Nancy Pelosi and the Decline of American Democracy

Nancy Pelosi and the Decline of American Democracy

 

“History will note she is the most consequential Speaker of the House of Representatives in our history,” Biden said in a statement. “There are countless examples of how she embodies the obligation of elected officials to uphold their oath to God and country to ensure our democracy delivers and remains a beacon to the world.”

 

-       Pelosi stepping down as top House Democrat after 2 decades in leadership

 

By Gregg Wall (11-26-2022)

 

Enjoy the above quote, girls and boys, because that’s the only positive thing you’ll read in this piece about the former House Speaker.  Do consider the source, pay-to-play Biden.  If like me, you are celebrating the former Speaker’s long overdue retirement, then please read on.  

 

The month of November will go down in the history books for the unprecedented magnitude of gaslighting & lies issuing forth from the MSM.  First, we were told repeatedly that the Dems won the election, despite losing the House and squeaking by in the Senate.  In essence, assuring that centrists, a failed status quo, endless gridlock, and wealthy American oligarchs were this year's true election winners.  Certainly, no win for Dem voters, who will now have to contend with the fact that the president and crew wasted his first two years and achieved virtually none of the Dems’ 2020 campaign promises.  The second whopper the MSM told… perhaps comparable to an ominous Russian gas leak discovered last summer, in terms of a limitless toxic cloud of methane & gas… was how great Queen Nancy was over the last two decades. 

 

It’s galling to read undeserved & worshipping hagiography, especially volumes of it written for someone so entirely corrupt.  So, let’s get on with it and go over the facts, on Queen Nancy’s reign of terror.  I really couldn’t decide what was the most monumental of her achievements: endless war & the cowardice of hiding behind the 2001 AUMF, two Wall St bailouts (the first bailout, given QE and interest rate suppression, never really ended), the explosion of national debt, or the passage of Obamacare (for-profit medical care, which is the leading cause of personal bankruptcy in the U.S.)?  All four combined really do Pelosi justice.  In January 2007, when Pelosi initially began as House Speaker, the national debt was roughly $9 trillion… today, as Pelosi exits stage right, the national debt, so we are told, is $31 trillion.  That’s quite an achievement.  To think, all that money went to funding endless bloodshed, bailing out billionaire welfare queens and Wall St., funding obscene amounts of corporate welfare, and endless privatization schemes (which is little more than the transfer of public wealth to serial private sector predators).  And let us not forget, tax cuts for the rich. 

 

Which leads us to the fact that - despite forever identifying herself as a liberal and a progressive - Pelosi loved her GOP.  And the former Speaker was known for pushing through omnibus spending measures, that basically consisted of the GOP's greatest hits.  Omnibus spending measures that always & conveniently instilled & perpetuated globalization, neoliberalism, libertarian industrial policy, neocon foreign policy, failed supply-side economics, and trickle-down tax policies.  I do not recall the insider trading diva ever challenging any of this, when it came time to push the mega-spending bills through the House… do you?  The reality is Nancy, initially, had nothing but contempt for the Green New Deal and saving the planet.  Her memory will be forever soaked in blood for funding wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Ukraine, Yemen, and goddess only knows where else… and the American people are expected to pay for this fraud.  Lost in the rubble of her majesty’s Speakership, there are the broken campaign promises… of both Presidents Obama and Biden… that, like magic, never managed to make it through the congress, as the American people suffered endless austerity.

 

Oh yes, the American people, who saw jobs offshored, the economy offshored, wages stagnate, and the middle class destroyed under Nancy’s watch and the Democratic party’s blind subservience to free trade and globalization.  We saw child poverty soar, the middle class destroyed, the abomination of a monopoly economy, and the formation of evil oligarchy, which systematically preys upon Americans.  The Federal Reserve’s printing presses roared.  I never heard The Speaker of the House question a word of it, as the US credit line was transferred to the least deserving of Americans: billionaires, the day traders in congress, the MIC, Silicon Valley, and Wall St.  (Admittedly, Pelosi doesn’t own all this.  But she played a significant role and her power, as House Speaker & Opposition leader, cannot be underestimated.)

 

Repeat.  The Speaker never questioned a word of it… except to chide the press that endemic corruption and day trading in the U.S. congress was about participating in the ‘free market’.  Part of the horror show was sheer arrogance … as in, this is the way it is, and this is the way it will always be.  Is there any doubt that the new generation of leaders will be equally corrupt?  Undoubtedly, much of the hubris stemmed from the knowledge that Americans really have only two right-wing choices every other November.  Both parties are wholly own subsidiaries of oligarchy.  Conveniently enough, the compromised leader never got around to addressing money in politics. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

As the first woman speaker, and aside from the aforementioned, Nancy Pelosi will forever be associated with the broken promise of identity politics… the idea that representation matters.  But what good is representation if all it does is stonewall against progressive reform, destroy the planet, and act as a guardian for: plutocracy; systemic misogyny & racism; the world largest penal - and slave labor - colony; the ugliest libertarian economic model the world has ever seen; endless bloodshed & war; and limitless taxpayer funded welfare for wealthy donors and utilities?  While the American people suffer and the world suffers endlessly, needlessly in the name of greed.  

Satan in a suffrage white pants suit?  You better god damned better believe it. 

 

The former Speaker will forever be associated with power's coercive insistence upon civility.  Civility in the service of billionaire, corporate, and monopolistic oppression, and mind-numbing corruption.

 

Someday, Americans may, perhaps, actually get the leadership they deserve -- women, blacks, gays, first nations, & immigrants from all faiths & backgrounds -- that aren’t bought off and corporately controlled.  

 

That is to say, leadership that will be nothing like Representative Pelosi. 

 

Copyright JM Hamilton Publishing 2022

Oligarchy Wins

Oligarchy Wins

 

In a two-party system, if both parties ignore public opinion, there is no place voters can turn. 

 

-       Howard Zinn

 

By Gregg Wall (11-12-2022)

 

Thank Goddess that’s over.  The every other November circus came and went this year, in America, and no surprise, the winners were failed duopoly and oligarchy.

 

As of this writing… the Senate and House are neck and neck, a tossup between GOP and Dem control (w/ more of an edge to the Republicans in the House).  Absolutely perfect for enshrining the failure that is the Holy Grail of American politics, the contrived necessity of bipartisan support (which exists in no parliamentary democracy in the world).  The odious bipartisan support, where the only thing that ever passes is trillions and trillions in corporate welfare, Wall St bailouts, tax cuts for billionaire donors and multinationals, and satanic sums of money for the DOD, empire, endless war, the MIC, and wholesale mass murder around the globe.  

 

Drilling deeper, the Republicans snatched defeat from the jaws of victory, over Dem incompetence:  when an arrogant, fascist SCOTUS attacked American women & destroyed federal abortion protections & rights; Senator Graham – the Queen of the Senate (?) - did his part, by pushing forward authoritarian legislation, dictating draconian control over women & their bodies; The Fuhrer also did his part, as the Orange Wonder received saturated national media attention, which reminded Americans as to why they voted him out in the first place; demographics played a key role too… as the GOP boomer base of support has been dying off and is physically being killed off by right-wing media & anti-vax, anti-science conspiracy theories (paint me crazy, but perhaps it’s not a great idea to spread these lies, essentially killing off your political base of support?). Which might explain why the GOP is desperately looking forward to a coup, to save the more rabid & sensitive members of the white race?

 

Possibly the coup de gras for the GOP’ red tide… was the entire inflation narrative.  Seems many Americans, correctly, saw past the GOP lies and did not view a gov check -- that mercifully, saved them & their children during the pandemic -- as the source of inflation; but Americans instead, correctly, saw America’s big oil, billionaires, cartels, monopolies, and Wall St collecting aircraft carrier loads of money, in a price gouging orgy, as the source of the nation’s ‘inflation’ phenomenon.  

 

The Dems too, were at their very worst… having done the classic bait & switch over the last two years, the party is now famous for.  BBB was barely even mentioned by Dem party leaders and their boot licking lackeys in the MSM didn’t hold the party to account.  Gone missing for tens of millions of Americans, who voted Biden & Crew into office, were the promised: child tax credit; childcare; tuition free college; minimum wage gone with the wind; universal pre-K out; affordable housing gone; Medicare For All option finito; cannabis legalization up in smoke; and long-term healthcare out.   

 

To save themselves, the Dems did the absolute minimum with student loan forgiveness, but Biden did this in such a bungled manner, or deliberate manner (???) … that the entire fiasco is now being held up in the courts (conveniently, right after the election; and also conveniently, right after the youth vote showed up to save the Democratic party’s bacon).  

 

You really can’t make this stuff up. 

 

Some might suggest the American news media and the pollsters failed yet again.  But if the corporatist, centrist MSM’ job is to drum up support for establishment Dems, and fear and loathing over MAGA and Trump republicans…. did the talking heads and the punditocracy in fact fail?   You decide. 

 

Aside from the failed duopoly and oligarchy, which can’t lose in our rigged system of government, shockingly, the other big winner Tuesday night was direct democracy and by that, I mean referendums.  In referendum after referendum, the American people, correctly, chose civil-liberties, democracy, freedom, and their economic interests… over corporatism, centrism, avarice, neoliberalism, and the establishment.  

 

I’m talking cannabis and magic mushroom legalization, elimination of the sub-minimum wage, medical debt crackdowns, abortion rights, workers’ rights referendums, expanded Medicaid, and in Massachusetts, single payer healthcare.  Again and again, the people spoke in referendums and the overwhelming consensus… what the MSM call ‘centrist’ is nothing short of fascism and libertarian & corporatist propaganda.   The American people overwhelmingly support state solutions, progressive solutions, and dare I say it, socialism and civil liberties.

 

Which explains why the corrupt two parties hate choice and democracy, and the billionaires and oligarchy flat out fear it (see the incomprehensible sums of money the oligarchy pours into America’s political system to rig outcomes in their favor). 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Amidst the fear and loathing, our twisted and moribund political system, corrupt gerontocracy, a fascist monopoly – slave wage - economy in crisis…  and the hope & promise we saw in youth turnout and referendum vote …  is the failed nature of the duopoly itself.  Which brings up questions, why a duopoly?  Who does the duopoly serve?  Why does the number of unaffiliated American voters (i.e., independents) grow and grow?  If America truly is the bastion of freedom and the beacon of light… why in the name of all that is good, would the establishment try to shoehorn the American people into two parties, that increasingly work entirely against the nation’s and the people’s interests?   

 

To answer these questions, let’s look at the nature of economic duopoly, which is hegemonic economic power, between two entities.  The two parties collude to set price; the two economic parties collude on setting wages for labor and their offerings to consumers.  And most deceptively, the illusion of choice is provided by an economic duopoly.  A political duopoly is no different.  The two American political parties agree on economic policy, libertarian ideology, the primacy of markets (even as markets breakdown and fail, again and again, propped up by government).  The two parties are nearly identical on foreign, fiscal, monetary, tax, industrial, & labor policies.  Ignore the rhetoric and examine the outcome and you see, on these issues & policies, the two parties are nearly identical.

 

To keep the pretense & illusion of democracy and choice alive, in America, we have the endless food fight over women’s & minority rights, civil-liberties, guns, Bibles, theocracy.  Issues that in every other G7 nation have long since, for the most part, been put to bed. Please understand, I’m not making light of any of these issues.  But as important, who does the political food fight serve?  Does the food fight provide cover, smoke, and mirrors for other activities, like the looting of the US government for Wall St bailouts, corporate welfare, and endless war, et al.?  Notice carefully, how much time did any of the hundreds of candidates actually spend talking about our failed libertarian economy and bankrupting foreign policies?  

 

Something else came to mind, when I was thinking about our precious duopoly, and it reminds me of the Cold War, Game Theory, and Mutual Assured Destruction… all of which held sway over an East-West world for nearly half the 20^th century, in terms of global economics and foreign policy.  

 

The idea that the world’s safety was dependent upon the threat that if either party, in a binary world, launched a nuclear first strike, the other party would respond in massive retaliation (and the world would be destroyed).  It seems that America’s duopoly frames the nation in a similar dual construct… both parties, Dem & GOP, frame the other party in the same binary terms, good versus evil.  Light versus darkness?  Failure to support one party over the other means extinction. 

 

Who does that serve, when half the nation is pitted against the other half in a perennial, political Civil War?   If you answered oligarchy, you’d be correct.  Americans, however, as we saw with the 2022 referendums, are increasingly beginning to assert their rights and are thinking outside the establishment’s artificial binary paradigm. 

 

And that gives me hope.  The two-party system is rancid, well past its expiration date, the anthesis of democracy, and needs to go. 

 

Copyright JM Hamilton Publishing 2022