[Peace-discuss] Between past and future: why wait for events?

[Karen Aram]

I think Chomsky is attempting to scare the hell out of us, and rightly so. 
The Left/the anti-war crowd will not go for Trump, they will either go for Hillary as the lesser evil, stay home and not vote at all as they often do, or just maybe if we are able to enlighten them they will support Jill Stein of the Green Party. We just need to work a little harder.
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From: C. G. Estabrook <carl at newsfromneptune.com>
Sent: Friday, March 4, 2016 7:19 PM
To: C. G. ESTABROOK
Cc: Peace-discuss List; sf-core; Occupy CU
Subject: Between past and future: why wait for events?

If you are depressed, you are living in the past.
If you are anxious, you are living in the future.
If you are at peace, you are living in the present.
—Tao Te Ching

SCENARIO, JULY 2016:

The Republican convention nominates Trump in Cleveland; the Republican establishment, at once neoliberal and neoconservative, refuse to back a candidate who is neither; led by Cruz and Rubio (and McCain and Romney), they decamp to Clinton, who is both.

The Democrat convention nominates Clinton in Philadelphia; the bulk of the Sandernistas reject her neocon & neoliberal politics and decamp to Trump, who’s attacked both.

Although each party desperately wants to make the campaign about the personality of the opposing nominee (Trump the vulgarian, Clinton the manipulator), the campaign becomes a debate on war and Wall Street...

The campaign sees a realignment of political groups in the US, which has occurred at intervals of about a generation and a half (a generation being the time it takes you to become the age your parents are now, about 25 years) - 1789, 1829, 1860, 1896, 1932, 1968 - and we're overdue.

SCENARIO, NOVEMBER 2016:

Trump wins by mobilizing the anti-war movement that put Obama in office in 2008 (and 2012) and joining it to less educated white sectors of the population, lower middle class and working class, people who are angry, frustrated, frightened, bitter about the fact that they have been in many ways cast by the wayside. Rising global inequality, which has reached extraordinary proportions, is one of the many indications.

The disparities have increased since the 2008 crash, with some 90% of growth going to 1% of the population. The one percent, who dominate both parties, now live in a different world from the general population. In the US, the neoliberal programs have led to stagnation or decline for much of the population, undermining of functioning democracy, reduction of benefits and social welfare. People do not have to read academic studies to know that real wages for male workers are about what they were in the 1960s while wealth has concentrated in very few hands; that corporate strategies have shifted manufacturing abroad; that a considerable majority of the population is virtually disenfranchised in that their representatives disregard their attitudes; and much more.

As the returns come in, the Joint Chiefs of Staff let it be known that they will act as a commission to review all presidential executive orders (especially regarding economic and military matters) so that the new president’s inexperience will not endanger national security. The public (and the members of the executive branch) are apprised of section 4 of the 25th Amendment to the Constitution.

--CGE (h/t Noam Chomsky)