Some Reflections on US Elections..

Susan Nevens | 8 May 2016

This election season has been an extra ordinary learning experience for me, an addendum to a particular awareness to psyche of American electorates which was acquired sometimes in early 2010.

In 2008, like many of my compatriots I have made a wrong judgement subscribing to Barack Obama’s message of ‘hope & change’.

As a supporter of Obama/Biden campaign, I have voluntarily dedicated many hours of my time, alas by early 2010, when little by little my audacity of hope was replaced by the mendacity of despair, I did acknowledge and owned my mistake and moved on.

6 years have passed since then and much has happened in world of politics which not only affected the landscape of US domestic policies and politics but it also influenced the perception by which the United States is perceived around the world.

Having the benefit of hindsight and in light of last 7 years, I can say with a great degree of certainty that Obama administration contributed as much as George W. Bush if not more to this train wreck of presidential candidates we have been witnessing in the last 9 months.

So it was no surprise when almost every single presidential hopeful, whether he was a Senator, Governor, ex-governor, or a member of US Congress to try his best to distance himself from the very system which gave him notoriety if not his paycheck.

Perhaps we are not so off the mark to imply that to save this Empire from total and utter implosion, the US stagnate economy is in need of her own version of perestroika (economic restructuring) and to help with our broken political structure and to eliminate traces of repression and for the US to become a more prosperous, productive nation a policy of glasnost (openness) should be adopted by the next person who would occupy the Oval office for the next 4 years.

Anyhow as we have witnessed, the fad for this election season was to somehow convince the wide eyed and disillusioned electorates to once again ‘believe in change’ hence the slogan of choice across the board became; “I am an outsider” which not only gained a candidate a great deal of support but it also generated some excitement.

Donald Trump wore a badge of not being a ‘politician’ with honor, which meant not only he need not abide by rule of 'politically correctness' but that he could justify his political illiteracy.

‘Not being a politician’ seem to have worked like the Monopoly's ‘get out of the jail’ card for Trump, an excellent cover for gutter politics of bigotry and racism in which the cesspool of sexist, racist, and xenophobic remarks became his trademark and was embraced by those whom in Trump found a vehicle to vent out their own pent up and restrained prejudices.

For ‘Senator’ Ted Cruz his party’s rancor and enmity for him was somehow translated to being an 'outsider', alas the support he had hope to garnish from the evangelical Bible hugging, 'family value' segments of the Republican Party were not enough to improve Cruz's odds to become the GOP nominee.

Bernie Sanders reminded us over and over again that he too was an ‘outsider,’ never mind the reality of him being part of the system for about 3 decades, the only 'Independent' Senator failed to move 'revolutionary' stance beyond the sclerotic and fully corrupted Democratic Party.

For some reason Comrade Sanders caucusing with the Democrats while promising his supporters a ‘political revolution‘ from within the cartel of high dollar owned & operated Democratic Party did not bother his young supporters;) whilst Bernie ‘the social democrat‘ Sanders spoke of ‘inequalities’ kept up the sham of vying to protect the nearly obliterated working class families while tying his wagon to the party of corpocrat crooks and Wall Street cuddlers.

Moreover the anti-war, anti-interventionist Sanders claimed to have voted against the Iraq war but then his supporters found nothing out of sort with his funding the US imperialist militaristic agenda in Iraq & Afghanistan, nor did anyone find anything un-kosher about his voting in favor of U.S./NATO military aggression against Kosovo (former Yugoslavia) during the Clinton years (late ‘90s).

Likewise Sanders did not mind the U.S./NATO aggression which was responsible for the slaughter of tens of thousands of Libyans resulting in reducing secular Libya into a sectarian failed state.

Furthermore Mr. Sanders did not shy away from jumping on the “bomb anyone who threaten us” bandwagon and subsequently voted in favor of giving George Bush unilateral war powers following 9/11 hence setting the stage for the president invasion of Afghanistan which has lasted for the last 15 years.

Moreover Sanders was totally complaisant in his support for the US planned and fomented neo-Nazi-led coup d’etat in Ukraine.

Despite all that however Comrade Bernie was considered a ‘political revolutionary’, a hero and the prodigal son for 'reform' and his support kept growing.

Hillary Clinton could be considered the only animal on shipwreck of the Noah’s Arc of presidential hopefuls who could not claim to be an ‘insurgent‘ and ‘outsider’.

After all Mrs. Clinton was transparent when it came to her moral vacuum and her militarist belligerence could not be more palpable. Her push to bomb Serbia; her vote to invade Iraq; her support to escalate the war in Afghanistan, and her role as a leading proponent of regime change in Libya which resulted in destruction of Libya and murder of Muammar Ghaddafi, her support for Egypt’s military coup by Al Sisi, and her groundwork for a coup d’etat in Ukraine were all undeniable.

She boasted about how tight she was with such war criminals as; Henry Kissinger and Madeline Albright. An unapologetic and corrupt to the core, Hillary Rodham Clinton is of Imperialism, for Imperialism and by Imperialism alas her failure as the Secretary of State and her shenanigans in Honduras, Haiti, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, and Ukraine seemed to have not phase her supporters who claim her to be the most qualified candidate among the bunch.*

Hillary Clinton and Clinton machinery banked on cleverness of few and stupidity of many and they were given a break not only by the Department of Justice and by FBI but by the very Bernie Sanders who claimed to be sick & tired of hearing about her damn emails.

Alas at the end of the day, when the only commodity available to a dis-empowered and a dispossessed American public in a corrupt and constrained system limiting their imagination to mechanical support of stage-managed icons is to cast a vote, nothing is as insipid as analysis of the U.S. presidential election and/or US presidential candidates. 

ink emoticon

But distasteful I am in encouraging those who find themselves incapable of thinking about politics beyond the limits of electoral convention, to think, to analyze, to compare and contrast.

When a complex project like democracy is limited to two airbrushed party bureaucrats, venal strategies of coercion are inevitable. But one should not be made to feel responsible for our national travails if one chooses to go beyond the cult of ‘lesser of two evils‘ by adopting different ways of political consumption and participation and/or refuse to validate the same shitty system.

Furthermore “Vote for Hillary or be responsible for Trump” is the slogan of someone who is either maintaining or being played by the system. So NO you are not responsible for emergence of Donald Trump, George W. Bush, Barack H. Obama, plutocrats, corrupt politicians, profiteers, potentates, and the well-heeled MSM commentators who aren’t compensated for insight but for their ability to render platitudes the currency of American political debate ARE RESPONSIBLE.

lest we not forget the similarities between Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders supporters, in which both groups credit their respective candidates for exposing the corruption of the parties.

Having said that, Trump and Sanders are not pioneers unless of course we are willing to overlook likes of Dr. Cornel West, Chris Hedges, Glen Ford, and Bruce Dixon, to name but a few, whom have all been active at the forefront of the modern progressive struggle & whom in a very real sense have prepared the groundwork that has made Sanders nominal success possible.

What needs to be acknowledged is the fact that a ‘movement‘ has been created. Whether or not Americans choose to further this movement is dependent on us not Sanders, and certainly not Trump. It is up to us to pick up and carry the banner for economic justice into the streets after the election, no matter who wins.

Up until now we have supported a ‘campaign‘ to which this ‘movement‘ has been born. Movements don't have so much of A leader as they have LEADERS, hundreds of leaders, thousands of leaders, millions of leaders whom must build solidarity across the social divides.

You see, it is not about voting for a president but IT IS about making a positive and tangible change beyond a campaign slogan. It's about taking action in interest of one's own life. It doesn't make much difference whether Clinton or Trump become the POTUS; the corporations will ultimately control both and the Congress.

If anything, the last 9 months have showed us that as a society we are conservative about the values and principles which we cherish; but we are forward-looking in protecting those values and principles and in extending their benefits.

As a nation we seem to have rejected the discredited theory which implies that the fortunes of the Nation should be in the hands of a privileged few. We have also seem to have abandoned the "trickle-down" concept of national prosperity. Instead, we have come to believe that our economic system should rest on a ‘real’ democratic foundation and that wealth should be created for the benefit of all.

The recent months and people’s support for ‘insurgency’ are testament that the American people have decided that poverty is just as wasteful and just as unnecessary as a preventable disease.

We have come to believe that no unfair prejudice or artificial distinction should bar any citizen of the United States from an education, affordable health, or from a job that he/she is capable of performing.

A movement has been born and this movement has the potential to change this country, whether we credit Trump or Sanders matters not when we recognize that a conducive atmosphere was created for us to stand up and take action, an action that for now is directed at the ballot box but it ought to go beyond that, we need to be the 'change' we like to see, not only 'believe' in change but 'be' the change.

Susan Nevens | 8 May 2016