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@nytimes @washingtonpost @business @WSJ @FT @CNN @MSNBC @Reuters I wrote this long thread after reading a new post by @Noahpinion on his thought-provoking, prolific newsletter, on fringe left “tankies." This thread is on the major “progressive” left, including BLM, starting off
with some historical background before dealing with the present situation. @BernieSanders @AOC et al are basically FDR-LBJ-Humphrey-McGovern-Mondale liberals, but the political spectrum has shifted so far right during neoliberal "Age of Reagan," 1980-20xx, that the GOP calls them
“socialists,” which is absurd. Actual socialists, e.g. the “old left” CPUSA and SWP, who were instrumental in the labor and civil rights movements from 1930s to 1960s, were driven out of the labor unions during the McCarthy era in the early 1950s, had very little influence with
the anti-war “New Left” SDS of the late 1960s, and have zero influence now. Today’s so-called "progressive" left, which came out of the black and women’s “liberation” movements of the late 1960s and became entrenched in liberal arts academic departments, has replaced the labor
left and places many issues above that of class, the focus of the left prior to the “New Left.” The “progressive” left focus on "identity politics" instead of labor class has along w "culture wars" of the "right" helped to slice and dice the bottom 50% into Dems (blacks, Latinx)
and GOP (whites), they used to be all Dems prior to 1980s. The base of the old left in industrial labor and its unions was destroyed starting in 1970s, as corporate America moved factories from the unionized north to the anti-union American south, then to Mexico, then to China.
The demise of the industrial labor unions is shown in the strike data in this table https://www.bls.gov/web/wkstp/annual-listing.htm where percent of time lost went from a high of 0.43% in 1959 to less than 0.005% in 2009-17, as the working class went from very strong industrial to very weak precariat.
Together the so-called left and right in effect if not intent helped elites deeply polarize the bottom 50%, so that they’ve been unable to unite to fight against their stagnant income and wealth the past 40 years. A good unity slogan is Sanders’ Medicare for ALL. Not Medicare for
Blacks, Medicare for Whites, Medicare for Women, Medicare for LGBTQ, etc, etc. Sanders is a throwback to the MLK civil rights era of 1960s American liberalism, when he got his start in politics. By far the largest “left” in 2020 was BLM, with huge protests, helped fueled by
decades of politically correct campus politics. Highly indicative of the changed so-called left is that there were no protests around the incompetent perhaps criminal response to Covid-19, with 354,381 deaths in 2020, about 85k of whom were blacks, about >5000x number of unarmed
blacks that were killed by police in 2020. Nor were there were protests against the millions of people thrown onto unemployment. Rather BLM was embraced and co-opted by liberal MSM, which loved it, centrist Dems, Pelosi took a knee, and corporate America, which pushed "diversity
training." Its slogan, "Defund the police," costs very little whereas huge social programs won by the power of the labor left, Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, total around $2.3 trillion this year. The liberal/left Dems of today try to increase the size of the one-time
checks in the Covid relief bill, which regardless of size will run out in a month or two for those in the bottom 50% just trying to survive, but makes no mention of a permanent lob guarantee program, which would be by far the best solution, as has been put forth by MMTers like
@ptcherneva , mainly academic economists who had a breakout year in 2020 w @StephanieKelton “The Deficit Myth,” title immediately confirmed by the $2.3 trillion CARES Act. As I wrote at the time, “we are all MMTers now,” a riff on a quote attributed to Nixon about Keynes, it’s
just that most Americans still don’t know it. The Fed and other central banks do, pumping out many trillions of money to deliberately inflate the financial assets of the 0.1-1.0% and home values of the upper middle class, the stock market closed the year at record highs while the
bottom 50% is desperate, the contrast highlighting the immoral inequality of this absurdly rigged game, with the bottom 50% constantly falling further and further behind, with zero chance to catch up. @JoeBiden factored in diversity for his VP and administration picks, which the
liberal MSM loved. He will push climate change, around which the social/racial justice "left" is incongruously allied, without seeming to know it, with Wall Street and central banks. On China, the liberal left is concerned about HK and the Uyghurs, not hundreds of millions in
the working class in China, whose authoritarian CCP has long cut deals with Wall Street and corporate America and just this week w the elites of the EU. Even before 2020 it was very obvious that the CCP has been doing a far better job of running China than U.S. elites are doing
running America. Stating that obvious fact does not make one pro-CCP or anti-American. Over two years ago, on Oct 2 and 9, 2018, I posted two articles on LinkedIn titled “Stop New Cold War with China” and “U.S. Should Fix Its Problems, Not China's," two ideas I've repeated often
since. The U.S. can’t change China, nor should it want to. The only viable way for the U.S. to influence the world is by fixing its own truly immense problems. Compare this 4 min video of New Year’s eve celebration in Detroit last night with a large number
of gun shots fired in the air w the bustling city life in China shown in the videos on this channel https://youtube.com/c/WalkEast/videos 2020 was a year of U.S. fiascos in a 21st century of them: the Iraq/Aghan quagmire, the Great Financial Crisis, the unnecessarily slow recovery from that.
But the disastrous 2020 didn't create another U.S. “Sputnik moment.” Instead the U.S. closed out 2020 with over half of a major party now going officially insane regarding Trump’s attempted coup attempt. Meanwhile China was more determined than ever, vowing to never again be held
hostage to American technology. The U.S. has survived much, much worse than 2020 (Revolutionary, Civil Wars, WW II, two Great Depressions, late 19th century, 1930s), but it was always a rising power then, unlike now. A big risk is both the U.S. and China will fall prey to hubris
w U.S. trying to cling to its fading hegemony, while China may be emboldened by U.S. weakness to try to speed up its global influence. On a positive note, amazingly rapid Covid vaccine development showed immense benefits of science/tech, but alas there's nowa distribution fiasco.
I've always been optimistic about science and technology improving lives, and skeptical of politics and finance screwing it up. China has lifted 800 m out of extreme poverty past 40 years, hopefully s Asia, Africa, Latam can do similar. End thread, thanks very much for reading!
