Well, it may be turning fall outside, but inside the hot
house asylum of American politics it's definitely springtime. Springtime for
Hitler that is- or at least the mustache. That notorious, trademark tuft of
facial hair is in full bloom all over the country sprouting up like an
irrepressible weed in the most unlikely of places- the Photoshoped upper lip of
our young, urbane African American President.
Unlikely and absurd, anyways, for those of us who are a part of the
non-certifiable majority who find the Hitlerian makeover of the President- that
signature artwork of the GOP goon squads who have been attacking Democrats with
the same mania they normally reserve for the free dessert buffet at Harrahs,
something of a head scratcher.
Apparently, we lack the x-ray eyes of the tea-bagging, death-paneling elect who
have been blessed with the Illuminati vision to see through the many layers of
contradictory guile that our diabolical President is using to gull the
guileless into totalitarian submission while he overthrows the free world. If
only we had their 20/20 we too would see that our C. in C. is an Aryan loving,
self hating African American fascist who is plotting a commie take over of the
country starting with a mandatory government health care system run out of FEMA
death camps cleverly disguised as hospitals and medical clinics.
Yes, it really is that grotesquely stupid and ignorant and might even be
laughable if not for the fact that their thuggish tactics bear such a strong
family resemblance to the man and the party they love to hate. The nonstop
repetition of over-the-top lies and coded racial slurs, the beer hall
loutishness used to disrupt meetings of elected officials, the open brandishing
of firearms and other weapons to back up the undisguised threat of political
violence, are all right out of the Nazi playbook.
And it's working.....Great.
So now we're left with the demoralizing question of how such a toxic,
calculated political reaction manages to get instant traction as the anointed,
all-American opposition of the politically dispossessed.
Is it because the Democrats, who have been pussies and wankers for decades,
would much rather hide in the dugout like a snake bit minority party rather
than face down the opposition and actually fulfill the mandate for change
demanded by the voters who have repeatedly handed them the power to do it? Or
is it because when the inevitable moment comes- over and over again- when they
have to betray the desperate needs of the electorate in favor of the corporate
interests of their patrons, they would much prefer to have a ginned up
spectacle of "grass roots" opposition on the right to give them
cover? (Wouldn't you?)
Or is it because the corporate mainstream media would much rather lavish face
time and credence on the reality TV antics of the inevitable Right-wing
backlash to the election of our first black president- a backlash the Left
naively thought we were "beyond"- rather than the legitimate concerns
and misgivings that are dawning on much of the rest of the electorate about
someone who sold himself as the ultimate change agent who seems unwilling or
unable to change anything? Or is it because the Obama campaign wasn't really a
political campaign after all, with a real political constituency driving a real
political agenda that would begin on inauguration day, but a movement to elect
the first African American president whose only endgame ended on election day?
I could go on but what's the point. Suffice to say that our current political
condition is a target rich environment of likely reasons- none of them edifying-
that would explain why a patently perverse, populist uprising made up of
corporate sponsored vulgarians shouting down their self interest, which would
be illegal in most Western democracies and unthinkable in all of them, gets
front page billing in this country as another bracing episode of the freedom
loving, cracker-salt-of-the-earth sticking it to the fatuous, liberal elite
while the ruling party obliges its paymasters by cowering in the corner.
So what's new? Nothing. And that of course is the real problem.
The sound and fury of a seemingly seismic shift in the electoral landscape that
sweeps into office the first African American President, dozens of new
Democrats in the House and a half a dozen in the Senate, signifies absolutely
nothing that has made a meaningful difference in the lives of quiet economic
desperation that are being eked out on a wing and a prayer by the bottom 80% of
Americans.
It's not supposed to. Because were are not a Western democracy where votes are
not only counted, but count. Not remotely
We are a one party corportocracy tricked out as a checkbook democracy with two
political brands whose only real competition, despite the dog and pony show of
partisan politics, is about which one can service the business of business
better and claim the fatter check.
This is the awful truth that the feckless Left in this country is finally going
to have to find and grab with its own two hands (along with its sorry ass) and
face: that it has aided and abetted this democracy-snuffing coportocracy far
more than the rabid Right.
Ever since the Democrats started squealing at the same corporate trough as the
Republicans, the Left has responded by sucking on a hopeium crack pipe that the
Democrats have been more than happy to fill with fluff victories about identity
politics and other class lite issues that have little or nothing to do with the
basic economic interests of the vast majority of Americans. In the process it
has become what would be considered in any other Western democracy an
oxymoronic joke: a Left without a defining class consciousness. Hence, a Left
that has never understood, let alone mobilized, the seething reservoir of class
resentment that has been growing for decades in this country as more and more
of the nation's wealth has flowed to the top.
What the birthers and deathers have been told to think may be certifiable, but
what they feel is only too real. They are the screwees in a predatory
relationship of mutual contempt with a paternalistic, economic elite that
always insists on having things its own way. That the Left has been completely
AWOL pursuing feel good obsessions and symbolic sideshows rather than seizing
on their resentment and turning it into a compelling, progressive program of
economic self interest and basic justice, is not the fault of the people we
have all rightly called crazy. It is our fault: the fault of every person whose
moral and critical intelligence makes them a Lefty- a liberal, a progressive, whatever.
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