The Dems’ October Debate

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If you want to learn how the world sees your country, try watching a major political event from abroad. I did that today for the Dems’ October debate. It was like looking through the wrong end of a telescope, and what I “saw” was not a pretty picture.

Both the manner and the technology of alleged transmission proved the utter domination of our media and our politics by big corporations. This was so despite numerous online protestations that, somehow, this time would be different, that no subscription requirement or other impediment would block my (or anyone else’s) access to a full, clean video feed.

As it turned out, I could access no workable live video feed from Namba, Osaka, Japan—not exactly a place out in the sticks. The live feed from the New York Times, to which I do have a digital subscription, simply didn’t work, despite my duly signing on and trying numerous times in different ways. As far as I could tell, all the other allegedly “free” video feeds were through corporate Facebook pages, to which I no longer have access.

I deactivated my Facebook account months ago. I did so in part because I consider Facebook not just bad software, but also an abuse of my trust and privacy, and mostly a useless distraction. I also see Facebook as having been, and as still being, the single most important factor in our nation’s precipitous decline, vastly outpacing Fox.

To watch the Dems’ October debate from an hotel in Osaka that offers no English-language cable channels, I apparently would have had to reactivate my Facebook account and give the primary instrument of our national subversion access to my private data. Is this really “free”? Is it “democracy”?

So the best I could do—with my Ph.D. in physics and fifty years’ experience in computers, electronics and the Internet—was read about the debate, in delayed “real” time, through live-streaming comments by the New York Times’ mostly female and mostly (very) young crew of live-streaming reporters.

On the good side, I must say that the reporters provided some useful references to the candidates’ past positions and statements outside the debates, as well as some plugs and links to relevant past NYT stories. But as everyone knows (let alone those trained in law), there is no substitute for hearing tones of voice, seeing facial expressions, and knowing exact words in context in really real time.

So stripped of all its technical encumbrances of apps and streams and chat bytes, what I “saw” was what the NYT’s reporters wanted me to “see,” not what actually happened. For this we replaced free broadcast TV with online video feeds?

Maybe it was this wrong-end-of-the-telescope “view.” Maybe it was the oppressive repetition that comes from having already had too many debates among too many candidates. Probably it was all of the above. But I am left with the overwhelming impression that these “televised” presidential debates are more about entertainment than any serious evaluation of candidates to be our next supreme leader.

This is hardly a new impression of mine. But today’s so-called debate, in which global warming received only passing mention and Trump’s evolving debacle in Syria only short shrift, vastly strengthened it.

For the record, this fatally flawed vehicle for comparison only strengthened my already firm conviction that Elizabeth Warren is by far the best debater, the most prepared and strategic thinker, the best communicator, and the best candidate overall, with Pete Buttigieg (who has similar incisiveness and strategic skill) running second. Warren’s uncanny ability to hit the nail on the head, with impressive concision every time, only reinforced my admiration for her.

Senator Klobuchar and others sought to ding Warren for her refusal to “admit” that her version of “Medicare for All” would require raising taxes. But Warren quite properly insisted that it’s only the total cost of health insurance that matters to consumers, including tax subsidies, premiums, deductibles and co-pays. Even the slowest of voters can understand that what they pay for “health care” is a sum of several different payments.

So why should any Democrat give strength to an inveterate GOP talking point: that only the tax rate matters, and not what you get for your taxes or what else you pay for the same thing? Do we really want Dems bashing other Dems using the same nonsense phrase (“no new taxes”) that deprived the best GOP president since Eisenhower (Daddy Bush) of a second term?

As for the rest, Bernie showed, with admirable stamina, that his heart attack has not noticeably set him back. Biden continued a campaign focusing on his personal accomplishments under Obama and before, which are all rapidly disappearing in our national rear-view mirror.

In the final analysis, there are only two issues in the coming presidential election. The first is breaking the corporate oligarchy’s hammerlock on our democracy and our government. The second is restoring professionalism, honor and expertise to our government, including our much-maligned bureaucracy. If we don’t do these two things, nothing else will get done, no matter how hard we try: not reducing the acceleration of global warming, not getting weapons of war off our streets, and not advancing the causes of racial and environmental justice.

There is only one candidate who understands this basic reality of our times, and who doesn’t pollute her message with scary irrelevancies like “socialism” and “political revolution.” That candidate is Elizabeth Warren, as she showed again today. The Dems and the nation owe Sanders a huge debt of gratitude for making these issues plain and mainstream, but he’s not the person to resolve them, let alone the one who can win the power to do so.

So insofar as Warren “won” this latest debate—and insofar as it enhanced her status as the leader—it served the Dems and the nation well. Insofar as it confirmed our corporate media’s utter domination of what we see, hear, and know about ourselves and our world, it only enhanced Warren’s status as by far the best, and perhaps the only possible, savior of our democracy.

Footnote: If, under the influence of constant Fox and GOP propaganda, you ever doubt the value of our federal bureaucracy, spend half an hour researching a disease or condition that threatens you or a loved one on the CDC’s website. There you will find the results of centuries of medical science, organized and presented simply, for anyone in the world to learn for free. Our federal bureaucracy has given us similar compendia of expert human knowledge in such fields as astronomy and space (NASA) and statistics about the other human beings with whom we Americans share this small planet (the CIA).

The professionalism, expertise, competence and efficiency of our federal bureaucracy comprise one of the least-often-told stories of American greatness. Unfortunately, that story is one that the Trump Administration is systematically destroying, both in reputation and reality, and that the next president must systematically rebuild.

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