And yet they clearly forget that the military works much as a socialist system with its health care, education, housing, and food benefits. Cognitive dissonance at its finest.
7 Likes
Heās spent years arguing that the party needs them back in it. His campaign has repeatedly made appeals to Trumpās voters (who are mostly non-college educated, blue collar whites, people who left the democratic party due to racial animus). And as Daneel pointed out, his opposition to reparations is due to it being ādivisiveā, ie. racist whites would be upset about it.
Re: reparations, Killer Mike had some interesting things to say about Sandersā being 1) the only candidate thatās talked about reparations, and 2) the most likely candidate to continue listening and who might potentially take up that cause in his administration (thatās a lot of āpotentiallyā and āmightā, but there it is):
1 Like
Killer Mike and a whole lot of other people missed the point of Coatesā article. Itās about the intractability of white supremacy. Basically making the case that if Bernie, a self-styled socialist and revolutionary canāt even say that he supports it (much less actually work to accomplish it) for fear of angering whites, then itās an impossible task and America will always be a white supremacist nation with a permanent Black underclass. It really has nothing to do with support or opposition to either candidate. Heās certainly not arguing we should vote Clinton.
2 Likes
I think Reich starts his narrative too late. I would say it started in the late 60s through the 70s. Iām pretty sure a substantial number of working poor whites were, at least by todays standards, socially conservative (at the time, they probably would have self-identified as ānormalā or even āliberalā for the wife working part time outside the home). If youāre a blue collar worker in the early 70s and a bunch of mostly college educated liberals who look down their noses at you culturally are trying to consciously re-order society, are you really going to vote for the party they identify with? Are you really going to vote for the person that tells you āI represent the working people. Iām on your side! Oh, and by the way, your daughter should be able to get an abortion and sheās going to be bussed across town instead of going to the school a few blocks away. Also, if you disagree with that youāre a horrible human beingā?
2 Likes
Adam Curtis made a documentary about the Clinton/Blair elections, which unfortunately, I canāt remember the name of. It featured several interviews with self-described swing voters talking about their very narrow self-interests and their desires to pay lower taxes. This was in a context of post-1980ās destruction of class (and identity politics-based) solidarity through segmented marketing techniques. Swing voters at that time were not looking for, say, a party that was both good on civil liberties and social justice. They were looking out solely for themselves and had worked out they had power to demand more from āleftā parties than working class people could.
But, you know, #notallSwingVoters, I guessā¦
2 Likes
Why do you think they forget that?
Theyāve never talked about it, but I can see how one could view the money paid to a soldier as different than money given to a welfare recipient.
Military spending on stuff made by for-profit companiesā¦not on troops, and definitely not on troops once theyāre no longer active duty. How the whole VA fiasco has been pinned on the Democrats, I canāt fathom.
6 Likes
I would guess those folks would make the following distinctions:
Military family = noble patriot fighting for good ole USA
Welfare recipient = lazy leech taking easy handouts
But to answer your question: I donāt know. Or, because I am looking at a rapidly building snowpack in my back yard, and since Iāve gotā¦22 liters (yeah, thatās right) of chocolate vanilla stout AND a double IPA brewed by yours truly, I am taking the lazy way out to say that Iām shortly to go get drunk and roll around in the snow.
2 Likes
Iām here to tell you, you really donāt want to know the kind of looks you get when you start praising that while youāre on active duty. Those were some of the most hate-filled glares I ever got.
Now admittedly, itās not that everyone gets the same level for all these things ā housing for an enlisted person such as myself was certainly less than an officer with equal time in service was receiving, but I sure did enjoy that same level of access to health care, food, utilities and education as even the ones that had been in uniform for 20 years. Try to find an equivalent to that in the civilian world work force!
3 Likes
Bro. BRO. Been there, done that. Answering, āYeah, I did vote for Clintonā damn near got me into a scuffle on base back in the day. Good on ya for being honestā¦and right.
Officers. Ugh. No love lost here for that group (other than the good ones, and they are there, but few). But yes, I agree entirely. I definitely recall spending my last hard earned bucks at the NCO club drinking myself and others stupid because I knew that later, I could simply walk over to the chow hall and eat every godamn thing in sight, without paying a dime for it.
4 Likes
Iām not sure thatās a great analogy, as the whole thing is funded by resources outside the system (thank goodness!), and you have to give up just about every basic civil right there is.
Iād say itās just more of a lesson in how money isnāt the only medium of pay.
1 Like
Mebbe so, but Iāve consistently failed to see how Hillary offers people of color anything more than Sandersā¦ and I consider myself a Sanders skeptic. Sanders hasnāt exactly pandered to the racist crowd even in dog whistles, and Iām really at a loss for how heās become a sort of illusory boogie man. Much to the benefit of Hillary.
3 Likes
Iād tend to agree based on my memories of the 70s, specifically of when the main employer in the city shut down and put half the male breadwinners out of work. The local Catholic churches ended up doing much more for affected families than the unions and certainly more than the local/state Democrats who were in charge at the time. As Iām told by family members this ended up pushing lots of people away from voting Democrat.
Lots of the people I keep in touch with back in the US (various ethnic groups, age ranges 30s-50s, earning ranges from ā1 paycheck from the streetsā to ādoing decentlyā) specifically commented about how they do in fact feel alienated from the Democratic party. The reasons vary but one common thread seems to be something to the effect of āIāve got no idea what they are about any moreā.
My relatives like that either served themselves or are related by blood or marriage to someone who served. One other factor of some I know back in the US is people whose jobs are pretty directly related to a military base and the impression is that the Democrats are always in favor of base closures, thus directly impacting their livelihoods.
The idea that the decline of unions in the US is somehow the fault of corporate interests pretty well ignores the fact that lots of working people got sick of the corruption of the unions themselves and the inability of unions to do much for the working people to begin with after the 70s.
1 Like
I didnāt notice H. Clintonās stance on reparations being attacked (or asked about).
3 Likes
Thatās not exactly surprising, given that it was in the '70s that unions began their precipitous decline - a decline, by the way, that neatly mirrors the rise of income inequality in the US (i.e. the collapse of the middle class). So yeah, weakened and non-existent unions couldnāt do much for people. (Except in the public sector where unions - and wages - have remained strong while unionless private sector equivalents saw wages stagnate and decline.)
It simply raises the question, in whose interests was it to portray unions as corrupt (far, far in excess of any reality)? To deny the role of corporate interests in the decline of unions is to totally ignore their long history of overt - and often illegal - efforts to break unions by any means.
8 Likes
Iām not sure I wanna play that based on what I saw growing up in a mafia controlled city and based on what I heard from family members who were former union organizers.
Its not that bosses didnt want to break unions but also that unions did a damn good job of breaking themselves as I learned it.
1 Like
Given that union membership is relatively low nowadays, I wonder if a certain amount of romanticizing the past happens from people not intimately familiar with these institutions. Iāve been a union member almost my whole adult life, and itās not all stickinā it to the man. There is a lot of bullshit. Good lord so much bullshit.
In my last local I remember going to the union for a committee meeting in the middle of the morning. The paid president of the local was sitting in his office staring at the wall. When I left an hour later, he was still sitting and staring at the wall. You wouldnāt believe how hard it was to do something about him. And the things I heard the vice-pres and sec-treasurer say. The whole mentality was that everyone was just going to do the absolute minimum to not get fired and anything more than that was met with āwell they should pay us moreā. If you at all cared about quality, or take pride in doing good work in your life, or had any sense of professionalism (I believe if you agree to do a job for certain compensation, you should do it well, not take the job and then half ass it) it was soul killing. I will admit my current local is a little better. A larger local up the freeway is corrupt to the bone and has done its level best to drive work away.
Edited to add: as a bonus, my union also lobbies for extending copyright and associated enforcement mechanisms, so there is that. Ugh.
Sorry if this little rant is getting too OT.
3 Likes
The supply side āCity on the Hillā pitch in 1979 (before and since) has generally been that cutting regulations and taxes at the top would help the working class ā and blaming āothersā when results failed to arrive.
As the New Deal/Great Society Consensus fragmented, Third Way democrats accepted aspects of that corporatist economic platform. It hasnāt worked.
The Third Way was mostly wrong. The āfree marketā wasnāt free. Supply side policies didnāt help working voters.
Reaganomics and its more conservative iterations have tended to favor idle wealthy freeloaders at the expense of people who do real work in the real world to pay rent and care for dependents. So people get mad. Third Way democrats made a wrong turn, and the GOP would now like to give them an empty bag to hold.
I think thatās partly R. Reichās point. He served in the first national Third Way administration.
4 Likes
āWe hold these truths to be self-evident, that all people are created equal.ā
They fucking better. To do otherwise would be unamerican.
2 Likes
