One of the more worthwhile articles on this site. Well done. Far too many are simply churning out junk volume, to use a weightlifting term. Trump farted, better write an article about it. MTG said or did something crazy again, better write an article about it. Whatever will get clicks and views. But I digress...
In the US, the gamut of permissible politics only runs from a soft neoliberalism (relatively tolerant of various social and economic reforms - at least when their hand is forced by movements such as the protests that followed George Floyd's public assassination - so long as status quo plutocracy is more or less maintained) to a strict neoliberalism to a burgeoning neofascism.
When people in the US refer to themselves as centrists or moderates, I can't help but wonder if they've actually put any critical thought into what they seem to consider a badge of honor. The center of neoliberalism and neofascism is a pretty ugly place to be. Now, if they're referring to the center of public opinion, I hope they understand that places them well to the left of the Democratic Party, much less the lunatic GOP. Because, in spite of the billions spent by the ruling class on propaganda, surveys consistently demonstrate widespread support for policy proposals most Dems dismiss as 'far left'.
There is no organized, capital-L Left in the US. Elizabeth Warren calls herself a capitalist to her bones, Rachel Maddow calls herself an Eisenhower Republican and Obama praises Reagan. The US perspective of right and left is only matched by the audacity of its take on right and wrong.
Several years ago, Canadian Michael Barnard wrote an article in which he highlighted a fairly comprehensive list of what he called pragmatic and centrist policies. It was striking how almost nothing on the list is advocated for by anyone in a position of power in the US outside of some marginalized members of the Progressive Caucus (the main exception on his list was so-called free trade agreements, which have proven disastrous for working people inside and outside of the US). https://medium.com/@garrettsnedaker/were-so-effing-skewed-7ddb5277be0f
Trump is corrupt, a fraud and the inevitable result of 50+ years of increasingly cruel and unhinged rhetoric and policy. From Nixon's Southern Strategy to the Powell Memo to Moral Majority to Reagan's anti-government vitriol, dog whistling, voodoo economics and repeal of the Fairness Doctrine. To the anti-intellectualism and war-profiteering of Dubya and the neocons. This is what makes the anti-Trump Republicans (including the likes of Cheney and Kinzinger who voted with Trump more than 90% of the time) such a joke, even as praise is heaped upon them by the corporate media. They created the monster that is today's GOP and GOP base. No Saint Donnie without Saint Ronnie.
That's clear to many of us, but Trump has successfully won over millions. And, no, it's not purely about his racism and sexism. Or this idea that his supporters simply want to see Trump 'blow everything up', whatever that even means. Trump represents, for his followers, a disruption of a status quo that has failed them. This is why some of his supporters say they'd vote for Bernie Sanders over an establishment Republican such as Rubio. More people should take that to heart.
The only hope is a diverse mass movement driven by a poor and working class alliance akin to what the late Fred Hampton was promoting before being murdered at the tender age of 21. But there's so much noise in way of the signal in this age of nonstop infotainment. You've got people more upset about being asked to respect a person's pronoun preference than they are about decades of wage stagnation, people more upset about police brutality protests than about the rising cost of healthcare, higher education and everything else.
No mass movement will be created overnight. It starts small, local. And then a local movement of class conscious people forms an alliance with a neighboring movement and then another and then another. At least that's the hope. Given climate change, we may not have the time necessary. But we gotta try.
Experiment. Converting businesses to worker-run co-ops, participatory budgeting, community-controlled policing, ecovillages, and so on. Just try shit. Detach from the outcome. Let go out of the outcome. You can't obsess over whether or not you're going to succeed or over whether what you're doing is precisely what needs doing. Just experiment. It's now or never.
