Posts Tagged ‘Sanders’

Three unshakeable pillars of American foreign policy

By Richard Falk

April 4, 2016

It deserves to be noticed that it is only the two anti-establishment candidates who have challenged the foreign policy consensus that has guided American politicians ever since the end of World War II: 1) consistently express unconditional support for the Pentagon, 2) Wall Street, and 3) Israel (especially since the 1967 War).

Bernie Sanders has been the first serious presidential aspirant for several decades to challenge directly and unabashedly at least one of these pillars by way of his principled and concerted attacks on Wall Street, on the billionaire class, on the exploitative 1%.

Although moderate overall, Sanders has been respectfully deferential to the other two pillars, Pentagon and Israel. Because he has mobilized an intense following among all categories of American youth there has been a media reluctance to assault his substantive views frontally, except to offer a variety of snide remarks that cast doubt on his ‘electability.’

Such a dismissal pretends to be pragmatic, but the polls indicate that Sanders would do better against likely Republicans than Clinton. This leads me to interpret the refusal of the corporatized mainstream to take Sanders seriously, at least so far, as a coded ideological attack, basically a reaction to his anti-Wall Street stand that can be viewed as the opening salvo of class warfare.

Donald Trump has encountered a somewhat different firestorm but with a similar intent.

At first, when the cognoscenti dismissed him as a serious candidate, he was welcomed as a source of entertainment. Read the rest of this entry »

 

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