All,
Is there some reason the subject line of this message went on and on and on and
nobody fixed it for something like 30 messages?
Sent from my iPhone
On Dec 14, 2015, at 7:57 PM, Carl Jarvis <carjar82@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On 12/14/15, Roger Loran Bailey <dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:It's interesting to note that the Species which proclaimed itself to
Indeed, we do not and cannot know it all, but that does not mean that we
should strive to know even less.
On 12/14/2015 8:07 AM, joe harcz Comcast wrote:
You make my point which is we are quite young as a species.
Dinasaurs domenated this planet for millions of years. Our species by
even the most genours estimates hasn't even existed for a million years.
All I'm saying here is we are youngsters and we shouldn't think we
know it all for we clearly do not.
----- Original Message ----- From: "Roger Loran Bailey (Redacted
sender "rogerbailey81" for DMARC)" <dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Saturday, December 12, 2015 10:06 PM
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: [blind-democracy] Re: [blind-democracy]
Re: [blind-democracy] Re: [blind-democracy] Re: [blind-democracy] Re:
[blind-democracy] Re: [blind-democracy] RE: [blind-democracy] Re:
[blind-democracy] RE: [blind-democracy] ‘Lesser-evil’ politics from
Trump to Sanders
The youngest Neanderthal fossil has actually been dated to about
thirty thousand years old. Anyway, time is relative. The age of the
universe as far as can be determined so far is about twelve to
thirteen billion years. That really makes human history look
infinitesimal. The Earth is about four and a half billion years old
and still human history is less than a blink in comparison. It is
estimated that the homo sapiens species finally reached the stage of
being homo sapiens about 150 to 200 thousand years ago, but did human
history start then? Well, history is usually defined as something
that has been written down and in that case history is only a
miniscule part of that maximum of 200 thousand years. But archaeology
and physical anthropology are uncovering more and more about the
prehistoric state and in that sense human history is being pushed
back further and further. However, even in the few thousand years
that written records have existed many lifetimes have passed. Who is
the oldest person you have ever known? Let me suppose that it is a
person a hundred years old because that is a very advanced age and it
is an easy number to calculate with too. In that case about fifty of
those lifetimes have passed since the invention of writing. I am
choosing a number that represents something very close to the upper
limits of a lifetime, but since it is so rare that anyone actually
makes it to that age the number of generations that have passed since
that time is considerably higher. Add that to the fact that at any
time in that span of time many millions of people were in existence
carrying out the cultural activities of their own cultures and the
number of cultures are myriad too. What it amounts to is that even
though the time span we are talking about is miniscule from some
perspectives it is still plenty long enough for a lot of things to
have happened and for patterns to emerge. So it is still possible to
determine that history progresses according to certain patterns from
which laws of history can be inferred.
On 12/12/2015 8:54 AM, joe harcz Comcast wrote:
I'm not drawing a straw man here. But, that said, I accept your
explanation and it is quite logical.
By the way I did digress somewhat as you point out here. Sorry it is
my nature.
Regardless, we both agree that Marx was brilliant, inciteful, and so
forth, but he also was, like all human beings flawed in his thinking
as well.
I have read your other comments and there is no need to revisit them
here.
Except perhaps to restate that in my studies of human history things
are not so linear, but rather often circular patterns of various
progressions, or advancments, and regressions.
Shit in actual human history, which isn't that old by the way we
almost became extinct as a species about 70,000 years ago when the
homo sapien species was as low as 10,000 due to climatic changes and
other events.
That does not include by the way the Neanderthal population which
did exist until roughly 40,0000 years ago but which went to
extinction except that in our fragmented DNA history there are some
remnents left withing about five percent of us to this very day.
Oh well again I am digressing.
But, for such a remarkable species we are quite short sighted even
about our own short history on this planet.
----- Original Message ----- From: "Roger Loran Bailey (Redacted
sender "rogerbailey81" for DMARC)" <dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Friday, December 11, 2015 9:49 PM
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: [blind-democracy] Re:
[blind-democracy] Re: [blind-democracy] Re: [blind-democracy] Re:
[blind-democracy] RE: [blind-democracy] Re: [blind-democracy] RE:
[blind-democracy] ‘Lesser-evil’ politics from Trump to Sanders
Well, no one has perfect understanding of human existence and
matters of political and economic matters and that includes me and
that includes Karl Marx. However, I have noticed that most often
when someone claims to see holes in Marxism or that they can refute
it they then attack a straw man. That is, they claim that Marx said
something that he never said and proceed to refute it. I suppose
they might be refuting something, but if they are going to claim to
refute Marx then they really should stick to refuting Marx. Just
look at how many times on this list that it happens. I can explain
something over and over and then I am attacked for it by being told
that I said something I did not say and that is often right after I
have said it. Anyway, if I understand you correctly you finished
your comment by asking me to prove the nonexistence of god. Well, I
can't do that and I have explained on this list over and over that
the proof of a negative proposition is completely unnecessary to
the assumption of the negative proposition. If you are given any
proposition there is a way of phrasing it so that it is stated to
be true or untrue. For the most part there is only one way that a
proposition can be true and even if there are multiple ways that it
can be true there are an infinite number of ways that it can be
untrue. That means that if there is no evidence one way or another
the assumption that the proposition is untrue is infinitely a safer
assumption than the assumption that the proposition is true. That
is, the statement that there is no god is only an assumption, but
it is as valid an assumption as any assumption can be until those
who make the claim of the positive assumption that there is a god
come up with some kind of evidence for their proposition.
On 12/11/2015 9:14 PM, joe harcz Comcast wrote:
And I too am an "self taught type.\, an audo-didactic.
I do not impune your knolege base here Rodger. I impune your
conclusions clearly here.
Moreover, I impune the conclusions of Karl Marx himself!!!
This does not mean, and I'll repeat this for empasis...This does
not mean I have personally every bit of understanding about human
existence and politically and economic understanding. For I would
never claim such a thing in the least!
It does mean that as far as I'm concerned and as I've demonstrated
over and over again the Marxist-Leninist paradigm is full of
numerous holes.
Some as born out by the science we both love and respect are born
out for Marx lived in a world before our wonderful scientific
achivements including DNA etc.
If you, Roger, must insist upone the one hand that scientic method
must be the be-all and end-all ( which by the by the by I a grree
with) and on the other hand mus agree with a Marxian construct of
the universe which is out of sorts with that ssientific method
itself then how can I agree in conscience or design sir?
Is MMarxist-Leninisim some sort of religion that is a matter of
doctrine of faith; or is it to be put before the same extracting
standing and rigors of the scientific method itself if it and its
conclusions are to be valid and...most importantly TRUE?
Ok, now let me dispense with the scientific B.S.
Let me talk the talk of the average folk here.
So Marxxist'Lenistist talk about amonst other things the denial of
God and about lots of stuff in this vein.
OK, I can dig that. I've got more than my doubts about everything.
So here I challenge you to prove your points sir.
(By the way being agnostic I offer no proofs here nor detractions,
but will be more than amused with the dialogue between ""belivers"
if sincere or even revealing.)
----- Original Message ----- From: "Roger Loran Bailey (Redacted
sender "rogerbailey81" for DMARC)" <dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Friday, December 11, 2015 8:50 PM
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: [blind-democracy] Re:
[blind-democracy] Re: [blind-democracy] RE: [blind-democracy] Re:
[blind-democracy] RE: [blind-democracy] ‘Lesser-evil’ politics
from Trump to Sanders
It seems like I have discussed the uneven progression of history
on this list before. In fact, I am pretty certain of it. But
alas, I find myself being lectured to again as if I am the one
who does not know what I am talking about despite the fact that I
have been autodidactly studying these things for about
forty-three to forty-four years now.
On 12/11/2015 8:36 PM, joe harcz Comcast wrote:
In many segments of the advance of history and the devolution of
same; and most especially after the utter collapses of the Roman
(Western) Empire there was not a clear delineation between that
empire and feudalism , There were various ebbs and flows and
various advances and denigrations..
Moreover, your paradigm is an European sencrincts one for during
the time where the Western Roman Empire declined and while
western Europe disintegrated there was in fact a ffliourishment
of enlightened and scientific advancement and that was in fact
as many on this list denote during the "Islamic Renaissance" ....
For except for pockets in perhaps the Celtic States of the Irish
circa 600 or so A.do. where was the literature orundestanging of
ancient learning held except in the enlightened Persian, Arabic,
and Berber states? All for the sake of Abdullah here were
nominally Islamic here.
All kept Aristotle alive, let alone other ancient Greek thinkers.
So, most, or not, without the Muslims what we know of or western
civilization would not exist today including what we know as the
"Scientific method".
Nothing about us is developed in a vacuum.
We are all culpable in infamy and we all are contributed for in
advancement by each other.
And again it is a demonstrable fact of archeology and
historiography that each and every of us survivors upon this
planet that call ourselves human came out of one place
originally. The place? Africa!
All homo sapiens cam from original place. All of us. You, me,
and the man behind the tree.
And new DNA evidence shows than the one to two percent of us who
have the remnants of DNA from our lass renaming brothers and
sisters in our ancestral tree also came from Africa. That being
our of mistletoe Neanderathrial brethren other words the race
thing is an absolute myth. For we are all the same beings. We
are all human beings and as so we are all equally endowed by the
creation of us.
----- Original Message ----- From: "Roger Loran Bailey (Redacted
sender "rogerbailey81" for DMARC)" <dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Friday, December 11, 2015 3:40 PM
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: [blind-democracy] RE:
[blind-democracy] Re: [blind-democracy] RE: [blind-democracy]
‘Lesser-evil’ politics from Trump to Sanders
It was followed by feudalism though. Do you think that the Roman
Empire
was immune to the laws of history? If so, then what do you call the
economic system that replaced it if not feudalism?
On 12/11/2015 3:31 PM, Miriam Vieni wrote:
I don't know about the laws of history, but I do know about the
political character of the US population
And I also know that climate change is moving at such a rate
that its consequences will eliminate human life unless
immediate changes take place in how we live. I don't see the US
moving toward socialism. When the Roman empire imploded, it
wasn't followed by peace and equality throughout the world.
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of
Roger Loran Bailey (Redacted sender "rogerbailey81" for DMARC)
Sent: Friday, December 11, 2015 3:04 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: [blind-democracy] RE:
[blind-democracy] ‘Lesser-evil’ politics from Trump to Sanders
Can you think of any reason that the US would be immune to the
laws of history?
On 12/11/2015 11:30 AM, Miriam Vieni wrote:
Aside from a few mis statements, this is a pretty good summary
of the situation. The problem is, I feel like it leaves us
nowhere. Does the Socialist Workers' Party or any other
socialist of communist party actually think that there can be
a socialist revolution in the US? I suppose that hope springs
eternal for some folks.
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of
Roger Loran
Bailey (Redacted sender "rogerbailey81" for DMARC)
Sent: Friday, December 11, 2015 10:19 AM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] ‘Lesser-evil’ politics from Trump to
Sanders
http://socialistaction.org/
‘Lesser-evil’ politics from Trump to Sanders
Published December 10, 2015. | By Socialist Action.
Sasha Murphy, of the ANSWER Coalition, leads demonstrators in
a chant during a protest against Republican presidential
candidate Donald Trump's hosting "Saturday Night Live" in New
York, Saturday, Nov. 7, 2015. Despite a 40-year history of
lampooning politicians while inviting some to mock themselves
as on-air guests, booking a presidential candidate to host the
NBC sketch-comedy show is almost unprecedented.
(AP Photo/Patrick Sison)
Sasha Murphy, of the ANSWER Coalition, leads demonstrators in
a chant during a protest against Republican presidential
candidate Donald Trump's hosting "Saturday Night Live" in New
York, Saturday, Nov. 7, 2015. Despite a 40-year history of
lampooning politicians while inviting some to mock themselves
as on-air guests, booking a presidential candidate to host the
NBC sketch-comedy show is almost unprecedented.
(AP Photo/Patrick Sison)
By JEFF MACKLER
That the leading Republican Party presidential candidate,
multi-billionaire Donald Trump, is a full-blown reactionary
caricature of a capitalist politician is now the common
parlance of most major media outlets. Even the relatively
conservative Washington Post featured a Dec. 1 Dana Milibank
column entitled, “Donald Trump Racist Bigot.”
Milibank, reflecting the general unease at Trump’s virulently
racist, misogynist, and xenophobic outbursts, wrote: “Let’s
not mince words:
Donald Trump is a bigot and a racist. … There is a great
imperative
not to be silent in the face of demagoguery. Trump in this
campaign
has gone after African Americans, immigrants, Latinos, Asians,
women,
Muslims and now the disabled…
“It might be possible to explain away any one of Trump’s
outrages as a mistake or a misunderstanding. But at some point
you’re not merely saying things that could be construed as
bigoted: You are a bigot.
“It has been more than a quarter century since Trump took out
ads in New York newspapers calling for the death penalty for
“criminals of every age” after five black and Latino teens
were implicated in the Central Park jogger case. The young
men, convicted and imprisoned, were later cleared by DNA
evidence and the confession of a serial rapist—and Trump
called their wrongful-conviction settlement a ‘disgrace.’”
“Since then,” Milibank continued, “Trump led the ‘birther’
movement challenging President Obama’s standing as a
natural-born American; used various vulgar expressions to
refer to women; spoke of Mexico sending rapists and other
criminals across the border; called for rounding up and
deporting 11 million illegal immigrants; had high-profile
spats with prominent Latino journalists and news outlets;
mocked Asian accents; let stand a charge made in his presence
that Obama is a Muslim and that Muslims are a ‘problem’ in
America; embraced the notion of forcing Muslims to register in
a database; falsely claimed thousands of Muslims celebrated
the 9/11 attacks in New Jersey; tweeted bogus statistics
asserting that most killings of whites are done by blacks;
approved of the roughing up of a black demonstrator at one of
his events; and publicly mocked the [physical] movements of
New York Times (and former Washington Post) journalist Serge
Kovaleski, who has a chronic condition limiting mobility.”
What is perhaps a bit different in today’s virtually
year-round election hyperbole is the fact that virtually every
one of the dozen or so Republican presidential contenders have
remained all but silent as Trump daily spews out his noxious
diatribes. Indeed, until quite recently, most of the corporate
media relished covering Trump’s every anti-social rant,
fearful perhaps that failure to do so might lose them critical
media ratings.
Trump himself has repeatedly affirmed that any coverage,
especially free media coverage—and to date he has by far had
the lion’s share of the latter—could only work to his advantage.
On Nov. 8, Trump delighted in the opportunity to appear on the
popular “Saturday Night Live” television show, where
wacked-out comedian Larry David, who plays the part of an
obnoxious liberal racist on his “Curb Your Enthusiasm” show,
took up DeportRacism.com’s offer of a $5000 prize to publicly
heckle Trump and call him a racist. David, who has yet to
collect his winnings, did just that—with Trump’s explicit and
prior, if not enthusiastic, agreement. In capitalist America
today, a real live, laughing, racist billionaire is a
profitable talent to broadcast!
Meanwhile, the front-running Trump has a dozen Republican
challengers, including the second in the polls—retired
surgeon, Christian fundamentalist, and climate and evolution
denier Ben Carson. All afford Trump virtually free rein in his
fear and hate-mongering campaign, with a few occasionally and
cautiously seizing the opportunity to one-up this racist bigot
in order to better capture an ever greater portion of the
Republican Party’s alienated, largely middle-class, Tea
Party-enthusiast voter base.
No doubt Trump’s rants find fertile soil in a small layer of
the overall electorate, but even less in the general
population, some half of which increasingly does not bother to
vote.
But Trump’s backwater histrionics are not new to the
increasingly polarized and crisis-ridden world capitalist
scene. Overtly far-right, if not neo-fascist, views are
similarly expressed in France, England, and across Europe. In
the former two nations such right-wing parties have, for the
first time in nearly a century, outpolled the traditional
capitalist stalwart parties of the status quo.
Trump is the American reflection of overtly racist and
neo-fascist ideology— if not a conscious experiment with it.
His racist rants in some instances have encouraged the use of
violent physical attacks by his disaffected followers, who
find his scapegoating of the oppressed to their liking.
Democratic Party charade
On the Democratic Party side of capitalism’s electoral
charade, this ruling-class party’s lead candidates take the
opposite tack, portraying themselves as the font of
progressive values.
In their first nationally televised debate, all five of the
original Democratic Party contenders, led by “socialist”
Bernie Sanders and matched by Hillary Clinton,
enthusiastically decried the “casino capitalism” of Wall Street.
Their purported vision of the future society is one in which
the U.S.
“returns” to the moral values of its much fantasized “small
business”
and “hard-working little man” roots, where prosperity awaits
all who conscientiously put in the effort. References to
America’s slave-labor and robber-baron origins are absent in
this scenario.
Given President Obama’s significantly declining poll ratings,
none of the present Democratic Party contenders sought his
overt political support. “Mums the word” with regard to
Obama’s record of leading the nation in implementing each and
every corporate assault against unions, workers, and the poor.
None chose to identify with Obama’s unprecedented corporate
largess in the form of multi-trillion-dollar bailouts to the
richest sectors of the U.S. ruling class.
Rhetoric aside, Sanders’ Democratic Party voting record stands
at 98 percent, while Hillary Clinton’s financial support from
corporate America’s giants, as with Obama before her and Bill
Clinton earlier, topped all contributions to her Republican
opponents.
We might add that former Secretary of State Clinton backed to
the hilt every imperialist war effort of the Obama
administration from Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya to today’s
U.S. war efforts in Syria. Obama’s countless covert and drone
wars abroad murdered millions while stuffing the coffers of
the military-industrial complex at home. But virtually no
comment from Bernie or Hillary!
Meanwhile, Obama’s hard-working “legacy” promoters struggle
today to posture the president as a keen environmental
advocate, an ally of immigrant communities, a champion of
health care for all, a friend of the working class, a champion
of democratic rights, and a man who is reluctant to send more
troops to fight in the interests of U.S. imperialism.
Obama has become the media-promoted rational champion of
climate science, currently partaking in the UN-sponsored Paris
talks as the chief “defender” of the earth against the ravages
of global warming.
Yet, Obama’s administration holds the modern-day record for
increasing the use of fossil fuels, opening the floodgates to
corporate off-shore drilling, and maintaining the obnoxiously
high government tax breaks for the leading Big Oil polluters.
Obama’s recent squelching of the infamous Keystone XL pipeline
provided his administration a momentary fig leaf of
credibility that immediately vanishes when contrasted to the
massive increase of environmentally destructive pipeline
complexes in place or under construction across the country.
Obama, the “Great Deporter,” with a record two million
immigrants brutally forced out of the country to his credit,
gifted $13 trillion in bailouts over the past seven years to
the corporate elite. He presided over the wholesale shredding
of civil liberties (as so ably exposed by the Snowden
revelations). His signature “affordable” health care
legislation gifted $3 trillion over the next 10 years to the
private and largely monopolized insurance, hospital, and
pharmaceutical industries—as opposed to a single-payer
alternative that would have saved $1 trillion in government
expenditures over the same period.
A Dec. 5 New York Times article entitled, “Jobs Report Seen as
Strong Enough for Fed Action” [to raise interest rates on
today’s nearly zero-rate “loans” to corporate America]
nevertheless revealed some bitter truths about the Obama
administration’s seven-year record.
“At 62.5 percent,” The Times notes, “the proportion of
Americans in the labor force remains near mid-decade lows. The
jobless rate for African-Americans rose by 0.2 percentage
points in November to 9.4 percent, which is more than twice
the 4.3 percent for white Americans.”
“Moreover, The Times adds, “the economy is still 2.8 million
jobs short of where it would have to be to match pre-recession
employment levels while also absorbing new entrants into the
workforce. … Even if the current trend continues, that
so-called ‘jobs gap’ will not be closed until mid-2017.”
Another Dec. 5 New York Times article, “Lawmakers Near Deal on
Billions in Tax Cuts,” notes that the upcoming bipartisan
tax-cut legislation, in almost all cases written behind the
scenes and negotiated secretly by the technocrat specialists
of the corporate elite, amounts to nothing less than a
five-year duration transfer of $840 billion from us to
them—from tax-paying working people to the tax-avoiding
richest portion of the one percent that really rules America.
A general shift to the right
Today’s political/electoral drama, almost always devoid of the
crooked corporate machinations that lead to tax cuts and other
perks for the super-wealthy, can best be summarized: “The
Republicans talk the talk:
the Democrats walk the walk.”
The silky and “progressive”-sounding Democratic Party
election-time jargon is no accident or fluke. It is
consciously designed to pose this wing of the ruling class as
the “civilized” representatives of an egalitarian society that
respects, if not cherishes, democratic and human rights and
economic fairness.
Similarly, the Republicans’ election posturing as a racist
nut-case party of almost deranged hate-mongers, climate
deniers, and war hawks is not without its own logic. The
extreme verbal political divergence between Democrats and
Republicans lays the foundation for capitalism’s well-honed
election-time lesser-evil scenario, wherein alienated voters
who would more than likely abandon the two-party shell game—a
60 percent majority favor a new third party, according to a
recent Gallup poll—feel compelled to once again allow
themselves to partake in “choosing”
capitalism’s preferred horse in the race.
The seeming Republican Party scapegoating mania combines well
with a generalized disgust with “establishment” politics, and
it allows Democrats to move ever further to the right. Few
doubt that President Obama and his Democratic Party political,
social, and economic policies are far to the right of the most
“evil” Republican propositions of yesteryear.
This generalized shift to the right of ruling-class politics,
and the associated feigned public disputes, never fail to
reach resolution in the hidden congressional and corporate
corridors, where “compromise”
solutions, always at the expense of the vast majority, are
routinely arrived at.
The chaotic and crisis-ridden capitalist system itself—in a
crisis virtually equal in magnitude to that of the Great
Depression of 1929—best accounts for today’s public partisan
discord. Different wings of the ruling elite are today at odds
with regard to how much, how fast, and with what means—mass
repression or “friendly” persuasion—to most effectively
advance their common corporate interests.
Sanders pledges to support any Democrat
It is in this context, where massive disillusionment with and
alienation from “traditional” capitalist parties and politics
has reached new heights, that one can also understand the rise
of long-time registered “independent,” now “socialist,” Bernie
Sanders, as well as the racist social dissident, Donald Trump.
Bernie Sanders is now an official Democrat, having pledged in
advance to support whoever of his party competitors emerges
from the upcoming election primary contests as the winner. In
some recent polls in the early primary states, like New
Hampshire and Iowa, Sanders’ ranking appears to be in the
political ballpark—that is, he could win.
It was perhaps some 50-60 years ago, when I first encountered
the “lesser evil” dichotomy at work—Kennedy vs. Nixon and
Johnson (LBJ) vs.
Barry Goldwater—that I half seriously predicted that the time
would come when the ruling-class elite, when it believed it
was necessary to head off a likely working-class move toward a
break with the capitalist two-party duopoly, would run a
“socialist” for president, under the Democratic Party
imprimatur, of course.
That day has arrived, with “Bernie” filling the bill almost
perfectly as today’s central sheepherder of the unwary back
into the Democratic Party fold.
Sanders’ service record on capitalism’s behalf falls well
within the boundaries of ruling-class politics. He supported
the Obama administration’s wars in Afghanistan, Libya,
Pakistan, Somalia, and Yemen—although he, like most other
liberals who feigned opposition to the Iraq War, including
Obama, now claim that this war was a ”mistake.”
The Saddam Hussein government after all, they have been
compelled to
admit, never had “weapons of mass destruction.” The U.S.
slaughter of
1.5 million Iraqis, we are told with a straight face, was a
mistake!
“Socialist” Sanders gave his assent to countless
trillion-dollar military appropriations bills, including all
congressional measures that supported Israel in its genocidal
drive to eliminate any Palestinian presence in their historic
homeland.
Thus, campaigning for and organizing mass forces to demand the
immediate and unconditional withdrawal of all U.S. troops from
every nation on earth is not within the Sanders campaign’s
calculated political territory. He knows full well that any
real socialist would view U.S.
imperialism’s wars everywhere as nothing less than the
extension and embodiment of U.S. ruling-class policies at home.
Sanders has indeed disappointed some of his liberal and even
“socialist”
supporters today due to his perceived “weakness” on
foreign-policy issues and his failure to unequivocally
challenge and condemn the ever-increasing brutality and police
murder of unarmed Blacks. When confronted with a Black Lives
Matter representative who jumped onto the stage demanding to
know where Sanders stood on America’s deepening racist
attacks, the “political revolutionary” was speechless and
quickly exited, leaving the audience stunned. When he was soon
afterward advised that his well-crafted liberal image had to
include a modicum of support to Black rights, he meekly
assented, but only to the point of not significantly
interfering with Clinton’s prior turf “claim” to the Black vote.
Sanders has also made clear that he is not the kind of
socialist that seeks the social ownership of the nation’s
wealth and the establishment of a revolutionary state that
once and for all places society’s means of production and
wealth in the hands of and under the democratic control of
those who produce it, in the framework of a government of the
working class and its allies. Sanders’ “socialism,” he
insists, includes respect for private property—operating,
perhaps, in a bit more humanely manner.
In short, Sanders, like his “socialist” counterparts in France
or in the Scandinavian countries, seeks a “kinder gentler
capitalism.” The fact that he seeks to emulate Europe’s
historically bankrupt social-democratic capitalist model while
these nations are engaged in supporting all of NATO’s wars and
imposing the same, if not worse, austerity measures against
their respective working masses is not unexpected.
In these troubled times “Bernie,” in fact, perfectly fills
capitalism’s needs for legitimacy. His chatter about the need
for a “political revolution” in the U.S. is subordinate to his
quarter-century service as Vermont’s leading elected
official—unchallenged by the Democratic Party.
His current assignment, for which he will undoubtedly be
richly rewarded down the line, is to corral working-class
discontent back into the capitalist framework and, when the
Peter Pan fairy dust has cleared, to back Hillary Clinton.
Santa is in exile!
There is no Santa Claus on Wall Street, dear friends—neither
in the form of Bernie and Hillary nor charitable gift-giving
billionaires like Gates and Zuckerberg. Indeed, the real Santa
likely abandoned his North Pole abode at the first signs of
Industrial Revolution capitalist-caused global warming.
That once pristine ice-capped area, increasingly barren today,
is the domain of happy Obama’s helpers, including the Chevron
Corporation, which seeks to mine the exposed earth for the
very fossil fuels whose continued use spells doom for all
human kind. The real Santa likely moved his helpers to cities
around the world to join the fight to restore his homeland and
ours, and to return to the people of the earth the opportunity
to collectively build a joyous world, free from those who
would irrationally destroy it in the pursuit of profit.
Another Christmastime hero, a young Jewish rebel who lived a
bit more than 2000 years ago, may have left us with some
insightful words to ponder. “Drive the money changers from the
temple,” he exhorted. Not a bad holiday admonition! Indeed,
the socialist movement of the early 19th century did include
followers of Jesus, who believed that socialism was the
modern-day expression of the teachings of the Lord.
Today’s Marxist revolutionaries base themselves on a
qualitatively grounded or materialist understanding of the
roots of capitalist society’s countless horrors. As the gap
narrows between workers’
mounting hatred of the dread consequences of capitalist
exploitation and oppression and their reluctance to enter the
fray to challenge it in all its fundamentals, we will see
countless millions of new and clear-sighted fighters break
with all of capitalism’s ruling-class-based institutions of
coercion and control.
That day is not far over the horizon. Today, the conscious
organization of a deeply-rooted mass revolutionary socialist
party—aimed at ending capitalist rule forever and bringing
forth a new world dedicated to advancing the finest yearnings
for freedom, justice, and equality—is Socialist Action’s
reason for being. Join us!
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be the most intelligent of Life Forms ever created or evolved, has so
mismanaged things to the point that this very same intelligent species
can destroy the planet. This proves that one can be both highly
intelligent and totally stupid, all at the same time.
Carl Jarvis
