Britain has the Conservative and Labour parties. We have the GOP and Dems. France’s two main parties are the Socialist Party and Republican Party, while Germany’s are the Social Democratic and Christian Democratic parties. Western democracies tend to have two major parties, whether their system of government is parliamentary or like ours.  In parliamentary systems, more sharing of power is done, because a multitude of minor parties often guarantees that two or more parties have to join forces to govern—no party has a simple majority. In any case, these are all representative democracies.

Conservative voters should be happy, though. For the most part, representative democracy is more conservative than progressive, because majority opinion often puts brakes on any radical ideas. In this sense, conservative parties are superfluous. It often takes the domination of one party, often despotic, like in Venezuela, or in faux democracies (the German Democratic Republic AKA East Germany was a prime example), for the majority to wake upa an spur on radical, progressive change. For the most part, people just try to get on with their own lives and hope THEIR representatives don’t screw things up too much.

When I first arrived in Colombia, Conservatives and Liberals took turns. That was an agreement reached after toppling the dictator Rojas Pinilla, who had forcibly ended La Violencia, that terrible civil war between—you guessed it—Conservatives and Liberals. For years, government in Colombia was a shadow representative democracy, although elections for lower legislative positions were “representative.” Democracy is messy, so people often turn to strong men (or women) who will clean things up. There are still people in Spain who yearn for Franco, for example. “You could walk safely in the streets of Madrid late at night,” one guest at a dinner party there once told me. Fascism appeals to people who see chaos all around them.

Franco’s appeal is Trump’s appeal in the U.S. now. People want to walk safely in the streets late at night. They don’t want to be terrorized by criminals of any stripe. They want to feel safe, have good jobs, educate their children, and forget about government. Now they feel that the old way of doing things isn’t working. Sanders’s appeal is often said to serve that same purpose. But it was the other pole of the magnet. Yes, people wanted change, but they didn’t want to turn to fascism either. Sanders’s revolution also was attractive to many not satisfied with the old way of doing things, but his supporters looked toward a brighter future, not a return to the dark past of Franco, Hitler, Mussolini, and the Japanese Empire, or the faux democracies Russia has often suffered from and promoted, or Donald Trump.

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Most dust from the fallout of the hacked DNC emails has settled by now (Hillary and friends seem to have problems with that antiquated communications medium–maybe she should have used Twitter, but what’s the hashtag for TOP SECRET). I’m still writing this post, though, because I’m still pissed. Not surprised, mind you—I never was—but still pissed. (OK, maybe I was surprised that we saw a wee bit of the tip of that iceberg made from the toxic waters of dirty politics.) I can now refine last Tuesday’s post that spoke about general corruption in the democratic process in both parties by analyzing how the DNC committed election fraud in their rush to get Hillary nominated and Bernie thwarted, probably all under the auspices of Clinton Inc.

Every Bernie supporter knows the Dem establishment rigged the game. (Warren spoke of a “rigged system” at the Convention, but that was a poor choice of words and flew in the faces of Bernie supporters—the email leaks only added to the narrower meaning.) The more he surged, the more desperate they got, and the more they strived to thwart his efforts. While you can bet Clinton Inc was behind all this, although her cohorts ensured deniability, the DNC, led by Wasserman Schultz, represent the gang of hitmen the Clinton mafia used. Clinton is the capo; Wasserman Schultz the stooge-assassin. Yeah, it’s character assassination of Bernie, but it was still an assassination.

Forget for the moment the super delegates and arcane primary events like flipping a coin in caucuses (although both are still open wounds for me). Forget for the moment scurrilous Bill standing outside polls, cajoling voters to vote for his wife (he also courted those super delegates—promises of rewards and special favors if she wins?). Forget for the moment all the evidence indicating that the Clintons are kissing the butts of one-percenters so their entire family can join that crowd (Chelsea’s already married to one, of course, so we know where her loyalty lies). The emails are an indictment: Released by Wikileaks, they show a concerted effort to attack Bernie and tilt the scales in Hillary’s favor by the DNC. The Russian connection (even if it’s true, it’s a distraction engineered by the Clinton camp to diminish outrage at the real problem) doesn’t change the damning content of those emails—Wasserman Schultz and her cohorts in the DNC were out to get Bernie. That’s election fraud.

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I’ve always said true conservatism has its place. In our haste to polarize the country’s political discourse, progressives give conservatives a bad name and vice versa. But putting the brakes on really radical ideas in order to study their consequences, so often lacking in wild-eyed progressives, especially one-issue voters, is a sane course. The law of unintended consequences applies to both conservative and progressive thinkers, of course, because not changing something might have worse consequences than changing it. “Making progress” implies striving to make things better, not worse. Logic and reason, also so often missing in today’s political discourse, seemed to be more prevalent in our nation’s history, probably because the media didn’t have as much reach and was less into sensationalism.

All that said, Daily KOS, who has become my least favorite progressive newsletter (being blindly for Hillary Clinton is hardly being progressive—the Clinton machine is a throwback to Tammany Hall and the Daley machine in Chicago), came out with an interesting list of items current conservatives would rather have people ignore in “Independence Day Special: A Dozen Facts About America Conservatives Would Like You to Forget” by Richard Riis. The 4^th is already past but the conventions are upon us, police brutality issues and the Dallas murderer are now part of our bloody history, so these points might still be interesting. Here they are with my comments:

Conservatives opposed the Founding Fathers, the American Revolution and a lot of other righteous stuff as well. The nation’s Fathers were radicals, pure and simple, and stealthily planned the whole thing. Their lofty ideals, while noble, sprung from the onerous financial situation of the colonies. The militias (the only ones the Founding Fathers wanted to guarantee arms to—they’re now our National Guards) were terrorists as far as the Brits were concerned. They hid behind trees and took potshots at the Redcoats in Lexington and Concord. The true conservatives in the colonies were called Tories and swore allegiance to King George.

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Bernie’s grassroots campaign shook up the Dem establishment. While the old guard, especially older establishment blacks, don’t want any changes in the organization of Dem primaries, younger voters—and by that I mean many people forty-years-old or less—are demanding a change to a more democratic selection of the Dem nominee. But that’s not all! Those same people want nothing to do with the Clinton dynasty.

Even Wall Street is thinking twice about Mrs. Bill Clinton because “Pocahontas” Warren is making noise as a potential veep. (Probably won’t happen, though. Warren labeled Clinton as a Wall Street sycophant in a recent book.) Sanders’s supporters should remember that Warren is a traitor to their cause—she didn’t endorse Bernie in Massachusetts—but Wall Street is still nervous because she pretends to be anti-corporate largesse and anti-Wall Street excess at least, and Clinton is mouthing some of Bernie’s words to mollify Bernie’s supporters. Wall Street just might end up backing Trump over Clinton for these reasons. That would waste all those nice efforts by Hillary to court Wall Street execs with her soothing “I’m on your side” speeches—what a hypocrite!

The Democratic Party establishment must fear two things about all those younger voters in Bernie’s camp: (1) they’re likely to sit out the 2016 general election now or vote for another candidate—I’m voting Green; and (2) they ARE THE FUTURE for progressive action in America—well, maybe not ye olde curmudgeon (I’ll probably either be dead or the country will be if progressive thought doesn’t become reality soon)—but those young voters, especially millennials, will carry the progressive torch (maybe literally?). The Clinton machine isn’t likely to win over those young voters, so said machine and the Dem establishment have to make it an anti-Trump campaign. But idealists get tired of voting for the lesser of two evils when both evils are so flawed—I certainly am, and I’ve been doing it since the sixties.

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This question is generated by the goings-on in New York now. The leader of the corrections workers union was just indicted. Several cops in managerial positions in the NYPD were indicted. Two state legislature VIPs, one from the Assembly and the other from the Senate, are going to jail for taking bribes. Bill de Blasio’s mayoral campaign has been accused of illegally channeling donations to candidates for that state legislature to try to ensure a Democratic legislature that is favorable to the mayor and his policies. I won’t name names, except for the mayor, who figures prominently in the discussion, because these cases haven’t been decided, and I wouldn’t be surprised if many of them were partisan motivated.

The question also has a NJ motivation, Bridgegate. How much did Chris Christie, ardent Trump supporter, even of his latest racist attack on a judge born in Indiana, really know about the payback plot against a NJ mayor not supporting Christie in an re-election bid? Two Christie confidants are already indicted. Someone on the list of suspects not indicted has filed a motion not to release that list. Again, partisan motivation might be suspected, first for coming up with Bridgegate scheme, and second for going after Christie.

Tip O’Neill stated that all politics is local. I would suggest there’s a corollary: politicians train for corruption locally. Corruption can include unethical but not illegal behavior—state legislators carving out congressional districts that guarantee one party’s dominance falls into that category. Corruption can include perverse or sketchy actions by a politician in the public spotlight. Wiener and Spitzer fall into this category—again, not illegal actions, but something that makes the general public wonder about a politician’s other ethical choices. And corruption can also include numerous illegal activities, often for personal gain. The media often can’t distinguish these types of corruption and declares them all scandalous; the majority of the electorate just follows what the media says, at least that particular brand of media they read, watch, or listen to.

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Does anyone else see the hypocrisy in Mr. Obama’s trip to Hiroshima? Or, at least the irony? OK, as a guy who wordsmiths full-time now, what the president said is both ironic and hypocritical. His basic message was that everyone has to work toward a nuke-free world. No apology for dropping the bomb (more on this later), but that message was clear. It was hypocritical because the U.S. isn’t doing that, and it’s ironic if Mr. Obama really knows he’s being hypocritical.

The nuclear powers of the world—and they include Israel—don’t want others to join that exclusive club. Their nukes allow them to strut and posture instead of walking softly, and to wave a very big stick to the rest of the world. If you assume that their arrogance is accompanied by restraint, that’s OK, but that’s quite an assumption. The Cold War avoided nuclear Armageddon only because the sticks of the two parties guaranteed a no-win situation—both the U.S. and U.S.S.R. would have been destroyed.

That was a precarious situation, as the Cuban Missile Crisis showed. While that balancing act still continues with a shriveled Russia taking the place of the U.S.S.R., there are other states who can shake the stick—Israel, in spite of denials, has nukes, and that psychotic despot in North Korea is starving his people so he can shake that stick too. Iran was going down that road. It’s not clear that a détente between two theocracies in the Middle East, Iran and Israel, would be a good thing—Israel has shown some restraint, but Iran is unpredictable.

The Iran/Israel case also reflects U.S. hypocrisy. Jump on Iran for the good of peace in the Middle East? What about jumping on Israel? They’re both theocracies, and the current leaders of Israel often seem just as conservative as the Ayatollahs. There’s probably a guilt trip lurking in the background here. The predominantly Christian West, sitting between Judaism and Islam historically for the most part, would just toss a coin—again from the religious point of view—if it weren’t for guilt about the Holocaust.

Of course, I’m even wrong treating the Jewish Holocaust as unique. The Armenian Holocaust occurred earlier (World War One era, not World War Two–Germany just incurred the wrath of the Turks by calling it a holocaust) and others have occurred too—Cambodia and Yugoslavia, to name a few. Even the U.S. interned presumed enemies, Japanese-Americans during World War Two. All this was terrible; none of it is unique because human beings do terrible things to other human beings en masse on a regular basis.

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[If you’re looking for “Monday Words of Wisdom,” you’ll find them at the end of this article.]

…and it tells me a lot about the NJ primary election. First, the top line corresponds to NJ’s Dem establishment—the slate of officially sanctioned NJ Dem committee blah-blah-blah’s candidates. I’ll ignore that whole line and not just because Mrs. Bill Clinton leads that linear parade. I have no use for the Dem establishment anymore. It’s shown it’s true colors. Arrogant, entitled, presumptuous, anti-progressive—those are the best adjectives I have to describe it. The worst ones aren’t appropriate for a PG-13 blog post.

Second, Mrs. Bill Clinton gets top billing over Sanders. The town fathers can argue for that as simple alphabetical order. Or maybe it was decided by a coin toss—like those “fair” coin tosses Hillary won in many of those silly caucuses. I know a lot of people see Democrat and vote the top line. NJ is a blue state, the Dem establishment always wins here, so nobody bothers to look at the issues anymore. The leading local Dem group is called the Blue Wave—read “DNC Annex.”

Besides, Clinton is a well-known face, it’s time for a woman to be in the White House, that Sanders is just a spoiler, yadda-yadda-yadda. This is assuming Dem voters even bother to show up. NJ’s is among the last primaries, people have better things to do (the NBA championship games are in full swing and the irises are in bloom in the local Iris Gardens), and summer has already started so the South Shore beckons.

I hear that “spoiler” criticism about Mr. Sanders a lot. The electorate has no memory. Mrs. Bill Clinton won the 2008 CA primary over Mr. Obama in 2008—she was a “spoiler” by Sanders’s naysayers’ definition! How dare Feinstein and all her old Hillary cronies call for Sanders to drop out. Sexism can go both ways, old Dem has-beens! How ‘bout asking yourselves which candidate is more likely to beat Satan aka Mr. Trump? Mrs. Bill Clinton is going to struggle—you can bet on that. But Mr. Trump chickened out on debating Mr. Sanders. So did Mrs. Bill Clinton.

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[This post is long, but it’s important.  The future of our nation is at stake.  Read on, please.]

It’s enough trouble that Mrs. Bill Clinton is running neck-and-neck with Mr. Donald Trump in a recent ABC News/Washington Post Poll—IN VOTER DISAPPROVAL RATINGS as well as popular vote.  Mr. Sanders is consistently doing better against Mr. Trump in national polls.  She can’t generate any enthusiasm; Mr. Sanders generates the crowds.  The news media wrote off that Carson, CA crowd cheering Bernie Sanders as “a few thousands turned out in support of Mr. Sanders.”  Mrs. Bill Clinton “packs” a small hall but with only a few hundred!  As Mr. Trump has stated in his inimitable insulting manner, the problem Mrs. Bill Clinton is having is that she can’t “put Bernie away.”  He recently won Oregon outright by 10 percentage points and fought her to a virtual tie in Kentucky, a state she carried overwhelmingly against Mr. Obama in the 2008 primaries.  Mr. Sanders won’t go away, he has nothing to lose, and, even if he did go away, his voters just might spurn the Clinton dynasty and sit this one out.

But not before making noise.  There will be more crowds in California as that primary draws near.  There will be crowds in NJ (there already are—last Saturday right here in Montclair).  Mr. Sanders has an energetic following.  It’s amazing that this old guy can generate this kind of energy.  It’s not so amazing that the old gal can’t.  He wiped that imperious entitlement grin off her face early.  As we’ve progressed through the primary season, those who didn’t know her learned about her and didn’t like what they saw and heard. She’s flawed, lyin’, and connivin’, and her smug, waffling husband is even worse (maybe less smug now than a year ago?).

She wants that old philanderer to solve the economic problems?  Please, not another NAFTA!  Not another crime bill (how is it that blacks support this deadly duo again?)!  On the other hand, the more people hear about Mr. Sanders, the more they like him—except those old blacks and Hispanics and others swallowing the Dem establishment’s lies and forgetting about the she-devil’s negative attacks on Mr. Obama in 2008 that were stealthy racist appeals directed at white voters.

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The pundits don’t know what to do with Trump and Sanders.  The parties don’t know either.  Both candidates are tapping into the smoldering anger that has turned into a conflagration in this campaign.  Both are anti-establishment candidates.  There the similarity ends.  Trump has been a one-percenter all his life, his political choices always determined by his analysis of the deal: what does he get out of it (or America, we hope)?  He’s a narcissistic sociopath (that’s a diagnosis of a mental condition, not an insult…and not one of Trump’s words that needs bleeping) and a real streetfighter—if you hit him, he hits back.

Whereas Trump has absolutely no political experience—even his touted business acumen and displays of one-percenter excesses received a huge initial boost from daddy’s gift—Sanders’s story is the truer American success story.  His father was a Polish immigrant and his mother was second generation in another Polish-Russian immigrant family.  Yeah, those immigrants Trump loves to hate.  Clinton fails by comparison too.  Where Sanders has been consistent and loyal to his principles, she’s been all over the board and unprincipled.  I love consistency, and I respect someone who sticks to their principles.

I’ve been consistent my whole life too, my only tweak being the development of a hawkish counterterrorism mentality because of 9/11 (Sanders has to work on that in particular and foreign policy in general, but I’m still more in tune with Bernie’s worldview than with Hillary’s).  For most domestic issues, Sanders and I are like twins.  OK, maybe I don’t like it when unions tolerate and try to hide incompetence—I don’t like incompetence anywhere and don’t want people to get paid for it—but that’s a nit I won’t bother to pick.  He’s the candidate whose viewpoints come closest to mine; there’s an enormous gap between him and everyone else.

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Because titles aren’t subject to copyright, I’m stealing Garcia Marquez’s title from his novella (“Cronica de una Muerte Anunciada” in the Spanish original, the version I read).  It seems appropriate to describe the situation in American politics this election year.  The American political system is on its deathbed, many factions are responsible for the attempted murder, and I foretold that many times in these pages.  Yeah, that’s flagrant pessimism and paranoia.  But you know the adage about paranoia, and this situation is horribly real.

Let’s take the 2016 presidency first because many things hinge on the campaign results (not that they matter much in general, only in the details).  On one hand, you have a tired old banshee and her philandering husband who want to continue their dynasty.  They seem to be successful at collecting the delegates and are the favorites of the Democratic establishment.  Their success is largely attributable to pandering to minorities, Blacks in particular, especially in the old South.  Because minorities are known to vote against their own interests, the Clintons are on a roll.

On the other hand, you have a narcissistic and fascist demagogue whose solution for every problem is attack, attack, attack, whether verbally or with physical force.  Because he’s confronting such a weak field of GOP candidates in the primaries, he has steamrollered almost all of them and is successfully bullying his way to the nomination.  He’s strong in the South too, by the way, because the GOP is always strong in the South.

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