Recent letters to TPP reminded me of an interview with the infamous Debbie Wasserman Schultz in the summer of 2016. Bernie Sanders was still in the race, so she was asked to explain the difference between a Socialist and a Democrat. She couldn’t answer the question.
There is no good answer, because the two are not mutually exclusive. Bernie Sanders calls himself as a democratic socialist, as in Medicare for All and free education. But he’s not calling for nationalization of major industries or land reform to transfer land from Big Ag corporations to farmers. At their inception, Social Security and Medicare were decried as socialism, and now they have the support of most Democrats and Republicans.
Trump and the Right might get some mileage with their base by identifying Democrats as socialist, but the label doesn’t matter, policies matter. Much of the stigma of socialism disintegrated with the collapse of the Soviet Union. More importantly, those born since the 1980s grew up, not with expanding post-WW II capitalism, but with stagnating neoliberal capitalism. Many of those have a more favorable view of socialism than capitalism.a
Neoliberal policies have left millions living paycheck to paycheck with little or no healthcare. Despite SNAP and subsidized school meals, millions remain food insecure. A $400 emergency bill cannot be paid. Now, the COVID19 virus puts everyone at risk, and those at the margin at most risk.
It seems all politicians are saying they want to help workers. The Republican Senate’s view is that if corporations are bailed out, their good fortune and profits will trickle down to workers when the pandemic is over. Until then, paltry cash payments that won’t cover even their rent can go to workers.
History teaches us how that ends up. Executive bonuses, stock buybacks, company profits and employees out of work. The 99% don’t have a seat at the table, and table scraps are not enough. Democrats need to fight for those who’ve been losing for the last half century. Democrats can’t be afraid of being labeled socialist, left-wing, or, like FDR, a traitor to their class. Altering a phrase from a former Republican presidential candidate puts the problem in perspective, the 99% are people too, my friend.
RICK PATELUNAS, Myrtle Beach, SC
Another casualty of coronavirus is that most of us have learned we are “non-essential.” nnWe always suspected. Still, we hied off dutifully to “work,” spinning our wheels, accomplishing tasks that didn’t matter, meeting deadlines that could have waited, to satisfy clients who likewise served no purpose to the economy beyond insular units of commerce.
Work is misrepresented to workers as expression of our choice and instrument of our freedom. The truly free, egalitarian cultures the world has known were the communal agricultural societies conquered by European powers in the last half of the last millennium. The conquerors installed their top-down model of rule.
Masters rule the masses with varying degrees of finesse. They might flatter the rubes that they are participants in a glorious moment of history, or gull us that we have a democratic voice in decision-making. The masters appear benign so long as the masses demonstrate obeisance to the Order. Workers who show up on time to unnecessary work, bow and scrape to superfluous superiors, and immerse in pointless activity, are as committed to “the way things work” as North Koreans gathered in the public square for Dear Leader’s birthday.
Coronavirus relief checks signal that powers-that-be are considering they may stop laundering their authority through the private sector. Socialism can be administered by autocrats as readily as socialists. The purpose is the same in either hands: to maintain useless people as units of consumption. The motives are different. Socialists believe we are entitled to the means (money) to life and liberty by right of our humanity. (The world doesn’t owe you a living, but humankind does.) Autocrats wield charity as a bludgeon to enforce loyalty. Alms must be earned by allegiance—at least acquiescence—to the Order. The “undeserving” are excluded to make the masses more grateful of their superiors and disdainful of their inferiors. Such a distribution preserves an autocratic regime in a democracy.
Trump has seized crisis as a platform to project his ego. Meanwhile, the late night comedians have been silenced. The great urban dailies are about to collapse for losing their sports sections. Trump can deftly apply bail-out trillions to electoral map advantage. And Democratic hopes for a mail-in ballot tidal wave will founder in an autumn of evictions and transience.
We are on the verge of a reign of idiot bullies that may last a thousand years. (They might adopt “Trump” as their title: Trump Donald Jr., Trump Palin, Trump Obama, and so on ...) Social justice revolutionaries used to threaten general strike! (I believe it’s still a crime to advocate one.) But that threat died when American workers lost the means of production to Mexico and the Pacific Rim. The threat we do possess, that is causing Wall Street panic, is debt strike.
M. WARNER, Minneapolis Minn.
Donald Trump’s rollback of approved mileage standards for vehicles on March 31 will not generate a huge outcry amidst the COVID-19 pandemic which is currently killing thousands of Americans while exposing the dark endemic underbelly of the United States broken health care system.
However, Trump’s catastrophic actions need to be highlighted and headlined for what they are-— pure evil. Only a delusional Fox News junkie with the IQ of room temperature can deny the damning reality of climate change. That we house and have and, in some circles, support a man who with precision and intent is systematically destroying the country’s meager safeguards against environmental Armageddon is a damning indictment of the American character.
Americans, and all global citizens need to understand one undeniable reality — regardless of the toll and cost and impact COVID-19 has on the world’s population — that impact, regardless of how horrific, will pale in contrast to environmental catastrophe if the likes of Donald Trump continue to have their way. And the one point that has to be headlined is this: these are not issues of “Conservative” vs. “Liberal.” We need to table that nonsense and leave that to the vacuous dolts who populate Fox and other corporate propaganda engines. These are issues of human survival. …
JIM SAWYER. Edmonds, Wash.
Concerning the article [“The real losers on Super Tuesday: Urgent Climate Action, Medicare for All, Anti-Plutocracy,” by Juan Cole, 4/1/20 TPP], I have my own slant on what happened on “Super Tuesday,” and its aftermath.
First — I am not a supporter of the scumbag presently occupying our White House — I’ve been a Democrat all my life.
But I think opportunists in the national Democratic Party used their influence to arrive at the outcome of their choice.
We all know two things to consider just before we look at what happene. The national Democratic Party never liked anything about Bernie Sanders from the get-go, (1) because of his independence, both in principle and (2) more importantly financially. They couldn’t control him like the much more moderate Joe Biden, for reason number one — and more importantly — for reason number two, and I think what happened is as damaging for our democracy as some other occurrences recently.
Effectively, by what happened, our primary election was bought as much as many people’s idea of Mike Bloomberg and the way they tried — unsuccessfully — to buy his way.
I see this as a major fault of the present political atmosphere. Money has way too much influence.
On the part of this publication and the media generally, I’ve not seen any mention of this influence, or what else we’ve lost because of it. I believe money had a major part in the eventual outcome and will, in the long run, come to be discovered.
I’m an 80-year-old nobody, but somewhere somebody ought to turn over some rocks to see what can be discovered. I htink there are rocks aplenty, and more obvious than we’d like to admit.
HENRY J. JASPER, St. Anthony, Ind.
Editor’s Note: Actually, the Sanders campaign outspent the Biden campaign by a more than two to one margin. According to Federal Election Commission data reported by OpenSecrets.org, as of the end of February the Sanders campaign had raised $179.6 million and spent $160.9 million, while the Biden campaign had raised $86 million and spent $74 million. Even with outside PACs figured in, Sanders and his supporters have spent $162.36 million supporting him, while Biden and his supporters have spent $84.77 million. Sanders got 54.18% of his money from small contributors (less than $200) while Biden got 61.88% of his contributions in amounts of $200 or more.
With the rise of the Far-Right and the Radical-Right, we have not only been experiencing the growth of “Survival-of-the-Fittest” Social Darwinist ideology in today’s Republican Party (especially in the US Congress) featuring their desire not only to cut and reduce spending on all of the federal government social programs that help the middle and lower classes (Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, college student loans), but we also get their growing cold-hearted desire to abolish all of them, which they try to keep a secret from the American people, as authors Jane Mayer and Nancy MacLean have well-documented by pointing out that they frequently use “stealth tactics” which are part of what Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman characterizes as their “Bad Faith.” They are joined in these practices by the national conservative news media and conservative “think-tanks” which are basically right-wing propoganda mills/factories.
After we successfully pull through this pandemic crisis, we can expect all of the above to set their sights in 2021 on going after the major federal government social programs especially Social Security (which they have always disliked the most) in their desire to make major cuts to them.
STEWART B. EPSTEIN, Rochester, N.Y.
From The Progressive Populist, May 1, 2020
Blog | Current Issue | Back Issues | Essays | Links
About the Progressive Populist | How to Subscribe | How to Contact Us