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to show the global corporate predators who really run things how "anti-communist" they are. Progressive, on the one hand, and murderous in their "defense" of predatory capitalism, on the other. That's the Devil's Bargain they made with the corporate rulers. And to Americans in general--who tend to want peace and justice--they touted "the Great Society" (war on poverty) and items like the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, i.e., you can get a fair shake in the corporate predatory world if you agree to kill lots of communists. This sick contradiction ultimately drove a whole generation of Americans into desperate rebellion--antiwar, anti-Draft, anti-establishment, with some unfortunate negative consequences ("turn on, tune in, drop out") in drug use and other self-destructive behavior. But it was heartfelt--and amazing, an historic revolution--in the sense that young Americans SAW THROUGH the sick contradiction, and refused to go along with it. The three most powerful public figures who also saw through--JFK (refused to invade Cuba, withdrew military "advisers" from Vietnam), MLK (historic speech on the inhumanity of the Vietnam war) and RFK (ran for president to stop the war, and would have won) were all assassinated. Message: The corporate state will only permit liberal progress unless it is combined with a huge military machine with which to intimidate and slaughter all those who don't want a corporate state, and who deny markets, resources and slave labor to the corporate predators.
Then, it was communist countries. Now it's Islamicists, who resist the corporate state and favor more communal arrangements for religious reasons.
In fact, I've just figured this out. :think: THIS is why the corporatists hate Islam, not because it's non-Christian, not because its jihadists are sometimes violent, not because it suppresses women's rights (a major concession of the fascist capitalists, in the progress/war bargain), but because they tend to hold a HIGHER VALUE than corporate profit.
Ha. Well, however that may be, here we are again, poised over the new "progress/war" bargain, and it is this: Corporate Democrats speaking to peace and justice-loving Americans (most of us): "We will save you from the Christian right, if you let us slaughter Arabs, Islamicists and maybe a few Venezuelans and others, in order to force open their markets, their resources and their slave labor pool to the global corporate predators who are really running things."
And any American politician who tries to rise above this dirty bargain, and represent the true interests of the American people, is 'swiftboated'/marginalized/destroyed by the corporate news monopolies (Dennis Kucinich, Ralph Nader and Howard Dean all come to mind), or is outright assassinated (Paul Wellstone). Further, any FOREIGN leader who sees through this crap (like Hugo Chavez) is similarly 'swiftboated'/marginalized/destroyed or assassinated. (Note on Dean: his campaign for president--which challenged the military budget/military orientation of the country, and corporate monopolies--was destroyed, but he survived to try to overcome this problem with grass roots organization).
I lived through the slaughter in Vietnam, a loyal Democratic voter all the way until 1968, when they assassinated MLK and RFK, and gave us war supporter Hubert Humphrey as our only choice. Humphrey was an old-fashioned union liberal and would have given us more of the progress/war bargain. I and other young voters (and some old ones) couldn't take it. Too many dead people (pushing a million by that time). We sat on our hands, and Nixon squeezed through on a very close vote, with lies about stopping the war--and then Nixon did something very similar to Bush, he acted as if a squeaker vote was a rightwing "mandate" and as if the war dissenters/leftists like me who got him elected were "conservatives." He wasn't as extreme as Bush, but that was the mode: divide and conquer on the war issue, and then rule to the right with no such mandate.
With forty years perspective, it might be useful to ask, Would Humphrey have done what Nixon did, i.e., expand the war into Cambodia and Laos, in order to "win" it (that's where the other million dead people came from)? And the answer is probably not. I think he had more of a conscience than Nixon did, and would have been more beholden to the strong antiwar/left wing of the party. So my non-vote in 1968 was probably a mistake. Actually, I had figured that out by the next election and never made that mistake again. In a fascist state (i.e., Republicans in charge), we lose both social progress and peace. And, by the time Clinton came along, I voted for him, despite my opposition to NAFTA, partly because he HAD BEEN an antiwar protester and I figured he understood the progress/war Devil's Bargain, and he did seem to. But what I didn't fully realize is how strong the corporate fascists had gotten. They were already solidifying the corporate news monopolies, under Clinton, as well as destroying our sovereignty as a people, with secret global trade deals, and it was only a matter of time before they would BREAK THEIR SIDE OF THE BARGAIN, and start reversing the social progress side of it, with an all-out grab for fascist power amidst truly massive theft, gutting of all social programs, looting of the Social Security fund and other pensions, one tax cut after another building up a $10 TRILLION deficit on the backs of the poor, etc., etc.
I didn't credit the left enough, in their analysis of NAFTA. That's where the rightwing coup actually occurred (under Clinton), and subsequent events, the 2000 coup, via the Supreme Court, followed by the electronic voting coup of 2004 (in which the people were not even allowed to elect a progress/war bargain candidate), have confirmed that analysis. NAFTA and other global corporate predator trade deals destroyed any control we, as a people, had over national policy, and was the harbinger of their taking away our right to vote (now directly controlled by Bushite fascist corporations using "trade secret," proprietary vote tabulation software, with virtually no audit/recount controls--an accomplishment of the Anthrax Congress).
I did protest NAFTA and "global free piracy"--in the Seattle 1999 protests, and in other ways. But it was too late. And it is possibly true that the Seattle protests--an amazing and entirely PEACEFUL protest of 50,000 people shutting down the World Trade Organization meeting (horribly slandered by the corporate news monopolies, of course) was what precipitated our corporate rulers' decision to "go for broke" with Bush: destroy the progressive state.
Mark Warner and Tom Vilsack and Co. are the Robert McNamara's of this era: the "brain trust" of the progress/war bargain, by which we get a strong middle class only if we agree to a huge military machine and corporate war (killing for resources, markets, etc). It's iffy whether even that Devil's Bargain can be restored, at this point. But it's important to understand what it is; what we're up against. We may want to go along with a restoration--say, with Hillary--in order to work on getting back our right to vote. (Interestingly, Hillary was one of only two Dem Senators--her and Schumer--who voted AGAINST the infamous "Help America Vote Act" by which we ended up with corporate control over our voting system--so possibly she could be persuaded to undo it.) (I'm not kidding--Hillary and Schumer, that was it. The rest of the Anthrax Senate knuckled under--and most of the House (63 voted against)).
My advice to all: Keep your eyes on the prize, folks--which MLK used to say, by which I think he also meant: keep your eyes OPEN. Don't be fooled by the Devil's Bargain of militarism/freedom, because freedom will NOT survive militarism; but neither permit yourselves to be divided and conquered by this false choice, that you must kill in order to be free. Do not buy into false choices, and do not be 'divided and conquered' by them. Not easy to do--as MLK certainly knew.
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