Home » politics (Page 25)

Category Archives: politics

Denial and Nullification

Posted on by | 3 Comments
How Can We Stop Thinking of Them?

How Can We Stop Thinking of Them?

In the minds of many Americans who live in the so-called Red States, their values are under siege. They believe that what made this country great was heterosexuality, Evangelical Christianity, racial and ethnic homogeneity, unregulated gun ownership, and overall lack of government interference in their lives. Back in some Golden Age, people did not need a handout to survive. Of course, many did not survive because life was hard and old Doc Peabody just didn’t know how to do anything but dispense aspirin.

Then, over time, corporations took over the farms; and the more promising youth left for the coastal states. Those who were left behind continued to espouse the same values as their fathers. Suddenly, however, it seems that most Americans were no longer in the Grant Wood American Gothic mold. They were Black, Asian, Mexican, Muslim, Liberal, Queer, Educated, Feminists—in short “Not Our Kind of People.”

One result is the growth of a political movement to turn back the tide of history. So we have people whose main strategy is denial. Denial of science, of demographic change, of agnosticism, of the urban poor. Life for the Tea Party and their camp followers is one of nullification of what they do not understand. And since they do not try to understand anything outside their narrow orbit, it is an ultimately defeatist stance of a party in retreat.

Yesterday, I read an interesting article by Christopher S. Parker called “Whither the Tea Party? The Future of a Political Movement,” published by the Brookings Institution. Click the link labelled “Download the paper” for the complete text.

Parker does not think the Tea Party is going away soon, irrespective how many times it is bloodied at the polls:

Some may question whether or not this is really an “astroturf” [as opposed to grassroots] movement, one that wouldn’t survive in the absence of support from the Koch Brothers, or other big-money funding sources. But Tea Party membership has continued to grow over the last year. As IREHR [Institute for Research and Education on Human Rights] indicates, this was during a time when big-money donors were all but absent: 82 percent of the donations to five Tea Party affiliated organizations were un-itemized individual donations, which are capped at $200, and 97 percent of the itemized contributions to three national Tea Party affiliated Super PACs—Freedom Works for America, Patriot Super PAC, and Tea Party Patriots Citizens Fund—failed to exceed $1,000. This suggests that the Tea Party movement isn’t “astroturf.” It’s a real grassroots movement, one that will likely be around a while.

As long as there are white Americans in the former Confederate States of America and Great Plains who feel disenfranchised, there will either be a Tea Party to minister to their needs. Or else, more likely over time, their needs will act as yeast in a Republican Party that has been largely taken over by their political and social agenda.

Change will not stop because it is in the interests of a large bloc of the U.S. population to halt it in its tracks. Over the long haul, there will be a continuing battle that will resemble some of the political battles of the Nineteenth Century over Free Silver and the Nativists. I expect it will be ugly, even if it is a losing battle: There will still be casualties on both sides.

 

The Real Reason Cantor Lost

Posted on by | 4 Comments
Read On for My Peerless Analysis

Read On for My Peerless Analysis

This may strike you as being unscientific, but the reason Eric Cantor lost his seat in Virginia is that no one liked him. He was always a whiny presence on the Washington scene.

Of course, the fact that he may be replaced by an even more dangerous Tea-Party-type is certainly no cause for celebration. The fact is that people who live in Confederate sh*thole districts are not likely to vote for anyone who will do anything but attempt to govern by hijacking or obstructionism. We live in the Disunited States of America and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future.

You may recall the whole “Left Behind” Evangelical myth that, in the End Times, the saved are wafted to Paradise while everyone else has to suffer the various beasts of the Apocalypse while the saved are eating Corn Nuts and drinking Duff Beer while fluffing their wings and cheering on the Four Horsemen. I think that the people who vote for insufferable right-wing nutjobs have been “left behind” by science, the economy, technology, and everything associated with good sense. All they’re left with is Jesus and their guns.

God help the rest of us!

 

“Stupidity of the Vilest Kind”

Dick Cheney

Dick Cheney

You are wedded to stupidity, my fine friend, of the vilest kind; you are impeached of this by your own words, out of your own mouth; and this, it seems, is why you dash into politics before you have been educated. And you are not alone in this plight, but you share it with most of those who manage our city’s affairs… Plato: Alcibiades

White People Twisting in the Wind

Posted on by
To the Right and to the Left

To the Right and to the Left

Go outside and look around you at the people passing by. Are they all white? If so, you must be in a gated community somewhere. We all know for a fact that the demographic of the American conservative tends heavily toward the white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant, and elderly. But, according to a recent article in The Nation entitled “The Unbearable Whiteness of the American Left,” American Progressives are just as far removed demographically from the people whose interests they profess to serve. The tents at either end of the American political spectrum are nowhere near as big as they should be. Wherever the voters are congregating, it is nowhere near either of the two poles.

If voters of different races and ethnicities are disgusted by being ignored, that could result in an election where the zealots are in charge, and the middle stays home. What would be an even more desirable outcome is for the two major political parties to either morph into something other than what they are, or to form new parties. Initially, these new parties would suffer losses at the polls, but eventually, the theory is that they would draw members from the two now ideologically bankrupt major parties.

The article in The Nation makes an interesting point about all-white panels making decisions affecting non-whites: “In the United States, campaigns for social justice are always ‘a racial thing.’ That doesn’t mean they might not be about other ‘things,’ too. Indeed, they invariably are. Race does not exist in a vacuum. But in a country that has never considered equality beyond its most abstract iterations and that has practiced slavery far longer than freedom, race is never entirely absent.”

If African-Americans, Hispanics, Asians, and others are excluded from the political process, the political process will become increasingly remote from the concerns of most Americans. When that happens, change can become painful and violent, as it did during the urban riots of the 1960s. I’m afraid we still haven’t learned the lesson, and that we will suffer for it.

 

 

 

 

Wretched Excess

Posted on by
I Must Apologize ...

I Must Apologize …

My last two postings—about the Koch Brothers and Cliven Bundy—are classic examples of (1) wretched excess and (2) lowering the level of political discourse by several notches. Not that I wouldn’t like to see those low-grade villains get their come-uppance, but it is just not worth overstating the obvious. I fell into the trap set by social conservatives of responding with knee-jerk outrage to acts of arrant stupidity.

There is no point to it: We are surrounded by a sea of retardation. Among our fellow Americans are millions of people whose combined brainpower isn’t enough to strike a match. The news media are there to capture every stupid phrase or gesture and magnify it until it comes to us with an unreal sense of urgency.

When I do this—in fact almost whenever I write about politics—I feel dirty. I have said this before, but now I am coming to realize that it’s all a sick game. Whenever I react in some knee-jerk fashion, I am doing my cause no good. The main thing is to show up at the polls, and when necessary, contribute a few dollars to my side.

I plan to move from Duh Drive as soon as possible … and stay away.

A Hero I Wouldn’t Wish Upon a Dog

Posted on by | 2 Comments
Thye GOP Loves Nevada Ranchers

The GOP Loves Nevada Ranchers

If it weren’t so pathetic, I would laugh at Cliven Bundy and other GOP folk heroes like Joe the Plumber (remember him?). It never seems to take very long before the “Cliven” turns into a “Cloven Hoof,” around the time he opens his mouth in front of the news media.

Let’s face it: Rancher Bundy is a tax cheat and, in the process, a Federal Government nullifier. He makes a big thing about paying his taxes to the county but doesn’t appear to recognize that there are fees for grazing on Federal lands—lands that have been Federally owned since the conclusion of the War with Mexico.

Is it any surprise that the latest GOP folk hero rhapsodizes about the good old days of slavery? He knows his audience, and he will keep braying like an ass until, quite suddenly, everyone will be fed up with him and he will be seen as just another embarrassment to the Government Optional Party.

 

Kicking Back at the Kochs

Posted on by
Paging Captain Boycott!

Paging Captain Boycott!

I am so tired of the Koch Brothers’ attempts to turn this country into a grey oligarchy that I thought the best thing to do would be to boycott, to the maximum extent possible, their products and services.Thanks to websites such as KochWatch.Org, it is now possible to see some of what makes the Brothers the rich bastards that they are. Their main consumer products are put out under the Georgia-Pacific logo and include:

Vanity Fair
Angel Soft
Quilted Northern
Soft N Gentle
Sparkle
Brawny
Mardi Gras
Zee
Dixie
DensArmor Plus
Plyntanium
Tough Rock Demak Up
Kittensoft
Lotuss
Moltonel
Tenderly
Nouvelle
Okay
Calhogar
Delica
Inversoft
Tutto
Nitamin
Bumper Harvest
Quik-Wrap
Quilt-Wrap
Food Shop Sandwich Wrap

Under the Investa subsidiary, the main Koch products are:

Lycra
Cool Max
Tactel
Solar max
Polarguard
Dacron
Thermolite
Comforel
Antron
Stainmaster
Cordura

And this is just a small sample. Most of the Koch Evil Empire is in business-to-business services that don’t impact us at the supermarket and which we are unlikely to use. Still, I think it’s a good idea to hit these billionaire clowns where they live, in the wallet.

According to Forbes, there’s even a Smart Phone app for scanning a UPC to determine whether the product in question is from the Kochs.

 

 

What the Democrats Don’t Get

Posted on by | 1 Comment
Do What’s Right First, THEN Ask for Money

Do What’s Right First, THEN Ask for Money

I am daily besieged by dozens of almost identical e-mails asking me for support. At first, they want me to just sign a petition. That’s fine with me. Then they hold out the tin cup, asking me for money so that the evil Koch Brothers, the Nazgul of our own time and place, do not hurl us all into a pit of unrelenting misery.

Look, I hate the Koch Brothers as much as they do—but I also hate television. All these Democratic-aligned organizations are doing is arranging for millions in political ad buys on a medium which I do not support, and for which I have active contempt. I am also getting a little bit suspicious: Just whom are these organizations supporting? Is it the issue named? Or is it the collective broadcast and cable television networks? And has anyone ever checked to see whether there are kickbacks taking place?

That reminds me of a snippet I read last night from Christopher Isherwood’s South American travel journal Condors and Cows: “In Bogotá, he says, the milk was always sold diluted with water. One day, a pure-milk dairy was started but soon went bankrupt. It had been deliberately ruined by the directors of the water-works, who feared a serious drop in water-consumption.” In other words, are the TV ad people involved in these movements as a way of drumming up business?

These are questions that need to be asked, because I, for one, am reluctant to respond to any of these ads—regardless of my political beliefs.

The Long View

Posted on by | 4 Comments
Being an Optimist in the Long Run

Being an Optimist in the Long Run

As a student of history, I tend to be an optimist in the long run. It’s quite possible that the American people will take a generation or more to act upon discovering that they were being had by super wealthy and powerful individuals and corporations. By then, I and most of my friends will have passed on. But then, remember that all those old stupid white people inhabiting the Confederate States of America will all be gone, too. Some of the most annoying commentators on the political scene today, people such as Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Bill O’Reilly, and and Ann Coulter will be seen as passé as the John Birch Society and Father Coughlin. (You do remember them, don’t you?)  And the Rand Pauls and Ted Cruzes of this world will either have been voted out of office or decided it was better to pursue power than ideological purity.

History is made up of large cycles. Ever since the end of World War Two, the United States has been in a “Let’s Go to War with People About Whom We Know Nothing” cycle. The list of our military incursions over the last sixty years would take several pages—though I’m tempted to try to list them one of these days, but after tax season. One of the things that will happen rather sooner than later is the realization that America is no longer viewed as “the City on the Hill” for all the world to look up to and follow. We will be just another large country thathas shamelessly squandered its power. By the way, that’s happening to Russia now. I think the Crimea will, in the long run, be a poisoned cookie for Putin.

I think I will read Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner’s The Gilded Age, for a look at the last time we let rich and powerful individuals have their way. Then, too, there is Frank Norris’s The Octopus and Theodore Dreiser’s Frank Cowperwood trilogy (The Financier, The Titan, and The Stoic). It was the labor movement that put an end to much of that. Even though GOP stooges like Scott Walker, Governor of Wisconsin, have done everything they could to destroy labor, I think it will be back again … but in the long run.

People my age have seen both worlds. It’s so depressing to straightline tendencies that we hate until they assume monstrous proportions, I would like to quote a GOP President whom I admire. Calvin Coolidge once said, “If you see ten troubles coming down the road, you can be sure that nine will run into the ditch before they reach you.” You just have to be ready for the one that does.

 

The Pendulum Swings Both Ways

Posted on by | 4 Comments
The SCOTUS Retards: Thomas and Scalia

The SCOTUS Retards: Thomas and Scalia

Although I am by no means a Communist, I have a certain belief in dialectics. Somethings happens (THESIS), opposition emerges (ANTITHESIS), and finally some sort of compromise solution emerges (SYNTHESIS). With the McCutcheon vs. FEC case just concluded, the U.S. Supreme Court gives wealthy individuals the right to in effect donate as much money as they want to the party or issue of their choice through SuperPACs which redistribute the funds. Although they still cannot write a megacheck directly to a particular candidate, I’m sure that won’t be long in coming.

What the so-called 1% (actually, a much smaller percent that) don’t realize is the hatred and opposition they are sowing. The superwealthy and the corporate elite have succeeded in infiltrating and gutting a major political party’but not without hard feelings. The more they ride roughshod over the feelings of American voters, the more likely there is to be a reckoning of some sort to redress the balance. There will be no Thousand Year Reich for the likes of Sherman Adelson and the Koch Brothers. They may be at their apogee wight now in terms of influence, but angry crowds are massing in front of the Bastille, and with luck their efforts will be taken apart brick by brick.

I am convinced that many or perhaps even most viewers of the Faux News channel are aware that the fix is in and are just waiting for the right time to cast their vote.

At least, I hope so.