Martin Eden
Martin Eden's JournalRepublicans WANT deficits. Republicans NEED deficits.
WHY?
Because their long term goal has been to destroy the safety net programs created by FDR's New Deal and LBJ's Great Society. These include Social Security and Medicare.
Oh, Republicans will bark and howl about budget deficits and the national debt, but the plain fact of the matter is deficits always go up when they're in charge of the federal government.
It's tempting to think they're too stupid to understand the consequences of their own policies (and there are indeed some real cretins among them) but we should disabuse ourselves of that notion. They're smart enough to understand that SS & Med (which they call entitlements) are earned benefits too popular with American voters to destroy by direct assault. Instead, they "starve the beast" with excessive military spending and huge tax cuts for wealthy corporations and their obscenely rich political donors. Then they put on their "fiscal conservative" masks and declare that "hard choices" must be made.
Those "hard choices" never include rescinding their enormous tax cuts for the rich that never trickle down to working Americans. The giant chasm between the vast majority and the oligarchs at the top continues to grow as the wealth created by all of us is increasingly hoarded to serve insatiable greed.
Money taken out of circulation does not stimulate the economy. Disposable income in more hands does. When people have money to spend beyond what they need to get by, businesses will find ways to get that money by offering products and services people want. This is basic economics.
Republicans do not serve the people who vote for them. Conservative "populism" is a phenomenon achieved with a strategy of divide and conquer, engineered by a terribly influential media landscape of rightwing propaganda dishing out a steady stream of disinformation and emotional triggers on the culture war battlefronts of race, religion, gender, and fear of "others" which has always villified immigrants from Irish to Chinese to Hispanics.
The stage was set for the con man who had his finger on the pulse of an angry populace already predisposed to point their fingers at each other instead of the oligarchs who owned much of the media which has been exploiting their ignorance and anger for decades.
Donald Trump is ignorant of many things, but he is a talented con man totally unrestrained by previous boundaries of lies and demagoguery. He walked onto the stage of the 2016 Republican primary and beat all contenders at their own game. He spoke to angry voters on a base level. He liberated the worst angels of their nature, and they love him for it.
If this would be dictator enacts the agenda he has promised, deficits and inflation will rise, and "the beast" will be further starved. The oligarchs who helped put him in office have enough cushion to ride out the economic turmoil, which is apparently a price they're willing to pay. Those who FDR referred to as the "malefactors of great wealth" have long been frustrated in their quest to destroy his legacy. They now wield the imperfect but powerfully destructive tool embodied in the orange frankenstine monster created in the laboratory of "conservative" mass media.
All of us need to find ways to not only weather the coming storm, but to harness the winds of change to chart a new course when the villagers are finally ready to turn their torches and pitchforks against the monster they so recently embraced.
Because the funds were not placed in Al Gore's "lock box."
I'm not joking. Gore was ridiculed for that in the 2000 election, but it was a damn good idea.
Instead, our SS funds were treated like an open cookie jar which GW Bush raided with his wars of choice & tax cuts for the rich, then by Trump's tax cuts for the rich.
Republicans are NOT fiscal conservatives. Their strategy for decades has been to "starve the beast" of funds, which means driving up budget deficits. They know it's nearly impossible to destroy popular programs like Social Security and Medicare by direct assault so they point to the national debt they purposely helped create, then pretend to be responsible conservatives and argue this "spending" can't be sustained. Hard decisions must be made on "entitlements."
These hard decisions NEVER include rescinding tax cuts for the rich to put the cookies they stole back in the jar.
Those cookies were paid for by you and me and every working American with deductions from our paychecks throughout our working lives.
This is nothing less than a transfer of wealth from the vast majority of regular folks (including Trump voters) to the fat cats who fund the political careers of these "fiscal conservatives."
THIS should have been a core element of Democratic messaging for decades.
The People need to understand that Republicans are stealing their cookies.
Sept 11, 2001 ....... Jan 21, 2025
Sep 11:
Bin Laden knew one way to defeat a stronger enemy is to manipulate the enemy into squandering its power and support in counterproductive military quagmires such as Afghanistan, the "graveyard of empires."
Jan 21:
Putin knew one way to bring about the fall of the United States is to tear it apart from within, corrupting its institutions and turning the American people against each other.
When Vlad's orange asset entered the political scene, the divide and conquer strategy had been instigated for decades by an oligarchy that understood expanding their wealth and political power depended on turning Americans against each other. If The People were united in exercising the power of their vote, the obscene transfer of wealth to a small percent at the very top could not happen.
So in stepped a "populist" demogogue, manipulating the grievances and bigotry of an angry populace -- in service not only to the malefactors of great wealth, but to a former KGB agent who had his own motives for the disintegration of American institutions -- especially the NATO alliance.
The attack begins in earnest in about seven weeks, when The Felon and his sycophants wield the vast power of the presidency.
How much damage can they do to our institutions, and how quickly?
With slim majorities in Congress, will any old school Republicans -- under threat of being "primaried" if they don't fall in line -- take a stand on principle and their sworn oath to protect our Constitution?
Will American voters harmed by the destruction turn against The Felon and his Party and if so, will we still have legitimate elections in 2026?
I wish I had good answers to these questions, but what faith I had in my country was dealt a severe blow five weeks ago.
Was Build Back Better typical of neoliberalism?
And how many Republican senators supported it?
And sure, neoliberalism can be laid somewhat at the feet of Bill Clinton (approx 30 years ago) but as I recall most of the opposition to financial deregulation came from Democrats. My recollection is a little more fuzzy on global trade agreements, but I suspect more support from Republicans.
In other words, why do Democrats get most of the blame for a pendulum shift which began in earnest during the two terms of Ronald Reagan?
Of course, that's no excuse for Democrats going along with it. However, I don't think that accurately characterizes BBB and the policies articulated by Kamala Harris -- especially compared to the "Ersatz capitalism" of her opponent.
And sure, the Harris campaign could have been run better -- but there were severe handicaps from the start, beginning with Democratic disarry after Biden's disastrous debate. Couple that with the fact that Kamala Harris was unpopular nationally as VP; did not earn the presidential nomination by winning a primary battle; and had just over 3 months to change perceptions -- I don't think messaging, policy proposals, or accurate blame for the effects of neoliberalism decided the outcome. Racism and misogyny were factors, though perhaps not decisive.
By all means, the Democratic Party needs an honest and accurate post-mortem followed by coherent and coordinated plans moving forward.
But IMO the biggest obstacle to overcome is the overwhelmig stream of disinformation which convinced a slim majority of the electorate to vote for a convicted felon and pathological liar who incited a violent assault on our nation's Capitol.
To any reasonably well informed citizen of normal intelligence, Donald Trump is egregiously unfit both mentally and morally for any elective office, let alone president of the United States. It should also be obvios that what he has promised will hurt the pocketbooks of the people who voted for him -- as well as posing a grave threat to our Constitutional rule of law.
God help us if a majority of his voters understood all that, yet chose economic calamity and authoritarianism anyway. For we are doomed, no matter what the Democratic Party does.
Or maybe they were conned into believing a gish gallop of lies and false narratives. In other words, mostly clueless.
In that case, they are in store for a world of hurt they didn't expect -- and therein lies an opportunity for the Democratic Party to ride to the rescue.
We better be pepared, or this may be our last chance.
Agree, except the last paragraph.
We are indeed sliding into fascism, but the conditions in Germany leading to the rise of Adolf Hitler versus the rise of Donald Trump are qualitatively different.
Germany had suffered a costly military defeat in 1918, made worse by the humiliating terms of the Versailles treaty which included huge reparations. Then the worldwide Depression struck. The German people endured economic hardships far beyond the pandemic downturn and inflation.
The American people had far less excuse to embrace a demagogue like Trump, especially after his mishandling of the pandemic and the remarkable recovery engineered by the Biden administration.
The difference in 21st century America is the growing share of the media landscape owned by rightwing propaganda, and algorithims on social media spreading disinformation.
IMO the biggest reason Trump won is that tens of millions of voters have been manipulated into believing things that simply are not true.
I would bet most Trump voters have no clue what "neoliberalism" means
Just as they have no clue that Trump's policies will INCREASE inflation, gut government services they may need, and transfer more wealth to the top.
The consequences of "laissez-faire" economics have indeed made the American Dream less accessible to a wider swath of the American electorate, but far more Republicans in Congress are on board with that than Democrats.
Are Trump voters aware that Republicans oppose unions, raising the minimum wage, and government assistance with health care costs while Democrats push for those policies?
Trump voters are clueless that HIS policies are comfort the rich on steriods.
They think they were better off four years ago under Trump when his mishandling of COVID increased the US death toll by hundreds of thousands and the economy was tanking, and they are blind to the accomplishments of the Biden administration which made the US economy the envy of the world.
To put it plainly, Trump voters believed false narratives promoted by Fox News, the Sinclair media empire, and social media lies that spread like wildfire via algorithims and the gullibility of an electorate whose ignorance renders them ripe for such manipulation.
When tens of millions of voters can be persuaded that Donald Trump is a truth teller who has their backs, the American experiment in democracy is gravely imperiled regardless of what Democrats do or say.
If Harris declared she would stop US sales of offensive weapons to Israel...
How would THAT have impacted the election?
Her campaign could have lost support from Jewish voters and donors.
The highly influential RW media landscape would have gone into overdrive with narratives that Harris was abandoning a close American ally, was antisemitic, and supporting terrorists.
The mainstream media would have run with those stories, and she'd be put on the defensive answering those questions.
Democratic strategists who advised the Harris campaign no doubt weighed the consequences on this issue, and determined that breaking with Biden on these arms sales would hurt more than help her chances in the election.
Damned if you do, damned if you don't. It was a political calculation in what they knew would be a very tight race.
My personal views:
When civilian casualties in Gaza escalated past 100, 200, 300 times the death toll of Oct 7 -- and Netanyahu ignored all pleas from his greatest enabler, the USA -- the correct and moral course of action was to withold the offensive weapons of mass slaughter that were turning Gaza into rubble.
However, Biden's greatest responsibility was to save American democracy. He did that in 2020, but failed in 2024.
We will never know how things might have turned out if Joe had witheld bombs from Israel, or if he had decided not to run for a 2nd term. I think the latter was the bigger factor.
Of one thing I am certain:
Gaza was going to Hurt the Harris campaign either way.
Could it made the crucial difference?
Perhaps, if Gaza was the main reason for the low turnout on Nov 5, but we will never know.
We are indeed in a war. To win it, we need allies.
The Democratic Party must not normalize or compromise with the fascists in our government.
But for each of us in our personal relationships, I offer this advice:
Don't burn bridges with family, friends, and associates.
They, along with everyone else (except perhaps the oligarchs) will be hurt by what's coming in the next four years. There will be opportunities to swing the pendulum back our way.
There is nothing to be gained by alienating potential allies. I've been very tempted to send an email to family members who voted for Trump, excoriating them for their stupidity. But that would help nothing, and ruin what once was and possibly could be again.
Many if not most Trump voters don't realize they voted against their own best interests, but they're going to find out. The hard way. I understand the desire to rub their faces in it.
Shall we ruin the holidays and formerly good relationships?
That would only bring more pain, and regrets.
Everything stems from his gigantic but fragile ego
He has the emotional maturity of a child, lashing out at anyone who opposed or criticised him. Wielding power gives him pleasure, especially when it makes not only specific people suffer but entire demographics he hates based on race and culture.
He is a sociopathic malignant narcissist whose cognitive capacity is degenerating with age, which is eating away at him on at least a subconscious level. This will increase his impulse for cruelty and spite. On top of that he is woefully ignorant of how government and the military function. His intent is not to serve or govern, but to rule like a mob boss -- but a real mob boss is more competent and subtle, serving his own interests without attracting attention.
He craves the attention and adulation that feed the insatiable need to keep filling the bottomless pit of his ego. If people are destroyed in the process, all the better. In his world, there are only winners and losers. He HAS to be perceived as the biggest winner, but his mental pathologies are such that he is more widely hated than loved. Deep down he knows this, and that increases his desire to make others suffer.
"Joe Biden stayed too long"
Among the reasons we lost that were within the control of Democrats, the BIGGEST was Joe Biden running for a 2nd term at the end of which he would be 86 years old.
Joe Biden deserves our thanks for his decades of public service, saving our democracy in 2020, and the accomplishments of his administration. But he should NOT have run again.
Kamala Harris also deserves our thanks for stepping up the way she did. I wasn't impressed with her as a candidate in 2020, but I grew to respect and admire her during the campaign that just ended. I think she could have done a better job extolling the success of the Biden economy, but overall she was brilliant.
But Kamala was not popular at all nationally, and she was not selected by Democratic voters as our nominee. I think we would have had a much greater chance in this election if there was an open primary with the next generation of Democratic leaders contending for the nomination, from which an election tested candidate with broader appeal would emerge.
We could not control post pandemic global inflation, or Russia invading Ukraine, or the war in Gaza, or the influence of rightwing propaganda thru talk radio, Fox News, OAN, Sinclair, X, TikTok, Russian Bots, etc.
But we could have had an open primary which may have produced a different result in the general election. Despite the wonderful Harris campaign, we know how that turned out.
And one More thing:
Merrick Garland should have had The Fascist Grifter's ass in prison before the primaries even started.
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