Thoughts: Why is Pres. Obama shoving the TPP down our throats?

[dreamnightwind]

113. Oh, that makes more sense then

All of the stuff in my post, to me, is relevant to the question in the OP, it's an issue I've been kicking around in my head for awhile, trying to understand where corporate Dems (not the best term but that's the label I often use in my head) are coming from. I know a lot of people, many of them people I respect, who share their worldview, and I've been puzzling how we can be so far apart in our views.

I think the acceptance of multinational corporatism and its political manifestations has roots in an earlier time, when what was good for G.E. was seen as what was good for America, when the progressive position was radically pro-trade, the U.S. was the sole industrial power in-tact after the second world war, when the potential of capitalism to entire destroy our planet's ecosystem was not yet understood, and when there was a lot of uppward mobility in the U.S. economy, and by that I mean trade and international development projects was giving a lot of people in this country excellent jobs and opportunity, with world travel and global cultural experience a part of the benefits for a lot of people, such as Obama's mother.

In my more cynical times, I focus on the drivers of money and power's negative aspects as the roots of this worldview, seeing them all as sell-outs or worse. That is part of the equation, but I know too many of these people to leave it at that.

The other side of it is that their world-view was formed in a very different context than what we are facing now, distributed labor forces and the mobility of capital outpacing the mobility of impoververished workers, plus the ability of capital to multiply independently of actual beneficial production, has been enabled by the tech explosion, with software that gives capitalists tools they only once dreamed of, but which the global financial and trade models are incapable of managing in a way that truly benefits our world and its inhabitants. The speed and tools of modern tech have made the capitalist beast so unruly and so much more powerful than the nation states that attempt to regulate it, that it is no longer, if it ever was, a force for good, and the whole world-view that bought into all of that is only applicable to an earlier, more innocent, time.

So I think the roots of the New Dem thing is in part the corrupting influence of capital and a capturing of the Democratic Party by capitalist interests, and is in part just an extension of what used to be considered a progressive position, where trade, expansion, multinationalism, was part of a great exportation and seeding throughout the world of a fairly idyllic and naive view of U.S. exceptionalism, and that view is still dominant in a lot of people's minds, such as our President, people like the Clintons, and a lot of people I know who I respect but who are coming to entirely different conclusions than myself about what path our nation should be on.

Sorry to ramble so, relevant to the OP though and it's all something I'm in the process of working out internally, so writing about it is helpful to that process. I have to run (I have a gig to play and have to pack up and get there asap) so will post without proofing, I may look at it later though and do some editing.