"He (Donald Trump) took a wrecking ball to democracy." No truer words were said. And as you have pointed out so eloquently, Mitch McConnell is the one who paved the way so the wrecking ball could create the most havoc.
Everybody who works for a paycheck is in the same class, and the sooner we realize it, the sooner we can unite and move forward. There is no poor, working class, and low, middle, and upper middle class. Carving the majority up and making some believe they are superior to those economically below them keeps the majority from realizing it is a class war with only two classes; the majority of us against the tiny oligarch class. Everyone economically above the poor can participate in the game of victim blaming that keeps capitalism solidly within our culture. When we continue to falsely believe this is the land of opportunity, and that anyone can succeed if they work hard enough, we perpetuate the myth of capitalism. We sacrifice the potential for decent lives for everyone without excessive stress and anxiety, to the morbidly rich who have created a system that sucks wealth from the bottom to the top.
I grew up in the Marble Hill Projects of the Bronx, (1950s)then moved to Manhattan. In those old days, there were real LEFTIES who made a difference in our day to day lives, because they were not beholden to corporate interests.. a few names come to mind: Congressman William Fitz Ryan, Bella Abzug...They fought hard for the common good, for fair wages, decent housing, and for PEACE.
Thanks for this terrific little capsule of political history. The working class/privileged class divide has indeed fostered Trumpist fascism. But in my opinion, the urban/rural divide is the even greater one. Look at the election results in every state. Not only did the professional/academic "elites" overlook the working men and women, they also paid no attention to the multiple disasters occurring in small town USA. The monopolization of the economy ruined these places and put millions of ma and pa enterprises out of business. Offshoring closed the factories. Meanwhile, the precocious children of privilege chose careers in financial services or (financial/tax) law instead of entering the sciences or humanities...because that's where the obscenely big bucks were to be made. And they made them, helping to shutter those factory gates and send small town shop owners into Chapter Eleven. The New Leftists then compounded this error by adopting a rampant "new socialism" that is ridiculously anti-small business. They don't speak at all to the remaining rural entrepreneurs, who could be their most likely strongest base of support. Who better to champion Medicare for all and get the burden of employer health insurance off their backs? Color me a very disappointed Bernie Bro for his abject failure in reaching out to small business owners, and his singular focus of labor organizing for "the masses". Both are needed! A guy like Pete Buttiegieg understands rural voters...but look at his own career path, for crying out loud! A guy like John Fetterman is absolutely the gold standard in "getting" what I'm talking about.
Keep in mind, the cadences and body language Trump uses are hypnotic, medically in fact. Hitler too, used these techniques, of which he was familiar due to his treatments and study after WW1. And we have it on good authority that Trump owned a copy of those speeches, and actually CAN read and study things that boost this con-artistry.
I am an amateur hypnotist, and have been since my college days many years ago. Watching Trump use these techniques is obscene and repulsive, for he uses them to boost his sociopathic greed for power, just as Hitler did. Beware
The 1968 Chicago police riot is, for me, when the economic and social progressives divorced. Bernie Sanders tried to reconcile the two, but he was shunned by a party run social progressives whose identities dated back to the 60s.
The 1976 Buckley v Valeo "money is speech" decision was another watershed moment. It made the full implementation of Lewis Powell's manifesto possible by opening the floodgates to a deluge of corrupting money. The common situs picketing bill went down in flames just a year later when the Democrats controlled the Congress and the White House. The major impact of that decision was not on the Republicans - it was on the Democrats who were exhorted to move right on economic policy by Congressperson Coelho. Most of the Democrats heeded his call.
We got Bill Clinton who renounced the New Deal when he said the era of big government is over in his second inaugural address. History would have been nicer to him if he had tried to renounce neoconservatism, but he embraced it instead. That reinforced the 1968 divorce. He came from humble roots, but was Ivy League and Mrs. Clinton projected an even more elitist aura. The working class was not in the back of the Democratic bus. It was thrown off. Mr. Obama went down the neoliberal road. I believe he was a sincere and committed neoliberal.
A characteristic of social progressivism is identity politics. Mr. Obama made a historic breakthrough, but non-affluent people of all races were essentially ignored. The inability of both parties to address growing economic issues created a groundswell of populism manifested by Messers. Sanders and Trump. One thing that did happen, represented by Sanders, is small donor activity that the aristocracy is countering with more money. We now have a situation where billionaires need to fork out millions to control politics. Mere thousands no longer suffice.
So now we have Peter Thiel decreeing that democracy and freedom are incompatible and Elon Musk appears to harbor similar feelings.
Richard Nixon created the modern GOP - racist and willing to do anything to win, like prolonging a war, keeping hostages caged up in Iran, or fomenting a putsch. Moscow Mitch acted in that spirit to pack the court acting in concert with Der Gropenführer. Republicans appear to be driven by fear of what will happen when white people become a minority and they are resorting to extreme anti-democratic measures. The Supreme Court is poised to let them do it. And the billionaires are ready to finance it.
The biggest wreck is the Supreme Court, being 'bought', and ignoring the rule of law by enabling Traitors and criminals in government, and the DOJ; not doing its job. The 'fourth estate' with no guardrails is complicit with the obscenely wealthy, who have done the buying of 'our' government, and media ;
The new left has also been hijacked by corporate money and shoved further right by the Republican Party, which is now completely unhinged. Both parties cater to corporate agendas. Unless elections are publicly financed, this problem will persist. Corporate agendas have also infiltrated education, undermining critical thinking. We may have more college degrees, but remain remarkably unenlightened. That is one of the reasons we don't have leadership up to the task. We need standards for holding political office and standards for the right to vote. This experiment in democracy is on life support.
"The goal of man and society should be human independence: a concern not with image of popularity but with finding a meaning in life that is personally authentic;
a quality of mind not compulsively driven by a sense of powerlessness, nor one which unthinkingly adopts status values, nor one which represses all threats to its habits, but one which has full, spontaneous access to present and past experiences, one which easily unites the fragmented parts of personal history, one which openly faces problems which are troubling and unresolved; one with an intuitive awareness of possibilities, an active sense of curiosity, an ability and willingness to learn.
This kind of independence does not mean egotistic individualism—the object is not to have one's way so much as it is to have a way that is one's own. Nor do we deify man—we merely have faith in his potential."
I had to go search out the full quote. Amazing.
As an external observer of American society this part leapt of the page..."This kind of independence does not mean egotistic individualism—the object is not to have one's way so much as it is to have a way that is one's own.".
America's mythologising of the Western frontiers "rugged individualism" is unlike that in any other Western society, and has sadly morphed into "rights without responsibilities". Even here in the UK, there is much more focus on what's "fair" for everyone and the health of society as a collective good than just what's good for "me, me, me".
Other Nordic and European countries are even more collectivist whilst still maintaining a fierce independence. (Top tip - don't call a Finn a socialist or a Communist if you want to get out of the bar in one piece...).
It's not difficult to hypothesise the benefits to the oligarchy in power via atomizing society and destroying the collective - "divide and conquer" is probably the oldest warfare strategy known to man.
It's the fact that Americans believe the myths and cling so fiercely to the very thing that's (literally) killing them that the rest of us find so difficult to understand, particularly when it's killing us along with it.
Wow. I haven’t seen any mention of the Port Huron statement for decades. As a near contemporary of Tom Hayden at the University of Michigan (who, oddly, I was discussing with a friend only yesterday) we shared a ‘course’ on political theory consisting of three students meeting in the professor’s office. I read the Port Huron statement in mimeo form in the spring of 1963.
The right wing was "grooming" a generation of working class middle Americans for decades. I remember my father laughing about how inept the post office was when FedEx was new, not because he'd had problems with postal service, just because it was being said to him through many avenues. AM radio was a big part, speaking to people who didn't identify with popular music and eager to stand in contrast with those who had been part of the 60s movements. Shortly after he turned 30 they were saying "never trust anyone over 30" and he resented them for years afterwards. I wish he'd had more opportunities to feel embraced and included.
You are telling the story of my generation as well. Even though I was born a few years later I know the events you're describing from a "front row seat", growing up in DC which was Ground Zero both for the Cuban Missile Crisis but also the political and economic events that unfolded. We all wanted a revolution: consciousness led, passionate for peace, respectful of difference and fair; but we now live in ashes of those flames. Can we come back to honouring the fundamental rights of all people? I hope so...
As usual, Dr. Reich you are spot on. I decried the abandonment of the blue collar worker by the Clintons who must have felt, like I heard at the time :"Who else are they [BCW] going to vote for?".
Well, 2016 showed why we should not turn away from the "uneducated" BCW.
Even with a Masters from a good university, I empathize with workers who have to scrounge: The middle class has disappeared under "trickle down economics".
"He (Donald Trump) took a wrecking ball to democracy." No truer words were said. And as you have pointed out so eloquently, Mitch McConnell is the one who paved the way so the wrecking ball could create the most havoc.
Everybody who works for a paycheck is in the same class, and the sooner we realize it, the sooner we can unite and move forward. There is no poor, working class, and low, middle, and upper middle class. Carving the majority up and making some believe they are superior to those economically below them keeps the majority from realizing it is a class war with only two classes; the majority of us against the tiny oligarch class. Everyone economically above the poor can participate in the game of victim blaming that keeps capitalism solidly within our culture. When we continue to falsely believe this is the land of opportunity, and that anyone can succeed if they work hard enough, we perpetuate the myth of capitalism. We sacrifice the potential for decent lives for everyone without excessive stress and anxiety, to the morbidly rich who have created a system that sucks wealth from the bottom to the top.
We're in this together.
I grew up in the Marble Hill Projects of the Bronx, (1950s)then moved to Manhattan. In those old days, there were real LEFTIES who made a difference in our day to day lives, because they were not beholden to corporate interests.. a few names come to mind: Congressman William Fitz Ryan, Bella Abzug...They fought hard for the common good, for fair wages, decent housing, and for PEACE.
Thanks for this terrific little capsule of political history. The working class/privileged class divide has indeed fostered Trumpist fascism. But in my opinion, the urban/rural divide is the even greater one. Look at the election results in every state. Not only did the professional/academic "elites" overlook the working men and women, they also paid no attention to the multiple disasters occurring in small town USA. The monopolization of the economy ruined these places and put millions of ma and pa enterprises out of business. Offshoring closed the factories. Meanwhile, the precocious children of privilege chose careers in financial services or (financial/tax) law instead of entering the sciences or humanities...because that's where the obscenely big bucks were to be made. And they made them, helping to shutter those factory gates and send small town shop owners into Chapter Eleven. The New Leftists then compounded this error by adopting a rampant "new socialism" that is ridiculously anti-small business. They don't speak at all to the remaining rural entrepreneurs, who could be their most likely strongest base of support. Who better to champion Medicare for all and get the burden of employer health insurance off their backs? Color me a very disappointed Bernie Bro for his abject failure in reaching out to small business owners, and his singular focus of labor organizing for "the masses". Both are needed! A guy like Pete Buttiegieg understands rural voters...but look at his own career path, for crying out loud! A guy like John Fetterman is absolutely the gold standard in "getting" what I'm talking about.
Keep in mind, the cadences and body language Trump uses are hypnotic, medically in fact. Hitler too, used these techniques, of which he was familiar due to his treatments and study after WW1. And we have it on good authority that Trump owned a copy of those speeches, and actually CAN read and study things that boost this con-artistry.
I am an amateur hypnotist, and have been since my college days many years ago. Watching Trump use these techniques is obscene and repulsive, for he uses them to boost his sociopathic greed for power, just as Hitler did. Beware
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychopathography_of_Adolf_Hitler
It was a very accurate trip down our political memory lane. Well done.
The 1968 Chicago police riot is, for me, when the economic and social progressives divorced. Bernie Sanders tried to reconcile the two, but he was shunned by a party run social progressives whose identities dated back to the 60s.
The 1976 Buckley v Valeo "money is speech" decision was another watershed moment. It made the full implementation of Lewis Powell's manifesto possible by opening the floodgates to a deluge of corrupting money. The common situs picketing bill went down in flames just a year later when the Democrats controlled the Congress and the White House. The major impact of that decision was not on the Republicans - it was on the Democrats who were exhorted to move right on economic policy by Congressperson Coelho. Most of the Democrats heeded his call.
We got Bill Clinton who renounced the New Deal when he said the era of big government is over in his second inaugural address. History would have been nicer to him if he had tried to renounce neoconservatism, but he embraced it instead. That reinforced the 1968 divorce. He came from humble roots, but was Ivy League and Mrs. Clinton projected an even more elitist aura. The working class was not in the back of the Democratic bus. It was thrown off. Mr. Obama went down the neoliberal road. I believe he was a sincere and committed neoliberal.
A characteristic of social progressivism is identity politics. Mr. Obama made a historic breakthrough, but non-affluent people of all races were essentially ignored. The inability of both parties to address growing economic issues created a groundswell of populism manifested by Messers. Sanders and Trump. One thing that did happen, represented by Sanders, is small donor activity that the aristocracy is countering with more money. We now have a situation where billionaires need to fork out millions to control politics. Mere thousands no longer suffice.
So now we have Peter Thiel decreeing that democracy and freedom are incompatible and Elon Musk appears to harbor similar feelings.
Richard Nixon created the modern GOP - racist and willing to do anything to win, like prolonging a war, keeping hostages caged up in Iran, or fomenting a putsch. Moscow Mitch acted in that spirit to pack the court acting in concert with Der Gropenführer. Republicans appear to be driven by fear of what will happen when white people become a minority and they are resorting to extreme anti-democratic measures. The Supreme Court is poised to let them do it. And the billionaires are ready to finance it.
The biggest wreck is the Supreme Court, being 'bought', and ignoring the rule of law by enabling Traitors and criminals in government, and the DOJ; not doing its job. The 'fourth estate' with no guardrails is complicit with the obscenely wealthy, who have done the buying of 'our' government, and media ;
Misinformation and disinformation abound.
The new left has also been hijacked by corporate money and shoved further right by the Republican Party, which is now completely unhinged. Both parties cater to corporate agendas. Unless elections are publicly financed, this problem will persist. Corporate agendas have also infiltrated education, undermining critical thinking. We may have more college degrees, but remain remarkably unenlightened. That is one of the reasons we don't have leadership up to the task. We need standards for holding political office and standards for the right to vote. This experiment in democracy is on life support.
"The goal of man and society should be human independence: a concern not with image of popularity but with finding a meaning in life that is personally authentic;
a quality of mind not compulsively driven by a sense of powerlessness, nor one which unthinkingly adopts status values, nor one which represses all threats to its habits, but one which has full, spontaneous access to present and past experiences, one which easily unites the fragmented parts of personal history, one which openly faces problems which are troubling and unresolved; one with an intuitive awareness of possibilities, an active sense of curiosity, an ability and willingness to learn.
This kind of independence does not mean egotistic individualism—the object is not to have one's way so much as it is to have a way that is one's own. Nor do we deify man—we merely have faith in his potential."
I had to go search out the full quote. Amazing.
As an external observer of American society this part leapt of the page..."This kind of independence does not mean egotistic individualism—the object is not to have one's way so much as it is to have a way that is one's own.".
America's mythologising of the Western frontiers "rugged individualism" is unlike that in any other Western society, and has sadly morphed into "rights without responsibilities". Even here in the UK, there is much more focus on what's "fair" for everyone and the health of society as a collective good than just what's good for "me, me, me".
Other Nordic and European countries are even more collectivist whilst still maintaining a fierce independence. (Top tip - don't call a Finn a socialist or a Communist if you want to get out of the bar in one piece...).
It's not difficult to hypothesise the benefits to the oligarchy in power via atomizing society and destroying the collective - "divide and conquer" is probably the oldest warfare strategy known to man.
It's the fact that Americans believe the myths and cling so fiercely to the very thing that's (literally) killing them that the rest of us find so difficult to understand, particularly when it's killing us along with it.
Wow. I haven’t seen any mention of the Port Huron statement for decades. As a near contemporary of Tom Hayden at the University of Michigan (who, oddly, I was discussing with a friend only yesterday) we shared a ‘course’ on political theory consisting of three students meeting in the professor’s office. I read the Port Huron statement in mimeo form in the spring of 1963.
Thank you for reminding me of those times.
The right wing was "grooming" a generation of working class middle Americans for decades. I remember my father laughing about how inept the post office was when FedEx was new, not because he'd had problems with postal service, just because it was being said to him through many avenues. AM radio was a big part, speaking to people who didn't identify with popular music and eager to stand in contrast with those who had been part of the 60s movements. Shortly after he turned 30 they were saying "never trust anyone over 30" and he resented them for years afterwards. I wish he'd had more opportunities to feel embraced and included.
Southpaws Rule, When you come to the fork in the road GO LEFT. Save our Democracy!
Putin has his Trolls working overtime to get the Donald elected.
You are telling the story of my generation as well. Even though I was born a few years later I know the events you're describing from a "front row seat", growing up in DC which was Ground Zero both for the Cuban Missile Crisis but also the political and economic events that unfolded. We all wanted a revolution: consciousness led, passionate for peace, respectful of difference and fair; but we now live in ashes of those flames. Can we come back to honouring the fundamental rights of all people? I hope so...
As usual, Dr. Reich you are spot on. I decried the abandonment of the blue collar worker by the Clintons who must have felt, like I heard at the time :"Who else are they [BCW] going to vote for?".
Well, 2016 showed why we should not turn away from the "uneducated" BCW.
Even with a Masters from a good university, I empathize with workers who have to scrounge: The middle class has disappeared under "trickle down economics".