The Unoriginality of Fundamentalism

In researching religious history, one major conclusion stands out. Modern world religions are syncretic products of the worldviews and traditions that co-existed with them and preceded them; based on many millennia of cultural development and inheritance. That is seen East and West (and presumably everywhere else), in how every new successful religion that comes along incorporates the cultural practices, rituals, beliefs, imagery, symbolism, holy sites, and sometimes even objects of worship from the prior religions of the converted; even to the point of repurposing holy buildings. This is as true for the Abrahamic religions as any others, despite the denial of fundamentalists. One might argue it’s particularly true of the Abrahamic religions that grew amidst such vast religious, philosophical, and cultural diversity; and we their inheritors rarely hear the other side’s take on what happened; although interestingly some early voices on Christianity and Islam mentioned pagan origins.

There was much destruction and loss as the various world religions came to power, but a surprising amount of the so-called paganism and heathenism survived, if in hidden and altered forms. Many of the major theological arguments and defenses (i.e., apologetics) that modern monotheists make are fundamentally no different than what non-monotheists have been saying for even longer. That is because nearly everything in Abrahamic monotheism originated in paganism. Even the earliest evidence of monotheism in Egypt preceded Abraham, likely where Jews got it from. There is almost nothing original to Abrahamic religions. Strip away all the pagan and secular accretions from Judaism, Christianity, and Islam (Mesopotamian mythology, godmen resurrection narratives, virgin mother motif, pagan stone worship, intercessory rituals, etc); and there might be nothing left of substance. Everything has paganism in it because paganism was everywhere and, at one point, everyone was a pagan. There is no escaping the past out of which our society formed.

So, in that case, what is monotheism, what do we think it is, and why do we think that way? Consider that some ancient Jews referred to their God as Zeus-Yahweh. They perceived the Father God of the Greeks and Jews to be the same ultimate deity or rather each being symbolic of the same ultimate divine reality, the same shared Cosmos of all people. Some pagans had been talking about a singular ultimate Father God, Godhead, or Reality for longer than Abrahamic monotheists have existed. That is seen, for example, in Hinduism going back many millennia into the Bronze Age. Similar thinking is also found back in Classical Greece and carried forward. This is why some ancient Jews also joined Greco-Roman mystery schools. No contradiction or heresy was seen by these spiritual aspirants. With a bit more controversy, there is Mohammad’s Satanic verses, indicating the syncretism also of early Islam; prior to an authoritarian backlash. Higher truth and reality isn’t owned or controlled by any single religious authority, certainly not by self-proclaimed theocrats pretending to speak for God.

Take the idea of worshipping a holy statue, object, etc not as an idol but for what is behind it or else using it as a way of orienting to a higher truth or as a practice to bring the faithful together. That is an archaic pagan spiritual understanding, the notion that there are layers of truth and/or levels of religious practice; with something that transcends, if interpreted variously. Many pagans didn’t perceive their foci of worship, prayer, and contemplation as idols to be treated identical to a god or whatever. They understood these things weren’t the divine itself but a visceral way for humans to see, hear, and grasp the divine; a way to orient to and relate to the divine. Yes, there were many other pagans who did tend toward idol worship, but then again most Jews, Christians, and Muslims have also fallen into various forms of idol worship. This certainly doesn’t distinguish supposed ‘monotheistic’ religions as different from all the rest, claims to the contrary notwithstanding. Paganism can’t be scapegoated for the sins of monotheists, but paganism might offer a better understanding than ‘sin’. Since the Abrahamic religions took on so much paganism, maybe we should look to how the pagans understood what we took from them.

For example, there was the original pagan Kaaba, apparently the same as the present Islamic Kaaba. Even after being taken over by Muslims, they continued to use the exact same pagan worship practices, including ritualistically walking around it in a pagan circular procession and kissing the same pagan black stone. Along with a pagan version of Ramadan, these are all the practices that Mohammad did for most of his life as a pagan before he invented Islam, as his family were the official pagan caretakers of the pagan Kaaba. He got rid of most of the pagan statues, but kept the pagan black stone because it held too much symbolic power for his culture. That is not to dismiss Islam, any more than to dismiss all the other religions that similarly borrowed. There is no shame in cultural traditions persisting from one religion to the next. Here is the point. If the pre-Islamic pagans were idol worshippers, then so are Muslims. But if Muslims are not idol worshippers, then to the same degree neither were those pre-Islamic pagans. The same goes for Christians, Jews, Bahai, or anyone else. Acknowledging one’s own historical origins is not a point of shame. Instead, we should greet such knowledge with curiosity and see pagans as part of this ongoing civilizational project. After all, they are our ancestors, and so we should show respect. In fact, pagans are still among us and sometimes they may be the best among us.

That isn’t to say that idolatry isn’t potentially a stumbling block for the faithful, but this kind of wisdom is not limited to the Abrahamic religions. In fact, other traditions may have essential understandings that would otherwise be lacking. We need to broaden our view of what is the actual concern. Anything can be an idol (statue, picture, symbol, rock, remnant, marker, book, building, institution, authority figure, ritual, etc), when it stands between you and the divine, stands in place of relationship to and experience of what is greater; or the very same thing could be used non-idolatrously as a vehicle to carry you to the divine. Idolatry is in the intent and attitude of the individual worshipper, not inherent to any given thing. In not understanding what is an idol, what is the deeper significance of warning and wisdom, one is all the more likely to fall prey to idol worship without realizing it. Idolatry is not evil. It’s simply a spiritual mistake that, when one learns to see it, one can correct it. But it shouldn’t be used as a cudgel to beat upon others as judged inferior, or to threaten them as damned, or to mock their faith. It’s simply a common error of our shared human nature. Interestingly, at an earlier time in Asia, there was intercultural dialogue between Muslims and Buddhists about idolatry.

That attitude of understanding, compassion, and forgiveness, however, is not typically shared by most fundamentalists; and so maybe sometimes fundamentalism itself becomes an idol, in replacing direct experience with human claims. The thing about fundamentalists, in particular, is specific to their psycho-social disposition and ideological worldview; far beyond religion. The most obvious link is to right-wing authoritarianism, of which research shows fundamentalists measure the highest of any group. But it doesn’t end with that. Tellingly, though religiosity is negatively correlated to individual narcissism, it’s positively correlated to group narcissism. Fundamentalists, in particular, want to believe that they are unique, their group is unique, and maybe that their moment in time is unique. It’s chauvinism, plain and simple (i.e., narcissism). They want to believe they are special snowflakes, that their ego-bound opinions are righteous truth and that they have a divine monopoly. That is arrogance, not righteousness.

But the reality is that fundamentalists are the complete opposite of unique and special, since in being high in right-wing authoritarianism they tend toward conformity; hence they have no talent for originality and so are forced to co-opt and claim other people’s originality, as if it were their own. In the end, this is simply the same old reactionary mind that comes up in so much else. Stealing ideas, rhetoric, practices, etc from others without giving credit, without a sense of mutuality and commonality; that is simply what reactionaries do and have always done for as long as they’ve existed, going back at least to the Axial Age. Then the fundamentalists spend centuries or longer erasing the knowledge and destroying the evidence of that history, often involving book burnings and textual interpolations, with not even their own holy scriptures being safe from their zealous and censorious wrath (all of the Abrahamic holy books show evidence of having been altered early on). There is nothing wrong with the act of borrowing what is worthy from other traditions, but it should be done with mutual respect, rather than social dominance, wanton destruction, and sometimes outright terrorism and genocide.

Fundamentalists and others of a similar ilk either lack knowledge of the larger world, specifically of the longer and broader history of the world, or else they hypocritically dismiss and conveniently ignore it, then seek to obscure and hide it. There is nothing unique about any of the major fundamentalist religions, not unique now and not unique when they first formed. This historical amnesia, one might call it willful ignorance, is the same undercurrent that causes endless moral panic and culture war; as if this time everything really is different, as if this time the world really will come to an end. In study after study, social conservatism as right-wing authoritarianism ultimate comes down to fear and anxiety, and nothing else. It’s a dark worldview that closes the mind, heart, and soul. They cut out their own eyes for fear of what they might see. Their claim that others don’t understand them is projection for they don’t understand themselves. How could they? There is no humanity other than our common humanity. To deny that is the ultimate betrayal, of humanity and whatever is greater than humanity.

Fundamentalists use fear to reinforce their group narcissism and groupthink, keeping at bay any knowledge that would challenge their spin, disinfo, and lies; for light threatens to dispel the darkness. Fear-mongering is highly effective, as long as a society can be kept sickly, stressed, and traumatized; something too many of us have come to take as normal, such that we don’t even notice it. The chronic fear and anxiety is in the background, and we wonder why so many people are pulled into the reactionary mind, not realizing we too have become vulnerable to it. So, the average fundamentalist is as much a victim as anyone else, not to be scapegoated in the way they do with others. They genuinely know not what they do for they don’t have eyes to see. Some of the greatest spiritual teachers, such as Jesus, came to challenge this very soul sickness, particularly of false religiosity; came to demonstrate another way is possible. Rather than being unique and special, we all share in a common humanity and a common divinity. What if what unites us is more important, more real and true, than what divides us? What if only that is worthy of worship?

Disunited States of Outrage

Liberalism, by historical definition, has meant generosity — not only generosity of money and charity, of public welfare and the public good but more importantly the generosity of spirit. This has expressed an attitude of openness and inclusion, an equal treatment of all, including perceived others and outsiders along with those perceived as different or not fitting in: minorities, immigrants, and the poor; the underprivileged, outcasts, and the sick; the differently abled, neurotypical, and gender nonconforming; etc. That is the noble ideal that makes liberals feel all warm and fuzzy. On this basis, I’ve been sharply critical of the liberal class, aligned as it is with the DNC elite, for lack of understanding, empathy, and compassion toward those they perceive as their ideological enemies and their social inferiors. It’s an us-versus-them groupthink with a patina of liberalish rhetoric. Ideals, when betrayed, lead to cynicism and that is what we now have.

Then again, the liberal class is an odd term in reference to the academics, professionals, investors, business owners, and politicians who are economically comfortable or even wealthy. Many in the upper classes are not necessarily liberal. Meanwhile, the vast majority of self-identified liberals and those holding liberal views are lower class with many of them being downright poor. The liberal class, as an identity, not only excludes conservatives but also most liberals. This is maybe how liberalism has gotten a bad name and become a slur. Of course, there is an equivalent conservative class that silences, ignores, and dismisses most conservatives (and liberals) perceived as below them. The fact of the matter is class war has its own ideology that is independent of stereotypes of left versus right. Still, for a left-liberal, it’s the bad behavior of supposed ‘liberals’ that hits one in the gut, in how it undermines the entire moral vision of liberalism.

There are liberals who are offended when someone uses the same kind of criticism against vegans, feminists, etc that they themselves so carelessly lob against those on the right. They find it easy to identity with the members of their in-group while not taking seriously the suffering and grievances of those perceived as outsiders, as if everyone else deserves what they get. Sadly, many respectable Democratic partisans blame poor whites for the Donald Trump presidency and then portray them as a caricature of white trash, although interestingly the political right often goes along with this same rhetorical framing conflating class and ideology. The truth is most of Trump voters are middle class, not even working class and certainly not poor. Most poor Americans, white or otherwise, simply don’t vote or participate in politics and activism. The ignorance about the poor and indifference toward them is sad, sometimes downright infuriating.

There are those of us on the principled political left — Jimmy Dore, Glenn Greenwald, Ralph Nader, etc — who are used to being the punching bags of liberals (or what goes for liberal within corporatist politics), just as we are intimately familiar with the ire of the political right. We take our bruises and punch back. I’m one of the first to defend the poor of all races, by looking at the demographic data and pointing to the history of class war, as there is a lot more going on here that has brought us to this point. Then again, I’m one of those crazy left-wingers who gets why some otherwise good people would vote for a less-than-good demagogue and charlatan like Donald Trump, similar to why some otherwise good people would vote for corrupt elites like Hilary Clinton and Joe Biden. I know the attraction of lesser evil voting. To an even greater extent, I grasp the gut-level frustration that led to some to vote for Trump as an act of pure desperation, even as they admitted he was a corrupt swamp creature, for they saw him as a bully who would fight the other bullies or else blow the whole thig up. Then there are those on the other side who throw their lot in with the Clinton Democrats as what they think of as a last stand against authoritarianism — I get that as well.

I understand and empathize. Everyone has their reasons. I don’t want to hate upon anyone, to condemn them for making imperfect choices in an oppressive system that ensures all options allowed are bad and worse still. I’m not in a position to stand in judgment. I’ve felt the same frustration and anger, sometimes a naked sense of threat as authoritarianism digs its claws deeper into American society. Yet my offering of fellow feeling is not always returned. Such is the way of compassion in a world darkened by fear and anxiety, hatred and outrage. People are quick to see enemies even in potential friends and allies. Even familial bond is no guarantee of mutal understanding, much less kindness and forgiveness.

One person in my family is a poor white guy on disability who takes care of his sick father. He is libertarian-minded, lives in a conservative state, and probably supports Trump. He unfriended me on Facebook because I said something positive about the Black Lives Matters protests. It’s not as if I advocated violence, destruction, or anarchy; and I made clear that my position was as a proponent of free speech in the face of authoritarian force that wishes to take that right away. Another family member is similar except in being middle class. He has been even more vocally libertarian in the past, and yet recently he advocated a violent police state response to ending the same protests, in arguing he’d rather have authoritarianism than anarchy. What goes for libertarianism is about as uninspiring as what often gets portrayed as liberalism. Oppressed Americans like me, according to other oppressed Americans, have become the enemy to be defeated at all costs in order to fight oppression — I’m not sure how that is supposed to work exactly. As family, I know these two people fairly well and we share many interests. They are good people who care about their loved ones and communities. But their minds have been shut down and their hearts grown cold. It is the saddest thing I’ve experienced in a long time, as it is personal.

This civil conflict is taken as total war where one side must win and the other side eliminated. Yet if the police treated them and their loved ones in a similar oppressive fashion, they’d likely be advocating terrorism, revolution, and overthrowing the government while proclaiming ‘liberty’. But as long as those other people (minorities, immigrants, poor urbanites, etc) elsewhere are being oppressed, not them and their own, it is perfectly fine as those other people had it coming. Apparently, to their fearful mindset, it is as if there is a limited supply of moral concern with any compassion and kindness offered to blacks or leftists being a direct attack on whites and right-wingers. Equality, fairness, and justice is assumed as an impossibility. But to my mind, this self-enforced division of the citizenry is how oppressive rule is maintained. These right-wing family members, both living in a rural conservative state, don’t understand that they share the same basic problems of oppressive class war as do urban blacks, working class liberals, etc. Along with Democratic voters I know who are also family members, if my Trump-supporting family could get past the media narratives and propagandistic rhetoric, they would discover they have common grievances with most other Americans across various perceived divides. They’d come to realize they aren’t alone and isolated. If this can’t happen among family, what hope is there to be found in the greater society?

This same outrage has pulled other individuals in my family toward supporting Trump, including some who didn’t vote for him last time in cleaving to their identity as old school Republicans. The Cold War rhetoric of commie fear-mongering has worked them up into a state of terror, as if a Biden presidency will unleash a Stalinist takeover, not to mention the postmodern neo-Marxism and cultural Bolshevism. Some of these otherwise moderate conservatives are rightfully feeling mad about the corporate media shut down of the Hunter Biden scandal, although no more pissed off than us left-wingers who have received similar or worse treatment over the years and decades. A total lockdown of corporate media has kept left-wingers silenced for generations. But these right-wingers take this silence as a sign that we freedom-loving leftists don’t exist or don’t matter, instead taking the corporate whores among the Clinton Democrats as representative of the political left — a truly sad state of affairs.

Sure, the DNC has its tentacles in the corporate media, as does the GOP. Yet as Fox News might tell part of the truth about Hunter Biden, they are just as quick to lie to their viewers about the same kind of corruption and legalized bribery in the Trump family. The propaganda model of media is not a new phenomenon, as many left-wingers have been protesting it for a very long time. But to many right-wingers, particularly among the white middle class, it’s as if they are only now discovering that the corporate media serves a corporatist power structure that doesn’t give a fuck about truth or about the average American. They are being red-pilled but lack any historical context to realize this is an ongoing pattern of censorship that, in many ways, was far worse during the Cold War. My God! Just look at the Operation Mockingbird in the 1970s and Otto Reich’s white propaganda in the 1980s.

But to the outraged mind, whatever is the most recent outrage is the worst outrage that has ever happened. Outrage eclipses any greater awareness in enclosing the mind a mystifying fog of historical amnesia, which is the entire reason the ruling elite use the corporate media to incite outrage in the first place. Republicans and Trump supporters, mostly white and middle class, are shocked to realize that they are treated with the same propaganda and censorship as everyone else, that are treated as equal to poor minorities — God forbid! It is disturbing to find out that one’s racial and class privilege doesn’t guarantee special treatment, after all. They have no sense of the historical oppression so many other Americans have suffered for generations and centuries. The censorship in the corporate media pales in comparison to the censorship they’ve internalized in their own minds. Instead of it being a point of solidarity among the oppressed, competing victim identities are played against each other, as is the purpose of divide and conquer. Outrage shuts down empathy and disempowers the public.

Despite what they’ve been told by the right-wing corporate media, these right-wingers aren’t the first to feel frustration toward oppressive injustice and censorship. Nice to meet you, comrade! Welcome to the reality many of us have been living in for our entire lives! I felt that frustration about bipartisan attacks on Ralph Nader in 2000. The corporate media shut him out back then and, ever since, has continued to silence candidates that are third party and independent. If you think right-libertarians have a tough time competing in the duopoly of a one-party state, try being a left-winger like a Green supporter. Right-libertarians at least have powerful plutocrats like the Koch family funding them. To return to the 2000 election, consider how bizarre and disheartening it is that both parties and all of the corpoate media, from Fox News to MSNBC, refused to report on the stolen election, even though the data shows that Democrats won both the popular vote and the electoral college. The Supreme Court defied all pretenses of democracy and simply appointed George W. Bush as the supreme leader. The Democrats submitted to this power play, since the transpartisan ruling elite doesn’t care all that much about which party wins as long as the system itself maintains an illusion of legitimacy, thus allowing bipartisan backroom deals to continue in defense of coporatocracy and plutocracy. The only unforgivable sin of Donald Trump is his having destroyed that legitimacy and shown it to be the fraud it always was.

About protests, look back to the anti-war movement under the Bush regime. It was the single largest protest movement in the history of the United States and the world, having united multiple ideological groups on the right and left, not to mention including the citizens of numerous countries joining in their own protests against American imperialism. Unlike the Vietnam War that required many years of failure before public opposition formed, protests against the Iraq War were organized at a large-scale before the war even began. Most Americans opposed the war right from the start, but that didn’t stop the corporate media from being unified in their attack o peace activists while beating the war drums in service to the military-industrial complex. Many of the people now acting so outraged were perfectly fine with the workings of that propaganda machine. Likewise, there was more recent bipartisan support from the corporate media in spinning state propaganda by falsely reporting on Syrian gas attacks that blamed the government, despite the evidence pointing to other actors. None of the corporate media has ever admitted to this propaganda, much less apologized for being willfully wrong, and so most Americans remain ignorant.

Do you want to feel outrage? There is no lack of reasons. Let’s not be selective in our outrage by only getting worked up when we are personally harmed and our own views suppressed. This country was built on outrage and has been continuously fueled by outrage. There is a reason or rather many reasons Americans have been in a near continuous state of protest and revolt for centuries. There is plenty to be outraged about and there always has been. But we shouldn’t let outrage darken our minds in lashing out against fellow Americans, against even our own neighbors and family. Outrage without compassion will rot the soul and destroy the public good. We need to deal with our own damage, not continually projecting it out onto the world with trauma leading to ever more trauma, with each generation of victims becoming victimizers. Arrogance, haughtiness, and righteousness, makes us vulnerable to manipulation. We aren’t right-wingers and left-wingers, Democrats and Republicans. We are all Americans. We are all human. Our fate is shared but so is, if we choose, our sense of hope and promise.

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Endless Nonsense of the Misinformed Mind

This campaign season, I’ve been surprised by quite a bit. I knew the Democratic establishment and the mainstream media were powerful, but I never realized how powerful.

Even among intelligent educated people I know, a remarkable number don’t seem all that well-informed or interested in being well-informed. I continually come across people who repeat talking points and false claims, even long after they’ve been disproven or the data has changed.

There also is a lot of simplistic opinions. I know I shouldn’t be shocked by this. It’s just for some reason it seems worse this time around. Many people are really caught up in emotional reaction or else simple partisan groupthink.

Let me give an example of some comments I’ve seen. Some people still seem to think of Bernie Sanders’ campaign as a failure. He should just give up, bow out, and hand the nomination to Hillary Clinton. They’ve assumed from the beginning, like Clinton has assumed, that the nomination was in the bag. It’s as if campaigns are just formalities and it’s really the political elites who declare who will represent us.

Such arrogance. And also such naive optimism about their candidate. Have these people been living under a rock? Haven’t they seen what’s been going on with Sanders’ campaign?

Sanders is the most well liked and most trusted candidate running right now, along with having a low negativity rating. He has raised massive amounts of money, all with small donations, setting a record in accomplishing this. He has also set a record in the largest crowds a candidate has drawn in US campaign history. He is running  neck to neck with the candidate promoted by the party establishment and the mainstream media, an establishment candidate who would have been losing long ago if the system wasn’t rigged in her favor.

Sanders’ campaign is the most impressive in my lifetime. The voting public hasn’t been this engaged in a long time. Even Obama never got this kind of groundswell.

It’s amazing how wrong people have been about Sanders, proportionate to how certain their opinions were stated. Consider the whole Bernie Bros allegation. And then how vicious Clinton supporters became when they found out that young women have turned against Clinton and sided with Sanders. Having learned their lesson from that, they now try to ignore all the data that shows how Sanders is taking the lead in numerous demographics that Clinton supposedly was guaranteed.

This is seen with demographics from low income to young minorities. Sanders has masterfully won them over. The response is to ignore it or confidently state the opposite is true, no matter what the data shows. I hear people say such things as, “Sanders never caught on with minority voters” and “Sanders always seemed to be speaking to fairly affluent white college students.” These kinds of statements are patently false.

Then there are all the other unsubstantiated allegations. Chairs were being thrown or whatever. It’s an endless smear campaign. Clinton supporters rarely talk about the issues and, when they do talk about them, they merely demonstrate they know little about the issues. I’m genuinely shocked that Clinton supporters know so little about her political record and the consequences of the policies she has supported, not to mention all the endless shady dealings. I could write an entire book detailing all of this and some people have already written such books.

So many people can’t be bothered to research the data for themselves. They simply know what is true because that is what they heard someone say, either in Clinton’s campaign or from the MSM.

I seem to have an endless capacity for being amazed at willful ignorance and intellectual laziness. I never want to believe that knowledge means so little in changing minds. I’m naive in my love of knowledge. I just think knowledge is awesome and wrongly assume most people share this attitude.

I just don’t get personality politics, partisanship, groupthink, and blind loyalty. It isn’t my nature to think that way.

I don’t even care about Sanders, despite my support of his campaign. No one is likely to tell me any criticism or data about Sanders that I don’t already know. And if someone did surprise me with something new, it wouldn’t really bother me. If I found out that Sanders did a fraction of the immoral and anti-democratic kind of crap that Clinton regularly does, I’d drop him in a heartbeat and not give it a second thought. Sanders as a person is as irrelevant to me as is the fact that he is running as a Democrat.

I just don’t care about such things. I want reform, however that might be achieved. And, most importantly, I want truth.

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Which Candidate Do the Poor Support?

Bernie Sanders and Civil Rights

Five demographic arguments for Bernie Sanders
by Carl Beijer

The story here is clear: one can only call Clinton an advocate of the powerless by ignoring women, Hispanics and other non-black voters of color, ~30% of black Americans, gays, lesbians, bisexuals and other non-straights, the young, and the poor. The narrative being aggressively advanced by writers like Tomasky and Goldberg – that Sanders is the candidate of privilege – can only be made by a stunning degree of demographic gerrymandering that ignores the dramatic sea changes in preference that have taken place since the beginning of the campaign.

Oldest African-American Newspaper in US Endorses Bernie Sanders
teleSUR

“Sanders has supported policies and programs that would be in the best interest of all Americans and African-Americans, specifically. He has been a consistent fighter for a more just and equitable society,” the oldest African-American newspaper says.

How Bernie Sanders won Michigan
by Kathleen Gray & Todd Spangler, Detroit Free Press

While many said the race in Michigan would come down to demographics — and Clinton’s advantage with African-American voters — exit polling done for CNN suggested it was more about issues and widespread dissatisfaction with the federal government.

A Shock: Bernie is Actually Bagging Black Votes
by Earl Ofari Hutchinson, Huffington Post

The first hint that Sanders’ halting efforts to break Clinton’s iron-grip on Black voters paid some dividends came in the early March Michigan Democratic primary. Sanders got almost one-third of the Black vote in that primary. It did more than raise a few eyebrows. It was just enough to edge Sanders past Clinton and nab the win. It also did much more. It proved that in close contests in the Northern states with a significant percentage of Black votes, Sanders need not top Clinton’s Black vote total. This won’t happen. He just needs to slice into her percentage of the Black vote to be competitive, and as Michigan showed, to even defy the oddsmakers, and win.

Youth of Color Talk About Sanders
by Christen McCurdy, The Skanner

Sanders went on to win Washington’s caucus Saturday and clinched victories in Alaska and Hawaii the same day.

Exit polls on the racial breakdown of Saturday’s caucuses are not available. Critics have noted all three states have notably smaller Black populations than the national average and that Clinton’s wins in southern states were apparently solidified by Black voters.

On the other hand, Alaska and Hawaii are two of the most racially and linguistically diverse states in the nation, and Sanders polls well with younger voters of all races, enjoying a slight edge over Clinton among young African Americans.

According to the polling firm Edison Research, 51 percent of African American Democratic voters aged 17 to 29 said they support Sanders, versus 48 percent supporting Clinton. Sanders leads 66-34 among young Hispanics who are likely to support a Democrat.

Clintons wrestle with a black generation gap
by Clarence Page, Chicago Tribune

Much has been said about the generation gap that has caused younger women to prefer Sanders over Hillary Clinton. As the parent of a politically savvy African-American 20-something, I have seen the same gap open up between black millennials and their elders.

Too young to remember the peace and prosperity of the 1990s, today’s youths are more familiar with mass incarceration, violent crime surges, viral videos of police brutality and losses in many black households of economic gains they made in the Clinton years.

New Twitter-age movements like Black Lives Matter are fueled by such experts as Michelle Alexander, 48, and her best-seller “The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness.”

In an essay in The Nation titled “Why Hillary Clinton Doesn’t Deserve the Black Vote,” Alexander harshly questioned the “devotion” of black voters to the Clintons.

“Did they take extreme political risks to defend the rights of African-Americans?” she wrote. “Did they courageously stand up to right-wing demagoguery about black communities …?” No, she wrote, “Quite the opposite.”

Why Young People of Color Are Rejecting Hillary Clinton
by Hector Luis Alamo, Latino Rebels

Hillary has a problem, and her problem is the Democratic Party’s problem: How are they going to excite young voters, and particularly young voters of color? Now that we’re being told Bernie Sanders has no path to the nomination, Democratic strategists and status-quo pragmatists are hoping young people will take the immense energy that has exalted the Sanders campaign and inject it into the scheme for Hillary. That ain’t happening, but not because young people are naïve, impetuous or are being fed lies about Hillary’s record, as Democratic operatives the likes of Dolores Huerta would have us believe. On the contrary, young people won’t vote for Hillary because “we just don’t trust her,” as a young black Bernie supporter recently explained on CNN. “We don’t trust what she says, and we don’t like what she’s done. And for those combined reasons, we won’t vote for Hillary Clinton.”

The more young people learn about Hillary, the less likely they are to vote for her. Her betrayal of female workers during her time on the board of directors at Walmart, her betrayal of children, families, people of color and immigrants during her time as first lady, her pro-Wall Street years in the Senate, and her betrayal of the United States’ neighbors in Latin America during her tenure as secretary of state. Hillary indeed has plenty of experience in government. Unfortunately for her, it mostly involves her taking neoliberal positions. There’s nothing wrong with Hillary being a neoliberal and not a “true” progressive, but at least tell me the truth.

The Generation Gap Between Latino Voters
Latino USA, NPR

Is there a generation gap dividing young and old Latino voters? Young Latinos seems to prefer Bernie Sanders, while older Latinos like Hillary Clinton.

Bernie Sanders rally in Stockton draws many Latino supporters
by Cynthia Moreno

An NBC analysis that tracked the voting preference of Latino Democrats back in March found that Latinos under 30 supported Sanders on exit and entrance polls in primaries and caucuses held in 19 states.

Young Latino Voters Trending to Bernie Sanders as Latino Vote Emphasized
by Alvaro Nino de Guzman Jr., Media Milwaukee

“It seems that Sanders is getting a lot of attention and momentum in the Latino community as well. Things might change especially because Sanders seems to have a broad appeal to young constituencies and among the Latino, the millennials are the majority. Forty-four perspective voters among the Latino community are young voters,” said Muniz.

How Hispanic Millennials Are Driving the Bernie Sanders Brand
by Elena del Valle, HispanicMPR

The Millennials now represent the largest voting bloc in the U.S. so they cannot be ignored – these 86 million young people will represent 40 percent the electorate in 2020. The proportion of Millennials that are Hispanic is higher than other age segments – e.g. one in four Millennials are Hispanic and their median age is 27 versus 37 for the remaining population, so their influence will be significant.

Why Bernie Sanders Really Did Win Nevada’s Hispanic Vote
by Doug Johnson Hatlem, CounterPunch

In a press release, Gonzalez and WCVI lamented that “[l]ost in this controversy is the fact that the data shows a record high Latino vote share in the Democratic Caucuses with Latinos representing 19% of the vote compared to 13% in 2008.”

WCVI is “one of the nation’s largest Latino voter registration groups.” It has worked since 1985 out of Los Angeles and San Antonio under a non-partisan mandate to get as many Latinos as possible registered and to the polls on election days, and will be hosting Latino Vote Summits in several key states beginning this Friday at the University of Texas San Antonio. SVREP’s work in Nevada saw Gonzalez quoted for a story in the Los Angeles Times last Wednesday suggesting that millennial Latinos, who may make up almost half of all eligible Latino voters in the U.S. in 2016, might just make the difference in the outcome.

“The leadership that is older is all Clinton, but the younger Latinos, they’re with Sanders,” Gonzalez told the Times. “Gonzalez said the rift is present in his own family. ‘My daughters are Sanders people,’ he said. ‘My wife is with Hillary’.”

Six in Ten Latino Teens Identified as Democrats And Most Prefer Bernie Sanders as President
by Glen Minnis, Latin Post

While youth voter turnout typically lags, pollsters found that 62 percent of the 28,141 teens surveyed that will be eligible to vote come November’s general election plan to do so.

The study found six in every ten Latinos identify as Democrats, with just 26 percent of respondents considering themselves members of the GOP.

Among those surveyed, Sanders leads overall democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton 43 percent to 16 percent. By comparison, Republican front-runner Donald Trump managed just six percent support.

Latinos also proved to be the group that most believes immigration to be a key issue in the overall presidential debate at 30 percent.

The Latin Vote: What Do Latinos Think Of Hillary Clinton And Bernie Sanders?
by Pedro Moreno Vasquez, XpatNation

When it comes to voting, Latin women seem to be more supportive of democrats. The 2014 midterm elections indicated that 66% of Latinas voted for democratic candidates. Among Latino men, the adherence for democrats is lower: 57% of them voted for a democrat, while 41% of Latino men voted for a Republican. For both sexes, Latinos over 45 are more likely to vote for a democrat.

It seems obvious then, that Latinas will strongly support Hillary. This has been a consolation for a candidate who, in recent months, has seen a shocking drop of support from nationwide female voters. In July 2015, 71% of democratic-leaning female voters supported Hillary Clinton. In a matter of eight weeks, Clinton lost almost 30% of those votes. Now only 42% of female voters support her.

Hillary is not considering something: Latino families in the US still have a strong patriarchal background. This may affect her appeal toward male Latino voters to a degree. In general, Hillary is not taking advantage of her Latino women support. She should do more to expand it. Clinton recently assigned a Dreamer Latina named Lorella Praeli as her Latino Outreach Director. Praeli has neither wide following nor charisma. There are, of course, Dreamers who are more popular, articulate, and have more presence, such as Erika Andiola, Cesar Vargas and Carlos Padilla.

But they support Bernie Sanders.

Huge Wins Ahead for Bernie Sanders if Latinos, Independents, Youths Vote
by Garrett Griffin, Weekend Collective

Sanders crushed Hillary by 20 percentage points in two-thirds of his victories: New Hampshire, Minnesota, Colorado, Vermont, Kansas, and Maine. This was not a fluke. He will likely have more big wins if young people, independents, and Latino voters register and cast their ballots.

Southwest and Western states with large Latino populations will likely flock to Sanders. He barely lost Illinois, but surveys the week before saw him with 64% of Latino support in the state, compared to 30% for Clinton. (Nearly half of Latino voters are millennials.) Of the 20 Iowa counties that have the largest Latino population, Sanders won 15 of them. He also may have won the Latino vote in Nevada, far better than expected, and Democracy Now reported after Colorado: “Latino vote helps Bernie Sanders surge to victory in massive Democratic caucus turnout.”

Upcoming states like New Mexico, Washington, Arizona, and California (with its whopping 546 delegates) with big Hispanic populations could cause Clinton’s lead to evaporate

Interview: Young Latinos Are Ralllying for Bernie Sanders
interview with José Manuel Santoyo, teleSUR

Although it has been often reported in this election cycle that minorities are overwhelmingly voting for former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, many members of the African-American and Latino communities have banded together to support Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders.

Sanders has been especially popular with young voters, inspiring many to participate in the democratic process for the first time.

TeleSUR spoke with José Manuel Santoyo, the online marketing strategist for Young Latinos For Bernie, about his organization’s efforts to bring his fellow young Latino’s into Sanders’ camp.

Huge!! New PPP poll: Sanders runs ahead of Clinton with Hispanic voters in a race against Trump
by vl baker, caucus99percent

Of Dreamers and Sleepwalkers

“Most men are not wicked. They are sleepwalkers, not evildoers.”
~ Franz Kafka

Lesser evil voting is mostly knee jerk groupthink, not rational decision-making and strategic thinking. If it was rational and strategic, Sanders would be guaranteed the nomination.

Sanders is the only candidate that the polling data has regularly shown to have any chance to defeat any of the Republican candidates. And he is the only candidate with both high popular support and low negative public opinion. On top of that, he is the only candidate of either political party whose politics aren’t some combination of neoliberalism and neoconservatism.

It’s about the narrative, the frame of how people think and what they can imagine. Lesser evil voting tends to mean backing the establishment and the status quo, no matter what. Some people use lesser voting strategically as a tactic, but these people are probably such a tiny fraction of a percentage of the voters as to be insignificant for elections. For most, lesser evil voting is simply about fear of the alternatives, even when their actions make the feared alternatives more likely.

Besides, so much of the argument seems pointless. Hillary Clinton has won most of the delegates even in states that have a majority supporting Sanders. The same happens in elections. What most Americans want is irrelevant to the system, especially considering how constrained is the election process, how controlled and manipulated and undermined is the pseudo-democracy. In a fully functioning democracy, neither Clinton nor Trump would make it very far in the process—both offering oppressive authoritarianism. Candidates like that don’t represent what most Americans support, as polls show. Despite how the MSM dismisses Sanders, he actually represents what is majority opinion.

None of this is charade is rational. It doesn’t matter what is proven to be true in polls, political records, released e-mails, historical documents, etc. It’s not about the issues. It’s not about what the American public supports and wants. This isn’t an actual democracy we live in. This is an open secret. Social science research has gone into this in great detail. It’s a favorite topic on the internet. Even the mainstream (corporate) media every so often throws up a piece on either asserting or questioning whether the US is still a democracy; and if not, what is it—military-industrial complex, banana republic, shadow government, deep state, inverted totalitarianism, corporatism/fascism, plutocracy, dark money, police state, or what exactly? The only place you don’t hear this kind of thing is in mainstream (corporatist) politics.

Yet everything goes on as if normal. We live in this dissociated state. We know it all is a charade or at least have strong suspicions. But we can’t bring ourselves to fully acknowledge this and act rationally in response to it. Rationality seems impotent when confronted by such horrific possibilities. Thinking along these lines would lead to radical notions and questions, and so we expunge them from our consciousness. It’s best not to think too much about it all. One might start feeling unacceptable impulses toward protesting in the streets, marching on the capitol, or God Forbid! starting a revolution. All of a sudden, the choice between Coke and Pepsi might be understood as meaningless as it always was. Such thoughts make people unhappy. If you confront people with this, they will get upset and angry. You can lose friends that way.

It’s understandable. There was something I think Franz Kafka said that has stuck with me—to paraphrase: Don’t destroy someone’s world, unless you have something better to offer them. That’s a tough standard to hold oneself to. It’s hard to imagine something new until the old has been cleared away. It might not be a matter of destroying someone’s world when they are acting self-destructively toward their own world.

In this situation, do you wait for full destruction to be complete before suggesting the consideration of alternatives? Why do we wait for problems to almost be past the point of any solution before even trying to figure out what those problems are?

None of this was inevitable. It was a series of choices made, the results accumulating over time.

Imagine if we had taken a different path. Imagine decades or even generations of greater good voting. Imagine for the past century that elected presidents included the likes of Eugene V. Debs, McGovern, Nader, Sanders, Jill Stein, etc. We wouldn’t even be facing the problems we now face. It’s not just about the lesser evil of this or that election, but endless kneejerk groupthink and fearmongering defense of the status quo.

Pointing this all out to people just irritates them. They have no way to make sense of it. The old narratives no longer explain much of anything and yet there is no compelling narrative to take their place. To imagine something new and different, people need to be told a story that draws them in and suspends their disbelief. One moment of envisioning an alternative could lift the cloud of cynicism and apathy.

That is one hell of a challenge. But maybe it doesn’t need to be as daunting as we make it. By nature, humans are talented at imagination. We are all dreamers. The trick is to learn how to dream while awake. Maybe this is not unlike, as Douglas Adams suggested, learning to fly by throwing yourself at the ground and missing. So, let’s throw ourselves at the dystopian fears before us and hope we miss.

* * *

The Logic of Lesser Evilism
by Andrew Levine, CounterPunch

The Reflective Voter’s Fear
by Andrew Levine, CounterPunch

75% in U.S. See Widespread Government Corruption
Gallup

Banana Republic Level of Inequality Is Undermining America’s Geopolitical Power
by Washingtons Blog

America the Banana Republic
by Christopher Hitchens, Vanity Fair

10 ways America has come to resemble a banana republic
by Alex Henderson, Alternet

Our Banana Republic
by Nicholas Kristof, The New York Times

The Permanent Militarization of America
by Aaron B. O’Connell, The New York Times

The Danger of American Fascism
by Henry A. Wallace, New York Times

When Fascism Was American
by Joe Allen, Jacobin

Have The American People Accepted Corporate State Fascism?
by Ray Pensador, Daily Kos

Deep state in the United States
from Wikipedia

Deep State America
by Philip Giraldi, The American Conservative

The Deep State
by Peggy Noonan, The Wall Street Journal

The War on Democracy: The Deep State
by Bob Burnett, Huffington Post

The Quiet Coup: No, Not Egypt. Here.
by John Tirman, Huffington Post

Controlled by shadow government: Mike Lofgren reveals how top U.S. officials are at the mercy of the “deep state”
by Elias Isquith, Salon

“Every president has been manipulated by national security officials”: David Talbot exposes America’s “deep state”
Liam O’Donoghue, Salon

Vote all you want. The secret government won’t change.
by Jordan Michael Smith, Boston Globe

National Security and Double Government
by Michael J. Glennon, Harvard National Security Journal

Examining Who Runs the United States
by Anand Giridharadas, The New York Times

Sheldon Wolin and Inverted Totalitarianism
by Chris Hedges, Truthdig

Inverted Totalitarianism
by Sheldon Wolin, The Nation

Nick Hanauer: Beware, fellow plutocrats, the pitchforks are coming
TED Talk video

How Gilded Ages End
by Paul Starr, The American Prospect

The Political Roots of Widening Inequality
by Robert Reich, The American Prospect

Plutocrats Against Democracy
by Paul Krugman, The New York Times

America slouches toward plutocracy
by Sean McElwee, Al Jazeera America

A Study in Plutocracy: Rich Americans Wield Political Influence, the Rest of Us Don’t
by John Light, Moyers & Company

We are Becoming a Plutocracy No Matter What Obama Proposes Tomorrow
by Robert Lenzner, Forbes

5 signs America is devolving into a plutocracy
by Tom Engelhardt, Salon