When are you likely to seek medical help? When something really bothers you. When you have real, sustained pain, that's when. When do people rise up in revolt against their tyrannical government and abusive economy? You guessed it. They must get very disgusted. In their personal lives they must feel hurtful pain. It does not matter what the news media say. What matters is how they and their families are suffering. They must get desperate. Hope for things changing for the better by making modest changes in the status quo must dissolve. Revolutions are driven by widespread pain, suffering and disgust. Recent drops in gas prices and now a stock market high are exactly what the power elites create when their plutocracy is threatened.
The Second American Revolution that our country desperately needs requires huge amounts of public energy. That energy has been building, but now through manipulation by power elites is ready to be channeled where those elites want it to go: to consumer spending. Much of that energy of discontent is also about to be wasted on a political placebo.
All the momentum for revolt built up during years of the Bush-worst-presidency-in-history is about to evaporate. This is part of the genius of the Democrap-Republicrook two-party duopoly, which is no more than a plutocratic political partnership to maintain the corpocracy and prevent the non-wealthy 80 percent of the population from taking the power that is theirs.
When one of our two-party demons goes to extremes the duopoly partner stands ready as a pressure release valve. The biggest downside of Democraps winning this November is how it will diffuse and deflate all the public pain and disgust generated because of the outrages of Republicrook control of our government. It is not surprising that millions of Americans disengaged from civic life and who don't even accept the responsibility to vote are ready to become placated by a shift from Republicrooks to Democraps. Much more depressing is how neo-progressives writing on Internet sites such as this one are justifying voting for Democraps.
Enthusiasm for Democraps because they are seen as the only alternative to letting Republicrooks keep political power is the litmus test for being a neo-progressive. These neo-progressives are making two profoundly important errors in thinking. First, they have deluded themselves that the when put back in power Democraps will actually perform political miracles and restore the quality of our democracy and produce economic justice. Every bit of historical evidence proves that this hope or expectation is ludicrous.
Second, these neo-progressives fail to understand how much pain and suffering the public must endure if a large majority of working- and middle-class Americans are to stimulate and support a Second American Revolution. These neo-progressives have lost their progressive moral principles; they do not understand the dynamics of social upheaval. They do not understand how the two-party duopoly is designed to – at critical times – dissipate public anger by letting the political pendulum swing from Republicrooks to Democraps, or vice-versa.
These neo-progressives have given up on third-parties and truly independent leaders emerging to wage battle against the corporcracy and the power and economic elites benefiting from the plutocracy. Neo-progressives are not revolution-minded. They are delusional, trusting that Democraps recapturing power will produce incremental improvements in our political and economic systems that reverse all the negative trends produced by the Republicrooks. They do not accept the inevitable reality that Democraps will merely use their new power to maintain their majority status. Democraps will eagerly accept tons of money from all kinds of corporate and other special interests. Will they be better than Bush Republicrooks? Of course, that is certain. But what will they accomplish?
Will victorious Democraps raise taxes on the rich? Will they enact true campaign reform through the Clean Money/Clean Elections approach, and reject all contributions other than small ones by individuals? Will they get us out of job-outsourcing globalization? Will they take a hard line on illegal employers of illegal immigrants? Will they put an end to line-item pork spending? Will they stop deficit spending? Will they stop lying to the public? Will a non-courageous minority become a courageous majority?
The price paid for Bush-relief is the loss of public energy for making more radical and necessary changes in our political and economic systems. Neo-progressives would rather replace Republicrooks with Democraps than replace the two-party duopoly with a new political system that undermines the power of the current plutocracy and corpocracy, and restores American democracy by making "representative" democracy honorable and trustworthy.
With the latest political scandal over Republicrook Mark Foley the odds of a Democrap victory in November have shot up, despite the rigging of gas prices and the stock market. True progressives should be mourning a lesser-evil Democrap victory. A few more years of Republicrook corrupt government and attacks on our constitution could have brought Americans closer to overturning the whole corrupt enterprise.
A Democrap victory and the inevitable excesses they will produce will energize core fiscal and social conservative constituencies for 2008 and produce more moderate and attractive Republicrook candidates for president and vice-president. Perversely, a Democrap victory this year that greatly lowers the energy of national discontent will help Republicrooks in 2008. Just as many conservatives may not vote this year, many liberals may not vote in 2008.
I hope cosmetic rather than systemic changes make neo-progressives happy. It surely will please the power and economic elites that can easily endure a brief dose of Democrap victory dancing. Americans will, once again, think that our political system is correcting itself and working. Certainly, that's what all the talking head pundits will be yapping. American democracy will be celebrated. Republicrooks will say they got the message and over the next few years will "reform" and repackage themselves to regain power in 2008.
When Democraps win and Republicrooks lose this year, non-wealthy Americans will continue to lose. That loss will only become apparent over time. The Democrap political placebo will work for awhile. That pain reduction puts off necessary surgery, letting our cancerous corrupt corporate culture to triumph.
www.delusionaldemocracy.com
Joel S. Hirschhorn is the author of Delusional Democracy - Fixing the Republic Without Overthrowing the Government (www.delusionaldemocracy.com). His current political writings have been greatly influenced by working as a senior staffer for the U.S. Congress and for the National Governors Association. He advocates a Second American Revolution, beginning with an Article V Convention to propose constitutional amendments.
Behind your premise seems to be the idea that some other 'people/party/group' will react better than these people did. I submit to you that as long as you keep the 'carrot' a little ahead of the mule on the downhill slope he will continue to pursue it until the slope tips him into the ravine. It will take some real hard-asses in whatever is going to be the next constitutional convention to evade the traps we've already set up in law. Part of the problem with democracy is that most people aren't especially moral or ethical; they are fairly decent when face to face with another person or faced with a choice that has immediacy, but they aren't much good at ethical and moral abstractions. When 'politics' provides that distance that cripples their moral and ethical judgement, they sit on the couch and watch TV and question none of it.
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brantl (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 23 comments)
on Wednesday, October 4, 2006 at 2:18:14 PM
I see Americans as victims. Our education system, our culture, our mainstream media, and our economic system create a distracted and time-poor citizenry and that is just fine with the two-party duopoly. This makes it easier to manipulate, misinform and control the population. To both help millions of Americans become engaged citizens and then to revolt against the current corrupt political system is a monumental challenge. But for us politically engaged dissenters there is no option but to meet this challenge. The point of my article is that when neo-progressives and others seek salvation through shifting political power from one of the two major parties to the other - in this case to Democraps - it actually undermines attempts for major, systemic change. As I explain in great detail in my book Delusional Democracy, there are a host of practical, proven actions we could take to restore American democracy. Getting serious attention to such actions, however, is extremely difficult. As most articles on this and other "progressive" Internet sites demonstrate, most activists are ranting, complaining and screaming; relatively little attention is given to specific positive actions. That bothers me.
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Joel S. Hirschhorn (114 articles, 20 quicklinks, 46 diaries, 430 comments)
on Wednesday, October 4, 2006 at 2:42:08 PM
I'm headed out tomorrow to demonstrate for World Can't Wait. I am in complete agreement with your analysis of the current political situation, and have many lovely ideas for fixing the entire system which is entirely broken. I keep trying to tell the Democrats, beg pardon, Democraps, when they call me, that I'm not sending any more money until they fix the elections, or at least explain why they didn't fight the results of the 2000 or 2004 elections. They keep not listening to me, of course.
I persist in believing that we can accomplish much by educating the people, a lot of whom don't need much more education at all. Less that 40% of the population think the Bush administration is doing a good job; half the population think this country was complicit in 9/11. These are tremendously encouraging statistics, if they are statistics.
Keep on keeping on, and in case the dollar crashes, have a month's supply of food stored at your home.
Carol
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Carol (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 1 comments)
on Wednesday, October 4, 2006 at 6:52:45 PM
Recently, after six years of refusing to address the issue, they've come out in favor of election integrity.
That is the result of you and me and millions like us telling them in no uncertain terms that if they don't fix the elections, or at the very least explain why they didn't fight for our votes in 2000, 2002, and 2004, we're not giving them another damned dime. The fact that they've thrown away our votes proves that they never cared about our votes in the first place, they only wanted our money. So we have no other way to get them to represent us than by doing the same thing the big PAC and corporations do: threatening not to give them any more money unless they represent us.
The real problem is what Joel explained. When Conyers, Pelosi, and Feingold stated that they do not intend to begin impeachment proceedings if the Democrats attain a majority, they were speaking the simple truth. They do not and they cannot. They voted for everything that Bush has done and you can't impeach someone for something that you yourself voted for without impeaching yourself at the same time.
We need a new system, a more participatory or direct democracy where we don't subject legislators to vast amounts of corruptive power. Congress was designed for a country with a much smaller population and a less complicated life. How can legislators represent us when they don't even have time to read the legislation they vote on?
At the local level we need at least one local legislator for every thousand citizens, so that they can actually have town hall meetings where they can listen to and speak with the people they are going to represent. At the state level we need at least one representative for every 10 local legislators. That way the people they represent can get to know them before voting for them, can keep track of their voting records, and they can have daily teleconferences and weekly meetings with the ten local representatives they are representing at the state level. And at the federal level we need at least one representative for every ten state representatives. That means an enormous House of Representativwes, one big enough to represent everyone, with nobody having too much power. We need to do away completely with the upper house or House of Lords, which we call the Senate, because it is no longer possible for two people to represent an entire state. We need to do away with political parties completely because choosing and voting for representatives is the direct and personal business of the electorate and no organization has the Constitutional right to come between us and our right to elect our representatives.
There are some who say that the right to vote is not protected in the Constitution. Attorney Paul Lehto points out that there is a good reason for that. The right to vote existed before the Constitution. The Constitution itself was enacted by voting on it. There may be questions about who has the right to vote, as with females and minorities, but there is no question about the right to vote itself. It is one of our inalienable rights and it can never be taken from us. Besides, as I've pointed out elsewhere, the Constitution does say that "the people" have the right to elect our representatives. How would we elect them if we didn't have the right to vote? Not to mention that four Constitutional Amendments refer specifically to "the right to vote" which would not be the case if no such right existed.
First we need open, honest elections with total transparency. That means hand counted paper ballots at the precincts where everyone can watch the vote counting. Once we have honest elections, the next thing we need is candidates. We have to look for people who have dedicated their lives to the things we believe in, like peace, justice, environmental protections, etc. No more electing people who might or might not care about these things, in hopes that once they're elected we might be able to convince them. You wouldn't let someone who might or might not have any mechanical abilities work on your car. You wouldn't let anyone who might or might not know how to care for kids be your babysitter. We need to take as much care in selecting candidates as we do in selecting people for any other job.
And we need publicly financed elections, so that people who have dedicated their lives to promoting peace, for example, don't have to win the lottery in order to be able to afford to run for office. We need proportional representation, so that minorities don't get left out and forgotten but are also represented in government. We need to abolish the electoral college and we need many other reforms.
But we can start by getting rid of the Democrap-Republicrook duopoly as Joel suggests. We need to stop thinking about who can win, and start thinking about who would actually represent us if they won. Because otherwise, even when they win, we still lose.
Excellent article, Joel.
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Mark E. Smith (20 articles, 28 quicklinks, 68 diaries, 810 comments)
on Wednesday, October 4, 2006 at 10:08:59 PM
