There's no proper Left in American politics

[Greater China]

There is no proper Left in American politics – even Obama is more Right-wing than Cameron

Wednesday, March 7, 2012

I want you to imagine a twelve-inch ruler, like the ones those of us of a certain age used to pack in our schoolbags. On the far left, just above the “1,” picture Trotsky and his band of crazies; on the far right, at “12,” Hitler and Genghis Khan.

Where on this scale would you place David Cameron? I’d put him at the seven-inch mark, a little to the right of Clement Attlee but definitely to the left of Tony Blair. This measured approach recognises distinctions down to a tenth of an inch, allowing Ed Miliband to sit fractionally to the left of the Prime Minister and just to the right of Nick Clegg.

Now picture a similar ruler used to define United States politics. A very different, and quite frightening, picture emerges.

Where the House of Commons covers a spread between four and nine, with the majority fitting in between five and seven, the US Congress starts at six and runs all the way up to ten, or even ten-and-a-half. Appropriately, most Democrats are at sixes and sevens; Republicans cluster around nine.

Barack Obama, like my father’s hat size, is seven and an eighth, just to the right of Cameron. Mitt Romney, the Republican most likely to face Obama in November’s presidential race, is a solid eight; Newt Gingrich, the acerbic former House Speaker, now in ill-tempered retreat, is a nine; but Rick Santorum, the arch-Catholic candidate from Pennsylvania, is not only, like Bo Derek, a Perfect Ten, he is a Ten who “throws up” at the mere mention of the separation of Church and State.

The received wisdom at the moment is that Obama will defeat his GOP challenger in November, only to face a Senate and House of Representatives bolstered by a religious Right that seems ready for the Rapture. In that event, nothing will get done and America will remain in stasis, with major decisions possible only in the area of foreign wars. But the stage will have been set for a Fundamentalist takeover in 2016, when Obama bows out and the Wild Men – and women – of the Right slug it out for the honour of turning America up to Eleven.

If you have ever asked yourself what an out-and-out takeover by the Republican Right would mean in these Tea Party times, consider the career of Rush Hudson Limbaugh III, the most-listened-to conservative in America.

Last week, Limbaugh, whose daily radio show audience can top 20 million, vented his spleen on the subject of Sandra Fluke, a Georgetown University law student who gave evidence to a Congressional Committee on the vexed subject of mandated health care.

President Obama wants employers to include contraception as part of their healthcare provision even if it it offends their religious convictions. Ms Fluke supports this. Republicans do not. According to the Tea Party, taking its lead from the Book of Leviticus, there is no more important issue to be resolved in national politics.

Limbaugh, like Jeremy Clarkson on Speed, recognises no limits. The four-times married radio host, who escaped jail time for drug abuse after he volunteered $30,000 to meet the cost of his prosecution, survived mocking Michael J Fox, a victim of Parkinson’s Disease, for his involuntary spasms. He emerged unscathed from describing feminists – or “feminazis", as he calls them – as unattractive women looking for a way to enter mainstream society. He took minimal flak when he defended the torture of detainees and not much more when he accused black parents of raising their children to be anti-American.

Here he is on Sandra Fluke. He is relaxed and in control of himself. But he is clearly not happy:

What does it say about the college co-ed Susan [sic] Fluke, who goes before a Congressional Committee and essentially says that she must be paid to have sex? What does that make her? It makes her a slut, right? It makes her a prostitute. She wants to be paid to have sex.

Liberals – a bi-coastal minority unflaggingly led by fake news host Jon Stewart – were appalled. Limbaugh was unmoved.

“If we’re going to have to pay for this, then we want something in return, Miss Fluke,” he breathed. “And that would be the videos of all this sex posted online so we can see it.”

An attractive image, is it not? An overweight, red-faced man in his 60s peering at a “community” **** video while scourging the Left for its sins.

If Limbaugh – whose eventual apology to Fluke centred on the claim that he had foolishly descended to the language of the “Left” – was a voice ranting in the wilderness, that would be one thing. But he is not. He is the voice of the Right in America, before whom Congressmen and Senators shamelessly prostrate themselves rather as politicians in Britain used to bend the knee to Rupert Murdoch.

Several prominent advertisers, embarrassed by the publicity, suspended their dealings with the Four Hundred Million Dollar Man (though they will soon be back), but this week, faced with the enormity of the offence, Messrs Romney, Gingrich and Santorum refused to offer a single word of rebuke. They might not have used the same words as “Rush,” they assured us, but they weren’t going to say that he was wrong or that millions of Republicans didn’t agree with him.

And this is the point. There is no Left left in America. There is only the moderate Right, which is most Democrats, and the merged Religious/Financial Right, which is most Republicans.

Britons, worried about the economy, the banks and the NHS, while trying to make up their minds about the value or otherwise of EU membership, need to realise that America, like the past it increasingly resembles, really is a foreign country. They do things differently here.

If you think the Salem witch trials provide a sound basis for the organisation of society; if you attend regular prayer breakfasts and routinely invoke God’s law while dismissing your political opponents as apostates and “sluts;” if you think the poor should be left to sort out their own problems and the rich should pay no more than 15 per cent in tax … if you subscribe to most or all of the above but plan to lead your own damn life whichever way you damn well choose; then, as Arnold Schwarzenegger used to say when trumpeting the virtues of California, when can you start? Come visit. You’ll fit right in.

But if you agree with Alastair Campbell, who reminded us once that British governments don’t “do” God (possibly his only contribution to the common good), then stick with watching the The Mentalist, True Blood and Hugo. Television and the movies, employing the wizardry of Silicon Valley, are where America’s true genius lies today. It is certainly not in the practice of politics

Refreshing News

 

[Hussein]

Yourself, do you think any country should have Left parti?
I mean do you thing that any country in the world should allow communist , socialist, or "social democrates" (european expression for moderate Left)?
What do you think of countries that don't allow any Left to exist?

 

[FairAndUnbiased]

Yourself, do you think any country should have Left parti?
I mean do you thing that any country in the world should allow communist , socialist, or "social democrates" (european expression for moderate Left)?
What do you think of countries that don't allow any Left to exist?

The question then becomes, would you rather live under Stalin or Genghis Khan?

 

[Greater China]

What do you think of countries that don't allow any Left to exist?

... like the United States?

The so called "democracy" there is a myth and the people who go around promoting it only use it as a smokescreen to try to excuse their neocolonialist aggressions around the world.

I'm not fond of fake "representative democracy" controlled by corporations and lobbies. The current U.S. political regime is mainly a form of corporate fascism with Zionists and banksters on top.

Basically, you can't change anything by voting since it's powerless. All the options are bad and most politicians of the West are corrupt hypocrites. The U.S. political system is rotten to the core, because big corporations rule and not the people, as they claim.

If people seek to change things by methods other than voting (for example, by means of protest), they get arrested. Haven't you watched the news about the Occupy Wall Street movement?

US Congress passes authoritarian anti-protest law

Tom Carter | Monday, March 5, 2012

A bill passed Monday in the US Congress and Thursday in the Senate would make it a felony—a serious criminal offense punishable by lengthy terms of incarceration—to participate in many forms of protest associated with the Occupy Wall Street protests of last year. Several commentators have dubbed it the “anti-Occupy” law, but its implications are far broader.

The bill—H.R. 347, or the “Federal Restricted Buildings and Grounds Improvement Act of 2011”—was passed by unanimous consent in the Senate, while only Ron Paul and two other Republicans voted against the bill in the House of Representatives (the bill passed 388-3). Not a single Democratic politician voted against the bill.

The virtually unanimous passage of H.R. 347 starkly exposes the fact that, despite all the posturing, the Democrats and the Republicans stand shoulder to shoulder with the corporate and financial oligarchy, which regarded last year’s popular protests against social inequality with a mixture of fear and hostility.

Among the central provisions of H.R. 347 is a section that would make it a criminal offense to “enter or remain in” an area designated as “restricted.”

The bill defines the areas that qualify as “restricted” in extremely vague and broad terms. Restricted areas can include “a building or grounds where the President or other person protected by the Secret Service is or will be temporarily visiting” and “a building or grounds so restricted in conjunction with an event designated as a special event of national significance.”

The Secret Service provides bodyguards not just to the US president, but to a broad layer of top figures in the political establishment, including presidential candidates and foreign dignitaries.

Even more sinister is the provision regarding events of “national significance.” What circumstances constitute events of “national significance” is left to the unbridled discretion of the Department of Homeland Security. The occasion for virtually any large protest could be designated by the Department of Homeland Security as an event of “national significance,” making any demonstrations in the vicinity illegal.

For certain, included among such events would be the Democratic and Republican National Conventions, which have been classified as National Special Security Events (NSSE), a category created under the Clinton administration. These conventions have been the occasion for protests that have been subjected to ever increasing police restrictions and repression. Under H.R. 347, future protests at such events could be outright criminalized.

The standard punishment under the new law is a fine and up to one year in prison. If a weapon or serious physical injury is involved, the penalty may be increased to up to ten years.

Also criminalized by the bill is conduct “that impedes or disrupts the orderly conduct of Government business or official functions” and “obstructs or impedes ingress or egress to or from any restricted building or grounds.” These provisions, even more so than the provisions creating “restricted areas,” threaten to criminalize a broad range of protest activities that were previously perfectly legal.

In order to appreciate the unprecedented sweep of H.R. 347, it is necessary to consider a few examples:

- A wide area around the next G-20 meeting or other global summit could be designated “restricted” by the Secret Service, such that any person who “enters” a that area can be subject to a fine and a year in jail under Section 1752(a)(1) (making it a felony to enter any restricted building or grounds without lawful authority to do so).

- Senator Rick Santorum, the ultra-right Republican presidential candidate, enjoys the protection of the Secret Service. Accordingly, a person who shouts “boo!” during a speech by Santorum could be subject to arrest and a year of imprisonment under Section 1752(a)(2) (making it a felony to “engag[e] in disorderly or disruptive conduct in” a restricted area).

- Striking government workers who form a picket line near any event of “national significance” can be locked up under Section 1752(a)(3) (making it a crime to imped[e] ingress or egress to or from any restricted building or grounds).

Under the ancien regime in France, steps were taken to ensure that the “unwashed masses” were kept out of sight whenever a carriage containing an important aristocrat or church official was passing through. Similarly, H.R. 347 creates for the US president and other top officials a protest-free bubble or “no-free-speech zone” that follows them wherever they go, making sure the discontented multitude is kept out of the picture.

The Federal Restricted Buildings and Grounds Improvement Act is plainly in violation of the First Amendment to the US Constitution, which was passed in 1791 in the aftermath of the American Revolution. The First Amendment provides: “Congress shall make no law . . . abridging the freedom of speech . . . or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” (The arrogance of the Democratic and Republican politicians is staggering—what part of “Congress shall make no law” do they not understand?)

H.R. 347 comes on the heels of the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which was signed by President Obama into law on December 31, 2011. The NDAA gives the president the power to order the assassination and incarceration of any person—including a US citizen—anywhere in the world without charge or trial.

The passage of H.R. 347 has been the subject of a virtual blackout in the media. In light of the unprecedented nature of the bill, which would effectively overturn the First Amendment, this blackout cannot be innocent. The media silence therefore represents a conscious effort to keep the American population in the dark as to the government’s efforts to eviscerate the Bill of Rights.

The bill would vastly expand a previous law making it misdemeanor to trespass on the grounds of the White House. An earlier version of the bill would have made it a felony just to “conspire” to engage in any of the conduct described above. The bill now awaits President Obama’s signature before it becomes the law of the land.

What lies behind the unprecedented attack underway on the US Constitution and Bill of Rights is a growing understanding in the ruling class that the protests that took place around the world against social inequality in 2011 will inevitably re-emerge in more and more powerful forms in 2012 and beyond, as austerity measures and the crashing economy make the conditions of life more and more impossible for the working class.

The virtually unanimous support in Congress H.R. 347, among Democrats as well as Republicans, reflects overriding sentiment within the ruling establishment for scrapping all existing democratic rights in favor of dictatorial methods of rule.

This sentiment was most directly expressed this week by Wyoming Republican legislator David Miller, who recently introduced a bill into the state legislature that would give the state the power, in an “emergency,” to create its own standing army through conscription, print its own currency, acquire military aircraft, suspend the legislature, and establish martial law.

“Things happen quickly sometimes—look at Libya, look at Egypt, look at those situations,” Miller told the Star-Tribune in Casper, Wyoming. Repeating arguments employed by every military dictatorship over the past century, Miller declared, “We wouldn’t have time to meet as a Legislature or even in special session to do anything to respond.” Miller’s so-called “doomsday law” was defeated in the Wyoming legislature Tuesday by the narrow margin of 30-27.

Published by the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI)

M4 English

If someone is actually trying to sell "democracy" they sure as heck better be calling for actual participatory democracy. That is direct democracy, often termed Athenian democracy (like the Ancient Greeks of Athens were suppose to have had), as it is only this participatory democracy that can even truly be termed democracy.

 

[Hussein]

I understand your point. No problem.

Fact is .. in many countries in the world, communist is not even allowed. For exemple in my country they were massacred.
I can give you some groups of communists outside Iran . But Iran is not the only country where communists were executed. We know many African countries had leaders which ... disappeared ... like the great Lumumba.

FairAndUnbiased > What do you mean for Gengis Kahn? i didn't get exactly what you mean.