For much of the 81.8% of voting-age citizens who would have liked someone other than Trump to be occupying the White House for the next 4 years, these last months have been a bit rough. On one side of the despair-spectrum, there was that sign-waving activist who called for #resistance as soon as King Tiny-Hands was crowned president-elect and, at the opposite end, that person on CNN saying we should all just give the poor guy a chance. Then, in between & all around those two, there were a lot of folks being shouted at from both sides, shell-shocked democrats, scape-goated 3rd-partiers, & millions of basement-dwelling Sandernistas sitting on their hands, trying very hard not to say, “we told you so.” Though the post-election chaos has subsided, a rift continues to grow between those who want to reform the democrats’ party & those who want to destroy it. Democrats, progressives, & other 81-Percenters, however, are not the only ones with something to lose in this conflict — nor are they the only ones with something to gain.

Theatre of the #FakeNews Media

Whatever else we disagree on, Donald Trump’s supporters are right about one thing — the mainstream media does, indeed, seem to have it out for them. From pushing Clinton’s genius idea that most of them were racists to clipping half-sentences from video of Trump so that his comment sounded worse than it was, a number of news-outlets willfully manipulated the public image of Trump & his “basket of deplorables.” The obvious neoliberal-bias of the media partly explains why a surprising number of independents & Bernie Sanders’ supporters ( who were also burned by the major outlets ) find they can relate more easily with Deplorables than liberals. Trump’s supporters, at least, do not deny the collusion of the media’s commentariat with corrupt democratic officials.

The Media Attacked Sanders

& Trump For Different Reasons

While Sanders & Trump have both been attacked by the neoliberal news-media, the reasons they were attacked were never the same. From the #PodestaLeaks & #DNCLeaks, it is clear that the media shaped their coverage of Sanders at the behest of the Democratic National Committee which maintains close ties to influencers in the news industry. The motive is obvious — party loyalists in the media were simply defending the status quo of their masters by containing the voter-insurgency instigated by an outsider. The Sand-Man gave them hell — but, in the end, the corporatist-DNC was built to crush dissent.

The public perception of Trump, however, was being shaped for very different purposes…

Behind the Curtains of #TheResistance ,

The Democrats Remain Resistant to Change

In the alternative reality that MSNBC & other neoliberal sock-puppets live in, the US political apocalypse is a simple battle between Good & Evil. On one side, the racist horde of disgruntled ex-coal-miners led by a stingy orange despot secretly backed by the Russians and, on the other, a diverse & inclusive coalition of liberals called the Resistance™ — if you can swallow that Kool-Aid, picking a side is easy. For people who no longer trust the major US news-outlets — which recent polling suggests is most of us — things are less simple.

MSNBC’s fairy-tale, of course, leaves out the part where they helped the democratic leaders, or “the good guys,” to intentionally elevate “the bad guy,” Trump, as part of the DNC’s campaign strategy. Just a minor detail, right? To prop up the 2-dimensional story, democratic politicians star in each puppet-show & the party is cast as the voice of what they portray as a unified Resistance™ behind them. The progressive, independent, socialist, & other voices which are also raised in protest — such as the water protectors at Standing Rock — are lost in the noise. Just as they did in the 2016 primaries, the DNC & their propagandists in the media are silencing progressives & other left-leaning independents. That’s why the polls show their approval has now fallen lower than Trump’s.

To the neoliberal-democrats, preserving the platform of their wealthy donors is more important than winning elections, even if it throws us all under the Trump Train…

The DNC Sided with the 1% —

But So Has Donald Trump

As the 81-Percenters’ disdain for establishment democrats grows, many have turned to third-parties and others have called to “Draft Bernie” & form a new one. Any path outside the two-party system would be steep, however, in an electoral system that looks as if it were designed to suppress any challenge to the publicly-funded duopoly. Frustrated by a system that limits their choices to a spectrum of lesser evils, some now declare Trump to be less evil than a complacent & inflexible DNC. That fact alone says a lot, really. The shared experience of media-persecution between Sandernistas & Deplorables, it seems, has built a few uneasy bridges — bridges that the right-wing is, of course, aware of. During one of his stump speeches, Trump even appealed directly:

“To all of those Bernie Sanders voters who have been left out in the cold by a rigged system of super delegates, we welcome you with open arms“

Veterans of the political revolution — progressives, greens, independents, & other leftists — have very real & unaddressed grievances with the democrats. The corrupt establishment, however, is not likely to be fixed by the billionaires who benefit from it. The enemy of an enemy is not always a friend — sometimes, the enemy of an enemy is just an inside-out cantaloupe in a toupee that slashes taxes for its rich friends.

Trump is Not Anti-Establishment —

He is the Establishment’s Messiah

CNN & MSNBC cast Trump to play the villain in most of their plays and, to be fair, he usually plays that role pretty well. Listening to the grave analysis of their experts & the talking heads, it seems that Washington DC is burning down every day. If all of the breaking news & the exclusive reports were added up — from Putin & Russian Hackers to the scandals & racist pasts of cabinet nominees — it might even look like the established order is in danger of coming apart. While liberals run for cover, however, Trump’s fans appear to think the noise is just more proof that the real-estate mogul is raging against the corrupt machine — but what is really happening, here?

In spite of the commotion, there is very little evidence that any actual raging has occurred, as of yet. Since he was sworn into the presidency, Trump has:

Appointed Executives of Industries to Regulate Them

Passed Legislation Discriminating Against Muslims

Chipped Away at New Deal Social Welfare Programs

Deported Immigrants Ignored Environmental Concerns to Help Oil Companies Ignored Treaties with Native Americans to Help Oil Companies Increased Our Already Gargantuan Military Spending Invaded the Middle-East (Maybe to Help Oil Companies But It’s Too Early to Say)

Wait — the US invaded the Middle-East, appointed people with ties to fossil-fuel to high government positions, & screwed over Native Americans? This is unprecedented — and to think that the United States could have avoided all of it, if only a few more voters had selected the democratic party’s candidate.

The globalists of the corrupt political establishment must be devastated. Everything that they had built — ruined.

The $64,000 Question :

Why is the media pretending this isn’t normal?

Republicans & democrats alike have invaded the Middle-East, slashed benefits for the poor, built up the military, & given the fossil fuel industry a free-pass for a very long time. Trump is certainly less deft and, in some cases, he gets to it with more zeal– but what he is doing is not fundamentally different from what presidents on both sides were doing for decades. The US became a net-exporter of crude oil for the first time since 1995 under Obama, no president has slowed the growth of military spending, & the sound of invading the Middle-East is pretty much the theme-song of the USA at this point.

The lesson is not that Trump should be able to do what Obama, Bush, Clinton, or Old-Bush did — the lesson is that too many of their differences are just the illusions of the media. There is no struggle between the light & the dark side of the Force in the US political establishment — that is just the shiny packaging. Inside of their boxes, they are all made of the same cheap plastic, manufactured for the profit of the same company. It is just a puppet-show, in which there seem to be different characters & motives, some of them good & some bad — but take a hold of each of them & it will be the hand of the same puppet master underneath.

And he is not your friend.

In solidarity,

John Laurits

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