Where governments fail the COVID-19 test most

I most fault poor government leadership as being responsible for problems of the following kinds:

1) Not having sufficient supplies of all kinds, including hospital beds, ventilators, and tests.
2) Not having enough trained personnel.
3) Not having a way to keep people fed, housed, and cared for during a mandatory lockdown.  This might include actual food deliveries to everyone.
4) Not sufficiently studying viral/bacterial disease transmission, pandemics, control measures, and the infection disease processes, and not sharing this information transparently.  (What was wrong with the Chinese tests that the US refused?  And what exactly is the reliability of these tests?  What social measures produce the most benefit?)
5) Not ensuring universal sick leave and healthcare
6) Not reproducing social graces (such as coughing into your sleeve, not going to work sick) and good health practices (getting enough sleep, getting enough exercise, proper nutrition).  I've been complaining about these things, as related to respiratory diseases in particular, for years and notably just back in January regarding travel I made in December, where a nearby passenger was coughing continuously, which she just wrote off as "COPD."  I believe I got sick twice from a boss who was coughing constantly, which he wrote off as "allergies."  I find it curious that these things were happening to me in the two years prior to COVID-19.  People had gotten so lax--and that probably explains a lot of how this pandemic started.  I have had a number of very bad colds, so bad I might have wished they were flus.  Notably that was occurring to me around 2007-2009.  A lot of those were exacerbated by my own poor behaviors, often not getting enough sleep (I could almost foresee getting sick every time I stayed up way too late, which I was often doing in those years, when I was still living like a highly paid adolescent).
7) Not starting to measure everyone's temperature going into large gatherings or public transportation.

I would fault governments less for not ordering mandatory lockdowns.  If the people aren't being provided for, it's actually the people who are sacrificing of themselves to do that.   Merely ordering a lockdown represents pretty close to a zero on the government's side.  Actually having prepared for it, and managing it, and thereby making it a success is something else--the kind of government we don't usually see.

I'm not at all happy about giant corporate slush funds as a way of "managing the crisis."  That's managing the economic crisis for a few fat cats who intend still to be on top afterwards--and possibly more so.

Leaders should understand that a $1200 check might help with food and such for a few weeks, but it's nothing like a replacement income for most people, who on average earn about that much every week and now could be looking at months or years (?) of unemployment.  Weeks seems a lot too small if this is anything like the crisis the media keeps describing.  Months seems to have worked in China, which had a response no capitalist country can match.  I hope, along the lines of all the arguments I've made previously, that the media is wrong about this, and that it is actually more in line with pandemics we've seen before like the recent SARS and H1N1, especially after the paltry (and sometimes of negative benefit) measures we've applied so far--still more than was ever done before.  But the precautionary argument is that even if the media has overblown this, which I believe is likely, it still may be bigger than we've seen in a long time and will exhaust our already overloaded medical industry in some places, so extreme measures like lockdowns may make sense in some places at some times.  The media can certainly endlessly cite apparently authoritative sources justifying extreme measures..  Are there qualified people who think differently?  From my sources, I believe so, and I'd love to see debates with few boundaries, like the ancient Royal Society, along with a little less concern about shielding the public from uncertainty through vetting.  That uncertainty is getting through anyway, leaving us with no way to judge (while I suppose I could spend more time reading freely available scientific publications...you could say "my" lack of being informed is my fault...but even reading scientific papers is nothing like debate...and one could argue that even published papers reflect the establishment concerns because they paid for it).

It irks me more than a little when the needs of people to get out and make a living are simply shuffled off as business concerns or economics concerns--which are certainly not as important as life.  Many people nowadays don't have a big business employer, who might have a huge slush fund of money in foreign banks.  They are self-employed, gig workers, people who live on tips, and small business owners who don't have a giant cushion of savings to rely on.  A complete lockdown or even social distancing will mean economic catastrophe to many, and will cost lives as well as creating destitution, just as Trump says.  Notably, people in these categories tend to be Trumpers themselves, and think Trump is very doing well by promising (so far) to keep the state of emergency limited, as compared with many Democrats implicitly calling for complete lockdown now which could last months, or whatever some particular medical authority says.  For various philosophical reasons, we can argue that life is more important than anything, but this quickly collapses to absurdity if taken to extreme.  Balance requires considering many factors including total lives spared as well as the quality and duration of lives lost or spared.  There may be nothing that justifies saving the wealth of the obscenely wealthy, ethically they might as well give it all to save just one old sick person (and sometimes do, if it is the same wealthy person) but obscene sacrifices by many many non-wealthy people may not be justified to save only a few very sick people who were about to die anyway and spare them just for a few more months.  Is that the case this time?  I doubt it and fear intense if not extreme measures may be justified, but most of the sacrificing should be done at the top--which is unlikely.  Rich people naturally command a capitalist economy, and if it doesn't work out, they should be the first to pay for that failure, but rarely do.  Given that the rich won't in fact pay for it, I don't think it's ethical to burden the non-wealthy too much either.  There is life, and then there is living.  That has always been my line, and I'm sticking to it.   Where the balance is, needs to be a matter of great, informed, and unlimited debate every time--it is not simple.  But most of the debate doesn't happen, instead people simply stereotype their adversaries as either bleeding hearts or business shills and so we have division without rationality, which tends to work to the advantage of the business shills, they always seem to win at the name calling game.  We the others should have a better game, generally.

As a fully retired and debt free homeowning person, I do not personally need a supplemental income stream.  But I feel very much for those who do, and where this is going for them, and the future of my country.

This is not to say all social security recipients are in my nice boat.  Many many have "retirement jobs," in fact nearly everyone I know (except me) does.  My mother worked to age 76.  My brother-in-law is still working at 80 plus.  And if they don't, their whole ship may sink under mortgages and other loans.  This is because they don't have paid off everything like me.

Therefore, it seems to me, one of the best things governments could do would be defer all debts and rent payments while a person remains unemployed.  And when that person gets employment again, payments resume with the same size payments, not a lump sum back payments which they can't possibly meet.

Then what about the modest landlords who live on rents?  Yes, that's part of the problem every layer of society pretty much lives paycheck to paycheck just with different kind of paycheck.  So the whole house of cards collapses if you pull one card from the bottom.

But anyway, people who live on rents would have their rents and debts deferred also.

But if we're tossing around trilions, it surely would be better for government to pay everyone's rent  or mortgage and other debts for the duration of their unemployment, than to inject trillions at the top.

This is not to say I wouldn't support the most radical idea of all, a debt jubilee.  I merely can't conceive of it happening.  Yet.

Free government-paid treatment of COVID-19 would be a good idea also, not to mention healthcare as a right.

Speaking of negative benefits, they include these:

1)  Panic crowds at stores with key items sold out  (Limits should have been in place months ago, along with mandated production of key items.)
2)  Doctors closing (so you need to go to overloaded urgent care centers which may be full of infected people).
3)  Obsessive measures which cause more damage than they are intended to prevent.  I still believe most of the concerns about sterilizing everything continually, even your own phone, are overblown, waste time, and distract from more useful measures.  It's possible the current procedures for dealing with COVID-19 require too many facemasks (over a dozen, I've read) to be practical and use up limited supplies of facemasks.

Wearing a mask

The conventional advice administered by CDC and WHO is that people who are not sick with COVID-19, and not caregivers of such a sick person, should not wear a mask.

The justification is that an improperly used mask, does not appreciably help, and might make matters worse:

1) Lack of seal means all the germs are being sucked in through the gaps anyway.  And unless N95 or better, lost can still come through the mask itself.

2) Handling the mask, assuming it was worn around sick people, could offload vast numbers of germs onto the hand or face itself during removal.

There are now many who dispute these claims.  As in all my previous pontifications, I don't know where the truth is buried, I'm only trying to ask important questions.

One argument is that since many people with COVID-19 are asymptomatic, and they may be asymptomatic for 2 weeks (or whatever), we should all be wearing masks just in case, to help prevent spreading the virus.   Others even dispute the claim that wearing masks does not help the individual.  Matt Stoller, for one, is strongly pro-mask (though I'm not sure if he makes both arguments).

It's easy to see that a mask might not be perfect.  But this isn't a test of perfect (though many binary reasoning people think it is).  It's a test of probabilities.  If you could lower your risk of getting sick by 50%, or even 25%, merely by doing something cheap and simple, wouldn't you?

Although in this case, you could also argue that while a mask might be cheap (if you already had some, they're simply not available now mostly) they are a big pain in every way, to put on, to take off (and then where do you put it, germs and all?), and while you are wearing it.

I'm inclined to follow the CDC/WHO guidelines in this case and at this time.

Tulsi Endorses Biden

Needless to say, as an early supporter of Tulsi (but greater supporter of Sanders) because I am an anti-Imperialist, I was very disappointed to see Tulsi endorse Biden.

It appears we had several faux progressive candidates.  Only two were the real deal, Bernie and Mike Gravel.  The rest, it appears, were shills.

Part of being Progressive is being one with the other Progressive Candidates.

Until the first vote at the Convention.

Only after losing that, can progressive candidates endorse a corporate candidate without getting shill status.

Bernie too, won "shill" status in 2016.  We have yet to see if he will this time.

Of course he won't run 3rd party, and no one should make that a condition for decency (as some do).  For the longest time, Tulsi-only's on Twitter claimed that Tulsi would be the one to have the guts to do that, after another predictable Sanders foiling.

This isn't even about finding the perfect messenger.  This is about holding together the largest possible coalition to defeat the CorporateCrats in the DemocraticParty, which is the only viable party in which they have a chance.  We may be failing to do that.  I concede I haven't done as much as I should have.  I felt too certain that Bernie would win Texas, where I live, so I didn't work as hard as I could have.

But even failing to defeat the CorporateCrats is no good reason to jump to FascistPopulists or SplinterCandidates.

Bernie MUST NOT WITHDRAW

My comment to a predictable article in the New York Times:


If Sanders had the clear path to majority position earlier projected by some, Biden would not withdraw.  He would go to the convention with the hope of winning on the second ballot.

Bernie should do that exact same thing.  He got into trouble with many supporters last time for withdrawing before the Convention.  It did not look good for the Democratic Party either.

All this pressure by the media for an early withdrawal of a popular candidate highlights the worst aspects of US politics.  The establishment wants people to sit down and shut up.  We get that.  That's not democracy, it's oligarchy.

This is not just about Bernie.  This is about a movement.  Bernie should not be pressured into resigning, and he does not even have the authority, on his own say so, to capitulate.

The Oligarchy understand this.  They don't want movements.  They want to kill movements, except for the right wing Movement Conservatism that serves as the most advantageous front for their interests.

*****

Operating the candidate selection like a Smoke Filled Room (as DNC argued in court they had a perfect right to do, in 2016) does not encourage people to regard such selection process as legitimate and worth supporting on the grounds that it represents the result of a Democratic Process, even if not the candidate they might have preferred.  Such hamfistedness encourages defection.  Many are already opining in great variety that was the plan all along.  Why?  Because the Deep State Actually Prefers Trump to Democratic Party Candidates.  The animosity is paper thin, designed to deceive people into believing the opposite.

The Corporate Media with ALWAYS oppose us

Biden's victories have been enabled by false fear over "electability" created by media pundits, which is the equivalent of millions and millions of free advertising (estimated to be equivalent to $70M in South Carolina alone).

The voting public actually likes Bernie's ideas better, and many polls showed Bernie having better electibility.  But those polls don't get televised, and the mainstream media spins tangled stories to avoid mentioning those facts, preferring to say that Bernie needs to fall in line with their corporate agenda to win.

We can assume the corporate media will ALWAYS be against us.  We must create, use, and support alternative media that supports people like Bernie.

The "Not a True Socialist" argument is not a true Socialist argument

Interesting anti-Bernie article below by Cindy Shehan.

I too am disgusted that Bernie demonizes Maduro and has not denounced US sanctions and other actions in Venezuela.  I agree with Shehan there and in a few other areas.

Still, Bernie is far better across the anti-War spectrum than any other currently viable candidate.  He denounces the US coup in Boliva (Biden does not) and Yemen and proposes to end Forever Wars and drastically cut defense defense spending.

For a long time, I had been confusing Shehan with the pro-Bernie anti-war Medea Benjamin (co-founder of CODEPINK) and I was confusing her with Shehan.

I like and trust Benjamin more, along with fellow Bernie supporters Ariel Gold (of JVP) and endless other "true Socialists" and "true Communists" you could name, even if Bernie is himself less radical than they, because they are political organizers and not ideologues.

Shehan does enunciate Socialist principles in ideology, if not political practice.  

In practice she had a platform similar to Sanders but garnered a tiny percentage of the vote.  It would be cruel to add she ran on ticket with Rosanne Barr and has long associated with the libertarian "Peace and Freedom" party in California, which has no national significance.  The actual Socialist Party disqualified her.

Socialist parties have been anything but the nominal Socialism Shehan describes either, so don't get me into defending them.

I'm an active member of DSA, which is "not a Socialist" organization either (it's Democratic Socialist, a kind of anti-non-oxymoron, members often ruely observe) though many Socialists do participate in DSA as it's been the largest Socialist organization for decades now in the USA.  Virtually all people in DSA support Bernie--who is also a DSA member.

So the "Not a True Socialist" argument against Bernie is neither a one true Socialists nor Communists would advance, only Socialist Idealogues who are not actuallly part of socialist organizations.

I suppose, to be a Socialist Idealogue is understandable.  Some are, just not so much in actual Socialist Parties or other organizations.  I suppose there is no rule that accurately self-described socialists can't be Socialist Ideologues as I define them, though it's rarely found except in leading characters such as Shehan, and cranks.

But no Communist is a Communist Ideologue except part time, to be a Communist is to be committed to action, action which is initially directed to achieve pracitical reforms in the here and now, as aptly described in none other than the Communist Manifesto.  Communists support the party that is at the leading edge of reform in the here and now, not in some imaginary future.

Likewise, with the "Not a True Anti-War President", though sadly that claim is stronger.

Cheating? Maybe, but the Corporate Anti-Socialism is certain

Some exit polls seem to show Bernie victories where Biden won.  (By and large, the exit polls do seem to support a Biden surge yesterday, as reported in People's World.  However there have been some previous irregularities.)  If things were reversed, would Biden withdraw?  (Of course not, we've been there, Biden currently enjoys a small lead in delegates.)

We already know that the aparatchik filled electoral and party establishments are filled with Bernie Haters at all levels.  Are they compounding fair politics with fraud?  It would be worth looking closely, where evidence suggests this, though not drawing conclusions prematurely.  Exit polls are not proof but indication that further investigation is warranted.

One thing is certain however, and also demands considerable attention.  Biden's (shallow and/or near) victories have come in the wave of massive amounts of PAC money funded advertising, virtually all negative against Bernie.  Totally twisted crap of which some I've seen.  This is the Billions of the Corporate Anti-Socialism blowing hard against our Revolution.

Troll armies too, it has seemed.  All of a sudden old lefty social media enclaves are filled with Bernie Busters intent on disproving "Bernie Myths" and blasting allegedly anti-social "BernieBros" for the predicted crimes of suppressing the vote by being critical of and suggesting they might not vote for the Democratic Party Candidate if it isn't the right one (a thought not at all unique to one side, but is always being blamed on one side--the people's side).

Yes, this is Stalinism in the actions of the DNC itself.  Voting is not a choice, but a Party Mandate, with an army of thought police and the full participation of the media to ensure compliance.

Sadly, such is the power of the ubiquitous airwaves of the Mainsteam Media on Internet, in Print, and especially Over the Video Matrix, that armies of newly Concerned Citizens echo the establishment narratives, to their friends and especially in group gatherings, intimidating those who would dare consider not voting for the Democratic Candidate in the General Election, or might have even thought of it in the past.

The Mainstream Media has ignored Bernie, dismissed Bernie, then started it's own set of negative responses, and identical Stalinesqe whining that people mechanically echo everywhere:

"What do you think about those Bernie supporters who refuse to vote for the Party Nominee?  They must really have been Trump supporters all along."

No.  Trump gets his support from people who vote for Trump, and contribute to the Trump Campaign and pro-Trump PACs, not people who exercise their constitutional right to not vote for the Democratic Party Candidate.  Trump is also helped by those who corruptly influence the electoral process or mindshare against the people's will.

We cannot, and should not, fault people for exercising their free right not to vote for the Democratic Party candidate.  It is the role of every Candidate and Party Organization to win the support of the masses in an electoral process, not the role of the masses to lie down and assent to the Party's choices.

Saying all this, I have decided pretty much unequivocally myself to support the Democratic Party Nominee, except in the very unlikely event that a 3rd party candidate looks truly competitive electorally.  I am utilitarian, rationalist, etc., and anyone with those tendencies ought see the value in voting for the lesser of two evils on the simple grounds that less evil is better than more evil.

It's true that no imaginable Democratic nominees could be worse than Trump, so therefore they would lose my vote only for the previously unimagined.  But that prospect is absolutely no justification for selling out by negotiating within.  THAT approach never works, it never gains support, it never creates enthusiasm, it never creates a firm principled position that can be held in the wake of powerful opposition.  (Classic Example: Gore's failure to call for a recount across ALL of Florida, which would have given him victory, and be more resistant to legal attack.)  Medicare for All as Bernie proposes it in the most universal terms as a Right to Healthcare is an example, as are all Bernie's proposed programs framed in such Universal terms.  These are the things we must fight for.

Another form of selling out is voting for awful candidates in the Primary because you fear others have less electibility.  In Primary voting, you should vote for who you want to win, or at least the lesser evil of the choices present on your party ballot.  There is ample evidence that selling out for "electibility" doesn't work, and adds to the unending corporatist drift of the Overton Window, and thereby even reducing the chance of victories further in the future.

My Party Member Bias shows up in my preference for voting the straight democratic ticket, even when the Presidential Candidate is unlikely to win the electoral votes in Texas.  This is a case in which I should vote for the Green Party Candidate, or whoever represents my interests best, rather than bother to cast my vote for a losing elector, in guidelines once laid down by Noam Chomsky, who I consider less Very Deep Left than me.

So, for all the reasons above and more, I pledge to vote for the Democratic Party Candidate.  But I do not pledge to keep my mouth shut so as not to call things as I see them, as much as possible, backed by facts and real data, and to defend others speaking their minds about central authorities.

But meanwhile, I must also demand that Democratic Party be fair and Democratic in every way.  Any unfairness or rigging will produce exactly what they accuse Bernie supporters of doing, Suppressing the Vote.

How can I possibly demand these things, if I'm pledging my vote anyways?

I'm not pledging to turn off my pursuit and enunciation of fairness and justice.

First the vision, then the money, then the jobs, and then the attitudes

Julie had the correct take.  "Poor people need higher wages and opportunity."  That is the short answer.

The article below is just blaming people for their own poverty.  Blaming the victim.

No matter what "attitude" people have, or what education or training they get, none of that is going to change the set of jobs that are available.  

Meanwhile, when and if good jobs suddenly become available, as happened in Korea in the mid 1970's, and Japan in the 1950's and Germany in the 1800's, all of a sudden people's attitudes turn on a dime.  Koreans, Japanese, and even Germans used to be though of as "lazy" "kooks" and "crooked" before their respective countries got moving.

Now, if YOU are the one that has the best education+training+attitude, then you may be the lucky one who gets the 1 in 10 good jobs (if there were any good jobs anymore) that falls from the establishment tree.  And the 9 in 10 other people aren't.  And it's not the fault of those 9 people that society only creates 1 in 10 or fewer good jobs.  That's the fault of the greedy neoliberal establishment that's been disinvesting in USA for decades.  Every job, or at least nearly every job, can and should be a good job that takes advantage of people's intelligence and creativity, rather than stifling them.

When there is greater equality, more money is being spent by formerly poorer people, therefore business scrambles to get that money, and hires more people.  Jobs are created when money is being spent!!!  That's what creates good jobs, not attitude, education, and training.  

But if only rich oligarchs have money, they don't spend it locally, instead they build factories in some foreign country.  That's why inequality needs to be solved up front, with things like unions and a high minimum wage (which takes the needed place of a union for people at the bottom who are going to find it near impossible to organize one).  Without equity-improving measures like these, there won't be enough money being spent locally to create a healthy economy to create good jobs.

I remember when if you didn't have the education and training and experience you needed, and employer would hire you anyway and see that you got the education, training, and experience you needed.  It is not really necessary for people to get training first to create better jobs.  You have to have the better jobs FIRST, and then all else follows.  This applied to me.  I got into programming because way back in 1980 they were desperate enough to hire someone without professional experience or specific training.  Nowadays you need to be vastly overqualified to get any decent job.

What created those first good jobs I got was the vision that we "needed to protect ourselves from USSR."  That was paranoia, but it created jobs.  Jobs could be similarly be created to deal with real problems like Global Warming, and as a country we would make ourselves richer in the process.  But the crop of oligarchs we have doesn't want to do that.  They like all the fossil profits they can bleed, and then hope to run away and hide when catastrophe hits.

So, what's needed is less inequality, and an establishment with a positive vision like the Green New Deal (which HAS a jobs guarantee) and $15 minimum wage and unions and that's a way to create less inequality.  That's how to create a virtuous cycle rather than a destructive one.  And so we need leaders like Bernie Sanders to be pushing the positive ideas like Green New Deal into the establishment, which after all, is supposed to be for all of us, rather than the usual "sorry, you can't have that" which becomes self-fufilling prophecy.

*****

Julie wrote

I really have a problem with the article below, not that there isn't some truth to it, but it seems to me the thing poor people need is higher wages and real opportunity.

https://therivardreport.com/how-to-change-the-poverty-mindset

Anti-Social-ist Media

I've been reading about people, including some I support, others whose right to speak I'd defend anyway, being banned by Twitter and Facebook.

Apparently due to some posts I've made, Facebook decided yesterday I needed to re-confirm my account because of suspicious posts led them to believe my account had been hacked.  All the posts were 100% authentic, and were pretty similar to stuff I say on this blog (while it lasts...), maybe even slightly restrained compared to what I'd say here.

It appears that mentioning Communism, Communists, are among things they look for on Facebook.  But in fact I run a Facebook Page for the local Communist Party, and there has never been a problem with that (in fact, Facebook automagically suggests I promote it, which I understand is not a good idea and in fact could lead to it being banned).

In the last few days, I can't even connect to Twitter from my personal Mac.  I can still connect to Twitter on my iPhone.

As I've argued, these companies are not publishers, they are Platforms, which need to be open to anyone legally exercising their right to free speech.  Promotion could be limited to vetted speakers.

Bernie on Immigration

In the excellent comments thread on Chris Hedges's excellent article at TruthDig (which I must add to my sidebar) some troll keeps whining "but, but, Bernie will institute Open Borders which will destroy America").

So, what exactly is Bernie Sander's position on immigration and immigrants?  It's so excellent, I wish I had known enough to write it myself (and I was sketching something very much like this).

First, just throw aside the notion the "Open Borders" claim has any merit.  Bernie is not breaking any new ground, except in pulling all the best ideas together.  The main idea, eliminating criminal penalties was been proposed by Beto O'Rourke and followed by many Democrats.  It's a long story. The section of US law that makes illegal entry criminal dates from 1920, but was rarely enforced until George W. Bush.   Criminal or not, US law authorizes the deportation of unauthorized immigrants, that's not the issue here actually.  The criminal penalties are in addtion to to deportation, or not.  The criminal penalties may have you locked up for 6 months and then deported.  There has to be a trail, pre-trial holding, and so on, making for great strains on the criminal justice system.  And in the end of a process so byzantine that it has resulted in a number of children's deaths, only tiny fines if any are extracted, and the deportation is done.

This monstrosity is made possible by blind faith, blind faith in the anti-immigrant movement that toughness is goodness.

So there you have it.  Bernie is great and wonderful.  But he is not off the charts.  He knows what he is doing.  He is pulling together all the best ideas, ideas which do actually have enthusiastic majority support, and which are within the known-possible political spectrum.  They are not crazy ideas, but they are pushing the envelope ideas that do break out of existing stalemates but will require some political will to achieve.

Some take that as a defect but I see that the wise course.

Of course, opponents will paint them as crazy, country-destroying, and so on.

They are simply wrong in their imaginations, from endless right wing propaganda.

The realization of Bernie's ideas will make everyone better off than the catastrophic course we are on.  It will not be the fascist socialism some imagine, though the cries may continue.

BTW, Bernie does call for an end to all foreign wars which is an excellent starting point for de-imperialism.  I differ with him on some US regime change operations such in Venezuela.  Those are apparently off the table for now.

(In my version of the Immigration Policy...I eliminated deportations too...)

As I keep saying, Bernie is a serious candidate.  That's the way our system works.  He has been vetted.  He's a US Senator!  So there is no need to buy into the Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt (FUD) constantly being pushed by his opponents.

We have to say with a clear voice to our betters about what we want, and not be fooled again to accepting a nothing negotiating point straight away, like Buttigieg.

Bernie has the best ideas, and if we don't stand behind him, we are giving them away at the start.

The US President should be a populist figure, fighting against entrenched aristocracy oligarchy of the rest of the deep state.

Trump was correct in trying to look like that.  Of course he is and always was the insiders insider, and that's always the kind of fake populist the establishment is trying to sell.

Many have the answer of 3rd party.  The answer is that it may be possible to break through and replace one of the two parties, but the gravity of the system pretty much maintains two parties and if the people are stupid, as they often are, they become two anti-populist parties, with endless additional points of contention, the prevent the most important items to the establishment from ever being considered.

So, if Democrats as Chris Hedges describes the establishment party apparatus cheat Sanders out of victory once again, what to do???

Given that I consider myself, a nearly-always-democratic voter and sometime party official, also to be a Democrat it makes sense to me, I concede, to fall in line.  I will certainly not throw away for voting for a write-in candidated who if counted at all, you'd have to contact the Secretary of State to find out.  I am going to be voting anyway, so it's no extra effort for me.  And my family and some friends will be upset.  I might not be following in line with the Communist Party either, who since 1988 has called for electing the Democrat.

However, this does not mean I will be happy.  I may in fact be very angry.  I may be disinclined to provide any financial support (IIRC I did give Hillary $25, after having given hundreds to Bernie).  I may be disinclined to do anything else.  AND I WONT SHUT UP.  (Of course, that applies the other way too, so no difference.)

If as some say, the possibility of a winning replacement ticket appears after WE THE DEMOCRATIC VOTERS have been seriously cheated, I might consider it.

If there were a serious possibility of rising up and overthrowing the system, as Hedges elsewhere encourages us, I might consider that too.  This might be what we ought to do, in some way, as in saving our souls from certain damnation otherwise.  But even as things are, I get out to demonstrations in the US, and they aren't even close to that scale or continuousness or determinedness.

And unlike the color revolutions we gift other nations with, there's no savior to help shepherd in the new government, international recognition, trade, money, things like that.

So, to me, it makes sense to vote Democratic even if I hate, even strongly hate the actions of the party apparatus and even loath the candidate, though presuming I loath them ever so slightly less, ignoring the impact on the party itself, for which my small input makes little difference.

But I won't put much else into it, and feel free to criticize every aspect of the candidates, fairly, and in context, regardless.

Probably more than I would if I actually liked the Candidate, their Ideas, their top people, their followers, etc.

BTW, it occurs to me also that you'd better vote for the candidate with the best Ideas as you are certain not to get them otherwise.

The media is always trying to make this about looks, which of course, they can doctor in their studios.  The corporate parties are always trying to make this about identities, as they nurture they for this purpose.  The shills are always deploying FUD.

Do not be fooled.