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
An interesting discussion which shows the redundancy of the terms capitalism, leftism and identity politics. Being left nowadays means a propulsion of one’s personal malaise into the social dysfunction, not an idealist desire to drastically change human interactions. That is what technological materialism has brought us and the isolation of the individual in our mechanized environment. Identity politics is what Freud called Civilization and its Discontents, in other words the personal discomfort with what civilizational rules have brought into human relationships. And capitalism, a rather dysfunctional term of what is simply feudalism under a synonym is being used as a… Read more »
(Are there still really some people who imagine a Putin/Trump partnership, in spite of all we’ve seen?) Americans reject the concept of egalitarianism. From the the Great Depression to the Reagan/Clinton era, the country took some measures toward an egalitarian society, implementing a system of just enough aid — along with access to opportunities — that enabled millions to get out of poverty. Restraints — regulations — were put on corporate and financial powers to prevent another Great Depression. Our former welfare programs had achieved (by the 1970s) a success rate of over 80%, providing just enough to enable millions… Read more »
Great discussion by Charles Derber and Chris Hedges of what happened to the left and what the left’s prospects are as we face a dystopian society governed by smiling and grimacing fascists of various stripes. Derber’s analysis is very accurate. As a political movement, we, for all intents and purposes, disbanded after the antiwar movement during the Vietnam War and and some splintered into identity politics that often lead nowhere. Hedges and Derber are right: If a person fights against discrimination of one kind or another simply to become a successful part of the larger society then that person is… Read more »
And all of this because the political left has not fulfilled Marx’s requirement that “the proletariat finds its intellectual and spiritual weapons in philosophy.” Maybe that is the unfulfilled precondition. The whole idea that Marx was opening up was that by fulfilling that requirement the political left would then be able to seize the high ground in culture and capture the imagination of the masses. In the absence of this development the way is left for the bourgeoisie to play “god.” It works well for them.