Here is something that was embedded in a previous diary I wrote over a year ago, perhaps the one on how we need to elect someone like Bernie Sanders as our president next time, but more likely the one on why it would be a mistake for Democrats to nominate Hillary Clinton. Then later I used it in response to a libertarian bashing progressives. I think it might be worthwhile having this be a diary on its own, because we’re wasting a great opportunity if we continue as we have been, fighting one another & not taking advantage of all we have in common.
If you are a true libertarian, then you would probably agree with me on much of the following. The words “liberal” & “libertarian” have the same root, which means “freedom”. Freedom is a key part of both philosophies. In reality, they have a lot more in common than they both realize. (The same goes for true conservatives & conservationists, & if you go back far enough in time, you’ll find that most conservatives were conservationists, although most of today’s conservatives haven’t conserved the conservationist part of conservatism.)
There is really one dominant party: the Corporatocrats: they have a Democratic wing & a Republican wing. The Democratic Corporatocrats use the progressives to help win their battles, and the Republican Corporatocrats use the Tea Party & libertarians to back their aims, which aren’t all that different from the other side in the scheme of what really needs to be done, and neither the progressives nor the Tea Party can ascend to the dominant role in either faction (although they can & sometimes do make trouble for their corporate leaders), nor can they get much of what really moves them enacted. The corporatists have adroitly pitted the American people against each other: left against right, progressives against the Tea Party, fighting each other on the basis of divisive social & other issues like abortion, gay rights, gun control, religion, taxes & government size, as a way to keep them occupied over the relatively little things, while they (the corporatists & corporations) have surreptitiously taken over virtually full control of our government, letting other more monumental issues like global warming, environmental degradation, mass extinction, resource depletion, huge & growing wealth disparity, the huge & growing debt, our languishing education system, our fading scientific & medical research, our crumbling infrastructure & the subversion of our democracy (for which they’re largely responsible) all go unaddressed & unabated.
The fact is that the left & right have many of the same concerns, though often the sides attribute these problems to different causes or have different solutions: both sides are alarmed by our current ineffective leadership, although the right tends to focus on government, while the left focuses more on corporate power; in reality it’s the merging of the two into our current corporatocracy that is the gist of the problem. Corporations have control of our government. Our government answers to corporate concerns over the will of the people, because corporations have all the money, to which the corporatists (the vast majority) in our government respond. Civilians on both sides fear the NSA, are suspicious of the TPP, are strongly against messing with internet neutrality, are concerned about our giant federal debt & the devaluation of the American dollar, are dubious about GMOs, worry about the poisoning of our environment & water supply, the spread of urban areas into rural areas & the loss of forests & other wildlands as well as farmland & the disappearance of many animals including birds & fish, are angry about the Farm Bill & subsidies to Big Ag, are largely dissatisfied with our health care system both before & after the ACA (Obamacare), are against the Patriot Act & other usurpation of our rights, are worried about the stagnation of our education system, have a dim view of lobbyists, rail against the influence of money in government, believe the system is rigged against the little guy, complain about law enforcement brutality, mistrust the mainstream media & are frustrated at their lack of coverage of important issues, have a low opinion of all 3 branches of government, are cynical about both major parties, are generally either disappointed with or downright contemptuous of our last 2 presidents (and often further back than that), hate Wall Street, are upset about our continual military involvement in foreign affairs, especially the Middle East, are afraid of our loss of freedom & democracy, & have a general feeling of gloom & doom regarding the future. The more I listen to both sides, the more points in common I find (I might point out that we the citizens of America may also have more in common with citizens of countries all over the world than any of us do with the governments & multinational corporations that rule us). All of these fears are justified & all are due at least in part to influence of the MIC (military industrial complex) in these areas. There are a lot of issues (ignored or aggravated by our corporatist political leaders) of mutual concern to non-corporatist citizens from all parts of the political spectrum.
Both sides, left & right, liberal & libertarian, need to find common cause if we are to remain a united nation & solve our critical problems.