Objectively worse off under Obama

The kleptocracy owns both parties. When the system incentivizes corruption, corrupt people run for office. It’s just a matter of degree. Every politician knows that to get elected and re-elected most of one’s time is spent collecting campaign donations from the wealthy and corporations. Then, of course, they come to collect after the election. That’s just part of the deal. You don’t ge to play otherwise.

This is a democracy. The American people are stupid enough to fall for this election after election. So they deserve what they get.

Don’t worry. Once Obama wins a 2nd term he’ll fulfill *all* the promises he made in 2008! Or in his 3rd term. Maybe.

— the American people may or may not be stupid, but when it comes to the polls they don’t exactly have a large, spectrum-wide choice of candidates.

“This is a democracy. The American people are stupid enough to fall for this election after election. So they deserve what they get.”

For those who actually possess an education, fair enough.

For those who wasted away through 12 years of public education, holding only a diploma or GED, or have gone to a community college for a year or two, or who are busting their asses to pay their bills or raise their kids, I’m sorry, but that’s a bullshit statement. And one I daresay comes from someone detached from average people’s lives. Did Steinbeck refer to the Okies as stupid? Did union organizers in Matewan WV call them stupid?

The people aren’t ignorant because they’re lazy or incapable of learning, they’re ignorant b/c the state wants them prone. They’re ignorant b/c their schools completely suck (naturally, when the state guts pub. education), and they’re ignorant b/c they have no viable media that represents their interests (natural when the state allows corporations to dominate the public airwaves).

Instead of calling them stupid, the left should be out in the fucking streets organizing them. But that’d be a lot more challenging than just calling them stupid.

Meanwhile police refuse to pursue criminal charges against banks breaking into housing to change locks when they don’t have clear title to the property. Many people have lost their houses based on fraudulent paperwork submitted by law firms and banks, where the banks committed perjury about their title to property.

Virtually all of this is interstate commerce and falls under RICO statutes if you want it to. The DOJ could go after it tomorrow if Obama wanted to. He doesn’t.

We’re talking about the same guy who helped the telephone companies get retroactive immunity. I expect that he will sign H.R. 3808 on the night of the election (buries the signing the most), or the day after the election (once he’s had some time to assess the “official” results), or the Friday evening after the election. And if the banks need something else to avoid the consequences of their law breaking, they’ll get their retroactive immunity. It is the Responsible, Serious thing to do For the Good of the Country.

Sadly, Bernard, your outlook defines the left. Thus our outrageous success over last 40 years. Keep the conversation bracketed off, keep clucking to a narrowing choir. That’ll grow a movement.

Whether you like the generalized “stupid” or not, their interests are our interests–we better find a way to reach them, however distasteful they may seem. It’s the only way the oligarchs will be defeated. And I can guarantee you one f’ing thing–the motherfuckers who have destroyed America are overjoyed to observe this type of division. They know as long as we’re at each others’ throats that they’re safe, that we won’t be dragging them from their gated communities and …

Every time someone insults a poor, uneducated person possessing misdirected anger, you not only further alienate him/her from any more coherent message—you alienate their families, friends, or others who ID with them (and not with folks from prosperous zip-codes holding degrees and condescending attitudes).

I may not want to engage the closeted jackboot who loathes anyone who threatens his fragile sense of self. But even that little-dicked, scared boy might have a sister or an aunt or even a son who might be open to what another church is preaching, if its minister weren’t saying that everyone in their community, everyone they see in their local church or Walmart or car-race, is ignorant trash. But, hey, maybe my roots are showing–where I grew up, that was the norm. Too many lefties of humble origins forget a lot, they’re so thrilled to get out.

There are two lefts IMO. There is the incestuous left that talks only to themselves, bemoaning our cratering society, and there is the activist left of Howard Zinn, that speaks to all peoples with respect and sympathy—for an ever-burgeoning class of people being preyed upon. And regardless of whether they’re too “stupid” to know by whom. I know, it’s pie in the sky idealism of the rankest order, but it’s all I got.

Back to Matewan, for those of you who’ve seen the film, the seminal moment is when Chris Cooper’s character explains to a lot of hardworking men what a union is. To a bunch of men who are hostile to his education, his politics or the notion of an integrated union. But they come to learn he has their best interests at heart, that out of many, one, that he’s putting his life on the line, coming into their community to preach the f’ing gospel. This might seem mere fancy, but this is the left I grew up believing in and it’s now virtually gone from the landscape. I may have little faith that it can be redeemed, but of one thing I’m fairly certain, if there is a hope of redemption, it’ll originate in the dirty, reeking street, not in the goddamned blogosphere.

And the problem with deportations is what exactly? The concept of getting deported if you’re in a country illegally is a pretty simple one, and all countries reserve the right to deport foreigners.

Add on 5 years in prison for employing illegals, and poof, there goes the immigration problem.

What makes you think that women and Hispanics are core constituents of the Ds?

obviously, Hispanics don’t count much in Obama’s plan. But who’ll do the Elite’s dirty work. can they outsource that to China too! lol

who’ll do the dirty housework for the Rich once all the Hispanics are “sent back” to Mexico?

just look at the islands in the Carribean. How the European White Elites imported all the “help” to run their plantations and then left after extracting all the “riches”.

that’s the “business” plan the Elites have always used. Once they steal all they can, it’s off to another place to “exploit,” leaving the devastated poor behind to fight one another for what is left.

The Business model of Capitalism. divide and conquer and destroy

But that’s just it, Mandos, voters haven’t recently been voting for right-wing candidates. Bush lost in 2000. Meaning that except for possibly 2004, the GOP has lost every presidential election since 1988. While Obama is enacting conservative policies, he was branded as a liberal or at least as not-Bush (who everyone knew was a conservative). And he won. Not because people wanted a right-winger – forget what they actually got – but because they wanted the person branded a “progressive”. And while more people may identify as “conservative”, when you look at what policies most Americans prefer, they’re liberal policies – higher taxes on the rich, Medicare for All, ending the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. Hell, recent polls show that more than half of Americans no longer oppose gay marriage (although support is still at slightly less than half).

The problem is actually twofold:

1) Americans are lied to 24/7 by the media and the government about the world they live in. Even if you want to know what’s going on, it’s very hard to find out.

2) “Liberal” Democrats like Obama keep enacting crappy conservative policies, which fail, and then are associated with liberals. People don’t hate the stimulus because it was expensive, they hate it because it didn’t work. The economy still sucks. Just like, despite the media pounding, they don’t care about the deficit nearly as much as they cared about jobs. And if Obama had enacted a real stimulus that delivered jobs, the Democrats would be doing much better. But instead he enacted conservative policies (tax cut heavy, too small stimulus, focus on deficit reduction) and the economy sucks. But, of course, because he’s a Democrat and was hailed as some progressive hero, it sucks because his “progressive” policies don’t work.

What’s more, if you look at polls, voters still hate the GOP. It’s just that a lot of Democrats won’t bother to vote because they were promised change and didn’t get it. The GOP isn’t winning because people love them, they’re winning because people are so discouraged, they aren’t going to bother to vote.

And, hey, who can blame them? There’s absolutely no indication that either party is going to do anything to help the regular people out. Obama has made it perfectly clear he isn’t going to do anything about unemployment (other than blame Bush) and is going to cut Social Security. Hell, the Democrats couldn’t even roll back the Bush tax cuts on the rich, which most Americans support. When you fail to do what you were elected to do – fix the economy, help Main Street, you lose elections. And in our limited two party system, that means the GOP wins, even if most Americans think the GOP is the one who screwed up the economy in the first place (and polls show they blame Bush more than Obama).

First of all, i have to agree with this wholeheartedly:

“Did Steinbeck refer to the Okies as stupid? Did union organizers in Matewan WV call them stupid?
The people aren’t ignorant because they’re lazy or incapable of learning, they’re ignorant b/c the state wants them prone. They’re ignorant b/c their schools completely suck (naturally, when the state guts pub. education), and they’re ignorant b/c they have no viable media that represents their interests (natural when the state allows corporations to dominate the public airwaves).
Instead of calling them stupid, the left should be out in the fucking streets organizing them. But that’d be a lot more challenging than just calling them stupid.”

Second, with regard to immigration into the U.S., it makes perfect sense to deport. The idea is not necessarily to reduce the number of undocumented workers in the US, but to keep them in the shadows. Remember to the 2008 Democratic coronation when everyone bashed Hillary for making the statement that she supported drivers licenses for undocumented workers, and precisely because it would bring such persons out of the shadows. Why is that important? Once they are out of the shadows, that would remove one of the downward pressures on wages. Labor will flow in accordance with capital, but the degree to which the state structures such flows (incentivizing second-class citizenry so as the exert a downward pressure on wages) seems to me to make the difference.

Nah, lb, Chris Hedges is the one who scores, speaking about why liberals cannot rally the American people:

Mass support for anti-democratic movements and public acceptance of open violations of human rights are not caused, in the end, by the skillful dissemination of misinformation or brainwashing. They are caused by the breakdown of a society and the death of a liberal class that once made reform and representative government possible. The timidity of our liberal class was on public display during the march in Washington. Speakers may have called for jobs, but none would call on citizens to abandon the rotting hull of the Democratic Party and our moribund political system or put Wall Street speculators in prison. The speakers at the rally proposed working within the current electoral system, although most Americans are aware that it has been gamed by corporate interests. This is hardly a call, especially given the failures of the Obama administration, that will fire up the unemployed and underemployed.

“We need jobs,” the Rev. Al Sharpton said at the march. “We’ve bailed out the banks. We bailed out the insurance companies. Now it’s time to bail out the American people.”

But Sharpton and the other speakers, too close to the power elite in the Democratic Party, did not call for rebellion. There was no war cry against Wall Street and the purveyors of death in the defense and health industry. There was no acknowledgement that unfettered capitalism and globalization are killing our ecosystem and creating a worldwide system of neo-feudalism. There was no acceptance that the corporate state must be dismantled if we are to save ourselves. Any effective resistance must begin with a condemnation of our political elite and liberal institutions, including the press, the universities, labor, the arts, religious institutions and the Democratic Party, for selling us out. But the speakers on the mall in Washington would not go there. And I suspect, for this reason, the Americans who are hurting most found nothing they said of interest.

Whatever else they may know or not know, Americans have managed to suss out that neither party in DC gives a damn about them. That’s the brilliance of the Tea Party movement. The conservatives, having recognized that the GOP had lost credibility, created a faux people’s movement in which to channel popular anger. While liberals simply keep telling people to be sure to “vote Democratic in November!” Despite the fact that the Democrats have done nothing but screw over regular Americans for the past 2 years (four if you count their abysmal Congressional performance under Bush). So long as that’s all we have to say, why on earth would anyone listen to us?

i was totally amazed at how international Orlando was. the further south in Florida you go the more Northern it becomes.

yes i have generalized about the South. the people is power in the South are Rednecks as far as only thinking about themselves. introspection, ME, is all that matters. not to say these people aren’t friendly and gracious and all those wonderful Southern things i take for granted as being Southern.

the fear however is real. the aspects of not getting over the Civil War is also pervasive and incorporated into general concepts of what is “right” and “wrong.” Riding back to my home in Nashville earlier this year, i turned on the radio and all i heard was Right wing hatred against the “Other” and “my way or the Highway” thinking. That part doesn’t change. Poverty causes people to adapt in strange ways to outsiders, or so it seems to me of how Southerners responded to the great devastation after the Slavery based economy of the South. The horror stories of the Reconstruction explain a great of how the South lived, thought, responded after the War of Northern Aggression.

oh yes the South isn’t uniform as it used to be when i was young. a lot of Northerners and foreigners have made the South quite different. BUT, the power structure still remains in the hands of the “Good ole Boys.” that much hasn’t changed a whole lot.

places like Alabama Mississippi and other White areas of the South are still anti change. i can’t begin to express the amount of fear I felt driving through Alabama, Tennessee after hearing their “opinions on the radio.” a friend from Nashville told me when i lived there, not to go into the Hollows. Being white i got a pass on the visible society i lived in. if i weren’t white, i would have run like hell. Knowing the KKK originated in Pulaski County, Tennessee wasn’t much comfort. i sure am glad i ain’t black in America. Not much has change in the rural south. even the Metropolitan areas are risky due to the segregation that has elapsed since the Government has forced “integration” of the schools.

this “status quo” is structured by the “Good ole Boys” who still run the South. Reality isn’t what i make it, so i have to accept it as it is.

what i am saying is the White Elites in the South have the power and keep it the way it always has been, even here in Louisiana. And Baton Rouge’s suburbs have given us David Duke and the a bastion of White Power. Don’t go there if you aren’t with “them.”

this “us vs them” has succeeded in dividing us according to color lines, when the real dividing live is “money”. as long as the Good ole Boys control the Money, there will always be a “color divide” used to distract us while the Good ole Boys steal us all blind.

as i said, the scarcities of the Reconstruction era engendered a way of thinking that has “colored” the thinking of the Southern society till today. LBJ War on Poverty uncovered the enmity and fear that “Southern graciousness” had papered over. Obama has blown the cover off the “pretense.”

with Latinos now a growing minority in the South, the competition for scarce resources/money has intensified. Poor Whites have been told so often that there isn’t enough to go around, and now the Mexicans/primarily/ want to be included in the structure of society of the South. the Fear used by the Good ole Boys is typified by Bill Clinton’s use of Triangulation. Clinton is so good at selling BS. Southern gentility.

you don’t get in power and stay there by being open! that’s one reason the Right has used the Southern Strategy all over America. the Right has used hatefilled tactics to achieve political power… white vs. blacks…, to think the Right will ever give up is laughable. The Good ole Boys have many years of experience on what works, and how to use it against their “competition”.

Fear is a wonderful tool to keep and consolidate political power/money. Genteel Society in the South is a great cover for the naked power structure that has controlled the South since Slavery was instituted. after all, being polite and friendly and appearing gracious has masked the viciousness of the Power Good ole Boys will never give up. Changing tactics is the essence,but not the reality of what makes the South the South.

as long as the rest of Southern Society accepts the Good ole Boys for their positions of authority, everything will be fine. of course that assumes you like things the way they are.
and you are happy with the status quo. if you are black, female, foreign, or gay, well that’s another story. and Southern Baptist.

Pity the “different ones.” either fit in or move.

And while more people may identify as “conservative”, when you look at what policies most Americans prefer, they’re liberal policies – higher taxes on the rich, Medicare for All, ending the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. Hell, recent polls show that more than half of Americans no longer oppose gay marriage (although support is still at slightly less than half).

Indeed, this is what posting the Kreplach Joke was intended to express. When people vote, what matters is their identification, not the particular soup of policies they really prefer. They may like a full cupboard of liberal and left-wing economic policy ingredients—but when provided the opportunity, they won’t necessarily vote for them.

(As an aside, on the single-payer front, it really depends on who is polling and how…)

The American right-wing movement has understood the nature of what I’ll call the Kreplach Gap—what exists in the mental space between the individual ingredients and the soup, between desired policy options and entire political programmes. And they’ve figured out how to exploit it. But American left-liberals are stuck fighting over whether there even *is* a Kreplach Gap, or whatever you want to call it.

Lots of typos above. Sorry. Rushed.

1) Americans are lied to 24/7 by the media and the government about the world they live in. Even if you want to know what’s going on, it’s very hard to find out.

This reduction to the economics of media is very popular on the left, and obviously money has something to do with the size of the megaphone, and the size of the megaphone has something to do with how well the message is heard and accepted.

But if it’s all there is, we might as well all pack up and go home and wait out the apocalypse, because the left will never have the money required to overturn the influence of money, not even via SorosBucks(tm).

Americans have, in fact, have had access to the means to find out the Real News for quite a long time, and even access to knowledge of electoral alternatives for quite some time. In 2000, Nader got quite a lot of coverage, and for once the principled left had a voice with some amount of media and branding-savvy. More’s the pity, it didn’t work.

So when someone actually *did* come and offer the alternative, *did* actually talk about living wage, *did* actually point out all the flaws that Chris Hedges pointed out, and *had* all the requisite web sites, leafletters, and a small but reasonable number of TV interviews, Americans chose not to look at the data to which they had access, chose not to vote for him. Even when many of the structural problems we see today were still present in 2000—the pernicious effects of free trade, the hollowing out of manufacturing, hollowing out of the welfare state.

I am forced to conclude that something else is missing.

Good comments to ruminate on, here.

That the U.S. is heading for its fascist moment as Ian says is, I think, by now inevitable. All the substantial world-line branchings that led elsewhere are now in our past.

BDB speaks for me. and i’m mostly scrolling on by you now, Mandos. being contrarian for it’s own sake? boring.