For a little while, I thought the rather absurd focus on Republican candidates, characters, office holders and policies on the "left" had abated. But I was wrong. The "left" is entirely invested in the Republican Party, Republican candidates and Republican policies, and can consider and talk about almost nothing else.
It doesn't matter that the "left" is often critical of or mocking Republicans. So long as they are the center of attention -- "all eyes on them" as it were -- Republicans rule.
As if they held complete power in a one party state verging on totalitarianism.
The United States has long been an authoritarian society -- often much more severely so than it is now -- but it has generally resisted totalitarianism. Now, I'm not so sure. As the economic situation continues to deteriorate for the millions, while those on top prosper as never before, a kind of home grown totalitarianism may be inevitable.
For quite a while, each political party was eager to pick the other party's presidential (and sometimes congressional) candidates, or at least to have a significant influence on the selection. It was a game of sorts, sometimes involving dirty tricks, but typically revolving around "chatter" and where possible, voter limitation and suppression. By controlling what was said and heard and who voted, each party sought to dominate the other. The People had little to do with it -- except to the extent they could be manipulated to go along with the program of the political consultants.
But what I see going on now is qualitatively different. Yes, of course, controlling what is said and heard is still important, as is voter suppression -- which is now quite deliberate and out in the open. But now it is no longer a matter of choosing the other party's candidates or influencing the choice. For all intents and purposes, it appears that the Democratic Party has collapsed as a political entity. It has become a pseudo-oppositional subsidiary of the dominant Republican Party, much as Congress and the courts became appendages of the Executive Branch during the Bush Years, something the Obama administration has only partially reversed.
A vestigial Democratic Party is simply uninteresting to observers. Democrats have no power or authority as a political party since they seem to be in complete thrall to their Republican Overlords, indeed more and more Democrats appear to be Republicans themselves -- perhaps Rockefeller Republicans, but Republicans nonetheless.
And as this One Party State develops, what you can do and what you can say and what your future will be diminishes.
You either conform to the will of a tiny minority of primarily banking interests (a totalitarianism of Banksters?) that insists on impoverished drudgery for those who can continue to be employed (ah, shades of Orwells Proles!), and irrelevance for everyone else.
The political Parties are nothing but Show, and not a very good Show at that. Meaningless elections can continue, but Rule is closely held and more and more personal among a diminishing handful of Favorites at the Top. We the People have nothing whatever to do with it.
The "Left" (so-called) is so deeply invested in Republicans and what they do and all their clowning and bizarre antics because the Republicans are the purest expression and face of the Rulers over us. The Dems are not even putting on a good show anymore.
There is a vestigial Real Left in this country, but you would never know it from appearances. In time it may reemerge, but for now, it is essentially underground. In the meantime, more and more Americans are simply withdrawing from the Perpetual Show that has taken the place of the Public Interest in the political realm. They are turning their backs and developing alternatives.
The Government may be in total thrall to the Banksters and their determination to extort the last dime and drop of blood from the masses, but the People themselves have long been strategizing ways to thwart them. If Government really does descend into a kind of neo-Feudal totalitarianism -- the direction its headed -- "opting out" will become more and more common. Our Rulers won't care, at least not until their extortion payments are no longer forthcoming.
And then?
Well, "Hello Greece!"
Agreed. The Dems have folded themselves into the Republican party. They now merely act as a kind of speedbump to the furthest reaches of the right. Their mission, apparently, is to keep right wing policies, especially on the economy, war and civil liberties in place, while trying to steer the crazies away from the actual levers of power. They, of course, use the crazies to reset the Overton Windows further to the right, knocking completely out of any relation with the left. Some in the Media and all too many Americans then see this breed of sell-out Dems as "liberal" and "leftist", therefore moving the goal posts and that window even more.
ReplyDeleteI find it nothing short of hopeless.
And it aint just here. We have supposedly "socialist" governments in Europe who are letting Banksters run the show, which means they can't possibly be socialist, much less be anywhere on the left.
(How on earth can the head of the IMF be a socialist, and still run that institution the way it's been run for the last thirty neoliberal years?)
Someday, we're going to see people seriously saying that public education is communism, and must be destroyed. And they will. They'll do it.
This country, this world, is headed for a massive collapse, and I think "the left" will be blamed for it. Because the right wingers who caused the destruction will scapegoat the left who had no power.
We've seen that movie before.
The Powers That Be are sure acting as if the Left were powerless in all this restructuring that's going on in the west.
ReplyDeleteAnd boy, it sure looks like the European Social Democrats are even more in thrall to the banksters than the American political class. Whatever they want, they get. Whatever the people want or need is taken away.
And all this austerity doesn't work; it doesn't work for anybody. Which means that the banksters are fundamentally stupid and evil, and the governments that fall for their demands -- which is all of them but Iceland at this point -- are made up of cowards and criminals.
Well, this should be a recipe for revolution. As has been attempted in North Africa and the Middle East. Ask the Egyptians or Tunisians, though. The revolution is far from won.
Whether the revolutionary fervor will spread, I don't know. There were concessions offered and/or made in North Africa and the Middle East. None at all in Europe, in fact, the program for Greece is even more brutal and draconian than was previously believed.
In the United States, there are no concessions, either.
The United States is useful as a very militarized and brutal global killing machine. That seems to be our national fate -- kind of like Sparta back in the day or Alexander's Macedonia. Remember how Sparta "defended Democracy" against the monstrous Persian foe? I suppose Alexander was "defending Democracy" too.
It's incredibly frustrating to live through this era.
Grr.
Ché