2020 USA presidential election

NDPP wrote:

Quite aside from whether he's right or wrong, it's his sheep-dog role to say so and unlike the American people, he will be suitably rewarded by the Democratic Party for playing that role so well.

You can disagree with Sanders' decision, but are you seriously suggesting that he has spent 40 years as an outsider just so that he could get a plum job at age 79? I find that ridiculous.

The Trump Administration Is Reversing Nearly 100 Environmental Rules. Here’s the Full List.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/climate/trump-environment-rollbacks.html?campaign_id=9&emc=edit_nn_20200507&instance_id=18281&nl=the-morning&regi_id=77748371&segment_id=26779&te=1&user_id=adf014a083d008fed9902946a660dad8

Contrianna :  "Do they really believe that the security state with their near seamless corporate controlled paper and electronic propaganda will be thrown out by a wave of enlightened masses?"

This is a curious question.   I very much appreciate your posts and take on politics here, but I am a little struck by the nihilism above.    To me one of the most hopeful signs in recent years has been the rising distrust in mainstream media among both the populist left and right, and the corresponding rise in independent and critical media.   Mass communication technologies may give us the best chance at an "enlightened mass" humans have ever had.   Or a herd of asses, who knows?

I also don't know what I would do as an American voter chosing between the two halves of the shit sandwich that are Trump and Biden.   I'd most likely end up voting as you and Chomsky would like, but I don't consider the choice between the two to be as existential as the partisan media, and you, are suggesting.   It's not obvious to me that the Democratic party would be better on foreign policy than Trump and the Republicans.   To take the example you gave above:  "Trump's environmental destruction and deregulation would almost certainly not have happened to that degree under a Democratic government with its slightly more environmentally conscious base."     I agree with this.

Would you agree that Trump's relatively noninterventionist foreign policy would almost certainly not happened under a Democratic government with its base that is slightly more Russiaphobic and slightly more willing to support humanitarian interventions?   

I've no grand point here, my brain is not at it's best, quarantine no doubt.   But I am surprised by your take on lesser-evilism in this regard.    I worry the Democrats have been, under Obama, and will be in future, far better salesmen for the security state to their own citizens and to the world than the Republicans could be.    (EDIT) All of which is to say, I have much sympathy for 3rd party voters or people who abstain.    

[quote=NorthReport]

Ex-Trump adviser Michael Flynn charges of lying to FBI 'to be dropped'

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-52584193

[quote=NDPP]

Matt Taibbi: FBI Set Up Against Mike Flynn Exposed (and vid)

https://youtu.be/1ppMzbmJQhY

"Author and reporter for Rolling Stone, Matt Taibbi shares insight on newly released documents about the government's handling of Michael Flynn's case and 'Russiagate'..."

The Jimmy Dore Show

https://youtu.be/qGeKIf8Sojc

"Biden sold out Democrats for $200K."

The Jimmy Dore Show

https://youtu.be/Hll8HNyLuaY

"Bernie betrays grassroots again says activists..."

'Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.'  -proverb-

'There's a sucker born every minute.' - PT Barnum

How the Russians could hack the campaign again.

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/06/putin-american-democracy/610570/

Aristotleded24 wrote:

josh wrote:

How the Russians could hack the campaign again.

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/06/putin-american-democracy/610570/

Because it's Russia's fault that the Democrats and the media propped up a horrible candidate who has been credibly accused of sexual assault and is not in control of his cognitive faculties when they had a much stronger candidate available. Got it.

Repeating RussianRepublican talking points.  All the while ignoring the article. Got it.  
 

The party's voters chose Biden.  Like it or not.

josh wrote:

Aristotleded24 wrote:

josh wrote:

How the Russians could hack the campaign again.

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/06/putin-american-democracy/610570/

Because it's Russia's fault that the Democrats and the media propped up a horrible candidate who has been credibly accused of sexual assault and is not in control of his cognitive faculties when they had a much stronger candidate available. Got it.

Repeating RussianRepublican talking points.  All the while ignoring the article. Got it.  
 

The party's voters chose Biden.  Like it or not.

The article is very scary.

 Perhaps not. Trump may be held largely responsible for the failure of the US pandemic response but also for the deep economic depression which follows. Even a candidate as odious and corrupt as Joe Biden could stand a good chance of beating him as a result. As always in such matters much will depend on money and media.

Biden Embraces Trump's Effort to Blame China For COVID-19

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/05/14/bide-m14.html

The campaign of Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden has produced a TV advertisement echoing the Trump administration's false claims that China misled the world about COVID-19, and that Beijing bears responsiblity for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people. Biden's statements are part of a deepening orientation of all sections of the US political establishment toward conflict with China, which is only being intensified by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Biden's embrace of Trump's anti-Chinese narrative - and attempt to turn it against Trump himself - is a variation of the right-wing political line the Democratic Party has pursued since Trump's election. In 2016, the Democrats centered their criticism of Trump on the charge that he was insufficiently aggressive against Russia. The bipartisan campaign to blame China for the COVID-19 pandemic is aimed at deflecting mounting social tensions outward through the creation of a common enemy..."

'After 3 years of 'Russia, Russia, Russia', the US is now infatuated with blaming China for all its problems...'

https://twitter.com/RaniaKhalek/status/1260991635812483072

Mobo2000 wrote:

Contrianna :  "Do they really believe that the security state with their near seamless corporate controlled paper and electronic propaganda will be thrown out by a wave of enlightened masses?"

This is a curious question.   I very much appreciate your posts and take on politics here, but I am a little struck by the nihilism above.    To me one of the most hopeful signs in recent years has been the rising distrust in mainstream media among both the populist left and right, and the corresponding rise in independent and critical media.   Mass communication technologies may give us the best chance at an "enlightened mass" humans have ever had.   Or a herd of asses, who knows?.... 

Thanks for your reply. Sorry to be slow responding.  As far as my nihilism  I'll leave that for you to decide. I'm certainly not "optimistic"--whether that means I'm being "pessimistic" or, as I would prefer, "realistic", is also a matter of opinion.

There are definitely positive elements in the alternate streams of information.  The current availability of thoughtful dissenting journalism is indeed encouraging when one compares it to the past when there were so few in the costly print media. For the 60's, for example, one thinks of Ramparts, the I.F, Stone Weekly, or for a time, the Village Voice, and a few others energized by the Vietnam war and the draft. The ease with which dissenting information can now be electronically accessed is remarkable, but so is being buried in a snowstorm of dubious dross and partisan inanity.

The current level of distrust in the corporate MSM is well deserved, but how much of that reflects an evidentuary and progressive evaluation of stories and their sources rather than a hostile tribal war between the duopoly's polarized political camps which embrace one camp's hyped false narrative over its rival camp's false narrative? Stories about the current level of distrust of the MSM rarely break down the hostility to party polarized and selective hostility in the disinformation wars. Also online there is a pervasive twitter culture which, rather than evidence and discussion, descends into partisan one-line jibes, also commonplace on Babble.

Dissenting online sites survive at the tolerance level of the corporate controllers (ISPs and media giants Apple, Google, facebook, twitter, etc) and the legalistic control of their partnered security state(s). The noose has been tightening, de-ranking by Google which helps to make invisible valid dissenting views, while choking their support revenue streams. Valid dissent is increasingly suppressed along with actual false information. There is not much pushback from many self-styled progressives partly because polarization has made the censorious targeting of enemies and their platforms cheered.  Increased censorship is normalized in principle and in fact across the acceptable political spectrum --objected to inconsistently only when one's own side is targeted.

A downside of skepticism of the MSM is also reflected in the slow response, especially in the US, to social distancing and work-from-home recommendations which has contributed greatly to the US having nearly a third of the world's cases. Although denialism and inaction of the Trump administration and gormless followers are much to blame, a more generalized distrust in the sensationalized threats foisted on readers readers as part of the corporate media business model is certainly a factor.  Media which hypes every reported health threat is often followed by another media refutation. As with all major fear-driven narratives it guarantees a vast pool of engaged viewers and clicks no matter how trivial or dubious much of the often politicized coverage of covid may be.

Quote:

I also don't know what I would do as an American voter chosing between the two halves of the shit sandwich that are Trump and Biden.   I'd most likely end up voting as you and Chomsky would like, but I don't consider the choice between the two to be as existential as the partisan media, and you, are suggesting.

I don't embrace a partisan media's heightened contrast between the two slices of the Lunch Special, its more like arguing about the fuel level in your jetliner with broken landing gear circling the airport. I'd opt for more fuel and time, perhaps irrationally. The unprecedented acceleration of environmental destruction and deregulation under the Trump administration is enough alone for me to prefer a Democrat run government which, though certainly on the corporatism destruction bandwagon, would weakly respond to their public base.

Quote:

Would you agree that Trump's relatively noninterventionist foreign policy would almost certainly not happened under a Democratic government with its base that is slightly more Russiaphobic and slightly more willing to support humanitarian interventions?

Trump's non-intervention was largely the con man's fiction used to sell his candidacy to voters weary of endless war and its costs. Though he has (so far) not started any new major wars he has supported coups, assassinations, proxy wars and ramped up deadly sanctions against US geopolitical rivals, the major ones being China and Russia. The Trumpian "America First" slogan does not mean non-interventionism (or "isolationism" as some military interventionist critics would claim) but rather "America uber alles" the easiest path to Trump's  non-ideoloogical "Me First".  Trump's actions have more recently gained qualified approval from some aggressive neocons:

Quote:

The Neocons Strike Back
How a discredited foreign policy ideology continues to wreak havoc in Washington and around the world....
....
At a minimum, the traditional Republican hard-line foreign policy approach has now fused with neoconservatism so that the two are virtually indistinguishable. At a maximum, neoconservatism shapes the dominant foreign policy worldview in Washington, which is why Democrats were falling over themselves to assure voters that Soleimani—a “bad guy”—had it coming. Any objections that his killing might boomerang back on the U.S. are met with cries from the right that Democrats are siding with the enemy. This truly is a policy of “maximum pressure” at home and abroad.

As Trump takes an extreme hard line against Iran, the neoconservatives may ultimately get their long-held wish of a war with the ayatollahs. When it ends in a fresh disaster, they can always argue that it only failed because it wasn’t prosecuted vigorously enough—and the shuffle will begin again.

Trump's unprecedented increase in military spending, (approved by Democrats of course) anti-China brinkmanship, the tearing up of treaties with Iran and Russia and are extremely dangerous, the later bringing on a new tactical nukes race. This also accompanied by hyper-aggressive economic lawfare. The Journal of Atomic Scientists doomsday clock has advanced to an all time high under Trump's reign.

As for a Biden administration, its hard to predict all who will be his team but I doubt it would it would be as bloodthirsty as Hilary Clinton's who if elected may have already started WWIII with her promised all-out intervention in Syria.

Even this Jacobin article attacking Biden, the Hawk gives him a mixed, though still depressing, record:

Quote:

To be sure, Biden is no Hillary Clinton when it comes to foreign intervention. He’s registered some antiwar positions from time to time, as when he voted against the first Gulf War or opposed the funding of the Nicaraguan contras in the 1980s. But overall, he’s racked up a track record of supporting overseas adventures....

As for Russiaphobia, that's a difficult call. Under Trump, actual anti-Russian policy has extended previous administration actions: 
25 Times Trump Has Been Dangerously Hawkish On Russia

https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2019/11/18/25-times-trump-has-been-dangerou...

Since Russiagate and Russiaphobia was largely a DNC, security agency, and aligned media construct to delegitimize the Trump presidency (used again for this election) if Trump was actually defeated in the next election the use of Russiaphobia would likely continue to lose steam, at least within the duopoly's partisan bickering, though certainly not for targeting dissent or justifying obscene military spending.

The Democrat elite have been showcasing their anti-Russian merit badges for four years and there is even a possiblility of a limited de-escalation with Russia under a Democratic government (I may be too "optimistic" here given the bipartisan continuity of "the blob"). That's all pure speculation, but one is reminded of the career-creating anti-Communism of Nixon which ultimately allowed him to visit Communist China. There may never be a US push for normalization of relations with its rivals given the standing US policy of global domination which targets any state not in its sphere.

Aristotleded24]</p> <p>[quote=josh wrote:

Repeating RussianRepublican talking points.

What part of my post is factually incorrect? Why after decades of being demonized as Soviet communists are people on a left-wing discussion board suddenly using McArthyite smears against people? That kind of foreign scapegoating gets into very dangerous territory.

Where did I call you a communist?

False allegations, followed by contradictory, also false, narratives are the norm in Russian media and political discourse. Misinformation is so prevalent that many Russians are largely indifferent to what is actually true. In Trump’s America, similar tactics are taking hold. What began as a disconcerting nexus between Russia and the reactionary right in this and other countries has become part of the American right-wing repertoire.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/05/17/russia-is-interfering-our-elections-again-trump-supporters-are-emulating-russian-tactics/

re WaPo: 'Russia is Interfering in Our Elections Again'

https://twitter.com/aaronjmate/status/1262180556898553856

"Russiagate Kool-Aid still flooding the country way past its expiration date."

Our American friend is obviously still hooked on the hoax.

The efforts are bolstered by a 2018 federal court ruling that for the first time in nearly four decades allows the national Republican Party to mount campaigns against purported voter fraud without court approval. The court ban on Republican Party voter-fraud operations was imposed in 1982, and then modified in 1986 and again in 1990, each time after courts found instances of Republicans intimidating or working to exclude minority voters in the name of preventing fraud. The party was found to have violated it yet again in 2004.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/18/us/Voting-republicans-trump.html