The current election ‘cycle’ in the U.S. is being met with what is increasingly argued to be changed circumstances. The rise of ‘outsiders’ Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders plays into the storyline of an atrophied political mainstream in need of an infusion of fresh blood to challenge ideas that aren’t working for most people. Was the problem simply a matter of stale ideas rather than the institutions and the whole of the Western corporate-state dedicated to the ongoing consolidation of political and economic power in the hands of a small and remote plutocracy the ‘inside / outside’ dichotomy might be more functionally descriptive. And as the ever-troublesome facts have it, both Messrs. Trump and Sanders have spent their adult lives in the corridors of power, albeit in different spheres.
At www.counterpunch.org
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