On Bernie vs Hillary

I watched a bit of yesterday's debate on PBS, but I have to confess that the debates do not hold my interest for more than a few minutes.

That's because our electoral system is a sham. Whomever is put up for and eventually elected president is a figurehead emplaced primarily to keep the masses tame while in the background the looters and killers have free rein to do what they do.

Even a mook like Trump will find that out in the by and bye, assuming he doesn't already know it, which I think he does.

All the candidates know the real deal.

Including Bernie.

So I wonder what he thinks he's doing yadda-yadda-ing all the time about things he can't actually change from the Big Chair in the White House.

Ah yes, it's a bone, he's a bone, thrown to the groundlings who feel so disoriented, so dispossessed by things as they are. He can't do anything about it but yadda-yadda. More to the point, even if he were to sit in the Big Chair -- and it could happen -- he won't be allowed to do anything substantive about it.

At least Hillary says what she knows: the way things are is not gonna change substantively in our lifetimes, and probably not in your children's lifetimes, either. Deal with it.

Any "revolution" has already happened, and it came from the right. There will be no leftist counter-revolution.

The reason why is simple enough. Maintenance of the status quo, which keeps shifting ever rightwards, is the whole point of what  constitutes the so-called "left" in today's political world. Bernie talks about what amount to tweaks in that status quo and preventing an even more precipitous lurch to the right. And he calls it "revolution" -- which is silly. And I think he knows it. Hillary, on the other hand, says the revolution is not coming (because it's already come?), she will tweak things a bit this way or that way, but mostly she will maintain an even keel through the next eight years, which is what she declares the People want.

Well, she could be right.

Bernie the Bone says "No, no! We have to do better!" Well, yes, but how? Through "reform?" He talks a lot about expanding and growing and building from the current base, but that's not revolutionary. It's hardly evolutionary. Hillary talks the same but takes a different tack: "Slow and steady. Step by step. Not all at once. A piece at a time. We'll get there. Eventually."

Time and again modern leftist parties have won elections by promising to do something about the looting, corruption, death and destruction caused by the triumph of the political and economic illiterates who rose to power and prominence on the wreckage of the Soviet Union.

At best they've been to mitigate some of the damage some of the time. But mostly they've been able to do nothing. Or -- as in the tragic case of SYRIZA in Greece -- they have been forced to implement even worse measures to satisfy their rapacious overlords.

Someone like Trump, as one of those overlords, would do it gleefully, come what may.

Someone like Bernie might say "I'd rather not" -- but would have no choice in the end.

Hillary would argue how best to do it.

So I don't watch the debates as a rule. The Show Business is all well and good but pretty meaningless in the end.

Pity.