We the People are the Third Choice
We Americans will have to save ourselves
“When the oppressors give me two choices, I always take the third.”
~Meir Berliner, died fighting the Nazi SS at Treblinka (see discussion)
W e the American people need to shift our focus away from the show being put on for our mass entertainment, the melodrama of decadence and dysfunction. We need to take back our minds from the attention economy, take back our power from the system. This is our time to organize and take action.
Most of the focus right now is on how horrific is Donald Trump’s fascist auto-coup and Elon Musk’s DOGE disaster. But most have already forgotten about Project 2025 or anything else that brought us to this point. Even that is just the tip of the iceberg. Everything seems to be going according to plan, and that plan goes back at least generations with American fascists and the right-wing shadow network.
This involves a dark history of scheming, manipulation, and harm: Business Plot, Ultra Plot, Dulles Brothers, Operation Paperclip, McCarthyism, blackballing, blacklisting, COINTELPRO, Powell Memo, Paul Weyrich, Joseph Coors, dark money, etc. This coincided with rising American imperialism, a growing deep state, an empowered plutocracy, a shift toward inverted totalitarianism, ever worsening inequality, an endless class war, and the systematic destruction of a strong and organized left-wing.
One thing that is clear is that Trump and Musk couldn’t get away with any of this without the permission and support of the larger power structure and elite establishment that could, at any moment, stop them. It makes one wonder if Trump and Musk are useful idiots and scapegoats being used for orchestrated distraction with political spectacle and kabuki theater. If so, to what end and for whose agenda? We seem to be heading toward global conflict, maybe a second great depression or a third world war or both.
Maybe it’s a planned Great Reset to systematically destroy the entire system and then, during mass war or civil unrest, to push through any new kind of system they want using war powers or some other form of suspension of normal law. Or whatever might be the case, it’s hard to imagine the purpose for all this will end well for most of us, unless we do something to stop it.
About the long-term right-wing takeover, we should never forget that it’s been a bipartisan effort. It’s part of a crony banana republic where the disconnected political elite as our supposed representatives don’t actually represent us but consistently fall in line with opinions and interests of their fellow elites (Norman J. Ornstein & Thomas E. Mann, ; Martin Gilens, Affluence and Influence; Martin Gilens & Benjamin I. Page, Democracy In America?; & Martin Gilens & Benjamin I. Page, ).
There is a one-party state with two right wings. Some call them the . As Noam Chomsky put it, “In the US, there is basically one party — the business party. It has two factions, called Democrats and Republicans, which are somewhat different but carry out variations on the same policies. By and large, I am opposed to those policies. As is most of the population.”
Ironically, for every presidential election, Chomsky has acted as a sheep dog who corrals leftists back into the corporate Democratic fold. Bernie Sanders, sadly, has done the same thing; such as giving official backing to Hillary Clinton after she used anti-democratic tactics to steal the nomination from him. We have many ‘leftists’ who talk strong and sometimes give inspiring speeches. Yet they’ve been co-opted by the system in being compromised and neutralized as a realistic threat. Arguing that they may have good intentions is moot and irrelevant.
Pseudo-leftist controlled opposition
That has been the problem since the once powerful left was dismantled and destroyed by McCarthyism, union-busting, COINTELPRO, neoliberalism, etc. In the process, many leftists who were strong voices, radical examples, and/or charismatic leaders have been either silenced, eliminated, or locked away: Martin Luther King Jr., Fred Hampton, Walter Reuther, Paul Wellstone, Leonard Peltier, Julian Assange, etc. That has created a chilling effect across society for generations.
The leftist or pseudo-leftists who are able to survive within the system, gain position, and get heard are typically weak or incompetent. They too often end up as controlled opposition.
That isn’t to say there aren’t some good ones fighting the good fight. We’re seeing that right now. But they are so few that they’re overwhelmed by all the rest. Look at how many Democratic politicians remain sitting on the sidelines apparently doing nothing or sometimes acting complicitly with the Trump administration (e.g., Chuck Schumer voting with Republicans to keep the Trump regime operating). The Democratic Party as a whole offers no organized front to push back against the criminal and unconstitutional acts that are sending our country into a death spiral.
The Democratic Party as a whole offers no organized front to push back against the criminal and unconstitutional acts that are sending our country into a death spiral.
The point, though, is that this goes far beyond the present moment. What we’re seeing with Democrats now is what we’ve seen from them since Jimmy Carter who began the shift to the right. Carter is another one of those figures with good intentions. Yet he also initiated the Blue Dog turn of the Democratic Party away from the New Deal and support of organized labor and toward austerity and politicized evangelicalism. It was the Democrat’s version of Southern Strategy led by Southern-bred Carter and Bill Clinton.
Following in Carter’s footsteps, Clinton pushed NAFTA, corporate deregulation, racialized tough-on-crime, mass incarceration, privatized prisons, etc. Rather than old school liberalism and progressivism, it was neoliberalism and neoconservatism ever more promoting elite interests. But it was all done with Clinton’s signature charisma and affability. Democrats play their part as the good cop to the Republican’s bad cop. Still, it’s the same game being played on us. Be it Richard Nixon or Ronald Reagan, Republicans get rough and hit hard. Then Democrats come in and pretend to represent the left.
Also, Democrats are forever cleaning up Republican’s mess, while almost never taking the credit.
Democrats are the fiscally responsible party, the responsible parent who doesn’t blow their paycheck every payday. They typically leave behind budget surpluses that are given away in tax cuts, subsidies, and military spending by the next Republican administration. This is how Republicans constantly ratchet up the permanent debt they intentionally created under Ronald Reagan, as part of Starve the Beast and Two Santa Clauses. Yet somehow Republican’s claim to be the economic geniuses who are good for the economy, while shifting the blame onto Democrats.
Right-wing elite and left-wing public
Leading Democrats almost never push back against these kinds of narratives, nor does the corporate MSM. These sacrosanct myths apparently are so important to maintaining the power structure that they can’t be allowed to be seriously challenged.
It’s another example of complicity, in this case through silence. By not speaking about it, Democrats allow Republicans to continue getting away with plutocratic theft. The reason is that both parties serve the same master, that of big biz. Each party has it’s role to play in the system. And politicians don’t get to the level of national politics without at least some significant willingness to play the game and comply with the rules.
Democrats are constantly taking weak positions, ceding territory, getting put on their back foot, and pulling punches.
As such, Democrats are constantly taking weak positions, ceding territory, getting put on their back foot, and pulling punches. They intentionally sabotage themselves so that they can pretend to be the leftist party while doing nothing for the left. Instead, they repeatedly punch left while offer covering fire to the right-wing, giving the lie to their being weak. They have plenty of power to use when they want to.
There are many other examples.
Think of even major issues like guns, illicit drugs, and abortion. We have tons of research and other data. We know which policies work best. We know how guns end up on the black market, but politicians do nothing to stop it, no matter how much a few Democrats talk about it. As for the other two, we know that countries that decriminalize illicit drug use and legalize abortions actually decrease the rate of drug use and abortions. That is because the same liberal governments push other liberal policies of drug use prevention, addiction treatment, full sex education, birth control access, women’s healthcare, planned parenthood clinics, etc.
Democrats rarely make their strongest arguments, as if they don’t really care if they win political debates, public opinion, and competitive elections.
Yet most of this overwhelming objective evidence is largely ignored in politics. Instead, it’s framed as subjective matter of moral values, personal belief, and culture war. Specifically, Democrats rarely make their strongest arguments, as if they don’t really care if they win political debates, public opinion, and competitive elections. Their purpose is to set the left up for endless failure, which supposedly shows leftist views are unpopular.
The purpose is to create frustration, demoralization, and defeatism.
Most Americans want to balance the greatest freedom possible with the most effective regulation necessary in promoting public good. But neither party represents and advocates for the , nor does the propagandistic media-industrial complex give them voice and equal reporting. Instead, the entire elite system constantly pushes false equivalency where the minority is treated as equal or greater than the majority.
Through a glass darkly
This is seen with issue after issue. But it’s obscured because the American people are so manipulated.
Even though the supermajority are liberals, progressives, and leftists in terms of operational ideology (i.e., actual values, morality, principles, beliefs, positions, & policies), through generations of political labels weaponized as identity politics (), most Americans will identify as ‘conservative’ over ‘liberal’ in terms of symbolic ideology. But give Americans other choices, such as progressive, socialist, etc and they’ll pick some other label. Americans now use other words to describe their left-liberal views, since McCarthyism and propaganda campaigns long ago turned ‘liberal’ into a stigmatized slur.
Also, the right will eliminate language in other ways, such as the that used to refer to anti-statist socialists. This is part of the reactionary right’s method of destroying, obfuscating, and recuperating rhetoric, identities, symbols, and tactics. It’s why the Nazis called themselves ‘national socialists’ because, if they were honest about their actual ideology, they never would’ve gained power in the first place. And it’s why Republicans will claim to be ‘Originalists’ while suppressing actual knowledge of the egalitarian, liberal, and democratic radicalism of many founders and framers (Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine, George Mason, etc).
It’s all a power game
But Democrats rarely push back against it or even point it out. Democrats simply submit again and again in accepting loss, even when they could so easily win with little effort. They go out of their way to shoot themselves in the foot and then act helpless in their self-inflicted crippling. Democrats understand the role they’re supposed to play. And if they don’t, they know they won’t get paid. Private funding from big money would instantly dry up for their campaigns, programs, pet projects, foundations, and numerous other goodies; along with loss of sweet retirement packages as corporate consultants, lobbyists, etc. Legal bribery greases the wheels.
The thing is Democrats could easily win nearly every election by going hard left. That is what most Americans want. But it’s not what most elites want. There is the rub.
The thing is Democrats could easily win nearly every election by going hard left. That is what most Americans want. But it’s not what most elites want. There is the rub.
This works out well for the far right. They utterly depend on the majority being unrepresented, disenfranchised, and demoralized. All the way back to 1980, at the public opening of the Moral Majority organization, the religious right leader and Machiavellian mastermind Paul Weyrich, in criticizing ‘goo goo syndrome’, basically admitted that they’d never win any elections if all Americans voted.
The purpose of Democrats is to create the illusory sense of choice, where every election is a horse race to once again distract the citizens from the real issues. They offer just barely enough difference — and it is a real difference — to make it compelling when they once again push rhetoric about lesser evils, spoilers, and wasted votes. So, Democrats occasionally win, they put the brakes on slightly, but they don’t really reverse the damage done by Republicans when they were in power. The two parties work together to slowly ease the whole system ever further right.
It trains the public into a state of learned helplessness and Stockholm syndrome. Without a doubt, it’s such a simple and effective strategy. “Why bother appealing to voters when you can just engineer a hostage situation instead?” ().
The citizenry could wake up from their trance, if not for the mollifying effect of bread and circus by way of cheap goods and cheap entertainment, with politics being a form of the latter. [With tariff wars, cheap goods will disappear, and so interesting times may be ahead.] The news media machine helps in keeping people trapped in systematic gaslighting and sanewashing, disinfo blind alleys, echo chambers, ideological realism, and reality tunnels. Plus, the constant media portrayal of conflict, violence, and crime to elicit mean world syndrome (conservatism, authoritarianism, groupthink, threat reactivity, distrust, xenophobia, bigotry, antagonism, polarization, punitiveness, etc).
Yet because the corporate MSM is constantly lying to the public, Americans can never get their bearings.
It’s an entire social order of chronic stress, free-floating anxiety, and complex and hazy trauma; of a culture of violence, PTSD, and silence; of intergroup conflict, victimization cycle, and victimhood Olympics; of high rates of sickliness of all sorts (physical, social, moral, and mental). Yet because the corporate MSM is constantly lying to the public, Americans can never get their bearings. That is worsened now with the internet so heavily controlled, manipulated, and censored.
Media mindwarp and mass manipulation
It’s near impossible to get a clear sense of anything going on in the world, in an age of media saturation. Look at how vast disparities have gotten. Our entire civilization has been radically restructured.
Only now are American beginning to grasp this reality, as the problem is getting too immense to be kept hidden. It’s why there was such a mass support of Black Lives Matter, Luigi Mangione, etc. Yet the elite system almost always finds a way to tamp down or redirect the growing populist unrest, to redirect opinion elsewhere. The public briefly hears themselves with collective voice and then it’s quickly buried again under algorithms, bots, paid trolls, astroturf, and propaganda campaigns.
Perception management is powerful. We only see what they want us to see, feel and think how they want us to feel and think.
For all the outrage at growing inequality, research shows that Americans have no clue how bad it’s gotten. The average American, as well as people in other countries, underestimates inequality to an extreme degree (Oliver P. Hauser & Michael I. Norton, ). That is because media and political elites are constantly deceiving and manipulating Americans, such that they’re never sure what is true. It’s a lot of work to dig through obscure data and boring research papers to come up to one’s own opinion.
…media and political elites are constantly deceiving and manipulating Americans, such that they’re never sure what is true.
Besides, most Americans are simply too busy, distracted, exhausted, stressed out, and overwhelmed. They get home from work and collapse in front of their favorite media tech device.
But if the American people ever did fully awaken to the reality of oppression they’re in, we’d have a second American Revolution in an instant. The elite realize they are barely keeping contained a beast that, if it comes into its full power, would not be so easily put back again. There are more of us than them, but that would require us to realize we are an ‘us’, as class consciousness or group consciousness. And that is what the elite go to the greatest effort to prevent.
It’s hard to know how much is actual conspiracy or not. Obviously, there is much that is proven conspiracy. The generations of machinations are well documented by released or leaked documents, both public and private, along with immense investigative journalism and academic scholarship. But within the power structure, many of those with authority and privilege are as duped as the rest of us. As C.J. Hopkins put it,
“The primary aim of official propaganda is to generate an “official narrative” that can be mindlessly repeated by the ruling classes and those who support and identify with them. This official narrative does not have to make sense, or to stand up to any sort of serious scrutiny. Its factualness is not the point. The point is to draw a Maginot line, a defensive ideological boundary, between “the truth” as defined by the ruling classes and any other “truth” that contradicts their narrative” ().
“The primary aim of official propaganda is to generate an “official narrative” that can be mindlessly repeated by the ruling classes and those who support and identify with them.”
What kind of elite do we have?
If you’re within the elite system, there is nothing to incentivize you to become aware and critically examine and challenge the very structures, ideologies, biases, and influences that your very livelihood, status, and identity is dependent upon. There are very intelligent and well informed people who, nonetheless, are trapped in conventional thought; such as , , etc. They’re fish who don’t see the water they swim in, but want to tell the rest of us about the oceans.
Many Democratic politicians, one might guess, are more of this variety. They keep their heads down, quickly learn what is allowed and disallowed, and do what they must to keep their positions. They don’t need to be part of a conspiracy. Humans are smart in figuring out how to subordinate themselves to those above them (e.g., AIPAC) for their own self-interest, and those who don’t figure it out are soon shut out from the system with money being dumped upon one of their competitors.
Carrot and the stick. One also might suspect that there is a lot of other forms of bribery, blackmail, and threats going on behind the scenes.
We know from research that people drawn to high levels of power tend to be dark personalities (Machiavellians, narcissists, psychopaths). And if you’re one of the rare ones who isn’t a dark personality, you quickly figure out that you’re surrounded by such devious people who will happily take you out if you get in their way or defy them, and that is becoming more true than ever (e.g., Trump’s FBI arrest of Milwaukee County Circuit Judge Hannah Dugan).
This culture of conformity, compliance, compromise, corruption, and complicity extends across elite society. It’s the reason why so many media companies, law firms, and colleges capitulated so easily and quickly to Trump’s threats and demands. They’ve been habituated their entire lives to get in line with power. If they hadn’t become so habituated, they never would’ve been that successful in their careers in the first place. This mentality is indoctrinated into their psyches from early on (William Deresiewicz, Excellent Sheep).
These people come out of the same schools and the same class as the politicians. It’s all the same social circles. They’re used to competing with each other, but they’ve always had a gentleman’s agreement to never attack the system itself that benefits them all. And right now, the system is controlled by the right-wing. These elites have no habit of defiance, even if they were willing to risk everything merely for moral principle, which few would be willing in the slightest.
They are used to realpolitik as just the way the world works, as determined by dominance hierarchy and social Darwinism. The Trump regime might be an extreme example, but it’s not really any different than what these people have known their whole lives. It’s a ruthless world and, in the halls of power, do-gooders get eaten alive.
They are used to realpolitik as just the way the world works, as determined by dominance hierarchy and social Darwinism. . . . It’s a ruthless world and, in the halls of power, do-gooders get eaten alive.
They’ve come to see this as not only the norm but as inevitable and desirable. The American Empire has dominated the world and these social dominators are the imperial aristocracy, the ruling class. They really do believe they are the best of the best, that they deserve everything they have and more, with emphasis on the more. That is why they’ve continually pushed for ever more wealth, resources, power, and privileges being transferred upward. No matter which party has been in power, the elite could be almost guaranteed to become ever more elite with what seemed like no end to the party.
That is why they’ve been so afraid to rock the boat. Even now amidst mass insanity and the world threatening to crash, they still worry about stepping out of line. And if they do step out of line, they’re handlers will tug them back into place.
Most politicians, in particular, are kept on a short leash. They aren’t the real power within transnational inverted totalitarianism and they know it. Some of the major political operators are also the puppet masters, such as four generations of the Bush corporate-political dynasty that goes back to the Business Plot. But generally speaking, the real masters of the universe operate behind the scenes such as the Coors family, if some of them are more well known like the Koch Brothers and Peter Thiel.
Political actors and empty promises
DC politicians act more as the faces, voices, and hands of power. As Hillary Clinton told bankers in a closed-room event, she worked for them and would do their bidding, no matter what she had to say on the campaign trail to win votes from the gullible dupes. Those like the Clinton Democrats, from Bill Clinton to Barack Obama, aren’t independent actors. It is a representational government, but they aren’t representing the citizenry.
That is why Al Gore refused to challenge the 2000 Supreme Court decision that anti-democratically stole the election from him. He served the same bosses as Bush. Those bosses decided they wanted Bush instead and they would’ve been unhappy if Gore aired their dirty laundry. He understood that to stay in the game he had to shut up and just take it without any fuss. Otherwise, the entire system would’ve attacked and scapegoated him for being a ‘sore loser’. The entire Democratic Party bowed down, defended this right-wing takeover, and tossed the left to the wolves.
That single act of moral cowardice established the imperial presidency, the Patriot Act, Homeland Security, unconstitutional spying on US citizens, resurrection of illegal COINTELPRO, and endless wars of aggression. It set a precedent for a totalizing abuse of power without consequence and that set the stage for everything that has since followed.
At the time, the Democratic Party threw their weight behind the War On Terror and beat the war drums for the military-industrial complex; as they always do. Even when Democrats later regained the presidency, they never fully reversed any of that infringement on democracy, the constitutional order, and the separation of powers.
Everything was further weakened and made soft for further takeover. All of it was done in service to entwined plutocracy and oligarchy.
Everything was further weakened and made soft for further takeover. All of it was done in service to entwined plutocracy and oligarchy.
After the 2008 Great Recession, Barack Obama bailed out the too-big-to-fail banks which made them even bigger, which further siphoned wealth from the lower classes. Then, instead of giving left-wing healthcare reform, he pushed Romneycare that came out of a right-wing think tank and was massive boost to insurance companies, along with consolidating healthcare corporations to further destroy competition.
Obama’s hope-a-dope campaign rhetoric was empty. And for anyone listening carefully to his words, it stood out that he avoided giving details. He was all charismatic hype and it was what the crowds wanted to hear. People were starving for any kind of leader who even vaguely sounded like a reformer.
Joe Biden was even weaker sauce, only winning because the public was voting against Trump. Then Kamala Harris intentionally took a fall in the fight during this past election. As with Hillary before her, she knew a left-wing candidate like Bernie Sanders was more likely to beat Trump. And she could’ve at least pretended to be a leftist. If she had hit hard with promises of popular left-wing reforms and not let up, she likely could’ve blown Trump out of the water, since the demand for reform is barely kept from boiling over.
But neither Kamala nor Hillary had it in them to even pretend to represent the American people, much less want populist anything. They are creatures of privilege and power through and through, and they simply assume it’s their right to rule.
They are creatures of privilege and power through and through, and they simply assume it’s their right to rule.
So, Trump was left with being the only candidate promising reform, if it was bullshit. This has given us a situation of flip-flopping between the parties because neither will give Americans what they want, while all other alternatives are shut out from the system. Many Americans have plain given up and don’t even bother to vote anymore.
Of course, the election might have been stolen. But even if the election was rigged, it wouldn’t have been a concern if it wasn’t so close, and it never should’ve been this close. Constantly forcing it into close races, though, is the whole point.
Organized movement meets organized power
It’s not clear anything has improved at this late of a date.
A surprising number of Democratic politicians seem to still be playing old political games. Even Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez are out on tour, as if on the campaign trail. Though they’re speeches are drawing and riling crowds, it’s not clear they’re offering any real opportunity for organizing and resistance.
Change doesn’t come merely from gathering people together in public. There has to be an actual confrontation with power, typically with power then committing violence. That is how the American Revolution started and how the Civil Rights movement won. Serious leftist leaders understand that public support only comes when violent power finally shows its hand through mass oppression that turns public opinion.
Also, what is needed is mass organizing. We need a national strike that grinds the machinery of power to a halt.
That would also elicit overreaction from the Trump regime and likely from corporations too, as happened in the past. Such organizing also needs to happen at a local level study groups and action groups, with mutual aid organizations and well-ordered militias. That is what people did in the past, such as during the Populist era and the Great Depression. It was real physical struggle, not mere symbolic politics that made people feel good. But back then people were faced with poverty, starvation, and worse. They were personally and viscerally motivated. Maybe Americans are going to have to get desperate before they finally get serious.
One thing to keep in mind is that major improvements and reforms rarely happen within the system alone. The motivating force typically comes from outside. Something else must already be developing to challenge the status quo.
One thing to keep in mind is that major improvements and reforms rarely happen within the system alone.
For example, once the British Empire got oppressive with the colonists, the colonists had already at that point developed their own forms of out-of-doors politics, autonomous self-governance, and grassroots community organizing. They could defy the empire because they didn’t need it. As the revolutionary veteran Levi Preston , “Young man, what we meant in going for those redcoats was this: we always had governed ourselves, and we always meant to. They didn’t mean we should.” They could act powerfully because they had developed their own alternative systems of power.
Every successful movement in United States history has done the same. And the powerful, in also learning from this history, has realized they’ve needed to target such competing power.
That is what happened with the psychopathic evil committed against the Black Panthers by the US government. They didn’t protest or march on Washington, DC. They simply took control of their own communities. They provided their own education and food programs. They armed themselves, patrolled their own streets, and protected each other. Also, they sought to build alliances through the Rainbow Coalition. That is why the FBI came down on them like a ton of bricks.
The trick is you have to organize faster and larger to keep ahead of such government oppression, and that is even more true when one doesn’t know what is coming next. We needed to be organizing months ago or better yet years and decades ago. Yet Democratic politicians are still stuck in speechifying mode. They aren’t taking this threat seriously. In their safe gated communities and comfortable elite lifestyles, the threat isn’t personally real to them.
We the American people can’t trust the corrupt and failed party system. That isn’t to say we can’t use it when it’s convenient, but we must not rely on it. Organizing will develop from the bottom up. We should hope for the best while preparing for the worst. And most likely, it will get worse before it gets better. Even if Trump were removed from power tomorrow, we’d still be in the middle of a disaster, and the problem would remain of a system that abandoned us when we needed it most.
It would still be necessary for us to come together as a people and as communities. The constitutional crisis has caused permanent damage, and there is no going back. For good or ill, Trump and Musk have cleared the board. The system will need to be overhauled and an actual democratic system established. The hard work hasn’t even begun. We’ll be entering an age of rebuilding, eventually. This is an opportunity to start again. Whether or not it remains peaceful, never doubt we are in a revolutionary moment.
“We have it in our power to begin the world over again. A situation, similar to the present, hath not happened since the days of Noah until now. The birthday of a new world is at hand, and a race of men, perhaps as numerous as all Europe contains, are to receive their portion of freedom from the events of a few months. The reflection is awful, and in this point of view, how trifling, how ridiculous, do the little paltry cavilings of a few weak or interested men appear, when weighed against the business of a world.”
~Thomas Paine, (1776)
