(Article changed on October 6, 2013 at 12:53)
Ragnarook by Wikimedia commons
From time to
time an established societal order gives way to something fundamentally
different. Such a transformation is occurring all around us right now. Long
established political, economic, and societal stability is rapidly breaking
down in America. This process of fast change will have dramatic effects upon
not only this country, but upon the entire world system.
Right now in
the US the most audacious crime against electoral democracy in the entire
history of the US--aside, possibly, from southern secession at the start of the
Civil War (First Civil War?)--is underway. Think about it: a numerically
inferior faction of one party, in one legislative chamber is effectively
demanding that the entire American legislative process, which has generally
worked fairly well for the past 224 consecutive years, be disregarded. In doing
this, they claim that they are only following the will of the majority of the
American people, and so, are therefore, entitled to subvert the centuries
established legislative process.
The Affordable
Care Act of 2010 ("Obamacare") has been the law of the land already for the
past THREE YEARS. It has survived intense scrutiny from the US Supreme Court.
Its provisions are in effect right NOW. Despite this, a minority faction of one
political party refuses to accept the outcome of this legislative process. A
law passed by Congress, signed by the President, upheld by the Supreme Court
must be invalidated according to this faction, or else the US government will
not be funded.
The
Constitutionally correct process to remedy or strike down an undesirable law
would be to win sufficient elections in the House and the Senate, while also
capturing the Presidency, to change, or eliminate the unwanted law. To do this
a party would need one essential ingredient: mass public electoral support. It's
called "democracy." The 2012 US Presidential election was largely fought out
over "Obamacare." Obama won by over 5 million votes. The Democrats actually increased
their representation in the Senate by several seats despite having many more
seats facing election. In the House, Democrats received 1.4 million more votes
overall that did Republicans. Only massive gerrymandering allowed them to hold
on to an unrepresentative (of popular will) majority in that chamber.
An
inescapable conclusion is that mass popular support for repeal of Obamacare by
any means very clearly DOES NOT EXIST among the American electorate. Not only
is this reckless Tea Party faction running roughshod over our democracy, worse,
they are doing so at the bidding of a lawless minority. So, what is REALLY
going on?
I see two
factors in play:
1) Rapid demographic changes which are
making it impossible for generally uneducated whites to provide a basis of
electoral victory for the Republican Party. If the 2012 presidential election
had occurred in an America with the demographics it had in, say, 1992, Romney would
have won easily. With 2012 demographics, victories are always very improbable.
This situation only gets worse for Republicans at an accelerating rate
throughout this century. Despite revived neo-Jim Crow laws throughout the red
states, the tide of demography is inescapable and unrelenting.
2) Rapid concentration of wealth into
ever fewer hands. The 400 wealthiest Americans possess greater net wealth than
do the bottom 155 MILLION Americans. Concomitant with this, electoral laws
designed to limit the role of money in politics have been eviscerated by the
Supreme Court's Citizens United and FreeSpeechNow.org decisions. For all
intents and purposes, the USA is now rapidly transforming into an oligarchy.
Note that
these two trends do not pull in the same directions. Demographic change is
pulling in the direction of greater inclusivity, enhanced social welfare, and
Democratic Party electoral dominance overall. Concentration of wealth is
pulling in the direction of greater concentration of political power, to be wielded
increasingly for the benefit of the wealthy few, at the expense of the less well-off
many.
I note that
BOTH political parties have thus been captured by elites in this manner.
However, the elite billionaires who bankroll the Republicans in general, and
its Tea Party faction specifically, are distinctly different from those elites
who support Democrats. Simply put the Tea Party supporting billionaires are far
greedier than their Democrat supporting counterparts.
Therefore we
can see what is driving the present government shutdown: greedy billionaires
who feel that they have a God-given right to all of their wealth, without
having to share any of it, via taxation, for social welfare programs such as
universal health care, use front groups to inflame sentiment among frightened
working class whites to the effect that lazy, non-whites, augmented by "white
trash," are scheming to tax them (non-elite whites) so that they can get
something, undeserved and unearned, for "free."
Given that
our electoral system is still functioning despite the ever growing power of money
to affect it; and also given that there are less greedy billionaires, who
support modest taxation increases for general welfare purposes such as health
care, what we are now observing is a clash between what remains of our
electoral system functioning as a popular democracy, and naked oligarchy.
The will of
the people expressed through the legislative process, and Supreme Court review
is being willfully assaulted. The concentrated power of a tiny, avaricious elite
minority is actively subverting the institutions of governance: Congress, the
Presidency, and the Supreme Court. If it succeeds, democracy will have definitively
failed in this country. We will henceforth be a full blown oligarchy. Just as
the Roman Republic eventually gave way to the Roman Empire, the American
Republic will have finally given up its ghost and been relegated to the history
books.
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