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Now that a coalition agreement between Likud and Kahol Lavan has been signed, its worth examining the significance of that agreement, in particular two core issues. For Kahol Lavan, the fig leaf that ostensibly justifies its entry into a Netanyahu government and proves it is sticking to its principles is the preservation of democracy and the rule of law. To this end, the party even agreed to compromise and consent to moves to advance annexation as of July 1.

This is basically all one needs to know about the thinking here, across the board, regarding democracy. After all, there is no connection whatsoever between democracy and the rule of law and the continued Israeli rule over millions of Palestinians who are without rights. What Israel is doing beyond the Green Line is undemocratic by its very nature. The Palestinians have no political rights, they do not take part in any democratic process, and their entire lives are controlled by Israeli systems in which they have no representation. No Palestinian subject ever took part in the election, appointment or promotion of High Court justices, Members of Knesset, army officers or government ministers all those Israelis who make decisions daily about what occurs in the territories.

Corona keeps Bibi in power and unmasks the MossadHaaretz

That being the case, all the lofty talk about democracy is meaningless, nor is there any point talking about the rule of law. Not just in the superficial sense of the absence of a demand for a reckoning from the members of the security forces who kill Palestinians, or the lack of law enforcement against settlers who harass Palestinians, but in a deeper sense too: How can the rule of law have any meaning when it is determined, interpreted and applied in accordance with the interests of those who control and oppress their subjects with the intention of perpetuating their rule by means of this same law?

As Humpty Dumpty explained to Alice: The question is which is to be master, thats all. And therefore the meaning of a word is just what I choose it to mean neither more nor less. In the territories, the meaning of the word law is just what Israel chooses it to mean. Thus it is legal to shoot unarmed protesters, to raze buildings, to steal lands, and to deprive people of water, electricity or access to lifesaving health services.

But Kahol Lavan joined the coalition to safeguard democracy and the rule of law, so how does that work? No problem there: Theyre thinking only about Netanyahus various corruption cases and about public corruption, not about the thousands that weve shot, or about the moral corruption at the root of the Israeli regime. The Kahol Lavan leaders dont even bother to hide this, and are even eager to clarify their intention in this whole celebration of the democracy that they are defending. Its an incredible democracy whose rule over millions of subjects doesnt undermine it in the slightest, to the point that there is no need even to mention those subjects.

But Kahol Lavan isnt content with passive silence regarding the subjects. In another section of the coalition agreement, they are partners in a proactive move regarding their future: one variation or another to be agreed upon with the head honcho in Washington, of annexation, with, as usual, the Palestinians not even to be asked about it. The practical implications of this act of annexation are not clear at this stage since Israel, in any case, acts in the territories as within its own borders; it has in effect already annexed them, and its intention to perpetuate its rule over the Palestinians has long been clear.

But its contribution is great in both contexts: First, by exposing the fact that nothing separates Kahol Lavan from Likud when it comes to the cynical use of democracy as a hollow label, including dealing with the Palestinians not as human beings but as political merchandise in coalition negotiations. And second, when it comes to reducing the gap between what Israel does, with Americas patronage, and what these two are saying. Apartheid isnt waiting for July 1 its already been here for quite a while but with an official Israeli declaration it will be harder to look away from the reflection in the mirror.

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Yes, in terms of exposing the reality in all its ugliness, the coalition agreement is making a real contribution: Perpetual rule over millions of subjects without rights? Check; Democracy? Check; Rule of law? Check. The question is, saidAlice, whether you can make words mean so many different things. But Humpty Dumpty reminds her: The question is which is to be master thats all.

The writer is the director of Btselem.

More:
No, Gantz, democracy and annexation don't go together - Haaretz

Empires fall a little bit at a time and then all at once. Over the last two decades,America has provenitself to be well along on that journey. The coronavirus pandemic has simply pushed our nationfurther alongthat downward spiral.

Ultimately, thepandemic has further exposed and exacerbated for those still somehow in denial aboutthe decades-long reality of America as a decaying empiredeep political, social, economic, culturaland other societalproblems.

The countrys infrastructure is rotting.Trump presides overa plutocratic, corrupt, cruel, authoritarian, pathological kakistocracy. The commons is being to rubble while the ultra-rich extract ever more wealth and other resources from the American people. Excessive military spending has left the United States incapable of attending to the basic needs of its people. Aculture of distraction and spectacle has rendered many Americans incapable of being responsible engaged citizens. Ourpublic educational system does not teach critical thinking skills. Radical right-wing Christians, white terrorist organizationsand otherneofascist paramilitaries and extremists are engaging in a campaign of thuggery, intimidationand violence against multiracial American democracy.

Writing at the Atlantic, George Packerdescribed this woeful state of affairs:

The crisis demanded a response that was swift, rational, and collective. The United States reacted instead like Pakistan or Belarus like a country with shoddy infrastructure anda dysfunctional governmentwhose leaders were too corrupt or stupid to head off mass suffering. The administration squandered two irretrievable months to prepare. From the president camewillful blindness, scapegoating, boasts, and lies. From his mouthpieces, conspiracy theories and miracle cures. A few senators and corporate executives acted quickly not to prevent the coming disaster, but to profit from it. When a government doctor tried to warn the public of the danger, the White House took the mic and politicized the message.

Every morning in the endless month of March, Americans woke up to find themselves citizens of a failed state.

In theNew York Times, Pulitzer-winning authorViet ThanhNguyendiagnosed the health of Americas body politic in the age of Trump and thepandemic he has empowered and accelerated:

If anything good emerges out of this period, it might be an awakening to the pre-existing conditions of our body politic. We were not as healthy as we thought we were. The biological virus afflicting individuals is also a social virus. Its symptoms inequality, callousness, selfishness and a profit motive that undervalues human life and overvalues commodities were for too long masked by the hearty good cheer of American exceptionalism, the ruddiness of someone a few steps away from a heart attack.

Chris Hedges, the Pulitzer-winning journalist, author, and philosopher,is not surprised by Americas decline. In places such as the former Yugoslavia, he has personally witnessed what happens when societies fall apart. In his most recent book, America: The Farewell Tour, Hedges both detailsthe countrys many cultural and political crises and what could potentially happen next. The coronavirus crisis has shown his analysisto be eerily prescient.

In this conversation, Hedges warns that the tumult and pain of Trumps coronavirus crisis is but a preview of far worse things in Americas future, as social inequality and political failure combine to create a fullcollapse of the countrys already declining standard of living, as well as its ailing democracy.

Hedges also explains how the Democratic Party and its presumptive presidential nominee, Joe Biden, will likely not be able to respond to the Age of Trump and the economic and social destruction created by gangster capitalism, in combination with the coronavirus pandemic. Why? Because the Democrats are also part of the plutocratic establishment that has failedthe American people.

You can also listen to my conversation with Chris Hedges on my podcast The Truth Reportor through the player embedded below.

This conversation has been edited for clarity and length.

What has the sudden shock of the coronavirus pandemic revealed about America? If you were to take a snapshot of this moment, what does it reveal about the country?

These days are the good times, as compared to what is coming next.

How does a society change so fast?

A society can change so quickly because the underlying structures are rotten. There is the patina or the veneer of a functioning system, but the foundations of it are so decayed that they cant take the stress. That was true in the Weimar Republic in Germany, before the Nazis took full control. That was true in Yugoslavia before the civil war and ethnic violence. It is true here in the United States too. This country cannot withstand thestress of the coronavirus pandemic. Beyond the obviousness of what the Republicans are doing, the Democratic Partys response to this crisis exemplifies the problems America is facing as a whole.

Twelve hundreddollars to individuals suffering during this crisis is not sufficient. The Democrats were only really trying to block the equivalent of a $500 billionslush fund that is going into Mnuchinshands, a man who acts like acriminal. That $1,200 is going to get vacuumed right up by the credit card companies and the banks who hold the mortgages.

This is like a repeat of 2008, where Congress is dumping staggering sums of money into the hands of Wall Street thieves. What happened in 2008? The plutocrats and the corporations gave themselves massive stock bonuses and other income and returns. I do not see how the United States is going to avoid another Great Depression, which in turn will lead to a further consolidation of power by an authoritarian, oligarchic elite. Those elites are not really worried about the coronavirus pandemic because they will have their own ventilators and private medical staff and all the other things that they need to survive. The average person will be left to take care of themselves.

The president, his party, the corporate overlordsand Trumps Christian nationalist cultare now telling the American people to go out and risk deathfrom the novel coronavirus as an act of patriotism and love for the economy.

would also add that huge numbers of people are going to die unnecessarily. Profit is always the most important thing for the oligarchs, and because of Fox News and other right-wing outlets a significant portion of the American public will downplay the severity and dangers of the coronavirus. Quite predictably, there is an accompanying spike in racist attacks against Chinese-Americans or any people of Asian descent.

I think the pandemic and the response to it could lead usinto virtually uncharted territory within the United States because as things deteriorate, the violence against nonwhites and other groups who are demonized by Trump and the right wing will increase. The desire for an authoritarian solution will grow more pronounced. I remember speaking to Fritz Stern, the great scholar of fascism, who himself fled Nazi Germany as a teenager. He said that in Germany there was a yearning for fascism before the word fascism was invented. We already see that yearning in America. The coronavirus crisis will make that yearning even more pronounced.

What of public memory, especially in the short and the medium term?There are manyvoices who believethe coronavirus will spur positive social change in the United States. I worry that there will be a type of organized forgetting, where several months from now the coronavirus pandemic and what it exposed about the countrys underlying rot will be forgotten all of it thrown down thememory hole.

I dont think were going to be able to go back to a time before the coronavirus pandemic. I believe that the coronavirus is going to trigger a decline unlike anything the country has seen since the Great Depression. That is why the business class and other ruling elites are panicking. It is why Trump, the corporate leaders, Republicans and others aligned with them are telling people to go back to work but to wear masks which may really not keep them 100% safe.

The pandemic was predictable. And yet, of course, especially under the Trump administration, we dismantled the mechanisms through which the United States could prepare. The needed infrastructure, such as hospital bedsand ventilators andother needed equipment, was not there because, like with all decaying empires, the resources go to the defense industry and the military.

The other part of this decay and vulnerability was the assault against public education and the corruption of the media. The fact that Fox News is even considered a news organization is staggering although I dont think CNN is much better. In total, that contributes to a yearning for a system or a figure that can promise to tame the demons that have been unleashed.

I am unsure if we have any mechanisms left in the United States by which we can effectively push back against the elites, the oligarchsand other anti-democratic forces. We dont have any ability to pit power against power. We can beg Pelosi or Mitch McConnell or some other politician all we want for help. We are not going to get it.

Watching Trump stand before the country and speak about the coronavirus pandemic while he is flanked by corporate CEOs never mind how Trump has filled the government with people from some ofthe worlds largest corporations really speaks to how the country isa naked plutocracy. The elites do not even try to hide it anymore.

The oligarchs dont care about democracy. They dont care about truth. They are not interested in the consent of the governed. They could care less about social and income inequality. They are not going to rein in the surveillance state. In fact, as things deteriorate,the surveillance state going to expand. The oligarchs do not care about job losses because, as Marx said, unemployment creates greater pools of desperate surplus labor. The oligarchs do not care about the climate. Its all about the primacy of profit and corporate power and those values and systems are extinguishing our democracy.

And of course, they are all thrilled that nobody can go out in the streets because of the coronavirus pandemic and social distancing. Mass mobilization and civil disobedience is what is needed to defeat the oligarchs and take those first steps necessary to win back an American democracy.

Americas current political system is a corporate political duopoly. A person can either vote for nativists and racists and climate deniers and creationists on one end, or a person can vote for people who speak in the language of tolerance and are willing to put gay people or women or people of color into positions of power as long as they serve the system. Of course, that is the role that Barack Obama fulfilled at the expense of the American people.

American society is in crisis, and in decline. As you pointout, the coronavirus, in combination with Trumps authoritarian, neofascist movement are just symptoms of a deep societal rot. Where do we go from here?

Lets take Biden. What does it mean to vote for Joe Biden? He has this kind of goofy persona which some people find charming. What is Bidens record? What is a person voting for if they back Biden on Election Day 2020?

The humiliation of courageous women like Anita Hill who confronted her abuser. You vote for the architects of endless war. You vote for the apartheid state in Israel. Biden supports those things. With Biden you are voting for wholesale surveillance by the government, including the abolition of due process and habeas corpus. You vote for austerity programs. You vote for the destruction of welfare. That was Biden. You vote for cuts to Social Security,which he has repeatedly called for cutting, along with Medicaid. You vote for NAFTA, you vote for free trade deals. If you vote for Biden, you are voting for a real decline in wages and the loss of hundreds of thousands of manufacturing jobs.

With Biden you are also voting for the assault on public education and the transfer of federal funds toChristiancharter schools.With Biden you are voting for more than a doubling of the prison population. With Biden you are voting for the militarized police andagainst the Green New Deal.

You are also voting to limit a womans right to abortion and reproductive rights. You are voting for a segregated public school system. With Biden you are voting for punitive levels of student debt and the inability of people to free themselves of that debt through bankruptcy. A vote for Biden is a vote for deregulating banking and finance. Biden also supports for-profit insurance and pharmaceutical corporations.

A vote for Biden is also a vote against the possibility of universal health care. You vote for Biden and you are supporting huge, wastefuland bloated defense budgets. Biden also supports unlimited oligarchic and corporate money to buy the elections.

Thats what youre voting for.

A vote for Joe Biden is a vote for more of the same. The ruling elites would prefer Joe Biden, just like they preferred Hillary Clinton. Donald Trump is vulgar and an embarrassment. But the ruling elites also made it abundantly clear about their interests: Many of these people were quoted by name saying that if Bernie Sanders was the nominee or even Elizabeth Warren they would vote for Donald Trump.

One of the dominant narratives in the mainstream news media is that Trump is done. The coronavirus pandemic and his incompetence are dooming his re-election chances; the tide has finally turned.

My response has been that this is too hopeful and borderson the delusional. One, there is no guarantee that there will even be a presidential election in 2020. Trump and the Republican Party are experts at vote-rigging and other ways of cheating to steal elections and subvert democracy. After the coronavirus crisis recedes, I believe that Trump may very well be even more powerful because he leads a cult and will proclaim that he led the country to victory over the virus.

Liberal elites offer hope that is not grounded in an understanding of political reality. I do not believe that Joe Biden will necessarily be able to win against Trump. Biden is an extremely weak candidate because he represents the neoliberal gangster capitalist policies that the Democratic Party has embraced and that so many Americans are revolting against.

James Baldwin explained why black people dont have midlife crises. Why? Because they do not buy into the myths of America. Black people know that the system in America is rigged. Black people know this when they are children. By comparison, white people buy into theseillusions of meritocracy and individualism and American exceptionalism and similar beliefs. That is why the highest rates of suicide right now are among middle-aged white men, because they are finally starting to realize that the system does not care about them.

Link:
Oligarchs dont care about democracy: Pulitzer winner warns COVID-19 will trigger a decline unlike anything seen since the Great Depression - AlterNet

Repeat after me: there is no magic bullet for getting us through this pandemic. And smartphone-based proximity-sensing is definitely not that bullet, though it might be useful if two conditions are met. One is that its perceived by citizens to be trustworthy and protects their privacy; the other is that its deployed in conjunction with a massive increase in state capacity for testing and treatment. Neither condition will be easy to satisfy.

There are clear indications that the UK government is now actively considering use of the technology as a way of easing the lockdown. If this signals an outbreak in Whitehall of tech solutionism the belief that for every problem there is a technological answer then we should be concerned. Tech solutions often do as much harm as good, for example, by increasing social exclusion, lacking accountability and failing to make real inroads into the problem they are supposedly addressing.

The technology involved, though complex, in essence provides a way of automating what has been a way of dealing with plagues since at least the 1600s: find those infected, lock them away or treat them and then trace everyone with whom theyve been in contact and quarantine them too. This is a very labour-intensive task that is not feasible in a society such as the UKs. But many smartphones have low-energy Bluetooth sensors that automatically register the proximity of other similarly equipped phones, while most smartphones also log their location using GPS signals. So in principle we could use smartphones to do contact-tracing on a large scale.

Thats the principle. In practice, there are various ways of using these capabilities in the Covid-19 context. Centralised models involve phones equipped with an app to relay their data, supposedly anonymised, to a central server run by a government health authority. This may make things simple for the government, but its a nightmare in terms of state surveillance especially if the authorities try to make installation of the app compulsory.

Decentralised models involve keeping most of the data on your phone and only broadcasting to all the phones to which youve been close via a secure relay server if youve been diagnosed. All of your contacts phones will then inform their owners that theyve been in contact with a diagnosed case of Covid-19. And of course all of the communications implied by this are encrypted by default. Because the individuals involved are notified immediately as soon as someone in their proximity is diagnosed, this method shortens exposure risk and enables health providers to suppress the virus rapidly. It restores agency to the individual, lessens the risks of state surveillance and better protects users privacy.

Smartphone contact-tracing would mark a step-change in state surveillance capabilities

You dont need to be a rocket scientist, let alone an IT expert, to realise that there are legions of devils in the details. (Harvards Safra Center for Ethics has a very good guide to some of them.) Who tells your phone that youve been diagnosed, for example? Given the possibility that in a post-lockdown scenario individuals with Covid-19 might be subjected to stigma, harassment or dismissal, they might be understandably reluctant to broadcast the fact.

Then theres the problem that not everyone has a smartphone, even though its commonly supposed in tech circles that they do. The pandemic has revealed that a significant minority of the population (mostly older people) still relies on olde-worlde feature phones. Moreover, it turns out that not all smartphones are created equal: one estimate is that 50% of all smartphones cant use the proximity-sensing systems being developed by Apple and Google. Given that any proximity-sensing system would probably have to cover at least 60% of the population to be truly effective, does this mean that Matt Hancock is going to be giving out Huawei handsets like Smarties to the Nokia-using poor?

I could go on but you get the point. The problem with magic bullets is that they sometimes miss their target. The biggest issue of all with smartphone contact-tracing, though, is that it would mark a step-change in state surveillance capabilities. Such a momentous decision cannot be left to Matt Hancock and his colleagues in their Downing Street bunker. This is a central point in a landmark review of the issue conducted by UK research group the Ada Lovelace Institute. A decision to deploy mandatory proximity-sensing technology, says the institute, is too important to be left to technocrats. There has to be proper parliamentary scrutiny and primary legislation with real sunset clauses. No fudging with orders in council by frightened ministers. I agree. If we get this wrong, not only will we not succeed in easing the lockdown, but we might also be kissing goodbye to the shrivelled democracy we still possess. Theres no lockdown exit through the App Store.

A constructive proposalIts time to build: a new manifesto from the internet pioneer and venture capitalist Marc Andreessen, on his firms website a16z.com

Rocknroll animalThe New York Timess obituary of Peter Beard, wildlife photographer extraordinaire. It wasnt just the fauna that was wild.

The state of the StatesThe coronavirus didnt break America it just revealed what was already broken. A memorable essay in the Atlantic by George Packer.

Read more from the original source:
Contact apps won't end lockdown. But they might kill off democracy - The Guardian

Something to consider while suffering through the daily barrage of fabulist blather from Donald Trump is that if the Democrats thought it would benefit their cause, they would be putting Joe Biden front and center to counter this pain. That they arent suggests that they understand exactly how politically tenuous Mr. Biden is. In turn, that Joe Biden is their choice suggests that all isnt what it could be in duopoly-party land. And coming in the midst of serial trillion-dollar bailouts, capitalism is looking a bit iffy as well.

To clarify, the point of this piece isnt to debate the relative merits of Team Red versus Team Blue. It is to consider why this pairing is the best that late-stage capitalism has to offer. Others who care can dwell on the policy specifics of Mr. Trumps rewrite of NAFTA versus Mr. Bidens support for the original. The question in need of an answer: is this election evidence of a broken political system, or is our democracy working exactly as the duopoly parties and the oligarchs they serve want it to work?

There is a Grand Canyon-sized disconnect between popular understanding of electoral politics democracy, and its role in capitalist political economy. While this may seem self-evident to many readers, party affiliations and class hegemony have been quite effective at muddying the waters. Within electoral logic, politicians work to garner votes, not to illuminate the constraints imposed by the two-party and state capitalist systems. But it is the latter that determine electoral outcomes through control of the process, not voters.

In the modern era, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, Barack Obama and Donald Trump all ran as political outsiders and won. And all supported the interests of capital and the further consolidation of political choice upon entering office. Were this the result of democratic mandate, so be it. But the fact that each became a political insider not just in that they entered office, but in terms of whose interests they represented, suggests that electoral politics isnt where important political choices are made.

An allegory of sorts can be found in corporate statements of guiding principles. Monsantos Code of Business Conduct, ExxonMobils Standards of Business Conduct and Goldman Sachs Code of Business Conduct and Ethics all abhor racial and gender discrimination and support diversity, inclusivity, LGBT rights and personal self-realization. As articulated, these liberal values are part of the belief system of the professional class and the American left. And they have been given legal backing through anti-discrimination laws.

They are also wholly irrelevant to how these firms conduct their businesses. Representing different industries agriculture, oil and gas and finance, these Codes represent a corporate view that is part moral self-flattery, part appeal to group (shared) values, and part legal preemption and self-defense. However, few describing these businesses would think to include the stated principles in a description of what they do. They are beliefs that are unrelated, except in very narrow circumstances, to actions.

Through the revolving door of employment between government rule-making and corporate profit generation, large, multinational corporations are the Federal government. This isnt simply a matter of who sits where. Monsanto writes agricultural and food policy; ExxonMobil writes energy and foreign policy and Goldman Sachs writes financial policy for the Federal government. And when they dont write policy directly, Congress is good at taking dictation.

That these companies are also among the more destructive forces in human history carries with it moral and political content. Monsanto produces the carcinogenic pesticide Roundup, the neonicotinoid pesticides contributing to mass extinction and inadequately tested GMO seeds. ExxonMobil is a central actor causing climate change while funding climate change denial research. Goldman Sachs is known as Government Sachs for its outsized role in crafting and profiting from government regulatory and financial policies around the globe.

Each represents its respective industry in the American corporate model of controlling all sides of the transactions they participate in. They do so under the cover of buying and selling in free markets. As with the choice between duopoly party candidates, markets in this case are the end of an economic process, not the beginning. These corporations use state and state-granted power military, monopoly, legal, structural, and historical, to obtain resources on the cheap, eliminate competitors and control markets.

Many of the people working for these corporations, particularly those in leadership positions, believe in the liberal values espoused in the corporate Codes, even though they have no bearing on how business is conducted. This dualism finds #Resistance liberals living in racially segregated neighborhoods while sending their children to racially segregated schools. The same is true of corporate hiring. Qualifications are a proxy for class and through it race, that provide an empirical rationale for legitimate discrimination.

Interpreting political outcomes by what politicians and / or corporate leaders say, rather than what they do, is the flip side of separating beliefs from actions. Because the role of the Democrats in the duopoly system is to feign having principles (keep reading) they use the equivalent of corporate Codes to sell their political programs. For instance, Barack Obama hailed an EPA program to close coal fired utilities in the U.S. as an environmental victory even as he sold the unused coal to China.

Hypocrisy isnt the point here. The social mechanisms that separate what political actors believe from what they do are. The currency of these corporations is power. Each have legal, tax, regulatory and lobbying departments that are as central to their businesses as those that produce their nominal products. The revolving door illustrates the merging of state with corporate power. Likewise, corporations are considered extensions of state power, hence the relation of trade and trade agreements to foreign policy.

The economists have this relationship perfectly backwards. Capitalist / neoliberal theory has it that markets are democratic in the sense that market outcomes are the product of exchange free from coercion. However, corporations exist to accumulate coercive power. As with state capitalist and duopoly party control over electoral choices, asymmetrical power makes markets the end of a political process, not the beginning. The relevant choices are made long before products are available in markets.

This model of controlling all aspects of markets finds it analog in electoral politics. At a basic level, elections are competitions between particular politicians (markets). Taken up a level, they are competitions between the duopoly political parties. The systemic outcomes of political races are determined through party machinations and commitments of resources. This is to argue that the duopoly parties control access to political participation.

Taken up another level still is a unified commitment to the form and function of political economy in the case of the U.S., state capitalism. Nancy Pelosi and Donald Trump both describe the U.S. as capitalist. But such descriptions are unnecessary. To understand this hegemonic role, ending capitalism would be political, but serving it isnt perceived as such. State capitalism is the political economy in which the duopoly parties operate.

The practical effect is that seemingly disparate politicians with different party affiliations provide political and economic continuity through what is posed as political difference. Neoconservative foreign policy support for right-wing coups abroad, stealth wars and the consolidation of power in the U.S. presidency, are matched through neoliberal support for Wall Street and austerity programs. The ideology of state capitalism provides the unified view that exists prior to electoral choice.

The best that can be said about American elections is that no matter who is elected, neither the process by which they were chosen nor the form of political economy over which they will govern will have been democratically chosen. Additionally, the principles for which they claim to stand particularly in the case of Democrats, are beliefs that are mostly, if not totally, unrelated to how they govern. Again, this isnt a matter of hypocrisy. It is a matter of parsing political beliefs from politics as practiced.

The permanent story of well-meaning but hapless Democrats up against a baseline right-wing agenda places Republicans as the source of this baseline. The logic of how Republicans control both the Democrats and their own political program is never explained. In fact, there are fewer Republicans than there are Democrats by the numbers. So in terms of electoral politics, how does this work, precisely? The answer is that it doesnt. Republicans are openly on the side of economic power, while Democrats serve the same masters while putting themselves forward as being driven by principles.

Lest this be unclear, having two superficially differentiated political parties serving the same interests (capital) is the analog of corporations controlling all sides of a transaction. Voters are given a choice after all of the politically relevant decisions have already been made. Actual democracy requires ending duopoly party control over the electoral process. And ending duopoly party control requires ending the state capitalism whose interests they exist to sustain.

The real world experiment of using the Democratic Party as a platform to launch an alternative political program just ended in failure. Pundits can blame the particulars wrong candidate and / or wrong strategy. However, the duopoly parties will either support state capitalism and the oligarchs or have their control over the electoral process taken from them ($$$). That the Democrats feign having principles makes them valuable for maintaining the illusion of political difference. But to confuse feigning with having principles is detrimental to democracy.

The alleged competition between Joe Biden and Donald Trump pits a right-wing corporatist Democrat against a right-wing corporatist Republican. Sure, Joe Biden opposed busing to integrate public schools, supported summarily imprisoning undocumented immigrants, wrote material portions of both the 1994 Crime Bill and the Patriot Act, actively supported the U.S. war against Iraq and opposes single-payer health care, but he believes that racism and xenophobia are wrong.

Heres the rub as long as the oligopoly parties control access to the ballot and state capitalism remains uncontested political economy, the choice will always be between Joe Biden and Donald Trump. The few times in my lifetime when it looked like there might be a choice Bill Clinton versus George H.W. Bush and Barack Obama versus John McCain, reality set in within minutes of their assuming office. The political problems are systemic. Changing the players wont change the nature of the game.

The press these days is full of earnest pleas that Donald Trump is uniquely dangerous and must be defeated. My recollection is that this was the pitch in 2016 as well just after the Clinton campaign elevated Mr. Trump under the theory that he would be easy to beat and before it inflicted three plus years of the Russiagate fraud on us. Assurances that Biden-adjacent technocrats are waiting in the wings to see us through coming crises ignore that these same people designed Obamacare and gave Mr. Obama legal cover to murder American citizens without due process.

If Donald Trump is re-elected, it will be wholly the fault of those who vote for him and the establishment Democrats who chose Joe Biden because he was electable. Should Mr. Biden win, congratulations, you elected Joe Biden to the Presidency. God help us. Assertions that anyone owes Mr. Biden a vote that arent attached to a detailed and plausible plan for ending duopoly party control over the electoral system and the political power of state capitalism arent worth the warm gas that compels them forth.

See the original post here:
Capitalism and the Illusion of Democracy - CounterPunch

Coronavirus appears to be an enemy of democracy.

Gone are freedom of movement and freedom of assembly. In some countries the virus has also claimed freedom of speech.

Covid-19 killed off (or at least made critically ill) its first European democracy on March 30 when the Hungarian parliament agreed to allow Prime Minister Viktor to rule by decree indefinitely.

He can quash all existing laws and imprison all those spreading false information which will presumably include all those who voice or publish criticism of his policies.

For the worlds poorest people in the slums of India, the Philippines and Bangladesh, the lockdown looks more like a crackdown.

The pictures of police officers beating people who must get out to work to eat, are distressing insights into the thinking of rulers who have adopted extraordinary powers in the name of saving us from the coronavirus.

In Pakistan doctors who dared to protest over the lack of PPE were beaten and arrested.

In the UK criticism or questioning of our own governments policy was somewhat stymied by the invoking of the blitz spirit.

The Queen sought to reassure with her well meet again. But didnt talk of war help make us obedient? Back then too much criticism of the government might have seemed disloyal?

Its only now, a few weeks later, that journalists are exercising freedom of speech by asking the tough questions.

Deep down we all know the value of freedom. When we saw it in Captain Tom Moore we showered him with millions.

His rank and medals proved hed fought for freedom and won, and although he could only exercise its writ the length of his garden, we were inspired by a light burning so bright aged 99.

In Israel civil liberties groups have staged protests over the conduct of the Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

At the start of this crisis not only did he suspend the Knesset, which appeared then to have an opposition majority, he closed most courts, including the one that was about to hear his trial on corruption charges.

There is also concern that the internal security agency, the Shin Bet, is using surveillance powers normally reserved for the fight against terrorism, to spy on any Israeli they choose, in the name of battling coronavirus.

Were told the measures that have been introduced at home, in America, Israel and elsewhere are temporary. But how do we know some of them wont become permanent.

In the past we have had the moral high ground when it comes to condemning the worlds autocrats.

But having encouraged them to be like us, theres the danger that coronavirus has made us more like them.

See the article here:
How coronavirus appears to be an enemy of democracy - ITV News