This is an interesting article, Miriam, and thank you for sharing it.
The author nonetheless continues the harmful reformist mythology that
would have a few tweaks of the capitalist system, (oh, to have another
FDR or JFK in office again). But there is no New Deal in the offering
nor will there be a Camelot that points to any future for our class.
The article points, if not indirectly, to the so called progressive
wing of the Democratic Party, for answers. For all intents and
purposes, however, the vast majority of working people have no friends
anywhere within the bankrupt political structures that are and always
have been beholden to their propertied rulers. Far from doom and
gloom, however, it is increasingly clear to me that there is
restlessness stirring among the "deplorables," to quote Hilary
Clinton. Amazon workers in Alabama, of all places, won the right to a
union vote on the job and rail workers at Union Pacific are learning
firsthand that these are not our courts nor our laws. Regardless of
where these very real and tangible struggles lead, the very fact that
these workers are thinking and fighting in these terms points to a
road forward. The history of our class has proven it time and again.
Were it not so, Jim Crow segregation would still be in place and
marriage would be reserved for exclusively religious and biologically
determined factors. The struggle is dynamic, to be sure, we certainly
don't win 'em all, quite to the contrary. But the rulers don't always
get the last word as we have also seen repeatedly throughout history.
Until folks tear their hopeful gaze away from the architects of war
and destruction, the obscene accumulation of fictitious capital,
graft, and massive routine corruption to finally recognize their own
class-conscious worth as producers, as organizers, and as human
beings, we will continue to read these cynical articles that
ultimately lay the blame for society's woes back on our backs. This is
the essential bottom line of articles such as these. It is important
to follow their line of thinking in the world, however, for by
recognizing the true intent and character of the criminal capitalist
class, we begin to appreciate our own story in our own words and start
to see our own potential and capacity to stand up and fight. I am
completely confident that this spirit is out there in the land but is
not covered in the bourgeois press because they are, for the most
part, alien to the conditions most of us face.
Let's keep up the pressure in 2021!
MSP
On 1/4/21, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
In 2021, the Best Way to Fight Neofascist Republicans Is to Fight
Neoliberal
Democrats
By Norman Solomon, Reader Supported News
04 January 21
The threat of fascism will hardly disappear when Donald Trump moves out of
the White House in two weeks. On Capitol Hill, the Republicans who've made
clear their utter contempt for democracy will retain powerful leverage over
the U.S. government. And they're securely entrenched because Trumpism
continues to thrive in much of the country.
Yet, in 2021, progressives should mostly concentrate on challenging the
neoliberalism of Democratic Party leaders. Why? Because the neoliberal
governing model runs directly counter to the overarching responsibilities
of
the left - to defeat right-wing forces and to effectively fight for a
decent, life-affirming society.
Neoliberalism can be defined as a political approach that "seeks to
transfer
the control of economic factors from the public sector to the private
sector" - and strives to "place limits on government spending, government
regulation, and public ownership." Neoliberalism can be described more
candidly as vast, systemic, nonstop plunder.
The plunder is enmeshed in politics. In the real world, economic power is
political power. And privatizing political power amounts to undermining
democracy.
After four decades of neoliberal momentum, we can see the wreckage all
around us: the cumulative effects, destroying uncounted human lives
deprived
of adequate healthcare, education, housing, economic security, and
existence
free of predatory monetizing. While Republican politicians usually led the
wrecking crews, their Democratic counterparts often served as enablers or
initiated their own razing projects.
As its policies gradually degrade the standard of living and quality of
life
for most people, neoliberalism provides a poisonous fuel for right-wing
propaganda and demagoguery. Although corporate media outlets routinely
assert that "moderate" Democrats are best positioned to block the right's
advances, the corporate-oriented policies of those Democrats - including
trade deals, deregulation and privatization - have aided rather than
impeded
far-right faux populism.
In the long run, the realities of rampant income inequalities cannot be
papered over - and neither can the despair and rage they engender. Phony
and
unhinged as it is, Trumpist extremism offers such rage a populist avenue,
paved with a range of vile bigotries and cruelties. When Democrats fail to
offer a competing populist avenue, their party is seen as aligned with the
status quo. And in this era, the status quo is a political loser.
A myth of U.S. mainstream politics and corporate media is that the most
effective way to counteract the political right is to compromise by
ideologically moving rightward. When progressives internalize this myth,
they defer to the kind of Democratic Party leadership that frequently ends
up assisting instead of undermining the Republican Party.
That's what happened when, as incoming presidents, Bill Clinton and Barack
Obama filled their administrations' top-tier positions with Wall Street
movers and shakers, elite big-business consultants and the like. Those
appointments foreshadowed major pro-corporate policies - such as Clinton's
NAFTA trade pact, and Obama's lavish bailout for huge banks while millions
of homeowners saw their houses sink under foreclosure water - policies that
were economically unjust. And politically disastrous. Two years after
Clinton and Obama entered the White House, Democrats lost control of
Congress in the 1994 and 2010 midterm elections.
Now, there's scant evidence Joe Biden is looking toward significant
structural changes that would disrupt the ongoing trends of soaring wealth
for the very few and deepening financial distress or outright desperation
for the many. Without massive pressure from progressives, it's foreseeable
that Biden - like Clinton and Obama - will run his presidency as a
corporate-friendly enterprise without seriously challenging the extreme
disparities of economic injustice.
"The stock market is ending 2020 at record highs, even as the virus surges
and millions go hungry," The Washington Post reported. Wall Street
succeeded
at "enriching the wealthy . despite a deadly pandemic that has killed more
than 340,000 Americans."
The reporting came from a newspaper owned by the richest person on earth,
Jeff Bezos (who currently has an estimated wealth of $190 billion that he
can't take with him). In a world of so much suffering, the accumulation of
such wealth is beyond pathology.
What's imperative for progressives is not to "speak truth to power" but to
speak truth about power - and to drastically change an economic system that
provides humongous wealth to a very few and worsening misery to the
countless many.
