The Democrats’ Maginot Line Illusion

       In case you don’t remember or never knew, the Maginot Line was a famous French delusion after WW I that if they built a seventy mile long defense line on their border with Germany they would be invulnerable while maintaining their own superiority.  Instead of working to create an equitable balance among European nations for an enduring peace the Maginot line was built that continued the confrontation.  Every possible military and technical device was installed in the line, further fortified by French convictions about their cultural and moral superiority.  The combination of moral virtue plus military power seemed unconquerable.

        Nevertheless the day of grand disillusionment came. On May 10^th 1939 the German blitzkrieg-style attack simply went around the Maginot line with high speed motorcycle brigades and light tanks, trapped the British army at Dunkirk, and within a month marched through the streets of Paris.  

        A similar delusion seems to stalk both political parties today. The grave danger to U. S. stability is composed less by the rivalry between the presidential candidates than by their shared national delusion about America’s God-given exceptionalism. Both parties repeatedly pronounce the U. S. to be great; greater than all others; headed for greater greatness!  Although warned in Michelle Obama’s speech Tuesday evening about the centuries of White racial superiority baked into American culture, that her family lived in a “White” house built by slaves, it appears to have done little to deter the preening delusion of a special American contract with God.  

       The net result is that for the Democrats it has become inconceivable that they could lose in November. So much political organization partnered with God cannot fail!  They also hope their skillful oratory (setting Bill Clinton loose to go on forever on the second night) will provide cover for the large failings of the Obama years in spite of its several successes and the President’s oratorical prowess. The Trump followers do not hear these Democrat speeches which have become illegible to them in any case. Instead they see what Sanders’ followers see:

·         the failure to prosecute a single banker/CEO after the 2008 crash--several of them clearly culpable for practices that destroyed millions of lives as people lost their homes.

·          the failure to stop the huge export of jobs out of the country;

·         the catastrophic failure of both the Bush and Obama war efforts in the Middle East;

·         the profound hypocrisy of a Congress voting billions annually for Israel that support their occupation of the Palestinian lands.

·          Above all, the failure to address the expanding disease of racial violence, an issue with global echoes.

       This is the picture Trump supporters intuit to be why they want to “take America back.” It’s also why the resistance of Sanders supporters cannot be counted on to blow over. Considering themselves the rationalists in the crowd, the Democrats with their skills in the arts of political theater have actually blinded themselves to how deeply disillusioned and fearful many Americans are.  They orate to themselves.  

       The shadow of tragedy is following the Clinton candidacy. She is the first woman to be this near to breaking the last glass ceiling but is besieged by unpopularity among both her opponents and in her own party because of her complicated record and ties to Wall Street money.  It is not so clear how much of the Sanders reforms she claims to now embrace will receive her enduring support.  The decision to answer the Sanders revolution with more Clintons may have built another Maginot Line.

The Mask of Sanity

      The Republican leadership has come to see their outrageous candidate, Donald Trump, as their best opportunity to sweep the liberals out of the Supreme Court, the Congress, and the Presidency. While this strategy continues their stance the past eight years to completely stonewall Barack Obama and the Democratic Senate, the reality of terrorism is their ace in the hole. 

      Trump’s red-faced ranting during much of his presidential nominating speech conforms to the definition of full blown psychopaths famously developed by Psychiatrist Hervey Cleckley forty years ago. In “The Mask of Sanity” he described psychopaths as persons who can “typically tell vivid, lifelike, plausible stories that are completely fraudulent, without evincing any element of delusion….When confronted with a lie, the psychopath is unflappable and can often effortlessly pass it off as a joke.”

      During the Trump nomination speech PBS's Judy Woodruff counted fifty promises Trump had made. Of course, he will not have to deliver on any of them until next year, if elected.  A psychopath, Cleckley wrote can be

  

“a perfect mimic of a normally functioning person, able to mask or disguise [their] fundamental lack of internal personality structure, an internal chaos that results in repeatedly purposeful destructive behavior…”

      Cleckley revised his analyses seven times between 1947 and 1976 but always believed such personalities were not capable of fully organized productive behavior. Trump proves he was wrong about that. Trump is highly organized in his unique way and that’s the problem: Donald Trump is sane and very dangerous because his character portrait is of an obsessed and highly narcissistic personality who can’t distinguish right from wrong.

      The strategy of the Republican leadership has now accepted Trump because of his potential as the law and order candidate whose campaign will fit hand in glove into the reality of terrorism.  He’s their cynical linchpin to defeat Hillary Clinton, finally throwing back the progressive, diverse, liberal wave. 

       It may happen. 

       

        As terror attacks multiply Trump becomes more likely to defeat the highly unpopular Hillary who will have to struggle with the high energy her campaign lost when it ambushed Bernie Sanders, who had electrified millions of young supporters.  There’s  little electricity in the Clinton campaign now, hobbled by her mistakes in Iraq, Libya and her not so confidential email messaging.  If there’s going to be new energy in her campaign for election its fear of Trump that may be her ace in the hole.

Inequality Is Firing the Guns

       In the nearly half century between an infamous shootout in Cleveland in 1968 and the five Dallas policemen ambushed and killed yesterday the fundamentals of race relations in the U. S. have not changed.

 

        Forty-eight years ago in the Glenville district of Cleveland three police officers were killed in a shootout with Black Nationalists. Three of the Nationalists and a bystander were also killed. Fifteen other police, gunmen and bystanders were wounded; twenty-one casualties total!

       During these forty-eight years hundreds of encounters have occurred between police and people of color that mirror this past week’s killing by police of Philandro Castile in Minnesota, killed for a tail light violation, Alton Sterling shot point-blank while pinned to the ground by the police in Baton Rouge, La.  Among the worst was 12 year old Tamir Rice shot dead in Cleveland within milli-seconds of Police arrival, for which they were later exonerated.  On and on.

       We need not be clueless about the underground forces that feed ambushes or impulse shooting. One clue is that the ranks of police are filled by men and women who might have chosen some other, safer occupation if there were such job options; but the fact is that good career job alternatives are scarce, meaning jobs that pay healthcare and retirement benefits. What is making racism grow is the disappearance of good jobs from the whole American economy. That’s the underlying story of Dallas and Cleveland and everywhere else. Even in booming Silicon Valley there are clues to how racism is being fed. Murder rates are growing sharply and about 35 percent of the workforce make only minimum wage or less and have jobs with no substantial benefits.

       Three-fourths of African Americans fell below the definition of middle class in the 2010 census. The master-slave relationship that is central to American culture over hundreds of years is tragically reinforced by widening inequality.   While the parallel development over the past fifty years of wider opportunities for people of color (from president to corporate executive) is making for a new Clinton-Obama tribe of masters, the slave status of the workforce is deepening and growing.

       Before stating the obvious it needs to be underlined that four-fifths of world population occupies this same lowly status and it is increasingly clear that the guns of Isis and Dallas are cousins by virtue of their shared plight.

        Most obvious of all, it is Capitalism that creates the fertile ground where racism grows and because of increased inequality now grows worse.  Bernie Sanders remains one of the few U. S. politicians who have given clear voice to this obvious role of Capitalism feeding both inequality and racism.  His now dwindling candidacy can still become the beginning of a national and global campaign about regulating capital.  With the guns out around the world and Trump’s candidacy (read also the National Rifle Association) on an ascendant path the situation is very dire.  This age of grotesque wealth must be wound down, and quickly.  Strong coalitions must be formed now among faith groups, labor groups, progressives in academia and in government. 

       It was Jefferson, the slave owner, who nevertheless seemed to know that a revolution now and then in a democracy is a good thing.