by BAR executive editor Glen Ford
While Democrats scream “fascist” at Donald Trump, actual fascists with real histories of mass murder at home and abroad gather in Hillary Clinton’s “Big Tent” Democratic Party. The melding of GOP and Democratic fat cats is “the most dramatic effect of the breakdown of the duopoly system set off by Donald Trump’s white nationalist, anti-‘free’ trade revolt.” Blacks and progressives will be shocked to find themselves at the margins of Hillary’s tent.
Hillary Stuffs Entire U.S. Ruling Class Into Her Big, Nasty Tent
by BAR executive editor Glen Ford
“Clinton has inherited the Republican money base, which means she is the candidate of the ‘bipartisan’ moneyed classes, period.”
Hillary Clinton is celebrating in the bloated expanse of the “Big Tent” Democratic Party she and Bill have dreamed of building since their days in the backwaters of Arkansas. Slick Willie and his wife have succeeded in assembling under one party roof nearly the whole of the U.S. ruling class and their hordes of attendants and goons. The scam that undergirded the duopoly system that has served the Lords of Capital so well for so long, has come undone. Thanks to a white nationalist billionaire who was too spoiled to play by the corporate rules, the two parties of the ruling class have become one.
It’s a funky place to be – especially for the traditional Black, brown and labor “base” of the party, now squished into a remote and malodorous corner of the tent, near the latrine, clutching the pages of a party platform that was never meant to bind anyone. These Democratic stalwarts appear intoxicated, high on the idea that they are part of a united front against the “fascist” Donald Trump and his imaginary storm troopers. The brass sound of martial music is heard, far off in the catered center of the tent. The generals have arrived, barking strategies to make Syria safe for “our” jihadists, re-bomb Libya, re-re-re-bomb Afghanistan, Pakistan and Somalia, and teach Russia and China the full meaning of geopolitical strangulation. Hillary’s cackle rings out above the bombast. She is pleased with her uniformed recruits.
“Trump has betrayed his class by raging against the free flow of money and jobs across borders.”
Wall Street is also in the house, too big to jail and definitely too fat for this tent. Michael Bloomberg, the 7th richest man in the country; Warren Buffet, who could buy and sell Bloomberg; and lesser plutocrats Meg Whitman and Mark Cuban, are part of Clinton’s “bipartisan cadre of billionaires.” Billionaires are, by nature, bipartisan, since they have no loyalties to country or party – only to their class. They are in Hillary’s Big Tent to trash one of their own, Trump, who has betrayed his class by raging against the free flow of money and jobs across borders, a heresy of the first order that is at the heart of Capital’s flight from the GOP, this year. Clinton claims she opposes the Trans Pacific Partnership corporate trade deal, but only the fools squeezed into the corner near the latrine feel compelled believe her. The Democratic Party platform they clutch so tightly says the opposite.
Spooks and goons infest the tent, like lice. Many “national security” operatives like to describe themselves as “non-partisan” -- claiming they cause mass death and chaos for God and country, not party. Such a spook is Michael Morell, a former acting CIA director who gained entrance to Hillary’s Big Tent after penning a New York Times article charging Donald Trump with “endorsing Russian espionage against the United States, supporting Russia’s annexation of Crimea and giving a green light to a possible Russian invasion of the Baltic States.” Trump, said Morell, is “an unwitting agent of the Russian Federation.” This is Morell’s first outing as a Democrat, but he fits right in with the weird, new ambiance in Hillary’s Big Tent, a place where the supposedly center-left party goes McCarthyite on the Republican candidate -- an historical role reversal.
The Big Tent nearly burst at its seams when 50 self-described senior Republican national security officials flashed their invitations and surged into the Queen of Chaos’ VIP section. “None of us will vote for Donald Trump,” said a letter brandished by the assorted assassins, mass murderers and imperial predators, including former CIA and NSA director Michael Hayden, regime change specialist John Negroponte, former deputy secretary of state and World Bank president Robert Zoellick, former secretaries of Homeland Security Tom Ridge and Michael Chertoff, and Eric Edelman, former national security advisor to Vice President Dick Cheney.
“Hillary’s Big Tent is a place where the supposedly center-left party goes McCarthyite on the Republican candidate -- an historical role reversal.”
Robert Blackwell, a former aide to Henry Kissinger, endorsed Clinton, encouraging speculation that the Master of Destruction himself -- the (onetime) Most-Wanted War Criminal in the World -- would drag his evil carcass into Hillary’s tent. Kissinger is a dear friend of Bill and Hill – if we can believe that real friendships exist among such creatures. According to Politico, “a person close to Clinton” has sent out feelers to GOP foreign policy big shots Condoleezza Rice, James Baker and George Shultz, as well – which would make Hillary’s tent a true place of Resident Evil.
Those fat cats that want to avoid the crush of the crowd at Hillary’s tent can simply send her the money they usually give to the GOP – which is apparently what donors to this year’s non-Trump Republican presidential candidates are doing. Contributors to the Jeb Bush, John Kasich, Lindsey Graham and Chris Christie campaigns are more likely to send another check to Hillary Clinton than to Donald Trump.
Lesson: Clinton has inherited the Republican money base, which means she is the candidate of the “bipartisan” moneyed classes, period.
She is the candidate of the imperial war machine, whose operatives have flocked to her corner in dread of Trump’s willingness to make “deals” with the Russians and Chinese. She is the candidate of multinational corporations, which are perfectly confident she is lying about her stance on TPP and other trade deals. And she is the candidate of the CIA and its fellow global outlaws, who will thrive as never before with a president in the White House who cackles “We came, we saw, he died” when the leader of an African country is murdered by Islamic jihadists supported by the United States.
“The Clinton ticket will outspend Trump by five to one, by far the widest margin in modern U.S. election history.”
The pestilence raging in Hillary’s Big Tent will inevitably lead to the death of millions, especially in Africa – and possibly of life on Earth. The demons swarming in her entourage are real, proven evils – as is she. On foreign policy, Trump’s stated positions are far less aggressive -- yet, the “doomsday” scenario is successfully spun around his candidacy, not hers. This is partly because Trump’s raging and racist white American nationalism makes him seem like the “type” that would nuke on impulse, despite his rather consistent calls for less confrontation in the world -- and even as Clinton promises to engage in new heights of provocation. However, the main reason the smell of Armageddon clings to Trump’s candidacy, is that the corporate news media, as a sector, has coalesced behind Clinton (whose husband multiplied corporate media wealth with the Telecommunications Act of 1996). They, too, have squeezed into the Big Tent.
The whole damn ruling class is now ensconced in the Democratic Party – the most dramatic effect of the breakdown of the duopoly system set off by Donald Trump’s white nationalist, anti-“free” trade revolt in the Republican ranks. I predict the Clinton ticket will outspend Trump by five to one, by far the widest margin in modern U.S. election history -- that is, since the dawn of the television age. However, Trump’s historic defeat will not demobilize the 30 percent or so of the white population that makes up his core support: the angry white nationalists. They will find political expression, either through continued dominance of the Republican Party, or in alternative venues.
“The demons swarming in her entourage are real, proven evils – as is she.”
It is the Left that has yet to find its footing.
It will take time, and a great deal of work, for the other shoe to fall -- for a viable social democratic electoral alternative to arise to pull Blacks, browns and white progressives out of Hillary’s Big Tent, and for an independent Black politics to reassert itself. Getting the Greens a secure place on the ballot, with 5 percent of the vote in November, is just a start. The real work of the next four years is in the streets, with social movements that sharpen the issues and illuminate the contradictions of capitalist rule in a white supremacist, imperial America. This struggle must incorporate a fierce discussion on the meaning of “fascism,” possibly the most misused term in the U.S. political vocabulary.
Fascists fly drones over other people’s countries. At home, they wear blue. The most dangerous ones are hanging out in Hillary’s Big Tent.
BAR executive editor Glen Ford can be contacted at [email protected].
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