Submitted by Pachamama
We will contend that what is generally referred to as a progressive socio-economic-political flank, located primarily on the ‘left’ or the ‘left of centre’, but less so on the ‘right’ or ‘right of centre’, has been dead for 50 years. The media fiction, on the left, has been keeping a dead political current alive as master narrative to mek money and mislead publics.
This subject is important because if progressives in North America and Europe are as useless as the evidence demonstrates, there can be no global convergence to protect small island states, like Barbados, from the most rabid Alt-Right forces which are preparing to descend on us all.
The Alt-Rightists will soon be controlling the IMF, the World Bank, the machinery for war, among other power levers. A country like Barbados could expect to surrender any perceived advantage (soft power) accumulated over time. Begging these criminals will not help. It would be encouragement to the enemy.
We will indict these so-called progressives for the emergence of a Donald Trump. The re-emergence of far-right parties in Europe. And the hollowing-out of any gains ordinary people have made in the past. Surely, Trump must signal a new era.
We will cast these ‘progressives’ as a bunch of spineless sycophants who allowed, in the case of the USA, a succession of ignorant, backward, Republican minded idiots, to take power. And do so from minority positions.
Our point of departure could be 1968, you choose. Since then we’ve had Nixon, Carter, Ford, Reagan, Bush 1, Clinton, Bush 2, Obama and now Trump. So from the height to the nadir of ‘progressivism’, in this recent incarnation, we’ve had less real progressives elected to the highest office than during the period of the first half of the 20th century – FDR, Teddy Roosevelt, for example.
The American ‘progressive’ has acquiesced so much that it is no wonder the best policy to be contrived, recently, had to do with the institutionalization of an agenda against mother nature herself.
The mainly White, highly ‘educated’, progressives are all about form not function. They are cowards, lacking a scintilla of courage. All about an empty rhetoric, as a means to blur the lines between themselves and the Republicans. The progressive agenda has always been a White man’s trick.
The republicans or conservatives play no such games. They see politics as war by other means and are prepared to move heaven and earth to their will.
In the Obama presidency alone, the Republicans have given us government shutdowns; illegal wars; mass defunding of social programs, developed to help the poor; filibustered an Obama Supreme Court nominee for over 300 days; gerrymandered the country to make certain of perennial control of the House of Representatives and the Senate; consistently stole elections by the disenfranchisement of primarily Black and Latino voters.
Not even when confronted with irrefutable evidence progressives have no meaning responses. They possess the worst kind of cowardice.
In North Carolina, a Republican Pat McCrory, the incumbent, was ‘defeated’ by a Democrat, Roy Cooper, in the Governor’s race, 2016. But since November 8th and several recounts, McCrory has failed to concede despite a nearly unassailable 10,000 vote lead by Cooper.
What is more, the Republican State Legislature in NC, in anticipation of the defeat of the Republican Incumbent Governor, has acted to severely cut the constitutional powers of the incoming Governor. Powers the current Governor enjoyed.
In the UK. We are not convinced that the Labour Party of Jeremy Corbyn has laid out anything new. He too seems wedded to traditional progressive agendas. But the political environment has markedly changed and requires different responses from hollowed-out labour parties. Maybe the alt-Right of Farage and company will repeat, in the UK, the Trumpism progressives in the US have made flesh.
In Barbados, it may take a decade or more for us to see some official recognition of the death of progressive ‘ideals’ as historically constructed.
All this is happening and there is hardly a whimper from the supine progressives in the Democratic Party, in the USA, or even Barbados. Maybe they are used to being in a submissive position with the ruthless Republicans driving home an advantage no minority should have.
Moreover, the case of the defeat of Clinton is indeed emblematic of the perennial weakness of progressives. With over a billion dollars and an ability to raise much more; possessing a far superior case than Trump; currently having control of the Obama presidency; and with all of these advantages, the pooch-pickers called progressives could not defeat a demagogue, a narcissist, an apolitical madman like Donald Trump.
Progressives, in an age of Trump, cannot be expected to offer any determined, courageous, resistance to the Hitler of our times. Already, we are seeing that they intend to be as supportive of Trump as they were of Bush#2. Even if they had majorities on Capitol Hill, which they do not, they will be just as compliant.
Progressives will be more interested in notions of working with the devil, Trump, than defending their constituencies which are largely anti-Trump. They are sell-outs. It is the progressives who have people of colour voting for agendas for which there is no benefit to the voter. And Black people make no demands of the system. Not even on matters of life and death, like police shootings.
Presently, progressives on popular media are still licking their wounds from the Clinton defeat. When all the sobbing and gnashing of teeth is over, aided by their media bosses, people like Rachel Maddow, Lawrence O’Donnell, Chris Matthews, Joy Reid, Anderson Cooper and others on MSNBC, as well as those on CNN, will be brought to heel. It will be unsurprising when the Trump administration demands more favourable coverage, like any dictator has, in return for access, pretenses will have to come to an end. Without access these media houses might as well play dead.
This is how the game is played by ‘progressive’ media bosses, on the left, who are only committed to money, in the final analysis. The same media bosses who gave Trump, in kind, the equivalent of 2.5 billion dollars in free advertising/coverage because ratings were high and the spectacle of the pre-election season meant more to their top and bottom lines, a measure of success! In sum Trump has been, and is more so now, a creature of mainstream media. And the progressives will never apologize for imposing him on us. Their attitude was that Clinton would win, regardless. Now, let them consign themselves to being the anachronistic dead-beats they have long been.
The peoples of the world were, long time ago, sold out by the progressive agenda. It was, of late, essentially a response to Communism and gave yeoman service to right-wing forces thus creating the illusion of political pluralism, mass mobilization around social needs. Now that the Right has discovered that they can create populism, of the Right as well as the left, those alt-Right forces will soon deem left-wing populism and progressives themselves totally unnecessary.
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