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Stephen H. Provost is an author of paranormal adventures and historical non-fiction. “Memortality” is his debut novel on Pace Press, set for release Feb. 1, 2017.
An editor and columnist with more than 30 years of experience as a journalist, he has written on subjects as diverse as history, religion, politics and language and has served as an editor for fiction and non-fiction projects. His book “Fresno Growing Up,” a history of Fresno, California, during the postwar years, is available on Craven Street Books. His next non-fiction work, “Highway 99: The History of California’s Main Street,” is scheduled for release in June.
For the past two years, the editor has served as managing editor for an award-winning weekly, The Cambrian, and is also a columnist for The Tribune in San Luis Obispo.
He lives on the California coast with his wife, stepson and cats Tyrion Fluffybutt and Allie Twinkletail.
Ruminations and provocations.
Filtering by Tag: Bernie Sanders
It’s the height of irony that Donald Trump, who has railed against the evils of “identity politics,” has mastered it so completely. He’s tapped into fear among certain segments of the population that they’re losing their identity as the dominant force in these United States.
Read MoreThe contrast with Trump couldn’t be more profound: The Donald listens to nothing but his own often misguided instincts and cares about no one but himself. He’s under the dangerous self-delusion that he never makes mistakes, so he never apologizes and — crucially — can never learn from them. Biden, on the other hand, acknowledges he’s not perfect, which means there’s room to grow. To get better.
Read MoreTrump’s no populist. He’s a con man playing a shell game, and winning by wrapping himself in the flag. In fact, his very success shows how difficult it is for a populist to carry the day in the United States. Real populists speak truth to power. He speaks falsehood to retain it.
Read More
The nomination of Joe Biden and by the Democratic Party has put progressive independents in a double-bind. They’re asking themselves:
Is a second term of a corrupt president more or less acceptable than a vote for a corrupt establishment?
If the president in question were anyone other than Donald Trump, the answer would be easy. Corruption has become so entrenched in our political system — thanks to corporate money, Gerrymandering, etc. — that voting for any candidate who enables this system seems nothing less than a vote for corruption.
Joe Biden has spent his career enabling the system, from his oversight of the Anita Hill hearings to his vote in favor of the Iraq War. And, perhaps most tellingly, his openness to weakening Social Security and his opposition to universal health care.
Now, there’s no question that Donald Trump is worse. There isn’t enough space in this article to enumerate his myriad failings. Voting for Trump is not an option for thinking progressives.
The question is whether voting for Biden is.
A vote for Biden will further entrench a corrupt system that relies on big-money corporate donors who’ll expect something in return from whomever they support. And yes, they’ll get it.
If Trump wins, on the other hand, he’ll continue to wreak havoc with everything from healthcare to minority rights. He’ll likely get a chance to appoint one or two more Supreme Court justices. He’ll keep lining his pockets and telling lies, and his victory will affirm everything so many progressives loathe about his blustering, egocentric approach to politics.
Will the damage caused by Trump be lasting? Certainly, a Trumpist high court would be a long-term nightmare. And the longer Trumpism flourishes, the more entrenched it will become.
On the other hand, however, the longer voters actively support candidates who cater to corporate donors, rather than the voters themselves, the more entrenched that pattern will become. And, in consequence, the less anyone’s vote will matter eight, 12 or 16 years down the line.
It’s tempting to say, “I’ll put my checkmark by Biden’s name, but I don’t believe in him and it won’t be a vote for him. It will be a vote against Trump.”
Biden won’t care. He’s run his entire campaign, not on issues or personal character, but on the mere idea that he’s the person best positioned to beat Trump. He doesn’t care if you support him, so long as that checkmark is next to his name.
He’s not running as Joe Biden. He tried that twice before and failed to win a single primary. He’s running as “the safe guy” and the “anti-Trump.” But “safe” means maintaining the status quo — which, in turn, means winking at corruption while putting your hand out to accept money from as many corporate donors as you can find.
In doing so, Biden is enabling corruption.
Trump, on the other hand, is actively engaged in it. Is one worse than the other? Sure. Should either one be acceptable? Surely not.
So I can understand those who choose to vote for Biden on the grounds that four more years of Trump could be catastrophic. But I can also understand those who sit the election out or vote for a third-party candidate on the grounds that the corrupt system itself is a bigger problem even than the most corrupt individual ever to hold the office. There are potent arguments to be made both ways.
But whichever course an individual chooses to follow (and I can’t stress this strongly enough), there is no good argument for shaming those who disagree with you. There is no good argument for casting blame on those with whom you largely agree of the issues, who are following their consciences and exercising their right to vote. And there is no good argument for pressuring, goading or threatening them unless they act the way you think they should.
That’s not democracy.
And, apart from being rude and childish, such behavior almost never works: People who feel disparaged and dismissed tend to dig in their heels rather than even consider doing things differently — regardless of their political persuasion. (Mitt Romney’s remark about the “47 percent” and Hillary Clinton’s derision toward “deplorables” on the one hand and “Bernie Bros” on the other provoked precisely that reaction, and cost both of them at the polls.)
Besides, it’s not the voters who are at fault for a lost election. It’s the candidate and, to varying degrees, the system.
That’s why the current situation is so galling. The system has, as it often does, produced two candidates who are woefully lacking. No, they’re not equally bad — I’m not suggesting some false equivalency here. But whichever one wins, it will make the situation worse by reinforcing a corrupt, bought-and-paid-for system that churns out “lesser of two evils.”
At least, they appear as two evils to many of us. It can feel like a choice between Machiavelli and the Marquis de Sade.
For corporate sponsors, by contrast, the result is a win-win. They often donate to both major candidates, so that, either way, they’ve got someone in their pocket. It matters little to them whether that someone is an incompetent egomaniac or a status quo partisan hack.
Maybe, at this point, it doesn’t matter to the future of the country, either.
Here’s a chilling thought: Trump’s scorched-earth presidency and corporate corruption may have both already done so much damage already that our democracy is beyond repair.
That bleak prospect is what keeps many people from bothering to vote. I’m not saying that’s the best response, merely that it’s understandable. You can rebuke them for their supposed apathy — and alienate them further. Or you can consider the possibility that, instead of caring too little, they actually cared too much. And that, at a certain point, people stop are bound to stop caring in self-defense if caring never makes a difference anyway.
It’s not being a sore loser. That’s not it at all. Most people don’t stop caring if they’re losing a fair fight. They stop caring if they believe the game is rigged and they never had a chance in the first place.
Criticizing them won’t help. Only one thing will: Leveling the playing field.
And barring a miracle, whichever candidate wins in November, that won’t happen.
Remember when Barack Obama ran on the theme of hope? It seems like a million years ago. Joe Biden isn’t running on the idea that we can actually make progress. In fact, he’s not offering anything substantially new. Instead, he’s promising to return us to a mythical “golden age” (the Obama years, ironically), in which everything was somehow great and wonderful. I’ve even got a slogan for him: “Make America Great Again.” Oops. I guess that’s already taken. Trump’s nomination was the shot across our bow, and Biden’s coronation is the answering volley. Together, they signal that both parties have abandoned their ideals and sacrificed hope for the future at the altar of yearning for a past that never was – except maybe in the era of snake oil and sweatshops.
This isn’t new. In fact, it’s the rule, not the exception. Politicians know this, and they play on it. Fear of nuclear war in 1964. Fear of terrorism in 2004. Fear of immigrants in 2016. Fear of Trump in 2020. Occasionally, hope rears its head, but it’s an anomaly. Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren and a few others who have dared to suggest looking to the future instead of the past have been sidelined by fear that their ideas were too “radical” — even ideas, such as universal health care, that are standard operating procedure for the rest of the civilized world. But hey, that’s not how we do it here in Merica, where one candidate wants destroy the inadequate safety net we have and the other has vowed to destroy a better one if anybody even tries to build it.
Or, rather, the only thing. Biden’s rallying cry throughout the primaries hasn’t been a platform or a policy proposal. It’s been this: “I can beat Donald Trump.” Again, this sounds a lot like someone else we know: Trump is, famously, obsessed with winning. It doesn’t matter what. It doesn’t matter how. It only matters that you win. In the words of Hillary Clinton: “I don’t care who the nominee is. I don’t care. As long as it’s somebody who can win...” Treating politics as a team sport isn’t new: The two-party system encourages it. The difference is that now, it’s no longer merely an undercurrent that drives the process; it’s a mission statement. And suddenly, nothing else really matters. Not policies. Not people. As Al Davis said, “Just win, baby.”
Long-term goals are ignored or dismissed for the sake of short-term election wins. Instead of addressing the major flaws in our democratic system, politicians exploit them. The list is too long to list here, but includes unlimited corporate funding; a process that rewards campaigning instead of governing; the Electoral College; gerrymandering; superdelegates; irrelevant primaries (most of them, after South Carolina) voter suppression... Politicians like Trump and Biden don’t bring up the tilted playing field, because it benefits them. And while they might give lip service to long-term challenges like lifting people out of poverty, dealing with climate change, or reducing health care costs, their real pitch is merely: “I can beat the other guy.” The only long-term priority either side really cares about is the makeup of the Supreme Court, which, once again, is just about winning.
For years, it was assumed that both parties wanted what was best for the country; they just had different ideas about how to get there. That’s no longer the case. The other side is no longer “the loyal opposition” but an evil enemy out do destroy the country. Politicians have figured out that the key to winning is fear, and there’s no better way to instill fear in people than to demonize and dehumanize the other side. It works in war, where it leads to atrocities. The Vietnamese weren’t women or children, they were subhuman “Gooks.” And it works in politics, too. (Is Trump’s use of belittling nicknames any different?) So now we’re in a civil war between red and blue, and when individual citizens are wounded in the crossfire, it doesn’t matter. They’re not people. They’re just collateral damage.
Trump demands personal loyalty above all else. But are Democrats any better? After Hillary Clinton lost in 2016, those who didn’t vote for her were excoriated online as though they were Judas Iscariot, Benedict Arnold, and Brutus all rolled into one. They’ll likely use the same treatment on anyone who doesn’t vote for Biden in 2020. And it’s not just enough to vote for the person, you have to offer unflinching, undying loyalty. Clinton said as much when she all but accused Bernie Sanders of costing her the election even though he endorsed and campaigned for her. John F. Kennedy’s plea has been warped to become: “Ask not what your candidate can do for your country, ask what you can do for your candidate.” Whether or not you voted for him in the primary (and it’s still nearly always “him.”)
The two-party system doesn’t naturally lend itself to independent thinking. If there are only two options, you tend to gravitate toward one or the other. But the “winning is everything” mentality has made things worse. Today’s partisan climate rewards tribalists, conformists and dittoheads. People who might be conservative on one issue but liberal on another are excluded because they can’t be trusted. Never Trumpers are ridiculed as RINOs by the right, and those who don’t support the Democratic standard-bearer are blamed for election losses by the left (rather than blaming the candidate for failing to make a compelling case). Independent thought isn’t just inconvenient, it’s anathema, and free speech isn’t protected, it’s shamed as blasphemy.
The old skill set of “working across the aisle,” touted as recently (though somewhat disingenuously) as the George W. Bush administration, has fallen by the wayside. When the other side is seen as the enemy, any civility or attempt to actually work together is viewed as complicity. Or treason — one of Trump’s favorite words. Politicians talk a lot about unity, but they don’t mean they intend to compromise. What they mean is, “I’ll tell you want to believe and how to act, then you fall into line like a good little puppy.” Compromise has, in fact, become a dirty word. Instead of give and take, or meeting in the middle, it’s more often viewed as contamination: “The integrity of our message has been compromised” by those who dare to think for themselves.
No matter who wins in November, the next president will be a pawn of corporate donors. Trump boldly declared in 2016 that he’d be using his own money to run for president. No lobbyists. No donors. Yet, this year, to date, he’s raised $164 million of not his own money. Bernie Sanders raised more than that from thousands upon thousands of small donors, and there was talk that his success in doing so might shift the balance of power back to actual voters. But it didn’t. Joe Biden, who relied instead on corporate donors, won the nomination. So, guess who’s going to be running the country the next four years. That’s right: corporations.
George Washington warned against “the baneful effects of the spirit of party,” and his successor, John Adams, opined: “There is nothing which I dread so much as a division of the republic into two great parties, each arranged under its leader.” Alexander Hamilton’s take: “Nothing could be more ill-judged than that intolerant spirit which has, at all times, characterized political parties.” And James Madison remarked on humans’ propensity to fall into animosity “when no substantial occasion presents itself.” Indeed, the remarked, “the most frivolous and fanciful distinctions have been sufficient to kindle their unfriendly actions and excite their most violent conflicts.” Yet, here we are. Donald Trump is no George Washington, and Joe Biden is no James Madison. But far worse: The system we have is not the system our founders envisioned. It’s a bad counterfeit and a perverse caricature of the democratic republic they believed they’d established. They’re not just rolling over in their graves. With any luck, their ghosts will be coming back to haunt us. It wouldn’t be half as scary as what we’re dealing with right now, and besides, we might learn something from it all.
It’s Super Tuesday. This is why I’m not a Democrat. It’s not about the issues, it’s about the way the Democratic Party treats people who don’t kowtow to its leaders. Like we don’t matter and we need to get in line. We need to “unite” for the common good.
“Unite.” I cringe when I hear that word. When politicians use it, they really mean this: “Do it my way, or else.”
It doesn’t mean getting together and solving problems in an actual give-and-take. It doesn’t mean collaboration or even compromise. It means either you get with the program set by our corporate donors, or you’ll be labeled a troublemaker or worse: a poser or a backstabber or a spy.
Oh, Democrats don’t come out and use these words the way, say, Donald Trump does. But they exert the same kind of political pressure under the table to make sure you don’t rock the boat. They badmouth you on social media and blame you for elections they lost through their own incompetence – because taking personal responsibility has never been their strong suit.
Whenever Trump talks about unity, what he really means is loyalty. Blind loyalty. And the events of the past few days show that Democrats, for all their talk of openness and inclusivity, operate by exactly the same code.
We know where blind loyalty got the Republicans: It got them Trump, a president who’s made a mockery of our nation in the eyes of the world and more than half our own citizens. But not only that, he’s also run roughshod over ideals the Republican Party itself once held sacred, whether you agree with them or not, like free trade and fiscal conservatism.
And now, the Democratic Party is doing precisely the same thing. It’s easy to think of Democrats as the party wrought by the Clintons and, to a lesser extent, Barack Obama – a party of caution that teeters on the verge on paranoia about the mere possibility of offending anyone. Don’t offend the PC police on the left, but don’t offend your corporate donors on the right, either, by daring to defend people who are being forced to choose between the cost of their prescriptions and bankruptcy. Or death.
The idea of free healthcare isn’t “revolutionary.” Every other civilized country does it (or perhaps I should say every civilized country does it and omit the “other,” because any country that puts profits over people isn’t civilized in my book).
The media labels Democrats who hold this position as “moderate,” but that’s a relative term. You’d probably consider the coronavirus as moderate when compared to ebola on the one hand and a common cold on the other, but that doesn’t mean you wan’t to catch it. Letting people die for lack of healthcare isn’t a “moderate” position, it’s an inhumane one.
We forget that it wasn’t always this way. The Democratic Party wasn’t always a creature of Super PACs and safe spaces. Once upon a time, it was the party of bold ideas that shone a spotlight on inequity and dared to dream of a better world – and not just dream of it, demand it! Franklin Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson fought for the kind of programs today’s Democrats are fighting against. Hell, Republican icon Teddy Roosevelt fought harder for equality and social justice than any of today’s “neoliberals.” These are men and women who give lip service to such ideals ... while taking money under the table to maintain the status quo.
Correction: Not under the table. The rules now make it perfectly legal to pursue financial conflicts of interest. This is the world we live in.
I remember a time when a gay politician named Harvey Milk died fighting for equality. Today, a gay politician named Pete Buttigieg would let Americans die to protect insurance company profits.
And he’s not alone.
In fact, the “neoliberals” spawned by Bill Clinton’s shift to the right a quarter-century ago are fighting harder against the idea of universal healthcare than they are against Donald Trump’s corporate giveaways.
Want to talk about unity? Why is the Democratic Party uniting against Bernie Sanders – a candidate whose platform builds on the bold social and economic ideas of FDR and LBJ? And why are they willing to do so on behalf of a two-time loser known for verbal gaffes who hadn’t won a primary in 32 years of trying before Saturday? A candidate who voted in favor of the Iraq War and didn’t stand up for Anita Hill?
There’s an easy answer to that.
But first, I’ll tell you why they’re not doing it. They’re not doing it for “Uncle Joe.” They’re not even doing it because they think it’s their best chance of defeating Trump. Oh, that’s their excuse, but it doesn’t hold up against polls that show Sanders does just as well against Trump as anyone else in the field.
Lately, they’re also saying it will hurt down-ballot candidates to have Sanders at the top of the ticket. Of course, they have zero proof of this, and it fails to take into account that the Sanders’ base is far more energized than the Biden base could ever dream of being.
Energized voters drive turnout. Democrats saw what that did for Trump, but they don’t care about that, either.
Nor do they care about the “next generation.” If they did, they’d be fighting for free education (something we’ve managed to provide at the primary and secondary levels for more than a century) and the forgiveness of student debt. No, to them, the younger generation is a nuisance, just as it was in the 1960s when they were protesting Vietnam and demanding equality for minority citizens. Back then, they said young people should be seen and not heard. They were too loud and cared too much, just like Sanders’ supporters today.
That’s why the old-guard Democratic leaders don’t like them. They like them even less than they like Trump.
They may say they’re fighting against Sanders because they want to beat Trump, but that just doesn’t pass the smell test. Otherwise they wouldn’t be following the exact same losing strategy they did in 2016, when they nominated the least popular Democratic candidate in history because she was the darling of the donor class. Like Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden the kind of candidate that loses every time – establishment hacks who rely on big-money donations and believe they should inherit the presidency because it’s “their turn.”
Hubert Humphrey. Walter Mondale. Al Gore. John Kerry. Hillary Clinton. What do they have in common? They were all career politicians. And they all lost.
The candidates who’ve won for the Democrats in the last half-century have all been outsiders who galvanized the youth vote: Carter, Bill Clinton and Obama. Bernie Sanders fits far better into that tradition of winners than does Joe Biden, but it scarcely matters, because, again, Democrats don’t want to win. (Remember, they wanted Hillary Clinton in 2008, too.) They’d rather keep the younger generation in its place and keep the money flowing in.
Incidentally, that’s another reason Sanders scares them: He’s a heretic who relies on small donors rather than super PACs. He’s cut the purse strings. And to make matters worse he’s not even a Democrat.
Oh, the humanity!
If Democrats really wanted to beat Trump, they’d be attacking Trump, not Sanders. But the fact is, they view Sanders as a bigger threat to their power than Trump is. And it’s their power, not the country, that matters most to them. Of course, this is the exact same approach taken by Republicans in remaining loyal to Trump – despite the fact that he’s a blithering idiot and a con man. They do so because they see Republican “Never Trumpers” as a bigger threat to them than Democrats. Trump himself referred to them as “human scum.”
Again, the Democrats aren’t as blunt about expressing themselves. They may not say Sanders is human scum, they just treat him like he is. Because they’re scared of him the same way Trump and his minions are scared of the “Never Trumpers.” They back Trump, not because they like him, but because they’re afraid what will happen to them if they don’t.
Democrats are backing Joe Biden for the same reason. These are the same Democrats who railed against GOP senators for their lack of courage during the impeachment proceedings. And they’re showing the very same kind of cowardice now.
Why? It’s not because they’re afraid Sanders will lose. It’s because they’re afraid he’ll win and remake the party the same way Trump has. Except he wouldn’t remake it as a protection racket with a two-bit mob boss at the top of a shrinking pyramid. He’d remake it as a party that values health, the environment and education as human rights, rather than as commodities to be exploited for profit or denied to those who can’t afford them.
The ones who are doing the exploiting are the same corporate control freaks donating to the Democratic establishment. They cover their bets by contributing to both sides: Dems and Republicans alike. It’s not that they care whether one side or the other wins: They couldn’t care less. They merely want to keep both sides in their pockets, so they win regardless of the outcome.
Democrats used to believe in things like bold social and economic reform, the programs championed by FDR, LBJ and, now, Bernie Sanders. It doesn’t anymore, and that’s why I’m not a Democrat. I agree with many of the ideals Democrats claim to espouse, I just happen to believe those ideals are more important than labels or tribal loyalty. Those are things Trump promotes, which is one of the reasons I’m not a Republican, either. I can’t speak for Bernie Sanders, but maybe that’s why he, too, is not a Democrat.
If the Democrats succeed in foisting off a status quo candidate on the electorate this fall, I won’t forget it, and neither will a lot of other people. They can talk about “unity” until they’re blue in the face, but all I’ll hear is a bunch of rich, bought-and-paid-for puppets trying to tell me what to do. Sorry, I’m not buying it. And I will never forgive the Democrats for forcing me to choose between two parties that have utterly abandoned their principles: one led by a corrupt corporate class and the other by a two-bit wannabe dictator.
If they lose, the Democrats won’t blame their own shortsighted, sellout strategy. They’ll blame voters who stayed home because they weren’t excited about the guy they nominated. Or they’ll try. If they do, most of the people they try to blame will probably just shrug and continue staying home. They’ll have had enough of the bullshit, and they’ll figure they just can’t make a difference – which is a shame, because that’s supposed to be the purpose of democracy: making a difference.
Even if the Democrats win, the damage to the party will be incalculable in the long run. Disillusioned young people will become more disillusioned and less engaged. But then again, I don’t think the donor Democrats really care as long as the money keeps rolling in. A New York Times headline said it all: “Democratic Leaders Willing to Risk Party Damage to Stop Sanders.”
It’s not a risk. It’s a guarantee.
Photo by Gage Skidmore, used under Creative Commons 2.0 license
