EXCELLENT ― Chris Hedges: Will the Democrats Betray Us Again?

Yet another excellent and illuminating article by Chris Hedges and more. This is also part of a greater article and interview that Chris did on November 6th with Ralph Nader. 

It now cannot be said that we were not warned repeatedly about what is at stake following the blue tsunami of one week ago in the midterm elections. It is not time for us to think the struggle is over when in reality a whole new level of fighting for justice, democracy, and the highest good for all has only just begun. 

I have been posting many times here on my blog and on Facebook about both the joy and celebration and also, very importantly, the peril we are in if we do not act in every way possible to wrest the poisonous power away from both the fascist republicans and the neoliberal democrats who have sabotaged and fought fiercely against any actual substantial progressive change and radical transformation that has been so urgently needed for so very long. Now it is up to us to pursue being deeply informed and inspired to take on the most wealthy and dismantle a toxic status quo that has long been destroying our country, other nations, and the planet.

And I bow with the deepest gratitude for Chris Hedges and all of the courageous truth-tellers, wisdom-keepers, authors and activists. spiritual and political leaders who have never relented in their fierce commitment to bringing us the truth and the larger pictures that are so essential for us all to see, understand, and individually and collectively act upon. Another world is possible! It is up to us! ― Molly

The 'Blue Tsunami' has inspired hope across the nation as Americans have repudiated Trumpism — but will the Democrats actually stand up to the donor class and deliver for their constituents?

By Chris Hedges

The Democrats may have taken control of the House and the Senate, they may have humiliated Donald Trump and the Republican Party, but the real fight is only beginning. It is not simply a battle to hold the corrupt Trump regime to account, something that can only be done if the Democrats are willing overcome their reluctance to carry out impeachment proceedings against the president. It is also a battle to sweep away the corporate-indentured hierarchy of the Democratic Party, including Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries.

The Democratic Party since the presidency of Bill Clinton, who gave us the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the greatest betrayal of the working class since the 1947 Taft-Hartley Act, and gutted New Deal-era welfare programs such as the Aid to Families with Dependent Children, is a more polished version of corporate and oligarchic rule, abjectly subservient to the war machine, the Israel lobby and their funders in the billionaire class.

The country is broken. Corruption, in both parties, is endemic. Federal agencies have been hollowed out and destroyed. The courts, including the Supreme Court, have been handed over to right-wing ideologues. The working class is crippled with debt peonage and substandard wages. Constitutional norms and protections have been erased. Billionaires, including Trump, pay little to no income tax. The 2010 Citizens United Supreme Court ruling, which allows big business to fund their hand-picked candidates, sustains a system of legalized bribery.

The public may clamor for a raise in the minimum wage, Medicare for All, regulation of the big banks and private equity firms, an end to arms shipments to Israel and campaign finance reform, but no one in the leadership of the Democratic Party listens or cares. They serve their paymasters.

Will cutthroat capitalism, sold to us under the sanitized name of neoliberalism, be allowed to continue to impoverish the citizenry and funnel wealth upwards into the hands of the 1 percent? Will corporations be regulated and policed? Will corporate criminals be brought to trial? Will our democracy be restored? Or will the grotesque sight of a trillionaire, Elon Musk, gutting federal agencies and pouring hundreds of millions into elections to try and control the outcome be normalized?

The handful of politicians who attempt to confront the corruption and the devastation visited on the American working class through deindustrialization and deregulation, such as Bernie Sanders, see their campaigns sabotaged by the Democratic Party leadership, including Barack Obama.

We must demand that progressive candidates, including Michigan senator-elect Abdul El-Sayed and Maine’s Troy Jackson, build coalitions to oust the Democratic Party leadership, raise the minimum wage, enact universal health care, prosecute corporate crime and impeach Trump. It will be up to us.

The Democratic Party hierarchy will see the results not as a repudiation of Trump, but an endorsement of the flaccid and ineffectual position of a party that stands for little and fights for less. This would be yet another betrayal by the Democrats of voters. It would keep alive the very real prospect of another fascist, one better organized and more intelligent, taking the White House in two years.

Of course, this fight will mean not only jettisoning a corrupt Democratic Party leadership, but turning on the mega-donors, lobbyists and corporations that fund and control the Democratic Party.

The effort to wrest the party back from the hands of corporations and oligarchs will be vicious and difficult. It will require us to rely on the power of mass movements to sever these bonds. Nothing else will work.

If we fail, our anemic democracy will not be saved by these midterm elections, but doomed.

Please go here for the original article and interview: https://chrishedges.substack.com/p/will-the-democrats-betray-us-again