Steven Jonas, MD, MPH Special to The Greanville Post | Commentary No. 49: “The ‘Rightward Imperative:’ on Full Display at the RNC”

Over the years I have written extensively about what I call the “Rightward Imperative and the Republican Party.”  The “Rightward Imperative” is the movement ever rightward of Republican politicians, from the presidential level to the lowliest, if they have any serious interest in getting elected.  The Rightward Imperative sometimes focuses on the real issues that are at the center of the Republican ideology, policies and programs.  For example, Eric Cantor lost his Congressional seat because he wasn’t tough enough on spending and taxes. 

Indeed, he was “Tea Partied.”  (Yes, indeed, most U.S. have never met a noun that they did not want to verb.)  But more often than not the Rightward Imperative focuses on the mis-named “social issues,” which are really the issues of religious dogmatism and authoritarianism, racism and xenophobia.

As I said, in the column cited above, Ronald Reagan initiated the historical stream of GOP-led right-wing reaction which we now see in front of us, every day.  They do have real policies which have underlain the Party’s programs since that time. As is well-known, the GOP represents major sectors of the US economy: the extractive/fossil-fuel industries, the military industrial complex, the prison-industrial complex, corporate agriculture, the “health” insurance and pharmaceutical industries, and of course corporate and “investment” finance.

But they could, and hardly can, run on a platform of “let the oil and coal companies do whatever they want to,” “we want the rich to get richer, donchaknow,” “we want to export as much American capital overseas where it can make larger profits than it can here, so we really want to de-industrialize our country,” “we don’t care about the health of the American people but we do care about the profits of the health care industry,” “we would like to have permanent war if we can get it,” “we want to completely convert the US economy from industrial capitalism to finance capitalism,” and so on and so forth. 

And thus, their real policies have included (see Pretty Boy Ryan, himself a true Far-Rightist): further tax cuts for the rich; creating ever-widening income and wealth gaps; reducing environmental, transportation, workplace, finance, and etc. regulation to the greatest degree possible; further facilitating the export of capital; promoting the Permanent Preparation for Permanent War economy; the abolition of Social Security and the tattered remains of the “welfare” system, and so on and so forth.

And so here came Donald Trump.  He may be poorly educated, poorly informed, and possessed of little knowledge about how the extremely complicated U.S. government actually works, but he is a great huckster.  He also understood well the Rightward Imperative.  Whether or not he consciously set out to employ it, he has proved himself (by lucky instinct) a master of the craft, beginning of course with the “Birtherism Hoax” of which he was the leading perpetrator in the run-up to the 2012 election.  To be sure, he is not himself much with the underlying dogmas of the Religious Right, but he surely has known how important it is to get there in appearance if you want to get the Repub. nomination. 

[dropcap]A[/dropcap]nd so he did, starting with his Liberty University speech.  You may recall that even though he revealed that really doesn’t know the Bible that well, using a mis-citation, it was the content of what he said that enthralled the crowd, and then a much wider audience on the Religious Right.  He did it so well, that he swamped the collection of true Religious Rightist Dominionists who had entered the primaries, which included Ted Cruz, Ben Carson, Mike Huckabee, and Marco Rubio.  He has now capped this particular march to the Religious Right by hooking up with Mike Pence.  This guy is a genuine religious rightist: a total homophobe who also sponsored highly restrictive abortion legislation.  He is also ranked as the Most Conservative Governor in the nation.

A religious zealot, abject chauvinist and warmonger, and 100% corporate owned, Mike Pence—who does have a political brain— typifies the excrement that rises to the top in the US political system. A fitting VP choice for Trump.

This guy wants to use the force of the law to allow holders of one religious view to deny civil and public rights to persons of another religious view. And yes folks, that is exactly what the Pences of this word would do: set one religious view against another, with the state standing behind the first against the second.  In the 16^th century people slaughtered each other over the issue of whether the wine and wafer of Communion are really the blood and body of Christ, or just symbolic thereof.  In the 4^th through the 6^th centuries, in the region of the Byzantine Empire, people slaughtered each other over the issues of whether Christ was uni-, bi- or tri-partite (the Monophysite Controversy) or whether Christ was really Godlike or rather a totally remarkable human being: the “Arian Controversy.”  This is what the Mike Pences of this world would lead us to.

Other examples of the Rightward imperative were on full display at the Convention. 

• A Trump advisor, New Hampshire State Rep. Al Baldasaro, calling for the execution (presumably without trial) of Hillary Clinton for the Benghazi affair.

• Ben Carson linked Hillary Clinton to “Lucifer” (which I believe is another name for the devil, no?  Of course, there is no proof of any kind that whatever the being is called he, she or it really exists, for the Carsons of the world it does.)  He then used that opportunity to promote on national television the Religious Rights’ canard that the U.S. is a ”Christian Nation” (even though the words “Christian” or “God” appear nowhere in the Constitution.

• A pastor with a direct relationship with Trump used his shot at an invocation to make a political speech supporting him.  In it, he happened to call upon “God” to defeat (or maybe it was help defeat) Hillary Clinton and the Democrats.  It happens that this man is an African-American fronting for this racist party.  One wonders how African-Americans can do this — and there are a few — until one knows that in the early days of Nazism there were Jews who supported Hitler. (As there are Jewish plutocrats today funding rabid Nazi militia groups in the Ukraine. History contains many ugly and even shocking surprises.).

• Chris Christie devoted most of his speech to demonizing Hillary Clinton personally (another element of the Rightward Imperative).  It’s a sure bet that if Trump winds and appoints Christie as his Attorney General (a real possibility), the latter’s first move will be to fire the current FBI director and his second to seek an indictment of Clinton for a wide variety of offenses.  (Indeed, in that way we would be becoming Turkey.)  Of course Christie is already running for the 2020 Repub. nomination, should Trump lose, as are Rubio, Cruz and Pretty Boy Ryan. 

• Finally here (and there are many more examples one could cite) there’s the Republican Party Platform.  While the Repubs., as I have said, are already running on three words, Benghazi, Emails, and Clinton (including, or perhaps featuring, Bill who, I don’t believe is running for President), Clinton might do well just to run against the Republican Platform.

The nomination of Donald Trump is the, so far, furthest projection of the Rightward Imperative.  He is running openly, without the usual “dog whistles,” on racism, xenophobia, religious determinism, religious prejudice, Islamophobia, authoritarianism.  (Funnily enough, he is against, or seems to be against, certain bedrock Republican principles like “free trade” and the export of capital.  However, the Repubs. can live with that for, if Trump wins, the Congress will be more Rightist than ever and such legislation would never stand a chance of passage.  Since, as his campaign chairman tells us, he would function more like the Chairman of the Board rather than the CEO [who would be Pence], this wouldn’t make too much difference to him.)  If indeed Trump does win, and he very well might, in part because the apparent Democratic nominee is so personally damaged by the email controversy, as well as politically compromised, it will the prime example of how the use of the Rightward Imperative can propel the least qualified major party candidate ever in the United States into the most powerful position in the world.  If that happens, gotta give it, and him, credit, for, if the Convention is any example, it sure wouldn’t have been done on policies and programs.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Senior Editor, Politics, Steven Jonas, MD, MPH is a Professor Emeritus of Preventive Medicine at Stony Brook University (NY) and author/co-author/editor/co-editor of over 30 books.  In addition to being Senior Editor, Politics, for The Greanville Post, he is: a Contributor for American Politics to The Planetary Movement; a “Trusted Author” for Op-Ed News.com; a contributor to the “Writing for Godot” section of Reader Supported News; and a contributor to From The G-Man. He is the Editorial Director and a Contributing Author for TPJ magazine.us.  Further, he is an occasional Contributor to TheHarderStuff newsletter, BuzzFlash Commentary, and Dandelion Salad.

Dr. Jonas’ latest book is Ending the “Drug War”; Solving the Drug Problem: The Public Health Approach (Punto Press, 2016). His last political title was the provocative The 15% Solution: How the Republican Religious Right Took Control of the U.S., 1981-2022: A Futuristic Novel, Brewster, NY, Trepper & Katz Impact Books, Punto Press Publishing, 2013, and available on Amazon.

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Steven Jonas, MD, MPH Special to The Greanville Post | Commentary No. 48: “The Civil War Has Never Ended: It’s Just Continued on in a Different Form, and on a Class Basis”

Following the assassination of the five police officers in Dallas, TX, the New York Post, the Murdoch Empire’s seamy tabloid in the United States, posted a front page headline proclaiming “Civil War.”   (I have with care chosen the word “assassination” to describe the killing of the police officers in Dallas.  For the word originated in Arabic, and means, literally, “political murder.”)  A couple of days later, Newsday, a respectable tabloid which is the leading newspaper on New York State’s Long Island, posted a headline which read, “America’s Anguish.”  The New York Post headline has been heavily criticized as provocative, and consistent with the generally racist line taken by the newspaper over the years and also taken by its sister TV/tabloid, the Fox”News”Channel.  But this is one instance in which I agree with The New York Post.  As for the Newsday headline, “America’s” Anguish?  I don’t think so.  For many U.S., on both sides of the struggle, it is just the continuation of business-as-usual, except that this time five policemen happened to receive a shooter’s bullet, rather than the other way ‘round.

Micah Xavier Johnson: the much vilified shooter in Dallas, especially by the sanctimonious liberal punditocracy. Johnson pulled the trigger, but despicable, entrenched injustice loaded the gun. As injustice and inequality become bolder, expect more Johnsons to come forth.

I have come to the conclusion that what happened in Dallas, although quite rare, is just another instance of the continuation of what most historians and other observers refer to as “The Civil War,” which came to an official end on the battlefield, at the Appomattox Court House on April 9, 1865.  For quite some time, I have referred to that conflict as “The First Civil War.”  I have predicted that there will be a Second Civil War, and in my book The 15% Solution (originally published in 1996), I described one form that that war might take.  Indeed, I have also described the South as having, de facto, won the Civil War of 1861-65.  After all, as that column shows, in the long term the South achieved all of its War objectives other than the perpetuation of chattel slavery.

Naive Chicago teenager Emmett Till was savagely murdered in the South, but his killers walked, and even openly bragged about their crime.

[dropcap]H[/dropcap]owever now, following the most recent police murders of black men, in Baton Rouge, LA and St. Paul, MN, and the Dallas assassinations, I have come to the conclusion that actually the U.S. Civil War has never ended.  It has just taken a different form: primarily in the ongoing oppression and repression of the U.S. African-American population that has been underway since almost the day after the implementation of Emancipation Proclamation in the states of the former Confederacy, shortly after the conclusion of the military action. 

Further, I have come to the conclusion that this repression, based on the continuation, and indeed spread across the nation, of the Doctrine of White Supremacy that provided, for the Southern Slavocracy, the justification for the institution of slavery, has served a vital class interest for the capitalist ruling class in the United States, down to this very day.

A “justified lynching” as depicted in Birth of a Nation. The victim to be hanged is a white actor in blackface. (Wikipedia) The KKK’s main goal at the beginning was to terrorize African Americans away from voting.

The continued repression of the bulk of the African-American population of the United States has been played out, over time, by for example: the violent institution of what was politely called “Jim Crow” in the post-Civil War South, led by the original Ku Klux Klan, the practice of lynching, designed to put forth a powerful image of what could happen to “uppity ni__ers.”  Images of lynching were actually disseminated by postcard throughout the South for many decades.  As for the Ku Klux Klan, its original, stated, primary objective was the prevention of voting by the newly freed slaves.

There have been breaks in the chain, from the Federal Employment Practices Commission of the New Deal through the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts.  But we are now in the midst of a very well-planned Republican campaign all across the country to repress the votes of various African-American communities all across the country.  (Ku Klux Klan politics, anyone?) Then there is the well-known ghettoization of African-American communities, the (historically) recent mass incarceration of black young men, often for non-violent “drug” offenses (see my book on the “drug war” a lengthy explication of that one), the second- (or third-) class education provided for many African-American communities, and so on and so forth.

[dropcap]B[/dropcap]ut how, one is justified in asking, does this history and social-economic situation (only very briefly summarized above), justify the conclusion the Civil War never ended, but just took on a different form?  Well, first of all, there has always been a political party representing particular economic interests that in the national government has taken the part of those interests.  During the Slave Era, after the original Federalist Period it was primarily the regional Democratic Party, helped by the “Southern Whigs.”  From the time of the end of Reconstruction to the late 1960s it was the post-Civil War Southern Wing of the Democratic Party which staunchly defended Segregation.  From the time of the institution of President Nixon’s “Southern Strategy” in the late 1960s, accompanied by the launching of the “drug war” which singled out the African-American community, for political reasons (see chap. 3 of my book), it has been the Republican Party which has promoted the Doctrine of White Supremacy and the continued repression of the African-American community.

The US ruling class could have wiped out the KKK decades ago, a clear and indisputable terrorist organization, but they know it fills a useful political role of latent intimidation.

Slavery itself (at its base, very cheap labor) served the economic interest of the Southern white ruling class.  But it was the Doctrine of White Supremacy which enabled the almost total co-opting of the poor white, non-slave-holding farmers and small businessmen of the South to support that ruling class and indeed die by the several hundred thousand in defense of the institution of slavery.  (There was, however, the occasional, class-based, poor-white resistance to the Confederacy, exemplified by the recent movie, The Free State of Jones. See an splendid review of this film right on this site.)  And the white Southern ruling class kept their dominant position through the continued use of the Doctrine of White Supremacy.  But then the Doctrine began to spread North.

For example, from the time in the 1880s of the first attempts to form trade unions among the newly minted “wage-slaves” that built the industrial North, the northern, then national, industrial ruling class has used the same doctrine to help it keep control of the white working class.  And that effect has lasted down to this very day.  It is seen in the attraction of white workers to the openly racist and xenophobic Republican candidate for the President (as of the time of writing) and in the adherence of many of those same people to the openly racist Propaganda TV Channel of the Republican Party.  It, of course, is being less and less successful in hiding behind its “dog-whistle” racism, as its candidates succumb to the Rightward Imperative of becoming ever more open about their racial and gender bigotry.

But how does all of this mean that the Civil War never ended, but just continued in a different form?  The basis of the original Civil War was the Northern opposition for a wide variety of reasons, from the moral to the economic, to the oppression of vast numbers of people, who happened to be of African descent and the use of the Doctrine of White Supremacy to justify that oppression.  Since that time, the oppression of (now) African-Americans (and it is ironic how much “white blood” flows in their veins but they still don’t make it out to full equality) has been used by the national capitalist ruling class, firmly now represented by the Republican Party (but hardly challenged on the basic issues by the other wing of the political Duopoly), to help them maintain their rule, a rule that has now produced the widest gap in wealth and income in the history of the nation.  Indeed, it is the widest in the world.

Oddly enough, it was Bill Clinton who put it very well when he announced for the Presidency in October, 1991:

“ ’For 12 years, the Republicans have tried to divide us, race against race’ Mr. Clinton said. ‘Here in the shadow of this great building, all of us, we know all about race-baiting. They’ve used that old tool on us for decades now. And I want to tell you one thing: I understand that tactic, and I will not let them get away with it in 1992.’ ”

We have never heard anything like that from the man since that time, but it did sound good at the time.

Thus it is The Doctrine of White Supremacy, in place since the time of Slavery, that has been significantly employed by the national ruling class, as it has evolved in this country, in order to maintain and expand its dominance of the political economy.  There is continued and unending violence employed against the African-American community, which extends from random and arbitrary police violence against black men to the non-random but equally repressive violence committed by the so-called “criminal justice system” to discrimination in living space, education, employment opportunity, and so on and so forth. 

It is in this sense that the Civil War has never ended.  That does not mean that there will not be a formal Second Civil War in the future.  There will be.  But it will simply be the re-ramping up to the broadest and most violent of stages of what the nation has been living with since the first slaves arrived on these shores in 1619.           

Post Script: Ms. Swin Cash, a star player for the New York Liberty of the Women’s National Basketball Association, summed it all up very well:

“The scariest part for me right now is that stories that I used to hear from my grandmother, stuff that happened in the civil rights [movement], how she used to talk about how the world was and things that needed to change. It’s like the bogeyman’s come back out of the closet and those things that used to be are now being brought to the forefront once again.”

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Senior Editor, Politics, Steven Jonas, MD, MPH is a Professor Emeritus of Preventive Medicine at Stony Brook University (NY) and author/co-author/editor/co-editor of over 30 books.  In addition to being Senior Editor, Politics, for The Greanville Post, he is: a Contributor for American Politics to The Planetary Movement; a “Trusted Author” for Op-Ed News.com; a contributor to the “Writing for Godot” section of Reader Supported News; and a contributor to From The G-Man. He is the Editorial Director and a Contributing Author for TPJ magazine.us.  Further, he is an occasional Contributor to TheHarderStuff newsletter, BuzzFlash Commentary, and Dandelion Salad.

Dr. Jonas’ latest book is Ending the “Drug War”; Solving the Drug Problem: The Public Health Approach (Punto Press, 2016). His last political title was the provocative The 15% Solution: How the Republican Religious Right Took Control of the U.S., 1981-2022: A Futuristic Novel, Brewster, NY, Trepper & Katz Impact Books, Punto Press Publishing, 2013, and available on Amazon.

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Special to The Greanville Post | Commentary No. 47: “Bernie and Socialism”

Quo vadis, really?  Where can all this rhetoric lead?

Bernie Sanders seems determined to go to the Convention with his delegates in hand, and who knows?  Stranger things have happened in U.S. political history (see, for example, the election of 1876).  But whether or not HRC is somehow derailed, there is the matter of the Bernie-or-busters, the already raging “lesser of the evils” argument, and what the not-much-of-a-fan-of-Hillary-but-thoroughly-revolted-by-Trump voter should do.  If HRC is the nominee, as I have said for quite some time, the Repubs. and Trump will be running on three words: emails; Benghazi and Clinton.  If it were somehow to be Bernie, the red-baiting scream machine would be turned up to a level opt heard since the height of the McCarthy era.  Thus it would seem to be a good time to again examine the question of Bernie, socialism, the relationship between them, and how this bears on the upcoming election.  (How to deal with the inevitable red-baiting will be the subject of another column, should Bernie in the end turn out to be the Democratic nominee.)

A simple definition of “socialism” is that it is an economic system in which the means of production, distribution, and exchange are in the hands of the working class (in one manner or another) and that the workers holds state power (by one means or another).  Historically, “democratic socialism”* has referred to a politico-economic socialist system that has been achieved, in one way or another, through the democratic process, which is then retained in some form or another.  The latter is also known as the “parliamentary road to socialism.”  “Social democracy,” or the other hand, does not have a distinct definition, other than making “democracy” (however you want to define that, within the context of capitalism) “social,” that is “work better for a majority of the population.”  

Bernie has been labelled as a “socialist,” a “democratic socialist,” and a “social democrat.”  While one cannot know what Bernie really is, deep down in his mind, one can tell fairly clearly from what he says and how he says it what he is, in the context of the U.S. political process and system.  Let us look at one his grand recent statements (of course reflecting his stump speech) about what he is for and what he thinks the important issues are.  As for the important issues, he said in part:

1. “Incredibly, the wealthiest 62 people on this planet own as much wealth as the bottom half of the world’s population — around 3.6 billion people. The top 1 percent now owns more wealth than the whole of the bottom 99 percent. The very, very rich enjoy unimaginable luxury while billions of people endure abject poverty, unemployment, and inadequate health care, education, housing and drinking water. . .
2. “In the last 15 years, nearly 60,000 factories in this country have closed, and more than 4.8 million well-paid manufacturing jobs have disappeared. Much of this is related to disastrous trade agreements that encourage corporations to move to low-wage countries.  Despite major increases in productivity, the median male worker in America today is making $726 dollars less than he did in 1973, while the median female worker is making $1,154 less than she did in 2007, after adjusting for inflation.
3. “Nearly 47 million Americans live in poverty. An estimated 28 million have no health insurance, while many others are underinsured. Millions of people are struggling with outrageous levels of student debt. . . . Frighteningly, millions of poorly educated Americans will have a shorter life span than the previous generation as they succumb to despair, drugs and alcohol.
4. “Meanwhile, in our country the top one-tenth of 1 percent now owns almost as much wealth as the bottom 90 percent. Fifty-eight percent of all new income is going to the top 1 percent. Wall Street and billionaires, through their “super PACs,” are able to buy elections. . . .
5. “Let’s be clear. The global economy is not working for the majority of people in our country and the world. This is an economic model developed by the economic elite to benefit the economic elite. We need real change.”

[dropcap]T[/dropcap]hese are resounding words about frightening facts (and they are frightening no matter on which side of the divide one finds oneself — for different reasons).  But, and this is a big BUT, like so many left-wingers he does not go on to present an analysis of why this situation exists.  But to do so would open up a huge can of worms (capitalist ones as it happens) for him, politically.  Because of course the cause of all of the above is rampant capitalism.  So Bernie just skips over that part and just goes on to what he recommends for changing this situation.

“We need a president who will vigorously support international cooperation that brings the people of the world closer together, reduces hypernationalism and decreases the possibility of war. We also need a president who respects the democratic rights of the people, and who will fight for an economy that protects the interests of working people, not just Wall Street, the drug companies and other powerful special interests.

“We need to fundamentally reject our “free trade” policies and move to fair trade. . . . We need to end the international scandal in which large corporations and the wealthy avoid paying trillions of dollars in taxes to their national governments. . .

“We need international efforts to cut military spending around the globe and address the causes of war: poverty, hatred, hopelessness and ignorance. . . .

“In this pivotal moment, the Democratic Party and a new Democratic president need to make clear that we stand with those who are struggling and who have been left behind. We must create national and global economies that work for all, not just a handful of billionaires.”

Sounds great, doesn’t it?  But in the absence of an analysis of causes, it comes up rather empty.  In the presence of the political and economic reality of the United States, regardless of who is the President, just how would one go about getting there?  Where does socialism, of whatever stripe and whatever route to establishing it, come in?

Well, among things, what Bernie doesn’t address is the concept of class struggle.  The rich have gotten to where they have gotten because they have always been at war with the workers.  In recent years, through a variety of strategies and tactics which I have dealt with elsewhere, they have essentially won.  One of their prime weapons has been control of the state apparatus, supported by an extremely powerful propaganda apparatus, aka “the free press”, to which Bernie refers above.  But does anyone think that one is going to be able to use the state apparatus of which the rich (otherwise known as the “ruling class”) have full control, to be able to wrest away from them the fruits of the (class) struggle in which they have engaged in order to gain those fruits of victory? 

Actually, in order to achieve in full what Bernie says is needed in terms of policy (and for the most part I agree with him), unless I have missed something one indeed would have to establish some sort of socialism.  But Bernie surely avoids that one.  And thus he also avoids the “parliamentary road” question (which, so far, at least, has never worked.  The closest a Western capitalist nation ever came to voting in socialism was Italy in 1948 and direct electoral intervention by a combination of the U.S. and the Vatican made sure that that did not happen).  Certainly in the U.S., that is not going to happen for the foreseeable future.

Bernie is essentially left with some approach to “fixing capitalism,” along the lines of former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich’s recent book, Saving Capitalism.  That approach is certainly not socialism, whether of the “democratic” (so far historically unachievable) variety, or not.  The public Bernie rather falls into the category of “social democrat,” as defined above, that is a Democrat who would like the government (the state) to work better in terms of what it does “socially,” for the working class and the other non-owning segments of society.  His program is really what I have previously referred to as “the New Deal on Steroids.”  As Bernie and his people roar into the Democratic National Convention, as Donald Trump becomes ever more openly fascistic, and as the “lesser-of-the-evils” question becomes ever more on the front burner, I think that it is useful to bear these considerations in mind.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Op-Ed News.com; a contributor to the “Writing for Godot” section of Reader Supported News; and a contributor to From The G-Man. He is the Editorial Director and a Contributing Author for TPJ magazine.us.  Further, he is an occasional Contributor to TheHarderStuff newsletter, BuzzFlash Commentary, and Dandelion Salad.