Thoms Frank is talking to all of the people who define themselves as
liberals. Perhaps if you'd read his books, you'd have understood how
sarcastic he was being in that article. His latest book, Listen Liberal, is
basically telling all of the Washington elites who define themselves as
liberal, precisely what Chris Hedges is telling them. There's also a
terrific video of a discussion between Thomas Frank and Robert Sheer on
Truthdig, in which they discuss the ssame issues. Robert Sheer dates back
to the anti war movement in the 60's when he was the editor of Ramparts, a
far left magazine. People like Thomas Frank, Robert Sheer, Glenn Greenwald,
Jeremy Scahill, Nick Terse, John Pilger, Juan Cole, Stephen Zumes, the other
Intercept reporters, and more whose names I can't think of right now, are
our allies and our heroes. They are the people who say the things that most
reporters and academics have difficulty saying.
Miriam
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Carl Jarvis
Sent: Monday, August 15, 2016 12:20 AM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: With Trump Certain to Lose, You Can Forget
About a Progressive Clinton
The greatest moderate of all? Hillary Clinton? Hogwash!
Hillary is a Wall Street Shill wearing the skin of a Chameleon.
This is a woman who thinks she really made a big jump from campaigning for
Barry Goldwater, to kissing the golden backsides of Wall street.
Again, I say Hogwash!
And Thomas Frank had better trade in his Leftist friends for a new bunch.
Are there really Leftists who believe Clinton will honor her concessions to
Bernie's Revolution?
Well, it's all blather. I think Thomas Frank must be paid by the word.
Carl Jarvis
On 8/14/16, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Republican wreck."
Frank writes: "My leftist friends persuaded themselves that Clinton's
many concessions to Sanders' supporters were permanent concessions.
But with the convention over and the struggle with Sanders behind her,
headlines show Clinton triangulating to the right, scooping up the
dollars and the endorsement, and the elites shaken loose in the great
with the Democrats'
Hillary Clinton. (photo: AP)
With Trump Certain to Lose, You Can Forget About a Progressive Clinton
By Thomas Frank, Guardian UK
14 August 16
Come November, Clinton will have won her great victory - not as a
champion of working people's concerns, but as the greatest moderate of
them all
And so ends the great populist uprising of our time, fizzling out
pathetically in the mud and the bigotry stirred up by a third-rate
would-be caudillo named Donald J Trump. So closes an era of populist
outrage that began back in 2008, when the Davos dream of a world run
by benevolent bankers first started to crack. The unrest has taken
many forms in these eight years - from idealistic to cynical, from
Occupy Wall Street to the Tea Party - but they all failed to change
much of anything.
And now the last, ugliest, most fraudulent manifestation is failing so
spectacularly that it may discredit populism itself for years to come.
Two weeks ago, I wrote in this space about how the Trump phenomenon
had reconfigured the conventional geometry of the two-party system.
Trump was riding high in the polls at that moment, and there was
reason to believe that his criticism of trade deals - one of several
Trumpian causes long associated with the populist left - might play havoc
happy centrist plans.come.
Now let us ponder the opposite scenario. In the intervening two weeks,
Trump has destroyed himself more efficiently than any opposition
campaign could ever have done. First, he heaped mounds of insults on
the family of a US soldier killed in Iraq, then prominent journalists
raised doubts about his mental state, and then (as if to confirm his
doubters) he dropped a strong hint that gun enthusiasts might take
action against Hillary Clinton should she appoint supreme court
justices not to his liking.
His chances, as measured in the polls, went almost overnight from
fairly decent to utter crap. For much of this year, populism had the
gilded class really worried. There was Bernie Sanders and the
unthinkable threat of a socialist president. There was the terrifying
Brexit vote. Just a short while ago the American national newspapers
were running page-one stories telling readers it was time to take
seriously Trump's followers, if not Trump himself. And on 3 August,
New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman actually typed the following:
"It scares me that people are so fed up with elites, so hate and
mistrust [Hillary] Clinton and are so worried about the future - jobs,
globalization and terrorism" that they might actually vote for Trump.
Yes, it scared Friedman that the American people didn't like their
masters any longer. As it has no doubt scared many of his rich friends
to learn over the past few years that the people formerly known as
middle class are angry about losing their standard of living to the
same forces that are making those rich people ever more comfortable.
Well, Friedman need be frightened no longer. Today it looks as though
his elites are taking matters well in hand. "Jobs" don't really matter
now in this election, nor does the debacle of "globalization", nor
does anything else, really. Thanks to this imbecile Trump, all such
issues have been momentarily swept off the table while Americans come
together around Clinton, the wife of the man who envisaged the Davos
dream in the first place.
As leading Republicans desert the sinking ship of Trump's GOP,
America's two-party system itself has temporarily become a one-party
system. And within that one party, the political process bears a
striking resemblance to dynastic succession. Party office-holders
selected Clinton as their candidate long ago, apparently determined to
elevate her despite every possible objection, every potential legal
problem. The Democratic National Committee helped out, too, as
WikiLeaks tells us. So did President Barack Obama, that former paladin
for openness, who in the past several years did nearly everything in
his power to suppress challenges to Clinton and thus ensure she would
continue his legacy of tepid, bank-friendly neoliberalism.
My leftist friends persuaded themselves that this stuff didn't really
matter, that Clinton's many concessions to Sanders' supporters were
permanent concessions. But with the convention over and the struggle
with Sanders behind her, headlines show Clinton triangulating to the
right, scooping up the dollars and the endorsement, and the elites
shaken loose in the great Republican wreck.
She is reaching out to the foreign policy establishment and the neocons.
She
is reaching out to Republican office-holders. She is reaching out to
Silicon Valley. And, of course, she is reaching out to Wall Street. In
her big speech in Michigan on Thursday she cast herself as the
candidate who could bring bickering groups together and win policy
victories through really comprehensive convenings.
Things will change between now and November, of course. But what seems
most plausible from the current standpoint is a landslide for Clinton,
and with it the triumph of complacent neoliberal orthodoxy. She will
have won her great victory, not as a champion of working people's
concerns, but as the greatest moderate of them all, as the leader of a
stately campaign of sanity and national unity. The populist challenge
of the past eight years, whether led by Trump or by Sanders, will have
been beaten back resoundingly.
Centrism will reign triumphant over the Democratic party for years to
This will be her great accomplishment. The bells will ring all overwith the Democrats'
Washington DC.
In this ironic and roundabout way, Trump may prove to be a disaster
for the reform politics he has never really believed in. Indeed, it
would be difficult to find a leader who could discredit populism more
thoroughly than this compassion-free billionaire. For Friedman's
beloved "elites", I predict that Trump will come to serve an important
symbolic purpose. Trump loves to boast that he is immune to the
scourge of money in politics, that he's nobody's puppet, and from his
coming ruin and disgrace we will no doubt be told to draw many lessons
about how money in politics actually helps prevent the rise of people
like Trump and makes the system more stable.
For decades, the Davos set have told us that doubt about "globalization"
was
a species of racism, and soon Trump, as a landslide loser, will
confirm this for them in overwhelming terms.
My friends and I like to wonder about who will be the "next Bernie
Sanders", but what I am suggesting here is that whoever emerges to
lead the populist left will simply be depicted as the next Trump. The
billionaire's scowling country-club face will become the image of
populist reform, whether genuine populists had anything to do with him
or not. This is the real potential disaster of 2016: That legitimate
economic discontent is going to be dismissed as bigotry and xenophobia
for years to come.
Error! Hyperlink reference not valid. Error! Hyperlink reference not
valid.
Hillary Clinton. (photo: AP)
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/aug/13/trump-clinton-el
ection
-chances-moderate-policies-economyhttps://www.theguardian.com/commenti
sfree/
2016/aug/13/trump-clinton-election-chances-moderate-policies-economy
With Trump Certain to Lose, You Can Forget About a Progressive Clinton
By Thomas Frank, Guardian UK
14 August 16
Come November, Clinton will have won her great victory - not as a
champion of working people's concerns, but as the greatest moderate of
them all nd so ends the great populist uprising of our time, fizzling
out pathetically in the mud and the bigotry stirred up by a third-rate
would-be caudillo named Donald J Trump. So closes an era of populist
outrage that began back in 2008, when the Davos dream of a world run
by benevolent bankers first started to crack. The unrest has taken
many forms in these eight years - from idealistic to cynical, from
Occupy Wall Street to the Tea Party - but they all failed to change
much of anything.
And now the last, ugliest, most fraudulent manifestation is failing so
spectacularly that it may discredit populism itself for years to come.
Two weeks ago, I wrote in this space about how the Trump phenomenon
had reconfigured the conventional geometry of the two-party system.
Trump was riding high in the polls at that moment, and there was
reason to believe that his criticism of trade deals - one of several
Trumpian causes long associated with the populist left - might play havoc
happy centrist plans.come.
Now let us ponder the opposite scenario. In the intervening two weeks,
Trump has destroyed himself more efficiently than any opposition
campaign could ever have done. First, he heaped mounds of insults on
the family of a US soldier killed in Iraq, then prominent journalists
raised doubts about his mental state, and then (as if to confirm his
doubters) he dropped a strong hint that gun enthusiasts might take
action against Hillary Clinton should she appoint supreme court
justices not to his liking.
His chances, as measured in the polls, went almost overnight from
fairly decent to utter crap. For much of this year, populism had the
gilded class really worried. There was Bernie Sanders and the
unthinkable threat of a socialist president. There was the terrifying
Brexit vote. Just a short while ago the American national newspapers
were running page-one stories telling readers it was time to take
seriously Trump's followers, if not Trump himself. And on 3 August,
New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman actually typed the following:
"It scares me that people are so fed up with elites, so hate and
mistrust [Hillary] Clinton and are so worried about the future - jobs,
globalization and terrorism" that they might actually vote for Trump.
Yes, it scared Friedman that the American people didn't like their
masters any longer. As it has no doubt scared many of his rich friends
to learn over the past few years that the people formerly known as
middle class are angry about losing their standard of living to the
same forces that are making those rich people ever more comfortable.
Well, Friedman need be frightened no longer. Today it looks as though
his elites are taking matters well in hand. "Jobs" don't really matter
now in this election, nor does the debacle of "globalization", nor
does anything else, really. Thanks to this imbecile Trump, all such
issues have been momentarily swept off the table while Americans come
together around Clinton, the wife of the man who envisaged the Davos
dream in the first place.
As leading Republicans desert the sinking ship of Trump's GOP,
America's two-party system itself has temporarily become a one-party
system. And within that one party, the political process bears a
striking resemblance to dynastic succession. Party office-holders
selected Clinton as their candidate long ago, apparently determined to
elevate her despite every possible objection, every potential legal
problem. The Democratic National Committee helped out, too, as
WikiLeaks tells us. So did President Barack Obama, that former paladin
for openness, who in the past several years did nearly everything in
his power to suppress challenges to Clinton and thus ensure she would
continue his legacy of tepid, bank-friendly neoliberalism.
My leftist friends persuaded themselves that this stuff didn't really
matter, that Clinton's many concessions to Sanders' supporters were
permanent concessions. But with the convention over and the struggle
with Sanders behind her, headlines show Clinton triangulating to the
right, scooping up the dollars and the endorsement, and the elites
shaken loose in the great Republican wreck.
She is reaching out to the foreign policy establishment and the neocons.
She
is reaching out to Republican office-holders. She is reaching out to
Silicon Valley. And, of course, she is reaching out to Wall Street. In
her big speech in Michigan on Thursday she cast herself as the
candidate who could bring bickering groups together and win policy
victories through really comprehensive convenings.
Things will change between now and November, of course. But what seems
most plausible from the current standpoint is a landslide for Clinton,
and with it the triumph of complacent neoliberal orthodoxy. She will
have won her great victory, not as a champion of working people's
concerns, but as the greatest moderate of them all, as the leader of a
stately campaign of sanity and national unity. The populist challenge
of the past eight years, whether led by Trump or by Sanders, will have
been beaten back resoundingly.
Centrism will reign triumphant over the Democratic party for years to
This will be her great accomplishment. The bells will ring all over
Washington DC.
In this ironic and roundabout way, Trump may prove to be a disaster
for the reform politics he has never really believed in. Indeed, it
would be difficult to find a leader who could discredit populism more
thoroughly than this compassion-free billionaire. For Friedman's
beloved "elites", I predict that Trump will come to serve an important
symbolic purpose. Trump loves to boast that he is immune to the
scourge of money in politics, that he's nobody's puppet, and from his
coming ruin and disgrace we will no doubt be told to draw many lessons
about how money in politics actually helps prevent the rise of people
like Trump and makes the system more stable.
For decades, the Davos set have told us that doubt about "globalization"
was
a species of racism, and soon Trump, as a landslide loser, will
confirm this for them in overwhelming terms.
My friends and I like to wonder about who will be the "next Bernie
Sanders", but what I am suggesting here is that whoever emerges to
lead the populist left will simply be depicted as the next Trump. The
billionaire's scowling country-club face will become the image of
populist reform, whether genuine populists had anything to do with him
or not. This is the real potential disaster of 2016: That legitimate
economic discontent is going to be dismissed as bigotry and xenophobia
for years to come.
http://e-max.it/posizionamento-siti-web/socialize
http://e-max.it/posizionamento-siti-web/socialize
