My Response to "Foreign Policy" Article on why Biden needs to be a Nationalist, and Unify the Nation



"Foreign  Policy" ran an important article, which was forwarded to me by a friend. I wrote the following in response, then thought it would be worthwhile sharing. Here is a link to the article:

https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/09/25/biden-needs-to-play-the-nationalism-card-right-now/

This idea I agree with wholeheartedly.  National unity is going to be his most important task. The question is, what will he be unifying the country around? Himself and Kamala Harris? The current Democratic Party leadership? The track record of Barack Obama? These things will not do it alone. 

For the answer, I would go back to FDR, (who my wife Martha is putting together a report on as we speak). FDR came to office and declared the Great Depression to be like our enemy in War. He sought to mobilize us to defeat it like we would a foreign enemy. He wasn't being metaphorical, as he knew who caused the Depression, and how. JP Morgan, Andrew Mellon, the robber barons of Wall Street, pulling the strings on an ideologically blind Herbert Hoover. They built up a Stock Bubble which collapsed, and then tried to bail it out, while neglecting the people they impoverished and throwing them to the mercy of the Free Market. 


Our "Enemy" today is the " "Pandemic" . We will not win that war with a Vaccine alone. We were vulnerable to it because of a 50 year long physical economic decline, due to the  Free Market, deregulation driven post-industrial society transition to information and entertainment, along with asset stripping with de-emphasis on renewable energy such as Nuclear power.


Additionally, we moved toward Consumerism, the downsizing of manufacturing and outsourcing, exploiting cheap labor in poor countries  (putting the nice name "globalization" on the old system of Colonialism) and became reliant on cheap imports. We saw the takeover of American agriculture by food cartels owned by Fast Food Empires, destroying our family farmers and our nutritional standards. That, combined with the dismantling of our Hospital systems since Nixon's HMO Act, with the accelerated looting by private equity companies and insurance companies of our health care system. 

And not least, we saw the obscene explosion of new forms of financial speculative commodities, from Junk Bonds, Derivatives, Mortgage Backed Securities, Credit Default Swaps to LBOs.  Etc.


 The Coronavirus pandemic is our enemy, and it is at the same time the deadliest symptom of the disease known as Free Market Economics, which stripped our national public health defenses leaving us open to this pandemic, and the future pandemics which certainly will arise. 


Yes, Biden must unify the Nation, but it has to be around an emergency economic mobilization to rebuild the physical economic, public health, Agro-Industrial, scientific and educational potential of our Nation and our people. We have to put a leash on finance, banking, and speculation, using FDR's methods. We need to unify around a concrete program to rebuild the Nation, and Biden has to build a movement for that, in the same way FDR allied with the Labor movement to launch the New Deal.


Without these things, Biden's campaign for National Unity will just be cheerleading, and will fail. He has to start the healing by helping the people become economically whole, not through give aways, handouts, or make work, but to enlist Americans in a War against the Pandemic and the Depression it and Trump have caused. That is how unity will happen.

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