The director of the newly created Commission for the Blind was forced
to resign. The Commission Board set out to interview and hire a new
director. Because of the turmoil in the blind community, the
commissioners met behind closed doors and agreed to find a neutral
person for the job. Someone who would be liked by everyone. No
political baggage. No association with either major national blind
organization.
And so they settled upon a fellow, a blind man, from Pennsylvania.
Quiet, friendly, eager to "get along" with everyone, and with no
particular philosophy from which to build an effective vocational
rehabilitation program. He lasted exactly one year. What the
commissioners discovered was that the person who tries to please
everyone, ends up pleasing no one.
President Obama appointed a man, a judge, to fill the seat of Antonin
Scalia. He selected someone who seemed to have nothing but friends in
congress. A real crowd pleaser. But of course he quickly learned
that those whom he seemed to have pleased, had no particular ties to
him, philosophically. The very quality that had moved him along in
his career, the "nice guy" to everyone, now turned on him.
But here's the interesting thing. Obama actually selected a man cut
from the same cloth as himself. Trying to "compromise" his way as
president, Obama spent time courting Republicans in an effort to be
the nice guy. Not only did he fail, but he lost much of his own
supporters as well. His one big claim, Obamacare, has turned out to
have been a capitulation to the drug cartel.
Aside from not pleasing much of anyone, Obama has failed to be a
leader because he truly is a product of his Times. This is the
generation of the "Plastic People", all show and no substance. After
8 years have come and gone, just what were the basic values of this
man.
Carl Jarvis
On 3/22/16, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Weissman writes: "Obama's political game-playing is pathetic, as is his
sanctimonious poppycock about judicial restraint, the rule of law, and
loyalty to what the Constitution says. Charles Evans Hughes, later chief
justice, shattered those fairytales over a century ago, when he pointed out
that 'the Constitution is what the judges say it is.'"
Donald Trump. (photo: AP)
From the Supreme Court to Donald Trump, It's Time to Get Real
By Steve Weissman, Reader Supported News
21 March 16
Forgive my foul mood. Like many of you, I’m still brought low by President
Obama’s far-from-progressive pick for the Supreme Court, Circuit Court
judge
Merrick Garland. Obama’s political game-playing is pathetic, as is his
sanctimonious poppycock about judicial restraint, the rule of law, and
loyalty to what the Constitution says. Charles Evans Hughes, later chief
justice, shattered those fairytales over a century ago, when he pointed out
that “the Constitution is what the judges say it is.”
This does not suggest that the Constitution's text and legal precedents are
irrelevant. As I’ve argued before, they frame the debates and provide the
arguments and “values” that the justices use to convince each other and
legitimize to the rest of us whatever they decide the Constitution now
says,
even if today’s interpretation differs radically from what the Constitution
supposedly said last week or will say some time in the future.
We can also learn from Antonin Scalia, who proved beyond doubt that there
is
no intellectually honest and anti-authoritarian way to be a Constitutional
fundamentalist. Nor should we trust Biblical fundamentalists, whether
Christian, Islamic, Jewish, Hindu, Buddhist, or Satanic. Nor free-market
fundamentalists. Nor Marxist, Leninist, or Trotskyist fundamentalists. Old
texts, old myths, and old ideologies cannot keep up with changing times.
They may point us in useful directions, help us hang onto basic values, or
they may not. But if progressive politics has any underlying theme, it has
to be this. That we look ahead and use our admittedly limited human reason
and hopefully unlimited human compassion ? not your old-fashioned faith or
mine ? to find workable solutions to problems old and new.
Bernie Sanders did this to perfection with Obama’s Supreme Court
nomination.
Appearing on Rachel Maddow’s show on MSNBC, he promised to support Garland
and oppose the Republican refusal to give him a hearing. But he pointedly
criticized Garland as “probably not the most progressive pick.” Would
Sanders, if he won the presidential election in November, request Obama to
withdraw Garland’s name and make his own pick for the next justice, asked
Maddow. “Yes, I would,” said Sanders without the least hesitation.
“I have said over and over again that I do have a litmus test for a Supreme
Court justice,” he explained. “That justice must be loud and clear in
telling us that he or she will vote to overturn this disastrous Citizens
United Supreme Court decision. I’m very worried about the future of
American
democracy, and about the ability of billionaires to buy American elections.
That is my litmus test, and that’s what I would insist on.”
How wonderfully refreshing! But we need to apply the same clear-headed
logic
to the looming threat of Donald Trump. Most surveys suggest that either
Bernie or Hillary could defeat Trump or Cruz, though it’s way too early to
put much trust in such hypothetical match-ups. More disturbing is how many
of Sanders supporters break with the Bern and talk of voting for Trump
against Hillary, or simply not voting at all. And should Bernie win the
nomination against the best efforts of the Democratic Party, the corporate
media, and the super delegates, the party honchos could well sit on their
hands and let him lose the presidential election big-time. That’s what they
did to George McGovern in 1972, and the party’s current ties to big money
interests offer strong incentives to let Bernie and our political
revolution
go down in flames.
Letting Trump win, whoever does it, could prove a catastrophic mistake.
Just
remember what happened when German Communists and Social Democrats in their
country’s 1932 presidential elections failed to make common cause against a
guy called Adolph Hitler.
Make no mistake. Trump is not Hitler, though his fascistic supporter, the
former KKK leader David Duke, thinks that any attempt to compare the Donald
to Der Führer will end up “rehabilitating that fellow with the mustache
back
there in Germany.” Hitler was fighting to make Germany great again against
the Communists “and the Jewish capitalists … who were ripping off the
nation
through the banking system,” Duke told his radio listeners. Trump, he
claimed, is fighting the same fight here in the US, defending “the real
America” and its European-American majority against Goldman Sachs and
Bernie
Sanders, “who is a former Communist and is a Marxist right now.”
Trump isn’t even Mussolini, though the similarities are striking, as Dana
Milbank and others have suggested. Trump’s “chin-out toughness, sweeping
right-hand gestures, and talk of his ‘huge’ successes and his ‘stupid’
opponents, recall Il Duce’s mannerisms. So does his “spreading a pervasive
sense of fear and overwhelming crisis, portraying his backers as victims,
assigning blame to foreign or alien actors and suggesting only his powerful
personality can transcend the crisis.” Trump’s encouragement of violence
and
use of violent imagery is also similar.
But, at least so far, Trump remains less the ideological leader than the
seasoned salesman and TV performer who is still feeling out his supporters
to see how he can best ride them to personal power. Think of him as a
Fascist in waiting. He’s clearly a racist and bigot, and has been for
years,
as I reported last September in “A F***king Jew Thanks Ann Coulter.” Her
remarks suggested he was at the least a closet anti-Semite. He has since
been more open in his Jew-bashing.
He also has been brilliant in winning support from Christian Evangelicals,
even though he’s as far from pious as he could be. And, like Bernie, he
quickly appealed to white blue-collar workers who had seen neo-liberal
economics and trade deals like NAFTA send American jobs overseas. Why has
it
taken the corporate media and even such savvy observers as Thomas Frank so
long to see how his leftist-sounding economic critique fits with his
right-wing Fascist appeal? He’s doing exactly the same as Marine Le Pen in
France, trying to replace a flaccid Left and poseurs like Hillary Clinton
as
the true enemy of global capitalism’s failures.
Whether Trump wins or loses this year’s race for president, don’t expect
him
to go away. He will almost certainly build on his similarities with
Europe’s
neo-Nazis. The only question is whether he will build his Fascist movement
faster than progressives can build a serious alternative following in
Bernie
Sanders’ footsteps.
________________________________________
A veteran of the Berkeley Free Speech Movement and the New Left monthly
Ramparts, Steve Weissman lived for many years in London, working as a
magazine writer and television producer. He now lives and works in France,
where he is researching a new book, Big Money and the Corporate State: How
Global Banks, Corporations, and Speculators Rule and How to Nonviolently
Break Their Hold.
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.
Error! Hyperlink reference not valid. Error! Hyperlink reference not
valid.
Donald Trump. (photo: AP)
http://readersupportednews.org/http://readersupportednews.org/
From the Supreme Court to Donald Trump, It's Time to Get Real
By Steve Weissman, Reader Supported News
21 March 16
orgive my foul mood. Like many of you, I’m still brought low by President
Obama’s far-from-progressive pick for the Supreme Court, Circuit Court
judge
Merrick Garland. Obama’s political game-playing is pathetic, as is his
sanctimonious poppycock about judicial restraint, the rule of law, and
loyalty to what the Constitution says. Charles Evans Hughes, later chief
justice, shattered those fairytales over a century ago, when he pointed out
that “the Constitution is what the judges say it is.”
This does not suggest that the Constitution's text and legal precedents are
irrelevant. As I’ve argued before, they frame the debates and provide the
arguments and “values” that the justices use to convince each other and
legitimize to the rest of us whatever they decide the Constitution now
says,
even if today’s interpretation differs radically from what the Constitution
supposedly said last week or will say some time in the future.
We can also learn from Antonin Scalia, who proved beyond doubt that there
is
no intellectually honest and anti-authoritarian way to be a Constitutional
fundamentalist. Nor should we trust Biblical fundamentalists, whether
Christian, Islamic, Jewish, Hindu, Buddhist, or Satanic. Nor free-market
fundamentalists. Nor Marxist, Leninist, or Trotskyist fundamentalists. Old
texts, old myths, and old ideologies cannot keep up with changing times.
They may point us in useful directions, help us hang onto basic values, or
they may not. But if progressive politics has any underlying theme, it has
to be this. That we look ahead and use our admittedly limited human reason
and hopefully unlimited human compassion ? not your old-fashioned faith or
mine ? to find workable solutions to problems old and new.
Bernie Sanders did this to perfection with Obama’s Supreme Court
nomination.
Appearing on Rachel Maddow’s show on MSNBC, he promised to support Garland
and oppose the Republican refusal to give him a hearing. But he pointedly
criticized Garland as “probably not the most progressive pick.” Would
Sanders, if he won the presidential election in November, request Obama to
withdraw Garland’s name and make his own pick for the next justice, asked
Maddow. “Yes, I would,” said Sanders without the least hesitation.
“I have said over and over again that I do have a litmus test for a Supreme
Court justice,” he explained. “That justice must be loud and clear in
telling us that he or she will vote to overturn this disastrous Citizens
United Supreme Court decision. I’m very worried about the future of
American
democracy, and about the ability of billionaires to buy American elections.
That is my litmus test, and that’s what I would insist on.”
How wonderfully refreshing! But we need to apply the same clear-headed
logic
to the looming threat of Donald Trump. Most surveys suggest that either
Bernie or Hillary could defeat Trump or Cruz, though it’s way too early to
put much trust in such hypothetical match-ups. More disturbing is how many
of Sanders supporters break with the Bern and talk of voting for Trump
against Hillary, or simply not voting at all. And should Bernie win the
nomination against the best efforts of the Democratic Party, the corporate
media, and the super delegates, the party honchos could well sit on their
hands and let him lose the presidential election big-time. That’s what they
did to George McGovern in 1972, and the party’s current ties to big money
interests offer strong incentives to let Bernie and our political
revolution
go down in flames.
Letting Trump win, whoever does it, could prove a catastrophic mistake.
Just
remember what happened when German Communists and Social Democrats in their
country’s 1932 presidential elections failed to make common cause against a
guy called Adolph Hitler.
Make no mistake. Trump is not Hitler, though his fascistic supporter, the
former KKK leader David Duke, thinks that any attempt to compare the Donald
to Der Führer will end up “rehabilitating that fellow with the mustache
back
there in Germany.” Hitler was fighting to make Germany great again against
the Communists “and the Jewish capitalists … who were ripping off the
nation
through the banking system,” Duke told his radio listeners. Trump, he
claimed, is fighting the same fight here in the US, defending “the real
America” and its European-American majority against Goldman Sachs and
Bernie
Sanders, “who is a former Communist and is a Marxist right now.”
Trump isn’t even Mussolini, though the similarities are striking, as Dana
Milbank and others have suggested. Trump’s “chin-out toughness, sweeping
right-hand gestures, and talk of his ‘huge’ successes and his ‘stupid’
opponents, recall Il Duce’s mannerisms. So does his “spreading a pervasive
sense of fear and overwhelming crisis, portraying his backers as victims,
assigning blame to foreign or alien actors and suggesting only his powerful
personality can transcend the crisis.” Trump’s encouragement of violence
and
use of violent imagery is also similar.
But, at least so far, Trump remains less the ideological leader than the
seasoned salesman and TV performer who is still feeling out his supporters
to see how he can best ride them to personal power. Think of him as a
Fascist in waiting. He’s clearly a racist and bigot, and has been for
years,
as I reported last September in “A F***king Jew Thanks Ann Coulter.” Her
remarks suggested he was at the least a closet anti-Semite. He has since
been more open in his Jew-bashing.
He also has been brilliant in winning support from Christian Evangelicals,
even though he’s as far from pious as he could be. And, like Bernie, he
quickly appealed to white blue-collar workers who had seen neo-liberal
economics and trade deals like NAFTA send American jobs overseas. Why has
it
taken the corporate media and even such savvy observers as Thomas Frank so
long to see how his leftist-sounding economic critique fits with his
right-wing Fascist appeal? He’s doing exactly the same as Marine Le Pen in
France, trying to replace a flaccid Left and poseurs like Hillary Clinton
as
the true enemy of global capitalism’s failures.
Whether Trump wins or loses this year’s race for president, don’t expect
him
to go away. He will almost certainly build on his similarities with
Europe’s
neo-Nazis. The only question is whether he will build his Fascist movement
faster than progressives can build a serious alternative following in
Bernie
Sanders’ footsteps.
A veteran of the Berkeley Free Speech Movement and the New Left monthly
Ramparts, Steve Weissman lived for many years in London, working as a
magazine writer and television producer. He now lives and works in France,
where he is researching a new book, Big Money and the Corporate State: How
Global Banks, Corporations, and Speculators Rule and How to Nonviolently
Break Their Hold.
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.
http://e-max.it/posizionamento-siti-web/socialize
http://e-max.it/posizionamento-siti-web/socialize
