It's Not Rocket Science
Nor fortune telling. Just observation and deduction.
I just need to do a spot of #PublicSociology here:
The German Guy rose to power following 15 years of economic hardship that befell the nation as retribution for armed aggressions from 1914 - 1918. Economic deprivation was a necessary precursor to populist nativism. Had there not been a second round of armed aggressions against Europe leading to the military overthrow of that Guy’s government, there is no telling how many targeted minorities he would have terminated, without anyone else becoming involved.
Today, the United States would not be seeing the same type of populist nativism, had the prior forty-plus years not been ones of economic deprivation. It was both Republicans and Democrats who made this possible; one could not have done it without the cooperation of the other. And when that cooperation painted Republicans into a corner, they stopped cooperating altogether. Instead, they worked to seize control of the government via racial gerrymandering, racially-targeted voter disenfranchisement, and refusal to hear judicial appointments.
The MAGA social movement comes from uncontested Neoliberal policies that suppressed working peoples’ wages and forced them into a declining quality of life. If we fail to correct for Neoliberalism, eventually MAGA will win. The Democrats, however, are more owned by corporate capitalist interests than ever, so do not expect them to propose silly policies that could never work like: Single-payer health care; making the minimum wage a basic living wage and tying it to productivity; collecting a 0.5% wealth-transfer tax and using it to fund Social Security at more than double current rates; or making education tuition-free for everyone, from the GED to the PhD.
Instead, health care and higher education costs, and rents, will escalate indefinitely. Barely-restrained corporate capitalism is the best an economy can ever be. Good luck. Remember if you end up undereducated, sick, and on the street, it was a matter of luck, not design, so don’t be blaming the economic form that relies on shorting labor.
And if Harris loses this election, the Democrats will not look to the failure to prosecute the insurrection like a real crime as their own, but will instead blame Progressives for not sacrificing their values. Never thinking for a second that putting them into practice would have both won Progressive votes and helped reduce MAGA’s influence.
Here we are, a year later. The Democrats are fighting the Republican shutdown by attacking them for cutting health care. As has been the plan for my entire life, the Republican goal is to reduce state supports and privatize everything. Privatization, by design, reduces the general availability of resources and finds profit in what the state once provided as a public service.
Kamala Harris appears to blame ‘people not voting’ for 2024 loss to Trump as book tour gets off to rocky start.
Kamala Harris does as I predicted she would, a year ago. She took an oath to “preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States” and that means blaming people for not having appealed to them enough when it mattered. Her sales skills are still on full display as she peddles her book telling prospective readers they are the reason she had to take the seven-figure advance from the publisher. That oath only counted when she was on the clock; it was a job requirement, not a lifetime commitment. Enjoy the Fascism—it’s your own fault.
Since the Democrats are a capitalist political party they, too, are reluctant to assure all social needs are fulfilled through public means. That is why their health care plan (the one they produced when it was their party that held the White House and both chambers of Congress, and there could be no opposition) sucks. As the state becomes both the buyer and the employer of last resort, the Democrats decided the state should also be the health care provider of last resort.
They could have made the state the principal provider, allowing individuals to buy private coverage (like we do with education) should they opt to. This is how it operates in 29 other nations that offer indoor plumbing to more than 98% of their populations. Health care is like indoor plumbing. It is unnecessary, but once you have access to it, it changes lives. Like indoor plumbing, universal health care improves public health and reduces individual costs of living.
Instead, we have the Democrats playing their favorite role: The Saviors. Rather than expand social support programs, 19 out of 20 Democrats are happy with them as they are, and are happy to fight tooth-and-nail against any Republican attempt to cut health care, or Social Security, or educational funding, or environmental regulations. Just don’t ask them for anything more or better than what you got, because that’s asking too much. They get to pose as if they are struggling to keep people on health care, silently asking people to ignore how they failed to provide universal coverage to begin with.
Speaking of for-profit health care and artificial shortages, the terrorism charges against Luigi Mangione have been quashed by the court. The court agreed that Mangione himself did not publicize the homicide, the shell casings, or the manifesto—that was all the government’s doing. They are the ones who terrorized the public.