My feeling is that you can't just lump everyone together in, "the working
class". People have different levels of education, come from different ethnic
and racial and religious backgrounds, do very different kinds of work, have
very different kinds of life styles, and most importantly, have very different
views of who they are and what their place is in this world. You're talking
about power and it's true that you don't have any more power than the people
with no education or who struggle to make a living for their children. That is,
you don't have any more power to influence whether or not we have war or peace,
or whether or not we get a single payer health system. But you do have enough
power so that you will be treated with more consideration by business people,
politicians, and police officers. To me, for people like us to say that there's
no difference between us and migrant workers or fast food workers or Walmart
employees, is to trivialize the kinds of problems that those working class
people have. You're not one of them. They know it and you know it.
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
<blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> On Behalf Of Carl Jarvis
Sent: Thursday, June 20, 2019 10:11 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: Clueless and Shameless: Joe Biden, Staggering
Frontrunner
With all due respect, I continue to consider all of us who are not members in
good standing of the Ruling Class, to be members of the Working Class. Unless
we are homeless or chronically unemployed, which would put us in the Lower
Class.
Middle implies halfway between something and something else. In the economic
structure of the American Empire, there is no "Middle"
anything.
My wife and I earned, back in the early 1990's, a bit over $100,000 per year
between us. So $100,000 would put us mid way between
$000,000 and $200,000. But in order to be midway between $000,000,000 and
$100,000,000, we would need to come in around $50,000,000.
Middle Class is just another make believe term that soothes the Soul, but means
absolutely nothing.
But hey! All of the rest of you can call it anything you want, because the
fact of the matter is that all of us who are not members in good standing in
the Ruling Class are owned by one or more members of that Ruling Class.
Remember, when you get set to disagree, a Monkey on a golden chain is just as
much of a prisoner as a Monkey on an Iron chain.
Carl Jarvis
On 6/20/19, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Clueless and Shameless: Joe Biden, Staggering Frontrunner By Norman
Solomon, Reader Supported News
20 June 19
Joe Biden just put a spotlight on his mindset when he explicitly
refused to apologize for fondly recalling how the Senate "got things
done" with "civility" as he worked alongside some of the leading
racist lawmakers of the 20th century. For Biden, the personal is the
political; he knows that he's virtuous, and that should be more than
good enough for African Americans, for women, for anyone.
"There's not a racist bone in my body," Biden exclaimed Wednesday
night, moments after demanding: "Apologize for what?" His deep
paternalism surfaced during the angry outburst as he declared: "I've
been involved in civil rights my whole career, period, period,
period."
Biden has been "involved" in civil rights his "whole career" all
right. But at some crucial junctures, he was on the wrong side. He
teamed up with segregationist senators to oppose busing for school
desegregation in the 1970s. And he played a leading role - while
pandering to racism with a shameful Senate floor speech - for passage
of the infamous 1994 crime bill that fueled mass incarceration.
Such aspects of Biden's record provide context for his comments this
week - praising an era of productive "civility" with the virulent
segregationist Dixiecrat senators Herman Talmadge of Georgia and James
Eastland of Mississippi (known as the "Voice of the White South"), who
often called black people "an inferior race."
Said Biden at a New York fundraiser Tuesday night: "Well guess what?
At least there was some civility. We got things done. We didn't agree
on much of anything. We got things done. We got it finished."
To Biden, any assessment of his past conduct that clashes with his
high self-regard is unfair; after all, he really means well. On the
campaign trail now, his cloying paternalism is as evident as his
affinity for wealthy donors.
Biden shuttles between the billionaire class and the working class -
funded by the rich while justifying the rich to everyone else. His
aspirations are bound up in notions of himself as comforter-in-chief.
"I get it, I get it," Biden said during his brief and self-adulatory
non-apology video in early April to quiet the uproar over his invasive
touching of women and girls. He was actually saying: I get it that I
need to seem to get it.
"I want to talk about gestures of support and encouragement that I've
made to women and some men that have made them uncomfortable," Biden
said in the video. "In my career I've always tried to make a human
connection - that's my responsibility, I think. I shake hands, I hug
people, I grab men and women by the shoulders and say, 'You can do
this' . It's the way I've always been. It's the way I've tried to show
I care about them and I'm listening."
Weeks later, appearing on ABC's "The View," he declared: "I have never
in my life, never, done anything in approaching a woman that has been
other than trying to bring solace." It was not a credible claim;
consider Lucy Flores, or the countless other women and girls he has
intrusively touched over the years.
For several decades, Biden has made his way through the political
terrain as a reflexive glad-hander. But times have changed a lot more
than he has.
"What the American people do not know yet is whether Biden has
actually internalized any of the blowback he's earned over the years
for his treatment of women," journalist Joe Berkowitz wrote last week.
"So far, it's not looking good."
What's also looking grim is Biden's brazen adoration of wealthy elites
who feed on corporate power. His approach is to split the rhetorical
difference between the wealthy and the workers. And so, days ago, at a
fundraiser filled with almost 180 donors giving his campaign the legal
limit of $2,800 each - an event where he tried and failed to get
funding from a pro-Trump billionaire - Biden declared: "You know, you
guys are great but Wall Street didn't build America. You guys are
incredibly important but you didn't build America. Ordinary,
hard-working, middle-class people given half the chance is what built
America."
The formula boils down to throwing the "hard-working middle class"
some rhetorical bones while continuing to service "you guys" on Wall Street.
Given his desire to merely revert the country to pre-Trump days, no
wonder Biden keeps saying that a good future can stem from finding
common ground with Republicans. But for people who understand the
present-day GOP and really want a decent society, Biden's claims are
delusional.
Biden sees his public roles of winking patriarch, civility toward
racists, and collaborator with oligarchs as a winning political
combination. But if he becomes the Democratic presidential nominee,
Biden will suppress turnout from the party's base while providing
Republicans with plenty of effective (albeit hypocritical) fodder.
Already the conservative press is salivating over the transparently
fraudulent pretenses of Lunch Bucket Joe, as in this headline Tuesday
in the right-wing Washington Examiner: "Biden Rubs Elbows With Billionaires
in $34M Penthouse."
When Bernie Sanders (who I continue to actively support) denounces the
political power of billionaires and repeats his 2020 campaign motto -
"Not Me. Us." - it rings true, consistent with his decades-long
record. But Biden can't outrun his own record, which is enmeshed in
his ongoing mentality.
And
so, the former vice president is in a race between his pleasant image
and unpleasant reality.
As the frontrunner for the Democratic presidential nomination, Joe
Biden is the biggest threat to Joe Biden's political future. He
continues to be who he has been, and that's the toxic problem.
Email This Page
Norman Solomon is cofounder and national coordinator of
RootsAction.org. He was a Bernie Sanders delegate from California to
the 2016 Democratic National Convention and is currently a coordinator
of the relaunched independent Bernie Delegates Network. Solomon is the
author of a dozen books including War Made Easy: How Presidents and
Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death.
Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work.
Permission
to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader
Supported News.
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