The protests have begun to lessen, so it would appear from my perch in the wilderness. They haven't stopped by any means, nor are they likely to end any time soon, but the numbers in the streets have been on a declining trend for some time, and I suspect that something called protest fatigue and burnout is to blame. One can't keep marching and protesting every day, no matter how much one might want to, when there are other matters that need attention. For many, those other matters will include "making a living" and such.
Also, too, consider this: though there have been many indications that a coup of some sort is immanent, for whatever reason it doesn't happen. Instead, we seem to have a situation in which the presidency itself is becoming an irrelevancy -- except for its entertainment value.
Other people, other interests are taking charge of running the government, and as long as Himself is kept on the hustings and/or the sidelines, there's nothing to worry about. Right?
Nothing will happen that the ruling class doesn't want to happen; there will be no fundamental changes in the course of whatever may come. Trump won't change a damned thing. He can't.
Something happened over the weekend, some of which we saw, some of which we aren't privy to, and it was clear enough to observers that Trump's choke chain was tightened a link or two, and his leash was given a jerk. His shtick hasn't changed much -- at least not for his adoring believers -- but his demeanor has been dialed back a notch or two. While he may not be behaving in a classic Presidential style -- not in him to do so -- he's somewhat less abrasive on the Twitter machine, somewhat less stupid-seeming otherwise.
His campaign stop in Florida cheered his demoralized fans and seemed to give him something of a boost. His appointment of Gen. McMaster as National Security Advisor seemed to give the permanent government a reason for hope.
The story is that he isn't really much interested in presidenting beyond issuing diktats and shaking things up for effect. His staff appears to be weak and very limited both in numbers and skill level. They are way out of their depth, The permanent government is not nearly as vulnerable as they believe it to be, and beyond that, they need it if they want to get their policies implemented, their programs done.
Ergo, a tense standoff appears to be in place.
As some observers point out, this is all happening way above our heads, and we the Rabble have very little effect on it. Practically none. We can speculate all we want about what is going on, who's being thrown under the bus, who the survivors might be, yadda yadda, but it doesn't matter a bit. Ultimately, things will or won't happen regardless of the Rabble.
The defenestration of General Flynn, and then of poor Milo, I think served as cautionary warnings, the first to Trump himself, the second to "President Bannon" -- who seems to think he's invulnerable.
Flynn and The Russia Thing seem very bizarre, but there is something going on there beyond the hysterics over nuclear holocaust, etc. Whatever it is, it is being used as a cudgel by elements of the permanent government -- They Who Know -- over the Trump Regime.
My sense is that it has to do with Trump's extensive mob ties, some of which are clearly Russian, and who has dirt on whom. Little or nothing to do with geopolitical strategeries and what not. This reflects on the nature of the presidency itself -- it's been mobbed up for generations -- and how rule is implemented. And by whom.
As for Fucking Milo, GFC on a crutch. That one was almost too easy. I've seen maybe five minutes of his act in toto, and it was obvious from the get that the whole thing was fake. As fake as the ropes of "pearls" he wore for his Bill Maher appearance. No there there, and his provocations (:"":) were as substance free as he was. It was all a charade. Eagerly marketed by those who seek to profit from the gullibility of some of the masses.
Oh well.
Meanwhile, whatever is to come still won't be in our interests. The question is, whose?
Showing posts with label Presidential Nonsense. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Presidential Nonsense. Show all posts
Wednesday, February 22, 2017
Thursday, January 26, 2017
Transformative Presidencies
I was born during the 1948 election campaign between Harry S Truman and Thomas Dewey (Strom Thurmond ran as a Dixiecrat.)
The false Chicago Tribune headline would become a legend in November of that year:
Yes, well. "Everyone makes mistakes," right?
I don't remember Truman as president, but I certainly recall Eisenhower and his 1956 re-election campaign against Adlai Stevenson.
I grew up in a Democratic household and there are reasons for it. Loyalty to the Democratic Party on my father's side goes back at least to the anti-Irish riots in Ohio instigated by the Know Nothings -- a third party which amalgamated with the Republicans shortly after the mob violence in Ohio and elsewhere. On my mother's side, it's a little more complicated as her stepfather was a Republican, her mother was a Democrat (primarily due to social issues -- like women's right to vote and so forth) and my mother was initially disinclined to either party but became a Democrat under FDR. She stayed a Democrat the rest of her life, but was sometimes reluctant to vote for them.
Between Truman and Eisenhower, I think we can say that Truman was the Transformative President. Eisenhower consolidated the Truman Transformation.
Because I have no memory of the FDR administration and what I heard about it was somewhat conflicted, I can't say much about it from personal experience. Many of the programs initiated during the FDR administration were continued by Truman and Eisenhower, but many weren't. What I saw and experienced was what remained, the Legacy if you will, of a previous Transformative Presidency.
Of course the Post World War II context of the Truman administration is fundamental to any understanding of what was going on and why.
When I was growing up, WWII vets were everywhere. Some were doing fine. Others I knew were having a lot of psychological problems, what we know as PTSD now, and their difficulties reverberated in the neighborhoods where I lived. There wasn't a lot that was done for them; people were pretty much on their own to work out their war-time difficulties as best they could, or contrariwise, they could be sent to the looney bin.
Context.
Truman was Transformative, Eisenhower was not.
Truman authorized the use of nuclear weapons on Japan and was forever after unrepentant. Truman initiated the Cold War with the Soviet Union, something that would reverberate for all of us throughout the '50s and '60s -- and into later decades, and still (for some ungodly reason). Truman integrated the armed forces, which reverberated in unanticipated ways until civil rights and integration for minority non-white populations became the standard, a standard still resisted by die-hard White Supremacists.
Eisenhower, for the most part, just continued FDR and Truman era programs, initiated some of his own -- such as the Interstate Highway construction program -- and allowed particular political and economic interests to have their way.Eugene Joe McCarthy was given leeway to conduct his witch-hunt for example, with no interference from the White House, but what a lot of people don't understand now is that McCarthy was just a temporary phenomenon; the witch hunt for Communists and their sympathizers was continuous and it was everywhere throughout the '50s and early '60s, and it was that continuing witch hunt that inspired the Free Speech Movement at UC Berkeley in 1964 which in turn triggered the student rebellion of the '60s and everything that followed.
But as president, Eisenhower seemed very hands off, even disinterested. After his heart attacks he seemed to turn over much of his power and authority to his vice president, Richard Milhouse Nixon.
Kennedy's was a transformative presidency, but not the way he intended. Well, everything changed after his assassination. Changes we know of, changes we don't. But there were events during his brief presidency that transformed the way we looked at presidents and particularly their wives. They became celebrity figures more than political ones. In the case of Jackie Kennedy, she was not just a celebrity, she was a glamorous icon of beauty, fashion and class, a status she maintained the rest of her life, and which she passed on to her son, John F. Kennedy, Jr.
Kennedy's assassination in Dallas, November 22, 1963, was the first of many political shocks we would be heir to. What happened was, up till then, inconceivable. No president had been assassinated for decades, and the prior assassinations had been one-off anomalies. We were so far beyond that by 1963. Besides, despite political differences, who in their right mind would want Kennedy dead? There wasn't a Civil War after all, nor were there the kind of movements afoot in the land that led to the assassination of William McKinley.
No, it was crazy, and suspicion fell on the hostile environment generated by the right wing, John Birch Society saturated, white supremacist culture of Texas. In other words, Kennedy must have killed because those white crackers in Dallas hated him for being a Yankee interloper/"nigger lover."
But things got very strange very quickly when Kennedy's accused assassin was himself assassinated live on TeeVee -- nothing like that had happened before, either. It was equally inconceivable -- and the whole world seemed to come tumbling down over the Thanksgiving Weekend.
The elevation of Lyndon Johnson to the presidency was equally shocking. Lyndon Johnson from Texas. How convenient.
But LBJ got the benefit of the doubt from a strangely passive public, and he made the most of it, achieving the most comprehensive and broad-based social legislation in our nation's history, very nearly enacting FDR's Second New Deal over the muted objections of Republicans.
Transformative? There's no doubt about it. In fact, I rank Johnson the most transformative president of my lifetime. He was a steamroller of a President who managed to overcome many, many obstacles to get done what up till then couldn't be done, including civil rights legislation, Medicare, and a host of Great Society programs intended to alleviate poverty and build a better future for all Americans.
Then there was the war in Southeast Asia. How he got suckered into that one, I don't know, but he did, and once he did, there was no going back. They say he saw it as a "man" thing, he had to prove his cojones as a War President, following as he did a man who was hailed as a genuine War Hero. But the carnage in Vietnam and Laos for unclear or venal motives made less and less sense, and it triggered endless mass demonstrations against the war, added to the student demonstrations triggered by the FSM uprising in Berkeley added to the periodic rage and riots in the ghettos of the country. By 1968, it seemed like the whole country was descending into chaos.
And yet on the other side, the US had never been so prosperous and, yes, "progressive." Not everything about it was either good or perfect, but social and economic progress was being made on many fronts, and many of the changes that got under way following the assassination of President Kennedy became institutionalized very quickly. They're with us today. There is likely no going back.
But the assassinations of 1968 were perhaps too much of a shock to an already reeling society, and they helped destroy what little comity was left in the country, leading directly to the inauguration of Richard M. Nixon -- who ran on a platform of ending the War (Humphrey would have continued it on Johnson's terms) and bringing "law and order" to the streets.
Well.
Of course he didn't end the War, he intensified it, but he did end the draft, and that took a lot of the piss and vinegar out of the anti-war movement and the student rebellion. His "law and order" campaign had the effect of declaring domestic war on uppity Negroes, particularly males, who were essentially criminalized as a class. Cities stopped burning on a regular basis.
Some of the progressive ideals he'd grown up with continued, however, and so his truncated regime was/is considered a mixed bag. Good-Bad together.
But Nixon was forced from office in yet another shocking course of events. He was shown to be a criminal -- a political criminal -- who abused the office and the power of the presidency to advance his own political interests and ends. At the time, this behavior was unacceptable by both parties and rather than impeach his ass, he was prevailed upon to resign in disgrace. This after his vice president, Spiro Agnew, had been forced to resign in disgrace for his own crimes.
Dear me. People got the idea that the Presidency was a criminal enterprise run by gangsters.
Well. Yes.
Nixon's actions and fall had a powerful effect on society and the presidency that reverberates today, particularly with regard to an obsession with "law enforcement" (by any means necessary) on the proles, and the understanding that if done right, the Presidency can be an Imperial dictatorship. Nixon just didn't do it right. You see.
Yes, a criminal enterprise run by gangsters. What's to stop it?
I guess I will have to concede it was a transformative paradigm of rule, one we have by no means escaped. It's almost become iron law.
Nixon was followed by our first unelected President/Vice President pair, Gerald Ford and Nelson Rockefeller. They were place-holders while the government attempted to get its act together. The War in Southeast Asia ended, finally, essentially petering out, leaving a swath of destruction through the region that is still being recovered from, but somewhat amazingly transforming the relationship between Americans and the people of Vietnam in particular from enmity to high regard. In some ways, they see each other as equally victimized by out of control rulers.
Ford was followed by Carter, whose moral suasion might have been high, but whose ability to implement that suasion from the Oval Office was thwarted by events, particularly the Iranian Revolution which crippled Carter's presidency beyond recovery. He was not re-elected.
Instead, a movie actor who suffered from incipient dementia/Alzheimers, Ronald Reagan, was elevated in a wave election that began the counter revolution against "progressivism" in its entirety. They wasted no time transforming the government and society into a version of what they used to be prior to the Progressive era.
Once again, people who understood that this wouldn't turn out well for the many, but would greatly enhance the comfort and convenience of the few were largely passive in the face of the Reaganite transformation. What could they do, after all? He was elected and he was for most of his reign very popular with a still powerful subset of white men.
Reagan was transformative, but not in a good way, though some of what he did was positive.
Reagan was followed by his vice president G H W Bush, former head of the CIA, and reputed to have been the eminence grise of the Reagan regime. Once installed in the Oval Office on his own account, he seemed almost as bumbling as Ford, and his appalling War on Iraq eventually became an albatross around his neck; wtf, dude? Of course there were the scandals. Jeebus, what had the presidency become?
Then came Clinton. Oh dear. Clinton has been ritualistically scapegoated for everything since the world began, and strangely he seemed to accept the role of scapegoat. No skin off his nose, I guess. He accelerated the neoliberal transformation begun under Reagan (Carter instituted some of it prior to Reagan's efforts) and thus set the stage for catastrophes to come. But he seemed oblivious -- then and now.
After being re-elected, Clinton was absurdly impeached. WTF, Congress? The spectacle was indeed compelling, much like the Trial of OJ, but what the actual fuck? The lesson was that the Presidency was not at all what many Americans thought it to be. It was neither all-powerful, nor was it power-less, but what it was depended more on the political equivalent of teevee ratings than anything else. In the meantime, the neoliberal/neoconservative game plan was churning away in the background, largely unnoticed due to the spectacle of WTF. Shiny objects to distract from what was important and what was really going on.
Clinton's impeachment failed, but I don't think it was meant to succeed. It was Grand Theatre, Grand Guignol, a conscious and cynical spectacle of power run amok. He left office under a cloud but surprisingly popular nonetheless. He is still reviled and revered in almost equal measure.
Then came Bush2, dear me with sparklers. Jeebus what a shit-show.
His rule was an unmitigated disaster almost from the beginning, in part, certainly, because he was illegitimately placed on the throne (yes, by now it should be clear that the Imperial notion of the United States and the presidency inaugurated by Nixon was institutionalized, and the president was in effect an autocrat/Emperor who could be appointed and removed at will -- by whom, though?)
We knew it would be a catastrophe, and it was.
Transformative? Well, it was sick making. Nevertheless, as appalling as it was, the neoliberal/neoconservative game plan continued unabated. In other words, no matter what happened on the surface, no matter how destructive and horrible, the underlying paradigm did not suffer or change.
That should have been a lesson learned, but it wasn't. When Obama rode a wave of fear and revulsion into the White House, as the Redemption Candidate who would fix what had gone wrong, still the underlying neoLibCon paradigm of rule continued without a pause.
Nothing changed except rhetoric and appearances.
Obama had the opportunity to be a transformative and redemptive president, and he actually had the power, but he didn't use it. Instead, he used his charisma to calm things down while instituting or continuing many of the policies and programs that continued the exploitation and destruction of the Rabble. And then convincing much of the Rabble that it was Good For Them. And everything would work out for the best, you'd see.
No. It didn't.
Some of us were not surprised. Others still don't see his sleight of hand/con game for what it was. Others still are ambivalent, whereas there is a strong element of racism and hatred in much of the opposition to him, racism and hatred that effectively distracts from what he was doing.
I have no love for him, in part because so much of what he did was contrary to the interests of the People and served to further concentrate wealth and power among a kleptocracy that now rules directly through a not-very-tightly wrapped upper class twit, a con-man, gangster and raging conspiracist, who is apparently so wild and ego-driven that he is always spinning out out of control, and is more and more likely to be neutralized with extreme prejudice, perhaps by one of his own guards. It's that dicey.
This cannot be happening, but it is.
Where it might lead is anyone's guess, but I've already said it is likely to be the final end of the Republic, and what comes after will be some form of institutionalized autocracy, even hereditary rule -- a throwback to some other time and place. And endless meatgrinder wars.
Jeebus, what have we done to deserve this?
The false Chicago Tribune headline would become a legend in November of that year:
I don't remember Truman as president, but I certainly recall Eisenhower and his 1956 re-election campaign against Adlai Stevenson.
I grew up in a Democratic household and there are reasons for it. Loyalty to the Democratic Party on my father's side goes back at least to the anti-Irish riots in Ohio instigated by the Know Nothings -- a third party which amalgamated with the Republicans shortly after the mob violence in Ohio and elsewhere. On my mother's side, it's a little more complicated as her stepfather was a Republican, her mother was a Democrat (primarily due to social issues -- like women's right to vote and so forth) and my mother was initially disinclined to either party but became a Democrat under FDR. She stayed a Democrat the rest of her life, but was sometimes reluctant to vote for them.
Between Truman and Eisenhower, I think we can say that Truman was the Transformative President. Eisenhower consolidated the Truman Transformation.
Because I have no memory of the FDR administration and what I heard about it was somewhat conflicted, I can't say much about it from personal experience. Many of the programs initiated during the FDR administration were continued by Truman and Eisenhower, but many weren't. What I saw and experienced was what remained, the Legacy if you will, of a previous Transformative Presidency.
Of course the Post World War II context of the Truman administration is fundamental to any understanding of what was going on and why.
When I was growing up, WWII vets were everywhere. Some were doing fine. Others I knew were having a lot of psychological problems, what we know as PTSD now, and their difficulties reverberated in the neighborhoods where I lived. There wasn't a lot that was done for them; people were pretty much on their own to work out their war-time difficulties as best they could, or contrariwise, they could be sent to the looney bin.
Context.
Truman was Transformative, Eisenhower was not.
Truman authorized the use of nuclear weapons on Japan and was forever after unrepentant. Truman initiated the Cold War with the Soviet Union, something that would reverberate for all of us throughout the '50s and '60s -- and into later decades, and still (for some ungodly reason). Truman integrated the armed forces, which reverberated in unanticipated ways until civil rights and integration for minority non-white populations became the standard, a standard still resisted by die-hard White Supremacists.
Eisenhower, for the most part, just continued FDR and Truman era programs, initiated some of his own -- such as the Interstate Highway construction program -- and allowed particular political and economic interests to have their way.
But as president, Eisenhower seemed very hands off, even disinterested. After his heart attacks he seemed to turn over much of his power and authority to his vice president, Richard Milhouse Nixon.
Kennedy's was a transformative presidency, but not the way he intended. Well, everything changed after his assassination. Changes we know of, changes we don't. But there were events during his brief presidency that transformed the way we looked at presidents and particularly their wives. They became celebrity figures more than political ones. In the case of Jackie Kennedy, she was not just a celebrity, she was a glamorous icon of beauty, fashion and class, a status she maintained the rest of her life, and which she passed on to her son, John F. Kennedy, Jr.
Kennedy's assassination in Dallas, November 22, 1963, was the first of many political shocks we would be heir to. What happened was, up till then, inconceivable. No president had been assassinated for decades, and the prior assassinations had been one-off anomalies. We were so far beyond that by 1963. Besides, despite political differences, who in their right mind would want Kennedy dead? There wasn't a Civil War after all, nor were there the kind of movements afoot in the land that led to the assassination of William McKinley.
No, it was crazy, and suspicion fell on the hostile environment generated by the right wing, John Birch Society saturated, white supremacist culture of Texas. In other words, Kennedy must have killed because those white crackers in Dallas hated him for being a Yankee interloper/"nigger lover."
But things got very strange very quickly when Kennedy's accused assassin was himself assassinated live on TeeVee -- nothing like that had happened before, either. It was equally inconceivable -- and the whole world seemed to come tumbling down over the Thanksgiving Weekend.
The elevation of Lyndon Johnson to the presidency was equally shocking. Lyndon Johnson from Texas. How convenient.
But LBJ got the benefit of the doubt from a strangely passive public, and he made the most of it, achieving the most comprehensive and broad-based social legislation in our nation's history, very nearly enacting FDR's Second New Deal over the muted objections of Republicans.
Transformative? There's no doubt about it. In fact, I rank Johnson the most transformative president of my lifetime. He was a steamroller of a President who managed to overcome many, many obstacles to get done what up till then couldn't be done, including civil rights legislation, Medicare, and a host of Great Society programs intended to alleviate poverty and build a better future for all Americans.
Then there was the war in Southeast Asia. How he got suckered into that one, I don't know, but he did, and once he did, there was no going back. They say he saw it as a "man" thing, he had to prove his cojones as a War President, following as he did a man who was hailed as a genuine War Hero. But the carnage in Vietnam and Laos for unclear or venal motives made less and less sense, and it triggered endless mass demonstrations against the war, added to the student demonstrations triggered by the FSM uprising in Berkeley added to the periodic rage and riots in the ghettos of the country. By 1968, it seemed like the whole country was descending into chaos.
And yet on the other side, the US had never been so prosperous and, yes, "progressive." Not everything about it was either good or perfect, but social and economic progress was being made on many fronts, and many of the changes that got under way following the assassination of President Kennedy became institutionalized very quickly. They're with us today. There is likely no going back.
But the assassinations of 1968 were perhaps too much of a shock to an already reeling society, and they helped destroy what little comity was left in the country, leading directly to the inauguration of Richard M. Nixon -- who ran on a platform of ending the War (Humphrey would have continued it on Johnson's terms) and bringing "law and order" to the streets.
Well.
Of course he didn't end the War, he intensified it, but he did end the draft, and that took a lot of the piss and vinegar out of the anti-war movement and the student rebellion. His "law and order" campaign had the effect of declaring domestic war on uppity Negroes, particularly males, who were essentially criminalized as a class. Cities stopped burning on a regular basis.
Some of the progressive ideals he'd grown up with continued, however, and so his truncated regime was/is considered a mixed bag. Good-Bad together.
But Nixon was forced from office in yet another shocking course of events. He was shown to be a criminal -- a political criminal -- who abused the office and the power of the presidency to advance his own political interests and ends. At the time, this behavior was unacceptable by both parties and rather than impeach his ass, he was prevailed upon to resign in disgrace. This after his vice president, Spiro Agnew, had been forced to resign in disgrace for his own crimes.
Dear me. People got the idea that the Presidency was a criminal enterprise run by gangsters.
Well. Yes.
Nixon's actions and fall had a powerful effect on society and the presidency that reverberates today, particularly with regard to an obsession with "law enforcement" (by any means necessary) on the proles, and the understanding that if done right, the Presidency can be an Imperial dictatorship. Nixon just didn't do it right. You see.
Yes, a criminal enterprise run by gangsters. What's to stop it?
I guess I will have to concede it was a transformative paradigm of rule, one we have by no means escaped. It's almost become iron law.
Nixon was followed by our first unelected President/Vice President pair, Gerald Ford and Nelson Rockefeller. They were place-holders while the government attempted to get its act together. The War in Southeast Asia ended, finally, essentially petering out, leaving a swath of destruction through the region that is still being recovered from, but somewhat amazingly transforming the relationship between Americans and the people of Vietnam in particular from enmity to high regard. In some ways, they see each other as equally victimized by out of control rulers.
Ford was followed by Carter, whose moral suasion might have been high, but whose ability to implement that suasion from the Oval Office was thwarted by events, particularly the Iranian Revolution which crippled Carter's presidency beyond recovery. He was not re-elected.
Instead, a movie actor who suffered from incipient dementia/Alzheimers, Ronald Reagan, was elevated in a wave election that began the counter revolution against "progressivism" in its entirety. They wasted no time transforming the government and society into a version of what they used to be prior to the Progressive era.
Once again, people who understood that this wouldn't turn out well for the many, but would greatly enhance the comfort and convenience of the few were largely passive in the face of the Reaganite transformation. What could they do, after all? He was elected and he was for most of his reign very popular with a still powerful subset of white men.
Reagan was transformative, but not in a good way, though some of what he did was positive.
Reagan was followed by his vice president G H W Bush, former head of the CIA, and reputed to have been the eminence grise of the Reagan regime. Once installed in the Oval Office on his own account, he seemed almost as bumbling as Ford, and his appalling War on Iraq eventually became an albatross around his neck; wtf, dude? Of course there were the scandals. Jeebus, what had the presidency become?
Then came Clinton. Oh dear. Clinton has been ritualistically scapegoated for everything since the world began, and strangely he seemed to accept the role of scapegoat. No skin off his nose, I guess. He accelerated the neoliberal transformation begun under Reagan (Carter instituted some of it prior to Reagan's efforts) and thus set the stage for catastrophes to come. But he seemed oblivious -- then and now.
After being re-elected, Clinton was absurdly impeached. WTF, Congress? The spectacle was indeed compelling, much like the Trial of OJ, but what the actual fuck? The lesson was that the Presidency was not at all what many Americans thought it to be. It was neither all-powerful, nor was it power-less, but what it was depended more on the political equivalent of teevee ratings than anything else. In the meantime, the neoliberal/neoconservative game plan was churning away in the background, largely unnoticed due to the spectacle of WTF. Shiny objects to distract from what was important and what was really going on.
Clinton's impeachment failed, but I don't think it was meant to succeed. It was Grand Theatre, Grand Guignol, a conscious and cynical spectacle of power run amok. He left office under a cloud but surprisingly popular nonetheless. He is still reviled and revered in almost equal measure.
Then came Bush2, dear me with sparklers. Jeebus what a shit-show.
His rule was an unmitigated disaster almost from the beginning, in part, certainly, because he was illegitimately placed on the throne (yes, by now it should be clear that the Imperial notion of the United States and the presidency inaugurated by Nixon was institutionalized, and the president was in effect an autocrat/Emperor who could be appointed and removed at will -- by whom, though?)
We knew it would be a catastrophe, and it was.
Transformative? Well, it was sick making. Nevertheless, as appalling as it was, the neoliberal/neoconservative game plan continued unabated. In other words, no matter what happened on the surface, no matter how destructive and horrible, the underlying paradigm did not suffer or change.
That should have been a lesson learned, but it wasn't. When Obama rode a wave of fear and revulsion into the White House, as the Redemption Candidate who would fix what had gone wrong, still the underlying neoLibCon paradigm of rule continued without a pause.
Nothing changed except rhetoric and appearances.
Obama had the opportunity to be a transformative and redemptive president, and he actually had the power, but he didn't use it. Instead, he used his charisma to calm things down while instituting or continuing many of the policies and programs that continued the exploitation and destruction of the Rabble. And then convincing much of the Rabble that it was Good For Them. And everything would work out for the best, you'd see.
No. It didn't.
Some of us were not surprised. Others still don't see his sleight of hand/con game for what it was. Others still are ambivalent, whereas there is a strong element of racism and hatred in much of the opposition to him, racism and hatred that effectively distracts from what he was doing.
I have no love for him, in part because so much of what he did was contrary to the interests of the People and served to further concentrate wealth and power among a kleptocracy that now rules directly through a not-very-tightly wrapped upper class twit, a con-man, gangster and raging conspiracist, who is apparently so wild and ego-driven that he is always spinning out out of control, and is more and more likely to be neutralized with extreme prejudice, perhaps by one of his own guards. It's that dicey.
This cannot be happening, but it is.
Where it might lead is anyone's guess, but I've already said it is likely to be the final end of the Republic, and what comes after will be some form of institutionalized autocracy, even hereditary rule -- a throwback to some other time and place. And endless meatgrinder wars.
Jeebus, what have we done to deserve this?
Friday, January 20, 2017
The Problem With Presidents
So as far as we know, later this morning New Mexico time, Mr. Trump will approach the podium set up on the back steps of the Capitol in Washington and be sworn in as the 45th President of the United States of America, to the shock and horror of much of the population of those United States and the world.
W. T. F. America?
So far as we know, there has been no serious intervention that would prevent Mr. Trump's ascension to office. There have been numerous opportunities for intervention since he began his rise during the primary contests with however many rivals the Republican Party threw up against him.
He was a force of nature. Chatty and incoherent, insulting to any and all critics or rivals and ingratiating with his adoring fans, telling everyone he didn't care what they thought of him, he was going to plow on no matter, and he would win, like he always did in business. Just watch.
He ran as an entertainer, a clown, a vicious street fighter, a financial and sexual predator, a bully, a con man, a force of nature to be reckoned with or to yield to. There were no alternatives, at least none offered in his own narrative or that of the propaganda media.
Accept him as he is or reject him; it didn't matter to him, not in the least. He would win, you just watch.
Sure enough, come election night, the shocked and then resigned looks on the faces of the media talking heads told the tale. Though he was never ahead in the overall popular vote as reported, he got enough votes in the crucial battleground states to defeat Mrs. Clinton soundly in the Electoral College, "the only vote that matters."
Hm. Well, there you are then. For the second time in 16 years, the loser of the popular vote will ascend to the White House as President due to the clever Electoral College mechanism specifically designed -- they say -- to prevent this sort of thing from happening. "They say." In fact, the Electoral College ensures this sort of thing will happen more and more often as time goes by. But that's another issue for another day.
What I'd rather deal with today is the problem with Presidents and the Presidency in general.
We have an archaic system of rule that's largely based in the model of the 18th Century British Empire from which what would become the United States rebelled. The rebellion wasn't on behalf of abstract notions of "equality," "freedom," and "liberty," but for the specific purpose of ensuring the advantages obtained by a rising colonial aristocracy. Fine words were employed to support the cause, but in the end, only about a third of the colonial population -- some of the white ones -- supported the rebellion. Had the Crown and Parliament in London actually taken the matter seriously, it's likely the United States as we know it would never have come into being.
But that's as may be. It did come into being, and after some initial difficulty and some internal rebellions, it began to flourish.
The initial concept under the Constitution that was ratified and went into force in 1789 was that of a domestic empire ruled as a Republic by a qualified class of patriotic aristocrats. White Men (only) of Means, Reputation, and Eminence.
For a long time, I thought one of them was among my ancestors, but it turns out he wasn't. While we may share ancestors in common (I haven't found them if they exist), there is no direct relationship between descendants. I was lied to.
The President is a somewhat anomalous position in that Republic. He (or maybe one day she) has vast powers -- exceeding those of any modern king or potentate, and in some ways exceeding those of 18th Century British monarchs, The President was to be constrained by the monetary appropriations of the Congress, the advice and consent of the Senate, and the rule of law as interpreted by the courts. Initially, the President was considered weaker than a monarch in most respects, but in others -- that is in his representation of the Nation -- he was more glorious than any Emperor.
As the role of the President evolved, however, the Presidency took on not just the trappings of autocracy but the reality of it as well, seen in stark relief during war time, and consolidated with relish during occasional outbreaks of "peace."
In fact, the United States government has engaged in perpetual war domestically and/or internationally for its entire existence, and this constant war-making has had a profound effect on the nature of the Presidency and the US Government as a whole.
Our rulers long ago set themselves up as a warrior caste -- whether or not they personally engaged in military action -- with an ever-varied list of "enemies" to be defeated. Our government runs on the principles of making war, as anyone who's been paying close attention or has had a close relationship with the federal government can recognize.
Behind the Warrior Caste is a Wealth Class, some of whom participate directly in the government, others stay in the shadows directing the government.
This has been the case for as long as there has been a government of the United States, and it isn't changing because Trump is to assume the office of President. He may have pretended to be a Warrior Caste member in his personal pageant, but for decades he's been a member of the Wealth Class who have the power to direct the government to their own advantage from behind the scenes.
This is why the pretense that he is "anti-establishment" is ludicrous. He IS "establishment" -- albeit part of a faction of the establishment that is generally considered contemptible and/or criminal. Nevertheless, it's always been a powerful faction, usually easier to accommodate than contest.
No one quite like him has been "elected" to the Presidency since Andrew Jackson, and the parallels with Jackson are not close enough to be particularly illustrative.
No, this is for all intents and purposes a unique -- and hopefully one-off -- experiment in direct rule by the Plutocracy.
It isn't just the President, the Congress, Courts and Statehouses of the nation are dominated by plutocrats, kleptocrats, and their agents as well.
They have some popular support -- as they have always had in national and state affairs -- but it isn't large, and as long as they have the power, the people's objections to their rule don't matter to them.
Until now, the presidency has been held by an heroic figure such as Mr. Washington, or Mr. Lincoln, or Mr. Eisenhower, or by an agent of the plutocrats, not directly by a member of the plutocracy/kleoptocracy.
But that's about to change, and many of those who celebrate it have no idea what kind of change is in the works.
In my view, this is the end-point of the Republic -- a Republic that was on life support anyway -- and there will be no going back. The experiment in self-government -- never perfected -- will end, either with a crash or a whimper, and that will be that.
The President will no longer be a genuinely powerful but ever-modest figurehead, he (or maybe one day she) will be what the office has always inherently implied: an autocrat, an Emperor in all but name, a divinity.
The Congress and courts and to a great extent the shadowy government of the Wealthy will do his bidding or feel his wrath. The People, the Rabble, will be cut loose to fend for themselves -- and be cut down if they get uppity -- or they will be patriotically "organized" and "coordinated" into Imperial support corps led by Himself.
White Supremacy will be restored to its rightful place in the National Mythology.
Too bad for those who don't fit the ideal.
Too, too bad.
The problem with Presidents and the Presidency is that this kind of authoritarian/autocratic and overtly racist rule has always been inherent in the position itself. I'm sure Mr. Trump will innovate in many ways, doing things we've never seen a President do before, but the nature of the position is such that he can do this with little or no interference from those vaunted "checks and balances." This power and authority has always been inherent in the position, but until now, certain formalities and traditions of the office have generally prevented their open expression.
Since 2001 (and actually before) those formalities and traditions have been under threat, and many have already been jettisoned. We entered an alternate political reality when GW Bush was installed in the Presidency lawlessly in 2001, and that alternate reality has only been reinforced and consolidated ever since. Mr. Obama, while seeming to be Mr. Modest in his rule actually carried on the processes that had been under way for quite a long time, and while he didn't adopt the trappings of an Emperor, he ruled like one where and when he could, and when he couldn't, he provided "Imperial Cover" for pretty much whatever the government's owners and sponsors wanted.
So here we're about to encounter the apotheosis of the Presidency, it's open transformation. There will be no going back.
I'm not sure the Nation can or will survive. A unified national consciousness --- and conscience --- has essentially disappeared. There are regional and largely independent perspectives, but they conflict with one another to such an extent that there's little common ground between them any more -- if there ever really was. The only times they've come together, and then only temporarily, has been under the gun. Otherwise they fight one another.
A breakup into several semi-autonomous regional super-states is therefore somewhat likely to relieve the stress of the transformations to come. The secessionists in California, Oregon, and Washington see themselves as a vanguard for this breakup, and maybe they are.
But there are all sorts of potential consequences to the coming ascension of Mr. Trump to the Presidency. Once he is in office, an intervention is still possible but much less likely, simply because it's easier to go along with a New Boss than to fight him.
We'll see.
Opposition is pervasive, true enough, but I have no clue where it will lead.
More and more folks are waking up to the New Reality, and to my eyes, more and more of them are saying "No!" -- but it's too late to stop what's coming (oh, I could go on and on about what could have been done) and we'll just have to ride it out.
Or something.
Strap in; it's gonna be a bumpy ride.
---------------------------------------
Frankie Say:
(There are about eighty-eleven different versions of this, but this one seems to fit the mood of the moment....)
W. T. F. America?
So far as we know, there has been no serious intervention that would prevent Mr. Trump's ascension to office. There have been numerous opportunities for intervention since he began his rise during the primary contests with however many rivals the Republican Party threw up against him.
He was a force of nature. Chatty and incoherent, insulting to any and all critics or rivals and ingratiating with his adoring fans, telling everyone he didn't care what they thought of him, he was going to plow on no matter, and he would win, like he always did in business. Just watch.
He ran as an entertainer, a clown, a vicious street fighter, a financial and sexual predator, a bully, a con man, a force of nature to be reckoned with or to yield to. There were no alternatives, at least none offered in his own narrative or that of the propaganda media.
Accept him as he is or reject him; it didn't matter to him, not in the least. He would win, you just watch.
Sure enough, come election night, the shocked and then resigned looks on the faces of the media talking heads told the tale. Though he was never ahead in the overall popular vote as reported, he got enough votes in the crucial battleground states to defeat Mrs. Clinton soundly in the Electoral College, "the only vote that matters."
Hm. Well, there you are then. For the second time in 16 years, the loser of the popular vote will ascend to the White House as President due to the clever Electoral College mechanism specifically designed -- they say -- to prevent this sort of thing from happening. "They say." In fact, the Electoral College ensures this sort of thing will happen more and more often as time goes by. But that's another issue for another day.
What I'd rather deal with today is the problem with Presidents and the Presidency in general.
We have an archaic system of rule that's largely based in the model of the 18th Century British Empire from which what would become the United States rebelled. The rebellion wasn't on behalf of abstract notions of "equality," "freedom," and "liberty," but for the specific purpose of ensuring the advantages obtained by a rising colonial aristocracy. Fine words were employed to support the cause, but in the end, only about a third of the colonial population -- some of the white ones -- supported the rebellion. Had the Crown and Parliament in London actually taken the matter seriously, it's likely the United States as we know it would never have come into being.
But that's as may be. It did come into being, and after some initial difficulty and some internal rebellions, it began to flourish.
The initial concept under the Constitution that was ratified and went into force in 1789 was that of a domestic empire ruled as a Republic by a qualified class of patriotic aristocrats. White Men (only) of Means, Reputation, and Eminence.
For a long time, I thought one of them was among my ancestors, but it turns out he wasn't. While we may share ancestors in common (I haven't found them if they exist), there is no direct relationship between descendants. I was lied to.
The President is a somewhat anomalous position in that Republic. He (or maybe one day she) has vast powers -- exceeding those of any modern king or potentate, and in some ways exceeding those of 18th Century British monarchs, The President was to be constrained by the monetary appropriations of the Congress, the advice and consent of the Senate, and the rule of law as interpreted by the courts. Initially, the President was considered weaker than a monarch in most respects, but in others -- that is in his representation of the Nation -- he was more glorious than any Emperor.
As the role of the President evolved, however, the Presidency took on not just the trappings of autocracy but the reality of it as well, seen in stark relief during war time, and consolidated with relish during occasional outbreaks of "peace."
In fact, the United States government has engaged in perpetual war domestically and/or internationally for its entire existence, and this constant war-making has had a profound effect on the nature of the Presidency and the US Government as a whole.
Our rulers long ago set themselves up as a warrior caste -- whether or not they personally engaged in military action -- with an ever-varied list of "enemies" to be defeated. Our government runs on the principles of making war, as anyone who's been paying close attention or has had a close relationship with the federal government can recognize.
Behind the Warrior Caste is a Wealth Class, some of whom participate directly in the government, others stay in the shadows directing the government.
This has been the case for as long as there has been a government of the United States, and it isn't changing because Trump is to assume the office of President. He may have pretended to be a Warrior Caste member in his personal pageant, but for decades he's been a member of the Wealth Class who have the power to direct the government to their own advantage from behind the scenes.
This is why the pretense that he is "anti-establishment" is ludicrous. He IS "establishment" -- albeit part of a faction of the establishment that is generally considered contemptible and/or criminal. Nevertheless, it's always been a powerful faction, usually easier to accommodate than contest.
No one quite like him has been "elected" to the Presidency since Andrew Jackson, and the parallels with Jackson are not close enough to be particularly illustrative.
No, this is for all intents and purposes a unique -- and hopefully one-off -- experiment in direct rule by the Plutocracy.
It isn't just the President, the Congress, Courts and Statehouses of the nation are dominated by plutocrats, kleptocrats, and their agents as well.
They have some popular support -- as they have always had in national and state affairs -- but it isn't large, and as long as they have the power, the people's objections to their rule don't matter to them.
Until now, the presidency has been held by an heroic figure such as Mr. Washington, or Mr. Lincoln, or Mr. Eisenhower, or by an agent of the plutocrats, not directly by a member of the plutocracy/kleoptocracy.
But that's about to change, and many of those who celebrate it have no idea what kind of change is in the works.
In my view, this is the end-point of the Republic -- a Republic that was on life support anyway -- and there will be no going back. The experiment in self-government -- never perfected -- will end, either with a crash or a whimper, and that will be that.
The President will no longer be a genuinely powerful but ever-modest figurehead, he (or maybe one day she) will be what the office has always inherently implied: an autocrat, an Emperor in all but name, a divinity.
The Congress and courts and to a great extent the shadowy government of the Wealthy will do his bidding or feel his wrath. The People, the Rabble, will be cut loose to fend for themselves -- and be cut down if they get uppity -- or they will be patriotically "organized" and "coordinated" into Imperial support corps led by Himself.
White Supremacy will be restored to its rightful place in the National Mythology.
Too bad for those who don't fit the ideal.
Too, too bad.
The problem with Presidents and the Presidency is that this kind of authoritarian/autocratic and overtly racist rule has always been inherent in the position itself. I'm sure Mr. Trump will innovate in many ways, doing things we've never seen a President do before, but the nature of the position is such that he can do this with little or no interference from those vaunted "checks and balances." This power and authority has always been inherent in the position, but until now, certain formalities and traditions of the office have generally prevented their open expression.
Since 2001 (and actually before) those formalities and traditions have been under threat, and many have already been jettisoned. We entered an alternate political reality when GW Bush was installed in the Presidency lawlessly in 2001, and that alternate reality has only been reinforced and consolidated ever since. Mr. Obama, while seeming to be Mr. Modest in his rule actually carried on the processes that had been under way for quite a long time, and while he didn't adopt the trappings of an Emperor, he ruled like one where and when he could, and when he couldn't, he provided "Imperial Cover" for pretty much whatever the government's owners and sponsors wanted.
So here we're about to encounter the apotheosis of the Presidency, it's open transformation. There will be no going back.
I'm not sure the Nation can or will survive. A unified national consciousness --- and conscience --- has essentially disappeared. There are regional and largely independent perspectives, but they conflict with one another to such an extent that there's little common ground between them any more -- if there ever really was. The only times they've come together, and then only temporarily, has been under the gun. Otherwise they fight one another.
A breakup into several semi-autonomous regional super-states is therefore somewhat likely to relieve the stress of the transformations to come. The secessionists in California, Oregon, and Washington see themselves as a vanguard for this breakup, and maybe they are.
But there are all sorts of potential consequences to the coming ascension of Mr. Trump to the Presidency. Once he is in office, an intervention is still possible but much less likely, simply because it's easier to go along with a New Boss than to fight him.
We'll see.
Opposition is pervasive, true enough, but I have no clue where it will lead.
More and more folks are waking up to the New Reality, and to my eyes, more and more of them are saying "No!" -- but it's too late to stop what's coming (oh, I could go on and on about what could have been done) and we'll just have to ride it out.
Or something.
Strap in; it's gonna be a bumpy ride.
---------------------------------------
Frankie Say:
(There are about eighty-eleven different versions of this, but this one seems to fit the mood of the moment....)
Friday, February 12, 2016
On Bernie vs Hillary
I watched a bit of yesterday's debate on PBS, but I have to confess that the debates do not hold my interest for more than a few minutes.
That's because our electoral system is a sham. Whomever is put up for and eventually elected president is a figurehead emplaced primarily to keep the masses tame while in the background the looters and killers have free rein to do what they do.
Even a mook like Trump will find that out in the by and bye, assuming he doesn't already know it, which I think he does.
All the candidates know the real deal.
Including Bernie.
So I wonder what he thinks he's doing yadda-yadda-ing all the time about things he can't actually change from the Big Chair in the White House.
Ah yes, it's a bone, he's a bone, thrown to the groundlings who feel so disoriented, so dispossessed by things as they are. He can't do anything about it but yadda-yadda. More to the point, even if he were to sit in the Big Chair -- and it could happen -- he won't be allowed to do anything substantive about it.
At least Hillary says what she knows: the way things are is not gonna change substantively in our lifetimes, and probably not in your children's lifetimes, either. Deal with it.
Any "revolution" has already happened, and it came from the right. There will be no leftist counter-revolution.
The reason why is simple enough. Maintenance of the status quo, which keeps shifting ever rightwards, is the whole point of what constitutes the so-called "left" in today's political world. Bernie talks about what amount to tweaks in that status quo and preventing an even more precipitous lurch to the right. And he calls it "revolution" -- which is silly. And I think he knows it. Hillary, on the other hand, says the revolution is not coming (because it's already come?), she will tweak things a bit this way or that way, but mostly she will maintain an even keel through the next eight years, which is what she declares the People want.
Well, she could be right.
Bernie the Bone says "No, no! We have to do better!" Well, yes, but how? Through "reform?" He talks a lot about expanding and growing and building from the current base, but that's not revolutionary. It's hardly evolutionary. Hillary talks the same but takes a different tack: "Slow and steady. Step by step. Not all at once. A piece at a time. We'll get there. Eventually."
Time and again modern leftist parties have won elections by promising to do something about the looting, corruption, death and destruction caused by the triumph of the political and economic illiterates who rose to power and prominence on the wreckage of the Soviet Union.
At best they've been to mitigate some of the damage some of the time. But mostly they've been able to do nothing. Or -- as in the tragic case of SYRIZA in Greece -- they have been forced to implement even worse measures to satisfy their rapacious overlords.
Someone like Trump, as one of those overlords, would do it gleefully, come what may.
Someone like Bernie might say "I'd rather not" -- but would have no choice in the end.
Hillary would argue how best to do it.
So I don't watch the debates as a rule. The Show Business is all well and good but pretty meaningless in the end.
Pity.
That's because our electoral system is a sham. Whomever is put up for and eventually elected president is a figurehead emplaced primarily to keep the masses tame while in the background the looters and killers have free rein to do what they do.
Even a mook like Trump will find that out in the by and bye, assuming he doesn't already know it, which I think he does.
All the candidates know the real deal.
Including Bernie.
So I wonder what he thinks he's doing yadda-yadda-ing all the time about things he can't actually change from the Big Chair in the White House.
Ah yes, it's a bone, he's a bone, thrown to the groundlings who feel so disoriented, so dispossessed by things as they are. He can't do anything about it but yadda-yadda. More to the point, even if he were to sit in the Big Chair -- and it could happen -- he won't be allowed to do anything substantive about it.
At least Hillary says what she knows: the way things are is not gonna change substantively in our lifetimes, and probably not in your children's lifetimes, either. Deal with it.
Any "revolution" has already happened, and it came from the right. There will be no leftist counter-revolution.
The reason why is simple enough. Maintenance of the status quo, which keeps shifting ever rightwards, is the whole point of what constitutes the so-called "left" in today's political world. Bernie talks about what amount to tweaks in that status quo and preventing an even more precipitous lurch to the right. And he calls it "revolution" -- which is silly. And I think he knows it. Hillary, on the other hand, says the revolution is not coming (because it's already come?), she will tweak things a bit this way or that way, but mostly she will maintain an even keel through the next eight years, which is what she declares the People want.
Well, she could be right.
Bernie the Bone says "No, no! We have to do better!" Well, yes, but how? Through "reform?" He talks a lot about expanding and growing and building from the current base, but that's not revolutionary. It's hardly evolutionary. Hillary talks the same but takes a different tack: "Slow and steady. Step by step. Not all at once. A piece at a time. We'll get there. Eventually."
Time and again modern leftist parties have won elections by promising to do something about the looting, corruption, death and destruction caused by the triumph of the political and economic illiterates who rose to power and prominence on the wreckage of the Soviet Union.
At best they've been to mitigate some of the damage some of the time. But mostly they've been able to do nothing. Or -- as in the tragic case of SYRIZA in Greece -- they have been forced to implement even worse measures to satisfy their rapacious overlords.
Someone like Trump, as one of those overlords, would do it gleefully, come what may.
Someone like Bernie might say "I'd rather not" -- but would have no choice in the end.
Hillary would argue how best to do it.
So I don't watch the debates as a rule. The Show Business is all well and good but pretty meaningless in the end.
Pity.
Monday, December 31, 2012
"Over the Cliff!"
Of course the teevee is breathless with anticipation that a "Deal" will be made "at the last minute," yadda yadda, but I've been arguing for years that we went over that Cliff long ago, and all we've been doing since is deciding who will be able to grapple their way back up the Cliff face and how fast.
That's it.
Nevertheless, the media has such an investment in their Cliff Narrative (and that includes the self-proclaimed "new media") that they're not about to give it up now.
What exactly happens if no "Deal" is brokered is anybody's guess. Taxes on the working and middle classes will go up no matter what, and benefits for the poor, the sick, the halt and the lame will be cut, no matter what. Military spending will not be reduced and may actually be increased no matter what.
And the Security State will be secured ever more.
That's what will happen regardless of any "Deal" and I think by now we know that -- or at least we should.
The People don't matter in these kinds of things. All that matters is that the Highest of the Mighty receive an ever greater share of whatever "good" there may be.
Thursday, June 28, 2012
Delusional
The current imbroglio over the ACA has once again thrust the radical, reactionary, lawless Supreme Court majority into the spotlight it so loves.
I'm fairly certain that the Court majority will let stand most if not all of the ACA legislation simply because it assures so much money to the Court majority's corporate masters. Whatever gives them what they want is what the Court majority approves, viz the Montana decision.
But if they overturn the whole thing -- which they will do if they are told to do so by their corporate masters -- the idea that the re-election of Obama will somehow lead to the overturning of the Court majority and its replacement with a liberal/progressive majority is delusional.
And yet I'm hearing it more and more stridently as the consequences of the current Court's majority decisions on behalf of their neo-liberal/neo-conservative and lawless ideology sink in.
Those consequences are dire. The delusion, however, is that Obama will somehow intervene and transform the Court. His two appointments to date demonstrate he has no intention of doing so, even if he had the power, which he does not.
The Court's lawless, extreme and thoroughly disreputable majority was essentially enshrined for the next 50 years with the appointments to the Court made by George W. Bush -- with the complicity of the Senate Democrats, let it not be forgotten. They knew what they were doing, Harriet Myers notwithstanding. Those appointments ensured that the Court's chief justice and majority would be "stabilized" as is for decades to come. That the was point, after all.
Democrats went along with it. As has been noticed from more than one observational post, many nominal Democrats are on board with the neo-liberal/neo-conservative agenda and ideology no matter what they say to get elected.
So even if by some miracle (reliance on which is itself delusional) Obama is re-elected, and all the Court's "conservative" majority resigns or dies, he's still not going to appoint, nor will the Senate confirm, a "liberal/progressive" Court majority.
Nothing short of revolution will achieve that in our lifetimes. In other words, it's not going to happen through presidential and congressional elections. It's delusional to think it will.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
UPDATE: Court upholds ACA in its entirety. The Rightists will of course experience exploding heads, but it will all be for show. The real deal is of course that their corporate paymasters love-love-love the mandate and all the money that will now be forthcoming.
Still we need comprehensive, affordable, and universal health care coverage, and as importantly, we need universal access to healthcare. The other factor of the ACA that corporatists love-love-love is that while payment is required, access is not.
Brilliant.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
BUT BUT BUT BUT BUT!!!
A counter argument arises: Roberts sided with the "liberals" to uphold the ACA; the "conservatives" all denounced it, including Kennedy.
Then I ask you: if this ruling represents a "liberal" victory, what does it say about the "liberal" minority on the court that staunch corporatist Roberts sided with them?
Why of course: it says that the "liberals" on the Court are just as corporatist as the "conservatives."
In Mussolini's day, this was the definition of Fascism.
I'm fairly certain that the Court majority will let stand most if not all of the ACA legislation simply because it assures so much money to the Court majority's corporate masters. Whatever gives them what they want is what the Court majority approves, viz the Montana decision.
But if they overturn the whole thing -- which they will do if they are told to do so by their corporate masters -- the idea that the re-election of Obama will somehow lead to the overturning of the Court majority and its replacement with a liberal/progressive majority is delusional.
And yet I'm hearing it more and more stridently as the consequences of the current Court's majority decisions on behalf of their neo-liberal/neo-conservative and lawless ideology sink in.
Those consequences are dire. The delusion, however, is that Obama will somehow intervene and transform the Court. His two appointments to date demonstrate he has no intention of doing so, even if he had the power, which he does not.
The Court's lawless, extreme and thoroughly disreputable majority was essentially enshrined for the next 50 years with the appointments to the Court made by George W. Bush -- with the complicity of the Senate Democrats, let it not be forgotten. They knew what they were doing, Harriet Myers notwithstanding. Those appointments ensured that the Court's chief justice and majority would be "stabilized" as is for decades to come. That the was point, after all.
Democrats went along with it. As has been noticed from more than one observational post, many nominal Democrats are on board with the neo-liberal/neo-conservative agenda and ideology no matter what they say to get elected.
So even if by some miracle (reliance on which is itself delusional) Obama is re-elected, and all the Court's "conservative" majority resigns or dies, he's still not going to appoint, nor will the Senate confirm, a "liberal/progressive" Court majority.
Nothing short of revolution will achieve that in our lifetimes. In other words, it's not going to happen through presidential and congressional elections. It's delusional to think it will.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
UPDATE: Court upholds ACA in its entirety. The Rightists will of course experience exploding heads, but it will all be for show. The real deal is of course that their corporate paymasters love-love-love the mandate and all the money that will now be forthcoming.
Still we need comprehensive, affordable, and universal health care coverage, and as importantly, we need universal access to healthcare. The other factor of the ACA that corporatists love-love-love is that while payment is required, access is not.
Brilliant.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
BUT BUT BUT BUT BUT!!!
A counter argument arises: Roberts sided with the "liberals" to uphold the ACA; the "conservatives" all denounced it, including Kennedy.
Then I ask you: if this ruling represents a "liberal" victory, what does it say about the "liberal" minority on the court that staunch corporatist Roberts sided with them?
Why of course: it says that the "liberals" on the Court are just as corporatist as the "conservatives."
In Mussolini's day, this was the definition of Fascism.
Sunday, June 10, 2012
Would A President Romney Actually Be Worse Than Another Term of President Obama?
 |
| Romney wants so much to serve you |
Bush's legacy -- if you want to call it that -- will live in infamy while Gore has petered out to near irrelevance in the public mind. Millions were slaughtered or displaced during the Bush era, imperialist aggression was launched, torture instituted as widely known policy (though continually officially denied), civil liberties were sharply curtailed, whole cities suffered ruin and neglect at home and abroad, and so on, all orchestrated, dictated if you will, from the White House. These things were not accidents.
For all his wardrobe and other faults, President Gore is unlikely to have done those things.
As is well known, the terrible things that Bush initiated or expanded during his time in the White House have largely continued under Obama, and Obama has built on the Bush/Cheney structure of rule. Rather than wars of opportunity and aggression, though, Obama prefers stealth Death From Above of "targeted" militants, insurgents, "enemies" of all kinds. He prefers arrests and draconian charges against domestic dissenters and whistleblowers. Civil liberties may be less openly suppressed, but efforts to curb and suppress dissent are no less intense. He prefers to let bygones be bygones with regard to the appalling crimes against humanity of his predecessors in office, and he has much the same attitude toward the banksters who crashed the economy and continue to loot, plunder and pillage with abandon.
It is unlikely that any of those things would change under President Romney. But what would change is this: domestic "order" would be compelled. Revenge is likely to be a paramount motivation for domestic policies. Harm would be no less widespread than it is now, but reward for faith and loyalty would be much greater because there will be more to offer those who are faithful and loyal.
The economic situation for most Americans will not get better; it will stay the same or get demonstrably worse. But there might be a greater sense of "hope" among the suffering masses. Instead of the languid indifference toward their plight as demonstrated time and again by the Obama regime, Romney in office would be constantly talking about the plight of the Lesser People while doing nothing to alleviate it. What would be likely for the poor and unemployed, maybe the homeless and mentally ill as well, is a form of indenture, by which they are provided with some sort of unpaid employment (which they are required to take) in exchange for bare and basic necessities of living, and perhaps forced instruction in thrift and obedience. In other words, don't be surprised if President Romney initiates a whole different order of society for the poor, homeless and mentally ill -- those who "can't make it" -- as opposed to the social order for those who can and do. Make it, that is.
There seems to be a natural point at which the current decline in living standards will begin to mitigate: it's about when 20% lives in poverty, and the 80% remainder feel they have escaped the worst of the Endless Recession. We're not quite there yet, as public employees continue to be shed and the official poverty rate is still slightly under 20%. But once it gets there, which will probably happen no matter who is in office, expect to see the beginnings of economic stabilization for the masses. The economic theory will be that so long as The 80% are doing OK, The Suffering 20% don't matter. They should be Grateful. As long as they're kept in a kind of spare but useful servitude, why should they complain anyway?
They'd be doing something useful for Their Betters. And what would Their Betters be doing under President Romney that they aren't doing now? For one thing, positions of wealth and power would become much more hereditary than they are now, and a true aristocracy of breeding would be instituted and promoted much more widely than we currently see, with Willard as the prime example of the Son following the Father in Power (and Glory if you like).
There would continue to be elections of a sort, but positions would become quasi-officially hereditary in far more cases than now. That would be unlikely in the extreme to occur under President Obama, though a mostly non-hereditary aristocracy would continue as customary.
Elections would become more farcical, but probably would be taken more seriously, than they are now. Whether there would be so much money dumped into elections would depend on how useful the media chooses to be to the New Settlement Regimes*.
For the money expended in campaigns is almost all fed directly into the maws of media conglomerates, in other words, Plutocracy feeding itself. The economic ideal is for the stronger to exploit the weaker, however, and among Plutocrats and Oligarchs, open exploitation of one another for someone else's profit is not polite. Never mind that the media money is spent to propagandize the masses. Shouldn't they be paying for their own brainwashing? I mean really.
That would mean that campaign money as we've known it would begin to disappear, and taxpayer funded elections might become standard. Of course that couldn't happen until the tax burden is fully shifted off of wealth and onto the middling and poor where it belongs. Taxes, after all, are punishment for failure. Those who do not achieve wealth are ipso facto failures, and only they should be subjected to the compulsion of taxation. Their Betters, on the other hand, will be offered opportunities for voluntary contributions of -- say -- as much as 10% of their income to worthy public causes, or even to the government if they choose.
As now, candidates would still be chosen by Their Betters for the masses to vote for, but the likelihood of insurgent candidates would be reduced to near absence. Elections would be formalities of popular approval for the pre-chosen few.
Eligibility to vote will be further restricted, perhaps only to those who have proved themselves worthy of citizenship and the franchise.
There might be other public rituals besides elections, probably on the pattern of public rallies at stadia and arenas and so forth that will be intended to "build community" and break the strangle-hold of devices and teevee on people's attention and leisure.
While this is a feature Obama might have instituted, given the huge crowds he was drawing during the 2008 campaign and the millions who gathered to freeze in the Mall while he was inaugurated, he quickly set out to disabuse the People that he was there to do anything for them; if anything, Obama policies set out to out Hoover Hoover. Consequently, gathering such enormous crowds now is essentially impossible for him now.
But a Romney Regime would not be holding such rallies for him as such, they would be clearly intended to build a sense of common purpose and community among attendees, more like the patriotic rallies of the past.
Internationally, I suspect that after wiping out Iran -- which seems more and more inevitable at some point, much as the Alexandrian effort to destroy the Persian Empire seems inevitable in hindsight -- all foreign interest will turn to China, or rather turn on China, in an American led effort to cripple and recolonize the Celestial Empire.
Of course this may turn into a long term and ultimately futile campaign which may so debilitate the United States that it... disappears, broken into petty statelets, the remainder partially absorbed by Canada and Mexico.
Don't laugh.
The United States has unfulfilled atonement to make, according to Romney's Mormon Scripture, and further, the Mormon Temple Romney was endowed into -- and in which he is still styled a bishop -- once demanded revenge against the United States for the murder of the Prophet Joseph Smith and his brother Hyrum. Of course they disavow any such thing now, and they say they have not included it in Temple Endowment ceremonies since 1927, but the Oath of Vengeance from previous generations was operative when Romney was Endowed at a Temple ceremony in 1966.
Whether or not a President Romney would consciously seek vengeance on the United States on the basis of that oath is something I think only he would know, but the Mormon church has an intrinsic sense of animus toward the United States government for its interference in and persecution of religious practices, some of which, like polygamy, forced Romney's grandfather to settle his polygamous family in exile in Mexico rather than put up with US government interference. This is not ancient history. For many Mormons, and for all I know the Romneys as well, this is very recent.
Despite all the accusations to the contrary, it's clear that Obama is not actively trying to take vengeance on or otherwise destroy the United States as such -- though his policies largely aid the Overclass in destroying the American People's wealth and security, the American People have often been considered expendable in some cause of the Rich whether it be war, empire, or economic peril for the masses. Obviously, Romney's predatory and parasitical capitalist career at Bain is not in any way outside the norm for his class.
There may be something deeper in both men's views of past (or present) slights and persecutions, but if so, it's not obvious. So I wouldn't be focused on the potential for mayhem implicit in the Mormon Oath of Vengeance. It may or may not even be a factor in a Romney presidency.
What we should keep in mind is that this nation has a deeply rooted theocratic underpinning. Its tendency has always been more or less toward theocracy, not toward secularism and pluralism. Thus, an antagonistic theocratic state like Iran would be considered an existential threat -- even though it is not -- because its theocracy competes with America's own. An overtly secular and atheistic state like China (or the former Soviet Union for that matter) is seen as an existential threat -- even though it is not -- because successful secular/atheist societies compete with America's theocratic-tending state.
No matter whether Romney or anyone else in office thinks and acts directly from a position of religious authority, the result is essentially the same because of the nature of the American state, not because of the nature or religious beliefs of the person in office.
Yes, a Romney presidency would be worse that Obama's in the same way George W Bush's presidency was worse than Gore's might have been, yet none of them are particularly good for the People of the United States due to the nature of its founding, its Constitution, and the state itself.
Bad can easily become worse.
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*[Forgot my footnote!] "New Settlement Regime" is a term coined to describe the means by which the financial shenanigans of the Highest of the Mighty are rationalized and backstopped by governments. As used by me, however, I'm referring to the New Settlement Regime as the ruling corporatocracy itself, as exemplified by one of its members, Mr. Romney of Bain Capital. In other words, the corporatocracy would be rationalizing and backstopping itself through direct extraction and rule.
Thursday, January 5, 2012
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