Friday, May 1, 2015

Yeah, but I know this grapevine.

In the last week I have noticed a distinct splash of attention to politician professional cretin Bernie Sanders in my Facebook feed.  Even before he officially announced his candidacy for the next edition of the I Wanna Rule The World Sweepstakes (which happened yesterday), it was apparent enough what was going on.

Given most of the comments, I must conclude that the functional dynamic here is completely lost on the general public, from the fawning acolytes to the partisan predictions of intergalactic collapse.  And it's not just a simple case of statist beer goggles, either.  Even before taking a degree in "political science" all those years ago, and even as a blissfully ignorant statist back then, it just didn't seem that hard to figure out that the purpose of a candidacy like Bernie Sanders' has nothing to do with actually vying for the position.  He's not there to compete for the throne himself;  he's there to make the party-designated front-runner look less toxic in comparison.  (Tough gig, I know.)

The party machines do this all the time.  If they have identified their golden child this early in the game, the strategic goal is to encourage as many "fringe" candidates to join as possible, in order to make the party designate look like the least disgusting best possible option.  (You'll hear variants of the phrase "...best chance of winning..." more and more leading up to the primaries.)  If you can keep in mind that it's never actually an open field--never--then all the dynamics, posturing, marketing, and breathless suspense actually make perfect gameplay sense.  The whole point is to wind up, at the point of the primary and through the general election, with a unified set of pragmatic partisans, usually dissatisfied with the party choice (who is invariably an Establishment cretin) but effectively cowed into supporting it as the (wait for it) ..."least of evils".  Sadly, this is wildly effective.  The machine gets what it wanted in the first place (wait, wut, you mean the House always wins?), the plebes can pat themselves on the back for having considered the matter carefully and made the agonizing "best choice" as informed voters, and the whole lot can get about excoriating the Other Team for... procedural shenanigans, misdirection and misinformation, and generally being more concerned about politics than protecting life, liberty and property.  See how this works?

Anyway, so here we have the "self-described democratic socialist" Sanders, who is going to wind up doing nothing more than making Hillary look more palatable to the credulous. That is the point.

All of which reminds me of the "grapevine" scene from Johnny Dangerously.  What starts as "Hey Bernie, wanna ingratiate yourself with the Party?  Go be yourself and make people forget how bloody hideous a human being Hill is..." becomes "w00t! Bernie for President!"

Embedding is disabled, but here's the YouTube clip.

Sanders won't be the last such stage prop, and of course the Respublikans will go through their own breathless gyrations to validate their own predestined choice, until then the Grand Illusion of "Choose Your Master" will be finally set, giving people yet another opportunity for The People to choose The Establishment once more.

Oh, swell.




4 comments:

MamaLiberty said...

Not just Demorats either, of course. The is the game plan of all political parties. I've lost track of how many incredibly stupid or smarmy "candidates" the Republirats have already.

Just keep hoping that enough people will finally see that it's a stupid, evil rigged game, no matter what label the cretins are wearing.

A pox on all their houses. :)

Paul Bonneau said...

This is a well-oiled machine. The best slave is the slave who thinks he is the master. That is what this system offers us, when all the BS is stripped away. I will puke the next time I hear some boob claim that "the politicians work for US!"

BTW, I am ready for Hillary. This country needs a revolution as soon as possible.

MamaLiberty said...

I don't know, Paul. If the first term of Obama didn't instigate a revolt, I don't really hold out much hope for any to be started over Hillary. I would hope that a great many women would finally realize what an incredible fraud and idiot she is... but that's highly unlikely either.

And "revolution" usually only results in a new set of idiot monsters... so I'm not ready for that. The complete collapse of the mainstream economy and it's fiat "money" seems to me to be the most likely to present people with an opportunity for a real "reset." But then... we can only hope that most of the Obama/Hillary voters are tragically lost in the upheaval.

Guess we'll have to wait and find out.

Kevin Wilmeth said...

It seems self-evident that nothing significant is going to change without some sort of widespread "revolt", but I still don't believe it needs to be a violent one, either. Yeah, I know it may be pissing in the wind, but I'm going to keep on agitating for the "ignore the dickheads until they go away" option, if for no other reason than my own peace.

That, and more opportunities to hone the skills in myself and others, in case the dickheads get their hot war.

Every year it seems like two things happen: certainly the Free Shit Army expands its ranks as lots of people note, but I also see more and more going the way of "ignore them all and get on with life". I can't help but think that's productive. :-)