The Failure of the “Left” – Continued

 

In addition to the giant blunders that I’ve already written about, and the clear absence of leadership on the left, there is the even more glaring indictment, which is this:

The US Democratic party, including all major self-proclaimed “progressives”, just voted unanimously, along with the Republicans, to give a $4.2 trillion bailout to the Wall Street corporate elite (after they crashed theeconomy by invoking the lockdown which caused the economic meltdown).

But, the fake left got the people a one-time $1,200 check per person – which won’t do anything – for which they are praising themselves like they are true messiahs.

That was, as it has been said, the cheese that baited the trap. But when the mousetrap snaps shut, as Jimmy Dore said, millions of heads will be crushed.

Millions of families are going to lose their homes – even more than the 5.1 million families who lost their homes in the last crash, in 2007-2009, when the faux left under Obama chose to bail out Wall Street instead of the 99% – which the faux left has just now done again.

Will someone please explain to the left, as well as the centre and right, that trickle-down economics don’t work? If you give billions or trillions to the business elite, it just makes the richest 0.1% richer – it doesn’t help the poor or the middle class, and it doesn’t stimulate the economy.

$20 trillion was transfered from Mainstreet to Wall Street between 2008 and 2010. It made the billionaires and the corporate giants even more astronomically wealthy and powerful. It caused stocks and assets to become super-inflated in an even bigger bubble (through stock buy-backs, which in an earlier era would have been called fraud). It post-poned the structurally inevitable major market correction, aka, crash. But it failed to revive the economy, which has remained in global recession since 2007. The richest got richer, while the 99% continued to be devoured.

Giving $20 trillion in debt relief to the poor, the middle class, and to small and medium business, instead of the Wall Street elite, would both help the people greatly, and also massively stimulate the economy – because they will spend the money, as they have to, to survive; whereas the elite just line their pockets further if you give it to them.

A Green New Deal to build renewable energy and transportation infrastructure would do the same – help the 99% greatly while powerfully boosting the economy – while creating millions of jobs.

For the $4.2 trillion that was just handed to Wall Street, both a job-creating, true economic stimulus of a Green New Deal, as well as debt relief for the struggling majority, could have neen done. Instead, the people have been looted, lied to, and swindled again.

Repeating the same failed multi-trillion dollar wealth transfer from the 99% to the ruling 1% in 2020 is not going to help the people or the economy this time, any more than it did the last time. In factm it is a giant swindle. It is economic warfare: class war. And “the left” legitimized it, and helped make it happen.

Disgraceful.

In the biggest single transfer of wealth from the 99.9% to the top 0.01% in history, “the left” was unanimously on board, just like the centre and the right. Clearly “the left” is, at present, devoid of leadership. Clearly, in fact, it is the faux left. There is no courage, vision, or leadership there.

Is the left leadership corrupt, cowardly, or simply deer caught in the headlights, momentarily shellshocked into a stupor of paralysis and brain fog? I don’t believe it is the first, in general. Let’s hope it is the last explanation, not the second. That would be the most promising.

Whatever the causes of the pervasive failure of the left, we need to correct it, and soon. Things are clearly in dire straights. Moreover, the people need to question everything, and everyone – including their “leaders”.

JTR,

April 9, 2020

Post-Script:

Immediately after writing this short essay, I see the announcement: Fed To Approve Another $2 Trillion In Stimulus. The business elite are tripping over themselves to give themselves ever greater wealth transfers from the people. They jusy can’t plunder the people fast enough, it seems.

Revolution is brewing, mark my words.

The Faux Left, and, The Urgent Need To Unite The People

What’s called “the left” is really a few camps, very narrow in range:

There are neoliberals such as Hilary Clinton, Obama, Biden, and the Democratic party establishment, who (like Tony Blair and new Labour in Britain, and the Liberal party in Canada) are in reality extreme right – they are corporatists, like the neoconservatives, which means, as Mussolini said, fascism: which is the merger of corporate and state power.

Then there are centrist liberals, but by now, they are so spineless, and mindless, that they effectively support the neoliberal fascists, having no idea what they are doing.

Then there are the FDR-style liberal-progressives. Sanders is a good example. Harmless, but not revolutionary by any stretch of the imagination, and generally obtuse, oblivious, well-meaning, but self-neutering. I pray to be proven wrong, but do not expect it.

100 or 90 years ago, they were the leading edge. Now they are a throwback, and too timid and unimaginative to get the job done: which is, to defeat the corporate oligarchy, not seek a compromise with it, or to petition it, or plead with it, but to defeat and dethrone it, and to replace it with genuine citizens’ democracy, civil liberties for all, and constitutional rule. That means revolution – real revolution. (Gandhian, but uncompromising.) They don’t seem to understand that, though they soon may, now that the neoliberal fascist lockdown – which the dithering left, centre, and grassroots right, all seem oblivious to – is underway.

Then there are democratic socialists, but most are really Sanders-progressive-FDR liberals, and greatly lacking in boldness, as well as vision and strategic intelligence: self-neutering, again, by and large.

That represents 98% of what is CALLED the left. But there is far more than this left in the world. Far more.

More importantly:

There are thinking liberals, conservatives, socialists, libertarians, anarchists and greens, who have some understanding of what is really going on. They disagree on a great deal, but they, in general, all agree that constitutional democracy, with civil liberties and freedom for all, is vastly preferable to fascism or oligarchy – which we have now. They, the not silent but marginalized majority, need to unite, and to stand up now.

“The resistance” – what a sad and tragic, dangerous joke. The neoliberals and the neoconservatives are two wings of the same ruling corporatist oligarchy. They must BOTH be overthrown, and now.

Planetary-health wise, there is no time left for compromising with either neoconservative or neoliberal corporate crypto-fascists, even if that were morally tolerable, which it is not. Both must go. It is now a matter of democratic revolution, or slow death in a gulag society.

Let us choose wisely – and choose now.

JTR,
April 4, 2020