What will be left of the Democratic Party after Trump?
I don't know who professor Jonathan Turley is, but he asks a good question.
In a recent op-ed, Turley wrote that Trump has led Democrats to abandon their "core unifying values.""Trump is remaking the party in his inverse image," Turley wrote.
He said on "Fox & Friends" that Democrats' "all-consuming effort" with opposing Trump is becoming their identity."What happens when Donald Trump leaves office? What is left of your party?" he asked..."What is left of the Democratic Party beyond being opposed to Donald Trump?"
Let's put aside for a moment that the Dem's Trump Derangement Syndrome is not significantly different from the Repub's Obama Derangement Syndrome, and the lack of self-awareness in this Fox clip, there is a lot to be concerned with here.
On the one hand, there is a huge difference between between the Dems and the Repubs on how they've behaved toward their base, and that effects what they stand for.
The Republican establishment has long fed and nurtured the worst parts of their conservative base. While that is bad for the country, it's good for their party. It gives Repubs a strong, albeit malevolent foundation.
The Democratic establishment, on the other hand, hold their progressive base in open contempt.
When their progressive base is inactive they dismiss it. When their progressive base is active they undermine it.
This has left a Democratic Party with a foundation of clay.
Democrats betrayed their base first with an embrace of neoliberalism that started in the 70's, peaked in the 90's, and finally broke the Democratic Party under Obama.
Gupta writes about how Obama governed significantly to the right of how he campaigned, leaving many of his supporters and the Democratic base feeling cheated and lied to.While Obama campaigned on ending the wars, taking on Wall Street, a Green New Deal, tackling immigration reform, and being pro-labour union, what he did instead, as Gupta writes was:
bombed seven countries (more than Bush), deported record numbers of immigrants, killed immigration reform through neglect, undermined climate change accords in Copenhagen in 2009, attacked teachers unions, abandoned “card-check” legislation that would aid union drives, and offered little more than rhetoric on raising wages.
Obama, however, spared no effort to rescue the sinking yachts. In October 2009 the New York Times noted that the bailouts begun a year earlier were fueling a “new era of Wall Street wealth.”
The disastrous elections of 2010 and 2014 didn't shake the Democratic Party establishment, but the election of President Trump did.
The Dems decided to double-down. Instead of being just the other Wall Street-loving neoliberal party, they would be the other warmongering neoconservative party as well.
the teaming up of AEI and CAP is noteworthy. After all, AEI has long served as the Beltway’s home to some of the leading lights of the neoconservative movement, while CAP is resolutely Clintonian in its policy preferences. Founded by longtime Democratic lobbyist John Podesta and run by former Hillary Clinton aide Neera Tanden, CAP sponsors the liberal-leaning Think Progress blog, among other projects.But the CAP/AEI alliance is just the latest example of liberal Democrats’ teaming up with neocon hard-liners. Another widely remarked-upon merger was unveiled in July of 2017, when the German Marshall Fund of the United States launched its Alliance for Securing Democracy (ASD), which brought together Laura Rosenberger (an Obama and Clinton foreign-policy aide) and neoconservative think-tank operative and former Marco Rubio adviser Jamie Fly. The advisory council of the ASD pairs neocons like Bill Kristol and former John McCain aide David Kramer with liberal hawks like Podesta and former Clinton campaign advisers Jake Sullivan and former ambassador Michael McFaul.
In addition to the goings-on in think-tank land, a second manifestation of the alliance between neocons and mainstream liberal Democrats can be found in the elite media. Hard-line neocons Bret Stephens and Bari Weiss have been given real estate on the op-ed page of The New York Times; neocon publicist Max Boot was given a column at The Washington Post; Bill Kristol, David Frum, and Jennifer Rubin are frequently featured as guests on the liberal cable-news outlet MSNBC.
Republicans have long been neoliberals and neocons. While Trump holds a few heretical ideas, no one has any problem imagining the GOP base falling back into line once a mainstream Republican wins again.
Things are more problematic for Democrats.
Other than opposing Trump, what does the Democratic Party establishment stand for? What values and ideology do they share with their base, other than Identity Politics?
Turley points out that the Democratic values look almost nothing like what they once stood for.
There was a time when a sizable number of Democrats opposed undeclared wars and unending military campaigns. Now, they are appalled that Trump would not continue a war in one of the myriad countries with American troops engaged in combat operations.
...Liberals once rejected the premise that we should engage in continual wars in other countries or face terrorism on our streets at home.Democrats are now defined by Trump the way that antimatter is defined by matter, with each particle of matter corresponding to an antiparticle. Take the secrecy. Democrats once were the party that fought against the misuse of secret classification laws by the FBI and other agencies. They demanded greater transparency from the executive branch, which is a position that I have readily supported. Yet, when oversight committees sought documents related to the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act investigation of Trump associates, Democrats denounced the very thought that Republicans would question the judgment of the FBI that any such disclosures would be tantamount to jeopardizing national security.
So if Trump doesn't run for re-election, what does the Democratic Party stand for?
Why would anyone vote for the Dems? Why would a leftist ever vote for a neoliberal/neoconservative party? What sort of democracy do we have when there is no one to represent the entire left-wing?
It appears that the Democratic establishment has gutted the party and our democracy in the process.
If the progressive insurgency can gain control of the Democratic Party then the Dems can still be saved, but the Democratic establishment will fight that with every dirty trick they've got.
And progressives are running out of time.
Comments
This speaks for itself
Time to think about another party. Yes, the U.S. electoral system is terribly biased against third parties. But the Democrats are completely bankrupt. If you still have a mind, you have to go elsewhere. We need a real opposition party, that will fight for the things we really need, period.
....
A truth of the nuclear age/climate change: we can no longer have endless war and survive on this planet. Oh sh*t.
J. Turley is a Constitutional Lawyer...
In the past, he was quite opposed to W Bush. I always found his writings to be lucid and informed. That is, he is not some rightwing hack, like the late and unlamented Charles Krauthammer.
To find him on Fox News is surprising; but I guess they will put on anyone who will bash the Dems - even honest ex-Dems, like Turley.
In the end, I have to go with your closing sentiment:
It is not that surprising at
all that they have had Turley on Fox news.
They had Nader on the other night, Greenwald is there on occasion, and Alan Dershowitz is a frequent guest (liberals don't like him anymore since he has called them out on their hypocrisy.)
Doug Schoen and Mark Penn have been on as well.
dfarrah
He's been a regular on bobblehead shows
Since the Clinton impeachment...
" In the beginning, the universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry, and is generally considered to have been a bad move. -- Douglas Adams, The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy "
The democrats are not really against Trump.
How many of them keep voting for his legislation? Bank deregulation. More power to spy on us.... Remember when Trump bombed Syria after the false flag? The kos kids were upset that he only bombed empty buildings and Hillary said that he didn't do enough bombing. But a few democrats said that he needed to get congress' permission to do that.
Will the democrats go back to their old positions? The ones where they gave lip service to the progressives? You betcha they will. When's the last time you heard the democrats talking about the importance of unions? Of worker's rights? Or any of the things they used to be for before the Clintons rolled into DC?
Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.
Yeah, the dems
just use Trump as a rallying cry.
dfarrah
What was left of the dem party before Trump?
What was left of it in 1900 when Eugene Debs wrote this:
"The Republican and Democratic parties are alike capitalist parties—differing only in being committed to different sets of capitalist interests—they have the same principles under varying colors, are equally corrupt and are one in their subservience to capital and their hostility to labor."
i.e., "neoliberal corporate dems" controlled the party back then too.
The problems with the democratic party and this political system obviously go back way before the 1970's and the current corporate dem leadership or we wouldn't have these quotes and writings from the past by Debs, Dubois, Mencken, Twain, etc., about the two party system. Been there, done that.
The illusion is that somehow we can "elect more and better democrats" and thereby save the democratic party and democracy itself, but we don't live in a democracy and never have.
True.
But they did a few good things, like soc sec, civil rights, and family leave act.
dfarrah
Perhaps for the same reasons they do everything else.
First, to benefit themselves and second to benefit their party. I think the two times they took dramatic steps, as opposed to a bit of an increase in the minimum wage phased in over so many months that inflation will outstrip it long before it is fully effective, were the New Deal and the Great Society. And both times, the PTB feared uprisings, if not outright revolution, ala the Russian Revolutions.
For that reason, I no longer see the Democratic Party as having changed radically. I've been working from time to time on an essay that goes into more detail, but I have not been very diligent about it.
FWIW -- Let me encourage you
I'd be real interested in reading that even if it wasn't deathless prose. Heck, feel free to post some bullet points as far as I'm concerned.
A lot of wanderers in the U.S. political desert recognize that all the duopoly has to offer is a choice of mirages. Come, let us trudge towards empty expanse of sand #1, littered with the bleached bones of Deaniacs and Hope and Changers.
-- lotlizard
Thank you. I am either very lazy or very busy; and
I ain't saying which! j/k
I've had a lot on my plate for almost a year now. I'll see what I can do when I am out of physical energy, but feel mentally alert.
A lot happened between 1900 and 1980
Debs told the truth in 1900, but the Democratic Party of 1936 was very different.
Of course the Democratic Party of 1966 wouldn't recognize the Dems of 1996.
What we appear to be returning to is the 1900 environment.
Personally I'm curious how Liz Warren does.
Neither Wall Street nor the Dem establishment wants her, but with MeToo she has a chance.
She's not my first choice, but I'd support her.
Re Liz
From what I can tell via her votes, she is not anti war and that is a non starter for me. Liz has absolutely no backbone. She may stand for the right things when it is safe, but she runs and hides when it calls for real courage.
Of course, many of us are now realizing that voting is not the route to effective change.
Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?
“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy
This is how I feel
“Whole dna fiasco which didn’t go very well for her.”
Heh. Really.
Like the guy in the vid said, she may be going for a SuperPac because I see no way in hell she could beat Trump and surely she gets that by now. He would LOVE to run against her.
This is poorly done but I must have missed something, no Hilz running?
A truth of the nuclear age/climate change: we can no longer have endless war and survive on this planet. Oh sh*t.
Oh no. Hillary is definitely in the game
I'm thinking that she will let the candidates be filtered out and then she is going to pop in and run. Being president has been her dream for too long for her to give up on it. And she might put either Warren or Harris on her ticket to get people to think that if something happens to her in office there will be a great backup.
I got $5 I'll put up on this if anyone's interested.
Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.
I will vote Bernie over Warren in primaries.
Warren has not proven to me she can win over working people. Maybe there some numbers out there, but it was common to hear people say who voted for Trump, they would have voted for Bernie if he won primaries.
I would certainly vote for Warren over Trump. If not her, at least Green.
But then again, powerful forces are gathering up to smash in particularily Bernie. Next would be Warren now that she has announced--Wall Street hates her with a passion. I remember that there were shady organizations that were formed to go after Howard Dean that included later Obama's press secretary.
And then in the general, if canidate Bernie or Warren were to win, democratic money people will do everything they can to undermine them as happened with McGovern.
Effective change will not come from elections
After Seeing the Man Behind the Curtain during the 2016 election, and finally coming to the realization of who Obama really was, I have yet to meet anyone who could adequately explain to me the reasons why anyone would believe what a political candidate tells us. I assumed it was already painfully obvious that unless Jesus Christ himself re-emerged on earth to battle the capitalist whores running our country, we could trust NO ONE posessing any kind of political power.
There is always Music amongst the trees in the Garden, but our hearts must be very quiet to hear it. ~ Minnie Aumonier
She's my first choice,
I think she represents a balance between electability and progressive cred. The fact that Wall Street and the DNC hate her make her my favorite, by definition.
"Obama promised transparency, but Assange is the one who brought it."
How dare you bring up history.
"We have to look forward" has been the mainstay of modern political malfeasance since forever.
Don't look at what we have done and forget who we have screwed.
Regardless of the path in life I chose, I realize it's always forward, never straight.
Whoever said history repeats itself wasn't kidding.
.
Well, them and the Klan. And, before that, the pro-slavery forces, which, now that I think of it, is capitalism taken to its most horrible and demented level. Made starvation wages look like the gravy train, no pun intended.
.
No undeclared or endless wars in the past? What the actual fuck? Whatever Turley was using or smoking, I may need some as it nears midnight tonight. Sometimes, I think I must have read entirely different history books and articles than everyone else.
When the hell was it that Democrats opposed undeclared or endless wars? Before Truman's "Korean Police Action," right on the heels of WWII and escalation by both JFK and LBJ of the "Vietnam Era?" Apparently, Democratic Presidents were of the belief that they could escape the requirements of the US Constitution as long as they thought up cute names for "unwars" in which tens of thousands of US troops perished and maybe more were wounded in body, mind and spirit.
Unending military campaigns? How about the Cold War, which they now seem to be striving to resuscitate with their Russiagate is making the sky fall hysteria? How many battles to "contain Communism" were fought during the allegedly "Cold" War? Perhaps not as many as have been fought since we invaded Iraq FOR WHICH EVERY DEMOCRAT WHO RAN FOR PRESIDENT AFTER THAT INVASION HAD VOTED, with the exception of Obama, who had no say in the matter and Kucinich. Obama did, however, later say that, if he had had a vote on invading Iraq, he probably would have voted for it.
In so doing, Obama proved Bill Clinton was correct, when Bubba said, "This whole thing's a fairy tale," meaning (I think) that Obama's positioning himself to Hillary's left on the Iraq invasion was a fairy tale because Obama had had no say in the matter, only a 2002 speech in which he had said the invasion was wrong. And, of course, off the bat, Obama nominated as his Secretary of Defense the man Bush had nominated for the same position and, as his Secretary of State, the woman who had voted for the Iraq invasion and was taking cues from the likes of Will Marshall, much to 2008 primary candidate Obama's advantage.
BTW, a number of Democratic Presidents, including FDR-- not only Obama--chose Secretaries of War, then Secretaries of Defense, and/or Secretaries of the Treasury who were registered Republicans. (And Geithner, Kissinger's protege who changed his registration when Clinton appointed Timmeh to his administration,although the New York Fed Head could not bring himself to change it to Democratic, only indie.
Now, why do we suppose Democratic Presidents have tended to do that?
In the aftermath of the Vietnam war
The Democratic base was very anti-war. So were the candidates they nominated like McGovern and Mondale and Dukakis. Carter was pro-military in particular pro-Navy, but knew he couldn't get away with a war so soon. He was even paralyzed about rescuing US hostages which was his eventual downfall. The mood of America is periodically anti-war but they always rally about events like Pearl Harbor and 9-11, even when they are manufactured like the Maine incident and Tonkin Gulf.
In the period between Pearl Harbor and the Bay of pigs, the country's mood was very militant. Some advocated unilateral disarmament. Some built underground bunkers. But most were advocates of the Cold War and quite a few, not just Republicans, advocated heating up the Cold War. Winning WW II was a psychic boost. In Europe, which was devastated by WW II, the mood was the opposite, but bankrupt economies forced the governments to depend of the US military to defend them from Russian aggression. And Stalin, a certifiable paranoiac, was very aggressive.
I've seen lots of changes. What doesn't change is people. Same old hairless apes.
What will be left?
A large body of neoliberal/neoconservatives with money and media backing, but not enough votes to win a majority. A much smaller body of wishy-washy pseudo-socialists who can't even utter the phrase "nationalize the banks" who may be able to win a few races AOC style with small donations and social media.
They'll be opposed by neo-Fascist Republicans who can't win a Presidential race without Florida, and can't win a nationwide majority.
So it will be coalition politics in Congress, with neoliberal/neoconservative Democrats in an uneasy alliance with neoliberal/neoconservative Republicans.
We've always been at war with Eastasia.
"The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function." -- Albert Bartlett
"A species that is hurtling toward extinction has no business promoting slow incremental change." -- Caitlin Johnstone
Grim
but, yeah. Just 2 wings of the capitalist "free" (for me, not thee) market party.
The Pussy Hat Party?
Avid readers of the Guardian?
Gëzuar!!
from a reasonably stable genius.
So, are you passing the time thinking up classic Bollox ; ).
Funny how succinctly you translate absurd reality into humour.
I don't know whether to wish you more or less smiles/smirks in the new year. I hope its all good though!
Possible I suppose
Although really, I'm pondering a flugelhorn that some kind person gave me.
Gëzuar!!
from a reasonably stable genius.
Something to help you ponder ...
I had forgotten about Chuck Mangione.
[video:https://youtu.be/sEnVEgluRhI]
How about
the Vuvuzela party? We may not win, but we sure can be annoying.
Please, no!
Even the soccer players don't like it. Cheers, Snode.
Exxcellent but for one teeny-tiny little thing
I believe that the demise of the Democratic Party is intentional. The donor class wants a one party state.
On to Biden since 1973
That would be risky
Without the appearance of democracy, and thus no pretence of legitimacy, in a heavily armed nation, there is the real danger of political violence.
I doubt the ruling class wants to live in walled fortresses. They would much rather have a society of quiet serfs that blame themselves for any misfortune.
Hubris
Maintaining the illusion of two parties is the strategy of sane people, of corruptocrats. Kleptocratic dictators are not sane, they do not think like sane people. They are omnipotent, they have no need for caution.
Perhaps the Democrats will be allowed to slow;y wither away while the racists and the christofascists split power and play palace intrigue, or perhaps the Democrats will sweep the 2020 elections and install a cultural revolution. TPTB don't care which. It's just a matter of time before they decide to sit on the Peacock Throne.
On to Biden since 1973
They pretty much have a one party nation
When you do those diagrams about where they mostly agree (differ only by degree) it's pretty much the poor, immigrants, POC, gays and women on one side and racists, gay haters, misogynists, religious and gun nuts on the other. Both sides leave out economic and opportunity matters, and both sides agree on war, the military and the left is the enemy. One party that plays around the edges with things that don't really matter to them. It's the Capitalist Party.
There's really no reason that a President
...must be affiliated with a political party. The President is an entire branch of government unto himself. Perhaps he can make better decisions for the country when he is able to consider the best course for the nation and the best outcome for the People when he is not juggling Party corruption.
There is a reason that the nation's Founders deliberately left private political clubs or "parties" out of the US Constitution. They wanted to keep the “necessary evil” of these private clubs at some distance from the legitimate processes of the working government. These Parties peddled influence and moved money in ways that delegitimized the regulated system they were designing.
Among themselves, the Founders described these private clubs as incubators of corruption and destroyers of democracies. Parties were seen as "necessary" because they had a role to play in a nation no electricity or communication. They could spread out and organize the people in the states to participate in Federal elections. Now that need is obsolete. The people can communicate instantaneously and form their own alliances through social media. They are perfectly capable of using a direct democracy to select their own President, without Party interference or sabotage.
The fact is, the Parties have no government authority to do what they do. They are lawless and unregulated. They act as political power boosters and election gamers that court Big Donors for billions of dollars, which they spend lavishly on convoluted strategies for marketing their own candidates for their own purposes. There are no rules that govern their political manipulations. They can freely rig primary elections with no repercussions.
We are all grown up now. We can select our own President from any walk of life. If the corrupt Party-State conspirators attempt to keep the People's Choice off the ballots, they should be sued now or strike the Voting Polls nationwide until democracy is restored.
____________________
The political system is what it is because the People are who they are. — Plato
Save the Dems?
What does that even mean any more? Let's suppose we "saved" them from Anti-Trumpism. That just returns them to Neoliberalism. The Democratic Party is a hollowed out husk with a few bits of it still kicking. About the only thing I can see to save is the brand.
A lot of wanderers in the U.S. political desert recognize that all the duopoly has to offer is a choice of mirages. Come, let us trudge towards empty expanse of sand #1, littered with the bleached bones of Deaniacs and Hope and Changers.
-- lotlizard
OT
Is OT 'off topic' or 'on topic'? the latter it is for me, thx/nt
The dimorat party
died a long time ago. Does America have the gumption, desire, want to re-do our form of government? Revolution is the only way.
"The “jumpers” reminded us that one day we will all face only one choice and that is how we will die, not how we will live." Chris Hedges on 9/11
hny sd. Powder dry = "too controversial "
A truth of the nuclear age/climate change: we can no longer have endless war and survive on this planet. Oh sh*t.
I love how the Corporate Democrats portray AOC
They like to make it seem like somehow her being a trouble-maker is a bad thing. They don't seem to understand that we NEED people to actually fight these battles. We NEED trouble makers. Every time the corporate Democrats whine, I think "Go Girl!" regarding AOC.
I have boundless respect for her.
A lot of wanderers in the U.S. political desert recognize that all the duopoly has to offer is a choice of mirages. Come, let us trudge towards empty expanse of sand #1, littered with the bleached bones of Deaniacs and Hope and Changers.
-- lotlizard
Happy New Life!
For many of us, each Happy New Year turns into yet another Crappy Old Year. Who or what is to blame? We are trained to blame ourselves, but are you, or am I, really guilty of causing economic crashes or sudden health crises, mass lay-offs, and the like? Are we the creators of a profit-driven health insurance system that refuses to cover millions and covers many others only incompletely, so that the majority of American bankruptcies result from health crises? Are we really to be blamed for not being rich when our society is formed like a wealth pyramid with an impoverished broad base and a tall wealthy spire that rises many miles above the rest of the pyramid, all the way into outer space?
Did you or I create such a mind-bogglingly uneven wealth distribution that makes sure that only a small handful owns as much as the rest of us, no matter how hard we work? Perhaps, if you are Jeff Bezos, you did indeed contribute to this wacky distribution of wealth, raking in over a hundred billion dollars in wealth for yourself while holding down thousands of your employees with meager wages and disgusting working conditions. If you are one of the super-rich banksters or Wall Street predators, you surely did push a lot of people into poverty and debt slavery, but did you create the capitalist system into which we were all born, a system which demands that such things be done?
On one hand, if you are cast in the role of a capitalist, you worry that if you choose to be a nice capitalist treating his workers well, you will soon be driven out of business by another capitalist who exploits his workers brutally thus maximizing his profits with which he can out-invest you. On the other hand, you have almost certainly been raised to consider this system of cruel inequality as natural and merit-based. You have almost certainly adopted the concept that you are entitled to great wealth and your workers or customers are not. And the many who struggle to survive in or near poverty have likewise learned to blame themselves... And, yet. Has any of us, whether we are located at the bottom or the top or somewhere in between, created this system and the cultural mentality that tells us that this inhumane distribution and treatment of each other is all natural and everybody deserves his good or bad fortune? Have we? Not really, right?
It has taken generations to create this system, but each generation (our own included) plays its part in upholding it and passing it on to the next generation.
A video I shared in my latest Video Weekend was very telling indeed. It presented a former capitalist who recovered his humanity after he went out of business and had to work for others. He described how, when he was still an employer himself, he felt completely entitled to pay his employees ten bucks an hour while swiping fifty bucks into his own pocket. When talking to fellow capitalists back then, they shared information and thoughts they never share with him now that he is in the working class and therefore perceived as a lesser human being. Those at the top form a private club in which they pat each other on the back and uphold the myth of being superior beings rather than people who lucked out in the lottery of life which places us on different spots in the preformed inhumane wealth pyramid that we did not create but nevertheless uphold.
When he dropped out of this private club, he recovered his humanity, and now argues against capitalism because he has come to realize that it prevents people from being human.
That is indeed the key issue we must all come to understand, whether we are rich or poor. A greed-driven system of wealth and power distribution deprives us of our human characteristics. Our reptilian ancestors fought their peers over food and territory. That was all they knew to do. When we humans entered the stage, we developed not only creative intelligence with which to build weapons and machines, but also social instincts that let us collaborate, making us invincible through strength by numbers, able to move mountains, and dominate the rest of life on the planet.
These social instincts also enrich us with compassion, caring, kindness, generosity, respect, friendship, and love that starkly distinguishing us from our asocial ancestors. They create human bonds which form the essence of what makes our lives worth living. These social instincts that make us human pushed the older asocial instincts to the back. Otherwise we would never have risen to dominate all other species. We would have been isolated, weak critters with tiny teeth and no claws, easily overcome by large predators and harsh diseases or famines and droughts. Without building a profoundly changed, human-friendly environment over many generations, our species would have never survived, leave alone dominated all others.
However, when we are born and raised in a hostile environment of competition and greed, a system that puts profits over people and pits us against each other, then our asocial reptilian instincts come back to the fore, having a “lucky” few dominate and gouge the rest of us and the oppressed rest of us kowtow and buckle submissively so as not to be killed. Is it any wonder that under these circumstances our civilization is falling apart and we are headed towards self-extinction?
I think not. The lesson should be clear. We need to recover our humanity and fundamentally change our system, cure it from its obsession with profits and domination, and replace these sick inhuman objectives with human ones, easily expressed with a simple phrase: a good life for all. With this resolve, with this governing principle, we can save ourselves. So, let’s not waste our time with blasé Happy New Year wishes or turgid spectator politics. Let us wish each other Happy New Lives. Human lives. Made possible with a profound system change that reshapes our wealth pyramid into a large house for all. Let’s absorb the astronomic spire and turn it into stilts that lift the floor above poverty, and let’s cap the roof never again to rise miles high, so that a tiny ruling class with a reptilian mindset can never return to warp our society and our mindsets for us all, including themselves.
Our flawed current system actually has the means to do so. Taxes and Social Security. All we need to do is tax away excessively rich incomes and wealth, and use them to expand Social Security (including Medicare) to put a financial and medical safety floor under everybody’s feet. It would reshape our society into a human one where all human beings can and will thrive. A man-made paradise. Heaven on Earth where we can all rise to our best potential, replacing our current Hell on Earth that keeps us all from a human life worth living and brings out the worst in us thereby reinforcing the horrid trap into which we were born.
Here is that video again. If you missed it, I highly recommend you watch it.
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WHys1jc2Png]
(Note: If the video linked above gets deleted, you may search the Internet for the title: “Confessions of a Capitalist: how a serial entrepreneur became a dirty commie”)
And here is another, shared earlier this year, in which a group of lesser relatives in the animal kingdom shame us and demonstrate that social instincts can outrun the asocial ones, to everyone’s benefit:
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A4UMyTnlaMY]
(Note: if the video linked above gets deleted, you may search the Internet for the title: “Why hierarchy creates a destructive force within the human psyche (by dr. Robert Sapolsky)”)
In a sense this article is a 2018 recap of Beanstock’s World. This year, we refined the idea that our mindset is the most important thing to change if we are ever to make our world suitable for a good life for all.
Let’s keep reading, watching, and discussing here, and work towards a world worth living in! Be sure to sign up for update notifications if you haven’t yet done so.
Happy New Life!
___
Ending Note: You can subscribe to free updates on Beanstock’s World (the primary publication outlet for Dirk Droll) in order to miss none of his articles. Also, please share links widely. Only together can we repair this messed-up world! Thanks!
~ Dirk Droll: Exploiting others is not self reliance.
As I hope my post indicated, I am not
devoid of knowledge of basic US political history. However, Turley spoke of the Democratic Party, not the base. When people, especially experienced commentators, like Turely, speak of the Democratic Party, they mean the PTB of the Party, not the base. When they speak of the base, they usually say "the Democratic base" or "Democratic voters." If you look at the quotations from Turley, especially in last gray section of the OP, it's very clear that he is using the term Party in that way. It's the leadership of the party that has devolved into little more than "Trump bad." The base is still concerned with jobs, wages and other bread and butter issues.
I'm not so sure that the base cares
Let's look at my family or GOS. Sure, they SAY they care. There's endless pearl clutching. But their actions and plans don't in any way support the words. In general I'm forgiving of matrix-people under the "they know not what they do" theory. But I have a lot less forgiveness for both myself and my family all of whom have the IQ and training to have known better... had we simply cared. There is blood on my hands. I feel pretty shitty about some of my political karma.
And for the matrix-people, I'm not sure what to make of that. They think what they are told to think. Whatever that is, it's certainly not caring.
A lot of wanderers in the U.S. political desert recognize that all the duopoly has to offer is a choice of mirages. Come, let us trudge towards empty expanse of sand #1, littered with the bleached bones of Deaniacs and Hope and Changers.
-- lotlizard
Who's in the matrix?
and how do they get out of it?
I think most of us here are outside the matrix in most aspects, but I'm curious about who you think is still in it? I fell that I'm out of it, but it took me a long time to get out. I started after Obama decided to approve the FISA bill instead of filibustering it and then seeing everything else he did, but it really took me until Bernie got screwed for me to totally be out.
I'm watching people expend lots of energy hating on the things that Trump is doing and saying. I realize that I did that during Bush's presidency and I'm thinking that's part of the game plan. Keep people focusing on what the puppet president is doing and not paying any attention to what congress does in the background.
Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.
Who is "in" the Matrix?
OK, I love making the analogy to that movie so here we go. In the movie, The Matrix is both real and unreal. On one hand, it's a virtual reality simulation. On the other hand, what goes on there has definitive impact on what goes on in the physical world... they are intertwined.
In that same way we have the establishment narrative. It is both real and unreal. The people on this site recognize it for what it is and so we interact with it as needed but we also perceive a different reality. Like in the movie, we are both in and out but we are not trapped inside.
I think anyone who recognizes the establishment narrative for the fiction it is can be thought of as outside the matrix. What can we do to get people there? Only what we are doing on sites like this and others. As I have learned from my brother, you can't simply tell someone, "The reality you believe in is a fiction." That statement will be rejected every time. They have to come to that notion themselves... or at least come to the point where they are noticing all the cracks in the narrative and asking questions. That's where sites like this come in. We can leave a trail of breadcrumbs.
By the way, I agree. The entirety of "the resistances" is a redirection ploy. It's akin to a war between two nations in the matrix. Does it affect things? Sure. Is it a war against the matrix itself? One last troubling point. Just as in the movie, they are ALL agents of the matrix. In a sad twisted sort of way, my brother is my enemy because despite his best intentions, what he fights for is to sustain the establishment narrative and my goal is to destroy the establishment narrative.
A lot of wanderers in the U.S. political desert recognize that all the duopoly has to offer is a choice of mirages. Come, let us trudge towards empty expanse of sand #1, littered with the bleached bones of Deaniacs and Hope and Changers.
-- lotlizard
Exactly!
They're not worthy of my support. The clay foundation is just a cherry topping. Let it fall for all I care; it'll do the world a favor.
What left after Trump? A party of progressive cliches.
Lots of posturing. See Cuomo is a POS
Could add other ones. Okay I will. There was the black female may of Baltimore who vetoed an increase in min. wage, after promising to support it in the primaries.
Even if democrats manage to win, there will be what Greenwald I believe called a list of rotating democratic villians who will undermine progressive proposals.