I didn’t meet a Republican until I was 18 years old, my freshman year at university. I grew up in working class suburbs of Detroit. Everyone was union. Everyone was a Democrat. This was the party of the New Deal, FDR, JFK.
That political party, that institution which understood and worked for everyday people – the blue collars of the lower class and the white collars of the middle class – that political force which invested its energy to foster an America for all, to serve the citizenry equally regardless of class status, the party which took seriously the constitutional mandate “to promote the general welfare”, no longer exists.
The transition took place during the 90s under the saxophone president, Bill Clinton, and was complete by the turn of the century. No longer was the Democratic Party a party of the people. It ended up serving the same monied class as the Republicans. As Ralph Nader puts it, choice at the polls now was deciding between Tweedledee and Tweedledum.
Democrats currently wonder why party loyalty has been diminishing, why Hillary Clinton lost to a glib reality show host/gambling casino magnate in 2016, a manifestly dishonest, terminally shallow, narcissistic, manipulative, self-serving, completely unqualified candidate in Donald Trump. It’s not difficult to explain: The new Democratic Party is the party which railroaded one of the most popular candidates in recent history, Bernie Sanders, out of the race, stranding the largest populous uprising in decades.
As if that weren’t insulting enough, Hillary made no secret of her disdain for the “deplorables” of America, the unwashed masses who didn’t benefit from pedigree educations, bulging stock portfolios, and natty wardrobes from Prada and Armani. Her elitist predilection was then reinforced by the leak of a speech she gave to top banking executives, where she claimed she had “both a public and private position” on Wall Street reform. The execs got the real story and the voting public was served up the usual campaign blather. Is it any wonder that her bid for the presidency was crippled by plummeting trust?
The feel-good campaign mounted by the Democrats for Kamala Harris is likewise revealing. It completely lacked substance, saturated with word salad and puerile rhetoric. Openly on display was how cynical Democratic Party leaders are and just how disconnected the party is from doing anything to improve the lives of everyday citizens living real lives in real time.
To his credit in both 2016 and 2024, Trump said many of the right things which resonated with the masses of voters alienated by the new corporate trimmings of the DNC and its penchant for supporting centrist establishment-friendly candidates. To his discredit, in 2016 Trump apparently didn’t mean what he said and managed to avoid fulfilling most of the promises he made in his campaign. But it was too late. And it’s still too late. Huge numbers of frustrated and angry voters are so fed up with the tone-deaf Democratic Party, they seem to be willing to forgive Trump for just about anything. We shouldn’t do what the Dems did in 2016 and underestimate the Orange Oligarch. Because he is perhaps the most gifted smooth talker to come down the pike since ‘Slick Willy’. Fool me twice.
Of course, the Democrats couldn’t leave it at just being disconnected from flesh-and-blood entities – the voting public, real life people. They made the existential leap of disconnecting from reality itself. I refer to Russiagate.
I’m not going to get into the messy details of this scam. As there are still folks out there who believe the Earth is flat, there are a frightening number of individuals who believe that Russia, in collusion with KGB mole Drumpf – code name Agent Orange – stole the election from the universally-adored Hillary and dropped it off at the Mar-a-Lago clubhouse. Many of these folks also think that Saddam Hussein attacked the Twin Towers, Iraq had nuclear bombs ready to lob at the Lincoln Memorial and on Disney World, and the space shuttle tiles are oven-crisp taco shells.
Suffice it to say, the ham-fisted subterfuge created to cover Hillary’s embarrassing electoral failure has, to put it mildly, created extensive collateral damage. Granted, the project to disappear Russia as a nation, dismember it, and parcel it into manageable chunks for maximum exploitation, already had legs, thanks to the PNAC neoconiacs. However, Russiagate went the extra mile in convincing most of the U.S. population that Vladimir Putin is a Hitlerian monster, and Russia a backward, malevolent, evil, ruthless, genocidal gas station masquerading as a country, bent on destroying America and forcing us all to listen to balalaika music 24 hours a day. Subsequent loathing lasting right up to the present for both Putin and everything Russian – now at warp speed with the Ukraine meatgrinder in full swing – has been meticulously built on the sludgerock foundation of the DNC/Hillary Russiagate propaganda. Even today, slanderous attacks, whole-cloth fabrications about the sinister Putin and revanchist Russian war machine continue to spew out 24/7. Questioning this baseless vitriol is equated with treason. Both sides of the congressional aisle scream for blood – Russian blood – and the prospects for WWIII are real and terrifying!
Not that such mass psychosis is anything new. Manufactured crisis is one product line we haven’t offshored to China. It’s a nefarious web of deceptions at which our own Deep State excels. Which is why the U.S. never runs out of enemies and why it’s always at war. Our Nobel Peace Prize president was actively engaged in military conflict with seven countries. Obama dropped 26,171 bombs on foreign soil, just his final year in office. A “peace time” record?
Assuring the public that we’re not wasting tax dollars, that as global policeman, we’re killing people who really deserve it, that we’re eliminating serious threats to the security of America, that we’re “fighting them over there so we don’t end up fighting them here,” is a lot of work and not always as easy as it looks. Nothing reflecting favorably on the “enemy” can be allowed. America’s vile nemesis must be marginalized, dehumanized, demonized. Their leaders must be portrayed as devils, Hitlers, evil incarnate. The evil country, its citizens, its leadership, its democracy-hating government must be blamed for every mishap, no matter how unrelated. Experts must offer ever more outrageous prognostications about what nefarious plans said enemy is conjuring in order to inflict more horrors on the U.S. and its loyal allies.
With a lot of practice, the U.S. propaganda machine has gotten very good at all of this. For example, the day after Russia started its special military operation to eliminate the growing military threat NATO was creating in Ukraine, we were instructed – and dutifully did our patriotic duty by enthusiastically complying – to hate Russian music, dance, art, literature, sports figures. Even Russian cats and dogs were barred from appearing in pet shows in the West. Western businesses based in Russia packed up and left, losing billions of dollars, rather than be around those despicable, foul, savage Russians. Air space was closed to any aircraft or carrier that had any affiliation with Russia. Offices of Russian media outlets in the West were shut down. It was truly the most viciously thorough campaign of cultural genocide in recent history. And yes, U.S. citizens have in hordes stepped up to the plate and carried their weight. Saying anything even moderately nice about Russia in America – especially Vladimir Putin – risks at minimum a barrage of expletives, a possible beating, even gunshot wounds. Order a White Russian from a bartender at your own risk.
‘Hate’ like ‘love’ is a four-letter word. But apparently the former is a much easier sell. Or perhaps, considering the frustrations and anger which seem to be mounting as chaos and dysfunction in everyday life become more the norm, people were and are uniquely primed for some heavy-duty animus.
It’s a truly disheartening comment on human nature.
One final point.
Like Anthrax spores, hatred is almost impossible to put back in the bottle. It’s contagious and grows exponentially. We hate Russia, we hate North Korea, we hate Assad of Syria, we hate the Ayatollah of Iran, we hate Cuba, we hate Venezuela. We need to hate China much more. Yes, we’re lagging a little in that department. After all … Covid-19, communism, TikTok.
The problem is, hate knows no borders. Inevitably, it comes back home. Now we see the acid-drip is corroding the vital fabric of American society. The Democrats hate Trump. Republicans hate Biden. MSNBC viewers hate Fox viewers. The vaccinated hate the unvaccinated. Of course, all enlightened people are derelict if they don’t hate haters. Haters would be anyone who is a transphobe, homophobe, racist, a racism denier, anti-Semite, an anti-Semitism denier, anyone who questions the positive impact of BLM and mRNA vaccines or the necessity of internet censorship, puberty blockers for children, 5G, 3-D printed meat, or 80+ genders. No reason to talk to any of these people. Just hate them.
By the way, as haters of all that should be hated, we should be proud we live in the most democratic, wealthiest, most powerful, most just and free nation in history! We are exceptional and indispensable, God is on our side, and we are chosen by destiny to rule the entire known universe. Thus, everything we do is good and wonderful. That even includes hating!
Yes, this is how disconnect works. It operates by its own rules, has no time for mind-muddling distractions like facts, logic, reason, objectivity, respectful debate, historical perspective, common sense, common decency, love of truth.
D is for disconnect.
D is for deception.
D is for dystopia.
[This is an excerpt from my book, Electing A Kennedy Congress, a thoroughly misunderstood and mindlessly maligned attempt at restoring our country to a recognizable version of itself, one which aligns with the grossly misleading, totally fabricated image it peddles to its citizens and the world. That would be an America I am proud of!]
The post D is for Disconnect first appeared on Dissident Voice.
This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by John Rachel.