My politics

Basically, there’s one political party with two fractious wings. I sometimes call it the Business Party, sometimes the Corporate Party. Its antecedents took power early on – from the beginning, actually, in a revolution from above of landed aristo-wannabes and merchants, and its incarnations have been called (by Andrew Jackson) the Money Power, and (by the Abolitionists) the Slave Power. Today, it’s a corporate-dominated, neoliberal version of capitalism in which the wealthiest one percent of the population owns more than the bottom 50%, and its tenets are shared across a rather narrow “bipartisan” spectrum. (“Neoliberalism” is essentially laissez-faire capitalism on a global scale with the largest military in the world backing it up.) The $700B transfer of the commonwealth to corrupt Wall Street speculators and usurious bankers shows that synergy quite nicely. As did Bill Clinton’s kowtowing fealty to the bond market.

The “right wing” of this ruling party is called Republican; the “left wing” is called Democrat. In a corporate polity, that “left” is in no way actually leftist. Rather it’s mildly reformist; capitalism with a human face, as personified in its current leader, B. Obama. As I read it, in the last quarter of the 20th century, the Democrats became the faction that used to be called Rockefeller Republicans, self-styled enlightened businessmen, willing to give a sop to the working class, accept that women are human beings, too, and build an new school or two. The Republicans, meanwhile, sunk into a retrograde swamp of reaction. The mire includes a chilling mash-up of Bible-thumpers, Birchers, disciples of Father Coughlin and other antisemites, libertarians (right anarchists), neoconservatives, Know-Nothings, and the new old South’s confederate leftovers, a fecal brew in the service of this generation’s robber barons.

Unlike Clinton, who took baby steps backwards with his wretched “triangulation,” Obama will take some baby steps forward. But real change? The point is that the system does not allow real change. After all, the “founders” didn’t want the rabble involved. Everything we’ve gotten since has come at an enormous price of blood and treasure against the system. The rotten boroughs of the Senate and the Electoral College are only a couple of the archaic constitution’s bulwarks against change. The Supreme Court, meanwhile, is returning to its historical role as safeguard of the wealthy and the policemen who protect the wealthy. Real change can’t come from within.

Put another way, the Democrats are the Mensheviks and the Republicans are the Bolsheviks of this capitalist party. Of course, intramural conflict is sometimes some of the bloodiest. Since faith in the basic economic power structure is a given, the two wings battle each other on the symbolic and cultural level. Hence the vital importance of emotion, of stories and characters, things easy to manipulate, script, and produce. Our politics are stunningly emotional, at least for some component of that proportion of people who actually partake (in the best of times, it’s barely half of the voting population, which is indicative of what a charade our democracy really is). Like advertising, the irrational appeal is essentially false, a way of making you feel a part of the action but, of course, not really anything but another cog in the machine. Historically, the irrational in politics was also the primary tool of fascism.

Republicans use greed, fear, hate, resentment, racism, and ignorance as their weapons of choice. The Democrats, so frequently hapless (remember the flailings of Mondale, Dukakis, Gore, & Kerry?) use wishy-washy hope, idealism, and dreams of a better place. Is it any wonder they are so frequently out-gunned, even though a majority of Americans agree with their mild, reformist take on capitalism’s ravages. Indeed, it’s the tanking of the economy at the hands of its corrupt masters that may propel Obama to the White House in a month.

The neighboring country of Eyeran

Is Iran going to be the October Surprise McBush needs to win one month from today? Wondered that when I saw the headline about the Iranians forcing down a plane over their airspace. Bush still has time to do more damage. And McBush has few other options, since the character issue isn't playing during an economic crisis. According to his book-banning running mate, Ms. Taliban, war is god’s will. "In’shallah" as the Ruskies Inuit tree huggers Arabs say.

Sun sets

If a tree falls in the forest and nobody hears it.... the fifth conservative paper in town, The New York Sun, has set. Sayonara, kids! I only just got the word, so I obviously won't be missing you. Subsidized by fat cats, it made a play by icing itself with well-written cultural chitchat, but the stale cake under the sugar was avowedly Israel-first. May it presage the Likudniks’ loss of influence here in the U.S. and the end of their jones for permanent war in the Middle East.

Gopmob

The lunatic fringe is on the loose. And McBush is going to need every single one of them at the polls. They are his only hope. They, along with the usual voter suppression, and all the sub rosa appeals to fear, racism, and resentment. It’s going to be an ugly month. The “silent majority,” as Nixon called them, of cretins, crackers, & paranoiacs. Palin is feeding them the red meat of lies they need to grovel at their master’s feet. Gun-toting, Bible-misunderstanding, plastic-fetus-doll-clutching. Pallid as zombies and just as dead. Hollow-eyed religious psychos. Gaunt or fat, a people of surprising ugliness, for their debasement and depravity is written all over them. An incipiently fascist mob, there to be exploited. And the Republicans, who’ve based a generation of power on them, are only too eager to do so.

Das Capital

Adam Smith on another of the myths of the free-market, where profits are privatized and loses are socialized. (Don’t like it? Remember who owns the government.)

“When workers combine, masters ... never cease to call aloud for the assistance of the civil magistrate, and the rigorous execution of those laws which have been enacted with so much severity against the combinations of servants, labourers, and journeymen.”

Predictable

Unsurprisingly, the House has passed the emergency the-sky-is-falling $700B Wall Street Speculators Conservation Bill. Actually, it’s going to cost much more than that because of all the sweeteners and bribes they put in to buy the bad little representatives who didn’t obey their mommy and daddy the first time on Monday. Chalk another one up for the ruling (bipartisan) Business Party.

Hey

What if all those people, good solid citizens, I’m guessing, who do these innumerable charity runs for this and that disease instead ran downtown and occupied their Senator’s and Representative’s office? And demanded some serious funding for public health, for medical research, for a simple system of national health for all Americans? And demanded some reasonable health priorities instead of the Pentagon's death priorities? And demanded that we as a nation put people above corporations? Sign me up for that run, kids!