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Bernie Sanders’ Phantom Movement
By Chris Hedges
....The Democratic Party is a full partner in the corporate state. Yet Sanders, while critical of Hillary Clintons exorbitant speaking fees from firms such as Goldman Sachs, refuses to call out the party andas Robert Scheer pointed out in a column in Octoberthe Clintons for their role as handmaidens of Wall Street. For Sanders, it is a lie of omission, which is still a lie. And it is a lie that makes the Vermont senator complicit in the con game being played on the American electorate by the Democratic Party establishment.
Do Sanders supporters believe they can wrest power from the Democratic establishment and transform the party? Do they think the forces where real power liesthe military-industrial complex, Wall Street, corporations, the security and surveillance statecan be toppled by a Sanders campaign? Do they think the Democratic Party will allow itself to be ruled by democratic procedures? Do they not accept that with the destruction of organized labor and anti-war, civil rights and progressive movementsa destruction often orchestrated by security organs such as the FBIthe party has lurched so far to the right that it has remade itself into the old Republican Party?
The elites use money, along with their control of the media, the courts and legislatures, their armies of lobbyists and think tanks, to invalidate the vote. We have undergone, as John Ralston Saul has written, a corporate coup détat. There are no institutions left within civil society that can be accurately described as democratic. We do not live in a capitalist democracy. We live in what the political philosopher Sheldon Wolin calls a system of inverted totalitarianism.
In Europe, Americas Democratic Party would be a far-right party. The Republican Party would be extremist. There is no liberalmuch less left or progressiveorganized political class in the United States. The growth of protofascists will be halted only when a movement on the left embraces an unequivocal militancy to defend the rights of workers and move toward the destruction of corporate power. As long as the left keeps surrendering to a Democratic Party that mouths liberal values while serving corporate interests, it will destroy itself and the values it claims to represent. It will stoke the justifiable rage of the underclass, especially the white underclass, and empower the most racist and retrograde political forces in the country. Fascism thrives not only on despair, betrayal and anger but a bankrupt liberalism....
Do Sanders supporters believe they can wrest power from the Democratic establishment and transform the party? Do they think the forces where real power liesthe military-industrial complex, Wall Street, corporations, the security and surveillance statecan be toppled by a Sanders campaign? Do they think the Democratic Party will allow itself to be ruled by democratic procedures? Do they not accept that with the destruction of organized labor and anti-war, civil rights and progressive movementsa destruction often orchestrated by security organs such as the FBIthe party has lurched so far to the right that it has remade itself into the old Republican Party?
The elites use money, along with their control of the media, the courts and legislatures, their armies of lobbyists and think tanks, to invalidate the vote. We have undergone, as John Ralston Saul has written, a corporate coup détat. There are no institutions left within civil society that can be accurately described as democratic. We do not live in a capitalist democracy. We live in what the political philosopher Sheldon Wolin calls a system of inverted totalitarianism.
In Europe, Americas Democratic Party would be a far-right party. The Republican Party would be extremist. There is no liberalmuch less left or progressiveorganized political class in the United States. The growth of protofascists will be halted only when a movement on the left embraces an unequivocal militancy to defend the rights of workers and move toward the destruction of corporate power. As long as the left keeps surrendering to a Democratic Party that mouths liberal values while serving corporate interests, it will destroy itself and the values it claims to represent. It will stoke the justifiable rage of the underclass, especially the white underclass, and empower the most racist and retrograde political forces in the country. Fascism thrives not only on despair, betrayal and anger but a bankrupt liberalism....
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article44214.htm
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Bernie Sanders’ Phantom Movement (Original Post)
Mr_Jefferson_24
Feb 2016
OP
Apparently a President Sanders would have his "Leftist Critics" just like Obama.
99th_Monkey
Feb 2016
#1
99th_Monkey
(19,326 posts)1. Apparently a President Sanders would have his "Leftist Critics" just like Obama.
Incarnating "Obama's Legacy"? ... but wait.. isn't that Hillary's gig?