Jason Hirthler
Selective Rebels Risk Being Co-opted by the Democrats–Again
[dropcap]B[/dropcap]efore we go too far down the road of our anti-Trump revolution, we ought to think about where we intend to lead this rebellion. We might need a subtle corrective. A flu shot to immunize us against the delirium that will surely overtake us in four years–the fever of lesser evilism. Perhaps we could use a small reminder of why we now sit like Lilliputians beneath the ogreish shadow of our new Offender-in-Chief. Or why millions of Americans in key battleground states stumped for a raving populist on a derelict Republican platform. The truth is refreshingly simple: they were still looking for the change that Barack Obama promised eight years ago.
Like he did in foreign policy, Obama largely followed the neoliberal blueprint on the homefront. The two are interrelated. A look at our national priorities through a spending lens tells you what you need to know: all other discretionary expenses are dwarfed by allocations to the war budget. (It should be noted that mandatory spending for Social Security, Unemployment, Labor, and Medicare dwarf military spending.) Rising costs and proliferating enemies (real and invented) are used to pressure the White House and Congress to reduce other discretionary allotments.
The Lie of Austerity
For bourgeois feminists still lamenting Hillary’s loss, and the eternally clueless who prefer symbol to substance, the party offers us Elizabeth Warren, a woman who has already cut a figure as a faux populist of impeccable credentials.
[dropcap]T[/dropcap]his ruse is accepted as rational by the mainstream public because politicians reinforce the false analogy that federal budgets function like household budgets. When someone in the family loses their job, a little belt-tightening is in order. Of course, federal belt-tightening in a national recession only makes things worse. Debt may shrink, but so does GDP, so the hoped-for shrinkage in the debt-to-GDP ratio doesn’t happen. But the powers that be, the Davos elite, already know this. Speaking truth to power in this regard, as done by well-meaning scribes like Robert Reich, with his hound-dog eyes and supplicant tomes, accomplishes nothing. Power already knows the truth, and they care about nothing so much as disguising that fact. So long as austerity is perceived as a well-intentioned blunder, we will tend to stay sunk in our couches, gazing at the hypnotic tube, flicking through feckless texts, perusing achingly cute cat videos on YouTube, and browsing Netflix.
But tell the population the truth–that austerity’s effects are known in advance, and that it is implemented anyway, by Congressional shock troops manipulated by seedy profiteers in the shadows of Capitol Hill–well, then you might have a riot on your hands. Tell them that austerity is cold-bloodedly administered to create a sea of reserve labor, of desperate creatures anxious to accept less money, fewer benefits, and no job security, just to service their debts. Tell them that austerity is done to legitimize arguments to privatize Social Security, rollback welfare, and reduce government services, in order to hand federal functions over to private industry and remove whatever tax and regulatory burdens continues to haunt abacus-wielding actuaries in the corridors of corporate America. Tell them austerity doesn’t really apply to the war budget, and could hardly be applied in any case since the Pentagon can’t even manage a proper ledger, let alone remember where all those War on Terror allocations went. Tell them that austerity reflects the elite faith in social Darwinism. After all, the only champions of a sink-or-swim world are the natural swimmers (or those born life-raft in hand). Of course, all this austerity talk is belied by that mind-bending truth only whispered in the foggy alleyways around Wall Street and the New York Fed, that the reality of fiat currency adds a bedeviling twist to the Koch brothers’ manic Fix the Debt propaganda.
The powers that be, the Davos elite, already know this. Speaking truth to power in this regard, as done by well-meaning scribes like Robert Reich, with his hound-dog eyes and supplicant tomes, accomplishes nothing. Power already knows the truth, and they care about nothing so much as disguising that fact.
Yet it was this false historical narrative that was adopted by that slim-suited change agent, Barack Hussein Obama. Early in his presidency, Obama shifted from the stimulus and its helpful but temporary impact on the economy to a Clinton-like emphasis on debt and deficit reduction. His 2010 State of the Union address set the stage for the future debt deals he cut with the Republicans, collaborating with neoconservatives to cut spending in an economy that needed more of it. Total government spending sunk to 2005 levels before ticking upward in the last couple of years. What that meant in practice is that there was no recovery for 95 percent of the population, that the gains of whatever recovery there was went to the top one percent of society. Obama knew this, yet disingenuously told the public, with his soothing baritone and sleepy eyed calm, that all would be well.
State of the State
Extremely ambitious, and already bought and paid for by the corporate class, NJ Sen. Corey Booker, seen here escorting CBS disinformer Gayle King, is one of those treacherous Democrats to watch out for. Does the world really need Obama redux?
[dropcap]H[/dropcap]ere’s a quick summation of Obama’s magical change, replete with charts. The evils that preceded and will post-date his tenure were not at all absent during it. Given a chance to prosecute greed-soaked bankers that brought the global economy down for a fast profit, he backed away. Given the chance to impose real restrictions on the exotic financial tools that precipitated the collapse, he let a neoliberal IMF insider call the shots. Given the chance to funnel $700 billion dollars into the breach of the ravenous foreclosure tsunami, he cravenly produced a weak program that funneled money to banks to restructure mortgages–voluntarily and on their own terms. Is it any wonder the bottom 90 percent of the population lost a third of its wealth and some five million homes under Obama?
Despite this, the Chosen One spent the majority of his final speech to his millions of fanboys reminding America what a grassroots kind-of-guy he is, repeating ad nauseum tired platitudes about normal people doing extraordinary things. But the peace laureate went further, lauding an economic recovery which saw the creation, not by his own hand, mind you, of a small mountain of waitressing and bartending jobs, and other low-wage, no-benefit, part-time jobs that were only created because they couldn’t be offshored. Over 90 percent of the jobs created during Obama’s tenure were part-time or temporary. Even though he didn’t create these jobs, he constantly took credit for them, just as Bill Clinton took credit for the Internet boom, as though he had injected some kind of job-producing stimulant into the sagging veins of a dying economy. By contrast, Obama failed to mention the decline in labor force participation, quality job creation, household incomes, new businesses, and faith in politicians and the media since he assumed the throne.
CBS reports that now most Americans are not prepared to deal with a $500 surprise bill without risking a financial meltdown. Helpfully, CBS counseled citizens to be more disciplined in their fiscal habits. Healthcare costs, despite the corporate boon called Obamacare, are rising, occasionally at unprecedented rates. Even as the cost of essential goods rise faster than inflation, which itself is rising faster than household incomes. Not that Congress is doing anything to help. The usual suspects in the cash-addicted Democratic Party joined for-sale Republicans in voting down a plan to let people import cheap drugs from Canada. Predictably, this bill was sponsored by Bernie Sanders, who continues to believe that working within the system is the best way forward, despite witnessing a rigged primary process, watching his nominees to the Democratic Platform Committee get coolly shoved aside, and the mainstream press give Donald Trump 23 times more free media coverage than Sanders himself. And yet the Bern soldiers on, shaming sell-outs with bills that never pass.
It’s not going to get any easier for the Bern considering that the Democrats lost 33 state legislatures and more than 1,000 state legislature seats during Obama’s tenure, another point missed by our alt-universe president. But what do you expect from a president who coupled austerity at home with an expansion of war abroad? These are exactly the kinds of data you should anticipate from that poison chalice of misery and mayhem.
All evidence aside, Democrats ignored the causes of their historic November collapse, swiftly installed two corporate neoliberals in charge of the House and Senate minorities, and prepared to spend the next four years abetting Trump when no one is looking, and stonewalling him when the lights are on. All while bull-horning frenzied messages about gender and race and sexual identity into the public square, which will be frequently trampled by thundering masses of neoliberals defending what will be their last and only freedom: sexual freedom, which will likely be surveilled from stationary drones with supersonic hearing hovering in the clouds.
The Next Neoliberal
[dropcap]T[/dropcap]his is the great danger of ignoring the outcome of the Obama Eight. That by refusing to acknowledge the economic and military disaster of these years, neoliberals will enthusiastically usher another corporate neoliberal back into power in four years. Neoliberals are so anxious to aim their fury at Trump and put the failings of their own fake progressivism in the closet, that they will learn no lesson from it. They will bring the next Obama, perhaps Corey Booker, into power. He or someone like him will seduce half the population with the same arsenal of artifice that Obama brandished so skillfully. They will believe the next neoliberal is a peacenik and a growth generator. They will be seduced by his confident gait, his winning smile, and his stage charisma, bound up with a rhetorical narrative that assures us we are headed in the right direction. Not only do neoliberals want to believe this, but it is a much easier pill to digest when you are living above the waterline, as it were, in the top 10 percent of society. If you aren’t on Obamacare, if you aren’t scrambling to find work now that your skill set has been offshored, if your profession enjoys all the protectionist measures that many white-collar professional trades do, if your house isn’t underwater, and you don’t know anyone that works in the fast-food industry, then why shouldn’t you believe what Obama tells you? It’s reflected in all the media publications you consume like air: The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NPR, CNN, MSNBC, and so on. Life inside the bubble is good. Why puncture it just so you can see what it looks like on the other side?Perhaps the most amusing aspect of the president’s farewell speech, amusing in a sick, dystopian sort-of-way, was when he lectured Americans on stepping outside of their bubble and lamented the way in which social media reinforces our prejudices. As though confirmation bias was a new discovery, created by Twitter. If there was anyone or any group hunkered behind blast barriers violently defending its lies, it was the Obama administration. Now it is the Trump administration doing so, frenetically quibbling with media drones about inauguration attendance, the number of visa-holders inconvenienced by this or that executive decree, inconvenient judicial rulings, and so on in dispiriting displays of naked self-interest.
At the Breaking Point
In Listen, Liberal, Thomas Frank’s recent screed against the corporate sell out of once-liberal Democrats, the author relates a conversation with a Seattle fireman who nicely summarized how the working class has been coping with income stagnation, unreported inflation, loss of jobs and benefits: First, they become a two-income household, typically with mothers and wives joining the workforce, which naturally incurs its own new childcare costs; second, they turn to credit cards to manage expenses that exceeded their joint earnings; and third, they tap the last, sacred source of wealth, the equity accruing in their homes, money that was intended to finance a comfortable retirement. Now, as 2017 kicks into gear, both spouses are working for depreciating wages to pay for metastasizing credit cards to keep an underwater roof over their heads. But only until the magic of the market economy rescues them at some indeterminate point in the near-or-distant future.
Selective Revolutionaries
[dropcap]G[/dropcap]iven the state of the economy, the state of household finances, and the proven tactical disasters of the last eight years, returning to that listing, terminally diseased party shouldn’t be an option. But of course it is. Most of the January marchers doubtlessly uphold good causes, like abortion access, the studiously ignored equal pay crisis, and keeping the state out of the bedroom. But as surely as they lined the streets to protest The Donald, they will cram those same streets to cheer the coronation of another neoliberal imperialist with good table manners.They must be reminded of the failure of neoliberal Democrats before the memory of it slips downstream, replaced by a hazy feeling of well-being and a pleasing image of Obama’s mic drop. They must be reminded that, despite the Bernie phenomenon, the Dems are back to being led by Nancy Pelosi and Charles Schumer, both there to crack the whip on would-be progressives who might wish to follow Sanders in a saner direction. They’ve already voted in President Trump’s ludicrous Iran-hating, surveillance-loving nominee to run the CIA, who will oversee The Donald’s recent pro-rendition and pro-torture directive. Not that this was necessary. Obama never got rid of rendition and only pretended to completely ban torture. Nor did President Trump’s #MuslimBan change the in-built bias against accepting immigrants from countries we habitually bomb. Under Obama, who originally identified the countries on Trump’s list, it took years and some 20 different bureaucratic steps before attaining the remote chance of being let in from those abattoirs of imperial wrath. But Trump will likely make these processes worse and certainly more visible, and like those before him, innovate new methods of disenfranchising us and those in our cross hairs. Obama’s genius was to bury the controversial beneath a mountain of legalese, media misdirection, and calming gestures. Trump has no such nuance.
Class War in Disguise
[dropcap]S[/dropcap]o, the Democrat electorate march forward, but as they do, they risk becoming the unwitting handmaidens of corporate power. They would like to impeach The Donald, banish him back to his lavish Midtown Elba, for his sins against identity politics. Either by impeaching him and installing Mike Pence, or by toppling him in 2020 with another corrupt Democrat, the so-called resistance will merely serve as the foot soldiers of a neoliberal capital that wants to crush the president’s fledgling “neo-nationalism.” They largely consist of gainfully employed corporate neoliberals who simply want to replace a socially offensive white billionaire with a charming neoliberal that is preferably either black, female, gay, or in some other significant sense an identity politics icon. Working class America and its pale-skinned, flyover-state profile, with its repulsive provincialism and self-concern, is anathema to them.What we’re really talking about here is class war. Most of those that are fairly comfortable will decline to afflict their own class with the plight of the afflicted. They will unwittingly serve as mercenaries in elite capital’s war on the working class and its nascent neo-nationalist movement. What an irony that the former are Democrats and the latter Republicans. What’s left of the left, those that haven’t been wholly co-opted by the sweet drizzle from the spigot of super-wealth, now face two competing tasks. First, oppose Trump. Second, vanquish corporate Democrats. Doing the first without the second will lead to another disastrous neoliberal presidency in 2020. Doing the second without the first will free the new administration to conduct its cruel and venal affairs with no pressure from the populace.
We should forget the color of the political lapel pins. Forget the Donkeys and the Elephants, the stirring stump speeches from lifelong beltway insiders, and the dreams of confetti showers in cavernous West Side convention halls. It’s time to banish the Trump and Obama archetypes alike. Our criterion for judging the petitioners of our vote should be singular: Does the shill in the suit back corporate imperialism or not? To know that, don’t read the policy press release issued from the bowels of Capitol Hill. Don’t read the soothing blue websites crisscrossed by rainbows of hope and policy summaries nobody could disagree with. Don’t flick between The Situation Room and The Sean Hannity Show. Trash your New York Times and delete the MSNBC app. And then have a look at the shill’s donor list. It will more likely be a bill of indictment than a register of populist causes. And that will tell you all you need to know.
Jason Hirthler is a veteran of the communications industry and author of The Sins of Empire: Unmasking American Imperialism. He lives in New York City and can be reached at jasonhirthler@gmail.com.
MAIN IMAGE : A lineup of corporate Democrats—all of these individuals voted down the idea of single payer, along with many other measures of urgent import to the public.
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