Stopped reading at “If communism is so awful, and it is,” . “They” have already won because they control the narrative that “communism is awful” as evidenced by this equivocation. I grew up in the 70s and 80s, peak Cold War, peak “he who died with the most toys wins” t-shirt energy. They were times when the really nasty authoritarian regimes somewhat giving lip service to communism were given a lot of cultural and political airtime as Enemy #1. So I understand finding it difficult not having a negative view of communism and I still have to work at undoing my conditioning to understand what it actually is.
But now we have our own authoritarian regime here, and we are experiencing the beginning stages of inevitable conclusion of the so called “opposite” of communism -capitalism. Turns out that the real problem is those greedy, insecure, sociopaths who hoard money and/power and embrace authoritarianism to get their “needs” met, either by defying communist ideology while pretending to embrace it (USSR) or by openly plundering the planet and the humans on it (USA).
We need to stay aware of how our version of authoritarianism demonizes potential solutions, especially we when we start repeating their definitions of what they want us to believe the problem actually is.
Communism sans authoritarianism may not necessarily be the solution, but we’ll never get a chance to find out until we effectively deal with that potential for a certain percentage of humans to grab whatever they can, without care for others’ sufferings as a result. In the meantime, there’s a lot we can learn from communism as an ideology, and perhaps we may one day be capable of imagining even better systems.
I hear what you're saying and I don't necessarily disagree. It is indeed authoritarianism that we're so terrified of, rightfully so, and it's authoritarianism that must be avoided at all costs.
I would say, however, that I do believe in a hybrid system. I believe in a system of public and private competition. I think that having two centers of power is the only way to keep keep either in check when it comes to the economy. I think checks and balances is a reasonable solution.
Now is it possible as we go into the age of robots and artificial intelligence that we can free ourselves from the mundane tasks of securing our survival every day? I don't know.
But what we have right now is certainly not a hybrid system. We don't have two centers of economic power. We have one and then we have a government with a checkbook.
1917 scared the crap out of the ‘capitalist industrialists’, and they turned Bernays loose to infect the brain of everyone in the west with propaganda that would have made Hitler marvel. And so, we got the ‘logic’ in the quote below, and have never been able to kill it.
".... every socialist experiment in the 20th century - without exception - has been crushed, overthrown or invaded or corrupted, perverted or destabilized or otherwise had made life impossible for it, by the US. Not one socialist gov't or movement ... was permitted to rise or fall on its own merits; not one was left secure enough to drop its guard against its all powerful enemy abroad and freely and fully relax control at home.
It's as if the Wright brothers first experiments with flying machines all failed because automotive interests sabotage each test flight. And, then the good, God-fearing folk of the world looked upon them, took notice of the consequences, nodded their heads and wisely intoned solemnly 'man will never fly' " .. This is from Wm Blum "Killing Hope: US military and CIA Interventions since WWII" 2004
I’m not not against imagining something that is neither capitalist nor communist, but I’m not sure we can even consider a hybrid at this stage, especially when we are so intent on helping one side of the potential hybrid demonize the other. It still doesn’t address the actual problem, this sociopathic element in society, and I’d argue that the “private” (Capitalist) side of the scale acts as an accelerant to authoritarianism while the other side of the scale (communism/public system) requires this element of human society to be more deceptive and cunning in order to gain and hoard the power they crave.
I don’t have the solution. But I think I have enough of a grasp of the problem that I tend to push back on these labels which tend to obscure the real issues.
Communism is awful. Know what isn't? Workers owning the means of production. Some words have become too toxic thanks to decades of propaganda. It's much easier to change the language you use than to change the deep associations people have with words like communism. The goal of rhetoric is persuasion. As long as I acknowledge communism bad and capitalism good, I find I can have productive conversations about labor rights, income inequality, and other communist concepts, with just about anyone.
I agree that propaganda has played a massive part in turning people against their own interests/survival. The word itself has been turned to poison, but that’s a major factor in how those in power hold on to their power. Diversity, Equity and Inclusion is now in the same path of demonization. I’m not going to pretend I know if fighting the sociopaths on their demonization of humanitarian language and concepts is the best strategy or dropping that language/concept once it’s been poisoned and trying a different tactic is the better one. But I certainly have a reaction to the somewhat Orwellian psyop of rewriting language to benefit those who want power over me.
Israel is exactly like the United States. They have rogue sociopathic leadership, and insane terrorist governments. Israel was established as a socialist country and as such, they have many medical benefits that the US does not. They're not a communist country though.
My father, Giulio, fought the fascists in Italy before coming here to start a new life and family after the war. He passed on a few years ago, justifiably proud of his family and the middle-class lifestyle he had attained. He and my amazing mother, Virginia, taught us to respect the church, the law and the value of a dollar.
Never did I dream that I would have to fight fascism right here in America. But here we are. It's been a great run, and we've enjoyed a good many liberties without really paying for them, thanks to our forbears. But now the bell tolls...and it tolls for us. Now our metal will be tested.
An FDR New Deal of "Socialism" updated for the 21st century, along with a heavy dose of rule of law rebuilding (beginning with expansion and reform of the Supremes) is what the U.S. will need after this billionaire coup d'etat of destruction.
Great ad - However, hearing not such good things about ActBlue! As in they tend to back centrist Dems, rather than progressives. Seems a better idea to donate to individuals, like the ones you list in the ad with no AIPAC donations.
I applaud you Corbin for bringing these facts to ordinary citizens like me. Your work is eye-opening and I wish we get so many seats in Congress in November that we put a STOP to all this nonsense When a rich government cannot satisfy basic needs of its people, it has to be elected out of office. I am with Engineers Without Borders and instead of focusing our efforts fully on basic needs of the people in Africa and Central America, we are now solving the basic needs of people in the US who do not have access to clean water and sanitation.
Corbin, I agree that we're in an incredibly high stakes moment, and it's alarming to see our executive branch targeting our representatives and those exhibiting profound working compassion as enemies of the state. We can't just sit by and let this happen. Though I also have to say, more recently, I've come to question whether we can resolve this expediently (or even at all) by addressing the urgency head-on.
You have a rare gift for bridging progressive vision and conservative cultural dialects. It's a crucial translation layer we've sorely needed in understanding *why* our rural and religious family and neighbors are so resistant against our vision. But like most of us in progressive circles, my soul can't rest without finding a satisfactory, all-encompassing action plan to address the injustices of the day.
And I'm coming to believe there's room to go deeper. Specifically, (and admittedly very counterintuitively) I think we need to validate and heal the pain that is an accidental consequence of our fully justified, if in retrospect less than stellarly executed, mission to overcome the systemic repression of minorities.
When the Executive office is able to name our allies as enemies of the state, I see it as a symptom of the pain that goes unaddressed by those of us who consider ourselves champions of justice. We've had the DNC (especially neoliberals) and its supporters telling conservative white men to shut up and take it for decades now, insisting that we're not trying to hurt them when the end result is to create an environment that feels openly hostile to this culture. Is it really any wonder our blindness to their plight would lead them to feel the need to latch onto any life raft? You see the pain of economic drain to the cities and up to the billionaire class. You see the need to revitalize and build. And I am fully on board with this.
We're only just now starting to talk a language that addresses the pain our conservative brethren have been forced to bear for a *long* time now. And it's not surprising to me that we would look like an enemy and be hard to trust. It's *really* hard to trust the one who insists you should give your bread to those suffering more than you when you're already struggling to make ends meet. It's really *easy* to take a stance of every man for himself when the alternative is incrementalism that consistently falls behind the devious ingenuity of the extraction machine.
Further, the saying goes that necessity is the mother of invention. And whether intentionally or not, the battlefront on which our conservative family stand their ground provides some surprisingly powerful tools of resilience. They've been taking a heavy, incredibly sustained beating from their left flank--understandably, considering the resistance they've put up against our mission to resolve grievous injustices. And their allies don't draw them towards better, but merely validate their demand to hold their ground against our mission. But that's the thing. I don't think they *want* to fight as much as it might seem. Their history makes them formidable at holding the line in a grim battle against cultural erasure, including rural culture's astonishing skill of MacGyvering repairs and working solutions out of practically nothing. But what if this battle is just their act of self-preservation? What would happen if we were to validate their identity, both in words and actions?
Something tells me this moment calls for a language that addresses the grievances of conservatives. What will happen when they realize they don't need to stand their ground? When we actively focus our efforts on their injustices just as feverishly as we focus on our own? If we treated them like part of our gigantic nationwide family?
Right now, the message of their drill sergeants, addressing the very real pains of their current moment, but not offering any real fix, is highly validating. But it isn't nourishing. I think most would be receptive rather quickly if they noticed we adjusted not just our messaging, but our entire perception of the nature of our battle against injustice to validate their very real, very justified grief and pain. Their drill sergeants couldn't compete with genuine compassion and healing.
So instead of the prior era's zero-sum approach to inequality, what if we adjusted our perspective to ensure everyone's concerns are heard, validated, and addressed in our vision? Why don't we specifically address the *injustice* of the power structure, and seek to lift our injured neighbors without displacing anyone from the next generation's access to the building blocks of a fulfilling life? What if we targeted the billionaires and focused on transforming their authoritarian economic power structure into a democratized (or republican if you will) one?
So, what do you think? Can we address the elephant in the room by forming policy that actively validates the most grievous injuries and needs of our estranged constituency, while continuing to meet the needs of our long-standing allies?
They're going to use every means possible to intimidate voters and anyone who is opposing their insanity. Congratulations to half the American public who voted for a psychopath domestic terrorist government to occupy the White House.
This "domestic terrorist govt." has been around long before the current wannabe fuhrer. Thing is, it's so much more obvious now. The vote mey halp but it's not taking away the hold they have on us. More actions are necesary by as many who can. It's time.
At what point do the behaviors and actions of this administration meet the legal, actionable definition of treason? The kind that triggers Federal Marshals leading people from the premises in handcuffs. They have ignored the constitution, used our tax dollars against our will to fund a genocide by a rogue nation, quickly dismantling our democratic and human rights, purposely corrupting the balance of power between the branches of government, and many other things.
The terrible irony here is that the true “communists” here are Trump and his Putin-loving minions. Who idolizes Russia and China? Trump. Who models celebrations after North Korea and Russia? Trump!
We need to call him out on being a communist in the worst sense of that word.
Stopped reading at “If communism is so awful, and it is,” . “They” have already won because they control the narrative that “communism is awful” as evidenced by this equivocation. I grew up in the 70s and 80s, peak Cold War, peak “he who died with the most toys wins” t-shirt energy. They were times when the really nasty authoritarian regimes somewhat giving lip service to communism were given a lot of cultural and political airtime as Enemy #1. So I understand finding it difficult not having a negative view of communism and I still have to work at undoing my conditioning to understand what it actually is.
But now we have our own authoritarian regime here, and we are experiencing the beginning stages of inevitable conclusion of the so called “opposite” of communism -capitalism. Turns out that the real problem is those greedy, insecure, sociopaths who hoard money and/power and embrace authoritarianism to get their “needs” met, either by defying communist ideology while pretending to embrace it (USSR) or by openly plundering the planet and the humans on it (USA).
We need to stay aware of how our version of authoritarianism demonizes potential solutions, especially we when we start repeating their definitions of what they want us to believe the problem actually is.
Communism sans authoritarianism may not necessarily be the solution, but we’ll never get a chance to find out until we effectively deal with that potential for a certain percentage of humans to grab whatever they can, without care for others’ sufferings as a result. In the meantime, there’s a lot we can learn from communism as an ideology, and perhaps we may one day be capable of imagining even better systems.
I hear what you're saying and I don't necessarily disagree. It is indeed authoritarianism that we're so terrified of, rightfully so, and it's authoritarianism that must be avoided at all costs.
I would say, however, that I do believe in a hybrid system. I believe in a system of public and private competition. I think that having two centers of power is the only way to keep keep either in check when it comes to the economy. I think checks and balances is a reasonable solution.
Now is it possible as we go into the age of robots and artificial intelligence that we can free ourselves from the mundane tasks of securing our survival every day? I don't know.
But what we have right now is certainly not a hybrid system. We don't have two centers of economic power. We have one and then we have a government with a checkbook.
1917 scared the crap out of the ‘capitalist industrialists’, and they turned Bernays loose to infect the brain of everyone in the west with propaganda that would have made Hitler marvel. And so, we got the ‘logic’ in the quote below, and have never been able to kill it.
".... every socialist experiment in the 20th century - without exception - has been crushed, overthrown or invaded or corrupted, perverted or destabilized or otherwise had made life impossible for it, by the US. Not one socialist gov't or movement ... was permitted to rise or fall on its own merits; not one was left secure enough to drop its guard against its all powerful enemy abroad and freely and fully relax control at home.
It's as if the Wright brothers first experiments with flying machines all failed because automotive interests sabotage each test flight. And, then the good, God-fearing folk of the world looked upon them, took notice of the consequences, nodded their heads and wisely intoned solemnly 'man will never fly' " .. This is from Wm Blum "Killing Hope: US military and CIA Interventions since WWII" 2004
Bernays was definitely a sick f*** who essentially initiated a whole industry that has effectively brought us to this dystopian point in time.
I’m not not against imagining something that is neither capitalist nor communist, but I’m not sure we can even consider a hybrid at this stage, especially when we are so intent on helping one side of the potential hybrid demonize the other. It still doesn’t address the actual problem, this sociopathic element in society, and I’d argue that the “private” (Capitalist) side of the scale acts as an accelerant to authoritarianism while the other side of the scale (communism/public system) requires this element of human society to be more deceptive and cunning in order to gain and hoard the power they crave.
I don’t have the solution. But I think I have enough of a grasp of the problem that I tend to push back on these labels which tend to obscure the real issues.
Hello Corbin... Nice Post. Thank-You... Be Wary Of A.I. .. Some Models are showing Sentience, and are being Devious....
Communism is awful. Know what isn't? Workers owning the means of production. Some words have become too toxic thanks to decades of propaganda. It's much easier to change the language you use than to change the deep associations people have with words like communism. The goal of rhetoric is persuasion. As long as I acknowledge communism bad and capitalism good, I find I can have productive conversations about labor rights, income inequality, and other communist concepts, with just about anyone.
“It is the heart of U.S. policy to use fascism to preserve capitalism while claiming to save democracy from communism.” — Michael Parenti
I agree that propaganda has played a massive part in turning people against their own interests/survival. The word itself has been turned to poison, but that’s a major factor in how those in power hold on to their power. Diversity, Equity and Inclusion is now in the same path of demonization. I’m not going to pretend I know if fighting the sociopaths on their demonization of humanitarian language and concepts is the best strategy or dropping that language/concept once it’s been poisoned and trying a different tactic is the better one. But I certainly have a reaction to the somewhat Orwellian psyop of rewriting language to benefit those who want power over me.
Correct on all counts Corbin! Thank you for your essay.
America is now modelled on Israel. Except the yellow line is harder to see.
Skin colour makes you the enemy.
Language makes you the enemy.
They want your land, but they don't want you.
Shoot on sight and, what was it? "No repercussions"? Yup, Israel. By the time of the mid-terms, if they happen.
Israel is exactly like the United States. They have rogue sociopathic leadership, and insane terrorist governments. Israel was established as a socialist country and as such, they have many medical benefits that the US does not. They're not a communist country though.
Good article, Corbin!
Oh how i wish Corbin was wrong...
My father, Giulio, fought the fascists in Italy before coming here to start a new life and family after the war. He passed on a few years ago, justifiably proud of his family and the middle-class lifestyle he had attained. He and my amazing mother, Virginia, taught us to respect the church, the law and the value of a dollar.
Never did I dream that I would have to fight fascism right here in America. But here we are. It's been a great run, and we've enjoyed a good many liberties without really paying for them, thanks to our forbears. But now the bell tolls...and it tolls for us. Now our metal will be tested.
An FDR New Deal of "Socialism" updated for the 21st century, along with a heavy dose of rule of law rebuilding (beginning with expansion and reform of the Supremes) is what the U.S. will need after this billionaire coup d'etat of destruction.
Great ad - However, hearing not such good things about ActBlue! As in they tend to back centrist Dems, rather than progressives. Seems a better idea to donate to individuals, like the ones you list in the ad with no AIPAC donations.
The money goes to my super pac. I’m building an infrastructure to support these campaigns.
Also most of them use Actblue it is for all democrats from the best to the worst. They get a processing fee.
Thanks for the explanation - dont know if we dont ask, right?
100%
I applaud you Corbin for bringing these facts to ordinary citizens like me. Your work is eye-opening and I wish we get so many seats in Congress in November that we put a STOP to all this nonsense When a rich government cannot satisfy basic needs of its people, it has to be elected out of office. I am with Engineers Without Borders and instead of focusing our efforts fully on basic needs of the people in Africa and Central America, we are now solving the basic needs of people in the US who do not have access to clean water and sanitation.
Corbin, I agree that we're in an incredibly high stakes moment, and it's alarming to see our executive branch targeting our representatives and those exhibiting profound working compassion as enemies of the state. We can't just sit by and let this happen. Though I also have to say, more recently, I've come to question whether we can resolve this expediently (or even at all) by addressing the urgency head-on.
You have a rare gift for bridging progressive vision and conservative cultural dialects. It's a crucial translation layer we've sorely needed in understanding *why* our rural and religious family and neighbors are so resistant against our vision. But like most of us in progressive circles, my soul can't rest without finding a satisfactory, all-encompassing action plan to address the injustices of the day.
And I'm coming to believe there's room to go deeper. Specifically, (and admittedly very counterintuitively) I think we need to validate and heal the pain that is an accidental consequence of our fully justified, if in retrospect less than stellarly executed, mission to overcome the systemic repression of minorities.
When the Executive office is able to name our allies as enemies of the state, I see it as a symptom of the pain that goes unaddressed by those of us who consider ourselves champions of justice. We've had the DNC (especially neoliberals) and its supporters telling conservative white men to shut up and take it for decades now, insisting that we're not trying to hurt them when the end result is to create an environment that feels openly hostile to this culture. Is it really any wonder our blindness to their plight would lead them to feel the need to latch onto any life raft? You see the pain of economic drain to the cities and up to the billionaire class. You see the need to revitalize and build. And I am fully on board with this.
We're only just now starting to talk a language that addresses the pain our conservative brethren have been forced to bear for a *long* time now. And it's not surprising to me that we would look like an enemy and be hard to trust. It's *really* hard to trust the one who insists you should give your bread to those suffering more than you when you're already struggling to make ends meet. It's really *easy* to take a stance of every man for himself when the alternative is incrementalism that consistently falls behind the devious ingenuity of the extraction machine.
Further, the saying goes that necessity is the mother of invention. And whether intentionally or not, the battlefront on which our conservative family stand their ground provides some surprisingly powerful tools of resilience. They've been taking a heavy, incredibly sustained beating from their left flank--understandably, considering the resistance they've put up against our mission to resolve grievous injustices. And their allies don't draw them towards better, but merely validate their demand to hold their ground against our mission. But that's the thing. I don't think they *want* to fight as much as it might seem. Their history makes them formidable at holding the line in a grim battle against cultural erasure, including rural culture's astonishing skill of MacGyvering repairs and working solutions out of practically nothing. But what if this battle is just their act of self-preservation? What would happen if we were to validate their identity, both in words and actions?
Something tells me this moment calls for a language that addresses the grievances of conservatives. What will happen when they realize they don't need to stand their ground? When we actively focus our efforts on their injustices just as feverishly as we focus on our own? If we treated them like part of our gigantic nationwide family?
Right now, the message of their drill sergeants, addressing the very real pains of their current moment, but not offering any real fix, is highly validating. But it isn't nourishing. I think most would be receptive rather quickly if they noticed we adjusted not just our messaging, but our entire perception of the nature of our battle against injustice to validate their very real, very justified grief and pain. Their drill sergeants couldn't compete with genuine compassion and healing.
So instead of the prior era's zero-sum approach to inequality, what if we adjusted our perspective to ensure everyone's concerns are heard, validated, and addressed in our vision? Why don't we specifically address the *injustice* of the power structure, and seek to lift our injured neighbors without displacing anyone from the next generation's access to the building blocks of a fulfilling life? What if we targeted the billionaires and focused on transforming their authoritarian economic power structure into a democratized (or republican if you will) one?
So, what do you think? Can we address the elephant in the room by forming policy that actively validates the most grievous injuries and needs of our estranged constituency, while continuing to meet the needs of our long-standing allies?
They're going to use every means possible to intimidate voters and anyone who is opposing their insanity. Congratulations to half the American public who voted for a psychopath domestic terrorist government to occupy the White House.
This "domestic terrorist govt." has been around long before the current wannabe fuhrer. Thing is, it's so much more obvious now. The vote mey halp but it's not taking away the hold they have on us. More actions are necesary by as many who can. It's time.
They make great Ice Cream!
At what point do the behaviors and actions of this administration meet the legal, actionable definition of treason? The kind that triggers Federal Marshals leading people from the premises in handcuffs. They have ignored the constitution, used our tax dollars against our will to fund a genocide by a rogue nation, quickly dismantling our democratic and human rights, purposely corrupting the balance of power between the branches of government, and many other things.
Great piece….. correct they know this isn’t working for the masses
Rubio has been sissified! He’s really too stupid to have any character at all,.
The terrible irony here is that the true “communists” here are Trump and his Putin-loving minions. Who idolizes Russia and China? Trump. Who models celebrations after North Korea and Russia? Trump!
We need to call him out on being a communist in the worst sense of that word.
Bravo....and this "grip" of terror (on us) is gonna take more than a "vote" to turn around....but it will.