OUT OF THE BOX

Donald Trump and Ben Carson have supporters in measurable numbers which would not have been predicted prior to their entry into the Presidential contest for election in 2016. Blaring Trump and brooding Carson have both lapsed into barking-mad territory. Trump's narcissistic megalomania trumps Carson's by a mile, but they are both getting attention for another reason as well. They have both been able to voice opinions on national policy which are out of the current propagandized box of political correctness. They have become voices of opposition to conformist mediocrity.

This has its value, whether or not you would trust either of them with a red button attached to nukes. The Democrats have offered us Hilary Clinton in big capital letters. They have made over the Clinton legacy. I was around for the reality. It wasn't that great: NAFTA, Don't Ask Don't Tell, failed health care reform and Fellatio-gate. Bill Clinton was the poster boy for corporate globalization and the New World Order of corporate capitalism. And Hilary does indeed carry the banner of that legacy shamelessly, despite playing quasi-handmaiden to our first multi-racial President as Secretary of Status Quo.

The Clintons are friends of the Bushes, Henry Kissinger and other aristocrats, whose legacies are equally specious. They built a non-profit gold mine for themselves under the guise of rehabilitating Harlem. They are capitalists to the core, and therefore no true friends of The Left. They frolic in the shark-infested waters of Wall-Street Manhattan with ease and provenance. Their former economic advisers, with the notable exception of Robert Reich, merrily rode the horses of the 2008 financial apocalypse along with George Bush's buds. 

So, if you consider yourself Left-of-Center, think twice before getting all gooey over Hilary as the potential first female POTUS. You may want to actually read Bernie Sanders' positions, for example. You may be getting the same box of mediocre progress which you have received during the Obama administration: Mediocre health reform, no final withdrawal from Iraq and Afghanistan, no significant banking reform, further deterioration of the middle class, no significant corporate tax reform. Gays in bridal gowns and military uniforms aside, that box is still packed and delivered by monsters like Amazon, our new corporate masters.