Our legitimate fear is based on medical science. Theirs are are not.
Berneko: Why everybody hates the Democrats
After explaining the whole Senate Parliamentarian mess, and how the Dems caved yet again, he rightly concludes:
"But this, exactly this kind of dithering and capitulating, is why the Democratic party is always so much less popular than incredibly well-liked ideas—Medicare For All, gun control, COVID-19 relief checks, minimum-wage increase, a federal government that does more to help people directly, etc.—whose only support in government comes from its own members. Given the rare opportunity to flex some power, and a clear and obvious moral mandate to do so, they’re throwing their hands up at non-binding parliamentary procedures. [...] The only thing you can count on the Democratic party to do is to develop a sudden paralyzing case of situational Budget Concern or Norms Respect, whenever it can cripple or stall or dilute the fulfillment of a pledge to make common people’s lives better, to materially address any of the myriad ways American society has been warped into incoherent brutality by capitalism and white supremacy."
And this is exactly why we won't be fooled again. If we don't get real representatives of the people to take over this Party and are left with this corrupt mess yet again, we're headed for a worse, more competent fascist takeover. But it seems the Democrats are comfortable with that.
Billie Eilish - The World's a Little Blurry
Zane Lowe talks with Billie about this new film about her. After of course she performs the song that gives the film its title.
We must be unified in defeating fascism
The below is a statement of the false notion of trying to work or compromise with Repugnacon's in Congress, as that Party has gone full fascist. Our only hope is to strongly defeat them at every turn, not weakly surrender to accepting it as just another opinion to be honored in some fantasy ideal of unity. Our unity comes in defeating fascism, which now includes the Repugnacon Party.
Is it time for a Progressive Party?
If the Democrats don't either fire the Parliamentarian or have VP Harris overrule her to get the wage hike in the Bill then we have to continue to replace establishment Democrats until we have a majority in the Party. Biden and the Party leaders are themselves an obstruction to we the people's agenda, as they are part of the problem of big money in government. However, is just electing more progressives to office enough? The system itself is so rife with corruption on both sides that more is needed. And to replace Party leadership and institute actual democratic policy in the Party is a very long term hope.
I'm starting to think that changing the Party from the inside is a lost cause, and that progressives really need to break away from it and form their own Party. There's a rumor that Twitler is thinking of forming his own Party, and if he does that would be prime time for the progressives to do the same. We the people are really sick of the corrupt status quo in both Parties and would likely welcome and vote for new Parties. That too though is a longer term implementation, but perhaps a necessary one given the hopeless situation of our politics. I'm going to pay more attention to Cornell West, Nina Turner and The People's Party from now on, as they might be right after all.
Bernie: "The only way we are going to raise minimum wage is through Reconciliation"
"Or ending the filibuster." You said it Bernie. Now stick to it.
Cenk: Send your personal message to Bernie
Bernie has always been our champion. Let's give him the courage and fortitude to keep up the good fight. It's our turn to be there for him. #DontKillItBernie
We've had it with the corporacrats in our Party
I remember back when the establishment Dem Party made back-room deals to get last-minute Dem candidate endorsements for Biden and against Bernie, thus sabotaging Bernie's campaign and putting a lid on progressive hope. Nevertheless, we progressives said that Biden was better than the fascist Twitler so we went along with the proviso that we would hold Biden's feet to the fire for progressive reform.
And now that we're doing it, and even in some cases necessarily pressuring the progressives to keep up their part of the bargain, we're once again being told that we must just accept the status quo, go along to get along, again being fed the empty promises that the Party will come along, don't worry. We just ain't buying that anymore. We're over the Stockholm syndrome you laid on us. If you don't fight for us we will not vote for you again.
You think the Parliamentarian would stop the Repugnacons?
Of course not. Granted their goals and values are despicable but you have to give it to them that they will fight tooth and nail to get what they want. Meanwhile the Dems 'might' have their heart in the right place but do not have any fight in them when they encounter the least resistance from the fascists. What a sad, sick situation.
Former CPAC Chair doesn't recognize his Party
Mickey Edwards had this to say:
"The Republican party really no longer stands for any kind of principles, conservative or otherwise. The party seems now to be completely following the lead of one man wherever he goes, which is the definition of a cult. Now all that matters is, ‘Trump is for this, we’re for this.’ And that includes denying truth, denying fact, denying reality. It’s such a disconnect from what’s really happened in the world. [They] are living in an alternate reality in which facts don’t matter, the Constitution doesn’t matter."
CPAC stage design a coincidence?
This FB post doesn't think so.
"Many folks may be unaware, but it’s a matter of public record that members of registered White supremacist hate groups have a long history of involvement in CPAC. That said, this year’s stage is a chilling, and hopefully sobering reminder of the seriousness of the exponential explosion of hate group activity fomented by Trump.
"Quite literally, the actual stage at the event is a particularly infamous Nazi symbol, as evidenced in the photo below. If you think it was an accident, you are a fool.
"If even now you still have doubts about the fact that the political right has been overrun by White nationalist psychopaths, you are dangerously ignorant.
"The insurrection of the Capitol was orchestrated by a cadre of fascist hate groups, including the Proud Boys, the Three Percenters, QAnon, the Oath Keepers, Rise Above, the Boogaloo Bois, and neo-Nazis, among others, directed by Donald Trump’s inner circle of White nationalists, including Steve Bannon and Roger Stone, on his behalf.
"Make no mistake; the insurrection wasn’t the end of the fascist takeover of the GOP... it was the beginning. The brazen act of designing the stage at CPAC in the shape of an infamous Nazi symbol was a statement. A statement confirming who is in charge, and daring critics to say otherwise.
"Like it or not, fascist right wing extremists such as Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Jim Jordan, Ron Johnson, Lindsey Graham, and Madison Cawthorn, aren’t the fringe of the GOP, they are in charge.
"Across the board, all of the GOP politicians that voted their conscience, after the President of the United Stated orchestrated the deadly insurrection at the Capitol, have been under attack from the their own party.
"This is nothing less than an existential crisis for the state of the nation. When interviewed, critics of Hitler and the Nazi regime overwhelmingly asserted that their single biggest regret was that they didn’t fight harder against the rise of the Nazi Party while they still could.
This is that moment for the US. Don’t normalize or minimize what is happening. Keep living your life, but don’t stop fighting fascism in whatever way your heart and head tells you to."
Why is Biden fighting for Tanden and not increasing the minimum wage?
Excellent question. Sirota has some relevant and insightful comments. Reasons which, of course, are why we hate the establishment and why Twitler was elected in the first place. And why we're going right back there again because the establishment Democrats simply cannot understand this.
"The motives here are unstated but obvious: nobody in either party or in the Washington media wants to center Tanden’s nomination on her actual record, because if that record becomes disqualifying for career advancement in Washington, it could set a precedent jeopardizing the personal career prospects of every creature slithering through the Washington swamp.
"Indeed, if corruption, mismanagement, bullying, union busting and let-them-eat-cake-style austerity ideology are suddenly perceived negatively, then all the real-life Veep characters in Washington – the politicians, operatives and media elites who’ve spent their whole lives angling for fancy White House titles – could be out of luck.
"Appreciating the power of this tribal motivation is crucial, because it accounts for why Democrats seem to be spending as much or more political capital on trying to rescue Tanden’s nomination than on enacting policies to rescue Americans from an economic disaster. That’s no overstatement: the White House has signaled it is working the phones and pulling out all the stops for the OMB nominee at the very same time the administration is signaling a potential pre-emptive retreat on the minimum wage and a willingness to limit promised survival checks."
AOC: Why we need the Green New Deal
She makes perfect sense to anyone with any sense. I can see why it makes no sense to Repugnacons. It's why we must not compromise with but defeat them if we really want to heal our planet and help our people.
Cenk on the wage hike taken out of Reconciliation Bill
He reiterates the same points I've been talking about the last few days. The Parliamentarian has no power to take it out, it's the Senate's Presiding Officer, Harris, who makes the decision. And yet the Democrats are giving up without a fight. Even Bernie is using it as an excuse to remove it from the Bill, as that is within his power at Chairman of the Budget Committee. Cenk recommends four steps to challenge this.
1. Pressure Bernie to keep it in the Bill and force a vote fight. Go to this address to sign the petition: https://tyt.com/petitions/dontkillitbernie.
2. If it stays in than the Presiding Officer, Harris, will have to decide. So next we pressure her.
3. If by some miracle she does then a Repug has to make an objection, which will require 60 votes to overrule Harris.
4. However, Moscow Mitch could then ask for a majority vote to break the filibuster in step 3. This would force all the Repugs, including Dems Manchin and Sinema, to break their vow to retain the filibuster showing that they are shallow hypocrites.
Doing these steps then put the opponents of the wage hike on the defensive and forces their hand, and if they cave and kill the filibuster it's the long-term win where we have a much better chance of passing not only the minimum wage but a host of other progressive policies on a majority vote. If the Repugs don't challenge our filibuster and let it remain in the Bill we might lose anyway if Manchin and Sinema choose to vote against the whole Bill. But standing strong and using every tool to fight for we the people will only strengthen our resolve to keep voting for them. If they fail to take any of the above steps then once again we the people know their words are empty, that they won't fight for us, and they lose our votes. It's up to we the people now to write and call in masses to apply the pressure. Let them know they fight for us or we don't fight for them.
Twitiot plot revealed to blow up the Capitol
And now with Moscow Mitch backing Twitler again this is apparently just what he wants.
"Far-right extremists are threatening to 'blow up' the U.S. Capitol during President Biden’s State of the Union address in hopes of killing dozens of members of Congress, a top security official told lawmakers on Thursday."
Moscow Mitch is back to fascism
Or rather he's always been fascist but now he's back to admitting it again. And proving his apparent rebuke of Twitler was as usual just lying spin. McTurtle is now saying he'd back Twit again if he's the Presidential nominee in 2024. Meaning of course his fascism lost the first time and they want to try again. And there is certainly no doubt that Twit is dropping any pretense of going full fascist next time. So too is the Repugnacon Party.
Daily Poster: VP Harris can overrule Parliamentarian but won't
Sirota reports that Harris has the power according to a memo circulating on Capitol Hill but White House Chief of Staff Klain already said they will not overrule the Parliamentarian: "Certainly that’s not something we would do. We’re going to honor the rules of the system and work within that system to get this bill passed." Which is weird that they will honor one Senate rule to eliminate the wage hike but ignore another rule where it would put the hike in the Bill. Honestly I'm sick of the same old from Democrats who claim to be on our side but refuse to fight for us.
Senate Parliamentarian ruled NO on $15 minimum wage in Reconciliation
According to this article now supporters of the wage hike need 60 votes to overrule the Parliamentarian, thus giving cover for Democrats to cower. But that is not true damn it. As noted previously and verified, the President of the Senate can overrule the Parliamentarian since the latter only advises the former who has the actual authority. In that case then 60 votes are needed to overrule the President, and the opposition does not have the votes for that.
Do not accept this fake excuse that this issue is over. We demand that the Democrats use the above Senate rule to get this wage increase in Reconciliation. And if they do not then it's time to replace them, for they have the power to do it and if they won't do it now their verbal support is empty and quite frankly insulting. No excuses: DO IT!
Even if we get the wage hike in, we might lose the majority vote on the Bill. But that would put extra pressure on both Manchin and Sinema to scrap the entire Bill and are they willing to do that? I think if we get it in the Bill then we can apply enormous pressure on both of them to pass the entire Bill, given the severity of the need for it right now.
Gone Insane
1980. Funny how one who perceives things more clearly can be labeled insane because we just don't want to accept those insights.
Behind the reaction to accountability
From this FB post:
"Do you really not believe cancel culture exists?"
I don't believe it exists *as portrayed by bigots and the people trying to shield them from accountability*
My biggest annoyance of this whole thing is the refusal of these people to define any of the terms. It seems to me that "cancel culture" is an almost completely amorphous concept that is exactly as broad or as narrow as the complainers need it to be.
Was the anti-communist freakout of yesteryear "cancel culture?"
Are the decades-long efforts of the Israeli apartheid state and its American lemmings to criminalize and brutalize criticism of Israeli government policy "cancel culture?" Not if you ask
Reason Magazine
.Is my entire life having the music I listen to and the games I play being threatened with censorship by social conservative creeps "cancel culture?"
When the John Birch Society got a Doors concert canceled in Ohio in the 70s, imbuing my mom with a lifelong hatred of JBS, was that cancel culture?
Or is the right just upset that now they're the ones whose views our culture has (ever so slowly) turned against?
If "cancel culture" means a culture where people who say bigoted things are at risk of being fired or boycotted or deplatformed or otherwise peacefully ostracized, then sure it exists. And it's welcome. People should be held accountable for the bigoted things they say. I consider this a marked improvement over the list of reasons conservatives have been canceling people for generations.
If "cancel culture" means a grand conspiracy to make it impossible for conservatives and libertarians to express themselves, then no I don't think that exists. It exists only insofar as conservatives and libertarians can't express themselves without saying horrid things about entire groups of people based on arbitrary characteristics.
If you can't beat 'em, cheat 'em
It's the Repugnacon way. Wake the f___ America, they hate you and will do everything in their power to suppress you for a buck.
"After record turnout in 2020, Republican-controlled states appear to be in a race to the bottom to see who can pass the most egregious new barriers to voting. According to a new analysis by the Brennan Center for Justice, 253 bills to restrict voting access have been introduced in 43 states already this year. Georgia is ground zero for the GOP’s escalating war on voting, targeting the voting methods that were used most by Democratic voters in 2020 and which contributed to flipping the state blue and electing two Democratic senators."
A (De)Joy to get rid of DeToy
The PostBastard was defiant in Congressional hearings, telling legislators TFB that you don't like me but I'm staying "so get used to it." Not so fast wanker. Biden filled the three empty seats on the PO Board, thus giving it a majority of those likely to oust him. The new three are a former Deputy Postmaster General, a former general counsel of the American Postal Union and a mail voting advocate. Buh bye you corporate toy.
PostBastard De Toy not worried
About getting fired through the mail because he'll never get it. He was specifically hired to make the PO work as badly as possible to provide justification for privatizing it. He and the PO Board that hired him must all be fired, and quickly Joe.
Mud in the Gutter
~1975. This is the first song I ever wrote. And it is a short one. I was living in The Vault, an apartment above a bank, with some musicians. I decided to pick up a guitar and learned to play at least some chords to go with the lyrics and melody.
Joy Gray: Tanden defense abuses sincere identity issues
She breaks down the pathetic manipulation of identity by Tanden defenders. Joy Gray certainly finds identity to be legitimate, but not in Tanden's case since her entire career is about destroying those marginalized identity protections which she claims helped her. Same goes for her defenders, trying to deflect away from Tanden's actual and atrocious history of corporate corruption. A tactic, btw, Biden also uses to defend his other horrific Cabinet picks: "Yeah but they're black or women." Sure, but also corporatists hell bent on destroying democratic protections for money.
Casey Bishop auditions on American Idol
Her first song was Motley Crue's Live Wire. So Katie asks her to sing some soul, so she then sings some Sarah Vaughn. Quite a moving performance for this 15-year old.
Ana of TYT grateful Tanden is being scrutinized
Even if it is by Manchin and Repugs with some progressives ironically dissenting, she'll take this win since it means corporacrat Tanden won't get a job meant for a peoples' representative. Joe ducked fup on this one.
Biden sticking with Tanden
Rising documents all of Tanden's ass-kissing Democratic defenders using misdirecting identity politics, including Biden via his Press Secretary. So why are they still sticking with this corporate lackey when they do not have the votes to get her nomination approved? Bottom line: It's payback for all the money Tanden has raised for the Party, period. Same old corrupt politics that got Twitler elected in the first place and that Biden promised was over. And if you believe that one...
Goddess
1997. This is the opening incantation to a ritual in which I participated. I used the imagery from Wesoterica and the Tarot Major Arcana.
FBI seized Congressional cellphone records
Related to the Capitol attack. This report focuses on the legality of that seizure and not on the fact that this could prove who in Congress conspired with insurrection. The FBI rightly claims that they used emergency powers given the severity of the issue. And we the people want the evidence of who in Congress conspired with this treason so that they can be duly prosecuted under the law.
Why we need to expand the Supreme Corp
Injustice Thomas wrote a scathing dissent in the recent Corp ruling to reject further challenges to PA election cases. He claims that even though there was no proof of voter fraud via mail ballots nonetheless there could have been but it just wasn't detected. Therefore we must eliminate mail-in ballots for most people.
In essence he is supporting Twit's claims that the election was rigged and giving ammunition to Repug State legislatures to ban mail voting. Which, by the way, they are already doing. We simply must expand the Corp to prevent this fascist takeover or we will indeed lose what little democracy we have left.
Ball: What's up with progressives defending Tanden?
In a strange, ironic twist Manchin is the one saving us from Tanden getting Senate approval for the head of the Office of Management and Budget. It's weird though because Manchin is a Corporacrat and they're the ones who typically love Tanden's own corporate ass-kissing.
Weirder still, some progressive voices are now defending Tanden, like the Executive Director of Justice Democrats Rojas who thinks Tanden will go big on progressive issues, and President of NARAL Hogue who claims Tanden is a committed progressive. Seriously, WTF? Krystal explains.
Repugnacon motto
No to government regulations. Yes to government bail outs. They really are despicable and yes, evil.
"Texas Republicans will use federal funds to help pay exorbitant energy bills hitting ordinary Texans after a deep freeze crippled the state this week."
Supreme Corp: Twitler must provide tax info
To the Manhattan District Attorney. This is how you convict a mob boss. Twit is going down for tax crimes and I can't wait.
"The Supreme Court on Monday rejected former president Donald Trump’s last-chance effort to keep his private financial records from the Manhattan district attorney, ending a long and drawn-out legal battle."
Key difference with Repugnacons
Imagine that: Raising money to help others and actually give it to them.
Contrapoints: J.K. Rowling's trans bigotry
Excellent breakdown of the indirect kind of trans bigotry exemplified by Rowling. It's a complex and lengthy video but well worth the time to understand much of the broader bigotry hiding behind claims for free speech and against political correctness and cancel culture.
"Indirect bigotry manifests as 'concern' or 'debate' about a host of proxy issues. It's often defensive in tone rather than offensive. Frequently the claim is that a once needed liberation movement has now gone too far, that it's now the activists who are the new oppressors, who are disturbing law and order with violent and chaotic protests, who are victimizing and silencing innocent people by calling the bigots. Who are infiltrating the media and replacing good old-fashioned entertainment with politically correct propaganda [...] because cancel culture is out of control and free speech is under attack" (22:02).
Why is even Bernie playing by rigged Senate rules?
Yes, Bernie made a good case that the $15 minimum wage meets the requirements of the Byrd Rule so that it can be in the Reconciliation Bill. But why are Democrats, including Bernie, accepting the Byrd Rule in the first place when they can easily overrule it? And why is TYT just accepting it as necessary too?
They instead need to report on how we override the Byrd Rule to get what we want in a Reconciliation Bill. The Parliamentarian only advises the President of the Senate. The latter can overrule that advice. In that case it requires 60 Senators to overrule the President's decision and they don't have the votes. It's time for Dems to play legislative hardball. Why they are not in this case is indefensible.
BTW: The conservative National Review even acknowledges that this procedure is part of Senate Rules. But they claim that it would be atrocious to use it to overrule Byrd. This hypocrisy is ludicrous since the Repugs have made a mockery of any Senate rule that gets in their way to what they want.
SNL: Loco
Ego Nwodim's song about how quarantine is driving us all loco. It's about time they're giving her some prime time on the show.
Is Biden's renege on deportations unifying?
Biden's spiel is on the promises he made to achieve unification. So what about this broken promise? Do we just let it pass with the excuse of not rocking the Democratic Party boat because they profess unification? Hell no. We progressives hold him to his promises and if he can't keep them we vote him out too.
See the ACLU's full statement here.
Defining a developed nation
A key in the transition away from rampant fossil fuel use is public transportation, and preferably electric at that. This meme highlights a difference in cultural norms about how we define ourselves in that regard.
Research paper: Fossil fuels caused 8.7 million deaths in 2018
According to this paper published in Environmental Research (2021) as discussed in this article. This is the very definition of genocide yet we're conditioned not to see that reality because it's just the cost of doing business. We must wake up and demand that our governments aggressively take up renewable energy and quickly phase out fossil fuels. These unnecessary and intentional deaths are simply not acceptable in any humane society.
"Air pollution caused by the burning of fossil fuels such as coal and oil was responsible for 8.7m deaths globally in 2018, a staggering one in five of all people who died that year, new research has found. Countries with the most prodigious consumption of fossil fuels to power factories, homes and vehicles are suffering the highest death tolls, with the study finding more than one in 10 deaths in both the US and Europe were caused by the resulting pollution, along with nearly a third of deaths in eastern Asia, which includes China. Death rates in South America and Africa were significantly lower."
The real cancel culture
As usual Repugnacons hide behind what they accuse others of doing. You'd think their followers would catch on by now. Unless of course they too are excited by totally eliminating any and all threats to their fascist agenda. Bingo!
AOC volunteers at Houston food bank
This is what a real representative of the people sounds like. Quite the contrast with Texas government, eh? Note that this aid is going to anyone who needs it, no questions asked. No means testing or other ineffective austerity BS standing in the way.
New study refutes Biden's student debt excuse
See this post as preface. The study notes that it's predominantly low and lower-income communities that have the most student debt and would benefit the most from some debt forgiveness. The higher income brackets going to Harvard and Yale are miniscule to non-existent for such debt. What's your next fake excuse Joe?
"Because low- and lower-middle income communities see the worst debt-to-income ratios, they would see the largest portion of their income freed up through student debt forgiveness. Young adult borrowers in low- and lower-middle income communities would receive an outsized share of forgiveness in aggregate dollars compared to middle- and upper-income communities."
AOC on absurd Corporacrat excuses
She makes a mockery of Biden's (and the Corporacrats') excuse for not forgiving $50,000 of student loan debt because the wealthy will get it too. The wealthy don't need it because few if any of them have any student debt, so it's an excuse to cover their overly complicated austerity and deficit hawkery farce they share with Repugnacons.
AOC helps Texans while Repugacons make excuses
While the Repugs are busy laying false blame to others for their own mismanagement of their energy grid, AOC was busy raising more than $1 million to help struggling Texans affected by this disaster. Remember that Texans when it comes time to vote again.
"Announced on Twitter early Thursday evening by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), the grassroots fundraising campaign brought in more than $1 million in a matter of hours—all of which, according to the New York Democrat, will go to The Bridge Homeless Recovery Center, Ending Community Homeless Coalition (ECHO), Family Eldercare, Houston Food Bank, Feeding Texas, and other local groups assisting Texans during the ongoing emergency."
Complexity is not always the answer
Tom Murray [1] makes the point that complexity isn’t the answer to everything. It has it place and usefulness but to make it the keystone that holds together everything else creates problems. Following are some examples from the US political system, where for liberals complexity is indeed the Philosopher’s Stone.
Sirota [2] gives a history lesson on complexity and the Democrats. They went from a Party protecting labor with simple framing on fairness and universalism with programs like social security, Medicare and public education to fetishizing “best-and-brightest technocrats and business neoliberals whose obsession with hair-splitting precision and corporate fealty ended up fetishizing ever-more complex means testing while largely accepting tax inequity.” This resulted in a “byzantine maze of complexity, paperwork and bureaucracy” that threw universal fairness out the window and let white collar and corporate criminals off the hook. It’s a stark lesson that complexity is far from the answer to everything. And in many cases it makes real-life situations far worse when simple solutions could do the job equitably. It’s a lesson elite Democrats should learn but cannot given their obsessive worship of the ever spiraling shibboleth of complexity.
Thomas Frank [3] makes a similar point. He discusses the meritocracy of the professional class and why it has consistently failed the American people. Frank is not opposed to expertise per se, just the orthodox meritocracy that is defined by establishment standards. He compares them to some of the experts of FDR’s administration. While some of them did indeed have some more establishment credentials, many were mavericks that challenged the establishment’s policies as well as what the very term expertise meant. It was more an expertise of the streets rather than the ivory towers, one that came from living the life of the people rather than the privileged life of the professional class. So under the professional liberal meritocracy their social class always does quite well. The rest of us not so much.
In Frank’s Frank’s book Listen Liberal [4] it is interesting to note that the liberal shift to expertise and complexity with the McGovern Commission sets a sociological background for key elements of the AQAL movement. Complexity came to be valued for its own sake. But it was a complexity that dissociated from its foundations in that the highly educated professions came to look down on the working class as deserving of their fate because they weren’t educated or smart enough. It was a dissociation from its ‘base,’ so to speak.
This was further supported by the ideology backing the professional class, with language of superior states like absolute reason or the soul being elevated beyond the mortal coil of toil and degradation. E.g., false reason in Lakoff’s terms. We can see this same dynamic in AQALingus as well, a top-down cream of the crop leading us lower level humans to the promised land not by making our material conditions better (how crass) but by selling us an ideology that will transform how we perceive and interpret those conditions. Thing is, those conditions have only gotten worse since this ‘liberal enlightenment’ of the upper classes.
Bill Clinton was a significant player in this shift to the neoliberal center. Back then documents even proudly used the neoliberal label. It was a conscious acceptance that the status quo was just fine. And that what was necessary was for individuals to be educated in new skills for the new corporate/information economy. There was no questioning the inherent inequalities or corruption in that system. Consequently, if one didn’t pursue the requisite education then their lot was their own fault. There was no analysis of how the system was rigged against such attainment. Even back then in Clinton’s first administration Robert Reich signed on to this canard. Obviously Reich has since changed his tune.
Another key fact is that Clinton talked like he still supported the working class to get their votes. But his policies per the above ideological shift in the Party were quite to the contrary. We can reasonably assume his wife, Hillary, was privy to and in agreement with this shift, since she has a record in the Senate and as Secretary of State supporting this inference. And she too, like her husband, is spinning the worker rhetoric yet coming from the same neoliberal, corporate view that dominates the establishment Dems. As but one example, her cronies on the Dem platform committee refused to support a plank that would guarantee a rejection of the TPP.
In this [5] interview Frank starts by saying that the Democratic Party still will not accept his analysis of why they lost so many elections. He then discusses how media like the Washington Post, mouthpiece of the Party, refuses to even broach certain topics like what Sanders promoted: single-payer healthcare, free college, renegotiating the trade deals, questioning globalization etc. You know, routine progressive ideas that the majority of Americans support. The Party just won’t hear it. Hence their so-called Better Deal is the same rehashed corporatism with empty promises that throws a few meatless bones to the masses.
Like Tom advises, we need to use complexity where it is applicable and beware of using it where it is not. Like the obsessed Democrats above we can muck things up by imposing complex solutions where a simple screwdriver does the trick. The wisdom is in knowing the difference.
Notes
1. https://www.perspegrity.com/papers/MM_Reader_chap_Murray.pdf
2. https://www.dailyposter.com/p/reminder-this-never-ends-well
3. https://www.youtube.com/watch?reload=9&v=a9reU6RdD_M&fbclid=IwAR3vzVSk2EbDXeX98xzG-H7Gev_P1LdMY7L-rTEWw1VSdgYq2fFUdVyfNEg
4. Frank, T. (2017) Listen Liberal. Picador: New York.
5. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gqvpePm_yiI&fbclid=IwAR05F-4iC-vLBdTX6MxrTbOlax93YJa6xElwzd9VSk5X3eVxUQb96Io-8c0
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Songs, lyrics, poems
Songs, lyrics, poems and other writing/media
Here are about a dozen songs I've recorded at YouTube.* And this link is to my lyrics and poems folder at Google docs, mostly from my ...
