Trump and Biden are symptoms, not the problems. Getting rid of Trump or Biden does nothing to fix what made them possible in the first place.
This brings to mind the chilling question that Anton Chiguhr asked Carson Wells in “No Country for Old Men”: “If the rule you followed brought you to this, of what use was the rule?”
I disagree. Both of these characters represent the precipitous lowering of intellectual and ethical skills by American citizens, as well as our media and alleged agency of government. As long as civilians adhere to the *fraud* of Representative government and the falsehoods of popular vote, elections will continue to yield up the dregs of organized crime syndicates. Selection of candidates via Sortition, and zero support of Legislation outside of a 75% Public Referendum vote, would put an end to the farce.
At this point, I'd say these two characters have graduated to "problems" without solutions. We have a 'president' who can't find his ass with both hands, and a pompous jerk who has no specific plan or agenda to solve serious dislocations in our financial and industrial sectors.
Mr Trump has no specific plan to rid America of it's NATO affiliations. No specific plan to stop all financing and funding of OTHER States which are NOT on US soil. And no plan to dethrone the current corporate regimes in power. These are real problems.
well, I'm glad he could at least find the $600B he made us playing the oil market. He's the best businessman in our history.
Why on earth would we leave NATO? and by financing and funding, do you mean loans - which technically is just profitable business, and Isreal? or do you mean aide for countries either we have directly harmed or whose aide is charity based?
oh and that 75% of the public should vote on every single piece of legislation before it can be made law?? Good lord! we'd have zero laws, which means there would be no economy!
In my opinion, financing and funding of non-US countries only serves interests *outside* the purview of US citizens and the limits of their Constitution. Individuals can go ahead and waste their money on fruitless "charities" but there should be zero authorization of tax dollars for countries existing outside US borders. I meant Zero funding of any proposed legislation existing without a 75% civil Referendum vote. The corporate economy is not an *economy* at all. The corporate economy consists of civil peonage within an oligarchic Fiefdom. Corporatism is monopolistic slavery, period.
Mr Trump was born into money. Lots of money. He's bankrupted virtually every partner and syndicate he's inaugurated. The record shows he was a lousy business person, but let's ignore the record.
The public continues to stare into the abyss of television. See: The Apprentice. The civilian public has completely lost touch with reality.
“Our only hope is to organize the overthrow of the corporate state that vomited up Trump.” This statement Says it all. Our politicians are puppets to the corporate greed. The masses of people need to raise up and change the situation. Our democracy has been in peril for years!
Yes, I am. The Cubans were and their revolution worked as planned. The difference between Cuba and other revolutions is they HAD A PLAN IN PLACE that they followed. We could do that, too.
he doesn't have dementia becuase someone with even mild cognitive impairment cannot make it through an interview longer than 15 minutes before it would show, but you know who has had aphasia for 10 years and has declined significantly since he was president, and who cannot make sense past 15 minutes? Trump.
Correct. The corporate/fascist/administrative state has been in control for well over 150 years. The plebs will continue to purchase their propaganda fixes at the company store.
The answers to nearly all current issues are writs of Quo Warranto filed against corporate executive staff, Revocation of Corporate Charters, and seizure of ALL corporate assets and physical properties. No one discusses these obvious solutions because they're invested in the company "system"...
Absolutely agree. But it appears easier to embody people's fears and frustrations in one madman than to attribute the horrors of capitalism to a vast system that everyone depends upon. The paranoias about socialism and even "communism" absurdly arise when the nation is at risk, not of fundamental change veering left but veering precipitously to the right. The American public is asleep at the wheel. Few, with Hedges and others as exceptions, call out the corporate menace that has created this scenario. I fear for us, our children, and grandchildren as both fascism and climate chaos are rising.
My Trump supporter friends and relatives believe the 2020 election was stolen from Trump. My Biden supporter friends and relatives either do not know or do not remember that Hillary claimed the election was stolen when she lost to Trump. My Trump supporter friends and relatives believe that Trump is for the working class. My Biden supporter friends and relatives believe Biden is for the working class. My Trump supporter friends and relatives believe the left (really non-existent) have gone too far to the left. My Biden supporter friends and relatives still believe in Russia Gate. As is said many times, we are propagandized to fight against each other so that we do not see the top one percent of the top ten percent satisfy their greed with our toil.
this is true except for Russia Gate - read the Mueller report, and the election was significantly influenced by foreign adversaries and criminal figures within the country, and by the head of the FBI. So, she was being dramatic, but she wasn't wrong.
Indeed, the real and grave problems causing the crisis of our democracy are rarely identified..! Trump is just a smiling (or scowling) face for the thousands of disempowered Americans who are never told about the forces at work against them...I imagine that his recent escape from death will give him wings at the republican convention, as if he really needed them...The Democrats must stop giving him so much attention and focus on how they will rescue the country...!
The Democratic leadership have redesigned the Congress to be a bribery distribution system. You either do what you’re told, by the donor/oligarchs, or the $$$$ go to your opponent, and you’re primaried or voted out. Our entire Congress is structurally corrupt. Voting is meaningless.
Don't be silly. It's not just the Democratic party. This is the problem with clinging to what passes for as capitalism. Capitalism and democracy cannot co-exist. And as long as the hoi polloi secretly dream of getting rich quick (which they think Trump did, but he didn't; he was born into money, which is true of most people with serious money), there will always be people ready to stop thinking for someone like Trump. Or Biden. Last time I looked the Congress was being run by the Republicans? Don't mistake me. I am not happy with the DNC. At all. the system is rigged. We've never succeeded in limiting the power of the capitalists. If we don't, this country will be yet another failed state.
We did succeed in limiting capitalism! 'The corporate compromise' in Europe (social programs,) NDP in Canada, and the U.S. New Deal. The Chicago School of econ, now dominant, is based on little more than an abiding hatred of the New Deal. They're openly anti-democratic; Milton Friedman said capitalism is most efficient with governments like Pinochet's.
In the late '70s, neolibs usurped the D party. Subsequently the D elite dumped the New Deal ideals, abandoned labor, passed finance deregulation, and signed profoundly undemocratic treaties like NAFTA and the WTO.
THis is the analysis that most resonates with me. I find that too many people, who assume they know what's going on....disregard the history of social movements and governments that did achieve some good for the entire society by creating universal programs like Canada's Medical Care Act.
How socialism became the evil...how so many see it as synonymous with communism...is a mystery to me. As soon as you see yourself as an individual....and society as a market place, you are on the road to serfdom of one kind or another. Getting rid of all regulations was an insane idea...we all should have known that only crooks want an economic free for all. Arguing that private capitalists were more 'efficient' than government was another pseudo idea, that flew in the face of most evidence.
We could return to a mixed economy....stop hating taxation by demanding fair and progressive taxation.....stop cutting educational programs in favour of private schools for the children of the wealthy....we could make housing a right...build homes that last at least a century, stop turning everything, including some of our children, into 'commodities' for sale on the open market.....
WE COULD TAKE A REFRESHER COURSE IN DEMOCRATIC SOCIALISM, STOP SUBSIDIZING EXTINCTION INDUSTRIES LIKE FOSSIL FUELS AND NUCLEAR, AND ORGANIZE OUR TOWNS AND CITIES SO THAT HOMELESSNESS AND WANT DO NOT EXIST.
Yes. We might all have to do with less.........and do more to produce wealth than we do to consume it. But that could give our lives meaning...and the isolation and lack of meaning that so many of us live with now wouldn't be long missed.
The biggest failures I see are failures of the imagination, failures of the heart and failures of ambition. We've settled for conspicuous consumption and boredom and lonliness.
Sucks to be us...it could be so very different. There are many alternatives to the gulags we subsist in now.
here here!!! sometimes private capitalists are more efficient than the gov't though... I. mean, the gov't could not have come up with the Mac, or an iPhone. I think this is why European countries are social democracies run by mixed socialist/capitalist Econ policies.
If you think either the Mac or the IPhone were essential to a well running social democracy, you are right. But having a social democracy doesn't prevent private capital from inventing gadgets........it simply prevents them from believing they are all there is to a society.
Currently, we've given all control to wealthy corporations. Have you heard about the disaster it is living near any of those big bitcoin creators?? Google what people are enduring with noise pollution in parts of Texas to see the wonders unbridled private capital (parasiting quite often off public subsidies) can bring to ordinary people.
Not to mention the waste of electricity they constitute for a climate constrained world trying to get off fossil fuels and onto a clean electrical grid.
Sorry. I grew up in the Middle East watching my country rape my adoptive countries. I don't call expanding imperialism "limiting" capitalism. Not at all. The New Deal might have helped men, but not women particularly. I know Chicago has a LOT to answer for. But then the neocons are a mixture of a number of influences, as I have already detailed elsewhere (and been told my thinking is muddy), Zionism not least of it all. I really don't see imperialism and proxy colonialism as a form of limited capitalism.
You seem to be confusing the New Deal, which was about domestic programs, with what happened after WWII. And for that matter, after WWI, which was explicitly about empire. The Arabs had helped the Allies by fighting the Ottoman Turks, who were on the side of the Germans and Austro-Hungarians. Then the Arabs were betrayed. Their nations were turned into resources for the remaining Fr. & UK empires and the emerging US one, the needs of their peoples ignored.
As for women, the New Deal was good. Look up Frances Perkins. She was FDR's closest advisor when he was NY governor and became the New Deal Secretary of Labor. Eleanor Roosevelt was a prominent figure in her own right; she was friends with Marion Anderson at a critical time. She supported strikers and went out to meet with ordinary citizens in public.
The Admin. passed finance and bank regulations, helped labor to organize, and put people to work like in the CCC, WPA, etc. All of which the Chi School loathed--most of all because these programs worked. FDR regularly spoke directly by radio to Americans, known as the "Fireside Chats." The assumption was that the average person was smart enough to understand the political and economic issues that effected them.
Thank you for mansplaining. I am not confusing the two. I am saying capitalism was NOT limited; it was expanded throughout the world. Obviously. Look at our foreign policy and what actually drives it. Stop exploring your navel. I do not live in the 1930's. Do you?
I agree. Capitalism depends on poverty and the disenfranchised. Pelosi oversaw, with the support of the Republicans and the billionaires, to recreate the Congressional system of complete corruption. We are an oligarchy. The good, not great, news is that this country is going to collapse. The demise of the dollar, my refusal to pay my student loans, will bring this misbegotten pile of BS to its knees. Yup.
Seriously?! I'm glad I am not. For many reasons. One, I have experience with many of the ills we are facing. But mostly I don't think I could stand more than two more decades of this. Thank god the older you get, the faster time moves. Thank god.
ugg, SCOTUS turned congress and the senate and the entire fed political system into a bribery distribution through a series of rulings! neither party had anything to do with how utterly corrupt our system has become other than green lighting judges required by the Heritage foundation. a simple minority is all the is required and none of those judges got in when the dems had a majority in the senate.
A dear friend who has read the Bible four times and has been a heavy duty Christian all of her life and she is now 90 sent me an email today from Massachusetts of course and which she said that now Trump is trying to be a hero. Not one word of the horror of people shooting at him or at each other. I have now decided that I will no longer remain silent. So I wrote her back and I said that we are stripping Trump of his humanity and we are losing our humanity as well. And I told her again that Christians are supposed to love God and love neighbor as self. There is no point in calling yourself a Christian if you can't even follow those two commandments.
The “national reality television show that has replaced journalism and politics” is a pithy and astute observation of our current situation. The artificiality of American society as well as the desire for (more) artificiality pushed in our media writ large is increasingly blocking all hope of choices and decisions grounded in integrity and ethics, not just in leadership but at all levels of our society. Magical thinking is ascendant, and fake is all the rage. And it seems like the most sociopathic among us are gaining traction everywhere and their victims are either happy cultists or dissidents steamrolled by them. Systemic implosion seems inevitable, no matter who wins.
Thank you for your principled stand in all things.
Our county has a major problem when snipers have to be present at political events. Violence in the United States is as American as apple pie. Our country is seeped in violence, massive amounts of weapons, daily mass shooters, the use of the military instead of diplomacy to deal with international problems and the use of the police to solve domestic problems instead of more social spending to prevent them. The assassination attempt is an extension of and another example of the violence that is seeped into the roots our society.
WARNING: Do Not look behind the soothing and self-congratulatory national story of founding freedoms, brave settlers, and hard work that brings rewards.
Otherwise deliberate genocide, slavery, and exploited factory workers become all too real.
It’s beyond smug, and certainly not journalism, to describe the event as “The former President was shot at” rather than “shot“. When a bullet causes blood to spurt from a man’s head, it’s time to set aside partisanship and return to journalism for just a little while, I would have thought.
Four of the world’s largest banks underwrote $8 billion in State of Israel bonds in May 2024, seven months into that State’s mass slaughter of the people of Gaza. These banks are BNP Paribas, Deutsche Bank, Bank of America, and Goldman Sachs - each to the tune of $2 billion. Underwriters of genocide - reprehensible. This needs to be made widely known. Chris is so right in everything he has been saying for years.
The Chicago School of econ, now dominant, is based on little more than a deep hatred of the New Deal. In the late '70s neolibs usurped the D party; as a union activist and local D campaign mgr I fought them. These elitists dumped the New Deal, abandoned labor, and passed finance deregulation plus profoundly undemocratic trade agreements like NAFTA and the WTO. I now wonder, since this lineage began around the time of the Powell memo, if they're not connected.
For years, I've asked the D faithful if they're for a neolib econ system. Add to that if they're fine with the Biden Dept of State being run by Dick Cheney trained neocons. Never gotten an answer other than the deflection of "but but but Trump!" Nope. Just because Trump is loathsome does not transmute your mediocre, addled, neolib puppet into a good guy.
I worked these issues for 40 years - the DNC New Democrats (Bill Clinton) intentionally sabotaged and abandoned the New Deal Coalition and labor and the working class. Don't call any of this "mine".
Remember the tech-will-solve-everything Atari Dems of the '80s? As memorable and relevant now as their eponymous company.
PS-- My reply above is a bit garbled. I meant to say that your comment re: Powell memo got me to connect the '73 Powell memo w/ the D party leveraged buy-out.
I can see it clearly in black and white. All is true. I am beginning to believe that this what we are as humans. Always with greed, power, money and lies. There is never ending injustice and wars. There will always be those who think and believe they are better, they are worth more, they deserve more!!!
The fact is that the struggle is never-ending. One sees it in all the struggles of Labor v. Capital on our time. However, the lessons are lost on humans, and have been lost on us for centuries. Another big thinker like Chris Hedges is the economist Michael Hudson, who is very good at showing the deep history, how the never-ending struggle plays out from the Bronze Age up until today. We can change it, but not if we keep falling into the same traps of a millennial struggle.
Chris, I have supported you for many years, since I heard you speak at Rockford College.
There is one other demonized group you didn't mentioned - the white working class.
The central premise of Neoliberalism is that racism, mysogyny, and homophobia are the problems with America, in fact the only problems, and that all can be solved by what Cornel calls "black (or gay or female) faces in high places."
There are many good faith Christian adherents lumped in with the bizzare Christian Zionists and other far right cults. These Christians are good faith social conservatives who are not fascists, although they may adhere to a right to life, the right to bear arms, the right to determine public school curriculum, or a comprehensive legal immigration policy that includes a path to citizenship for persons that rever this country and the rule of law.
In short, I think you overstate both the numbers and the influence of that portion of Christian "Right" that are fascistic. Many in fact are labor adherents and anti-war and recently voted for figures like Bernie Sanders.
Check out Les Leopold's 2024 book //Wall Street's War on Workers (How Mass Layoffs and Greed Are Destroying the Working Class and What to Do about It)//. Years of research and stats to prove it. Including polls on how white working class attitudes toward gays and race have changed over the decades.
These layoffs are caused by corporations needing $$$ for stock buy-backs; it's good for CEOs and Wall St. stock manipulators, but not for anyone else including the company. A great issue for the Ds. Which, predictably as the party of neolibs, they ignore. Yet by far the majority in the U.S. is working class--less than 30% of the population have 4 year degrees and many who do have jobs that aren't related.
I've encountered dogmatic leftists who insist identities like LGBTQ and BIPOC are mere diversions from working class issues. Comments by white men who've never had to fight to be recognized for what they are nor, for that matter, ever lifted a tool in their lives. I fit both sets of letters and was a blue collar worker and union activist for 28 years. It's not either/or; it's both/ and.
And, yeah, having a few faces in the neolib camp who look like mine does nothing to help. The message of the elite D party is: we don't care about race, gender, or sexual orientation as long as you have the requisite Ivy League education or similar qualifications and connections that separate you from the inferior masses. That "basket of deplorables."
Very good article, Chris. There is no way I can vote for either of these two candidates, both of the uniparty , war party. Genocide Joe or Zion Don, take your pick.😢☮️🇵🇸
I can't either. What's more obvious evidence that democracy is dead than a "choice" between a mediocre, addled puppet of econopathy and an ignorant, nasty, plutocratic narcissist? Both of whom are acceptable to the real powers--neolibs and neocons.
"The assassination of Trump would not remove the yearning of tens of millions of people, many conditioned by the Christian right, for a cult leader." (comment at this site).
Yes it would and always be aware of false flags, be hey domestic or abroad.
“The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear.”
― Antonio Gramsci, Prison Notebooks
The attempted assassination of Trump, if real, parallels that which took place in Rome for centuries.
I consider it highly possible Trump’s assault was faked. My sense of Trump is that he’s truly a coward. He would have crumpled in the face of a real threat. Whereas Biden wouldn’t have known it was happening.
There was an expose' maybe 15 or 20 years ago by 60 Minutes about the evangelical Christian movement and its massive influence on the U.S. Congress. In particular, the show revealed how these shadowy, conservative Christian groups ingratiate themselves with like-minded reps and senators through their obscure National Prayer Breakfast.
A seemingly benign gathering of the faithful, this hugely influential "breakfast" is little more than a convention of far right Christian nationalists ( I call it Christ Con) gathering to glad hand, back slap, and conspire with the far right D.C. power brokers to have their dream of a radical Christian agenda come true.
It's through these congressional brothers-in-arms (not to mention the six members of the SCOTUS that are hard-core, anti-abortion Catholics) that these far right radicals have pushed their extremist white power and Christian agenda, which has been raising its ugly head for years now, and seems to be reaching a feverishly dangerous peak as we head into November.
I was curious if the groups you mentioned are aligned with the far-right Christian
groups I referred to above? I know that 60 Minutes show from years back scared and angered me and my fears have been confirmed with the non-stop push by the far right to codify Christianity as America's only true religion, with the Bible its primary "legal" reference.
American is on the brink of that scenario being fully realized should Trump and the Republicans ever gain all levers of power, which they may well do in November. It's extreme enough for this unrepentant atheist to say God help us.
The Council for National Policy (CNP) is a secretive right-wing nationalist group that was formed in the early 1980s to counter the purported dominance of “liberal” groups like the Council on Foreign Relations.[1] CNP members helped spearhead the emergence of the modern conservative movement (sometimes referred to as the “New Right”).
Although it rarely receives public attention, the group remains an important element of U.S. right-wing activism and is regularly courted by conservative politicians, religious leaders, and activists. The invitation-only group sponsors closed conferences and seminars for “national leaders in the fields of business, government, religion and academia to explore national policy alternatives.”[2]
A recent indication of its efforts to shape the conservative political landscape has been its activities related to the 2016 Republican presidential nomination. TheNational Journal reported: “Convinced that Republicans nominated a ‘moderate’ in the past two presidential elections because the conservative vote was splintered—and certain that John McCain and Mitt Romney lost in November because the GOP base didn't turn out—this clutch of right-wing activists wants desperately to prevent a third act.”[3]
During a May 2015 meeting, several prospective presidential candidates spoke, including Sens. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Marco Rubio (R-FL), Texas Gov. Rick Perry, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, and former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina. According to attendees, Ted Cruz appeared to have the biggest impact. "Cruz blew everyone else out of the water. He made the best case, I think, for conservative leaders and organizations to think strategically about working together to help propel a conservative candidate into contention,” opined one attendee.[4]
I also give very serious consideration to the possibility that some Trump-supporting MAGA nut, meaning any of them, could have done this in hopes of blaming the left and inciting violence against the them.. Literally every possibility, no matter how crazy, is on the table with the aptly named Deplorables.
The labels of the various and sundry are becoming increasingly inaccurate. Currently I feel as if Liberals are as deplorable as Deplorables. Both major parties have been subsumed by the oligarchs resulting in the singular “corporatists”. While the Democratic label of “Progressive” (which I happen to actually be) has ceased, for the Democrats, to be meaningful. Great change is rumbling beneath us. I hope that soon the battle lines will be clearly drawn: The People vs The Very Wealthy Parasites.
In the early '70s, I was trained by people who'd been (real) leftist union organizers in the '30s. They told me: "liberals are the ones who leave the room when the fight starts." Exactly what happened. See my long comment for details.
The mainstream Dem leaders are as corrupt as the Republicans, but I think the rank and file of the right have worked overtime to earn the deplorables label and it applies in spades in my mind. How many batshit conspiracies of the Trump era and even before originated on the left? I can't think of a single one.
Meanwhile, MAGA lamebrains cook up unhinged conspiracies based on absurd lies and serves them up as indisputable facts, which the cult gobbles up like life-sustaining manna. In addition, virtually all of the rhetoric of violence, as well as the actual violence in the Trump era, has come from the right, and we've been seeing the proof of that idiocy for years.
I feel where you're coming from and agree to an extent. But I think it's no contest between the cult and the left as to which side is the more odious of the two. Trump Nation Deplorables: the original and still the bet.
The Democrats have supported the genocide is Gaza. That’s extremely unhinged. There are many issues tangled in our current politics. Including major economic issues. Poverty and low wages are endemic in this country. This is a crime, and it can drive people crazy.
Yes they have, and that's beyond deplorable. I totally agree with your entire post. But those aren't conspiracy
theories. I'm referri g to just dumb ass stuff the right creates and spreads. I asked in an earlier post how much of that crap originated on the left, and I said I couldn't think of a single one. But yeah, I missed a big one: Trump's a Russian asset or even puppet of Putin, or some such nonsense. Russiagate...Jesus. Ok, Ok, I missed a couple. But, again, on the whole, the right has a virtual patent on unhinged, unproven claims.
For 28 years, I was a blue collar union activist and local pol campaign mgr. I fought the neolib elite that usurped the D party; they dumped the New Deal, abandoned labor, passed finance deregulation, and signed profoundly undemocratic treaties like NAFTA and the WTO.
They did for displaced Rust Belt workers (now suffering deaths of despair) same as they did to the Wall Street vultures of 2008: NOTHING!
The D party only represents the admin and professional 10-20%. Same types as the well paid bureaucrats who make oligarchies and dictatorships possible by keeping them running. We lessers, the majority working class, are quite aware that HRC's "basket of deplorables" includes all of us. A perverse form of solidarity.
We humans are finally bumping up against our environmental limits. The wealthy are really full on parasites. We can no longer afford their very expensive bullshit. Democracy is the best system, in my opinion, for creating consensus and dealing realistically and sensitively with complex environmental and social issues as well as prioritizing justice as foundational to governance. Capitalism prioritizes profit over everything. Everything. Hoarding is a mental illness, not the basis of a successful society.
The 1%ers, the biz Rs, and the lapdog D bureaucrats are certain they'll survive whatever happens. They think they can buy everything.
Just before the 1999 WTO, (huge demonstrations against which now known as "The Battle of Seattle") there were teach-ins at the U of WA. A prof of biz econ claimed "The Market" would solve all problems, including water shortages. Because in a desert, water is more valuable than diamonds, thus conserved. During the Q & A afterward, I asked if that meant conditions must deteriorate to desert before the model would work. He turned bright red and told me I didn't know what I was talking about. On the ferry home, alt. economist David Korten told me that's how you know you have them--the deflection and anger.
I'd bet nothing effective will be done. Official excuse that it would cost too much, harm the economy. Real reason--the elite considers it unnecessary. Their econ theory defines away devastation of communities and environments as externalities, therefore unimportant. And as the fittest, the superior, the winners, they deserve their lavish lifestyles.
It looks more and more as if Kim Stanley Robinson's eco sci-fi 2020 book, //The Ministry of the Future,// is not fiction but an accurate prediction. Not only of what rising temps will do, but how monstrous yachts and private planes are, shall we say, discouraged.
Trump and Biden are symptoms, not the problems. Getting rid of Trump or Biden does nothing to fix what made them possible in the first place.
This brings to mind the chilling question that Anton Chiguhr asked Carson Wells in “No Country for Old Men”: “If the rule you followed brought you to this, of what use was the rule?”
I disagree. Both of these characters represent the precipitous lowering of intellectual and ethical skills by American citizens, as well as our media and alleged agency of government. As long as civilians adhere to the *fraud* of Representative government and the falsehoods of popular vote, elections will continue to yield up the dregs of organized crime syndicates. Selection of candidates via Sortition, and zero support of Legislation outside of a 75% Public Referendum vote, would put an end to the farce.
As I said, symptoms.
At this point, I'd say these two characters have graduated to "problems" without solutions. We have a 'president' who can't find his ass with both hands, and a pompous jerk who has no specific plan or agenda to solve serious dislocations in our financial and industrial sectors.
Mr Trump has no specific plan to rid America of it's NATO affiliations. No specific plan to stop all financing and funding of OTHER States which are NOT on US soil. And no plan to dethrone the current corporate regimes in power. These are real problems.
Even if both dropped through cracks in the earth, the system that gave us the choice between Tweedledee and Tweedledum remains.
well, I'm glad he could at least find the $600B he made us playing the oil market. He's the best businessman in our history.
Why on earth would we leave NATO? and by financing and funding, do you mean loans - which technically is just profitable business, and Isreal? or do you mean aide for countries either we have directly harmed or whose aide is charity based?
oh and that 75% of the public should vote on every single piece of legislation before it can be made law?? Good lord! we'd have zero laws, which means there would be no economy!
In my opinion, financing and funding of non-US countries only serves interests *outside* the purview of US citizens and the limits of their Constitution. Individuals can go ahead and waste their money on fruitless "charities" but there should be zero authorization of tax dollars for countries existing outside US borders. I meant Zero funding of any proposed legislation existing without a 75% civil Referendum vote. The corporate economy is not an *economy* at all. The corporate economy consists of civil peonage within an oligarchic Fiefdom. Corporatism is monopolistic slavery, period.
Are these not symptoms...............how did Trump come to be?
Mr Trump was born into money. Lots of money. He's bankrupted virtually every partner and syndicate he's inaugurated. The record shows he was a lousy business person, but let's ignore the record.
The public continues to stare into the abyss of television. See: The Apprentice. The civilian public has completely lost touch with reality.
“Our only hope is to organize the overthrow of the corporate state that vomited up Trump.” This statement Says it all. Our politicians are puppets to the corporate greed. The masses of people need to raise up and change the situation. Our democracy has been in peril for years!
Allan. Are you ready for the 'fallout?'
Yes, I am. The Cubans were and their revolution worked as planned. The difference between Cuba and other revolutions is they HAD A PLAN IN PLACE that they followed. We could do that, too.
You could BUT US is a large country with many different factions.
"Our democracy" hasn't existed for decades.
That same system gave us a senile dementia patient as the alternative to Trump.
he doesn't have dementia becuase someone with even mild cognitive impairment cannot make it through an interview longer than 15 minutes before it would show, but you know who has had aphasia for 10 years and has declined significantly since he was president, and who cannot make sense past 15 minutes? Trump.
Lol, keep telling yourself that. I've encountered people with senile dementia who have more and less lucid moments.
Trump sounds like the loudmouth at the corner bar.
Correct. The corporate/fascist/administrative state has been in control for well over 150 years. The plebs will continue to purchase their propaganda fixes at the company store.
The answers to nearly all current issues are writs of Quo Warranto filed against corporate executive staff, Revocation of Corporate Charters, and seizure of ALL corporate assets and physical properties. No one discusses these obvious solutions because they're invested in the company "system"...
Agreed. The PEOPLE have the power but there is no coordination
Absolutely agree. But it appears easier to embody people's fears and frustrations in one madman than to attribute the horrors of capitalism to a vast system that everyone depends upon. The paranoias about socialism and even "communism" absurdly arise when the nation is at risk, not of fundamental change veering left but veering precipitously to the right. The American public is asleep at the wheel. Few, with Hedges and others as exceptions, call out the corporate menace that has created this scenario. I fear for us, our children, and grandchildren as both fascism and climate chaos are rising.
More hard truth from Chris Hedges. Thank you, sir.
My Trump supporter friends and relatives believe the 2020 election was stolen from Trump. My Biden supporter friends and relatives either do not know or do not remember that Hillary claimed the election was stolen when she lost to Trump. My Trump supporter friends and relatives believe that Trump is for the working class. My Biden supporter friends and relatives believe Biden is for the working class. My Trump supporter friends and relatives believe the left (really non-existent) have gone too far to the left. My Biden supporter friends and relatives still believe in Russia Gate. As is said many times, we are propagandized to fight against each other so that we do not see the top one percent of the top ten percent satisfy their greed with our toil.
Well put.
this is true except for Russia Gate - read the Mueller report, and the election was significantly influenced by foreign adversaries and criminal figures within the country, and by the head of the FBI. So, she was being dramatic, but she wasn't wrong.
Indeed, the real and grave problems causing the crisis of our democracy are rarely identified..! Trump is just a smiling (or scowling) face for the thousands of disempowered Americans who are never told about the forces at work against them...I imagine that his recent escape from death will give him wings at the republican convention, as if he really needed them...The Democrats must stop giving him so much attention and focus on how they will rescue the country...!
The Democratic leadership have redesigned the Congress to be a bribery distribution system. You either do what you’re told, by the donor/oligarchs, or the $$$$ go to your opponent, and you’re primaried or voted out. Our entire Congress is structurally corrupt. Voting is meaningless.
Don't be silly. It's not just the Democratic party. This is the problem with clinging to what passes for as capitalism. Capitalism and democracy cannot co-exist. And as long as the hoi polloi secretly dream of getting rich quick (which they think Trump did, but he didn't; he was born into money, which is true of most people with serious money), there will always be people ready to stop thinking for someone like Trump. Or Biden. Last time I looked the Congress was being run by the Republicans? Don't mistake me. I am not happy with the DNC. At all. the system is rigged. We've never succeeded in limiting the power of the capitalists. If we don't, this country will be yet another failed state.
We did succeed in limiting capitalism! 'The corporate compromise' in Europe (social programs,) NDP in Canada, and the U.S. New Deal. The Chicago School of econ, now dominant, is based on little more than an abiding hatred of the New Deal. They're openly anti-democratic; Milton Friedman said capitalism is most efficient with governments like Pinochet's.
In the late '70s, neolibs usurped the D party. Subsequently the D elite dumped the New Deal ideals, abandoned labor, passed finance deregulation, and signed profoundly undemocratic treaties like NAFTA and the WTO.
THis is the analysis that most resonates with me. I find that too many people, who assume they know what's going on....disregard the history of social movements and governments that did achieve some good for the entire society by creating universal programs like Canada's Medical Care Act.
How socialism became the evil...how so many see it as synonymous with communism...is a mystery to me. As soon as you see yourself as an individual....and society as a market place, you are on the road to serfdom of one kind or another. Getting rid of all regulations was an insane idea...we all should have known that only crooks want an economic free for all. Arguing that private capitalists were more 'efficient' than government was another pseudo idea, that flew in the face of most evidence.
We could return to a mixed economy....stop hating taxation by demanding fair and progressive taxation.....stop cutting educational programs in favour of private schools for the children of the wealthy....we could make housing a right...build homes that last at least a century, stop turning everything, including some of our children, into 'commodities' for sale on the open market.....
WE COULD TAKE A REFRESHER COURSE IN DEMOCRATIC SOCIALISM, STOP SUBSIDIZING EXTINCTION INDUSTRIES LIKE FOSSIL FUELS AND NUCLEAR, AND ORGANIZE OUR TOWNS AND CITIES SO THAT HOMELESSNESS AND WANT DO NOT EXIST.
Yes. We might all have to do with less.........and do more to produce wealth than we do to consume it. But that could give our lives meaning...and the isolation and lack of meaning that so many of us live with now wouldn't be long missed.
The biggest failures I see are failures of the imagination, failures of the heart and failures of ambition. We've settled for conspicuous consumption and boredom and lonliness.
Sucks to be us...it could be so very different. There are many alternatives to the gulags we subsist in now.
here here!!! sometimes private capitalists are more efficient than the gov't though... I. mean, the gov't could not have come up with the Mac, or an iPhone. I think this is why European countries are social democracies run by mixed socialist/capitalist Econ policies.
If you think either the Mac or the IPhone were essential to a well running social democracy, you are right. But having a social democracy doesn't prevent private capital from inventing gadgets........it simply prevents them from believing they are all there is to a society.
Currently, we've given all control to wealthy corporations. Have you heard about the disaster it is living near any of those big bitcoin creators?? Google what people are enduring with noise pollution in parts of Texas to see the wonders unbridled private capital (parasiting quite often off public subsidies) can bring to ordinary people.
Not to mention the waste of electricity they constitute for a climate constrained world trying to get off fossil fuels and onto a clean electrical grid.
Agree.
Sorry. I grew up in the Middle East watching my country rape my adoptive countries. I don't call expanding imperialism "limiting" capitalism. Not at all. The New Deal might have helped men, but not women particularly. I know Chicago has a LOT to answer for. But then the neocons are a mixture of a number of influences, as I have already detailed elsewhere (and been told my thinking is muddy), Zionism not least of it all. I really don't see imperialism and proxy colonialism as a form of limited capitalism.
You seem to be confusing the New Deal, which was about domestic programs, with what happened after WWII. And for that matter, after WWI, which was explicitly about empire. The Arabs had helped the Allies by fighting the Ottoman Turks, who were on the side of the Germans and Austro-Hungarians. Then the Arabs were betrayed. Their nations were turned into resources for the remaining Fr. & UK empires and the emerging US one, the needs of their peoples ignored.
As for women, the New Deal was good. Look up Frances Perkins. She was FDR's closest advisor when he was NY governor and became the New Deal Secretary of Labor. Eleanor Roosevelt was a prominent figure in her own right; she was friends with Marion Anderson at a critical time. She supported strikers and went out to meet with ordinary citizens in public.
The Admin. passed finance and bank regulations, helped labor to organize, and put people to work like in the CCC, WPA, etc. All of which the Chi School loathed--most of all because these programs worked. FDR regularly spoke directly by radio to Americans, known as the "Fireside Chats." The assumption was that the average person was smart enough to understand the political and economic issues that effected them.
Thank you for mansplaining. I am not confusing the two. I am saying capitalism was NOT limited; it was expanded throughout the world. Obviously. Look at our foreign policy and what actually drives it. Stop exploring your navel. I do not live in the 1930's. Do you?
I agree. Capitalism depends on poverty and the disenfranchised. Pelosi oversaw, with the support of the Republicans and the billionaires, to recreate the Congressional system of complete corruption. We are an oligarchy. The good, not great, news is that this country is going to collapse. The demise of the dollar, my refusal to pay my student loans, will bring this misbegotten pile of BS to its knees. Yup.
You must be very young. Corruption in the Congress WAY predates Pelosi.
This is simply the latest iteration. I wish I was very young.
Seriously?! I'm glad I am not. For many reasons. One, I have experience with many of the ills we are facing. But mostly I don't think I could stand more than two more decades of this. Thank god the older you get, the faster time moves. Thank god.
Just the product of a dying Empire.
The sooner the better.
ugg, SCOTUS turned congress and the senate and the entire fed political system into a bribery distribution through a series of rulings! neither party had anything to do with how utterly corrupt our system has become other than green lighting judges required by the Heritage foundation. a simple minority is all the is required and none of those judges got in when the dems had a majority in the senate.
A dear friend who has read the Bible four times and has been a heavy duty Christian all of her life and she is now 90 sent me an email today from Massachusetts of course and which she said that now Trump is trying to be a hero. Not one word of the horror of people shooting at him or at each other. I have now decided that I will no longer remain silent. So I wrote her back and I said that we are stripping Trump of his humanity and we are losing our humanity as well. And I told her again that Christians are supposed to love God and love neighbor as self. There is no point in calling yourself a Christian if you can't even follow those two commandments.
Lucy. What Democracy?
Frankly you are a dying Empire and what will happen in the US will be what happened after the British Empire folded.
Anarchy/coup'detats etc.
Truth is always cleansing. Thank you @Chris Hedges
The “national reality television show that has replaced journalism and politics” is a pithy and astute observation of our current situation. The artificiality of American society as well as the desire for (more) artificiality pushed in our media writ large is increasingly blocking all hope of choices and decisions grounded in integrity and ethics, not just in leadership but at all levels of our society. Magical thinking is ascendant, and fake is all the rage. And it seems like the most sociopathic among us are gaining traction everywhere and their victims are either happy cultists or dissidents steamrolled by them. Systemic implosion seems inevitable, no matter who wins.
Thank you for your principled stand in all things.
Our county has a major problem when snipers have to be present at political events. Violence in the United States is as American as apple pie. Our country is seeped in violence, massive amounts of weapons, daily mass shooters, the use of the military instead of diplomacy to deal with international problems and the use of the police to solve domestic problems instead of more social spending to prevent them. The assassination attempt is an extension of and another example of the violence that is seeped into the roots our society.
Historical violence, too.
WARNING: Do Not look behind the soothing and self-congratulatory national story of founding freedoms, brave settlers, and hard work that brings rewards.
Otherwise deliberate genocide, slavery, and exploited factory workers become all too real.
It’s beyond smug, and certainly not journalism, to describe the event as “The former President was shot at” rather than “shot“. When a bullet causes blood to spurt from a man’s head, it’s time to set aside partisanship and return to journalism for just a little while, I would have thought.
You should reread what Chris wrote. He said Trump was "shot at a campaign rally in Pennsylvania." He did not say he was "shot at"
I wrote this too quickly. Of course Chris Hedges used the proper form. I was quoting the NYTimes, who said “shot at”. Apologies to all.
“Shawn McCreesh
By Shawn McCreesh
Published July 13, 2024
Updated July 14, 2024, 11:24 a.m. ET
Donald J. Trump was back on his feet. He had just been shot at, his white shirt was undone and his red hat was no longer on his head.”
I extrapolated since Chris is not trying to hedge his bets like the media he critiques.
Sera. You have a press which cannot come to terms with the fact that the US is dead.
There will be discord/anarchy/coup d'etats while you cling on for life!
NO I am not a troll because I am answering you in my own words.
USA is dead and the death and destruction you have visited on other countries in the name of Democracy when Democracy has never existed in the USA
Troll
????
Four of the world’s largest banks underwrote $8 billion in State of Israel bonds in May 2024, seven months into that State’s mass slaughter of the people of Gaza. These banks are BNP Paribas, Deutsche Bank, Bank of America, and Goldman Sachs - each to the tune of $2 billion. Underwriters of genocide - reprehensible. This needs to be made widely known. Chris is so right in everything he has been saying for years.
There's a direct line between Project 2025 and the 1934 fascist Liberty League (via the Powell Memo, 1971).
Connecting those dots would require targeting corporate power and fascist cultural and political dynamics.
But I have not heard one Democrat or even progressive critic of Project 2025 make that argument.
The Chicago School of econ, now dominant, is based on little more than a deep hatred of the New Deal. In the late '70s neolibs usurped the D party; as a union activist and local D campaign mgr I fought them. These elitists dumped the New Deal, abandoned labor, and passed finance deregulation plus profoundly undemocratic trade agreements like NAFTA and the WTO. I now wonder, since this lineage began around the time of the Powell memo, if they're not connected.
For years, I've asked the D faithful if they're for a neolib econ system. Add to that if they're fine with the Biden Dept of State being run by Dick Cheney trained neocons. Never gotten an answer other than the deflection of "but but but Trump!" Nope. Just because Trump is loathsome does not transmute your mediocre, addled, neolib puppet into a good guy.
I worked these issues for 40 years - the DNC New Democrats (Bill Clinton) intentionally sabotaged and abandoned the New Deal Coalition and labor and the working class. Don't call any of this "mine".
Remember the tech-will-solve-everything Atari Dems of the '80s? As memorable and relevant now as their eponymous company.
PS-- My reply above is a bit garbled. I meant to say that your comment re: Powell memo got me to connect the '73 Powell memo w/ the D party leveraged buy-out.
I can see it clearly in black and white. All is true. I am beginning to believe that this what we are as humans. Always with greed, power, money and lies. There is never ending injustice and wars. There will always be those who think and believe they are better, they are worth more, they deserve more!!!
The fact is that the struggle is never-ending. One sees it in all the struggles of Labor v. Capital on our time. However, the lessons are lost on humans, and have been lost on us for centuries. Another big thinker like Chris Hedges is the economist Michael Hudson, who is very good at showing the deep history, how the never-ending struggle plays out from the Bronze Age up until today. We can change it, but not if we keep falling into the same traps of a millennial struggle.
Chris, I have supported you for many years, since I heard you speak at Rockford College.
There is one other demonized group you didn't mentioned - the white working class.
The central premise of Neoliberalism is that racism, mysogyny, and homophobia are the problems with America, in fact the only problems, and that all can be solved by what Cornel calls "black (or gay or female) faces in high places."
There are many good faith Christian adherents lumped in with the bizzare Christian Zionists and other far right cults. These Christians are good faith social conservatives who are not fascists, although they may adhere to a right to life, the right to bear arms, the right to determine public school curriculum, or a comprehensive legal immigration policy that includes a path to citizenship for persons that rever this country and the rule of law.
In short, I think you overstate both the numbers and the influence of that portion of Christian "Right" that are fascistic. Many in fact are labor adherents and anti-war and recently voted for figures like Bernie Sanders.
Check out Les Leopold's 2024 book //Wall Street's War on Workers (How Mass Layoffs and Greed Are Destroying the Working Class and What to Do about It)//. Years of research and stats to prove it. Including polls on how white working class attitudes toward gays and race have changed over the decades.
These layoffs are caused by corporations needing $$$ for stock buy-backs; it's good for CEOs and Wall St. stock manipulators, but not for anyone else including the company. A great issue for the Ds. Which, predictably as the party of neolibs, they ignore. Yet by far the majority in the U.S. is working class--less than 30% of the population have 4 year degrees and many who do have jobs that aren't related.
I've encountered dogmatic leftists who insist identities like LGBTQ and BIPOC are mere diversions from working class issues. Comments by white men who've never had to fight to be recognized for what they are nor, for that matter, ever lifted a tool in their lives. I fit both sets of letters and was a blue collar worker and union activist for 28 years. It's not either/or; it's both/ and.
And, yeah, having a few faces in the neolib camp who look like mine does nothing to help. The message of the elite D party is: we don't care about race, gender, or sexual orientation as long as you have the requisite Ivy League education or similar qualifications and connections that separate you from the inferior masses. That "basket of deplorables."
Very good article, Chris. There is no way I can vote for either of these two candidates, both of the uniparty , war party. Genocide Joe or Zion Don, take your pick.😢☮️🇵🇸
Yeah. Always voted Dem. No more. Throwing my vote away to anti war Jill.
I can't either. What's more obvious evidence that democracy is dead than a "choice" between a mediocre, addled puppet of econopathy and an ignorant, nasty, plutocratic narcissist? Both of whom are acceptable to the real powers--neolibs and neocons.
"The assassination of Trump would not remove the yearning of tens of millions of people, many conditioned by the Christian right, for a cult leader." (comment at this site).
Yes it would and always be aware of false flags, be hey domestic or abroad.
“The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear.”
― Antonio Gramsci, Prison Notebooks
The attempted assassination of Trump, if real, parallels that which took place in Rome for centuries.
Will there b an election?
Does it matter?
I consider it highly possible Trump’s assault was faked. My sense of Trump is that he’s truly a coward. He would have crumpled in the face of a real threat. Whereas Biden wouldn’t have known it was happening.
I joked to a friend that the whole thing was probably a deranged stunt by Trump himself. But I was joking only a little.
It is hard to know; if we ever will know.
Surely this makes Trump a figure more cast as a victim first of lawfare then of an 'assassination attempt'.
One must remember that Trump is a useful idiot for a theocratic fascist movement worldwide.
What is worthy to note is that there is little discussion of the Council for National Policy and nothing but coverage of the Heritage Foundation.
The CNP was secretive until its member list was revealed I believe in 2016.
They are the true architects of Trump's policies.
But not a word about them.
They remain in the shadows.
Their members consist of everyone from Ginni Thomas to Tucker Carlson as well as dignitaries from around the fascist global movement.
The Council on Foreign Relations develops the concepts and Heritage provides the installation plans.
Find out more about the Council on Foreign relations, their member lists as we have them.
They are the true theocrats that founded the Christian fascist movement back in the 1980's under Reagan.
There was an expose' maybe 15 or 20 years ago by 60 Minutes about the evangelical Christian movement and its massive influence on the U.S. Congress. In particular, the show revealed how these shadowy, conservative Christian groups ingratiate themselves with like-minded reps and senators through their obscure National Prayer Breakfast.
A seemingly benign gathering of the faithful, this hugely influential "breakfast" is little more than a convention of far right Christian nationalists ( I call it Christ Con) gathering to glad hand, back slap, and conspire with the far right D.C. power brokers to have their dream of a radical Christian agenda come true.
It's through these congressional brothers-in-arms (not to mention the six members of the SCOTUS that are hard-core, anti-abortion Catholics) that these far right radicals have pushed their extremist white power and Christian agenda, which has been raising its ugly head for years now, and seems to be reaching a feverishly dangerous peak as we head into November.
I was curious if the groups you mentioned are aligned with the far-right Christian
groups I referred to above? I know that 60 Minutes show from years back scared and angered me and my fears have been confirmed with the non-stop push by the far right to codify Christianity as America's only true religion, with the Bible its primary "legal" reference.
American is on the brink of that scenario being fully realized should Trump and the Republicans ever gain all levers of power, which they may well do in November. It's extreme enough for this unrepentant atheist to say God help us.
Council for National Policy
last updated: June 15, 2015
The Council for National Policy (CNP) is a secretive right-wing nationalist group that was formed in the early 1980s to counter the purported dominance of “liberal” groups like the Council on Foreign Relations.[1] CNP members helped spearhead the emergence of the modern conservative movement (sometimes referred to as the “New Right”).
Although it rarely receives public attention, the group remains an important element of U.S. right-wing activism and is regularly courted by conservative politicians, religious leaders, and activists. The invitation-only group sponsors closed conferences and seminars for “national leaders in the fields of business, government, religion and academia to explore national policy alternatives.”[2]
A recent indication of its efforts to shape the conservative political landscape has been its activities related to the 2016 Republican presidential nomination. TheNational Journal reported: “Convinced that Republicans nominated a ‘moderate’ in the past two presidential elections because the conservative vote was splintered—and certain that John McCain and Mitt Romney lost in November because the GOP base didn't turn out—this clutch of right-wing activists wants desperately to prevent a third act.”[3]
During a May 2015 meeting, several prospective presidential candidates spoke, including Sens. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Marco Rubio (R-FL), Texas Gov. Rick Perry, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, and former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina. According to attendees, Ted Cruz appeared to have the biggest impact. "Cruz blew everyone else out of the water. He made the best case, I think, for conservative leaders and organizations to think strategically about working together to help propel a conservative candidate into contention,” opined one attendee.[4]
https://militarist-monitor.org/profile/council_for_national_policy/
I meant Council on National Policy, not Foreign relations. My error.
For more on the Heritage foundation see: https://rightwing.fandom.com/wiki/Heritage_Foundation/source2
For more on the CNP one might start here:
https://www.exposetheenemy.com/
I also give very serious consideration to the possibility that some Trump-supporting MAGA nut, meaning any of them, could have done this in hopes of blaming the left and inciting violence against the them.. Literally every possibility, no matter how crazy, is on the table with the aptly named Deplorables.
The labels of the various and sundry are becoming increasingly inaccurate. Currently I feel as if Liberals are as deplorable as Deplorables. Both major parties have been subsumed by the oligarchs resulting in the singular “corporatists”. While the Democratic label of “Progressive” (which I happen to actually be) has ceased, for the Democrats, to be meaningful. Great change is rumbling beneath us. I hope that soon the battle lines will be clearly drawn: The People vs The Very Wealthy Parasites.
In the early '70s, I was trained by people who'd been (real) leftist union organizers in the '30s. They told me: "liberals are the ones who leave the room when the fight starts." Exactly what happened. See my long comment for details.
“The petty bourgeois is afraid of the class struggle, and does not carry it to its logical conclusion, to its main object.”
– V. I. Lenin
The mainstream Dem leaders are as corrupt as the Republicans, but I think the rank and file of the right have worked overtime to earn the deplorables label and it applies in spades in my mind. How many batshit conspiracies of the Trump era and even before originated on the left? I can't think of a single one.
Meanwhile, MAGA lamebrains cook up unhinged conspiracies based on absurd lies and serves them up as indisputable facts, which the cult gobbles up like life-sustaining manna. In addition, virtually all of the rhetoric of violence, as well as the actual violence in the Trump era, has come from the right, and we've been seeing the proof of that idiocy for years.
I feel where you're coming from and agree to an extent. But I think it's no contest between the cult and the left as to which side is the more odious of the two. Trump Nation Deplorables: the original and still the bet.
The Democrats have supported the genocide is Gaza. That’s extremely unhinged. There are many issues tangled in our current politics. Including major economic issues. Poverty and low wages are endemic in this country. This is a crime, and it can drive people crazy.
Capitalism is a criminal enterprise.
Yes they have, and that's beyond deplorable. I totally agree with your entire post. But those aren't conspiracy
theories. I'm referri g to just dumb ass stuff the right creates and spreads. I asked in an earlier post how much of that crap originated on the left, and I said I couldn't think of a single one. But yeah, I missed a big one: Trump's a Russian asset or even puppet of Putin, or some such nonsense. Russiagate...Jesus. Ok, Ok, I missed a couple. But, again, on the whole, the right has a virtual patent on unhinged, unproven claims.
For 28 years, I was a blue collar union activist and local pol campaign mgr. I fought the neolib elite that usurped the D party; they dumped the New Deal, abandoned labor, passed finance deregulation, and signed profoundly undemocratic treaties like NAFTA and the WTO.
They did for displaced Rust Belt workers (now suffering deaths of despair) same as they did to the Wall Street vultures of 2008: NOTHING!
The D party only represents the admin and professional 10-20%. Same types as the well paid bureaucrats who make oligarchies and dictatorships possible by keeping them running. We lessers, the majority working class, are quite aware that HRC's "basket of deplorables" includes all of us. A perverse form of solidarity.
We humans are finally bumping up against our environmental limits. The wealthy are really full on parasites. We can no longer afford their very expensive bullshit. Democracy is the best system, in my opinion, for creating consensus and dealing realistically and sensitively with complex environmental and social issues as well as prioritizing justice as foundational to governance. Capitalism prioritizes profit over everything. Everything. Hoarding is a mental illness, not the basis of a successful society.
The 1%ers, the biz Rs, and the lapdog D bureaucrats are certain they'll survive whatever happens. They think they can buy everything.
Just before the 1999 WTO, (huge demonstrations against which now known as "The Battle of Seattle") there were teach-ins at the U of WA. A prof of biz econ claimed "The Market" would solve all problems, including water shortages. Because in a desert, water is more valuable than diamonds, thus conserved. During the Q & A afterward, I asked if that meant conditions must deteriorate to desert before the model would work. He turned bright red and told me I didn't know what I was talking about. On the ferry home, alt. economist David Korten told me that's how you know you have them--the deflection and anger.
I'd bet nothing effective will be done. Official excuse that it would cost too much, harm the economy. Real reason--the elite considers it unnecessary. Their econ theory defines away devastation of communities and environments as externalities, therefore unimportant. And as the fittest, the superior, the winners, they deserve their lavish lifestyles.
It looks more and more as if Kim Stanley Robinson's eco sci-fi 2020 book, //The Ministry of the Future,// is not fiction but an accurate prediction. Not only of what rising temps will do, but how monstrous yachts and private planes are, shall we say, discouraged.
They liv in their own rubber room of denial and avoidance.