Lost in a Past that Kills Any Future

Joe Biden is not whole, the corporate establishment does not care. The goal is to stop a progressive movement before it reaches maturity. To sow the seeds of cynicism as happened in 1968 in the Lorraine Hotel, the Ambassabor Hotel, at the Democratic Convention in Chicago, later with the wholesale massacre of the Black rights movement, and 4 (white kids) dead in Ohio.

Hammer blows fracturing and splattering visions of a sane if not fully democratic society. The “movement” went into hiding or social issue politics, broken by Cointelpro, the War on Drugs, and a massive corporate backlash that synthesized in the Powell memo and triumphed in destroying unions, privatizing public services and ownership, choking the social state, deregulating finance and capital, ultimately denying the very existence of a commonwealth, common good, and society itself. We are atoms on our own, in it for ourselves, winners or losers, mostly losers, parched month to month, waiting for the trickle to come down. Hold on to what you got and to hell with the rest.

The Democratic party was gutted of its FDR/Truman past, its ‘caucus’ foreclosed and sold for deregulation of banks, corporate media consolidation, unbridled lowest wage global manufacturing, and ever expanding war and private/public war industries. As Bill Clinton said, “Government is not the problem, and government is not the solution.” The government deregulates and facilitates, let those who know better take care of business.

A racist Crime Bill remade Jim Crow in the image of private prisons. Clinton “felt our pain,” and with Joe as head of the Senate Judiciary Committee, shifting right of Ronald Reagan, created a school to prison pipeline decimating families, marking Black and Brown kids with a lifetime stigma following 5 to 10 years’ incarceration for possession. Joe Biden was on it, he knew what those ‘thugs’ and ‘predators’ needed. The government had a solution after all.

Older folks are the broken backbone of Joe Biden’s support. They check in on MSNBC and CNN between episodes of Jeopardy and some violence-resolves-conflict, cops/feds vs psycho criminals series. They are comforted by the familiar, the puffing, the halting half thoughts, half remembered past, and Joe’s old man anger as he recalls a lost vigor. They enjoy the demented fantasies of past battles as an implacable champion of civil rights. Just like them. We all stood with Nelson Mandela, we all marched with MLK. And we, and corporate media for us, learned the “lessons” of ’68 and the war in Vietnam.

Those lessons are right before our eyes, or better, not before our eyes, given that the lessons are: the media does not examine or discuss what is actually happening, and when asked they say whatever fits the desired goals. An expert, as Henry Kissinger once said, is someone deputized by the institution to speak for the institution. This is the formula that has guaranteed 30yrs of progressive “hope” and “small change.” Issues are framed to exclude what is not to be seen. The frame is justified with binary equations: electibility = our choice, social programs = impossible, America =centrist, progressive = radical left = communism.

The business model has been to dis-aggregate or splinter, to deflect attention from the key issues of corporate control of environmental, financial, and tax regulations, control of elections by selecting candidates and financing campaigns, and control (ownership) of the overwhelming majority media outlets and digital delivery services.

Joe Biden is not whole, he is the poster old fart for the ideological, moral, and ethical bankruptcy of 30 years of corporate control of the Democratic Party. A Senator from Delaware, a state with more registered corporations than registered voters, Joe’s entire career exhibits his unflinching advocacy for corporate interests, corporate control of the Democratic Party, and political/ideological junction with an avowedly corporate GOP. Joe did not just reach across the aisle, he is a key figure in walking the Dems down the aisle with their whites only Republican bride. An incestuous nuptial whose offspring is Donald Trump.

A contest between Joe Biden and Donald Trump is win/win for the interests that control the country today. Either we return to status quo corruption (the revolving door between government and private profit) or we continue with unchecked corruption of the present administration that sees everything, including public health, defense spending, and foreign policy as sources of personal revenue or advantage.

Joe Biden is not whole, he cannot beat Trump. Donald is a raving madman out of his mind with power, Joe is losing his mind. We are losing our democracy, and losing another generation, breaking them down to the cynicism that says, it is not worth it, don’t get involved, it is just politics. Think about yourself.

Calling Not Me Us, come in please.