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Lumpenproletariat

Monthly Archives: Apr 2020

Second Thought: America’s Stunted Political Spectrum

24 Fri Apr 2020

Posted by ztnh in Political Economy, Political Science

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political spectrum, Second Thought

LUMPENPROLETARIAT—The political science concept of the political spectrum must occur to everybody sooner or later, in their thinking about politics, if they think about politics at all.  Surely echoing the view of other reliable scholars, Dr. Noam Chomsky has commented that the “general population doesn’t know what’s happening. And it doesn’t know that it doesn’t know.”  Dr. Chomsky, of course, co-wrote Manufacturing Consent about how the range and bounds of discourse are framed and constrained by institutional abuse of power even before discourse or debate begins, often without the awareness of the participants or observers.

So, Americans know there is a political right-wing and a political left-wing. Americans have, perhaps, some vague notion of something called anarchism, but we’re not quite sure what it is. ‘Vandalism, maybe?’ ‘Isn’t anarchy like chaos?’ we might wonder. Unfortunately, most Americans seem to know little else about the diversity, range, and domain of political spectrum possibility, or political compass possibility. Perhaps, we, Americans lack political imagination.

A simple model of the known possible entirety of political thought. With zero at the center, the horizontal axis is an economic scale, ranging left (towards extreme cooperation) and right (towards extreme competition). The vertical axis is a social scale, ranging up (towards total obedience to authority) and down (towards a maximization of personal liberty).

Inclusiveness and political diversity in government are signs of a healthy democracy.  Exclusion of political alternatives, especially by a colluding cartel of two corporate political parties, is a red flag, a sign of a stagnant, unhealthy, and/or dying democracy, perhaps even a failed state, as Chris Hedges, et al. have suggested.  And two-party systems are antidemocratic because they collude to exclude political alternatives, political competition, and, ultimately, the will of the people.

America’s restricted political spectrum has censored and eliminated the left.

Scholars, political scientists, and others are aware of the known entirety of political possibility. But corporate for-profit media outlets, where most Americans seek news and information, predominantly expose their audiences to only the two corporate parties, which we must remember is an antidemocratic media practice. As a result of corporate media censorship of political alternatives and American lack of political imagination and curiosity, as a result of the process of manufacturing consent, our capitalist rulers and antidemocratic, dominating systems of power have almost completely cut out the left half of the political spectrum since the Second Red Scare and McCarthyism.

In American politics, the political bifurcation of discourse into “left” and “right” is mostly political theater because both parties overwhelmingly support the same policies on behalf of the same corporate funders.

This scatter plot appears to form a trend line from the lower left corner (cooperation & liberty) to the upper right corner (authoritarianism & cartelization).

Let’s consider the graphed model above to help drive the point home that there is no “left” in the USA, at least not in electoral politics, which is the primary lever of power in American politics. When American pundits bash ‘the left’, they’re referring to Democrats as “leftists” because they want to smear the real left, so that Americans will never even learn what the real left is. Tulsi Gabbard and Mike Gravel are both Democrats. The only socialist on the map is Howie Hawkins from my hometown of San Mateo (like fellow San Mateo High alumni Kris Kristofferson and Alicia Silverstone). But ain’t nobody heard of Howie Hawkins. You certainly never hear about him in the dominant media, like you do Sanders, Gabbard and even Gravel. But, of course, Sanders has become a tool of the Democrat Party bosses, since he sacrificed his integrity when he refused to challenge Hillary Clinton’s collusion with DNC bosses to sabotage the 2016 Sanders presidential primary campaign.

The graphed model above is an example of a simple political compass or political spectrum map of the 2020 U.S. presidential election. We can’t help but notice there are only four candidates on the left of the economic scale (favoring cooperation, instead of competition), and only five candidates on the bottom of the social scale (favoring a maximization of personal liberty, instead of obedience to authority).

So, we see there actually is no American “left”, no leftist political parties with significant electoral impact. The political drama we see on TV and our portable digital screens is political theater and political posturing between Democrats in the center and center-right arguing with everyone else on the right, without ever actually opposing them electorally or in any meaningful sense. The Democrats only punch downward at the Green Party and any other electoral politics to the left of them, as noted above.

The general population is aware that there’s a “left” and a “right” or “liberals” and “conservatives”.  But the general American understanding of the various philosophies found in the differing positions along a 2-D (single-axis) or 3-D (multi-axis) political spectrum model is often weak.  For example, former President Obama was often attacked as being a “socialist“, when Obama instituted a predominantly pro-capitalist, center-right, or even extreme right-wing agenda. Indeed, Obama is widely recognized by political scientists as being to the right of Reagan on the political spectrum, if we compare their respective policies. Further complicating matters for American political observers and/or participants is the fact that individual politicians can vary politically. For example, Obama may be viewed as progressive or liberal on certain token social issues or identity politics, but very conservative or right-wing on deeper structural foreign policy, economic, or Constitutional matters.

Understanding and modeling diversity of political and economic philosophies can get complicated. But it can actually be fascinating to think about. And it’s terribly important for the wellbeing of society. A deeper understanding of the various competing political philosophies in our society, not only helps us make more informed political choices, but it better protects our ongoing American experiment towards true democracy from misinformation, disinformation campaigns, and other gaslighting abuses from narcissistic, craven politicians and cynical media. 

Now, with all that in mind, if we haven’t already, let’s see what Second Thought can tell us about “America’s Stunted Political Spectrum“.

Messina

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Featured video: “America’s Stunted Political Spectrum” by Second Thought (YouTube channel)

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[15 OCT 2020]

[Last modified on 17 NOV 2020 at 09:15 PST]

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The American Prospect | Our Uniquely American Virus

14 Tue Apr 2020

Posted by ztnh in Anti-Capitalism, Democratic Party (USA), Neoliberalism, Police State, Republican Party (USA)

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COVID-19, The American Prospect

LUMPENPROLETARIAT—It is important to understand that this crisis, we, Americans are facing is man-made because we have been warned about the type of viral outbreak we are now dealing with; but capitalists do not profit from emergency preparedness. That’s why Trump has cut back on important funding, which has left us vulnerable to pandemics, like COVID-19. But Obama did the same before him. Neoliberalism is advanced by both parties of the political cartel, which lords it over our nation—the Democrat and Republican parties’ two-party dictatorship. Across the nation, local hospitals have been closed down, forcing people to drive farther and farther to mega-hospitals. And EMTs often report that rural people have to be shuttled up to an hour to get to their nearest hospital. And, when they arrive, there might not be a bed available.

This American neoliberal reality is being exposed for the dangerous fraud that it is, as Americans die across the nation needlessly. Many people have died only due to the failure of our for-profit health care system, which will always be unprepared for national emergencies. Capitalist modes of production prioritize profit motive over human rights, human wellbeing, and environmental sustainability. Thus, when crises occur, they are only exacerbated by American neoliberal ideology. Worse than that, as Naomi Klein has explained in her book, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, crises are often used by neoliberals to ram through previously devised policies, which tend to concentrate wealth and power.

“If America’s “free-market” health care system is guided by an invisible hand, that hand is busy digging our graves.”

Nick Hanauer, The American Prospect, 14 APR 2020

Messina

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Hanauer-Neoliberalism 041420.jpg

THE AMERICAN PROSPECT—[14 APR 2020] America’s ability to contain the coronavirus has been compromised by decades of neoliberal ideology. And it is literally killing us.

The novel coronavirus is a pathogen that attacks the body politic as opportunistically as it attacks the body itself. Just as people living with underlying medical conditions are at much higher risk of severe illness or death from COVID-19, so too are people living in nations weakened by underlying pathologies in their economic and political systems. That helps explain why some nations manage to flatten the curve, while others struggle merely to bury their dead.

Tragically, as our pandemic response reveals, the United States is suffering from a crippling underlying condition. The pathogen is neoliberalism.

Four decades of contagious neoliberal ideology—four decades of dismantling government to deliver tax cuts for the rich, deregulation for the powerful, wage suppression for workers, and shrunken and debilitated public services for all—have left our families more precarious, our economy less resilient, and our physical and social infrastructure less capable of mounting an effective pandemic response. It has left us with a federal government so callously anti-government that it has abdicated its role as a protector of public health at home and as a leader and role model abroad.

And it has left us with democratic institutions so fragile that the virus even threatens our ability to conduct free and fair elections.

The emergence of deadly new pathogens is inevitable. But deadly pandemics are not. As was not the case in the influenza pandemic of 1918, today we have the knowledge and resources to track, slow, contain, and ultimately stop transmission of a deadly disease. It is incompetent governance, lack of preparation, and the inability or unwillingness to face facts or listen to science that transform pathogens into pandemics.

Neoliberal ideology has left us with democratic institutions so fragile that the virus even threatens our ability to conduct free and fair elections.

— snip —

Learn more at THE AMERICAN PROSPECT.

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[26 DEC 2020]

[Last modified on 26 DEC 2020 at 06:37 PST]

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