Demagogues for Fiscal Responsibility

(also against Putin and Castro)

Klobuchar, Buttigieg, Bloomberg, and Biden are classical demagogues.

demagogue A political orator or leader who gains favor by pandering to or exciting the passions and prejudices of the audience rather than by using rational argument.

They shout $50, $60, $70 trillion for single payer health care to scare people.  But single payer costs much less where it used in other countries, as compared to our existing system in the United States.  Single payer will reduce costs by cutting into the inefficient existing system.  This means that a lot of people who profit from the current system will make less money from it -- i.e. the vested interests.

Mayo Pete math (sponsored by Aetna):  Health care is free when provided by the private sector.

So the Democratic establishment is trying to scare us by acting as if a single payer system will bankrupt the country.  In fact, the country's health care system as a whole will be more efficient, but the vested interests that support the establishment will be adversely affected in the short run.

BE AFRAID.  THE COUNTRY WILL GO BANKRUPT (unspoken: if we do anything which will affect my campaign contributors' profits).

Demagogic logic:

1. Be afraid of Bernie!!  He will bankrupt the country.
2. Bernie will lose to Trump because people are afraid.

Of course, according to the demagogues, there are other reasons to be afraid of Bernie (who dares to take on some establishment interests).  For example, be afraid of Bernie because he is supported by the Russians! 

So it boils down to whether or not we should genuinely be afraid of Bernie because of his policy proposals.  The answer is a resounding no. We will not go bankrupt or suffer withering inflation if we implement a more efficient health care financing system.  Russia will not be controlling our government if Bernie wins.  This is just good old fashioned demagoguery.

For more on modern day demagogues' favorite subjects, please see Two Great Societal Lies.

Local v National Government

Michael Bloomberg stands for competence in local government.  His performance is controversial and disputed, but a case can be made that he did a decent job as mayor of one of the world's biggest cities (New York City).

Bernie Sanders was mayor of a considerably smaller city (Burlington Vermont).  His performance is less controversial.  By most accounts, he did a good job, but at a significantly smaller scale than New York City.

Following his mayoralty, Sanders moved to elected office in the United States national government, first as a representative and then as a senator.  This national experience sets him apart from Bloomberg, who has only local government experience.

Just as business and government are fundamentally different types of organizations (one's purpose is to maximize profits, the other's is to maximize the welfare of citizens), local and national governments are fundamentally different types of organizations.  One of the major differences is that a national government issues money, while a local government uses money.  A local government is like a business or a household with regard to money.  A national government, on the other hand, has the power to create money and does this regularly.  Thus, when Bloomberg says, "we can't afford all the programs that Bernie proposes" (paraphrasing), he is revealing his ignorance of how our national monetary system works.  Other Democratic candidates, such as Klobuchar and Buttigieg, share Bloomberg's lack of insight into how the national monetary system works.

Please see The Socrates Show, with guest Pete Peterson and Two Great Societal Lies.

Two Great Societal Lies

Throughout most of western (European and American) history, the Bible was beyond criticism.  Thus, for example, Galileo was tried and condemned by the Roman Catholic Inquisition in 1633. He was prosecuted for his support of heliocentrism, the astronomical model in which the Earth and planets revolve around the Sun at the centre of the Solar System.  Protestants continued the tradition of Biblical / clerical infallibility.  For example, Michael Servetus was burned at the stake in 1553 by John Calvin for challenging the doctrine of the trinity.

By now, in western society, we moved beyond religious dogma.  However, there are certain illogical doctrines that are beyond challenge in elite society.  These were on full display in the Democratic presidential debate last night.

1. We "can't afford" to provide services such as universal health care.  This was pounded relentlessly by candidates Bloomberg, Buttigieg, and Klobuchar.  This is absurd on its face, as all other developed countries do this and spend less on health care than does the U.S.  But it is only one manifestation of the larger misconception that the national government has a limited supply of money.  As creator of the currency (U.S. dollar), our national government faces no monetary limits other than inflation (which has been trending lower for decades).
2. Russia interfered in our 2016 election and is uniquely evil (along with China and any other country that refuses to submit to our empire).  The Democratic candidates tried to outdo each other in denouncing Russia and Putin, along with China and Xi, and Cuba and Castro.  This is again obviously absurd.  It is well documented that most of the so-called Russian interference in the 2016 election was actually manufactured by U.S. and British intelligence.  And to claim that countries as Cuba actually have accomplished anything, in education for example, is beyond the pale.  Thus, establishment standard-bearer Joe Biden was shrieking at Bernie Sanders for actually saying this out loud.
   
   This is of course absurd.  Democracy is obviously an important concept, and the U.S. led empire does have certain basic democratic principles which generally prevail.  But this is not the only humanitarian standard by which we can judge countries.  And the U.S. supports many authoritarian governments who choose to cooperate with the empire to a greater extent than Cuba.  It's thus a great lie to claim that governments who stand up to the empire are irredeemable and cannot, by definition, have done anything good.

As with the imposition of Biblical / clerical infallibility, the current great lies are obviously absurd, yet strictly policed by the elite class.  Despite this societal blind spot, many wonderful scientific and artistic accomplishments take place in our society.  We have come a long way in terms of civil rights.  But the blind spots are dangerous to our survival as a nation and a species, just as the blind spots of yore led to absurd persecutions and devastating wars.

The Threat to Democracy

I believe that the most serious current threat to democracy in the United States is from our unaccountable intelligence services.  Neither the Democrats nor the Republicans nor the mainstream media is willing to challenge these services, which are licensed to lie in the service of protecting our country from terrorism or foreign enemies such as Russia, China, Iran, and Venezuela.  Inevitably, having this kind of power and mission has led to opportunities to mislead the public, to blackmail enemies, and to conduct false flag operations.

Various foreign countries and subnational groups are engaged in life and death struggles.  These include the Russia-Ukraine conflict, the Israel-Iran conflict, the Shia-Sunni conflict, and the class conflicts in Venezuela and Bolivia.  Various parties in these armed conflicts are desperate and therefore will go to great lengths to get the United States, the world's supreme military power, involved on their side.  And so, despite perhaps having good intentions, we get involved at the behest of one faction or another.

In addition, we live in a global economy where American countries make profits around the world.  Naturally, our intelligence agencies are charged with protecting these interests.

So we have an enormous bureaucracy devoted to "intelligence", with a budget 10 times that of Russia's spy budget and in fact bigger than Russia's entire military budget.  For whatever reason, this sprawling and unaccountable bureaucracy has made enormous mistakes over the past decades (Iranian and Central American coups, Vietnam War, Iraq War).

I do not mean to imply that U.S. intelligence agents are bad people, or that the work they do is unnecessary.  Rather, I think it needs to be pointed out that they have an enormous budget in keeping with the status of the United States as the world's preeminent superpower.  While we've tried to build in safeguards against abuse of power, there is a huge incentive to subvert the safeguards in the pursuit of various agendas.

No politician has comparable power, so all must "play" with the intelligence community or lose power.  Thus, serial liar John Bolton is courted by the Democrats because Trump dared to oppose him.  The Democrats do this in the name of democracy, but they are 180 degrees wrong in basing their support for democracy on the foundation of what the intelligence community says.  Democracy should be more about what is publicly known and verifiable.

A Bernie Sanders presidency would provide better balance between the vested interests supported by the intelligence community, and the larger public who constitute the country's labor force, families, and future.

An Election as Part of a Movement

Populist movements are on the march across the neoliberal democratic world, along with various fringe or borderline areas.

In the United States, the Sanders candidacy represents a populist movement.  As such, it is similar to the Trump presidency.  In Britain, the Brexit movement toppled the neoliberal establishment.  In France, the Yellow Vests have been on the streets for over a year.  Populism has been rising in Germany.  The populist Sinn Fein party just scored an upset victory in Ireland.  Populists have dominated Italian politics in recent years.   Protests in Hong Kong are ongoing.  The Middle East has been rife with populist turmoil of one sort or another for decades.  Modi in India and Duterte in the Philippines are right wing populists, as are the leaders of Hungary (Orban) and Brazil (Bolsonaro).  Mexico and Venezuela have leftist populist leaders, while the leftist populist leader of Bolivia was recently deposed in a coup.  Civil protests are taking place throughout Chile.

Leftist populism is age related in the United States.  An Economist/YouGov poll released this week (written Feb 15) found that 60 percent of Democrats younger than 30 support either Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren; among those 65 and older, the progressive candidates’ combined total was 27 percent.  Exit polls from New Hampshire affirmed this generational split, with Sanders winning 47 percent of voters 18 to 29, but just 15 percent of those over 65.

This is the context for the 2020 presidential election which finds Bernie Sanders as the leading Democrat trying to unseat Republican Donald Trump.   The old guard is under attack from both the left and the right, and from the next generation.  Reactionary forces have moved into high gear, employing vast quantities of advertising and scare tactics in an attempt to derail the populist movements.  We are told that Trump is such a threat to our democracy that we must rally behind the Democratic establishment to preserve liberal values.  In this view, establishment Democrats provide the only credible alternative to a second Trump term and the end of democracy as we know it.  This is indeed a frightening prospect.

I disagree with this reactionary political movement for two fundamental reasons:

1. In my opinion, the U.S. military intelligence complex is a greater threat to our liberal values than are Trump Republicans.
2. The Democratic establishment has proven ineffective in representing liberal values and presenting an alternative to Trumpian populism.

I will discuss the military intelligence complex below, but first I will address the argument as to whether Sandersonian populism can be more effective than the Democratic establishment  The best argument against Sandersonian democratic socialism, in my opinion, is that it's unrealistic.  I disagree with this argument, but it is a serious one.  Protest movements are by their very nature not sustainable in the long term, in large part due to the amount of energy and commitment it takes to maintain them*.  If Sanders is elected president, he will face formidable obstacles to implementing his agenda.  Congress will block him, corporations with vested interests will continue to oppose him, and the military intelligence establishment will undermine him.  A reasonable argument can be made that he will be unable to govern effectively, and that therefore his liberal ideals will be discredited.

Against this, we can see the fate of Democrats during the Obama presidency.  As a moderate, Obama swept into the presidency with Democrats in control of both houses of Congress, including 60 senators.  However, his Democratic administration was openly undermined by Republicans and, ultimately Democrats overall were discredited by the electorate as Republicans came to dominate all branches of government by 2016, including especially state governments.  Moderates failed in precisely the way that reactionary conventional wisdom predicts that Sanders will fail.

Looking at American and world history shows that real change in society is possible.  Slavery was abolished.  Women got the right to vote.  In the New Deal era, Social Security was passed and laws passed to help workers and the unemployed.  Throughout the western democratic world, health care is provided as a human right (except in the U.S., although we are much of the way there).  Minority rights are protected much more than they were in the past.  These advances did not result from singular electoral victories.  Rather they were the culmination of movements which eventually prevailed over vested interests and the status quo.

This is the light in which the Sanders candidacy is most constructively viewed.  Ian Welsh discusses this in more detail.

Bernie Sanders, like Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Occupy Wall Street, and Black Lives Matter before him, wants to use mass appeal audience effects to renegotiate the country’s political and economic contract...  These movements operate by forcing conflict out into the open, on favorable terms and on favorable ground. Make the malignancy of power show its face in daylight. Gandhi and the salt march. MLK and the Selma to Montgomery marches. FDR picking fights and catalyzing popular support throughout the New Deal era, starting with the first 100 days. Occupy Wall Street changed American language and political consciousness by cementing the frame of the 1% into the lexicon. Black Lives Matter reminded America who it has been and still is on the streets of Ferguson...  Sanders understands very clearly what kind of coalition and movement he needs to ignite to accomplish the vision he’s putting out in his campaign. It’s an aspirational vision...  Elites may beat Sanders himself but they will not beat the movement he’s invigorating but did not create.

Realistically, we the people have limited power in comparison to the .1% who own most of the wealth.  Whether we vote for Bernie or for Bloomberg or for Trump, they will continue to hold disproportionate power and continue to act in their own self-interest.  What we can do is make our preferences clear, and push for a better society for all by exposing problem areas to a wider audience.

Viewed from the global perspective, there are similar movements for change in many places, abetted by advances in communications technologies which expose problems to large audiences.  As the predominant global superpower, the U.S. leads the reactionary response to protest and unrest across much of the world.  The neoliberal establishment blames the ascendance of Trump in the U.S. on Russia.  China is blamed elsewhere.  Iran is seen as a major culprit in the Middle East.  Populism in the U.S., Britain, France, Germany, and Italy is blamed on racism.  Problems in Central America and South America are blamed on corrupt dictators, and so forth.  There is little self-awareness as to dysfunction of the U.S. led international system of neoliberal economics and politics.

The Democratic party establishment has demonstrated this lack of self-awareness to an extraordinary extent since the 2016 presidential election.  Trump's victory was blamed on Russia, Sanders, racism, and the FBI, although it was later revealed that the leadership of the FBI (including Director Comey) was anti-Trump and pro-Clinton.  Most troubling, the Democrats and the mainstream media have relied on faulty leaks from the FBI, CIA, and British intelligence sources to make their anti-Trump, pro-neoliberal establishment case.

I have written about this, providing detailed examples, many times.  For example, Robert Mueller played a lead role in trying to discredit Trump.  Mueller was given tremendous credibility by the Democrats and media despite his poor track record.  For example, as FBI Director in 2003, he asserted:

Baghdad has the capability and, we presume, the will to use biological, chemical, or radiological weapons against US domestic targets in the event of a US invasion.

When his investigation of Trump was concluded last year, finding no evidence of Trump conspiracy with Russia, it was widely dismissed by Democrats and the media.  Our democratic system has already been severely compromised by the intelligence community such that we ignore their being wrong and move on to their next batch of "leaks".   The impeachment process, initiated by a CIA "whisteblower" over investigation of possible corruption in Ukraine. was a massive distraction from the serious problems facing the country.  It demonstrated that Trump faces massive opposition in the public sphere, in contrast to the intelligence community which is largely unaccountable.

Thus, I disagree with the scare tactics promulgated by the Democratic establishment regarding Trump as a threat to our democratic system.  The greater threat to our democracy can be seen in the Democratic campaign for president in 2020.  Pete Buttigieg has become a favorite of the intelligence community and invested in the app which has prevented the Iowa caucus from being conducted fairly.  In a widely acknowledged fiasco, the Democratic establishment ended up giving Buttigieg more delegates than Sanders, despite Sanders winning more votes and documenting mathematical errors with regard to determining delegates.

Mike Bloomberg has entered the Democratic race and is throwing tons of money into a desperate attempt to stop Sanders.  No major media outlets endorse Sanders, nor do they cover his campaign fairly.  Vested interests are everywhere throwing money and misleading commentary in an attempt to preserve the status quo.  Hillary Clinton and Lloyd Blankfein are amongst these purveyors of fear.

Of course, political campaigns have always been rough and tumble events.  Thus, Republicans will say that Trump's lying and funding by vested interests are fair.  Democrats will say that stopping Trump is imperative and justify Bloomberg's Trump-like performance.   The U.S. as an empire cannot escape the desire of other countries (U.K., Israel, Ukraine) to affect the U.S. political scene.  That's reality.  But secretive and unaccountable intelligence agencies are best positioned to take advantage of this landscape, not a relative outsider such as Trump.

Again, a Sanders victory will not magically clear this up.  But it will provide an opportunity to expose real problems, including election misbehavior, to a wider audience.  The mainstream media will have to extend the Overton Window to encompass Sanders' bully pulpit.  This would be a great restorative measure for the U.S., and thus for the world as a whole as we struggle to evolve more effective democratic principles and reduce the need for populist protest.

Why I Voted for Bernie Sanders

I voted absentee ballot back in January.  For me, it was an easy decision to vote for Bernie Sanders.  I also voted for him in 2016, and events since then have reinforced my belief in his candidacy.

Earlier in the year, I was planning to vote for Elizabeth Warren.  She seemed like the candidate most likely to unite the Democratic party against Trump.  However, in my view, she faltered in recent months, showing a lack of conviction in the face of attacks from the establishment.  Her attack on Bernie Sanders, seemingly made in desperation as she was sinking in the polls, for supposedly thinking a woman can't win in 2020, was the decisive factor.  I discussed the reasons why in this post.

Attacking Sanders from the left is usually a bad idea.  He is perhaps the most consistent politician I can think of, going back to his civil rights advocacy in the 1960s.

Attacks from center seem similarly flawed to me.  I just watched this 2/9/2020 interview with Jake Tapper on CNN, and it gives a good idea of just how ridiculous some of the criticisms are.  As an example, he is criticized for being impractical with regard to health care.  His response that other countries cover everyone for half the cost per capita is unassailable.  As he tells Tapper, if Canada, Japan, and every country in Europe can provide universal coverage at a reasonable cost, so can we.

What Bernie has already accomplished is somewhat remarkable.  As Nathan Robinson says in Current Affairs,

The Bernie Sanders 2020 campaign has achieved a number of firsts. Never before in modern American history has a political movement been funded virtually entirely and directly by the working class...  Bernie has the most contributions of any candidate in 46 states, the most contributions ever by any presidential candidate at this point in the race... Sanders has actually out-fundraised all the billionaire-backed candidates, something many predicted confidently was impossible to achieve in U.S. politics... 

In 2016, Bernie Sanders promised to continue to build a popular movement, and since the narrow loss in that race, he hasn’t stopped. He’s helped Amazon workers secure $15 an hour, joined together with Walmart workers fighting for the same, helped Disney service workers win a contract, and has joined and boosted countless labor struggles in the past years... 

The first Jewish candidate for President ever to win a presidential primary in U.S. history, a man clearly deeply influenced by his Jewish origins, who spent time living in Israel on a kibbutz, has been absurdly pilloried as an anti-Semite in the media for the crime of recognizing the humanity of the Palestinian people... 

My impression is that the United States has been failing on a number of fronts.  Our economy has become overly financialized, with the marketplace becoming more of a counterproductive casino.  In addition, as the predominant global superpower, we have neglected international law and fairness in favor of bullying other countries. Our intelligence services are largely unaccountable and have captured both major parties and the mainstream media, with unfortunate effects on domestic politics.  Trump is a symptom of this state of affairs, more than a cause.

Reasonable people can disagree about this.  There is always a temptation to naively embrace candidates making unrealistic promises.  I have probably been guilty of this in the past.  On the other hand, I think it is a good idea to strive to make the world a better place, and not to be deterred by cynicism or vested interests.  As I wrote in Facilitating Travel Along the Arc of Moral Justice,

In the early days of our nation, societal decisions were made by a restricted class of white men.  Now other races and genders participate and have power more commensurate with their numbers.  This "arc of moral justice" was facilitated not only by trade and communications technology, but also by explicit efforts to expand the discussion to include underrepresented points of view.  Thus, abolitionists made visible the injustices of slavery and featured the African American perspective.  Suffragettes expanded democracy to more specifically consider the concerns of women.  The progressive movement and the New Deal elevated the concerns of manual laborers to a more visible platform.  Gandhi, MLK, and Mandela brought similar tactics to their respective movements, forcing conflict out into the open, on favorable terms and on favorable ground.

In this, I was influenced by Ian Welsh's article entitled Does Bernie Sanders Know What He’s Doing?.  Quoting Welsh:

In peaceful social movements, “winning” means winning the hearts and minds of the majority of the society’s stakeholders to the point where they actively choose sides. First make them witnesses, then convert them into participants in the conflict. 

All Democrats, and Republicans for that matter, claim to be for helping the majority while protecting the rights of minorities.  Sanders has more credibility on this score than any of the other candidates, in my view.  Moreover, I like his slogan: "Not Me, Us".  Sanders is old and won't be around forever.  His candidacy is about a movement to address real problems more than it is about him as an individual, and that's the way it should be.

Facilitating Travel Along the Arc of Moral Justice

I've talked a lot about Getting to Yes as an effective guide to win-win negotiation.  But sometimes the other side is too powerful and won't negotiate in good faith.  An effective technique in these circumstances may be to expand the audience, as suggested by Ian Welsh in an article about the 2020 presidential election.  This fits well with my UU values, which are essentially humanist (plus respect for the interdependent web of all existence).

We UUs are humanist in the sense that we value humanity in general more than any particular race or ethnicity or other tribal affiliation.  We often find justice is attained as the participation in a discussion or democratic process is broadened to include more ethnicities and other types of sub-groups.   Fortunately, this happens more often as civilization evolves to a global level, with technology facilitating wider trade and broader and faster communication.

In the early days of our nation, societal decisions were made by a restricted class of white men.  Now other races and genders participate and have power more commensurate with their numbers.  This "arc of moral justice" was facilitated not only by trade and communications technology, but also by explicit efforts to expand the discussion to include underrepresented points of view.  Thus, abolitionists made visible the injustices of slavery and featured the African American perspective.  Suffragettes expanded democracy to more specifically consider the concerns of women.  The progressive movement and the New Deal elevated the concerns of manual laborers to a more visible platform.  Gandhi, MLK, and Mandela brought similar tactics to their respective movements, forcing conflict out into the open, on favorable terms and on favorable ground.

This is how the arc of the moral universe is made to bend towards justice.  As Ian Welsh said,

In peaceful social movements, “winning” means winning the hearts and minds of the majority of the society’s stakeholders to the point where they actively choose sides. First make them witnesses, then convert them into participants in the conflict.

Thus, at the societal level, we are guided by democratic humanist principles such as universal suffrage, free speech, majority rule, and respect for minority rights.  At the personal and small group level, we are guided by the humanist methods of Getting to Yes, striving for win-win negotiations wherever possible.  Here is a framework for building political values upon a solid foundation of personal values.  Form win-win coalitions to achieve personal and small group success.  At the societal level, success involves getting as many people into the discussion as possible, and forming a majority which rules based upon that constituency.  We want win-win relationships all the way up.