Sometimes when you read The Guardian -- either the UK edition or the U.S. edition, it's pretty amazing how closely some of these people in England, Ireland, Wales, and Scotland follow our American news and politics. Canada, too -- let's not leave out Canada.
I get the feeling they watch us much more closely than we watch them. Both the actual journalists and Readers who Comment-in -- you know, it isn't only the full-time reporters, lots of these people have opinions and observations.
It seems like they -- look to us, to America, for (I don't want this to sound egotistically patriotic, but --) I feel like they look to us for an example, something to look up to. That may sound like I'm trying to be boastful, but I don't mean it that way. That's just the way it comes across, to me.
Sometimes they are disappointed with us. Sometimes not.
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September 4, 2017 on this blog (post titled "queen of hearts") we re-printed a NYT Reader Comment from a Diana feature story:
------------ [excerpt from Comment] ---------------- It is worth remembering that British monarchs reign but they don't rule. The UK is a Constitutional Monarchy which means that Parliament rules, and as Parliament is elected by the people (with somewhat fairer constituency boundaries than exist in the US) [referring to gerrymandering] they truly rule themselves.
The monarchy is an elegant mechanism for separating the role of Head of State and all its trappings from the political arena. The Monarch is non-political -- so you solve the problem of the ceremonial leader of the country being someone you voted against be it Obama or Trump.... [end, Comment] -----------------
I thought that was an interesting point, and worth focusing on.
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September 27, 2017 Guardian ran a story about the Alabama Senate primary (Moore - Strange...or was that "more strange"...?).
Two Guardian reader comments:
James Hubbard
If elected Moore would take Sessions' place. What difference would that make in the Senate or the nation? Alleged analysts have been reporting right wing upsurges, revivals and waves for many decades.
A closer, less hysterical look at American history would reveal that reactionaries and strident conservatives (people opposed to almost any government program, or the extension of civil rights to almost anyone) have been around since the 1930s.
By 1938, a combination of conservative Republicans and southern (and therefore conservative) Democrats controlled both houses of Congress and maintained control until the 1960s and have regained control periodically ever since.
The notion that, since the New Deal, the United States has been run by liberals or progressives or even centrists, is seriously flawed. Only for brief periods in the early 1930s and the middle 1960s did the Congress expand the government's role in the United States to any significant degree.
To complicate the picture a bit, the only other period that might qualify was Richard Nixon's first term (which may explain in part why contemporary Republicans act as if Nixon never existed).
Ralph Crown
And yet, when you ask people what they actually want, rather than about partisan talking points, they want what progressives want. Things like single-payer health care, a living wage, worker's rights, good schools.
And yet the people who control the government don't provide those things, in fact go out of their way to oppress the general population.
Why would people vote for representatives who don't represent them?
Why do the largest increases in government and deficits take place under conservatives?
Who really benefits?
-------------- [cue Twilight Zone music...]
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In today's UK-edition Guardian, an Editorial appears titled
"The Guardian view on Corbyn's speech: his best yet"
first part of the Editorial: ____________
---------It is remarkable what a difference a single election can make. Even if you lose.
Jeremy Corbyn delivered his third -- and best -- speech as Labour leader to a party giddy with optimism. By reducing the Tories to minority government and increasing Labour's vote by the biggest amount since 1945, Mr. Corbyn has transformed gloom to cheer.
That the Labour leader has done so from the left is a vindication of his brand of "modern, progressive socialist" politics. Mr Corbyn's attachment to socialism is important: since the 1990s Labour leaders have avoided mentioning the word, which they viewed as being synonymous with the then unpopular notions of state control and higher taxes.
They preferred instead to declare their loyalty to democratic socialist "values".
Values are less controversial than policies. Values can be shared, whereas policies divide. However, Mr Corbyn's speech was peppered with plans to intervene in markets where vested interests, represented by the Conservative party, have conspired against the multitude.
The Labour leader wants to distinguish his party from the thinking of the last four decades, arguing for a "new model of economic management to replace the failed dogmas of neoliberalism". His contention is that the party is now electable because of socialism, not despite it.
This is stirring stuff. There's little doubt that Mr Corbyn spoke to the passions of the party, but did he speak to the preoccupations of the wider electorate? His diagnosis is founded on unquestionable truths: that an era of deregulation, privatisation and low taxes for the wealthy came tumbling down with the global financial crisis. Bankers
played a leading role in the crisis, but it's the rest of society that has paid for the crash. This has had profound consequences: most notably class divisions have been politically revived.
"Them and us" economics is rooted in the fact the top 1% of society has recovered all the ground it lost while the average worker faces the longest period of falling real-terms pay since the Napoleonic wars. It's difficult to sell capitalism to those with no capital.
[article to be continued here, tomorrow]
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