Submitted by Pachamama
Large numbers of the people of the United States have followed their peers in Europe and have made a lurch into the open embrace of fascism. The process towards an open embrace of totalitarism comes as people everywhere have been pushed towards the margins by the political duopolies. The failure of the Trump campaign could see the destabilization of the established formations, open the door to a transformation which could destroy the Republicans as a national party, see the re-emergence of the Democrats as the new right wing, with a party formation of Greens and others as a visible new left.
This is happening as Democrats are sounding more and more like Republicans used to. Where Donald Trump has embraced elements of Keynesian economics which used to be more associated with Democrats. In some ways Trump is more ‘progressive’ than Clinton and has told some truths which Clinton will never dare mouth.
For example, Clinton sees causation for the deindustrialization of America with the exportation of capital and proposes a cure in a new tax policy. This comes about 50 years too late – the horse has already bolted. Whereas Trump goes further and reviles underlying tensions between finance and developer/industrialist capitalism.
It remains amazing that we are, globally, continuing to seek out our salvation from political models which existed before electricity was ‘discovered’. In an age when we go to the moon and are on the verge of evolving ourselves out of existence, we still rely on antiquated political-economy formations.
For fervent believers, so much energy is invested into proving one model is better than another, or a combination of others, that there is hardly any time left to consider whether there could be something which benefits all the people, more equitable, more just. The establishment of a role for a truly multi-party state, inclusive of the Green Party of Jill Stein in the USA, for example. Garry Johnson says some of the right things but we are, ourselves, distrustful of the Austrian school.
They are political duopolies which empire employs in managing the world. When Bajans think about political independence they must ask themselves why 50 or more countries got their so-called freedom around the same time. Why most so-called independent countries seem to be unable to avoid predictable economic dangers.
They should find out the extent to which these events have ever happen before. Whether there may be other more persuasive explanations for that so-called independence. And why that brand of political independence will never be able to birth economic interdependence.
Political independence has meant nothing of significance for us. It however gave the Anglo-Americans new ways of controlling us. Control without ownership. Control without responsibilities for the quislings.
People have come to know that ‘democracy’ is a fiction. They see well-honed old and new imprecisions remaining or become truths. That worn, outdated, unworkable systems are still being presented to us as the basis on which our problems are to be solved.
Democracy is not the economic system intended but becomes a political fiction. A fiction which makes us free for one day every 4 or 5 years. Even that day’s ‘freedom’ is taken away by official lies and the operations of marketing mind-altering media interventions not unlike the propaganda used in total warfare on pliable populations.
Whether it be the USA or Barbados the system is the same. Two well-entrenched parties play musical chairs with electorates in support of their real functions. Those functions are to serve the oligarchs while pretending that fake electoral pageantries are replacements for real democracy, as an economic system.
The sheepdog for Hilary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, has now decided that the sheeple have been sufficiently corralled to postpone his revolution. That the function of the sheepdog is no longer needed.
Poor Bernie had no ideas that his revolution would have garnered 13 million votes. It took the DNC party apparatus with their elbow on the scales of ‘democracy’, justice, to help him to end his involvement.
These are the pre-1932 circumstances in Germany, happening again in 2016, which gave rise to WW2. To the extent that we are again located within a WW3 scenario may have more to do with intentional construction rather than cyclical forces or mere happenstance.
The global nature of the economic forces driving political formations, especially those on the far right, in seeking supremacist fictions are accompanied by growing militarism at home and abroad under neo-liberal governments. Roles are inverted.
At the centre of western imperialism historical imbalances cannot be allowed to shame those in power that their illegalities of the past require remedies instead of the clear determination to employ the hammer, as the preferred tool at home, for further official repression.
There are several new Hitlers in our world.
And with the Donald Trump as Hitler the deaths of Black young men, mainly, almost on a daily basis is to be responded to with more police repression, with a Reaganesque law and order agenda. Not that the McCarthyist responses of Obama or Clinton were or will be much different, as a practical matter.
As with Adolf initially, Trump seems to have a less contentious posture when it comes to relationships with Russia. So much so that the Clinton folks have sought to label him as ‘an unwitting agent’ of a foreign power. Certainly a charge, during the height of Joseph McCarthy era, which would’ve led at least to congressional hearings, if not social exclusion and imprisonment.
Clinton’s eagerness for a militarily confrontational posture with Russia and China elevates contretemps to much graver scenarios. Not that we are to believe either Trump or Clinton. They are well-known to be monumental liars. A better position in the fight for a white house fails to deliver any assurances that either will, or could, deliver beyond a difference in analysis, implementation.
We consider that the Republicans will be unable to survive the damage to their brand a Trump campaign would have exposed. Trump has materialized the 50 years of divisiveness theorized by Republicans. It goes back to the last reordering of political forces.
That was another time of flux. The heights of the ‘civil’ rights movement. A time when some of the most far-right elements within the Democratic Party became Republicans. When African-Americans, en masse, changed to the Democratic Party. These formations led to the Southern Strategy, gave rise to a New Jim Crow and so on, on the Republican side. It was a time where both major parties were titularly going in opposite directions on the left-right paradigm.
We must confess that the third party formations have failed to conduct the hard political work needed to aid an enduring participation at the national level. Few in the inner cities know of the Greens, for example. Even Ralph Nader, for whom we have more than a modicum of respect, was largely unknown to Africa-Americans even when they hold very similar views.
What is to become of the Bernie crowd? Will they find a third party to their liking? Will African-Americans and other ‘minorities’ be jettisoned by the re-configuring of the Democrats towards a more right-wing orientation?
We hold no particular brief neither for Trump nor Clinton. Though we have an admitted liking for alternatives to establishment politics, economy, as we do not see these genuine intents within the major party structures. Our overriding interests however, lies with a clear-eyed analysis of current circumstances as we try to measure trends and forecast what future events will be.
For us, it is difficult to imagine that the natural emergence of a Donald Trump from within the bowels of the Republican Party could avoid leaving a lasting effect in spite of the fact he was at times a Democrat and at other times apolitical as most business people seem to be. The rise of Trump is the result of the backwards politics championed for more than five decades. That his rejection by the populace could mean a return to the position ante is not anticipated. His unlikely victory will, at best, serve to delay the same outcomes of fragmentation and reorientation. We contend that this re-orientation that must follow will go to the centre of the political establishment but the economic elites will continue the further consolidation of wealth into the hands of the 0.01 percenters.
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