This is a great post b. But I think you’re advice to the Democrats is misplaced.
The REAL issue for the Left is NOT how bad Trump is, but how the Left has completely failed to hold the Democratic Party to an ethical standard worthy of the mission/movement. So much so, that the institutional Left has screwed themselves along with the people that they say they serve.
That has resulted in bitter former Democrats that will NEVER return to the Party. Sooner or later, it will be clear to everyone that the Democratic Party can not win elections without these fed-up progressives.
The Institutional Left has been begging disgruntled progressives to work within the Party for a decade or more. The recent election of Tom Perez as DNC chair proved that the Democratic Party is not capable of change. They are structurally a part of the money-driven establishment duopoly. Citizens United effectively destroyed representative Democracy in the US.
In this election we found that even progressive leaders like Bernie Sanders and Jill Stein were co-opted. Sanders acted like a sheep-dog, pulling punches (“enough about the emails”), and endorsing Hillary despite Hillary-DNC collusion (NB: many Republicans refused to endorse Trump – Sanders could’ve followed their lead). And Jill Stein demanded recounts that could only benefit Hillary – mysteriously receiving millions within a matter of days to do so!
IMO The Pirate Party’s program for direct democracy is the best alternative. It offers an alternative to money-driven politics that principled and rational people on both the left and right can agree on.

Posted by: Jackrabbit | Mar 12 2017 20:32 utc | 3

The Dems and The Repubs are BOTH austerity mongers. They both want to starve the 99% and wage trillion dollar wars. The spoiler effect induced two party system is what sustains the Deep State.
Of the now literally hundreds of “fancy” voting methods all over the Internet, strategic hedge simple score voting is the only one that specifically enables the common voters to win elections against the two-party empowered Deep State. (All of the many others treat elite interest involved elections as if they were casual “hobby club” elections.)
Too bad we don’t have simple score voting. Then we could give between 1 and 10 votes to many candidates. But no votes at all for Hillary the war monger. We might place 8 votes for Bernie (since he is less bad than Hillary (or more accurately, was previously though to be)), 10 write-in votes for Jesse Ventura, and 10 write-in votes for Dennis Kucinich.
Strategic hedge simple score voting can be described in one simple sentence: Strategically bid no vote at all for undesired candidates (ignore them as though they did not exist), or strategically cast from one to ten votes (or five to ten votes, for easier counting) for any number of candidates you prefer (up to some reasonable limit of, say, twelve candidates, so people don’t hog voting booths), and then simply add all the votes up.
We must also abolish Deep State subvertible election machines (“computer voting”), and get back to had counted paper ballots, with results announced at each polling station just prior to being sent up to larger tabulation centers.

Posted by: blues | Mar 12 2017 20:38 utc | 5

Two “occupy” type demonstrations and tent camps are facing each other on the central Railway Square in Helsinki this week. According to Finnish media:

1. Helsinki police on alert over planned neo-Nazi protest
2. Thousands gathered to support asylum seekers at Helsinki’s Railway Square

Video: Finland: Pro-refugee demonstration dwarfs nationalist counter-protest in Helsinki
The captions are misleading. The people in “refugee” camp are not asylum seekers. They are Middle Easterners who entered Finland illegally as part of Merkel’s refugee wave and who have now had their baseless asylum applications rejected. For unknown reasons they have not yet been deported from Finland.
Asylum from political persecution and from terror is a basic human right. But the protest camp has nothing to do with human rights. The Finnish Fake Left is now protesting for illegality and a breakdown in law and order. There is a name for this madness. It is called virtue signalling. (Evidently it is something White People Like.)

Posted by: Petri Krohn | Mar 12 2017 20:47 utc | 7

Fake left le monde instead of reading the latest wikileaks starts a 5 piece series on russian cyberattacks. No comment and no wonder le pen will ve either president or prime minister

Posted by: Mina | Mar 12 2017 21:16 utc | 9

It’s interesting that the Salon piece (essentially the Sanders viewpoint) was written in response to a Vanity Fair piece (the Clintonite viewpoint) that ends with the claim that non-Party members share

. . . the belief that the real enemy, the true Evil Empire, isn’t Putin’s Russia but the Deep State, the C.I.A./F.B.I./N.S.A. alphabet-soup national-security matrix. But if the Deep State can rid us of the blighted presidency of Donald Trump, all I can say is “Go, State, go.”

So that’s your Clinton Democrat / McCain Republican viewpoint – aka “neoliberal-neoconservative fascism.” Rather tellingly, the Salon piece does not include the world “neoliberal” but just rehashes the stale PR-speak of “liberals vs. conservatives” that dominates mass corporate media in the United States. In reality, policy in Washington is made by politicians and bureaucrats who adhere to neoliberal and neoconservative ideologies and who are really servants of consolidated wealth – the American oligarch class – and their conflicts merely reflect disagreements among the oligarchs; for example do Warren Buffett and George Soros and the Koch Brothers see eye-to-eye on all issues? No, they don’t, so their sock puppets like Bush and Clinton have their differences. However, the neocons and neolibs are so close to one another as to be indistinguishable to the average American citizen:

The main similarity between the two is that they have both become known as “technofacists”, meaning melders of corporate, state and military power into a few political elites that allow comprehensive control. The left and the right have marched full circle and met one another.

As blues@5 notes above, fixing the electoral system (paper ballots, ranked-choice voting, voting districts that are coherent regional sectors, not octopus-like, maybe drawn along watershed boundaries, etc.) is a key step in breaking their grip on power.
Another critical issue is using anti-trust to break up the media conglomerates and destroy the centralized propaganda system that controls U.S. corporate mass media, in which a handful of Wall Street-owned corporate monsters dictate what kind of news stories are fed to the American public via television, radio and print journalism.
These reforms seem highly unlikely, however, in the current political environment.
What we probably have to look forward to is more likely continued economic downturn and rising poverty. The deep state and establishment politicians are not likely to give Trump anything, and will probably try to push an economic collapse just to make Trump look bad – not that Trump’s policies have much to offer; infrastructure looks dead in the water and at best will look like Iraqi Reconstruction 2.0 under GW Bush and Cheney. We’d need an FDR-scale New Deal to turn that around and neither neocons nor neolibs will ever go for that. Instead we’ll likely get infighting and factionalism, maybe a war between Trump and the Federal Reserve, etc.
Honestly given the rot in the federal government it seems the only hope is for states to take matters into their own hands as much as possible and set their own policies on rebuilding infrastructure and creating jobs but the federal government and their oligarchic corporate overlords are pressing down on that as well. One hell of a nasty situation for the American people is what it is, and maybe massive Soviet-scale collapse, and a fundamental change in government (as happened with Putin in Russia post-Boris Yeltsin) followed by rebuilding from the ground up is the only way out of this mess.

Posted by: nonsense factory | Mar 12 2017 21:46 utc | 11

Rats! Rigid, not ridged!

Posted by: karlof1 | Mar 12 2017 22:25 utc | 13

As an example of our dysfunctional culture, I offer this article as exhibit 1, which explores a microcosm of what’s essentially systemic dysfunction amid unbelievable corruption, https://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/epa-chief-denies-basic-climate-science

Posted by: karlof1 | Mar 12 2017 22:40 utc | 15

You’re right, b. Dems will continue to bleed out. A good place to see this will be the special election to replace in Georgia’s 6th CD Rep. Tom Price, who took the job to be Trump’s Health and Human Services Secretary. Daily Kos and ActBlue are shaking the can raising money for a young Dem staffer named Jon Ossoff. Here’s the Daily Kos pitch for Ossof:

But while Price might love him some Trump, his district doesn’t feel the same way. In fact, the 6th saw a remarkable shift on election night. Four years ago, voters in this conservative but well-educated area supported Mitt Romney by a wide 61-37 margin. In 2016, however, hostility toward Trump gave the president just a 48-47 win—a stunning 23-point collapse. That dramatic change in attitudes means this seat might just be in play.

The “Women’s Strike” on International Women’s Day was a dud. The Dems are labeling what they’re doing a “Resistance,” as if they are fighting a guerrilla war against Vichy. But what they’re “fighting” for is really a restoration of Vichy (Trump is more a caudillo) with young corporate-friendly Dems like Ossoff.

Posted by: Mike Maloney | Mar 12 2017 23:06 utc | 17

Actually I don’t agree that the Left has lost. There’s simply a lack of ideas.
The extreme nationalist right goes in the US because geographically isolated. In Europe it is time limited. In UK Brexit has won for the moment, but it is falling apart, because it can’t deliver economic success. (more to see). In continental Europe, the extreme right are not gaining in the polls (Wilders, Le Pen), rather stagnating.
Macron, in france, could have the right attitude, oriented to the young. But it could turn bad.

Posted by: Laguerre | Mar 12 2017 23:13 utc | 19

“Real wages sink but they continue to import cheep labor (real policy) under the disguise of helping “refugees” (marketing policy) which are simply economic migrants.”
Sorry B, but this is outright bullshit. No country in EU-Europe needs to import cheep labor from not-EU-countries. There are more then enough EU-Europeans in search of better wages. The EU was extended exactly in order to achieve this ‘abundance’ (o.k. not the only reason). The people you denounce as “simply economic migrants” are not an imported good – they enter the EU against all odds. And many, many are refguees coming from countries ruined by western military interventions.

Posted by: Pnyx | Mar 12 2017 23:52 utc | 21

Well, if Zero Hedge is anything to go by, in a few years automation will abolish the working class anyway. Then Bill Gates’ depopulation scheme will mop up the remnants.

Posted by: Fedya Trezvin | Mar 12 2017 23:59 utc | 23

b – exactly so. Thank you.
On the question of the far right, only if substantial sections of the political spectrum are shut out is there scope for the extremists to come in and fill the gap. That is the danger to a minor degree in England and to a greater degree in Continental Europe, as we are told it was the danger in the Weimar republic. Some precedent, that.
I am not sure about the “populist” movements in Continental Europe but the Brexit vote in England and the Trump movement in America do not, in spite of the almost universal assertion to the contrary, represent a swing to the right, let alone the far right. They represent a return to the centre, a centre that has long been shut out in Western politics generally and that is now tentatively re-asserting itself. It is only if that return to the centre fails that we need fear the Neo-Nazis and the like coming in to fill the gap.

Posted by: EnglishOutsider | Mar 13 2017 0:12 utc | 25

the ‘left’ is a gang of ‘middle-class’ would-be jacobins, directing ‘the masses’ while eating cake. there is no left, there is no right, there is a top – the few – and a bottom – the many. as b points out the desperately vocal few are left and/or right, they are on their own side of the top, definitely not on the side of us many on the bottom. their policies create more and more of us every day. they are our fathers and mothers in that sense. we will dance on their graves.
b, please don’t say ‘pseudo democrats’ it sounds too jacobin, like the trots at wsws.org and their constant ‘pseudo left’. ‘fake’ will do for pseudo. and it’s two fewer key strokes – three in the same row. stick with the bottom against the top.
write what you want of course … that’s just a rant roiling my gut gaining vent.

Posted by: jfl | Mar 13 2017 0:39 utc | 27

I contributed to a progressive blog for years until I was finally kicked off for suggesting Bernie was herding progressives into Hillary’s tent. I often criticized Obama’s foreign policy and the local partisan blogs–when they weren’t ignoring the perspective I represented–ridiculed me for being a “conspiracy theorist” when I pushed back against the anti-Russian consensus.
I spent many years working with chronic homeless people in Montana in the “progressive” utopia known as Missoula and when the Democrats that run this town aren’t actively making housing more unaffordable with their bonds for parks and endless schemes to gentrify this town into being Boulder, Colorado, they are making symbolic stands against guns and enabling Uber.
now I work with aging individuals and I am learning a lot about the cruel complexity of Medicare and Medicaid. it’s already really bad and, sadly, it will only get worse–just in time for the American Boomer generation’s silver tsunami to hit entitlement programs.

Posted by: lizard | Mar 13 2017 0:49 utc | 29

It reminds me of the attitudes espoused by Ishmael:
“The ship was sinking—and sinking fast. The captain told the passengers and crew, “We’ve got to get the lifeboats in the water right away.”
But the crew said, “First we have to end capitalist oppression of the working class. Then we’ll take care of the lifeboats.”
Then the women said, “First we want equal pay for equal work. The lifeboats can wait.”
The racial minorities said, “First we need to end racial discrimination. Then seating in the lifeboats will be allotted fairly.”
The captain said, “These are all important issues, but they won’t matter a damn if we don’t survive. We’ve got to lower the lifeboats right away!”
But the religionists said, “First we need to bring prayer back into the classroom. This is more important than lifeboats.”
Then the pro-life contingent said, “First we must outlaw abortion. Fetuses have just as much right to be in those lifeboats as anyone else.”
The right-to-choose contingent said, “First acknowledge our right to abortion, then we’ll help with the lifeboats.”
The socialists said, “First we must redistribute the wealth. Once that’s done everyone will work equally hard at lowering the lifeboats.”
The animal-rights activists said, “First we must end the use of animals in medical experiments. We can’t let this be subordinated to lowering the lifeboats.”
Finally the ship sank, and because none of the lifeboats had been lowered, everyone drowned.
The last thought of more than one of them was, “I never dreamed that solving humanity’s problems would take so long—or that the ship would sink so SUDDENLY.”
― Daniel Quinn

Posted by: Andrew Homzy | Mar 13 2017 2:01 utc | 31

Life isn’t gonna get better for those who are not born into a solidly upper middle class family until nation states are downsized. amerika needs to be carved up into 40 or 50 – units maybe even more particularly for the large population seaboard ‘states’. The one good thing about the brexit the englander tory government is gonna deliver is that it is likely to cause scots and maybe even ulster-people to leave the union.
I’ve lived in quite a few nation states over the years and have found that a small population state is far more responsive to the needs of its citizens than large ones – even when a mob of carpet-bagging greedheads has jerry-mandered their way into political power in a small state and an allegedly humanist political entity is running the large state this holds true.
As far as I can discern there are two reasons for this or maybe 2 facets of one reason. Firstly even the rightist greedheads cannot shit on any group be it divided by race gender or sexual preference long term in a small population state. The reason is that in smaller population units people tend to know others better and obvious injustices always reach the ears and consciences of rightist voters – even supporters of racist or sexist asshole governments and it results in a backlash. Humanist pols in large entities fall back on ‘pragmatic’ excuses about ‘perception’ at the drop of a hat – no different in action than their ‘enemy’.
The second reason is the other end of the first. Because of that degrees of separation thing, when you live in a small population political unit, you find you will always know someone who knows any political aspirant. Those with a rep for being greedy, malicious or deceitful cannot hide behind press spokespeople and bullshit for long – they cop the flick quickly.
I have long believed that this is the real motive for the corporatists to support politicians’ incessant centralising & empire building.
Claims about large population groups somehow being more efficient are quickly shown to be false when put to the test of reality. In nature biological systems, even those within large entities are localised and full of seemingly inefficient redundancies because one thing evolution has taught is that a system that has inbuilt alternative modes of survivability will keep the entity alive much longer than some ‘simple & straightforward’ system whose failure means the death or massive disability of the entity. Corporations themselves tend to be labyrinthine full of small similarly named but legally discrete modules because that is what works best, yet corporations keep underwriting politicians who strive to make their ‘entity’ bigger, more centralised and ‘simpler’ – why?
Well because political failure is a capitalist’s best ally and of course when a political entity is really large as amerika is, it is possible to deceive all the people all the time. The average citizen is a stranger to any/all of the members of the political elite and as such are entirely dependent upon third party information vectors – the so-called mainstream media who push out whatever deceit their masters instruct them to.
I make the point in this thread because too many people appear to believe that it would be possible to reform the amerikan political system despite the fact that helluva lot have already tried and failed long before they got anywhere near the centre of power.
It just isn’t possible because of the simple principle that anyone who is capable of convincing large numbers of people who he/she has never had any personal contact with, to support their ‘character’, ideas and political objectives is by virtue of their success, unworthy of anyone’s vote.
No person can convince that many strangers without resorting to some form of gamesmanship and that makes them a bad choice. There is no way around that reality yet most citizens adopt the usual cognitive dissonace every election cycle and pay no heed to what should be blindingly self-evident.

Posted by: Debsisdead | Mar 13 2017 2:36 utc | 33

b’s premise is that disenfranchised voters will go the polls for far right interests under the promise of nationalistic interests and the policy that springs from this. However, I do not believe that they will rue the day for this choice from being squeezed out. The Nazi party ascension was a huge success for bread and butter interests of the common kraut. Autobahn, infrastructure, industry: this nationalism scared the allies enough to go to war with Germany for asserting it’s independence and own interests. Are we Weimar Germany? No, no, no. Our military is already to the hilt and yet is being halted in its advance by Russia, Iran, etc. You can’t keep squeezing the same lemon and expect more lemonade. The only option for Trump is to invest in America again, period. Anything less or a further downward trajectory will only incite the deplorables more and Trump would be gone after four years, and maybe sooner to the clicking of boots marching on the White House. Something truly unpredictable and unexpected might transpire at that juncture.

Posted by: NemesisCalling | Mar 13 2017 3:34 utc | 35

@ Debsisdead | Mar 12, 2017 10:36:35 PM | 33
Actually, there is a way around that. If a candidate has a previous “track record” from lower levels of power, then that can usually be relied upon.

Posted by: blues | Mar 13 2017 4:31 utc | 37

A safe bet: next wednesday ultra right-wing Geert Wilders will win the dutch elections, after the diplomatic row with sultan-wanna-be Erdogan. And then Marine Le Pen…

Posted by: guy | Mar 13 2017 4:57 utc | 39

blues | Mar 13, 2017 12:31:00 AM |
Yep they can be relied upon to be corporate slaves for sure I cannot think of a single example over the past 50 years of any amerikan pol who succeeded at a national level, who wasn’t a forked toungued corporate shill.
There are plenty of examples of pols whose history at a low level ‘seemed OK’ – where their occasional examples of perfidy could be dismissed as just having to toe the party line; “Once he’s his own man/woman he will really strut his/her stuff for the people” a certain Oblamblamblam comes to mind as the most egregious recent example – when they get in power everyone gets to see what whores they always were. Whores concealing their inner asshole to get into real power. That type of duplicity is much more difficult to pull off in smaller populations – it gets found out and the pol really struggles to get past the bad reputation chiefly because a lot of voters can put a face to the ‘victim’ which makes the evil palpable.
What I find really odd is the way that even self described lefties who acknowledge the massive evil committed by amerika still seek to evade and/or justify the evil.
It goes to show how brainwashed all amerikans are. I guess they think everyone feels that way – when people who haven’t been subjected to that level of conditioning about their homeland actually don’t hold that blind ‘right or wrong determination. I like where I live now and everything else being equal probably would go in to bat for my friends or family if this country somehow got into a tussle. But I would back off and advocate for the other side in a heartbeat if I felt the nation I lived in was doing wrong.
I was living in Australia when Gulf War 1 kicked off and up until that point I doubt there was a more dedicatedly loyal Australian but the cynical decision to suppoft GH Bush made by the Australian Labor Party just wouldn’t wash and without wanting to be accused of the current heinous crime de jour ie virtue signalling, I like many others took a stance against my adopted nation that cost me professionally & personally. This was no great achievement by me, it was easy because I hadn’t been indoctrinated into any sort of exceptionalism.
Yet I see the effects of the cradle to the grave conditioning amerikans are subjected to in the posts on virtually any subject made by amerikans.
That of itself makes the destruction of amerika essential, a prerequisite that must be met if there is to be any real change in the amerikan political structure.

Posted by: Debsisdead | Mar 13 2017 5:38 utc | 41

b, excellent analysis. Amerika is rotten to its core. There are no cures….. just sit and watch on the sideline for these tugs NeoCon, NeoLiberal, progressive etc.. Kill themselves and blames it on Putin.
I hold two valid passports, neither better than the other. Hot frying pans, hot boiling oil?

Posted by: OSJ | Mar 13 2017 6:46 utc | 43

P.S.- When the microphones are owned by the wealthy, they’re the only voices heard by the masses.

Posted by: ben | Mar 13 2017 7:01 utc | 45

Thank you b, for stating the essential question.
I think there’s no left left for the simple reason that it’s role in the system, at least since the end of ww2, became void after 91. No competing system, no need for niceties, back to the 30’s, plenty of unfinished business, 80 years of taxes to get back. New Deal and European Social Model are obsolete. The armies of workers offshored, what is left is a kind of lumpen, busy fingering their smartphones. A highly educated lumpen, probably the highest educated generation ever, but lumpen nonetheless, Indoctrinated by all media to individualism, their atomization seems assured. I wonder if anyone under 30 reads MoA. Might be wrong but looks like most of us are over 60 considering the muppet like kind of grumpyness that erupts so often.
There are drops in the ocean, in places were solidarity still has strong roots. Marinaleda (sorry, the english wiki sucks, a machine translation from the spanish wiki is certainly more informative) 0% unemployment, equal pay to all residents, housing provided through self-building, the city council provides plot, technical supervision, building materials, charges 15 euros monthly rent. Collective economy based on farming, husbandry and industrial transformation of it’s products. I repeat, equal pay to all residents 1,128 euros for 35 hours a week. Just a drop in the ocean, but a worthy one.
Elsewhere true social-democracy can be found in Latin America. Nicaragua, Venezuela, Equador, Bolivia, Uruguay pop up as examples that neoliberalism, racism and neocolonialism can be defeated, on their terms, even if there are setbacks like Brazil and Argentina. There one can find rivers of solidarity. Telesur english keeps you up to date, with better coverage on Syria than CNN.

Posted by: estouxim | Mar 13 2017 7:58 utc | 47

Very good post b,
leftists parties is a joke today there is no other way to put it, its a real shame and a real tragedy.
Also on this topic:
PROBLEMS WITH SWEDISH MEDIA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t20xx5Khov0&feature=youtu.be&t=275

Posted by: Anonymous | Mar 13 2017 9:30 utc | 49

All those USAG’s and IG’s and NO one wants or has investigated where all those Pentagon missing trillions went to?
Ditto for the MSM, who use all that print space pushing to let men dressed as women use the little girl’s bathroom. The USA project has failed, it’s Kaput, time to turn out the lights.

Posted by: Greg Bacon | Mar 13 2017 10:37 utc | 51

I highly recommend Chris Hedge’s book “The Death of the Liberal Class.” One of my favourite reads ever.
More concise lectures are available on YouTube for those who won’t pick up a book.

Posted by: FecklessLeft | Mar 13 2017 11:29 utc | 53

So the left is good at pointing to its own flaws & decay but your simplistic view of a “static” right that doesn’t evolve and alway represent the “evil” is laughable. Both the left and right have merged on most issue, it’s a system of croony capitalism with a big government and where “financial capitalism” has destroyed industrial capitalism and innovations. Who would invest to hire employees or innovate if it’s more lucrative to sell private bonds to a central bank or “buy back” the shares of the cies (to boost their price with a loan in order to get a “productivity” bonus?
A long, long time ago both left/right were pretending to offer a solution and improve the living standards, one faction with individual liberties, low taxes and a sound money policy (gold & silver) while the left was fighting against inequalities and proposing wealth redistribution with a big government & taxes. Both the left & right started to be coopted in the 1960’s

Posted by: jfb | Mar 13 2017 13:03 utc | 55

The characteristics which define Right-wingers are…
1. They are are obliged to believe their own bullshit in order to sell it to the masses.
2. Bribery is an indispensable component of Modern Democracy.
3. Whenever one of their inane schemes backfires, it’s ALWAYS somebody else’s fault, NEVER their own.
Malcolm & the Liberals will spend the next 6 months looking for scapegoats (with their fingers in their ears – another R-W trait).

Posted by: Hoarsewhisperer | Mar 13 2017 14:08 utc | 57

@35 Your version of “score voting” is clearly the best approach to “ranked choice voting” as currently used. Also, using paper ballots that are counted by optical scanning machines? That’s just as subject to hacking as electronic voting machines are, since nobody is going to back and hand-count those paper ballots.
But really, under current finance rules, the oligarchs tightly control the electoral process via their control of corporate media and their ability to run puppet candidates against any honest politicians who defy their agenda. Ultimately this is why politicians gravitate towards the BS issues describe by b, i.e.

“When LGBT claptrap, gluten free food, political correctness and other such niceties beat out programs to serve the basic needs of the common people nothing “left” is left. The priority on the left must always be the well-being of the working people. All the other nice-to-have issues follow from and after that.”

But addressing the well-being of the working people – wages, homes, affordable healthcare for their parents and education for their children – that impacts multinational corporate profits. This is why politicians steer clear of such issues – they don’t want to incur the anger of the oligarchs, who can spend millions to get them removed from office. Journalists do the exact same thing, wanting to keep their jobs in corporate media outfits controlled by Wall Street oligarchs. This is highly similar to how the oligarchs ran Russia during the Boris Yeltsin era.
There are clearly many similarites between the Russian billionaires of that era and their various American counterparts today, from the Silicon Valley billionaires to the oil & gas billionaires to the finance billionaires; they could never have made all that money without the active cooperation of politicians and bureaucrats who serve their interests in Washington as well as in many state governments. This vast extraction of wealth from the middle class, coupled with a desire to control the whole world and move money freely across borders without restrictions, and to use the military to invade and crush any countries who don’t go with the program, that’s what the neocon-neolib agenda is all about.

Posted by: nonsense factory | Mar 13 2017 14:36 utc | 59

Perimeter @ 59
What should we then call left in Yankeeland?

Posted by: estouxim | Mar 13 2017 15:22 utc | 61

@60 Unorthodox gringos.

Posted by: dh | Mar 13 2017 15:48 utc | 63

Democrats more likely to accept gifts from lobbyists; while Republicans prefer cash in brown paper bags under the desk.

Posted by: fast freddy | Mar 13 2017 15:54 utc | 65

b,
“gluten free food”
Take a look at the Italian Cooking Show ladies. They aren’t fat. Their immune system see gluten as an invader causing physical inflammation.
Personally if I eat gluten my lower gut blows up like an inflated bicycle tire. Gluten intolerance is not a trend. Check out online videos titled ‘wheat belly.’
The wheat we eat today has been genetically modified mainly to increase crop yields.
Gluten intolerance is not a fad.

Posted by: ALberto | Mar 13 2017 16:07 utc | 67

What do you call a Social-Democracy without social-democrats?
Although many have called the “crisis of social-democracy” in previous years (especially after the “crash” of 2007-8), so far it is James Corbett that has given us the most extensive non-scholar research on How The Left Stopped Worrying and Learned to Embrace War
Bonus reading: AD Lavelle’s academic case-study on the transformation of Swedish and German social-democracy into neo-liberalism.

Posted by: LXV | Mar 13 2017 16:15 utc | 69

b states that the disenfranchised will rue the day they threw in their card for the far-right. I am not sure that this reality will pan out here in the states, though I am unsure what will ultimately transpire. My reasonING for this goes back to the nazification of Germany and the great benefits to that nationalist movement in general. Autobahn, infrastructure, industry: their new deal was very beneficial for the common kraut in addressing their concerns, though this nationalism scared the shit out of the global finance cabal and hence war. I am not entirely versed as to the legitimacy of their claim to Poland or the moral implications of that seizure, though the ethnic cleanses in the Russian steppes were evil.
My point is that nationalism could be one of the only forces that could bring down the global finance elite. This propelled me to vote for Trump and to hold out hope for a while. My thought is that we already have military spending covered and I don’t see how the trickle down of more military spending would impress the deplorables too much. If Trump wants a 2.0, he will have to invest in another new deal. And what choice does he have? Continually being blocked my Russia and Iran? I am not convinced yet of his total idiocy, but if he continues along a neoconservative route, there will be little doubt. I guess tyrannies are stupid after all. Are Americans that stupid, too? We’ll see.

Posted by: NemesisCalling | Mar 13 2017 16:29 utc | 71

1945 – 2000 +. In Europe the ‘Left’ was overcome in principally 2 ways.
1) Was the ‘red scare of communism’, i.e. against the USSR – old memes now home again. Even though there were some quite strong Communist parties, particularly in France. (Today, the ex-leader of the dead communist party, R. Hue, has come out supporting Macron.) The ‘liberals’ (economic liberalism) of course used any tool and propaganda to hand.
2) The expansion of W economies, 1950-1980 (about), that so to speak ‘lifted all boats’, and afforded for ex. cars, fridges, TVs, and at the start, just the basics like a small flat and some electricity, and water plus a flush toilet (or better services for small houses) plus universal free education (to age 14-15) and some basic health / social care. Transport flowered (fossil fuel use and railways) … As opposed to living in a hut in a filthy slum…though rurals were always better off. The economy basically boomed and jobs, even if ugly and badly paid, were available. This was all a tremendous advance and it was credited to a ‘liberal’ economic model. NOT-communist. (Though it had nothing to do with any political arrangement per se. See Hobsbawm on the USSR.)
Later, Third-wayers (Bill Clinton, Tony Blair..) tried to ‘snow’ ppl who would become ‘poorer’ with fakey Socialist-Dem party platforms, actually favoring the ‘rich’ (Corps, Finance, MIC, Big Gov..), in an attempt to keep ppl quiet. This ‘third way’ has now failed, ppl turn where they can, for now it is voting for the ‘alt-right’ (Trump, Wilders, Le Pen..) along a sort of nationalist line, which seems to contain germs of proto-fascim (as some would say), but which is actually principally directed against the PTB.

Posted by: Noirette | Mar 13 2017 16:55 utc | 73

The great tragedy of the collapse of the left is that there will be nobody around to protect the minorities who live in the nations of the West. As a nonwhite American, I see the polarization of politics around racial lines is a catastrophe waiting to happen. The Democrats want to play the good cop, using fear of to control their minority vote bank while doing sweet F A for their communities that they profess to love so much. The Trumpian right has now dropped all pretense and is openly embracing white supremacy, race baiting for votes and stirring up all kinds of anti-foreigner sentiment on top of the folksy old fashioned racism done by “good” GOPers. As disgusting as the smug, patronizing prejudice of liberals is, the wild vitriolic hatred found in parts of the white community is backed up with state force. Even when faced with this reality, the Democratic party views discussions of economic issues as pandering to the “deplorables”! Never mind the rampant poverty and unemployment in black and latin ghettoes, talking about jobs is racism! They will continue this political death spiral and we will pay the price. There have been two shootings I know of where Indians (mistaken for Muslims by rednecks hopped up on hate) and I’m sure we’ll see plenty more. God help Europe when their right wingers crack down on the Muslims. You think the young are being radicalized now? You ain’t seen nothing yet.

Posted by: Almand | Mar 13 2017 17:11 utc | 75

Juliana at 73 wrote about Trump voters.
I don’t blame those who did, thinking he might break the mold. In doing that, they were not ‘voting far right.’ They were voting for what Trump said he would do, act peacefully towards each country, take care of citizens’ grievances.
Yes, right on. And that extends to all the ‘nationalist’ voters. What they – perhaps confusedly for some – are trying to effect is a timid step in the present horrific political landscape, towards having a say, >> having the space, and scope, of decision-making circumsribed, and made not only smaller, but more rigidly, clearly defined – in this case down to nation size where the ppl may hopefully garner some more power.
The labels ‘right’ and ‘left’ of course are nonsense, but we all use them as ‘tags’ for e.g. Dems vs. Reps, and that’s ok, as long as everyone undertands the short-hand. Being ‘nationalist’, ‘anti-globalist’, ‘localist’, ‘community oriented’ (footnotes skipped) is not left or right, it doesn’t project to any point on the left-right polarity. Nor does it relate to an authoritarian, controlling axis. vs. a libertarian one. But of course these challengers are painted as Hitler ‘nationalist’ stooges and putative vicious invaders, war mongers, conquerers, as is for ex. Putin.

Posted by: Noirette | Mar 13 2017 18:05 utc | 77

@60
And why should we call something “Left” in Yankeeland?
Why, if there is nothing not even close of this there?

Posted by: Perimeter | Mar 13 2017 19:07 utc | 79

And if anyone is interested, I chose the name “Perimetr” because that is the way my friend Colonel Yarynich spelled it . . .
Also known as the “Deadhand” system, Perimetr is a semi-automated system through which a retaliatory nuclear strike can be ordered by a decapitated Russian National Command Authority. Perimetr came into being in the 1980s and appears to still be functional. You can read a detailed analysis of it in the book by Colonel Valery Yarynich, “C3: Nuclear Command, Control, Cooperation” (if you can get your hands on a copy). https://www.amazon.com/C3-Nuclear-Command-Control-Cooperation/dp/1932019081
Perimetr uses emergency communication rockets to issue launch orders to any (surviving) Russian nuclear forces; such orders would automatically trigger a launch of these forces without further human intervention. The crew that mans the Perimetr launch control center requires several things to happen before they launch: (1) an initial preliminary authorization from the National Command Authority following the detection of an incoming attack, (2) a complete loss of communication on all channels (various radio frequencies, land lines, etc) with the National Command Authority, and (3) a simultaneously set of positive signals from seismic, optical, and radiological nuclear detonation detectors indicating that a nuclear attack has occurred.
At that point, the crew is ordered to launch the ECRs. This “Deadhand” launches the missiles even after those who gave the preliminary launch order have been incinerated in a nuclear strike. Valery thought that Perimetr added a measure of safety having the system, in that it would make it less likely that the NCA would launch a “retaliatory” strike (Launch on Warning, LOW) before nuclear detonations confirmed the strike was real (if the warning was false, then the “retaliatory strike” would actually be a first strike . . . hence Perimetr offers some certainty of retaliation for choosing to “ride out” a perceived attack). I took less comfort that did Valery, as I found it disconcerting that there was a non-human mechanism or means to order a Russian nuclear attack.
see “Launch-Ready Nuclear Weapons: A threat to all nations and peoples” http://www.psr.org/nuclear-weapons/launch-ready-nuclear-weapons.pdf and http://thebulletin.org/2004/may/lets-go-no-low

Posted by: Perimetr | Mar 13 2017 19:29 utc | 81

@80
Are you illiterate?
“Perimeter” is graphically different of “Perimetr”. In addition and mainly, interested people can differentiate one from the other ideologically. So do not worry, kid.

Posted by: Perimeter | Mar 14 2017 2:14 utc | 83

– Someone in a townhall meeting asked a Democratic representitive: “What do the Democrats stand for”. And the representitive replied with platitudes. and the whole thing was captured on video.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d9KyR86CZ1E

Posted by: Willy2 | Mar 14 2017 7:55 utc | 85

@67 ALberto
i’d check out the relationship between the exponential growth in the use of glyphosate, decimated microbial populations in the human gut as a result of its use, and the sudden eruption of gluten intolerance. that’d get any biochemist / epidemiologist fired in short order, or demonized on publication. i’m sure that’s why we haven’t seen it.

Posted by: jfl | Mar 14 2017 13:07 utc | 87

@ Posted by: Willy2 | Mar 14, 2017 3:55:52 AM | 85
Thank you for the link. Succint & concise. Tragicomedy(sic) … 🙁
What was highlighted with cutting clarity is what the average Joe & Betty six-pack, and not just Stateside, throughout the ‘West’ are primarily up in arms about, IMV. And the Owned & Controlled, Corporate ‘Mainstream’ Mega-Media will not touch it nor even acknowledge ‘it’ … hopefully the scales will fall from enough peoples eyes to awaken from the somnolance induced by all-encompassing ‘digital valium‘ …
If locales can ever reach a critical mass re numbers … maybe the Tumbrels will yet again roll to swing humanities ‘pendulum’ back the other way. If they don’t …

Posted by: Outraged | Mar 14 2017 14:33 utc | 89

RE: Perimeter | Mar 13, 2017 10:14:10 PM | 83 “Perimeter” is graphically different of “Perimetr”. In addition and mainly, interested people can differentiate one from the other ideologically. So do not worry, kid.
Well let’s see, would Circe be upset if someone started posting under “Circes”? Would Outraged mind if someone started posting here as “Outrages”? How about “Alberto” instead of “ALberto”??
Sorry, there are lots of other names available, so what is the point in posting under one that is essentially identical to mine, except to confuse those who might not be paying much attention?

Posted by: Perimetr | Mar 14 2017 16:03 utc | 91

@84, the racial-ethnic divides among populations pale in comparison to the divisions between classes. The Reptilian Order must rake up the former through media exploits lest the proles wise up to the latter.

Posted by: ruralito | Mar 14 2017 17:02 utc | 93

@ Posted by: estouxim | Mar 14, 2017 2:37:48 PM | 94
My views tend towards pacifism these last many years and am totally opposed to capital punishment for common criminal acts … the death of even one innocent due to failures of the system, injustice, or mere errors, is one life too many, IMV.
Have personally seen the dire consequences of psychopaths & sociopaths, in Military, Intelligence, Government & Corporate environments, in positions of leadership/authority. They select alike as near peers and congregate fellow-travellers, arch-opportunists & sellswords as underlings, enablers/facilitators.
Yet, long reflection on … bitter … experiences, have brought me to a perceived unpalatable truth, that there likely must be, long overdue, a cull of the ‘Impune’, via the tender mercies of such as madame guillotine, to reset the balance, for their number and reach in primarily western first world countries has become a vast cancer upon humanity.
If one can be reviled by the community and dealt with at Law for a simple common murder, why can one who abuses the authority of the State, or delegated thereof, order policies or acts that result in dozens, 100’s or thousands or more deaths of innocents, yet be impune, wholly and forever, unassailable, unaccountable ?
When exactly was it that Presidents & Prime Ministers once again quietly assumed the pseudo-Regnum like Majesty & Dictatorial Imperium of Caesars, Emperors, Kings/Monarchs of history past ?
Had thought the last ‘Sun King’ was in France ~160 years ago …
Technology has opened a Pandora’s Box of expanding destructive forces & potentialities at the behest of these psychopaths that, as Karlof1 somewhat similarly fears, will have a singular end result, if left unchecked.
Do not believe a little pruning of wealth/capital will any longer suffice … Iceland alone, started tentatively upon the right path, after the GFC.

Posted by: Outraged | Mar 14 2017 19:56 utc | 95

Outraged @95–
“When exactly was it that Presidents & Prime Ministers once again quietly assumed the pseudo-Regnum like Majesty & Dictatorial Imperium of Caesars, Emperors, Kings/Monarchs of history past?”
I don’t believe the Divine Right of Monarchs was ever completely expunged as it continued to operate in the shadows until it retuned to the surface at WW2’s end with Truman.
Don’t know how much you agree with my assessment above @12, but one of the smartest people I’ve ever known–the late Lynn Margulis, Carl Sagan’s first wife, the superior microbiologist who proved symbiosis within species and agent of evolution to be fact–wrote the forward to the paperback edition of Morrison’s work I cited, agreeing with him.
It’s easy to observe and analyze the situation then prescribe the remedy. But said remedy must be applied by millions of currently very disparate individuals having almost no solidarity or in agreement about said remedy, or even knowing a remedy exists. I’d do more, but my responsibilities limit me to my current activities–writing and exhorting those able to act.
The great irony of our dilemma is humans have overcome Nature in almost every sphere, yet that triumph is precisely what threatens humanity and the biota–a triumph driven by Nature itself. So, to overcome our overcoming of Nature, we must again triumph at overcoming our Human Nature by limiting the impact of Nature on our actions through the use of a very ancient technology–culture, by making certain actions by humans taboo and their violation punishable by death as the Polynesians practiced.
Yes, radical, controversial, requiring a great deal of prior knowledge to comprehend the logic driving the remedy. Yet, as Spock would say, there it is: Long life and prosperity lies down remedy’s path; massive destruction, pain and eventual oblivion if the status quo continues.

Posted by: karlof1 | Mar 14 2017 21:16 utc | 97

@ Posted by: karlof1 | Mar 14, 2017 5:16:09 PM | 96

… it returned to the surface at WW2’s end with Truman.
… we must again triumph at overcoming our Human Nature by limiting the impact of Nature on our actions through the use of a very ancient technology–culture, by making certain actions by humans (Leaders/Leadership) taboo and their violation punishable by death as the Polynesians practiced.
… massive destruction, pain and eventual oblivion if the status quo continues.

Concur.
Yet, would take that slightly further re amending formal application of Law & Sentencing & Punishment.
A number of Navies apply Mandatory MAXIMUM punishments for any offense, where found guilty, committed outside the parent nations 12 Mile limit, for good reason re discipline under a Captain’s authority … the ship becomes the nation and the crew the ‘people’ thereof and the ultimate survival of all dependent upon such.
The greater the status, rank, education, authority, experience, length of service of the ‘Taboo Breaker,‘ (Leaders/Leadership), the less any mitigating circumstances can be considered, and the proportionally higher the punishment, towards the maximum. Such should be able to plead no excuse, ignorance or misunderstanding, or lack of comprehension whatsoever, compared to a ‘Constable/Trooper/Sailor/Airman’.
The pyramid of actual accountability & consequent punishment, must be inverted, by society.
If one looks carefully throughout humanities recorded history, across cultures, down thru millennia, sooner or later the stone (society) could be squeezed no further, and there was inevitably blowback and a, culling.
Yet, since the inter-continent telegraph and the widespread ubiquitous distribution of the mass ‘Press’, concurrent with the machinations of the Bankers & War Profiteers behind the scenes since the late 1800’s, IMV, the ability to manipulate, divide & rule, society has become an artform, ever accelerating in scope, scale & effectiveness, preventing the necessary ‘cull’ in the ‘International Community’ of the ‘west’.
IMV, the old grey men may have misunderstood/underestimated the accident of the ‘net, hence desperation of such as ProPornOT etc, which provides alternate independent voices re communication & re perceived reality … it may be enough, a small window of opportunity given the obvious accident of ‘Trumps’ ascension, to possibly enable a reckoning, there are a few discordant shrill cries and desperate pleas arising amongst the ‘narrative’ from the Globalists/Atlanticists (US/EU/UK/AUS/CAN), to believe & trust TPTB … but only if there is a true, not faux, accounting.
Otherwise, yes, almost inevitably, your last. Faint hope …

Posted by: Outraged | Mar 14 2017 22:20 utc | 99