Not Without Incident: Questioning Big Brother's Platitudes

“And my response is, being asked this question is being asked: Do I prefer cholera, or do I prefer gonorrhea?”[i]– Julian Assange

“I conclude, then, returning to being feared and loved, that since men love at their convenience and fear at the convenience of the prince, a wise prince should found himself on what is his, not on what is someone else’s; ‘ he should only contrive to avoid hatred, as was said.”[ii]– Niccolò Machiavelli

The latest declared strategy of the Democratic party ahead of the 2022 midterm elections is to scare voters about Trump and his sinister plot to overthrow democracy. This has been their strategy for a while now, it is just out in the open now. Donny Deutsch, in an appearance on Morning Joe on MSNBC, said that since the Democratic party does not have the economy on their side, they need to terrify voters into believing that the ‘great replacement theory’ is a part of the Republican party and their platform.[iii] Deutsch remarked emphatically that the Democrats must “scare the bejesus out of people.”[iv] As Frank Furedi argues, where fear used to be connected to concrete ideas, like the fear of death or the fear of starvation, now “many see the very act of fearing as a threat in itself.”[v] Fear is an act used by the Washington establishment to retain control. Fear about Trump and his movement returning to power in 2024 via fascistic means is being spread to assist the Democratic party in the upcoming midterms. In an interview with Politico, legal expert Rick Hasen referred to Trump’s behavior after the 2020 election as a “dress rehearsal”, and what is to come next is what we should be terrified about.[vi] Hasen says “I’m up at night with it on my mind, even in the off-season. It is the greatest political threat this country faces.”[vii] After mentioning threats like climate change, he says “But in terms of our political process, nothing comes close.”[viii] Apart from it being ridiculous and childish that adults are having trouble sleeping over Trump and his supposed dire threat to democracy, this is the sort of fearmongering that is contradicted by the Democratic party funding candidates who believe that Trump won the 2020 election. The reality of what the Democratic party is enacting and funding versus the rhetoric that they and their media drool buckets spew is stark, and it reveals an obscene cynicism. These MAGA lunatics are a means of distraction, just like Trump is.

The DNC is taking on the role of a P.T Barnum, putting together a freakshow and handing out tickets, though what they don’t realize is that they too are part of the freakshow. In the words of George Carlin, “When you’re born you get a ticket to the freak show. When you’re born in America, you get a front row seat.”[ix] Trumps use as a distraction was exploited to disastrous ends, as Eric Ortiz summarizes, on the heroism of Julian Assange exposing the corruption within the Clinton campaign in 2016, remarks that, “Trump is the distraction, a first-rate heel, exploited by the Hillary Clinton campaign and Democratic National Committee.”[x] The fearmongering did not work. When the truth behind why Trump was given so much airtime and coverage was revealed, there was little accountability or explanations offered. It was exposed as empty and politically exploitative. Many people did not fall for the scare tactics and either did not vote, or, as Assange points out, they opted for the “Trump hand grenade”[xi] That the Clinton machine never considered the possibility of their strategy failing, and were truly stunned by Trump’s victory, betrays their disconnect with voters. The silly ‘Pied Piper’ strategy pursued by the Hilary Clinton campaign resulted in the election of Trump in 2016. Still, they pursue this strategy, funding MAGA aligned candidates in elections across the country as they are considered easy to beat. If any of them accidentally get elected, inevitably there will be blame thrown at voters, Russia, or some other spectral force other than Democratic party corruption and meddling in politics. As Barry Glassner argues in his book Culture of Fear, in stirring up fear, bad people are substitutes for bad policy.[xii] He uses the example of road rage and the threat posed by enraged drivers, and instead of fixing issues like traffic congestion, singular instances of road rage are focused on and make headlines.[xiii] Trump, his proteges, and voters are the bad people focused on instead of the underlying problems that allow him to thrive. However, Trump and his movement seem to have an unlikely group of supporters- the Democratic party and unwittingly, their donors. Where is the outrage over this? Why are the same people who rant and rave about the alarming threat to the sanctity of democracy funding the harbingers of that threat? Either they don’t believe it and it’s purely a media ploy to stir fear in the public, or they are stupid shills and have their heads in the sand. This should be plastered over all the main papers and news outlets, not as something that’s happening, but as evidence of the sordid and corrupt Democratic party.

The Pied Piper strategy led to Trump being elected, and aside from some firings, there was little to no accountability for the media and the Clinton campaign contributing to Trump’s victory. Voters are blamed. They should have known better than to vote Trump. Many fools swallowed this lie, that voters are responsible for the mess the Democratic and Republican parties are in. The conservative elite are to blame as well, and they boo and shake their heads in disapproval at people who still support Trump and MAGA aligned candidates. The Bush era is a contributing factor to Trump’s rise as well, and its leftovers like Liz Cheney are considered saviors of democracy for opposing him. Republican party infighting occurs over these candidates and over Trump’s role in the party. The Democratic party funds its own defeat, gambling on crazies in a time like this is lunacy. Trump winning should have proven that. People still foolishly pledge their vote to the Democratic party despite all this sleaze. The war on Trump is still cheered on as our primary battle. The battleground set up by the Biden administration is them versus the MAGA Republicans.[xiv] According to retiring Democratic Representative John Yarmuth of Kentucky, “If we win, it’s because we scared the crap out of people about the maniacs who will be in charge.”[xv] This view of politics, that fear is a tool to be used, proves that Trump’s opposition is far more insidious than he could ever hope to be. The Democratic party is, as Glen Ford argued, “the more effective evil.”[xvi] Whether they will admit it publicly or not, the DNC and the Democratic party is Trump’s shadow base. Contrary to what Yarmuth says, they are the maniacs currently in charge, and voting Republican will only switch maniacs.

The Pied Piper strategy has never worked out. It backfired horrendously in 2016 in Clinton’s face and gave America Trump. These results will likely be repeated in 2022 and 2024. Trump steps on rakes constantly, but he is given gifts by the Democratic party. The Pied Piper strategy is poor planning. The Democratic party evidently wants Trump to be their opponent in 2024, as after his loss in 2020 they feel that he is beatable. Some in Republican circles think that Trump will not run because being a two-time loser would be too much for his ego. Whether he will run or not is hotly contested and creates divisions between and within both parties. Seeing Trump as a sure-fire way to stay in power is a huge mistake. The war on Trump helps him immensely. Although he is praised by the right for being a ‘fighter’, his successes since 2016 are owed more to the reckless fervor of his opposition. As Sun Tzu says, “Hence to fight and conquer in all your battles is not supreme excellence; supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy’s resistance without fighting.”[xvii] Although Trump is fighting, that is not what breaks his opposition. The wounds of both are self-inflicted, and Clinton’s campaign was a spectacular failure. Trump did not win because he performed extremely well or via political savvy. Picking him as an opponent may have worked if it wasn’t Clinton running. The arrogance of the Clinton dynasty resulted in a failure to tap into the working and displaced class voters needed to win the battleground states. Her ‘ground game’, was a complete failure, and the more she spoke to people, the worse she did. She even notes in her book What Happened, that maybe people just didn’t like her.[xviii] Many people may not have liked Trump, but in a change election, a candidate who embodies the establishment will always fare horribly. This is ignored by the pied piper strategy, which is solely focused on winning this election. As Christian Parenti points out in a critique of Clinton’s campaign, they were “Too busy congratulating themselves and concurring with each other, the Clintonites couldn’t even get the rudiments of the campaign correct.”[xix] Perhaps if the DNC strategists forced themselves out of their bubble for a bit, they may have realized how voters were feeling about the direction of the country and the animus there was, and is, towards the Washington establishment. Fomenting outrage at Trump supporters and at figures like Assange and Jill Stein is a means of passing the blame.

Hilary Clinton, in her deranged manifesto on the 2016 election, What Happened, blames everyone but herself.[xx] Her inability to offer introspection represents an issue that plagues the legacy media and the political establishment in Washington. She describes election night and the following day as a harrowing experience for her, and writes “In the morning, it was real. November 9 dawned raw and rainy. I tried to drink some orange juice, but I didn’t have any appetite. I had a job to do. That’s what I focused on. By the light of day, I saw more clearly what I needed to say.”[xxi] If the idea of Trump being president was so despairing, why not admit here that she had role in elevating Trump? Clinton also taught a Masterclass on leadership. If one wanted to learn how to manipulate and coerce your way into power, and how to exude entitlement and to see political leadership as a birthright instead of an earned position, then a class led by her is perfect. She currently warns of a second coming of Trump. Like a mutating viral strain, her and her ilk of arrogant, sociopathic neoliberals never go away. They keep reappearing on news panels, podcasts, and books. Unless she publicly acknowledges her role in creating Trump, not just in the 2016 campaign, but in her time in the Clinton administration, as a senator, and in the Obama administration, and all the destructive policies she oversaw and voted for, her words are meaningless.

They may be inadvertent supporters, but the DNC and the Democratic party are supporting Trump through their refusal to reflect on Clinton’s loss in 2016 and the continued appeal of Trump heading into the midterms and 2024, and via donor funding they are literal supporters of MAGA candidates. This should be the story. There is so much to unravel here, however, the insular media within the US and across the Western world will not pick this up, as they are inconvenient truths. It would require the media to acknowledge their role in creating Trump, although they predicted he couldn’t possibly win the election. Pollsters and the liberal class need to self-evaluate. They are evidently building a new Frankenstein. Before it was Trump, and now it is Trump plus MAGA members of congress and the senate. The Pied Piper strategy is a proven disaster, so why are they still pursuing it? Why are they not being called out more? Are the Democrats more psychopathic or idiotic? Probably both. It may be true that Trump and his likenesses are as well, but as Assange said when asked about which candidate he’d prefer, he said that it was like choosing between “cholera or gonorrhea,”[xxii] Assange said that he saw no difference between Clinton and Trump, admitting that he timed his release of the scandalous emails before the 2016 election.[xxiii] While many see this as evidence that Assange was working on Trump or Russia’s behalf against Clinton, he simply recognized the truth, that the presidential candidates on offer every four years are metaphorically diseased.  

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[i] Democracy Now! “Full Interview: Julian Assange on Trump, DNC Emails, Russia, the CIA, Vault 7 & More.” Accessed July 13, 2022. https://www.democracynow.org/2017/4/12/full_interview_julian_assange_on_trump.

[ii] Machiavelli, Niccolò. The Prince. Translated by Harvey C. Mansfield. 2nd ed. Chicago, Ill: University of Chicago Press, 1998. Pg. 68

[iii] Parks, Kristine. “Donny Deutsch: Democrats Losing on Economy, so We Need to ‘scare’ Voters against ‘Racist’ GOP | Fox News.” Accessed July 13, 2022. https://www.foxnews.com/media/donny-deutsch-dems-losing-on-economy-so-scare-voters-against-racist-gop.

[iv] Parks. “Donny Deutsch: Democrats Losing on Economy”

[v] Furedi, Frank. “The Only Thing We Have to Fear Is the ‘Culture of Fear’ Itself,” April 4, 2007. https://www.spiked-online.com/2007/04/04/the-only-thing-we-have-to-fear-is-the-culture-of-fear-itself/.

[vi] Stanton, Zack. “What If 2020 Was Just a Rehearsal?” POLITICO. Accessed July 13, 2022. https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2021/09/26/trump-politics-american-democracy-threat-2021-2022-analysis-514180.

[vii] Stanton. “What If 2020 Was Just a Rehearsal?”

[viii] Stanton. “What If 2020 Was Just a Rehearsal?”

[ix] FoundationINTERVIEWS. George Carlin on God, the Planet, and “the Freak Show” – EMMYTVLEGENDS.ORG, 2011. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i9CjBtv7j78.

[x] Ortiz, Eric. “WikiLeaks Should Be Applauded for Removing the Mask of U.S. Power.” Truthdig: Expert Reporting, Current News, Provocative Columnists. Accessed July 13, 2022. https://www.truthdig.com/articles/wikileaks-applauded-removing-mask-u-s-power/.

[xi] Democracy Now! “Full Interview: Julian Assange on Trump, DNC Emails, Russia, the CIA, Vault 7 & More.”

[xii] Glassner, Barry. The Culture of Fear: Why Americans Are Afraid of the Wrong Things. 2nd ed. Basic Books, 2000.

[xiii] Glassner. The Culture of Fear

[xiv] Ferris, Sarah. “Dems Unite Jan. 6 and Roe for New Battleground Target: ‘MAGA’ Republicans.” POLITICO. Accessed July 13, 2022. https://www.politico.com/news/2022/07/01/house-dems-midterm-strategy-maga-republicans-00043630.

[xv] Ferris. “Dems Unite Jan. 6 and Roe for New Battleground Target”

[xvi] Ford, Glen. “Why Barack Obama Is the More Effective Evil.” Black Agenda Report, March 21, 2012. http://blackagendareport.com/content/why-barack-obama-more-effective-evil.

[xvii] Tzu, Sun. The Art of War. Collins Classics. London: Harper Press, 2013. Pg. 9

[xviii]Rodham Clinton, Hillary. What Happened. U.K: Simon and Schuster, 2017., and Zurcher, Anthony. “What Happened: The Long List of Who Hillary Clinton Blames.” BBC News, September 12, 2017, sec. US & Canada. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-41244474.

[xix] Parenti, Christian. “Garbage In, Garbage Out.” Accessed July 13, 2022. https://jacobin.com/2016/11/clinton-campaign-gotv-unions-voters-rust-belt.

[xx] Rodham Clinton. What Happened

[xxi] Rodham Clinton. What Happened

[xxii]Politico. “Assange: US Election Is like Choosing between ‘Holera or Gonorrhea’.” POLITICO. POLITICO, July 27, 2016. https://www.politico.eu/article/us-election-is-like-choosing-between-cholera-or-gonorrhea/?fbclid=IwAR0K-WGSFZYIst0UmS_na5C52oTAUctV-bAVnyoZkCoRiuu8xnBTqFd1UHc.

[xxiii] Politico. “Assange: US Election Is like Choosing between ‘Holera or Gonorrhea’.”

Bibliography

Ferris, Sarah. “Dems Unite Jan. 6 and Roe for New Battleground Target: ‘MAGA’ Republicans.” POLITICO. Accessed July 13, 2022. https://www.politico.com/news/2022/07/01/house-dems-midterm-strategy-maga-republicans-00043630.

Ford, Glen. “Why Barack Obama Is the More Effective Evil.” Black Agenda Report, March 21, 2012. http://blackagendareport.com/content/why-barack-obama-more-effective-evil.

FoundationINTERVIEWS. George Carlin on God, the Planet, and “the Freak Show” – EMMYTVLEGENDS.ORG, 2011. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i9CjBtv7j78.

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Furedi, Frank. “The Only Thing We Have to Fear Is the ‘Culture of Fear’ Itself,” April 4, 2007. https://www.spiked-online.com/2007/04/04/the-only-thing-we-have-to-fear-is-the-culture-of-fear-itself/.

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Parks, Kristine. “Donny Deutsch: Democrats Losing on Economy, so We Need to ‘scare’ Voters against ‘Racist’ GOP | Fox News.” Accessed July 13, 2022. https://www.foxnews.com/media/donny-deutsch-dems-losing-on-economy-so-scare-voters-against-racist-gop.

Politico. “Assange: US Election Is like Choosing between ‘Holera or Gonorrhea’.” POLITICO. POLITICO, July 27, 2016. https://www.politico.eu/article/us-election-is-like-choosing-between-cholera-or-gonorrhea/?fbclid=IwAR0K-WGSFZYIst0UmS_na5C52oTAUctV-bAVnyoZkCoRiuu8xnBTqFd1UHc.

Rodham Clinton, Hillary. What Happened. U.K: Simon and Schuster, 2017.

Stanton, Zack. “What If 2020 Was Just a Rehearsal?” POLITICO. Accessed July 13, 2022. https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2021/09/26/trump-politics-american-democracy-threat-2021-2022-analysis-514180.

Tzu, Sun. The Art of War. Collins Classics. London: Harper Press, 2013.

Zurcher, Anthony. “What Happened: The Long List of Who Hillary Clinton Blames.” BBC News, September 12, 2017, sec. US & Canada. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-41244474.