Reiterating something I have oft said, that Donald Trump is symptomatic of something that needs to be understood before meaningful chance can come about. It IS the economy and we have been very stupid about it for a long time, and when not so stupid, unwilling to do anything to deal with the wealth and the rest of us problem that is not a republican or democratic thing. It is not even an American thing anymore as our form of predatory capitalism has spread around the world and now, around the world, people’s lives are the property of those who run the global economic system. Why it is that we are not marching on the mansions, shutting down the streets of the chichi shopping district where a shirt for a thousand or a dress of a couple of hundred thousand is no big deal for the people who frequent such places, is a question whose answer might cause to rise the legitimate kind of outrage that might displayed to those who are beneficiaries of this hostile to humanity system. Yes, there are those who are wealthy and use their wealth to good ends but their possessing so much wealth as compared to the average citizen puts them in control of even that that pretends to be a humanely liberal agenda and, because the current circumstances both keep them wealthy and allow them to buy power, they are more likely to want the rest of us to focus on symptoms, our attention to such diverting us from thinking about problems central to the situation which have much to do with the fact that they are able to accumulate so much wealth and buy power with it.
Yes, there are a good many who live decent lives on the petty cash (in comparison) we are allowed but, and this should be obvious, we are not allowed enough to compete with the real haves for in the arena where societal decisions are made. By the people, as it works (or does not) now is not about a good many of the people and the absolutely absurd and inhumane aspects of our society and societies around the world exist because money speaks louder than good sense based in humanity. That has to change but there is hardly a voice that gets through (who owns the media?) that speaks to the issue of wealth and power. Those who try are relegated to the margins and at the margins, those voices are undermined by others at the margins who speak without much sense or sense of humanity.
I again feel it necessary to say that the current political scene lacks the voices of true liberals, those dedicated to taking things apart and putting them back together, whatever the cost, to build a society that is truly just and where fairness reigns because justice and fairness are essential to the humane society. We need new organizations, we need a new politics, we need a democratic society and, to think that we actually have one now is an illusion, one, I need say, perpetuated by the Democratic Party through its campaign of trying to convince people that America is actually doing very well (remember the convention speeches, all bubbly for all that had been achieved during the Obama and W. Clinton eras? How the fuck could it be that we are where we are now considering the liberalness of those administrations?).
America is not doing well and its not doing well is how things will be into the future unless we admit that even under the administrations of the best the Democratic Party had to offer, justice and fairness were hardly priorities.
