January 20, 2017

My heart breaks

I'm not watching the inauguration, but I saw this posted on Facebook. Her expression says everything to me.
My heart breaks, not just for Hillary but for our country. Instead of a fine, exceptionally prepared president, we have an unstable, FSB asset entering the White House.

January 20, 2017

What bothers me most about the primary wars

Is the way in which those unhappy with the choice of nominee have created a narrative that ignores and disrespects the great majority of Democratic voters. Recriminations about how "the party" should have chosen a different candidate willfully ignores the agency of the 16 million citizens who independently made their own choices about whom to support. Treating the primary result as the the outcome of a reified party erases American citizens who made choices with which Sanders supporters disagree. We've seen the election results wielded as a cudgel, with which individual DUers are told that if they don't accept the Bernie contingents interpretation, the party is doomed to perpetual failure, as though elections were determined by compelling a few dozen people on a message board to submit to their views. I have even seen people argue that the millions of votes of the majority (particularly those by African Americans) aren't pertinent because they reflectively voted according to party loyalty.

Think about what that says. Do you truly believe that anyone who disagrees with you is unable to make rational political choices, and that their failure to do as you say means their votes are illegitimate or less valid than your own? What makes you think it acceptable to deny the democratic choices of the most historically marginalized Americans? How can people claim to represent a progressive ideology while erasing the majority of Democratic voters, especially people of color (whom we know voted overwhelmingly for Clinton), from political consideration? Do you truly believe that the only voters who matter are those who shared your own choice in a single presidential party?

And how is it that people demand we understand the reasons for the votes of white Trump supporters while rejecting or ignoring the political choices of the majority of Democrats?

Remember this for the next primaries (and subsequent general elections, for that matter). Advancing your chosen candidate is not accomplished by forcing agreement on a message board or through emails by party officials. It means winning votes--the individual votes of millions of individual Americans whose choices are no less important than your own. Refusing to understand that basic point makes winning unlikely. When those voters whose choices are dismissed come disproportionately from historically marginalized groups, it draws into question claims of progressivism.

January 15, 2017

Witness Russian propaganda in action

http://jackpineradicals.com/boards/topic/the-establishment-is-trying-to-steal-the-presidency-from-trump/

Trump is standing up to "oligarchy." His cabinet doesn't please the oligarchy: 5 appointees from Goldman, at least that many billionaires, all as far right wing as exists, and they aren't the oligarchy?

He's standing in the way of war with Russia, which makes him better than Democrats. Did you know the US, and Hillary Clinton specifically, was planning war on Russia? Donald Trump, a beacon of peace amid a sea of hawks.

And then the requisite comment of how Hillary "stole" the primary, a creation of Russian propaganda, as recent investigations have determined.

And of course the rapist Assange, defender of the America's only hope for peace and democracy, the sexual predator Donald Trump. It would appear that being a sexual assailant garners particular esteem among fascists.

They claim there is a coup underway against Trump (it was put out by the Kremlin so it must be true) because of the orange one's bravery in standing up to the "establishment" and "oligarchy," you know--establishment oligarchs like John Lewis who refused to drink at the colored folks fountain like he was supposed to.

And they think their hated is justified by anger over Bernie being denied the nomination by a woman who refused to stay in the kitchen like she is supposed to. Despite my disagreements with Bernie, I have to believe he would find their deluded hate mongering and unfettered admiration for a billionaire and his despotic handler Putin every bit as repulsive as I do.

This is an example of the effect of Russian propaganda. Now granted, that propaganda would not be effective among reasonably intelligent and sane people, but the fact is too many across the political spectrum are neither. The Kremlin are masters as psy-ops, and they know whom to target. Americans may be particularly susceptible because of poor education and our news media. Whatever the explanation, this should scare the shit out of most everyone. These people vote, and we are living through the outcome of their insane choices, which they are now desperate to defend in the most bizarrely irrational ways imaginable. At least they aren't spreading their deranged ravings on this site any more.

January 8, 2017

Automation predates trade deals

By some 60 years. It's been a continual process since Fordism and Taylorization were implemented in factories (even in the 18th to 19th centuries with the process of alienation of labor described by Marx). Deindustrialization also predates deals like NAFTA. Chronology does matter. NAFTA may have well accelerated a process already underway, but it did not initiate it.


The fact is that capitalism is based on profit--the accumulation of capital. Its imperative is to find more efficient ways of accumulating more capital. The exploitation of labor is the very heart of the capitalist system, and it depends on inequality. Capitalism determines social relations, mores, and the nature of the state. Inequality and poverty are not incidental but central to the system.

There was a brief period in US history in which the white working class, men in particular, benefited from that system, based largely on the capacity of the US government to enforce labor exploitation in the Global South. The US is now far less able to enforce such economic relationships than at the height of the American empire, which correspond precisely with that period of relative prosperity for the white middle class.

Striking down trade deals won't return America to the prosperity of the 50s; it won't make America great again. They have to be replaced with something. Trump's plan is to tear down regulation and minimum wages so businesses finding moving abroad less attractive. The idea is for the US to become the Global South.

I don't know what Bernie's plan was to replace trade deals. That may be a result of my own ignorance rather than his failing, but I did look several times at his website for details on that and other issues and found very few.

For the record, I was a critic of NAFTA and opposed TPP, largely because TPP replicated chapter 11 of NAFTA, which created an extra-judicial arbitration board that national court systems have no ability to overturn. I did, however, find the discussions against TPP lacking because : 1) they attributed far too much causality to those deals; 2) there was very little discussion of what would replace them. Progressive critics seemed to echo ( other way around actually) Trump's implication that we could resurrect the economy of the 50s and 60s. That is simply not possible. Details matter, and we got few.

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A post above is reflective of the kind of discourse I find frustrating. " Corporate trade" is described as caused by trade deals, as though corporations didn't dominate trade before NAFTA. United Fruit engineered the overthrow of the govt of Guatemala in 1954 (through the CIA Director and Sec of State who were major stockholders) in order to keep the Arbenz govt from expropriating their uncultivated land. yet that was 30 years before NAFTA, at the height of American prosperity. Yet "corporatism," we are told, is far more recent. With little understanding of history and no critique of capital itself, we see presentist claims that don't hold up to scrutiny. They do convey frustration at the current situation, but offer no solutions. Ultimately, if we don't understand cause, solutions are not possible.