By RICHARD JOHN STAPLETON
It’s sad that USian and Earthian states of affairs have evolved to where they are today.
I have always been a passive politician and citizen, doing nothing more than stating my opinions and voting. I never marched, never incited any sort of violence, never ran for a political office; but I was never confronted with a reality such as we now face:
Both political parties are oligarchies.
Both Republican and Democratic politicians operate the US government as pseudo-employees of the elite rich and large corporations who have paid them to do their bidding.
We the people are almost irrelevant.
Yet, I have some hope the DNC will recognize Bernie Sanders as the rightful leader of we the people, if he receives more popular votes than any other politician in the 2020 DNC primary race.
If so the US can progress along the right (and rightful) path.
At seventy-nine years of age I probably won’t change. I most likely won’t march and I won’t incite or commit violence if Sanders is robbed of his rightful place in USian and Earthian history by DNC superdelegates; but I can’t keep from thinking there will be hell to pay one way or another if the DNC and the RNC do not allow quasi-real democracy to work in the 2020 US presidential election.
Full democracy has never existed in a US presidential election, since the authors of the US Constitution saw fit to insert the odious Electoral College in the voting procedures, giving individuals the power to override the popular national vote in close races. Unfortunately, there is nothing that can be done about that now, and Bernie Sanders could wind up like Al Gore and Hillary Clinton, winning the popular vote in the national election but deprived of the office of president by the Electoral College, assuming he wins the DNC primary popular vote, and the DNC pseudo-Electoral College allows him to run in the general election.
How great it is, this democracy of the US!
DNC superdelegates have the power to negate a Sanders popular vote victory in the primaries according to arbitrary rules insider DNC establishment members approved among themselves, that a judge has ruled legal.
That ruling is not a DNC in-house Electoral College enshrined in constitutional law. Far from it. It runs counter to common sense notions of fairness and justice; it smacks of corruption; and it will not mollify the anger of Bernie Sanders’s workers and financial contributors, who were led to believe their work, money, and votes would count–and Sanders would be the Democratic nominee–if he won the most votes in the primary elections.
Or have I missed something? Did the DNC insider establishment make this clear at the outset?
Did DNC establishment insiders tell Sanders’s supporters something like this:
“Yes, you people can vote in our primary race for anyone you want to, but your votes won’t count if you vote for a candidate that wins that will not work with DNC establishment insiders to satisfy their personal financial and egotistical wants and needs, and the personal financial and egotistical wants and needs of their elite rich and corporate employers.”
Are DNC establishment insiders worried about this? Of course they are. Their livelihoods are at stake, as are the livelihoods of most Repub and Dem politicians, their paid employees, and the locust swarm of lobbyists in Washington, given that Bernie Sanders promises to help the lower ninety percent instead of the upper ten percent.
The poor will be with you always? Well, maybe not always, but a long time, if Trump or a DNC insider gets elected in 2020.
Bernie Sanders is not a real socialist. He does not advocate nationalizing all US industries, just the healthcare industry, which should be managed as a natural monopoly, as I have pointed out in my article, “Why Healthcare Should be Managed as a Natural Monopoly,”at https://blog.effectivelearning.net/why-healthcare-should-be-managed-as-a-natural-monopoly-2/.
Sanders is a social democrat, a reincarnated Roosevelt New Dealer bent on enhancing social programs and rationally regulating industries, not tearing them down or owning them, which is necessary to prevent the US from sliding deeper into fascism, which the Deep State and the RNC and DNC establishments seem to have in mind.
Bernie Sanders had the audacious idea that the US should be governed by the USian government, not the elite rich and large corporations.
The 2020 presidential race is more than a contest between two pseudo-different political parties; it’s a contest between different kinds of humans who have been scripted from birth to feel, think, and behave as they do. I disagree with the common sense notion that people can easily choose nihilism or democracy using free will. Most people are indoctrinated and programmed by their parents and others before they are eight years old with psychological injunctions to feel, think, and behave somewhere on a continuum between extreme democratic idealism and extreme authoritarian nihilism; and it’s difficult to change this indoctrination and programming even if individuals are aware of being programmed and make concentrated efforts to change the programming. The programming is deeply embedded and ingrained in their subconscious minds.
Up to now in the US Red states and Red communities have stayed Red, and Blue states and Blue communities have stayed Blue, regardless of what politicians have said or done about actual psychological, social, economic, and political states of affairs.
Changing dysfunctional scripting, feeling, and behaving is not easy; but it can happen if humans after they learn how to read accept new messages powerful enough to cause them to override the early psychological script injunctions.
The political situation now reminds me of what went on at recess when I was a student in a small rural grade school on the South Plains of Texas.
There were about one hundred or so kids from several grades milling around on the playground, about half male and half female. We had as I recall two recesses of about thirty minutes each, one in the morning and one in the afternoon, unsupervised by teachers or the principal, several grades together doing whatever they wanted to running wild with whomever they wanted to of whatever age. Younger smaller boys had to watch out for older and bigger boys. The unstructured process or melee was like a form of gang warfare, at least among the boys. I don’t remember what the girls did since I never played with them. It behooved the smallest and youngest boys to choose their friends wisely.
Nobody to my knowledge ever got seriously hurt but there were always psychological Games going on, and fights happened. I got involved in a couple that drew blood. Never lost a fight. Law of the jungle basically. Apparently the teachers and principal thought this was good training for adult life in rural Texas at the time.
In case you don’t know what a chicken Game is go here for some instruction.
Back in my time in a small town on the South Plains of Texas a common “Chicken” game played by boys entailed two players facing one another about four or so feet apart taking turns throwing the blades of their opened switch-blade knives in the ground near their opponent’s feet, getting closer and closer to hitting a foot with each iteration of the Game. Whichever one stopped the Game first was the loser, the “Chicken”. Adolescents who had their own cars could play this Game by driving head on toward each other on a road. The one who swerved first was the “Chicken”.
In recent years I have come to feel and think at times that I am now living again in a process similar to those recesses in grade school. International relations of governments, including the US, now seem like a form of gang warfare, with mafia don-wannabe presidents and prime ministers like Donald Trump and his cronies mucking around Spaceship Earth playgrounds Persecuting, Rescuing, and Victimizing others playing psychological Games.
The 2020 presidential election may be the most significant US election yet. If Bernie Sanders wins USian and Earthian states of affairs can improve; if Trump wins the US can wind up a full-blown fascist dictatorship run by extreme nihilists cut from the same cloth as Hitler, Stalin, and Mao Tse Tung, and their followers in Germany, Russia, and China.
Most USian voters won’t accept the fact their governments have committed crimes against humanity since the beginning of the US as a nation, against Native Americans and countries such as North Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Iraq, and possibly Gaza. Whether the US has been worse in this regard through time than other major nations is another matter. Whether these crimes paid off in terms of better living conditions inside the US for USians probably cannot be proved, but one thing seems certain: the US has been a powerful playground bully, muchly feared and respected during and after recesses called wars.
Regardless, all Earthian humans around Spaceship Earth have got to learn how to use more nurturing parent and adult ego state energy to seriously work together to combat global warming and nuclear bombs to survive. Life on Earth has been hell for a high percentage of humans for a long time, and those days must end, or the Earthian human race will end.
No one around Spaceship Earth can be fully OK unless everyone is OK, and nobody can be OK if global warming or nuclear bombs render humans extinct, annihilated, so it behooves humans to work with and for everyone, not just a chosen few.
Here’s a way Bernie supporters can maximize their power in the short run to prevent unfair treatment of Bernie and themselves by DNC insiders and playground bullies in the event Bernie does not win 1,990 delegates, despite receiving more votes than anyone else in the primary popular vote. To make sure Bernie is not screwed out of the popular vote nomination by super delegates in second round voting at the DNC Convention July 13 in Milwaukee, Bernie supporters should let potentially-unfair Dems know now they will not vote for a Blue nominee other than Bernie in the general election against Trump, if they unfairly screw Bernie out of the nomination using super delegates.
If the DNC obstinately screws Bernie and his supporters they will then be guilty of causing a Trump disaster to win and take over—by choosing their insider DNC vested-interest favorite, regardless of the probability Bernie Sanders was considered best in the eyes of a majority of USian voters.
The problem boils down to a high stakes “Chicken” Game, such as those played on playgrounds by nihilist kids back in my time during grade school recesses.
Richard John Stapleton, PhD, CTA is the inventor of the FreeFairProgressParty.