For all those out there like this writer who consider themselves to be socialists, we are like the Jack Nicholson character in Joseph Brooks’ 1997 film As Good As It Gets. Nicholson plays a writer, Melvin Udall, who is suffering from OCD ( Obsessive Compulsive Disorder). As he exits from his psychiatrist’s session into the waiting room he addresses the patients: ” What if this is as good as it gets?”
For many decades of the late 20th century, right into the early 2000s, we socialists and dedicated progressive activists had some degree of hope. Friends, those hopes are now gone… Down the drain of reason! The Military Industrial Empire that we are indentured servants within has smothered us! Many of our fellow kindred spirits have been co-opted by the corporate Democratic Party, or at least been compromised as voters. Now, this writer realizes that voting is not the most important action citizens should take. Yet, what had occurred in the 2020 elections rings paramount. The outright threat of American Fascism by Trump and his party was real. Folks like myself, living it what was once a ‘ Swing State’, Florida, voted for a lifetime political hack and phony like Joe Biden. The alternative facing America was far too great to ignore.
The political game of Column A or Column B has been around seemingly for generations. The Two Party/One Party duopoly for far too long had strangled any relief offered by Left Wing and Libertarian third parties. Look what they did to Ralph Nader in 2000, by not allowing him and his Green Party to be part of the presidential debates. Technically, they had the percentage needed to be included, but… no cigar! Imagine what Nader would have done to those two hacks, Gore and Bush Jr. How many key issues could he have raised to awaken millions of viewers to actually make people Think? The masters of empire don’t want that, do they? In 2008 they pushed Mr. Obama to center stage as the solution to the eight years and phony wars/ occupations of the Bush/ Cheney Cabal. He was America’s first black candidate for president, when in reality he was as white as he was of color, being what they used to call ‘ Mulatto’. Obama’s mantra of ‘ Hope and Change’ sold his election, as millions of new voters waited on line for literally hours to vote for him. The first thing he did when elected was to make sure ( for his masters) that the run-up to the disgraceful war on Iraq was not to be investigated. ” We have to look forward and not back” he told us. Meanwhile, he continued the Bush /Cheney taxpayer subsidized bailout of the crooked Wall Street banksters , allowing them basically off the hook. The result of this was that today we have millions of former homeowners now being tenants of the super rich corporate landlords ( read Aaron Glantz’s book Homewreckers) .
In 2016 Senator Bernie Sanders had a great chance to upset Miss Hillary and become the Democratic Party nominee. We on the true Left begged Bernie , an independent, to run on the Green Party ticket. He refused, feeling that there were enough Democratic voters and independents nationwide to actually push him to the top. Well, once again the masters of empire, the ones who control the Democratic Party, made damn sure Sanders would not succeed. Their media whores ,like NPR ( which I call National Propaganda Radio) and MSNBC were all for Hillary and savagely destroyed him. He never had a chance, and because of this a very shady candidate like Mrs. Clinton , being the standard bearer, aided in Trump being elected. I have always said that if the Democrats would have run Donald Duck they could have defeated Donald Trump. Trump’s biggest key ally was the fact that many Americans could see through Mrs. Clinton. So, they chose a phony populist demagogue who ranted about the Deep State when he and Hillary both represented it. This rage and anger towards her clouded the truth about Trump.
Finally, in 2020, Joe Biden, loyal soldier of the empire, received his lifelong dream and was elected as president. Once again, it was the behind the scenes manipulations of his party to oppose Sanders that did the trick. During the primary season Biden was so low in the polls that many already wrote him off as the loser he had always been. Then, before the South Carolina primary, a few of his opponents magically dropped out and backed him. His lifelong political pal, Sen. Clyburn of South Carolina, got the black vote out through a myriad of pastors and elected leaders in his state, and the rest is history. Meanwhile, the damage to our nation that the Trump administration had done rallied millions of us, including this writer, to vote that megalomaniac out. Thus today the Neo Fascists are hindered but a bit while the Neo Cons take control. The ‘ piece de resistance’ has been this terrible and ( ultimately) foolish bankrolling (to the tune of hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars) proxy war in Ukraine. As the armies of homeless saturate our major cities President Biden and his crew lament for the Ukrainian citizens, victims of the Russian aggression that his foreign policy helped instigate.
So, what are we to do, we on the ‘ Left Wing ‘ divorced from the phony Democratic one? Things are so far gone in this Alice in Wonderland America that the right wing mainstream media calls out the Democrats Marxists and Communists while CNN, MSNBC and NPR call the Democrats the ‘progressive ‘party. As my childhood friend and a loyal Democrat said to me yesterday, with much candor and truth: ” An ideal progressive government with a vital progressive agenda will never get elected… ever!” Perhaps it really would take a few generations ( or a tremendous Depression similar to 1929 )to get the mega millions of my fellows out into the sunlight to protest.
Philip A Farruggio is regular columnist on itstheempirestupid website. He is also frequently posted on Nation of Change and Countercurrents.. He is the son and grandson of Brooklyn NYC longshoremen and a graduate of Brooklyn College, class of 1974. Since the 2000 election debacle Philip has written over 500 columns on the Military Industrial Empire and other facets of life in an upside down America. He is also host of the ‘ It’s the Empire… Stupid ‘ radio show, co produced by Chuck Gregory. Philip can be reached at [email protected].
