July 22, 2024 Kamala Harris and Joe Biden. Source: X By Chris Hedges Joe Biden was discarded by the same billionaire class he assiduously served throughout his political career. Barely able to stumble his way through the words on a TelePrompter and not always cognizant of what is happening around him, his billionaire supporters pulled the plug. He was their creature – he has been in federal office for 47 years – from start to finish. He was used as a foil to defeat Bernie Sanders in the 2020 primaries and was anointed as the candidate in 2024 in a Soviet-style primary campaign. The billionaire class will now anoint someone else. Democratic Party voters are stage props in this political farce. Donald Trump, unlike Kamala Harris or any other apparatchik the billionaire class selects as a presidential candidate, has a genuine and committed base, however fascistic. In Hitler and the Germans, the political philosopher Eric Vogelin dismisses the idea that Hitler — gifted in oratory and political opportunism but poorly educated and vulgar — mesmerized and seduced the German people. The Germans, he writes, supported Hitler and the “grotesque, marginal figures” surrounding him because he embodied the pathologies of a diseased society, one beset by economic collapse and hopelessness. Voegelin defines stupidity as a “loss of reality.” The loss of reality means a “stupid” person cannot “rightly orient his action in the world, in which he lives.” The demagogue, who is always an idiote, is not a freak or social mutation. The demagogue expresses the society’s zeitgeist. Biden and the Democratic Party are responsible for this zeitgeist. They orchestrated the deindustrialization of the United States, ensuring that 30 million workers lost their jobs in mass layoffs. As I write in America, The Farewell Tour, this assault on the working class created a crisis that forced the ruling elites to devise a new political paradigm. Trumpeted by a compliant media, this paradigm shifted its focus from the common good to race, crime and law and order. Biden was at the epicenter of this paradigm shift. Those undergoing profound economic and political change were told that their suffering stemmed not from rampant militarism and corporate greed but from a threat to national integrity. The old consensus that buttressed New Deal programs and the welfare state was attacked as enabling criminal Black youth, “welfare queens” and other alleged social parasites. This opened the door to a faux populism, begun by Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, which supposedly championed family values, traditional morality, individual autonomy, law and order, the Christian faith and the return to a mythical past, at least for white Americans. The Democratic Party, especially under Bill Clinton and Biden, became largely indistinguishable from the establishment Republican Party to which it is now allied. The Democratic Party refuses to accept its responsibility for the capture of democratic institutions by a rapacious oligarchy, the grotesque social inequality, the cruelty of predatory corporations and an unchecked militarism. The Democrats will anoint another amoral politician, probably Harris, to use as a mask for outsized corporate greed, the folly of endless war, the facilitation of genocide and the assault on our most basic civil liberties. The Democrats, tools of Wall Street, gave us Trump, and the 74 million people who voted for him in 2020. They look set to give us Trump again. God help us. https://scheerpost.com/2024/07/22/chris-hedges-my-thoughts-on-biden-dropping-out/
I agree that the DNC establishment is responsible for this horrible situation we fund ourselves in. They have been ignoring the democratic voter since 2016. Where I disagree is thinking Trump will be any worse than Joe was or Kamala would be. We're in for a shitshow no matter who swears in as president Jan. 20th. The oligarchy is in charge and they got plans, big plans, and a John and Jane average citizen are in the way.
Trump is worse, on balance, because on the cultural level he's very racist and misogynist, and encourages those low sorts in the general pop to act out. As for the economic level, you're right, little to no difference. The parties are fairly well balanced and at each others throats, with all attention off the "one percent"—just the way they like it.
I think attacking wealthy people for the vast majority of problems is overplayed. The truth is that the pandemic showed us that no matter how much free money we are given, goods and services need to be created. For those things to be created, people have to work. Without that productivity all it creates is inflation. Things aren't created by demand alone. If everybody is given money and they feel like they don't need to work, less of these goods/services are created. So now the question is, what policies do we enact to find the right balance? There's no evidence that the correct answer is to let the free-market work. The free-market isn't necessarily the optimal solution, it's just been a better solution than many of the solutions tried in the past.
There are a couple of ideas that are, imho, too often overlooked in this type of conversation: Say's law: the production of a product creates demand Cantillon Effect: the original recipients of new money enjoy higher standards of living at the expense of later recipients In light of these, I would suggest the question isn't "what policies do we enact", but what policies do we repeal. For better or worse, you rarely hear contrarian viewpoints from politicians (esp. the left) such as: Economic Inequality Is a Good Thing Price caps harm the economy ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
It is way way underplayed imo. The vast majority of our problems today have their basis in ecological overshoot. In this sense, the wealthy are all those worldwide earning around $25/hour or more and with matching consumption. But attacking them merely because they're wealthy does miss the mark, I'll agree with you that far. Chris Hedges is only just starting to get his head around climate change, or the larger problem of EO.
Although time has dis-proven the Malthusian Law of Population, the left keeps trying to resurrect it (in various forms) for their own gain. Seriously... is there another explanation besides The Politics of Envy?
Malthus is not proven wrong, because he said "left unchecked" a population will grow to outstrip its resources. You can see many examples among other species. For that matter previous civilizations have also outstripped their resource base. But so far industrial civilization has not been checked, because we're burning through 500 million years of free energy accumulation, and treating the air, land and sea like open, free sewers.
Every day that passes without a "Malthusian catastrophe" disproves his theory more and more. In addition, even if we assume such a catastrophe will some day befall humanity, the notion that technocrats can stave it off in a fair and ethical manner is incredulous. So... until the catastrophe happens, I'm content reminding you that there are many valid criticisms. You think I just fell out of a coconut tree?
The primary change from the time Malthus lived in -- to today -- is that modern fertilizer, pesticides, and machinery have greatly increased farming yields and global food supply. In fact the world generally has an excess (over-supply) of food which causes many farmers to dump crops rather than sell them in some seasons. While there may be other resources that civilization outstrips (e.g. oil), we are not currently seeing it.