Open letter to the Democrats
Dear Democrats:
Let's start with the obvious. Biden foreign policy has been historically bad. It marks Joe Biden as one of the worst Presidents in American history. Sure, Biden foreign policy is much like W. or first-term Reagan foreign policy; but at a completely inappropriate time. It would have benefited you to recognize reality, and get behind Bernie when you had the chance; however, instead you elected Biden, and reality gave you a pass because his opponent was a naive and egotistical Trump. Your pass has expired, and Trump is no longer as naive as he once was. And you are cheering on Biden's stand-in, someone you neither elected nor selected.
You behave as if you are in denial about Biden foreign policy being bad. Right now the ruling class is united in a panic, attempting to put some sort of half-mask upon Biden failures until the election. This is of course why the party elites put a stop to the re-election effort: the half-mask was failing. After the election, well, whomever wins (and yes I still think it will be Trump) will have to deal with some realities:
1) The collapse of Project Ukraine will occur. A horrific black mark will be placed upon the whole of the West, as cornered Ukrainian Nazis wage a reign of terror upon the whole of what is left of the country. No country will want to take any responsibility for the rump Ukraine: not the Russians, not the Poles or Hungarians or Slovakians, not NATO, nobody. There will be a vast effort to discredit any human rights campaign centered upon Ukraine, for fear of embarrassing the world's political classes. Zelensky will go into exile.
2) The collapse of Project China will occur. China will place an embargo upon the US, after which the US will cry "uncle" in a month or two.
3) Northern Israel will be obliterated, as will Gaza and large portions of Lebanon and Syria. Hamas will be incorporated into a much larger organization, not named Hamas. Iran will acquire nuclear weapons. Once again, the rich will go into exile, the global political class will forswear the resultant human rights catastrophe, and remnants will devolve unto ongoing violence.
4) There will be a lot of elite wagon-circling to preserve the value of the US Dollar, and more inflation. I do not know if the Euro can be saved; we may see efforts in small nations to secede from the Euro. The cause of this inflation will be obvious: Biden foreign policy has pissed off much of the world, and this time around the rest of the world will be empowered to do something about being pissed off. And they will exercise their emotions upon the dollar. The Euro will be a victim of Project Ukraine.
5) The homelessness situation in the US will get a lot worse. This, then, will be the human rights situation the elites will allow.
6) Reactionary victories in the US will put you in a pickle. Your candidate, to be sure, is not campaigning on anything but "she's not Trump." So there's no ideological initiative there. Your studies of Project 2025 will not matter. When the reactionaries win, do you choose a) to back your political party, or do you b) choose actually to fight, on behalf of women and immigrants?
Democrats: you have a passing chance of defending your party's domestic policies against those of the Republicans. Team Biden's foreign policy, however, was and is first-administration Reagan on steroids, and the more you defend it, the more thoroughly you discredit yourself. Right now, you pretend to save face, and maybe a few of you will recognize at some later point that your party is a millstone, just as maybe a few of you recognized (along with Cenk Uygur) that continued support for Joe Biden was a waste. America will be a changed country at that point, and not for the better.
But there are some things you can do now. Here are the big four:
1) Quit with the pretenses. No, Ukraine isn't going to win. No, Biden economic policy didn't benefit the working class: instead, wages failed to keep pace with inflation and buying power shrunk. No, Harris isn't going to do anything to make Netanyahu angry, just as Biden didn't really "shift to the left" in the first half of his one and only term. Nobody is fooled. Do not claim to know that which you in fact do not know -- that's what I do.
2) Be realistic about elections. No, this isn't the most important election of our time: it's more like the least important one. Our individual votes will only matter as to the outcome if we live in swing states and are swing voters. The elites control America; they will control America after this election, and until we all develop the will and the ability to oppose them.
3) Your inflated notions of Trump didn't work, aren't working, and won't work. Trump is bad enough as he actually is.
4) I'm not one of you. I wasn't really one of you even if I briefly registered (D) to vote for Bernie, and I'm not going to be one of you. And I'm never going to be a Republican, either. Get that out of your heads.
Yours in friendship,
Cassiodorus
Comments
A credible prophecy...
...but I think you prematurely rule out at least one major possibility: That this is finally the year we get a 3rd-party upset.
Stranger things have happened.
In the Land of the Blind, the One-Eyed Man is declared mentally ill for describing colors.
Yes Virginia, there is a Global Banking Conspiracy!
I suppose it could happen.
The half-mask would have to exhibit a major failure, however, and this failure would have to be combined with a failure of the Republicans to pick up the votes the Democrats lost.
I was thinking this was going to be like to next 1852, the last meaningful year of the Whig Party in the United States.
“When there's no fight over programme, the election becomes a casting exercise. Trump's win is the unstoppable consequence of this situation.” - Jean-Luc Melanchon
Thanks - and tell me more about the latter.
I'm afraid 19th Century American history is not my strongest suit (not that this should matter much to my education, per se, but the overwhelming majority of my ancestors had yet to even set foot in the Western Hemisphere).
In the Land of the Blind, the One-Eyed Man is declared mentally ill for describing colors.
Yes Virginia, there is a Global Banking Conspiracy!
Brief synopsis:
The Whigs lost really badly in 1852, and were divided into proslavery and antislavery camps. The Compromise of 1850 had made this division really dangerous. In 1854 the Republican Party was founded, and in 1856 the last remnant of the Whig Party, in New York state, merged with the American ("Know-Nothing") Party. It was the biggest realignment in American history.
“When there's no fight over programme, the election becomes a casting exercise. Trump's win is the unstoppable consequence of this situation.” - Jean-Luc Melanchon
A very minor edit that I might suggest,
only in the name of clarity.
Dear Democrats,
Drop Dead.
Yours in friendship, etc...
Twice bitten, permanently shy.
I don't harbor any particular animosity toward them.
Living in Oregon has taught me that there are a lot of people in the world who are very friendly but whose politics are bad.
Educating people is hard. Mostly this is because people don't want to learn. What they want -- under the current system (and this caveat cannot be emphasized enough) -- is for reality to go away. This is what is behind the reduction of education to training or curriculum or, once upon a time, fact memorization like what you see in Dickens' novel "Hard Times." So, yeah, let's educate the Democrats that their politics stand in need of improvement and that they would benefit from such improvements as can be had. It's easier said than done.
Perhaps the most daring thing about Aldous Huxley's 1932 novel Brave New World is that it actually makes the sales pitch for ignorance. If you can make them stupid and docile and happy, the masses won't be a problem because reality won't be a problem for them. Feed them soma, and all will be well. You don't need to browbeat them; just distract them a lot. Huxley was merely stating the quiet part out loud. All of the nice literati were outraged, completely missing the point. "How dare you create a character who argued that a society of educated democrats (small D) wouldn't work?" they pointed. So? Prove the character wrong. Create that society of educated democrats!
Instead, of course, the Democrats, big D, would rather play follow the leader. For the first three and a half years their presumed leader was a senile old fool; now it's a woman whose talents are apparently in raising elite cash, being a diversity hire, and cruelty toward the masses. But the Democrats are so thoroughly engaged in follow the leader, their version of Centrifugal Bumble-Puppy, that they can't see any of this. So what to do?
“When there's no fight over programme, the election becomes a casting exercise. Trump's win is the unstoppable consequence of this situation.” - Jean-Luc Melanchon
"Centrifugal Bumble-Puppy"
Having never read Brave New World, I had to look that up. Wow.
Reminds me of microtransactions/"lootboxes"!
In the Land of the Blind, the One-Eyed Man is declared mentally ill for describing colors.
Yes Virginia, there is a Global Banking Conspiracy!
Dang that's a good...
summary of Kamala. Thanks!
If you're poor now, my friend, then you'll stay poor.
These days, only the rich get given more. -- Martial book 5:81, c. AD 100 or so
Nothing ever changes -- Sima, c. AD 2020 or so
Kshama Sawant on Kamala Harris
“When there's no fight over programme, the election becomes a casting exercise. Trump's win is the unstoppable consequence of this situation.” - Jean-Luc Melanchon
This time reminds me of Hexagram 64
.
"Before the End"
The final goal is in sight, but there is unfinished business to resolve before reaching completion.
In this case, it refers to the other parties involved in the conflict. There must be a weakening in the provoking Proxy force. Certain elements of this aggressive coalition must break away or change course. Others must follow them. This weakening could lead to a rapid collapse of the aggressive Proxy. Only then can the final goal of a peaceful world be completed and enacted.
Any one of your six scenarios could potentially signal a complete reversal of fortune for the Neocons who are pushing this horrific agenda onto the American people (and the world) via the captured US Federal Government. Your first premise that is centered on Ukraine is the most likely to activate. The resulting chaos will be a relief for a World that aspires to the 'win-win cooperation' between nations that is coming into existence. However, this will not solve the domestic disfunction in the mentally-ill US — nor will it end the deadly divisiveness borne out of ignorance and propaganda.
The Time Before the End is now fully in play, globally: Belarus marked the first retreat from the NATO aggression, then Turkey. Then Hungary turns to China. And now Italy follows (see below). Next will be Canada, heading back to China to revise its relationship and apologize. Then, the UK. Some of the Neocon-, Nazi-, NATO-infused nations, like Germany, will choose economic suicide.
A critcal mass must first retreat from the deranged, self-annihilating Proxy aggressors before the rest of the world gains the confidence to act to solidify new standards of civilized behavior between nations — without resorting to war. The EU has mortally wounded itself (and the UN) through the cursed depravity that riddles the leadership of its association.
As for what happens on the isolated US plantation, nobody knows. What can be rebuilt with an obsolete constitution, two throughly corrupt political parties, a brainwashed population, and an economy based on international murder and mayhem? Will there be retribution for what the US Neocons have done to the world?
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[edit = typos, grammar]
What seems clear to me:
In the US:
1) Increasing authoritarianism
2) Declining economy
3) Increasing distance between rhetoric and reality
“When there's no fight over programme, the election becomes a casting exercise. Trump's win is the unstoppable consequence of this situation.” - Jean-Luc Melanchon
The US population has been mentally damaged
...by the non-stop propaganda, censorship, brain washing, cognitive dissonance, hypocrisy, fear, self-destructive incarceration, and threatening atmosphere.
I don't know how a nation backs out of that. I think a couple of generations have to die off. Most laws will need to be vacated and/or re-ratified by the remaining generations. Laws made by dead people cannot be imposed on the living without their direct consent. Not anymore. If the US is ever to become a real democracy, the Federal Government needs another Branch, a standing Peoples' Congress, to clear out trashy laws that harm the People and propose laws to improve their lives. Otherwise, it's more of the same corruption. Voting is not what makes a government a Democracy.
The Gaza encampments were a hope.
At least here in the US. Though memories of Occupy and of some of the more interesting participants in Bernie's campaigns may also help.
I really don't know how much of the media circus actually sticks in the brains of the American people. People are "trained" by the pseudo-education they receive in school, in which they are taught "facts" but do not really take an interest in the relevance of said "facts." One big door-opener in the literature on pseudo-education was Paulo Freire, with his book "Pedagogy of the Oppressed." Freire's explanation of the "banking model" used in schools suggests that, because schooling is not genuinely dialogue, the knowledge it communicates isn't really about the world, but, rather, it's about the teaching situation. This suggestion is further reinforced in Peter McLaren's classic ethnographic study in "Schooling as a Ritual Performance." Students of oppressive instruction are more likely to conclude that math is boring than that math is about anything.
It seems to me, then, that brainwashing can be overcome, but that its most lingering quality is the devaluation of the subjects which it is about. The end of the great era of brainwashing, then, is likely to be some great social collapse, which will lead people to believe that politics is about something and that if it was once convenient to believe that it wasn't, well, now it is.
“When there's no fight over programme, the election becomes a casting exercise. Trump's win is the unstoppable consequence of this situation.” - Jean-Luc Melanchon
Of course the first thing to disabuse them of is...
... the idea that the US is a democracy. Mark Sleboda, take it away:
This connects to Advice #2:
“When there's no fight over programme, the election becomes a casting exercise. Trump's win is the unstoppable consequence of this situation.” - Jean-Luc Melanchon