Sanders-021507-18335- 0004
A self-identified socialist won 22 states.
He did FAR, FAR better than any left-wing candidate has in years. Yes, he lost, but he showed very clearly that the country IS changing.
He won super-majorities of young people.
The model under which I have been operating for some time, following Stirling Newberry, is that the US doesn’t have a real chance at change until 20-24, because older cohorts need to die and younger cohorts need to replace them.
I am uninterested in “convincing” most people who voted for Clinton of anything. They are not reachable. To reach them, a candidate like Bernie would have to compromise himself so far that he couldn’t do the right things upon getting into office.
This is not the 2000s or 90s. This is not the age of compromise. The fruits of neoliberalism, neoconservatism, and oligarchy are being reaped; the youngsters have now grown up and never known a good economy. Many barely remember a time when the US wasn’t at war.
Clinton or Trump will have their time. There will be another socialist candidate and another, whether called that or not. Odds are that either fascism or socialism will win the US. The conditions in the US make that most likely.
As for Clinton supporters, they won. That is reasonable. Most Democrats did want Clinton. More Republicans did want Trump–and most Independents (now the most left-leaning group in America) wanted Sanders.
The Democrats are the conservative party right now. They are about the status quo: Keep neo-liberaling, keep bombing and invading brown people’s countries, keep shoveling money to the rich.
Republicans under Trump are the right-wing populist party.
Clinton supporters were not Sanders to win, because Sanders could not be Sanders and win them.
Most of the worst catastrophes are already locked in. Acidification of the oceans, loss of essentially all fish stocks, far worse climate change than the current consensus models, and the rise of fascism, men-on-horseback, and radical leftists.
The time to cut that stuff of was the 2000s. Obama was the last chance, and Obama chose to bail out oligarchs.
So now we play it out. But Bernie has been a hopeful sign, a sign that the youngs have had enough. Whether they will stay that way, we will see. But I think they will, because they have little choice: They are not the children of prosperity like the Boomers–their backs are against the wall. They win, or their lives are garbage. Those are the stakes for them.
So we wait, and we see. But Bernie lost in a genuinely hopeful way, showing that a socialist is now viable in the US and that young people are massively against the status quo.
That matters.
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Ivory Bill Woodpecker
I think I finally understand Ian and his fellow radicals here.
IF we are irremediably careening toward apocalypse(s), then radical politics makes sense, and may be the only kind of politics which makes sense.
Only time will tell if that assessment is correct.
Ian Welsh
We aren’t necessarily heading towards apocalypse (though we might be). We are inevitably heading to catastrophes.
However, yes. Understand clearly, I spent a number of years trying to convince Democratic elites to change policies to cut this stuff off. I was /reasonable/.
And by this I don’t mean outside screaming in, I mean direct influence of important insiders.
I was not the only one.
It did not work.
The door is closed. The stuff that is going to happen is now almost all “locked in”. It’s just too late to stop most of it with moderate policy changes.
Shh
Not sure why a preference for creating a society that has wide spread social benefits that account for and are supportive of life’s many phases as its core objective is such a radical idea. Never got that. It’s simply unfathomable to me why this is remotely difficult to agree on conceptually.
But since en mass we clearly prefer short-sighted, self defeating egoist victories over anything resembling “reasonable” doctrines, there’s little to do really. It is very encouraging to note that fate is passing again into the hands of the young and, baby boomer that I am, perhaps sucking down another 30 years of the good life at the expense of, well, everything, needs to be re examined.
One only needs remember that behind every luxury there is a cartful of atrocities. The question no one’s asking is: Am I really worth it, or do I just flatter myself?
Of course, the system of economics is not the same thing as the system of government, unless you’re one of the plutocracy.
Hugh
I understand Ron’s comment expressed in the last thread because Sanders as sheepdog for the corrupt Establishment party structure Clinton represents or as final, ineffectual gesture of a once rebel, now old pol on his way out was always there. It still is. But something happened, probably as much to Sanders’ surprise as anyone else’s, between where he started and where we are now. Like Trump, he tapped into some of the massive discontent in this country. We may be treated like rubes, but we are not rubes. A majority of people may not have a real clear idea of what is wrong or how to fix it, but they do know something is drastically, terminally wrong in the country. It is here that I agree with Bruce Wilder. People needed a compelling narrative: how we got here, who was responsible, where we go from here, and why we should care. Sanders did not do this. He didn’t totally ignore it, but what we got from him were a few good ideas here and there and bits and pieces of a narrative. He never tied it all together though. To do that, he would have had to run and run loudly against the corruption of the Democratic party, not just Debbie Wasserman Schultz, but the thoroughly rigged process, the grifter Clintons, the black misleadership class, and of course, Obama.
He would have had to look black Americans in the eye and ask them, “What did getting the first black American President get you? What did Barack Obama actually ever do for you? Are your neighborhoods safer or have they turned into shooting galleries? Do you have better jobs now? do your children? Do you see a clear path to a better future for them and you?”
And he could have looked to women and made the same argument: “If having the first black President didn’t help black people in this country, why do you think having the first woman President will help you?”
Much of Hillary’s support came from older Americans. These are people for whom the New Deal program of Social Security and the last of the great New Deal inspired programs Medicare (under Johnson) brought a certain level of comfort and security. These are people who have always voted Democratic because for them the Democratic party is still the party of the New Deal. Sanders needed to tell them the modern Democratic party is not the Democratic party you remember and grew up with. It is the party of Wall Street and Hillary Clinton is the candidate of Wall Street. They made her rich. She represents them, not you. And if you think your Social Security and Medicare are safe, then think again. The moment they can, they will take as much of it away from you as they can. How do I know this? because they have already started, raising the retirement age and making the bridging coverage on Medicare more expensive. And they will continue. Finally think of your children. Hillary and the Democrats no longer even pretend that your children will ever have what you had. Why do you think your kids are supporting me?
The truth is you cannot run a revolution by halves. You are either in or out. This is the fatal, and some like Ron would say deliberate, flaw in the Sanders’ campaign. I would say that Sanders still has some options. He can wait until the convention and see if Clinton’s candidacy doesn’t implode from the FBI’s investigation. I don’t expect an indictment because both Clinton and Obama will do everything they can to smother one, but I think pre-convention leaks are likely. I also think that if Trump can simply avoid shooting himself in the foot so often (it’s a given he will be unnecessarily and stupidly offensive fairly regularly), the polls will tighten and he could even pull ahead at which point there could be a lot of buyer’s remorse with Hillary. These are, however, unlikely to derail Clinton’s already damaged candidacy. So we are left with what will Sanders do at and after the convention. And there the choice is stark. If he wishes to remain true to his supporters, he cannot in any way, shape, or how endorse Clinton. He could either release his supporters without formally endorsing Clinton, making clear he does NOT support Clinton, he could come out openly against her and advise his supporters to do likewise, or he could start a third party run. All these options are important because Clinton cannot win the Presidency without Sanders’ voters, no matter how much she wished she could.
On the other hand, if Sanders endorses Clinton, no matter what the rationale, lesser evil whatever, this would be a betrayal of his supporters and validate the Black Agenda Report and Ron’s view of Sanders as sheepdog. But with this difference: while such an endorsement would discredit Sanders, I figure at best only about half of his supporters would kowtow to TINA and vote for Clinton. The rest would either out right reject her, vote Trump or third party, or find something else to do election day. If Sanders did not endorse Clinton, I think a lot of his supporters would feel sanctioned by his action and withhold their support as well, and Clinton would lose the election, even to a fumbling loudmouth like Trump.
I write all this as a non-Sanders supporter. My own view, which I have expressed often enough, is that a vote for any Democrat and any Republican is a vote for more of the same because no matter how you cut it, you are still voting for one of these two parties and that is what they stand for. And more of the same is what is killing our country.
(I will post this here and in the following thread asking your pardon in advance)
Hugh
Shh, it is called class war. It turns people upside down and inside out. It gets them railing against what they want and supporting, whether they like it or not, whether they realize it or not, what is killing them. 2030 pulses blood red in my mind because I figure we have only between now and then, not to be talking, not to be starting, but to be firmly along a path dealing with resource exhaustion, environmental destruction, global warming, and overpopulation. Otherwise, it is as Ian is saying, game over. This is why this election year is so crucial. Our window for action is short, and we simply don’t have the time to wait out the dilatory disasters of a Trump or Clinton Presidency.
Jeff Wegerson
Sanders can support Clinton in word but work, not against her, but against everything she stands for in both word and spirit. That will effect those willing to vote lesser evil to do so. That will be enough for Clinton to win. Sanders meanwhile educates his followers in strategic voting and polling analysis, something likely many are not aware of. My own daughter, for instance, “but what if too many switch to a Jill Stein in our state?” It very much tends to show up in the polling, I reminded her.
But what happens to Sanders and his reputation because of his choices going forward in this election are not important. The mechanics of his campaign fund-raising remains for more and new socialists and social democrats waiting in the wings. Yes, now matter what he does next will encourage some and disappoint others.
I agree with the notion that his run has, on the whole, been encouraging for the future of the U.S.
wendy davis
I’d try to make a comment similar to this weeks ago, but it never made it out of moderation, apparently. Sanders is not a socialist, but a democratic socialist, meaning a capitalist reformer, imo.
He’s also on record as saying that the US should have the largest military on earth, being fine with Obama’s (Terror Tuesday) Kill List (just a wee less bugsplat, please), and that the Saudis ‘should get their hands dirty to fight ISIS’ (OMG); favors a sorta different kinda NATO (no specifics), and all that jazz. He favors R2P interventions if necessary (how did any of those work out?).
As far as I know, his climate change thingie on his website, never mentioned that in the US of A, the two largest carbon footprints are the military and factory farming.
A socialist would at least call for federalizing the Fed (he hasn’t), even Stein has. I’ll wait for a global revolution (which won’t start here), and abjure voting for a Prez candidate, and wit for an actual socialist. I reckon he’ll make some deal when he meets with Obama tomorrow, but we won’t likely know what it was for some time.
Oh, and many blacks srsly believe that Bubba Clinton was the first black Prez, thanks to Toni Morrison.
https://berniesanders.com/democratic-socialism-in-the-united-states/
He’s FDR without the wobblies and other unions agreeing to withhold strikes for ‘the war effort’; he tossed working folks some…social safety nets.
@ Hugh: I didn’t disagree with Ron’s polemics, myownself.
Tony Wikrent
Shh and Hugh – Hugh is absolutely correct: it is class war. I would add that there are very precise names that can be given to those who have waged class war: Irénée du Pont and the American Liberty League; Ludwig von Mises, Friedrich von Hayek, Max Thurn, Milton Friedman and the Mont Pelerin Society; the Volker Institute; Richard Mellon Scaife; David and Charles Koch; and so on: the whole right-wing apparatus that has been lavishly funded ever since the right-wing and the rich organized to oppose class traitor FDR and the New Deal.
The other thing I would add is my major complaint about the left: the left dismissed the founders of the American republic pretty much out of hand as rich slave-holders, but the fact is that they understood quite well the danger of the rich becoming a new oligarchy, and moreover, wrote about how the culture and the psychology of the population is changed under different forms of government and political economy. Charles Beard was greatly distressed to find that his Economic Interpretation of the Constitution was widely seen and accepted as a Marxist critique, and about a decade later, wrote The Economic Basis of Politics in which he argued that Madison’s and Hamilton’s analysis of human nature and the economic origins of political factions had proven to be more accurate, and far more useful for prescribing policy, than Marx’s or Lenin’s.
One interesting item I read about just this past week: Madison had drawn up a list of amendments to the Constitution he thought necessary. One was to require all Congressmen and Senators to reveal any and all bank stock they owned, and to prohibit their buying, selling, and trading any stock in any financial company while they served in Congress. Btw, George Washington wanted a prohibition on any banker or “stock jobber” serving in Congress at all.
As I have argued in the past, the key question to ask–if you want to truly know who your enemy is–how did we get from those ideas of Madison and Washington, to today’s bankster dictatorship? That’s why I think it important to add the list of villians to Hugh’s observation.
TRV
“You’re Satan, aren’t you?”
Hugh
I agree with Tony Wikrent. Agency is important, and the naming of names.
As for Sanders finessing Clinton, haven’t we had enough of 11-dimensional chess? What is so hard about simply standing up for what you believe in and letting the chips fall where they may? I am pretty much at a point where it’s show me results or your blood on the floor. All this pay “lip service to” then work against is from the Hill and Bill playbook, and how has that worked out for any of us? If Sanders supports Clinton, he utterly discredits himself, end of story. “I am against shit sandwiches, but this one is good for you.” Yeah, that’ll sell. Seriously, he has a duty to his supporters, not to Clinton, not to the Democratic party. I said above, he could release his supporters and tell them to act according to their consciences, but even that is a kind of a cop-out. The only way he can keep his credibility and integrity intact is if he declares outright that he cannot support Clinton. That it is so hard for us to see this as the only honest path for him just shows how far we all have gone down the rabbit hole.
Katherine Calkin
Thank you so much, Ian. Much to my own surprise, I have been crying all day. We were so close. You have helped me feel a bit better about the future.
reslez
Sanders has always been willing to cut a deal. That’s how he operates in Congress, that’s what I expect to happen now. A certain amount of deal-making and vote-swapping is necessary to accomplish anything at all in a corrupt institution. What matters is whether you compromise on core principles. I have no idea what those are for Sanders. (He draws the line at personal corruption. Compared to his peers that’s a big deal, but beyond than that I couldn’t tell you, I don’t pay enough attention to legislation.)
I expect Sanders to come out of the Dem convention with something. Whatever it is will be less than what most of you would call success. You’ll feel betrayed, etc. You’re ruled by human cognitive bias and hindsight error. You’ll wonder why you forked over $27.
What matters is that we didn’t compromise our core principles. We didn’t vote for evil, and for commoners that’s sometimes the best we can do. That $27 was a monetary vote against Hugh’s shit sandwich. I’d pay a lot more to avoid eating shit.
Participating in a Dem nomination doesn’t make you ritually impure. You can go on to do other things in support of civilization and sanity. Alternatively, go join Ron on the highway overpass and yell obscenities at the drivers. Hey, it’s better than sitting at home.
Carla
@ Hugh, re: “The only way he can keep his credibility and integrity intact is if he declares outright that he cannot support Clinton. That it is so hard for us to see this as the only honest path for him just shows how far we all have gone down the rabbit hole.”
YEAH! Like you, there’s no way I’m voting for ANY Republican or Democrat candidate. I pulled a Green Party ballot in the Ohio primary, as I have ever since Obama educated me in 2009.
Nevertheless, Bernie is the only person in our national political landscape who has retained ANY credibility or integrity. For that reason (and for our collective sake as a “country”) I’d like to see him keep it. But experience tells me it prolly won’t happen. We are, as you note, very far gone.
Bill Hicks
Sorry, but I don’t see Bernie candidacy having any more long term effect than did Occupy Wall Street. The populist right quite obviously has far more energy than does the populist left, partly because there are far more working class white voters than there are young, college educated liberal lefties. Clinton isn’t Thatcher, she’s (if elected) Heinrich Bruning, the last real Chancellor of Weimar Germany.
Troy
“Clinton supporters were not Sanders to win”
Needs a bit of fixing for clarity.
markfromireland
The world is becoming a very strange place when somebody as conservative as me finds himself nodding in agreement with such lefties as Hugh, Tony Wikrent, and Bill Hicks. What’s going on in the US (and elsewhere but let’s stay on topic) at present is open class warfare. It’s is waaaaay past time that American politics had a principled left willing to fight for their interests. Sadly what they’ve got is “liberals” a group who don’t have any principles whatsoever just attitudes.
markfromireland
@ Troy it just needs an apostrophe.
“Clinton supporters were not Sanders’ to win”
V. Arnold
Hugh
June 8, 2016
“On the other hand, if Sanders endorses Clinton, no matter what the rationale, lesser evil whatever, this would be a betrayal of his supporters and validate the Black Agenda Report and Ron’s view of Sanders as sheepdog. But with this difference: while such an endorsement would discredit Sanders, I figure at best only about half of his supporters would kowtow to TINA and vote for Clinton. The rest would either out right reject her, vote Trump or third party, or find something else to do election day. If Sanders did not endorse Clinton, I think a lot of his supporters would feel sanctioned by his action and withhold their support as well, and Clinton would lose the election, even to a fumbling loudmouth like Trump.”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Yes, good sumary and a hat tip to Ron Showalter.
The one positive of this campaign cycle is the transparency of the rot and corruption for all to see.
Democracy? Not hardly. Kleptocracy with a serving of facism.
Mandos
In your inveighing against “identity politics”, many of you completely fail to see or empathize with how people see threats to their well-being. Case in point:
https://twitter.com/jocastlemiller/status/740575041750867968
NLK
@mandos
Aw, poor widdle Clinton supporters are too intimidated to talk about how they want to bomb innocent brown people into pink mist, and sell the country to the corporations. Call the WAAAAAHMBULANCE! Does baby want their bah bah?
Mandos
And that is why you fail.
Mandos
I mean, not only must people do the thing you want, they must also see it the way you see it. Any kind of mass politics, from an electoral perspective, can’t function that way.
scruff
@mandos: I can understand that point of view without agreeing with it. Identity politics is what has told those women that they are in danger, all the time, all from men. It’s a lie, and that the lie has worked to instill fear into those women does not make the lie true. Should we also worry about empathizing with the alt-right who are bitching endlessly about their imagined “white genocide”? No; people who operate from a basis of delusion cannot be reached with normal methods.
Bill H
Sorry, but this is one of those rare occasions where I agree with Bill Hicks. The Sanders support group is going to do no more to destroy the Washington cabal than OWS did to destroy Wall Street.
They will grow older during the next eight years, accumulate more things and more money, also more debt, and will become more in thrall to the status quo.
Mandos
But it’s not identity politics that told them that. The attraction of identity politics is at least partly, if not mostly, that it corresponds to a certain portion of lived experience. 70s second-wave feminists pointed out that very right-wing women were so, because they had essentially the same analysis as radical feminists, but had concluded that they were safer in the home and with a single oppressor.
Now we seem to have made progress: a generation later, we have a lot of female voters who see in Clinton someone who understands crucial aspects of their lived experience, so they can support a centrist and identify as feminists rather than tend towards the previous form of safety.
You, on the other hand, and many others here, regardless of gender, don’t share those fears, and don’t think they’re real. Rather, your concern is about the “fine red mist.” And that someone else has a different priority order, shall we say, is seen by y’all purely in moralistic terms, without empathy, because you decide beforehand who is worthy of empathy before you apply empathy. That thought-pattern doesn’t work, if you want to see change through the electoral process on the schedule you think is necessary.
Ivory Bill Woodpecker
Madoka bless you, Mandos. You have more patience than I.
Also more snark-suppression discipline. 😉
Jill
I felt fear and dread seeing young people and other leftists falling for Bernie, just as they did for Obama in 2008 and 2012. The thousands of people shouting his name over and over in arenas is not a sign of hope, it is the demonstration of the raw power of propaganda at work.
Ordinary people know very well that things are terribly wrong in US society. The problem is we don’t have an accurate analysis of what is going wrong. Instead, constant propaganda brought to you by USG and various Tech corpses aim their poisoned arrows at the people whom they have successfully splintered from each other. On the right, there is one set of lies. On the left, there is another set of lies. Reality isn’t allowed into the mix. Cooking shows and celebrities take up the space around the lies.
Yes, this is a class war. 38,000 jobs “created” in the entire nation of the US last month when even USG’s cooked number says 220,000 is the replacement number? Really, the economy is doing well?
I don’t find hope in Sanders but I do find hope in that despite the best propaganda money can buy people still understand things aren’t working. What will be a hopeful sign is when people overthrow the power of lies in our life. These lies do not explain what is happening, they obscure it. Somehow, we have to break through all the lies. Sanders supporters need to face up to who their own candidate really is. He is one more lie. Just is Trump is one more lie for people on the right.
What we need is truth. That is what will bring down this corrupt system. Truth will allow people to turn towards each other for economic justice. This won’t solve everything, but it will be the beginning of real hope.
Ron Showalter
@ Bill Hicks
I’m glad someone has reiterated the obvious connection between the Bernie-madness, Occupy and right-wing populism b/c if there was MAYBE a lesson for the fake-left to learn it just might be in examining these “events”.
So, what is the obvious connection?
Well, they are ALL fake grassroots movements created/manipulated by TPTB to exhaust/defeat/subdue any vestige of true leftish sentiment/uprising in the US:
Occupy was a domestic “color revolution” type operation led by former Color Revolution leaders to blunt/mollify those angry at the financial thievery of TPTB. Tobin tax in exchange for the theft/looting of TRILLIONS of dollars?!! Stop it you’re making me pee my pants.
The fakeness/astroturf nature of the entire Tea Party movement I believe needs no link.
Similarly, there were many commentators on the Left who stated that Bernie was a sheepdog from the beginning – likewise, Trump is the PERFECT scary monster in this Spectacle cycle – and that principled leftishits shouldn’t be abandoning the hard work they had done in finally getting to the point were they correctly saw the entire US political landscape as nothing more than a stage-show. However, the Spectacle/propaganda was too great – once again, notice the true effectiveness of the TPTB’s system – and the fake-left once again licking its wounds wondering what had happened. Again.
Yep, now, even though a small cadre – if to be believed – of fake-lefties will vote for Trump, the pro-Hillary fake-left has been energized due to the faux-scare BS put into them and they will now ENTHUSIASTICALLY support HRC. It’s gonna be a landslide and – most importantly – hte system has garnered MILLIONS AND MILLIONS of participants to bolster its needed legitimacy. File under Consent of the Governed, Social Contract yatta yatta yatta
Thanks, Bernie!
Ron Showalter
Sorry this was the link about Occupy and Color Revolutions. My html must have been screwed up:
http://www.globalresearch.ca/occupy-wall-street-and-the-american-autumn-is-it-a-colored-revolution/27053
Mandos
Do read what Ron has to say. He is merely taking the logic of many regulars to its proper conclusion.
Ian Welsh
Women are not wrong to think they are in danger from men. I mean the rape stats are about one in six to one in four (attempted or succeeded). That’s damn high.
The issue is not their identification that they have shared interests as women, the issue is bad parsing of who will help them. It isn’t always women, and even if a women is good on women’s issues (Clinton is), she may be terrible on other issues that are important to them.
Bernie is as good as Clinton in feminist issues, better on race issues, and better on economic issues.
But he is a man, and does not, therefore “parse as one of us.”
TRV
June 9, 2016
AGAIN with the scaaaary violent Bernie Bro crap.
Why were exit polls cancelled?
Is ballot stuffing REALLY less plausible than scaaary bro intimidation as a reason for the advance polls missing? Were Hillary supporters afraid that pollsters were really scaaary Bernie Bros in disguise?
Good grief.
TRV
(Not that I substantively disagree with Ron or Jill’s assessment of the Sanders phenomenon, I just couldn’t let that slip by.)
Shh
@ Hugh and Tony Wikrent
“Class warfare” – I both agree and disagree. One the one hand it’s a nice expression for a complicated subject, by the same sword, it’s a a rhetorical blade that has lost its cutting edge. Since America has barely any memory of “class” as a defining cultural characteristic, there are probably better rhetorical devices to use to sway opinion. Said another way…Uhmerkins are too ignorant to know they live under a ruthless caste system, so talking about it in those terms is merely academia.
Tony’s inference to agency is key in my estimation to unbundling much of this. Agency – the force(s) that impel action, or ascribed post hoc to outcomes that likely arise from very complex and unpredictable vectors.
I simply can’t back the idea of “class warfare” having agency as I see agency as implying intent. The Koch Bros ™ may flatter themselves as important agents of conservative causes, but they over estimate their influence, in the same way the Clintoons do, or the parties, or the institutions. But developing a clear understanding of agency is important I think. Those few who may be regarded as ever having personal influence over events are those who understand how to move energy – and by this I’m drawing analogy to martial arts masters who use the Tao to influence the energy of aggression to advantage.
Ron’s much more readable when he’s calm and I think he’s right in his assessment that there overt pysops are part and parcel of the manipulations being played out here, but the problem with cabals is peoples mouths. Large ones simple strain credibility.
Again we’re left with agency. Each of us is moving unconsciously in response to the larger cultural ( I hate this word) zeitgeist, which by definition is a polarized phenomena. Awareness is the only way to rise above it, not polemics, not rhetoric, not impassioned diatribes.
Hugh, you said “This is why this election year is so crucial. Our window for action is short, and we simply don’t have the time to wait out the dilatory disasters of a Trump or Clinton Presidency.”
Sadly this was the case when Carter got elected, only we didn’t know it then. The harvest we’re about to reap has precious little to do with the niceties of feminism and racism. A degradation of the West’s conquest of Maslow’s hierarchy is going to refocus energy into more limbic arenas, should we survive at all.
This is why Bernie’s candidacy is important – even if it is by halves – at least it is the half that has some pretense of creating social structures that are not inherently designed to serve the least deserving among us – the banksters, crooks, cronies, sycophants, journalists, “leaders (a laughable term if ever there were one). But it is not nearly enough.
Still I can’t think that blood on the streets and guillotines are a solution to anything.
Jill
TRV,
I don’t subscribe to identity politics. Hillary Clinton is a very evil person and I would not urge any person of any gender to vote for her for any reason.
As to exit polls: in 2008 Censored Stories, it shows clearly that exit polls were accurate and that the error in votes during the 2002, 2004 elections could not statistically be accounted for. I lived in Ohio at the time. It was the Green party who challenged the vote count. The Democrats walked away from obvious voter disenfranchisement. We did not have the money to address the issue on behalf of voters (unlike the wealthy Democratic party) but I can tell you the fraud was significant and very real.
TRV
I don’t subscribe to identity politics. Hillary Clinton is a very evil person and I would not urge any person of any gender to vote for her for any reason.
Indeed, you and Ron have both made your position crystal clear. I apologize if I seemed to insinuate otherwise–it was not intentional.
TRV
And the solution is systematic persecution of whistle-blowers.
Hugh
Identity politics is just another arrow in the quiver of class war. It is just another tool to keep us divided, and it replaces thinking. You don’t have to pay attention or learn about issues. You just press the lever to vote for the identity. To grifters like the Clintons, it is like waking up in rube-atopia, more marks than they can fleece but boy, will they try.
Jill mentioned the 38,000 jobs created in May and I couldn’t resist the segway into discussing the numbers.
First, it is important to understand that 38,000 number doesn’t exist. It’s not real although it is treated as real and even realer than what actually happened in May. It’s true function is simply to make a prettier line on a graph, and fool us rubes. It is, in fact, a trendline number. What does this mean? Well, if you climb down a thousand foot valley and then climb up the other side, the trendline will tell you that your change on average in altitude was zero. That isn’t what you experienced, but it is what the trendline will tell you. (And then on top of this our idiot pundit class will take this number which is itself a prediction of future economic activity and ponderously opine as to how this number can be used to predict future economic activity.)
Second, 2015 was a worse year for jobs than 2014, and this is even after some very heavy year-end revisions by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Third, February through June marks the period of greatest job creation in the year. (It is actually February to June, but because of the way the BLS collects data, most job losses connected with the end of the school year in May don’t get counted until July.)
Fourth, actual job creation February-April in 2016 was in line with 2014 and 2015. But based on what the BLS thought was a good March and ignoring lots of negative signs in the economy, it projected its trendline to high. This led it to revise the March and April numbers, and reduce May down to 38,000.
Fifth, the total number of nonfarm jobs (government plus private) created in May was 651,000. The number of private sector jobs was even higher 697,000. So why wasn’t this good news? because the number of private sector jobs should have been close to a million. (996,000 in May 2015 and 959,000 in 2014)
So basically the economy tanked in May in what was supposed to be a strong economic month, and even more surprisingly in an election year when the pols normally give the economy a nudge to make it (and them) look better.
reslez
“Identity politics is just another arrow in the quiver of class war.” Like many other things identity politics arose out of urgent needs in a specific place and time. In the 50s and 60s, it made made more sense as a focus because issues of class were not as urgent. Workers had unions and a piece of the pie that increased in step with the economy.
Today, some of the most blatant identity-based oppression has been mitigated (though marital rape was not a crime until the 90s, forced childbirth is a fact on the ground in red states and Black Lives Matter show how partial that success has been). Since the 70s, class issues have been the most important ones facing the majority of the populace. Identity politics has become a sideshow and a distraction, used as an escalator for daughters of the elite and minorities already at the top of the ladder. But plenty of people still remember the bad old days and want them to never return. The worse off the majority becomes, the more inclined they are to lash out at the Other Next Door. And the more frantic those victims become.
Hugh
Shh, a few years ago using a term like “elites” was considered the same way you look at class. “Establishment” was seen as quaint and so sixties. I don’t know your experience, but among a lot of the working class I meet, they have no trouble with either “class” or “class war”. They know they are being had and that it is the elites and the rich who are doing it to them. Even a taboo word like “revolution”, especially among younger people, has little or no shock value.
I think it is important that we use these terms because by using them they get adopted and become mainstream. Our elites might like to equate a class analysis of what is happening to us with Marxism, but this is a charge that just doesn’t stick. I use class because of its explanatory value. I started using it to address a very specific problem. Conspiracy theories just aren’t very credible. Are there smoke filled rooms? Sure, but not enough to coordinate what is happening to us or really describe our experience. Class does. The rich and elites may jockey for advantage and power among themselves, giving the appearance of uncoordinated activity, but when it comes to us, their actions, or rather the effects of their actions, become much more uniform. They are out to screw us. But you may say that many of the rich and elites aren’t conscious that this is what they are doing. This is a big problem for conspiracy theorists, but in a class analysis, it’s no big deal. It doesn’t matter that much what the rich and elites tell themselves. What counts is what they do. That elites by definition are supposed to know and be aware of what they are doing, it is after all the justification for their wealth and privileges, simply shows that what they are doing is wrong and even criminal. If someone steals from you, it doesn’t really matter how they justify their theft. It doesn’t matter if they don’t even bother to think of it as theft, it is still theft. And just because they do it over and over and for years and years doesn’t make it less criminal. It makes it more criminal. So yes, class is important. And I have found when I explain it to people this way, they get it.
Ron Showalter
“Still I can’t think that blood on the streets and guillotines are a solution to anything.”
And that’s why nothing will ever change b/c manning the most effective propaganda arsenal in the history of mankind, the US PTB assuredly know that they count on the 99% to acquiesce back into their media/pharma-induced torpor.
Yes, genuine momentary surprises/movements – if they ever occur or have even occurred in the recent past – can make TPTB scramble to adjust the knobs on their control panels/levers but I wouldn’t mistake/confuse a flurry of activity on the part of TPTB with anything remotely resembling worry or fear. IOW, peon-observable PTB activity should not be interpreted as fear or retreat. – e.g., the shakedown/threatening of the gov via TARP and bank bailouts during the last crisis.
No, they know Americans are sedate/sedated and don’t really want to see blood on the streets especially their own.
Side note: if you accept that Occupy was a large psyop then that sure puts the BLATANT and FILMED police-on-peaceful protestor violence – e.g. pepper spray in faces, body slams, screaming, destruction of tech property, etc etc – in a whole new light, huh? Instead of really having to smash the heads/property of ALL protestors nationwide, the jackboot thugs in the US much more efficiently IMO allowed themselves to be filmed at planned/selected locations – with the help actors on the .gov payroll, naturally – engaging the most egregious behavior to send a very effective message to anyone else thinking of joining in. Much similar to the totally faked ISIS head-chopper videos that we were recently inundated with to get us all willing to invade Syria.
scruff
@mandos:
You say “pointed out” as if the claim being made were objective and inarguable, or even as if it were the repetition of of what those right-wing women said about their own lives, situations and conclusions. Maybe it is, I don’t know the source you’re referring to, but I’ve known a lot of right-wing women who would vehemently disagree with that characterization. Actually, I doubt I could find a single woman of any political stance who would agree with it, even among those who had been horribly abused in their marriages. Is it really so hard to believe that women might not consider their husbands their oppressors? It seems a bit more likely to me that when 70s second-wave feminists claim to be telling you about what’s going on in the heads of women who disagree with them, maybe those feminists are imposing their own opinions onto behavior they don’t understand or wouldn’t mirror.
It wouldn’t be the only time that’s happened, either; further down Ian mentions the 1-in-4 to 1-in-6 rape stat claims, which as far as I can tell all derive from Mary Koss’s research in which she denoted sexual activity as rape even when the women being questioned about it did not consider it to have been rape (or attempted rape).
Yes, the attraction of identity politics is as you say. But it is also identity politics which re-imagines marriages as last-ditch efforts to minimize the number of oppressors a woman must deal with, and then convinces you to repeat those characterizations as if they are incontrovertible testimony of those women. That’s too much of a stretch for me; I can’t follow you there.
I think the fears are absolutely real, but I don’t think the dangers are as described. Women are far more worried about being the victims of public-sphere violence than men are, despite that men are far more likely to actually *be* the victims of public-sphere violence. Women seem to be far more worried about being threatened online (as in the image you linked to) than men are, although with the exception of stalking and sexual harassment online harassment targets men and women roughly equally (and primarily skews towards the under 30 demographic, which may not even be all that significant to Hilary’s support base). This is something that identity politics does well and frequently: it takes an aspect of lived experience of a group and exaggerates its prevalence in order to play off of the fear generated by that new perception. Hell, it’s not just identity politics that does this; it’s been happening for the last fifteen years to justify all manner of security-state impositions of surveillance and violations of due process. The problem in both of those cases is that when the dangers are exaggerated and (in the case of identity politics in particular) different groups are characterized as having irreconcilably different interests based on identity markers, the end logical conclusion of *that* perspective is that the only thing left to be done is to war.
Some Guy
Generally agree with this, Ian, but I think – at risk of making a ‘this time is different’ argument, that when you say, “Odds are that either fascism or socialism will win the US. The conditions in the US make that most likely.” – I think you are looking too much to the past.
What I see is more along the lines of Leonard Cohen’s future – ‘Things are gonna slide in all directions. Won’t be nothing you can measure any more’
I’m sure we will try to fit whatever is coming, partly here already, into those boxes, but I think that it is likely to be different than what has come before, mostly due to just being overall less coherent.
Today’s big media story is Clinton tweeting ‘delete your account’ to Trump. Fascism? Socialism? More like chaotic idiocracy with nobody, not even the all powerful all knowing all controlling elite of Ron’s imagination in control.
Tony Wikrent
Hugh – you reply to Shhh is excellent. Reading it, what came to my mind was the first two or three pages of Thorstein Veblen’s The Theory of the Leisure Class, where Veblen observes that the higher classes seek to avoid having to do work. “Manual labour, industry, whatever has to do directly with the everyday work of getting a livelihood, is the exclusive occupation of the inferior class…” Veblen’s schema, unlike Marx’s, allows us to understand class differences in all societies, including so-called “primitive” societies, including feudalistic and hunting and gathering.
TRV
Indeed. It also tends to head off discussion of whether Occupy was on the level to start with–far from “foily” given how transparently absurd its tactics invariably were.