Wednesday, November 27, 2024

EXCELLENT — C.J. Polychroniou: Defeating Trumpism With a People's Agenda

An excellent article by C.J. Polychroniou who gave us the gift of numerous interviews with Noam Chomsky over the years. He provides a vision of the many answers that have long been needed to radically transform our economy and nation away from the imperialist white-supremacist neoliberal capitalist patriarchy that has brought us to the chilling place we are at today. As important as it is to repeatedly shine bright light on the problem, it is equally as vital to again and again illuminate the solution.  Molly

Democratic presidential candidate, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) speaks to supporters at a campaign rally in Queensbridge Park on October 19, 2019 in the Queens borough of New York City. (Photo by Kena Betancur/Getty
We should raise walls of resistance as much as we can. More important, though, we should demand from the democratic forces to adopt a socio-economic agenda that puts people’s needs above corporate interests.

By C.J. Polychroniou

A clear consensus has emerged that the economy was the key factor behind Trump’s stunning victory. However, that may not be a very accurate description about what led a disaffected electorate wanting to see Trump back in the White House as the U.S. economy had been in a rather good shape from the second quarter of 2022 to the third quarter of 2024 and was in fact outperforming all other advanced economies by a wide margin. Indeed, surveys had consistently shown that the majority of voters had negative views on the economy at large, thus revealing a disconnect between economic numbers and public sentiment. Unemployment was the lowest it had been in decades, consumer spending was up, and inflation had cooled off. Yet voters still thought the economy was trash.

The U.S economic system does stink, no matter what the numbers show, and the political system is totally dysfunctional, which explains why so many voters were not fazed by Democrats’ core message that Trump posed a threat to democracy. They were probably wondering where democracy was to be found when economic elites run the show. Forty-five years of neoliberal economics have exacerbated capitalism’s inherent tendencies toward economic inequality, created a permanent state of economic insecurity, and led to the rise of an oligarchy.

It is the disastrous socio-economic and political consequences of neoliberalism that produce feelings of neglect, powerlessness and anger and lead voters in turn to cast their ballots for demagogues like Donald Trump...

The United States is the most unequal society in the developed world. The rich are growing richer with every passing year while the middle class shrinks, and the poor are left to their own fate for survival. Massive social inequalities and economic disparities destroy trust and confidence in government and leave people thinking that the future is unavoidably grim. This is the primary reason for the rise of ethno-nationalism and authoritarian populism in the developed world, including of course Trumpism in the United States. It is the disastrous socio-economic and political consequences of neoliberalism that produce feelings of neglect, powerlessness and anger and lead voters in turn to cast their ballots for demagogues like Donald Trump who promise a return to a golden era.

The irony is that while Trump is an authoritarian bully who wishes to use the iron fist of the state to rollback immigration and crush social agendas and even those who oppose him, his economic views are overall staunchly pro-market and outrageously neoliberal. In that regard, there is nothing fascistic about Trump when it comes to the economy. Statism lies at the heart of fascist ideology. The state is the all-powerful entity for fascists. The question of state-controlled planning of the economy is of paramount importance to fascism. For fascists, the state should not control all the means of production, as is the case with traditional socialism, but should dominate them.

The irony is that while Trump is an authoritarian bully who wishes to use the iron fist of the state to rollback immigration and crush social agendas and even those who oppose him, his economic views are overall staunchly pro-market and outrageously neoliberal.

Trump’s proposals for the economy are seen as a mixed bag. That’s because while he has proclaimed himself a champion for deregulation, he is in favor of protectionist trade policies. But Trump’s trade policy should not fool people that he is not a neoliberal. With protectionist trade policies, Trump, as with the way he runs his own business, only sees the short-term advantages in economic policy. Moreover, protectionist trade policy does not depart from neoliberalism. As has been acutely pointed out by British political economist Tom Wraight, Trump simply uses “the coercive power of the state to force other nations to conform to market-based economic logic.”

Trump has promised an anti-regulation blitz from Day One upon his return to the White House on virtually all aspects of the economy, including environmental and public health regulations. After spending months lying to voters about his knowledge of Project 2025, Trump has picked scores of people who worked on this ultra-reactionary policy manifesto for top posts in his administration. The Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 agenda for the economy, if fully implemented, would create a far more unequal and harsher society as it entails policies that will lead to massive cuts on all social programs, including Medicaid, the Children’s Health Insurance Program and food assistance, and calls for massive disinvestment in public services and a host of new tax cuts for wealthy households and corporations.

Project 2025 is the ultra-right wing game plan for the full completion of the neoliberal economic vision and political nightmare that started nearly half a century ago. It will produce far greater social dislocation and greater economic anxiety than any other time since the onset of the neoliberal counterrevolution. Most of those who voted for Trump on the basis of their perceptions about the direction of the economy and their belief that the country is on the wrong track will be deeply disturbed by the new economic and social realities that will emerge in the United States during the second Trump reign and will hopefully rethink their support for Trumpism. The problem is that the Democratic Party is either incapable or unwilling to offer citizens a new vision for the United States, one that will end the rule of oligarchy, restore democracy, and put people and the planet above profit.

Here are some policies that should be included in a socio-economic agenda for the specific needs of the people in the twentieth-first century United States of America:

1. Implementing Universal Health Coverage (UHC). That is, a publicly administered system that guarantees that all people have access to the full range of quality health services when and where they need them. Financing of UHC could come entirely from broad-based tax revenues. Coverage would be universal and automatic. Covered services would include inpatient, outpatient, dental, mental health, and long-term health, as well as prescription drugs. All three levels of the U.S. government (federal, state, and local) would be involved in the health care system.

2. Getting rid of all challenges and obstacles of union organizing, which include making illegal threats to close a plant if workers select a union to represent them and threatening workers with loss of jobs or benefits if they join a union. Current U.S. law makes it difficult for workers to join unions and even excludes certain categories of workers.

3. An industry-level approach to collective bargaining with active participation in social dialogue. An industry-level approach to collective bargaining will secure the best economic compensation possible for workers.

4. Undertaking a large-scale federal program of social housing construction. The United States faces a deep and persistent housing affordability crisis that demands active government intervention. It is beyond naΓ―ve belief to think that the market can fix the housing crisis. Repairing the house market with market-oriented solutions such as liberalizing zoning rules and other regulations have never worked. They do not lead to a major increase in housing supply or in more affordable housing. A strong housing safety net should also be introduced to address the problem of homelessness and ensure home security for the most vulnerable.

5. Raising the federal minimum wage to $15 or even $20 per hour. The current federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour has been stagnant since 2009 and maintaining it is a scandal of grand proportions. No decent society, let alone the richest country in the world, should accept having such a thing as the “working poor.”

6. Fighting poverty and inequality. Poverty should not be defined one-dimensionally based on income alone. Poverty should be seen as access to a variety of resources, such as education, health, energy, jobs, rights and personal security. The task of eliminating poverty should include both short-term (cash handouts) and long-term approaches (delivering social services and addressing the structural causes of poverty with initiatives such as the guaranteed-jobs program).

7. Implementing the Green New Deal. Greening the economy is a vital and urgent task to save humanity and the planet from the impacts of global warming but also provides a macro-economic approach to sustainable economic growth. It’s a win-win situation and only vested interests (fossil fuel industry, banks, oil-producing nations) and lack of political stand on the way to transitioning to a green economy.

8. Cutting military spending. The United States spent $820 billion on national defense during the fiscal year 2023. It spends nearly 8.4 times as much on its military as Russia does and more than three times the amount of China. While the U.S. comprises just over 4 percent of the world’s population, it accounts for nearly 40 percent of global military spending. Between 2001 and 2022, the U.S. spent $8 trillion on war. The notion that such enormous defense spending is important for national security questions is utterly absurd. The U.S. homeland has never been invaded and no nation threatens U.S. national security. The obscene amount of money that the U.S. spends on defense, which different methodologies estimated to be above $1.5 trillion for the fiscal year 2022, is for the building and maintenance of the U.S. empire. The U.S has over 750 overseas military bases, which only provoke geopolitical tensions and harm the United States, as David Vine demonstrates in his book Base Nation: How U.S. Military Bases Abroad Harm America and the World. Money saved from cuts in the defense budget can go towards supporting social programs and/or for reducing the national debt. Arguing for reforms in Social Security and Medicare when the country spends so much money on the military is morally indefensible and will become politically unacceptable if people realize how wasteful and harmful military sending is.

At the heart of the neoliberal vision is a societal order based on the prioritization of corporate power and free markets and the abandonment of public services. The neoliberal claim is that economies would perform more effectively, producing greater wealth and economic prosperity for all, if markets were allowed to perform their functions without government intervention. This claim is predicated on the idea that free markets are inherently just and can create effective low-cost ways to produce consumer goods and services. It is all rubbish, of course; nothing but an ideological pretext to make the rich richer and the poor poorer. Neoliberalism is indeed not simply an economic doctrine but also a socio-political ideology that places individual self-interest before the common good, displays indifference to social inequalities and economic disparities and subsequently justifies plutocracy.

At the heart of the neoliberal vision is a societal order based on the prioritization of corporate power and free markets and the abandonment of public services.

 Trump’s approach to government and corporate interests, which he will undertake with an extra heavy authoritarian twist, will magnify all aspects of the neoliberal nightmare that has engulfed the United States under both Republican and Democratic administrations for the past several decades. Unfortunately, a majority of the U.S. electorate refused to see what Trump really stands for and was duped into believing that their great leader is the one to take on the detestable liberal/neoliberal establishment and create in turn a system that works for the average citizens, not just the rich.

The next four years promise to be one of severe cruelty for the most vulnerable people in the United States and a nightmare for the environment. We should raise walls of resistance as much as we can. More important, though, we should demand from the democratic forces to adopt a socio-economic agenda that puts people’s needs above corporate interests and consigns neoliberal capitalism to the dustbin of history.

Please go here for the original article: https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/how-to-defeat-trump

'By and For the Ultra-Wealthy': Here Are the Billionaires Set to Run Trump's Administration

No surprises here. Those who voted for this man are in for some deep disillusionment and shocking and painful losses in their lives. I have also posted more of an in-depth look into the cabinet choices for the incoming administration here: https://mollystrongheart.blogspot.com/2024/11/shining-bright-light-on-dark-places.html.

Chaos, heartlessness, greed, and sociopathic values and policies and actions will be the norm. And it will be unsustainable. We need to remember here, I believe, that everything is impermanent — including the horrors and heartbreaks that are coming. And may all of this push more and more of us into actions rooted in solidarity with the universal struggle to create a just, sustainable, caring, and peaceful world.  Molly

Linda McMahon and Elon Musk attend the America First Policy Institute gala held at Mar-a-Lago on November 14, 2024 in Palm Beach, Florida. (Photo: Joe Raedle/Getty Images)
"Trump paid plenty of lip service to working-class Americans, but as president-elect, he's moved quickly to stack his administration with billionaires that share his vision of a rigged economy that only works for people like them."

By Jake Johnson

Since winning the presidential election earlier this month, Donald Trump has wasted no time working to fill his incoming administration with billionaires and other ultra-rich individuals who are poised to benefit from the GOP agenda of tax cuts for the wealthy and large-scale deregulation.

In separate analyses published this week, Americans for Tax Fairness (ATF) and Accountable.US offered overviews of the president-elect's key nominations and their potential conflicts of interest as Trump prepares to retake power in January.

So far, Trump has announced plans to nominate billionaire hedge fund manager Scott Bessent to head the Treasury Department, WWE billionaire Linda McMahon to head the Education Department, billionaire crypto banker Howard Lutnick to head the Commerce Department, and billionaire entrepreneurs Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy to head the Department of Government Efficiency—an outside advisory commission tasked with slashing federal spending and regulations.

"These appointments clearly show the incoming administration will be run by and for the ultra-wealthy," said David Kass, ATF's executive director. "They've already announced plans to spend trillions of dollars to renew the Trump tax bill, to further enrich large corporations and wealthy elites like themselves while advocating for cuts to vital programs that working and middle-class Americans depend on."

ATF's analysis, released Monday, shows that the combined wealth of Trump's richest nominees and transition team members—including the president-elect and Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio), the vice president-elect—is over $313 billion. By comparison, the combined net worth of President Joe Biden's Cabinet is an estimated $118 million.

"Even excluding Elon Musk—the world's richest man and Trump's co-director of the Department of Government Efficiency—the average net worth of Trump, his vice president, and top appointees is $616 million," ATF observed. "This figure is over 616 times higher than the mean average wealth of the typical American household, which is a little more than $1 million."

ATF and Accountable.US also highlighted other ultra-rich individuals nominated for key roles in the incoming administration, including drilling enthusiast Doug Burgum, worth an estimated $100 million; Mehmet Oz, worth up to $315 million; and Chris Wright, who as of earlier this month held nearly $47 million worth of stock in his fracking company, Liberty Energy.

Tony Carrk, executive director of Accountable.US, said in a statement Tuesday that "Donald Trump paid plenty of lip service to working-class Americans" during the 2024 campaign, "but as president-elect, he's moved quickly to stack his administration with billionaires that share his vision of a rigged economy that only works for people like them."

"Should the Senate rubber stamp these nominations," Carrk added, "Trump's department heads will be among the biggest beneficiaries of another promised tax giveaway for big corporations and the top 1%, paid for with deep cuts for seniors, veterans, and everyday workers."

Billionaires have already gotten significantly richer since Trump's election victory, according to research published last week by ATF. In roughly the week after Trump's win, the combined net worth of the nation's 815 billionaires jumped by around $280 billion—with Musk's wealth surge accounting for 20% of that gain.

Please go here for the original article: https://www.commondreams.org/news/billionaires-trump-cabinet

Monday, November 25, 2024

Satish Kumar: The Work of Eliminating Violence

Photos are by Molly

 The Work of Eliminating Violence

We must realize that violence is not confined to physical violence. Fear is violence, caste discrimination is violence, exploitation of others, however subtle, is violence, segregation is violence, thinking ill of others and condemning others are violence. In order to reduce individual acts of physical violence, we must work to eliminate violence at all levels, mental, verbal, personal, and social, including violence to animals, plants, and all other forms of life.

 Satish Kumar
From The Buddha and the Terrorist

EXCELLENT ― Les Leopold: Revenge of the Deplorables?​

An excellent and deeply important article. Again and again we are faced on every level with the radical changes that are vital if we are to save ourselves, our nation, the planet. This very much includes the long and urgently needed shadow work related to the underbelly of our nation, which I also shared in-depth about here: https://mollystrongheart.blogspot.com/2024/11/reflections-on-next-vital-step-long.html Molly

Supporters of President Donald Trump protest outside the Clark County Election Department on November 7, 2020 in North Las Vegas, Nevada. (Photo by Ethan Miller/Getty Images)
Think about it this way, maybe it's the Democratic Party which has become deplorable to the working class.

By Les Leopold

Did the working class, especially its white members, elect Donald Trump again because they are basically racist, sexist, homophobic, and xenophobic? Are they craving a strongman who can protect white supremacy from a flood of immigrants and put the woke liberals in their place? Didn’t Harris lose primarily because she’s a woman of color?

More than a few progressives, as well as the New York Times, believe these are plausible explanations for Harris’s defeat. I’m not so sure.

The working class started abandoning the Democrats long before Trump became a political figure, let alone a candidate. In 1976, Jimmy Carter received 52.3 percent of the working-class vote; In 1996, Clinton 50 percent; In 2012, Obama 40.6 percent; and in 2020, Biden received only 36.2 percent.

These voters of color don’t fit comfortably into that basket of deplorables Hillary Clinton described, but they are a part of the working class that’s been laid off time and again because of corporate greed.

Furthermore, my research shows that mass layoffs, not illiberalism, best explains the decline of worker support for the Democrats. In the former Blue Wall states of Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin, for example, as the county mass layoff rate went up the Democratic vote went down. The statistical causation, of course, may be off, but the linkage here between economic dissatisfaction and flight from the Democratic Party is straightforward.

Did the Working Class Give Trump 1.9 Million More Votes?

Trump improved his vote total from 74.2 million in 2020 to 76.1 in 2024, an increase of 1.9 million. Did the white working class support him more strongly this year?

No. According to the Edison exit polls, Trump’s share of the non-college white vote dropped from 67 percent in 2020 to 66 percent in 2024. (For 2020 exit polls see here. For 2024 see here.)

In fact, the largest increase for Trump this year came from non-white voters without a college degree. Trump’s percentage of these voters jumped from 26 percent in 2020 to 33 percent in 2024. These voters of color don’t fit comfortably into that basket of deplorables Hillary Clinton described, but they are a part of the working class that’s been laid off time and again because of corporate greed.

The Defection of the Border Democrats

Perhaps the most astonishing collapse of the Democratic vote is found in the Texas counties along the Rio Grande. Take Starr County, population 65,000, most of whom are Hispanic. Hillary Clinton won that county by 60 percent in 2016. Trump won it this year by 16 percentage points, a massive shift of 76 percentage points, almost unheard of in electoral politics. Trump won 12 of the 14 border counties in 2024, up from only five in 2016. Interviews suggest that these voters are very concerned by uncontrolled border crossings, inflation, and uncertainly in finding and maintaining jobs in the oil industry.

(I hear whispers among progressives that Hispanic men just don’t like women in leadership positions. Yet just across the Mexican border, Hispanic men seemed quite comfortable recently electing a female president.)

The Big Story Is the Overall Decline of the Harris Vote

Harris received 73.1 million votes in 2024, a drop of 8.3 million compared with Biden’s 81.3 million votes in 2020. That’s an extraordinary decline. Who are these voters who decided to sit it out?

So far, while the final votes are tallied and exit polls are compiled, it looks like they are a very diverse group—from young people upset about the administration’s failure to restrain Israel to liberals who didn’t like watching Harris go after suburban Republicans by palling around with arch-conservatives Liz and Dick Cheney.

Personally, I think many working-class voters of all shades sat on their hands because Harris really had so little to offer them. Harris was viewed as both a member of the establishment and a defender of it, and the establishment hasn’t been too considerate of working-class issues in recent decades.

Many working-class voters of all shades sat on their hands because Harris really had so little to offer them.

This decline has little to do with illiberalism on social issues. Since Carter’s victory, these workers have become more liberal on race, gender, immigration and gay rights, as I detail in my book, Wall Street’s War on Workers.

Harris’ highly publicized fundraising visit to Wall Street certainly made that clear. And in case we missed that signal, her staff told the New York Times that Wall Street was helping to shape her agenda. It’s very hard to excite working people by arguing, in effect, that what’s good for Wall Street is also good for working people.

The John Deere Fiasco

For me, the symbolic turning point was the Harris campaign’s pathetic response to the John Deere company’s announcement about shipping 1,000 jobs from the Midwest to Mexico. Trump jumped on it right away, saying that if Deere made that move, he would slap a 200-percent tariff on all its imports from Mexico. If I were a soon-to-be-replaced Deere worker, that would have gotten my attention.

The Harris campaign responded as well, but not in a way that would convince workers that she really cared about their jobs. The campaign sent billionaire Mark Cuban to the press to claim such a tariff would be “insanity.” He and the campaign said not one word about the jobs that would soon be lost. Trump promised to intervene. Harris promised nothing.

The sad part is that the Biden-Harris campaign could have at least tried. They had the power of the entire federal government. They could have cajoled and bullied, waved carrots and sticks. In short, they could have easily made a visible public effort to prevent the export of those good-paying jobs by a highly profitable corporation that was spending billions of dollars on stock buybacks to enrich Wall Street and it’s CEO. Here was a chance to defend jobs against overt greed. Instead, they essentially told working people that Harris wasn’t willing to fight for those jobs.

But Didn’t the Working-Class Abandon Sherrod Brown?

I haven’t yet found any comprehensive demographic data about Brown and his working-class support. We do know, however, that he ran well ahead of Harris. Brown lost his Senate race by 3.6 percent in Ohio compared to a Harris loss by 11.5 percent.

Rather than blaming working-class voters for not rejecting Trump out of hand, the Democrats should reflect on the failure of their brand and their failure of nerve.

 Brown knew that he was carrying a heavy load as a Democrat, especially because of the passage of NAFTA, which was finalized during Bill Clinton’s presidency. As Brown put it: “The Democratic brand has suffered again, starting with NAFTA…. But, what really mattered is: I still heard it in the Mahoning Valley, in the Miami Valley, I still heard during the campaign about NAFTA.”

Brown, as a loyal Democrat, was stuck with that dubious brand, and with Harris, as she was clobbered in Ohio. Tom Osborne, the former local labor leader and a refreshing political newcomer, shed the Democratic Party burden by running as an independent in Nebraska. He lost his Senate race by 6.8 percent compared to 10.9 percent for Harris. Brown did better than Osborne but it’s highly likely that both did much better than Harris with working-class voters.

Maybe the Democratic Party Has Become Deplorable to the Working Class

Rather than blaming working-class voters for not rejecting Trump out of hand, the Democrats should reflect on the failure of their brand and their failure of nerve.

  • Biden’s ego kept him in the race at least a year past his sell-by date and the Democratic leadership did not have the nerve to act until he completely lost it in the June debate with Trump. (A few of us urged Biden to step aside in November 2023).
  • Harris was anointed without going through a rigorous primary process. She failed miserably at that in 2020, and she probably was not the strongest potential Democratic candidate this time around either.
  • Refusing to run on a strong progressive populist platform pushed much of the working-class to Trump. The Center for Working Class Politics survey of Pennsylvania showed that a strong populist message was the most popular among working class voters, and that the Harris focus on democracy was the weakest issue for that group. But the Harris campaign doubled down on the democracy issues late in the campaign and paid the price.
  • The failure to say anything at all about mass layoffs and stock buybacks was nothing short of political malpractice.
  • And placating Wall Street was flat out deplorable.

Will the Democrats learn from this debacle and change their ways? I’m not optimistic. They are the defenders of the liberal elite establishment and have grown very comfortable (and prosperous) in that role.

We may not have all the data we desire or need as yet, but we know this much: something has to change. And that change is not going to come from the old guard of this deplorable Democratic Party establishment.

Please go here for the original article: https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/deplorable

Pema ChΓΆdrΓΆn: The Endless Opportunities of a Lifetime

Photo by Molly

 The Endless Opportunities 
of a Lifetime

When you open yourself to the continually changing, impermanent, dynamic nature of your own being and of reality, you increase your capacity to love and care about other people and your capacity to not be afraid. You're able to keep your eyes open, your heart open, and your mind open. And you notice when you get caught up in prejudice, bias, and aggression. You develop an enthusiasm for no longer watering those negative seeds, from now until the day you die. And, you begin to think of your life as offering endless opportunities to start to do things differently.

 Pema ChΓΆdrΓΆn
From Practicing Peace in Times of War

Sunday, November 24, 2024

Wayne Muller: Great Healing

Photo by Molly
Great Healing

As Gandhi wisely points out, even as we serve others we are working on ourselves; every act, every word, every gesture of genuine compassion naturally nourishes our own hearts as well. It is not a question of who is healed first. When we attend to ourselves with compassion and mercy, more healing is made available for others.  And when we serve others with an open and generous heart, great healing comes to us.

— Wayne Muller

ThΓ­ch NhαΊ₯t HαΊ‘nh: You Are Like a Candle

Photo by Molly

You Are Like a Candle

You are like a candle. 
Imagine you are sending light out all around you.
All your words, thoughts and actions are going in many 
directions. If you say something kind, your kind words go 
in many directions, and you yourself go with them. 
We are transforming and continuing in a 
different form at every moment.

 ThΓ­ch NhαΊ₯t HαΊ‘nh

NPR Hard at Work Normalizing Trump's Far-Right Cabinet Picks

This is an excellent article which highlights the problem that I've had with NPR/PBS ever since I first began to learn about neoliberalism from independent resources and became deeply disillusioned with Obama and mainstream media. Again and again I have come to understand the vital importance of seeking independent resources of information that receive no funding from corporations and other wealthy sources. It is only then that we hear the voices of truth and integrity who hold the powerful accountable rather than being their voice pieces - something that Amy Goodman and many others have been dedicated to for decades. The American corporate mainstream media - and not just FOX! - has played a significant role in bringing us to this place of great peril that we find ourselves in today. Tragically, those who have been long warning us about the trajectory we are on are not the ones we see and hear on our corporate funded MSM. And now independent journalism will be under chilling attack from the Trump regime. That said, more and more of us must increasingly embody a profound commitment to truth - the words I first heard spoken by Chris Hedges many years ago. — Molly

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Donald Trump shake hands during a campaign rally at Desert Diamond Arena on August 23, 2024 in Glendale, Arizona. (Photo by Rebecca Noble/Getty Images)

When John Bolton is the most aggressive critic of the incoming administration, you know we have a problem.

By Julie Hollar

Donald Trump hasn’t taken office yet, but he has wasted no time naming cabinet members and other nominations for his incoming administration. They must be confirmed by the Senate—unless Trump manages an unprecedented end run around the Senate’s power to advise and consent—which means the media play an important role in helping bring to light their records and qualifications.

Clearly Trump is trying to see how far he can push the limits of the country’s democratic institutions with these nominations, which include an anti-vaxxer to oversee the country’s public health infrastructure, and a congressmember investigated for sex trafficking to be attorney general. A look at NPR‘s coverage so far suggests that the public radio network has no interest in using the power of the so-far-still-free press to preserve those limits.

In its reporting on Trump’s picks over the seven days from November 13 through November 19, NPR‘s Morning Edition has featured eight guest sources offering commentary, in the form of either soundbites or lengthier interviews, according to a FAIR search of the Nexis news database. All but two were current or former Republican officials, including one current Trump adviser. The other two were a representative from the right-wing Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank, and a political risk consultant (who offered a perfectly neutral assessment). All of them were white men.

As a result, the most forceful denunciations of Trump’s parade of shockingly unqualified nominees that Morning Edition listeners were permitted came from one of the most right-wing members of the George W. Bush administration, John Bolton (11/14/24). And the show made sure to explicitly balance his interview by also giving one a few days later to Trump adviser Marc Lotter (11/18/24).

The dearth of nonpartisan experts and utter absence of any progressive or even mildly liberal voices also meant that only Trump’s most outrageous picks thus far—Matt Gaetz (who has since withdrawn), Pete Hegseth, Tulsi Gabbard, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.—were subject to “expert” criticism on the show. Meanwhile, most of his other picks weren’t even mentioned, let alone scrutinized.

One guest, a former George W. Bush official, made the only mention of Mike Huckabee, Elise Stefanik and Mike Waltz as picks, calling them “leaders who have to be taken seriously” (11/13/24). But in a sane democracy, the media would be taking a close look at these candidates, too, who have more polished resumes but similar levels of extremism: Huckabee, picked as ambassador to Israel, has argued repeatedly that the West Bank is Israeli territory, and that “there’s no such thing as a Palestinian.” Waltz, for national security advisor, wants Israel to bomb Iranian nuclear sites. Stefanik, tapped to be UN ambassador, led the congressional witch hunt against college presidents last spring.

‘Look at the positives here’

It wasn’t just Morning Edition sanewashing Trump’s picks at NPR. In a piece (NPR.org, 11/15/24) about Trump’s selection of RFK Jr. to head the Department of Health and Human Services, NPR‘s headline and opening framed the anti-science conspiracy theorist as just a guy who “Wants to ‘Make America Healthy Again,'” but who “Could Face a Lot of Pushback.”

It took seven paragraphs for reporters Will Stone and Allison Aubrey to mention that scientists are “deeply worried about Kennedy’s history of questioning scientific consensus on vaccines and his antagonism to mainstream medicine more broadly.”

After quoting one public health expert who expressed strong fears about the serious damage Kennedy could do to the country’s public health system, NPR cheerfully offered the other side of things:

And yet there’s no denying there are areas of substantial overlap between the goals of MAHA and scientists who have long advocated for tackling the root causes of chronic illness.

The reporters did point out the contradictions between Kennedy’s regulatory goals, which would take on “big food and big pharma,” and the GOP/Trump war on government regulation of big corporations. But they gave the last word to Kennedy adviser Calley Means to argue, without rebuttal:

“I would tell anyone skeptical about this, to look at the positives here,” he says. “This MAHA agenda is one of the golden areas for true bipartisan reform.”
He says Kennedy’s approach will be to insist on what he terms “accurate science.”

In total, the piece gave more time to Kennedy allies with products to sell than to actual public health experts.

‘Expressed doubts’—or lied?

In a piece on Trump’s nominee for energy secretary, oil executive Chris Wright, NPR (11/16/24) offered a textbook example of sanewashing that ought to have jarred any editor:

Wright has also expressed doubts about whether climate change is driving extreme weather events.
“There is no climate crisis, and we’re not in the midst of an energy transition either,” Wright said in a video uploaded to LinkedIn.
“We have seen no increase in the frequency or intensity of hurricanes, tornadoes, droughts or floods despite endless fearmongering of the media, politicians and activists,” he also said in the video. “The only thing resembling a crisis with respect to climate change is the regressive, opportunity-squelching policies justified in the name of climate change.”

Those quotes do not illustrate “doubts about whether climate change is driving extreme weather events,” they illustrate anti-science climate denialism in the form of flat-out lies.

‘Backstop’ in action?

As we reported last month (FAIR.org, 10/24/24), NPR recently installed a “Backstop” editorial team to review all content prior to airing or publishing, after the latest round of right-wing complaints of bias. When the Corporation for Public Broadcasting announced it would be funding that team, it explained the purpose was to help NPR achieve the “highest standards of editorial integrity,” including “accuracy, fairness, balance, objectivity and transparency, and the obligation to include diverse viewpoints.”

The incredibly lopsided “balance,” lack of actually diverse viewpoints, and dubious fairness and accuracy displayed in the network’s nomination coverage reveals what the CPB was really going for with the new oversight it installed.

Not all NPR cabinet reporting has been spineless. A team of reporters led by Shannon Bond, for instance, published an in-depth piece (11/14/24) on Defense nominee Pete Hegseth that probed his strong links to extremist white Christian nationalism.

But three days later, another NPR report (11/17/24) talked about Hegseth as if the biggest problem with him is simply that senators simply “have come to expect” nominees with a different “background”:

Real trouble started brewing with Pete Hegseth, an Army vet known for his weekend commentary on Fox News, being named secretary of Defense. Although a veteran of the Iraq and Afghanistan missions, he does not have the background that senators have come to expect of someone appointed to head up the Department of Defense. Hegseth’s frequent attacks on the uniformed leadership of the armed services has included talk of firing current generals, including at the highest levels.

Similarly, on All Things Considered (11/16/24), NPR senior political editor Domenico Montanaro explained the “difference” between Trump’s 2016 picks and those this year, saying the 2016 nominations

sometimes stood in the way of things he wanted to do that broke with the normal way…that things had been done for years. This time around, he’s really surrounding himself with a team of loyalists.

What former cabinet members did was stop Trump from doing things that were unconstitutional or abuses of power. For NPR to minimize them as “the way things had been done for years” indicates that the network is currently more concerned with preserving its CPB funding than sustaining democracy.

ACTION ALERT: You can send a message to NPR public editor Kelly McBride here. Please remember that respectful communication is the most effective. Feel free to leave a copy of your message in the comments thread of this post.

Please go here for the original post: https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/trump-cabinet-media

Saturday, November 23, 2024

Reflections On a Next Vital Step: Long Overdue Shadow Work

 

Shadow Work As Pathway To Healing 
and Transforming Ourselves, 
Our Political and Economic Systems, 
Our Nation, and Our World

We all have different bottoms.  For me, it was 9-11. That was when I hit a new bottom and knew in my deepest being that I needed to look deeply into what I did not know about our nation. The tipping point came when George W. Bush declared that we were attacked because "they hate us for our freedoms"  and then went on to proclaim that we needed to go shopping and we needed to prepare to go to war.

But why?? Who is "they"? And I just knew that war was not the answer. And I also knew that the horrors that occurred on that September day in 2001 were not because anyone hated our freedoms. But I had absolutely no idea why 9-11 happened. And I had to find out. I'd been compelled to uncover many hard and painful truths that have thrown me into disillusionment again and again. It was only sometime later that I realized that disillusionment is an antidote to our illusions. What a valuable lesson that is. 

For decades now I've known that the pathway to deeper truths is not meant to just be a pleasant stroll in the park. No. It requires intention, courage, tenacity, support, vulnerability, openness, resilience, and a profound ongoing commitment to truth. It can take a lot to allow the world as we thought we knew it to fall out from under us leaving us in unchartered territory and facing  information that counters so much of what we've been told and believed. At least this has certainly been my experience.

Over the years, it has been incredibly humbling to learn how deeply I had absorbed so much that simply was not true. And as I read and researched, transformed my resources of information, discerned who I could trust and who I could not, went to hear a diversity of knowledgeable and wise speakers, and lined my bookshelves with numerous invaluable books, I was gradually being empowered to lift layer after layer of the fog that I'd unknowingly been in throughout my lifetime. Loosening the grip that my indoctrination and the toxicities that I've absorbed from our unhealthy culture has been life changing and profound. And that is real freedom.

So, yes — and altogether for well over half of my lifetime now — I've been recovering. Recovering from illusions and indoctrination and ignorance. Recovering from the lack of empathic awareness that is embedded in privilege. (I am white and grew up in the wealthy Detroit suburb of Grosse Pointe, Michigan.) Recovering from ancestral and cultural trauma. Recovering from multiple addictions, anxiety and depression, and fibromyalgia. Recovering from image management and perfectionism, black and white thinking, and shame and fear and disconnection. Recovering from beliefs I've absorbed from our American mainstream media, from narratives that one political party is good and the other bad, from misogyny and patriarchy, and from American exceptionalism and the illusion of the American dream. And more...

And what have I been recovering through all these years of shadow work? My Self. And my capacity to see you and experience this ever growing connectedness with all of life. Coming from a place of such deep disassociation and fear and trauma, this has indeed been a profound journey.

And the more that I've been able to go to dark places within myself, and listen and learn and unburden, the more that I have been empowered to bring this same courage and curiosity and deeper passion for compassion, for truth and understanding, for healing and transformation into all that my life touches  the dynamics and needs within my family and other relationships, the dynamics and needs of the families and children I have worked with professionally, and the dynamics and needs within my community and our nation and our Earth Mother. Consciousness feeds on itself and, if we nurture it, grows and expands in an ongoing way. 

It is shadow work that uncovers so much that would otherwise lie hidden from our awareness, dormant and unattended, and abandoned and festering within us individually and collectively as families, communities, and nations. It is also since the earliest days of colonialism, slavery, and the genocide of Indigenous Peoples that our nation has accumulated a vast unhealed history — a history which continues to profoundly impact us all today, causing great harm to our country and its citizens, to other nations and other beings, and to the Earth herself.

bell hooks calls what has infected us for hundreds of years imperialist white-supremacist capitalist patriarchy. This is the dark underbelly of what has needed our attention for so very long.

* * * * *

Photos are by Molly
In These Dark Times, Will More and More 
of Us Engage in the Shadow Work 
Which Empowers Us to Grow 
Stronger Our Light?

Today I am wondering if this encroaching era of neoliberal fascism will act as a new bottom for increasing numbers of us? In the midst of the "anti-woke" messages pervasive in our culture, will more and more of us embody the courage to awaken even more deeply into our authentic Selves? Will be shaken into a greater passion for pursuing the truth, for engaging in the shadow work which heals and transforms us, for acting out of wisdom and kindness and compassion, and for standing in strong protection of all who are vulnerable and under assault? 

It is my belief that we are all needed, and especially those of us who live with some degree of privilege. And what will our roles be? 

As I have written and spoken to many times before, it has long been my belief — and my personal experience — that we humans all fall somewhere on a continuum. Patterns of ignorance, separation, and fear are often found on the one end while consciousness, compassion, and love are on the other. However awakened we are, or connected with our deeper Self, will determine where we fall on this continuum. At least this is my personal experience and what I have compassionately witnessed in countless others. 

And while being "woke" is criticized by many in our culture, I believe that that criticism arises out of fear and pain. Fear of change. Fear of loss. Fear of being left behind without any way out of our pain and suffering. And, yet, what is "woke" anyway other than assuming our place, no matter how large or small, in working on behalf of human rights and justice and seeking to alleviate the suffering and pain within ourselves and other humans and all beings? 

Evolving in consciousness for me has been deeply related to cultivating greater depths of kindness and caring, curiosity and courage, compassion and the heartfelt awareness that your suffering and your joy is also mine. My experience of being "woke" is related to seeing the larger picture and embodying a dedication to continuously seeking to understand beyond what I can grasp today. It is peeling back the layers of unknowing — a process which empowers us to see beyond the vista where we not sit. Again and again and again.

Uncovering our places of not knowing is certainly a lifelong process. In our culture it can often be a radical experience to be rooted in truth, wisdom, compassion, and love. As e.e. cummings has wisely said, "It takes courage to grow up and become who you truly are." So true. So true.

And this is where shadow work is so deeply needed, empowering, and transformative. And this is also where we can build empathic communities of caring and solidarity where we can do shadow work together, as I have for many years now, and nourish the safe and supportive environments that are needed for us to grow and evolve together. And as we grow stronger and clearer and more passionate about kindness, we will be making the needed difference for ourselves and each other and what we love and cherish in our hurting beautiful world.

* * * * *


Shadow Work On Behalf of Ourselves,
Our Nation and Other Nations, 
and Life On Earth

I will end with thoughts and resources related to what has led us to this time of great collapse that we find ourselves in today. We did not get here overnight. This new era that many are calling neoliberal fascism under the Trump regime is incredibly frightening and has been a long time coming. There have been those who have been warning us for decades. And those voices are rarely or never heard on corporate funded mainstream media. And I'm not just talking about FOX. I'm also talking about MSMBC, CNN, NPR/PBS, and all media which receives funding from resources connected with Wall Street and the Big Banks, the military industrial complex and the fossil fuel industry, the pharmaceutical and insurance industries, the prison and animal agricultural industries, and other wealthy interests.

What we have not been deeply informed about is exactly what is asking for our attention, our courage, our engagement in shadow work and passionate quest for truth, transformation, and radical change. 

While there are those who voted for and are celebrating the election of Donald Trump, those among them who are not wealthy are in for a traumatic time ahead when what has been promised will not happen.

For those of us who voted for Kamala Harris, this past election has thrown us into deep trauma. And it is human to want to find who is to blame. This is where courage comes in. And shadow work and a profound commitment to truth (the words I first heard spoken by Chris Hedges many years ago).

What I have been discovering are many layers of what has brought us to the peril we all face today. Yes, misogyny and racism have certainly played a role. Yes, the corporate funded MSM has kept millions uninformed, propagandized, and polarized. And, yes, the Republican Party has become a fascist Party which has successfully pulled into the MAGA cult vulnerable hurting human beings. 

And the Democratic Party has also played a significant role in the massive collapse we are now in. That said, there can only be a rebirth and the possibility of creating the peaceful, caring, sustainable, compassionate and just world that we all yearn for if we first individually and collectively understand how we got here in the first place.

It is my belief that the shadow work related to the Democratic Party is one aspect of what is essential. We cannot heal and transform what we deny or don't clearly understand and see. And, of course, the larger picture beneath the neoliberalism that has infected nearly the whole of the Democratic Party for close to 50 years is what bell hooks shines bright light on — the imperialist white-supremacist capitalist patriarchy.

The shadow side of the Democratic Party is one important part — which also connects with all the others — that I believe we must recognize and act together to address and radically change.

So I invite you to look into some of the resource that I will now share below, not with any intention to blame, but rather to understand more deeply where we are at and what the shadow work is before us. These are just a few glimpses into what has brought us to where we are at today:
  • This Is Neoliberalism: Introducing the Invisible Ideology (Part 1)

Shared here are again just glimpses into the vastness of a much larger picture than racism or misogyny or the one man who will now horrifyingly be the American President once again. We need to understand that the tragedies that are ushering in this new era of many horrors and heartbreaks is much larger than any one man or any one political party. And we need to understand that there are millions of Americans and people worldwide who have been suffering under great injustice, inequality, violence, and oppression for a very, very long time. And this is what we must, in my perspective, see and understand and act to change, radically change. Because we truly are all connected, all related, all family, all in this together.
 
* * * * *


Holding a Vision for a
Transformed Nation and World

In closing, I am called to add this piece by C. J. Polychroniou 
― who over many years has gifted us with numerous interviews with Noam Chomsky ― entitled "Defeating Trump With a People's Agenda": https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/how-to-defeat-trump. One vital part of shadow work is also unearthing the long buried strengths, potentials, visions, and wisdom that we humans carry within ourSelves and bringing them to fruition. Just imagine a nation and a world where a People's Agenda prevailed. Just imagine. 


As important as it is to repeatedly shine bright light on the problem, it is equally as vital to again and again illuminate the solution and work together to birth what is possible as we grow in solidarity, consciousness, and commitment to what is in the highest good of us all.

Another world is possible.
Bless us all, no exceptions,
πŸ™πŸ’—πŸ™
Molly