The Potemkin Progressives (short rant)

[Jackpine Radical]

Watching Feingold's censure resolution about to go down the tubes, apparently--as Skinner suggests--with a whole lot of Dems sitting on their thumbs--stirs in me the terrible feeling that we're all being had. Imagine that the whole government is complicit in a fascist takeover. The so-called, supposed, imaginary Loyal Opposition seem to be playing out their ineffectual roles like Alan Colmes, serving as foils, as fools, as bumbling buffoons for the Bushoviki to pummel and ridicule.

By maintaining a pretense of opposition while offering no meaningful resistance, squealing and bleating while going along with everything from the election thefts to the Patriot Act, these clowns provide the neocons with an immense service. They are their own straw men--and women. You wouldn't want your kids to grow up to be like these twits.

Now we're gonna get Hillary the warmongering neocon, whose husband was in no small measure responsible for NAFTA and the subsequent corporate takeover of the world, to bear our flag for us. Probably against the "moderate" John McCain, whose "moderation" has earned him the third-most conservative voting record in the Senate. Jeez, I can hardly wait to choose between one of that pair in 2008.

[phantom power]

1. Many days I feel the same. However, I suspect that it's most likely...

a postive feedback loop of some kind. Our current political climate is a complex system in a stable attractor. No single person or group is directly responsible. It's an emergent phenomenon.

[Jackpine Radical]

4. That's a pretty scary picture.

How do you kick a society out of its pathologically stabilized state? I have some idea of how to do it with a single brain, but it pretty much requires the willing collaboration, attention and intention of the owner of the brain. I'm afraid that moving a whole society would at least require a fairly massive influx of information, and that is one thing the average American seems to have pretty good defenses against.

[phantom power]

5. I don't know either. The examples I can think of didn't end well.

[400Years]

2. kick

[RazzleDazzle]

3. Well, it may not be true, but it's real

That's a quote from a story told by a Native American scholar whose name escapes me at the moment.

My point in using it is this: doesn't matter if what they're doing is conscious complicity with a fascist takeover or not, the effect and results are the same, aren't they?