@Lash,
Quote:It seems like we agree for the most part about the influence of the Deep State (or shadow govt or unelected power behind our govt--whatever euphemism you use), so I don't understand why you get so balled up in the puppet show and ignore the string-pullers?
I've been writing about the bastardization and corruption of politics by money and corporate interests for three decades. More recently, no one here has been pointing to the deep and profound influence of the Koch network more often than myself.
I've never used the phrase "puppet show" with an attending connotation that it properly describes US politics. I'm not nearly that cynical. But I do acknowledge that democracy waxes and wanes and that we are often on or near the precipice where democratic norms and institutions can be seriously degraded. One element that saves us are all those people in and around government who work very hard to keep things on an even keel. Another, of course, is citizens who work to the same end. Another is people in news media who (as the cliche has it) afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted.
President Sanders? I've read nothing that has led me to conclude that he would have won the last election or that if he had won, he might have much room to implement his policy notions. The institutionalized machinery that stands in his way is too entrenched, too wealthy, too powerful.
Not long ago, Chomsky noted in an interview that the most common question he is asked is, "What can I do to help?" He said, "It's the same as it has always been - get informed and join with others in activism". Implicit in this observation/recommendation is, I think, Chomsky's understanding that positive change happens incrementally, not via revolution (in the dramatic, immediate sense some hope for or imagine possible). And we should know this from the examples of every positive social movement I can think of. And even negative examples (modern conservatism from the Powell memo in the early 70s up to today).
When Sanders first announced, I had a mixed reaction. On the one hand, I thought it a good and necessary thing if the Dems could be moved further to the left (continuing the trajectory of Obama). On the other hand, I knew that the Republicans very much wanted to stand against Sanders rather than Clinton but past that, that they would effectively use Sanders as a means of attacking Clinton from the left so as to sew discord and dissent among Dem voters, promoting doubts about Clinton as a true rep of Dem values (100% predictable strategy). And they did.
