The political commentator, Chris Hedges, had some home-truths to tell the Bernie Sanders supporters which is worth repeating to drive the
point further home.
“…Democratic electoral campaigns, at best, raise political
consciousness. But they do not become movements or engender revolutions. They
exist as long as election campaigns endure and then they vanish. Sanders’
campaign will be no different. No movement or political revolution will ever be
built within the confines of the Democratic Party…”
“…The Democrats, like the Republicans, have no interest in
genuine reform. They are wedded to corporate power. They are about appearance,
not substance. They speak in the language of democracy, even liberal reform and
populism, but doggedly block campaign finance reform and promote an array of
policies, including new trade agreements, that disempower workers…”
“…If Sanders is denied the nomination—the Clinton machine
and the Democratic Party establishment, along with their corporate puppet
masters, will use every dirty trick to ensure he loses—his so-called movement
and political revolution will evaporate…”
“…Do Sanders’ supporters believe they can wrest power from
the Democratic establishment and transform the party? Do they think the forces
where real power lies—the military-industrial complex, Wall Street,
corporations, the security and surveillance state—can 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 movements—a
destruction often orchestrated by security organs such as the FBI—the party has
lurched so far to the right that it has remade itself into the old Republican
Party?... In Europe, America’s Democratic Party would be a far-right party. The
Republican Party would be extremist…”
“…The political system, as many Sanders supporters are about
to discover, is immune to reform. The only effective resistance will be
achieved through acts of sustained, mass civil disobedience. The Democrats,
like the Republicans, have no intention of halting the assault on our civil
liberties, the expansion of imperial wars, the coddling of Wall Street, the
destruction of the ecosystem by the fossil fuel industry and the impoverishment
of workings. As long as the Democrats and the Republicans remain in power we
are doomed…”
“…I am all for a revolution, a word Sanders likes to throw
around, but one that is truly socialist and destroys the corporate
establishment, including the Democratic Party. I am for a revolution that
demands the return of the rule of law, and not just for Wall Street, but those
who wage pre-emptive war, order the assassination of U.S. citizens, allow the
military to carry out domestic policing and then indefinitely hold citizens
without due process, who empower the wholesale surveillance of the citizenry by
the government…”
“…The billionaire class and corporate oligarchs cannot be
tamed. They must be overthrown. They will be overthrown in the streets, not in
a convention hall. Convention halls are where the left goes to die….”
Strong words from someone who has first-hand experience of
American party-politics. Yet even Chris Hedges falters at the last hurdle.
His
own revolution is one that merely “…brings under strict civilian control the
military, the security and surveillance apparatus including the CIA, the FBI,
Homeland Security and police and drastically reduces their budgets and power… that
nationalizes banks, the arms industry, energy companies and utilities, breaks
up monopolies, destroys the fossil fuel industry, funds the arts and public
broadcasting…”
His is the revolution of the welfare state that “…provides full
employment and free education including university education, forgives all
student debt, blocks bank repossessions and foreclosures of homes, guarantees
universal and free health care and provides a living wage to those unable to
work, especially single parents, the disabled and the elderly…”
These
palliatives are the very same palliatives Sanders hopes his “Nordic” reforms
will emulate.
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