From Hero to Zero

Poor Graham Platner is headed back to oysters and he must be wondering why the Groper In Chief gets away with it and he doesn't. Damn those double standards! And why wouldn't a candidate with lots of skeletons in the closet be able to represent his constituency? Headline in Wall Street Journal: World’s largest meat group JBS scraps a key climate goal. Like all the big investor groups and Fortune 500 companies. A piece in the Times titled How American Socialism Changed never mentions the labor movement or unions. Nor does it mention class. This new socialism wants a little redistribution of wealth (call it "progressive") but nor property. A bridge too far. EJ Dion argues that conflating socialism with social democracy is a good thing and we should all stop arguing about ownership of the means of production. Black and brown folk are upset about these mostly whiite, young socialist interlopers in their neighborhoods but as I've argued, they have themselves to blame. From todays Times : "Just five years ago, Eric Adams’s victory in a hotly contested Democratic mayoral primary seemed to signal a high-water mark for Black political power. Mr. Adams would become only the city’s second Black mayor; Alvin Bragg was to become the Manhattan district attorney; Hakeem Jeffries, a Brooklyn congressman, was on a path to become the House minority leader." The lesson here is clear folks. Your centrist politics suck. To wrap up, here is more liberal faith in a "sane" world with "rational" politics. Bill Mc Kibben talks to Ezra Klein and holds out hope in the price of renewables, in enlightened politicians, in fewer bureaucratic regulations. The only concern is climate change. Nobody has to sacrifice anything (maybe the evil fossil fuel majors) and technology will come to the rescue. in other words, same old same old. Like me , Bill is getting old but still writes books advocating a common sense approach. In classic contradictory fashion ( disavowal) he recommends Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor's new book yet maintains that totally discredited liberal faith in "democratic" capitalism.