The rehabilitation of the American right is a dangerous mistake

Perhaps it is understandable. Given the crass and debased manifestation that Donald Trump is of what is in fact the underlying thinking of the mainstream Republican right in the United States perhaps it should be no surprise that so many self-styled progressives have begun to rewrite even recent political history.

As Trump plays the buffoon while calling for the same racist, far right, anti-worker, militarist and authoritarian polices that Republicans have supported and been pushing towards to one degree or another since Nixon, somehow the American liberal tries to find solace by re-imagining bigots and vicious imperialists like George H.W. Bush and John McCain as paragons of civility and decency -- a revisionism that would almost be funny were it not so terribly dangerous.

McCain helped to legitimize the very wing of the Republican Party that now most vehemently backs Trump by choosing an extremist like Sarah Palin as his running mate in 2008 when he ran for President. His history of supporting anti-woman, anti-gay, anti-worker polices, military adventurism, his war crimes and his use of bigoted language has been well documented including here on The Left Chapter and in many other forums. 

As the media and politicians lionized George H.W. Bush a few voices of reason tried to remind about the drumbeat of lies that led to the first Iraq War, the indiscriminate slaughter of civilians that was the result of his illegal invasion of Panama, his emboldening of fascists at home and abroad, and-on-and-on-and-on. A round-up of these articles can also be found here.

I suppose the dog-whistling of the Willie Horton ads in 1988 were a kinder, gentler campaign racism.

CNN host Don Lemon's castigating of Trump for going to Bush Sr's funeral was utterly misguided in its target. It would have been better to ask what folks like Jimmy Carter and Obama were doing there.

The sheer idiocy of liberals, progressives and the media glowing over the passing of candy by the second Bush of the Patriot Act, the Iraq War, the indiscriminate use of the death penalty and Hurricane Katrina -- to name just a few of his crimes --is genuinely grotesque. Michelle Obama may have been willing to gush “I love him to death...He’s a wonderful man” but I rather suspect history will deliver a very different verdict.

Of the little tender moment a writer in the Boston Herald opined:

This was a statement that George W. Bush plainly wanted to make, and wanted his countrymen to see: in an America convulsed by the assaults on decency and civility that Trump and team have visited upon it, it is not too late to restore the best of what have always been regarded as American values.

This is such unmitigated bullshit it is very hard to wrap one's mind around it. Bush's two terms as President were a prolonged and non-stop set of "assaults on decency and civility".  It is of such recent memory that it astounds that so many seem to have entirely forgotten what it was like to live through his reign and the relentless attacks of his Presidency on American democracy and rule of law. Never mind the millions who have been slaughtered directly due to Bush's illegal wars based on lies and misinformation.

Bush has in no way stopped his indecency, by the way, and found time in his retirement to make calls to swing senators in support of Trump Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh. What a wonderful fellow.

All of this reactionary revisionist liberal and media nonsense plays to profoundly false notions of an America and American political class that was allegedly once pure, just, democratic and fair. An America that was once great.

That America is a chimera. A lie. It never existed. And neither did the "good" Republicans and conservatives. Reagan, both the Bushes, McCain. They were all practitioners of a bigoted politics with a deep authoritarian streak and they all worked with the Republican and Democratic politicians in congress to push the envelope ever further towards a toxic, racist, reactionary, corporate political culture that allowed a President Trump.

For all the hue-and-cry about Trump's alleged "indecency" sitting Republicans have had little problem falling in line with his legislative agenda. Neither have many corporate Democrats.  Republicans on the state level continue to undermine what is left of American democracy -- such as it was -- through gerrymandering, voter suppression, vote fraud and even outright authoritarian maneuvers such as those that are occurring in Wisconsin and Michigan. 

Every time the Republicans push the United States further and further towards the right the Democrats adapt and ultimately fall in line with the new normal. 

In the interregnums where the Democrats supposedly reigned little was made better. Clinton campaigned as a pro-death penalty, anti-"entitlement" Democrat and took great pride in policies and rhetoric that led to the dismantling of the American welfare state, the scapegoating of immigrants and the mass incarceration of black Americans.

Obama singularly failed to hold the Wall St. elite accountable for the crimes that brought the 2008 economic meltdown and continued Bush's imperialist and adventurist aggressive war polices with little to no change. In fact, of course, Obama left a terrible legacy of death and destruction with the ongoing and endless war in Afghanistan, the increased use of illegal drone attacks, the appalling Libya intervention, the coup in Honduras,and the rest of the shitshow that was his foreign policy record.

Now Hilary Clinton echoes Trump by calling for Europe to curb immigration to "stop" the far right. It is not much of victory to keep extremists out of power by adopting their worst policies.

Ultimately this is where the danger lies in creating this myth of the virtuous, "good" American reactionary. It not simply normalizes what was the right wing extremism and incivility of just ten years ago, it also helps to normalize the politics and ideological underpinnings of it. It creates the conditions for the birthing of an enfant terrible like Trump and then for the worse yet that may follow. 

See also: Trump -- Reflections on the state and the revolution

America deserves to dream big...and it needs Bernie Sanders -- An Open Letter to Democrats from a Canadian socialist

By A.M. 

To Democratic Primary Voters;

Greetings from Toronto.

My writing name is A.M. I'm a musician and writer here in the city. I'm also involved in what I would call socialism, though I trust you would hesitate to give it such a politically-charged label. Our activisms probably amount to what are essentially the same things: signing petitions; walking picket lines; engaging in civil disobedience; charitable donations. I could go off here on a tangent about what socialism really means; or why I think you should be a lot more afraid of Barack Obama than you now are; or about the evils of the so-called "free market." I could pontificate and rip into you for upholding any one of a million structures of oppression (in which, it must be said, I am also complicit), but I'd instead like to do two things -- convince you to vote for Bernie Sanders, and convince you to at least entertain the possibility of your party moving to the left.

Our nations, and indeed the entire planet, are at a critical moment. Climate change is threatening our very existence as a species. The ever-present possibility of global war (over religion, race, oil -- you name it) seems to be drawing nearer each day. I won't insult your intelligence by going into detail about these or any other issues threatening humanity - you possess the same mental faculties that I do.

What I will say instead is that I believe you need to change your perspective. This might seem rude and presumptuous, but let me explain.

I want you to think, for a moment, about where you were and what you were doing when Barack Obama swept his way into the White House. I was sitting on my bed, watching CNN with my mom and crying. Much like you, I was overcome with positive emotion - hope, love, compassion, and so on. It took only a few short months, however, for me to realize that Obama had sold us a bill of goods. As the economy continued to sputter, I witnessed firsthand the effect that government cuts (which I will henceforth refer to as austerity) were having on my mom, a nurse at a hospital in downtown Toronto. Much like you, I began to feel ever greater pressure as a result of this austerity - increased fees at school, worsened health care, and the like. My views began to change. Perhaps Obama was not the salvation we were told he would be. Perhaps the Democratic Party, which had been positioning itself for years as the "anti-Bush," was actually not on the side of working people.

I am witnessing a similar phenomenon in my own country. We just rid ourselves of our former Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper, replacing him with a young, articulate, well-spoken leader (sound familiar?) who makes all the right noises in public, but is in fact beholden to all the same class interests as Harper. Our new Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, has garnered a reputation as a peaceful, compassionate man. He even brought gender parity into our national Cabinet! And yet, working people are making less with each passing day, and the cost of living keeps rising.

Hope and change, indeed.

As long as I live, I will never forget the day I became a socialist. We had just walked back to class from my high school auditorium, where we had been treated to a public "showing" of the Obama inauguration. Frustrated, my normally reserved music teacher could not hold back any longer. He pointed out the hypocrisy of an American President who talked about judging nations by the scale of the things they built, not what they destroyed. Look at Obama's advisors and donors; look at his belief that the war in Iraq was a strategic blunder and not what it really was -- a breach of international law and probably the single greatest war crime since Vietnam!

It finally clicked for me that (the overwhelming majority of) governments are not on our side. Even more to the point, they are actively opposed to the interests of their citizens!

One of the more common (and apparently convincing) arguments put forward by the Clinton campaign is that a party based around single-payer healthcare, more humane drug policies, and the other policies Sanders is fighting for is doomed to fail.

But I'd like to give you a very short lesson in one part of Canadian history.

In 1934, in the Canadian prairie city of Regina, a few dozen farmers, writers, activists and assorted ne'er-do-wells gathered to form a new political party. This political party, named the Co-Operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF), believed that the means of production -- and hence the economic power -- of our country should be harnessed for the good of all. While calling most prominently for universal healthcare (including dental services, prescriptions, and many other things that Canada's Medicare scheme still lacks), the CCF programme also advocated for unemployment insurance, pensions for the elderly, tuition-free schools, protection for farmers and homeowners fighting foreclosure, and many other policies that likely appeal to you as a Democrat!

Famously, at least among Canadian socialists, the final lines of the Regina Manifesto stated that "No C.C.F. Government will rest content until it has eradicated capitalism and put into operation the full programme of socialized planning which will lead to the establishment in Canada of the Co-Operative Commonwealth."

All this from a bunch of unschooled farmers and Prairie preachers!

Of course, they didn't win everything.

As you probably can tell, capitalism is alive and well in Canada. But there were (and continue to be) some extremely important victories. As I mentioned above, the CCF advocated for unemployment insurance, pensions and universal healthcare. To a great degree (though not great enough), we have those things in Canada. Every single election -- federal and provincial -- Canadians debate healthcare. We talk incessantly about expanding our social programs, not eliminating them. Even Prime Minister Harper, who hobnobbed with Islamophobes and corporate vultures, never came out publicly and talked about dismantling Medicare. Millions of lives, including my own, have been greatly enriched as a direct result of socialist policies won by grassroots, socialist struggles.

Simply put, you must aim high if you intend to win major victories for those living in poverty, the unemployed, workers and the elderly. You must dream of utopia if you intend on even the small victories.

Bernie Sanders is not a perfect candidate, of course. I could point to his basically unwavering support for Israel, or his voting for Clinton-era crime "reforms", as evidence of his unworthiness as a candidate. I personally have deep reservations with the Sanders platform. And as a libertarian socialist, I disagree in principle with the very idea of peoples' movements shepherded by leaders, no matter how humorously cantankerous they may be. I believe that our countries belong to us.

Bernie Sanders and his frankly mild form of social democracy are not perfect. But I urge you to put yourself in the shoes of those CCF organizers. Here were a desperate bunch of people - but they dreamed of something bigger, something greater, something truly humane. They didn't get there, but I'm sitting here writing this today because of the very real, hard-won victories of Canadian socialism. Perhaps the Sanders candidacy is unrealistic, as Clinton supporters are so fond of saying. But people deserve better than a "realistic" politics. People deserve utopia.

“To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness.
What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places—and there are so many—where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction.
And if we do act, in however small a way, we don’t have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.” - Howard Zinn

A.M. is a writer in Toronto 

 See also: Bernie ascendant

See also: Raising Monuments -- How Corbyn may yet turn the tide

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Bernie ascendant

Last night saw the once presumed establishment Democratic Party Presidential nominee Hilary Clinton squeak out, apparently, the narrowest of wins over self-described Democratic Socialist upstart Bernie Sanders. While Iowa Democratic officials, as of the time of this posting, have not as yet declared officially who won, Clinton has crowned herself the victor. Either way, Iowa is not a "winner take all state" so both Sanders and Clinton will emerge with a basically equal number of delegates.


But this victory, even if confirmed,  may yet prove to be a Pyrrhic one.



As Sanders himself put it:

"Nine months ago, we came to this beautiful state, we had no political organization, we had no money, we had no name recognition and we were taking on the most powerful political organization in the United States of America."

Despite the many obstacles and the alleged aversion of Americans to socialism, Sanders' momentum has been steadily building to the point where he is no longer a fringe voice simply trying to put some ideas out there, but is actually a serious contender.

The importance of this in efforts to revive a socialist and anti-capitalist electoral movement in both the United States and Canada cannot be overstated.

Many have pointed to the obvious limitations of Sanders -- from his vague and not terribly progressive foreign policy ideas to the fact that his "socialism" often seems to be really a very aggressive form of reformism or statist New Deal style liberalism -- though these quibbles would often seem to miss the point.

The significance of Bernie Sanders lies not in the minutiae of his socialism or its purity, but in the fact that today one can read an opinion piece on the CNN website that states:

 A few months ago, the notion that a democratic socialist could seriously challenge a front-runner who has been preparing to win in the Iowa caucuses since 2008 would have seemed ludicrous. But that is no longer the case.

Sanders has made the ludicrous and unthinkable thinkable. He has put the idea of socialism, however vaguely conceived or constructed,  as a possible electoral reality and alternative back into the discourse in the United States in a way it has not been in decades.

Whatever the flaws of Sanders, this represents a huge reversal of fortune and victory for the idea that there can even be a socialist idea in America. This is a remarkable accomplishment totally unforeseen even a few months ago.

He has also shown that there is a very real, palpable thirst out there for genuine alternatives to the neo-liberal austerity consensus of the last 30 years that has delivered a society of staggering inequality and runaway corporate power, as well as to 'Third Way' notions of  'progressiveism' that essentially accept this "reality" while hoping presumably  to tinker with its worst excesses.

In the United Kingdom with Jeremy Corbyn we also saw this push back against the Blairite clones who had led the UK's Labour Party for a generation and had alienated it from those who it had always been meant to represent, regardless of whether that would result in nominal electoral successes that really changed little for the vast majority of people.

Yet in Canada the once social democratic NDP under Tom Mulcair has seen this tired Blair vision of capitulation to right wing narratives that flowed out of the 1990's become firmly entrenched as its ideology and vision of governance.

With Bernie ascendant in the US and inspiring huge crowds and packed to capacity rallies to a fever-pitch of excitement at the notion that possibly an economy and government that is entirely beholden to corporations and the wealthy is not inevitable, and with a Labour Party returning to its roots and seeing a stunning growth in its membership and in the enthusiasm of its base, maybe it is time for those on the electoral left in Canada to stop simply applauding these developments abroad and to do something -- whether inside or outside the NDP -- to make them happen at home.

photo via wikimedia commons

See also: It appears the NDP strategists are stuck in the 90’s – again

See also: Raising Monuments -- How Corbyn may yet turn the tide