More Medium misadventures: Poking around Medium, I came across another noxious Clintonite article, this one trying to blame Bernie Sanders and progressives for creating an atmosphere of conspiracy and violence that, this week, led a deranged man in Virginia to open fire on congressional Republicans as they took part in baseball practice. As often happens, my reply ran a little long and I've reproduced it here:
Oh, look, another Clintonite article on Medium
that checks out on reality in order to echo the anti-progressive
narrative of the nut-right. How shocking! Dismantling yet another one on
points seems a waste of time, as neither "Roy Delfino" nor his target
audience have any interest in the truth, but I have some time on my
hands and it's a despicable-enough article that someone should probably
tackle it.
You open with a false premise:
"This is not, however, the first act of violence by a Bernie supporter. Far from it. From leading violent anti-Trump riots in Chicago, to sending death threats to superdelegates, to forcing superdelegate Jim McDermott to defend himself with a shovel against a Bernie fan threatening to cut out his tongue, violence has long been a hallmark of Bernie's movement."
The
astute reader will note that even if all of those were entirely
accurate, they don’t really add up to anything, certainly not the
picture you’re trying to paint. Your language, setting up the pattern you follow throughout, is obfuscatory.
Lacking incidents to make a convincing case, you were forced, when
constructing that sentence, to divide "death threats to superdelegates"
from, well, a death-threat to a superdelegate--trying to make one thing
look like two (the other item is bullshit too).[1] On the charges
themselves, death threats against public officials are just an
unfortunate fact of life. Officials from both parties get them-- it’s been going on for years.
In a country with more than 320 million people, there’s always a few
cranks out there. This is how you try to pin this big wave of
violence--a wave that you haven’t established and that, in fact,
doesn’t exist--on Sanders:
"But a large part of this violence springs from feelings of desperation, helplessness, and raw anger that fermented in Bernie’s base... This is where Bernie Sanders does bear an enormous responsibility, because this sentiment and worldview was propagated, recklessly and intentionally, by Bernie and his campaign."
Sanders,
of course, doesn’t foment "desperation" or "helplessness"; he was the
energizing hope-and-change candidate in the 2016 primaries who
enunciated a positive progressive agenda. And it’s on those progressive
politics, particularly the anti-corruption, pro-democratic components of
them, that you’re attempting, in a rather artless smear, to pin violence.
Sanders
supporters were upset by those superdelegates, for example. Here’s how
those supers work (a subject you carefully avoid): Sanders won 72% of
Washington--completely destroyed Clinton--yet Jim McDermott and the
other five state superdelegates, granted by mere party decree the same
voting-power as hundreds of thousands of Washingtonians, supported Clinton.
It’s a story that repeated itself all over the U.S. Sanders flattened
Clinton in New Hampshire, beating her by 22%, only to see the state’s
superdelegates side with her and give her
the state, 17 delegates to his 15. Throughout the process, the
corporate press, which was a virtual monolith in support of Clinton and
against Sanders, used the superdelegates in its accounting of the race in order to make Clinton look unbeatable. In the end, Clinton failed to win enough real delegates to take the nomination and had to rely on the supers to put her over the top.
In short, the superdelegates are an anti-democratic cancer on the party nomination process.
When you create something like that then use it to give one candidate unfair advantage over everyone else, everyone with any
respect for democratic values is going to be upset by it, yet you take
the position that Sanders’ supporters are only upset by it because
Sanders is propagating that sentiment, blaming the progressive
pro-democratic values and their prominent proponent rather than the
anti-democratic portion of the process. What, exactly, are they supposed
to think?
Worse,
you later quote Sanders explaining this part of the process and, going
off into the ozone entirely, characterize his words as some sort of
effort "to send a clear dogwhistle to online conspiracy-theorists":
"'When we talk about a rigged system, it’s also important to understand how the Democratic Convention works,' Sanders said Morning morning. 'We have won, at this point, 45 percent of pledged delegates, but we have only earned 7 percent of superdelegates.'"
To note the obvious, there’s no "dogwhistle" there, "clear" or otherwise. The superdelegate system is, quite literally,
a rigged system, party bosses operating entirely outside the democratic
process yet being allowed to manipulate its course, and Sanders
forthrightly and correctly says so. Sanders doesn’t like that. It
runs counter to his progressive views, those being both pro-democracy
and anti-corruption. You insist that Sanders, by merely enunciating
those views, is sending some sort of secret signals to nuts on the
internet, in which case the only way to avoid such a thing is just to
shut up and not to offer them.
Which is, of course, what you want.
You’re following the lead of Fox and the rest of the Trumpanzee-right press in
tarring those progressive views as feeding nuttiness and violence for
the same reason they do it: because you want them to go away. In
something else that forms a pattern throughout your article, you avoid
the substantial objections to the superdelegate system because those
objections are entirely reasonable and honestly addressing them would
put an end to your little anti-progressive smoke-and-mirrors show.
Speaking of which:
"Fully aware of the delusions of his base, Bernie used phrases, and pushed an agenda, that dovetailed with those delusions."
The
part that’s missing: anything that established Sanders’ base as
delusional. You simply present that as a given and think yourself
clever. You’re not.
"For instance, Bernie created the image of a DNC managed by corporate puppetmasters, and his campaign worked overtime to paint this image in the minds of Bernie fans on a nearly daily basis"
The
DNC spent the campaign aggressively prostituting itself and the
potential future Democratic presidency of Hillary Clinton to Big Money
sources. Among other things, it progressively eliminated
Obama-imposed bans on accepting money from lobbyists and PACs. Sanders
didn’t create that image of the DNC; it did that all by itself (a fact
that, again, you entirely ignore so you can bash the progressives).
Sanders stands against the bribery-and-donor-service system that
characterizes so much of our politics and again, you blame his
enunciation of progressive anti-corruption values, rather than the
corruption. Shaddup, Bernie.
In
order to treat the rigged system as just some sort of kooky conspiracy
theory, you don’t address the substantive facts regarding it and in one
of your more outrageous moments, you insist the Wikileaks disclosures
from the DNC "contained nothing more controversial than a few frustrated
insults." Meanwhile, in the real world, those emails showed that the
DNC, which is supposed to be neutral in a primary/caucus process, had,
among other things, conspired with the Clinton campaign to rig the
debate schedule in Clinton’s favor while ignoring the wishes of the
other campaigns, had placed "spies" inside the Sanders campaign--and
yes, they actually use that word--feeding them info and discussed
strategies to deploy against Sanders. I’ve written at some length on the
larger matter of the DNC’s efforts to tilt the primaries (the emails
are a good resource for this). This piece has a section devoted to it. Just scroll down to the header, "A Rigged Process?"
Regarding
the Nevada Democratic convention, you write that Sanders delegates
"rioted on the floor," which is a fiction carefully nurtured by the
Clintonites:
That
letter you quote at some length was written by Bradley Schrager, the
Nevada Democratic party general counsel and, more importantly, a Clinton
supporter; you treat his words as some legitimate account rather than
what it was, a piece of Clinton campaign propaganda. You take up the
cause of Robert Lange, another Clinton supporter and the head of the
convention, without a word about how her extremely bad behavior--acting like some half-assed dictator--contributed to what happened to her.
In Nevada, as caucus day approached, Clinton
was on the verge of losing the state, which could have had a major
impact on her national campaign, when, at the last minute, Democratic
Senate leader Harry Reid intervened,
arranging with the state’s big hotel and casino worker’s union to allow
their workers to leave the job for long enough to go caucus for Clinton
while still getting paid for their time. A pretty nifty trick. That's how Clinton won the first stage of the contest. That's also probably how, during stage 2 at the county level, the state flipped to Sanders, as large numbers of Clinton delegates, apparently not given the day off and marching orders this time, failed to appear. All of this is the preface that forms the context for the third
stage, which was the state convention. In order to cut down on the
Sanders contingent, it was scheduled to begin the same day the state’s
largest institutions of higher learning were holding their graduation
ceremonies and Lange--again, a Clinton supporter--was made a virtual
dictator, a position she took up with great relish. That and the
often-confusing and inappropriate rules under which the convention was
conducted --mentioned by the source you cite, not by you--led to a
raucous convention and a lot of Sanders supporters who felt they were
being rooked. The Clintonites took full advantage, manufacturing the
bullshit about a chair-throwing riot and running to every press outlet
that would put them on to crow about it. Number of violent incidents
recorded at that convention: 0.
You
hit another of your low points when covering Sanders’ reaction to what
happened. You write that "Democratic leaders, including Harry Reid,
pressured him [Sanders] to end his silence and condemn his supporters’
actions. What they got instead was what can only be described as a tacit
endorsement of his supporters’ sentiment and behavior."
But as you’re well aware, the few readers who bother to look at that statement will get a very
different story from it. You quote only a portion of it, without
indicating you’re only quoting a portion, and only from the
preamble--in order to make your grotesque mischaracterization, you end
your cut-and-paste early, right after he first mentions Nevada.
"Within
the last few days there have been a number of criticisms made against
my campaign organization. Party leaders in Nevada, for example, claim
that the Sanders campaign has a 'penchant for violence.' That is
nonsense."
And that’s where you stop. Continuing from there, Sanders wrote:
"Our
campaign has held giant rallies all across this country, including in
high-crime areas, and there have been zero reports of violence. Our
campaign of course believes in non-violent change and it goes without
saying that I condemn any and all forms of violence, including the
personal harassment of individuals."
Sort of speaks to your own honesty as much as anything I could have said.
The
Russian conspiracy nonsense became tiresome long ago. Clintonites love
it is because it’s so entirely free of substance; it allows them to
impugn the Sanders campaign without ever having to provide any real
evidence of anything and, it being this thing of wind, can never really
be subject to any sort of strict interrogation. The Clintonite press has
been absolutely obsessed with it. You construct on it a series of
allegations in an entirely incurious way while, seemingly without any
sense of self-awareness, accusing the Sanders camp of fomenting an atmosphere of conspiracy theories.
The U.S. intelligence community insists there was a concerted Russian operation to influence the election. Perhaps there was.
Did it involve the sort of network you describe? Who knows? You play a
number of Clintonite shell-games with this matter. In one, you throw the
much larger--massive and long-running--problem of fake news, trolls,
etc. in with the Russia allegations and hope no one notices. Suddenly,
it’s all Russian, even if we can’t actually prove any of it is. In another, you assert that
"Bernie supporters fell for it hook, line and sinker, and the narrative of the Russian propaganda machine quickly became dogma in Sanders circles."
But you fail to provide any examples or, more importantly, any real-world effect of any of it. It’s impossible to say that no one
voted for Sanders because they believed the Pope had endorsed him or
because they thought Clinton ordered her critics murdered but if there
are any such people, we can say with great confidence that the number is
going to be microscopic.[2] Fake news seeps into pro-Sanders
communities the way it seeps into any internet community--there’s a lot
of it here on Medium--but none of that bullshit has become "dogma." It's just stuff a relatively few people believe and most don't. Presenting the former rather than the latter as representative of the overall movement is as arbitrary as it is counterintuitive. You play still another game with timelines when you assert,
"The Sanders campaign was well-aware of the efforts by Russian intelligence and other fake news sources to help his campaign."
And...
"Make no mistake, Sanders and his campaign knew exactly how this massive campaign of weaponized disinformation was being used to aid his candidacy at the expense of Hillary Clinton. They did absolutely nothing to stop it."
The
story about a concerted Russian effort to interfere in the presidential
election first broke in the Summer of 2016 after the primary season was
already over and it mostly played out in the months after
that. The high-profile stories attributed to it--the murder of Seth
Rich conspiracy, the "Pizzagate" thing, etc.--all happened long after
the primary season (and, it’s worth noting, all, in reality, started in
domestic nut-right circles, not on any foreign shore). The Huffpost
article you cite uses murky language to speculate that it started
earlier but it’s really just describing suspicious activity that may or
may not have been part of a Russian campaign that may or may not have
even existed. In any event, the Sanders campaign wasn’t "well-aware" of
Russian intelligence efforts that weren’t even reported until the
primary season was over and, contrary to your demagoguery, wouldn’t have
been able to do anything about it if it had been. A presidential
campaign can’t call in an airstrike on some theoretical Estonian
warehouse full of internet trolls. And while you’re very down on Sanders
benefiting from internet trolls and "weaponized disinformation" based
on these sketchy Russian allegations, things over which he had no
control, you decline to offer a single word about the only organized
campaign of trolls and weaponized disinformation we know existed, David Brock’s Correct the Record,
a super PAC which openly collaborated with the Clinton campaign to
skirt campaign finances laws and attack her opponents and critics.
You switch back to the weasel-wording, insisting Sanders has
"repeatedly and recklessly stoked the flames of anger and paranoia, while refusing to shut down, push back against, or take any responsibility for the conspiracy theories and violent rhetoric that spread like a virus in his base."
...wording
that blames Sanders without actually blaming him, because, of course,
he’s neither engaged in nor encouraged violent rhetoric or conspiracy
theories and has no
responsibility for such things, and his stoking "the flames of anger"
amount, in your account, to merely expressing his progressive values,
something he isn’t gong to stop doing just because you (and Fox News)
don’t like them.
You keep circling this same drain right up to the end:
"Violence and conspiracies are, and have always been, a fundamental characteristic of Bernie’s movement, and Bernie’s cowardly attempts to absolve himself and his reporters of responsibility must be called out loudly and repeatedly until he is forced to clean up the absolute mess he has made."
"Bernie’s
movement" presently consists of 80% of Democrats, who tell
pollsters they approve of him. "Violence and conspiracies" are, it
should go without saying, not characteristic of most Democrats, nor are such things their "hallmark." While Sanders is the most popular politician in the U.S., you’re doing this
blaming-without-blaming dance while demanding that he be held
accountable for something he hasn’t done and somehow clean up some mess
he couldn’t clean up and hasn’t, in fact, made.
Get lost.
--j..
---
[1]
The Chicago events occurred after Trump had spent months on the
campaign trail encouraging his followers to commit violence against
anti-Trump protesters. This built to critical mass in the Windy City,
where demonstrations forced Trump to cancel a planned event. Trump's
immediate response was to blame Sanders
for what happened. "Get your people in line, Bernie." So in attempting
to pin those demonstrations on Sanders, you’re parroting an entirely
fictional narrative crafted by Donald Trump.
What actually happened is that congressman Luis Gutierrez and other elected officials--all, btw, Clinton supporters--openly called on their constituents to join them in protesting Trump, a Facebook page
dedicated to protesting the Trump event was launched (by a Sanders
supporter) and a multitude of different groups--Black Lives Matter,
MoveOn, Mijente, Assata’s Daughter, the Black Alliance for Just
Immigration and on and on--organized the demonstrations.
[2]
You make the outrageous claim that "we witnessed the phenomenon of
Sanders supporters voting en masse for Trump." Over 80% of Sanders
supporters voted for Clinton. A small number of them voted for Jill
Stein, a larger number of them simply stayed home. We don't have solid numbers on how many voted for Trump but we do know it’s
microscopic, because there weren't enough left after all that. For that
matter, the number of Sanders voters in the Democratic primary,
something around 10 million people, is tiny compared to the number of
general election voters (136.67 million). "En masse" my ass.
No comments:
Post a Comment