Some of us live in hope that, when Donald Trump is gone, things will return to normal. That hope ignores what Chris Hedges has called a corporate coup d'etat. Paul Street builds on Hedges' analysis. There's a lot of magical thinking going on on the left:
Still, we on the left, what’s left of it, should nonetheless retain our capacity to be properly nauseated by a yard sign I recently saw in arch-liberal, super-blue Iowa City, Iowa. Surrounded by other, smaller signs with the names of a handful of dismal local and statewide Democratic candidates, it read “MAKE AMERICA GOOD AGAIN: Vote.”
Please. The notion that the richly bipartisan corporate totalitarianism of which Trump is the apotheosis can be reversed, and the nation made “good” simply by voting Herr Donald and the Republicans out of office is a childish fantasy.
That, too, is a Great Lie. As marchers celebrating a rare legal victory over a white supremacist U.S. police state in Democratically controlled Chicago chanted last month, “The whole damn system is guilty as Hell.” It’s the whole damn system that must be democratized from the bottom up. From the dismal dollar Democrats, The New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN, MSNBC, PBS, Tom Steyer, the Gates Foundation, the Brookings Institution, the CFR, the Atlantic Council, the Obama and Clintons on the so-called left, to the radically reactionary Republicans, the Koch brothers, the Mercers, the Heritage Foundation, the American Enterprise Institute, Fox News, the Weekly Standard, the Hudson Institute, the Hoover Institution, and the American Legislative Exchange Council, Breitbart, right-wing talk radio, the Sinclair Broadcasting Co., the Federalist Society and more on the actual right, imperialism, racial inequality and class rule have brought us to this menacing pre-fascist moment.
If there is any hope, perhaps it can be found in a blue baseball cap which I saw the other day. Its slogan was "Make America Think Again." Thinking -- critical thinking -- is on life support south of the border.
Image: Suzanne Churchill
4 comments:
I am eagerly awaiting the results of the midterms coming up, Owen. My suspicion is that if the Democrats do especially well, they will have far less incentive to turn away from their corporate embrace and will simply maintain the status quo and embrace a status quo presidential candidate in 2020.
That would be a huge mistake, Lorne. But, these days, wisdom does not appear to be alive and well in the United States. In fact, it appears to be endangered in lots of places.
I thought Trudeau would change the many people and things that Harper put into place. That proved to be a big disappointment!
The faces change, Rob, but -- like an infestation of cockroaches -- neo-liberalism continues to thrive.
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