All Opposed to the Blind Fascism of Hillary’s Lackeys - Let the Dead Bury Their Dead!
Last week, Bernie Sanders
published an opinion piece in the New
York Times titled “Democrats Need to Wake Up”. He spoke to the current, “increasingly
globalized economy, established and maintained by the world’s economic elite”—the
very capitalist system that has utterly failed us, the 99%.
Many of Sanders’ readers likely
agreed it is, indeed, deeply troubling that the superrich should enjoy unthinkable
wealth and lux while, at the same time, “billions of people endure abject
poverty, unemployment, and inadequate health care, education, housing and
drinking water.”
And many of those
sympathetic to the facts at hand likely agreed with the Democratic National
Party’s only progressive presidential
candidate that there’s something wrong when “the wealthiest 62 people on this
planet own as much wealth as the bottom half of the world’s population”—that
is, when the top 1% lays claim to more wealth “than the whole of the bottom 99
percent.”
Surely, though, there
were many who took issue with Sanders’ piece.
For instance, take Katherine
Ho of Illinois—probably your average Hillary supporter. She published a letter
to the editor in the Times the very
day after Bernie’s piece and titled it “Dear Bernie Sanders: What You Didn’t
Say”.
In her letter, Ho claimed
that “…[Bernie Sanders] needs to wake up to a modern reality in which
globalization is both inevitable and beneficial, creating domestic jobs and
raising millions worldwide out of poverty.”
In other words, Bernie
needs to get a grip and get out of the way of the economic progress wrought by global
neoliberal policies and capitalism rigged by a plutocracy.
In other words, still, Bernie
doesn’t get it: Market forces and individual liberty are the 99%’s saving grace,
especially in a fated, perpetually liberalizing global economic order (the kind
that Hillary pretends to uphold no matter how egregious the cost).
These are the people supporting HRC, and this is their mindset.
And they’re precisely the
ones taking issue with the message in Sanders’ piece.
So, however unwittingly,
the Times has elucidated a major contention
amongst the DNC faithful. It’s a political powder keg with a long fuse, and
it’s been burning in the corner of the DNC’s basement for some time now.
Ho, like a number of
“HRC” lackeys, is willing to peddle undemocratic economic logic just to spite Sanders.
No, they won’t admit to being so petulant; but they’ll readily tell you Bernie doesn’t
“get it”—that he and his supporters are contemptuous for so audaciously daring
to keep the DNC from being the first American political party to put a woman in
the White House.
What a calumnious ruse!
They’re worried about
their party losing, but they’re not worried about the economic, ecological, or
political ramifications of putting Hillary in charge. In fact, in the eyes of
the HRC filigree, all who are nauseated by the thought of a Clinton
commander-in-chief are unthinkably misinformed, backwards, sexist, and “just
don’t get it.”
Of course, this rhetoric only
serves to indemnify Hillary’s personal ambitions, and her lackeys readily strafe
with fallacies just to exact damage and gain ground in the make-Bernie-seem-quixotic
campaign they so absurdly wage.
And Ho’s is certainly not
the first voice to sound from the HRC camp and condescendingly champion free
trade, informing all who are categorically anti-Hillary that Sanders’ economics
“just don’t make sense.”
But this is a serious
problem with so many members in the cult of Hillary: They have taken to making a
case for fundamentally free markets and capitalist status quote, which, despite
all evidence to the contrary, they suppose to be the best mechanism for
allocating scarce goods and services.
Whether they are intelligent
enough or populist enough to realize it, this—to use Ho’s words—has been the “modern
reality” for the last few decades, and it has culminated in the Great Recession
and sinful gains of the plutocracy.
And this is precisely what has failed us, the 99%!
But the HRC camp doesn’t
care. They only care about defeating the evil straw man that is Trump. They
only care about having their nominally progressive team win.
What Ho and company are promoting
by supporting on principal HRC over Bernie, or Jill Stein, is that governments govern
best when they secure property and the private ownership of the means of
production, and not a thing more.
As evidenced by their
supporting the ever more messianic Hillary, the HRC camp actually believes that
human interaction through markets alone can make the 99% free—or the “millions worldwide”
that neoliberal globalization has been so graciously able to lift from the
grips of poverty, according to Ho.
Ho’s short letter further
lambasts Sanders for his “aversion to basic economics” and his “inability to
accept the results of the Democratic primaries.” As a hallmark of many HRC cult
members, Ho presumably means to invoke Sanders’ supporters whenever she uses
his name.
But even if Americans have
had to learn something from the so-called Brexit, as Bernie says in his piece, Ho
alleges that Sanders has learned nothing.
She complains, like many
of Hillary’s lackeys, that Sanders has not adequately pressed into service his
political purchase with so many millions of Americans so as to adequately support “the one person
standing between us and a Trump presidency: Hillary Clinton.”
Again, Ho isn’t alone in
her inability to grasp the nonplussing actions of Bernie in light of a
potential Trump presidency. Nor is she alone in her confusion about the general
disdain that millions of Americans harbor for Hillary.
Actually, just last week,
Robert Reich posted on his Facebook account a Times article about the deadlock between Hillary Clinton and Donald
Trump in the polls. One would think this would sink-in for all the Clintonistas—that
they would have enough sense to gather that Hillary is not the only person
standing between “us and a Trump presidency,” to reiterate Ho.
But, somehow, they just don’t get it.
Reich proves as much in
his post. He writes, “I don’t get how Hillary Clinton and Donald J. Trump can
be deadlocked (according to a new national poll of registered voters released
this morning), with 42 percent supporting her and 40 percent backing him.”
“This frankly worries me.
Trump hasn’t put up a single television ad, his campaign is in shambles, he has
almost no field staff, he’s spent almost zilch and his campaign bank is nearly
empty, and he’s been getting nothing but horrible press. Hillary Clinton has
been blanketing swing states with ads, her campaign is being run like clockwork
and it’s huge, and she’s pulling in and spending money like mad.”
“More to the point, Trump
is a bigoted petulant egomaniac with the temperament of a hyena. She's
experienced, competent, and intelligent.”
Baffled by the recent
metrics, Reich cries out in his Facebook post as if to God: “What’s going on?”
Well, perhaps Reich, like
Ho, is a true-believer.
Trump’s dismal popularity
notwithstanding, Hillary’s warranted disapproval doesn’t boil down to misogyny,
though some would prefer it. And the confusion about Hillary’s deadlock with
Trump is not all that hard to understand. A large part of it is, to quote Liza
Featherstone on the faux feminism of HRC, that “…[Hillary Clinton] has actually
dedicated her career to austerity, state repression and imperialism…”
The HRC cult knows all of
this! But they just don’t care. Why should they?
It’s safe to say that Ho and
the HRC cult are the ones to need “to wake up to a modern reality” in which
globalization is neither inevitable nor beneficial, does not create domestic
jobs or raise millions out of poverty, and only exists to stratify the wealth
that the superrich are able to accumulate and enjoy.
Obviously, many Marxist
thinkers have long treated neoliberalism, globalization and the American
project for development as the latest incarnation of imperialist exploitation—something
that certainly plagues people in the Third World.
And many of us who have
been critical of neoliberalism—even well before the IMF itself called it into
question this June—still bemoan the highly predatory structural adjustment programs
that capitalist non-state institutions have forced down the throats of billions
so that, as Bernie wrote, “the wealthiest 62 people on this planet (might) own
as much wealth as the bottom half of the world’s population…”
Ho’s—and Hillary’s—ideology
pivots on gross global inequality, economic inequities, rampant unemployment, utter
alienation and the destruction of sociability, the raping of the environment,
and cultural inculcation.
Illuminating the
negatives that have resulted from neoliberalism and a globally liberalized
economic world order is not hard. Illuminating the ills of market
fundamentalism, deregulation, and the gnarly externalities of privatization is
not hard.
But getting the HRC
stalwarts to support a democratic platform is difficult. Getting them to make
sense of reality, if not, for themselves, is difficult, too.
So, to all those opposed
to the blind fascism of Hillary’s lackeys: Let the dead bury their dead!
In her letter, Ho voiced
exactly what has been the quintessence of the Hillary camp ever since it became
apparent Trump would be #Her opponent. That is, the rallying cry of a truly
desperate, reactionary, and fascistic plea. It screams, “Stand with me, Hillary
Clinton, and let us fight Trump’s reactionary fascism with my own trusted brand
of it!”
Edward Martin is Professor of Public Policy and Administration, Graduate Center for Public Policy and Administration at California State University, Long Beach, and co-author of Savage State: Welfare Capitalism and Inequality.
Mateo Pimentel is an Axis of Logic columnist, living on the US-Mexico border. Read the Biography and additional articles by Axis Columnist Mateo Pimentel.
© Copyright 2016 by AxisofLogic.com
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