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

Tuesday, December 22, 2020

Posts will be spotty this week: Tuesday, December 22 through Saturday, December 26, 2020

I expect to have a full posting on Sunday, December 27, 2020.

I will always take notice of the use of "liberal" and "liberalism" to describe politics in the USA, and this grabbed my attention coming from a magazine online group that were earlier actual descendants of the British aristocracy that were replaced by "liberals" in the contemporary sense. I have over my adult lifetime puzzled over the lack of distinction with the usage of words related to "liberalism", and earlier in the magazine and later in the online posts that CounterPunch has run its articles. It is confusing when I discover the word in articles in other publications. I don't know which definition is meant except by the intellectual content framed by the author. There were, and continues to be, two definitions of the word which I will explain.

The original definition is now regarded as a "classical" definition of the word. While writing his commentary, I found to my surprise the distinction recognized in an article written only last summer by Robert Longley and posted on ThoughtCo's website entitled "What Is Classical Liberalism? Definition and Examples". In this article he distinguishes the two in one sentence: "Today, classical liberalism is viewed in contrast to the more politically-progressive philosophy of social liberalism." Thus, the argument here is that the current use of "liberalism" is only a subset of what is now termed "classical liberalism", the ideology of capitalism. And, according to his definition, the current use of the word prevalent throughout especially the USA means only a kind of social form of classical liberalism with its emphasis on civil rights supposedly guaranteed by the Constitution. Notice that this definition does not in any way disturb liberalism in its classical meaning.

History has demonstrated that "social liberalism" is essentially propaganda used by the capitalist ruling classes to prettify the essential inequalities of capitalism and to diminish the use of classical liberalism, the ideology of capitalism. This propaganda serves to hide the social harms in the forms of racism, poverty, exploitation, wars, etc. that have been done to the general population under capitalist regimes that have always favored the enrichment of the few over the health and welfare of the many. These crimes are the result of capitalism and its self-serving ideology of classical liberalism and today's liberalism ("social liberalism") that has functioned over the past several centuries to create the conditions of today. Can you who identify as liberals in the contemporary sense continue to ignore these conditions: lack of access to healthcare, widespread poverty, racism, neverending wars, and the destabilization of the climate which is threatening to end nearly all life on planet Earth including humans? 

Now our masters in the capitalist ruling classes have promised us more social harms to come under the Great Reset where, according to promises by them, we "will own nothing and be happy". Could this be another ideology like "social liberalism" that serves to hide their wet-dream of total control over us, that is, a "new world order" under their control and serving only their needs? If you like the present social-economic reality or are thoroughly indoctrinated by the propaganda of the current ruling class, then you will obey them like sheep headed down the chute to be slaughtered; but if not, you need to see what they have planned for us, actively oppose their plans, and then destroy their system of capitalism, that is, private ownership of the economy, that has given them so much power and wealth but has caused so much destruction on societies today. [I have done some editing of this commentary on 12/25/2020 to clarify my argument.]
  • CHD Article on Big-Picture Look at Current Pandemic Beneficiaries Accepted by Peer-Reviewed Journal from Children's Health Defense. (Note: The fact that this article was accepted by the International Journal of Vaccine Theory, Practice and Research is a recognition of it importance that I overlooked earlier in this month.) My reaction: The rather lengthy article contains what the ruling class has planned for us ordinary people (not billionaires and their sycophants) according to the Great Reset project.
  • Is Society Collapsing? by Kirkpatrick Sale from CounterPunch. My reaction: He should win the bet, but the financial circumstances of the escrow holder will determine the winner. If he/she is a member of the ruling class of capitalists, he will lose the bet. But if she/he is a worker, he will win the bet. If he/she is in between, who knows? If society is collapsing, all humans will ultimately lose because humans need societies to exist.
The promoters of the dominant productivist model and of the capitalist system first denied the existence of a major issue, namely the environmental damage and climate change, and they still actively support policies that worsen the situation. Next, when their position became impossible to uphold, they made the headlines in international media by publishing a report on the issue, thus attempting to give credence to the idea that international institutions and the governments of the most industrialized countries have taken the measure of this serious problem, while in fact it had been deliberately concealed for decades. At the end of the day, those who defend the current system [capitalism] imply that it can solve a problem it is largely responsible for, thus permitting its own perpetuation. It is urgent to understand that the only fair and sustainable solution involves a radical questioning of this productivist capitalist system, which cannot but generate environmental damage and careering inequalities. [my insertion]
  • The Future of Vaccines featuring James Corbett, a Canadian, delivering his research about the new mRNA vaccine supposedly to treat SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes COVID-19 illness in a 41:34m video from his weblog The Corbett Report. This is a best post. 
If the Gateses and the Faucis and the representatives of the international medical establishment get their way, life will not return to normal until the entire planet is vaccinated against SARS-CoV-2. What many do not yet understand, however, is that the vaccines that are being developed for SARS-Cov-2 are unlike any vaccines that have ever been used on the human population before. And, as radically different as these vaccines appear, they represent only the very beginning of a complete transformation of vaccine technology that is currently taking place in research labs across the planet. This is a study of The Future of Vaccines.
  • Covid-1984 And The Agendas To Come with James Perloff. In this Activist Post Spiro Skouras interviews "author, journalist and recently retired registered nurse, James Perloff" in a 54:10m video interview in which Perloff discloses that his book was banned by Amazon. I note that he asserts (at 17:57m) that the future that we can expect is "bolshevism in America". This is another example of the confusion by current critical activists who mix up fascism with bolshevism which forbad private ownership of the economy as existed in Western capitalist countries. Perloff's use of the term bolshevism only applies to the Stalinist rule of the Soviet Union after bolshevists in that country were attacked mainly by viscerally anti-communist armies of the British ruling class (also 13 armies of other capitalist ruling classes of nations including the USA) which aligned themselves with the small Russian capitalist class and caused a civil war. This eventually caused Stalin's takeover of the Soviet Union. Then the nation was ruled autocratically by Stalin, who was a supreme nationalist (not an imperialists that Western propagandists portrayed him as), and together with his loyal followers in the bureaucracy formed a new self-serving ruling class. This example demonstrates the effectiveness, and the confusion of activists, resulting from 75 years of anti-communist propaganda. 
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