We’ve lived so long under the spell of hierarchy—from god-kings to feudal lords to party bosses—that only recently have we awakened to see not only that “regular” citizens have the capacity for self-governance, but that without their engagement our huge global crises cannot be addressed. The changes needed for human society simply to survive, let alone thrive, are so profound that the only way we will move toward them is if we ourselves, regular citizens, feel meaningful ownership of solutions through direct engagement. Our problems are too big, interrelated, and pervasive to yield to directives from on high.
—Frances Moore Lappé, excerpt from Time for Progressives to Grow Up

Monday, December 14, 2020

Posts that I especially recommend today: Monday, December 14, 2020

This article is another illustration of when "push comes to shove" (def.) "liberals" will always go with the capitalist ruling class and their government. What the author has written--and she has impeccable liberal credentials--in my opinion, supports censorship of non-governmental highly trained experts. What she has written supports government policies that mandates vaccines directly or indirectly by tolerating businesses which discriminate against those who don't trust pharmaceutical corporations which have a record of profiting off drugs like opioids. After all, her main argument is that people who don't trust pharmaceutical corporations and government fake health agencies impair the health of others. This is an argument that we, the people, must be "shoved" by mandatory laws into compliance which will force people who don't trust for-profit pharmaceutical corporations and which are indemnified from lawsuits, to take their vaccines. This is the same argument that the government, which are controlled by the capitalist ruling class, are the final authority on what's best for Americans. What happened to the belief that government derives from the consent of the governed? and the Bill of Rights which protects basic freedoms of minorities? Oops? I think we caught them on a very slippery slope to fascist capitalism?
For the new Left, then, it was not capitalism but the democratic social order altogether that was the source of oppression — not just of black people, or of workers, but of us, the college bourgeoisie. The civil rights movement of black Americans became the template for subsequent claims by women, gays and transgender persons, each based on a further discovery of moral failing buried deep in the heart of America. Hence a further license, indeed mandate, granted to individual conscience, as against the claims of the nation.
My reaction: The "new Left", that is, ("liberals") were influenced, as always, by the ruling class who had an interest in shaping them into this thought disorder--thinking that society was the problem, not capitalism.
  • Trump’s Last Chance to Snub the Deep State by Ron Ridenour from Strategic Culture Foundation. My reaction: It might be his last chance, but I hardly think he will do it because such pardons will "snub" the entire capitalist ruling class of which he is a prime member.