The Democratic Party Stands for Kleptocracy and Empire
The old political assumptions have been turned upside down
In the past two weeks, both the House and the Senate passed a bill to provide $40 billion to Ukraine. To keep in mind just how much money this is, I’ll use Jimmy Dore’s example of $12 billion being how much money is made each year by the entire music recording industry.
$40 billion. If we follow the money only a little bit, we can see that it all goes through the grifting paws of the kleptocratic organs of the US Imperial State, and some will eventually reach Ukraine in the form of either weapons or money, all distributed through a chain of imperial government agencies, corporations, and NGOs.
IOW, this is mainly a money-laundering operation designed to just keep throwing money at the enemies of the Russians in the hopes of literally outspending Russia into submission. When one considers that the entire annual Russian military budget is some $69 billion, one knows that such a strategy cannot possibly accomplish its goal.
Nope. Quite impossible. Obviously the whole thing is a grifting operation designed to prolong a war as long as possible by propping up an expendable vassal state until the inevitable happens and it is forced to surrender. Meanwhile, KA-CHING!!! Or “Capital!,” as the British imperialists used to more honestly say.
Brief note to Ukrainians: You are far from the first people to be grist for the mill of US imperial profit. Those American politicians don’t give a shit about you. The sooner you figure this out the better off you will be.
So that’s what the US Congress voted for. Who were they, particularly? Well, not a single Democrat in either the House or the Senate voted No. One Democrat rep from Maryland, I think, abstained. The rest voted Yes. Every. Single. One of Them.
Most Republicans, all but 11 in the Senate and 57 in the House, did their bipartisany uniparty thing and happily went along and lined up at the trough like good little piggies. I’m sure they were as happy as these guys:
So. When one party unanimously votes for war and most but not all of the other party does, which party is more antiwar? Which one is the “lesser evil” if you don’t want America involved in foreign wars?
The Republican Party is now, quantifiable and objectively, more antiwar than the Democrats are. Period. All of you Blue Wave Democrat partisans out there cannot get around that. Your party has painted itself into an absolute political and(I love this, you virtue-signaling bastards) moral corner.
If you support any of those Democrats or Republicans who voted for this kleptocratic imperial insanity, you support imperial war overseas more than you do your government doing its fucking job as required by the Constitution to promote the gods-damned general welfare and helping out its own citizens who are in desperate need of that help right fucking now.
Sorry. I’m a Navy veteran. That’s how I express myself when I’m really, seriously pissed off at people. Anyway, as The Who sang, the party on the left is now the party on the right, and the bipartisany kleptocratic dance enters a new phase in the elite political ballrooms of power in the American Empire.
If this weren’t enough to say that the old assumptions of the American political paradigm have turned upside down, Donald Trump his own self came out and castigated Democrats for “sending another $40 billion to Ukraine, yet America’s parents are struggling to even feed their children.” Which is true.
Trump has outflanked the entire Democrat Party on their left without even trying. He’s also saying a very true and very populist thing. If there’s one thing Trump is good at—sometimes—it’s reading the room. Americans are being decimated by inflation on top of all of the other aftereffects of the disastrous federal handling of the Covid pandemic, and the Democrats spend money on Ukraine but not on their own working class voters.
They have slapped all working class and most middle class American citizens right in the wallet, and are now telling us that we are bad people if we object. They have lost all credibility with everyone on the left who has any integrity whatsoever.
If you want to continue to support Democrats, I can’t stop you. But you can’t call yourself antiwar or leftist ever again, because you’re not. You are a supporter of kleptocratic imperialism, and you have no moral high ground to stand on.
On the bright side, there are opportunities here for American populists of widely different ideologies to come together in various forms of direct action to oppose what Thomas Jefferson would call a tyrannical government, but I’ve got family and household Things To Do so that will have to wait for another day.
Thank you for reading and have a nice night.
Thank you, Mr Barbarian. I always enjoy your posts very much.