Bernie Sanders: Democrats Need to Wake Up
This is not Bernie using his hard won high profile to shift from seeking the Democratic nomination to supporting Hillary and the Democratic Party against Trump and the Republican Party.
This is Bernie the Seattle rioter, the global anti-capitalist revolutionary jumping up and down and angrily shouting in rage.
Rage at a human race born in naked poverty, a humanity that spent most of history as poor as the most desperate Chinese peasant of the 19th Century, a human world in which wealth remains exceptional and the erratic race between progress and poverty sees now one and now the other dash ahead.
Rage at the global poverty against which progress still races, and at the inequality that is in any case intrinsic to capitalism.
Rage at the global capitalism, itself, that Obama and Hillary support, endorse, and seek to ameliorate.
We so are not all socialists, now.
And then he pivots to briefly damning those who supported Brexit and those who support Trump while espousing the left wing fake version of economic nationalism, before with his usual hypocrisy pretending to take their side and share their rage, as he has done throughout his campaign.
We need to fundamentally reject our “free trade” policies and move to fair trade.
"Fair trade" is what cosmopolitans urge to steal votes from economic nationalists who urge tariffs or even bans on importing specified products.
It does not and cannot keep jobs in America and is not intended to, but only ensures that the foreigners who get our jobs are not too awfully exploited.
It is what Denis Kucinich and David Sirota used to talk about while pretending they wanted to stop factories moving to Mexico or China when what they really wanted to do was make those lost American jobs even more beneficial to the Mexican and Chinese workers who took them.
Americans should not have to compete against workers in low-wage countries who earn pennies an hour.
Absolutely not.
We need to insure those workers in low wage countries at least earn dimes and quarters.
That is what "fair trade" is all about.
We must defeat the Trans-Pacific Partnership.
And then he ends pretending, as he has all along, that he wants to prioritize Americans while demanding policies that would harm Americans for the purpose of benefiting others around the world, as well as future owners of beach-front and shore level property.
We must help poor countries develop sustainable economic models.
. . . .
We need to create tens of millions of jobs worldwide by combating global climate change and by transforming the world’s energy system away from fossil fuels.
We need international efforts to cut military spending around the globe and address the causes of war: poverty, hatred, hopelessness and ignorance.
Those are the causes of war, huh?
My God, what awful left-wing twaddle.
The notion that Donald Trump could benefit from the same forces that gave the Leave proponents a majority in Britain should sound an alarm for the Democratic Party in the United States.
Millions of American voters, like the Leave supporters, are understandably angry and frustrated by the economic forces that are destroying the middle class.
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.
So writes the global radical who has all along worn the sheep's clothing of faux economic nationalism, his crude redistributionism amiably attired as Scandinavian social democracy.
There is a lot more Chavez/Madero/Pope Francis in this fellow than he has clearly let on.
Had he been chosen as the Democrats' nominee Trump and the Republicans would have eaten him alive.
PS.
Yes, all this means that the establishment left and the establishment right actually agree that Americans are overpaid.
Raising the minimum wage in a context of free trade will not actually help American workers that much as it will mostly just drive factories out of America even faster, possibly at the cost of a rise in inflation putting a nasty ding in people's - and especially retirees - nesteggs.
But that will help make the globalizing plutes even richer (conservatives: Yay!) while pleasing cosmopolitan liberals and libertarians who think giving poor foreigners our jobs benefits the globally worst off, does the greatest good for the greatest number, and helps equalize the global playing field.
Ditto open borders and high-volume low-wage immigration.
In contrast to all of which Donald Trump, alone, stands for positions on trade and immigration that put America First.
No comments:
Post a Comment