With the Win-Win Machine, Most of Us Actually Lose

by Roy Eidelson

agor2012.

Somewhere, deep in the bowels of our nation’s capital, today’s Democratic Party establishment keeps close guard over a hulking, fearsome, and often temperamental machine. With hundreds of moving parts, it’s surprising that the elaborate contraption has only one purpose: to take bold and popular policy proposals that could improve millions of lives, chew them up, and then spit out much feebler versions that don’t materially threaten the status quo. Servicing this apparatus isn’t cheap. But that’s not a problem because so many corporate behemoths—Wall Street, Big Oil, health insurers, Big Pharma, defense contractors, and beyond—are more than happy to foot the bill. They’re also very generous when it comes to tipping the machine’s operators, which apparently is how the Win-Win Machine got its name.

Given how well this arrangement works for its beneficiaries, the Democratic leadership understandably finds it unsettling whenever progressive candidates—having won office despite the considerable obstacles routinely erected by the Democratic National Committee and its offshoots—enter Congress but refuse to get their hands dirty by helping out with the Win-Win Machine. Indeed, worries about the machine’s future—and the buckets of money it reliably brings—are undoubtedly part of the impetus behind a post-election narrative being promoted by establishment Democrats. They claim that support for “socialism” among progressive candidates—in the form of Medicare for All, a Green New Deal, and other efforts to counter injustice and inequality—is the reason the party failed to expand its control of the House or win back the Senate.

But the evidence doesn’t fit this self-serving account. Around the country, progressive candidates—and policies—flourished. Noteworthy winners in their races include Rashida Tlaib in Michigan, Ilhan Omar in Minnesota, Ayanna Pressley in Massachusetts, Pramila Jayapal in Washington, Cori Bush in Missouri, Marie Newman in Illinois, Katie Porter and Ro Khanna in California, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Jamaal Bowman, and Mondaire Jones in New York. As Bernie Sanders wrote a week after Election Day, “It turns out that supporting universal health care during a pandemic and enacting major investments in renewable energy as we face the existential threat to our planet from climate change is not just good public policy. It also is good politics.”

Nevertheless, the seemingly coordinated blame-the-Left propaganda we’re now hearing was entirely predictable—because it soothes the billionaire class. And for those politicians who prioritize comfort over consequence in their careers, that may be what matters most. So progressives are portrayed as misguided and misinformed, as out of touch with what Americans really want, and as proponents of dangerous reforms. In sharp contrast, so-called centrists are depicted as having been unjustly victimized and as blameless for the party’s shortcomings. The don’t-rock-the-boat Democrats who encourage this view have a clear goal: to demoralize, marginalize, ostracize, and intimidate those members who they fear will muck up the Win-Win Machine.

Meanwhile, for the many millions of Americans who were unenthusiastic about Joe Biden’s “nothing will fundamentally change” platform yet voted for him anyway because they understood the necessity of preventing another horrific four years of Donald Trump, this open hostility toward a progressive agenda undermines their interests, their values, and their aspirations. If Biden now selects only corporate-friendly, status-quo-defending advisors and Cabinet members, and if he touts watered-down bipartisan “solutions” as stunning successes, it will further cement the betrayal.

Of course, none of this suggests that Trump, Mitch McConnell, and other Republican Party leaders are any better. Indeed, they’re much worse. Consistently ruthless and single-minded in pursuing a narrow and greed-driven agenda, they count on fearmongering, racist dog-whistling, and appeals to blind patriotism to attract the intolerant and the disillusioned. Even with Trump gone, there’s little reason to expect that this GOP strategy will change.

But this reality doesn’t mean that we have to wholeheartedly embrace and defend Democratic politicians who condemn their progressive counterparts while jeopardizing the common good by deferring to the divergent preferences of their largest donors. Instead, let’s insist that these Democrats begin the new era ahead by finding a more suitable home for their anti-democratic Win-Win Machine.

Two options quickly come to mind: toss the entire contraption into the Potomac, or install it in the Smithsonian for public viewing—as a reminder of how a political party can lose its way by abandoning its core principles and its most vulnerable constituents.

********

Roy Eidelson is a past president of Psychologists for Social Responsibility and the former executive director of the University of Pennsylvania’s Solomon Asch Center for Study of Ethnopolitical Conflict. His book Political Mind Games: How the 1% Manipulate Our Understanding of What’s Happening, What’s Right, and What’s Possible is now available as afree PDF. Follow him on Twitter at @royeidelson.

THE STANDING ROCK PROTEST: GENOCIDE, ECOCIDE, & CHANGE, Part 3

People protesting the Dakota Access Pipeline stand in the street with signs and banners. 15 November 2016 Author: Pax Ahimsa Gethen This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.

by Anthony J. Marsella, November 26, 2016

JUSTICE VERSUS THE POLITICAL-ELITE SYSTEM

Standing Rock is more than a protest of an indigenous population struggling to claim and reclaim its rights to exist. It is a confrontation between good and evil!  Harsh words? No! Constructing an oil pipeline across Native American Indian lands will have tragic consequences for people, land, and nation.  “Fracked” oil and tar-sands oil from Canada will be transported across thousands of miles, a portion transported under the Missouri River and tributaries, all of it at risk of pipeline ruptures from faulty technology and protests. And when a rupture occurs . . . .

Where are the self-righteous voices who supported either of the corrupt political parties in our election; these political parties made a mockery of governance, the USA Constitution and our treasured Bill of Rights! Neither of you were respected or wanted. The events at Standing Rock happened on your watch! Do you get it? You made it happen! You, the corporate-government-military complex! Standing Rock is about justice! Standing Rock is about retribution. Standing Rock is about resurrection! Woe to you elite, choosing to demean Standing Rock’s consequences.

To the current USA political elites, cabals, and global-order members (e.g., Davos Factions, Bilderbergs, National Banks), I say, how dare you claim moral authority? How dare you claim wisdom as you engage in self interests

Standing Rock and the Dakota Pipeline happened on your watch. You did nothing! We were all betrayed by your endless condemnations of political opponents, attacking one another with foolish blather. You are the opponents of life! You have no right to impose your will and interests upon the world’s citizens. Your concentration of wealth, power, and position, carefully calculated to insure exploitation is a crime!

Will “Big Oil” fund your libraries, philanthropies, and luxurious houses? Will you gather at Davos, Bilderberg, Bohemian Grove, Skull & Bone reunions, and celebrity events honoring one another? Will any of you gather at Standing Rock, protest signs in your hands, taking blows from truncheons and pepper spray? No! Because you benefits from the oppression occurring at Standing Rock!

Standing Rock will endure with honor and dignity. It will be recalled a hundred years from now, if our nation and our land exist. Standing Rock will be treasured by those who saw through the lies of the political elite and their sycophants. Historians will write Standing Rock was the pivotal point in USA history when a few Native American Indians and their supporters, stood against the corporate-government-military Leviathan, claiming justice, denying genocidal efforts to eliminate them, and ultimately, at great cost, won a victory for humanity.

The actions of the political elite, their lies, propaganda, deceit, betrayal, smiling faces, cannot escape history’s judgment.  You had the opportunity, and you chose betrayal. None of your faces will be carved on Mount Rushmore. Your libraries will be maintained by your minions, but your stature will be demeaned because you represented special interests at the cost of the people of the world. Your money can no longer guarantee your image.  You could have helped but you did not!

AN UNFOLDING STORY . . .

And so, the Standing Rock protest will continue until a wave of public criticism and outrage rises across the land in support of Standing Rock as more than a specific event, but in support of the timeless values of justice, peace, honor, dignity, and morality. Standing Rock will enter history books and classrooms as an example of “people power,” but more important it will enter history books, classrooms, board rooms, think tanks, as an ignored iconic event that changed the course of USA history.

Anthony J. Marsella, Ph.D., a  member of the TRANSCEND Network, is a past president of Psychologists for Social Responsibility, emeritus professor of psychology at the University of Hawaii, and past director of the World Health Organization Psychiatric Research Center in Honolulu. He is known nationally and internationally as a pioneer figure in the study of culture and psychopathology who challenged the ethnocentrism and racial biases of many assumptions, theories, and practices in psychology and psychiatry. In more recent years, he has been writing and lecturing on peace and social justice. He has published 15 edited books, and more than 250 articles, chapters, book reviews, and popular pieces. He can be reached at marsella@hawaii.edu.

 

Who are the real environmental terrorists??? Part 2.

 

An estimated crowd of 35-50,000 gathers near the Washington Monument on Feb 17, 2013 to protest the Keystone XL pipeline and support action on climate change.
Image by Jmcdaid and licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

Identifying the real environmental terrorists, the despoilers of planet earth, the greedy deniers of climate change who toss the future of our world to the smoggy winds, is not such a difficult task. The more critical question right now is who will take them on? Who will work to end the madness?

A recent report from the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication reveals that there are a lot of Americans who say they will take action.  Based on their research, the program reports that nearly 30% of Americans have joined or would join a campaign to convince elected officials to take action to reduce global warming.

And, perhaps most important, “One in four Americans would support an organization engaging in non-violent civil disobedience against corporate or government activities that make global warming worse (24%) and one in six (17%) say they would personally engage in such activities.”

Certainly Americans and others around the world are personally engaging in protests against Big Oil, Big Coal, Gigantic Corporate Media and other mega-groups too big for their britches.

In a recent Truthout article, Jeremy Brecher gives us some cause for optimism. From May 4-15, 2016, just a couple of months from now,  environmental groups from around the world, including Greenpeace, will hold a global week of action called Break Free From Fossil Fuels.

The profiteers who wreak havoc on our environment will want to call the protestors environmental terrorists if they put a foot over the wrong line, but the environmentalists are not going to let the power brokers define them.  As Brecher says, “Break Free From Fossil Fuels participants will define themselves to the movement, the public and the courts not as criminals but as law-enforcers trying to enforce legal rights and halt governments and corporations from committing the greatest crime in human history.”

Those of us who want the earth to survive would do well to support that movement.

Kathie Malley-Morrison, Professor of Psychology