By Guido Lasken
By Guido Lasken
There’s not much more than a year before the midterm elections – and those will be much too important to let the Deep State and its media outlets turn them into the usual “left” vs. “right”, “Republican” vs. “Democrat” or “progressive” vs. “conservative” battle, or even a referendum on who gets to use what bathroom, or a referendum on whether Trump is great (therefore, Republican landslide) or awful (therefore, Democratic landslide).
Less than a week ago, the Senate passed a bill pushing tough sanctions on Russia over alleged meddling with the 2016 Presidential elections – meddling that anyone who has paid any attention will know did not actually happen. This bill will make it harder than ever to prevent a second cold war from starting, or even to prevent the second cold war that some say is already there into an actual hot war.
And it shows clearly how much change is needed: It’s not just a few Senators who need to be replaced over this – it’s almost all of them. The vote was very clear across both parties – 98-2.
And the 2 Senators who did the right thing and voted against sanctions for something that never happened? The favorite of Anti-Deep State Republicans – Rand Paul, and the favorite of Anti-Deep State Democrats – Bernie Sanders.
Just today, it became clear that the “Stop Arming Terrorists Act”, which could quickly have ended the mess in Syria, found only 13 cosponsors — and once more support is not related to party affiliation, here we’re seeing 8 Republicans and 6 Democrats trying to do the right thing.
If you look past the corporate media propaganda, our positions on many issues diverge, but are not as far apart as we have been lead to believe they are.
If you ask someone on the “real” (as in, not a neoliberal Clintonbot) left what the difference between the left and the right is, chances are you’ll get something like “The right works for big corporations and war (and against the people, so they’re for total surveillance), the left works for the people and peace. A typical representative of the left is Bernie Sanders, and typical representatives of the right are John McCain and Hillary Clinton (who just happens to be in the wrong party). The evil banksters are extreme right-wingers out for their own profit!”
If you pose the same question to someone on the “real” (as in, not a neocon Bush/Cheneybot) right, you’re likely to get “The left wants big government (and therefore total surveillance, taxing the people to death, and government power to start any war they like), the right wants small government (therefore making sure the people are free and government doesn’t get to start unnecessary wars). Typical representatives of the left are Hillary Clinton and John McCain (who just happens to be in the wrong party), and a typical representative of the right is Ron Paul. The evil (esp. Federal Reserve) bankers distort the real free market, and therefore are communists!”
Both sides say they’re the ones in support of the people, both sides accuse the respective other side of being behind war and surveillance, and both sides even frequently use the same examples for bad people — always pretending they’re on the “other side” in reality if not in name. And guess what? Both sides are genuinely convinced that’s the way things are, because both sides tend to stay in their own feedback loop that keeps painting the “left” as the enemy of the “right”, “conservatives” as the enemy of “progressives”, or “Democrats” as the enemy of “Republicans”. This is exactly what the Deep State wants – as long as we’re divided and fighting over smaller issues instead of uniting as the people “left” and “right” vs. the Deep State, we just don’t stand a chance of getting rid of the Schumers, McCains, Bushes and Clintons – and they can continue unhindered with their push for more war and corruption.
This next election must not be about furthering this divide – it must be about those who support the people (on either side) vs. those who don’t (also on either side).
It’s true that a joint “people movement” across both parties will not bring about neither the Free Market utopia envisioned by the right nor the Social Democratic utopia envisioned by the left – but it can lead to a reasonable compromise both sides can live with until the Deep State is weeded out, the wars are over, the central bank is under control if not abolished, and we can get back to fighting about the “smaller” issues.
What could such a compromise look like? Aside from the things we’ve already looked at (working for the people, against war, against the big banksters), there are a number of things to disagree about – but there’s also some potential agreement.
Something that looks like a point we will always disagree on is possibly not as bad as everyone is thinking: The right is calling for less regulation, while the left is calling for more. But if we listen to what both sides have to say instead of automatically rejecting the other side’s argument as “socialist!” or “in the pockets of big business!”, we’ll find some agreement even where the two sides seem to be calling for polar opposites.
Talk to someone on the right, and the argument will be along the lines of “Massive over-regulation prevents people from starting their own business. Small businesses are dying because they have to spend half their time filling out forms and hiring lawyers to read over-complicated regulations to make sure they won’t get fined out of business! They recently tried to arrest kids over selling lemonade without a business license – it’s insane!”
Someone on the left will likely give you a narrative of “Big business has gone virtually unregulated for way too long – they monopolize everything, they no longer pay their workers decent wages (some work two full-time jobs and can barely live on it), and they think they get a free pass at polluting our air and water with GMOs and all sorts of poison.”
So we have one side arguing for fewer regulations and one for more – looks like this is hard to overcome, but then, they aren’t really talking about the same thing. One is talking about the load of unnecessary regulations’ impact on individuals and small businesses, the other is talking about the cronyist giant megacorporations doing whatever they please. Would it be such a bad idea to impose tougher regulations on giant corporations (at the very least labeling, if not forbidding, GMOs, limits on what they can put into the air and water, anti-trust laws to prevent unhealthy monopolies) while at the same time abolishing all regulations that don’t make sense and exempting individuals and small businesses from regulations that have a use when applied to big business? While not either side’s purist approach, I think this is something everyone could live with.
Getting back to the midterms, they — the corrupted DNC and the corrupted RNC — have already lined up their choice of corrupted Deep State candidates to keep and/or take their seats. They’ve probably lined up some distractions too (maybe they’ll allow for a pro-people Republican to run for California’s Senate seats and a pro-people Democrat to run for Wyoming’s – knowing full well that they’ll more than likely get their choice even if they don’t rig the election outright) — but what they aren’t prepared for is a united challenge from the people.
I’d love to see a third party starting to be successful, but realistically, that isn’t going to happen this soon – so we have to work in another way.
To an extent, we’ve seen this can work in the 2016 presidential elections – the Republican primary was taken by the RNC’s least favorite candidate, and the Democratic primary was almost taken by someone who wasn’t even a member before his presidential run — and there’s a good chance he would have won the nomination if it hadn’t been for Team Clinton’s cheating on many different levels.
They have enough loyalists in both parties lined up to make sure both parties will give us “more of the same” candidates in every race – but they aren’t prepared for breaking their majority with the help of massive support from people usually affiliated with the other party. A good no-name candidate agreed upon by those following the alternative media CAN defeat his party’s favored high-profile crook – just as long as there’s enough people from the “other side” crossing over to support the no-name.
We need a concerted effort to ignore party affiliations and push (or in the few cases where there already is one, get behind) a decent primary challenger to every single one of those 98 seats.
We must primary the RNC’s preferred candidate (with the support of numerous Democrats crossing the line) in any solid red state, primary the DNC’s preferred candidate (with the support of numerous Republicans crossing the line) in any solid blue state, and send a good candidate (in whatever party we stand a chance at taking the nomination away from their preferred crook) into the race in swing states. Making the swing state red or blue is far less important than handing it to an outsider willing to do the right thing regardless of party affiliation.
In races where both the RNC and the DNC manage to win their respective primary races, my advice is to vote against the incumbent – at least it’ll take the “new guy” some more time to get into all the lobbyist networks — but of course voting for the one with whom you agree on more of the smaller issues on which they allow their candidates to differ is a valid approach too.
To those who absolutely want to make it about Trump, can we all agree that, no matter how horrible or great we think Trump is, he can (at least theoretically) do both right and wrong? And that it is very much the job of both houses to stop him when he’s going wrong while supporting him when he’s trying to do the right thing? “Trump wants X” neither means “X is good” nor “X is bad”, and a decent Senator, regardless of party affiliation, should know that and act on it. It’s time for our “elected representatives” vote their conscience, not their party line. By all means, keep Trump in check and don’t let him get away with anything bad – but don’t prevent him from doing something good just because “Trump wants it, therefore it must be wrong”.
Right now, pretty much the opposite is happening – whenever Trump does something bad (like firing missiles at Syria), the media and Senate are full of praise, while they scream “Russia” whenever Trump does anything to try and drain that swamp (like firing corrupted Comey). This has to reverse.
With the corporate media full of stories about Democrats calling for “Hunting Republicans” and Republicans getting ready to take revenge on Democrats over the Scalise shooting (which may or may not have been genuine – I wouldn’t put it past them to set up someone like Hodgkinson to sow further distrust and hatred between supporters of either party, but of course lone nuts do exist as well, and on both sides). The fact that they keep pointing out Hodgkinson was a Bernie supporter is a clear sign that – regardless of whether or not the whole thing was a setup – they’re using what they can get to set up Democrat outsiders against Republican outsiders. It is clear that the last thing they want us to do is ignore party lines, get along and do what is right for the people, the country, and the world at large.
Do “hunt down” that Republican or Democrat (whichever you aren’t) next door – just not literally, but to talk to them, find the common ground, and show them who the common enemy is.
They have put a lot of rocks into our ways, including even modifying our language to make it harder for both sides to talk about something. I’ve known for a long time that the corporate media have been trying to evolve our language in different directions – but it became more obvious than ever while writing this article, which should be readable by both sides without getting a “Not worth reading on, this was obviously written by a right-wing nut job” from the left or a “Not worth reading on, this was obviously written by a communist socialist” from the right after the first paragraph.
Beyond the different definitions of what it’s all about to be “left” or “right”, or “conservative”, “progressive” or “liberal”, one example is simply what word to use when talking about a regular, hard-working person — it’s a point of wide agreement is that someone who works hard, mentally or physically, should get enough money to feed his family. The left would tend to frame this as “workers’ rights” (immediately triggering a reaction of “socialist!”, “communist!” or “corrupted unions!” from many on the right, given how many communist movements across the world called themselves Workers’ Party or similar) – while the right would talk about “producers” needing to get their fair share (triggering a reaction of “Rand-ism! Pro-megacorporation anti-people!” from the left).
We must overcome this artificial division – or at least be aware of it so we can use the right term depending on who we’re talking to while working to overcome it.
Anyone but McCain in Arizona, even if it means getting behind a Democrat!
Anyone but Schumer in New York, even if it means getting behind a Republican!