老狐狸的假義憤

老狐狸的假義憤

陳真

2022. 07. 30.

桑德斯 (Bernie Sanders) 毫無疑問是美國政壇上最虛偽無恥的政客之一，搞不好連 “之一” 都沒有；滿口都是左派，都是 (社會)主義，心裏卻全是生意。他很像早年的阿扁，包攬所有所謂進步理想，關懷弱勢，關心窮人，福國利民什麼的，做為一種政治包裝，但是所作所為卻完全是另一回事。

把他比擬為阿扁，對阿扁其實是一種侮辱，因為他比阿扁還壞，比阿扁還更加懂得操弄口舌，玩概念，玩階級，玩左右，玩女權，玩氣候問題，玩普世價值，什麼都玩，但他卻紮紮實實是美國最為腐敗的政治集團的一份子。

大家知道我對妖女希拉蕊及其所代表的勢力素有強烈惡評，但是，正所謂 “惡紫之奪朱”，我對那些真小人的敬意，肯定還遠遠高於像桑德斯這種無恥透頂的偽君子。以其政治屬性來說，與其說他像阿扁，不如說他更像人渣黨的 “新潮流”，同時也包括島內那些滿口仁義道德的綠營側翼，諸如范什麼雲或屎袋力量等等這些人，販賣所謂 “進步理想”，甚至販賣 “左派” 這樣一種政治商品。

至於兩岸關係，桑德斯肯定也是美國歷史上把話講得最為極端、最為 “義憤” 的一位總統候選人。2020年，這老狐狸出來競選民主黨總統候選人提名，在一種比賽誰最反中的選舉氛圍下，老狐狸講得最激烈。他說，中共如果膽敢出兵台灣，美國將會向全世界保證，絕對會介入。他還對 “絕對” 一詞做了一番義正嚴辭的強調。

後來，一些媒體把他的所謂 “介入台海衝突” 解釋為 “絕對會向中國開戰”，他也不曾否認。他很懂得在什麼場合什麼情境下做出何種表態。可是，這混蛋不是長年以來標榜對外不干涉主義嗎？現在為了騙選票，居然把兩岸統一講成侵略，講得如喪考妣。

這傢伙很會表演 “義憤”，滿口仁義道德，滿口窮苦階級，但是，在所有議題上，他所講的，跟他所做的，幾乎完全相反；他經常會做一些無關痛癢的假表態、假義憤來騙選票，但其真正屬性與作為卻完全是美國最為腐敗的主流政治勢力的一份子。

底下有篇WSWS最近的文章，不妨看看，講的就是這老狐狸的假義憤。Noam Chomsky是他的支持者。這其實也看得出 Chomsky在政治判斷上的某種天真以及某種西方本位的基本立場。

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https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2022/07/19/ydvn-j19.html

Senator Sanders rediscovers his faux outrage

Patrick Martin

18 July 2022

With his two bids for the Democratic presidential nomination in the rearview mirror, Senator Bernie Sanders has largely dropped his campaign posture of raging at the “billionaire class,” in favor of shilling for them. Over the past two years he has served as a leading advocate of the policies of the Biden administration and the congressional Democratic Party leadership.

Sanders on ABC’s This Week [Photo by ABC News]
Sanders has become a regular on the Sunday morning television interview programs, where he can usually be counted on to deliver a soporific restatement of the latest press releases from the White House or Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer, long known as the “senator from Wall Street.”

Last weekend, however, was an exception to this rule, as the erstwhile “democratic socialist” suddenly rediscovered the evils of big money dominating the US political system and lashed out against Democratic Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia. Given his close ties with the coal, oil and gas industries, which he represents and even personifies, since his family’s million-dollar fortune is based entirely on coal industry holdings, Manchin’s identifier should be (D-fossil fuels) rather than (D-WV).

Appearing Sunday on ABC’s This Week, Sanders delivered a tirade against Manchin after the right-wing Democrat delivered the coup de grâce to Biden’s last pretense of significant action on climate change and on taxing the wealthy, among the most popular items in the Democratic Party program on which he ran in the 2020 election.

Manchin reneged after months of protracted negotiations with Schumer and the White House on reviving Biden’s “Build Back Better” legislation in some scaled-back version, limited to improvements in subsidies for those receiving Medicaid, authorizing Medicare and Medicaid to negotiate lower drug prices and taking some minimal actions on reducing fossil fuel emissions, the main contributor to climate change.

“Scaled back” is actually something of a misnomer, like calling a mud puddle a scaled-back version of a swimming pool. Even that comparison would grossly exaggerate the significance of Biden’s original plan: perhaps the proposed Manchin-Biden deal was a spoonful of sludge compared to a bucketful of the same noxious material.

In any case, efforts by Sanders and media apologists like Leah Stokes in today’s New York Times to portray the potential Manchin-Biden climate deal as the last chance for humanity to save the planet are ludicrous. There is no solution to the dire consequences of climate change without the complete restructuring of the world economy and the abolition of capitalism and the nation-state system, which requires the mobilization of the international working class on the basis of socialist revolution.

Sanders began his appearance on ABC with an extremely mild criticism of Biden for his visit to Saudi Arabia and his notorious fist-bump encounter with Saudi ruler Mohammed bin Salman. Asked if a President Sanders would have made the trip, he replied, “I don’t think so. You have the leader of that country who is involved in the murder of a Washington Post journalist. I don’t think that that type of government should be rewarded with a visit by the president of the United States.”

There has been a fair amount of hyperventilating over this action by the left wing of the Democratic Party, not because they actually oppose the foreign policy of the Biden administration, but because they feel the pretense of outraged disappointment is needed to preserve their “antiwar” pretensions and bamboozle the American public.

These “lefts” support the enormous US military backing for Ukraine, a regime which celebrates the Nazi accomplice and mass murderer Stepan Bandera as a national hero, and do not object to Biden’s friendly relations with such reactionaries and participants in mass killing as Indian President Narendra Modi, Egyptian dictator Abdel Fattah al-Sisi or the other bloodstained oil sheiks Biden mingled with during his trip to Jeddah.

As for attacks on journalists, Sanders made no objection to Biden meeting with the Israeli government that recently murdered Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, and did not mention the Biden administration’s efforts, continuing the campaign of Obama and Trump, to drag Julian Assange of WikiLeaks into a US court to face espionage charges carrying 175 years in a maximum security prison.

Sanders then began venting faux outrage against corporate America profiting from the pandemic. The economy was doing poorly for the working class, he said, “But we should also recognize the economy is doing extraordinarily well for the people on top, for the billionaires who have seen a $2 trillion increase in their wealth during this pandemic while a million Americans died.”

Host Martha Raddatz was not so rude as to point out that Biden, Schumer and Sanders were among those setting the policies that enriched the billionaires at the expense of the working class. She is, after all, one of the millionaires who have benefited from this process. She was happy to move the discussion to the subject of the congressional infighting over Biden’s proposed legislation, and Sanders erupted against Manchin, declaring, “He has sabotaged the president’s agenda.”

He claimed to have warned Biden and Schumer against negotiating with Manchin, saying, “the problem was that we continue to talk to Manchin like he was serious. He was not. This is a guy who is a major recipient of fossil fuel money, a guy who has received campaign contributions from 25 Republican billionaires.” Manchin was representing “the very wealthiest people in this country, not working families in West Virginia or America.”

While Manchin is a particularly egregious case, the same class characterization applies to the entire Democratic Party. Senator Schumer represents the interests of Wall Street, not of the poor and working people of New York. The same is true of every Democratic senator and representative in Congress, and, for that matter, it applies to Senator Sanders too.

Every member of Congress, without exception, defends the capitalist system, which is based on the economic and political dictatorship of a tiny class of capitalists, who own and control the means of production and direct the operations of the entire society. The two-party system, the military-intelligence apparatus and the mainstream media are the principal means through which this financial aristocracy dominates.

Sanders concluded his appearance by declaring climate change to be “an existential threat to humanity,” and calling for a vote for the Democrats in November: “what this election must be about is whether or not we’re going to vote for candidates who will have the guts to stand up for working people, stand up for the planet and have the courage to take on the billionaire class who dominates our economy and our political life.”

But it was candidate Joe Biden, appearing at a Manhattan fundraiser in 2019, who notoriously reassured his audience of multimillionaires that they should not fear a Biden presidency, because “no one’s standard of living would change, nothing would fundamentally change.”

Sanders had the gall, at an earlier appearance Friday on the SiriusXM program of left-liberal Dean Obeidallah, to say, “Manchin is not particularly concerned about President Biden succeeding. He’s not particularly concerned about the needs of working people.”

This identification of the Democratic administration and the needs of working people is the biggest lie of American capitalist politics. Neither the Republican Party nor the Democratic Party represents or fights for the interests of the working class. Whatever their tactical differences and bitter struggles over positions of power and influence, both parties respond to the dictates of the financial oligarchy.

In freeing itself from the political stranglehold of the Democratic Party, the working class must understand the role of demagogues like Sanders, and his pseudo-left supporters in organizations like the Democratic Socialists of America, who seek to provide a “left” screen for an utterly right-wing party of imperialist war and corporate domination.