Covid & the Left: An open letter

It matters not what group it was this letter was addressed to. What matters is the content. Please read:

(Note that WordPress randomly gets buggy on me and will not let me make paragraph spacing properly: hence the strange use of stars. * And WordPress strangely made my signature invisible as well. Sorry I am all thumbs with tech or I would fix it, somehow.)

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With much respect, and solidarity, I urge you to check your facts.

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You wrote, “On Friday, May 1, an ongoing General Strike campaign begins. This campaign could become the most powerful movement in the United States and reset the national agenda. It comes when the failures of the US political system have been magnified by the COVID-19 pandemic, which triggered an economic collapse in a presidential election year.”

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This is the beginning of a bold plan, which could be transformative – yet it is also based in delusion, due to lack of fact checking, and the succumbing to an elite-crafted propaganda narrative.

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I am not going to argue my case again here. I have argued it many times already. Please see the articles on my blog: J. Todd Ring on WordPress. If that is not sufficient, please check the facts at Trends Journal.

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If you base a major strategy, a key strategy, on a radically misinformed view, you will likely be discredited later for being revealed to have been terribly and dangerously  naive.

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Worse yet, by supporting the standard narrative that covid-19 CAUSED an economic collapse and an  authoritarian lockdown, which is an obviously irrational and foolish view, since a virus cannot quarantine anyone, much less entire nations, then you are lending support to what is in truth a simple fascist power grab, a fascist coup, by a bipartisan neoliberal and neoconservative global power elite.

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How this is not clear to the left is almost inconceivable to me. You need to rethink and do some basic fact-checking, immediately.

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Under 200,000 people have died from covid-19, versus 300,000 to 700,000 ANNUAL deaths from the common flu. How is it that these numbers justify extreme authoritarian measures? Can you not see the obvious big lie in this? The covid-19 virus is not even an epidemic if the annual flu is not considered an epidemic with 2-3 times higher yearly death toll. Are these things not obvious?

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Read my blog, see Trends Journal, and please, think again.

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YOU ARE PLAYING INTO THE HANDS OF  FASCIST OLIGARCHS, BY UNQUESTIONINGLY ACCEPTING AND SUPPORTING THEIR NARRATIVE!

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Peace,

J. Todd Ring

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See:

The Herd Mentality – Trends Journal

Piers Robinson

GreenMedInfo

My essays, including: Any Enemy Will Do

Crisis Point: Leadership Needed From…Anywhere, Now

 

Imagine if real leadership from the grassroots comes now from the moderate, democratic/republican right, and not the centre or the left. Considering that the centre and left, almost without exception, have their heads up their asses, this mortifying development is entirely possible.

Let us hope that basic sanity, in terms of resisting authoritarianism, comes from a broad-spectrum coalition, however; because that is what we will need to defeat the oligarchs in their current bipartisan neoliberal/neoconservative joint effort at a slow motion fascist coup. 

For the record, I supported Ron Paul in 2008 & 2012, because he was the only anti-authoritarian (and anti-imperialist) in those corporate coronations erroneously called elections. I supported Sanders in 2016 and 2020 because he was the only conceivably winnable candidate who is a genuine constitutional (small d and r) democrat or republican, and was not on the oligarch’s payroll or lackey squad. Left and right mean nothing if we do not have basic rights and freedoms. That is something the high-handed and supremely pretentious, blinkered centre and left need to figure out, and now.

The people had better wake up fast. The global showdown between democracy and oligarchy has now reached endgame.

The Brave New World is here. But the vast majority are asleep; and worse, they are sleep-walking while cheering on their slavers, and begging for their shackles and chains.

Ron Paul, Bernie Sanders, the grassroots right or left – it doesn’t matter now: we need leadership to resist corporate fascism, and it matters not where it comes from.

Unite the people. Wake the people. Defend democracy and freedom, before we lose them. And we are losing them now.

JTR,

April 25, 2020

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.

Why The Left Is Once Again Wrong

 

Also happening now, and further showing the continued failure of the left: the left is shouting in defence of payroll taxes – which kill jobs, as they are a tax on hiring and employment, as well as a regressive tax that hurts small and medium business the hardest.

The smart policy would be for the left to say to Trump, yes, we agree payroll taxes should be cut, and in fact eliminated – but we need to make any tax cuts revenue neutral at least, so as to not increase the deficit and debt without good reason.

(Sometimes that is ok, to run or to increase a running deficit, even wise, temporarily, as the Keynsian New Deal showed; but you don’t want to further run up deficits and debt if you can easily avoid it. The central point is, there are two sides to a budget, not one: revenue (taxes) and spending. You must naturally address both, or you are quite clearly, simply insane: either delusional, that is, or else deceitful.)

That means, cutting payroll taxes must be linked with a carbon pollution tax – with temporary transitional excemptions for small and medium business, and poor and middle class households, but serious pollution taxes for the big corporations and the rich.

And of course, if you are going to cut taxes again – this time, sensibly, for a change – you must reflect on whether forty years of neoliberal and neoconservative tax cuts for big business and the rich have helped the economy, and the people broadly, or not. Clearly they have harmed both.

What the left needs to say, therefore, is, Look, we know that more than four decades of neoliberal and neoconservative policies, including massive tax cuts, bailouts and subsidies for big corporations and the richest 1%, have balooned the debt load, and gutted the economy as well as the middle class.

We will give you your payroll tax cut, because that helps small and medium enterprises and will create jobs. But we demand an end to the feeding trough of multi-trillion dollar give-aways to big business, in the form of bailouts, subsidies and tax breaks.

Again, we are aiming for a balanced budget here, remember, as well as job creation.

Imagine the right being accused of budgetary indescretions, which of course they are notorious for, with corporate tax cuts and subsidies and military/police state spending far outweighing any savings from slashing much-needed programs that help and protect the environment, the poor and the middle class.

Imagine the left being the ones fighting for budgetary sensibility, and showing the right to have been full of deceit on that count for decades.

Now that would be an intelligent policy for the left. But that’s not what we see. We see unthinking knee-jerk reactions, and a patchwork of ideas with no systematic or even truly strategic approach. This must change, and now.

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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 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.

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 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 5, 2020

Hurray For the Daft! (That’s Us)

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(My apologies for the strange formatting again – WordPress gets glitchy on me and refuses paragraph spacing, forcing me to use awkward-looking stars. Bear with me.)

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The left is loudly proclaiming, amidst the coronavirus (largely manufactured disaster capitalism) disaster: bail-outs for the people not the corporate elite, health care for all – and a green new deal!

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Yes, that is entirely sensible. But what about civil liberties for all, basic constitutional law, and functioning democracy, all of which requires a functioning resistance to the clear and present, unfolding imposition of neoliberal fascism, as a solution for a vastly exaggerated health crisis – fascist measures which are not likely to be reversed after the crisis has passed.

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Without those three things – civil liberties for all, basic constitutional law, and functioning democracy – all your wishes and demands – for universal health care, aid to the people and not just big business and the rich, and a green energy infrastructure and jobs program – are just pipe dreams.

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With real democracy these things and more are all possible. Without standing up for these three essentials, they are nothing but that – pipe dreams.

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But to ask the left (or “progressives”) for presence of mind is something that is too much to ask, it seems. They can quote Marx, but they really need to be quoting Huxley, Orwell, or Thomas Jefferson right now – and they seem to realize it not, but are oblivious.

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It is well-documented that US and other Western elites have armed, trained, funded, used, and colluded with Islamic terrorists for murderous geopolitical and imperial objectives for decades. There is no question that Western elites have for decades, and repeatedly, lied to the people, falsified evidence, colluded with terrorists, and engaged in mass murder for oil and other resources, while imposing a kind of global economic apartheid and predatory economic imperialism upon the world, resulting, among other things, in the on-going deaths of 20,000 children per day due to hunger, in a world that produces enough food for all. Yet the people broadly, and the left in particular, are quite cheerfully willing to believe that the same Western elite are telling the truth now, while they use the present coronavirus crisis to usher in literally fascist measures, and to believe that they have only a deep and abiding concern for human health as their motivation. Clearly the people, including the left, have lost all capacity for rational thought, and have temporarily lost their minds.

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We need a little more Sun Tzu, and a little less Homer Simpson here, people. Think! Wake up! Question!

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If this doesn’t soon change, we are doomed to slavery under a corporate-run, technocratic, neo-feudal Orwellian order which I and others have warned about for decades – and it will not be pretty, I assure you, but will make COVID-19(84) look like a child’s picnic.

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Unless, of course, this is just the warm-up, the prelude to the final putsch: in which case, the people are being conditioned to accept “emergency” fascist measures, so that whenever the elite feel the need, they can flick the switch again – and this time, people disappear for good, and en mass (think Jakarta, or labour camps) – dissidents, activists, anybody who gets in the way or opposes the elite’s rule in any way. And nobody questions enough to stop it, until it is too late. If that is what we are experiencing, it is perhaps even more dangerous.

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In any event, complacently and meekly, slavishly, obediently, foolishly allowing our civil liberties to be stripped away, while sweeping, literally fascist powers are granted to, or usurped by, elites both West and East, is terrifyingly dangerous in the extreme.

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We should not be so foolish as to be complacent about this. How much can that be emphasized? Not possibly enough.

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JTR,

April 3, 2020

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Post-Script:

Naomi Klein wrote the book that best describes what we have been experiencing since 9/11, with the “war on terror”, the “regime change” wars that resulted, and the war on democracy which it represented, and the rise of disaster capitalism – The Shock Doctrine: the book that still, to my mind, best describes what is happening right now. We need to make sense of this, in the most obvious sort of way. How is this not obvious that it is another power grab? A real event, hyped to the maximum degree possible, is being exploited by power hungry elites in the West, as in the East. This is not complicated to understand.

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PSII: Karl Marx, as well as being brilliant (as a sociologist, though a daft philosopher and a terrible political theorist), was fiery as well. He managed to piss off virtually the entire left of Europe. But a fiery spirit goes with the left, generally speaking. Look at Tommy Douglas, or Martin Luther King Jr. These guys were not pussy cats. Fiery is what we need. So, sorry if I ruffle feathers at times. It is not my intention, but it is sometimes unavoidable. Truth comes first. Always.

Trump Says Up, You Say Down: Psyops 101

The deep state steers Trump. Smart move would be to nudge him to dismiss the coronavirus as over-hyped. Then the lemmings will trip over themselves to avoid guilt by association. But even idiots can be right sometimes, remember. Even a broken watch tells the right time twice a day. But the centre and left reacted like Pavlov’s dogs. Now they are loathe to admit they made a mistake, so they refuse to look at facts, and dig in. The majority are easily manipulated by elites playing power games…. It’s terrifying how easily the majority can be manipulated. That is the real danger.

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Trump is a tool of the Deep State. He thinks he’s a brave rebel, at war with the Deep State. Or so he thought until the generals schooled him. Now he obeys orders.

Trump may be unpredictable and a loose cannon, but by and large, the Deep State has him firmly under control. They steer him, letting him believe he has far more power and autonomy than has actually has. He is another pawn – a pawn they wish to remove from the board, but a pawn so long as he is in play, nonetheless.

That considered, and that summary of Trump and the Deep State is pretty much unquestionable, it is interesting to note how an intelligent psyops campaign might be played out, if the ruling neoliberal elite wanted to:

a) get rid of Trump; and more importantly,

b) distract the people from the major crises –  the economy, poverty, inequality, injustice, climate change, pipeline protests, an explosion of protests world-wide, simultaneous with growing oligarchic and fascist powers, class warfare, imperial wars abroad, and the rapidly growing crisis of legitimacy of the ruling elite and the entire global corporate oligarchy – distract the people by a greatly exaggerated public health crisis (see my earlier articles, especially, Coronavirus: Facts & Fallout); and

c) use the public health crisis as a way to further intensify class warfare, crash the economy for this purpose, and loot the people further, in the process hopefully removing Trump in the 2020 election, and bring about police state measures in response to the largely manufactured crisis.

Nudging Trump to initially dismiss the virus as greatly overblown – which it is (see WSJ article, re-posted on my blog, written by Standford University professors, saying exactly this); and now to signal he wants an end to “social distancing” soon; would have the predictable response from the centre and left: they would, and did, trip over themselves stampeding to avoid any association with Trump.

Trumps says Up, so we say Down. Trump says black, so we say white. Trump is crazy, scary, stupid, and bad (all true) so we must disagree with everything he says (a foolish and childish reaction).

Everyone in the centre and on the left wants to avoid guilt by association with Trump. It is an unconscious but powerful reaction. Trump says X; Trump must be wrong, always; so we say Y.

But remember, even idiots are right sometimes. And even a broken clock tells the right time twice a day.

Look at the evidence. Avoid knee-jerk reactions. We are being manipulated, and played.

Investigate. And think for yourself.

The centre and left are acting like Pavolv’s dogs. They are cheerleading for a narrative that is demonstrably false, proven false by the facts; and worse, they are cheerleading for the removal of our rights and freedoms, and the imposition of a police state.

“The men the American people admire most extravagantly are the most daring liars; the men they detest most violently are those who try to tell them the truth.” – H. L. Mencken

“We Americans are the ultimate innocents. We are forever desperate to believe that this time the government is telling us the truth.” – Sydney Schanberg

“If you think any American official is going to tell you the truth, then you’re stupid.” – Arthur Sylvester, assistant secretary of defense for public affairs, to American journalists, 1965

“This is a business-run huckster society, whose cardinal virtue is deceit.” – Noam Chomsky

“During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act.” – George Orwell

Can you spell, (self-) L-O-B-O-T-O-M-Y?

At present, to repeat, the centre and left are being misled and manipulated, en mass, into:

a) accepting a narrative which is patently false (remember Saddam’s WMDs?), and does not fit the facts (see the Italian government’s study on the true death toll from the coronavirus, and the WSJ article by two Stanford professors);

and, more terrifyingly, into:

b) screaming loudly in defense of a normalization of the very authoritarian measures they should be fighting against.

Now that is a psyops/propaganda/social engineering coup.

Let us pray it is short-lived, and the people recover their senses, and their sanity, and soon.

JTR,
March 27, 2020

Revolution and Uniting the People: Bernie Sanders, Thomas Jefferson and FDR

 

I would say that Bernie Sanders is not only a good candidate for US President, and beyond that, the only serious candidate for the people, since he is the only one who is not thoroughly indebted to the Wall Street money masters, owned by Wall Street, and in service to Wall Street; but he would be the best US president since FDR, and arguably, since Thomas Jefferson.

 

Of course, it is Congress which holds the greater power, and not the President, but having a true populist progressive in the White House would be an enormous stride in the right direction – especially when it is one who is so passionately and fiercely determined to reign in Wall Street and get big money out of politics.

 

I realize that conservatives tend to despise FDR, or at least despise his policies, but they should remember that it was FDR’s policies which got the US out of the Depression, put millions of Americans back to work, and, along with the labour movement, helped to create the middle class – which is now being systematically eliminated by the neoliberal/neo-fascist/globalization policies of the super-rich billionaire class of business elites, the very people that both FDR and Bernie Sanders so fiercely oppose.

 

(And no, war did not end the Great Depression, as some people imagine. The policies of FDR, and his very real stimulus package, which built or re-built the US infrastructure and put millions of people back to work (unlike the current neoliberal “stimulus” packages which rob billions and trillions of dollars from the treasury and the people and give it to the super-rich banking elite) is what began the long road to US and global economic recovery. Once the economic recovery was underway, WWII began, and the US prospered from it – mainly for three reasons: one, the US did not suffer the disastrous effects of waging a war on its own soil, as the European powers did; two, after the war, the US emerged as the world’s “first truly global super-power” and globally dominant power, precisely because war had left the great powers of Europe in ruins; and three, because US business elites profited handsomely by trading with the enemy, (that includes George Bush’s grand-daddy, Prescott Bush) and by selling to both sides – for example, IBM providing the office machines and data management for the extermination camps and gas chambers. War is disastrous to economies invariably, except for these very unusual conditions, and in any event, the economic recovery was well under way before the war even began.)

 

More to the point, the majority of Americans, well over 70%, are not conservatives, but center-left in their views, as poll after poll has shown for decades – so if Bernie Sanders does become the next President of the United States, conservatives will simply have to – pardon my expression – suck it up.

 

But it is also a fact that many sensible conservatives, and even many sensible Republicans – and yes, there is such an animal, believe it or not – support Bernie Sanders, or at least respect and admire him for his integrity, and his honesty and courage. They may not like all of his policies, but they realize that he is the best choice available at this time, and the only candidate who is willing to stand up to the greatest threat facing the country and the world – Wall Street and the international corporate elite. The more sensible also recognize that the Republican candidates, along with Hilary, represent the interests of the same crypto-fascist (and more and more brazenly fascist) corporate oligarchs and plutocrats. In short, Bernie is not only the best the people have at this time – he is all the people have at this time, at least in terms of presidential candidates.

 

“Before you Republicans and Hillary supporters say anything about Bernie, let’s look at his history. He was the only one in Senate to stand up for gay soldiers in 1995. He actively participated in the Civil Rights Movement along with Martin Luther King Jr. He voted against the Iraq War. (Which Hillary still considers a “mistake”.) He practically predicted the Wall Street Crash of 2008.He has been consistent with his political views for the past 30 years [and] ever since he joined the senate. He is the longest serving independent in Senate history. He believes climate change is the most threatening problem we have today. He has over a million individual donations from actual people donating whatever they can to support the campaign without any Super PACs. (Rest of the candidates would be struggling to equal Bernie’s collections without SuperPac money.) I just have to say Bernie is the real deal. Believe it or not.” – Arnav Garg

 

Actually, it’s 2.5 million individual donations now, which Bernie has raised, averaging less than $30. (And Bernie is setting all new records for the fastest rate of raising individual donations in US history.) All the other candidates are deeply indebted to Wall Street, and in service to Wall Street. Bernie is the only serious candidate for the people. Period.

 

‪#‎FeelTheBern‬

What is more, now that Bernie Sanders has begun to unite progressives, liberals, the left, environmentalists, labour, large segments of the black community, including, most notably, leading black American scholar and activist Cornel West, along with many sensible conservatives – due to his fierce opposition to Wall Street, big money in politics, and the increasingly fascist police state which Bush and Obama have created – Bernie stands a serious chance, not only of winning the next US presidential election, but winning by a landslide – as he should.

This is enormously significant: Robert F. Kennedy, leading black American activist and scholar Cornel West, and now, the major US progressive organization, Move On, amongst many others, including diverse figures ranging from actor John Cusack, UFC fighter Ronda Rousey, to the Red Hot Chili Peppers, have come forward to endorse US President – oops – US Presidential candidate, Senator Bernie Sanders.This could be the straw the breaks the back of the ruling political elites and their Wall Street masters, and puts a true progressive populist democrat into the White House. Let us pray we are so lucky – or so determined.

 

“MoveOn has spent more than 17 years bringing people together to fight for progressive change and stand up against big money interests. MoveOn’s fight to give the American people a voice in our political system was reflected in the group’s internal democratic process. I’m humbled by their support and welcome MoveOn’s members to the political revolution.”

– Bernie Sanders, As reported by Fortune Magazine

(I would like to see Bernie seek out and receive the support of Ron Paul, by the way: the maverick, anti-establishment conservative Senator who consistently fought for the people, and against the same crypto-fascist, pro-war, neo-feudal big money interests which Bernie so strongly opposes – a person who has tremendous integrity, and who also has tremendous support among conservatives and many thoughtful people on the grassroots right. This, Sanders should do, and do immediately, and this support he should gain. Someone please notify Ron Paul that his help is needed here, and now.)

I also realize the some people on the left are very critical of Bernie Sanders, feeling that he is not radical enough for their liking. But while such individuals have valid points to make, and useful criticisms, they too will, I am afraid to say, and will bluntly say, have to suck it up, because the policies of Bernie Sanders, while they do not go far enough in some important ways, not only represent a very good starting place, but are also supported by the majority of Americans.

The criticisms from individuals on the left with regards to Bernie’s foreign policy, where he is admittedly weak, are particularly valid and important; but frankly, despite that valid criticism, I think that Bernie’s critics on the left are not only throwing the baby out with the bath water, but are simply out to lunch, and out of touch with reality. And there is one simple reason for that statement.

At this time, when a crypto-fascist corporate oligarchy has taken over the nation, as well as the economy, the financial system, the monetary system, most of the media, the culture and the political process, there are only two options available to the American people – at this moment at least. One is revolution – and as much as I have been urging revolution, I do not think that there is reason to believe that the American people are yet ready for it. The other is Bernie Sanders. Say what you will about Bernie, but he is the best hope for America at this time.

Do I think that Jill Stein would make a better president than Bernie Sanders? Possibly she would. Do I think that Jill Stein has any chance of becoming president at this time? No. Therefore, I will support Bernie Sanders, as the only legitimate choice amongst candidates who stand any chance of winning the election – and again, a person who would make the best president since FDR, if not Thomas Jefferson. Is he perfect? No, but I, for one, am not looking for a messiah, but simply a person who will serve the people, as Bernie Sanders has done for over 30 years, and will continue to do. There will always be critics. Let’s just get the job done, shall we, and get on the with urgent business of creating, at least a starting point, for some urgently needed social change.

What would be wise for Bernie to do is to continue to reach out to the black and Hispanic communities, immigrants, progressives, labour, environmentalists and the left, as well as independents; but also to reach out to sensible conservatives and people on the grassroots right, who share his passionate opposition to the domination of Wall Street and corporate America over the economy, the political process and the country.

If he does this, Bernie Sanders may very well become the next president of the United States. And that, I would say, would be a very good thing, and the beginning of some very hopeful, and very real change.

J. Todd Ring,

January 12, 2016

 

For more analysis and social commentary, see my recently published book, Enlightened Democracy: Visions For A New Millennium – available now on Amazon.com.