Donald Trump and the American Left -- a view from the Left

An essay in the hard-Left journal Counterpunch, here.

First paragraph:

 

Ugh, its like reading a term paper.

Some good points in there but its all theory and conjecture. The author states things as facts but never proves how it is a fact.

Its basically an opinion piece by someone who knows how to write at college level.

I believe I only saw one source in the article.

Still, I agree with much that he said although I might disagree with the extent that class warfare is what propelled Trump to the WH. That being said, I do believe that the working class switching to Trump did play a large factor in his win and I think any reasonable person knows it wasn't Russia.

 

Counterpunch is a journal for the far Left. So things that might need some factual backing, if written for a mass readership, can be taken for granted when you're writing for people who already share many of your assumptions. (Same goes for articles written for Rightist journals.)

 

An enormous number of unsubstantiated and/or long since debunked left-wing myths trotted out as if they were gospel, and an overall tendency to use words that have no bearing on anything (abandonment of class analysis?) does seem to distill the left wing's views on everything political.

One small disagreement would be this writer's idea that the left has abandoned their marxist roots. However that's to be expected since this guy seems to be slightly left of Marx when it comes to seeing everything through the fog of a marxist idiot. The democrats are trying to cover all bases because they can't abandon the normal democrats who think that being a democrat is to care about people.

 

Writes like a college sophomore trying to grind out an extra + from the prof by using unnecessary jargon. Full of half-formed suppositions and flat out inaccuracies such as the origins of the 2008 recession. Identity politics has been the left's SOP at least since Huey Long scared the bejeesus out of FDR with it... then academic Marxists used it to anoint the new proletariat, women and blacks, since the old labor-based proletariat failed them so miserably. Writer apparently wants us to believe that identity politics is a consequence of the Trump Movement. It's not, been around for decades, and used to the left's great advantage during that time.

There are two "classes" in the U.S. The middle and up taxpayers of the nondependent private sector; and the gov-edu-union-contractor-grantee-trial lawyer-MSM Complex and its nontaxpaying intergenerational dependents, wearing anticapitalist clothes to get the exact same old capitalist things most Americans have always wanted... but involuntarily via forced transactions, and in exchange for as little work as possible.

"Leave us alone to conduct our lives voluntarily" is the mantra of one group, "Pay for my capitalist lifestyle... or else" the mantra of the other.

Same old rotten, manipulative, Complex enriching song, different century:



Sound familiar? It should. Some things never change.

 

The left feels threatened by Trump. He's an outsider who doesn't accept status quo thinking that nothing can be accomplished without the approval and assistance from the deep state in Washington.

 

The left feels threatened by Trump its deeper than that. They are terrorized of President Trump for the reason you posted.

 

So Huey Long was Obama before Obama? At least the country had enough sense not to let Long be President.