Alternative Visions - ‘Behind the Presidential Debates—What They Reveal for 2017’ - 10.21.16

 Jack steps back and discusses the three presidential debates in a broader context, focusing on what the debates reveal about what is coming in 2017:  i.e. more aggressive US foreign policy action in Syria, against Russia, and in Southeast Asia (Philippines) soon after the election. More attacks on civil liberties by US political elites to silence alternative perspectives like Wikileaks and other media. More internecine conflict within the elite ranks of the two main political parties as they deal with rising popular rebellion against the ‘political class’, on both left and right. Republican and Democrat party elites ‘shoring up’ their rules to avoid Sanders-Trump type internal challenges re-occurring in 2020 and elite efforts to more tightly control their primary nomination processes and conventions. A growth of independent political parties as ‘rebellion against the political class’ moves outside the two party structure. Rising rent, healthcare, and inflation, and continuing wage stagnation for the bottom 90% of the workforce as US recession returns in late 2017. Growing disaffection of the millennials from the political system.  (Next week: interview of Jill Stein of the Green Party and Gary Johnson of Libertarians).