In his June article, “No Lesser Evil, Not this Time,” sociologist and writer for CounterPunch, Andrew Smolski, presents some vitally needed critical thinking concerning the choice liberal Americans are facing right now: Sec. Hillary Clinton and the Democrats or Dr. Jill Stein and the Green Party… How best to reverse course and avert the fascism threatening to descend on 21st-century America?
I just shared Smolski’s piece with several FB friends, adding the following comment (which I now share with all of my friends who aren’t into the whole social-media/networking thing that Zuckerberg birthed):
THIS. This is brilliant. Recent reading on the phenomenon of fascism (Robert O. Paxton’s tome) has reinforced for me the fact that there is a direct correlation between failed, thoroughly-corrupted, PSEUDO-liberalism (like that of the last 30+ years of “Democrats,” esp. under the Clintons and President Obama, who are — ON POLICY — the all-time movers of the modern far-right’s agenda)… and bona fide fascism.
Put simply, the former (failed/pseudo-liberalism) makes relatively free societies extremely vulnerable to the latter (fascism).
In early 20th-century Europe, “liberal” establishments set the precedent for modern American Democrats — the bankster-abetting modern Democrats who’ve dismantled the middle class and rule of law, while perpetuating war — serving up their free societies to dangerous fascists with no regard for the consequences, oblivious (because they are pure corporatists, technocratic managers of mass-plunder and environmental destruction. Their job is to silence the left in order for the pillage to continue.).
I cannot vote for a pseudo-liberal candidate whose ethics, character, and agenda are indistinguishable from those of Bush/Cheney/Romney and the entire Koch/Adelson-fueled cabal — whose neoconservative policies I know so well, whose victims number in the millions, mostly non-European people, indigenous and impoverished people, Muslims, Africans, Central/South Americans, women, and children. (I can’t vote for a transparent warmonger whose party has been setting the table for WW3 during the entirety of Obama’s presidency, supporting neo-Nazi coups in Ukraine and Salafist violence across the Middle East, originating from Washington’s Saudi despot allies… and Langley, VA, of course. The destruction of Syria has been the result of a second Mujaheddin unleashed by the neocons.)
The truth, for those of us who follow policy like our lives depend on it, is that George W. Bush’s torture-happy CIA (like Wall Street) got exactly what it wanted in the presidency of Barack Obama: the death of left-wing opposition to Bush/Cheney policies, which have been continued and dramatically expanded under the nation’s first black president.
But I will vote for neither the “cause” nor the “effect” of America’s descent into neo-fascism.
And here’s a word of warning to those living in FEAR, too terrified to vote for Dr. Jill Stein and the values which you profess to hold: With more “Democrats” like these in office, the NEXT fascist will be a whole lot scarier than center-left, pro-choice, anti-war, anti-TPP* Donald Trump… and, yes, while exploding the GOP establishment and discrediting the wars and corruption of our political system and media, he’s also comported himself as an extremely dangerous demagogue (and a very flawed, reckless PIG of a man — though that is what we’ve come to expect from the Clintons’ circle of friends).
Think, people. Think. Read. Learn. And then vote your conscience.
* which actually makes Trump a stronger defender of environmental/labor regulations than Sec. Clinton, counterintuitive though that may seem (the TPP is all about subjugating nations to corporations — officially and enshrined in international law, as the oceans collapse and the world burns — nullifying/discouraging any form of government regulation… of fossil-fuel companies, labor practices, banking, pharmaceutical companies, etc. — President Obama’s State Department actually lowered the government’s standards to allow some of the most notorious modern practitioners of SLAVERY, including Malaysia, to participate in the treaty. THAT is all the TPP promises, having almost literally nothing to do with “trade” — and being wholly antithetical to freedom. It is about putting shackles on any future threat of an actual democratic, responsive, accountable government breaking out, anywhere in the world. That’s what our establishment fears more than anything else: Free people. And that’s why we’ve got to buck the fuckers).