Author: Ian Welsh Page 58 of 436

Every time one mentions that Biden has committed genocide, someone says “But Trump will be worse!”

Well, here’s your answer:

If you don’t get this something is wrong with your ability to put yourself in other people’s shoes.

“All of our missiles, the ammunition, the precision-guided bombs, all the airplanes and bombs, it’s all from the US. The minute they turn off the tap, you can’t keep fighting. You have no capability. … Everyone understands that we can’t fight this war without the United States. Period.”

Also, the idea of “holding them accountable after they’re elected” is almost entirely bullshit. It rarely works. Pre-election is your point of maximum leverage, not after. Especially if a politician is in power, make them do something for you before you vote for them.

But, basically, “Democrats killed your family, but Trump will be as bad or worse” isn’t going to convince people whose families Biden killed to vote Democratic.

If you think it will, something is wrong with you.

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Joe’s Out And The Election Is No Longer In The Bag For Trump

By Ian Welsh

On July 22, 2024

25 Comments

So, an attempted Presidential assassination, and now Biden has stepped down as nominee.

My fellow Democrats, I have decided not to accept the nomination and to focus all my energies on my duties as President for the remainder of my term. My very first decision as the party nominee in 2020 was to pick Kamala Harris as my Vice President. And it’s been the best decision I’ve made. Today I want to offer my full support and endorsement for Kamala to be the nominee of our party this year. Democrats — it’s time to come together and beat Trump. Let’s do this.

Primary pressure seems to have been funneled thru Nancy Pelosi.

The most important thing is that the election is no longer in the bag for Trump. There was no way, minus a deus ex machina that Trump would lose against Biden, but it’s not so sure with another candidate.

Those who would never vote for Biden, mostly because of genocide, are now in play if the nominee can keep from bowing too deep to AIPAC and Netanyahu. After all, Trump spends all his time talking about how he’d have done more to genocide than even Biden did. And Biden not stepping down is helping with this: the nominee can pretend they’re less of a psychopathic mass murderer than Biden or Trump without having to actually walk the walk.

In general this is an opportunity for the nominee to run populist and gut Trump’s appeal.

Odds are the candidate will be Kamala Harris, especially as she can draw on the fund raising already done for Trump/Harris and no one else can, but we’ll see if a viable alternative arises. Drama in the nomination process would keep attention on Democrats and off Trump.

Kamala is a bad candidate, but so is Trump. He was a very unpopular president, and looks good only compared to Biden, who was even more unpopular.

No predictions as to who wins, but the election is back in play.

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Open Thread

By Ian Welsh

On July 20, 2024

18 Comments

Use to discuss topics unrelated to recent posts.

Scratch A CEO, Find A Fascist

By Ian Welsh

On July 19, 2024

12 Comments

Not that they require fascism, but they’re OK with it:

David Zaslav, the CEO of CNN’s parent company, at the Allen & Co. media conference in Sun Valley, Idaho, on Tuesday:

Asked about the upcoming Presidential election, Zaslav said it mattered less to him which party wins, so long as the next president was friendly to business.

“We just need an opportunity for deregulation, so companies can consolidate and do what we need to be even better.”

One of the few things Biden has been good on is anti-trust, so this means Trump.

In a similar vein:

The pull quote:

“France’s corporate bosses are racing to build contacts with Marine Le Pen’s far right after recoiling from the radical tax-and-spend agenda of the rival leftwing alliance in the country’s snap parliamentary elections”.

The left, and real left, not the so-called “Center Left” will always be opposed by corporations, just as most of them opposed FDR. They want to get bigger and richer, whether that’s good for the country or not. High marginal tax rates, vigorous anti-trust and high corporate tax rates with laws forbidding stock options and other nonsense produced America and Western Europe’s best economy in history—the post-war states from 45 on.

Of course, during that time period the CEO/Worker pay ratio tended towards 30/1 or so.

But, as we all know, workers made enough so that a single wage-earner could support a family, and as for GDP growth rates, well:

These charts are pretty clear. Consolidation and deregulation do not lead to higher GDP growth, and that’s leaving aside redistribution.

This is important because the argument for deregulation and allowing consolidation was that it would make growth better and that there would be a “trickle down” which would leave everyone better off even if inequality soared.

Well, we did get trickled on, I suppose

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How Much Does Genocide In Gaza Effect The US Presidential Election?

By Ian Welsh

On July 18, 2024

26 Comments

I’ve been saying it mattered a lot for quite some time, but, finally, some numbers:

Foreign policy debates rarely determine U.S. presidential elections, although polling suggests that 2024 might be an exception. Nationwide, nearly 4 in 10 voters (38 percent) say they are less likely to vote for President Biden because of his handling of the war in Gaza, according to a July 2024 Century Foundation/Morning Consult poll of 1,834 registered U.S. voters. Many core constituencies—including independents, swing state likely voters, and Democratic Party activists—are angry at Biden’s unqualified support for the Israeli assault on Gaza.

The issue isn’t that people who hate genocide will vote Trump, he’s pro-genocide as well. Instead it’s that they will stay home or vote third party and that if they do hold their nose and vote Democratic, they’re less likely to donate or, more importantly, to volunteer.

In a close election, and Biden’s best case is a close election, that matters.

To put it simply, Biden decided that mass-murdering Palestinians in service to AIPAC and Zionism was more important than being re-elected, and in affect that all the things he claims to care about which might help Americans are less important than helping Israel commit genocide.

That’s a choice, just like his choice to run again even though he’s clearly in serious decline and obviously can’t act as President for another four years.

Biden has chosen to lose the election, and anyone who blames anyone but Biden for his loss is full of it.

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Get Out If You Can. If Not, Prepare

By Ian Welsh

On July 16, 2024

29 Comments

Starting in 2009 and especially after Citizens United, I’ve been advising Americans who can get out to do so. I recognize that many people can’t: you have to “shelter in place”, but for those who are able to leave America and haven’t, well, the advice is the same, but more urgent.

The US is no longer meaningfully a Democracy. The funneling of wealth and income to oligarchs continues unabated and even accelerated during the pandemic. Official economic statistics from the US are now almost entirely fantasy based: completely unrelated to reality due to how inflation and other statistics are “calculated” and due to the over-reliance of GDP, which is no longer tracking welfare.

The massive increases in necessities like food is a very very bad sign.

The possibility of civil war is real, and so is the chance of collapse. Nothing is going to get better for the majority of Americans; everything is going to get worse.

So, at the least, if you can get a second passport, do it. If you don’t have any passport, apply for one. If you can go somewhere reasonable and make a decent living, consider it. If you’re rich enough to set up a second citizenship and home, get it done.

Where to go is difficult. If you speak Mandarin and they’ll let you in, China’s not a bad choice. Avoid the UK unless you have no other options: Britain is in terminal decline. In general Europe is in decline and the chance of the Atlantic Meridian Overturning Current (AMOC) stopping makes it questionable for those who are younger or who have children, but while Europe is going down, the welfare state still exists and will take longer to go away, so long as you choose your destination carefully. (Obviously Greece is out of the question.)

Canada is trending right hard, and is “too close” to America, but if you can’t get anywhere else and have money or skills in demand, it might work for you. This is especially true if you’re healthy, younger and comfortable on the frontier, of which there is still plenty.

The truth is that there are no longer any completely “safe” choices. But there are places where government and society are more functional and more caring, and where the destruction of the welfare state (which includes, oh, universal healthcare, functioning power and sewage) is less far along.

If you have to stay and indeed if you’re in many countries, do what you can to improve your “grid collapse resistance.” Brownouts and blackouts and failures of water systems will become worse. A couple of big camping batteries + solar recharging may keep key electrical appliances running. Find some way to store or produce water and keep some surplus food around. If you’ve got power, water and a way to boil said water, something as simple as a lot of vacuum packed rice and beans can keep you going for quite a while.

In general, take measures. Assume that things are going to keep getting worse for the rest of your life. There will be some exceptions, but there’s no way the majority of people can or will avoid these trends.

Don’t sleep on this. Back in 2009 it wasn’t urgent, but we’re now at the point where local collapse or violence is a real possibility: we don’t know when exactly, but we do know the conditions have been met. Once that happens, when is hard to predict, but bad is dead simple to predict.

Dead being the operative word.

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Hard To Care About the Attempted Assassination Of Trump

By Ian Welsh

On July 13, 2024

19 Comments

Disputed if this picture is real, but it doesn’t matter, it’ll be the iconic picture.

Obviously it makes him more likely to be elected. Obviously you can’t call someone Hitler and a fascist and a threat to everything good without an increased chance for violence. If he is Hitler reborn, after all, killing him would be the right thing to do.

Blame will be apportioned, whether rightly or wrongly, and it increases the chance and amount of violence and repression down the line when and if Trump becomes President.

I don’t, personally, care much except as regards the consequences. I wouldn’t care if Trump or Biden was killed, not for them, anyway. They’re both mass murderers and Trump has spent the last nine months going on about how much he supports the Gaza genocide.

That said, I wouldn’t kill either myself or advise anyone to assassinate them, as it is counter-productive and pointless. Both of them are symptoms, not causes, and if Trump had been killed whoever replaced him would have been as bad or worse and likely won on a sympathy/vengeance surge.

America’s problems aren’t about any individual. If only it were so.

(Also, I don’t see why everyone’s so worked up. As Trump once said about a school shooting, “get over it.” This is the country the right and neoliberals wanted: all these weapons available + an economic and political pressure cooker. What did you think would happen?)

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