 If you are a consumer of independent news and the first place you should be going to is Consortium News and please do try to support them when you can. It doesn't have its articles behind a paywall. It's free for everyone. It's one of the best news sites out there and it's been in the business of independent journalism and adversarial independent journalism for over two decades. I hope that with the public's continuing support of Consortium News it will continue for a very long time to come. Thank you so much. Welcome to CN Live, Season 2, Episode 21, A Terrible Choice. I'm Joe Laurier, Editor-in-Chief of Consortium News. And I'm Elizabeth Loss. It seems every four years we hear that this is the most crucial presidential election in U.S. history. Either this is just hyperbole or it is a sign of the deepening crises of American political and social life. National crisis is that successive elections seem unable to solve. What is new about this election is that it's taking place in an ever-worsening pandemic which has become the number one issue in this campaign. What has remained the same is that both major candidates are offering few solutions to the widening inequality, lack of national health insurance, and wasted billions of dollars on perpetual war. In 2016 the Center-Right Democratic Party ignored these issues, paving the way for Donald Trump's brand of right-wing popularism. The Democrats making the same mistake this time around. Joining us to discuss the U.S. presidential election are two foreign presidential candidates, Ex-Senator Mike Ravel, who are waiting to join the program. He was a candidate in the Democratic primaries of 2008 and 2020, and Dr. Jill Stein, the two-time Green Party presidential hopeful. Former New York Times Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and host of On Contact. Chris Hedgers and economist Rick Wolf are also here to join the discussion. Welcome to all of you. Let me begin by asking each of you a very broad question. Even if this isn't the most crucial election in U.S. history, what is at stake on Tuesday? Jill, let me start with you. You know, I think you kind of summarized it. It's a really terrible choice, and I don't think we have a win either way. You know, I think many progressives take the view that Trump is a particular danger and a particular fascist who's driving, you know, a very scary moment, extremely scary moment. And he, you know, I think it's undeniable. He's very inflammatory, and incites kind of the worst racism, potential violence. He's dogwisling to militias. You know, it's scary. And in that way, they are different, in my view. But in terms of the policies and the needs of the American people, the economy, the incredible effects of COVID on our health and on jobs and, you know, the whole nine yards, the housing tsunami that's around the corner, the food insecurity that is, you know, at the door for some 52 million people. And this is on top of an economy where half of Americans were in or near poverty to start with, you know. So this is, to my mind, this is end stage empire that we are looking at. COVID didn't happen entirely by accident. You know, it's become the crisis that it is because of the systematic dismantling of our health care system. And in your introduction, Joe, you mentioned that the parties had neglected the critical issues before us. They're not just neglecting it. You know, they are suppressing they had candidates who Bernie Sanders at least who addressed the issues to some extent to a fairly large extent. And he was purposefully sabotaged for the second time. And that's not new either. You know, I just think the consequences are far more severe because empire is at an end stage right now. And I think these resurgence of fascism now is part of that as well, the economic devastation of working people in the middle class, which took place, you know, particularly under the Obama administration, you know, so the choices between a neo fascist or a representative of the neoliberalism that that drove us to neo fascism, and that really drove that that development. So it's kind of a no win situation. Maybe there's one loss, which is worse than the other, but it's not a win for the American people. And I think it's really important that people not be intimidated into silence and into embracing the parties of war on Wall Street. And I think that in throwing off the, you know, the stranglehold of fascism in the White House, we have to be careful that we're not embracing these parties of empire that will just continue this odd infinitum until there is no recourse we have to stand up. And I just want to briefly say, think of Chile and think of Bolivia and what just happened in the past week, you know, that's where our mindset needs to be that we need to vote, but we also need to revolt. Chris, what is at stake on Tuesday in your view? Who's going to manage the empire and, you know, Biden has three times the money of Trump because the architects and managers of empire quite correctly see Trump as an embarrassment and they want him removed. The donor class of the Democratic Party, Lloyd, Blankfein and others made it very clear that if Sanders was the nominee, they were going to vote for Trump. They don't like Trump. They prefer Biden, but they can live with Trump. So this whole mantra of the least worst only applies to you and me and people like us. It doesn't apply to the ruling elites. And of course, in many ways, the Obama administration laid the groundwork for Trump. Obama had a mandate after the 2008 crash, global financial meltdown, which he turned and served to the interests of Wall Street. As Cornel West says, he was a black mascot for Wall Street. We're headed for a tremendous crisis, not only because if Biden wins Trump and his supporters will claim that the elections were fraudulent and rigged, I think we will see a definite uptick in the kind of very frightening militia violence that almost took the lives of the governors of Michigan and Virginia. But Americans who already, as Jill pointed out, half the country living in poverty or near poverty and already living under great distress because of the COVID pandemic and the fallout are about to get hit. Now, first of all, the pandemic has spiraled out of control. 300,000 Americans, it is estimated will be dead by the end of this year. That figure is expected to rise to 400,000 by January. The chronic underemployment and unemployment in real figures is probably close to 20%. That's when you count people who have been erased from the rules because they've stopped looking for work, erased from the rules because they've been furloughed and they're not going to get rehired, and erased from the rules because they may have a job, but it still puts them below the poverty line. The privatized healthcare system, which is designed to make money, it's not designed to cope with a public health crisis, has consolidated, we only have a million hospital beds. That's, as Jill mentioned, a result of decades-long trend of mergers and closures. So you have field hospitals being set up in Milwaukee, states like Mississippi, are either don't have ICU beds or about to run out of ICU beds. And then on top of that, we have all of the economic stress that has been caused by the pandemic. So 48% of frontline workers on whom we depend still remain ineligible for sick pay. Over 40 million Americans have lost their employer, sponsored health insurance, thousands of bankruptcies, food banks are overrun, 10 to 14 million renter households, that's about 35 million people were behind on their rent in September. That's 12 to 17 billion an unpaid rent that figures expected to rise, that 34 billion in January. And this comes with a lifting on moratoriums and foreclosures, which will see these families thrown into the street. Hunger in US households almost tripled since last year. The proportion of American children who don't have enough to eat is 14 times higher than it was last year. There are 8 million more Americans who are now classified as poor. And meanwhile, the 50 richest Americans hold as much wealth as half the United States. So all of the social inequality, the economic distress, all of that, which was very bad before the pandemic is about to explode. And there will be political and social consequences because of that. And because the left has been so eviscerated and destroyed, I fear that this backlash will be a right-wing proto-fascist backlash. I mean, I covered the war in Yugoslavia. Nobody wanted war in Yugoslavia. It was the same kind of dance with these people dressed up in camo uniforms there. They were holding AK-47s here. They have AR-15s. But eventually, violence does take place. We've come very close. We had the incidents in Portland. And then you open that Pandora's box, which you can't control. So I find echoes, very disturbing echoes of the meltdown of Yugoslavia, which I covered as a reporter. And Biden and the Democratic Party has made it very clear that they intend to not to institute the kind of radical measures that might hold us back from the brink. So I see the next few months and years is very dark, even under a Biden presidency. Rick Wolf, what's your overview of this election coming up? Well, much of what I might have said, Jill has said very well and Chris as well. So let me say a little bit more about the details without hopefully getting lost in the weeds that we face here. I am struck that neither of these candidates, and this is a tradition going way back, gets anywhere near what the economically fundamental issues are that this country faces. And let me just give you a few examples. Capitalism as a system, the system we have, wherever it has settled over the last 350 years since the modern form evolved in England and spread from there around the world. Capitalism has had a crash or a downturn or a recession or a depression. We have an endless vocabulary for this phenomena. Every four to seven years, everywhere for 350 years, there is no sense to the argument that we weren't ready for or were somehow surprised by the economic downturn we're now going through, the second worst in capitalism's history. Of course we should have been prepared. We know what these things are doing. Just to give you an example, in the first 20 years of this new century, 20 years we've had three. The dot-com crisis in the spring of 2000, the subprime mortgage crisis in 2008, and now the COVID-19 crisis. Three crises, 20 years, bingo, right on schedule. We know. Was there preparation for it? Of course not. Did the Republicans and Democrats have a plan for what to do if the economy crashed? Of course not. We're actually reading newspapers, Wall Street Journal and many others who are wondering whether this time we will escape it. Really? After 350 years of not managing to do that, we're really wondering whether this time we're going to? I'm not going to repeat the same argument about viruses, but they've been with us longer than capitalism has. Of course we are worried about viruses. Of course we have to be prepared for viruses. We had that horrible one back in 1918. We know very well what it can do. We had SARS and Ebola and MERS and all the others. We weren't prepared. These two political parties, this capitalist system, was shocked and unbelievably surprised that a virus came and an economic crash came. Well, you know it's capitalism's worst nightmare. They have tried for 350 years to overcome these periodic business cycles. They've tried everything because they know that every few years you throw millions of people out of work and you destroy businesses, you bankrupt cities and states and countries because they can't raise taxes, you're going to make people critical of this system. They've really tried everything. Let me say that again. They tried everything. What did they accomplish? Nothing. They don't know how to stop these crises. We're still at the mercy of these crises. Look what we're going through. That's a complete failure to do the most basic thing. And the nightmare is that you'd have an economic crisis coinciding in time and place with a public health crisis or a climate crisis. And then you're getting scary. Then you're getting into that dark, limitless possibilities framework that Chris and Jill have talked about. Any kind of real politics would have a political opportunity for people to say, this is a systemic problem. It's been that way for 300 years. We need a fundamental change. Instead, we have a political theater, a make-believe election in which the remarkable thing about the two major candidates is they have not one word to say about these fundamental economic problems. The two parties over the last 30 years have basically been on a project to undo the New Deal from the great... And by the way, the New Deal was the effort to deal with the last catastrophic breakdown of capitalism. So we had a New Deal. And the Republicans and Democrats have undone the New Deal. The Republicans faster than the Democrats. That's a Democrat's achievement. We do it more slowly. It takes a bit longer. But we will accomplish it. Is there a discussion about that? Not a word. Not a word. The two parties that did that don't criticize each other for doing it. At best, they criticize each other for doing it too fast or too slow or they moan about it. I find it stunning that you have a political debate. And I understand, it raises some important issues. I'm not disputing that. But the key fundamental question of what kind of economic system you are going to have in the future, given the performance of this one in the past culminating in this nightmare combination of economic crash and public health catastrophe. I mean, the ability not to talk about it in those terms, rooted in our history, rooted in an alternative, I find that amazing. That, for me, that is awful evidence for Chris's dark vision. Because what that means is we're walking into a storm with a deep commitment to self-imposed blindness and out of very scary possibilities. One last point. I don't put an evil eye on both of them to the same extent. I look at the political establishment of the United States and here's what I see. They were willing to enable and then to support and then to allow to stay in office for a full four years an extreme right-wing politician. When they had a moderate left-wing politician and Bernie was left-wing but for sure moderate, they were able to say, no way are you getting anywhere near either controlling the Democratic Party or getting near to the presidency. So the establishment, the capitalist core of this society has made it crystal clear what they are willing to do for and with right-wingers and what they are not willing to do for and with us. And for me that's the most important lesson that we can drive home about this election. Thank you, Rick. Mike Ravel is with us from his home in California. Mike, if you unmute your microphone. Mike, unmute Mike. Yeah, it's in the lower bottom of your screen where it says mute. Kathy, can you unmute him? Got it. I just got it. Thanks for being with us. Just looking at the broad overview of the election. What are your views of this? Well, I want to associate myself to the remarks that have already been made. I can't add any more than the dire results and predictions that we're all talking about. All I can do is signal a couple of things. One, obviously I hope that Biden gets elected over Trump, but what will that portend? I'm not happy with that because there's no alternative but Biden. One of the things to watch for is in the first two days of the Congress in early January, will the Senate do away with the filibuster or will they hang on to it? If they hang on to it, then forget it. There's not all that much that's really going to happen in any kind of a fundamental way. The other area that frightens me is Biden's attitude towards China. China is not a belligerent country. But we are. Our imperialism runs amok. In addition to that problem is the nuclear problem. It started in Obama approving 1.7 trillion for refurbishment. This is the sickest thing you could imagine. Now, it's not only sick because of the presidency, but the Congress. So when you're looking for solutions, don't look to the Congress. Don't look to the presidency because you're not going to get any secure from either institution and they're only going to compound it. When Trump campaigns in charging the Democrats are being financed by Wall Street, you've got to realize how bad things really are. And so with the comments that were made, the nuclear one is the one that I fear the most because with respect to China. If you think that China is a threat, what? They've got maybe 250 nukes and we've got 6,500. You've got to be sick and ahead to think that the problem lies with China rather than the problem lies with ourselves. But the solution. Let me talk a little bit about the solution because I do have a solution. It's radical, but I can tell you if you look back at the Constitution of the United States, you realize how bad the Constitution is. It's a horrible document and we revere it. Like this is a solution. No, the solution to our system of governance is the declaration of independence where all people are created equal and we don't sustain slavery in perpetuity, which is what we've done in the Constitution. So if you're looking at solving the problem, there's only two venues. There's only two venues. One is the government, which of course is not going to solve the problem. And all of the discussions in terms of solutions are within the context of the existing government structure. Now, I've got to disabuse you. There is no way the government, which controlled by the elites, is going to address any solution at all. Any effort made will damage the elites in their control, not only at the government, but their control of our entire society and the militarization that they've brought about of our society with the military industrial complex. Is it, does it surprise you that there's only two persons running for president that talked about the military industrial complex? One was Tulsi Gabbard and the other was Bernie. And nobody else, not one member of the media raised their, raised a question about this unbelievable situation, which is gutting the wealth of our country for possible war. And if you look closely at the period before the First World War, you'll recognize that it's only a period of time before we initiate a war, not China, not Russia, the United States of America, the quote, democracy. But let's address this democracy. If we can't get a solution within the context of representative government, what is the only other venue that you can address a solution to? It's the people. And when you look closely at the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, you'll find that the Constitution not only destroyed democracy in a cradle, they did it in order to protect slavery. And so let's just push that aside and say, well, now, since there's only two venues, one is the government and the other is the people, the government won't do it. And the people can't do it because they don't have the tools in the Constitution to go ahead and alter the Constitution, which of course, all of the founders said was, was desirable and, and it's so fucked up. So what I've come up with, and all I can say is that it's the people. And I came up with this 30 years ago, it's the people. But how do we, how do we bring about the people taking charge? And the only way in my mind you can do it is to turn around and have a national election without the government being involved. And you can do that because under, under the, under the, under the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, not the Constitution itself, but in the Bill of Rights, the right to assemble is nothing more than an election. So if we have an election where we present to the people the power to vote for empowering themselves with a legislature of the people. Now, just, just, and I know this is out of the box. And it's very difficult because it would probably take a billion dollars. Of course, we're seeing six billion going into the election right now, but it is, it is to take a billion dollars for the people to vote to empower themselves to make laws. I'm just finishing up a republication of a book that's only 110 pages. All of you could read it in an easy sitting. And, and that legislation is one, a constitutional amendment that will permit the people to, to take their sovereignty and to be able to create a legislature of the people. That's a long-term solution. We can come back. There is, there is no short-term solution. Well, I mean, we have two days to go to the election. I think we can No, I've given up, I've given up on the election and I've given up on the Democrats solving anything once they get in power. That's what I want to ask about because Rick mentioned 30 years ago, both parties started pursuing the same policy. And that's around the time that Bill Clinton created the Democratic Leadership Council, which was moving the party center right, severing ties with labor unions, traditional funding sources and additional base. At the same time, Tony Blair was doing the new labor in Britain. It was exactly the same thing. And both of those parties no longer are representing working class people as they once did, as imperfectly as they once did. And that has created the crisis. And I think a lot of progressive people are more disappointed and angry at the Democratic Party than the Republicans because little was ever expected from the Republicans. But there has always been an expectation. So you're making the argument of the good old days. Well, there never existed a good old days. And the problem doesn't go back to Franklin Roosevelt. It goes back all the way to the formation of the government in 1976. I wanted to ask about you said you wanted Biden to win. So my question is for all of you, because you could all jump in, is this issue of holding your nose to Biden? Well, for Biden, is Trump such a danger? And if you look at the way he's handled the pandemic, and certainly his reaction to the uprisings, his vicious, along with Bill Barr, branding of these uprisings as somehow some threat to the Republic, I wonder what you all think about whether people have to vote for Biden on money, as much as, and Mike knew Joe Biden, you served together in the Senate. I want to ask you about him later. What are all your views on this issue about having to vote for Biden, voting for a third party or not voting at all? Well, let me just let's go to Joe, Mike. Let's hold on a minute. Then we'll come back to you. Okay. I didn't vote for Biden. I know a lot of people who didn't vote for Biden. I don't think that a monolithic solution exists on voting, especially in our situation now where we have a terrible voting system. We need voting reform. We need ranked choice voting, which removes this extortion of voters, this extortion that forces you to act on your greatest fear and to vote against what you're terrified of instead of for what you believe. I think we need, you know, our values need to guide our political system and our electoral system. And right now we have a system that prevents the expression of those values. So I think it's a no-win situation. In my view, it's not so much a question of whether you're voting for Biden or whether you're voting for a third party. I think that will be modified depending on what state you're in and depending on what you think. In my own experience, the spoiler hysteria is largely not true. It's largely a tool for political repression. And if you look deeply at either the Nader situation in 2000 or in 2016, the notion that Greens or third parties stole the election from Democrats who own those votes is preposterous. It doesn't hold up as a value statement. And it also doesn't hold up mathematically. I don't want to waste time to go through that right now. But it's based on the cherry picking of numbers and it's preposterous, only to say that Greens had 1.4 million votes in 2016. But there were 100 million people who couldn't bring themselves to vote for either candidate. And there were what, something like 8 million Obama voters who moved over to, crossed over to vote for Trump. You know, so this is just a complete manipulation of the facts in order to punish political opposition. And I think it's wrong to cave to it and it's dangerous to cave to it. We need political opposition is at the heart of our democracy. If we don't have it, if we just have two corporate parties from Wall Street and the war machine, you know, we're in deep trouble. So I think it's a fallacy, but you know, I don't believe in voter shaming and we shouldn't blame people for voting for Biden or shame people for not voting for Biden. There are many considerations that people have, but I think it's really important. The one principle that I think is really important to observe here is not to cave, not to surrender to the parties of Warren Wall Street and for people who feel compelled to vote for Biden for whatever reason, don't just lay down arms across the board, register green. You know, if you feel like you have to vote blue, then register green or, you know, vote green down ticket and fight like hell for ranked choice voting so that we can neutralize this terror, this, this spoiler terror that's used to manipulate voters and to basically silence debate. Mike was bemoaning, you know, rightly that candidates who had an anti-war position were silenced, not only silenced, but demonized and Howie Hawkins certainly has a very powerful anti-war position and the Greens have really taken it on the chin in this election and we've been stripped of ballot access. We're being stripped in New York State, for example, of even access, future access to the ballot. So, you know, that to my mind, you know, the politics of empire is all about censorship. It is about militarism and, you know, it is about political repression as well. And we're seeing all that playing out right now, you know, in the censorship that was being exerted on Glenn Greenwald and, you know, on so many, you know, on consortium news for that matter, you know, so many people who dare to speak out are facing shutdowns and legal prosecution and all that. You know, this has become the norm rather than the exception. It's absolutely outrageous and it goes hand in hand with political repression. So, you know, it's very important. And let me just also say, on the more hopeful side here is that the American people aren't buying this. There was a poll that came out, you know, in the midst of this extremely partisan, hyper-partisan environment, what did the polls show? It showed 60 percent of Americans now are clamoring for an independent third party because they know and they express the view that the two current political parties that we have are not capable of governing, essentially. You know, so this hype that we're hearing from those who have the big megaphones, you know, has nothing to do with the real political realities out there. And, you know, given the economic catastrophe that, you know, has been described here tonight, which is just, you know, in coming down on us full bore, especially on low-income and communities of color and working people, you know, and the middle class for that matter, you know, the uprising is in full swing. It's coming. And it's not going to be looking favorably at the parties of war in Wall Street. You know, even polls show that twice as many people want to cut the military budget as the number of people who want, you know, a strong military right now. You know, so what we hear from the political establishment is just nonsense. It really turns reality on its head. And it's very important not to be fooled by it for a moment. It's very important, I think, to have the courage of our convictions and, you know, and to be out there and, you know, and leveraging, riding this wave, because the wave is here and it's probably going to be bigger, you know, than, you know, than even during the Great Depression, because the economic hardship is worse. So, you know, I think it's really important to set our expectations very high for what's going to happen. But there will be enormous and ruthless resistance, you know, which is what we're seeing now. You know, I faced three years of investigation by the Senate Intelligence Committee for nothing, you know, and at the end of it, they basically said, oh, thank you very much, you know, as if, as if to say, well, there was really nothing there to start with, you know, it's kind of obvious. That's where things are right now. And if you speak out, especially against the war machine, it's going to come down on you. So we shouldn't have any illusions that this is going to be easy. But it's very clear that there is a revolt that is in full swing. And, you know, that that's our challenge. It's in our hands, really, to nurture and to work with and to be a part of this rebellion, which is right in front of our faces now. The establishment is very aware of that rebellion. And I think that's why they're nervous. And if they're so worried about a spoiler like the Green Party, for example, then why don't they take the Democrats, take on Medicare for all, Green New Deal, ending wars, and they would take away that green vote. They wouldn't have any threat from people. But of course, they want to hold on to their power. The establishment was also interesting. Argue you made against the spoilers. One other example was Al Gore. 30,000 Democrats voted for Bush in Florida. And yet they blame a rough native for that. Chris Hedges, can you weigh in on this issue, please, about whether one has to hold their nose and vote for Biden or not? I didn't vote for Biden. I haven't voted for Democrats since before 2000. You know, the way the system is built, you're only permitted to vote against what you hate. And that is the whole media model is setting group against group. It's kind of a consumer version of what George Orwell in 1984 called the two minutes of hate. And what you get, as Matt Taibbi has written, is packaged anger just for you. And what it's done is create these manufactured political divides because on all of the major issues, there is no difference between the two ruling parties. And let's never forget that Biden gave us two of the worst modern Supreme Court justice, Clarence Thomas, and humiliated Anita Hill in the process, Clarence Thomas and Anton Scalia. But the two parties have been in locked step on the endless wars in the Middle East, the apartheid state in Israel, wholesale surveillance, austerity programs, destruction of welfare, cuts to social security, which Biden has called for repeatedly, NAFTA, free trade, deindustrialization, real declining wages, the loss of hundreds of thousands of manufacturing jobs, the assault on public education, because Arnie Duncan was behind this, some of the Obama administration, and building a for-profit or Christian fascist charter schools, the doubling of the prison population, which Biden was instrumental in instituting, the tripling and quadrupling of sentences that merit the death penalty, the militarized police, that was Biden. Of course, they're against the Green New Deal, they're against immigration reform, they support fracking, they support both parties' punitive levels of student debt and the inability to free yourself from that debt, Glass-Steagall and deregulating the banking industry, unlimited oligarchic and campaign money. And let's never forget that that super PAC that has given Biden hundreds of millions of dollars is all out of Silicon Valley and Wall Street, largely because Google knows that by giving them all that money, they won't be broken up, they will continue their monopoly. So on all of the major issues, there's no daylight. And so they argue about what Freud would call the narcissism of minor difference. They argue about what I would call societal or ethical issues, which are not unimportant, a woman's right to control her own body, racism, issues of LBGTQ rights, which of course Trump has rolled back, but they're not really political issues. And so it's really how you want your system, Sheldon Wellen, called inverted totalitarianism, how you want your system of inverted totalitarianism or empire dressed up. But if we don't radically break with where we're headed, and we haven't even talked about the catastrophe in detail of the climate, which again, I think illustrates that the two ruling parties throughout the industrialized world, all of the ruling parties, have abrogated their legitimacy, given their inability to deal with the climate emergency. I mean, all of the petitions and appeals to the UN and misguided trust and figures like Obama have been accompanied by a 60% rise in global carbon emissions since 1990. And we now have baked into the system an estimator over the next decade, a 40% rise. That means that we're 10 years away from carbon dioxide levels that will reach 450 parts per million. That's absolutely catastrophic. And that's what's coming. We can't even, we can't wish that away, even if we stop all carbon emissions today. So that's a strong supporter of extinction rebellion and was involved in shutting down the street in front of the stock exchange last fall for extinction rebellion. I think that at this point, we have to look to the kind of mass movements that we've seen in Beirut, that we saw in Chile, that we've seen in other places. I'm not saying it's going to work, but that's all we have left. But the whole idea that number one voting is that effective, as Emma Goldman said, if voting was that effective, it'd be illegal. But I just, I think that the moral squalor of the two parties and the Democratic Party just ask you to surrender just about every ethical or moral position that you have. It's just, it's too much. And we have to begin to say no. We have to begin to, and it's difficult every four years. I mean, Emma Brackwyn-Carrie ran the whole peace movement disintegrated, because everybody said we had to support Cary and who was outfalusion. He was reporting for duty and he wouldn't have withdrawn from Fallujah and he was outbushing Bush. And the whole anti-war movement never got its footing back after that. So we've got to stand fast on these moral issues and take the heat because we're going to get it. But there's no time left. There's no time left to play these games just on the climate crisis alone. Rick, Will, on the issue of what voters should do faced with these, this terrible choice. Well, for me, which will come as a surprise, I'm sure to none of you. I'm an economist for a reason. The economic issues have, for me, been absolutely central. And I think that our two party system is nowhere more vulnerable than in the fact that both parties are what I would call cheerleaders for capitalism. They disagree on how best to support it, to subsidize it, to grow it, but they don't disagree on that as their number one obligation. And everything else is subordinate to that, including whatever other issues people are concerned about. They can go through some agreements or disagree. It doesn't matter because where it counts, they come together and they are the same. And let me give you the example because I think it points to a strategy for us. United States capitalism is now, and I mean this seriously, structurally defunct. It doesn't work. The United States government is now supporting this capitalist system in a way and to an extent that requires a medical image. This private capitalism is now on life support. It is held up only. And let me illustrate, it's not complicated. The Federal Reserve this year started direct lending of freshly new minted money directly to corporations. It did not do that before. It has lent many, many billions of dollars directly to private corporations. That's monetary policy now. You print the money, you drop the interest rates to next to nothing, and you go to corporate America and say, here, whatever problems you have, Chinese competition, bad technology, products nobody wants, don't worry. We have the quickest, easiest, cheapest possible solution for any and all of your problems. We will lend you unlimited amounts of fresh new money at an interest rate barely above zero. You can't beat that. That's easier to do than any other solution. And that's why we have now roughly 20% of our large corporations are what we call on Wall Street zombie corporations. And what that means is they don't earn enough profit to cover their interest costs each year, which means the only way they survive is by borrowing more money, which doesn't solve the problem, obviously. Okay, here's the second point. Besides monetary policy, which the Federal Reserve is in charge of, we have what we call fiscal policy. That's when the government spends money like there's no tomorrow while cutting taxes, running huge deficits. Here's how that works. The government spending like crazy while cutting taxes has to borrow money to cover the difference like anybody else. So they issue Treasury securities, which they sell to the public, which turns around and sells it to the Federal Reserve. In other words, the Federal Reserve's printing of money and a zero interest rate is the content of monetary and fiscal policy. All of the rest, if you pardon me, is economic bullshit. That's a system that can't function. It's done. It can't solve its problems as a private capitalist system. That's one of the reasons it flirts with the right wing, because this is the economics of a state private capitalist merger, which has another name, fascism. And what you see in the front of you, the fascism that you're used to is the manifestation of the economic fascism to which we have already arrived. Capitalism doesn't work well under these circumstances. It's going to become more and more dysfunctional. It already is. That's why we have the unemployment that we do. That's why we have the housing crisis. We are not paying people enough money to be able to afford the meals and the housing without which life can't go on. The turning against capitalism is coming. And if we vote for one of the two parties who are unanimous in supporting the Federal Reserve, taking care of this capitalism forever, we're signing our own political death warrant. We are better off saying no, now, before everybody else catches on, than waiting. Say now that this life support is intolerable. What is a government supposedly of the people doing sustaining a system that produces instability and inequality on a scale like this? It's taxing the mass of people to produce the inequality. It's stupefying once you get to it. But I think if we went after it, dare to say capitalism is the problem. Dysfunctional capitalism now on government life support is where we're at. And we want to get away. We reject all of it. Whereas the two parties are just debating how best to keep this dead elephant afloat. So no matter which party, it doesn't seem to matter. Mike Ravel, you knew Joe Biden. You served in the Senate for him for many years. You've told me personally that he's a nice guy. And I've heard other people who knew him say that. And maybe on a one-on-one basis, very likely is. But when you look at his policies, and I'll just name two, one that Chris mentioned, the crime bill, how many lives were destroyed by that, black lives in particular, and the Iraq War. He was the chief proponent in the Senate. He was on the Center for Foreign Relations Committee. He argued in favor of preemptive war essentially by saying this wasn't preemptive war. But of course, we know it was. And he bought the WMD. That led to hundreds of thousands of dead lives. He's not only responsible for that. So tell me about this nice guy, Joe. And I guess Trump's pretty bad because you want him to win. You probably voted for Joe. Tell us why people need to vote for Joe Biden. Because in this election. Well, first off, Joe, the only asset he has is that he's a nice guy. As an intellect, it's a zero. There's no question about it. And because he's a nice guy, there's not a sense that there's not an attitude where there's conscience that wells up over the terrible things that he's party to because he doesn't recognize the falseness of his ideology. Excuse me. I just want to make one point because I associate with all of you. Chris, Richard, I voted for Jill. And I'm going to vote for Biden because I think that having a narcissistic fool at the head of our government is all it's going to do is accelerate all of the terrible things that we've described. Now, solution here, the rule of law. If you can't, when you talk in terms of revolution, you're on a dangerous footing because you're taking the power of law and putting it in the hands of demagogues who will lead the revolution. What I'm most frightful of is after the pandemic, the elites have made a fortune from the pandemic. And so now what you're going to see is when we're going to correct the problems of the pandemic, who's got the money to go ahead and do this? It's the elites who control our society. And so when I talk in terms of control, I talk in terms of what is the heart, what is the heart of human civilization? It's the rule of law. What's the heart of government? It's the rule of law. And so if you want to address any of these problems, you have to be able to make laws. And the people can't do that today for obvious reasons because of slavery. And so we just got to recognize that that is so imbued in the American character that we're racist. We truly are and have been from the get go. And so is the rest of civilization. We have racist qualities. And the only way to overcome that is to acquire the ability to make laws, to make these corrections. There are self-evident. The problem is self-evident. The solution is self-evident. But when you can't make laws, you can't do anything other than suffer the consequences of what the elites perpetuate. Period. Thanks, Mike. Elizabeth, please. Yeah, I'd just like to ask a quick question of all of you, I guess, starting with Jill. And that is, do you see any effective difference in the way that the Assange case may develop if he is to be extradited to the U.S.? Do you think that there will be a substantive difference between the way a Biden administration would treat Assange versus a Trump administration, which we know is behind the persecution of Assange right now? And yet Joe Biden has gone on the record calling Assange a high-tech terrorist. Jill? Yeah, I wish there was a difference there. But if there is, I haven't seen any evidence of it. And, you know, I think it's going to be very dire, given that we're stuck with one or the other of these candidates for the next four years. It's going to be very dire if Assange is extradited. He should not be extradited. It's outrageous that his case has gotten to this point. It makes a complete mockery of the judicial system. And I must say of the media who's every bit at risk in this process and is completely AWOL in, you know, standing up for their own right to publish. And, you know, the fact that Assange is being sort of caught in a drag net by the U.S. government as a publisher, this can happen to any journalist anywhere in the world. It's just mind boggling how he's been caged, how he's been denied his most basic rights, how he's fundamentally been tortured for eight, nine years, how stories have been manufactured in, you know, to my mind, what's happened to Assange is sort of the, you know, it's kind of the worst case scenario of, you know, censorship and political repression all kind of tunneled into one. And it's, you know, we let this happen at our peril. There are so many reasons for him not to be extradited. And it's a violation of U.K. law for someone to be extradited into a, you know, a political quagmire. This violates the whole terms of their extradition process. The judge in charge of the case has made a complete mockery out of the case. To me, it's just mind boggling that she's not been disbarred for what she's done. Her incredibly arbitrary rulings and pronouncements, the whole thing is just, you know, it just gives me unbelievable heartburn to think about this and to think about what it means for all of us. I think if they're, you know, it's like first they came for Assange, you know, then they can come for anybody, you know, and the kind of character assassination that they routinely undertake, it just lays the groundwork for this kind of abuse. And its implications for freedom of the press are absolutely staggering. So, you know, I don't see hope here in the U.S. for stopping this yet. Maybe, you know, with the next, with the next president, you know, maybe something can be done, but, you know, let's hope it doesn't get to that point. Chris, did you have anything to add? Biden will, you know, that's why the ruling elites want him. Biden will persecute Assange as vigorously as Trump. Mike, anything else? Well, what else is new? I mean, what else? I mean, they're prosecuting Assange in broad daylight. Talk about, you know, what about all of the entire media establishment? Not the covert media, but the media establishment is in control of the elites. So, Assange is just proof that they have no fear of what they're exercising and what they're going to execute on him. You know, thank God that Snowden got himself over to Russia, and Chelsea Manning eventually is out of jail, but there's other whistleblowers that are in jail now and that are in a process of being prosecuted, and this whole whistleblower situation is a joke. They're going after anybody, anybody who raises his voice. And of course, what we're all lucky is that our voices are muted. You know, here, I'm 90 years old. They're not going to spend any time trying to put me under. You know, all they got to do is wait and be patient. The good reaper will take care of my voice. And with the rest of you, it's a question that you're marginalized. You're all heroes in my view, and you're bona fides is the fact that you're marginalized. And I've always been very resentful. Jill Laporte in her book, These Truths, she's the first historian of note that has been able to piece together what is the bias of mainstream media. She calls it the machine. Well, that's how you dumb down the public, is you feed them some crap that they're not able to analyze because the establishment doesn't permit it, just doesn't permit it. Here, let me go back to one thing. I said before, I'll say it again, if you do not have the capacity to make laws, you do not have the capacity to bring about any change, period. We'll all suffer the consequences. And I like many, and I'm not a scholar, but I have many scholars, whether it's Will and Ori of the Run, Toynbee and others, at the end of their lives, they all felt very pessimistic about the outcome of civilization. And I gotta tell you, I share that same pessimism. The shame that on so many of these really substantive issues, what we're talking about are the similarities between the two candidates, no matter the superficial differences that they seem to have. They are so the same on a lot of these issues. Rick, did you have anything to add on the Assange issue? Not so much on the Assange, except in a metaphorical way. I was struck a couple of weeks ago, I believe it was a couple of weeks ago, when someone asked Biden the question about China, and in particular, its leader, Xi Jinping. And he referred to him as a thug, that's a quote. Mr. Biden felt it was important to run for office by referring to the leader of the People's Republic of China as a thug. Now, I'm not gonna go into who Biden is. You've all mentioned the wonderful things he's done, so that we could generate labels for him that were equivalent, but I'm not gonna do that. Nor does the Chinese government choose to refer to Mr. Biden or Mr. Trump, for that matter, as a thug. This is not the behavior, and I mean this, of a society that has anywhere near situation under control. I would argue that these are the signs, including the haunting of Mr. Assange. This is a society that is, if you allow me, scared, shitless. This is a regime that is desperate. I see Mr. Trump as a wonderful symptom of desperately casting about, behaving in these outrageous ways, because nothing can be done other than the endless Twitter crap that flows from this guy. And the sad thing is that Mr. Biden is teaching, even though others don't see it that way yet, that he has no better offer than Mr. Trump. He's polite, and he's a nice guy, but he doesn't have anything else to offer, because they can't face the problems they have, and they don't have a solution, and that's why they can even talk, the crazy talk, that vote for me, Joe Biden, and I will get us back to normal, because the poor schmuck doesn't understand that normal is what got us to this place. How true, how true. Rick, you reminded me of a moment in one of the primary debates, where Sanders was going on about Medicare for All and why it works in Denmark, why can't it work in the U.S., and Biden turned squarely to Sanders. He thrust out his chest and said, because we're the United States. So that was his answer, why we can't have that. What kind of an answer is that? And that's the kind of thuggery that- That's the answer of a person who has no answer. It is literally body theater, because no words, no substance can come forward. So you do your little moment of body theater. Well, I'm more depressed now after this discussion than I was going into it. I think Tuesday is- We're going to have to finish, because we've done over an hour, and Chris has a film to show his children. So should anybody have any optimism on how- What is the next four years going to look like no matter who wins? Is there any daylight in any of the domestic or foreign policies? There are some. I mean, at least Biden believes in climate change, where Trump is a skeptic. Although Biden backs a Paris Accord that was good on paper, but has no enforcement mechanism. It was just a delaying tactic. At least Biden seems to take the pandemic seriously and will listen to scientists, where Trump has completely thrown the scientists aside for the economy. He's basically allowed people to die. There was just a story yesterday. 30,000 people have gotten the virus from his rallies alone. So he doesn't care about people getting sick and dying. Biden seems like he will. Is there any case at all for at least on the pandemic and on climate change for a difference between Biden and Trump? I'm desperately looking for one. Anybody want to throw it open? No, no, because as James Hansen said, Paris talks were fraud. They're non-binding agreement. So it's all rhetoric. I mean, you know, so what about our right to privacy? What about habeas corpus? I mean, the assault on civil liberties under the Obama administration was worse than under George W. Bush. It's all rhetoric. The rhetoric is nicer. The rhetoric sounds better. But look at, I mean, all the people that the Obama administration deported on the drone, the expansion of drone strikes, the attacks on whistleblowers, misuse of the Espionage Act, destroy any kind of investigative journalism into those all under Obama. So yeah, the rhetoric is more appealing. But the reality, you know, what it is they're actually doing on the ground and why was Biden picked? Obama picked Biden because he was in essence a Republican. He voted Republican, even including supporting segregated schools. He was anti-bussing. So I mean, our hope is in the streets, the valiant effort in cities across the country to stand up to police violence. That's where the hope is. But within the political process? No. That's right. I agree with that. We're facing the situation now. We have had, just a footnote, millions and millions of businesses, millions and millions of people have not paid rent for the last three to six months. They are not paying rent now. They are not being given that money back. That money is owed. It's accumulated. Either the landlords are going to take an unspeakable hit or the people are going to be evicted. Either way, neither of these politicians says a word because they have no solution. And we're going to see all kinds of ad hoc horrors that produce and recruit for those activities in the street that Chris is talking about. That is the hope because this is a system that is now being governed by people who just wish all these problems would go away so we can get back to a pre-Trumpian normal. That's a recipe for failure. What about the issue of possibility of violence? Kind of a developing world is common to have violence after an election. And police are getting ready for this apparently. This is quite a serious threat. Chris or Joe, anybody wants to jump in here? Are we going to see some kind of violent reaction to the results, especially if we don't get a result right away? Yeah, clearly. And Trump will incite it. It's probably not being actually orchestrated in any organized way out of the White House, but the rhetoric will attempt to green light it. I'm very worried. Again, I draw the parallels to Yugoslavia. The divide within the media where 91% of the readers of the New York Times vote Democrat. The divide now is complete. So people live within their own echo chambers. They will believe that the election was stolen. They will be told it was stolen and it was rigged. And I think the possibility of violence is very, very real. What about the parallel with Hamburg and Berlin and Munich in the 30s where you had left and right wing out in the streets? Yeah, but we don't have a left wing. We don't have the Communist Party like they do in Germany. Now, if Antifa begins to sustain violent assaults, they may also pick up weapons. But Antifa, in terms of actually posing any kind of real threat, is ridiculous compared to Knights of the All Right, Proud Boys, 3%ers. I was with all these groups in my last book, America the Farewell Tour, many of whom are veterans, especially the 3%ers. And they have a tacit relationship with these neo-fascist militarized police. But it is different from Weimar in that sense because you did have significant numbers of deaths and injuries almost on a daily basis. But we don't have anything like the Red Brigades and these groups that were formed. The Red Fighters League was called under the Communist Party. That doesn't exist. But I do think the possibility of violence is very real. I agree the possibility of violence is very real and there are many efforts to put out the alert and to have people out there to try to defend the election, to prevent the hijacking of the election, the blocking of the vote counts and so on. And that could provide the battle zone right there. There are a lot of efforts being made to help people engage in conflict mediation and reduction and things like that. What kind of, how are people going to learn that on the fly and how effective is that going to be? I don't know. It's very worrisome and they got a lot of guns and the hope is that the election won't be so close that Trump can mobilize that fear and call out his militias. And to my mind that's the one benefit of Biden being in office rather than Trump in that I don't think we're going to see Biden try to fan the flames of violent conflict in the street the way Trump is. And so if there's one little glimmer of advantage in Biden's victory, I think that's it and that's what's terrifying a lot of people right now is Trump's very overt embrace of the worst aspects of fascism. And I haven't seen that come from Biden. Biden's policies I think are going to maintain the economic disaster that feeds fascism and that feeds just the development of the next Trump. So I don't take much comfort at all in in dealing with Biden rather than Trump. But what I do find is what I take comfort in is what just happened in Chile and in Bolivia to know that when we have social movements that are out in the street and that are very well organized and that are committed, we can overcome fascism. And my hope is that this is a teachable moment. There was another poll that was done by the Wall Street Journal actually about a year ago that showed that a shocking 70% of the American public is not just fed up with these two political establishments. They are fighting angry at them. So to my mind we are at a tipping point right now and our job is to turn this crisis that we face into the tipping point that we need and it's not going to happen easily but it's not hard to envision how this could happen given that we are an end stage empire, we are in end stage capitalism, it has really come home. The hammer has fallen down on most Americans and they are completely fed up with and angry at the system and there will be no solace offered to them. There will be no solutions put on the table by Democrats or Republicans. So it is inherently a moment for change and young people especially are not buying it and see the reality of the climate crisis coming down on their heads. So I think we have many drivers right now of social and political transformation. It has come much faster certainly than I ever envisioned that I would see. I didn't think I would see this moment in my lifetime but I think we are here now. We really are at this fork in the road and it's motivating and people have lost their allegiance to the system as we know it. The system as we know it is firewalled in all kinds of ways to prevent communication, to prevent organizing, to prevent mobilizing so it's not going to be easy but the obstacle is not changing people's minds. People's minds have been changed. Now it's our challenge to develop the tools and the resources to work with this moment of transformation to move it in the right direction. And I would just add to that that we can move it in the right direction if the people can acquire the ability to make laws. The core, let me repeat, the core of civilization is the rule of law and that's what the people don't do. That's what we don't have in our solutions in the ability to make laws. To say that part of what just happened in Chile, you know the the plebiscite in Chile which was fought for in the street for a year was to be able to rewrite their constitution and to rewrite it as the people so they're holding public assemblies to rewrite their constitution on behalf of the people presumably so that the people can make laws and that they're not going to be encumbered by a that's the solution Jill, that's the solution. The model is there staring us in the face. So the consensus seems to be that you know we need to get out into the street to see real change here as opposed to looking for an electoral politics and I just wanted to ask Chris one question about that and that is how do we avoid basically that a violent type of movement that invites a backlash that would just strengthen a police state type situation rather than really get the change that we want? Is the difference that it needs to be peaceful versus violent or how do we navigate that? Well that's why I've been so critical of Antifa and the Black Block. That's a gift to the security and surveillance state. It's just a game we can't win. I mean that's the language the state has mastered and speaks very well and we have to build a movement in terms of numbers like 10,000 Spaniards surrounding the parliament. Those kinds of numbers, I saw them in Eastern Europe, 500,000 people in Alexanderplatz in East Berlin or Wenceslas Square. There's nothing you essentially they can't handle numbers like that. That's our only hope and I have to go because I did promise my daughter that after an hour I would let her watch Arsenic and Old Ace 1944. Thank you for your patience yeah. Thank you. Okay all right bye. Unless anyone has any final words Jill or Rick we're gonna we could end it right here because I'm getting really very depressed by all of this. I think we should stop this. Can I just add one other thing that I find very not depressing and you know rank choice voting makes the spoiler smears impossible. They become obsolete and we can no longer be shut down because we are you know that third party or that disenfranchised community which is you know stealing the election from its proper winner. You know that argument is dead as rank choice voting passes and I'm very hopeful that we're going to pass it here in Massachusetts. It will completely transform our political environment. It is not a silver bullet. It's not going to do everything. There will still be things to overcome but it will end that spoiler hysteria that makes it impossible to have a debate. So at least then we can begin to engage the debate. There's just a lot of shit that we have to do and I think because we are in a completely different moment economically, ecologically, health-wise, education-wise, debt-wise things are not going to sit still. They are you know there's enormous momentum to move away from this political and economic establishment and I think it's a challenge that you know I don't want to say you know I don't want to say I'm optimistic about but I am you know I feel energized by the fact that this veil has been lifted. You know how you can't buy into this mythology that things are okay you know or that the system is going to fix itself. It's very clear now that we really need major transformational change and things are not going to stay the same. So to my mind that in itself is a big improvement, the fact that things really cannot rest on their laurels and people cannot sit back and take the same old crap from from the media and the political parties. That system has just fallen apart. It has no more credibility and people are starting to to wake up. So two things out there, Jill's rank voting and Mike's long-term plan to have a national initiative based where state initiatives are that people should be able to make laws federally as they do in many states with their initiatives. Rick I'd like to end it with you if I can. What kind of reforms are you looking at economically that could really save us in the short and long terms? Well I'm more optimistic than Jill is so maybe I can end with that. And I say this having never said it in my life basically until now. I think that this system is dumb. It's had its 350 years. It has tried. It has made great strides. It has overcome many obstacles. It has proven itself resilient. I admit all of that, but it has now accumulated a set of problems that it cannot and it will not solve. And that's why it's on life support and that's why it's facing the return of the repressed, the endlessly repressed racial conflict blowing up the long repressed role of women in this society which is blowing up with the Me Too and all the other aspects of it. It can't handle its financial problems that I can assure you. It has a major competitor in the People's Republic of China and in the competition. Let me be real clear with all of you. In the competition between the United States and China, China is winning. And this is not an endorsement of China. Lots of things wrong in China. But there is no contest and everyone in the world who pays attention knows it. Only in the United States is there the delusion that something other than that is going on. I don't think you can forever maintain the crazy American notion that none of what I've just said is either there or matters. I think we're coming to the end of the self-delusional fakery. So for me, the number one objective for us now is to organize the left. It's already big enough. That's not the problem. And it is developing an ideology about the system that's pretty good and not the problem either. The terrible, awful number one problem is the organization of the left. Teaching the American left that they have to form organizations. They have to build them. They have to think about them as flowers to nurture with lots of water and lots of fertilizer and endlessly boring meetings. They have to do that or else they will not be serious. And along the way, yeah, they have to form groups of young men and women who march, maybe even in uniforms and maybe even in scary formations. There can't just be very nice people on one side and overarmed the proud boys on the other. As long as you allow that, you're going to see which way the system is going to lean. It's going to lean to those proud boys. There need to be, we need to have our own. And one of the reasons I don't and cannot get excited about Mr. Biden is we don't belong in the Democratic Party. We have to be an independent, different, other political organization, differently grounded, differently focused. I think, as Jill said with that poll, we have more than enough people ready to do it, but someone has to do it. And there, we stink. We're not good at it. The organizations we produce are weak, are scattered, are diffuse, and that's a luxury we cannot afford. And one of the results of that, not having our own organization, is the ease with which the lesser evil and all the other stuff can then get sold to even our supporters who could and should know better. So for me, I'm optimistic. I run around the country, I have the label Marxist attached to me, which is, you know, you live in this country too. But I have never had audiences like I've had in the last five or 10 years. Never. Never. I know how wide and deep in this country the support for these ideas is. People is not our problem. We got them. Commitment, not a problem. Understanding, really pretty good. Does it need work? Yeah. But the number one problem for me is to overcome the horrific, apolitical, individualism ramped up with fancy words like libertarian or anarchists that all do the job of undermining the solution, which is, can we organize our people? If we can, we won't have to worry the way we do now about the right because we'll outnumber them. Oh, Rick for that. Yes. Yeah, if I can add one more thing to that, because, you know, as a member of a small independent political party, you know, I have a little bit of a perspective on on political opposition organizations. And as greens, we're often criticized for being weak and insufficiently funded and organized and all that. But, you know, I think it's really important to point out how much the resistance of the system destroys independent political and, yeah, political, electoral and non electoral organizations that the system is very good at destroying its opposition. And in fact, the Green Party has something of a record for simply surviving for several decades because usually small independent parties are destroyed. So peace and freedom used to have some national scope. They were beaten back to one state socialist alternative and the other socialist parties, you know, have been beaten back to single cities and, you know, occasional city council seats and things like that. So, you know, it's not just that our organizations are weak, they also get infiltrated, they get fear mongered, they are blocked from press coverage and all that, which is why, to me, I take this as such a hopeful moment, if I dare to use that word. And maybe it's not hope, it's kind of an empowering moment, because the veil is coming down, the veil that that fools people into believing the hype out there, that the duopoly, that the political and economic elite have some kind of credibility, which they don't. And that veil is falling down now in a very big way. It's extremely ramped up because of the anxiety surrounding the election. But the belief isn't there, you know, when people are coming out for Biden, aren't for Biden, they're just against Trump. And, you know, I'm excited about how rank choice voting factors into this because it removes the fear factor from the silencing of debate and discussion and opposition candidates. So I sort of feel like things are falling into place to enable a whole new era of political struggle and thereby political organization. And I've seen many of the fundamentals of organizations come together, and in many ways they are better now than they've been for a long time. Partly just you accumulate experience and you learn how to deal with this, you know, with the crap that they throw at you. It's not as though it's easy street going forward, but it does feel like the there are breakthroughs in the wall of resistance that's been used to destroy independent political parties. So I'm hopeful that the dialogue will open up because if you begin to put together the young people who are really up in arms about the climate right now together with the young people who are up in arms about student debt, you know, you've got the majority of young people now who have to live at home with their parents because they don't have jobs and they don't have income, they can't afford the housing, you know, so an entire generation has really been devastated here. You put that together with working people who are beginning to question their sort of blind obedience to the wishes of the Democratic Party, you know, and even to their own leadership where you see more kind of grass roots inspired labor movements and strikes where the leadership doesn't want them to strike, you know, like what's gone on with so many of the teachers' unions in the past year or two and so on. So there seem to be the building blocks for a big movement here and given that there's going to be kind of economic catastrophe raining down on people, it's a mobilization bonanza potentially. So to me that gives, it doesn't get better than this, you know, it's not like the universe is going to put victory in your hands, but it may put the solutions for a strategy, you know, you may have the makings of a strategy and you may begin, I mean you may begin to have the players who can have this conversation and start unifying some of these powerful movements who are really in a very different political moment now and a very different existential moment than they have ever been in before. And, you know, I share your optimism, Rick, as a historian, as an economic historian, you kind of have, you have a notion about how, you know, aristocracy came and went, you know, it eventually went, you know, who would have thought, but it did, it took a while. Capitalism has run its course now, you know. I feel the same optimism that you do and that's why I said, what I said, I see it as an incredible opportunity, one that like you, I did not expect to see in my lifetime, you know, I was born in Youngstown, Ohio, which is a city that is a kind of perpetual display of capitalist dysfunction, you know. I never expected to see the level of discourse that is now possible in this country with all the kinds of problems. I want to remind everyone that in Seattle and Rochester and Western Mass, Central Labor Councils announced that they're considering general strikes, if Trump doesn't go, you know, the idea that the labor movement would make a political strike and would, you know, these are their little things, but they're little things at all point in a particular direction. You know, a great leader once said, when his followers complained, he said, you know, you're right. For many, many decades, nothing seems to happen. And then in a few weeks, decades happen. That's right. That's the way it goes. We're frustrated that it hasn't gone faster. My guess is in the next 12, 18 months, it's going to go very, very fast. No matter who wins, Rick. No matter who wins. Neither of them are in a position to deal with it. It's going to be hysteria as they grapple with things that are like they're doing now. We have a moratorium on addictions. Think about that. Nobody can pay. The landlords can't survive. The tenants can't. How does this get resolved? And the same is true with commercial property. The stores are not paying the landlords in the malls. The malls are all dying anyway. I mean, you have an accumulation of economic, political, cultural problems. It's done. You can't. It's too much. It's not even fair to ask. No capitalism was ever asked to handle all of this. It's too much. And they can't do it. And therein lies our possibility. Exactly. The last general strike was like 1944, I think, and it was limited to the Bay Area. And the fact that this is now being seriously contemplated now by the labor movement and by many affiliated social movements as well that are ready to join in. It's not hard to envision what a strategy could be, who the players are, and what exactly the protocol needs to be going forward. And in some ways, it may happen faster under Biden just because Trump is such a showman. And he has such a loyalty among a large section of working class, middle class, lower middle class, non-college educated. He's got a loyal following who's going to experience a huge amount of pain. And because they are devoted to him, they may not be out on the street quite as quickly as they may be under Biden. It's not going to be easy, but it's there for the taking if we can rise to that challenge. I wonder, Rick, if this last phase of the capitalist period, the neoliberal period, didn't accelerate their decline? They tried to really scoop it up, didn't they? Yeah, because they allowed, you know, we're not the only ones who have this problem. They allowed their ideological preconceptions to get away from them. They were horrified by what they had to suffer in the Great Depression. I mean, people have to remember, in the Great Depression, capitalism collapsed. And everybody knew it. And the solution was the New Deal forced from below by the CIO and the socialists and the communists. And they got incredible things, social security, unemployment compensation, a minimum wage, a government jobs program, the very things we're not getting now in a comparable economic collapse. They got all of that. But it drove the business community and the rich crazy because they paid for it. They had to shell out the big bucks in taxes and they had to lend the money to the government. They had to. There was no option. And so they did that. And they saw their worst nightmare. The government, which is in a universal suffrage system, our target, was becoming crucial to them. And that terrified them. And they went crazy to undo this horrible thing. And that's called neoliberalism, to roll it all back, to have the fantasy that the private sector could do, if just relieved of government intrusion, could solve. That was wrong. That was a mistake. It was private capitalism that caused the Great Depression. They weren't going to get out of it by going backwards. They thought they desperately wanted to believe that that would work. And it worked for a while, roughly the eight 1970s until maybe the end of the century. But by 2008, it blew itself up again in exactly the same way. They don't have a solution anymore. The neoliberal didn't solve their problems. And here they are with a worst case of many of the same problems that they had before. Only now, nobody will listen to deregulation, because it has become completely unthinkable. The corporate sector in America is living off the government. At the end of 2018, for a short time, the Federal Reserve tried to push interest rates back up from the crazy low that they were. The stock market went into a complete collapse in three weeks. And they stopped doing it. And they have now promised, if you listen to Mr. Powell, they have promised the corporate sector that there will be limitless amount of new money created at zero interest rates for the next several years. That's unheard of. That's simply saying to the private capitalist sector, don't worry, the government will take care of you. But this is an impossible arrangement, because the massive people are being taxed to sustain the most unequal capitalism in the world. That's not a sustainable arrangement. We are going to have fun with that. We are paying a government that makes us an unequal society when the overwhelming majority of taxpayers have already indicated they want less inequality. We are going to be able to use that. They care. So they have learned a lot. Yes, Joe? If I can add another factor here that I think is really important, that also aligns in a very empowering way. And that is really the resurgence of a very powerful movement for racial justice in the face of ongoing white supremacy. It's just more visible now, maybe because our phones have cameras on them. But to the black community, it's not like the white supremacy is new or resurgent. It's always been here. But what's really different now is that there's this enormous public mobilization against it. And when Rick was talking about the capitalists being outraged with the New Deal, it just brought to my mind how our country is really founded on completely unfettered capitalism and slavery. And slavery is sort of the ultimate expression of capitalism. And it is so much at the heart of what is wrong in our economy. And as Martin Luther King said, you have this kind of fundamental connection between racism, militarism, and imperialism, and capitalism. Or, you know, I'm sorry, racism, materialism, or capitalism, and militarism. So those three things kind of go together. And they're all kind of crashing and burning right now. And the fact that there is such a mobilized community of color right now, mobilized by the militarization of our police that has really made the kind of the examples so graphic and so absolutely chilling that racism has, you know, it's really inspired this incredible mobilization all over society, really. And for the first time, as opposed to during the 1960s, the demand for racial justice now is much more multiracial. And there are far more white people involved in it. So, you know, this is such a healthy thing for us as a society that the demand for racial justice is surging. And it can really coalesce with these other factors right now that are kind of bringing these movements together and create the possibility of a really strong mobilization. People are already in the streets by the millions for all kinds of reasons, but especially on the issues of white supremacy and police racist violence and all that. So it's just another thing that's different right now that kind of comes together with this broader awakening and this anger, this fury at the political system that has enriched itself as an economic and political elite. You know, the billionaires have made a trillion dollars while the bread lines are four and five miles long in Nevada, in Texas. You know, you've got exploding bread lines while the billionaires are making out like bandits. People have had it. You know, I think there's a Rubicon that's being crossed by many movements that can potentially bring many constituencies together here in, you know, in a very transformative way. It's not going to happen by itself. It's going to be challenging, but the ingredients are there. And again, we don't need to change people's minds. The course of history has done that. People's minds are changed and they are ready, I think, to be focused on a whole new agenda and are really waiting, I think, for a dialogue to grapple with and to wrestle with. I think people are, I'm finding, you know, there are certain groups now that totally don't, you know, the Rachel Maddow crowd is not interested in a conversation. And, you know, I find they are kind of, they're punching harder than usual right now because they have the Trump derangement syndrome big time and they're very angry at anyone they can blame. I'm being blamed right now for 230,000 COVID deaths by some of them. So some people are very angry, but I'm finding others are not. And there are a lot of barriers and walls that are coming down right now because there's nothing like an existential crisis and facing the potential for your own mortality, you know, and really the mortality of our civilization. That is a possibility that is on the table right now. And that is inherently a very eye-opening moment. It's going to change things that is changing things. And that has enormous potential that can be harnessed with the good. I agree with most of it, but I would leave you only with one thought. It's not a pretty picture, but the liberal types like Biden also have a long history of being unable to tolerate anything to their left. And that's not a nice story, but it's part of what we're talking about. I know everybody wants to think that Biden is better than Trump. I'm not so sure. Well, the anger that Jill's describing existed in the 1930s, what the lesson they're not learning or following now is that FDR saw that to stave off rebellion and to save capitalism, he needed the New Deal. And there's no talk of a New Deal. They're still trying to kill off the remnants of the first New Deal. Aren't they creating the rope to hang themselves is what you're saying, Rick, isn't it? Yes. Here's the irony of ironies of American history. After the end of the New Deal, after the war was over and after Roosevelt was dead, the right wing was so horrified by what had been accomplished by the left in the 1930s, that they committed themselves to get rid of it. They started with the Taft Hartley bill in 1947. And then it was off to the races, culminating in Donald Trump. But here's the irony. It was the left that gave an alternative in the depths of the depression, an alternative to fascism. And Roosevelt took that option. There is no left today. So the capitalist class doesn't have the option because they destroyed the very left that could have provided it to them. And they don't know what to do. They don't want that fascism because it's too socially disruptive, but they don't have anywhere else to go. So they're going to go with Mr. Biden, who is exactly what he looks like. No solution, half demented, old man, pathetic. And the pathos is clear to everybody, even those who are enthusiastic about him, which is why you justify him because he's not as bad as Trump. And in the rush to believe that, you forget the history which suggests that he may be just as bad as Mr. Trump. He'll just do it in a different way. But I don't want to distract from what Jill said. This is a moment of great trouble and danger for the system, but that always goes with great opportunity. That's Hegel's dialectic. We don't get free of that. By the way, that leader I quoted before, you know, if nothing happened for decades and then in a few weeks, decades happen, that was lending. Well, I think we'll end it there. Thank you, Rick Wolf. Jill Stein, previously Chris Hedges, Mike Ravel, for a, at least we ended on somewhat of an optimistic note. So this is a drill, Laurie, if it's in live, I just want to remind you that we're going to do an experiment of live election night coverage starting at 9 p.m. eastern time on Tuesday. And we're going to invite all of our guests to have an open forum. So if anybody wants to pop in to the link and to join us at any point during the night, you're all welcome to join us. I'll send out a notice to many people to join our program. Again, thank you all. Thank you, Kathy Wogan, our producer and Elizabeth Valls. See you in live. This is Joe Laurier. Bye-bye.