What is going on in Central Ohio? Air, food, water, housing, healthcare, education, policing and criminal justice,…etc? Is organizing in Central Ohio dead?
If we’re talking about a convergence of conservative and progressive philosophies and values among the rank-and-file, ( and certainly not talking about corporatist bipartisanship) here are points, not necessarily in order of importance regarding how ordinary conservatives and ordinary progressives can recognize plutocracy as the main threat to our freedom, prosperity, and national security (not to mention a habitable planet)
(1) civil liberties ;
(2) what the right calls “crony capitalism” and the left “corporate welfare” and the contined increase of monoply power in every sector of the economy, from banking to farming, from internet and media to retail and healthcare.
(3) so-called “endless wars” that some conservatives such as Ron Paul and Pat Buchanan and many progressives have spoken out against, though neither camp in either party’s establishment is anti-militarist;
(4) international trade agreements that detract from national sovereignty via investor-state dispute settlements;
(5) corporate elite-driven financialization of the US economy whereby making profit on debts and speculation comes at the expense of capital investments, R&D and the private sector’s role in infrastructure maintenance and development, deskilling our workforce, all at the expense of national security and working and middle class prosperity;
(6) the elements of #5 combine with the corporate looting of the treasury which affects public investments into infrastructure and human resource maintenance and development, which in turn occurs on top of multinational corporations being in a race-to-the-bottom for the lowest paid workers with the least amount of human rights in places with the least amount of environmental regulations.
Much of the polarization in this country results from how multinational corporations run both parties and much of the media.
I don’t know how much of that is by design and how much an emergent property but our population is manipulated and divided and thereby unable, so far, to muster any social democratic, populist countervailing force against the predations of the corporate state.
Consider the massive popular support for FDR and the New Deal. White working class people supported those policies and were not driven to vote against them because FDR, the First Lady and members of his cabinet supported black civil rights.
We can have 1930s and 1940s levels of broad working and middle class solidarity allied with a sympathetic set of politicians while keeping our 21st Century values regarding the rights of racial and ethnic minorities, women, Queer folk…etc.
We can rouse the public against the corporate-indentured establishments of both parties and their respective corporate media without racism, xenophobia, and white nationalism, and also without trying throw the baby out with the bath water such as has been the case with Trump’s authoritarian assault on the media, the courts, public scientific bodies…etc
Locally, connected to national and global struggle; head (theory and analysis), heart (social bonds, family, friends, communities near and far, small and large)and hands (practical endeavors such as feeding people, growing food…etc)
With endeavor, I can ask how, if at all, the particular endeavor connects to “people power overcoming big money power”
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