So you think you're a badass, crowing about Michael Flynn's resignation and making fun of Trump? You think you're a rebel, spelling his name tRump like a naughty eight year old kid from the forties? It's because "rump" means "butt", right? Is that the gag? Be careful you don't cut yourself on all that edge there, Lenny Bruce.

I don't expect this article to share particularly well. Progressives are still too intimidated by their liberal friends and acquaintances to openly defy the infamous echo chamber on the social media outlets I get most of my exposure on, but this is getting intensely stupid and somebody needs to say something. The way people are championing a cause that's also being championed by every multimillionaire on every channel on every show on every television as though they're being in some way rebellious and counter-cultural is beyond my understanding. The resignation of a National Security Advisor (a registered Democrat, by the way) who was working against the oligarchic push toward a military confrontation with a nuclear superpower, who was one of the few people telling the truth about America's arming of terrorists in Syria, and Democrats are singing and dancing like a bunch of Ewoks watching an exploding imperial death star.

Let me remind you gangstas that a 2014 Princeton University study showed clearly that the United States of America is an oligarchy, not a democracy. Here's a five-minute video breaking down what that means and how it works in clear and simple terms. Basically, in the current system, your wishes have essentially no impact on your country's legislation and policy unless you are very rich; your vote and the votes of the rest of the 99 percent change functionally nothing about the way your nation moves and behaves. So the fact that this guy was democratically elected to be the leader of the nation doesn't mean that he's actually in charge; ultimately, the real source of power is the large network of oligarchs and unelected manipulators collectively known as the Deep State.

That is what Bernie Sanders kept talking about when he spoke of America becoming an oligarchy, and that is where the real rebellion is. It is also the source of all of the current administration's internal struggles right now.

And this does indeed seem to be the major source of confusion and/or manipulation on America's political left. Clintonian liberals were having a hard time being branded as proponents of the political establishment; they were the squares, the obedient, color-inside-the-lines brown nosers of the rich and powerful. Remember those 'Bernie vs. Hillary' memes? That.

But then when Trump won, they took this as a sign that they get to be the cool kids now, because "Look! Now he's in charge! That makes him the establishment, right?"

Wrong. The Deep State goes very deep, and the power structures entrenched therein are very old. The POTUS faces a long, hard, uphill slugfest of a battle in his attempts to restructure America's power systems, and the majority in both parties openly or secretly hate him and his stated agendas. It's still far too early to tell if Trump's new power dynamics will be more beneficial for America than the old ones, but he is clearly in conflict with the neoliberal power structures that have been choking America to death for generations.

It's not a coincidence that it was the Washington Post who originally broke the story of Flynn's phone call to Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak in one of its notorious reports from "anonymous sources" in the intelligence community, for example. WaPo is owned by Jeff Bezos, who as the fifth-wealthiest person on the planet makes Donald Trump look like a high school janitor, and who has personally received hundreds of millions of dollars directly from the CIA. WaPo has consistently been a devout mouthpiece for the political establishment, running sixteen smear pieces in sixteen hours against Bernie Sanders at the most heated and contentious period in the Democratic primaries, and running fake story after fake story fanning the flames of public hostility toward Russia. This is the Deep State at work, my liberal brothers and sisters, and it's working against Trump, not your buddies in the Democratic party.

This is not a defense of Trump; I see Trump as largely irrelevant and very low on the list of priorities America's political left should be focusing on. This is simply a reminder to liberal Americans that you cannot attack Trump without propping up the Democratic establishment, and you cannot prop up the Democratic establishment without supporting the oligarchs who own it. When you celebrate the Deep State's counteroffensives against the Trump administration, you are not cool, you are not anti-establishment, and you are not a rebel. You are a tool.

Happy Valentine's Day.

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