Which Corporate Party Will Win on Tuesday?
Will it be the Business Party of Biden or of Trump?
It’s been a depressing election season but the end is finally near (hopefully not THE END). The Democrats tell me I must vote blue no matter who because democracy is at stake and only they can save it from the fascist Republicans. The Republicans tell me to vote for them because Biden the radical socialist/liberal is out to groom our kids, take away our guns, and disrespect our religion (it’s assumed here that your religion is Christianity). Both parties are hyping fear of the other as a motivating force. It’s not a shooting civil war; we don’t have a Bleeding Florida (yet) like we had in the 1850s in Bleeding Kansas; but the stoking of divisions in this country for electoral gains is truly dispiriting.
After reviewing my state’s ballot online and looking over the choices, I expect I’ll be voting mostly for Democrats, not because I want to but because the third-party choices are either uninspiring or non-existent. I live in a solidly blue state, so I don’t really have to worry about a red tide of Republicans surging across my little corner of this earth. Elsewhere in America, I expect Republicans will do quite well.
The reason is simple: The Democrats’ message, like Biden himself, is old, corporate-centered, and uninspiring. I can’t name one policy the Democrats are truly embracing to help ordinary Americans. A $15 federal minimum wage? Nope. Single-payer health care? Nope. A firm commitment to getting big/corporate money out of politics? Nope. Reductions to Pentagon spending and a peace dividend to those in need? Nope. I could go on and on. Just about the only clear Democratic message is “vote for us because the Republicans are going to destroy democracy.”
Of course, Democracy is already destroyed in America. Both parties are corporate-dominated. They obey the owners and donors and ignore us. The people who need the most help in America are those with the weakest voices; those who are dominant keep scheming successfully to get more and more even while loudly crying “foul.” It’s socialism for the corporate rich, dog-eat-dog capitalism for everyone else, and both parties are firmly committed to keeping it that way.
So why do I vote? I truly believe it’s one of my civic duties. Besides, there are issues/questions on the ballot that do matter in my state, and I want to have my say.
So, my fellow Americans, don’t despair at tomorrow’s results. Don’t become fearful about one party or the other winning followed by democracy’s destruction. For that happened decades ago, and we’re still chugging along, even though I’m seeing more black smoke billowing from the engine compartment.
My dad knew the score, and his words haunt me. He survived poverty, the Great Depression, World War II, and low-paying factory work before securing a decent civil service job that kept us solidly in the middle class. In the 1990s, he told me he’d had it tough in the beginning of his life but easy at the end; but he predicted the reverse would be true for me: relatively easy at the beginning but tough at the end. I hope he’s wrong, but I fear he’s right. The proof is evident at every election. Sigh.
The title pretty well sums it up. Corporatists will win just about every race, whether they wear Red or Blue. This time, as Blue once again has failed to deliver and they can't make war-enhanced inflation disappear, it will likely be the more aggressively antisocial Red side that comes out ahead. This, notwithstanding all the political messaging exhorting the faithful to "defend" the non-existent democracy.
Voting rights suppression and attacks on reproductive autonomy and sexual identity by the R's may help the D's a little, but those are part of the seemingly permanent culture wars, and for better or worse, it seems to be true that "It's the Economy, stupid!" - pocketbook issues- which most influence peoples' votes.
Given the D's failures with respect to the economic insecurities, and failure even to address them in messaging, what can they expect?
My own voting behaviors generally reflect what I consider to be the most fundamentally important, but also often longer-term issues. Ending the nation''s imperialism, pursuing peaceful relations with other states, reinvesting the moneys spent therefore into human needs that include averting complete climate destabilization, eliminating corporate subsidies and shifting those resources to public needs, saving (or at least partially restoring) democracy by eliminating private capital's control over both electoral & policy politics; those are the issues I care about most.
Even voting rights themselves - suppression of which in some Red states is one of the warnings pushed by the D's nationwide - mean increasingly little given that a corporatist of one stripe or the other is almost guaranteed to win. Put another way, the value of voting has become steadily diminished over time by the inevitability that one face of the duopoly will all but certainly win.
In his D2: THE SECOND DECLARATION, Max Borders offers a new Declaration of Independence for America in 2022… :
WHEN IN THE COURSE OF HUMAN EVENTS, it becomes necessary for us to dissolve the political bands that tether us to arbitrary power – and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which Universal Morality entitles us – posterity demands we enumerate the injustices and declare our resolve.
We still hold these truths to be self-evident, “that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
We understand these timeless words to mean that no one is justified in subordinating another who has caused no injury and that neither majoritarian mobs nor deliberative bodies may deny us our life, liberty, or pursuit of happiness.
Therefore, in peaceful solidarity, we declare our independence — again.
CONSENT: To secure our rights, the People must institute new governance systems, deriving our just powers from the consent of the governed.
Whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of our ends, it is: “[T]he Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”
We do not take the implications lightly.
Still, when a “long train of abuses and usurpations” creates a condition of subjugation, it is our right and our duty “to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for [our] future security.”
We have waited long enough for elected officials to reform themselves and our system. We have seen too little progress. So the time has come for the People to alter our systems of government.
But we are under no illusions: powerful authorities do not care about lofty appeals. We can no more swarm them with muskets as ignore their power. We must instead launch a million experiments in liberation. The history of governments, after all, is a history of repeated injuries by authorities who oppress the people for the ends of power. Enough is enough.
INJUSTICES; WE SUBMIT THE FOLLOWING GRIEVANCES, AS OUR GOVERNMENT AUTHORITIES:
Take from us without our consent and prevent us from governing ourselves.
Deny us guarantees in the Bill of Rights, especially Amendments I, II, IV, V, VI, VIII, IX, X .
Threaten, regulate, and oppress us, too often without legislation or due process.
Lie to us and keep secrets from us, while evading accountability.
Divide and disenfranchise us through the spectacles of partisan polarization and national elections.
Seek to control us, that is, to engineer society as if it were a machine and we were its cogs.
Force us to subsidize failed agencies, systems, and institutions.
Grant favors or subsidies to reward the powerful at the poor's expense.
Threaten, attack, and imprison those who share the truth about them, criminalizing both demands for accountability and peaceful dissent.
Trade on and profit from inside knowledge of the very laws they make.
Feed our fears to grow the military-industrial complex out of all reasonable proportions.
Threaten to confiscate our means of defending ourselves from criminals and tyrants.
Tax us without legitimacy through currency manipulation.
Conscript the media and social platforms into deception, spin-doctoring, and censorship on their behalf.
Assault our shared moral principles, Common Law, and Constitution.
Spy on the People and deny us our privacy.
Auction power to corporate bidders and horse trade with our property to expand their power.
Mandate commercial relationships or associations we would never choose otherwise.
Create corrupt monopsonies of scientific research.
Declare “wars” on the People for "crimes" that have no victim.
Invade countries that represent no credible threat to the People or our pursuit of happiness.
Use unlimited debt to buy votes, expand their power — burdening our children and grandchildren.
Threaten legal action, heap charges on us, or seize our property without due process.
Inculcate our children with illiberal doctrines, identity politics, or bankrupt ideologies.
Claim expertise and decision-making rights on matters about which they have insufficient knowledge.
Force us to use their debased monies and prevent us from using our own networks and stores of value.
Create perverse, unintended effects by meddling in complex systems they don't fully understand.
Oppress us repeatedly in the name of the common good.
Put the interests of elites over the needs of the People.
Obstruct our pursuits and diminish our happiness.
The purposes for which the people's government was constituted have been usurped. So we must set about building society anew.
RESOLUTIONS; THEREFORE, WE RESOLVE TO… :
Continued at https://logictry.com/apps/623de1953735487903026adf .