2024's DNC: the Audacity of Fake Change
Democratic conventions are better known for what they hide than what they show. In 1968, when Chicago’s Democratic Catholic mayor allowed police to brutalize anti-war protestors outside, only Jewish Senator Abraham Ribicoff was brave enough to decry the mayor’s “Gestapo tactics.” The Catholic responded, on live television, saying, “F*ck you, you Jew son-of-a-b*tch.” Inside was no safer. Security personnel assaulted journalists, including Dan Rather, who demanded to be arrested instead of beaten. Hunter Thompson wrote, “I went to the [1968] Democratic Convention as a journalist, and returned a cold-blooded revolutionary.”
Fast-forward to 2024’s Democratic Convention. American troops are not actively fighting a war, but the Western defense industry is promoting Likud vs. Hamas + Hezbollah and Ukraine vs. Russia. Once again, the Convention will be remembered not for what it showed, but what it tried to hide: Palestinian displacement and Palestinian suffering, plus the rise of BRICS PAY against a backdrop of 35 trillion USD in national debt. Current debt--higher than 2007-08 levels--requires politics favor showmanship over substance. Meanwhile, Americans and Europeans are caught in internal and international cultural wars over how much power lawyers and algorithms ought to have over their lives. With no answer for deepfakes, and no truly secure communications, “might makes right” has prevailed, sapping moral substance from all political platforms. The difference between the Democrats and GOP today is only that Donald Trump is all realpolitik while the Democrats believe their more multi-colored corps represents, if not morality, then higher progress.
Unfortunately, diversity in the Democratic Party is only skin-deep. While Trump pushed a de facto immigration ban targeting Muslims, the United States government used African-Americans as follows: 1) Linda Thomas-Greenfield vetoed an Arab-backed U.N. resolution demanding a ceasefire in Gaza; 2) Robert A. Wood vetoed a resolution for full U.N. Palestinian membership; 3) Barack Obama, a lawyer, became the first president in American history to openly assassinate an American citizen without due process; and 4) Colin Powell, with Democrat-appointed CIA director George Tenet sitting behind him, lied about WMDs in Iraq, paving the way for unjust wars. Of course, Trump is no friend of Palestinians–but at least he is open about his allegiances to Israel rather than pretending to play both sides equally. At the end of the day, Americans may not agree with you, but like most people, they generally like honest men. When Trump’s popularity is studied by future generations, many will be stumped, but they shouldn’t be. When a sincere man blunders, people tend to forgive; when a circus performer fails, people want their money back.
As I write, the Russian founder of an encrypted messaging app has been arrested in France. I use his app regularly, and I use it because the founder rejected “backdoors” allowing governmental monitoring. A backdoor used initially by benign governmental actors may later be used by autocrats, criminals or malicious hackers, so Telegram’s refusal to cooperate made it the preferred app of dissidents worldwide. In contrast, Mark Zuckerberg’s apps have backdoors, and his teams regularly cooperate with FBI requests for information on American citizens, even when such requests are overbroad.
From Brennan Center, January 7, 2022: FBI agents can open an “assessment” simply on the basis of an “authorized purpose,” such as preventing crime or terrorism, and without a factual basis. During assessments, FBI agents can carry out searches of publicly available online information. Subsequent investigative stages, which require some factual basis, open the door for more invasive surveillance tactics, such as the monitoring and recording of chats, direct messages, and other private online communications in real time.
Anyone paying attention post-Snowden, post-Assange, and now post-Durov knows privacy does not exist, regardless of what Constitutions and law professors say. In this morally-unmoored environment, voters implicitly do not trust Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Joseph Biden, or Kamala Harris and are voting for the lesser of two evils. In 2016, Trump was clearly the lesser of two evils. In 2024, the picture is less clear. A white man in 2024 should know he cannot personally attack a black woman the same way as a white woman. Trump and his VP’s failure to understand basic American history have made them the circus freaks rather than Kamala “I Will Bribe Voters by Any Means Necessary” Harris and Tom “Teachers Can Do Anything” Walz. Yet, even with debt at all-time highs, people dislike being bribed for their votes through governmental programs, and most adults haven’t forgotten at least half their public school teachers were tyrants.
And, yes, poor unappreciated teachers. I did say sweet deal. American public school teachers have the world's best PR operation going. Whining every chance they get about how demanding their jobs are, how many 'extra hours' they put in, how little they make, how much of their own money they have to spend just to do their jobs, how noble they are working this job that nobody ever asked them to do--welcome to the f*cking world... You think you got it tough? You don't got it tough. American teachers would crumble if they ever had to work the real hours of a cabbie, doctor, bartender, fisherman, truck driver, small-business owner, hotel clerk, mechanic, architect, janitor, musician, surveyor, accountant, or the million other jobs that don't observe weekends, much less every city, county, state, and federal holiday on the docket, almost three months' paid vacation a year, and pension programs funded out of the public trough. How is it we go through school painfully aware that half our teachers are lazy or incompetent or pathological control freaks, then turn around and let them convince us what a bunch of saints they are as soon as we become taxpayers? – Chuck Thompson, Smile When You’re Lying (2007)
If it sounds as if I support Trump, I don’t. In fact, I will not be voting in this year’s election, because my vote in California is meaningless. My state is a one-party machine dedicated to preserving the property and influence of the Catholic Church, which settled the land in the 1700s. The current Democratic Party is an extension of the Catholic Church, which has perfected propaganda such that most Californians do not realize they live in a theocracy or even that the Catholic Church promoted the Vietnam War to split Vietnam into a Buddhist north and a Catholic south. In short, I don’t need to watch the Democratic National Convention to know Democrats are capable of putting on a good show; however, as someone who paid off his student loans early by penny-pinching, I do notice the politicians peddling hope don’t seem to include accountability anywhere. At the end of the day, the Democratic Party does not care about the individual if that individual dares challenge the mechanisms of party power: conformist minorities, partisan unions, and unsustainable public pension ROIs.
If progress means the status quo, but with more subsidies and more partisan lawyering, Kamala’s your woman. It should be easy to counter such brazen banality, but that would require principles, which the GOP no longer has. No one will forcefully audit any major church; reform military spending; regulate dark pools; standardize civil procedure and evidentiary rules; or demand universities use their endowments to lower tuition. It is a debt-soaked world we live in, and beggars cannot choose differently than their bondholders and bankers. What better investment than a three-way minority who will enforce the status quo while making you believe you have a choice?
© Matthew Rafat (August 26, 2024, from Bangkok, Thailand)
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