The British ruling class, in cahoots with its Washington masters, shames the British nation.

ABOVE: WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange © Peter Nicholls / Reuters

No outdoor space, no sunlight 

The 27-page report, written by an unnamed trauma and psychosocial expert, notes that Assange has been residing in a “usable living space” of approximately 30 sq meters since Ecuador granted him asylum at its London embassy in August 2012. The total size of the embassy is approximately 200 sq meters.

RELEASE: Psychological, medical, dental records for Julian Assange reveals his life inside the embassy siege

In addition to the small quarters Assange has called home for four years, the embassy has no outdoor space. It does not receive any direct sunlight, according to the report.

“Mr. Assange reports that he has made numerous attempts through his lawyers and through representations by the Embassy of Ecuador to be able to access the open air, for example on the roof of the building adjacent to the Embassy, for an hour a day (the legal minimum for prisoners) without risking arrest, but says that British authorities have refused this possibility,” the expert wrote.

Physical health

[dropcap]T[/dropcap]he report notes that Assange has become sleep-deprived, as he is determined to sleep with “one eye open,” particularly after an incident in which several Metropolitan Police officers allegedly stood outside the embassy, with one officer throwing an object at Assange’s window.

Assange is also at risk of various illnesses due to his sedentary lifestyle within the embassy, including obesity, cardiovascular disease, and hypertension.

In addition, Assange is being deprived of adequate medical care, noting that there has been difficulty finding doctors who will agree to see him inside the embassy.

“The reasons given were uncertainty over whether medical insurance would cover the Embassy (a foreign jurisdiction); whether the association with Mr. Assange could harm their livelihood or draw unwanted attention to them and their families; and discomfort regarding exposing this association when entering the Embassy,” the report states.

The report also states that Assange is in need of an MRI scan and ultrasound imaging on his right shoulder, as he is plagued with pain which is “severe” and “growing progressively worse.” A December 2015 physician’s letter said the pain is “likely a chronic progressive condition” which is likely to worsen without treatment.

“There is a limit to how much a single person can take and Julian has reached that limit,” said his lawyer Melinda Taylor in a live link with RT from London. “The staff are being extremely helpful in allowing him to stay but it is an embassy, it is not a even a prison, it doesn’t have the services available in any standard prison.”

“One of the problems of being inside the embassy is getting proper diagnoses, so to have a thorough diagnosis of his health, he would have to go to hospital. But the UK government consistently refuses to give him safe passage to a hospital.”

The UK government confirmed in October 2015 that it had denied a September 2015 request from Ecuador for Assange to be granted safe passage to a hospital, where he could have received an MRI.

“The absence of a clear cut diagnosis and standard procedures is causing extreme stress to Mr. Assange, and concerns expressed range from permanent damage to the shoulder/arm to the possibility of cancer,” the report states.

The paper also mentions that Assange suffers from “chronic dental pain from a fractured tooth” which he claims affects his ability to sleep and work.

It references a July 2015 letter from Assange’s dentist, which says he is in need of gingival surgery and root canal treatment or surgical extraction. Such a procedure cannot be carried out inside the embassy.

Psychological health 

The report notes that Assange is under constant surveillance, and therefore “virtually under a microscope.” The writer called such a situation both “traumatizing and destructive” to his personality.

‘Ridiculous to say Assange faces no threat’ – WikiLeaks founder’s advisor to RT

When asked if he ever thought about self-harm, Assange responded that he feels self-destructive on occasion. He did, however, state that he had never acted in a manner to cause himself or anyone else harm.

“In my opinion he does have a degree of suicidal ideation, but his children are a strong positive factor, and objectively the risk of self-harm is low,” the expert wrote.

The expert recalled their first visit to the embassy, when they noticed that Assange’s working space was extremely cluttered.

“I commented on the clutter and asked couldn’t he see it? He replied that he ceased to ‘see’ things in that way, that it all became a blur in the total absence of any novel sensory input. He described it as a shutting down of his visual field in relation to his physical environment,” the expert wrote.

In his own words, Assange said: “…The walls of the embassy are as familiar as the interior of my eyelids. I see them, but I do not see them.” He went on to state that it has become increasingly difficult to see how objects relate to each other, or “to grasp the passage of time.”

The expert described Assange’s thoughts as being typical to those whose physical activities are restricted, as such people can experience a “slow unraveling of their cognitive faculties.”

The report goes on to note a number of interviewees who said that Assange has become increasingly introverted, and is now an “extremely sad person” who seems to sometimes forget about eating.

No end in sight 

The writer of the 27-page report noted that Assange’s situation has “no end date,” adding that there is “convincing evidence” that indefinite detention causes “severe harm” to the individual being detained. They added that it is “urgent” that Assange’s circumstances are resolved as quickly as possible.

“Mr. Assange’s mental health is highly likely to deteriorate over time if he remains in his current situation. Such highly stressful circumstances, with no end in sight, can lead to unpredictable and sometimes very destructive consequences for individuals. They may become very ill mentally and physically and carry out desperate acts to try and gain relief,” the expert wrote.

Read more

‘Assange kill attempt’? Unknown man climbs Ecuador’s London embassy, sheltering WikiLeaks chief

Stating that Assange is in a “state of chronic health insecurity,” the expert wrote that he needs, at the bare minimum, “access to fresh air, sunlight and exercise space on a daily basis.” They added that Assange’s “unusual circumstances” have placed him in a “precarious situation.”

“The effects of the situation on Mr. Assange’s health and well-being are serious and the risks will most certainly escalate with the potential to becoming life threatening if current conditions persist,” the expert concluded.

Assange has been living inside the Ecuadorian embassy in London since Quito granted him asylum in 2012. The 45-year-old is wanted in Sweden for questioning in connection with allegations of sexual assault against two women in 2010, an accusation which he has always denied. Several additional charges against Assange were previously dropped because their statute of limitations were reached. However, the current charge is not due to lapse until 2020.

The WikiLeaks founder fears that if he goes to Sweden, he will then be extradited to the US, where he is wanted on espionage charges related to publishing classified US military and diplomat documents in 2010 – a move which amounted to the largest information leak in US history.

His legal team believes that Assange is entitled to compensation from the UK and Sweden for having to stay at the embassy for the past four years.

“His rights have been violated. His right to protection against arbitrary detention, his presumption of innocence, his right to a fair trial, his protection against cruel and inhumane treatment – all of these rights have been violated, so he should be given compensation,” Taylor told RT.

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What will it take to bring America to live according to its own propaganda?

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BY DAVID WALSH, SENIOR FILM CRITIC, WSWS.ORG

Directed by Ang Lee; written by Jean-Christophe Castelli; based on the novel by Ben Fountain

Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk is the latest work from veteran Taiwanese-born filmmaker Ang Lee, probably best known for Sense and Sensibility (1995), The Ice Storm (1997), Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000) and Brokeback Mountain (2005). The new film is based on the novel of the same title by American author Ben Fountain, published in 2012.

The drama takes place in 2004. A unit of American soldiers, who have survived a brief but fierce battle with Iraqi insurgents, are being celebrated as “heroes” on a nationwide tour. Thanksgiving Day finds them in Dallas, where they are to take part in halftime festivities at a Dallas Cowboys football game. Despite the media hoopla and public attention, the group of soldiers is on the eve of being shipped back to Iraq.

Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk

Billy Lynn (Joe Alwyn), the central figure in the novel and film, is a 19-year-old US serviceman whose effort to save his beloved sergeant (Vin Diesel) in Iraq was captured on film and has earned him a Silver Star. We follow him as he navigates the goings-on at the football stadium, and we also see what he remembers about the battle in Iraq and other recent episodes in his life, including his first visit home since his deployment. His sister, Kathryn (Kristen Stewart), to whom he has been very close, is working on Billy to find a means (medical, psychological) to avoid returning to the war zone. The young man also encounters and becomes infatuated with a Cowboys cheerleader, Faison (Makenzie Leigh).

Accompanying the “Bravos,” as the media has dubbed the group of young soldiers, is a Hollywood wheeler-dealer, Albert (Chris Tucker), who is trying to put together a film deal. The “heroes” are the guests of Dallas Cowboys’ owner, Norm Oglesby (Steve Martin), who talks cheaply and indiscriminately about God and country. He pompously tells Lynn, “Your story, Billy, no longer belongs to you. It’s America’s story now.” Ultimately, which should surprise no one, Oglesby proves to be a first-class chiseler along with everything else.

Before discussing the substance of Ang Lee’s film, it is necessary briefly to consider its “groundbreaking…technical breakthroughs.” Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk was shot in 3D, in high resolution (4K, or twice the number of pixels, both horizontally and vertically, as an ordinary film) and in “a history-making frame rate” (120 frames per second, as opposed to the normal 24).

According to Billy Lynn ’s production notes: “The movie even set up its own lab in Atlanta in order to process a vast quantity of data, as Lee and [cinematographer John] Toll invariably relied on two cameras running at five times the normal speed with twice the amount of data running on each of those cameras. That translated into twenty times the data storage of a normal high-quality Hollywood film on a daily basis.”

Kristen Stewart and Joe Alwyn

The technology is impressive and certainly deserves to be explored. However, the claim that technical means by themselves will advance cinema is simply unwarranted. Lee comments, “To me, when we see movies, it’s as if we’re watching someone’s story from a distance. My hope with this new technology is that it could allow for greater intimacy, to really convey the personal feelings of a conflicted young soldier.”

It is difficult to know precisely what this means. We are always watching someone’s story from a distance in a film. Greater physical proximity does not necessarily bring us any closer to the truth of someone’s life. For that, social and psychological knowledge are required. Compared to present-day filmmakers, Murnau, Renoir, Eisenstein, Kurosawa, Ford and Chaplin worked with primitive equipment, but they were able to present far richer pictures of life.

Co-producer Stephen Cornwell: “In some ways the language of cinema hasn’t really evolved for a hundred years. The frame rate’s been the same. The way things are performed, spoken and constructed and the way narrative unfolds is something that we’ve all come to accept as norms. And what Ang has done is ask how do we evolve cinematic language to stay relevant, distinct and unique in the post-digital age, in an age where cinema is plateauing, where story telling has become very familiar? To do that, we have to change the way people experience cinema, and that’s what Ang’s reaching for, what we’re all reaching for in this film.”

The problem with contemporary filmmaking is not primarily mechanical or organizational, but artistic and social. Cornwell seems to imply that the present stagnation can be overcome by astonishing technical knowhow. This is obviously not true. What’s needed, above all, is not greater “technologically induced realism,” but greater historical and psychological realism.

Human beings and objects have always appeared to me to be three-dimensional on screen, at least physically. The 3D technology is often a distraction, and it certainly proves so in Lee’s new film. So-called 3D films sometimes appear to be composed of cardboard cutouts standing in front of one another.

Joe Alwyn

Filming Billy Lynn apparently had its peculiarities. Fewer takes were possible, for example, because of the expense. Also, according to the British-born Alwyn, “The cameras were absolutely huge. … Because of how intimate Ang wanted the shots––so close to the faces––you would be performing to the black-matte box around the camera, rather than being able to see the other actors. Oftentimes, you’d just be following bits and pieces of tape, moving around a black space, and delivering your lines to that.” These circumstances may help explain why there is much stiffness and awkwardness in a number of the performances, especially in those of Steve Martin, Vin Diesel and Chris Tucker.

In any event, the filmmakers have done a reasonable job of adapting Fountain’s book, which––as I noted previously––”is not so much a novel about Iraq…as it is a sharp look at phony patriotism, hypocritical religiosity and corporate greed in [George W.] Bush’s Texas.

Fountain notes that the idea for the novel originally came to him at home while actually watching the Dallas Cowboys’ Thanksgiving Day football game in 2004.

“This was three weeks after the general election when George W. Bush had beaten [Democrat John] Kerry. I felt like I didn’t understand my country.” Fountain explains that he remained seated during halftime and “started watching the halftime show—I mean really looking at it. And it’s very much the way I write it in the book: a surreal, pretty psychotic mash-up of American patriotism, exceptionalism, popular music, soft-core porn and militarism: lots of soldiers standing on the field with American flags and fireworks. I thought, this is the craziest thing I’ve ever seen.”

Presumably, writing the novel was a means by which Fountain attempted to “understand” his country. He succeeded, however, only in fits and starts. The book has amusing and useful features. Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk pours a good deal of satirical cold water on the professional sports-military complex, with its unsavory mix of patriotism, meaningless spectacle and violence.

The novel’s generally hostile tone is legitimate, but the targets, including Bush and his administration, are fairly easy ones at this time. In the end, despite its decent intentions, the book is a little too light-hearted and “soft.”

Ang Lee has never appeared to possess a satirical touch. His films have tended toward the earnest and literal. He is a competent, dogged filmmaker, who is capable at his best of shedding light on human relationships and of generating emotion.

The new film alternately and regularly advances toward certain harsh truths and retreats from them.

There are good, serious elements here.

–In one scene, Billy and one of his fellow soldiers, “Mango” Montoya (Arturo Castro), sit and talk with a stadium bartender. The latter is thinking of enlisting, because there is nothing for him in civilian life. They agree that the economic situation is poor and the rich live in another realm from them.

–During a dinnertime conversation at home, Kathryn quizzes Billy about the war, and its purpose. Is it for oil, she asks? Where are those WMDs [weapons of mass destruction] we’ve been hearing about? (In the novel, she says: “Then let me ask you this, do you guys believe in the war? Like is it good, legit, are we doing the right thing? Or is it all really just about the oil?” Billy replies, “You know I don’t know that,” and, later, “I don’t think anybody knows what we’re doing over there.”) Kathryn is the most intelligent, sensitive individual in the film and her antagonism toward official society and propaganda is contagious.

–While the Bravos are sitting around at the stadium at one point, an oilman (Tim Blake Nelson) approaches and commends them on their “service.” Sgt. David Dime (Garrett Hedlund), the leader of the squad, responds with excessive, implicitly bitter and sarcastic zeal to this odious individual, “You keep on drilling, we’ll keep on killing!”

–In the only scene that gives some sense of the reality of the Iraq war and occupation, the squad bursts into a house at night and generally terrorizes the residents. They eventually place a hood on the head of the man of the family and take him away.

–In the incident for which he received his decoration, Billy ends up wrestling with one of the insurgents and cutting his throat. We watch as a pool of blood forms around the dead man’s head. Lee shows this image twice. It is the most disturbing in the film.

–The football halftime show itself is a scathing comment on the cultural-political state of things in America. Destiny’s Child (with a Beyoncé stand-in) and groups of dancers perform, marching bands march, fireworks explode, the Bravos stand at attention or move around in a daze. All the while, Billy recalls the mayhem and death in Iraq. Lee effectively brings to the screen Fountain’s “surreal, pretty psychotic mash-up.” It is impossible not to feel the absurdity and monstrosity of the situation, the horrible reality that America’s rulers are sending young men and women to die to ensure business as usual.

At the same time, unhappily, there are numerous moments and elements that undermine or offset much of what is strong in the work. Lee’s approach is too non-committal in many of the sequences, too “even-handed.” The early portions of Billy Lynn are especially flat. One can also feel where Lee gives in to political pressures, to pro-military, “support the troops” rubbish. The assault in Fountain’s book on the businessman at the center of the whole reactionary business, Oglesby (Martin), is considerably downplayed and weakened. One hardly knows what to make of him in the end. Moreover, the evasive note on which the film concludes, a variation on the “band of brothers” theme, is another accommodation to bourgeois public opinion.

The production notes for Billy Lynn include a comment from Alwyn, whose thrust one suspects reflects Ang Lee’s thinking: “The film doesn’t go into the politics of war or why they guys are fighting over there…but it brings the war home and explores people’s projections on the soldiers rather than getting into the morality and the politics of it so much.”

Yes, and this is the movie’s most damaging failing and what prevents it from being a more consistently powerful and artistically satisfying experience. We will make the point one more time––it is not possible to make a coherent and convincing film about the criminal invasion and occupation of Iraq, with all its devastating and ongoing consequences, without treating in some fashion the driving forces of the war and its broader significance. Every deliberate act of avoidance eats away at the sincerity and depth of a work of art.

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NOTE: ALL IMAGE CAPTIONS, PULL QUOTES AND COMMENTARY BY THE EDITORS, NOT THE AUTHORS

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ELECTION 2016—

That said what is especially grating is that the media whores do not and did not persecute Trump for all the numerous and actually important and right reasons, preferring to concentrate on superficial if admittedly obnoxious sexist sins and xenophobic remarks, assigning no real discussion or coverage to how Trump is liable to decimate working class people in countless ways, do nothing to relieve the environment from capitalist assault, and many other longstanding political crimes of the GOP.

Of course, one of the problems of the mainstream media at this point is that, finally, due to their endless lies and abject, sociopathic performance, they too have lost much traction with a growing sector of the US population. The question before us then is, what is it in Trump that provokes such intense hatred in the establishment’s propaganda machine?

In a nutshell, as explained many times elsewhere on this site, Trump is hated because he is regarded as unpredictable and unreliable as a proper agent for the Deep State, crawling with Neocon, war-mongering vermin obsessed with the idea of securing American dominance all over the globe, at any cost, even if that means the very real risk of a nuclear war with Russia or China or both, a crime so hideous, that its very plotting should merit Nuremberg-class justice, plus the indefinite continuation and amplification of highly profitable (for the military industrial complex) of more  “conventional” wars in all latitudes.

Trump, due to relative ignorance about the professionally devious ways of the ruling elites, does not see the “logic” in this. He would rather negotiate with Russia than provoke Moscow to a nuclear confrontation. He does not quite understand why ISIS, which he sees as a ragtag assembly of  murderous fanatics, lacking a navy and air force not to mention the vast array of sophisticated weapons in the US arsenal, cannot be easily liquidated by the Pentagon, and even argues about the efficiency of joining forces with Russia and Assad, who are doing such a good job of liquidating this pestilence. All of this is naturally unwelcome talk among the architects of our supremacist foreign policy and anathema to the whores throughout the American media, charged with selling such repulsive policies to a completely benighted public.

O’Donnell browbeating Trump to give the right answer.

[dropcap]A[/dropcap]ll of this is rather transparent on this video segment of the CBS This Morning show (Nov. 12, 2016). It’s obvious in the way the two main anchors, Charlie Rose, himself a shameless shill for Hillary and the US imperial establishment, and Norah O’Donnell, a glorified cheerleader and chauvinist ignoramus in more ways than one, look positively dyspeptic hearing Trump question the sacred dogma of expanding the brutal US intervention in Syria for all the phony sanctimonious pretexts, or the giving of sophisticated weapons to anti-Assad fanatics, whose actual identity Trump asserts, no one knows. O’Donnell surpasses past performances here serving the warmongering crowd, as she literally cross examines Trump as to why he is so stubborn about his refusal to deepen the US meddling in the Middle East. Observe, too, Trump’s refreshingly simple answers, which, erratic and ignorant as he usually is, appear almost refreshing, because it happens to be true. “Russia is fighting and killing ISIS, we should be supporting that”, he affirms naively. Yea, as mentioned, that’s sacrilege to the ears of the imperial propaganda flacks.

The bottom line is that his antiwar stance may be just about the only thing that Trump can claim as good for humanity, and vastly superior to Hillary’s program, and, let’s be frank, since we are talking nuclear war, that is not a small thing at all. Because of that, the path for left activists should be clear: Resolutely oppose Trump in all his rightwing predatory, racist, proto-fascist and hyper-exploitative projects, but make sure, via constant activism, and without relying at all on the utterly treacherous and corrupt Democrats, that the criminals in the Western ruling elites do not make him walk back that notion, too.

—P. Greanville is The Greanville Post’s founding editor.

By ANDREW LEVINE

She had the backing of the entire capitalist class, including the most nefarious high flyers among them, and of all “respectable” corporate media outlets.  And, once Bernie Sanders crossed over to the Dark Side, she had no serious opposition within the Democratic Party.  She also enjoyed at least the passive support of the Republican establishment.  And yet she lost!

I thought that would be impossible; and I am not the only one.  Right up to the bitter end, it even seemed that the Trump campaign itself was getting ready to disappear down the memory hole.  Indeed, it was not until the second or third hour after the first polls closed that it started to dawn on anyone that the impossible was actually happening.

Contrary to the conventional wisdom (at least before the polls closed Tuesday night), Hillary can’t do much of without fucking it up.  But losing to Donald Trump!  That was extraordinary even for her.

I was sure that Trump would lose, and that anti-Trump hysteria was a Clinton campaign concoction intended to boost turn out and to scare potential Jill Stein and Gary Johnson voters into the Democratic fold.  I may have been right about the Clinton camp’s intentions, but boy was I wrong in thinking that Trump couldn’t win.

Perhaps the kindest email I received the morning after came from a friend who asked: “…you want fries with that crow?”  Indeed.  It wasn’t just me, though; it was nearly everybody.

Whatever his own views may be, there is no doubt that Trump’s campaign brought out the “inner fascist” — and misogynist and racist and nativist and Islamophobe – in more than just a few of his supporters.

This is a cause for concern – even if, as I and many others have also been saying all along, the grievances that underlie the Trump phenomenon are real and urgent.   We are in for turbulent and troubled times ahead.

But let’s look on the bright side.

Hillary  had the backing of the entire capitalist class, including the most nefarious high flyers among them, and of all “respectable” corporate media outlets.  And, once Bernie Sanders crossed over to the Dark Side, she had no serious opposition within the Democratic Party.  She also enjoyed at least the passive support of the Republican establishment.  And yet she lost!

[dropcap]F[/dropcap]or as long as I had been discounting the Donald’s chances, I have been praising him for driving a stake through the heart of the GOP.  That execrable political party has been riven by cultural contradictions at least since the late seventies, but the center still somehow managed to hold.  As recently as 2012, the Party’s grandees were able to secure the Presidential nomination for their man, Mitt Romney, notwithstanding the opposition of the many “useful idiots” they had recruited into the GOP base.

Had Trump not entered the race this time, they might have held onto power still  – even in the absence of a candidate who isn’t a complete and total dunce.

The views of Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, Jeb Bush and the others are, by any plausible metric, a lot worse than the Donald’s, as best as anybody can tell what the Donald’s views are.  But this hardly matters to establishment political figures, and their media flacks.  What matters to them is that Trump did, and the others did not, challenge some of the settled assumptions upon which the status quo rests, and that he would sometimes let loose with remarks about the corruptions of government that are normally considered taboo.

Being a skilled huckster and showman, Trump easily decimated his competition.  The “establishment” therefore hated him.  It didn’t hurt Trump’s standing with his base that the feeling was mutual.

Inasmuch as America’s duopoly party system is one of several structural obstacles in democracy’s way, I therefore maintained, early on, that Trump’s effect on the campaign was more salutary than not, despite his vileness and the vileness of some, but by no means all, of his supporters.

Somewhat facetiously, I depicted the Donald as a “world historical figure” in more or less the philosopher G.W.F. Hegel’s (1770-1831) sense, a man who, acting on his own passions and interests and without any regard for loftier goals, became, thanks to the Cunning of Reason, an agent of Historical progress – in this case, advancing democracy in America by delivering a profound, perhaps fatal, blow to the more reactionary of our two major political parties.

This now seems less sure than it did before November 8.   The fate of the GOP now depends on what the Donald, as President-elect, decides to do.

If he turns to the clowns he defeated in the primaries and caucuses, bringing them and their co-thinkers into his administration, he could actually save the old GOP – keeping its body intact, while changing only its head.

Or he could take it upon himself to turn the Trump phenomenon into a Trump revolution – for which step number one would be to build a new party, so to speak, on the ashes of the old.

It is not clear how that would work under the “exceptional” conditions that prevail in the Land of the Free.  There is no apt European model – not even the Front National of Marine Le Pen, a big Trump fan – because, for historical and demographic reasons, there really is no American nation in the way that there is still a French nation in France.

America is a mélange of nations, none of which is capable any longer of ruling over the others, the way that Anglo-Protestants, and then white Protestants generally, once did.

Trump’s slogan, “Make America Great Again,” trades on false nostalgia; as such, it is basically silly, much like the man himself.  But insofar as its invocations of “America” mean anything at all, it is not a nation that Trump is referring to, but a country.

It is telling that, for all his talk of building a wall on the Mexican border, and deporting even more “illegal aliens” than Barack Obama has done, that Trump actually did better in Hispanic communities than Romney did four years ago.

There surely are “deplorables” in the Trump base who do not much care for brown and black people; but there are also brown and black people who, as much as those older, rural, uneducated white folks we hear so much about, who respond to his appeal – not out of self-loathing or false consciousness, but because they are fucked over workers too.

It hardly matters that Trump is a false prophet; the grievances he exploits are entirely real.

There is a lesson in this: that the Democratic Party’s obsession with identity politics doesn’t play as well as it used to.

This is one reason why the demographic changes that were supposed to assure Clinton’s election never quite materialized.

Had down ticket Republicans done worse – in other words, had Clinton not dragged down so many Democrats with her – the GOP’s demise might be on the horizon already.  But because Hillary is so widely despised, and because she flubbed so badly, the GOP is now temporarily strengthened, in much the way that many people, myself included, used to think that the Democratic Party would be after Hillary won.

[dropcap]T[/dropcap]he end of the GOP may therefore not happen right away, but it will happen sooner or later.  When it does, the wound that the Donald inflicted upon the Republican Party this electoral season will be part of the reason why.

Meanwhile, Democrats have only themselves and Hillary to blame for their troubles; they can hardly blame Jill Stein, though, as the results were coming in Tuesday night, the condescending hacks at MSNBC did give it a try.

As a Democratic party flack Rachel Maddow’s arrows, always invariably hit the GOP (which certainly deserves it), while giving the Dems a big pass. This makes her show useless as a platform to explain American political realities. It also reinforces the duopoly grip on the nation. A worthless, self-impressed creature, but oh so typical of the media liberals.

That actually caused me to turn to Wolf Blitzer and others of his ilk on CNN (the Clinton News Network) for election returns.  I thought I could stomach Rachel Maddow, but I was wrong.   Watching her take twenty minutes to make some inane twenty-second point was too much to bear.

Poor Jill Stein; poor Green Party.  Even after Clinton and her DNC operatives gracelessly  cheated Bernie Sanders out of the nomination, alienating millions of Sanders supporters, she couldn’t come close to gaining the 5% of the popular vote she needed for the Greens to get federal funding for future elections.  She didn’t even beat Ralph Nader’s 2.7% in 2000.

Stein’s politics are excellent and she ran an outstanding campaign.   But the silence of the media and the hostility of Democratic Party apparatchiks proved too much to overcome.  It is hard to see what anybody could have done that would have made the outcome better for the Greens.

With one exception, that is: had Sanders bolted from the party that screwed him and his supporters over, and run as a Green, as Stein generously proposed, the Greens would now be in a very different situation.  Instead, they are where they have been for years: on a road to nowhere.

At this point, I am not sure whether I welcome Clinton’s defeat or not.  It all depends on what Trump’s victory portends; and this, no one now knows.  Probably, Trump himself doesn’t know.

But it does look like, for now, the world dodged a bullet because, whether good liberals realized it or not, a vote for Hillary was a vote for war – in Syria, in the first instance, and then, almost inevitably, with Russia too.  The consequences could be catastrophic, and they would likely unfold before a militant anti-Hillary resistance movement could take shape.

That consideration, thankfully now moot, was a reason to think that the lesser evil might actually be Trump.

When it seemed that Trump had no chance, that hardly mattered.   If Hillary couldn’t lose, the important thing was to hold her war mongering at bay.

I was particularly concerned by the way her campaign kept ratcheting up stories about Russian hackers under the control of Vladimir Putin, the demon du jour, interfering in the election process.  What was the point of making unsubstantiated accusations like that if not to prepare the groundwork for war?

What an odd claim, in any case.  If Putin or anyone else really wanted to gain political influence over the American government, why wouldn’t he just do what other world leaders with similar intentions do: write out a check to the Clinton Foundation?

And talk about the pot calling the kettle black!  The United States has been interfering in Latin American elections from time immemorial, and in the elections of European and Asian countries, allies and foes alike, since even before the end of the Second World War.

***

[dropcap]T[/dropcap]he jury is still out on Trump’s effects on the GOP, but not on Bernie Sanders’ effects on the Democratic Party.  Had he distanced himself from Clinton and Clintonism, the neoliberal, liberal imperialist neocon project that the Clintons and their co-thinkers helped foist upon the world — had he run, as he could have, at the head of the Green Party ticket — he could have struck an even more profound, and salutary, blow for democracy than our world historical President-elect ever could.

Instead, he left it for Trump to dispatch Hillary, and, in so doing, to cause Clintonism to come to grief. We don’t yet know how far-reaching the consequences will be.

But at least we won’t have Hillary and Bill to kick around anymore.  Better still, the Clinton Foundation will now wither away for want of a sufficient reason.  Who, after all, would pay to play with people who are no longer players?   If Trump the Vengeful now decides to prosecute the Clinton Foundation as well, the process would be speeded along.

Like Blairism, its spiritual cousin, Clintonism may be hard to eradicate completely.   But whatever diminishes its hold over the body politic is all to the good.

Will “Trumpism” be any better?  There is no way to answer or even address that question at this point because no one knows what Trump is likely to do.

However, if his words are any guide, it is fair to speculate that he will do less harm than Hillary would – at least with respect to matters bearing on war and peace.

A business perspective, much less a real estate developer’s, is hardly ideal.  But it is better than anything the foreign policy elites upon whom Hillary depends have going.

And, as a real estate speculator and builder of over the top luxury pleasure domes, the Donald has few, if any, vested interests in the military industrial complex.   This too is a reason for hope.

Of course, there is no guarantee that Trump will do anything to put the breaks on our out of control perpetual war regime.   But, if he wants to live up to the persona he has lately concocted for himself, he just might.

Similarly, there is no guarantee that he really would end or renegotiate the trade deals that have done so much harm to so many people around the world.   But if he reneges on that, the Donald will find himself in deep trouble with the people who voted for him.  He has to be at least somewhat concerned about that.

Hillary claimed, lately, to be against the TPP, the Trans-Pacific Partnership.   Does anybody seriously believe that she would have kept that up once she was in office?   And what about all the other deals that she and her husband did so much to encourage?   On trade, Trump comes out way ahead.

On domestic affairs, the situation is murkier – because it is especially unclear what the Donald actually believes.  Did he really think that Obama wasn’t born in the USA?   Or was that just an unsubtle gimmick, useful for winning over “deplorable” hearts and minds?  The fact that he took it all back in the waning days of the campaign, when seeming sane became expedient, suggests that it really was just for show all along.

Similar questions could be asked about a range of issues on which Trump’s positions have been genuinely alarming.

Is he really a climate-change denier?  Or does he just play one on TV because it plays well with his marks?  His expressed views are dangerous, but will he bother to stand by them when he no longer needs to?  We will find out soon enough.

And what about abortion?  As an inveterate philanderer, he was surely for it before he found it politically expedient to seem to be against it.   It would probably be fair to say that he doesn’t care much one way or the other.

Trump and his fans seem to think that he can just march into Washington and start issuing orders.  In fact, whether he realizes it yet or not, Washington will overwhelm the Donald.  With all the forces now arrayed against him gearing up for a fight, he will soon find himself in way over his head and will therefore have no choice but to pick his battles.  If he is half as smart as he says he is, he won’t want to get bogged down over abortion, especially since he doesn’t really care.

However, at least for a while, he will have to stand by the people who elected him.   Many, maybe most, of them are more attracted by the middle finger he keeps sticking in the face of the ruling class than by any of his policy proposals.  Therefore, when the time comes, most of them probably won’t much mind if he flip flops on abortion or anything else.

One thing he will have to do early on is nominate a rightwing, anti-abortion fanatic to take up Antonin Scalia’s seat on the Supreme Court.   Team Hillary seldom mentioned this, however – perhaps because Obama’s Merrick Garland nomination is still pending. Whatever the reason, they preferred to dwell more on what an asshole Trump is with women than on the Supreme Court.  No doubt, it’s better for the ratings.

If they really cared about women, and not just about scoring points with suburban Republican ladies, they would have underscored the fact that this is probably the only issue on which it is clear that Hillary unequivocally is the lesser evil.

Or maybe not.   Trump will have to appoint a rightwing anti-abortion Justice to take Scalia’s place, but after that, when his campaign promises will have been swamped by the tumult he will cause, anything could happen.

For the time being, the issue is replacing Scalia; not ending Roe v. Wade.  For that, Trump’s second nomination will be the crucial one.   By then, though, who knows what the always mercurial Donald will be up to?   For a man without principles, only instincts, there is no telling.

***

[dropcap]T[/dropcap]hat Trump’s victory was a disaster is beyond doubt.  But the devil we know is no prize either, and, in the circumstances we are now facing in Syria, her Russophobia and her fondness for military “solutions” to problems she did so much to create poses perhaps an even clearer and more present danger than Trump’s temperamental unfitness for the office he will assume.

Which is worse?  I, for one, cannot help thinking that, all things considered, Trump is, because he is such a loose cannon, and is so prone to acting out.  But maybe this conviction just reflects fear of the unknown.   With Hillary, it is fairly clear what to expect; with the Donald it is still an almost total mystery.

In any case, plausible arguments can be made both ways.

One reason, though, why I am not too distraught about how the election turned out is that anti-Trump resistance is taking shape already.  A President Hillary would probably be able to get her way unimpeded at first because, as they did with Obama, “progressives” would cut her endless slack.

Of course, in time, it would become clear, even to them, just how wrong-headed that attitude is in this case.  By then, though, it might already be too late.

It is therefore impossible to say unequivocally which electoral outcome is worse, the horror we are stuck with now or the horror most liberals would have preferred.  The only sure thing is that both are as bad as any that our decrepit electoral institutions have ever produced.

Note to Commenters
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What will it take to bring America to live according to its own propaganda?

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By ANTHONY DIMAGGIO

ABOVE: Photo by Jamelle Bouie | CC BY 2.0

First, the Democratic loss. There’s no two ways about it – this was a huge, and embarrassing loss for a party that’s clearly fallen out of favor with the mass public. Hillary Clinton and the Democratic establishment were badly exposed in this loss, and the party is in the middle of a full-on meltdown. The country was told that Trump had little to no chance of winning, and that Hillary was a shoe-in to be our first female president. Obviously, that was a fiction that few challenged considering all the polls that consistently predicted Clinton would prevail on November 8th.

Looking back, it should be obvious that the Democratic Party’s Achilles Heel was its near-complete failure to prioritize the issues of economic inequality, jobs, and the aiding of America’s working class, middle class, and poor. The Dems had ample opportunity in Obama’s first two years in office to adopt a platform committed to limiting Wall Street power and aimed at serving the public via reforms promoting re-unionizing of the nation, introducing universal health care, and instituting a living wage. To put it simply, the party blew it big time, and it’s come back to burn the party badly, with Clinton now serving in the public mind as the ultimate symbol of Wall Street power and greed.

If the Democratic Party wants to have any chance of remaining relevant in the future, it needs to completely clean house and redefine itself, removing the snake pit that passes for party leadership – including the Pelosis, Reids, Clintons, and Wasserman Schultzs of the world. For the party to have any chance at redemption, it needs to adopt a new New Deal or a new War on Poverty-style initiative, that on multiple fronts cultivates greater support among Millennials, the young, and other disadvantaged groups. Young Americans represent the only hope for the party’s future sustainability, and the refusal to prioritize the needs of this group will guarantee the Democrat’s irrelevance in future elections.

Second, we need to understand the reasons why Trump won. This requires recognizing the uniqueness of this election on multiple fronts. Trump’s victory was just as much about the Democratic Party’s implosion as it was about the triumph of Trump’s “outsider” political campaign. The Republican victory was not driven by the party’s ascendance among the public at large. If anything, the party is in big trouble looking ahead. Despite significant U.S. population growth from 293 million in 2004 to 325 million by 2016, total voter turnout for Republican presidential candidates in this period is as follows: 2016: 59.6 million votes; 2012: 60.9 million votes; 2008: 59.9 million votes; and 2004: 62 million votes. This translates into a net loss of 2.4 million votes (or a decline of four percent) over 12 years, despite 11 percent U.S. population growth during this same period. As bad as that looks for Republicans, Dems have been hurt even more as the overall percent of Americans voting fell dramatically. The party’s total votes received for presidential candidates fell from a high of 69.5 million in 2008, to 65.9 million in 2012, down to 59.8 million in 2016. This represents a 14 percent decline in Democratic voting over just 8 years. These findings suggest that Donald Trump didn’t take this election from Clinton so much as Clinton gave it away to Trump.

If the Democratic Party wants to have any chance of remaining relevant in the future, it needs to completely clean house and redefine itself, removing the snake pit that passes for party leadership – including the Pelosis, Reids, Clintons, and Wasserman Schultzs of the world.

[dropcap]O[/dropcap]utside of the Democratic Party’s collapse, we need to examine why tens of millions of people voted for Trump. There is no single magic bullet answer to this question, and anyone who claims to have one is not giving you the full story. On the one hand, it seems silly at this point to deny considering a mountain of polling data that much of Trump’s support originates from a noxious blend of sexist, racist, and xenophobic beliefs. I’ve documented this reality in previous writings, and we do ourselves little good by burying our heads in the sand and pretending that Trump is some modern-day Marxian hero, fighting a corrupt capitalist elite to the benefit of an enlightened, populist working class that is free of prejudice, hatred, and spite. This herculean image of America’s working class is heavily propagandistic.

Having addressed the socially reactionary and ugly aspects of Trump’s victory, there is also the reality that this campaign came to symbolize mass public anger at the economic status quo. This anger, at its core, is quite rational, even if Trump is a highly questionable spokesman for the cause. On the one hand, there is little evidence that Trump’s primary campaign succeeded due to economic populism and voter rejection of corporate globalization. I presented exhaustive evidence earlier this year, drawing on numerous national surveys, showing that Trump’s primary victories were not the result of economic frustration and anxiety, as seen in concerns over poverty, joblessness, a weak economy, and the rising costs of health care and education. Rather, Trump’s support was statistically associated with issues like immigration, terrorism, gun control, opposition to addressing global warming, and other Republican bread and butter issues.

Despite the above findings, it now seems undeniable that somewhere along the way following the primaries, Trump’s economic message caught on among mass segments of the public who had been harmed greatly by the neoliberal, pro-business, corporate globalization agenda. His populism didn’t speak much to Republican primary voters, who instead embraced his reactionary social and cultural agenda. But Trump’s economic populism did catch on among the masses by election day. This part of his campaign was clearly captured in the New York Times’ exit polling data. Staring Americans in the face were the following findings:

* 79 percent of voters who agreed that the condition of the nation’s economy is “poor” voted for Trump, while 55 percent of those feeling it was merely “fair” did the same.

* 78 percent of those saying their “family financial situation” is “worse today” than in the past voted for Trump.

* 65 percent of those who said the “effects of trade with other countries” has been to “take away jobs” voted for Trump.

My failure to find evidence of such economic anxieties during the primary season wasn’t for a lack of trying, as I scoured national surveys in search of the missing link between economic frustration and Trump voting to no avail. The now well-known April Gallup survey clearly showed that Trump’s primary supporters were not motivated by economic populism, and they were not more likely to have lost their jobs to outsourcing. Rather, most were middle to upper middle class types with above average incomes, little to no experience with being unemployed, and were largely well-to-do. Primary voters are typically more affluent, and Trump’s supporters were no exception. They had largely signed on to Trump’s nativist cultural agenda. But Trump’s appeal had clearly broadened by year’s end. No longer can the Trump vote simply be written off as the paranoid delusions of an impassioned group of reactionary hicks, troglodytes, and yokels. There is a very real economic component to Trump’s success, as seen in the public’s growing anger at a winner-take-all economy that fails to serve the interests of anyone not in the top 1 percent of income earners.

The voting public’s embrace of Trump is a dangerous gamble, however. On the one hand, it’s informed by a legitimate anger at the political-economic status quo and a system that has horribly failed the masses. On the other hand, those who claim Trump will “Make America Great Again” are projecting their hopes onto a candidate who is as maverick as they come, and who has no experience in working toward effective policy change in Washington. It’s impossible to predict with certainty just what he’ll do when he gets in office. Furthermore, he has given little indication that he cares about helping America’s poor, despite a lot of populist sounding rhetoric about the lost greatness of the working class. As far as I can tell, there are numerous possible outcomes that may lie ahead regarding Trump’s future, each of which is plausible based on specific aspects of his personality. None of them are encouraging in the least.

 Trump as a Reality TV Circus Clown

[dropcap]I[/dropcap]t may be that Donald Trump has little interest in the arduous work of governing a nation of 325 million people. In this scenario, think of him as a Jerry Springer ringmaster, presiding over a comic tragedy masquerading as presidential politics. To be blunt, “The Donald” may be completely and utterly full of shit when he says he wants to be president of the United States. Trump’s now infamous hedonistic personality profile, detailed in the pages of the New Yorker magazine, and depicted by his former biographer and ghostwriter, paints a picture of a shamelessly narcissistic, egocentric maniac who only cares about basking in the public eye, and as lacking the conviction, interest, or stamina to govern. He doesn’t care if the attention he receives is positive or negative. So long as it’s attention, that’s all that matters. Every media interaction is driven by a lust for public attention, while avoiding or downplaying real political proposals that challenge Washington establishment politics. Each press conference represents a chance to self-aggrandize, at the expense of substance, politics, and the nation itself. I am struck by the very real likelihood of this outcome, based on the message implied in the New Yorker profile that Trump may suffer from ADHD. As Trump’s biographer made abundantly clear, Trump is either unable or unwilling to focus on substantive issues for more than a few minutes at a time, seeing them as pointless and as a waste of effort.

The image of Trump as a scatterbrain who is uncommitted to serious political reform coincides well with reporting from this last July that Trump reached out to fellow Republican John Kasich to offer him the position of Vice President, while also offering him full control over domestic and foreign policy formulation in the White House. When asked what that would leave for Trump to do, the Trump campaign reportedly responded that he would be responsible for “making America great again,” whatever that means. This version of a Trump presidency is certainly possible. Americans familiar with the carnivalesque nature of Trump’s reality television career know that he is a relentless and shameless self-promoter, who quickly grows tired of people and situations he believes are boring or stale. It’s likely that his run for the presidency is the latest stage in a narcissistic career, one in which he takes advantage of the prestige of the office to further his public profile, while making numerous national and international connections to enhance his businesses’ profitability. In this scenario, Trump lacks any interest in governing, and becomes a figurehead and rubber stamp for the Republican Party’s reactionary, pro-business agenda. Essentially, it would be the Mike Pence presidency, not the Donald Trump presidency. There is obviously precedent for such a thing, considering the astounding power exercised by Vice President Dick Cheney during the George W. Bush administration.

If the Pence-Trump presidency becomes a reality, none of Trump’s proposals for helping working class Americans will be allowed to pass through a Republican Congress – save those that serve the agenda of America’s plutocratic elites. Supporters of Trump will no doubt reject this scenario as wholly wrong and inconsistent with the spirit of his campaign promises, but Trumps’ abdication of presidential authority is a distinct possibility, and it would not surprise me considering the superficialities endemic in the world of narcissistic reality television.

Trump as a Populist Pariah

[dropcap]I[/dropcap]t’s possible that Trump means it when he says he wants to “Make America Great Again,” and that he’ll work to try and implement his reactionary populist vision, as seen in his newly announced “First 100 Days” agenda. In this scenario, Donald Trump represents a cross between Ross Perot’s opposition to “free trade,” and Archie Bunker-style bigotry that demonizes non-whites as a subhuman “other.”  This part of Trump’s persona is well known to the public, as documented in his promises to “build a wall” between the U.S. and Mexico to keep the Mexicans from stealing our jobs, raping our women, and corrupting the citizenry with drugs.

Recognizing the savage racism that defines Trump’s social and trade agendas, he may still be sincere in his proposals to repeal NAFTA, abandon the Trans-Pacific Partnership, designate China a “currency manipulator,” and implement tariffs on foreign goods to pressure U.S. companies from relocating abroad. A central problem with the “Trump as a populist pariah” scenario is that there is zero chance that Republican majorities in Congress will allow any of these proposals through, due to their threats to corporate interests and profits. Short of Trump circumventing the legislative process and governing dictatorially through executive order, there is no reason to think that his trade proposals have a snowball’s chance in hell of being implemented. How precisely will these policies be passed through a rightwing Congress that worships at the feet of corporate plutocratic interests? Whether Trump understands it or not, a president – at least one bound by checks and balances – is quite limited in what he can accomplish, especially when Congress wants to hamstring him. Obama learned this lesson all too well with a Republican congress determined to undermine him at every turn [but he also never tried to lead with energy for anything that could have benefited the public, beginning with single payer, for example. Such leadership would have neutralized the nest of vipers represented by actual GOP obstructionism and DINOs in his own party.—Ed]. Should Trump go the route of executive order to implement his trade agenda, his “solution” to the problem of corporate globalization will be worse than the problem. Trading democracy for dictatorship is a non-starter for any sane American – regardless of the promised payoff.

Trump as a Modern-Day Caligula

[dropcap]A[/dropcap]mericans would be unwise to discount the possibility of a proto-fascist or fascist president. We’ve seen enough of Trump’s pathological, serial lying and moral depravity to know that he could seek to become a dictatorial, “great man” in the history of American politics, ruthlessly suppressing his political opponents, and embracing a dictatorial style that frames criticisms of the president as treasonous. As a Roman emperor, Caligula’s time in power was short lived, and Trump’s may be too if he seeks to go the authoritarian route. Caligula became an infamous figure in western history due to his toxic mix of egotism, authoritarianism, and sexual debauchery. Historians associate his rein with depraved sexual acts, ranging from rape and incest to extreme sexual promiscuity and the forced prostitution of women. These traits all fall within Trump’s wheelhouse, whether we are talking about his creepy sexual advances toward his daughter, his reported sexual assault and harassment of countless women, his multiple affairs (and attempted affairs), and his instrumentalist approach to valuing women, judging them based on perceived sexual attractiveness, and treating them as possessions to be used and discarded.

The Caligula metaphor applies beyond Trump’s sexism. The much-maligned Roman emperor became infamous for ruthlessly crushing his political enemies. Declaring war on the Senate, Caligula organized numerous trials against his detractors, accusing them of treason, later presiding over their convictions and executions. Trump undeniably has an authoritarian streak, for example engaging in extreme politicization of the investigation of Hillary Clinton’s emails. Greatly concerning was his cavalier announcement during debate two, that Clinton would “be in jail” if Trump wins. He has made this promise, prior to any formal presentation of charges, and independent of any trial or any formal presentation of evidence against her. Trump’s supporters’ chants of “lock her up” reflect a collective hysteria on the part of the reactionary right in their a priori demonization of political opponents. Forget that the FBI has now twice concluded that no charges should be brought against Clinton. This has prompted Trump to go after FBI director James Comey, depicting him (absurdly) as in the tank for Hillary. There is little reason to believe based on Trump’s previous comments that he will end his attacks on Clinton, despite the FBI’s failure to present evidence of illegality in “email gate.”

One could add to Trump’s witch hunts his years-long attack on Barack Obama, who the right alleges is a secret Kenyan, anti-American plant who threatens America’s national identity and security – a la the deplorable and racist “birther” conspiracy. And Trump’s attacks on Obama and Clinton are just the tip of the iceberg. His penchant for encouraging violence against political detractors at rallies raises legitimate fears about how he will deal with political dissent when he has actual political power. Will groups like Black Lives Matter be criminalized and declared terrorist organizations under a Giuliani Department of Justice? Trump’s promise to pay the legal fees for those who engage in felony assaults against Trump critics was a disgusting display of proto-fascism. These incidents suggest that this “president” has little commitment to the rule of law, or to the protection of dissent. His numerous calls to repeal First Amendment protections for journalists, and his support for violating the First Amendment religious rights of Muslim Americans via deportation and the forced closing of mosques should disturb anyone committed to basic civil liberties and a pluralistic society based on tolerance and celebration of diversity. In short, to frame Trump as a real danger to American freedoms is not hyperbole. It reflects a reasonable fear of his actions as commander in c­­­hief, extrapolating from his statements and actions on the road to the White House.

Trump comes into office shrouded in a fog of controversy. And that’s putting it lightly. Based on what we’ve seen in this election, he appears to have lost the popular vote, despite winning the majority of electoral votes. This failure represents a major scandal in and of itself – the second of its kind in the last decade and a half. This scandal alone is reason to be skeptical of conservative claims that Trump enjoys a public mandate to implement his political-economic agenda. Like Bush before him, it is unlikely that Trump will let this lack of a democratic mandate get in the way of his plans for the nation. Whichever of the three scenarios above is most accurate, the likelihood that Trump’s presidency ends up strengthening American democracy and the raising of the living standards of the mases is unlikely. None of the above scenarios provide cause for optimism, and I don’t know any sane or compassionate person who is excited about a Trump presidency moving forward.

Note to Commenters
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What will it take to bring America to live according to its own propaganda?

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