It is delightful to hear him calling out their MO. The way you fight corruption and manipulation is by making them explicit for people.

What he is doing is so important. He is re-teaching this nation what we have a right to expect from a representative political process, and pointing out how perversely ours has been corrupted.

REAL hope and change. We need Bernie in the White House.

There's a fundamental problem in that.

Corporations exist to grow their own profit. Governments are supposed to exist for the welfare of human beings.

When you put corporate motives in charge of governments, terrible things happen to people.

We drown in corporate message control and political manipulation. Just read down the board.

And once it is called out and undeniable, there will be predictable attempts to rationalize and legitimize and normalize the sliminess. That is how shameless and slimy the sliminess is.

It is like the posts that use the FACT of Wall Street corruption and bribery in Washington as an excuse for *participating* in Wall Street corruption and bribery.

Now, for the first time in a long time, we have a chance to demand better.




Enough slimy. Enough lies. Enough corruption. Enough propaganda.

Enough is Enough.

Worth putting in the subject line.


If posting the actual policies of corporate politicians is "bashing" them, then it would seem clear that there is a serious problem with the policies.

Because it sure seems that baiting, policy-free, diversionary OP's like this one have BECOME the messaging strategy for HRC supporters here.

See, you won't point us to the threads showing why Hillary is the best policy representative for the people, because you can't. They don't exist.

Look down the board. All the OP's by Hillary supporters are like yours. Here was my response to another like this:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=6683607

What you have done here with this baiting OP *is* the campaign strategy: message control and manipulation. As long as people are taking your bait here, they are not talking about Bernie's campaign, his clear stances on issues ranging from the TPP to Social Security to campaign finance reform, and Hillary's lengthy record of coziness with Wall Street and predatory corporate and warmongering policies.

Yes, it's worth making the defensive, diversionary MO here explicit. But I'm off to substantive threads now.

We live in a vile, dishonest, magnificently funded propaganda state.

We have come to accept the flat-out lies and propaganda assaults of corporate government as business as usual. We shouldn't.

A highly publicized Kabuki Theater sham vote to allow Democrats to pretend to oppose the predatory TPP.....followed predictably and immediately by a cynical reversal to vote in favor of Fast Track.

Insincere, massively publicized speeches about reining in military power, followed immediately by huge escalations in military power, a new war in Syria, a new war in Iraq, carpet bombing of captive populations in Gaza, a continuation of the unconscionable droning of civilians in multiple countries with which we are not at war, and a new TRILLION DOLLAR ramp-up of nuclear weapons...That's not acceptable.

Lying, manipulative claims to care about the environment, while selling off expanses of the Gulf of Mexico for drilling, opening the Atlantic Coast for drilling, relentless support for fracking, and defense of the most environmentally predatory "free trade" agreements in this nation's history.....That's not acceptable.

Shameless, lying speeches extolling the government's transparency and protection of whistleblowers and respect for journalism, when we have all seen the treatment of Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden by this administration, and when we have all witnessed the outrageous targeting of investigative journalists through abuse of the Espionage Act....That's not acceptable.

Disgusting claims to represent the interests of the 99 percent, while stuffing the cabinet with predatory corporatists, signing cuts in aid for the poor and disabled repeatedly, putting SS on the table as a "greater evil" to justify the imposition of austerity greater even that that Paul Ryan initially requested, giving nauseating speeches about the need to eat our peas while repeating Republican LIES tying SS to the defiicit, personally lobbying to gain settlements for criminal bankers, and then unconscionably lobbying for the criminal CRONYBUS to even further deregulate banks and allow the looting of America to happen again.....That's not acceptable.

How do we know it's a lie and a talking point, rather than the truth?

Simple.

Because Third Way corporate politicians routinely LIE their way through campaigns pretending to be more liberal than they actually are. They mouth empty promises about fighting for a public option or putting on comfortable walking shoes for unions or taking on criminal banks. They *always* pivot leftward in their rhetoric during campaigns in order to win votes, because they know that voters are significantly to the left of the predatory corporate agenda they actually stand for.

Thus, we get the spectacle of Hillary now claiming to care about income inequality, even though she is intimately connected with, overwhelmingly backed and funded by, the predator class that drives obscene inequality in this nation. Claiming to care even while she supports H1B visas that destroy the jobs of Americans. Claiming to give a damn even though she is an author of perhaps the most predatory, antidemocratic "free trade" agreement in this nation's history, that will destroy American jobs, force Americans to compete with Third World workers, and cut the wages of fully NINETY PERCENT of working Americans:

Hillary pushes for increases in H1B visas and outsourcing.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=6405669

Hillary Clinton's leading role in drafting the TPP
http://www.democraticunderground.com/101667554

Hillary's TPP will mean a pay cut for 90 percent of American workers.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10023661805

Hillary Clinton and Trade Deals: That “Giant Sucking Sound”
http://www.democraticunderground.com/1016101761

And our corporate media no longer calls our politicians "representatives," but "leaders."

It's way past time to take our government back from these antidemocratic, authoritarian corporate criminals.

Bernie: An honest representative rather than a manipulating sellout for corporate interests.

We are deliberately trained to think that way by manipulative propaganda...urged to pick a team and adhere to it regardless of the policies it enacts.

But that's a deliberate attempt to pervert what parties have traditionally been about.

I think Sanders is beginning a process of reteaching Americans what a TRUE representative political process looks like, as opposed to the perverse "faux-democracy" that corporate candidates have been feeding us for some time.

Real representative democracy has little to do with shiny, focus-tested videos and attempts to avoid taking sides on issues. Nor is it about voting for your team even if their policies are odious and predatory, just so that the other team won't win.

It's about finding the candidate and party who will actually best represent your interests and building coalitions to support that direction of policy.

I think you will see a lot of people waking up to the manipulations and labels being used by corporate politicians to keep us divided and duped into voting by party rather than principle and policy. As has already happened in Vermont, I think you will see a lot of former Republicans and Independents crossing party lines to vote for the AGENDA Bernie stands for....because it's not just an agenda for Democrats. It's an agenda for reclaiming this nation and the very foundations of its democracy back from the corporate, authoritarian interests that have hijacked it....and returning it to people.

That agenda transcends partisan issues. If we can agree on nothing else, people across a wide spectrum of political and economic views can agree on a few simple, evident truths, like that the purchase of governments by a tiny corporate elite is malignant to human lives.