(Stop me! Grrrr!)
Zephyr Teachout's column was not only right but mild. Read it:
Biden's pay-to-play dealings typify the systemic political corruption under capitalism. It doesn't matter that it's legal. Who legalized every species of conflict-of-interest, political bribery, nepotism? Oh, right, forty years of Biden and the Bipartisans. (Of course the history is longer than this but there's no doubt on how they stood politically in deregulating the flow and reach of money.)
It doesn't matter how much worse Trump is! Of course he's worse! Figure it out, Trump has a base. He plays their Leader. They follow him! This is not a joke, it really is the time of death coming.
You get one chance to stop the beast. There is no safe option or assured route. Biden's right-wing politics, at best, will leave the un-Trumpian majority apathetic and demobilized. His legal family enrichment and his decades of loyal service to the corporations will be fat and easy targets.
Do you think Trump's predatory instincts were in error, when he tried to sic Ukraine back on the Burisma case? Obviously this will stick to Joe, don't delude yourself with the corporate media talk about how Hunter's payoffs are "appropriate." The more Biden points to Trumpian corruption in response, the more they look the same regardless of some important underlying differences. And Joe's lost whatever game he had, this ain't 2015 no more. Look at all his meltdowns -- how the hell is he going to withstand what's coming? Is this really the show you want to watch unfold for the next 10 months?
In short, Sanders should never have apologized for what Teachout wrote. (See,
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/21/us/p ... biden.html) She is among the leading legal experts on these issues and a thoroughly upstanding, righteous person. (For me it was a pleasure meeing her, that one time.)
In response to those bewailing Teachout's column, all that Sanders needed to say was that she is a law professor and she writes what she likes. Apologizing for her is probably a tactical move, yes. Look like a nice guy. "Unity." Teachout doesn't seem to mind, she just reiterated her endorsement of Sanders.
But this is no time to apologize for straight and honest talk. Not from the guy who just told the assembled New York Times editorial board, to their faces, that they are sad creatures, waiting for birthday cards from people who know they are empty suits, full of shit. There is no going back.
The "centrist" campaigns, the party establishment, the corporate media, the Old Republican "Never-Trump" war criminals who have seized land among the Democrats, and the Clinton-gang punditry will continue to manufacture bogus, irrelevant, and outrageous attacks. Every single day. They are following the same dirty strategy of personal slander that was thrown against Corbyn in the UK. They will show no limits, no shame, no concern whatsoever for any interest other than the narrow aim of destroying Sanders and the new left movement. They will tell you the Jewish socialist from Brooklyn is anti-Semitic. They are hostiles. If it means losing to Trump, they don't care. Some people prefer to watch the world burn.
The right way to deal with this rhetorical aggression is to take no shit. Hit back. Keep it brief, but no apologies. Stick to real politics. Win the damn votes. Once these forces are pushed back, it will be on them to decide just how much further they intend to help Trump's reelection. Fuck them. Of course Sanders should not go as far as Tulsi Gabbard, but her lawsuit in response to Clinton, who literally accused her of treason, should serve as the guiding star in how to deal with slander from hostiles.
Sanders is rising at the right time. Unlike with Corbyn, who was battered by "his own side" for five years, the time-frame for establishing slanders against him is short.
Is it me, or do most Americans seem to have stopped caring about the daily corporate media bullshit? Are they perhaps suffering from bullshit overload? Either way, it's not sticking like it used to. My evidence is that after three years of the most fanatically repetitive top-down propaganda campaign I've ever seen in this country, most people care less than ever about the manufactured Russian threat. Quick, who's Oleg Deripaska?
Some of you do know the answers to that last one, at least sort of. You may have convinced yourself this name's more important and consequential to the course of U.S. politics or the actions of the Trump regime than Prince, DeVos, Walton, Thiel and Bezos combined. You exceptions are plentiful among my highly educated and generally sharp friends: a minority, but well ensconced in your filter bubbles, you are probably disillusioned with what a dud the #Russiagate main narrative proved to be. But now you cling to its offspring: the impeachment strategy that may as well have been designed to lose.
Are you actually deluding yourselves that John Fucking Murder-Man Bolton, who delivers keynote speeches at conventions of literal terrorist organizations (MEK), and who might dance in public if nuclear weapons were dropped on a few million Iranians, is going to help unseat Trump? Maybe, if you promise to drop that nuke for him.
It makes me sad to see you this way.
Are you taking inspiration from Schiff's unhinged war talk? The way he dehumanizes Russians, just like Trump dehumanizes Muslims and Mexicans (and everyone else)? Schiff is channeling no lesser criminal than G. W. Bush himself, repeating the slogan of "we must fight them over there" -- what the fuck!? -- so "we don't fight them over here."
Please figure out that this does not damage Trump. Reaction is not the answer for reaction. Inciting more war in Ukraine is not your national security!
My friends, there is still hope for you. I'm not a liberal, I'm a leftist. But in what universe is this your liberalism? Rediscover your principles.