Collapse of the American Political Spectrum (Part 3 of 3)

Written by Igor Goldkind

Continued from Part 2 of 3

I don't applaud or even support all the actions and ideologies of the left. Many suffer from self-delusion, self-righteousness, intolerance and just as nefarious intent as the right; e.g. the 2106 Democratic primary (that is, only if you're so right wing do you consider Democrats as equivalent leftists). Mainly I despise the current progressive left for being so far up their own digestive tracks as to permit the election of an unqualified, incompetent candidate! Jill Stein? No, this is well beyond left or right; this is about whether or not you understand and advocate for the U.S. Constitution or whether you adhere to contradicting the Constitution by imposing dictates like the Ten Commandments and the irresponsibility of unregulated market capitalism.

Like most things, disdain is born of ignorance. The left has always been viewed in measure to how close to Marxism it drifts on our traditional spectrum. But that has mainly to do with a basic misunderstanding of Marxist rhetoric on the part of most Americans. For example, Marx’s Das Capital is not a blueprint for revolution regardless of whether revolutionaries from Lenin through Mao to Castro took it as such. Marx was never a revolutionary or even, strictly speaking, political. Karl Marx was a socio-economist, interested in scientifically tracing the origins and causes of his current social system, in both England and France where he studied everything from the Paris Communes to the British miner’s union.

His work is a critique and a warning against the dangers of unbridled Capitalism, not a prescription for its replacement. It was Lenin and Mao Tse Tung that decided that they knew what to replace their respective monarchical systems with. They were merely following the first American and then French models of revolutionary severance in an emerging industrial society where the rule of Capital was quickly replacing the seat of power and oppression held by the monarchy and the church. Remember that Fidel Castro first appealed to the U.S. to support his democratic revolution and only turned to Soviet-style Communism when his entreaties were rejected by us. Castro had read the U.S. Constitution and mistakenly thought that a nation built on the foundation stone of revolution would sympathize and support his struggle against the dictator Baptista. Boy, was he going to get a wake up call!

This is all summarised by the very first international convention on Marxism attended by scholars, writers and politicians from all over the world. The keynote speaker at the end was to be an aged Karl Marx himself! After listening to hour upon hour of dissertation and speech on the tenets of Marxism by every leading self-described Marxist in the world, when Karl Marx was ushered to the podium to the thunder of a standing ovation, for Marx was clearly the patron saint of all of them, he paused. Karl Marx leaned into the microphone and after the long pause pronounced: “Thank you everyone, thank you very much but after I’ve heard everything I’ve heard today, I want you all to be very clear about one thing: I am not a Marxist!”

It's really that simple.

Don't be distracted by the false claims of partisanship so often paraded by the right. And use anything you find useful here to pursue this argument with those supporting the extreme Right.

Donald Trump isn't right wing, he is simply and indisputably a betrayer of the U.S. Constitution.

So let's put aside our redundant spectrum labels, let's renounce our own affiliations and denounce all politics up till now whilst at the same time re-examine the history of our nation's founding. Let us enter into debate and discussion with our fellow citizens and engage in disagreement and persuasion based not on whether a political leaning fits your particular style or mood, but whether the issue, the organization, the person or the principle being examined either supports or contradicts the founding ideology of our (already), great, democratic republic.

The only way we are going to rise above the rubble of our political spectrum is to dig deep into the original American values upon which this country is founded. Not closure or exclusion but hope, promise and progress. We are a nation founded on reason and reason is what we all desperately need to return to or we will cease to be the nation our forefathers and fore-immigrants dreamt of. 

For more writing by the author go to:

https://igorgoldkind.wordpress.com/

 

The Collapse of the American Political Spectrum (Part 2 of 3)

Written by Igor Goldkind

Continued from Part 1 of 3

America is a melting pot goes the cliche, but it’s not a melting pot of people and cultures. Instead, America is a melting pot of people’s idealization of America. A merging of hopes and aspirations from all four corners of the world. All of the immigrants who came to America for whatever reason, imagined what this country represented, my Russian grandfather included. As a youth, he had posters of Hollywood film stars pasted on his walls. He had always dreamed of escaping the Jewish pogroms and escaping to America, the land of the Free, where people could work hard and prosper. He imagined the land where he wanted to live, to escape to, long before he had touched feet on American soil. It was his desire to pursue his dream, his optimistic illusion that moved him. So it was with the Irish, the Germans, the Russians, the Italians, the French, the English, the Spanish, the Indians, the Vietnamese, the Japanese, the Chinese and so forth. Wave upon wave of immigrants arriving literally on the wings of a prayer: that there might be a better life here for them and their families.

From the onset immigrants wanted to conform, to fit into this culture. When people are diverse, they strive to be the same and when people are the same they strive to be distinguished. Immigrants want to become American as fast as possible, or at least they want their children to be as a natural progression. When I asked my grandfather to teach me Russian he refused telling me that it was the language of the old country and best forgotten along with the victims of the Cossack pogroms he and my grandmother had left behind. This was the land of their aspirations and embraced whatever culture they could touch. More often than not, it was the aspirations of the previous generation of immigrants they embraced, that still lingered in the atmosphere like the scent from a million flowers. It was within this churn of dreams that America was invented.

This was the living, breathing American idealism that seamlessly overlapped the original Anglo-Protestant American idealism of the post-Enlightenment both confirming and revitalizing the ideal of America. What America really is, what it really represents is refreshed and reinvigorated with each and every new wave of immigrants. Refugees come here escaping war and tyranny because until this past year, this nation was the safe harbor of Liberty. This is why immigrants are so vital to our democracy and why Trump is so horrifically wrong to hinder their entry. It is optimism of the immigrant, their aspirations, their idealism, that refreshes our democracy and reminds us what is truly great about America and Americans. Not our jingoism (every nation state has that), but our openness to the other we may not first understand and our willingness to change and be changed by the world turning round.

The Black Panthers, the usual right wing's bugbear, at their worst fought for the right to bear arms (as provided by the Second Amendment) and to not be harassed by the Oakland police. They armed themselves to protect their civil rights and to protect themselves from racist police brutality. Don't believe me? Read your history and read the works of Eldridge Cleaver, Huey Newton and Malcolm X. All were fighting for their American civil rights as provided by and guaranteed in the text of the U.S. Constitution, the highest law of the land.

Even the destruction of property isn't prohibited by the Constitution but by other more localized laws. However, constitutional law trumps federal law, state law, county law and city law. If it's not spelt out in the Constitution then it has been down to the legal tradition to work it out through the enforcement of lower court decisions all the way to the Supreme Court, if need be. But those laws of governance and the rights of man are spelt out, such as the right to free speech, the right to dissent, the right to pursue one's happiness without deterrence and the right to practice any religion without harassment; it stands above any other law that has been passed locally or otherwise.

The U.S. Constitution (and its accompanying Bill of Rights and Declaration of Independence), are by their very existence if not definition, progressive documents. They were all written, argued about and voted on to progress us beyond a decadent monarchy, church and systems of government that had existed for a millennium at least previously (with perhaps the exception of the short-lived English Civil War). They were also the rules of governance, not anti-government, but an equitable governance that assured the democratic representation of all citizens, documented or not.

If, on the other hand, you are terrified of change, resistant to progress and always proclaim the past as superior to the present, then you are conservative, but no longer of the right. If you were successfully transferred to the distant past, you would have been a Tory resisting the radical, never before tried, severance from the King and the religious establishment. You would have gone as far as to collude with our foreign enemies, like Benedict Arnold and Donald Trump did to undermine our democratic institutions and betray the Constitution that both had sworn to protect.

So much clarity is lost when we succumb to counterfactual history. In this case, “counterfactual” meaning, not only backward looking narratives that are factually inaccurate, but contrived narratives that actually defy and contradict the tenets they are meant to illustrate. Examples include the right wing attempt to reattach church and state with the preposterous notion that our history is Judeo-Christian just because a lot of Christians live and practice here. As well they should as the first amendment guarantees the right to worship anyway you want but NOT deny others the right to practice their religion or even lack of belief. Again, the United States was founded on the basis of reasoned judgement NOT faith and superstition.

This is exemplified in the malicious rewrite of history that forgets that most, if not all references to God in our founders documents were added later by Christian legislators. The credo ‘In God We Trust’ was actually added to our currency in the mid-20th century, to distinguish us from Communist atheism.

It's time for American patriots to start calling a spade a spade (as in pointed shovel, not a racial slur) if you oppose the general welfare of the American people, you stand against the Constitution. If you oppose every American's unqualified entitlement to "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness," you stand against the Constitution. If you favour the introduction of prayer into schools and the Christian faith above all other religions in our laws and institutions, then you stand against the Constitution. And if you favour or excuse the gerrymandering of political precincts for the sake of political advantage or to disenfranchise the right of all U.S. citizens to vote regardless, or invite a foreign power to interfere with a U.S. election, you stand against the Constitution.

If you collude with a foreign power to receive stolen information detrimental to your political opponent for political gain; not only do you stand against the Constitution. You're a traitor to it.

Continue to Part 3 of 3

For more writing by the author go to:

https://igorgoldkind.wordpress.com/