The Emperor’s New Clothes

I’ll assume you’re familiar with the tale of the vain and foppish Emperor who gets conned by a peasant into believing he has the finest suit in the land when in fact he’s entirely naked.

The political point of the story is that none of his courtiers or even the regular folk dare tell him the truth about his, umm… exposure and it is only a little child, too naive to be afraid, who points out the obvious facts.

In our system the Emperor has been stripped bare for a long time, but that is certainly no reason to continue in denial.

Republicans Would Rather Lose the 2016 Election than Win with Donald Trump
Glen Ford, The Real News Network
May 18, 2016

Hillary May Win in November, but the Duopoly Electoral System is Doomed
by Glen Ford, Black Agenda Report
Wed, 05/11/2016

The crisis in the U.S. duopoly electoral system is profound, and will intensify, rather than diminish, after November, when the likely outcome is that Hillary Clinton’s “Big Tent” Democratic Party – further fattened with Trumpophobic corporate funding and flush with “moderate” Republican suburban refugees – will bury Trump’s scaled down GOP in an Electoral College landslide rivaling Barry Goldwater’s defeat by Lyndon Johnson in 1964. The very magnitude of Trump’s loss will further destabilize the duopoly system that has served the rich rulers so well for virtually the entirety of the Republic’s history.

The Republican “brand” will remain in contention in the wake of the debacle. A second party claiming to represent “Republican” principles will emerge, either as a refuge for humiliated Trump followers or as an alternate GOP fashioned and funded by the dreaded “elites.” Either way, the “old” GOP will rise again, in smaller form, to attempt to resume its interlocking corporate relationship with the Democrats, while the Trump faction will maintain its own structure, either in the shell of the current Republican Party or in some new formation.

For the near term, the Republican project is wrecked, which, by itself, destabilizes the duopoly relationship between the two corporate parties. (Tweedle-Dum really does need Tweedle-Dee in order to fully monopolize the electoral machinery in service of Capital.) But, the contradictions in the Democratic Party are at least as deep, if not so immediately acute, as those that are ripping apart the GOP.
…
(Blacks) should be first out the door of a corporate dominated party, but are held in place by the duopoly structure that assigns them to the Democrats. Most Black people are aware that they are captives of the Democrats – they know their relationship with the party is not really a matter of choice, but are glad to have any place at all to shelter from the dreaded White Man’s Party.

The great, uncultivated spaces in U.S. politics are to the left of the corporate dominated Democrats. This includes a smaller, unique space that yearns to be filled by a self-determinationist, independent Black politics. The duopoly is designed to keep these spaces dormant, quiescent, untilled. The mass of Bernie Sanders’ white supporters want to cultivate this space to Hillary’s left – the space where there is a “Future to Believe In” – but are learning that they cannot do so under the terms of the duopoly. And, if the choice were no longer between corporate Democrats and the White Man’s Party, Black politics would rapidly shift to an independent, decidedly more radical track, in sync with the Black Radical Tradition that is manifest even among female West Point cadets.
…
The Bernie Sanders people, scattered in their millions, became a self-aware social force through a similar process. They will not go away, or be dismissed out of existence by CNN pundits. Many now hate the Democratic Party, although they didn’t start out the season that way. They want to occupy those political spaces to the Left of Hillary.

Young Black people, half of whom favored Sanders despite the near-universal endorsement of Clinton by the local and national Black Misleadership Class, are reclaiming Black political and physical space. They are determined that Black America re-emerge as a social force, and their most talented elements specifically reject the U.S. duopoly system.

These forces – the Progressive, the Black, and yes, the Racist – will not be contained by the two-party corporate arrangement. The unraveling has begun.