Greenwald on the Election

Hola Everybody,
Just got home...  but here's a very good analysis of the past few days (courtesy of Glenn Greenwald):

That message was heard loud and clear. The institutions and elite factions that have spent years mocking, maligning, and pillaging large portions of the population — all while compiling their own long record of failure and corruption and destruction — are now shocked that their dictates and decrees go unheeded. But human beings are not going to follow and obey the exact people they most blame for their suffering. They’re going to do exactly the opposite: purposely defy them and try to impose punishment in retaliation. Their instruments for retaliation are Brexit and Trump. Those are their agents, dispatched on a mission of destruction: aimed at a system and culture they regard — not without reason — as rife with corruption and, above all else, contempt for them and their welfare.

Read more here

Winter has Come

Hola mi gente,
I had to write this quickly. Welcome to Trumpland, welcome to twilight of the Empire.

(Note: As always, all links open up in a new tab/ browser)

Winter

Clinton, along with other white, neoliberal feminists, attempted to manipulate the illusion of herself as a trailblazer for all women in her grab for power. This despite the fact that every policy she has advocated has disproportionately caused immeasurable harm to women the world over -- especially marginalized Black, Brown, and Indigenous women.

And she lost... And the fault is hers and hers alone.

For over a year I have been warning that so-called “pragmatic progressives” had this election all wrong from the get. This election was about a legitimate and profound disappointment with a status quo that is crushing the working class. Trump manipulated that disappointment by playing to the crowd and offering a bait-and-switch scheme.

The out of touch, spectacularly ineffective Democratic Party thought they could offer someone who could manage this dysfunctional state of affairs and the people, rightfully so, rejected it. The tragedy is that if the Democrats had the cojones and foresight, they could have tapped into the same middle class and working poor angst by getting behind a wildly popular, ground-up movement. 

Imagine what today would’ve looked like had the vast sums of lucre and resources had been poured into a genuine people’s movement? Imagine if the DNC had gotten behind those enormous rallies happening across the nation -- tens of thousands of people from all walks of life clamoring to get behind a people’s power political platform. Imagine a platform that addressed concerns about a rigged economy, crushing student debt, a bloated and cancerous military budget, and corrected an insurance (not health) reform law that came straight out of an extreme right-wing think tank.

What the DNC did instead was to rig the primaries and then spit on that burgeoning movement. What the Democrats did was try to use fear of Trump to win an election. In the meantime, they stood for  nothing and got nothing. This demonstrates that the DNC cannot be reformed or counted upon. This demonstrates the need for a movement that creates its own party that is responsive to the needs of the people.

But that will never happen with the DNC because Trump is right: the DNC (and RNC) are totally beholden to their corporate masters. Shit, cockroaches poll higher than these congress critters.

So what’s next? 

I plan to tackle that tomorrow. 

My name is Eddie and I’m in recovery from civilization… 

Lesser Evilism Sucks

Hola everybody,
As I type, the TV machine is announcing that Trump has won Florida. He’s also won Ohio -- two major battleground states.

That sound you hear? That’s the collective clenching of the anal sphincters of millions of Hillary supporters -- you know the “pragmatic progressives.”

The NY Times is saying that Trump has a 92% chance of winning the election.

Wow!

Lesser Evilism Bites You in the Ass

What this says is that a DNC masquerading as “republican lite” is not resonating with the US public and highlights the failure of a two-party system that’s under the thrall of corporate dominance.

The one possible good thing that can come about from a possible Trump presidency is that it will be easier to mobilize people. It will finally convince many that the lesser of two evils has been a huge failure that we cannot continue down this road if we want to fight corporate dominance.

Really…

More later.

My name is Eddie and I’m in recovery from civilization…

Make it Personal

Hola Everybody,
By tomorrow this time, we will know who will hold the most powerful political office in the known universe -- may your God, Higher Power, or whatever you fuckin' pray to, protect you. Regardless of who seize power, we will be fucked if we don't wake up. I repost the following in order to rail against the dying of the light. It gets lonely out here.

Politics

It’s personal.

The personal, as some are so fuckin’ fond of saying, is political. Therefore, if some idiot politician, some power player, tries to execute policies that harm you or those you love, take it personally.

Get Angry. 

The Machinery of Justice will not serve you here: it is slow and unfeeling, and it is theirs -- all of it. Only those without access to power suffer at the hand of Justice; the creatures of the power elite slide out from under with a wink and a grin.

If you want Justice, or even fairness, you will have to snatch it from them.

Make it personal.

Do as much damage as you can. Get your message across. That way you stand a far better chance of being taken seriously next time -- of being considered dangerous. And make no mistake about this: being taken seriously, being considered dangerous, marks the difference -- the only difference in their eyes -- between players and the little people. They don't give a damn about respect -- respect has no value for them. You have to make them fear and loathe you.

Players they will make their deals with. Little people they liquidate. And time and again, they justify your liquidation, your displacement, your suffering, and the brutality of it all with the ultimate insult that it’s the way of the world, it’s politics, it’s a tough life, it’s “just business,” and that it’s nothing personal. Well, fuck that...

Make it personal.

My name is Eddie and I’m in recovery from civilization…

Sunday Sermon [An Open Letter to Moral Conformists]

Hola mi gente,
Enough is enough. Every day, my social media streams are inundated by posts by cowed, fearful, and at times positively rabid Hillary Clinton supporters. To paraphrase a meme I saw today: pointing out Trump’s faults does not make a case for Hillary. 

The following is for those who profess to be liberals or progressives and who are voting the conservative candidate, Hillary Clinton.

Pathologizing Dissent

 

“Shallow understanding from people of goodwill is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.”
 -- Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., Letter from Birmingham Jail

Almost every day I have to suffer through yet another post appearing on my stream by the Working Families Party of New York (WFP). Having first endorsed Bernie Sanders, the WFP now wants people to vote on their line. Their presidential pick? Hillary Clinton. 

A little bit of self-disclosure: during the early days of the WFP, I was an organizer for them. I spent many nights in NYC’s gulag, Far Rockaway, going door-to-door in the projects there and I spent a few months organizing in my old Brooklyn neighborhood, Bushwick. Ironically, I also assisted with organizing a huge accountability session that included Hillary Clinton who, at the time, was running for the New York State senate seat. At the time, I thought the WFP was a great idea. 

The WFP took a grassroots guerilla warfare approach to local elections. Basically, we presented a slate of policies and asked local politicians if they would commit to publicly endorsing them. The effective part was being able to demonstrate to politicians that we could get a few thousand people to vote. That usually put the fear into them. It was a very effective approach, and I have to admit that the WFP did some good work in those early years.

However, today’s WFP is not the WFP of yesteryear and has, in my opinion, made some very suspect decisions, culminating with the decision to endorse Cuomo in the last gubernatorial race. It was a decision that threatened to rip apart of the coalition. I left the WFP for several reasons, one being that while it used a grassroots model of organizing, its decision-making process was very hierarchical (not grassroots). We did the organizing, but the ultimate decisions about direction and strategy were made by a few people.

And this is why it bothers me that the WFP is endorsing Hillary Clinton. I see that decision, as with the Cuomo endorsement, as a way to garner more votes on their line. The more votes a political party garners, the better access it has to power. So, a political entity with the words “working families” in its title, is endorsing a candidate who used racial stereotypes to pass legislation that gutted social safety nets for the most vulnerable in our society and advocated for a trade treaty (NAFTA) that erased millions of jobs for working families. This is the same candidate that that is on record as saying that the TPP -- NAFTA on steroids -- set the gold standard on trade treaties.

Think about that.

I have previously written about why I could never vote for Hillary Clinton. Others have also written why Black and Latinx people should not vote for Clinton. Therefore, reiterating a case against a Clinton administration will not be the purpose of this post. Let me put it this way, the last time the Clintons were confronted with a recalcitrant GOP congressional majority, they turned tail and helped pass some of the most pernicious, ultra-conservative policies.

But point this out to a Hillary supporter and after reflexively barking out “Trump,” it only elicits contempt. I am not realistic, they say. I am too idealistic. They are proud “pragmatic progressives” -- the adults in the room -- they sneer. The thing I find particularly disturbing is how an empirical observation such as that a ruling elite, primarily corporate in character, exists and exists for its interests and not the interests of the people, is stigmatized by so-called lefties as the ravings of unhinged misogynists. I am embarrassed -- no offended -- that there are people advocating for a strategy that discourages people from using their vote to organize and support viable alternative voices, and instead encourages people to give up their power to a right wing, neoliberal, corporate-controlled politician with the hopes that they will somehow push her to the left once she ascends into power.

Hope, my friends, is not a strategy. At least it is not a winning strategy.

Hillary is the poster child of everything that’s wrong with the Democratic Party and what the faux liberal Hillary supporters don’t seem to understand is that this election is really about disgust with the current status quo. This is the main reason why Hillary is barely beating out a childish narcissist who can’t even run a coherent campaign. People don’t trust her with good reason. People don’t like her, not because she is a woman, but because she hasn’t earned that trust. We on the left should see this election as a clarion call to organize, to support progressive third parties, to speak out against a dystopian status quo in which people find themselves barely keeping their head above water. People are drowning. The time for short-term fixes is long past. It is time for change and it seems that the reason Hillary Clinton has some of the lowest favorability and trust numbers is that the Democratic Party holds no attraction presenting itself as a bullshit “Republican Lite” alternative. In fact, I would submit that Hillary has nothing but contempt for the common people -- the unwashed masses.

We should be encouraging people to vote strategically, lending their franchise to progressive third parties. For example, people dismiss the Green Party because it can’t win. But if the Green Party could garner at least 5% of the popular vote, it would qualify for millions in federal funds. Shit, 15% would have compelled the duopoly to allow a candidate like Jill Stein at the debates and there would have been discussions about climate change, inequality, poverty, and an economic structure that benefits the majority, not just those lucky enough to be born rich. Instead we got a series of bad reality shows that were obsessed with grabbing pussy and Benghazi.

But instead of calls to organize, or the will for marginalized communities to take power, what I’m hearing from so-called progressives is that we must vote for war, privatization, inequality, mass incarceration, and corporate dominance in order to achieve goals that are exactly the opposite. What we will get is a more right-wing version of Obama -- quite possibly eight years of it. Can we afford it?

It. Makes. No. Sense. 

What do you honestly expect to achieve if the candidate in office, regardless of who they are, has nothing to fear? The DNC has nothing but contempt for progressive ideals and knows you will vote for them out of fear regardless of their record.

Those advocating for Hillary are the living example of the definition of insanity: committing the same acts and expecting different results. I’m not trying to convince people on how they should vote, but don’t fuckin' tell me that voting for Hillary is a road to anything amounting to change. The historical record refutes anything you say. But instead of looking at the evidence, some want to practice a form of magical thinking they have the nerve to call “pragmatic.”

The time to fight is now. If not now, when. If not you, then who?

My name is Eddie and I’m in recovery from civilization…