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Should have said IF they think... sorry!
#1 NO
They likely think it's a movie... when they think!
Hello!
Anybody understand Fascism?
Against which wars were fought?
I very much would like to think and feel that the Obama administration decided not to move forward with offshore drilling off the Atlantic coast because of the groundswell of opposition from communities, environmentalists, etc, but I tend to believe that it was done to protect the D Party and THEIR nominee, HRC in this 2016 presidential election. The D Party is dominated by corporate Democrats and if not for this election year, they would not think twice about moving ahead with offshore drilling.
Reply to #11: Sorry Ms. Jussayin, but I agree with Mr. Bliss. Hillary Clinton is a fascist, and I don't vote for fascists.
The Democratic Party is no better than the Republican Party. They both stand for the 1%. They are in cahoots. And the mainstream media is sold out to them.
Do you think that a lot of the Americans watching the wall-to-wall coverage of the terrorist attack in Belgium actually think it IS happening here??
Hey Thom: Why can I no longer stream your show in Chicago? Ever try to get AM in downtown Chicago? WCPT can KMA!
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I'm suddenly reminded of this line in a song by Stealers Wheel: "Clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right. Here I am, stuck in the middle with with you." One problem; I seem to be stuck in the middle more and more alone. Marxism and Fascism are natural enemies, like the Cobra and the Mongoose. Everyone seems surprised when they're locked in a room together for almost a hundred years they're still trying to kill one another.
Ideologues and realists are also natural enemies. Oddly enough, though, realists like myself only have one weapon against ideologues; reason. And ideologues are the most destructive forces on the planet, whether they stand on the left or on the right. Both are borderline Utopian in their conviction that if only the rest of the world would come around to their particular philosophy, the world would be a perfect place. Facists want absolute order, Socialists almost absolute disorder, and the balance is between dictatorship and chaos.
Since there is less oppression in chaos I lean more toward the Democratic Party, but I think (hope) the natural evolution of political philosophy will eventually lead to right-leaning Democrats and left-leaning Republicans will join to form a majority party and all you extremists will be left alone on the fringes, rendered nearly harmless. That is, of course, if your extreme differences don't lead to a bloody revolution that ends up an awful mix of both the extremes of your ideologies.
Dictatorship is the same whether it's of the Proletariat or one, or an Oligarchy. I want no part of any of that. If socialism is completely destroyed, people will go hungry because the natural concentration of wealth at the top will stay there and not trickled down as the capitalists say it will. If capitalism is eliminated, some people will still go hungry because much of the wealth we've become accustomed to will disappear with it.
Another bad thing about ideologues like some of you here and Mr. Hartman is impatience. You're so anxious for change that when a Bernie Sanders comes along you see it as an opportunity to start a quiet revolution. Trust me, this is not the time. There's still a great aversion to socialism here and, if you doubt it, tune into Hannity or Limbaugh, or Fox Newa Channel for awhile.
As for Sanders leading us out of the wilderness, here's a reality check. I did some math and head to head so far in the primaries and caucuses, these are the total votes cast. Hillary-8.5 million; Trump-7.3 million; Bernie-5.9 million. THAT is the strength of your so called revolution. I didn't add up Cruz's numbers because I think Trump is going to be the guy, but if somehow the "establishment" (the few Republicans with common sense) can steal the nomination from Trump, you could wind up with Cruz. He's probably around 3 mil, and if even as few as half of the Trumpistas come out for him in the general election. it puts him slightly ahead of Bernie. If the thought of Ted Cruz naming the next two or three justices to the Supreme Court doesn't shake some sense into you, seek psychiatric help at once!
When I was much younger (and a bit of an ideologue myself) George McGovern was my Bernie Sanders. He had this crazy idea we should withdraw from Viet Nam unilaterally, and had a tax plan that gave $1000 for each person in families with incomes under a certain level. He was painted as a Socialist by Nixonites and lost 49 states. Bernie would be portrayed as the new Karl Marx (and, yes there are more people who remember that name than there are millenials who don't) and could probably win Vermont, California, Michigan, and maaaaybe Ohio. Better than McGovern, but still no cigar.
Hillary at least has a shot at mobilizing my generation of women who remember what it was like before Roe v. Wade, and blacks who remember life before Democrats of her father's generation passed the civil rights act. Forget revolutionizing Washington. Republicans have a revolution of their own happening. Thirty governorships and 68 of 98 state legislative chambers, and in case you're not paying attention, the U.S. House and Senate.
So quit bitching and hand-wringing about how Dems have sold out and are "just like Republicans," because they AREN'T. Preidential elections usually don't make much difference, but this one most certainly does, and if you insist on voting your "conscience" and effectively wasting your vote, I hope your conscience let's you sleep well with Trump or Cruz sleeping at 1600 Penn.
Significantly, flyguy8650, the secret-police/militarized-police apparatus already in place proves the Ruling Class intends in the near future to behave toward the rest of us exactly as it already behaves toward the African-American, Hispanic and First Nations population. That is proven by analysis of what in the military is called "capabilities" (as demonstrated against Occupy and Black Lives Matter) and of "intentions" (as demonstrated against Occupy and Black Lives Matter, and in killings at Ferguson, Baltimore, New York City etc.).
The only question for the remainder of the 99 Percent is when the killing of innocents will become the national norm at any protest againast capitalist or racist savagery.
My estimate, based on a lifetime of 76 years and a near-lifetime as both a journalist and a student of history, is that the obvious, no-longer-deniable death of U.S. representative democracy will be declared by the emergence of zero-tolerance, kill-all-resistance plutocracy soon after the 2016 elections.
In this sense, there is no significant difference between Hillary and Trump: each is an unabashed fascist (although in deference to Trump it is worth noting he pledges to protect the very Social Security and Medicare programs Hillary wants to destroy) -- and because each is an unabashed fascist, neither has any intention of preserving the freedoms guaranteed by the Bill of Rights.
Hence the difference between the United States and fascist nations of the past will soon become more a matter of euphemisms and the identity of human targets than anything else.
In this context, history shows only the most disciplined resistance has any chance of achieving liberation. History also shows that only Marxism embodies that discipline. Thus, for example, were the opponents of Diem's Roman Catholic theocracy in South Vietnam compelled to adopt (and adapt) Marxism: no other ideology possessed the requisite discipline.
Remember too that Marxism failed in Russia not because of Marxism but because of the dark undertow of Russian history -- the fact Russia had no democratic or even libertarian traditions to sustain its people's quest for liberation against opportunists like Stalin.
Marxism in the United States -- with its virtually ageless background of First Nations democratic traditions, British Common Law, 241 years of constitutional governance and its ideology of representative democracy (no matter how the inherent principles have been nullified since 22 November 1963 by capitalism and its economic mandates for domestic enslavement and global conquest) -- would prove to be a very different story.
Indeed it may be our only possibility of salvation -- whether as an oppressed people or a species on the brink of environmental extinction.
Trump as a "change candidate" is the same old false flag strategy the Teapublic Party has been using since they figured out the corpse media won't do a god damn thing about the national broadcast of bald faced lies. Fox News indirectly created Trump long before Trump was in the political spotlight. The media created him in the sense that a large segment of "Merica" has been brainwashed by a relentless propaganda machine, brainwashed into believing the democractic party is always the enemy despite the obvious conflict with fact based reality.
Support for an arrogant, selfish, bigoted, greedy, and narcissistic billionaire, as if he'll be on your side, can only be created by the kind of purposeful confusion the right -wing hate machine whips up. I'm sorry, but Trump already represents and practices everything that is wrong with being a conservative/Teapublican.....he's simply twisting things, exactly like Fox News does, but in his own false flag manner. He's saying whatever it takes to get elected.
Trump will rule the country as a Fascist, just like the ones that already control the Teapublic Party. In that sense it would be business as usual, but with an even more accelerated concentration of wealth. Yes, I agree he would be the Hitler choice, but I also believe we reached that point with Fox News and the Teapublic party long ago.
Bernie is our only hope for true change....he's the rare FDR soul who is in the right place at the most crucial time.
Wow, I agree that the essay Thom wrote today may indeed be one of his best. However, Mr. Bliss, Marxism is NOT the answer as we all have seen over and over. There is little difference between the Corrupt Tyrants of the Dems and Gop, (AKA - Opposames), is very different. What we need is for our generation, (Baby Boomers), to start educating our grandkids. We really screwed up our kids. Turn our education system back to where it was in the 1950's. Locally controlled and managed. Strong Civics Education, work ethic, history going back WAY before 1970's. Demonization of past presidents is of little value. Focus on what made America Great. It was good to grow up in the 50's. We got good education, strong work ethic but our parents did not lean on us to pass on the lessons of the Greatest Generation and our Constitution. I pray and hope for a ballot revolution, we surely need it. Violence, if it happens, will only make America an "Also Ran" in the worlds history. Much like Roman Empire.
Thanks for the cogent comments and essay's. Very thought provoking. Tag - We'er It!!
This the best, most informative, most compelling essay I have yet seen under Mr. Hartmann's byline.
It is most assuredly also -- assuming We the People somehow triumph, and " that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth" -- an essay truly for the history books.
Indeed I have only one contrary comment: it is not merely the "emerging generation of Millennials" who have become what Mr. Hartmann labels "radical cynics,"
The same is true of many elderly people like myself, who have been painfully awakened to the deadly malevolence of the forces arrayed against us -- especially as manifest in the genocidal policies of the One Percent and their Ruling Class vassals toward any of us old enough to remember how much better life was under the New Deal.
Awakening to the true magnitude of the Evil that threatens us, we are also awakening to the fact that only Marxism -- and only Marxism in its Leninist/Maoist variant -- offers the ideological discipline essential to overthrow those tyrants who would either reduce us all to slavery or exterminate us all by the slow-motion genocide of "austerity."
We also realize that the One Percenters -- and their wholly owned Ruling Class of politicians, bureaucrats, academics, military officers and police commanders -- now regard our memories of radically better times as definitively subversive.
That is why they are trying to kills us by slashing Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps and any other governmental stipends and services upon which capitalism forces us to depend for survival.
Literally, our lives -- and the lives of every member of the Working Class -- are at stake.
Moreover, with the omnipotent secret police apparatus the One Percent has already built -- total surveillance and federally militarized law enforcement -- we need only look to our species' broader history to see, particularly in the example of Nazi Germany, the irrefutable evidence that conventional USian politics are woefully indaequate.
Given our dawning recognition that capitalism demands the embrace of limitless, mercilessly selfish, relentlessly greedy moral imbecility as its core principle, we also question the effectiveness of any political ideology that does not as a first premise acknowledge capitalism as the most devastating, potentially terminal affliction humanity has ever thrust upon itself.
Hence, Mr. Hartmann, the "political revolution" you describe has indeed already begun.
One hopes, as I surely do, it will be accomplished via the ballot box. The alternative -- our nation reduced to the ruin that now characterizes most of the Middle East - is too fearful to contemplate.
But knowing the murderous arrogance of the One Percent -- demonstrated not just by such horrors as the Pinochet Regime in Chile but also by the emergence of death-squad police tactics here in our own homeland -- it is tragically probable our smug and obscenely powerful overlords will reject a democratic solution here just as they rejected it in Iran in 1953 and in so many other places since then.
"The only difference between the Republican and Democratic parties is the velocities with which their knees hit the floor when corporations knock on their door. That's the only difference." - Ralph Nader
I wouldn't mind seeing a new party... even after Bernie wins the Democratic nomination.
I too have been frustrated with the established Democratic party, as a Bernie Sanders supporter he is the only candidate that is like a beacon of light in the darkness. I respect that he is only financially supported by people like you & I and now month after month he has gotten more donations than anyone in history. If he is not nominated as the Democratic candidate, I will write in his name on the CA ballot.
The Democratic Party embraces the complicated as you say. It’s just like the Affordable Care Act, a 20,000 page document that is esoteric and confusing but could be simple as the Single Payer Medicare. It’s my opinion that if one can confuse, then one can deceive. And, we’ve had deception for many years and the effect is obvious to most of us.
"No matter what happens in this 2016 election, though, the bottom 90% has had enough.
If nothing else, the astonishing number of people who say they’ll vote for either Trump or Sanders (i.e. “the outsider”) if the other party (even their own party) puts up an establishment candidate is unprecedented..."
Significant observation.
In the past Tom has suggested the practical course of action was for a grass roots movement to hijack a major party.
But in 2117 there may be enough energy to overcome the labrynith of state hoops through which a new national party must jump.
Some founding father railed against political parties, and making it straight forward to have many national parties dilutes the power of the party elite.
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If the Republican Party and corporate media steal the nomination from Trump, the chaos Thom envisions will begin to erupt sooner than later. A Clinton nomination will prove disastrous unless Sanders declares he cannot support her. He must take charge of his supporters and refocus them on movement activism. He should help organize citizen groups to work on universal health care, the environment, free tuition at public colleges and universities, etc. He should not turn over his voter list to Clinton and return, defeated, to his work in Congress. He has an opportunity to build his revolution. Sheepdogging his supporters into the corrupt Democratic Party fold will have wasted the incredible burst of optimism and enthusiasm and idealism he's ignited.
This has been the most frustrating point of this entire election for me. The Democratic party was the counterweight to the Right and we looked the other way when they gave in to their favored brand of special interests, mainly anything with money. That's almost understandable but when the constituents begin to look the other way as have Hillary's follwers, it makes the party no better than the Right. Hillary's followers remind me of Reagan followers from the 80s. I was sickened by them then and still am.
The Democratic party needs to get back to its counterweight roots or it will continue to see better than half leave the party for a Bernie write-in or Independent run. I've already made up my mind that I'm done with the Democratic party unless they take a hard Left and accept Bernie as the leader. The Green party is looking pretty good to me.
Are you kidding? Our so called democracy is a sham....it is a coin operated democracy. In my opinion, both parties should burn to the ground. The GOP never represented the interests of the working class and thanks to the corporate Democrats dominating the Democratic Party since Clinton, the Democrats now work overtime to please their corporate donors with corporate friendly legislation. On tax and trade policy in particular, there is NO DIFFERENCE with the GOP.
This country is the Corporate States of America and we are already an oligarchy. And after how the DNC, the D Party and corporate media treated Bernie Sanders, I will NEVER support the CORPORATE Democratic Party again nor would I ever support the R Party.