There are some differences between the two corporatist parties.
The Democrats possess a fading belief, residual from F.D.R. and L.B.J, that government ought to work in the interests of ordinary citizens--so long as corporate interests are not jeopardized. Many rank and file Democrats have a sense that we have lost our way, have become disconnected from reality, and seem to be rushing to disaster. They want something to be done--though they do not want to do anything that might cause them any discomfort.
However, elected representatives of the people do not control our system, so only the most tepid change can ever be implemented--and then only if sufficient bribes to the true masters of our political universe are incorporated into the final legislation. What most Democrats do not want to know, and willfully refuse to accept, is that Obama is powerless to implement true, fundamental change--as are the Congressional Democrats.
As to the Republicans, their base is increasingly rural and suburban, southern, white, fervently religious Protestant. What they perceive around themselves is a society which is increasingly less white, less rural, and less religious--at least in a dogmatic, intolerant, fundamentalist way. Their thinking is manipulated to cause them to group together the social changes occurring around themselves as "liberalism."Further, they are conditioned to see this liberalism as the CAUSE of their financial problems. In particular, liberalism is said to support "big government" which destroys jobs. Their proposed "solution" is to scale back government control over corporations while eliminating the provision of public goods, such as education, health care, free roads, and medical and retirement security, to the maximum degree possible.
In reality this means that these ignorant millions become a political force for the corporations as nothing can restrain these avaricious entities except laws and regulations enforced by the police power of the state. So this cohort works to destroy itself. More recently, increasingly extreme, violent elements of this cohort have become politically organized for the purpose of disrupting Congressional town hall meetings--which is to say they have become the brown shirts of the corporate state.
Corporatism is parasitical not only upon the great mass of humanity, but on the wealth of nature itself. As it requires unending growth--else it would face financial collapse as today's loans could only be paid off with tomorrow's new material wealth, it is inconsistent with natural reality. It is inevitably doomed to collapse, taking most of humanity, and indeed most of the complex life of the planet, down into oblivion with itself. But, it exists to extract short term profit, and it has subverted government to its will. Given this reality, the globally powerful US military is now an enforcement arm of these unelected thugs.
Within the USA, Democrats hope for "change" from within the political system which will be both effective and will not interrupt their American Dream lives. By acting within the established system, and by never challenging its core assumptions, they strengthen the iron grip of the corporatocracy. In reality their party is a simply a vessel to channel public discontent in harmless (to the corporate state) ways. Ultimately though, this group is delusional, as no real change ever occurs.
Republicans, seeking desperately to maintain their backward facing white American Dream represent delusion on steroids. In their fearful desperation to preserve the status quo they actively attack those forces which could benefit their standard of living--unions, progressive legislators etc., while serving as the attack agents of the corporate forces which are actively subverting themselves and their families. This faction has often been referred to as being "batshit crazy." There's a lot of truth in that, though I feel that they are so astronomically far out there as to perhaps require an apology to batshit for demeaning it by association!
America in the early 21st century is being forced to shed its 400 year old delusions and come to grips with actual reality. Seemingly endless growth and expansion--in terms of territory, resources and economics, was a historical anomaly. All available territory is now not only fully occupied, but actually overpopulated. Energy and material resources are in decline, or are approaching decline. Declining resources cannot provide for an ever-expanding economy. In any event our compounding destruction of the planet's biosphere is unsustainable.
The post World War II "American Dream" corresponds to the climax of a brief and now vanishing period of energy and resource abundance on a mostly non-industrialized, much less crowded (population 3 billion in about 1960 versus almost 7 billion now) planet. We need a new dream for our future. One that allows us to live healthy, happy, fulfilling lives, in the context of a complex society, which is sustainable and coexists harmoniously with our biosphere.
However, most Americans appear to be willing to die rather than accept a reality inconsistent with their 1950's era "American Dream." They may well get their wish as our house of cards, delusional political and economic system collapses in the near future.
The rest of us need to escape this doomed, consensus trance, corporate manufactured "McReality" and deal squarely with actual reality, our own survival, the survival of complex society, and of the biosphere. We are compelled to accomplish this agenda outside of the formal political system except at the local, and perhaps, state (or provincial in Canada) level. It's time for a new dream, a Planetary Dream!
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