Month: March 2020

I never was a fan of Bernie.  Bernie has never been for me just a person.  Bernie is an idea.  No, Bernie is a philosophy to which, in almost all parts, I subscribe and to which I have been subscribed for most of my life.  That philosophy is about what Paulo
Freire calls humanization, about growth of human consciousness toward kindness and generosity, the purging of ruthless selfishness that can be achieved when people know they do not have to fight one another to get what they need because they have spent a good part of their time on earth findings ways to insure that everyone has enough.  That is a sane and humane goal and by buying into it one is him or herself humanized, capable of and wanting to celebrate the wonder that is the human being, that being more fully realized each minute and hour and day by further discovery of the capacities of the human mind.

Bernie, the philosophy, is based in a profundity of empathy, a what hurts you hurts me sensibility that prevents the one doing harm to another one.  The individual is precious and the primary goal of government is to allow all to grow fully as individuals while supporting a system of constraints that individuals agree to impose upon themselves for the sake of a society that allows all amongst many to live as freely as possible.  The primary work of good government is to discover, promote, and perpetuate the common good, it, to a large extent, manifest in the freedom to think and form opinions that contribute to the formulation of policy–in the realm of the personal and in the realm of the societal–that makes possible the best conditions for the best possible life.

This is not the philosophy that guides shapes our current policies and the actions that result from those policies are patently inhumane.  One child starving as a result of policy or for the lack of humane policy indicates that humane society has not been achieved and, the ongoing creation of policy that is inhumane, according to our Declaration of Independence, violates nature’s law, makes for an unnatural and rancid society.

Some of us hate living in a rancid society in which many children and many adults, a great many too many when one is tragedy enough, are allowed under policy formulated by the governing to live miserable lives while, at the very same time, others live gluttonous lives, these made possible in good part by the misery of those others.  Bernie philosophy has it that this should not be.  Bernie’s take on the current reality is that the few have been exploiting, crushing the humanity out of the many, that many ever more so being excluded from participation in the decision making process by which their lives are shaped.

Cruelty was a part of Bernie’s defeat.  Selfishness was a part of Bernie’s defeat.  Fear of change when that one child and the many need the help of a humane society to be allowed to exercise their right to live decently.

America has always been about goodness and doing right. Platitudes!  Propaganda!  The big lie that somehow is effective in turning people away from seeing the nastiness of American reality.  Last democratic convention, the good old boys and girls that pushed for Hillary constantly repeated the phrase “America is already great.”  It was a lie.  None there could have believed it if they possessed the least bit of humanity, if they cared at all about the plight of the suffering of that many harmed by the greatness of the system they wanted to keep in place.  It was an inhumane chant meant to cause people to vote for a twisted reality that would work to serve the interests of those with their bellies already full at great cost to those already hungry.

 

And you have succeeded. A good number of us know there is a better future than what has been so much of our past under both democratic and republican administrations, neither of the only two sides considerate enough of human needs and human pain to change the way this country operates.  Both parties fail in offering platforms humane enough for decent people to find enough good in them to really believe that after election poverty will be eradicated, fear for job security will be eliminated, a fair wage will be paid for a fair day’s wage, that health care will be made a right, that schools will be adequately funded, that measures will be taken to defang the rich by taking away their right to own the political system and most everything and everyone in this society.

Yes, some do sip hundred dollar a shot bourbon and some own beach homes worth more that the lifetime pay of several working because they have no choice but homelessness and starvation to work for what they can get.  Last round of primaries made anointment by the Democratic Party of a right of center candidate a done deal.  The party rallied to show enough hatred of the idea of real change to insure that capitalism would stand strong and continue to crush decent people in this country and abroad.  Joe did what he could to make the party line resonate in strongly implying that Bernie Sanders was not just a socialist but a communist and a friend of leaders of communist countries, countries they want people to believe are so terrible that no one wants to live in them.

Bernie, they advertised, is about dictatorship and this because he pointed to the truly humane things these horrible governments have done for their people like educate them, help them out of poverty–poverty encouraged by the capitalist west’s desire to have what ever these places had that was good and necessary in exchange for promises not to annihilate them. A capitalist dictator is always better than a compassionate socialist and no matter what a communist government does to feed and educate and give health care to more people in these countries than they ever had before, it is far worse that us, a country extremely rich that refuses to make life decent for good numbers of its people.

Can I forgive the democratic party and get on board after it won its way against me by winning the argument, not with good sense discussion of the truly pressing issues, but through fear mongering, creating a new red scare, this to protect what is not right and good but to protect what is wrong but serves the leadership and many of its supporters well.

Biden wants us, of course, to come together so we can defeat a man who is worse than him.  He is not good and many who have voted for him know this.  He is better than the worst and still not good enough.  That is the real tragedy of Trump who comes after Obama who came after Bush who came after Clinton.  The democrats, when they win, try be friends with those across the isle, many of whom are really for the same things–that good old American way that cheats labor so to keep those elegant cocktail on the veranda with movie stars and billionaires going.

I may have to bend and vote for Biden.  But I may not be able to unless he moves somewhat my way.  Want a fucking compromise, maybe if good enough.  Want submission to your cruel reality?  Go to hell.

Politics in a time of crisis such as the one in which we now find ourselves is critical to getting out of crisis and for minimizing the effects of future ones.  Yes, the capitalist system is failing everyone besides the capitalists who are bound to find a way, as they did with the 2008 financial crisis they created, to cash in on the misery of the multitudes.  Making profit is what they exist for, what shapes the ways in which they operate.  They are viciously opportunistic and this, is a disaster ripe with opportunity to turn a buck or many million bucks.  The president has shown that he will support these most inhumane amongst the species in every way he can and the democratic party’s anointed candidate to challenge him has a record that shows that he will side with the corporate interests whenever possible.  This crisis should tell people about what the economic system and its advocates have done to government that is supposed to be by and for the people, the whole of the people, for the common good.  For decades now, through republican and democratic administrations, the trend has been to cut government services and allow the private sector to have its way with the world, no government there to protect the people or hold back those who would harm them from doing them damage.  Joe, Hillary, and all those in the democratic party who have supported their “America is already great” approach to dealing with the issues that confront us have aided in destroying the safeguards against human abuse and neglect a government by a people with good sense would demand.  This centrist line is should be taken as a joke line, the joke on anyone who believes centrists want the kind of change needed to make this a decent society.  It is time for a revolution and for those who stand in the way to be given a hard push, hard enough to push them out of policy making.  No to Joe because Joe is not a good Joe, certainly not good enough for what ails us.

So Joe is straight forward Joe but the direction in which he is going and the place of truth from which he is coming are bound to get him in a lot of trouble when the great liar who is the current president has a bag of Biden lies to counteract his own.  And the Hunter thing!  Go after Trump on corruption and what do you think Joe will get if he does that?  Hillary had her bag of nasty memories.  Joe has his.  Better than a socialist though.  Because he is more electable.  What happened the last time around with a better than the socialist candidate ran into Trump?

Intercept video on truthful (that’s a lie) Joe.

Robert Reich@RBReich·1hbut we it will pay how forQuote Tweet

CNBC Now@CNBCnow · 2hBREAKING: Stocks jump from session lows as Fed announces it will pump more than $500 billion into short-term bank funding, expand types of security purchases

Krystal Ball@krystalball·16mSomething for the left to think abt. The reason everyone obsesses over the wants & needs of moderates is bc they r constantly threatening to vote for the other team/stay home. The party thinks the left will vote for them no matter what so we have 0 power & get treated like crap.

Joe is being anointed. No one supporting him who is sane believes him to be the best possible candidate for the office but, somehow he is the best the democratic party is capable of supporting.

It is time for a real third party, a party to build a truly humane platform to challenge all who wish to preserve the current rotten status quo.

Joe is better than Trump, not good, but the only other choice we have been given by this two party system.

The new party will not get in the way of Joe getting elected but will be there to keep pushing for the humane agenda, one that constantly reminds the world of the savagery of the current American capitalist system.

Kids in cages is beyond outrageous. Kids underfed and undereducated as part of the normal operations of a society that is abundantly wealthy is nothing but child abuse, neglect, criminality. That the democratic party ran a candidate last time who make the convention sing the mantra “America is already good” was a sign of how little it has to offer the cause of humanity.

Vote for Joe. Hold your nose and do it. Maybe get some anti-nausea and anti-anxiety pills for the debates and prepare for the real possibility that he will be made a fool by the great fool himself. A fear theater of the worst kind of absurd but what else do we have.

Thank you democratic party. Go to hell.

It will be a miserable night, I suspect, for people like me who see the current economic system as being unjust and inhumane and it will be miserable because the “reasonable” people out there cannot reason beyond the reality this society has created for itself, one that demands that in order for it to be good, some have to suffer, that the good of some is more important than the good of the whole.  I do not think that the rich are evil but that some rich people are too rich and use their wealth to leverage democracy to get more of what they want, this at the expense of functional democracy.  The article you sent me is about a type of analysis that serves well to say that, as Hillary did, America is already good or, at least, sill the best.  While they say this, there are so many elements of “even though” to either ignore or call inevitable that the claim of goodness is preposterous.  The reality of the consequences of those “even thoughs” for the people who suffer them are often ignored so that the good life can go on or the plight of the sufferers said to be their own damned fault when a little bit of sensitivity to their reality would tell the caring being that at best such is only partially true, in too many cases, those involving children and others a decent society would do everything to protect and make comfortable, wholly true and terribly disturbing.  So, with Joe we are going to be able to get along again and the isle will be crossed and hands shaken and backs patted to show unity restored—as if it ever disappeared, as if there ever has been a congress that is truly for all of the people, for the people more than the companies, for the people more than stockholders who often make more money off the work the workers do than the workers themselves.

Bernie is being made a joke and you can feel the anxiety of those who have and control dissipating.  Me, I do not know what to do.  For a moment I held some hope for a kinder, gentler America, a country I could like well enough because it had become humane enough to make it possibly for me to stop suffering from feeling empathy.  Sucks to it, I say.  What is mean and rotten will remain and the possibility of another Trump or worse will be more than real, the Bush after a right of moderate Bill Clinton, a Trump after the ever so good Obama.  I fear to think about what the after Biden will be.  I have every reason to believe that there is a good possibility that is better than Bernie will be even worse at winning against Trump than the last better than Bernie.

I am deeply saddened by America.

Electability! Trust Joe Biden to show up sound enough of mind to take on all that Trump will throw at him? To believe he is capable is delusional and terribly dangerous. But anything is better than one who would interfere with the good times of those enjoying the benefits of our capitalist wonderland. This appears in the Intercept which the good democrats will say is biased, this while watching MSNBC and CNN offer what is fair and balanced. Like a fox. https://theintercept.com/2020/03/09/it-was-democrats-and-their-media-allies-who-impugned-bidens-cognitive-fitness-yet-now-feign-outrage/

Howard, the media analysis of people like me is so disparaging and disrespectful that I feel so horribly alienated from the political system that I almost see no reason left to participate in it. Capitalism will blow up the world and who the fuck am I to stand in its way?