The debate rages on over whether or not House progressives should force a floor vote on Medicare for All by threatening not to re-elect Nancy Pelosi as House Speaker, with one side arguing that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and the rest of "The Squad" were elected to advance progressive policies so that's what they should do, and the other side arguing that AOC is cool so shut up and leave her alone.
If nothing else, this entire affair should raise the consciousness (of anyone truly listening) to the blatant idiocy of thinking that career center-right politicians like Biden and his minions can suddenly be pushed left. I think that most "liberal" Boomers (my generation) are inured to just how potent is the poison that the Dems feed new congresspersons to immediately adjust their thinking toward the party norms of economic inequality, fealty to tech elites, and the war economy. That poison has rendered the Democratic Party dead to me and useless to those aforementioned liberals; although most of them, sleeping the sleep of narcissism, don't realize it.
Caitlin writes, "A society doesn't collectively reject racism until it collectively becomes aware of how destructive and insane it is." This is absolutely true of all forms of racism and bigotry, including the scapegoating of white male gentiles. It is indeed "destructive and insane" to constantly blather on about the "cisgendered, heterosexual white patriarchy" when 99% of white males are just as powerless as 99.5% of women and POC, and to continue giving a pass to the 0.5% token females and POC who enrich themselves at the expense of their brothers and sisters.
You've highlighted yet another ism our species needs to resolve and evolve beyond. The obscenely wealthy corporate fascists are, indeed, old white men. And, what they've wrought in this world needs to be dismantled asap, or we will sentence our children and our children's children to a hellish future and our species' extinction (pockets of us may survive, but it will be a hellish existence).
Expanding consciousness is spot on. Also makes me think of the psychological advice, “Don’t listen to what people say, observe what they do.” I have always found that advice very enlightening.
Willful ignorance is a huge psychic wound for our species and a deliberate one. We are witnessing the outcome of decades of propaganda coupled with a co-opted system of public education designed to spit out factory fodder and service industry drones--with stunted critical thinking skills and an understandable aversion to all things academic.
If we are to leave our children and our children's children a habitable planet, it is critical for all of us to understand viscerally that a handful of obscenely wealthy corporate fascists--the handful of old white men who own and control most of this planet's resources--are responsible for the wanton destruction of our ecosystem, and their behavior, by definition, is psychopathy--a psychopathy that promises our extinction event.
Biden should have pressured his good pal Pelosi to accept the Republicans' initial offer to insure that people would get a stimulus check and could put food on their tables... at Christmas! And these criminals infesting our government thought they were going to leave for a luxurious, taxpayer funded Christmas vacation after "assuring" that we'd receive a $600 check! Their hubris is off the charts! The neoliberal corporate sycophants infesting our government just gave a big fuck you to those of us struggling to survive economically. They're only concerned about their personal filthy lucre and media coverage of their sophomoric political one-upmanship.
If you're keeping up with Biden's dissembling and the recent media flurry about the Biden campaign's stimulus plan, wherein another stimulus check is a "definite possibility" (weasel words–using a classic contradiction in terms), you are witness to the type of shenanigans we can continue to expect from the corrupt Democratic Party.
If you do not recognize this "definite possibility" as a political ploy, think back on this post when the Democrats pull their "we sincerely tried to get you destitute Americans another check, but the evil Republicans are ruthless obstructionists" — all while facilitating another massive transfer of wealth to the already obscenely wealthy.
We'll be in the streets by the millions before this is over.
"Ever since 2016 people have been predicting massive upheavals which radically shift power from one mainstream faction to the other, but it never happens, the imperial machine keeps chugging along with all its part working in well-oiled harmony."
Part of the problem here may well be a significant misdiagnosis of the nature of this imperial machine and a tendency to ignore its more granular details, which are usually the key to keeping this apparatus of power functioning in a "well-oiled harmony."
Indeed. As long as industrial equipment remained in the US, the "capital equipment" was here. When such things as LTV's (nee, Republic Steel's) state of the art 98 inch strip mill were sold, packed up and shipped to China, it was often accounted as "revenue" to boost the stock price when it really should have been accounted as a return of capital, resulting in a reduction of the "book value" of the stock. Insiders would have known this was a slow liquidation of the company and sold the inflated stock to purchase some Chinese company.
If nothing else, this entire affair should raise the consciousness (of anyone truly listening) to the blatant idiocy of thinking that career center-right politicians like Biden and his minions can suddenly be pushed left. I think that most "liberal" Boomers (my generation) are inured to just how potent is the poison that the Dems feed new congresspersons to immediately adjust their thinking toward the party norms of economic inequality, fealty to tech elites, and the war economy. That poison has rendered the Democratic Party dead to me and useless to those aforementioned liberals; although most of them, sleeping the sleep of narcissism, don't realize it.
Caitlin writes, "A society doesn't collectively reject racism until it collectively becomes aware of how destructive and insane it is." This is absolutely true of all forms of racism and bigotry, including the scapegoating of white male gentiles. It is indeed "destructive and insane" to constantly blather on about the "cisgendered, heterosexual white patriarchy" when 99% of white males are just as powerless as 99.5% of women and POC, and to continue giving a pass to the 0.5% token females and POC who enrich themselves at the expense of their brothers and sisters.
You've highlighted yet another ism our species needs to resolve and evolve beyond. The obscenely wealthy corporate fascists are, indeed, old white men. And, what they've wrought in this world needs to be dismantled asap, or we will sentence our children and our children's children to a hellish future and our species' extinction (pockets of us may survive, but it will be a hellish existence).
Expanding consciousness is spot on. Also makes me think of the psychological advice, “Don’t listen to what people say, observe what they do.” I have always found that advice very enlightening.
My latest observation:
Willful ignorance is a huge psychic wound for our species and a deliberate one. We are witnessing the outcome of decades of propaganda coupled with a co-opted system of public education designed to spit out factory fodder and service industry drones--with stunted critical thinking skills and an understandable aversion to all things academic.
If we are to leave our children and our children's children a habitable planet, it is critical for all of us to understand viscerally that a handful of obscenely wealthy corporate fascists--the handful of old white men who own and control most of this planet's resources--are responsible for the wanton destruction of our ecosystem, and their behavior, by definition, is psychopathy--a psychopathy that promises our extinction event.
Biden should have pressured his good pal Pelosi to accept the Republicans' initial offer to insure that people would get a stimulus check and could put food on their tables... at Christmas! And these criminals infesting our government thought they were going to leave for a luxurious, taxpayer funded Christmas vacation after "assuring" that we'd receive a $600 check! Their hubris is off the charts! The neoliberal corporate sycophants infesting our government just gave a big fuck you to those of us struggling to survive economically. They're only concerned about their personal filthy lucre and media coverage of their sophomoric political one-upmanship.
If you're keeping up with Biden's dissembling and the recent media flurry about the Biden campaign's stimulus plan, wherein another stimulus check is a "definite possibility" (weasel words–using a classic contradiction in terms), you are witness to the type of shenanigans we can continue to expect from the corrupt Democratic Party.
If you do not recognize this "definite possibility" as a political ploy, think back on this post when the Democrats pull their "we sincerely tried to get you destitute Americans another check, but the evil Republicans are ruthless obstructionists" — all while facilitating another massive transfer of wealth to the already obscenely wealthy.
We'll be in the streets by the millions before this is over.
#OurRevolution
"Ever since 2016 people have been predicting massive upheavals which radically shift power from one mainstream faction to the other, but it never happens, the imperial machine keeps chugging along with all its part working in well-oiled harmony."
Part of the problem here may well be a significant misdiagnosis of the nature of this imperial machine and a tendency to ignore its more granular details, which are usually the key to keeping this apparatus of power functioning in a "well-oiled harmony."
True.
Indeed. As long as industrial equipment remained in the US, the "capital equipment" was here. When such things as LTV's (nee, Republic Steel's) state of the art 98 inch strip mill were sold, packed up and shipped to China, it was often accounted as "revenue" to boost the stock price when it really should have been accounted as a return of capital, resulting in a reduction of the "book value" of the stock. Insiders would have known this was a slow liquidation of the company and sold the inflated stock to purchase some Chinese company.