The Democratic Party is the Face of the Global Warfare and Corporate Welfare State

At TruthDig, Chris Hedges argues that "liberals are useless" and makes the case against any progressive alliance with the Democratic Party:

Liberals are a useless lot. They talk about peace and do nothing to challenge our permanent war economy. They claim to support the working class, and vote for candidates that glibly defend the North American Free Trade Agreement. They insist they believe in welfare, the right to organize, universal health care and a host of other socially progressive causes, and will not risk stepping out of the mainstream to fight for them . . .

I am not disappointed in Obama. I don’t feel betrayed. I don’t wonder when he is going to be Obama. I did not vote for the man. I vote socialist, which in my case meant Ralph Nader, but could have meant Cynthia McKinney. How can an organization with the oxymoronic title Progressives for Obama even exist? Liberal groups like these make political satire obsolete. Obama was and is a brand. He is a product of the Chicago political machine . . .

Anyone who says he or she cares about the working class in this country should have walked out on the Democratic Party in 1994 with the passage of NAFTA. And it has only been downhill since. If welfare reform, the 1999 Financial Services Modernization Act, which gutted the 1933 Glass-Steagall Act—designed to prevent the kind of banking crisis we are now undergoing—and the craven decision by the Democratic Congress to continue to fund and expand our imperial wars were not enough to make you revolt, how about the refusal to restore habeas corpus, end torture in our offshore penal colonies, abolish George W. Bush’s secrecy laws or halt the warrantless wiretapping and monitoring of American citizens? The imperial projects and the corporate state have not altered under Obama. The state kills as ruthlessly and indiscriminately in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan as it did under Bush. It steals from the U.S. treasury as rapaciously to enrich the corporate elite. It, too, bows before the conservative Israel lobby, refuses to enact serious environmental or health care reform, regulate Wall Street, end our relationship with private mercenary contractors or stop handing obscene sums of money, some $1 trillion a year, to the military and arms industry. At what point do we stop being a doormat? At what point do we fight back?

Naturally, partisans of the Democratic Party and the duopoly system of government do not look kindly upon principled left-wing criticism of their continuing support for the ruling parties and the corresponding global warfare and corporate welfare state. At firedoglake, Blue Texan is unable to marshal anything other than the old lesser-of-two-evils argument in favor of Obama, demonstrating the absolute moral bankruptcy of establishmentarian liberal progressivism:

Does Hedges really believe the country would look no different today if the Supreme Court hadn’t appointed Bush in 2000? Because I think he’s wrong. Similarly, does anyone think John McCain would have overturned the Bush policy on stem cells, acknowledged the seriousness of climate change, spent a huge amount of political capital trying to reform health care, reversed Bush’s policies on labor, on the environment, or endangered species? Does anyone think John McCain would’ve nominated Sonia Sotomayor for the Supreme Court or signed the stimulus bill?

Rather than waste time engaging Blue Texan directly, perhaps it makes more sense simply to lay bare the hypocrisy of liberal Democratic lesser-evilism. At Boiling Frogs, Sibel Edmonds points out:

Many referred to the previous administration’s figureheads as evil; many of us would find that aptly put and easily justified. After all, they sanctioned torture practices, extraordinary rendition, and world-wide assassinations; they took away civil liberties and put in place police practices ironically named the Patriot Act; they increased secrecy and decreased (ceased) accountability; they established untouchability and granted themselves immunity fit for kings, such as the State Secrets Privilege invocations; they spied on and illegally wiretapped Americans with no cause or oversight; they lied and engaged in preemptive wars . . .

Do we all agree with the evilness of all the practices mentioned above? Then, let’s be honest with ourselves, and let’s objectively plug in the same standards to the man who was marketed and sold to us by the establishment and its media tentacles as the ‘candidate of change, for change’:

The Obama Administration has agreed with and continued the Bush Administration’s illegal domestic wiretap practices. They have granted immunity to all involved in these unconstitutional and police state practices.

The Obama Administration has granted immunity to all criminals who’ve been engaged in illegal renditions and torture practices.

The Obama Administration has continued the previous administration’s secrecy practices, including the invocation of State Secrets Privilege, and the Executive Branch’s immunity from judicial oversight.

The Obama Administration has condoned and promoted the previous administration’s assault on American’s liberties through the Patriot Act.

The Obama Administration has fought against any rights for national security whistleblowers and blocked the passage of legislation attempting to grant protections to those who expose Executive branch criminality, waste, and abuse . . .

Last year, during the final stages of the primaries and the elections, I stood almost alone. I knew candidate Obama’s track record, which told me pretty much all I needed to know; that there weren’t going to be any changes, if not those for the worse . . . I did not waste my vote on Obama or McCain.

There is no place for opponents of the global warfare and corporate welfare state inside either of the ruling parties because there is no opposition to the two-party state inside the two-party state. In related news, the Green Party has announced an "emergency" anti-war rally for this Saturday in Lafayette Park to oppose the Democrats' escalation of the war in central Asia, stating, "we promise intensified opposition, with anti-war candidates prepared to defeat his war policy."