It's a pleasure to hear the views of someone who's been paying attention to the current political situation, domestic and foreign, and, most importantly, has studied the historical route by which we have arrived here, in the weird 21st century. (The fact that I agree with almost all of your politics doesn't hurt, either.) I'm convinced that the primary reason for the current state of things is the essential ignorance, on the part of the general public, of the facts of history. Whatever one's politics, when you don't know the facts that define the reality, and you have disdain for people who do, you can only fall back on slogans, stories, and themes that have been spoon-fed to the public via the propaganda apparatus that envelops our present technological reality. So, don't take such criticism too personally; we're living in a time when women are losing the right to control their own bodies, at the same time that some jurisdictions are attempting to make child labor legal, again. When those issues were decided, some 50 and 90 years ago, society advanced. And yet...today that progress is fading, while the USPS, public schools, highways, prisons, and countless other government sector programs are being manipulated in the hope that they'll all be privatized. Yet, so few people even notice. That's why I like your work; it's nice to have company as we watch the Follies of 2024 unfold. Thanks.
Excellent essay. I read Counterpunch regularly, and am often treated to your thoughtful and intelligent columns. My own disdain for the pandemic of historical ignorance is tempered by the fact that, after years of study, I am still surprised to learn new information about people or events that escaped my notice, for decades. I was well into my 60's, for instance, when I, one day, realized that a favorite film of my youth, "The Alamo," was all about the efforts of slaveholders to steal land from Mexico, to enable slavery and Manifest Destiny to expand, notwithstanding any latitudinal Congressional limitations. I read Leon Uris's book, "Exodus," and loved the 1960 film, until it struck me, in my 50's, that there was much that was missing or misrepresented in that exciting tale. Finally, it wasn't until last year that I realized that prisoners were exempted from the 13th Amendment's ban on slavery; this realization occurred when California Governor Gavin Newsom, advised the State Senate to not approve a bill outlawing slavery, in the State, his rationale being that the State would lose considerable income from the current practice. I will never cease pursuing knowledge through the study of history; there's too much to know, to ever stop.
I will try to find and put up here essays I have done under the title WHY STUDY HISTORY? The mass amnesia is lethal, a political catastrophe! And it's not by accident. Thank you!
In regards to your third response to criticism, perhaps you received a version of that criticism that bases the charge of fascist leaning Dems to much on the Israel issue. While the Israel issue is clearly demonstrative, it is FAR from the only or even main indication that Dems would be just as happy with a fascist domestic America as would be Republicans. The only distance I perceive between the two is one of perceived self interest, which makes any “clinging to bourgeois democracy,” on the part of Dems a totally self interested, calculated, and instrumental position, which obviously implies that when the sense of self interest shifts, so too will the professed and practiced regard for even the limp and ineffectual “bourgeois democracy.” Take on very recent example, Biden is suddenly “willing to talk” on further border militarization when Republicans no longer want to rubber stamp Ukraine money (out of abundant virtue I’m sure). Does this not represent a clear willingness to facilitate demands for a deepening of fascist policies. There are many ways to skin a cat, “complicity” is just a covert manner of meeting one’s socially unacceptable desires and maintaining cognitive dissonance.
Paul, I am a long retired schoolteacher who plans to vote for Cornell West this November. You and I will agree that foreign policy is the same under both major parties. But I think that you exaggerate the differences between the domestic policies of both. Maybe this is what is referred to as “the narcissism of little difference “. George
Nope! I live much of the year in a bright red Republifascist state (Iowa) and another part of the year in a bright blue Dem state (Illinois) and brother I am here to tell you that you are way off here. Way off. I do not exaggerate the domestic policy differences, trust me. Talk to a woman in need of an abortion in Mississippi or Texas or....fill in the red state blank. Try to teach actual American history with racism and sexism included in Iowa or Alabama. Marijuana legal in Illinois and other blue states, illegal in red states. Medicaid expansion ..the list goes on. No. Both capitalist imperialist parties? Yup. Both Christian white nationalist parties? Nope. Spend much time in a red state, sir? Question: what outcome do you hope your Vote for Brother West to bring about beyond some kind of personal feeling that you stuck it to the man to use an old Sixties Panther phrase?
Trump's occasional "antiwar" moments reflect (1) the fascists wanting to go for a somewhat different alignment of forces internationally than what has been customary for the US. and (2) the effects of real defeats and failures during the so called "Global War on Terror" and especially (3) the fascist need to solve the problem of political power within the US as a prerequisite for carrying out their program elsewhere. That stuff reminds me of Nazi opposition to Alfred Hugenberg in 1933.
Start of capitalism-imperialism: One example, I recently read that the last battle of the American war of independence was fought in India 10 months after the war ended elsewhere. I think Seattle Times was the source.
Paul, sorry for the off-topic request here, but do you have any interest in publishing (a transcript of) your talk on “centering the system” in Cultural Logic, a Marxist open-access academic journal that I’ve co-edited for 25 years and that is located at the University of British Columbia? If so, please contact me at Sansculotte1226@gmail.com to discuss. Thanks, Dave
Thank you, Paul. I agree with all you've said and I may follow your not-so-well hidden recommendation. But it truly pisses me off to once again plug my nose, ears and eyes to vote for the half (or less) brained Biden. He's not really running the show anymore. Who's running it is the military, the "security state tools" and big money/corporate entities. I doubt that a majority of them are going to let much good happen in our so-called government because the dismal dems are usually going along to get along with the republi -fascists. Independent thought is very rare in our
"homeland". If the dems had fielded a decent candidate or several, that's one thing but the pitiful offering of sleepy joe is unconscionable and frankly, I won't vote for him. I will vote for Jill Stein or write her in come what may. Apparently, we the people are sleepwalking into fascism one way or the other, like the Germans id (sic) in the 30's. The situation here is going to get worse either way, with what is on offer.
On current trajectory and without a radical force in play pointing to a revolutionary alternative ...horror beckons. And this is true even if the Amerikaner project somehow fails. Capitalism-imperialism under either or both reigning parties is wired for exterminism.
You make a good and valid assessment of the difference between bourgeois democracy and bourgeois fascism as they are unfolding in the U.S. today. You also make a decent point about blue 'no matter' who or what. Something does matter, your first point. What I'm missing is a simple statement to vote for them Dems all along the line vs Trump and the Trump election deniers at every level and build independent organizations in the process. And yes, I fully understand that the electoral arena is only one battlefield among many others. Fight on them, too. But the outcome in Nov matters a lot, no?
Well, look I am saying that one of the two dominant parties has now mainstreamed homeland Fascism....I don't pretend that won't possibly encourage folks to do LEV and I definitely never tell people not to vote. I also never pretend that third party left voting couldn't help the Republifascists in November. Of course it could, under the US winner take all system. But these days it seems that the Dems and the underlying system they wear around their necks when they have the White House are both so bad that another squeak by Weimar Dem victory just postpones the next Republifascist takeover. If Hillary won MI and WI in 2016 we'd be gearing up for Adolph Trump's re-election this year perhaps. And then there's the problem of feeding people's hopes into the meat grinder that is the insane Electoral College and the absurdly malapportioned representative bodies and the corrupt judiciary and on and on with this madness. We are running out of time for playing along with what Avakian calls the BEB--- the bourgeois electoral bullshit.
Yes they matter. But the actual choice is between a fascist imperialist narcissist to the fairly extreme end( Trump), and a corrupt, patronizing, packaged Deep State
Unforgiving liar, (back off from extreme a bit Biden)!! Building independent parties
Paul,
We at cc have much the same position on this as you do. And we catch the same kind of denialism from the Trumpenleft.
https://classconscious.org/2023/07/04/are-you-a-liberal-if-you-think-trump-is-a-fascist/
Bob Montgomery
It’s difficult to believe that those who have made these criticisms have actually read or listened to any of your work.
Oh especially on the charge of Dem fronting. I may have the world word count record for Marxist ripping of the dismal dollar warmongering Dems!
It's a pleasure to hear the views of someone who's been paying attention to the current political situation, domestic and foreign, and, most importantly, has studied the historical route by which we have arrived here, in the weird 21st century. (The fact that I agree with almost all of your politics doesn't hurt, either.) I'm convinced that the primary reason for the current state of things is the essential ignorance, on the part of the general public, of the facts of history. Whatever one's politics, when you don't know the facts that define the reality, and you have disdain for people who do, you can only fall back on slogans, stories, and themes that have been spoon-fed to the public via the propaganda apparatus that envelops our present technological reality. So, don't take such criticism too personally; we're living in a time when women are losing the right to control their own bodies, at the same time that some jurisdictions are attempting to make child labor legal, again. When those issues were decided, some 50 and 90 years ago, society advanced. And yet...today that progress is fading, while the USPS, public schools, highways, prisons, and countless other government sector programs are being manipulated in the hope that they'll all be privatized. Yet, so few people even notice. That's why I like your work; it's nice to have company as we watch the Follies of 2024 unfold. Thanks.
Here's one...I've done a few along these lines. https://www.paulstreet.org/why-study-history/
Excellent essay. I read Counterpunch regularly, and am often treated to your thoughtful and intelligent columns. My own disdain for the pandemic of historical ignorance is tempered by the fact that, after years of study, I am still surprised to learn new information about people or events that escaped my notice, for decades. I was well into my 60's, for instance, when I, one day, realized that a favorite film of my youth, "The Alamo," was all about the efforts of slaveholders to steal land from Mexico, to enable slavery and Manifest Destiny to expand, notwithstanding any latitudinal Congressional limitations. I read Leon Uris's book, "Exodus," and loved the 1960 film, until it struck me, in my 50's, that there was much that was missing or misrepresented in that exciting tale. Finally, it wasn't until last year that I realized that prisoners were exempted from the 13th Amendment's ban on slavery; this realization occurred when California Governor Gavin Newsom, advised the State Senate to not approve a bill outlawing slavery, in the State, his rationale being that the State would lose considerable income from the current practice. I will never cease pursuing knowledge through the study of history; there's too much to know, to ever stop.
I will try to find and put up here essays I have done under the title WHY STUDY HISTORY? The mass amnesia is lethal, a political catastrophe! And it's not by accident. Thank you!
In regards to your third response to criticism, perhaps you received a version of that criticism that bases the charge of fascist leaning Dems to much on the Israel issue. While the Israel issue is clearly demonstrative, it is FAR from the only or even main indication that Dems would be just as happy with a fascist domestic America as would be Republicans. The only distance I perceive between the two is one of perceived self interest, which makes any “clinging to bourgeois democracy,” on the part of Dems a totally self interested, calculated, and instrumental position, which obviously implies that when the sense of self interest shifts, so too will the professed and practiced regard for even the limp and ineffectual “bourgeois democracy.” Take on very recent example, Biden is suddenly “willing to talk” on further border militarization when Republicans no longer want to rubber stamp Ukraine money (out of abundant virtue I’m sure). Does this not represent a clear willingness to facilitate demands for a deepening of fascist policies. There are many ways to skin a cat, “complicity” is just a covert manner of meeting one’s socially unacceptable desires and maintaining cognitive dissonance.
The dismal Dems have earned your critique. I do call them a Weimar party.
Paul, I am a long retired schoolteacher who plans to vote for Cornell West this November. You and I will agree that foreign policy is the same under both major parties. But I think that you exaggerate the differences between the domestic policies of both. Maybe this is what is referred to as “the narcissism of little difference “. George
Nope! I live much of the year in a bright red Republifascist state (Iowa) and another part of the year in a bright blue Dem state (Illinois) and brother I am here to tell you that you are way off here. Way off. I do not exaggerate the domestic policy differences, trust me. Talk to a woman in need of an abortion in Mississippi or Texas or....fill in the red state blank. Try to teach actual American history with racism and sexism included in Iowa or Alabama. Marijuana legal in Illinois and other blue states, illegal in red states. Medicaid expansion ..the list goes on. No. Both capitalist imperialist parties? Yup. Both Christian white nationalist parties? Nope. Spend much time in a red state, sir? Question: what outcome do you hope your Vote for Brother West to bring about beyond some kind of personal feeling that you stuck it to the man to use an old Sixties Panther phrase?
Trump's occasional "antiwar" moments reflect (1) the fascists wanting to go for a somewhat different alignment of forces internationally than what has been customary for the US. and (2) the effects of real defeats and failures during the so called "Global War on Terror" and especially (3) the fascist need to solve the problem of political power within the US as a prerequisite for carrying out their program elsewhere. That stuff reminds me of Nazi opposition to Alfred Hugenberg in 1933.
Start of capitalism-imperialism: One example, I recently read that the last battle of the American war of independence was fought in India 10 months after the war ended elsewhere. I think Seattle Times was the source.
French vs British I think
Paul,
That’s great news! Can you send me an email at sansculotte1226@gmail.com to discuss details? Thanks, Dave
Paul, sorry for the off-topic request here, but do you have any interest in publishing (a transcript of) your talk on “centering the system” in Cultural Logic, a Marxist open-access academic journal that I’ve co-edited for 25 years and that is located at the University of British Columbia? If so, please contact me at Sansculotte1226@gmail.com to discuss. Thanks, Dave
Sure...
Sansculotte! I basically minored in the French Revolution. LOL.
Thank you, Paul. I agree with all you've said and I may follow your not-so-well hidden recommendation. But it truly pisses me off to once again plug my nose, ears and eyes to vote for the half (or less) brained Biden. He's not really running the show anymore. Who's running it is the military, the "security state tools" and big money/corporate entities. I doubt that a majority of them are going to let much good happen in our so-called government because the dismal dems are usually going along to get along with the republi -fascists. Independent thought is very rare in our
"homeland". If the dems had fielded a decent candidate or several, that's one thing but the pitiful offering of sleepy joe is unconscionable and frankly, I won't vote for him. I will vote for Jill Stein or write her in come what may. Apparently, we the people are sleepwalking into fascism one way or the other, like the Germans id (sic) in the 30's. The situation here is going to get worse either way, with what is on offer.
On current trajectory and without a radical force in play pointing to a revolutionary alternative ...horror beckons. And this is true even if the Amerikaner project somehow fails. Capitalism-imperialism under either or both reigning parties is wired for exterminism.
no comment Paul other than: I'm listening. Always good to hear your voice. A happy and prosperous New Year to you and your books, essays, blogs
You make a good and valid assessment of the difference between bourgeois democracy and bourgeois fascism as they are unfolding in the U.S. today. You also make a decent point about blue 'no matter' who or what. Something does matter, your first point. What I'm missing is a simple statement to vote for them Dems all along the line vs Trump and the Trump election deniers at every level and build independent organizations in the process. And yes, I fully understand that the electoral arena is only one battlefield among many others. Fight on them, too. But the outcome in Nov matters a lot, no?
Well, look I am saying that one of the two dominant parties has now mainstreamed homeland Fascism....I don't pretend that won't possibly encourage folks to do LEV and I definitely never tell people not to vote. I also never pretend that third party left voting couldn't help the Republifascists in November. Of course it could, under the US winner take all system. But these days it seems that the Dems and the underlying system they wear around their necks when they have the White House are both so bad that another squeak by Weimar Dem victory just postpones the next Republifascist takeover. If Hillary won MI and WI in 2016 we'd be gearing up for Adolph Trump's re-election this year perhaps. And then there's the problem of feeding people's hopes into the meat grinder that is the insane Electoral College and the absurdly malapportioned representative bodies and the corrupt judiciary and on and on with this madness. We are running out of time for playing along with what Avakian calls the BEB--- the bourgeois electoral bullshit.
Yes they matter. But the actual choice is between a fascist imperialist narcissist to the fairly extreme end( Trump), and a corrupt, patronizing, packaged Deep State
Unforgiving liar, (back off from extreme a bit Biden)!! Building independent parties
can be a working idea, but you’re talking
about a cohesive, dedicated, focused,
Patriotic movement over an undetermined
Length of time!!!
determined