Bernie disappointed

I don't donate to political campaigns... because sooner or later, a politician will always disappoint me. Bernie did when he gave way to Joe Biden in the 2019 Democratic primary. I have 2 theories of why Bernie gave way:

1. Bernie's asshole quotient isn't high enough to attack his opponents as needed to win a political campaign at this level.

or

2. Bernie decided he didn't actually want to be president... possibly his heart condition was a more significant warning call than he signaled to his campaign or supporters.


Regardless, he let down everyone who donated, volunteered or spoke on his behalf.

And now, weeks after Bernie's acquiescence, in the middle of a rampant protests against the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis Police, Bernie has been largely out of sight. Another disappointment... :(

minority voting hypothesis

Super Tuesday was this past Tuesday and Bernie had a poorer showing than polling predicted.

3 facts stand out:
-black voters supported Biden over Bernie
-Bernie had higher Latino support than Biden
-young voters did not turn out as Bernie had hoped

Hypothesis:

A larger number of Latinos are immigrants. Children of immigrant families are the window to the outside world. Adults who don't speak the language rely on their children to navigate and understand the culture, customs and politics of foreign country in which they now live. Youth outreach worked for Bernie in the Latino community because Latino youth have more power to inform and influence decision making of the voting adults. 

African American (AA) family dynamics are very different. Highly racial policing have forced AAs into highly defensive parenting meaning exert strong control (most likely discipline) over children... a top down authoritarian family structure. Compared to Latino households, youth in AA homes have very little influence over adult decision making. The effect of AA youth outreach does not tend to penetrate the households.


If true, Bernie needs a strategy that targets adults in minority communities, not just the youth.

A form of Reparations?

There's been more talk of Reparations since Ta-Nehisi Coates' The Case for Reparations was published. In it, he talks about how redlining was used as a tool to essentially steal wealth from black communities. I wondered if there is a way to help reverse the effects of redlining in these communities... currently home mortgages are tied to the original lender; the mortgage taker cannot transfer a mortgage to another home buyer nor can someone who inherits a house continue to honor the terms of the mortgage to pay off the remaining debt. Lending institutions, on the other hand, can trade mortgages left, right, inside-out and upside down. *So* creating a mortgage that can be transferred to the heirs of a home owner would be a way to increase the intergenerational transfer of wealth and make it easier to build wealth over generations. Not reparations but a way to build value over generations.

Universal Establishment against the Resistance

At TRNN, Charles Derber talks about the need to universalize the resistance to fight the establishment. My comment:

"...on the one hand, this universalization, but on the other hand, are we becoming more fragmented?... How does that go together, on the one hand the universalization and on the other hand this fragmentation?" 

The establishment, also known as the system, is unified and highly successful in fragmenting the working people of the world. They use identity and social issues to splinter voters into opposing groups so they are disinclined to organize significant resistance. For example, the Republican and Democratic Parties don't particularly care abortion; so long as individual politicians can get the medical care they seek for their families, they aren't concerned if poor women have access to abortion or reproductive care. They care about policies that their donors want. Abortion is useful because it polarizes their electorate and generates a mock conflict between the pro and anti sides (like pro-wrestling) which distracts the real policy intent of the Republican and Democratic Parties which is to always advance the concentration and transfer of power/wealth to their donors. 

The key to resist voter fragmentation is not to ignore the differences but to unify to respect these differences and advocate for each others' rights to those positions. The poor, brown, white, low wage, immigrant, women, LGBT and other groups are not outsiders; they are insiders, part of the group. In this country, they are all known as Americans but workers should not overlook the same systemic pattern of deliberate fragmentation that is also exercised abroad. The system uses competition between native and foreign workers to sow division internationally. The entire point of corporate/trade globalization is to create wage competition to force down production costs. Worker unity must also cross national borders if the establishment/system is to be contained.

Who he identifies with

Digby described a meeting between the only African-American Republican senator, Tim Scott of South Carolina, and DJT:

Tim Scott of South Carolina, who had requested a meeting with the president to talk about Charlottesville. Scott reportedly believed that if Trump heard his story and understood the history better he might come to understand why his remarks were so provocative and hurtful.

          ...

Trump is asked about the meeting on Air Force One during the trip to Florida. Apparently, he thinks he taught Scott a thing or two: 

We had a great talk yesterday. I think especially in light of the advent of Antifa, if you look at what’s going on there, we have some pretty bad dudes on the other side also and essentially that’s what I said.

Now because of what’s happened since then with Antifa, you know really what’s happened since Charlottesville, a lot of people are saying, in fact a lot of people have actually written, “Gee, Trump might have a point.” I said, you’ve got some very bad people on the other side also, which is true.

It's telling that Antifa is 'the other side.' Apparently DJT sides with white supremacists.

Racism is an economic tactic of division

On Sat., August 12, 2017, there was a white nationalist march in Charlottesville, VA which resulted in the death of counter-protestor Heather Heyer.

On NPR's Codeswitch podcast:

NPR asked: "what you think white nationalists, like the ones in Charlottesville, expect to accomplish in 2017?" 

Answer: "to create a society where the resources of the society funnel into a whites-only space, but that it is propped up and supported by a vast labor pool without rights."

This again confirms racism is a form of economic division. It's similar to anti-feminism, anti-LGBT, anti-abortion, colonialism, etc. divide and conquer tactic of the economically powerful. Unfortunately, they're a particularly well armed movement with no qualms of using violence.

Theories of inequality antecede economic benefits

Comment at Truthout where historian Ibram X. Kendi discusses the root and cures of racism in America:

Dr. Kendi clearly defined the causal relationship: economic benefit precedes racist ideas precedes persistent cultural racism. This relationship applies to *all* manner of division, not just racism. 

Economic benefited class -> 'theory' of inequality -> policy and culture of inequality 

some examples:(1) big Republican donors -> trickle-down/supply-side economics -> 'deregulation' & right to work(2) religious right -> abortion is murder -> post Roe v. Wade abortion restrictions(3) POTUS DJT (and other politicians) -> 'illegal' aliens are criminals -> mass deportation 

The cure for these inequities is not embedded in their theories or policies. Because they are rooted in economic inequality (unequal economic power), their cure is to equalize economic power. And the secret to decentralizing power is information transparency/dissemination. The wealth/power of modern corporations and institutions are derived directly from the information they control or 'own' (patents, copyrights, trademarks, branding, proprietary/trade secrets, 'national security' secrets, etc.). Looser controls on information would increase opportunities for economic competition and, over time, decrease economic disparity.

Division

Comment at TRNN segment with Gerald Horne discussing the economic aspects of 'War on Immigrants:

Yes. But 'divide and conquer' is not a strategy unique to the U.S. Gender stratification is one of the oldest divisions used to exert social control and extract labor from a 'sub' class of people. The three major Abrahamic religions all assign women to a lower status than men; the major eastern cultures also tend to subjugate women relative to men. The body politic of the day uses social issues to the same effect; sexuality, race, class, immigrants, religion and even abortion rights among others are used to divide Americans into in-group and out-group. These internal conflicts are all staged to distract us from the massive transfer of power and wealth exercised by policy makers. 

Right wing media is dangerous for the lies they promulgate. They may be even more dangerous for the division they sow. The left is renown for its lack of organization and division; this is often seen as a strength. It is now necessary to pool this division so the cacophony of voices can speak towards a common goal.

Another economic pro-anti-immigrant lobby is the private prison industry. 'Illegal' immigrants are are not dangerous or unruly criminals so they are cheap to contain in mass housing - to the private prison industry, this means lots of $$ and profits. 

Update: Division in the form of segregation is costly in crime, economics, culture and likely health as described by NPR.

Unifying Resistance

A comment I posted at Truthout. It pulls together several themes I've written about here:

"Trump is upping his game, and we, as resisters, aren't ready." 

Yes. It's also time to be proactive as opposed to reactive. But we need to understand the reflex to react and how to step back and see the forest to respond proactively. It's important to understand how politics divides people in both obvious and subtle ways. DJT is a practitioner of confrontational divisiveness; he outright declares his rejection of immigrants, Mexicans, unattractive women, prisoners of war, disabled people, etc. Divide and conquer can also be achieved by more subtle tactics, such as when Republicans and Democrats specifically void the needs of the poor by leaving them out of the debate (or DJT spotlighting the educated with his 'I love the poorly educated').  

The modus operandi of the body politic is to act on the interests of the elite at the expense of the larger population by dividing the larger group. Successful opposition would require some degree of unified resistance which is not the case with single issue movements. I would suggest single issue movements make their case under the umbrella of a larger 'meta' theme for the benefit of the larger overall. For instance, demanding that all policy be based on objective evidence would mean the numbers of gun injuries and deaths factors into gun policy and definitions of corporate personhood would correct for the differential influence such policy would confer on owners. Another useful theme would be to define economies as 'production, consumption and exchange of capital for the sustained wellbeing of humanity'. 'Sustained' would entail policy makers incorporate a long view of policy outcomes - think climate change; 'wellbeing' would require some degree of universal healthcare; and the 'economics' of warfare would be completely invalidated. A final theme would be maximize information transparency. The only way a small group (elites) can concentrate power to any extent is through the control of information. They use propaganda (selective/deceptive use of information) to create divides in the larger population and amplify infighting. Information transparency inoculates against propaganda.  

The resistance movement needs to recognize that although Trump is personally repugnant and vulgar, he is only a figurehead. The real adversaries in the long fight are the power elites.

Ugliness of Israeli settlements

I am not fond of Abby Martin's Empire files - I find her presentation to be over dramatized, even when I agree with her point of view. But in this instance, even if only a tenth of her report is true, Americans are doing bad things. This episode describes how the state of Israel not only tacitly approves of Israeli terrorism against Palestinians, but it's overtly abetting such activity. And considering U.S. aid covers close to one-quarter of Israel's military budget, Americans are indirectly sponsoring state terrorism.

Be informed. It's necessary to mount effective opposition.

Endemic police violence

Redditt Hudson, a black former cop, wrote this article detailing the culture of racism flamed violence in American police departments. He tells an awful story that's well worth reading. He writes:

"On any given day, in any police department in the nation, 15 percent of officers will do the right thing no matter what is happening. Fifteen percent of officers will abuse their authority at every opportunity. The remaining 70 percent could go either way depending on whom they are working with. "

So rooting out the 15% of abusive cops would go far to fixing the problem.

I wonder if private insurance could be an effective tool to stem police misbehavior. I am not clear if municipalities self-insure against the professional conduct of their police. Cities have had to pay out large sums to victims of police violence. What would happen if each police officer were required to carry individual police conduct insurance? (Compare this to malpractice insurance that doctors need to practice medicine.) Who actually pays for the insurance coverage is not as important as the insurer adds a layer of independent oversight. Insurance providers don't want to pay claims; they won't insure officers with a record of misconduct. It might just work as a tool to weed out the bad cops and warn the others that big brother is watching (when they're on duty, that is).