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On a Bridge at Midnight. Photo by KD, OAN copyright 2014. (Click on image to view full size.)
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SORRY,
THERE'LL BE no separate blog essay this week. That's because production
of a monthly newsletter – I am its (unpaid volunteer) founder, editor,
writer, photographer, designer, production manager, typist and general
roustabout – was so bedeviled by computer problems I am still suffering
from post-production exhaustion.
The publication, called Community Chronicle
and typically containing at least six pages of text and photos, serves
the senior housing complex in which I live. It has become one of many
factors in the ongoing development of our sense of community and
communal identity – a sense already so strong we are now planning to
undertake collective gardening next year.
Hence
I approach the newsletter with the same dedication I approached my work
as a professional journalist. Hence too when that insufferable prick
Murphy shows up to enforce his law (anything that can go wrong surely
will), I am just as upset as I would have been if one of my long-ago cub
reporters had returned from a major society wedding to tell me “no
story, sir; the church burned down.”
Or,
worse, if the reporter had indeed written a Pulitzer-class report on
the nuptials-turned-nightmare that would never see the light of day
because the newspaper itself had burned to the ground. Yes, I am still
that committed to my lifetime craft, even at the age of 74. But in a
week as electronically disrupted this was, something had to be
sacrificed to the Lords of Chaos, and in this instance it was OAN. Again my apology.
But
the superb Katelyn Driskill photography above – of which I hope we'll be seeing
more – will surely help compensate for this week's lack of original OAN writing.
***
IN
PLACE OF the usual essay there will at least be a another glimpse of
the ongoing debate between those who believe the Democratic Party might
yet be revitalized and those who, like myself, believe the party is
truly dead – though as of now it seems I am the only writer who has yet
dared write its obituary.
Thus the following, my response to a rally-the-Democratic-troops piece written for Reader Supported News by New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio.
His is an essay that – whether coincidentally or not – almost seems as
if it could be the party's reply to my assertion it has been corrupted
beyond any rational hope of amelioration.
Beyond that, de Blasio is important for a couple of reasons.
Though
I no longer have any sources inside the City's political apparatus and
thus cannot say anything with any certainty about de Blasio's
administration, it seems from what I read he may actually be trying to
govern my home City as a place for everyone and not merely for the
parasitic, obscenely wealthy Ruling Class who have governed it since the
mid-1970s as if all five boroughs were their very own Winter Palace.
If
my understanding of de Blasio's intent is correct, his democratic
resolve is profoundly heartening. The last mayor who outspokenly so
governed the City was the late John V. Lindsay who,
with his contemporaries John Fitzgerald Kennedy and Robert Francis
Kennedy, were amongst the political heroes of my young adulthood.
The
other reason de Blasio is important is he is trying – much as Sen
Elizabeth Warren is trying – to put a new face on the Democratic Party.
Hence the significance of his RSN text, an open letter to Democrats (and therefore to the nation) entitled “Don't Soul-Search. Stiffen Your Backbone.”
Its essence is contained in its second and third grafs:
“As
a Democrat, I'm disappointed in last Tuesday's results. But as a
progressive, I know my party need not search for its soul -- but rather,
its backbone.”
“The truth is that the Democratic Party has core values that are very much in sync with most Americans.”
The
apparent question is whether de Blasio and Warren are genuine would-be
reformers or are merely trying to perpetrate another Obama-type Big Lie.
Vital as it may seem to many, I believe that question is irrelevant.
The
bitter truth is the Democratic Party has always been a creature of the
Ruling Class. It birthed the New Deal not in furtherance of
humanitarianism and economic democracy but to protect capitalism from
the consequences of its own savage greed.
Had
there been no New Deal, a Communist revolution would have been
inevitable. With the support of the Soviet Union and its Red Army, the
revolutionaries would have won. They'd have established a soviet-type
state in most (if not all) the U.S. beyond the old Confederacy. (The old
Confederacy would have seceded again and – backed by Nazi Germany and
Fascist Italy, established its own white-supremacist version of Hitler's
Third Reich, with the Ku Klux Kross in place of the swastika.)
Yes,
the New Deal was – while it lasted – an era of genuinely humanitarian,
economically democratic reforms. But that which the master giveth, the
master can just as easily taketh away. Hence – with the Soviet Union
dead, Communist China hopelessly bought off and the socialist challenge
to capitalism therefore nullified – the capitalists dropped all pretense
of human kindness and again bared their true moral imbecility.
That's
why, behind the Democrats' Big Lie smokescreen of “progressive”
rhetoric, their policies are indistinguishable from those of the
Republicans. The Republican opposition to the Democrats is nothing more
than a clever charade – a means of enabling the Democrats to impose
Ruling Class demands. Combined, the two parties are therefore the
perfect, good-cop/bad-cop facilitator of capitalism's Ayn Rand
malevolence.
Reform
is therefore impossible. Neither party can be reformed, not now, not
ever. Whether from misguided idealism or deliberate deviousness, de
Blasio and Warren are both scamming us. As Audrey Lorde
so presciently observed, “the master's tools will never dismantle the
master's house.” Why? Because the master – the Ruling Class – will not
allow it.
Hence my reply to de Blasio's panegyric:
Sorry, Mr. de Blasio, you're beating a dead horse – or, rather, a dead donkey.
The
issue is trustworthiness. Obama the Orator promised “change we can
believe in” but quickly became Barack the Betrayer. That makes those of
us who voted for him stupid, gullible suckers conned by the biggest Big
Lie in U.S. presidential history.
And
that's the real issue, Mr. de Blasio: the fact Democrats cannot be
trusted. It's a lesson hammered into the electorate by every Democratic
president after John Fitzgerald Kennedy:
Lyndon Baines Johnson – escalated Vietnam into a major war while Big-Lie campaigning as the "peace candidate";
Jimmy Carter – bible-thumped away the reproductive freedom of impoverished women, began the war against the New Deal;
Bill
Clinton – outsourced our jobs, reduced us to permanent Third World
poverty and, via “welfare reform,” made damn sure there will never again
be a safety net to protect the millions of families capitalism hurls
into permanent destitution;
Now Obama out-does them all: not just betrayals, but the methodical murder of the constitution too.
The lesson? Vote for a Democrat, get a Republican. (No wonder so many don't vote.)
As to the party's soul and backbone, it has neither. It lost both in the aftermath of 22 November 1963.
Face
it, Mr. de Blasio: the Democratic Party is dead. Our only hope now is
some new party – preferably one with enough Marxian discipline to shut
down capitalism forever.
(But I ain't holding my breath.)
***
Then I answered a poster who said George Bush not Barack Obama deserved the “most lying president” award:
We – or at least I – always assume the Republicans will behave like the overt fascists and/or closet Nazis they truly are.
But
we – or at least I – expected better from the Democrats, even after the
betrayals by LBJ, Jimmy the Theocrat and Slick Willie.
Also,
George the Second didn't maliciously resurrect the hopes of a nation –
truly desperate hopes given our socioeconomic reality – then literally
spit in all our faces by betraying us even before he took office.
But that's precisely
what Obama did. He promised single-payer public-option health care,
promised to sign the Employee Free Choice Act, and above all else
promised to restore constitutional governance. And he had a Democratic
majority in both houses of Congress, too...
Worse
– although exactly as he had secretly promised his Wall Street masters –
Obama the Orator was becoming Barack the Betrayer even before he took
office. Remember the secret meetings with the prescription drug lords
and the health insurance barons?
We voted for a Democrat and got not just a Republican but a viciously conservative Republican at that.
Try as I might, I cannot find a comparable betrayal anywhere in U.S. history.
Obama's smirking treachery – I will call it what it is – has driven the final nail into the Democratic Party's coffin.
Given
U.S. racism, his behavior has also discredited legitimate
African-American aspirations for at least a century if not forever.
***
Lastly, for a poster who agreed with my original comment, I elaborated:
Reduced to its LCD (lowest common denominator), capitalism is quite simply infinite greed elevated to maximum virtue.
It
is therefore the rejection and reversal of every humanitarian precept
our species ever set forth. It is also moral imbecility, the ethos of
the serial killer – literally the knowing embrace of evil.
That's
why, when capitalism becomes capitalist governance, it means absolute
power and unlimited profit for the Ruling Class, total subjugation for
all the rest of us – exactly as we have in today's U.S., exactly as
prevailed in Pinochet's Chile, Franco's Spain, Hitler's Germany and
Mussolini's Italy.
The only remedy – remember how quickly the New Deal was destroyed – is democratic socialism.
But now it is not just human liberty that's at stake. It's the very survival of our species.
Either we raise the Red Banner of international socialism or we become extinct.
Yes, it truly is that simple.
LB/16 November 2014
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