Lefties taking out other lefties do not make them righties.
Fascism is incompatible with the right as it includes government control of business, amount other things.
The Ten Charateristics.
1. As with China and the Soviet Union. 2. As with China and the Soviet Union and the political Left in the US today. 3. As with China and the Soviet Union and the political Left in the US today. 4. As with China and the Soviet Union. 6. As with China and the Soviet Union and the US today. Those being “cancelled” are rarely on the Left, and when they are, it is because they question the Left. 7. As with China and the Soviet Union. 8. Communism and often socialism are Sate religions. 9. Yes, but this is NOT an idea held by the Right in the US. Who was it that forced banks restrict corporate account holders based upon the policies they supported? 10. The Left in the US owes much of its power to labor unions but have long not been on the side of the memberships of them. 11 and 12 are of issue in the US today but can not be creditably argued as anything other than the pendulum swing back after excesses. 13. Long been a growing problem in the US. However, I will refer to my earlier question on who subordinated the banking sector to enforce its political policies. FATCA/FBAR and CBT are other areas to look into too. 14. Even been threatened with death as a child because your guardian witnessed ballot box stuffing as an election judge in a country that had never elected anything but democrats to any office since the civil war? I have. The threat was delivered to my guardian when they asked “What is this!?” When after the polls closed a large number of ballots were brought in the back door and dumped in tho the ballot box. The threat was delivered openly in front of the Sheriff who stared at my guardian as it was delivered. learned of this years later when I told my guardian that the crews of US naval vessels home-ported in Japan did not receive their ballots in time to vote for the election that Bill Clinton won. Inquiries indicated that this may have been a service wide problem.
In reference to FDR’s quote, look into the ESG scoring system.
AGAIN - Nazis are not now - and never were - "the left". That's a rightwing canard and a persistent fallacious trope. If you want to get set-straight in a debate, in short order - try running that past Professor Richard Wolff, who has heard that brand of nonsense, before.
Congratulations - it sounds like you're slowly coming around to the awareness that you live in a Fascist = Corporatist = "Corporate Socialist" Police State. Which we've been, at least since the Civil War, to some extent - but ever increasingly so.
Neither Bill Clinton, nor Hillary Rodham are actual leftists... Nor have they ever been, in reality. She's a "Goldwater Girl" sent in, to infiltrate the left long ago. Her college thesis means nothing - Saul Alinsky is nobody on the actual left. We never talk about him - but maybe she does, I have no idea.
FDR was an Elite Corporatist - a scion of the Delano family (opium pushers for the Queen, in China). The Wobblies, and people in the CIO were leftists - the AFL - much less so.
What you're pointing towards is the reality that both the USSR and China were TOTALITARIAN States. Communism doesn't kill people - Nation STATES kill people. And the elevation of the State to a "religion", is a common trait in almost every State. But what the USSR had, and the PRC have - is nothing like the Religious States of France or England, or Iran or Saudi Arabia.
Fr. Blase Bonpane, used to preach leftist fire and brimstone about the religion of "Americanism" which is the platform upon which Trump stood - and many before him. That is significantly different from Theocracy, or the marriage between the Catholic Church and the Third Reich, under Pius the 2nd.
Vietnam and Cuba,are both significantly better for Human Rights, than either the US Empire, or their US-backed prior Governments.
Let's not forget that the USSR was founded by a guy with backing from German Intelligence, and was funded by Wall Street.
And from it's very inception - it was assailed from without, and within, by invasion, civil warfare, and internal dissension - all fueled by people like "Reilly Ace of Spies", the UK, US, Wall Street and City of London.
That kind of stuff can rightly make you paranoid. And it led directly, to something called "War Communism" - and the rise of a Totalitarian Police State.
The Paris Commune wasn't known for it's Gulags or Secret Police. Nothing in Marx and Engles demands a Totalitarian approach...being surrounded by a planet full of ruthless nations, committed to your destruction does that, all by itself.
Please compare the Communists in this video - rallying for the Metaphorical death of the Klan - as a racist, rightwing organization - to the Klansmen who showed up - with the blessings of the local cops, and the FBI, to kill them, in a very non-metaphorical way.
I've been an Anti-Fascist, since the 1970's. There is no Grand Lodge of Anti-Fascism handing out Charters and Membership cards - like there is for the Klan, and various other Rightwing bodies. ANYONE can declare themselves to be "Antifa", sadly...even cops and intelligence assets... And promoting violence between left and right is a "strategy of tension" that goes back quite a ways. Frankly, some of these little idiots calling themselves "Antifa" piss me off enough that I want to slap the taste out of their mouths, too. But they are hardly a monolith. And the lack of prosecutions for the violence and "rioting" in 2020 - along with my own first hand observations, tells me that most of that was done by Feds and Cops and Informants - Like "Umbrella Man" from Minneapolis. He was rightly ID'ed as a St. Paul cop - despite their belated, and unconvincing attempt, to provide him with an Alibi. The other guy, that they tried to pin that on, was a Prison Nazi, and part of an Outlaw MC...SO CLEARLY, not a leftist in either event.
#9 is TOTALLY true of the Right in the US - which is why the Koch Brothers spent so much $ on bolstering the Tea Party and modern GOP. It's still Corporate Socialism and Corporate Welfare, at the end of the day - that even Dominionist Xristianists are supporting. People have rights, and aren't even subject to US or STATE Income Taxes, in the several States. But PERSONS - are ALWAYS within the US Corporation, and in Interstate commerce, as a De Jure Matter. So keeping the rightwing shock troops confused, and hyped about Taxes - serves the goals of Koch Industries - which is a PERSON, and not a living breathing child of God. Keeping people confused about who and where they really are - is part of the scam that keeps the right fighting against their own interests.
Along with all of racist Obama caricatures, depicting him as witch doctor, complete with a bone through his nose...one of my favorite Tea Party signs was "Keep Your Government Hands Off of MY MEDICARE!!!". Yeah... That was a real thing.
Even one of the Koch brothers' think tanks admitted - that a Single Payer system, would improve healthcare distribution, while lowering costs overall. Now that doesn't mean a Nationalized Medicare Bureaucracy, necessarily. It COULD mean that every private Doctor and Hospital just sends their bills in to the Treasury, the same way that the Pentagon does... with no questions asked. The experience of the last few years has cured me of any desire to see HHS doing ANYTHING, but cutting checks to Hospitals and Doctors, based upon mutual and informed consent with the patients, and ethical medicine as each provider sees it. And prior to this attempted Genocide - Single Payer healthcare was actually majority popular, even with the Republican base... about 70%+ popular overall, with all voters.
Yes, we have all heard the “But pure communism hasn’t been tried” argument. Human nature prevents it. China and the Soviet Union are the natural progression of a system that must take possession of private property to set up.
Yes, Cuba’s human rights are so wonderful that people risk dying at sea to escape it. Likewise, the US so bad that there are not large numbers risking death to enter.
As a friend of mine liked to say, apply the gate test to different forms of government. Open the gates and see which people flow.
People flee Cuba - because we've been crushing their Economy for more than 60 years - with an Illegal blockade and Sanctions. And the CIA beams messages into their country telling them that the goodlife and a hand up onto the deck of a US Vessel - is just a raft ride away.
The vast majority of Cubans are happy with their Government - and that's why our Coup and Color Revolution attempts always go nowhere. You know who wants to flee ti freedom? People in Haiti and Guatemala and El Salvador... But because we support the Tyrrany being imposed upon them - they're NEVER welcome. That's the core of the rightwing Trumpist appeal - turning back the people (refugees/asylum seekers) fleeing the effects of OUR NeoLiberal and Fascist foreign policies.
If 'Socialism Never Works' - why do we have to spend TRILLIONS trying to destroy it? You'd think we could just stand back and watch it organically collapse into its own footprint, at freefall speed - like WTC7...
NO. The reality is that Venezuela, under Chavez had a rapidly improving set of social metrics (life expectancy, literacy, decreasing infant mortality and homelessness rates, etc.), and a GROWING GDP... People were fleeing there, from the NeoLiberal paradise in Colombia. Which is WHY the US declared them to be a "bad(=good) example" that had to be subjected to redoubled hybrid warfare efforts. And STILL people are poor there - but they have healthcare and access to education. The Slums of Caracas have been replaced with Social Housing... If you're looking for people sleeping under bridges - you need to head somewhere else. That's not really a thing, there or in Cuba.
Do I need to go into Bolivia? Morales cut extreme poverty rates in half, in just a decade or so. That's why Trump and the fascists had to do a Coup. And given a somewhat free and fair election - the Coup leader just got replaced, and sentenced to 10 years in prison (the Government is appealing for a longer sentence - and she deserves it. If they had the Death Penalty - that would be the appropriate punishment). Apparently the Bolivians didn't get the memo, from the well endowed Rothschild Chairs in Anti-Communism.
Bullshit - we had equal access to unaffordable care, that bankrupts the sick, and makes insurance companies and Wall Street quite wealthy. Barack Obama had the perfect opportunity to push through a Single Payer system - since the Democrats controlled both houses of Congress... But they represent Wall Street and Goldman Sachs - not their voters... And you had the Kochs warning everyone to avoid a system that a decade later, they admitted works better, for less cost (and less rapacious Wall Street profits, too). That's why we started the Occupy Movement - which was remarkably diverse in its makeup and political spread.
I haven't been to Japan since I was an exchange student under Reagan, in 1984. So I can't speak to their system of healthcare.
Single payer systems around the world bankrupt the entire nation that has them. The system, such as it can be called a system with at least 50 different subsystems was certainly not performing any where near optimal, yet offered far better than elsewhere. In the UK, Canada and Japan, everyone pays for healthcare but many do not receive it. We did not have waiting lists for anything other than transplants as do Canada and the UK. In Japan, they just turn you away, which they call “Taraimawashi”. Perhaps you can explain this for me. No one else has even tried. Why is a system that denies you what you paid for superior to one that you have difficulty paying for what you received?
If you're a US citizen - you (and your labor) are collateral on the Federal Debt. You are property, Chattel - enslaved by the Federal Reserve, which creates an account with a given amount of fiat money in it, when you're born.
As such - maintaining their property, is not just in their (and your) best interest, it should be a fiduciary duty. It seems like the system that they've built accepts that the poors will just die untreated, while the prosperous, productive, or lucky - will have no expenses spared, to prolong their lives and bolster their health.
If you're a Koch or a Walton, even one of the trust fund-syphoning 'black sheep' - you can just pay cash. If you have Cadillac healthcare - like most executives, and the President, and people in Congress - your insurance will pay whatever it costs. But if you're lower down on the social pyramid - your insurance will just look for ways to get rid of you, as soon as your benefits start exceeding your premiums significantly.
Michael Moore and others have laid out this disparity. One former Insurance Executive (Wendell Potter) talks about all of the tricks that they use to cancel and drop people, after taking in their premiums for decades. And for most people, the insurance comes from a job that you can never afford to lose... But if you get sick enough, they may have to let you go, since you can't come in anymore. And there goes your coverage.
Rationing is a Choice. You see how we write checks for Ukrainian NAZIS? The sky is the limit. It could be that way for paying for the Doctors and Hospitals of your choices, too. It's all Monopoly money. MMT posits that there are limits - but that we never have to hit them, if we don't spend it all on weapons and cash for Israelis - who ALSO have State-sponsored healthcare.
Cuba does remarkably well on the healthcare front. In a world where we weren't in a neverending state of warfare against them - they'd be a model for the world. As it is, they provide healthcare all over the place, and they train great doctors, who get by with limited resources, admirably. They have their own biomedical tech industry, too. Interferon alpha worked against Covid, quite well, according to reports. I have no idea how their traditional-type Covid Vaccine works, or the safety profile - but I suspect that it works far better than the rest, and doesn't kill and injure people needlessly. The Empire was desperately trying to prevent the WHO from recognizing it - which can only mean good things.
People who complain about British or Canadian healthcare - have never been without insurance, here in the US. And I'm positive that a free people + human socialism system, could put their bureaucratic and miserly systems to shame. Like with their system we could have the State pay the bills - but we could just leave it up to the ethical judgement of Doctors (of the patients' choice) what care is appropriate and worthwhile. If patients want a second or third opinion - we let the Doctors compete for those State $s. And having a single payer for all - means that drug companies and hospitals can't gouge. And we could change our patent laws, to recoup the intellectual property value, that we routinely give away for free, or to line the pockets of people like Fauci.
“And for most people, the insurance comes from a job that you can never afford to lose... But if you get sick enough, they may have to let you go, since you can't come in anymore. And there goes your coverage”. Unbeknownst to mostly Japanese, this is true in Japan as. Receiving benefits from the national health care scheme is dependent upon paying premiums, which stop once one is let go. Such people can still receive benefits if they go to the city office and make payments out of pocket. Extremely few know of this. In my experience, only those who have gone through it, and I would hope, those close enough to them to learn of their plight. Without income, this quickly becomes a drain on the family finances.
I know people here in Japan denied acceptance into hospitals despite being covered. I know people who have lost babies because of this. Meanwhile, in the US, my niece was severally injured in an auto accident that took her mother’s life. She survived because a helicopter landed on the highway to pick her up and transport her to a trauma center in another State. I have no idea where the money for treatment came from as her father, my brother, was and remains of extremely modest means. If my son suffered similar injuries here in Japan, his chances of survival, despite 20 years after my nieces crash, would be next to zero as the ambulance crew would have to find a hospital in our prefecture that had a pediatrician on duty that was not with another patient. Pediatricians are paid less than doctors in most other fields and are overworked, thus few in number. Those I know about have had to wait for over an hour before admission to a hospital. I have read stories of similar in Canada and the UK. For reasons that I will never understand, the systems that offer next to zero reliable care for accident victims are praised to high heaven by those who live under them and those who do not. No one needs to pay huge sums of money out of every paycheck just so they can get a physical check up for “free” and long waiting lists for routine procedures. What is needed form medicine is not care for lifestyle choices, but urgent care for those who are injured or suddenly fall ill. Single payer systems of Canada, the UK and Japan and I’d bet many others fail miserably in this regard, negating any perceived benefit from them and at a cost of bankrupting the entire nation. No thanks.
As a US Citizen living abroad and under FATCA/FBAR and CBT, I know, perhaps more than you, that your opening statement is true. However, none of this answers my question. They argue net in the US before ACA was, “How do I pay for the emergency treatment I received?” Whereas in Japan, Canada, and the UK and probably other places, the question is, “How do I get treatment that I already paid for?” Those are the two options. The number of uninsured persons in the US was small compared against the whole population. The number most usually cited for uninsured in the US includes those in the country illegally. The solution to that problem does need to be a single payer system, nor the monstrosity of ACA.
Uninsured and underinsured together are why the costs are so high when you go to an Emergency room. That $100 aspirin is compensating for those who can't or don't pay. And I have it good authority, that the undocumented from the South pay at a much higher rate than the native born - even when it's from their own pockets. I know, this, because my father ran the ER in Boyle Heights for several decades.
People forced to stay in bad jobs, because they can't afford to risk the loss of insurance, while hunting for a better one, reduces net productivity for our society. Those without jobs rarely have insurance, and as Trump pointed out at one point while running in 2016 - that's a fake statistic, "unemployed" - you have to look at the total jobless numbers, because people fall off of the rolls, at a certain point.
I can't speak to all the possible flaws of systems that don't exist, or problems that exist in other systems. But I can tell you that our open system would work better than it does now, in every possible case, with the Pentagon Budget system, acting as a single payer for everyone. And the benefits to societal productivity would be great. Healthy people are more productive, for longer.
I stopped reading after the first sentence. You are not responding to the reality I shared with you. Despite being paid up in full, one is routinely denied the emergency room in Japan and can be in Canada and the UK. This is especially true for children, pregnant women. More so if one does not look Japanese. They have paid, yet are denied emergency treatment in a timely manner.
There still are. We just AREN'T supporters of the Blue Team in the MONOPARTY Kayfabe.
So anyone $hilling for the Democrats is either not really on the left - or they're VERY confused, and playing some kind of "long game", that they're doomed to lose. Few people know this - but Barack Hussein Obama - is Dick Cheney's cousin. He comes from a CIA family, not a socialist one...and his REAL dad wasn't even Kenyan...
The Blue Team has adopted 'Wokeness', as an attempt to indulge a popular impulse on the left, that need not become the pathology that they have deliberately turn it into. The basis for what some now call CRT - I've always known as "American History" + "Ethnic Studies". I took many upper division classes that explored those ideas, without any injury to my whiteness. But the BEST classes in that vein, also took into account Class and Power...
Prior to the movement against Unaccountable (often racist and/or classist) Police Violence and Murders - being hijacked by some unscrupulous opportunists, and rebranded as "BLM" - some REAL LEFTISTS started the StolenLives.org project, and October22.org coalition. Those groups were old enough to vote, before BLM was a hashtag... Look at the pictures in the collage of victims at the first site. There's plenty of white folks. But because the organizational basis was universal, non-divisive and class based...they couldn't get two column inches in any paper... Even when the cops showed up and brutally attacked them, in Police Riots. And never were their names heard on the nightly news, either. They were a populist appeal that could cross over from poor right to poor left. The Democrats hated them just as much as the Republicans.
And I will perhaps be willing to join you, and make common cause on many issues.
My politics for the commons are on the left - but until we have human socialism, I eschew any Government Handouts or assistance - because the costs are too high, and the deal being offered just SUCKS...
And I'm capable enough, and have enough "privilege" that I can squeak by without it. But I understand that the disabled, for instance, may need help. And those who've been wronged historically, deserve to be made whole, too. Aetna Insurance started off insuring the Slave Trade. That's a corporate liability.
But I happen to be a small r republican, who lives in the California Republic state. I'm not a "Republican" per se. In fact I'm Peace and Freedom, currently - but considering a switch to the Movement for a People's Party. The Jab cultishness and stupidity of fauxgressive wokeness is beginning to push me away from the P&F crew.
I will work with all people of good faith and conscience. Join me, won't you?
A great speaker on history and propaganda about and versus the left - is Michael Parenti. ScrewUToob is littered with shadow banned videos, that come right up with a simple websearch. I highly recommend him.
Human socialism can not exist. Human nature prevents it.
Righting historical wrongs can never work as their is not a people upon this planet that have not, at some time in their past, been enslaved and at other times, been the enslaver. While we may not be able to go back it time far enough to discover every instance, this is true. The best we can do is do all we can to prevent it from happening to us and to keep us from doing it. That involves governments have extremely limited power, being subservient to those they govern. Good luck creating that in today’s environment.
We have a system of law which says that those who've been injured deserve to be made whole. There are no analogs for the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade, which combined slavery with dehumanization. If there are - then let those folks be compensated, as well. We are a Nation whose capital was built by slaves, and whose economic growth was built upon centuries of unwaged labor. Along with that, came laws against literacy, and fomenting familial destruction. There were still some slaves, in Texas, until the 1950's. There were public lynchings all through the 20's and 30's (and on into the 1960's, at least... What year was James Byrd?)... The Tulsa Riot was an attack upon Black Wall Street... And redlining and Jim Crow and social programs that encouraged dependence, or whose benefits were denied to certain groups are all factors. The USA is a unique case.
Human Socialism CAN and actually DOES exist. Workers in Germany sit on Corporate boards. Worker-owned collectives are possible, and can be successful. The limits you're imagining are illusions. The Paris Commune had to be torn apart, by the outside world. Systems based upon sharing, cooperation and collaboration, can be just as productive as systems based upon greed and selfishness and competition.
You are talking nonsense. There is not a single soul alive today who was enslaved in the US to pay reparations to. Nor is there a single person alive today who enslaved anyone within the US from whom to extract reparations from.
Then we have the fact that everyone loves to overlook. Over 300,000 boys in blue never made it home from the war that resulted in the freedom of those enslaved in the US, most of whom were not of the race freed. That debt has been paid in blood.
You're speaking from the easy and comfortable position of someone whose family was never torn apart, and whose ancestors weren't robbed of their labor, and productivity. Your ancestors weren't prevented by law from being literate.
You're clearly ignoring the reality, that if they found slaves on a plantation in Texas in the 1950's - there could quite easily be someone alive today who was enslaved. You're incorrectly supposing that all of the racist injuries ended with slavery, and they did not. Sennet and Cobb's "The Hidden Injuries of Class" showed how poverty is reproduced intergenerationally, in a race neutral context - amongst poor whites in Boston. Add race to the equation and people are double screwed. There was never even the promised 40 acres and a mule - but rather, sharecropping and De Jure discrimination that continues-on, well into the present day - if you know where to look.
Slavery wasn't the only thing those people were fighting over, so let's not oversimplify and over-lionize those who died - many of whom were on the other side of that issue, including in the North.
14th Amendment "citizenship" was never equal to State (or state) Citizenship.
Responsibility is individual. There are none today who are responsible for slavery in the US. Reasons for the war as immaterial as are the reasons a drunk gets behind the wheel. Their reason for the drunk was not to kill whomever he slammed his car into, he just wanted to get home. His victims are dead none the less. regardless of the reasons they went to war, the end result was that the slaves were freed. I wonder if you have read any of the writings of participants of that war written at the time. Though far from universal, a common theme is a gradual change from exposure to the enslaved race from ambivalence or racism to, what would surprise most modern Americans, an open respect and acceptance, though with limits. Abolition came about due to the blood spilt by the US Army and Navy and of the treasure of the criticizes of that time.
Unworkable at any rate. Would immigrants from Africa getting sworn in today be due immigrants from Germany taking the oath of allegiance right next to them? How about the Amish? Native Americans? Anyone who arrived after the abolition? Nonsense. The Nigerians I had the pleasure of drinking with when I first arrived here in Tokyo this time would think your idea absurd in the extreme.
And I have some personal experiences that surprise most because I am white and in Japan. My wife is Japanese as is our kid. He gets victimized by his father’s homeland and his due to one of his parents being a USC and picked on for being a “hafu”, especially “American” one here in Japan. Like my fellow Americans of color, he has features that he was born with that can not be hidden and the idiots of the world take as license to make life as difficult as possible for him, including wanna be do gooders from Europe who apparently thought something must be amiss when an older Gaijin man is walking with what probably looked like to them a full Japanese boy of 4 in the tourist areas of Kyoto. My friends of color in Japan, admittedly have a hard time here too, but there is little doubt that they are the parents of own children as there has been with me and my own son. I’ll leave it here. More can be said, but not to you.
Lefties taking out other lefties do not make them righties.
Fascism is incompatible with the right as it includes government control of business, amount other things.
The Ten Charateristics.
1. As with China and the Soviet Union. 2. As with China and the Soviet Union and the political Left in the US today. 3. As with China and the Soviet Union and the political Left in the US today. 4. As with China and the Soviet Union. 6. As with China and the Soviet Union and the US today. Those being “cancelled” are rarely on the Left, and when they are, it is because they question the Left. 7. As with China and the Soviet Union. 8. Communism and often socialism are Sate religions. 9. Yes, but this is NOT an idea held by the Right in the US. Who was it that forced banks restrict corporate account holders based upon the policies they supported? 10. The Left in the US owes much of its power to labor unions but have long not been on the side of the memberships of them. 11 and 12 are of issue in the US today but can not be creditably argued as anything other than the pendulum swing back after excesses. 13. Long been a growing problem in the US. However, I will refer to my earlier question on who subordinated the banking sector to enforce its political policies. FATCA/FBAR and CBT are other areas to look into too. 14. Even been threatened with death as a child because your guardian witnessed ballot box stuffing as an election judge in a country that had never elected anything but democrats to any office since the civil war? I have. The threat was delivered to my guardian when they asked “What is this!?” When after the polls closed a large number of ballots were brought in the back door and dumped in tho the ballot box. The threat was delivered openly in front of the Sheriff who stared at my guardian as it was delivered. learned of this years later when I told my guardian that the crews of US naval vessels home-ported in Japan did not receive their ballots in time to vote for the election that Bill Clinton won. Inquiries indicated that this may have been a service wide problem.
In reference to FDR’s quote, look into the ESG scoring system.
AGAIN - Nazis are not now - and never were - "the left". That's a rightwing canard and a persistent fallacious trope. If you want to get set-straight in a debate, in short order - try running that past Professor Richard Wolff, who has heard that brand of nonsense, before.
Congratulations - it sounds like you're slowly coming around to the awareness that you live in a Fascist = Corporatist = "Corporate Socialist" Police State. Which we've been, at least since the Civil War, to some extent - but ever increasingly so.
Neither Bill Clinton, nor Hillary Rodham are actual leftists... Nor have they ever been, in reality. She's a "Goldwater Girl" sent in, to infiltrate the left long ago. Her college thesis means nothing - Saul Alinsky is nobody on the actual left. We never talk about him - but maybe she does, I have no idea.
https://covertactionmagazine.com/2022/01/03/there-is-absolutely-no-reason-in-the-world-to-believe-that-bill-clinton-is-a-cia-asset-except-for-all-the-evidence/
https://samsmitharchives.wordpress.com/2015/04/14/6467/
FDR was an Elite Corporatist - a scion of the Delano family (opium pushers for the Queen, in China). The Wobblies, and people in the CIO were leftists - the AFL - much less so.
What you're pointing towards is the reality that both the USSR and China were TOTALITARIAN States. Communism doesn't kill people - Nation STATES kill people. And the elevation of the State to a "religion", is a common trait in almost every State. But what the USSR had, and the PRC have - is nothing like the Religious States of France or England, or Iran or Saudi Arabia.
Fr. Blase Bonpane, used to preach leftist fire and brimstone about the religion of "Americanism" which is the platform upon which Trump stood - and many before him. That is significantly different from Theocracy, or the marriage between the Catholic Church and the Third Reich, under Pius the 2nd.
Vietnam and Cuba,are both significantly better for Human Rights, than either the US Empire, or their US-backed prior Governments.
Let's not forget that the USSR was founded by a guy with backing from German Intelligence, and was funded by Wall Street.
And from it's very inception - it was assailed from without, and within, by invasion, civil warfare, and internal dissension - all fueled by people like "Reilly Ace of Spies", the UK, US, Wall Street and City of London.
https://archive.org/details/HIST3750GreatConspiracyAgainstRussia
That kind of stuff can rightly make you paranoid. And it led directly, to something called "War Communism" - and the rise of a Totalitarian Police State.
The Paris Commune wasn't known for it's Gulags or Secret Police. Nothing in Marx and Engles demands a Totalitarian approach...being surrounded by a planet full of ruthless nations, committed to your destruction does that, all by itself.
Please compare the Communists in this video - rallying for the Metaphorical death of the Klan - as a racist, rightwing organization - to the Klansmen who showed up - with the blessings of the local cops, and the FBI, to kill them, in a very non-metaphorical way.
https://www.c-span.org/video/?324036-1/1979-greensboro-shooting#
I've been an Anti-Fascist, since the 1970's. There is no Grand Lodge of Anti-Fascism handing out Charters and Membership cards - like there is for the Klan, and various other Rightwing bodies. ANYONE can declare themselves to be "Antifa", sadly...even cops and intelligence assets... And promoting violence between left and right is a "strategy of tension" that goes back quite a ways. Frankly, some of these little idiots calling themselves "Antifa" piss me off enough that I want to slap the taste out of their mouths, too. But they are hardly a monolith. And the lack of prosecutions for the violence and "rioting" in 2020 - along with my own first hand observations, tells me that most of that was done by Feds and Cops and Informants - Like "Umbrella Man" from Minneapolis. He was rightly ID'ed as a St. Paul cop - despite their belated, and unconvincing attempt, to provide him with an Alibi. The other guy, that they tried to pin that on, was a Prison Nazi, and part of an Outlaw MC...SO CLEARLY, not a leftist in either event.
https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/charlie-kirk-thinks-the-kkk-and-antifascist-protesters-are-equivalent/
#9 is TOTALLY true of the Right in the US - which is why the Koch Brothers spent so much $ on bolstering the Tea Party and modern GOP. It's still Corporate Socialism and Corporate Welfare, at the end of the day - that even Dominionist Xristianists are supporting. People have rights, and aren't even subject to US or STATE Income Taxes, in the several States. But PERSONS - are ALWAYS within the US Corporation, and in Interstate commerce, as a De Jure Matter. So keeping the rightwing shock troops confused, and hyped about Taxes - serves the goals of Koch Industries - which is a PERSON, and not a living breathing child of God. Keeping people confused about who and where they really are - is part of the scam that keeps the right fighting against their own interests.
Along with all of racist Obama caricatures, depicting him as witch doctor, complete with a bone through his nose...one of my favorite Tea Party signs was "Keep Your Government Hands Off of MY MEDICARE!!!". Yeah... That was a real thing.
Even one of the Koch brothers' think tanks admitted - that a Single Payer system, would improve healthcare distribution, while lowering costs overall. Now that doesn't mean a Nationalized Medicare Bureaucracy, necessarily. It COULD mean that every private Doctor and Hospital just sends their bills in to the Treasury, the same way that the Pentagon does... with no questions asked. The experience of the last few years has cured me of any desire to see HHS doing ANYTHING, but cutting checks to Hospitals and Doctors, based upon mutual and informed consent with the patients, and ethical medicine as each provider sees it. And prior to this attempted Genocide - Single Payer healthcare was actually majority popular, even with the Republican base... about 70%+ popular overall, with all voters.
I have no idea what ESG is.
Then, there are no leftists.
Yes, we have all heard the “But pure communism hasn’t been tried” argument. Human nature prevents it. China and the Soviet Union are the natural progression of a system that must take possession of private property to set up.
Yes, Cuba’s human rights are so wonderful that people risk dying at sea to escape it. Likewise, the US so bad that there are not large numbers risking death to enter.
As a friend of mine liked to say, apply the gate test to different forms of government. Open the gates and see which people flow.
People flee Cuba - because we've been crushing their Economy for more than 60 years - with an Illegal blockade and Sanctions. And the CIA beams messages into their country telling them that the goodlife and a hand up onto the deck of a US Vessel - is just a raft ride away.
The vast majority of Cubans are happy with their Government - and that's why our Coup and Color Revolution attempts always go nowhere. You know who wants to flee ti freedom? People in Haiti and Guatemala and El Salvador... But because we support the Tyrrany being imposed upon them - they're NEVER welcome. That's the core of the rightwing Trumpist appeal - turning back the people (refugees/asylum seekers) fleeing the effects of OUR NeoLiberal and Fascist foreign policies.
If 'Socialism Never Works' - why do we have to spend TRILLIONS trying to destroy it? You'd think we could just stand back and watch it organically collapse into its own footprint, at freefall speed - like WTC7...
NO. The reality is that Venezuela, under Chavez had a rapidly improving set of social metrics (life expectancy, literacy, decreasing infant mortality and homelessness rates, etc.), and a GROWING GDP... People were fleeing there, from the NeoLiberal paradise in Colombia. Which is WHY the US declared them to be a "bad(=good) example" that had to be subjected to redoubled hybrid warfare efforts. And STILL people are poor there - but they have healthcare and access to education. The Slums of Caracas have been replaced with Social Housing... If you're looking for people sleeping under bridges - you need to head somewhere else. That's not really a thing, there or in Cuba.
Do I need to go into Bolivia? Morales cut extreme poverty rates in half, in just a decade or so. That's why Trump and the fascists had to do a Coup. And given a somewhat free and fair election - the Coup leader just got replaced, and sentenced to 10 years in prison (the Government is appealing for a longer sentence - and she deserves it. If they had the Death Penalty - that would be the appropriate punishment). Apparently the Bolivians didn't get the memo, from the well endowed Rothschild Chairs in Anti-Communism.
Oh for crying out loud. You are a walking propaganda speaker. We hands access to health care in the US before the ACA. I live in Japan, BTW.
Bullshit - we had equal access to unaffordable care, that bankrupts the sick, and makes insurance companies and Wall Street quite wealthy. Barack Obama had the perfect opportunity to push through a Single Payer system - since the Democrats controlled both houses of Congress... But they represent Wall Street and Goldman Sachs - not their voters... And you had the Kochs warning everyone to avoid a system that a decade later, they admitted works better, for less cost (and less rapacious Wall Street profits, too). That's why we started the Occupy Movement - which was remarkably diverse in its makeup and political spread.
I haven't been to Japan since I was an exchange student under Reagan, in 1984. So I can't speak to their system of healthcare.
Single payer systems around the world bankrupt the entire nation that has them. The system, such as it can be called a system with at least 50 different subsystems was certainly not performing any where near optimal, yet offered far better than elsewhere. In the UK, Canada and Japan, everyone pays for healthcare but many do not receive it. We did not have waiting lists for anything other than transplants as do Canada and the UK. In Japan, they just turn you away, which they call “Taraimawashi”. Perhaps you can explain this for me. No one else has even tried. Why is a system that denies you what you paid for superior to one that you have difficulty paying for what you received?
If you're a US citizen - you (and your labor) are collateral on the Federal Debt. You are property, Chattel - enslaved by the Federal Reserve, which creates an account with a given amount of fiat money in it, when you're born.
As such - maintaining their property, is not just in their (and your) best interest, it should be a fiduciary duty. It seems like the system that they've built accepts that the poors will just die untreated, while the prosperous, productive, or lucky - will have no expenses spared, to prolong their lives and bolster their health.
If you're a Koch or a Walton, even one of the trust fund-syphoning 'black sheep' - you can just pay cash. If you have Cadillac healthcare - like most executives, and the President, and people in Congress - your insurance will pay whatever it costs. But if you're lower down on the social pyramid - your insurance will just look for ways to get rid of you, as soon as your benefits start exceeding your premiums significantly.
Michael Moore and others have laid out this disparity. One former Insurance Executive (Wendell Potter) talks about all of the tricks that they use to cancel and drop people, after taking in their premiums for decades. And for most people, the insurance comes from a job that you can never afford to lose... But if you get sick enough, they may have to let you go, since you can't come in anymore. And there goes your coverage.
Rationing is a Choice. You see how we write checks for Ukrainian NAZIS? The sky is the limit. It could be that way for paying for the Doctors and Hospitals of your choices, too. It's all Monopoly money. MMT posits that there are limits - but that we never have to hit them, if we don't spend it all on weapons and cash for Israelis - who ALSO have State-sponsored healthcare.
Cuba does remarkably well on the healthcare front. In a world where we weren't in a neverending state of warfare against them - they'd be a model for the world. As it is, they provide healthcare all over the place, and they train great doctors, who get by with limited resources, admirably. They have their own biomedical tech industry, too. Interferon alpha worked against Covid, quite well, according to reports. I have no idea how their traditional-type Covid Vaccine works, or the safety profile - but I suspect that it works far better than the rest, and doesn't kill and injure people needlessly. The Empire was desperately trying to prevent the WHO from recognizing it - which can only mean good things.
People who complain about British or Canadian healthcare - have never been without insurance, here in the US. And I'm positive that a free people + human socialism system, could put their bureaucratic and miserly systems to shame. Like with their system we could have the State pay the bills - but we could just leave it up to the ethical judgement of Doctors (of the patients' choice) what care is appropriate and worthwhile. If patients want a second or third opinion - we let the Doctors compete for those State $s. And having a single payer for all - means that drug companies and hospitals can't gouge. And we could change our patent laws, to recoup the intellectual property value, that we routinely give away for free, or to line the pockets of people like Fauci.
“And for most people, the insurance comes from a job that you can never afford to lose... But if you get sick enough, they may have to let you go, since you can't come in anymore. And there goes your coverage”. Unbeknownst to mostly Japanese, this is true in Japan as. Receiving benefits from the national health care scheme is dependent upon paying premiums, which stop once one is let go. Such people can still receive benefits if they go to the city office and make payments out of pocket. Extremely few know of this. In my experience, only those who have gone through it, and I would hope, those close enough to them to learn of their plight. Without income, this quickly becomes a drain on the family finances.
I know people here in Japan denied acceptance into hospitals despite being covered. I know people who have lost babies because of this. Meanwhile, in the US, my niece was severally injured in an auto accident that took her mother’s life. She survived because a helicopter landed on the highway to pick her up and transport her to a trauma center in another State. I have no idea where the money for treatment came from as her father, my brother, was and remains of extremely modest means. If my son suffered similar injuries here in Japan, his chances of survival, despite 20 years after my nieces crash, would be next to zero as the ambulance crew would have to find a hospital in our prefecture that had a pediatrician on duty that was not with another patient. Pediatricians are paid less than doctors in most other fields and are overworked, thus few in number. Those I know about have had to wait for over an hour before admission to a hospital. I have read stories of similar in Canada and the UK. For reasons that I will never understand, the systems that offer next to zero reliable care for accident victims are praised to high heaven by those who live under them and those who do not. No one needs to pay huge sums of money out of every paycheck just so they can get a physical check up for “free” and long waiting lists for routine procedures. What is needed form medicine is not care for lifestyle choices, but urgent care for those who are injured or suddenly fall ill. Single payer systems of Canada, the UK and Japan and I’d bet many others fail miserably in this regard, negating any perceived benefit from them and at a cost of bankrupting the entire nation. No thanks.
As a US Citizen living abroad and under FATCA/FBAR and CBT, I know, perhaps more than you, that your opening statement is true. However, none of this answers my question. They argue net in the US before ACA was, “How do I pay for the emergency treatment I received?” Whereas in Japan, Canada, and the UK and probably other places, the question is, “How do I get treatment that I already paid for?” Those are the two options. The number of uninsured persons in the US was small compared against the whole population. The number most usually cited for uninsured in the US includes those in the country illegally. The solution to that problem does need to be a single payer system, nor the monstrosity of ACA.
Uninsured and underinsured together are why the costs are so high when you go to an Emergency room. That $100 aspirin is compensating for those who can't or don't pay. And I have it good authority, that the undocumented from the South pay at a much higher rate than the native born - even when it's from their own pockets. I know, this, because my father ran the ER in Boyle Heights for several decades.
People forced to stay in bad jobs, because they can't afford to risk the loss of insurance, while hunting for a better one, reduces net productivity for our society. Those without jobs rarely have insurance, and as Trump pointed out at one point while running in 2016 - that's a fake statistic, "unemployed" - you have to look at the total jobless numbers, because people fall off of the rolls, at a certain point.
I can't speak to all the possible flaws of systems that don't exist, or problems that exist in other systems. But I can tell you that our open system would work better than it does now, in every possible case, with the Pentagon Budget system, acting as a single payer for everyone. And the benefits to societal productivity would be great. Healthy people are more productive, for longer.
I stopped reading after the first sentence. You are not responding to the reality I shared with you. Despite being paid up in full, one is routinely denied the emergency room in Japan and can be in Canada and the UK. This is especially true for children, pregnant women. More so if one does not look Japanese. They have paid, yet are denied emergency treatment in a timely manner.
No.
There still are. We just AREN'T supporters of the Blue Team in the MONOPARTY Kayfabe.
So anyone $hilling for the Democrats is either not really on the left - or they're VERY confused, and playing some kind of "long game", that they're doomed to lose. Few people know this - but Barack Hussein Obama - is Dick Cheney's cousin. He comes from a CIA family, not a socialist one...and his REAL dad wasn't even Kenyan...
https://covertactionmagazine.com/2021/10/01/a-company-family-the-untold-history-of-obama-and-the-cia/
https://covertactionmagazine.com/2022/02/07/barack-obamas-father-identified-as-cia-asset-in-u-s-drive-to-recolonize-africa-during-early-days-of-the-cold-war/
The Blue Team has adopted 'Wokeness', as an attempt to indulge a popular impulse on the left, that need not become the pathology that they have deliberately turn it into. The basis for what some now call CRT - I've always known as "American History" + "Ethnic Studies". I took many upper division classes that explored those ideas, without any injury to my whiteness. But the BEST classes in that vein, also took into account Class and Power...
Prior to the movement against Unaccountable (often racist and/or classist) Police Violence and Murders - being hijacked by some unscrupulous opportunists, and rebranded as "BLM" - some REAL LEFTISTS started the StolenLives.org project, and October22.org coalition. Those groups were old enough to vote, before BLM was a hashtag... Look at the pictures in the collage of victims at the first site. There's plenty of white folks. But because the organizational basis was universal, non-divisive and class based...they couldn't get two column inches in any paper... Even when the cops showed up and brutally attacked them, in Police Riots. And never were their names heard on the nightly news, either. They were a populist appeal that could cross over from poor right to poor left. The Democrats hated them just as much as the Republicans.
I could say with equal veracity, that all these who say are on the right are not true righties.
Ok.
And I will perhaps be willing to join you, and make common cause on many issues.
My politics for the commons are on the left - but until we have human socialism, I eschew any Government Handouts or assistance - because the costs are too high, and the deal being offered just SUCKS...
And I'm capable enough, and have enough "privilege" that I can squeak by without it. But I understand that the disabled, for instance, may need help. And those who've been wronged historically, deserve to be made whole, too. Aetna Insurance started off insuring the Slave Trade. That's a corporate liability.
But I happen to be a small r republican, who lives in the California Republic state. I'm not a "Republican" per se. In fact I'm Peace and Freedom, currently - but considering a switch to the Movement for a People's Party. The Jab cultishness and stupidity of fauxgressive wokeness is beginning to push me away from the P&F crew.
I will work with all people of good faith and conscience. Join me, won't you?
A great speaker on history and propaganda about and versus the left - is Michael Parenti. ScrewUToob is littered with shadow banned videos, that come right up with a simple websearch. I highly recommend him.
Human socialism can not exist. Human nature prevents it.
Righting historical wrongs can never work as their is not a people upon this planet that have not, at some time in their past, been enslaved and at other times, been the enslaver. While we may not be able to go back it time far enough to discover every instance, this is true. The best we can do is do all we can to prevent it from happening to us and to keep us from doing it. That involves governments have extremely limited power, being subservient to those they govern. Good luck creating that in today’s environment.
We have a system of law which says that those who've been injured deserve to be made whole. There are no analogs for the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade, which combined slavery with dehumanization. If there are - then let those folks be compensated, as well. We are a Nation whose capital was built by slaves, and whose economic growth was built upon centuries of unwaged labor. Along with that, came laws against literacy, and fomenting familial destruction. There were still some slaves, in Texas, until the 1950's. There were public lynchings all through the 20's and 30's (and on into the 1960's, at least... What year was James Byrd?)... The Tulsa Riot was an attack upon Black Wall Street... And redlining and Jim Crow and social programs that encouraged dependence, or whose benefits were denied to certain groups are all factors. The USA is a unique case.
Human Socialism CAN and actually DOES exist. Workers in Germany sit on Corporate boards. Worker-owned collectives are possible, and can be successful. The limits you're imagining are illusions. The Paris Commune had to be torn apart, by the outside world. Systems based upon sharing, cooperation and collaboration, can be just as productive as systems based upon greed and selfishness and competition.
You are talking nonsense. There is not a single soul alive today who was enslaved in the US to pay reparations to. Nor is there a single person alive today who enslaved anyone within the US from whom to extract reparations from.
Then we have the fact that everyone loves to overlook. Over 300,000 boys in blue never made it home from the war that resulted in the freedom of those enslaved in the US, most of whom were not of the race freed. That debt has been paid in blood.
You're speaking from the easy and comfortable position of someone whose family was never torn apart, and whose ancestors weren't robbed of their labor, and productivity. Your ancestors weren't prevented by law from being literate.
You're clearly ignoring the reality, that if they found slaves on a plantation in Texas in the 1950's - there could quite easily be someone alive today who was enslaved. You're incorrectly supposing that all of the racist injuries ended with slavery, and they did not. Sennet and Cobb's "The Hidden Injuries of Class" showed how poverty is reproduced intergenerationally, in a race neutral context - amongst poor whites in Boston. Add race to the equation and people are double screwed. There was never even the promised 40 acres and a mule - but rather, sharecropping and De Jure discrimination that continues-on, well into the present day - if you know where to look.
Slavery wasn't the only thing those people were fighting over, so let's not oversimplify and over-lionize those who died - many of whom were on the other side of that issue, including in the North.
14th Amendment "citizenship" was never equal to State (or state) Citizenship.
Responsibility is individual. There are none today who are responsible for slavery in the US. Reasons for the war as immaterial as are the reasons a drunk gets behind the wheel. Their reason for the drunk was not to kill whomever he slammed his car into, he just wanted to get home. His victims are dead none the less. regardless of the reasons they went to war, the end result was that the slaves were freed. I wonder if you have read any of the writings of participants of that war written at the time. Though far from universal, a common theme is a gradual change from exposure to the enslaved race from ambivalence or racism to, what would surprise most modern Americans, an open respect and acceptance, though with limits. Abolition came about due to the blood spilt by the US Army and Navy and of the treasure of the criticizes of that time.
Unworkable at any rate. Would immigrants from Africa getting sworn in today be due immigrants from Germany taking the oath of allegiance right next to them? How about the Amish? Native Americans? Anyone who arrived after the abolition? Nonsense. The Nigerians I had the pleasure of drinking with when I first arrived here in Tokyo this time would think your idea absurd in the extreme.
And I have some personal experiences that surprise most because I am white and in Japan. My wife is Japanese as is our kid. He gets victimized by his father’s homeland and his due to one of his parents being a USC and picked on for being a “hafu”, especially “American” one here in Japan. Like my fellow Americans of color, he has features that he was born with that can not be hidden and the idiots of the world take as license to make life as difficult as possible for him, including wanna be do gooders from Europe who apparently thought something must be amiss when an older Gaijin man is walking with what probably looked like to them a full Japanese boy of 4 in the tourist areas of Kyoto. My friends of color in Japan, admittedly have a hard time here too, but there is little doubt that they are the parents of own children as there has been with me and my own son. I’ll leave it here. More can be said, but not to you.