Will FEBAR Bring Down the House?

[phantom power]

The reality that the public has to understand is that there are three poles of politics in America.There are two philosophies of national government - a liberal one and a reactionary one - and then there is a localist Americanism. For a very long time, this third pole felt that it was allied with the reactionary theory to restrain the liberal one. Even if nominally a member of the Democratic Party, the laissez-faire, small government, free market, low taxes vision of America could have been ripped from the Democratic Party's platform of 1928, or even 1932, before FDR had transfigured the party.

It created a national economy that taxed money where it piled up in cities, and pumped it out to the country side. This "pork-u-pump" kept rural areas afloat, slowed the bleeding of people into the cities, and gave them buying power to purchase manufactured goods, which allowed cities and a vast industrial machine to slowly bloom, and then, after the end of World War II, to boom. A representative's job, as much as he had one, was to work this pump: cut taxes on his constituents, and "bring home the bacon."

This means that many Democratic Congressmen, while they weren't happy not having the perks of the majority, were safe in their jobs as long as they could, from time to time, score a few laws and snarf down some pork now and again. Many of them were as devoted to the idea of "cut taxes, raise defense spending and pretend to balance the budget" as their counterparts across the aisle were. Many, coming up from state political machines, were happy to have the Federal government stay out of investigating local corruption and local ways of doing business. No applause please, just throw money.

(...)

Because most Democratic office holders lacked any larger vision than bringing home the bacon, being out of power was galling, but not worth taking large risks to change. Most were not angry about the direction of policy. Instead, what angers them now is their growing perception that the great game of politics, the ability to investigate the other party and raise a fuss - the ability to engage in "oversight," which is the bread and butter of moving an ambitious career upwards or making a mere politician into an untouchable institution - has been taken away.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/091005X.shtml

[starroute]

1. The bottom line is that it's all been city vs. countryside

We all know that the major cities are heavily blue while the rural areas and small towns are heavily red.

We should also know that the religious right's "moral values" issues are largely a matter of fearing and hating the freedom and plurality of urban culture.

And Jane Jacobs told us a long time ago that great cities are the engines that produce wealth.

But I hadn't realized before reading this article that the fundamental process of American politics involve extracting wealth from the cities and spreading it across the countryside. And I still don't know why this process creates so much resentment in its red-state beneficiaries.

I want to know more about this -- including such questions as how the proposed base-closings, which would heavily skew the military towards the south and west, fit into it. This could explain a lot more than the immediate topics of the article.

[phantom power]

2. It is one useful way to view American politics.

I would say that it's not wholly a bad thing. The purpose of a "Representative" is, clearly, to represent his or her constituents. If that involves a certain amount of "bacon", that's not necessarily bad either.

Balance. It's always about balance. The system is healthy when local desires are balanced in good faith with the needs of the country as a whole. That committment to "common good" we've been reading so much about since Katrina, which we all know has been steadily disappearing since Reagan's presidency.