I NEVER expected my previous OEN article, "THIS Changes Everything: Bernie as Dems' New FDR," to parent a whole SERIES. But some brainstorming--fueled by warm reader response--soon evolved a full-blown political strategy. My sunshiny "Bernie as Dems' new FDR" vision was the motivational WHY; the rest of my series is the strategic HOW. Here, I diagnose "what's rotten in Demmark"--the daunting party hurdle Bernie must clear.

::::::::

"Bernie'd Kick Elephant Butt." "Except He Has No Chance."

In "THIS Changes Everything: Bernie as Dems' New FDR," my OEN article launching this series, I cited the huge, enduring electoral benefits Democrats would reap by nominating Bernie Sanders as their 2016 standard bearer--especially in terms of a frontal assault on the deeply unpopular Citizens United decision. Unsurprisingly, several naysayers quickly assessed Bernie's chances of winning the Dems' 2016 presidential nomination at zero.

Given Hillary Clinton's huge advantage in name recognition, media coverage, and corporate funding, the naysayers seem right. Moreover, since exactly zero high-profile Democrats have expressed support for Sanders, and several have already endorsed Clinton (including rising progressive star Elizabeth Warren, apparently kowtowing before Clinton's dynastic claim to priority as the "first woman president"), the naysayers seem irrefutable. But given Sanders' (or Warren's) vastly greater credibility, compared to corporate gun moll Clinton's, in leading a populist crusade overturning Citizens United, the evident unwillingness of progressive Democrats to support Sanders--or even to advance a current Democrat less corporatist than Clinton--seems downright puzzling.

The Ultimate Electoral Puzzle: Why Dems Don't Trounce Repugs

I find that puzzle inextricably bound up with the ultimate electoral puzzle: why Democrats, despite the utter selfish greed and sheer lunacy of today's Republicans, don't simply mop the floor with them at the polls. When Democrats find embracing arguably winning candidates and issues not just impractical but literally unthinkable, something, to paraphrase Shakespeare, is clearly rotten in the state of "Demmark." Since that "something" poses the most formidable obstacle to Bernie's candidacy--perhaps our last, best hope for saving the planet from catastrophic climate change--it's the Democratic "mystery disease" I hope to diagnose in this essay.

In feeling the need for such an analysis, I don't mean to imply that other progressives, both intelligent and well-meaning, haven't already spilled much ink wondering aloud why Democrats don't simply trounce today's intellectually and morally repulsive Republicans. I also think there are two partial explanations for this result. One is based on voter-base distribution, the other on dirty Republican gerrymandering and vote-denial tricks. In terms of voter-base distribution, the Democrats' base tends to cluster in cities, where they form supermajorities. By contrast, the Republicans' base is widely distributed among many far smaller rural districts. This goes some way toward explaining why Republicans retain so much legislative presence, despite the Democrats' substantial absolute majority in the nation as a whole. And where Republicans dominate legislatures--above all in "red states"--they're clearly positioned to enact the sleazy gerrymandering and vote-denial laws I mentioned.

Nevertheless, given how wildly out of touch Republicans are with the popular will (even in red states)--as shown by polls on preserving Medicare or Social Security, taxing the superrich and corporate tax dodgers, or guaranteeing a livable wage--it seems obvious that the anomalies of voter distribution and "dirty tricks" don't sufficiently explain the failure of Democrats to simply trounce Republicans at the polls. It is at this point that Democratic journalists and public intellectuals, ranging from the likes of Thom Hartmann, Paul Krugman, or Robert Reich, to Andrew Schmookler and his "Press the Battle" series here at OpEdNews, usually cite a problem with Democrats' messaging--with its persistent lack of passion and clarity. Yes! But given how easily diagnosable and fixable a messaging problem is (and Democrats' evident self-interest in fixing it), a mere messaging problem also can't sufficiently explain why overwhelming public support for the policies of Democrats isn't reflected by substantial Democratic majorities in Congress. If a messaging problem were the principal cause, it would have been fixed years ago.

Democrats' "Elephant in the Room": Deep State Bullshit

I think we must probe deeper and attribute the compromised message to a deeply compromised messenger. That's precisely where my novel concept--"Deep State bullshit"--comes in.

Now, before exploring Deep State bullshit's enormous role in crippling--a better word is "castrating"--Democrats as messengers, I need to explain exactly what I'm claiming as my new concept. It is evidently not the "Deep State" itself. I, like virtually everyone else now using the term, cribbed it from Mike Lofgren's brilliant essay "Anatomy of the Deep State," first published by Bill Moyers.com. And Lofgren himself admits the term "Deep State" was first coined in Turkey. What I find so scintillating is his seizing a foreign term so strangely apt to our circumstances and applying it with incredible penetration--as only a longtime Deep State functionary, long since freed of its hothouse culture and lethal groupthink, possibly could. In a sense, Lofgren has done the Schwarzenegger share of my intellectual "heavy lifting." My only original contribution is to link Lofgren's Deep State to the concept--now even philosophically popular--of "bullshit." I hope to prove it's a fruitful contribution nonetheless.

Though I cite the current philosophical discussion of bullshit as a sign of our times--it's so prevalent even philosophers are analyzing it--I don't intend to adopt their special academic uses of the term. (For those interested, the Wikipedia entry "Bullshit" is a good start.) Rather, basing my own analysis on the longstanding popular meaning of "bullshit" as particularly egregious nonsense--"nonsense on stilts" (or steroids)--I intend to extend the popular meaning in a way that relates closely to the Deep State. So, for readers unacquainted with Lofgren's essay (which I strongly recommend), I'd better briefly explain what the Deep State is. Then, you'll be fully equipped to appreciate my "Deep State bullshit" concept.

In his essay's first paragraph, Lofgren contrasts our "visible government" in Washington with "a more shadowy, more indefinite government that is not explained in Civics 101 or observable to tourists at the White House or the Capitol." Calling our traditional government that's "controllable by elections" the "tip of the iceberg," Lofgren speaks of "the subsurface part of the iceberg" as "the Deep State, which operates according to its own compass heading regardless of who is formally in power." Later in his essay, Lofgren writes, "Yes, there is another government concealed behind the one that is visible at either end of Pennsylvania Avenue, a hybrid entity of public and private institutions ruling the country according to consistent patterns in season and out, connected to, but only intermittently controlled by, the visible state whose leaders we choose." And in identifying this "hybrid entity of public and private institutions," he refers to "the twin pillars of national security imperative and corporate hegemony."

In other words, the Deep State dictating national policy "from behind the curtain" consists of the military-industrial-surveillance complex and Wall Street and its government minions. Though Lofgren doesn't specifically name them, I think we can, in the interests of truth and greater completeness, include Big Gas & Oil, Big Pharma, industrial agriculture, and the Israel lobby as well. And the collaborating news media, concentrated in ever fewer oligarch hands, that--by self-censorship and outright propaganda--facilitate the Deep State. They operate like the temptress Lola of musical fame--"Whatever Lola wants, Lola gets"--and it hardly matters whether the Deep State Lola's mesmerized suitors wear a donkey or an elephant lapel pin.

Readers should by now have a pretty firm grasp of what Lofgren means by the Deep State, and you'll soon be positioned to understand how unquestioning servitude to the Deep State results in bipartisan--but especially Democrat--bullshit. But to "grok" how Deep State puppet mastery works in practice, I think readers can do no better than peruse a little, admittedly exaggerated, comic portrayal. Though OpEdNews writer Greg Maybury never mentions the Deep State by name, his article-opening sketch of "the new president's first day" (based on a skit by comedian Bill Hicks) forcefully evokes the idealism-crushing torque it must exert on Washington newbies of both parties. If we stretch the "initiation" period and imagine the threats to be subtler and less lethal, I think the compelling vignettes of Maybury and Hicks can give us a good sense of how the Deep State fraternity initiates its overmatched freshman pledges.

So, readers, now that you are in command of the Deep State concept, you can readily understand what I mean by "Deep State bullshit." I mean two related things, really: the insane, disastrous policies and policy talk that result from the readiness of both parties to dance to the Deep Staters' marionette strings; and, in the case of Democrat politicians, in particular, the public impression of self-censorship, cowardice, and insincerity stemming from the stark contrast between bandied progressive principles and actual allegiance to the Deep State.

Perhaps David Swanson has the best one-sentence summary of what I mean by Deep State bullshit: "We live in an age in which the most important facts are not seriously disputed and also not seriously known or responded to."

Less Comfy with Bullshit, Dems Sound More Full of It

While, for both parties, Deep State policies and policy talk result in sheer bullshit--insane, reality-ignoring policies that amount to "nonsense on stilts"--Democrats suffer the added harm of looking and sounding as if they're full of bullshit. Republicans, nearer in actual philosophy to the (repulsive) Deep State agenda, don't appear nearly as insincere or spineless. Needless to say, for Democrat pols attempting to inspire or appear "on the side of the angels," bearing the Deep State burden of self-censorship and insincerity amounts to messaging castration. This is necessarily so, since the only possible sincerity would mean blurting out the tabooed truth about the Deep State itself.

Some examples should clarify my meaning. Consider, for instance, the mother of all Deep State puppet shows--the 2012 Obama-Romney debates--where the bipartisan Deep State was in evidence as much by what was said as what was not. Following the military-industrial Deep State script, Obama and Romney vied in saber-rattling over which candidate would more forcefully quash Iran's "existential threat" to Americans. This was particularly pungent bullshit, since the government's own intelligences agencies had just issued reports rating Iran scarcely a threat at all. But the stench of this vociferous bullshit was perhaps minor compared to the mephitic silence over the real existential threat to all of human civilization: climate change. Debaters Obama and Romney, dancing on gas and oil puppet strings, never dared mention it once.

Or consider the whole militaristic, universal-surveillance framework of the "global war on terror." Now, the very concept is bullshit--nonsense on elevated stilts--correctly ridiculed by some terrorism experts as "war against a tactic" or, perhaps more incisively, by Monty Python comedian Terry Jones as "war on an abstract noun." And, not just conceptually but empirically, the war on terror has proven to be bullshit: hundreds of thousands of Afghans and Iraqis dead, the U.S. trillions of dollars deeper in debt, U.S. moral credibility shot, global civil liberties lost, and Middle East terrorism more rampant than ever. Yet, just once let the terror tactic rear its head--as in a theatrical beheading--and our knee-jerk reaction is bombs, drones, arms and training for potential terrorists, and (sooner or later) "boots on the ground." But, since the war on terror is deeply profitable for the military-industrial-surveillance complex, when terror-warfare talks, bullshit always walks.

Or again, consider the sheer fascist injustice of Chelsea Manning's draconian prison sentence under the outmoded WWI Espionage Act--a law intended to punish foreign spies, not classic whistleblowers. Manning was not only tried under this law, but forbidden to mount the whistleblowers' essential public-interest defense. To appreciate the sheer "stinks to heaven" nature of this outrage, contrast Manning's supersized sentence with the breezy freedom enjoyed by George W. Bush and Dick Cheney. Both these men are authentic Nuremberg war criminals, guilty not just of torture but of the Nuremberg code's worst crime, aggressive war. Yet they remain free to build libraries for their own glorification and haunt the media pundit circuit. Here, bullshit literally walks, yet where has a single Democrat (forget Republicans) dared to denounce this sulfurous injustice?

Clearly, Democrats' servile, if half-willing, Deep State bootlicking saps most of the juice from their moral message. Democrats will tell you, with evident sincerity, that electing them will add jobs and protect education and the social safety net. What they can't tell you with any sincerity is that electing them won't mean endless war, more drone killings of foreign innocents, expanded global surveillance and police militarization, secret trade deals steamrolling democracy and the environment, presidential deep-sixing of the Constitution and international law, brutal state repression of needed protest movements like Occupy, and--worst of all--ramped-up production and export of climate-destroying fossil fuels. Tellingly, Democrats' boot-lackey service to the Deep State means extensive loss of campaign work (and votes) from progressives--potentially their best, most politically active supporters. Can Dems seriously expect progressives to "get pumped" for poll work with our jaws hanging aghast at their "shadow agenda"? With Democrats like Obama or Clinton at the helm, how do we know which Democratic Party--the socially conscious, progressive one, or the fascistic Deep State cat's paw--we're voting for? Isn't voting for Democrats increasingly rewarding bad--and even illegal and unconstitutional--behavior?

Life Beyond Bullshit

Democrats would clearly turbocharge their party's moral clarity--and ignite wildfires of progressive enthusiasm--by pink-slipping Deep State strumpet Hillary Clinton and handing the party keys to independent, progressive outsider Bernie Sanders. Needless to say, the Deep State forces now setting over half the party agenda will fight tooth-and-claw--with their gargantuan resources--to keep that from happening. So progressives' and climate activists' only hope of rebranding Democrats as Bernie's party is electoral blackmail. More on this in my next series article, "Life Beyond Bullshit: Of Bernie and Blackmail."

Authors Bio:

Patrick Walker is co-founder of Revolt Against Plutocracy (RAP) and the Bernie or Bust movement it spawned. Before that, he cut his activist teeth with the anti-fracking and Occupy Scranton PA movements.

No longer with RAP, he wields his pen and his activist network to wage holy war for climate justice. Hoping to help build a counterculture of revolt, he also writes quirky, highly literate song lyrics for the rising indie band God's Comics.

A happily married man for over 10 years, Patrick has lost his beloved wife Ginger to colon cancer. He resides with his ineffably charming Sheltie dog Jasmine in East Amherst, NY.