If there is any political organization that is screaming out for a label, it is the No-Labels Party. nnSome would question whether it is even properly a political party. It appears to be a gaggle of billionaire donors in search of willing candidates, who then must search for voters. That’s a reversal of the standard bottom-up way of party building. It’s a less a party than a pyramid scheme.
But if it were a party, it would need a name befitting of its purpose. Consider the Sheep’s-Clothing Party, for the No-Labels’ desire to hide its true purpose of shaving off enough Democrat votes to return a Republican to the White House. Or perhaps call it the Secrecy Party, for its 501(c)4 status permitting it to hide the names of its donors. Maybe the Joes-Against-Joe Party would be appropriate, for pursuing the services of anti-democratic Democrats Joe Manchin and Joe Lieberman to stop that socialist tyrant Joe Biden. Most likely it should just be called the No-Liberals Party, since liberal populism scares its leadership worse than death, and certainly more than dictatorship.
If they should take any of the above suggestions, they should be congratulated for at least being more honest than the GOP, which despite all its authoritarian predilections, retains the label Republican.
JEFFREY HOBBS, Springfield, Ill.
Robert Kuttner’s column on student debt [“Biden, student debt, and the 2024 election,” 7/1-15/23 TPP] pointed out the dire position Millennials and Gen Z are in. Student debt, scarce and expensive housing, unreliable and low-paying jobs, etc. This 78-year-old agrees with him that we need a “Bill of Rights for the Young.”
Today’s oligarchs need to learn from Henry Ford: Workers need fair compensation if you want a healthy market where people can afford to buy your products.
But today is worse than the Gilded Age (1890-1910) in that business also lacks the workers to produce their products. Few workers are starting families because they can’t afford children even if they want them.
The squeeze on our 20-40-year-olds is a big factor in our country’s dangerously low birth rate. The good news is that this is fixable. There’s an obvious solution: treat workers fairly and subsidize children. Would that Henry Ford were still around to teach today’s oligarchs where their enlightened self-interest lies.
CHARLES HAYNES, Lansing, Mich.
So, it has now become apparent that America’s Christian ministries and churches will do nothing to stem the tide of the new Christian Nationalism merging with White supremacy in the GOP. Not that it would change the tide of hate or fill the pews of cathedrals with earnest parishioners. Would it be unfair if I compared this amalgam of MAGA-ers and QAnon-ers to the Ku Klux Klan of the 1920s? As for Black ministries, let me say this. Read your Scripture. Then tell me what it says about slavery or how you interpret those passages when the Ancients spoke of human bondage. As American Christian leaders and their partners in commerce and trade continue to confuse ethics with asceticism, the laws they support and enact will reflect the confusion and disrupt society. As we enter the mid-21st century when climate change will clash with A.I., we can only imagine how the winds of change will settle as the years descend on the upcoming century. If time has passed by some, I can only say this, there is no turning back. Even in Scripture.
STEVEN ROSENZWEIG, Brooklyn, N.Y.
Although weaponry and brute force are thought to rule the world, it’s opinion that rules. For most of recorded history, monarchs and chieftains governed, as mythic divinities, over human affairs. The dawning of the Renaissance illumined liberal opinions.
It’s conceivable that human beings of all races, nationalities and spiritual beliefs can and would live in peace with each other, accorded the blessings of freedom from groundless fear and intimidation. It’s the fear-mongering that is the common menace — the selfishness that uses fallacies and heinous slander that divides to conquer.
Socrates and Jesus illumined a better way for us to emerge from crass superstition and fulsomely foisted miscomprehensions. All that is needed to save our souls is the raw courage to recognize the false from true, the sinister from the rational.
WILLIAM DAUENHAUER, Willowick, Ohio
Our political system, from its founding forward, has managed to attract some of societies’ most devious, scurrilous, scheming scum and corrupting thieves via the system itself negating “human behavior” and putting that old adage aobut “the fear of God into someone’s psyche” as a deterrent to punitive actions that are so “threatening to one’s life and reputation.” Any sane individual imbued with an iota of moral and ethical fiber would never contemplate any wrongdoing knowing so. How about a contractual arrangement with simple words and dictates citing the fact that should any and all “public service” positions throughout the entire realm of “social governance” (local, state, federal) effecting/affecting eery servant of such throughout efforts defy or deny any citizen, human being their inalienable rights without justified legal reasoned cause they shall be held responsible and dismissed from their authority posthaste.
Life’s longevity, approaching nonagenarian status (2024) and an eclectic life’s involvement has elevated my angst and ire to the point of absolute disgust when I see the aforementioned “societal scum” that brings our nation/world authorities holding power over people’s lives sitting on our Supreme? Court. Supreme is apparently no longer the applicable designation when thievery and misogynistic mindsets prevail over the “wills of We the People” and societal betterment for the many not the “poisoned ideological few” and their avarice greed and abusive thinking within.
Our nation’s divisions (red and blue states) are the acts/actions of our most devious and despicable reprobates from our founding forward in the utilization of that ancient strategy of “divide and conquer” supported with that Machiavellian proposition ‘’the end justifies the means” our nation/world’s very salvation calls for a 21st-century version of our 1800s Era of Enlightenment, where “We the People” exposed the centuries of lies, propaganda and culturally dictated behaviors that were supportive of tyrants and dictators, with their ability to pillage and control the mindsets and behaviors of their populations, just as it is today (2023), only more dangerous and deadly.
The tactics and strategies that have and continue to be utilized in the initiation propagation and perpetuation to deny and defy “other” human beings their inalienable rights and our reversion to the mammalian/tribalistic more violent culture, has our nation resembling a third world nation than the great nation we once were multiple decades ago.(1920-1950+).
FRANK C. ROHRIG, Milford, Conn.
In 2003, 80% of Americans opposed the fake “war” on Iraq. This means 80% of Americans believed Iraqis had a right to defend their territory. Let’s say when the Iraqis did exercise their right to defend against a criminal superpower invasion — used cluster munitions upon the US and British militaries — how well would this have gone over back here on the homefront?
Racism infiltrates everything. Why wouldn’t it infiltrate fake “wars”?
Thanks to White privilege, Whites in Ukraine being attacked by “war” aggression are given every right to defend themselves, even the right to use cluster bombs. Muslims would be seen as evil if they used cluster bombs, no matter what the circumstances.
FRANK ERICKSON, Minneapolis, Minn.
From The Progressive Populist, August 15, 2023
Blog | Current Issue | Back Issues | Essays | Links
About the Progressive Populist | How to Subscribe | How to Contact Us