Exactly. Which means both the DNC and GOP are genocide supporting fascist parties (or are two factions of the same fascist political organization). Either way, there is no "left" politician currently in federal office in the US, but there are more than you might think in local and state offices. Here are some stats: https://www.gpelections.org/
I don't think this system can be changed from within. We need a different system altogether. What kind of system could (should?) it be, to be decided by the people who make up the system, i.e. everyone.
Poverty does not exist because we cannot feed the poor, but because we cannot satisfy the rich.
No human being is a billion times as valuable than another. This is the first time in human history that we have the technology and resources to take care of everyone. Food, housing, healthcare - yet here we are.
Sawant has brought the goods but Seattle is one of the few USA places that still has strong labor. It's because labor is still needed to build airplanes and Seattle/Tacoma is where this is done. In the rest of the USA strikes have pretty much been killed off.
Okay well what do you call it when you want to dismantle capitalism, end imperialism, and take back what the ruling class has stolen? I would say those who support this position could be described as "left", and those who oppose it are "right". They're not the same, and it only confuses things to pretend they are, so we need words for those distinctions. Feel free to mentally substitute whichever words you prefer to label those distinctions, though.
The trouble is the mass media has so muddled things that there is no agreement on what words like left, right, socialism, democracy, freedom and so forth mean. Debate gets very confused and almost useless. I say that such words have been "Orwellized", deliberately obfuscated for this reason. The confusion makes it hard for the general public to organize politically.
So what to do? Abjure these words and Instead discuss specific issues. Gaza/Lebanon, gvt. health care, monopolies, war spending, and so forth. People will vote for a program that addresses these things. Get such a program and elect a Congress on that platform. That's what FDR did. Sure it's a lot of work but believe me it is the easiest way. Peace and prosperity. A big majority wants these things and will vote for them. Heck, Trump got elected as the peace candidate.
If you focus on what you and the Right can agree on, you’d get further. Then you could argue the points of difference after. I think a lot the Populist Right movement wanted an end to imperialism and crony capitalism - monopolies, money in government, two tier justice system, gov corruption. They didn’t get it with Trump, haha, but they hoped he would give them that.
"What's funny about rich people complaining that poor people don't work and are a drain on society is that every rich person does negative work. That is, it takes far more work to accommodate their life than their labor could possibly produce. They are the real drain on society." ~George Carlin
Is it about class conflict, though, anymore? The ruling class have done well with making it appear to be much more about cultural issues and race than class. It’s confused the categories intentionally, to protect itself
Ok, I wasn’t clear, I meant to many people it appears to not be about that anymore, because of the successful work of the ruling class after the Occupy Wall Street movement to make it about cultural issues
>>"I meant to many people it appears to not be about that anymore,"
Duh! Why do you think I suggested people LEARN and EDUCATE themselves on this subject? Because people don't know - and they form their beliefs based on narratives and 'what they hear frequently/repeatedly' rather than (1) real history (2) real facts (3) logic and critical thinking.
Agreed. It's up and down, or top and bottom, but the left/right description just doesn't really cut it anymore (if it ever did). It's a class struggle. The workers at the "bottom" of the heap are fighting the capitalists/fascists at the top who are hoarding all the resources.
As Jill Stein (of the Green Party) often says, "You can't have a revolution in a counter-revolutionary party."
I never understood why Bernie felt that the DNC was the way to get to the White House... He's always run for office as an independent. I was very leery about him running for the Dem ticket. And sure enough, after Philadelphia, they crushed him and put in Shillery. I vowed never to vote for any duopoly candidate ever again. The Revolution will not be coming via the fascists.
Same here. After the 2016 debacle, I tried to trust Bernie, but each instance where he gave in to the status quo and backed the "lesser evil" DNC agenda just made me hate him more. Never again.
CJ>>"You cannot change the system using a political party that is designed to prevent change."
THIS! People need to inject this understanding into EVERY cell of their body and mind. Also, in the U.S., there are 2 right-wing Capitalist parties and Zero left-wing parties (and the irony is that most Americans are pretty clueless about what 'Left' and 'Right' is - maybe there needs to be some sort of re-education for the American public?)
See this…it’s accurate. It’s also why the powers that be were both nervous and proactive. They made it into a right/left issue Jiminey Quick. Talking about Mangione.
Luke, for the 100th time, Left is about "an absense of hierarchy" while Right is about "maintaining hierarchy". Left and Right is NOT about cultural issues (though many of these issues ARISE from the distribution of POWER in hierarchies). Anytime you have hierarchies of power (not to be confused with hierarchy of merit/ability/etc.), you have the makings of right-wing thought and class conflict.
There is no left. the media keep referring to the left so people now use it as normal while what’s considered the center has moved so far to the right this language seems normal to most and seems used by many many people.
Bernie started a movement and didn’t win the elections because they were rigged by the DNC. He’s been relatively consistent. Totally agree the Dems are useless. Why would anyone want to get them back in control? To do what? To stand for what? Thanks for your work and writing.
I mean, giving the absolute nutbag sitting in the White House right now - I'm not about to waste my energy on those pundits doing their best to get him the hell out (like Kyle Kulinski).
But Trump is not the disease, he's just a symptom of the disease. Sure, vote Trump out. But it doesn't get rid of the disease, and the disease is progressing rapidly.
Actually, he refused pleas in two open letters to start a movement. He claimed he was doing so, but all he built was a typical campaign organization, albeit with a couple orders of magnitude more volunteers.
The oligarchs will not go quietly into the goodnight. We even see now that the billionaire oligarch in the White House has gone right back to war with Iran. And even he and his corrupt cabinet must be fully aware of what will happen within 4-5 weeks:
Ordinary Americans will be destroyed by a runaway inflationary economy - since the US oil reserves now are about to completely run out.
The economic repercussions will be disastrous for millions of Americans. But Trump and the oligarchs, they couldn't give one hoot about the peasants and the squalor the peasants will soon be living in. The squalor doesn't impact Trump or the rest of the Epstein class of billionaires. So Hi-Ho, back to war we go!
I think you missed something. While Obama apparently identifies as black, he is a mixed-race person with a black father and a white mother. As a child, he was basically abandoned by his father, raised primarily by his mother, and then by his mother's parents (his white grandparents). I've often heard Obama disparagingly described as, among other things, a corporate sell-out, a token DEI president, Wall Street's little (fill-in-the-blank) boy, and as being an "Oreo." (Like the cookie. Black on the outside and white on the inside.)
Give me a break! It's not generational. This 78-year-old is fed up with the local DSA chapter, which, like the national organization, is full of younger folks who are trying to elect whatever new faces they think are the best Democrats, not recognizing that the system is fine-tuned confuse, co-opt, and corrupt them, too.
I've written, "The differences in branding between politicians who affiliate with these two organizations are far greater than the differences in the policies they implement. Democrats, therefore, always sound far better out of power than they perform in power." And, "Democrats and Republicans need each other in order to appeal to their own bases. Without a Republican foil to attack as more obviously cruel, corporate, and retrograde than they are, Democrats would have even less credibility than they do today."
I am hard-pressed to identify a major Democratic legislative victory in the last 50 years. I know people will cite the ACA and even the “historic infrastructure” bill. However, the ACA was achieved by giving the health care industry an enormous gift rather than reforming the system. The infrastructure bill was only historic because Democrats were unable to enact it in the prior 20 years. In no organization is the resolution of deferred maintenance considered a momentous accomplishment.
Very telling that the DNC couldn't even codify Roe V. Wade. Even when they had the majority in both houses of Congress and the presidency, they didn't even turn Roe V. Wade into law. More evidence that both factions of the uniparty (duopoly) are "right wing" or fascists.
Sanders is a sleazy guy. He purports to carry the progressive banner, but operates within the confines and rules of the right wing Democratic Party elites. He is not willing to give up the benefits obtained by doing the bidding of the Dems. That is why he ran as a Democrat and was, predictably, defrauded by the party leadership of the nomination. In my view, Sanders is automatically disqualified as a progressive due to his staunch support of Israel, including its genocide of the Palestinians and other multiple war crimes. He tries to shield himself from criticism by arguing, with no credibility, that all these crimes are the fault of Netanyahu and that Israel could not be such a filthy little terrorist, genocidal, thieving, lying state but for the Netanyahu leadership. All of that is a big heap of bullshit which does not even deserve discussion. In short, Sanders is a fraud. Pay no attention to anything he says.
It is baffling why people cling to politics when we have everything now to decide things for ourselves. The least we could do or the first step that could be taken is for politicians to send surveys to their constituents before they vote on any Bill. And get an accurate reading as to what their constituents want. But that is never going to happen because that would bust the game. So the people remain like minions forever. Politics is old hat, something from a bygone era now that we have all the tech we need to get things our way every time. The way of the vast majority, not just 1% above randomness (51:49% of the vote)
We have a uniparty politics in the United States with state media. China has uniparty politics with state media. In the US, capital regulates government. In China, the government regulates capital. The American economy is a financialized Ponzi scheme for the wealthy while the Chinese manufacture the future for their whole society. We have a 250 year history of spreading murder and chaos to every corner of the planet. The Chinese have lifted hundreds of millions of their people out of poverty. They have a culture and civilization found nowhere in the west. We have as our one and only real religion capitalism. Draw your conclusions.
I completely agree Caitlin. To an outsider, notwithstanding all the emotion, there is very little difference between the Republicans and Democrats policy-wise. Yeah the Republicans are a bit more naked about their subservience to Capital and all that it entails, but since Clinton and his policy of 'triangulation', Democrats have been professing to be pro-John Doe but legislatively pro-big business. And the Chuck Schumer's and Hakeem Jeffries' of the world know, their job is to keep out anyone who really wants serious reform at any cost because whilst they may symbolically answer to the little people (easily bamboozled and distracted) once every six or two years respectively, it is the hyper-focused power elite that call the tune they dance to.
Bernie was wrong because the system is wrong, because the system allows a monitory to control the majority. That is a design fault of Left-Right opposition - an English system! Politicians will never fix the system because they have vested interest in maintaining a Right majority, and the money to buy that result. Only people - en mass - can call for that change.
Down with confrontation politics - Up with consensual government, for the people - by the people - someone actually said that before - I wonder When and Who?
“You cannot change the system using a political party that is designed to prevent change.”
Impeccable logic, I’d say.
After 10,000 years of living together as a species, I would say that the system is the species.
Suddenly, I need a drink. *sigh*
As they say there are two political parties in the USA. One is right-wing and the other is fascist. Republican party is not the right-wing party.
The more the political rhetoric is different, the more it seems to be the same…. The ‘right’ supported genocide, the left supported genocide.
Exactly. Which means both the DNC and GOP are genocide supporting fascist parties (or are two factions of the same fascist political organization). Either way, there is no "left" politician currently in federal office in the US, but there are more than you might think in local and state offices. Here are some stats: https://www.gpelections.org/
I don't think this system can be changed from within. We need a different system altogether. What kind of system could (should?) it be, to be decided by the people who make up the system, i.e. everyone.
Poverty does not exist because we cannot feed the poor, but because we cannot satisfy the rich.
No human being is a billion times as valuable than another. This is the first time in human history that we have the technology and resources to take care of everyone. Food, housing, healthcare - yet here we are.
Jamenta,
You can take the people out of the jungle, but you can’t take the jungle out of the people.
I guess I still hold out hope like Anne Frank did. It may turn out to be a fool's errand Turcot.
So change it from the outside. That doesn’t mean abandoning electoral politics.
Sawant brings the goods - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TuyhAJI5aXM&t=3795s
Sawant has brought the goods but Seattle is one of the few USA places that still has strong labor. It's because labor is still needed to build airplanes and Seattle/Tacoma is where this is done. In the rest of the USA strikes have pretty much been killed off.
I wish people would stop talking about Left and Right, though, as well. It should be Up and Down. See James Corbett’s discussion of it.
Okay well what do you call it when you want to dismantle capitalism, end imperialism, and take back what the ruling class has stolen? I would say those who support this position could be described as "left", and those who oppose it are "right". They're not the same, and it only confuses things to pretend they are, so we need words for those distinctions. Feel free to mentally substitute whichever words you prefer to label those distinctions, though.
The trouble is the mass media has so muddled things that there is no agreement on what words like left, right, socialism, democracy, freedom and so forth mean. Debate gets very confused and almost useless. I say that such words have been "Orwellized", deliberately obfuscated for this reason. The confusion makes it hard for the general public to organize politically.
So what to do? Abjure these words and Instead discuss specific issues. Gaza/Lebanon, gvt. health care, monopolies, war spending, and so forth. People will vote for a program that addresses these things. Get such a program and elect a Congress on that platform. That's what FDR did. Sure it's a lot of work but believe me it is the easiest way. Peace and prosperity. A big majority wants these things and will vote for them. Heck, Trump got elected as the peace candidate.
Exactly what I’ve been trying to say in a conversation lower down with Chang
Glad to be of service.
If you focus on what you and the Right can agree on, you’d get further. Then you could argue the points of difference after. I think a lot the Populist Right movement wanted an end to imperialism and crony capitalism - monopolies, money in government, two tier justice system, gov corruption. They didn’t get it with Trump, haha, but they hoped he would give them that.
"What's funny about rich people complaining that poor people don't work and are a drain on society is that every rich person does negative work. That is, it takes far more work to accommodate their life than their labor could possibly produce. They are the real drain on society." ~George Carlin
Tax Wealth, Not Work
Love the concept! Negative work is too funny!
The billionaires, for sure. So many of whom are government welfare babies of a kind themselves
I wish people would LEARN and EDUCATE themselves on what 'Left' and 'Right' mean.
I highly recommend watching the following 3 videos (in order) to better understand LEFT/RIGHT ->
(1) The Left-Right Political Spectrum is about Class Conflict (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P3cmjNrXWms)
(2) How Political Definitions Shape Reality (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TaFkzIQk-1o)
(3) How we know what Left and Right actually mean: who’s who, 1789-1917 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B3uevocEy3c)
Is it about class conflict, though, anymore? The ruling class have done well with making it appear to be much more about cultural issues and race than class. It’s confused the categories intentionally, to protect itself
>>"Is it about class conflict, though, anymore?"
Anymore???
I suggest (1) Watching the above videos, (2) learning about class consciousness, (3) Reading to expand your perspectives.
It is ALL about class conflict.
Karl Marx - "The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles."
Ok, I wasn’t clear, I meant to many people it appears to not be about that anymore, because of the successful work of the ruling class after the Occupy Wall Street movement to make it about cultural issues
>>"I meant to many people it appears to not be about that anymore,"
Duh! Why do you think I suggested people LEARN and EDUCATE themselves on this subject? Because people don't know - and they form their beliefs based on narratives and 'what they hear frequently/repeatedly' rather than (1) real history (2) real facts (3) logic and critical thinking.
People won’t do that though. To me Left and Right are functioning too much to divide the lower classes. Drop the language to be more inclusive
Agreed. It's up and down, or top and bottom, but the left/right description just doesn't really cut it anymore (if it ever did). It's a class struggle. The workers at the "bottom" of the heap are fighting the capitalists/fascists at the top who are hoarding all the resources.
Love it!
As Jill Stein (of the Green Party) often says, "You can't have a revolution in a counter-revolutionary party."
I never understood why Bernie felt that the DNC was the way to get to the White House... He's always run for office as an independent. I was very leery about him running for the Dem ticket. And sure enough, after Philadelphia, they crushed him and put in Shillery. I vowed never to vote for any duopoly candidate ever again. The Revolution will not be coming via the fascists.
I was a huge supporter of Bernie when he first ran. And he became a huge disappointment. Never have been able to trust him again.
Same here. After the 2016 debacle, I tried to trust Bernie, but each instance where he gave in to the status quo and backed the "lesser evil" DNC agenda just made me hate him more. Never again.
I never fell for Bernie because I already supported the Socialist Equality Party.
I only vote for the Socialist Equality Party. Read the World Socialist Web Site and learn something.
CJ>>"You cannot change the system using a political party that is designed to prevent change."
THIS! People need to inject this understanding into EVERY cell of their body and mind. Also, in the U.S., there are 2 right-wing Capitalist parties and Zero left-wing parties (and the irony is that most Americans are pretty clueless about what 'Left' and 'Right' is - maybe there needs to be some sort of re-education for the American public?)
See this…it’s accurate. It’s also why the powers that be were both nervous and proactive. They made it into a right/left issue Jiminey Quick. Talking about Mangione.
https://x.com/lmazzeiphotos/status/1995839895932469411?s=46
Luke, for the 100th time, Left is about "an absense of hierarchy" while Right is about "maintaining hierarchy". Left and Right is NOT about cultural issues (though many of these issues ARISE from the distribution of POWER in hierarchies). Anytime you have hierarchies of power (not to be confused with hierarchy of merit/ability/etc.), you have the makings of right-wing thought and class conflict.
Believe it or not I THINK that i understand that now….ballbuster lol.
I have learned a lot from people like you and also people i have driven away.
There is no left. the media keep referring to the left so people now use it as normal while what’s considered the center has moved so far to the right this language seems normal to most and seems used by many many people.
Bernie started a movement and didn’t win the elections because they were rigged by the DNC. He’s been relatively consistent. Totally agree the Dems are useless. Why would anyone want to get them back in control? To do what? To stand for what? Thanks for your work and writing.
(Some) ppl want Democrats back in control as the lesser of two evils. Sadly, however, the lesser of two evils IS STILL EVIL.
I mean, giving the absolute nutbag sitting in the White House right now - I'm not about to waste my energy on those pundits doing their best to get him the hell out (like Kyle Kulinski).
But Trump is not the disease, he's just a symptom of the disease. Sure, vote Trump out. But it doesn't get rid of the disease, and the disease is progressing rapidly.
Left… right…. Left….. right….. ?
There’s a difference?
Actually, he refused pleas in two open letters to start a movement. He claimed he was doing so, but all he built was a typical campaign organization, albeit with a couple orders of magnitude more volunteers.
And all the while, Netanyahu’s $730 million hasbara budget operates behind the scenes, infiltrating the ‘left’ and ‘right’.
We need to “build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete…”
The oligarchs will not go quietly into the goodnight. We even see now that the billionaire oligarch in the White House has gone right back to war with Iran. And even he and his corrupt cabinet must be fully aware of what will happen within 4-5 weeks:
Ordinary Americans will be destroyed by a runaway inflationary economy - since the US oil reserves now are about to completely run out.
The economic repercussions will be disastrous for millions of Americans. But Trump and the oligarchs, they couldn't give one hoot about the peasants and the squalor the peasants will soon be living in. The squalor doesn't impact Trump or the rest of the Epstein class of billionaires. So Hi-Ho, back to war we go!
That is why we need a revolution. Socialism or barbarism.
The sooner these white "liberal" baby boomers die off, the better.
Did I miss something? Wasn't Obama black?
LOL--yes, 50%. And, he's 50% white. But he's 100% CIA.
I think you missed something. While Obama apparently identifies as black, he is a mixed-race person with a black father and a white mother. As a child, he was basically abandoned by his father, raised primarily by his mother, and then by his mother's parents (his white grandparents). I've often heard Obama disparagingly described as, among other things, a corporate sell-out, a token DEI president, Wall Street's little (fill-in-the-blank) boy, and as being an "Oreo." (Like the cookie. Black on the outside and white on the inside.)
Give me a break! It's not generational. This 78-year-old is fed up with the local DSA chapter, which, like the national organization, is full of younger folks who are trying to elect whatever new faces they think are the best Democrats, not recognizing that the system is fine-tuned confuse, co-opt, and corrupt them, too.
I've written, "The differences in branding between politicians who affiliate with these two organizations are far greater than the differences in the policies they implement. Democrats, therefore, always sound far better out of power than they perform in power." And, "Democrats and Republicans need each other in order to appeal to their own bases. Without a Republican foil to attack as more obviously cruel, corporate, and retrograde than they are, Democrats would have even less credibility than they do today."
https://www.amazon.com/Blessed-Disillusionment-Letting-Cannot-Turning/dp/0578978318
There are plenty of other OGs who agree.
I am hard-pressed to identify a major Democratic legislative victory in the last 50 years. I know people will cite the ACA and even the “historic infrastructure” bill. However, the ACA was achieved by giving the health care industry an enormous gift rather than reforming the system. The infrastructure bill was only historic because Democrats were unable to enact it in the prior 20 years. In no organization is the resolution of deferred maintenance considered a momentous accomplishment.
Very telling that the DNC couldn't even codify Roe V. Wade. Even when they had the majority in both houses of Congress and the presidency, they didn't even turn Roe V. Wade into law. More evidence that both factions of the uniparty (duopoly) are "right wing" or fascists.
The ACA was written by the health care "industry". Health care should not be an industry.
Sanders is a sleazy guy. He purports to carry the progressive banner, but operates within the confines and rules of the right wing Democratic Party elites. He is not willing to give up the benefits obtained by doing the bidding of the Dems. That is why he ran as a Democrat and was, predictably, defrauded by the party leadership of the nomination. In my view, Sanders is automatically disqualified as a progressive due to his staunch support of Israel, including its genocide of the Palestinians and other multiple war crimes. He tries to shield himself from criticism by arguing, with no credibility, that all these crimes are the fault of Netanyahu and that Israel could not be such a filthy little terrorist, genocidal, thieving, lying state but for the Netanyahu leadership. All of that is a big heap of bullshit which does not even deserve discussion. In short, Sanders is a fraud. Pay no attention to anything he says.
Nobody who supports Israel can be considered progressive, or even decent. Sanders has been a fraud all down the line.
It is baffling why people cling to politics when we have everything now to decide things for ourselves. The least we could do or the first step that could be taken is for politicians to send surveys to their constituents before they vote on any Bill. And get an accurate reading as to what their constituents want. But that is never going to happen because that would bust the game. So the people remain like minions forever. Politics is old hat, something from a bygone era now that we have all the tech we need to get things our way every time. The way of the vast majority, not just 1% above randomness (51:49% of the vote)
We have a uniparty politics in the United States with state media. China has uniparty politics with state media. In the US, capital regulates government. In China, the government regulates capital. The American economy is a financialized Ponzi scheme for the wealthy while the Chinese manufacture the future for their whole society. We have a 250 year history of spreading murder and chaos to every corner of the planet. The Chinese have lifted hundreds of millions of their people out of poverty. They have a culture and civilization found nowhere in the west. We have as our one and only real religion capitalism. Draw your conclusions.
I already have. China is the future, if there is one.
I completely agree Caitlin. To an outsider, notwithstanding all the emotion, there is very little difference between the Republicans and Democrats policy-wise. Yeah the Republicans are a bit more naked about their subservience to Capital and all that it entails, but since Clinton and his policy of 'triangulation', Democrats have been professing to be pro-John Doe but legislatively pro-big business. And the Chuck Schumer's and Hakeem Jeffries' of the world know, their job is to keep out anyone who really wants serious reform at any cost because whilst they may symbolically answer to the little people (easily bamboozled and distracted) once every six or two years respectively, it is the hyper-focused power elite that call the tune they dance to.
Socialists don't want reform. We want revolution. Read Rosa Luxemburg.
Bernie was wrong because the system is wrong, because the system allows a monitory to control the majority. That is a design fault of Left-Right opposition - an English system! Politicians will never fix the system because they have vested interest in maintaining a Right majority, and the money to buy that result. Only people - en mass - can call for that change.
Down with confrontation politics - Up with consensual government, for the people - by the people - someone actually said that before - I wonder When and Who?