by William Skink
Alternative Radio featured Thomas Frank this evening speaking about the America that elected Trump. I appreciate Frank because he understands, historically, how Democrats willfully transformed their party into the hot mess it is today. One of the central rationalizations driving the decision to abandon the working class for the professional class was the need to keep pace, dollar for dollar, with the deep pockets of Republican backers. How else could Democrats be expected to compete, they argued.
Thanks to Trump, that rationalization is now gone. Hillary’s war chest was immense, but despite the money propping up the Clinton brand, the branding failed.
Another part of Frank’s talk that resonated with me was his zeroing in on the most consequential missed opportunity of the first Obama term; a disastrous decision that doomed Democrats and set this country on the path to another global war: the bailout of Wall Street.
The real enemies threatening the livelihoods of Americans walked in to that infamous meeting with the incoming Obama administration ashen faced, said Frank, and left smiling. The moment to address the rot that metastasized after the Clinton administration successfully killed Glass-Steagall passed and now we’re just waiting for the other shoe to drop.
It’s true I’ve spent the majority of my blogging time over the years railing against Democrats. But before Trump I didn’t know how truly contemptible these party loyalists would become.
The Russia hysteria enrages me beyond words. These smug, tantrum-throwing losers once offended by conspiracy theories about birth certificates to delegitimize a president now believe any anonymous-sourced swill coming from their beloved papers of record. These are the same people who breathlessly warned us about Trump supporters not accepting the results of an election that was sure to enthrone their ceiling-shattering candidate.
While the Russia hysteria continues unabated, despite a persistent lack of tangible evidence, acts of war are escalating. In just the last 24 hours America’s illegal presence in Syria, fighting a war not declared by Congress, kicked up a notch after a U.S. fighter jet shot down a Syrian warplane, then there’s Iran’s missile strike targeting ISIS in Syria.
(I used the NYT and Slate for sources so Democrats know this is really happening and not just fake news planted by Trump to distract from his treasonous collusion with Putin)
Syria is a cauldron of conflict that could easily spark a wider war, and there is absolutely no substantive political force in America positioned to give voice against the madness of escalation. That fact could not have been more clear with the recent 97-2 vote for more sanctions against Russia.
Neither of those two dissenting votes came from a Democrat.
Going all-in on Russiagate is easily, imho, the second worst decision perpetrated on the American people by the Democratic political machine. Because there is more at stake than delegitimizing a president and stoking right-wing racism, I find this tactic deployed against Trump worse than what the birthers tried to do against Obama.
What will Trump have to do to prove he isn’t a stooge of the Kremlin? Start WWIII?