America’s “two-party system” is at the heart of our crisis. Both parties have always joined hands to prevent the rise of any significant third our fourth party (a Workers’ Party, La Raza Unida (latino), etc.)
While only two parties ruled they could effectively strangle any social movement that arose. But the civil rights, antiwar, anticapitalist, women’s, gay rights, and similar movements that emerged in the 1960s to 1980s were/are unacceptable to America’s ruling class and had to be destroyed.
This, the more conservative political wing of America began to push farther and farther Right until the appearance of Donald Trump enabled them to cut all ties to democracy.
We cannot just recreate America’s political past and think all will be well. This is the problem we must debate as we fight off fascism.
Tim Pool's a good example: You've got a lot of right-wing people whose business model is built on capturing your attention, and if there is no war six months or a year from now it's not like anyone's gonna say, "That's it, I'm cancelling my Tim Pool subscription!" The financial incentives are all on the side of amping up the warnings of war and the promises of war, regardless of whether you can actually make it a reality.
OTOH I can easily imagine them as a terrorist movement. Shoot up a synagogue, park a rental truck full of explosives in front of a federal building, that sort of thing. Out there in the audience are people who will do that and call it "war."
But in the end my mind comes back to actual "contending for power" which does still require winning elections, not threatening people over the internet or sporadic acts of mass murder.
Oh, gosh. I've gained a new set of filters for seeing, ever since a family member, having sized me up a bit first, handed me Sarah Kendzior's "They Knew" last year. All I see now is the completely untrammeled power of transnational money demanding we all kneel before it. A couple of years before, I'd heard English writer Paul Kingsnorth in conversation with retired Archbishop Rowan Williams speak to the manner in which the ongoing drive to achieve the 'Perfection of the Market' looks an awful lot like a demand that we bring about the complete exploitation of all Creation, digging up the Earth so as to turn it all into just money. Exploiting each other. Timothy Snyder recently observed that there is a 'future deficit' in the world, that the thrust of war and threat of war (specifically in Ukraine) (but promised for all of us without the nihilist's 'vision' that there are no truths, or beauty, that the only thing that matters is the exercise of violence to get what people crave) have deprived us of a notion of a future of contentment. In other words, a transnational sense of entitlement, greed, of reaping what we have not sown. I've been fortunate to have been laid low enough to be able to let go of that - I don't know how the culture gets that wake-up call, short of the lifeboats finally hitting the water and the leviathan of our comfort sliding beneath the waves.
Hopefully everybody's seen this. Perhaps par for the course but saying the quiet part out loud and finishing the job!
crucially important story from yesterday that got buried under the news of Trump’s conviction. In The New Republic, Ken Silverstein reported on a private WhatsApp group started last December by military contractor Erik Prince—founder of Blackwater and brother of Trump’s secretary of education, Betsy DeVos—and including about 650 wealthy and well-connected “right-wing government officials, intelligence operatives, arms traffickers, and journalists,” including Representative Ryan Zinke (R-MT), who served as Trump’s secretary of the interior.
Called “Off Leash,” the group discussed, as Silverstein wrote, “the shortcomings of democracy that invariably resulted from extending the franchise to ordinary citizens, who are easily manipulated by Marxists and populists,” collapsing Gaza into a “fiery hell pit,” wiping out Iran, how Africa was a “sh*thole of a continent,” and ways to dominate the globe. Mostly, though, they discussed the danger of letting everyone vote. “There is only one path forward,” Zinke wrote. “Elect Trump.” Another member answered, “It’s Trump or Revolution” “You mean Trump AND Revolution,” wrote another.
So what’s the plan to save we Dems/non-Republicans from the trump promised bloodbath/slaughter. Republicans will assassinate their useful idiot, trump. (As you discussed in your pod cast last night the very real possibility of trump’s assassination)seems like a very real option.).
I see the Republicans arranging the kill/assassination of trump and handily blaming the assassination on “the Radical Left Dems” As the propaganda machine that is funded by the US Billionaire Oligarchs, the Heritage Foundation and Conservative consortium is firmly in place, it will be impossible to prove Dem innocence. The Republican coup will be complete.
So, again, wondering what’s the plan to save us from our impending slaughter and bloodbath as promised by the current Republican regime.
Good talk Jared. I loved your Midnight book, we both believe the important issues. I wish that these wicked politicians would concentrate on our climate. The storms in the Midwest keep coming more often & more powerful. We need the citizens to start doing something about the World focusing on our Survival from the true dangers of Climate, we may not survive.
America’s “two-party system” is at the heart of our crisis. Both parties have always joined hands to prevent the rise of any significant third our fourth party (a Workers’ Party, La Raza Unida (latino), etc.)
While only two parties ruled they could effectively strangle any social movement that arose. But the civil rights, antiwar, anticapitalist, women’s, gay rights, and similar movements that emerged in the 1960s to 1980s were/are unacceptable to America’s ruling class and had to be destroyed.
This, the more conservative political wing of America began to push farther and farther Right until the appearance of Donald Trump enabled them to cut all ties to democracy.
We cannot just recreate America’s political past and think all will be well. This is the problem we must debate as we fight off fascism.
Yes to all this. But in this and other pieces you hint at some “path back,” but don’t spell out what that path might be.
Tim Pool's a good example: You've got a lot of right-wing people whose business model is built on capturing your attention, and if there is no war six months or a year from now it's not like anyone's gonna say, "That's it, I'm cancelling my Tim Pool subscription!" The financial incentives are all on the side of amping up the warnings of war and the promises of war, regardless of whether you can actually make it a reality.
OTOH I can easily imagine them as a terrorist movement. Shoot up a synagogue, park a rental truck full of explosives in front of a federal building, that sort of thing. Out there in the audience are people who will do that and call it "war."
But in the end my mind comes back to actual "contending for power" which does still require winning elections, not threatening people over the internet or sporadic acts of mass murder.
Oh, gosh. I've gained a new set of filters for seeing, ever since a family member, having sized me up a bit first, handed me Sarah Kendzior's "They Knew" last year. All I see now is the completely untrammeled power of transnational money demanding we all kneel before it. A couple of years before, I'd heard English writer Paul Kingsnorth in conversation with retired Archbishop Rowan Williams speak to the manner in which the ongoing drive to achieve the 'Perfection of the Market' looks an awful lot like a demand that we bring about the complete exploitation of all Creation, digging up the Earth so as to turn it all into just money. Exploiting each other. Timothy Snyder recently observed that there is a 'future deficit' in the world, that the thrust of war and threat of war (specifically in Ukraine) (but promised for all of us without the nihilist's 'vision' that there are no truths, or beauty, that the only thing that matters is the exercise of violence to get what people crave) have deprived us of a notion of a future of contentment. In other words, a transnational sense of entitlement, greed, of reaping what we have not sown. I've been fortunate to have been laid low enough to be able to let go of that - I don't know how the culture gets that wake-up call, short of the lifeboats finally hitting the water and the leviathan of our comfort sliding beneath the waves.
Hopefully everybody's seen this. Perhaps par for the course but saying the quiet part out loud and finishing the job!
crucially important story from yesterday that got buried under the news of Trump’s conviction. In The New Republic, Ken Silverstein reported on a private WhatsApp group started last December by military contractor Erik Prince—founder of Blackwater and brother of Trump’s secretary of education, Betsy DeVos—and including about 650 wealthy and well-connected “right-wing government officials, intelligence operatives, arms traffickers, and journalists,” including Representative Ryan Zinke (R-MT), who served as Trump’s secretary of the interior.
Called “Off Leash,” the group discussed, as Silverstein wrote, “the shortcomings of democracy that invariably resulted from extending the franchise to ordinary citizens, who are easily manipulated by Marxists and populists,” collapsing Gaza into a “fiery hell pit,” wiping out Iran, how Africa was a “sh*thole of a continent,” and ways to dominate the globe. Mostly, though, they discussed the danger of letting everyone vote. “There is only one path forward,” Zinke wrote. “Elect Trump.” Another member answered, “It’s Trump or Revolution” “You mean Trump AND Revolution,” wrote another.
Sorry that's from Heather Cox Richardson's column on sub stack
So what’s the plan to save we Dems/non-Republicans from the trump promised bloodbath/slaughter. Republicans will assassinate their useful idiot, trump. (As you discussed in your pod cast last night the very real possibility of trump’s assassination)seems like a very real option.).
I see the Republicans arranging the kill/assassination of trump and handily blaming the assassination on “the Radical Left Dems” As the propaganda machine that is funded by the US Billionaire Oligarchs, the Heritage Foundation and Conservative consortium is firmly in place, it will be impossible to prove Dem innocence. The Republican coup will be complete.
So, again, wondering what’s the plan to save us from our impending slaughter and bloodbath as promised by the current Republican regime.
Good talk Jared. I loved your Midnight book, we both believe the important issues. I wish that these wicked politicians would concentrate on our climate. The storms in the Midwest keep coming more often & more powerful. We need the citizens to start doing something about the World focusing on our Survival from the true dangers of Climate, we may not survive.