As the right wing pageantry grinds to its oafish conclusion in Cleveland, with the duopoly’s brethren preparing for its own spectacle in Philadelphia, let us return to important considerations of why neither political party can be trusted.
Donald Trump and the Revolt of the Proles, by Mike Whitney (CounterPunch)
… Economic insecurity. Brexit was about economic insecurity. The Trump phenom is about economic insecurity. The rise of left and right-wing groups across Europe and the US is about economic insecurity. This isn’t about ideology, it’s about reality; the reality of not knowing if you’re ever going to be able to retire or put your kids through school or make your house payment or scrape by until payday. The reality of muddling by in an economy where the prospects for survival look worse with every passing day. That’s the reality that made Trump possible, and that’s what this election is about, economic insecurity.
And:
The world is taking its revenge against elites. When will America’s wake up? by Thomas Frank (The Guardian)
It felt so right, this Democratic infatuation with the triumphant young global professional. So right, and for a certain class of successful Americans, so very, very obvious. What you do with winners like these is you celebrate them. Winners need to win. Winners need to have their loan payments deferred, to have venture capital directed their way by a former president. That all these gestures might actually represent self-serving behavior by an insular elite does not appear to have crossed our leaders’ minds in those complacent days of June 2016.
But by the time of Hillary Clinton’s speech the happy, complacent mood was already beginning to crumble.
