I had been ignoring the patently corporate campaign of nobody Pete Buttigieg - until I came across this definitive demolition of the man's fake persona. The article goes into immense detail, which I suppose is necessary to rebut the flood of corporate media puff pieces that are being cranked out.

For this small post (hardly an essay), I will snip a brief summary of PB (I already can't stand his barely pronouncable and vaguely humorous surname.) and a closing rant on why he should be flushed down the toilet of duopoly politics. If you want to know the details, the article is long and excellent.

Mayor Pete does not have an entirely different story than any other politician in our lifetime. He has the same story they all have. David Axelrod has gushed: “His story is an incredible story.” Is it? The son of two professors at an elite university goes on to several different elite universities, serves an uneventful seven-month tour of duty in the Navy, and then becomes the technocratic mayor of the city his parents’ university is in? Ilhan Omar has an entirely different story than any other politician. So does Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. This man is the story of the American elite.

The myth-making here is going to be intense. The profiles are already streaming forth. The New York Times covered his wedding by wondering if Buttigieg would be president. You will be sold Buttigieg’s small-town milliennial neoliberalism the way they’re trying to sell you Beto O’Rourke’s skateboard neoliberalism. Hey kids, you like Medicare For All? So does this guy! But he’s young and from the Midwest and likes Hamilton! Bernie is old. You don’t need an old man. You need young hip progressivism.

Do not be deceived by this. Look into the actual records of these candidates. Get their shitty books and scrutinize them closely. A lot of money is going to be flowing toward tricks like this, as frantic Democratic elites try to push someone like Buttigieg in order to prevent a Sanders nomination. They know Buttigieg is one of them; they see “McKinsey” and realize they’ll come to no harm. But they hope you don’t see what they see.

- Nathan Robinson, All about Pete

The article closes with an awesome rant:

Why have I been so relentlessly negative? Because I see what this is, and I see how these things go, and we can’t afford to make this mistake again. No more Bright Young People with their beautiful families and flawless characters and elite educations and vacuous messages of uplift and togetherness. Give me fucked-up people with convictions and gusto. Give me real human beings, not CV-padding corporate zombies. If we are lucky, Buttigieg Fever will dissipate quickly when people realize this guy is the same rancid wine in a new wifi-enabled bottle.

As more and more young, stealth neoliberal candidates are funded and promoted, the game plan of TPTB is quite clear. Find someone, anyone to siphon enough votes away from Sanders to throw the contest to a second ballot where the superdelegates can pull the same shit as 2016.

Clearly, those people who still believe that American politics is anything more than Kabuki theater need to get behind Sanders (the only proven domestic progressive, the only progressive candidate with massive name recognition) and start stomping out these wildfires being set by TPTB arsonists.

And we are still two years out from the election. I think a secondary goal is to make Americans so sick of electoral politics that they find being dictated to a relief.