GLEN FORD—Trump has slunk off the national stage for the time being, but we must remember who made him a contender for president in the first place: the Democrats and their corporate media. As Wikileaks revealed , the Clinton campaign encouraged friendly media to boost Trump’s Republican primary prospects, hoping to set up a straw man that could easily be knocked down in November, 2016. By Election Day, the corporate press had lavished $5 billion in free media on Trump – more than Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders and all of Trump’s Republican presidential competitors, combined. If you are desperate to flush the stink of four years of Trump out of your brain, remember who put it there, through constant, daily repetition.
CAPITALIST SICKNESS
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Like many liberals, John Oliver is quite eloquent in describing the abuses of capitalism, in this case the “payday” loans industry. The problem is that while liberals are good at diagnosing a social cancer when they see it, they are lousy at recommending the proper therapy. For cancer they recommend some quack remedy. Thus as a full-fledged member of the Democrat courtier media, Oliver is happy to expose and castigate many of the system’s blatant crimes, thereby burnishing his liberal creds, but his comfortable allegiance to the Democratic party—a party that exists precisely to block and co-opt true social change by disarming real opponents of the imperial oligarchy— makes him often an accomplice of the Democrats, rendering his reformist efforts a bit hypocritical and self-defeating.
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RAMIN MAZAHERI—Part 2 of this article will remind us of just how right-wing the US Democratic Party is. This is perfectly obvious when what Joe Biden and his supporters actually believe are held side-by-side with the basic tenets of actual leftism. Because the West is so rabidly anti-leftist the basic, globally similar tenets of leftism are never openly discussed, and thus people get so very confused about what leftism is that they actually come to believe that Democrats are a “left” party on the global political spectrum. That’s absurd.
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ERIC ZUESSE—When the U.S. invades a foreign country, or issues sanctions against a foreign country, it benefits some American investors, not only in corporations such as Lockheed Martin and ExxonMobil, but even in some foreign-headquartered corporations. America’s spending around half of the entire world’s military expenses gives an enormous competitive boost to America’s billionaires, which is paid for by all U.S. taxpayers. It takes away money that would otherwise go toward the rest of the U.S. population — people who might even become crippled or killed by their military service for the benefit of America’s billionaires. Marketing this military service to the public, as “national defense” (actually international aggression) — even at a time when no nation has invaded or even threatened to invade America after 1945 — is good PR for America’s wealthiest families, regardless of whether it’s of any benefit whatsoever to other Americans.
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ERIC ZUESSE—America’s billionaires take advantage of, and exploit, the American people’s equating “socialism” with “communism,” and, so, Americans fear socialization of the healthcare function, though it would actually provide vastly better-quality health care at vastly lower prices.