Let's be real. Trump committed hundreds of high crimes before going after the centrist of the donor class.
MATTHEW COOKE - NOVEMBER 14, 2019
There are hundreds of high crimes worthy of removing Trump. But it was attempted Biden-sabotage that ignited the impeachment process.
While the serious and enraging impeachment saga goes on, the media is lost in a bottomless clean up job, fact-checking the fun Republican game of tag-I'm-making-up-a-new-conspiracy.
But what about the high crimes Trump committed against the people of the United States:
There are many more. It's astounding that for the majority of democrats in office, nothing Trump's done has been as egregious as the Joe Biden conspiracy. It was extorting a foreign power to sabotage Joe's chances of beating Trump in the election that crossed the line.
And of course there is no evidence of anything illegal about Joe's son Hunter making 50K a month on the board of a foreign fossil fuel company. In fact, that sounds like something a republican would do. And that's the deeper issue.
There are huge differences between the republicans and the democrats and yet they are essentially two factions of one party. The party of oligarchy (rule by a few) or more accurately the party of plutocracy (rule by a wealthy few).
It's hard to emphasize just how dangerous the right wing is. Full support of authoritarianism with no checks and balances is no small matter. Google the well known Cambridge Analytica scandal to see why British intelligence calls Republican campaign advertising "weapons-grade psychological operations."
As Noam Chomsky says, they are the most dangerous criminal organization in the history of humankind. Because of their public denial of climate science and their anti-climate energy policy.
Trump's own National Highway Traffic Safety Administration stated in their 2018 report that temperatures will reach twice the levels manageable for organized human life by the end of the century. And so Trump's conclusion is to further deregulate for short term profits.
And although it sounds bizarre outside the Fox and Breitbart bubble, this "greed is good" belief system is intertwined with the radical interpretation of Christianity they promote. Which makes them a cult.
And this has been going on since Christianity's beginning.
What was once a pacifist poor people's movement for the persecuted has repeatedly become the religion of the persecutors. First with Constantine, the Roman emperor who took over the movement in the late 300's, and imposed upon it the hierarchical structure of the empire.
A more recent example is the 1930s. Republicans remade evangelical Christianity in the image of the empire. Wealthy corporate leaders paid famous preachers like Billy Graham to reframe Jesus as anti-government and "pro-business" which, as we have seen over time, has led to unprecedented levels of concentrated power over congress and global industries. There's a great book detailing this by Kevin Kruse called One Nation Under God: How Corporate America Invented Christian America. You can order it from billionaire Jeff Bezos.
What we’re seeing on FOX News right now is the same cultural, racial, and religious supremacist ideology that's been used to radicalize the white working class since the birth of the nation for the benefit of the empire. Now on a more massive and sophisticated scale than has ever existed in human history. The strategy of bombing the airwaves and social media with conspiracy theories doesn't need to be credible. This is all culture war tactics. Sow confusion. Gaslight. And create any excuse for the base to justify their rage and irrational fear of half the country and the rest of the planet.
So what is the media to do? The forensic inspection of every Republican conspiracy theory is a daunting and necessary task. But there's more to the story. How these people got into power in the first place. Why anyone who isn't a billionaire would vote for this party.
The answer is not something the corporate-financed media nor corporate-financed democrats want to explore.
The democratic party hasn't substantively represented labor or the working class or people of color in a long time. Not since Franklin Roosevelt created social security, public jobs programs and protections, limited corporate power and confronted the problems of modern industrial society, have we had anyone primarily representing the general public.
Today, democrats might represent cultural issues and identity politics at 2 miles per hour on the freeway of progress but nobody's representing our economic rights.
We have over 45 million people in abject poverty in the richest nation on earth. Yet both parties, under Bush and Obama, found bipartisan support to use taxpayer money to bail out banks, leaving Americans fighting to survive.
As the most recent late November polling suggests, independents are losing interest in Trump's removal. They appear to see the impeachment inquiry as more insider fighting. Most Americans agree that the president's "perfect phone call" was wrong. And most Americans think it's just politics as usual and would like the government focused on more important matters.
This is why they don’t vote. They're convinced the system is rigged. Not just voter machine hacking, voter suppression and gerrymandering. The whole set up. The electoral college. The even more profoundly undemocratic representation of the senate. The source of campaign financing. The record inequality. Fewer employee benefits than any other developed nation. A criminal justice system that loves the rich and incarcerates the poor. Unaffordable housing. Drowning debt. Meaningless jobs. Unlivable wages.
There are real differences between the parties that cost lives and liberties, but either choice is still a yes to the oligarchy. And everyone can see that at varying velocities we’re still headed in the same direction.
That's what the public wants to impeach.
The political polls are imperfect. They are helpful in predicting the old model of who "likely voters" will choose. But as we have seen, the polls cannot predict who will decide to vote or not. And that is the factor that can change everything.
The public knows an "elite" class controls the levers of society. And in the case of the right wing, their rage, confusion, fear and prejudice make them susceptible to mass manipulation by the media monopolies.
That's why Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, and any other "centrist" will not turn out the votes needed to defeat a true demagogue like Trump, someone who inflames people's basest emotions and prejudices.
And that is why an impeachment inquiry over sabotaging the donor class party is not going to get millions marching in the streets. It doesn't matter how damaging this particular crime has been to the institutions of our government. It doesn't matter how brave the folks in the state department and the NSA have been in speaking out against Putin's influence on this vengeful, corrupt president and the lock-step support of his deputies in congress.
It doesn't matter because for too many people this particular crime is just not about them. And keeping up with the impeachment process is a full time job. Who has that kind of time?
The media is befuddled. Is this a failure of our system? Not at all.
The system is not broken. It's doing what it was designed to do, when it was written centuries ago, by slaveholders who wanted to protect the "opulent minority" from the masses. Those are founding father and chief architect of the constitution, James Madison’s words, not mine.
If we're going to fix this we need to impeach not only Trump, but the system that put him there. We have to level up to something better. As Noam Chomsky says, with the constitution we have now, we wouldn't be allowed in the EU. Not democratic enough.
So how do we fix it?
1) We can’t elect anyone to government who is bought by corporations.
2) No candidate for the people should be under the illusion or pretend the system isn't working exactly as it was designed. Call it out.
3) Vote for representatives who understand this. They are few and far between. They understand that addressing massive inequality is central to democracy. Concentrated wealth concentrates power. In other words, we can have inequality or we can have democracy.
4) Engage in the process. Actively and consistently and to whatever extent is required. Locally, regionally, nationally, and globally. This is overwhelming for most people. We are by nature conformists and myopic. We're oppressed by an economic system that keeps us chasing the next dollar. But consider the alternative.
5) Get behind a movement, not a personality. We need a new system. The major goals outlined in the Green New Deal are the minimum requirements to overcome the existential crisis which threatens organized human life on this planet, and the economic tyranny that got us here.
