Our all-star panel discussed troubling aspects of the upcoming U.S. presidential election.
In the midst of a pandemic, the 2020 U.S. presidential election is perhaps like no other. But as in 2016, U.S. voters must decide on two establishment candidates little concerned about the real issues facing ordinary Americans. Our expert panel of Jill Stein, Chris Hedges, Mike Gravel and Rick Wolff, discussed the American Decision. Watch the replay here:
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Thank you CN for this excellent conversation. Light years better than the brain dead corporate censored drivel that emanates from the ruling class media.
Richard Wolff did a great job of explaining that the capitalist empire that we live under is dead. There is no possibility of reforming it. We need to build a new system that ensures true democratic principles are upheld. Also, thanks to Jill for pointing out how the people of Chile and Bolivia have set the example for how this is done. We can’t expect to protest on Saturday and go home. Sustained civil resistance in the streets plus strikes and boycotts are necessary. This will require sacrifice and risk. It can’t be avoided. Chris Hedges to me is the prophet of our time. He is tough, but his warnings of what we face if we don’t act should be internalized. There is no easy shortcut to taking this system down. It will take us all down with it if we keep being played by the corporate political class.
Great show w/Stein, Gravel, Wolff and Hedges.
So in essence we are the corporately flocked and waiting for that one really bad day?
P.S. The closest thing there is to a General Assembly in the USA is actually the Electoral College (minus the super delegates). That might have provided a shortcut to bringing change. Unfortunately most States have legislated to ensure they only have the power to pick candidates on the ticket and then they die as an elected group.
Many Americans don’t even know that the Declaration of Independece and the Constitution were written 12 years apart. Plenty of time for the power brokers of the day to rig the system for their own benefit and that they did. So much of the Constitution is not fit for purpose. It was written to bring 13 self governing colonies together and to ensure that the mercantile class maintained ascendancy (now manifested in Wall Street) . The America of today should not remain attached to those apron strings forever. A new Constitutional Convention is needed, but only a general assembly of directly elected representaives from the whole of the USA can bring it about. Who is going to do that? Its impossible. The 1788 Constitution built a fortress around itself.
P.S. The closest thing there is to a General Assembly in the USA is actually the Electoral College (minus the super delegates). That might have provided a shortcut to bringing change. Unfortunately most States have legislated to ensure they only have the power to pick candidates on the ticket and then they die as an elected group.
Calling this “our democracy” is like slaves referring to “our plantation”
While Americans are re-programmed every four years for the most important desperately crucial national emergency election since the last one, which will assure that Wall Street, the Pentagon, Israel and billionaires maintain power and control over everything that matters, most eligible voters will choose neither of the ruling power’s candidates and in a sense exercise democratic values by refusing to act as majority puppets.
Meanwhile the people of Bolivia and Chile recently went to the polls and in dramatic contrast to America actually voted on substantial issues that could radically change their country’s futures. Bolivia chose returning to the socialist government that had been overthrown by a U.S. aided capitalist -fascist coup and Chile voted to dump its U.S. influenced fascist-capitalist constitution in favor of a new one to guarantee the rights of all and not just some of their people. However things turn out for them what they did comes far closer to what America needs and democracy can create but what we’ll get is the same system with possibly slightly different actions by the crew of our national model of the Titanic. Escape lifeboats will still be available only to the upper income groups while the rest of us can drown. Sorry, we’re in the “real” world and still being convinced that having a new CEO of a petroleum firm who is a transsexual of color or a bi-polar Semite or a Picasso person with seven eyes and eight breasts is more important than ending dependence on fossil fuels and demanding alternate power sources for the future of our nation and our planet.
With manufactured fears of this multi-billion dollar electoral market being sold as democracy but allegedly threatened by Russia, China, Iran, Cuba, Mexico, Disneyland, Lower Slobovia or other fictional scapegoats, the financial fiasco that grows more criminal and psychotic every day supposedly guarantees freedom to the homeless, the poor, the debtors, the millions without health care and the rest of us to whom everything nature’s corporate capitalism offers is available provided we’ve the market force to buy it. Those of us able to buy are a group getting smaller by the minute with plastic replacing money at a faster clip than ever with debt in the trillions and the only hope of paying it off being prayer, drugs or mass murder.
The bread and circuses of a past empire has its present version in the moral pornography of a rich nation with people living on the street, under highways and bridges and being stepped over by good folks on their way to rescue a dog or cat while massive political fund raising assures the richest minority maintains control of the entire political process. All of this is sanctified by the law of the land, a constitution written by the original 1% to assure that the other 99% would never threaten their power and control, only allowing supposed revolutionary amendments that allow a greater professional servant class and guarantee that the overwhelming majority continue to react to the spectacle of a variety show that passes for an electoral process, as people are convinced that the right to vote is the essence of democracy, with little or no consideration about what there is to vote for. With fears of fascism being charged every minute and attributing that threat to the rich if honest simpleton in the white house, there is also the veneration in the minds of the people that the act of voting is the be all end all of fictional democracy.
Pssst: the popular depiction of the archfiend fascists of Nazism and Hitler leaves out the fact that they took power through the sacred democratic process of voting, and Germany was generally considered the foremost intellectual and artistic culture of the continent. Past American dominance of the world was never dependent on our exceeding Canada and Mexico in thought and creativity except when it came to making and using weapons to slaughter millions while proclaiming love for mankind, democracy and other good stuff. The point being that fascism is an aspect of capitalism at an extremely critical crisis during which the most repressive among the ruling class take power and make life better for some and worse for others but in a fashion beyond the usual fake manner which calls attention to poverty, war and social degeneracy as aspects of awful “other” social formations. This is currently the expression of the alleged fascist putz in the white house while his alleged liberal foes engage in the most repressive reactionary politics in the usual guise of democracy in America: Our evil is lesser than their evil. Vote for polio or you’ll get cancer!
Before we were struck by the pandemic spread by market forces, more than half a million Americans were homeless. More than 8 million have since descended into poverty while the billionaire class has expanded its wealth to even more outrageous extremes than before. And while our national situation disintegrates under the moral assault on life and nature called the free market, no less than the World Bank warns of the titanic debt threatening the globe with the poorest countries already facing hardship beyond anything previously experienced in trying to approach paying off debts they owe to richer nations which often got rich by stealing their national wealth through colonialist oppression. The bank warns against global collapse unless the world does something about the fact that the richest 2 thousand people own more wealth than four and a half billion humans combined.
These are not among the issues brought before the American public this election season when Trump’s personal tax figures and sex life take precedence over the fact that his open adoration of Israel and Netanyahu exceeds that of the entire American congress which all but publicly buried its face in his crotch when he spoke to the assembled recipients of Israeli lobby wealth for their political campaigns. Trump openly says he doesn’t need the Israeli lobby’s money so his passion is accepted as sincere where as much of congress and past white house occupants gleefully accept the much needed millions to “democratically” treat the last colonial nation in the world as some divine aspect of humanity.
The outcome of the election may not be known for hours, days or weeks after its conclusion due to the conditions brought about by the pandemic alongside other breakdowns in our political economy. Speculations about whether the post office will sell our ballots to Russia or China or Trump’s family will use them to gain more credit at Amazon or that fascism or civil war will take place are beside the point. Feverish fears or realistic panic, the fact is that Wall Street, the Pentagon, Israel and Billionaires will remain in control of the nation and future acceptance of the lie that this represents democracy will not just make things worse, but much worse than ever before. This needs to be the last vote that accepts the lie of national democracy and must lead to the creation of a new national political party to represent the majority of Americans currently having our lives bargained at a corrupt market and equally corrupt political process over which we exercise no control.
Social conditions may become more dreadful in the short term after this hopefully last exercise of fake democracy. Whatever the lesser evil outcome of the ruling class owned and controlled exercise of the present moment, we need immediate action on the part of the people being bled physically, mentally and spiritually for fictional nonsense we are always fed, never more than during this latest outburst of truly fake democracy. We need the real thing and we need it fast. That struggle has already begun and it needs to take on much greater speed after November3, 2020.
email: fpscott (at) gmail.com
The very notion that electoral politics has ever been democracy is itself an Orwellian inversion of meaning. The ancient Athenians who invented democracy were keenly aware of electoral systems (such as Sparta’s and Athens’ own elections for generals) and considered all such systems to be one or another form of oligarchy because they select for the upper classes of society. For hundreds if not thousands of years democracy was understood to be, just as the Athenians had practiced it, a form of governance where officials are selected by random lot. Only very recently around the late 18th or early 19th century was democracy redefined to include when you vote for people, which myopic political science hacks then clung onto as the oxymoron of “representative democracy”. Most people today are shockingly unaware of the rule-by-lot aspect of Athenian government. I’ve even had a class in classical Greek history where this was never once mentioned.
Disband the American Military!
No More War!
War is Evil.
America is ruled by Pure Evil at the very Top.
Stop paying these monsters Income Taxes.
Voting Out of Fear is Stupid. There is No Lessor Evil just Evil. Only vote your heart.
Nuclear Weapons are Pure Evil & the United States is the Biggest Nuclear Weapon Holder. That makes America Pure Evil.
No More Nuclear Weapons. Peace & Love from Oregon
All War is Evil
No More War
Horrible choices, redux of 2016. Normally I would be eager to vote for the more competent (NOT TRUMP!), however in this case (as with Hillary) the more competent may be the much more dangerous. Watching the Russiagate BS for four years with the braying MSM “walls closing in” bombshells, the impeachment (for either calling out Biden’s family’s corruption, or for delaying provocative funding of weapons for the Ukraine neoNAZI regime, the result of a putsch/coup by Biden/Obama/Nuland) which diverted necessary attention from Covid-19, not sure the oligarchic Establishment deserves any support. It’s comical to note Gravel talking about the Rule of Law; all of our Establishment top levels are clearly above the Law, as becomes more clear every year.
Guess I’ll vote Third Party like Stein and Hedges, the only sane and principled vote.
I do agree with all you’ve said. Again this election I cannot vote for either Trump or Clinton as in 2016 or Biden this election. My 3rd party choice is Libertarian. If we manage to survive until 2024 I’m hoping we can encourage Senator Ben Sasse to run for the presidency. I appreciate his intellect, his education, and based on what he understands about the Constitutional foundation of our government it will take someone like him to change the direction of this country before we hit bottom. I see no one else.
Yep, that diverted the “necessary attention.” Some days I feel like I’m either real well informed or becoming some kinda crank. Like, to me pandemic control logic means without question…Feluda test logic. And I sit here reading (on days I have time to) in aghastitude (ha!) never seeing Greens and progressive sources hammering on this point [not hackable tracing is another whole issue…another whole issue it would take a Bill Binney to solve, and yet it would seem to me this scourge ALONE should be enough to get a Constitutional Amendment going to shut backdoors!!]. Maybe it’s because I’m involved in direct care. The answer is so there, yet for whatever whacked out reason so unreachable.
But, even if I have become a crank on this issue, I find it GREAT to encounter Stein logic again (surely I’m in sync with the majority of Greens on that score). Listened to Hawkins numbers of times too; and, once again, I feel the Greens have found the right person.
Hope the DNC, the consultants, pundits, think tanks, spin doctors, and the surveillance capitalists are happy with this BOGUS Russia mythology that’s McCarthy-tized so many American minds. If a paradigm comes along that can reorient enough of’em, something tells me it’ll have to be more biological. I mean, any paradigm will have its legalisms (Snowden had some complaints about China, eg). All in all, though, better IMO to start listening to folks like Vandana Shiva and Rupert Sheldrake. I believe they’re hip enough on MICIMATT as well.
Excellent show. Very informative.
I’ve still got to watch the first 20 minutes. All the guests were all terrific.
Bravo!
Talking of economy and military that neither potus nor Biden have addressed.
New Power To The People!
Instant Runoff Voting (deceptively termed “ranked choice voting” by FairVote and lately Green Party leaders as if it’s the only type of ranked voting method) is NOT the panacea to the spoiler effect that Jill Stein makes it out to be. IRV does in fact feature a form of spoiler effect, and it even invents new types of tactical voting and counter-intuitive election pathologies. The net result is that while IRV is indeed an improvement over basic plurality voting it ultimately delivers the same end result in electoral politics. IRV has been used around the world in various countries, isolated offices, and localities for a whole century now and in that time it has largely failed to actually overcome two-party domination in those areas of usage. It’s a lousy overcomplicated voting method that delivers subpar results.
In fact, IRV has actually been adopted and subsequently REPEALED a number of times in US municipalities precisely because some of those new counter-intuitive election pathologies it invents can upset people enough to prefer returning to plurality voting. See the results of the 2009 Burlington, Vermont mayoral election which angered voters so much they repealed IRV the very next election. In this manner it could arguably be said to function as the Trojan Horse of Alternative Voting Methods: it functions to convince dissatisfied users to reject all other alternative voting methods after experiencing a characteristically bad IRV election. Third party advocates have got to stop shooting themselves in the feet pushing a voting method that will never actually empower them and start getting educated on the many vastly superior alternatives to IRV that actually CAN get third parties elected. Please learn about rating-based voting methods such as Approval Voting, Score Voting, and STAR Voting. This one of the most important subjects in effecting actual change from electoral politics and we owe it all to ourselves to get educated on it.
Senator Mike Gravel astute as always with a good grip on the real world with constructive solutions, not depressing at all like some of the others.
Excellent! Activism and a brain trust! This is the 21st century and we know stuff! I like the idea of a People’s Legislature outside the control of the duopoly and the governors. I voted for Jill Stein. and I am relieved to have Chris Hedges and Richard Wolff and Mike Gravel on scene and gettin’ mean.