Since the USA is not at war with Russia, the word treason cannot be used in this case. That is the language of McCarthyism and the John Birch Society, and progressives should have none of it. The US Constitution very carefully defines treason, the only crime defined in that document. The purpose was to restrict its application to wartime so that it could not be used, as it had been in England, to punish opposition to government policies. I enjoy the schadenfreude of Republicans squirming about Trump peoples' connections to Russians as much as anyone, but it is really becoming a paranoid and dangerous hysteria. Stealing John Podesta's unflattering emails about Clinton is an "act of war"? Let's get a grip. Portside should more carefully vet articles about this. This hysteria is going to become a big argument for gutting every progressive program of the federal government to feed the Pentagon, and having signed onto the hysteria, the liberals in Congress will look like hypocrites (which they are) if they don't sign onto a new round of arms and regional wars.

 

David Worley

I have a lot of sympathy for this argument, as it makes more sense than the Paul Krugman, Ezra Klein *"give up on white workers, universal benefits, Sanders, inequality, no raises for 40 years, etc, etc....until they deal with their 'white identity'".*

 

At the same time, how does Sanders, or Sanders-like politics really turn the American austerity regime around? The truth is, I suspect, is that we really don't know. We mainly KNOW that the alternatives, the Republican fascist threat, and/or liberalism with no wage increases and increasingly dysfunctional and failing institutions, are NOT working. And the failures are killing us.

 

African American and Latino voters did not express their frustrations in the same ways electorally. When everyone is scrambling for crumbs, the race, nationality, religion, and other "identities" play out in numerous divisive and splitting narratives

 

The power shifts necessary -- in class terms -- to have a modern social-democratic (call it socialist, if you wish) regime that rolls back the half century of austerity are frankly mind-bending. Comparisons to the abolition of slavery, or the rise of the New Deal, or the American revolution itself, come immediately to mind.

 

Plus, having put together a sufficiently strong coalition, progressives have to bring to the table a lot more than manufacturing--where technology is pointing to more intensive robotics -- to sustain a credible return of a "middle class". Do we really want a return to the middle class, where the "lower" class remains mired in poverty? If we focused on abolishing any "lower class", the middle might continue to disappear, but no one would notice or suffer.

 

John Case

Research needed: Strike Threats

 

I am doing a study of strike threats over the past 5 years with Dr. Helena Worthen. We are looking for people who have been involved in them to interview. Would it be possible to post a notice on your website that we are looking for people to self-report?

 

Thank you,