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Thursday 20 February 2020

Blooming Onion

Yes, it is true that the DNC is doing again this time round what it did in 2016, and, yes, if you want to take a broader view of things, it is how an establishment party can assure defeat if they don't get the candidate they prefer. Should it come as any surprise that actual human voters (or non-voters) would behave the same way and ensure that the same party will lose when that party does get the candidate it prefers?

It doesn't matter that one or the other doesn't make one or the other right. Bottom line is that one has the power of the party, the voter has diminishing returns, and conversely, pun intended. That's the nature of low voter turnout. To blame the non-voter for ensuring other party victories goes beyond ignoring the obvious. It is a projection of society's ills onto someone else without electoral agency. Establishment media are well aware of this, which is why these bad actors' editorial sleaze mercantilism can be justified with the equivalent of the nuttiest of them defending the nuttiest of their crapfests with "But we're just asking questions!" in how they roundly speculate on the most popular candidate's electability. The official grownup version goes more like "We're just reporting what's out there."  Which is bullshit. It all stems from the same bad actors.

Yes, it is fake news. It's all fake news. An objection to that framing as a false equivalency is protestation that's been purchased and packaged for further consumption by Fake News of Choice, more facts included. Of course I know that my energy, too, has been funneled, and even if I believe I'm being lessly manipulated, I won't justify myself with a lesser-funneled argument because if I do that I'll just be justifying every other better or worse by comparison claptrap "out there".

I will say that particularly suspect is the more recent explicit testimony by the bad actors and their political cronies that they are acting solely to prevent a Sanders' nomination. Not that that is the cause of the "damned if you would, damned if you could" shitstorm that will continue to rage well through the consecration convention, where, no matter where your energy's funneled, the other side is always responsible for the lack of unity. I mean, that's the logic behind never primary-ing the incumbent. So it's old hat. It's suspect because it seems odd that as a party you would tell a significant portion of your future to go to hell.

But it doesn't have to be suspicious. If they know that Sanders Sixteen knew they didn't want him, why not make their intentions official this time and delayer it with a more legit look? It's just politics. Anyway, at least some of them are spinning it as a concern that he cannot win. Personally I don't think it matters whether he can win or not. His having a chance to lose in November might at least give the party's arguments against him plausibility, and I too would do my best to tune out 100% all the talk that would ensue should he get the nomination and lose.

Not that I'm a Bernie-or-bust guy, but I sympathize with them. Just as I sympathize with the sentiment that says Russia-gate was as much a deal prior to the election between the US and the Kremlin as it was anything else. Entrapment is after all how lesser-evil criminal feds ensnare whichever criminals they don't like. I really could not care less. I'd bet all delegates squared that the party doesn't care about winning more than they care about defeating something secretly to them more despicable than the Apprenticedent. They certainly aren't doing anything to defy that appearance to an awful lot of people.

To their creators and whoever sees them appear, only appearances matter.

Revealing it was a little while back when I innocently clicked on an anti-Bloomberg tweet to meet an unfathomably long thread of what appeared to be Bloomberg Bots accusing the tweeter and every single tweet of his twittering allies of being aligned with Putin, and such like — as if on the Infinite Day of Christmas, seeing so many black kettles kettling. As deep as such things run, there are for sure those who'd attribute those Bloomberg Bots to Russia as well. Sowing dissension, is it? It doesn't matter. It's all appearances to whomever they appear.

Take as another example the impeachment, which was presented as something that had to be done on principle, just to get it on the record, knowing full well at the outset of assured acquittal. What mattered most was appearances, political ramifications be damned. And even the ramifications are just something that will seem so, or not so much, depending on whom one is inclined to want to blame for society's ills.

It gets more complicated trying to explain why the impeachment of someone who's running a walking & talking impeachable offensive would focus on an offense that includes as its indirect object the previous Veep's conflict of interest. Although it'd need no defense because the object would not the one on trial, its defense would amount to, "well, it doesn't equal emoluments because of the paper thin firewall of nepotism, and it's only that because it's only an appearance of a nepotism, not a conflict. Because we say so." It does however lend credence to the idea that they might not have gone after the Apprenticedent on emoluments in spite of its massively lesser less-blatancy, plausibly speaking, because his goombah defense could have been like: "Using your political office for personal financial gain?" (cue laugh track, release worms). So we're not talking about anyone reaping financial rewards while in office. At least not from upon the divine dais.

Appearances. If that spectacle was not Republicans behaving typically then it also was not [trigger warning] Democrats playing pussies on TV. Oh, but did you see how the Speaker of the House ripped up that lying liar's speech! Madame Puh-leasey is also aware that symbolic gestures, no matter how empty they may appear to some, weigh more than naysayers' reproaches when you got the party behind you, among whose accoutrements include a plausible plurality of allegedly engaged voters who'll find your symbolic gesture heroically fierce and "literally" historically significant. Unlike the deep fried onion, which is not literally blooming, just an overpriced symbol of one cause of society's ills.