Painful Truth 911 Gazillion: There is absolutely zero Liberalism in today’s “NeoLiberalism.”
. One which must ultimately end in oligarchy, a neutered electorate, and the demise of the Liberal principles of democracy, equality and freedom that America was founded upon.
So why choose a phrase that incorporates “Liberalism” in such a misleading, inaccurate and damaging manner?
It wasn’t originally done to diminish Liberalism or the masses in a Republic where every single Founding Father was a proud Liberal. Although that’s been the result.
The phrase was coined in at a time when Southern elites still hated the Party of Lincoln, but loved Republican Ronald Reagan’s Wall Street cheerleading, class warfare, union-busting ways and Vooodoo economics.
Attaching “Neo,” as in “new,” to Liberalism gave them a way to embrace those Republican principles while remaining Dems. With the passage of time, it also eased their departure to the Republican Party in the mid-1990s.
Meanwhile, the new Democratic leaders morphed into Democrats-In-Name-Only.
At which point both parties began competing with one another to boost corporate profit growth at the expense of workers. Which is why our elections are now rigged contests between dueling Wall Street cheerleaders.
Before Reagan, both Democrats and Republicans sounded a lot like U.S. Senators Bernie Sanders (Ind.-NH) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) Today, they all sound like Reagan.
Which is why describing the Hillarys of the world as “Liberal” has become a knowing lie.
Incorporating “Liberal” into “NeoLiberlaism” back in the 1980s was akin to working “Twitter” into twitterati today. The same trendy word game was played on the Right in the 1990s by Republicans like Jeb Bush, who attached “Compassionate” to Conservative to signal their opposition to group bias.
. Any more than “Compassionate Conservatives” are Conservatives. They’re just ambitious party insiders who tried to change their political party instead of changing parties and starting their political careers over again.
Why should you care?
Because The Right Wing Noise Machine is now embarked upon a cynical campaign to rebrand all Liberals as rich hypocrites – aka “NeoLiberals” – and modern-day Uncle Toms like Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio as populist patriots
The idea isn’t to inform the masses or educate us, it’s to mislead.
It’s been pretty successful. So much so that many Americans are now wholly ignorant of both the true definition of liberalism and our own nation’s Liberal roots, which are visible all around in the many towns, streets and parks across the nation which are named “Liberal” or “Union.”
Fox News and Breitbart – which are owned or controlled by billionaires – are misleading the poor and middle class into hating Liberalism, which champions the masses, by using the term as code for Corporate Dems like Hillary Clinton. As if the Dems who support a global economy with no global government or labor protections are somehow different from the Republicans who support it.
They’re not.
None of them champion the poor or faltering middle class any more. Liberals do. Always have, always will.
I know because I’m that mythical Liberal journalist you’re always hearing about. The Right Wing Noise Machine would have you believe I’m either a rich hypocrite like Hillary or some kind of Communist revolutionary raised in The Hamptons.
I’m neither. I’m just a working class guy from the Bronx who didn’t abandon the Liberal principles of democracy, equality and freedom to shift to the Right when it was trendy.
Why?
Because I knew those Liberal values were the essence of The America Dream.
I eventually realized that NeoLiberalism was the enemy of true Liberalism. Not a relative, friend or fellow traveler.
True Liberalism is about destroying monarchies and social caste systems, and fighting hereditary wealth and power. As in the Chelsea Clintons and Ivanka Trumps now being groomed for high office like the Czars, Kasiers and Kings of days gone by.
True Liberalism is about the masses beating rich ass. It is Occupy Wall Street writ large, which is why Corporate Dems and billionaire Michael Bloomberg led the charge against that populist movement in 2010-12.
What was Occupy’s crime?
The pro-democracy group opposed political corruption, oligarchy, and the continuing redistribution of wealth from the masses to the rich. In other words – it was Liberal and very American. Not Communist and not Republican.
By contrast, NeoLiberalism is essentially rich entitlement, imperialism, class warfare and savage capitalism. It is the Party of Forever Profit Growth (by any means necessary) and Forever War. Just like The Republican Party. It no longer really champions workers or organized labor, except at election time.
The problem this creates is one of political checks and balances.
When both parties become The Party of Business there is no watchdog left to police Wall Street’s excesses. Like offshoring U.S. jobs to China; the excessive interest rates that put criminal loan-sharks out of business during the Reagan Administration; the lax mortgage lending standards which inflated the Housing Bubble during the Clinton Administration; and the rise of a new Global Economy, with no labor regulations or global government, which threatens to reduce all workers to the low-wage debt slaves.
The same is true of the three branches of government. When Supreme Court justices decide cases solely on their political implications, they’re no longer a check on anyone. So it goes with Congress, when it indefinitely delegates its war-making powers to the executive branch.
It’s an insult to principled Liberals to equate us with NeoLibs like Hillary Clinton Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, Cory Booker and Debbie-Wassserman-Schultz. They’re no more Liberal than Donald Trump. Which is to say not Liberal at all.
Sure, they champion traditional victim groups the way Trump champions rich white men. But they don’t champion the masses – which include working class white men. Poor and middle class whites are victimized by the rich every bit as much as the celebrities championed by The Me Too Movement.
That’s why I keep telling my readers we don’t really have two political parties any more. Both Republicans and Democrats now worship Wall Street multinationals and embrace the tenets of nepotism, rich entitlement, and political corruption, and the primitive tribalism of identity politics.
Neither leads or is even remotely capable of leadership by example in a nation where a typical American worker brings home about $50,000 a year. Meaning, the 60 percent of working age Americans who still have full-time jobs.
We don’t count the folks whose jobs have been offshored to China and India to lift corporate profit growth.
Why?
It makes Wall Street look bad.
Meanwhile, the median wealth of the mock “public servants” in the U.S. Congress now exceeds $1 million. Making it a veritable House of Lords, rather than a House of the People.
In that respect, Hillary and Donnie Trustfund are allies. They both champion the rich and exploit the masses.
That means Hillary – who amassed a fortune in public service – is not the anti-Trump and he’s not the anti-Hillary. It also means that being a NeoLiberal is no different than being a Conservative Republican.
Bottom line, if you think Hillary is a Liberal you don’t know what the term means.
If you want to hate something – hate the right thing.
Those of us who cling to the Liberal values this nation was founded on – democracy, equality and freedom – are not subversives. The subversives are the toxic elites on Wall Street and in Washington, D.C., who are trying to turn this nation into a corporate police state.
Seeing Dems and Republicans as enemies, or Corporate Dems as Liberals, is incredibly naïve in this political climate. It’s like assuming the Harlem Globetrotters and rival Washington Generals are enemies. Instead of paper rivals who make money by staging basketball games against one another, just as the two parties of Wall Street now stage rigged elections.
In both cases the show is a staged contest, just like in professional wrestling, in the sense that the outcome is pre-ordained. Regardless of who wins or losses at the poll, Wall Street always gets a candidate in office who is willing to turn a blind eye to its sins.
You can’t have a true contest without real opposing teams, and you can’t have a true democracy without representative leaders and a real party of the people to balance out The Party of Business.
The Dems spit the bit on that role under Bill Clinton. You know, the guy who did not have sex with that woman he had sex with?
That’s why it’s so important for predatory elites to turn Liberalism into a euphemism for rich hypocrisy. Before the masses coalesce around it. As they did in France when they toppled King Louis XIV in 1815; in Russia when they toppled the Czar in 1917; and in the United States of America, when we kicked the British King to the curb in 1776.
Kicking rich ass is what Liberalism historically has been about. Although you would never know it by listening to our mainstream news media.
Liberalism is not – and never has been – embodied by the rich hypocrisy of Hillary Friggin Clinton and those like her. It is not a movement which celebrates those who seek the privileges of great wealth without accountability for how it’s achieved.
What’s it all mean?
Without Hillary there would be no Trump.
Without Trump there would be no Hillary.
Because without Hillary there would be true Liberalism. Instead of the rich hypocrisy of her and her fellow NeoLibs.
The answer to the tyranny of Wall Street isn’t Communism. It’s good old fashioned Liberal democracy. As in real democracy. Not the fake Democracy we have now.
The Hillarys and Trumps of the world better hope the masses in this country never figure out what Liberalism really represents. Because if and when we do, they’re going down hard.
Believe it.
That’s what almost happened with Occupy Wall Street and what almost happened with Bernie. And it’s going to keep almost happening so long as Wall Street turns more and more workers into debt slaves.
There’s a key difference between them and us, which no working American should ever forget: The masses can lose every day of the week and twice on Sunday, but the rich and powerful only get to lose once.
Just ask Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi. His police state tyranny worked really well, right up until the point where it didn’t.
At which point Mo received an invite from his own people to take a dirt nap.
