|
Bernie Sanders Denounces Brazil's Impeachment as Undemocratic, Calls for New Elections |
 |
|
Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=29455"><span class="small">Glenn Greenwald, The Intercept</span></a>
|
|
Tuesday, 09 August 2016 13:30 |
|
Greenwald writes: "Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders yesterday denounced in harsh terms the impeachment of Brazil's democratically elected president. As the Brazilian Senate heads toward a final vote later this month, Sanders described his position, set forth in a statement posted on his Senate site, as 'calling on the United States to take a definitive stand against efforts to remove Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff from office.'"
Bernie Sanders. (photo: Karen Bleier/Getty Images)
Bernie Sanders Denounces Brazil's Impeachment as Undemocratic, Calls for New Elections
By Glenn Greenwald, The Intercept
09 August 16
 ermont Senator Bernie Sanders yesterday denounced in harsh terms the impeachment of Brazil’s democratically elected president. As the Brazilian Senate heads toward a final vote later this month, Sanders described his position, set forth in a statement posted on his Senate site, as “calling on the United States to take a definitive stand against efforts to remove Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff from office.” He added: “To many Brazilians and observers the controversial impeachment process more closely resembles a coup d’état.”
Sanders also condemned the unelected center-right coalition under Michel Temer that has seized power during Rousseff’s suspension and is now trying to install themselves through 2018. “After suspending Brazil’s first female president on dubious grounds, without a mandate to govern,” he said, ” the new interim government abolished the ministry of women, racial equality and human rights” and “replaced a diverse and representative administration with a cabinet made up entirely of white men.” They are now attempting to implement radical policies that could never be democratically ratified: “impose austerity, increase privatization and install a far right-wing social agenda.”
Sanders’ statement comes as Brazil’s elites – virtually unified in favor of Dilma’s impeachment – have taken extraordinary (and almost comically futile) measures during the Olympics to hide from the domestic public, and the world, how deeply unpopular Temer is. Brazil’s largest newspaper, Folha de São Paulo, last month was caught manufacturing polling data when it claimed that 50% of Brazilians want him to stay (in fact, their own poll showed a large majority (62%) want Temer out and new elections held and the paper’s Ombudsman harshly criticized them). Brazilian media spent months hyping the prospect of Temer’s election in 2018 without mentioning the rather significant fact that he’s been banned by a court for running for 8 years because he violated election law (they were forced to mention that last week when the São Paulo prosecutor called attention to this fact in the wake of a new media movement to have Temer run).
Temer himself, fearful of intense booing, demanded that protocol be broken by not announcing his presence at the opening ceremony of the Olympics (he was intensely booed anyway when Brazilians realized he was present). Peaceful ticket-holders have been systematically and at times forcibly removed by Brazilian soldiers from Olympic events for holding “Fora Temer!” (Temer Out) signs, creating international controversy; watching the military use force to silence citizens criticizing an unelected “president” is a jarring image in a country that suffered under a 21-year military dictatorship that only ended in 1985 (a judge last night ruled such removals violate the Constitutional guarantee of free expression).
Sanders’ denunciation of Temer could not come at a worse time for the would-be unelected President. Executives from the construction giant at the heart of the Petrobras scandal, Odebrecht, told investigators this week that Temer’s Foreign Minister, José Serra, received R$ 23 million (US$ 5.5 million) in illegal funds for his 2010 presidential campaign. In just two months in office, three of Temer’s ministers have been forced to resign due to corruption scandals. Even worse, as The New York Times noted yesterday, Odebrecht executives also “told investigators that Mr. Temer [himself] had requested more than $3 million for his centrist Brazilian Democratic Movement Party. As part of a plea deal they are seeking, the Odebrecht executives said the payment had been made in cash through a unit used to deliver bribes, according to Veja, a newsmagazine.”
It’s a bit difficult to justify the removal of democratically elected President by citing corruption, when far more serious corruption scandals are engulfing the person eager to replace her along with his closest associates. But that has been the sham at the heart of this anti-democratic process from the start. As Slate‘s Franklin Foer put it in a long article on Brazil yesterday: “Dilma’s impeachment was a farce, if only for the fact that her accusers have benefited from graft on a mind-bending scale and ginned up the spectacle to distract from their own misdeeds.”
Sanders’ denunciation of the attack on Brazilian democracy is part of a growing international recognition of the illegitimacy of Temer’s rule. Just two weeks ago, “40 Democratic members of the U.S. House of Representatives published a letter … expressing ‘deep concern’ about threats to democracy in Brazil.” Similar denunciations of Dilma’s impeachment have been issued by British MPs and labor leaders, the Organization of American States, dozens of members of the EU Parliament, and Brazil’s first Pulitzer Prize winner. So dubious is Temer’s standing that, as AP reported last month, many world leaders are avoiding the Rio Olympics so as to avoid the quandary of whether to shake his hand.
One question that arises from Sanders’ statement is timing: why, after months of silence on Brazil’s political crisis, did he finally speak out now? One of the significant flaws of his candidacy was that he rarely addressed foreign policy at all, notwithstanding the fact that his primary opponent is a war advocate and militarist who (even long before Trump’s emergence) was attracting neoconservative support. He was a candidate steadfastly on message. Requests had been made for Sanders by his supporters to speak out on Brazil during the primary race, but those requests were rejected or ignored.
When Sanders did speak on foreign policy, it was to offer the mildest critiques, while endorsing many of the fundamentals of the bipartisan War on Terror. There were noble exceptions – some of his statements on Israel and Palestine were among the best from any major party candidate in decades, and his refusal to repudiate some of his more controversial 1980s positions when confronted with red-baiting was impressive – but by and large, Sanders avoided any foreign policy views that could be castigated as left-wing or out of the mainstream.
Now that his presidential campaign is over, he is free to speak out in ways that would not necessarily be politically beneficial in the eyes of the Democratic Party voter base. Some of his most prominent supporters have been steadfast in their opposition to Dilma’s impeachment. Whatever the explanations on timing, Sanders’ statement is strong and unequivocal. Perhaps most significant is his call for the U.S. Government to “demand that this dispute be settled with democratic elections” – the solution which a large majority of Brazilians also support as the resolution to their political crisis, but which the country’s anti-democratic elites, fearful of who would be elected, vehemently oppose.
 |
|
FOCUS: An Eight Point Brief for LEV (Lesser Evil Voting) |
|
|
Tuesday, 09 August 2016 11:37 |
|
Excerpt: "Among the elements of the weak form of democracy enshrined in the constitution, presidential elections continue to pose a dilemma for the left in that any form of participation or non participation appears to impose a significant cost on our capacity to develop a serious opposition to the corporate agenda served by establishment politicians."
Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. (photo: Getty Images)
An Eight Point Brief for LEV (Lesser Evil Voting)
By John Halle and Noam Chomsky, Noam Chomsky's Website
09 August 16
 reamble:
Among the elements of the weak form of democracy enshrined in the constitution, presidential elections continue to pose a dilemma for the left in that any form of participation or non participation appears to impose a significant cost on our capacity to develop a serious opposition to the corporate agenda served by establishment politicians. The position outlined below is that which many regard as the most effective response to this quadrennial Hobson’s choice, namely the so-called “lesser evil” voting strategy or LEV. Simply put, LEV involves, where you can, i.e. in safe states, voting for the losing third party candidate you prefer, or not voting at all. In competitive “swing” states, where you must, one votes for the “lesser evil” Democrat.
Before fielding objections, it will be useful to make certain background stipulations with respect to the points below. The first is to note that since changes in the relevant facts require changes in tactics, proposals having to do with our relationship to the “electoral extravaganza” should be regarded as provisional. This is most relevant with respect to point 3) which some will challenge by citing the claim that Clinton’s foreign policy could pose a more serious menace than that of Trump.
In any case, while conceding as an outside possibility that Trump’s foreign policy is preferable, most of us not already convinced that that is so will need more evidence than can be aired in a discussion involving this statement. Furthermore, insofar as this is the fact of the matter, following the logic through seems to require a vote for Trump, though it’s a bit hard to know whether those making this suggestion are intending it seriously.
Another point of disagreement is not factual but involves the ethical/moral principle addressed in 1), sometimes referred to as the “politics of moral witness.” Generally associated with the religious left, secular leftists implicitly invoke it when they reject LEV on the grounds that “a lesser of two evils is still evil.” Leaving aside the obvious rejoinder that this is exactly the point of lesser evil voting-i.e. to do less evil, what needs to be challenged is the assumption that voting should be seen a form of individual self-expression rather than as an act to be judged on its likely consequences, specifically those outlined in 4). The basic moral principle at stake is simple: not only must we take responsibility for our actions, but the consequences of our actions for others are a far more important consideration than feeling good about ourselves.
While some would suggest extending the critique by noting that the politics of moral witness can become indistinguishable from narcissistic self-agrandizement, this is substantially more harsh than what was intended and harsher than what is merited. That said, those reflexively denouncing advocates of LEV on a supposed “moral” basis should consider that their footing on the high ground may not be as secure as they often take for granted to be the case.
A third criticism of LEV equates it with a passive acquiescence to the bipartisan status quo under the guise of pragmatism, usually deriving from those who have lost the appetite for radical change. It is surely the case that some of those endorsing LEV are doing so in bad faith-cynical functionaries whose objective is to promote capitulation to a system which they are invested in protecting. Others supporting LEV, however, can hardly be reasonably accused of having made their peace with the establishment. Their concern, as alluded to in 6) and 7) inheres in the awareness that frivolous and poorly considered electoral decisions impose a cost, their memories extending to the ultra-left faction of the peace movement having minimized the comparative dangers of the Nixon presidency during the 1968 elections. The result was six years of senseless death and destruction in Southeast Asia and also a predictable fracture of the left setting it up for its ultimate collapse during the backlash decades to follow.
The broader lesson to be drawn is not to shy away from confronting the dominance of the political system under the management of the two major parties. Rather, challenges to it need to be issued with a full awareness of their possible consequences. This includes the recognition that far right victories not only impose terrible suffering on the most vulnerable segments of society but also function as a powerful weapon in the hands of the establishment center, which, now in opposition can posture as the “reasonable” alternative. A Trump presidency, should it materialize, will undermine the burgeoning movement centered around the Sanders campaign, particularly if it is perceived as having minimized the dangers posed by the far right.
A more general conclusion to be derived from this recognition is that this sort of cost/benefit strategic accounting is fundamental to any politics which is serious about radical change. Those on the left who ignore it, or dismiss it as irrelevant are engaging in political fantasy and are an obstacle to, rather than ally of, the movement which now seems to be materializing.
Finally, it should be understood that the reigning doctrinal system recognizes the role presidential elections perform in diverting the left from actions which have the potential to be effective in advancing its agenda. These include developing organizations committed to extra-political means, most notably street protest, but also competing for office in potentially winnable races. The left should devote the minimum of time necessary to exercise the LEV choice then immediately return to pursuing goals which are not timed to the national electoral cycle.
- Voting should not be viewed as a form of personal self-expression or moral judgement directed in retaliation towards major party candidates who fail to reflect our values, or of a corrupt system designed to limit choices to those acceptable to corporate elites.
- The exclusive consequence of the act of voting in 2016 will be (if in a contested “swing state”) to marginally increase or decrease the chance of one of the major party candidates winning.
- One of these candidates, Trump, denies the existence of global warming, calls for increasing use of fossil fuels, dismantling of environmental regulations and refuses assistance to India and other developing nations as called for in the Paris agreement, the combination of which could, in four years, take us to a catastrophic tipping point. Trump has also pledged to deport 11 million Mexican immigrants, offered to provide for the defense of supporters who have assaulted African American protestors at his rallies, stated his “openness to using nuclear weapons”, supports a ban on Muslims entering the U.S. and regards “the police in this country as absolutely mistreated and misunderstood” while having “done an unbelievable job of keeping law and order.” Trump has also pledged to increase military spending while cutting taxes on the rich, hence shredding what remains of the social welfare “safety net” despite pretenses.
- The suffering which these and other similarly extremist policies and attitudes will impose on marginalized and already oppressed populations has a high probability of being significantly greater than that which will result from a Clinton presidency.
- Should constitute sufficient basis to voting for Clinton where a vote is potentially consequential-namely, in a contested, “swing” state.
- However, the left should also recognize that, should Trump win based on its failure to support Clinton, it will repeatedly face the accusation (based in fact), that it lacks concern for those sure to be most victimized by a Trump administration.
- Often this charge will emanate from establishment operatives who will use it as a bad faith justification for defeating challenges to corporate hegemony either in the Democratic Party or outside of it. They will ensure that it will be widely circulated in mainstream media channels with the result that many of those who would otherwise be sympathetic to a left challenge will find it a convincing reason to maintain their ties with the political establishment rather than breaking with it, as they must.
- Conclusion: by dismissing a “lesser evil” electoral logic and thereby increasing the potential for Clinton’s defeat the left will undermine what should be at the core of what it claims to be attempting to achieve.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Tuesday, 09 August 2016 10:20 |
|
Galindez writes: "What Donald Trump is really saying is that he wants to make America great for WASPS again. When Donald Trump says he wants to make America great again, he is not talking to me, he is warning me. I am Latino."
Protesters rally to call attention to wealth inequality and police brutality. (photo: Getty Images)
Make America Great for “Us” Again
By Scott Galindez, Reader Supported News
09 August 16
 hat Donald Trump is really saying is that he wants to make America great for WASPS again. When Donald Trump says he wants to make America great again, he is not talking to me, he is warning me. I am Latino. Trump wants a return to the day when WASPS control the country again.
The Donald has been setting up this campaign for years. Donald Trump knows that President Obama was born in the United States, but he knew that racist bigots would support his efforts to cast any doubt on Obama. When Donald Trump said Mexicans were rapists, he was speaking to his base. Trump is speaking to angry white men who think that all the good jobs should be theirs and brown and black people can have the scraps. That is the America that Donald Trump wants to bring back.
He has telegraphed it from the beginning of his campaign. It’s that white working class male who is tired of political correctness he’s speaking to. It’s not just the outspoken clearly racist bigot. It’s the guy who bites his tongue and acts like everything is fine but his views have not changed. But it’s not all men – it is also women who are anti-gay, anti-immigrant, who are blaming political correctness for anything that is wrong in their eyes. Some are vocal like Ann Coulter. Others bite their tongue and act like they have evolved, but in reality they are still racist, sexist, and anti-gay.
Then there is the guy who wants his wife at home barefoot and pregnant. Trump knew when he battled with Megyn Kelly that his sexist male base would reward him. Again, women who think they should be at home taking care of the children also respond to Trump.
When Trump says we have to bomb ’em, he’s talking to that segment of the population that thinks we should nuke all those Arabs. So often we hear about Trump’s gaffes. They are not gaffes – he knows exactly what he is doing and who his audience is.
He is right on the TPP and other trade deals, I think. I’m a little suspicious though, since his motives are to continue to gain the trust of white working class voters who are rightfully angry that their jobs are overseas. If you look at his record, however, he manufactures products overseas and sells them in the United States. That’s what is wrong with the trade deals. He knows it, so he exploits the issue to gain support among those voters while at the same time capitalizing on it to make money. I don’t think Trump really opposes the TPP or other trade deals. He is using the issue to fire up his base.
When Donald Trump was asked to distance himself from David Duke, he shrewdly didn’t do it on the eve of the Southern primaries but backtracked after racist voters got the message that he was one of them. He didn’t distance himself from Duke until after the Duke voters had cast their ballot for Trump. He knew exactly what he was saying and who he was saying it to.
Racist bigots are still a powerful political force in America. The Republican Party has been using code to reach out to them for years. Donald Trump is just more open about it. Name a Republican candidate who blames everything on immigrants. “They are taking your jobs” is the message the GOP has used to reach out to white male voters with no college education. Of course their wives will likely follow, in Trump’s America. Republicans were not winning them all over, because unions were holding some of the support by fighting trade deals. Trump sees that and is trying to expand the GOP base by taking workers who don’t think their unions are doing enough. Those workers see someone speaking their language. They are ignoring the fact that in his own business he sees them as cheap labor and doesn’t want to pay them more or give them better benefits.
What they are seeing is a faux populism. They like what he says but refuse to look behind the curtain.
I guess I am playing the fear card. I am scared of a Trump presidency. Especially if the racist Republican Party holds the Senate.
Republicans know who their base is and they know who they will reward if they win. They will be rewarding that uncle who you are embarrassed to be in public with, who blames all of our problems on blacks and Mexicans. Oh and the gays are part of the problem too. Republicans will further dismantle affirmative action. There will be no raise in the minimum wage; those jobs are for the Mexicans and teenagers just starting out. They are promising that the good jobs will come back. How will they really get them back? They won’t. Instead they will weaken worker safety and other regulations that they blame for jobs going overseas. The GOP Congress will have already passed the TPP in a lame duck Congress and sent it to Obama’s desk for a signature. Trump will talk the talk against it and use it as an issue to keep his base fired up.
They will build a wall, and we will pay for it. It won’t be as magnificent as Trump wants and he will blame Congress for not giving him enough money, and the wall would be one of his issues again in 2020.
Union-busting Donald will be a nightmare for workers when Trump stacks the Labor Department with management types so he can weaken collective bargaining and worker protections.
Women’s health? Planned Parenthood and other funding will not even be in the budgets that the GOP sends to his desk.
Voter suppression laws that have been spreading state to state will go federal. After all, the goal is to get back to where “real” Americans are the only ones voting.
If Donald Trump becomes president, he will take us backward and try to undo the progressive change that we have accomplished over the years. Americans will not get a raise. Women may return to the back alleys for abortion. It will be harder to vote. Worker safety laws will vanish. The whole government will be in denial of climate change. Environmental protections will be gutted.
If you are a redneck, America will be great for you again. Well it won’t be, but you will have a president who speaks to you. He will continue to screw you, but at least he will speak your language.
We can avoid that, and there is only one option. Hillary Clinton is no Bernie Sanders, but she will not reverse the gains that we have already made. The status quo, four more years of Obama, is better than four years of going backward with Trump.
Let’s give Hillary Clinton a Democratic Senate, and in two years a more progressive House, and make progress. During this transition let’s continue to build our movement and then challenge Hillary again in 2020 and beat her. Let’s not make America great for WASPS again, that is not a move forward. Instead let’s prepare to make America great for everyone. No, Hillary is not prepared to transform America, but she won’t take us backward.
Scott Galindez attended Syracuse University, where he first became politically active. The writings of El Salvador's slain archbishop Oscar Romero and the on-campus South Africa divestment movement converted him from a Reagan supporter to an activist for Peace and Justice. Over the years he has been influenced by the likes of Philip Berrigan, William Thomas, Mitch Snyder, Don White, Lisa Fithian, and Paul Wellstone. Scott met Marc Ash while organizing counterinaugural events after George W. Bush's first stolen election. Scott will be spending a year covering the presidential election from Iowa.
Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader Supported News.
|
|
A Republican Workers' Party? |
|
|
Tuesday, 09 August 2016 08:06 |
|
Taibbi writes: "The new Republicans would no longer be the party of 'business and the privileged,' but the protector of a disenfranchised working class. This was unplanned. If it happens, it'll be a change that takes place not because conservative leaders ever wanted it, but because voters demanded it."
A Republican debate in Detroit, Michigan. (photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
A Republican Workers' Party?
By Matt Taibbi, Rolling Stone
09 August 16
Democratic incompetence has made the previously unthinkable possible: Republicans are reimagining themselves as a labor party
 horrifying article appeared in The New York Times last week, entitled "They Want Trump to Make the G.O.P. a Workers' Party."
In it, conservative intellectuals say they disavow Donald Trump, but also see in his rise a reason to shift their party's focus.
The new Republicans would no longer be the party of "business and the privileged," but the protector of a disenfranchised working class.
This was unplanned. If it happens, it'll be a change that takes place not because conservative leaders ever wanted it, but because voters demanded it.
Basically, large numbers of working-class voters, particularly white working-class voters, long ago abandoned the Democratic Party in favor of the Republicans.
A few conservatives saw this coming. Chin-stroking New York Times columnist Ross Douthat, whom Esquire's Charles Pierce once described as a "god-bothering newsboy on his best day," along with National Review editor Reihan Salam, claim they saw the writing on the wall.
In their 2008 book, Grand New Party, Douthat and Salam argued that the Republicans needed to reshape themselves, and admitted "the policy elite of the Republican Party" is "out of touch with the majority of Republican voters."
They also noted, in a recent Times editorial, "A Cure for Trumpism," that the Republican Party has "increasingly depended on mostly white working-class support, even as its policy agenda was increasingly unresponsive to working-class voters' problems."
All of this soul-searching is happening now because the maniac Trump has hijacked a portion of the Republican base and is driving it off an electoral cliff. (He will clutch his own hand all the way down in the inevitable Thelma & Louise crash ending.)
Republican propaganda for decades pushed magical-thinking concepts like "trickle-down economics" that asked lower-income voters to accept present sacrifices for theoretical bigger payoffs down the road.
Until this year, Republican voters mostly bought it. But Trump was their way of telling their leaders they're done waiting. They want their piece of the pie now, even if it means unleashing the Trumpinator to get it.
People have been conscious of the defection of working-class voters to the Republican Party for years, but this has always been dismissed as the consequence of skillfull propaganda. It's the What's the Matter With Kansas? creation story, i.e., that the white working class has been hoodwinked into going against its own economic interests thanks to cynical/backward appeals to race, religion and culture.
But that isn't the whole story, as some leading Democrats are beginning to realize. Joe Biden went on Morning Joe a few weeks ago and admitted that "the Democratic Party over all hasn't spoken enough to [working-class voters]," the "ordinary people busting their necks."
Biden's admission is a massive understatement. If we're going to be honest about what's happened in the last 30 or 40 years, the new iteration of the Democratic Party has embraced hocus-pocus neoliberal theory that is not much different from trickle-down economics.
The Democratic Party leaders have been fervent believers in the globalization religion since the late Eighties, when the braintrust at the Democratic Leadership Council made a calculated decision to transform the party from one that depended largely on unions for financial and logistical support to one that embraced corporate objectives, in particular free trade.
When he signed NAFTA into law in 1993, Bill Clinton laid out a utopian vision of how free trade would work. "We have the opportunity to remake the world," he said, boldly.
More trade agreements, he said, would create a world that would not only be more prosperous all over, but freer and more able to serve as a market for our exports.
"We will press for workers in all countries to secure rights that we now take for granted, to organize and earn a decent living," he said.
Critically, Clinton promised that free-trade agreements would emphasize new environmental standards, would expand the rights of workers in signatory countries, that we would not trade with countries that employed subsidies or tariffs against us, and that displaced domestic workers would eventually see gains after being retrained and redeployed for new jobs that would eventually appear to replace the lost ones.
"To the men and women of our country who were afraid of these changes," Clinton said, "the gains from this agreement will be your gains, too."
It was never articulated this way, exactly, but the basic promise of free trade was that the American middle class would experience temporary losses that over time would be balanced out by increased growth worldwide.
It was trickle-down economics, only repackaged with an international spin: After a long trip around the world, the wealth eventually gets back to you.
Twenty-three years later, we see how all of this has turned out. There have been some improvements in the economic condition of foreign workers.
But we never excluded politically oppressive regimes from free-trade deals, never made sure that trade partners weren't also massive human rights violators, never seriously worried about environmental enforcement. Mostly, we just made cheap, un-free foreign labor available to Western manufacturers.
Even a onetime die-hard NAFTA cheerleader like staunch Clinton supporter Paul Krugman, who once compared free trade's critics to the anti-evolutionist followers of William Jennings Bryan at the Scopes Monkey Trial, now admits that the case for "ever-freer" trade is a "scam":
"The elite defense of globalization is basically dishonest: false claims of inevitability, scare tactics (protectionism causes depressions!), vastly exaggerated claims for the benefits of trade liberalization and the costs of protection, hand-waving away the large distributional effects that are what standard models actually predict."
Like Marxism, globalization is a borderless utopian religion. Its adherents almost by definition have to reject advocacy for the citizens of one country over another. Just as "Socialism in One Country" was an anathema to classic Marxists, "prosperity in one country" is an anathema to globalists, no matter what their politicians might say during election seasons.
If you bring up the destruction of the American middle class, pro-globalization adherents will point to facts like the rising fortunes of those hundreds of millions of Chinese workers who are now supposedly above the World Bank definition of poverty, making more than $1.90 a day.
That those same workers still have virtually no rights or benefits and on occasion have to be housed in factories with safety nets to keep them from killing themselves at an astronomical rate is immaterial to True Believers.
They want even American voters to focus on the good news of incrementally increased wages abroad, forgetting that American workers never signed up for a plan to disenfranchise themselves so that workers in China or India could earn a few quarters more per day. Moreover, they certainly didn't elect leaders to push such policies.
The problem with all of this is that the Democrats went so far in the direction of advocacy for the global religion that they made something as idiotic as the rise of unabashed nativist Donald Trump possible.
Worse, Trump's rise will give the Globalist Faith Militant an automatic argument for more time. They will decry any criticism of free trade or globalization as racist Trumpism, and Trump is such a galactic jackass that this will work, his vast inventory of offensive bleatings discrediting even the legitimate economic concerns of his voters.
But expecting American politicians to advocate first and foremost for their own constituents isn't isolationism. It's just rational self-interest, which neoliberals only seem to disbelieve in when it pertains to labor. Moreover we didn't call movements to disinvest from South Africa or the Soviet Union "nativism." We called that idealism.
We haven't shown much of that in the last decades, as huge majorities of Westerners buy cell phones, clothes and other products increasingly likely to have been made by abused sweatshop workers or even children (like the Indonesian eight-year-olds recently found harvesting tobacco sold to the West).
As Krugman explained earlier this year, the question of what to do about any of this is a very hard one. He even called the Bernie Sanders campaign "a bit of a scam itself" because it hinted that anything at all can be done about the vast inequities and injustices of globalization.
Krugman claimed the maze of trade agreements is so entrenched by now that chaos would ensue from any attempt to undo them. A Trump might try, he said, but only as part of a "reign of destruction on many fronts."
Maybe that's true, and maybe it isn't.
But to deny that something needs to be done, and to ask American voters to keep having faith in this "we'll all see gains in the end" fairytale that so far has very conspicuously only delivered gains to a tiny group of very wealthy people in this country, will do nothing but drive more workers into the Trump tent.
And maybe the next strongman those voters pick to lead them out of the wilderness won't be quite as huge an idiot, or as suicidal a campaigner, as Trump. Sooner or later, failing to deal with these questions is going to come back and bite all of us.
|
|
