-- where any change at all that looks like it might simulate real change starts to look really good.

All the nice Dem elites know full well that, especially if you are an unknown, it will take at least two years to run a credible Presidential campaign. But even from here in remote southern Oregon one can hear them telling themselves OMIGOD I'VE SPENT MY WHOLE LIFE BEING A NEOLIBERAL SOCIAL CLIMBER SO HOW COULD I POSSIBLY COMPETE AGAINST JOE BIDEN WHO HAS BEEN A NEOLIBERAL SOCIAL CLIMBER HIS LONGER WHOLE LIFE? Blubber, blubber etc. I am of course not writing here about the already lost causes, the long queue which lined up in 2020 to drop out and endorse Joe. We know already those people are super-empowered nobodies.

Never mind how incredibly unpopular Joe is at present, and never mind that Joe's solution to inflation is to crash the economy, and never mind Joe's disastrous proxy war in Ukraine, and never mind that Joe is the oldest President ever, and never mind Joe's general inaction on 90% of what once upon a time were political issues, and never mind that the blatant attempt to rig the primaries for Joe is going to backfire rather disastrously in New Hampshire and in Iowa. None of the fools brandishing a (D) next to their names is willing to say ANYTHING that might upset the applecart; they can't be bothered to pay 1% attention to the disaster upsetting the applecart right now, never mind the disasters to come. Their unanimous rallying cry is "four more years." Besides, the Republicans are worse or something like that. (Actually, the difference between the Republicans and the Democrats is the character of the different con jobs they are pulling. Voting has thusly been reduced to a comparison of con jobs.)

Here I must remind readers of Riley and Brenner's verdict upon American politics, which runs as follows:

Under political capitalism, raw political power, rather than productive investment, is the key determinant of the rate of return. This new form of accumulation is associated with a series of novel mechanisms of ‘politically constituted rip-off’. These include an escalating series of tax breaks, the privatization of public assets at bargain-basement prices, quantitative easing plus ultra-low interest rates, to promote stock-market speculation—and, crucially, massive state spending aimed directly at private industry, with trickledown effects for the broader population: Bush’s Prescription Drug legislation, Obama’s Affordable Care Act, Trump’s cares Act, Biden’s American Rescue Plan, the Infrastructure and CHIPS Acts and the Inflation Reduction Act. All these mechanisms of surplus extraction are openly and obviously political. They allow for returns, not on the basis of investment in plant, equipment, labour and inputs to produce use values, but rather on the basis of investments in politics.

Eventually, you see, the parasites devour their host, all in the name of security. Yeah, social climbers, cling to that collapsing America and your BFF Joe Biden. Don't change before the empire falls -- you'll laugh so hard you'll crack the walls.

They sung that one fifty-five years ago, when America was a better place. This is the song they ought to have sung forty years ago:

Now, I think I'll wait until Marianne Williamson actually announces before applauding. And then I'll hope that someone in America takes her seriously.