An Open Letter to Bernie Sanders and His Campaign

We don’t have the time to engage in a long discussion, even argument, about how dumb or smart the America electorate is. So let’s do a brief review of his comment and begin by clarifying for Mr Nestor the following:

(1) As per TGP rules long established and explained at the bottom of each article, “all [image] captions and pullquotes” are by the editors, NOT the author(s).” So “the guy” you mention as being denser than the American electorate is in this case one of our editors, to be precise, the editor in chief, Patrice Greanville, me, not Eric Zuesse. The author did not say nor imply anything along those lines.

(2) The political stupidity and/or inaction, passivity, call it what you will, observed for many decades among the American population is well known, well recorded, well commented among historians and sociologists, and is both a scandal and the laughing stock of the world, even the butt of savvy comedians (George Carlin, for example, one of the sharpest political comedians this country has produced). “No one went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people” is an old joke, and, like all jokes it remains funny to many because it rings true. The level of political comprehension exhibited by Americans is simply appalling, and their bovine acceptance of innumerable broad daylight inadequacies, annoyances, and crimes inflicted by the US political class in their daily lives, things (for example) like big pharma tv commercials, and a rotten, pathetic healthcare system, to mention just two, would be and are justly regarded as offensive, criminal or ridiculous in other nations, which, as you know, are also capitalist yet manage somehow to maintain a modicum of self-respect as polities.

The preceding not to deny that “the American disease” of political ignorance, stupidity and indifferentism has now invaded many nations formerly a bit better constituted culturally and politically, even nations once famous for their “left” political culture, like Italy or France; indeed the “Americanization” of cultural mores we see in countries like France, a traditional bastion of anti-anglo culture, is indicative of how far this nefarious trend has reached. At the top political level, American influence for decades has corrupted their media even further (the case of Germany amply documented by German witnesses from within, including a former journalist corrupted by the CIA, whom the media have naturally “neutralized”, and who practically no average American ever heard of), and certainly their political establishments, making these nations not just willing capitalist partners of Washington in its worldwide depredations (Korea, Vietnam, etc.) as they emerged from WW2, but outright vassals. The regimes of Francois Hollande, Cameron and Merkel—inter alia— will be remembered as the bottom of a filthy well. Converging class interests, of course. The natural and organic march of imperialism. We know. We understand Marx as well as you. Still, in this filthy game some are dirtier than others. The British and their “baby Brit” brood——Australia, Canada and New Zealand, have gone furthest, as the UK ruling class has simply grafted itself on Washington to share in the spoils of the new empire. You don’t get more disgusting than that.

(3) We are aware of the longstanding cultural and historical facts defining the American consciousness, the airtight control of the mass media by tycoons and megacorporations; the corrosive and disabling myths of rugged hyperindividualism, the “American Dream”, the land of freedom, model democracy, and, of course the ultimate propaganda triumph, the definition of the American nationality itself as inherently capitalist, as in “The American Way of Life.” Europeans, Chileans, and many other nationalities are still trying to wrap their minds around the concept of “Anti-Americanism”, meaning anti-capitalist. Thus to call an Italian communist “anti-Italian” would invite derision or guffaws or, more likely, incomprehension. It’s a typically idiotic (but forceful) American concept created with impunity by the ruling circles of this nation and enforced by their abject running dogs in the media. Yea, running dogs, and that is to put it charitably.

(4) The above not to deny that America has produced its radicals and dissenters, some great people by any standard, like Bill Haywood, but so have other cultures and nations, and those people operated and still operate under far worse and threatening conditions than the American variety.

(5) The term “American electorate” was actually a polite term, as the reality is that political obtuseness and self-absorption of the gravest form afflicts “the American population”, in general. The fruits of this disablement can be seen everywhere, in the wreckage and filth that passes for US elections, to its media, and major cultural and social institutions, with utterly criminal manifestations on the world stage.

Finally, as a sophisticated social observer you must know that general labels attached to social phenomena always allow for exceptions. This is one of the critical differences between social sciences and natural sciences, not to mention mathematics. Exceptions do exist, some heroic and honorable, but, in the American political ambit, they do not seem to make a difference yet. That’s why the latest news about Justin Bieber or Madonna carries more cultural awareness than what this filthy ruling class is doing in the Ukraine, to mention just one of many examples.

—Patrice Greanville
Editor in Chief