#and the general opinion is that the government is still a centrist-right wing one

[chidoknowshit]

This is how it works in Italy:

On average 9.5 women a month are killed by their exes, partners, husbands and in general the men in their lives

The government refuses to see this as a social problem, denies that our system is deeply entrenched in patriarchy and that equality between genders does not exist in Italy.

Every murder is portrayed as the consequences of the assassin mental health, or in many cases the nationality/religion of the man

The last victim is a young girl of 22 who was kidnapped and murdered by her ex four days before her graduation

This case, justly, creates a sensation because Giulia was young and we all hoped that in the end she would be found alive. But also because both her and her murderer were young, italian, white, from good families and from the North.

During the investigation it emerges that law enforcements dismissed a call of help from a witness who saw the kidnapping. If they'd done their job Giulia might have been found still alive or at least her muderer might not have had the time to escape to Germany.

Giulia's sister, who called out the State and the authorities for their responsabilities in her sister's murder, is depicted by the media at best as a girl destroyed by the pain and unable of rationality because of it and at worst as a satanist and a suspect.

The case creates a shockwave through the public opinion: manifestations all over the country, politicians denouncing violence against women, the Goverment promises changes and everyone wears a red ribbon.

The Government issued a security decree that's completly useless in actually stopping the systemic violence on women

The Government promises a reform in the school to introduce sentimental education (we are one of the few states in Europe that don't have it, also the less said about sexual education in the schools the better) and nominates a commiteee.

In the committee there are: a Nun, a magistrate affiliated with one of the most traditionalist, catholic and backwards parties and finally a leftist politician who advocates for LGBT+ rights

The reform is immediatly tanked because the goverment doesn't want to bring "politics and idealism" into the schools , that's of course referred entirely to the leftist politician. Not the nun.

I am everyday more disgusted and hopeless

[bisexualseraphim]

Really not sure why I’ve got so many 19 year olds in my notes going “LMAO KAMALA HARRIS IS NOT A LEFTIST WHAT PLANET DO YOU LIVE ON”

“Leftist” just means “someone with left-wing politics.” Which Kamala Harris overall has. It does not mean “person who prays nightly to a portrait of Stalin and has a prep bunker for overthrowing the government.”

Like I’m sorry to break it to you all but most people in the real world are not as far on the left as basically everyone on this website. I don’t know if being on here has skewed your views of the political spectrum or what but someone can very much be a leftist without openly advocating for all cops to be hung drawn and quartered in the streets.

So no, Kamala Harris is not a centrist just because she has some opinions which you or I may personally find pretty sour. And also saying “she’s not a leftist she’s a liberal” is redundant because in the modern United States liberalism is generally accepted as a left-wing ideology. There’s a reason people on the right love using “liberal” as an insult.*

(And because so many of you apparently love to put words in my mouth and invent things to get mad at, no, I’m not fucking saying I disagree with far left politics and agree with everything Kamala Harris believes. Have a good night)

*Okay, the people who can’t read have found another way to “um actually” me and seem to think I believe liberals are on the left just because those on the right use it as an insult. Um. No.

Essentially, the world “liberal” in the United States often means something different depending on who is using it. Conservatives think liberals are left-wing. Liberals themselves tend to think they’re left-wing. And those further on the left think liberals aren’t left-wing enough and believe they’re centre-right. It also depends on which type of liberalism is being referred to: there is classical liberalism, traditional liberalism, modern liberalism, social liberalism, neoliberalism, economic liberalism, conservative liberalism, etc. Modern and social liberals are, by definition, left-wing, whereas the others tend to fall closer to the centre or somewhere on the right. The one thing uniting all forms of liberalism is the belief in equality.

However, when discussing liberalism as a whole from a definitive standpoint, the form that is widely accepted to be the one that most are referring to when they talk about liberals in the United States today is modern liberalism, which focuses on equality, personal autonomy and social justice. Modern liberals advocate for access to education, welfare and healthcare, as well as voting rights, reproductive rights and rights for LGBTQ people. In terms of economics, beliefs can differ but since the Obama administration, modern liberals generally believe in higher taxes for the wealthy. Additionally, contrary to the beliefs of those further on the left, modern liberals see state and government as essentials to maintain both equality and order, and see it as the state’s obligation to make sure everyone in society has equal opportunities. Classical liberals, however, believe that although the state is necessary and should exist, it should still have minimal involvement and intervention in the individual’s private actions and beliefs of no harm is being done. This belief that some form of state should exist what makes a lot of leftists detest liberals, since those further on the left commonly reject state and government entirely as opposed to the idea of a state with regulation.

If you apply what I have just listed to Kamala Harris, then yes, she is indeed a liberal, and she is also left-wing. She may not be as far left as many would prefer, and may even hold some beliefs many here might associate more with the centre or the right, but overall she is still both liberal and left-wing regardless. Incidentally, she is recently being described in the media as “the most liberal US senator” (whether that’s true is a separate conversation), and this is in the context of her being the most left-wing.

You can argue whether she’s left-wing “enough”, but the reality is she is more left-wing than the vast majority of major US politicians in history, especially when taking into consideration that the Overton window has shifted to mean that basically anything that doesn’t abide by the GOP is seen as liberal/left by many. Some Republicans are now advocating for Kamala Harris, and that doesn’t suddenly mean it’s because she’s become a fascist; they have simply decided that Donald Trump is just way too far right for them, and they are willing to put differences aside and advocate for someone who promises to try to undo at least some of the damage he has done. (Some people on here could learn from that, ironically.)

Anyway TLDR Kamala Harris is a liberal and that isn’t a bad thing when you consider the fact she follows the most left-wing form of liberalism and the normalisation of fascist ideals in the US means that a liberal government remains ideal for social progression. Also yes some things she said at the DNC and in the CNN interview gave me the ick but she’s still worlds above Donald Trump and you still need to vote for her to keep that genocidal maniac white supremacist far away from the White House. I’m going back to bed now

[aberration13]

Lotta fake progressives and centrists coming out in support of the right wing extremist government of Israel in its effort to do ethnic cleansing.

Even assuming everything is as cut and dry as they claim (it's not) these people are still supporting reprisals against thousands of civilians because there happen to be terrorists there too (again, it's still not that simple).

Imagine if when kyle rittenhouse came from Illinois to do some terrorism in Wisconsin, the state of Wisconsin then decided to use that as an excuse to bomb Illinois, shut off the water and power for everyone in the state, and then started stealing the land and letting people from Wisconsin kick people from Illinois out of their own houses and lay claim to them.

Oversimplified still but that's the general idea of what the Israeli government is doing to palestine/gaza.

And many people, (even people in Israel) are opposed to those horrific actions.

This is not a jewish people vs muslim people issue like the media is making it out to be. This is a highly conservative fascist government colonizing a neighboring region issue while using religion as a justification even against the will of many who are of that faith both living under that government and globally as well.

Many of the harshest critics of the Israeli government are Jewish organizations and claiming that criticizing Israel and or zionism in general is antisemitic is the same as claiming that Israel speaks for all Jewish people and as a result makes anyone who does this guilty of stereotyping Jewish people as a whole; trying to lump a very diverse group of people together under one belief and erasing the politically inconvenient variety of thoughts and opinions held in favor of an ideological monolith that's easier to swallow.

They end up being guilty of the same antisemitism they accuse others of.

[gorey-gorella]

Any chance you'd be willing to share what academics/scholars/trusted sources that have helped you come to your political positioning? I genuinely can not understand how anyone believes in an "enlightened centrism." Based on the U.S.'s right-lean in comparison to other developed countries, the democrats/liberals are already centrists, making centrists/moderates just right-wing. If you truly care about policies like universal healthcare, it makes no sense to align with "centrism" or anything even further right. I would also love for you to provide an example of a "leftist" extremist (I put leftist in quotes because most examples people provide are from the "authoritarian-left" square of the political compass, and seeing as authoritarianism is antithetical to left values, the term leftist is typically reserved for the "libertarian-left" quadrant of the political compass—granted the compass is not the best representations, it is simply one of the more well-known ones).

Wanting to abolish the government, antifa and their violence in general, acab, the whole shit 'be gay do crime' garbage, you know, the people who think that being 'queer' means that you can't comform with normality and society and that saying being gay is not a personality trait is apparently homophobic.

I got fed up with leftist and right winger bullshit and I tried finding people who were also like me.

So I watched youtubers Dr Shaym(he puts lots of research in his videos), Short Fat Otaku, and Shoeonhead.

I tend to observe human behaviour, online and in real life.

I also just believe in what seems to be the most logical.

I don't believe in multiple genders, not because I'm some transphobe or sexist but because there's only two genders because biology proves it. The rare, intersex mutations that are still either male or female but with mutations don't exactly count.

I do not believe in 2 genders because some Christian conservatives told me. In fact, I get sceptical when it's a Christian conservative talking to me about biology.

Right wingers say the same shit about how the republican party is left centre and the democratic party is far left. The far right hates my opinions, Trump and the American republican party.

There's right wingers who are pro-free health care even if there isn't alot. The right isn't some monolithic.

[hjohn3]

1992 And All That

Labour’s Thirty Year Old Trauma Still Haunts the Party: Could It Happen Again?

Sources: The Sun/ GettyImages

By Honest John

LIKE A psephological Banquo’s Ghost, the 1992 General Election haunts the Labour Party like no other. The contest - thirty one years ago now - is continually held up as a warning against complacency and proof positive of the baleful influence of the right wing media in the U.K. and the almost mystical ability of the Conservative Party to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat by relentless attacks on Labour’s economic competence, its patriotism, and even its right to exist as the main party of opposition at all. After twelve electoral defeats out of twenty since the Second World War (and just two victories before that), Labour is perhaps justified in its belief that the British electorate fundamentally do not trust the Labour Party, viewing it alternately as spendthrift, economically reckless and threatening to a British way of life based on capitalist aspiration and social advancement. It suits the Tory Party and the right wing commentariat to present Labour as somehow alien to the value system of good British (or perhaps English) folk, and their rare election victories to be seen as at best aberrations and worse, dangerous. It may also suit certain factions within Labour itself to restrain radicalism and utopianism and to keep the party focused on a centrist agenda that does not really threaten the basis on which the capitalist economy is run.

That sense of excessive caution, even fear, has been at the heart of Labour’s political positioning almost from the moment Keir Starmer became leader. The promises on which he ran for the party leadership have been dropped one by one; commitments on nationalisation, tuition fees, and even the Green Prosperity Plan have been ditched, diluted or postponed. In an attempt to neutralise any hint of the fiscal incontinence on display in Corbyn Labour’s 2019 manifesto, Labour has adopted the “iron discipline” of Rachel Reeves’ fiscal rule and a policy-light offer designed to “bomb proof” Labour’s positioning from any conceivable Tory attack line. With its smooth competence, heavy hitters from the New Labour past and a relentless focus on reassuring the electorate that Labour is “safe” to vote for, the Party has seemed at times in danger of being unable to articulate any vision for the country at all. However, this caution and apparent lack of ambition has been rewarded by a 20 point opinion poll lead for over twelve months, serial council and by-election victories and the drift, turning to a scramble, of business interests and lobbyists, either cynically or hopefully, towards the opposition. Change appears to be in the air. At the Labour Party Conference, quiet confidence was the order of the day and if hope that Labour will at last form a government some time in 2024 was present, this was accompanied by palpable nervousness that the Tories might yet find a way to turn things around, and behind this doubting, is always the shadow of 1992.

It of course benefits the Tories to maintain the fallacy that they are hardwired into the brain of Middle England and can anticipate and stoke almost atavistic fears of a Labour government on the part of voters. It’s nonsense of course, but the Conservative ability to pose as something new after a long period in office does have a track record and John Major’s ability to secure a 21 seat Tory majority and an extraordinary 42% of the vote after the Conservatives had been in office 13 years holds an almost supernatural hold on the Labour imagination, in a way the similar Tory reinvention acts of Macmillan and Johnson do not. It is true that the Conservatives, who rid themselves of Margaret Thatcher due to her electoral toxicity in 1990 (a fact often forgotten by Tory mythologisers who have raised the Iron Lady to secular sainthood) , were able to rally behind John Major, a personally liberal and politically emollient character, and to present him as a new type of Tory leader, less divisive, hectoring and uncompromising than his predecessor. It was also true the Conservative attack machine lethally picked apart Labour’s policy frailties and ambiguities in 1992. This had its greatest impact in the Conservative claims, masterminded by then Party Chairman Chris Patten, that Labour had a “tax bombshell” they would drop on middle income families to fund social programmes and that a “Double Whammy” of tax increases and inflation (complete with posters of a boxer wearing outsize gloves with each “whammy” -more taxes and higher prices - painted on them) would be a result of Labour’s spending plans. Thirteen years of transformative government under Thatcher had completely changed public attitudes on the necessity of increased taxation to fund public services and the appeal of aspiration to the lower middle and upper working classes was key to Major’s self-effacing style.

Superficially, there are similarities today to the political situation in 1990/91. A flamboyant and divisive Prime Minister has been replaced by a modest and technocratic successor; Keir Starmer, like Neil Kinnock, struggles to connect with swathes of the electorate; Rishi Sunak presents himself as the “change” candidate, contrasting himself both to unpopular Tory predecessors and the time-served leader of the opposition, and he and Jeremy Hunt present themselves as fiscally responsible conservatives, in contrast to Labour’s reckless borrowing plans, particularly to fund the Green Prosperity Plan. But there the similarities with 1992 end.

The Thatcher governments in the 1980s had presided over a period of growth in the British economy bolstered by North Sea oil revenues and investment in the new technology industries, following the rapid withdrawal of the U.K. from its previous industrial dependence on coal, iron and steel. With the privatisation of state assets and the “Right to Buy” council houses the proceeds of that growth had been targeted at an aspirant demographic, sufficient to win General Elections under First Past The Post, even as social inequality grew and communities that had hosted Britain’s former heavy industries collapsed into economic wastelands. John Major inherited this voting coalition and retained its support in 1992. Sunak has no such legacy to boast of. Austerity, Brexit and Trussonomics are words that dare not be spoken: inflation, low growth and crumbling public services are the lived experience of families who researchers tell us have lost an average of £10,000 thanks to stagnating living standards, since 2010. There is no prosperous demographic outside the hyper rich of which Sunak himself is a self conscious member, that are seeing their incomes or lifestyles improve. With mortgages barely affordable, the housing ladder long since removed and well paid jobs and pensions increasingly out of reach, aspiration is simply not an option for most ordinary people.

Then there are the opinion polls. In 1991, Labour’s poll lead, when it had one at all, averaged at best 5%; in 1992 it had dropped to 3%. Apparent false memory frequently relates that Labour were “expected” to win in 1992. They were not. The two parties entered the election campaign more or less neck and neck and the most frequently predicted result was that of a hung Parliament. The emphatic Tory win, at least in percentage vote terms, was a surprise but not because most commentators expected a Labour majority government. Contrast this to the fact Labour have enjoyed a lead of between 15 and 20 points for over twelve months, a lead consistent with actual by election and council election results over the same period. An opinion poll lead of this size and duration has never been overhauled by an incumbent government who went on to win a general election, in British political history. Also in 1992 the media was unremittingly hostile to Labour’s mild social democratic offer. Famously The Sun ran a front page that, if Labour won the general election, asked the last person leaving Britain to “please turn out the lights” with Kinnock’s head framed in a light bulb. After the result the same paper boasted that it was “The Sun Wot Won It”. Today, formerly reliably Tory newspapers and journals like The Times, the Financial Times, The Spectator and occasionally even the Daily Telegraph will run Labour-friendly articles, and seem unworried at the prospect of Keir Starmer being PM. Only the Daily Mail and Daily Express can be relied upon to churn out anti-Labour scare stories on a consistent basis.

The left would claim that this is because, compared to Kinnock, Starmer is in the pocket of vested interests and represents no threat to the rich and powerful. But the Labour programme confirmed at its conference is Wilsonian indeed, including tax reforms targeted at the rich, reform of the House of Lords, the biggest proposed improvement to workers’ rights since the 1970s, renationalisation of rail and a post Brexit commitment to an industrial strategy to propel a rebalancing of the economy towards green energy. To top it all, there is a promise to build 1.5 million affordable homes in New Towns - an unapologetic commitment to Keynesian economics. The Starmer programme is therefore far to the left of anything ever proposed by Blair, who prided himself on adherence to free market solutions to Britain’s problems. However, much of the right wing media this time seem relatively sanguine about this Labour programme of social and economic reform, Rachel Reeves’ fiscal rule notwithstanding.

Neil Kinnock’s Labour in 1992 did offer a programme of renewal and a reprioritisation of social values, but insufficient numbers of voters were prepared to give it a hearing. The difference in 2024 is that the majority of the electorate want change after 13 years of serial failure, social vandalism, open corruption, ideological folly and broken promises delivered by a series of chaotic and unserious Conservative governments. Keir Starmer will succeed where Neil Kinnock failed not just because the Tories have been rumbled, but because Labour possess a credibility it did not have 31 years ago and above all, because it offers a weary electorate that precious electoral commodity: it offers voters hope.

17th October

[luckyladylily]

Well, okay. Whatever you want to believe. If you think actively discriminating against right wingers on major levels will go just fine and not at all feed their victim complex and make them even more insufferable, then I guess I can't say anything else. You do what you want, but I still believe in being the better person, and I don't believe in punishing millions of people for being naive or having bought into lies from politicians.            

So this is the last reply from that anon earlier today. I just deleted the message and decided to move on with my life, but it stuck in my head and I started thinking, and I think this is worth looking at. We on the left can understand something of what is going on among conservatives right now and I can, hopefully, address some of the fears of conservatives who follow me (because I know there are several of you out there).

“If you think actively discriminating against right wingers on major levels...”

This is where it starts, and is where the core of all the fear happening on the right is at this moment. The right lost several huge political battles in the USA such that centrists and the left effectively control the government. People on the right are fearing that there will be a massive backlash of discrimination. This is because they have been told for years and years that they are under attack. That if the left ever gets control that we are going to come for them. This is the central pillar of fear on which the far right and alt right has built itself. Us vs Them in a battle of survival. White Genocide. Antifa is a violent terrorist organization that is coming for you.

You do what you want, but I still believe in being the better person, and I don't believe in punishing millions of people for being naive or having bought into lies from politicians.

This is in response to my last post, in which I said this: “People who have committed crimes in order to undermine our democracy should be charged with those crimes and put on trial. People who join hate crime motivated terrorist organizations should be shunned.”

These statements are translated into society wide discrimination and a desire to punish all conservatives. It would be easy to dismiss this as a deliberate bad faith reading of my words. Unfortunately, it is not that simple.

Supposedly, conservatives are all about the rule of law. It is basically one of the core principles of conservatism. But by twisting well meaning people in circles the leadership of conservatism have tied the idea of the punishment of right wing criminals as the first step towards the inevitable punishment and discrimination against the general right. It is all done by breeding fear. “If they attack me, you will be next!” is the message. And it is extremely effective. 

I am going to speak directly to the conservatives that might be reading, but I want all you people on the left to read and understand:

The criminals are lying to you. Your leadership, the people who actively committed crimes to enrich and empower themselves at the expense of a stable democracy are lying to you. They know that if people are held accountable for those crimes they are going to be put and trial and found guilty and they are using you to avoid the consequences of their actions.

They used you before to get into power, they used you to keep popular opinion on their side as they committed crimes for their personal enrichment. Now they are using you to avoid the consequences of their actions. They used you before and they are going to keep using you again and again. They don’t give a single shit about you except for how they can use you.

There is not going to be mass punishment of millions of conservatives. We want the terrorists and the criminals tried in court. We expect many if not most of them would get off with not so much as a slap on the wrist. But there has to be some accountability. There has to be something. We can’t just let years of undermining our government and violence and terrorism go without so much as an attempt at justice.

You are supposedly the party of the rule of law. This is supposed to matter, really matter, to you.

Don’t be naive. Don’t let criminals and terrorists fool you into abandoning your principles just to protect them. Don’t let them use you again. Be better than that.

[arcticdementor]

I’ve been keeping an eye on Europe lately, and on France in particular. As I’ve tried to articulate here previously, the era of general upheaval underway is hardly a phenomenon limited to the United States. Instead, propelled everywhere by the same fundamental forces, it appears to be playing out in a more or less similar fashion all across the Western world, and perhaps beyond. In this regard France serves as an especially instructive example, as recent events have served to highlight in striking fashion.

In short, recent national controversy over a pair of open letters directed to the government by a collection of retired and active-duty military officers has not only spawned a month of political controversy in France, but revealed deeper dynamics at work in the country that may help provide a clearer picture of what’s happening everywhere.

On April 21, twenty retired French generals published an open letter to President Emmanuel Macron and the French government in the right-wing magazine Valeurs Actuelles (Today’s Values) denouncing “the disintegration that is affecting our country,” and explaining they were speaking out because “the hour is late, France is in peril, and many mortal dangers threaten her.”

…

Initially, the letter was dismissed as mere “eccentric nationalist nostalgia by octogenarian retirees,” as the British Financial Times put it, and the government appeared content to ignore it. The then head of France’s General Directorate for Internal Security, Patrick Calvar, had already warned that France was “on the edge of a civil war” as early as 2016, so this kind of thing was old news. But that changed as soon as Marine Le Pen – the leader of the right-wing Rassemblement National (National Rally) party who polls show is likely to again be Macron’s top rival in presidential elections next year – endorsed the letter, saying “it was the duty of all French patriots, wherever they are from, to rise up to restore – and indeed save – the country.”

Public conversation in France turned to politicization of the armed forces and whether the letter’s final lines were a call for a military coup d'état (the fact that the letter was published on the 60th anniversary of a failed generals’ putsch against President Charles de Gaulle in 1961 providing evidence for this in the view of many). General François Lecointre, armed forces chief of staff, stated that while “at first I said to myself that it wasn’t very significant,” at least 18 active military personnel had been found to have been among the more than 1,500 people who also signed the letter. “That I cannot accept,” he said, because “the neutrality of the armed forces is essential.” They would all be punished, while any of the generals still in the reserves would be forced into full retirement as part of “an exceptional measure, that we will launch immediately at the request of the defense minister.” Still, the government’s ministers emphasized that the signatories were nothing more than an isolated and irrelevant minority in the military.

But soon enough, on May 10, a second letter appeared, again published in Valeurs Actuelles, this time by more than 2,000 serving soldiers writing in support of the first letter’s retired generals, accusing the government of having sullied their reputations when “their only fault is to love their country and to mourn its visible decline.”  

…

The second letter, this time open to the public to sign, attracted (as of the end of last week) more than 287,000 signatures.

Again came exasperated reactions from many ministers and observers. But what is most remarkable, in my view, is how little enthusiasm most seemed to have for challenging the basic premises of the letters: that France is in a state of growing fracture and even dissolution. Instead, the focus of controversy was once again on the military taking a political position.

…

But perhaps my favorite example was that of (retired) General Jérôme Pellistrandi, chief editor at the magazine Revue Défense Nationale, who prefaced his otherwise sharp criticism of the outspoken soldiers with: “Everyone agrees that society is breaking up, it’s a known fact, but…”

What was going on here? Since when do government officials reflexively agree that their country is falling apart? Well, it turns out that a rather shockingly high proportion of the French public seems to agree with the sentiments the letters expressed. The following chart, created from the results of a Harris Interactive opinion poll taken April 29, after the first letter, is in my view one of the most striking statements about the political mood in a Western country that you’re likely to see for some time:

…

So, to break this down, not only do 58% of the French public agree with the first letter’s sentiments about the country facing disintegration, but so do nearly half of Macron’s own governing party, the centrist En Marche. Awkward. Nor are those sentiments limited to any one part of the political spectrum, even if the right is more sympathetic overall. Far-left party leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon may have quickly declared that the “mutinous and cowardly” soldiers who signed the letter would all be purged from the army if he were elected, but 43% of his party seem to share their concerns.

But that’s not even the whole of it – an amazing 74% of poll respondents said they thought French society was collapsing, while no less than 45% agreed that France “will soon have a civil war.”

…

And, in short, both countries are clearly facing at least one of the defining characteristics of the Upheaval: the collapse of any agreed upon and consistently accepted authority. It is notable that, in both countries (at least until recently) there is only one institution that still garners relatively widespread respect: the military. (And French generals aren’t the only ones trying to capitalize on this with controversial open letters.)

Second, there is the key detail – almost entirely skipped over in the English-language press in favor of focusing on the anti-immigration angle, as far as I’ve seen – of the “anti-racism,” “decolonialism,” and “communitarianism” decried in the two letters as contributing to national dissolution. This is rather unmistakably a reference to the amalgamated, zealously anti-traditional and anti-liberal ideology of the “New Faith” – alternately referred to as Anti-Racism, the Social Justice movement, Critical Theory, identity politics, neo-Marxism, or Wokeness, among other synonymous infamies – that I’ve previously identified as one of the key revolutionary dynamics of our present era.

Let me repeat this proposition again: no revolution has ever remained contained by national borders. The New Faith is a trans-national ideological movement, which can no more remain confined to the United States than it remained confined within the American academy where it matured (it was arguably born in, well… France). And it is more than capable of rapidly adapting itself to and flourishing within whatever national context it penetrates. But, wherever it goes, it’s just as disruptive to the foundations of social and political order.

…

Finally, what’s striking about the situation in France is that every driving factor appears set to only get worse. The COVID-19 pandemic has only accelerated the divide between rich and poor; Europe’s economic recovery has been shaky; the ideology of the New Faith is likely to prove more difficult for the French to combat than they expect (the foundation of the established order having been hollowed out over a very long period of time); and the identitarian culture war is likely to only heat up, especially with elections approaching in which Le Pen appears to have a decent chance of actually winning (an outcome that could accelerate political and cultural fracturing, as Donald Trump’s election did in the United States).

…

It is notable that every one of these trends, including climate-induced migration, is featured in the U.S. Intelligence Community’s rather ominous recent report evaluating where the world is headed over the next five years, which I’ve written on previously. (Several readers have written to me to criticize my lack of discussion of climate change as a factor in both that post and my essay introducing the Upheaval – well fair enough, though I am uncertain about how much the climate issue has actually driven the turmoil we’re already seeing so far today, as opposed to what we may see in the future.)

France thus seems set to function as an ahead-of-the-curve epicenter for the Upheaval in Europe. No wonder the French are so pessimistic…

[cetospandiglia]

Ywsterday (sunday february 14th of 2021) there was an election in Catalonia and I feel like talking about it so I'm gonna explain it briefly (a brief explanation, a long post mayne 10 or 15 min read) for my American & international readers out there. (This will have a clear bias, I'm no journalist. That said, I don't belong to any of the parties discussed in this post.)

First, a bit of context for those completely unaware. Catalonia is a historical region of Spain with its own language (which has been marginalized and banned to various degrees during the last 3 centuries, which stirs controbersy to this day) and a separatist movement that has had moments of relevance and irrelevance along the last ~100 years.

Independence as a social movement has had its ups and downs, 25 years ago it wasn't very relevant but in the 2010s it started gainign traction ending in an unsuccessful unilateral declaration of independence in 2017 which resulted in the arrest or exile of most of the government (President Puigdemont is exiled in Waterloo, vice president Junqueras has spent years in prison now).

With that out of the way, to talk about the players in this election first we have to understand how does one get to be president of Catalunya.

Catalunya, as well as Spain as a whole and many other european countries and regions, doesn't have Presidential elections, they only vote for the parliament members: voters choose a party and once the Parliament is made up they vote for the president. In this particular case, the Parliament has 135 seats so if some party gets 68 seats they have an absolute majority and can govern by themselves in most cases (some things require 2/3 majority but to elect a president and to pass most laws it's just half+1).

The thing is, this election the winner didn't get anywhere near 68 seats, they got 33 so whoever ends up governing needs to pact. It's time to know the players:

To start, we're going to talk about the parties in the previous, independentist government:

THE INDEPENEDENTIST FORCES:

Junts per Catalunya (together for Catalunya) is a big, centrist coalition of organisations with left leaning and right leaning sectors. The left sees them as right wing and they're the only catalanist right wingers, so the rest of the right fucking hate their guts. They were in power for decades (under the name Convergència i Unió, the history of this party is convoluted) since the end of the fascist regime and did a lot of work to reestablish the place and institutions of the Catalan language (Franco was infamously against any languages in Spain that weren't Spanish). This is the party that the exiled president Puigdemont belongs to. Of the main 2 parties in power this was the bigger one until last night.

Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya (ERC, Republican Left of Catalunya, republican as in opposed to monarchy): Left wing, cataln nationalist run-of-the-mill european social democrats. They defend the catalan culture and language as JxC has done, they were in power as a part of the "tri partit" (three parties) with other left wing forces from 2003 to 2010 to avoid more years of JxC government. Then, independentist movement started to gain traction, the more conservative faction of JxC left and they (JxC & ERC) formed a government together with the complicit votes of CUP.

CUP (Candidatura d'Unitat Popular, Candidature of Popular Unity) is a far-left, socialist, quasi-anarchist organisation that used to have a few members of local councils but didn't even bother going to Catalan elections, then independence happened and have had a few MPs ever since. Not enough to pass any radical laws, but enough so that the JxC and ERC coalition needs their votes to govern: they vetoed Artur Mas, an infamously corrupt president and actually got what they wanted.

~

ELS COMUNS (the commons?) is neither independentist or unionist, they're a left wing party (less radical than CUP but also with less relevance and votes in the general Catalan panorama, although they have the Mayor of Barcelona). They try to pass progressive left leaning legislature and even though some of them want independence, they don't believe it's a pressing issue for the catalan people. Their Spanish Counterparts, Podemos, are in power as the 2nd, more "radical", left leaning force of a center-left coalition in the Spanish governent with PSOE.

~

THE UNIONISTS:

PSC (Partit dels Socialistes de Catalunya, Socialists' Party of Catalunya) is the Catalun branch of PSOE (socialists etc etc español), a center-left party that is currently in the Spanish government. PSC used to have catalanist sectors and when they were in power in Catalunya (as the 1st force of the Tripartit) they passed laws to defend catalan etc (to this day since the death of Franco no regional government of Catalonia has been against defending Catalan). Those positions towards the language and culture probably remain but now they're explicitly anti independence. They're not super left but if you don't count Comuns as unionists, PSC is the farthest left you can go in the unionist side.

PP: the strong Spanish right wing party since the 90s, where all the francoists ended up after the transition in the 70s, they held the Spanish governent '96-2004 and 2011-2018 and do not want to defend catalan. They won't usually say it out right though, they'll say things like "spanish speakers are oppresed in Catalunya", and that's the same for all anti-independentists. In Catalonia, though, they have very bad results.

Ciudadanos (citizens) is basically a split from PP that formed in 2006 in Catalonia to be explicitly anti-catalanist. For a hot second it seemed like they could be the new strong party of the Spanish right but now the party is crumbling and in Catalunya specifically they've gone from 1st force (they still didn't govern) with 36 seats to second to last with only 6. Rumours say that the party will dissolve before the next election.

Vox is a far right party that likes Donald Trump and fucking hates independence and Catalunya, they're a new party and rn the strongest of the spanish right wing forces in Catalunya in 4th place in the parliament.

Now you know all the players I can explain THE RESULTS:

(the big hemicircle is yesterday's results, the little one is last election's)

PSC has had a slight edge over ERC but they haven't been able to reflect that in more seats. Cs has crumbled from first place to 8th. Vox has appeared out of nowhere, but the rise in unionist seats (26) between PSC and Vox is still smaller than the 30 seats Cs has lost.

In the independentist side, ERC has gained 1 seat, JxC lost 2 and CUP gained 5 for a total gain of 4 seats for the independentists.

Even thoug an explicitly far right force has entered the parliament, this election shows a trend towards left wing forces: unionists towards PSC rather than Cs, and independentist towards ERC and CUP.

Even though the JxC+ERC coalition is a mess, all analysts and journalists agree that ERC's Pere Aragonès has the best chance to become the next President. All evidence points to the fact that CUP will have an easier time voting for a leftist President from ERC than a centrist/right winger from JxC, and some rumours say that ERC could be looking for Comuns' support. They don't want independence but maybe they can be brought in to strengthen the left wing stance of this new government.

The opinions of analysts and the rumours I mention come from last night's TV3 election special.

Election results:

If you've read the whole thing thank you and I hope this has been useful 😊❤️

[chiseler]

A Country in Turmoil: Why Netanyahu is a Symptom, Not Cause of Israel’s Political Crisis

Ramzy Baroud

It is convenient to surmise that Israel’s current political crisis is consistent with the country’s unfailing trajectory of short-lived governments and fractious ruling coalitions. While this view is somewhat defensible, it is also hasty.

Israel is currently at the cusp of a fourth general election in less than two years. Even by Israel’s political standards, this phenomenon is unprecedented, not only in terms of the frequency of how often Israelis vote, but also of the constant shifting in possible coalitions and seemingly strange alliances.

It seems that the only constant in the process of forming coalitions following each election is that Arab parties must not, under any circumstances, be allowed into a future government. Decision-making in Israel has historically been reserved for the country’s Jewish elites. This is unlikely to change anytime soon.

Even when the Arab parties’ coalition, the Joint List, imposed itself as a possible kingmaker following the September 2019 elections, the centrist Kahol Lavan (Blue and White) list refused to join forces with Arab politicians to oust Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. Kahol Lavan’s leader, Benny Gantz, preferred to go back to the polls on March 2 and eventually join forces with his arch-enemy, Netanyahu, than make a single concession to the Joint List.

Gantz’s decision did not only expose how racism occupies a central role in Israeli politics, but also illustrated Gantz’s own foolishness. In rejecting the Joint List, he committed an act akin to political suicide. On the very day, March 26, that he joined a Netanyahu-led coalition, his own Blue and White alliance collapsed, with Yair Lapid of Yesh Atid and Moshe Ya’alon of Telem breaking away immediately from the once-dominant coalition.

Worse, Gantz lost not just the respect of his own political constituency, but of the Israeli public as well. According to an opinion poll released by Israel's Channel 12 News on December 15, if elections were to be held on that day, Gantz’s Blue and White would receive only 6 seats out of 120 seats available in the Israeli Knesset. Gantz’s former coalition partner, Yesh Atid, according to the same poll, would obtain an impressive 14 seats.

While Netanyahu’s Likud Party will remain on top with 27 seats, Gideon Sa’ar’s “New Hope - Unity for Israel,” would come a close second with 21 seats. Sa’ar’s is a brand new party, which represents the first major split from the Likud since the late Israeli Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, formed the offshoot Kadima party in 2005.

Netanyahu and Sa’ar have a long history of bad blood between them, and although anything is possible in the formation of Israel’s political alliances, a future right-wing coalition that brings them both together is a dim possibility. If Sa’ar has learned anything from Gantz’s act of political self-mutilation, it is that any coalition with Netanyahu is a grave and costly mistake.

Ideological differences between Netanyahu and Sa’ar are quite minimal. In fact, both are fighting to obtain the vote of essentially the same constituency - although Sa’ar is hoping to extend his appeal to the disgruntled and betrayed Blue and White voters, who are eager to see someone - anyone - oust Netanyahu.

Never in the history of Israel, spanning seven decades, had a single individual served as the focal point of the country’s many political currents. While beloved by some, Netanyahu is much loathed by many, to the extent that entire parties or whole coalitions are formed simply to remove him from politics. That in mind, the majority of Israelis agree that the man is corrupt, as he has been indicted in three separate criminal cases.

However, if this is the case, how is a politically controversial and corrupt leader able to remain at the helm of Israeli politics for over 14 years? The typical answer often alludes to the man’s unmatched skills of manipulation and backdoor shady dealings. In the words of Yossi Verter, writing in the daily Haaretz, Netanyahu is “a first-class master swindler”.

This analysis alone, however, is not enough to explain Netanyahu’s durability as the longest-serving Israeli Prime Minister. There is an alternative reading, however, one that is predicated on the fact that Israel has been, for quite some time, navigating uncharted political territories without a specific destination in mind.

Prior to the inception of Israel on the ruins of historic Palestine in 1948, Israel’s Jewish political elites clashed quite often over the best way to colonize Palestine, how to deal with the British Mandate over the country, among other weighty subjects. These differences, however, largely faded away in 1948, when the newly-founded country unified under the banner of Mapai - the predecessor to Israel’s current Labor party - which dominated Israeli politics for decades.

Mapai’s dominance received a major boost after the Israeli occupation of the remainder of Palestine in 1967. The building and expansion of more Jewish colonies in the newly-acquired territories breathed life into the mission of Israel’s founding fathers. It was as if Zionism, the founding ideology of Israel, was rediscovered once more.

It was not until 1977 that the erstwhile negligible Israeli right formed a government for the first time in the country’s history. That date also ushered in a new age of political instability, which worsened with time. Still, Israeli politicians remained largely committed to three main causes in this specific order: the Zionist ideology, the party and the politicians’ own interests.

The assassination of the Labor Party leader, Yitzhak Rabin, at the hands of a right-wing Israeli zealot in 1995, was a bloody manifestation of the new era of unprecedented fragmentation that followed. A decade later, when Sharon declared the ‘Disengagement from Gaza’ plan of 2005, he further upset a barely functioning political balance, leading to the formation of Kadima, which threatened to erase the Likud from the political map.

Throughout these turbulent times, Netanyahu was always present, playing the same divisive role, as usual. He led the incitement against Rabin and, later, challenged Sharon over the leadership of the Likud. On the other hand, he was also responsible for resurrecting the Likud and he kept it alive notwithstanding its many ideological, political and leadership crises. The latter fact explains Likud’s loyalty to Netanyahu, despite his corruption, nepotism and dirty politics. They feel that, without Netanyahu’s leadership, the Likud could easily follow the same path of irrelevance or total demise as was the case with the Labor and Kadima parties, respectively.

With none of Israel’s founding fathers alive or relevant in the political arena, it is hard to imagine what course Israel’s future politics will follow. Certainly, the love affair with the settlement enterprise, ‘security’ and war is likely to carry on unhindered, as they are the bread and butter of Israeli politics. Yet, without a clear ideology, especially when combined with the lack of a written Constitution, Israeli politics will remain hostage to the whims of politicians and their personal interests, if not that of Netanyahu, then of someone else.

by Ramzy Baroud

- Ramzy Baroud is a journalist and the Editor of The Palestine Chronicle. He is the author of five books. His latest is “

These Chains Will Be Broken

: Palestinian Stories of Struggle and Defiance in Israeli Prisons” (Clarity Press). Dr. Baroud is a Non-resident Senior Research Fellow at the Center for Islam and Global Affairs (CIGA) and also at the Afro-Middle East Center (AMEC). His website is

www.ramzybaroud.net

[berniesrevolution]

JACOBIN MAGAZINE

The German Greens have been flying high in the polls in recent months. Now standing at 18 percent, support for the party has soared to its highest point since the Fukushima nuclear disaster. Last Sunday the Greens more than doubled their vote share in the Bavarian state election, taking 17.5 percent. The party also looks set to come in second in the state of Hesse next weekend.

But the performance spike comes as somewhat of a surprise: the Greens netted a mediocre 8.5 percent in last year’s federal elections, almost unchanged from 2013. The party hasn’t veered much from its centrist path since its failed attempt to form a federal coalition with Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic alliance (CDU/CSU) and the pro-business Free Democrats (FDP) following the 2017 general election — moves that disgruntled the Greens’ more radical youth wing. But if the party hasn’t changed, what else has?

The answer lies in the performance of Germany’s ruling parties, today joined in a grand coalition. Following multiple cabinet showdowns this summer, each of which brought the gears of government to a halt, discontented voters from all the ruling parties — the CDU/CSU and the social-democratic SPD — seem to be drifting toward the Greens. Just over two-fifths of the Green’s new supporters have migrated from the SPD and a quarter have wandered over from the CDU/CSU, according to a poll published in Die Weltnewspaper.

The development spells bad news in particular for the once-mighty SPD. The old party of the German center-left has hit historic lows in opinion polls and has even been overtaken by the fiercely anti-migrant Alternative for Germany (AfD), which was founded in 2013. Against this backdrop, it might seem like a good thing for the floundering Left if CDU/CSU voters are shifting to the Greens. The reality is rather less promising.

What Does It Mean to be a Green?

The Greens can trace their roots to the 1968 student movement, which strove to shake off the political legacy of Nazi-era Germany. The party’s old guard was from a generation that took to the streets to tackle the conservative establishment with direct action. Once outsiders with an unwavering pro-environmental agenda, the radical spirit of the first wave of Greens has been chipped away since they first entered German parliament in 1983.

Where a critical stance towards capitalism and the ecological damage wreaked by profit-makers in industrialized societies once featured highly in the Greens’ manifesto, the party now offers centrist solutions palatable to German capital. At one point the Greens stopped saying “the system is broken” and started talking about “capitalism in service of the people.”

For example, the Greens still back the closure of all Germany’s brown coal energy plants. But nowadays they want the process to be done gradually (by 2030) in a “socially responsible” manner, without leaving swathes of people unemployed in coal-producing regions.

The party’s national leadership now fights a user-friendly, eco-lite corner. They want to see Germany switch to 100 percent renewable energy by 2050, get more electric cars on the road, and move towards agriculture free from mass animal farming, pesticides, and GMOs.

And some faces in the Green Party have cast aside even these bolder policies in favor of “pragmatic” solutions designed to please business and achieve momentary electoral gains. One such case is Winfried Kretschmann, the Green state premier of wealthy Baden-Wuerttemberg, where car-builders such as Daimler have important bases. Contradicting the party’s line, Kretschmann is a loud voice against the Greens’ push to get diesel vehicles off the road.

“Ecology and economy, freedom and security, humanity and order. You have to keep on the middle path,” the conservative Green told radio broadcaster Deutschlandfunk.

Some prominent Greens have distanced themselves even further from the party’s humanist ideological roots, flirting with right-wing populist rhetoric. Take Boris Palmer, popular mayor of the city of Tübingen, also in Baden-Wuerttemberg, who regularly causes a stir with his calls to control asylum seekers arriving in Germany more closely and for the rapid deportation of those who run afoul of the law.

“No one can expect any society to permanently put up with regular knife attacks, rape and terrorist attacks, because they offered help to [people fleeing war],” Palmer wrote in a Facebook post after a refugee took a woman hostage in Cologne’s main train station.

A New Volkspartei?

While the party’s remaining hardcore eco-warriors may despair over its swing to the right, the formula has worked electorally. The Greens were in federal government coalition with the SPD between 1998 and 2005, taking up ministerial positions. Currently the party features in half of Germany’s state government coalitions, and even holds the state premiership in Baden-Wuerttemberg, where it rules in coalition with the CDU.

More recently, the Greens have set their sights on becoming a Volkspartei, a big-tent party attracting voters from different sections of society. Traditionally, their voter base has been somewhat elitist: highly educated, largely western German, urban and middle class.

To broaden their appeal, the Greens are taking on issues beyond their classic ecological remit to court working-class Germans. In practical terms, this means targeting wavering SPD voters who feel threatened by the changes from globalization.

(Continue Reading)

[larrykrakow]

To Be On The Progressive Left, Know Your Fight

New Post has been published on https://theprogressivemind.org/to-be-on-the-progressive-left-know-your-fight/

To Be On The Progressive Left, Know Your Fight

I have seen people claim to be part of the progressive left and still not have a clue when to argue with their own party or pick the right side. This is really troubling because it is destructive to the left as a whole. The majority of American people understand one thing as truth. Donald Trump was the most dangerous man ever to hold the White House. Throughout the campaign, there were people who may have been third party supporters that were also badmouthing Joe Biden as if he was the enemy. I have some agreements with people on the centrism of Biden which is code for corporatism, but I cannot and will not live outside of reality.

The progressive left clearly should be defined.

Who are you if you are someone claiming to be a leftist? If you were willing to see Donald Trump in power for another four years to keep Biden out so a progressive could win, I have news for you. You are not on the progressive left. You are an angry child who didn’t like the game and thus decided to take your ball home. Believe me, it was painful pulling the lever for Biden. I stood on line in the cold for nearly two hours just to vote Trump out.

Although the progressive left should be defined as people supporting a set of policy positions, nothing can be more destructive to those ideas than allowing the right-wing to take power. It is irresponsible and quite unsettling. As someone on the left, sure, we take the positions of Medicare For All, A Green New Deal, ending the wars, ending mass incarceration, taxing and regulating Wall Street, and other things. One thing however that anyone that is REALLY on the left would not capitulate to the right in order to prove a point. If you think that will be the thing that helps us get our policies passed, you are wrong. The way that you get your policies passed is by infiltrating the Democratic Party and getting your ideas pushed through.

What We Should Do Going Forward

We have to understand that the system is set up the way it is for a reason. Many years ago, the two parties came to an agreement in the wake of the vote count received by Ross Perot. It is very unlikely that a third party will be able to break through. It is likely however that an outsider figure could work through and get the nomination and win an election. Unfortunately, Donald Trump proved that to us. Sadly, the way that the Republican party holds primaries allowed a demagogue the opportunity to rile up the base. He sailed through to the nomination beating one candidate after another.

We need to be mindful that as members of the progressive left, we cannot cede ground to the right-wing over our personal feelings. We have to work within the current system before we can reform it.

Going forward, we need to work on idea framing. Public opinion has largely been shaped around buzzwords like “socialism” or “communism”. That has been a downfall for us. The right even tried to label Joe Biden as a radical socialist. We all know that he is a centrist corporatist. That is who he is, but the label was used. Now, what do we do? We help candidates down-ballot and in local elections that align with our views. We get on the ground and canvas. Our feet are on the ground and our faces are glued to our phones calling people to get them to turn out. We need to be in the halls of government and out in the streets protesting. Our job will be to walk off of our jobs in general strikes to make politicians capitulate to our demands. That is what people did to force Roosevelt to sign the new deal.

The Progressive Left Does Not Have A Purity Test

You CANNOT think that purity is the ONLY way. Sure, Bernie supporters would love to see a complete end to all corruption and a progressive utopia. That said, I would love to see Nancy Pelosi retired and a return to working-class values. I would like to see more members of “the squad” representing our values. In fact, I would love to see people with those values represent more than half of all elected Democrats because the Democratic Party currently does not represent the makeup of their voters. We align with Democrats on social issues and civil rights, but we also align with the squad on economic issues.

What we cannot do is sit out general elections to prove a point. We must fight like hell in primaries as seen by Jamal Bowman’s race when he unseated Eliot Engle. The process is long and the prize is big, but if we capitulate, we capitulate to the right-wing. We all know that the right-wing is far worse than Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, and Joe Biden. Anyone who disagrees is not part of the progressive left. If you are one of the people that believe that Trump is not as bad as the Democratic establishment, you need to have your head examined. Flex your muscle within a system as you can by going after corporate Democrats, but do not cede ground to fascists.

We have to be steadfast as progressives, but realistic.

I cannot say this enough. FDR campaigned on balancing the budget, but in response to the Great Depression and the ineptitude of President Hoover, he had enough pressure to do the right thing. He felt the pressure of the Communist Party and labor unions as they used mass general strikes to force his hand. Social pressure is far more effective than dogma. Dogma shows anger, but ends up confined to echo chambers on Facebook and Twitter. Dogma does not organize around a set of principles. We have to pick and choose our battles.

The fight against the insurrectionists and white supremacists could not be a greater example. In that case, you have to decide between the Democrats and the collection of QAnon believers and racists. Who do you want to fight against in the future? If you give control to outright fascists, they will crush your soul and maybe more. The last four years should have made that much clear. Nearly half a million people are no longer with us to tell us how they would have felt knowing how the right handled the virus. Even the most ardent racists still want to feed their children. I am not saying that you should align with them either. They are disgusting people. Do one better. Take away their power to perpetuate hate. Without a mouthpiece like Donald Trump or Marjorie Taylor Greene, they have nothing. It gives us more freedom to actually fight for what we need to fight for.

[expatimes]

With the support of the left, Biden can deliver progressive gains

Days after the 2020 presidential race was finally called for Joe Biden, there is still cause for progressive Americans who voted against Trump and Trumpism to be concerned.

Support for Trump has increased in real terms - from nearly 63 million votes in 2016 to well over 73 million this year. Trump's refusal to concede to his Democratic rival and his attempts to undermine the legitimacy of the election results with false allegations of voter fraud are increasing anxiety among those eager to see the demagogue leave the White House. Moreover, post-election tensions are emerging between progressive and centrist factions of the Democratic Party who had not long ago joined forces to run a disciplined and unifying electoral campaign.

Centrists such as James Clyburn and Abigail Spanberger are holding the progressive wing of the party responsible for what they view as Democratic underperformance in the election, and casting doubt on the viability of running on a progressive platform in the two Senate runoffs in Georgia in January - which might end Republican control of the Senate.

Prominent left-wing intellectuals, meanwhile, are warning the Biden-Harris victory could end up being just a progressive “mirage”.

In the immediate aftermath of the election, Judith Butler issued a powerful rebuttal of Trump and Trumpism but also distanced herself from the centrism of President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris.

Naomi Klein also voiced her pessimism about the progressive prospects of this ticket. In a recent opinion piece, she criticized the Democratic Party's inability to gain widespread popular support, and echoing Butler, stressed that “a great many people did not vote for Joe Biden, they voted against Trump”.

Is the left's lukewarm reception of the Biden-Harris victory justified? Do we really have reason to be sceptical of the progressive prospects of the incoming democratic administration?

Reason for optimism

As the vote count reaches the final stages, Biden's win is looking much more decisive than it did in the early post-election days. He is now leading with nearly six million votes nationally and has registered the largest number of votes for a US president ever, in an election marked by the highest voter turnout in more than a century.

He managed to flip Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania, where Clinton lost to Trump in 2016. He also scored historic wins in Arizona and Georgia, traditionally Republican states.

Biden and Harris have benefitted from the mobilisation of a broad multi-racial coalition of working- and middle-class voters. Black voters were decisive in key battleground states in the Midwest and in Georgia, especially in urban and suburban areas. Latinx and Native American votes were crucial in flipping Arizona, and Latinx votes played a significant role in turning Wisconsin blue. Democrats also gained the support of white working-class voters in the Midwest, showing the dominant narratives about this group were incomplete.

A major surge in youth voter turnout benefitted the Democrats, which bodes well for the future. Young voters, especially Black and Asian Americans, supported Biden in great numbers.

This increased support from younger generations shows that this year's mass protests for racial justice have brought real gains for the Democratic Party in the ballot box. This is an important shift from previous years when similar forms of popular mobilization did not always translate into electoral politics. The Black Lives Matter movement, climate justice organisers, and Latinx migration rights activists played a significant role in the Biden-Harris victory.

Cori Bush perhaps embodies this development best - a grassroots activist and a nurse, she went from the streets of Ferguson to the House of Representatives, on a promise to help address systemic racism and economic inequalities through concrete policies designed and implemented in the federal legislature.

Bush and her fellow rising stars of the left in Congress, such as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, Ayanna Pressley and Jamaal Bowman, have successfully placed social, climate and economic justice demands on the political agenda: data from exit polls tells us that Democratic voters are very concerned about racial inequality, the coronavirus pandemic, healthcare policy and climate change.

A pragmatic left

From early on, pundits have adamantly praised Biden's pragmatism. What most analysts failed to notice, however, is that the left of the Democratic Party has grown savvier and more pragmatic as well. Through relentless grassroots activism and frank dialogue, they have strategically built a coalition with the center of the party to deliver a decisive win for Biden and Harris. It is the same pragmatism that led Stacey Abrams in Georgia to carry on one of the most effective campaigns of voter mobilization among populations whose right to vote has been regularly suppressed.

Pragmatism has also led the Biden-Harris ticket to embrace progressive policies in their program.

The transition team's plans state the intention to substantially increase federal government intervention in the handling of the coronavirus pandemic, including creating jobs in public health, boosting domestic manufacturing of personal protective equipment, and providing economic aid to the unemployed, workers and small businesses. The plan mentions using the Defense Production Act, which would give significant leeway to Biden to make bold moves to bring back the state into managing public health and the economy even if finding a majority in Congress might prove difficult.

Biden and Harris promise massive investment in green infrastructure as well as the manufacturing, caregiving and education sectors. The new government aims to “create millions of good-paying union jobs”, increase workers' ability to organize and to engage in collective bargaining, increase protections such as paid family and leave sick, and increase minimum wages to $ 15 an hour. The president-elect and the vice president-elect also want to increase taxation for the rich and big business and reinforce and expand Obamacare.

They talk openly about the need to boldly address systemic racism. On this issue, the measures proposed are still vague, but the commitment to police reform legislation and reducing the prison population sets the agenda for pursuing deeper changes in the future. The new administration knows that they will have to deliver on the expectations raised by the overwhelming support the majority of Democratic voters have for the Black Lives Matter movement.

Of course, it would be naïve to think the US will dismantle white supremacy and turn into a well functioning social democracy overnight - grassroots activists are well aware of that. Yet, the Biden-Harris administration does have a real shot at reversing the effects of decades of rampant neoliberalism and heightening inequalities.

The need for unity

The new government will not have it easy. Biden will have to move fast in the middle of a pandemic that continues to ravage the lives and livelihoods of millions of Americans, with a divided Congress, and a divided country where voter support for Trumpism is on the rise.

Trump's racist, sexist and incompetent rule culminated in the disastrous mishandling of the pandemic, and yet, the incumbent president's campaign deployed a sophisticated propaganda machinery that delivered targeted disinformation, ranging from coronavirus denialism to stoking fears of a communist takeover and more. These messages emboldened Trump's white followers, kept Republican core support among older voters, and made significant inroads into conservative Latinx communities in Florida and Texas.

With Trump on the way out, the end game for right-wing media such as Fox News and for the Republican Party will be to keep riding the destructive and divisive politics of disinformation, fear and resentment that sustained the Trump presidency.

The effective mix of pragmatism and cautious optimism that has united the left and the center of the Democratic Party in the ballot box is now needed to stave off the looming threat of never-ending divisions and internecine conflicts that Republicans will try to fuel and manipulate to their advantage. The election results, and the spontaneous mass gatherings that saw Americans taking to the streets to celebrate Biden's victory as much as Trump's demise, show that the prospects for progressive gains under the new administration are good.

The views expressed in this article are the authors' own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera's editorial stance.

. #world Read full article: https://expatimes.com/?p=14450&feed_id=18706

[lettersfromtaiwan]

Same-Sex Marriage In Taiwan: Progression Via Judicial Review In Spite Of A Passive Centrist Politics

On the 24th May, Taiwan’s Council of Grand Justices issued Constitutional Interpretation No. 748 in which they stated that The Civil Code violates the freedom of marriage and equal rights for all citizens as guaranteed by the Constitution, and that If the government has not changed the law in two years, same-sex couples will be allowed to register their union at household registration offices.  This has since proven to be a destructive mistake. Marriages across the nation are falling apart as heterosexual couples realise that their union is not only no longer sacrosanct but has also been stripped of any meaning. Young impressionable students across Facebook and LINE are declaring their desire to marry themselves and their pets, and at least one of the remaining statutes of Chiang Kai-shek has been spotted weeping. Traditional Chinese culture and Confucian values are dead. The malaise of Western liberalism has destroyed yet another nation. That at least, with little exaggeration, was the prognosis of what would happen should same-sex marriage be legalised. What has actually happened is that the nation has spent a day or two in mild celebration that the Council of Grand Justices affirmed that some of the rights laid out in the Constitution do actually apply to everyone, as is the purpose of a Constitution. There has been little of a social, or political earthquake in response to the ruling, but for those who campaigned so hard to enjoy a basic right to join in a legally recognised union with the person they love regardless of their sex or gender, it was a seismic moment.  It is one that Taiwan should rightly be proud of as the first country in Asia to release the institution of marriage from illogical and exclusionary heteronormative constraint.

The ruling is also interesting for the response to it. The new Chairman of the KMT, Wu Den-yih (吳敦義), and also party grandee Jason Hu (胡志強), quickly came out with statements in support of the ruling, much to the surprise of netizens who were also quick to point out that the Chairman had previously publicly stated his opposition to it. That a politician would flip their position after measuring which direction the vane of public opinion had swung is both opportunistic but also in some respects welcome. It shows at least that they are capable of change.  Their previously strong and consistent opposition to same-sex marriage will not however be forgotten by those who suffered in the period of struggle to gain those rights, and their quick change of heart and the mendacious and revisionist claim to have always supported same-sex marriage will not earn the public’s trust. You don’t get a gold star for lacking moral certitude and courage in battle until someone else has won the war and its time to line up for a medal.  Most interestingly though, despite all the protests from US-funded and inspired evangelicals before the ruling, the vast majority of Taiwanese seem perfectly at ease with the ruling and its implications, or at least do not feel threatened by them.  The main reason for this collective shrug is probably because the ruling doesn’t actually affect anyone negatively - it only expands a right enjoyed by the vast majority. It turns out that expanding this right to marriage was not a zero-sum equation and did not devalue, denigrate, or render less sacrosanct, marriages between heterosexual couples. As much as ‘love trumped hate’, logic triumphed over a tendency to visceral reaction.

What the response also highlighted was that ‘public opinion’ has at least two dimensions in Taiwan, and I suspect in other developed liberal democratic nations: a private held or intimately shared liberalism, with a small ‘l’, and a publicly expressed and socially nervous reactionary and performative conservatism. As a business which generates more consumption of its product when events are more polarising and sensational, the media seek out the latter over the former, thereby distorting the image people have of what most of their fellow citizens think. A desire to fit in and swim with the tide is a powerful component of culture in Taiwan, as it is elsewhere in countries around the world.  The death penalty is a good example in this respect. Both KMT and DPP administrations shy away from addressing the failure of capital punishment to act as a deterrent, the former wielding it as a means to project strength and as tool for political distraction, the latter cautious of handling a political hot potato which it feels does not have sufficient public consensus to take the electoral risk of addressing. One wonders how many wrongful executions will be tolerated before public consensus is deemed sufficient for politicians to find the courage to bring Taiwan in line with the vast majority of other nations and abolish this cruel and ineffective practice. 

Significantly, it should be noted that the same-sex ruling was not only a top down effort but a citizen-led one: Chi Chia-wei (祁家威) filed a request for an interpretation in 2015 after his attempt to register his same-sex marriage was rejected by Taipei’s Wanhua District (萬華) household registration office in 2013 and subsequent court appeals failed. The other request was filed by the Taipei Department of Civil Affairs in 2015. The Legislative Yuan, even with a clear and historic DPP majority had stumbled over amending the civil code and / or introducing new law. The President had made clear her support for same-sex marriage but her party’s caucus had failed to evince unity or creativity over the issue. National level politicians had sat on the fence and essentially waited for the judiciary to settle the case for them. Sadly, it is very doubtful such an approach would work with the death penalty in Taiwan this year and perhaps still for years to come.  Where allowing everyone to marry does not install fear or loathing in the populace, it seems not executing murderers is still a logical step too far for many, if opinion polls are to believed.  

The mark of a progressive and liberal democracy is how society’s outliers and its most vulnerable are treated.  A party or government which claims to be truly progressive will not just reflect public opinion but have the political courage, especially when in power, to lead positive change, even when seemingly unpopular, which reflects the nation’s humanity and protects everyone, not just those the public is willing to express sympathy for. It should be a determined force for institutionalising empathy over sympathy, tolerance over spite, inclusion over ring-fencing, and safeguards over abandonment. ‘Progress’ in society as a whole is not a measure of economic and technological development but one where gross domestic happiness, trust, and security are maximised.  

Politics and economics are not separate. Nodding to the left to superficially ameliorate the continent negative impacts of maintaining a dominant right-wing model of political economy is both morally bankrupt, exploitative, and ultimately only creates political space and legitimacy for more extreme voices on the right. The popularity of (domestically liberal yet internationally reactionary) Bernie Sanders in the US, and the electoral success of genuine progressive Left Jeremy Corbyn in the UK on June 8th, shows that the current forty year hegemony of neoliberalism has lost public trust. The election of Donald Trump as President is evidence that the empty logarithm-driven sloganism of “I’m With Her”, and the neoliberal incrementalist agenda it papers over, offers no vision or hope or answer to any number of collective problems such as climate change, an end to the war on drugs and terror economies, or how to address building the fiscally sustainable national, universal healthcare system that all tax-payers and citizens should deserve as a basic human right.  “En-Marche” in 2017 is no safeguard against a President Le Pen in 2022. If anything it will be an invitation for it, especially once the electorate cottons onto his Obamaesque style of camouflaging centre-right economics with sound-bites and PR stunts that appropriate the left for clickatvist popularity spikes. The performative liberalism of Trudeau will not for long mask his deeply illiberal security and energy policies, or the willingness of his administration to bend at the knee in the face of pressure from Beijing.  

President Tsai would do well to look abroad and take note that Trump is a supernova whose logical end is implosion and a political black hole that could easily suck the US into a vicious and destructive spiral of domestic institutional and social conflict which could even result in open and bloody insurrection.  Politics across the world are becoming more extreme and polarised as people start realising that continuing as normal is collective suicide by inequality and climate.  If Tsai wants to lead a truly progressive DPP, she should not be afraid to lead with courage and conviction, to make the case that there are other more humane, and affordable, models of political economy which better ensure basic human rights, such as marriage and a clean environment, sooner and for generations to come.

[sinesalvatorem]

Have you noticed any interesting correlations between demographics and the two political questions in your survey? The "catgirl effect" or anything else?

So, the first thing to note is that my political questions were set up as basically a political compass. They were social and economic freedom axes, and they were on a scale of 1 to 5, with 1 being furthest left and 5 furthest right (because English speakers read ordered lists left to right).

The first question was social freedom and had an answer of 1 being “The government should keep out of one's private affairs” and 5 being “The government should regulate proper social and moral standards”. The second question was economic freedom and had an answer of 1 being “The government should have strong control over the economy” and 5 being “The government should avoid interfering with the economy”. Answers from 2 to 4 were taken as intermediate.

An interesting fact about the data as a whole: From just a glance at the bar graph for the social freedom question, it’s obvious that my readership leans socially liberal really hard. The most common answer was 1, and 1 and 2 together account for 89% of my responses. Which is... wow. Like, I’m not surprised, but I’m also definitely not appealing to conservatives.

Meanwhile, the data on economic freedom was way more balanced. Since it was only a 5 point scale, I can’t really be sure, but it certainly looks normally distributed about a point only slightly right of centre. The modal and median answers are both ‘3′, while the mean is 3.33. My readership is only a little bit more conservative economically than one might expect by pure chance. Apparently, I have very broad appeal on this side.

So, what correlations to perform? Obviously, the first one is: Does support for social freedom correlate with support for economic freedom? The answer, of course, is no. Left/Right split continues to exist, as evidenced by the correlation coefficient being -0.251. However, the fact that it’s not much higher does prove that there are some general-libertarians or general-authoritarians about. Let’s go find them!

Firstly, we want to define what these things mean. For the purpose of this test, I defined someone as being on the Left if they answered between 1 and 2 for both social and economic freedom, as these were the two left-leaning answers. I defined someone as Right if they answered between 4 and 5 for both. I defined someone as Libertarian if they answered between 1 and 2 for social freedom and between 4 and 5 for economic freedom. I defined someone as Authoritarian if they answered between 4 and 5 for social freedom and between 1 and 2 for economic freedom. I defined everyone who answered 3 for one question and 2-4 for another as a Dirty Centrist. All else were uncounted.

When I actually ran the numbers, I found 3 Authoritarians and 0 actual Conservatives. Pretty much everyone is either a liberal, libertarian, or centrist - as could be expected based on how everyone is super into social freedom. After looking at that, I decided that I would simply run correlations on support for economic freedom, as that’s the only thing with notable variance.

Now, for the demographics! Here I had a little trouble finding groups large enough to find out meaningful information. However, I was able to get useful information from the following demographics:

Age: Basically what it says on the tin, but with the actual calculations being done using ages estimated as the expected middle of the age range selected on the survey.

How long they’ve followed me: Similarly to age, this one was given as a range, but I’m picking an arbitrary midpoint for calculatory reasons.

Log of time they’ve followed me: Natural log of the above, in case any effects are logarithmic.

How much they like the blog: Simple 1-5 scale. Easiest correlation.

Gender: Broken into Cisfemale, Cismale, Transfemale, Transmale, AFAB Other, and AMAB Other.

Nationality: Americans vs literally everyone else. (”Americans” is still bigger)

Religion 1: Atheists-and-agnostics vs Theists

Religion 2: Jews (religious and non-), ex- and current-Christians, and Others.

As only age, length of following, and blog-enjoyment are scalar, only those three will be reported as a correlation. Everyone else will just have their average value reported.

This is being done with a sample of 250-260 (based on what people did and didn’t skip) in Google Sheets. Using this, I can calculate Pearson’s r, but I can’t figure out the p values. I’m going to talk about results over 0.1 as if they matter and under 0.1 as if they don’t, but this is so not how that should be done. If anyone wants to help me do Real Statistics to this stuff, hit me up!

Finally, the results:

Firstly, there is no correlation among my readers between age and economic liberty. The Pearson’s r between the two is 0.038, which is literally nothing. (Social liberty had a moderate negative correlation (in keeping with stereotypes) of -0.197, but everyone was super into social liberty, so it basically doesn’t count.)

The correlation between people liking my blog and supporting economic liberty is also very weak (0.090). I wouldn’t read much into it. The weakness means that I suppose people who disagree with me really like hearing what I have to say anyway?

The amount of time people have spent following my blog has a more significant effect. The r here is 0.162 for linear time and 0.177 for log time, so I suppose the effect is relatively linear? Of course, what that effect is is uncertain. It could be that long term exposure to me helps turn people libertarian, or that libertarians are more likely to stick around long term. Whatever it is, it’s minor enough that I doubt it’s worth worrying about.

Now, the thing this ask focused on: Gender! For gender, we have the following values for average level of economic freedom support: Cisfemale = 3.0, Cismale = 3.5, Transfemale = 3.8, Transmale = 3.1,   AFAB Other = 3.0, and AMAB Other = 3.3.

So, yes! The Libertarian Transgirl stereotype is supported by the data! Being a transwoman is a +0.8 to economic freedom preference over being a ciswoman. Another intriguing result is that, while degree of economic freedom support varies about half a point by gender among AMABs, AFABs of all genders are pretty solidly centrist. All of these groups were within one point of each other, though, because the overall distribution is clustered near the centre.

Americans have an economic freedom preference of 3.3, while non-Americans have one of 3.4, which fits with the average of 3.33. I feel tempted to make a jab about America not being the land of the free anymore but, honestly, the numbers are so close that this is probably just noise. It does mean that my non-American followers aren’t significantly more left-wing, though - despite what you might expect for a bunch of Europeans and Australians :p

Theistic followers have an economic freedom preference of 3.2, while non-Theistic followers have on of 3.4. Again, pretty close to each other. Because religion has historically been a battle ground for social issues, I checked for differences in opinion there. However, among my followers, there seems to be complete agreement on social issues: Both theists and non- are at 1.7 (1.3 points to the left) on average.

People of a Christian background are at 3.3 for economic freedom; people of a Jewish background are at 3.3; and people of all other backgrounds are also at 3.3. Similarly, on social issues, everyone looks exactly the same.

Anyway, what the results show is that basically nothing matters. There is a moderate correlation between following my blog for a long time and being libertarian, and between being a transwoman and being a libertarian. But, otherwise, nothing of much importance is going on. My followers cluster hard near the centre for economic freedom and at the left for social freedom, and variance from that point is minimal and has little relationship with group-membership.

(If you want to take this survey and contribute to all the ~cool science~, you can do so here.)

[libertariantaoist]

The other day on Twitter someone tweeted me  the news of the latest drone strike in Yemen, with the taunting message: “Congrats,  @JustinRaimondo.” I had to laugh, and bemoan my fate: “I am now to be held responsible for everything the Trump  administration does, especially their failure to go full pacifist!” Of course,  you don’t have to be a pacifist to oppose our drone campaign, in Yemen or elsewhere,  as I do, but the comment and my response underscore a basic flaw in the thinking  of Trump’s anti-interventionist critics.

I have been writing this column for over twenty years, commenting on current  events as they impact the US on the international stage. I’ve watched as this  country fought a series of unnecessary and debilitating wars, exhausting its  resources and sacrificing the lives of its young people in bloody crusades from  Belgrade to Baghdad. I’ve navigated the tides of public opinion, as support  for this suicidal policy waxed and waned, according to the caprices of the moment  and the push and pull of external events. And if I can draw a single important  lesson from all this experience, it is this: the albatross of empire won’t be  easily lifted from our necks.

There are too many interest groups with both  a financial and psychological stake in maintaining the status quo. The worldwide  string of bases, alliances, protectorates, and US-protected corporate enclaves  that make up the architecture of empire are so vast, and so profitable (for  the war profiteers), that the task of dismantling it is the work of generations.

There was a window of opportunity that opened  after the collapse of international communism and the end of the cold war that  might have cut that timeline short. The events of September 11, 2001, put an  end to that bright hope. Just as the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor ended the  hope of the biggest antiwar movement in our history – the America  First Committee – that we might stay out of the European war, so 9/11 put  on hold the idea that America could finally put down the sword and “come home”  after the decades-long cold war.

In short, the lesson of the past twenty-plus years is that we must take the  long view. As a corollary to that, anti-interventionists must understand that  ours is a battle of ideas. The enemy is the concept that America must maintain  a hegemonic position on every continent, that we are entrusted with upholding  and defending the “international liberal order,” and that we alone are capable  of carrying out that supposedly sacred task. It is a conceit that arose in the  wake of World War II and it has guided US foreign policy since that time. Both  parties have historically agreed that “politics  stops at the water’s edge,” and, since 1952 – when the America First “isolationist”  wing of the GOP led by Sen. Robert  A. Taft was finally defeated — bipartisan support for our policy of global  intervention has been de rigueur for all major presidential candidates.

That is, until now.

Although we are still in the grip of what I  call the 9/11 Effect, the aftershocks of that seminal event have largely worn  off. A war-weary public, and a visible decline in our economic condition, has  turned the public inward and greatly decreased the War Party’s influence. The  key to maintaining that influence was always in maintaining the political isolation  of the anti-interventionist forces, which were largely confined to the far left  wing of American politics. As long as the neoconservatives dominated the GOP,  and “centrists” maintained control of the Democratic party, the postwar foreign  policy consensus reigned supreme for the simple reason that the American people  were never given a choice. As Garet Garrett, the Cassandra of the Old Right, put  it in 1952:

“Between government in the republican meaning, that is, Constitutional,  representative, limited government, on the one hand, and Empire on the other  hand, there is mortal enmity. Either one will forbid the other, or one will  destroy the other. That we know. Yet never has the choice been put to a vote  in the 2016 election of the people.”

More than half a century after those words were written, it has been  put to a vote, and the winner is someone who is challenging – in a fundamental  way – the very basis of the longstanding internationalist consensus. I’ve detailed  the various  ways in which Trump  has issued  his challenge  in this space, at length, and so I won’t repeat myself here. Suffice to say  that his revival of the “America First” tradition is, in and of itself, a mortal  threat to the War Party, and they recognize the danger he poses to them. That’s  why every faction with an interest in maintaining the Empire – the neocons,  the liberal internationalists, the national security bureaucracy, the CIA, the  cold war Democrats – have pulled out all the stops in their unrelenting assault  on the Trump administration. They know who their enemies are.

That Trump is inconsistent, and an imperfect vessel, hardly needs to be said.  That the danger of war still looms over us is also a fact that none can deny.  Yet all this is irrelevant in the fact of the conceptual victory his winning  the White House represents. Here is a candidate who campaigned against GOP foreign  policy orthodoxy, explicitly rejecting the legacy of the Iraq war and even going  so far as to call  out the Bush administration for lying us into that war. Even if he had been  defeated in the general election, Trump’s triumph in the Republican primary  signaled the end of neoconservatism as a viable political force, at least inside  the GOP. What this means is that the War Party’s monopoly on the foreign policy  positions of both parties is ended: Garrett’s lament is now outdated, because  the voters do have a choice. They can choose between republic and Empire.

Yes, the Trump administration will take many actions that contradict the promise  of their victory: that is already occurring. And we are covering that in these  pages, without regard for partisan considerations: and yet it is necessary to  step back and see the larger picture, looking past the journalistic details  of the day-to-day news cycle. In short, it is necessary to take the long view  and try to see what the ideological victory that was won this past November  augurs for the future.

If we look past Trump and his administration and scout out what the  road ahead looks like, the view is encouraging: the obstacles that loomed large  in the past – the neoconservative hegemony in the GOP, the war hysteria that  dominated the country post-9/11, the public’s largely unquestioning acceptance  of what the “mainstream” media reported – have been swept away. What’s more,  a global rebellion against regnant elites is threatening the status quo. All  the elements that make for the restoration of our old republic are in place,  including a growing mass movement in this country that rejects the old internationalist  dogma.

Ideas rule the world: not politicians, not parties, not range-of-the-moment  fluctuations in public opinion. This isn’t about Trump, the politician, or the  journalistic trivia of the moment: we are engaged in a battle of ideas – and,  slowly but surely, we are winning.

No matter what one thinks of Trump, or his appointees, the election of 2016  is without doubt the biggest victory opponents of empire have enjoyed since  the country turned its back on the interventionism of Woodrow Wilson and enjoyed  a “return  to normalcy” in 1920. The victor that year was Warren Harding, who declared:  “America’s present need is not heroics but healing; not nostrums but normalcy;  not revolution but restoration.” After the posturing Teddy Roosevelt’s aggressive  imperialism and the more studied “idealism” of Woodrow Wilson, America was ready  to return to the foreign policy of the Founders.

This time, after years of constant warfare, and the stunning realization that  our empire has brought us nothing but financial and moral ruin, Americans are  again seeking a return to normalcy – or, as Trump would put it, they want to  “make America great again.” Having gone down the road that Rome once trod, Americans  stand at the abyss of inexorable decline – and they want to turn back.

Yet the road back is by no means an easy one. External events – unpredictable  by their very nature – may intervene once again. After all, the history of mankind  is the record of chance, human caprice, and endless folly. Yet I am optimistic  at this recent turn of events: barring some unforeseen catastrophe, the future  is brighter than it has been for quite some time. The chances are good that  we may yet become a normal country again, as opposed to a bloated empire beset  by external enemies and internal rot. Perhaps not in my lifetime – I’m 65! –  but, if all goes well, at least I’ll have seen the beginning of the end of the  War Party’s bloody reign.

Since I take the long view, that’s good enough for me

[peterinpa]

Republicans Get to Govern. We should all be worried.

In 2008, Barack Obama swept into office, bringing with him impressive majorities in both houses of Congress. Obituaries were written about the Republican Party and the changing demographics that would make it difficult for them to compete on the national level. Mitch McConnell laid out privately the game plan they readily adopted: oppose everything in unanimity to try and limit Obama to one term. Conservatives were wringing their hands in worry about the liberal agenda that would ruin the country. McConnell this weekend used the Classic winner revenge by reminding us that elections have consequences by declaring that Democrats were just being sore losers and that conservatives would now force their policies upon us. Fair enough. We're not in a favorable position to stop much. But 2016 is dramatically different than 2008 in a myriad of ways, a few of which I'll speak to in this posting. First, the Democrats were partly successful by running conservative candidates in gerrymandered Republican districts to achieve the ultimate goals: power, and the perks and money that follow it. And in an attempt to retain that power, they acquiesced to their conservative colleagues and watered down what became the PPACA, or Obamacare, essentially adopting a plan the Republicans had touted for decades and that Mitt Romney had implemented in Massachusetts. A complete reliance on the private sector for-profit insurance industry, with penalties for non insurance so low that only those in higher risk health categories would purchase insurance. And even though they had advocated this very plan since the 1970's, the GOP held firm with McConnell's advice: just say no. And the signature piece of legislation intended to jump start the economy, the so-called stimulus bill, was also watered down by the conservative wing out of fear mongering by republicans over the impact on the national debt. So what should have been the massive infrastructure rebuilding program we so desperately need, and that Trump now promises, we were left with a patchwork of tax credits and ill conceived projects that replaced a boardwalk in Rehoboth that would have been replaced anyway, and gave someone like me a tax credit on a central air system. All because Republican hypocrites wailed about the deficit, and conservative Democratic congressmen clung to the false pipe dream of staying in power. Let's ignore for the moment that for all his faults, and there were many, we actually had surplus budgets under Bill Clinton that would have continued into the future, according to the non partisan Congressional Budget Office had George W Bush, who also lost the popular vote, acted in the best interest of the country and not embraced that classic Republican philosophy of tax cuts for the already well off. You know, that trickle down theory. So 8 years ago, we had a Democratic Party in power, who thanks to Bill Clinton, had become confused about what they stood for: be a centrist party and look like Republican lite and cling to power, and perks and cash, or stand up for what had made this country great: a true liberal agenda that provides a safety net for the young and old and infirm, a fair tax system that supports defense, maintains a public works infrastructure, and provides for a quality public education. Oh. And ensure that the rights of minorities are not trampled upon by the latest change in public opinion whipped up by nationalistic demagogues selling the good old days. Now to my point. Donald Trump ran AGAINST the Republican establishment and mocked Republicans as the ones who would be stupid enough to give him the nomination. He was pro abortion when convenient, anti abortion when convenient. Said on many occasions that Bill was a great president, and that Hillary would be a better one. Contributed regularly to the opponents of the men who he has now nominated to cabinet positions. And ridiculed and denounced Republican leaders every chance he got. Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell held their noses when it became clear he would be the nominee and gave lip service to supporting him. I truly believe that they never thought a guy who delighted in grabbing pussy, mocked the disabled, ridiculed prisoners of war, attacked Gold Star parents, lied about previous statements, never held public office, cheated contractors, misused charitable funds, declared bankruptcy when convenient, and apparently exploited tax law that his own lobbyists ensured remained in the tax code to avoid paying millions of dollars in federal taxes for 20 years. None of us did, really. Did we? So what happens now? Let's not forget that Republicans vehemently opposed the New Deal; that they viewed the Great Society as an overreach of government; that they voted against Medicare as a government takeover. Why? At their core, the party believes in personal responsibility and believes that family and church should provide the safety net that has been cobbled together over the years. They essentially disdain any government program and ignore the racial prejudice that still exists in our country since slavery was an economic institution. They have successfully starved the government of it's ability to deliver basic services by opposing every fair tax, modest tax increase or appropriate corporate tax, and then pointed to failing education and crumbling infrastructure and dwindling anti poverty programs as examples of how government shouldn't do these things. That the private sector can do it better. The one growth industry in government today? New and expanded prisons. Why? They convinced themselves that private industry could own and operate them! Wonder who owns stocks in those companies? My humble opinion is that Mr. Trump sees himself as chairman of the board. He doesn't need the money, at least from what he tells us. But he is a narcissist, and the attention of the world hanging on his every word is going to convince him he is our god. And the true purists in the Republican Party are going to be able to dismantle our safety net and convince us we will be able to do better on our own. Look at them, after all. All self made successful men who have suckled on the spigot of government contracts and influence. Don't worry, they will say. We can do better if Medicare is just a voucher. But a better plan! Don't worry, they will say! You can invest your social security in the stock market and make a killing. And the cash left over after you die will go to your kids! They will tell us public education has failed, so we need charters so we can send our kids to any school we want. But those teachers aren't unionized, and there is no evidence -zero- that suggests charters can do better. Smaller class sizes have proven to be the answer, but that costs more money. And they will tell us that deficits don't matter as they rack up huge spending on military programs the military has said they don't need or want, but that defense companies need to increase profits. And then tell us that the fraud in food stamp programs is so wide spread that they have to cut those to reduce our deficits. And yes, they will appoint Supreme Court justices who they say won't legislate from the bench. What they really mean is that they want justices who will endorse their view of the constitution. And yes, Mr. Trump will sign off on all this. Because he is the most elite of the elite corporate ruling class that really has been the shadow government from the start. And his tax cuts will ensure that he and his friends, and successive generations of them, will remain in the top 1% of the top 1%. Because his ego will be fed beyond even his imagination, and that's what drives him. Power and ego. And the Republicans will achieve their long standing goal of a smaller government under the moralistic position that we should turn to our religious institutions to care for the needy, and our families to provide for the infirm. Can we prevent this? Perhaps. And I'll explore the ways we may be able to in future posts which will be fairly frequent going forward. But we have fallen for the very demagogue that our founding fathers feared, for what we are about to learn was very good reasons. But make no mistake. The Democratic takeover 8 years ago was achieved by the selling of the soul of the Democratic Party for power, perks and cash. The Republican Party has purged itself of all moderate voices, and the liberal wing of the party, from which I came, has been destroyed. The Republican Party today is a purest philosophy party that doesn't need to worry about the loss of power at the local level. Sweetheart deals with Democrats, worked out at the precinct level, has gerrymandered the country into districts that are essentially safe for virtually all incumbents. They hail Ronald Reagan as their hero. They conveniently ignore the fact that Reagan raised taxes not once, but when needed, both as governor and as President. And he compromised often. Because he knew that it was the way to good government. Next up: why compromise is a dirty word, and what it will take to " give him a chance". And why term limits may be the only way to save our democracy.