People's Podcast - With Chris Hedges

Organize44min

Speaker 1

00:00

In, a failure on the part of the media to report accurately and honestly as proceeded the Biden administration although you're perfectly right. That the reporting has been appalling. Biden was one of the primary architects of that democratic decision led by Clinton to transform the Democratic Party into the Republican Party, and essentially push the Republican Party so far to the right, it became insane. That was all Biden Omnibus Crime Bill he was a major author of the Patriot Act, you know, Omnibus Crime Bill vastly expanded our prison population militarized our police Biden bragged about it at the time that I think increased the number of federal crimes that murder the death penalty from a handful one or two to 50 to go I think 51 He used to walk around, bragging about it. He under Clinton you know they were responsible for doubling and tripling sentences so you have 40% We have 25% of the world's prison population were 4.4% of the world's population, 40% of the people in our prison population have never been charged with physically harming another person. We have people serving life sentences for drugs that was all Biden, and of course the militarization of the police was all by. And I think that's part of the problem with the liberal class is that they don't have any real con tact or they don't have relationships with people who have suffered from these kinds of policies I teach in a prison, half of my students wouldn't be in that classroom but for Biden and Clinton. And I don't know how, and you know not only have they suffered horrendous injustice, but so has their families, their children. I don't know how you could walk out of a prison classroom and then turn around and vote for Biden, or support but. But I think that there's, you know for so much of the liberal elite, the suffering and the suffering in this country is very real, not only among communities of color about among the white working class and much of my family comes from the white working class in Maine, that's all real, and to write these people off, either as super predators if they're black or as deplorables if they're white, just shows how bankrupt liberal elite itself is. And of course that is, I think, portrayed in the kind of echo chamber that has built up around Biden, as you correctly point out lotting What are very meager. You know crumbs really tossed to working men and women, while once again, Wall Street and large corporations swallow staggering sums of money. You know this is, this is just a playbook that we've seen going back to 2008. And that's what Biden's continued but it's a very dangerous route, and it's one that's going to, I think it has potential political consequences that are very grave for the country.

Speaker 2

03:12

We completely agree. Because the pandemic. It appears has been used by elites by corporations by both parties to accelerate the decline of the country to accelerate massive levels of wealth inequality. I mean, the billionaires have taken more than a trillion dollars now from the working class at the same time, that as you described earlier there are 10s of millions of people who will literally lose their homes in the United States, the minute that these moratoriums are stopped being rolled over, that's literally that they're never going to be able to pay that debt. I mean in the United States and other countries, it's amazing. In other countries, they are providing either basic incomes, they're provided there, they kept their employees on payroll, the government subsidized companies to keep their employees on payroll, so they understood the basic equation, that if you want people to survive and to continue being able to purchase in the economy, to be able to buy food, housing, basic needs, you need to keep, you need to maintain some kind of income, if you're going to have, if you're going to lock down the economy, and you're going to prevent them from going to their jobs, then you have to continue to provide for them in some way. And here in the United States we're at a point where these two parties are so unbelievably corrupt and so unbelievably determined, just to destroy kind of whatever remains of a middle class in this country that they instead. Didn't square that basic equation thinking somehow 80% of people before the pandemic are living paycheck to paycheck, half the country can't afford a $500 emergency. And so what are we going to do what's going to happen, we're going to cut off everybody's you know, jobs 50 million unemployment claims in the wake of the pandemic, which we've never recovered from of course all of this debt that people have picked up, not just from housing but medical debt, also student debt, more than a trillion dollars in student debt, and that's never going to be paid, and that is just like a reinvention of a form of bondage against people. And so one of the things though that that was hopeful kind of following this, this election, maybe a glimmer of hope was that. And something else I wanted to ask you about was that there was the potential of possibly doing something about this now, that hadn't existed before, because, as a result of the Democrats utter corruption and incompetence, they actually lost seats in the House of Representatives, and came down to a margin of about only four votes. And so as, Ilhan, Omar. Omar pointed out, back in December. It only takes five courageous progressives, of which they're supposed to be 100 in the CPC, there's the squad is supposed to be six, they're supposed at plus many, many others like famila Jaya Paul ro Khanna. And so, and yet. And so, that that margin is supposed to allow them to act as a block and exercise power as you're supposed to do with so just like Joe Manchin has his one vote and he can deny the 50 votes in the Senate, Bernie Sanders has one vote in the Senate. The squad has enough votes to deny a majority for the Democrats in the House, and yet it seems like opportunity after opportunity comes along where they have the ability to exercise power in a way to win substantive meaningful structural changes to the conditions that the working class has in this country, the $15 minimum wage. Medicare for all, with the forced vote, push, and yet they don't seem to be taking any of these opportunities. In fact, I even took note of the fact that

Speaker 2

07:21

privilege iPhone the progressive, move to the introduction of Medicare for all, in the house, which was just recently introduced, they moved the introduction from February over to March, after the introduction of the American rescue plan after the stimulus package, why would you do that as a progressive, I just, it's, it's incomprehensible, if you could gain so much leverage you have the moderates on one hand, demanding things like Joe Manchin say we want unemployment to go from 400 to 300. We don't want the $15 minimum wage cut that we don't want to public option, cut that which Biden ran on, we don't want to include student debt forgiveness, cut that. And so, if the moderates in the party are allowed to make all this demands, and yet the progressives have enough of a foothold because of such razor thin margins right now, that they could on the other hand, make other demands, you know, rather than accepting that rather than say accepting 400 to 300 for unemployment benefits which is a lifeline for millions of people in this country, they could come out and demand instead know it's going to go to 600, or in fact we're going to get a $2,000 a month, basic income, and it's going to be retroactive to the beginning of the pandemic, when you gave literally trillions of dollars to Wall Street, within two weeks of the beginnings of lockdown, showing your priorities. And so what I wanted to ask you, Chris is what is holding them back from acting on that power.

Speaker 1

08:54

They don't want to lose their political position, same thing that holds Bernie Sanders back and this is long characterize Bernie's relationship with the Democratic Party. Remember, Sanders was campaigning for Clinton in 96 after the after, after the Omnibus Crime Bill. And the same with AOC and the squad they, and they're not wrong, I mean Pelosi and Schumer and the Democratic Party establishment, crush them if they actually defied them. And so they're not going to defy them they'll tweet, garbage out and you know make, you know appropriate kind of noises, but they're not going to do anything of substance because they, they are well aware that their political career would be over, and then I'm going to risk it so their careers and I guess they assume that it knows better than than someone else, but it's made them utterly ineffectual as a political force as you correctly pointed out, so you're right, they do have a certain amount of power. At the moment, but they won't use it because they realize that the Democratic Party machine would destroy them. That's why That's why Bernie. That's why Bernie never takes on the Democrats. It's why Bernie, I mean I was in Philadelphia. Cornel West and I were with several 1000 homeless people outside the appropriately named Wells Fargo Center on the night that Bernie endorsed Clinton and the hundreds of people walked out his supporters walked out, and he should have walked out with him. He didn't even he missed his historical moment, and he didn't walk out. Well, in fact, you know, Bernie left the Clinton campaign takeover his Twitter account to essentially send out messages to all his delegates and supporters to support Glenn. And because he knew that he loses Senate seat need because he'd be tossed in the political wilderness like Ralph Nader or go although go back to George McGovern who also defied the Democratic Party establishment. After the Democratic Party elite allied itself with the Republican Party elite to destroy him in the presidential race they took away ascendancy. They, and he was, he was gone, so they know they know, you know, very very well the, the price they would pay for that kind of defiance, they don't want to pay it and that's the problem.

Speaker 2

11:21

I, I agree. It is, is the party structure, I believe that that holds them back and keeps them from insisting on any kind of change that, that they run on it. It certainly seems like they are more afraid of the party and the party's ability to, to deny them reelection, then they are accountable to the movement. And that's a big problem and I think it's a big problem as well. When it comes to the organizations that have kind of sprung up to support progressive Democrats, particularly in the wake of 2016. And so I was the national political outreach coordinator on the Bernie 2016 campaign. I helped start our revolution after that as a dealer tour manager, and I saw after the Bernie 2016 campaign, the way the way that Bernie inspired millions of people to try to go into the Democratic Party to try to change it inspired the kind of rise of a new generation of progressive organizations. Our revolution, brand new Congress justice Democrats DSA which grew tremendously in the wake of 2016, but it seems that these organizations have are having a fundamental problem of attempting when it comes to actually keeping these progressives that they've elected, even the people I mean, to begin with the Democratic Party has just blocked the vast majority of people that those organizations have attempted to run, and so there's still only kind of a small couple of handful of progressives in Congress, you know that's probably a generous interpretation, but of the ones that are of the ones that are there, I think there's an even deeper problem that has become apparent that some of these organizations don't want to deal with, and that some of some progressive Democrats don't want to deal with and that is the question of accountability, how do you actually hold the members of Congress who have elected the politicians who have elected to the Democratic Party accountable because it's become clear that once they get there, there is a machinery within the Democratic Party that begins to act on them. There are all kinds of different forms that the party has levers of control whether it's threats of primaries, massive pressure to support Blue Dog Democratic incumbents and help you know protect their seats to protect majorities in the legislature, we recently saw AOC. For example, She recently gave 1000s of dollars to establishment Democrats who were actually fighting against Medicare for all, only two years after being there and saying that these are the exact same people who were going to primary in mass, she's now contributing to their campaigns to help shore up their positions. Committee assignments which we've seen Pelosi and the corporate Democrats actually take away from AOC, and take away from other progressives as a way of punishing them and disciplining them. And so, you know, I kind of want to ask you about that dynamic that when it comes to these organizations, it doesn't seem to be a problem that they had anticipated, but I want to see what you think about that.

Speaker 1

14:47

Well, it's it really comes down to whether the Democratic Party is a reformable organization, number one, or whether it's even at its core democratic, and it's neither. And this has just been a mystery, on the part of progressives, but of course that mystery is perpetrated by the Democratic Party establishment, you know whether they allow cousine edge to run or Bernie or anyone else, the ideas to give expression to those kinds of issues, but then in the end, once the presidential nominee is selected or anointed as Biden was to corral the progressive wing of the Democratic Party or progressives back into the Democratic Party, fold, and of course it works every time because as the political situation devolves the monstrosities that are coughed up, you know, whether it's bush or Trump become worse and worse and believe me, this next time around is going to be much worse than Trump. So, it's diminishing returns. And, you know these these figures are careerists in the end they AOC and Bernie and all the rest of them. They're not temperamentally or morally fit to lead this fight, which is a fight against the ruling elites, which includes the Democratic Party establishment itself. And that is not going to come from within.

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