The Biden agenda, which represents the beginnings of a significant break from neoliberalism – an ideology and practice that dominated the country’s political, economic, and ideological life for nearly 4 decades – should command the attention and receive the full support of the expansive coalition that elected Biden last year. The main task of this coalition, therefore, isn’t to “critique” or “push” or or “fine tune” the many positive legislative initiatives of the administration or to passively observe the clash that is taking place between the administration and Congressional Democrats on the one hand and Congressional Republicans on the other. Quite the contrary. Practical engagement in support of Biden’s domestic agenda should be the watchword.

Don’t think that the far flung, right wing authoritarian coalition is passively observing what is transpiring in the nation’s capital. From the right wing evangelicals to the right wing extremist media, they understand on a very practical level that the immediate imperative is to defeat – no crush – Biden’s agenda. Everything else in their view pales in comparison. Isn’t a similar urgency and practicality necessary on our side?”

I would say the sprawling coalition – and progressive and left thinking people in the first place – should give unstinting support to the Biden administration’s agenda – infrastructure, voting rights, etc. The future of the country and the outcome of the midterm elections turn on the administration’s success in enacting its agenda this year and next. And the support should be active, demonstrative and neighbor to neighbor.

White workers accrue skin privileges in the form of higher wages and salaries, superior health care, access to quality schools and safer neighborhoods, promising job opportunities and promotions, longer life expectancy, and more compared to their brothers and sisters of color. I’m hardly the first one to make this observation in recent years. A legion of commentators have made the same point far better than me. But what goes unmentioned in many instances is the other side of this dialectic. Which is that neither racism nor white skin privileges, which are a product of racism, are an unalloyed blessing for white workers – politically, economically, culturally or morally.

Juneteenth – A Day of Celebration, Remembrance, and Recommitment

Yesterday Susan Collins (R-ME) said: “S. 1 would take away the rights of people in each of the 50 states to determine which election rules work best for their citizens.” But what if states enact discriminatory, anti-democratic legislation that suppresses the vote? Should the federal government and Congress sit idly by, doing nothing to right the wrong? Nothing to protect democracy and voting rights?

Collins, not surprisingly, avoided these questions. Not out of ignorance though. Cynicism doesn’t explain it either. That lets her off the hook too easily. Words like crassly anti-democratic, racist, anti-working class, and demagogic for me anyway, better capture her position and mental makeup.

It goes without saying that the position of rest of her Republican colleagues mirrors hers. And like her, they do this shamelessly, even righteously. So much so that is doesn’t strain the ears to hear echoes of the apologists of slavery in the 1850s and the Southern Redeemers in the 1870s.