Is America the stupid country? The easy-to-brainwash
country? A country of lemmings? Other countries have lost their way in the past
- Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, Argentina, Mexico - is it America’s turn now?
Millennials and other young
people made up 13% of all the votes on
November 4. Oh sure, it’s not worth
voting, you say, because you are terribly busy, and the system is rigged anyway...Those
are some of the excuses. Well, good luck with that! If
you keep letting old men decide who is going to rule, you will continue to get
screwed by the plutocracy
Reactionary Behavior: Obama saved us out of the Great
Recession, the worst thing in eighty years, and Americans are practically ready
to lynch him. What is that?
However, an historical perspective might help: such
reversals are common. In 1945, immediately after Churchill had saved his country,
defeated Hitler and won World War II, the British electorate kicked him out and
replaced him with Labour’s Clement Attlee. How is that for ingratitude?
Reaction and regression are part
of history. In the words which.”
Take the French Revolution -
1789. It was followed by Napoleon’s dictatorship and a century of monarchy and
restoration. Not until 1871 did France become a permanent Republic.
Ancient Rome, same story: There
were many populist efforts at dismantling the senatorial and patrician
oligarchy, for example those of the Gracchi brothers, those of Marius and those of Caesar, who was a populist. To
little avail. The aristocracy ALWAYS
came roaring back. Sulla triumphed over Marius, the Gracchi and Caesar were
assassinated.
The US? Here, we had a Civil
War, Lincoln’s heroic presidency, his
Proclamation of Emancipation, the 14th Amendment and an attempted
radical Reconstruction of the Deep South. And then? The rise of Jim Crow
laws, the KKK, and the sordid reaction which persists in some
forms to this very day.
So now the pendulum swings back once again. We are going through
the “GREAT AMERICAN REACTION” (set in motion by Reagan, by the way).
What happened on Nov. 4, 2014 tends to happen almost every time: By the
time a President has served for six
years, many are ready to kick him out, or at least to
kick out his party. Weird.
It happened when Republicans won a majority of house seats in 2010 and in 2012, and it probably happened again on November 4, 2014 (see More Democratic Votes). It is astounding that despite the vastly greater proportion of old, conservative people voting, even on a day like November 4, there are more people who vote democratic than republican! Democracy schmemocracy! Majority rule is circumvented through gerrymandering, the electoral college and other tricks.
Americans are a
generous and altruistic people; they
assume the best in others; to
their credit, they are not envious. However,
they are also naïve and gullible. They lack class consciousness. They
often fail to perceive or to vote for their self-interests. On November 4,
millions of lower middle-class people, little old ladies in tennis shoes,
tea-partiers and other people barely
getting by on miserable incomes, voted in such a way as to make the 10% most
opulent fat cats in America even richer
- at the little people’s own expense.
Now comes the next con job: After the election, Republican
leader Mitch McConnell was like a pussycat.
Oh so magnanimous and reasonable. He is willing to work with
President Obama, he said. “There will be no government shutdown and no
default on the debt.” As to Obamacare? “We just want to replace it with
something better.”
Republicans are now clamoring that they are not just “against” things (Obama
things). They claim to have a positive
agenda. They want to accomplish things.
For example, they wan to start with “tax reform.”
And here is where the con starts. Do you know what “tax
reform” is? It’s tax CUTS. They say: (a) we’ll close loopholes and (b) we’ll
reduce marginal rates and corporate rates. But I know what will happen: only (b) will happen. Loopholes
can never be closed. New rules can always be circumvented. When they eliminated
the home office deduction for professors in the 1980s, all we had to do was to
separate our writing business from our
teaching business in order to continue to use the home office tax deduction.
“Tax Reform” will not be revenue neutral.
Replace Obamacare with something better? Since Obamacare, Republicans have professed
to be concerned about health care. For
150 years, they have resisted all attempts
at providing health benefits to
the entire population, including the dozens of millions of poor
Americans who have had to forego medical coverage. They have loved the fact
that America’s profit-based health care system consumes 17 % of our economy,
much of which has nothing to do with healthcare. Are people blind? Isn’t it obvious that the “better” system
they want to introduce is a return to the status quo, sending back 60
million people to the uninsured rolls? Republicans have never given a damn
about public health, only about the bottom line. Now suddenly that would
change? Come on.
There will now be renewed efforts at privatizing everything,
and further assaults on
government, public services
and unions. Privatization will mean
renewed attempts at handing over the last vestige of a meager “defined benefit”
plan - Social Security - to the grubby
hands of Wall Street gamblers.
The plutocracy is on the march. America is becoming a highly
stratified society. The “land of opportunity” now has a class system every bit
as rigid as that in Europe, where upward mobility now surpassed ours.
The Power Structure:
As ever, the dominant power in America is the white, rich,
middle-aged male. He is numerous, powerful, resourceful and cunning. No other
group approaches his level of power.
The media are complicit. It is
said that they are just the messengers, and that one should never kill messengers. But the problem is that the
media deliver the message so badly. The
media are fearful, and they therefore
collaborate with the power structure. Under the guise of “balance,” they
give a pass to cheats and liars.
When Ted Cruz is interviewed by the allegedly “centrist” NBC,
that network lets him get away with an
oft-repeated lie about Hillary Clinton: That she said she didn’t care about our embassador’s murder
in Benghazi. That is a lie. What she said was: “What difference does it make whether
he was murdered by an organized cell or a spontaneous riot?”
When allegedly liberal NPR interviews the Colorado
legislator who introduced a more “patriotic” history curriculum, they let
her get away with the following amazing statement: “We look at both sides of
historical issues, both the pros and cons of slavery.” Why didn’t NPR say at
that point: “you can’t be serious?”
The solidly democratic Sacramento
Bee prints more right-wing
syndicated columns (Krauthammer, David Brooks, etc.) than progressive ones - Paul Krugman being
one of the few of the latter sort. So the allegedly “centrist” and “moderate”
media kneel before the right-wing spokesmen.
Conclusion:
Unlike the media, I will not
equivocate: Flawed as it is, the Democratic Party is still a regular political
party. Its goal is to improve the lives of the American people, including schools,
infrastructure, safety, health,
environment.
The Republican Party’s goal
is to maximize the wealth of its
supporters. It cleverly uses slogans and subterfuges - “freedom,” “individual
responsibility,” “wasteful, inefficient and corrupt government,” “lazy takers,”
“take America back.” However, their true agenda is to stuff as much money into their own pockets as possible. That is what “the pursuit of happiness” means to them.
There is no reason for the
Republican Party to exist. It is against people, against Americans, against
justice. It should disappear. We need a multi-party system without a Republican
Party. Americans who belong to the Republican Party or who vote for a Republican are either
dishonest or fools.
Now that the Democrats are
nearly the opposition party (apart from that great
Hawaiian-Indonesian-Kenyan-Anglo-American in the white house), they should
start doing what the Republicans have
been doing for six years: Oppose everything, filibuster, paralyze every
republican initiative. Obama can still achieve a lot through executive action,
and he may even be able to push some legislation through Congress, as there is
now a heightened expectation from Congress to finally “do something.” leave comment here
© Tom Kando 2014
© Tom Kando 2014
