Dancing with the devil while whistling past the graveyard

I think it’s premature to predict a Republican comeback. I live deep in the heart of Texas, so my perspective is almost as unreliable as yours (you live outside the US, I live outside reality, even further outside than the rest of America, waaaay outside). But I think there is definitely a sense that the Vichy Dems don’t have what it takes to fix things any more than the implacable Republikans. On the other hand people (especially those enthusiastic Obama supporters, and the clap-harder-so-Tinkerbell-won’t-die financial press) seem to be pretending that things can go back to normal without any radical change to how we are governed, or how we pay taxes or who runs the economy and how. On the third hand, I don’t think there is anyone of prominence that people feel they can get behind to lead change, even if they could agree to what needs to be changed. Last year’s misplaced enthusiasm for Obama will no doubt harden into cynicism at some point. At this point I would predict record apathy for both parties next year. But depending on when and how fast things turn to shit, that could change. I honestly don’t think America can change its ways until we are in much worse straights than we are now. Until that happens the media and politicians will just point to the status quo as proof that we’re all just a bunch of Chicken Littles. And after that point all bets are off.

Why not suggest massive general strikes.
That’s about the only nonviolent thing ordinary citizens can do to slow down this runaway train.

Silly Ian.

I started posting on the internet in 2000, before blogging was invented, to try to get the truth to people who were bedazzled by Bushlove.

Then I tried to tell so-called progressives that Obama was no liberal and no FDR, but a cautious, dithering, incrementalist, corporatist. Those bedazzled by Obamalove called me a stupid dead ender racist.

My conclusion is that most of the people want to be fooled and bedazzled most of the time, it’s only a question of which bedazzler has the momentum at the moment.

I have never had such a low opinion of my fellow citizens.

Carolyn Kay
MakeThemAccountable.com

The only bit of hope I have is that the multiple crises (in the financial, automotive, and health care sectors) and the various “solutions” have made the realization inescapable to just about everyone, even establishment types like Congresswoman Marcy Kaptur and IMF economist Simon Johnson, one that, even a short while ago, might have been consigned to loony conspiracism—that the government is completely captured by corporate interests. (I’m sort of partial to the “inverted totalitarianism” theory as a way of explaining the methodology.) While, in the short term, yeah, I agree with tc that that sounds like a recipe for apathy and staying home at the polls and with Curmudgeon that “doomed” seems like a realistic assessment at the moment, in the slightly longer run, that realization might lead to some much-needed action. One can hope, anyway.

Samuel PERMALINK
Why not suggest massive general strikes.
That’s about the only nonviolent thing ordinary citizens can do to slow down this runaway train.

Why not indeed? Well first off, as to the nonviolence, you should read Digby’s continuing coverage of the advances in taser devices and other crowd control technology. It might be intended to be nonviolent, but the police will definitely escalate it to violence. When was the last time there was a general strike in America? Has there ever been one?

But mostly this is a nation of sheep. We might muster a demonstration on the Mall on a weekend, and then quibble about the numbers in attendance for a few days (if it’s teabaggers or some such rightwingers demonstrating – if it’s DFHs, like the huge antiwar rallies that were practically ignored by the TV and print media, that’s a different story). They outright stole the presidency for four years (maybe eight), they started 2 wars, one of them massively unpopular (until we got won over by shock and awe). There’s not much “they” can’t get away with when it comes to the American populace.

Right now, nobody is going to take off work to go downtown and face tear gas, billy clubs, horses, rubber bullets, taser bombs , and most of all a criminal record, the moment the whole crowd gets punished and slandered for the reckless few, or just because the cops were itching to break some heads. Maybe a few years of high youth unemployment will change that. I wouldn’t even count on it then.

There is something about the situation that is unprecedented, and is also happening in the UK.

You supposedly have two parties. One party is in power and pursues a set of policies, and eventually the public has enough. They elect the other party, which then pursues the same policies as the previous incumbents. So you have a situation where you simply can not affect policy by voting. Vote in the Republicans, they transfer billions of dollars to the banks. Vote in the Democrats, they transfer billions of dollars to the banks.

Both parties seem equally committed to increasing income inequality. To what end? To the point where we repeal the 13th Amendment and relegalize slavery?

I’m not sure what the mechanism is for how this happened. I suspect a mixture of bribery and blackmail of the political class. But you basically got a situation where you have elections, sometimes they are quite competitive, but it just doesn’t matter who wins because both candidates will do the same thing once in office.

The system in Africa has survived because the efforts at reform have largely sucked. Why have they largely sucked? Because of exterior/colonial interests whose direct presence was removed only relatively recently. I would not give it special resilience over other systems.

In the American case, I would wait until the failure of the system has become apparent to all before making too many pronouncements. As I said, in Real Life, it doesn’t appear to be the case that the awareness is widespread. On the other hand, awareness is growing. Perhaps the weird ambivalence of polls giving us seemingly contradictory results heralds a transition?

Big O has made uncle milton friedmans dream come true only this time it’s not offshore. Welcome to the new Amerika.
Everything is on schedule, please move along.

Check out this piece from News from the Zona: http://newsfromthezona.blogspot.com/2009/10/republican-virtue-and-equality.html.

I agree. What we are looking at is a takeover and undermining of small-r republican instutions by the rich. It happened all the time in the ancient world.

Mandos’ analysis is good as well. I would also cite Latin America as well as Africa. Latin American countries actually copied the US consitution, and many evolved imitation two party systems where the two parties did essentially the same thing while in office. The one thing different was a willingness to use death squads to simply kill genuine dissidents.

The situation in Latin America has actually improved slightlyin recent decades, but it took military rule and a good dose of neo-fascism to break the logjam.

Stirling Newberry had a great post that has been illuminating for me all summer/fall:

http://www.correntewire.com/three_polar_politics_post_petroleum_america

He basically intones that there are three political factions/parties in America today: the Confederates, the Moderates, and the Progressives. Most of the Republicans are the Confederates straight up (40 votes in Senate), Moderates are Blue Dog type democrats (40 votes), with Progressives coming up on the fringe of the Dems (with 20 votes.)

His overarching point being that Obama is the leader of the Moderates, not the Progressives. So to say he leads the entire Democratic party (and that party is in solidarity) isn’t accurately. He spearheads the moderate party, the progressives are left just as far out in the cold as the republicans. Stirling’s endgame to this is a loss of the Presidency to the Confederates (Repubs) in 2012 (if they can find someone non-toxic), who will actually break down the banks/govt spending/etc and crash the economy into Hooverism. With progressives having the muscle to come back in say 2016 or so and actually take the office of president and do what really needs to be done.

Seems like a long ass time to wait for soem sanity in DC, but ever since I read that post, it’s been hard to not see the evidence piling up day after day. Obama will fail, he just doesn’t have it in him to make the changes he promised. We wanted a revolutionary level of changes, what we got is a carefully managed breakdown of the same type that was uncontrolled under GWB. He simply cna’t dot he job that needs to be done, he won’t make it past 2012.

Honestly, I’m a progressive and I’m ready to see him go. I don’t want Sarah Palin, but I would seriously consider a Ron Paul type if they ran on a platform of shrinking: the Fed, runaway deficit spending, stopping the wars, and shrinking exectutive powers. It would eventually be a disaster, but at least someone would be doing something.

While a general strike might not be possible, I’m partial to Theodore Roosevelt’s remedy for curbing the power of the speculators in an economy. The supreme result of Roosevelt’s populism – which went beyond anything else proposed in the U.S. in the 20th century – was a bill , S232, that passed the House in 1911. Here is how it is described by Lawrence Mitchell in the Speculation Economy:

“It would have replaced traditional state corporate finance law by preventing companies from issuing “new stock” for more than the cash value of their assets, addressing both traditional antitrust concerns and newer worries about the stability of the stock market by preventing overcapitalization. But it would have done much more.

S. 232 was designed to restore industry to its primary role in American business, subjugating finance to its service. It would have directed the proceeds of securities issues to industrial progress by preventing corporations from issuing stock except “for the purpose of enlarging or extending the business of such corporation or for improvements or betterments”, and only with the permission of the Secretary of Commerce and Labor. Corporations would only be permitted to issue stock to finance revenue-generating industrial activities rather than finance the ambitions of sellers and promoters. … S. 232 would have restored the industrial business model to American corporate capitalism and prevented the spread of the finance combination from continuing it dominance of American industry.” (137) In Sklar’s account of the Roosevelt era draft, ‘whenever the amount of outstanding stock should exceed the value of assets, the secretary would require the corporation to call in all staock and issue new stock in lieu thereof in an amount not exceeding the value of assets, and each stockholder would be required to surrender the old stock and receive the new issue in an amount proportionate to the old holdings.”

We didn’t put these curbs in place in 1911. Since then, Speculation has become dominant in the U.S. economy. The whole trick of neo-liberalism is to extrude the old social insurance net, which was the great product of the progressive and new deal eras, into the private sphere. In essence, crush the bargaining power of labor, loosen restraints on credit, and tie the median income class directly to the speculative markets.

This has had the effect of creating a politics that is basically about pampering the speculative sector. It is, of course, a disaster for the vast majority of people. And that there was a lively discussion about speculation at all once upon a time – from 1890 to 1914 – has been utterly forgotten. You rarely ever hear a radical nowadays say, why don’t we simply end the system of watered stock? Which, in effect, would mean that if you owned stock in a company, you really owned the company, rather than a financial instrument whose value was solely determined in a secondary market. The simple genius of requiring that the stock would have to equal the outstanding assets, and no more, would shatter the whole system.

I’d like to see that discussion restart.

Break up the banks. Shoot the economists.