DEMOCRATS: WANT TO WIN IN 2024? HERE’S THE PATH FORWARD!

“We Choose Truth Over Facts” –Joe Biden

“Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passion, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.”
― President John Adams

“Uncork the champagne! Break out the caviar! Bernie’s “Socialist” candidacy is dead!” That, or something approaching it, resounded through the canyons of Wall Street and the cloistered halls of the Democratic Party establishment in early April of 2020. But 2021 is a whole different scene: despite having the Corporate media propping them up on almost every front, the Biden/Harris Administration reels from one blunder to another, alienating their democratic base by forcing experimental vaccines in order to further enrich Big Pharma. Whispers of what to do about the Biden Problem have been growing behind the scenes in the establishment. Overseas, talk about replacing Biden for the 2024 Presidential Election is more overt: Australian Media on replacing Biden in the next election.

Neo-Liberals and their one percent Lords and Masters since then have been celebrating their victory over Progressives from the comfort of their penthouses and wine-caves ever since. But before the Party elite and their mindless media minions become too intoxicated with their triumph, they should take heed of the old Chinese adage about being careful what you wish for.

The Establishment may still be gloating over their complete defeat of Sanders, but anyone concerned over the fate of our Nation should first consider a few obvious facts. What was in truth merely a mild version of FDR New Deal Progressivism, was defeated through media manipulation, massive vote fraud, and assorted knavery that the DNC has become so skilled at. Yes, Ex-President Mr. Nice Guy, the Banksters Friend, and other Corporatists foisted their Anointed One on the Democratic Party in an almost exact replay of the 2016 primaries. The “I’m not Trump” voters were enough to squeak out an insipid victory over the Insane Klown, but in the process, Dems LOST house seats rather than gained them! That doesn’t happen when you have a genuinely popular candidate; normally, the “Coattails Effect” will carry a number of House and Senate seats with the Presidential win. That should have the first warning sign to the Democratic Party. Granted, there is a hard core “never Trump” electorate who will vote for the Democratic Party no matter how awful their candidate is; but that constituency is more vocal than numerous. And, as we have learned by now, Mainstream Corporate Media polls about Biden’s popularity are works of creative fiction, not science, and certainly not destiny.

Meanwhile, as America flounders in its own delusional bubble on both the Corporatist left and right, around the world the Globalist/NeoLiberal agenda has proved a massive disaster, with whole nations in open revolt against its local proponents. Apparently Neo-Liberals in the Democratic Party haven’t gotten the memo and are still partying like its 1999, glutted as they are with donations given them by the Banksters and others of the donor class.

With no core values in the 21st century other than keeping those billionaire contributions flowing into their pockets, defeating substantive economic and political reform has become far more important to the Democratic Party elite than actually winning elections. Enjoy your Jeni’s Ice Cream while you may, the Deplorables are coming with their pitchforks to take you down and you won’t have to wait for 2024: the mid-term elections could be a bloodbath for the Democratic Party.

In their desperate effort to stave off systemic reform, the Democratic Establishment has painted itself, and the Party, into a corner. With every incoherent sentence that comes out of his palsied lips, Dementia Joe shows how utterly unfit he is for any office, least of all the highest one in the land.

But worse still, there is a closet-full of skeletons in Joe Biden’s past and the shill media can keep them from tumbling out into the light of day for only so long.

Even forgetting the allegation of rape–barely contained by the Corporatist media–there exists abundant footage of Beloved Uncle Joe behaving creepily towards young girls, to the point of molesting them on camera. Joe Biden’s pedophilia towards young girls is as apparent as Michael Jackson’s was towards young boys and equally whitewashed by the Mainstream Media–but won’t be by the GOP.

CREEPY JOE: THE PEDOPHILE PRESIDENT

Creepy Joe has been getting away with his sexual predation for so long he doesn’t even try to conceal it anymore. His “inappropriate” behavior is on full display in public, where he brazenly gropes grown women. There is enough video and photo evidence to fill hundreds of Republican attack ads. Don’t expect the GOP to go so easy on Creepy Joe and the Dems as the media has.

“Creepy Joe” doesn’t begin to describe Joe Biden’s long history of sexual predation. In addition to the rape allegations, there is abundant photographic evidence of him assaulting women, young and old. But, as with Bill Clinton and Harvey Weinstein, Glass Ceiling Feminists have looked the other way as long as they got what they want politically. from these power-brokers

In this regard, “Uncle Joe” Biden reminds one of “Uncle Charlie,” the main character in Alfred Hitchcock’s classic thriller, Shadow of a Doubt. In the film, “lovable” Uncle Charlie turns out to be a demented serial killer who murdered dozens of women. Of course, our good ole’ Uncle Joe never did that. No, instead, Uncle Joe and his Neo-Liberal cronies are responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians with their regime change wars and coup d’états, not to mention the harm they’ve done to countless thousands of Americans through the privatization of prisons, education, defense and just about any other piece of prize pork that isn’t nailed down.

If Biden is bold enough to grope women in public, imagine what he is doing in private.

Add to that, there is Banksters Friend Biden’s long history of playing footsy with big banks, his forty-plus year history of trying to destroy Social Security and Medicare, counting notorious Segregationists among his friends, his well-known opposition to integration in Congress, plus Law n’ Order Joe Biden championing crime bills to put Blacks and other minorities behind bars in record numbers—all recorded on video for the world to see and the GOP to use. But wait, there’s more!

Does anyone in the DNC and other Corporatist Democrat strongholds actually believe that with both Ukrainegate and Chinagate in their quiver, GOP attack ads in 2024 won’t also use those revelations? Once the Republicans and the Insane Clown get through with the Dems in their attack ads, not only will Biden lose spectacularly, but the whole party’s down ballot candidacy promises to go down in flames with him.

By the time the Repugnicans are finished, no amount of media spin or DNC conspiracy theory hoaxes–like the now thoroughly debunked Russiagate farce–will be able to put all the shattered pieces of the Humpty-Dumpty Biden Administration back together again. And when the billionaire donors, whom Neo-Liberal politicians hold so dear, abandon the proverbial sinking ship of the Democratic Party, do they really think working class voters and donors, that they’ve screwed over for years, will suddenly rush to their aid?

Despite nearly forty years of lies, alienation and wage stagnation, Neo-Liberals succeeded at some things: they have succeeded in shunning the American working class and they have alienated a majority of the electorate under 35. Even tried and true identity politics ploys are failing; a majority of younger minority voters have come to realize that, beyond a symbolic gesture, eight years of Obama did nothing for them either and that his “Republican Light” Neo-Liberalism has resulted only in more of the same economic desolation and endemic racism as before.

In addition, Glass Ceiling identity politics is also unlikely to deliver its true believers to the Democrats this time around, since the Tara Reade Scandal, while it has been swept under the rug by the six corporations that control 90% of the media, it is still simmering below the surface, waiting for the right moment to bubble over into full view.

Bernie Sanders, for all his pseudo-radical rhetoric, has simply refurbished New Deal Liberalism and labelled it “Democratic Socialism.” Nevertheless, even Sanders’ tepid version of Socialism offers an economic agenda which could provide American workers with real change for the better. It has already proven to energize large swaths of potential voters from a broad spectrum of backgrounds. Sanders’ quite moderate reform agenda shows that policies similar to what got Franklin Delano Roosevelt elected, updated for the 21st century, are still tremendously popular in the U.S. and can win elections.

Neo-Liberal Globalization has failed the American people. Repackaging the same “malarkey” that Neo-Liberals have spoon fed the rank and file for thirty-five years simply won’t work.

Bernie Sanders’ candidacy had held hope that he could save the party from its own folly. That hope was dashed; but not all the blame for Sanders’ failure can be laid at the feet of the Neo-Libs and their electoral rigging. Sanders’ own failure to prosecute his case forcefully against, “My Good Friend” Joe, plus his refusal to call out the massive cheating and vote theft in the primaries were fatal flaws too. They are failings by Sanders and his top advisors that has left a bitter taste among many former followers, even as it exposed Sanders’ own weakness as a candidate for the general election.

Now a catastrophe of the worst magnitude is looming, not just for the Democratic Party, but the Nation. The Petro-dollar is on the verge of collapse and with it falls fifty years of American economic and political Hegemony. And with that collapse also collapses the whole Globalist house of cards as well.

Fundamental economic and political reforms are long overdue and the current mass demonstrations and pent-up rage spilling out onto the streets of America’s cities are but a taste of things to come.

The hour is late; the need is great. As the headline indicates, there is a way forward.

The path to victory for Democrats?

–if they act quickly and decisively the answer is:

DUMP DEMENTIA JOE, DRAFT AL GORE, AND ADOPT BERNIE SANDERS’ POPULIST ECONOMIC AGENDA. DO THAT AND YOU WILL WIN!

In the back alleys of DC and in the cloak-rooms of the Old Boy network, whispered discussions of what to do about “The Biden Problem” were already buzzing well before they forced Sanders to bend the knee in 2020. The “I’m not Trump” strategy worked–barely–in 2020, but it just won’t fly in 2024.

Surely, any sane person in the DNC or other centers of Corporatism knew that Biden is a lost cause for election in 2024. Joe Biden’s mental disability is no longer a funny meme, even for Republicans.

The solution is simple: Uncle Joe’s puppet masters must convince him not to run in 2024. It would be the best for the Party, for the nation and for a mentally impaired geriatric politician who should never have been nominated in the first place, much less elected. But who to replace him with, and as importantly, what to do to appeal to all the alienated working-class voters whom the Neo’s have driven out of the Party? Forty percent of the American electorate are now independent voters; most of those used to be stalwart working-class Democrats. How do we win them back into the fold?

But the Party establishment first has to decide: do you really want to win the 2024 election? If so, as FDR told his millionaire peers in the 1930’s in a similar situation, you will need to promise working people something substantial in return for their votes.

Business as usual won’t work; identity politics can con some voters, but not enough. Above all, the Neo-Liberal failed Republican Lite bushwah BS won’t work anymore. The Democratic Party, the party of Jefferson, Jackson, FDR and Kennedy, needs to get back to its roots, adapted to the current crisis, otherwise it is doomed to fail, and fail BIG.

Al Gore is the man to deliver this new promise to the American worker!

Granted, the younger generations of voters may not know who Al Gore is; older voters may remember the controversy surrounding his election but likely forgot what Gore stood for. Moreover, Neo-Liberal elites long ago shunned him for not bending the knee and paying proper homage to the Clinton Machine. But The 2016 Election sent the Dems a message loud and clear from the voters: they would rather vote for a lying, cheating, ignorant bigot, with the IQ of a cumquat, than vote for another “lesser evil” Neo-Liberal candidate. And after four years of broken promises by the Neo-Lib Democratic bosses, the Insane Klown–or someone equally as evil–will not look so bad to workers whose lives have been savaged by Neo-Liberalism and Globalist economics. Just remember, they laughed at Hitler until economic despair drove German voters to elect him Chanceller of Germany.

It’s not rocket science! You need someone who is 1. Electable, 2. Honest, and has 3. Policies, concrete policies, not vague high-sounding nostrums–especially policies grounded in economic reform–that resonate with a majority of Americans.

I propose that Vice President Al Gore, at this juncture in time, is the ideal candidate, not only to beat Donald Trump or his MAGA Klown Clone, but to restore and reunite the Democratic Party nationally and rebuild the old coalition that made it so popular.

Here’s why Gore is the Man:

Electability.

Contrary to what you may have read in the Corporatist Media, Al Gore WON THE 2000 ELECTION. It was a close race, granted, but if the Repugnicans had not controlled the governorship and attorney general’s office of Florida, the fact of Gore’s victory would never have been in dispute. Vote tampering, ballot box manipulation and voter suppression is nothing new in Florida for either party, but the GOP pulled out all the stops in 2000. But what topped it all off was the Republican-packed Supreme Court, in what has been called a “Judicial Coup D’Etat,” illicitly prevented a full and accurate count of all the ballots from being carried out. In consequence the Republicans prematurely declared their boy Bubba as President and a spineless Democratic Party establishment rolled over and played dead.

Al Gore has won four elections in the House of Representatives; he has twice won elections as a Democratic Senator in a Southern state; he has twice helped win the White House as Vice President, and in 2000 he won the Presidential election against a far more popular, far more likeable–albeit equally illiterate–candidate than Trump. AL GORE HAS PROVEN HIS ELECTABILITY.

Honesty.

To some, Al Gore’s honesty is a drawback.

In the 21st century, where the Clinton Crime Family’s egregious graft, influence peddling, fraud and embezzlement are ignored and they are lionized by high society and the Corporate media alike, not having created a $100 Billion faux Charity as an international slush fund, as the Clinton’s did, is regarded as a failing by the DNC and the Party elite.

However, a large number of average Americans feel quite differently on the matter. To the best of our knowledge, there are no Wikileaks skeletons hanging in “dull” Al Gore’s closet.

At the very least, Gore’s squeaky-clean record gives the GOP very little ammunition to smear him with. It is true, the Washington Press Corps decried how dull Al was as Vice-President. The Corporate media looked the other way at Slick Willie’s many notorious sexual escapades and only with reluctance reported his dubious financial dealings due to relentless Republican hearings.

However, the general electorate, sick of Washington graft and nepotism, may regard honesty and integrity as a refreshing change from what has become the standard operating procedure in DC.

Winning Policies.

Universal Healthcare:  While Al Gore is less well known for his advocacy of Universal Healthcare than Bernie Sanders, the fact is that he has been an advocate for it  since 2002. In 2017, Gore came out strongly for the Medicare for All version of Universal Healthcare, in stark contrast to Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer.

National Healthcare, in one form or another, has been advocated by Progressives since at least 1912. It is long overdue. As a long-standing party member, Gore has sufficient clout to strongarm the Old Guard in Congress that an outsider like Bernie Sanders would never be able to do.

As Presidential candidate, there is no question Gore will do more than any other Democratic insider could possibly do to get universal healthcare passed into law.

Climate Change: If there is any policy defines Al Gore’s political career it is his long-standing concern for the Climate and the urgent need to reverse decades of regressive and destructive governmental policies regarding the environment.

The Green Party in 2016 and Sanders candidacy in 2020 made a “Green New Deal” the centerpiece not only of their climate policy but of jobs creation as well. For decades before them, Al Gore has been sounding the alarm about global warming and the need to wean away from fossil fuel, and has long advocated for full employment with jobs that pay a living wage

Al Gore has been involved with environmental issues since 1976, when as a freshman Congressman he led the first Congressional hearings on climate change and global warming.  In 1990, as Senator, Gore presided over a three-day conference with legislators from over 42 countries in which he tried to hammer out a Global Marshall Plan, whereby developed countries would help less developed countries grow economically while still protecting the environment. In the late 90’s, as VP, he urged Congress (unsuccessfully) to approve the Kyoto Protocol, to limit greenhouse gas emissions.

After being cheated out of the Presidency, Gore became even more involved in combating climate change and won a Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts on behalf of environmentalism. Most notably, Gore won the Palm d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival for his film An Inconvenient Truth, as well as an Oscar for the same documentary. He also produced a sequel to it in 2017. Al Gore’s dedication to protecting the environment is ongoing and deeply felt, and clearly not based on either political convenience or infatuation with a passing fashions in the media.

Gore’s efforts to sound the alarm about the dangers of climate change have frequently caused to him being ridiculed by a well-funded right wing media and he has often met with strong opposition from politicians of both parties aligned with Big Oil and the fossil fuel industry. Decades of obstructionism and climate denial have only worsened the crisis and increased the urgency to take strong action.

Al Gore is uniquely qualified to lead the charge for a Green New Deal. He has not just paid lip service to this pressing cause, he has been a leader in it for virtually his entire career. If elected, there’s no doubt about him making it a centerpiece of his Presidency.

For his foresight on this issue, Al Gore stands head and shoulders above any other potential candidate for President of any party. On this issue alone, Al Gore is more qualified than any other person to lead the country.

Free University Education and Erasing Student Debt. While Al Gore has not made education reform as much of a priority as the environment, since leaving office he has been involved with academia on a number of occasions. He has served as a visiting professor at Middle Tennessee State University, Columbia University, Fisk University, and UCLA. as well as making numerous campus appearances promoting environmental causes, such as the “24 Hours of Reality” at Vanderbilt in 2019, which not only raised awareness about the climate but also climate change’s adverse effects on human health. While Gore has not focused on these specific issues, certainly his ongoing involvement with higher education and frequent meetings with college students indicate that Gore would eagerly champion these and other education related causes with little urging.

Raising the Minimum Wage, Equal Pay, and other Labor and Domestic Issues. Since Gore has been out of day-to-day politics for a number of years, his precise stand on these issues is not known. We can say that in his last run for the Presidency, Gore was in favor of raising the minimum wage, was for equal pay for women, and was strongly in favor of repealing anti-union laws, strengthening worker safety rules and new laws for hazardous industries. Gore was also for welfare reform to help people out of poverty and uniquely proposed a three to one government subsidy for low income workers to put into a Social Security savings fund similar to a 401K, but which people could also withdraw from to buy a home or for college education. To combat homelessness he also proposed funding more new low income homes, subsidizing existing housing, and he set as a goal to raise median family income in America by at least a third over ten years.

Of course, since 2000, instead of all these domestic improvements and raising America’s standard of living, under President Bush what we got was a Dubya-cross: we got the Iraq War (which Gore opposed); The Patriot Act legalizing domestic spying and lying, as well as the militarization of police; tax breaks for billionaires; torture of prisoners; the mass murder of civilians and other war crimes. Dubya presided over a series of Oil Wars to benefit the Bush family’s Oil Oligarchy cronies; and above all he enabled the unrestrained theft of America’s wealth and health by Banksters and the One Percent. Trump is the natural result of two decades of Globalism, Trickle Down impoverishment and the New Imperialism.

NOT ME, US!

All Berniecrats out there, especially those still grieving over his campaign’s premature demise, need to realize that Sanders’ candidacy is dead and can’t be revived.

Unspoken, but a definite subtext of Party opposition to his run for the nomination, was the fact that Sanders was an outsider. He may have voted with the Democrats on many issues, but he was never a member of the Party and even among reformers was regarded with disdain. This was made apparent when, as soon as Sanders bent the knee, many party stalwarts began to parrot many of Sanders proposals as if they were their own.

However, Sanders’ policies, his concrete program of economic reform, are not dead. They continue to resonate with a vast majority of the American public, not just among his hard core supporters. Those policies are more popular, more relevant, than they were just six months ago, and more needed than at any time in history.

Adopting all or part of Sanders’ Progressive agenda is a sine qua non for any Democratic candidate serious about winning in November. Packaging Neo-Liberal turd in a glossy new package, as it did in 2016, won’t even get the party the plurality Hillary Clinton got in that election.

Things are so much worse now, and not just because the Insane Clown has bungled things so badly. Forty years of trickle down economics has brought ruination on the nation and on the world at large. Time for something completely different.

Bernie Sanders did not invent the policies he was espousing; most of them have been proposed by earlier Democratic Party leaders and earlier Progressives on and off for a century or more. Sanders labelling these long-standing goals as “Democratic Socialism” was counter-productive, regardless of the veracity of the term or not. So, to make it more palatable to older voters and old-school party stalwarts, as well as those people brain-washed by fifty years of red-baiting bushwah, re-labelling it to something like “The Green New Deal,” or “New Deal for the 21st Century” is only sound political strategy. It also truthfully reflects what it’s really about.

In truth, State Socialism is nothing new in America: the Republicans first introduced it in the United States during the Civil War. But like the classic Abbott & Costello skit about “Meatball!,” where Costello freaked at the mere mention of something he actually liked, many working class Americans have been taught to regard Socialism as Costello did meatballs. The Democrats will have a much better chance of this reform agenda proving palatable to the Heartland by giving it a different label. Remember, great swaths of honest, earnest, working class folk have been brainwashed to vote against their own economic self-interests by the Oligarchy for generations.

At least half of the Democratic rank and file are already on board with these policies and certainly the overwhelming majority of independent voters are too, and Independents now stand at around 40% of the electorate. These are the voters the Democratic Party needs to win over before November.

As far as those imaginary “Centrist” Democrats the DNC keeps pandering to, if they were willing to vote for Dementia Joe simply to get rid of Trump, they’d vote for JoJo the Dog Faced Boy or anything in between. You don’t need to pander to them, unless your goal is to lose the election.

If the Dems want to win back working class America, they will need to at least make a good faith effort to restore this bedrock of economic stability. It is way past due to do make fundamental and lasting reforms.

One thing is certain: Globalism and the NeoLiberal/NeoCon “Trickle Down” policies of the last forty years have proven disastrous for all but the very few. Their  failure is about to bring the entire country to the verge of widespread revolution because of it. Those very few who prospered continue to fund these failed economic policies out of pure greed, but America–the World–is fast approaching a crisis point where we can no longer indulge in such failed theories.

The alternative will soon be widespread violence in the streets on a level that this Nation has never seen. As President Kennedy observed, “those who make peaceful revolution impossible, will make violent revolution inevitable.”

Pseudo-Progressives and Corporatist Neo-Liberals successfully stone-walled the Sanders candidacy. But the economic forces that are driving Sanders economic reforms cannot be undone so easily as his candidacy was.

Unless the Democratic Party wishes to go the way of the Federalists and the Whigs, it has only a few months to come up with a viable alternative to Biden’s hollow “Nothing Will Change” and “Anyone But Trump” campaign strategies that it has painted itself into a corner with.

As the title of this little diatribe indicates, the Democratic Party has had the perfect candidate all along: Al Gore.

For the ideologues of the left and right, undoubtedly Vice President Al Gore does not pass the purity test. He comes from a Southern Democrat political dynasty and in the past billed himself as a Southern Liberal. To many in the North being a Southern Liberal is worse than being a Northern Conservative. In many minds, Gore is also tied to the “Double Bubba” candidacy, which in turn is synonymous to Bill Clinton and Neo-Liberalism’s betrayal of the American worker.

But Al Gore was never part of the Clinton inner circle, much less part of its Neo-Liberal economic agenda. Gore was not connected to the Arkansas Mafia that helped get Clinton elected and cashed in after his election, nor was he in any way associated with Clinton’s sex scandals.

As we noted above, not only has Al Gore run for the Presidency, he WON that election. We needn’t recite the sad history of how his victory in the 2000 election was stolen from him. But it is worth noting that his electoral victory would have been far stronger, and not have hinge on Florida’s crooked vote counting,  had Gore not rejected the assistance of Bill Clinton on the campaign trail. Honesty has its costs.

While at the time his motives for rejecting the Clinton machine’s help was not explained, in retrospect it is clear that Gore was aware of Clinton’s crooked dealings and, wanting to wash his hands of dirty politics, didn’t wish to be beholden to Clinton, lest Slick Willie’s corrosive brand of politics taint his own presidency.

For those who consider Al Gore not Progressive enough, consider this: even if there still had been a 9-11 event on his watch, would a Vietnam Vet (not a draft dodger like Clinton and Trump, or playboy evader like Dubya) have listened to the Chicken Hawk Neo-Cons? Would President Gore have allowed himself to be talked into invading Iraq, causing hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths, not to mention torturing prisoners and other war crimes? Would President Gore have enshrined police-state legislation and the Nazification of police departments as enshrined in the Patriot Act, and all those similarly unconstitutional innovations we saw under the Cheney/Bush regime and then whitewashed and added to by the Obama-nation?

Even for those party loyalists who don’t want to reform their highly profitable system of graft, there is this to consider: do establishment Democrats really prefer the near certainty of a crushing defeat in November led by Dementia Joe?

Another crushing defeat may well convince your wealthy donors and lobbyists that you are no longer a good investment and their money will certainly flow into the already engorged bank accounts of the Republican Party. Creepy Joe’s candidacy is a lose-lose proposition no matter how you look at it.

Whatever else one may say about Al Gore, none can deny that he has been sounding the alarm about climate change for more than fifteen years. If anyone can sell the Green New Deal with credibility and conviction, it certainly is Al Gore.

If you think that the Coronavirus Crisis is a big deal, just wait a few years, when massive crop failures not only spawn worldwide famine but massive pandemics also ensue, as they always do on the heels of famines. Only this time the pandemics will be on a scale not seen since the Dark Ages. The question is no longer if, but when this will happen. And If you think Dementia Joe will do anything more than the Insane Clown would, you are truly delusional.

Al Gore may not be the Left’s ideal candidate, but neither does he have a record of forty years of trying to destroy Social Security and Medicare, as Bankers Friend Joe Biden does.

DNC hacks and other Democrat Corporatists have been hinting that Hillary Clinton would be the perfect choice to replace Rapist Joe should he choose to step down from his Divine Right throne—as if 2016 didn’t already give them the answer to that selection. Whomever Creepy Joe would appoint Vice President on his ticket would not automatically be the replacement candidate, since they have not won any primaries nor even come in second. In any case, does anyone seriously think an insipid hack the likes of Amy Klobuchar would have any better chance than Hillary? Perhaps to Dementia Joe, but no one else.

In one sense, the Coronavirus Pandemic has been a blessing for Joe Biden, allowing him to hide in his basement and not be out in public putting his advanced mental deterioration on daily display. But even with his wife reading the teleprompter for him, Biden’s weakness is apparent to all. Dementia Joe Biden will lose and take the entire party with him—and as it is, many on the left as well as the right will cheer when that happens.

Dementia Joe needs to be replaced and the Democratic Party has until the Convention to do it in as painless a manner as possible. Biden’s reason for stepping down doesn’t need to be due to Tara Reade or the next rape allegation that is bound to surface, much less his long history of creepy sexual behavior towards little girls. Similarly, the Dems can short circuit both Ukrainegate and Chinagate as potential political scandals related to Biden’s egregious Nepotism. Biden’s mental deterioration is sufficiently advanced that it would be widely accepted without question—and with a sigh of relief by all democrats.

Unless the Democrats immediately put up a credible replacement, someone with broad appeal to reformers as well as old guard party loyalists, they will still be doomed in November. Simply nominating an honest candidate who is mentally sound is not enough: the Green New Deal, Medicare For All, and the other economic reforms are doable programs that can and will motivate a broad swath of the electorate.

An honest candidate, coupled with a solid platform of concrete reforms, will give American voters motivation to venture out on election day and effect a change.

Bernie’s candidacy is dead; Joe Biden is brain dead; all the other corporatist shills presented in the primaries are worse than useless.

Al Gore, and Al Gore alone, is the man that fits that bill.

CARL SCHURZ, AMERICAN SOCIALIST, ON “TRUE AMERICANISM”

Revolutionary, Soldier, Diplomat, Senator and 13th Secretary of the Interior, Carl Schurz was a dedicated reformer and patriotic American Socialist.

Carl Schurz was an American politician, soldier and diplomat, and a dedicated Socialist. He was born in Liblar, Germany and after attending a gymnasium, in 1847 he began pursuing a doctorate in History at the University of Bonn, with a view to ultimately teaching in a university. His studies were interrupted by the German Revolution of 1848. Like many idealistic students, 19 year old Carl became imbued with revolutionary fervor and Schurz became a leader of a student movement that promoted Social Democracy, being strongly influenced by Gottfried Kinkel. He joined the revolutionary socialists, fighting in several battles against the Prussian Army which had vowed to stamp out all political reform.

When the revolutionary army was finally crushed at Rastatt in 1849, Schurz escaped to Switzerland, aware that the Prussians intended to murder all their prisoners. He returned to Germany on a secretly to free his revolutionary mentor Kinkel from prison. The political climate in Europe after the suppression of the rebellions being hostile to all political reform, Schurz migrated to America, marrying and becoming involved in American politics, where he found like-minded folk such as himself in the new-born Republican Party.

Moving to the upper Mid-West, he reunited with a number of former “Forty-Eighters” who had settled there, many of whom were becoming involved in growing reform movements there such as Abolitionism and Women’s Suffrage. Schurz joined the Republican Party and actively campaigned for Lincoln in the election of 1860.

When the Civil War broke out, Schurz, with his previous military experience, volunteered for the Union Army and was active in motivating fellow German immigrants to also join the army. Eventually he rose to the rank of general, fighting in a number of battles. Lincoln  sent him back to Europe as Ambassador and after the war Schurz served in various capacities in government and politics.

Throughout the late nineteenth century, the Republican Party remained a haven for Socialists and other Progressive thinkers, of whom Schurz was one of the most prominent. He often aroused the ire of political opponents for his attempts at political reform, his championing of Native American rights, and his opposition to Imperialism. This speech, made later in life, reflects his views on true patriotism–versus the boastful and bellicose “jingoism” that was becoming popular.  Many of the sentiments expressed by Schurz in this speech are–unfortunately–as relevant today as when he spoke them.

“The True Americanism”

— Carl Schurz, “The True Americanism“, address delivered in New York City at a meeting of the Chamber of Commerce of the State of New York, January 2, 1896.

What is the rule of honor to be observed by a power so strongly and so advantageously situated as this Republic is?

Of course I do not expect it meekly to pocket real insults if they should be offered to it. But, surely, it should not, as our boyish jingoes wish it to do, swagger about among the nations of the world, with a chip on its shoulder, shaking its fist in everybody’s face.

Of course, it should not tamely submit to real encroachments upon its rights. But, surely, it should not, whenever its own notions of right or interest collide with the notions of others, fall into hysterics and act as if it really feared for its own security and its very independence.

As a true gentleman, conscious of his strength and his dignity, it should be slow to take offense. In its dealings with other nations it should have scrupulous regard, not only for their rights, but also for their self-respect.

With all its latent resources for war, it should be the great peace power of the world. It should never forget what a proud privilege and what an inestimable blessing it is not to need and not to have big armies or navies to support.

It should seek to influence mankind, not by heavy artillery, but by good example and wise counsel. It should see its highest glory, not in battles won, but in wars prevented.

It should be so invariably just and fair, so trustworthy, so good tempered, so conciliatory, that other nations would instinctively turn to it as their mutual friend and the natural adjuster of their differences, thus making it the greatest preserver of the world’s peace.

This is not a mere idealistic fancy. It is the natural position of this great republic among the nations of the earth.

It is its noblest vocation, and it will be a glorious day for the United States when the good sense and the self-respect of the American people see in this their “manifest destiny.”

It all rests upon peace. Is not this peace with honor? There has, of late, been much loose speech about “Americanism.” Is not this good Americanism?

It is surely today the Americanism of those who love their country most. And I fervently hope that it will be and ever remain the Americanism of our children and our children’s children.

 

You Might Be A Socialist If…

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With the defeat of Bernie Sanders’ FDR-Style “Democratic Socialist” candidacy and the modest reforms he proposed complete, all the affluent  Silicon Valley sycophants, Latté Liberals, NeoLib Corporatists and others posing as Progressives or Liberals can now breathe a collective sigh of relief in their wine caves now.

We can all relax, confident in the knowledge the right-wing “Centrist” candidacy of Uncle Joe has safely been propped up by the DNC’s creative vote counting in all the Super Tuesday States and with the remaining primaries halted only halfway through.

And what does it matter if #DementiaJoe can’t tell his wife from his sister, occasionally gropes other men’s wives, gets really creepy around pre-pubescent girls and occasionally rapes naïve young female staffers, why “Joe Biden is Joe Biden,” as Nancy Pelosi cryptically reassures us.

“Nothing Will Change” is the one campaign promise we can count on with MBNAJoe, as he surrounds himself with only the fattest of the fat-cat lobbyists and banksters in his proposed dream team cabinet. Yes, rest assured that not one iota of genuine reform will ever see the light of day should Big Bank Biden be elected come November. Of course, no matter how crooked, how demented, how much of a sexual predator he is, who ya gonna vote for–the Insane Clown President? The Duopoly again presents us with two evils and asks us to choose the lesser. There IS a better way and they know it.

However, even should The Not Trump candidate not win in November, hey, that’s OK too. ‘Cause Chuck, “I’m Helpless to Stop Them,” Schumer and Nancy, “Let Them Eat Jeni’s,” Pelosi will continue to have cover for giving the Republicans everything they want, all the while railing against The Insane Clown’s boorish behavior and his retarded rants. Meanwhile, both vote for bloated giveaways to billionaires, approve trillions for foreign wars, and write blank checks for fatally flawed war machines.

It would be good at this juncture, however, for us to do a brief self-assessment from the safety of our collective wine-cave quarantine, just to make sure no genuine progressive ideas have somehow insinuated themselves into our psyche. Of course, identity politics and virtue signaling are fine, providing those vague affirmations of moral superiority never result in real change. 

With all this in mind, following is a checklist of Progressive-Socialist ideas that have somehow managed to seep into the Corporatist bubble that has been carefully constructed around the American public over the past half century.

Much of it was originally introduced by those vile class traitors, the Roosevelts, both Teddy and Franklin Delano. Thankfully, Neo-Liberals, working on behalf of their Billionaires benefactors, have managed to expunge most of these dread reformers’ legacy since the 1990’s, even as they pretended to be carrying forward their ideals.

Review this list, and if you don’t say nay to most of it, there is a very real danger that you might be a closet Socialist without even realizing it!

So here goes, YOU MIGHT BE A SOCIALIST IF:

1)   You believe that healthcare is a basic human right or, worse still, that Medicare For All is somehow a viable alternative to the For-Profit Healthcare Industry, whose main goal is not to provide affordable health insurance but to maximize profitability for shareholders. 

No, our venerable employer-based healthcare was good enough for grandpa, (who died at the age of 55) and so it damn well better be good for your grand-children, whether they have a corporate job or not. And recession, what recession? Never happen! Cough once if you agree, cough twice or more and collapse in a high fever if you disagree.

2)   You might be a Socialist if you believe all people should be paid a living wage. This is one of those insidious ideas, like Unions, that really should have been stamped out by now.

For years, our Good Friends in the GOP—the Grand Ole Plutocrats—tried to sneak in a “sub-minimum” wage as a way of getting people used to starving, after working their butts off in dangerous working conditions, or be glad to work overtime just to be able to pay the rent.

The way the Clinton and Dubya Administrations handled the demand for higher wages (ya know, that good ole law of supply & demand) was to CHEAT. Without changing any laws, both presidential NEO’s chose not to enforce immigration rules and opened the floodgates to illegal immigration.

In truth, immigration had already been boosted manifold by the United States’ own awful “free” trade deals, which hurt workers in poor countries as much as it hurt workers in the US. That, combined with our never-ending regime change coups and wars, had made life a living hell in Third World countries.

In the late 90’s and into the Oh-Oh! Decade, where a skilled Union tradesman might have gotten thirty dollars an hour, unskilled  illegal immigrants, desperate for work, were glad to do the same labor for thirty dollars a day, although not as well. And if the roof of a million-dollar home suddenly came off in high winds because a construction crew of unskilled illegals hadn’t nailed it properly to the beams, well, after all, you get what you pay for—and the developer made his profit, didn’t he?

Of course, once Dubya left office, suddenly illegal immigrants became demonized and refugees became convenient scape-goats for the, by now, obvious de-industrialization of America. Jobs that paid high wages became fewer and farther between, regime-change wars remain a boom industry (or I should say KA-BOOM!) and Globalist George Soros’ billions quietly subsidizes worldwide floods of desperate immigrants, enabling them to travel thousands of miles in search of work.

And what did Mr. NICE GUY Barack Obama do? Why, more awful trade deals and more regime change wars, even as he upped deportation’s for those who were fleeing devastation, death, disease and famine. Having turned a blind eye for years, the Republicans did a 180 and now immigrants became the villains, not multi-national corporations. How better to keep people in line than by setting one group of underpaid workers against another, even more destitute group?

Trump may gloat over putting children behind bars, but let’s not forget that MR. CLEAN, Barack Obama, was the one who first came up with that idea and despite the Insane Clown’s bluster and BS, Obama still reigns supreme as “Deporter in Chief” of Illegals.

Now Wall Street and Silicon Valley have had another great idea: why have employees at all? The growth of the “independent contractor” model, which Silicon Valley loves so much, frees Capitalists from any worries about being forced to pay $15 an hour, or $12 and hour or even the beloved good ol’ $7.25. Hell, in some cities, Uber drivers are lucky to net $3.00 a hour in real income! But that’s the American Way, ain’t it? And if you don’t think so, you MUST be a Socialist!

Unions, a living wage, affordable housing: all dread Socialist traps for the unwary! Begone, I say! Let them eat Jeni’s ice-cream!—providing you can get past the security guards of Nancy Pelosi’s gated community, or the electrified wire and the attack dogs.

3)   You might be a Socialist, for sure, if believe we should have Free College Education.

For those too young to remember the bad old days, this Dread Red idea had actually been a reality in the USA once upon a time, but fortunately, since the beloved advent of St. Ronald Reagan and Trickle Down Everything, state universities and colleges have been charging ever-increasing tuition, assuring the huddled masses remain in blissful ignorance—and low paying jobs. Then came the for-profit colleges that provided expensive educations in fields for which there was absolutely no demand. And, thanks in large part to Creepy Uncle Joe, the DINO who is currently being beatified as the patron saint of child molesters, the NEO’s made it impossible for anyone burdened by huge student debts to declare bankruptcy, even if you’d been scammed by these for-profit shyster schools.

Oh, did I forget to mention that free public college education was originally put into law in 1862 by a political party founded by Socialists? Today we call it the Republican Party. Like the Democrats, the Republicans have changed a bit since they were founded.

4)   In a similar vein, mainly the jugular, you might be a Socialist if think the US could and should forgive all student debt.

Since the Federal Government subsidizes almost all student loans, this is one of the more do-able Socialist programs. Unfortunately, the mantra used against this and other Socialist reforms of “how ya gonna pay for it” which had served as a bulwark against any and all humane proposals to make life in America better, was made inoperable by the Congress’ transfer this spring of TRILLIONS of dollars to the big banks and other big businesses with no strings attached. Not that Congress has ever worried about funding bloated defense budgets and regime change Oil Wars.

5)   You might be a Socialist if you believe the government should subsidize rail transportation, both locally and nationally.

In Europe, citizens and tourists can ride comfortably and cheaply from city to city by train, while mass transit within cities have long been a given of modern civilized society. Not only do all modern nations have national rail systems, fully funded by their governments, the United States of America actually paid to rebuild western Europe’s railroads after World War II, which was only fair, since we bombed the crap out of them during the war. Still, what we could afford to do for Europe was NEVER done for our own passenger rails, which have withered on the vine since the 1940’s. Thank GM and the Laissez Fairies for that.

The argument against this Socialistic subsidized rail system one commonly hears is that if passenger trains can’t pay their own way, the government has no business subsidizing them. Which leads us to:

6)   You might be a Socialist if you believe the government should provide a free transportation systems in the form of Federal, state and local highways, not to mention more pedestrian Socialist conveyances such as sidewalks.

Depending on where you live, you might know roads with names like Gallatin Pike, Hillsboro Pike, Murfreesboro Pike, and the like. Or, say, do you favor Tollhouse Cookies? All these are vestiges of a time when the main roads in the nation were for-profit ventures, organized by private stock companies to enrich their investors, and tollhouses were where the fares to travel those roads were collected.

Before that, the only way to get long distances was on The King’s Highway, which was actually owned by the king (or queen) and mainly reserved for sovereign lords to transport armies from one place to another to bash disloyal subjects. Only as a secondary benefit were ordinary folk allowed to travel those roads. So, no, the government building and maintaining roads, highways and interstate freeways was not always a given and are definitely socialistic in their very conception.

7)   You also might be a Socialist if you believe the government should provide fire and police protection, water and sewer services and assorted other public utilities most Americans now take for granted.

Recently Joe Rogan had a dufus of a politician on his show who, when confronted with the fact that such things are inherently Socialistic in nature, tried to counter that no, they were a “public service.” When Joe pointed out that, as a public service, they were paid for by the government, Congressman Dufus countered that no, they were a “public good.” Rogan kept pressing him on his obtuse illogic, but, as the saying goes, you can’t fix stupid.

In the early Republic there was no organized police or fire services in the cities and as far as drinking water went, people dug their own individual wells, often within feet of public latrines. Then they wondered why Typhus, Diphtheria, Yellow Fever, Smallpox and a host of other deadly diseases broke out so often! The glaring defects of Laissez Faire policies in running modern cities soon became apparent to many people.

In the late nineteenth century, “Sewer Socialists” and other reformers increasingly replaced corrupt graft-ridden city governments staffed by cronyism and not only instituted honest governments run with an apolitical civil service, but promoted government-funded (that is Socialistic) public water and sewer systems as a way to combat the deadly pandemics that beset the burgeoning American urban landscape.

There were volunteer fire-fighting companies in early American cities, to be sure, but these were often for-profit entities, being paid by insurance companies to only put out fires on homes that were insured, and as often as not the volunteer companies were more interested in fighting each other than fighting the fires . These volunteer groups, like the early street gangs, also served as political organizations. Boss Tweed got his start as Captain of one such volunteer fire-fighting company: Americus Engine Company Number 6 (“The Big Six”). The idea that professional full-time firemen, dedicated to fighting fires no matter who owned the property, may seem common sense today, but it took a number of devastating city fires in nineteenth century American for this Socialistic institution to take hold.

Likewise, in the early Republic, there were no organized police forces. In New England, town Constables existed, but they were unarmed and generally more concerned with public drunkenness or making sure citizens attended church than fighting crime. The true first police force wasn’t formed until 1838, with other cities following suit soon after. These early police forces were less than stellar institutions, with graft and corruption endemic, and in any case their main job was to protect the private property of the wealthy elite, not  to keep the peace or protect citizens from harm.

In the rural South, the situation was worse, since the county sheriff’s departments had their origins in the ante-bellum “slave patrols” whose main job was to keep slaves from running away or rebelling. Members of slave patrols were often far more violent and sadistic than the slave owners themselves, being drawn from poor whites, who as a class tended to be resentful of having to compete for employment with an unpaid Black workforce.

In post-war era, Progressives and Socialists, including leaders like Teddy Roosevelt, pushed to “clean up” the police and have them serve the general good, not just the needs of the affluent. 

8)   You might be a Socialist If you have ever recited the Pledge of Allegiance.

OK, this is a trick question. But ever since the NEO’s have brought back the McCarthy-Era smear tactic of  “guilt by association” so that anyone, left or right, can be tarred as a Russian “bot” who dares to point out the simple truth that the Russians didn’t “hack” the DNC emails in 2016, we can safely include anyone who recites a pledge written by a Socialist to be also tainted with Socialism. 

The Pledge of Allegiance in its present form was created by a Christian Socialist.   Francis Bellamy, was a devout Christian, but also a dedicated Socialist and also quite patriotic. He wanted to inculcate a greater sense of loyalty, especially among children and recent immigrants.

Bellamy had considered using the slogan of the French Revolution, Liberté, égalité, fraternité as a basis for the national pledge, but he thought that fraternity was “too remote of realization.” Likewise with equality; while he was for equality in principle, he was aware that, at that point, neither women nor blacks were treated equally in America, so that it would be a “dubious” word in a national pledge. Finally, Bellamy concluded, “Liberty and justice were surely basic, were undebatable, and were all that any one Nation could handle. If they were exercised for all. They involved the spirit of equality and fraternity.”

The Pledge was first published on Sept. 8, 1892 and quickly became universally accepted, although it would still be decades before it was made official. Although Bellamy was a Protestant minister as well as a dedicated Socialist, the pledge as he composed it did not include the phrase “under God.” That wasn’t added until the 1950’s during the “Red Scare” to weed out lefties, ‘cause, don’t ya know, all them Socialists is Godless.

in fact, a previous pledge had included God in it, but Bellamy, although a devout Christian, deliberately excluded it because he wanted the pledge to be as inclusive as possible. Well, that’s a “godless socialist” for you!

9)   You might be a Socialist if you have ever sung “America the Beautiful.”

Yup, here again, we have a beloved patriotic song—which many would prefer as the National Anthem to the racist and bellicose Star Spangled Banner—that was penned by a Socialist. In fact, the author was Christian Socialist and, many say, a Lesbian. We should also add that not only was the author a Socialist, but an ardent foe of American imperialism as well, plus she was an activist for immigrants, minorities, the poor, unions, women’s rights, and education among other causes. A dangerous foe of Capitalism if ever there was one!

The author of this almost-the-national-anthem paean to American patriotism was Katherine Lee Bates—no relation to actress Kathy Bates of “Misery” fame. Katherine was inspired to write a song that virtually every schoolchild knows and which is sung in many churches as a hymn, during a train trip to Colorado to teach a summer college class.

Bates, unusual for her day, was a highly educated professional woman, a Professor of English at Wellesley College, and her trip was something of a busman’s holiday. A number of the sights on her trip inspired her, including a visit to the Columbian Exposition in Chicago, the so-called “White City,” and traveling farther west she viewed the vast wheat fields of Kansas growing and blowing in the wind. Above all she was inspired viewing the “fruited plains” from high atop Pikes Peak, where the words of the poem began to flood into her mind. All that natural beauty is apparent in the opening lyrics of “America the Beautiful.” But a closer reading of the stanzas also reveals her distinctly Socialist and Progressive ideas about how our nation should be.

There are no “rockets red glare” in “America the Beautiful.” Rather, we hear of “amber waves of grain” and “the enameled plain,” as well as “thine alabaster cities gleam” (that White City she saw in Chicago). But Ms. Bates also asked God to bless the country with moral reform, end injustice and to avoid Imperialism: “God mend thine every flaw/Confirm thy soul in self-control/Thy liberty in law,” that those Alabaster cities should not only gleam, but “gleam/Undimmed by human tears!” Bates’ poem also calls out the greed of the Robber Barons Capitalists and asks that God shed His grace, “Till selfish gain no longer stain/The banner of the free!” Nor did the Professor shy from summoning the image of fraternity as well as equality: “And crown thy good with brotherhood/From sea to shining sea.”

For Christian Socialist Bates, America being great was not enough; observing that “countries such as England failed because, while they may have been ‘great’ they had not been “good.” She asserted that, “unless we are willing to crown our greatness with goodness, and our bounty with brotherhood, our beloved America may go the same way.” The Socialist’s poem was first published in the religious journal, The Congregationalist, in 1895, but it wasn’t married to its current melody until 1910. It’s been a patriotic staple ever since.

10)   Finally, you might be a Socialist if you believe either of these statements: 

1. “The value of any commodity, therefore, to the person who possesses it, and who means not to use or consume it himself, but to exchange it for other commodities, is equal to the quantity of labor which it enables him to purchase or command. Labor, therefore, is the real measure of the exchangeable value of all commodities.” Or, that: “Labor alone, therefore, never varying in its own value, is alone the ultimate and real standard by which the value of all commodities can at all times and places be estimated and compared. It is their real price; money is their nominal price.” (Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations)
2. “… value can, does and should increase in relation to the amount of labor which has been expended in the improvement of commodities” (St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae)
3. “all goods, considered economically, are only the product of labor and cost nothing except labor” (Karl Marx, Das Kapital)

 

If this list has issues or institutions you find congenial, DON’T PANIC! There is still time to purge yourself of the double-speak that infects your psyche. While I don’t advocate taking a Chloroquine enema or swallowing UV light-bulbs, you might consider a double shot of Grey Goose as antiseptic, coupled with a massive dose of Bloomberg News, followed by an eye-wash of fresh copies of Forbes and the Wall Street Journal. Then read back issues of WAPO or the NYT and let their “unnamed high placed sources” in the Intelligence Community (probably the reporter’s local bartender) reassure you that’s it’s all a plot by the Ruskies to rig the elections, or the economy, or the alt right/alt left media or whatever con they currently have running. Because the Military Industrial Complex NEVER lies, right?

And before you return to watching Rachel Maddow, or Loveable Ellen, or pseudo-Liberal Joy, don’t forget to go to your 25k freezer and consume several pints of Jeni’s artisanal ice cream to clear the palate of any lingering bad taste that these Socialist ideas may leave in your mouth.

 

 

BERNIE SANDERS HAS A PLAN. JOE BIDEN HAS DEMENTIA.

It is, perhaps, an exercise in futility to put forth a pragmatic plan that can begin to begin to deal with our present crisis.

The media is owned by the 1% and continually colludes with the Military Industrial Complex to hide the truth about the state of the nation and the world from the American people. the Democratic Party is so corrupt it would rather artificially prop up a sexual predator, whose nepotism and corruption are well documented and who continually lies about his history of regressive, pro-corporate legislation. Nevertheless, Bernie Sanders put forward a six-point plan to deal with the crisis. NOW.

I am no Bernie Bro; in fact, there are no “Bernie Bros”—it is a false narrative invented to discredit the men and women of all ages and races who have responded to Sanders’ call for radical reform of the American economy.

Nor is Sanders himself above criticism by his followers. Bernie Sanders  refuses to tell the truth about his “Good Friend” Joe Biden—aka Creepy Joe, Dementia Joe, Nepotism Joe, HSBC Joe, etc.—or call out the egregious hacking of the primaries that have been proved by the hard facts of raw exit poll data.

There is evidence to show that as much as 13% of the primary results were electronically transferred from Sanders to his crooked “Good Friend” and this doesn’t take into account various other DNC dirty tricks, such as closing or moving polling stations without warning, putting defective machines in others, magically unregistering progressive democrats from the rolls on primary day, etc., etc.

The Democratic Primary system hasn’t changed much since the days of Boss Tweed–except it’s become even more dishonest.

But the stark truth is that all the alternatives to Sanders available right now are much, much worse. Forty years of trickle down economics, combined with a medical crisis that political hacks of both parties have known was coming for years, have put our Nation–and the World–on the brink of the Abyss.

Bernie Sanders, like the mythic Greek hero Sisyphus, keeps rolling the ponderous stone of reform up the mountain of corruption that is modern American politics. It may seem absurd to even attempt to right the wrongs of forty years of the “NEO” con-job foisted on us by the pseudo-right and the pseudo-left, so far down the wrong path have they led us. Yet Sanders still endures. And make no mistake, Sanders has made tactical and strategic mistakes, have trusted in bad advice from persons who were, at best, fifth columnists, and has put personal loyalties to former colleagues above his duty to the people of his movement and the people of this nation, all with tragic consequences.

Right now we, as a nation, face total system collapse not only due to the present pandemic and ensuing economic meltdown that will surely follow, but even due even to a Corporatist political establishment that continues to play the same old political con game with am American public rapidly running out of options or patience.

In the face of this immanent crisis, as Cheeto Man lies, bullies and blusters his way through daily press briefings, and Creepy Uncle Joe displays his advanced dementia and incapacity to lead in video after pathetic video interviews from home, Bernie Sanders despite being cheated, shunned and disrespected by the Corporate Media and the party that used to be for the people, has put forth a six-point program that is pragmatic and achievable within months of it being implemented.

Though we know it may well be futile, we owe it to our neighbors, our fellow citizens and the nation to show them a way forward, for certainly the Corporate Media and the oligarchs that pay them to lie to us will continue to ignore Sanders and his solutions to the mess they created.

Here, is what Bernie Sanders has proposed, to deal with the crisis:

1. Addressing the Employment Crisis and Providing Immediate Financial Relief
There is little doubt in my mind that we are facing an economic crisis that could be even worse than the Great Depression. The St. Louis Federal Reserve has projected that 47 million more people may become unemployed by the end of June, with unemployment reaching 32 percent. In my view, we must make sure that every worker in America continues to receive their paycheck during this crisis and we must provide immediate financial relief to everyone in this country.
An important precedent for that approach was taken in the recent stimulus package in which grants were provided to the airlines for the sole purpose of maintaining the paychecks and benefits of some 2 million workers in that industry through September 30. We must expand that program to cover every worker in America and we must make it retroactive to the beginning of this crisis. This is not a radical idea. Other countries, such as the UK, Norway, Denmark, France, and others have all come up with similar approaches to sustain their economy and prevent workers from losing their jobs.
Our primary goal during this crisis must be to prevent the disintegration of the American economy. It will be much easier and less expensive to prevent the collapse of the economy than trying to put it back together after it collapses.
To do this, we must also begin monthly payments of $2,000 for every man, woman, and child in our country, and guarantee paid family leave throughout this crisis so that people who are sick do not face the choice of infecting others or losing their job.

2. We Must Guarantee Health Care to All
Let’s be clear: we were facing a catastrophic health care crisis before the pandemic, and now that crisis has become much, much worse. Already, 87 million people are uninsured or underinsured. Layoffs will mean tens of millions of people more will lose their current insurance — which will result in countless deaths and bankruptcies. Already in the last two weeks, an estimated 3.5 million people have lost their employer-sponsored insurance.
And as the pandemic grows, we are seeing more and more reports of people who have delayed treatment due to concerns about cost. In this pandemic, uninsurance will lead to deaths and more COVID-19 transmissions.
Therefore, during this crisis, Medicare must be empowered to pay all of the deductibles, co-payments and out-of-pocket healthcare expenses for the uninsured and the underinsured. No one in America who is sick, regardless of immigration status, should be afraid to seek the medical treatment they need during this national pandemic. Let me be clear: I am not proposing that we pass Medicare for All in this moment. That fight continues into the future. But, for the moment, we must act boldly to make sure everyone can get the health care they need in the coming months.

3. Use the Defense Production Act to Produce the Equipment and Testing We Need
Unbelievably, in the United States right now, doctors and nurses are unnecessarily putting their lives on the line treating people suffering from the coronavirus because they lack personal protective equipment like masks, gloves, and surgical gowns. The CDC has directed health professionals to use homemade gear like bandanas or scarves and some workers at the VA are being told to re-use one surgical mask for a week at a time. HHS estimated that our country needs 3.5 billion masks in response to this crisis.
President Trump has utilized the Defense Production Act thousands of times for the military and for enforcement of his immigration policies, yet he has resisted using its power to save lives during the pandemic. That is unacceptable. We must immediately and forcefully use the Defense Production Act to direct the production of all of the personal protective equipment, ventilators and other medical supplies needed.
We must also utilize this power to produce antibody tests so we can begin figuring out who has already contracted the virus and has developed some immunity to COVID-19.
In addition, OSHA must adopt a strong emergency standard to protect health care workers, patients, and the public during this crisis. We must crack down aggressively on price gougers and hoarders, and use any means necessary to secure supplies.

4. Make Sure No One Goes Hungry
Even before this crisis hit, one in every seven kids in America was going hungry and nearly 5.5 million seniors in our country struggled with hunger. Already in this crisis we see lines at food banks and growing concern that our most vulnerable communities and those recently unemployed may struggle to feed their families.
As communities face record levels of food insecurity, we must increase SNAP benefits, expand the WIC program for pregnant mothers, infants, and children, double funding for the Emergency Food Program (TEFAP) to ensure food banks have food to distribute, and expand Meals on Wheels and School Meals programs. When necessary, we must also develop new approaches to deliver food to vulnerable populations — including door-to-door drop offs.

5. Provide Emergency Aid to States and Cities
Even as state and local employees like police officers, firefighters and paramedics work on the front lines of this pandemic, states and cities that pay their salaries are facing enormous budgetary pressures.
Congress must provide $600 billion in direct fiscal aid to states and cities to ensure they have the personnel and funding necessary to respond to this crisis. In addition, the Federal Reserve must establish programs to provide direct fiscal support and budgetary relief to states and municipalities.

6. Suspend Monthly Payments
Even before this crisis, half of the people in our country were living paycheck to paycheck. In America today, over 18 million families are paying more than 50 percent of their income on housing. Now, with growing unemployment, families are facing financial ruin if we do not act quickly and boldly.
That’s why we must suspend monthly expenses like rent, mortgages, medical debt and consumer debt collection for 4 months. We must cancel all student loan payments for the duration of this crisis, and place an immediate moratorium on evictions, foreclosures, and utility shut-offs.

“These are the times that try men’s souls; the summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of his country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph.”           ——Thomas Paine, early American Socialist

Add your name to say you support these ideas to support the working people of this country during the coronavirus crisis.

A POLITICAL GLOSSARY

Having delved deeply into the life and times of Ambrose Gwinnet Bierce–“Almighty God Bierce” in his humbler manifestation–the imbecility of modern politics and its complete lack of moral compass strikes me as perfectly suited to the cynical temperament of that great American lexicographer and curmudgeon. 

It is therefore entirely apropos to go to Ambrose Bierce’s voluminous writings to glean some pity pearls of venom to lay on the modern body politic. In Medieval Wales satiric poetry was forbidden, for it was considered a form of sorcery and skilled bards were reputed to be able to cause boils to appear on the skin of persons who were the subject of their satire. While Bierce was never brought up on charges of witchcraft, his satire was nevertheless prodigious and he was particularly skilled with his poison darts when the subjects of his ire were pompous politicians or incompetent generals. In consideration of the upcoming Presidential election year therefore, I present a short lexicographical essay by the Master as edited by myself on his behalf, as he is somewhat indisposed, somewhere in Mexico at the moment.

A POLITICAL GLOSSARY

Ambrose Bierce

ABDICATION, n. An act whereby a sovereign attests his sense of the high temperature of the throne.

ADMINISTRATION, n. An ingenious abstraction in politics, designed to receive the kicks and cuffs due to the premier or president. A man of straw, proof against bad-egging and dead-catting.

ALDERMAN, n. An ingenious criminal who covers his secret thieving with a pretence of open marauding.

ALLEGIANCE, n.
This thing Allegiance, as I suppose,
Is a ring fitted in the subject’s nose,
Whereby that organ is kept rightly pointed
To smell the sweetness of the Lord’s anointed.

ALLIANCE, n. In international politics, the union of two thieves who have their hands so deeply inserted in each other’s pockets that they cannot separately plunder a third.

ARISTOCRACY, n. Government by the best men. (In this sense the word is obsolete; so is that kind of government.) Fellows that wear downy hats and clean shirts—guilty of education and suspected of bank accounts.

CAPITAL, n. The seat of misgovernment. That which provides the fire, the pot, the dinner, the table and the knife and fork for the anarchist; the part of the repast that himself supplies is the disgrace before meat. Capital Punishment, a penalty regarding the justice and expediency of which many worthy persons—including all the assassins—entertain grave misgivings.

CONGRESS, n. A body of men who meet to repeal laws.

CONSERVATIVE, n. A statesman who is enamored of existing evils, as distinguished from the Liberal, who wishes to replace them with others.

CONSUL, n. In American politics, a person who having failed to secure an office from the people is given one by the Administration on condition that he leave the country

CORPORATION, n. An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility

CORSAIR, n. A politician of the seas.

CYNIC, n. A blackguard whose faulty vision sees things as they are, not as they ought to be. Hence the custom among the Scythians of plucking out a cynic’s eyes to improve his vision.

DUTY, n. That which sternly impels us in the direction of profit, along the line of desire

ELECTOR, n. One who enjoys the sacred privilege of voting for the man of another man’s choice.

EMANCIPATION, n. A bondman’s change from the tyranny of another to the despotism of himself

EXECUTIVE, n. An officer of the Government, whose duty it is to enforce the wishes of the legislative power until such time as the judicial department shall be pleased to pronounce them invalid and of no effect.

EXILE, n. One who serves his country by residing abroad, yet is not an ambassador. An English sea-captain being asked if he had read “The Exile of Erin,” replied: “No, sir, but I should like to anchor on it.” Years afterwards, when he had been hanged as a pirate after a career of unparalleled atrocities, the following memorandum was found in the ship’s log that he had kept at the time of his reply:
Aug. 3d, 1842. Made a joke on the ex-Isle of Erin. Coldly
received. War with the whole world!

FUTURE, n. That period of time in which our affairs prosper, our friends are true and our happiness is assured.

GRAPESHOT, n. An argument which the future is preparing in answer to the demands of American Socialism.

HONORABLE, adj. Afflicted with an impediment in one’s reach. In legislative bodies it is customary to mention all members as honorable; as, “the honorable gentleman is a scurvy cur.”

HOUSELESS, adj. Having paid all taxes on household goods.

IMMIGRANT, n. An unenlightened person who thinks one country better than another.

INFLUENCE, n. In politics, a visionary quo given in exchange for a substantial quid

JUSTICE, n. A commodity which is a more or less adulterated condition the State sells to the citizen as a reward for his allegiance, taxes and personal service.

KING, n. A male person commonly known in America as a “crowned head,” although he never wears a crown and has usually no head to speak of.

LAWYER, n. One skilled in circumvention of the law.

LIAR, n. A lawyer with a roving commission.

LITIGANT, n. A person about to give up his skin for the hope of retaining his bones.

LITIGATION, n. A machine which you go into as a pig and come out of as a sausage.

MAJESTY, n. The state and title of a king. Regarded with a just contempt by the Most Eminent Grand Masters, Grand Chancellors, Great Incohonees and Imperial Potentates of the ancient and honorable orders of republican America.

MAMMON, n. The god of the world’s leading religion. The chief temple is in the holy city of New York.

MINISTER, n. An agent of a higher power with a lower responsibility. In diplomacy and officer sent into a foreign country as the visible embodiment of his sovereign’s hostility. His principal qualification is a degree of plausible inveracity next below that of an ambassador.

MUGWUMP, n. In politics one afflicted with self-respect and addicted to the vice of independence. A term of contempt

PANDEMONIUM, n. Literally, the Place of All the Demons. Most of them have escaped into politics and finance, and the place is now used as a lecture hall by the Audible Reformer. When disturbed by his voice the ancient echoes clamor appropriate responses most gratifying to his pride of distinction.

PATRIOT, n. One to whom the interests of a part seem superior to those of the whole. The dupe of statesmen and the tool of conquerors.

PATRIOTISM, n. Combustible rubbish read to the torch of any one ambitious to illuminate his name.

In Dr. Johnson’s famous dictionary patriotism is defined as the last resort of a scoundrel. With all due respect to an enlightened but inferior lexicographer I beg to submit that it is the first.

PEACE, n. In international affairs, a period of cheating between two periods of fighting.

POLITICS, n. A strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles. The conduct of public affairs for private advantage.

POLITICIAN, n. An eel in the fundamental mud upon which the superstructure of organized society is reared. When he wriggles he mistakes the agitation of his tail for the trembling of the edifice. As compared with the statesman, he suffers the disadvantage of being alive.

PRESIDENCY, n. The greased pig in the field game of American politics.

PRESIDENT, n. The leading figure in a small group of men of whom— and of whom only—it is positively known that immense numbers of their countrymen did not want any of them for President.

QUEEN, n. A woman by whom the realm is ruled when there is a king, and through whom it is ruled when there is not.

 

RABBLE, n. In a republic, those who exercise a supreme authority tempered by fraudulent elections. The rabble is like the sacred Simurgh, of Arabian fable—omnipotent on condition that it do nothing. (The word is Aristocratese, and has no exact equivalent in our tongue, but means, as nearly as may be, “soaring swine.”)

REAR, n. In American military matters, that exposed part of the army that is nearest to Congress

RECOUNT, n. In American politics, another throw of the dice, accorded to the player against whom they are loaded.

REPUBLIC, n. A nation in which, the thing governing and the thing governed being the same, there is only a permitted authority to enforce an optional obedience. In a republic, the foundation of public order is the ever lessening habit of submission inherited from ancestors who, being truly governed, submitted because they had to. There are as many kinds of republics as there are graduations between the despotism whence they came and the anarchy whither they lead.

REVOLUTION, n. In politics, an abrupt change in the form of misgovernment. Specifically, in American history, the substitution of the rule of an Administration for that of a Ministry, whereby the welfare and happiness of the people were advanced a full half-inch. Revolutions are usually accompanied by a considerable effusion of blood, but are accounted worth it—this appraisement being made by beneficiaries whose blood had not the mischance to be shed. The French revolution is of incalculable value to the Socialist of to-day; when he pulls the string actuating its bones its gestures are inexpressibly terrifying to gory tyrants suspected of fomenting law and order.

ROUNDHEAD, n. A member of the Parliamentarian party in the English civil war—so called from his habit of wearing his hair short, whereas his enemy, the Cavalier, wore his long. There were other points of difference between them, but the fashion in hair was the fundamental cause of quarrel. The Cavaliers were royalists because the king, an indolent fellow, found it more convenient to let his hair grow than to wash his neck. This the Roundheads, who were mostly barbers and soap-boilers, deemed an injury to trade, and the royal neck was therefore the object of their particular indignation. Descendants of the belligerents now wear their hair all alike, but the fires of animosity enkindled in that ancient strife smoulder to this day beneath the snows of British civility.

RUSSIAN, n. A person with a Caucasian body and a Mongolian soul. A Tartar Emetic

SCEPTER, n. A king’s staff of office, the sign and symbol of his authority. It was originally a mace with which the sovereign admonished his jester and vetoed ministerial measures by breaking the bones of their proponents.

SENATE, n. A body of elderly gentlemen charged with high duties and misdemeanors

TRUST, n. In American politics, a large corporation composed in greater part of thrifty working men, widows of small means, orphans in the care of guardians and the courts, with many similar malefactors and public enemies.

ULTIMATUM, n. In diplomacy, a last demand before resorting to concessions.
Having received an ultimatum from Austria, the Turkish Ministry met to consider it.

“O servant of the Prophet,” said the Sheik of the Imperial Chibouk to the Mamoosh of the Invincible Army, “how many unconquerable soldiers have we in arms?”

“Upholder of the Faith,” that dignitary replied after examining his memoranda, “they are in numbers as the leaves of the forest!”

“And how many impenetrable battleships strike terror to the hearts of all Christian swine?” he asked the Imaum of the Ever Victorious Navy.

“Uncle of the Full Moon,” was the reply, “deign to know that they are as the waves of the ocean, the sands of the desert and the stars of Heaven!”

For eight hours the broad brow of the Sheik of the Imperial Chibouk was corrugated with evidences of deep thought: he was calculating the chances of war. Then, “Sons of angels,” he said, “the die is cast! I shall suggest to the Ulema of the Imperial Ear that he advise inaction. In the name of Allah, the council is adjourned.”

UN-AMERICAN, adj. Wicked, intolerable, heathenish

VOTE, n. The instrument and symbol of a freeman’s power to make a fool of himself and a wreck of his country.

WALL STREET, n. A symbol for sin for every devil to rebuke. That Wall Street is a den of thieves is a belief that serves every unsuccessful thief in place of a hope in Heaven.

WAR, n. A by-product of the arts of peace. The most menacing political condition is a period of international amity. The student of history who has not been taught to expect the unexpected may justly boast himself inaccessible to the light. “In time of peace prepare for war” has a deeper meaning than is commonly discerned; it means, not merely that all things earthly have an end—that change is the one immutable and eternal law—but that the soil of peace is thickly sown with the seeds of war and singularly suited to their germination and growth.

WASHINGTONIAN, n. A Potomac tribesman who exchanged the privilege of governing himself for the advantage of good government.

 

 

For more about the life and times of Ambrose Bierce, read Ambrose Bierce and the Period of Honorable Strife, an in depth look at the American author’s military service during the Civil War.

AMERICA 1620: Early American Socialism

“Neither was there any among them that lacked: for as many as were possessors of lands or houses sold them, and brought the prices of the things that were sold”         Acts 4:34

“The First Thanksgiving” by Jean Ferris, a somewhat romanticized portrayal of the communal feast celebrated by the Pilgrims and Native Americans. Both groups brought food to the feast according to the abilities; all shared the fruits of their labors equally. The Pilgrims practiced a simple form of communism as a matter of sheer survival; the Native Americans had practiced a form of tribal communism for thousands of years. In each case, it was an economic system which proved successful.

Recently, the one-time “Newspaper of Record,” which in recent years has become the unofficial shill for the Military Industrial Complex, issued a supplement intended, both to assume the mantle of moral superiority, as well as to rewrite American history from the perspective of Identity Politics. The Sunday Times Magazine, thus dedicated an entire issue to virtue signaling, entitled “America 1619,” with its stated goal, “to reframe American history by considering what it would mean to regard 1619 as our nation’s birth year,” the year the first Blacks arrived at Jamestown.

     To be sure, all those awful things the NYT describes that the southern Planter Class—the Slaveocracy—did, as well the northern Industrialists role in it, is quite true and bears remembering. But it was hardly all “whites” who foisted this on African Americans, but a small but powerful economic elite. However, if we are going to choose an arbitrary starting point for American history instead of the actual beginning point, all the while continuing to ignore the many regime-change wars and Oil Oligopoly sponsored mass murders which The Grey Lady has enabled in the last twenty years, I humbly propose that we choose instead the following year, 1620. This is the year when the first successful American Socialist commune was established along the coast of New England: the Plymouth Colony.

While the history of American Socialism is not exactly a deep secret, most Americans, even academics, have a very poor understanding of what it was.

In whatever manner or form one may regard Socialism, be it as a social, political or economic movement, the chances are good that you are wrong in your assumptions.

At best, most voters know by now that Bernie Sanders is far from being the first Socialist to appear on the American scene; but how far back does Socialist, much less Communist, economic behavior go?

—–Think it was begun by members of the American Communist Party in the 1930’s? They were outspoken, militant and slavishly devoted to Joe Stalin, and most people during the Cold War associated them with disloyalty and treason; but no, they were hardly the first or only ones to advocate some kind of socialist solution.

—–How About the Socialists active during Gilded Age and the early 1900’s? Well, there were a bunch of folks active in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century; they were instrumental in the early labor movement and as mayors of cities and congressmen they had a spotless reputation for honesty and good government; but no they were not the first. But when Woodrow Wilson, pseudo-Progressive and friend of the second Klu Klux Klan lied us into World War, the Socialist opposed him and their political rights were brutally and unconstitutionally suppressed, Guess again.

—–How About Socialism during the Civil War Era, were they first? You’re getting warmer. There were a whole bunch of people who espoused Socialism before and during the War and were active in Abolitionism as well. To a man they volunteered to fight for the Union and helped rescue our nation from disunion, disloyalty and slavery; but no, they weren’t the first, not by a longshot.

—–How About the Early decades of the Nineteenth Century, were there Socialists around during the Early Republic? Yes, there were and in addition to those espousing political ideas, many organized communes were established as bold social and intellectual experiments, reminiscent of the Hippie communes of the 1960’s. But no, sorry no brass ring; they weren’t the first.

OK. If you’re still with me, let me clue you in: not only is Socialism as American the Thanksgiving Turkey, its origins in America go back to the very first English settlements–assuming, of course, we don’t include Native Americans, who lived successfully in communities devoid of private property in North America, and practiced direct democracy going back to at least the Mesolithic Era.

It was, in fact, the earliest settlers of New England who first practiced Socialism, folk whom you may know as the Pilgrims. Curiously, most Socialist historians seem to ignore this important milestone (or Plymouth Rock, if you will), leaving it to any number of right wing Conservative Christian pundits to totally misrepresent what actually happened.

Actually, there were two groups of early settlers in New England, the ones we call Pilgrims (although they didn’t use that name) and the Puritans; the Plymouth Bay Colony and the Massachusetts Bay Colony respectively. According to my family’s genealogists, we can claim ancestors in both groups, although the lineage is a bit convoluted, (who knows, perhaps they said hullo! to Elizabeth Warren’s putative predecessors).  Regardless, these early settlers are usually held up as models of the Protestant Work Ethic and cited as positive role models for the Capitalist Way, which is a popular lie you were, no doubt, fed in grade school.

Protestants they were, and pretty austere ones at that, but they also did something modern Bible thumpers rarely seem to do; they read all the passages of the Bible, not just the ones that were convenient or suited some media evangelist’s get rich quick gospel.
If you get deeply into both the Old and New Testaments, you will find quite a bit there that does not conform too well with modern notions of Capitalism and big business. The Bible contains things like, oh, a progressive income tax (OT), or, say, passages where it tells you to give all your possessions to the poor and follow Jesus (NT); stuff like that.

Eventually, of course, Mammon won out over Jehovah among the Puritans and they became prosperous smugglers, merchants, manufacturers, whalers, transporters of slaves and assorted other activities that made one filthy rich, but were not particularly good for the soul.

If you travel through New England, even today, you will still find at least one vestige of the region’s Socialist roots. Just about every little town or village has a “commons” and, of course, the Boston Commons is well known to residents of Beantown. Originally, every community’s land was held in “common” and used according to the town Elders’ dictates.

Across the state line in New York, the center of town is usually called the village “green” (as in “Tavern on the Green”), short for Bowling Green. Of course, the Dutch in New Amsterdam were fond of their bowling and would play Nine-Pins in the town square whenever weather allowed, while quaffing the product of a nearby inn or tavern. In Puritan New England, such merriment was strictly forbidden; hard work and prayer substituted for singing, dancing and gaming, although alcohol was still allowed in moderation.

A piece of the rock–Plymouth Rock that is, after several centuries of souvenir hunters have whittled it down.

When the first Pilgrims first arrived in 1620, they did not have an easy time of it. They did not arrive off the New England until November of that year, far too late for growing any crops and that first winter nearly half of the 102 colonists died.

Of more interest for our concern was the fact that, at first, everything that the colony produced was pooled together and held in the “common storehouse” at one end of the Plymouth settlement. This system was in force for the first couple of years, partly out of necessity: the colony was facing starvation for first few seasons, and more immigrants arrived by boat from England, but the extra mouths to feed were not accompanied by enough supplies to provide for them. The Plymouth colonists at one point were reduced to stealing parched corn from a local Indian tribe to avoid starving (they later made restitution, with apologies).

Local Native American leader Samoset welcomes the arriving Pilgrims.  Living communally much like the Native Americans, the Pilgrims tried to deal fairly with the natives, in contrast to “rugged individualism” of the Jamestown colonists, who were so busy hunting for gold they couldn’t be bothered to plant crops and at one point turned to cannibalism–a foreshadowing of the later Capitalist system, which depended on King Cotton and the Slaveocracy.

Local Native American leader Samoset welcomes the arriving Pilgrims. Living communally much like the Native Americans, the Pilgrims tried to deal fairly with the natives, in contrast to the “rugged individualism” of the Jamestown colonists, who were so busy hunting for gold they couldn’t be bothered to plant crops and at one point even turned to cannibalism.

This communal system did not sit well with some of the more able bodied males in the new colony: they had migrated in hopes of making a quick fortune in the New World in Virginia and perhaps join in on a pirate raid or two against Spanish treasure galleons, not sail along a frigid shore for religious reasons (these worldly folk were called “the Strangers” by the more godly) and had no desire to provide for other men’s wives and children when quick and easy riches were to be had with little work.

Eventually, in 1623, Governor Bradford and the English financiers of the enterprise abolished the system of the common storehouse and land was divided among settlers to farm as “families.” However, these families included all single unattached males, who greatly outnumbered the females, so the familial units, so-called, were not actually blood relations. The colony as a whole, moreover, still retained communal title to the land, even though it was farmed separately, and all the tools were still held collectively and doled out “each according to his need.” Meadowlands for the grazing of livestock were still managed in common, plus fishing, hunting and fowling rights were held in common as well, so the private property and individual ownership remained absent from Plymouth for some years.

“The Puritan” by Augustus Saint-Gaudens: forthright, devout and, in the early days, Socialist.

As a City on a Hill
The story of the early days of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, (begun by the Puritans, a different religious sect than the Pilgrims), was not dissimilar to that of the Plymouth colony, save that they were even more austere and, well, more puritanical.

The Puritan colony was planned from the start as a theocracy. In theory, not man but God ruled the Puritan communities. This Utopian society was intended to be an example to the world–as Governor Winthrop put it, “as a city upon a hill”–and it was to be organized along socialist–albeit Biblical socialist–lines. While initially centrally planned and organized by the Puritan leaders in England, as the colony grew each new unit, or township, was set up as an individual community, semi-autonomous, and socialistic in its economic organization.

Each new township established by the Puritan elders had about six to ten square miles of land, effectively some 30 to 40 thousand acres, and each resident of a township had access to the common pasturage. There was no particular political ideology at work here, however; it was simply the best way to organize a Godly community and, in many cases, they were simply continuing the traditional open field system they’d known in the Old Country. The main difference was that in the New World they were working the fields in common for their own benefit, not for some oppressive lord or king. During the English Civil War, in the 1740’s and later, however, there were egalitarian Socialist groups, such as the Levelers, even more radical than the mainstream Puritans, who advocated an extreme communistic ideology.

As time went on, the virtues of the early Puritans gave way to un-elightened self-interest and greed. Regulating the fair and proper use of the common lands of the New England communities became more and more bothersome for beleaguered town elders constantly having to discipline those few who took more than their fair share.
In the end, the fact that most of the land in New England was ill suited to intensive farming probably had more influence on the breakdown of the Puritan’s Agrarian Socialism than the economic superiority of “Capitalism” (which didn’t yet exist) or any other economic theory.

Many frugal Yankees found that building ships and transporting goods across the open seas was far more rewarding than the backbreaking work of being a Jabez Stone-style farmer in a rock filled field. Moreover, it became a firm tenet of Puritan belief that material wealth was Jehovah’s way of rewarding the virtuous–and by the end of the seventeenth century, Yankee merchants had become very virtuous indeed.

But while greed ultimately triumphed over virtue in the Puritan heart, it should never be forgotten that the edifice of their later prosperity was firmly rooted upon the solid economic foundations which Puritan Socialism had lain. Moreover, during the early Republic, the Congregationalists—successors to both the Pilgrims and the Puritans–were one of a very few religious sects who fought hard against the evils of the Slavocracy, sometimes with their lives.

When taking in all the facts that modern schoolbooks leave out, the “City on a Hill” that is America, owes far more to early American Socialism in all its forms than most historians and popular pundits are still willing to concede.

The Pine tree was the symbol of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. In the end Money triumphed over virtue in Puritan New England.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      

Don’t Deny Black Confederate Valor

While there were never large numbers of Black Confederate combatants, they did exist and there were many more who served willingly in a non-combatant role. To deny this fact is simply to ignore the evidence in order to create a false historical narrative. This in no way justifies slavery OR secession and it raises the conundrum of why these African Americans did serve in the Rebel armies–something which no mainstream historian wishes to tackle, since it would cost them their academic tenure.

Civil War Chat

(May 10, 2019) Today’s article is obtained from a blog post by C. W. Rodenwho is a South Carolina member of the Sons of Confederate Veterans. His analysis of Black Confederates is the most objective and authoritative discussion I have yet seen. While he estimates that the number who actually fought probably did not exceed five thousand he provides convincing evidence that a great many more served willingly as non-combatants. Most importantly, he cogently demonstrates that the white Confederate veterans themselves honored the black participants after the war.

One example involves the Southern Cross of Honor medal created by the United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC) in 1899. The medal was a high honor that could only be bestowed by the UDC to Confederate veterans. Even today a Virginia statute makes it a crime for anyone to wear one who has not earned the privilege. As documented by the…

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AMERICA NEEDS A MULTI-PARTY DEMOCRACY

TO ANYONE WITH EARS TO HEAR AND EYES TO SEE, THE 2016 PSEUDO-ELECTION DEMONSTRATED THAT FOR OUR REPUBLIC TO REMAIN FREE AND A DEMOCRACY, WE NEED MORE THAN TWO PARTIES TO CHOOSE FROM IN ELECTIONS.

 

In the 2016 Democratic Party primaries, the level of vote-rigging, voter fraud and general hacking of machines and votes reached an unprecedented level that would have put even Boss Tweed to shame. It was not the Russians, as the CIA and the Corporate Media would have you believe who did it–it was the corrupt Neo-Liberals of the DNC who were guilty.

There were numerous online bloggers and a few remaining honest journalists present to document that fact, if one were willing to hunt these sources down online. Of course, if your source of news is the Corporate Media–the so-called Mainstream Media–you would have heard or seen none of this primary fraud. Thanks to Bill Clinton’s “reform” of the laws governing media ownership in the ’90’s, the United States went from about fifty different news and media sources down to five. The information highway, so-called, is controlled by a handful of Corporate conglomerates, who in turn have the fingers in the military-industrial government pie.

Case in point: the Washington Post, currently being lionized in the movies for releasing the Pentagon Papers in the 70’s, (which exposed the lies, collusion and fraud which the Pentagon and CIA engaged in to gin up the Vietnam War), was bought by Jeff Bezos with money obtained from a lucrative contract with the CIA. The WaPo then proceeded to shill for Hill and when Bernie Sanders became a serious threat to her coronation, began churning out attack pieces on Sanders, propaganda disguised as news, at a furious pace. In one day alone they vomited 18 attacks. Hillary, Wall Street’s choice for Democratic Party candidate, had the money, the power and the media behind her, as well as the CIA pulling propaganda strings behind the scenes. Yet still she lost to what is generally agreed as the worst POTUS in US history (sorry Millard Fillmore & James Buchanan you were bad, just not this awful). With the WaPo in the back pocket of the CIA, don’t look for it to ever do an expose such as they did with Watergate and the Pentagon Papers in the ’70’s.

As the DNC and Podesta emails proved beyond a reasonable doubt, not only was the Democratic primary rigged in advance, the Clinton machine–with Mainstream Media collusion–actually promoted the Trump candidacy in the GOP primaries. They called it “the Pied Piper” strategy: engineer the worst possible candidate into the role of GOP presidential candidate and the voters of the United States will be forced to vote for the “lesser of two evils.”

Pervs of a feather fly the Lolita Express together to Jeff Epstein’s Under-Age Fantasy Island. The one with the hidden video cameras to use to blackmail the rich and famous later.

Despite many non Clinton dems urging for HER to go out and campaign in the contested states, Hillary and her acolytes were so sure she would win by a landslide they not only did not actively campaign in the field where it was most needed, they went out of their way to insult and degrade the Sanders wing of the party, which arguably was more than 50% of Democratic Party stalwarts. Well, as we know too well, the American electorate, given the choice of two evils, chose what they perceived was the lesser evil–Trump!

 

Two sexual predators compare notes and gloats.

I would like to gloat over the monstrous hubris of the Clintonites, but unfortunately the entire country–the entire world–is having to suffer the consequences. The Clintons, with their billions of graft and “donations” extorted from third world strongmen and dictators (including Vladimir Putin), can sit back and roll in their ill gotten money; most Americans however will suffer from the dangerous incompetency, the meanness and arrogance of Bill Clinton’s golfing buddy and fellow sex perv, Donald, “grab pussy” Trump.

There are many causes of how the American political system became so dysfunctional and in future articles I will delve into some aspects of the decline of Democracy and death spiral our Republic seems to be in. But for the present, let me just state the obvious: had the American public been presented with viable alternatives to the Hillary-Trump axis–or Wall Street Blue vs Wall Street Red as one pundit framed it–we would certainly be far better off for the next four to eight years.

Third parties have arisen, but generally they have never attempted to build a party infrastructure county by county that can deliver votes in congressional elections. Once every four years for a charismatic candidate is not enough to turn the Republic’s death spiral around.

What America needs to restore democracy is not three, but at least four and perhaps even six legitimate parties, each of which would appeal to a broad swath of the American electorate. Most issues today are framed in a left vs right duopoly, as if there were no middle ground between either camp.

How many right to life advocates would argue that, if a woman’s life were in immanent danger due to a pregnancy, that she should be made to die rather than to save her life? Conversely, it is estimated that as many as 80% of all gun owners are for reasonable restrictions to keep guns out of the mentally ill, career criminals and terrorists. What they are not for is to have their constitutional rights taken away.

Most Americans, no matter what their declared party affiliation is, often take a variety of stands on a variety of issues: yet the two oligarchic parties restrict our choice to Column A and Column B. Bernie Sanders, a self avowed Socialist, was able to work with Ron Paul, a Libertarian, to force the Federal Reserve to do an audit of its holdings, revealing millions of dollars unaccounted for. That is an example of how independent politicians with different political philosophies can work together for the common good.

politics makes for strange bedfellow, but at least they’re not underage.

It may be hard to fathom today, but the Republican Party started as a party whose rank and file were composed of Socialists of one ilk or another.

The Republicans of the 1850’s and 1860’s not only abolished slavery, but redistributed millions of acres of land to the landless, set up a system of FREE higher education, had government intervene in building a transcontinental transportation system (a socialistic program if ever there was one) and many other reforms we now take for granted and don’t even recognize their socialistic origins.

 

 

The Democratic Party used to be the party of the working man and woman and under FDR and the New Deal, farmers, laborers and common folk in all parts of the country looked to the party of Jefferson and Jackson to defend their rights and expand democracy.

Since the mid-eighties, however, that party has been taken over by plutocrats disguised as liberals–the so-called Neo-Liberals–who are definitely NOT Liberals but who are basically Wall Street operatives in sheep’s clothing. More and more, Neo-Liberals’ main goal is to maintain control of the party–and the flood of money coming in from lobbyists and special interests–and less and less with actually winning elections. After all, their logic goes, who are union workers and minorities going to vote for–the Republicans?  With at least 40% of the electorate now identifying themselves as independent, clearly the answer is: NONE OF THE ABOVE

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We desperately need more than these two old and corrupt parties to choose from.  If comic book heroes can dwell in a multiverse, so too can the American voter. The electorate can handle more than two choices for not just the Presidency, but the House and Senate and, especially, for state and local offices. The Duopoly–that cabal of rich plutocrats who pretend to be for democracy but who really wish to keep American voters in the thrall of Wall Street–don’t want to give the voters a real choice at the polls. To be sure, those Americans who remain brainwashed by the Left-Right delusion, may think they are voting “Conservative” or “Liberal” when they go to the polls, but how often do they find that what they thought they were voting for never comes to pass?

THE WORLD THAT HAS BEEN PULLED OVER YOUR EYES TO BLIND YOU FROM THE TRUTH

Wall Street Red and Wall Street Blue will continue to function for a long time to come, but many of the people now part of either party are not happy with their masters and if they were presented with viable alternatives, gladly bolt the failed duopoly that serves neither their needs nor their values.

In future articles I will go into detail as to what these parties should look like. Bear in mind, I do not necessarily subscribe to the values of such parties; but there are large numbers of Americans who would and whose voices would be best heard outside of the stifling political strait-jacket that now exists of Democratic v. Republican tickets. In a true democracy we do not always get what we want; but we are given clear and honest alternatives to choose from.

DO YOU HEAR THE PEOPLE SING?

In the past, America has had other parties than the Democrats and the Republicans and in some cases we had a genuine multi-party Presidential election. The one time we had a four-way Presidential election, the choice of the voting was arguably one of the country’s greatest Presidents: Abraham Lincoln.  We need more politicians like him today–and a multi-party system is the way to do it.

 

 

 In 1912, Theodore Roosevelt left the corruption of the Republican Party to form the Progressive or “Bull Moose” Party, the best expressions of the Progressive political movement in the 20th century. He beat the GOP candidate in the popular vote, but lost to Woodrow Wilson, a virulently racist Democrat, who pretended to be Progressive but was anything but, and who later dragged America into a war to defend Wall Street & London Bankers’ financial investments.

Ambrose Bierce on Immigration

Ambrose Bierce.  Cynic, observer of the human condition, disappointed idealist.

 

“Think what a better world it would be if we all-the whole world-had cookies and milk about three o’clock every afternoon and then lay down with our blankies for a nap. Or if all governments had as a basic policy to always put things back where they found them and to clean up their own mess.  And it is still true, no matter how old you are-when you go out into the world, it is best to hold hands and stick together.” Robert Fulghum

It seems like some issues in American politics never go away, they just change their context.  One such issue is the question of Immigration Policy.

This election year we hear the Republican candidate spewing racial stereotypes and absurd solutions to the problem of illegal immigration.  While members of his own party have condemned his statements, the truth is that for the last eight years their own stand on illegal immigrants has not been that much different than his.  Before the Great Recession of 2008, moreover, they positively welcomed “undocumented” immigrants because, they said, “we can’t get Americans to do hard work” and similar excuses for allowing cheap unskilled labor to undercut the American worker.

Conversely, the Democratic Party has embraced illegal immigrants–supposedly–even as President Obama has deported more illegal immigrants than his predecessors combined.  To be sure, some humane immigration policies have been temporarily put in place by the present POTUS, but this is like putting a topical anesthetic on the skin to cure an internal tumor.

The truth is, many American blue collar workers have seen their good paying jobs disappear over the years, only to be replaced by low wage, no benefit jobs.  Americans are not lazy, nor they unwilling to do hard work; they simply want to be paid a decent wage, something the multinational corporations who run our government and who are writing the international “Free” Trade deals that continue to ship whole factories overseas don’t want.  What most working class Americans don’t understand is that each wave of illegal immigrants flooding into our country are the byproducts of these phony trade deals, which are neither free, nor even much about trade.  NAFTA spurred a flood of illegal Mexican workers, displaced by the deal, who came north seeking work; CAFTA did the same thing to Central Americans, also desperate for work at any price.  Nothing spurs ethnic animosity like the perception that these new arrivals are here to take your already substandard paying job.

The moral philosopher and humorist, Robert Fulghum, once observed that “All I Really Need to Know, I learned in Kindergarten.”  Consider, if you will, the game of Musical Chairs; every time the music stops, everyone scrambles for a chair and someone ALWAYS LOSES. Then another chair is taken away and the music starts again;  again and again, the music stops and another chair is taken away, until only one person wins.  Do you all remember how many fights and arguments broke out over that game?  I do.  Our “rigged” economy is very much like that game of Musical Chairs.  So, yes, a lot of working class Americans are bigoted against immigrants, legal or illegal, because they blame them for the loss of their once prosperous and affluent lifestyle, without ever stopping to think who it is that is really manipulating the music and the chairs.

What has all this got to do with Ambrose Bierce?  Actually, precious little; but in the late nineteenth century many “real Americans” were also concerned about immigration and worried that the furriners were going to ruin our country. Having delved into Ambrose Gwinnett Bierce’s life and works for over six years as I worked on my current book, whenever I see a current political issue heatedly debated, it naturally reminds me of something Bierce said or did.  For you edification, therefore, I present Bierce’s take on immigration:

“America has issued a general invitation. Whether that may have been judicious or not is not for them to say who have accepted it. If we keep open house, we do not need, neither will we tolerate, an intimation from a guest that the company is not sufficiently select.” In other words, only Native Americans have a right to complain about more recent immigrants.”  AGB

Things have changed greatly from the day Bierce uttered his observation, but I would aver that his words still contain much wisdom.

 

Ambrose Bierce and the Period of Honorable Strife, due out in 2016 and available at all the better bookstores.

 

 

 

 

 

TEDDY NAILED IT THEN, NAILS IT NOW

“There once was a time in history when the limitation of governmental power meant increasing liberty for the public.  In the present day, the limitation of governmental power, of governmental authority means the enslavement of the people by the great corporations.”

Teddy Roosevelt (1913)