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Washington’s most revealing events often pass unnoticed, especially when the news cycle is crowded with serious crises—like the one unfolding in Gaza—that occupy the attention of casual observers of politics.
When Biden teamed up with Republicans [ [link removed] ] to block labor rights last year, it represented an on-brand example of the bipartisan collaboration on which he based his campaign [ [link removed] ] for the White House back in 2020.
We were offered another example this week, continuing a longstanding pattern of bipartisan military industrial corruption [ [link removed] ].
Washington reveals its bipartisan priorities
On Friday, Biden publicly requested another $106 billion from Congress [ [link removed] ] to spend on weapons for Ukraine and Israel. His request ignores mounting outrage around the world about mass human rights violations, as well as increasingly dire social needs across the U.S. from housing to healthcare.
He also jeopardized his own re-election campaign, by placing at risk his support in key swing states [ [link removed] ] like Michigan and across critical demographics such as millennials [ [link removed] ] across the political spectrum who have been forced to juggle financial crises while watching Wall Street profit from destroying their futures.
The response from Congress spoke volumes.
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While Democrats and Republicans theatrically tear out each other’s political throats, they tend to discover common ground whenever convenient for Washington or Wall Street.
There might be some solace to be found—and no shortage of irony to be observed—in Biden’s request for another $106 billion dollars for the corrupt right wing regimes in Ukraine and Israel falling on the shoals of Republican dysfunction in the House [ [link removed] ].
But while the House is paralyzed due to intraparty drama among Republicans, the institutional Republican Party—embodied in Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell—has predictably rallied to support Biden’s request. McConnell spoke in support of Biden’s proposal today [ [link removed] ], setting aside the strident partisan rancor normally on display in Washington to instead close ranks around the Pentagon and weapons manufacturers whose corporate welfare takes the indirect form of dead & disfigured children.
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If you pay attention to journalists in America, you might come away with the impression that Democrats and Republicans in Washington are irreconcilably committed to war between the parties.
Ironically, anything related to warfare—or other dimensions of militarism, like policing [ [link removed] ] or border security [ [link removed] ]—is precisely what both corporate parties always agree on, whatever their campaign platform or espoused beliefs.
Reconsidering last week’s news in light of the two corporate parties’ zones of shared consensus reveals that they share a great deal in common: a commitment to shielding war criminals [ [link removed] ] in Washington, empowering [ [link removed] ] corporations, disempowering workers [ [link removed] ] and their families, and helping fossil fuel companies [ [link removed] ] drive life on Earth to accelerating—and preventable—mass extinction.
They also share a commitment to filling their bulging pockets [ [link removed] ].
Paid subscribers can access a further observation of hypocrisy among liberals who have themselves come to share some of my longstanding concerns about one branch of government after decades of unfortunate complicity. It’s worth observing these parallels between institutions in order to excavate patterns that transcend rhetoric, yet usually escape the attention of writers focused on minutiae.
If nothing else, it can offer ammunition for debates with centrist friends who accept the lies of corporate Democrats while struggling to see through them...
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