A (Concerned) New Zealand First Perspective On Key's Resignation

Understandably, most of the New Zealand Left is giddily euphoric as the result of yesterday's bolt-from-the-blue-brigade news. Some of us have spent virtually the entirety of our adult lives awaiting this moment - so a certain level of enthusiasm is to be anticipated.

But once the initial shock and jubilation fades away, the canny political mind starts considering what happens next. And, for that matter, what's already perhaps been happening a little beyond the ken of the public eye.

We're likely to hear an array of different theories over the next few weeks as to just why Key chose to resign rather than seek a fourth term in office. Some of them are more plausible (and less interesting) than others.

It's in that spirit that I share the following:

A few months ago, I was told by persons in a position to know that the National Party was looking in to ways it could ensure a fourth term by stitching up a coalition arrangement with New Zealand First. The most obvious manifestation of this so far has been attempts to talk up the inclusion of Shane Jones on our 2017 List (the idea being that Jones, as a man of proven amenability to National, would form something of a 'bridge' into our Caucus for National were he successfully elected - and would be a counter-pole to Ron Mark; both of these factors making a Black-Blue coalition arguably more likely).

But it was also noted that one of the key 'sticking points' between National and Winston Peters which would have to be excised in order for a coalition to take place ... would be John Key. There's so much 'bad blood' between between them that Key remaining leader of National and Prime Minister would form an insurmountable obstacle to a fruitful relationship with New Zealand First.
So the 'idea' was to have John Key replaced by Bill English - on the assumption that the latter's more 'restrained' economic approach and considerably dialed down enthusiasm for social causes might make him a better (even 'Bolger-esque') working-mate for Peters. [with an implicit logic that even if National took a reasonably severe popularity hit from replacing Key of several percent and lost one or more support-parties [either due to Peter Dunne in Ohariu losing his seat, or the Maori Party finally siding with someone else], they'd still likely command more votes than Labour+Greens - albeit with newfound need of a new coalition partner to get htem back over 61 seats in the House - a situation for which a 'double-digit' New Zealand First would be the ideal remedy]
At the time ... I dismissed it as a hypothetical strategic play somebody had concocted over too many whiskeys and perhaps a bit of NOS. But given yesterday afternoon's events (and a number of other things I'm aware of going on back there in the shadows) ... I'm no longer so sure.
Certainly, some of the events required for such a previously unthinkable constellation of political forces to take place are now in motion. Much to my consternation, of course. 
In any case ... I think I know what I have to do. Work harder to support Ron, block Jones, and help keep New Zealand First from falling prey to National's nefarious clutches.
Now, more than ever, a left-wing counterweight within NZF is *vitally* important.

Michael Wood's Victory - And The Ongoing Defeat Of National's "Ethnic Strategy"

There are two general schools of thought as to what Michael Wood's rather stunning victory in Mt Roskill over the weekend might mean. The first of these is the predictable National Party supporter (or, perhaps, anti-labour churl) who boldly proclaims that the result means nothing. That Mt Roskill was 'always' going to be won by Labour, on grounds that it's allegedly a Labourite "safe seat" - and that therefore, there is nothing serious to be gleaned from a 66%-25% crushing defeat for National.

The second group is made up of those individuals - myself included - who see it altogether the other way around. That what Wood has pulled off in Mt Roskill does, indeed, suggest a weakening (however slight) of National's overall stranglehold upon the hearts and minds of the broad mass of 'Middle New Zealand' voters - and that, if nothing else, the Labour Party's electoral appeal and party apparatus aren't quite terminal yet. If properly motivated and deployed - they're still evidently more than capable of propelling positive results.

But there is a third area to consider - that of the grander and macroscopic strategic import of what we've seen over the course of this campaign - which doesn't neatly fit into either interpretation above.

It is to there that we shall now turn.

Probably the most important revelation to be had from National's drubbing is that the "Ethnic Strategy" which the Blue party has pursued for quite some time now ... is rapidly reaching its limits.

This is not a phenomenon that has exclusively been confined to this result, but instead forms the terminus of a pattern which we've previously seen sketched out across a number of other contests - particularly at the 'local body' level earlier this year. At the time, it was much commented upon by the organizers and co-ordinators of the local National franchisee-satrapy 'Auckland Future' that they were making a concerted effort to bring Pasifika candidates to their slates in a bid to 'reach out' to less traditional National voters. This was probably a natural continuation of their efforts in 2014 - wherein a certain rather outspoken National candidate by the name of Misa Fia Turner (who's once again been making waves for what we can charitably call ... peculiar pronouncements, on grounds that she'd have been an MP in the unlikely event of Parmar's winning due to her list placing) made a concerted attempt to brand John Key as an 'anti-gay marriage' option for more conservatively minded Pasifika voters in South Auckland at the last Election. (a stance which was, needless to say, almost entirely at odds with reality)

The results from the aforementioned previous 2014 General Election outing of the "Ethnic Strategy" were ... not entirely unencouraging. True, in places like Mangere and Manukau East, National made gains - but at somewhere between one and three percent gains apiece against entrenched Labourites on severely high pluralities still hovering around the seventy percent mark, it would be a bit of a stretch to state that it produced "dividends".

A better test for the strategy's relative merits came earlier this year with the Auckland local body contest. Here, at the Council level we saw several defeats for National's ethnic candidates - with, for instance, the two Pasifika contenders put up in the Manukau ward by Auckland Future managing to come in at around two thousand votes between them fewer than former National MP Arthur Anae's 2013 run result. [5,550 and 5,304 as compared with 12,961 - for those of you playing at home]

The situation does not exactly improve when we consider the data to be gleaned from the Local Board contests, either. In each of Henderson-Massey, Waitemata, Whau, Puketapapa, Mangere-Otahuhu, Papatoetoe, and Otara, Auckland Future (or other National-controlled tickets) put up 'ethnic' candidates - and watched them lose. Now this doesn't necessarily mean that the constituencies in question are either passively or actively inimical to being represented by local politicians of Pasifika, Asian, or Indian extraction. In fact, the results in several of these seats would directly contravene such an inaccurate contention.

But what it DOES suggest is that National (and its allies) are going to face an ongoing difficult circumstance by persisting in attempting to sell their right-wing politics through faces not dissimilar from those out there suffering in the community.

And this handily brings us back to Mt. Roskill.

Right throughout the campaign, the National Party attempted to bank hard upon their candidate - Parmjeet Parmar's - ethnic background. A cynic might go so far as to suggest that this was at least partially because the candidate in question was perceived as having comparatively little to offer to the prospects of victory other than this (a background as a neuroscientist is certainly impressive ... but I'd be somewhat surprised if it were found to have motivated even a single pen upon a single ballot in her favour).

This got to the point, a few days ago, wherein Parmar implicitly suggested that Michael Wood's status as a white male would render him effectively unable to perform the representational duties of an MP for that electorate due to its diversity. (Wood's response was almost perfect - noting that with a bewildering array of different ethnicities represented within the corpus of the constituency, it would be blatantly impossible for any one individual to adequately encapsulate all the diversity of that Seat ... and that instead, Roskilllians would demand competency as the main rubric by which to assess the worth of their prospective MP. Evidently, that's exactly what happened.)

But there is one very good acid-test for any political strategy: whether it delivers the goods on polling-day.

By pretty much any rubric of success which you care to name, what National's attempted here hasn't worked.

Maybe they didn't have to 'win' in order to appear successful or credible. Maybe (as an astute mind from my own Party noted), all they had to do was not lose *too* badly to chalk up a (moral) victory.

They did neither. Parmar's votes are less than the margin of victory which Wood won by. As a proportion, she's gone markedly backwards from her previous 2014 showing in the same electorate.

All the talk from National-aligned folks (and a poking, prodding, probing, pustule-piercing media) that the seat being held by Labour at the last election was purely a function of Phil Goff's personal credibility, with National winning the Party Vote by more than two thousand indicating that it wasn't 'safe' and was, in point of fact, 'winnable' (perhaps with the 'right' candidate) ... has evaporated like shadows afore the sunlight or cobwebs in a whirlwind.

Good riddance.

Earlier this week, the Prime Minister was peevishly proclaiming that a defeat in Mt. Roskill would be "Terminal" for Andrew Little.

Given the result ... the only "terminal" in question would appear to be the one Little promised for a light-rail system running out to the suburb.

It will be interesting to see what National elects to do in the seat (or, for that matter, with its ongoing "Ethnic Strategy") at next year's General Election.

Fidel Castro - A Brief Eulogy

I'm really not quite sure what to say about Fidel Castro's death. The man was an absolute titan of modern politics and the modern world. He not only comprehensively reshaped his home nation from Mafia-run, economically colonized backwater to a vanguard liberation state with enviable first-world healthcare (because to simply say that that's what he did would be almost to imply that it was done in a vacuum); but he also managed to do so despite the might of a superpower breathing both strenuously and semi-literally down his neck, and under the weight of a crippling international embargo. 

Before we had the jokes about the "Curse of Assad" (wherein pretty much every Western politician who's insisted "Assad must go" has, themselves, wound up deposed or otherwise dethroned) ... it was a running sport to tally up the number of US Presidents he'd outlasted (particularly those who'd attempted to have him assassinated - the CIA's Operation Mongoose racking up more than six hundred attempts against his life and featuring everything from exploding seashells to LSD-filled missiles).
And regardless of how you might feel about the man .. that sort of tenacity and indefatigability is certainly worthy of respect. As are, to my mind, the results which Castro's regime achieved in comparison to many of its (still foreign-dominated) Carribean neighbours. Certainly, squaring up outcomes and quality of life for Cubans against the ordinary inhabitants of other (capitalist) countries of the Carribean does not necessarily cast Castroist Cuba in a particularly bad comparative light. (Although for reasons I'll never quite understand, the default point of comparison for many commentators is, instead, living-standards in the US - and never, for that matter, the impoverished parts like Detroit)
But as with any 'great man', whatever he might have been and achieved in life, the serious intellectualizing of what he stood for almost inevitably comes predominantly after his death. This will be particularly the case with Castro, as there were simply so many sides to his political life - so many 'fingers in pies', if you will. I've already touched upon his specific role within the Cuban Revolution; and any serious student of the history of Latin America will also know of his incredibly broad-spanning role influencing and supporting the political developments of his neighbours (including considerable humanitarian assistance to Grenada, military aid to the Sandinistas in Nicaragua, an attempt to help Salvador Allende in Chile, the ill-starred Cuban efforts in Bolivia which martyred Che Guevara, and longstanding and active comradeship and material support with the Bolivarians of Venezuela).

In addition to these, we also have his tireless advocacy for other marginalized and subaltern peoples (for example, with the ongoing crisis of third world foreign debt); and a broader military participation by Cuba in the overseas struggles of a bewildering array of other nations further afield.

This particular element of Castro's contribution has been overlooked by many of the media accounts of his life which I've read over the past 36 hours; but it is no exaggeration to say that the massive scale of Cuban military intervention in southern Africa (with, at its height, somewhere around 55,000 Cuban troops plus air assets and other military hardware deployed in Angola) contributed to the ending of Apartheid in South Africa. It also occurs, on that note, that this is another mark of the success of Castro's leadership - as over a three-decade period, Cuba had been transformed from a quasi-colonial island backwater 'playground for the American rich' into a regional powerhouse capable of projecting force to the other side of the world.

Still, it would be an exercise in hagiography (which is perhaps, at this early stage, somewhat unwarranted) to pretend that Castro's reign was perfect. A number of commentators have pointed out the reality of prison camps in Cuba (although curiously, often without noting by way of context that the largest such camp on Cuba is, in fact, the Guantanamo Bay facility run by the Americans). And it is certainly true that in the 1960s, internment camps were set up for homosexuals on the island. Although those invoking this reprehensible part of his history rarely also deign to mention that it was Castro himself who shut down those same camps in 1968 (after visiting them incognito to see what conditions were actually like); or that homosexuality's legalization there in 1979 beat us here in progressive New Zealand by nearly a decade.

With all of those facets to consider, we shall no doubt be continuing to debate what Castro's contribution was to human history for many decades to come. (Indeed, the ripple-effects are such that one is put in the mind of Zhou Enlai's famous rejoinder to a question asked by Richard Nixon in 1972 about the impact of the French Revolution nearly two centuries earlier - "it's too soon to say")
Many political traditions, groups and movements will seek to claim both Castro and his legacy. This is understandable. Any figure which exerts such an impressive weight upon both the popular imagination and the very fabric of our global politics will, of course, have an almost gravitic attraction for all manner of figures and currents out there in the firmament.
But to my mind, the first and most enduring conceptualization of Castro's politics are those of a Nationalist. We often obscure this when we focus upon the Cuban Revolution's ensuing alliance with the Soviet Union, and attempts at 'exporting revolution' over the subsequent decades (although I'm not entirely sure why either of these factoids are thought to be in contravention of Nationalist proclivity - both are eminently defensible as the sustained participation in causes affiliated and acting in influence upon with national liberation struggles). But looking at what Castro said, did, and wrote in his early years, this Nationalist orientation is fairly incontrovertible (even down to his early attempts to seek peaceful coexistence with and work productively with the United States, until the latter made such a thing deliberately unworkable). Even looking ahead for the next thirty or so years, his record appears very much as a man interested in both Cuban and other nations' self-determination. 

In any case, I am not Castro. I cannot speak on his behalf. But if I were ... I have little doubt that that's what I'd wish for my legacy to be - acting as an ever-living and eternal (albeit supernal) beacon of both illumination and inspiration to those seeking to better the lot of their fellow man through national liberation struggles even far afield from Castro's own island homeland.

As we say here in New Zealand: "A Mighty Totara Has Fallen".
The serious question now is what grows up in its former shade - and, for that matter, what form of canoe is adzed out of its fallen trunk.


^The image above is, of course, of Fidel's fallen comrade Hugo Chavez. But I do wonder if it also encapsulates the right feeling for the weekend's post-mortem as well.

Multinationals Not Paying Tax Is A Legal, Fiscal & Ethical Issue - Not Just 'Bad PR'

I nearly fell out of my chair yesterday evening when Newshub opened an item with a declaration that the Prime Minister was finally talking about multinationals dodging their fair share of Kiwi tax.

My disbelief was understandable. National has spent quite some years now basically attempting to pretend that this problem doesn't exist. When they're queried about this in Parliament, and just straight-up asked whether they think it's an issue that ten billion dollars of sales generates only $1.8 MILLION dollars in taxes for the top twenty multinationals operating here ... they just waffle away - and, at best, suggest that this is an international problem (which, to be fair, it is) which isn't really solvable by New Zealand.

It's always seemed a bit peculiar to me that our comparatively tiny country on the far side of the globe can do mighty things like bringing to a halt French nuclear testing, or thumbing our nose (and actually getting our way) when it comes to the defence policy of a superpower in our backyard ... yet we apparently balk when confronted with slightly tricky issues involving medium-large corporations. It isn't just a matter of taxation or offshore interests, either - consider the ongoing omnishambles we had attempting to wrangle Telecom to properly provide national communications infrastructure (rather than fat dividends for its shareholders) in the early 2000s.

Maybe it's an issue of our Government lacking the requisite willpower and vision to properly deal with corporates. Perhaps they just simply don't care.

In any case, if National WERE actually genuinely interested in getting foreign multinationals to pay their fair share of tax here, I'd be over the moon and singing their praises.

Except they're not.

You see, what actually happened over the weekend at APEC, was John Key took Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg aside and told him he had a "PR problem". Not, you understand, a legal problem. Not a fiscal/monetary problem. Not even, quelle surprised, an ETHICAL problem.

No, what the Government believes Facebook's ongoing flouting of our laws and our good natured hospitality is ... is a PR problem.

This is a distinction that's presumably quite instructive. When you have legal problems ... you sue (and, in the post-TPPA National Party, perhaps they've altogether forgotten that it's states who can sue corporations ... rather than exclusively the other way around thanks to ISDS). When you have fiscal/monetary problems, you regulate. And when you have ethical problems ... you intervene.

But when you have PR problems - well, that's different. That simply means you've been caught out via the spotlight of the public gaze. And, more importantly, that it's perfectly fine to keep doing whatever it is that you were snapped for - just make sure it's where the filthy proles can't see you doing it.

PR issues, in other words, are the sort of 'problems' which exist to be 'managed' and 'massaged', rather than actually 'solved'.

John Key, by talking to Zuckerberg one on one, can thus claim to actually be 'doing' something about this issue - while in actual fact doing precious little (other than flapping his lips and garnering another successful-person photo-op). It means he's worked out that his Government has started to look decidedly weak in this area.

If he were serious about sorting this issue, there are a number of potential paths he could pursue. Many of us will remember, at the more harshly punitive end of the spectrum, Labour's David Clark floating the idea of a ban on companies such as Facebook operating here in New Zealand if they can't abide by our laws. Personally, I agree with the spirit of this motion - but given how inextricably important the social media platform has become for so much of our personal lives and daily communications, I question whether I'd support such a measure actually being put into practice.

Cooler heads like New Zealand First's Fletcher Tabuteau, meanwhile, have long been making the case for properly tightening up and toughening up our nation's taxation laws so that foreign corporates like Facebook can't continue to flagrantly get away with this kind of pernicious and parsimonious behavior.

If National genuinely want to see Facebook et co. start to pay their proper taxes (rather than just genuinely no longer wanting to be seen as on the back foot on this issue) ... perhaps they ought to hit Fletcher up, and see what the New Zealand First proposal to fairly tax foreign corporates looks like.

I'm sure we'd only be too happy to help.

A Sea-Change On Government Attitudes To Protesting

[Author's Note: This piece originally appeared in a September edition of my Sex, Drugs & Electoral Rolls column for Craccum Magazine. In light of the planned Protest Flotilla actions this week timed to coincide with the US Navy's ship-visit for our own Navy's anniversary celebrations, I've chosen to reprint it here for a broader audience]

In 1973, New Zealand Prime Minister Norman Kirk sent our frigate, the HMNZS Otago, to the French nuclear testing site of Mururoa Atoll. On board was the Kiwi Cabinet Minister Fraser Coleman. The stated - and, indeed, officially mandated - purpose of those two hundred and forty three men was to put themselves in the path of foreign military activity, on a ship, as a protest action.

This was a pretty proud moment in New Zealand history - a real David vs Goliath sort of sentiment pervaded domestic remembrance of that time a small group of Kiwis took on the military (and, earlier that year, legislative) might of an Old World nuclear-armed former colonial power.

I open this piece by referencing the exploits of the HMNZS Otago (and, immediately subsequent to this the HMNZS Canterbury) not simply because it is an incident worth remembering in these modern days of our Government tiptoeing around the internationally expressed wills of the Great Powers. But instead, because there is a clear, present, and utterly immense difference in terms of both principle and courage between what the Kirk Government sought to do 43 years ago, versus what the Key Government seeks to do today.

In case you missed it, the Nats are presently attempting to push through legislation which would criminalize protesting at sea. In fact, it's worse than that. With the bill as presently drafted, you would be liable to be labeled a "terrorist" if you disrupted the actions and activities of a foreign military vessel.

You know, like we used to rightly celebrate and lionize doing in both the 1970s and 80s.

Government MP David Bennett supplied the rationale for deeming maritime protesters to be terrorists:

"This is a foreign power's vessel - a military vessel. You're getting in the way of it - so it's a terrorist act on a foreign country, isn't it."

That's a pretty pithy piece of legal reasoning. In the botanical sense of the term 'pith', of course, wherein it refers to the significantly less desirable bit under the rind of a fruit which surrounds the morsels you actually want to eat. Sounds like David Bennett all up.

Now here in New Zealand, we know a thing or two about nautical acts of terrorism committed against foreign countries. 21 years ago, the French carried out exactly such an act in our waters against the Greenpeace flagship, the Rainbow Warrior. (As a point of historical trivia, it had been preparing to depart for Mururoa, to once again continue the mission of observation and disruption against illegal French nuclear testing begun twelve years before by our very own Navy)

What this bill therefore seeks to do, by apparent conscious design, is place legitimate protest actions such as those carried out in New Zealand waters against American naval vessels in the eighties upon the same opprobium-heaped pedestal that we customarily reserve for craven and cowardly acts of actual terrorism like the Rainbow Warrior bombing.

And while this is a singularly egregious situation, it's not entirely accurate to state that the criminalization of potentially significant dissent is an exclusively National-produced phenomenon. The Terrorism Suppression Act brought into force by Labour in 2002 also has some problematic provisions, including 5 (3) (d), which in concert with 5 (2) (b), could effectively have rendered something as innocuous as the anti-TPPA road and motorway blockade action which took place earlier this year an apparent act of terror.

Even though the Terrorism Suppression Act contains a dedicated subsection (5 (5)) which seeks to clarify that the mere fact of an action being protest-motivated is not, itself, grounds to call something a terrorist act ... the fact that such a clause was necessary in the first place goes some ways to illustrate just how problematic previous New Zealand Government efforts at legislating against terrorism (or, more accurately, to punish 'terrorism' post-facto) have been.

Some cynics might even conclude that exploitable 'flaws' in the legislation such as that outlined above would constitute, as an IT professional would say, "a feature, not a bug".

And lest we think that the New Zealand security apparatus, police, courts, and other arms of state are far too 'benevolent' or 'Kiwi-casual' to want to do dodgy things with the powers we give them ... consider the illegal spying which was carried out on Kim DotCom at the behest of what amounts to an ineluctable combination of a foreign government and big-name overseas corporate interests. We literally had our foreign intelligence service using military-grade hardware to stake out an eccentric German tech-magnate over a case of copyright infringement of all things.

The miscellaneous miscreantery of the NZ Deep State doesn't stop there, either.

I still vividly remember in 2013 getting a visit from the detective who'd been second in command of the Urewera Raids, accompanied by an intelligence service spook. Apparently, the fine boys down at the counter-terrorism unit of the New Zealand Police had had me under wiretap surveillance for the previous eighteen or so months. The reason why? We think they were trying to get Winston for something which they thought I was involved in (in connection to the 2011 Tea Tapes scandal) - and they thought that monitoring my communications would prove it. The *official* reason why? I was allegedly a "threat to national security".

My first thought afterwards was wondering whether there was supposed to be an apostraphe and an S after the word "National".

Followed swiftly after by a sense of mounting horror as I realized that pretty much everything I'd said over the last year and a half via facebook messenger, or through txt had quite possibly crossed the desk of at lest one nameless analyst somewhere in the New Zealand security apparatus and/or Police. An acrimonious breakup with a girlfriend (and the resultant emotional fallout), personal secrets confided in close mates ... all of it was now in the databanks of the state and subject to easy, at-will persual by those with the right security clearance.

And all because I just happened to be in the right place at the right time outside a cafe in late 2011.

(Also, if you're wondering just why I got a housecall - the previous relevant legislation governing search and surveillance mandated a duty to report to the target what had happened once the surveillance was lifted - something which is still somewhat present in the 2012 act which replaced it at 61 (1) (c).

This is apparently a check and/or balance for their power - knowing that some judge, somewhere, will force them to front up to explain to the person under surveillance that all their deep dark secret-communications are now Official Knowledge. I guess the idea is that the (potentially mutual) embarrassment of getting the wrong guy and then having to look them in the eye and TELL THEM that, is supposed to keep our security intelligence services in line. Riiiiight.)

The reason why I cite this incident is because it handily demonstrates that i) laws put in place to protect us from terrorism can and have been misused even very recently in the past; ii) that the specific forms of that misuse very quickly cross over into the realms of the political; and iii) that even seemingly innocuous or rather small-scale acts of potential dissent (like standing outside of a cafe in the presence of a few TV cameras) can quite quickly conjure the Heavy Hammer of the State coming down upon you.

When we talk about not just criminalizing - but 'terrorizing' - protests, we go rather beyond the simple maintenance of public order.

We instead send chilling messages with chilling effects upon certain aspects of public participation in the hallowed apparatus of our democracy.

As I've said earlier, these increasingly seem to be "a feature, not a bug", in the minds of many of our august policy-makers. With the Key Government preparing to lionize itself for effectively normalizing military relations with the US, sanctified by a potentially nuclear-armed ship-visit (you know ... EXACTLY the sort of thing we rose up in (maritime) protest against back in the '80s) - it's not hard to see just whom this new kind of "terrorism"-fighting legislation might be aimed at to please.

Secessionists, Demonstrationists, and Defenestrationists: The Unchanging Character Of US Responses To Their New Presidents

I'm now old enough to properly remember three Presidents (Bush, Obama, and Trump. I have vague, hazy memories of Bill Clinton - but that's mostly just bombing Yugoslavia and a sex scandal). And you know what I've realized? There's some remarkable consistencies in how EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM gets reacted to in office.

Each one of these men has been called Hitler. Every one of them's been talked about as some sort of irascible warmonger who's inching us closer to the broad-spanning extinction of the Human Race. They were all #NotMyPresident. All of these Presidencies either have or will preside over a fundamentally racist justice system, and repugnant foreign & trade policies. The only main difference between Trump advocating for targeted killings of terrorists' families ... and Obama's drone-strike program, or Bush's invade-an-entire-country program, is that Trump was straight-up and honest about what he was trying to achieve (and also isn't talking about 'regime change' enforced at bayonet-point) - a theme which presumably applies to pretty much every other area of core contention that most people have against a Trump Presidency based upon what he's said on the campaign trail.

Hell, even the broad, sweeping reactions to a President people don't like are overtly similar. For the last few days, we've had Californians talking about secession from the Union - and, more darkly, outraged arch-liberals suggesting somebody ought to go John Hinckley and assassinate Trump (apparently heedless of the fact that the man who'd replace him as President - Mike Pence - is inarguably worse on EVERY front, being an anti-gay and pro-TPPA classic modern Republican). This is nothing new. Under Obama, it was Texas that was allegedly going to secede, and Tea Partiers and militiamen talking about assassination. Under Bush ... well, it was the "People's Republic of Vermont" [maybe THEY'D have had the good sense to make Bernie Sanders President], and any number of fantasizing books, comics, movies and polemic pieces arguing that the world'd be better off with one less President Bush. 

So what's changed? What's actually different here?

Well, for one thing, this much outrage, this quickly is pretty striking. I don't even think after Bush Jr. got re-elected in 2004 (amidst allegations of *actual stealing of the election* via rigged e-voting machines, systematic disenfranchisement etc.) that there was seemingly this much heat on the street. We're less than FOUR DAYS into President-Elect Donald Trump, and it already looks from afar as if America's starting to unravel (it isn't - starting, that is - but these things often look so much more dramatic from far away).

There's also probably an easy distinction to be made between that outrage and this. In the former case, there was something really big, really abhorrent and really reified which that President had *already* done (namely, invading a foreign country under a false pretext while top officials *lied* about it) to galvanize public support for his popular opposition.

In this case, nothing like that has yet eventuated.

The only thing people can seem to object to is the mere fact of his election itself. (something which, to be honest - albeit from entirely different reasons - was pretty much what the Tea Party people were doing in 2008 with Obama)

There is, of course, a counter-argument - that this Presidential outcome is so singularly sui-generis in sadness and in suicidality that some radical actions are more called for now than they were previously. In that light, I don't think I've ever before seen outright demands for the Electoral College *not* to represent the votes of the people of the states before in order to pick and anoint a preferred candidate.

But in any case, I can't help but wonder whether the scale and the vitriol of the liberal/leftist/democratic-malcontent response to the looming and increasingly corporeal specter of President Trump is actually motivated by this.

Or, instead, whether so many are so bitter precisely because this is a decidedly unexpected turn of events; and because they were all geared up to think that they, Clinton, "had it in the bag" - and that we'd all be ganging up to ridicule and vituperate those silly Trump supporters with their Orange-Meme Nominee for being stupid enough to lose.

Well, we sure aren't laughing now.

And because we can't deal with it - whether rightly or wrongly - we're lashing out in anger and in protest (at just about anybody who fits the bill of "might have helped Trump get elected", into the bargain).

It will certainly be interesting to see whether this wave of semi-popular discontent simmers down or sizzles up with increasing verbosity over the coming days and weeks.

But one thing's for sure: no matter whom the next President is - and whether we see them first in 2020 or 2024 ... they'll presumably face EXACTLY the same wave of Reductio-Ad-Godwinning, street-protests, and pre-emptive criticisms as the last one.

Truly, as that Bible verse goes, "there is nothing new under the sun".

Why Clintonistas Desperately Want You To Stop Talking About Bernie

It's been interesting watching the shift in discourse about Bernie Sanders from some of the local #ImWithHer crowd (and, presumably, those further afield/closer to the action).

Immediately after the loss, a lot of them were (partially, at least) blaming him for Hillary Clinton's defeat. Because apparently, the idea that your candidate can be seriously derailed by a septuagenarian 'Socialist' is his fault for being too er .. electable, rather than your anointed one's error for being a seriously flawed candidate.

But now, something different is happening. I've seen a number of pro-Clinton people make the case that "we need to stop talking about Sanders".

And, to be fair, one of the cornerstones of this analysis - that just because we had quite a run of (older) polls suggesting that Sanders would absolutely crush Donald Trump in the actual Election, doesn't necessarily mean that he would have won - is actually pretty accurate. We genuinely don't know whether Trump's style of campaigning would have found similar purchase upon the scandal-free and principled Senator Sanders; or, for that matter, whether Sanders' message of economic fairness, anti-corruption, and fundamentally fixing the US 'system' to give ordinary working people a fair go ... would have resonated with the less-well-off voters in key battleground states who actually handed Trump the election.

But these are interesting questions to consider.

So when centrist types insist that "we've got to stop talking about Bernie" because, it appears, they want to work out how they could have made Hillary - *their* preferred brand of warmed-over neoliberal-in-more-egalitarian-language politics - "win", when it comes to the fight for the future ... it tells me something important.

Namely, that a not insignificant number of folks out there in the wider political sphere haven't actually learned the lesson from Nov. 8 and actually fundamentally think that 'business as usual', sufficiently tweaked, poked and prodded (but only rhetorically and in the packaging, of course) ... can actually be meaningfully useful in service of the pursuit of power for the next few elections to come.

They are, in other words, eagerly anxious to shut down dialogue about the alternative path which Sanders might have represented (now that they've worked out that simply, insipidly blaming him for their own failures) ... because they don't really *want* thinking from 'outside the paradigm' which they, personally, represent.

It's not even about admitting (or covering up for) failure anymore.

It's their hack-futures on the line, and they'd rather quite desperately cling to the idea that they can just keep doing what they've always done rather than actually recognize that the neoliberal consensus for which they stand is dying ... and that we're right now in a "go under the tracks or get outta the way!" phase of political-economic-history as applies that doctrine.

So don't do what they tell ya.

Keep positing left-wing alternatives that aren't simply (queasily) crushed by 'orthodox-establishment' politicians and politicos insisting that they 'know better' and are 'more electable' precisely because they dare to refuse to dream.

And remember: they're now only trying to stifle left-wing dissent ... because they're afraid we'll start to work out that we don't actually need them to win :P











:P