Today I just want to make the simple observation that America’s two-headed one-party political system is a lot like an old stand-up bit Bill Cosby once did about beating his children.
The bit I’d like to highlight is from Cosby’s 1983 special “Himself”. Society’s attitude toward physically assaulting children has changed a bit since then, as has society’s attitude toward Bill Cosby, so it rings a fair bit different in modern ears than it did in those of the audience at the time. In fact when you just read a transcript of the routine, it doesn’t look like a comedy bit at all; it just looks like some guy’s description of abusing his children with his wife.
After painting a scene in which his children bicker and fight in defiance of their mother’s instructions, Cosby said the following:
“My wife turns around, grabs a yardstick. She holds it like a samurai warrior. She then makes an announcement that the beatings will now begin by saying, ‘I have had enough of this!’ Now these three brain-damaged people have the nerve to look surprised. My wife is… [imitates yardstick being thrown]. Children run everywhere.
“Now my job is, I am the goalie. The children come at me, I kick ‘em back into play. Now the beatings are over, not because I see my wife, but because I hear all of upstairs going: [Imitates sobbing.]
“Now here’s the funny part: my wife comes downstairs with the broken stick, throws it on the table, sits down and begins to talk out loud to nobody: ‘Gonna tell me that you’re not going to do something when I tell you to do something. I mean, you move when I say move. Think I carried you in my body for nine months so you can roll your eyes at me? I’ll roll that little head of yours down on the floor. You don’t know who you’re fooling with. I’ll beat you until you can’t grow anymore.’ “
America’s dad, everyone.
“Now my job is, I am the goalie. The children come at me, I kick ‘em back into play.”
Does this sound familiar?
Does it sound kind of like the Democratic Party?
Does it sound like the party which draws in voters who are looking to escape from the abusive, violent, warmongering, climate-killing, oligarch-coddling Republican Party, only to “kick ’em back into play”?
That’s the Democratic Party’s job. The Democratic Party is the goalie. Whenever the victims of America’s corrupt status quo start looking for an exit from the abuse, the Democratic Party’s job is to block that exit. It blocks that exit by offering up the promise of social justice, economic justice, advocacy for the working class and progressive reform, and then it actively neuters all attempts to make that happen. Attempts such as electing a progressive candidate to lead the party in a direction that actually reflects the will and interests of the people, for example.
Democrats sometimes accuse me of claiming that both parties are exactly the same, but that’s not true at all. The parties fulfill two very distinct roles in the administration of the beating: one wields the actual yardstick, while the other one acts as the goalie. One openly advances warmongering, ecocidal agendas of the billionaire class, while the other advances all those agendas more slyly while nullifying any attempt by the populace to thwart them.
They play two different roles in advancing the exact same agenda. Their behaviors are a bit different, but they’re both working to assault children with a yardstick.
America’s Two-Headed One Party System
"Ralph Nader occasionally shares an anecdote about the time he told his father that what America needs is a good third party.
'I’ll settle for a second,' his father replied."https://t.co/iwicX8CPwR— Caitlin Johnstone (@caitoz) December 14, 2019
Cosby’s routine paints him as an innocent and well-intentioned bystander, but in actuality he’s telling a story about two adults beating up young children. Democratic Party leadership paint themselves as the sensible advocates of the people, but in actuality they’re facilitating an assault on the American people just as much as the Republicans are.
And now we are seeing Trump held up as the menacing threat who everyone must run away from, and what is the life raft that the Democratic Party leadership is trying to throw them to escape this threat? Joe Biden. An actual, literal dementia patient with an extensive history of advancing the most toxic and violent policies imaginable.
As the closest thing to a viable left-wing party that exists in the most powerful and influential government on earth, the Democratic Party has more real power than any other political party in existence in terms of the changes it could make to the world if it wanted to. The fact that it plays goalie instead is an inexcusable evil which justifies the total elimination of the entire status quo the entire system is built upon.
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33 responses to “America’s “Two”-Party System Is Like Bill Cosby’s Routine About Beating His Children”
How can Americans get control of their government? They can’t. All options have been sabotaged or controlled. It’s the same in England, France, Germany, Australia, Canada, and every other U.S. Allied country. The control is global, just like the conspiracy. The origin? Sociopathy. Sociopaths rule. Just look at our U.S. leaders, and the leaders of all those other countries. It’s obvious. And they are just the puppets of the really hard-core sociopaths who control them. Until we understand the truth of our predicament, everything continues according to their plans.
Good cop. Bad cop. Kind nurturing momma party vs tough kick ass protect you from danger daddy party.
What’s with the tacit editorializing against corporal punishment? You sound like a liberal.
Big fan. Bit of a shitpost.
‘Eliminate’ the system, and replace it with what?
People working out win -win arrangemets, voluntarily joining i to systems lime buying clubs, food co-ops, skilled labor banking arrangemets. What, exactly, is thus central givernment providing to us? Shall we not shut the whole thig down for a decade, and let these 50 states finally stand up and serve, ratber then being lapdog to Uncle Sam. Cancel all Fed Tax for a decade too. Lord knows, DC has no control over the Fed Bank. I’d like my Micky Mouse Dollar now please.
http://www.lp.org
That’s it! That’s exactly how it works. And, for all practical purpose, the main function of the party in the role it has been playing in the political system under the like of so-called centrists and self-proclaimed third-way Democrats in the 80’s. It’s called the Ratchet Effect and it’s been the dynamic at work for quite some time even before then, since at least 1968:
http://wulfshead.blogspot.com/2010/08/i-didnt-ken-what-dem-was-saying_27.html
I ♥️ your style and your spirit!
joe biden won (inherited) all the states where people vote for dementia because it makes them feel smarter.
Trumpit will win all the states that still hold cunnilingus illegal. (Same places.)
AMerdRiche will watch sports until their teams lose and then vote to blow up Finland.
{did you hear what finaland did? they elected a 34 year old president and she turned out a grrrl. she needed a coalition so she asked the 5 biggest progressive or socialist parties to join her–they were accidentally headed by Femmes, and so the six most powerful pols in Finland are now chicks.
their first proposal to parliament? a 4 day week with 6 hour days. yep. meanwhile UK gets the Iron Maiden and us’ns get Madeleine Alldark, who says 500,000 dead Iraqi kids was worth it.
this as Tulsi would order them all out.
time flies.
Kissinger always said, “They’re just useless eaters.”
Jay Gould, the capitalist one, said, “I got enough money to pay half the poor to kill the other half.”
motley quotes you can use after fact checking. keep on dancing….in the kitchen….never forget the body need some joy and satisfaction too. i suggest Majek Fashek in a new york way.
or Tsotsi. or another trip through Rabbit Proof Fence. don’t want you to slow down tho’. keep on keepin on.
Sadly, I think that the plutocracy of the 1 percent, which owns BOTH major political parties in America and which is the driving force behind the Republican Party’s transition from a stodgy, responsible center-right conservative political party to a reactionary and fascist conspiracy to seize power in America doesn’t really care about the US Constitution of 1787, cares not at all for “democracy,” and, considering that they believe that the United States of America is a declining, has been economic and military superpower, they really don’t care if the United States of America survives at all.
The primary function of the Democratic Party in America today is to deflect and channel as much opposition to the reactionary policies of the Republicans as possible into a political reservoir where it will be rendered harmless. The secondary function of the Democrats is to supply as much support in general and votes in Congress as necessary to carry out the plutocrats reactionary policies.
Seamless explanation and funny to boot. The idea may be an older one (Upton Sinclair from 1904 -“two wings of the same bird of prey.”) but using fresh analogies and making them funny, is truly an art. And you are an artist in every way possible, Caitlin. You are dear to so many. Cheers. ML
A few counter comments for thought.
1. Spare the rod, spoul the child.
2. Everyone screams for progressive socialistic policies except those living under them. They instead try to migrate to the United States.
3. Viewpoints today are so different from viewpoints just a few years ago. Has anyone bothered to consider they may not be any improvement but worse.
4. Socialism is just another word for unbridled government growth. You cannot advocate one and denounce the other.
Sure. It’s remarkable how many Germans, Danes, Norwegians….are pounding at the gates!
Our left leaning globalist controlled MSM have given Americans a skewed view of how wonderful those socialist countries operate. Read their local oapers to get a true view of their utopia. They are dealing with the same problems as in the US.
I merely refuted your skewed suggestion (or should I say “ridiculous assertion”) that people living “under” “progressive socialistic policies” desire migration to the U.S.
“Mainstream Media”, that wholly-owned Mockingbird stenographic subsidiary of a state-corporate-oligarchic fusion, is hardly “left-leaning”, another ridiculous assertion of people such as yourself who are either lying through their teeth or simply possess infantile analytic capacities.
Yes, other governments around the world are dealing with the effects of decades of neoliberal World Bank /IMF economic policy otherwise known as “austerity” for the masses and “resources” for the few who wield concentrated economic power and their “buffer” 10% who are paid well to administrate and enforce their policy. But at least the common people of the rest of the developed world (governments with more extensive “progressive socialistic” policies) don’t deal with high economic barriers to health care, housing, and higher education.
And note that your original assertion that I have contention with is not logically substantiated by your comment that “they are dealing with the same problems as in the US.”
As a side note, my understanding of reality is never coloured by concepts of “utopia”, which people like you enjoy pinning on people like me who advocate for progressive social policy.
Ah, but you are using the word “socialism” in the way we used it for 150 years … that, is the expropriation of the bourgeoisie and the transfer of their property — the means of production and distribution — to the state (a “workers’ state,” of course!).
Because of the malign influence of Satan, wherever that sort of socialism was tried, it resulted in no liberty and little food, although I am sure we’ll get it right if we just try again. In the meantime, look to North Korea and Cuba for the real thing.
Now, ‘socialism’ means the social welfare programs of states where the bourgeoisie owns the means of production and distribution, but everyone pays high enough taxes so that we don’t actually have starvation in the streets. In other words, countries like ‘socialist’ Germany, where the first social-welfare programs were instituted 150 years ago to keep real socialism out, by Comrade Bismarck. (‘New-socialist’ Germany absorbed actually-existing-socialist-Germany thirty years ago. I mean, BMWs vs Trabants, come on!) There are proportionately more billionaires in Sweden than in the US — now, there is some ‘socialism’ for you!
There is no such thing as “good” government, never has been, never will be. Being the perfect environment for sociopaths, they all shortly become saturated with them. The very idea that a particular gang has authority to use violence, or the threat thereof, to force an individual to do, or not do, anything is repugnant. The only justified use of violence is that needed to defend oneself from such aggression by another. I signed no such “social contract”, and in fact have never seen one. Consequently, I’ve had no opportunity to reject such contract. The only thing that government is really good at is killing people, a skill at which they excel.
Sociopathy existed before government. Government was a way of organizing it better. If you remove the government, you still have the sociopathy. So, what do you propose to do about it?
Your choice. Be ruled by a single thug or a group of thugs. A group is better because you can appeal to one competing group over another. A single thug is much worse. Let me name a few….Hitler, Stalin, Idi Amin. Be careful of the system you tear down. What replaces it could be far worse.
In any country there must be people who have to die. They are the sacrifices any nation has to make to achieve law and order……Idi Amin
Roman Radzijevskij’s article that Catlin links to leaves out the fact that when Bill Cosby was in the US Navy in the mid to late 1950s he served at the Bethesda Naval Hospital. There he assisted in enhanced interrogation research and reprogramming veterans of the Korean war using various drugs as part of MKULTRA (more correctly, Project ARTICHOKE). It’s not a huge stretch to connect this episode in Cosby’s life to the fact that he used drugs to rape women.
When organisations or nations are really sick then competing parties or factions (e.g. within politics or within religions) may each be led overtly or covertly by pathological individuals or small groups of pathological individuals so that both sides of the coin are the same, and whichever faction wins, pathology wins, to the detriment of normal people
First, thanks for the article. I’m old enough to remember Cosby when he was a top comedian. And yes, some of his routines do raise a few question marks now when looking back at them.
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But, I get the increasing feeling this is more about rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. I think we are about to see that the Central Planning system in China was able to deal with this virus. People died, people got sick. But it was contained, mostly. But now we are about to see that the supposedly advance systems of the West will be incapable of dealing with this. A system that says people have to pay big money to even see a doctor and which also makes workers work when ill as standard practice is about to fail a big test.
And, when people start dying. When people are afraid, that’s when things change. That’s when evils that had been tolerated up until then are no longer tolerated, and mobs demand justice. And we know from the last economic crash that the big banks are all interconnected and when things turn down they can’t cope and the losses tumble around like dominoes.
Add economic crash to everyone being fearful of disease, and there is a real chance that the leadership of the world will not look the same. When such events happen, they happen fast. The world can go from “Let Them Eat Cake” to Guillotines awfully dang quick.
Yup, isn’t it beautiful?
Depends who’s got the guillotine, and which side of it you’re standing on.
“Republicans stand for
Greed, corruption, bigotry, and war
While Democrats
Pretend to feel guilty about
Greed, corruption, bigotry, and war
Greed, corruption, bigotry, and war
Greed, corruption, bigotry, and war
And don’t forget pollution”
(The Brown Lipstick Parade – Jello Biafra and The Guantanamo School of Medicine)
I love Jello Biafra, and had some great times listening to him. But this is of course rather dated, as the system keeps evolving, like two snakes eating the tails of the other and constantly changing places.
By now, the Democrats are all-in in endorsing Greed Corruption and War. Look at the oligarchs on the stage in the debates they don’t let Tulsi into. And of course the reason Tulsi is persona-non-grata is because she challenges them on Greed, Corruption and the Wars they use to drive it.
And, since Identity Politics is just Bigotry repackaged and rebranded, it could be said that the Democrats embrace all four with no signs at all of feeling guilty about it. The party that was once the pro-slavery Party now brings Red-baiting and McCarthyism back to American life and no longer even pretends to feel guilty about anything.
GET Real folks (Laugh!!!) the Never was a REAL two party political system in the first place since the Avatars wrote that FAKE constitution for the “Corporate United??? States”! (Vatican Owned)
It was created by the Avatars to make it SEEM that they were attempting to by JUST and FARE….But it only was written for the benefit of the Avatar Conquerors (White Supremacist Europeans)…Remember???
It did NOT include the then known as BLACK Slaves…Remember???
The only thing the Avatars are attempting to do…with “Assistance” from the so-called “Democrats” is change the system into a SINGLE party DICTATORSHIP….Are ya stupid R sum-Tim???
Now they are Faking a health crisis to help aspects of This to happen…Must I draw ya a picture folks???
There will be NO 2020 “Selections” because it is NOT part of the ORIGINAL “Divine Creators” Plan for this planet…GET-THAT- YET???
Thank You, Ms Johnstone for this article. Earlier today I had the pleasure of reading an article from Mr. Paul Edwards that made my day.
It made perfect sense to the corporate mind. Cater to the massive bucks of Wall Street and the War Machine, befuddle the dim, sappy, declining middle class with pleasant, polite, high-minded blather, and cut the poor, ill, elderly, and immiserated dead. They have no money to give. They don’t matter.
Between the glib, ingratiating, snakeoil poster boys for faux progressivism, Clinton and Obama, the transition was made. The Party became the toy of the Big Kahuna donors of the Oligarchy while its traditional electoral base–ordinary, working people–like tipsy, seduced debutantes, surrendered and embraced the two Prom Kings it adoringly permitted to fuck them.
You can read this fine article here:
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/53074.htm
Caitlin listen to this song, what you say was already being said in the late 60’s right here:
And here:
Woman -o- Woman thats a good one! It’s going straight to my clueless (I’m working on it) facebk boomer acquaintances.
You never leave me any room to add anything but “right” except perhaps “absolutely right” or maybe “absolutely irrefutably right” You have covered all the bases!
Its striking how immoral this “comedy” is, if your children are beating each other up you beat them up to teach them not to beat each other up, this way only the BIGGEST abuser is right, the littler abusers are then wrong not because they abused one another but because they are little, so they grow up loving their abuser as in the right because they were successfully abused by them, this explains why people vote for their abuser with such conviction that they have made a good choice. Its called “masochism”.
Actually, the two-party system is a lot like anybody beating children.
Another Home Run Scribbling
Thanks
Bravo!
Bravo!
Bravo!