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.

 

 

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

.

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.

 

 

 

 

 

IF YOU STRIKE ME DOWN….

After the brazen voting fraud displayed in the New York Primary, it was a foregone conclusion that the Clinton Machine would pull out all the stops to cheat their way to victory on the April 27 “Super Tuesday”  (It seems like Super Tuesdays are becoming more frequent than “Trials of the Century.”). The signs were all there in Pennsylvania that the same criminal behavior Hillary’s minions practiced in the Big Apple would be on display in PA: forged absentee ballots, hacked electronic voting machines, mysteriously purged voter rolls.  Yesterday, one county alone had 900 registered Democrats “missing” on election day; another district had Hillary Clinton handbills on prominent display inside the polling place–that was caught on video–and the poll workers refused to remove the deceptive ads, which were made to look like paper ballots.

Queen Hillary’s coronation seems virtually assured, at least that is what all the corporate media pundits keep telling us.  In her arrogance, however, Wall Street Hillary, when asked whether she would meet the Sanders people “halfway” and adopt some of their reform agenda, shut down any talk of compromise.  She wants Sen. Sanders to bend the knee and pledge unquestioned allegiance to her and turn over her forces, “for the sake of party loyalty.”

You would think, at the very least, that by now Hillary and her Corporatist lackeys would have grasped what the Sanders Campaign is all about, even if they hated what it stood for.  While we all admire Bernie Sanders for his integrity and honesty, he has not attracted the mass following that he has simply on that alone.  Nor can his popularity be attributed to his charisma or youthful good looks.  No: first and foremost, people have responded to his message of reform and progress.

Bernie Sanders agenda is not just about breaking up the big banks and bringing the Banksters to account for their crimes: but also to create more & better paying  jobs; taking money out of the election process and protecting voting rights; stopping the TPP and repeal the other phony free trade deals that have savaged our economy; universal health care; strengthen and enlarge Social Security; free public university education; rebuilding our crumbling infrastructure; make primary and secondary public education public again and not a “profit center” for corporations; end the “Prison Industrial Complex” and stop imprisoning minority groups for petty infractions of the law; the list goes on and on.  As Bernie has emphasized over and over, this is not about one person or one election.  It is about a fundamental reform of America, a nation which has been ravaged by the bad economics of the GOP and their DINO allies in the Democratic Party ever since the 1980’s.

Occupy Deathstar Protesters

 

Hillary Clinton’s greed for Corporatist money is only exceeded by her lust for power.  Her and the DINO establishment, who have lost far more elections than they have ever won, cannot fathom, it seems, that Bernie Sanders is running on principles, not for personal gain.  Even if he were to sell out his ideals, simply for some political appointment, his mass movement will not troop along dociley and tow the Corporatist line, as Hillary and the other corrupt Establishment Dems want.

While there are still several primaries to go and it is still important for every reform minded individual to still turn out and vote for Bernie, we all need to recognize that the Sanders candidacy is not the end, but the end of the beginning (as Churchill once put it)!

Mark my words, there is a bitter convention fight looming, not for the nomination, but for the reform planks that Sen. Sanders advocates to be put into the Democratic Platform.

Wall Street Hillary’s backers do not want any genuine reforming of the financial system, or of the corrupt electoral process that they control, not to mention any of the other Progressive planks we so desperately need enacted.  The DINO’s will fight tooth and nail to keep any real and meaningful reform planks out of the platform.  Hillary wants nice sounding nostrums, to be sure; and she will promptly betray even those if elected. But any serious and sincere programs of Progressive reform, reforms that the American electorate could get behind? Oh No, God forbid that her real constituency, the 1% that is in currently in control of both parties, should be offended by the Democratic Party Platform.

La Lutte Continue!

 

After the Democratic Convention, whatever its outcome, all those who have united behind the banner of Bernie Sanders must realize that the real work, the real struggle, the real campaign, has only just begun.

 

 

 

 

The Empire struck back yesterday.  They will continue to do so all through this electoral year and beyond.  Through all of their evil machinations in BOTH parties, remember, we are a Rebel alliance, not just one man and not just one race.

The Rebel Alliance needs YOU!

 

There will be other battles ahead and new Jedi Gekkai of all ages, races, genders and creeds will be needed to succeed.  Perhaps even new political parties will be needed to break the stranglehold that the Corporatists have on on our nation–on the world–and if that is what it takes, that is what it takes.  The Republican Party, which was once a party of social justice and economic reform, was begun by handful of idealists gathering in a one room schoolhouse.

The road is long, the road is hard, but the destination is worth the effort.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Force of Progress be with you.

Ben Carson and Biblical Economics: Bible Econ. 101

What the Bible says and what Ben Carson wants it so say are two very different things.

The foundation of Dr. Ben Carson’s political following rests on his credentials as a Conservative Christian ideologue; any of the pathological lies he utters about his personal past are ignored as the “Secular Humanist” Media, or alternately the imaginary “Liberal Media” distorting what their Good Christian Crusader may say, no matter how absurd or inconsistent it seems to all those not brainwashed into Religious Right dogma.  So the fact that Doctor Ben has used fetal stem cells in past research is ignored, so long as he states he is against the use of fetal stem cell research.  Likewise, when in the debates he states he is opposed to raising the minimum wage, even when last April he was for it, well, that’s just more of the Liberal Media trying to confuse us with facts.  It is therefore irrelevant to his supporters that Doctor Ben is a pathological liar: he is a Good Christian (so he says) and that’s all they know and need to know.

Trying to cite facts to the true believers of the Religious Right is akin to how trying to argue with traditional Leninist/Stalinist true believers used to be: they have their dialectic and everything that does not fit into it is willfully ignored.   So, when the Religious Right starts citing chapter and verse to justify trickle down economics and social Darwinism and all the other long disproved Republican propaganda masquerading as economics, it is useless to try to argue modern realities with them; their biblical dialectic won’t allow it.  However, like many Bible thumpers who claim to take the Good Book literally and are fond of using it for their economic and political beliefs, Ben Carson and the Religious Right are notoriously selective when it comes to citing examples from the Bible.  It goes back to the old adage: the Devil can quote the Bible to suit his purposes.  It is therefore quite legitimate to call Doctor Ben out when he justifies his wrong-headed ideas by basing them on the Bible, when in fact the Old and New Testaments do not support or justify those ideas.

Let’s start with Doctor Ben’s latest honker about the pyramids being ancient granaries and then move on to his more dangerous theories.  Now I make no claims to being a Biblical scholar, nor a theologian for that matter; but I did spend a few years of my mis-spent youth studying Ancient Near Eastern History and Archaeology, including both Egyptology and the history of Eretz Israel.  I was taught by eminent Egyptologists such as Dr. Helene Kantor and Professor Klaus Baer, as well as other stellar luminaries of the Biblical history and Assyriology, and while I cannot claim to aspire to their expertise in the subject, I did manage to stay awake in their lectures to understand that what Doctor Ben and his followers believe is utter garbage.  Firstly, the Story of Joseph, as recorded in the Old Testament, was written to about the eighth century BC, although it refers to events preceding the Exodus, which most scholars place towards the end of the New Kingdom, sometime towards the end of the Late Bronze Age/Early Iron Age (anywhere between the 14^th and 12^th centuries BC give or take).  Now admittedly, since academics still debate about the date of Exodus, there is a bit of wiggle room here—but not a lot.  The Pyramid Age—when the pyramids were constructed—was the Old Kingdom (ca. 2700-2100 BC), nowhere near in time to either the Story of Joseph or Exodus.  The other fact is that the pyramids were primarily the tombs of the ancient kings of Egypt and while their also held the king’s treasure trove, they were never, ever used as granaries, either in the Old Kingdom or later: FACT NOT THEORY.

Doctor Ben thinks Big

While Doctor Ben’s whacko theories about the pyramids may seem amusing, it points to a mind that is not only profoundly ignorant, but also refuses to learn differently.  His pyramid theory was not just an off the cuff remark; the other night Steven Colbert’s researchers dug up an old clip of Carson as a young man also proclaiming the same theory.  Apparently this man holds onto mistaken beliefs like a bulldog gnawing an old bone: facts that get in the way of his contrived theories are ignored.  This man is dangerously ignorant.

Dr. Ben one with demented Tea-baggers

If one were to use the Story of Joseph for something other than its moral teaching value (its original intent) there is, however, a lesson in economics to be learned from the Bible tale.  Pharaoh, as you may recall, had a strange dream where seven lean cows devoured seven fat cows; Joseph was summoned to interpret the odd dream and divined that Egypt would have seven years of plenty followed by seven lean years of famine.  So, according to the story, on Joseph’s advice, the Pharaoh did indeed build granaries to house the surplus—not give it away to corporations and billionaires—and when the lean years came, (as they always do) the food was distributed to the population.  The Story of Joseph, therefore, is a classic example of the virtue of deficit spending during an economic downturn.  The Greeks told a lot of false tales about the ancient kings of Egypt that we still hear, but whatever you may think of them, at least the ancient kings of Egypt looked after their people and made sure the poor did not starve—and if you want to look to the Bible for economic policy, the Story of Joseph is as good a starting place as any.

Doctor Ben has also cited the Bible as his authority for instituting a flat tax when he becomes King—I mean President.  Here again, he has done a bit of selective reading when it comes to the OT.  Yes indeed, the ancient Israelites did have a Tithe—a flat ten percent tax—on agricultural products; but they also had a Temple Tax, plus a non-agricultural Tithe—whereby you gave ten percent of your income to the poor!  The Temple Tax was a small fixed amount regardless of income limited to adult males over 20; whereas the tithes were based on your income; that is, AN INCOME TAX.  Now the tithes were actually proportional, which is to say PROGRESSIVE INCOME TAXES, since those who were poor were either relieved of paying the tithe or allowed to pay a lesser percentage than 10; conversely, those who were wealthy were obligated to pay 20% of their income instead of the standard rate.  There were a number of other duties and customs as well: for example, there was the custom of gleaning, whereby the poor were allowed to go through the fields after harvest and collect the grains which had fallen to the ground and to take away whatever they could carry on their person.  Unlike modern America, where law and politics are totally divorced from morality, despite the hypocritical utterings of the Religious Right, to the ancient Israelites the Law was fundamentally moral in nature and social justice was engrained into every aspect of it—kind of what we would call Socialism today.

If the Pyramids are granaries then of course Easter Island statues were Goliath’s toys.

Now, if we go to the New Testament, what we find is not Socialism, but outright Communism in early Christianity.  Do phrases like “give up all your worldly goods to the poor and follow me” or “it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to inherit the Kingdom of God” ring a bell?  In fact there is a passage in the New Testament where it explicitly states that the early Christian communities held their property in common.  This is where the old communistic tradition in Christianity comes from: be they the Benedictines (who ran my old alma mater) or the Protestant Amana Colony of Iowa, or splinter sects like the Shakers (good music, but the celibacy was a little rough on the early American pioneers so they kind of petered out).  By comparison, Marxism is just a recent fad compared to the Socialism/Communism of the Old and New Testament.

Now I am not telling anyone to go thou and do likewise: the Bible is a collection of texts intended for spiritual instruction and moral guidance; it is not an economics textbook, still less is it a biology or climatology textbook.  Evolution and Global Climate Change are scientific facts, not opinions; if your theology conflicts with scientific fact, the problem is not with the Bible, OT or NT, but with your interpretation of those ancient sources of wisdom.  Don’t put that one on God; and don’t use God and the Bible to justify a hypocritical belief system which puts billionaires’ privileges ahead of the common good.  You don’t have to use the Bible as your guide to economics, but then again, there are worse guides to go by for economic guidance—just don’t cherry pick what suits you.