In fact liberalism has been dead for the last twenty years. There can be no liberalism where there is no thrust of intention to actually pursue liberal values. It has been replaced by neoliberalism which is the total collapse of liberalism. Nobody especially the media wants to about neoliberalism because it is the stealth ideology ruining western cultures. It is a form of economic fascism where wealth and power go straight to the 1%. It is no coincidence we are about to have our first trillionaire as neoliberalism makes it very easy to become wealthy and endlessly wealthier.
Canada's liberal government is in fact neoliberal as are all our other parties as neoliberalism erases party identities.
A stated goal of neoliberalism is to denigrate and marginalize the role of governments which they have achieved very effectively as they are no more than toadies to the vested interests that control them.
It is very well entrenched in our societies going back to the time of Reagan and Thatcher who were god parents to the ideology.
Until we face the destructive realities of what neoliberalism does to our societies progressive change is frozen and war and despotism will continue to prevail.
It is only one of several ruinous ideologies operating in the background that eviscerate our liberal and democratic values. The west has been hijacked by war mongers and greedy ideologues and politicians are their "useful idiots".
We jump from one cheap slogan to another when the objective is to reestablish responsible accountable representative governments.
Capitalism is not inherently bad it is simply that it has been allowed to become predatory , free from social restraints, and no accountability.
ACCOUNTABILITY is a key word at any time because where it is torn down chaos ensues-- just what we are seeing now. We have a system that has been broken and systematically corrupted over many decades and it must be fixed as the starting point for real change and a return to social equilibrium.
There is a lot to be said for the MIDDLE WAY, a balance that must be sustained and is sustainable.
You hit on a very important point as it is hard to pin point who the villains of the peace really are . We have too much money and power vested in too few hands, the wrong hands, and they have many fingers in the pudding. As you say the oligarchs are one, the bankers another, the neocons another, powerful corporate lobbies, the military industrial complex. There is also what is known as the "deep state."
There are also PACs which corrupt the electoral system.
The CIA subverts agendas and pulls strings in secrecy.
The MSM which is bought and paid for.
Imperialism is the big daddy of them all as it turns countries into slave states where the wealth of nations is stolen to fight foreign wars.
It has never been truer that money is the root of all evil and we are suffering a pandemic of pure evil paving the way for endless wars, endless genocides, and social disintegration ongoing.
The good news is this tyranny is starting unravel as good things are starting to happen, the destruction of NATO being one.
All of us have a critical role to play for making better futures.
The same is true in Denmark and other socialist countries where the social safety net is still intact . But the US spent the last half of the 20th century purging any semblance of socialism from their system. Socialism is now a dirty word and thoroughly vilified by politicians .
Canada's pallid socialist party has totally collapsed.
There is a huge discrepancy in taxes paid . There was the famous comment by billionaire (Warren Buffet?) that his secretary paid more in taxes than he did.
A working definition of neoliberalism is "Socialism for the very rich, and raw capitalism for everybody else" This is very true as all wealth and powers travels up to the 1%.
The US is the only western country where life expectancy is dropping because of poverty and social despair. Unexpected medical expenses are a leading cause of personal bankruptcy in the US.
I personally don't think the word 'liberal' means a LOT to people here BUT it certainly does on Washington Post which I comment on regularly and send people here to substack.
These Liberal (Elitists) have absolutely NO moral ideas.
I see comments like: VOTE blue like your life depends on it!
These people are 'dyed in the wool' Liberal conservatives.
I don't think you can change this word now because it will cause too much confusion.
This is not surprising. The fake liberals have been doing this domestically forever.
If you spend time in the US you will find all these fake liberals that have been central to the creative of a country that persecutes its poor for being poor, exploits them, refuse them basic social infrastucture, has the worlds biggest police force chasing them on the streets, and a mass incarceration state that imprisons them at higher rates than any country they call a dictatorship. All of these things that add up to massive structural inequality - the fake liberals DEMAND them.
But everyone continues to let them call themselves liberal because they support abortion rights and they wave rainbow flags.
The so-called west is a mentally empty space. And the rest of the world cannot continue to afford this level of vapidity.
A number of years ago I went out to lunch with some Jewish friends who were very active politically on all fronts, including Israel. A woman, I guess someone invited along for the ride, asked me as soon as she saw me what my ethnicity was and I told her I was half Polish, and didn't even get a chance to tell her about the rest of me. When I told her she immediately said, your people killed my people, always the victim. I told her my people were in this country for a very long time, poor, in both, and I doubt they had nothing better to do then run around killing Jews, and said to her lets talk about killing Palestinians. That shut her mouth. I think there are too many Jewish people who are raised on a sense of their victimhood as a people which blinds them to the fact they can be culpable in victimizing others. Always innocent, and any one they kill no doubt meant them harm. Often when people write about the holocaust implemented by Hitler a whole lot of groups get left out of the discussion and the focus is solely on the Jewish population. I think all of this blinds them to their very obvious capacity to victimize others since they look to the past for a pardon. They along with the rest of the world were also inculcated with the prejudicial views of Arabs which helped them from the beginning to implement a genocide of their own, The nakba.
I agree wholeheartedly with your comments. I see it in movies and books. Really disgusting. There were plenty of others that were targeted in the Holocaust. Yes, the Jews may have been the main focus for Hitler and his henchmen, but the Roma(gypsies), homosexuals, mentally/physically challenged children and adults(euthanasia programs were in different places in Germany and Austria, I believe at the time for the sole purpose of extermination of these people, especially the children), Poles, Ukrainians, Russians, Communists among others. Yet most of these movies and/or books or articles don’t focus on these populations like they do the Jews. It shows the biasness of our corporate mainstream media and the companies/publishers/writers/directors etc. I mentioned Ukrainians above b/c even though a lot of them did cooperate with the Nazis, like the Banderites did, there were many I’m sure who did not. One example of this is a recent episode of Law & Order that depicted pro -Palestinian protesters as antisemitic in that in this episode a Jewish professor was brutally murdered by a pro -Palestinian activist encouraged to do it by a woman of middle eastern heritage. It was so blatantly obvious as to what the producers of the show were trying to depict right up to the ending where two young men get in fist fight in the courthouse after the trial. One was of Muslim or Arab ethnicity and the other I presume was Jewish. It’s so blatantly biased in this way.
"I told her I was half Polish, and didn't even get a chance to tell her about the rest of me. When I told her she immediately said, your people killed my people, always the victim."
So, was this woman accusing you of a blood libel? I thought that was supposed to be a bad thing, or is that only sometimes?
I don't care what her accusations are based on. It was an inappropriate question that had no relevance to me but to further her own prejudices and play victim.
I love the idea that Americans look back to where they came from:
It doesn't mean shit. All you will find is that immigrants were treated badly!
In the global world we have all come from somewhere......why is it that US citizens deride there origins in Europe but NEED to know where they come from?
People in the US shit upon Europeans who came to America to find a better life.
You call Europeans names that frankly you have no knowledge of.
IF the Europeans had NOT come to your country who would have?
There were indigenous citizens already in your country...........who you wiped out.
I suppose the Europeans should be blamed for this?
In many cases: The Irish famine was caused by colonialism by the British BUT in the US you treated them like 2nd class citizens. The same with the Polish people/Ukranians.
All it was about if you take time to read is MONEY
Immigrants coming into the USA NOW are worth nothing.
I have a number of degrees in several areas, so screw you, and by the way I don''t know any religion that can look back on it's history and make the claim we were always a peaceful lot. So screw you again.
Here's another band of merry idiots, but they are heart and soul better then you who espouse murder and death.
You are the Nazi now!!!
Pro-Palestinian Jewish group wants to see end of US funding for Israel
Jewish Voice for Peace is determined to see a ceasefire in Gaza and an end to US funding for Israel. Since October 7th the group has used mass protest as well as personal calls to US politicians to advocate for changes to US foreign policy – specifically targeting the influence the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) has in US politics.
Why are you even pursuing this since it bares no significance to what is going on, and what is going on is a genocide, a very violent one indeed implemented by Israel against the Palestinians.
Since they are in many ways the opposite of mid-20th century liberals, I think that is how they can be called "fake". No self-respecting liberal in 1970 would be against free speech, for uncritical war, against poor whites while supporting POC/women/gays, etc. It's an inversion of what "liberal" has been understood to mean for decades.
I just don't have any idea who these liberals are you are talking about. We must have been living in alternate universes for that to be your view of liberals as compared to mine. I recall how difficult it was in the 1970's to get anyone, especially liberals to speak out against the occupation. In the 1970s, even I.F. Stone couldn't go that far.
After Angela Davis was fired from the University of California, supporting her was not a popular liberal position. It wasn't the liberals who were protesting on behalf of AIM, or Leonard Peliter. The liberal media completely lied in their coverage about Attica. It was the liberal Jimmy Carter who called Ferdinand Marcos and the Shah of Iran his best friends.
Sorry, Jenny, I don't have research data, these are all historical events I lived through, and saw who spoke up, and how we and they considered themselves. I guess the details are found online.
"We must have been living in alternate universes for that to be your view of liberals as compared to mine."
When I said "no self-respecting liberal in 1970 would be against free speech, for uncritical war, against poor whites while supporting POC/women/gays, etc." that's exactly how I understood it c.1970 at about age 10 from my working-class extended family in northeastern Massachusetts, who called themselves "liberal". Maybe you're taking about the two-faced "limousine liberals" we disparaged.
This dichotomy certainly became clear by the early 90s when Pat Schroeder had the balls to complain about Paula Jones as being the result of "dragging a hundred-dollar bill through a trailer park". That was my wake-up call as to what was happening to the party.
If you have for example lived in new York City, you will find it is the heartland of these fake liberals in their Democratic Party ranks. They support the NYPD’s police brutality, the privatisation of schools and public services, and endless wars abroad. They collude with the real estate moguls and the finance barons to strip the city of value, exploit tenants and the population, and avoid pay the taxes that the city needs to support public services - in return they collect “political donations” from these oligarchs. Even Donald Trump was considered to be popular in their social circles - until he put on the hood and ran against Hillary Clinton.
And yet they claim to be the polar opposites of conservatives. Which is blatantly untrue.
I live in NYC now. The elected city gov is nearly a total woke clown show, never mind the ever-roiling corruption (I love reading NY Post comments dropping hints of what's actually going on). I'm to the Left of Marx, meaning I believe in actual messy democracy for all, not lectures from, and totalitarian rule by, 'the man' behind the curtain. Who of course is now, hilariously, an Animal-Farm-style substitute for the original 'the man'.
"[Liberals] support the NYPD’s police brutality..."
When I was a kid, we were warned against making stereotypes, no matter who the group.... I guess times change. Fun fact: My neighborhood was bypassed by George Floyd rioters who had planned to rip it up, finally opting instead to go to Soho et al after neighborhood leaders talked openly about the fact that "your people" live here.
Anyway, I've decided I'm continuing to report from the inside, and going down with the ship, I have but one life to give to my country. Maybe not all what you wanted to to hear from a resident here, but ...
"A concrete jungle and the exact opposite of nature."
I love the positives each can provide, but at different times. Lived in big cities all my adult life, in 'good' neighborhoods and 'bad'. I do get a chuckle when my suburban liberal relatives lecture me on race, and dish out other signaling silliness.
BTW, I'm to the Left of Marx, meaning that I support actual messy but functioning democracy, rather than stealth totalitarian rule by virtue-signaling vanguards (aka liberals).
I am on the Washington Post. I won't leave because I am doing a good job commenting against these uneducated so-called Liberal elitists who assume that Biden is doing a good job!
Drives me nutz.
My idea is you fight 'fire with fire' and you do NOT stop buying these papers.
I think I am getting through and sending people to substack.
Even after his successive cave ins to Clinton and Biden(well, Obama), I still did not realize how craven Sanders was until I saw his reactions to Oct 7.
Shitlibs were against Bush's war of terror, but signed on when Obama continued them. Not a word when he destroyed Libya. Plus they once mocked the axis of evil, but now Kos himself says that China, Russia and North Korea, Iran are the 'real' axis of evil. I had an argument with one who defended Obama’s drones because they saved American lives. You just can’t make this up.
Obama did more to neuter the antiwar movement in the US and in Europe than anything the neocons themselves could have done, not if Dick Cheney were named Supreme Genitalissimo And Maximum Leader For Life.
Supposedly, the CIA noted as much in 2008, specifically, that europeans despised the Evangelical Bush and the swaggering McCain, but that they swooned over Obama and would do anything for him.
Yep. His Nobel peace prize speech was pure warmongering, but he got a standing ovation from the world. He said that King was wrong and if he lived after 9/11 he would have changed his tune. Obama got me to quit voting. He had both houses and the people’s mandate and he screwed us bigly. It’s why I never fell for Bernie. Been there, done that.
highly recommend you read "The General's Son" by Miko Peled. 2nd edition with a forward by Alice Walker, Just World Press, 2016. or watch Chris Hedges interview with him:
Spot on Caitlin, thank you!! Bernie needs to be reminded that he is not nor was he ever the human we all thought or hoped he'd be, perfect article, shame on him, again!
Bernie 'Hillary will make a great president' Sanders proved he was little more than a sheepdogger already by mid-Spring 2016. He converted his well-worn reputation as Congress' rhetorical bomb-thrower into a flip-flopping, crime-tolerating, stealth totalitarian (or, far less likely, the most milquetoast useful idiot). The idea of him leading any kind of "Revolution" against TPTB is a ROFL'ing howler. Signed, a 2015 - early'16 supporter.
Anybody, in any limited hangout, who survives today without loss to position and voice ('skin in the game') is now a suspect. We are steadily learning who they are.
Spot on. Remember how democrats got rid of McKinney and Kusinich by changing the voting boundaries. I can’t remember what that’s called, but republicans do it even more. The word will come to me just before I nod off…
The U.S. might have had a legitimate (though immoral) strategic interest in Israel as an unsinkable aircraft carrier amidst oil-producing countries. However, vastly improved offensive and defensive rocketry since 1948 has made even that unsinkable aircraft carrier obsolete. The U.S. is now risking a regional war for no strategic purpose. Zionism jumped the shark with its rejection of a Palestinian state, encroachment in the West Bank, and now genocide in Gaza. Zionism is no longer useful to the U.S. Empire, although it continues to be for fund-raising politicians.
I think you misunderstand. The US Empire doesn't care about Zionism (or any other ideology). It never did. There are a multitude of factors as to why the US supports Israel.
One needs to look through the lens and framework of geopolitics and great power politics to truly explain the conundrum of why the US considers Israel as the 51st state of America. There are many reasons why the US supports Israel - some of them are:
(1) Israel acts as a proxy for the US in the Middle-East and represents its interests in the region.
(2) Israel carries out a lot of the dirty work (clandestine operations, arming US supported regimes, covert operations that benefit the US empire, etc.) on the US's behalf so as to avoid the bad PR that America would be blamed for. (Examples from history: supporting South African apartheid, arming the contras in Nicaragua, supporting rebels in Gautemala, etc. - the list is too long)
(3) Israel creates just enough chaos in the Middle-East to keep the Islamic Middle-East countries divided. This way, none of the oil and resource rich countries can ever unite and pose a threat to the US empire. This also helps the US maintain price-controls over resources such as oil.
There are many other reasons, but you get the idea. The Middle-East region is of great strategic interest to the US - mainly for oil and gas but also for trade routes.
Supporting Israel helps the US manage and control activities in the region. In reality, it has little to do with Jews or Judaism or Zionism. If Israel was occupied by some other ethnic nationality (i.e. if some other group played the role of Israel for the US), the US would end up supporting that entity as long as that entity could prove that it could represent America's interests in the region effectively.
The Empire's various benefits you cite from Israel's existence are all true. You left out one, which is Israel research and development of methods of population control = suppression. Nevertheless, you ignore the main fact: that the Empire as most recently conceived by the Neocons is a Jewish project. That you have left this out implies that you are a Jewish apologist.
Yes - but we have to be practical Jenny - and if we have to choose between the lesser of two evils ... well - then like practical adults, should vote again for Uncle Joe. Right?
IF you vote Biden and he wins do you really think Trump will do nothing? I suspect he will again try to overturn the election and this time it will be very different.
Yes I was being sarcastical Jenny. I've never bought into the "Lesser of Two Evils" from the start (and that was many moons ago). The entire premise of LTE for voting for either of these two corrupt political parties was nonsense.
Certain kinds of western liberals -- and there are many -- drive me nuts! Great examples are Canada's Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau who is one of the most lying, virtue signalling jerks you can imagine. Right in there with Hillary Clinton.
Thats all been a trick to bring on the useless left leaning old hippies yuppies are whatever the fuck they are now,, yeah the shitlibs is always a good term
So disappointed in Sanders. My wife and I supported him in '16, but that was it. I wasn't surprised that he caved in during the '20 election; I was only surprised at the speed with which he did so.
They fell bigger for Obama and Bidens and even Trump if we are to be fair..although i think Trump despite all his ego and bluster was way over his head to realize he was manipulated like a cheap violin by Kushner and nettytheyaoo
Most people forget his iconic little meeting at the white house with Obama and as he left had a little pat on the head now go and back out you little Unmensch...
I have heard many versions of Phil Ochs’ “Love Me, I'm a Liberal” over the years and it has been very adaptable to any decade; the covers invariably keep the last verse.
"where Jews are welcomed and kept safe." Well, how about where poor people are welcomed and kept safe? Because from where I sit there are a hell of a lot of homeless people who deserve housing and help and do not get it, and they run the gamut in terms of ethnicity. So one religion has to be kept safe above all others? Liberals are racist and classist and hide that truth from themselves.
You nailed it, Ms Johnstone. I closed my most recent post with the slogan "make 'israel' Palestine again", which may sound glib or reactionary to some, but it's actually a call for a 'one state's solution, with equal dignity and rights for all of it's people. If certain supremacist Jews don't like it, let them 'return' to America or Europe or wherever they sprang from.
In a world of labels I leaned toward "liberal" for most of my life. And indeed there were some worthy liberals about that one could admire and emulate. Frank Church comes to mind. Now I loathe the word. The liberal project and the Democratic party which purported to represent Western liberalism since the FDR administration has been dying a slow death at many hands, but this has accelerated since the Clinton administration. Now I find nothing to admire in the establishment Democrat camp and will not vote for a party that cannot take a firm moral stand in the face of Zionist Israel's project of ethnic cleansing, land theft and war crimes. Israel has ALWAYS been about displacing the indigenous population of Palestine, stealing their land, killing them when necessary. That anyone calling himself a "liberal" would defend this is more than enough for me to keep my distance from such people. We should note that even people who come from the "conservative" side of the spectrum know genocide when they see it and condemn the Zionist project and our support and apologies for it as being against the interests of the American people. No labels, indeed. Only actions from a truly moral and ethical center count, and that has nothing to do with modern American politics. Politics is about power and therefore cynical at its core. Power and politics without ethics and fair dealing can only deliver chaos and misery. That is exactly where we are as a nation, and will remain until we awaken to the truth.
The fact that Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden have been the most recent presidential candidates of the "liberal" party says everything about the moral rot in the modern Democratic Party, and in liberalism writ large.
The FDR administration was never liberal. People continue to make that mistake simply on the basis of the New Deal "reforms" enacted by Roosevelt during the Great Depression. But that was never Roosevelt's aim. He and his administration only enacted the New Deal to save their own skins from the enraged working class. They were out to save capitalism, terrified by the spectre of socialism. Most of the working class was socialist and the Russian Revolution was only a few decades in the past during the 1930s. The creation of the New Deal myth was deliberate and one of the first great hoaxes perpetrated upon working people in the United States. People still believe in it. They are mistaken.
I agree. FDR was not a liberal in the American political sense but he was a hell of a lot smarter and more perceptive than the people who rule this country and one might well imagine what would have happened without the New Deal. He did have several people whom one might call “liberal” in his administration, including his wife! Harry Hopkins and Henry Wallace were actually more of a democratic socialist bent, Wallace an outright socialist, but one might still liken them to liberals as we came to recognize them in the Kennedy era. Labels fail us in characterizing the full spectrum of political views and I abhor them. Therein lies the problem of labels: they become a meaningless pejorative based upon fundamental errors and mischaracterizations. What I miss is the feeling abroad in the country, however vague, in mid-century, that government was working for ordinary citizens and that one’s vote just might help to push the country toward “a more perfect union.”. I realize that we may have been deluded all along, but the excesses of power have pretty much been in our face for the last 40 years. No illusions there. But the entire national mood is different than it was a half century ago. My parents’ generation got the New Deal, FHA and a new prosperity. Every working man or woman since Reagan got the shaft, regardless of who was in the White House.
My grandfather in Louisiana cried when Huey Long was assassinated. He was a demagogue and corrupt as hell, but he knew where his power lay, and that was with the working people and the poor. And he delivered. None of that “I feel your pain” bullshit. I was a medical student at Charity Hospital in N.O.—a thousand beds for the poor and out of luck. Walk in and you got the same medical care as the rich folks at Touro. No insurance “networks” then. Huey Long built it. Shame we can’t have good things for ourselves from consensus government, but that’s not how it works now. That explains the allure of Donald Trump, which is very similar to the popularity of HL in the 1930’s: people want raw political power to deliver the things that they can’t get with consensus government. Difference: Mr. Trump WON’T deliver a better life for any of his devotees or the rest of us.
How can she have shocked you? I'm an American and I agree with Caitlin 100%. I rejected liberalism some time during the late 1960s. You sound incredibly naive.
Democracy, as a practical matter, is basically an exercise in passing the buck, in avoiding responsibility. Everyone in power claims to answer to and derive their authority from someone else, going ultimately back to "the people" who themselves do not directly exercise power, and who would find it difficult to exercise as a collective action problem, even if they had the formal authority to do so.
What this means is that real power is often in the hands of unelected bureaucrats, who typically don't even want to stand for election because they don't want the voters to know what their programs are, much less to exercise any oversight. Robert Moses is the classic example here.
Even that minimal level of scrutiny is too much for some, and real power is often exercised by people not formally part of any government structure. Corporate lobbyists or Robert Kagan come to mind.
To put it another way: if politicians answer to The People, why is it that almost every western political leader is so hated by his own public?
>>"Democracy is based upon MAJORITY wins and MINORITY loses."
In reality, it doesn't work out that way. As Feral Finster was alluding to, it doesn't matter which majority wins (Democrats or Republicans), it is always the "power elite" (the powerful minority) that controls things behind the scenes. So, democracy (in most practical instances) lands up being an illusion.
In fact liberalism has been dead for the last twenty years. There can be no liberalism where there is no thrust of intention to actually pursue liberal values. It has been replaced by neoliberalism which is the total collapse of liberalism. Nobody especially the media wants to about neoliberalism because it is the stealth ideology ruining western cultures. It is a form of economic fascism where wealth and power go straight to the 1%. It is no coincidence we are about to have our first trillionaire as neoliberalism makes it very easy to become wealthy and endlessly wealthier.
Canada's liberal government is in fact neoliberal as are all our other parties as neoliberalism erases party identities.
A stated goal of neoliberalism is to denigrate and marginalize the role of governments which they have achieved very effectively as they are no more than toadies to the vested interests that control them.
It is very well entrenched in our societies going back to the time of Reagan and Thatcher who were god parents to the ideology.
Until we face the destructive realities of what neoliberalism does to our societies progressive change is frozen and war and despotism will continue to prevail.
It is only one of several ruinous ideologies operating in the background that eviscerate our liberal and democratic values. The west has been hijacked by war mongers and greedy ideologues and politicians are their "useful idiots".
Well said Robert Billyard!
We jump from one cheap slogan to another when the objective is to reestablish responsible accountable representative governments.
Capitalism is not inherently bad it is simply that it has been allowed to become predatory , free from social restraints, and no accountability.
ACCOUNTABILITY is a key word at any time because where it is torn down chaos ensues-- just what we are seeing now. We have a system that has been broken and systematically corrupted over many decades and it must be fixed as the starting point for real change and a return to social equilibrium.
There is a lot to be said for the MIDDLE WAY, a balance that must be sustained and is sustainable.
You hit on a very important point as it is hard to pin point who the villains of the peace really are . We have too much money and power vested in too few hands, the wrong hands, and they have many fingers in the pudding. As you say the oligarchs are one, the bankers another, the neocons another, powerful corporate lobbies, the military industrial complex. There is also what is known as the "deep state."
There are also PACs which corrupt the electoral system.
The CIA subverts agendas and pulls strings in secrecy.
The MSM which is bought and paid for.
Imperialism is the big daddy of them all as it turns countries into slave states where the wealth of nations is stolen to fight foreign wars.
It has never been truer that money is the root of all evil and we are suffering a pandemic of pure evil paving the way for endless wars, endless genocides, and social disintegration ongoing.
The good news is this tyranny is starting unravel as good things are starting to happen, the destruction of NATO being one.
All of us have a critical role to play for making better futures.
One of the best arguments is: Taxation
Taxation is a dirty word in the US.....most people don't want to pay taxes at all.
IF a country taxed people on income which is done here in France you would have a decent healthcare system/education/housing.
We pay a lot more tax in France SOLELY so that poor/lower income people can have all of the above.
NOT many of my friends are against this because it works.
The same is true in Denmark and other socialist countries where the social safety net is still intact . But the US spent the last half of the 20th century purging any semblance of socialism from their system. Socialism is now a dirty word and thoroughly vilified by politicians .
Canada's pallid socialist party has totally collapsed.
There is a huge discrepancy in taxes paid . There was the famous comment by billionaire (Warren Buffet?) that his secretary paid more in taxes than he did.
A working definition of neoliberalism is "Socialism for the very rich, and raw capitalism for everybody else" This is very true as all wealth and powers travels up to the 1%.
The US is the only western country where life expectancy is dropping because of poverty and social despair. Unexpected medical expenses are a leading cause of personal bankruptcy in the US.
Yes.
I lived in the US for 23yrs and education sucked.
How can any country not take education seriously unless they want their people to be dim in order to manipulate them.......so sick of watching this.
IF I wasn't worried about the world I would not be watching this circus.
In my small brain I feel like it's incumbent on us from other countries to help.
continued from above...The good news is this tyranny is starting unravel as good things are starting to happen, the destruction of NATO being one.
All of us have a critical role to play for making better futures.
I personally don't think the word 'liberal' means a LOT to people here BUT it certainly does on Washington Post which I comment on regularly and send people here to substack.
These Liberal (Elitists) have absolutely NO moral ideas.
I see comments like: VOTE blue like your life depends on it!
These people are 'dyed in the wool' Liberal conservatives.
I don't think you can change this word now because it will cause too much confusion.
Liberal Elitists works.
What the f..k is MAGA communism?
Many thanks.
This is not surprising. The fake liberals have been doing this domestically forever.
If you spend time in the US you will find all these fake liberals that have been central to the creative of a country that persecutes its poor for being poor, exploits them, refuse them basic social infrastucture, has the worlds biggest police force chasing them on the streets, and a mass incarceration state that imprisons them at higher rates than any country they call a dictatorship. All of these things that add up to massive structural inequality - the fake liberals DEMAND them.
But everyone continues to let them call themselves liberal because they support abortion rights and they wave rainbow flags.
The so-called west is a mentally empty space. And the rest of the world cannot continue to afford this level of vapidity.
A number of years ago I went out to lunch with some Jewish friends who were very active politically on all fronts, including Israel. A woman, I guess someone invited along for the ride, asked me as soon as she saw me what my ethnicity was and I told her I was half Polish, and didn't even get a chance to tell her about the rest of me. When I told her she immediately said, your people killed my people, always the victim. I told her my people were in this country for a very long time, poor, in both, and I doubt they had nothing better to do then run around killing Jews, and said to her lets talk about killing Palestinians. That shut her mouth. I think there are too many Jewish people who are raised on a sense of their victimhood as a people which blinds them to the fact they can be culpable in victimizing others. Always innocent, and any one they kill no doubt meant them harm. Often when people write about the holocaust implemented by Hitler a whole lot of groups get left out of the discussion and the focus is solely on the Jewish population. I think all of this blinds them to their very obvious capacity to victimize others since they look to the past for a pardon. They along with the rest of the world were also inculcated with the prejudicial views of Arabs which helped them from the beginning to implement a genocide of their own, The nakba.
Well said Fran, and good for you!
Thanks!
I agree wholeheartedly with your comments. I see it in movies and books. Really disgusting. There were plenty of others that were targeted in the Holocaust. Yes, the Jews may have been the main focus for Hitler and his henchmen, but the Roma(gypsies), homosexuals, mentally/physically challenged children and adults(euthanasia programs were in different places in Germany and Austria, I believe at the time for the sole purpose of extermination of these people, especially the children), Poles, Ukrainians, Russians, Communists among others. Yet most of these movies and/or books or articles don’t focus on these populations like they do the Jews. It shows the biasness of our corporate mainstream media and the companies/publishers/writers/directors etc. I mentioned Ukrainians above b/c even though a lot of them did cooperate with the Nazis, like the Banderites did, there were many I’m sure who did not. One example of this is a recent episode of Law & Order that depicted pro -Palestinian protesters as antisemitic in that in this episode a Jewish professor was brutally murdered by a pro -Palestinian activist encouraged to do it by a woman of middle eastern heritage. It was so blatantly obvious as to what the producers of the show were trying to depict right up to the ending where two young men get in fist fight in the courthouse after the trial. One was of Muslim or Arab ethnicity and the other I presume was Jewish. It’s so blatantly biased in this way.
Wow, great coverage Sylvia!!!!!!!!!!!!!
"I told her I was half Polish, and didn't even get a chance to tell her about the rest of me. When I told her she immediately said, your people killed my people, always the victim."
So, was this woman accusing you of a blood libel? I thought that was supposed to be a bad thing, or is that only sometimes?
I don't care what her accusations are based on. It was an inappropriate question that had no relevance to me but to further her own prejudices and play victim.
I love the idea that Americans look back to where they came from:
It doesn't mean shit. All you will find is that immigrants were treated badly!
In the global world we have all come from somewhere......why is it that US citizens deride there origins in Europe but NEED to know where they come from?
People in the US shit upon Europeans who came to America to find a better life.
You call Europeans names that frankly you have no knowledge of.
IF the Europeans had NOT come to your country who would have?
There were indigenous citizens already in your country...........who you wiped out.
I suppose the Europeans should be blamed for this?
In many cases: The Irish famine was caused by colonialism by the British BUT in the US you treated them like 2nd class citizens. The same with the Polish people/Ukranians.
All it was about if you take time to read is MONEY
Immigrants coming into the USA NOW are worth nothing.
Capitalism is the name of the game.
I am not quite sure whom you are on about, but I was born in a pile of hay on the upper floor of a barn, and I lived much of my adult life in europe.
I have a number of degrees in several areas, so screw you, and by the way I don''t know any religion that can look back on it's history and make the claim we were always a peaceful lot. So screw you again.
Here's another band of merry idiots, but they are heart and soul better then you who espouse murder and death.
You are the Nazi now!!!
Pro-Palestinian Jewish group wants to see end of US funding for Israel
Jewish Voice for Peace is determined to see a ceasefire in Gaza and an end to US funding for Israel. Since October 7th the group has used mass protest as well as personal calls to US politicians to advocate for changes to US foreign policy – specifically targeting the influence the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) has in US politics.
https://www.aljazeera.com/program/newsfeed/2024/3/4/pro-palestinian-jewish-group-wants-to-see-end-of-us-funding-for-israel
Why are you even pursuing this since it bares no significance to what is going on, and what is going on is a genocide, a very violent one indeed implemented by Israel against the Palestinians.
Yes. Buddhism (Theravada) Look at Myanmar/Thailand/Sri Lanka!
I do not see a link?
I don't spend time or entertain people who think they can be abusive using their sense of anonymity to do so.
I'm not sure what the "fake" adds to the term "liberal." These people are the liberals and this is what they do. No fakery necessary.
Since they are in many ways the opposite of mid-20th century liberals, I think that is how they can be called "fake". No self-respecting liberal in 1970 would be against free speech, for uncritical war, against poor whites while supporting POC/women/gays, etc. It's an inversion of what "liberal" has been understood to mean for decades.
I just don't have any idea who these liberals are you are talking about. We must have been living in alternate universes for that to be your view of liberals as compared to mine. I recall how difficult it was in the 1970's to get anyone, especially liberals to speak out against the occupation. In the 1970s, even I.F. Stone couldn't go that far.
After Angela Davis was fired from the University of California, supporting her was not a popular liberal position. It wasn't the liberals who were protesting on behalf of AIM, or Leonard Peliter. The liberal media completely lied in their coverage about Attica. It was the liberal Jimmy Carter who called Ferdinand Marcos and the Shah of Iran his best friends.
I did not know this...
Can you elaborate further?
Sorry, Jenny, I don't have research data, these are all historical events I lived through, and saw who spoke up, and how we and they considered themselves. I guess the details are found online.
"We must have been living in alternate universes for that to be your view of liberals as compared to mine."
When I said "no self-respecting liberal in 1970 would be against free speech, for uncritical war, against poor whites while supporting POC/women/gays, etc." that's exactly how I understood it c.1970 at about age 10 from my working-class extended family in northeastern Massachusetts, who called themselves "liberal". Maybe you're taking about the two-faced "limousine liberals" we disparaged.
This dichotomy certainly became clear by the early 90s when Pat Schroeder had the balls to complain about Paula Jones as being the result of "dragging a hundred-dollar bill through a trailer park". That was my wake-up call as to what was happening to the party.
If you have for example lived in new York City, you will find it is the heartland of these fake liberals in their Democratic Party ranks. They support the NYPD’s police brutality, the privatisation of schools and public services, and endless wars abroad. They collude with the real estate moguls and the finance barons to strip the city of value, exploit tenants and the population, and avoid pay the taxes that the city needs to support public services - in return they collect “political donations” from these oligarchs. Even Donald Trump was considered to be popular in their social circles - until he put on the hood and ran against Hillary Clinton.
And yet they claim to be the polar opposites of conservatives. Which is blatantly untrue.
They are just fake.
I live in NYC now. The elected city gov is nearly a total woke clown show, never mind the ever-roiling corruption (I love reading NY Post comments dropping hints of what's actually going on). I'm to the Left of Marx, meaning I believe in actual messy democracy for all, not lectures from, and totalitarian rule by, 'the man' behind the curtain. Who of course is now, hilariously, an Animal-Farm-style substitute for the original 'the man'.
"[Liberals] support the NYPD’s police brutality..."
When I was a kid, we were warned against making stereotypes, no matter who the group.... I guess times change. Fun fact: My neighborhood was bypassed by George Floyd rioters who had planned to rip it up, finally opting instead to go to Soho et al after neighborhood leaders talked openly about the fact that "your people" live here.
Anyway, I've decided I'm continuing to report from the inside, and going down with the ship, I have but one life to give to my country. Maybe not all what you wanted to to hear from a resident here, but ...
You live in Noo Yawk Shitty, Antihip? Poor you.
We used to visit relatives in upstate NY frequently, and they always commented on what a nice state it would be if it didn’t include NYC.
I was there exactly once. Horrible. A concrete jungle and the exact opposite of nature.
"A concrete jungle and the exact opposite of nature."
I love the positives each can provide, but at different times. Lived in big cities all my adult life, in 'good' neighborhoods and 'bad'. I do get a chuckle when my suburban liberal relatives lecture me on race, and dish out other signaling silliness.
BTW, I'm to the Left of Marx, meaning that I support actual messy but functioning democracy, rather than stealth totalitarian rule by virtue-signaling vanguards (aka liberals).
Gypsy my dear friend.
It might be a 'concrete jungle' to you who live in the rural area of the US.
One thing I can tell you: Is NY was (perhaps is) the only place in the USA where one could have a conversation.
It didn't matter what side of the Establishment you were from there was conversation without 'brawls' or gun toting individuals.
MOST Europeans love NY City because they are people who will listen!
I just had 2 friends of mine (now living in France) who drove from NYC to Seattle. They were terrified to open their mouths out in the boondocks.
You definitely have a point.
100% agree.
I am on the Washington Post. I won't leave because I am doing a good job commenting against these uneducated so-called Liberal elitists who assume that Biden is doing a good job!
Drives me nutz.
My idea is you fight 'fire with fire' and you do NOT stop buying these papers.
I think I am getting through and sending people to substack.
The convenience of perpetual victimhood exploited by the convenience of spineless liberalism.
Even after his successive cave ins to Clinton and Biden(well, Obama), I still did not realize how craven Sanders was until I saw his reactions to Oct 7.
I am beyond craven at this point with Sanders ... More like in "fraud" territory for me.
I keep hoping that one of them will actually be on the side of the people and not rooting for the 1%, but my hopes remain hopes.
Totally agree.
Oh, if Team R in general or Trump in particular were presiding over the genocide, liberals would suddenly find their consciences. Like magic!
Witness how bravely they condemned Trump’s sponsorship of Saudi genocide in Yemen, only to do a 180, once Biden was in charge.
Shitlibs were against Bush's war of terror, but signed on when Obama continued them. Not a word when he destroyed Libya. Plus they once mocked the axis of evil, but now Kos himself says that China, Russia and North Korea, Iran are the 'real' axis of evil. I had an argument with one who defended Obama’s drones because they saved American lives. You just can’t make this up.
Obama did more to neuter the antiwar movement in the US and in Europe than anything the neocons themselves could have done, not if Dick Cheney were named Supreme Genitalissimo And Maximum Leader For Life.
Supposedly, the CIA noted as much in 2008, specifically, that europeans despised the Evangelical Bush and the swaggering McCain, but that they swooned over Obama and would do anything for him.
Yep. His Nobel peace prize speech was pure warmongering, but he got a standing ovation from the world. He said that King was wrong and if he lived after 9/11 he would have changed his tune. Obama got me to quit voting. He had both houses and the people’s mandate and he screwed us bigly. It’s why I never fell for Bernie. Been there, done that.
Smart. Your avatar aside, you don't seem like a dog.
Lol…Snoopy and I were born in the same year and I’ve been a fan my whole life. Even had 3 beagles because of him. Boy did Schultz nail the breed.
Yeah, you got it! The eternal “flip floppers” are these liberals. With brutal republicans at
least you know what you’re getting.🤣😂
highly recommend you read "The General's Son" by Miko Peled. 2nd edition with a forward by Alice Walker, Just World Press, 2016. or watch Chris Hedges interview with him:
https://youtu.be/CU0UcPKe9Ysi=9beGqPrmp42HB2Zv
I watched the interview on Chris Hedges and it was excellent. Intend to read the book on ebooks.
Spot on Caitlin, thank you!! Bernie needs to be reminded that he is not nor was he ever the human we all thought or hoped he'd be, perfect article, shame on him, again!
Bernie 'Hillary will make a great president' Sanders proved he was little more than a sheepdogger already by mid-Spring 2016. He converted his well-worn reputation as Congress' rhetorical bomb-thrower into a flip-flopping, crime-tolerating, stealth totalitarian (or, far less likely, the most milquetoast useful idiot). The idea of him leading any kind of "Revolution" against TPTB is a ROFL'ing howler. Signed, a 2015 - early'16 supporter.
Anybody, in any limited hangout, who survives today without loss to position and voice ('skin in the game') is now a suspect. We are steadily learning who they are.
Spot on. Remember how democrats got rid of McKinney and Kusinich by changing the voting boundaries. I can’t remember what that’s called, but republicans do it even more. The word will come to me just before I nod off…
Gerrymander. (The original bordered my hometown which appeared on the "salamander" map. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:The_Gerry-Mander_Edit.png)
Thank you! It was driving me nuts not remembering what it’s called.
It is good that you got wise. Too many humans just keep doubling down rather than admit that they were fooled.
Cats are FAR too smart to fall for all the bullshit, Feral.
Perhaps you could be the first feline in the White House!
Yeah, but I'd wash my ass during press conferences. You know how many times Feline Resources has to come to my office? And I own the company.
The U.S. might have had a legitimate (though immoral) strategic interest in Israel as an unsinkable aircraft carrier amidst oil-producing countries. However, vastly improved offensive and defensive rocketry since 1948 has made even that unsinkable aircraft carrier obsolete. The U.S. is now risking a regional war for no strategic purpose. Zionism jumped the shark with its rejection of a Palestinian state, encroachment in the West Bank, and now genocide in Gaza. Zionism is no longer useful to the U.S. Empire, although it continues to be for fund-raising politicians.
I think you misunderstand. The US Empire doesn't care about Zionism (or any other ideology). It never did. There are a multitude of factors as to why the US supports Israel.
One needs to look through the lens and framework of geopolitics and great power politics to truly explain the conundrum of why the US considers Israel as the 51st state of America. There are many reasons why the US supports Israel - some of them are:
(1) Israel acts as a proxy for the US in the Middle-East and represents its interests in the region.
(2) Israel carries out a lot of the dirty work (clandestine operations, arming US supported regimes, covert operations that benefit the US empire, etc.) on the US's behalf so as to avoid the bad PR that America would be blamed for. (Examples from history: supporting South African apartheid, arming the contras in Nicaragua, supporting rebels in Gautemala, etc. - the list is too long)
(3) Israel creates just enough chaos in the Middle-East to keep the Islamic Middle-East countries divided. This way, none of the oil and resource rich countries can ever unite and pose a threat to the US empire. This also helps the US maintain price-controls over resources such as oil.
There are many other reasons, but you get the idea. The Middle-East region is of great strategic interest to the US - mainly for oil and gas but also for trade routes.
Supporting Israel helps the US manage and control activities in the region. In reality, it has little to do with Jews or Judaism or Zionism. If Israel was occupied by some other ethnic nationality (i.e. if some other group played the role of Israel for the US), the US would end up supporting that entity as long as that entity could prove that it could represent America's interests in the region effectively.
The Empire's various benefits you cite from Israel's existence are all true. You left out one, which is Israel research and development of methods of population control = suppression. Nevertheless, you ignore the main fact: that the Empire as most recently conceived by the Neocons is a Jewish project. That you have left this out implies that you are a Jewish apologist.
I don't understand what anyone expects from liberals.........they are the milksops/knee jerk/thoroughly propagandized individuals.
At least we know the GOP is BRUTAL.
Yes - but we have to be practical Jenny - and if we have to choose between the lesser of two evils ... well - then like practical adults, should vote again for Uncle Joe. Right?
Jamenta. This is my take and I could be wrong.
IF you vote Biden and he wins do you really think Trump will do nothing? I suspect he will again try to overturn the election and this time it will be very different.
I would NOT vote for Biden it's morally wrong.
Yes I was being sarcastical Jenny. I've never bought into the "Lesser of Two Evils" from the start (and that was many moons ago). The entire premise of LTE for voting for either of these two corrupt political parties was nonsense.
I agree, morally wrong - and just wrong wrong.
I like your sarcasm. 👍
:P
I detect sarcasm 😁
Never! 0.0
Certain kinds of western liberals -- and there are many -- drive me nuts! Great examples are Canada's Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau who is one of the most lying, virtue signalling jerks you can imagine. Right in there with Hillary Clinton.
Trudeau is not a liberal. He is a right-wing defender of imperialism and fascism.
I agree. But these types are calling themselves Liberals and even Labour. Ugh!
Thats all been a trick to bring on the useless left leaning old hippies yuppies are whatever the fuck they are now,, yeah the shitlibs is always a good term
So disappointed in Sanders. My wife and I supported him in '16, but that was it. I wasn't surprised that he caved in during the '20 election; I was only surprised at the speed with which he did so.
At least you got wise, rather than keep on doubling down.
Witness members of the Trump Cult and the Obama Cult, still making excuse after pathetic excuse. Don't be like them.
This is the problem with far too many Americans. They fell for Sanders' nonsense.
They fell bigger for Obama and Bidens and even Trump if we are to be fair..although i think Trump despite all his ego and bluster was way over his head to realize he was manipulated like a cheap violin by Kushner and nettytheyaoo
Most people forget his iconic little meeting at the white house with Obama and as he left had a little pat on the head now go and back out you little Unmensch...
I have heard many versions of Phil Ochs’ “Love Me, I'm a Liberal” over the years and it has been very adaptable to any decade; the covers invariably keep the last verse.
"where Jews are welcomed and kept safe." Well, how about where poor people are welcomed and kept safe? Because from where I sit there are a hell of a lot of homeless people who deserve housing and help and do not get it, and they run the gamut in terms of ethnicity. So one religion has to be kept safe above all others? Liberals are racist and classist and hide that truth from themselves.
Exactly...chosen by god to be stark raving mad psychopaths that get every perk and privileged to keep murdering for sport.. gods an asshole then!
You nailed it, Ms Johnstone. I closed my most recent post with the slogan "make 'israel' Palestine again", which may sound glib or reactionary to some, but it's actually a call for a 'one state's solution, with equal dignity and rights for all of it's people. If certain supremacist Jews don't like it, let them 'return' to America or Europe or wherever they sprang from.
There was just such a country where Jews, Muslims, and Christians lived together in peace. It was called PALESTINE.
In a world of labels I leaned toward "liberal" for most of my life. And indeed there were some worthy liberals about that one could admire and emulate. Frank Church comes to mind. Now I loathe the word. The liberal project and the Democratic party which purported to represent Western liberalism since the FDR administration has been dying a slow death at many hands, but this has accelerated since the Clinton administration. Now I find nothing to admire in the establishment Democrat camp and will not vote for a party that cannot take a firm moral stand in the face of Zionist Israel's project of ethnic cleansing, land theft and war crimes. Israel has ALWAYS been about displacing the indigenous population of Palestine, stealing their land, killing them when necessary. That anyone calling himself a "liberal" would defend this is more than enough for me to keep my distance from such people. We should note that even people who come from the "conservative" side of the spectrum know genocide when they see it and condemn the Zionist project and our support and apologies for it as being against the interests of the American people. No labels, indeed. Only actions from a truly moral and ethical center count, and that has nothing to do with modern American politics. Politics is about power and therefore cynical at its core. Power and politics without ethics and fair dealing can only deliver chaos and misery. That is exactly where we are as a nation, and will remain until we awaken to the truth.
The fact that Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden have been the most recent presidential candidates of the "liberal" party says everything about the moral rot in the modern Democratic Party, and in liberalism writ large.
The FDR administration was never liberal. People continue to make that mistake simply on the basis of the New Deal "reforms" enacted by Roosevelt during the Great Depression. But that was never Roosevelt's aim. He and his administration only enacted the New Deal to save their own skins from the enraged working class. They were out to save capitalism, terrified by the spectre of socialism. Most of the working class was socialist and the Russian Revolution was only a few decades in the past during the 1930s. The creation of the New Deal myth was deliberate and one of the first great hoaxes perpetrated upon working people in the United States. People still believe in it. They are mistaken.
I agree. FDR was not a liberal in the American political sense but he was a hell of a lot smarter and more perceptive than the people who rule this country and one might well imagine what would have happened without the New Deal. He did have several people whom one might call “liberal” in his administration, including his wife! Harry Hopkins and Henry Wallace were actually more of a democratic socialist bent, Wallace an outright socialist, but one might still liken them to liberals as we came to recognize them in the Kennedy era. Labels fail us in characterizing the full spectrum of political views and I abhor them. Therein lies the problem of labels: they become a meaningless pejorative based upon fundamental errors and mischaracterizations. What I miss is the feeling abroad in the country, however vague, in mid-century, that government was working for ordinary citizens and that one’s vote just might help to push the country toward “a more perfect union.”. I realize that we may have been deluded all along, but the excesses of power have pretty much been in our face for the last 40 years. No illusions there. But the entire national mood is different than it was a half century ago. My parents’ generation got the New Deal, FHA and a new prosperity. Every working man or woman since Reagan got the shaft, regardless of who was in the White House.
Screw FDR. I prefer Huey P. Long.
My grandfather in Louisiana cried when Huey Long was assassinated. He was a demagogue and corrupt as hell, but he knew where his power lay, and that was with the working people and the poor. And he delivered. None of that “I feel your pain” bullshit. I was a medical student at Charity Hospital in N.O.—a thousand beds for the poor and out of luck. Walk in and you got the same medical care as the rich folks at Touro. No insurance “networks” then. Huey Long built it. Shame we can’t have good things for ourselves from consensus government, but that’s not how it works now. That explains the allure of Donald Trump, which is very similar to the popularity of HL in the 1930’s: people want raw political power to deliver the things that they can’t get with consensus government. Difference: Mr. Trump WON’T deliver a better life for any of his devotees or the rest of us.
I wrote a longer response but my fat paw deleted. TL;DR people voted for Long because he delivered. People vote for Trump to Burn It All Down.
And maybe they should.
Very true Carolyn L Zaremba. You know your history well. Thank you!
I’m not entirely sure about this but I believe you
How can she have shocked you? I'm an American and I agree with Caitlin 100%. I rejected liberalism some time during the late 1960s. You sound incredibly naive.
What exactly is a Liberal?
Libertarianism is capitalism run amok with no government
Democracy, as a practical matter, is basically an exercise in passing the buck, in avoiding responsibility. Everyone in power claims to answer to and derive their authority from someone else, going ultimately back to "the people" who themselves do not directly exercise power, and who would find it difficult to exercise as a collective action problem, even if they had the formal authority to do so.
What this means is that real power is often in the hands of unelected bureaucrats, who typically don't even want to stand for election because they don't want the voters to know what their programs are, much less to exercise any oversight. Robert Moses is the classic example here.
Even that minimal level of scrutiny is too much for some, and real power is often exercised by people not formally part of any government structure. Corporate lobbyists or Robert Kagan come to mind.
To put it another way: if politicians answer to The People, why is it that almost every western political leader is so hated by his own public?
Trying to think ...
>>"Democracy is based upon MAJORITY wins and MINORITY loses."
In reality, it doesn't work out that way. As Feral Finster was alluding to, it doesn't matter which majority wins (Democrats or Republicans), it is always the "power elite" (the powerful minority) that controls things behind the scenes. So, democracy (in most practical instances) lands up being an illusion.