The Oxymoron of “Progressive” Democrat

One of the central themes here at the Ruling Class Preservation Society  is to encourage the masses to loosen their idolatry of the established political system. In that vein, it should not be surprising, then, that we should expose and promote opposition to our of our most faithful and successful servants in Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.

Hillary Clinton absurdly claims she is “a progressive who gets things done”, who will carry on Obama’s “progressive” legacy. She has run her campaign as Obama’s reelection bid. Moreover, many rank and file Democrats aide and abet the party in the preposterous collective  delusion that the President is a “progressive” himself.

Wall Street gives Hillary Clinton millions and that’s fine with Liberal loyalists. How does one demonstrate the obvious to individuals who cannot even process the basic understanding that big business political “contributions” constitute quid pro quo which are not progressive? How to get around this? Below we list a small profile directly linking Obama and Clinton to their decidedly anti-progressive policies. These decisions are their doing and do not include possibilities for the favorite Liberal mantra that “its the Republicans’ fault”.

A note to Obama and Democratic Establishment “Progressives”: for real progressives the items below require no explanation.

Obama says big banks did nothing illegal. Not even Obama’s own attorney general believes that about the 2008 crisis. Attorney General Loretta Lynch said they engaged in “brazenly illegal behavior.” While many analysts agree with the Attorney General (see here, here and here for a sampling, if you don’t know by now), Obama and Clinton apparently agree with likes of Fox News that People Commit Fraud, Not Banks, and Paul Krugman who’s only link on this subject is another opinion piece by himself.

The Libya Fiasco. Proud “progressive” Hillary Clinton, in the tradition of regressive ruling class servants, proclaimed of  Libyan leader Muammar el-Qaddafi “We came, we saw, he died!” The fact that Libya posed no danger to the U.S. or Europe was not a consideration in the decision to — well, massacre thousands of civilians. Of course, predictably, the case for destroying the country and making it a major hub of people smuggling and jihadi activity, was based on falsehoods.  George Bush I claimed Saddam Hussein was worse than Hitler, while  Obama said of Libya, “If we waited one more day, Benghazi . . . could suffer a massacre that would have reverberated across the region and stained the conscience of the world.” Seems like “Progressives” love hyperbole as much as Conservatives.

But the most damning information that Obama and Clinton are following the neocon playbook (aside from the fact that they destroyed a country that posed no “imminent threat” (remember that term?)), comes form General Wesley Clark in 2007. He told a reporter, “I just got this memo from the Secretary of Defense’s office. It says we’re going to attack and destroy the governments in 7 countries in five years – we’re going to start with Iraq, and then we’re going to move to Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Iran.” The fiver-year quickie turned out to be wrong, but the plan, messy as it is, keeps moving along thanks to “progressives”. “They wanted us to destabilize the Middle East, turn it upside down….” recounted the General.

Last time the Preservation Society checked, neocon destabilization programs are not progressive policies. But then again “progressive” Clinton admires Henry Kissinger.

Obama appoints GE’s Jeffrey Immelt Jobs Czar. What confused progressive would ever appoint a big corporate executive to oversee “job creation”? Here’s what progressive and former senator Russ Feingold wrote, “Someone like Immelt, who has helped his company evade taxes on its huge profits — and is now looking to workers to take major pay cuts after his compensation was doubled — should not lead the administration’s effort to create jobs.” In 2014 Immelt said, “most of us saw it our task to outsource manufacturing, to move it to low-cost countries.” A real progressive hero.

Obama appoints Cat Food Commission. Obama’s Deficit Commission was supposedly intended to find ways to achieve “fiscal sustainability”. Why then would he pick for co-chair former Republican Senator Alan Simpson who said social security is “a milk cow with 310 million tits” — unless that is the progressive way to refer to Social Security? Indeed, the Commission’s central mandate was cuts to Social Security, among others. Many seniors might find cat food a cheaper option when they go shopping for groceries.

Another appointee was Ann Fudge, who “became chair and CEO of Young & Rubicam Advertising, making her the first black woman to head a major American advertising firm” according to American Association of University Women. Liberals love “breaking glass ceilings”. About the Cat Food Commission, Ms. Fudge said, “I deeply support what we’re trying to do in terms of tax reform. From a business standpoint, we have been hamstrung by the tax laws that we currently have in place relative to our global competitors.” Who doesn’t know that “tax reform” is “progressive” code for tax cuts for the rich and big corporations?

Obama’s Drone Program. An anonymous source leaked documents on the program to The Intercept. He told Jeremy Scahill, “This outrageous explosion of watchlisting — of monitoring people and racking and stacking them on lists, assigning them numbers, assigning them ‘baseball cards,’ assigning them death sentences without notice, on a worldwide battlefield — it was, from the very first instance, wrong”. Progressive values no doubt. In 2012, according to the New York Times the “progressive” president and his “progressive” Drone policy aggravated his ambassador to Pakistan, Cameron P. Munter. He “complained to colleagues that the C.I.A.’s strikes drive American policy there, saying “he didn’t realize his main job was to kill people,” a colleague said.

 Professor Juan Cole said, “Death by drone is inherently lawless. There is no constitutional or legal framework within which the US government can blow people away at will.” Do “Progressives” fight “terrorism” with terrorism?

The “progressive” Democrat will object. It is terrible, they will say, but Obama has to make tough choices in the War on Terrorism. However, many progressives question the War on Terrorism in the first place, but lets put that aside. They would undoubtedly mention the small detail that the drone assassinations don’t work. In 2009, leaked documents admitted “the potential negative effect of HLT [High Level Targets] operations,” the report states, “include increasing the level of insurgent support […], strengthening an armed group’s bonds with the population, radicalizing an insurgent group’s remaining leaders, creating a vacuum into which more radical groups can enter, and escalating or de-escalating a conflict in ways that favor the insurgents.” Since then we have witnessed the spectacular success of non-state terrorists against a coalition of massive American and European (impotent?) power.

But it is much worse than that. The “progressive” administration has no idea who they are killing. As Professor Juan Cole estimates “as many as a fourth of those killed by US drone assassinations are non-combatants. To be fair, what “progressive” has the time to distinguish weddings and funerals from terrorists?

Obama proposes cutting off clean water funding. One would think a progressive would continue clean water funding as an essential — especially in the aftermath of Flint  — but not this “progressive”.

We encourage individuals to challenge their challenged Liberal and Democratic friends on these points. If they can’t get past even a few of them how can they claim they and their leaders are progressive?

Perhaps we may refer to this species of “progressive” as the “compassionate progressive“.