All of this discussion is interesting. But when the bottom line is
reached, each of us will remain basically where we were at the top.
Besides, the problem with our judicial system is not whether we can
prove guilt or innocence. What we have are two opposing sides. One
side is committed to proving the bird in the hand is the guilty one.
The other side is attempting to prove that this bird is innocent, and
there must be another bird in the bush.
Over and over we learn of individuals having been found guilty, only
to be proven innocent when more sophisticated tools are used to
examine the evidence. Usually DNA evidence.
Would it not better serve the public if the court assigned a team to
examine all of the evidence, and search for additional details, rather
than turning the trial into a contest, pitting the guilty against the
innocent.
Our present judicial system is heavily weighted toward the wealthy.
If we are to have real Justice, then an individual must be treated
equal in all aspects, and must be viewed as neither guilty nor
innocent until the facts have been gathered and examined.
As far as proving or disproving God's existence,
it cannot be done. I can prove to you that a mountain exists. I can
walk you up the steep slopes, even if you are totally blind. I can
prove that water exists, simply by tossing a bucket of the wet stuff
over your head. I can even prove that there is air, simply by filling
my lungs with the invisible stuff and holding my breath until the air
forces itself out again. But no one can prove the existence of that
which does not exist in this reality. Folks tell me, "Look about
yourself. The trees, the birds, the golden sunrise and the
magnificent ocean. How can you explain their existence except that
God created them."
"no," I tell them. "It was a giant creature at the edge of the
universe that barfed and puked out all that we see about us. ". My
proof is exactly the same proof as theirs is.
Early Man believed that the Earth was held up on the backs of giant
elephants, and if a man sailed too close to the edge, he'd fall over
into space. This thinking was good enough for the times. But
eventually sailors proved that the world was round, not flat. and the
new belief was that Earth was in the center of everything. With each
theory new evidence proved that there were flaws, and a newer theory
needed to be formed. But we have not invented the tools to measure
whether God exists or not. The Empirical evidence around me provides
for me evidence that God is fabricated. But the same evidence
convinces my mother-in-law that God is real.
But in all of that, neither she nor I are dealing with God, Himself.
No matter how fine the words are, words that we invented to express
meaning, no matter how emotional someone becomes, they cannot prove
God exists. "You must accept it on Faith", I am told. "Okay," I say,
"I'll accept God on Faith and you can buy this piece of land from me
for ten thousand dollars, cash on the barrel". "Where is the title to
this land you want me to buy?"
"You must accept it on Faith. Give me the money and I'll give you the land."
Silly? Of course. No one buys the Brooklyn Bridge these days.
But I am supposed to embrace an entire way of believing, on Faith? We
Humans revel in our great ability to reason. Yet in a matter that is
so important, we are expected to shut down reason and accept in blind
Faith.
Anyway, it's a pointless point.
Carl Jarvis
On 12/13/15, Alice Dampman Humel <alicedh@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
guilt or innocence of a crime can not be treated as analogous to existence,
one is a determination based on a specific act already defined as a crime,
the other is a state of being.
On Dec 11, 2015, at 11:55 PM, Roger Loran Bailey (Redacted sender
"rogerbailey81" for DMARC) <dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
In that case, Alice, suppose a murder has been committed. There is no
evidence that points to a particular culprit and so the prosecution just
randomly picks a name out of the telephone book and it is your name. He
then sends the cops out to arrest you. You are brought into the courtroom
and asked if you can prove you did not do it. Well, you were nowhere near
the crime scene, but you don't have witnesses and you have no evidence of
where you were when the crime happened. So you are convicted and led away
to serve your sentence. I would expect that you would point out that you
have not been proven guilty and when you point that out you are told that
you can't prove you didn't do it so you must be guilty. That would be an
extreme miscarriage of justice wouldn't it? Well, that is exactly what
happens when you put the burden of proof on both sides of the argument.
Any of the thousands or millions of people in the phone book could just as
easily be accused and convicted as any other and if they could not prove
that they didn't do it then it would be assumed that they did do it. Even
in that case, though, the probability of guilt is much greater than if
there is no supporting evidence at all. If it is clear that the murder has
been committed then some member of the population has to be guilty and
picking one out at random means that however improbable it is the culprit
just might have been accidentally caught. When the proposition has nothing
in the way of evidence that there is a culprit at all, though, the number
of choices to explain the proposition are infinite. That is why you always
assume the negative when there is no evidence one way or another. There is
no obligation for the defense in a trial to prove the innocence of the
defendant and there is no requirement at all for the negative of a
proposition to be proved. In some cases it might be possible to prove the
negative, but even then if the proponents of the positive aspect of the
proposition want to maintain their position they are then burdened with
the job of showing that the negative proof was a false proof and that is
again just shifting the burden of proof to the positive side. Otherwise,
go ahead and think up the most absolutely absurd proposition you can come
up with and then until someone proves that it is wrong you will have to
accept it as truth. That means accepting as true an infinite number of
absolutely ridiculous propositions that all contradict each other.
On 12/11/2015 10:51 PM, Alice Dampman Humel wrote:
no, not buying that…the assumption on either side requires proof, and
neither side has any...
On Dec 11, 2015, at 9:49 PM, Roger Loran Bailey (Redacted sender
"rogerbailey81" for DMARC) <dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
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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