More Thoughts on Bernie Sanders and Capitalism
Why isn't the world ready for smart politics, or for that matter
real politics?
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In Further Up the Organization, Robert Townsend says
that there are two types of people in meetings: those that give
you their best reaction immediately, and those who need a day or
two to think it over before getting back to you. I recognized
myself as one of the latter. Part of that is that I actually do
give fairly serious consideration to anything new I hear, and
often to old things with new evidence and/or arguments. It takes
a while to honestly evaluate anything new. I mostly run it through
various models I've developed about how the world works, keeping
open the possibility that the models may also be need revision.
I'm not a strong believer in anything but my most closely held
moral principles, and even those I'm more likely to defend on
utilitarian grounds (taking the word literally, and not as the
"ism" distilled by Bentham, Mill, and 24). I ask myself
does it work? And being an engineer, I ask could it work better?
Of course, those things are rarely absolutes (though absolutely
doesn't work occurs pretty often).
Hence, when I publish something, I usually find that I have
more thoughts coming the next day or two. My
recent post on the Bernie Sanders book, It's OK to Be
Angry About Capitalism, almost immediately led me to think
of a "more thoughts" piece. Part of this was because I had a
section from that book I wanted to write more about, but left
out as I figured I had already gone on enough — but also
because it needed to be put into some kind of context. So I
outlined a bit of what I was thinking in a August 26
Music Week post, but didn't get back to it until a couple
weeks later.
A thumbnail history that brings us to Sanders (and Trump)
I may have lost a thread or two along the way, while coming up
with a couple more. I thought I'd write a paragraph on context here,
then the main section on policy, and possibly some conclusions. But
I jumped ahead and wrote the policy section first — it started
with a list from the Sanders book, so I could just react without
having to sort my own policy ideas into a structured outline —
then circled back to here. Feeling that I had already written too much,
and that my thoughts on context really need their own post to open up
and breathe, I'll just compress them into bullet points here.
I've been thinking about revolutions. I used to think about
them in classic leftist fashion, as revolts against decrepit powers
that sweep away the old regimes to make way for a more equitable,
just, and progressive future. Now I'm more inclined to think of
them as failures of the old regimes, too hard and brittle to adapt
to change, which in their wake allow emerging forces to run amok
until their own limits sideline them in a ditch somewhere. Whether
anything resembling progress occurs is incidental, even if clearly
intended by the revolutionaries. (A fuller discussion of revolutions
would show they can either go left or right, and be followed with
reactions that can be more disruptive than the initial revolutions.
But in most cases, even without a reaction or restoration, the old
nation tends to revert to its pre-revolutionary form, as Russia did
a decade or so after 1917 and again after 1993. It would also show
that while autocracies tend to be rigid and brittle, and as such
prone to revolution, democracies are usually more flexible, allowing
them to absorb movements that might crack an autocracy. But weak or
flawed democracies could break or be demolished, like Germany in
1933.) While revolutions are rare, revolutionary moments, where masses
of disgruntled people desire radical change, are much more common.
The US has had a number of these, with 1776 producing a revolution,
1860 a civil war that was effectively a second revolution, and 1932
peacefully produced major changes. Other elections, often during or
following major recessions, showed revolutionary potential but with
mixed or ambiguous results, with some falling short (Bryan in 1896),
some turning reactionary (Nixon in 1968, Reagan in 1980), and some
backing away from the change they promised (Clinton in 1992, Obama
in 2008). In the latter cases, the energy that elected Democrats
turned against them two years later, flipping Congress and ending
any real chance of change. In the 1950s, Krugman's "Great Compression" never seriously
challenged Mills' "Power Elite." The deal was that corporate powers
would be the stable centers of progress, while liberals sacrificed
labor unions to anti-communism and the global spread of capital
protected by American hegemony. That compromise, especially with
the Vietnam War, discredited the liberalism that had built America,
freeing corporate power to gravitate toward ever more predatory
capitalists. Nixon in 1968 and Reagan in 1980 rode to power in
reaction to the fiascos of Democratic presidents, then used their
wins to secure even more corporate power. (As did Bush in 2000:
the Clinton scandal was mostly propaganda, but he alienated a
lot of people, enough to make a difference. Eisenhower in 1952
could also be chalked up as anti-war reaction, but he personally
had few complaints about the status quo.) America, nearly since its inception, has been dominated by
a two-party system that constrains options within limited bounds,
forcing both sides to compete for the support of moneyed interests,
and leaving everyone else to choose among lesser evils. To see how
this works, it helps to view major political parties as consisting
of four constituent groups:
- The donors (or in capitalist terms, the owners), who provide
the money, and have personal and/or class interests they expect to
advance politically. The basic problem here is that donors have
weak partisan ties, often engaging in both parties, which only adds
to their allure. (For similar reasons, uncommitted voters get more
attention than reliable ones, whose commitment can be assumed and
taken advantage of. But votes are much less valuable than money —
to party elites, that is — and numbers (and money) dictate that
donors get personal attention, while voters get propaganda.)
- The professionals (or elites): politicians and their high-level
operatives, who spend most of their time raising and spending money,
and whose careers depend on maintaining this system.
- The activists: lower-level people who put considerable effort
into politics, sometimes out of simple partisan loyalty, or often
out of concern for specific issues that align with a party.
- The base, who are mostly reliable voters, including leaning
independents, but who factor into party decision-making even if
they have little real power. It's been said that Democrats despise
their base, while the Republicans fear theirs. The distinction has
little to do with fear or spite, which are plentiful on both sides.
It's that Republicans are more keen to flatter their base with
flattery that caters to their prejudices, while Democrats treat
their base with contempt. Two reasons for this: one is to impress
their donors, reassuring that they remain in control and that
the voters' wishes don't have to be appeased; the other is that
no matter how disgruntled the base becomes, they'll still vote
for elite Democrats who promise to save them from even worse
Republicans (how's that working out?).
Beyond these groups, there are the non-partisan masses, who
are alienated, disengaged, and often uninformed. We could also
slot much of the media into this diagram — Fox on the Republican
side, mostly as activists (while they can be counted on to follow
whatever line the elites are pushing, they're often out in front,
mostly because their business model is based on outrage, which
helps Republicans gauge how much they can get away with). When Goldwater ran in 1964, he ran a purely ideological
campaign, which proved massively unpopular. Starting with Nixon
in 1968, Republicans have focused on cultivating and harvesting
discontent, blaming it all on Democrats. This became much easier
piggybacking on Fox's business model, to the extent that especially
during Democratic presidencies, Fox wound up calling the shots (and
having much more fun than they ever could just covering up for
Republican misrule). Ever since they jettisoned Henry Wallace and embraced the Cold
War — which started with the "red scare" purge of communists and
"fellow travelers," especially from trade unions — elite Democrats
have regarded the isolation and containment of the left to be a key
part of their remit. They had been so successful for so long that
the Sanders campaign in 2016 caught them by surprise, driving them
to desperate measures: especially in 2020, after Bloomberg's $500
million vanity campaign imploded, they hastily regrouped behind Biden,
preferring an unpopular and often incoherent campaigner to losing
face with their donors. On the other hand, Republicans never have
a problem with their extremists: they organize the fringes, serve
as rabid attack dogs, make other Republicans look normal, and can
safely be ignored when business dictates. I've read complaints about "centrist" Democrats as closet
or nascent Trumpists, but I think this confuses two distinct groups:
on the one hand, you have ideological neoliberals like Clinton and
Obama, who really do think that their "middle path" can both raise
capitalism to extraordinary profits and still protect workers and
the poor and even the environment from its worst ravages; on the
other, you have decent people, mostly with somewhat conservative
personal tastes, who are just confused by the Republican media
circus, and who get suckered into repeating their talking points
as if they're serious issues. The latter may otherwise lean left,
right, or with the wind, and may decide close elections, but will
otherwise be ignored. The former, despite two two-term presidents
who are now largely discredited, have no viable political base,
because no matter how well they serve their donors, they deliver
little (if anything) to their voters: the rich may give them money
but no coattails to get their reforms implemented; everyone else
sees the rich getting richer, their pet politicians enjoying their
luxury, while everything else that affects their lives goes to hell.
Those people are ripe for some revolutionary pitch, but skeptical
of Democrats after the 1992 and 2008 sellouts (especially the latter,
where Obama was so explicit about campaigning for change, then
delivered so little). Anyone who wants to move the Democratic Party
to the left needs to recognize the differences between these two
"centrist" groups, and deal with each accordingly, finding common
ground the minimizing (without ignoring) differences. While Democratic elites risk funding by so much as recognizing
the programs and rhetoric of the left, Republicans can easily indulge
the desires of their agitated base (at least so far). Hence, while
Trump may not have been the first choice of Republican donors and
elites, they can see backing him as a tactical move: he gets tons
of free press; presents himself as a dynamic leader, with a popular
appeal that extends somewhat beyond the Fox base; he is safely one
of the rich, yet can pretend he's beholden to none other (while being
greedy enough to be persuaded); and his followers actually get off
on how much he is despised by the "elites" they have learned to hate.
He can, in short, tap into a revolutionary current without posing any
risk to those actually in power (other than self-destruction due to
over-indulgence of their own misconceptions, which is not something
they worry about). Much earlier, he would have been written off as
an absurdity, but by 2016, the revolutionary current that Obama rode
to his win in 2008 was still unrequited, and had fermented into the
kind of slop a Trump could exploit. Some evidence of this desire for revolution appeared in 2016
when Sanders ran up against a very locked-in Clinton nomination,
and ran a very strong race with no elite and very little activist
support — much stronger than a purely ideological leftist (say,
someone like Nader) could have hoped for. Part of this was that he
figured out how to raise serious money without becoming compromised.
Part was that few coastal Democrats appreciated the resentments that
had accumulated with the post-NAFTA deindustrialization -- which, by
the way, coincided with a wave of immigrants also dislodged by NAFTA.
His 2016 success should have set him up well for 2020, especially
after Hillary shamed herself by losing to Trump, but the DP elites
were even more desperate to stop him. I've faulted his 2020 strategy
for not moving to disarm elite reaction by normalizing his policies,
perhaps even reaching some kind of accord with the party elites (hard
to do, as the neoliberals were still convinced they had the magic
formula — validated by their fundraising, until disproven at the
ballot box). But his instinct was to stay left (which in 2020 meant
left of Warren), perhaps because his identity, and his credibility,
was so wrapped up in challenging the system from outside, and because
his list of issues was still growing. His campaigning for issues was
a rare politician putting his movement ahead of his personal standing. Trump ran as the incumbent in 2020, using tactics that won
second terms for Clinton, Bush, and Obama, but without success.
How much the pandemic/recession hurt him isn't clear — he had so
many negatives it's hard to factor them out, but he did get a bump
after he got and survived Covid, and that boosted his image as a
defiant and determined leader (as did his "assassination attempt"
survival in 2024). But his outsider, anti-incumbent, anti-system
poise was partly sapped. Surprisingly, his loss, defiance, and
prosecutions revived him up, turning him into much more of a threat
to the system than he had been in 2016-20: he built his campaign
around redemption and vengeance, traits that appealed to Americans
who had become disgusted with the country's direction (capitalist
as it was). And Harris played into his hand by embracing that very
status quo — including Biden's disastrous foreign policy, which
left the US powerless to end horrific wars in Ukraine and Israel —
one that troubled Democrats as well as Republicans. She won the
donors, but lost the voters, with a campaign that sniped at Trump
for his criminality and autocratic tendencies and sniffed at him as
"weird," but which had little credibility, either in showing people
how much they had to lose with Trump, or to gain with a modest but
decent platform of Democratic reforms. How much this revolutionary current factored into Trump's
win is hard to prove. One common formulation is that he was part
of some kind of global anti-incumbent trend, which all through
2024 toppled governments of every hue. What is beyond dispute is
that Trump and his gang have behaved like a revolutionary junta
from the moment he was inaugurated: they are people suddenly thrust
into power with few restraints beyond their own minuscule and
perverted consciences.
That's more context than I intended, but less than the history
seriously deserves. I've seen polling that shows Sanders having the
highest approval rating of any American politician, while Trump is
deep underwater, and the Democratic Party faring even worse (while
the generic Congress polling shows D+3). Clearly, the left-right
spectrum doesn't explain American voting. Sanders has something else
going for him than socialism: most likely traits that are sorely
lacking in American politics, like integrity and credibility.
That's something that Democrats need to work on, and not just
because the corrupt crypto-fascist lane is fully occupied.
But also, while "moderate" and "center" seem like attractive
concepts, their net effect is no different than the economic
agenda of the Republicans — except perhaps for the very poor,
but means testing cordons them off from the rest of an uncaring
population. Conversely, if you look at problems objectively, you
will soon discover that most practical (and virtually all real)
solutions come from the political left. That's mostly because
capitalism, with its predatory greed and ratcheting inequality, is
at the root of most problems, and it's only leftists who see that
and can imagine a fix. If we had a free press that promoted rational
discussion free of hysterical labeling that would be more widely
recognized.
Sanders' great value is that he helped crack the illusion that the
left is inconceivable in America. But also because he suggests that free
people could choose to steer America's politics in a more egalitarian
and communitarian direction (i.e., to the left), and that most people
need not be consigned to the faux-populist hell demagogues like Trump
are tempting them with.
Sanders' agenda is modest, clichéd, and not visionary enough
Sanders provides many lists in his book. On pp. 265-275, under
the heading "Real Politics Is Smart Politics," he offers a capsule
guide to his real/smart political program — although "some of
what that agenda and set of principles should include" doesn't make
it sound all that sharply reasoned. But this gives us a rough sketch
of what he's willing to offer as smart and real. What follows are
his items in bold, followed by my notes, often on feasibility:
Get money out of politics: The core problem here is
inequality, which extends through most of the list, and underlying
that is capitalism. So sure, the system is rigged to favor the
rich over working people, and a different system could be more
likely to elect a representative government. But you can't change
the system until you beat it on its own terms, so you have to start
with what you can do and might work. The best you can do here is
to discredit the power of money in politics: show who's buying what,
what's for sale, and how that hurts people, and screws up the whole
system. Once people are aware of that, merely pointing out that your
opponent is owned by moneyed interests can turn the tables. (Republicans
are actually pretty good at shaming hypocritical Democrats, while almost
never being held accountable for their own corruption.) Guarantee voting rights: Again, you have to win the
rigged game to make it more fair. One start is to expose the bad
faith behind Republican schemes to deny voter rights, but you also
have to campaign for the actual voters, no matter who or where
they are. Make the Constitution relevant to the twenty-first century:
The US Constitution is notoriously difficult to amend, a situation that
has only gotten worse in the last 50-70 years. Until you have huge wins,
there's very little you can do here. On the other hand, the people who
argue for a constitutional convention are all on the right, as they're
the ones who figure they have leverage, and they're looking to undermine
rights written into the Constitution (and increasingly ignored by the
packed Republican Courts). Abolish the Electoral College: No chance to change this,
but sure, point out how this skews and debases democracy. It's an
obstacle, one of many. But if you win big enough, it doesn't matter. Rethink the United States Senate: Same thing here.
Clearly, the filibuster has to go. Adding D.C and possibly Puerto
Rico might help (although I'd be just as happy erasing their debts
and setting all of the colonies free). Rethink the U.S. Supreme Court: Fixing the Constitution
is probably out of the question, but with sufficient majorities in
Congress, the Court could be expanded, and certain members possibly
(but not easily) could be impeached, which would help restore some
ideological balance to the Court. The lesser courts could more easily
be restructured. Even the present Supreme Court could move back
toward historical norms if the political climate changed and/or
they felt their own unique status threatened. (Sure, Roosevelt's
plan to "pack the court" failed, but while his plan faced uphill
resistance, it was really "the switch in time that saved nine"
that rendered his plan unnecessary.) Revitalize American media: This is a big topic, and
he has a longer list elsewhere of what's wrong, but he has very little
to add here beyond "greatly increase funding for public, non-partisan,
nonprofit media." The media is almost all controlled by the private
sector, and reflects the class interests of its owners. There is
much more that can and should be done here, but the only thing that
can be done now is to rigorously critique the old media, and start
to build up real alternatives. Even so, this will be a long, slow
struggle, and don't expect people who avoid (or simply distrust)
media to catch on. End all forms of bigotry: Sure, but bigotry is learned,
and unlearning is hard, and while correcting people may shut the up,
it's rarely if ever convincing. An better approach is to make bigotry
matter less. As bigotry is almost always an outgrowth of inequality,
work there. Nearly everyone is victimized by some form of inequality.
Consciousness of that demands justice, and builds solidarity, which
is the surest way to get past the common divides of bigotry. But
attacking bigotry head-on, as the "woke movement" has been lampooned
for doing, doesn't work, and (as we've seen) produces a backlash
(ridiculous, but potent nonetheless). On the other hand, it seems
fair to point out that anti-wokeism is often just an excuse for
racism. Treat workers' rights as human rights: Muddled
terminology here, especially for a point that ultimately doesn't
get much past increasing the minimum wage. We need an expansive
view of human rights, regardless of whether one works or not.
Those rights shouldn't end when one goes to work. Indeed, the
conditions of work should respect additional rights, including
the right to leave work and go elsewhere, and much more than I
can list here. Democratize the future of work: This is even more
muddled. He seems to mean that technology should benefit workers
as well as capitalists. Elsewhere in the book he talks about
actual workplace politics, like unions, worker representation on
boards, and employee-owned companies. These are very important
matters, worth keeping in mind even if fighting fascism is more
pressing at the moment. Health care is a human right. Period: Sure, but how?
First he talks about expanding the Affordable Care Act (which was
designed to leave room for improvement), then his Medicare for All
(which is a better),
then he admits that's not the end, but he doesn't look beyond.
The insurance system has always been the "low-lying fruit" in the
struggle to free the health care system, but the bulk of the problem
is in the private industries that have taken "your money or your
life" as their ticket to ever-expanding riches. Still, the real
key here is to get rid of the ability of the system to discriminate
between people when they enter, so there is no option of denial of
service. Once you solve that, everything else is just a matter of
paying off service providers, which can be negotiated to reasonable
levels. (This, by the way, isn't blue sky: most other nations have
health care systems that work that way, with better health results
for less cost). And while we're at it, let's note that patents are
not necessary to incentivize researchers to invent new technology.
(They merely allow companies to extort premium rents, which depend
on denying benefits to people who can't afford them.) Moreover,
patent-free innovations can help anyone and everyone, so research
all around the world can help Americans. A new business model for the pharmaceutical industry:
This is a case in point, and a far from trivial one. This is actually
the longest section in this list, but he fails to mention the bedrock
of the current system, which is the patent monopoly the government
grants to corporations so they can screw us over. The notion that
patents are necessary for technological progress is a fallacy that
economists have a hard time shaking. I doubt that they even help,
at least as regards technology that is actually desirable. Protect our children: This comes down to a plea for
more spending on education, including preschool. I haven't thought
much about education since my teen years, when I was very unhappy
with pretty much every aspect of the system. Were I to give it
commensurate thought today, I doubt I'd be much happier. But as
a general principle, sure, invest more in schools, and make sure
it gets to everyone who needs and/or can benefit from it. (As a
practical matter, that may mean putting more money into poor areas
than rich areas — assuming more money produces better results,
which is probably an oversimplification.) I'd also like to see adult
education expanded, so anyone who wants to can study as long as they
want, whatever they want, regardless of the economics. Protect the elderly and disabled: This is very short,
and limited to the expenses of people who can ill afford to pay.
More money would help, but a better solution is to expand the
definition of what one is entitled to by right, and stop with
the means testing and nickel-and-diming of people for what they
need to live their lives out with decency and dignity. One way
to help pay for this would be a very progressive estate tax,
which would only inconvenience heirs of unearned and undeserved
wealth. Social Security benefits must be increased: I'm not
opposed to more cash, but more help with necessary expenses might
be a better approach. You shouldn't have to go broke before you
can get help for food, housing, home health care, etc. If someone
has enough money to pay for all those things, you can always tax
it away once they're dead. Provide affordable housing for all: This starts
with 600,000 homeless, but really goes well up the income scale.
I see huge problems in trying to do anything meaningful in this
area, partly because so many Americans view their homes as assets,
making them very reluctant to change a system which inflates their
values (even if the system as a whole costs more than it benefits).
Any attempt to undercut the value of rental
properties is also bound to raise an uproar, as many people — even
small investors — see them as a stepping stone to wealth. Then
there's all the NIMBY backlash. Klein-Thompson "abundance" is pitched
to solve this problem, but the problem doesn't exist because people
are stupid. It's the consequence of Adam Smith's "invisible hand,"
which doesn't always (or even often) work for the better. Break up monopolies: Another good idea that works up
to a point, and certainly should be done where it makes sense, but
doesn't always work. In some cases, it's best to regulate the monopoly,
or even to take it over and turn it into an employee-managed nonprofit.
In other cases, one could erode monopoly power by setting up competitors,
especially nonprofit ones that could drive down the profit margins of
the monopolists. (Lots of opportunities here for open source software.)
In some cases where network effects predominate and the marginal cost of
growth is near-zero, a public-funded alternative could largely erase the
monopolist (e.g., imagine a Facebook alternative that didn't collect your
data, didn't sell you to advertisers, and didn't intrude in every waking
moment of your life; as your friends switched, would you still stay with
Facebook?). Make billionaires pay their taxes: That's just the tip
of the iceberg. Sure, right now, it's especially conspicuous, which
makes it easy to say, but we need a much fairer and more sensible
tax code and system, which shouldn't be hard to devise except for the
insane amount of lobbying that goes into corrupting and/or evading the
current one. Taxes have two purposes: one is to pay for work that the
government does to support and provide for the people, and that's
especially important for things we can't or don't want to sell; the
other is to reduce the amount of inequality the economy generates,
because gross inequality is bad for society (as should be pretty
damn obvious by now). We don't have to be super aggressive in
taxing billionaires to reduce inequality, but we have to start making
actual progress. I'm not a big fan of a wealth tax, but that's one
way to do it. I'd start by really jacking up the estate tax, with
a possible foundation outlet (provided the foundation eventually
dissolves, so it would have to pay out more than it makes each year).
One should note, though, that a lot of what passes for wealth today
is really just ridiculously overvalued stock and other assets, and
that those values will shrink with the number of billionaires (or
whatever the top bracket becomes). How far should it go? Well, if
we neither knew nor cared who the richest person in the world was,
that would be close enough to approximating equality. We must save the planet: One of my all-time most
hated clichés: the planet literally does not care whether it's
populated by people or dinosaurs or just bacteria. We should
focus more on saving ourselves. And we should ask what from?
Capitalism is probably a slight overstatement, but it is a big
part of the problem. Fortunately, we know how to limit and manage
its worst tendencies, and we also know how to compensate and care
for most of its ravages. Unfortunately, the people in power now
are deaf, blind, and dumb on this score, and we lack the political
will power to turn them around.
I have several critical points. The first are things he doesn't
talk about. Although in one section he talks about cutting back spending
on the military, he doesn't make much of a point of it, and he has
nothing to say about American foreign policy. That's a major omission:
it seems like he decided early on that he couldn't risk crossing the
Blob for fear of easily being branded as un- or anti-American. He's
come around a little bit on Israel since then, but he's still very
cautious. This matters because it's impossible to defend social and
economic justice at home without showing some of the same concern for
the rest of the world.
He also has very little to say about immigration, which is ok
with me — one shouldn't indulge Trump's obsessions with any
degree of legitimacy — but I regard immigration as primarily
a foreign policy issue: the people who come here often do so as a
direct consequence of American wars and/or American trade policies.
The easiest way to reduce the number of immigrants would be to
change American foreign policy to give people more reason to say
where they are. Economically, immigration is probably net positive,
but that doesn't exclude the possibility of domestic losses that
deserve compensation. Culturally it's probably a net positive as
well, even if some assholes don't think so. Where we do have to
be careful is to make sure that immigrants are treated fairly, and
that their presence not be exploited to undermine labor rights.
That means we have to clean up the "undocumented" mess, but it
doesn't mean we should do it with the cruelty and zeal that Trump's
goons have brought to bear.
A second criticism I have is that while he brings up examples of how
other nations are better at providing social services than the US is,
he doesn't venture beyond those existing boxes. I agree that there are
good examples elsewhere, and at the very least they show that it the
canard that says so-and-so is impossible is false. But there's much
more room for innovation, as I noted when talking about patents and
open source software.
A third thing is that I think we need to be clearer about moral
and political values, and how they can be firmly held as guides but
still cautiously implemented as reforms. Sanders is a very practical,
as well as exceptionally principled, politician, so at some level he
understands this, but even he doesn't have the speech to articulate
this. Nor, really, do most Americans, have the ears to hear it,
including those in the media who should know better.
Still, even with these flaws, had he become president, even if
he was stymied on every item on his agenda — which is probably
what would have happened — we would be a helluva lot better off
than we are now. Blame the American people if you must, but know
that the capitalist class hierarchy, the ideologically stunted mass
media, the Republican propaganda machine, and above all the lame
and short-sighted Democratic elites share full responsibility.
As a practical matter, one should start with the latter, as they
at least should be aware of, sensitive to, and flat-out ashamed
of their failings. While Republicans have worked long and hard
to hijack America and drive us into a hopeless chasm, it's the
neoliberal Democrats who have let them given them the chance,
through their own failures, their indulgences of the right, and
their failure to make common cause with a left that only wants
for a more peaceful and harmonious world with a sense of justice
that satisfies everyone.
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