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From Down With Tyranny
Offered ironically. The roughest waters lie ahead of us.
"For certain of their leaders, modern-day liberalism is a way of rationalizing and exercising class power." ~~ Thomas FrankThe real resistance occurred in 2016. It failed in both parties. ~~ Yours truly
There's something greatly troubling about what the media-fronted #Resistance has morphed into, but I'm having trouble writing about it (it's lightly touched here: "A Nation in Crisis, Again"). Partly the problem is the marshaling of pages of proof; partly the problem is the unstoppability of the train wreck that will ensue. Perhaps I'll write about the train wreck instead.
After all, as noted in the link above, "No Praetorian Guard, once it grows muscular, reverts back to a simple barracks unit just because new leadership arrives." And the anti-Trump leadership in both parties is growing us a Praetorian Guard, if we don't have one already. You may be cheering it onward as we speak, depending on the latest lashings from former and current security state personnel, but what you're cheering, if you do, enables an unelected, uncontrolled and muscular security state, one you've certainly been appalled by in many other contexts.
Trump will go; but the unelected state will grow only stronger, now with help from the #Resistance. Do you see the dilemma? How to write about this to a nation in love with what it will come, but only later, to hate?
How Principled Is the #Resistance?
Another troubling aspects of the "professional resistance" -- for example, the MSNBC version, which constantly offers the worst of the New Dems and neoliberals for cheers by the anti-Trump crowd -- is that I suspect it's not at all principled.
For example, the charge "Russia's attack on our election is an act of war" has been made and platformed daily for almost a year -- spoken by those for whom it would be heresy to say that U.S. interference in elections around the world are also "acts of war."
As one of far too many examples, consider Honduras:
"At the beginning of Clinton's tenure as Secretary of State in 2009, the Honduran military ousted democratically elected President Manuel Zelaya in a coup d'etat. The United Nations condemned the military coup and the Organization of American States suspended Honduras from its membership, calling for Zelaya's reinstatement. Instead of joining the international effort to isolate the new regime, Clinton's State Department pushed for a new election and decided not to declare that a military coup had occurred.Is this also a declaration of war by the U.S. against Honduras? Did the U.S. declare war on Iran in 1953 when the CIA unseated the democratically elected Prime Minister Mossadegh?
"'If the United States government declares a coup, you immediately have to shut off all aid, including humanitarian aid, the Agency for International Development aid, the support that we were providing at that time for a lot of very poor people,' Clinton said when asked about Honduras in April. 'So, our assessment was, we will just make the situation worse by punishing the Honduran people if we declare a coup and we immediately have to stop all aid for the people, but we should slow walk and try to stop anything that the government could take advantage of, without calling it a coup.'
"Clinton said that she didn't want Zelaya returning to power. 'Zelaya had friends and allies, not just in Honduras, but in some of the neighboring countries, like Nicaragua and that we could have had a terrible civil war that would have been just terrifying in its loss of life.'
"Emails that have since surfaced show that Clinton and her team worked behind the scenes to fend off efforts by neighboring democracies through the Organization of American States to restore the elected president to power."
The answer to all these question may well be Yes. But would the pro-Clinton hosts and guests at MSNBC, of which there are many, say so? Especially if Clinton herself were to be tarred with that same brush? Using Trump-Russia logic, would Rachel Maddow charge Clinton with abetting an "act of war" against Honduras? Hardly likely.
As I said, I suspect the "professional resistance" to Donald Trump is not at all principled, but opportunistic and entirely one-sided, however right or wrong that one side might be.
The Failed Electoral Revolution of 2016
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