The Left Chases Alternative Reality
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
The American Left has so many people vying to be the Alternative Reality poster child that it may be difficult to pick a winner.
In recent weeks, we’ve seen a slew of entries:
Hillary Clinton on Wednesday praised an 11-year-old schoolgirl in Maryland who refused to stand for the Pledge of Allegiance and “took a knee” like NFL players. “It takes courage to exercise your right to protest injustice, especially when you’re 11! Keep up the good work Mariana,” tweeted Clinton, who actually nearly became president of the United States two Novembers ago.
Also last Wednesday, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo declared at a bill-signing ceremony in New York City, “We're not going to make America great again. It was never that great."
The governor explained: “We will reach greatness when discrimination and stereotyping of women, 51% of our population, is gone, and every woman's full potential is realized and unleashed and every woman is making her full contribution." So, until America becomes a gender-neutral utopia, it’s not such a great place after all – and never was.
In June and July, Portland, Oregon Mayor Tom Wheeler presided over 38 days of street anarchy by antifa and other fanatics who laid siege to the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) offices. They followed ICE employees home and assaulted city residents, including a woman who had asked them to stop loudly drumming. The occupiers disabled her electric wheelchair, hit her on the head, and lifted her in the air.
Police, who had been ordered by Mayor Wheeler not to interfere in any way, took a statement but did nothing, according to Andy Ngo, writing in the Wall Street Journal. Masked demonstrators terrorized a food-cart-owning family for selling burritos to federal officers, but “police never responded to their frantic calls,” Mr. Ngo reported.
When the occupiers left, a cleanup crew found used needles and disgusting stuff that defies description in a family newspaper. “I do not want the @PortlandPolice to be sucked into a conflict, particularly from a federal agency that I believe is on the wrong track,” Mayor Wheeler had tweeted.
On August 3, in an event coinciding with the leftwing Netroots Festival in New Orleans, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, Massachusetts Democrat, told Dillard University students “the hard truth about our criminal justice system. It’s racist…. I mean, all the way, front to back.” This tars everyone from the cop on the beat to bailiffs, defense lawyers, prosecutors, jurors and judges.
The senator, whose net worth Forbes estimates at $8 million, also said the government has been “captured by the rich and powerful and it’s time for us to take it back.” She could be feeling poor herself because Hillary Clinton’s net worth is estimated to be around $45 million, not counting the couple of billion stashed in the Clinton Foundation. There’s nothing wrong with being rich, but it might detract from soak-the-rich boilerplate rhetoric.
On July 13, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the Democratic Socialist candidate for Congress that DNC Chairman Tom Perez calls “the future of our party,” said on PBS’s “Fire Line” that: “Unemployment is low because everyone has two jobs. Unemployment is low because people are working 60, 70, 80 hours a week and can barely feed their family.” Even left-leaning PolitiFact labeled this “pants on fire.”
As PolitiFact put it, “the people who might be working 70 or 80 hours a week amount to a tiny percentage of a tiny percentage — 310,000 people at most in a pool of employed Americans totaling more than 150 million.” The fact checker also said that 6 to 7 million people hold multiple jobs out of the total number of about 150 million employed Americans – another tiny percentage.
“Capitalism has not always existed in the world, and it will not always exist in the world,” said Ms. Ocasio-Cortez, 28, who also has called for disbanding ICE, seizing control of the entire health industry and having taxpayers pay for free college tuition for all. “When this country started, we were not a capitalist — we did not operate on a capitalist economy,” she insisted.
That would be news to silversmith and iron foundry owner Paul Revere, farmer George Washington, printer/publisher Benjamin Franklin and a host of other industrious founding fathers who had never heard of Karl Marx. Socialism’s patron saint didn’t publish “The Communist Manifesto” until 1848 and “Das Kapital” in 1867, unleashing untold misery wherever socialism reared – and still rears -- its deadly head.
There are many more worthy nominees for the Alternative Reality award, but there’s only so much space in a column.
Tags
Who is online
99 visitors
Is this "alternate reality" anything like "alternate facts"???
So is she suggesting we revert to our prior systems such as mercantilism or slave-based capitalism? Someone needs to buy a vowel.
One of the most entertaining fallacies that the worshippers of capitalism fall into is the idea that capitalism = the free market when, in fact, the goal of the capitalist, in practice if not in theory, is to destroy competition. Unrestrained capitalism would be just another form of economic enslavement every bit as harsh as what HA and other rightwingers claim socialism is.
Competition does not require capitalism.
Unrestrained capitalism has always led to monopoly.
Once a monopoly has been reached, then what?
A monopoly is the opposite of competitiveness.
Government controlling the mop/d typically destroys effective competition. Competition is improved by decentralizing control over the mop/d rather than centralizing. Government / state control is the most restrictive level of centralized control. Bad news for competition.
Feudalism centralized control with the monarchy and lords. Capitalism centralized control with capitalists. A major improvement from feudalism yet still control is held by a minority. Decentralization means control by the people - not the state / government.
Monopolies are centralized clusters - tying your comment to mine by illustrating the problem of centralized control.
Definitely better to see more petty capitalists vs. industrial capitalists. The former is a more decentralized system.
So-called Monopolies have always come and gone, unless government get's involved. Government "Protected" monopolies are a good thing.
Something BETTER always comes along eventually.
You are describing statism with redistribution of wealth.
In your case you are probably thinking of social democracy.
Assuming that is not one of your (often) brilliantly ironic statements, it is only when capitalism is restrained and often not even then. For example, anti-trust laws attempt to keep creation of vast monopolies in check. A great example now is Sinclair's attempt to take over 2/3 of the entire viewer market in this country:
Current Sinclair markets:
Sinclair with Tribune merger:
Given Sinclair's penchant for presenting hard rightwing (i.e., Koch Bros. level) propaganda as news, this is a grave danger to the republic.
Please. Socialism is great for a little while, until it becomes great for those in power and terrible for everyone else as it ALWAYS eventually does. Ask any Venezuelan.
Or
China
Cambodia
Cuba
East Germany
Ethiopia
North Korea
Poland
Romania
USSR
All of these places tried Socialism at one point or another and all were devistating for the people.
At what point in time did the people (not the state / government / party, not the aristocracy) of these nations have decentralized, democratic control over the productive resources of their nation?
Yep but the only Monopoly I see the media is Fox news. They have the conservative republican market all sewn up.
The government forces the monopoly to disband, as the did with Ma Bell years ago.
The breakup of Bell was done in 1982. It is 2018. Given that 36 year history to consider, would you say that corporations are more powerful or less powerful nowadays? In other words, do you think that the government has done a good job of managing monopolistic practice or has economic power centralized to a smaller minority?
Bonus question: is the government nowadays less or more controlled by centers of economic power (i.e. money)?
I see why you always avoid history when you talk about socialism. Can you give a working example of your brand of Socialism?
Actually China is still listed as a successful socialist country along with these 9
Do something other than make up allegations.
Why do you presume I, personally, have a brand of socialism? I am assuming, of course, that you actually read what I write.
Quite correct.
Another problem with this topic is that a lot of people (worldwide) incorrectly label social democracies as 'socialism'. They are not. As you note, a socio-economic/political system with a capitalist economy is capitalism. A variant of capitalism, but capitalism nonetheless.
If one looks at how the term 'socialism' is used in the vernacular one could call any nation on the planet 'socialist' and justify that label with at least one of the ascribed definitions of the term.
The American Left has so many people vying to be the Alternative Reality poster child that it may be difficult to pick a winner.
This may certainly be true, However we do know for sure who the winner is of alt reality on the republican side. Although many of his puppet people come in a close second.
Off topic ? sorry I thought the topic was people pushing their alt-reality BS.
PS: I still think your post at #1 post on America deserves reposting as a seed. It was good but got overlooked.
Another article from the Alternate Universe of the Right.