Something for the weekend: Jan 22nd 2021
Three quotations to stir your thinking
Here are three quotations I copied into my notes today, each pertinent to this moment. Something to ponder over the weekend.
The first is from an article by Paul Street on Counterpunch. The subject of the article is the false assumption that the US is, in any way, a democracy. This obviously challenges the received wisdom that the US is both a shining example of democracy and that the mission of this country that believes in its own exceptionalism is to export democracy into the dark corners of the world. Any examination of the history of US foreign policy (or should that be foreign intervention) in the decades since the Second World War quickly finds that the phrase ‘export democracy’ should be read as ‘destroy democracy’.
[The US] is a capitalist country, to say the least. Capitalism and democracy, falsely and absurdly conflated with each other in American ideology, are not merely different things. They are fundamentally opposed to one another, for an ever-present democracy-cancelling tendency towards the greater concentration of wealth in fewer hands is a central characteristic of capitalism…
My second quotation comes from the latest bulletin from the Media Lens team. The bulletin has illuminating things to say on topics such as…
