There is a problem with the progressive conversation. Progressives have apparently forgotten everything that has happened since the 2016 election. Maybe that’s why they keep trying to help the Democratic Party. They started doing this while the Biden administration was still in control and they continued through the Harris campaign. Now they’re scratching their heads over what they see as Democratic incompetence in dealing with Trump. This is very frustrating.
Progressives are ignoring certain facts, which I list below. Those with knowledge of American politics will have to decide if the following facts are helpful. It’s important to mention that improving the conversation may not improve the political situation. But if the alternative media channels insist on talking about politics they should consider all the facts. Otherwise they will just add to the chaos.
The 2016 Election
Progressives’ ability to remember certain important facts would improve the conversation.
The Democratic Party demonstrated its ability to keep a candidate out of the White House. Yet Trump is the President.
Some Democrats openly admitted during Bernie’s campaign that they preferred Trump to someone like Bernie.
The DNC’s frantic and obvious effort to destroy Bernie’s candidacy–twice– was suspicious. In my opinion the Democrats chose suspicious behavior over decorum, even though the best competitors they could offer clung to an establishment worldview rejected by progressives.
In the 2016 campaign, the DNC styled Hilary Clinton as the Democratic version of an emperor. Think white pantsuit, golden lighting, arms raised like a prizefighter. Maybe that’s why she couldn’t communicate to the voters why she wanted to be president.
Donald Trump announced his candidacy after a meeting with Bill Clinton.
Hilary received enough cash after her loss to Donald Trump to purchase the estate next to her New York residence.
The 2024 Election
Since Trump’s second inauguration, the Democratic Establishment has continued to act as though they are watching a play. It took Elon Musk’s outrageous behavior to jolt Congressional Democrats out of their stupor.
During Bernie’s campaign, Members of Congress didn’t need an unelected billionaire to wake them up. They were united in their contempt for Bernie. This attitude filtered down to state Democratic parties. I believe the Maricopa County Democratic Party is a good example of the DNC’s thorough organizing effort.
We shouldn’t forget that the DNC did not stand behind Joe Biden in 2024. In addition, they failed to inform the electorate of the Biden/Harris administration’s strengths.
Why did it take so long for Congress to become ‘aroused’, as Chuck Schumer put it? Were they waiting for their cue from the DNC?
At least one Democratic Representative may have received a cue. This is Hakeem Jeffries, Minority Leader of the US House of Representatives. He claims the Republicans are in control and the Democrats can’t do anything about it. Jeffries almost sounds like he’s calling for someone else to step in. But maybe it only seems that way to me because of my own background.
The Enemy From Within
Donald Trump has told us that the problem in America is ‘the enemy from within’.
The Mormon Church has been warning its membership about the enemy from within for decades. There will come a time, the Church claims, when the Constitution will be hanging by a thread. At that time Mormon leaders will be called upon to step in and rescue us.
The Church also predicts that it will be put in charge of ‘poor relief’. This is the exact term used for the Catholic Church when it was still a European institution. At its height, the Catholic Church owned a third of the land of Europe. We don’t know how much land the Mormon Church now owns worldwide because it is often bought furtively. But we know it’s a lot.
The Church in Utah uses the US welfare program to pressure recipients to be active in the Church. This aspect of the current crisis makes me believe these actors are no joke. There is a takeover in progress and its exact characteristics, while not known to us, have already been worked out.
Jonathan Rauch has been making the rounds of certain alternative media channels to promote the Mormon Church as an authority on civic religion.
Rick Wilson’s interview with Harry Litman is just one example of the wrong-headed analyses of Kamala Harris’s loss that have been making the rounds since the 2024 election. For the most part, Rick Wilson blames progressives for 2024. At 21:42 in the video, Litman asks Wilson what the focus should be for rebuilding the Democratic Party. Wilson answers:
Stop looking over your left shoulder at the progressives because what have they proven to you this year? They don’t f**king care if you win or lose. They don’t care if you win or lose. All the garbage they put this party through and Harris through about Gaza, and the decisive number of democrats who voted for Jill Stein in Michigan because of Gaza..
Wilson is probably correct about Jill Stein’s part in Harris’s loss. He is not the first to call this out. His claim is based on his organization’s model. The model shows that progressive and Arab Democrats made up enough of he vote that killed her (Harris) in Michigan. Then he continues:
If these people, if the democratic party doesn’t realize that the progressives are not their ally, that they are a competing party inside their party, just like the Republican Party didn’t realize that MAGA was going to consume them…
I disagree with this comparison, as I explain below.
Wilson Says AOC Will Tweet Mean Things About Him
Wilson laments that he’ll get a lot of sh*t from progressives, and AOC will tweet mean things about him. He insists that he is a practical politics guy, not an ideologue or a pie in the sky whatever. He believes in victory and if you don’t have victory against Donald Trump and his allies in the 2026 cycle, goodbye, it’s over. They [the Democrats?] need to go at the throat [of progressives?] all the time. “There’s no more ‘my honorable friend’ in the house or Senate. They need to go to war every single day to stop every Trump appointee.”
Then Wilson goes to his focus on the trans issue. He cites the Trump campaign ads based on Harris’s past support for trans-friendly policies. Wilson doesn’t blame this on the Democratic Party. They were in fear of the left flank. Democrats have to overcome this fear.
He insists that he’s not telling the Democrats to become Republican light. He’s telling them to be more like Bill Clinton, who won by being a non-traditional Democrat. Or Barack Obama, who ‘came across like a country club Republican’. Wilson’s anti-progressive wish list for the Democratic Party includes things like ditch the radical talk, the progressive fantasy world. Stop thinking you have to go out and campaign to talk to workers about industrial policy and solar panel jobs. Start talking to them where they live (which he implies is not in the trans world). This harangue against progressivism, or against Wilson’s definition of progressivism, continues until 26:31.
Wilson’s Progressivism is a Straw Man
It seems obvious that when Rick Wilson blames progressives for 2024, he’s not talking about progressives at all. He’s talking about the progressive fantasy world. And the progressive fantasy world is his own creation. Furthermore, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama are not the way forward as he suggests. They are part of the Democratic Party’s past. Furthermore, they lost this election. In recommending them to Democrats, Wilson reveals his irrelevance to both Democrats and progressives.
The Progressive Response
Much of what I’ve written since 2016 assumes readers remember the exhilaration of calling out the madness in the Middle East and then discovering Bernie Sanders. I probably should have written about that process in the lead up to this election.
We suddenly saw that it was time for a new direction. If this sounds overly ambitious, there was reason to believe that our leaders saw it too. Their foreign policy had been a spectacular failure, Libya being the most recent example before Gaza. And there were going to be repercussions that no one seemed concerned about.
The Importance of Food Systems
Bombs and white phosphorus were destroying food systems and farmland. Land and water resources and housing were in danger, while the global population was larger that it had ever been. By 2050, the population would reach 9 billion. We declared that it was time to stop the destruction. It was time to prepare for coming generations.
Intervention in Libya, Credit: By Jolly Janner
This agenda implied self-sacrifice on the part of progressives, but it had an enthusiastic following. I would argue that it was the blossoming of new life in the electorate. But the Democrats chose to cling to their failed worldview. Or perhaps they were clinging to the worldview of their donors. The blindness and arrogance were breathtaking.
Progressives are the Loyal Opposition
However, progressives are nothing like MAGA. We voted for Hillary in 2016 and Joe Biden in 2020. In 2024, I urged progressives to vote for Kamala. Then came 2024. We were told Biden was pressured to drop out of the race because of his health. His policy platform was not part of the discussion.
However, Harris was consistently asked whether she would continue Biden’s policies. Questions about her policy proposals began to grow.
This is strange, given the fact that Bernie’s candidacy had been scuttled by Barack Obama. He decided it would be Biden instead of Bernie. We voted for Joe Biden to keep Trump out. And then Biden surprised us by cooperating with the progressives. My point is that we had no reason to think we could hold Harris over a barrel policy-wise. The salient points were that she was young and healthy and not Trump.
There was also the problem of Gaza. It is a problem. Voters, especially Arab voters, hated Joe Biden for his part in the genocide. Therefore…what? Don’t vote? Vote for Trump? It was a hard decision. However, progressives are not necessarily to blame. Gaza caused everyone anguish in one way or another. How could it not affect the way they vote? No voter should have to weigh the suffering of Gaza when they cast their vote. But that’s what they had to do.
The Democratic Establishment Fought Progressives. The trans-rights issue came from them, not us.
In 2016, the Democratic Establishment was thunderstruck that anyone would criticize their policies. They apparently thought everything was going well. Instead of accepting progressive criticism, they fought it tooth and nail. They fought our candidate too. It was almost embarrassing how openly they went to war against Bernie Sanders.
We knew very little about Bernie back then. As it happened, his focus was not food and water security or foreign policy. It was more about elevating the domestic working class and alleviating wealth and income inequality. For progressives on the other hand, food and water security was tied to foreign policy. It was an internationalist outlook from the beginning. We knew that we can never be secure when so much of the world is in turmoil and so many people lack basic necessities. And this state of affairs was being driven by US foreign policy.
If we had analyzed our differences with Bernie, we would have supported him anyway. Compared to the neocons and Conservatives, Bernie was like rain in the desert. However, we did have one thing in common with Bernie: none of us was even thinking about the trans issue or same-sex marriage.
The Indiscriminate and Undiscriminating World of Alternative Media
The term ‘woke’ appeared quite early in our conversation. I don’t know where it came from. I would guess that the woman who first uttered it was a manifestation of establishment (probably Democratic) consultation.
From the Republican side, a fear campaign was launched against the term ‘social justice’. I once used this term in reference to Bernie’s agenda. I didn’t realize it had negative connotations from the World War II era. But during World War II, this term was not used by the Democratic Party–progressive or otherwise. It was associated with Father Charles Coughlin, an American right-wing supporter of Adolf Hitler. Of course the Republicans didn’t mention that in 2016.
Leading up to the 2016 election, YouTube pundits began encouraging progressives to vote for either Bernie Sanders or Jill Stein. I objected in their video comments and on my blog. I said that telling young voters to choose between two candidates is not a strategy. But they continued.
Jill Stein has been lauded consistently over the last decade by Chris Hedges. Hedges appears to be a progressive but he always seems to be working against the Democratic Party.
Trans Rights
No one has ever explained to me how same-sex marriage and trans rights are progressive. At least not in the sense of 21st century progressivism. Our focus is the survival of the human race, which is threatened by war and unsustainable agricultural systems. We’re not just promoting the survival of the human race. We are in search of a fulfilling and productive existence for everyone.
But the celebration of same-sex marriage and trans rights seemed to appear on the scene as part of a full-scale blitz. Certain ‘progressive’ YouTube pundits suddenly appeared with over ten thousand followers and they immediately joined in the celebration.
We support policies that fight discrimination. This includes discrimination against same-sex couples and trans people. But same-sex marriage and trans rights do not take precedence over survival in the progressive agenda.
The 2024 Election
When Benjamin Netanyahu attacked Gaza in spite of Americans’ warnings and objections, I predicted that he would continue to pound the people of Gaza until the election. And that’s what he did. Today everyone agrees that Israel’s behavior hurt Joe Biden’s chances in the 2024 election. Of course it did. It was meant to hurt Biden. Netanyahu wanted Trump to win the election.
Palestinians inspect the damage following an Israeli airstrike on the El-Remal aera in Gaza City on October 9, 2023. Israel continued to battle Hamas fighters on October 10 and massed tens of thousands of troops and heavy armour around the Gaza Strip after vowing a massive blow over the Palestinian militants’ surprise attack. Photo by Naaman Omar apaimages
The voters were herded like cattle on market day. That’s how Trump won the presidency. and it didn’t happen in a media vacuum. Influencers on YouTube and in Michigan pushed the strategy of punishing Biden in the election. It was obvious to most people that helping Trump get elected would not be good for Gaza, but the influencers continued anyway. These influencers included Benjamin Netanyahu, Chris Hedges and Jill Stein.
It’s not the first time voters have been herded. However if Trump has his way, it will be the last time. No elections, no voters. I could lecture you that strategic thinking and voting is important in a democracy. However, even if a majority of Americans could be influenced by such arguments I would be closing the barn door after the cows got out.
The right wing’s narrative describes a world in which evangelical Christians and their allies have God on their side. Normally I wouldn’t disagree–according to Christian doctrine, God is on the side of the human race. But they are actually saying God approves of their politics. They apparently assume this will convince believers to vote for them and paint the political opposition as evil. In my opinion, the left must respect religion enough to question the far-right’s claim to God’s favor. This doesn’t require a personal calling from God. It just requires the patience to listen to the far-right’s claims and compare them to the Bible.
Since Evangelical Christians believe Donald Trump is a messianic figure, the relevant verses would be those that refer to the messianic age. In Ezekiel 47 the Lord God showed Ezekiel a vision of abundance and blessing and joy.
Afterward he brought me again unto the door of the house; and, behold, waters issued out from under the threshold of the house eastward: for the forefront of the house stood toward the east, and the waters came down from under the right side of the house, at the south side of the altar.
Then brought he me out of the way of the gate northward, and led me about the way without unto the utter gate by the way that looketh eastward; and, behold, there ran out waters on the right side.
And when the man that had the line in his hand went forth eastward, he measured a thousand cubits, and he brought me through the waters; the waters were to the ankles.
Again he measured a thousand, and brought me through the waters; the waters were to the knees. Again he measured a thousand, and brought me through; the waters were to the loins.
Afterward he measured a thousand; and it was a river that I could not pass over: for the waters were risen, waters to swim in, a river that could not be passed over.
And he said unto me, Son of man, hast thou seen this? Then he brought me, and caused me to return to the brink of the river.
Now when I had returned, behold, at the bank of the river were very many trees on the one side and on the other.
Then said he unto me, These waters issue out toward the east country, and go down into the desert, and go into the sea: which being brought forth into the sea, the waters shall be healed.
And it shall come to pass, that every thing that liveth, which moveth, whithersoever the rivers shall come, shall live: and there shall be a very great multitude of fish, because these waters shall come thither: for they shall be healed; and every thing shall live wither the river cometh.
And it shall come to pass, that the fishers shall stand upon it from En-gedi even unto En-eglaim; they shall be a place to spread forth nets; their fish shall be according to their kinds, as the fish of the great sea, exceeding many.
But the miry places thereof and the marishes thereof shall not be healed; they shall be given to salt.((Ezekiel 47:1-11))
Ezekiel is then told that the fruit of the trees will be for meat and the leaf will be for medicine. The leaf will not fade and the fruit will never be consumed because their waters issued out of the sanctuary. And finally, the Lord God describes the borders whereby the twelve tribes of Israel will inherit the land. This is not a Zionists’ dream, however. At least not the Zionists we know. Nor is it the dream of American wall-builders and imprisoners of immigrant children.
And it shall come to pass, that ye shall divide it by lot for an inheritance unto you, and to the strangers that sojourn among you, which shall beget children among you: and they shall be unto you as born in the country among the children of Israel; they shall have inheritance with you among the tribes of Israel.
And it shall come to pass, that in what tribe the stranger sojourneth, there shall ye give him his inheritance, saith the Lord God.((Ezekiel 47:22,23))
This does not sound like Donald Trump and his supporters at all. Instead, it seems to describe the hopes of progressive supporters of Bernie Sanders.
Some say the Son of man is not a single person. The Son of man is a collective. Of course, Bernie has no intention of being a messiah. You may recall the day he waved away Birdie Sanders, the bird that landed on his podium during a campaign speech. He is a politician after all, not a religious leader. But what about the rest of us? We thought for a few glorious moments we saw the end of the old regime, and we projected all our hopes on this amazing candidate who appeared out of nowhere. And they were hopes of peace and fairness and inclusion.
I recently watched George Packer talk about his new book, Last Best Hope. I agree with most of what I heard in this interview (although there are hints that he is not an ally of progressives). Parker is calling for the return of liberalism. On the positive side, he thinks the goal for the country should be equal citizens governing themselves. He stresses that he doesn’t define equality in the sense of equal outcome, but in the sense of no one being born and dying in a permanently subordinate class. And when he says citizens should govern themselves, he means they should participate in the current democratic system. My main concerns are the rivalry he sets up between liberalism and progressivism, and his belief that we actually have a self-governing system.
The root of our problems, Packer says, is that we’ve been unable to make an equal America across race and class lines. We have to create conditions of equality, mostly through government intervention, through breaking up monopolies, by empowering workers, by rebuilding the safety net, by making education more equal.
I agree with all of these proposals. However, I would argue that the attempt to achieve these goals has lead to the divisions he is trying to heal. But Packer believes his policies would allow the temperature to go down so that people could work together again.
Packer does mention progressives. He credits Elizabeth Warren as the leader of progressives who want to rein in monopolies. But progressives are not listed in his four divisions of America, and the category that would seem to include progressives is not invited to participate in the return of liberalism. Below is Packer’s list of four rival Americas which have arisen since the 1970s:
The four Americas are Free America; Real America; Smart America; and Just America. Free America is conservative to the point of libertarianism. Real America is Sarah Palin’s America, and the direct rival of Free America. Smart America is the professional class or meritocracy. Smart America is separate from liberalism. Just America is the chief critic of Smart America. Packer does not think Just America has any benign attributes. It is associated with social intolerance and cancel culture.
According to Packer, Just America sees the United States as nothing but a caste system. For this group everything about American history is white, and whiteness is on trial. He illustrates this by citing Ta-Nehisi Coates’s statement that America is a unitary malignant force. But Packer’s so-called illustration is misleading, because Coates has been criticized by progressives.
Packer also claims that Just America’s focus on race makes them unwilling to talk about class. What is needed, in his opinion, is two people of different races to spend several hours together in a room. He seems unaware that Bernie Sanders and Killer Mike met together in just this way.
Packer also criticizes Just America’s denial of black violence in black communities, as well as its support for defunding the police. On the other hand, he speaks approvingly when he calls Black Lives Matter a movement for oppressed people. This is a contradiction because Black Lives Matter is the most prominent voice for defunding the police.
In case you are not convinced that Just America is on the firing line, I’ll share Packer’s summary of the four divisions of America: Free America lauds the energy of the unencumbered individual; Smart America respects intelligence and welcomes change; Real America commits itself to a place and has a sense of limits; and Just America demands a confrontation with what the others want to avoid.
The Return of Liberalism Needs the Left
If the changes listed by Packer can be accomplished, I won’t object to the dismissal of the progressive movement. But Packer’s false definition of the left makes success unlikely. The accomplishments of progressives have to be acknowledged and appreciated and built upon if we’re going to achieve the equality George Packer is talking about.
A Supporting View
Packer’s misidentification of progressives is summed up by Eric Levitz in a June 15 article for Intelligencer.
There are many problems with Packer’s essay. For one, its characterization of Just America is a tendentious description of one ideological tendency in a single segment of the millennial left. There are no small number of racial-justice advocates whose vision is unabashedly universalist…
But an even bigger problem with Packer’s schema is this: It completely ignores the majority of Democratic voters who are neither professional-class meritocrats nor millennial anti-racists. Packer hasn’t described the central division within Blue America but the generational cleavage within his own professional circle.
The Return of Liberalism and Self-Governance
Packer wants this country to remain self-governing. I share his concern, but it’s important to acknowledge that the system needs improvement. After all, it gave the presidency to Donald Trump in 2016 even though he had 4 million fewer votes than his opponent. More importantly, it has silenced the voices of many generations who have tried to warn us about the climate crisis. We need a system capable of being influenced by the voters, and we need voters who are willing to participate. We can do a better job of self-governance.
Considering the pressures that weigh down the inhabitants of Planet Earth this Christmas season, I think it is important to state the good news first rather than at the end of the article. (My recommendations for a Russian movie, Stalker, and the Grace Cathedral version of Handel’s Messiah can be found at the end of this article.) The following may not be the good news you were hoping for, but it bodes well for the future: It has recently become apparent that our conversation is developing a recognizable character, substance and direction. In these times when foundations seems to be crumbling, a new foundation has been forming itself right under our feet.
I came to this realization after a disturbing conversation with a member of my local Democratic Party in which I discovered that she was completely unaware of the term ‘option for the poor’. Participants in our conversation will have learned this term from Pope Francis–it is a term used in Catholic social teaching, and it means that “God invites us to care in a special way for those who need the most help.”
As followers of Christ, we are challenged to make a preferential option for the poor, namely, to create conditions for marginalized voices to be heard, to defend the defenseless, and to assess lifestyles, policies and social institutions in terms of their impact on the poor. The option for the poor does not mean pitting one group against another, but rather, it calls us to strengthen the whole community by assisting those who are most vulnerable.
Her obliviousness to this key concept of the conversation was doubly disturbing considering that President-elect Joe Biden, a member of her own party, has been using this term in his speeches. (Biden would have learned this term directly from Catholic social teaching.)
In addition to his mention of a preferential option for the poor, President-elect Biden has appointed cabinet members that we can at least hope will be willing and able to manage our land and resources for the support of every American.
For example, he has appointed Xavier Becerra as Secretary of Health and Human Services; Congresswoman Marcia Fudge as Secretary of Housing and Urban Development; Deb Haaland as Interior Secretary; and Michael Regan as EPA Administrator. Biden has also created a new cabinet role of Special Presidential Envoy for Climate Change, appointing John Kerry to this role. We can discuss these nominees later, as well as others that are not as much to our liking, but in this season we can choose to focus on good news and that is what I want to do.
Biden’s pick for Chair of Council of Economic Advisers, Cecilia Rouse, spoke in the language of the conversation when she said, “We need to be positioned for the economy of the future so that everyone is able to partake in the growth we hope to have.” Biden’s pick for US Trade Representative, Katherine Tai, also spoke in the language of the conversation when she said, “[Trade] is a means to create more hope and opportunity for people…And it only succeeds when the humanity and dignity of every American–and of all people–lie at the heart of our approach.”
In addition to the influence of Catholic social teaching, other crucial influences round out the conversation and give it life. We have welcomed the wisdom of indigenous people in the fight to protect our resources. Biden’s nomination of Deb Haaland as Interior Secretary is a clear nod to the importance of the Native American contribution to this effort.
The conversation has also welcomed the influence of socialists and Marxists in our midst (although with some trepidation on my part, mostly due to the fear that it invites extremism in American politics.) The socialists have patiently explained the necessity of economic theory going forward as well as the importance of the creation of wealth if we’re going to care for everyone in times of crisis. For my part, I recognize the need for these knowledgable people who can think outside of the economic box.
We are also grateful for the voices and activism of Black Lives Matter, and the attention that protesters around the world have brought to the problem of racism and police brutality.
Of course, Bernie Sanders has been a huge influence in the conversation. Although Sanders was considered a left-leaning candidate for the presidency this is only true by American standards. All of his policy proposals have a solid place in American politics.
We are also aware in this conversation of the importance of agricultural policy and the way it affects food and water security. This has been a concern of Marcia Fudge, who lobbied for the position of Secretary of Agriculture. She would have shifted the agency’s focus from farming toward hunger. Agricultural policy is central to climate policy and job security as well as food security, so it is sure to be of interest to progressives in the years to come.
For me, the realization of the centrality of agricultural policy in global conflicts was the most exhilarating realization of this conversation. It is so important that it should have at least been acknowledged by the Democratic establishment in the 2016 election, but Biden may be making up for that omission. It should motivate an immediate change, not only in domestic policy but in foreign policy as well. It makes the Empire’s foreign adventures seem futile and ridiculous, and for that reason it inspires the imagination and the confidence to envision a new world.
But this good news is only a beginning. Americans who face hunger and eviction continue to suffer this Christmas season, so we ask the incoming Biden administration to make them a priority.
I’ll finish by sharing a movie and Christmas music that I think you will enjoy. Speaking of our strange times, there is a 1979 movie called Stalker. Admittedly, you have to pay $3.99 to rent it and also have an Amazon Prime account. (It may also be on Netflix, but I don’t have a Netflix account so I can’t say for sure.) The movie is based on a novel by the Strugatsky brothers, Roadside Picnic, and directed by Andrei Tarkovsy. According to Adam Curtis it was inspired by a sense of unreality in Soviet Russia.
Update December 25: I believe that the following articles and videos have some bearing on the movie, Stalker, that I recommended at the end of this article, or some bearing on my article in general.
I want to urge activists to use caution in the post-Bernie stage of this election cycle. I’m a little worried about the tone the analyses have taken–not for Bernie, I’m worried for the activists. It is crucial to the health of the movement to be able to put things in their proper perspective, especially now. At this time the pundits are apparently just coming to terms with the fact that Bernie is out and they have to watch the smirking idiots in Washington calmly go on with their plans. I won’t deny it is disgusting to watch–one can’t help but think they should be more afraid than they are, and yet their so-called plans lurch determinedly on. If you think the job of government is to serve the people, it seems to go forward without rhyme or reason.
Still, it is not time to lash out. For one thing, it’s not over yet. I’m not implying that our dreams still might miraculously come true, although if the world makes any kind of sense at all they should come true. What I’m saying is that at this point we have no choice but to wait and hope. Rather than tear everything down, we should be using this time to reconnoitre.
We have learned some important facts during the course of these two campaigns. For example, we’ve seen that our people in Congress have a firm grip on the mechanism of government at every level–including the press which is not even supposed to be a branch of government–and they have no fear of repercussions.
My own analysis of Sanders’ campaign would go something like this: we could have used our time better in the interim between the two campaigns. I would also like to suggest that some of Bernie’s million volunteers were not really Bernie supporters. I believe that if our progressive pundits had volunteered by making calls and knocking on doors, they would have the same concern. Who were the volunteers who sabotaged the good volunteers you ask? Ask yourself what you would do if it was your job to keep Bernie out of the White House? Wouldn’t you sign up to volunteer so you could sabotage the attempts by real supporters trying to do their job? It would be so easy–you could be virtually anonymous. Finally, I would like to ask the pundits how they thought Bernie could win by being humiliated at the polls in all of the remaining states, which I believe would certainly have happened. If you didn’t see that coming after Iowa I’m not going to waste my time explaining it. Anyway, I’ve already written about it here.
To continue with my analysis, we jumped into this torrent in the middle of the river with no preparation. It wasn’t our fault. When I started talking about the 2016 presidential campaign, I had in mind the responsibility of citizens to pay attention to elections and to vote. The presidential election was on the horizon and it seemed like a good idea. The thing is, no one knew that Bernie would take the country by storm and that we would have to stand by while those devils took it from us. All I hoped back then is that his campaign would add a little sanity to the downward spiral of our republic.
I still think we have the responsibility to vote, but I clearly had some unrealistic expectations. I thought we could choose our candidates based on what we understood to be the most pressing needs of the nation. That would be our second lesson–we can’t. The election process, at least at the presidential level, is nothing more than a long, expensive spectacle. Oh, we still have free speech alright, but what does that do for us? It saves us from the punishment of cement overshoes for speaking our mind, which is a good thing, but unfortunately it lasts a lot longer than cement overshoes. At least with cement overshoes we’d be sleeping with the fishes, whereas elections never end. And no, this is not an invitation for Bernie’s former supporters to check out. We’re going to find a way to go on and this is how you do that–by calmly thinking it over. Well, maybe not so calmly in every case.
Now let’s turn our attention to these people who claim to be Democrats, but who have been treating us like poor relations at the reading of the will. Who exactly are these people against whom we’ve been sending our own personal gladiator, Bernie Sanders, to do battle? Where do they fit in the overall scheme of American history and world history? Let’s look at them first in the context of American history.
I won’t keep you in suspense. The explanation is too long and I’m afraid you’ll forget the question by the time I get to the answer. Our Democratic establishment is kin to the conservatives who defeated the liberal Republicans in the 1960s and 70s. How do I know this? Because the main issue that divided the Republican Party at that time was the New Deal. Of course now the Conservatives are all about social issues, while back in the sixties they used anti-Communism as a rallying point for bringing the GOP together, but they kept their animosity toward the American middle class. The liberal Republicans were in favor of the New Deal and the conservatives were against it. The Clintons have always been on board with this conservative focus.
We know that Hillary Clinton was a Young Republican and that she supported the great conservative hope, Barry Goldwater. Of course now she makes a joke of it but I’ve never heard her renounce his ideas, have you? You might be interested to know that her father used the same tactic. He ran for a local office as a Democrat, although he was a Republican, and then switched back to being a Republican. I only wish Hillary Clinton had the decency to switch back!
Fast forward to the Clinton administration. Bill Clinton did battle against the middle class on several fronts, the most egregious assault being NAFTA, but also including financial deregulation with the end of the Glass Steagall Act, and the Telecommunications Act of 1996. Interesting isn’t it, that certain Democrats accuse others of not being Democrats when they are the ones who are not Democrats?
You might want to read about how the conservative Republicans took over the party. It’s explained in a book, Turning Right in the Sixties: The Conservative Capture of the GOP by Marry C. Brennan. ((Turning Right in the Sixties: The Conservative Capture of the GOP, the University of North Carolina Press, 1995))
There are only two political rivals in the world today: organized crime and the state. It is true that there are many seemingly valid state ideologies vying for attention, but they are mostly different versions of the same idea, none of which defend the state in the way it needs to be defended. These versions include advocacy for shrinking the state, austerity, theocracy, xenophobia and zionism, neoliberalism and libertarianism. Marxism also remains part of the conversation, but the Marxists are merely a convenient and irrelevant target for the conservative versions of the idea listed above. I say irrelevant because the Marxists have mistaken notions about the state and these notions render them useless in the fight against organized crime.
James Cockayne warns that a failure to understand how mafias work has led to the overlooking of a major force in global affairs.What we are seeing today are the effects of a purposeful strategy for controlling the planet’s resources, and this strategy is a direct challenge to the authority of states.It represents the imposition of an alternate form of governmentality—in other words, a mental framework or operating system. The only entity capable of resisting organized crime is an efficient state. (James Cockayne, ”Hidden Power: The Strategic Logic of Organized Crime″, Oxford University Press, 2016)
I think it’s obvious that something similar to what happened in Italy after the World War Two is happening in the United States today.Just like in Italy, the ruling class in the United States would rather prop up a criminal state than give any credence to the political left.
According to Cockayne’s book, the rise of organized crime was not inevitable.The state’s silence, along with the media’s silence, has enabled it to gain power.However, he doesn’t advocate direct confrontation, which most definitely would not work anyway.He argues instead that states cannot simply disappear in this globalized world—they must learn to compete in the market for government.A state must demonstrate that it is an effective, credible, rewarding system of government, and the people must understand this and choose to be governed by the state rather than the other options becoming available, from ISIS to the transnational gang model of the maras.Otherwise, other forms of governmentality will continue to grow (309).
See this link for the latest statements warning Trump against striking Syria. First is Democracy Now’s report of a statement from Bernie Sanders:
On Wednesday, Sanders tweeted, “President Trump has no legal authority for broadening the war in Syria. It is Congress, not the president, who determines whether our country goes to war, and Congress must not abdicate that responsibility.”
Democracy Now also reports that Russia’s U.N. Ambassador Vasily Nebenzya directly addressed his U.S. counterpart, Nikki Haley at the United Nations Security Council.
Vasily Nebenzya: “You are very good at threatening. And the threats you are proffering, that you are now stating vis-à-vis Syria, should make us seriously worried—all of us—because we could find ourselves on the threshold of some very sad and serious events. I would once again ask you, once again beseech you, to refrain from the plans that you’re currently developing for Syria.”
And finally there is this warning reported by Press TV. Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova has said that the threat of using force against a UN member state is a gross violation of the UN charter.
“We call upon… members of the international community to seriously consider the possible consequences of such accusations, threats and especially action (against Syria),” she added.
This escalation must be stopped in any way possible. When will you people stop being confused about Donald Trump? Will you at least consider that he may be the Clinton’s Plan-B, and controlled by the same people?
We knew that this election was a contest between two deep state factions, but the most interesting thing in my opinion is the fact that both Trump and Clinton represent neoconservative influences.
It was Bill Clinton who allowed the left-wing neocons to take control of the Democratic Party.[1] (Page 36, Location 465) He did so because he needed their support for his first presidential campaign. This would explain the DNC’s treatment of Bernie Sanders in 2016. Bernie’s Democratic Socialism is more threatening to left-wing neocons than the right will ever be. However the neocon influence on the left tends to stay under the radar. It usually takes the form of neoconservative candidates posing as progressives, including John Kerry, Howard Dean, and John Edwards. Those ‘in the know’ hoped that the imperialist-democratic ideal was on its way out with the election of Barack Obama. Little did they know…
It goes without saying that the right-wing religious leaders who supported Donald Trump are also neocons, although everyone seems to chalk up their bizarre statements to religious extremism. The Christian Right has been considered a natural ally of the neocons since the time of Irving Kristol. The neocons shared the Christian Right’s aversion to the cultural revolutions of the 60s and 70s. They rejected the Democratic Party when President Carter proved to be too open-minded and respectful of people’s different lifestyles, and they were disappointed again at Reagan’s moderate stance on family and cultural issues. From that time the Christian Right has supported the most radical groups and it has violently opposed the Democrats, particularly the Clinton administration, which it considered too timid in foreign affairs.
This alliance has been courted by both the Christians and the neocons. Ralph Reed, head of the Christian Coalition from 1989 to 1997, had neocon sympathies, putting him somewhere between a sometimes anti-Semitic protestant fundamentalist and the pro-Israeli group in Washington. On the neocon side, PNAC sought to create links with key Christian groups such as William Bennett’s Empower America, and neocons like Kristol or Eliott Abrams showed their support by sharing extreme Christian positions on abortion and Aids. This alliance was boosted after September 11 when Christian Right think tanks, lobbies, and affiliated preachers adopted the neoconservative vision of Islam, Islamic terrorism and the ‘War on Terrorism’.
Many Americans are not aware of how often the Christian Right has swayed presidential decisions. George Bush was threatened with their sanctions when he condemned Israel’s assassination attempt on Hamas leader Rantissi in June of 2003. As a result of their threats Bush’s reaction to the successful assassinations of Sheikh Yassin and Rantissi in 2004 took on an entirely different character: he sided with Sharon. (When Empire Meets Nationalism, Page 35, Location 447)
Thus, starting from a deep-rooted anti-communism, the neoconservatives have gradually developed their analyses, which go far beyond the strict mould of their supporters to irrigate the whole political scene. During all their historical trajectory, there has always been a desire for American supremacy and a wariness of the rest of the world which can only lead them towards a re-legitimization of the Empire as a key to world order. (When Empire Meets Nationalism, Page 38, Location 489)
Given this discouraging state of affairs, it’s important to identify a pointed and coherent resistance. The position of Pope Francis in this struggle is probably best illustrated by the identity of his Catholic critics. As described in Todd Scribner’s book, A Partisan Church: American Catholicism and the rise of Neoconservative Catholics,[2] Francis’s critics are Catholic neocons. This is probably the faction represented by Paul Ryan when he stated that Francis should not be involved in politics. Bernie Sanders on the other hand, has been sympathetic to Francis’s approach.
Orthodox criticism of the Catholic Church represents political rivalry of another sort. The Orthodox Church is not a disinterested religious voice. It vies with Alexander Dugin for influence over Vladimir Putin.
Dugin’s neo-eurasianism represents a line of thought similar to neoconservative thought. His influence on both Vladimir Putin and Steve Bannon reveals the true dilemma of our time.
[1] Didier Chaudet, Florent Parmentier, Benoit Pélopidas, When Empire Meets Nationalism: Power Politics in the US and Russia. Ashgate Publishing Limited, Surrey, England and Burlington VT, 2009. (All page numbers and locations correspond to the Kindle edition.)
[2] As reviewed by Patrick Garry, Neoconservative Catholicism in America. First Things, December 2, 2015
