I think that what youre suggesting, and what I believe is actually quite true, is that Trump and the Democrats really represent two different elements of the same coin. I mean, what you have is a savage form of neoliberalism that now dominates most of the globe, in which questions of power and questions of justice are completely removed from any sense of accountability.
By attempting to frame the Sanders-Clinton divide as one determined solely by race and gender, Clinton surrogates have tried not only to remove from view Sanders's support among the young, but also to avoid any discussion of class — an element of American society that is inextricably linked to issues of race and gender.
Unless we revive an antiwar movement in the United States, none of this will occur in the present time. It is war that is destroying our economic being and our future. Ultimately, it will be our refusal to oppose and work to end war that will destroy our souls.
One telling piece of evidence is the indifference to the outcome of those debates on the part of the powers that be in our multiple Establishments: financial, corporate, military, Intelligence, entertainment. They couldn’t care less whether transgenders (still undefined) get designated bathrooms at Ivy League universities. They’re more interested in controlling what’s going on in business schools, engineering colleges, law schools, economic departments, and alumni offices.
And, of course, in numerous cases civilians have been killed in large numbers and people have been targeted without identifying who they are.
A few years ago, I attended a popular exhibition called "The Price of Freedom" at the venerable Smithsonian Institution in Washington. The lines of ordinary people, mostly children shuffling through a Santa's grotto of revisionism, were dispensed a variety of lies: the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki saved "a million lives"; Iraq was "liberated [by] air strikes of unprecedented precision". The theme was unerringly heroic: only Americans pay the price of freedom.
"If we can't say a word about TPP, if we can't talk about Medicare-for-All explicitly, if the greatest prophetic voice dealing with pending ecologically catastrophe can hardly win a vote, and if we can't even acknowledge occupation... it seems there is no way in good conscience I can say, 'Take it to the next stage,'" [Cornel] West declared before the assembly.
“At least half of Americans that vote for the Democratic Party in national elections are social democrats whose politics are incompatible with the Democratic Leadership Council corporatists.”
“We must choose between a neo-fascism in the making (Trump), neo-liberalism in the decaying (Clinton), and a neo-populism in the ascending (Sanders).”
Chris Hedges | Kshama Sawant: How to counter establishment politics (Video interview)
These are the citizen champions who, for example, led the fight for safer and nutritious food, less harmful medicines, cleaner air and water, more secure pensions, a freer media, more open government, waging peace instead of war, securing indigenous peoples’ rights, safer transportation, the well-being of children, insurance industry accountability and great advances for people with disabilities.
In the age of Trump, truth becomes the enemy of governance and politics tips over into a deadly malignancy.
