By Thomas Neuburger. Originally published at God’s Spies
Weekend murder in Rafah (source)
The rich don’t rule in anyone’s names but their own.
—Yours truly
The Bipartisan Consensus Runs America
The Bipartisan Consensus on most matters rules America. For example, the Bipartisan Consensus controls support for our wars. On April 20:
The United States House of Representatives approved a $95 billion legislative package on Saturday, aimed at providing assistance to Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan. … Both Democratic President Joe Biden and top Senate Republican Mitch McConnell had urged Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson to bring the bill to a vote.
And on April 27:
The US Senate has approved a $95bn bill to deliver security aid to Ukraine, Israel and the Indo-Pacific region with overwhelming bipartisan support, in a boost to President Joe Biden’s top foreign policy priorities.
This is true despite a lack of public support for both wars, and active opposition to the ongoing genocide in Gaza.
The same is true for health care in America. Majorities have favored national Medicare for All plans for years. Yet the Bipartisan Consensus opposes it. Biden has said he would veto a Medicare for All bill, and Republicans, of course, want a Medicare for No One plan, despite majority support for a public option even among their base.
I guarantee, even Republican voters, if once they had it, would kill to keep an expanded Medicare for All. Nobody thinks South Park is wrong about the U.S. medical system. We just haven’t reached critical mass in active opposition, and media helps keep it that way.
It’s the Princeton Study All Over Again
We could go on and on, but what’s the point? This is the Princeton Study all over again. “Major Study Finds The US Is An Oligarchy” sang one headline. We all know that statement’s not wrong.
This is not about Left versus Right. There are Left vs. Right issues, but Endless War (to enrich the war suppliers) and Endless Wealth Flows to the Top (to enrich our true rulers and impoverish everyone else) aren’t among them.
This about the Rich and the Rest. More specifically, it’s about how do we stop the rich from ruling the rest? How do we break their vice-grip on politics?
Could Israel Support Divide the Rich from the Rest?
Which brings me to Israel, and my main point.
Gazans are being relentlessly murdered. In response, here at home, there’s a surprisingly strong rebellion — students against money-soaked universities; the ruled against their rulers, like the billionaire Robert Kraft — and the issue that sparked it all is a foreign war, Israel’s genocide, and its broad and determined elite and media support.
Where could this end?
Outcomes
The very best outcome would be for Israel to stop murdering people. That would end the deaths and end the revolt against our leaders’ complicity. After all, the George Floyd protests left barely a trace. Torture of Gazans would continue, just as murder-by-cop continues, but drained of its driver — mass murder — this opposition would likely fade into the wings.
But what if Israel is intent on genuine ethnic cleansing, either by murdering most Gazans, or by mass expulsion, or both. John Mearsheimer certainly thinks this is the most likely of his four options. Israelis don’t want a one-state solution. They don’t want a two-state solution. They’re left either driving all Arabs from Palestine, or murder of those that are left.
So what happens then, if Israel never stops?
- Biden withholds support for Israel in a meaningful way, and meaningful protests cease.
- Biden maintains support and protests accelerate, in parallel with unstoppable murder.
I think that’s it for choices.
If Biden and the Bipartisan Gang insist on arming the slaughter of what could end up being a million or innocent souls, the U.S. bottom — its people — could rise against the top — its money-fed leaders — in a way that tells everyone who participates this unavoidable truth: The rich don’t rule us in anyone’s names but their own.
The Unfinished Revolution
And that would return the U.S. to the ’60s and ’70s, another time of critical-mass revolt. Back then a number of themes — civil rights, women’s rights, environmentalism (called “greening”), and others — each were united around one live-and-death core, the refusal of the mass of young men to be sent off to die.
As long as the draft was in place, the revolt (“the Movement”) was strong, a solid threat to the authority of the State. As soon as the draft ended, the Movement began to decline. The separate “movements” remained, but lost critical mass. We live in a post-Movement world, built by Carter (the proto-neoliberal), Reagan, Clinton, Bush and all the rest.
What Will End American’s Servitude?
As before, today there are many issues that threaten our lives — economic and racial justice, the rape of the people for wealth, our man-killing climate — but none alone has united the people to rebel, and none has sparked critical mass.
Until now, that is, with the horror of Israeli genocide and our rulers’ determination to see it continued.
So my own bottom line is this:
If Israel keeps murdering Gazans, and our leaders keep forcing complicity down our throats, the revolt could light a flame that could reach critical mass — and burn till the Israelis give up, or Biden does, or our leaders lose control of the country.
Will Israel succeed in taking this nation apart? After all, something has to end American servitude. It’s not going to end by itself. It may as well be by the hand of our leaders’ best friend.
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I don´t see a critical mass. The article offers the very reason:
“As long as the draft was in place, the revolt (“the Movement”) was strong, a solid threat to the authority of the State. As soon as the draft ended, the Movement began to decline.”
When did popular uprisings end a genocide?
And since this is essentially another US proxy war why should the same US want to end it?
Israel being only a piece on the chessboard.
Which is no argument to not resist.
What Gaza did do, may be completely unintended, was to show the entire world the true nature of the hegemon by setting off a second proxy war along with proxy war#1 UKR.
And this is too much evidence to be ignored by any population outside the West.
While UKR raised doubts, now the doubts over the US/West have become indisputable fact.
This might trigger a decline, which the protest can be a little part of. But for now it´s rather about what is outside the US. Not inside. But as the Global South is aware of what the government is committing, it takes as much notice of the uprisings.
This is my reading as well. Of the two “choices” we can bank on the second: “Biden maintains support”. There will be weasel-wording and symbol-manipulating around the definition of “support”, but the arms will continue to flow.
Because meanwhile, protests likely won’t accelerate, because “we live in a post-Movement world”.
Q.E.D.
The first condition we can treat as an invariant. So, it’s a question of the second condition changing, but as AG points out, above, there’s no draft, so USians won’t feel directly threatened by any of this.
Ergo, nothing will change, and especially not as long as millions of people have a severe case of TDS, and will keep on voting for the Dems, because “only they can win”, no matter how many times the Dems have shafted those same TDS-addled Blue cultists in the past.
The Dems might lose bigly this November, but the Dem party will survive to fight on and reclaim the WH, House, and Senate.
Nothing short of a permanent, crippling defeat of the parties will change things.
My earlier long screed is based on the following:
If the Zombie President continues his support of Israel, the genocide will continue.
If the slaughter in Gaza continues, there will be more protests.
If the ruling class is as incompetent as I think it is, it will continue to respond to protest with too much violence, which will invite violent counter protests.
Even if I am wrong about Gaza being the trigger, it is still adding more fuel and adding pressure to a system that has no safety valve.
What of the election? Just how will the establishment deal with a probable return of the King in Orange? How will people handle things if the Orange Man loses? Suppose there is another natural disaster?
The ability of Americans to keep pretending that the Wurlitzer playing poka-dotted elephant in the collective national living room is not real is disappearing. Again, even if I am wrong right now, what happens when they add the flashing lights to the elephant? Something will be the cliché camel’s straw.
I hope that I am wrong and that there will not be violence. But fairly soon, I think.
I think TPTB are expecting that also and have decided a Pearl Harbor moment is needed to “unify” the country; after all, it worked so well in 2001. Hence, the constant vilification of Putin as the Evillest Evil to ever evil (or at least, the evillest since the last time).
Problem is, the Russians aren’t playing games.
This is probably going to sound like it is coming out of left field but I think this period’s Pearl Harbor moment may not be one distinct moment or anything war related. And if it goes as I believe it could I don’t think it is going to be helpful to the Oligarchy. Nothing gets Americans going like fear, and if it is a vague enemy not one boogeyman the government better look capable and responsive or it is going down.
Call me wild and crazy, but watch both our infrastructure AND our emergency services widely fail over this coming summer. We have lots of evidence that neither is up to an ongoing state of stress and emergency. And we have a long very hot summer coming with possibly destructive weather issues, plus lots of major structures facing increased stress. New continuing events combined with recent and past failures could easily turn the public on an uninterested and unresponsive government. Think an East Palestine or a Maui/Lahaina every week and in every region, with a Baltimore Bridge or two thrown in for good reason. This would upset the local political machines first, but that in itself begins to topple the DC uniparty.
Not saying it is going to go that way, but I think it is possible.
I think that you are generally spot on, Pat, but will add a 3rd item to create a trifecta or a 3rd leg of a stool (whichever metaphor you prefer)– the Bidinflation & typical economic Crash during election years combined with infrastructure rotting (since Bidet conspired with Sen. Manchin, now running as an Independent in Va. to further spit in Joe & the Dems’ faces) & Kirsten Sinema to make sure ONLY the Chamber of Commerce “Infrastructure” bill passed & not anything that would help actual people instead of the corporat class. So: open Genocide & endless wars abroad + collapsing roads, bridges, planes (etc.) + duopoly designed poverty for 98% of the populace (& not mostly young people like currently) creates the start of a revolutionary movement . . .
The podcast Due Dissidence maintains that if young people were comfortable like only us Boomers (I was born in ’59) who weren’t poor & still survived they might not care AS much about the carnage the Empire + Zionists are doing in Gaza, West Bank, Bethlehem, etc. I think they are on the right track.
If Gaza is a second USA proxy war, that suggests to me that the USA leadership class sees gain from the war’s prosecution.
However, at first glance I don’t see how the USA gains from this effort, other than many politicians preserving their positions via donor money/influence/blackmail.
At least the USA could view the Ukraine Proxy war as a destabilization of Russia to get access to Russian resources.
Perhaps the killing of tens of thousands in the Gaza Proxy war effort is an well-disguised way to remove Israeli political influence in the USA and unite the global south in a new multi-polar world?
Maybe there are some “better angels” in D.C that are strategizing this?
Joe Biden might actually have a plan and not be the “dolt” some have stated.
Colloquially speaking, we print money. And post-Covid, everyone realizes this is true. There is no need to destabilize Russia to gain access to their resources.
Yes, but that way US corps would not control the piggybank!
They do control the piggy bank. They don’t control global resources and they are not going to. Limiting their access to global resources through bad foreign policy just produces a self referential finance that increasingly has no connection to any part of the global economy. All of Enron becomes financialized Enron and then disappears up its own Family Blog
Maybe there are some “better angels” in D.C that are strategizing this?
Joe Biden might actually have a plan and not be the “dolt” some have stated.
No, and no.
>>>Will Israel succeed in taking this nation apart? After all, something has to end American servitude. It’s not going to end by itself. It may as well be by the hand of our leaders’ best friend.
I do not know if Gaza will be that straw that breaks our collective backs, but it crystallized things, made the evil of our current system undeniable. Rather like slavery. Most people were willing to ignore it until they were not. There had been increasing conflict, murder, kidnappings, judicial corruption, even a bit of organized violence akin to war until everything crystallized.
Abraham Lincoln’s election victory was the immediate cause although he had no intention of ending slavery although he was a noted opponent of it especially of its expansion. That was too much for the leadership of the South who thought President Lincoln was an extremist, an abolitionist, and they really wanted to conquer all the way into Central America, plus Cuba, the island of Hispaniola, Puerto Rico, and maybe more for their slave plantations. Being masters of the richest part of the United States was not enough, they wanted it all. Talk about dreams of avarice; modest and prudent they were not.
One might ask so what? For at least three generations, people knew that something like the civil war was going to happen because of slavery unless something was done. However, the Slavocracy refused any changes despite the rest of the country ending it because they were held in place by the tremendous wealth and privileges gained by owning people. All the opposition to slavery in the South was crushed, sometimes fatally. And so a war that killed, if you include both military and civilian, and both the battlefield and of disease killed roughly one million Americans. Then there was the failure of Reconstruction and the rise of Jim Crow because of the Southern leadership refusal to accept change including the loss of status, wealth, and power. They managed to murder their way back into control of the South with often the same families that had been in control before the war.
As explained by Chris Hedges in his book Death of the Liberal Class, there no longer exist a liberal class previously that had moderated the power and abuses of the ruling class while also moderating the reforms demanded by the masses. A safety valve that allowed needed reforms and gave access to higher positions by talented individuals. Slow change, but enough that prevented things exploding, which included the often violent activities of the ruling elites. However, that liberal class, which I can suggest that it lasted for over two centuries or since at least the Articles of Confederation, has been co-opted, subverted, and almost completely changed. The current “liberal” speaks some of the language of the old liberal class, but whereas the old class fought both poverty and corruption, supported some effective political changes, the current liberal class is wholly supported of the corruption, the growing police state, while making no efforts beyond the token of reducing poverty. It is also massively incompetent except in holding power and gaining wealth.
So, a liberal class that saved the country from ruin, even another civil war, at least three times (Progressive Era, New Deal, and the reform movements of the 1960s), but failed once due to the greed and obstinacy of part of the political and economic establishment. Today, the liberal class is part of the establishment that needs reform and like the previous powerful elites, refuses to accept reform.
There is no effective safety valve anymore. Almost everyone outside of the top 10-15 percent can see this, but the people in control, which now includes the modern (neo)liberal class, believes or at least hopes that the security state including the military that they support will save them. Maybe not consciously, but it is there. Of course, with the South there was a specific geographic area and a
ruling class that was willing to personally kill and risk death for their goals. From both sides, an awful lot of officers, which usually came from the upper classes, died in the civil war. Even the generals were often within cannon and rifle range. I really don’t see anyone one in leadership positions in our society willing to fight and die for what they believe unless it is more money. But they are happy to send in the gendarmerie on peaceful protesters.
I suspect that this summer and fall there will be massive crackdowns by the militarized police with the full support of the various three letters agencies with national guard and perhaps the actual military added by the fall. No matter how peaceful the protesters are, there likely will be great violence, and there likely will be no reforms especially as there are nobody in power willing to enact them and no influential liberal class to intercede for both sides. Or to lead the process of reform, which they usually do.
I also think that the more radical elements of what we could call the old left and even the old liberals will attempt to create an organized, competent, and effective reform movement. I also expect them to start having “suicides” or having child porn found in their devices. Large, well supported movements can often survive the loss of some of its leaders. After all, new leaders often arise just like in the army, but both in the American South as well as Central and South America, there often have many well supported death squads. The movements are often quite literally murdered. At that point, either the push for reform will die or the guns will come out, and even Blue California has lots of guns.
What happens next depends on the desperation or determination, ruthlessness, and competence of all sides with the support, or lack of, by the general population often crucial. The peaceful reformers could succeed, which has happened, the revolutionaries could succeed, the current regime will stay in power, or it could be decades of fratricidal conflict with nobody winning control. And there is also the issue of just how magnanimous the winners are, which will determine just how the government will govern. Harsh punishments will require a large militarized, repressive force, while mass amnesty will not, but there is the issue of war crimes, which will require some kind of legal actions preferably an actual open trial, as there will be crimes. Just how open and fair they perceived to be will also influence the people’s actions.
It has been over a century since Americans have fought a guerrilla war, which the American Revolution, the American Civil War, and the Indian Wars all where most of the time often to support the armies maneuvering for a winning battle. And those guerrilla conflicts were just as horrible as any such conflict anywhere else.
“I do not know if Gaza will be that straw that breaks our collective backs…”
Really compelling writing. Thank you.
Really great comment, JBird, thank you.
One indicator — leading or trailing? I dunno — that I would watch to judge the likelihood of backlash against bi-partisanship (which is NOT the same as non-partisanship) is this poll:
https://news.gallup.com/poll/15370/party-affiliation.aspx
It’s been literally years since more people identified here as either D Wing or R Wing than as neither. OTOH, the push-poll follow-up question (at the bottom of the page) has typically driven the plaguers of both houses down to around 10% or below.
(An honest poll would at least sometimes ask an inverted question — such as asking those who answered D or R in the first round, “If you knew your vote would decide the election for whoever you preferred, where would it go?” Might take a while before folks would feel un-pushed enough to answer openly, though — and that’s presuming that question ever does get asked. Anyway. . . .)
If I squint at those low-down figures (and do the calculations left unspoken), I think I see a trend toward results over 10% being more common. If the numbers of the uncompromising unrepresented start topping 15%, or 20% — and if we start finding each other (with or without the pollsters publishing), and showing each other the courage of our convictions and the depths of our desperations — I think that might be a sign the times are ready for changin’. . . .
(Cue harmonica. Or maybe the dreamer’s keyboard — since a big part of it all, IMO, will be knowing we’re not the only ones.)
I wish I could see your link. Somebody in ‘Netland nixed it. Dangerous info?
The link is doubled. Trim everything after the “.aspx” and try again.
That one messed up too, eh? I beg everyone’s pardon. (Maybe my phone’s keyboard-let is the problem. Yeah, that’s the chiclet. . . .)
Well, let’s see if I can fix this error on the second try.
https://news.gallup.com/poll/15370/party-affiliation.aspx
Try ‘er now, Mr. Kyle!
Is Zionism the US’s current Peculiar Institution?
Anyone not familiar with the “Peculiar Institution” is encouraged to google it. No other two words better sum up American history.
Zionism isn’t an American institution at all although it has been alleged that American Zionists arranged Balfour. To be sure the Zionists have defended themselves by saying that they are only doing what Americans did to the native Americans. The downside for the Israelis is that they picked the wrong century to live in. Colonialism met its Waterloo in the World Wars.
I do think the wheel is about to turn on the MIC and the corruption in our politics. Our ruling class is finally going too far.
I was using the comparison because of the past restrictions on discussion and debate associated with the topic.
Another possible limiting factor on protests who has time (and other scarce, precious resources) available to contribute to such causes . . . or conversely (as Professor Von Der Weigel was wont to say at Second City), who sees a cause as so desperately needed that they’re willing to invest whatever they have.
Corrections:
* “. . limiting factor on protest is. . . .”
* Also, I couldn’t get the link to that lecture in by editing, so here it is:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=mrXFQNXmwqM
Last correction. (I should hope! Dunno if my repeated errors are an indication more of reduced executive function or of yet another late night — or just clumsy fingers on a smartphone keyboard. I am sure it all shows my excitement about the post.)
The Second City link is correct as displayed; I hope that, on this third try, it actually works as well.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=mrXFQNXmwqM
(FWIW, I pre-authorize any moderator willing to do so to adjust the first of these three posts to incorporate the fixes in the latter two, and delete those.)
American leaders are unified in their ideology of might is right and American exceptionalism. The only thing that will break this is a world war where America loses. And going by it’s actions of regime change and no holds bar funding of Israel a large war will happen. OR maybe if a Democratic president loses an election then change can happen peacefully. If the student protests translate into votes that is.
It was the surrender of South Vietnam, not the anti-war movement, that ended the Vietnam War. If this is the case, then unlimited U.S. aid will continue as long as Israel and Ukraine want to continue fighting.
This view is contested. Nixon had campaigned on ending the war. Both his Secretary of State Rogers and Secretary of Defense Laird opposed expanding it, as Nixon did with bombing Cambodia. Kissinger has suggested the movie Patton, which Nixon watched repeatedly, influenced his decision to escalate. Details here: https://thediplomat.com/2019/02/how-a-film-influenced-a-us-presidents-decision-to-invade-a-foreign-country/
There’s a great coda to the article:
“For what it’s worth, President Trump’s favorite picture is ‘Citizen Kane'”
I thought it was Bloodsport.
If Kissinger ‘suggested’ anything, don’t believe it. Kissinger exhaled lies. Remember that when William Shawcross published Sideshow, Kissinger had to pull his memoir from the publisher though it was already in galley form. He had to undo some of his lies. Any decision to escalate the war came from Kissinger himself.
I can just picture Nixon, totally drunk, watching the movie Patton while making slurred comments and using “vulgar” language.
What a tragic figure, he signed the EPA and proposed a comprehensive US health care system. As flawed as he was, he looks “good” by comparison with the freaks we have now.
the Bipartisan Consensus controls support for our wars
But who controls that consensus and how is done? How are the masses guided/manipulated/propagandized to not see it, how is it that the PMC, NPR listening crowd have come to be this Bipartisan Consensus’ strongest advocates/supporters?
Just watched for the first time half of a 1988 John Carpenter movie “They LIve” and had an OMG moment “so that’s where it comes from”, when I saw a pic I’ve seen many time to depict where we are in the The West: A commercial district (Time Square?) with captions “Go Shopping!” “Watch TV” “Obey” “Resect Authority” “Submit” “Consume”. These captions could only be seen if you happened to find and use a pair of dark eyewear that look like sun glasses. W/O, your eyes see only the commercials. The glasses also shows you the real robotic zombie like figures behind their fake faces vs the merely brainwashed. The movie starts from the perspective of a recently homeless guy looking for a job and among settled in homeless park somewhere in the City (which gets bulldozed by The Authorities) so it’s prophetic to a degree.
Point being, the Gaza Oct episode was very much a “mask off” moment to many younger. The younger folks know little to nothing of the drama of poor persecuted Israel bravely fending off the bad guys she is surrounded by we all read about in the 60’s 70’s 80’s. Freed of that drama baggage, the 30ish and younger only see the incredible brutality of Israel and don’t understand why a Palestine nation can’t live in peace next to Israel because in final analysis we’re all the same.
I agree the authorities have built protective mechanisms that make political policy change nearly impossible. We live in a dictatorship of establishment corporate consensus.
“Resect Authority!” I’m stealing that!
Yes. Support for Israel is dead for those under…..say 55.
But boomers (especially DC-NYC boomers) are so, as a cohort, self-absorbed that they don’t know it yet.
Changes in widespread belief are slow on human timescales, and it is impossible to understand their implications until we know the nature and results of those changes. One thing is certain, however: the context in which the protests are now occurring has very little in common with the context in which protests of the ‘60’s occurred.
For example, there is now nothing with which the ruling rich can bribe many of the kids protesting, even to those of relative privilege.
The promises of a career, a house, a comfortable and secure life, are now ashes for almost all. It is clear to everyone who does not live exclusively on an island of wealth and privilege, or to anyone who is not otherwise fully deluded, that the genie cannot be put back in the bottle. The forces trying to accomplish that trick, the forces of the ruling rich, have lost any semblance of legitimacy in the eyes of the protestors and there is absolutely nothing that can be done to restore even a fig leaf of legitimacy. And it’s possible that they, the forces of the ruling rich, understand this, given that they immediately resorted to violence and deprivation in trying to restore ‘order.’
When the Vietnam War and the U.S. draft ended, a significant threat to a secure middle class life ended, and many young people chose to get on with their lives. For the vast majority of young people now, there is no ‘getting on with their lives,’ and they understand this with cold, unblinking clarity.
The vast changes in context between the earlier and current protests implies that there is very little point in drawing conclusions about the latter based on the former. They occurred in different contextual worlds, and with respect to climate, literally different worlds.
I figured that for both the Democrats and the Republicans, that support for Israel is the hill that they will be willing to die on. But it is not that way at all. Support for Israel is a uniparty third rail so it does not matter which party is in power, total support for Israel will remain the same. Thing is, the masks are coming off and the world is seeing what ‘the only democracy in the Middle East’ is really all about and how the IDF is not really ‘the most moral army in the world’ but the most genocidal. And it is the Israelis doing this. Just tonight I heard Israeli’s Finance minister promise that they will do the same for the West Bank as they are doing for Gaza. And stuff like this is making its way onto CNN and MSNBC where even older supporters of Israel cannot avoid seeing it. And it must do a number on their heads when they see some Americans protesting about this genocide while carrying American flags being attacked by Israeli supporters carrying Israeli flags. Who are they suppose to support? The war has been grinding its way on for eight months now and it is only a matter of time until the first anniversary comes up and probably Hamas will still be fighting. Meanwhile more and more nations are recognizing Palestine with Slovenia being the latest. And in America itslef support for Israel is dwindling. Does Israel imagine that one day it can turn to the world after the heavy fighting is over and say ‘that things went crazy for awhile but now things can go back to normal now.’
I think Neubeurger is spot on his choices for what happens if Israel doesn’t stop (which they won’t). This war ends when Biden says it ends or, failing that, popular revolt in the US. What he does not mention are the catalysts.
In my mind these would be a conventional military loss for the United States or a nuclear exchange. The former is in play if Israel opens the northern front or an outside country intervenes against Israel.
The latter is where this ends if ammunition is not cut off for the IDF. A nuclear exchange is almost assured if the IDF engages with any military force besides Palestinean factions. If Biden does not cut them off, they will go there.
I will be surprised if, in late summer or the following fall, “our” “adversaries” do not Do Something with an idea of modifying the the politics of the US, especially the politics of the ruling class and their more immediate servitors. I have no idea what this Something will be but Mr. Putin and Mr. Xi and so on are probably not fools, so whatever it is might be fairly effective or at least noticeable, shall we say. There are lot of choices.
Why would Putin or Xi interrupt our suicide?
This is an issue with a lot of specificity, and I don’t think it is readily crammed into an OWS style 1 percent vs the rest of us economic framework.
That said, Jeet Heer of The Nation reviewed Marty Peretz’s recently published autobiography and says that it is very illuminating in terms of how the bipartisan consensus around neoliberalism and neoconservatism was constructed amongst the liberal elite and the PMC.
Peretz was the previous publisher of The New Republic. On my phone or I would look for some links.
Now, neoliberalism is a little shaky in the political classes. The problem is they are mindlessly replacing it with a very belligerent ethnonationalism born of neoconservatism that is not going to work in a multiethnic nation, is genocidal in effect abroad in the middle east and Ukraine, does not address the damages to the US of neoliberalism and financialization, and does not take accurate measure of the real globalized world of trade in goods and services.
It is this last part that I find particularly odd.
~But what if Israel is intent on genuine ethnic cleansing, either by murdering most Gazans, or by mass expulsion, or both.
In my view, that was always the intent, they just didn’t think they could get away with it until now. But, drip by drip, the M$M is opening up a bit, this from the Guardian today:
US state department falsified report absolving Israel on Gaza aid – ex-official
I think it is increasingly clear that for our masters power trumps expertise, and indeed facts and human rights, even life itself. The emerging Washington-Zionist consensus is that the commoners can be eliminated when they get in the way. Trump has intimated that pro-Palestinian protesters will be next if he is reelected. As with Lincoln, he may unleash the next civil war.
As the rottenness of the foundations of authority and civil society become more and more obvious, especially to the young, there will be a widespread breakdown in respect for and obedience to the law. Maybe this can start at the Democratic convention in Chicago, if they dare to actually proceed with that (and not have it mostly be an “over the net” event). There will be more violence against the visible symbols of the ruling class, but of course this will only rarely touch the people involved (at most maybe we get another hapless Patty Hearst stand-in), since those people are very isolated from the hoi polloi. So, another 1968-1973 period, maybe.
But you have to believe, this is all anticipated. That the increased surveillance and use of the internet to cause “troublemakers” to self-identify will result in harsher repression and more state violence, just as happened in the 1968-1973 period, but more comprehensively. And maybe the iron claws will come out of the velvet glove and stay out this time. Whether it’s Christian Zionist Stalinism or woke Stalinism will not make much difference to the victims. Will we ever get close to seeing something like a General Strike in response? Probably not, because there will be too much inertia of the old and the comfortable keeping a mass action like that from occurring, and the fake culture war memes can still be used to divide the masses.
So the most likely bet is a highly repressive failed state where living conditions steadily deteriorate.
Yes, but Stalinism? woke Stalinism? Where? The USSR has been dead for decades. Perhaps totalitarian/authoritarian amoral tyrranny; techno-totalitarian neo-fuedalism? We can get creative with descriptive terms
Mario Savio’s 1964 text
https://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/mariosaviosproulhallsitin.htm
And the famous bit on video
https://youtu.be/lsO_SlA7E8k?si=hlWdZW8wk8k7hHa4
Looking forward to Chicago
The Bipartisan Consensus, the Washington Consensus – the US is an oligarchy and there is no way to “vote” against their interests. US Elections Inc. are the world’s most lucrative PR stunt and distraction – the MassMedia have a field day and make a tidy sum.Just today in the Guardian they are celebrating Genocide Joe’s opportunity to “win” the election. Still waiting for the Ghost of Rod Serling to come and tell us “you have entered The Twilight Zone”.
Yves makes excellent points here and I agree. I wish that the conclusion would come true, but not to be ever-pessimistic, I doubt it. As noted, the Consensus (and US vassals) all support Israel unconditionally. Israel is only one issue in the larger context of abuse of power, kleptocracy, and institutional corruption. The cancerous rot has metastasized throughout the institutions of both public and private power. Public power is controlled by private power anyway.
Simplistically put: material conditions for the vast majority of US dwellers will have to deteriorate further in order to motivate more into action. Most people are either unaware of the context and history, or are misinformed about Israel and international issues in general. While many young people are rebelling against the tyranny of the techno-totalitarian state, the critical mass of people are still divided by the D/R; DT/JB BigMedia Drama and tilt at windmills. Sadly the angry, desperate masses will fight among themselves instead of focusing on the oligarchy behind the thin curtain.