Corporate Dems and Capitalist Conservatives...What's really going on?

[Jackpine Radical]

I wrote this about 6 months ago (July 2008)--and scared myself when I re-read it. It was like a self-inflicted slap up 'side the head. I'm shocked to realize how little seems to have actually changed.


Observing the behavior of both parties has left a lot of us confused. Why are the Dems so spineless? Why has there been no truly liberal legislation since the days of LBJ, civil rights and the Great Society? (And even that era was marred by our wacko foreign policy.)

Clinton "blew it" on universal health care, gays in the military, and some other things, while pushing through NAFTA and welfare "reform."

Then, when the Right actually gets solidly into power, as in 2002-2006, they ram all kinds of economic legislation through (tax breaks for the rich, deregulation, corporate bailouts, privatization of vital government functions like the military, etc.), but there is little payoff for the social conservatives (no rollback of Roe V. Wade, no recriminalization of homosexuality, etc.).

The pattern here is that neither the left nor the right delivers very much for their respective "bases--" us flaming liberals on the one hand, or the Bible-thumping social conservatives on the other. What happens instead is a lot of lip service to the causes dear to the liberals and the social troglodytes respectively, but no action. Instead, we get a steady push on the economic issues, summatively in the same direction, sort of like a sailboat tacking upwind, traveling sometimes slightly to the right(torture, Enron) and sometimes a bit more to the left (I don't even know where to put Clinton's balanced budget on the R-L scale), but always toward serving the interests of the wealthy, the Overlords. The Dems talk like socially responsible liberals, and the Republicans talk like social conservatives, but they both work for the same people when they're in power.

Well, try this on for size. The public consists of three groups--the diehard liberals, the right-wing nutcases, and the large, clueless lump in the middle that is kept in a more-or-less permanent trance state by the media. The Democrats have since WWII won by pandering to the left and governing in the interest of the wealthy. The Republicans have won by likewise catering to their base during the election season, and once in power, also governing in the interest of their economic overlords. In the last few decades, people like Lee Atwater and Rove & Co. decided to become a political monopoly. There were just too many personal inconveniences involved in letting the Dems have a turn at the wheel.

The problem is that there are just enough payoffs in having a nominally leftist government to keep me voting that way, but I see more and more every day that real change has to come from the bottom, and from places in society other than government.

I think that real change is best effected during times of crisis--like now. With the convergence of potential disasters in the economic, environmental, and energy spheres that is looming over us, combined with a nascent era of amazing new information technologies, there is a coming time of confusion and opportunity such as comes along rarely in history. Such a time happened in the Renaissance, when the bourgeoisie seized a lot of economic power from the hereditary princes. There were other such times before and after--the rise of agriculture and urbanization, the industrial revolution--but I am hard pressed to think of a time when so many problems converged in the same time and space as so many potentials.

For once, maybe the old Chinese malediction, "May you live in interesting times," may not be an unalloyed curse.

[Selatius]

1. I think it's pretty sad commentary that a nation doesn't change until it is almost destroyed.

As in destroyed by disasters and economic collapse. That kind of environment means it's almost impossible for real, meaningful change to occur in a peaceful manner.

If it takes a Great Depression to get a New Deal enacted and corporate regulation put into place, exactly what the hell would it take for a second New Deal to get enacted? The Second Great Depression? That's flirting with disaster. In the 1930s, many people were pissed off. It was said that if FDR had not been around when the Great Depression hit, the US could have easily followed Hitler's path and turned into a corporate dictatorship protecting robber barons from desperate workers who were starving to death.

[Jackpine Radical]

6. Things could probably have gone many ways back then.

Some have said that FDR saved America from a Communist revolution. There were a lot of armed, trained, and pissed-off WWI vets in the 1930's, and the National Guard had to be called out to disband them once.

[terisan]

2. Excellent Post. Where do you think the non- govt places are that can initiate real change?

[Jackpine Radical]

7. Maybe in local communities, people joining together to help each other.

That, too, is an old American tradition.

[stillcool]

3. Our government and the represenstatives we..

elect have no motive to do anything different. Why would they? They suffer no consequences.

[Jackpine Radical]

8. A jarring thought.

How can we bring consequences to them? The right, we can always vote out, as we just did. The so-called left, on the other hand, assumes that we have nowhere else to go. As for me, they have this chance right now. If they blow it, I see no reason to vote for them again. I'm going Green or something.

[stillcool]

12. I think we have to form a we..

and do the same old silly little things like make phone calls, emails, etc., Hundreds of people taking a little action won't do it. Thousands won't do it. But millions will. We need some cohesion..but I guess that would be labeled 'lock-step'. It is not just them against us..it is us against us.

[Waiting For Everyman]

4. I think you are right.

And this technology allows us to see that people now (in the last month or so) are rising up in a very similar way, all around the world... and people all over are seeing that and aware of it too. It's creating a consensus which, I think, will grow stronger - about what the problem is and what the direction has to be.

We (people around the world) are totally screwed, but we do have unique opportunites which have never been before. It's unknowable what will happen from it.

[Jackpine Radical]

9. Then mabe it only LOOKS like we're totally screwed.

[Peace Patriot]

5. What I see is that the Cleptocracy has been accruing power over the last 40 years or so,

sometimes in big leaps (Reagan-tax code re-write; start of deregulation; busting of unions) but mostly just steadily forward--more and more power for the rich, less and less democracy and general prosperity--then the Bush Jr. junta burst upon us, and the Cleptos grabbed with both fists, everything left they could get their hands on--multiple tax cuts for the rich, unheard of war profiteering, yet more privatization of the military, not just deregulation but NO regulation--neglect, malfeasance on any remaining regs and responsibilities--outsourcing of billions of jobs to cheap foreign labor markets, etc.--and this mindboggling looting and plunder was capped by the fast-tracking of electronic voting machines, all over the country, during the 2002 to 2004 period, run on 'TRADE SECRET,' PROPRIETARY programming code, owned and controlled by far rightwing corporations, with virtually no audit/recount controls--an unbelievable giveaway of our sovereignty as a people by our own party leaders--and this privatized corporate control of the vote count was not only to keep the Forever War going, but, now we see, it had another goal: the Financial 9/11 that these fuckwads pulled off in September, and the complete and final looting of the American people until the 7th generation, with billions and billions of dollars pouring out of future federal coffers into the pockets of the rich.

I think they do expect the "frogs" to pop out of the boiling water at some point--and, for that, they have police state measures all ready, to cook us up real good. The Dark Lords could have a Germany 1932 scenario in mind--economic meltdown, fracturing of the center-left, inability of the center-left to govern, enter Hitler II, Diebolded into office in 2012. Parallels to Nazi Germany are often made, and they are never very exact. We are a far different country than Germany was in the 1930s, or at any time. But there are lessons there--one of them being, beware of stoked up civil disorder. That could be a scenario for bringing Obama down, or rather for inventing a feasible corpo/fascist 'news' monopoly narrative to accompany his ouster. I worry about that one, because I wonder at what point the American people are going to get REALLY mad, and maybe play right into the hands of the Dark Lords.

I think a slow, steady pace is the best wisdom, such as the people of South America have taken, with very hard work over the last decade on their democratic institutions--such as transparent vote counting and honest elections. That is how they have elected Hugo Chavez, Evo Morales, Rafael Correa and so many others. There were protests--many, in Bolivia--but with a STRONG FOCUS on electoral politics, and achieving the political power to get things done.

We need to start peeling back items like 'TRADE SECRET' vote counting--which can still be done, at the state/local level--and these beastly corporate 'news' monopolies--which might be done (or started) with half-decent Obama appointees to the FCC. We have a long list of tasks like this, just to restore or create democratic mechanisms of power. That's the way the South Americans did it--mostly at a slow, steady, patient pace. They were hit with "shock and awe" economics long before we were--10, 15 years back. Those "free trade"/World Bank/IMF assaults (called "neo-liberalism" in Latin America) precipitated crises and protests, but the protests would have gotten exactly nowhere--would have merely been met with brutal repression--if there had not been simultaneous work on democratic institutions, including a whole of grass roots organizing.

Neither Germany (bad model) nor South America (good model) exactly fits conditions here. We have our own unique problems--our humongous "military-industrial" war machine, for one. And we are more scattered and non-community-oriented than, say, the people of Bolivia. We are a huge country (i.e., where is the Bastille?), and very multi-cultural (how do we pull together?). We are also unique, I think, in having the most potential power, as a people, to really and truly change the world, since most of the world's ills are generated right here, by our own fascist corporations and war profiteers. We have the theoretical power to dismantle corporate rule. And that I'm sure is why such special measures have been taken to fool us, lie to us, dumb our people down, propagandize them, "boil" them slowly, dismantle good government and steal their votes. We are still, despite all, a mostly progressive, peace-minded, justice-minded people, with strong democratic traditions and potentially great power. The trouble that has been taken to confuse us, and steal our elections, is something of a compliment. A lot of thought, energy and resources have gone into it. We need to understand this--penetrate it, intellectually--and find the ways to pull together and restore democracy here. It won't be easy. It won't happen overnight. But it can be done. If the South Americans can do--after all the shit they've suffered--so can we.

[lib_wit_it]

10. Wow. If only what you say here could be understood by the majority of Americans...

[Jackpine Radical]

11. Not just a thoughtful and thought-inducing post--

something like a highly condensed manifesto for action.

Thank you.

[Peace Patriot]

13. Thank you! One more thought, as to theme of the OP: In many cases in South America,

the main enemy of democracy and desperately needed change was the lock on power of a corrupt two-party system. I was just reading about it in Bolivia--how Evo Morales and the grass roots social movements that supported him broke up the power of the two-party system. The problem of the two-party grip on power is not unique to us, but it is greatly exacerbated by our UNBELIEVABLY corrupt campaign money system. I don't think there's any country in the world--certainly no purported democracy--that permits truckloads of cash to be shoveled from corporate interests and the rich, through political candidates, right into the pockets of the corporate media. It is just mindboggling. What do we expect? We should expect just what we've gotten--elected officials who are so corrupt that they handed the power over our vote counting TO private corporations--rightwing corpos, no less--with NO AUDIT/RECOUNT requirements. And what should we expect from 'TRADE SECRET' vote counting? More war; massive looting by the rich.

I don't think we can do anything BUT go on voting for Democrats, until we--like the Bolivians--organize a new, more inclusive and representative political movement. For all the non-differences between Bush and Obama policy--and there are many--we can't afford any more direct wrecking of our government, or the outright, blatant evil and DANGER of Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld & co., and many other Pukes. And we do need to regain some self-esteem in our self-image as a people. What a dreadful blow it was to have such a total moron as president--a blow, and an insult. Anyway, what do we do in the meantime? Priority no. 1: transparent vote counting. No. 2: Media, if we can make any headway. No. 3: Trying to figure out ways to overcome the money disadvantage of good candidates in the Democratic (and other?) primaries. We need some creative thinking on this. Maybe the internet could be used to promote no-money campaigns? Have the candidate eschew all donations. No ads. No consultants. The voters might be ready for this, at last--TOTALLY CLEAN CANDIDATES. A YouTube campaign--all volunteer, from the web.