Democracy: Stick a fork in it, it's done

[Pris]

.

Posted by Antagenet (here)

Posted by rgray222 (here)
[B]Antagenet, you are out of line. Your post clearly states that every aspect of every problem in the world (see below) is virtually the result of Jews.

Whoa!! lol. Look a little more closely, my friend,
I said
MOST OF THE CONTROL.
(Not every damn problem on earth!!!)

I would add, it only applies to certain Jews (like, for example, some Zionist Jews...) -- not all Jews. Nobody likes to be painted with a broad brush.

[shaberon]

Posted by Pris (here)
.

Posted by shaberon (here)
"Consolidation of central power" *is* the Constitution, which is the reason it was opposed in the first place, in some cases quite strongly.

I found this. Seems that someone from China explains "separation of powers" quite well...

Sure. It was mainly designed by Montesquieu, and applied, for example, by the Tsarina.

I would suggest it may be why forms of government don't scale too well.

For example, old Gaelic nations were not states. As individuals they owned farms and lands and pasture, but otherwise there was no kind of political boundary marking an area that was a "state". The boundary was your mouth and word. Twenty or thirty families would send their head to a meeting, where one guy was in charge and made all the decisions, he was the Judge and the Executive who would determine if the group needed to attack or defend. The Law was a few ideas he might have gotten from the previous guy, and it was just whatever they said.

You go along with it or you get thrown out.

For one thing, all those people had a whole lot in common.

Past a certain level of population, that kind of thing doesn't seem to work out too well.

The point about the Constitution is that it consolidates power in the Federal Government, at the expense of the states. The State already has a Constitution, the States are the original sovereigns, and so the dispute is far less about the theories and proportions that divide up federal operations, it is about the vampiric relation towards the sovereign States.

That is essentially the main argument from 1787-1865; that is what the War Between the States was about.

During that time the Hamiltonian Wall Street Party became Anti-Masonic, then Whig, then Republican ---> John Birch and Truman mentality.

Although we could say the Democratic party once opposed this, at a certain point it becomes compromised as well, more along the lines of Atlanticism or internationalism --> CFR and WEF mentality.

The U. S. was founded around several caveats to "alter or abolish" the government, actually I think Jefferson may have said a revolution per generation might be normal.

The war we did have was not "Civil", because the Confederacy was not trying to gain control of the Constitutional government. It was not trying to revolutionize, that is, to alter or abolish it either. It tried to make its own less-consolidated government, or, rather, it did, but it was defeated.

[Ernie Nemeth]

It seems that democracy, like fiat currency, is an ideal that can never be 'real'. It relies on perception alone. That is, the reality of a fiat currency is an illusion but for the perception of value that we all agree to. Like now, for example, when the value of the fiat currency is going down, yet we all perceive the same value as before - a dollar is a dollar (even though that dollar today is only worth 94 cents. Tomorrow it will be worth 89 cents, and so on).

Democracy is like that. It is merely a perception that we have agreed to yet, in fact, its value has been decreasing since the first law was enacted. Every law is an abrogation of someone's rights. At best, democracy is a mini tyranny of limited duration. More to the point, democracies tend toward dictatorships over time.

Democracy works only to the extent that there is individual integrity prevalent within its citizenry. It is only individuals with high moral standards that can set a true course of freedom because only they know what that looks like, and what its true price is.

In the past, such standards were expected. Today, not so much.
The first rule of a true civilization is the rule of civility.

I think I now understand more why Wade maintains that integrity is a scarce resource in the modern world.
And that perhaps humanity is not yet sentient...

[shaberon]

Here is a revolution--in this case, the removal of a constitutional government:


General Abdourahmane Tchiani has been declared Niger’s new head of state, Colonel Amadou Abdramane, a spokesman for the rebels who have seized power in the country, said in a televised address on Friday.

However, in his words, the constitution of the country remains suspended.


While at the same time, there could be the birth of another constitution:


"For example, the East African Community (EAC) is in the process of becoming a political federation," Ndayishimiye pointed out.


According to the EAC:


The Political Federation is the ultimate goal of the EAC Regional Integration, the fourth step after the Customs Union, Common Market and Monetary Union.



That process is very slow, starting perhaps prior to 2004. It is, in a sense, similar to the United States, because most of those places are formed by colonists drawing up state lines out of their empires. The U. S. made a much faster union, because it entered hostilities with the colonizer, instead of waiting until 1960 for a decision.


Its current stage is treaties:


Signing of the Treaty of Accession of the Democratic Republic of Congo to the Treaty for the Establishment of the East Africa Community 2022


Enlarging it to this area:










Followed by:


EAC officially launches the Verification Mission to assess Somalia's readiness to join the Community

And, they happen to use this buzz word, a lot:

East African Community attaches great importance to nurturing democracy


The Head of the EAC Election Observer Mission (EOM) to Rwanda, former Kenyan Vice President Moody Awori, said that no country could expect to attain economic growth, peace and security without the stamp of legitimacy from its citizens.

“This is why we as a Community are keen on free, fair and transparent elections in all the six Partner States,” said Mr. Awori.



What does it mean? Are they buying an -ism? Doing a cookie cutter of Anglo-American law? It only means whatever they decide to say it means:

During debate, Hon. Dora Byamukama said there was need to make key follow-up on what the Partner States do on the very day. “We need to take the issue of democracy very seriously”, she said. “Perhaps Africa needs its own definition taking into account the fact that we need to take to enhance civic education”, she added.

Hon. Mukasa Mbidde said it was necessary for the rule of law and democracy to be adhered to. The motion is anchored on Article 6 (d) and 7 (2) and all Protocols that African States are party to. “It is on this day that we need to tell the Partner States to carry out, and implement what it takes to ensure access to justice is realized”, he said.


The Partner States should also ensure the access and deposit of the declarations required under Article 34 (6) of the Protocol of the African Court and Human Rights. So far only, the United Republic of Tanzania and the Republic of Rwanda have deposited the said Protocol.

On 29th January, 2015, EALA passed a Resolution urging the EAC Partner States to adopt the African Charter on Democracy, Elections and Governance.

Hon. Mbidde further mentioned that the jurisdiction of the East African Court of Justice (EACJ) needs to be extended to cover the crimes against humanity. At the moment, only the ICC can try perpetrators of human rights violation, Hon. Mbidde said.

The youth are majority and deserve their space in terms of planning and decision making”, he added. They must be part of a constructive agenda and not destructive’, he said, adding, that the Assembly should observe the day by among other things having discussions of intellect on the democratic practices.

This mainly consists of Swahili countries, which Ethiopia is not, nor has it been colonized, most of its trade is north and over the Red Sea, and it has very little connection to these places. So although it looks like a neighbor, it has not signed on to the Currency arrangement or any of the other groundwork that leads to membership. It, possibly, could, but, we might say that Swahili Democracy is just beginning...just not of a kind that has been planted there by someone else. That, to me, at least, is the important thing, it is not "Liberal Democracy" scarfing territory for venture capitalists, it is their own internal affair.

[shaberon]

Here is what happens when you implement martial law:



Burkina Faso and Mali will consider any military intervention in Niger as a declaration of war against them.



It announced it was suspending the export of uranium to France with immediate effect. Niger is the world’s seventh-largest producer of Uranium and France, which relies on nuclear energy for 75 per cent of its power, is a significant importer.


Because Mali, having recently washed its hands of France:


There are already widespread allegations of direct French military intervention being imminent...

France has asserted it will only recognize the only legitimate authority as Bazoum, whose precise whereabouts remain unknown...

Colonel Amadou Abdramane, who is among the coup leaders and a spokesman, has alleged that Niger’s foreign minister had signed a legal order which authorizes external French military intervention to restore political stability.

Complicating matters, and adding to the geopolitical pressures and tensions, is the fact that Niger has long been a major operating hub for French special forces, with some 1,500 French troops in the country, who regularly conducted joint operations with the prior government.

The ‘anti-imperialist’ nature of coup supporters in the streets has been demonstrated by their waving Russian flags. Alarmingly, while both French and American troops are in the region, the Russian mercenary group Wagner is just next door in Mali. Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin, who days ago popped back up in Russia for the first time since the June 23 mutiny events, in a rare message positively celebrated the coup and blasted past French and Western colonialism in Africa:

In a long message posted to social media, Prigozhin blamed the situation in Niger on the legacy of colonialism and alleged, without evidence, that Western nations were sponsoring terrorist groups in the country. Niger was once a French colony and, before this week’s putsch, it had been one of the few democracies in the region.

Meanwhile, Russian flag-bearing protesters have attacked the French embassy in Niamey…




All of this has prompted a fresh response from President Emmanuel Macron, who said his government “will not tolerate any attack on France and its interests” in Niger. He blasted the coup d’état as “perfectly illegitimate” (ironic given this implies he believes he can bestow some coups with legitimacy but not others).

Tensions are also building along the borders, after coup leaders claimed neighboring allies of the West are plotting against them. West African leaders held an emergency meeting on Sunday in Nigeria over the coup and crisis.

The 15-nation regional bloc Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) called for Bazoum’s immediate restoration to office, saying it will “all measures” to restore democratic government and the constitution. The biggest warning from ECOWAS was seen in the following statement:

“Such measures may include the use of force for this effect,” it said in a statement.

The White House in a weekend statement said it is “closely monitoring” the coup and events inside the country, while staying in communication with military leaders.

“We remain deeply concerned about the unfolding developments … the United States condemns in the strongest terms, any effort to seize power by force,” NSC spokesman John Kirby said. “A military takeover may cause the United States to cease security and other cooperation with the government of Niger, jeopardizing existing security and non security partnerships.”



But as The Intercept highlights, this is yet another problem and change of government that’s at least in part of Washington’s own making… that is, another African coup leader who was trained by US special forces. According to The Intercept:

BRIG. GEN. MOUSSA SALAOU BARMOU, the chief of Niger’s Special Operations Forces and one of the leaders of the unfolding coup in Niger, was trained by the U.S. military, The Intercept has confirmed. U.S.-trained military officers have taken part in 11 coups in West Africa since 2008.

“We have had a very long relationship with the United States,” Barmousaid in 2021. “Being able to work together in this capacity is very good for Niger.” Just last month, Barmou met with Lt. Gen. Jonathan Braga, the head of U.S. Army Special Operations Command, at Air Base 201, a drone base in the Nigerian city of Agadez that serves as the lynchpin of an archipelago of U.S. outposts in West Africa.

On Wednesday, Barmou, who trained at Fort Benning, Georgia, and the National Defense University in Washington, joined a junta that ousted Mohamed Bazoum, Niger’s democratically elected president, according to Nigerien sources and a U.S. government official who spoke on the condition of anonymity.





Ft. Benning = School of the Americas, i. e., in general, CIA type training for, you know, overthrows and stuff like that. Guess he is putting the lesson to the test!

Wild:






ECOWAS is the Treaty of Lagos 1975, including Burkina Faso and Mali. It has three suspended members, including Niger, meaning that even if it has a NATO-type defense pact, it does not apply.

The news article for their ouster has expired; instead, it gives me:


Homeless Camps Are Being Cleared in California. What Happens Next?


Democratic leaders who previously tolerated homeless camps have lost their patience for the tent villages and blocks of trailers that proliferated during the pandemic.

[Tiyaira]

In general, there are really only three different kinds of government. Quoting Book 1, Section 3 of the Law of Nations:

If the body of the nation keeps in its own hands the empire or the right to command, it is a popular government, a democracy; if it entrusts it to a certain number of citizens, to a senate, it establishes an aristocratic republic; finally, if it confides the government to a single person, the state becomes a monarchy.

The key function in any system is where the right to command is. Do you, as a mere citizen, have the right to command your society? To do your part in managing its affairs as you see fit? No? Then you do not live in a democracy and never have.

What are called "representative democracies" are actually aristocratic republics in their function. Elected representatives are only a subset of the population, and it has been proven time and again that there is neither contractual agreement nor duty for them to consider your interests. The only agreement that exists by vote is that you agreed that they get to make the decisions and not you. If they be an idiot or a traitor, well, that's allowed by the system and what happens happens because it is allowed to happen.

From a functional systems perspective, existing so-called democratic systems are actually very simple in their design and I see many gaps in their functionality. They were designed by people who did not have systems programming experience (excusable because the field didn't exist in their time) and operated under the assumption that people always had good character. They do not. In a numbers game, bad characters can overpower good characters. We also saw that voting, as a function in a system, is error-prone and should not be relied upon as much as it is.

Democracy requires that people exercise self-government in order for it to function, and self-government requires that people develop in themselves a strong character. Democracy also has the feature of the right to command or manage the society being spread widely in the population without representatives in the way. It does not mean rule by mob -- that is an outcome that occurs with poor system design and it is an error because it is possible for an entire mob to be wrong -- and as an optimizing function, a society ought to avoid going down wrong paths because they are inefficient uses of resources. It is possible to implement a democratic system, where the right to command is entrusted widely, but which does not rely upon numbers to steer its direction.

[abc]

Posted by rgray222 (here)
Antagenet, you are out of line. Your post clearly states that every aspect of every problem in the world (see below) is virtually the result of Jews. I am not Jewish and I have no skin in this argument but when I see something so hate-filled and so out of line I feel it must be called out.

Correlation does not mean causation, but there is definitely a Jewish hand in the things you mentioned. Not to mention the ruling class talking about how Israel is our greatest ally and how Israel is fiercely anti-immigration while people from there actively advocate for mass immigration into countries.

[rgray222]

Posted by abc (here)

Posted by rgray222 (here)
Antagenet, you are out of line. Your post clearly states that every aspect of every problem in the world (see below) is virtually the result of Jews. I am not Jewish and I have no skin in this argument but when I see something so hate-filled and so out of line I feel it must be called out.

Correlation does not mean causation, but there is definitely a Jewish hand in the things you mentioned. Not to mention the ruling class talking about how Israel is our greatest ally and how Israel is fiercely anti-immigration while people from there actively advocate for mass immigration into countries.

Correlation does not mean causation......................... This is precisely why I made the comment in the first place.

I firmly stand by my post. The original post did not say that Jews had a "hand in things" It clearly and emphatically stated (see link https://gtvflyers.com/) that Jews were responsible for every aspect of:

• COVID
• Slavery
• Abortion
• Guns
• Satanism
• Pornography
• Penis Sucking (not joking, see below)
• LBGTQ Movement
• Biden Administration
• Trump Campaign Funding
• Mass Immigration
• Ukraine
• 911
• Federal Reserve
• Communism
• Child Murdering Pedophiles
• Feminism

I have no problem with someone making a case against Zionism but one does not need to be related to Einstein to see that this post has all the hallmarks of hate.

I am not going to comment any further on this subject.

[shaberon]

Posted by Tiyaira (here)
...if it confides the government to a single person, the state becomes a monarchy.

That is not entirely so.

There are various kinds of "constitutional monarchies" and so forth, and various ways of electing kings.

Once the powers of a king are distributed, then he is more or less a chief executive, practically indistinguishable from a president. That is why there was about a 30% minority which would have elected G. Washington king after the American Revolution.

Why is the term "dictator" bandied about? Is Niger currently under the control of one person who is not a king?

Most Tyrants have been installed by popular support, mainly for Debt Jubilee that the "legitimate government" ceased observing.

Either a minority or majority of "bad characters" is able to spread badness through some form of government. I would suggest the form matters less than the character.

The U. S. Confederacy only had a Senate, which led to most of the arguments over the Constitution, in people thinking there should be a "lower house" like in Britain, which is a monarchy with a separate legislature, which led to most of the problems that the Americans revolted against. In that sense, they mainly revolted against the Parliament.

[aKnightThatSaysNi]

Posted by Bill Ryan (here)
I've been meaning to start this thread for quite a while. It's very clear to me that 'democracy' has been a sham — and often a cynical, crooked, manipulated one — for decades, in almost every part of the world. (But significantly, not Crimea or the Donbass. )

This new video from Chris Martenson made my decision to post this. He's outraged about the recent treatment of RFK Jr in the censorship hearings (when he himself was censored!), but there's a LOT more to this important topic than that.

It's All Over! (Democracy, That Is)

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=l0L0BdycDJE

Some of us have known Democrazy is a farce for a long time.

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=zqb-R1UznDY

[shaberon]

This is a snippet from the idea of the End of Europe:


The macroscopic data that explains what is happening in France after February 2022 is that relating to food consumption. That suffered an unprecedented drop of 17% compared to 2021.



which is just some dry data that speaks volumes on its own.

But right now, my question is, if the following could even possibly be happening:

Turning the death of Europe into a metaphysical tragedy is Spain with its jumble of political parties that fail to find a majority, general election after general election.

The country under the leadership of the socialist Sanchez is facing these difficult economic times in relative tranquility. The country’s GDP is supported by the post-Covid recovery of tourism and the revitalization of the real estate sector. While awaiting the next speculative bubble and the formation of yet another national minority government, Spanish politics is the best geopolitical laboratory of the new American way of life based on false rights, the erasure of culture and political correctness. In the general silence of international public opinion, Madrid has reformed the school curriculum, eliminating history and philosophy from the school curriculum. Instead of those two subjects, now considered outdated, Spanish children will be taught disciplines such as ecofeminism, democratic memory, ethics of care and LGBT rights. We are on the verge of the abyss: that reform, at best, should be considered as the most idiotic distillation of cancel culture. In the background, there remain the secessionist tensions of some regions that can no longer bear the link with Madrid: Catalonia in the lead.

[Bill Ryan]

This is the strongest uncensored rant I've ever heard from Chris Martenson. The video was recorded on 21 December for his Peak Prosperity members (safe behind his paywall!), but has only just been uploaded to YouTube — where there are at least half a dozen reasons why it might not stay for long. (I've downloaded it already.)

I could also have posted it on all or any of these other threads:

• The planned takedown of America: now in full swing
• David Rogers Webb's new book "The Great Taking"
• Donald Trump arrested and charged
• God Save Canada
• Turmoil in Argentina.

Martenson opens by praising Argentina's new President Milei, but this was recorded before Milei pulled Argentina out of joining BRICS. I posted earlier that Milei was bad news, and I still hold to that. While I take the points that Martenson makes about him, it'd be interesting to know what he thinks now.

Witnessing Democracy's Decline: My Reflections and Fears

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=eJ7bzFDVM4w

[Arcturian108]

Posted by Bill Ryan (here)
This is the strongest uncensored rant I've ever heard from Chris Martenson. The video was recorded on 21 December for his Peak Prosperity members (safe behind his paywall!), but has only just been uploaded to YouTube — where there are at least half a dozen reasons why it might not stay for long. (I've downloaded it already.)

I could also have posted it on all or any of these other threads:

• The planned takedown of America: now in full swing
• David Rogers Webb's new book "The Great Taking"
• Donald Trump arrested and charged
• God Save Canada
• Turmoil in Argentina.

Martenson opens by praising Argentina's new President Milei, but this was recorded before Milei pulled Argentina out of joining BRICS. I posted earlier that Milei was bad news, and I still hold to that. While I take the points that Martenson makes about him, it'd be interesting to know what he thinks now.

Witnessing Democracy's Decline: My Reflections and Fears

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=eJ7bzFDVM4w

I had the privilege of meeting G. Edward Griffin on several occasions, once in Australia and once in America. He is one of our guiding lights, still active at age 92.

[Mike]

Posted by DNA (here)
For me, personally, the shock comes from the lack of response the indifference by all I come in contact with.
I work at a hotel and do delivery driving part time. I'm in contact with your common man.
People simply don't care.
People are brainwashed.
If you try to talk to people they are triggered.
No one is allowed to talk about anything controversial.
What that really means is no one is allowed to talk about conservative matters.
And if you mention Trump you're getting written up.
But,,, you can talk and or say anything liberal leaning what so ever.

I have witnessed the judicial system attack Trump nonstop for the past six or seven years and I'm not even allowed to talk about it. It's insane!!!!

I don't think it's that people don't care necessarily. Some are too weak and weary to fight it all, and some are just cowards.

The average person - who is being bludgeoned by countless stressors on a daily basis - simply has no more emotional/mental capacity for controversy. They're all maxed out...mentally, emotionally, spiritually, financially...

They understand intuitively that they're not prepared on any level to accept what you have to tell them. So, with their very sanity hanging in the balance, they will fight you tooth and nail on this stuff. Or they'll simply dismiss you...which gives the impression of not caring but is really something else entirely (deep denial).

They know something is off, but they'd rather live with the cognitive dissonance if it means things will remain relatively stable. They understand that to fight will result in instability, and they no longer have the strength or bravery to endure it. Plus some are just justifiably afraid, which is understandable. But sadly they're not afraid of the right things!

And it's because most people don't have any grasp on history at all...even relatively recent history. I didn't either really, I'm embarrassed to say, until recently. Most haven't the slightest clue where collectivism leads to, or even what it is really. It's a pretty simple concept that gets lost in language (deliberately). The crap they promote goes by many different names - equity, social justice, critical social justice, woke, collectivism etc. But it's all just repackaged Marxism/communism/socialism.

[Johnnycomelately]

Posted by Mike (here)
.
They know something is off, but they'd rather live with the cognitive dissonance if it means things will remain relatively stable. They understand that to fight will result in instability, and they no longer have the strength or bravery to endure it. Plus some are just justifiably afraid, which is understandable. But sadly they're not afraid of the right things!
.

Is that (bolded text) what they call a Freudian Slip? Do you really champion FEAR, as long as it’s the right ones? IMO, fear is, like sadness, a symptom of lack of love.

[Mike]

Posted by Johnnycomelately (here)

Posted by Mike (here)
.
They know something is off, but they'd rather live with the cognitive dissonance if it means things will remain relatively stable. They understand that to fight will result in instability, and they no longer have the strength or bravery to endure it. Plus some are just justifiably afraid, which is understandable. But sadly they're not afraid of the right things!
.

Is that (bolded text) what they call a Freudian Slip? Do you really champion FEAR, as long as it’s the right ones? IMO, fear is, like sadness, a symptom of lack of love.

The point I was making there is that people who are afraid of taking action now should be far more afraid of what will eventually happen if they don't.

Fear can be useful if it makes you act to prevent disaster. It's not useful when you allow it to frighten you into inaction.

[ozmirage]

DEMOCRACY has always been a vile form, where a majority can legally persecute a minority or tax the snot out of them.

I prefer the republican form, where all men are created equal (before the law - none HIGHER) with Creator endowed rights that governments were instituted to secure - not tax, regulate nor trespass. Absent consent of the governed, these servant governments are limited to adjudicating disputes, prosecuting criminals, and defending against all enemies, foreign and domestic.

Of course, once you consent, shut up, sit down, pay and obey.

(a REPUBLICAN FORM is not synonymous with a REPUBLIC. The Peoples Republic of China is a republic but NOT a republican form. Nor can any constitution create a republican form, ergo it's not a "constitutional republic.")

[Bill Ryan]

Bumping this thread, which I'd suggest is an important one, with a new report from Kim Iverson, also withNebojsa Malic, a columnist for Antiwar.com and RT America, now based in Belgrade, Serbia. Here's her opening:

I think deep down, whether we want to vocalize it or not, most people in this country feel that it's over for democracy.

From Ukraine to Epstein: How American Democracy has already Crossed the Rubicon

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=MEHWOyv19-4

[shaberon]

Okay. I thought we had a thread like this around here somewhere. I don't yet have any partisan material to post. But I will say 2026 has got off on the wrong foot and it is time to eat tectonic cake.



First of all, this is Richard Wolff on removing the Security myth:

I have learned a lot, I continue to learn a lot, from a professor of political science from the University of Chicago named John Mearsheimer. He has been doing a lot of work on global big power conflict. He was early on to identify the impossibility for Ukraine to win that war, et cetera, et cetera. And he analyzes everything from the standpoint of great power activity, one against the other.

He usually explains it by saying it is in the nature of big powers to feel insecure about their situation and then everything they do, including war with one another, are products of attempting to cope with that insecurity.

I’ve always wondered: why would you start your argument there? Why wouldn’t you ask the question, why are people fearful about their security? Conventional human nature? Are we supposed to think like that, the way people have been thinking that way for centuries? And I believe the answer is no, and I think it’s relevant right now.

Here’s the model to keep in mind. It’s the conventional model of capitalist competition.

You have three companies making the same thing. Let’s say it’s shoes or software programs. It doesn’t matter. Each company is aware that there are other companies. And each company is aware that the customer can go to another company if they don’t like your company. So they try to improve their product by giving it new capabilities, by painting it a different color, by advertising it in a new and better way.

But everything they do to enhance their own security thereby threatens the security of the competitors. Because if you succeed by improving the quality of your goods, you shift your buyer from that other commodity by the other company to yours. That’s what you hope for. That’s what success represents. So the success of each is the endangerment of the success of every other. That’s the nature of capitalist competition.

When you teach it to students in economics departments, you do a very odd thing. You tell them how competition gets you good results, such as improvement, new technology, and so forth. And that’s true. Competition provokes improvements of all kinds. But as anyone with even 10 seconds of Hegel in their brain would know, now you have to ask the question, what are the negative consequences of competition, which turn out to be every bit as horrible and destructive as you could imagine?

Competition is why one company looks for a shortcut, uses cheaper materials, uses inferior products, falsely advertises, and a hundred other things that come out of competition. The notion that competition is some universal good thing is stupid. It is a sign of inability to think in a sophisticated way. It’s when ideological need completely trumps intellectual honesty.

As I said, I have enormous respect for Mr Mearsheimer. He has taught me enormously and is a very valuable thinker. But it’s out of capitalist competition that big powers are insecure and then take steps on their own security that threaten everybody else. Perfect analogy with capitalist competition. Which raises the question, if we’re going to be honest, whether we are ever going to solve the problem of great power hostility if we don’t get rid of the capitalism out of which all of this grows and upon which it is modeled.

So, there is a sort of dimness of view that many of us are sick of, which leads to escapades like the abduction of Maduro while Congress is in recess.

It's an intellectually dishonest method of clinging to ideology that is in about its 75th year of Does Not Work.


In the time I have been a member here, I would say there are fewer and fewer outside non-commercial independent type blogs or websites, that, so to speak, have a concentration of something more accurate and useful, and less noise. One of them I still do is Michael Hudson, who is the guy that made the petro-dollar, And so "democracy" like in the title of this thread, it's hard to say whether or not that is what is "done", because it kind of doesn't means one certain thing, "socialism" does not really mean something all that specific either.

For example Simon Bolivar didn't have any "politics". He spent 20-30 years running around the world and cribbed ideas mostly from the English model and other normative Enlightenment philosophers, and wasn't exactly anything because the iteration kept changing and it was more like "whatever was necessary" to remove the Spanish authority.


In the current sense, it actually *is* different from "democracy" because of at least two main things:


anti-imperialism

nationalization of infrastructure


As we start to face some music this year, this is a long transcript from a few weeks ago which is in response to the National Security Statement and the inconvenient appearance of a Muslim Mayor of NYC.

He's the closest thing to not falling into one side or the other.

Razor's edge.

After experiencing a lifetime of the "Military Industrial Complex", this is their view of what is "ending" called Party Machines Lose:




⁣NIMA ALKHORSHID: Hi, everybody. Today is Thursday, November 6, 2025, and our dear friends, Richard Wolff and Michael Hudson, are here with us. Welcome back, Richard and Michael.

⁣RICHARD WOLFF & MICHAEL HUDSON: Glad to be here.

⁣NIMA ALKHORSHID: Let me start with what has happened in New York. And the mayoral election, the outcome was someone — you look at him, all red lines are on him: he’s a Muslim, socialist, immigrant — it’s amazing to see, you know, because the billionaires invested, they paid more than, if I’m not mistaken, $40 million against him in this campaign. And after all, [Zohran] Mamdani was successful in his way of getting to the position.

Michael, looking at what has happened in New York, what is your understanding of what has happened, and what does it mean for the future of the Democratic Party?

⁣MICHAEL HUDSON: Well, both parties are trying to spin the election. The Democrats are trying to say, well, you see, we won. It’s all a rejection of Trump. And the Republicans are trying to make it appear it’s all about socialism — and look at the right-wing Democrats who won in Virginia and New Jersey.

But the fact is that both the Republicans and the Democratic parties lost, as a result of New York City. All of the attention, as you’ve just pointed out, is on New York City. Even though that was the most local election, it had a national scope because it’s the future of not only the Democratic Party, but what the next year’s midterm elections are going to be all about.

The Republicans lost the elections in New Jersey to the governor, who wanted to lower the electric bills that have been raised against the population; and Virginia elected a CIA Democrat, who obviously is part of the right-wing part of the Democratic Party. So, the Democrats are claiming a victory.

But all of this was overshadowed by Mamdani’s victory in New York City, and his win is what made the Democrats the loser, despite the fact that the election was local. He was really running against the Democratic National Committee; and its leaders have announced their outright hatred, not only for him, but, for the last year, for Bernie Sanders, for AOC [Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez]. The Democratic National Committee is saying: We have to prevent the party from turning left. We have to support Israel. We have to support Wall Street. We have to oppose progressive taxation — and essentially [keep] doing what we’ve been doing all along, being soft-core Republicans.

And now all of that has been repudiated. And so Mamdani was running not only against the disgraced former governor of New York, Andrew Cuomo, not only against the Republicans, but really against all of the money — the $40 million that you mentioned — that was all mobilized against him. And in that sense, he was defined not simply by his program of providing free bus rides and child care, but he was defined by his enemies, who were attacking him by making all sorts of claims that he was a Marxist, a socialist —

It’s as if the newspapers are too embarrassed to say that there have been public opinion polls (that Richard and I have mentioned before on your show), that the voters prefer the word “socialism” to “capitalism.” “Socialism” isn’t a bad word. So, by calling him “socialism” for wanting to improve transportation; “socialism” for protecting tenants’ rights against landlords; “socialism” for improving the lot of New Yorkers and progressively taxing wealth — he not only takes away the Democratic base, but the Republican base for this.

And the reason that the $40 million came from wealthy Zionists wasn’t because of his socialism. It was because they’re trying to defeat him. [W]hat made people so passionate over this election was the whole issue of Zionism — brought up by his opponents, such as the Democratic Senate leader, Chuck Schumer, who refused to support Mamdani, saying that Mamdani was defending the Palestinians against the Israeli bombing and he could not support that.

Well, what better support could you want from a New York population? And the fact that over 70% of New York’s Jewish population voted for Mamdani shows the attempt to slander him, how off-[putting] it is. And if you look at the only districts that Mamdani lost, [they] were in the fundamentalist Orthodox Jewish Brooklyn area, and Queens (near Long Island) — who, of course, saw that the election was all about Zionism.

A Wall Street Journal editorial today really, I think, spells out the story best of all. It said, “If [New York Governor Kathy] Hochul turns left [in next year’s election for the governor], she may defeat [her Lieutenant Governor] Antonio Delgado, who will run from the Mamdani left. [But] [i]f Ms. Hochul turns left, she may defeat Mr. Delgado but leave herself open to a likely GOP [Republican] challenge from Rep. Elise Stefanik.”

Well, Stefanik was the hectoring lady in Congress who attacked the presidents of Columbia [University] and Harvard [University] for permitting protests against the Israeli attack on the Palestinians. And she attacked these universities for not expelling students who opposed genocide, students who said: The Palestinians are human beings, they’re civilians. This is against the laws of war. It’s against all international law. She said: They must be expelled, and any professor who gives voice to a Palestinian point of view must be expelled from your university. Harvard and Columbia duly expelled the professors and expelled the students from the university.

And if that is what the election for New York Senate is going to be all about next year, you can be sure that this is going to be splitting the whole U.S. electoral campaign, just as the split over Charlie Kirk has been splitting his right-wing Republican following over the issue of Zionism.

And that’s what the newspapers are hesitating from [writing].

The Republicans are afraid to acknowledge that that is what the election was about. They’re pretending that it was about Marxism. And it’s not about Marxism at all. There’s nothing Marxist about providing subsidized education, so that workers can afford to earn a lower salary from their employers and make their employers more competitive. I mean, that’s basic 19th-century classical-industrial-capitalist strategy to become more competitive. It’s all really about the Zionist issue.

And in the Wall Street Journal (same issue), you have, on the next editorial page, a Jewish writer [worrying] — “[i]f socialists become the Democratic Party’s face” [as Karl Rove wrote in the same issue] — he’s going to be afraid to wear his kippah (his yarmulke) in public; he bought a newsboy’s hat because he thinks that somehow the Jewish population will be threatened. This is hysteria. And the hysteria is part of what has really motivated, I think, Mamdani’s voters to say: We don’t want any part of this. We’re not going to go along with this demagogy — at all.

Trump has already said that if New York voted for Mamdani, he’s going to pull all public federal support for New York out. And the Republicans and Democrats want to treat New York City like the United States and Europe treated Soviet Russia after its revolution: try to do everything you can to oppose it, to drain it, to isolate it, to make it harder to govern — and, then, say, socialism doesn’t work — when they have to spend all their time defending themselves. This is what it’s going to be about.

In fact, I just got (yesterday) this month’s The Nation magazine, the left-wing magazine from the last century. And there’s an article about how the black caucus in the United States (the representatives in Congress) has been dominated by AIPAC [American Israel Public Affairs Committee], saying that if they do not follow the AIPAC pro-Zionist line, they will be opposed; and AIPAC will fund their opponents in order to, essentially, mobilize election money for Zionism. So, somehow, this issue has overwhelmed the whole electoral process here.

⁣NIMA ALKHORSHID: Richard, looking at who voted for Mamdani, the young people under the age of 30, more than 75% voted for Mamdani. And here is what Donald Trump [posted] before the election happened: “Any Jewish person that votes for Zohran Mamdani, a proven and self-professed JEW HATER, is a stupid person!!!”

And we know that Bernie Sanders, since the Democrats didn’t want to support Mamdani, but Bernie Sanders went after him. And we know what has happened to Bernie Sanders during the presidential election. This time, he came and supported Mamdani. In those days, [Sanders] had nobody to support him against Hillary Clinton.

But what’s your understanding of what has happened?

⁣RICHARD WOLFF: Well, I’m coming at it from a little bit of a different perspective from Michael, but I think they’re complementary [perspectives], or they can go together.

I want to talk about the history here, because I think this is a historic shift. It began with Bernie — no question. It was given an extra boost by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and the group of young women who came into prominence with her. And now it has taken a quantitative new additional leap with the election of Mamdani.

But I want to talk about the hysteria in historical perspective. It ranges from the pathetic to the ridiculous. I mean, we are watching — whether it’s the Wall Street Journal, or Elise Stefanik, or anything like that — spewing their hysterical reaction that makes no sense. It’s a revelation of their ignorance. They ought to be embarrassed, and they will, one day.

What do I mean? Mamdani is a Democratic Socialist. He emphasizes the phrase “Democratic Socialist,” which he has every right to do. It is a kind of socialism that he advocates. It’s very close to what used to be called “municipal socialism.” Why? Because it is the kind of limited, moderate policy changes that mayors have tried to do in American and in foreign cities — for the last two centuries! It is not revolutionary. It doesn’t usher in anything like the hysterical remarks being made by Americans.

You know what this response shows? It shows that for 75 years, since the end of the Second World War, the United States has buried its head in the sand and pretended that socialism, communism, Marxism, are all something evil and horrible — over there. They haven’t understood how it developed. They don’t understand the different points of view within socialism. None of it. They don’t know or care. And so they see a socialist, they don’t understand how to understand it, other than in their underdeveloped, 75-year, out-of-date backwardness.

Let me get at this a second way. Someone once counted up: seventy-five American cities in the history of this country have had mayors who were socialists, and said so. I know from my research — I did a lot of work once on the mayoralty in Bridgeport, Connecticut. I did that because I ran for mayor of the city of New Haven, Connecticut, which, like Bridgeport, is one of the three sizable cities in the state of Connecticut. Bridgeport had a socialist mayor for many years. Nothing of the sort of the hallucinations of the right wing happened in Bridgeport during the time of their mayor. Ditto, Milwaukee. Ditto, all the 75 [cities]. Number one.

Number two. Right now in Europe, there are socialist mayors. A number of the major cities of Europe — by the way, places like Paris, London, Milan, and so on, are governed by socialists, or have been at various moments in their history — nothing of the fantasy-horrors that are being spun out in the American media ever happened there. Socialist parties are regular participants in every country in Europe, and beyond. But I want to talk about Europe, otherwise, I’ll take too much time.

So, what you’re seeing in the response of the right wing in this country is a sign of its utter ignorance and bad education — and being, as I say, 75 years out of date: talking like they talked back in the days of the House Un-American Activities Committee. Think of the very name — ridiculous, you know, as if they have the sole authority to decide what is, and isn’t, American. It’s a joke. That’s the first thing.

The second thing. It’s important to understand that this is a sign of real serious trouble. This is something Michael and I have tried very hard to get across. My language: it’s a decline of our empire. It is a series of problems, many of which Michael has very, very creatively shown us: how they’ve accumulated; what their history is; how the people in charge have not solved these problems have basically kicked them down the road, during which time they have accumulated and gotten worse. If you don’t solve your medical problems, they get worse; you don’t solve your psychological issues, they get worse. Well, it’s in economics, as well.

And this is a sign that the people of New York, who aren’t that different from people anywhere else, made a decision. And here’s what I think the election showed. Mr. [Curtis] Sliwa (the Republican) and Mr. Cuomo (the Democrat) represent, in their totality, the same old, same old, same old. Literally — Sliwa has been a candidate for as long as I can remember here in New York. And as we all know, Cuomo was a governor, he worked with the Clintons, and blah — it’s all the same. And nothing either of them said gave anyone any reason to believe that they would be, in the future, any different from the nothing that they were in the past.

Therefore, Mr. Mamdani had an unbelievable opportunity. All he had to do — and by the way, I don’t take away anything. He ran a brilliant campaign. He’s very successful. He deserves everybody’s amazement and congratulations. So, I don’t want any confusion in what I’m about to say — but he cashed in, as successful politicians always do, on something much bigger, and different, from himself. He was the obvious, different, new change. He embodied it: a Muslim in New York, a socialist in this country. Wow. Who would have thought it?

Things are changing. Of course, young people come (75%). They want change. They know that the “American Dream” promised to them is not available anymore. No one has to persuade them. They’re already there. They want change. And looking at Sliwa and Cuomo and Mamdani? That’s easy, where your best chance for change is!

Now, the last point. Yes, he’s a socialist. And I don’t know exactly what that means to him, since I’m very aware that socialism means very different things to different people. The Soviet Union was one kind of socialism. Norman Thomas, who was the great leader of the American socialists for many years, was a deadly opponent of the Soviet Union, and all that it stood for. So that shows you that people who wanted the name “socialist” could mean very different things. There’s a Trotskyite tradition, which goes in yet another direction. The current people who lead China refer to their country as “socialism with Chinese characteristics.”

Okay, where in all of that does Mamdani fit? Well, America is too backward in this area to be even able to ask the question. So, everyone’s fantasy of what it might mean just blurts out — and I mean the pages of the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal — it’s embarrassing that you know so little that you don’t even understand this “socialism” of Mamdani, who calls it “democratic,” and who tells you, quite clearly, what he plans to do! This is a remarkable statement, but it carries enormous implications, also for the emerging new left in the United States; because he, like Ocasio-Cortez, and like Bernie, [they] are going to be the standard-bearers. By virtue of what has happened, they are going to be “socialism.”

But I guarantee you what I’m about to say is true. (I don’t believe in prediction — I can’t predict anything, and nobody else can — but I’m going to do it anyway.) The other kinds of socialism are waiting in the wings. They will emerge now. Why do I say that? Because they have everywhere else on this planet; so they’re going to do that here, too. So, a word to the wise, if they’re smart enough to listen. Mr. Bloomberg (who gave the most money); or the owner of Airbnb (who gave a lot of money); or Home Depot’s Mr. [Ken] Langone (who gave a lot of money); let me give you a piece of advice: You better be glad that Mamdani won, because the other socialists coming down the road are going to be a lot worse for you than he will be. That’s the reality.

But that’s also a challenge to Mr. Mamdani. He also has to face the scale of his solutions, which, I suspect, he knows, is inadequate to the scale of the problems he faces: You are not going to solve the problems of the United States (that we have been spending months on this program, trying to clarify and explain). You’re not going to solve them — not with free buses; and not with public grocery stores in food deserts; and not with a 2% tax on wealth above $100 million; or whatever it is that is his [program] —

it’s perfectly good as a program. I’m glad he’s putting it forward. But here’s the problem — and he should learn from Mr. Trump. This was a resounding defeat for Mr. Trump. And you know why? Not because of how he speaks, or the extreme stuff he does. (I wish it were a defeat for those reasons — but it wasn’t.) It was a defeat because what he’s doing, Mr. Trump cannot, will not, and did not solve the problems he inherited. His Big Beautiful (tax) Bill makes those problems worse. His tariff program, whether or not the Supreme Court allows it, doesn’t solve these problems. It can’t.

That, Mr. Mamdani, you have to understand, too. You, too, will be confronted, like Trump, with asking the difficult question: What has to be done to deal with the actual problems we have? You can do it, but you have to admit that that’s the case. Otherwise, you will discover — like Mr. Trump is discovering — that promising people quick-and-easy solutions — as if they were available, and as if you could deliver them — doesn’t work. And it will turn those people away from you. And that’s what happened to him. And it’s going to happen to him more, and more, and more. And as it does, the people around him will abandon him. It’s already happening, and it will happen more.

But the cautionary tale is, that problem confronts the left as well.

⁣MICHAEL HUDSON: Thank you, Richard, for reminding us about municipal socialism in America. That has always been one of the forces behind socialism. In the 1950s when I grew up, it was Robert La Follette [Jr.] of Milwaukee who led this whole reform, and it made all of Wisconsin progressive. And the city where I grew up (Minneapolis) was, I think, the only Trotskyist city in the entire world that led to the Minneapolis general strikes of the 1930s. And even the governor of Minnesota, Floyd B. Olson, said he hoped capitalism went right to hell. That got him re-elected! You could say that socialism in America demonstrated the way in which it worked from the only place where it had a chance of doing that — and that was at the local level.

I want to get back to the national level in this case, because the national level is where the money comes in for campaigning for the local level. And what terrifies both the Democrats and the Republican Party leadership is that most of the midterm elections are going to be, as I said, over Zionism and the Israeli violence in Gaza and the West Bank.

That was the issue that was largely responsible for the Democrats’ loss in the November presidential election. As Jill Stein and I forecast in our interviews with you, Nima, the Islamic voters in Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Minnesota, refused to vote for the Democrat Kamala Harris because of her reliance on Zionist donors and her steadfast support of Israel First. And that is one of the reasons why yesterday’s Democratic victories in New Jersey and Virginia were much stronger margins for the Democrats than the presidential vote for Harris. She was unpopular because she continued Biden’s pro-war policy, the policy that Trump has escalated in making the wars in Ukraine, Israel — now Venezuela and Nigeria — his war.

So, there’s a movement to oppose any candidate that’s receiving election financing, basically, from AIPAC. And that’s threatened to become a litmus test for candidates. The Democrats’ opposition to the National Committee is going to be: Will you refuse to vote for any politician who receives money from AIPAC? Well, AIPAC already realized this, and said: We’ve got to create a Zionist pro-Israel campaign system that’s not AIPAC, that’s funded by the wealthy billionaires from Silicon Valley, and other billionaires who are defending Israel. The fight against Mamdani is, in that sense, going to be a fight by politicians to keep receiving campaign contributions for themselves — above all from AIPAC, but also from other donors with special interests.

And that’s what the entire American political election system has turned into. The election system has been privatized in this country, and sold to the donor class. That is the consequence of the Supreme Court’s ruling in Citizens United, that any corporation and any donor can give as much money as they want to politicians. There is no limit at all.

Well, Mamdani came in with much less funding than anyone else, and won. So he’s challenged this whole system, but he’s raised the issue for what’s going to be the statewide elections and for next year’s national elections in the United States: How is American politics going to survive this privatization and financialization of elections? If it doesn’t solve this, then the United States is going to be a failed state politically, because the right-wing demand for “originalism” in the Supreme Court is to say, well, what would the slave owners who wrote the Constitution rule today? Well, they would back all of the right-wingers.

And you had the same fight occur in Athens in the 4th century BC. What was the original Constitution of Solon? What did Solon really do? Well, there were rival views of what the Constitution was all about.

One of the upshots of this New York election and municipal socialism is going to be the whole issue of, basically, oligarchy and campaigns. And that’s why Mamdani has again and again used the word “oligarchy.” And that’s where he’s distinguishing himself from others. And the issue? Really, it’s not Marxism; it’s not socialism as such because there are so many different kinds of socialism, as Richard has pointed out. It’s oligarchy versus real democracy, which means policies that are enacted to protect the population at large — of tenants, of wage earners, of the bottom 90% of the population — not just the top 10%, as we’ve been talking about.

So, this is exactly what the 2026 Senate elections are going to be about. And if AOC runs against Chuck Schumer, trying to unseat him — same thing with the House of Representatives — you’re going to have the Democrats, particularly, running against Bernie Sanders, AOC, [against] any attempt to have public health care because that threatens to cut off their own flow of election contributions from the special interests.

So, all of this goes beyond political ideology itself. It has to do with the whole structuring of the political system. And that’s why both the Republicans and the Democrats were so shocked by Mamdani’s win, and why his win is so historical — if it will actually change things.

People have been saying: Well, look at how Bernie and AOC ended up surrendering to [Nancy] Pelosi and Schumer, and just going along with the Democratic majority. They were co-opted. Well, Mamdani is free of the pressure that was brought against both Bernie Sanders and AOC because there’s no party above him as Mayor of New York. There’s no one who can tell him what to do, or say: If you don’t support this policy, we won’t put you on a powerful committee, a such-and-such committee; or we won’t give you any voice.

He now has the voice to do what he wants. Today he appointed Lina Khan, Biden’s excellent anti-monopoly lawyer, as one of his co-chairs for his mayoral [transition] campaign. He’s bringing all the progressives on this [transition] team with him. And what he’s going to be doing is not simply a personal fight for New York — he’s a very gifted politician, he’s a natural as a politician, for any of you who’ve listened to his victory speech the other night. It’s really a whole — his team will say: There is an alternative, and there’s no other alternative on the schedule; and we’re going to start with this alternative on a New York scale, if we can.

And if we’re opposed by Trump and by the federal government, trying to starve us for transportation funds and all the federal funds that come in; if Trump sends in the National Guard to begin arresting citizens — one of Trump’s supporters yesterday said he wants ICE (the Immigration authority), to look at Mamdani’s citizenship application, and said: Was there anything wrong? Was there a typographical error? If so, let’s deport him back to Africa. You already have seen that breaking out yesterday. That’s the stakes that we’re seeing in what is going to be the policies he has for mayor.

⁣NIMA ALKHORSHID: Richard, I think the main point, what Michael just said, is so important: Who’s going to be on his team and what would be the policies that he’s going to adopt? After all, we know that the status quo doesn’t work in the United States. That’s why people are voting for Mamdani and people like him.

And it’s not just about the Democratic Party. Within the Republican Party, the same thing is happening. And here is just a short clip of what Tucker Carlson said.

LINDSEY GRAHAM (CLIP): […] the Republican Party. We’re killing all the right people and we’re cutting your taxes.

⁣TUCKER CARLSON (CLIP): Cutting your taxes and killing all the right people. That really is the crispest way to describe the marriage of libertarian economics and neocon foreign policy: cuttin’ taxes and killin’. And if you think about it, who’d want to be associated with that? Cutting taxes itself is hardly a virtue. It’s a contextual matter. Sometimes it is, sometimes it is. It totally depends. But in Lindsey Graham’s simplistic-but-heartfelt formulation, cutting taxes is just a positive good, always. And so is killing people. Killing the right people. No, they got to be the right people, but killing people. Killing people is just a good thing. Like, it’s one of the things you don’t need to describe […]

⁣NIMA ALKHORSHID: Yeah.

⁣RICHARD WOLFF: You know, the problem with Tucker Carlson is he doesn’t understand how far that reaches, so he can only come up with the examples that he comes up with.

But let me take it another step, because it’s all about what Mamdani is going to have to do.

When Mr. Trump comes into office, he has a problem. The American national debt has ballooned faster than anything else. What is it now? $35 trillion, or more than that. In a very short time, it went from a few hundred billion to $35 trillion — out of control national debt. So bad that we lose our AAA credit rating. So bad that we get statements by lenders that they don’t want to lend to the United States anymore because they’re not confident in the ability to pay — which is why you don’t have a AAA rating.

So, he comes in, and he’s got a problem. He’s going to do something. He promises he’s going to do something about this national debt, about the ability of the United States to borrow.

And for those who don’t understand, a reminder: Every major war, starting in Vietnam, that we have fought in recent times has been paid for by borrowing; and the reason is you cannot fight these wars if you were to make the American people pay the tax to pay for it, because they’d oppose it right from the beginning. Now it takes a year to get into these wars before the American people begin to realize the hopeless[ness] and pointlessness of it — for them.

So, you’ve got to be able to borrow. You cannot run your foreign policy. You can’t even run your government. Why is that? Very simple. We have a politics in which corporations and the rich demand of the government all kinds of services — but they don’t want to pay taxes. And by donating — or not — they can force the politicians not to tax them. Okay?

What about the mass of people? They want the government to give them all kinds of benefits: schooling, hospitals, roads, policing, fire department, you name it. And they don’t want to pay taxes — but they’ve been forced to.

The burden of taxation, as anyone knows who studies it, has been shifted, over the last century, from corporations and the rich to the average person, the middle class. That’s what’s happened.

So, Mr. Trump comes into office after this; but he’s got a problem. He can’t just borrow some more. He did that in his first presidential run, and everybody pointed out, you didn’t solve the government’s debt, you made it worse — which, of course, was true because he inherited the structure that was doing that before him, did it during him, and did it after him under Biden.

So, what is he going to do? The only thing he knows: try to do what Republicans do — more so.

What does that mean? Don’t tax corporations and the rich. Once again, the first act of his new presidency, the current second term, Big Beautiful (tax) Bill — extend the tax cuts of the first regime, and add a few more — which is what he did.

So, what’s left? There’s no way to reduce the government debt if you’re not going to tax the corporations and the rich. You dare not tax the mass of people because that’s your political base.

So, what do you do? There’s only one thing left. You have to cut expenditures. The first phase he does with Elon Musk, and he raises the banner, Efficiency: I’m going to cut the government, by efficiency.

And when that runs out of gas, and runs into every difficulty imaginable, he has to drop it. He kicks Mr. Musk to the curb, throws him under the bus, and comes up with a new way to save money called the government shutdown that we’re living through.

That’s as fanciful nonsense as the efficiency bull**** was before. All he’s doing — and of course, this is not enough — he’s trying to save money so he can do something about the national debt, which he’s inherited. But he can’t do it on the scale that will make a difference.

So, he’s stuck. And you know how he knows he’s stuck? Because of the elections two days ago. That’s his sign: You’re stuck, Jack. The collection of things you’re doing adds up to people finding reasons not to vote for you, or for the people you endorse. Everyone he endorsed lost. Everyone he opposed won. Not just Mamdani.

And I understand what Michael said about the other Democrats. They’re nothing to write home about, but those were the people that Trump was able to defeat before — can’t do it anymore. That is a problem. Michael is right: Mamdani is going to face every conceivable kind of obstacle, opposition. If he begins to do the things he’s going to have to do, that opposition will get worse.

But if he doesn’t do it, he’s going to find the same sad story.

The people who voted for him are giving him a chance. But if he doesn’t produce, they will vote against him next time. They really will. And they’ll have a lot of help doing that. New York City is the home to more billionaires in this country than any place else — so, he’s got ‘em.

England has a whole bevy of laws, in case he needs them, that require anyone who leaves Britain to pay for all the benefits they got while they were in Britain, as a condition of leaving.

Oh, oh. Here, billionaires threaten to leave, and nobody dares say anything.

Will Mr. Mamdani have the courage and the foresight to know he cannot give the same answer? He has to go — not just because that will pay for his programs, which it will. His programs are modest. If you look at the cost of grocery stores and free bus rides, it’s not expensive, relative to the budget of the City of New York, anyway. But he has to do it. He has to do it for political reasons. And he has to have advisors who are able and willing to see, and to help him navigate that situation.

⁣MICHAEL HUDSON: I think you’re right about the fact that many of the reforms that he can do don’t cost more money. For instance, one of the things he can do to support tenants’ rights is you end the building department corruption that was inherited from [the] Mayor [Ed] Koch regime and from [Rudolph] Giuliani, where the building departments run by the developers have enabled developers, like Trump, to simply tear down landmark buildings without really being fined more than a token cost of doing business.

The developers have run the city; the landlords have run the city courts against the tenants. And by providing public lawyers for the tenants, you can defend against the landlord interests in these tenant courts. And the fact that Mamdani has said that New York is unlivable — with an average rent of over $4,500 a month in New York, who can afford to actually live here if you don’t inherit enough money, [or] get a [high-paying] job?

He can tax Wall Street, as you said. That’s really the key. Are these billionaires, concentrated in New York City as the nation’s financial center, really going to move out? Well, hard to move to Florida these days, with all of the hurricanes threatening the property there. There’s really nowhere for them to move out. So, of course, he can raise the rents. He’s going to have to drag the city council and other agencies along.

It would be nice if he can drag the current center-right Governor Hochul around to imposing the (originally higher) charges for driving your automobile into the city that is still paralyzing traffic here.

And the subways have spent all of the money to help developers on the upper east side from the Second Avenue extension, so that they have not fixed the subways going outside of Manhattan — to Queens, to Brooklyn, and to the Bronx. (Last night, my wife’s 45-minute trip took her an hour and a half, including sitting in the dark for over half an hour when the electricity was turned off on the line to where we live in Forest Hills, Queens.) The subways are falling apart — which is where most of the wage earners live, who have to earn a living in Manhattan, and can’t afford to live there anymore because of the rents.

So, all of these things can be done without much money. The money squeeze, I think, is not going to be from what Mamdani does, but from the withdrawal of state and federal support that has been subsidizing New York — as long as it was pro-landlord, pro-Wall Street, pro-oligarchy — all along.

That’s going to be a fight. And again, that fight is going to be more than just a municipal fight. It’s going to be a national fight, against municipal socialism and the obvious things that Mamdani has promised, which is why he got so many good followers from the beginning.

⁣NIMA ALKHORSHID: Richard, I think this is a huge opportunity for a socialist working in New York City. How helpful could Bernie Sanders be for this sort of movement in New York City? And how is [Mamdani] going to use the experience of Bernie Sanders? What do we know about the relationship between the two?

⁣RICHARD WOLFF: Well, at this point, the first answer is he could use help from Bernie Sanders, all the time. I mean, he needs Bernie to be out there helping him carry the message, if you like, nationwide.

Bernie is at the top of many polls. People should know this. There are people who go around asking the question: In your judgment, as an American citizen, who’s the most popular politician you can think of? And Bernie wins that contest, over and over, because even though he didn’t win the election, he, therefore, has none of the negativity. He hasn’t had to face promises made that he couldn’t deliver on — because people didn’t give him the job. So, he’s able to say: I told you so. This needs to be done. You didn’t do it. And so we have a problem. And that’s a very much better position to be in, when an empire is declining, because you’re going to be facing losses, one after the other.

I mean, let me remind people — because Americans don’t want to face it — that, for example, the CEO of NVIDIA, Mr. [Jensen] Huang, gave a speech yesterday, in which he basically said that we should understand that the artificial intelligence revolution has now been won, and the winner is the People’s Republic of China. This is true across the board — militarily, politically, economically. The BRICS alliance is exploding in the world. It has lots of problems, of course. It encompasses very different political and economic — I don’t want to make it simple — and it’s not all pro-Chinese, or anything like that — but it’s a viable alternative.

The power of Mr. Trump — the last cudgel he could use on the rest of the world to beat them into shape — is: I won’t let you come and trade here. I won’t let you buy here. I won’t let you sell here. You’re going to have to give me a lot of money, if you want to sell your goods here. I’ll only hit you with a low tariff, if you make big [investments] —

He’s demanding tribute from the whole world.

But it’s too late. It would have had to have been done 20 years ago. It might have worked then. But it wasn’t necessary. Now that it’s necessary — too late. That happens often in history.

The BRICS are the alternative. China is turning to them, and they to China. The United States is, in a busy way, isolating itself. That’s the reality. And that is going to implode on the United States in many ways. Mr. Mamdani, whether he wishes it or not, is going to be finding himself in the following situation: What can a socialist do (about what I’ve just said) to distinguish a better socialist response to a declining empire, than a capitalist one?

And that’s where Bernie and Ocasio-Cortez, that’s where they come, because they are the national and, therefore, the appropriate international.

Let me be daring and say something that people may remember: There are two ways for the United States to deal with the People’s Republic of China.

One is aggressive, hostile maneuver[ing]: that’s what we got. Here’s an alternative: Sit down, divide the world up in such a way that both of you can find opportunities to grow and to develop.

What might it mean if socialists became advocates of that second approach, as part of a transformation of the United States? Wow. Might that bring to them a level of support, if only from all of the Americans who already worry that the relation with China is on its way to nuclear war? Wow.

A socialist movement worthy of the name has to think like that, has to have the large — as well as the public grocery store in the food desert. And I wish there were enough socialists to divide the labor, but there isn’t. So, Mr. Mamdani, who’s going to be the face of socialism for a while, it’s up to him. He can mobilize Bernie and Ocasio-Cortez — probably — if he understands the situation he’s actually in.

⁣NIMA ALKHORSHID: Michael?

⁣MICHAEL HUDSON: Richard made the point. You’re right. The socialists have always been against war because most wars are against socialism.

⁣NIMA ALKHORSHID: Yeah. Thank you so much, Richard and Michael. Great pleasure, as always.

⁣RICHARD WOLFF: Yeah, this was an important conversation, made possible by an important election. And I think we will be talking about the implications and ramifications many times in the future of these conversations.

⁣NIMA ALKHORSHID: Exactly. Yeah. Thank you so much. See you soon. See you next week. Bye-bye.

[shaberon]

Elsewhere I have posted a few things about focusing the Republican Party in a negative manner because of a simple fact:


As long as there is a Republican Senate, the President cannot be impeached.



It is not just that, but, because the Party functions as practically one unit, with little difference of opinion and anyway pretty much full support for the Executive.

As I have tried to describe, American politics has gone through some word twists and, for example, in 1790 the non-Wall Street view was becoming known as Anti-Administration, and so a parallel meaning still applies. In that sense, the term Republican in current use is continuous from the so-called Civil War.

The term "democrat", on the other hand, is more of a flux. In that sense, it would be true that the expression Southern Democrat includes the most fundamentally racist character types through more than half of the twentieth century.


Now the reason I am not "a Democrat" is because of that, and, if you sift through the previously-posted interview, the issues of corruption are in the Democratic National Committee which is at the Federal level. And in this sense it is like CFR-aligned "softcore" Republicans.


Unlike the Republicans, which is nationalistic in the sense that it is a complete skeleton at every level, most local Democrats are not Washingtonians in that sense. And in that way it is a power base for whatever is "not Republican". It looks to me like New York City has got the first potential definition of any viable third column that is not in favor of the way power is used at the federal level by either one.


The difficult position of not being "a Democrat" but being pretty sure you are "not Republican", according to Politico, is about to bring us the first Billion Dollar Senate Race:

“This could easily be a billion-dollar race, no question about it,” says Morgan Jackson, Cooper’s longtime political consultant.

With so few pickup opportunities for Democrats next year, there is no path back to a Senate majority without a victory in North Carolina. As one of America’s closest swing states — and as an open seat with no incumbent running — it represents the party’s best chance to flip a Republican-held seat. That means donors and super PACs on both sides will concentrate their firepower here, and the state will soak up money that might otherwise be spread across a half-dozen battlegrounds.

“North Carolina historically has had really expensive Senate races,” said Jim Blaine, a state-based Republican strategist. “Going back to Hunt vs. Helms [in 1984], that was the most expensive Senate race in American history, inflation-adjusted, for 30 years, until 2014, when Hagan vs. Tillis topped it and then, in 2020, Tillis vs. Cunningham set the record.”

“A billion dollars… I can’t even think of how you spend that much money,” Blaine mused.

Elsewhere I posted some articles about how in the 2020s we have been gerrymandered along lines that would have made John McCain President. It's surgically sculpted. The Congressional Districts are pretty much the most politically biased or polarized entities conceivable.

It is readily apparent that the urban areas are Democratic and that is in the sense of only about ten or twelve places in the south that historically have "progressive-minded white voters", which is a polite way of saying "not racists".

I consider myself urbanized or cosmopolitan like that and the place that I am sitting now has been re-drawn into one of the most mystifying and unnatural maps I have ever seen, i. e., thus excluding Democrats and making a Republican District. That's why I feel like a wanderer in some strange land of gentle dale folk. This has been an ongoing project started by the Republicans, stopped, and then resolved by stacking the State Supreme Court. If I want to try to remove a Republican from Congress, this is what I get into:

...a surprising primary candidate from none other than Kate Barr, who knowingly ran a losing campaign for state senate in 2024 to make a point. Barr is a Democrat, although her registration may state differently while the election progresses.

She’s using the race to speak out against political redistricting, which makes races like hers extremely uncompetitive. Since a Democrat stands no chance at winning in the solidly Republican district, she decided to run as a Republican.

“I’m running in the only way that makes sense within the jacked up system that power-hungry politicians have built,” she said in a statement. “If they want to get mad about it — they should start by yelling at the men in the mirror.”

We don't have a word.

There are ideas that could be called "democratic" or "socialistic" but there isn't a pre-configured solution to problems. There is a consensus that what the current Administration has done is something you just don't do.

We will have to find the right words to equate to "anti-imperialistic" which is a foreign concept.

I think the vast majority of people would be able to know what it means not to be aggressive towards other countries. They don't know how to voice it and put it into action. This year will galvanize, something, which if can't figure out how to articulate itself, might just make a mess. Handled effectively, it might be able to lead to a radical shift in U. S. foreign policy. It would be in everyone's best interest if that is what is "forked and done".

It is like with the right conversation, the Republican Party is rendered obsolete.