What I liked about the Ethical Humanist Society was their philosophy which was
a more complex version of, "Do unto others", more like "Act in such a way that
you will encourage the positive attributes in other people". What we have in
our favor, is the intellectual capacity to think beyond our instinctual
responses.
Recently, I started reading a book on BARD about Richard Holbook called, "Our
Man", and periodically I go back to it, most probably because the writing is
rather humorous and cynical. It focuses on his career in government and so I've
been reading about government policy during the Vietnam War and now during the
Carter administration. I think that the author is a journalist from The New
Yorker so he's from the center left. But what is so obvious is how government
policy is focused only on the self interest of the US as it is perceived by the
people who have made their careers in government. And it is apparent from the
history recounted in this book, that it was in the late 70's and early 80's,
that people began setting up consulting operations after leaving a government
post because they had access to government people and they could sell that
access to private business. As I read, I can see how personal rivalries and
enmities inadvertently influence government policy and action. Also, bits and
pieces of reality get dropped along the way like back in 1938 when there was a
big international conference on refugees, FDR worked hard to keep the number of
Jewish refugees allowed into the US as small as possible and Noam Chomsky was a
supporter of the C'mere Rouge, at least according to this author.
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
<blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> On Behalf Of Carl Jarvis
Sent: Monday, March 9, 2020 1:48 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: The One-Choice Election
It's a real conundrum, because the fact is that at the bottom of it all, the
real stumbling block is something called Human Nature. And all of our clever
schemes to correct the short comings of the current Oppressor contain the core
problem called People. People! Our own best friend, and our own worst enemy.
All rolled into one big mess.
At worst, we're doomed. At best, we might control our population, control our
over pollution, control our massacre of the Earth's Flora and Fauna until we
figure out how to control the destructive beast within ourselves.
Carl Jarvis
On 3/9/20, miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Reading Chris Hedges, I'd like to sit down with him and have a conversation.
I would ask him if he doesn't see a profound danger to the world if
Trump and the people whom he chooses for government posts, stays in
office for a second term. I'd ask him to realistically evaluate the
probability of a huge number of Americans going out into the streets
to peacefully demand the fundamental changes that we need.
I listened to the podcast, The New Yorker Radio Hour just now, to see
how this sophisticated liberal magazine frames the issues. The name of
the episode is, "Two Are Left". First there was one of their political
reporters, and then Michael Casin, whose name I remember from years ago.
He's now a history professor somewhere or other. Neither of them
mentioned Biden's dimentia, nor his damaging political history. When
attempting to analyze why he ended up with unexpected majorities in
northern states, neither of them talked about the manipulations of the
Democratic Party machine. Their framing of the story was carefully
arranged to sound politically sophisticated without blaming the party
leadership for anything.
Even when they included damning facts, it was done so blandly, in such
a matter of fact manner, that the listener would remain calm and
accepting of what is happening.
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
<blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> On Behalf Of Carl Jarvis
Sent: Monday, March 9, 2020 11:29 AM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: The One-Choice Election
Right on, Chris Hedges!
As long as you're mentioning Henry Wallace and George McGovern, I'd
add the name of Ralph Nader.
Carl Jarvis, still voting for Bernie Sanders
On 3/9/20, miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
The One-Choice Election
Mr. Fish
There is only one choice in this election. The consolidation of
oligarchic power under Donald Trump or the consolidation of
oligarchic power under Joe Biden. The oligarchs, with Trump or Biden, will
win again.
We will lose.
The
oligarchs made it abundantly clear, should Bernie Sanders
miraculously become the Democratic Party nominee, they would join
forces with the Republicans to crush him. Trump would, if Sanders was
the nominee, instantly be shorn by the Democratic Party elites of his
demons and his propensity for tyranny. Sanders would be red-baited -
as he was viciously Friday in The New York Times' "As Bernie Sanders
Pushed for Closer Ties, Soviet Union Spotted Opportunity" - and
turned into a figure of derision and ridicule. The oligarchs preach
the sermon of the least-worst to us when they attempt to ram a
Hillary Clinton or a Biden down our throats but ignore it for
themselves. They prefer Biden over Trump, but they can live with either.
Only one thing matters to the oligarchs. It is not democracy. It is
not truth. It is not the consent of the governed. It is not income
inequality.
It is not the surveillance state. It is not endless war. It is not
jobs. It is not the climate. It is the primacy of corporate power -
which has extinguished our democracy and left most of the working
class in misery - and the continued increase and consolidation of
their wealth. It is impossible working within the system to shatter
the hegemony of oligarchic power or institute meaningful reform.
Change, real change, will only come by sustained acts of civil
disobedience and mass mobilization, as with the yellow vests movement
in France and the British-based Extinction Rebellion.
The longer we are fooled by the electoral burlesque, the more
disempowered we will become.
I was on the streets with protesters in Philadelphia outside the
appropriately named Wells Fargo Center during the 2016 Democratic
Convention when hundreds of Sanders delegates walked out of the hall.
"Show me what democracy looks like!" they chanted, holding Bernie
signs above their heads as they poured out of the exits. "This is
what democracy looks like!"
Sanders' greatest tactical mistake was not joining them. He bowed
before the mighty altar of the corporate state. He had desperately
tried to stave off a revolt by his supporters and delegates on the
eve of the convention by sending out repeated messages in his name -
most of them authored by members of the Clinton campaign - to be
respectful, not disrupt the nominating process and support Clinton.
Sanders was a dutiful sheepdog, attempting to herd his disgruntled
supporters into the embrace of the Clinton campaign.
At
his moment of apostasy, when he introduced a motion to nominate
Clinton, his delegates had left hundreds of convention seats empty.
After the 2016 convention, Sanders held rallies - the crowds
pitifully small compared to what he had drawn when he ran as an
insurgent - on Clinton's behalf. He returned to the Senate to
loyally line up behind Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, whose
power comes from his ability to funnel tens of millions of dollars in
corporate and Wall Street money to anointed Democratic candidates.
Sanders refused to support the lawsuit brought against the Democratic
National Committee for rigging the primaries against him. He endorsed
Democratic candidates who espoused the neoliberal economic and
political positions he claims to oppose. Sanders, who calls himself
an independent, caucused as a Democrat. The Democratic Party
determined his assignments in the Senate. Schumer offered to make
Sanders the head of the Senate Budget Committee if the Democrats won
control of the Senate. Sanders became a party apparatchik.
Sanders apparently believed that if he was obsequious enough to the
Democratic Party elite, they would give him a chance in 2020, a
chance they denied him in 2016. Politics, I suspect he would argue,
is about compromise and the practical. This is true. But playing
politics in a system that is not democratic is about being complicit in the
charade.
Sanders misread the Democratic Party leadership, swamp creatures of
the corporate state. He misread the Democratic Party, which is a
corporate mirage. Its base can, at best, select preapproved
candidates and act as props at rallies and in choreographed party
conventions.
The Democratic Party voters have zero influence on party politics or
party policies. Sanders' naivete, and perhaps his lack of political
courage, drove away his most committed young supporters. These
followers have not forgiven him for his betrayal. They chose not to
turn out to vote in the numbers he needs in the primaries.
They
are right. He is wrong. We need to overthrow the system, not placate it.
Sanders is wounded. The oligarchs will go in for the kill. They will
subject him to the same character assassination, aided by the
courtiers in the corporate press, that was directed at Henry Wallace
in 1948 and George McGovern in 1972, the only two progressive
presidential candidates who managed to seriously threaten the ruling
elites since Franklin Delano Roosevelt. The feckless liberal class,
easily frightened, is already abandoning Sanders, castigating his
supporters with their nauseating self-righteousness and championing
Biden as a political savior.
Trump and Biden are repugnant figures, doddering into old age with
cognitive lapses and no moral cores. Is Trump more dangerous than
Biden? Yes. Is Trump more inept and more dishonest? Yes. Is Trump
more of a threat to the open society? Yes. Is Biden the solution? No.
Biden represents the old neoliberal order. He personifies the
betrayal by the Democratic Party of working men and women that
sparked the deep hatred of the ruling elites across the political
spectrum. He is a gift to a demagogue and con artist like Trump, who
at least understands that these elites are detested. Biden cannot
plausibly offer change. He can only offer more of the same. And most
Americans do not want more of the same. The country's largest
voting-age bloc, the 100 million-plus citizens who out of apathy or
disgust do not vote, will once again stay home. This demoralization
of the electorate is by design. It will, I expect, give Trump another term
in office.
By voting for Biden, you endorse the humiliation of courageous women
such as Anita Hill who confronted their abusers. You vote for the
architects of the endless wars in the Middle East. You vote for the
apartheid state in Israel.
You vote for wholesale surveillance of the public by government
intelligence agencies and the abolition of due process and habeas
corpus. You vote for austerity programs, including the destruction of
welfare and cuts to Social Security. You vote for NAFTA, free trade
deals, de-industrialization, a decline in wages, the loss of hundreds
of thousands of manufacturing jobs and the offshoring of jobs to
underpaid workers who toil in sweatshops in China or Vietnam. You
vote for the assault on public education and the transfer of federal
funds to for-profit and Christian charter schools. You vote for the
doubling of our prison population, the tripling and quadrupling of
sentences and huge expansion of crimes meriting the death penalty.
You vote for militarized police who gun down poor people of color with
impunity.
You vote against the Green New Deal and immigration reform. You vote
for limiting a woman's right to abortion and reproductive rights. You
vote for a segregated public-school system in which the wealthy
receive educational opportunities and poor people of color are denied
a chance. You vote for punitive levels of student debt and the
inability to free yourself of debt obligations through bankruptcy.
You vote for deregulating the banking industry and the abolition of
Glass-Steagall. You vote for the for-profit insurance and
pharmaceutical corporations and against universal health care.
You vote for bloated defense budgets. You vote for the use of
unlimited oligarchic and corporate money to buy our elections. You
vote for a politician who during his time in the Senate abjectly
served the interests of MBNA, the largest independent credit card
company headquartered in Delaware, which also employed Biden's son
Hunter.
There are no substantial political differences between the Democrats
and Republicans. We have only the illusion of participatory democracy.
The Democrats and their liberal apologists adopt tolerant positions
on issues regarding race, religion, immigration, women's rights and
sexual identity and pretend this is politics. The right wing uses
those on the margins of society as scapegoats. The culture wars mask
the reality. Both parties are full partners in the reconfiguration of
American society into a form of neofeudalism. It only depends on how
you want it dressed up.
"By fostering an illusion among the powerless classes" that it can
make their interests a priority, the Democratic Party "pacifies and
thereby defines the style of an opposition party in an inverted
totalitarian system," political philosopher Sheldon Wolin writes.
The Democrats will once again offer up a least-worst alternative
while, in fact, doing little or nothing to thwart the march toward
corporate totalitarianism. What the public wants and deserves will
again be ignored for what the corporate lobbyists demand. If we do
not respond soon to the social and economic catastrophe that has been
visited on most of the population, we will be unable to thwart the
rise of corporate tyranny and a Christian fascism.
We need to reintegrate those who have been pushed aside back into the
society, to heal the ruptured social bonds, to give workers dignity,
empowerment and protection. We need a universal health care system,
especially as we barrel toward a global pandemic. We need programs
that provide employment with sustainable wages, job protection and
pensions. We need quality public education for all Americans. We need
to rebuild our infrastructure and end the squandering of our
resources on war. We need to halt corporate pillage and regulate Wall
Street and corporations. We need to respond with radical and
immediate measures to curb carbon emissions and save ourselves from
ecocide and extinction. We don't need a "Punch and Judy"
show between Trump and Biden. But that, along with corporate tyranny,
is what we seem fated to get, unless we take to the streets and tear
the house down.
Chris Hedges
Columnist
Chris Hedges is a Truthdig columnist, a Pulitzer Prize-winning
journalist, a New York Times best-selling author, a professor in the
college degree program offered to New Jersey state prisoners by
Rutgers.
