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Wednesday, April 19, 2017

THE DAY AFTER

OK, so Jon Ossoff came up just short.  The total Democratic vote was about 49%.  We have a shot in the runoff.  Let us hope the Democratic National Committee takes note and starts busting its butt to support candidates across the country. 

Meanwhile I remain entranced by this Administration’s inability to keep track of its aircraft carriers.  J  What really happened, pretty clearly, is that the military, who actually do know where their heavy equipment is, sent word up the chain of command and Trump either did not get the message or did not understand what he was told or mindlessly exaggerated and misrepresented what he was told for the immediate headline grabbing effect, oblivious of the fact that the truth would come out.

By the way, a propos some comments on this blog, Seoul, South Korea, a metropolis of more than ten million, is only twenty miles from the DMZ [de-militarized zone, the border established by the cease fire sixty-four years ago].  The North Koreans have more than twenty thousand artillery weapons – “tubes” as they are called – along the DMZ quite capable of reaching Seoul.  At this point that, not the North’s nuclear capability, is the real danger.

With regard to the possibility of mass direct action, beyond what we have already seen, I dream of that but I am not hopeful.  Labor unions are weakened, and student protests of the sort that played a role during the Viet Nam War are less likely because there is no longer a military draft.  That is why America switched to an all-volunteer professional military more suitable to an imperial power.


Meanwhile, let us support every Democratic candidate we can find whose election would help reverse the overwhelming Republican domination of local and federal government.  

2 comments:

David Auerbach said...

Corey Robin, over on his Facebook page, says this:
"Just following up on my previous post: One of the things that Christopher Hayes interview with Perez and Sanders did is to showcase how dedicated Sanders is to providing a political analysis of the contemporary economy and the contemporary US. I don't think we on the left sufficiently appreciate the significance of that. While there is no doubt that Sanders's positions aren't nearly as left as many would like, his real contribution, it seems to me, has been to resurrect a way of thinking that looks at wealth, poverty, class and culture, through a lens of what the state does and what capital does, to a story of the long history of American political economy. Not a story that naturalizes the economy but a story that politicizes the economy. You may disagree with his analysis or think that it comes up short, but that misses the point. The last major political figure who wasn't a Republican who had a narrative about the American political economy was Bill Clinton. It wasn't a left or even a political narrative at all. It was about the naturalness and inexorability of globalization, where the only thing the state could do was promote education and skills development: that was it. Sanders's analysis, whatever its flaws, is much closer to a left analysis insofar as it focuses on class and state power. I really think it's impossible to underestimate just how explosive that is on the contemporary American scene; it's a language this country has not heard from its elected leaders since, I would say, the 1930s and 1940s. Parts of the Civil Rights Movement and left Democratic establishment in the 1960s (the Bayard Rustin wing of the party and movement) did as well, but in terms of elected leaders, it really began to thin out after the 1940s." See: http://www.msnbc.com/all-in/watch/sanders-i-don-t-consider-myself-a-democrat-924041283893

Unknown said...

I just watched the clip. Perez was pathetic--nothing but talking points, one cliche after another, avoided answering questions, e.g., "Are you just a stalking horse for the Democratic establishment?", "Are you going to name an enemy?"