When I was very young, I was naive. I wondered why it was that so many countries seemed to hate us. Weren’t we the Good Guys™, after all? As I got a little bit older, I started to notice something: our country supported a lot of governments that were really terrible. Why did we hate Fidel Castro and love Augusto Pinochet? And then later, why did we hate the Sandinistas in Nicaragua and love the Salvadorian military government? These are the sorts of things that made me a liberal. If America really did stand for the things it claims, I’d probably be a conservative.

I always imagine that’s what went on with Chelsea Manning. She was a true believer — an American idealist. And the actual truth came as a shock to her and so she did what she could. And the attitude toward her is amazing. She was committed to our ideals. Those who blast her are cynical. They think that everyone is just supposed to know that all our rhetoric about freedom and democracy is just a cover — a way to further American corporate interests and empire. To me, the worst thing you can say about Manning is that she was naive. But we could use more of that kind of naivete.

I’ve written about this a lot. Our government really doesn’t care at all how any government treats its citizens, as long as it keeps its markets open to us. Just look at Venezuela, which has its problems, but which is most clearly a democracy. And we hate it and the media are all over it. Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia is a dictatorship that is simply awful, but they are our friends, so anything they do is a-okay — even when many rich people in the country provide financial support to terrorists who attacked us.

Glenn Greenwald published an article recently that pretty much sums up our hypocrisy on such matters, Two Short Paragraphs that Summarize the US Approach to Human Rights Advocacy. He’s referring to a 2013 article in The Washington Post where an anonymous senior government official was quoted as saying:

That’s right! That’s exactly what we do. And that’s what I’m not willing to support for a higher standard of living. Of course the irony is that our vile foreign policies do not provide me with a higher standard of living. They provide people who already have about as high a standard of living as one can have with even more money. And that is what it is all about: money. Venezuela is still more than willing to sell oil to us; they just aren’t willing to allow Exxon to suck out billions in profits. So we are hypocrites so that Exxon shareholders can make a bit more money.

But there was one thing that Greenwald wrote that I think nails the whole situation for me:

But it is basically tribal. Chelsea Manning wasn’t supposed to focus on what we say about ourselves. She was supposed to support the US in whatever it did. You know the conservative’s favorite line, “My country, right or wrong.” Of course, what the great American Carl Schurz actually said was, “My country, right or wrong; if right, to be kept right; and if wrong, to be set right.” If it is naive to want this country to live up to its stated ideals, then we need a lot more naivete.

Forgive me for ranting, but I’ve just got to get this out. I am really angry at the way many liberals are responding to the election of Jeremy Corbyn to lead the Labour Party in the UK. Apparently, the correct approach to four decades to rightward march — on both sides — is to push for a minor correction to the left. I believe it was most likely be that the new Labour Party leader would be proto-Tory Liz Kendall if Corbyn hadn’t radically changed the race. As it was, she ended up with less than 5% of the vote. Corbyn got almost 60% of the vote. How is that so bad?

For a lot of liberals here in the US, this brings to mind Bernie Sanders. And of course, all good liberals know that Sanders just can’t win the general election. And so a lot of people are freaking out that the Democrats just might nominate someone who actually represents its base. And I’m not immune to that thought. I’m aware that Sanders is likely a weaker general election candidate than either Clinton or Biden. I also know, of course, that who wins is going to be determined primarily by the state of the economy and not the mythical swing voters.

The conservative movement has had an unending string of victories over the last 40 years — both here and in the UK. And that is despite the fact that Democrats and Labour have been in control for a lot of that time. It was not a Republican president who ended welfare. It was not a Republican president who repealed Glass–Steagall. It was not a Republican president who turned the Espionage Act into his own little play thing. This is how politics works. And it is something that liberals seem to be clueless about. It doesn’t matter if your candidates are elected if they lead within the context of the other side.

At this point, I just wish that people would shut up about all of this. We are months away from our first primary. We are a month away from the first debate. I’m a Sanders supporter, but I like Clinton just fine. I’d like to see how the debates go. I’d like to see how the candidates go about distinguishing themselves. In other words: I’d like to have a primary. But I think a lot of liberals don’t want to have a primary. I think they are so convinced that they know what will happen in a general election, that they don’t want to allow the process to work. They must stand up and announce, “Danger, Will Robinson!”

Political scientists have found that 40% of the results of presidential elections are determined by the economic trend of the three quarters leading up to the election. In Lynn Vavreck’s book The Message Matters: The Economy and Presidential Campaigns, she found that the only exceptions to that occur when a challenger changes the conversation from its default: the economy. And even then, the challenger only manages to get the weakest of victors. Think Jimmy Carter in 1976.

With Corbyn, I think a case can be made that he is too liberal. But that is not because of his economic policies; it is about his foreign policies. That’s not true in Bernie Sanders’ case. So the only thing that the Republicans are going to have to complain about Sanders with regards to his being a “socialist” are a bunch of really popular policy positions. But even if they manage to use this against him, will it be enough to throw the election to Jeb Bush or Marco Rubio or Donald Trump? It’s possible.

But the main thing that we don’t know. But I feel like I’m in a hell of a lot better a position to talk about this than most liberal ranters. That’s because I actually take the political science seriously. And it appears that liberals continue to be afraid of their own shadows. I don’t intend to blow this election. I also don’t intend to surrender over a year before it happens.

Ted McLaughlin at Job’s Anger brought my attention to some very disturbing information, 43% Of GOP Say They Could Support a US Military Coup. It is taken from a YouGov poll. And it includes a lot of information about what I’ve come to think of as the casual cynicism of the American people. So on that level, maybe we shouldn’t be too concerned.

Let me back up a bit. YouGov asked people the following question, “For each of the following groups please indicate whether you think that they generally want what is best for the country or what is best for them personally.” More people thought that federal civil servants are more interested in themselves than in the country. And the numbers are just embarrassingly bad for local and federal politicians. I don’t necessarily have a problem with that. Fundamentally, everyone is looking out for themselves. That doesn’t mean that they don’t do their jobs as best they can.

But the two groups that a large majority of Americans thought put America before themselves are just ridiculous: police officers and military officers. So the two groups that have been used by despots all over the world to oppress their people are the ones that Americans are most sanguine about. It really boggles my mind. Some scientist working at the FDA is likely to release a drug he knows is dangerous for a bribe from a chemical company? But police officers are just out there serving the community without a thought to pay and job security?

The best you can say about the people who give these kinds of answers is that they don’t think before they answer. I’m sure when asked about “federal civil servants” all some people think of is Lois Lerner (who I don’t think did anything wrong — not that you would know that based on the coverage of the IRS “scandal”). But really: when was the last time an IRS agent killed an innocent person? Shouldn’t we as a nation be more concerned about the kind of power that people have and how they use it?

This all leads us to the stunning finding that 43% of Republicans think that they might support a military coup. But it isn’t just them. Here is the breakdown:

It’s good to see that a strong majority of the American people are against a military coup under any circumstances. But it is still shocking in a country that prides itself on the idea of representative democracy that almost a third of the people would think that a military coup ought to be an option we hang onto. We’re not even talking about revolution here. This isn’t Americans saying, “The people should rise up because the government isn’t doing the will of the people!” This is, “The military knows better how our country should be run than either our representatives or our people!” That is a basically fascistic mentality.

Note that neither Democrats nor independents have a plurality in favor of an eventual military coup. But the Republicans have a strong plurality in potential support of a military coup. This is not as shocking as it may seem. Over the last couple of decades, I’ve seen a very anti-democratic trend in the conservative movement — to the point where it is now openly discussed. There are still many old school conservatives who are committed to democracy, but there are even more who have given up on the idea. The arguments go something like this, “The people just don’t understand that you can’t raise the minimum wage because it will cost jobs, so what we need is a strong leader to just come in and get rid of it.”

This is what is at the bottom of the 43% of Republicans who would support a military coup. Obviously, they wouldn’t support just any military coup. They would only support a military coup that enacted their policy preferences. It speaks to a general belief among conservatives that they can’t win a normal fight; their policies are just too unpopular. It’s very disturbing because it means that a lot of them have given up on the American project. They don’t believe in the process — just the results. If fascism brings about a ban on abortion, that’s fine.

Meanwhile: Liberals ♥ Democracy!

For a long time, I’ve been harping on a particular thing in the education “reform” movement: that it isn’t natural. People in it always claim that while they may not be doing the obvious things to improve primary education in this country, they are at least doing something. What’s more, they claim that the things that I think are important are “politically impossible.” But it just so happens that the things that they have “chosen” to do — the things that are “politically possible” — are the things that rich people are willing to pay them to work on.

As a result of this, there is really only one thing that the education “reform” movement is all about: breaking teacher unions. Everything else: high stakes testing, charter schools, and all the rest are just the means to that end of depriving teachers of basic worker protections. And whether the useful fools who work in the “reform” movement know this or not, the ultimate result of this will be to make teaching a worse paying, less stable form for work. And that will mean that it will be that much harder to find qualified teachers, not to mention the great teachers the “reformers” are always yammering on about incentivizing.

All of this is obvious if you follow the issue at all. But in general, it isn’t discussed. Maybe it is because opponents of this “reform” don’t want to be seen as questing the motives of “reform” supporters — who after all seem to be genuine in their desires. But the issue isn’t primarily about the people on the front lines. The primary issue is who is supporting them and why. And they are the plutocrats who have a very different end in mind for education “reform.” But I do blame those on the front lines who are clearly more interested in listening to people who know nothing about education but who offer up piles of cash than they are to actual teachers.

It’s because I feel so alone on this issue that I was glad to see that Matt Bruenig had written, The Left Wing of the Fundable. It it, he talked about one very telling example. Conor Williams recently made the case that those in the education “reform” movement are the true warriors against inequality because they are against segregated neighborhood schools. Hooray for charter schools because they wash away decades of segregated schools!

Except they don’t. Neighborhoods are segregated because white Americans are racists. And they are helped along by a racist system where educational funding in most areas dependent upon local property taxes. So the (mostly white) people who can afford it are incentivized to move to (mostly white) areas that have better schools. Are charter schools designed to solve the problem of segregation? No. Is it likely that racist white Americans would figure out ways to game the system anyway? I think so.

Bruenig noted that busing is the obvious answer to school segregation. We know it works. But Conor Williams isn’t running around telling everyone that we should be using busing to integrate the schools. Williams and other reformers would claim that busing is not a political possibility whereas charters are. And this is where Bruenig gets his title: “practicality is defined here in terms of what you might call the Left Wing of the Fundable.” He’s singing my tune:

This is one of the biggest ways the the power elite have to keeping the conversation always on their own turf. This is why we are always talking about cutting Social Security and not raising the payroll tax cap — because Pete Peterson pays hundreds of millions of dollars to the liberal class to talk about what he wants. And it is the same way that Bill and Mindy keep us us from talking about using the taxes they pay on their $123 million house and spending them on poor children in Lakewood. So don’t listen to the jerks like Conor Williams. They are just useful fools. Look at what the interests are of those who fund people like him. It ain’t school integration, that’s for sure.

David Brockington wrote a great article over at Lawyers, Guns & Money, Why I Voted Jeremy Corbyn for Leader of the Labour Party, With Reservations. This is not another article about Corbyn, so don’t worry. It’s about choice. Brockington is a social scientist on the faculty of Plymouth School of Government. And he has been doing work that indicates that voter turnout goes down the more the two parties move to the center. He’s very careful to say that he hasn’t proven this. He’s a scientists, after all. But the evidence seems to indicate it. And the narrative is very strong.

Consider that you have two candidates. One of them is promising cut taxes on the wealthy and the other is promising to keep those taxes the same. If you aren’t wealthy, why would you care? Would this make you think that you ought to inconvenience yourself by finding time to vote? Or would you feel very much like the people of a nation where they can only vote for people from a single party? When elections come down to who is the most competent to do what both candidates agree on, very few people show up at the polls.

Given that the people least likely to vote are liberal leaning voters, it thus makes more sense to get turnout as high as possible. Of course, it doesn’t always work. In 2004, turnout was very high because people were angry about the war. But this was cutting against an improving economy. I now feel certain that had the Democrats nominated Howard Dean and made the election about the war, Bush would have lost. (And do you know what that would have meant? No John Roberts. No Samuel Alito. And we still would have likely gotten Sotomayor and Kagan, because Souter and Stevens both wanted to retire. That would have brought us a court with one liberal, five moderates, one conservative, and two wackos.)

So what does this mean for the 2016 presidential election here in the US? Even though I’m a supporter of Bernie Sanders, I don’t think that it means we have to nominate him. I think that Hillary Clinton is plenty exciting herself. She would be, after all, the first woman president. And we do have a history of this: first black men got the vote (in theory, anyway) and then women got the vote. It does make me more skeptical of a Joe Biden presidential run. I think that people often make a very big mistake by going with the “safe” choice. It’s just too easy to be wrong. Again, it’s like John Kerry in 2004. He was the “safe” choice, but knowing what I now know about politics, he was a horrible choice.

Someone I was reading recently noted that if the American people could vote Obama a third term, they would. That’s probably true. I think the country is happy enough with the direction of the economy. And I expect that to be true for the next year. The Republicans seem incapable of offering anything other than going backwards to worse times. And I don’t think the people are in any mood to go far to the left. Of course, the thing about Clinton is that she’s pretty much matched Sanders in terms of possible economic policy. So in addition to being a woman, she is offering policies that do make a clear distinction with whatever candidate the Republicans run.

This makes me feel even a little better about 2016.