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Greetings:The more things change, the more they remain the same. So goes the ancient saying, although in the original French, the observation that humans inevitably resist life's challenges rhymes elegantly. Once our personality patterns and intellectual abilities have jelled, we humans change our individual and organizational values, attitudes, expectations, beliefs and choices very slowly, unless we see some obvious and immediate advantage from adapting. This is why a quip by Will Rogers, offered on stage in many vaudeville houses, still rings too true for comfort as we approach the 2006 and later the 2008 elections. Rogers, the best known humorist of his day, got a lot of mileage by saying -- I'm not a member of any organized political party -- I'm a Democrat. Battling among ourselves, while our Republican opponents offer to hold our coats and goad us on to fraternal bloodletting remains the besetting sin of so many progressives.
Unfortunately, Mr. Dean, Ms. Pelosi and Mr. Reid, from many fervent discussions out here on the tundra, some of the Democrat legislators who are being offered control of the Congress on a silver platter, appear ready to self-destruct once again. It need not be that way. According to the polls, both President Bush and the Republican controlled Congress have lost the confidence of the American people. The narcissistic kooks can be knocked out of office -- it isn't yet too late, but to win in November, you must embrace several changes right away. The fruit shall not drop into your laps like ripe plums. For while two thirds of the voters have lost confidence in George W. Bush, by no means have two thirds of the people decided that Democrat politicians deserve their trust any more than his clever manipulators. You shall have to lift the hearts and stir the minds of the people of whom only twenty-two percent or so think the Congress is doing a decent job. You really must use the following four imperatives.
DEFY THE McCAULEY CURSE -- Charles Babbington, Lord McCaulay, was the British historian who wrote brilliantly about the first Queen Elizabeth's Empire. As he researched the rise and fall of the rich and powerful, he discovered that every successful civilization, nation, royal family, corporation and political party, eventually commits suicide by creating powerful vested interest groups. These narcissistic groups are so enamored with their own satisfying status quo, are so egoistic about their own prestige, power and possessions, that the parent organization cannot adapt when major changes occur and it must rapidly embrace new principles or perish under the assaults of ambitious challengers. For example, some years ago when General Motors had paint peeling off their automobiles in sheets, so many internal vested groups resisted improving the painting function for their own reasons, that it took three years to solve a two months problem. Of course, we can see where such domination by those internal power players has taken G M C today! The rigid manipulators within the once generous giant have persisted in building automobiles that fewer and fewer Americans will buy. They continue selling automobiles that average the same number of flaws after three years on the road as Toyotas and Hondas average after seven years of service.
The greater American tragedy grows worse. The vested narcissists of America, the proto-fascistic plutocrats, the reactionary politicians and the fundamental politico-preachers, now have the American middle class firmly by the throat. With a working class that no longer neutralizes the ruthless and powerful through the ballot box, compounded by a powerful propaganda system that spins and spins and spins the naïve and lazy, our democratic governance is being seized by a dictatorship of the elite. Given the way political campaigns are currently financed by those with limitless money, we are already halfway there.
Lord McCauley is being proven correct once more -- because humorist Will Rogers remains correct about the Democratic Party's in-fighting among its own vested groups. Obviously, some men and women within the right, centrist and the left wings of our Party are so self-centered that they will sacrifice American democracy to the proto-fascistic narcissistic triad in exchange for a powerless seat in a Congress dominated by ruthless true believers such as DeLay, Brownback, Santorum and Lott. I've said that to say this. You, our Democratic leaders, must educate, reward or coerce your vested, contrarian members to seek satisfaction through saving the country -- rather than by hunkering down while opening the Party's veins in a suicide pact. Democrats of our several persuasions must reject the inertia, narcissism and conflicts common within dying organizations, as powerful members battle to the death for shrinking benefits. We must save the American Republic from collapse at the hands of its greatest enemies. For the real enemy in this era of confusion and conflict isn't Al Queda so much as the ruthless abusers in a fanatical, bought and paid for right wing House, Senate, Supreme Court and Presidency. Assure us that the Democratic leadership shall not force us to commit suicide this year! Show us a modicum of patriotism and courage!
DEVELOP A PERSUASIVE PROGRAM -- We Democrats can regain the House and the Senate and later the Presidency -- only by offering the American people innovations that fend off the proto-fascist Republican Party's ruthless assault against every aspect of middle class life. Most persons have suffered from the precipitous American decline during the Bush administration, except for the six or eight percent who control ninety percent of the nation's wealth. You know whom I mean, the oil, media and financial barons with whom the Bush and Cheney families play golf and tennis at the world's finest country clubs. The financial aristocrats and their companies are doing extraordinarily well, as bought and paid for economics gurus gleefully report at the hint of a government grant, except that the people who actually produce the wealth for the elite have been booted out of the chow line. The economic explosion being touted so loudly by the world's best spin doctors occurs as the direct result of cleverly passing our horrendous national debt on to our kids and grandkids. The financial elite have wangled their vaunted economic prosperity from the next two or three generations of our descendents. Ours shall be left holding the empty sack. Indeed, behind many great fortunes are concealed great crimes! The six years of the Bush administration has created a growing national calamity, the tragic results of which, according to Paul Volker, shall not become obvious for another three or four decades. Our devastating American defeats have been cleverly recast by Republican spin doctors to appear as great victories, when actually, disaster after disaster sweeps over us. The Republicans are eliminating our democratic middle class with its vast purchasing power. Killing it literally while the following occurred on George W. Bush's watch!
Thirty thousand dead and maimed Americans in Bush's very own pointless war.
Many upper class fortunes -- behind which is the theft of middle class prosperity.
A billion Muslims, for whom martyrdom is a viable option, who hate the U S.
Inflationary pressures leading to interest rate increases that block new jobs.
Soaring energy costs due to oil supply anxiety because of the Bush War.
Millions of homeless children sleeping in cardboard boxes.
A national debt that Paul Volker calls catastrophic.
Declining purchasing power for most workers.
Great airlines hanging on by their fingernails.
Thirty million Americans without health care.
A hundred thousand dead and maimed Iraqis.
A failed disaster plan revealed by Katrina.
Countless foreclosed home loans.
Countless civil rights violations.
A culture of major corruption.
Retirement plans collapsing.
Blocked stem cell research.
Exploding medicine prices.
Then, there is the potentially most dangerous Bush folly of all. For many wasted years, the Administration deliberately made climatologists, who warned the world about global warming, appear as buffoons. Unfortunately, scientists don't know how much danger is already locked into the weather system. It could be, even if we limited carbon dioxide production tomorrow, that the current heat level could continue to increase for another forty or fifty years, melting the great ice caps, dooming every coastal city under twenty-five feet of water, deflecting the Gulf Stream against Africa and thus throwing Europe into a new Ice Age while Africa becomes a vast desert. Severe global warming could scorch every green plant between the Tropics of Cancer and Capricorn.
Therefore, if you -- Mr. Dean, Ms. Pelosi, Mr. Reid and your factious Democratic peers -- cannot agree on a better platform than the above litany of disasters for the American voters to accept, why should thoughtful persons struggle to return any of you to office? The Republicans, who are already deeply vested in the rape and pillage of America -- shall surely continue serving the vested power players that McCauley predicted would rise up to destroy every organization through their own greed. The manipulators always have. Their narcissistic predecessors destroyed twenty or twenty-one of the world's twenty-two great civilizations that left their footprints on the earth, by pandering to their own internal contradictions and self-serving choices. This is the fatal flaw of every free market system. It succeeds brilliantly for a while and inspires competitors and then cuts its own throat in some spectacular manner. There has always been a hungry society or two lurking in the wings to scarf up the remains -- but, all but one or two of the great civilizations eventually committed suicide by failing to adapt successfully. And the hungry replacements on our civilization's fringes are China, India, and Brazil et al. Democrats shall not save America by also emulating to the users and abusers within our own nation that the people have come to despise and distrust. You have got to give us something better than the Republican manipulators offer or you shall fail once again due to the perception that Democratic candidates are determined to save their powerless seats at the table at the expense of everyone else. We really do need to take a new look at John Kennedy's Profiles in Courage.
GO FOR THE JUGULAR -- Take off the twelve ounce gloves! The very existence of the American Republic -- and possibly the survival of sentient life on the earth if global warming goes amok -- hangs in the balance. When most people tell pollsters they want genteel candidates who calmly debate the issues, so they can make rational choices, they are lying through their teeth. Many undecided voters today, who are frustrated because of the narcissistic manipulators who rule in Washington, want a strong campaign offense. They expect a bloody brawl because so much is at stake and dislike voting for candidates they perceive as wine and latte drinking, overly nuanced, Volvo driving Ivy League sissies. Mike Dukakis blew it by rationalizing away a trick sexual assault question about his wife that would have made most men furious. He very reasonably explained himself right out of the running. Kerry blew it by remaining the heroic and rational naval officer is pollsters wanted -- while the Bush/Rove Swift Boat assassins were cutting his three purple hearts and a Navy Cross to shreds with their calculating lies. Cerebral Stevenson, McGovern, Dukakis, Mondale, Gore and Kerry come to mind as too nuanced to appeal to the middle voters who are not committed to either party, Jimmy Carter's election was a fluke because Gerald Ford had shot himself in the foot by pardoning Nixon -- and Bill Clinton had a folksy style, a middle class mind set and a swift and wicked response to Republican attacks that sold very well. Gore would be president today and we would not have lost thirty thousand dead and wounded in Iraq or be trillions of dollars in debt had he embraced Clinton rather than shunning him during his campaign.
Do we need more proof than that offered by George W. Bush who took the presidency twice with his counterfeit born again gunslinger persona created by Karl Rove. He got close enough for the Supreme Court to get himself selected Chief of State, despite his West Texas fractured syntax, his dyslexia and his history as a womanizing, alcoholic draft dodger. Remember how his "Bring it on!" quip captivated the blue collar workers who have now lost their jobs to China, their health care insurance and their retirement plans? I cannot believe they are stupid enough to continue suffering the Republican endorsed pain -- if they have candidates in whom they can believe. Now that Rove is off the hook with the Alberto Gonzales Justice Department, what do you think he is going to do during these last months before the mid-term elections? And why is Newt Gingrich currently the leading Republican candidate for the presidency in 2008 in several Republican primaries? How respectful of our candidates do you think these two poison pen pals shall be? Democrats in Congress shall be committing suicide once again, if they think a great number of undecided voters shall respond to gracious and cuddly candidates. Politics has gone beyond that now and out here in the countryside, we middle class folk doubt that we can survive another term of Bush style abuse and manipulation. Many people fear and dread all that is happening and will elect Democrats -- providing you convince them you really shall throw the greedy Republicans overboard and steer the ship of state to a safe harbor.
USE POWERFUL COUNTERPUNCHING -- When the House and Senate Republicans use the catch-phrase Cut and Run, several times in an hour, trying to define you according to their illicit schemes and scams, counter with your own definition. Not of yourself, for that will always leave you playing catch-up, but hopscotch over them with your own terms. For example, make it clear that it is our boys and girls who Bleed and Die -- Bleed and Die -- Bleed and Die, in the Republican war that Bush started in order to build the military bases that would dominate the Middle Eastern oil patch for the petroleum barons. Work Bleed and Die into your speeches and in your articles, as often as they use Cut and Run. Define them, identify who they are, in terms that describe what they have really done and plan to continue doing to maintain their vested interests at our expense. When Republicans accuse you of being Soft on Defense, counterpunch with the accusation that they deceive the American people into Paying, Praying and Obeying -- to Pay for the war and tax cuts for billionaires by bankrupting our kids and grandkids with an unbalanced budget, to Pray for an unlikely victory over a billion angry Moslems and to Obey Bush's schemes that cripple the Constitution and defy the Bill of Rights. Surely your speech writers can come up with better counter action phrases than an amateur like myself. Pay and Pray and Obey! It has a good ring to it!
Come on out into the countryside and take a chance -- you have nothing to lose but your humiliating chains as perpetual losers, forged by the proto-fascist manipulators who despise democracy and are destroying the middle class. You will be pleasantly surprised how many of the frustrated and angry middle class who voted for Bush during the last two elections shall come home. Unless, of course you insist on committing suicide along with the Republicans in the death dance of the affluent American Republic.
Sincerely,
Jard DeVille
