Thankful for....

This is a rough time for a lot of folks. It could be worse, and I'm thankful that it's not, at least not so far.

Of course this is a Day of Mourning for Native Peoples, who apart from sheer and bare survival, have too little to be thankful for. Nevertheless, not only are they still here, but they continue the struggle against the forces lined up to take from them what's left. Their bodies and their spirits are strong and millions of allies around the world stand with them. How can we not be thankful for that?

"Thanksgiving Day" is for the White Folk. It's a folk holiday for the Invaders, Colonists and Settlers, who see no reason for everyone else not to celebrate with them... after all, it could be worse! Ha ha.

Yea and verily, it could be worse.

From a personal point of view, I'm thankful that I'm still here, and that despite my increasingly frail physical state, I don't feel like my end is nigh. It may be, but the doctor I saw yesterday disputes it, and my treatments took a step up, both palliative and corrective. Because I have a "complicated" condition that can affect all kinds of organs besides my joints -- and is currently doing so -- it's going to be a challenge from here on in. Well, I've certainly faced those before and somehow got past the worst of them. How this one will go I can't know in advance, but I'm up for the challenge.

That has a lot to do with the Light of My Life, Ms Ché, with whom I just celebrated our 47th year of marriage, our 49th together. What a wonder. You think I'm not thankful for that? Oh, but I am. Nothing in my life prior to becoming Mr. Ché to the Missus came close to the feeling of love and devotion and mutual regard we have for one another, nothing over such a long stretch of time has given me so much education (let's say!), extraordinary commitment, and so much serenity. She continues on, despite her own conditions -- diabetes being the main one, the chronic settler-disease of so many Natives -- setting a pace and an example for the young ones at IAIA that is nothing short of amazing. She may be an Elder, but she out performs many of the young pups there, many of whom have become part of her "Posse."

Even our elder friends are astonished at her strength and endurance, but that's who she is, that's who she's always been. God Bless Her.

It's hard for me to express how thankful I am that we live in New Mexico rather than California. Every now and then I have a hankering to return, to see friends -- before they pass on -- and to sort through the things we left in storage there, selecting what few items we need to bring back to New Mexico with us and disposing of the rest. But each time I get to the point of scheduling a trip to CA, something comes up, and whoopsy, I can't go. And  here we go again. Something has come up -- RA lung disease in this case -- and it's not looking much like I'll be able to go back to California anytime soon.  if ever. C'est la vie.

I prefer New Mexico, out here in the country, in the middle of nowhere when it comes down to it, where there are more prairie dogs, cattle, and antelope than people, living in an old and beat up pioneer (settler!) adobe, with friends we can count on, salt of the earth neighbors -- who largely voted for Trump, and I'll try to get to that  -- but with whom we have little or no animosity, despite our Outlander/Outlandish California ways. This is our home place, and it really feels like it, and like we've always been here.

California had its merits to be sure, but for us it became almost unlivable.

The California we knew, Ms Ché and I, when we were young (she born into it, I being brought from Iowa when I was 9 months old) had a population barely 20% of the current number, actually closer to 15%. There were big cities, yes, but there was a lot of wide-open country too, and the seashores and mountain retreats were not the exclusive playgrounds of the rich. In those days, too, the rich -- or at least some of them -- had a social conscience which appears to have gone absent in the contemporary conception of California, despite occasional efforts at pretense.

Population density kept increasing. Ms Ché was born out in the country, but her family's place became surrounded by suburban development starting in the 1950s and was finally absorbed by the suburbs they'd held at bay.

I first lived in a little town north of Santa Barbara, a kind of idyllic place, full of flowers and surrounded by strawberry and broccoli and sugar beet fields, where everyone knew everyone else, and... well, things happened that I won't go into now. I'll only say that it wasn't easy for a single mother like my mother to cope with both making a living and looking after a squalling brat like I was, heh. Even though this was her home place from the time she was five years old. It wasn't easy, and she did what she had to to get by and get along.

That meant moving to Los Angeles, albeit suburban Los Angeles, out in the San Gabriel Valley, which was at that time, mid 1950s, still out in the country, and it was filled with orange groves. For a little while more, anyway.

Sam Shepard wrote about the transformation of the San Gabriel Valley in his trilogy of Family Plays, "True West," "Buried Child," and "Curse of the Starving Class." It was the strangest thing. I didn't know what his background was, that he'd been raised on a country place in San Dimas, a few miles from my home(s) in Baldwin Park and then La Puente. And he lived through the traumatizing transformation of these little towns and outposts in the Valley into tracts and tracts of post-war suburban housing. And that's a big part of what he was writing about in those plays. I didn't know about that when I first encountered "Curse of the Starving Class" -- I just knew that I immediately related to the characters and the story. Oh yes, I knew these people. They were neighbors, friends, people down the street and across from my school. I knew them well. And when I later worked on a production of "True West," it was as if I were being transported back to where I once lived, hard against the San Jose Hills (I think they have a different name now, "South Hills" or something) which was still very wild country when I was a lad. He lived hard against the San Gabriel Mountains -- which formed the stunning view (on clear days) out my living room window eight miles to the north. Oh my yes. I could feel the connection but at the time, I didn't know what it was, and when I mentioned it during the production, no one could understand what I meant because they hadn't been there and didn't know. Those who lived through it, as I did and Sam Shepard did, knew. But for others, it was like peering into a telescope at an alien land populated by strange and incomprehensible entities.

I'm thankful that I eventually came to understand Shepard's understanding of what we in our separate little child-worlds knew for a fact was true.

But I'm also thankful that I've been able to find a whole lot of documentation about my family and ancestors that I knew little or nothing about when I was young, partly because either my parents didn't know much either, or if they did know, they didn't want me to know. My father told a grand fib about our ancestors which I believed -- why not? -- until I found out the truth (only a few years ago) which was quite different. In the process of research, I was contacted by a cousin I didn't know I had who corrected some of my information and shared some of her experiences, including the bogus story my father told me about our ancestors. Her mother, my father's younger sister, had told her essentially the same story of prominent Irish-American ancestors who were pivotal in the Revolutionary War, blah, blah, blah, and how we were their direct descendants.

Only the fact is, we aren't. We couldn't be. They emigrated from Ireland in the 1600s. Our direct ancestors arrived in or about 1850 according to the records. The best I could come up with -- and the information is spotty -- is that we and they have common ancestors back in the 1600s and before in Ireland, but who they were and how we are (or aren't) related is a mystery we may never solve. When I told her that, she seemed momentarily nonplussed, but when I explained that the story we'd been told could not possibly be true, but the actual story (so far as I could piece it together) was if anything even more interesting, she seemed to be mollified. Somewhat.

Then it got more interesting for me. I thought my mother was of Irish ancestry -- she wasn't sure but she had red hair like me -- and that therefore I was probably 3/4 Irish and 1/4 German (through my father's German American mother). Turns out no. My mother was actually of British ancestry all the way down. Her father, her biological father, may have had some Scottish heritage, but that's uncertain. At any rate, on his mother's side, she was every bit the English dame. On my mother's mother's side, all of her ancestors were of British origin, going back to the deepest mists of time, and most of the early ones arrived in America if not on the Mayflower (apparently some might have), then shortly afterwards. Oh.

There is also an Indian Princess connection on my mother's side. Yes, she's really called "Princess" *Snowflower* but whether she was actually an Indian or not is subject to some dispute. The story that she was an Indian Princess is told in great detail in lore and legend, but those who dispute it say the tale was made up in the 19th century years after her death, and is not backed up by fact. It was just a romantic something or other to pass the time away.

People did that in those days. As was demonstrated by my father's family's tale of colonial ancestors.

And so, while I probably know far more "truth" about our ancestors than my parents did, there's a whole lot I don't know and may never know. That's quite all right!

Trump voters, yes. Let's consider that a bit. One of the established myths of the (s)election was that "rural, white male voters" were the deciding factor, and it was the failure of Hillary to appeal to that constituency on economic or other terms that lost her the presidency.

It's a convenient myth, but I think it's wrong. First of all, there aren't enough rural voters, period. The United States has long been 80% urban and 20% rural -- just about the same split as in New Mexico, btw.

[Note: I got my county's demographics wrong, thanks to misremembering an outdated City Data chart. According to the Census Bureau, my county reports  a decline in population from 2010 -- from 16,383 to 15,485 in 2015. The bureau also reports that 90% of the remaining population state that they are white, while 42% state that they are Hispanic. 53% say that they are non-Hispanic white. There are 4.2% Native, 2.2% black and .05% Asian. 2.8% claim two or more races. Median household income is $34,720, poverty rate, 27.6% in 2015.

My rural county, like many in New Mexico, is 70% Hispanic *mostly citizens*, not Anglo at all, and many of the other rural counties in the United States are nowhere near as white/Anglo male as the current mythos of the (s)election makes them out to be.

My rural county in New Mexico is relatively poor -- as it has always been. People get by however they can, and that can take some clearly or potentially illegal routes. Oh well. If there are no other viable economic activities available, then that's what people will do. Too bad, so sad. The primary economy here is based on ranching and farming, and there are a few very wealthy and prominent "ricos" in the population. They are mostly Democrats. Some of them are High Party functionaries, former electeds and so forth.

On the other hand, most of the party registration in the county is Republican or Libertarian. Gary Johnson, for example, got 11% of the county vote. Trump got 60%, and Hillary just under 30%. That's pretty much what I expected.

So why would a largely poor 70% Hispanic rural county, vote 60% Trump and 11% Johnson (I was one of 66 voters who voted for Stein in the General, whoo-hoo!)

Isn't it obvious?

This is what the myth-makers of the Rural White Rural voter revolt typically ignore: what the majority of the people in my rural county want and wanted was to be left alone, first, and not to have to pay for other people's well being -- or incarceration -- when they can barely get by on their own. Hello? Isn't this obvious, for criminy sake?

Their racial/ethnic origin (ie: the much derided "identity politics") doesn't make nearly as much difference as is widely believed under the economic circumstances for rural voters in general, which for too many, for too long has been a form of imposed poverty and extraction of any surplus to pay for the well being of others (not just welfare recipients, oh no) and the incarceration of their friends and family. Hello?

That's not to say that racism has nothing to do with it, because for some it does. Of course it does. This is America, racist at its foundation, racist to its core. But that's not the sole or the chief reason people voted for Trump or Johnson over Clinton or Stein in my county. I would extrapolate that to many other counties as well.

It wasn't primarily racism at all. It was much more that Democratic political and economic policies, whatever their intention, simply made life harder for people on the margins and in rural areas with little or no mitigating effort or even mitigating thought for that matter. Trump and Johnson at least said they wanted to lighten that burden. Ok, then. Easy to understand, no?

But even if every rural voter voted for Trump or Johnson, there wouldn't be enough of them to cancel out an urban vote for Clinton.

Not only are not all rural voters white and male, not nearly all the rural voters voted for Trump or Johnson, not even close. Except, interestingly, in those counties in Pennsylvania and the upper Midwest where -- at least initially -- more votes were recorded than were cast, and other peculiarities and anomalies, such as 90% or greater turnouts and so forth were reported. There "whiteness" -- even if only phantoms -- may have been a determining factor.

The myth of what happened is false, through and through, but it's the Narrative that's being sold to Americans in order to explain how Trump "won" when in fact he may not have.

Jill Stein is raising money to challenge the outcome in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania, simply because there are too many questionable anomalies to accept without question. Good on her. Somebody has to do it, and according to what I read last night, she's already raised enough money to begin the challenge process in those three states. Whether it will change the results is highly doubtful, largely because there is no way to be sure the counts or recounts are accurate. In many cases there simply aren't any reliable audit or checking mechanisms -- and that is by design. Our voting and tabulating systems are too often grossly and deliberately opaque. There's no way to know for sure whether the outcomes reflect the will of the voters or not.

But if Jill does challenge the outcomes in those states, and the issue is aired thoroughly, regardless of the ultimate result, then I will be thankful that it has been brought to public attention once again that too many voting systems in this country cannot be veritfied and because of it, Americans cannot be assured the outcome is actually what they voted for.

This has been true for a very long time, and it's long past time for it to change. But given the way the outcome seems destined to go, the situation is likely to get worse, not better.

So. We'll see. It's going to be an interesting few months, that's for sure.

Meanwhile, I'm thankful for the Water Protectors in North Dakota who will not give up the fight. I'm thankful for the people in the streets who refuse to accept the results of the (s)election without question or resistance. I'm thankful in fact to be living in such interesting times, even if there isn't a lot I can do any more to change things.

Elections Fraud

This seems to have become a nearly routine issue in American elections. They are not "free and fair" by any stretch of the imagination -- at least in some areas, at least some of the time.

Reports have been coming in of potentially millions of voters disenfranchised in New York, for example. Ridiculous levels of SNAFU afflicted the primary election in Arizona, and similar problems restricted voting in several other states.

There is a remarkable consistency about these problems: polls don't open on time, there are too few polling places, too few voting machines at the polling places that are open, not enough ballots, voters are not found on the rolls, party registration has been changed if they are found on the rolls, extremely long waits to cast ballots, purges of eligible voters, etc.

Neither major party seems to have more than a casual interest in correcting this situation, and anything they would -- eventually -- sponsor to correct it would likely institutionalize disenfranchisement rather than ameliorate it.

So. What's going on? We've had some rather spectacular elections irregularities at least since the 2000 presidential election that was lawlessly decided by the Supreme Court in an act of unprecedented arrogance.

Now it seems that elections fraud has become endemic to the system and like a virus is spreading far and wide. Of course, when "elections fraud" is mentioned, it's generally interpreted to mean that somehow voters are committing fraud, and that must be stopped with all due prejudice. This means access to the franchise is further and further restricted by law, to the point where millions are effectively disenfranchised with little or no practical recourse.

The only problem is that voters are not committing fraud in more than single digit numbers. The idea that they are is a myth.

On the other hand, over and over again, elections clerks and their sponsors and supervisors have acted directly and indirectly to make voting as difficult as possible or actually impossible for millions, seemingly more and more voters affected at every election.

The only remedy is in the courts, and the courts are loathe to interfere, consequently the problems are not corrected. They grow worse.

Something tells me this is by design. Ultimately the public will lose faith in elections altogether, and who knows, maybe officials will be selected by boards of experts.

We've been down this path before, and it looks like we're headed this way again. Disenfranchisement was a key element in early American elections, and it came back with a vengeance in the early days of the Progressive era. The whole point was/is to restrict voting to those who are considered "worthy." And to restrict it to as few of them as possible. And to restrict voting to as few issues as possible.

Efficiency!

I see no way out of this dilemma in the short term. Over the long term? Oh, a revolution may be in order.

Expanding the Voting Rights Act

Johnson signs the Voting Rights Act... still considered too much too soon by some

Given the nature of "law" and "justice" in this country, it's likely that the Supreme Court will find a way to strike down the Voting Rights Act and will leave it up to a dysfunctional Congress to rectify the consequences... or not as the case may be. Neo-Jim Crow, here we come.

For generations states have been trying to get out from under the onerous burden of holding free and fair elections in which voting is not "unduly" restricted, and given the successful efforts of many of them to interfere with the voting rights and opportunities of their citizens these last few years, it's clear they are champing at the bit to be liberated from oversight and get on with the business of limiting the franchise to the right sort of people once again -- free at last! Thank gawdal mighty, we free at last!

Though there have been no overt efforts to "unduly" restrict the franchise in New Mexico, there have been a number of ham-handed actions by county clerks and elections officials to gum up the works, most notoriously in Sandoval County in the last general election when far too few voting machines were provided for large-population precincts leading to unprecedentedly long lines and hours long waits to vote. It was so bad that the governor herself came down from Santa Fe and handed out bottles of water and snacks to those in line.

For the most part, elections in New Mexico are handled smoothly and relatively well given the vast empty expanses of the state and the heavy concentration of population in the Abq Metro area as well as the relatively primitive procedures employed -- such as (eek) hand-counting ballots.

If the Voting Rights Act is struck down, it's widely assumed that many states will revert to pre-VRA policies and procedures, which essentially means reverting to Jim Crow exclusionary laws and policies. What most Americans seem not to understand is that Jim Crow-style laws and policies were not limited to the South, they were practically universal throughout the country, and in many cases, the first order of business was disenfranchisement of large segments of the population. This was unfortunately considered a 'progressive' means of 'curbing corruption.'

So it is likely to be again if Congress doesn't intervene, and there is no sign whatever that this Congress will do any such thing.

Millions of course are already disenfranchised by the fact that they are on some list somewhere of convicted felons or other miscreants. Of course, non-citizens are unable to vote in any case. So part of the process of disenfranchisement includes restrictions on citizenship. In effect, those disenfrancised become a separate class of non-citizens who can be subjected to all kinds of mistreatment with impunity -- as they were when time was.

Those who advocated for the Voting Rights Act knew full well what these consequences were, and that was part of the motivation for the Act in the first place. It's not solely a matter of being able to vote, it is a matter of citizenship itself, and the dignity that is supposed go with it.

Apparently, the issue before the Court is whether things have reformed enough in the subject states that there is no longer any need for the oversight and conditions imposed on them by the Voting Rights Act. Practically everyone seems to think that the conservative majority of the Court will agree that the time has come to lift these provisions and overturn the Act, but not because things are necessarily permanently better. No, the issue now is that voting restrictions are being emplaced outside the designated states and jurisdictions, and therefore, the Act no longer works the way it was intended. By the authority vested in the Court, the time has come to overturn the Act and do something else.

There is no federal constitutional right to vote (despite references to it in some of the amendments.)  Perhaps the ideal "something else" would be an amendment that specifically grants the right to vote to all Americans in all elections with few restrictions -- as is customary in almost every other democracy on earth. The second choice might be to expand the provisions of the Voting Rights Act to all states without restricting its provisions to only those jurisdictions with a history of voter suppression. One of the interesting objections I've heard to that idea is that the DoJ would be "overwhelmed" with voting rights cases and issues and would be essentially paralyzed due to the sheer volume of voting rights violations. That may be. Would it necessarily be such a bad thing?

It would be in the sense that the issue would likely be litigated forever, which would more than likely mean that there would be endless delays in lifting "undue" voting restrictions, all the while endless creative attempts at enhancing voting restrictions would be undertaken. We know how these things play out.

On the other hand, I've said many times that voting as such is not the most effective means of making desirable policy changes, as the Voting Rights Act itself demonstrates. The Act was never subject to a vote of the People, of course, nor would it have been in any case. Nor, in fact, were those who voted for it in Congress elected on the understanding that the provisions of the Act would be their objective. That's not to say that the Act was somehow a mistake. It is to say that "voting" as such had little or nothing to do with the creation, passage and implementation of the Act. And so it is with most public policies especially at the Federal level. You don't get a vote on policy. You get to vote for personalities.

Policy changes generally happen through pressure from outside the electoral system, by effective and well placed advocates and activists. Which may mean high-priced lobbyists and their running dogs, or it may mean massive demonstrations in the streets, or it may mean populist uprisings of one sort or another. Strikes. Shutdowns. Resistance.

Voting by itself is generally not an effective means of accomplishing desirable change, nor is it meant to be.

But then, who really wants change, anyway?

Documenting the Atrocities

The atrocities seem to be coming thick and fast these days, and as everyone knows, their endless documentation is the primary purpose of Blogtopia (h/t Skippy).

After delivering his smooth and soothing and ever so "progressive" Inaugural Speech, His Serenity Barack Obama commenced his second term of office determined to have his way no matter what, demanding that the Rs concede the points he's long been making that the rich in America have to pay their fair share, and then the rest of Americans have to sacrifice by enduring permanent cuts in benefits called "Entitlement Reform."

He's never wavered from this position from the moment he was installed in the White House. One of the things about Obama is that he is a remarkable politician who gets his way in the face of some of the most hot-headed criticism any president has endured since before the Civil War.

He gets his way. He got an increase in upper income tax rates, but notice what it was linked to: an end to the payroll tax holiday which meant a 2% increase in the payroll tax rate, and 2% less in working people's take home pay. The tax burden on the rich has increased a bit, but I'm told it's not even close to 2%. Beauty.

He gets his way. This fact about reduced worker take home pay is ritualistically ignored by practically the whole universe of commentators, and many in fact defend it as proper. Yes, well. Of course.

It was only a temporary tax holiday, not meant to be permanent, and besides, what do working people need with all that spendable cash anyway? They should be saving for a rainy day, and the expiration of the payroll tax holiday will force savings by putting the money into Social Security. So it's all good.

Then there is the whole issue of "targeted assassination" of American citizens -- via drone or SEAL or whatever -- not to mention the continuing debate over whether "we" should torture.

The White Paper is supposed to explain the legal rationale for "targeted assassination" -- aka: summary execution, murder, etc. Torture of course is not done. Any more than the Church tortured heretics. It simply didn't happen. So stop saying that.

Killing and torture and extracting wealth from the masses is how Empires are established, sustained and run. It's simple. The People can do nothing about it once those in power become convinced that their security can only be ensured by means of Empire. First, the People have no say in the matter, but even if they did have a say, they'd probably go along with whatever evil that Power proposes in the hopes that they would one day benefit.

That's how it goes.

It's fascinating to see people state and debate these issues on the internet and confidently assert that voting choices will somehow bring matters under the control of the People. Third parties are very popular -- if somewhat abstract -- remedies to the cruelties and depredations of the Duopoly that rules us, even though in the last election third parties didn't even break into double digits.

Elections and voting, I've said many times, is not the answer, for in our system you never actually have a choice when it comes to policy (not at the federal level), for policy is never put to a vote of the People.

You vote for personalities.

Slogans.

Not policies.

Third parties are meaningless in a winner take all electoral system. Two parties that shade into one another are the only feasible "choices." Change the system and maybe third (fourth, fifth, sixth) parties will have a chance, but because they might have a chance, the system will not change from the inside.

Pressure from the outside can sometimes afflict the dominant parties sufficiently that they might mitigate some of their worst policies, but the pressure must be sustained over long periods -- generations or centuries sometimes -- and it must be relentlessly single-minded.

Documenting the atrocities isn't going to do it.

But I guess it's worthwhile in its own right.

Isn't it?

On the Importance and Irrelevance of Voting

I come from a heritage in which voting was considered of fundamental importance. When my Irish ancestors emigrated, they were not allowed to vote in Ireland, and previously, they hadn't even been allowed to marry according to the rites of the Holy Catholic Church, to hold office, or in any other way participate in the political life of His/Her Majesty's Realm. My German ancestors faced similar impediments.

In America, however, as soon as they established citizenship and residency, they could vote in elections and stand for office. My grandfather, therefore, only one generation away from the emigrant boat, was a Democratic Party Chair in the Great State of Iowa, and my father stood for office. This is something their ancestors could not have imagined doing.

I have voted in every election since I was eligible to vote (at age 21, let it be known), and I have never advised or encouraged anyone not to vote. Though I have never stood for office myself, I have served on numerous boards and commissions, have chaired some of them, and I have a fairly intimate acquaintance with the operations of government from the inside at the local, state and federal levels. I have campaigned extensively for candidates -- though not recently -- and I have more than a little bit to do with local Democratic politics (though again, not recently.)

If I were a cynic, I would say it's all a bunch of bullshit, a fraud of the first order, and everyone should stay well away from it -- or burn the whole rotten edifice down. But as a rule, I don't say that. Instead, I try to point out what the real deal is.

American politics is corrupt to the core, and there is no way to salvage it from its mortal corruption. It's been this way since dirt was new. There is no way to clean it up because much of the corruption is built in to the system. It's inherent in the way the Parties operate and in turn in the way the Government operates. It's riddled with cronyism, backscratching and backstabbing, time serving, and barely functional constituent services. "Pay to Play" is nearly universal, and the exceptions are striking.

You do not get a vote on policy at the Federal level at all. You may or may not get a vote on policy through initiatives and referenda at the state and local level, but even if you do, the implementation of any policy you've voted on is not in your hands, and it may not be in the hands of anyone who is accountable to you or any portion of the electorate and you will therefore have little say in the matter.

A Presidential election is a personality election, not a policy election. By the time candidates reach the presidential level, their policy prescriptions have long since been determined outside your purview, by people and institutions you probably have no relationship with, on behalf of interests you're probably not a part of. In most respects, the candidates you are allowed to choose from for President have similar if not identical policies. They are candidates for Head of State, Chief of Government and Military Commander; the Government itself is a huge institution with its own internal interests and characteristics. Changing that institution in any substantial way is usually out of the question, therefore, most of the policies of candidates (not necessarily campaigns) are virtually identical because the candidates campaigning not so much to serve the People as to serve the Government. 

Your vote is a resource to be mined under the circumstances, but it is not individually important at all. Vote or don't vote, it doesn't matter very much in the end, because you're basically voting on variations in personality and on slight differences in implementation policies that have already been determined. The policies are going to happen no matter what you vote -- or don't vote as the case may be.

The only way to affect policy is from the outside of the system. I learned that a long time ago, but it was a lesson I didn't really understand until fairly recently. In our political system, for the most part, policies (and candidates for that matter) are bought and sold like commodities, and with about as much care and concern. As a rule, those who have the money... rule.  This is true nearly everywhere in electoral politics; there are at any given time very, very few "citizen politicians." They are almost all creatures of their benefactors and funders. But their benefactors and funders are outside the political/governmental system. Very few of them ever stand for office themselves (this is not as true as it once was) and often they are completely unknown to the People. They are in the shadows, behind the scenes, pulling strings to be sure, but rarely making any sort of public display of it. These are the people whose phone calls your representative always takes; these are the people whose will becomes law in a surprisingly short time with little or no public comment. These are the people whose interests come first. These are the people to whom your government is accountable.

Not. To. You.

"But we can throw the bums out!" Yes. By all means. Go ahead. You'll get another crop of bums inevitably. This is how the political system and the government works. Indeed, voters have a choice but it will almost always be a choice between variations of the same thing.

The growing problem is that over the years the Government -- and its servants, the electeds  -- have become divorced from The People, to the point where now The People hardly factor at all in the policy decisions of the Movers and Shakers in and out of Government. In fact, many in office are proud to assert that the public interest and public will are not important factors in their decisions, and we have seen time and again, that the Democratic Party Big Wigs make a fetish of insulting and denouncing their own political base. Republican Big Wigs don't do this publicly, but their contempt for the base of their own Party is pretty obvious just the same.

Our Rulers don't believe that they need to accommodate the public any more, or even hear them in many cases. They don't believe they need to in part because they don't believe the public will do anything about the actions of the electeds (and those who sponsor them) that those in office need pay any attention to.

Sternly worded emails don't cut it.

Nor do blog posts.

Not even hotly passionate phone calls.

It isn't too strong to suggest they don't care what you think. They never really did. They only care about what you do and so far as they're concerned, you're not going to do anything they need concern themselves with. And if you get uppity, they'll have you taken care of.

Once you're clear about these fundamentals, the whole "lesser of two evils" trope and the notion that "this is the most important election in world history evah" lose their oomph. "Lesser of two evils" is essentially meaningless, especially if there is no recognition that it is the political/electoral/governmental system itself that produces this situation, not the candidates. All the candidates come out of and serve that system. "The most important election" notion is just as meaningless. If they are all the "most important" -- and they are -- then they're really not that important in the larger scheme of things.

What's important are the policies that are adopted -- which you and I have almost no say in as individuals or as voters.

Sustained activism outside the political system can and does affect those policies, however, as we have seen in numerous instances of civil rights and civil liberties campaigns. Our Rulers have been racheting down the limits of what sorts of activism and on what issues they will allow to affect their decisions, but there is still a possibility of influencing and affecting public policies through sustained activism.

Economic policies and war and peace policies, however, are rarely subject to public influence you may have noticed. In fact, it works the other way: economic policies and war and peace policies are determined at the top and then sold to the public like soap.

Nevertheless, by all means, vote, cast your ballot, exercise the franchise. Just don't expect it to make that much of a difference and you'll be fine.

And if too many people vote the wrong way for their own good, the wise old Robed Ones will take the vote on their own and fix it for you.

Railing Against the "Left" in America

At some point I will have to acknowledge the uselessness of continuing to beat the long dead horse of what passes for the "left" in American politics.

In point of fact, there is no real Left active in the American political system and there hasn't been one for many years. There are a few (very) fringe parties that take leftist, even revolutionary, positions on some issues, but they have no political influence at all -- some would say by the design and intention of the political system itself and by these fringe parties in cahoots with their own marginalization. They do seem to be oddly content outside the system, come to think of it.

In the mainstream of American politics, what's called the "left" functions as a slightly mitigating version of the ever-dominant American Right. I've pointed out that even St. Franklin Roosevelt was no "leftist," and the New Deal programs and policies that actually survived (like Social Security and Unemployment Insurance) are NOT leftist by any stretch of the imagination. They are basically survivalist policies of the Right intended to buy off the masses and keep the tumbrils and guillotines at bay for a while longer.

Now, however, since the Crash of 2008, the Right is going for complete control without the troublesome and burdensome necessity of carving out some benefit for the masses. They've been busying themselves with taking economic benefits as well as civil liberties away from the masses, selling off public assets at fire sale prices, destroying public education, reducing and/or eliminating pension benefits, making access to health care ever more difficult and expensive and setting up system after system of automatic revenue payments to corporate entities, many of which are now behaving like taxing authorities and private governments.

The so-called "left" in American politics and governance merely operates as if it were a helpful critic of Rightist policies. The "left" has no policies of its own except maintaining bits and pieces of the status quo and delaying and mitigating (somewhat) the more radical policies of the Right.

That's it. At one time, when there was something of an active Left in American politics, instead of reducing benefits and raising retirement ages, we would have been treated to arguments proposing to lower the retirement age and substantially increasing benefits. We would hear arguments to collectivize, nationalize industries and services and implement a broad-based public sector economy on democratic principles. Instead of ignoring Marx and other cogent critics of capitalism, we would have long ago explored and demonstrated alternatives to the kind of rampant crony capitalism we endure today -- a capitalist system that is depriving whole generations of a future.

If we had a real Left in our politics, the possibilities for the Future would be seen as unlimited.

But we don't have one. No, Occupy is not "the Left," not even close; it's not at root a political entity; it's more of a philosophical one. It may give rise to a political entity, but it hasn't yet. It has only given rise to ideas, opportunities, and demonstrations of alternatives to the current downward spiral.

The election will only have an effect on how fast and how harshly Rightist programs and policies -- most of which we are already familiar with -- will be implemented going forward. Neither major party is in any way interested in backing off from those Rightist programs and policies, any more than most of the governments around the world are going to suddenly jettison neoliberalism. It's not going to happen.

The only way to accomplish that end now is through efforts conducted outside the standard political system, and we've already seen that if those efforts show signs of succeeding, they will be violently shut down by the corpro-government.

If a genuine political Left is ever revived on the other hand, what might we see? What wonders might await?

A rational argument for not voting. [Note: a repost of the material at the link was disappeared at FDL because a moderator didn't want to "promote" the idea of not voting. It is obviously considered a dangerous concept that must be kept away from the masses.]

The Vote -- Continued

The CW is that the Dems' losses are due to their "leftward" direction.

Wrong.

The Dems are losing, even such prominent Dems as Russ Feingold (although there are a number of issues with him) because they have pretty much ignored the interests of the People in order to fulfill their obligations to their Owners.

With Feingold, it was a matter of his talking real purty, but when it came time for action, he couldn't get it up. I'm sorry, anybody who insists that as a matter of principle, he has to vote to approve George Bush's appointees no matter how awful they are and anyone who refuses to use his prerogatives and powers as a Senator to stop the worst abuses of a White House out of control is an empty suit. Sorry Russ, you lost me a long time ago. Apparently, you lost a lot of Wisconsinites, too.

The fact that the Democrats have been languidly indifferent to the horrendous unemployment situation, except to demagogue it, is the deal killer for so many Americans. You can expect the Rs to try to repeal minimum wage and health and safety protections for workers, but they also say they're going to do something to get people back to work. The Dems have never, ever made that kind of promise for the short term, all they've done is work to extend unemployment benefit payments (that over half the unemployed don't -- and never did -- qualify for.)

They have done nothing about foreclosures but make the situation worse for tens or hundreds of thousands. They have lavished so much money on the upper crust, the rich are seeing their incomes skyrocket while everyone else's declines -- sometimes well less than zero.

The Dems' economic policies are Hooverite; their international policies have been Bushevik with a somewhat less hostile face.

One can go on and on listing the abundance of reasons for the Democrats' losses.

But it's not because they've been too leftist. It's because they have ignored the plight of the People, kept the wars and Empire going, and have lavished money on the already well-heeled.

The Republicans have said they will pay attention. Of course they lie, but at least they have said the right things.

The results are utterly predictable.

The Vote

Yes. Well.

Your vote doesn't count. Well, it does, in the micro-scene, it doesn't in the macro. This seems to be a dawning realization among some of the Disappointed Democrats who thought they were voting on Big Important Policy Matters in the elections of 2006 and 2008 and found out they weren't.

In fact, matters of Big Important Policy are never put to a vote by the electorate, ever. It just isn't done. Elections are advisories on how already decided policies and ideological positions will be implemented, whether fast or slow, harsh or gentle, that sort of thing.

We do not get to vote on what is done, and only marginally do we have a vote on how it is done.

This is a new concept to people who are new to politics, and they resist it fiercely. Soon enough our TeaBagger Patriots are going to find out for themselves that all their stridency, all their "study" of the Constitution, all of Sarah's hosannas and heysannas, Glenn Beck's paranoia and psychosis, all their careful selections of candidates (some of whom will be elected most certainly) is not going to have more than a marginal effect on the High and the Mighty, much as putative "Progressives" discovered that getting Dems into a majority in the Congress and into the White House had at best only a marginal effect on the Powers That Be and their neo-con/neo-liberal domestic and international policies.

It is shocking to find that out. Denial comes long before acceptance.

The lack of enthusiasm among Democrats this time around is due largely to their realization that their vote doesn't really matter in the larger scheme at all. The wars are still going on, the Imperial Project is, if anything, more secure than it ever was, the Rich and the Privileged continue to prosper, and the Poor and the Working Class continue to take it in the shorts -- and pay for what they have repeatedly rejected besides. The radical transformation of our government from that of a faltering Republic to an all-out Empire that commenced with the lawless intervention by the Supreme Court in the election of 2000 has been consolidated and institutionalized under the Democrats; the Empire is expanding, not contracting; wars are being ginned up mercilessly throughout South Asia and East Africa; the wealth at the top is growing exponentially; those in the middle and on the bottom are being relentlessly squeezed economically. Civil liberties are being extinguished.

The United States is not yet a totalitarian society, but it is mindlessly slouching toward Autocracy. There is nothing our vote can do about it. The direction is set.

We have somewhat of a say in how we proceed, that's all. And that's temporary. That "say", however slight it is, could disappear at any moment, and our elections will have as much influence on the Powerful as elections had in Imperial Rome.

You can't correct this descent by voting. You don't have that choice at the ballot box.

Nevertheless, I always advocate voting, and as a rule, I advocate voting for the milder course to the Inglorious Future -- ie: the Democrats -- rather than the harsher Republicans.

No, you do not change the direction by voting, you change affect the implementation. That's all. But that's important when the Rs are batshit, bloodthirsty and cruel. When you vote for the Rs you are voting for the worst in human nature to be applied as broadly as possible. And that inevitably results in death and destruction on a massive scale.

The Dems are headed in the same direction, but their path is not quite as slick with quite as much bloodshed, and their "sanity" contrasts with the R's continuous psychosis. As coldblooded as Dems can sometimes be, they are not, for the most part, as consciously cruel as Rs almost always are.

That doesn't make a big difference to some of the political Puritans out there, for whom the consequences on other people simply don't matter.

They matter to me.

On the other hand, if we want Big Changes in the direction this country is headed, if we want an end to the Imperial Project and its associated wars, if we want an end to legal injustice, if we want economic and social justice as well, we need to do something other than cast our vote in elections.

And Americans are simply not willing to take the personal risks to do what it takes.

Not yet, anyway.


And never forget:

Big Ball's in Cowtown