Sen. Kyrsten Sinema recently formally declared “independence” from the “broken two-party system.” Aside from the fact that she elaborated on her departure from the Democrat Party at Davos, wearing an outlandish fur blouse ripped straight from the decadent technocrats’ costumes in Hunger Games, this appears to be a positive development for the prospects of representative government.
Unfortunately, the devil is in the details. The “I’m an independent” lie enables creatures like Sinema to cloak themselves in the sexy avatar of the maverick renegade that Americans love with none of the actual independence or force of will.
What Sinema really is, at her core, behind the façade, is a servant of the ruling class, whose role in the Democrat Party was to preserve the status quo of complete corporate dominion over a hijacked government under the “centrist” banner. Now she’s rebranding herself as an “independent” while still serving the exact same interests. Nothing at all whatsoever will change about Sinema’s politics, much like Biden promised donors of his own politics behind closed doors during the 2020 presidential race.
“Nothing will fundamentally change” is code for “you will maintain your chokehold on the American neck while you suck out all the lifeblood from the once-great American middle class.”
Biden and Sinema are the same dependable breed of D.C. Swamp creature, groomed to serve functionally in their roles until they are put out to pasture, which Biden seems to be on the cusp of, given his ongoing documents scandal that appears to be a knife in the back from his own staff.
Sinema will continue to feed on the table scraps that the governing class drops from their table. She is a good girl. The costume she wears with the D or the R or the I may change at her donors’ whim, but she’ll always be a good girl.
She’s an institutionalist – just like every mainstream politician and corporate media hack – because the current configuration of the institutions in the D.C. machine has served her very well.
When these types of people talk about patriotism and “defending democracy,” what “America” means to them is an abstract network of public and private institutions that merge together at the nexus of power in Washington, D.C., and, increasingly, in foreign nexuses of power like the World Economic Forum. America is a bureaucracy, not an ideal.
“Independents” and “centrists” often market themselves as “adults” just focused on the hard-nosed tasks in front of them, getting done what they can given the circumstances. But this, too, is a lie.
Reflexively defending institutional technocracy is a cheap sleight of hand designed to camouflage one’s servitude as pragmatic and high-minded. The “adult” thing to do, to hear them tell it, is to cuck yourself to the intelligence agencies and allow them to run your mind for you while they transition your child and teach your wife what the acronym DP means, metaphorically, as an abstract conceptualization of what they’re doing to her.
“Independent” in a political context, by definition, means outside of the dominant power structure. Someone like Ron Paul, for instance, may have nominally worn the Republican label, but he was functionally an independent because he was barred entry to the higher seats of power on account of his peculiar ideological integrity in his opposition to the corporate state.
In contrast, whatever Speaker Kevin McCarthy is, he’s not “radical right.” He hobnobs with the same donor owners as his colleagues in the ruling ranks of the Democrat and Republican parties.
On the inside, in the cozy upper echelons of power that only a craven few ever reach, they’re all friends; they’re all dear colleagues. They serve the institution faithfully, and so they are gifted with the gavel.
“Independents” do not get invited to schmooze with billionaires on private jets en route to Davos like Sinema did. This is now how anything works. Words have to mean something. Sinema is a slave to the cause who sold her soul for cold hard cash and a key to the Davos castle. As long as she maintains her loyalty to the technocrats, her true masters, it matters not what lapel pin she wears.
“That which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet.”
-Shakespeare, ‘Romeo and Juliet’
