Open Thread

As Philly-based Gopuff goes global, its delivery drivers demand better pay and work conditions

https://www.inquirer.com/business/gopuff-union-drivers-pay-petition-philly-instacart-20210828.html

Another $1 billion for GoPuff as out-of-town capital floods Philly firms

https://www.inquirer.com/business/gopuff-softbank-funds-capital-temple-university-heart-disease-amazon-20210323.html

Alumni Founders of GoPuff Dedicate Torah Scroll to Drexel Chabad
Two 25-year-old graduates channel their business success

https://www.chabad.org/news/article_cdo/aid/4024140/jewish/Alumni-Founders-of-GoPuff-Dedicate-Torah-Scroll-to-Drexel-Chabad.htm

Was “GoPuff” ever Philly-based? Does the fervent ideology of people such as Gola and Ilishayev drain local communities in the interest of their own worldwide community?

Impeachment is so yesterday. The 25th amendment is ready to go. The one primary candidate to win not a single delegate will be President. Democracy in action.

https://twitter.com/stacyfmitchell/status/1430149663735402514

Big box stores have found new ways to loot the communities who have foolishly hosted them. The complicity of the courts in helping them run their property tax-avoidance swindles makes me think that the Federalist Society ghouls have succeeded in turning the courts into the kind of venues appropriate to the third-world economy we have become.

I doubt it too NR, but impeachment makes for good theater and it helps serve as a distracting cover for Congress not accomplishing anything except maintaining the status quo trend of increasing wealth concentration. So, impeachment proceedings will now be a permanent political feature I believe.

https://mtracey.substack.com/p/what-the-media-hasnt-told-you-about

Cuomo railroaded. Even if you didn’t like the guy or the way he ran things, this kind of circus of orchestrated false accusations with press complicity is creepy, smirking corruption to a brazen degree.

It’s like everything some of us were idealistic about in the 70s like feminism, civil rights or pacifism has been perverted. The people who pretend to represent those things now only do it as a front to cover their tracks for pursuing the opposite of anything those ideals once meant.

@ someofparts

It was certainly interesting that almost immediately on the election of Joe Biden and the bare Democratic majorities in the House and Senate, movements to remove the Democratic governors of two of the most populous states kicked into high gear and in the case of Cuomo was successful, in the case of Gavin Newsom may be successful in September (to be replaced with a Republican as was the case with the California recall of
Gray Davis) with the eager complicity of the media and perhaps strangely, perhaps not, the non or less than enthusiastic support of the Democratic Party apparatus for the retention of the threatened — elected — Democratic governors.

Smells fishy.

And yes to this:

It’s like everything some of us were idealistic about in the 70s like feminism, civil rights or pacifism has been perverted. The people who pretend to represent those things now only do it as a front to cover their tracks for pursuing the opposite of anything those ideals once meant.

We are in the midst of a slow moving fascist coup. Elections only count, are only “legitimate,” if they win them. Black and brown voters get dis-enfranchised because they vote the “wrong” way. And aside from some minor grumbling, we allow this to happen. Meanwhile the Democrats continue to promote mediocrities and express surprise when even these aren’t acceptable enough to the right and are subverted. And as all this is going on, we can’t even call the fascists fascists because that would be impolite, because America is exceptional and because because there can be no fascists here.

https://www.amazon.com/No-Good-Men-Among-Living/dp/1250069262/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2E15S5PGXMX7N&dchild=1&keywords=no+good+men+among+the+living&qid=1630255211&s=books&sprefix=no+good+men+a%2Cstripbooks%2C234&sr=1-1#customerReviews

I’m just reading the reviews of this book and learning so much. The book itself is highly recommended by Ryan Grim at his twitter feed.

@Hugh,

The Conservanons have an 80 year head start on the Liberanons on membership in the gun culture. The comparatively gunless state of the mass majority of Liberanons, including contamination of the Liberanon mindset with the filth of subhuman pacifist subhumanism, are what set up the Liberanons for encrushment beneath the slow-moving tank treads of the Conservanon fascist slow-rolling takeover.

diff clue – Nobody was supporting Cuomo or his administration. The point was that orchestrated, made-up smears to target public figures is not a tactic to be encouraged. It sounds kinda like you did not read the link, or that would be clear.

And as all this is going on, we can’t even call the fascists fascists because that would be impolite, because America is exceptional and because because there can be no fascists here.

Merriam Webster’s (my favorite) definitions of fascism:

1 often capitalized : a political philosophy, movement, or regime (such as that of the Fascisti) that exalts nation and often race above the individual and that stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition

2 : a tendency toward or actual exercise of strong autocratic or dictatorial control early instances of army fascism and brutality

This applies to both parties. Perhaps the simplest way to state it is that the parties are offering their own versions of “hard” and “soft” fascism, though that’s hardly paints the entire picture.

Anyway, what can possibly be gained expending an iota of energy complaining or worrying about whether a given label can be applied? It’s divisive and counterproductive.

Wiki’s take on fascism is less susceptible to false equivalence than Webster’s: “Fascism is a form of far-right, authoritarian ultranationalism characterized by dictatorial power, forcible suppression of opposition, and strong regimentation of society and of the economy.” It goes on to say that say that fascists consider their violence as justifiable and their nationalism manifests in the form of an emphasis on racial purity. Naturally, this has nothing to do with America’s own right wing whites-only, we don’t need no stinking elections movement, except it does.

As for Biden almost losing the election, he won by 74 electoral votes 306-232 in our anti-democratic electoral college and by 5.9 million in the popular vote. Only in the US with our increasingly joke democracy would this be taken as close.

The corruption of the Congressional Republicans works as follows: they vote as a block and as long as they continue to do so they will benefit from the legal bribery in our political system but they won’t have anyone crawling up their ass to try to find grounds to blackmail them unless they’re a Senate or House leader like McConnell who gives directions to the Republican block.

The corruption of the Congressional Democrats works like this: they are balkanized against acting in the interests of the U.S. working class and poor because they had the bribery and blackmail brothers, and Centerview business partners, Rahm Emanuel and Robert Rubin working their carrot-and-stick dark magic within the party. Emanuel worked in Congress and the executive office and probably used private Israeli intelligence companies and the Mossad to dig up and use dirt against democratic politicians and troublesome federal staff to blackmail them while Robber Rubin worked the kinder bribery side of their operations with all his Wall Street contacts (see Clinton, Bill). The Fed and financial markets are dominated by forces that ally themselves with Rubin and Emanuel.

Put the dynamics of the two parties together and there is absolutely nothing pro-worker of any significance that will ever pass through Congress that will benefit the vast majority of U.S. citizens and remove the heavy boot of capital and debt off of our necks. At least not before the country falls apart due to infrastructure breakdown and global warming.

That’s why Hawley is Enemy Number One of the group that Rubin and Emanuel represents and why they and their useful idiots call for Hawley to resign for the treason … ha ha ha, that’s an hilarious term coming from this group who doesn’t give one f*ck about this country … of giving an air-fist bump to the January 6th crowd before they broke into the Capitol Building. Mind you also that the air-fist bump was very likely done simply in acknowledgement to the crowd calling his name and that the media narrative about an armed insurrection busting into the Capitol Building with anything close to a cohesive plan to overthrow the government has been either totally squashed or walked back. None of it has been corroborated as far as I know. No one from the crowd was caught with weapons in the building. The zip tie guys actually found the zip ties in the Capitol Building. There has been no evidence that the cop who died was beaten or directly and purposefully murdered by anyone involved in the cosplay insurrection. Unfortunately for the crowd though their clown hero Trump, true to form, acted like a selfish coward and didn’t pardon them for taking part in a patriotic riot that he himself incited as president.

The only political way out of this vice grip is electing someone like Hawley as president, as flawed as he may seem. At least he has some romantic notion about the U.S. family and cares about the country in those terms while scumbags like Rubin and Emanuel don’t give one damn about this country at all. The U.S. worker and their family are just cattle to them and a commodity to be exploited to further their aims.

Therefore, our rulers primary political concern is that Hawley might become president and actually use the executive powers to benefit the U.S. family and go after Big Tech and, most importantly, our financial market overlords while there is absolutely no chance that a democratic presidential candidate will make it through the campaign financing structure and vetting process that Rubin and Emanuel have designed and installed within the democratic party. Hawley can bypass the “donor class” and appeal to the U.S. worker directly and that’s why they fear him the most and we get these ridiculous media campaigns to bury Hawley for the January 6th cosplay insurrection for the “treason” of giving the crowd an air-fist bump on his way into the building to do Congressional business.

Grim conclusion: There are no political solutions available to the abused U.S. working class and poor for the next four years unless they unite in a General Strike and force Biden/Harris to do something to mitigate it. In 2024 the only political solution presently fathomable is if Hawley gets elected as president.

Z

I object to Hugh’s use of the term, “fascist”, as an epithet for whatever in politics he does not like for two reasons. First, this usage undermines any understanding of historical fascism as a complex phenomenon in the interwar period. Second, as far as I can tell, Hugh intends the name-calling to foreclose any inquiry into current dynamics of American politics. “Fascist” and “racist” is all anyone of good will needs to know, case closed, shut up, is the message.

To me, the “fascist” and “racist” name-calling is representative of a politics of tendentitious narratives that aim primarily at virtue-signalling and feeling superior to some “other” group, whose actual concerns, interests, anxieties and views are to be disrespected and ignored. The effect on the plurality who largely ignore politics is overlooked.

Actual historical fascism was a kind of totalitarianism that mobilized millions. American politics today is in a state well-described by Sheldon Wolin as inverted totalitarianism, a kind of totalitarianism not its opposite, but one driven by top-down management of politics by business corporations where the public drama of controversies is stage-managed.

I feel Hugh’s insistence on a narrative of villains in the electorate of the other Party serves to distract us from the reality of a top-down politics, where giving false hope to those inclined to be faithful partisan loyalists is stock-in-trade for the professionals who run the campaigns, write the newscopy and the spokesmodel politicians occupying high office.

I accept that the country is already enveloped by a corrupt, oligarchic authoritarianism and driving on toward more, but I think the professional and managerial classes, represented in the Democratic Party, are pushing for corruption and authoritarianism and are not willing to resist their Republican counterparts on behalf of principle or the general public.

The War’s Epitaph:

https://theintercept.com/2021/08/26/afghanistan-america-failures/

bruce, thank you for saying it better than I ever could.

Mike Barry, don’t you have a QAnon meeting you’re late for?