Interesting Times

 

It's apparently not true that the Chinese had a curse: "May you live in interesting times."  Be that as it may, we are living in interesting times.  My reaction to this CounterPunch article about Democratic Party USA activists' disillusionment with Joe Biden is that this is how a civilization collapses.

Defenders of sticking with Biden glibly dismiss negative poll numbers while noting that polls in January can’t tell us where persuadable voters will end up in November. But there’s a serious problem beyond just polls. It’s the disaffection of activists – pivotal because thousands of talented, hard-working activists are needed to help persuade voters on the fence, and to get-out-the-vote of traditional Democrats who are only “occasional voters.”

During the Covid-haunted election of 2020, thousands of grassroots activists and groups – including many who were Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren supporters – devoted months of their lives to defeat Donald Trump after Biden became the Democratic nominee. Overall, many progressive groups went all in for Biden when it came down to him or Trump in the fall of 2020.

But in 2024, many of these experienced activists are disaffected from Biden if not outraged at him, over issues from Gaza to voting rights to climate to student debt.

Five hundred people who were campaign or party staff members in 2020 – recalling that they “fought tirelessly to organize millions of Americans to cast their votes” for Biden – have now signed a well-informed letter urging Biden not only to work for a Gaza ceasefire, but also to “end unconditional military aid to Israel” and “take concrete steps to end the conditions of apartheid, occupation, and ethnic cleansing that are the root causes of this devastation.”

Will there be enough diligent volunteers to get-out-the-vote for Biden in 2024? Not according to current Biden for President staffers who say volunteers have “quit in droves” over Biden’s handling of the Gaza war – adding: “It is not enough to merely be the alternative to Donald Trump.”

Make no mistake about it: Fascism is a toxic-stew of irrational fears and delusions that is never far from the hearts of many right-wingers.  Religious women who believe in "manly men" who uphold whatever stupid traditions they were raised to comply with will suppport fascism.  Racialized males who hate feminists, homosexuals, members of different racialized minorities, and philosophies that challenge their prejudices, will either have their own fascist movements or sign-up with mainstream white fascist movements.  It's more a state of mind than a coherent ideology.  And Donald Trump's state of mind is fascist and his appeal is fascist.

Neoliberalism, by destroying the economy and impoverishing the majority, has created a breeding ground for fascism.  Neoliberal liberals (which is to say, advocates of deregulated capitalism who aren't conscious bigots or racists) make proto-fascists hate anti-racism and gay rights and whatever other causes that liberals embrace.  "Enlightened" capitalists don't care about the colour of your skin, or about the sex that you're attracted to, or the religion you follow, or if you even follow a religion at all.  As a person, all they care about is your money.  As a worker, all they care about is to exploit you.  As a citizen, all they care is that you are powerless to interfere with them.  It costs them nothing to advocate for equal rights for everyone to be a capitalist cipher to be fleeced and exploited and discarded.  When some socially conservative working class person gets fucked-over by neoliberalism, and there's a right-wing politician telling them about single-mothers on welfare as the root of all their problems, they start to see red.

I'm not saying that entities like the Democratic Party USA or the Liberal Party of Canada need to start pandering to right-wing assholes.  They just have to stop fucking everybody over.  But they can't help themselves because they're amoral, stupid assholes.  And so we have the right-wing all fired-up with their hypocritical grievances of stolen elections and persecution (although, with "Russiagate" the stupid Democrats stupidly gave them plenty of genuine ammunition) and we have progressives so uninspired by the standard-bearer of a dying system that they can't bring themselves to do it anymore.

I would never vote for someone like Biden.  I will never vote for the Liberal Party of Canada again.  If the neoliberals really grasped the threat of Trump, the threat of fascism, ... well, they would stop the policies that breed more and more fascists everyday.  And they would at least respond to the genuine grievances of the people they need to combat this threat and try to meet them at least halfway.  But they don't care.  Either because they're magnificently deluded, or they're arrogant, or some damned thing.

Regardless.  We're all going to die horrible deaths.

I will note that the CounterPunch article I've linked to ends rather abruptly:

While establishment Democrats are intent on whistling past the Biden graveyard, there’s a different kind of magical thinking among some who consider themselves to be on the left – a fantastical pretense that it doesn’t really matter whether Trump becomes president again. People who think that Trump and his leadership team are not fascistic, or that a Trumpite return to the presidency wouldn’t be much worse than abhorrent Bidenism, are out of touch with political reality.

When he's not acting like a sneering misogynist towards Caitlin Johnstone, or arrogantly yammering about the books he's reading and the music he's listening to, Jeffrey St Clair is busy fund-raising so that he can post the unpaid work of pretty much anyone who wants CounterPunch's audience.  Bad poetry, imperialist talking-points on Ukraine, all sides of the UAW's recent strikes, pro-Democratic Party propaganda?  Fine.  A bit of sloppy editing, and he can get back to his hobbies.  It appears that in this case Jeffrey screwed-up and didn't post the last part of the article. That, or the authors erroneously believed that they've made their case for still voting for "Genocide Joe."

I wonder what Jeff Cohen and Norman Solomon's answer to the disaffection of people (including former Sanders supporters) who held their noses and campaigned for Biden in 2020 but who can't bring themselves to do so again?  Will Cohen and Solomon step-up and canvas for Biden?  Did they do so in the past?  What have they been doing since 2020 as Biden has betrayed the working class again and again (unless we count those pro-Biden articles on CounterPunch that say he's been a hero for the working class) to build an alternative?  To respond to the hellish nightmare we're all stuck inside?

This lack of a realistic analysis is why we're all going down in flames.