AMERICAN PARTY DUOPOLY

ED CURTIN—Harry Houdini, the magical performer who was able to escape from any trap, any nightmarish enclosure, any lockdown, once said, “It’s still an open question, however, as to what extent exposure really hurts a performer.”

The question has been answered.  It doesn’t hurt at all, for phony events still mesmerize millions who are eager to suspend their disbelief for the sake of a sad strand of hope that their chosen leaders – whether Biden or Trump – are levelling with them and are not playing them for fools. To accept that Trump and Biden are scripted actors in a highly sophisticated reality TV movie is a bit of “reality” too hard to bear.  Exposing them and their minions doesn’t hurt at all.  There’s no business but show business.

GARY OLSON—Caller: So, anyway. We’re gonna be coming down on you pretty hard but don’t take it personally. It’s all Kabuki theater and we each play a part. It’s been a glorious four years but your role now is to exit the stage. We’ll call you if we need you but Biden is eager to carry on for us. Even before he was nominated, he assured us that nothing would fundamentally change and all the evidence so far suggests that’s the case. Hell, stocks are at record highs and the Dems aren’t going to tax or regulate us. Trump: What’s a Kabuki?

KOLLIBRI TERE SONNENBLUME—As for describing property damage in the Capitol as “desecration”—no, it is not a sacred place. Given the separation of church and state, it is definitively secular, and it’s better that way. If I use that word at all, it would be to describe a clear-cut, a mine, or some other act of ecocide.

What I agree with is that we are in a moment of high danger. Not, in my opinion, of greater disturbances in DC between now and Inauguration; no, the incident at the Capitol only happened because the police cooperated with the mob, and they won’t be left unchaperoned like that again for the remainder of the Trump regime.

CALEB MAUPIN—At this point it’s worth recaling that all these calamities were created by the elites’ obstinate allegiance to incurably irrational predatory capitalism, which, devious rhetoric aside, continues to this day.  The legitimacy /representational problem is serious, and they know it. Heck, even Americans, world famous for their political cluelessness are now ferociously alienated from their own media and political establishment (not yet from capitalism itself, though, as they have been heavily indoctrinated to believe it is “the American way”). These crises, of which the massive and incurable unemployment, caused by capitalism’s periodic”overproduction”, now aggravated by the digital revolution, constitute a perennial challenge to the elites’ governance, can be overcome only through two paths: socialism or barbarism. (The latter by definition only a temporary fix). 

ERIC ZUESSE—As-of 2014, the top 0.1% of Americans owned almost as much wealth as the bottom 90% did. The top 0.1% owned more than the entire bottom 80% did. Furthermore, America’s billionaires now have an absolute veto-power against any candidate in both Parties’ Presidential primaries, such as Bernie Sanders, whom no billionaire wants to become President. Only candidates who are backed by at least a few billionaires have any realistic chance at all. A candidate whom no billionaire backs is not liable to win the nomination of either of the major Parties.