Democrats And The Perpetual Trump Obsession
As Joe Biden Takes To The Road To "Sell" The Inflation Reduction Act, Expect An Endless Parade Of Deception, Exaggeration, and Distractive Melodrama Before The November Midterms
Photo by Darren Halstead on Unsplash
Unless you’ve been living in a cave, or you are eschewing cable “news” and affiliated social media completely, (better for your mental health) you’re likely aware that the Democrats are in the second week of a self-congratulatory orgy over the passing of the Inflation Reduction Act.
Trying to address this in a previous post, I was, naively, hoping that once the bill was signed there would be a “one and done” effect.
Specifically, we would move on to discussions as the midterms approach, about the type of issues that are of immediate concern to Americans feeling increasingly desperate.
The campaign assault, unfortunately, was, and is, only getting started. The issues that Biden will inevitably campaign on will decidedly NOT be based on the concerns average Americans deal with on a day-to-day basis. It’s more likely that Biden will, instead, rehash the alleged merits of the Inflation Reduction Act, hitting the cherry-picked highlights, and skipping the fine print with his trademark aviator glasses and a toothy smile, just like the best-used car salesman sells a clunker to an unsuspecting customer.
It will be less a campaign, and more a pompous parade of self-promotion: American exceptionalism, the glory of global war, the reinvention of American manufacturing, all intertwined with lies, deception, cherry-picked statistics, and endless, inane stump speeches, a grand “American Tradition” that should be long dead in the age of technology.
The deception and lies are in the fine print, and presumably, they are counting on voters not paying attention. The cobbled-together IRA is fully compromised with corporate concessions, yet, will be touted for its “life-saving” components: From “Saving The Climate” to letting Medicare negotiate lower drug prices. It’s all a ruse, as Big Oil, for example, will be allowed to continue unabated fossil fuel extraction, and Medicare won’t be lowering prices in negotiations with for-profit healthcare anytime in the near future. FOUR YEARS into the future, to be specific.
But what of the core promise, contained within the title of the bill itself?
“Economists say it's unlikely the Inflation Reduction Act will reduce inflation, at least anytime soon. There's a chance the legislation could eventually tamp down prices by about 0.1 percentage points in about five years, according to an analysis by the University of Pennsylvania's Penn Wharton Budget Model.2”
Criminally overlooked, or ignored outright, will be the fact that despite the long-term debilitating effects of COVID, the continued spread of other diseases, and the danger of perpetual reinfections to the elderly and immunocompromised, the CDC under Biden has officially thrown in the towel, seemingly for ALL disease mitigation.
In the rare case that COVID is mentioned, it will be to gaslight and indoctrinate the public into a warped and sociopathic concept of “new normal” reality. As a reminder, that concept was formed months ago, around March, when Democrats threw science and epidemiology into the waste bin and embraced pretending, a literal child’s game, as an actual, real-life, “adult” strategy, ALL FOR VOTES.
The government, as I write this, officially pulled the plug on any and all COVID mitigation (and presumably, Monkeypox, Polio, or other contagions) now, and for the future. The endless mantra repeated by Cable News doctors, medical experts, and alleged guardians of public health, “We Have The Tools”, no longer applies. Without any input from scientists, the CDC has declared that EVERYTHING we have learned about COVID doesn’t matter. The unvaccinated and vaccinated can freely embrace each other, unmasked. Vaxxed and Boosted? Nevermind. The “acute emergency” disappeared by corporate and government consensus via wish fulfillment.
Consider, that in announcing this new “non-strategy,” the lead person responsible for responding to COVID events, Covid-19 Coordinator Dr. Ashish Jha, said the government will stop buying vaccines, treatments, and tests as early as the Fall. Uninsured, and underinsured citizens of the nation can now allegedly take comfort in the fact that all these items will soon be available for purchase, possibly, by 2023. That is, nothing fundamentally changes, if you have the money, you can have “access to healthcare,” the core tenant of for-profit healthcare in America.
Addressing a meeting, not of fellow medical professionals with ethics that may have pushed back, but a gaggle of members of the pro-business, back-to-normal, US Chamber Of Commerce Foundation, Jha revealed, intentionally or not, the current thinking of the Biden administration:
"One of the things we've spent a lot of time thinking about in the last many months -- and we're going to continue this work, and you'll hear more from the administration on this -- is getting us out of that acute emergency phase where the US government is buying the vaccines, buying the treatments, buying the diagnostic tests," Jha said at an event sponsored by the US Chamber of Commerce Foundation.”
“Getting out” is not based on scientific evidence that the acute emergency phase is over, but on fantasy, childish wish fulfillment, and corporate greed.
It appears we’re on our own in terms of the spread of disease, and Biden has turned away from the very things he literally stated that Trump should resign for: “Anyone who is responsible for that many deaths should not remain as President of the United States of America.”
Ironic, but not surprising then, that Blue Check echo chamber network MSNBC described a September 2020 Biden Town Hall campaign event as “Calm and socially distanced” while Trump’s was “Wild and packed.” One year later, in November of 2021, Biden had done nothing to stop another 220,000 American COVID deaths. Public health is now a “personal choice”. In fact, Biden embraced and enhanced Trump policies, only without financial aid, cheered on by “freedom-loving” Congressional legislators.
COVID denial is just one of many issues.
There remains real inflation at the gas pump despite the ease in price gouging due to the release of strategic oil reserves, and other consumer needs.
The fact that Biden and the entire Democratic party are united in serial deception of the public, falsely claiming that their concessions to Big Oil via Joe Manchin are an “investment in Climate” or are “Saving The Planet,” is a clear indication that a corrupt two-party system is the heart of the problem, not the solution, in any way, shape or form.
Lone voices on the internet try to reason with us as members of the wider, global population, but largely fall on deaf ears. The entirety of the political class and government are taking us for fools. Loyalty to the tribe impedes our evolutionary and societal progress.
It’s not that the opposition party has a clue about selling themselves as being a true alternative to the mendacity and general deception, as most of the political ads that are beginning to stream forth prove. The Republicans are completely devoid of ideas and have no moral, intellectual, or practical solutions.
Grabbing dubious and ridiculous concepts out of thin air, for example, that all contemporary problems in America are rooted in Biden’s active campaign to spread a “socialist agenda” via “woke madness” is a declaration neither rooted in reality or credibility. Have they not been paying attention to the unprecedented escalation of his Pentagon budget, and active participation in prolonging war, edging us, every day, closer to global extinction? Have they not seen Biden embrace more funding for Police?
“Socialist agendas” generally aren’t rooted in deflecting billions of dollars to profit the corporations that make up the Military Industrial Complex. So the effect of these empty ads is more like an insane storyline from a Warner Brothers cartoon than anything that could be taken as a serious appeal to a potential voter.
One thing both parties have in common: Everything is based on war analogies, and candidates on both sides are all abusing the well-worn cliche that they are “soldiers” fighting for “freedom” (sans responsibility) and “defending democracy.”
Speaking of cartoonish, who could possibly buy this far-fetched ad from the campaign for the re-election of authoritarian, power-loving Republican Ron DeSantis, who is seen here staying up past his bedtime to lovingly treasure the handwritten letters and shot on film photographs of his grateful constituents, despite the majority of those constituents having lived for decades in the post-film, pen, and paper era of computers and smartphones.
Here is the black irony: DeSantis is a man who, despite the deaths of 78,749 (at current count) Floridians was an early adopter of current Biden policies on COVID, and he wants voters to know that he has heard from Floridians eternally grateful that he could keep the state open so they could all “thrive”. A slight exaggeration, considering Florida shut down for a matter of weeks, and even then, never FULLY shut down.
The “beat backs” of the “woke liberal media” dished out by the tough-talking, take no prisoners approach of DeSantis were, apparently, a source of pride for many Floridians. Even children diligently hand-scrawled letters written in crayons to their political hero.
Depending on your level of belief in coincidence vs. conspiracy, it should be no surprise that the Democrats have effectively decided to re-run the 2016 and 2020 campaigns against Donald Trump. The “conspiracists,” aka Trump supporters, see the FBI raid on Mar-A Lago, just prior to the midterm elections, as a planned attack, abusing the power of Biden’s Dept. Of Justice, the Biden supporters see it as God parting the heavens to shine a light and end the corruption and deep evil that pervades the nation.
If Trump has committed treason and espionage by stealing and locking away classified documents, then let the chips fall where they may.
Unfortunately, if that IS indeed the case, it won’t be the last we hear about Donald Trump, because among the powerful, elite voices of left-leaning celebrities, and certainly, within the Democratic party itself, a figurehead is needed: one that is not only to blame for the current ills of society but more importantly, one that distracts from the objective failures of Biden and Democratic policy.
Like the metaphorical demon that wreaked havoc in The Exorcist, Trump has been transformed into a real-life demon that, whether actually in power in the past, or without actionable power and authority in the present, simply transfers his presence to another host. That demonic force is known as “Trumpism”. It’s often equated, accurately or not, with a rise in Fascism on American soil.
The level of superstitious, almost religious belief in the supernatural power of Trump is incredible. Like heroin, Trump is an addiction for elite, left-leaning celebrities and politicians. These people, of course, can afford to pontificate, reducing the world to black and white, because hard reality and suffering created in equal measure by Democratic and Republican policies don’t affect them.
How have so many of them suspended disbelief to bond with and rehabilitate Republicans like GW Bush and Liz Cheney, solely because of their antagonism toward Trump? How is it a good thing, effectively blurring the lines and embracing fascism, as long as their favorite authoritarian derides Trump and Trumpism?
Here is the reality: Despite George Takei’s nodding in assent to the usually extreme Laura Ingraham’s view, deep down, they NEED Donald Trump. Without Trump, TV ratings falter, tweets lose their controversial sting, and the literal careers of feckless politicians like Representatives Adam Schiff and Eric Swalwell are exposed to the light for the mediocre failures to actual practical public service that they are.
There is no doubt that the Democrats have moved rightward, despite their efforts to portray Trump and Republicans as more extreme.
Take the embrace of law enforcement as a key solution to all social problems.
It would have been inconceivable years ago, to hear Democrats “defend the integrity” of the FBI, yet alleged left-leaning Dems have no issues with highly paid FBI and CIA propagandists deceiving the public on corporate cable news shows on a daily basis. The law and order fanaticism goes into overdrive when it comes to the FBI exercising its duty to execute arrests and uphold the law in raiding Mar-A-Lago.
The endorsements from the Trump obsessed for that action pour in, like fan letters to a popular celebrity. Younger people, especially, seem not to be aware of FBI involvement in killing outspoken leaders like Fred Hampton and harassing Dr. Martin Luther King. Trump is apparently powerful enough to eclipse both reason and actual history.
However, ignoring recent FBI abuses is both short-sighted and extremely hypocritical.
When it comes to people in power, and people with much less power, the FBI is an equal opportunity abuser.
“Leaders of the African People’s Socialist Party say the FBI carried out a violent raid on its properties with flash grenades and drones early Friday morning in Missouri and Florida. The pan-Africanist group has been a longtime advocate for reparations for slavery and a vocal critic of U.S. foreign policy. The raid appears to be connected to a separate indictment of a Russian man accused of using U.S.-based groups to spread Russian propaganda and tampering with U.S. elections. We speak with Omali Yeshitela, chair of the African People’s Socialist Party, who describes how he was zip-tied while his home was raided. He says the FBI’s implication that their group was taking orders from the Russians is “the most ridiculous, asinine” narrative. “It’s an attack on the right of Black people,” says Yeshitela. “It’s an attack on our struggle for the absolute total liberation of every square inch of Africa.”
It remains to be seen if there is any merit to the very serious charges of espionage and treason against Trump.
Centrist Democrats and their supporters, in order to be taken seriously, need to let go of their Trump obsessions and face voters and take responsibility for their failures in the contsxt of trumpeting their successes.
I’m not betting on honesty in a campaign season.
One thing is for certain, not being Trump is no longer a viable option.
Update 08/21/2022: The Democratic Party propaganda machine is nothing if not predictable. The misdirection, shallow sloganeering, appeal to consumer greed, and wallowing in mendacity are all evident from this sampling of recent Twitter posts.
