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But when you talk about this kind of conspiracy to undermine the first four years of Trump and then and here's the most important thing he didn't say one critical thing about Trump. Like, if you want to attack and critique the Democratic Party and forces behind it, go for it, no problem. I don't care whether it's four days before the election. But you have to have the critique of Trump, too. Not just play into what Tucker Carlson wants.
So, yes, critique Biden, even now. But let's be realistic that this, as you reference and I said before, this Trump is a cancerous tumor and he's very, very dangerous to progressive forces. We're heading into a deep depression. This pandemic: round two, round three? The vaccine may not work. There could be millions and millions more unemployed. We could start to see a real spontaneous uprising amongst workers that we haven't seen in years. There are already strikes breaking out. The teachers have shown some real guts. As I said earlier, this consciousness of socialism is growing.
We're heading into a real period of conflict, and I'm not saying the Biden forces aren't capable of some serious coercive action, but it's harder for them. They depend on the Black vote. They depend on the Latino vote. They depend on votes from the big cities where the working class and people are more conscious and more progressive. It's harder, and those differences matter.
In my article, I quote Gerald Horne. He cracked a joke in one of our interviews that if Trump's re-elected, the left could be all meeting up in Yankee Stadium. And that's referencing how they rounded up people in Chile when they overthrew Pinochet and threw people into stadiums and then killed a bunch of them.
Don't rule this stuff out. Glenn needs to take what he's doing way more seriously, no matter how angry he is at the Intercept or the Democratic Party.
Abby MartinBiden's entire candidacy was a repudiation of the Bernie wing. I think that's why he was there. Right? That's why you saw this this right wing [of the Democrats] coalesce behind him. "I'll drop out and support him before Super Tuesday." It was all to get Bernie out. And in fact, you can argue that the Democrats worked harder to squash Bernie and the movement and to repudiate the movement than they did to stop Amy Comey Barrett. There were many things they could have done to jam up that process. And I think that when the left looks at the Democratic Party, as I've been told for the last twenty years, that this [election] may not even be about the [presidential] nominee, this could be about the Supreme Court. Well, we just saw that fight play out. And guess what? It's over. And it was pretty devastating, Paul, to say the least.
So, I get it. I get why people hate the system. I get this anti-Democratic Party ideology, if you could really call it that. I don't think it's really an ideology. But I think that they've made it clear to us that they don't want our votes and all they do is campaign on anti-left. You saw Biden actually saying that he is going to entertain putting Republicans in his cabinet. He even said that he doesn't maybe want Warren to even have a cabinet position. Warren, who, again, kneecapped Bernie at the end.
I get it. I get the seething hatred for Democrats. I share that hatred. But I also agree with you that a Trump presidency and let's just talk about, again, domestic policy alone: not having a plan for the pandemic. This could be never-ending. I mean, we could literally see another four years of hundreds of thousands of more people dying because we have just an absolute sh*t-show clown running this. Where just to double down on being right, he will continue to downplay and essentially deny that this is even a thing. Right? Because this abject denial of reality is such a bizarre characteristic of this administration. So, that's one thing. Then you have the law-and-order mentality where, again, [they're] emboldening the fascistic wing of the police forces. (I would argue most of the police, just by its essence, is fascistic.)
But that is very scary as well. Paul. The political persecution of activists, slapping potentially decades-long sentences on people who are just doing simple political actions. We see people in the Party for Socialism and Liberation facing now years, potentially a decade, in prison for staging a sit-in in front of a police station in Colorado.
So, these things are happening. I totally get why I would want a playing field that is not black-bagging protesters in the street and throwing them in unmarked vans. I do not want that reality. I do not want marauding gangs of fascists being emboldened like Kyle Rittenhouse. I do not want to face down people who are trying to kill leftists on behalf of their cult leader. I think rhetoric absolutely matters and that bleeds over to all sectors of the right wing who are emboldened here.
Now, let's move on to this anti-Democrat thing. Look, basically, under the Trump administration, I have pivoted. The second Trump got elected. And I think that we can all agree we did not see that coming. At least I didn't. I believed that, for the most part, the polls and all the pundits who said Hillary Clinton had it in the bag. So, I was dead set on criticizing Hillary Clinton because I wanted to be fighting her from day one.
I was sideswiped. I think a lot of us were with the Trump administration. And so, from day one, I have been focusing on how dangerous and how rabid of a militarist Trump has been, and debunking this notion that there is this Deep State, and how Trump is fighting the Deep State, and how Trump is fighting the military-industrial complex, and how he's really antiwar and that's why you have these insiders trying to oust him because he's not carrying out their imperialist agenda.
It is absolutely absurd. It's simplistic. You can argue that it's just Bannonite regurgitation of very dumbed down talking points catering to the right wing who are more isolationist. I can go over all the things Trump has done and I want to. But I do think that there is a tendency among the left and I've seen this quite a bit. This is not just one person: this is a lot of people, I would argue, a lot of people in alternative media as well who have essentially given Trump a pass. Who have essentially ended up apologizing for Trump because of the strict focus on the Democratic Party, the failures of Russiagate which I know we both agree on, this complete distraction, which essentially has emboldened and legitimized Trump that has essentially led a large sector of [left, alternative] media that should be focusing on where we are today to continuing to double down and fall back on the Obama administration and how we got here and what led to Trump instead of talking about where we are.
To me, I can walk and chew gum at the same time. I can criticize the Democratic Party all day, but I can also criticize where we are and how dangerous what is happening is. Right? And that's where I kind of gravitate toward today: Trump is a monstrous outgrowth of the cancer of neoliberalism. He needs to be taken down for multiple reasons, as we've outlined. And the Democratic Party is also very dangerous as well.
I think the focus [should be] on organizing here instead of electoralism. I maybe have my differences with you about the progressive wing that has been elected to Congress. Look, we're talking about maybe five or six people in a sea of hundreds of centrists and right-wingers. I think we both can agree that we need a new party for the people, a pro-worker party. I don't know how far off that is. We need maybe rank-choice voting first and to abolish the electoral college. That's for a different conversation.
But all of these problems, it gives people faith in electoralism. It makes people think that all they need to do is pull that lever every four years. And I think that that's a dangerous way of thinking because it makes people disengaged and depoliticized. And then when the Democrats turn around and blame leftists for everything that happens, when they literally do nothing to get our vote for the entirety of their administrations in fact, the opposite is true I think it's a really disingenuous way of campaigning and also just engaging in politics.
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