My heading is an exaggeration, since Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and Alan Grayson qualify. But this is a point I've been trying to make more and more for the past 8 years. This piece by RJ Eskow makes the same point, but mostly not as directly as it could be made. Here's the guts of it:
Since his re-election, Barack Obama has proposed to cut Social Security, echoed the deficit hysteria of the right, continued to negotiate NAFTA-like trade deals in secret (hidden from Congress and the public but available to 600 “corporate advisors”), and continued to privatize the military/national security state. (He has also pursued the most aggressive anti-whistleblower presidential campaign in American history.)
And yet 85 percent of registered Democrats either “somewhat approve” or “strongly approve” of Obama’s performance, according to a recent Washington Post/ABC News poll. While the level and intensity of Democratic support has dipped somewhat, these figures are still surprisingly robust for a President who moved to cut Democrats’ signature achievement – Social Security – and whose other economic policies are so out of line with his party’s base.Eskow's point is that corporations are using social policy to distract liberal voters from issues of economic justice just as conservatives have been doing with "Kansas" for decades. Democrats and progressive-type voters will tolerate an awful lot of right-wing economic engineering from their liberal heroes as long as they are on the right side of the gay-marriage and immigration arguments.
Since Day 2, the Clintons, in my view, have been the archetypal smiling-faces-sometimes conservatives---every bit as despicable to me as Joe Lieberman. They know how to charm you into silence as you watch them steal the silverware. President North Star earned a lifetime membership in that club of vipers upon following his terrific New-Deal-type inauguration speech rhetoric with centrist appeasement... as if Social Security is his to compromise away. At this point I think I'd rather have Rand Paul than Hillary Clinton as the next president.
Democrats are Tylenol: they keep the fever low enough that the virus can stay in command.
there are also no Conservatives. Try using a standard definition of that word to describe the effluvient oozing from the Republican party. It now includes radicals, anarchists, renegades, psychopaths, schizophrenics, the insane and business majors. Kinda like the line of applicants for an army of bad guys in Blazing Saddles. Like trying to use a single word to describe the mindset of all the inmates in an entire prison.
ReplyDeleteRead Corey Robin's "The Reactionary Mind" from front to back for a rigorously supported study of what "conservatism" really is. His sources are the words of the most important self-identified conservative writers. Whatever you use as a "standard definition" of "conservatism" is incomplete or wrong. One of Robin's most important points is that even at the university level, political science students receive very little instruction or reading in the original sources---they mainly get a second-hand interpretation by others.
DeleteThe 'Big Tent' turned Nudebrank in envelopment hunting mode...giving rise to the horror film, "The Zombie Turds Walked By Night!". So is the choice between feces stained, or feces through and through? Like trees and sharks can you count the rings? But to even toy with alternatives I for one am not at all ready for this all too euphemistic "watering the roots of liberty" crap. Think Mad Max "american style", think Syria, think street thugs with a growing addiction to non-bridled power...only, eventually, to arrive at probably a paler imitation. [To borrow a bit] all at the price of the pale blood of exhausted heros. E. Pound got no where with a "Vortcist" movement pre-WW-I. Symbolists and surrealism sort of take a back seat to what would become many tens of millions dead ("1" tied and leading to "2"). Maybe as a culminating blow off we'll see a Spengler-Toynbee style end. It could be called a "Vortical Malestrom" of societal history. You know you're a [redneck] [[living in a democracy]] when...
ReplyDeleteJeff Fox Worthington Smythe, Esq.
That's pretty much what I'm saying---pure crap or painted heavily enough by crap that it might as well be pure crap. I don't think that means we have only two choices, even if it is predetermined that we have only two "major" political parties at any one time. What do I mean by that? There's a very good reason why Occupy scared the yellow porridge out of everybody from Glenn Beck to Hillary Clinton. I leave it as an exercise for the reader to identify the reason. Hint: "The Power of the Powerless" by Havel.
DeleteSo, an actual, real, viable, etc. third party. The forces of big media and monied interest would be aligned against you from the start. Process, rules, regulations, signature petition counts, fees, that "happen" to impede would be the new tyranny. And all the while TV/Radio messaging of how efforts just split/steal from semi-paralle goals (targetted to rob "base" of course). Then there's the "old dredgings" and ad hominin attacks -- the DUI in Brownsfield 17+ years ago, another's back alimony court case (never mind types like Newt Gingrich at his ill wife's HOSPITAL BED looking for a legal document signature. What was that #2 going for #3?)
ReplyDeletePossible lessons and things to avoid from:
1. the Nader campaign (Perot and Anderson too for that matter) -- the Bull Moose Fair Deal Party?
2. evolution of Greens in Europe
3. origin and history of Lib Dems in GB
It would be a full time, underpaid job (calling). For one of the few asymmetric advantages there would HAVE to be a strong, persistent, multi-faceted internet strategy as part of a bigger coordinated effort. At least a decade, certainly multiple legal fees, and possible jail time. As a bit of a change for the U.S. could have a persisting and somewhat evolving online platform for comment and discussion (i.e., a kind of engagement -- just what is likely to emerge from the crucible of flame wars? The Federalist Papers they would not be.).
Give me Cheetos, Budweiser and a comfy sofa, or give me.... It'd be a tough sell to S-U-S-T-A-I-N, but at least could start in pockets of those most economically impacted. It's possible that segment will continue to grow. The organized many against the few.
Say hey, Che (a cold blooded assassin by the way, vs this air brushed image you see around)
P.S. a bit more on how things are done
ReplyDeletehttp://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-07-26/guest-post-how-establishment-will-attempt-bring-down-liberty-movement