Politics

I was fortunate enough to view a screening of the new Snowden movie Wednesday evening with some of the whistleblowers who have cameos in it and with its director Oliver Stone. I'm not allowed to review it until Saturday night, but it is a truly great movie and has the potential to be the most widely seen, heard, or read thing of any political decency or truth in the world this year. That's not, however, why I'm glad I saw it.

On September 7, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump are set to appear on the same stage in a broadcast NBC is calling the“Commander-in-Chief Forum," an event devoted to "national security, military affairs and veterans issues." The candidates will not debate face-to-face. They will appear separately, back-to-back.

For an event that marks the beginning of one of the most critical presidential debates in US history, NBC is mounting a disturbing preamble. Instead of focusing on the full range of domestic issues that are roiling the electorate – lack of good jobs, declining wages, rising housing costs, failing schools, crumbling infrastructure, mass incarceration, and the tandem proliferations of gun possession and police violence -- the lead issue selected by the National Broadcasting Corporation, is war-fighting.

Under NBC's marching orders, the two candidates will vie for the allegiance of "an audience consisting mainlyofmilitaryveteransandactiveservicemembers."

As a crowd waited for Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein to join a September 2 political rally at Capital University, local Green Party members took the podium to explain the key role of third party politics, and how Stein’s presidential bid coalesces with state and local efforts to transform the political landscape.

“Politics creates the kinds of communities that we will live in,” said Anita Rios of Toledo, who ran for Ohio Governor in 2014. “Somebody is going to make those decisions, and if it’s not somebody who understands our needs, they’re going to make decisions based on the people who give them money — decisions that simply do not work for us.”

Healing our communities requires a groundswell of Americans participating in politics at the local level, Rios said, “not just as voters, but also as candidates.” She described her Ohio gubernatorial run as a grueling effort that required great sacrifices from herself, her family, and a legion of Green Party activists.

While Bernie Sanders was doing a brilliant job of ripping into the Trans-Pacific Partnership during the livestreamed launch of the Our Revolution organization on Wednesday night, CNN was airing a phone interview with Hillary Clinton and MSNBC was interviewing Donald Trump’s campaign manager.

That sums up the contrast between the enduring value of the Bernie campaign and the corporate media’s fixation on the political establishment. Fortunately, Our Revolution won’t depend on mainline media. That said, the group’s debut foreshadowed not only great potential but also real pitfalls.

Even the best election campaigns aren’t really “movements.” Ideally, campaigns strengthen movements and vice versa. As Bernie has often pointed out, essential changes don’t come from Congress simply because of who has been elected; those changes depend on strong grassroots pressure for the long haul.

n May 2008, presidential candidate Barack Obama released a summary letter of his general health signed by Dr. David Scheiner, who had been Obama’s primary care physician for 21 years. Providing limited detail, the doctor found Obama to be in “excellent health” and “in overall good physical and mental health needed to maintain the resiliency required in the Office of the President.” The Obama campaign indicated at the time that it was not planning to release any further medical records, and it didn’t.

Donald Trump is a reckless fool. But the U.S. defense establishment is M.A.D.

And herein lies one of the darker problems with the Trump candidacy, and the reason why so many establishment conservatives are awkwardly distancing themselves from America’s leading narcissist — if not running screaming into the night in fear for their lives (and everyone else’s).

Trump as commander in chief? Trump with his finger on the button?

When the subject of nukes has come up in interviews, he has come across as creepily naïve. For instance, according to MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough, Trump allegedly hounded a foreign policy expert with the question: “If we have them, why can’t we use them?”

The level of hatred and hostility towards Hillary Clinton is staggering. This is not just “nattering nabobs of negativity”: what is occurring now is more like verifiable vitriolic vehemence that is unprecedented in my lifetime. I think back to the hatred for Lyndon Johnson for perpetuating the Vietnam War or for Nixon and Kissinger for bombing Cambodia, or even the antipathy and contempt for George Bush II for his grudge matches in the Middle East coupled with the anger towards Cheney and Halliburton for thinly veiled profiteering in the Foreign Policy arena: none of these add up put together to the level of hostility towards the Democratic nominee, despite the smooth words of the soothsayers, which have no effect on those recalcitrant citizens of whom I speak now.

These were instructions passed around during the last night of the Wells Fargo Arena Anti-Russia Don't-Say-TPP Call-It-Debt-Free-College-Not-Free-College Democratic Party Extravaganza. Noise Makers were deployed. Lights could be switched off on people as needed. Delegates were prevented from walking out. And chants like "Black Lives Matter" and "Love Is Love" were joined in by the corporatists.

However, if you chanted "Ban Fracking Now," they would chant "Hillary" back at you, as if having Hillary as their beloved leader was better than banning fracking. Also if you chanted "Stop TPP" or "Walk the Walk" you'd be greeted by screams of "Hillary!"

But what if you shouted "No More War"? Wouldn't they join in and try to own that one? Don't Christmas decorations even today still sometimes say "Peace on Earth"? Didn't Tim Kaine pretend in his speech that Woodrow Wilson was a peace maker? Doesn't the Pentagon claim that it kills people for peace? Wouldn't trying to shout down opposition to war be a step too far even for a pro-fracking, pro-corporate-trade, cult of personality?

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared on July 25 that Israel has defeated the BDS movement. Ben White of Middle East Eye calls this claim “laughable.” A few days earlier, the Palestinian BDS National Committee posted a blog article that describes the accelerating growth of BDS despite Israel’s efforts to undermine it.

BDS (Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions) is an economic strategy for pressuring Israel to end its occupation and colonization of Arab lands in Palestine. BDS supporters also want Israel to dismantle the Gaza Wall and recognize full equality for Arab-Palestinian citizens — ending what they see as a system of apartheid.

As the Democratic Convention opens in Philadelphia, there’s just one one clear message that matters from the Republicans: Donald Trump will be within ten points of Hillary Clinton in the fall election. 

Thus, unless the Democrats do something about the issue of election protection, it will be within the power of key GOP swing state governors to give Donald Trump the presidency.

For all its problems, the wildly disorganized and fractious gathering in Cleveland all boiled down to Trump’s final speech. It was rambling and often incoherent. But it delivered the classic strongman message: You need ME to protect you.

Given the chaos, violence, and injustice of imperial America in 2016, that message is almost certain to sell with enough Americans to keep Trump close enough to Hillary Clinton to allow the election to be electronically stripped and flipped.

In 2008 and 2012, Barack Obama was able to overcome these barriers with a huge popular margin in more states than the GOP could reasonably steal.