WEEKENDER PREVIEW: The Senate and Neoliberalism in Crisis
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Nick Hauselman is out of town, so Jared Yates Sexton flies solo in this Weekender episode, going deeper into Joe Manchin and Krysten Sinema's opposition in the Senate, detailing the history of neoliberalism and how its crisis is holding us all hostage, and checking in on some truly horrendous exploitation in Vietnam.
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Hey everybody, welcome to the weekender edition of the McCrick Podcast.
I'm here at Yates Sexton flying solo this week.
Tricky Nicky Halseman is out roaming the highways and byways of the great American landscape.
We miss him terribly.
We're ready for him to be back next week.
In the meantime, you've got me.
And I'm really happy to be doing this.
Of course, this is our patron exclusive episode every week.
We thank you for your support.
If you are one of our wonderful listeners who are listening to the preview of this, this is a perfect time to jump on board.
This episode today, I'm going to go in depth on a couple of things.
We're going to learn a little bit about The current crisis both in Congress, but also around the world.
And, you know, get some real definitive ideas of exactly how we've arrived here and what we're dealing with.
We're going to go way, way deep into the weeds in a way that our media is completely and utterly allergic to.
So if you haven't already, go over to patreon.com slash muckrake podcast.
You're going to want to hear this episode.
So, to begin, we're going to read an article in a second together that is just one of these, I don't know, it's one of these articles that floats up and no one really pays attention to.
It's technically a business article from the New York Times, which means that it's basically written by people with business interests, capitalists.
And through this, we're going to talk about this current era of neoliberalism, hyper capitalism, and how that sort of defines not only the era that we're in, but also the crisis that we're facing.
And, you know, right now, of course, the major story in political circles is what is going on in Congress, where Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, two Democratic senators, have completely hijacked an agenda that, to be honest, is Not even that liberal.
It's not leftist at all.
It is common sense investment.
It is basically as moderate as it gets.
And just a reminder that for decades now, investment in human projects like infrastructure, education, healthcare, just the general well-being of Americans,
has not only been ignored, but has been absolutely tirelessly beaten down, destroyed, intentionally hammered, to the point where America is literally decades behind the other industrialized nations of the world.
You know, it would almost be laughable if it wasn't so infuriating.
And in this case, what we're watching is an attempt by a center left president to start the process of investing in human projects that have been left alone for decades, intentionally and relentlessly.
And that agenda is being held up by two senators, one of whom, Joe Manchin, is incredibly wealthy.
His wealth depends on fossil fuels.
On top of that, he is completely and utterly owned by energy companies around this country to the point where they don't even hide it anymore.
It's actually sort of a badge of honor that they own Joe Manchin to the point that they do.
Let's get a sip of coffee.
This is The Weekender after all.
We're settling in.
We're settling in for an experience here.
For a little bit of learning.
We gotta get the coffee going.
And then with Kyrsten Sinema, uh, you have what has been described as an enigma by our press, which completely and utterly ignores the fact that as a first term Senator, Sinema has which completely and utterly ignores the fact that as a first term Senator, Sinema has more or less hung a sign on her
Uh, yesterday it came out that as she held this agenda hostage, uh, she fundraised off of it because of course she did.
That's the environment that we're in.
That's how this stuff works is we have representatives at this point who immediately, and in order to run for these offices, first and foremost, have to be either incredibly wealthy or connected to the donor class, which means that the people that we get in office are either wealthy or products of the donor system.
That's one of the foremost problems that we have in our political ecosystem, is that only the wealthy and the connected can run for office anymore.
for.
And I've talked about this in the past I thought very very briefly about running for Congress and almost immediately as I did that I discovered that it was not a situation where Anybody coming from a grassroots position was really in a in a position to win unless you spent literally all of your time fundraising which is what we've reduced these positions to and
It is a perpetual re-election machine.
The moment that you get elected, you know, you go out, you give a little speech, you thank your supporters and your family, and then you immediately start fundraising for the next campaign.
That system doesn't work.
That system leads to corruption.
That system leads to a legislative body in which the representatives who have been elected Do not serve their constituents, but they serve a donor class or a special interest class.
Kyrsten Sinema is probably the most overt symbol of how broken this system is that we've seen in a very long time.
And this entire situation with Biden's agenda being held up by, by her and Manchin is incredibly indicative of what has been happening here.
Now, I've talked in previous Substack posts, I've talked a little bit about it on the podcast, but this, what we're watching with Manchin and Sinema and their opposition to Biden's agenda is sort of a crossroads moment.
And to understand what is happening here and how we've arrived at this moment, and I have to tell you, I am as frustrated and as infuriated as you are.
I mean, as this is happening, if it's not bad enough that this agenda has been held up, which also makes it incredibly possible that Republicans will win back power in the midterms and possibly even the presidency in 2024, which is in and of itself an incredible crisis in waiting.
All of this agenda nonsense has now been coupled with the possibility of a governmental default because the Republican Party is playing chicken with the Democrats who are incapable of getting their house in order.
So we're watching the possible, you know, cratering of the American economy.
And I talked about this a little bit when Pete Dominick was on on Tuesday.
You know, they really don't care.
If this whole thing melts down, they'll figure it out.
They're wealthy, they're connected, and you know, the government will be there to make it right.
Because that's what the government invests in.
They take our money, our tax money, our wealth, our treasure, and instead of reflecting it back into giant social projects, or even modest social projects that are meant to help us,
The government then invests either in a defense state which is run by a military-industrial complex and Isn't about at all defending us because they're incapable of defending us as September 11th 2001 showed us and As we've had I don't know one incident after another that shows that they are completely incapable of actually offering us anything approaching protection
Instead, they take our money and they hand it over to these research and manufacturing groups.
There's a big, giant, shadow society of military-industrial complex companies and individuals who have gotten unbelievably wealthy off of all of this.
Now, they're not afraid to invest in that stuff.
We're going to have a military budget that is not only the top of the world, but it's more than several of our competitors combined.
And that's not by accident.
And it doesn't actually make us safer.
What it's about is creating an apparatus by which the state or the empire can operate all around the world in dozens of countries, whether in declared wars or in secret operations, in order to secure footholds for both political power, but also resources in order to create goods, in order to manufacture things and keep the commerce rolling.
So our government either invests in that and runs up incredible deficits, and you'll notice that they never even for a moment argue over these deficits.
There's occasionally a Democrat or an Independent over here that will say, you know what, we need to start trimming the defense budget.
There's no reason for it to be like this.
But they're the lone calls for it.
So the government has no problem investing in the military-industrial complex.
But they also have no problem bailing out wealthy people, which is what we've seen happen now for the past few decades.
Going back, of course, to 2008, which was the most egregious example of this, in which the government, facing a total economic meltdown, made the financial sector whole again.
It made sure that the people who melted down the economy were able to recoup their losses.
And you know, there's a little bit of debate about that, but not much.
And so if the economy melts down again, eh, they'll figure it out.
They'll make the wealthy whole again.
And that's what we've seen going back to the Great Depression, which is a moment, of course, where excess greed and the overheating of the economy led to the entire thing melting down.
While normal Americans, ones who, you know, weren't investors, who weren't capitalists, who weren't wealthy and affluent, they dealt with the meltdown by standing in soup lines, bread lines, begging for money, getting thrown out of their houses, going through a literal financial apocalypse.
But the wealthy, they persevered.
Because these meltdowns have been happening over and over and over again.
Because this entire system is unstable.
The government is there to continue to invest in these things to make sure that the economy continues and that the wealthy are made whole and that our military and all of our might is there to go all around the world and set up a financial system that is tuned to the benefit of America's wealthy class.
Now, Mansion and Cinema, and people like them, and I've said this before, they are only the most public figures in this situation.
Manchin and Sinema are part of the political class that are there to run interference and keep the government from ever actually helping normal, everyday Americans.
Mitch McConnell is, of course, the foremost example of this, and his legacy will always be the breaking of Congress and making it to where the only thing that Congress is able to do is pass tax cuts for the wealthy and the powerful.
Mansion and cinema are sort of a byproduct of a changing political climate.
They are there as America moves further left.
And this has been a consequence of the past few years, going back to 2008, but also the election of Trump, and also the problematic means by which our society works now.
People are starting to read the writing on the wall, because it's very obvious that this system, this hyper-capitalistic neoliberal system that we're going to talk about in a minute, it doesn't work.
It's failed.
And it's always failed, but it's coming to a head.
The consequences of that system are coming to a head in a way that people can't even live in denial of anymore.
And so as the Republican Party has become more and more isolated as the party of white supremacy and white interest, They have narrowed their appeal.
They've become historically unpopular.
Their electoral viability has fallen off.
And as that has happened, as the Republican Party has moved further and further right on the political spectrum towards authoritarianism and fascism, the Democratic Party's umbrella has had to grow.
And as it's grown, things have moved left.
The American public doesn't care about old bullshit communist arguments.
They want their lives to feel better.
They look at how things are working and they understand they don't have the same opportunities that were promised to past generations.
We understand that the American Dream is a joke.
We don't have faith in it anymore because it never deserved our faith in the first place.
It was a mythology.
It was a way of mobilizing us.
It was a way of saving us and keeping us from rising up and demanding more.
Because if the American Dream was real, well, if you were competent, then you would always be able to rise up.
But it's not real.
And we know that.
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