Chapter 24: Socialism, For Some

Where to begin? The disingenuous oligarchy that run our society have recently been railing against socialism. A Pew poll recently found that more and more young people have negative feelings about capitalism (unsurprisingly & accurately, its a suffering cult), and feel more positive about socialism. Of course, their commissars in the mainstream media rush to tell us how horrible it is.

It is becoming more and more apparent to everyone that the system is RIGGED. Its a shame Donald Trump was sadly able to co-opt this because of the sheer ignorance of the now far-right Democratic Party. Hilary Clinton didn’t lose because of sexism, or any of those nonsensical social identities. She lost because people saw her for exactly what she is. A right winger masquerading as a leftie. In fact, she is so right wing and phone that Donald Trump, a racist billionaire demagogue was actually able to outleft her. Tells you all you need to know about her “progressive” credentials.

It is not often explored, but Trump was only able to win because he actually ran to the left of Clinton. He presented himself as anti-war, promised “healthcare for everybody” (his words), to bring back the manufacturing jobs and a detente with Russia. These are leftist positions. Now of course, he is a total phony and didn’t believe or mean anything he said, a bit like Barack Obama in that regard. Promising hope and change but actually doing more of the same.

Obama was nothing more than a Televangelist. He always used the word “hope”, but he never seemed to specify what for. After the greedy oligarchs ran their business into the ground, Obama was there to open up the public purse and stuff their pockets, all while cynically and immorally foreclosing homes and slashing public benefits, cutting social programs and bringing in austerity.

Obama oversaw the largest transfer of wealth from poor to rich in US history.

This is our black Jesus.

Of course, they don’t call the bank bailouts socialism. They don’t call it anything. They never ask where we’ll get the money from. We just have the money. It’s important to point out that austerity didn’t have to follow the bank bailout. The idea that the banks should be owned by the public, since it is indeed public money they were using to make themselves whole again, didn’t even enter the mainstream discourse.

Only 9 years after the bailout, the same banks are now making record profits. The heads of the major investment banks, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Chase etc. we’re quoted in a QZ article saying:

The punishing austerity that followed was described in the report of the UN Special Rapporteur for Poverty. Philip Alston, described it as “patently unjust” that the fifth richest country in the world should have so many people living in poverty. The report tells horror stories of people working full time and still using food banks, a form of begging. People selling their bodies for food and disabled people with no arms being told to go to work.

The report cites the Fiscal Studies who report that about 40% of UK children will be in poverty by 2022. Of course, if the children are living in poverty, one can only speculate what kind of condition their parents are in. Not much better one can imagine.

One of the key lines in the report was when Alston described the “misery” as “unnecessary”. What he means is, the class war does not have to go on. The rich can fill their boots and still leave enough for the rest of us. But they are not content with this. The punitive measures undertaken after the global financial crisis of 2010 was done to discipline the poor, remind them of their proper place. It is also worth noting that many of those not included as being in poverty actually own a huge amount of debt, and are a few payments away from homelessness and a cycle of inescapable poverty. You can find the full report here.

In conclusion, the system which I have previously described as the “Inverse Robin-hood model” (a term I stole from Bernie Sanders) is morally corrupt. The rich not only take a bigger portion of the cake, they take whole damn cake, sweep up the crumbs, empty it in a bin, then leave us sorting through the trash for a few crumbs. While the rest of us must have what the markets serve, the rich can always run to the nanny state when it runs its business into the ground. Then we pay through the nose, having been completely unaware there was even a problem to begin with.