The Coming Months of Crazy

Whether or not Frank Zappa ever really said it, politics is indeed the entertainment division of the military industrial complex. It is the circenses of the panem et circenses, the circuses of the bread and circuses.

Audio and video here: https://davidswanson.org/talk-world-radio-the-coming-months-of-crazy

As we normalize genocide, increase the risk of nuclear war, lock in climate collapse, and accelerate the bioweapons tinkering that probably caused the covid pandemic, we are yet again presented with another most important election of our lifetime. Which geriatric sociopathic servant of the MICIMATT — the military industrial congressional intelligence media academia think tank complex — do you choose to identify with, deny all evidence against, and cheer for as a savior worthy of imperial powers no person should ever hold? Is it the guy who wants and has overseen massive increases in military spending, or the guy who wants and has overseen massive increases in military spending? Is it the guy who lied that he would end the war on Afghanistan or the guy who lied that there was some point evil enough at which he would end the war on Gaza? Is it the guy who badgers nations into buying more weapons or the guy who badgers nations into buying more weapons? Is it the guy who evicted Russian diplomats, sanctioned Russian officials, put missiles practically on Russia’s border, lobbied European nations to drop Russian energy deals, left the Iran agreement, tore up the INF Treaty, rejected Russia’s offers on banning weapons in space and banning cyberwar, expanded NATO eastward adding Montenegro as a member, added a NATO partner in Colombia, proposed adding Brazil, splurged on more nukes, bombed Russians in Syria, oversaw the largest war rehearsals in Europe in half a century (now outdone), condemned all proposals for a non-NATO European military, and insisted that Europe stick with NATO, or the guy who outdoes all of that, blocks peace deals for Ukraine, and claims the first guy is a servant of Russia?

Want to communicate your displeasure with all of this? If you do it in Chicago outside the Democratic National Convention you’ll be labeled a Trump supporter. If you do it in Milwaukee outside the Republican National Convention you’ll be labeled a Biden supporter. The very idea that you could be anything other than one of those things will be unthinkable. And yet, at the same time, everyone will imagine that you have declared Trump and Biden to be identical, indistinguishable, mirror images of each other in every little detail, which is of course absurd — maybe even more absurd than suggesting that cancer and heart disease are one and the same thing. The two least popular candidates for U.S. president ever are about to have those records smashed by the very same two people, but they are different people from each other with different policies on hundreds of important issues. For those disgusted by an ignorant fascist buffoon like Donald Trump, the choice is easy: whichever guy isn’t Trump. And yet that guy is so awful that even those voting for him ought to more than ever concentrate their energies outside of elections on the non-electoral nonviolent activism that has always done the most to improve the world and they ought to never give up until election day on urging Joe Biden to drop out and let someone decent (and with a better chance of winning) run. The fact that you could be pretty sure of getting a better candidate by picking a U.S. resident at random makes it rather pathetic. Our champion of democracy is only a candidate because of cheating Bernie Sanders last time, blaming revelations of that cheating on Russia — to which the U.S. media and public reacted like a starving dog thrown a bone — and because of effectively blocking any challengers this time. Just to be extra democratic, Biden will have himself pre-nominated prior to the convention in Chicago, at which quite possibly nothing real will happen.

But if you want to see an even more fake convention, look at any past one of either party. These parties routinely put out platforms full of blatant lies. Why is Biden so miserably unpopular? There’s the ever-worsening inequality, and also the ever-worsening healthcare system, and the ever-worsening climate collapse. In the absence of radical change, many crises will go on getting worse, and each new occupant of the White House will gain ever more unpopularity as a result, regardless of whether he or she did more or less than the previous guy in the way of token mitigation.

Then there’s the war on Gaza and the endless wars and militarism and military spending and militarization of the border. Most people want Biden to stop providing the arms and the vetoes and the propaganda support for genocide. Most people have grown up being told that’s the very worst thing in the world. Now they watch Biden every day leading the charge for the very worst thing in the world. The fact that the corporate media pretends that Biden is trying to aid the very people he’s killing cannot be expected to completely fool everyone — especially people not paid the salary of a columnist to perform the function of failing to understand.

Then there’s this: Biden got over his dramatic unpopularity last time by pretending to be Bernie Sanders. I can think of a couple of dozen ways he could, if he wanted, follow through on his pretenses of four years ago:

1. Undo all of his new drilling permits to stop breaking his promise of “No more drilling on federal lands, period.”
2. Create free college for families paid less than $125,000 a year. It was in the 2020 Party platform and on the 2020 Campaign website.) Biden can do this alone but chooses not to.
3. Provide $10,000 in student debt relief per borrower as in the Party platform and on the Campaign website. Biden has claimed he has the power to cancel $10,000 but not $50,000, yet failed to actually cancel $10,000.
4. “[E]nd support for the Saudi-led war in Yemen and help bring the war to an end.” It was in the Party platform and on the Campaign website. I mean actually do it. That means stop sending weapons to Saudi Arabia. This is in Biden’s power. He could also simply give his Party members in Congress permission to end the war with legislation as they did when Trump was president, and then not veto it as Trump did.

The same goes for ending the wars in Ukraine and Gaza that could not go on without U.S. blockage of negotiations or U.S. provision of weaponry.

5. “Immediately end the horrific practice of separating families at our border and holding immigrant children in for-profit prisons.” Campaign website. Biden could do this now. He hasn’t fully done it. He also promised to compensate separated families and could keep that promise right now but is choosing to break it.
6. Create a $15/hour minimum wage. This was promised on Biden’s campaign website and in the Party platform. We’ve seen no sign of it, and already it will be worth less than it would have been in Biden’s first year. (The senseless ongoing failure to tie the minimum wage to the cost of living is why an adjustment is needed in the first place.)
7. Provide paid sick and family leave. This bit of the Party platform sounded really good back in 2020: “Democrats will implement paid sick days and a high-quality, comprehensive, and inclusive paid family and medical leave system that protects workers from the unfair choice between attending to urgent health or caretaking needs and earning a paycheck. We will fight to ensure workers are guaranteed at least 12 weeks of paid family and medical leave for all workers and family units, to enable new parents to recover from childbirth and bond with their newborns, foster or adopted children, and allow all workers to take extended time off to care for themselves or ailing loved ones.” See also Biden’s 2020 Campaign website.
8. Remove the cap on Social Security taxes so that the rich pay their share, and expand Social Security benefits. These changes, laid out on Biden’s 2020 campaign website, and carefully analyzed by academics would help millions of people if, you know, Democrats actually made them.
9. “Provide Section 8 housing vouchers to every eligible family so that no one has to pay more than 30% of their income for rental housing.” That’s a quote from Biden’s 2020 campaign website. Here’s a quote from The Princess Bride: “I’m waiting!”
10. Reduce the military spending that he’s already increased. This is a tricky demand, given that the Democrats have already done the opposite of what was promised in their Party platform, (Biden has asked Congress for a big increase each year and Congress has increased it beyond what he asked for each year) but it can be done. These words from that platform may inspire Democrats to action: “We spend 13 times more on the military than we do on diplomacy. We spend five times more in Afghanistan each year than we do on global public health and preventing the next pandemic. We can maintain a strong defense and protect our safety and security for less.”
11. Create free community college for two years. (Party platform.) (Campaign website.)
12. “Provide high-quality, universal pre-kindergarten for all three- and four-year-olds.” (Campaign website.) (Party platform.)
13. Belatedly do the “Year One Legislative Agenda on Climate Change.” (Campaign website.) Here’s an excerpt: “Biden will make the largest-ever investment in clean energy research and innovation. After World War II, public investment in research and collaboration between universities and the private sector spurred American innovation, led to rapid economic and job growth, and helped build a strong middle class. The Biden plan will double down on this approach to create the industries of the future by investing $400 billion over ten years. That’s twice the investment of the Apollo program which put a man on the moon, in today’s dollars. This investment will enable us to develop new technological break-throughs that will create jobs and drastically reduce emissions.”
14. Put $2 trillion into clean energy. (Campaign website.) “Biden will make a $2 trillion accelerated investment, with a plan to deploy those resources over his first term, setting us on an irreversible course to meet the ambitious climate progress that science demands.”
15. “Provide every American city with 100,000 or more residents with high-quality, zero-emissions public transportation options through flexible federal investments with strong labor protections that create good, union jobs and meet the needs of these cities – ranging from light rail networks to improving existing transit and bus lines to installing infrastructure for pedestrians and bicyclists.” (Campaign website.)
16. [R]epeal decades-old authorizations for the use of military force. (Party platform.)
17. Create a healthcare “public option.” (Campaign website.) (Party platform.)
18. Lower the age for Medicare. (Party platform.)
19. Expand voting rights, including for people convicted of felonies. (Party platform.) The promised changes included automatic voter registration, same-day voter registration, early voting, universal vote-from-home and vote-by-mail options, and an election day holiday.
20. Reform campaign financing. (Campaign website.) “Biden will: Introduce a constitutional amendment to entirely eliminate private dollars from our federal elections. . . . Enact legislation to provide voluntary matching public funds for federal candidates receiving small dollar donations. . . . Restrict SuperPACs. . . . End dark money groups. . . . Ban corporate PAC contributions to candidates, and prohibit lobbyist contributions to those who they lobby.”
21. Get weapons of war off streets. (Campaign website.) “In 2005, then-Senator Biden voted against the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, but gun manufacturers successfully lobbied Congress to secure its passage. This law protects these manufacturers from being held civilly liable for their products – a protection granted to no other industry. Biden will prioritize repealing this protection. Get weapons of war off our streets. The bans on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines that Biden, along with Senator Feinstein, secured in 1994 reduced the lethality of mass shootings. But, in order to secure the passage of the bans, they had to agree to a 10-year sunset provision and when the time came, the Bush Administration failed to extend them. As president, Biden will: Ban the manufacture and sale of assault weapons and high-capacity magazines. . . . Buy back the assault weapons and high-capacity magazines already in our communities.”
22. Allow union organizing. (Campaign website.) (Party platform.) “Biden will go beyond the PRO Act by enacting legislation to impose even stiffer penalties on corporations and to hold company executives personally liable when they interfere with organizing efforts, including criminally liable when their interference is intentional . . . . A co-sponsor of the original Employee Free Choice Act, Biden supports workers choosing to form a union if a majority signs authorization cards empowering a union to represent them. He will go beyond the PRO Act by allowing workers to use this process, called ‘card check,’ as an initial option for forming a union, not merely an option granted when the employer has illegally interfered in the election process. . . . Ban state laws prohibiting unions from collecting dues or comparable payments from all workers who benefit from union representation that unions are legally obligated to provide.”
23. Eliminate cash bail, mandatory minimums, the death penalty, or the criminalization of marijuana. They’re all on Biden’s campaign website.
24. Make D.C. a state. (Party platform.)
25. Tax the oligarchs. (Party platform.) (Campaign website.) “Democrats will take action to reverse the Trump Administration’s tax cuts benefiting the wealthiest Americans and rewarding corporations for shipping American jobs overseas. We will crack down on overseas tax havens and close loopholes that are exploited by the wealthiest Americans and biggest corporations. We will make sure the wealthy pay their fair share in taxes. We will make sure investors pay the same tax rates as workers and bring an end to expensive and unproductive tax loopholes, including the carried interest loophole. Corporate tax rates, which were cut sharply by the 2017 Republican tax cut, must be raised, and ‘trickle-down’ tax cuts must be rejected. Estate taxes should also be raised back to the historical norm.”

Breaking promises is usually unpopular. Breaking promises that you had to fake in order to pass for popular in the first place is pretty damaging. The fact that the corporate media does not mention any of this, and that many people may be only vaguely aware of this, doesn’t change the fact that all these lies were sold to people four years ago and are much harder to sell now — and for the most part the sales pitch isn’t even being attempted.

The fact that Genocide Joe is a liar and eminently evil is not a problem for lesser evilism, if the other guy is more evil. But many lesser evilists turn out to actually think their candidate is good, and many others resist acknowledging the full extent of their candidate’s evil. When you become a supporter of a candidate, even for lesser evil reasons, you enter into a particular universe. If you volunteer for that candidate, you encounter nothing but praise for them and denunciations of their opponent. Even if you never leave your house, your web searches gradually begin finding only news sources that slant everything in favor of your candidate. Millions of people put up yard signs and bumper stickers promoting their candidate, and virtually nobody puts a second sign beside the first one protesting some of that candidate’s evil agenda. You can claim that lesser evilism leaves you independent and uncompromised, but you can’t actually protest your evil candidate’s evil in their local office — you’ll be off the team instantly.

Many lesser evilists claim to flip a switch within themselves after a particular period of time. For two weeks or six months or two years they choose to utter not one word against their evil candidate, while swearing that the rest of the time they will bring outside independent pressure to bear on the government without distorting anything in favor of one office holder or party over another. This is at best self-delusional in most if not every case. Right now we have the two parties in Washington, D.C., directing their “grass roots” groups in what to ask for and what to say about it — the complete inversion of representative government. And this is because election season never ends and lesser evilism never ends right along with it. In January of 2007, the Democrats had just taken over Congress with a clear mandate to end the war on Iraq, and Rahm Emanuel told the Washington Post that the Democrats would keep the war going for two more years in order to run “against” it again in 2008. And so they did. And people who preferred having Democrats keep the war going to having Republicans keep the war going stuck tape over their own mouths and lay back and took it.

This is the problem. It’s not that lesser evilism isn’t logical in a voting booth. It’s that it never ever stays within a voting booth. It poisons political activity every day of every year.

To grasp that point, one has to be brought to share the perspective in which voting is not the only important political activity. Now, I’m not against elections. I think we should have one some day! That would require some of these changes that cannot be voted in under the broken system that lacks them: public funding of elections, no bribery, free air time for candidates, automatic voter registration, open debates and ballots, no gerrymandering, hand-counted paper ballots, international monitors, no electoral college, no delegates, no superdelegates, and a three-month election season with a bit of actual governing before the next one.

You cannot vote those things in any more than women voted themselves the right to vote or children voted an end to child labor or any major change has come about through voting. Voting is a critical component in applying public pressure in a system lacking direct democracy, but it is only one small piece — and it’s even smaller when it’s as broken as the current U.S. presidential election system.

What should people do other than vote and complain? Occupy college campuses — that’s done more for divestment and peace than voting usually does. Pass local resolutions. Organize demonstrations and general strikes. Disrupt speeches. Hold rallies. Hold teach-ins. Write articles, phone media outlets, produce media, organize conferences, join in marches and concerts and street performances. Do a few of the things that tend to work. Join peace rallies in Washington DC July 6 and 7 — see No NATO Yes Peace Dot Org.

What would it take to have elections with candidates worth voting for? With the right popular movement and the right Congress, no new laws would be needed. But to put the standards we should have into the form of a Constitutional amendment, I would put them something like this:

The rights protected by the Constitution of the United States are the rights of natural persons only.

Artificial entities, such as corporations, limited liability companies, and other entities, established by the laws of any State, the United States, or any foreign state shall have no rights under this Constitution and are subject to regulation by the People, through Federal, State, or local law. The privileges of artificial entities shall be determined by the People, through Federal, State, or local law.

The judiciary shall not construe the spending of money to influence elections to be speech under the First Amendment.

All elections for President and members of the United States House of Representatives and the United States Senate shall be entirely publicly financed. No political contributions shall be permitted to any federal candidate, from any other source, including the candidate. No political expenditures shall be permitted in support of any federal candidate, or in opposition to any federal candidate, from any other source, including the candidate. The Congress shall, by statute, provide limitations on the amounts and timing of the expenditures of such public funds and provide criminal penalties for any violation of this section.

State and local governments shall regulate, limit, or prohibit contributions and expenditures, including a candidate’s own contributions and expenditures, for the purpose of influencing in any way the election of any candidate for state or local public office or any state or local ballot measure.

The right of the individual U.S. citizen to vote and to directly elect all candidates by popular vote in all pertinent local, state, and federal elections shall not be violated. Citizens will be automatically registered to vote upon reaching the age of 18 or upon becoming citizens at an age above 18, and the right to vote shall not be taken away from them. Votes shall be recorded on paper ballots, which shall be publicly counted at the polling place. Election day shall be a national holiday.

Nothing contained in this amendment shall be construed to abridge the freedom of the press. During a designated campaign period of no longer than six months, free air time shall be provided in equal measure to all candidates for federal office on national, state, or district television and radio stations, provided that each candidate has, during the previous year, received the supporting signatures of at least five percent of their potential voting-age constituents. The same supporting signatures shall also place the candidate’s name on the ballot and require their invitation to participate in any public debate among the candidates for the same office.

Imagining such a legal standard sounds like a top-down solution, but it would take a massive bottom-up movement to create and uphold it. By bottom-up I do not mean the opposite of the corporate media term “elites.” Elites intentionally conflates greedy plutocrats with smart people, establishing that the way to oppose oligarchy is to empower really dumb people. By bottom-up I mean coming from everyone who is not individually empowered by wealth or by serving the interests of wealth. I think we should bear in mind that this is most of us, as the corporate communications system goes for all-out craziness, recall with Shelley that we can rise like lions after slumber in unvanquishable number, shake your chains to earth like dew, which in sleep had fallen on you, ye are many, they are few.