Author: Christopher Merle (Page 11 of 53)

I have had a habit of naming years and I don't remember what I named previous years. I'm too lazy to review all of my previous posts and I don't know how to search my past posts for those year names. There may be a way, but I'll check later or peruse later when I have more time.

As Samantha Bee pointed out 2010 was the most important election in our lifetime and Republicans won. They fucked us over good and hard. Assuming the 2016 election goes well for Democrats, they won't even begin to undo the damage done. That will take decades. Decades we don't have. Anytime Democrats win the White House and Congress, Republicans fight back hard to keep them from doing anything useful. They did it 1968. They did it in 1980. They did it in 1994. They really did it 2010. And they did it 2014.

Democrats aren't perfect. In fact many of the elite are just as beholden to Wall Street and the Military-Industrial Complex as Republicans are, but there are two candidates who have tapped into the vast majority of people who have been screwed by their party elites, Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders. Those two could not be more different.

Donald Trump is a con man. Bernie Sanders is an activist. Trump directs the anger of his fans at those not responsible for the current mess, at immigrants, at gays, at refugees, at women, at minorities. Bernie doesn't so much direct the anger of his supporters as explain who is responsible, Wall Street. Donald does correctly point out how trade and outsource jobs have hurt Americans, but his solutions won't work, and will only harm his supporters even more.

Stripped of his adopted family name and fake tan, Drumpf looks about as appealing as a waterlogged corpse. Remove his hair too and he looks like a paroled ex-con from The Sopranos.

Here's the thing. There's a lot of anger at those responsible for the destruction of the middle class over the past thirty years. Only Bernie Sanders offers solutions to stop the decline and reverse it, but then we have enormous environmental challenges to deal with, global warming, ocean acidifcation, species loss, habitat loss, to name a few. His movement can't solve everything but it's a start.

I'd started composing the post before Trump became the presumptive GOP nominee and that Sanders chances had dramatically dwindled. Given the voter suppression efforts ( gerrymandering) of the Republicans over the past few years and the gutting of the Voting Rights Act, it's a very real possibility that Trump will be our next president.

The media is to blame for the rise of Drumpf. They love him. They earn him lots and lots of advertising dollars, because to the corporate owned media it's not about substance it's about spectacle, and Drumpf knows it. They love portraying the campaign as a horse race. It's not a race. It's not about who is up or who is down. It's not a fucking rollercoaster but that's what it feels like. It's not a chase but they are doing everything they can to portray it that way.

But if it's a chase then may I present Immortan Trump:

I wouldn't go so far as to say that Hillary Clinton is Furioso or that Bernie Sanders is Mad Max, but those are the roles available to them in this chase, and they almost work. But if anyone fully represents the values of Immortan Joe it is Donald Trump. Furioso worked within the system until it came time to make her break; Hillary worked within the system but will she make her break? Bernie is outside the system, but wants to do right, make the system better. And in a lot of ways he is making Hillary a better candidate. A lot of people talk about fleeing America if Drumpf is elected. There's no place to go. Just like in the movie they thought they could get away but the best place was where they came from. They had to remove Immortan Joe and his War Boys. So if we're going to have a metaphor for this year, for this campaign that could very well determine the future of the US, Fury Road is it.