Here's an important article explaining the rise of wealth inequality in the US and its relation to Federal Reserve policy and the special global status of the dollar:
Become? It already is. The Democrats have made a massive miscalculation in opening up the southern border. Their intention, without question, is to alter the balance of the voting blocs around the country. What they are missing is that their policies of high taxes, high regulation, dangerous neighborhoods, poor policing, are precisely what these people are fleeing. They want natural rights, not more authoritarian leftism. They will become Republicans in the end.
“Remember this. The people you're trying to step on, we're everyone you depend on. We're the people who do your laundry and cook your food and serve your dinner. We make your bed. We guard you while you're asleep. We drive the ambulances. We direct your call. We are cooks and taxi drivers and we know everything about you. We process your insurance claims and credit card charges. We control every part of your life.
The heart of the nation lies in the working people. It's the working people that believe in God, country, family. The new left is skeptical (to say the least) about all three. It's not class defined by economics, it's class defined by culture.
'The Democratic Party...has embraced a progressive politics that jibes with the sensibilities of wealthy coastal elites—and has alienated pretty much everyone else.'
Ah, there's that word again. Elites.
So Let's see who some of these elites are - and - oops! Some of them are these new fangled 'populists'!
Hawley - educated at Stanford, Yale
Cotton - educated at Harvard
Vance - " " Yale
Romney - " " Stanford, Harvard
De Santis - " " Harvard
And there's gotta be a few hundred million dollars shared among them.
The idea that elitists are all from the Democratic Party is nonsensical. Or maybe because they're not 'coastal' - maybe that's why the above mentioned qualify as not being elitist. But these guys are as disconnected to the average worker as they come. I'll wait a bit to see what they do. Will they put their money where their mouth is? Or will they tumble back down to Trump's orbit and get exactly nothing done. My bet is on the latter.
Don't you think that Democrats jibing with the sensibilities of coastal elites would be synonymous with being allied to the Democratic tendencies of said coastal elites? Elites do not belong to the Dems - there are enough to go around, so that even the 'populist' wing of the GOP can claim a few. Quite a few. As in, let's jump on the latest train to victory. Elites, in other words, are meaningless to both parties. It's a false dichotomy, and quoted ad nauseam by journalism like this.
I have one delightful observation on this article. Classical education is NOT dead. Batya Ungar-Sargon is a young and talented reporter. She used an analogy of the Scylla and Charybdis. I really can't get over that. :) Beautiful. Maybe our civilization has a chance. Other than that, I agree with ALL her observations in this well-written piece.
The problem for progressives is America has created too many bourgeoisie, too few "proletariat" for the Marxists to deal with. Hence the open borders and attempts to limit voter verification.
Republicans are ALREADY the party of the poor and middle class. It started with Reagan and is now hitting stride. Every day more Blacks and Latino's are getting it.....so are white laborers even though the union's rich ruling class wants nothing to do with a party that is going to hold them accountable. 2024 will be another bite out of the Democrats arse. Marco now knows what to expect from The Donald....as do all the other challengers when the GOP nomination debates start......Donald is toast! He delivered the goods....but he shot himself in the foot too many times on his way out. Too much drama, the circus barker bit is old news. He'll get more time to golf.....and he rightfully deserves it.
The GOP has always been the party of the working class. Democrats just lied about that, among many other things.
Nothing in the Democrats agenda has ever actually been good for the working class. They just pandered to them and insisted that Republicans hate them, sort of like what they do with black people.
Marco Rubio is a joke. I only wish this article was.
Unfortunately, Ms. Ungar Sargon seems to be of a piece with many perfectly justified critics of wokeness who can't walk and chew gum at the same time. Who think that battling the illiberal pieties of the left requires turning a blind eye to the glaring dysfunction of the Republican Party, which currently threatens the very foundations of our democracy.
The Republican Party will not become the party of the working class, or of anything, really, until Donald Trump has finally gulped down one too many midnight cheeseburgers. This is a party *literally* without a platform outside of "we're with Trump". And Trump's regard for the working class is as fraudulent as everything else about him.
As for Rubio, his newfound "populism" is little more than political opportunism, representing a sharp about face from his previous Reagan Republican stances in his flailing attempts to re-invent himself after Trump cast him into emasculated irrelevance. And normally, I'd say fine - if that's what you want to fight for now, then do it faithfully.
But faithfulness requires trust and there can be no trust for Rubio who, like most Republicans, refuses to stand up to Trump and be honest with his constituents. He knows full well how dangerous Trump and his lies are to our republic and yet toes the line, still believing that he has a chance to become President one day. He's a craven coward, and you can't trust a coward.
And the white working class shouldn't be fooled - the Republican Party is still controlled by wealthy business interests, and acts like it. Rubio's freelancing is tolerated for the moment while the party deals with accidentally becoming a personality cult where the only rule is fealty to Trump. Don't expect the party as a whole to start getting behind legislation that benefits working class families. They've been building white working class support through cultural wedge issues since well before Trump, continued doing so while he was President, and will do so again if he wins in 2024, all while Trump entertains everyone with his clown show and we hope our government can withstand four more years of brazen lawlessness.
In fact, this article seems like little more than a continuation of that same pattern - take advantage of the Democrats' far left wing to convince working class people that Democrats are an existential threat to America and that Republicans are their savior. Valorize ignorance in the name of "freedom". I've been listening to this broken record for a long, long time. Not good, "Common Sense".
You nailed it. That said, the woke left is dangerous, too. And its driving the bus.
On issues, I'm liberal. But my upcoming votes won't be about issues, they'll be about which party will do more harm to this nation. That's never been the case before.
Blue collar workers have been shifting right for decades, all over the world. Conversely, elites having been shifting left for decades, all over the world. The 2019 election in the UK provides a good example. Corbyn lost ground almost everywhere and went down to a landslide defeat. However, he did better in districts with large numbers of students than elsewhere.
Labor even gained a seat in ‘fashionable’ Putney.
This is a consequence of a fundamental shift in the both the ‘right’ and ‘left’. The ‘left’ was once economically focused. Now racial identity politics dominates the left.
I'll leave it at this. I didn't leave the Dem party because of any of this. I left because a major/powerful part of the party is rabidly anti-Semitic (they'll tell me they're just anti-Zionist. They think I'm stupid). Progressives have undermined traditional liberals and my vote is up for grabs.
I can't stand and certainly don't trust the majority of the Republican party. But my vote will no longer be about various issues, it'll be fear-based, about which party/candidate does the least damage to the country. On that front, I'll note, that the history of nations which allow anti-Semitism to thrive is absolutely awful.
Do you honestly believe that it's fair to say that the United States "allows anti-Semitism to thrive"? We are a free country where the state does everything it can to discourage racial and ethnic hatred. We have a Constitution which explicitly protects freedom of religion and laws against hate crimes which punish more harshly when the attempt is to intimidate an entire group of people. And since the Civil Rights era, our ideals of pluralism and tolerance of ethnic/religious differences in this country have enjoyed strong and growing popular support.
Surely you're aware of where this country came from in terms of anti-Semitism. Prior to World War II we were rolling in it. Since then it has become such a scurrilous charge that a major television network just suspended a *black woman* in the midst of a so-called "reckoning" against anti-black racism for expressing a mistaken (yet no doubt commonly held) notion about Jewry not constituting a race (at least in the context of the Haulocaust).
In fact, since (I'm assuming) you're sympathetic to the "wokeness" skepticism that motivates forums like this (as am I) consider how, in the post-WWII era, American Jews enjoyed such a strong cultural aversion to anti-Semitism so as to impose a largely bipartisan stigma against criticism of Israel - one that has only recently shown some signs of eroding. This stigma has been, in many ways, quite similar to woke anti-racism, refusing to brook any criticism of Israel with the slightest whiff of anti-Jewish tropes - which tend to involve themes of money, power, and influence. Surely you see the problem here.
I don't blame you for abandoning a political party; personally I think they're poison. But as the recent Whoopi Goldberg incident illustrates, greater willingness to criticize Israel, however misguided it may be, does not translate into greater anti-Semitism. And healthier political discourse demands that we learn to distinguish the two better than we have in the past. That is the downside to having an ethnic democracy (which one could be forgiven for seeing a sectarian state) claiming to represent the world Jewish diaspora.
Actual anti-Semitism on the fringe of the American left is nothing new. Around the turn of the century, many of us were gobsmacked at how some in the Black civil rights movement expected us to take Lewis Farrakhan seriously as a leader. And it is certainly nothing new on the fringe of the American right, where white Christian nationalism has festered out of sight of the American mainstream.
The history of countries which have promoted anti-Semitism is indeed awful. The history of countries that have permitted it in any way is impossible to generalize, because it includes virtually every nation where Jews have ever lived - there is even anti-Semitism in Israel! But few countries can say they've done a better job of stigmatizing it than America. And there is a reason that American Jewry has long leaned to the left politically - because of an understanding of the importance of civil rights, free expression, and opposing discrimination. The existence of some pro-Palestinian bias in geopolitics is a natural outgrowth of that, and should be of no more concern than people on the right babbling conspiracies about "Jewish space lasers" or equating COVID vaccine proponents with Nazi scientists.
The word ‘race’ had a different meaning, back when Hitler spoke about Germans being the ‘Master Race’. Race was used back then, for what we would call ethnicity. For example, at one time, the British Army asked recruits to identify what ‘race’ they were. The choices were Scottish, English, Welsh, and Cornish. None of those groups would be considered to be a race today, An ethnicity? Perhaps.
These days, the word ‘race’ is used for continental sized population groups and ‘ethnicity’ is used for smaller subdivisions. None of these terms has an exact definition (even the biological term, species doesn’t have an exact definition).
Eric73, I would say that the US as a whole does not promote anti-semitism. However, it does thrive in some parts of the USA. Louis Farrakhan is very much a hero in some circles, even though he is both a Hitler admirer and a rabid anti-semite. However, the truth is actually worse. No less than Chelsea Clinton was berated for denouncing anti-semitism. Alice Walker is a vicious anti-semite and a hero in many circles.
The statement "We are a free country where the state does everything it can to discourage racial and ethnic hatred" is simply not true. A recent speaker at Yale gave a talk titled "The Psychopathic Problem of the White Mind". Not a single law-maker from either party denounced her talk. Racism is completely acceptable in the US today, as long as it is PC.
Do you think it is possible for someone to be anti-Zionism but not anti-semetic? And just out of further curiosity, do you think it is possible for someone to be anti the Jewish religion (e.g. they think the Torah is in general foolish or immoral and Judaism as a religion is unworthy of joining) and yet not anti-semetic?
"Do you think it is possible for someone to be anti-Zionism but not anti-semetic?" That's what the mullahs of Iran claim they are, and for that matter most of the Islamic world.
What the mullahs of Iran claim is totally irrelevant to whether a person can be anti Zionism and not anti Semitic. Just as it is totally irrelevant that David Duke might say he is anti Black Lives Matter but not racist toward black people. David Duke being against BLM doesn’t make everyone who is against BLM like David Duke. Just as because Communists didn’t like Nazis didn’t make everyone who was opposed to Hitler a Communist.
Would you like to answer my question directly now?
it is possible, but that isn't the norm. Anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism tend to be a bit like a hand and glove. Different, but they do work together.
If you looked at the polling around recent Palestinian election (which ultimately didn't happen), 3 groups led. Each advocating for the murder of Jews. One incorporates it into its charter, one pays people to do it and calls the murderers holy and the 3rd is in prison for his role in murdering 5 people. You rarely hear criticism of these policies by those critical of Israel.
As for religion, people are absolutely free to criticize it. There's lot in the Torah worthy of criticism. Much like there is lots in the US Constitution worthy of criticism. My own view of religion includes this: God gave you a brain, and expects you to use it. That said, criticism is different than hate or incitement.
How are you determining the norm? For example, you think among Democrats who are critical of zionism, it is the norm for them to be anti-semetic? I find that highly unlikely.
What does Palestinian politics have to do with whether Israel's policies toward ethnic Palistinians is racist and unjust?
For example, I can find the dominant political factions in Palistine worse than the dominant political factions of Israel, but still consider the dominant political factions of Israel racist. I can still think the US shouldn't be subsidizing a relatively wealthy theocratic ethnno state and also think that their enemies are worse. These are not mutually exclusive positions, thus there is no reason to assume that because a person condemns zionism that they also support dominant Palestinian political factions. Some people do, but that is just guilt by association.
When someone condemns Zionism, how do you determine whether that person is anti Semitic or just anti Zionism? That they don't condemn the dominant political factions in Palistine in the same breath? Do you think a person is racist against white people when they condemn white nationalism without condemning Louis Farakhan in the same breath?
Given the prejudices people have about people who condemn zionism, a person who does condemn zionism may be prudent to point out at the same time they also condemn the dominant political factions of Palistine, lest they are deemed an anti semite by some people. But, to avoid that prejudice may be as futile as a white person condemning blm and also condemning white nationalism. They will still often be called racist by people who support blm.
And there is also the fact that what is often deemed “anti semetic” by people who wish to express condemnation of the behavior and views of dominant Palestinian factions is actually animosity that is entirely directed at people who identify as religious Jews, and not people who are “racially” Jewish. If a person born into Judaism were to convert to Islam, the Muslims who have a hatred toward Jews may not have hatred toward that person. Hatred directed at Jews because of their religion is not racism, just as hatred directed at Muslims is not racism, just as hatred directed at atheists is not racism.
Hatred toward people because of their ideology while often immoral, is not *always* immoral, while hatred toward people because of their race is always immoral. Hatred toward Nazis because of their ideology is a favorite pastime these days, but hatred toward Nazis because of their race is immoral. People do not typically assume a hatred toward Nazis is sufficient evidence of hatred toward Germans though. It is quite common though to assume a contempt toward Zionism is sufficient evidence of hatred toward ethnic Jews — regardless of those Jews’ ideology. That is a type of hypocrisy.
Such conflation between animosity toward ideology and animosity toward race is quite common among proponents of some ideologies who want to shield their ideology from criticism though. That is both intellectually and morally bankrupt.
BLM and people who support BLM for example, do it regularly. People think because their ideology has included the word “black” in it, any criticism of it is therefore racist against black people. Its stupid.
If someone thinks the character of Jehovah in the Torah is evil and only worthy of condemnation and not worship -- do you consider that criticism, or hate?
I know that you quoted Rubio, but you reveal the same odd perspective that he does. Big fundraisers have always been made possible by people giving money to their own causes, not to any particular party. The gem is that those on the left have been able to slander those on the right as the only ones who did it. Even two decades ago, big fundraisers were held by rich people who ran big corporations and were equally connected to politicians, celebrities and the press - because of the "fundraisers." Prior to two decades ago, all of that "culture" was long dominated by Democrats. The only difference now is that they are more radical, more bigoted and more brazen with their authoritarian plans.
The notion that the bulk of critical goods be manufactured in the U.S. is sensible and every Republican I know has always thought so, and many Democrats. The Democrat politicos now think too much of all the money they could make with their insider trading and the personal enrichment by privileged access to the Chinese market. THAT was unthinkable two decades ago.
The Canadian truckers underscore what used to be shared American values - our freedom and the dignity found in work. Those are conservative values that many Republicans and Democrats alike embraced. The left has always exploited both.
The problem is that union membership in the private sector is 6 percent and falling. Apart from contractors, the GOP legislation championed by Rubio would not reverse that.
In my view there is no way to rebuild the collapsed system of enterprise unions (site or company based) under the NLRA. What is needed is sectoral collective bargaining. Better to build a completely new system of state wage boards like those in New York with representatives of labor, business and government setting wages, benefits and hours for specific sectors, starting with the low wage sectors first. All workers can enjoy the results without belonging to a union at all. The low wage sectors are mostly in the nontraded service sectors—janitorial, construction, nursing aides—so there is little danger the employers will flee a state with higher standards, unlike graded sector companies like aerospace.
Why are You idealizing the covid convoy occupation of Ottawa? These people are destroying as many businesses as the BLM protests did You mentioned by blocking access to them and You don't seem to have a problem with it. What they are doing is undemocratic and inexcusable and it's illegal too. Anyone who is trying to intimidate a democratically elected government and to terrorize innocent people is an enemy of freedom, be it BLM or be it the "convoy". We should all stand with our democratic institutions, which are under attack in Canada as well as the US or we may as well find ourselves some day oppressed by a GOP turned into a populist "worker's party" like the "National Socialist German Worker's Party" was back in its days. Exercising blunt racism, shutting down the free press, destroying anything that even remotely resembles democratic institutions and hating everyone who isn't them, just like the Trumpists have been doing over the last few years. The writing is on the wall, You just have to read it. Give in to fascism and history might just repeat itself. By the way....in the US the days, where elections ended with the defeated candidate conceding defeat and gratulating the winner are over for good. From now on every election result will be bitterly contested. Thanks to Your new "working class movement". Your democracy is already lying in ruins You just don't realize it yet. Up here in Canada we still have the chance to fight populism disguised as "working class rights" and defend our democracy and we will.
It is tiresome seeing “fascism” used as a catchall synonym for “something I don’t like”. Fascism is a specific thing with identifiable properties, none of which are evident in the trucker protest.
Actually, the Democrats are "like the "National Socialist German Worker's Party" was back in its days. Exercising blunt racism, shutting down the free press, destroying anything that even remotely resembles democratic institutions and hating everyone who isn't them." Canada is not a democracy. It is under the thumb of the petty tyrant, Justin Trudeau. Hopefully the truckers and their supporters will bring him to his knees, then move the convoy to Washington, D.C.
You obviously do not have clue what democracy is. You are openly promoting coups in Canada and the US to overthrow democratically elected governments to replace them with mob rule. People like You are tyrants in waiting. Justin Trudeau won the last democratic election just a few months ago fair and square just like Joe Biden did last year in the US where Donald Trump lost both the popular vote and the electoral college. You can either respect those facts, then You are on the side of democracy and freedom or You are an enemy of democracy and freedom.
Bernd, the truckers in Canada are not attempting a coup, or trying to overthrow the government; likewise protestors in the United States. They do not want mob rule. They want freedom from the tyranny of mandates and other unconstitutional abuses of power. In the US system power is supposed to flow from the people to the government, i.e. the government has only the power granted by the people it governs. Yet government at all levels; local, city, state and federal, especially in the so-called blue states, is claiming and exerting power that it does not have and has not been given. The truckers in Canada and the like minded in the U.S. just want their freedoms back. You seem to believe that democracy and freedom come from the government. True democracy and freedom comes from the people. We fought the Revolutionary War to overthrow the tyranny of the British government. Canada never fought that war.
A vaccine mandate for people who travel regularly through the entire continent and are therefore ideal spreaders of new covid variants is a necessary measure to fight the pandemic. It's no "tyranny" or "unconstitutional abuse". A weeklong blockade of supply lines and entire cities on the other hand is tyranny against the many by the few. It's a far bigger intervention into other peoples lives the a vaccine mandate. People cannot work, people cannot leave the house to work or shop, emergency services can't get through.....This is no peaceful protest. The opposite is true. There are numerous cases where peaceful protesters against the convoy and journalists are harassed by extremists amongst the truckers. The other day there was footage on TV where a trucker tried to push a bicyclists with his truck out of his way. I'm not saying all the truckers are violent extremists (most truckers in the country are against this blockades anyway and only suffer the consequences like losing income, which makes them victims of the illegal protests), but the time has arrived when originally well intended truckers should see what's truly going on here and leave to let the police deal with the hard core extremists in their midst who have phantasies of overthrowing a democratically elected government. What if everybody who is unhappy with a government decision resorts to the same tactics? Holding the entire economy and country hostage, blocking vital supply lines until the government gives in and the group gets its way? Say for example the truckers get their will and the vaccine mandate gets scrapped and the majority who supports this mandates uses the same tactics to get them back? Or environmentalists asking for tougher measures against climate change? Can't You see what this kind of street tyranny and mob rule can do to any country and its people let alone democracy itself? It would be the end of majority decisions and the start of the tyranny of those who have the most bullying power.
Here's an important article explaining the rise of wealth inequality in the US and its relation to Federal Reserve policy and the special global status of the dollar:
https://www.mauldineconomics.com/frontlinethoughts/financialized-everything
Become? It already is. The Democrats have made a massive miscalculation in opening up the southern border. Their intention, without question, is to alter the balance of the voting blocs around the country. What they are missing is that their policies of high taxes, high regulation, dangerous neighborhoods, poor policing, are precisely what these people are fleeing. They want natural rights, not more authoritarian leftism. They will become Republicans in the end.
Time to remember the words of Tyler Durden
“Remember this. The people you're trying to step on, we're everyone you depend on. We're the people who do your laundry and cook your food and serve your dinner. We make your bed. We guard you while you're asleep. We drive the ambulances. We direct your call. We are cooks and taxi drivers and we know everything about you. We process your insurance claims and credit card charges. We control every part of your life.
https://youtu.be/VVQX5fegiqs?t=43
They drive trucks too.
The heart of the nation lies in the working people. It's the working people that believe in God, country, family. The new left is skeptical (to say the least) about all three. It's not class defined by economics, it's class defined by culture.
'The Democratic Party...has embraced a progressive politics that jibes with the sensibilities of wealthy coastal elites—and has alienated pretty much everyone else.'
Ah, there's that word again. Elites.
So Let's see who some of these elites are - and - oops! Some of them are these new fangled 'populists'!
Hawley - educated at Stanford, Yale
Cotton - educated at Harvard
Vance - " " Yale
Romney - " " Stanford, Harvard
De Santis - " " Harvard
And there's gotta be a few hundred million dollars shared among them.
The idea that elitists are all from the Democratic Party is nonsensical. Or maybe because they're not 'coastal' - maybe that's why the above mentioned qualify as not being elitist. But these guys are as disconnected to the average worker as they come. I'll wait a bit to see what they do. Will they put their money where their mouth is? Or will they tumble back down to Trump's orbit and get exactly nothing done. My bet is on the latter.
You've beclowned yourself.
You quoted the fact that Democrats "jibe with the sensibilities of wealthy coastal elites and have alienated everyone else".
Then you attempted to contradict that statement by bait-and-switching a different statement - that "elitists are all from the Democrat Party".
Don't you think that Democrats jibing with the sensibilities of coastal elites would be synonymous with being allied to the Democratic tendencies of said coastal elites? Elites do not belong to the Dems - there are enough to go around, so that even the 'populist' wing of the GOP can claim a few. Quite a few. As in, let's jump on the latest train to victory. Elites, in other words, are meaningless to both parties. It's a false dichotomy, and quoted ad nauseam by journalism like this.
I have one delightful observation on this article. Classical education is NOT dead. Batya Ungar-Sargon is a young and talented reporter. She used an analogy of the Scylla and Charybdis. I really can't get over that. :) Beautiful. Maybe our civilization has a chance. Other than that, I agree with ALL her observations in this well-written piece.
The problem for progressives is America has created too many bourgeoisie, too few "proletariat" for the Marxists to deal with. Hence the open borders and attempts to limit voter verification.
Republicans are ALREADY the party of the poor and middle class. It started with Reagan and is now hitting stride. Every day more Blacks and Latino's are getting it.....so are white laborers even though the union's rich ruling class wants nothing to do with a party that is going to hold them accountable. 2024 will be another bite out of the Democrats arse. Marco now knows what to expect from The Donald....as do all the other challengers when the GOP nomination debates start......Donald is toast! He delivered the goods....but he shot himself in the foot too many times on his way out. Too much drama, the circus barker bit is old news. He'll get more time to golf.....and he rightfully deserves it.
The GOP has always been the party of the working class. Democrats just lied about that, among many other things.
Nothing in the Democrats agenda has ever actually been good for the working class. They just pandered to them and insisted that Republicans hate them, sort of like what they do with black people.
Marco Rubio is a joke. I only wish this article was.
Unfortunately, Ms. Ungar Sargon seems to be of a piece with many perfectly justified critics of wokeness who can't walk and chew gum at the same time. Who think that battling the illiberal pieties of the left requires turning a blind eye to the glaring dysfunction of the Republican Party, which currently threatens the very foundations of our democracy.
The Republican Party will not become the party of the working class, or of anything, really, until Donald Trump has finally gulped down one too many midnight cheeseburgers. This is a party *literally* without a platform outside of "we're with Trump". And Trump's regard for the working class is as fraudulent as everything else about him.
As for Rubio, his newfound "populism" is little more than political opportunism, representing a sharp about face from his previous Reagan Republican stances in his flailing attempts to re-invent himself after Trump cast him into emasculated irrelevance. And normally, I'd say fine - if that's what you want to fight for now, then do it faithfully.
But faithfulness requires trust and there can be no trust for Rubio who, like most Republicans, refuses to stand up to Trump and be honest with his constituents. He knows full well how dangerous Trump and his lies are to our republic and yet toes the line, still believing that he has a chance to become President one day. He's a craven coward, and you can't trust a coward.
And the white working class shouldn't be fooled - the Republican Party is still controlled by wealthy business interests, and acts like it. Rubio's freelancing is tolerated for the moment while the party deals with accidentally becoming a personality cult where the only rule is fealty to Trump. Don't expect the party as a whole to start getting behind legislation that benefits working class families. They've been building white working class support through cultural wedge issues since well before Trump, continued doing so while he was President, and will do so again if he wins in 2024, all while Trump entertains everyone with his clown show and we hope our government can withstand four more years of brazen lawlessness.
In fact, this article seems like little more than a continuation of that same pattern - take advantage of the Democrats' far left wing to convince working class people that Democrats are an existential threat to America and that Republicans are their savior. Valorize ignorance in the name of "freedom". I've been listening to this broken record for a long, long time. Not good, "Common Sense".
You nailed it. That said, the woke left is dangerous, too. And its driving the bus.
On issues, I'm liberal. But my upcoming votes won't be about issues, they'll be about which party will do more harm to this nation. That's never been the case before.
Become? It's long been the part of the working class.
Blue collar workers have been shifting right for decades, all over the world. Conversely, elites having been shifting left for decades, all over the world. The 2019 election in the UK provides a good example. Corbyn lost ground almost everywhere and went down to a landslide defeat. However, he did better in districts with large numbers of students than elsewhere.
Labor even gained a seat in ‘fashionable’ Putney.
This is a consequence of a fundamental shift in the both the ‘right’ and ‘left’. The ‘left’ was once economically focused. Now racial identity politics dominates the left.
I'll leave it at this. I didn't leave the Dem party because of any of this. I left because a major/powerful part of the party is rabidly anti-Semitic (they'll tell me they're just anti-Zionist. They think I'm stupid). Progressives have undermined traditional liberals and my vote is up for grabs.
I can't stand and certainly don't trust the majority of the Republican party. But my vote will no longer be about various issues, it'll be fear-based, about which party/candidate does the least damage to the country. On that front, I'll note, that the history of nations which allow anti-Semitism to thrive is absolutely awful.
Do you honestly believe that it's fair to say that the United States "allows anti-Semitism to thrive"? We are a free country where the state does everything it can to discourage racial and ethnic hatred. We have a Constitution which explicitly protects freedom of religion and laws against hate crimes which punish more harshly when the attempt is to intimidate an entire group of people. And since the Civil Rights era, our ideals of pluralism and tolerance of ethnic/religious differences in this country have enjoyed strong and growing popular support.
Surely you're aware of where this country came from in terms of anti-Semitism. Prior to World War II we were rolling in it. Since then it has become such a scurrilous charge that a major television network just suspended a *black woman* in the midst of a so-called "reckoning" against anti-black racism for expressing a mistaken (yet no doubt commonly held) notion about Jewry not constituting a race (at least in the context of the Haulocaust).
In fact, since (I'm assuming) you're sympathetic to the "wokeness" skepticism that motivates forums like this (as am I) consider how, in the post-WWII era, American Jews enjoyed such a strong cultural aversion to anti-Semitism so as to impose a largely bipartisan stigma against criticism of Israel - one that has only recently shown some signs of eroding. This stigma has been, in many ways, quite similar to woke anti-racism, refusing to brook any criticism of Israel with the slightest whiff of anti-Jewish tropes - which tend to involve themes of money, power, and influence. Surely you see the problem here.
I don't blame you for abandoning a political party; personally I think they're poison. But as the recent Whoopi Goldberg incident illustrates, greater willingness to criticize Israel, however misguided it may be, does not translate into greater anti-Semitism. And healthier political discourse demands that we learn to distinguish the two better than we have in the past. That is the downside to having an ethnic democracy (which one could be forgiven for seeing a sectarian state) claiming to represent the world Jewish diaspora.
Actual anti-Semitism on the fringe of the American left is nothing new. Around the turn of the century, many of us were gobsmacked at how some in the Black civil rights movement expected us to take Lewis Farrakhan seriously as a leader. And it is certainly nothing new on the fringe of the American right, where white Christian nationalism has festered out of sight of the American mainstream.
The history of countries which have promoted anti-Semitism is indeed awful. The history of countries that have permitted it in any way is impossible to generalize, because it includes virtually every nation where Jews have ever lived - there is even anti-Semitism in Israel! But few countries can say they've done a better job of stigmatizing it than America. And there is a reason that American Jewry has long leaned to the left politically - because of an understanding of the importance of civil rights, free expression, and opposing discrimination. The existence of some pro-Palestinian bias in geopolitics is a natural outgrowth of that, and should be of no more concern than people on the right babbling conspiracies about "Jewish space lasers" or equating COVID vaccine proponents with Nazi scientists.
The word ‘race’ had a different meaning, back when Hitler spoke about Germans being the ‘Master Race’. Race was used back then, for what we would call ethnicity. For example, at one time, the British Army asked recruits to identify what ‘race’ they were. The choices were Scottish, English, Welsh, and Cornish. None of those groups would be considered to be a race today, An ethnicity? Perhaps.
These days, the word ‘race’ is used for continental sized population groups and ‘ethnicity’ is used for smaller subdivisions. None of these terms has an exact definition (even the biological term, species doesn’t have an exact definition).
Eric73, I would say that the US as a whole does not promote anti-semitism. However, it does thrive in some parts of the USA. Louis Farrakhan is very much a hero in some circles, even though he is both a Hitler admirer and a rabid anti-semite. However, the truth is actually worse. No less than Chelsea Clinton was berated for denouncing anti-semitism. Alice Walker is a vicious anti-semite and a hero in many circles.
Do you honestly believe that it's fair to say that the United States "allows anti-Semitism to thrive"?
Yes. Its worse than its ever been in this country. History says once anti-Semitism starts to take root, it is incredibly difficult to stop.
The statement "We are a free country where the state does everything it can to discourage racial and ethnic hatred" is simply not true. A recent speaker at Yale gave a talk titled "The Psychopathic Problem of the White Mind". Not a single law-maker from either party denounced her talk. Racism is completely acceptable in the US today, as long as it is PC.
Do you think it is possible for someone to be anti-Zionism but not anti-semetic? And just out of further curiosity, do you think it is possible for someone to be anti the Jewish religion (e.g. they think the Torah is in general foolish or immoral and Judaism as a religion is unworthy of joining) and yet not anti-semetic?
"Do you think it is possible for someone to be anti-Zionism but not anti-semetic?" That's what the mullahs of Iran claim they are, and for that matter most of the Islamic world.
Unfortunately you didn’t answer my question.
What the mullahs of Iran claim is totally irrelevant to whether a person can be anti Zionism and not anti Semitic. Just as it is totally irrelevant that David Duke might say he is anti Black Lives Matter but not racist toward black people. David Duke being against BLM doesn’t make everyone who is against BLM like David Duke. Just as because Communists didn’t like Nazis didn’t make everyone who was opposed to Hitler a Communist.
Would you like to answer my question directly now?
it is possible, but that isn't the norm. Anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism tend to be a bit like a hand and glove. Different, but they do work together.
If you looked at the polling around recent Palestinian election (which ultimately didn't happen), 3 groups led. Each advocating for the murder of Jews. One incorporates it into its charter, one pays people to do it and calls the murderers holy and the 3rd is in prison for his role in murdering 5 people. You rarely hear criticism of these policies by those critical of Israel.
As for religion, people are absolutely free to criticize it. There's lot in the Torah worthy of criticism. Much like there is lots in the US Constitution worthy of criticism. My own view of religion includes this: God gave you a brain, and expects you to use it. That said, criticism is different than hate or incitement.
How are you determining the norm? For example, you think among Democrats who are critical of zionism, it is the norm for them to be anti-semetic? I find that highly unlikely.
What does Palestinian politics have to do with whether Israel's policies toward ethnic Palistinians is racist and unjust?
For example, I can find the dominant political factions in Palistine worse than the dominant political factions of Israel, but still consider the dominant political factions of Israel racist. I can still think the US shouldn't be subsidizing a relatively wealthy theocratic ethnno state and also think that their enemies are worse. These are not mutually exclusive positions, thus there is no reason to assume that because a person condemns zionism that they also support dominant Palestinian political factions. Some people do, but that is just guilt by association.
When someone condemns Zionism, how do you determine whether that person is anti Semitic or just anti Zionism? That they don't condemn the dominant political factions in Palistine in the same breath? Do you think a person is racist against white people when they condemn white nationalism without condemning Louis Farakhan in the same breath?
Given the prejudices people have about people who condemn zionism, a person who does condemn zionism may be prudent to point out at the same time they also condemn the dominant political factions of Palistine, lest they are deemed an anti semite by some people. But, to avoid that prejudice may be as futile as a white person condemning blm and also condemning white nationalism. They will still often be called racist by people who support blm.
And there is also the fact that what is often deemed “anti semetic” by people who wish to express condemnation of the behavior and views of dominant Palestinian factions is actually animosity that is entirely directed at people who identify as religious Jews, and not people who are “racially” Jewish. If a person born into Judaism were to convert to Islam, the Muslims who have a hatred toward Jews may not have hatred toward that person. Hatred directed at Jews because of their religion is not racism, just as hatred directed at Muslims is not racism, just as hatred directed at atheists is not racism.
Hatred toward people because of their ideology while often immoral, is not *always* immoral, while hatred toward people because of their race is always immoral. Hatred toward Nazis because of their ideology is a favorite pastime these days, but hatred toward Nazis because of their race is immoral. People do not typically assume a hatred toward Nazis is sufficient evidence of hatred toward Germans though. It is quite common though to assume a contempt toward Zionism is sufficient evidence of hatred toward ethnic Jews — regardless of those Jews’ ideology. That is a type of hypocrisy.
Such conflation between animosity toward ideology and animosity toward race is quite common among proponents of some ideologies who want to shield their ideology from criticism though. That is both intellectually and morally bankrupt.
BLM and people who support BLM for example, do it regularly. People think because their ideology has included the word “black” in it, any criticism of it is therefore racist against black people. Its stupid.
If someone thinks the character of Jehovah in the Torah is evil and only worthy of condemnation and not worship -- do you consider that criticism, or hate?
I know that you quoted Rubio, but you reveal the same odd perspective that he does. Big fundraisers have always been made possible by people giving money to their own causes, not to any particular party. The gem is that those on the left have been able to slander those on the right as the only ones who did it. Even two decades ago, big fundraisers were held by rich people who ran big corporations and were equally connected to politicians, celebrities and the press - because of the "fundraisers." Prior to two decades ago, all of that "culture" was long dominated by Democrats. The only difference now is that they are more radical, more bigoted and more brazen with their authoritarian plans.
The notion that the bulk of critical goods be manufactured in the U.S. is sensible and every Republican I know has always thought so, and many Democrats. The Democrat politicos now think too much of all the money they could make with their insider trading and the personal enrichment by privileged access to the Chinese market. THAT was unthinkable two decades ago.
The Canadian truckers underscore what used to be shared American values - our freedom and the dignity found in work. Those are conservative values that many Republicans and Democrats alike embraced. The left has always exploited both.
The problem is that union membership in the private sector is 6 percent and falling. Apart from contractors, the GOP legislation championed by Rubio would not reverse that.
In my view there is no way to rebuild the collapsed system of enterprise unions (site or company based) under the NLRA. What is needed is sectoral collective bargaining. Better to build a completely new system of state wage boards like those in New York with representatives of labor, business and government setting wages, benefits and hours for specific sectors, starting with the low wage sectors first. All workers can enjoy the results without belonging to a union at all. The low wage sectors are mostly in the nontraded service sectors—janitorial, construction, nursing aides—so there is little danger the employers will flee a state with higher standards, unlike graded sector companies like aerospace.
Why are You idealizing the covid convoy occupation of Ottawa? These people are destroying as many businesses as the BLM protests did You mentioned by blocking access to them and You don't seem to have a problem with it. What they are doing is undemocratic and inexcusable and it's illegal too. Anyone who is trying to intimidate a democratically elected government and to terrorize innocent people is an enemy of freedom, be it BLM or be it the "convoy". We should all stand with our democratic institutions, which are under attack in Canada as well as the US or we may as well find ourselves some day oppressed by a GOP turned into a populist "worker's party" like the "National Socialist German Worker's Party" was back in its days. Exercising blunt racism, shutting down the free press, destroying anything that even remotely resembles democratic institutions and hating everyone who isn't them, just like the Trumpists have been doing over the last few years. The writing is on the wall, You just have to read it. Give in to fascism and history might just repeat itself. By the way....in the US the days, where elections ended with the defeated candidate conceding defeat and gratulating the winner are over for good. From now on every election result will be bitterly contested. Thanks to Your new "working class movement". Your democracy is already lying in ruins You just don't realize it yet. Up here in Canada we still have the chance to fight populism disguised as "working class rights" and defend our democracy and we will.
It is tiresome seeing “fascism” used as a catchall synonym for “something I don’t like”. Fascism is a specific thing with identifiable properties, none of which are evident in the trucker protest.
Actually, the Democrats are "like the "National Socialist German Worker's Party" was back in its days. Exercising blunt racism, shutting down the free press, destroying anything that even remotely resembles democratic institutions and hating everyone who isn't them." Canada is not a democracy. It is under the thumb of the petty tyrant, Justin Trudeau. Hopefully the truckers and their supporters will bring him to his knees, then move the convoy to Washington, D.C.
You obviously do not have clue what democracy is. You are openly promoting coups in Canada and the US to overthrow democratically elected governments to replace them with mob rule. People like You are tyrants in waiting. Justin Trudeau won the last democratic election just a few months ago fair and square just like Joe Biden did last year in the US where Donald Trump lost both the popular vote and the electoral college. You can either respect those facts, then You are on the side of democracy and freedom or You are an enemy of democracy and freedom.
Bernd, the truckers in Canada are not attempting a coup, or trying to overthrow the government; likewise protestors in the United States. They do not want mob rule. They want freedom from the tyranny of mandates and other unconstitutional abuses of power. In the US system power is supposed to flow from the people to the government, i.e. the government has only the power granted by the people it governs. Yet government at all levels; local, city, state and federal, especially in the so-called blue states, is claiming and exerting power that it does not have and has not been given. The truckers in Canada and the like minded in the U.S. just want their freedoms back. You seem to believe that democracy and freedom come from the government. True democracy and freedom comes from the people. We fought the Revolutionary War to overthrow the tyranny of the British government. Canada never fought that war.
A vaccine mandate for people who travel regularly through the entire continent and are therefore ideal spreaders of new covid variants is a necessary measure to fight the pandemic. It's no "tyranny" or "unconstitutional abuse". A weeklong blockade of supply lines and entire cities on the other hand is tyranny against the many by the few. It's a far bigger intervention into other peoples lives the a vaccine mandate. People cannot work, people cannot leave the house to work or shop, emergency services can't get through.....This is no peaceful protest. The opposite is true. There are numerous cases where peaceful protesters against the convoy and journalists are harassed by extremists amongst the truckers. The other day there was footage on TV where a trucker tried to push a bicyclists with his truck out of his way. I'm not saying all the truckers are violent extremists (most truckers in the country are against this blockades anyway and only suffer the consequences like losing income, which makes them victims of the illegal protests), but the time has arrived when originally well intended truckers should see what's truly going on here and leave to let the police deal with the hard core extremists in their midst who have phantasies of overthrowing a democratically elected government. What if everybody who is unhappy with a government decision resorts to the same tactics? Holding the entire economy and country hostage, blocking vital supply lines until the government gives in and the group gets its way? Say for example the truckers get their will and the vaccine mandate gets scrapped and the majority who supports this mandates uses the same tactics to get them back? Or environmentalists asking for tougher measures against climate change? Can't You see what this kind of street tyranny and mob rule can do to any country and its people let alone democracy itself? It would be the end of majority decisions and the start of the tyranny of those who have the most bullying power.