We'd decided to skip a planned feature but then along came the winner of Mike's Idiot of the Week and we knew we couldn't skip it.
Socialist (but in the closet on it) Bisty showed up with "The 'O' in Socialism" (The Nation) last week where she lamented many things (and her parents lamented paying for a wasted higher education) including:
Now, the Obama=socialist meme, which was once just laughable, has gone viral.
It's still hard to take it very seriously, given how far Obama's policies are from even the mildest form of social democracy--recall how he explicitly rejected the idea that the United States should emulate Sweden's highly effective response to its early 90s financial meltdown, when it overcame the crisis by nationalizing the banks.
We don't like liars so we don't like the jug-eared Bitsy. But Bitsy wants to pretend the problem is Republicans. On Socialism?
The January 4, 2008 Iraq snapshot noted the meme Bitsy can't be honest about:
If you're not seeing the problem, you're lying to yourself. A bit like the lie being spread that "Obama's a closet socialist, hop on board, he's big time left, he just can't say so." He's not and he's not left. Do we want a War Hawk in the White House, as the US moves to the wars to Africa, who can lie to the camera and say, "Oh, my father was from Kenya, this is a just war, don't even ask me that!"
The "Barack Is A Socialist!" meme started on the left and ran through the Socialist circles. We have an e-mails from an anti-war 'leader' on December 29th claiming Barack was a Socialist and that "we all must get on board." Barack is a Corporatist War Hawk and, community wide, we always told the truth on that. But a lot of liars on the left insisted he was a Socialist. Now Bisty Reed wants to show up and pretend like the right wing started it? That's laughable. When, in the last forty years, has the right ever had the intellectual resources to start anything? They're reactors, not actors.
Barack benefited from the 'intellectual' left, the Socialist. Many of whom lied about him and some lied knowingly. It wasn't a problem for them because, hey, they lie about who they are.
May 20th, Matty Rothschild stepped out of the political closet, "And for those who, like me, are actually Democratic Socialists, it’s time to come out and say so."
"Democratic Socialists" are not Democrats. Tossing the word "Democratic" in front of it does not make a Socialist a Democrat. And it matters because Matthew Rothschild savaged Hillary Clinton and stroked Barack over and over throughout the Democratic Party primaries. (Matty grew so unhinged at one point he just knew The New York Times had conspired -- with the weather apparently -- against Barry.) Didn't readers of The Progressive have a right to know that Hillary was being judged not by a Democratic standard but by a Socialist one?
Didn't readers have that right?
And when Barbara Erhenreich was writing her trash, didn't readers also deserve the courtesy of knowing the unhinged Erhenreich was grading by a different scale?
Democrats are Democrats and they may be corrupt or they may be wonderful or they may be human and flawed. But a Democratic Party primary is supposed to represent the will of the Democrat Party base. Not Socialists. Not Communists. Not Republicans. Not Greens. Not Libertarians.
A general election is open to all and every US citizen could and should weigh in. But when people are coming out during the primaries in favor of one candidate or another, the public has a right to know who is endorsing.
So, for example, when Laura Flanders makes a political endorsement (as she did) of Barack Obama for the Democratic Party nomination, people had a right to know that she was not a Democrat. Not only is she not a Democrat but in the general elections of 2000 and 2004, she didn't vote for the Democratic Party candidate. How much weight would her endorsement of Barack carried with anyone had people known she wasn't a Democrat or that she didn't vote for Al Gore in 2000 or John Kerry in 2004?
How seriously would they have taken her bitchy attacks on Hillary Clinton (including saying Hillary "cackled") if they'd know she wasn't a member of the Democratic Party?
During the campaign, when various Republicans endorsed Barack, it was treated as news. And it was news. Republicans should be endorsing their own party. When they don't, it's news. By the same token, when Socialists endorse Democratic candidates, it should be news because it qualifies as such. But a lot of people want to live in political closets and tell themselves fairy tales.
Take Naomi Klein. Interviewed by Matthew Rothschild, she not only made a fool of herself, she revealed herself to be a very bad liar:
That night I was walking to the apartment where my husband stays, and passing by this really elite, storied club. I always look in the window. It looks like the kind of place where Central American coups are plotted. On this night, a half hour after the results had been announced, there were these two African American men high-fiving each other outside the club. One of them was the doorman for this private club, and the other was a chauffeur for one of the club members. As I was passing, one of the club members came out looking just miserable. He was sort of a Daddy Warbucks character, with just an absolute scowl on his face. I watched these two men who had just been celebrating go back to their posts. One of them opened the door of the club, and the other opened the door of the waiting limousine. And they shared this smile. I just thought: Wow! This is a night where the people holding the doors are having a way better time than the people walking through the doors. And that's pretty rare in that city.
That's a lot of information for Naomi to pick up just by walking by. Does she use a walker? It's another lie from a woman who seems intent to divorce herself from reality. She makes up a story that sounds so very wonderful but when you stop a moment to actually think about it, it all falls apart.
Sort of the way it would have fallen apart for Barack if all of his endorsers at The Progressive, The Nation, The Huffington Post, etc. had to admit their political persuasion when endorsing.
In that interview, Naomi made a real fool of herself, sounding like a neo-con seeing 'good' in 9/11, as she declared of the economy, "This is an amazing moment for the left, for progressives. Because the free market ideology is truly in crisis."
Bill Fletcher isn't a Democrat and when that was pointed out at The Common Ills, his little feelings were so hurt that days later he could be heard on CounterSpin whining about a new McCarthyism. It's not McCarthyism, Fletch, it's about telling the damn truth. Bill Fletcher Jr. -- non-Democrat -- endorsed Barack Obama during the Democratic Party primaries.
People damn well had a right to know that the endorsement was not coming from a Democrat. In fact, he and others should have been told to butt the hell out. It wasn't their business, it is not their political party.
Though Bill's itty-bitty feelings were hurt then, as soon as the election was over, he and Babsie were out of their political closets and co-authoring an article at The Nation entitled "Reimagining Socialism:"
But as socialists we know the spirit in which this great project of collective salvation must be undertaken, and that spirit is solidarity. An antique notion until very recently, it flickered into life again in the symbolism and energy of the Obama campaign. The Yes We Can! chant was the slogan of the United Farm Workers movement and went on to be adopted by various unions and community-based organizations to emphasize what large numbers of people can accomplish through collective action. Even Obama's relatively anodyne calls for a new commitment to volunteerism and community service seem to have inspired a spirit of "giving back." If the idea of democratic planning, of controlling our destiny, is the intellectual content of socialism, then solidarity is its emotional energy source--the moral understanding and the searing conviction that, however overwhelming the challenges, we are in this together.
Proving that xenophobia runs deep at The Nation, Babsie and Billy got to claim "Yes We Can!" was the slogan of the United Farm Workers. No, it was not. Si se puede translates as "Yes, it can be done." Si se puede was the slogan of UFW. "Yes We Can!" was a song by the Pointer Sisters.
When they were tearing apart Hillary and endorsing Barack, do you think most people knew that what Fletcher and Ehrenreich were on board for was the death of capitalism?
Now some would have applauded that. How many we don't know and we can't know because Fletcher and Ehrenreich are liars and tricksters who refused to allow their beliefs to compete in the public square.
After the election was not the time for the American people to learn that these people were not members of the Democratic Party and did not support the goals and platform of the Democratic Party.
After the election, it was too late.
It was also too late to jump start a conversation on Socialism which is how the cowardice on the part of Bill Fletcher Jr. and Barbara Ehrenriech cheated Socialism. And goodness knows, Socialism could really use a serious discussion. That was demonstrated October 29, 2008 when "Deep In The Heart Of Texas" posted "Socialist!" to Barack Obama's campaign site:
I'm a Socialist and I'm proud of it.
Stupid people that use that term as an insult don't understand what it means. Thomas Jefferson was a Socialist. FDR was the greatest Socialist of our time. Our Founding Documents were based on a "Social Contract."
It's a philosophy we all live by everyday. We all put in, and we all take out. We pay, and we withdrawal. We are stronger together than we are separately. Our education system, our roads and highways, our police departments, our fire departments are all the product of Socialism. Our progressive tax system is socialism at work! What do senior citizens live off of? Social Security!
Oh my! We're all Socialists! Let's elect one!
Socialism is not Social Security. The right wing believes that and repeats it but it's not Socialism. FDR was not a Socialist and, in fact, if you have to argue that a non-Socialist was "the greatest Socialist of our time," that's indicting actual Socialists as being pretty damn lousy. And the "Social Contract" is not a Socialist premise, it predates modern Socialism.
These are things that Babsie and Billy could have educated on had they not been so desperate to hide in political closets.
Socialism? It's a theory and a system. The same as Capitalism, or Communism, or Fascism, or Democracy, or Monarchy. And maybe it's what the US wants and should move to and maybe it's not. But trickery and deceit -- long the hallmark of Socialists and Communists who have attempted to co-opt the Democratic Party (this is not a new development, The National Guardian was created to fight against such sell-outs) -- don't advance anything. You don't persuade with trickery. You don't convert with deceit. Not in the long run.
If Socialism is as wonderful as Babsie and Billy and the rest think, you might think they'd be willing to make the case for it publicly.
2008 cannot be undone. But in the future, you can and should call out non-party members who attempt to hijack a political party's nomination process. Socialists, Communists and Republicans are not members of the Democratic Party. While they're more than welcome to vote for whomever they want in a general election, a political party is supposed to choose its own nominee. If you check out the 'intellectual' cheerleaders for Barack, you'll find there were very few Democrats among them. There were Republicans (Arianna and her Blogger Boiz, Andrew Sullivan, et al) and there were Socialists and Communists. Like the voters, Democrats lined up behind Hillary. Unless Democrats are willing to fight for their own party, they better accept that they will not be picking their nominee.
And everyone should reject Bisty Reed's facile and insulting scribbles. Bitsy tells you that Barack's actions with the banks and Big Auto are being called Socialism by the right wing. "America's Socialism For the Rich". Funny. We didn't realize The Guardian published right-wingers. We also didn't realize Joseph Stiglitz was a right winger.