US 2020 Election: One Choice Only – The Oligarchy

Chris Hedges states there is no choice in the 2020 US election if it is a choice between Trump and Biden: both are a vote for the consolidation of the oligarchy.

Now that sums it up perfectly well.

Mind you, it was the same in 2016. People in Germany felt that choosing between Trump and Clinton was like choosing between cholera and the plague.

The same was true in 2012: Obama vs Romney – a choice between two devoted servants of Wall Street, the corporate oligarchy, the empire, the war machine, the growing sureillance and police state, which was launched by Bush and Cheney, and expanded by Obama, and the military industrial security complex, which has ruled the US since the National Security Act was passed in 1947.

(Like Citizens United and the Patriot Act, there is a piece of fascist-oligarchy-enabling legislation that needs to be killed as swiftly as possible, if either freedom or democracy, or constitutional rule, is to survive.)

Remember what Chomsky said about the US political system: it’s a one party system – the party of big business – with two wings. That’s been the case for a long time.

We should also remember that the entire political spectrum has slid far to the right, both in the US and across the Western world. Obama has said that, not too long ago, he would have been considered a moderate Republican. And that is true.

In fact, with his continuation of the dismantling the New Deal social contract; the continued multi-trillion dollar “bail-outs” and “stimulus” packages given to the Wall Street banking elite – which is an historically unprecedented transfer of wealth from Main Street to Wall Street, which is to say, mass looting; with his embracing and expanding of the new surveillance and police state created by the Bush-Cheney neoconservatives; and his expansion of the neocon imperial wars abroad, Obama was further to the right than Eisenhower, a moderate Republican who in 1961 warned us, “Beware the military industrial complex” – which every president since Eisenhower, Democrat or Republican, has devotedly served.

The Democrats are now a party of the far right, with their devotion to the fascist architecture of the Constitution- and Bill of Rights-shredding Patriot Act, the permanent imperial wars abroad, the new surveillance and police state, and the intensified war on democracy, freedom, constitutional rule, the rule of law, and the people of the US and the world.That’s called “the left.” It’s not the left. It’s the far right. And the Republicans are even further to the right.

The Democrats are in truth crypto-fascists – and not so crypto about it, for anyone who is remotely paying attention. They are the neoliberals. That means, the merger of business and the state – but with a liberal, smiley face, of course. They are the fuzzy, warm, gender-inclusive, multicultural, “liberal” fascists. They are the good cops. So we are to believe.

The Republicans are the neoconservatives. They are the Tweedle dum to the Democrats’ Tweedle Dee. They are the harsher, more stark face of the merger of business and the state.

But both parties represent the merger of business and the state – which, as Mussolini said himself, is called corporatism, which is the proper term for fascism.

Fascist, war-mongering corporate oligarchy candidate A, or fascist, war-mongering candidate B – which would you like?

It’s time for some real change.

To me, as far as US politics are concerned, it’s now Bernie or revolution.

Or more accurately, it’s now time for revolution – with or without Bernie in the White House.

JTR,

March 10, 2020