortion if we don't vote for them. This cynical ploy relies on people not knowing various fact as to how the Court became so reactionary in the first place- Democrats had to allow the placement of every single reactionary on the high court, as even the minority party in the Senate can block confirmation through various parliamentary mechanisms.

For example; Scalia was put on the court with the aid of every single Democratic Senator (the vote to confirm was 98-0). And Joseph Biden, as chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, was instrumental in ramming through the confirmation of sex-harasser Clarence "Silent Cal" Thomas. His venal, dishonest role is what made Thomas' ascension possible. (He actually tried to keep the evidence provided by Anita Hill secret from other Senate Democrats, and then told them that Hill was not to be believed; he also quashed supporting evidence of Thomas' vulgar behavior towards women.) [See the book The Strange Justice: The Selling of Clarence Thomas, by Jane Mayer and Jill Abramson, 1994. In 1994 both authors were employed by the right-wing Wall Street Journal. Mayer went on to The New Yorker, Abramson became the top editor at The New York Times (until she was cashiered and character-assassinated in a quasi-defamatory media campaign by the sexist male Times' hierarchy, led by publisher Arthur "Pinch" Sulzberger, who inherited the job from his daddy and whose family controls the corporation). So both have eminent establishment credentials and unimpeached credibility over the years. Some of the damning facts about the evil Biden are on pages 248-50, 268-71, and 277. By the way, on page 248 is a description of Thomas lying to the FBI, a felony for which he was never indicted, and which in no way impeded his elevation to the exalted "highest court in the land."

2] And not just Trump. Other outrageously brazen GOP liars like Ben Carson and Carly Fiorina were given the same extreme deference. A particularly disgusting example was when Fiorina claimed during one of the GOP presidential candidate "debates" (Sept. 17, 2015) that she watched a surreptitious ambush video, shot trying to entrap Planned Parenthood in fetal tissue malfeasance, that showed a baby lying on a table, kicking and screaming, before having its organs harvested. No such video exists. When this was pointed out to Fiorina by Chris Wallace (one of Rupert Murdoch's minions) on Fox "News" Sunday, the show he hosts, Fiorina loudly told the same lie again, yelling that this imaginary video showed a crying baby pre-disembowelment. And Wallace cravenly retreated! He let her get away with asserting the blatant lie as truth.