Where is THE LEFT in the USA?

I've been saying for years, to anyone who'll listen, that "there's no proper political Left in the USA". In 2015/6 at election time, Bernie Sanders' campaign proved that there is plenty of support for more left-leaning policies, more pro-working class policies, more support for the ordinary people of this vast country. We all know what happened...don't we? Media in general denied him the space given to ...well just about everyone else involved in that General Election.

Ted Rall has a very good piece up at Counterpunch this weekend, it highlights one major reason why the Left in the USA remains largely hidden, year after year:
The Left Will Never Thrive Without a Well-Funded Left Media Organization

A few snips:

On Sunday, October 23rd “About 1,500 women and allied men marched on the Pentagon on Sunday to demand an end to perpetual war and the funding of education, health care and other social needs instead,” reported Joe Lauria of the progressive website Consortium News.

Mainstream/corporate journalistic outlets memory-holed the event with a total media blackout.

One commenter on Facebook bemoaned national priorities: what does it say that so few attended the Women’s March on the Pentagon? More than 200,000 people crowded the Washington Mall for comedian Jon Stewart’s inane 2010 “Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear,” a piss-take parody of protest, literally and by the definition of its organizers an apolitical march for nothing!

Cindy Sheehan, an activist who made national news by protesting her son’s death in the Iraq War at George W. Bush’s Texas ranch, responded on Facebook that people should show up rather than sit at home criticizing those who did on their computers.

......................Our real problem is that there isn’t a real, bona-fide Left journalism outlet in the United States.

One that’s smart, i.e., well-managed. Not in the derpy leaderless consensus style that destroyed the Occupy movement, but top-down by brilliant Machiavellian can’t-be-bought leftist schemers who know how to motivate and build an organization.

One that’s well-funded. Not by some control-freak billionaire who can petulantly renege on his big promises after he loses interest or gets corrupted, but by generous ongoing crowdsourcing that guarantees editorial independence to an uncompromisingly left-wing team of editors with big budgets to hire kickass investigative reporters, back out-of-the-box journalists, humorists and editorialists. Give me $50 million a year (wonder if the person who won the $1.6 billion MegaMillions lottery is progressive?) and I could build and run an operation that could change the world. It’s not impossible: Bernie Sanders raised $100 million from small donors in one year..........

In the 1960s the corporate mainstream media allowed antiwar, pro-civil rights and other anti-establishment journalists and pundits to disseminate their views on TV (Cronkite criticizing the Vietnam War), on the opinion pages of major newspapers and in bestselling books. And they covered protests.

No more. The Left has been ruthlessly purged.

Not one single opinion writer or staff columnist or cartoonist employed by an American newspaper is a real, bonafide leftist—not a single one even supported Bernie Sanders (whose politics are basically McGovern in 1972 and was supported by half of Democrats) during the 2016 primaries.
Not one single TV or major radio talk show host is a real, bonafide leftist. None supported Bernie.
The same goes for “liberal” outlets like The Atlantic, Salon, Slate, etc.
It’s censorship. It’s systemic. It’s killing the Left.

(Highlighting is mine.)

Do go read the full piece at Counterpunch. But...what can we ordinary people do about this problem? We can spread the word wherever we can, in conversations on social media, blogs, real-life chit chats and debates. Shine a light on the problem - that's what we can do at present, as well as supporting people such as Ted Rall who are able to shine a brighter light, with a much longer beam than our own.

Warmongering Media

“I would rather take a political risk in pursuit of peace than to risk peace in pursuit of politics. I will not make decisions on foreign policy in a futile effort to appease partisan critics, the media, or Democrats who want to resist and obstruct.” ~ Donald Trump.

“Some people HATE the fact that I got along well with President Putin of Russia. They would rather go to war than see this. It’s called Trump Derangement Syndrome!”
Tweet by Donald Trump.

In the sidebar of this blog, if one scrolls right down, there's a small illustration declaring: "Blog Peace". Honouring it, I'm linking to a recent article and comments. The article is by Norman Solomon:

Climb Down From the Summit of Hostile Propaganda.


In Mr Solomon's 2nd and 3rd paragraphs he writes

Contempt for diplomacy with Russia is now extreme. Mainline U.S. journalists and top Democrats often bait President Trump in zero-sum terms. No doubt Hillary Clinton thought she was sending out an applause line in her tweet Sunday night: “Question for President Trump as he meets Putin: Do you know which team you play for?”

A bellicose stance toward Russia has become so routine and widespread that we might not give it a second thought — and that makes it all the more hazardous. After President George W. Bush declared “You’re either with us or against us,” many Americans gradually realized what was wrong with a Manichean view of the world. Such an outlook is even more dangerous today.

Please do go and read the article - it's not arduously long, and makes many good points - as do some of the comments beneath it.

A comment by Joe Tedesky particularly hit home for me:

It’s apparent that there are many Americans who neither fear war, or they believe that war will never happen, and this I truly believe is a result of these Americans having never experienced war first hand. It’s all an imaginary threat if it’s anything at all. Why any war that is to be will not be fought here, because we fight them over there. Lastly America is the sole super power, and everybody knows that, so where’s the worry?

Reflecting back on the sixties when Left Wing meant peace marches, and advocating for peace, is now a distance memory of a mass ideology which helped to wing down the Vietnam war. Back then these anti-war protesters were all we had to beat down the warmongering DC mindset. The peace advocate of the sixties was determined to bring peace to the world. The music of its era reflects this mindset. Maybe we should have a national oldies day, and try and catch that spirit again… Joanne Mitchell, Richie Havens, anyone?

If you had told me some fifty years ago that the Left would someday be the purveyors of war instigation, I would not have believed you, but turning points and the truth often don’t reconcile in a society gone mad.

I'm a (naturalised) American who has experienced war first hand - albeit when I was very young, back in England. I came into a world on the brink of war - World War 2. I sincerely hope not to go out of this world on the brink of (or in the midst of) another, even more horrendous war between the two greatest nuclear powers on the planet.


From Mike K

There is certainly a lot that is terribly wrong with Donald Trump’s policies, but this does not justify the totally illegal and immoral attempt to unseat him on the basis of a bunch of concocted lies. Some of us are called upon to hold our noses, while defending Trump and the office of the Presidency from unconstitutional fascist style attacks. The ugly warmongering being used to attack Trump constitutes a clear and present danger that must be countered to preserve our very existence.

When forces within our society are willing to risk the extinction of humanity for narrow political and economic gain, it is time for us to wake up and call a halt to this madness.

Another excellent, much longer, detailed piece on the same website is by Joe Lauria:

US Media is Losing Its Mind Over Trump-Putin Press Conference

The reaction of the U.S. establishment media and several political leaders to President Donald Trump’s press conference after his summit meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday has been stunning.

This comment by "Banger" is noteworthy:

It’s just over for those of us on the old left. The Orwellian nature of the media has taken hold and we are powerless against it. We have a population utterly uncurious of facts or history, logic or science, rationality or erudition. It’s over. People want to belong, want to share their anger at whatever enemy there is no matter how ludicrous is that threat from the enemy. This is how the oligarch has decided to use Trump’s election–first to divide us on tribal grounds and second to invent some enemy that uses all the mythology of Hollywood villains with Russian accents. It’s working and it means the oligarchs are unassailable and now are able to control public opinion with a bunch of gestures on the screen and the population will bark on command. Goebbels is, somewhere, cackling with delight.

We will be lucky if we avoid war, fortunately the professional military understands the situation much better than the civilian leaders and have put brakes on our drift into permanent major war everywhere.

Let us hope fervently that "Banger's" final paragraph proves to be correct.

"All in all it's just another brick in the wall"

The post's title, from Pink Floyd's rock opera "The Wall" is the only nod to Music Monday this week, it buzzed through my mind as I read an article online about the firing of a journalist.

I don't read any newspaper, don't watch any news or political shows on TV. News for me these days comes solely from the internet. For those who do still trust corporate newspapers to offer "fair and balanced" views, the news that democratic socialist journalist/columnist Harold Meyerson was recently fired from his regular Washington Post column by newspaper's owner Jeff Bezos aka CEO of internet giant Amazon should alert them to what's becoming common in mass media: getting rid of any who don't toe the corporatist line!
My 2013 post Robber-Baronitis mentions Jeff Bezos, by the way.

From Wikipedia

Harold Meyerson (born 1950) is an American journalist and opinion columnist. In 2009 The Atlantic Monthly named him one of "the most influential commentators in the nation" as part of their list "The Atlantic 50."

Life and career
Born in Los Angeles, Meyerson was educated in the Los Angeles public schools and at Columbia University. The son of long time leaders in California of the Socialist Party of America, he was active in the 1970s in the Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee.

Meyerson is editor-at-large of The American Prospect and was an opinion columnist for the Washington Post from 2003 until 2015, when he was fired by the latter. He served as executive editor of the L.A. Weekly from 1989 through 2001, and continues to write about California politics in the Los Angeles Times. His articles on politics, labor, the economy, foreign policy, and American culture have also appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The New Republic, The Nation, and New Statesman.......

An avowed democratic socialist—according to Meyerson one of only "two" that he encounters during "daily rounds through the nation's capital," the other being Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont — he is a vice-chair of the National Political Committee of the Democratic Socialists of America

Commenter "Sneed Urn" at Huffington Post wrote

His firing is not at all ironic. It is (most likely) in response to Sanders' rise and the growing realization among conservative rank and file that they have been duped. Keeping the balance of power tipped towards big money is the job of corporate owned media. Presenting "opposing" points of view is part of that process, to be able to claim objectivity with the actual intent to frame the range of what counts as progressive and what is "fringe".

Sanders has been able to overcome the "fringe" label. The media now has to help disenfranchise his supporters through other means. Limiting Sanders' exposure and always asserting the presumption that Clinton is the de facto nominee are the primary ways media works for corporate interest and against the people in the democratic race. This should not be a surprise.

Exactly!
(My highlights in both quotes)

This video is around a couple of months old, not much has changed in the meantime. Watch a comedian tell us how it really is.