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Seven non-Party specific developments under the names of neoliberalism, austerity, deregulation, and globalization that helped move the United States to the far right over the past 36 years:Increase in Income Inequality to levels before 1929 and the end of the liberal welfare state: Transfer of wealth up to one percent. Bill Clinton drops the tax rate on the rich from 28 to 20 percent. No minimum wage raises. Credit card debt. Corporate downsizing, outsourcing, destruction of the working class with move from production based economy to service based economy. More work for less pay. Or unemployment. With almost no welfare benefits. Huge rise in student debt as B.A. rather than a high school diploma is the ticket to entry level job. 1992: End of the Democratic Party and rise of the Clintons and the DLC (the “third” way). End of unions (PATCO busted under Reagan when they strike in 1981). Clinton signs Welfare Reform Act in 1996. End of the university of ideas and rise of the corporate university (“excellence”) in the 1980s. Window for the Democrats in 2008-10 to do whatever they want: They have the Presidency and both Houses of Congress: they could fill judicial vacancies; pass a single payer insurance plan; whatever. Nothing much happens except that Obama escalates the war in Afghanistan. Gitmo is never closed during Obama’s administration, despite his repeated attempts. Obama tries and fails to cut Social Security and Medicare in exchange for tax hikes with a “Grand Bargain” in 2012. End of public education. Teaching becomes training. Instruction becomes testing. 2001: Bush “No Child Left Behind.” 2009: Obama “Race to the Top.” Charter Schools. Internet and tele-technical communication; shift from analog to digital; rise of algorithms as basis for consumer satisfaction and voter preferences. 1996: Bill Clinton signs the Communications Decency Act. It is ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in 1997. 24 / 7 consumption becomes possible. Amazon: Buy whenever you want and have your order delivered quickly. Surveillance powers of the security state radically expanded after 9/11; whistle-blower prosecutions expanded by Obama under the 1917 Espionage Act. Wiki-Leaks. Edward Snowden leaks. 2016: Obama does not pardon Edward Snowden or Chelsea Manning. A specialist in Constitutional law, Obama said Private Bradley Manning could be detained however harshly the Army wished to because “he broke the law.” Manning had not been convicted at the time. Obama says that he cannot pardon Snowden because Snowden hasn’t been convicted. But President Ford pardoned ex-President Nixon without Nixon ever having been tried. Journalism is displaced by “fake news,” “fake fake news,” and social media. See The Wire, Season 5. By 2015, liberals win the culture wars when Republican wedge issues like gay marriage become moot and the internet has normalized and expanded porn. But then “progressives” start to wage war over their own wedge issues, like bathroom access and Hollywood casting, as left-wing sectarian identity politics morphs into shame culture and expands to include newly christened victimized groups and introduces diverse new kinds of unconscious or unintended victimization (“microaggression,” mansplaining,” and “rape culture”) and victimizers (“white privilege”). 1990s: Sensitivity, sexual harassment, and diversity training seminars become mandatory at the average workplace, including the college campus workplace, to reduce if not eliminate employer liability. Rolling Stone story “A Rape on Campus” published in 2014 and then retracted in 2015. The author and Rolling Stone are sued for libel, lose, and are ordered to pay $3 million. MEME wars. Standing Rock Sioux tribe?and allies peacefully protest construction of the Dakota Access pipeline and are attacked by police; journalists are arrested.Business deregulation and the rise of finance capitalism. Savings and Loan Crisis in 1980s; repeal of Glass Steagall Act by Bill Clinton; recession of 1987; predatory capitalism (“hostile takeovers”; “greed is good” and Gordon Gecko from Oliver Stone’s Wall Street become the American yuppie mantra. Subprime mortage crisis of 2008. Obama dubbed the Barack Hoover Obama in 2009 by Harpers Magazine. No banks are prosecuted. In 2012, Obama lets the W. tax cuts become permanent. Student debt becomes the largest kind of debt nationally; 2005 bankruptcy law makes it impossible for students to declare bankruptcy to avoid paying student loans. Cheap goods: Walmart. NAFTA. 2015: Obama tries to fast track TPP. 2016: TPP is dead. Civil Rights and Reproductive Rights. Gay Marriage declared legal by the Supreme Court after Bill Clinton signed the Defense of Marriage Act. 1992: “FemiNazi” coined by far-right radio host, Rush Limbaugh; Slut-Shaming and Sandra Fluke controversy. 2015: Planned Parenthood smeared with fake video about “harvesting fetal body parts”; Republicans hold hearings and find nothing. 2016: Republican Governor and Vice-President elect Mike legislates burial of any aborted fetus. Title IX of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 revisited in the 1980s and expanded to include sexual discrimination (not just gender). 1990s: Sexual harassment cases boom in law office. The scope of Title IX greatly expanded by Obama’s Department of Education. Feminists split again (as in the 1980s and 90s) over the meaning of female sexual emancipation. 2015: Professor Laura Kipnis controversy over her publication of an article critical of Title IX: a feminist and Marxist, she is investigated after complaint she violated Title IX is filed by a graduate student. 2013: Health and Human Secretary Kathleen Sibelius repeatedly delays approval of the morning after pill and then approves it but limits access to women over seventeen and with a prescription only. Finally, a judge excoriates her in his ruling and orders her to approve the morning after pill without age restrictions and for over the counter purchase. Sibelius resigns six months after roll out of Obama’s Affordable Health Act proves to be full of glitches. Her successor is appointed the same day she resigns. SCOTUS COUP D'ETAT in 2000 when the Court stops the Florida?recount and makes Bush President. Unprecedented in the history of the country. Endless War and Torture. Dick Cheney. Obama awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2009. Obama becomes the first President to be at war every day of his two terms. Drone warfare. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton emerges as a major hawk—approves bombing of Libya. Consensus is that the bombing was a disaster. W. widely rated the worst President ever by 2008. 1980s war on drugs aka war on black people (crack cocaine epidemic of 1980s) and the rise of the prison-industrial complex. Saddam Hussein is Hitler. W. is Hitler. Obama is Hitler. (Obama is also a Communist.) Angela Merkel is Hitler. Trump is Hitler. Patriot Act passes in 2002. Militarization of the police after 9 /11. Obama does nothing to halt it until after Ferguson. After 9/11, use of off-shore concentration camps—“renditions” (aka kidnappings) to black prison sites—for “enhanced interrogations,” aka torture. Bogus reasons for war on Iraq in 2002-03. The war is a disaster: Abu-Gharib. Gitmo Detention Camp. The word “torture” is pointedly not used by the New York Times. Judith Miller. Torture by U.S. is admitted by Obama in 2014; he said in 2009 there would be no prosecutions of CIA torturers. (Time to “move forward.” “Forward” becomes Obama’s slogan.) 2014: Senate Torture Report released in heavily redacted form. Director of CIA John O. Brennan spies on the Senate subcommittee writing the report. CIA director fired but not prosecuted. 2014: CIA is still torturing people in Afghanistan. 2016: Suit filed against CIA contractors for torture. No prosecutions of subprime mortgage crisis bankers or banks by Obama’s AG, Eric Holder, in 2009 or thereafter, despite widespread MSM consensus that there should be prosecutions. After 9/11, no more debate about cuts to defense spending. Rise of military contractors. The U.S. military leadership becomes liberal. Won’t bomb Iran as Cheney wants. Gays in the military (no more Bill Clinton “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell”; women can serve in combat, possibly as officers, as of 2016. Now living in a world that is the opposite of Dr. Strangelove and Seven Days in May or even State of Siege. Climate Change and the War on Science. Exxon Valdez disaster. Off-shore drilling. Deepwater Horizon oil spill disaster. Northwest passage now open. Ships start going across the artic in 2015. Katrina. Oil industry turns against environmental regulations. Where are we now? 2016: The anti-establishment Republican Presidential candidate wins the nomination of his establishment Republican party and then wins the election after a Republican controlled Senate refuses to hold hearings on Obama’s Supreme Court nominee, Merrick Garland. Concentration of power in Republican hands not seen since 1928: President; state governors; state legislatures; Supreme Court appointments. We are one Republican state legislature away from the Republicans having enough states to pass any Constitutional Amendments they want. Meanwhile, the Democratic Party appears to have no future. Interest rates will rise, and that will mean inflation will go up. Hyperinflation? Who knows? Comparisons between the U.S. and Weimar Republic in Germany, made back in the 1990s, are already returning, only this time we will have Weimar and Hitler (Trump) at the same time, not one after the other. Two astute left-wing critics: John R. MacArthur, Harpers Magazine and Professor David Bromwich. Both are white males. Out there (alt-left?) but sometimes informative: Max Keiser and Stacy Herbert in The Keiser Report on RT. ................
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