The fight over Biden’s administration choices begins

Joe Biden is by no means a progressive. His entire history has been in the service of the neoliberal, pro-war, pro-business consensus that defines the two major parties. While the Democratic Party platform that he ran on was more progressive than the stances he had taken before, platforms are just wish lists and often are ignored by presidents once they are elected. The most important achievement in Biden’s career may well end up being that he defeated Donald Trump. To his credit, he did not blow it. For progressives, defeating Trump was just the first battle, albeit a major one and a victory that deserves to be savored. The next battle must be to fight Biden’s administration picks who have neoliberal, anti-progressive, and pro-war stances.

Knowing Biden’s history does not mean that we should not expect more from him than his past might suggest. While he may surprise us by being more progressive, he could well turn out to be another Barack Obama who as president was more conservative, more pro-war, and more friendly to business and the financial sector than his first election campaign led us to believe. Norman Solomon writes that some progressives are already succumbing to the allure of access to top administration officials to overlook some very troubling nominees to Biden’s cabinet in the national security area.
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Can America afford democracy?

In an article The Silenced Majority: Can America still afford democracy? in the December 2020 issue of Harper’s Magazine, Rana Dasgupta argues that democracy is a luxury whose existence depends on inequality between nations that enables the rich in the wealthy societies to accommodate the democratic aspirations of its own citizens.

In the past, power was in the hands of those who had property. With the rise of organized labor as a force in the rich nations, that power was reduced but as long as the people of the poorer nations could be used to subsidize the elevated living standards of those in the richer ones, then democracy could be tolerated. But when that difference between nations begins to disappear, as is happening currently, then so does democracy. He argues that the ultimate death of democracy in the US will come at the hands of the big tech companies.


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The violent style in American politics

Violence is no stranger to American life. Its gun culture results in violence on almost a routine basis, so much so that we have become numb to the regular recurrence of mass shootings by people armed with highly powerful weapons. It takes a really high death toll to make the national news these days. We have also seen periods of severe political violence in the past involving groups like the KKK and when the government put down labor movements with great force. Recently during the Trump presidency we have seen a rise in violent political rhetoric that has again occasionally spilled over into physical violence.

In an article in the November 16, 2020 issue of The New Yorker, Evan Osnos examines the style of conflict in American politics that oscillates between persuasion and force. He says that political scientist Richard Hofstadter, towards the end of his life in 1970, became absorbed about the intersection of politics and force in the US and argued that the political violence in the US tends to take a different form than in most other countries.
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Word

I came across a quote that seemed to me to capture a great deal of truth about how race politics is conducted in the US. It is by president Lyndon B. Johnson who was widely recognized as a shrewd and cynical politician who knew how to work the system to his advantage and get his agenda through.

Johnson’s stances on race were complicated. As the above article says, he started as a flat-out racist but later, he used the insights gained from being one to persuade similar politicians to pass the Civil Rights Act.
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What, you think your god will protect you from getting covid-19?

Reports have emerged of a wedding held in the ultra-Orthodox Hasidic Jewish community of New York City where thousands of people were crammed together indoors and tried to keep this violation of safety protocols secret from the authorities.

New York City officials on Monday announced that they would fine the organizers of a Hasidic Jewish wedding that was attended by thousands of people earlier this month, calling it reckless and accusing organizers of concealing it from authorities.

The New York Times reported that New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio (D) said that those who planned the wedding took active steps to ensure that the thousands of participants would not reveal news of the wedding to city authorities.
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There is no fool like a rich fool

Many people have jumped on the Trump election fraud bandwagon to persuade people that they have a shot at overturning the election results in the courts provided people contribute enough money to finance the lawsuits. Some very wealthy people have taken the pitch and only later realized that they had got suckered.

Fred Eshelman, a North Carolina-based money manager and True the Vote donor, is suing True the Vote for $2.5 million for failing to show evidence of voter fraud this election year and not keeping him up-to-date on its efforts.

Newsweek’s Darragh Roche reports that Eshelman, who founded the company Eshelman Ventures LLC, “now wants his money back because True the Vote did not provide him with information about their progress and he believes they can’t achieve what they claimed.”
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True the Vote called its efforts to challenge the 2020 election results Validate the Vote, promising lawsuits in seven battleground states and claiming that it would use “sophisticated data modeling and statistical analysis to identify potential illegal or fraudulent balloting.” Eshelman donated $2 million to True the Vote on November 5 and another $500,000 the following week. But now, Eshelman wants his $2.5 million back and is saying that when he asked for updates, he was “met with vague responses, platitudes and empty promises.”

Don’t these rich people do any research before shelling out such big bucks? If Eshelman had done some basic investigation, he would have realized that he was throwing his money down the drain because this group is really focused on voter-suppression.

Are vaccination certificates in our future?

Australia’s national airline Qantas has announced that once the covid-19 vaccines become readily available they will require proof of vaccination to fly on international flights. It is expected that other airlines will follow suit.

The airline’s CEO Alan Joyce said in an interview with CNN affiliate Nine News on Monday that the move would be a “necessity” when coronavirus vaccines are readily available.

Joyce said the airline was looking at changing its terms and conditions to “ask people to have a vaccination before they get on the aircraft.”
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Whether a vaccine requirement for travel becomes the international standard is at this stage far from certain. There are also questions about whether governments would mandate such a move — and the legalities of doing so — before allowing international travelers into their countries.
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Trump’s increasingly pro-forma complaints of election fraud

It looks like Trump has decided to slowly begin the process of conceding that he has lost the election and will be leaving the White House. In a peevish exchange with reporters, he said that he will leave if the Electoral College announces that Biden has got the most votes, though he insisted that such an ascertainment would be a mistake because the election was a fraud. Of course, it dos not matter in the least that he is saying he will leave because he will have to go whether he agrees to or not.


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Thanksgiving

Today is the American holiday known as Thanksgiving. It is a nice holiday when family and friends get together that is devoid of the crass commercialization that accompanies some other holidays like Christmas.

It is the occasion for some to reflect on the things that they are thankful for. There are many things in my life that I am very thankful for but the one that is uppermost in my mind at this moment is that Donald Trump lost the election and that there will be a new president who at least takes seriously the most dangerous crisis that we face, and that is climate change. Four more years of neglect on this critical issue, and even deliberately taking steps to make it worse as Trump was doing, would have caused serious damage.

The more immediate crisis to be dealt with is of course the covid-19 pandemic and here too it is a relief that the new president takes science seriously. My one hope is that people who are celebrating this holiday and Christmas really take steps to avoid the risk of spreading the virus. We will only know how well this turned out in late January, about the time that Trump walks or is dragged dejectedly out of the White House for the last time.