@phillybluesfan "the "liberal establishment" purged radicals from its own ranks ". I always want to ask what "radicals" are they speaking of. Living wage, equal justice, sane medical care, Family leave, work place rights advocates, food and shelter security? Those radical ideas? It always sounds in the framing as if they're talking about the Weather underground and bomb makers. Just WTF is radical?

Hedges slams five specific groups and institutions — the Democratic Party, churches, unions, the media and academia — for failing Americans and allowing for the creation of a "permanent underclass."

Hedges says that, for motives ranging from self-preservation to careerism, the "liberal establishment" purged radicals from its own ranks and, as a result, lost its checks on capitalism and corporate power.

"For millions of Americans, including the 15 million unemployed Americans," Hedges tells NPR'S Neal Conan, "the suffering is becoming acute."

He cites a recent trip to Camden, N.J., per capita the poorest city in the nation, as an example.

"When you get up and see the human cost of what this has done — these foreclosures, these bank repossessions, the fact that one in eight Americans and one in four children depend on food stamps to survive," Hedges says, it's clear the system has failed.

The Death of the Liberal Class

@snoopydawg

The left left that site during the Ides of March.

And moved here, by the Grace of Cat (and JtC)!

You decide if any of them would help you decide who to vote for.

ToP is all over David Brok and his use of trolls to attack anyone who says anything bad about him, but again they don't see their hypocrisy on this after they defended Her use of the same thing when she used Correct the Record. No diary on Doug Jones voting to help Trump spy on us. Or Pelosi, DiFi and the 63 other democrats that voted for the FISA bill, or voted against the one that would have reined it in.

The left left that site during the Ides of March. Now it's full of admitted centrists.

@Big Al thinks that the Democratic party represents the real left. The entire issue of left and right is an artificial construct used to continue to divide we the people. I actually saw a YouTuber recently claim that the Democratic party is promoting communism. W.T.F?

The political system in this country is lost. The people have zero power via the political system. Perhaps they may have some power in smaller local elections, but the PTB are taking over those too.

To be honest, I have lost any hope for real change within this country.

thinking about the democratic party as a left wing, liberal political party. The actions of that party since the end of the Vietnam war do not support such a label. It's really just a charade to make people think there are two different philosophies but that's all fake. This latest act using DACA as the dividing point shows how they use this divide to maintain the illusion that the two parties are left and right. It really is all an act.
The real left so far has been too meek in accepting this system.
The only thing I can think of that divides this country more than this two party system is the office of the president itself.

@Big Al

A bunch of greedy, selfish, and corrupt toadies to the wealthy. It’s a gang of cheating incompetents. The ham-fisted way they tried to steal the election is embarrassing. From the beginning we knew what they were doing.

I don’t care who runs on the ‘left’. If they’re being promoted by the DNC, screw ‘em. Particularly Sanders.

thinking about the democratic party as a left wing, liberal political party. The actions of that party since the end of the Vietnam war do not support such a label. It's really just a charade to make people think there are two different philosophies but that's all fake. This latest act using DACA as the dividing point shows how they use this divide to maintain the illusion that the two parties are left and right. It really is all an act.
The real left so far has been too meek in accepting this system.
The only thing I can think of that divides this country more than this two party system is the office of the president itself.

@Tak

...but there are quite a lot of people on the left, possibly even a sizable majority according to some polls if you go issue by issue. The big problem is that they are disorganized, atomized and thus largely voiceless in the current political landscape where we have two big political parties, run by two competing factions of the plutocracy which nonetheless are in agreement on, if little else, the continuation of the plutocracy and its neoliberal project.

Occupy threatened to break that (and did manage to nudge the national conversation to the left), but was done in by external repression (organized nationally by the Democratic Party) and internal grandstanding and lack of attention to its own original principles.

The Sanders presidential campaign likewise opened up discussion of left politics, but after its inevitable failure was unable to move beyond the usual dead-end electoral solutions. Sanders himself is still out there, pointing out the many failures of capitalism, but still stuck on the short-term pseudo-solution of voting for this or that candidate rather than creating a large grassroots movement independent of parties.

So, no "Left" until we get organized.

@Tak

...stands to the Left of the elected government on an issue-by-issue basis.

That being said, I believe I stand to the Left of everyone I know.

...but there are quite a lot of people on the left, possibly even a sizable majority according to some polls if you go issue by issue. The big problem is that they are disorganized, atomized and thus largely voiceless in the current political landscape where we have two big political parties, run by two competing factions of the plutocracy which nonetheless are in agreement on, if little else, the continuation of the plutocracy and its neoliberal project.

Occupy threatened to break that (and did manage to nudge the national conversation to the left), but was done in by external repression (organized nationally by the Democratic Party) and internal grandstanding and lack of attention to its own original principles.

The Sanders presidential campaign likewise opened up discussion of left politics, but after its inevitable failure was unable to move beyond the usual dead-end electoral solutions. Sanders himself is still out there, pointing out the many failures of capitalism, but still stuck on the short-term pseudo-solution of voting for this or that candidate rather than creating a large grassroots movement independent of parties.

So, no "Left" until we get organized.