The media seems intent on perpetuating a dishonest, obsolete and apolitical understanding on politics that only works to shift the debate to the Right and prevents the real issues—in our democratic structures and in our democracy—from being addressed.xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

It's amazing really, that an educated person at a major American paper (Greg Sargent at the Washington Post) can write something like this. It's almost as if this person has lost all touch with reality and thinks that politics is little more than the simulacra of a game-show or horse-race that only takes place in people's minds and conforms somehow to the best intentions of those thoughts.

He writes:

Democrats expect that in coming days, Sanders will tone it down, and that in the end, he will probably refrain from contesting the convention. They note that he could even try to use his leverage to influence the party’s agenda in the fall elections without damaging the party’s chances. If so, they see no reason for him to get out.

This is precisely the kind of coercion we expect to work with a child: tone it down, behave for 20-minutes and then, if you're good, we'll get ice-cream and you can tinker with your toys. This is the level of discourse that, not only these always unnamed party 'officials' (something that sounds more at home in the Chinese or Soviet Communist Politburo), but also this intrepid reporter, who seems to think he's got some credibility to lend to this debate, has put his own reputation on the line for. Really?

If it's accomplished anything, the grid-lock that's taken root over the past 8-years has done at least one worthwhile thing: reminded people that what legislative 'progress' had been occurring previously was the result only of the implicit consent of both parties. Both shared, basically, the same agenda, bowed to the same corporate interests and lobbyists, and solicited money from them as well. The only thing that separated them them was the increasing focus on identity politics, of race and gender and sex to create the appearance of difference between the parties, as well, perhaps, as the degree to which Democrats accepted corporate money from Wall Street. When the Right and the wealthy decided it was time to get even more, they realized they could not simply play along in this same consensual manner. Rather they could: not pass the budget and shutdown government, filibuster this bill and that bill, not pass anything in a given month, not hold hearings on presidential appointments, including the recent Supreme Court nominee. They could just shut things down. The Right realized that, in order to get the more of what they want and to resist the populist movement that elected Obama and his seemingly liberal-progressive agenda, that they would actually need to push the boundaries of the political system to its limits and to exploit every possibility within it to exact some real leverage on their opponents, to refuse to agree to the point where the mechanisms of the system alone would be tested, and ultimately fail to force compromise. In all honesty, rather than the abandonment of the political, this kind of behavior is the very definition of real politics.

Politics is not about consent that happens between disagreeing parties who, in the end, decide amongst themselves to compromise. Democratic politics is about the disagreements between adversaries that are able to fully express themselves within a democratic structure that facilitates debate, the elaboration of each's positions and, then, the vote that determines which party's positions will be adopted. Once every party has had the opportunity to express their opinion, has the chance to communicate that to people and appreciates its having been communicated, and once a vote by all people has made the determination on which party's agenda to adopt—if all this has taken place, openly, fairly and without manipulation—the conditions have been created for transforming disagreements into acceptance and for moving the debate along to the next point. This is the way it is in every debate we have: once we've had a chance to express our perspective and desires, feel we've given it our best shot, its always possible to resign ourselves to the choices of others. Sure, we may not like it, but unless we want to abandon these people altogether it is incumbent upon us to find a way to move forward and accept the roll of the dice that is the democratic moment.

Of course, other options are available: unable to accept the vote of the majority, the minority can withdraw and seek its own sovereignty, which is the case all throughout history and the case of political movements and wars. The Basque independence movement, the Catalan independence movement, both in Spain are examples. The initial formation of the United States and the American Civil War are others. Of course, we don't always have to agree or to compromise. But to the extent that we don't, we also have to be willing to accept the consequences: a fight, perhaps, for independence; reforming the structures of government anew. And if we're not, and we still refuse, and we want to simply protest within the structures, then it is the burden of the majority to change the structures of democratic consent, those structures that put checks on the so-called 'unfettered' will of 'the mob', that allow filibustering, and other procedural issues meant to channel democratic intent into consensus formation. Failing to even attempt that, which is basically what the Democrats have done, the majority has little to legitimacy to complain..

In any case, the reality is that the situation in the United States has decidedly moved beyond the corrupt functioning-consent between ostensibly different parties to the dysfunctional paralysis of enemies (rather than democratic adversaries) who refuse to any longer go along with this charade. This has revealed profound issues with the consensus-making structures of our democracy and the overly conservative bias of their design that prevents the majority from exercising its authority without the participation of the minority. Unfortunately for both the politicians themselves, the media, and the public more generally, the narrative on politics still continues within the previous corrupt and superficial understanding. This is preventing our progress, preventing us updating non-functional structures and mechanisms of our democracy and, above all, preventing us from addressing the real issues facing the majority of people held hostage to this dysfunction. Of course, the dysfunction serves big-money interests, who wallow in the current tax and regulatory regime, of course. We should all know that perfectly well by now. It's only the people, suffering and struggling, who need democracy to function for them to receive any social or economic justice that this system fails. Seeing that failure for what it is, rather than for what it isn't would be the start of a national discussion and movement towards reform. Which would mean seeing it as a complex, vast problem including gerrymandered districts, low-voter turnout, voter apathy, rigged elections, electronic voting machines without verifiability, and, at root, the necessity to reform congress and re-elect representative who will obey the will of their constituencies rather than a childish issue of keeping quiet about the bad things so the bad men don't find out and ruin our day.

The narrative of compromise that persistently sees the Republicans as looming threats ready to demolish anything the Democrats try to accomplish is also a corrupt, dishonest narrative because it is not only a fundamental misunderstanding about the functioning of a democratic society, but it is also a manipulation of that false understanding which is used to persistently move the debate to the Right. This is why the Democrats are endlessly looking for 'compromise' with the Right which ends up with the Right getting its way and the Democrats with only symbolic victories of little substance: tax breaks for millionaires, but contraception for women; turning over the democratic process to large corporate manufacturers of voting machines, while increasing registrations of new voters. This isn't to say the Democratic gains are meaningless in and of themselves, but they are rendered meaningless by the overwhelming concessions of fundamental power over the political system that ends-up coming back later to pull the debate even further to the right (by, for instance, rigging elections with electronic voting machines to get Scott Walker and other radical right, Koch brother supported candidates elected and that creates gridlock like we have, based as it is on illegitimate actors being inserted into a democratic system). The narrative of fragility and compromise is just the most visible manifestation of this corruption: its the way in which it takes place publicly in and through the media by attempting to exploit the public's reasonable fears about a continued drift Rightward (which, funny enough, is just what they get when they fear it).

Which is why this Washington Post article, and the hundreds of others¹²³(for a start, from just today), are important: not only is it an attempt to perpetuate this narrative again today when it has become patently obsolete, but it attempts to perpetuate this antiquated idea of democracy and to insert it into the heart of the Democratic nomination process and not just something operating between the Democrats and Republicans that facilitates the public acceptance of their 'compromise'. So, rather than a real debate on ideas between Clinton and Sanders, the political elite and media punditry expect Sanders to 'tone it down', to 'eventually support' Clinton and to advocate for her despite their differences for the good of the party. They charge that Sander's critiques provide fuel to Republicans, as if Republicans don't see the same issues with their deeply flawed candidate that all the rest of us see. And the pundits expect all real differences to simply be swept under the rug for the benefit of what, party unity? Unity on what, exactly? So that Sander's can influence the Democratic party platform? The narrative of fear of Republicans and of the need to compromise and the delicate, fragile nature of Democratic power, inserted into the Democratic primary itself, is one way that a corporate elite, sensing that the moment is pregnant with real potential to change that threatens to upset the fragile exploitation that the elite have established in the last 3-years or so attempts to appropriate the political structure most likely to continue supporting it: in this case, Hillary Clinton. Trump is unpredictable and could end-up splitting apart and destroying the Republican party that has become obviously fringe anyway, and Bernie Sanders clearly states his intentions to break apart the status quo.

Influencing the actual platform will be impossible without real political opposition. Sure, perhaps the platform as 'piece of paper' or written document might be shaped to include Sander's language, but belief in a piece of paper, of all things, is the height of political ignorance. It is really the point where the absurdity of these claims exposes itself: the idea that a piece of paper would dictate a persons behavior, particular when it is non-binding, extra-judicial simply because it is written is the kind of belief only an autistic person could sustain. People with power know that law's are just loopholes to be driven straight through and non-binding, extra-judicial pieces of paper are for—please excuse the expression—wiping one's ass (try, for instance, quoting the law or the constitution to a police officer or a judge; if they don't laugh in your face, their contempt will linger long with you as they take every opportunity to crush your naive resistance). To actually modify behavior requires political opposition that can retire people from office, remove people from the game they love to play and reminds them who pays their salary. This is the only true source of political power in a democracy that isn't one determined by moral or ethical codes (which are, clearly, non-existent now in our bankrupt country).

The migration of this narrative into the heart of the so-called Democratic party and in to those that now ostensibly support it—in addition to it being a problem of Democrats' unbelievable hypocrisy, as Glenn Greenwald argues in his recent piece here—signifies that we need to be increasingly aware of the shifting boundaries between 'Left' and 'Right', between 'progressive' and 'conservative' and what a constitutes a 'liberal' today. Because as Clinton's candidacy becomes the more promising vehicle through which to drive the corporate agenda, we can expect to see all sorts of ostensibly liberal and progressive narrative re-appropriated to suit a new conservative, corporate agenda. Feminism and the first woman president, race, sexism, all these issues have already been falsely manipulated against the Sanders campaign⁴⁵, and this kind of manipulation can only increase in the months to come, particularly if Hillary Clinton is the Democratic nominee and, worse, the President.

Finally, the real problem with this endless stream of absurd, intellectual impoverished, childish and dishonest articles is that they all fail to discuss any single issue of any relevance to anyone, which remain hidden beneath the false controversy they espouse. The reality is that the Party (Democrat or Republican) will take care of itself and the system will continue to function. The need is for people to move their focus from these media constructed trivialities to those of substance. Showing a historical video clip of Ted Kennedy speaking in the '70s doesn't give your analysis depth of insight and credibility; it makes it look like a high school essay by someone who hasn't, perhaps after years of dealing with politics, even of politics in their own restricted intimate family and social life, gotten any single bit of education on what it actually is. The Republicans will criticize Clinton for who she is as a person and her obscene record, not because Bernie said it first. Parroting another's attack line doesn't win any votes unless it also happens to be true. In fact, doing it will generally strengthen the opponent's hand as doing so undermines the attackers credibility (look at the unending slow-motion demise of Ted Cruz's vaunted 'strategies' for a master class on this point).

What we need today are real politics, not these logical narrative games: a politics we do rather than read. And that's precisely what Bernie Sanders and the movement that supports him is aiming to do, even if, all the while, not a single media pundit or establishment politician can either a) see it's happening, particularly through the subservient fog of idiotic 'journalism' like this piece or b) and more probably, believe it will ever happen, their strangle-hold on power so strong and their social and economic context so sheltered and ignorant of the realities all around them that they simply cannot see it.