...voting is of relatively tiny significance. Which is why you should not waste time worrying about it, and just do it.

This is related to the "debate" following Scats' recent posts.

I wanted to emphasize what I didn't say clearly enough in my ramblings:

It is important to recognize the manifest criminality of the Democrats (and not just their "weakness" or "failure to live up to their ideals");

and it is important to see that the violence of the United States continues in an unbroken chain back to Jamestown, is part of the very fabric of what Americans understand by "constitutional democracy";

and that liberals and great Americans have from the start been complicit in this violence;

and that Hillary Clinton will surely preside over the ongoing functioning of the death machine if she somehow manages to be given the presiding role;

and--at the very same time--

it is also true that one manifestly OUGHT to vote Democratic in national elections;

and that the two parties are NOT the same (EVEN IF at a deeper level they REALLY ARE founded on the same murderous principles).

The Republicans really will cause more deaths than the Democrats; the difference between 10.5 million and 9.5 million deaths worldwide really is significant.

You have to be able to live in a contradiction, and say, I don't support the Democrats, they don't stand for me, they are part of the problem, and I am going to give the better part of my energy and aspirations to real alternative forms of politics,

while also saying, I can go to the fucking voting booth and vote for one of these assholes. Actually, it's not that hard.

The "libloggers" ARE worthy of criticism because they seem to think that there are no alternatives to the Dems, that the Dems really have good in their hearts, that America is at bottom a fine place and the best thing to hope for politically is empowered and confident Democratic rule.

This is indeed deadly nonsense.

But you can say all that, and commit yourself to altogether anti-Democratic-party politics, and STILL not say bullshit like Hillary will somehow be "as bad" as Bush.

Why even make the comparison?

That kind of talk is deliberately inflammatory and sensational, and people talk that way for self-aggrandizing purposes--to strike out a new position, to establish a niche for their journal, to express inchoate anger and rebellion, or whatever. I don't buy it.

Saying Hillary is as bad as Bush is like saying piss is as bad as shit.

It doesn't mean anything.

Once again: Hillary is CERTAINLY part of the problem, as is evident from all of the examples cited in Scats' posts. And Bill Clinton was a self-aggrandizing opportunist who certainly did set up the truly genocidal neoliberal economic apparatus that is now the frame for U.S. global domination.

Still, at election time, I want Bill and Hillary over Bush et al.

That doesn't mean I like them. I might even pray for forgiveness, or curse Satan for forcing me to make this vote.

---------

The reason this vote is difficult for some "radicals" is because they are STILL accepting the terms of the established game and insisting that the moment of voting is somehow of great significance, as if this were the one moment for political expression, as if this were the one moment when consent could be given or refused, as if this were one's only chance to express one's political will.

But to assume this is to take on the main assumption of liberal-statist politics. In the language of the state, yes, the vote is the one and only moment that the individual has a living political will. The will is reduced to a mere option between two given choices.

This is pure ideology, reducing the will's diversity of desires and directions to a single option for one or another pre-given choice. This reduction of politics to consumption is built into the very idea of voting as the sole means of political action for solitary individuals. This breeds the passivity, apart from voting time, that enables state mis-rule.

The vote is not that important, in fact is more or less meaningless at this point.

As has been said repeatedly by Scats et al., Hillary or Rethug death is NOT a real substantive choice.

STILL--that is all the more reason not to waste time turning the decision into a big deal, or pretending that rejecting the vote is somehow putting oneself above it.

That sick deadly choice is, on voting day, the only choice there is. But there are many other days. So vote for Hillary and then (unlike the libloggers) forget about her doing anything very good; and go about the business of constructing a REAL politics that has nothing to do with her.

Voting is nothing. Voting for Hillary over Rethug death is like making sure you separate cardboard from regular garbage. It is an unbelievably minor point in the larger and deadly scheme of things.

The problem is NOT voting for Hillary.

The problem is thinking that the vote means very much. BOTH the pro-Hillary libloggers AND the posturing anti-Hillary radicals assume that the moment of voting is somehow important in the ongoing functioning of the global death machine.

It is NOT. Voting for Hillary does NOT AT ALL negate the horror that will certainly continue as long as the death apparatus is in place. But perhaps for somebody somewhere such a vote will help make the situation one milli-increment less horrible. In the same way, dropping 5 cents in the tip cup at a coffee shop is doing somebody a very very tiny, virtually insignicant favor.

Just do it. And don't think about it or waste time talking about it or pretending it matters very much.

There are many, many more ways to act politically. Worrying about your vote--and writing columns arguing against voting is STILL worrying about your vote--is buying into a bankrupt system.

Ah well...so much for tyranny. RCTV is back on the air. Well, not exactly the air, they're on cable.


But wait! There's hope...in Costa Rica:

[There is] an October vote on whether or not to join the Central American Free Trade Agreement. Like NAFTA, CAFTA promises to be a boon for U.S. corporations while screwing over small businesses on both sides of the treaty.

Most Costa Ricans strenuously oppose the treaty, as evidenced by polls commissioned by various prestigious universities.

These polls directly contradict President Oscar Arias, who claims that Costa Ricans actually support the agreement, which is, of course, embarrassing both for Arias and the U.S. officials who want to make this deal happen.

The Costa Rican Supreme Court saves the day by issuing a ruling that universities are no longer allowed to release polls on the topic.

Oh, and while they’re at it, universities are hereby banned from studying, debating, or otherwise discussing CAFTA until the vote, activities that President Arias has deemed “verbal violence.”

I eagerly await the deluge of editorials denouncing President Arias for his dangerous and worrisome freedom-killing autocratic megalomania. If anyone would be so kind as to let me know when to stop holding my breath, I'd appreciate it.



via BoRev.net

Arthur:

Americans now reside in the Land of the Living Dead. For the moment, the dim, blurred forms of a constitutional republic remain, but they are entirely empty and drained of life and vitality. We continue to go through the meaningless rituals of elections, many of us trying to convince ourselves that one party might be even a slight improvement over the other. As I pointed out before last fall's election, such hopes rely on willful self-delusion and an all-encompassing ignorance of history. As I have also said more than once, my estimate of how awful the Democrats' performance would be even if they took back both the House and the Senate -- and it was very awful -- has proved, in the event, to be laughably generous.

Please note -- and I underscore this point at least five times for emphasis -- that I absolutely do not include those individuals who so tirelessly work for Democratic electoral victory among those Americans who truly value liberty or peace. The criminal who currently resides in the White House and his fellow gang members may have taken the lead in destroying the remnants of our freedoms -- but they were supported and enabled every step of the way by the "opposition" party. From the Patriot Act, through both Authorizations for the Use of Military Force, and on to the monstrous Military Commissions Act, the Democrats offered enthusiastic support for the metastasizing authoritarian state or, when they meekly attempted to slow the tide, they fought in the manner of a skeletally thin imitation of a human being, about to fall over and finally expire due to a fatal lack of moral and spiritual nourishment.

The Democrats and their wholly-owned subsidiary (and one occasionally wonders if and to what extent they are compensated, financially and/or in terms of promised "influence," for their diligent and conscientious efforts), the much-lauded liberal-progressive "netroots" -- which is to say, bloggers of the kind represented by Atrios, Digby and their fellow travelers on this road leading straight to hell -- make much of the authoritarian approach and style of the current "conservative" movement. To be sure, today's conservatives manifest certain distinctive characteristics (which I have discussed in some detail myself, as in this post about David Brooks and one of his intellectual forebears, Joseph de Maistre). But in terms of the most critical fundamental principles, there is no difference whatsoever between the Republicans and the Democrats as institutions of power in the U.S. political system as it has developed over the last hundred years.

The latest example of the identity of means and ends shared by both major political parties is the FISA legislation, which the Senate approved by a wide margin yesterday. The difference between the Democrats and Republicans is now only one of style and emphasis…

…

..But they both agree that the government must be empowered to do whatever it wants, with no constraints at all, even if those constraints are imposed by the Constitution itself.

...


Once again, the leading liberal bloggers profess utter bafflement in response to the Democrats' actions. Several days ago, Atrios wrote:

Don't Get It

I'm really not sure why the Dems are even bothering to pretend (or, jeebus, not pretending) to take Bush seriously on this FISA stuff. He's been breaking the law for years.

Yesterday, in a post decrying the great haste with which the Democrats moved to accede to the administration's demands (which is, I note again, precisely what the Democrats did with regard to the MCA), Digby said -- with "Deep, Heavy, Sigh" (just so we know exactly how distressed she is):

Obviously, I'm not the only one who can't for the life of me figure out why the congress is doing this.

I suggest we take these leading lights of the progressive blogs at their word: they most certainly do not get it, and they absolutely cannot "for the life of [them] figure out why the congress is doing this."

I also note that, following the Senate cave-in, Atrios has dubbed Harry Reid the "Wanker of the Day." Will all this diminish in even the smallest degree Atrios's, or Digby's, or any other leading progressive blogger's efforts to ensure a huge Democratic victory in 2008? Of course not.

The reason for that is very simple, and it goes to the progressives' central articles of religious faith: The Democrats aren't really like this, not in their heart of hearts. The Democrats don't actually favor a repressive, authoritarian state. The Democrats are good, and they want liberty and peace for everyone, everywhere, for eternity, hallelujah and amen.

People who continue to believe this have evicted themselves from serious political debate, and they have willingly made themselves slaves to their enthusiastically embraced self-delusions. They confess a comprehensive ignorance of history, a stunning inability to understand the political developments of the last century…

…

It must be noted that Atrios and Digby (and many other liberal and progressive bloggers) are obviously intelligent; on occasion, they are unusually perceptive on narrower questions. But when the story upon which we insist is used to trump history and facts, even when those facts continue to scream in our faces every day, even intelligent people render themselves functionally stupid. As a result, they "don't get it," and they cannot begin to understand why the Democrats act as they do.

…

To believe that the Democrats are dedicated to peace and opposed to non-defensive, needless war and overseas intervention, one must blind oneself entirely to the history I have examined in great detail …Woodrow Wilson grafted two important elements onto United States foreign policy: an insistence that the U.S. is the "indispensable" nation necessary to ensure worldwide peace and stability, and a messianic "idealism" that trumpets "American exceptionalism." To maintain that the current Bush invented these aspects of our conduct overseas is to pretend that Wilson never existed. And look again at the attacks and invasions the United States has launched since World War II, as listed by Jim Bovard:

Korea 1950-53
Lebanon 1958
Vietnam 1961-73
Laos 1964-73
Dominican Republic 1965-66
Cambodia 1969-70
Lebanon 1982-84
Grenada 1983
Libya 1986
Panama 1989
Iraq 1991-[2007]
Somalia 1992-94
Croatia 1994
Haiti 1994
Bosnia 1995
Sudan 1998
Afghanistan 1998
Yugoslavia 1999
Afghanistan 2001-[2007]

The wars, covert operations, coups and assassinations went on uninterrupted, regardless of which party controlled the executive and legislative branches of government. The Democrats are devoted to peace? Try to be serious. But because the progressives will not give up their story, they continue to say they cannot understand why we are in Iraq -- when the invasion and occupation of Iraq are the logical and inevitable result of the decades-long bipartisan drive to American hegemony. Similarly, Digby cannot grasp why the Democrats continue to make an attack on Iran all but inevitable (a development I noted here):

I cannot believe that the Democrats voted for this en masses on the merits. It had to be a deal of some sort, or some kind of assurance from the powers that be or something that I'm just not getting. I'm usually pretty good at figuring out the kabuki of these inexplicable legislative actions but in this case, I'm stumped.

Digby concludes the post by confirming her ultimate bafflement: "I don't get it." Truer words...

As for the notion that Democrats are dedicated to individual liberty, we must look again at Wilson's deplorable and thoroughly repellent record…[what follows is an account of Wilson's record]

...



And here is Higgs on the record amassed by the greatest Democrat of them all -- and therefore and without question the greatest defender of liberty and peace -- Franklin Roosevelt…[what follows is an account of Roosevelt's record]

...

Let us pass over several of the subsequent decades, even though the destruction of liberty continued apace (and the wars also continued, as noted above), and consider just one of Bill Clinton's many contributions to the defense of individual freedom, as explained by the indispensable Jim Bovard…[what follows is an account of Clinton's record. This is for you, Rat.]

…

The Democrats are opposed to an increasingly repressive, authoritarian state? Try to be serious.

But perhaps liberals and progressives think Hillary Clinton will represent an improvement on her husband's baleful record. Honestly (if that's the operative word, which I strongly doubt)? "I'm a strong believer in executive authority," she said in 2003. "I wish that, when my husband was president, people in Congress had been more willing to recognize presidential authority."

As I noted in my post about the then-impending 2006 election, the Democrats will do nothing but make an attack on Iran more likely, check -- they will not end the occupation of Iraq, even if a Democrat -- any Democrat -- is president in 2009, check -- and they will not repeal the Military Commissions Act, check. They have not even made a serious effort to restore habeas corpus, upon which all our other rights depend. And let us not forget the Defense Authorization Act of 2006, or how easy that legislation makes it for the president to declare martial law -- or that Carl Levin co-wrote the key provision, and it was enthusiastically endorsed by many Democrats, including Ted Kennedy.
...

But for the reasons set forth above (and a full case would fill many volumes), the Democrats are not going to impeach any of these criminals, barring events entirely unforeseeable at present. And they will not for one overwhelmingly significant and determinative reason: always with regard to the underlying principles, and frequently with regard to the specifics, the Democrats are implicated in every single crime with which they would charge the members of the administration. The Republicans' crimes are their crimes.

I turn to another Robert Higgs article for a critical overarching point:

As a general rule for understanding public policies, I insist that there are no persistent "failed" policies. Policies that do not achieve their desired outcomes for the actual powers-that-be are quickly changed. If you want to know why the U.S. policies have been what they have been for the past sixty years, you need only comply with that invaluable rule of inquiry in politics: follow the money.

When you do so, I believe you will find U.S. policies in the Middle East to have been wildly successful, so successful that the gains they have produced for the movers and shakers in the petrochemical, financial, and weapons industries (which is approximately to say, for those who have the greatest influence in determining U.S. foreign policies) must surely be counted in the hundreds of billions of dollars.

So U.S. soldiers get killed, so Palestinians get insulted, robbed, and confined to a set of squalid concentration areas, so the "peace process" never gets far from square one, etc., etc. – none of this makes the policies failures; these things are all surface froth, costs not borne by the policy makers themselves but by the cannon-fodder masses, the bovine taxpayers at large, and foreigners who count for nothing.

What is true in foreign policy is also true in domestic policy. The Republicans and the Democrats both advance the growth of the corporatist state, as they have for the last century -- a state where key and hugely influential financial interests ally themselves with government power (including perhaps most significantly the military-industrial-congressional complex). As it expands and becomes increasingly corrupt, the corporatist state is also an authoritarian state: individual rights give way more and more to state power, in the form of proliferating laws, regulations, edicts, wiretapping and surveillance.

As Higgs notes, none of this serves the interests of the "ordinary" citizen, whose life and security become ever more fragile and disposable. But none of that concerns the ruling elites: their lives are ones of immense comfort and privilege, far removed from the petty concerns of those who pay for it and whose servitude makes it possible. As I said in that earlier essay: the concerns of the ruling elites are not yours or mine, and their motives are a universe apart from ours. Except for rare historic moments of huge and possibly threatening public protest, the elites don't give a damn at all about you or me.

The corporatist system itself is irreversibly corrupt. To restore anything even approaching the original design of a constitutional republic, another revolution is required. There is still time for a peaceful revolution, one led by those with a radically different political vision, but just barely. An attack on Iran and its likely aftermath, or an attack or series of attacks here at home, would almost certainly finish us off. But the liberals and progressives who remain devoted to Democratic electoral victory are completely unable to grasp this larger picture, and usually they have rendered themselves incapable of seeing even a small part of it. They remain committed to the story that gives their lives and their precarious sense of self meaning and succor: the Democrats will save us.

They will not. Try to grasp this finally, before it is too late: the Democrats may differ from the Republicans on matters of detail, or emphasis, or style. But with regard to the fundamental political principles involved, everything that has happened over the last six years -- just as is the case with everything that has happened over the last one hundred years -- is what the Democrats want, too.

This should not be a difficult point to understand. The historical record is compelling in its clarity, and overpowering in its length and volume. A corporatist, authoritarian state is what the ruling elites want, and it is precisely what serves their interests, Republican and Democrat alike. They know it; they count on your inability or refusal to see it.

So far, most liberals and progressives oblige them, just as the conservatives do. One would think the fact that they have become the Sam Brownbacks of political discourse would at least give the progressives pause. To date, it hasn't caused them to miss even a single step. And does anyone doubt that all the leading progressive and liberal writers and bloggers will eagerly fall into line for Hillary Clinton, if she is the presidential candidate? I certainly do not -- Hillary Clinton, warmonger, lover of ever-expanding executive authority, and endorser of state torture. If that last element isn't a deal-breaker for you, I have nothing further to say to you. She will be no better than Bush; in certain respects, she is likely to be significantly worse. And keep in mind that in the context of a deadly and oppressive authoritarian state -- which is what we've got and will have much more of, my friend -- competence is the last thing you want. The extent to which Clinton may be more "competent" than the current criminals is the precise extent to which she will be markedly more dangerous to anyone who wants to live in anything remotely like freedom.

But she's a Democrat and a self-proclaimed "progressive," the other progressives will bleat. She will save us.

A real column, written by a man named Stu Bykofsky and published in the Daily News, one of the major newspapers in the American city of Philadelphia.

-------

ONE MONTH from The Anniversary, I'm thinking another 9/11 would help America.

What kind of a sick bastard would write such a thing?

A bastard so sick of how splintered we are politically - thanks mainly to our ineptitude in Iraq - that we have forgotten who the enemy is.

It is not Bush and it is not Hillary and it is not Daily Kos or Bill O'Reilly or Giuliani or Barack. It is global terrorists who use Islam to justify their hideous sins, including blowing up women and children.

Iraq has fractured the U.S. into jigsaw pieces of competing interests that encourage our enemies. We are deeply divided and division is weakness.

Most Americans today believe Iraq was a mistake. Why?

Not because Americans are "anti-war."

Americans have turned their backs because the war has dragged on too long and we don't have the patience for a long slog. We've been in Iraq for four years, but to some it seems like a century. In contrast, Britain just pulled its soldiers out of Northern Ireland where they had been, often being shot at, almost 40 years.

That's not the American way.

In Iraq, we don't believe our military is being beaten on the battleground. It's more that there is no formal "battleground." There is the drip of daily casualties and victory is not around the corner. Americans are impatient. We like fast food and fast war.

Americans loved the 1991 Gulf War. It raged for just 100 hours when George H.W. Bush ended it with a declaration of victory. He sent a half-million troops into harm's way and we suffered fewer than 300 deaths.

America likes wars shorter than the World Series.

Bush I did everything right, Bush II did everything wrong - but he did it with the backing of Congress.

Because the war has been a botch so far, Democrats and Republicans are attacking one another, when they aren't attacking themselves. The dialog of discord echoes across America.

Turn back to 9/11.

Remember the community of outrage and national resolve? America had not been so united since the first Day of Infamy - 12/7/41.

We knew who the enemy was then.

We knew who the enemy was shortly after 9/11.

Because we have mislaid 9/11, we have endless sideshow squabbles about whether the surge is working, if we are "safer" now, whether the FBI should listen in on foreign phone calls, whether cops should detain odd-acting "flying imams," whether those plotting alleged attacks on Fort Dix or Kennedy airport are serious threats or amateur bumblers. We bicker over the trees while the forest is ablaze.

America's fabric is pulling apart like a cheap sweater.

What would sew us back together?

Another 9/11 attack.

The Golden Gate Bridge. Mount Rushmore. Chicago's Wrigley Field. The Philadelphia subway system. The U.S. is a target-rich environment for al Qaeda.

Is there any doubt they are planning to hit us again?

If it is to be, then let it be. It will take another attack on the homeland to quell the chattering of chipmunks and to restore America's righteous rage and singular purpose to prevail.

The unity brought by such an attack sadly won't last forever.

The first 9/11 proved that.

IOZ go Boom:

...what's particularly delicious is that your Hillary Clintons and your Barack Obamas and your Democratic Congresscreatures all see the plain future of 2008, in which yawning fools like Digby and chirping careerists like Markos Moulitas and a whole passel of other Netrootsian Democrats, all of whom are ever and always along for the ride, doing their damndest to put a Democrat in charge of it all! They're front-loading everything and the kitchen sink into the swollen gift-bag of Executive power so that the Clinton dynasty can expand magisterially into its role and worry about important things, like new rugs and china. The Democratic candidates all understand that they could rape babies in Times Square, and Glenn Greenwald would write a post about how the George W. Bush administration has done unprecedented damage to the convention against baby rape; Digby would write a post beginning with "I can't for the life of me figure out . . ."; Atrios would write a one-sentence post that says, "Remind me why we're raping babies again?"; FireDogLake would ignore the baby raping to live-blog "Joseph Wilson has totally hot sex with his hot wife"; DailyKos would explain to us how electing John McNobody in the Million-and-First district of rural Northern California will prove that Joe Lieberman is a bad man; the folks over at The Poor Man will blame it on "The New Naderism"; Lawyers, Guns, and Money will explain that Libertarians R Stoopid; and Josh Marshall will surprise us by pointing out that this one Republican, he totally, like, lied one time, and we can prove it!

Perrin:

...liberals like Greenwald act shocked when the Dems do something that they've always done, namely, help screw tighter the political vise while enabling reactionary elements among ruling circles. This is the Dems' main purpose, and if someone supposedly fluent in law can't see it, then frankly, he's worthless as a political commentator.

...

I don't know if Greenwald was writing political commentary during Bill Clinton's two administrations, but if he was, do you suppose he had the same concern for constitutional liberties then that he ostensibly has now? Recall that Clinton, primarily though the passage of the Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act in 1996, but also through his expansion of police state measures (explosion of SWAT and Delta teams and accelerated prison building), attack on habeas corpus, approval of roving wiretaps, among other forms of state control, set the table for what we're now seeing. Think FISA, or for that matter, the Patriot Act, came out of nowhere? That dismemberment of the Constitution is an exclusive Republican feature? Let's also throw in one of the most open violations of the Fourth Amendment, the federal assault and mass murder at Waco, an assault that many liberals still celebrate. Where was the dewy-eyed love of the Constitution then? Bill Clinton did more to undermine that supposedly sacred document than most other presidents before him, and allowed George W. Bush to build on that. And yet, Clinton remains a liberal hero.

If Greenwald protested all this in real time, then good for him. But based on what I read by him now, I seriously doubt that he raised much of a fuss. Very few liberals did. So, when leading libloggers like Greenwald acknowledge the systemic reasons for our awful condition, reasons that are pretty easy to look up, then perhaps I'll take his avowed concern for the Constitution more seriously. Until then, he's part of the problem.

Graphic via DIA.

I didn't get a chance to watch the AFL-CIO debates last night, but have been browsing the coverage today. John Nichols has a post-mortem in The Nation that focuses on Kucinich:

On Tuesday night, Kucinich wowed the crowd of 15,000 union activists in Chicago when he promised to use a little-known provision in the North American Free Trade Agreement to pull the U.S. out of the deal.

"In my first week in office, I will notify Mexico and Canada that the United States is withdrawing from NAFTA," declared Kucinich. "I will notify the WTO, that the United States is withdrawing from the WTO."

As the applause rose from a rumble to a thunderous roar, Kucinich shouted, "How about it America? Do you want out of NAFTA? Do you want out of the WTO? Listen to the workers of America, let them hear from you!"

It was the most rousing moment of the night, perhaps of all the Democratic debates up to this point.

Kucinich did exactly what the AFL-CIO's leadership had hoped he would. He showed the most cautious frontrunners -- all of whom continue to back NAFTA, albeit with apologies and calls for reform -- just how much enthusiasm there is for a radical shift from the misguided trade policies of Bill Clinton and George Bush.

So how did Pravda-on-the-Hudson portray "the most rousing moment of the night"? In a thousand word piece, roughly six hundred were devoted to labor and trade issues. About 160 words were devoted to the foreign policy discussion. This would seem a fair proportion since, as the Times notes, the foreign policy exchange "capped" the discussion.

Nevertheless, somehow the headline reads:

War on Terror Takes Focus at Democrats’ Debate

So at a debate convened by a labor union, attended by union members, in which the majority of the discussion centered on issues that concern working people, the take-away meaning for the Times is that a fiction "took focus". Does that mean it came into focus, or became the focus? Who knows? Who really cares anyway? Asking for precision in meaningless speech is like...is like asking a prestigious publication to speak meaningfully.

So what news specifically of Kucinich's strong stance, rousing rhetoric, and the popular response against the neoliberal agenda? Not a single word.

Kucinich may have shown the frontrunners that there is a lot of enthusiasm for radical change, but no matter how thunderously the crowd roars the The Party's house organ can be relied upon to hit the mute button. The frontrunners can now safely ignore what they've been shown. Assuming that they gave a shit in the first place.

Now they're not even going to be nudged into appearing to give a shit, because for the paper of record the fake 'War on (some people's) Terror' is much more important than the ongoing neoliberal War on People.

What's really pathetic about this is that the 'War on Terror' is currently in the process of being discarded as a tactic in the War on People. It's time to put the Grey Lady out to pasture. After all, what good is a Commissar who only spews yesterday's Party line?




UPDATE: You can watch the debates here and judge how rousing the moment was for yourself. The speech is in the ninth part about eight minutes into the clip.

To me it doesn't sound quite as intense as Nichols describes, but it is a YouTube clip and all the mics and cameras were facing away from the crowd. Relative to the cheers everyone else was getting it seemed more intense.