Babeuf here. Socialist moi. Just wondering what strange fungus or rotted grain the so-called progressives on this list have eaten as of late. Capitalism stinks. It exploits. It favors the rich. It will strip you of your dignity and your last dollar. It will grant you enough resources to physically reproduce yourself, so that you will work and so that you will peck down and shit on the poor slob who has less than you. It will divide you, you will hate people because they are different from you. You will grow to love and respect the bastards who are daily screwing you.
That's capitalism in a nut shell. And MOST AMERICANS LOVE IT. I don't care about the polls which say Americans favor some broad re-distribution of wealth. AMERICANS LOVE CAPITALISM. They want to keep it. They want to make sure that if wealth is re-distributed, it goes to the people that are like them. That is why in times of economic crisis Americans vote republican.
Obama and every democratic politician, from the left to the blue dog is in DC to protect and save capitalism. Something should be as clear as the nose on your damned faces. And Obama has saved capitalism. Thank fucking god, because without it there isn't socialism in this country there is barbarism. Now of course, I want a Keynsian wonderland now. I want a happy, nurturing capitalism that helps the unemployed, that has universal healthcare, that has free and excellent public schools. I want America to look like Sweden. But guess what, that's not gonna happen. There is a reason America isn't Sweden. And it has nothing to do with the pathetic and venal blue-dogs, of whom Obama, warts and all, is clearly not. It has everything to do with Americans themselves. Americans are not on the street protesting for against the economic oblivion they have inherited from the quasi-fascist right. No Americans, or the ones that vote are doubling down on their libertarian looniness. I hate to have to remind this list over and over, but if it were not for the presence of sizable brown and black folks, this country would be as right as Pinochet's Chile.
My question to "progressives" is a simple one. Ah your complaints and your flailing act disillusionment are well documented. But what have you done to talk down the American people from their destructive love affair with the free market? Let me guess your fine with it too. Well then, you expect the democratic politicians whose job it is to save capitalism, to push through a soft and cushy capitalism, one that lives up to your progressive fantasies!? You are delusional.
No change comes without changing the hearts and minds of the American people themselves. And progressives, you are not doing that. Labor is trying. Heck, even Michael Moore, god bless him, makes great propaganda. But progressives, you want a happy, comfy capitalism without the work. American is not a left liberal country. If you want it to be one you have a lot of hard work organizing Americans who are all but totally disenfranchised. That doesn't mean "getting better democrats" or the albeit difficult and important election cycle work. It means organizing an actual left. I don't know how to go about it myself, but I do know that we will continue to have centrist democratic party and a checked out citizenship susceptible to the lure of every quasi-fascist canard until we can organize a viable, disciplined left.
Until then, I guess we're left with Oedipal drama of the progressives. Yes, Papa always disappoints.