If you’re a DemEnter person, by all means throw all of your energy into pushing forward a wildly progressive candidate; don’t waste your energy trying to convince establishment loyalists that they should give peace and economic justice a chance. If you’re DemExit, blast full speed ahead without looking back; don’t try to pull these people with you. The plutocrats who own your country’s government have no intention of ever letting you advance anything remotely resembling a progressive agenda. They won’t end wars, because their empire depends on war. They won’t let you have economic justice because power is relative, so in a system where money equals power they necessarily need to keep you poor in order to maintain their rule. The people who serve the oligarchy will not be converted on the merit or truth of your position, because they are not motivated by merit or truth.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
Parting shot—a word from the editors
The Best Definition of Donald Trump We Have Found
In his zeal to prove to his antagonists in the War Party that he is as bloodthirsty as their champion, Hillary Clinton, and more manly than Barack Obama, Trump seems to have gone “play-crazy” -- acting like an unpredictable maniac in order to terrorize the Russians into forcing some kind of dramatic concessions from their Syrian allies, or risk Armageddon.However, the “play-crazy” gambit can only work when the leader is, in real life, a disciplined and intelligent actor, who knows precisely what actual boundaries must not be crossed. That ain’t Donald Trump -- a pitifully shallow and ill-disciplined man, emotionally handicapped by obscene privilege and cognitively crippled by white American chauvinism. By pushing Trump into a corner and demanding that he display his most bellicose self, or be ceaselessly mocked as a “puppet” and minion of Russia, a lesser power, the War Party and its media and clandestine services have created a perfect storm of mayhem that may consume us all.— Glen Ford, Editor in Chief, Black Agenda Report
Logic forces me to agree with Johnstone’s conclusion. However, I don’t give progressives much chance of winning a revolution either.
I argued the same point right here at The Greanville Post. 99% of what is so vitally important in the news is a colossal distraction, especially the 2020 presidential race. There may not even be a presidential election in 2020. There may not even be a human race. The article: “A Cure For Mad Trump Disease” . . . https://www.greanvillepost.com/2017/09/20/a-cure-for-mad-trump-disease/ . . . offering a powerful, innovative non-partisan strategy for upending the neoliberal/neocon establishment. We do this by uniting voters behind those issues which mean the most to them and only election candidates who guarantee they will represent the interests… Read more »
What do words like “progressive” even mean today? Progressivism itself isn’t a new invention. It referred to an ideology based on creating a better society/nation from the bottom up. That’s long gone. Liberals dumped the poor 20-some years ago, preferring to ignore the consequences of our deregulated capitalism. They spent the years of yet another administration calling on us to protect the advantages of the better-off, the middle class. If we had a revolution, who would fight whom, and for what? We’re rich vs. middle class vs. poor, further split apart by race and political ideology. In other words, the… Read more »
That’s why Citizens Against Plutocracy is backing my “issues based” initiative for voter empowerment. Forget labels, forget parties, forget ideologies, gang colors. Focus on what the vast majority of citizens want, only elect representatives who will guarantee to do those things in writing. The Contract For American Renewal lists eleven areas of reform and all have 62%-80% support of the public. The items listed there are such revolutionary concepts as: • Increasing the minimum wage to $15 per hour. • Investing in America’s crumbling infrastructure. • Addressing climate change. • Ending the war in Afghanistan, reducing the DOD budget. •… Read more »