We were all derelict.
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Paul Wick
Sent: Tuesday, December 15, 2015 9:05 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] RE: [blind-democracy] ‘Lesser-evil’
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
