Naples.
The Daily Kos has long fascinated amateur left political anthropologists, folks who remain almost eternally frustrated by the sheer political opportunity wasted by this mammoth liberal site. The Daily Kos is so massive, and so self-important, that it merits its own encyclopedia, of sorts, that is, the Kosopedia. Problem is, like the Democratic party it is affiliated with, the DK soaks up much of the oxygen in the “online progressive spectrum” of the US population, thereby blocking such people from bumping into and exploring far more radical and thereby closer-to-the-truth blogs. Given the acute crisis the US and the world are in, much of it precipitated by the former, this is no small objection.
The blog’s rank and file are, as we might expect from a conglomeration of ordinary folks, decent enough, with liberal instincts after all, but, like most self-conscious establishment American liberals, they suffer from the capital national sin, a pervasive form of hubris. This manifests itself in the following: Kossacks think they are (a) far better informed than the rest, (b) nicer and better intentioned than their political foes, (c) better judges of political character, not to mention policies, and, the oldest conceit among comfortable, upper middle class poltroonish liberals, (d) that they represent the American left (such as it is).
Parochial to a fault despite their self-image as political sophisticates, they may be wrong—woefully wrong— on all counts, but that doesn’t seem to stop anyone at the DK corral from adhering to their staked positions as if life depended on it, which these days may be much more of a literal than metaphorical flourish.
Being ideologically immutable is not something to celebrate. We should all remain flexible enough to adjust our positions when properly challenged with irrefutable proof, or at least what seems like cogent analysis. Unfortunately, the US is a deeply divided nation today, almost irreconcilably so, as the mainstream media, which could and should have acted as a gradual amplifier and softener of wrongheaded but deeply rooted ideological positions, a veritable educator and mediator for the masses through sheer cumulative and systematic exposure to diverse, truthful reports on social reality, has utterly and deliberately failed to do so. That, naturally, is a subject for another article.
The tyrannical rule of abject liberaloid wisdom
Markos Moulitsas
The catalyst for such uniformity of thought is Donald Trump’s fractious personality, and his obviously outrageous statements, as it is rather clear (even suspicious to some) that Trump has been and remains his own worst enemy in terms of imprudent talk. While plausibly calibrated to please some of the most rightwing and racist elements in a crowd that feels justly betrayed and neglected by the Obama regime (in reality Obama has betrayed all Americans, except for his real controllers, the plutocratic 0.00001%), Trump’s Big Mouth statements have exceeded his need to consolidate his core and ended up giving the Hillary camp (which has always included a silent but powerful segment of establishment Republicans) a wealth of material with which to destroy him in the court “of respectable public opinion”, a fief in which liberal pundits predominate. But stupidity, random irrationality, blatant ignorance, immanent criminality or personal venality have never been a disqualifier for the White House before, as GWB proved so conclusively, so what exercises the establishment worthies is surely something else. Crazy, loose talk like “Obama founded ISIS.” Or, “why the hell do we need NATO now…” (This one sends shivers down the spine of the imperial Pentagon/spook establishment). Yea, the man sounds crazy, not to be trusted, petulantly whimsical, but some of things he says will never be said or even entertained by Hillary, and they do not sit well with the powers that be, comfortable with the current course of endless imperialist wars and confrontations and systematic immiseration of the Great Unwashed at home. From the standpoint of the establishment then, it’s clear Trump won’t do. (More on this later.)
But let’s continue with our analysis of DK’s baleful role in this election.
While DK’s self-complacent herd prides itself in observing individual autonomy, the site’s overall tone and direction are set by a bunch of often obnoxious, petty conservative liberals—”extremists of the center”—that have no problem in proudly proclaiming that their site is an official Democratic party appendage, and critics better beware! At the DK, the DNC mafia rules! (In fairness, honorable exceptions do exist, but we are again talking about the weight of the misguided multitude.) “Kos”, by the way, is the US-Army/screen nickname of the founder of Daily Kos, Markos Alberto Moulitsas Zúniga.
The site’s longstanding and defining allegiance to the Dems is stated up front:
This is a Democratic blog, a partisan blog. One that recognizes that Democrats run from left to right on the ideological spectrum, and yet we’re all still in this fight together. We happily embrace centrists like NDN’s Simon Rosenberg and Howard Dean, conservatives like Martin Frost and Brad Carson, and liberals like John Kerry and Barack Obama. Liberal? Yeah, we’re around here and we’re proud. But it’s not a liberal blog. It’s a Democratic blog with one goal in mind: electoral victory. And since we haven’t gotten any of that from the current crew, we’re one more thing: a reform blog. The battle for the party is not an ideological battle. It’s one between establishment and anti-establishment factions. And as I’ve said a million times, the status quo is untenable. (Kosopedia, 2004)
No surprise then that Kossacks were among the first to go gaga over Obama, as this crowd is rich in natural suckers for identity politics, and remain, despite some nagging doubts, enthralled by the First Black POTUS, a master demagog born to fool people like these. Consistent with such character trait, DK’s loyalties have seamlessly switched from Obama to Hillary Clinton, and the trickle of support at the start of the primaries has now become a veritable torrent—the herd again stampeding on cue at the thought of Big Bad Trump wolfing down the nation.
Let’s get something up front at this point. How do you think the Kossacks would react were a statement like this, written by respected Black Agenda Report senior columnist Margaret Kimberley, cross their mindscape?
Wikileaks latest revelations of the Democrats’ corruption prove that the party is nothing but a neo-liberal marketing scheme meant to fool progressive voters. As with the Republicans, its goal is to aid and abet the dictates of the ruling classes. The contents and substance of the hacked emails had to be disappeared so as not to ruin the Democratic convention and its well-honed image of inclusion. (Trump, Russia, and Democratic Lies, BAR, 8.3.16)
Yea, that’s right. Sister Kimberley is spot on—as usual. “A neo-liberal marketing scheme meant to fool progressive voters.” That’s what the Democratic party is all about these days. Truth, however, no matter how expressed, has little impact on insulated minds. Incautious souls attempting to open the eyes of this crowd—traditionally one of the most thankless tasks in American politics, comparable to preaching racial equality to a Klan assemblage—are liable to be viciously pelted, their arguments receiving cruel sarcasm or worse. The really unlucky may also receive a gratuitous lecture on the topic, as many Kossacks fancy themselves “experts” in various fields: history, politics, science, culture, race, you name it. How they can boast clear vision about world realities while living deep in the folds of the conventional wisdom that shields the rotten status quo they profess to criticize is one of their great contradictions, but then, again, they are not liberals for nothing.
Mirroring the Big Media offensive against Trump
[dropcap]H[/dropcap]aving heard the bugle to stop the media-manufactured anti-Christ, the Kossacks are now in full mobilization mode. I got one of their reading recommendations mails this morning. The obsessive list points to Trump as the capital danger to humanity in just about every article. While Trump is no doubt heinous enough, a despicable maniacal narcissist and terminal ignoramus, and he wears his fascistic and racist tendencies on his sleeve, he’s not demonstrably a worse threat to the planet than corporate flack, certified war criminal and military/security-apparatus favorite Hillary Clinton. So, in our view, what DK and its horde of wannabe activists should be doing is seeking a true alternative to this dual malignancy, like endorsing Green Party candidate Jill Stein, in measurable ways a far more consistent progressive than Sanders ever was. That, however, for reasons, elaborated elsewhere, is not their path. They have clearly chosen the establishment course of demonizing Trump (which is fairly easy for reasons stated), and vibrantly endorsing Clinton, which is as dumb as it gets, for this is indeed an election opportunity when Third Party voices and unconventional moves are in order. In any case, see for yourself and note the silly triumphalist/celebratory tone of some of their potshots (click on image):
The character witnesses summoned by the author(s) of this contrived collage of apologetics for Clinton are all utterly compromised themselves; all to a fault creatures similarly embedded in the very putrid establishment that Hillary personifies, from Henry Louis Gates, an establishment-coddled African American Harvard don who Black Agenda Report editors correctly denounce as anything but an honest historian, to the likes of Jill Abramson, a former Executive Editor for the New York Times and reporter for the Wall Street Journal, among other high corporate media positions.
Abramson as a Hillary character witness really sticks in my craw. For to believe that Abramson is a credible reference in this case would necessitate that we also believe in the purity of the mainstream media, especially the New York Times, which excels at the craft of —for lack of a better label—”authoritative disinformation”. While they are at it, while not throw in the Immaculate Conception?
Has anyone on the left reading these lines ever seen the editors of the New York Times print any important story that comes anywhere close to the truth—particularly in matters of foreign policy? I mean when it matters, not 20, 50, 100 years after the events took place. Has the Times or its twin in evil manipulation, the WaPo, print anything truthful about the Ukraine before or after the US-sponsored fascist coup? Have they conducted any serious investigation of the demonstrators’ “massacre” in Kiev, a turning point in that supposedly “people’s revolt”? All evidence now points to a Western false flag, exculpating Yanukovych’s security forces (several of them were shot, in fact), but the US press has remained curiously uninterested in pursuing the story. Ditto the great MH17 scandal, a grand case of Western journalistic malfeasance, whereby Russia and Putin were instantly pilloried as the guilty party, before there was anything even remotely credible on which to pin such outrageous claims.
Have these papers denounced in urgent and stern terms (instead of cheering it on) the crazy Neocon-inspired warmongering games played by NATO —the Pentagon’s Cat’s Paw—on Russia’s doorstep? Why don’t the supposedly sober-minded, peace-loving editors of the Times use their huge megaphone to denounce the US government’s constant attempts at provoking and encircling Russia and China, thereby bringing the world ever closer to a nuclear Armageddon? Has either of those great exemplars of American journalism admitted clearly and conclusively that the US was and remains behind the creation and perpetuation of Wahhabi fanaticism culminating with ISIS, the still expanding plague of retail terrorism, and the genocidal wars in Iraq, Syria, Libya, the European refugee crisis, and so on and so forth, ad infinitum? Have either of these papers ever thrown their mighty resources behind a serious, systematic investigation of 9/11, one of the pivotal issues of the 21st century, instead of running cover for the still unpunished perpetrators?
Truth and priority assigned to such issues is the mark of good journalism, and by those simple standards these papers—along with the rest of the US media pack—fail the test abominably. Furthermore, if these media are so thoroughly tainted and compromised with the stink of shilling for US imperialism, for the American Deep State, why doesn’t intimate association with such criminal entities constitute a disqualifying factor? Does anyone believe that you can get to be Executive Editor for the paper of record of the US bourgeoisie—as Abramson was—without being thoroughly vetted as a dependable member of the club? And we are expected to believe that this woman is qualified to serve as a reliable source for Hillary’s honest nature?
But Aronovitz, assuming he is really serious about his panegyric, is too dense to see the obvious about Clinton, so he falls for the Lesser Evil with embarrassing alacrity. Except that in 2016 Hillary and the Dems do not represent anything like the “Lesser Evil” but quite probably “the More Effective Evil”, or, since Hillary’s tent, dissolving any pretense of a partisan divide, now encompasses the whole murderous corporate establishment, simply “the one and only Evil”.
The always astute Black Agenda Report executive editor, Glen Ford, put it this way:
While Democrats scream “fascist” at Donald Trump, actual fascists with real histories of mass murder at home and abroad gather in Hillary Clinton’s “Big Tent” Democratic Party. The melding of GOP and Democratic fat cats is “the most dramatic effect of the breakdown of the duopoly system set off by Donald Trump’s white nationalist, anti-‘free’ trade revolt.” Blacks and progressives will be shocked to find themselves at the margins of Hillary’s tent…
“Clinton has inherited the Republican money base, which means she is the candidate of the ‘bipartisan’ moneyed classes, period.”
Hillary Clinton is celebrating in the bloated expanse of the “Big Tent” Democratic Party she and Bill have dreamed of building since their days in the backwaters of Arkansas. Slick Willie and his wife have succeeded in assembling under one party roof nearly the whole of the U.S. ruling class and their hordes of attendants and goons. The scam that undergirded the duopoly system that has served the Lords of Capital so well for so long, has come undone. Thanks to a white nationalist billionaire who was too spoiled to play by the corporate rules, the two parties of the ruling class have become one.
(Hillary Stuffs Entire U.S. Ruling Class Into Her Big, Nasty Tent.)
Such clear-sightedness is alien to the likes of Arnovitz, or, for that matter the mainstream liberal mob, who remain happily imprisoned in a stupid cocoon of self-reinforcing delusions, political evasions, and Big Lies circulated in the mainstream media and their vast blogosphere. It is therefore hardly shocking to see this closing statement in Arnovitz’s tract:
Hillary is nobody’s idea of perfect. Fine. But in my view if a man with her qualifications were running in the Democratic primary, Bernie would have been done before he even started. And if a man with her qualifications had been running for the Republicans, they’d be anointing him the next Reagan while trying to sneak his face onto Mount Rushmore.
Most of the people who hate Hillary when she’s running for office end up liking her just fine once she’s won. And I have every confidence that history will repeat itself again this November. As for myself, I have been watching Presidential elections since Nixon. And never in my life has there been an easier or more obvious choice than now. Trump is not merely a bad choice, he is (as many leading Republicans have already admitted) a catastrophic choice, unfit in every possible way for the office of the Presidency.
As such, I happily voted for Hillary in my primary. And I will proudly vote for her in November. Yes she will disappoint us all on occasion. Who doesn’t? But I think she’s also going to surprise a lot of people. She will fear neither consensus when possible nor ass-kicking when necessary. She will safeguard us from the damage a right-wing Supreme Court would inflict on the nation. She will stand for the rights of women, LGBT Americans, and minorities. She will maintain critical global relationships, and she will react to dangerous situations with the temperament of a seasoned and experienced professional. And in a nation that didn’t even allow women to vote until 1920, she will make history by shattering the very highest glass ceiling, and in doing so forever change the way a generation of young women view their place in our Republic.
She’s going to be a fine President.
I’m with her.|
Willful idiocy of that caliber is sealing the fate of humanity. Wish us all a lot of luck after the January 2017 coronation. We’ll need it. Badly.
NOTE: Those prone to self-flagellation can read the whole Arnovitz article here.
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